Cities today are increasingly at the forefront of the environmental and social crisis—they are simultaneously a major cause and a potential solution. Across the world, a new wave of urban social movements is rising to fight against corporate control, social exclusion, hostile immigration policies, gender oppression, and ecological devastation. These movements are building economic, social, and political alternatives based on solidarity, equality, and participation. This anthology develops the debates that began at the recent Transnational Institute of Social Ecology’s (TRISE) (...) conference about the dire need to rebuild the social and political realities of our world’s cities. It discusses the prospects of radical urban movements; examines the revolutionary potential of the concept of “the Right to the City,” and looks at how activists, scholars, and community movements can work together towards an ecological and democratic future. A fruitful conversation between theory and practice, this book opens new ground for rethinking systemic urban change in a way that challenges oppression and transforms how people work, create, and live together. (shrink)

The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status, even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that (...) some individualists have offered in its favor. We defend a non-categorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view, some degree of culpability is necessary for liability, and non-culpable combatants may therefore sometimes remain non-liable even when they fight for an unjust cause. (shrink)

In the tradition of just war theory two assumptions have been taken pretty much for granted: first, that there are quite a lot of justified wars, and second, that there is a moral inequality of combatants, that is, that combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war but not vice versa. I will argue that the first assumption is wrong and that therefore the second assumption is virtually irrelevant for reality. I (...) will also argue, primarily against Jeff McMahan, that his particular thesis about the moral inequality of “just” and “unjust combatants” is an analytical truth which, however, does hardly apply to anything (there are few if any “unjust combatants” as he defines them). If one takes his thesis less literally, namely in the sense of a thesis about combatants participating in a justified war and combatants participating in an unjustified war, it is correct in principle, but still of little practical relevance even if one disregarded the fact that there are virtually no justified wars. One of the reasons for this is that, contrary to McMahan’s claims, justification does not defeat liability. (shrink)

According to the dominant position in the just war tradition from Augustine to Anscombe and beyond, there is no "moral equality of combatants." That is, on the traditional view the combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war - but not vice versa (barring certain qualifications). I shall argue here, however, that in the large number of wars (and in practically all modern wars) where the combatants on the justified side (...) violate the rights of innocent people ("collateral damage"), these combatants are in fact liable to attack by the combatants on the unjustified side. I will support this view with a rights-based account of liability to attack and then defend it against a number of objections raised in particular by Jeff McMahan. The result is that the thesis of the moral equality of combatants holds good for a large range of armed conflicts while the opposing thesis is of very limited practical relevance. (shrink)

Contra Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan, neither classical just war theory nor the contemporary rules of war require or support any notion of combatant moral equality. Nations rightly accept prohibitions against punishing enemy combatants without recognizing any legal or moral right of aggressors to kill. The notion of combatant moral equality has real import only in our interpersonal -- and intrapersonal -- attitudes, since the notion effectively preempts any ground for conscientious objection. Walzer is criticized (...) for over-emphasizing our collective responses to war conduct and slighting our personal, extra-political responses. (shrink)

All humans have an equal basic moral status. They possess the same fundamental rights, and the comparable interests of each person should count the same in calculations that determine social policy. Neither supposed racial differences, nor skin color, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, intelligence, nor any other differences among humans negate their fundamental equal worth and dignity. These platitudes are virtually universally affirmed. A white supremacist racist or an admirer of Adolf Hitler who denies them is rightly regarded as beyond (...) the pale of civilized dialogue. However, a very simple line of argument developed by Peter Singer challenges our understanding of these platitudes and forces us to rethink the basis and nature of the moral equality of all humans. What I call the “Singer Problem” arises if one accepts that the morally significant cognitive capacities that are relevant to the determination of the fundamental moral status of a being vary from individual to individual by degree. The problem is to specify a moral principle determining fundamental moral status that assigns a superior status to humans compared to other animals on the basis of the superior cognitive capacities of humans but also assigns all human persons an equal fundamental moral status regardless of their differing cognitive capacities. More broadly posed, the problem is to specify moral principles that yield intuitively satisfactory implications for the treatment of human individuals and other individual animals given that cognitive capacities differ across species and individuals. A search for a resolution of the Singer problem leads to disappointing results. (shrink)

