A concept that can be expressed by the term ‘rationality’ plays a central role in both epistemology and ethics -- and especially in formal epistemology and decision theory. It is argued here that when the term is used in this way, the concept of “rationality” is the concept of a kind of virtue, with all the central features that are ascribed to the virtues by Plato and Aristotle, among others. Interpreting rationality as a kind of virtue helps to solve several (...) problems, such as the relations between “rationality” and “rational requirements” and between “propositional” and “doxastic justification”, and to answer objections to the thesis that “rationality” is a normative concept that are based on the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in civic republicanism. In light of this revival, it is interesting to consider what sort of theory of legal or judicial adjudication such a doctrine—centered on the value of promoting freedom from domination—would recommend. After discussing the importance of such a theory and clarifying its relationship to broader questions of institutional design, it is argued that theories of adjudication should be assessed according to three criteria: first, their contribution to the (...) republican cause of promoting freedom from domination; second, their suitability to the characteristic features of legal systems; and third, their impact on long-run institutional stability. According to these criteria, a republican theory of adjudication would hold that judges and other legal officials should strive in their decisions and interpretations to maintain and enhance the distinctive value of the rule of law. (shrink)

Shame is most frequently defined as the emotion we feel when we fail to live up to standards, norms, or ideals. I argue that this definition is flawed because it cannot explain some of the most paradigmatic features of shame. Agents often respond to shame with violence, but if shame is the painful feeling of failing to live up to an ideal, this response is unintelligible. I offer a new account of shame that can explain the link between shame and (...) violence. On my view, shame arises out of a tension between our identity and our self-conception: those things about which we feel shame are part of our identities, but they are not part of our self-conception. I conclude by arguing that this account of shame is a valuable moral emotion. (shrink)

The democratic egalitarian ideal requires that everyone should enjoy equal power over the world through voting. If it is improper to vote twice in the same election, why should it be permissible for dual citizens to vote in two different places? Several possible excuses are considered and rejected.

This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of (...) ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice and from the nature of political judgement. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought. (shrink)

Suppose you can save only one of two groups of people from harm, with one person in one group, and five persons in the other group. Are you obligated to save the greater number? While common sense seems to say ‘yes’, the numbers skeptic says ‘no’. Numbers Skepticism has been partly motivated by the anti-consequentialist thought that the goods, harms and well-being of individual people do not aggregate in any morally significant way. However, even many non-consequentialists think that Numbers Skepticism (...) goes too far in rejecting the claim that you ought to save the greater number. Besides the prima facie implausibility of Numbers Skepticism, Michael Otsuka has developed an intriguing argument against this position. Otsuka argues that Numbers Skepticism, in conjunction with an independently plausible moral principle, leads to inconsistent choices regarding what ought to be done in certain circumstances. This inconsistency in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Numbers Skepticism. Kirsten Meyer offers a notable challenge to Otsuka’s argument. I argue that Meyer’s challenge can be met, and then offer my own reasons for rejecting Otsuka’s argument. In light of these criticisms, I then develop an improved, yet structurally similar argument to Otsuka’s argument. I argue for the slightly different conclusion that the view proposed by John Taurek that ‘the numbers don’t count’ leads to inconsistent choices, which in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Taurek’s position. (shrink)

This paper argues for the legalization of vote markets. I contend that the state should not prohibit the sale of votes under certain institutional conditions. Jason Brennan has recently argued for the moral permissibility of vote selling; yet, thus far, no philosopher has argued for the legal permissibility of vote selling. I begin by giving four prima facie reasons in favour of legalizing vote markets. First, vote markets benefit both buyers and sellers. Second, citizens already enjoy significant discretion in their (...) use of their vote, including the ability to use their vote in ways antithetical to justice and the public interest. Third, vote markets are relevantly similar to other democratic practices that are legally permissible. Fourth, vote markets enable elections to better reflect the intensity of citizens’ preferences. Next, I reply to two counter-arguments. The first contends that vote markets will increase the political power of the wealthy; the second contends that votes must be used in the serv.. (shrink)

