{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,5]],"date-time":"2025-04-05T05:53:04Z","timestamp":1743832384101,"version":"3.37.3"},"reference-count":24,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,3,20]],"date-time":"2023-03-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1679270400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,3,20]],"date-time":"2023-03-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1679270400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100010665","name":"H2020 Marie Sk\u0142odowska-Curie Actions","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["898322"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["898322"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100010665","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100003407","name":"Ministero dell\u2019Istruzione, dell\u2019Universit\u00e0 e della Ricerca","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["201743F9YE"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["201743F9YE"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100003407","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001711","name":"Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur F\u00f6rderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["187473"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["187473"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001711","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100006690","name":"Politecnico di Milano","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100006690","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Res Publica"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,6]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:p>The widespread use of algorithms for prediction-based decisions urges us to consider the question of what it means for a given act or practice to be discriminatory. Building upon work by Kusner and colleagues in the field of machine learning, we propose a counterfactual condition as a necessary requirement on discrimination. To demonstrate the philosophical relevance of the proposed condition, we consider two prominent accounts of discrimination in the recent literature, by Lippert-Rasmussen and Hellman respectively, that do not logically imply our condition and show that they face important objections. Specifically, Lippert-Rasmussen\u2019s definition proves to be over-inclusive, as it classifies some acts or practices as discriminatory when they are not, whereas Hellman\u2019s account turns out to lack explanatory power precisely insofar as it does not countenance a counterfactual condition on discrimination. By defending the necessity of our counterfactual condition, we set the conceptual limits for justified claims about the occurrence of discriminatory acts or practices in society, with immediate applications to the ethics of algorithmic decision-making.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s11158-023-09586-3","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,3,20]],"date-time":"2023-03-20T17:03:17Z","timestamp":1679331797000},"page":"185-211","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["How I Would have been Differently Treated. Discrimination Through the Lens of Counterfactual Fairness"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"29","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7053-4724","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Michele","family":"Loi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9824-4630","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Francesco","family":"Nappo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1640-2763","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Eleonora","family":"Vigan\u00f2","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,3,20]]},"reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"9586_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"149","DOI":"10.2307\/3312397","volume":"141","author":"Larry Alexander","year":"1992","unstructured":"Alexander, Larry. 1992. What makes wrongful discrimination wrong? Biases, preferences, stereotypes, and proxies. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141 (1): 149. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2307\/3312397.","journal-title":"University of Pennsylvania Law Review"},{"key":"9586_CR2","unstructured":"Binns, Reuben. 2018. Fairness in machine learning: Lessons from political philosophy. In Proceedings of the 1st conference on fairness, accountability and transparency, 149\u201359. PMLR. https:\/\/proceedings.mlr.press\/v81\/binns18a.html."},{"issue":"2","key":"9586_CR3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"163","DOI":"10.5406\/21520542.36.2.04","volume":"36","author":"Clinton Castro","year":"2022","unstructured":"Castro, Clinton. 2022. Just machines. Public Affairs Quarterly 36 (2): 163\u2013183. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5406\/21520542.36.2.04.","journal-title":"Public Affairs Quarterly"},{"key":"9586_CR4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s11158-022-09561-4","author":"Clinton Castro","year":"2022","unstructured":"Castro, Clinton, David O\u2019Brien, and Ben Schwan. 2022. Egalitarian machine learning. Res Publica, August. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s11158-022-09561-4.","journal-title":"Res Publica, August."},{"key":"9586_CR5","unstructured":"Castro, Clinton. (ms). Just Machines. PhilArchive, latest version: 03\u20132022. https:\/\/philpapers.org\/archive\/CASJM.pdf"},{"issue":"01","key":"9586_CR6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"7801","DOI":"10.1609\/aaai.v33i01.33017801","volume":"33","author":"Silvia Chiappa","year":"2019","unstructured":"Chiappa, Silvia. 2019. Path-specific counterfactual fairness. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33 (1): 7801\u20137808. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1609\/aaai.v33i01.33017801.","journal-title":"Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence"},{"key":"9586_CR7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/acprof:oso\/9780198732877.001.0001","volume-title":"Discrimination and Disrespect","author":"Benjamin Eidelson","year":"2015","unstructured":"Eidelson, Benjamin. 2015. Discrimination and disrespect. New York: Oxford University Press."},{"key":"9586_CR8","volume-title":"Evidence of Fairness: On the Uses and Limitations of Statistical Fairness Criteria","author":"Will Fleisher","year":"2021","unstructured":"Fleisher, Will. 2021. Evidence of fairness: On the uses and limitations of statistical fairness criteria. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network."},{"key":"9586_CR9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Glymour, Bruce, and Jonathan Herington. 