In this paper we use an experimental approach to investigate how linguistic conventions can emerge in a society without explicit agreement. As a starting point we consider the signaling game introduced by Lewis. We find that in experimental settings, small groups can quickly develop conventions of signal meaning in these games. We also investigate versions of the game where the theoretical literature indicates that meaning will be less likely to arise—when there are more than two states for actors to transfer (...) meaning about and when some states are more likely than others. In these cases, we find that actors are less likely to arrive at strategies where signals have clear conventional meaning. We conclude with a proposal for extending the use of the methodology of experimental economics in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Human need and related concepts such as basic needs have long been part of the implicit conceptual foundation for social work theory, practice, and research. However, while the published literature in social work has long stressed social justice, and has incorporated discussion of human rights, human need has long been both a neglected and contested concept. In recent years, the explicit use of human needs theory has begun to have a significant influence on the literature in social work.

Preventive use of force may be defined as the initiation of military action in anticipation of harmful actions that are neither presently occurring nor imminent. This essay explores the permissibility of preventive war from a cosmopolitan normative perspective, one that recognizes the basic human rights of all persons, not just citizens of a particular country or countries. It argues that preventive war can only be justified if it is undertaken within an appropriate rule-governed, institutional framework that is designed to help (...) protect vulnerable countries against unjustified interventions while also avoiding unacceptable risks of the costs of inaction. The key to ensuring the fairness of rules governing the preventive use of force is accountability.This essay proposes a scheme that would make those promoting and those rejecting the preventive use of force more accountable. The proposal contains the following crucial features:States proposing preventive war are required to enter into a contract with a diverse body of states as a condition for authorization of their actions;Prior to taking preventive action, states must make an evidence-based case to the UN Security Council, and agree in advance to submit themselves to an evaluation by an impartial body after the preventive action occurred;Both proponents of action and those opposing it will be held accountable ex post for the accuracy of their prior statements and the proportionality of their actions;Sanctions will be imposed against intervening states or states that opposed preventive action, respectively, depending on the findings of the ex post evaluation.If preventive action were blocked in the Security Council, states seeking to engage in preventive action could then present their case in a different body–a coalition of democratic states–with its own ex post and ex ante accountability procedures. (shrink)

Many critics of utilitarianism claim that we should reject interpersonal aggregation because aggregative principles do not take the separateness of persons seriously. In this article, I will reject this claim. I will first elucidate the theoretical structure of aggregation. I will then consider various interpretations of the notion of the separateness of persons and clarify what exactly those critics are trying to reject by appealing to the notion of the separateness of persons. I will argue that none of these interpretations (...) can serve as the ground for rejecting aggregation. (shrink)

Social contract theorists often take the ideal contract to be the agreement or bargain individuals would make in some privileged choice situation. Recently, experimental philosophers have explored this kind of decision-making in the lab. One rather robust finding is that the exact circumstances of choice significantly affect the kinds of social arrangements experimental subjects unanimously endorse. Yet prior work has largely ignored the question of which of the many competing descriptions of the original position subjects find most compelling. This paper (...) aims to address this gap, exploring how attractive experimental subjects find various characterizations of these circumstances of choice. We find evidence suggesting that no one choice situation can fulfill the role that social contract theorists have hoped it would play. We also find that, contrary to what some prominent social contract theorists have expected, there is no robust relationship between an individual’s ranking of distributive principles and their ranking of various descriptions of the original position. In conclusion, we discuss the broader implications of these results for political philosophy. (shrink)

Sufficientarians claim that what matters most is that people have enough. I develop and defend a revised sufficientarian conception of justice. I claim that it furnishes the best specification of a general humanitarian ideal of social justice: our main moral concern should be helping those who are badly off in absolute terms. Rival humanitarian views such as egalitarianism, prioritarianism and the difference principle face serious objections from which sufficientarianism is exempt. Moreover, a revised conception of sufficientarianism can meet the most (...) prominent undefeated challenges to the view. I contend that prevailing versions of sufficientarianism have not satisfactorily defined the sufficiency threshold, and so I offer an original specification of the threshold. I also address perhaps the most common objection to sufficientarianism, namely that sufficientarian regimes will channel all of society's resources towards elevating people to the sufficiency threshold regardless of the gains foregone by those above the threshold. (shrink)

In attempts to compare different distributions with regards to need, so-called “measures of need-based distributive justice” have emerged in recent years. Each of the proposed measures relies on a single dimension of need that is taken into account. This is shown to be problematic since humans experience different kinds of need that appear to be incommensurable. A strategy to deal with this problem is introduced by using multidimensional measures.

