While increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the relation between Foucault’s conception of critique and Kant’s, much controversy remains over whether Foucault’s most sustained early engagement with Kant, his dissertation on Kant’s Anthropology, should be read as a wholesale rejection of Kant’s views or as the source of Foucault’s late return to ethics and critique. In this paper, I propose a new reading of the dissertation, considering it alongside 1950s-era archival materials of which I advance the first (...) scholarly appraisal. I argue that Foucault manifests a fundamental ambivalence to Kantian anthropology, rejecting it in theoretical terms while embracing its practical (‘pragmatic’) conception of the subject. Furthermore, I take these texts to collectively evidence Foucault’s attempt to situate himself within the anthropological-critical tradition rather than extricating himself from it. If we interpret Foucault to reject this tradition’s appeal to an essentialized, theoretical conception of subjectivity, what remains of anthropology is its inherent practical reflexivity in structure. Thus, I situate Foucault’s conception of ethics as one’s relation to oneself in continuity with this tradition. (shrink)

We propose an account of the subject’s cognition that allows for a full articulation of the phenomenon of ideology. We argue that ideology operates at the level of the a priori: it transcendentally conditions the intelligibility of thought and practice. But we draw from strands of post-Kantian philosophy of science and social philosophy in repudiating Kant’s view that the a priori is necessary and fixed. Instead, we argue, it is contingent, and therefore revisable. More precisely, it is conditioned materially: it (...) must be understood as an activity, continuous with and shaped by material social practice. We conclude with some remarks about the possibility of agency over one’s relativized, materially conditioned a priori; that is, over the possibility of critique. (shrink)

This paper claims that Kant’s conception of culture provides a new means of understanding how the two parts of the Critique of Judgment fit together. Kant claims that culture is both the ‘ultimate purpose’ of nature and to be defined in terms of ‘art in general’ (of which the fine arts are a subtype). In the Critique of Teleological Judgment, culture, as the last empirically cognizable telos of nature, serves as the mediating link between nature and freedom, while in the (...) Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, the connection between art and morality passes through culture. In either case, Kant offers distinct, yet interdependent, arguments for how culture demonstrates the amenability of nature to its supersensible ground: the central question Kant claims in the Introduction that the work seeks to answer. Thus, not only does this account advance a concept essential to both parts of the work; it also demonstrates how the two parts can be conceived as complementary, with each supplementing the other to solve Kant’s central question. As such, understanding the Critique of Judgment in terms of culture enables us to see how the two parts of the work do not merely share points of similarity or common themes, but presuppose one another in order to understand how nature is amenable to freedom. (shrink)

In ‘Other Minds’, J.L. Austin advances a parallel between saying ‘I know’ and saying ‘I promise’: much as you are ‘prohibited’, he says, from saying ‘I promise I will, but I may fail’, you are also ‘prohibited’ from saying ‘I know it is so, but I may be wrong’. This treatment of ‘I know’ has been derided for nearly sixty years: while saying ‘I promise’ amounts to performing the act of promising, Austin seems to miss the fact that saying ‘I (...) know’ fails to constitute a performance of the act of knowing. In this paper, I advance a defense of Austin’s position. I diagnose the principal objections to Austin’s account as stemming from detractors’ failure to acknowledge: (1) that Austin never characterizes ‘I know’ as a pure performative; (2) that saying ‘I know p’, unlike simply knowing p, occurs in specific interpersonal contexts in which others rely on our knowledge claims; (3) Austin’s considered account of the felicity conditions of performative utterance; (4) Austin’s ultimate repudiation of the performative/constative distinction. I conclude that Austin’s treatment of ‘I know’ rests on a more general commitment to the intrinsically normative nature of ordinary language. (shrink)

Discrimination, understood as differential treatment of individuals on the basis of their respective group memberships, is widely considered to be morally wrong. This moral judgment is backed in many jurisdictions with the passage of equality of opportunity legislation, which aims to ensure that racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, sexual-orientation, disability and other groups are not subjected to discrimination. This chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings of discrimination and equality of opportunity using the tools of analytical moral and political philosophy.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the recent debate about responsibility and distributive justice. It traces the recent philosophical focus on distributive justice to John Rawls and examines two arguments in his work which might be taken to contain the seeds of the focus on responsibility in later theories of distributive justice. It examines Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’, the ‘luck egalitarianism’ of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, as well as the criticisms of their work put forward by (...) Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, and Jonathan Wolff. Key concepts such as responsibility (individual and collective), luck (thin and thick; brute and option), control, desert, and equality of opportunity are delineated, and the implementation of responsibility-sensitive accounts of justice is considered. The chapters of this book are positioned in relation to the wider literature on responsibility and distributive justice, and a brief outline of the chapters is provided. (shrink)

