Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory that assigns value impartially to the well-being of each person. Informed Altruism, introduced in this paper, is an intentionalist theory that relegates both consequentialism and impartiality to subordinate roles. It identifies morally right or commendable actions (including collective actions such as laws and policies) as those motivated by a sufficiently informed intention to benefit and not harm others. An implication of the theory is that multiple agents may perform incompatible actions and yet each be acting (...) rightly in a moral sense. (shrink)

Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not e...

This paper critically assesses existing accounts of the nature of difficulty, finds them wanting, and proposes a new account. The concept of difficulty is routinely invoked in debates regarding degrees of moral responsibility, and the value of achievement. Until recently, however, there has not been any sustained attempt to provide an account of the nature of difficulty itself. This has changed with Gwen Bradford’s Achievement, which argues that difficulty is a matter of how much intense effort is expended. But while (...) this account captures something important about the relationship between difficulty and achievement, it fails to account for the fact that part of what makes achievements great is that they are difficult in a moderately agent-neutral kind of way. Nor is this thought captured by any other extant account. I argue that to fill this gap we should think of difficulty in terms of low probability of success. (shrink)

Distributive justice, defined as justice in distribution of income and wealth, is impossible. Income and wealth are distributed either unequally or equally. If unequally, then those with less are unjustly subject to social contempt. But equal distribution is impossible because it is inconsistent with bargaining to advance our own good. Hence justice in distribution of income and wealth is impossible. More generally, societies where social relations are mediated by money are necessarily unjust, and Marx was wrong to think a socialist (...) society which retained money would lead to communism. Contributive justice proposes that each flourishes by advancing the flourishing of others. To achieve this goal all labor, both simple and complex, must be shared among all capable of doing it. The good of contributing our abilities to benefit others is then available to all non-competitively. (shrink)

Sometimes it’s reasonable to reduce confidence in a proposition in response to gaining etiological information. Suppose, for example, a theist learns that her theism is ‘due to’ her religious upbringing. There is a clear range of cases where it would be reasonable for her to respond by slightly decreasing her confidence in God’s existence. So long as reasonability and justification are distinct, this reasonability claim would appear consistent with the thesis that this kind of etiological information cannot, all by itself, (...) affect one’s justification. In what follows, I argue that this is mistaken. For, even if reasonability and justification are distinct, the reasonability of decreasing confidence in response to etiological information must be explained in terms of a decrease in justification. The argument to follow threatens not only the stronger thesis that etiological information never defeats justification but the substantially weaker thesis, advocated by various authors, that justification is defeated by etiological information in only a limited range of circumstances. I go on to show how the arguments en route to this conclusion have much wider epistemological ramifications. (shrink)

We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led others to (...) doubt whether there is any worry here at all. I argue that evidence of irrelevant belief influence is sometimes, but not always, undermining. My proposal picks out ordinary, non-skeptical cases in which we get evidence of error. It says that, in those cases, evidence of irrelevant influence is epistemically significant. It shows how respecting evidence of error is compatible with the epistemic lives we see ourselves living. We are fallible creatures, yes, but we are also capable and intelligent ones. We can recognize and correct for our own error so as to improve our imperfect, yet nevertheless robust, epistemic lives. (shrink)

Abstract. Richard Feldman’s Uniqueness Thesis holds that “a body of evidence justifies at most one proposition out of a competing set of proposi- tions”. The opposing position, permissivism, allows distinct rational agents to adopt differing attitudes towards a proposition given the same body of evidence. We assess various motivations that have been offered for Uniqueness, including: concerns about achieving consensus, a strong form of evidentialism, worries about epistemically arbitrary influences on belief, a focus on truth-conduciveness, and consequences for peer disagreement. (...) We argue that each of these motivations either misunderstands the commitments of permissivism or is question-begging. Better understanding permissivism makes it a much more plausible position. (shrink)

