 A number of related questions have been discussed under the general title of ‘the justification of desert claims.’ Some apparently take the question about justification to be a question about epistemic justification (see, for example, McLeod 1995, 89). If we understand the question in this way, we may want to know how – if at all – a person can be epistemically justified in believing that (for example) hard work is a desert base for reward. Others take the question about justification in a different way. They take it to be a question about explanation. Consider again the question about the justification of the claim that hard work makes us deserve reward. On this second interpretation, the question is: what explains the fact that hard work is a desert base for reward? Others speak in this context of “normative force” (see, for example, Sher 1987, xi). They seem to be concerned with a question about what explains the fact that when someone deserves something, it is obligatory for others to provide it, or good that it be provided. Still others may phrase the question by appeal to concepts of grounding or foundation. They may ask what grounds the fact that those who work hard deserve rewards. Still others write a bit more vaguely about the analysis of desert claims (see, for example, Feinberg 1970). 