Le but de ce recueil est d’offrir des commentaires accessibles et introductifs aux textes classiques qu’ils accompagnent, en ouvrant des perspectives de discussion sur le thème du capitalisme. C’est en ce sens qu’Emmanuel Chaput lance le débat en commentant le texte de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, « Qu’est-ce que la propriété ? ». Les textes de Karl Marx ne sont bien sûr pas laissés pour compte : Samuel-Élie Lesage s’engage fermement dans cette voie en discutant L’idéologie allemande de Karl Marx, Christiane Bailey (...) nous offre d’approcher différemment l’œuvre marxienne en abordant son traitement de la question animale dans des extraits du Manifeste du parti communiste et du Travail salarié et capital, et Mathieu Joffre-Lainé nous présente une analyse fine des questions proprement économiques du Capital. Abordant les alternatives au capitalisme dans la pensée de Léon Bourgeois, Éliot Litalien commente La Solidarité et Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette s’attaque à l’analyse de l’Essai d’une philosophie de la solidarité. Enfin, en liant capitalisme, patriarcat et pouvoir politique, Tara Chanady propose une lecture du texte Du mariage et de l’amour de Emma Goldman. La conclusion de Marie-Eve Jalbert se situe dans une perspective contemporaine et critique en décortiquant la critique du socialisme avancée par Friedrich A. Hayek. (shrink)

On most accounts, beliefs are supposed to fit the world rather than change it. But believing can have social consequences, since the beliefs we form underwrite our actions and impact our character. Because our beliefs affect how we live our lives and how we treat other people, it is surprising how little attention is usually given to the moral status of believing apart from its epistemic justification. In what follows, I develop a version of the harm principle that applies to (...) beliefs as well as actions. In doing so, I challenge the often exaggerated distinction between forming beliefs and acting on them.1 After developing this view, I consider what it might imply about controversial research the goal of which is to yield true beliefs but the outcome of which might include negative social consequences. In particular, I focus on the implications of research into biological differences between racial groups. (shrink)

I argue that capitalism presents a threat to “democratic contestation”: the egalitarian, socially distributed capacity to affect how, why, and whether power is used. Markets are not susceptible to mechanisms of accountability, nor are they bearers of intentions in the way that political power-holders are. This makes them resistant to the kind of rational, intentional oversight that constitutes one of democracy’s social virtues. I identify four social costs associated with this problem: the vulnerability of citizens to arbitrary interference, the insensitivity (...) of markets to relevant interests, failures of trust in the market system, and the inhibition of social deliberation about matters of public concern. I make general two suggestions about how we might ameliorate these problems: First, as a way of introducing some measure of intentionality to large-scale patterns of business activity, the reconceptualization of such activity as participation in larger group actions; second, the development of deliberative bodies that bring together business actors, policy experts, and diverse citizens in an effort to better characterize and transmit the public values that business should serve. (shrink)

Online discourse has created a new media environment for contributions to public life, one that challenges the social significance of the role of public intellectuals—intellectuals who, whether by choice or by circumstance, offer commentary on issues of the day. The value of such commentary is rooted in the assumption that, by virtue of their training and experience, intellectuals possess knowledge—that they understand what constitutes knowledge with respect to a particular topic, are able to distinguish it from mere opinion, and are (...) in a position to define its relevance in different contexts. When intellectuals comment on matters of public concern, they are accordingly presumed to speak truth, whether they are writing books or op-ed columns or appearing as guests on radio and television news programs. At the same time, with increasing frequency, discourse on public life is taking place online. This new digital environment is characterized by abundance—an abundance of speakers, discussion, and access. But has this abundance of discourse—this democratization of knowledge, as some describe it—brought with it a corresponding increase in truth? Casting doubt on the assertion that online discourse, with its proliferation of voices, will somehow yield collective wisdom, Speaking Power to Truth raises concerns that this wealth of digitally enabled commentary is, in fact, too often bereft of the hallmarks of intellectual discourse: an epistemological framework and the provision of evidence to substantiate claims. Instead, the pursuit of truth finds itself in competition with the quest for public reputation, access to influence, and enhanced visibility. But as knowledge is drawn into the orbit of power, and as the line between knowledge and opinion is blurred, what role will the public intellectual play in the promotion and nurturing of democratic processes and goals? In exploring the implications of the digital transition, the contributors to Speaking Power to Truth provide both empirical evidence of, and philosophical reflection on, the current and future role of the public intellectual in a technologically mediated public sphere. Contributions by Barry Cooper, Jacob Foster, Karim-Ally Kassam, Boaz Miller, Liz Pirnie, and Eleanor Townsley. (shrink)

