School boosters are tax-exempt organizations that engage in fundraising efforts to provide public schools with supplementary resources. This paper argues that prevailing forms of school boosting are defeasibly unjust. Section 1 shows that inequalities in public education funding in the United States violate John Rawls’s two principles of domestic justice. Section 2 argues that prevailing forms of school boosting exacerbate and plausibly perpetuate these injustices. Section 3 then contends that boosting thereby defeasibly violates Rawlsian principles of nonideal theory for rectifying (...) injustice. Thus, boosting should be presumptively either made illegal or substantially reformed. Finally, Section 4 responds to potential objections. (shrink)

Several philosophers have proposed that key instances of moral progress in the past, as well as perhaps some present or future progressive changes, rely on people overcoming the notion that their current institutions and social practices are “natural, necessary, and inevitable feature[s] of the social world” (Pleasants, “Moral Argument is Not Enough,” 166). I call this account of how moral progress happens denaturalization. In this paper, I provide a more rigorous account of denaturalization than has thus far been provided in (...) the literature, so that its plausibility and its promise as a mechanism of progressive change can be better assessed. I develop an account according to which denaturalization occurs when people come to have more accurate judgments about the costs of abandoning status quo institutions in favor of alternative institutions. I draw on the philosophy of conventionality to develop an account of costs and provide a limited defense of the psychological realism of the costs account of denaturalization. With this more detailed and explicit account in hand, I explore under what kinds of conditions denaturalization is likely to lead to moral progress. (shrink)

Political philosophers old and new have defended the twin claims that (i) traditions embody wisdom, and (ii) transforming tradition based on aprioristic theory threatens to disregard that wisdom. This article argues that while a priori theorizing about justice is indeed epistemically valuable, a priori theories of justice usually tend to merit moderate to low credences. The article develops an account of what I call the “A Priori Theorizing Thesis,” which holds that such theses are likely to be false and dangerous (...) when implemented, and the “Non-substitution Thesis,” which holds that theorists should generally be disinclined to substitute their judgment for the wisdom of social traditions and norms. Along the way, Burke's positive contributions are emphasized and his hyperbole ignored. (shrink)

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

I defend convergentist realism from counterarguments that appeal to apparently deep and widespread moral disagreement. Pace recent claims by antirealists, I first argue that scenarios such as the prominent “Magistrate and the Mob” case betray cognitive defects in subjects, such as partiality, that we would not find in ideal agents. After this, I defend three reasons to expect cross-cultural disagreement on moral cases even if convergentist realism is true. These defusing explanations concern individual and group moral development and the moral (...) models on which agents rely. While developing my defense of moral realism, I aim for comprehensive engagement with responses to arguments by Doris, Plakias, and others that have been dispersed across several related articles. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anderson claims that the prevailing culture of business is one of domination. “Most workplace governments in the United States are dictatorships, in which bosses.. don’t merely govern workers; they dominate them” (2017, p. xxii; italics in the original). If this diagnosis is correct, then the culture of business poses a significant threat to human liberty, as each year millions of people in the employ of businesses spend hundreds or thousands of hours on the job. This essay provides a further (...) argument supporting Anderson’s analysis, by extending her treatment of Adam Smith and drawing on his claim about the potentially mind-numbing effects on workers of extreme division of labor. Smith’s analysis, though consistent with Anderson’s, implies that the problem is more worrisome than she allows, and accordingly that Anderson’s own remedy might be insufficient. Our Anderson/Smith argument suggests that worker unfreedom might warrant more aggressive institutional remedy. (shrink)

Proponents of political experiments in living, such as Elizabeth Anderson and Ryan Muldoon, often emphasize their potential to generate useful observational data about the relation between social rules and ethically desirable outcomes. This paper highlights another epistemic dimension of political experiments: their potential to transform the cognitive perspectives of participants. I argue that this transformative dimension of experimentation offers an endogenous societal mechanism for increasing perspectival diversity. I explore the implications of this mechanism for institutional design.