This chapter identifies three contrasts between responsibility-sensitive justice and desert-sensitive justice. First, while responsibility may be appraised on prudential or moral grounds, it is argued that desert is necessarily moral. As moral appraisal is much more plausible, responsibility-sensitive justice is only attractive in one of its two formulations. Second, strict responsibility sensitivity does not compensate for all forms of bad brute luck, and forms of responsibility-sensitive justice like luck egalitarianism that provide such compensation do so by appealing to independent moral (...) concerns such as equality. Desert-sensitive justice can deliver the appropriate compensation without relying on external moral resources. Finally, while responsibility-sensitive justice harshly refuses to provide for those whose basic needs are unsatisfied due to their own negligent actions, this result can be averted by desert-sensitive justice as it can take into account responsibility-independent considerations. In sum, desert-sensitive justice appears to offer a tighter fit with considered judgments about justice. (shrink)

Knowledge-making practices in biology are being strongly affected by the availability of data on an unprecedented scale, the insistence on systemic approaches and growing reliance on bioinformatics and digital infrastructures. What role does theory play within data-intensive science, and what does that tell us about scientific theories in general? To answer these questions, I focus on Open Biomedical Ontologies, digital classification tools that have become crucial to sharing results across research contexts in the biological and biomedical sciences, and argue that (...) they constitute an example of classificatory theory. This form of theorizing emerges from classification practices in conjunction with experimental know-how and expresses the knowledge underpinning the analysis and interpretation of data disseminated online. (shrink)

Moral particularists and generalists alike have struggled over how to incorporate the role of moral salience in ethical reasoning. In this paper, I point to neglected resources in Kant to account for the role of moral salience in maxim formation: Kant's theory of reflective judgment. Kant tasks reflective judgment with picking out salient empirical particulars for formation into maxims, associating it with purposiveness, or intentional activity (action on ends). The unexpected resources in Kantian reflective judgment suggest the possibility of a (...) particularist universalism, where recalcitrant particulars directly inform, and in some cases revise, moral principles. Such an account improves on particularist accounts of moral salience and moral perception: rather than deriving moral sensitivity solely from an agent's upbringing or cultural resources, the reflective dimension is situated alongside the universalist dimension of moral principles typically identified with Kantian ethics, allowing for a critical approach both to moral universals and to the reception of moral particulars. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse the relation between the use of environmental data in contemporary health sciences and related conceptualisations and operationalisations of the notion of environment. We consider three case studies that exemplify a different selection of environmental data and mode of data integration in data-intensive epidemiology. We argue that the diversification of data sources, their increase in scale and scope, and the application of novel analytic tools have brought about three significant conceptual shifts. First, we discuss the EXPOsOMICS (...) project, an attempt to integrate genomic and environmental data which suggests a reframing of the boundaries between external and internal environments. Second, we explore the MEDMI platform, whose efforts to combine health, environmental and climate data instantiate a reframing and expansion of environmental exposure. Third, we illustrate how extracting epidemiological insights from extensive social data collected by the CIDACS institute yields innovative attributions of causal power to environmental factors. Identifying these shifts highlights the benefits and opportunities of new environmental data, as well as the challenges that such tools bring to understanding and fostering health. It also emphasises the constraints that data selection and accessibility pose to scientific imagination, including how researchers frame key concepts in health-related research. (shrink)

This paper calls into question the view typically attributed to Kant that aesthetic judgements are particularist, resisting all conceptual determination. Instead, it claims that Kant conceives of aesthetic judgements, particularly of art, as playing an important role in therevisionof concepts: one sense in which aesthetic judgements, as Kant defines them, ‘find a universal’ for a given particular. To understand the relation between artistic judgements and concepts requires that we consider what I call Kant’s diachronic account of aesthetic ideas, or how (...) such judgements unfold in the course of communication and reflection. My reading draws Kant much closer to debates in the philosophy of art on the semantic dimension of artworks. Here, illuminating the way in which aesthetic judgements about art can play a role in conceptual revision allows us to make sense of the way in which modern artworks contest concepts rather than merely presenting or expressing them. (shrink)