McMahan’s own example of a symmetrical defense case, namely his tactical bomber example, opens the door wide open for soldiers to defend their fellow-citizens (on grounds of their special obligations towards them) even if as part of this defense they target non-liable soldiers. So the soldiers on both sides would be permitted to kill each other and, given how McMahan defines “justification,” they would also be justified in doing so and hence not be liable. Thus, we arrive, against McMahan’s intentions, (...) at a moral equality of combatants. In addition, his own account of liability cannot deal adequately with symmetrical defense cases in the first place. This undermines his presupposition that justification defeats liability, which is central to his defense of the moral inequality of combatants. I shall argue that McMahan’s attempts to counter these objections fail and that therefore his general claim of the moral inequality of combatants remains unpersuasive. (shrink)

To many, the idea of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) killing human beings is grotesque. Yet critics have had difficulty explaining why it should make a significant moral difference if a human combatant is killed by an AWS as opposed to being killed by a human combatant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of various deontological concerns with AWS and to consider whether these concerns are distinct from any concerns that also apply to long- distance, human-guided (...) weaponry. We suggest that at least one major driver of the intuitive moral aversion to lethal AWS is that their use disrespects their human targets by violating the martial contract between human combatants. On our understanding of this doctrine, service personnel cede a right not to be directly targeted with lethal violence to other human agents alone. Artificial agents, of which AWS are one example, cannot understand the value of human life. A human combatant cannot transfer his privileges of targeting enemy combatants to a robot. Therefore, the human duty-holder who deploys AWS breaches the martial contract between human combatants and disrespects the targeted combatants. We consider whether this novel deontological objection to AWS forms the foundation of several other popular yet imperfect deontological objections to AWS. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many of our common-sense moral judgments seemingly imply the existence of moral luck. I attempt to avoid moral luck while retaining most of these judgments. I defend a view on which agents have moral equality of opportunity. This allows us to account for our anti-moral-luck intuitions at less cost than has been previously recognized.

After the 2008 crisis, there were several debates on the bail-out and the lack of accountability of financial institutions; this supposedly affects politica l values such as equality and responsibility: it implies transferring resources from the public (for instance, poor people) to specific economic agents who have chosen to incur certain risks. On the other hand, it is arguable that it would not be up to the regulators to protect investors’ interests, and that there would be more efficient and (...) less burdensome instruments associated with prudential regulation. Our goal is to provide a justification for the bail-out and for holding bankers accountable. In section 2, we present a brief description of the problem in the context of the crisis, followed by a justification for the bail-out through the incentives argument, based on Rawls’s difference principle. In section 3, we provide an ethical discussion over the corresponding moral hazards, and investigate how to mitigate it through coercive measures. (shrink)

A retrospective essay, written for the 125th anniversary of Ethics.

Shelly Kagan has recently defended the view that it is morally worse for a human being to suffer some harm than it is for a lower animal (such as a dog or a cow) to suffer a harm that is equally severe (ceteris paribus). In this paper, I argue that this view receives rather less support from our intuitions than one might at first suppose. According to Kagan, moreover, an individual’s moral status depends partly upon her ‘modal capacities.’ In (...) this paper, I argue that the most natural strategy for justifying Kagan’s theory faces some important challenges. More generally, I argue that philosophers who wish to defend the view that human beings have a higher moral status than that of the lower animals face a dilemma. Either their theory of moral status will imply (unacceptably) that some severely cognitively impaired human beings have a significantly lower moral status than that of typical human beings, or these philosophers will be forced to ground moral status in a set of properties so far removed from a subject’s actual capacities that it will become difficult to see why these kinds of properties should have such moral importance. (shrink)

In this paper, we tackle the widely held view that practice-oriented approaches to ethics are conservative, preserving the moral status quo, and, in particular, that they do not promote any change in our dealings with animals or formulate clear principles that help us to achieve such change. We shall challenge this view with reference to Wittgensteinian ethics. As a first step, we show that moral thought and action rest on basic moral certainties like: equals are to be (...) treated equally and unequals unequally. We then explore the relations between this insight and the notion of the difficulty of reality elaborated by Cora Diamond. Our goal is to show that a Wittgensteinian-Diamondian approach to animal ethics is not necessarily morally conservative. Indeed, it offers a profound practice-oriented approach to animal ethics that is capable of promoting change in human dealings with animals because it is compatible with radical critique. (shrink)

