In The Myth of Ownership, Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel argue that achieving fairness in taxation is principally a matter of distributive justice. Distributive justice can be understood as being concerned with what is owed to people as a matter of justice. For Nagel and Murphy, fairness in tax schemes is subsumed to the question of distributive justice: fairly allocated tax liabilities are just those that are compatible with the preferred theory of distributive justice. Subsuming assessments of tax fairness to (...) distributive justice, however, overlooks the following possibility: that the question of how we ought to divvy up tax liabilities, and the burdens associated with running a society more generally, requires different, non-distributive considerations of justice. These are considerations of justice that aren’t essentially about distributive justice at all. I argue here that the division of burdens in a society is specifically a matter of contributive justice. Contributive justice is concerned with what people owe as a matter of justice, rather than what is owed to them. It makes the division of burdens itself evaluative salient in assessments of fairness. Even a comprehensive specification of distributive justice leaves indeterminate how the burdens of running a society should be fairly divided up. Each of the chapters in this dissertation develops one part of an account of contributive justice. I first make conceptual space for an account of contributive justice. By taking Murphy and Nagel’s lead, and working within the post-distribution, a distinctive need for principles of justice in contribution can be shown. Murphy and Nagel decline to introduce non-distributive principles for guiding the provision of post-distributive public goods. Instead, they favor efficiency in determining the provision of post-distributive of public goods. I show that contributive justice is genuinely distinct from both efficiency and distributive justice. I also identify one respect in which principles of contributive justice should bear: that of determining the financing and delivery and civic cultural public goods. I then argue that a principle of contribution in accordance with ability (a principle of “ability-to-pay”, or “ability-to-contribute”, for short) stands out as a candidate principle of contributive justice. The version of ability-to-pay that I defend is, in particular, a deontic principle of ability-to-pay. I show that a deontic principle of ability-to-pay is more closely allied with a view of society as a cooperative enterprise than utilitarian versions of ability-to-pay. An account of ability to contribute is developed by grafting a notion of opportunity cost onto Amartya Sen’s capability theory. Lastly, I incorporate contributive justice in an account of contributive legitimacy. Contributive legitimacy gives us a set of conditions under which the state’s use of coercive force to extract tax contributions is legitimate, and hence justified. Drawing on empirical evidence from the development and fiscal sociology literature, I show that contributive legitimacy in a state’s tax extraction practices is essential to rule of law, and the avoidance of kleptocratic authoritarianism. Contributive legitimacy supplements our understanding of conventional notions of political legitimacy and helps us identify possible failures of political legitimacy. These are failures that might be overlooked were we to focus solely on distribution. (shrink)

Kimberly Chuang’s detailed and very helpful reply to my article concerns Jon Elster’s struggle to develop a mechanistic account that sheds light on explanation in social science. I argue that a problem exists with Elster’s current conception of mechanistic explanation in social contexts. Chuang defends Elster’s conception against my critique. I still believe I have identified a problem with Elster’s conception. In this reply I want to recapitulate briefly Elster’s idea, as I understand it, and then use (...) some of Chuang’s critical points to advance the position I advocate. (shrink)

: In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique, Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cannot (...) cause appearances directly because they depend essentially on the passive sensibility of finite beings. Kant’s response to the second version is that human beings are endowed with transcendental freedom, which blocks the causal transitivity that is presupposed by this version. We also contrast his position on this topic with Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s. (shrink)

A philosophically and historically influential section of the Critique of Judgement presents an ‘intuitive intellect’ as a mind whose representation is limited to what actually exists, and does not extend to mere possibilities. Kant’s paradigmatic instance of such an intellect is however also the divine mind. This combination threatens to rule out the reality of the mere possibilities presupposed by Kant’s theory of human freedom. Through an analysis of the relevant issues in metaphysical cosmology, modal metaphysics and philosophical theology, I (...) show that Kant in fact possesses the resources to reconcile the philosophical claims of §76 of the Critique of Judgement with his keystone commitment to the reality of human freedom. (shrink)

First-ever comprehensive introduction to the major new subject of quantum computing and quantum information.

