In recent years, democrats both inside and outside the academy have begun to reconsider the merits of the age-old practice of sortition, the random selection of political officials. Despite this fact, however, the comparative assessment of the merits of voting and sortition remains in its infancy. This paper will advance this project by treating the problem of assigning public responsibilities as a problem of allocative justice. To treat the problem in this manner is to treat public office as a type (...) of good to which citizens might have various claims. Random selection is the appropriate method for distributing public office when all citizens have equal claims to that office and there is not enough to go around. Universal distribution is more appropriate when all claimants have equal claims to the office and there is enough to go around (as with universal suffrage, for example). Election (or possibly other procedures, such as appointment) makes sense when citizens do not enjoy equal claims to the office and that office is in scarce supply. This approach captures a crucial component of democratic equality. Different understandings of democratic equality lay behind sortition and election. Each might be appropriate under different circumstances, but both place rights-based constraints on the design of a democratic political system. (shrink)

Many hold that distributing healthcare according to medical need is a requirement of equality. Most egalitarians believe, however, that people ought to be equal on the whole, by some overall measure of well-being or life-prospects; it would be a massive coincidence if distributing healthcare according to medical need turned out to be an effective way of promoting equality overall. I argue that distributing healthcare according to medical need is important for reducing individuals' uncertainty surrounding their future medical needs. In other (...) words, distributing healthcare according to medical need is a natural feature of healthcare insurance; it is about indemnity, not equality. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the debate about ‘climate justice’, i.e. a call for a just and feasible distribution of responsibility for addressing climate change. The main argument is a proposal for a cautious, practicable, and necessary step in the right direction: given the set of theoretical and practical obstacles to climate justice, we must begin by making contemporary development practices sustainable. In times of climate change, this is done by recognising and responding to the fact that emissions of (...) greenhouse gases, with climate change as their result, are an immanent threat to any reflectively embraced development project. In the universal pursuit of progress, basic needs of both present and future people are put at risk. Even so, a political stalemate and business-as-usual prevail. The situation is locked up by an uncertainty about the exact impacts of choices made and by the reasonable disagreement of modern societies. The result is passiveness, and the passing on of a slowly and indiscernibly growing problem to future generations. This dissertation brings out a crucial message about the need to make our development sustainable. Instead of delaying action through trying to resolve the intractable epistemic and normative uncertainty fully, the focus should be on vindicating already shared points of practical convergence. On the constructivist method here adopted, the task is to characterise the agent and the situation faced from a practical and first-person point of view. More specifically, to specify the practical problem climate change gives rise to; the moral importance of needs (chapter three); how a principled priority of basic needs can be defended (chapter four), intergenerationally (chapter five) and internationally (chapter six); and what natural and social limits there are to development (chapter seven). These conceptions narrows the practice of development in the present context: it can be concluded that development must not risk the basic needs of anyone implicated. This common ground brackets off disagreement irrelevant to the urgent need to act, and so brings together otherwise deeply divided agents. A sufficientarian basic needs-principle, as the focus of an overlapping consensus, is practicable and anticipatory in the disuniting moral conundrum of climate change. (shrink)

Sweatshop labor is often cited as an example of the worst and most pervasive form of exploitation today, yet understanding what is meant by the charge has proven surprisingly difficult for philosophers. I develop an account of what I call “Needs Exploitation,” grounded in a specification of the duty of beneficence. In the case of sweatshop labor, I argue that employers face a duty to extend to employees a wage sufficient to meet their basic needs. This duty is limited by (...) the degree of the employees’ dependence on the employer for basic needs and a reasonability standard where the employer may remain within a range of well-being between deficiency and luxury. (shrink)

It is often claimed that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. This claim is made because it is thought that it is the level of sacrifice involved that prevents these acts from being morally required. In this paper, I will argue against this claim. I will start by making a distinction between two ways of understanding the claim that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. I will then examine some purported counterexamples to the view that supererogation always involves sacrifice and (...) examine their limitations. Next, I will examine how this view might be defended, building on comments by Dale Dorsey and Henry Sidgwick. I will then argue that the view and the argument in favor of it should be rejected. I will finish by showing how an alternative explanation for the limits of moral obligation avoids the problems facing The Sacrifice View. (shrink)

This book chapter is not available in ORA, but you may download, display, print and reproduce this chapter in unaltered form only for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organization from the ANU E Press website.

