Most agree that envy, or at least the malicious kind, should not have any role in the moral justification of distributive arrangements. This paper defends a contrary position. It argues that at...

The conscientious refusal to dispense emergency contraception is legally protected in fourteen states. While the ethical dimensions of these objections have been explored within moral and feminist philosophy, conscientious refusal to the over-the-counter sale of EC has not been significantly studied through an egalitarian lens, especially with attention to the existing reproductive healthcare landscape in which these refusals occur. This article argues, through Amartya Sen’s capability approach, that conscientious refusal to EC creates a burdensome inequality for people wishing to prevent (...) pregnancy that manifests within a background of historical injustices, elevating its importance in our weighing of capabilities. (shrink)

The collapse of society is inevitable, even if it is in the distant future. When it collapses, it is likely to do so within the lifetimes of some people. These people will have matured in pre-collapse society, experience collapse, and then live the remainder of their lives in the post-collapse world. I argue that this group of people—the transitional generation—will be the worst off from societal collapse, far worse than subsequent generations. As the transitional generation, they will suffer disparately. This (...) intergenerational disparity in suffering is inequitable. Given that other disparities in suffering are worthy of remediation, this intergenerational disparity in suffering is worthy of remediation. However, the only way to do so is to target the mental states of the members of the transitional generation. (shrink)

Organ shortage is a major survival issue for millions of people worldwide. Globally 1.2 million people die each year from kidney failure. In this paper, we critically examine and find lacking extant proposals for increasing organ supply, such as opting in and opt out for deceased donor organs, and parochial altruism and paired kidney exchange for live organs. We defend two ethical solutions to the problem of organ shortage. One is to make deceased donor organs automatically available for transplant without (...) requiring consent from the donor or their relatives. The other is for society to buy nonvital organs in a strictly regulated market and provide them to people in need for free. (shrink)

Many proponents of the Harm Principle seem to implicitly assume that the principle is compatible with permitting the free exchange of goods and services, even if such exchanges generate so-called market harms. I argue that, as a result, proponents of the Harm Principle face a dilemma: either the Harm Principle’s domain cannot include a large number of non-market harm cases or market harms must be treated on par with non-market harms. I then go on to discuss three alternative arguments defending (...) the status of market harms as exceptions to the Harm Principle and discuss why these arguments also fail. (shrink)

A considerable literature has emerged around the idea of using ‘personal responsibility’ as an allocation criterion in healthcare distribution, where a person's being suitably responsible for their health needs may justify additional conditions on receiving healthcare, and perhaps even limiting access entirely, sometimes known as ‘responsibilisation’. This discussion focuses most prominently, but not exclusively, on ‘luck egalitarianism’, the view that deviations from equality are justified only by suitably free choices. A superficially separate issue in distributive justice concerns the two–way relationship (...) between health and other social goods: deficits in health typically undermine one's abilities to secure advantage in other areas, which in turn often have further negative effects on health. This paper outlines the degree to which this latter relationship between health and other social goods exacerbates an existing problem for proponents of responsibilisation (the ‘harshness objection’) in ways that standard responses to this objection cannot address. Placing significant conditions on healthcare access because of a person's prior responsibility risks trapping them in, or worsening, negative cycles where poor health and associated lack of opportunity reinforce one another, making further poor yet ultimately responsible choices more likely. It ends by considering three possible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarians, equality is not primarily about the distribution of some good but about people relating to one another as equals. However, compared with other theorists in political philosophy – including other egalitarians – relational egalitarians have said relatively little on what role personal responsibility should play in their theories. For example, is equality compatible with responsibility? Should economic distributions be responsibility-sensitive? This article fills this gap. I develop a relational egalitarian framework for personal responsibility and show that (...) relational equality commits us to responsibility. I develop two sets of arguments. First, I draw on relational theories of moral responsibility – particularly Strawsonian views – to show that valuable egalitarian relationships require responsibility. Second, I show why relational equality sometimes requires that economic distributions be sensitive to responsibility and choice. I also defend a seemingly paradoxical result: being committed to responsibility, relational egalitarianism not only justifies some distributive inequalities but some relational inequalities too. Overall, relational egalitarianism gives a nuanced and coherent answer as to why and how responsibility matters from within egalitarianism. That it does should be an important argument in its favour. (shrink)