How could a state have the moral authority to promulgate and enforce laws that citizens are thereby obliged to obey? That is the problem of political authority. The Consequentialist Explanation of Political Authority contends that great social benefits depend upon there being a state with political authority. In his book, The Problem of Political Authority, Michael Huemer considers different types of explanation of political authority and he rejects them all. I show that the objections he raises to consequentialist accounts are (...) confused and that they fail to connect with the Consequentialist Explanation of Political Authority. Huemer argues that anarchy of a particular kind would be better than the states that exist in current Western societies. I explain why that argument, if it were successful, would be an effective objection to the Consequentialist Explanation of Political Authority. (shrink)

The notion of a spontaneous order has a long history in the philosophy of economics, where it has been used to advance a view of markets as complex networks of information that no single mind can apprehend. Traditionally, the impossibility of grasping all of the information present in the spontaneous order of the market has been invoked as grounds for not subjecting markets to central planning. A less noted feature of the spontaneous order concept is that when it is applied (...) to ecosystems it yields a reasonably strong environmental ethic. Thinking of ecosystems as spontaneous orders generates a presumption against interfering with their natural functioning in a manner that results in anthropogenic species loss. Such a presumption will permit some interventions in nature while precluding others. Environmental ethics could potentially make valuable use of the spontaneous order idea, without necessarily endorsing its traditional application to markets. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHélène Landemore claims that under certain conditions, democracies with universal suffrage will tend to make smarter and better decisions than epistocracies, even though most citizens in modern democracies are extremely ignorant about politics. However, there is ample empirical evidence that citizens make systematic errors. If so, it is fatal to Landemore's defense of democracy, which, if it works at all, applies only to highly idealized situations that are unlikely to occur in the real world. Critics of democracy will find little (...) in Landemore's defense of democracy to make them change their minds. (shrink)

The present essay aims to account for F.A. Hayek's oft-noted 'turn' away from technical economics to concerns of a more philosophical nature. In particular, the paper seeks an explanatory principle that reconciles various elements of both continuity and discontinuity in Hayek's intellectual development, especially with respect to the evolution of his arguments concerning economic fluctuations. The essay uncovers such an explanatory principle in Hayek's own methodology of sciences of complex phenomena. According to this principle, an inquirer who confronts phenomena too (...) complex for adequate explanation on the basis of current knowledge must move to a more general, albeit less testable, explanation. This is precisely what occurred in the evolution of Hayek's thought concerning trade cycles. The concluding section considers the implications of the argument for the extensive secondary literature on Hayek's 'transformation'. (shrink)

Arnold and Bowie (2003) attempt to derive ethical constraints on the actions of the managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs), orthe MNEs themselves, from a Kantian perspective. We contest Arnold and Bowie’s claims regarding MNE duties, in particular that MNEs have a duty to pay a subsistence wage above market levels. We conclude that even within Arnold and Bowie’s Kantian framework such a duty does not properly emerge. In addition, we argue that the account of coercion used by Arnold and Bowie (...) does not serve their purposes. Arnold and Bowie address consequentialist issues by arguing that their conclusions are not undercut by economic considerations regarding unemployment. We argue that Arnold and Bowie have misread the economic literature in this regard. (shrink)

The purpose of this theoretical article is to contribute to the analysis of knowledge and valuation in markets. In every market actors must know how to value its products. The analytical point of departure is the distinction between two ideal types of markets that are mutually exclusive, status and standard. In a status market, valuation is a function of the status rank orders or identities of the actors on both sides of the market, which is more entrenched than the value (...) of what is traded in the market. In a market characterized by a standard, the situation is reversed; the scale of value is more entrenched than the rankings of actors in the market. In a status market actors need to know about the other actors involved as there is no scale of value for evaluating the items traded in the market independently of its buyers and sellers. In a standard market it is more important to know how to meet the standard in relation to which all items traded are valued. The article includes empirical examples and four testable hypotheses. (shrink)

