This paper explores Saidiya Hartman's undertheorized account of 'redress' in conversation with the extensive uptake of her work on Black fungibility, subjection, and critiques of emancipation. Although Hartman uses the term in nearly all of her writing, little work has been done to clarify how Hartman conceptualizes redress as a response to the constitution of Black lives as abstract, exchangeable, and disposable. This paper offers an account of how Hartman theorizes redress, showing how it both resists, and (...) acts as a mechanism for, the constitution of Blackness as fungible. Consequently, I argue that Hartman's readers fundamentally skew her thinking in divorcing redress from her other key concepts. (shrink)

This thesis under the title “Public Health Policy in Resource Allocation: the Role of Ubuntu Ethics in Redressing Resource Disparity between Public and Private Healthcare in South Africa” explores health care disparities pertaining to resource allocation between public and private sector. It is of relevance and importance in South Africa where 54% of the population live on less than US$3 per day. Although the government has instituted certain changes aimed at transforming the public health care system, the resource allocation gap (...) between the two persists and remains wide. The research gives special attention to the role that Ubuntu ethics can play in redressing the resource allocation disparities between public and private health care sectors in South Africa, pointing out the existing gap in financing, as well as human resource between public and private health care sectors, which leads to poor health outcomes in public sector. Therefore, the problem is the prevalent inequality of resource allocation between private and public health care sectors. The analysis of policy gaps, as well as evaluating the cause of disparities in the health system is the goal of this research. The study endeavours to redress the disparities within the context of Ubuntu ethical principles and proposes a change in public policy so as to enhance healthcare for the benefit of the people. The study is philosophical and ethical, so the methodology used is discursive in nature, majorly focusing on critically reviewing existing literature, that is, the philosophical resources on Ubuntu ethics and justice theories as well as a range of government resources inclusive of public health policy documents. Social determinants of health and their impact in a South African context are discussed with the implication that health is not merely freedom from disease and or incapacity, but rather being well mentally, physically and socially. The attainment of a healthy status goes beyond ability to access healthcare services, and incorporates social determinants including but not limited to conditions in which people have been born into, stay, establish career and grow old in. It also includes the arrangements put in place to deal with illness and determine health. Issues of revenue, literacy, communal safety networks, vocation and conditions under-which vocation is undertaken, lack of work and vocation insecurity, early stages of human development, gender, cultural group, dietary insecurity, housing communal exclusion and disability all come into the picture as factors that determine health. But there is also discussion of the socio-economic status as contributors to health inequity wherein alcohol abuse, sugar intake, and smoking are identified as behavioural factors that complicate public health. One outstanding feature of this research is that it establishes a link between Ubuntu and public health policy. The researcher establishes that Ubuntu ethics is appropriate for not only discussing public morality, but also for formulating public policy that is morally tenable for South Africa, especially for the public health sector. This thesis calls for an application of Ubuntu in a proper context in order to enhance societal well-being for the benefit of many, if not all. The research proposes the fundamental principle of Ubuntu ethics in which the good of the community is as important as the good of every member of the community. Since Ubuntu ethics does not merely seek to fulfil what benefits the majority, as would be the case in a utilitarian society, the researcher advocates for the building of consensus on the common good, which should be understood to imply not just what is good for everyone in the community, but also what is good for the continued well-being of the community as a single unit. In this regard, the research finds it important that deliberate effort be made to integrate Ubuntu ethics into policies, citing the example of the National Health Insurance (NHI). The good health of all the members of a community is an assurance of the well-being and continuity of the whole national community. The research concludes that public health policy should integrate Ubuntu ethical values such as community, sharing, care, solidarity, identity, harmony, respect, and dignity into policy documents and legislation. (shrink)

Hunger strikes are commonly repressed in prison and seen as disruptive, coercive, and violent. Hunger strikers and their advocates insist that incarcerated persons have a right to hunger strike, which protects them against repression and force-feeding. Physicians and medical ethicists generally ground this right in the right to refuse medical treatment; lawyers and legal scholars derive it from incarcerated persons’ free speech rights. Neither account adequately grounds the right to hunger strike because both misrepresent the hunger strike as noncoercive and (...) nonviolent. I articulate an alternative, dual account of the right to hunger strike. On the remedial argument, the right to hunger strike should be legally protected as a right to petition for redress, in light of incarcerated people’s structural vulnerability to abuse and given inadequate grievance mechanisms. The constructive argument derives the right to hunger strike from the right to resist oppression and stresses the normative permissibility of the use of coercive tactics to defend one’s liberty interests in the face of carceral oppression. -/- . (shrink)

Human rights treaties are often attached and complemented with Optional Protocols. The Optional protocol instruments are adopted after careful deliberation between different stakeholders including member states to human rights treaties. -/- The present document on Introduction to the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights- Optional Protocol [OP-ICESCR] is an addition to the on-going work on the Human Rights Framework on ESC Rights. It covers basic information on the objectives of the OP and the key provisions dealing with the (...) redressal mechanisms and processes. Much emphasis is given to highlighting the expansion of the normative framework through the works of the Committee under the ICESCR. The document highlights a few of the important standards developed, interpreted and applied by the Committee in its dealing with member states. The document also mentions a few areas that need further study and analysis in order to understand the impact of the OP-ICESCR mechanisms within domestic jurisdictions, particularly of the member states. (shrink)

Redresses the critical neglect of uplifting literature for children from the 16th to the 19th century, by looking at how catechisms, poetry, allegories, parables, short stories, novels, and plays handle the motif of imagining heaven on earth. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This essay aims to redress the contention that epistemic possibility cannot be a guide to the principles of modal metaphysics. I introduce a novel epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. I argue that the interaction between the two-dimensional framework and the mereological parthood relation, which is super-rigid, enables epistemic possibilities and truthmakers with regard to parthood to be a guide to its metaphysical profile. I specify, further, a two-dimensional formula encoding the relation between the epistemic possibility and verification of essential properties (...) obtaining and their metaphysical possibility or verification. I then generalize the approach to haecceitistic properties, and examine the Julius Caesar problem as a test case. (shrink)