Experimental ethicists investigate traditional ethical questions with non-traditional means, namely with the methods of the empirical sciences. Studies in this area have made heavy use of philosophical thought experiments such as the well-known trolley cases. Yet, the specific function of these thought experiments within experimental ethics has received little consideration. In this paper we attempt to fill this gap. We begin by describing the function of ethical thought experiments, and show that these thought experiments should not only be classified according (...) to their function but also according to their scope. On this basis we highlight several ways in which the use of thought experiments in experimental ethics can be philosophically relevant. We conclude by arguing that experimental philosophy currently only focuses on a small subcategory of ethical thought experiments and suggest a broadening of its research agenda. (shrink)

An increasingly popular moral argument has it that the story of human evolution shows that we can explain the human disposition to make moral judgments without relying on a realm of moral facts. Such facts can thus be dispensed with. But this argument is a threat to moral realism only if there is no realist position that can explain, in the context of human evolution, the relationship between our particular moral sense and a realm of moral facts. I sketch a (...) plausible evolutionary story that illuminates this relationship. First, the sorts of adaptive pressures facing early humans would have produced more than just potent prosocial emotions, as evolutionary antirealists like to claim; it would have produced judgments—often situated within emotions—to the effect that others could reasonably disapprove of some bit of conduct, for an early human who cared deeply about how others might respond to her action enjoyed the benefits of more cooperative exchanges than those early humans who did not. Second, according to objectivist versions of moral constructivism, moral facts just are facts about how others, ideally situated, would respond to one's conduct. Thus if any objectivist moral constructivism story is true, then we can intelligibly assert that a) our capacity for moral judgment is the product of adaptive pressures acting on early humans and b) some moral judgments are objectively true. (shrink)

This paper gives prescriptions for introducing ethical concerns into the economic theory of the firm. Topics include social responsibility, corporate governance, profit maximization, competition barriers, collusion, the market system, and welfare economics. The need for such prescriptions is based on a content analysis of 21 managerial economics texts for their coverage of ethics. My analysis finds that substantive discussions of ethics are conspicuous by their absence. As ethical breaches can involve significant monetary damages to a firm - particularly through adverse (...) market reactions - moral-reasoning abilities can complement analytical skills. Consequently, my analysis demonstrates how ethics figure into the opportunity costs of managerial decision making, which is central to the economic definition of profit. (shrink)

Most countries appear to believe that their health system is in a state of semi-crisis with expenditures rising rapidly, with the benefits of many services unknown and with pressure from the public to ensure access to a comprehensive range of services. But whose values should inform decision-making in the health area, and should the influence of different groups vary with the level of decision-making? These questions were put to 54 members of the public and health professionals in eight focus groups. (...) Adopting a different perspective from other studies, participants were not asked if particular groups should be involved in decisions but rather through deliberation and discussion nominated their own potential decision makers. This delivered a clear message that participants saw a legitimate role for a broad range of stakeholders in priority-setting decisions so as to incorporate a diversity of expertise and opinion. Companion themes were the acknowledgment that decisions involve ethical judgments and are not purely technical, that the power of special interest groups (such as clinicians) should be kept in check, and that the process by which decisions are reached is important. The results suggest that qualitative methods of investigation have the potential to improve the legitimacy of policy decisions by contributing to a better understanding of the values of the public and health professionals, and by expanding the range of options available for further research. (shrink)

Prof. Miščević has long been an ardent defender of the use of thought experiments in philosophy, foremost metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Recently he has, in his typically sophisticated manner, extended his general account of philosophical thought-experimenting to the domain of normative politics. Not only can the history of political philosophy be better understood and appreciated, according to Miščević, when seen as a more or less continuous, yet covert, practice of thought-experimenting, the very progress of the discipline may crucially (...) depend on finding the right balance between the constraints of (biological, psychological, economic, political, and so on) reality and political-moral ideals when we set to design our basic political notions and institutions. I have much less confidence in this project than prof. Miščević does. As a subspecies of moral TE, political TE share all their problems plus exhibit some of their own. In the paper, I present and discuss two types of evidence that threaten to undermine political philosophers’ trust in thought-experiments and the ethical/political intuitions elicited by them: (i) the dismal past record of thought-experimentation in moral and political philosophy; and (ii) the variety, prevalence, and stubbornness, of bias in ordinary social/political judgment. (shrink)

While there exist extensive literatures on both distributive justice and senior executive pay, and a number of authors (notably the French economist Thomas Piketty) have addressed the implications of high pay for distributive justice, the existing literature fails to address what senior executives themselves think about distributive justice and whether they consider high income inequalities to be morally acceptable. We address this gap by analysing a unique dataset comprising the views of over 1000 senior executives from across the world, which (...) was constructed using a survey instrument designed by the authors based on a thought experiment resembling John Rawls’s original position. We report four main findings. First, executives conceptualise distributive justice in a pluralistic manner, endorsing different and sometimes apparently conflicting philosophical principles: to explain how this plurality can be accounted for we propose a novel field-theory framework for conceptualising beliefs about distributive justice. Second, executives support similar philosophical approaches at both society and company levels of analysis, thus countering the idea that companies should leave matters of distributive justice exclusively for governments to deal with via the tax system. Third, executives believe that they live in societies and work for companies that fall short of desirable distributive justice outcomes. Fourth, the distributive justice views of the executives in our sample fall into four distinct clusters that are correlated with certain socio-demographic markers. Finally, we note the distinction between distributive justice beliefs and behaviours, from which we derive a number of managerial and public policy implications. (shrink)