Lao Tzu and Marx together provide the basis of an epistemology based on ignorance—not on knowledge. The failure of an epistemology based on knowledge is shown by the internal inconsistencies afflicting mainstream economics: Economic theory predicts certain empirical phenomena but these fail to reveal themselves. In fact, the strongest research finding in development economics is that there are almost no robust empirical relationships between an implemented policy and its desired outcomes in the real world. A theory of ignorance can highlight (...) many economic contradictions—and may even prove useful in understanding autistics. (shrink)

Advocates of ?deliberative democracy? want citizens to actively participate in serious dialogue over political issues, not merely go to the polls every few years. Unfortunately, these ideals don't take into account widespread political ignorance and irrationality. Most voters neither attain the level of knowledge needed to make deliberative democracy work, nor do they rationally evaluate the political information they do possess. The vast size and complexity of modern government make it unlikely that most citizens can ever reach the levels of (...) knowledge and rationality required by deliberative democracy, even if they were better informed than they are at present. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The financial crisis was caused by the complex, constantly growing web of regulations designed to constrain and redirect modern capitalism. This complexity made investors, bankers, and perhaps regulators themselves ignorant of regulations promulgated across decades and in different “fields” of regulation. These regulations interacted with each other to foster the issuance and securitization of subprime mortgages; their rating as AA or AAA; and previously their concentration on the balance sheets (and off the balance sheets) of many commercial and investment (...) banks. As a practical matter, it was impossible to predict the disastrous outcome of these interacting regulations. This fact calls into question the feasibility of the century‐old attempt to create a hybrid capitalism in which regulations are supposed to remedy economic problems as they arise. (shrink)

In this essay, my point of departure is Bernard Hodgson’s analysis of neo-classical economic theory and his demonstration that neo-classical economic thought is already a branch of normative theory. I undertake to broaden the demonstration by showing that other contemporary conceptions of economics are also irreducibly normative. The essay begins with an overview of Hodgson’s argument strategy, and a discussion of his thesis that economics is a moral science. This illustrates in what way moral presuppositions are at play as core (...) principles that both positivist and normativist economics take for granted. My strategy is to show that alternative conceptions of economics, in particular Schumpeterian accounts of evolution/innovation, and orthodox versions of ecological economics, share with classical and neo-classical economics normative assumptions about the common good, extending Hodgson’s thesis to one about moral science . For then these assumptions (both moral and scientific ) commit economics to unworkable notions of social and environmental optimization that ignore the pure historical contingency of physical, economic, social and cultural conditions. It is concluded that the relationship between facts and values must be fundamentally retheorized. (shrink)

During the last decade, scholarly criticism of sweatshops has grown increasingly sophisticated. This article reviews the new moral and economic foundations of these criticisms and argues that they are flawed. It seeks to advance the debate over sweatshops by noting the extent to which the case for sweatshops does, and does not, depend on the existence of competitive markets. It attempts to more carefully distinguish between different ways in which various parties might seek to modify sweatshop behavior, and to point (...) out that there is more room for consensus regarding some of these methods than has previously been recognized. It addresses the question of when sweatshops are justified in violating local labor laws. And it assesses the relevance of recent literature on coercion and exploitation as it applies to sweatshop labor. It concludes with a list of challenges that critics of sweatshops must meet to productively advance the debate. (shrink)

Abstract Democratic control of public policy is nearly impossible in the presence of extreme voter ignorance, and this ignorance is in part caused by the vast size and scope of modern government. Only a government limited in its scope can be meaningfully democratic. David Ciepley's response to my article does not seriously challenge this conclusion, and his attempts to show that limited government is inherently undemocratic fail. Ciepley's alternative vision of a ?democracy? that does not require informed voters turns out (...) to be not a defense of democracy at all, but a rationalization for any form of government that achieves a high level of leadership skill and bureaucratic efficiency. (shrink)

We respond to Jack Vromen’s (this issue) critique of our discussion of the missing micro-foundations of work on routines and capabilities in economics and management research. Contrary to Vromen, we argue that (1) inter-level relations can be causal, and that inter-level causal relations may also obtain between routines and actions and interactions; (2) there are no macro-level causal mechanisms; and (3) on certain readings of the notion of routines and capabilities, these may be macro causes.