Theories of happiness usually consider happiness as something that matters to us from a first-person perspective. In this paper, I defend a conception of public happiness that is distinct from private or first-person happiness. Public happiness is presented as a feature of the system of right that defines the political relationship between citizens, as opposed to their personal mental states, desires or well-being. I begin by outlining the main features of public happiness as an Enlightenment ideal. Next, I relate the (...) distinction between the political and the personal to the distinction between having normative reasons for a particular political arrangement and merely having a ‘pro-attitude’ towards a state of affairs that accords with one's preferred definition of happiness. Following this, I demonstrate why well-being, understood as a normative rather than a purely descriptive conception of personal happiness, nevertheless cannot serve as a normative reason in the political domain. In the final section, I show why normative reason-giving matters for the relationship between citizens, and how such reason-giving relates to public happiness. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is supposed to be a theory of the overall good that captures the common intuition of . But it is difficult to give precise content to the prioritarian claim. Over the past few decades, prioritarians have increasingly responded to this by formulating prioritarianism not in terms of an alleged primitive notion of quantity of well-being, but instead in terms of von NeumannPrimitivistTechnicalpriority to the worse offMorgenstern utility is a retrograde step.

Opt-out systems of postmortem organ procurement are often supposed to be justifiable by presumed consent, but this justification turns out to depend on a mistaken mental state conception of consent. A promising alternative justification appeals to the analogical situation that occurs when an emergency decision has to be made about medical treatment for a patient who is unable to give or withhold his consent. In such cases, the decision should be made in the best interests of the patient. The analogous (...) suggestion to be considered, then, is, if the potential donor has not registered either his willingness or his refusal to donate, the probabilities that he would or would not have preferred the removal of his organs need to be weighed. And in some actual cases the probability of the first alternative may be greater. This article considers whether the analogy to which this argument appeals is cogent, and concludes that there are important differences between the emergency and the organ removal cases, both as regards the nature of the interests involved and the nature of the right not to be treated without one’s consent. Rather, if opt-out systems are to be justified, the needs of patients with organ failure and/or the possibility of tacit consent should be considered. (shrink)

In this chapter we first discuss the main principles of justice and note the standard objections to them, which we believe necessitate a hybrid approach. The hybrid account we defend is primarily based on the distributive principle of sufficientarianism, which we interpret as the idea that each country should have the means to provide a minimally decent quality of life for each of its citizens. We argue that sufficientarian considerations give good reason to think that what we call the ‘ability (...) to pay objection’ should be taken much more seriously in this debate. Following this, our account emphasises what we believe are the two most important moral desiderata in any attempt to distribute responsibility for dealing with climate change: the ability to mitigate the problem and the making of culpable contributions to the problem. After noting that our proposal includes enough detail to be a useful start for policy makers, we defend our account against some potential objections. (shrink)

The aim of the book is to uncover the relation between market and justice through the critical examination of the work of Friedrich Hayek. The book argues for the following thesis: the institution of free market is not the only candidate social system; substantial, not merely formal distributive justice must become the central virtue of our social institutions. Notwithstanding its achievements and virtues, the Hayekian theory makes a simple mistake by equivocating possible social systems, dividing them into two groups. One (...) is the world of liberty and free market where people follow the general and abstract rules of conduct, accepting the outcome of market processes, be those good or bad. The other is the world of coercion and repression in which organized distributive instituions dominate and free market is non-existent. According to Hayek’s famous thesis, although freedom is possible in the latter world, we are nevertheless already on the road to serfdom: this fate is inevitable. In this dichotomy the decision is indeed simple. If justice is nothing else but the Trojan horse of oppression, then it is indeed a dangerous and unworkable ideal. However, if this dichotomy does not hold and there is a variety of acceptable social systems, then justice may become the central virtue of institutions, thereby contradicting Hayek’s theory. In the second half of the book I present this alternative, justice-governed social system in more detail. (shrink)

Este artículo investiga la posible justificación de derechos culturales dentro del marco teórico del enfoque en las capacidades. El enfoque no se opone en principio a esta justificación, pero establece restricciones significantes, y correspondientemente, no es compatible con las demandas multicultur..

