Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment (Nozick's scenario) is widely used as the basis for a ?knockdown? argument against all internalist mental state theories of well-being. Recently, however, it has been convincingly argued that Nozick's scenario should not be used in this way because it elicits judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. These arguments all include alternate experience machine thought experiments, but these scenarios also elicit judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. In (...) this paper, several experiments are conducted in order to create and test a relatively bias-free experience machine scenario. It is argued that if an experience machine thought experiment is used to evaluate internalist mental state theories of well-being, then this relatively bias-free scenario should be used over any of the existing scenarios. Unlike the existing experience machine scenarios, when this new scenario is used to assess internalist mental state theories of well-being, it does not provide strong evidence to refute or endorse them. (shrink)

The concept of fairness as mutual advantage has been developed in the tradition of social contract theory. In this framework society is seen as an enterprise that coordinates the activities of its members in order to advance their interests. All acceptable social rules are in the interest of each member of society. Rules are agreed unanimously – no rules can be enforced against the interest of someone. It is assumed that individuals are basically self-interested and rational. Radical libertarianism claims that (...) individuals do not have to accept any a priori constraints on their behavior. “Libertarianism focuses on negative freedom”. (shrink)

Discoverers of “market failures” as well as advocates of the general efficiency of a “true, unhampered market” sometimes seem to disregard the fundamental fact that there is no such thing as a “market as such.” What we call a market is always a system of social interaction characterized by a specific institutional framework, that is, by a set of rules defining certain restrictions on the behavior of the market participants, whether these rules are informal, enforced by private sanctions, or formal, (...) enforced by a particular agency, the “protective state,” in J. M. Buchanan's terminology. (shrink)

In the ‘Introduction’ to Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman's stated intentions are to: establish the role of competitive capitalism as a system of economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom; indicate the proper role of government in a free society; and return the term ‘liberal’ ‘… to its original sense – as the doctrines pertaining to a free man’. In fact, Friedman accomplishes none of these things. This essay has three distinct, though related, objectives: first, to compare Friedman's position (...) with the liberal alternative; second, to show why Friedman's position is more properly regarded as libertarian than liberal; and third, to assess the quality of Friedman's argument in its own right. My purpose is to demonstrate that Friedman overlooks the important liberal insight that the unrestricted accumulation of private propety may limit rather than promote individual freedom. This omission is crucial. Not only does it divorce Friedman's conception from liberalism, it also vitiates his case for economic freedom as a necessary condition for political freedom. (shrink)

This paper is divided into three sections. It aims to give some resources for making possible a straightforward debate on the mind-body problem as well as some serious researches in it. Having these goals into account, the first section offers an introduction to the mind-body problem and the second section explains briefly some of the most influential answers to this problem. The third section is devoted to eliminative materialism.

In this article I argue that the famous image on Hobbes’ frontispiece of Leviathan provides a more honest picture of authority and of contract than is provided by today’s liberal images of free and equal persons, who are pictured as sitting round a negotiating table making a decision as to the principles on which to base laws. Importantly, in the seventeenth century, at the start of modern political thought, Hobbes saw no contradiction between contractual agreement and subordination. I will draw (...) out these arguments by comparing three images of politics that employ the human body: Hobbes’ frontispiece is compared firstly with an earlier picture of the state, the illustration of the Fable of the Belly, and then with a later Rawlsian image of the social contract described above. At stake is Hobbes’ view of two associated concepts: authorship and authority. I argue that Hobbes’ image is a vivid portrayal of a ‘persona covert’, akin to the feme covert, a wife characterised in common law as so dominated by her husband that she is imagined as being ‘covered’ by his body. (shrink)

Though most legal and labor historians have depicted an American labor movement that suffered from legal disabilities, American law has never denied organized labor's freedom of association. Quite the contrary, unions have always enjoyed at least some favoritism in the law, and this status provided the essential element to their success and power. But, even during the heyday of union power (1930–47), organized labor never succeeded in gaining all of the privileges that it sought, not enough to stem its current (...) (private-sector) decline back to historically normal levels. This article provides a synoptic overview and reinterpretation of the development of American labor law. (shrink)

