Recently, there have been attempts at offering new justifications of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. Blain Neufeld has suggested that the ideal of political autonomy justifies public reason, while R.J. Leland and Han van Wietmarschen have sought to justify the idea by appealing to the value of political community. In this paper, I show that both proposals are vulnerable to a common problem. In realistic circumstances, they will often turn into reasons to oppose, rather than support, public reason. However, (...) this counterintuitive result can be avoided if we conceive of autonomy and community differently. (shrink)

Of all the risks we face in life, ranging from unemployment to old age, early death is among the most tragic and yet most neglected by modern states. Liberal egalitarians might find it easy to dismiss social insurance against early death, but I argue they should not. Early in this paper, I explain why social insurance should include the risk of premature death by replying to four common criticisms. What follows is a case for a novel form of insurance that (...) is more liberal and egalitarian across ages than the status quo. More specifically, I show that granting storable pensions in all life stages - youth, middle and old age - promotes liberty and reduces lifetime inequality. Writers on age group and longevity justice often overlook the extent to which liberal lifetime equality can supply insightful arguments against inequality across ages. These call for a policy that gives each age group the freedom to draw a storable pension. I call that policy "freetirement". (shrink)

The meaning of justice can be defined according to a juridical, human, theological, ethical, biomedical, or social perspective. It should guarantee the protection of life and health, personal, civil, political, economic, and religious rights, as well as non-discrimination, inclusion, protection, and access to care. In this review, we deal with three theoretical concepts that define justice in all its aspects. (1) The utilitarian theory, which justifies moral statements on the basis of the evaluation of the consequences that an action produces, (...) elaborating a pragmatic model of medical science. (2) The libertarian theory, which considers freedom as the highest political aim, thus absolutizing the rights of the individual; here, the principle of self-determination, with respect to which the principle of permission/consent is the fundamental presupposition, plays a central role in the definition of the person. (3) The iusnaturalist theory, in which man’s moral freedom is identified with the ability to act by choosing what the intellect indicates to him as good; the natural moral law that drives every conscience to do good is therefore realized in respect for the person in the fullness of his rights. In conclusion, different forms and conceptions of justice correspond to different organizations of society and different ways of addressing ethical issues in the biomedical domain. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give an account of what it is to internalize a rule. I claim that internalization is the process of redistributing the burden of instruction from the teacher to the student. The process is complete when instruction is no longer needed, and the rule has reshaped perceptual classification of the circumstances in which it applies. Teaching a rule is the initiation of this process. We internalize rules by simulating instruction coming from someone else. Running (...) these simulations enables us to toggle between the perspective of the instructor and our own perspective. By doing this we coordinate our perspectives with that of the teacher. The account given here provides a deeper explanation of why internalizing a rule involves the dispositions and reactive attitudes proponents of Rule Consequentialism often say it does, why moral reflection is variably demanding, how intergenerational moral progress is made possible by our cognitive architectures, and why the adoption of a rule should be understood in terms of teaching that rule. (shrink)

“Basic equality” is the thesis that all (or nearly all) human beings are equal in moral status. Widespread interpersonal differences among humans make the task of justifying basic equality notoriously difficult. One strategy for circumventing this difficulty is to identify some morally significant binary (“all-or-nothing”) property that all humans have. This strategy seems promising: if the basis of equality is binary, then those who have it have it equally. However, skeptics have argued against this strategy on the grounds that a (...) proper defense of basic equality requires that we identify a morally significant property that can vary among humans but does not in fact vary. This paper examines various ways in which this skeptical argument can be motivated and concludes that they all fail. (shrink)

Almost everyone believes that freedom from deprivation should have significant weight in specifying what justice between generations requires. Some theorists hold that it should always trump other distributive concerns. Other theorists hold that it should have some but not lexical priority. I argue instead that freedom from deprivation should have lexical priority in some cases, yet weighted priority in others. More specifically, I defend semi-strong sufficientarianism. This view posits a deprivation threshold at which people are free from deprivation, and an (...) affluence threshold at which people can live an affluent life, even though their lives may be even further improved beyond that point. I argue that freedom from deprivation in one generation lexically outweighs providing affluence in another generation; in all other cases, freedom from deprivation does not have lexical priority. (shrink)

