The resurgence in antiracist activism and education brought with it the need to better understand what racism is and how it operates in the production of racial injustice. Prevailing theories understand racism as fundamentally structural, essentially cognitive, and requiring political philosophical investigation over moral philosophical investigation. Such theories are useful within limits, but ultimately offer an inaccurate or incomplete view of racism. In what follows, I offer a virtue-based account of racism that begins its genesis story with individuals, yet acknowledges (...) and attends to the reality and severity of institutional and structural racism; is essentially both cognitive and non-cognitive; and, prioritizes moral philosophical investigation. Throughout, I apply my theory of racism to various spheres of human experience and history to demonstrate its ability to accurately and comprehensively capture the relevant entities and phenomena implicated in racism. In improving our understanding of racism, I aim to generate more targeted and comprehensive reform that effectively mitigates racism and promotes human and societal flourishing. (shrink)

Criminal justice systems have traditionally relied heavily on human decision-making, but new technologies are increasingly supplementing the human role in this sector. This paper considers what general limits need to be placed on the use of algorithms in sentencing decisions. It argues that, even once we can build algorithms that equal human decision-making capacities, strict constraints need to be placed on how they are designed and developed. The act of condemnation is a valuable element of criminal sentencing, and using algorithms (...) in sentencing – even in an advisory role – threatens to undermine this value. The paper argues that a principle of “meaningful public control” should be met in all sentencing decisions if they are to retain their condemnatory status. This principle requires that agents who have standing to act on behalf of the wider political community retain moral responsibility for all sentencing decisions. While this principle does not rule out the use of algorithms, it does require limits on how they are constructed. (shrink)

Many philosophers and legal theorists worry about punishing the socially disadvantaged as severely as their advantaged counterparts. One philosophically popular explanation of this concern is couched in terms of moral standing: seriously unjust states are said to lack standing to condemn disadvantaged offenders. If this is the case, institutional condemnation of disadvantaged offenders (especially via hard treatment) will often be unjust. I describe two problems with canonical versions of this view. First, its proponents groundlessly claim that disadvantaged offenders may be (...) punished as severely as advantaged ones, even though such punishment is unjust in light of the state’s loss of standing. Second, and more importantly, moral standing arguments prohibit states from blaming advantaged as well as disadvantaged offenders. This unwelcome outcome suggests that standing approaches incorrectly analyze the source of moral misgivings about punishing the disadvantaged. I conclude that those who share such concerns should put standing accounts aside. (shrink)

Recognition is one of the most ambivalent concepts in political and social thought. While it is a condition for individual freedom, the subject’s demand for recognition can be exploited as an instrument for reproducing domination. Axel Honneth addresses this issue and offers the concept of ideological recognition: Recognition is ideological when the addressees accept it from their subjective point of view but is unjustified from an objective point of view. Using the examples of the recognition of femininity, I argue that (...) Honneth’s account fails not only to offer the objective normative standard that delineates between morally justified and unjustified recognition, but also to descriptively explain why the addressees of ideological recognition accept their identities as having positive qualities. To overcome these problems, I provide an alternative, epistemic structural account. First, my account offers the concept of epistemic trust and identifies the objective injustice that Honneth’s account cannot capture. Second, my account offers the concept of structural power and discusses the problem of internalization of problematic identities. Furthermore, I argue that epistemic structural account has theoretical and practical benefits for analyzing domination and advancing the task of critique by explaining the ideological recognition in the case of racial identity, for example. (shrink)

I offer a Kantian argument for the idea that the state lacks the authority to punish neglected, impoverished citizens when they commit crimes to cope with that neglect. Given Kant’s own commitments to the value of external freedom and the state’s obligation to ensure it in Doctrine of Right, there is no reason a Kantian state can claim authority to punish an impoverished citizen while also failing in significant ways to protect her external freedom.

Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience (...) to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience is more accurately conceived of in terms of two kinds of acts: artistic and artworld. In addition to artistic disobedience and artworld disobedience, we add a broader and more diverse sort of transgressive aesthetic disobedience. Our aim is to articulate how Neufeld’s account of a kind of disobedience in the artworld that parallels civil disobedience can prove even more generative. (shrink)

This paper advocates for a general policy of penal leniency: judges should often sentence offenders to a punishment less severe than initially preferred. The argument’s keystone is the relatively uncontroversial Minimal Invasion Principle (MIP). MIP says that when more than one course of action satisfies a state’s legitimate aim, only the least invasive is permissibly pursued. I contend that MIP applies in two common sentencing situations. In the first, all sentences within a statutorily specified range are equally proportionate. Here MIP (...) applies directly. In the second, judges reasonably believe that one of the sentences within the range is the most proportionate, but can’t identify it with any certainty. In these cases of sentencing uncertainty, judges must be indifferent between their preferred sentence and a softer one, and this indifference triggers MIP. MIP thus frequently mandates some degree of leniency. I conclude with some comments on statistical uncertainty. (shrink)

Soda taxes are controversial. While proponents point to their potential health benefits and the public projects that could be funded with their revenue, critics argue that they are paternalistic and regressive. In this paper, we explore the prospects for designing a just soda tax, one that appropriately balances the often-competing ethical considerations of promoting social welfare, respecting people’s autonomy and ensuring distributive fairness. We argue that policymakers have several paths forward for designing a just soda tax, but that the considerations (...) relevant to ethical policy design are more complicated than is sometimes acknowledged. (shrink)

Acts of futile resistance—harms against an aggressor which could not reasonably hope to avert the threat the aggressor poses—give rise to a puzzle: on the one hand, many such acts are intuitively permissible, yet on the other, these acts fail to meet the justificatory standards of defensive action. The most widely accepted solution to this puzzle is that victims in such cases permissibly defend against a secondary threat to their honour, dignity, or moral standing. I argue that this solution fails, (...) because futile resistance is not plausibly regarded as defensive in the relevant sense. I propose instead that futile resistance is justified as a form of protest, where protest is analysed as an expression of rejection of victims’ wrongs. Such protest is justified, I argue, when and because it is the fitting response to the circumstances of futility. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders Tommie Shelby's (2016) analysis of procreation in poor black communities. I identify three conceptual frames within which Shelby situates his analysis—feminization, choice-as-control, and moralization. I argue that these frames should be rejected on conceptual, empirical, and moral grounds. As I show, this framing engenders a flawed understanding of poor black women's procreative lives. I propose an alternative framework for reconceiving the relationship between poverty and procreative justice, one oriented around reproductive flourishing instead of reproductive responsibility. More generally, (...) the paper develops a methodological challenge for nonideal moral and political philosophy, especially concerning the obligations of the oppressed. Specifically, I argue that in the absence of descriptive and conceptual accountability, the moral gaze of the philosopher risks preserving, rather than destabilizing, oppressive ideologies. (shrink)

Many philosophers and legal theorists worry about punishing the socially disadvantaged as severely as their advantaged counterparts. One philosophically popular explanation of this concern is couched in terms of moral standing: seriously unjust states are said to lack standing to condemn disadvantaged offenders. If this is the case, institutional condemnation of disadvantaged offenders (especially via hard treatment) will often be unjust. I describe two problems with canonical versions of this view. First, its proponents groundlessly claim that disadvantaged offenders may be (...) punished as severely as advantaged ones, even though such punishment is unjust in light of the state’s loss of standing. Second, and more importantly, moral standing arguments prohibit states from blaming advantaged as well as disadvantaged offenders. This unwelcome outcome suggests that standing approaches incorrectly analyze the source of moral misgivings about punishing the disadvantaged. I conclude that those who share such concerns should put standing accounts aside. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This essay critically assesses Anna Stilz's argument in Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration that legitimate states have a right to do wrong. I concede that individuals enjoy a claim against external interference when they commit suberogatory acts, but I deny that the right to do wrong extends to acts that would violate the rights of others. If this is correct, then one must do more than merely invoke an individual's right to do wrong if one hopes to vindicate a legitimate (...) state's right to commit injustices. Of course, there may be distinctive features of legitimate states that explain why they enjoy moral protections that individuals lack, but I argue that the value of collective self-determination is not up to this task. And even if these arguments fail, self-determination would at most explain why legitimate states enjoy a right to commit injustices against their own citizens; it would provide them no moral protection when they violate the rights of outsiders. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that results as part of a social process that systematically (...) gives rise to racial injustice, and is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Serene Khader’s effort to develop a decolonized approach to transnational feminism takes a helpfully nonideal approach. Much of decolonial theory has criticized universalism in order to espouse pluralism. Khader attempts to develop a form of minimalist universalism compatible with a significant dose of pluralism in regard to how we understand liberation from gender-based forms of oppression, and she effectively shows how the nonideal, meliorative approach can do this. I address three issues here: (1) the serious challenge her universalist account (...) poses to critical theory and some other trends in continental philosophy; (2) the persuasive analysis of, approach to, and critique that she makes of ‘gender role eliminativism’ and (3) the epistemic and dialogic questions left remaining in her defense of feminist universalism, in relation to who can theoretically formulate the universal. (shrink)

