Although anxiety is frequently seen as a predominantly negative phenomenon, some recent researchers have argued that it plays an important positive function, serving as an alert to warn agents of possible problems or threats. I argue that not only can one’s own, first-personal anxiety perform this function; because it is possible for others—in particular, one’s friends—to feel anxious on one’s behalf, their anxious feelings can sometimes play the same role in our functioning, and make similar contributions to our well-being. I (...) distinguish between a number of kinds of cases in which what I call proxy anxiety serves a positive function, including Anxiety Avoidance (where there is good reason for an agent to avoid becoming anxious herself, but can benefit from a friend’s anxiety on her behalf), Anxiety Omission (where an agent fails to become anxious due to a malfunctioning anxiety-generating system), long-term commitments involving dispositions to feel other-directed proxy anxiety, and cases in which proxy anxiety can help reduce or relieve excessive anxiety. A person’s friends, it is argued, are particularly well positioned to help regulate deficient and/or excessive anxieties, precisely because friends are close enough to care for and identify with the agent, but at the same time distant enough to maintain a relatively objective perspective. I conclude by examining connections between proxy anxiety and theories of well-being. (shrink)

We have arrived at an inflection point, a moment in history when the sentience, conscious- ness, intelligence, agency, and even the moral agency of many nonhuman animals can no longer be questioned without ignoring centuries of accumulated scientific knowledge. Nowhere is this more true than in our understanding of nonhuman primates (NHPs). A neu- roethics committed to probing the ethical implications of brain research must be able to respond to and anticipate the challenges ahead as brain projects globally prepare to (...) increase the use of NHPs in research. This requires adopting a less anthropocentric focus that includes nonhuman animals within its scope. But the Neuroethics Roadmap represents a missed opportunity to critically examine the future direction of research with NHPs in an ethically-responsive neuroscience. (shrink)

In The Moral Dimension, Amitai Etzioni claims, as did Albert Hirschman in Morality and the Social Sciences, that people often act from moral motives, that economics needs to recognize this, and that it will be significantly changed by doing so. I agree, though I think the changes may be smaller than Etzioni believes – I shall be explaining why. But Etzioni goes further. He makes a specific claim about the sort of morality that motivates people: it is deontological. In this (...) paper, I shall examine what this means, how far it is true, and what difference it makes. (shrink)

When individuals receive benefits as a result of the burdens assumed by other people, they are expected to make a return in similar form. To do otherwise is considered as a failure to treat those other people with appropriate respect. It is this which justifies the expectation that individuals share in the labour that is necessary to preserve just institutions and productive practices that characterise complex schemes of social cooperation. In this paper, I argue that where benefits do not meet (...) thresholds specifying the expected function and efficacy of those benefits, this does not simply issue in a ‘downward adjustment’ in the work expectations and reciprocal demands that are made of people. Rather, it legitimates refusal to engage in productive labour even where limited benefits are still being received. Other costs and obligations emerge that contribute to the creation of disruptive political, economic and social associations. These not only replace the demands of reciprocity but actively target and disrupt the practices and exchanges that give form to reciprocity. (shrink)

I argue that desire satisfaction theories of welfare are not committed to the view that changes in welfare levels can happen after death, or that events that occur after death impact the agent's welfare levels now. My argument is that events that occur after death have only epistemological import. They may reveal that the person was successful (unsuccessful) in life, but the desire was already frustrated or satisfied before the person died. The virtue of the account is that it gives (...) us a way to acknowledge both the intuition that we cannot be harmed after we die and, in a sense, the intuition that things that happen after we die are relevant to our lives. (shrink)