This chapter offers a concise discussion of classic utilitarianism which is the prototypical moral doctrine of the utilitarian family. It starts with an analysis of the classic utilitarian criterion of rightness, gives an overview over its virtues and vices, and suggests an overall assessment of its adequacy as a theory of morality. Furthermore, it briefly discusses whether classic utilitarianism holds promise as a philosophy for doing business.

Alternative allocations of a fixed bundle of healthcare resources often involve significantly different indirect, non-health effects. The question arises whether these effects must figure in accounts of the conditions under which a distribution of healthcare resources is morally justifiable. In this article we defend a Scanlonian, affirmative answer to this question: healthcare resource managers should sometimes select an allocation which has worse direct, health-related effects but better indirect, nonhealth effects; they should do this when the interests served by such a (...) policy are more urgent than the healthcare interests better served by an alternative allocation. We note that there is a prima facie case for the claim that such benefits (and costs) are relevant—i.e. they are real benefits, and in other contexts our decisions can permissibly be guided by them. We then proceed to rebut three lines of argument that might be thought to defeat this prima facie case: they appeal to fairness, the Kantian Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself, and the equal moral worth of persons, respectively. (shrink)

Standard, familiar models portray harms and benefits as symmetrical. Usually, harm is portrayed as involving a worsening of one's situation, and benefits as involving an improvement. Yet morally, the aversion, prevention, and relief of harms seem, at least presumptively, to matter more than the provision, protection, and maintenance of comparable and often greater benefits. Standard models of harms and benefits have difficulty acknowledging this priority, much less explaining it. They also fail to identify harm accurately and reliably. In this paper, (...) I develop these problems, argue that we should reconsider our commitment to the standard models, and then merely gesture at the direction in which we might locate a superior approach, one that better accounts for the moral significance of harm and its relation to autonomy rights. (shrink)

I argue for the existence of a ‘ratcheting-up effect’: the behavior of moral saints serves to increase the level of moral obligation the rest of us face. What we are morally obligated to do is constrained by what it would be reasonable for us to believe we are morally obligated to do. Moral saints provide us with a special kind of evidence that bears on what we can reasonably believe about our obligations. They do this by modeling the level of (...) sacrifice a person can realistically bear. Exposure to moral saints thus ‘ratchets-up’ our obligations by combating a type of ignorance that would otherwise defeat those obligations. (shrink)

Despite the popularity of equality as a political value, egalitarianism as a political theory has never, I think, been fully or successfully defended. I aim in this paper to begin the defense of such a view. The egalitarianism I have in mind has as its ideal a condition of equal wellbeing for all persons at the highest possible level of well-being, i.e. maximum equal well-being. Egalitarianism holds that society should be arranged so as to promote and maintain this state. Defending (...) such a view involves, as I see it, three tasks. First, the ideal I have Just mentioned must be made clearer and more specific and its implications for the distribution of particular goods such as material possessions and liberty must be revealed. Second, positive arguments must be given in support of an equal distribution of well-being as a requirement of morality and Justice. And, thirdly, arguments to the effect that there are Just or Justified inequalities which seriously outweigh the claims of equality must be rebutted. (shrink)

The theory of rights is crucial as a means of relieving the tension between basic rights and democracy, and as a means of resolving the problem of allocating competence between the constitutional court and the legislature. To some theorists, no tension between basic rights and democracy exists, for the latter presupposes the former. To others, among whom I include myself, tension does exist, for basic rights, in lending protection to certain persons and groups, limit the possibilities of political decision. In (...) this connection it is important to take up the problem of the necessary conditions for realizing basic rights. One of these conditions concerns the delimiting of the scope of institutional action that is found, so to speak, in the space between the constitutional justices and the legislature, the latter as representative of the popular will. (shrink)