Why does institutional police brutality continue so brazenly? Criminologists and other social scientists typically theorize about the causes of such violence, but less attention is given to normative questions regarding the demands of justice. Some philosophers have taken a teleological approach, arguing that social institutions such as the police exist to realize collective ends and goods based upon the idea of collective moral responsibility. Others have approached normative questions in policing from a more explicit social-contract perspective, suggesting that legitimacy is (...) derived by adhering to (limited) authority. This article examines methodologies within political philosophy for analyzing police injustice. The methodological inquiry leads to an account of how justice constrains the police through both special (or positional) moral requirements that officers assume voluntarily, as well as general moral requirements in virtue of a polity’s commitment to moral, political and legal values beyond law enforcement and crime reduction. The upshot is a conception of a police role that is constrained by justice from multiple foundational stances. (shrink)

The piece returns to my earlier challenges of retributivism as the basis of contemporary criminal law, advancing my work on republican political justifications that make central the effect of punishment on citizenship. In short, the justification of punishment should eschew individual retributivist “desert” and focus primarily on the effects of punishment on the entire polity. In particular, this would mean that the effects of mass incarceration would be explicitly a part of justification of punishment. Concretized, members of communities where widespread (...) punishment (incarceration) has damaged collective civic health should explicitly receive discounts on otherwise “retributively justified” punishment. Most obviously, a regime focused on the effect of punishment on civic bonds would explicitly target the vast racial disparities in contemporary punishment regimes, grounding an explicit claim that an African-American or Hispanic defendant from overly punished communities should be punished less and requiring other state resources to secure the safety of the community. While critical, this regime is not solely aimed at racial disparities. This principle would equally address the concentration of punishment in poor, white communities often battered by punishment and policing. Thus, the policy shows a way of building allies across racial lines. (shrink)

Philosophers have highlighted a dilemma for the criminal law. Unjust, racist policies in the United States have produced conditions in which the dispossessed are more likely to commit crime. This complicity undermines the standing of the state to blame their offenses. Nevertheless, the state has reason to punish those crimes in order to deter future offenses. Tommie Shelby proposes a way out of this dilemma. He separates the state’s right to condemn from its right to punish. I raise doubts about (...) Shelby’s proposed resolution. So long as punishment is widely and reasonably understood to condemn crime, Shelby’s proposal does not resolve the dilemma. Moreover, there is reason to think the blaming aspect of punishment plays a role in the justification of its hard treatment. I conclude by considering some other ways out of the dilemma, focusing especially on how the United States might take responsibility for its complicity. (shrink)

This article examines which lessons political philosophers can learn from discussions within Critical Philosophy of Race. The article assumes a social-constructionist understanding of “race” and focuses on the question of how we can reconcile normative universalism with sensitivity to differences that have been created by processes of racialisation. To answer this question, it looks exemplarily at debates within three different fields of political philosophy: normativity, politics, and law. First, it presents objections voiced by critical race theory against liberal, ideal conceptions (...) of justice. Second, the article reconstructs the main arguments for and against affirmative action as a policy measure directed at minority groups. Third, it focuses on racial inequalities in the context of penal law. By way of conclusion, it suggests how debates around justice and punishment and the conceptual lenses offered by CPoR can be fruitfully applied to the German context. (shrink)

Can compensation repair the moral harm of a previous wrongful act? On the one hand, some define the very function of compensation as one of restoring the moral balance. On the other hand, the dominant view on compensation is that it is insufficient to fully repair moral harm unless accompanied by an act of punishment or apology. In this paper, I seek to investigate the maximal potential of compensation. Central to my argument is a distinction between apologetic compensation and non-apologetic (...) compensation. Apologetic compensation, I argue, is an act that expresses regret and apology by means of some offer of money, goods, or services. Non-apologetic compensation is an act that seeks to restore loss or harm without expressing regret or apology. In the paper, I defend the view that acts of compensation can be apologetic and argue that such apologetic compensation is sufficient for moral repair. (shrink)

In this essay review of Samir Okasha's Agents and Goals in Evolution, I reflect on the rationale for agential thinking in biology, and consider whether the rationale is the same for genes as for organisms. I also discuss Okasha's ingenious examples of the evolution of irrational behaviour, and in particular the evolution of violations of the "independence axiom" of rational choice theory. These examples rely on a crucial distinction between aggregate and idiosyncratic risk.

