Drawing a link between energy policy and sustainable development, this paper explores the normative dimensions of policy analysis that inform energy sector decision-making, and how these norms fall short of incorporating adequate considerations of sustainability. The discussion focuses on the obligations that our present generation has to conserve for future generations, the decision of which discount rate to use, and the importance of citizen-oriented preferences in economic valuation. This analysis concludes with the claim that if sustainability insights are applied to (...) conventional methods of approaching these issues, we may be better prepared to address issues that are unconventional and complex, such as those involving the production and use of energy resources. (shrink)

The modern social world is unjust. It is also complex. What does this latter fact imply about the kind of approach that should be used in ameliorating the injustice expressed in the former fact? One answer, recently put forth by Jacob Barrett, is that _ideal theory_, which he understands as being fundamentally defined by the identification and subsequent pursuit of an aspirational macro-level institutional goal, lacks a place in social reform. The reason he thinks ideal theory lacks a place has (...) to do with its inability to deal with complexity. _Pace_ Barrett, I argue that ideal theory, suitably understood, can play a valuable role in social reform in a complex world. While some ideal theorists have underappreciated the extent to which complexity considerations complicate social reform, this does not mean that there is no place for it. This paper surveys the resources ideal theory has available to cope with what I call _the challenge of complexity_. Although the coping techniques will be successful to varying degrees, I believe, in aggregate, a compelling case can be made that ideal theory can combat the challenge of complexity. Still, one may worry that even if ideal theory can adequately deal with complexity, it cannot adequately deal with ever-changing social circumstances. Call this _the dancing landscape objection_. A static ideal theory cannot overcome it, but a _dynamic ideal theory_ could. In sum, dynamic ideal theory can contribute to social reform in a complex and mutable social world. (shrink)

Capability theorists have suggested different, sometimes incompatible, ways in which their approach takes account of the value of freedom, each of which implies a different kind of normative relation between functionings and capabilities. This paper examines three possible accounts of the normative relation between functionings and capabilities, and the implications of each of these accounts in terms of degrees of paternalism. The way in which capability theorists apparently oscillate between these different accounts is shown to rest on an apparent tension (...) between anti-paternalism and anti-fetishism. The paper then advances a fourth account, which incorporates a concern with the content-independent or ‘non-specific’ value of freedom. Only the fourth account would remove all traces of paternalism from the capability approach. Whatever reasons advocates of the capability approach might have had for rejecting this fourth account, those reasons are not internal to the capability approach itself. (shrink)

This Introduction to the collection of essays surveys the philosophical literature to date with respect to five central questions: justice, care, agency, metaphilosophical issues regarding the language and representation of cognitive disability, and personhood. These themes are discussed in relation to three specific conditions: intellectual and developmental disabilities, Alzheimer's disease, and autism, though the issues raised are relevant to a broad range of cognitive disabilities. The Introduction offers a brief historical overview of the treatment cognitive disability has received from philosophers, (...) and explains the specific challenges that cognitive disability poses to philosophy. In briefly summarizing the essays in the collection, it highlights the distinctive contributions the collection makes to ethics, political philosophy, bioethics, and the philosophy of disability. We hope that the richness of the topics explored by these essays will be a spur to further investigation. (shrink)

Many democracies use geographic constituencies to elect some or all of their legislators. Furthermore, many people regard this as desirable in a noncomparative sense, thinking that local constituencies are not necessarily superior to other schemes but are nevertheless attractive when considered on their own merits. Yet, this position of noncomparative constituency localism is now under philosophical pressure as local constituencies have recently attracted severe criticism. This article examines how damaging this recent criticism is, and argues that within limits, noncomparative constituency (...) localism remains philosophically tenable despite the criticisms. The article shows that noncomparative constituency localism is compelling in the first place because geographic constituencies foster partisan voter mobilisation, and practices of constituency service help to sustain deliberation among constituents and within the legislature and promote the realisation of equal opportunity for political influence. The article further argues that it is unwarranted to criticise geographic constituencies for being biased against geographically dispersed voter groups, for causing vote-seat disproportionality, and for being vulnerable to gerrymandering. The article also discusses the criticisms that local constituencies may pose risks of inefficiency and injustice in resource allocation decisions, may lead legislators to neglect the common good, and may limit citizens’ control over the political agenda. Whilst conceding that these objections may be valid, the article argues that they do not outweigh the diverse and normatively weighty considerations speaking in favour of noncomparative constituency localism. Finally, the article’s analysis is defended against several variants of the charge that it exaggerates the benefits of geographic constituencies. (shrink)

: Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card's essay develops a case for this position, taking up an injustice sufficiently serious to constitute an evil: the sheltering of domestic violence.

Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card's essay develops a case for this position, taking up an injustice sufficiently serious to constitute an evil: the sheltering of domestic violence.

: Social death, central to the evil of genocide (whether the genocide is homicidal or primarily cultural), distinguishes genocide from other mass murders. Loss of social vitality is loss of identity and thereby of meaning for one's existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents.

Social death, central to the evil of genocide, distinguishes genocide from other mass murders. Loss of social vitality is loss of identity and thereby of meaning for one's existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents.

ABSTRACTEnvironmental ethics research pays much attention to the rights of individuals, future generations, and nonhuman stakeholders to have a clean environment. Moral condemnation is directed at polluters for violation of stakeholder rights. However, little consideration is given in the research literature to those who are harmed by well‐intended progressive environmental legislation. This article addresses the moral entitlements of small, remote resource‐based communities not to be harmed by environmental legislation that results in the elimination of the major employer that economically sustains (...) them. It is argued that these communities are morally entitled to the best attempt by a government to mitigate the harm or compensate for it. The article shows how a government can go beyond compensation to form collaborative public–private partnerships to promote strategically viable future directions for communities. (shrink)

A commentary on Richard Joyce's The Evolution of Morality.

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

This article examines John Stuart Mill’s influential proposal of how to tax wealth transfers. According to Mill, every person should be free to bequeath but not to receive bequest. Mill proposed an upper limit on how much each person could receive from wealth transfers. We discuss three objections against this proposal. The nonseparability objection holds that it is not possible to separate the freedom to give from the freedom to receive. The objection from private property holds that private property includes (...) an unlimited right to dispose of one’s assets and that this right is violated under Mill’s scheme. The objection from incentives holds that Mill’s scheme would have negative effects on people’s willingness to work and save. We argue that these objections can be met and that taxing bequeathed wealth according to Mill’s scheme is more just and more efficient compared to systems that rely less on wealth transfer taxation. (shrink)

A liberal egalitarian theory of justice seeks to combine the values of equality, personal freedom, and personal responsibility. It is considered a much more promising position than strict egalitarianism, because it supposedly provides a fairness argument for inequalities reflecting differences in choice. However, we show that it is inherently difficult to fulfill this ambition. We present a liberal egalitarian paradox which shows that there does not exist any robust reward system that satisfies a minimal egalitarian and a minimal liberal requirement. (...) Moreover, we demonstrate how libertarianism may be justified in this framework if we drop the egalitarian condition. (shrink)

Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change. This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory. First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question) In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V). I then illustrate my account, by outlining four kinds of (...) action that should be undertaken (Section VI). Pervasive noncompliance also raises a second question: Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, should existing governance structures be maintained or changed (and if they should be changed, in what ways)? (the Governance Question). The paper briefly outlines a methodology for addressing this question and outlines what a nonideal response to the existing institutional structures would be (Section VII). It does so with reference to the Paris Agreement, and in particular the creation of a "global stocktake" (Article 14, Paris Agreement) and the "facilitative dialogue" (paragraph 20 of the ‘Adoption of the Paris Agreement’). The aim, then, is to set out an account of a nonideal theory of climate justice. (shrink)

