What Defines Merit with Regards to Equality of Opportunity?

Abstract

It is not uncommon to hear explanations such as “we hired this candidate because they were the most deserving of the job” or that “the particular student chosen for this scholarship was the most worthy candidate.” However, there is little consensus as to what defines merit or desert in this context. This essay defends Tom Scanlon’s view that for merit to be a valid basis of selection for positions of advantage, it must be defined in the institution-dependent sense. This means that merit or talent must be based on how well an individual fits the goals or aims which the institution plans to promote, provided that the institution’s aims are normatively justified. The first section of this essay successfully shows the theoretical validity of Scanlon’s argument for the institution-dependant sense of merit. This is done by first analyzing how institutions generate inequalities in a just fashion, relying on John Rawls’ concept of the original position. The essay then shows that for these inequalities to be justified, they must be distributed according to the institutional account of procedural fairness. The first section concludes by providing a definition of talent that fits with the institutional account of procedural fairness and the Rawlsian original position, this being the institutiondependent notion of merit. The second and third sections of the essay assess the logical strength of Scanlon’s argument against a rebuttal from Ronald Dworkin, and the real-world implications of the institution-dependent definition of merit on equality of opportunity, in the context of affirmative action programs. The final section of the essay highlights some potential problems and unanswered questions with regards to the institution-dependent definition of merit and provides some potential solutions while also provoking more exploration of the topic of merit and equality of opportunity. An appendix is also provided to show the logical validity of Scanlon’s argument with formal logic. All of this will cumulatively show that T. M. Scanlon is correct in asserting that for merit to be a valid basis of selection, it must be defined in the institution-dependent sense.