This article examines the question of private coercion in market societies, arguing for an unconditional basic income guarantee from a classical liberal viewpoint. It proposes three main arguments. First, classical liberals view the purpose of government to be the reduction of coercion, both public and private. Second, a proper understanding of the nature of coercion indicates that parties subject to certain types of hardship are being coerced. Third, where the total amount of coercion is reduced by eliminating the hardship, the (...) classical liberal state must do so to fulfill its purpose. Hence, this article argues that if the total amount of coercion in society can be reduced by the state employing the amount of coercion necessary to maintain an unconditional basic income guarantee, then the classical liberal state is obligated to maintain such a guarantee by its underlying justification. (shrink)

On the face of it, the protracted public controversy over abortion in the United States and elsewhere might seem to rest on intractable normative questions inaccessible to economic analysis. But an influential early essay in the now sizable philosophical literature on the subject suggests otherwise. Judith Jarvis Thomson disarmingly inclined toward the view that “the fetus has already become a human person well before birth”,. presumably with all the rights pertaining thereto. She denied, however, that such rights necessarily include use (...) of the mother's womb until birth. To illustrate her point, she compared the mother's situation to that, for example, of an unwilling Good Samaritan with a uniquely suited blood type, who is forced to share a kidney for 9 months with a famous, ailing violinist who needed its use for that duration to recover. Even if the life of a human being was at stake, the assertion of rights for the violinist or the fetus, she argued, would be too degrading for either the Good Samaritan's or the mother's status as a person, where large unwanted sacrifices would be required. Reduced to its economic essentials, the argument is that the mother has property rights to her own body, including the right to expel a “trespasser”. who would die as a consequence. Thus, the antiabortion position is neatly undercut by granting its major premise while denying its conclusion. (shrink)

T. H. Marshall, a British sociologist, gave a series of lectures in 1949 under the title “Citizenship and Social Class.” To many American intellectuals, his analysis still offers a persuasive account of the origins of the welfare state in the West. But Marshall spoke in the early postwar era, when the case for expanded social benefits seemed unassailable. Today's politics are more conservative. In every Western country the welfare state is under review. Yet Marshall's conception can still help define the (...) issues in social policy and the way forward. (shrink)

In this essay, I identify the reasons that libertarian principles have failed to capture the popular imagination as an acceptable form of civil society. By the term “libertarian” I mean a belief in and commitment to a set of methods and policies that have as their common aim greater freedom under law for individuals. The term “freedom” in this context means not only a commitment to civil liberties, such as freedom of expression, but also to economic liberties, including a commitment (...) to a laissez-faire policy of free enterprise and free trade between countries. Libertarians, therefore, are committed to the absolute minimum state intervention in the economy as well as in people's private lives. In a world constrained by these libertarian principles, people should be permitted to do as they please, constrained only by rules that prevent them from encroaching on the liberty of others. (shrink)

Desire-satisfaction theories about welfare come in two main varieties: unrestricted and restricted. Both varieties hold that a person's welfare is determined entirely by the satisfactions and frustrations of his desires. But while the restricted theories count only some of a person’s desires as relevant to his well-being, the unrestricted theories count all of his desires as relevant. Because unrestricted theories count all desires as relevant they are vulnerable to a wide variety of counterexamples involving desires that seem obviously irrelevant. Derek (...) Parfit offers a well-known example involving a stranger afflicted with what seems to be a fatal disease. Similar examples are offered by Thomas Scanlon, James Griffin, Shelly Kagan, and others. In this paper I defend a simple unrestricted desire-based theory of welfare from the claim that some of our desires are irrelevant to how well our lives go. I begin by introducing the theory I aim to defend. I then formulate the Irrelevant-Desires Problem and reject a few rationales for its key premise. I then consider and reject a few flawed responses to the problem. I finally offer an obvious but widely overlooked response: I bite the bullet. My overall goal is to dissuade those sympathetic to a desire-based approach to welfare from rejecting unrestricted forms of desire satisfactionism simply because some desires may seem irrelevant to how well our lives go. (shrink)