Imagine that you are a farmer living in Kenya. Though you work hard to sell your produce to foreign markets you find yourself unable to do so because affluent countries subsidize their own farmers and erect barriers to trade, like tariffs, thereby undercutting you in the marketplace. As a consequence of their actions you languish in poverty despite your very best efforts. Or, imagine that you are a peasant whose livelihood depends on working in the fields in Indonesia and you (...) are forcibly displaced from your land by a biofuels company because corrupt government officials have stolen the land and sold it to the company. Or, suppose that you work on the coast of Bangladesh but find that increasingly you are unable to cope with salination resulting from sealevel rise – a product of anthropogenic climate change. These, I believe, are cases of global injustice. My question is: What are those who bear the brunt of global injustice entitled to do to secure their, and other people’s, entitlements? Often people focus on the duties of the affluent to respect and uphold the rights of the disadvantaged. This is understandable. But there is a striking omission. Rarely do people analyze, or even mention, what those who lack their entitlements are entitled to do to secure their own rights. This is my focus in this paper. More specifically, I examine what agents are entitled to do to change the underlying social, economic and political practices and structures in a more just direction. (shrink)

The prospect of dangerous climate change requires Humanity to limit the emission of greenhouse gases. This in turn raises the question of how the permission to emit greenhouse gases should be distributed and among whom. In this article the author criticises three principles of distributive justice that have often been advanced in this context. He also argues that the predominantly statist way in which the question is framed occludes some morally relevant considerations. The latter part of the article turns from (...) critique and advances a new way of addressing the problem. In particular, first, it proposes four key theses that should guide our normative analysis; and, second, it outlines how these four theses can be realised in practice. (shrink)

Climate change is projected to have very severe impacts on future generations. Given this, any adequate response to it has to consider the nature of our obligations to future generations. This paper seeks to do that and to relate this to the way that inter-generational justice is often framed by economic analyses of climate change. To do this the paper considers three kinds of considerations that, it has been argued, should guide the kinds of actions that one generation should take (...) if it is to treat both current and future people equitably. In particular it examines the case for what has been termed pure time discounting, growth discounting and opportunity cost discounting; and it assesses their implications for climate policy. It argues that none of these support the claims of those who think they give us reason to delay aggressive mitigation policies. It also finds, however, that the second kind of argument can, in certain circumstances, provide support for passing on some of the costs of mitigation to future generations. (shrink)

The concept of rights is now so dominant in the language of politics that it is becoming difficult to identify its use with any particular approach to the solution of social problems or to gain a clear picture of its significance, its advantages and its disadvantages as a way of conceptualizing and resolving contentious political issues. None the less there is a perceptible shift towards an emphasis on rights in contemporary politics which many welcome and encourage and others question and (...) even reject, a shift which is matched in jurisprudence by the renewed stress which many theorists place on rights as a basic legal concept despite recurrent problems associated with the concept as a tool for legal analysis and moral justification. Conflicting theories of legal rights are canvassed and this in turn feeds into the debate concerning the reality or significance of non-legal rights, for the process of law reform is often presented as a matter of giving legal embodiment to the rights which various interested categories of people are asserted to possess already. (shrink)

The concept of rights is now so dominant in the language of politics that it is becoming difficult to identify its use with any particular approach to the solution of social problems or to gain a clear picture of its significance, its advantages and its disadvantages as a way of conceptualizing and resolving contentious political issues. None the less there is a perceptible shift towards an emphasis on rights in contemporary politics which many welcome and encourage and others question and (...) even reject, a shift which is matched in jurisprudence by the renewed stress which many theorists place on rights as a basic legal concept despite recurrent problems associated with the concept as a tool for legal analysis and moral justification. Conflicting theories of legal rights are canvassed and this in turn feeds into the debate concerning the reality or significance of non-legal rights, for the process of law reform is often presented as a matter of giving legal embodiment to the rights which various interested categories of people are asserted to possess already. (shrink)

