Thomas Sowell’s terms surrogate decision-maker and hypothetical individuals seem a bit wry.
In Rawls, the locus of discretion is the surrogate decision-maker “society” which can choose the trade-off collectively and arrange results in accordance with principles of justice these principles being derived in explicitly rationalistic terms. While the principles of justice are logically derived from the presumed preferences of hypothetical individuals, “in the original position” of the yet unborn, deciding what kind of world they would like to inhabit, the locus of discretion in applying these principles is “society” or a collective “we” — that is, surrogate decision-makers.
From A Conflict of Vision (2007).
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