Several attempts have been made to apply the choice-sensitive theory of distributive justice, luck egalitarianism, in the context of health and healthcare. This article presents a framework for this discussion by highlighting different normative decisions to be made in such an application, some of the objections to which luck egalitarians must provide answers and some of the practical implications associated with applying such an approach in the real world. It is argued that luck egalitarians should address distributions of health rather (...) than healthcare, endorse an integrationist theory that combines health concerns with general distributive concerns and be pluralist in their approach. It further suggests that choice-sensitive policies need not be the result of applying luck egalitarianism in this context. (shrink)

In normative ethical theory, computer ethics belongs to the area of applied ethics dealing with practical and everyday moral problems arising from the use of computers and computer networks in the information society. Modern scholarship usually approves deontological and utilitarian ethics as appropriate to computer ethics, while classical theories of ethics, such as virtue ethics, are usually neglected as anachronistic and unsuitable to the information era and ICT industry. During past decades, an Aristotelian form of virtue ethics has been revived (...) in modern philosophical enquiries with serious attempts for application to computer ethics and cyberethics. In this paper, the author argues that current trends and behaviours in online communication require an ethics of self-care found in Plotinus’ self-centred virtue ethics theory. The paper supports the position that Plotinus’ virtue ethics of intellectual autonomy and self-determination is relevant to cyberethics discussions involved in computer education and online communication. (shrink)

Talk about Beliefs Mark Crimmins, 1992 Cambridge, MA, MIT Press xi + 214 pp., $25.00The Roots of Thinking Mahne Sheets‐Johnstone, 1990 Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press ix + 389 pp.Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism Owen Flanagan, 1991 Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 393 ppBehavioral Endocrinology Jill S. Becker, S. Marc Breedlove & David Crews, 1992 Cambridge, MA, MIT Press xxiii + 574 ppLanguages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation Ray S. Jackendoff, 1992 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford (...) Books i‐ix, 1–200 pp., ISBN 0–262–10047–9Parapsychology: A Concise History John Beloff, 1993 London: Athlone Press xiv + 330 pp ISBN 0 485 11405 4 hb, £32.00 ISBN 0 485 12096 8 pb, £12.95. (shrink)

Proposals for how to redesign democracy so as to better secure the demands of intergenerational justice can be divided into three broad families: (1) representative proxies; (2) differential voting schemes; and (3) counter-majoritarian devices. However, these proposals suffer from a fundamental weakness: namely, they all assume that despite the fact that democracy is by its very nature ill-equipped to secure intergenerational justice, it is nevertheless possible to rely on democracy to solve this problem in the first place. But that, to (...) put it colloquially, is like thinking that one can pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. This paper sketches the shape and contours of a solution to this problem that is better able than the alternatives to escape this objection. This solution draws upon the strategy of a so-called ‘non-reformist reform.’. (shrink)

Many advocate practices of ‘local food’ or ‘locavorism’ as a partial solution to the injustices and unsustainability of contemporary food systems. I think that there is much to be said in favor of local food movements, but these virtues are insufficient to immunize locavorism from criticism. In particular, three duties of international ethics—beneficence, repair and fairness—may provide reasons for constraining the developed world’s permissible pursuit of local food. A complete account of why (and how) the fulfillment of these duties constrains (...) locavorism will require extensive empirical evidence about the relationship between agricultural demand-led industrialization, international trade (rules), and local food practices. In this paper I can only gesture at some of this evidence and, for that reason, my policy prescriptions are merely provisional. Instead, the upshot of this paper is that advocates of locavorism ought to be attentive to the empirical-dependence of the moral permissibility of their projects. As local food ‘scales up’—and comes to be embraced as a goal of political communities—these concerns should receive even greater attention. (shrink)

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)

