This article challenges the orthodox explanation of the normative connection between contracting parties: The promisee is regarded as having a superior position vis‐à‐vis the promisor, a position manifesting itself in the promisee's authority or control over the promisor's performance, and supported, in particular, by the promisee's supposed power, or at least some sort of ability falling short of a normative power, to “waive” the promisor's duty of performance. The article demonstrates that this explanation is rooted in a one‐sided, and ultimately (...) wrong, understanding of correlativity in contractual relations and suggests a better understanding, one truly capable of accounting for contractual bilaterality. (shrink)

The article discusses the link between freedom, crime and punishment. According to some theorists, crime does not only cause a person to have less freedom; it constitutes, _in and of itself_, a breach of the freedom of others. Punishment does not only cause people to have more freedom, for instance by preventing crimes; it constitutes, _in and of itself_, respect for mutual freedom. If the latter claims are true, crime and punishment must have certain _meanings_ that make them denials/affirmations of (...) freedom irrespective of their consequences. My aim is to show that such an immanent connection between crime/punishment and freedom exists. I do so by explicating the “natural meaning” of crime and punishment. This way of addressing the topic is inspired by Jean Hampton’s use of H. P. Grice’s concept of natural meaning. Expanding on Hampton’s theory, drawing on both H. L. A. Hart and Kant, I argue that crime has the natural meaning of denying freedom, and punishment has the natural meaning of affirming freedom. The paper presents an ideal theory, not a justification for actual criminal justice practices, which in most countries unfortunately fail to instantiate the value of mutual freedom. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 249-268, August 2022. When skilled individuals emigrate from developing states to developed states, they leave a burdened state behind and bring their valuable human capital to a state that enjoys vast advantages by comparison. Most of the normative debate to date on this so-called ‘brain drain’ has focused on the duties that skilled emigrants owe to their home state after they emigrate. This article shifts the focus to the question of whether (...) their host state acquires special duties toward their home state and argues for an affirmative answer to that question. After identifying the conditions under which ‘exploitative free-riding’ can occur, the article shows that the brain drain is a case of exploitation that gives rise to special duties of compensation for developed host states. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 210-226, October 2021.

Argues, against Anscombe, that Aristotle had the concept of morality as an interpersonal normative order: morality is justice in general. For an action to be wrong is not for it to warrant blame, or to wrong another person, but to be something one should not do that one has no right to do. In the absence of rights, morality makes no sense.

ABSTRACTAccording to interest theorists of rights, rights function to protect the right-holder's interests. True. But this leaves a lot unsaid. Most saliently here, it is certainly not the case that every agent who stands to benefit from performance of a duty gets to be a right-holder. For a theory to allow this to be the case—to allow for an explosion of right-holders—would be tantamount to a reductio thereof. So the challenge for interest theorists is to respect the core of the (...) interest theory while delimiting the set of right-holders in a principled manner. The foremost explicit attempt to do this has invoked Bentham's test. Predictably, invocation of this test has come under attack, with the ultimate aim of challenging the interest theory itself. My purpose in this paper is to render Bentham's test as clearly and accurately as possible. Doing so will raise issues of modality—ultimately in rendering Bentham's test's logical form. Ultimately a core attack on Bentham's test falls away, and, to that extent, the interest theory remains standing as a promising theory of rights. (shrink)

The Will Theory of Rights says that having control over another’s duties grounds rights. The Will Theory has commonly been objected to on the grounds that it undergenerates right-ascriptions along three fronts. This paper systematically examines a range of positions open to the Will Theory in response to these counterexamples, while being faithful to the Will Theory’s focus on normative control. It argues that of the seemingly plausible ways the defender of the Will Theory can proceed, one cannot both be (...) faithful to the theory’s focus on normative control as the grounds of rights and achieve extensional adequacy. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