When studying the feasibility and justice of basic income, researchers usually assume that policymakers would be introducing the unconditional benefit to a closed economic entity. When contemplating the introduction of a universal policy, few researchers take into consideration the fact that citizens and foreigners migrate, and that this movement alters the size and skill structure of the population. This article addresses this oversight by analyzing how basic income schemes based on residence or citizenship may affect tax base, wages, and employment (...) while incorporating migration incentives. The discussion is based upon neoclassical labor supply and migration theory and informed by the conjectured economic effects from a normative perspective. This research suggests that a basic income would create migration incentives that reduce the tax base, leading us to question this policy’s feasibility. Moreover, the flow-on effects of migration call into question the justice of both residence-based and citizenship-based basic income schemes. Therefore, this article sheds light on how basic income’s feasibility and justice relate to each other and identifies the benefits and further opportunities for interdisciplinary social policy research. (shrink)

In recent years, insurance companies have begun tracking their customers’ behaviors and price premiums accordingly. Based on the Market-Failures Approach as well as the Justice-Failures Approach, I provide an ethical analysis of the use of tracking technologies in the insurance industry. I focus on the use of telematics in car insurance and on the use of fitness tracking in life insurance. The use of tracking has some important benefits to policyholders and insurers alike: it reduces moral hazard and fraud, increases (...) actuarial fairness, and incentivizes safe behavior. These benefits, however, are outweighed by significant moral objections. First, the use of tracking technologies significantly undermines the fairness of the interaction between insurance companies and policyholders. Specifically, the use of tracking eliminates information asymmetries, but in such a way that favors insurers exclusively. Furthermore, tracked behaviors and the ability to choose to behave safely are highly correlated with other variables such as income. Therefore, tracking-based insurance relies on and exacerbates existing inequalities and injustices, which undermines the benefits that tracking is supposed to introduce. (shrink)

Effective altruism is a movement which aims to maximise good. Effective altruists are concerned with extreme poverty and many of them think that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty. Their reasoning, which I will scrutinise, is as follows: -/- Premise 1. Extreme poverty is very bad. -/- Premise 2. If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, morally, to do (...) it. -/- Premise 3. Individuals ought to choose the effective option in preventing very bad things. -/- Premise 4. Donating to effective charities is one of the best ways to alleviate extreme poverty. -/- Conclusion. Individuals ought to donate to effective charities working towards extreme poverty alleviation where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. -/- I will scrutinise each of these premises in turn. -/- For Premise 1, I focus on hedonistic utilitarianism and criticise its outlook on extreme poverty. I claim that hedonistic utilitarianism might be problematic for effective altruism. -/- Premise 2 is Peter Singer's Weaker Principle of Sacrifice. I introduce several possible interpretations of it, and press several objections to it by stressing overpermissiveness, luck, and rights. I defend strengthening the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice without making it overdemanding. -/- I claim that Premise 3 can be attractive to both consequentialists and non-consequentialists. Nevertheless, by showing that effectiveness sometimes violates fairness, I propose a method which avoids always helping the greater number and always giving everyone equal chances of being helped, which is compatible with effective altruism. -/- Against Premise 4, I assess the systemic change objection, which states that effective altruism unjustifiably distracts individuals from systemic change. By considering risk and the moral standing of the future extremely poor, I claim that the systemic change objection is partially successful, but cannot undermine effective altruism. -/- After analysing all of these, I argue that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism has been criticized for condoning some cases of oppression and condemning others for the wrong reason—namely, that the victims were not responsible for their oppression. Oppression is unjust, however, the criticism says, regardless of whether victims are responsible for it, simply because it is contrary to the equal moral standing of persons. I argue that four luck egalitarian responses to this critique are inadequate. Two address only the first part of the objection and do so in a way (...) that risks making luck egalitarianism inconsistent. A third severely dilutes the luck egalitarian doctrine. A fourth manages to denounce some instances of oppression for the right reason, but at the same time permits other instances of oppression and condemns yet others for the wrong reason. (shrink)

