There is a widespread belief that, conceptually, justice cannot require what we cannot achieve. This belief is sometimes used by defenders of so-called ‘non-ideal theories of justice’ to criticise so-called ‘ideal theories of justice’. I refer to this claim as ‘the feasibility constraint on the concept of justice’ and argue against it. I point to its various implausible implications and contend that a willingness to apply the label ‘unjust’ to some regrettable situations that we cannot fix is going to (...) enhance the action-guiding potential of a conception of justice, by providing an aspirational ideal. This is possible on the condition that, at all times, we cannot specify with certainty the limits of what is feasible for us collectively. The rejection of the feasibility constraint entails that there can be injustice without perpetrators; this is a theoretical price worth paying. (shrink)

Does ?ought? imply ?can? for collectives' obligations? In this paper I want to establish two things. The first, what a collective obligation means for members of the collective. The second, how collective ability can be ascertained. I argue that there are four general kinds of obligation, which devolve from collectives to members in different ways, and I give an account of the distribution of obligation from collectives to members for each of these kinds. One implication of understanding collective obligation and (...) ability in the proposed way is that a group can be blameworthy for failing to realize its obligation even when no member of the group is blameworthy for failing to realize her obligation. (shrink)

It is commonly taken for granted that questions of feasibility are highly relevant to our normative thinking – and perhaps especially our normative thinking about politics. But what exactly does this preoccupation with feasibility amount to, and in what forms if any is it warranted? This article aims to provide a critical introduction to, and clearer characterization of, the feasibility issue. I begin by discussing the question of how feasibility is to be understood. I then turn (...) to the question of feasibility’s role, suggesting that there are two quite different kinds of role questions that may be at play, though they are often run together: a question about feasibility’s normative significance; and a question about its proper use in informing our normative thinking. Finally, I consider how the feasibility issue differs from certain other related issues: the demandingness issue; the issue of whether “ought” implies “can;” and the “ideal versus non-ideal theory” issue. (shrink)

It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination (...) and dynamic duties to expand agents’ power to fulfill ambitious principles of justice. (shrink)

It is natural and relatively common to suppose that feasibility is a constraint on what we ought to do all-things-considered but not a constraint on what we ought to do as a matter of justice. I show that the combination of these claims entails an implausible picture of the relation between feasibility and desirability given an attractive understanding of the relation between what we ought to do as a matter of justice and what we ought to do all-things-considered.

Recent methodological debates regarding the place of feasibility considerations in normative political theory are hindered for want of a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier. To address this shortfall, I present an analysis of feasibility that generalizes the economic concept of a production possibility frontier and then develop a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier using the familiar possible worlds technology. I then show that this model has significant methodological implications for political philosophy. On the Target (...) View, a political ideal presents a long-term goal for morally progressive reform efforts and, thus, serves as an important reference point for our specification of normative political principles. I use the model to show that we can- not reasonably expect that adopting political ideals as long-term reform objectives will guide us toward the realization of morally optimal feasible states of affairs. I conclude by proposing that political philosophers turn their attention to the analysis of actual social failures rather than political ideals. (shrink)

I discuss Gheaus's (2013) argument against the claim that the requirements of justice are not constrained by feasibility concerns. I show that the general strategy exemplified by this argument is not only dialectically puzzling, but also imposes a heavy cost on theories of justice -- puzzling because it simply sidesteps a presupposition of any plausible formulation of the so-called "feasibility requirement"; costly because it it deprives justice of its normative implications for action. I also show that Gheaus's attempt (...) to recover this normative force presupposes an epistemic dimension to the feasibility requirement that most proponents of that requirement would reject. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the analysis of the feasibility of global justice developed by Pablo Gilabert in his recent book From Global Poverty to Global Equality: A Philosophical Exploration. Gilabert makes many valuable contributions to this topic and I agree with most of his analysis. However, I identify a distinction between strategic justification and moral justification that Gilabert neglects. I show how this distinction is useful in addressing objections to the feasibility of global justice. I also claim (...) that Gilabert makes some problematic assumptions concerning the way in which global justice is morally demanding. (shrink)