People sometimes try to call others’ beliefs into question by pointing out the contingent causal origins of those beliefs. The significance of such ‘Etiological Challenges’ is a topic that has started attracting attention in epistemology. Current work on this topic aims to show that Etiological Challenges are, at most, only indirectly epistemically significant, insofar as they bring other generic epistemic considerations to the agent’s attention. Against this approach, we argue that Etiological Challenges are epistemically significant in a more direct and (...) more distinctive way. An Etiological Challenge prompts the agent to assess whether her beliefs result from practices of indoctrination, and whether she should reduce confidence in those beliefs, given the anti-reliability of indoctrination as a method of belief-acquisition. Our analysis also draws attention to some of the ways in which epistemic concerns interact with political issues—e.g. relating to epistemic injustice, identity-based discrimination, and segregation—when we’re thinking about the contingent causal origins of our beliefs. (shrink)

This article argues that Rawlsian liberal political institutions are incapable of ensuring that the basic welfare needs of the worst off are met. This argument consists of two steps. First, I show that institutions are incapable of ensuring that the basic needs of the worst off are met without pursuing certain non-taxation-based courses of action that are designed to alter the work choices of citizens. Second, I argue that such actions are not permissible for Rawlsian institutions. It follows that a (...) state governed by a Rawls-type political conception of justice is parasitic on the willingness of citizens to be sufficiently motivated by concern for the worst off, but it cannot require or even encourage them to be so motivated. (shrink)

Harry Brighouse discusses two conceptions of educational equality. The first is a type of equality of opportunity, heavily influenced by the work of John Rawls, which he calls the meritocratic conception. According to this conception, an individual’s educational prospects should not be influenced by factors such as their social class background. The other, radical conception, suggests a person’s natural talents should not influence their educational prospects either. Brighouse favors the meritocratic conception, but this article argues that it is flawed and (...) that the radical conception ought to be preferred. Although a superior conception of educational equality, the radical conception is still not quite right, so this article develops a luck egalitarian conception of educational equality. It is argued that this conception reflects much current thinking about equality and avoids some of the difficulties with Brighouse’s two conceptions. Finally, two objections to a luck egalitarian conception are considered. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians equalize the outcome enjoyed by people who exemplify the same degree of distributive desert by removing the influence of luck. They also try to calibrate differential rewards according to the pattern of distributive desert. This entails that they have to decide upon, among other things, the rate of reward, i.e., a principled way of distributing rewards to groups exercising different degrees of the relevant desert. However, the problem of the choice of reward principle is a relatively and undeservedly (...) neglected issue among luck egalitarians. The main goal of this paper is to highlight the importance and difficulty of this problem, and to elaborate upon G. A. Cohen's community-oriented response to it. In the last section, I provide a taxonomy of distributive pluralism, contrasting Cohen’s view with other (not so genuine) pluralisms - especially with all-things-considered varieties - while trying to motivate readers to adopt the more robust form of pluralism. (shrink)

Morality is demanding; this is a platitude. It is thus no surprise when we find that moral theories too, when we look into what they require, turn out to be demanding. However, there is at least one moral theory – consequentialism – that is said to be beset by this demandingness problem. This calls for an explanation: Why only consequentialism? This then leads to related questions: What is the demandingness problematic about? What exactly does it claim? Finally, there is the (...) question of what we do if we accept that there is a demandingness problem for consequentialism: How can consequentialists respond? The present chapter sets out to answer these questions (or at least point to how they could be answered). (shrink)

There is an odd proximity between Hayek, hero of the libertarian right, and Rawls, theorist of social justice, because, at the level of principle, Hayek was in some important respects a Rawlsian. Although Hayek said that the idea of social justice was nonsense, he argued against only a particular principle of social justice, one that Rawls too rejected, namely distribution according to individual merit. Any attempt to make reward and merit coincide, Hayek argued, would undermine the market's price system, leaving (...) us all poorer and less free. Like Rawls, Hayek held that we should assess social institutions from behind a veil of ignorance, and he thought that doing so pushed us toward egalitarianism. Most of the distance between Hayek and Rawls at the level of policy stems from Hayek's optimism about the operation of markets, his equivocation about the meaning of central concepts, and his appeal to under-argued slippery slopes. Hayek wavered, however, between claiming that private property and markets benefit everyone, compared to the feasible alternatives, and the principle that they maximize the opportunities of a randomly selected member of society, i.e., aggregate opportunity. Contemporary Hayekians claim that capitalism raises the position of the worst off in the long run, in future generations, whereas Rawlsians insist that inequalities between social positions should benefit the worst off now. (shrink)