The thesis provides a philosophically grounded account of a socialist planned economy. While I do not primarily consider a positive case for socialism, I address two major objections to it and thus argue that the possibility of socialism as an alternative form of economic organisation has been dismissed too quickly. Furthermore, I provide an account of the precise form a socialist economy should take, outlining general principles of planning and distribution. Based on a welfarist interpretation of Marx, I show that (...) distribution of consumer goods should be facilitated by an equal distribution of tokens. These tokens can be redeemed for consumer products or substituted for additional leisure time. The rates at which tokens can be redeemed for consumer products should correspond to market clearing prices. Welfare-oriented socialism is also defended against a deontological objection to socialism by Robert Nozick, who claims that socialism leads to injustice because it violates private property rights. The thesis also considers Ludwig von Mises’s calculation argument against socialism, which claims that socialism leads to the abolition of economic rationality. I show how this objection can be overcome by using optimal planning techniques which are responsive to consumer demand as signalled by the market clearing rates of consumer products. The resulting model of socialism is tested using a computer simulation. The simulation also demonstrates that a novel system of valuation based on opportunity cost leads to a better adaptation of production in response to environmental constraints when compared to the labour values of classical political economy. (shrink)

Philosophers of science now broadly agree that doing good science involves making non-epistemic value judgments. I call attention to two very different normative standards which can be used to evaluate such judgments: standards grounded in ethics and standards grounded in political philosophy. Though this distinction has not previously been highlighted, I show that the values in science literature contain arguments of each type. I conclude by explaining why this distinction is important. Seeking to determine whether some value-laden determination meets substantive (...) ethical standards is a very different endeavor from seeking to determine if it is politically legitimate. (shrink)

The idea of using responsibility in the allocation of healthcare resources has been criticized for, among other things, too readily abandoning people who are responsible for being very badly off. One response to this problem is that while responsibility can play a role in resource allocation, it cannot do so if it will leave those who are responsible below a “sufficiency” threshold. This paper considers first whether a view can be both distinctively sufficientarian and allow responsibility to play a role (...) even for those who will be left with very poor health. It then draws several further distinctions that may affect the application of responsibility at this level. We conclude that a more plausible version of the sufficientarian view is to allow a role for responsibility where failure to do so will leave someone else who is not responsible below the sufficiency threshold. However, we suggest that individuals must exhibit “sufficient responsibility” in order for this to apply, involving both a sufficient level of control and an avoidable failure to respond adequately to reasons for action. (shrink)

Among those who reject the Epicurean claim that death is not bad for the one who dies, it is popularly held that death is bad for the one who dies, when it is bad for the one who dies, because it deprives the one who dies of the good things that otherwise would have fallen into her life. This view is known as the deprivation account of the value of death, and Fred Feldman is one of its most prominent defenders. (...) In this paper, I explain why I believe that Feldman’s argument for the occasional badness of death fails. While staying within an Epicurean framework, I offer an alternative that adequately accounts for a significant range of widely held intuitions about prudential value. My account implies that death is almost always good for the one who dies, yet often less good than not dying. Finally, I discuss some puzzles that remain for my account and hint at possible ways to address them. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform it only if she abides by certain duties of care. Those who argue that engaging in such an activity can render an agent liable to defensive harm (...) ground this liability in the luck egalitarian thought that we may justly hold individuals responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices. Against this, I argue that a luck egalitarian commitment to holding people responsible cannot, by itself, ground liability to defensive harm. It can help ground such liability only against the backdrop of a distributively just society, and only if further considerations speak morally in favour of attaching certain well-defined costs to individuals’ risk-imposing choices. I conclude by suggesting that if an account of liability applies robustly across distributively just and unjust contexts alike, then what grounds an agent’s liability is plausibly not her responsibility for threatening objectively unjustified harm, but her culpability for doing so. (shrink)