I argue that contemporary accounts of ideology critique—paradigmatically those advanced by Haslanger, Jaeggi, Celikates, and Stanley—are either inadequate or redundant. The Marxian concept of ideology—a collective epistemic distortion or irrationality that helps maintain bad social arrangements—has recently returned to the forefront of debates in contemporary analytic social philosophy. Ideology critique has similarly emerged as a technique for combating such social ills by remedying those collective epistemic distortions. Ideologies are sets of social meanings or shared understandings. I argue in this paper (...) that because agents must coordinate on them to be mutually intelligible, ideologies, on the fashionable contemporary account, are conventions. They are equilibrium solutions to a particular kind of social coordination problem. The worry is that changing pernicious conventions requires more than the epistemic remedy contemporary critical social theorists prescribe. It also requires overcoming strategic impediments like high first-mover costs. Thus contemporary proponents of ideology critique—the “new ideology critics,” as I’ll call them—face a dilemma. Either their account of social change fails to account for important strategic impediments to social change, in which case it is inadequate, or it incorporates a theory of strategic behavior, and thus merely reinvents the wheel, poorly. It adds nothing to prominent convention-based accounts of social change in the social sciences. More generally, this is an example of a pernicious trend in contemporary critical social theory. Contemporary critical social theorists have abandoned their predecessors’ commitment to engaging with social science, thereby undermining their efforts. (shrink)

Why Does Inequality Matter?, by ScanlonT.M.. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 170.

Just institutions have claims on us. There are two reasons for thinking that such claims are warranted. First, one may believe that we are under a natural duty of justice to support and further just institutions. If one believes that it matters whether institutions are just, one also has a reason, almost as a matter of consistency, to support and further just institutions. Second, one may believe that by enjoying the benefits brought about by cooperation through just institutions, one incurs (...) an obligation to support these institutions. Those who accept and enjoy the benefits brought about by cooperation through a just scheme are under an obligation of fairness to reciprocate. But what happens to these reasons to support and comply with an institution if the scheme of cooperation is less than fully just? There is hardly a real-world institution, policy, or scheme of social cooperation that would qualify as fully just. However, questions about obligations of fairness and duties of justice under conditions of injustice have hitherto suffered relative neglect. I shall outline an overall framework for thinking about these questions by asking what the victims of injustice owe to moderately unjust institutions. (shrink)

Injustice can undermine the standing states have to blame criminal offenders, and this raises a difficulty for a range of punishment theories that depend on a state's moral authority. When a state lacks the moral authority that flows from political legitimacy, its right to punish criminal lawbreakers cannot depend on a systematic claim about the legitimacy of the law. Instead, an unjust state is permitted to punish only criminal acts whose wrongness is established directly by morality, and only when criminal (...) guilt is established through legal procedures that meet minimal standards of fairness. These restrictions narrow the proper scope of criminal law and invalidate popular rationales for punishment that construe punishment as blame. (shrink)

You shouldn’t have done it. But you did. Against your better judgment you scrolled to the end of an article concerning the state of race relations in America and you are now reading the comments. Amongst the slurs, the get-rich-quick schemes, and the threats of physical violence, there is one comment that catches your eye. Spencer argues that although it might be “unpopular” or “politically incorrect” to say this, the evidence supports believing that the black diner in his section will (...) tip poorly. He insists that the facts don’t lie. The facts aren’t racist. In denying his claim and in believing otherwise, it is you who engages in wishful thinking. It is you who believes against the evidence. You, not Spencer, are epistemically irrational. -/- My dissertation gives an account of the moral-epistemic norms governing belief that will help us answer Spencer and the challenge he poses. We live in a society that has been shaped by racist attitudes and institutions. Given the effects of structural racism, Spencer’s belief could have considerable evidential support. Spencer notes that it might make him unpopular, but he cares about the truth and he is willing to believe the unpopular thing. But, Spencer’s belief seems racist. Spencer asks, however, how could his belief be racist if his beliefs reflect reality and are rationally justified? Moreover, how could he wrong anyone by believing what he epistemically ought to believe given the evidence? In answer, I argue that beliefs can wrong. (shrink)