Abstract: Chickpea is one of the main food crops in East Asia. As it contains high nutritional value, it has high demand in the world food market. Even though chickpea is mainly cultivated in India and China, Sri Lankan farmers did not trend to cultivate this crop. Therefore considerable amount of foreign exchange spent on import. This study will contribute to the country development in future. A study was conducted to study the feasibility of Chickpea cultivation in Ampara area. (...) The research was done at Hardy ATI Farm, Ampara from 2nd December, 2015 to May, 2016. The land initially prepared and uniformly sized as 120 cm X 300 cm by having three replicates with the total of twelve beds which were used for testing plots. Three beds were used for establishing plants with (30 X 45) cm spacing recommended by the Department of Agriculture, India. Other 9 beds were planted with (25 x 40) cm, (35 X 50) cm, (35 X 40) cm. All the beds were provided with the same management practices such as seed planting, irrigation, weeding, pest & disease control and fertilizer applications. Germination time period (days), Germination percentage (%), plant heights (cm), Number of flowers were obtained for analysis. Complete Randomized Block Design (CRBD) was used with the Minitab database software. From the study it was identified that Chickpea plants performed significantly (p-0.05) well under Ampara climatic condition up to flowering stage when a spacing of (50 X 35) cm was used where germination percentage of 48.00±6.85 %, maximum plant height of 51.8 cm, highest no of flowers at 20th week with flower count of 29. Further this study could be repeated in alternative climatic regions for the best performances and profitability of Chickpea cultivation and to check yield analysis. (shrink)

This paper empirically raises and examines the question of ‘conceptual control’: To what extent are competent thinkers able to reason properly with new senses of words? This question is crucial for conceptual engineering. This prominently discussed philosophical project seeks to improve our representational devices to help us reason better. It frequently involves giving new senses to familiar words, through normative explanations. Such efforts enhance, rather than reduce, our ability to reason properly, only if competent language users are able to abide (...) by the relevant explanations, in language comprehension and verbal reasoning. This paper examines to what extent we have such ‘conceptual control’ in reasoning with new senses. The paper draws on psycholinguistic findings about polysemy processing to render this question empirically tractable and builds on recent findings from experimental philosophy to address it. The paper identifies a philosophically important gap in thinkers’ control over the key process of stereotypical enrichment and discusses how conceptual engineers can use empirical methods to work around this gap in conceptual control. The paper thus empirically demonstrates the urgency of the question of conceptual control and explains how experimental philosophy can empirically address the question, to render conceptual engineering feasible as an ameliorative enterprise. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen attempts to provide a case for socialism that takes into consideration the reasons why socialism is desirable and some of the problems for its feasibility. He finds that the kind of community sentiment that socialism requires is possible, but the devices of social organization that can facilitate the growth of socialist sentiment along with the effective transmission of information are not currently known. In short, Cohen thinks social scientists and philosophers need to find out how to harness (...) the information transmission capacity of market exchange without the motivational encouragement of rapacious self-interest that market exchange fosters. This paper argues that Cohen’s appraisal of the ineffectiveness of informational transmission in socialist planned economies in incorrect. A democratically planned socialist economy can serve as the basis for the fostering of the socialist community sentiment that Cohen advocates along with the required transmission of economic information. (shrink)

During long-term refugee displacements, it is common for the refugees’ country of origin to be called on to recognize a right of return. A long-standing tradition of philosophical theorizing is sceptical of such a right. Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan are contemporary proponents of this view. They argue that, in many cases, it is not feasible for entire refugee populations to return home, and so the notion of a right of return is no right at all. We can call Adelman (...) and Barkan’s view the feasibility objection. Many defenders of rights will deny that empirical facts such as the kind to which Adelman and Barkan appeal are relevant to determining whether a moral entitlement amounts to a right. In contrast, I offer a response to the feasibility objection that does admit the relevance of facts. In my view, considerations of feasibility do matter when determining what rights human beings possess. Nevertheless, the feasibility objection is undone by its failure to acknowledge a distinction between two different kinds of feasibility constraints. ‘Hard’ constraints include logical, nomological and biological considerations. ‘Soft’ constraints include political, cultural and institutional factors. A necessary condition of a moral entitlement achieving the status of a right, I argue, is that it be feasible in the hard sense. Crucially, however, a right need not always be feasible in the soft sense. Refugees can have rights that it is not currently possible to implement politically. (shrink)

At the United Nations climate change conference in 2011, parties decided to launch the “Durban Platform” to work towards a new long-term climate agreement. The decision was notable for the absence of any reference to “equity”, a prominent principle in all previous major climate agreements. Wealthy countries resisted the inclusion of equity on the grounds that the term had become too closely yoked to developing countries’ favored conception of equity. This conception, according to wealthy countries, exempts developing countries from making (...) commitments that are stringent enough for the collective effort needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In circumstances where even mentioning the term equity has become problematic, a critical question is whether scope for a fair agreement is being squeezed out of negotiations. To address this question we set out a conceptual framework for normative theorizing about fairness in international negotiations, accompanied by a set of minimal standards of fairness and plausible feasibility constraints for sharing the global climate change mitigation effort. We argue that a fair and feasible agreement may be reached by (i) reforming the current binary approach to differentiating developed and developing country groups, in tandem with (ii) introducing a more principled approach to differentiating the mitigation commitments of individual countries. These two priorities may provide the basis for a principled bargain between developed and developing countries that safeguards the opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change without sacrificing widely acceptable conceptions of equity. (shrink)