It is more than a half-century since Nelson Goodman [1955] applied what we call the Reflective Equilibrium model of justification to the problem of justifying induction, and more than three decades since Rawls [1971] and Daniels [1979] applied celebrated extensions of this model to the problem of justifying principles of social justice. The resulting Wide Reflective Equilibrium model (WRE) is generally thought to capture an acceptable way to reconcile inconsistency between an intuitively plausible general principle and an intuitively plausible judgment (...) about a particular case. Recently a different model for reconciling moral inconsistency has emerged: Moral Consistency Reasoning [Campbell and Kumar 2012, 2013a; Kumar and Campbell 2012; Campbell 2009: 86?7; Campbell and Woodrow 2003; Wong 2002]. MCR applies when two moral judgments give opposing assessments of (what appear to be) relevantly similar particular cases. Though WRE and MCR are strikingly different, each arguably captures a rationally acceptable method for reconciling moral inconsistency. Moreover, as will be shown, they function in complementary ways. Are they parts of a more comprehensive model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency that would explain the attractions of each? This essay first spells out the relevant differences between the models and then formulates a more general model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency. ?1 reviews the emergence of Goodman's model that he offers in the spirit of epistemology naturalized, almost a decade before Quine coined the term [1969a]. ?2 analyses six salient features of WRE to be compared with six contrasting features of MCR in ?3. ?4 presents the general model. (shrink)

Arguing that the grounding of philosophical ethics is more complex than De George's reference to reason and human experience reflects, and that religious ethics is less doctrinaire and less given to indoctrination than De George suggests, Camenisch maintains that De George has portrayed an artifically wide gap between the two fields. Rejecting De George's typology of religious ethics as unhelpful, Camenisch suggests that the crucial distinction between philosophical and religious/theological ethics is the community or lived nature of the latter. The (...) implications of this dimension of religious ethics for business ethics is briefly explored in relation to the use of cases, the role of the lives of moral exemplars, corporate responsibility, and obligations to future generations, to indicate not that religious ethics generates answers different from those of philosophy, but that it provides a different perspective on some central moral matters. (shrink)

Coherentists fail to distinguish between the individual revision of a conviction and the intersubjective revision of a rule. This paper fills this gap. A conviction is a norm that, according to an individual, ought to be ascribed to a provision. By contrast, a rule is a judicially ascribed norm that controls a case and is protected by the formal principles of competence, certainty, and equality. A revision of a rule is the invalidation or modification such a judicially ascribed norm, provided (...) that the judge meets the burden of argumentation of formal principles. Thus, judges can revise their convictions without changing the law. (shrink)

A theory of intergenerational justice consists in the study of the moral and political status of the relations between present and past or future people, more specifically, of the obligations and entitlements they can potentially generate. The challenges that justify talking about responsibilities between generations are myriad. And the disputes they prompt can focus on the past just as much as on the present, even though the fact that the human species has reached a state of technological progress that enables (...) it to have an irredeemable impact on the planet and perhaps even endanger future human existence tends to make concerns about the future more pressing. Debates on intergenerational justice are twofold. The first revolves around the issue of whether claims of justice across generations whose members' lifetimes do not necessarily overlap could be justified. And the second revolves around the specific conception of justice in play, that is, around the nature of the standard that must be applied as well as around the identification of the contents of the duties that present generations supposedly have vis-à-vis past or future generations. This survey article depicts the conceptual and argumentative framework in which these debates are set. It aims to outline certain of the main features shared by the most influential contemporary theories of intergenerational justice, and the problems inherent in them. It concludes by suggesting that, even though the idea of succeeding generations is merely an abstraction, there are specific empirical states of affairs that require different theoretical responses to intergenerational justice. (shrink)

Dissent is a word we come across frequently these days. We read it in the newspapers, use it in discussions with friends and colleagues—perhaps even engage in the activity ourselves. And yet for all of its popularity, few of us, if pressed, would be able to pin down exactly what dissent is. It is this question I wish to explore in this paper. In particular my aim will be to provide a conceptual analysis of the idea of dissent such that (...) we may more cleanly distinguish it from other related forms of disagreement. I use a recent book written on the topic by Ronald Collins and David Skover as an argumentative foil. (shrink)

