Politics, Philosophy & Economics recent issues

What counts as original appropriation?

van der Vossen, B. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:16:14 PDT

I here defend historical entitlement theories of property rights against a popular charge. This is the objection that such theories fail because no convincing account of original appropriation exists. I argue that this argument assumes a certain reading of historical entitlement theory and I spell out an alternative reading against which it misfires. On this reading, the role of acts of original appropriation is not to justify but to individuate people’s holdings. I argue that we can identify which acts count as original appropriation against the background of a general justification for a practice of property rights. On this view, what I will call ‘natural’ acts of original appropriation are acts by which a person begins to satisfy the general conditions for justified ownership. Finally, I offer an interpretation of John Locke's theory of appropriation along these lines and argue that it provides an attractive reading of his view.

Each outcome is another opportunity: Problems with the Moment of Equal Opportunity

Chambers, C. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:16:14 PDT

This article introduces the concept of a Moment of Equal Opportunity (MEO): a point in an individual’s life at which equal opportunity must be applied and after which it need not. The concept of equal opportunity takes many forms, and not all employ an MEO. However, the more egalitarian a theory of equal opportunity is, the more likely it is to use an MEO. The article discusses various theories of equal opportunity and argues that those that employ an MEO are problematic. Unjust inequalities, those that motivate the use of equal opportunity, occur throughout people’s lives and thus go unrectified after an MEO. However, it is not possible to abandon the MEO approach and apply more egalitarian versions of equal opportunity throughout a person’s life, since doing so entails problems of epistemology, efficiency, incentives, and counter-intuitive results. The article thus argues that liberal egalitarian theories of equality of opportunity are inconsistent if they support an MEO and unrealizable if they do not.

Neo-republicanism, freedom as non-domination, and citizen virtue

Costa, M. V. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:16:14 PDT

This article discusses Philip Pettit’s neo-republicanism in light of the criterion of self-sustenance: the requirement that a political theory be capable of serving as a self-sustaining public philosophy for a pluralist democracy. It argues that this criterion can only be satisfied by developing an adequate politics of virtue. Pettit’s theory is built around the notion of freedom as non-domination, and he does not say much about the virtues of citizens or the policies the state may employ to encourage their development. In order to explain the motivation to comply with republican laws that promote non-domination, Pettit relies on the phenomenon of civility and the mechanism of the intangible hand. But to understand what underlies an adequate level of robust civility one needs to focus on the more basic phenomenon of personal virtue. Policies that aim to promote non-domination should take into account the need to cultivate virtue among citizens, as well as the full range of conditions that favor its exercise.

Institutional pluralism and the limits of the market

Claassen, R. J.G. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:16:14 PDT

This paper proposes a theory of institutional pluralism to deal with the question whether and to what extent limits should be placed on the market. It reconceives the pluralist position as it was presented by Michael Walzer and others in several respects. First, it argues that the options on the institutional menu should not be principles of distribution but rather economic mechanisms or ‘modes of provision’. This marks a shift from a distributive to a provisional logic. Second, it argues that we should drop the assumption that any good should only be placed in one sphere, i.e. distributed according to one distributive principle. This marks a shift to ‘complex pluralism’: for at least some goods it is appropriate that they are provided through the market and through one or more non-market alternatives simultaneously. Finally, it argues that the often used conventionalist justification should be traded for a capability approach to the moral evaluation of markets and non-market alternatives. Any institutional option on our menu has value to the extent that it enhances the morally relevant capabilities of the producers and/or consumers of the good that is to be provided. This approach will be illustrated with two examples of goods for which it yields complex pluralist conclusions: the provision of care and the provision of media content.

Identity, community, and justice: locating Amartya Sen's work on identity

Qizilbash, M. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Amartya Sen's recent works on identity have emerged at the same time as a much wider and growing literature on the topic across the disciplines of politics, philosophy, and economics. This article outlines some of Sen's claims and attempts a partial elucidation of their relationship to some strands in the relevant literatures on identity, community, and justice. It thereby frames Sen's works in such a way as to facilitate comparisons with other views on identity and multiculturalism, community, justice, and recognition which feature in this volume and the relevant literatures. Framing Sen's work in this way also helps to clarify Sen's position in relation to those of Bhikhu Parekh and certain communitarian thinkers.

Logic of identity

Parekh, B. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Identity refers, among other things, to what distinguishes an individual and makes him or her this person rather than some other. It has two closely related dimensions: personal and social. Personal identity refers to the individual's fundamental beliefs and commitments in terms of which he orientates himself to the world and defines his place in it. Social identity refers to those relations with which the individual identifies and which he regards as an integral part of himself. Social identity is inherently plural. How an individual balances and prioritizes different identities is a result of the dialectic between her self-understanding and social and political environment.