This study explores freedom and equality as necessary constituents of a liberal democratic state. At the same time, equality and freedom conflict in various respects. It is examined how such conflicts may optimally be resolved while taking seriously the interests involved. These inquiries have far-reaching consequences for the justification of the liberal democratic state. Equal rights are generally considered to be an integral part of a liberal democratic state, but on what foundation are such rights based? Various attempts (...) have been made to provide such a foundation from a moral framework. Some important and influential positions are examined critically and an alternative perspective is offered. "Equality" is approached straightforwardly, without appealing to obscure notions while seeking an outcome that may universally be accepted. Rationality is an important feature in this respect. The question to what extent freedom should be allowed to citizens is another important issue. Granting citizens freedom is beneficial for the liberal democratic state as a whole and for citizens themselves. The limits of freedom must, however, be defined carefully. The search for a simple solution is balanced against the need to do the complexities of individual cases justice. In addition, it is not the task of a liberal democratic state to influence people’s convictions concerning equality ; only equal treatment should be guaranteed. (shrink)

In the luck egalitarian literature, one influential formulation of luck egalitarianism does not specify whether equalities that do not reflect people’s equivalent exercises of responsibility are bad with regard to inequality. This equivocation gives rise to two competing versions of luck egalitarianism: asymmetrical and symmetrical luck egalitarianism. According to the former, while inequalities due to luck are unjust, equalities due to luck are not necessarily so. The latter view, by contrast, affirms the undesirability of equalities as well as inequalities insofar (...) as they are due to luck. The symmetrical view, we argue, is by far the more compelling, both by internal luck egalitarian standards and in light of the external rightist emphasis on choice and responsibility to which luck egalitarianism may partly be seen as a response. Our main case for the symmetrical view is that when some people, against a background of equal opportunities, do not exercise their responsibility to the same degree as others, they cannot justifiably call for equalizing measures to be put in place. Indeed, such measures would be positively unfair. The symmetrical view, accordingly, rejects compensation in such cases, whereas the asymmetrical view, implausibly, enjoins it. We also examine two objections to this argument. First, that this view fails to qualify as genuinely egalitarian, instead collapsing the notion of equality into the notion of desert. Second, that the opposing asymmetrical view, in contrast to the symmetrical view, can draw support from its compatibility with sufficientarian concerns. Both objections are rebutted. We conclude that luck egalitarians are best served by endorsing the symmetrical, luck-neutralizing stance. (shrink)

This article presents a fairness principle for evaluating decision-making based on predictions: a decision rule is unfair when the individuals directly impacted by the decisions who are equal with respect to the features that justify inequalities in outcomes do not have the same statistical prospects of being benefited or harmed by them, irrespective of their socially salient morally arbitrary traits. The principle can be used to evaluate prediction-based decision-making from the point of view of a wide range of antecedently specified (...) substantive views about justice in outcome distributions. (shrink)

Neither M. Walzer's collectivist conception of the "moral equality" of combatants, nor its antithetical individualist conceptions of responsibility are compatible with the ethos of military professionalism and its conception(s) of the responsibility of military professionals for service in an unjust war.

This chapter considers possible moral grounds for recognizing and realizing economic and social rights (ESRs) as human rights. It begins by suggesting that ESRs fall into three families: (1) welfareoriented ESRs, which protect adequate income, education, health, and safe and healthful working conditions; (2) freedom-oriented ESRs, which prohibit slavery, ensure free choice of employment, and protect workers’ freedoms to organize and strike: and (3) fairness-oriented ESRs, which require nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in the workplace along with fair remuneration for (...) one’s work. To accommodate the normative diversity found in these three families, the chapter suggests a pluralistic justicatory framework that appeals to three kinds of moral reasons: human welfare, freedom, and fairness. A final section considers the possibility of subsuming all three of these approaches to justication under the idea of human dignity or the associated idea of equal respect for persons. (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)

Severe poverty is a major global problem about risk and inequality. What, if any, is the relationship between equality, fairness and responsibility in an unequal world? I argue for four conclusions. The first is the moral urgency of severe poverty. We have too many global neighbours that exist in a state of emergency and whose suffering is intolerable. The second is that severe poverty is a problem concerning global injustice that is relevant, but not restricted, to questions about (...) responsibility. If none were responsible, this does not eliminate all compelling claims to provide assistance. The third is that severe poverty represents an inequality too far; it is a condition of extremity with denial of basic needs. The fourth is that there is a need for an approach that captures all relevant cases – and the capabilities approach and the connection theory of remedial responsibilities are highlighted as having special promise. (shrink)

