https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

From the Publisher:
The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.

/pdf/being-there-putting-brain-body-and-world-together-again-31tt4y51ml.pdf

Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

Extensive empirical evidence and theoretical developments in multiple disciplines stimulate a need to expand the range of rational choice models to be used as a foundation for the study of social dilemmas and collective action. After an introduction to the problem of overcoming social dilemmas through collective action, the remainder of this article is divided into six sections. The first briefly reviews the theoretical predictions of currently accepted rational choice theory related to social dilemmas. The second section summarizes the challenges to the sole reliance on a complete model of rationality presented by extensive experimental research. In the third section, I discuss two major empirical findings that begin to show how individuals achieve results that are “better than rational” by building conditions where reciprocity, reputation, and trust can help to overcome the strong temptations of short-run self-interest. The fourth section raises the possibility of developing second-generation models of rationality, the fifth section develops an initial theoretical scenario, and the final section concludes by examining the implications of placing reciprocity, reputation, and trust at the core of an empirically tested, behavioral theory of collective action.

/pdf/a-behavioral-approach-to-the-rational-choice-theory-of-25pyb8tyg1.pdf

A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1997

Contemporary research on the outcomes of diverse institutional arrangements for governing common-pool resources (CPRs ) and public goods at multiple scales builds on classical economic theory while developing new theory to explain phenomena that do not fit in a dichotomous world of “the market” and “the state.” Scholars are slowly shifting from positing simple systems to using more complex frameworks, theories, and models to understand the diversity of puzzles and problems facing humans interacting in contemporary societies. The humans we study have complex motivational structures and establish diverse private-for-profit, governmental, and com munity institutional arrangements that operate at multiple scales to generate productive and inno vative as well as destructive and perverse outcomes ( Douglass C. North 1990, 2005 ). In this article, I will describe the intellectual journey that I have taken the last half century from when I began graduate studies in the late 1950s. The early efforts to understand the poly centric water industry in California were formative for me. In addition to working with Vincent Ostrom and Charles M. Tiebout as they formulated the concept of polycentric systems for gov erning metropolitan areas, I studied the efforts of a large group of private and public water producers facing the problem of an overdrafted groundwater basin on the coast and watching saltwater intrusion threaten the possibility of long term use. Then, in the 1970s, I participated with colleagues in the study of polycentric police industries serving US metropolitan areas to find that the dominant theory underlying massive reform proposals was incorrect. Metropolitan areas served by a combination of large and small producers could achieve economies of scale in the production of some police services and avoid diseconomies of scale in the production of others. These early empirical studies led over time to the development of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. A common framework consistent with game theory enabled us to undertake a variety of empirical studies including a meta-analysis of a large number of existing case studies on common-pool resource systems around the world. Carefully designed experimental studies in the lab have enabled us to test precise combinations of structural vari ables to find that isolated, anonymous individuals overharvest from common-pool resources. Simply allowing communication, or “cheap talk,” enables participants to reduce overharvest ing and increase joint payoffs contrary to game theoretical predictions. Large studies of irrigation systems in Nepal and forests around the world challenge the presumption that governments always do a better job than users in organizing and protecting important resources.

/pdf/beyond-markets-and-states-polycentric-governance-of-complex-23y9ii9i6l.pdf

Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems

Capitalism and Freedom

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research … [which include] creating human-animal hybrids. —George W. Bush, 2006 State of the Union Address (20...

/pdf/thinking-about-the-human-neuron-mouse-j8flwymokz.pdf

Thinking about the human neuron mouse

We are a multidisciplinary group of Stanford faculty who propose ten principles to guide the use of racial and ethnic categories when characterizing group differences in research into human genetic variation.

/pdf/the-ethics-of-characterizing-difference-guiding-principles-6470h1siyk.pdf

The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics.

@fmct:Contents @toc4:Preface, by Debra Satz iii @toc1:Part One. The Stanford Tanner Lectures by Harry Frankfurt @toc2:1 Taking Ourselves Seriously 0 2 Getting It Right 00 @toc1:Part Two. Comments @toc2:3 Morality and the Logic of Caring 00 @tocca:Christine M. Korsgaard @toc2:4 A Thoughtful and Reasonable Stability 00 @tocca:Michael E. Bratman @toc2:5 Socializing Harry 00 @tocca:Meir Dan-Cohen @toc4Notes 000 Index 000

Taking ourselves seriously & Getting it right

L'A. explique la these de l'asymetrie, selon laquelle les marches du sexe et de la reproduction sont asymetriques aux autres marches du travail, par le fait que la prostitution contribue a renforcer l'inegalite sociale entre les hommes et les femmes. Pour l'A., ce n'est pas tant la question de la decriminalisation de la prostitution qui importe, mais bien celle de l'egalite des sexes

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2382005.pdf

Markets in Women's Sexual Labor

In his provocative book World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge employs two distinct argumentative strategies. The first is ecumenical: Pogge makes powerful arguments for redressing world poverty that aim to appeal to persons with divergent views regarding its causes, and also for the nature and extent of our obligations to the global poor. This is an extremely important part of his book: World Poverty and Human Rights argues that on any reasonable moral theory and across a wide range of views of the ultimate causes of world poverty, we will be seen to have obligations to the world's poor. Pogge's ecumenical argument shows that one does not have to accept a principle of global equality of resources in order to conclude that we have a general obligation to aid other human beings in severe need. I will discuss this strategy of argument at the end of my essay.In his second and main argumentative strategy, Pogge defends a distinctive normative and empirical perspective. For, at the heart of the book is the thesis that we in the developed countries have special obligations to end world poverty because we have significantly contributed to its existence. Pogge argues for a causal contribution principle, which holds that we are morally responsible for world poverty because and to the extent that we have caused it.Pogge also argues that our obligations not to harm others apply universally and are stronger than the obligations we have to provide aid. In fact, on Pogge's view global justice involves solely this negative duty—a duty not to inflict harm on others. The central innovation of the book is to defend a normative premise typically associated with libertarianism—that we have strong duties not to harm but only weak duties to benefit people we have not harmed—and conjoin it with an empirical claim to generate an argument for radical global redistribution.Although there is much else of interest in World Poverty and Human Rights, particularly Pogge's specific policy proposals to diminish global poverty, the causal contribution thesis and the identification of a duty not to harm as the fundamental principle of justice arguably form its intellectual core and central innovations. In this comment, I will critique both Pogge's use of the causal contribution principle as well as his attempt to derive all of our obligations to the global poor from the need to refrain from harming others.

Debra Satz

Papers

Thinking about the human neuron mouse

The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics.

Taking ourselves seriously & Getting it right

Markets in Women's Sexual Labor

What Do We Owe the Global Poor