In this paper we articulate and diagnose a previously unrecognized problem for theories of entitlement, what we call the Claims Conundrum. It applies to all entitlements that are originally generated by some claim-generating action, such as laboring, promising, or contract-signing. The Conundrum is spurred by the very plausible thought that a later claim to the object to which one is entitled is a function of whether that original claim-generating action is attributable to one. This is further assumed to depend on (...) one’s being identical to the person who performed the claim-generating action. But the right theory of personal identity for grounding these later claims proves quite elusive. In demonstrating both the Claims Conundrum and diagnosing its source, we begin with its instantiation in John Locke’s theories of personal identity and initial acquisition, and then we gradually expand its net to include both Lockean and non-Lockean theories of both, moving ultimately to show that this is a problem for most entitlements generally. We then diagnose the source of the trouble, showing that a basic assumption about the link between attributability and identity that most people take to be obvious is in fact false, clearing a path for future investigation into this overlooked but serious problem’s resolution. (shrink)

In morally grounding a public justification requirement, public reason liberals frequently invoke the idea that persons should be construed as “free and equal.” But this tells us little with regard to what it is about us that makes us free or how a claim about our status as persons can ultimately ground a requirement of public justification. In light of this worry, I argue that a public justification requirement can be grounded in a Nozick-inspired argument from the separateness of persons (...) (one that is consistent with the idea that individuals are free and equal). As I claim, one particular feature of the fact of our separateness – the possession of a basic psychology consisting of beliefs, intentions, sentiments, and a variety of desire-like psychological states – does the most work in grounding both a principle of liberty (PL) and a requirement of public justification (RPJ). Together, PL and RPJ provide the basic framework for a theory of public reason liberalism. (shrink)

This paper concerns the relationship between epistemology and radically extended cognition. Radically extended cognition (REC) – as advanced by Andy Clark and David Chalmers – is cognition that is partly located outside the biological boundaries of the cognizing subject. Epistemologists have begun to wonder whether REC has any consequences for theories of knowledge. For instance, while Duncan Pritchard suggests that REC might have implications for which virtue epistemology is acceptable, J. Adam Carter wonders whether REC threatens anti-luck epistemology. In this (...) paper, I argue that the possibility of REC has no systematic consequences for theorizing in epistemology. I suggest an alternative relationship between the two: epistemology can play a role in diagnosing cases of REC. Thus, by establishing that entities partially located outside biological boundaries don't play certain epistemic roles, one can establish that they don't play the related cognitive roles either. I conclude the paper by illustrating this last point. (shrink)

The paper contains four arguments to show that experiences don't represent. The first argument appeals to the fact that an experience can't occur without what the experience is of; the second appeals to the fact we can have an experience without having any awareness of what it is of, the third argument appeals to the fact that long experiences, such as the experience of being kidnapped, don't represent anything; and the fourth appeals to the fact that experiences often leave physical (...) traces. The author rebuts several arguments for the conclusion that experiences represent. The author also considers some of the pitfalls involved in stipulating that experiences represent in a technical sense of “experience” or “represent”. (shrink)

This paper argues that the practical implementation of blockchain technology can be considered an institution of property similar to legal institutions. Invoking Penner's theory of property and Hegel's system of property rights, and using the example of bitcoin, it is possible to demonstrate that blockchain effectively implements all necessary and sufficient criteria for property without reliance on legal means. Blockchains eliminate the need for a third-party authority to enforce exclusion rights, and provide a system of universal access to knowledge and (...) discoverability about the property rights of all participants and how the system functions. The implications of these findings are that traditional property relations in society could be replaced by or supplemented with blockchain models, and implemented in new domains. (shrink)

States are not only claiming the right to grant or deny entry to their territories but also enforcing this right against non-citizens in ways that cause significant harm to these individuals. In this article, I argue that endorsing the presumptive right to restrict immigration does not settle the question of when or how it may permissibly inflict harm on individuals to enforce this right. I examine three distinct justifications for causing harm to individuals. First, the justification of defensive harm holds (...) that harming individuals is morally permissible when they pose an unjustified threat to others. Second, the justification of protecting property states that harming individuals is morally permissible when they pose an unjustified threat to others’ property interests. Third, I consider the state punishment justification, which maintains that harming individuals is morally permissible when punishment is an appropriate response to their previous conduct. I conclude that any immigration enforcement measure that involves lethal force or the infliction of severe bodily harm is morally impermissible, whether it is used to defend the state or its property. Moreover, criminal sanctions for immigration violations are difficult to justify. (shrink)