We care not only about how people treat us, but also what they believe of us. If I believe that you’re a bad tipper given your race, I’ve wronged you. But, what if you are a bad tipper? It is commonly argued that the way racist beliefs wrong is that the racist believer either misrepresents reality, organizes facts in a misleading way that distorts the truth, or engages in fallacious reasoning. In this paper, I present a case that challenges this (...) orthodoxy: the case of the supposedly rational racist. We live in a world that has been, and continues to be, structured by racist attitudes and institutions. As a result, the evidence might be stacked in favour of racist beliefs. But, if there are racist beliefs that reflect reality and are rationally justified, what could be wrong with them? Moreover, how do I wrong you by believing what I epistemically ought believe given the evidence? To address this challenge, we must recognize that there are not only epistemic norms governing belief, but moral ones as well. This view, however, is at odds with the assumption that moral obligation requires a kind of voluntary control that we lack with regard to our beliefs. This background assumption motivates many philosophers to try to explain away the appearance that beliefs can wrong by locating the wrong elsewhere, e.g., in an agent’s actions. Further, even accounts that accept the thesis that racist beliefs can wrong restrict the class of beliefs that wrong to beliefs that are either false or the result of hot irrationality, e.g., the racist belief is a result of ill-will. In this paper I argue that although the these accounts will capture many of the wrongs associated with racist beliefs, they will be only partial explanations because they cannot explain the wrong committed by the supposedly rational racist. The challenge posed by the supposedly rational racist concerns our epistemic practices in a non-ideal world. The world is an unjust place, and there may be many morally objectionable beliefs it justifies. To address this challenge, we must seriously consider the thesis people wrong others in virtue of what they believe about them, and not just in virtue of what they do. (shrink)

This essay tries to develop a “black radical Kantianism”—that is, a Kantianism informed by the black experience in modernity. After looking briefly at socialist and feminist appropriations of Kant, I argue that an analogous black radical appropriation should draw on the distinctive social ontology and view of the state associated with the black radical tradition. In ethics, this would mean working with a (color-conscious rather than colorblind) social ontology of white persons and black sub-persons and then asking what respect for (...) oneself and others would require under those circumstances. In political philosophy, it would mean framing the state as a Rassenstaat (a racial state) and then asking what measures of corrective justice would be necessary to bring about the ideal Rechtsstaat. (shrink)

Social interaction is laden with stereotypes. Throughout history negative stereotypes have been immensely harmful, leading to hatred, vilification, and direct harm such as discrimination, and they continue to be so in almost all societies. It is widely accepted that we ought not to view members of other groups negatively in stereotypical ways, and also ought not to apply negative stereotypes to members of our own group (or even to ourselves). However, is there any special moral obligation on the targets of (...) such negative stereotypes to take care not to confirm them? May one even be blameworthy for not doing so? The very thought seems outrageous. Yet I will argue that it is plausible to think that, in fact, the victims, too, have pro tanto obligations to prevent stereotype confirmation (henceforth sc), in many central contexts. I am not aware of any sustained philosophical discussion making this claim. (shrink)

Tommie Shelby has offered an influential, carefully stated, and well-argued set of objections to any volitional analysis of racism (VAR) as consisting centrally in certain forms of race-based disregard. Here I hope to defend aspects of VAR by analyzing, evaluating, and sometimes countering several of his major contentions, which have stood unchallenged in the literature over more than two decades. First, I sketch and respond to his Methodological objection to VAR, which criticizes VAR's reliance on language and linguistic intuitions; then (...) to a Psychological objection, which suggests that VAR implausibly distances an agent's intentions from her beliefs; and, finally, to a Psychopathological objection, which holds that VAR requires treating as unproblematic some psychological states better seen as aberrant. The following section treats three subtle counterexamples Shelby uses to challenge VAR's core contentions about what's necessary and what's sufficient for racism. I close with some gestures toward what I see as a promising approach, very different from his, to studying these topics. (shrink)

A shift in popular discourse over the last few years makes it makes it tempting to think that the answer to the question whether racism is essentially systemic is yes. My argument, however, is that there are forms of racism—things that are properly counted as instances of racism—that are distinct from and independent of systemic racism. These include ideational racism, ideological racism, racism as antipathy, and racism as prejudice and bigotry. Systemic racism does exist and is not reducible to these (...) other forms of racism. It is arguably the form of racism that should be of most concern to us, but it is not the only form that racism takes. (shrink)