From the perspective of a realist philosophy of social science, the recent explosion of criticisms of mainstream economics, including reinvigorated Austrian criticism, provides what seems like a rich opportunity to join what are too often disjoined disciplinary interests and inquirers, and also to extend the arguments not only as regards the realist theory of social science, but also as regards the implications of this approach for economics. I begin with a minimum sketch of key features of realist philosophy of science (...) as I understand it. The central difference turns on the role and nature of explanation and of theory, between what is frequently termed ‘deductivism’, and on an alternative in which explanation requires the articulation of a causal mechanism, for example, the mechanism provided by molecular chemistry that gives us an understanding of oxidation. I take the position that in social science, explanation requires social causal mechanisms. I consider the Austrian contribution from this point of view and conclude with some hints regarding how the foregoing bears on our understanding of capitalism and socialism. (shrink)

Marx believed that what most clearly distinguished him and Engels from the nineteenth-century French socialists was that their version of socialism was “scientific” while the latters' was Utopian. What he intended by this contrast is roughly the following: French socialists such as Proudhon and Fourier constructed elaborate visions of a future socialist society without an adequate understanding of existing capitalist society. For Marx, on the other hand, socialism was not an idea or an ideal to be realized, but a natural (...) outgrowth of the existing capitalist order. Marx's historical materialism is a systematic attempt to discover the laws governing the inner dynamics of capitalism and class societies generally. Although this theory issues in a prediction of the ultimate triumph of socialism, it is a commonplace that Marx had little to say about the details of post-capitalist society. Nevertheless, some of its features can be discerned from his critical analysis of capitalism and what its replacement entails. (shrink)

This article provides an ISCT analysis of commercial bribery focused on transaction cost economics. In the language of Antitrust, commercial bribery is a form of vertical arrangement subject to the same efficiency analysis that has found other vertical arrangements potentially beneficial to consumers. My analysis shows that actions condemned as commerical bribery in the Honda case (1996) may well have benefited Honda's dealer network once promotional free riding and other forms of rent seeking by dealers are considered. I propose that (...) the term "commercial bribery" should be avoided until after an ISCT analysis shows that the community is likely to have been harmed. The term "third-party payments" is a more ethically neutral term with which to begin the analysis. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, D. Wade Hands reviewed Charles Taylor's two-volume work, Philosophical Papers. Hands predicts that Taylor's work will have no impact on the philosophy of economics. This may indeed turn out to be the case; but if so, it will only be because the profession is not listening. Of course, it is typical of the profession to be more interested in exporting its product than in learning from other disciplines. This is exemplified in Hands's use (...) of the term “philosophy of economics” – philosophy is the handmaiden of the highly successful enterprise of economics. But this journal is called Economics and Philosophy, which means that a conversation requiring an openness and attentiveness is called for between economics and philosophy. (shrink)

How can democratic governments be relied upon to achieve adequate political knowledge when they turn over their authority to those of no epistemic distinction whatsoever? This deep and longstanding concern is one that any proponent of epistemic conceptions of democracy must take seriously. While Condorcetian responses have recently attracted substantial interest, they are largely undermined by a fundamental neglect of agenda-setting. I argue that the apparent intractability of the problem of epistemic adequacy in democracy stems in large part from a (...) failure to appreciate the social character of political knowledge. A social point of view brings into focus a number of vital factors that bear on our understanding of democratic epistemology and our assessment of its prospects: the essential role of inclusive deliberation, the public's agenda-setting function, institutional provisions for policy feedback, the independence of expert communities, and the knowledge-pooling powers of markets. (shrink)

Libertarianism holds that agents initially fully own themselves and have moral powers to acquire property rights in external things under certain conditions. It is normally advocated as a theory of justice in the sense of the duties that we owe each other. So understood, it is silent about any impersonal duties (i.e., duties owed to no one) that we may have.

Kuhn’s “essential tension” between conservative and innovative imperatives in enquiry has an empirical analogue—between the potential benefits of collectivization of enquiry and the social dynamic impediments to effective sharing of information and insights in collective settings. A range of empirical materials from social psychology and organization theory are considered which bear on the issue of balancing these opposing forces and an institution is described in which they are balanced in a way which is appropriate for collective knowledge production.