In recent years, scholars have come to understand emotions as dynamic and socially constructed—the product of interdependent cultural, relational, situational, and biological influences. While researchers have called for a multilevel theory of emotion construction, any progress toward such a theory must overcome the fragmentation of relevant research across various disciplines and theoretical frameworks. We present affect control theory as a launching point for cross-disciplinary collaboration because of its empirically grounded conceptualization of social mechanisms operating at the interaction, relationship, and cultural (...) levels, and its specification of processes linking social and individual aspects of emotion. After introducing the theory, we illustrate its correspondence with major theories of emotion construction framed at each of four analytical levels: cultural, interactional, individual, and neural. (shrink)

Although formal barriers to women’s social and political participation have crumbled, society remains, to a significant degree, gendered in the roles that women and men play. Women’s and men’s choices regarding work and family are largely responsible for maintaining and reinforcing the differences. While feminists recognize the need to criticize women’s choices, too often they focus on restrictive conditions rather than the choices themselves. Kimberly A. Yuracko argues instead that encouraging women to make choices in accordance with a grounded (...) and well-defined conception of perfectionism—a philosopy concerned with human flourishing—is the most effective way to redress persistent gender inequality. To this end, Yuracko seeks not only to expose the perfectionism underlying current choice critiques, but to articulate a concrete set of feminist perfectionist principles that would improve the quality of individual women’s lives and improve the social standing of women as a whole. (shrink)

This book is devoted to a thorough analysis of the role that models play in the practise of physical theory. The authors, a mathematical physicist and a philosopher of science, appeal to the logicians’ notion of model theory as well as to the concepts of physicists.

Governing Animals explores the role of the liberal state in protecting animal welfare. Examining liberal concepts such as the social contract, property rights, and representation, Kimberly K. Smith argues that liberalism properly understood can recognize the moral status and social meaning of animals and provides guidance in fashioning animal policy.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared procreation to be a fundamental right in the early twentieth century in a case involving Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act, an act that permitted unconsented sterilization of individuals convicted of certain crimes. The right that the Court articulated in that case is a negative right: it requires that the government not place unjustified roadblocks in the way of people seeking to procreate, but it does not require the government to take positive steps to help people (...) procreate if they wish to. I argue that a positive legal right is morally necessary in the United States, given the profound significance of procreation, the current barriers to access to care, and the related issues of individual and societal justice. I assume at the outset that the right to procreate should be expansive enough to include a right to noncoital reproduction. The absence of a positive right to procreate reflects not just constitutional tradition but also a governmental and societal commitment to a longstanding set of reproductive hierarchies by which those who fall outside of the traditional framing of family too frequently find their procreative dreams hindered. Reconceiving procreative rights to include a positive right would create greater opportunities to argue and lobby for increased access to technologies that are out of reach for many. (shrink)

Although it is not yet officially recognized as a clinical entity which is diagnosable, Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) has been included in section III for further study in the DSM-5 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2013). This is important because there is increasing evidence that people of all ages, in particular teens and young adults, are facing very real and sometimes very severe consequences in daily life resulting from an addictive use of online games. This article summarizes general aspects (...) of IGD including diagnostic criteria and arguments for the classification as an addictive disorder including evidence from neurobiological studies. Based on previous theoretical considerations and empirical findings, this paper examines the use of one recently proposed model, the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model, for inspiring future research and for developing new treatment protocols for IGD. The I-PACE model is a theoretical framework that explains symptoms of Internet addiction by looking at interactions between predisposing factors, moderators, and mediators in combination with reduced executive functioning and diminished decision making. Finally, the paper discusses how current treatment protocols focusing on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Internet addiction (CBT-IA) fit with the processes hypothesized in the I-PACE model. (shrink)

This study investigates the relationship between mental health and emotional intelligence among senior high school students in a public school. Thus, the study employed a correlational design to measure the relationship between mental health and emotional intelligence among 152 Grade 12 senior high school students in a public school. Hence, to measure the study’s variables - Mental Health Inventory and Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) were utilized. Based on the inferential statistics, the r coefficient of 0.32 indicates a low positive correlation (...) between the variables and a p-value of 0.00, indicating a significant relationship between the respondents' mental health and emotional intelligence. Implications and recommendations were discussed in the study. (shrink)

