 Some who write on this topic are “monists” about justification; they apparently assume that there is a single feature that will serve in all cases to justify desert claims. Others are “pluralists.” They defend the idea that desert claims fall into different categories, and that each category has its own distinctive sort of justification (see, for example, Feinberg 1970, Sher 1987, and Lamont 1994). We first consider some monist views. 