So-called theories of well-being (prudential value, welfare) are under-represented in discussions of well-being. I do four things in this article to redress this. First, I develop a new taxonomy of theories of well-being, one that divides theories in a more subtle and illuminating way. Second, I use this taxonomy to undermine some misconceptions that have made people reluctant to hold objective-list theories. Third, I provide a new objective-list theory and show that it captures a powerful motivation for the main (...) competitor theory of well-being (the desire-fulfilment theory). Fourth, I try to defuse the worry that objective-list theories are problematically arbitrary and show how the theory can and should be developed. (shrink)

Alasia Nuti’s important recent book, Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, makes many persuasive interventions. Nuti shows how structural injustice theory is enriched by being explicitly historical; in theorizing historical-structural injustice, she lays bare the mechanisms of how the injustices of history reproduce themselves. For Nuti, historical-structural patterns are not only shaped by habitual behaviors that are or appear to be morally permissible, but also by individual wrongdoing and wrongdoing by powerful group agents like (...) states. In this article, I extend Nuti’s rich analysis, focusing on two questions that arise from her theory of historical-structural injustice: Beyond being blameworthy for wrongful acts themselves, are culpable wrongdoers blameworthy for contributing to structural injustice? Does historical moral ignorance mitigate moral responsibility for past injustice? Regarding, I distinguish between the local and societal structural effects of wrongdoing. Though I think this distinction is well-founded, it ultimately leads to tensions with structural injustice theory’s idea of ordinary individuals being blameless for reproducing unjust structures. Regarding, I argue that even though it is natural for the question of historical moral ignorance to arise in considering past wrongdoing, at least in the case of powerful group agents, we should not overlook forms of cruelty which present-day moral concepts are not needed to condemn. (shrink)

This collection brings together fourteen contributions by authors from around the globe. Each of the contributions engages with questions about how local and global bioethical issues are made to be comparable, in the hope of redressing basic needs and demands for justice. These works demonstrate the significant conceptual contributions that can be made through feminists' attention to debates in a range of interrelated fields, especially as they formulate appropriate responses to developments in medical technology, global economics, population shifts, and poverty.

The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different dis- ciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, rele- vance is also a core concept in the affective sciences, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to be relevant to the person in whom (...) that state is elicited. Despite this, although some affective scientists have carefully considered what emotional relevance might mean, surprisingly little research has been dedicated to providing a definition. Since, by contrast, the relevance-theoretic notion of relevance is carefully defined, our primary aim is to compare relevance as it exists in affective science and in relevance theory, A further aim is to redress what we perceive to be an imbalance: Affective scientists have made great strides in understanding the processes of emotion elicitation/responses etc., but despite the fact that among humans the communication of information about emotional states is ubiquitous, pragmatists have tended to ignore it. We conclude, therefore, that affective science and relevance theory have much to learn from each other. (shrink)

In this chapter, we consider the plausibility and consequences of the use of the term “honest errors” to describe the accidental killings of civilians resulting from the US military’s drone campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. We argue that the narrative of “honest errors” unjustifiably excuses those involved in these killings from moral culpability, and reinforces long-standing, pernicious assumptions about the moral superiority of the US military and the inevitability of civilian deaths in combat. Furthermore, we maintain that, given (...) the knowledge-distorting practices within the US military’s organizational structure, few if any civilian deaths from drone strikes meet the criteria of a genuinely morally excusing “honest mistake”. Instead, these accidental killings often reflect objectionable attitudes of relative disregard for the safety of civilians. These attitudes are, we argue, sufficient to warrant the attribution of blame and moral responsibility, both with respect to certain individual actions and with respect to the US military as an institution. In light of this, we propose incorporating a Principle of the Moral Equality of Non-combatants into military assessments of what counts as “acceptable risk” to civilians. This would go some way, we argue, to redressing the ongoing injustice inflicted on the victims of civilian killings by the failure of the US military and US political leadership to take moral responsibility for unjustified civilian deaths. (shrink)

I argue that epistemic failings are a significant and underappreciated moral hazard in the financial services industry. I argue further that an analysis of these epistemic failings and their means of redress is best developed by identifying policies and procedures that are likely to facilitate good judgment. These policies and procedures are “best epistemic practices.” I explain how best epistemic practices support good reasoning, thereby facilitating accurate judgments about risk and reward. Failures to promote and adhere to best epistemic (...) practices contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. I identify and discuss some of the ways in which best epistemic practices were violated in the events that led to the crisis, with a focus on the role of the credit rating agencies. I go on to discuss some of the ways in which these failings have been redressed. I conclude by observing how proactive regulation for best epistemic practices might help us to anticipate and avoid future crises. (shrink)

Blaming (construed broadly to include both blaming-attitudes and blaming-actions) is a puzzling phenomenon. Even when we grant that someone is blameworthy, we can still sensibly wonder whether we ought to blame him. We sometimes choose to forgive and show mercy, even when it is not asked for. We are naturally led to wonder why we shouldn’t always do this. Wouldn’t it be a better to wholly reject the punitive practices of blame, especially in light of their often undesirable effects, and (...) embrace an ethic of unrelenting forgiveness and mercy? In this paper I seek to address these questions by offering an account of blame that provides a rationale for thinking that to wholly forswear blaming blameworthy agents would be deeply mistaken. This is because, as I will argue, blaming is a way of valuing, it is “a mode of valuation.” I will argue that among the minimal standards of respect generated by valuable objects, notably persons, is the requirement to redress disvalue with blame. It is not just that blame is something additional we are required to do in properly valuing, but rather blame is part of what that it is to properly value. Blaming, given the existence of blameworthy agents, is mode of valuation required by the standards of minimal respect. To forswear blame would be to fail value what we ought to value. (shrink)