Reciprocal libertarianism is a version of left-wing libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian distribution of resources according to reciprocity. In this paper, I show that reciprocal libertarianism is a coherent and appealing view. I discuss how reciprocal libertarians can handle conflicts between self-ownership and reciprocity, and I show that reciprocal libertarianism can be realised in a framework of individual ownership of external resources or in a socialist scheme of common ownership (libertarian socialism). I also compare reciprocal libertarianism with left-libertarian (...) approaches: I argue that a reciprocity-sensitive version of left-libertarianism (reciprocal left-libertarianism) is coherent and morally superior to traditional left-libertarianism, on grounds of incorporating a distinctively solidaristic and recognition-oriented aspect of equality. The policy implications of reciprocal libertarianism will differ depending on which rights people can have over external resources, but all reciprocal libertarian views acknowledge the existence of social rights that people have as co-operators. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Lockean proviso can be utilized as a relevant principle of justice for food security under global climate change. Since reducing GHG emissions is key to enhancing food security, we suggest a global food security scheme that systematically allots, among all people, access to GHG sinks in food systems impacted by global climate change. For consideration of the scheme, it is important to have a principle of justice. Furthermore, it should incorporate the value of fairness. A (...) relevant principle of climate justice for food security should meet the following criteria: (1) the parties concerned under the scheme are states; (2) fairness does not undermine the requirement that the basic needs of all people must be met; (3) when determining fair burdens, a fair distribution of the rights to use GHG sinks should be sensitive both to each state’s responsibility for its GHG emissions and to (4) each state’s effort to reduce such emissions. With them in mind, first, we argue that the Lockean proviso can provide legitimate guidance for each state. Second, the Lockean proviso reasonably enjoins that a state has a right to a food system that secures its citizens’ basic needs, and a duty to meet the basic needs of other people. Third, the Lockean proviso can be deployed as a principle of both global justice and intergenerational justice for food security. Finally, the Lockean proviso enables us to count the reduction of GHG emissions by each state as “the fruits of its labors”. (shrink)

This paper is about the relevance, to the definition of freedom, of values or goods other than freedom. In this respect,its subject matter is not at all new. However, I do believe that new light can be thrown on the nature of this relationship by paying more attention to another relationship – one which exists within the concept of freedom itself. There are two senses in which we can be said to possess freedom. Firstly, there is the sense in which (...) we can be said to be free to do a certain particular thing. Secondly,there is the sense in which we can be said to possess a certain ‘amount’,‘degree’ or ‘quantity’ of freedom, in some overall sense. 1 I believe that most recent accounts of the relationship between freedom and other goods are inconsistent, because they see those other goods as affecting the truth value of claims about freedom in the second sense, but not in the first. (shrink)

Utilitarianism could still be a viable moral and political theory, although an emphasis on justice as distributing burdens and benefits has hidden this from current conversations. The traditional counterexamples prove that we have good grounds for rejecting classical, aggregative forms of consequentialism. A nonaggregative, liberal form of utilitarianism is immune to this rejection. The cost is that it cannot adjudicate when the basic needs of individuals or groups are in conflict. Cases like this must be solved by other methods. This (...) is not a weakness in liberal utilitarianism, on the contrary. The theory clarifies what we should admit to begin with: that ethical doctrines do not have universally acceptable solutions to all difficult problems or hard cases. The theory also reminds us that not all problems are in this sense difficult or cases hard. We could alleviate the plight of nonhuman animals by reducing meat eating. We could mitigate climate change and its detrimental effects by choosing better ways of living. These would imply that most people’s desire satisfaction would be partly frustrated, but liberal utilitarianism holds that this would be justified by the satisfaction of the basic needs of other people and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