This article argues that, suitably modified, the method of reflective equilibrium is a plausible way of selecting moral principles. The appropriate conception of the method is wide and radical, admitting consideration of a full range of moral principles and arguments, and requiring the enquiring individual to consider others' views and undergo experiences that may offset any formative biases. The individual is not bound by his initial considered judgments, and may revise his view in any way whatsoever. It is appropriate to (...) describe the method as a balance between coherentism and fallibilist foundationalism. With these points in mind, various criticisms, including the claims that considered judgments are not initially credible and are shaped by prejudice, and that the method itself fails to determine principle selection, are challenged. (shrink)

Christopher Bennett has argued that state support of conjugal relationships can be founded on the unique contribution such relationships make to the autonomy of their participants by providing them with various forms of recognition and support unavailable elsewhere. I argue that, in part because a long history of interaction between two people who need each other’s validation tends to produce less meaningful responses over time, long-term conjugal relationships are unlikely to provide autonomy-enhancing support to their participants. To the extent that (...) intimate relationships can provide a unique form of reciprocal support, Bennett fails to show that couples have an advantage over multiple-partner arrangements in doing so. (shrink)

This paper offers a reading of Beauvoir’s Second Sex as a genealogy of ‘morality’: the patriarchal system of values that maintains a moral distinction between men and women. This value system construes many of women’s experiences under oppression as evidence of women’s immorality, obscuring the agential role of those who provoke such experiences. Beauvoir’s examination of the origin for this value system provides an important counterexample to the prevailing debate over whether genealogical method functions to debunk or to vindicate: while (...) the currently dominant moral system may have been historically necessary at certain stages in human development, Beauvoir nevertheless debunks it; only the value system itself now remains, without its precipitating needs. Thus, Beauvoir’s critique reveals what I call the moral unintelligibility of women’s experiences of oppression: women encounter difficulty in making sense of the harms wrought against them because the operative value system obscures them as harms in the first place, instead construing women themselves as immoral. Against the prevailing construction of moral blame and responsibility, Beauvoir’s solution is the political virtue of moral invention, a virtue epistemic as well as moral, collective as well as individual. (shrink)

"Scientific Research in the Era of Big Data" - this book was also published in French (Mimesis) in 2019 and in Portuguese in 2022 (FIOCRUZ editors).

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)

Shared decision-making involves health professionals and patients/clients working together to achieve true person-centred health care. However, this goal is infrequently realized, and most barriers are unknown. Discussion between philosophers, clinicians, and researchers can assist in confronting the epistemic and moral basis of health care, with benefits to all. The aim of this paper is to describe what shared decision-making is, discuss its necessary conditions, and develop a definition that can be used in practice to support excellence in maternity care. Discussion (...) between the authors, with backgrounds in philosophy, clinical maternity care, health care management, and maternity care research, assisted the team to confront established norms in maternity care and challenge the epistemic and moral basis of decision-making for caesarean section. The team concluded that shared decision-making must start in pregnancy and continue throughout labour and birth, with equality in discourse facilitated by the clinician. Clinicians have a duty of care for the adequacy of women's knowledge, which can only be fulfilled when relevant knowledge is offered freely and when personal beliefs and biases that may impinge on decision-making (defeaters) are disclosed. Informed consent is not shared decision-making. Key barriers include existing cultural norms of “the doctor knows best” and “patient acquiescence” that prevent defeaters being acknowledged and discussed and can lead to legal challenges, overuse of medical intervention and, in some areas, obstetric violence. Shared decision-making in maternity care can thus be defined as an enquiry by clinician and expectant woman aimed at deciding upon a course of care or none, which takes the form of a dialogue within which the clinician fulfils their duty of care to the client's knowledge by making available their complete knowledge (based on all types of evidence) and expertise, including an exposition of any relevant and recognized potential defeaters. Research to develop measurement tools is required. (shrink)

People are increasingly exposed to conflicting health information and must navigate this information to make numerous decisions, such as which foods to consume, a process many find difficult. Although some consumers attribute these disagreements to aspects related to uncertainty and complexity of research, many use a narrower set of credibility-based explanations. Experts’ views on disagreements are underinvestigated and lack explicit identification and classification of the differences in causes for disagreement. Consequently, there is a gap in existing literature to understand the (...) range of reasons for these contradictions. Combining the findings from a literature study and expert interviews, a taxonomy of disagreements was developed. It identifies 10 types of disagreement classified under three dimensions: informant-, information- and uncertainty-related causes for disagreement. The taxonomy may assist with adoption of more effective strategies to deal with conflicting information and contributes to research and practice of science communication in the context of disagreement. (shrink)