With by far the lowest population density in the United States, myriad challenges attach to healthcare delivery in Alaska. In the “Size, Population, and Accessibility” section, we characterize this geographic context, including how it is exacerbated by lack of infrastructure. In the “Distributing Healthcare” section, we turn to healthcare economics and staffing, showing how these bear on delivery—and are exacerbated by geography. In the “Health Care in Rural Alaska” section, we turn to rural care, exploring in more depth what healthcare (...) delivery looks like outside of Alaska’s major cities. This discussion continues in the “Alaska’s Native Villages” section, which specifically analyzes healthcare in Alaska’s indigenous villages, some of the smallest and most isolated communities in the United States. Though many of the ways we could improve Alaskan health care for Alaskan residents are limited by its unique features, the “Justice and Healthcare Delivery” and “Technology and Telemedicine” sections consider ways in which certain policies and technology—including telemedicine—could mitigate the challenges developed in previous sections. (shrink)

When is it fair that some people are less healthy than others due to their own individual choices and preferences? In this paper, I explore two alternative answers. The first is a luck-egalitarian account that holds people responsible for choices that society could have reasonably expected them to avoid. I argue that this account is indeterminate and go on to sketch an alternative proposal based on Rawls’s idea of a “social division of responsibility.” This latter approach connects the notion of (...) responsibility for health to the social conditions under which health-related behaviour is developed. (shrink)

Economic policy decisions require comparisons of the gains and losses from policy choices to different people. If those gains can be valued in monetary terms, than all that is needed is a comparison of the value of income to different persons, which can be weights in cost-benefit analysis. An objective comparison of the value of income to different people has been long sought but never found. I propose that when money to be allocated is controlled by a group of people (...) with equal control over that money, then a hypothetical auction for transfers of income between people can produce a collective judgment about the value of income that provides suitable weights, and is morally defensible in cases where the decision is made by the group collectively, e.g. when making government policy choices. I provide a method for calculating such weights from observed choices about distributing income, and discuss several desirable properties that they have. (shrink)

Through modern driver assistant systems, algorithmic decisions already have a significant impact on the behavior of vehicles in everyday traffic. This will become even more prominent in the near future considering the development of autonomous driving functionality. The need to consider ethical principles in the design of such systems is generally acknowledged. However, scope, principles and strategies for their implementations are not yet clear. Most of the current discussions concentrate on situations of unavoidable crashes in which the life of human (...) beings is existentially affected. In this paper, we argue that ethical considerations should be mandatory for any algorithmic decision of autonomous vehicles, instead of a limitation to hazard situations. Such an ethically aligned behavior is relevant because autonomous vehicles, like any other traffic participants, operate in a shared public space, where every behavioral decision impacts the operational possibilities of others. These possibilities concern the fulfillment of a road-user’s safety, utility and comfort needs. We propose that, to operate ethically in such space, an autonomous vehicle will have to take its behavior decisions according to a just distribution of operational possibilities among all traffic participants. Using an application on a partially-autonomous prototype vehicle, we describe how to apply and implement concepts of distributive justice to the driving environment and demonstrate the impact on its behavior in comparison to an advanced but egoistic decision maker. (shrink)

This paper compares Joseph Heath’s critique of the just deserts rationale for markets with an earlier critique due to Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek. Heath shares their emphasis upon the role of luck in prices based on supply and demand. Yet he avoids their claim that the inheritance of human capital is on a moral par with the inheritance of ordinary capital, as a basis for unequal shares of the social product. Heath prefers to argue that markets do (...) not tend to reward talent as such. The paper raises some doubts about this factual claim, and argues that sweeping the issue of talent under the rug threatens to make our theory of justice less egalitarian than it would otherwise be. The paper also addresses the objection that claims of unfairness based on the arbitrariness of the distribution of innate abilities will undermine self-respect. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen conceptualizes socialism as luck egalitarianism constrained by a community principle. The latter mitigates certain inequalities to achieve a shared common life. This article explores the plausibility of the community constraint on inequality in light of two related problems. First, if it is voluntary, it fails as a response to “the abandonment objection” to luck egalitarianism, as it would not guarantee imprudent people sufficient resources to avoid deprivation and to function as equal citizens in a democratic society. Contra (...) Cohenite socialism, this appears unjust. Second, if it is instead enforced, coercive equalization beyond sufficiency-constrained luck egalitarianism, which is possibly necessary to achieve a shared common life, seems to require unjustified restrictions on liberty. I therefore argue that the constraint is most plausibly specified as requiring enforcement of sufficiency and only voluntary equalization thereafter. I also note, skeptically, why this constraint might be morally preferable to a purely sufficientarian alternative. (shrink)