In recent work, Andrew T. Forcehimes and Robert B. Talisse correctly note that G.A. Cohen’s fact-insensitivity thesis, properly understood, is explanatory. This observation raises an important concern. If fact-insensitive principles are explanatory, then what role can they play in normative deliberations? The purpose of my paper is, in part, to address this question. Following David Miller, I indicate that on a charitable understanding of Cohen’s thesis, an explanatory principle explains a justificatory fact by completing an otherwise logically incomplete inference. As (...) a result, the explanatory role such a principle plays is inseparable from its status as a (not necessarily successful) justificatory reason. With this interpretation in hand, I then proceed to argue that Lea Ypi’s and Robert Jubb’s recent criticisms fail to undermine Cohen’s thesis, and that fact-insensitive principles, once discovered, are especially helpful for purposes of deliberation in circumstances characterized by changing and changeable feasibility constraints. (shrink)

The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only three credible ways to save (...) the charge of infeasibility: by proposing an alternative account of feasibility; by proposing an alternative, more circumscribed interpretation of the subject-matter of feasibility claims; and by proposing a more expansive account of the addressees of the demand for open borders. The first fails to vindicate the claim that infeasibility is a normative argument-stopper. The second does not provide an argument against open borders at all. The third underestimates the power of at least some non-state actors. We conclude by drawing some lessons for the open borders view and the use of feasibility in politics more generally. (shrink)

Many of us feel internally conflicted in the face of certain normative claims that make infeasible demands: say, normative claims that demand that agents do what, given deeply entrenched objectionable character traits, they cannot bring themselves to do. On the one hand, such claims may seem false on account of demanding the infeasible, and insisting otherwise may seem to amount to objectionable unworldliness – to chasing “pies in the sky.” On the other hand, such claims may seem true in spite (...) of making infeasible demands, and insisting otherwise may seem to amount to treating the agents in question with undue lenience – to mistakenly letting them “off the hook.” What is going on? One possibility is that we are making a mistake. I explore the alternative hypothesis that our ambivalent reactions, far from involving any mistake, are entirely consistent and appropriate. Rather than some single privileged ought such that the idea that “ought” implies “feasible” is either true or false, there are simply different oughts that are supposed to be capable of operating in the service of, and playing distinct roles associated with, what I shall call different core normative practices. In particular, there is a) some salient core practice-serving ought for which it’s true that “ought” implies “feasible” and b) some other salient core practice-serving ought for which it’s false that “ought” implies “feasible.” I sketch a framework for understanding different core practice-serving oughts in general and then use this framework to consider which particular core practice-serving oughts might be capable of vindicating our ambivalence. I begin by considering and rejecting a prevalent and prima facie promising account according to which the relevant oughts are the prescriptive ought and the evaluative ought. I then propose a different account that holds that the oughts we need are instead the deliberative ought and the hypological ought. (shrink)

The familiar complaint that some ambitious proposal is infeasible naturally invites the following response: Once upon a time, the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of women seemed infeasible, yet these things were actually achieved. Presumably, then, many of those things that seem infeasible in our own time may well be achieved too and, thus, turn out to have been perfectly feasible after all. The Appeal to History, as we call it, is a bad argument. It is not true that (...) if some desirable state of affairs was actually achieved, then it was feasible that it was achieved. “Actual” does not imply “feasible,” as we put it. Here is our objection. “Feasible” implies “not counterfactually fluky.” But “actual” does not imply “not counterfactually fluky.” So, “actual” does not imply “feasible.” While something like the Flukiness Objection is sometimes hinted at in the context of the related literature on abilities, it has not been developed in any detail, and both premises are inadequately motivated. We offer a novel articulation of the Flukiness Objection that is both more precise and better motivated. Our conclusions have important implications, not only for the admissible use of history in normative argument, but also by potentially circumscribing the normative claims that are applicable to us. (shrink)