The Rawlsian texts appear not to be consistent with regard to the status of the right of freedom of association. Interestingly, Rawls's early work omits mention of freedom of association as among the basic liberties, but in his later work he explicitly includes freedom of association as among the basic liberties. However, freedom of association would appear to have an economic component as well (e.g., the right to form a firm). If one turns to such “private ordering” (e.g., contract, partnership, (...) and corporate law), we find a similar ambiguity in the Rawlsian texts, as well as sharp divisions in the contemporary literature on Rawlsianism. This ambiguity has engendered widespread confusion over the scope of the two principles of justice—leading to the contemporary dispute over the breadth of what Rawls calls the “basic structure” and the question of whether the principles of justice are properly understood to govern private ordering. There is significant disagreement over the breadth of Rawls's basic structure—one aspect is whether the principles of justice apply to the private law. In a controversial passage in Political Liberalism Rawls addresses this question. This passage has, however, led commentators to reach divergent conclusions. We argue that this disagreement is explained by an instructive confusion in the passage over the distinction between what we characterize as “pre-institutional” and “post-institutional” freedom (vis-á-vis contract and property). The passage, we argue, illicitly shifts from invoking the post-institutional sense of “freedom” to the pre-institutional sense, thereby causing significant though understandable disagreement. Rawls's lapse into the pre-institutional conception of “freedom” provides interpretive grounds for the narrow understanding of the basic structure. If Rawls, however, had invoked the sense of “freedom” to which he is entitled at this stage of his theory—the post-institutional conception—such disagreement need not have arisen. (shrink)

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

Taylor, Sandel, Walzer, and MacIntyre waver between granting the community authority over the individual and limiting this authority so severely that communitarianism becomes a dead letter. The reason for this vacillation can be found in the aspiration of each theorist to base liberal values‐equality and liberty—on particularism. Communitarians compound liberal formalism by adding to the liberal goal, individual autonomy, the equally abstract aim of grounding autonomy in a communally shared identity. Far from returning political theory to substantive considerations of the (...) good, communitarianism legitimizes really existing liberal politics—the politics of the nation‐state. (shrink)

A major theme in discussions of the influence of technology on society has been the computer as a threat to privacy. It now appears that the truth is precisely the opposite. Three technologies associated with computers—public-key encryption, networking, and virtual reality—are in the process of giving us a level of privacy never known before. The U.S. government is currently intervening in an attempt, not to protect privacy, but to prevent it.

We argue for a procedural approach to ethical critique in CDA based upon the ‘argumentative turn’ in CDA advocated in our recent publications. This is not a matter of abandoning substantive critique, or abandoning the long-standing commitment of our version of CDA to critique of domination and of ideology, but of integrating them into a deliberative procedure for critical questioning, from an impartial and unbiased standpoint. The advantage of this position is that it enables us to accentuate ethical criticism and (...) critique in CDA, rather than advocacy and partisanship. The task of critical discourse analysts is to subject argumentation, including their own argumentation, to systematic critical questioning in the spirit of open debate, with no ideological parti-pris. (shrink)

Writing in 1912, before the Bolshevik Revolution, American socialist John Spargo said that it was “inconceivable” that a democratic socialist society would ever abolish the “sacred right” of freedom of publication which had been won at so great a sacrifice. According to Spargo, “every Socialist writer of note” agreed with Karl Kautsky that the freedom of the press, and of literary production in general, is an “essential condition” of democratic socialism.