What attitude would a just state take to the inheritance of property? Would confiscatory taxes on the estate of the deceased be morally acceptable, or would they represent some kind of wrong? While there is a good amount of political philosophical scholarship that considers the desirability of inheritance tax, there appears to be little that has considered it from the perspective of rights theory, asking what kind of thing a right to bequeath or to inherit would be, and whether those (...) putative rights are defeasible. I argue here that putative inheritance rights are best made sense of as interest-rights. However, while agents may have interests in bequest and inheritance, it is also plausible that the community as a whole has interests that would be served by a confiscatory inheritance tax; and if inheritors’ and testators’ interests are strong enough to generate a prima facie right, it is also plausible that the community would have a competing prima facie right. Importantly, there is reason to think that the community’s interests trump the testator’s and the inheritor’s; if there are thoroughgoing rights in respect of inheritance, it is not at all clear that a highly confiscatory tax would violate them. (shrink)

According to the doctrine of informed consent medical procedures are morally permissible when a patient has consented to the treatment. Problematically it is possible for a patient to consent to or refuse treatment which consequently leads to a decline in her best interests. Standardly, such conflicts are resolved by prioritising the doctrine of informed consent above the requirement that the medical practitioner acts in accordance with the duty of care. This means that patient free choice is respected regardless as to (...) whether her choice leads to a decline in her best interests, since to disrespect patient choice would be an instance of ‘unwarranted’ paternalism. This thesis defends the claim that in cases where patient consent comes into conflict with her best interests, paternalistic interference is in fact justified. The ambition of the thesis is thus twofold: in the first place I argue that the doctrine of informed consent cannot be used as an ethical guarantor for medical decision making. Secondly I will conclude that hard paternalism is justified in medical practice, thereby calling for a reversal of the prioritisation of informed consent procedures over the medical practitioner’s duty of care. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAccording to the standard or traditional account, those who hold political authority legitimately have a right to rule that entails an obligation of obedience on the part of those who are subject to their authority. In recent decades, however, and in part in response to philosophical anarchism, a number of philosophers have challenged the standard account by reconceiving authority in ways that break or weaken the connection between political authority and obligation. This paper argues against these revisionist accounts in two (...) ways: first, by pointing to defects in their conceptions of authority; and second, by sketching a fair-play approach to authority and political obligation that vindicates the standard account. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between distributive injustice and political obligation within the confines of the fair-play theory of political obligation. More specifically, it asks ho...

Eudaemonism is the common structure of the family of theories in which the central moral conception is eudaemonia , understood as "living well" or "having a good life." In its best form, the virtues are understood as constitutive and therefore essential means to achieving or having such a life. What I seek to do is to lay the groundwork for an approach to eudaemonism grounded in practical reason, and especially in instrumental reasoning, rather than in natural teleology. In the first (...) chapter, I argue that an approach based in natural teleology will not work. In the second, the claims of decision theory to be an adequate formal representation of instrumental reasoning are examined and found wanting. In the third, I develop an account of ordinary instrumental reasoning. In the fourth, I discuss the structure of eudaemonism, with the aim of showing that there is an intelligible and attractive doctrine that can be disentangled from the natural teleology. In the fifth, I sketch an argument showing that instrumental reasoning, as explicated in the third chapter, can bear on the selection of final and ultimate ends, and that it is plausible that the instrumental approach to moral theory that I am urging yields conclusions with a eudaemonistic structure. I also indicate directions for further development and exploration. (shrink)

This article questions the commonly held view that professional ethics is grounded in general ethical principles, in particular, respect for client (or patient) autonomy and beneficence in the treatment of clients (or patients). Although these are admirable as general ethical principles, we argue that there is considerable logical difficulty in applying them to the professional-client relationship. The transition from general principles to professional ethics cannot be made because the intended conclusion applies differently to each of the parties involved, whereas the (...) premise is a general principle that applies equally to both parties. It is widely accepted that professionals are required to recognize that clients or patients possess rights to autonomy that are more than the general rights to personal autonomy accepted in ordinary social life, and that professionals are expected to display beneficence toward their clients that is more than the beneficence expected of anyone in ordinary social life. The comparative component of professional ethics is an intrinsic feature of the professional situation, and thus it cannot be bypassed in working out a proper professional ethics. Thus, we contend, the proper professional treatment of clients or patients has not been explained by appeal to general ethical principles. (shrink)

