Treating People Differently

Abstract

This thesis is on the topic of discrimination. In the sense relevant to moral inquiry, discrimination refers to a wrongful sort of differential treatment. Agents discriminate in treating some differently to others, and in ways that require restitution. My main aim is to develop a moralised conception of discrimination with an eye on rational decision-making. On the view presented in this thesis, an agent discriminates in engaging in differential treatment on the basis of considerations that are not sufficiently relevant to their legitimate goals. Agents can do so by misconstruing their evidence or by adopting goals that prescribe wrongful differential treatment. At first glance, this view runs counter to intuition. A greater focus on rationality dilutes discrimination's putative moral content. I show that the view presented allows that some cases of discrimination - as marked by socially salient attributes, for instance - warrant particular moral concern or are especially wrong. In the course of this work, I pursue two subsidiary aims. One, to analyse discrimination in a way that is neutral between moral theories. And two, to develop an account of discrimination that extends to a broad range of inequalities, including ones not precipitated by background injustice. The upshot is a theory of discrimination capable of guiding moral inquiry under a range of variable contextual factors. Show more