In an intriguing essay, G. A. Cohen has defended a conservative bias in favour of existing value. In this paper, we consider whether Cohen’s conservatism raises a new challenge to the use of human enhancement technologies. We develop some of Cohen’s suggestive remarks into a new line of argument against human enhancement that, we believe, is in several ways superior to existing objections. However, we shall argue that on closer inspection, Cohen’s conservatism fails to offer grounds for a strong sweeping (...) objection to enhancement, and may even offer positive support for forms of enhancement that preserve valuable features of human beings. Nevertheless, we concede that Cohen’s arguments may suggest some plausible and important constraints on the modality of legitimate and desirable enhancements. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism provides one powerful way of defending global egalitarianism. The basic luck egalitarian idea that persons ought not to be disadvantaged compared to others on account of his or her bad luck seems to extend naturally to the global arena, where random factors such as persons’ place of birth and the natural distribution of the world’s resources do affect differentially their life chances. Yet luck egalitarianism as an ideal, as well as its global application, has come under severe criticisms (...) in recent debate. My aim in this article is to restore plausibility to the luck egalitarian idea, and to suggest how it could then provide a plausible grounding for global egalitarianism. To do this, I will propose a more modest but also more defensible conception of luck egalitarianism that can also strengthen the case for global distributive justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences (...) worrying and I come up with two candidate principles. I then argue that one principle should be rejected because it is inconsistent with permissivism. The principle we should accept implies that it is sometimes rational to maintain our beliefs, even upon learning that they were caused by irrelevant influences. (shrink)

This study starts from the observation that there are relatively few controversial issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Given its strong normative background, CSR is rather an atypical discipline, especially in comparison with moral philosophy or applied ethics. Exploring the mainstream CSR agenda, this situation was echoed by widespread consensus on what was considered to be "good practice": reducing pollution, shutting down sweatshops, discouraging tax evasion, and so on. However, interpretation of these issues through the lens of moral pluralism unveils (...) latent controversies. The moral appraisal of good practices within CSR depends on key moral concepts (such as harm, responsibility, intention, and consequences), which have various—and often incompatible—interpretations. In a nutshell, this article argues that from a moral pluralist standpoint, all CSR topics are potentially controversial. (shrink)

An overview of Dai's ethics, highlighting some overlooked or misunderstood theses on moral deliberation and motivation.

This paper addresses the definition and the operational use of intuitions in philosophical methods in the form of a research study encompassing several regions of the globe, involving 282 philosophers from a wide array of academic backgrounds and areas of specialisation. The authors tested whether philosophers agree on the conceptual definition and the operational use of intuitions, and investigated whether specific demographic variables and philosophical specialisation influence how philosophers define and use intuitions. The results obtained point to a number of (...) significant findings, including that philosophers distinguish between intuitions used to formulate (discovery) and to test (justification) philosophical theory. The survey results suggest that strategies implemented to characterise philosophical intuition are not well motivated since, even though philosophers do not agree on a single account of intuition, they fail to capture a preferred usage of intuitions as aspects of discovery. The quantitative summary of survey findings informs the debate on this topic, and advances more defined routes for subsequent approaches to the study of intuitions. (shrink)