The main difficulty utilitarians have faced is the problem of reconciling the dictates of utility with what seem clearly to be moral duties, but based on considerations of Justice. John Stuart Mill addressed this problem in his essay,Utilitarianism,and the result has not served to silence the critics of utilitarianism on this score. In part, this is due to the fact that Mill's position in the chapter on Justice is not entirely clear, nor is it entirely convincing where it is clear. (...) Still, I do not think Mill's views on Justice have been given their due. In this essay, I shall try to show that Mill anticipated recently defended principles that rely on appeal to a notion of fairness or fair play, and that these can be given a utilitarian foundation. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of the fair play principle suggest that, under appropriate conditions, those who benefit from the cooperative labor of others acquire an obligation of repayment. However, these accounts have had little to say about the nature of such obligations within morally or legally problematic cooperative schemes, taking the matter to be either straightforward or unimportant. It is neither. The question of what sorts of fair play obligations obtain for those who benefit from illicit cooperative activity is a matter of (...) great complexity and consequence with implications for, inter alia, global economic justice. In this essay, I explore the nature of this obligation within illicit cooperative schemes, specifically those with so-called negative externalities, or deleterious effects on non-members of the scheme. I conclude that the willing beneficiaries of such schemes acquire a fair-play obligation to recognize and respond to their culpability. This reconceptualization of the fair play principle opens up new avenues for exploring the obligations of those who benefit from acts of collective wrongdoing. (shrink)

What is wrong with participating in a democratic decision-making process, and then doing something other than the outcome of the decision? It is often thought that collective decision-making entails being prima facie bound to the outcome of that decision, although little analysis has been done on why that is the case. Conventional perspectives are inadequate to explain its wrongness. I offer a new and more robust analysis on the nature of voting: voting when you will accept the outcome only if (...) the decision goes your way is an act of bad faith: you are not taking part in a ‘process that decides what we will do’. This analysis sheds light on understanding the intrinsic nature of voting and what we are doing when we make decisions collectively. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

In spite of the burgeoning philosophical literature on human dignity, Stephen Darwall's second-personal account of the dignity of persons has not received the attention it deserves. This article investigates Darwall's account and argues that it faces a dilemma, for it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean one should reject a second-personal account. Instead, I argue that an alternative second-personal conception, one I will call relational, promises to (...) solve the dilemma by avoiding both the problem of antecedence and the wrong kind of reasons problem. More generally, distinguishing these two second-personal conceptions of the dignity of persons is important to enrich the available philosophical accounts of human dignity. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy about justice, a contrast between empirical and transcendental approaches can be identified. Hillel Steiner represents an empirical approach: he argues for building an account of justice-as-rights out of the minimal inductive material of psychological linguistic and moral intuitions. From this opening, he ultimately concludes that persons have original rights to self-ownership and to an initially equal share of natural resources. Emmanuel Levinas represents a transcendental approach: he argues that justice arises from a transcendent ethical relation of responsibility-for-the-Other. (...) This relation underpins all subjective cognition, and makes rationality, reasoning, and rights possible.Analysis of each of these positions reveals certain problems. On the one hand, Steiner’s argument contains a number of latent methodological, conceptual, and structural presuppositions. These include the pretheoretical concepts of “person”, “equality”, and “consistency”. These presuppositions prefigure and condition the conclusions which Steiner reaches. On the other hand, Levinas fails to provide a convincing account of how the self comes to be an object of my own deliberations about morality and justice. This amounts to an annihilation of the subject which undermines his argument for the subject as a site of responsible action. As Steiner identifies, justice encompasses equal moral agents. Levinas’s hyperbolic description of the ethical relation’s asymmetry must therefore be revised.Nevertheless, what remains is the strength of Levinas’s argument for the priority of the ethical relation over thematization, rationality, and consciousness. The hidden presuppositions supporting Steiner’s work are evidence of Levinas’s plausibility in this respect. Steiner’s account of justice-as-rights requires a prior ethical relation in which we recognise one another as separate persons, each possessing an ethical status of their own; an attitude of justice motivates Steiner’s description of justice. This attitude is evident in language, which is communication before it is thought. In that individual rights can be conceived only on the basis of a relation of responsibility, rights are primordially the rights of the Other. (shrink)