In what follows I consider whether the idea of a person's interest or good might be better understood through that of care or concern for that person for her sake, rather than conversely, as is ordinarily assumed. Contrary to desire-satisfaction theories of interest, such an account can explain why not everything a person rationally desires is part of her good, since what a person sensibly wants is not necessarily what we would sensibly want, insofar as we care about her. First, (...) however, a tale: There was no other explanation which seemed reasonable. … [W]as it not reasonable to assume that he meant never to claim his birth-right? If this were so, what right had he, William Cecil Clayton, to thwart the wishes, to balk the self-sacrifice of this strange man? If Tarzan of the Apes could do this thing to save Jane Porter from unhappiness, why should he, to whose care she was intrusting her whole future, do aught to jeopardize her interests? (shrink)

The proposal I offer attempts to remedy the inadequacies of exclusive focus on well-being for moral purposes. The proposal is this: We should allow the agent to decide for herself where she wants to throw the weight that is her due in moral reflection, with the proviso that she understands the way that her weight will be aggregated with others in reaching a moral outcome. I will call this the "autonomy principle." The autonomy principle, I claim, provides the consequentialist's best (...) prospect for taking people into account morally in a way that they endorse. (shrink)

One of the most common policy-related messages that economists present to non-economists is the superiority of cash over in-kind transfers as a policy tool. A good deal of government policy on behalf of the poor consists, of course, of various forms of in-kind assistance, such as medical care or food stamps. However, if we wish to help the poor, the argument goes, in-kind transfers are an inferior way to do so.

A distinctive feature of modern capitalist societies is the tendency of the market to take over the production, maintenance, and distribution of goods that were previously produced, maintained, and distributed by nonmarket means. Yet, there is a wide range of disagreement regarding the proper extent of the market in providing many goods. Labor has been treated as a commodity since the advent of capitalism, but not without significant and continuing challenges to this arrangement. Other goods whose production for and distribution (...) on the market are currently the subject of dispute include sexual intercourse, human blood, and human body parts such as kidneys. How can we determine which goods are properly subjects of market transactions and which are not? The purpose of this article is to propose a theory of what makes economic goods differ from other kinds of goods, which can help to answer this question. (shrink)

The structure of our ethical experience depends, crucially, on a fundamental distinction between what we are responsible for doing or deciding and what is given to us. As such, the boundary between chance and choice is the spine of our conventional morality, and any serious shift in that boundary is thoroughly dislocating. Against this background, I analyze the way in which techniques of prenatal genetic diagnosis (PGD) pose such a fundamental challenge to our conventional ideas of justice and moral responsibility. (...) After a short description of the situation, I first examine the influential luck egalitarian theory of justice, which is based on the distinction between choice and luck or, more specifically, between option luck and brute luck, and the way in which it would approach PGD (section II), followed by an analysis of the conceptual incoherencies (in section III) and moral problems (in section IV) that come with such an approach. Put shortly, the case of PGD shows that the luck egalitarian approach fails to express equal respect for the individual choices of people. The paradox of the matter is that by overemphasizing the fact of choice as such, without regard for the social framework in which they are being made, or for the fundamental and existential nature of particular choices—like choosing to have children and not to undergo PGD or not to abort a handicapped fetus—such choices actually become impossible. (shrink)