Ideal theory in social and political philosophy generally works to hide philosophical theories’ complicity in sustaining the structural violence and maintenance of white supremacy that are foundational to settler colonial societies. While non-ideal theory can provide a corrective to some of ideal theory’s intended omissions, it can also work to conceal the same systems of violence that ideal theory does, especially when framed primarily as a response to ideal theory. This article takes a decolonial approach to exploring the limitations of (...) non-ideal theory in its ability to respond to and redress the continuing harms done to Indigenous peoples by settler colonialism, including by outlining non-ideal theory’s relationship to a colonial politics of recognition. (shrink)

Given the difficulty of characterizing the quandary introduced in Hume’s Appendix to the Treatise, coupled with the alleged “underdetermination” of the text, it is striking how few commentators have considered whether Hume addresses and/or redresses the problem after 1740—in the first Enquiry, for example. This is not only unfortunate, but ironic; for, in the Appendix, Hume mentions that more mature reasonings may reconcile whatever contradiction(s) he has in mind. I argue that Hume’s 1746 letter to Lord Kames foreshadows a subtle, (...) but significant, shift in Hume’s reasonings regarding the relevance of “real connexions”; that the Enquiry of 1748 provides evidence for this shift; and that this shift obviates Hume’s second thoughts by reconciling the contradiction that he had in mind. In short, Hume’s letter to Kames and Enquiry supply the retrodictive keys to a systematically satisfactory account. (shrink)

The 2005 International Consensus Conference on Intersex resulted in a substantive revision of the lexicon and guidelines for treating intersex conditions. The speed with which the new treatment protocol has been adopted by healthcare practitioners and providers is considered unprecedented. However, a number of intersex people and advocacy groups have complained that the recommended revisions are inadequately informed by the testimony of intersex people. In this paper, I argue that such complaints are valid and that, despite the conference conveners stated (...) intention, the revisions perpetuate the epistemic injustice long endured by intersex people. By analyzing the Consensus Conference and its results as a failed attempt to redress the epistemic marginalization of intersex patients and advocacy groups, I am able to identify lingering institutional hurdles to cultivating the virtue of epistemic justice in biomedical practice. (shrink)

Alasia Nuti’s recent book Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress puts forward a compelling vision of contemporary duties to redress past wrongdoing, grounded in the idea of “historical-structural-injustice”, constituted by the “structural reproduction of an unjust history over time and through changes”. Such an approach promises to transcend the familiar scholarly divide between “backward-looking” and “forward-looking” models, and allow for a reparative approach that focuses specifically on those past wrongs that impact the present, (...) while retaining a significant focus on the historical. While Nuti’s work is perhaps the most sophisticated treatment of structural injustice to date, this paper argues that an exclusive concentration on historical-structural-injustices neglects some aspects and some acts of wrongdoing that call out for present-day redress. What is needed, therefore, is a pluralist theory that can accept the pressing force in the present of historical-structural-injustices, whilst also making room for past-regarding duties that either do not fit, or are not best conceptualized in terms of, this approach, without being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of historic injustice. (shrink)

Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation. Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. (...) It is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intra-mathematical explanation, and scientific unification. (shrink)

Brentano's philosophy of art, contained primarily in his book, Grundzuge der Ästhetik, is the result of an original theory of intrinsic value that was derived from Brentano's philosophical psychology. In his aesthetics, Brentano endeavored to find an objective ground for the value of aesthetic contemplation through his theory of the intentional objects of emotions and desires. The lack of attention Brentano's aesthetics has received is surprising, given that two of the many students Brentano influenced, Husserl (through the development of the (...) phenomenological movement) and Ehrenfels (through the development of Gestalt psychology) have had an extraordinary influence on twentieth century perceptions of art. In this paper I will attempt to redress some of this neglect by outlining Brentano's analysis of aesthetic intentions and the relationship his aesthetics bears to his overall philosophical system. (shrink)

On 4 December 2006, during discussions on the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill, Andrew Dismore, Member of Parliament and then Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, said, ‘Organisations can kill people … but it is the actions and omissions of people in organisations that cumulatively cause death’. However, the corporate entity is a vehicle for the communal actions of those who guide the business activities. Attempting to seek out persons or people that are solely responsible for deaths (...) and violations of human rights caused by companies is fruitless. The entity is a vehicle for those actions, it possesses its own, often deep, pockets of finance and resources, and it has a public image. It is more useful to punish the corporate entity, in instances where the corporate behaviour has led to death and human rights abuses, as it is in seeking out individual defendants. Soft law options have not brought about a sufficient reduction in instances of deaths caused by corporate behaviour across jurisdictional borders. This article will argue that the time has now come to establish an international hard law on corporate killing, and for states to ensure that there is a viable path towards a redress for victims and their families along with adopting a duty to assist the victim or their family to pursue redress to ensure a fair balance of power against transnational companies. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explain what a protest is by using the resources of speech-act theory. First, we distinguish the object, redress, and means of a protest. This provided a way to think of atomic acts of protest as having dual communicative aspects, viz., a negative evaluation of the object and a connected prescription of redress. Second, we use Austin’s notion of a felicity condition to further characterize the dual communicative aspects of protest. This allows us to distinguish (...) protest from some other speech acts which also involve a negative evaluation of some object and a connected prescription of redress. Finally, we turn to Kukla and Lance’s idea of a normative functionalist analysis of speech acts to advance the view that protests are a complex speech act constituted by dual input normative statuses and dual output normative statuses. (shrink)