Extended and distributed cognition theories argue that human cognitive systems sometimes include non-biological objects. On these views, the physical supervenience base of cognitive systems is thus not the biological brain or even the embodied organism, but an organism-plus-artifacts. In this paper, we provide a novel account of the implications of these views for learning, education, and assessment. We start by conceptualising how we learn to assemble extended cognitive systems by internalising cultural norms and practices. Having a better grip on how (...) extended cognitive systems are assembled, we focus on the question: If our cognition extends, how should we educate and assess such extended cognitive systems? We suggest various ways to minimize possible negative effects of extending one’s cognition and to efficiently find and organise (online) information by adopting a virtue epistemology approach. Educational and assessment implications are foregrounded, particularly in the case of Danish students’ use of the Internet during exams. (shrink)

Comenzamos este texto con una pregunta, por algo que podríamos llamar un signo propio de la época, a saber, la proliferación de aproximaciones espaciales a los más diversos problemas y desde las más diversas disciplinas. No podemos dejar de notar que eso, cuyos signos se dejan recoger a pesar de su dispersión, en algo que llamamos época, sobreviene después de un agotamiento de la radicalización del historicismo y de un pensamiento del tiempo.

Research, innovation, and progress in the life sciences are increasingly contingent on access to large quantities of data. This is one of the key premises behind the “open science” movement and the global calls for fostering the sharing of personal data, datasets, and research results. This paper reports on the outcomes of discussions by the panel “Open science, data sharing and solidarity: who benefits?” held at the 2021 Biennial conference of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies (...) of Biology, and hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. (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)

The standard version of sufficientarianism maintains that providing people with enough, or as close to enough as is possible, is lexically prior to other distributive goals. This article argues that this is excessive – more than distributive justice allows – in four distinct ways. These concern the magnitude of advantage, the number of beneficiaries, responsibility and desert, and above-threshold distribution. Sufficientarians can respond by accepting that providing enough unconditionally is more than distributive justice allows, instead balancing sufficiency against other considerations.

Critics of luck egalitarianism have claimed that, far from providing a justification for the public insurance functions of a welfare state as its proponents claim, the view objectionably abandons those who are deemed responsible for their dire straits. This article considers seven arguments that can be made in response to this ‘abandonment objection’. Four of these arguments are found wanting, with a recurrent problem being their reliance on a dubious sufficientarian or quasi-sufficientarian commitment to provide a threshold of goods unconditionally. (...) Three arguments succeed, showing that luck egalitarians have good reasons for assisting ‘negligent victims’ on account of changes that may occur in an individual between the time of their choice and their subsequent disadvantage, bad option luck, and doubts about free will and responsibility. Luck egalitarianism is therefore shown to offer strong support for public insurance. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium focuses on the relationship between principles and judgments. Principles are relatively general rules for comprehending the area of enquiry. Judgments are our intuitions or commitments, ‘at all levels of generality’ (Rawls 1975: 8), regarding the subject matter. The basic idea of reflective equilibrium is to bring principles and judgments into accord. This can be achieved by revising the principles and/or the judgments. -/- I first look at normative political judgments (Section 2) before considering the role (...) of principles, arguments, devices of representation and background theory in wide reflective equilibrium (Section 3). I then consider two of the main challenges to the method (Section 4), and show how to use it to deliberate about substantive political principles (Section 5). I conclude with an extended example of the method in action (Section 6). (shrink)

Many political philosophers maintain that beneficiaries of injustice are under special obligations to assist victims of injustice. However, the examples favoured by those who endorse this view equally support an alternative luck egalitarian view, which holds that special obligations should be assigned to those with good brute luck. From this perspective the distinguishing features of the benefiting view are (1) its silence on the question of whether to allocate special obligations to assist the brute luck worse off to those who (...) are well off as a matter of brute luck but not as a result of injustice, and (2) its silence on the question of whether to allocate assistance to those who are badly off as a matter of brute luck but not as a result of injustice. In this new light, the benefiting view is harder to justify. (shrink)