:Justice can be approached from many angles in ethical and political debates, including those involving healthcare, biomedical research, and well-being. The main doctrines of justice are liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, luck egalitarianism, socialism, utilitarianism, capability approach, communitarianism, and care ethics. These can be further elaborated in the light of traditional moral and social theories, values, ideals, and interests, and there are distinct dimensions of justice that are captured better by some tactics than by others. In this article, questions surrounding these matters (...) are approached with the hermeneutic idea of a distinction between “American” and “European” ways of thinking. (shrink)

Using Bernard Suits’s brilliant analysis (contra Wittgenstein) of playing a game, this paper examines the intrinsic value of game-playing. It argues that two elements in Suits’s analysis make success in games difficult, which is one ground of value, while a third involves choosing a good activity for the property that makes it good, which is a further ground. The paper concludes by arguing that game-playing is the paradigm modern (Marx, Nietzsche) as against classical (Aristotle) value: since its goal is intrinsically (...) trivial, its value is entirely one of process rather than product, journey rather than destination. (shrink)

Hobbes is known for bridging natural and political philosophy, but less attention has been given to how this distinguishes the Hobbesian conception of the self from individualist strands of liberalism. First, Hobbes’s determinism suggests a conception of the self in which externalities determine the will and what the self is at every moment. Second, there is no stable conception of the self because externalities keep it in a constant state of flux. The metaphysical underpinnings of his project downplay the notion (...) of a purely individualistic conception of the self, pointing to a positivist theory of criminology relying upon external forces. This theory is especially prescient with respect to twentieth-century variants of positivism that focus upon how social organization affects personality. In a sense, then, modern criminological theory is indebted to Hobbes’s focus upon the connections between externalities and the self; a focus that illuminates new ways of viewing responsibility and accountability. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Biomedical experimentation on animals is justified, researchers say, because of its enormous benefits to human beings. Sure, animals suffer and die, but that is morally insignificant since the benefits of research incalculably outweigh the evils. Although this utilitarian claim appears straightforward and relatively uncontroversial, it is neither straightforward nor uncontroversial. This defence of animal experimentation is likely to succeed only by rejecting three widely held moral presumptions. We identify these assumptions and explain their relevance to the justification of animal (...) experimentation. We argue that, even if non‐human animals have considerably less moral worth than humans, experimentation is justified only if the benefits are overwhelming. By building on and expanding on arguments offered in earlier papers, we show that researchers cannot substantiate their claims on behalf of animal research. We conclude that there is currently no acceptable utilitarian defence of animal experimentation. Moreover, it is unlikely that there could be one. Since most apologists of animal experimentation rely on utilitarian justifications of their practice, it appears that biomedical experimentation on animals is not morally justified. (shrink)

Though political philosophers often presuppose that coercive enforcement is fundamental to law, many legal philosophers have doubted this. This article explores doubts of two types. Some legal philosophers argue that given an adequate account of coercion and coerciveness, the enforcement of law in actual legal systems will generally not count as coercive. Others accept that actual legal systems enforce many laws coercively, but they deny that law has a necessary connection with coercion. There can be individual laws that lack coercive (...) sanctions, and it is at least conceptually possible for there to be a legal system that lacks coercive enforcement altogether. This article then examines why most political philosophers and some legal philosophers have been reluctant to treat the conceptual possibility of non-coercive law as significant. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to revisit Brown as a paradigmatic understanding of social justice and its barriers, by reconsidering Brown in light of the three moral pillars of democracy identified by Cornel West (2004). West maintains that authentic deep democracy is grounded in three fundamental capacities and dispositions, or pillars: (a) Socratic questioning, (b) a prophetic commitment to justice, and (c) tragicomic hope. West's articulation of these pillars constitutes 20 a philosophical framework for the exploration of the basic (...) demands of justice in a democratic society. These moral pillars can also offer useful insights into this phase of living exploration of Brown and its central place in educational studies. (shrink)

In earlier work, I argued that observed changes in moral values over human history are best explained as cognitive progress: societies tend over the long term to move closer to the objective moral truth. It is also true that, in recent decades, liberal democracies have moved strongly in the direction of greater government regulation and wealth redistribution. Does this mean that extensive regulation and redistribution are objectively good? I argue that the answer is no; these recent trends are importantly different (...) from earlier examples of moral progress in ways that enable them to be satisfyingly explained without adverting to objective moral correctness. (shrink)