abstract The moral value of distributive equality constitutes one of the most contentious debates in political philosophy. Following Frankfurt, many philosophers have claimed that the intuitive appeal of equality is illusory and that egalitarian intuitions are fundamentally intuitions about the importance of satisfying basic needs. According to this argument, our intuitions tell us that inequality ceases to matter once a certain threshold has been reached. Despite the widespread appeal to intuitions regarding this issue, few empirical studies have (...) tried to assess whether Frankfurt and his followers are right in claiming the lack of intuitiveness of equality per se. In a series of three experiments, we show that experimental evidence does not allow us to settle the intuitiveness of each theory: laypeople are divided in the consideration of the respective importance of needs and equality. While our results do show that laypeople attach special importance to needs‐fulfilment, it also seems that they are divided when it comes to the importance they grant to equality once needs are fulfilled. No theory is unanimously backed by participants, and it seems that, fundamentally, divisions among philosophers reflect deep divisions among people. (shrink)

Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring about social acceptance of skewed views that suit their interests. Epistemic equality in the context of justification is a means of preventing such obstruction. Drawing on social epistemology and theories of equality and distributive justice, we provide an account of epistemic equality. We regard participation in, and influence over a knowledge-generating discourse in an epistemic community as a limited good that needs to (...) be justly distributed among putative members of the community. We argue that rather than trying to operationally formulate an exact criterion for distributing this good, epistemic equality may be realized by insisting on active participation of members of three groups in addition to credited experts: relevant disempowered groups, relevant uncredited experts, and relevant stakeholders. Meeting these conditions fulfills the political, moral, and epistemic aims of epistemic equality. (shrink)

This chapter explores the place of remorse in Sophie de Grouchy’s moral theory, as presented in her 1798 work, Letters on Sympathy, which was originally published with her translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that, for Grouchy, a cultivated sense of remorse weakens our self-conceit by drawing our attention to the ways in which we harm others, even for seemingly justifiable reasons. In so doing, we are led to recognize the equal standing of others, (...) which gives rise to the “sentiment of natural equality.” This “sentiment of natural equality” places a check on our norms and institutions and allows for the potential of moral progress. While Grouchy frames the Letters as a commentary on Smith’s writings, her discussion of remorse, equality, and moral progress shows her to be a bold and original thinker, and one worth taking seriously. (shrink)

In this book I argue that school integration is not a proxy for educational justice. I demonstrate that the evidence consistently shows the opposite is more typically the case. I then articulate and defend the idea of voluntary separation, which describes the effort to redefine, reclaim and redirect what it means to educate under preexisting conditions of segregation. In doing so, I further demonstrate how voluntary separation is consistent with the liberal democratic requirements of equality and citizenship. The position (...) I defend is not opposed to integration but rather is a justified response to the daily experience of frustration and disappointment with a system that has failed members of marginalized groups for too long. I argue that most voluntary separation experiments in education, far from being motivated by a sense of racial, cultural or religious exclusion, are in fact driven among other things by a desire for a quality education, not to mention community membership and self respect. As such, voluntary separation represents a morally robust pragmatic strategy that is able to answer liberal challenges concerning involuntary stratification, ethnocentrism and democratic deliberation. (shrink)

Several democratic theorists have recently sought to vindicate the ideal of equal political power (“political equality”) by tying it to the non-derivative value of egalitarian relationships. This chapter critically discusses such arguments. It clarifies what it takes to vindicate the ideal of political equality, and distinguishes different versions of the relational egalitarian argument for it. Some such arguments appeal to the example of a society without social status inequality (such as caste or class structures); others to personal relationships (...) among equals, like friendship. Each strategy faces problems. After discussing what social status consists in, the chapter argues that social status equality does not require an equal distribution of power, but only that unequal distributions are not justified on grounds incompatible with the citizens’ fundamental equal moral standing. By contrast, personal relationships among equals do require equal power; but establishing that their norms apply to our political community is challenging. (shrink)

In this essay, I challenge Charles Mills’s use of the category of moral personhood for advancing a robust anti-racist political critique in nonideal circumstances. I argue that the idea of the moral equality of persons is necessary but insufficient for reparative justice. I enrich the normative basis of political critique to include: (1) a clarification of what the public recognition of moral personhood can legitimately entail as a requirement of justice enforceable by the state, especially with (...) respect to economic reforms that advance equal opportunity and (2) a conception of non-alienated labor that assails identity-based occupational segregation in the labor market. These additional components do not exhaust the plausible bases for political critique, but enrich it in a way that the idea of moral equality alone cannot. (shrink)

The fact of moral disagreement when conjoined with Conciliationism, an independently attractive view about the epistemic significance disagreement, seems to entail moral skepticism. This worries those who like Conciliationism, the independently attractive view, but dislike moral skepticism. Others, equally inclined against moral skepticism, think this is a reductio of Conciliationism. I argue that they are both wrong. There is no reductio and nothing to worry about.