In response to recent policy trends towards linking social rights more tightly to work requirements, this article argues that those sharing Rawlsian commitments have good reasons to prefer a radical‐liberal policy agenda with a universal basic income at its core. Compared to its main rivals in present policy debates, the politics of basic income has greater potential to promote the economic life prospects of the least advantaged in a way that provides a robust protection for the bases of social recognition (...) and non‐subservience. The argument seeks to establish that these concerns should be ascribed priority in the most plausible balancing of Rawlsian objectives and that doing so generates a strong case for basic income. As recent arguments for basic income have suggested that Rawls’ theory is insufficient to make the case for such a reform, this analysis also demonstrates that a powerful argument for basic income can be built on Rawlsian foundations alone. (shrink)

One response to the demandingness objection is that it begs the question against consequentialism by assuming a moral distinction between what a theory requires and what it permits. According to the consequentialist, this distinction stands in need of defense. However, this response may also beg the question, this time at the methodological level, regarding the credibility of the intuitions underlying the objection. The success of the consequentialist's response thus turns on the role we assign to intuitions in our moral methodology. (...) After presenting the demandingness objection to consequentialism and revealing the underlying methodological stalemate, I break the stalemate by appealing to research in the cognitive neuroscience of intuitions. Given the evidence for the hypothesis that our moral intuitions are fundamentally emotional (rather than rational) responses, we should give our intuitions a modest (rather than robust) role in our moral methodology. This rescues the consequentialist's response to the demandingness objection. (shrink)

Unlike his theory of justice as fairness, John Rawls’s political liberalism has generally been spared from critiques regarding what is due to the disabled. This paper demonstrates that, due to the account of the basic ideas of society and persons provided by Rawls, political liberalism requires that the interests of numerous individuals with disabilities should be put aside when the most fundamental issues of justice are settled. The aim is to accommodate within public reason the due concern for the disabled (...) while upholding political liberalism. To achieve this aim, a revision of the basic ideas of persons and society is proposed. The idea of persons should be regarded as more fundamental than that of social cooperation, and persons should be defined in terms of minimal moral powers. (shrink)

This paper studies welfare tradeoffs in two-sided, one-to-one matching markets. We begin by providing theoretical upper bounds on a utilitarian price of stability, and show that these bounds vary with the composition of participants’ ordinal preference lists. We then turn to simulation experiments to describe how changes in basic characteristics of agents’ preferences can increase or decrease the average price of stability as measured by both utilitarian and Rawlsian welfare criteria. Our results indicate that markets featuring moderate degrees of correlation (...) and positive intercorrelation in the preferences of participants exhibit the steepest tradeoffs between stability and utilitarian welfare and between stability and Rawlsian welfare. (shrink)

Narrative bioethics is primarily understood to involve storytelling through the use of literature. This article suggests that other forms of media are necessary to convey stories of an ethical nature to an audience broader than one being trained as medical professionals. “Documentary bioethics” is a manner to present and interpret stories of an ethical nature using forms of popular electronic media in a reality-based documentary style to society at large, specifically Generations X and Y.

This article argues that the concept of evil is needed in normative ethics in general as well as in the professional ethics of social work. Attention is drawn to certain shortcomings in the classical theories of normative ethics when it comes to recognizing the profound destructiveness of certain types of acts that exceed the mere ?bad? or ?wrong? applied in the most common theories of moral philosophy. Having established the category of morally evil acts in general, the author turns to (...) the field of social work and applies it to some paradigm cases of evil that many social workers are likely to be confronted with during the course of their service. In the final part of the article, the concept of moral evil is discussed in relation to the professional ethics of social work in general, with reference to certain value assumptions that are found to be inherent to social work. (shrink)