We argue that, under certain plausible assumptions, de Sitter space settles into a quiescent vacuum in which there are no dynamical quantum fluctuations. Such fluctuations require either an evolving microstate, or time-dependent histories of out-of-equilibrium recording devices, which we argue are absent in stationary states. For a massive scalar field in a fixed de Sitter background, the cosmic no-hair theorem implies that the state of the patch approaches the vacuum, where there are no fluctuations. We argue that an analogous conclusion (...) holds whenever a patch of de Sitter is embedded in a larger theory with an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, including semiclassical quantum gravity with false vacua or complementarity in theories with at least one Minkowski vacuum. This reasoning provides an escape from the Boltzmann brain problem in such theories. It also implies that vacuum states do not uptunnel to higher-energy vacua and that perturbations do not decohere while slow-roll inflation occurs, suggesting that eternal inflation is much less common than often supposed. On the other hand, if a de Sitter patch is a closed system with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, there will be Poincaré recurrences and dynamical Boltzmann fluctuations into lower-entropy states. Our analysis does not alter the conventional understanding of the origin of density fluctuations from primordial inflation, since reheating naturally generates a high-entropy environment and leads to decoherence, nor does it affect the existence of non-dynamical vacuum fluctuations such as those that give rise to the Casimir effect. (shrink)

This book reprints an ancient Chinese work from the late Warring States period (3rd century BC) that contains stories and anecdotes exemplifying the carefree nature of the ideal Taoist sage. Chuang Tzu's philosophy represents the main current of Taoist teachings, and his text is widely regarded as both deeply insightful and a great achievement in the Chinese poetical essay form. The version presented was translated by Feng Yu-lan, the famous Chinese philosopher, who puts more emphasis on Chuang Tzu's (...) philosophy than do previous attempts. William James once said that every great philosopher has a personal vision. When one has grasped that vision, the whole system can be easily understood. And Crocé once said that the greater a philosophical system is, the simpler the central idea. Although the present translation is limited to the first seven chapters of Chuang Tzu's writings, it accurately conveys his main vision and ideas. (shrink)

This study investigates the reactions of graduate students to perceived gender bias in their classes, using survey data from 254 social science graduate students in seven Ph.D.-granting departments in three universities. In addition to summarizing reported rates of gender-biased behavior in classrooms, we test hypotheses connecting perceptions of sexist behavior with students' emotional reactions, levels of distraction, and subsequent performance. Results are mixed, depending on students' perceptions of professors as either sensitive or insensitive to gender issues. Second, we use a (...) model of social influence to test for negative effects of reported sexist behavior on students' perceptions of professors' expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. Strong support is demonstrated for these hypotheses. (shrink)