I believe that Tom is the proud father of a baby boy. Why do I think his child is a boy? A natural answer might be that I remember that his name is ‘Owen’ which is usually a boy’s name. Here I’ve given information that might be part of a causal explanation of my believing that Tom’s baby is a boy. I do have such a memory and it is largely what sustains my conviction. But I haven’t given you just (...) any causally relevant information, I’ve given my grounds for my belief. I’ve given reasons that might justify me in supposing that Tom’s baby is a boy. Less naturally, the question might be taken as a request for a broader causal explanation of my holding this belief. Appropriate answers might cite all manner of facts concerning the evolution of the human race, why I chose to pursue philosophy and hence came to know Tom, the mechanisms of email transmission, the firing of various neurons, the circumstances of concept formation as a result of which I’m able to grasp the thought that Tom’s baby is a boy, and so on. It is an interesting question what distinguishes the narrower set of answers that I first suggested. I won’t pursue that here. I assume you have a good enough sense of the distinction I’m drawing. We might call the narrower set of answers justifying reasons, the kind of reasons I might cite in justifying my belief. Answers of the first sort are clearly relevant to epistemological evaluation. In assessing whether you know p or are rational in believing it to the degree you do, I will naturally want to consider what reasons you have for your belief. In deliberating myself about whether to believe p, in seeking an answer to the question of whether p, I will naturally consider what reasons or grounds I have to suppose that p. But what I want to focus on here is how explanations of the broader sort bear on such questions as whether to believe p. From a third-person perspective we can ask, ‘In assessing the epistemic status of S’s belief that p, what is the relevance of causal information that lies outside of the realm of justifying reasons?’ From the first-person standpoint we can ask ‘In seeking to answer whether p, how should such causal information affect my deliberations?’ At first it might seem that such broader causal information could have little relevance if any. Like any belief my belief that p can be traced back to innumerable causes from far and wide.. (shrink)

 Fred comes to realize that if his parents had settled in a more conservative neighborhood, he would have—on the basis of essentially the same evidence—arrived at political views quite different from his actual views. Furthermore, his parents chose between liberal and conservative neighborhoods by tossing a coin. (Sher 2001).

How should we assess the burden of moral demands? A predominant assessment is provided by what Murphy calls the baseline of factual status-quo (FSQ): A moral theory is demanding if the level of agents’ well-being is reduced from the time they begin to comply perfectly with the theory. The aims of my paper are threefold. I will first discuss the limits of the FSQ baseline. Second, I suggest a different assessment, which examines moral demands from a whole-life perspective. My view (...) is that even if agents’ compliance with a moral theory will not cause a substantial reduction to their existing level of well-being, the total quality of life that they may obtain from complying with this theory may still be lower than what they could have obtained by following some other moral theories. The third aim of this paper is that, through this investigation, I hope to explicate the relation between agents’ acceptance of a moral theory and the burden of demands that is created by it. I believe that we can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of moral demands by paying attention to the psychological development of agents as they accept and internalize a moral theory. (shrink)

John Rawls famously claims that ‘justice is the first virtue of social institutions’. On one of its readings, this remark seems to suggest that social institutions are essential for obligations of justice to arise. The spirit of this interpretation has recently sparked a new debate about the grounds of justice. What are the conditions that generate principles of distributive justice? I am interested in a specific version of this question. What conditions generate egalitarian principles of distributive justice and give rise (...) to equality as a demand of justice? My paper focuses on relationalist answers to this question. Advocates of relationalism assume that ‘principles of distributive justice have a relational basis’, in the sense that ‘practice mediated relations in which individuals stand condition the content, scope and justification of those principles’. To say that principles of justice are ‘based’ on and ‘conditioned’ by practice mediated relations is ambiguous. I will here be concerned with advocates of what I call the relationalist requirement , viz. positions which assume that ‘practice mediated relations’ constitute a necessary existence condition for principles of egalitarian distributive justice. Relationalists who endorse this view come in different varieties. My focus is on relationalists that view social and political institutions as the relevant ‘practice mediated relation’. The question at stake, then, is this: Are institutionally mediated relations a necessary condition for equality to arise as a demand of justice? Strong relationalists of the institutionalist cast, call them advocates of the institutionalist requirement , differ in important respects. They argue about what set of institutions is foundationally significant, and they disagree on why only that institutional relation gives rise to egalitarian obligations of justice. My paper engages two ways of arguing for the institutionalist requirement : Julius’s framing argument and Andrea Sangiovanni’s reciprocity argument . The issue at stake are the grounds of egalitarian justice and I will argue that the institutionalist requirement is mistaken. It is not the case that egalitarian obligations of distributive justice arise only between and solely in virtue of individuals sharing a common institution. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen's Rescuing Justice and Equality proposes that both concepts need rescuing from the work of John Rawls. Especially, it is concerned with Rawls' famous second principle of justice according to which social primary goods should be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is to the benefit of the worst off. The question is why this would ever be necessary if all parties are just. Cohen and I agree that Rawls cannot really justify inequalities on the basis given. But (...) he also thinks equality is the correct analysis of justice, though he provides no actual direct arguments for this. He does, however, provide a striking analytical argument claiming that fundamental principles of justice must be fact insensitive, and that Rawls's view of justice violates this requirement. I argue that the requirement is itself misconceived and that principles of justice cannot possibly be fact insensitive in the sense developed by Cohen. Few philosophers share this view of Cohen's—which I argue is due to several conceptual mistakes. With these ironed out, the contractarian view, broadly speaking, is seen to be plausible and powerful. Meanwhile Cohen appears to embrace intuitionism, a stance that cannot possibly be acceptable in social philosophy. In the end, Cohen is successful in arguing that Rawls cannot have what he wants, but neither is Cohen successful in claiming that justice is equality. (shrink)