We report the results of a vignette experiment with a quota sample of the German population in which we analyze the interplay between need, equity, and accountability in third-party distributive decisions. We asked subjects to divide firewood between two hypothetical persons who either differ in their need for heat or in their productivity in terms of their ability to chop wood. The experiment systematically varies the persons’ accountability for their neediness as well as for their productivity. We find that subjects (...) distribute significantly fewer logs of wood to persons who are held accountable for their disadvantage. Independently of being held accountable or not, the needier person is always compensated with a share of logs that exceeds her contribution, while the person who contributes less is punished in terms of receiving a share of logs smaller than her need share. Moreover, there is a domain effect in terms of subjects being more sensitive to lower contributions than to greater need. (shrink)

The key to moral behavior is often perceived to consist of ignoring rational self-interest and instead following norms recommended by religious tradition and moral philosophy. A central issue is the connection between these ambitions and actual behavior. Are an idealistic mood and an ethics of ambition the way out of an iron cage of individualistic rational behavior? Or is ethics best served by rules and incitements in harmony with rationality? The article discusses morality from the perspective of compliance. A normative (...) suggestion in the Prisoner’s Dilemma exemplifies the case of prudent morality. The player should contribute if the expected value of that choice exceeds his payoff of mutual defection. The article questions the value of an absolute morality and suggests a morality that is more of a prudent policy than a categorical imperative. A conviction favoring a good average result in the long run is the most relevant argument for complying with a rule. The structure of economic games can give useful insights about problematic situations and consequences of different strategies. Being prudent rather than doing good might be a better policy not only for the agent, but also for organizations and society. (shrink)

Liberal nationalists have been trying to argue that a suitably sanitized version of nationalism - namely, one that respects and embodies liberal values - is not only morally defensible, but also of great moral value, especially on grounds liberals should find very appealing. Although there are plausible aspects to the idea and some compelling arguments are offered in defense of this position, one area still proves to be a point of considerable vulnerability for this project and that is the issue (...) of what, according to the liberal nationalists, we owe both members of our nation, our co-nationals, and what we owe those who are not members of our nation. It is here that we see the project still has some distance to go if a version of liberal nationalism is, indeed, to be morally defensible. In this paper I examine leading liberal nationalist accounts of our obligations to co-nationals and non-nationals. I argue that liberal nationalists have not yet given us an adequate account of our obligations to non-nationals for a number of reasons. For instance, on the issue of the priority we may give co-nationals' interests over non-nationals', the theorists' view show significant tension, they seem to be confused about what their positions entail, the views are unhelpful, ad hoc, or the positions are quite unclear. Liberal nationalists also have a misleading impression that their positions better capture the relation between personal identity and duty, but this turns out to be false. Other defects with their specific projects are highlighted. I go on to offer a more promising method for determining our obligations to non-nationals. Rather than this alternative precluding any scope for nationalism, it actually makes clearer to us how there might be some defensible space for nationalism once our obligations to put in place appropriate institutions and sets of rules have been fulfilled. (shrink)

In this paper we use an experimental approach to investigate how linguistic conventions can emerge in a society without explicit agreement. As a starting point we consider the signaling game introduced by Lewis. We find that in experimental settings, small groups can quickly develop conventions of signal meaning in these games. We also investigate versions of the game where the theoretical literature indicates that meaning will be less likely to arise---when there are more than two states for actors to transfer (...) meaning about and when some states are more likely than others. In these cases, we find that actors are less likely to arrive at strategies where signals have clear conventional meaning. We conclude with a proposal for extending the use of the methodology of experimental economics in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

A review essay of Gillian Brock Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Philosophical theories about justice feelings and axiological feelings generally suffer from the fact that they look for simple criteria of justice, legitimacy, fairness. For this reason, they appear as of little help to account for the findings from sociological empirical studies. Weber's notion of "axiological rationality" can be interpreted as suggesting a "cognitivist" theory of axiological feelings. According to this theory, the causes responsible for the fact that a social actor endorses an axiological statement would not be basically different from (...) the causes responsible for his endorsement of a representational statement. He would endorse the statement "X is fair" as he endorses "X is true", because these statements appear to him as grounded on strong reasons, though he may not perceive these reasons explicitly. This cognitivist theory was used by analysts of collective moral sentiments, as Adam Smith, before Max Weber. A careful examination of two empirical studies shows that the cognitivist theory can make the observational findings more easily understandable. The "cognitivist theory" eliminates the weaknesses of the major general philosophical and sociological theories of axiological feelings. It shows notably that these feelings can be context-dependent without this contextuality making them irrational. This theory includes two major principles: that instrumental rationality does not overlap with rationality shortly; that there are no simple criteria of "fairness", "legitimacy", etc. (shrink)