This thesis argues that a particular version of equal opportunity for welfare is the best way of meeting the joint demands of three liberal egalitarian ideals: distributional equality, responsibility, and respect for individuals’ differing reasonable judgements of their own good. It also examines which social choice rules best represent these demands. Finally, it defends the view that achieving equal opportunity for welfare should not only be a goal of formal public institutions, but that just citizens should also sometimes be guided (...) by it in their everyday life. The version of equal opportunity for welfare it defends differs from some well-known contemporary versions in the following ways. First, it rejects a definition of welfare as the degree of satisfaction of a person’s preferences, because, it argues, this conception of welfare cannot adequately deal with preference change. Instead, it suggests that we should adopt a conception of welfare based on a list of goods and conditions that are recognised as valuable from the perspective of a variety of different conceptions of the good. Second, it argues that individuals’ prima facie claim to an equally valuable share of the world’s resources—a claim which is based on their equal moral worth—is limited to situations in which giving one person a more valuable share means that someone else ends up with a less valuable share. It also argues that in situations where we can improve at least one person’s situation without worsening anyone else’s, we generally do not fail to respect each person’s equal moral worth by doing so, even if this leads to inequalities. Third, it defends a distinct view of responsibility, which justifies social arrangements that give people certain options with reference to the value that individuals can achieve (but don’t necessarily achieve) through their choices from these options. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze the tension between realism and antirealism at the basis of Kantian constructivism. This tension generates a conflictive account of the source of the validity of social norms. On the one hand, the claim to moral objectivity characteristic of Kantian moral theories makes the validity of norms depend on realist assumptions concerning the existence of shared fundamental interests among all rational human beings. I illustrate this claim through a comparison of the approaches of Rawls, Habermas and (...) Scanlon. On the other hand, however, objections to moral realism motivate many Kantian constructivists to endorse the antirealist claim that reasonable agreement is the source of the validity of social norms. After analyzing the difficulties in the latter strategy, I try to show how a balance between the realist and antirealist elements of Kantian constructivism can be reached by drawing a sharper distinction between the justice and the legitimacy of social norms. (shrink)

In consequentialist theories, the good is usually defined in non-moral terms (i.e., as that which persons in fact like, desire, seek out, enjoy), and the right is characterized in terms of maximizing the good. The good is usually defined “impartially,” that is, as the good for everyone rather than for an individual. But this need not be the case: as we see with Bentham, the good that the individual (as opposed to the legislator) is concerned with is his or her (...) own. And exceptions are sometimes made to the non-moral character of the good: the pleasure of the sadist or the pain of the justly punished is discounted from calculations. (Bentham, notice, explicitly avoids doing this: any pleasure is a good and any punishment is bad. But he thinks that the pleasure of the sadist will always, as a matter of fact, be immensely outweighed by the victims, and punishment is legitimated by a positive net effect.). (shrink)

This is a comprehensive anthology of works concerning the nature of economics as a science, including classic texts and essays exploring specific branches and schools of economics. Apart from the classics, most of the selections in the third edition are new, as are the introduction and bibliography. No other anthology spans the whole field and offers a comprehensive introduction to questions about economic methodology.

In this paper I argue that the debate between subjective and objective theories of prudential value obscures the way in which elements of both are needed for a comprehensive theory of prudential value. I suggest that we characterize these two types of theory in terms of their different aims: procedural (or subjective) theories give an account of the necessary conditions for something to count as good for a person, while substantive (or objective) theories give an account of what is good (...) for a person, given some set of necessary conditions. Characterizing the theories in this way allows us to see their mutual compatibility. To make this case, I assume that a theory of prudential value ought to be descriptively and normatively adequate. The criterion of descriptive adequacy requires that our theory explain the subject relativity of prudential value. I characterize subject relativity in terms of justifiability to subjects and I argue that certain procedural theories are well suited to meet this criterion. The criterion of normative adequacy requires that our theory be capable of guiding action and I argue that a certain kind of substantive theory is needed to meet this requirement. (shrink)

abstract The most well‐known liberal‐egalitarian defence of cultural rights, provided by Will Kymlicka, presents culture as a primary good, and thus a resource that ought to be distributed according to some fair egalitarian criteria. Kymlicka relies on the intuition that inequalities between persons that are the result of brute luck rather than personal choice are unjust in making the case for various multicultural rights. This article makes two main claims. First, the standard luck egalitarian intuition on which Kymlicka's argument relies (...) cannot justify what he calls ‘polyethnic rights,’ in particular cultural and religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. Second, I argue that such exemptions are justifiable by appealing to the public value of fair equality of opportunity, properly construed. (shrink)

