Defining the line of what counts as severe injustice, a high stakes error or a violation of a basic right, is not done precisely in the literature and is in my view impossible to do in a theoretically satisfying way. I think this is true for all nonconsequentialist thresholds. The point of nonconsequentialism is to avoid having to say how good something is, which makes it difficult/impossible to know how to trade-off different nonconsequentialist elements against each other. What do I do if I have to choose between the right to free speech and the economic minimum? If I don’t know how good these things are, I don’t see how I can compare and weigh them. Equally, what do I do if I have a 10% chance of violating someone’s right to free association and a 20% chance of violating someone’s right to an economic minimum? If you don’t know how good these outcomes are, probability weighing them isn’t much use when you’re deciding how to act.
Ultimately, the boundary of what counts as a high stakes error is defined fuzzily and arbitrarily.
Defining the line of what counts as severe injustice, a high stakes error or a violation of a basic right, is not done precisely in the literature and is in my view impossible to do in a theoretically satisfying way. I think this is true for all nonconsequentialist thresholds. The point of nonconsequentialism is to avoid having to say how good something is, which makes it difficult/impossible to know how to trade-off different nonconsequentialist elements against each other. What do I do if I have to choose between the right to free speech and the economic minimum? If I don’t know how good these things are, I don’t see how I can compare and weigh them. Equally, what do I do if I have a 10% chance of violating someone’s right to free association and a 20% chance of violating someone’s right to an economic minimum? If you don’t know how good these outcomes are, probability weighing them isn’t much use when you’re deciding how to act.
Ultimately, the boundary of what counts as a high stakes error is defined fuzzily and arbitrarily.