Benefit/cost analysis is a technique for evaluating programs, procedures, and actions; it is not a moral theory. There is significant controversy over the moral justification of benefit/cost analysis. When a procedure for evaluating social policy is challenged on moral grounds, defenders frequently seek a justification by construing the procedure as the practical embodiment of a correct moral theory. This has the apparent advantage of avoiding difficult empirical questions concerning such matters as the consequences of using the procedure. So, for example, (...) defenders of benefit/cost analysis (BCA) are frequently tempted to argue that this procedurejust isthe calculation of moral Tightness – perhaps that what itmeansfor an action to be morally right is just for it to have the best benefit-to-cost ratio given the accounts of “benefit” and “cost” that BCA employs. They suggest, in defense of BCA, that they have found the moral calculus – Bentham's “unabashed arithmetic of morals.” To defend BCA in this manner is to commit oneself to one member of a family of moral theories (let us call thembenefit/cost moral theoriesorB/C moral theories) and, also, to the view that if a procedure is (so to speak) the direct implementation of a correct moral theory, then it is a justified procedure. Neither of these commitments is desirable, and so the temptation to justify BCA by direct appeal to a B/C moral theory should be resisted; it constitutes an unwarranted short cut to moral foundations – in this case, an unsound foundation. Critics of BCA are quick to point out the flaws of B/C moral theories, and to conclude that these undermine the justification of BCA. But the failure to justify BCA by a direct appeal to B/C moral theory does not show that the technique is unjustified. There is hope for BCA, even if it does not lie with B/C moral theory. (shrink)

Gauthier's version of the Lockean proviso (in Morals by Agreement) is inappropriate as the foundation for moral rights he takes it to be. This is so for a number of reasons. It lacks any proportionality test thus allowing arbitrarily severe harms to others to prevent trivial harms to oneself. It allows one to inflict any harm on another provided that if one did not do so, someone else would. And, by interpreting the notion of bettering or worsening one's position in (...) terms of subjective expected utility, it allows immoral manipulation of others and imposes unwarranted restrictions based on preferences that should carry no moral weight. (shrink)

Research Articles Donald C. Hubin, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Technology corporations and the emerging digital health market are exerting increasing influence over the public healthcare agendas forming around the application of mobile medical devices. By promising quick and cost-effective technological solutions to complex healthcare problems, they are attracting the interest of funders, researchers, and policymakers. They are also shaping the public facing discourse, advancing an overwhelmingly positive narrative predicting the benefits of wearable medical devices to include personalised medicine, improved efficiency and quality of care, the empowering of under-resourced communities, (...) and delivery of health services previously unavailable to the citizens of developing countries. Typically techno-optimist in their description, the key barriers to this impending inflection point in healthcare are identified as technical issues such as short battery life and a lack of data protection. However, this tech innovation narrative is consistent with problematic ethical, social, and political assumptions that have practical and normative effects, and risk, one, undermining the real clinical potential of wearable devices and, two, designing social inequality and injustice into our mobile health interventions in global healthcare. I argue that the foundational assumptions dealing with the just distribution of healthcare ‘goods’, the individual as part of society, and the political framing of future healthcare policy devalue equity and despite what they promise cannot meet the distinctive needs of individuals and groups that do not conform to a standardised concept of care-receiver. (shrink)