Here I argue that the hyper-individualistic and rationalistic ethical paradigms – originating in the late eighteenth century and dominating moral philosophy, in various permutations, ever since – cannot capture the moral concerns evoked by the prospect of global climate change. Those paradigms are undone by the temporal and spatial scales of climate change. To press my argument, I deploy two famous philosophical tropes – John Rawls's notion of the original position and Derek Parfit's paradox – and another that promises to (...) become famous: Dale Jamieson's six little ditties about Jack and Jill. I then go on to argue that the spatial and especially the temporal scales of global climate change demand a shift in moral philosophy from a hyper-individualistic ontology to a thoroughly holistic ontology. It also demands a shift from a reason-based to a sentiment-based moral psychology. Holism in environmental ethics is usually coupled with non-anthropocentrism in theories constructed to provide moral considerability for transorganismic entities – such as species, biotic communities, and ecosystems. The spatial and temporal scales of climate, however, render non-anthropocentric environmental ethics otiose, as I more fully explain. Thus the environmental ethic here proposed to meet the moral challenge of global climate change is holistic but anthropocentric. I start with Jamieson's six little ditties about Jack and Jill. (shrink)

: This essay examines Irigaray's analysis of politics and the political implications of her critique of sacrificial orders that repress difference/matter. I suggest that her descriptions of a fluid "feminine" can be read as an alternative symbolic not dependent on repression. This idea is politically promising in opening a possibility for justice and a nonantagonistic intersubjectivity. I conclude by assessing Irigaray's concrete proposals for sexuate rights and a civil identity for women.

This essay examines Irigaray's analysis of politics and the political implications of her critique of sacrificial orders that repress difference/matter. I suggest that her descriptions of a fluid “feminine” can be read as an alternative symbolic not dependent on repression. This idea is politically promising in opening a possibility for justice and a nonantagonistic intersubjectivity. I conclude by assessing Irigaray's concrete proposals for sexuate rights and a civil identity for women.

The Hastings Center was founded in 1969 to study ethical problems in medicine and biology. The Center arose from a confluence of three social currents: the increased public scrutiny of medicine and its practices, the concern about the moral problems being generated by technological developments, and the desire of one of its founders (Callahan) to make use of his philosophical training in a more applied way. The early years of the Center were devoted to raising money, developing an early agenda (...) of issues, and identifying a cadre of people around the country interested in the issues. Various stresses and strains in the Center and the field are identified, and some final reflections are offered on the nature and value of the contributions made by bioethics as an academic field. (shrink)

The Hastings Center was founded in 1969 to study ethical problems in medicine and biology. The Center arose from a confluence of three social currents: the increased public scrutiny of medicine and its practices, the concern about the moral problems being generated by technological developments, and the desire of one of its founders to make use of his philosophical training in a more applied way. The early years of the Center were devoted to raising money, developing an early agenda of (...) issues, and identifying a cadre of people around the country interested in the issues. Various stresses and strains in the Center and the field are identified, and some final reflections are offered on the nature and value of the contributions made by bioethics as an academic field. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism and Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics are both examples of what I call methodological conservativism. Methodological conservativism involves the claim that a subset of common first-order beliefs is immune to revision. I argue that there are striking differences between their respective commitments to this position, however. For Kant, his conservativism is based upon a commitment to the reliability of particular results of the sciences of his day. For Strawson, in contrast, his conservativism is based upon his (...) attempted liberation of arguments for the necessity of a certain conceptual scheme from any particular scientific commitments. In fact, for Strawson, no change in scientific commitments could displace the conceptual scheme employed to navigate the manifest world of ordinary perceptual experience. Each approach brings with it challenges with regard to how to accommodate potential scientific theory change. (shrink)