In the first half of the 1970s, two books appeared which have subsequently been regarded as major works in political philosophy: John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Economists have devoted a considerable amount of ink to commentary, pro and con, on A Theory of Justice; and it is getting to be a rare public finance textbook that does not, in its discussion of governmental redistribution, describe the Kantian contract made behind the veil of (...) ignorance. On the other hand, while Nozick has not exactly been ignored, economists have not joined the debate over Anarchy, State, and Utopia with the same gusto. When economists have joined the debate, their concern has been, more often than not, with Nozick's entitlement theory of distributive justice, as is the case with Varian and Sen. What is largely missing, then, is any economic analysis of the processes that give rise to Nozick's morally legitimate state, which he calls the minimal state, and the characteristics and likely activities of the minimal state within the moral boundaries set by Nozick, his assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. (shrink)

We expound an economic explanation of the nature, causes, and effects of moral conventions. We show, first, that systems of moral rules lead to Pareto-efficiency; second, that the efficiency they induce may be interpreted as the outcome of an exchange of courtesies; third, and finally, that moral exchange takes place whenever the costs of transaction are sufficiently low. We also explain various phenomena, including the diversity of moral rules in time and space. Finally, we give sufficient conditions for universal moral (...) rules to emerge in a sequence of agreements involving two agents only at a time. (shrink)

This essay interprets John Locke's teachings about private societies, or free private associations. The essay proceeds by interpreting Locke's mature writings on ethics, politics, and philosophy, and then by illustrating Locke's teachings as they apply to two contemporary problems in associational freedom. Although Locke wrote about private societies primarily in the course of arguing for religious toleration, throughout his mature corpus he develops an internally consistent general theory of associational freedom. At first glance, Locke seems to suggest that all citizens (...) are entitled to associate for any end of their choosing, to control admission into and expulsion from their membership, and to enforce their own internal rules of governance. However, Locke qualifies this broad right to bar societies from organizing around ends inconsistent with the minimal moral and political conditions of liberalism. Ultimately, Locke suggests, citizens deserve a broad right of private society only to the extent that they are well enough formed by their regime and its private institutions to be capable of governing themselves in both private and public life.In contrast with contemporary practice, Locke's justification is broader in some respects and narrower in others. The essay illustrates the implications by considering how Locke's teachings justify limiting the scope of anti-discrimination laws and enlarging the scope of government efforts to dissolve seditious associations. (shrink)

A country's right to levy taxes is a fundamental aspect of its sovereignty. Without the power to tax, a government would be unable to redistribute resources among its citizens and provide public goods. The question of how tax rights should be distributed is therefore one of the oldest and most important problems of tax theory. Increased international economic integration has made this question even more important, as a larger share of economic transactions take place across national borders, giving rise to (...) situations in which more than one country is able to tax the same base.How such conflicts are resolved affects both the ability of countries to redistribute resources domestically and the international distribution of tax revenues. The allocation of tax rights therefore raises important questions of distributive justice, questions that require a normative theory of the right to tax. This essay seeks to evaluate the current distribution of tax rights by examining whether it can in fact be justified within the main approaches to distributive justice. (shrink)

Philosophers have long distinguished various interpretations of the principle of equal opportunity and argued over their implications and justifications. But they have almost always tacitly assumed that the context was a national one. They have not, in particular, considered whether some interpretation of the principle could apply and be justified globally, that is, to all people without regard to their nationality or citizenship. Yet, such an investigation is clearly demanded. The leading moral theories seem to support a case for at (...) least some interpretation of the equal opportunity principle, and it is not obvious that they can support it only domestically.Consider, first, those moral theories which place great value on negative liberty, for example, libertarianism. Libertarianism supports a standard interpretation of the equal opportunity principle – “formal” equality of opportunity; formal equality of opportunity requires that legal restrictions j on the taking of opportunities be lifted, and such restrictions diminish negative liberty. But libertarianism would also seem to support a global. version of formal equality of opportunity, for example, that laws be rescinded which require that candidates for jobs in a country be citizens of that country, or which restrict emigration or immigration. Such laws also diminish negative liberty.Or consider those moral theories which place great value on efficiency, for example, utilitarianism. Utilitarianism probably supports formal equality of opportunity because legal restrictions on the taking of opportunity not only diminish negative liberty, but also often prevent talent and skill from going where it can best be used and thus reduce efficiency. (shrink)

