140. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen | Wrongful Discrimination

What is discrimination, and what makes it wrongful?My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.1. AuthorKasper Lippert-Rasmussen is professor in political theory at University of Aarhus, Denmark. His work has focused primarily on applied and normative ethical issues.Check out his Cambridge Element, “Wrongful Discrimination”!https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/wrongful-discrimination/6E0371A0B8D60E14E657153706F6F3EChttps://a.co/d/fjqivMb2. Book SummaryLippert-Rasmussen’s Wrongful Discrimination asks what “discrimination” is and, more importantly, what makes it wrongful when it is. He starts by distinguishing mere (generic) discrimination—just differentiating—from “group discrimination,” where people are treated differently because they’re seen as members of socially salient groups (race, gender, religion, etc.). He then maps key varieties of group discrimination (especially direct vs. indirect, plus structural patterns), and stresses that “wrongful” and “morally impermissible” can come apart: discrimination can wrong someone even in cases where (all things considered) an act might still be permissible, and vice versa.The core of the book is a critical survey of three leading families of explanations for wrongfulness: harm-based views, disrespect-based views, and views that tie wrongfulness to sustaining or expressing relations of social inequality (a “social equality”/relational-egalitarian approach). Lippert-Rasmussen argues that each can explain many paradigm cases of wrongful direct discrimination, but each runs into serious trouble once you press on hard cases—e.g., cases that look wrongful without straightforward harm, or cases where harms are present but don’t seem to generate a complaint in the right way.He then uses three especially important “non-paradigmatic” domains—indirect discrimination, implicit-bias discrimination, and algorithmic discrimination—to test these theories. The upshot is pessimistic about any single master explanation: these phenomena often don’t fit neatly under standard categories (prompting proposals like a third category beyond direct/indirect discrimination), and they expose systematic gaps in harm-, disrespect-, and social-equality accounts as usually formulated. Overall, he concludes that the prospects for a monistic theory of what makes discrimination wrongful are dim, and that we may need a more pluralistic (or significantly revised) framework.3. Interview Chapters00:00 - Introduction00:43 - What is “discrimination”?07:17 - Irrelevant features10:48 - Framing the project18:43 - Socially salient groups23:44 - Connection with the law26:49 - Empirical research28:04 - Vagueness33:12 - Political beliefs35:07 - Direct and indirect discrimination38:14 - Worry about indirect discrimination43:35 - Statistical discrimination46:24 - Different category?48:41 - Structural discrimination52:40 - Wrongful discrimination55:09 - Rejoinder1:03:02 - Harm-based accounts1:06:53 - Respect-based accounts1:11:11 - Intent 1:13:19 - Equality-based accounts1:19:16 - Monistic accounts1:23:05 - Value of philosophy1:27:10 - Conclusion This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fric.substack.com/subscribe