This paper aims to persuade its reader that libertarianism, at least in several of its varieties, is a species of the genus Michael Oakeshott referred to as ‘rationalism in politics’. I hope to demonstrate, employing the work of Oakeshott, as well as Aristotle and Onora O’Neill, how many libertarian theorists, who generally have a sincere and admirable commitment to personal liberty, have been led astray by the rationalist promise that we might be able to approach deductive certainty concerning the 'correctness' (...) of some political programme. Of course libertarians, in common with the adherents of almost any other political ‘stance’, are not a monolithic body, but exhibit a variety of more or less rationalist arguments for their views. For example, a thinker like Hayek, who is often placed in the libertarian camp, came to adopt much of Oakeshott’s critique of rationalism in his later work. And, of course, Oakeshott himself expressed an affinity for libertarian ideas in his essay, ‘The Political Economy of Freedom’ (1991 [1962]). But a general predilection to enhance individual freedom as far as is deemed practicable is quite a different matter from taking a stance in which liberty, and liberty conceived in a rather narrow fashion, is the only value deemed admissible into ‘reasonable’ political discourse. (We will see in a subsequent section that Oakeshott recognized this urge to sanctify one value above all others as a logical requirement of striving for deductive political truths.) I believe that a critique of such libertarian rationalism is particularly relevant given the present situation in the United States vis-à-vis civil rights and the ongoing ‘war on terror’, in that many non- libertarian supporters of peace and strong civil rights find themselves allied with libertarians on these issues—if libertarians have gotten these issues ‘correct’, then how might they have gone wrong elsewhere? Furthermore, the critique may aid libertarians themselves, because, if the title of this paper is accurate, such a single-minded exaltation of one value above all others is an enemy of true liberty, so that libertarians might want to rethink adopting such a position. As Philip Pettit demonstrates (1997), freedom as non-domination is more robust and inclusive of all that we value about freedom than is the libertarian concept of freedom as non-interference; by allowing, say, immense economic power to be concentrated in a single corporation, as intervention to break the company up would violate the principle of non-interference, libertarian ideas may greatly diminish the liberty of the people subject to that corporate power. (shrink)

The basic principle of educational equality is that each child should receive an equally good education. This sounds appealing, but is rather vague and needs substantial working out. Also, educational equality faces all the objections to equality per se, plus others specific to its subject matter. Together these have eroded confidence in the viability of equality as an educational ideal. This article argues that equality of educational opportunity is not the best way of understanding educational equality. It focuses on Brighouse (...) and Swift's well worked out meritocratic conception and finds it irretrievably flawed; they should, instead, have pursued a radical conception they only mention. This conception is used as a starting point for developing a luck egalitarian conception, pluralistic and complex in nature. It is argued that such a conception accounts for the appeal of equality of opportunity, fits with other values in education and meets many of the objections. Thus, equality is reasserted as what morally matters most in education. (shrink)

The family disrupts equality while also, think many, providing goods of unique value. In Family Values, Brighouse and Swift tackle both of these tendencies, offering a refined and distinctive liberal egalitarian account both of the value of family life, and the limits of what may be done in its name. It builds up from an account of children's specific interests to a defence of ‘familial relationship goods’ as providing the best way of satisfying those interests. Thus though parenthood carries goods (...) of its own, parental prerogatives are delimited by what is good for children. The position which emerges plays out in nuanced, sometimes surprising ways. I raise three main lines of potential criticism, concerning, respectively, the distribution of family relationship goods, their value in relation to fair equality of opportunity, and the viability of distinguishing between family-located and other contributions to the realisation of a child's interests. (shrink)

Argues that truth, moral right, political right, and aesthetic value may be understood as arising out of a naturalist account of humanity, if naturalism is rightly conceived.

The substantive center of Christian ethics is Jesus’s ministry of the kingdom or reign of God, and its preferential inclusion of the poor, the outcast, and the sinner. What defines a gospel-based bioethics is a hopeful, practical commitment to improve the health of those who are most vulnerable to illness and early death because they lack basic needs. This commitment is distinctive of Christian bioethics, if not “unique” in the sense that no other bioethical approaches or traditions share it. To (...) succeed in reducing disparities in access to health care requires cooperative social action with members of multiple moral and political communities, meaning that there is no strict boundary between secular and Christian bioethics at the practical, political level, the level of applied Christian social ethics. (shrink)

Baron has provided some examples of nonconsequentialism in decision making and describes them as biases; these may be the remnants of the biological origin of decision making. One may argue that decisions are made on the basis not of rationality but affective processes. Behavior follows the trend toward maximizing pleasure. This mechanism might explain apparent nonconsequentialism.