This thesis argues that a particular version of equal opportunity for welfare is the best way of meeting the joint demands of three liberal egalitarian ideals: distributional equality, responsibility, and respect for individuals’ differing reasonable judgements of their own good. It also examines which social choice rules best represent these demands. Finally, it defends the view that achieving equal opportunity for welfare should not only be a goal of formal public institutions, but that just citizens should also sometimes be (...) guided by it in their everyday life. The version of equal opportunity for welfare it defends differs from some well-known contemporary versions in the following ways. First, it rejects a definition of welfare as the degree of satisfaction of a person’s preferences, because, it argues, this conception of welfare cannot adequately deal with preference change. Instead, it suggests that we should adopt a conception of welfare based on a list of goods and conditions that are recognised as valuable from the perspective of a variety of different conceptions of the good. Second, it argues that individuals’ prima facie claim to an equally valuable share of the world’s resources—a claim which is based on their equal moral worth—is limited to situations in which giving one person a more valuable share means that someone else ends up with a less valuable share. It also argues that in situations where we can improve at least one person’s situation without worsening anyone else’s, we generally do not fail to respect each person’s equal moral worth by doing so, even if this leads to inequalities. Third, it defends a distinct view of responsibility, which justifies social arrangements that give people certain options with reference to the value that individuals can achieve (but don’t necessarily achieve) through their choices from these options. (shrink)

According to Corey Brettschneider, we can protect freedom of religion and promote equality, by distinguishing religious groups’ claims to freedom of expression and association from their claims to financial and verbal support from the state. I am very sympathetic to this position, which fits well with my own views of democratic rights and duties, and with the importance of recognizing the scope for political choice which democratic politics offers to governments and to citizens. This room for political choice, I (...) believe, is necessary if people are to have any chance of reconciling the conflicting moral and political obligations they are likely to face, however idealized our conception of democracy or morality. Granted that no amount of personal and political choice will ever guarantee that we do not encounter tragic choices, and painfully conflicting moral demands, it is an important feature of democracy – or so I believe – that its rights reflect the importance of mitigating these conflicts so that people are able, as a rule, to act as they ought, so that they do not experience their moral sentiments, beliefs and capacities simply as grounds for recrimination, alienation and despair. I therefore believe that democracies have good reason not to force the consciences of the undemocratic and the intolerant, where it is possible to accommodate such people without threatening the rights of others. However, the fact that I share many of Brettschneider’s intuitions and beliefs does not mean that I share them all. In particular, I find his conception of democracy unduly narrow, and unduly based on a rather idealized conception of the American constitution which is unlikely to appeal to those whose conceptions of democracy are more republican, more socialist, more pragmatic and more international than his. I have explained these worries elsewhere and drawn out some of their implications for his arguments about privacy and judicial review. There is no need to repeat them here. I will also set to one side my worries about his uninflected, overly abstract and rather reified characterization of the State, in the hope that others will discuss this and that, in the end, a more nuanced conception of the State and a more lively appreciation of the conflicting people, institutions, histories and norms which make up most states, will prove consistent with his arguments. Finally, I do not propose to enter into a detailed discussion of the difficulties of Brettschneider’s overly abstract and reified conception of State ‘speech’ and ‘expression’ which, while motivated by the language of American constitutionalism, appears to cover pretty much anything a government might do, from raising and spending taxes, to accepting judicial interpretations of contested constitutional provisions, or to affirmatively pronouncing on the goals that will animate its legislative agenda and its aspirations for citizen’s lives. Again, while I would have wished for a more nuanced and analytical discussion of so central a concept as ‘expression’ and, in particular, expression by ‘the State’, I am uncertain that anything fundamental in Brettschneider’s account of citizen rights and duties would be altered in the process. Instead, then, I want to focus on points in Brettschneider’s argument that intrigue, and sometimes puzzle, me the most and where issues of nuance and clarification might make a substantial difference to our views of equality and religious freedom. (shrink)