The moral principle of fairness or fair play is widely believed to be a solid ground for political obligation, i.e., a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law qua law. In this article, I advance a new and, more importantly, principled objection to fairness theories of political obligation by revealing and defending a justificatory gap between the principle of fairness and political obligation: the duty of fairness on its own is incapable of preempting the citizen’s liberty to reciprocate (...) fairly in ways other than obeying the law. This justificatory gap is unaffected by the ongoing debate between the voluntarist and the nonvoluntarist accounts of fairness, and it cannot be bridged by the two arguments that are perhaps implicit in Klosko’s account, namely the presumptive benefits argument and the democratic procedure argument. (shrink)

Many business ethicists assume that if a type of conduct is illegal, then it is also unethical. This article scrutinizes that assumption, using the rideshare company Uber’s illegal operation in the city of Philadelphia as a case study. I argue that Uber’s unlawful conduct was permissible. I also argue that this position is not an extreme one: it is consistent with a variety of theoretical commitments in the analytic philosophical tradition regarding political obligation. I conclude by showing why business ethicists (...) would have a better rejoinder to the “dominant view” of business ethics associated with Milton Friedman if they dispensed with the assumption that illegal implies unethical. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward an ethical argument for the provision of extensive patient choice by the British National Health Service. I base this argument on traditional liberal rights to freedom of choice, on a welfare right to health care, and on a view of health as values-based. I argue that choice, to be ethically sustainable on this basis, must be values-based and rational. I also consider whether the British taxpayer may be persuadable with regard to the moral acceptability (...) of patient choice, making use of Rawls’ theory of political liberalism in this context. I identify issues that present problems in terms of public acceptance of choice, and also identify a boundary issue with regard to public health choices as against individual choices. (shrink)

Since the death of Mao Zedong and the subsequent implementation of an ?open door? economic policy, foreign criticism of China's human rights record has greatly increased. China maintains that it possesses a distinct understanding of rights deriving from its own history and national conditions. In particular, China cites the doctrine of Marxism, its state ideology since 1949, as the primary influence on its perception of rights. Yet, China also persists in a peculiarly Confucian orthodoxy, identifiable both in its official theory (...) and practice of rights. Is there a universal principle of human rights, or does China's entrenched Confucian heritage of itself argue against the pertinence of foreign criticisms? (shrink)

In this article, I offer a foundation for the prima facie idea of a right to welfare based on a neglected aspect of Kant’s legal theory: his account of equity rights. I argue...

In this article we aim to reduce the force of the expensive tastes objection to equality of welfare by constructing a pluralist welfare egalitarian theory which is not defeated by it. In the first part, we argue that Cohen’s condition of responsibility-sensitiveness is not able to provide a satisfactory rebuttal of the expensive tastes objection for at least a class of theories of justice, namely those that adhere to a methodologically fact-sensitive view. In the second part, we explore the possibility (...) of constructing a welfare egalitarian theory that gives weight to both equality and efficiency. We propose two alternatives, which integrate a utilitarian constraint and a Weak Pareto constraint on equality and show that both theories consistently differentiate between compensable and non-compensable expensive tastes, but should ultimately be rejected because of other unattractive implications. Finally, we develop a fairness-constrained theory of welfare egalitarianism and suggest that it can distinguish between compensable and non-compensable expensive tastes in both a conceptually consistent and a morally plausible manner, without generating decisive additional objections. (shrink)