The fog of identity

Sen, A. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Personal identity and social identity are two very different concepts and the idea of getting them together, as Bhikhu Parekh proposes, within an integrated bundle of some `overall identity' raises serious questions of coherence. Personal identity demands the `sameness' of a person (Who is this guy? Am I still the same person that I was ten years ago?). Social identity is focused instead on our social affiliations, such as identifying with others with, say, the same nationality, or the same religion, or same political partnership. We can make reasoned choices about our priorities in social affiliation. Those who want to make our social affiliation a matter of `discovery' rather than of choice may frighten us by saying that we would lose our overall identity if we were to choose to affiliate differently (for example as an Indian and not just as a Hindu, or as British and not just as a Muslim). To understand that there is no threat to personal identity involved in such choices is important both for clarity of analysis and for standing up against the herd behaviour of identity politics.

Clearing the fog

Parekh, B. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Justice and boundaries

Miller, D. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Michael Walzer has argued that `distributive justice presupposes a bounded world', but what counts as a relevant boundary? The article criticizes two arguments holding that boundaries should not count at all: a negative argument that there is no relevant difference between human relationships within and across state borders and a positive argument that principles of justice must, as a matter of logic, be universal in scope. It then examines three rival accounts of the bounded scope of distributive justice: the cooperative practice view, the political coercion view, and the common identity view. Although each has plausible arguments to support it, none turns out to give necessary and sufficient conditions for principles of distributive justice to apply. Importantly, however, the idea of social justice has emerged within political units (nation-states) that to a large extent combine the three features in question. To the extent that this overlap breaks down, we will need to develop new theories of transnational justice.

Recognition: personal and political

Baldwin, T. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Recognition plays a central role in international affairs and in moral and political theory. Hegel noted the connections between these two contexts, and this article explores Hegel's approach with reference to the work of two political philosophers (Honneth and Rawls) and debates in international law. The conclusion is that while recognition has a constitutive role in international affairs, it has a different role in moral and political theory: morality is the evaluative recognition of the significance of individual autonomy.

Liberalism and intellectual property rights

Breakey, H. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Justifications for intellectual property rights are typically made in terms of utility or natural property rights. In this article, I justify limited regimes of copyright and patent grounded in no more than the rights to use our ideas and to contract, conjoined at times with a weak right to hold property in tangibles. I describe the Contracting Situation plausibly arising from vesting rational agents with these rights. I go on to consider whether in order to provide the best protection for the voluntary activities and consensual interactions occurring within the Contracting Situation, it might be appropriate or even necessary to move to institutions qualitatively similar to copyright and patent. I conclude that in at least some circumstances limited regimes of copyright and patent may be defendable solely on the basis of these very basic rights.

contributors

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:52:39 PDT

Whose rights? A critique of individual agency as the basis of rights

Weyl, E. G. — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:37:08 PDT

I argue that individuals may be as problematic political agents as groups are. In doing so, I draw on theory from economics, philosophy, and computer science and evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and biology. If successful, this argument undermines agency-based justifications for embracing strong notions of individual rights while rejecting the possibility of similar rights for groups. For concreteness, I critique these mistaken views by rebutting arguments given by Chandran Kukathas in his article `Are There Any Cultural Rights?' that groups lack the temporal coherence, political independence, and indivisibility of individuals. I also show how formal critiques of group agency from social science (in particular, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem) can be applied as reasonably to individuals as groups. Because these symmetries between groups and individuals undermine common implicit assumptions in political philosophy, I argue that they may have broader implications for liberal political theory, as they emphasize the importance of intrapersonal justice.

The division of moral labour and the basic structure restriction

Porter, T. — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:37:08 PDT

Justice makes demands upon us. But these demands, important though they may be, are not the only moral demands that we face. Our lives ought to be responsive to other values too. However, some philosophers have identified an apparent tension between those values and norms, such as justice, that seem to transcend the arena of small-scale interpersonal relations and those that are most at home in precisely that arena. How, then, are we to engage with all of the values and norms that we take to apply to us? In this article, I discuss one way that we might hope to resolve the tension and its relation to John Rawls's `basic structure restriction'. The prospect of resolution is offered by the idea of a `division of moral labour', according to which the pursuit of certain values is assigned to institutions and not to individuals. According to Rawls's basic structure restriction, principles of justice are applicable only to the institutions of the basic structure of society. The possibility of a connection between the division of moral labour and the basic structure restriction readily suggests itself. Taking G.A. Cohen's well-known `incentives' critique of the basic structure restriction as a starting point, I consider five ways in which that restriction might be defended by appeal to the division of moral labour. I conclude that none of these defences succeeds, for none convinces that the conditions in which it makes sense to apply the division of moral labour idea obtain for Rawls's conception of distributive justice. Although the division of moral labour is an attractive proposal, it can do no work in a Rawlsian context.

Rawls on the practicability of utilitarianism

Labukt, I. — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:37:08 PDT

John Rawls's claim to have demonstrated the superiority of his own two principles of justice to the principle of utility has generated fairly extensive critical discussion. However, this discussion has almost completely disregarded those of Rawls's arguments that are concerned with practicability, despite the significance accorded to them by Rawls himself. This article addresses the three most important of Rawls's objections against the practicability of utilitarianism: (1) that utilitarianism would generate too much disagreement to be politically workable, (2) that a utilitarian society would be vulnerable to social instability, and (3) that publicly adopting the principle of utility as the ultimate criterion of right and wrong would undermine the self-respect of some citizens. It is argued that Rawls's objections are either exaggerated or mistaken, and that this may have an impact on the assessment of `justice as fairness' as well as the utilitarian doctrine.