[Warning: Google's "AI Overview" -- the first thing you see when you google this publication -- is thoroughly misleading: it presents the paper's thesis and argument as nearly the opposite of what I actually wrote. I've long assumed that AI will transform everything we've written into nonsense after we die, but the nonsensification in this case was almost immediate. Here's the abstract that Google garbled:] What sense could it make to describe your life as ‘unlivable’? What is it not only (...) to be alive but to have a life that you live or lead? I answer by developing a social understanding of the pursuit of meaning in life. True to other uses of ‘meaning,’ I propose, meaning in a life is communicative. If you experience your life as ‘unlivable,’ recovery can lie in this communicative dynamic: you regain the experience of leading your life by letting others remind you of meanings you have communicated to them in leading it. My argument develops an analogy between two dimensions in which you project an investment – a care, concern, love, or the like – when you form an intention or plan. Intrapersonally, you project your investment as communicatively intelligible to your own future self at ‘plan’s end.’ Interpersonally, you project it as communicatively intelligible to others who might come to love this thing that you love simply because you love it, as an expression of love for you. The normativity of meaning in your life puts rational pressure on you not only to abandon investments that you cannot communicate but to experience the meaning in investments that you retain. (shrink)

When reading contemporary theories of distributive justice, one could easily get the impression that questions of fiscal design are normatively speaking merely instrumental for realizing the distributive ideal. Once the overall conception of justice is settled upon, questions of how the state should arrange its institutions and policies are settled if they effectively and efficiently promote the preferred distribution. I argue that such pure instrumentalism is mistaken in the context of fiscal policy. As a result, there is nothing problematic or (...) morally arbitrary about accepting domain-specific principles of fiscal justice. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to consider whether, when, and why it is morally right to treat members of socially disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups favorably when allocating scarce medical resources. Since the COVID 2019 pandemic has had different impacts on racial and ethnic groups, some U.S. states have given racial and ethnic minorities preferential access to COVID-19 vaccines, leading to controversy over the moral and legal permissibility of doing so. I examine three arguments for affirmative action—the compensation, equality-of-opportunity, (...) and antidiscrimination arguments—and argue that both the equality-of-opportunity and antidiscrimination arguments have the potential to provide well-founded justification for race-based affirmative action for the allocation of scarce medical resources. I also consider further moral requirements that instances of affirmative action based on both or either of the two arguments should comply with for them to be justified. (shrink)

The focus of the article is the notion of normativity in logic and politics and their possible intersections. The twentieth-century divide between the analytical and the continental idea of logic is explored, by noting that they both – with significant differences – can be seen as proposing a ‘bottom-up normativity’, which may have immediate political effects. Logical normativity postulates universality, and a connection between reality and reason able to orient actions universalistically. For a bottom-up conception (as specifically advanced by Deleuze’s (...) logic of sense), the universalistic approach does not descend from above on an elusive reality but is a self-organization of multiple processes occurring in a horizon which is typically affected by political facts and choices. (shrink)

Retirement is often viewed as a reward for a working life. While many have reason to want a work-free retirement, not everyone does. Should working retirees have to give up their retirement pension and, consequently, their status as retirees? The answer, I argue, boils down to whether we conceive of retirement as free time (need-free) or as leisure (work-free). In this article, I put forward a liberal case in favour of free time, despite whether our liberalism leans towards perfectionism or (...) neutralism, with social primary goods being a case in point. Applying this case for free time to retirement yields two significant policy implications. First, it demands “free synchronic combination” – that retirees may use their retirement pensions however they see fit, including to work. Second, it also yields “free diachronic combination” – that, within limits, individuals have discretionary control over how to combine retirement and work across time – thus challenging the idea that retirement should be available only in old age and not earlier in life. So far, the literature on free time focused only on narrow temporal units, such as hours and days, but there is much to gain by extending the concept into retirement. (shrink)

Present-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive events to be located in the present rather than the non-present, and for negative events to be located in the non-present rather than the present. Very little attention has been given to present-bias in the contemporary literature on time biases. This may be because it is often assumed that present-bias is not a distinctive psychological kind; that what explains people’s being present-biased is just what explains them displaying various other time-biases. (...) According to this view, there is no need to investigate present-bias independently of investigating these other biases, since present-bias is really just a manifestation of these other biases. We call this the manifestation thesis. We take up the question of whether the manifestation thesis is true, and argue that it is not. Thus, by failing to investigate present-bias in its own right we are failing fully to understand the spectrum of ways in which people display time biases. In turn, we suggest, this may have implications for the ways we evaluate whether present-bias is rationally permissible. (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value when (...) it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)