This paper considers issues raised by Elizabeth Anderson’s recent critique of the position she terms ‘luck egalitarianism’. It is maintained that luck egalitarianism, once clarified and elaborated in certain regards, remains the strongest egalitarian stance. Anderson’s arguments that luck egalitarians abandon both the negligent and prudent dependent caretakers fails to account for the moderate positions open to luck egalitarians and overemphasizes their commitment to unregulated market choices. The claim that luck egalitarianism insults citizens by redistributing on the grounds of paternalistic (...) beliefs, pity and envy, and by making intrusive and stigmatizing judgments of responsibility, fails accurately to characterize the luck egalitarian’s rationale for redistribution and relies upon luck egalitarians being insensitive to the danger of stigmatization. The luck egalitarian position is reinforced by the fact that Anderson’s favoured conception of equality, ‘democratic equality’, is counterintuitively indifferent to all unchosen inequalities, including intergenerational inequalities, once bare social minima are met. (shrink)

According to all-luck egalitarianism, the differential distributive effects of both brute luck, which defines the outcome of risks which are not deliberately taken, and option luck, which defines the outcome of deliberate gambles, are unjust. Exactly how to correct the effects of option luck is, however, a complex issue. This article argues that (a) option luck should be neutralized not just by correcting luck among gamblers, but among the community as a whole, because it would be unfair for gamblers as (...) a group to be disadvantaged relative to non-gamblers by bad option luck; (b) individuals should receive the warranted expected results of their gambles, except insofar as individuals blamelessly lacked the ability to ascertain which expectations were warranted; and (c) where societal resources are insufficient to deliver expected results to gamblers, gamblers should receive a lesser distributive share which is in proportion to the expected results. Where all-luck egalitarianism is understood in this way, it allows risk-takers to impose externalities on non-risk-takers, which seems counterintuitive. This may, however, be an advantage as it provides a luck egalitarian rationale for assisting ‘negligent victims’. (shrink)

The assertion that an experiment by Afshar et al. demonstrates violation of Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity is based on the faulty assumption that which-way information in a double-slit interference experiment can be retroactively determined from a future measurement.

David Miller has objected to the cosmopolitan argument that it is arbitrary and hence unfair to treat individuals differently on account of things for which they are not responsible. Such a view seems to require, implausibly, that individuals be treated identically even where (unchosen) needs differ. The objection is, however, inapplicable where the focus of cosmopolitan concern is arbitrary disadvantage rather than arbitrary treatment. This 'unfair disadvantage argument' supports a form of global luck egalitarianism. Miller also objects that cosmopolitanism is (...) unable to accommodate special obligations generated by national membership. Cosmopolitanism can, however, accommodate many special obligations to compatriots. Those which it cannot accommodate are only morally compelling if we assume what the objection claims to prove - that cosmopolitanism is mistaken. Cosmopolitanism construed as global luck egalitarianism is therefore able to withstand both of Miller's objections, and has significant independent appeal on account of the unfair disadvantage argument. (shrink)

Emissions grandfathering maintains that prior emissions increase future emission entitlements. The view forms a large part of actual emission control frameworks, but is routinely dismissed by political theorists and applied philosophers as evidently unjust. A sympathetic theoretical reconsideration of grandfathering suggests that the most plausible version is moderate, allowing that other considerations should influence emission entitlements, and be justified on instrumental grounds. The most promising instrumental justification defends moderate grandfathering on the basis that one extra unit of emission entitlements from (...) a baseline of zero emissions increases welfare to a greater extent where it is assigned to a high emitter than where it is assigned to a low emitter. Moderate grandfathering can be combined with basic needs and ability to pay considerations to provide an attractive approach to allocating emission entitlements. (shrink)

Discussions of where the costs of climate change adaptation and mitigation should fall often focus on the 'polluter pays principle' or the 'ability to pay principle'. Simon Caney has recently defended a 'hybrid view', which includes versions of both of these principles. This article argues that Caney's view succeeds in overcoming several shortfalls of both principles, but is nevertheless subject to three important objections: first, it does not distinguish between those emissions which are hard to avoid and those which are (...) easy to avoid; second, its only partial reference to all-things-considered justice means it cannot provide a full account even of climate justice; and third, it assigns to the poor very limited duties to meet climate change costs, even where they have created those costs, which may incentivise them to increase emissions. An alternative pluralistic account which avoids these objections is presented. (shrink)