The use of the concept of moral status is commonplace today in debates about the moral consideration of entities lacking certain special capacities, such as nonhuman animals. This concept has been typically used to defend the view that adult human beings have a status higher than all those entities. However, even those who disagree with this claim have often accepted the idea of moral status as if it were part of an undisputed received way of thinking in ethics. This paper (...) argues that the use of this concept, however common, distorts our understanding of how to behave towards different individuals in different circumstances. When moral status is identified with the interest in living or the capacity for well-being, it becomes an arbitrary and irrelevant criterion. When it is used as a synonym of moral consideration or considerability, in a way that is compatible with the principle of equal consideration, it becomes trivial and confusing. When used, instead, to defend the unequal moral consideration of interests of equal weight, it has several implausible implications. In particular, the claim that unequal status is justified because of the value of cognitive capacities implausibly entails that our exercising those capacities should have priority over the promotion of our wellbeing. The idea of full moral status is also problematic as it implies the possibility of status monsters. In addition, its use is based in a misconceived way of what it would really entail to have a full status by virtue of having rational capacities. The paper concludes that we have strong reasons to abandon the concept of moral status altogether. (shrink)

It is customary to think that Objective List (“OL), Desire-Satisfaction (“D-S”) and Hedonistic (“HED”) theories of prudential value pretty much cover the waterfront, and that those of the three that are “subjective” are naturalistic (in the sense attacked by Moore, Ross and Ewing), while those that are “objective” must be Platonic, Aristotelian or commit the naturalist fallacy. I here argue for a theory that is both naturalistic (because voluntaristic) and objective but neither Platonic, Aristotelian, nor (I hope) fallacious. In addition, (...) this proposal, called “CHOICE,” is an example of neither an OL, D-S, nor HED theory. It is a theory according to which uncoerced choosings create objective values that we (even everyone) may be wrong about, because valuations are conative rather than epistemic activities. On this view, intrinsic prudential goods necessarily involve likely (pursuant to lawlike regularities) net increases in successful free choosings . (shrink)

One so-called paradox of blackmail concerns the fact that “two legal whites together make a black.” That is, it is licit to threaten to reveal a person’s secret, and it is separately lawful to ask him for money; but when both are undertaken at once, together, this act iscalled blackmail and is prohibited. A second so-called paradox is that if the blackmailer initiates the act, this is seen by jurists asblackmail and illicit, while if the blackmailee (the person blackmailed) originates (...) the contract, this is commonly interpreted as bribery and is not illicit.But these are paradoxes only for legal theorists innocent of libertarian theory. The authors use that perspective to reject the claim thatblackmail should be unlawful. If this act were legalized, then both paradoxes would disappear, precisely their contention. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the prospects for a rights-based approach to the morality of pure risk-imposition. In particular, I discuss a practical challenge to proponents of the thesis that we have a right against being imposed a risk of harm. According to an influential criticism, a right against risk-imposition will rule out all ordinary activities. The paper examines two strategies that rights theorists may follow in response to this “Paralysis Problem”. The first strategy introduces a threshold for when a (...) risk-imposition is a rights violation. The second strategy drops the claim that rights are absolute and maintains that all rights infringements generate compensation duties. It is argued that both strategies face significant practical problems of their own and that the Paralysis Problem seems fatal for a right against risk-imposition in the absence of an adequate account of the morally relevant threshold risk. (shrink)

While some suggestions have been made as to how the duty to undertake humanitarian intervention should be assigned to specific states, the question of how to assign the duty to carry the economic a...

ABSTRACTSome suggest that the duty of humanitarian intervention should be discharged by states that are historically responsible for the occurrence of violence. A fundamental problem with this suggestion is that historically responsible states might be ill-suited to intervene because they are unlikely to enjoy support from the local population. Cécile Fabre has suggested a way around that problem, arguing that responsible states ought to pay for humanitarian interventions even though they ought not to take part in the military operations. We (...) claim that Fabre’s idea is subject to two concerns. First, the duty to perform might not be appropriately transferrable from the historically responsible state to another state because it would allow the primary duty bearer to escape the worst costs of intervention. Second, an intervention might be as unlikely to generate local support when a historically responsible state pays for an intervention as when it performs it. These problems are enough to cast doubt on Fabr... (shrink)

Many critics of utilitarianism claim that we should reject interpersonal aggregation because aggregative principles do not take the separateness of persons seriously. In this article, I will reject this claim. I will first elucidate the theoretical structure of aggregation. I will then consider various interpretations of the notion of the separateness of persons and clarify what exactly those critics are trying to reject by appealing to the notion of the separateness of persons. I will argue that none of these interpretations (...) can serve as the ground for rejecting aggregation. (shrink)

