Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That (...) gives citizens their just deserts. In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don't think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists. (shrink)

In his famous ‘Integrity Objection’, Bernard Williams condemns utilitarianism for requiring us to regard our projects as dispensable, and thus precluding us from being properly committed to them. In this paper, I argue against commitment as Williams defines it, drawing upon insights from the socialist tradition as well as mainstream analytic moral philosophy. I show that given the mutual interdependence of individuals (a phenomenon emphasised by socialists) several appealing non-utilitarian moral principles also require us to regard our projects as dispensable. (...) This means that those who endorse those principles cannot appeal to Williams’s argument against utilitarianism. It also puts pressure on his thought that moral theories ought to permit commitment – in fact, it suggests that they ought not. Regarding one’s projects as dispensable may be alienating, and this may motivate us to hang onto commitment and reject these non-utilitarian principles along with utilitarianism. However, commitment also threatens a kind of alienation – from other people. Drawing upon the socialist tradition again, I argue that avoiding this form of alienation is necessary for proper engagement with our projects, and thereby with ourselves. (shrink)

Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating. It cannot be both true that you ought to save the drowning child from a pond at the expense of ruining your shoes and that you ought to aid the world’s poor if you thereby do not sacrifice anything of comparable moral importance. Taking the latter principle seriously would lead you to let the child in front of you drown whenever you could thereby (...) save more children in the developing world. Though Singer can defend the duty to aid the world’s poor starting from consequentialist principles requiring you to make things go best in the impartial sense, he cannot have it invoking the commonsense judgment about what you ought to do in the pond case. There is no sound path from commonsense morality to Singer’s principles of beneficence. (shrink)

This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of (...) interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williams’s Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern world’s most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williams’s objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition – in particular, that tradition’s emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williams’s objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophy’s rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions. (shrink)

In his interesting and provocative article ‘Being Good in a World of Need’, Larry Temkin argues for the possibility of a type of Each-We Dilemma in which, if we each produce the most good we can individually, we produce a worse outcome collectively. Such situations would ostensibly be troubling from the standpoint of effective altruism, the project of finding out how to do the most good and doing it, subject to not violating side-constraints. We here show that Temkin’s argument is (...) more controversial than it may appear initially regarding both impartiality and goodness. This is because it is both inconsistent with (i) a plausible conception of impartiality (Anonymity) and inconsistent with (ii) the standard view of goodness (the Internal Aspects View). Moreover, because (i) and (ii) are entailed by the sense of ‘impartial goodness’ that effective altruism tentatively adopts, Temkin’s argument is less relevant to effective altruism than he suggests. (shrink)

People disagree about whether individuals in rich countries like the United States have an obligation to aid the world’s poorest people. A tempting thought is that this disagreement comes down to a non-moral matter. I argue that we should be suspicious of this view. Drawing on psychological evidence, I show that we should be more pessimistic about our ability to attribute the disagreement to a difference in factual beliefs.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate a specific critical discussion of Peter Singer's view on philanthropy. This critique of Singer's position takes several forms, and here we focus on only two of these. First of all, it is claimed that philanthropy (based upon the giving up of luxury goods) should be avoided, because it harms the poor. As we shall see this is a view defended by Andrew Kuper. However, philanthropy is also accused of harming the (...) poor by being sub-optimal and standing in the way of the more effective and lasting poverty relief brought about by changes in the political and economic system. This second complaint is defended by, among others, Paul Gomberg, Anthony Langlois and David Schweickart, as well as Kuper. To our knowledge, little systematic work has been done on the presentation and evaluation of theses objections to philanthropy. In what follows, the objections are dealt with in connection with private donations made by individuals, as this is the focus, and target, of the philosophers/scientists we wish to discuss. (shrink)

Effective altruism is committed to Altruistic Maximization – the claim that any impact of giving to charities ought to be maximized at the margins and counterfactually. This may lead to counterintuitive or contradictory conclusions in certain cases. For instance, when we can bring about a substantial benefit to few or a tiny benefit to a larger number at the same cost, spreading of benefits across a great number of recipients can compensate substantial loss for fewer people. However, sometimes the perspective (...) of widely spreading tiny benefits instead than giving substantial benefits to small groups is counterintuitive, and repugnantly wrong. Call this the ‘Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion.’ Standard solutions to the Repugnant Conclusion do not work if applied to the Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion. The Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion can be rebutted by giving up on the idea that judgements on such cases should be precise. But imprecision undermines Altruistic Maximization. Hence a dilemma for effective altruists follows: either they accept some strongly counterintuitive judgments—weakening the attractiveness of their position—or they give up on the maximizing requirement, thus admitting sub-optimal contributions. (shrink)

Peter Singer’s groundbreaking call to action in 1972, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” drew philosophical attention to the topic of famine and the associated suffering or preventable death of many throughout the world. Yet despite the volume of philosophical work Singer’s paper inspired, it would still be easy to suppose that global poverty is not a problem for philosophers to take seriouslyin itselfbut is rather a particularly stark illustration or instance of a more general problem, whether in ethics or in political (...) philosophy. The aim of this paper is to argue that the philosophical landscape of global poverty is both sui generis and sufficiently complex that the topic should be considered not as an instance of a more general philosophical problem but as a distinct area of normative inquiry. (shrink)

Justice can be pursued by the state, or through voluntary charity. This paper seeks to contribute to the debate about the appropriate division of labor between government and charitable agencies by developing a positive account of the charity sector's moral foundations. The account given here is grounded in a legal conception of charity, as a set of subsidies and privileges designed to cultivate a wide variety of activities aimed at enhancing civic virtue and autonomy. Among other things, this implies that (...) a charity sector oriented largely around the pursuit of justice will come at a moral cost to a liberal society, at least when the state is in a position to take the greater share of the responsibility. So, a positive account of charity provides at least a pro tanto reason for preferring a division of labor in which the state takes a greater share of the responsibility for pursuing justice. As well as developing and defending this conception in its own right, we apply it in offering some criticisms and enhancements of existing views about the division of labor. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the face of widespread poverty, Peter Singer argues that the best response is giving money to charitable organizations that give aid to the poor. In response, much criticism has been leveled by cosmopolitan philosophers that philanthropy is unable to effectively combat poverty for many reasons: such funds fall prey to corrupt bureaucrats, the poor will waste the money, or become dependent upon donations rather than providing for themselves. In this paper, I argue that the work of the organization GiveDirectly (...) offers an approach that can overcome the criticisms leveled against philanthropy. GiveDirectly works by providing direct cash transfers to the poor; by adopting such a straightforward method, GiveDirectly provides practical benefits to the poor, and overcomes key philosophical critiques. The poor are empowered to make choices to meet their own needs, and do not become dependent upon donations. While GiveDirectly does not constitute the solution to the problem of global poverty, it does pro... (shrink)