I defend the feasibility of a medical conscience in the following sense: a medical professional can object to the prevailing medical norms because they are incorrect as medical norms. In other words, I provide an account of conscientious objection that makes use of the idea that the conscience can issue true normative claims, but the claims in question are claims about medical norms rather than about general moral norms. I further argue that in order for this line of reasoning (...) to succeed, there needs to be an internal morality of medicine that determines what medical professionals ought to do qua medical professionals. I utilize a constructivist approach to the internal morality of medicine and argue that medical professionals can conscientiously object to providing treatment X, if providing treatment X is not in accordance with norms that would have been constructed, in light of the end of medicine, by the appropriate agents under the appropriate conditions. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is to specify the feasibility conditions of compromise. More specifically, the goal of this dissertation is to specify the conditions of increasing the feasibility of compromise. The underlying assumption here is that feasibility is a scalar concept, meaning that a socio-political ideal can be feasible to different degrees (Lawford-Smith 2013). In order to specify the conditions of increasing the feasibility of compromise, it is necessary to first identify potential feasibility constraints. (...) The main chapters of this dissertation are devoted to this task. -/- My research identifies two kinds of feasibility constraints that compromise potentially faces: A psychological feasibility constraint on realizing moral compromise (i.e. compromise on moral issues) and a structural feasibility constraint on realizing fair compromise. The psychological feasibility constraint consists in what I call an “affective aversion” to compromise. Affective aversion designates a deep emotional reluctance to compromise on moral values, which, I propose, can be reduced by cultivating an affective attitude of respect for other persons. The structural feasibility constraint refers to the process through which a compromise is achieved. I argue that if a fair compromise is the goal, the process of compromising needs to be based on deliberation rather than on the negotiation or bargaining processes that are commonly associated with compromise. Based on these results, my research indicates a) that an affective cultivation of respect is a condition for increasing the feasibility of moral compromise; and b) that deliberation, not negotiation or bargaining, is a condition for increasing the feasibility of fair compromise. (shrink)

What should we do when we won't do as we ought? Suppose it ought to be that the procrastinating professor accept the task of reviewing a book, and actually review the book. It seems clear that given he won't review it, he ought not to accept the task. That is a genuine moral obligation in light of less than perfect circumstances. I want to entertain the possibility that a set of such obligations form something like a 'practical morality'; that which (...) we ought to do given that we're unlikely or unwilling to do much of what ideal morality demands. If it is possible to give a coherent account of these kinds of obligations, then it is possible to entertain the idea that these obligations are in fact what morality demands. The conceptual truths about justice (good, right, fairness) that come from ideals are one thing; the actions that morality demands of people given their actual circumstances are quite another. In this paper I will ask about the kinds of facts that can be used to establish a more circumscribed set of obligations than we get from the orthodox view about moral obligation. (shrink)

The first part of this paper finds Craver’s (2007) mutual manipulability theory (MM) of constitution inadequate, as it definitionally ties constitution to the feasibility of idealized experiments, which, however, are unrealizable in principle. As an alternative, the second part develops an abductive theory of constitution (NDC), which exploits the fact that phenomena and their constituents are unbreakably coupled via common causes. The best explanation for this common-cause coupling is the existence of an additional dependence relation, viz. constitution. Apart from (...) adequately capturing the essential characteristics of constitution missed by MM, NDC has important ramifications for constitutional discovery—most notably, that there is no experimentum crucis for constitution, not even under ideal discovery circumstances. (shrink)

Research suggests that interventions involving extensive training or counterconditioning can reduce implicit prejudice and stereotyping, and even susceptibility to stereotype threat. This research is widely cited as providing an “existence proof” that certain entrenched social attitudes are capable of change, but is summarily dismissed—by philosophers, psychologists, and activists alike—as lacking direct, practical import for the broader struggle against prejudice, discrimination, and inequality. Criticisms of these “debiasing” procedures fall into three categories: concerns about empirical efficacy, about practical feasibility, and about (...) the failure to appreciate the underlying structural-institutional nature of discrimination. I reply to these criticisms of debiasing, and argue that a comprehensive strategy for combating prejudice and discrimination should include a central role for training our biases away. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between human rights, human dignity, and power. The idea of human dignity is omnipresent in human rights discourse, but its meaning and point is not always clear. It is standardly used in two ways, to refer to a normative status of persons that makes their treatment in terms of human rights a proper response, and a social condition of persons in which their human rights are fulfilled. This paper pursues three tasks. First, it provides an (...) analysis of the content and an interpretation of the role of the idea of human dignity in current human rights discourse. The interpretation includes a pluralist view of human interests and dignity that avoids a narrow focus on rational agency. Second, this paper characterizes the two aspects of human dignity in terms of capabilities. Certain general human capabilities are among the facts that ground status-dignity, and the presence of certain more specific capabilities constitutes condition-dignity. Finally, this paper explores how the pursuit of human rights and human dignity links to distributions and uses of power. Since capabilities are a form of power, and human rights are in part aimed at respecting and promoting capabilities, human rights involve empowerment. Exploring the connections between human rights, capabilities, and empowerment provides resources to defend controversial human rights such as the right to democratic political participation, and to respond to worries about the feasibility of their fulfillment. This paper also argues that empowerment must be coupled with solidaristic concern in order to respond to unavoidable facts of social dependency and vulnerability. (shrink)