The primary aim of this chapter is to show that several missteps made by others in in their thinking about law as an artefact are due to misconceptions about the role of intentions in understanding law as an artefact. I first briefly recap my own contention that law is a genre of institutionalized abstract artefacts (put forth in The Functions of Law (OUP 2016) and subsequent papers), mostly following Searle’s understanding of institutions and Thomasson’s understanding of public artefacts. I highlight (...) the central place that this theory affords law’s functions, without requiring the theorist to say that possession or performance of the function is either necessary or sufficient for inclusion in the class of law. Some of the most common misunderstandings are exemplified in Brian Leiter’s paper ‘Legal Positivism about the Artifact Law’. He thinks that holding an intentionalist view of artefacts commits the theorist to privileging drafters’ intentions when interpreting law. (It doesn’t.) He also has confusions about the differences between artefact tokens and artefact types leading him to a problematically broad understanding of artefacts. Another problem can be seen in thinking that functional understandings of artefacts are vulnerable to the same problems that arise in functional explanations for biological systems. I go on to consider the work of Luka Burazin and Corrado Roversi, addressing worries that making intentionality central to artefacts implies too much conscious thought is required to make one, noting that several theories of intentionality do not require conscious thought in the execution of intentional action. While those who think a central place for intentionality threatens to leave us unable to explain customary law, this can be dealt with by noting the important distinction between customary rules and customary laws (where the latter requires a decision to enlist public aid in redressing violations). I claim that authors’ intentions are communicated requests for the artefacts’ audiences to see the artefacts as members of their putative kinds. Finally, I address the question of whether or not legal systems are themselves artefacts and institutions, given that they may or may not have been intentionally created. An early lawgiver might have created a legal system by accident in the process of handing down the first laws. I raise the possibility that we might want to impute intentionality to necessary by-products of artefact creation, seeing those by-products as artefacts as well. (shrink)

My primary aim in this article is to provide a philosophical account of the unity of hallucinations, which can capture both perceptual hallucinations (which are subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions) and non-perceptual hallucinations (all others). Besides, I also mean to clarify further the division of labour and the nature of the collaboration between philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Assuming that the epistemic conception of hallucinations put forward by M. G. F. Martin and others is largely on the right track, I will (...) focus on two main tasks: (a) to provide a satisfactory phenomenology of the subjective character of perceptions and perceptual hallucinations and (b) to redress the philosophers’ neglect of non-perceptual hallucinations. More specifically, I intend to apply one of the central tenets of the epistemic conception—that hallucinations can and should be positively characterised in terms of their phenomenological connections to perceptions—to non-perceptual hallucinations as well. That is, I will try to show that we can positively specify the class of non-perceptual hallucinations by reference to the distinctive ways in which we first-personally experience them and perceptions in consciousness. The task of saying more about their underlying third-personal nature may then be left to the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

From a nonideal justice perspective, this article investigates liability and compensation intheir wider theoretical context to better understand the governance of climate loss anddamage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC). The usual rationale for considering compensation takes a backward-looking understanding of responsibility. It links those causing harm directly to its remedy. Thisarticle shows that, under current political circumstances, it is more reasonable to understandresponsibility as a forward-looking concept and thus to differentiate responsibilitieson grounds of capacity and solidarity. (...) The article argues that loss and damage entitlementsinUNFCCCgovernance should be understood as entitlements to a threshold of capabilitiesfor resilience. While compensation merely means redressing the situation ex ante a threat,entitlements to capabilities for resilience can entail more demanding responsibilities ofsupport. This means that Article 8 of the Paris Agreement has much more demandingimplications than it might at first appear. (shrink)

To understand the radical potential of Heidegger’s model of practice, we need to acknowledge the role that temporality plays within it. Commentaries on Heidegger’s account of practical engagement, however, often leave the connection between purposiveness and temporality unexplored, a tendency that persists in the contemporary discourse generated by the interaction between the phenomenological tradition and certain approaches within cognitive science. Taking up a temporality-oriented reading that redresses this can, I want to argue here, reveal new illuminating sites for the intersection (...) between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, particularly between Heideggerian perspectives and what have become known as enactive approaches to the study of cognition. According to the latter, cognition is an inherently relational process through which the interaction of a living being and its environment generates meaning and, ultimately, a world of significance defined by the cogniser’s self-concern. I will suggest that this emphasis upon the inextricable intertwining of agent and world renders enactive models of cognition particularly congenial to a mutually enriching dialogue with Heidegger’s account of purposiveness, particularly if we read the latter in terms of the temporal framework that Being and Time offers us. (shrink)

Individualists hold that moral responsibility can be ascribed to single human beings only. An important collectivist objection is that individualism is morally deficient because it leaves a normative residue. Without attributing responsibility to collectives there remains a “deficit in the accounting books” (Pettit). This collectivist strategy often uses judgment aggregation paradoxes to show that the collective can be responsible when no individual is. I argue that we do not need collectivism to handle such cases because the individualist analysis leaves no (...) responsibility-deficit. Harm suffered in such situations can have only two sources. Harm is either due to culpable wrongdoing by individuals. Harm is then redressed by holding these individuals responsible. Or harm does not result from culpable wrongdoing. Such harm may have to be redressed too, but not because anyone is responsible for it. Therefore, the charge of moral insensitivity against individualist accounts can be rejected. Furthermore, in the last section of the chapter I will show that collectivist talk about moral responsibility can be used for ethically questionable purposes as well. Collectivists cannot claim the moral high ground. (shrink)

Current theories of addiction try to explain what addiction is, who experiences it, why it occurs, and how it develops and persists. In this article, I explain why none of these theories can be accepted as a comprehensive model. I argue that current models fail to account for differences in embodiment, interaction processes, and the experience of addiction. To redress these limiting factors, I design a proposal for an enactive account of addiction that follows the enactive model of autism (...) proposed by Hanne De Jaegher. (shrink)

Modern philosophy can often appear to be mere cryptomnesia, redressed and resuited to fit the particular mouth from which it is espoused. This notion is but a sorrowful chimera binding the 21st-century mind to the confines of an eternal shadow, an eternal prison of doubt in the face of limitless potential. As a species, we are rapidly approaching the precipice of Yahweh's original position as instantiators of consciousness, as the I AM in relation to our artificial progeny. Could one fabricate (...) a candidate more fitting for a contra-analysis of our current situation than Hegel? One could not. (shrink)