The development of the science of poverty has largely been driven by the need to define more precisely what poverty is, as well as to provide theoretical and empirical criteria for identifying those who suffer from it. This thesis focuses on a notable response to these and related questions: the conception and measure of poverty by the British sociologist Peter Townsend. Townsend defines poverty as relative deprivation caused by lack of resources. This conception, along with his corresponding cut-off measure, constitutes (...) some of the key components of his theory of poverty. The theory discusses what poverty is, its causes, and how it can be eradicated, and is detailed in Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living (1979), his magnum opus. The primary aim of this thesis is to interpret the theory from Townsend’s adherence to the value-free ideal. He pursued this ideal in response to what he perceived as the pervasive and deleterious influence of moral and political values on measures, theories, and policies on poverty throughout its scientific and political history. I argue that to be free from such influence, Townsend aimed to be as guided by epistemic values as possible, which resulted in a systematic theory of poverty. -/- The thesis is structured as follows: In Chapter 1, I situate Townsend’s conception and measurement of poverty within the context of both the recent history of scientific poverty lines and the most important approaches to measuring the phenomenon. Chapter 2 discusses the systematic nature of the theory, including its role as a middle-range theory that bridges broad-range theories with empirical data. This connection is achieved through several elements: a conception of poverty; hypotheses and anthropological observations related to the elements of the conception; measures to test these hypotheses; an explanation of poverty; and reports on how the research was conducted. Furthermore, Townsend’s theory aligns with Bradburn et al.’s (2017) measurement theory, which asserts that a good measure must include a conception of the relevant phenomenon, a representation, and procedures to gather data. Additionally, all three components must be supported by arguments showing that they fit together properly. -/- In the remaining chapters, I present and discuss the main elements of the theory: his conception of poverty as relative deprivation caused by lack of resources, along with the related hypotheses and observations (Chapter 3); the representations of this conception and the procedures for data collection, processing, as well as ensuring their reliability (Chapter 4); and the explanation of poverty (Chapter 5). I conclude by presenting what Townsend considered the “policy prescriptions” of his theory. Despite its potential shortcomings, I also argue that Townsend’s theory fulfills an important epistemic value: fruitfulness. (shrink)

There is a large and growing body of empirical work on people’s intuitions about distributive justice. In this paper, we investigate how well luck egalitarianism and desertism—the two normative approaches that appear to cohere well with people’s intuitions—are supported by more fine-grained findings in the empirical literature. The time is ripe for a study of this sort, as the positive literature on justice has blossomed over the last three decades. The results of our investigation are surprising. In three different contexts (...) (good option luck, good brute luck, and bad brute luck) in which the demands of luck egalitarianism and those of a mainstream desert-based view come apart, the latter carries the day. One ramification of these findings is that people’s intuitions about justice are moralized; that is, they appeal to particular conceptions of the good. Luck egalitarians must decide whether to embrace these moralized intuitions by adopting desertism—or to resist them. (shrink)

This article argues that, to distinguish between “critical” and “uncritical” solidarity, the normative concept of solidarity must be grounded on the principle of respect for persons. I start analyzing the principle of respect for persons from a modified Kantian perspective, arguing that it must be interpreted as a normative relation of power in which each person must recognize the autonomy of the other as a source of power. In this perspective, the principle of respect offers a foundation for an ethical (...) assessment of situations in which ethical solidarity is required. By drawing on the distinction between passive and active respect, I argue that solidarity is grounded on the duty of active respect in the face of danger or oppression and that this foundation allows us to distinguish between critical (i.e. appropriate) and uncritical (i.e. inappropriate) solidarity. (shrink)

In the literature on philosophical progress it is often assumed that agreement is a necessary condition for progress. This assumption is sensible only if agreement is a reliable sign of the truth, since agreement on false answers to philosophical questions would not constitute progress. This paper asks whether agreement among philosophers is (or would be) likely to be a reliable sign of truth. Insights from social choice theory are used to identify the conditions under which agreement among philosophers would be (...) a reliable indicator of the truth, and it is argued that we lack good reason to think that philosophical inquiry meets these conditions. The upshot is that philosophical agreement is epistemically uninformative: agreement on the answer to a philosophical question does not supply even a prima facie reason to think that the agreed-upon view is true. However, the epistemic uninformativeness of philosophical agreement is not an indictment of philosophy's progress, because philosophy is valuable independent of its ability to generate agreement on the correct answers to philosophical questions. (shrink)

Deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) are legal means, alternative to trial, for the resolution of criminal business cases. Although DPAs are increasingly used in the US and are spreading to other jurisdictions, the ethics of DPAs has hardly been subjected to critical scrutiny. We use a multidisciplinary approach straddling the line between philosophy and law to examine the ethics of DPAs used to resolve cases of multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) foreign corruption. Deontologically, we argue that the normativity of DPAs raises critical concerns (...) related to the notion of justice as punishment, with serious cases of international corruption resolved with minimal retribution for offending MNEs. Taking a utilitarian ethical perspective, we also evaluate the effect of DPAs on MNEs’ tendency to self-regulate or re-offend. Our conclusion, supported by critical analysis of the juridical literature and case evidence on MNEs’ recidivism, is that DPAs do not foster ethical behavior. (shrink)