This article is a feminist intervention into the ways that disability is researched and represented in philosophy at present. Nevertheless, some of the claims that I make over the course of the article are also pertinent to the marginalization in philosophy of other areas of inquiry, including philosophy of race, feminist philosophy more broadly, indigenous philosophies, and LGBTQI philosophy. Although the discipline of philosophy largely continues to operate under the guise of neutrality, rationality, and objectivity, the institutionalized structure of the (...) discipline implicitly and explicitly promotes certain ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies as bona fide philosophy, while casting the ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of marginalized philosophies as mere simulacra of allegedly fundamental ways of knowing and doing philosophy and thus rendering these marginalized philosophies more or less expendable. This article is designed to show that legitimized philosophical discourses are vital mechanisms in the problematization of disability. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the research field of machine ethics and how it relates to a technological singularity—a hypothesized, futuristic event where artificial machines will have greater-than-human-level intelligence. One problem related to the singularity centers on the issue of whether human values and norms would survive such an event. To somehow ensure this, a number of artificial intelligence researchers have opted to focus on the development of artificial moral agents, which refers to machines capable of moral reasoning, judgment, and decision-making. (...) To date, different frameworks on how to arrive at these agents have been put forward. However, there seems to be no hard consensus as to which framework would likely yield a positive result. With the body of work that they have contributed in the study of moral agency, philosophers may contribute to the growing literature on artificial moral agency. While doing so, they could also think about how the said concept could affect other important philosophical concepts. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that luck egalitarianism captures “desert-like” intuitions about justice. Some even think that luck egalitariansm distributes goods in accordance with desert. In this paper, we argue that this is wrong. Desertism conflicts with luck egalitarianism in three important contexts, and, in these contexts, desertism renders the proper moral judgment. First, compared to desertism, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too stingy: it fails to justly compensate people for their socially valuable contributions—when those contributions arose from “option luck”. Second, luck egalitarianism (...) is sometimes too restrictive: it fails to justly compensate people who make a social contribution when that contribution arose from “brute luck”. Third, luck egalitarianism is too limited in scope: it cannot diagnose economic injustice arising independently of comparative levels of justice. The lesson of this paper is that luck egalitarians should consider supplementing their theory with desert considerations. Or, even better, consider desertism as a superior alternative to their theory. (shrink)

This article advances what it calls the ‘Impossibility Result’: it is impossible to claim that the reduction of exploitation leads to the improvement of efficiency. The Impossibility Result is the inevitable result of the proposed conceptual difference between ‘injustice’ and ‘exploitation’. Injustice occurs when one member of a society deviates from the norms and the legal rules concerning how one should treat other members of that society. Exploitation occurs when one member of a society takes advantage of entities such wild (...) animals, cattle, a field of vegetables, or other people that lie outside the boundary of that society. In many cases of exploitation, the exploited may derive some benefit, as in the case when enslavement is better than death. In other cases of exploitation, the exploited may derive zero benefit, called here ‘harm’, as in the case when a deer is hunted. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the commonly held view that paternalism is all things considered wrong when it interferes with a person’s autonomy. I begin by noting that the plausibility of this view rests on the assumption that there is a morally relevant difference in the normative reasons concerning an intervention in a person’s self-regarding actions and an intervention in his other-regarding actions. I demonstrate that this assumption cannot be grounded by wellbeing reasons, and that autonomy-based reasons of non-interference (...) also cannot adequately explain the difference. Following this, I propose that the difference in the reasons related to an intervention in a person’s self-regarding actions and an intervention in his other-regarding actions can be explained by the value of holding a person responsible for his choices. Nonetheless, this does not result in paternalistic behavior that interferes with autonomy being all things considered wrong. Instead, I show that the reason to hold a person responsible for a diminution of his wellbeing does not necessarily defeat the wellbeing reasons that count in favor of paternalistic behavior. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen’s critique of the Rawlsian difference principle points out an inconsistency in its presentation. The initial equality decided by the participants in the original position under the veil of ignorance is not preserved by the inequality sanctioned by the difference principle. Cohen shows how the breakdown of the initial equality of the original position prevents the desired results of the Rawlsian system from being realized. Cohen argues that an egalitarian ethos is required within a society for equality preserving economic (...) distributions and Pareto superior outcomes to occur. Nonetheless, Cohen’s analysis of Rawls misses the ultimate cause of inequality, which is the dynamics of capital accumulation. An egalitarian ethos is only possible if there is a socialist mode of production to facilitate its development. Additionally, Cohen’s critique of Rawlsian constructivism through an argument for intuitionism does not address the natural-material existence of human beings. This existence must be considered for any advantageous social formation. (shrink)