Traditional representations of philosophy have tended to prize the role of reason in the discipline. These accounts focus exclusively on ideas and arguments as animating forces in the field. But anecdotal evidence and more rigorous sociological studies suggest there is more going on in philosophy. In this article, we present two hypotheses about social factors in the field: that social factors influence the development of philosophy, and that status and reputation—and thus social influence—will tend to be awarded to philosophers who (...) offer rationally compelling arguments for their views. In order to test these hypotheses, we need a more comprehensive grasp on the field than traditional representations afford. In particular, we need more substantial data about various social connections between philosophers. This investigation belongs to a naturalized metaphilosophy, an empirical study of the discipline itself, and it offers prospects for a fuller and more reliable understanding of philosophy. (shrink)

Traditional procedures for rational updating fail when it comes to self-locating opinions, such as your credences about where you are and what time it is. This paper develops an updating procedure for rational agents with self-locating beliefs. In short, I argue that rational updating can be factored into two steps. The first step uses information you recall from your previous self to form a hypothetical credence distribution, and the second step changes this hypothetical distribution to reflect information you have genuinely (...) learned as time has passed. While the second step resembles traditional procedures of updating by conditionalization, the first is best understood by analogy to traditional models of how agents transmit self-locating opinions through ordinary interpersonal communication. (shrink)

This thesis argues that a particular version of equal opportunity for welfare is the best way of meeting the joint demands of three liberal egalitarian ideals: distributional equality, responsibility, and respect for individuals’ differing reasonable judgements of their own good. It also examines which social choice rules best represent these demands. Finally, it defends the view that achieving equal opportunity for welfare should not only be a goal of formal public institutions, but that just citizens should also sometimes be guided (...) by it in their everyday life. The version of equal opportunity for welfare it defends differs from some well-known contemporary versions in the following ways. First, it rejects a definition of welfare as the degree of satisfaction of a person’s preferences, because, it argues, this conception of welfare cannot adequately deal with preference change. Instead, it suggests that we should adopt a conception of welfare based on a list of goods and conditions that are recognised as valuable from the perspective of a variety of different conceptions of the good. Second, it argues that individuals’ prima facie claim to an equally valuable share of the world’s resources—a claim which is based on their equal moral worth—is limited to situations in which giving one person a more valuable share means that someone else ends up with a less valuable share. It also argues that in situations where we can improve at least one person’s situation without worsening anyone else’s, we generally do not fail to respect each person’s equal moral worth by doing so, even if this leads to inequalities. Third, it defends a distinct view of responsibility, which justifies social arrangements that give people certain options with reference to the value that individuals can achieve (but don’t necessarily achieve) through their choices from these options. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to develop and defend a novel answer to a question that has recently generated a considerable amount of controversy. The question concerns the normative significance of peer disagreement. Suppose that you and I have been exposed to the same evidence and arguments that bear on some proposition: there is no relevant consideration which is available to you but not to me, or vice versa. For the sake of concreteness, we might picture.