Claims about what justice “requires” and the “requirements” of justice are pervasive in political philosophy. However, there is a highly significant ambiguity in such claims that appears to have gone unnoticed. Such claims may pick out either one of two categorically distinct and noncoextensive kinds of requirement that we call 1) requirements-as-necessary-conditions for justice and 2) requirements-as-demands of justice. This is an especially compelling instance of an ambiguity that John Broome has famously observed in the context of claims about other (...) requirements (notably the requirements of rationality and morality). But it appears to have been overlooked by political philosophers in the case of claims about the requirements of justice. The ambiguity is highly significant inasmuch as failing to notice it is liable to distort our normative thinking about politics and make us vulnerable to certain kinds of normatively consequential errors: both mistakenly drawing inferences about what justice demands of us from claims that certain states or societies are not just; and mistakenly drawing inferences about what states or societies are or would be just from claims that justice does not demand of states or societies that they do certain things. Paying greater attention to the distinction between these two different kinds of requirements and the ways in which they come apart is helpful, not merely in avoiding these distortions and errors, but also in resolving, or at least clarifying, a number of other notoriously murky meta-normative debates, especially various important debates about realism and idealism in political philosophy. (shrink)

Ideal theory in social and political philosophy generally works to hide philosophical theories’ complicity in sustaining the structural violence and maintenance of white supremacy that are foundational to settler colonial societies. While non-ideal theory can provide a corrective to some of ideal theory’s intended omissions, it can also work to conceal the same systems of violence that ideal theory does, especially when framed primarily as a response to ideal theory. This article takes a decolonial approach to exploring the limitations of (...) non-ideal theory in its ability to respond to and redress the continuing harms done to Indigenous peoples by settler colonialism, including by outlining non-ideal theory’s relationship to a colonial politics of recognition. (shrink)

Recosiderations of Charles Mills’ The Racial Contract a quarter-century after its initial publication and my first reading trouble previous assessments as my reengagement with the text brings to the fore several items of Mills’ authorial and critical agendas that are not easily reconciled, in the text or by my still sympathic reading.

Ethics is frequently concerned with how to resolve clashes between competing claims from claimants of different kinds. The idea of moral status is crucial to understanding how (1) competing claims...

In the era of generative AI and specifically large language models (LLMs), exemplified by ChatGPT, the intersection of artificial intelligence and human reasoning has become a focal point of global attention. Unlike conventional search engines, LLMs go beyond mere information retrieval, entering into the realm of discourse culture. Their outputs mimic well-considered, independent opinions or statements of facts, presenting a pretense of wisdom. This paper explores the potential transformative impact of LLMs on democratic societies. It delves into the concerns regarding (...) the difficulty in distinguishing ChatGPT-generated texts from human output. The discussion emphasizes the essence of authorship, rooted in the unique human capacity for reason—a quality indispensable for democratic discourse and successful collaboration within free societies. Highlighting the potential threats to democracy, this paper presents three arguments: the Substitution argument, the Authenticity argument, and the Facts argument. These arguments highlight the potential risks that are associated with an overreliance on LLMs. The central thesis posits that widespread deployment of LLMs may adversely affect the fabric of a democracy if not comprehended and addressed proactively and properly. In proposing a solution, we advocate for an emphasis on education as a means to mitigate risks. We suggest cultivating thinking skills in children, fostering coherent thought formulation, and distinguishing between machine-generated output and genuine, i.e., human, reasoning. The focus should be on the responsible development and usage of LLMs, with the goal of augmenting human capacities in thinking, deliberating and decision-making rather than substituting them. (shrink)

This article argues that military conditioning (MC) systematically violates the human dignity of soldiers. The argument relies on an absolute deontologist account of human dignity understood as a claim-right to live in self-respect, which is a right to decide on one’s own behalf about, and to be in control of, essential aspects of one’s own life. The article claims that MC violates soldiers’ dignity so understood because the largely automatic physical killing reflex that MC instills aims to remove their freedom (...) of choice to kill or not to kill, while the MC practices that rationalize the killing of opponents aim to subvert soldiers’ moral deliberation in relation to this behavior. MC thus aims to take away soldiers’ control over a very essential aspect of human life: the decision whether to take life in war. Thereby, MC systematically violates their human dignity. The article concludes with a proposal for an amendment to international law that would allow legal institutions to do more justice to soldiers’ dignity. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the rights violations caused by mass formal schooling systems and explores what students may do about them. Students have rights not to be harmed and rights to liberty (not to be oppressed), as well as attendant rights to (proportionately) defend their rights if necessary. For some time now, education has been dominated by mass formal schooling systems that harm and oppress many students. Such harm and oppression violate those students’ rights not to be harmed or oppressed, which (...) may justify student nonviolent defensive (or rights-protecting) action. (shrink)