Ideology critics believe that many bad social practices persist because of ideology, and that critiquing ideology is an effective way to promote social reform. Skeptics draw on game theory to argue that the persistence of such practices is better explained by collective action problems, and that ideology critique is causally inefficacious. In this paper, I reconcile these camps. I show that while game theory can help us identify contexts where ideology critique makes no difference, it also reveals causal mechanisms by (...) which ideology critique can have a significant effect. I then consider some objections and directions for further research. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that some examples of what we label ‘algorithmic bias’ would be better understood as cases of institutional bias. Even when individual algorithms appear unobjectionable, they may produce biased outcomes given the way that they are embedded in the background structure of our social world. Therefore, the problematic outcomes associated with the use of algorithmic systems cannot be understood or accounted for without a kind of structural account. Understanding algorithmic bias as institutional bias in particular (as (...) opposed to other structural accounts) has at least two important upshots. First, I argue that the existence of bias that is intrinsic to certain institutions (whether algorithmic or not) suggests that at least in some cases, the algorithms now substituting as pieces of institutional norms or rules are not “fixable” in the relevant sense, because the institutions they help make up are not fixable. Second, I argue that in other cases, changing the algorithms being used within our institutions (rather than getting rid of them entirely) is essential to changing the background structural conditions of our society. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up the question of how epistemic injustices can be resisted. Miranda Fricker, who introduced the term to describe situations in which subjects are wronged as knowers, has initially advocated an individualist, virtue-based account to counteract epistemic injustices. Epistemic injustices, however, do not merely operate at an individual level but are rooted in social practices and structures. Arguably therefore, individually virtuous epistemic conduct is not enough to uproot patterns of epistemic injustice. Institutional change and collective actions (...) are needed. Recently, Elizabeth Anderson has proposed such a structural remedy. Diagnosing patterns of social segregation that track existing inequalities to be the principal structural cause of epistemic injustices, Anderson suggests that integration is required to achieve epistemic justice. Pace Anderson, I argue that certain segregated spaces —namely spaces provided by subaltern counter-publics— can function and, in fact, have historically functioned as important sites of epistemic resistance. In particular, I argue that even if integration is sharply distinguished from assimilation, Anderson’s proposal insufficiently acknowledges the subversive potential of those spaces, in which shielded from the gaze of the oppressors, marginally situated subjects can assemble and question hegemonic epistemic practices. (shrink)

The punitive, moralizing conception of individual responsibility commonly associated with retributive justice exaggerates the moral meaning of criminal guilt. Criminal guilt does not imply moral desert, nor does it justify moral blame. Mental illness, intellectual disability, addiction, immaturity, poverty, and racial oppression are factors that mitigate our sense of a wrongdoer’s moral desert, though they are mostly not treated by the criminal justice system as relevant to criminal culpability. The retributive theory also distracts from shared responsibility for social injustice. Instead (...) of highlighting the moral urgency of correcting conditions that help to explain the crime rate, a commitment to retribution diverts attention from the social conditions that engender crime. These conditions include an unequal distribution of social, economic, and political power, which poses a serious problem for the retributive theory. When disadvantaged members of society act in ways that violate the criminal law, they are less morally blameworthy, even when the laws they violate are justified. Judgments of blame and desert, in relation to criminal justice, vary in accordance with political status. The diminished political power of oppressed groups is at odds with a retributive justification of punishment. (shrink)

Tommie Shelby articulates a nonideal theory of black US ghettos that casts them as consequences of an intolerably unjust institutional structure. I argue that, despite some of its significant merits, Shelby’s theory is weakened by his rejection of integration as a principle for reforming disadvantaged ghettos and correcting structural injustices in the US. In particular, I argue that Shelby unwarrantedly downplays the socio-economic efficiency of integrationist policies and fails to consider some of the ways in which integration might count as (...) a duty of justice. (shrink)

Several critics have argued that private prisons are not only problematic because of their worse effects but also intrinsically wrong. This article analyzes two prominent arguments for this claim: the representation argument and the condemnation argument. The conclusion is that these arguments fail to show that there is something intrinsically wrong about private prisons. This is especially true if the arguments are extended to non-profit private prisons under social injustice contexts that states are responsible for. In such cases, non-profit private (...) prisons might not only be on a par with public prisons but be preferable to them. However, the arguments are also insufficient to oppose every conceivable for-profit private prison. (shrink)