This article argues for an unconventional interpretation of Arthur O. Lovejoy’s distinctive approach to method in the history of ideas. It is maintained that the value of the central concept of the ‘unit-idea’ has been misunderstood by friends and foes alike. The commonality of unit-ideas at different times and places is often defined in terms of familial resemblance. But such an approach must necessarily define unit-ideas as being something other than the smallest conceptual unit. It is therefore in tension with (...) Lovejoy’s methodological prescription and, more importantly, disregards a potentially important aspect of intellectual history – the smaller conceptual units themselves. In response to this, an alternative interpretation of unit-ideas as ‘elemental’ – as the smallest identifiable conceptual components – is put forward. Unlike the familial resemblance approach, the elemental approach can provide a plausible explanation for changes in ideas. These are construed as being either the creation of new unit-ideas, the disappearance of existing ones, or alterations in the groups of unit-ideas that compose idea-complexes. The focus on the movement of unit-ideas and idea-complexes through history can also be sensitive to contextual issues, carefully distinguishing the different meanings that single words may have, in much the way that both Lovejoy and his influential critic Quentin Skinner suggest. (shrink)

Discrimination might be considered unjust on account of the comparative disadvantage it imposes, the absolute disadvantage it imposes, the disrespect it shows, or the prejudice it shows. This article argues that each of these accounts overlooks some cases of unjust discrimination. In response to this state of affairs we might combine two or more of these accounts. A promising approach combines the comparative disadvantage and absolute disadvantage accounts.

Many naive realists endorse a negative disjunctivist strategy in order to deal with the challenge presented by the possibility of phenomenologically indistinguishable halucination. In the first part of this paper I argue that this approach is methodologically inconsistent because it undercuts the phenomenological motivation that underlies the the appeal of naive realism. In the second part of the paper I develop an alternative to the negative disjunctivist account along broadly Meinongian lines. In the last section of this paper I consider (...) and evaluate a somewhat similar but rival view of hallucination developed by Mark Johnston. (shrink)

This review article of Shlomi Segall's Health, Luck, and Justice (Princeton University Press, 2010) addresses three issues: first, Segall’s claim that luck egalitarianism, properly construed, does not object to brute luck equality; second, Segall’s claim that brute luck is properly construed as the outcome of actions that it would have been unreasonable to expect the agent to avoid; and third, Segall’s account of healthcare and criticism of rival views. On the first two issues, a more conventional form of luck egalitarianism (...) – that is, one which objects to brute luck even if it creates equality, and which construes brute luck as the inverse of agent responsibility – is defended. On the third issue, strengths and weaknesses in Segall’s criticism of Rawlsian, democratic egalitarian, and all-luck egalitarian approaches to healthcare, and in his own luck egalitarian approach, are identified. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of egalitarian justice have often focused on the issue of expensive taste. G.A. Cohen has recently abandoned the view that all chosen disadvantages are non-compensable, now maintaining that chosen expensive judgmental tastes—those endorsed by valuational judgment—are compensable as it is unreasonable to expect persons not to develop them. But chosen expensive brute taste—the main type of non-compensable expensive taste on the new scheme—cannot be described in such a way that there is a normative difference between it and chosen (...) expensive judgmental taste. As there are related problems with denying compensation for the other kind of expensive taste that might remain non-compensable, Cohen's position on taste appears to be either implausible or virtually indistinguishable from that of equality of welfare. However, compensation for valuational judgment-based expensive taste might be justified on grounds of responsibility. (shrink)

Some critics of luck egalitarianism have suggested that its reference to responsibility leaves it either assuming metaphysical libertarianism or (in the inevitable absence of a resolution of the free will problem) practically impotent. This paper argues that luck egalitarianism need not fall into either trap. It may in fact be sensitive to the possibility that libertarianism is false, and would not be undermined were this the case. Here luck egalitarianism actually fares better than outcome egalitarianism, which assumes, in just the (...) way luck egalitarianism allegedly does, a controversial metaphysical position. There is, moreover, little difficulty in applying luck egalitarianism in practical contexts on the basis of our best guess about the relevant metaphysical questions. This solution is, of course, non-ideal, but appears preferable to the alternatives, such as simply assuming that metaphysical account of responsibility that offers the best fit with our favored theory of distributive justice. (shrink)