David Brady argues that low European poverty rates are a result of the welfare state. His finding relies on a relative measure of poverty, according to which the threshold for being poor differs across countries. Using the American poverty threshold as a fixed measure, though, Western Europe has a poverty rate of 18 percent, higher than that of the United States. Moreover, Brady's thesis that welfare-state spending explains cross-country differences in inequality does not take account of the problem of reverse (...) causality. Historically, welfare states developed in homogeneous nations that started out with higher levels of social capital and lower inequality. Scandinavia, for example, had unusually low poverty rates a century ago, and even today Americans with Scandinavian ancestry exhibit a poverty rate no higher than that in Scandinavia. Since poverty, social capital, population homogeneity, and the size of the welfare state relate in multiple ways to each other, we cannot rely on cross-country correlations to isolate the causal effect of the welfare state on poverty rates. (shrink)

John Rawls's account of Kantian constructivism is perhaps his most striking contribution to ethics. In this paper, I examine the relation between Rawls's constructivism and its foundation in Kantian intuitions. In particular, I focus on the progressive influence on Rawls's approach of the Kantian intuition that the substance of morality is best understood as constructed by free and equal people under fair conditions. Rawls's focus on this Kantian intuition, I argue, motivates the focus on social contract that grounds both his (...) accounts of the original position and of reflective equilibrium. Critics, including Onora O'Neill and Larry Krasnoff, object that Rawls's view distorts various aspects of Kantian moral reasoning. I argue that these objections (i) exaggerate the distinctions between Kant's and Rawls's decision procedures and (ii) reflect an unnecessarily constricted view of Kant's moral thought. (shrink)

In this article, I suggest and support a utilitarian approach to business ethics. Utilitarianism is already widely used as a business ethic approach, although it is not well developed in the literature. Utilitarianism provides a guiding framework of decision making rooted in social benefit which helps direct business toward more ethical behavior. It is the basis for much of our discussion regarding the failures of Enron, Worldcom, and even the subprime mess andWallStreetMeltdown. In short, the negative social consequences are constantly (...) referred to as proof of the wrongness of these actions and events, and the positive social consequences of bailouts and other plans are used as ethical support for those plans to right the wrongs.I believe the main cause of the neglect of the utilitarian approach is because of misguided criticisms. Here, I defend utilitarianism as a basis for business ethics against many criticisms found in the business ethics literature, showing that a business ethics approach relying onJohnStuartMill's utilitarianism supports principles like justice, is not biased against the minority, and is more reasonable than other views such as aKantian view when dealing with workers and making other decisions in business. I also explain utilitarian moral motivation and use satisficing theory to attempt to defend utilitarian business ethics from questions raised regarding utilitarian calculus. (shrink)

One of the most troubling features of international trade is that it often involves exchange between individuals facing dramatically different life circumstances, who therefore derive different levels of benefit from the exchange. Most obviously, wages are extremely low in underdeveloped countries. However, the principle underlying these wages is the same as the one the dictates wage levels in wealthy countries. It is, therefore, difficult to criticize the wages paid to ?pauper labor? without at the same time criticizing the way that (...) capitalism functions as a whole. For those who would like to question aspects of globalization, without simply repeating the standard moralizing critique of capitalism, this poses particular difficulties. This paper offers some suggestions on how egalitarians can approach this issue. The central piece of conceptual apparatus introduced, in the service of this aim, is the distinction between a ?first-best?, a ?second-best?, and an ?nth best? set of normative principles. It is then suggested, first, that capitalism is acceptable to egalitarians only within a third-best framework, and second, that this low level of idealization imposes real constraints on how far one can go in criticizing trade practices at the global level. (shrink)

Many discussions of love and the family treat issues of justice as something alien. On this view, concerns about whether one's family is internally just are in tension with the modes of interaction that are characteristic of loving families. In this essay, we challenge this widespread view. We argue that once justice becomes a shared family concern, its pursuit is compatible with loving familial relations. We examine four arguments for the thesis that a concern with justice is not at home (...) within a loving family, and we explain why these arguments fail. We develop and defend an alternative conception of the justice-oriented loving family, arguing that justice can—and, for the sake of justice, should—be seen as a family value. (shrink)

The evidential value of moral intuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that the intuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on the intuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts in these domains, we (...) also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of the moral domain itself. (shrink)