Recent breakthroughs in stem cell differentiation and reprogramming suggest that functional human gametes could soon be created in vitro. While the ethical debate on the uses of in vitro generated gametes (IVG) was originally constrained by the fact that they could be derived only from embryonic stem cell lines, the advent of somatic cell reprogramming, with the possibility to easily derive human induced pluripotent stem cells from any individual, affords now a major leap in the feasibility of IVG derivation (...) and in the scope of their potential applications. In this paper we develop an ethical framework, rooted in recent scientific evidence, to support a robust experimental pipeline that could enable the first-in-human use of IVG. We then apply this framework to the following objectives: (1) a clarification of the genetic parenting options afforded by IVG, along with their ethical underpinnings; (2) a defence of the use of IVG to remedy infertility, broadening their scope to same-sex couples; (3) an assessment of the most far-reaching implications of IVG for multiplex parenting. These include, first, the liberation of parenting roles from the constraints of biological generations in vivo, allowing multiple individuals to engage in genetic parenting together, thus blurring the distinction between biological and social generations. Second, we discuss the conflation of IVG with sequencing technology and its implications for the possibility that prospective parents may choose among a hitherto unprecedented number of potential children. In view of these perspectives, we argue that, contrary to the exhausted paradigm according to which society lags behind science, IVG may represent instead a salient and most visible instance where biotechnological ingenuity could be used in pursuit of social experimentation. (shrink)

Agriculture is very important to human continued existence and remains a key driver of many economies worldwide, especially in underdeveloped and developing economies. There is an increasing demand for food and cash crops, due to the increasing in world population and the challenges enforced by climate modifications, there is an urgent need to increase plant production while reducing costs. Preceding instrument vision methods established for selective weeding have confronted with major challenges for trustworthy and precise weed recognition. In this paper, (...) plant seedlings classification approach is presented with a dataset that contains approximately 5,000 images with 960 unique plants that belong to 12 species at a few developing phases. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) algorithms, a deep learning technique extensively applied to image recognition was used, for this task. The results found that CNN-driven seedling classification applications when used in farming automation have the latent to enhance crop harvest and improve output and productivity when designed properly. The trained model achieved an accuracy of 99.48% on a held-out test set, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach. (shrink)

This paper proposes the feasibility of a second-order approach in cosmology. It is intended to encourage cosmologists to rethink standard ideas in their field, leading to a broader concept of self-organization and of science itself. It is argued, from a cognitive epistemology perspective, that a first-order approach is inadequate for cosmology; study of the universe as a whole must include study of the scientific observer and the process of theorizing. Otherwise, concepts of self-organization at the cosmological scale remain constrained (...) by unacknowledged assumptions and biases. Examples of limiting notions are discussed in the context of alternatives. To include the role of the theorist does not mean reducing science to subjective or sociological terms. On the contrary, second-order science would provide a more complete portrait of nature. The work of cosmologist Lee Smolin is discussed as a candidate example of second-order cosmology. (shrink)

The strongest arguments for the permissibility of geoengineering (also known as climate engineering) rely implicitly on non-ideal theory—roughly, the theory of justice as applied to situations of partial compliance with principles of ideal justice. In an ideally just world, such arguments acknowledge, humanity should not deploy geoengineering; but in our imperfect world, society may need to complement mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering to reduce injustices associated with anthropogenic climate change. We interpret research proponents’ arguments as an application of a particular (...) branch of non-ideal theory known as “clinical theory.” Clinical theory aims to identify politically feasible institutions or policies that would address existing (or impending) injustice without violating certain kinds of moral permissibility constraints. We argue for three implications of clinical theory: First, conditional on falling costs and feasibility, clinical theory provides strong support for some geoengineering techniques that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Second, if some kinds of carbon dioxide removal technologies are supported by clinical theory, then clinical theory further supports using those technologies to enable “overshoot” scenarios in which developing countries exceed the cumulative emissions caps that would apply in ideal circumstances. Third, because of tensions between political feasibility and moral permissibility, clinical theory provides only weak support for geoengineering techniques that aim to manage incoming solar radiation. (shrink)