This articles proposes that theories and principles of distributive justice be considered substantively egalitarian iff they satisfy each of three conditions: (1) they consider the bare fact that a person is in certain circumstances to be a conclusive reason for placing another relevantly identically entitled person in the same circumstances, except where this conflicts with other similarly conclusive reasons arising from the circumstances of other persons; (2) they can be stated as 'equality of x for all persons', making no explicit (...) or implicit exclusion of persons or individuals and showing no greater concern and respect for some rather than others; and (3) they pursue equality in a dimension that is valuable to egalitarians. On this construal, prioritarianism and Dworkinian equality of resources, a view often identified as luck egalitarian, are not substantively egalitarian, but equality of opportunity, the standard form of luck egalitarianism, may be. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin maintains that value is unitary, in the sense that different values do not conflict. This article resists this ‘hedgehog’ view with reference to the values of equality and utility. These appear to yield conflicting prescriptions in cases where one possible distribution gives different individuals the same amount of advantage, and the other contains an unequal distribution of a greater overall amount of advantage. Hedgehogs might respond to such a case in two ways. First, they might claim that equality (...) and utility are not truly in conflict. However, this claim seems implausible on our ordinary concepts of these values, and Dworkin does not provide grounds for revising our concepts. Second, they might deny that one of these values – utility – is a genuine value. However, one of the two aspects of Dworkin’s fundamental principle of equal concern appears to be supportive of utility, and he offers no good arguments for his preferred strategy of accommodating this aspect of equal concern within the value of equality. Furthermore, the alternative ‘fox’ view, which recognizes equality and utility as conflicting values, each accommodating one aspect of equal concern, has the advantage that it stays truer to familiar moral concepts. (shrink)

Emissions grandfathering holds that a history of emissions strengthens an agent’s claim for future emission entitlements. Though grandfathering appears to have been influential in actual emission control frameworks, it is rarely taken seriously by philosophers. This article presents an argument for thinking this an oversight. The core of the argument is that members of countries with higher historical emissions are typically burdened with higher costs when transitioning to a given lower level of emissions. According to several appealing views in political (...) philosophy (utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism) they are therefore entitled to greater resources, including emission entitlements, than those in similar positions but with lower emissions. This grandfathering may play an especially important role in allocating emission entitlements among rich countries. (shrink)

A large proportion of humankind today lives in avoidable poverty. This article examines whether affluent individuals and governments have moral duties to change this situation. It is maintained that an alternative to the familiar accounts of transdomestic distributive justice and personal ethics put forward by writers such as Peter Singer, John Rawls, and Thomas Pogge is required, since each of these accounts fails to reflect the full range of relevant considerations. A better account would give some weight to overall utility, (...) the condition of the worst off, and individual responsibility. This approach provides robust support to global poverty alleviation. (shrink)

This article explores the Rawlsian goal of ensuring that distributions are not influenced by the morally arbitrary. It does so by bringing discussions of distributive justice into contact with the debate over moral luck initiated by Williams and Nagel. Rawls’ own justice as fairness appears to be incompatible with the arbitrariness commitment, as it creates some equalities arbitrarily. A major rival, Dworkin’s version of brute luck egalitarianism, aims to be continuous with ordinary ethics, and so is (a) sensitive to non-philosophical (...) beliefs about free will and responsibility, and (b) allows inequalities to arise on the basis of option luck. But Dworkin does not present convincing reasons in support of continuity, and there are compelling moral reasons for justice to be sensitive to the best philosophical account of free will and responsibility, as is proposed by the revised brute luck egalitarianism of Arneson and Cohen. While Dworkinian brute luck egalitarianism admits three sorts of morally arbitrary disadvantaging which correspond to three forms of moral luck (constitutive, circumstantial, and option luck), revised brute luck egalitarianism does not disadvantage on the basis of constitutive or circumstantial luck. But it is not as sensitive to responsibility as it needs to be to fully extinguish the influence of the morally arbitrary, for persons under it may exercise their responsibility equivalently yet end up with different outcomes on account of option luck. It is concluded that egalitarians should deny the existence of distributive luck, which is luck in the levels of advantage that individuals are due. (shrink)

