{"id":6954,"date":"2015-09-30T05:27:16","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T05:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/30\/sloppy-liberal-thinking-about-equality\/"},"modified":"2015-09-30T05:27:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T05:27:16","slug":"sloppy-liberal-thinking-about-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/30\/sloppy-liberal-thinking-about-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"Sloppy Liberal Thinking About Equality"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Equality of opportunity is one thing, equality of outcome quite another.&#0160; The former is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the latter.&#0160; Yet many liberals think that any lack of equality of outcome for a given group argues an antecedent lack of equality of opportunity for that group.&#0160; This is a <em>non sequitur<\/em> of the following form:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">P is necessary for Q<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><em>Ergo<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">~Q is sufficient for ~P.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">This is an invalid argument form since it is easy to find substitutions for \u2018P\u2019 and \u2018Q\u2019 that make the premise true and the conclusion false.&#0160; For example, being a citizen is necessary to be eligible to vote; <em>ergo<\/em>, not being eligible to vote is sufficient to show that one is not a citizen.&#0160; The conclusion is false, since there might be some other factor that disqualifies one from voting such as being a felon, or being under age.&#0160; Similarly, an unequal outcome is not sufficient to show discrimination or unequal opportunity for the simple reason that there might be some other factor that explains the unequal outcome, such as a lack of competitiveness, an inability to defer gratification, or a lack of ability.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Equality of opportunity is one thing, equality of outcome quite another.&#0160; The former is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the latter.&#0160; Yet many liberals think that any lack of equality of outcome for a given group argues an antecedent lack of equality of opportunity for that group.&#0160; This is a non sequitur &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/30\/sloppy-liberal-thinking-about-equality\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Sloppy Liberal Thinking About Equality&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-logica-utens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}