This book provides an invaluable overview of the competing schools of thought in traditional and contemporary normative international theory and seeks to provide a new basis for doing international political theory and thinking about ethics in world politics today. · Part one explains the role and place of normative theory in the study of international politics before critically examining mainstream approaches in international relations and applied ethics. Here the student is introduced to the central debates between realists and idealists, and (...) cosmopolitans and communitarians. · Part two introduces the conceptual challenges of contemporary perspectives from critical theory, postmodernism and feminism and provides a platform for the author to develop her own Hegelian-Foucauldian approach for doing normative international theory. · In Part three the insights drawn from the first two parts are applied to the study of two key topics in contemporary theoretical debate: the principle of self-determination, and the democratic ideals of political cosmopolitanism. Finally conclusions are made for the future practice of theorizing international politics. Accessibly written and wide-ranging, this text will quickly become essential reading for all students and academics of politics and international relations seeking a deeper understanding of the underlying tensions and future potential of international or global political theory today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Invisible HarmKimberly ZieselmanI’m a 48–year–old intersex woman born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) writing to share my personal experience as a patient affected by a Difference of Sex Development (DSD). Although I appear to be a DSD patient “success story”, in fact, I have suffered and am unsatisfied with the way I was treated as a young patient in the 1980’s, and the continued lack of appropriate care for (...) intersex people even today.As the Executive Director of the advocacy organization Advocates for Informed Choice and a board member of the AIS–DSD Support Group since 2012, I have heard doctors reference the “silent happy majority” of DSD patients all too often. They speak [End Page 122] of patients who were treated in childhood and went on to live (seemingly) contented lives. It appears however that doctors have drawn this conclusion from the fact that most of their patients have not returned to complain about their treatment. While there is little evidence to support the success doctors claim, there is quite a bit of evidence that suggests my suffering is the norm rather than the exception.Medical professionals would likely include me in that “silent majority,” only seeing a woman who identifies and appears typically female, graduated law school, married for over twenty years, with adopted children and a successful career. And while I have been fortunate in many ways, I no longer want my voice to be presumed buried within that silent majority. Instead, I am speaking out today to tell my story.My StoryAt age 15 I was diagnosed with amenorrhea and referred to a reproductive oncologist who told my parents I had a partially developed uterus and ovaries that would likely soon become cancerous. We were told my vagina was abnormally short and might require surgery in order to have heterosexual intercourse.Neither my parents nor I was ever told I had AIS and XY chromosomes, or that the gonads being removed were testes, not ovaries. I was told I needed a “full hysterectomy” to prevent cancer and hormone replacement therapy. That summer I spent my 16th birthday recuperating from surgery. I spent the next 25 years living a lie.A lie that has had a profound and harmful impact on me.At some level, I knew I was not being told the whole truth. My parents’ and the doctors’ actions signaled to me something more might be going on. But I was afraid to ask questions; my parents were distressed and I didn’t want to cause them any more pain. Over the years I have wondered just how much my parents knew but withheld from me (albeit with good intentions). I sensed something awful was being hidden from me, and I didn’t know whom I could trust.When I asked my doctor if I could meet someone else with my condition, I was told I was different, that there was “nobody” with my medical condition in the world, that my situation was “very rare.” I was told to get on with my life and not talk about my surgery because it wasn’t important; I was healthy and could adopt if I wanted to become a parent. I was told I must take a hormone pill each day for the rest of my life to stay healthy.But what I heard was, “you are not a real woman: you are a damaged freak, so go out and fake the rest of your life and be sure nobody knows your secret.” So that’s what I did. I was a “good girl” and took my pills, didn’t ask questions and did what the men in white coats asked me to do. There was no support provided for either my parents or me. No social workers, no therapists. Perhaps most shockingly, there was no true informed consent.A few years ago I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by anxiety I had been harboring for over two decades about my past surgery and fear of getting cancer. I decided to obtain my medical records from the hospital and discover the truth.Covering several pages of... (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive overview of what the criminal law would look like if organised around the principle that those who deserve punishment should receive punishment commensurate with, but no greater than, that which they deserve. Larry Alexander and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan argue that desert is a function of the actor's culpability, and that culpability is a function of the risks of harm to protected interests that the actor believes he is imposing and his reasons for acting in (...) the face of those risks. The authors deny that resultant harms, as well as unperceived risks, affect the actor's desert. They thus reject punishment for inadvertent negligence as well as for intentions or preparatory acts that are not risky. Alexander and Ferzan discuss the reasons for imposing risks that negate or mitigate culpability, the individuation of crimes, and omissions. (shrink)

Broadly, I endorse the view that biodiverse species and spaces warrant conservation (partially) in virtue of their power to induce epistemic (Paul 2015; Sarkar 2011), relational, and positive, psycho-physiological transformation. However, if we are (in the not-so-distant future) able to construct cross-modally replete simulations of biodiverse environments, then what reason would we have to conserve genuine, biodiverse ecosystems? In order to address this “Simulation Problem,” I argue that the authenticity of biodiverse environments matters, both in itself and insofar as authenticity (...) plays an important psychological, cultural, personal, and epistemic role in the lives of human agents. (shrink)