In a morally diverse society, moral agents inevitably run up against intractable disagreements. Civility functions as a valuable constraint on the sort of behaviors which moral agents might deploy in defense of their deeply held moral convictions and generally requires tolerance of other views and political liberalism, as does pluralism. However, most visions of civility are exceptionless: they require civil behavior regardless of how strong the disagreement is between two members of the same society. This seems an excellent idea when (...) those required to do the tolerating might otherwise smash us. However, the demands of civility are universal and fall upon everyone, including ourselves. They may seem to require us to tolerate the intolerable, leading us not into pluralism but rather into functional relativism, and also require the powerless to moderate their demands for redress. They also place moral agents in a very difficult position with respect to realizing our deeply held moral values. Isaiah Berlin’s pluralism, by contrast, allows us to violate tolerance when we come up against values which, put into practice, are incompatible with a form of life we can tolerate. Despite the many fronts on which civility and pluralism align, they are also pitted against each other. Only a qualified (not exceptionless) civility based in respect for persons can cohere with pluralism and thus resolve the double bind in which the moral agent seemed to be placed by exceptionless civility. I develop a rule for Accepted Exceptions that helps to explain how moral agents can be civil, value pluralism, demand redress, and maintain their own deeply held moral commitments. (shrink)

A key premise of the kalam cosmological argument is that the universe began to exist. However, while a number of philosophers have offered powerful criticisms of William Lane Craig’s defense of the premise, J.P. Moreland has also offered a number of unique arguments in support of it, and to date, little attention has been paid to these in the literature. In this paper, I attempt to go some way toward redressing this matter. In particular, I shall argue that Moreland’s philosophical (...) arguments against the possibility of traversing a beginningless past are unsuccessful. (shrink)

The distinctive experiences of multiracial people have been underexplored in philosophy. For instance, it is not uncommon for a multiracial person to anticipate or encounter racial denials. A racial denial occurs when a person’s assertion of their racial identity, e.g. “I am Black,” is challenged or called into doubt. While monoracial individuals can generally assert their race without being challenged (e.g. “I am Black” or “I am White”), a multiracial person may be met with the rejoinder, “You aren’t really Black” (...) or “You aren’t really White.” Utilizing Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice, this essay argues that some racial denials arise because our existing racial vocabulary has gaps, and that these gaps can be traced to unjust origins. Ultimately, this essay’s aim is threefold. First, it aims to understand the nature of racial denials. Second, it demonstrates that attending to the lives multiracial people can yield important insights into race and epistemic injustice. Third, by focusing on multiracial experience, this essay aims to redress — in a limited way — the marginalization of multiracial lives within philosophical theory. (shrink)

Although the Chunqiu fanlu traditionally ascribed to Han dynasty scholar Dong Zhongshu (c. 195 − 115 BCE) is considered to be an extremely important book for the development of Chinese ethical and philosophical thought, it has been long neglected and has lacked proper non-Chinese scholarly attention. Up to the 2016 translation by Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major, only partial translations of the Chunqiu fanlu had been published in English. Part of the reason for the neglect of the study (...) of the Chunqiu fanlu and consequently its late translation lies in the complexity of the text, connected to a number of obscurities about its origin, authorship and nature. Sarah Queen and John Major have made an important step forward in redressing this neglect. They produced a complete English translation and study of the Chunqiu fanlu. Besides focusing on the first complete English translation of the Chunqiu fanlu, this article reviews central questions and problems regarding that text and attempts to summarize the current state of research on it. (shrink)

I argue that changes in the numerical identity of groups do not necessarily speak in favour of the supersession of some historical injustice. I contend that the correlativity between the perpetrator and the victim of injustices is not broken when the identity of groups changes. I develop this argument by considering indigenous people's claims in Argentina for the injustices suffered during the Conquest of the Desert. I argue that present claimants do not need to be part of the same entity (...) whose members suffered injustices many years ago. For identifying the proper recipients of reparation, all that is necessary is that the group who suffered the historical injustice under consideration has survived into the present. I also support a view upon which present living members of a certain group have reasons to redress those injustices perpetrated by their predecessors if they are relevantly connected with each other. In particular, by relying on the notion of collective inheritance, I argue that if present-day members of a certain group claim that they are the continuation of the group whose past members bequeathed them certain goods, they cannot consistently reject such a membership when the very same people legated them certain evils. (shrink)

Statistical evidence is crucial throughout disparate impact’s three-stage analysis: during (1) the plaintiff’s prima facie demonstration of a policy’s disparate impact; (2) the defendant’s job-related business necessity defense of the discriminatory policy; and (3) the plaintiff’s demonstration of an alternative policy without the same discriminatory impact. The circuit courts are split on a vital question about the “practical significance” of statistics at Stage 1: Are “small” impacts legally insignificant? For example, is an employment policy that causes a one percent disparate (...) impact an appropriate policy for redress through disparate impact litigation? This circuit split calls for a comprehensive analysis of practical significance testing across disparate impact’s stages. Importantly, courts and commentators use “practical significance” ambiguously between two aspects of practical significance: the magnitude of an effect and confidence in statistical evidence. For example, at Stage 1 courts might ask whether statistical evidence supports a disparate impact (a confidence inquiry) and whether such an impact is large enough to be legally relevant (a magnitude inquiry). Disparate impact’s texts, purposes, and controlling interpretations are consistent with confidence inquires at all three stages, but not magnitude inquiries. Specifically, magnitude inquiries are inappropriate at Stages 1 and 3—there is no discriminatory impact or reduction too small or subtle for the purposes of the disparate impact analysis. Magnitude inquiries are appropriate at Stage 2, when an employer defends a discriminatory policy on the basis of its job-related business necessity. (shrink)

Paradigmatic examples of logical arguments from evil are attempts to establish that the following claims are inconsistent with one another: (1) God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good. (2) There is evil in the world. Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense resists such arguments by providing a positive case that (1) and (2) are consistent. A weakness in Plantinga’s free will defense, however, is that it does not show that theism is consistent with the proposition that there are non-moral evils in (...) the world (i.e., that there obtain morally bad states of affairs for which no creature is morally responsible). But many of us firmly believe that there are evils of that sort. I show how Plantinga’s free will defense can be extended so as to redress this weakness. (shrink)