The Schrodinger's Cat and Wigner's Friend thought experiments, which logically follow from the universality of quantum mechanics at all scales, have been repeatedly characterized as possible in principle, if perhaps difficult or impossible for all practical purposes. I show in this paper why these experiments, and interesting macroscopic superpositions in general, are actually impossible in principle. First, no macroscopic superposition can be created via the slow process of natural quantum packet dispersion because all macroscopic objects are inundated with decohering interactions (...) that constantly localize them. Second, the SC/WF thought experiments depend on von Neumann-style amplification to achieve quickly what quantum dispersion achieves slowly. Finally, I show why such amplification cannot produce a macroscopic quantum superposition of an object relative to an external observer, no matter how well isolated the object from the observer, because: the object and observer are already well correlated to each other; and reducing their correlations to allow the object to achieve a macroscopic superposition relative to the observer is equally impossible, in principle, as creating a macroscopic superposition via the process of natural quantum dispersion. (shrink)

The potential for scalable quantum computing depends on the viability of fault tolerance and quantum error correction, by which the entropy of environmental noise is removed during a quantum computation to maintain the physical reversibility of the computer’s logical qubits. However, the theory underlying quantum error correction applies a linguistic double standard to the words “noise” and “measurement” by treating environmental interactions during a quantum computation as inherently reversible, and environmental interactions at the end of a quantum computation as irreversible (...) measurements. Specifically, quantum error correction theory models noise as interactions that are uncorrelated or that result in correlations that decay in space and/or time, thus embedding no permanent information to the environment. I challenge this assumption both on logical grounds and by discussing a hypothetical quantum computer based on “position qubits.” The technological difficulties of producing a useful scalable position-qubit quantum computer parallel the overwhelming difficulties in performing a double-slit interference experiment on an object comprising a million to a billion fermions. (shrink)

Marine ecosystems are under increasing pressure from human activity, yet successful management relies on knowledge. The evidence-based policy (EBP) approach has been promoted on the grounds that it provides greater transparency and consistency by relying on ‘high quality’ information. However, EBP also creates epistemic responsibilities. Decision-making where limited or no empirical evidence exists, such as is often the case in marine systems, creates epistemic obligations for new information acquisition. We argue that philosophical approaches can inform the science-policy interface. Using marine (...) biosecurity examples, we specifically examine the epistemic challenges in the acquisition and acceptance of evidence to inform policy, discussing epistemic due care and biases in consideration of evidence. (shrink)

South Africa is a highly distributively unequal country, and its inequality continues to be largely along racial lines. Such circumstances call for assessment from the perspective of contemporary theories of distributive justice. Three such theories—Rawlsian justice, utilitarianism, and luck egalitarianism—are described and applied. Rawls' difference principle recommends that the worst off be made as well as they can be, a standard which South Africa clearly falls short of. Utilitarianism recommends the maximization of overall societal well-being, a goal which South Africa (...) again fails to achieve given its severe inequality and the fact of the diminishing marginal value of money—that a given amount of money tends to produce more utility for a poor person than it does for a rich person. The final theory, luck egalitarianism, aims to make distributions sensitive to individual exercises of responsibility. This view also objects to South Africa's inequality, this time on the basis that the poor are overwhelmingly worse off through no fault or choice of their own. These major theories of distributive justice therefore all propose large-scale redistribution to the benefit of the (predominantly black) poor. Perhaps more surprisingly, all three views also provide support for socio-economic affirmative action, as opposed to South Africa's race-based Black Economic Empowerment. (shrink)

Palliative care serves both as an integrated part of treatment and as a last effort to care for those we cannot cure. The extent to which palliative care should be provided and our reasons for doing so have been curiously overlooked in the debate about distributive justice in health and healthcare. We argue that one prominent approach, the Rawlsian approach developed by Norman Daniels, is unable to provide such reasons and such care. This is because of a central feature in (...) Daniels' account, namely that care should be provided to restore people's opportunities. Daniels' view is both unable to provide pain relief to those who need it as a supplement to treatment and, without justice-based reasons to provide palliative care to those whose opportunities cannot be restored. We conclude that this makes Daniels' framework much less attractive. (shrink)

I show in this paper why the universality of quantum mechanics at all scales, which implies the possibility of Schrodinger's Cat and Wigner's Friend thought experiments, cannot be experimentally confirmed, and why macroscopic superpositions in general cannot be observed or measured, even in principle. Through the relativity of quantum superposition and the transitivity of correlation, it is shown that from the perspective of an object that is in quantum superposition relative to a macroscopic measuring device and observer, the observer is (...) already sufficiently well correlated to the measuring device that once the object correlates to the measuring device, there is no time period in which the observer can perform an appropriate interference experiment to show that the measuring device is in a superposition. (shrink)