How to demarcate the political units within which democracy will be practiced? Although recent years have witnessed a steadily increasing academic interest in this question concerning the boundary problem in democratic theory, social contract theory’s potential for solving it has largely been ignored. In fact, contract views are premised on the assumption of a given people and so presuppose what requires legitimization: the existence of a demarcated group of individuals materializing, as it were, from nowhere and whose members agree among (...) themselves to establish a political order. In order to fill this gap in social contract theory, a distinction is made between three kinds of contract views: Lockean political voluntarism, contractarianism, and contractualism. Each of these views can be interpreted in such a way that it offers a democratic solution to the boundary problem. Ultimately, however, a Rawlsian interpretation of the contractualist solution is defended. (shrink)

Nicholas Vrousalis has aimed to recast an old objection to the will theory of rights by focusing on Hillel Steiner’s version of that theory. He has argued that Will Theory must either be insensitive to the (values of the) lives of the unempowerable, or be incomplete, because it has no argumentative resources within its conceptual apparatus to ascribe or justify restrictions on the amount of discretion exercised by legal officials. I show that both charges are problematic. They rely on some (...) of Steiner’s inferences which are simply unjustified because they are based on misinterpretations of the logic of Hohfeld’s terminology. The problem for Vrousalis is that his critique takes for granted some of these flawed arguments. The critique is also misdirected to the extent that it assumes that the problems with Steiner’s theory affect Will Theory in general. (shrink)

MARXISM AND LIBERALISM edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Jeffrey Paul and John Ahrens New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 223 pp., $14?95 (paper) LIBERALISM by John Gray Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. 106 pp., $9.95 (paper).

In "Morals by Agreement", David Gauthier attempts to derive property rights from a moral principle called the Lockean proviso. The derivation fails, and the true implications of the moral principles which Gauthier invokes are quite different. These principles imply that persons have extensive liberties to use physical materials, but relatively few rights against interference by others in this use. Robert Nozick argues for an extensive system of property rights in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia"; his argument fails for similar reasons.

There have been a number of attacks on the idea of human rights recently, both in the course of political and diplomatic encounters across the globe, as well as in the more systematic literature of political philosophy. These attacks do not always distinguish between the Lockean, negative and the more recent positive rights traditions. For example, at the 1993 summer conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, many diplomats from different regions of the world raised such questions as 'When we (...) speak of human rights, are these conditions that everyone everywhere ought to enjoy?’Is it perhaps the case that human rights are one thing for people in one part of the globe and another for those in another part?' These questions were raised in large part about the rights spelled out in the United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights, including both negative and positive rights–e.g., the rights to freedom of expression and to public education, respectively. (shrink)

The principle of fairness is a moral principle which states that individuals are under an obligation to contribute towards beneficial cooperative projects. It has been appealed to in arguing that citizens are obligated to pay for public goods that their government supplies. Yet the principle has faced a number of powerful objections, most notably those of Robert Nozick. In responding to some of these objections, proponents of the principle have placed a number of conditions on its application. However, by doing (...) so, they have reduced the number of public goods that the principle can explain obligations to contribute towards, and consequently limited its relevance to questions of political obligation. I argue here that a more permissive version of the principle, with fewer conditions on its application, will perform equally well in responding to Nozick's objections. This opens up the possibility of a theory of political obligation that relies more heavily on the principle of fairness than has previously been thought possible. (shrink)

Governments around the world collect huge amounts of personal data from their citizens for counterterrorist purposes. While mining this data has arguably increased the security of populations, the practices through which these data are currently collected in many countries have been criticised for violating individuals’ rights to privacy. Yet it is not clear what a permissible data collection regime would look like and thus also how we could reform existing regimes to make them morally acceptable. This article explores a number (...) of ways in which we might justify a data collection regime to those affected in spite of the setbacks to their privacy. In contrast to existing justifications, I argue that individuals can be asked to surrender their personal data as a requirement of reciprocity in a cooperative system in which they gain security from others doing likewise. Relying on this justification, though, has significant implications for how we should reform existing data collection regimes. In particular, more stringent limits will need to be placed on the forms which these regimes can legitimately take. (shrink)