The case for reparations for grievous acts of historical injustice has been getting a lot of attention lately. But I aim to broaden the discussion in two ways. First, I am not only going to talk about reparations as a means of rectifying the injuries inflicted by slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of their land, and the ongoing ripple effects of these historic wrongs. I am also going to talk about reparations for a wider variety of (...) historical injustices, including, most importantly, the long-term economic oppression of women, and the historical exploitation of labor. Second, I am not going to base my argument on the principle of equality, as most people currently do, but on the principle of liberty, as it is understood by libertarians on both the right and the left, at least as long as they believe what they say they believe. Not because I think that egalitarian demands for reparations are wrong. Rather, my point is that the principle of liberty, which is often raised as a defense to claims based on the principle of equality, actually leads to exactly the same place. Finally, I will discuss one possible form of reparations that has largely been ignored, but which has a special connection to libertarian principles, and I will show how it can provide some real relief without provoking the opposition that society-wide redistributive remedies usually face. (shrink)

In two different occasions in the twentieth century John Dewey and Maxine Greene stressed the point that educators should attend to ‘what the known demands of us’. Following this dictum, from a critical perspective and with a constructive pedagogical spirit, in this paper we portray a new paradigm for values education that addresses the major challenges to the sustainable futures of young people in the third decade of the twenty first century as well as proposing transformative and empowering educational strategies. (...) Employing the terminology of sustainability in its wider sense, we begin with a widely acknowledged diagnosis of the five major global risks – interconnected and interdependent – that endanger the sustainable future of humanity and nature: environmental, political, social, health, and cultural. We then move to suggest a constructive solution, proposing three conceptual pillars for repairing the world and laying foundation for a thriving sustainable future: (a) Ecohumanism as the paradigm for values education – merging the humanist concern for human dignity, social justice and democracy with the ecological concern for climate stability, biodiversity and environmental sustainability; (b) education of democratic personality and for democratic culture that is holistic and transformative; and (c) a threefold notion of activist pedagogy that addresses the element of cultivating personal agency, empowering political literacy and agency, and engaging students in experiential, holistic, and active teaching-learning experiences. (shrink)

Forced choices between rescuing imperilled persons are subject to a presumption of equality. Unless we can point to a morally relevant difference between these persons' imperilments, each should get an equal chance of rescue. Sometimes, this presumption is overturned. For example, when one imperilled person has wrongfully caused the forced choice, most think that this person (rather than an innocent person) should bear the harm. The converse scenario, in which a forced choice resulted from the supererogatory action of one of (...) the imperilled people, has received little attention in distributive ethics. I argue that, sometimes, we need not offer equal chances in these cases either. When the supererogatory act places the initially imperilled person under a reciprocal duty to bear risks for the supererogatory agent's sake in the forced choice, we may fulfil this duty for them if they are unable to do it themselves, by favouring the supererogatory agent. (shrink)

The rejection of a “characterless” moral self is central to some of Bernard Williams’ most important contributions to philosophy. By the time of Truth and Truthfulness, he works instead with a model of the self constituted and stabilized out of more primitive materials through deliberation and in concert with others that takes inspiration from Diderot. Although this view of the self raises some difficult questions, it serves as a useful starting point for thinking about the process of developing an authentic (...) moral point of view in the context of contemporary living. In what follows, I begin to fill out and extend this picture of the self and its related notion of authenticity by exploring some of the “technologies of the self” at play in Rachel Cusk’s recent work (primarily, the Outline trilogy, Coventry, Second Place, and “The Stuntman”) that ask us to rethink the possibility and importance of stability; seek a way of constituting oneself and one’s values outside the confining structures of traditional narrative (focusing instead on a framework that might be provided by the visual arts); and give a different role to the sort of internalized other Williams sees as being at work in the mechanisms of shame. (shrink)

A central question in contemporary ethics and political philosophy concerns which entities have moral status. In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the view that moral status comes in degrees. I argue that degrees of moral status can be specified along two dimensions: (i) the weight of the reason to protect an entity’s morally significant rights and interests; and/or (ii) the rights and interests that are considered morally significant. And I explore some of the complexities that arise when (...) we link degrees of moral status to the weight of reasons to protect bundles and/or the content and size of these bundles, in particular regarding the attribution of moral status to nonparadigmatic entities (e.g. people with severe cognitive disabilities, children, embryos and foetuses, robots, non-human animals, ecosystems, and rivers). (shrink)