This article discusses the suggestion of having the notion of solidarity as the foundational value for welfare scheme reforms. Solidarity is an emerging concept in bioethical deliberations emphasizing the need for value-oriented discussion in revising healthcare structures, and the notion has been contrasted with liberal justice and rights. I suggest that this contrast is unnecessary, flawed, and potentially counterproductive. As necessary as the sense of solidarity is in a society, it is an insufficient concept to secure the goals related to (...) social responsibility. The discussion on solidarity is also based on a questionable sense of nostalgia. Furthermore, solidarity and liberal justice share essential objectives concerning welfare schemes; therefore, the question arises whether the proper comparison should in the first place be within justice and solidarity. (shrink)

This essay begins by focusing on four cultural characters that signify different but associated aspects of the changing destiny of the human figure at the end of the twentieth century and beyond. These characters embody the human figure, in the double sense of form and metaphor, at work, at leisure and at war, and as gendered cultural and philosophical ideal. It is our suggestion that they provide excellent images of a general economy of the future present. Their significance as indices (...) of the destiny of the human resides in the way that they disclose the effects of a restricted economy that overflows its boundaries to incorporate, utilise and restrict every element of its generalised expenditure, to use the categories of Georges Bataille: its sumptuary excess, its sacred forms, its abjected waste, its modes of eroticism, its violence. The essay continues by discussing the implications of, and consequences for, human life in the face of the corporate or techno‐bureaucratic drive to incorporate the ‘impossible‐real’. For Paul Virilio, the technological desire to overwrite the temporal and spatial dimensions of ‘the actual’ discloses something of the ‘divine’ in this new technology. In conclusion, then, the essay questions what resistance there might be to the law of the machine‐God who lies, impossibly, as the immanent being of machinic efficiency, operativity and becoming excellence. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in workplace democracy, the question whether nonworker stakeholders, like suppliers and local communities, warrant inclusion in the governance of democratic companies, as workers do, has been largely neglected. We inspect this question by leaning on the boundary problem in democratic theory. We first argue that the question of who warrants inclusion in democratic workplaces is best addressed by examining why workplace democracy is warranted in the first place, and offer a twofold normative benchmark—addressing objectionable corporate power and (...) upholding efficiency—to assess the principles of democratic inclusion on offer. Against this benchmark, we next argue that the All-Affected Principle is unfit due to its over- and underinclusive extensional results, and that the All-Subjected Principle, whose variants we examine alongside their extensional results, holds more promise when coupled with independent considerations of justice or a constrained variant of the All-Affected Principle. These combinations need not entirely preclude, but speak against, nonworker stakeholder inclusion. (shrink)

A debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker (...) faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge. (shrink)

With increasing use of automated algorithmic decision-making, issues of algorithmic fairness have attracted much attention lately. In this growing literature, existing concepts from ethics and political philosophy are often applied to new contexts. The reverse—that novel insights from the algorithmic fairness literature are fed back into ethics and political philosophy—is far less established. However, this short commentary on Baumann and Loi (Philosophy & Technology, 36(3), 45 2023) aims to do precisely this. Baumann and Loi argue that among algorithmic group fairness (...) measures proposed, one—sufficiency (well-calibration) is morally defensible for insurers to use, whereas independence (statistical parity or demographic parity) and separation (equalized odds) are not normatively appropriate in the insurance context. Such a result may seem to be of relatively narrow interest to insurers and insurance scholars only. We argue, however, that arguments such as that offered by Baumann and Loi have an important but so far overlooked connection to the derivation of the minimal state offered by Nozick (1974) and thus to political philosophy at large. (shrink)