Institutions generate cooperative benefits that explain why they exist and persist. Therefore, their etiological function is to promote cooperation. The function of a particular institution, such as money or traffic regulations, is to solve one or more cooperation problems. We go on to argue that the teleological function of institutions is to secure values by means of norms. Values can also be used to redesign an institution and to promote social change. We argue, however, that an adequate theory of institutions (...) should not be ‘moralized’ in that they should not be defined in terms of the values they are supposed to promote. (shrink)

Many philosophers deny that happiness can be equated with pleasurable experiences. Nozick introduced an experience machine thought experiment to support the idea that happiness requires pleasurable experiences that are “in contact with reality.” In this thought experiment, people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences. We test Nozick’s hypothesis that people will reject this offer. We also contrast Nozick’s experience machine scenario with scenarios that are less artificial, and offer options which are less invasive or (...) disruptive than being connected to a machine, specifically scenarios in which people are offered an experience pill or a pill that improves overall functioning. (shrink)

Scholarly discussion has treated the account of the state of nature which Locke presents in his Second Treatise as neither an hypothesis nor a description but rather as a fiction. John Dunn, for example, claims that it is a `theoretical analysis of the fundamental relations of right and duty which obtain between human beings, relations which are logically prior to the particular historical situations in which all actual human beings always in fact find themselves'. Here Dunn presents a misleading account (...) of Locke's argument, presumably, as the title of his paper suggests, in order to mount an argument of his own about the `political relevance' of Locke's work to a time when no one takes seriously the early modern idea of the state of nature. However, this article also has a more serious concern. I argue that the representation of the state of nature as a merely imaginary, `theoretical analysis' of social relations obscures the significance of the early modern idea of a state of nature, not only for the work of Locke and his near contemporaries, but also, more importantly, for the broader development of western social and political thought. The idea of an original condition of freedom and equality played a central role in Locke's argument, serving as a means both to undermine the view that humans were born into a natural condition of subjection to the rule of others and to justify European expropriation of land in the Americas. It also represented one end of a developmental continuum, running from the original, most primitive, condition of humanity through to the societies of contemporary western Europe, which was thought to encompass all sections of humanity. While the idea of an original asocial condition on which this continuum was based was later brought into question, a closely related developmental framework nevertheless informed later movements in history and the social sciences. After being abandoned in its original form, this category was finally revived in 20th-century political theory, this time precisely in the form that Dunn mistakenly ascribes to Locke. The article concludes by speculating on the relationship between these normative and empirical perspectives on the state of nature. (shrink)

Next SectionBecause of the radically incarnational nature of the Christian understanding of ethics and bioethics, according to Kierkegaard, there has always been an infinite gulf between Christian bioethics and secular bioethics. However, the process of the secularization of the public square has made this gulf more apparent and salient for the current ethical debates in biomedicine and the culture more generally.

:Freedom is often analysed in terms of the absence of intentionally imposed constraints. I defend the alternative view on which the relevant constraints are those for which some agent can be held morally responsible. I argue that this best captures the relation between freedom and respect. Berlin correctly points out that intentional restrictions exhibit ill will and hence are disrespectful. However, the same holds, I argue, for restrictions that are due to indifference. Berlin also observed that it would be counterintuitive (...) if an agent could increase her freedom by changing her preferences. I criticize the argument that Dowding and Van Hees present according to which this observation counts in favour of explicating freedom in terms of intentionality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Do Buddhist philosophical commitments support a particular theory of well-being? Most authors who have examined this question argue that Buddhist ideas are compatible with multiple theories of well-being. In this paper, I contend that one tradition of Buddhist philosophy—Abhidharma—does imply a specific theory of welfare. In particular, Abhidharma supports hedonism. Most Ābhidharmikas claim that only property-particulars called dharmas ultimately exist and I argue that an Abhidharmic theory of well-being should only refer to these properties. Yet the only dharmas that (...) could plausibly be intrinsically good are phenomenal properties that are good in virtue of how they feel. Thus, the only intrinsically good things are pleasures. I defend this surprising conclusion from various interpretative objections and show that my argument can also inform contemporary philosophical debates about welfare. (shrink)