This special issue aims to redress the balance and to open up Gaston Bachelard's work beyond a small in-crowd of experts and aficionado’s in France. It aims to stimulate the discovery of new and understudied aspects of Bachelard’s work, including aspects of the intellectual milieu he was working in. Fortunately, for this purpose we were able to rely both on renowned Bachelard specialists, such as Hans-Jörg Rheinberg-er, Cristina Chimisso and Dominique Lecourt, as well as on a number of younger (...) scholars who are discovering their work in a different intellectual context. At the same time we also want to reassess the value of this oeuvre, which also entails examining the reasons and causes of the relative neglect of Bachelard’s work in recent times. Has it exhausted its possibilities? Does it have intrinsic limitations that have contributed to the eclipse, as some influential, mainly French, philoso-phers have more or less explicitly suggested? (shrink)

The thesis that follows proffers a solution to the mind-matter problem, the problem as to how mind and matter relate. The proposed solution herein is a variant of panpsychism – the theory that all (pan) has minds (psyche) – that we name pansentient monism. By defining the suffix 'psyche' of panpsychism, i.e. by analysing what 'mind' is (Chapter 1), we thereby initiate the effacement of the distinction between mind and matter, and thus advance a monism. We thereafter critically examine the (...) prevalent view, antithetical to a pansentient monism, that mind is not identical to matter but emergent therefrom (Chapter 2). This anti-emergentist critique acts also as a fortification of the Genetic Argument for panpsychism: if mind is not emergent (nor distinct) from matter, mind must always have existed with matter. But what is 'matter'? Chapter 3 investigates what we understand by 'matter', or 'the physical', and exposes it as a highly deficient concept and percept that in concreto points to its identity with that denoted by 'mind'. This also acts as a fortification of the Abstraction Argument for panpsychism, employing a new taxonomy of physicalism and a new taxonomy of the varieties of abstraction. Thus do we reach a monism that is a parsimonious psycho-physical identity theory. But here we face what can be called The Identity Problem for Panpsychism: if our panpsychism is a psycho-physical identity theory, how can it respond to the powerful objections that beset the identity theory of the twentieth century? In Chapter 4 it will be argued that, like emergentism, this psycho-neural identity theory presupposed a deficient concept of 'matter', down to which mind was reduced away, let alone identified. But to identify down phenomena to what is actually an abstraction is to commit failure of explanation. When the theory is amended accordingly, we move from a psycho-neural identity theory to a genuine psycho-physical identity theory that as such can overcome the aforementioned identity problem. Furthermore, as Chapter 5 clarifies, our pansentient monism has, in addition to parsimony, the explanatory power to resolve the problem of mental causation that afflicts both the reductive physicalism of psycho-neural identity theory and the non-reductive physicalism of emergentism, by genuinely identifying physical and mental causation. Jaegwon Kim considers the place of consciousness in a physical world and the nature of mental causation to be the two key components of the mind-matter problem. Through the critical analysis of our prosaic understanding of mind and matter in this thesis, which incorporates the thought of both classical and contemporary thinkers through a novel fusion, it is hoped that both components are addressed and redressed. That is to say that I present this pansentient monism as a plausible, parsimonious, explanatory, and thus, I think, powerful position towards this ever-perplexing mind-matter mystery. -/- [This thesis was passed in January 2019 with viva examination from Galen Strawson and Joel Krueger. (shrink)

The groundwork has long been laid, by feminist and critical race theorists, for recognizing that a robust social epistemology must be centrally concerned with questions of epistemic injustice; it must provide an account of how inequitable social relations inflect what counts as knowledge and who is recognized as a credible knower. The cluster of papers we present here came together serendipitously and represent a striking convergence of interest in exactly these issues. In their different ways, each contributor is concerned both (...) to understand how dominant epistemic norms perpetuate ignorance and injustice and to articulate effective strategies for redressing these inequities. (shrink)

Being woke, that is, being aware of the appalling injustices borne by many in American society because of certain identities or features and wanting to act to redress these injustices, seems to put one in a quandary: either one can accept a role in the struggle against injustice that seems obviously inefficacious or, if one insists on doing more, one must, it seems, engage in epistemic imperialism, thereby wronging some of those one is endeavoring to help.

While geoengineering may counteract negative effects of anthropogenic climate change, it is clear that most geoengineering options could also have some harmful effects. Moreover, it is predicted that the benefits and harms of geoengineering will be distributed unevenly in different parts of the world and to future generations, which raises serious questions of justice. It has been suggested that a compensation scheme to redress geoengineering harms is needed for geoengineering to be ethically and politically acceptable. Discussions of compensation for (...) geoengineering harms, however, sometimes presume geoengineering has presented new and unique challenges to compensation that cannot be readily accommodated by existing compensation practices. The most explicit formulation of this view was recently presented by Toby Svoboda and Peter J. Irvine, who argued that two forms of uncertainty in geoengineering — namely, ethical uncertainty and scientific uncertainty — make it immensely difficult to devise an ethically and politically satisfactory compensation scheme for geoengineering harms. -/- In this paper, we argue against the view that geoengineering presents new and unique challenges relating to compensation. More specifically, we show that placing these challenges within the broader context of anthropogenic climate change reveals them to be less serious and less specific to geoengineering than some appear to believe. (shrink)

