Showing papers in "Philosophy & Public Affairs in 2009"
203 citations
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192 citations
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that when a harm is impersonal, it should fail to trigger this alarmlike emotional response, allowing people to respond in a more "cognitive" way, perhaps employing a cost-benefit analysis.
Abstract: reasoning, it should come as no surprise if we have innate responses to personal violence that are powerful but rather primitive. That is, we might expect humans to have negative emotional responses to certain basic forms of interpersonal violence. ... In contrast, when a harm is impersonal, it should fail to trigger this alarmlike emotional response, allowing people to respond in a more "cognitive" way, perhaps employing a cost-benefit analysis.60 Similarly, Singer writes, For most of our evolutionary history, human beings have lived in
188 citations
173 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the European Consortium for Political Research workshop in Granada, the Nuffield Political Theory workshop, the Stanford Political Theory Workshop, the University of South Carolina; the Oxford Political Thought Conference; the Society for Applied Philosophy; and a workshop on “Justice between Age Groups” at University of Essex.
Abstract: We are grateful to audiences at a European Consortium for Political Research workshop in Granada; Oxford's Centre for the Study of Social Justice; the Universities of Birmingham, Reading, Newcastle, and Rochester; Queens University; the Nuffield Political Theory workshop; Princeton's Center for Human Values (and especially to Stephen Macedo for facilitating that occasion); MIT; the Stanford Political Theory Workshop; the University of South Carolina; the Oxford Political Thought Conference; the Society for Applied Philosophy; and a workshop on “Justice between Age Groups” at the University of Essex. We have surely forgotten many valuable corrections and suggestions received during the years it took us to reach this stage, but we do remember at least some of those from Jaime Ahlberg, Richard Arneson, Eamonn Callan, Simon Caney, Dario Castiglione, Clare Chambers, Matthew Clayton, G. A. Cohen, Joshua Cohen, Randall Curren, Cecile Fabre, Pablo Gilabert, Herbert Gintis, Dan Hausman, Richard Holton, Adam Hosein, Sandy Jencks, Hugh Lazenby, Kenneth Macdonald, Colin Macleod, Dan McDermott, David Miller, Philip Pettit, Rob Reich, Ingrid Robeyns, Francis Schrag, Zofia Stemplowska, Sarah Stroud, Christine Sypnowich, John Tasioulas, Simon Thompson, Matt Waldren, Brynn Welch, Andrew Williams, Bekka Williams, and Erik Olin Wright. The Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs provided a total of four sets of comments that helped us to improve on previous drafts. Adam Swift thanks the British Academy and Nuffield College for granting and hosting the Research Readership, during which he began work on the article. Harry Brighouse is grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Association for helping to facilitate this and other collaborations, and to the Spencer Foundation. Any remaining errors are Brighouse's.
101 citations
TL;DR: The notion of moral standing was introduced by as mentioned in this paper, who argued that a being has moral standing if it counts morally, in its own right, in the sense that it has the capacity for practical rationality.
Abstract: The terms 'moral status' and 'moral standing' are sometimes used interchangeably, but in the analysis that follows I will distinguish them. I will say that a being has moral standing if it counts morally, in its own right. For Bentham, all beings that are sentient count morally in their own right. For Kant, only persons, beings with the capacity for practical rationality, have moral standing. On both views, moral standing is not a comparative notion. Moral status, in contrast, is a comparative notion. Two beings can both have moral standing, but one may be of a higher moral status. The idea that different beings with moral standing have different moral statuses is common to otherwise divergent moral theories and is implicit in much pre-theoretical moral thinking as well. A being's moral status can make a difference as to whether its behavior is subject to moral evaluation, how it ought to be treated, whether it has rights, and perhaps what kinds of rights it has. In moral views that include a plurality of moral statuses, it is human beings, or at least human beings who are persons, that are thought to occupy the highest status. A few contemporary moral theorists have begun to develop nuanced views on moral status.1 At the same time, concerns about moral status
98 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a discussion of the relationship between rational choice and moral decision-making in the context of the Ethics of Risk, which they call Rational Choice and Moral Decision-making.
Abstract: We are grateful to Arthur Applbaum, Alexander Barker, Ken Binmore, Johan Brannmark, Boudewijn de Bruin, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, G. A. Cohen, Nir Eyal, Brian Feltham, Marc Fleurbaey, Alon Harel, Nils Holtug, Annabelle Lever, Kasper lippert-Rasmussen, Ve*ronique Munoz-Darde*, Erik Nord, Derek Parfit, Ingmar Persson, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen, Carlos Soto, Katie Steele, Peter Vallentyne, Ralph Wedgwood, Andrew Williams, Michael J. Zimmerman, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for their comments. This article was presented to audiences at All Souls College, Erasmus University, the Free University of Amsterdam, Harvard University, LSE, Lund University, the University de Montreal, Rutgers University, UCL, and the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Manchester, Pittsburgh, Warwick, and York. We are grateful to those present for their comments. Alex Voorhoeve's work was aided by a British Academy Small Research Grant for the project "Rational Choice and Moral DecisionMaking," and Michael Otsuka's was supported by an AHRC Research Grant on the Ethics of Risk. 1. Unless we indicate otherwise, it should be assumed that the health states we refer to in this article will last from early adulthood until the end of the lives of individuals with equally long life spans, that people are equally well off in all respects other than those to which their differences in mobility give rise, that everyone who is in the same health state is at the same (interpersonally comparable) level of utility, and that it is through no choice or fault of any individual that she suffers from or is vulnerable to any impairment.
93 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that those who are linked in political associations of a colonial sort have claims against one another under exactly that heading and argue that associative duties qua associative duty morally do not vary merely on account of how distant you are from those who exercise power and authority within your association.