Modern money theory is a conjecture concerning fiscal spending and the nature of money. I show that modern money theory provides two interesting insights into distributive justice that have not been addressed in the recent Anglo-American distributive justice literature: (i) that the nature of a sovereign fiat currency allows for some distributive conflicts to be avoided; and (ii) that recent Anglo- American distributive justice theories assume that the economy is at capacity. Based on this, I consider if the policy results (...) of modern money theory can help foster a sense of justice. (shrink)

Public health policies typically assume that there are characteristics and constraints over health that an individual cannot control and that there are choices that an individual could change if he is nudged or provided with incentives. We consider that health is determined by a range of personal, social, economic and environmental factors and we discuss to what extent an individual can control these factors. In particular, we assume that the observed health status of an individual is a result of factors (...) within the individual’s control and constraints the individual faces. We suggest three different constraints: budget, time and psychological constraints and position various determinants of health according to increasing levels of constraint and increasing degrees of individual control. We finally discuss public health policies such as nudging, intervening and rewarding within this new framework and show that the level of constraints and the degree of individual control on health status are essential dimensions to consider when designing and implementing public health policies. (shrink)

The late G.A. Cohen is routinely considered a founding father of luck egalitarianism, a prominent responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. David Miller argues that Cohen’s considered beliefs on distributive justice are not best understood as luck egalitarian. While the relationship between distributive justice and personal responsibility plays an important part in Cohen’s work, Miller maintains that it should be considered an isolated theme confined to Cohen’s exchange with Dworkin. We should not understand the view Cohen defends in this exchange as (...) Cohen’s considered view. Accepting this thesis would change both our understanding of Cohen’s political philosophy and many recent luck egalitarian contributions. Miller’s argument offers an opportunity to reassess Cohen’s writings as a whole. Ultimately, however, the textual evidence against Miller’s argument is overwhelming. Cohen clearly considers the exchange with Dworkin to be about egalitarianism as such rather than about the best responsibility-sensitive version of egalitarianism. Furthermore, Cohen often offers luck egalitarian formulations of his own view outside of the exchange with Dworkin and uses luck egalitarianism as an independent yardstick for evaluating principles and distributions. (shrink)

Egalitarian theories assume, without defending it, the view that the costs of children should be shared between non-parents and parents. This standard position is called into question by the Parental Provision view. Drawing on the familiar idea that people should be held responsible for the consequences of their choices, the Parental Provision view holds that under certain conditions egalitarian justice requires parents to pay for the full costs of their children, as it would be unfair for non-parents to bear the (...) negative externalities of others’ choices to have children. This article examines closely the Parental Provision view and argues that various possible justifications for it are unsuccessful. In so doing, it brings to light respects in which the choice to have and rear children is special and may not be treated as being on a par with other choices for which we think people should be held responsible. (shrink)