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is best known for its documentation of increasing social inequality, but it also has a notable normative aspect. Although Piketty is far less clear on the normative level than on the empirical, his view of justice can be summarised as meritocratic luck egalitarianism. This leads him to condemn as unjust the fact that inheritance is once again becoming more important than education for determining social position. In this paper, I discuss whether Piketty's normative (...) conception can justify this condemnation. My main thesis will be that Piketty ends up in a dilemma that he cannot resolve with the normative resources he has at his disposal. The horns of this dilemma are defined by whether or not we accept what Susan Hurley calls ‘the regression requirement’, and in both cases the normative distinction between inheritance and education as ways to achieve social positions disappears. Toward the end, I shall suggest an alternative justification for the moral superiority of education over inheritance, which makes use of one of Piketty's key empirical arguments. (shrink)

Many competing ideas exist around teaching ‘standard’ high school social studies subjects such as history, government, geography, and economics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of social studies teaching and learning as a moral activity. I first propose that current high school curriculum standards in the United States often fail in focusing on the kinds of sustained discourse and ideas necessary for students to develop an awareness and commitment to justice in a pluralistic society. I then (...) make the argument that understanding social studies as an inherently moral activity creates a space for transformative and meaningful learning to occur. Lastly, I contend that public schools are inextricably linked to understanding and creating elements of a just society and as such, hold equal potential to both support and severely hinder its development. (shrink)

Reflectivists consider reflective reasoning crucial for good judgment and action. Anti-reflectivists deny that reflection delivers what reflectivists seek. Alas, the evidence is mixed. So, does reflection confer normative value or not? This paper argues for a middle way: reflection can confer normative value, but its ability to do this is bound by such factors as what we might call epistemic identity: an identity that involves particular beliefs—for example, religious and political identities. We may reflectively defend our identities’ beliefs rather than (...) reflect open-mindedly to adopt whatever beliefs cohere with the best arguments and evidence. This bounded reflectivism is explicated with an algorithmic model of reflection synthesized from philosophy and science that yields testable predictions, psychometric implications, and realistic metaphilosophical suggestions—for example, overcoming motivated reflection may require embracing epistemic identity rather than veiling it (à la Rawls 1971). So bounded reflectivism should be preferred to views offering anything less. (shrink)

This article compares the social movement mobilization that led to reforms in police and judicial handling of battering in the United States to the movement ideology, organization, and tactics that resulted in analogous policy reform in the processing of dowry burnings and beatings in India. Using field notes and secondary sources from both countries, the article examines how both movements redefined violence against women in families as a public issue, then looks at how movement demands affected policy reform in each (...) country. The analysis questions the current conceptualization of social movement success. Social movements theory assumes that entry into the polity of liberal, democratic states constitutes success in the sense of social change. Yet the cases analyzed suggest that assumptions about the gender neutrality of state response to movements prevents researchers from critically examining the outcomes of social movement mobilization. Moreover, institutionalization of women's movement demands and organization may diminish the capacity of such movements to control the social construction of domestic violence against women by providing protection without empowerment. (shrink)

We believe we owe one another respect. We believe we ought to pay what we owe by treating one another ‘with respect.’ If we could understand these beliefs we would be well on the way to understanding morality itself. If we could justify these beliefs we could vindicate a central part of our moral experience.Respect comes in many varieties. We respect some people for their upright character, others for their exceptional achievements. There are people we respect as forces of nature: (...) we go to great lengths to accommodate their moods, wiles, and demands. Finally, most of us seem to respect people simply because they are people. This is the sort of respect of special interest to moral theory.In order to be worthy of this last sort of respect, it is not only sufficient but necessary that one be a person. We can, of course, take a similar attitude towardnonpersons. (shrink)