Abstract: The vast majority of countries in the world have stood in an “associative relation” of a colonial sort with some other country or countries, at sometime or another. The aim of this article is to probe the implications of that brute fact for contemporary debates regarding the scope of global distributive justice.
The legacy of colonialism poses huge issues of rectificatory justice as well, of course. Imposing alien rule on people, exploiting their persons, and extracting their resources are historical wrongs crying out to be put right. That is the first thing that inevitably comes to mind when thinking about justice for former colonies, and rightly so. We argue here, however, that alongside those issues of righting past wrongs there are further issues concerning the duties of and claims to distributive justice that people in colonial relations have with respect to one another during— and may retain after—colonial rule.
On the “associative relations” account we shall here be discussing, duties of robust distributive justice are said to be owed to all, but only, those with whom one is linked in a political association. Everyone living within the same political association has associative duties with respect to one another. That analysis is ordinarily deployed to restrict the scope of robust distributive justice narrowly to compatriots alone. Here we argue, however, that those who are linked in political associations of a colonial sort have claims against one another under exactly that heading. Associative duties qua associative duties morally do not vary merely on account of how distant you are from those who exercise power and authority within your association. Furthermore, there are good reasons to think that at least some of those associative duties linger well beyond the colonial period itself.
55 citations
TL;DR: For instance, this paper found that when people judge it permissible to turn a trolley toward five persons away from them, though it will then hit and kill another person, brain centers involved in cognitive processes (and associated with rational thought) are stimulated.
Abstract: Recent work in psychology has studied persons' intuitive judgments of trolley problems.1 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, run by Joshua Greene,2 are said to show that when people judge it permissible to turn a trolley headed toward five persons away from them, though it will then hit and kill another person, brain centers involved in cognitive processes (and associated with rational thought) are stimulated.3 By contrast, fMRI studies are said to show that when people judge it to be impermissible to throw someone over a bridge into
51 citations
TL;DR: Civic nationhood is meant to describe a political identity built around shared citizenship in a liberal-democratic state as mentioned in this paper, and membership is open to anyone who shares these values and does not require a disposition on the part of citizens to uphold their political institutions and to accept the liberal principles on which they are based.
Abstract: Civic nationhood is meant to describe a political identity built around shared citizenship in a liberal-democratic state.1 A "civic nation," in this sense, need not be unified by commonalities of language or culture (where "culture" refers to the traditions and customs of a particular national group). It simply requires a disposition on the part of citizens to uphold their political institutions, and to accept the liberal principles on which they are based. Membership is open to anyone who shares these values. In a civic nation, the protection or promotion of one national culture over others is not a goal of the state.2 Although the concept of a "civic," as distinct from a "cultural," nationalism goes very far back in the literature, those employing the distinction today tend to be philosophers who wish to defend a liberal ideal of citizenship. Jurgen Habermas argues that new immigrants to a liberal state should not be required to assimilate to the culture of the majority nation, but instead must simply "assent to the principles of the constitution within the scope of interpretation determined at a particular
44 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that non-identity problems threaten any argument for reparation for historic injustices, and that there is no possible world in which the wrong that was a condition of a person's existence can be undone.
Abstract: Must people be compensated for injustices their ancestors suffered? If someone commits an injustice, it would seem that she should undo the effects of her transgression on all parties she has harmed, possibly including persons in subsequent generations. Victims' descendants might then have claims to compensation. However, nonidentity problems threaten any argument for reparation for historic injustices.1 In brief, the problem is this: how can any person have a claim to compensation for a wrong that was a condition of her existence? In such cases, there is no possible world in which the wrong
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the original position of the parties in the original argument has no compelling reason to select the liberal principle in addition to a democratic principle of legitimacy.
Abstract: John Rawls's liberal principle of legitimacy states that the essentials of a constitution must be reasonably acceptable to all citizens.1 This principle in effect precludes the possibility of a fully legitimate religious constitutional order, at least in normal circumstances in religiously pluralistic societies. Members of religious minorities cannot be reasonably expected to endorse constitutional essentials that embody controversial elements of a religion they do not accept. Rawls claims that the liberal principle would be selected in the original position, and that the argument for its selection is in essence the same as the argument for the two principles of justice as fairness.2 1 argue against this claim. My thesis is that the parties in the original position have no compelling reason to select the liberal principle in addition to a democratic principle of legitimacy. This democratic principle states that political power must be exercised within a constitutional order that respects the equal status of all citizens and that effectively guarantees each citizen the basic liberal rights and entitlements necessary to participate in political processes on equal terms. The liberal principle incorporates the democratic principle since reasonable citizens would not find a basic political inequality acceptable. But the democratic principle does not imply the liberal
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw upon the morality of individual self-defence to explain important features of the traditional jus in bello: the permissibility of killing, even by soldiers who lack justice on their side; the principles that govern surrender and the taking of prisoners of war; and the principle of discrimination between soldiers and civilians.
Abstract: meaningfully talk of an unjust war being fought justly, and vice versa: soldiers defending against aggression might nevertheless be criminals for the way in which they do it; while soldiers prosecuting an aggressive war, provided they fight it in the right way, are without culpability. This paper will draw upon the morality of individual self-defence to explain certain important features of the traditional jus in bello: the permissibility of killing, even by soldiers who lack justice on their side; the principles that govern surrender and the taking of prisoners of war; and the principle of discrimination between soldiers and civilians. Our explanation will not leave all aspects of the jus in bello undisturbed: it has consequences that are revisionary in at least some respects, this being the upshot of trying to explain the jus in bello in individualist terms. Partly because of such consequences, approaching the morality of war in individualist terms is