Kant's theory of the intuitive intellect has a broad and substantial role in the development and exposition of his critical philosophy. An emphasis on this theory's reception and appropriation on the part of the German idealists has tended to divert attention from Kant's own treatment of the topic. In this essay, I seek an adequate overview of the theory Kant advances in support of his critical enterprise. I examine the nature of the intuitive intellect's object; its epistemic relation to its (...) object; its mode of comprehension; the relationship between these cognitive elements; and I ask which minds Kant regards as intuitive intellects. (shrink)

It has been argued that infants possess a rich, sophisticated theory of mind that is only revealed with tasks based on spontaneous responses. A mature theory of mind implies the understanding that mental states are person-specific. Previous studies on infants’ understanding of motivational mental states such as goals and preferences have revealed that, by 9 months of age, infants do not generalize these motivational mental states across agents. However, it remains to be determined if infants also perceive epistemic states as (...) person-specific. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to use a switch agent paradigm with the classic false belief violation-of-expectation task. Results revealed that 16-month-old infants attributed true and false beliefs to a naïve agent—they did not perceive beliefs as person-specific. These findings indicate that infants’ understanding of beliefs is not as sophisticated as the rich mentalistic view suggests. (shrink)

When a provocateur intentionally provokes a deadly affray, the law of self-defense holds that the provocateur may not use deadly force to defend himself. Why is this so? Provocateurs are often seen as just one example of the problem of actio libera in causa, the causing of the conditions of one’s defense. This article rejects theories that maintain a one-size-fits-all approach to actio libera in causa, and argues that provocateurs need specific rules about why they forfeit their defensive rights. This (...) article further claims that provocateurs need to be distinguished from their cousins, initial aggressors, as initial aggressors engage in conduct that grounds the permissibility of the defender’s behavior whereas the provocateur’s behavior does not justify the respondent’s use of force against him. In addition, this article rejects that the basis of this forfeiture can be found in the doctrines surrounding when and why mitigation for provocation is appropriate for the respondent. Provocateurs forfeit their defensive rights for the very simple reason that they start the fight. This forfeiture occurs when they behave culpably, meaning that they subjectively appreciate that they are running the risk of causing force to be used against them and they engage in this behavior without justification or excuse. The question of when the provocateur’s behavior is justified is incredibly complex. It requires analysis of when it is that one is justified in increasing the risk of another’s wrongdoing. Any analysis of this justification must take seriously the liberty rights of the potential provocateur to engage in otherwise permissible behavior. Moreover, the determination of whether the provocateur is justified will turn on whether the later acts that he puts into motion are themselves justified. Thus, when Charles Bronson in the movie Death Wish presents himself as a victim so that muggers will attack him, the justifiability of his conduct in appearing as a vulnerable victim will turn on whether he is entitled to engage in this conduct, intending to later defend himself. This article argues that in Death Wish-type cases, the reason that the provocateur is not justified is because he becomes a vigilante, thereby usurping the role of the state and undermining rule of law values. (shrink)

In this piece, I extend a transformative power account to the conservation of dark (and starry) night skies. More specifically, I argue that the transformative power that dark nights bear warrants their conservation and is best understood in terms of the important intellectual, cultural, aesthetic, and (psycho-physiologically) restorative effects that they afford. This gives us a pressing set of reasons to combat the growing, global phenomenon of light pollution. To do so, I argue, we ought to preserve the few remaining (...) dark refuges that we have left (what I term wildness regions) and synergistically re-wild (i.e. re-darken) urban and suburban environments. Synergistic re-darkening, I propose, can be achieved by (i) establishing interpretive (educational) ‘dark zones’, (ii) implementing bioluminescent lighting technologies, and (iii) strategically employing lighting design. Finally, and in order to enact a degree of epistemic justice, I argue that we ought to implement multi-cultural ‘co-learning’ initiatives, which promote education pertaining to both Western, scientific and indigenous, North American astronomies. (shrink)