Models of idealistic societies pervade the history of political thought from ancient times to the present. How can these models contribute to our thinking about political life in our non-ideal world? Not, as many political theorists have hoped, by performing a normative function -- by giving us reasons to accept particular political principles for the purpose of regulating our thought and behavior. Even still, idealistic models can sharpen our thinking about politics by performing a conceptual function -- by helping us (...) clarify and interpret the concepts we use to describe and evaluate political behavior and institutions. These insights point to a more incisive and judicious approach to political inquiry, in which explanatory and normative modes of thought are tightly intertwined. (The manuscript is under review. I have uploaded the table of contents, chapters 1 and 2, and the bibliography. Chapter summaries are available from my website.). (shrink)

In the literature on philosophical progress it is often assumed that agreement is a necessary condition for progress. This assumption is sensible only if agreement is a reliable sign of the truth, since agreement on false answers to philosophical questions would not constitute progress. This paper asks whether agreement among philosophers is (or would be) likely to be a reliable sign of truth. Insights from social choice theory are used to identify the conditions under which agreement among philosophers would be (...) a reliable indicator of the truth, and it is argued that we lack good reason to think that philosophical inquiry meets these conditions. The upshot is that philosophical agreement is epistemically uninformative: agreement on the answer to a philosophical question does not supply even a prima facie reason to think that the agreed-upon view is true. However, the epistemic uninformativeness of philosophical agreement is not an indictment of philosophy's progress, because philosophy is valuable independent of its ability to generate agreement on the correct answers to philosophical questions. (shrink)

Predictable polarization is everywhere: we can often predict how people’s opinions, including our own, will shift over time. Extant theories either neglect the fact that we can predict our own polarization, or explain it through irrational mechanisms. They needn’t. Empirical studies suggest that polarization is predictable when evidence is ambiguous, that is, when the rational response is not obvious. I show how Bayesians should model such ambiguity and then prove that—assuming rational updates are those which obey the value of evidence—ambiguity (...) is necessary and sufficient for the rationality of predictable polarization. The main theoretical result is that there can be a series of such updates, each of which is individually expected to make you more accurate, but which together will predictably polarize you. Polarization results from asymmetric increases in accuracy. This mechanism is not only theoretically possible, but empirically plausible. I argue that cognitive search—searching a cognitively accessible space for a particular item—often yields asymmetrically ambiguous evidence, I present an experiment supporting its polarizing effects, and I use simulations to show how it can explain two of the core causes of polarization: confirmation bias and the group polarization effect. (shrink)

In the Critique of Gotha Programme, Karl Marx famously argues that a communist society will be characterised by the principle, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ In this essay, I take up a question about this principle that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen, namely: what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? In reply to this question, Cohen interprets Marx as saying that communism is possible because of limitless abundance, a view that Cohen (...) takes to be implausible for ecological reasons. In this paper, I develop a new interpretation of Marx’s position. On this interpretation, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, self-realisation generates conditions in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I defend this view as an interpretation of Marx and I argue that it represents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen’s interpretation in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role. (shrink)

Learning information about the etiology of one's beliefs can reduce the justification a thinker has for those beliefs. Learning information about the etiology of one's desires, emotions, or concepts can similarly have a debunking effect. In this chapter, I develop a unified account of etiological debunking that applies across these different kinds of cases. According to this account, etiological debunking arguments work by providing reason to think that there is no satisfying explanation of how it is that some part of (...) our mental life is fitting. The role that etiological information plays is to help to rule out (or render less plausible) potential explanations, given our background views about the world. This account suggests several potential morals for epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and metaethics. (shrink)

Relational egalitarians claim that a situation is just only if everyone it involves relates to one another as equals. It implies that relational egalitarians believe the ideal of “living as equals” (for short) is desirable, and furthermore, necessary for justice. In this paper, I distinguish three accounts of the desirability of the ideal: the instrumental value account, the non‐instrumental value account, and the non‐consequentialist account. I argue that the former two accounts cannot provide satisfying reasons for being a relational egalitarian. (...) Instead, the ideal of “living as equals” ought to be understood as fundamentally a moral requirement in a non‐consequentialist sense. In addition, a pluralist (though fundamentally non‐consequentialist) approach is welcome. (shrink)