While standard forms of discrimination are widely considered morally wrong, philosophers disagree about what makes them so. Two accounts have risen to prominence in this debate: One stressing how wrongful discrimination disrespects the discriminatee, the other how the harms involved make discrimination wrong. While these accounts are based on carefully constructed thought experiments, proponents of both sides see their positions as in line with and, in part, supported by the folk theory of the moral wrongness of discrimination. This article presents (...) a vignette-based experiment to test empirically what, in the eyes of “folks”, makes discrimination wrong. Interestingly, we find that, according to folks, both disrespect and harm make discrimination wrong. Our findings offer some support for a pluralistic account of the wrongness of discrimination over both monist respect-based and monist harm-based accounts. (shrink)

Distributive justice is one of the central questions of contemporary moral and political philosophy. Discussions on this topic are often presented as a confrontation between two groups of thinkers: libertarians and luck egalitarians. The former emphasize the dependence of the existing distribution on the individual choice and personal responsibility of people, and therefore are skeptical about various redistribution programs. The latter, on the contrary, emphasize the influence of morally arbitrary luck on the economic situation of people, and therefore welcome redistributive (...) measures to compensate for this brute luck. Left-libertarian claims to reconcile these two types of moral considerations. The classical left-libertarian point of view seeks to offset the influence of brute luck through an egalitarian distribution of the benefits of owning natural resources that are independent of anyone’s choice and responsibility. However, this position does not sufficiently take into account the influence of other factors of brute luck and, in particular, genetic endowments on the distribution of economic wealth. This article discusses three approaches that allow left-libertarians to take into account the factor of genetic luck in interpersonal distribution. First, it is Hillel Steiner’s proposal to attribute genetic information to natural resources, the benefits of which are subject to egalitarian redistribution. Second, it is the concept of equal opportunity for welfare by Peter Vallentyne, Michael Otsuka and Eric Roark. Third, it is the universal dominance criterion of Philippe Van Parijs and Kasper Ossenblok. The first two approaches face a number of moral and practical difficulties, but the third approach is able to overcome them. Thus, the universal dominance criterion is the most promising way to reconcile left-libertarianism and justice in the distribution of genetic endowments. (shrink)

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a new, rapidly-growing class of organizations governed by smart contracts. Here we describe how researchers can contribute to the emerging science of DAOs and other digitally-constituted organizations. From granular privacy primitives to mechanism designs to model laws, we identify high-impact problems in the DAO ecosystem where existing gaps might be tackled through a new data set or by applying tools and ideas from existing research fields such as political science, computer science, economics, law, and organizational (...) science. Our recommendations encompass exciting research questions as well as promising business opportunities. We call on the wider research community to join the global effort to invent the next generation of organizations. (shrink)

Since the publication of Miranda Fricker’s seminal book Epistemic Injustice, philosophy of education scholarship has been mostly limited to analyses of culprit-based epistemic injustice in education. This has left structural manifestations relatively underexplored with great detriment to those who are most vulnerable to experience such injustice. This paper aims to address this oversight and open avenues for further research by exploring approaches to theorizing structural epistemic injustice in education and envisioning efficacious remedies. The author identifies three approaches: one that focusses (...) on educational institutions; one that focusses on institutional processes that impact educational outcomes; and one that focusses on epistemological processes that are internal to education. Whilst the approaches differ as to their explanatory power and ease of implementation, it is argued that all three demonstrate that epistemic injustice in education is often the result of structural factors which cannot be attributed to individual epistemic agents. The author concludes by suggesting that educational philosophers must examine each of these approaches in greater depth to make significant progress in disrupting the impact of epistemic injustice in education. (shrink)

As founder of modern political economics and prominent theorist of the commercial society, Adam Smith’s importance is universally recognized. Little, however, has been done so far to develop Adam Smith’s virtue ethics in the context of modern business, characterized by digitalization. This article aims to rediscover Adam Smith’s virtue of prudence and its relevance for the “e-commercial society”: It presents a framework that considers the central place of prudence in the relationship between a prosperous e-commercial system and societal flourishing. In (...) Smith’s view of the commercial society, prudence enables people to develop habits of character related to industriousness, genuineness, spirit of sacrifice, and self-command, which help in the conduct of a prosperous business activity. This article translates Smith’s virtue of prudence into a language typical of consumers in the current e-commerce scenario, considering their development as persons and the contribution of their activities to the good of society. (shrink)