Many philosophers now see meaning in life as a key evaluative category that stands alongside well-being and moral goodness. Our lives are assessed not only by how well they go for us and how morally good they are, but also by their meaningfulness. In this article, I raise a challenge to this view. Theories of meaning in life closely resemble theories of well-being, and there is a suspicion that the former collapse into the latter. I develop this challenge showing that (...) it is formidable. I then answer it by offering a novel account of what meaning in life is and how it differs from well-being. The account I offer is able to resist the strongest form of the challenge while also having much intuitive appeal. (shrink)

According to the standard story, there are two defensible theories of property rights: historical and institutional theories. The former says that you own something when you’ve received it via an unbroken chain of just transfers from its original appropriation. The latter says that you own something when you’ve been assigned it by just institutions. This standard story says that the historical theory throws up a barrier to redistributive economic policies while the institutional theory does not. In this paper, I argue (...) that the standard story is wrong in almost every detail. For a start, neither of these theories are defensible. Both generate absurd consequences when combined with our non-ideal circumstances. In actuality, no unbroken chains of just transfers stretch from original appropriation to what we now possess. And our actual institutions are very seriously unjust. So both theories imply that we actually own almost nothing. I revise these theories so that they avoid this absurd consequence. Yet, when we do this, their distributive implications flip. The institutional theory throws up serious barriers to redistribution while the historical theory tears them down. In our non-ideal circumstances, the distributive implications of these theories are the opposite of what is standardly presumed. (shrink)

How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard (...) solutions for ‘clarifying’ meaning through descriptive definition encounter difficulties with the biases of status quo idioms, as well as partisan translations and circularity. Collectively called linguistic gerrymandering, these difficulties threaten political liberalism’s underlying coherency. The proposed interpretation of political argument overcomes this with a new brand of conceptual analysis that can falsifiably determine whether rhetoric has hijacked political argument. (shrink)

A theory of rational belief should get the cases right. It should also reach its verdicts using the right theoretical assumptions. Leading theories seem to predict the wrong things. With only one exception, they don't accommodate principles that we should use to explain these verdicts. We offer a theory of rational belief that combines an attractive picture of epistemic desirability with plausible principles connecting desirability to rationality. On our view, it's rational to believe when it's sufficiently likely that you'd know (...) because believing when it's sufficiently likely that you'd know minimises expected objective epistemic undesirability. (shrink)

This article proposes a way of understanding Kantianism, act-utilitarianism and some other important ethical theories according to which they are all versions of the same kind of theory, sharing a common structure. I argue that this is a profitable way to understand the theories discussed. It is charitable to the theories concerned; it emphasizes the common ground between them; it gives us insights into the differences between them; and it provides a method for generating new ethical theories worth studying. The (...) article briefly discusses the relationship between these ideas and some other recent proposals that emphasize the common ground between Kantianism and versions of consequentialism. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should replace the common classification of theories of welfare into the categories of hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories. The tripartite classification is objectionable because it is unduly narrow and it is confusing: it excludes theories of welfare that are worthy of discussion, and it obscures important distinctions. In its place, the paper proposes two independent classifications corresponding to a distinction emphasised by Roger Crisp: a four-category classification of enumerative theories (about which items constitute (...) welfare), and a four-category classification of explanatory theories (about why these items constitute welfare). (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to present and defend a new argument for rights contributionism – the view that the notion of a moral claim-right is a contributory (or pro tanto) rather than overall normative notion. The argument is an inference to the best explanation: it is argued that (i) there are contributory moral factors that contrast with standard moral reasons by way of having a number of formal properties that are characteristic of rights, even though they (...) can be overridden, and (ii) that this is best explained by a view that takes these factors to correlate with rights. The second aim is to show that the truth of rights contributionism matters for normative ethics. More specifically, it is argued that rights contributionism clears the way for deontologists to justify the pre-theoretically plausible verdict that we have a duty to save the greater number in so-called Taurek scenarios – scenarios in which we have to choose between saving either a greater or a smaller number of different people. The chapter offers a novel and distinctively deontological explanation of this verdict that is based on the assumption that everyone has a pro tanto right to be saved in a Taurek scenario. (shrink)

