What is the "natural lottery"?

Having created this blog over a month ago and then subsequently having neglected up to now (okay, so I’ve been busy with other things), I think that I should at least explain its name (“The Natural Lottery”) to anyone who might be curious. In my academic field of specialization (political theory), a central question involves the concept of desert: how might we distinguish between those advantages and disadvantages that persons can justifiably be said to deserve (as a matter of justice) from those that they do not? The standard distinction between deserved and undeserved advantages and disadvantages concerns the causal role of a person’s voluntary choices in determining those advantages and disadvantages, where luck (or, more accurately, “brute luck”) names those circumstances in which a person’s volition or choices in no way determine their particular bundles of resources, or mix of advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, there exist many instances in which both luck and voluntary choice combine to affect a person’s life chances, though at least some (often called “accidents of birth”) such relevant variables in a person’s opportunity structure arise purely from luck (or from “the natural lottery”). The above quote from Rawls - which serves to introduce his theory of justice for social institutions that is intended to “deal with these facts” - relies upon such an analysis, and much of my own work likewise involves the exploration what the “natural lottery” implies for politics and society.

Though this is a scholarly interest of mine, I do not intend it to be the focus of this blog (though it may occasionally come up, and its assumptions will probably be represented in some of the page’s content). Instead, I imagine this as a kind of virtual storage unit for my miscellaneous observations regarding subjects that arise from both my professional and personal interests and experiences. Following the conventions of the genre as it has developed in the “blogosphere,” I expect some mix of commentary, links to interesting online sources, and semi-autobiographical sketches to find its way onto this page. This, at least, is what I now anticipate, though only time will tell if upcoming months will prove more fruitful for “The Natural Lottery” than its first month has.