Regarding the sinking lifeboat scenario involving several human beings and a dog, nearly everyone agrees that it is right to sacrifice the dog. I suggest that the best explanation for this considered judgment, an explanation that appears to time-relative interests, contains a key insight about prudential value. This insight, I argue, also provides perhaps the most promising reply to the future-like-ours argument, which is widely regarded as the strongest moral argument against abortion. Providing a solution to a longstanding puzzle in (...) value theory across species while illuminating the morality of abortion, the time-relative interest account proves worthy of sustained theoretical attention. (shrink)

Healthcare (including public health) is special because it protects normal functioning, which in turn protects the range of opportunities open to individuals. I extend this account in two ways. First, since the distribution of goods other than healthcare affect population health and its distribution, I claim that Rawls's principles of justice describe a fair distribution of the social determinants of health, giving a partial account of when health inequalities are unjust. Second, I supplement a principled account of justice for health (...) and healthcare with an account of fair process for setting limits or rationing care. This account is provided by three conditions that comprise "accountability for reasonableness.". (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the political and economic domains are analogous for distributive purposes. The upshot of this conclusion is that because we normally think that an unequal distribution of votes is objectionable even if these inequalities are strictly necessary to improve the lives of less informed voters, so we should conclude that an unequal distribution of resources might be similarly objectionable even if strictly necessary to make the worse off better off. Leveling down economic resources is therefore (...) sometimes morally permissible. I consider and reject three types of objections to this view. (shrink)

Many believe that paternalism is less wrong in intimate relationships. In this paper, we argue that this view cannot be justified by appeal to (i) beneficence, (ii) shared projects, (iii) vulnerability, (iv) epistemic access, (v) expressivism, or (vi) autonomy as nonalienation. We finally provide an error theory for why many may have believed that paternalism is less wrong in intimate relations.

Prior scholarly approaches to meaningful work have largely fallen into two camps. One focuses on identifying how work can contribute to a meaningful life. The other studies the antecedents and outcomes of workers experiencing their work as meaningful. Neither of these approaches, however, captures what people look for when they seek meaningful work—or so I argue. In this paper, I give a new, commitment-based account of meaningful work by focusing on the reasons people have to choose meaningful work over other (...) options. I draw on philosopher Ruth Chang’s account of voluntarist reasons (reasons that arise from an act of the will) to argue that commitments can create distinctive reasons to pursue certain work. It is the presence of these distinctive reasons that makes work meaningful. (shrink)

This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular (...) persons, generated rather by persons’ non-moral personal commitments. Against objections to the contrary, I show how these are genuine necessities, since unlike mere desires and freely escapable aims, personal needs constitute objective, inescapable, and non-compensable practical requirements. The personal-need-satisfaction theory of well-being combines objectivity with subject-dependence in novel ways, and motivates well-being pluralism at the level of individual agency. Implicating necessity as it does in the structure of individual well-being, this account presents a robust challenge to ethical and political theories that rely on the intrapersonal aggregation of well-being to be unproblematic. (shrink)

How do social norms influence our choices? And does the presence of biased norms affect what we owe to each other? Looking at empirical research relating to PrEP rollout in HIV prevention policy, a...

Do we have stronger duties to assist in emergencies than in nonemergencies? According to Peter Singer and Peter Unger, we do not. Emergency situations, they suggest, merely serve to make more salient the very extensive duties to assist that we always have. This view, while theoretically simple, appears to imply that we must radically revise common-sense emergency norms. Resisting that implication, theorists like Frances Kamm, Jeremy Waldron, and Larry Temkin suggest that emergencies are indeed normatively exceptional. While their approach is (...) more in line with common-sense, however, it is theoretically less simple, and it is has proven difficult to justify the exception. In this paper we propose a model of emergencies that we call the Informal-Insurance Model, and explain how this can be used to combine theoretical simplicity with common-sense emergency norms. (shrink)