It has become somewhat a commonplace in recent political philosophy to remark that all plausible political theories must share at least one fundamental premise, ‘that all humans are one another's equals’. One single concept of ‘basic equality’, therefore, is cast as the common touchstone of all contemporary political thought. This paper argues that this claim is false. Virtually all do indeed say that all humans are ‘equals’ in some basic sense. However, this is not the same sense. There are not (...) one but two concepts of basic equality, and they reflect not a grand unity within political philosophy but a deep and striking division. I call these concepts ‘Equal Worth’ and ‘Equal Authority’. The former means that each individual’s good is of equal moral worth. The latter means that no individual is under the natural authority of anyone else. Whilst these two predicates are not in themselves logically inconsistent, I demonstrate that they are inconsistent foundation stones for political theory. A theory that starts from Equal Worth will find it near impossible to justify Equal Authority. And a theory that starts from Equal Authority will find any fact about the true worth of things, including ourselves, irrelevant to justifying legitimate action. This helps us identify the origin of many of our deepest and seemingly intractable disagreements within political philosophy, and directs our attention to the need for a clear debate about the truth and/or relationship between the two concepts. In short, my call to arms can be summed up in the demand that political philosophers never again be allowed to claim ‘that all human beings are equals’ full stop. They must be clear in what dimension they claim that we are equals—Worth or Authority. (shrink)

The paper explores an egalitarian norm widely accepted today, which I call the Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard. According to this standard, marital relationships should be non‐hierarchical; neither partner may be more dominant than the other. The Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard is exceptional: in almost all associations, including many financial, professional, educational and recreational ones, in almost all spheres of life, some hierarchies, within certain limits, are widely believed to be morally legitimate. I argue that in marital relations, too, some hierarchies should be (...) accepted as morally legitimate. It might be argued that marital relations should be loving, and love requires that lovers will have the same degree of power. However, contemporary analyses of love show that love is consistent with (some) hierarchies. It might also be argued that justice requires that lovers will have equal power. However, theories of distributive justice such as Rawls's, Sen's, Dworkin's, and almost all others allow some marital hierarchies. Thus, both the love requirement and the justice requirement allow some hierarchical marital relationships and conflict with the Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard. Until other justifications for this standard are presented, it is unclear why it should be endorsed. (shrink)

This essay defends the controversial and indeed counterintuitive claim that there is a good argument to be made from a Lockean perspective for government action to guarantee access to health care. The essay maintains that this argument is in some regards more robust than the well-known argument in defense of universal health care spelled out by Norman Daniels, which this essay also examines in some detail. Locke's view that government should protect people's lives, property, and freedom–where freedom is understood as (...) independence and self-determination–justifies government action to ensure access to health care, because (roughly), just as individuals cannot protect themselves from crime and foreign invasion, so individuals are unable to provide for their own health care. Defense from disease is as important as defense from crime, and–although this is arguable–government action to guarantee access to health care does not itself undermine freedom. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze a view that is increasingly spreading among philosophers and even physicians. Many of them believe that it is right to apply the principle of responsibility for illness in the allocation of health care. I attempt to show that this idea is unacceptable.

Much contemporary egalitarian theorizing is broadly divided between luck egalitarians, such as G. A. Cohen, Richard Arneson, and John Roemer, and relational egalitarians, such as John Rawls, Samuel Scheffler, Josh Cohen, and me. The two camps disagree about how to conceive of equality: as an equal distribution of non-relational goods among individuals, or as a kind of social relation between persons - an equality of authority, status, or standing.This disagreement generates a second, about when unequal distributions of non-relational goods are (...) unjust. Luck egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it is accidental: when it is caused by morally arbitrary factors such as circumstances of birth. Relational egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it disadvantages people: when it reflects, embodies, or causes inequality of authority, status, or standing. (shrink)

Political philosophers commonly tackle the issue of climate change by focusing on fundamental interests as a basis for human rights. This approach struggles, however, in cases where one set of fundamental interests requires one course of action, and another set of fundamental interests requires another course of action. This article advances an alternative response to climate change based on an account of global justice that gives weight to utilitarian, prioritarian, and luck egalitarian considerations. A practical application of this pluralistic account (...) is provided, which shows that it handles trade-offs between individuals’ interests in an appealing way, and that it supports an aggressive policy of climate change mitigation. This account provides a more plausible justification for rights against the harms of climate change. (shrink)

I argue that a gendered division of labor is often the result of choices by women that count as fully voluntary because they are an expression of preferences and commitments that reflect women's understanding of their own good. Since liberalism has a commitment to respecting fully voluntary choices, it has a commitment to respecting these gendered choices. I suggest that justified political action may require that we fail to respect some people's considered choices.

