Proponents of temporal neutrality have challenged the intuitive appeal of future-bias: The intuitive appeal of future-bias is limited to a set of isolated cases that involve only hedonic and self-regarding goods and harms. They suggest that we should treat future-bias as irrational in self-regarding hedonic cases too, or at least not treat the intuitive appeal as evidence for future-bias's permissibility, since hedonic and non-hedonic cases are relevantly similar. This paper defends the rationality of future-bias against this concern. Firstly, hedonic goods (...) and harms mostly concern well-being at a time, while the proposed non-hedonic goods concern lifetime goodness. This is a relevant structural difference between hedonic and non-hedonic goods and harms that warrant different attitude patterns, including the applicability of future-bias. Secondly, the degree of idealisation required to make intuitions favour temporal neutrality obscures the weight of intuitions to a level that makes it unreliable as evidence against the permissibility of future-bias. As temporal neutralists need this degree of idealisation of their cases, the argument fails. In summary, we can keep using intuitive support as evidence for future-bias's rationality, at least when it comes to hedonic goods, but to some extent for its general permissibility. (shrink)

Wer Politikwissenschaft studiert, lernt, was gute empirische Arbeiten ausmacht. Wie sieht es aber in der Politischen Theorie aus? Wie kann man systematisch ergründen, was gerecht ist oder welche Entscheidungen Politiker:innen treffen sollten? Wie erweitert die Positive Politische Theorie den Horizont empirischer Erklärungen? Was macht eine überzeugende Interpretation historischer Texte aus – und was können Studierende in einer Hausarbeit zu den großen Klassikern noch sagen? Dieses Lehrbuch vermittelt das Handwerkszeug, um Probleme in der Positiven wie Normativen Politischen Theorie und Ideengeschichte eigenständig (...) anzugehen – anwendungsorientiert und leicht verständlich, verknüpft mit Argumentationstheorie und Grundlagen des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens. (shrink)

The distinction between equality and sufficiency, much discussed in the distributive justice literature, is here applied to democratic theory. Overlooking this distinction can have significant normative implications, undermining some defences and criticisms of political equality, as I show by discussing the work of three prominent democratic theorists: Thomas Christiano, David Estlund, and Mark Warren. Most importantly, Christiano sometimes defends egalitarian conclusions using sufficientarian premises, or worries about inequality in situations where insufficiency is also part of the problem; inequality above the (...) level of sufficiency is not always as troubling. Estlund makes the reverse error. He attacks rather than defends political egalitarianism, but insufficiency seems to explain some of his concerns. Nonetheless, I show that political egalitarians may need to specify a sufficientarian threshold, to avoid levelling-down objections. Democratic theorists should thus take seriously the distinction between political equality and political sufficiency. More generally, political theorists and philosophers should be aware of omitted variable bias and interaction effects due to conceptual stretching arising from under-theorised distinctions in their thought experiments. (shrink)