Intuitively, moral responsibility requires conscious awareness of what one is doing, and why one is doing it, but what kind of awareness is at issue? Neil Levy argues that phenomenal consciousness—the qualitative feel of conscious sensations—is entirely unnecessary for moral responsibility. He claims that only access consciousness—the state in which information (e.g., from perception or memory) is available to an array of mental systems (e.g., such that an agent can deliberate and act upon that information)—is relevant to (...) class='Hi'>moral responsibility. I argue that numerous ethical, epistemic, and neuroscientific considerations entail that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is necessary for moral responsibility. I focus in particular on considerations inspired by P. F. Strawson, who puts a range of qualitative moral emotions—the reactive attitudes—front and center in the analysis of moral responsibility. (shrink)

According to moral intuitionism, at least some moral seeming states are justification-conferring. The primary defense of this view currently comes from advocates of the standard account, who take the justification-conferring power of a moral seeming to be determined by its phenomenological credentials alone. However, the standard account is vulnerable to a problem. In brief, the standard account implies that moral knowledge is seriously undermined by those commonplace moral disagreements in which both agents have equally good (...) phenomenological credentials supporting their disputed moral beliefs. However, it is implausible to think that commonplace disagreement seriously undermines moral knowledge, and thus it is implausible to think that the standard account of moral intuitionism is true. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson’s (1962) “Freedom and Resentment” has provoked a wide range of responses, both positive and negative, and an equally wide range of interpretations. In particular, beginning with Gary Watson, some have seen Strawson as suggesting a point about the “order of explanation” concerning moral responsibility: it is not that it is appropriate to hold agents responsible because they are morally responsible, rather, it is ... well, something else. Such claims are often developed in different ways, but one thing (...) remains constant: they meant to be incompatible with libertarian theories of moral responsibility. The overarching theme of this paper is that extant developments of “the reversal” face a dilemma: in order to make the proposals plausibly anti-libertarian, they must be made to be implausible on other grounds. I canvas different attempts to articulate a “Strawsonian reversal”, and argue that none is fit for the purposes for which it is intended. I conclude by suggesting a way of clarifying the intended thesis: an analogy with the concept of funniness. The result: proponents of the “reversal” need to accept the difficult result that if we blamed small children, they would be blameworthy, or instead explain how their view escapes this result, while still being a view on which our blaming practices “fix the facts” of moral responsibility. (shrink)

I argue that traditional views on which beliefs are subject only to purely epistemic assessment can reject demographic profiling, even when based on seemingly robust evidence. This is because the moral failures involved in demographic profiling can be located in the decision not to suspend judgment, rather than supposing that beliefs themselves are a locus of moral evaluation. A key moral reason to suspend judgment when faced with adverse demographic evidence is to promote social equality—this explains (...) why positive profiling is dubious, along with more familiar cases of negative profiling, and why profiling is suspect even when no particular action is at stake. My suspension-based view, while compatible with revisionary normative positions, does not presuppose them. Philosophers of all stripes can reject demographic profiling both in thought and deed. (shrink)

The evolutionary model of moral progress developed in A Better Ape is nuanced and illuminating. Kumar and Campbell use their view of the evolved moral mind to analyze clear cases of increased inclusivity and equality (at least in Western society). Their analyses elucidate the psychological and social mechanisms that can drive moral progress (or regress). In this commentary, I raise three main concerns about their model: that factors other than social integration are more central to progress; (...) that their model isn’t inherently progressive; and that inclusivity and equality conflict with other forms of progress. (shrink)

We offer a relatively simple and straightforward argument that each of us ought to be vegan. We don’t defend this position by appealing to ‘animal rights’ or the view that animals and humans are ‘moral equals’. Rather, we argue that animal agriculture causes serious harms to other animals (such as pain, suffering and death) and these harms are morally unjustified or caused for no good reason. This is true for both ‘factory farming’ and smaller, so-called ‘humane’ farms. We argue (...) that attempts to justify these harms don’t succeed, and conclude that raising and killing animals for food is wrong. -/- In the second part of our essay we explain how this argument relates to the choices of individuals to buy and consume animal products. Since most people don’t raise and kill animals themselves, the argument above doesn’t directly address individuals’ daily choices. To address this concern, we offer a plausible, general moral principle that describes when consumers should not purchase or consume a product: most simply, we should not support those who act wrongly by seriously harming others, provided we can safely and easily do so. Since, for most people, it is safe and relatively easy to not support those who do wrong by raising and killing animals so they can be eaten, we should not buy or consume animal food products. -/- After making our case that we ought to be vegan, we respond to some of the more challenging objections to our argument. We argue that these objections don’t succeed and so, given our previous argument, nearly everyone is morally obligated to eat a vegan diet. (shrink)