For multiple reasons, deliberating groups often converge on falsehood rather than truth. Individual errors may be amplifi ed rather than cured. Group members may fall victim to a bad cascade, either informational or reputational. Deliberators may emphasize shared information at the expense of uniquely held information. Finally, group polarization may lead even rational people to unjustifi ed extremism. By contrast, prediction markets often produce accurate results, because they create strong incentives for revelation of privately held knowledge and succeed in aggregating (...) widely dispersed information. The success of prediction markets off ers a set of lessons for increasing the likelihood that groups can obtain the information that their members have. (shrink)

Th is paper investigates the epistemic powers of democratic institutions through an assessment of three epistemic models of democracy : the Condorcet Jury Th eorem, the Diversity Trumps Ability Th eorem, and Dewey's experimentalist model. Dewey's model is superior to the others in its ability to model the epistemic functions of three constitutive features of democracy : the epistemic diversity of participants, the interaction of voting with discussion, and feedback mechanisms such as periodic elections and protests. It views democracy as (...) an institution for pooling widely distributed information about problems and policies of public interest by engaging the participation of epistemically diverse knowers. Democratic norms of free discourse, dissent, feedback, and accountability function to ensure collective, experimentallybased learning from the diverse experiences of diff erent knowers. I illustrate these points with a case study of community forestry groups in South Asia, whose epistemic powers have been hobbled by their suppression of women's participation. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anderson claims that the prevailing culture of business is one of domination. “Most workplace governments in the United States are dictatorships, in which bosses.. don’t merely govern workers; they dominate them” (2017, p. xxii; italics in the original). If this diagnosis is correct, then the culture of business poses a significant threat to human liberty, as each year millions of people in the employ of businesses spend hundreds or thousands of hours on the job. This essay provides a further (...) argument supporting Anderson’s analysis, by extending her treatment of Adam Smith and drawing on his claim about the potentially mind-numbing effects on workers of extreme division of labor. Smith’s analysis, though consistent with Anderson’s, implies that the problem is more worrisome than she allows, and accordingly that Anderson’s own remedy might be insufficient. Our Anderson/Smith argument suggests that worker unfreedom might warrant more aggressive institutional remedy. (shrink)

There is an extensive literature on quantification, the systematic representation of knowledge with numbers and indicators. Among various related research questions, many scholars have focused their attention on its socio-political effects and consequences. In this work, I focus my attention on the possibility that an increasing use of numbers in the political discourse is part of a double movement. Given the political pressure made by severe global issues, and the emergence of anti-democratic groups, democratic political forces feel questioned, and consequently (...) use numbers for their communicative efficiency, in the attempt to gain public support for their policies. However, a quantified political discourse, when implemented by a distrusted political class, can end up causing severe socio-political and socio-epistemic shortcomings, to the point that it paves the way for, instead of preventing, the emergence of populist forces, and also prevents the society from fully benefitting of the epistemic power of diversity. (shrink)

The concept of the ‘infodemic’ has become a popular explanation for the rejection of anti-COVID-19 crisis governance measures. In this paper, we argue that infodemic is an inherent property of society under free institutions misused to pursue an epistemically vicious political epistemology. Furthermore, we provide an alternative account of political epistemology of COVID-19 governance and popular resistance to it. Namely, we argue that 1) pandemics represent a complex problem, and some level of resistance to governance which restricts liberties while informed (...) by ongoing scientific and political learning processes is inevitable, and 2) the resistance is exacerbated by the history of technocratization of governance and the exclusionary socio-economic inequalities which condition political and epistemic deficiencies easily exploitable by the political entrepreneurs of right-wing populism, particularly under the conditions of social media which gamifies public discourse. Thus, we argue, the correct response to the cultures of rejection of anti-COVID-19 measures is to change the underlying political and economic conditions and not to limit speech or restrict franchise as the infodemic diagnosis suggests. (shrink)

Jeppe von Platz has recently argued that welfare-state capitalism can be justified by a theory of democratic equality, challenging John Rawls’s critique of capitalism. Von Platz develops his argument by introducing a social democratic interpretation of democratic equality as an alternative to Rawls’s justice as fairness. Unlike justice as fairness, in which there is only one possible principle of reciprocity (the difference principle), social democracy includes four possible principles in an eligible set that could be chosen as a principle of (...) reciprocity. However, I argue that von Platz’s conception of reciprocity still fails to justify welfare-state capitalism. Of the four principles of reciprocity in social democracy’s eligible set, one of them, the principle of utility, does not express a notion of reciprocity and thus does not belong. The other three – the principle of equality, the difference principle, and the principle of equity – are not compatible with welfare-state capitalism. Thus, since capitalism cannot satisfy a principle of reciprocity in the (revised) eligible set, it is incompatible with the social democratic interpretation of democratic equality. (shrink)

