Michael Otsuka (LSE): “Determinism and the Value and Fairness of Equal Chances”

Abstract: It follows from plausible claims about the laws of physics and the narrowness of the most relevant reference class that the positive chances between 0.0 and 1.0 that lotteries yield are almost certainly merely epistemic rather than objective. It is, for example, merely a matter of our ignorance that a given fair coin toss confers a 0.5 chance of landing heads. In actual objective fact, the chances of its landing heads are almost certainly either 0.0 or 1.0. I argue that, even if all chances between 0.0 and 1.0 are merely epistemic rather than objective, the provision of such merely epistemically equal positive chances of an indivisible, life-saving resource to those with equal claims renders things fairer by providing the equal distribution of something that it is rational to value equally. It follows, somewhat paradoxically, that the descent of a veil that deprives us knowledge of who is fated to live and die makes things fairer. It would, however, be self-defeating for us to choose to impose such a veil in order to try to equalize the distribution of something it is rational to value equally. This is because rational valuation is based on an assessment rather than the destruction of the best evidence available to us.

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