Abstract: The standard picture of rationality requires that the agent acts so as to realize her most preferred alternative in the light of her own desires and beliefs. However, there are circumstances where such an agent can predict that she will act against her preferences. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens is the paradigmatic example of such cases. In those circumstances the orthodoxy requires the agent to be ‘sophisticated’. That is to say, she should take into account her expected (...) future choices and prevent her future self to act in certain ways. She should ‘bind’ herself to a certain course of action. This is a form of causal commitment. It is generally recognized that this form of self-commitment is the only one that is available to a rational agent. Rational commitment, where the agent gives herself a reason to act in a certain way rather than making herself act in that way, is considered not feasible. In this paper, I question this verdict. I sketch the broad outlines of a model of rational commitment, which takes as its starting point Michael Bratman’s ‘planning theory’ of intention. There are two important objections against this theory (one by John Broome and one by the Dutch philosopher Govert den Hartogh.) Both criticisms claim that such a theory is a form of ‘bootstrapping’ reasons for action into existence. In the remainder of the paper, I will defend the theory against these objections. This way, I hope to establish that defending the feasibility of rational commitment is not an obvious mistake. (shrink)

This paper defends the naïve thesis that the method of experiment has per se an epistemic superiority over the method of computer simulation, a view that has been rejected by some philosophers writing about simulation, and whose grounds have been hard to pin down by its defenders. I further argue that this superiority does not come from the experiment’s object being materially similar to the target in the world that the investigator is trying to learn about, as both sides of (...) dispute over the epistemic superiority thesis have assumed. The superiority depends on features of the question and on a property of natural kinds that has been mistaken for material similarity. Seeing this requires holding other things equal in the comparison of the two methods, thereby exposing that, under the conditions that will be specified, the simulation is necessarily epistemically one step behind the corresponding experiment. Practical constraints like feasibility and morality mean that scientists do not often face an other-things- equal comparison when they choose between experiment and simulation. Nevertheless, I argue, awareness of this superiority and of the general distinction between experiment and simulation is important for maintaining motivation to seek answers to new questions. (shrink)

Felix Klein and Abraham Fraenkel each formulated a criterion for a theory of infinitesimals to be successful, in terms of the feasibility of implementation of the Mean Value Theorem. We explore the evolution of the idea over the past century, and the role of Abraham Robinson's framework therein.

Utilizing the film I, Robot as a springboard, I here consider the feasibility of robot utilitarians, the moral responsibilities that come with the creation of ethical robots, and the possibility of distinct ethics for robot-robot interaction as opposed to robot-human interaction. (This is a revised and expanded version of an essay that originally appeared in IEEE: Intelligent Systems.).

Today’s technological-scientific prospect of posthumanity simultaneously evokes and defies historical understanding. On the one hand, it implies a historical claim of an epochal transformation concerning posthumanity as a new era. On the other, by postulating the birth of a novel, better-than-human subject for this new era, it eliminates the human subject of modern Western historical understanding. In this article, I attempt to understand posthumanity as measured against the story of humanity as the story of history itself. I examine the fate (...) of humanity as the central subject of history in three consecutive steps: first, by exploring how classical philosophies of history achieved the integrity of the greatest historical narrative of history itself through the very invention of humanity as its subject; second, by recounting how this central subject came under heavy criticism by postcolonial and gender studies in the last half-century, targeting the universalism of the story of humanity as the greatest historical narrative of history; and third, by conceptualizing the challenge of posthumanity against both the story of humanity and its criticism. Whereas criticism fragmented history but retained the possibility of smaller-scale narratives, posthumanity does not doubt the feasibility of the story of humanity. Instead, it necessarily invokes humanity, if only in order to be able to claim its supersession by a better-than-human subject. In that, it represents a fundamental challenge to the modern Western historical condition and the very possibility of historical narratives – small-scale or large-scale, fragmented or universal. (shrink)

The paper offers five desiderata on a realist normative theory of politics: that it should avoid moralism, deontologism, transcendentalism, utopianism, and vanguardism. These desiderata argue for a theory that begins from values rooted in a people’s experience; that avoids prescribing a collective deontological constraint; that makes the comparison of imperfect regimes possible; that takes feasibility and sustainability into account; and that makes room for the claims of democracy. The paper argues, in the course of exploring the desiderata, that a (...) neo-republican philosophy of government does pretty well in satisfying them. (shrink)

Political philosophers frequently claim that political ideals can provide normative guidance for unjust and otherwise nonideal circumstances. This is mistaken. This paper demonstrates that political ideals contribute nothing to our understanding of the normative principles we should satisfy amidst unjust or otherwise nonideal circumstances.