The (moral) permissibility of an act is determined by the relative weights of reasons, or so I assume. But how many weights does a reason have? Weight Monism is the idea that reasons have a single weight value. There is just the weight of reasons. The simplest versions hold that the weight of each reason is either weightier than, less weighty than, or equal to every other reason. We’ll see that this simple view leads to paradox in at least (...) two ways. We must complicate the picture somehow. I consider two candidate complications. The first, Parity Monism, is inspired by Ruth Chang’s suggestion that parity is a fourth comparative beyond the traditional three (>, <, =). This view complicates the single weight relation by allowing that the weights of reasons can be on a par. Unfortunately, Parity Monism resolves only one of the two paradoxes that afflict simple versions of Weight Monism. To resolve both paradoxes, we need our second candidate complication, Weight Pluralism. This view holds that reasons have at least two weight values (e.g., justifying weight and requiring weight) and these two values aren’t always equivalent. Parity is no substitute for Pluralism. (shrink)

What bearing does living in an increasingly globalized world have upon the moral assessment of global inequality? This paper defends an account of global egalitarianism that differs from standard accounts with respect to both the content of and the justification for the imperative to reduce global inequality. According to standard accounts of global egalitarianism, the global order unjustly allows a person’s relative life prospects to track the morally arbitrary trait of where she happens to be born. After raising some (...) worries with these accounts, the author offers an alternative account of global egalitarianism, “social egalitarianism,” which locates the wrongfulness of global inequalities in their effects on social and political interaction rather than in the unfairness of their source. On this view, global inequalities wrongfully exclude the worse-off from partaking in the benefits of globalization. Consequently, social egalitarianism aims for the elimination of only those inequalities that impede such participation. (shrink)

Moral philosophers and psychologists often assume that people judge morally lucky and morally unlucky agents differently, an assumption that stands at the heart of the Puzzle of Moral Luck. We examine whether the asymmetry is found for reflective intuitions regarding wrongness, blame, permissibility, and punishment judg- ments, whether people’s concrete, case-based judgments align with their explicit, abstract principles regarding moral luck, and what psychological mechanisms might drive the effect. Our experiments produce three findings: First, in within-subjects experiments (...) favorable to reflective deliberation, the vast majority of people judge a lucky and an unlucky agent as equally blameworthy, and their actions as equally wrong and permissible. The philosophical Puzzle of Moral Luck, and the challenge to the very possibility of systematic ethics it is frequently taken to engender, thus simply do not arise. Second, punishment judgments are significantly more outcome- dependent than wrongness, blame, and permissibility judgments. While this constitutes evidence in favor of current Dual Process Theories of moral judgment, the latter need to be qualified: punishment and blame judgments do not seem to be driven by the same process, as is commonly argued in the literature. Third, in between-subjects experiments, outcome has an effect on all four types of moral judgments. This effect is mediated by negligence ascriptions and can ultimately be explained as due to differing probability ascriptions across cases. (shrink)

Because moral understanding involves a distinctly first-personal grasp of moral matters, there is a temptation to think of its value primarily in terms of achievements that reflect well on its possessor: the moral worth of one's action or the virtue of one's character. These explanations, I argue, do not do full justice to the importance of moral understanding in our moral lives. Of equal importance is the value of moral understanding in our relations with (...) other moral agents. In particular, I argue that an understanding of moral matters is of central importance within relations of solidarity. In addition to highlighting an overlooked aspect of moral understanding's value, this view also has important implications for what solidarity requires of those who stand in that relationship. (shrink)