Over the last 30 years the Indian philosopher-economist Amartya Sen has developed an original normative approach to the evaluation of individual and social well-being. The foundational concern of this ‘capability approach’ is the real freedom of individuals to achieve the kind of lives they have reason to value. This freedom is analysed in terms of an individual’s ‘capability’ to achieve combinations of such intrinsically valuable ‘beings and doings’ (‘functionings’) as being sufficiently nourished and freely expressing one’s political views. In this (...) account, ‘development’ is conceived as the expansion of individuals’ capability, and thus as a concept that goes beyond the economic growth of third world countries. My thesis is a philosophical examination of Sen’s capability approach. In the first part (chapters 1-3) I present and defend my interpretation of Sen’s work. (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)

ABSTRACTThe Assistance Principle is common currency to a wide range of moral theories. Roughly, this principle states: if you can fulfil important interests, at not too high a cost, then you have a moral duty to do so. I argue that, in determining whether the ‘not too high a cost’ clause of this principle is met, we must consider three distinct costs: ‘agent-relative costs’, ‘recipient-relative costs’ and ‘ideal-relative costs’.

It is widely agreed that benevolence is not the whole of the moral life, but it is not as widely appreciated that benevolence is an irreducible part of that life. This paper argues that Kantian efforts to characterize benevolence, or something like it, in terms of reverence for rational agency fall short. Such reverence, while credibly an important part of the moral life, is no more the whole of it than benevolence.

Indigenous and non-indigenous communities in Latin America make land claims and support them with a variety of arguments. Some, such as Zapatistas and the Mapuche, have appealed to the “ancestral” or “historical” connections between specific communities and the land. Other groups, such as MST in Brazil, have appealed to the extremely unequal distribution of the land and the effects of this on the poor; the land in this case is seen mainly as a means for securing a decent standard of (...) living for members of disadvantaged groups. Although there is a large literature on the history as well as the social and political dimensions of land contestations and conflicts in Latin America, the question of whether the land claims put forward by disadvantaged groups can be morally justified has not been adequately examined. In this essay, we investigate the scope and limits of appeals to what we shall call assistance-based, contribution-based, and benefitting-based moral reasons with respect to land claims made by these disadvantaged groups. (shrink)

Citizens in wealthy liberal democracies are typically expected to see to basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter out of their own income, and those without the means to do so usually receive assistance in the form of cash transfers. Things are different with health care. Most liberal societies provide their citizens with health care or health care insurance in kind, either directly from the state or through private insurance companies that are regulated like public utilities. Except perhaps for small (...) co-pays or deductibles, citizens are not expected to see to their health needs out-of-pocket, at least for some basic level of care. Instead, when a citizen gets sick, the state or her insurance company foots the... (shrink)

:This article analyzes the criteria for the distribution of healthcare services through different justice theories such as utilitarianism and liberalism, pointing out the problems that arise when providing services to a culturally diverse population. The international epidemiological setting is a favorable one for discussing personal responsibility and luck egalitarianism; however, some provisions have to be made so that healthcare institutions do not treat ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic minorities unfairly. The article concludes by proposing that accommodations and culturally sensible attention (...) should be provided when possible, without affecting the equal opportunity of others to access these services. (shrink)

:Contemporary behavioural economics has documented common failures of reasoning that apparently make possible policies that benefit individuals by contravening or correcting their judgements. These policies appear to be paternalistic, even though a traditional view would deny that they are paternalistic on the grounds that policies such as nudges do not restrict individual liberty. It appears to many that a new definition of paternalism that takes its cue from behavioural economics is needed. Furthermore, if one revises the definition of paternalism, one (...) must revisit traditional views concerning whether paternalist policies are wise. In Government Paternalism, Julian Le Grand and Bill New make a valuable start, although some corrections are needed. This essay provides a general setting for revising the definition of paternalism and suggests a revised definition of paternalism. (shrink)