Do motivational limitations due to human nature constrain the demands of justice? Among those who say no, David Estlund offers perhaps the most compelling argument. Taking Estlund’s analysis of “ability” as a starting point, I show that motivational deficiencies can constrain the demands of justice under at least one common circumstance — that the motivationally-deficient agent makes a good faith effort to overcome her deficiency. In fact, my argument implies something stronger; namely, that the demands of justice are constrained by (...) what people are sufficiently likely to be motivated to do. Thus, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, it is the business of ideal theory — not just nonideal theory — to work with the motivational capacities people are likely enough to have. (See also Estlund's reply in the same issue of EJPT and my rejoinder on Philpapers.). (shrink)

Obstacles to achieving a global climate treaty include disagreements about questions of justice raised by the UNFCCC's principle that countries should respond to climate change by taking cooperative action "in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions". Aiming to circumvent such disagreements, Climate Change Justice authors Eric Posner and David Weisbach argue against shaping treaty proposals according to requirements of either distributive or corrective justice. The USA's climate envoy, Todd Stern, takes (...) a similar position. In this article I explain the practical and theoretical drawbacks of Posner & Weisbach's welfarist perspective and propose an alternative. I show that their arguments fail to rule out John Rawls' non-utilitarian, political conception of international justice and human rights, the Law of Peoples. On this basis I develop a conception of climate justice that highlights implications of some of Rawls' principles and adds a principle for determining fair shares of climate -treaty-related benefits and burdens. I propose this conception as a moral framework for negotiating a treaty that would promote human welfare consistently with requirements of justice, and I argue that a treaty proposal satisfying these requirements could best satisfy Posner & Weisbach's own feasibility criteria. (shrink)

The revisionist critique of conventional just war theory has undoubtedly scored some important victories. Walzer’s elegantly unified defense of combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity has been seriously undermined. This critical success has not, however, been matched by positive arguments, which when applied to the messy reality of war would deprive states and soldiers of the permission to fight wars that are plausibly thought to be justified. The appeal to law that is sought to resolve this objection by casting it (...) as a practical concern, a pragmatic worry about implementation, which while germane to debates over the laws of war, need not undermine our convictions in the fundamental principles the revisionists advocate. This response is inadequate. Revisionists have not shown that soldiers should obey the laws of war, in practice, when they conflict with their other moral reasons – our worries about application remain intact. Moreover, a theory of war that offers only an account of the laws of war, and a set of fundamental principles developed in abstraction from feasibility constraints, is radically incomplete. We need to know how to apply those fundamental principles, and whether, when applied, they lead to defensible conclusions. Only two options seem to remain. Perhaps the revisionists’ arguments for their chosen fundamental principles are sufficiently compelling that we should stick with them, and accept their troubling conclusions – in other words, accept pacifism. Alternatively, we need to revise our fundamental principles, so that when applied they yield conclusions that we can more confidently endorse. -/- Though it does not save the revisionist view from the responsibility dilemma and cognate objections, the appeal to law does raise an important, and previously inadequately theorized, question – or, rather, resurrects a neglected topic, discussed in depth by historical just war theorists such as Grotius and Vattel. There are good grounds for distinguishing the laws of war from the morality of war, and for adjusting the former to accommodate predictable noncompliance, that should not impact on our account of the latter. Nonetheless, I have argued that there are some profound moral insights underlying both combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity: specifically, we cannot infer from a combatant’s side having not satisfied jus ad bellum that he may not justifiably use lethal force; and other things equal, it is more wrongful to harm a nonliable noncombatant than to harm a nonliable combatant. (shrink)

This essay offers a standard by which to assess the feasibility of market anarchism. In anarchist thought, the concept of feasibility concerns both the ability and the willingness of private defense agencies to liberate their clients from state oppression. I argue that the emergence of a single stateless pocket of effective, privately-provided defense for a “reasonable” length of time is sufficient to affirm feasibility. I then consider the failure of private defense agencies to achieve even this standard. (...) Furthermore, I identify five possible explanations for the conspicuous absence of private defense agencies. These explanations are entrepreneurial, technological, or economic in nature, or result from a lack of consumer demand or a lack of incentive for violence specialists to refrain from aggression. Of these, only an economic deficiency renders anarchism intrinsically unworkable. (shrink)

The plurality of definitions of life is often perceived as an unsatisfying situation stemming from still incomplete knowledge about ‘what it is to live’ as well as from the existence of a variety of methods for reaching a definition. For many, such plurality is to be remedied and the search for a unique and fully satisfactory definition of life pursued. In this contribution on the contrary, it is argued that the existence of such a variety of definitions of life undermines (...) the very feasibility of ever reaching a unique unambiguous definition. It is argued that focusing on the definitions of specific types of ‘living systems’ – somehow in the same way that one can define specific types of ‘flying systems’ – could be more fruitful from a heuristic point of view than looking for ‘the’ right definition of life, and probably more accurate in terms of carving Nature at its joints. (shrink)