In its January 20th, 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court ruled that certain restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations for political advocacy violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, which provides that “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Justice Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 (...) majority, held that “[b]y suppressing the speech of manifold corporations, both for-profit and non-profit, the Government prevents their voices and view-points from reaching the public and advising voters on which person or entities are hostile to their interests” (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 38-9 (2010); emphasis added). Much of the language of the opinion, and some of its reasoning, as this passage illustrates, presupposes that corporations are agents capable of speech, and that it is (at least in part) in the light of this that limitations on political advocacy by corporations are prohibited by the Constitution. -/- While there are other strands in the argument, they are interwoven with the conception of the corporation as agent and speaker, with its voice and its viewpoints. The dissenters on the court objected on precisely this point (among others). Justice Stevens wrote sarcastically in his dissent, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, that “[u]nder the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech” (558 U.S. 33 (2010)). Justice Sotomayor suggested in oral argument that the Court’s century-old practice of treating corporations as persons rests on a conceptual mistake. -/- My concern in this essay is not with the question whether the restrictions violate the Constitution. There are many issues that bear on this which will be outside the scope of my discussion. My concern is with the proper conceptual framework for understanding the agency of corporations and corporate speech, and the role that conceptions of these play in the background of the majority’s reasoning. The issue is legal, but it also has philosophical, conceptual and semantic aspects. It will be the latter aspects, and their potential to shed light on legal reasoning, that are my main focus. An adequate framework requires saying what properly speaking the corporation is, how agency is expressed through the corporation, whose agency it is, centrally whether the corporation is an agent or person in its own right, and in what sense it can be said to be capable of speech. I draw on recent work in collective action theory, particularly with respect to the semantics of collective action sentences (Ludwig 2007) and the analysis of the proxy agency in collective action (Ludwig 2014), to show (i) that corporations are neither genuine agents nor (therefore) capable of engaging in genuine speech, (ii) that consequently the First Amendment does not apply to corporations per se, and (iii) that a better understanding of the mechanisms of corporate agency casts doubt on more indirect arguments for extending the First Amendment to “corporate speech” as well. (shrink)

Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligation has led some philosophers to argue that he would reject self-government rights for indigenous peoples. Some recent scholarship suggests, however, that Kant’s critique of colonialism provides an argument in favor of granting self-government rights. Here I argue for a stronger conclusion: Kantian political theory not only can but must include sovereignty for indigenous peoples. Normally these rights are considered redress for historic injustice. On a Kantian view, however, I argue that they are not (...) remedial. Sovereignty rights are a necessary part of establishing perpetual peace. By failing to acknowledge the sovereignty of native groups, states once guilty of imperialism leave open the in principle possibility for future violence, even though no current conflict exists. Only in recognizing self-government rights can states truly commit to the cosmopolitan ideal. (shrink)

ésumé : Les domaines de la philosophie et de la théorie politique ont connu un certain nombre de changements au cours des quarante dernières années. L'un attire notre attention tout particulièrement ; le basculement d'un point de vue national, cristallisé par le contrat social rawlsien, vers un point de vue non-national. En effet, plusieurs penseurs abordent un ensemble de phénomènes considérés comme nouveaux, tels que les traités de libre commerce et l'économie globale, les entreprises et les institutions supra et transnationales, (...) l'immigration et les contrôles frontaliers etc. Ces changements sont intéressants puisqu'ils obéissent, principalement, à une évolution majeure du terrain politique et social que l'on appelle mondialisation. Les théoriciens travaillant dans le domaine de la justice globale semblent s'adresser à deux questions différentes mais reliées. La première concerne la justice globale : dans quelle mesure et pourquoi l'ordre mondial est-il juste ou injuste ? Qu'est-ce qu'un ordre global juste ? La deuxième est dans un sens corollaire à la première, et concerne la responsabilité : qui devrait être blâmé ou digne d'éloge pour l'ordre mondial ? Est-ce que les citoyens sont responsables de l'ordre mondial ? Qui devrait redresser ses éventuelles conséquences injustes ? Face à l'économie mondialisée et aux institutions politiques et économiques internationales et trans-nationales, cette interrogation devient légitime et nécessaire : suis-je responsable à l'égard des travailleurs des sweat shop lorsque j'achète des habits à Auchan ou bien à l'égard des caféiculteurs très mal payés lorsque je prends un capuccino dans un café Starbucks ? Est-ce que les citoyens sont responsables des traités de libre commerce que leurs gouvernements signent ? Ces questions sur la responsabilité des individus dans le contexte de la mondialisation seront l'enjeu de ce travail de recherche. Nous interrogerons plus exactement la responsabilité d'un agent lorsqu'il fait partie d'un chaîne causale complexe, lorsqu'il participe d'une injustice structurelle. Ainsi, il ne s'agit pas seulement d'une chaîne causale, mais de connexions qui sont l'issue d'un changement des modes de productions, de consommation et de la concurrence dans un marché mondialisé. Plus important encore, il ne s'agit pas simplement de la responsabilité individuelle mais plutôt de la responsabilité individuelle en tant que citoyen, et donc d'une responsabilité politique. Elle peut certes être individuelle, mais nous devons tenir compte du fait qu'elle doit être pensée en tant que responsabilité politique, et pas uniquement morale, puisque l'individu et ses actions sont déterminés par des communautés politiques dans lesquelles il participe, ou dans lesquelles il est représenté. Ainsi, la mondialisation nous invite à repenser la responsabilité individuelle pour pouvoir rendre compte des intuitions morales et politiques qui guident une bonne partie du champ de la justice globale. Pour cela, nous verrons dans un premier temps la manière dont les théories de la justice globale essaient de répondre à ce défit. Grâce à cela nous dégagerons l'hypothèse qui nous guidera, l'idée que dans la mondialisation, un agent peut être responsable, avec d'autres, des raisons pour lesquelles il n'est pas considéré comme responsable. C'est-à-dire qu'il sera méta-responsable. Dans un second temps, nous essaierons de déterminer un model de responsabilité individuelle, et de comprendre comment la responsabilité est attribuée. Ensuite, nous essaierons de formuler une manière de concevoir la responsabilité politique. Grâce à ces deux éléments, la responsabilité individuelle et la responsabilité politique, nous pourrons parvenir à formuler une conception de la méta-responsabilité comme forme de penser l'agentivité traversée par la mondialisation. -/- . (shrink)