Susan Moller Okin's critique of libertarianism in Justice, Gender, and the Family has received only slight attention in the libertarian literature. I find this neglect of Okin's argument surprising: The argument is straightforward and, if sound, it establishes a devastating conflict between the core libertarian notions of self-ownership and the acquisition of property through labour. In this paper, I first present a reconstruction of Okin's argument. In brief, she points out that mothers make children through their labour; thus it would (...) seem that mothers own their children; but this implies that the children are not self-owners. I then examine the two most common objections to this argument in the literature: mothers do not make children, and acquisition by labour includes an exception for persons. I give several replies to each objection, including an extension of Okin's argument that I call Okin's dilemma. This dilemma argues that the libertarian can avoid Okin's conclusion only by requiring an.. (shrink)

In this article I first use Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of a practice to develop a version of the common, although increasingly controversial, ideal of value-free, value-neutral, or autonomous science. I then briefly show how this ideal has been used by some philosophers to criticize both governmental and commercial funding of science. I go on to argue that, far from being value neutral, certain elements of this ideal strongly resemble some controversial elements of libertarian political philosophy. I suggest that alternative ideals (...) for science might be developed by drawing on egalitarian liberal and communitarian political philosophy. (shrink)

Contractualism is one of the most promising ‘centers of gravity’ in business ethics. In this guest editorial we provide a concise roadmap to the field, sketching contractualism’s historic and disciplinary antecedents, the basic argumentative structure of the contract model, and its boundary conditions. We also sketch two main dimensions along which contributions to the contractualist tradition can be positioned. The first dimension entails positive versus normative theorizing – does a given contribution analyze the world as it is or how it (...) ought to be? The second dimension involves four different levels of analysis that are commonly employed in contractualist business ethics: the nano, micro, meso, and macro levels. We then proceed to position the articles comprising this special issue along these two dimensions. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that sufficientarian principles are indispensable in the set of principles that have bearing on issues in distributive ethics. I provide two arguments in favor of this claim. First, I argue that sufficientarianism is the only framework that allows us to appropriately analyze what sort of obligations we have toward individuals who are badly off due to their own faults and choices. Second, I argue that sufficientarianism is the only theory that provides an adequate framework for (...) thinking about the desperately badly off. (shrink)

This article presents an approach to how to make reasonable social choices when independent criteria (e.g., prioritarianism, religious freedom) fail to fully determine what to do. The article outlines different explanations of why independent criteria sometimes fail to fully determine what to do and illustrates how they can still be used to eliminate ineligible alternatives, but it is argued that the independent criteria cannot ground a reasonable social choice in these situations. To complement independent criteria when they fail to fully (...) determine what to do, it is suggested that society must engage in public deliberation by way of generating new reasons that can determine how to rank the alternatives. It is suggested that the approach to social choice presented here reveals a way of accepting the relevance of independent criteria for social choice without letting go of the idea that the attitudes of affected parties matter. (shrink)

Generating an account that can sidestep the disagreement among substantive theories of well-being, while at the same time still providing useful guidance for well-being public policy, would be a significant achievement. Unfortunately, the various attempts to remain agnostic regarding what constitutes well-being fail to either be an account of well-being, provide useful guidance for well-being policy, or avoid relying on a substantive well-being theory. There are no theory-free lunches in well-being policy. Instead, I propose an intermediate account, according to which (...) well-being is constituted by endorsed veridical experiences. This account refers back to theories of well-being but does so as agnostically as possible. An intermediate account of well-being is meant as a policy guiding compromise between the different theories of well-being that make claims regarding what constitutes well-being. An intermediate account does as well as can be hoped for in providing a basis for well-being policy. (shrink)