This paper discusses how to deal with research that threatens to cause harm to society—in particular, whether and in what cases bans and moratoria are appropriate. First, it asks what normative resources philosophy of science may draw on to answer such questions. In an effort to presuppose only resources acknowledgeable across different comprehensive worldviews, it is claimed that the aim of credibility provides a good basis for normative reflection. A close analysis reveals an inner tension inherent in the pursuit of (...) credibility, referred to as the paradox of credibility: Although the aim of credibility involves the goal of being trusted, the immediate pursuit of the goal of being trusted as much as possible can run counter to and undermine the pursuit of credibility. From this inner tension, considerations are derived on what it means to uncompromisingly strive for trustworthiness. When applied to the problem of harmful research, it becomes apparent that it is important to distinguish between different types of cases. Some cases allow science to prevent harm while relinquishing credibility in the associated research area. In contrast, other cases demand preserving subject-specific scientific credibility in order to manage potential harm. (shrink)

Résumé Le problème moral de l'autorité peut s'exprimer ainsi : comment l'autorité, avec la déférence qu'elle implique, peut-elle être compatible avec la liberté et la rationalité? L'approche pluraliste sépare l'obligation politique de l'autorité. Pour les pluralistes, l'autorité est à la fois injustifiable et inutile, et donc l'obligation politique légitime, y compris le devoir d'obéir à la loi, n'implique pas de déférence. Je soutiens qu'il est possible de conserver l'engagement pluraliste envers des motifs de légitimité pluriels, tout en réfutant les objections (...) pluralistes à l'autorité. En conséquence, chaque fois que l'autorité a une légitimité, la question morale de l'autorité exigera une réponse. (shrink)

This article attempts to do justice to two conflicting positions in current public debates. On the one hand, it defends a strong version of scientific freedom, according to which science should be free, not only from external obstacles and pressures but also from criticism that is based on reasons “of the wrong kind.” The only admissible criterion in debates about scientific claims, I argue, is whether there is sufficient evidence for their truth. Furthermore, I accept the anti-moralistic view that (non-)conformity (...) with moral ideals is never itself evidence. On the other hand, the article nevertheless argues that there is a possibility of legitimate moral criticism of moral claims. This argument relies on the popular (if controversial) idea that there is pragmatic encroachment – specifically, the idea that the standard of sufficiency for evidence is in part determined by pragmatic factors like the costs of error. This opens up the door for a certain type of legitimate moral criticism. For the costs that determine a standard of sufficiency for epistemic justification can also plausibly count as morally significant. There is thus a con-contingent connection between epistemic and moral defects of certain scientific claims. The resulting view is applied to concrete debates, most importantly about race, genetics and IQ. (shrink)

Greater public awareness of the occurrence of sexual assault has led to the creation of mobile phone apps designed to facilitate consent between sexual partners. These apps exhibit serious practical shortcomings in realistic contexts; however, in this paper I consider the hypothetical case in which these practical shortcomings are absent. The prospect of this viable consent app creates an interesting challenge for consequentialism – one that is comparable to the objection that the theory justifies killing innocent persons to prevent large (...) numbers of less serious harms like experiencing brief, painful headaches. I outline and reject the most straightforward way for consequentialists to address this challenge, and I argue that the empirical calculations at stake reveal something rarely appreciated: consequentialists ought to sometimes favour reinforcing deontological constraints in common-sense morality rather than seeking to undermine them. (shrink)

People sometimes use speech to interfere with other people’s speech, as in the case of a heckler sabotaging a lecture with constant interjections. Some people claim that such interference infringes upon free speech. Against this view, we argue that where competing speakers in a public forum both have an interest in speaking, free speech principles should not automatically give priority to the ‘official’ speaker. Given the ideals underlying free speech, heckling speech sometimes deserves priority. But what can we say, then, (...) about situations in which heckling clearly seems to infringe upon people’s civil liberties, in a way that intuitively justifies intervention? In such cases, we argue, heckling infringes upon people’s associative freedom. We present and defend an ethical framework for the institutional management of ‘Speech Fights’, geared around this insight. (shrink)

Affirmative action as a state policy is one of the powerful ways of empowering the underprivileged in the society. While such a policy is aimed at lifting the economic and social condition of the underprivileged, this comes with acts that are discriminatory and exclusionary. Yet these acts are termed as positive discrimination. Certain sections of the society are excluded from having access to economic resources and opportunities, while these privileges are earmarked for another section of the society considered marginalized and (...) underprivileged. This is being done guided by the principle of distributive justice. While the principle carries sound moral basis, conceptualizing the deprived and mode of empowerment varies with states and society, thus throws up several challenges. Indian experience draws challenges of negotiating the dual presence of individual and collective in the theorizing—idea of empowerment is directed to an individual, but the identity of the individual is based on his/her social identity. The dual challenge of uplifting a caste/community through empowering an individual belonging to the group has raised several questions in terms of achieving the goal of distributive justice. While the principle of distributive justice aims at empowering the least privileged within an underprivileged group/community, this has not been an easy task. After seventy years of reservation policy a lot more initiative is still called for. There is perhaps need for deeper philosophical deliberation on the nature of empowerment, distributive justice, and the underlying moral foundations. Meaningful policy intervention must be built on well thought out theoretical deliberations. (shrink)