The stated aim of cryptocurrencies is to free the monetary system from the need to trust financial intermediaries, by relying on incentive design and technology. Many descriptive studies, however, have questioned cryptocurrencies’ delivery on the promise of trustlessness. This paper promotes a normative analysis of trust in cryptocurrencies by discussing (i) whether trust is in principle eliminable, and (ii) whether trustlessness is in itself a desirable goal. These issues are closely related, we argue, to the further issue of what kind (...) of institutions cryptocurrencies represent. We discuss the cognitive functions played by cryptocurrencies through the lens of the “extended mind” hypothesis in the philosophy of mind and hence conceive of cryptocurrencies as mind-extending institutions. As the models of institutional mind extension differ in the fiduciary bond they assume exists between individuals and institutional resources, we compare the reliance-based model of “scaffolding institutions” with the trust-based model of “cognitive institutions,” showing that the ineliminability and desirability of trust lead to seeing cryptocurrencies as instances of the latter. In the end, our discussion suggests that trust is a necessary component of cryptocurrencies’ cognitive functions and its promotion helps to perform such cognitive functions more effectively and sustainably. (shrink)

A number of writers have drawn on Hayek’s epistemic defence of market institutions to argue that free-markets and tort law are best placed to overcome the knowledge problems associated with the environmental sphere. This paper argues to the contrary, that this Austrian School approach itself suffers from significant knowledge problems. The first of these relates to the ability of Austrian economics to assign victim compensation and the second to the difficulty of establishing causation in complex environmental problems. The paper will (...) also show how alternative approaches may not suffer from these epistemic challenges and are better placed to overcome them. (shrink)

Epistemic questions have become an important area of debate within democratic theory. Epistemic democrats have revived epistemic justification of democracy, while social scientific research has speared a significant debate on voter knowledge. An area which has received less attention, however, is the epistemic case for markets. Market advocates have developed a number of epistemic critiques of democracy which suggest that most goods are better provided by markets than democratic institutions. Despite representing important challenges to democracy, these critiques have gone without (...) reply as democratic theorists have tended to exclude markets from consideration. This article responds to these critiques and argues that there are good epistemic grounds for granting a much greater role to democracy than its market critics have claimed. It argues that there is a broad range of goods, including important ethical goods, which are better provided by democracy than markets due to the particular epistemic burdens they create. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

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

It is commonly held that political ignorance is rational, a response to the high costs and low benefits of acquiring political information. But many recent critics of the claim that political ignorance is rational instead urge that it is a simple consequence of agents not concerning themselves with the acquisition of political information whatsoever. According to such critics, political ignorance is inadvertent radical ignorance rather than a rational response to the incentives faced by agents in democracies. And since political ignorance (...) is not a response to incentives, these critics urge, it cannot be ameliorated by incentivizing the acquisition of political information. This paper has two goals. First, I show that these seemingly competing accounts of political ignorance are in fact complementary, together explaining much political ignorance. Indeed, there is a sense in which political ignorance can be both rational and radical at the same time. Second, I more closely examine the relationship between incentives, kinds of political ignorance, and the acquisition of political information. On the one hand, from the fact that political ignorance is rational it does not follow that it can be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. On the other hand, from the fact that political ignorance is radical it does not follow that it cannot be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. Lastly, the complexity of the information in question is more relevant to determining whether ignorance can be overcome than whether such ignorance is rational or radical. (shrink)

Honors Research: PPE @ UPenn | This thesis seeks to address some of the most central questions to the fields of political philosophy and political economy. How can social order and government develop from anarchy under standard economic assumptions of rationality, where all agents act strictly in their own interests? What are the deontological limits to the State’s use of force such that political legitimacy is maintained, and how do these ethical boundaries of government relate to moral obligations conferred upon (...) individuals? Finally, what sets of policies and social institutions ought the State implement to achieve the best welfare outcomes for a society, and is there a necessary conflict between policy consequentialism and deontological ethics? This thesis will first show that a laissez-faire capitalist social order spontaneously emerges from the State of Nature as a result of mutual self-interest between rational agents, with the institution of government being a mere product of market forces that is best modeled as a locally-monopolized, excludable, collective entity with global competition. Then, this thesis will defend a theory of natural rights on the basis that persons are normatively separate, before establishing that laissez-faire capitalism and its contractual form of government are uniquely in compliance with these universal moral standards of conduct that predate the institution of any state. Finally, it will be argued in this thesis that the key tenets of laissez-faire capitalism - strong individual rights to life, liberty, and property - produce maximal human welfare from both individualist and collectivist aggregations, before such conclusions are translated into a foundation for limited government. These arguments serve to solidify libertarianism as both the dominant political philosophy and the globally convergent equilibrium of political organization, while also demonstrating that laissez-faire capitalism is the optimal form of social order. (shrink)