The idea of empowerment has gained a significant role in the discourse of poverty. I outline a restricted conception of empowerment inspired by Kant’s idea of rightful honour. According to this conception, empowerment consists in enabling individuals to assert their own human rights (juridical empowerment). I apply this conception to impoverished persons and argue that it is crucial to their self-respect, their so-called ‘power-[from-]within,’ and their political agency, and has a teleological primacy regarding our efforts to reduce poverty. I also (...) defend the idea that there is a moral right to this form of empowerment and a corresponding duty to empower the impoverished as rights-asserters. Juridical empowerment will be compatible with a pluralism of substantive accounts of the moral wrongs of poverty and with broader conceptions of empowerment. (shrink)

Recalling the landmark US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the advancement of educational equality is often associated with the reduction of stigmatizing differences in status or “sense of inferiority” engendered by separately and differentially educated citizens. This essay takes up the obverse concern, the sense of superiority sustained by educational inequality, with particular focus on the inequality signaled by higher education status. I contend that the presence of aggrandized HES in a democratic society provides reasons to object (...) to educational inequality for which institutions of higher education ought to be held responsible. Aggrandized HES not only demands a questionable deference from citizens in a democratic society; it also weakens HES’s signaling of epistemic authority and equality of educational opportunity, which harms the public’s motivation to learn by distorting beliefs about education. To address this problem, I argue that the best policy solution for curbing aggrandized uses of HES is to transform the positional aspect of higher education using an admissions policy originally suggested by Elizabeth Anderson, which I term the elite culture strategy. Beyond admissions policies, this essay addresses the larger concern of educating citizens to perceive and assess educational status according to democratic norms and not solely in terms of self-interested gain. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage with the debate between John Rawls and Charles Mills. In the first part, relevant works by Rawls and Mills are mainly examined. To this end, I first begin by examining Rawls’s ideal theory of justice and its relevance to the issue of racism. I then consider Mills’s non-ideal critique of Rawls and supplement it with the help of the notion of social norms. Whereas Rawls’s view can deal with racial injustice as discrimination, in my view, (...) I argue that Mills’s theory is mostly concerned with racist injustice as oppression. Between racial injustice as discrimination and racist injustice as oppression, however, there are varying degrees of race-related wrongs, which can be elucidated by harmful social norms. As a result, I conclude that Mills’s point can be shown without supposing that the Rawlsian basic structure is inherently racist. (shrink)

The increasing implementation of and reliance on machine-learning (ML) algorithms to perform tasks, deliver services and make decisions in health and healthcare have made the need for fairness in ML, and more specifically in healthcare ML algorithms (HMLA), a very important and urgent task. However, while the debate on fairness in the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) and in HMLA has grown significantly over the last decade, the very concept of fairness as an ethical value has not yet been sufficiently (...) explored. Our paper aims to fill this gap and address the AI ethics principle of fairness from a conceptual standpoint, drawing insights from accounts of fairness elaborated in moral philosophy and using them to conceptualise fairness as an ethical value and to redefine fairness in HMLA accordingly. To achieve our goal, following a first section aimed at clarifying the background, methodology and structure of the paper, in the second section, we provide an overview of the discussion of the AI ethics principle of fairness in HMLA and show that the concept of fairness underlying this debate is framed in purely distributive terms and overlaps with non-discrimination, which is defined in turn as the absence of biases. After showing that this framing is inadequate, in the third section, we pursue an ethical inquiry into the concept of fairness and argue that fairness ought to be conceived of as an ethical value. Following a clarification of the relationship between fairness and non-discrimination, we show that the two do not overlap and that fairness requires much more than just non-discrimination. Moreover, we highlight that fairness not only has a distributive but also a socio-relational dimension. Finally, we pinpoint the constitutive components of fairness. In doing so, we base our arguments on a renewed reflection on the concept of respect, which goes beyond the idea of equal respect to include respect for individual persons. In the fourth section, we analyse the implications of our conceptual redefinition of fairness as an ethical value in the discussion of fairness in HMLA. Here, we claim that fairness requires more than non-discrimination and the absence of biases as well as more than just distribution; it needs to ensure that HMLA respects persons both as persons and as particular individuals. Finally, in the fifth section, we sketch some broader implications and show how our inquiry can contribute to making HMLA and, more generally, AI promote the social good and a fairer society. (shrink)