The wide reflective equilibrium (WRE) is considered the most important method of ethical justification and is intensively discussed in the scientific community. However, it is unclear to what extent it is actually applied in the ethical literature. The objective of this paper is to fill this gap by providing a critical overview of its explicit applications. Explicit application refers to studies that, following Daniels’ definition, contain three levels, name their elements, and provide a connection between the levels. Philosophers Index, ProQuest, (...) PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched for studies that explicitly used the WRE method and were written in German or English. All topics, disciplines, and publication forms were considered. Nineteen studies were found in which the WRE was applied 23 times. In the 23 applications, 50 equilibria were discussed, and 19 times it was reported that an equilibrium state was reached. The authors applied the WRE in various disciplines, for different purposes, and to diverse topics. The applications themselves differed considerably regarding the application procedure and the scope. Differences can be seen in particular with regard to the presentation of the adjustment process and the WRE criteria used. The results indicate that the WRE can be successfully applied, but the number of explicit applications is still very low. Further research is needed to develop the WRE into an established method of justification. In particular, standards are needed for adjustment and for WRE criteria. (shrink)

What justifies differences in the acceptance of paternalism towards competent minors and older people? I propose two arguments. The first argument draws on the widely accepted view that paternalism is easier to justify the more good it promotes for the paternalizee. It argues that paternalism targeting young people generally promotes more good for the people interfered with than similar paternalism targeting older people. While promoting people's interests or well-being is essential to the justification of paternalism, the first argument has certain (...) unfair implications in that it disfavours paternalism towards the worse off. The second argument caters to such fairness concerns. It argues that priority or inequality aversion supports age-differentiated paternalism because young people, who act imprudently and thereby risk their interests or well-being, are worse off than older people who act in similar ways. I suggest that both arguments are pertinent in evaluating specific paternalistic acts and policies. (shrink)

While Susan Moller Okin found much to celebrate in Rawls's earlier articulation of his theory of justice, she worried that his later turn to political liberalism evacuated his theory of its feminist potential. Here, I argue that we need not be so pessimistic: some of the strongest arguments for pursuing certain feminist projects can and should be made from within a politically liberal framework. In advancing this claim, I develop Rawls's idea of primary goods—namely those goods that all citizens need (...) qua citizens—as a key conceptual resource for arguing for the elimination of the gendered division of labor using public reason. Drawing on recent empirical literature, I point out that the gendered division of labor continues to distribute to women an unfair allocation of primary goods. I then advocate for a specific public policy, which I call Gender Egalitarian Daddy Quota—a parental leave policy that sets aside time specifically for fathers to encourage men and women to engage in childcare related leave-taking to similar extents—on the grounds that this policy would help secure a fairer distribution of primary goods, and thus is required as a matter of justice. (shrink)

Taking seriously the task of sustaining the democratic project requires debunking pessimism, thinking critically about what constitutes the distinctive character of democracy, and taking a future-oriented perspective on democratic transformations.

When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, claims to distributive fairness in (...) the provision of public goods also turn out to be more complex to assess. (shrink)

Katrina Forrester’s book poses a problem for any reviewer that, I suspect, will be reflected in the experience of its readers. Unusually, the author is equally.

How might good work – skilled, autonomous work which affords workers opportunities for meaningful social cooperation in decent conditions – be made available to all? I evaluate five commonly advanced strategies: an unregulated labor market, egalitarian redistribution of resources, state regulation, collective bargaining, and workplace democracy. Each, I argue, has significant limitations. An unregulated labor market ignores workers' unduly weak bargaining power vis-à-vis employers. Egalitarian redistribution alone fails to solve this problem due to distinctive and endemic imperfections of labor markets. (...) Direct state regulation is insufficiently context-sensitive and insufficiently dynamic in the face of technological and other developments. Collective bargaining gives workers only indirect and sometimes costly influence over their working conditions. And workplace democracy leaves workers vulnerable to collective action problems induced by competition between firms. I argue, however, that these strategies can be complemented in a promising way by ‘syndicalist economic democracy’: direct worker participation in the government of the economy, largely specific to particular occupations or economic sectors but above the level of the individual workplace. (shrink)