In this article, we survey some current debates among cosmopolitans and their critics. We begin by surveying some distinctions typically drawn among kinds of cosmopolitanisms, before canvassing some of the diverse varieties of cosmopolitan justice, exploring positions on the content of cosmopolitan duties of justice, and a prominent debate between cosmopolitans and defenders of statist accounts of global justice. We then explore some common concerns about cosmopolitanism – such as whether cosmopolitan commitments are necessarily in tension with other affiliations people (...) typically have and how we should deal with issues concerning a perceived lack of authority in the global domain – and whether these can be addressed. We also look briefly at how the concern with feasibility has led some to take up the challenge of devising public policy that is cosmopolitan in outlook, before offering some concluding remarks on future directions in these debates. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism is a family of egalitarian theories of distributive justice that aim to counteract the distributive effects of luck. This article explains luck egalitarianism's main ideas, and the debates that have accompanied its rise to prominence. There are two main parts to the discussion. The first part sets out three key moves in the influential early statements of Dworkin, Arneson, and Cohen: the brute luck/option luck distinction, the specification of brute luck in everyday or theoretical terms and the specification (...) of advantage as resources, welfare, or some combination of these. The second part covers three later developments: the democratic egalitarian critique of luck egalitarianism, the luck egalitarian acceptance of pluralism, and luck egalitarian doubts about the significance of the brute luck/option luck distinction. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Joshua W. Seachris (2012) argues that the distinction I make between perspectives and standards in sub specie aeternitatis arguments for the meaninglessness of life does not hold for a salient component of the sub specie aeternitatis perspective: the ontological-normative component. In this article I suggest that Seachris’s argument is problematic in a number of ways and ought to be rejected.

Utilitarianism is often rejected on the grounds that it fails to respect the separateness of persons, instead treating people as mere “receptacles of value”. I develop several different versions of this objection, and argue that, despite their prima facie plausibility, they are all mistaken. Although there are crude forms of utilitarianism that run afoul of these objections, I advance a new form of the view—‘token-pluralistic utilitarianism’—that does not.

According to deterrence justifications of legal punishment, legal punishment is justified at least in part because it deters offenses. These justifications rely on important empirical assumptions, e.g., that non-punitive enforcement can't deter or that it can't deter enough. I’ll challenge these assumptions and argue that extant deterrence justifications of legal punishment fail. In the process, I examine contemporary deterrence research and argue that it provides no support for these justifications.

In this paper, I address the question of whether aerosol geoengineering (AG) ought to be deployed as a response to climate change. First, I distinguish AG from emissions mitigation, adaptation, and other geoengineering strategies. Second, I discuss advantages and disadvantages of AG, including its potential to result in substantial harm to some persons. Third, I critique three arguments against AG deployment, suggesting reasons why these arguments should be rejected. Fourth, I consider an argument that, in scenarios in which all available (...) climate change strategies would result in net harm to persons, we ought to adopt that response to climate change which would result in the least net harm. I suggest that under .. (shrink)

The Confucian family, not only in its historical manifestations but also in the imagination of the Confucian founders, was the locus of misogynist norms and practices that have subjugated women in varying degrees. Therefore, advancing women’s well-being and equality in East Asia may seem to require radically transforming the Confucian family to approximate alternative ideal conceptions of the family in the West. This article opposes such a stance by arguing that (1) Western conceptions of the family may be neither plausible (...) nor feasible in traditionally Confucian societies and (2) the Confucian family, once reconstructed in line with Confucianism’s core ideas and values, can be conducive to a feminist future in East Asia that is uniquely Confucian. In order to support my position, not only influential contemporary Western ideal conceptions of the family from the justice perspective and care ethics, but also different interpretations of the Confucian family will be carefully examined. (shrink)