This article proposes a retheorisation of Rawlsian civil disobedience through examining the burdens we expect people to bear when they practice civil disobedience, focussing specifically on marginalised groups. First, I consider public concerns over civil disobedience, to elicit the idea of an ‘authentic civil disobedience’. I then assess the claim that civil disobedience occurs within a ‘nearly just’ society in order to recognise the more complex position of marginalised civil disobedients. This allows me to frame any criteria we theorise for (...) civil disobedience as a wicked problem. Next, I examine one particular criterion dominant within the literature: that to be interpreted as civil disobedience, disobedients must show a willingness to suffer the legal consequences – and so, must not act anonymously. I claim that this asks too much of civil disobedients in a marginalised context and conclude civil disobedience theory needs retheorising to consider when and why anonymity is acceptable. (shrink)

Whenever justification of classroom punishment has been attempted it has usually been on grounds that punishment acts either appropriately pedagogically, teaching students how to behave morally, or is a necessary evil that enables the practical running of the school so that it may carry out its educational business. By itself the first justification leaves punishment in schools as only an extension of wider social attitudes about the virtue of punishing perceived moral wrongdoing, rather than providing any distinct argument for punishment (...) specific to the special circumstances of the school. By highlighting an entanglement between the moral and the conventional, and between discipline and punishment, within the context of the school, I shall argue that the essentially contested nature of education and its purpose, and the related question of the school’s suitability as a venue for it, means that the school’s most promising defence of its use of punishment—that punishment of students might somehow be necessary for enabling the important educative business of the school—becomes undone. Schooling and education are not necessarily synonymous, and as schools provide only one vision of education—and this vision is contestable—then upholding the business of any one school in order for it to achieve its particular unsettled and disputed purpose is not a morally sufficient reason to coerce a student’s compliance through regimes of ‘harm intended as harm’. (shrink)

Appreciation and gratitude get good press: They are central virtues in many religious and secular ethical frameworks, core in positive psychology research, and they come highly recommended by the self‐improvement set. Generally, appreciation and gratitude feature as good things, in popular consciousness. Of course, on an Aristotelian model, the belief that these are virtues implies they are something people can get right or wrong. This paper examines bad appreciation and bad gratitude, characterizing forms of appreciation and gratitude at the center (...) of some major social norms and practices, and demonstrating that they mask familiar oppressive expectations and power relations. (shrink)

Political theorists concerned with ways to counteract the oligarchic tendencies of representative government have recently paid more attention to the employment of “class-specific institutions” (CSIs)—that is, political institutions that formally exclude wealthy elites from decision-making power. This article disputes a general objection levelled against the justifiability of CSIs, according to which their democratic credentials are outweighed by their explicit transgression of formal political equality—what I call the political equality objection. I claim that, although CSIs do not satisfy political equality fully, (...) their exclusionary thrust is inter alia justified in virtue of the fact that they unfold against the background of badly ordered, class-divided societies. Parallel to recent arguments in nonideal theory arguing for the priority of the right to resist economic oppression over the protection of private property rights, access to the empowering properties of CSIs should take priority over the full satisfaction of formal political equality. Yet, I also claim that the justification of CSIs depends on their orientation toward overcoming class divisions because, otherwise, we might end up wrongly naturalizing those divisions—a conclusion that needs to be avoided to reply to the political equality objection. The result is, I believe, a convincing egalitarian case for the democratic justifiability of CSIs. (shrink)

This paper challenges the “characterological” theory of racial injustice. This theory, widely held in corporate efforts to address race, simultaneously endorses a “structural” account of racism while advocating deeply individualistic remedies: challenging systemic racism, on this view, requires directing our energies inward toward our most ingrained habits and self-conceptions. I begin by reconstructing the characterological theory and its appeal. I then argue that it rests on questionable, if not untenable, cognitive assumptions. Instead of seeing racism as carried forth by agents’ (...) deeply internal characters, I argue that a structural account of racial domination is better served by understanding cognitive processes as externalized and conducted through our environments. Drawing on theories of the “extended mind” and distributed cognition, I offer an account of both structural racism’s persistence and individual racist actions, which is anchored in the environmental (and not characterological) manifestations of racial hierarchy. I conclude with the normative potential of business ethicists adopting the distributed cognition framework. (shrink)