Fairness

What Fairness brings to inquiry

At the garden shed, you have cast your friend with enormous boots as the maker of a muddy trail. Your friend offers a sole for comparison. It is much wider than the print. You give that difference its due and withdraw the claim, leaving the maker unknown. Your tidy cast list has lost its leading villain; the mud has declined to audition a replacement.

This is an invented illustrative scene.

Fairness gives evidence its due regardless of which person it favors. A first suspicion can organize your attention so effectively that every later detail seems to support it. Deliberately examine the favorable evidence as well: a different time, a clean sole, a detail that rules out the supposed action. An impartial assessment can reach a clear conclusion. Its strength comes from the relevant evidence, not from distributing suspicion equally.

Fairness gives an account credibility beyond the preferences of its author. Another person can see that their strongest relevant point has been considered, even if the conclusion remains unwelcome. That makes disagreement more informative.

A reading group can compare the best case for each plausible explanation before the reveal. In everyday life, a shared account of a minor mix-up can include your own role and the detail that favors the person you first blamed.

Finding the balance

An evidence rule should survive a change in whose account it favors. A detail that clears your friend deserves its full weight even when it leaves your preferred story without a suspect.

In ordinary life

A mystery’s red herring

Find the best available reason that the apparent suspect could not have done what your theory requires.

A small disagreement

State the strongest relevant detail that favors the other account before deciding.

Nearby virtues, different work

Intellectual Honesty

Intellectual Honesty exposes your belief to correction; Fairness gives each relevant interest and item of evidence impartial weight.

Justice

Fairness governs assessment; Justice takes seriously what people are due, including after assessment.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Equal suspicion counterfeits Fairness when everyone receives the same accusation regardless of evidence. Fairness applies a consistent standard and permits unequal conclusions where the support differs.

Cultivating Fairness

• Look for the evidence your first suspicion would prefer to overlook.
• Apply the same standard to your own recollection.
• Revise the conclusion when a relevant distinction emerges.

Try it today

Use a fictional mystery or a minor shared matter that participants freely want to discuss. Identify the strongest relevant detail favoring the explanation you currently doubt. Consider how it changes the account before restating your conclusion.

Try the same evidence rule on an account you like less and ask whether the standard stayed the same.

Questions worth returning to

• Which account received the easiest standard of proof?
• What evidence favors the person I first doubted?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

1. … all the Arguments pro and con ought to be examined, before we come to a Judgment.

   John Locke · An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II
   4. The Grounds of Probability are two: Conformity with our own Experience, or the Testimony of others.
   John Locke · Project Gutenberg 10616 display edition, described as based on the second edition; Books III and IV

   Locke asks for consideration of both sides of an argument. The relevant favorable detail deserves attention even after a suspicion has become familiar.

2. Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it may be doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point of ignorance, class feeling, or prejudice.

   Thomas Henry Huxley · Science & Education
   A LIBERAL EDUCATION; AND WHERE TO FIND IT
   Thomas Henry Huxley · Project Gutenberg 7150 display edition of collected essays

   Huxley challenges the easy assignment of prejudice to one social group. His education argument invites scrutiny of the standard applied to each account, not endorsement of every historical claim in the collection.

3. … every fresh fact seemed to strengthen his conviction of young McCarthy’s innocence.

   Arthur Conan Doyle · The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
   IV. THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY
   Dr. Watson, narrator · 1892 collection; Project Gutenberg 1661 display edition

   Watson records an inquiry attending to facts favorable to the accused in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery.” The conclusion is not owed to the initial suspicion.

4. To believe James Harwell capable of guilt, and to find evidence enough to accuse him of it, were two very different things.

   Anna Katharine Green · The Leavenworth Case
   XIV. MR. GRYCE AT HOME
   Everett Raymond, narrator · 1878 novel; Project Gutenberg 4047 display edition

   Raymond distinguishes a judgment about someone’s supposed capacity from support for an accusation. Fairness gives the actual evidence the deciding role.

5. It may be worth while to find out tomorrow whether Superintendent Seegrave was wrong about the Indians as well.

   Wilkie Collins · The Moonstone
   CHAPTER XVI
   Sergeant Cuff · 1868 novel; Project Gutenberg 155 display edition

   Cuff questions an earlier suspicion of the Indian characters after other conclusions failed. Their identity does not itself establish the allegation; the novel’s historical terminology is preserved.

6. He did her that justice, though all the time it would have been a relief to believe her utterly unworthy of his esteem.

   Elizabeth Gaskell · North and South
   CHAPTER XXXVIII. PROMISES FULFILLED.
   Narrator, describing John Thornton · 1854–1855 serial; 1855 book; Project Gutenberg 4276 display edition

   Thornton’s emotional convenience would favor a harsher account of Margaret. The narrator shows him retaining a relevant distinction despite that wish.

7. … whose noble qualities were generously acknowledged even by his political enemies.

   Samuel Smiles · Character
   CHAPTER VI.—SELF-CONTROL.
   Samuel Smiles, describing John Hampden · 1871 work; Project Gutenberg 2541 display edition

   Smiles’s account of Hampden recognizes favorable qualities across political opposition. An opposing position need not erase the evidence that counts in someone’s favor.

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