Much has been made of Deleuze’s Neo-Leibnizianism,3 however not very much detailed work has been done on the specific nature of Deleuze’s critique of Leibniz that positions his work within the broader framework of Deleuze’s own philo- sophical project. The present chapter undertakes to redress this oversight by providing an account of the reconstruction of Leibniz’s metaphysics that Deleuze undertakes in The Fold. Deleuze provides a systematic account of the structure of Leibniz’s metaphys- ics in terms of its mathematical (...) underpinnings. However, in doing so, Deleuze draws upon not only the mathematics developed by Leibniz – including the law of continuity as reflected in the calculus of infinite series and the infinitesimal calculus – but also the developments in mathematics made by a number of Leibniz’s contemporaries – including Newton’s method of fluxions – and a number of subsequent developments in mathematics, the rudiments of which can be more or less located in Leibniz’s own work – including the theory of functions and singularities, the theory of continuity and Poincaré’s theory of automorphic functions. Deleuze then retrospectively maps these developments back onto the structure of Leibniz’s metaphysics. While the theory of continuity serves to clarify Leibniz’s work, Poincaré’s theory of automorphic functions offers a solution to overcome and extend the limits that Deleuze identifies in Leibniz’s metaphysics. Deleuze brings this elaborate conjunction of material together in order to set up a mathematical idealization of the system that he considers to be implicit in Leibniz’s work. The result is a thoroughly mathematical explication of the structure of Leibniz’s metaphysics. What is provided in this chapter is an exposition of the very mathematical underpinnings of this Deleuzian account of the structure of Leibniz’s metaphysics, which, I maintain, subtends the entire text of The Fold. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism’s commitment to neutralizing brute luck inequalities is thought to imply that the elimination of disabilities is an appropriate way to eliminate the unchosen disadvantage that often accompanies disabilities. This implication is not only intuitively objectionable to some, especially those concerned with disability justice, but is subject to objections from relational egalitarians that should be taken seriously. This paper defends the claim that disability elimination is not a natural implication of luck egalitarian theories of justice and that luck egalitarians (...) can avoid the related relational egalitarian objections. I take this to be the case because luck egalitarians can consistently endorse three commitments that, together, take disability elimination off the menu of possible ways to redress the disadvantage of persons with disabilities. These three commitments are: i) the rejection of the view that disability intrinsically makes a person worse off; ii) the endorsement of the fundamental equality of all persons; and iii) the view that luck egalitarianism advances a theory about the arrangement of social institutions. (shrink)

This article discusses an anomaly in the English law of reproductive liability: that is, an inconsistency between the law’s approach to wrongful life claims and its approach to cases of negligent selection of gametes or embryos in infertility treatments (the selection cases). The article begins with an account of the legal position, which brings into view the relevant inconsistency: while the law treats wrongful life claims as non- actionable, it recognises a cause of action in the selection cases, although the (...) selection cases bear a relevant resemblance to wrongful life claims. The article then considers arguments that may be invoked in an attempt to reconcile the above two strands of the law. Three of these counterarguments consist in attempts to distinguish the selection cases from wrongful life claims. It is argued that these attempts fail to reveal a valid basis for treating these situations differently. A fourth possible counterargument levels against the present analysis a charge of reductio ad absurdum. It is shown that this argument suffers from a fundamental flaw caused by confusion between different senses of the term “identity”. Finally, the article discusses possible changes to the legal position that could rectify the problem. It argues that one of these changes, which focuses on legal redress for violation of personal autonomy, is particularly apt to resolve the problem at hand, but also highlights the need for further inquiry into the broader implications of introducing this form of redress into the law of torts. (shrink)

I am tasked with addressing philosophical hazards in the neuroscientific study of religion. As a philosopher concerned with the well-being of neuroscientists studying religion, I am inclined to begin with the philosophical hazards of philosophy. I am well aware of the extraordinary difficulties of both tasks, for the hazards are many and it is easy to miss the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. Instead of focusing on one issue in great detail, I shall hang a (...) number of warning signs around a forest of issues that identify various philosophical hazards which deserve particular caution when it comes to neuroscience and religion. Since I am aiming for breadth over depth, my brief remarks on each issue shall be synoptic, non-exhaustive, contentious and suggestive for additional consideration and reflection. To redress such deficits, I have provided references for further reading. (shrink)

After a fatal police shooting in the United States, it is typical for city and police officials to view the family of the deceased through the lens of the law. If the family files a lawsuit, the city and police department consider it their legal right to defend themselves and to treat the plaintiffs as adversaries. However, reparations and the concept of “reparative justice” allow authorities to frame police killings in moral rather than legal terms. When a police officer kills (...) a person who was not liable to this outcome, officials should offer monetary reparations, an apology, and other redress measures to the victim’s family. To make this argument, the article presents a philosophical account of non-liability hailing from self-defense theory, centering the distinction between reasonableness and liability. Reparations provide a non-adversarial alternative to civil litigation after a non-liable person has been killed by a police officer. In cases where the officer nevertheless acted reasonably, “institutional agent-regret” rather than moral responsibility grounds the argument for reparations. Throughout the article, it is argued that there are distinct racial wrongs both when police kill a non-liable black person and when family members of a black victim are treated poorly by officials in the civil litigation process. (shrink)

This chapter develops an account of epistemic nihilism—roughly, the rejection of truth’s intrinsic or instrumental value in favor of statements that reject or obscure truth to secure an advantage for the speaker—by examining three instances of such nihilism: lying, bullshit, and trolling. It further argues that epistemic nihilism, exacerbated by changes in the media landscape, can pose a significant threat to liberal democratic institutions and ideals by undermining the democratic ideal of good faith engagement on a level playing field, while (...) also encouraging undemocratic actions (e.g., terrorism) among interlocutors who take the nihilist’s claims seriously. Finally, this chapter argues that in extreme cases, we are justified in denying epistemic nihilists a platform from which to speak by drawing a parallel with vexatious litigant laws that deny individuals the right to petition courts for redress on the grounds that abuse of that right results in significant harm to both individuals and the legal system itself. (shrink)

Literature on testimonial injustice and ways that perpetrators might combat it have flourished since Miranda Fricker’s ground-breaking work on testimonial injustice. Less attention has been given, however, to the role of bystanders. In this paper, I examine the accountability that bystanders may have for their omissions to redress testimonial injustice. I argue that bystander accountability applies in cases where it is opportune for bystanders to intervene, and if they are also sufficiently equipped and able to redress the testimonial (...) injustice. Moreover, I recommend that we move beyond virtue responsibilism for ameliorative thinking about testimonial injustice. (shrink)