This essay provide an overview of debates about the method of political philosophy that have recently gripped the field, focusing on the relationship of theory to practice. These debates can be usefully organized using two oppositions that together carve the field into three broad families of views. Call “practicalism” the view that the theory of justice exists to guide political action. Call “utopianism” the view that reflection on the idea of a just society plays an important role in the theory (...) of justice. Call the view that combines the two positions, “utopian practicalism”. On this view, reflection on the nature of a just society has an important role to play in guiding action. There would appear to be two ways to depart from this position: by rejecting the view's utopianism or its practicalism. So we find in the literature three broad camps: utopian practicalists, anti‐utopians, and anti‐practicalists. This essay provide an opinionated overview the ongoing debates between these three broad positions. It touches on the recent cases against practicalism by G.A. Cohen and David Estlund, the comparativist methodologies advocated by anti‐utopians such as Amartya Sen and Gerry Gaus, and systems failure approaches of Elizabeth Anderson and David Wiens. It also considers the recent development of novel utopian practicalist perspectives in the work of theorists including Erik Wright, Tommie Shelby, Lea Ypi, Pablo Gilabert, and Ben Laurence. (shrink)

Childress and colleagues (2023) review several arguments that would support the unilateral withdrawal of ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) against the wishes of a capacitated patient (Mr....

This dissertation identifies and responds to a problem for liberal relational egalitarians. There is a prima facie worry about the compatibility of liberalism and relational egalitarianism, concerning the requirements of equality in informal social life. Liberalism at least involves a commitment to leaving individuals substantial discretion to pursue their own conceptions of the good. Relational equality is best understood as a kind of deliberative practice about social institutions and practices. Patterns of otherwise innocuous social choices (e.g., where to live, whom (...) to befriend or marry) can create emergent, severe differentials in power, status, and influence, and when they do they can threaten relational equality. If relational equality required individuals to subordinate personal choices to egalitarian considerations, it would run into conflict with liberal commitments. In response, I defend the value of accepting an imperfect realization of relational equality. What I call fair relational equality demands that members of society treat some informal social norms and practices as part of the basic structure of society, in need of justification. Three practices are required to meet that demand. First, the relational-egalitarian society must develop institutional strategies to preempt or mitigate tendencies toward emergent inequality as they are identified. Second, members of society must engage in broad social deliberation about the norms and expectations of informal social interaction. Third, they must be willing to reform social practices where doing so does not impinge on important personal projects and values. (shrink)

In their simplest form, consensus gentium arguments for theism argue that theism is true on the basis that everyone believes that theism is true. While such arguments may have been popular in history, they have all but fallen from grace in the philosophy of religion. In this short paper, we reconsider the neglected topic of consensus gentium arguments, paying particular attention to the value of such arguments when deployed in the defence of theistic belief. We argue that while consensus gentium (...) arguments are unlikely to offer anything close to overwhelming support for theism, their probative value is nevertheless underappreciated, and that they have been unfairly maligned as a consequence. (shrink)

Had we grown up elsewhere or been educated differently, our view of the world would likely be radically different. What to make of this? This paper takes an accuracy-centered first-personal approach to the question of how to respond to the arbitrary nature in which many of our beliefs are formed. I show how considerations of accuracy motivate different responses to this sort of information depending on the type of attitude we take towards the belief in question upon subjecting the belief (...) to doubt. (shrink)

L’un des objectifs centraux du livre de Kyle Johannsen,A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, consiste à défendre l’idée selon laquelle nous devrions concevoir la justice comme une valeur fondamentale pouvant entrer en conflit avec d’autres valeurs fondamentales. Ce type de pluralisme est principalement associé aux travaux de G.A. Cohen et à sa critique de la théorie de la justice de John Rawls. Dans le cadre ce commentaire, je propose une esquisse des implications du pluralisme de Cohen et de ce à quoi (...) pourrait ressembler un ethos de justice à la Cohen. (shrink)