This paper explores Rawls' positions on the subject of retributive (criminal) justice. It is first argued that Rawls' perspective is hybrid with respect to the two traditional dichotomies of retributivism vs. utilitarianism and of deontologism vs. consequentialism. There is evidence to the effect that Rawls is both a retributivist and a consequentialist. Secondly, Rawls' positions are discussed in the light of recent empirical research. It is argued that his view of retributive justice as being strictly reactive conflicts with the present (...) proactive dimension of criminal justice. It is also suggested that the principle that all inequality should profit the least advantaged members of society has now little application in criminal justice which essentially targets the poor and the powerless. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Dans ce texte, l'auteur analyse et réfléchit sur la critique posée par le philosophe allemand Jürgen Habermas à l'encontre du libéralisme politique de son homologue américain John Rawls. Insistant sur quelques thèmes clés, l'auteur se penche, dans un premier temps, sur la critique formulée à l'encontre du modèle d'autonomie politique et individuelle développé par Rawls. Dans un deuxième temps, il examine la position habermasienne à l'égard du discours deformation des normes élaboré par Rawls. Cette étude fait ressortir certaines lacunes (...) de la théorie rawlsienne au regard du monde contemporain et propose une approche alternative tenant davantage compte de Vintersubjectivité et de la démocratie. ABSTRACT In this text, the author analyses and considers the critic of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas over the political liberalism of his american homologue John Rawls. The author first looks at the critics formulated against Rawls's model of political and individual autonomy. The author then proceeds to examine Habermas's position regarding Rawls's discourse on norm formation. This study shows certain lacunas in Rawls's theory in regard of today's society and proposes an alternative approach which would take into account democracy and inter subjectivity. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation between philosophical discussions of, and social-scientific research into popular beliefs about, distributive justice. The first part sets out the differences and tensions between the two perspectives, identifying considerations which tend to lead adherents of each discipline to regard the other as irrelevant to its concerns. The second discusses four reasons why social scientists might benefit from philosophy: problems in identifying inconsistency, the fact that non-justice considerations might underlie distributive judgments, the way in which different principles (...) of justice can yield the same concrete distributive judgments, and the ambiguity of key terms. The third part distinguishes and evaluates three versions of the claim that normative theorising about justice can profit from empirical research into public opinion: that its findings are food for thought, that they amount to feasibility constraints, and that they are constitutive of normatively justified principles of justice. The view that popular opinion about justice has a strongly constitutive role to play in justifying principles of distributive justice stricto sensu is rejected, but it is argued that what the people think (and what they can reasonably be expected to come to think) on distributive matters can be an important factor for the political theorist to take into account, for reasons of legitimacy, or feasibility, or both. (shrink)

A small set of allocation principles is said to be behind several theories of distributive justice. However, disagreement about the appropriate relationship between these notions remains, so that compromises between principles may generate more agreement. Truncated utilitarianism is a prominent candidate. It demands maximising total wealth subject to a floor level of individual wealth for all people. Based on some well-known distributive notions, we developed a questionnaire setting and confronted student respondents with corresponding allocation problems, where an exogenously given poverty (...) line served as a floor. However, support for allocations resulting from this specific interpretation of truncated utilitarianism remained rather low. This is surprising because the respective solution was close to an equal split of resources, and aspects of efficiency and responsibility were explicitly introduced to promote more general acceptance. We argue that people may either wish to see higher floor levels or are more inequality averse than probably expected. Moreover, high support for an unconditional consideration of the poverty line can be witnessed, even though aspects of responsibility, but not efficiency arguments, display an influence. In general, attitudes with respect to the equality–efficiency trade-off are found to remain heterogeneous, although different equality concerns are prominent. Furthermore, trade-offs are moderated by the responsibility principle. (shrink)

This paper gives prescriptions for introducing ethical concerns into the economic theory of the firm. Topics include social responsibility, corporate governance, profit maximization, competition barriers, collusion, the market system, and welfare economics. The need for such prescriptions is based on a content analysis of 21 managerial economics texts for their coverage of ethics. My analysis finds that substantive discussions of ethics are conspicuous by their absence. As ethical breaches can involve significant monetary damages to a firm – particularly through adverse (...) market reactions – moral-reasoning abilities can complement analytical skills. Consequently, my analysis demonstrates how ethics figure into the opportunity costs of managerial decision making, which is central to the economic definition of profit. (shrink)