W tekście zajmujemy się przeobrażeniami, jakie na przestrzeni wielu stuleci zaszły w rozumieniu uprawnień. W związku z tym interesują nas też zmiany w roli nadawanej skorelowanym z nimi obowiązkom oraz sprawiedliwości. Wychodząc od pierwotnego (obiektywnego) sensu praw jako przedmiotu sprawiedliwości, przechodzimy do nowożytnego podmiotowego (subiektywnego) ich rozumienia. Twierdzimy, że konsekwencją opisywanej transformacji jest zmiana struktury uzasadnienia praw. Mamy na myśli to, że prawa, pierwotnie uzasadniane regułami sprawiedliwości i równoważne obowiązkom, stały się od sprawiedliwości niezależne, a nawet, że tę ostatnią zaczęto (...) rozumieć jako regułę urzeczywistniania autonomicznie ustanawianych benefitów (czyli substancjalnie wziętych praw). (shrink)

For philosophers, rights against the world are equivalent to rights in rem. Contrary to what Hart thought, however, this does not make them equivalent to general rights. Rights in rem contrast with rights in personam, whereas general rights contrast with special rights. As I explain, rights against the world can be either general rights or special rights. My explanation follows Waldron’s strategy of exhibiting property rights as justified by Locke’s theory of property as a case of rights in rem that (...) are also special rights. Moreover, despite what ‘in rem’ means in Latin, rights against the world include more than property rights. For example, they also include moral human rights. With moral human rights and property rights alike, the correlative duties are borne by ‘everyone’, understood in a dynamic sense I undertake to specify. (shrink)

The nature of basic equality (what it is that makes us all equals) can have implications not only for the question of the currency of egalitarian justice but also for that of its . The latter question is raised by G. A. Cohen in his critique of John Rawls's theory of justice. In this paper I argue that Rawlsian liberals might provide an answer to Cohen's critique by establishing two distinct kinds of basic equality, thus providing a of basic equality. (...) A first kind of basic equality gains moral relevance in the context of respectful relations between individuals, and establishes egalitarian duties between them. A second kind of basic equality gains moral relevance in the context of respectful relations between the state and individual citizens, and establishes egalitarian duties of the state toward citizens. The strength of Cohen's critique depends, in part, on the fact that Rawls identified only one kind of basic equality while at the same time wishing to defend a dualist account of individual and state duties. (shrink)

The World Health Organisation encourages that blood donation becomes voluntary and unremunerated, a system already operated in the UK. Drawing on public documents and videos, this paper argues that blood donation is regarded and presented as altruistic and supererogatory. In advertisements, donation is presented as something undertaken for the benefit of others, a matter attracting considerable gratitude from recipients and the collecting organisation. It is argued that regarding blood donation as an act of supererogation is wrongheaded, and an alternative account (...) of blood donation as moral obligation is presented. Two arguments are offered in support of this position. First, the principle of beneficence, understood in a broad consequentialist framework obliges donation where the benefit to the recipient is large and the cost to the donor relatively small. This argument can be applied, with differing levels of normativity, to various acts of donation. Second, the wrongness of free riding requires individuals to contribute to collective systems from which they benefit. Alone and in combination these arguments present moral reasons for donation, recognised in communication strategies elsewhere. Research is required to evaluate the potential effects on donation of a campaign which presents blood donation as moral obligation, but of wider importance is the recognition that other-regarding considerations in relation to our own as well as others’ health result in a range not only of choices but also of obligations. (shrink)