Current techno-utopian visions of metaverse raise ontological, ethical, and political questions. Drawing on existing literature on virtual worlds but also philosophically moving beyond that body of work and responding to political contexts concerning identity, capitalism, and climate, this paper begins to address these questions by offering a conceptual framework to think about the ontology of metaverse(s) in ways that see metaverse as real, experienced and shaping our experience, technologically constituted, and political. It shows how this non-dualist political-ontological approach helps to (...) better identify, understand, predict, and evaluate some real and potentially dangerous ethically and politically relevant phenomena, including what I call ‘metacapitalism’’s environmentally problematic dream. (shrink)

This article argues that teachers of environmental ethics must more aggressively entertain questions of private property in their work and in their teaching. To make this case, it first introduces the three primary positions on property: occupation arguments, labor theory of value arguments, and efficiency arguments. It then contextualizes these arguments in light of the contemporary U.S. wise-use movement, in an attempt to make sense of the concerns that motivate wise-use activists, and also to demonstrate how intrinsic value arguments miss (...) the mark. Finally, it offers some suggestions about further directions for environmental ethics, reasoning that there is a good deal of headway to be gained for environmental ethics by accepting that nature can be owned as property, but nevertheless engaging the idea of private property critically. (shrink)

Despite the recent backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge. This paper articulates and defends a novel alternative, Epistemic Kantianism, which rests on a requirement of respect for the truth. §1 tackles some preliminaries concerning the proper formulation of the epistemic consequentialism / non-consequentialism divide, explains where Epistemic Kantianism falls in the dialectical landscape, and shows how it can capture what seems attractive about epistemic consequentialism while yielding predictions that are harder for the latter to (...) secure in a principled way. §2 presents Epistemic Kantianism. §3 argues that it is uniquely poised to satisfy the desiderata set out in §1 on an ideal theory of epistemic justification. §4 gives three further arguments, suggesting that it (i) best explains the objective normative significance of the subject's perspective in epistemology, (ii) follows from the kind of axiology needed to solve the swamping problem together with modest assumptions about the relation between the evaluative and the deontic, and (iii) illuminates certain asymmetries in epistemic value and obligation. §5 takes stock and reassesses the score in the debate. (shrink)

According to the Market Failures Approach to business ethics, beyond-compliance duties can be derived by employing the same rationale and arguments that justify state regulation of economic conduct. Very roughly the idea is that managers have a duty to behave as if they were complying with an ideal regulatory regime ensuring Pareto-optimal market outcomes. Proponents of the approach argue that managers have a professional duty not to undermine the institutional setting that defines their role, namely the competitive market. This answer (...) is inadequate, however, for it is the hierarchical firm, rather than the competitive market, that defines the role of corporate managers and shapes their professional obligations. Thus, if the obligations that the market failures approach generates are to apply to managers, they must do so in an indirect way. I suggest that the obligations the market failures approach generates directly apply to shareholders. Managers, in turn, inherit these obligations as part of their duties as loyal agents. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses existing accounts of the nature of difficulty, finds them wanting, and proposes a new account. The concept of difficulty is routinely invoked in debates regarding degrees of moral responsibility, and the value of achievement. Until recently, however, there has not been any sustained attempt to provide an account of the nature of difficulty itself. This has changed with Gwen Bradford’s Achievement, which argues that difficulty is a matter of how much intense effort is expended. But while (...) this account captures something important about the relationship between difficulty and achievement, it fails to account for the fact that part of what makes achievements great is that they are difficult in a moderately agent-neutral kind of way. Nor is this thought captured by any other extant account. I argue that to fill this gap we should think of difficulty in terms of low probability of success. (shrink)