Becker's thesis and three models of preference change

Bradley, R. — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:37:08 PDT

This article examines Becker's thesis that the hypothesis that choices maximize expected utility relative to fixed and universal tastes provides a general framework for the explanation of behaviour. Three different models of preference revision are presented and their scope evaluated. The first, the classical conditioning model, explains all changes in preferences in terms of changes in the information held by the agent, holding fundamental beliefs and desires fixed. The second, the Jeffrey conditioning model, explains them in terms of changes in both the information held by the agent and changes in her prior beliefs, holding her fundamental desires fixed. The final model, that of generalized conditioning, allows for explanations in terms of changes in the values of all three variables.

contributors

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:37:08 PDT

Proportionality, winner-take-all, and distributive justice

Reiff, M. R. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:21:05 PST

When faced with multiple claims to a particular good, what does distributive justice require? To answer this question, we need a substantive moral theory that will enable us assign relative moral weights to the parties' claims. But this is not all we need. Once we have assessed the moral weight of each party's claim, we still need to decide what method of distribution to employ, for there are two methods open to us. We could take the winner-take-all approach, and award the good to the party with the strongest claim. On the other hand, we could divide the good proportionally, according to the relative strength of each party's claim. Because the choice between these two methods of distribution can have a dramatic impact on the resulting pattern of distribution, the choice presents a question of justice. But this is a question of justice that is often overlooked. As a result, we currently employ the principle of proportionality far less often than justice actually requires. If we focus on the question of distributive method, however, we are not only better able to understand how certain reasons enter into our all-things-considered moral judgments, we are also able to explain some perplexing but common aspects of our moral beliefs: how rights can be said to have peremptory force, yet still be balanced against other important interests; how justice can sometimes require compromise, yet sometimes require victory; and how a moral theory can avoid being too demanding while still being demanding enough.

A dilemma for libertarianism

Widerquist, K. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:21:05 PST

Many libertarians make a moral argument that liberty requires the freedom to exercise strong property rights. From this, they argue that no more than a minimal state with sharply limited powers of taxation can be justified. A larger state would supposedly interfere with private property rights and thereby reduce liberty. In response, this article shows how natural rights to property do not entail any particular vision of the state. It demonstrates that the principles of natural property rights support monarchy just as well as they support a capitalist aristocracy. Nothing in the theory of natural property rights rules out government ownership of property or government ownership of the right to tax. Therefore, the natural rights argument does not necessarily imply libertarian limits on the state, but rather the acceptance of whatever state powers and property rights have been in place for a sufficient amount of time. For example, historical property rights in Britain do not imply that private titleholders possess rights that have been subject to interference from the state, as libertarians claim. Instead, they imply that the Queen and her ministers in parliament have a strong claim to at least partial ownership of the whole island of Britain and the property within it. If this argument holds, it poses a serious dilemma for libertarians, forcing them to choose between their account of liberty as the exercise of property rights and their belief that only a minimal state is justifiable.

Contractarianism and cooperation

Stark, C. A. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:21:05 PST

Because contractarians see justice as mutual advantage, they hold that justice can be rationally grounded only when each can expect to gain from it. John Rawls seems to avoid this feature of contractarianism by fashioning the parties to the contract as Kantian agents whose personhood grounds their claims to justice. But Rawls also endorses the Humean idea that justice applies only if people are equal in ability. It would seem to follow from this idea that dependent persons (such as the disabled) lack claims of justice. It appears, then, that the Kantian and Humean themes in Rawls conflict. I present a reading of Rawls that resolves this tension between the Kantian and Humean themes. The first theme, I argue, allows Rawls to maintain that persons as such are owed justice regardless of their ability to engage in social cooperation. The second theme, I argue, allows him to retain Hume's connection between justice and reciprocity, but confines the reciprocity condition to relations among nondependents. I conclude that Rawls's approach permits him to rebut recent criticisms leveled by disability theorists and others who claim that his theory excludes dependents.

From the organization to the division of cognitive labor

D'Agostino, F. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:21:05 PST

Discussion of the cognitive division of labor has usually made very little contact with relevant materials from other disciplines, including theoretical biology, management science, and design theory. This article draws on these materials to consider some unavoidable conundrums faced by any attempt to present a particular way of dividing tasks among a labor team as the uniquely rational way of doing this, given the interdependence of the underlying evaluative standards by which the products of a system of division of labor will be judged. Divisions of labor will typically cut across these interdependencies in ways which leave the outcomes of a process of labor hostage to path dependencies and suboptimalities. Some attempts to avoid these results are shown to be unsuccessful. All these difficulties are compounded by the fact that, in many cases, the division of labor has to be constructed over a ground of values that is itself being constructed simultaneously with the products which they are invoked to assess.

contributors

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:21:05 PST