The central focus of this paper is to motivate and explore the question, when is it permissible to endorse a psychologizing explanation of a sincere interlocutor? I am interested in the moral question of when (if ever) we may permissibly dismiss the sincere reasons given to us by others, and instead endorse an alternative explanation of their beliefs and actions. I argue that there is a significant risk of wronging the other person, and so we should only psychologize when we (...) are in a position to know that they are in bad faith. (shrink)

Hablar del poder comunista significa estudiar el “poder” como potencia, que esconde, de hecho, una cuestión central que aleja a Marx y a la teoría materialista de las diferentes formas de idealismo político, viejas o nuevas, tanto como aleja a la teoría dialéctica de sus muchos enemigos. Y esta es precisamente la cuestión de la posibilidad, o de la correcta comprensión de la categoría de posibilidad, o la relación entre lo posible y lo imposible, posibilidades materiales y posibilidades meramente subjetivas. (...) Esto nos llevará también a la cuestión de la _contradicción, _la de la organización (como poder comunista en acto), y de la idea de negación determinada, o de la Revolución como “negación de la negación” —que es como Marx se refiere a esta tanto en los _Manuscritos de París _(1980: 164) como en _El Capital _(2013: 535). (shrink)

The demandingness of a moral prescription is generally understood exclusively in terms of the welfare costs involved in complying with that prescription. I argue that psychological difficulty is a second aspect of demandingness, whose relevance cannot be reduced to that of welfare costs. Appeal to psychological difficulty explains intuitive verdicts about the permissibility of favouring oneself over others, favouring loved ones over strangers, and favouring one’s short-term good over one’s long-term good. There are also significant implications for the morality of (...) addressing severe global poverty. (shrink)

When a belief has been influenced, in part or whole, by factors that, by the believer's own lights, do not bear on the truth of the believed proposition, we can say that the belief has been, in a sense, arbitrarily formed. Can such beliefs ever be rational? It might seem obvious that they can't. After all, belief, supposedly, “aims at the truth.” But many epistemologists have come to think that certain kinds of arbitrary beliefs can, indeed, be rational. In this (...) paper, I want to do two things. First, I want to show that the claim that arbitrary beliefs can be rational is inconsistent with the conjunction of two other attractive claims: one saying that rationality requires a certain kind of epistemic immodesty, and one saying that rationality forbids certain kinds of self-ascriptions of epistemic luck. Second, I want to evaluate different ways one might respond to this inconsistent triad. I won't defend any response in particular, but I'll draw out some notable costs and benefits of each response, which may help shed light on the question of whether arbitrary beliefs can be rational. (shrink)

In this article I interpret John Rawls’s concept of the original position as a spiritual exercise. In addition to the standard interpretation of the original position as an expository device to select principles of justice for the fundamental institutions of society, I argue that Rawls also envisages it as a “spiritual exercise”: a voluntary personal practice intended to bring about a transformation of the self. To make this argument, I draw on the work of Pierre Hadot, a philosopher and classicist, (...) who introduced the idea of spiritual exercises as central to ancient and modern conceptions of philosophy. By reading Rawls alongside Hadot, this article portrays Rawls as a thinker deeply concerned with the question of how subjects can lead more just and fulfilling lives. It also proposes that the original position as a spiritual exercise can help defend liberalism as a social and political doctrine. (shrink)

The main goal of this thesis is to provide a clear basis for the analysis of alternative currencies, such as Bitcoin, LETS, Local currencies, the WIR or Carbon currencies. It attempts to determine whether alternative currencies might constitute just and workable alternatives, either in the form of small-scale experiments or in the form of more radical reforms. The first chapter proposes a new way to classify currencies. The second examines the case in favour of monetary plurality. The third analyses the (...) claims in favour of restricting the use of money locally, within a community, or to certain goods. The fourth studies the link between money and the market. Finally, a post-scriptum focuses on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. This thesis highlights that these currencies are drivers of several potential conflicts. Their widespread use might conflict with the adequate management of monetary policy, with social justice, and with liberal values. These conflicts are potential, for they would come into existence only if alternative currencies increased in scope. However, there is no reason to disregard potential conflicts when the case in their favour relies mostly on their potential benefits. (shrink)