The search for moral objectivity has been constant throughout the history of philosophy, although interpretations of the nature and scope of objectivity have varied. One aim of the pursuit of moral objectivity has been the demonstration of what may be termed its epistemological thesis, that is, the claim that the truth of assertions of the goodness or rightness of moral acts is as legitimate, reliable, or valid as the truth of assertions involving other forms of human knowledge, such as common (...) sense, practical expertise, science, or mathematics. Another aim of the quest for moral objectivity may be termed its pragmatic formulation ; this refers to the development of a method or procedure that will mediate among conflicting moral views in order to realize a convergence or justified agreement about warranted or true moral conclusions. In the ethical theories of Aristotle, David Hume, and John Dewey, theories that represent three of the four variants of ethical naturalism that are surveyed in this essay, the epistemological thesis and the pragmatic formulation are integrated or combined. The distinction between these two elements is significant for the present essay, however, since I want to show that linguistic naturalism, the fourth variant I shall examine, has provided a demonstration of the epistemological thesis about moral knowledge, even if the pragmatic formulation has not been successfully realized. (shrink)

Opponents of euthanasia sometimes argue that it is incompatible with the purpose of medicine, since physicians have an unconditional duty never to intentionally cause death. But it is not clear how such a duty could ever actually be unconditional, if due consideration is given to the moral weight of countervailing duties equally fundamental to medicine. Whether physicians' moral duties are understood as correlative with patients' moral rights or construed noncorrelatively, a doctor's obligation to abstain from intentional killing cannot be more (...) than a defeasible duty. (shrink)

Abstract: We are all familiar with the way in which social roles, such as mother, father, professor, club football coach, citizen, and so on, confront us with clusters of duties that purport to bind us. Though we generally experience these role-duties as normatively binding, we might question this. What reason do role-occupants have for conforming to the duties that define their roles? I argue that the agent who identifies with her role thereby has a weighty and important justificatory reason for (...) conforming to the role's defining duties: namely, the identifying agent realizes the fundamental goods of meaning and self-determination by doing so. This is an important normative ground of role-duties because it, unlike the grounds of natural duty or voluntary assumption, ensures that the duties it grounds are not alien impositions but rather are elements of the identifying agent's wellbeing. I also argue that role-identification provides a reason that shares many of the characteristics of a moral reason, and I argue that role-identification in tandem with the principle of fair play grounds a moral duty to conform to one's role-duties. (shrink)

I offer a new account of fair-play obligations for non-excludable benefits received from the state. Firstly, I argue that non-acceptance of these benefits frees recipients of fairness obligations only when a counterfactual condition is met; i.e. when non-acceptance would hold up in the closest possible world in which recipients do not hold motivationally-biased beliefs triggered by a desire to free-ride. Secondly, I argue that because of common mechanisms of self-deception there will be recipients who reject these benefits without meeting the (...) counterfactual condition. For this reason, I suggest that those who reject non-excludable benefits provided by the state have a duty to support their rejection with adequate reasons. Failing that, they can be permissibly treated as if they had fair-play obligations (although in fact they might not have them). Thus, I claim that there is a distinction, largely unappreciated, between the question of whether we have a duty of fairness to obey the law and the question of whether we can be permissibly treated as if we had one. (shrink)

The secession of prosperous regions may negatively affect the redistributive scheme of an established state. As a consequence, the capacity of its welfare system to support the inhabitants of poorer regions may be significantly reduced. Some authors assert that affluent groups who opt for full political independence violate duties of solidarity. This objection to the secession of prosperous regions can be based on different views of distributive justice. Here, following a distinction that has been introduced by Allen Buchanan, ‘subject centred’ (...) and ‘justice as reciprocity’ theories are explored. It is argued that both theories fail to support the case against the secession of wealthy groups. ‘Subject centred’ theories cannot explain special duties toward compatriots, whereas ‘justice as reciprocity’ theories cannot justify restrictions on exit rights. However, this does not mean that separatists have no moral duties vis-à-vis their fellow citizens. They are obliged to dissolve the political union in a fair way, e.g., by accepting responsibility for some share of the public debts. (shrink)