2019. Measuring the biases that matter: The ethical and casual foundations for measures of fairness in algorithms. In Proceedings of the conference on fairness, accountability, and transparency, 269\u2013278. FAT* \u201919. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.","DOI":"10.1145\/3287560.3287573"},{"key":"9586_CR10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Heidari, Hoda, Michele Loi, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Andreas Krause. 2019. A moral framework for understanding fair ML through economic models of equality of opportunity. In Proceedings of the conference on fairness, accountability, and transparency, 181\u2013190. FAT* \u201919. New York: Association for Computing Machinery","DOI":"10.1145\/3287560.3287584"},{"key":"9586_CR11","volume-title":"When Is Discrimination Wrong?","author":"Deborah Hellman","year":"2008","unstructured":"Hellman, Deborah. 2008. When is discrimination wrong? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press."},{"key":"9586_CR12","volume-title":"The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination","author":"Deborah Hellman","year":"2018","unstructured":"Hellman, Deborah. 2018. Discrimination and social meaning. In The Routledge handbook of the ethics of discrimination, ed. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen. London and New York: Routledge."},{"key":"9586_CR13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hu, Lily, and Issa Kohler-Hausmann. 2020. What\u2019s sex got to do with fair machine learning? In Proceedings of the 2020 conference on fairness, accountability, and transparency, 513\u2013513.","DOI":"10.1145\/3351095.3375674"},{"key":"9586_CR14","unstructured":"Kilbertus, Niki, Adri\u00e0 Gasc\u00f3n, Matt J. Kusner, Michael Veale, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Adrian Weller. 2018. Blind justice: fairness with encrypted sensitive attributes. In 35th international conference on machine learning, ICML 2018 6 (June), 4123\u20134137."},{"issue":"5","key":"9586_CR15","first-page":"1163","volume":"113","author":"Issa Kohler-Hausmann","year":"2019","unstructured":"Kohler-Hausmann, Issa. 2019. Eddie Murphy and the dangers of counterfactual causal thinking about detecting racial discrimination. Northwestern University Law Review 113 (5): 1163\u20131228.","journal-title":"Northwestern University Law Review"},{"key":"9586_CR24","volume-title":"Naming and necessity","author":"Saul Kripke","year":"1980","unstructured":"Kripke, Saul. 1980. Naming and necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press."},{"key":"9586_CR16","unstructured":"Kusner, Matt J., Joshua R. Loftus, Chris Russell, and Ricardo Silva. 2017. Counterfactual fairness. In Advances in neural information processing systems 2017-December (March), 4067\u201377."},{"key":"9586_CR17","volume-title":"Born Free and Equal? A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Discrimination","author":"Kaspar Lippert-Rasmussen","year":"2014","unstructured":"Lippert-Rasmussen, Kaspar. 2014. Born free and equal? A philosophical inquiry into the nature of discrimination. New York: Oxford University Press."},{"key":"9586_CR18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9780511803161","volume-title":"Causality","author":"Judea Pearl","year":"2000","unstructured":"Pearl, Judea. 2000. Causality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/CBO9780511803161."},{"key":"9586_CR19","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"96","DOI":"10.1214\/09-SS057","volume":"3","author":"Judea Pearl","year":"2009","unstructured":"Pearl, Judea. 2009. Causal inference in statistics: An overview. Statistics Surveys 3: 96\u2013146. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1214\/09-SS057.","journal-title":"Statistics Surveys"},{"issue":"1","key":"9586_CR20","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"499","DOI":"10.1146\/annurev-polisci-032015-010015","volume":"19","author":"Maya Sen","year":"2016","unstructured":"Sen, Maya, and Omar Wasow. 2016. Race as a bundle of sticks: Designs that estimate effects of seemingly immutable characteristics. Annual Review of Political Science 19 (1): 499\u2013522. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1146\/annurev-polisci-032015-010015.","journal-title":"Annual Review of Political Science"},{"key":"9586_CR21","unstructured":"Weinberger, Naftali. 2022. Signal manipulation and the causal analysis of racial discrimination. Preprint February 2022. http:\/\/philsci-archive.pitt.edu\/20221\/."},{"key":"9586_CR22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/0195155270.001.0001","volume-title":"Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation","author":"James Woodward","year":"2003","unstructured":"Woodward, James. 2003. Making things happen: A theory of causal explanation. New York: Oxford University Press. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/0195155270.001.0001."},{"issue":"2","key":"9586_CR23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"183","DOI":"10.1007\/s10506-016-9182-5","volume":"24","author":"Indr\u0117 \u017dliobait\u0117","year":"2016","unstructured":"\u017dliobait\u0117, Indr\u0117, and Bart Custers. 2016. Using sensitive personal data may be necessary for avoiding discrimination in data-driven decision models. Artificial Intelligence and Law 24 (2): 183\u2013201. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10506-016-9182-5.","journal-title":"Artificial Intelligence and Law"}],"container-title":["Res Publica"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s11158-023-09586-3.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11158-023-09586-3\/fulltext.html","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s11158-023-09586-3.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,22]],"date-time":"2023-05-22T15:13:20Z","timestamp":1684768400000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/10.1007\/s11158-023-09586-3"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2023,3,20]]},"references-count":24,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,6]]}},"alternative-id":["9586"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s11158-023-09586-3","relation":{},"ISSN":["1356-4765","1572-8692"],"issn-type":[{"type":"print","value":"1356-4765"},{"type":"electronic","value":"1572-8692"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2023,3,20]]},"assertion":[{"value":"19 February 2023","order":1,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"20 March 2023","order":2,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Declarations"}},{"value":"The authors declare no conflict of interest.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Conflict of interest"}}]}}