Democracy in its currently dominant liberal form has proven supportive of unprecedented human flourishing. However, it also appears increasingly plagued by political polarization, strained to cope with the digitalization of the political discourse, and threatened by authoritarian backlash. A growing sense of the anthropic risks—with runaway climate change as the leading example—thus often elicits concern regarding democracy’s capability of mitigating them. Apparently, lacking a sufficient degree of the citizens’ consensus on the priority issues of the day, it can find itself (...) unable to muster the resolve and resources necessary to alter its “business as usual” path even where disasters loom ever larger in its track. Against these concerns, I argue that democracy’s potential remains far from depleted. While political irrationality needs to be considered a major obstacle to successfully managing the anthropic risks, many existing reform proposals appear capable of reining it in. My main suggestion is to seek ways to facilitate a speedier and more effective exploration of the landscape of the possible democratic mechanisms of collective choice. A virtual platform to support such an exploration—which I call ‘democracy’s digital playground’—may allow us to find innovative ways of managing anthropic risks without compromising our commitment to democratic values. (shrink)

The book’s core argument is that an artificial intelligence that could equal or exceed human intelligence—sometimes called artificial general intelligence (AGI)—is for mathematical reasons impossible. It offers two specific reasons for this claim: Human intelligence is a capability of a complex dynamic system—the human brain and central nervous system. Systems of this sort cannot be modelled mathematically in a way that allows them to operate inside a computer. In supporting their claim, the authors, Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith, marshal evidence (...) from mathematics, physics, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, and biology, setting up their book around three central questions: What are the essential marks of human intelligence? What is it that researchers try to do when they attempt to achieve "artificial intelligence" (AI)? And why, after more than 50 years, are our most common interactions with AI, for example with our bank’s computers, still so unsatisfactory? Landgrebe and Smith show how a widespread fear about AI’s potential to bring about radical changes in the nature of human beings and in the human social order is founded on an error. There is still, as they demonstrate in a final chapter, a great deal that AI can achieve which will benefit humanity. But these benefits will be achieved without the aid of systems that are more powerful than humans, which are as impossible as AI systems that are intrinsically "evil" or able to "will" a takeover of human society. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, authors of the Austrian School have argued that the problem of rational allocation in a planned economy is not computational or technical in nature (static optimisation, with given information) but a question of dynamic efficiency (innovation and the creation of new information), and that this would be impossible without market processes and free entrepreneurship. In this article, we argue to the contrary that a planned economy can effectively drive dynamic efficiency. We first reveal that the Austrian thesis (...) on the impossibility of dynamic efficiency in socialist planning is based on tautological arguments, or on problems already solved by technological development. Secondly, we present an institutional formula for promoting innovative activities and entrepreneurship within a framework of social ownership of the means of production and social control of investment. (shrink)

The theoretical challenge posed by this paper is to find a conceptualisation of value for entrepreneurship theory grounded in Indigenous knowledge from a Māori perspective capable of guiding entrepreneurs operating for sustainability and wellbeing. We review Western and Māori theories of value, values, and valuation. We argue that Indigenous concepts of value centre on collective wellbeing as opposed to self-interest, and have spiritual and material elements. The paper proposes a tentative Māori theory of value we call manahau, which combines mana (...) (power, authority, and dignity) and hau (vitality of people, places, and objects). We define manahau as an axiological agent Māori entrepreneurs employ to synergistically negotiate cultural and commercial imperatives to achieve multidimensional wellbeing, human potential, and relational balance. We discuss research which illustrates manifestations of manahau in the Māori cultural ethics of utu (reciprocity) in Māori entrepreneurship and tauutuutu (reciprocity and balance) in Māori agribusiness. We argue that an Indigenous Māori theory of value has implications for entrepreneurship theory and practice. (shrink)