At the United Nations climate change conference in 2011, parties decided to launch the “Durban Platform” to work towards a new long-term climate agreement. The decision was notable for the absence of any reference to “equity”, a prominent principle in all previous major climate agreements. Wealthy countries resisted the inclusion of equity on the grounds that the term had become too closely yoked to developing countries’ favored conception of equity. This conception, according to wealthy countries, exempts developing countries from making (...) commitments that are stringent enough for the collective effort needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In circumstances where even mentioning the term equity has become problematic, a critical question is whether scope for a fair agreement is being squeezed out of negotiations. To address this question we set out a conceptual framework for normative theorizing about fairness in international negotiations, accompanied by a set of minimal standards of fairness and plausible feasibility constraints for sharing the global climate change mitigation effort. We argue that a fair and feasible agreement may be reached by (i) reforming the current binary approach to differentiating developed and developing country groups, in tandem with (ii) introducing a more principled approach to differentiating the mitigation commitments of individual countries. These two priorities may provide the basis for a principled bargain between developed and developing countries that safeguards the opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change without sacrificing widely acceptable conceptions of equity. (shrink)

This essay argues that David Miller's criticisms of global egalitarianism do not undermine the view where it is stated in one of its stronger, luck egalitarian forms. The claim that global egalitarianism cannot specify a metric of justice which is broad enough to exclude spurious claims for redistribution, but precise enough to appropriately value different kinds of advantage, implicitly assumes that cultural understandings are the only legitimate way of identifying what counts as advantage. But that is an assumption always or (...) almost always rejected by global egalitarianism. The claim that global egalitarianism demands either too little redistribution, leaving the unborn and dissenters burdened with their societies' imprudent choices, or too much redistribution, creating perverse incentives by punishing prudent decisions, only presents a problem for global luck egalitarianism on the assumption that nations can legitimately inherit assets from earlier generations – again, an assumption very much at odds with global egalitarian assumptions. (shrink)

Much contemporary political philosophy claims to be Kant-inspired, but its aims and method differ from Kant's own. In his recent book, Force and Freedom, Arthur Ripstein advocates a more orthodox Kantian outlook, presenting it as superior to dominant (Kant-inspired) views. The most striking feature of this outlook is its attempt to ground the whole of political morality in one right: the right to freedom, understood as the right to be independent of others’ choices. Is Ripstein's Kantian project successful? In this (...) research note I argue that it is not. First, I suggest that Ripstein's notion of freedom is viciously circular. It is meant to ground all rights, but in fact it presupposes an account of those rights. Second, I show that—independently of its inability to ground a whole political morality—such a moralized understanding of freedom is normatively unappealing. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the tensions that arise when one juxtaposes one important liberal understanding of the nature and use of state power in circumstances of pluralism and (broadly) retributive accounts of punishment. The argument is that there are aspects of the liberal theory that seem to be in tension with aspects of retributive punishment, and that these tensions are difficult to avoid because of the attractiveness of precisely those features of each account. However, a proper understanding of both (...) liberalism and retributive punishment allows us to dissolve some of the tensions whilst also bringing each position into sharper relief. The paper begins by introducing the liberal position and outlining the apparent tensions that may arise with retributive punishment. In so doing, there is also a brief discussion of how this debate relates to the more familiar dispute between legal moralists and their opponents. The paper then proceeds by considering each of the areas of tension in turn. (shrink)

This paper argues that the independence from intercultural disagreement, that Peter Jones attributes to human rights, implies that those rights are best understood as modelled on the Will Theory of rights and are derived from each person’s foundational right to equal (negative) freedom.

This conceptual article has three parts: In the first, I discuss the shortcomings of treating the environment as a stakeholder and conclude that doing so is theoretically vague and lacks prescriptive force. In the second part, I recommend moving from broad notions of preserving nature and appeals to beauty to a more concrete analytic framework provided by the idea of human sustainability. Using sustainability as the focus of concern is significant as it provides us with a more tenable and quantifiable (...) standard for action, as in the case of carbon offsets and development of measures such as the United Nations Sustainability Indicators. In the final section, I draw on notions of stewardship to suggest that stakeholder management has a positive responsibility to promote sustainability. (shrink)