Veil of Ignorance, explained.
The veil of ignorance is Rawls's restriction on information about one's eventual social position when justifying principles of justice. It invites impartial reasoning rather than merely guessing which position will win a lottery.
Why it happens
Knowing your own receipt can distort the defence of a common rule. Withholding that fact lets minimum, total, equality, and other reasons be considered before personal advantage is revealed.
Rawls's original position withholds knowledge of personal circumstances to investigate impartial principles of justice. The veil of ignorance is a constraint on justification, not merely a lottery tactic.
Read the result
Compare every policy's four receipts, floor, and total. Commit before revealing the seeded role. Your personal result is one outcome under an invented uniform draw, not a test of Rawls's full theory.
A worked example
Choosing a rule before learning your position
Equal shares allocates six to each of four positions, giving total twenty-four and floor six.
The high-total policy allocates 1/5/9/17, giving total thirty-two and floor one. Both numbers matter to the comparison.
Reveal your role only after commitment. Ask whether the reason for your choice still addresses the person who receives the lowest amount.
OPTIONAL DEEPER DETAILGo deeper: inside the model
Inside this model
Three stipulated policies allocate tokens across four positions: 6/6/6/6, 1/5/9/17, or 5/6/8/9. Compare minimum, total, and mean. Your policy locks before a seeded role is revealed. A fresh round changes the role, not the policy values.
Where this idea is useful
A practical use
A policy designer can ask whether a rule is defensible to people whose eventual position the designer does not know.
A common misconception
“The veil mechanically proves that equal token shares are just.”
The activity omits liberties, opportunities, institutions, and Rawls's arguments. Token comparisons make a question visible without selecting a universally correct principle.
What this explanation leaves out
- The uniform role lottery is Modic's illustration, not a faithful reconstruction of Rawls's reasoning about uncertainty. Token totals omit liberties, opportunities, institutions, and many features of justice. No allocation is marked morally correct.
Does Rawls assume each position has a known equal probability?
Not as a straightforward premise of the original position. Modic's uniform draw is a teaching device, and Rawls's reasoning about the choice situation is more demanding.
Could you defend your preferred rule without knowing which position you would occupy?
Associated thinkers
Associations marked provisional are awaiting source review.
Further reading
Explore the original research or the teaching reference behind this experiment.