This chapter defends a pluralist understanding of species on which a normative species concept is viable and can support natural goodness evaluations. The central question here is thus: Since organisms are to be evaluated as members of their species, how does a proper understanding of species affect the feasibility of natural goodness evaluations? Philippa Foot has argued for a form of natural goodness evaluation in which living things are evaluated by how well fitted they are for flourishing as members (...) of their species, in ways characteristic of their species. She has further argued that assessments of moral goodness in humans are of the same evaluative form. However, natural goodness evaluations and, by extension, the natural goodness approach, do not garner justification in virtue of employing a scientifically privileged conception of species. The natural goodness approach is only justified given particular metaethical and normative commitments that are independent of naturalism, since the approach does not depend upon naturalism alone. (shrink)

Many political philosophers hold the Feasible Alternatives Principle (FAP): justice demands that we implement some reform of international institutions P only if P is feasible and P improves upon the status quo from the standpoint of justice. The FAP implies that any argument for a moral requirement to implement P must incorporate claims whose content pertains to the causal processes that explain the current state of affairs. Yet, philosophers routinely neglect the need to attend to actual causal processes. This undermines (...) their arguments concerning moral requirements to reform international institutions. The upshot is that philosophers’ arguments must engage in causal analysis to a greater extent than is typical. -/- [Supplement: Handout available at http://db.tt/fyuVW3Xv]. (shrink)

This paper defends the naïve thesis that the method of experiment has per se an epistemic superiority over the method of computer simulation, a view that has been rejected by some philosophers writing about simulation, and whose grounds have been hard to pin down by its defenders. I further argue that this superiority does not come from the experiment’s object being materially similar to the target in the world that the investigator is trying to learn about, as both sides of (...) dispute over the epistemic superiority thesis have assumed. The superiority depends on features of the question and on a property of natural kinds that has been mistaken for material similarity. Seeing this requires holding other things equal in the comparison of the two methods, thereby exposing that, under the conditions that will be specified, the simulation is necessarily epistemically one step behind the corresponding experiment. Practical constraints like feasibility and morality mean that scientists do not often face an other-things- equal comparison when they choose between experiment and simulation. Nevertheless, I argue, awareness of this superiority and of the general distinction between experiment and simulation is important for maintaining motivation to seek answers to new questions. (shrink)

This essay offers a standard by which to assess the feasibility of market anarchism. In anarchist thought, the concept of feasibility concerns both the ability and the willingness of private defense agencies to liberate their clients from state oppression. I argue that the emergence of a single stateless pocket of effective, privately-provided defense for a “reasonable” length of time is sufficient to affirm feasibility. I then consider the failure of private defense agencies to achieve even this standard. (...) Furthermore, I identify five possible explanations for the conspicuous absence of private defense agencies. These explanations are entrepreneurial, technological, or economic in nature, or result from a lack of consumer demand or a lack of incentive for violence specialists to refrain from aggression. Of these, only an economic deficiency renders anarchism intrinsically unworkable. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen and Andrew Mason have recently argued, against many contemporary philosophers, that feasibility is not a legitimate constraint in theorizing about social justice. Their main argument is that principles of justice are logically independent of issues of feasibility and, consequently, feasibility has no bearing on the correctness of these principles. This article is a critical examination of three attempts to show that Cohen and Mason’s argument is unsound. The examined attempts are those of Harry Brighouse, (...) Collin Farrelly, and David Miller. I argue that all these arguments are based on false, unjustified or implausible, premises and/or assumptions. Consequently, they cannot discredit the soundness of Cohen and Mason’s argument and of the thesis that feasibility is not, in fact, a legitimate constraint in theorizing about social justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the feasibility of a realistic interpretation of the quantum mechanical path integral - that is, an interpretation according to which the particle actually follows the paths that contribute to the integral. I argue that an interpretation of this sort requires spacetime to have a branching structure similar to the structures of the branching spacetimes proposed by previous authors. I point out one possible way to construct branching spacetimes of the required sort, and I ask (...) whether the resulting interpretation of quantum mechanics is empirically testable. (shrink)

In this paper, I address two related challenges the phenomenon of depression raises for conceptions according to which autonomy is an agency concept and an independent source of justification. The first challenge is directed at the claim that autonomous agency involves intending under the guise of the good: the robust though not always direct link between evaluation and motivation implied here seems to be severed in some instances of depression; yet, this does not seem to affect the possibility of autonomous (...) action. The second challenge targets the feasibility of a reliable distinction between autonomous and non-autonomous choices in the context of depression: value-neutral and value-laden ways of drawing the distinction seem both open to decisive objections. I develop an account of paradoxical identification which supports a revised value-neutral distinction between autonomous and non-autonomous choices in the context of depression (my response to challenge 2), and shows that depression is inconsistent with autonomy to the extent that it involves an agent’s (paradoxical) identification with projects she implicitly loathes, that is, to the extent that depression thwarts intending under the guise of the good (my response to challenge 1). (shrink)