Abstract

This paper will argue for the need to attend to the impact of cognitive and other psychological limitations on the ways in which we theorize about fairness and unfairness. In particular it will consider the implications of the fact that people seem better able to describe situations as unfair than to articulate coherent conceptions of fairness, and that theories that make demands on people that they perceive as inordinate will be ignored regardless of the strength of the arguments in their favor.