This volume brings together essays by seminal figures and rising stars in the fields of animal ethics and moral theory to analyze and evaluate the moral status of non-human animals, with a special focus on the question of whether or not animals have moral rights. Though wide-ranging in many ways, these fourteen original essays and one reprinted essay direct significant attention to both the main arguments for animal rights and the biggest challenges to animal rights. This volume (...) explores the question of whether or not animals have moral rights through a number of different lenses, including classical deontology, libertarianism, commonsense morality, virtue ethics, and utilitarianism. The volume also addresses what are undoubtedly the most serious challenges to the strong animal rights position, which maintains that animals have moral rights equal in strength to the rights of humans, including challenges posed by rights nihilism, the ‘kind’ argument against animal rights, the problem of predation, and the comparative value of lives. In addition, the volume explores the practical import of animal rights both from a social policy standpoint and from the standpoint of personal ethical decisions concerning what to eat and whether or not to hunt animals. Unlike other volumes on animal rights, which focus primarily on the legal rights of animals, and unlike other anthologies on animal ethics, which tend to cover a wide variety of topics but only devote a few articles to each topic, the volume under consideration is focused exclusively on the question of whether or not animals have moral rights and the practical import of such rights. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that forgiveness is a morally appropriate response only when it is grounded in the wrongdoer’s demonstration of genuine remorse, their offer of a sincere apology, and, where appropriate, acts of recompense and behavioral change. I then respond to John Kleinig’s suggestion (in his paper “Forgiveness and Unconditionality”) that when an apology is not forthcoming, there are at least three additional grounds that, when motivated by virtues such as love and compassion, could nevertheless render “unconditional forgiveness” (...) a morally laudable option. I argue that such grounds could indeed constitute or result in laudable responses to wrongdoing, but only if they are not conceived of or described in terms of forgiveness. (shrink)

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

Moral luck occurs when factors beyond an agent’s control affect her blameworthiness. Several scholars deny the existence of moral luck by distinguishing judging blameworthy from blame-related practices. Luck does not affect an agent’s blameworthiness because morality is conceptually fair, but it can affect the appropriate degree of blame for that agent. While separatism resolves the paradox of moral luck, we aim to show it that it needs amendment, because it is unfair to treat two equally blameworthy people (...) unequally. We argue that separatists should conceive fairness as a pro tanto reason for blame. By locating fairness as a ground for blame within a wider axiology of blame, separatism could resolve the challenge of blaming fairly. In such an axiology, reasonable and fair blame diverge. (shrink)

Moral obligation, Darwall argues, is irreducibly second personal. So too, McMyler argues, is the reason for belief supplied by testimony and which supports trust. In this paper, I follow Darwall in arguing that the testimony is not second personal ?all the way down?. However, I go on to argue, this shows that trust is not fully second personal, which in turn shows that moral obligation is equally not second personal ?all the way down?

Moral contextualism is the view that claims like ‘A ought to X’ are implicitly relative to some (contextually variable) standard. This leads to a problem: what are fundamental moral claims like ‘You ought to maximize happiness’ relative to? If this claim is relative to a utilitarian standard, then its truth conditions are trivial: ‘Relative to utilitarianism, you ought to maximize happiness’. But it certainly doesn’t seem trivial that you ought to maximize happiness (utilitarianism is a highly controversial position). (...) Some people believe this problem is a reason to prefer a realist or error theoretic semantics of morals. I argue two things: first, that plausible versions of all these theories are afflicted by the problem equally, and second, that any solution available to the realist and error theorist is also available to the contextualist. So the problem of triviality does not favour noncontextualist views of moral language. (shrink)

In this paper I describe how Kant’s idea about the impossibility of moral luck has come to influence, via Rawls, recent writings in egalitarian theory. I argue that this influence has been detrimental for the study of equality. Further, I claim that the major deficiencies of this post-Rawlsian egalitarianism (nicely described by Elizabeth Anderson’s title “luck egalitarianism) are both effectively critiqued and corrected by the understanding of equality and its value located in John Dewey’s writings.

Notwithstanding International Economic Law’s (IEL’s) inevitable distributional effects, IEL scholarship has had limited engagement with theoretical work on global distributive justice and fairness. In part this reflects the failure of global justice theorists to derive principles that can be readily applied to the concrete problems of IEL. This article bridges this gap, drawing on existing coercion-based accounts of global justice in political theory to propose a novel account of global distributive justice that both resolves problems within the existing theoretical literature (...) and can be directly applied to both explain and critique concrete issues in IEL, including in particular WTO law. By complementing existing coercion-based accounts with a more nuanced typology of international coercion, it distinguishes two morally salient classes of economically relevant measures: External Trade Measures (ETMs), which pursue their goals specifically through the regulation of international economic activity; and Domestic Economic Measures (DEMs), which do not. The distinctive intentional relationship between ETMs and the outsiders they affect means such measures require more stringent justification, in terms of global equality or other goals those outsiders themselves share; whereas DEMs can be justified under the principle of self-determination. Non-Product Related Production Processes and Methods (NPRPPMs) provide a case study to show how this framework can illuminate recurring problems in IEL. (shrink)