Abstract: Justice is one of the core humanistic values and behavioral model in societal life. In the mythology of the ancient Roman civilization, Veritas refers to an ultimate moral ideal, whereas in Greek tradition fairness and equity essentially define Aequitas. Hence, political theory determining the inner interpretation of Veritas et Aequitas finds justice in truth as truth is just. While people are naturally inclined to justness, different cultures differently understand its internal norm of correctness and power of apprehending justice appears (...) as either human-created or what came into being itself. However, what is potentially ambiguous is whether it belongs to all or only to some. The often conflicting interpretations of justice made the study unfold the notion through the basic features of its transitional, retributive and distributive inner, show what the Original Position evolved into, reveal (in)conformity between fundaments of liberty, individual and general, and point to exaggerating complexity in defining the core of the notion. (shrink)

I argue that a parental prerogative to sometimes prioritize the interests of one’s children over the interests of others is insufficient to make the parental refusal of routine childhood vaccines morally permissible. This is because the moral permissibility of vaccine refusal follows from such a parental prerogative only if the only (weighty) moral reason in favor of vaccination is that vaccination is a means for promoting the interests of others. However, there are two additional weighty moral reasons in favor of (...) routine vaccination: fairness and concern for the vulnerable. These moral reasons in favor of vaccination are not defeated by a parental prerogative to prioritize the interests of one’s children over the interests of others. (shrink)

Murray N. Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe build their libertarian theory of justice on two axioms concerning self-ownership and homesteading, which are bolstered by two key arguments: reductio ad absurdum and performative contradiction. Each of these arguments is designed to demonstrate that libertarianism is the only theory of justice that can be justified. If either of these arguments were valid, it would prove the libertarian claim that the state is an unjust political arrangement. Giving due weight to the importance of the (...) libertarian anarchist claim, this article exposes and criticizes the arguments that substantiate it. (shrink)

. Book Reviews. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 331-340.

The ethics of corruption cannot be analysed without simultaneously addressing the legitimacy of public office or entrusted power. This paper introduces a concept of core unethical corruption, defined as violations of distributed ethical obligations for private gain. In other words, it is suggested that what is ethically wrong with corruption is that it entails the violation of certain obligations attributed to agents. By explicitly relating corruption to obligations, this approach helps make ethical sense of the concepts of public office or (...) entrusted power, attending to the question of their legitimacy. Since distributed obligations are implied by a wide range of ethical theories, the concept of core unethical corruption also reflects a (partial) overlapping consensus on the ethics of corruption. (shrink)

In recent years, policy debates in the United States have focused heavily on rising healthcare costs and what measures can be taken to ensure greater provision of healthcare to individuals of limited means. Much of the rhetoric on this subject has taken on an explicitly moral character, and one common sentiment is that healthcare is or should be viewed as a basic human right. However, the notion of a right to healthcare has not been well articulated, and critics have failed (...) to distinguish between legal and moral rights. Additionally, there are numerous problems inherent to viewing healthcare as a basic human right-many of which are in direct conflict with distinctly American conceptualizations of rights. The present paper reviews the debate over “rights”-both legal and natural-to healthcare, and argues that problems associated with natural rights arguments render them severely compromised. Instead, market systems commonly accepted in American society may be better suited to reducing healthcare costs and increasing access to services in the United States. (shrink)

Confucian scholars express skepticism about rights. This skepticism is relevant to managers who face issues about the recognition of workplace rights in a Confucian culture. My essay examines the foundations of this skepticism, and the cogency of potential leading Western liberal responses to it. I conclude that Confucian skepticism is more formidable than liberals have recognized. I attempt to craft an argument that defuses Confucian skepticism about workplace rights while at the same time respecting the moral depth of Confucianism.

Abstract:We discuss the role that transnational corporations (TNCs) should play in developing global governance, creating a framework of rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the social (...) responsibility of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)