The unconscionability doctrine in contract law enables a court to decline to enforce a contract whose terms are seriously one-sided, exploitative, or otherwise manifestly unfair. It is often criticized for being paternalist. The essay argues that the characterization of unconscionability doctrine as paternalist reflects common but misleading thought about paternalism and obscures more important issues about autonomy and social connection. The defense responds to another criticism: that unconscionability doctrine is an inappropriate, because economically inefficient, egalitarian tool. The final part discusses (...) more interesting but neglected questions about the scope of accommodation necessary to support fully meaningful autonomous activity. (shrink)

Should we grant a fresh start to those who come to regret their past lifestyle choices? A negative response to this question can be located in the luck egalitarian literature. As a responsibility-sensitive theory of justice, luck egalitarianism considers it just that people’s relative positions reflect their past choices, including those they regret. In a recent article, Vansteenkiste, Devooght and Schokkaert argue against the luck egalitarian view, maintaining instead that those who regret their past choices in health are disadvantaged in (...) a relevant way and should receive compensation. Employing the ideal that people should be made equal as measured by equivalent resources, they purport to show the fairness of such an arrangement through a hypothetical scenario. Relaxing the implicit assumptions of this scenario brings forth several unattractive consequences of the fresh-start idea. The main problem is that in striving to ensure that people’s past choices do not affect their own opportunities, the authors must accept that these choices put heavy strains on the opportunities available to other people. Furthermore, the luck egalitarian position is more compelling than they admit. (shrink)

My intention in this paper is to reframe the practice of veiling as an embodied practice of self-development and self- transformation. I argue that practices like these cannot be handled by the choice/chance distinction relied on by those who would restrict religious minority accommodations. Embodied self- transformation necessarily means a change in personal identity and this means the religious believer cannot know if they will need religious accommodation when they begin their journey of piety. Even some luck egalitarians would find (...) leaning exclusively on preference and choice to find who should be burdened with paying the full costs of certain choices in one’s life too morally harsh to be justifiable. I end by briefly illustrating an alternative way to think about religious accommodation that does not rely on the choice/chance distinction. (shrink)

The paper offers to substantiate a claim about the so-called Meritocratic Conception of how educational opportunities ought to be distributed. Such a conception holds an individual’s prospects for educational achievement may be a function of that individual’s talent or effort levels but should not be influenced by their social class background. The paper highlights the internal tension in the Meritocratic Conception between on the one hand a prohibition on the influence of social class on educational opportunities and on the other (...) a permission to allow unequal educational opportunities on the basis of talent and effort. This tension obtains because individuals’ talent and effort are themselves subject to influence by social class. The paper makes a positive case for an interpretation of the Meritocratic Conception that resolves this tension in favour of an egalitarian version, such that social class represents an objectionable determinant of unequal educational prospects even when its influence is mediated through the cultivation of talent and effort. This argument is further supported through an explanation that the character of social class as a systemic social source of the structure of individuals’ opportunities makes it an objectionable influence on educational opportunities. (shrink)

Political philosophers have become increasingly interested in questions of justice as applied to health. Much of this literature works from a distributive understanding of justice. In the recent debate, however, ‘relational’ egalitarians have proposed a different way of conceptualising equality, which focuses on the quality of social relations among citizens and/or how social institutions ‘treat’ citizens. This paper explores some implications of a relational approach to health, with particular focus on health care, health inequalities and health policy. While the relational (...) account can add interesting perspectives to current debates on justice and health, we also highlight some tensions and difficulties relational egalitarians might encounter and some discontinuities between the implications of a relational account and current discourse on health equity. (shrink)

Principles of distributive justice are normative principles designed to guide the allocation of the benefits and burdens of economic activity.