Increased emphasis has been placed on teaching ethics in business schools. A recent meta-analysis of business ethics instruction indicated that instructional programs have a minimal impact on improving ethical behaviors (Waples et al. 2008). One of the newest trends in MBA education is gamification which allows instructors to employ video game concepts to engage students in serious business problems. Educators are attempting to harness a similar sort of power exhibited by games like FarmVille or Call of Duty and translate this (...) power into improved educational outcomes. This trend leads to the question; can gamification improve ethical learning outcomes? Using a single cohort of MBA students, ethics instruction in the MBA program was gamified and then operationalized in the students’ first required class and last required class. Although the sample was limited to a single cohort of students, results were promising, indicating improvement in ethical decision making and warranting further study. (shrink)

This chapter examines the moral justifiability of “stand your ground” laws. First, it sets forth the parameters of self-defense as understood in the philosophical literature. Next, it focuses on the necessity limitation and questions whether this limitation can be defensibly weakened to accommodate SYG laws. Finding no comfort for SYG statutes in a weakened necessity limitation, the chapter turns to the proportionality constraint and examines approaches that increase the interests that may permissibly be defended as well as approaches that abandon (...) proportionality altogether. Finally, this chapter maintains that the most perspicuous lens through which to view SYG laws is that of law enforcement because what SYG laws actually do is place citizens in the role of police. The justifiability of such enforcement authority turns, then, on two further questions. It must be appropriate for citizens to serve this function. But second, it must be appropriate for the state to stand its ground. (shrink)

We propose a three-way interaction model based on substitutes for leadership theory to explore the relationship among ethical leadership, moral personality, and moral ideology on two types of employee voluntary behaviors. Results from a sample of 218 supervisor–subordinate dyads indicate that moral personality attenuates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee voluntary behaviors. Idealism serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality. However, relativism only serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality (...) when predicting workplace deviant behavior. (shrink)

As the technology for ectogenesis continues to advance, the ethical implications of such developments should be thoroughly and proactively explored. The possibility of full ectogenesis remains hypothetical at present, and myriad concerns regarding the safety and efficacy of the technology must be evaluated and addressed, while pressing moral considerations should be fully deliberated. However, it is conceivable that the technology may become sufficiently well established in the future and that eventually full ectogenesis might be deemed ethically acceptable as a reproductive (...) alternative to gestation within a human womb under certain circumstances. If the safety and efficacy of full ectogenesis are established, if ethical dilemmas are sufficiently well addressed, and if the technology is offered as a reproductive option to cisgender heterosexual individuals or couples desiring to become parents, there is a moral obligation grounded in social justice to ensure that full ectogenesis be made available to individuals or couples identifying as members of sexual‐ or gender‐minority groups who likewise seek to pursue parenthood. We examine the history of access to current family‐building options, including assisted reproductive technology, surrogacy and adoption, for these populations and conclude that in the absence of robust empirical evidence suggesting an increased risk of harm to children of individuals and couples who identify as members of sexual‐ or gender‐minority groups, equitable access to ectogenesis as a pathway to parenthood for sexual and gender minorities must be assured as a matter of reproductive justice. (shrink)

New York City hospitals expanded resources to an unprecedented extent in response to the COVID pandemic. Thousands of beds, ICU beds, staff members, and ventilators were rapidly incorporated into h...

What makes it permissible to reach out to hold someone’s hand on a first date, or to rub a friend’s back when she is crying? This paper, a contribution to the special issue on Doug Husak, argues that conventions, context, and relationships play a role in shifting normative boundaries, such that the default rule becomes that it is permissible to touch someone until she dissents. Part I of this paper focuses on convention-type cases, contrasting dates with the intentional touchings that (...) occur on crowded streets or while playing football. Part II then addresses the range of normative justifications that track these different cases. Part III adds a different way that dissent-sensitive permissions can arise—from relationships and common ground. Part IV unearths the underlying rights-structure that my view presupposes and returns to the question of whether the theory I have on offer is one of consent. Part V argues that this approach, that these are alterations of permissibility, is superior to the view that conventions only impact the actor’s blameworthiness by rendering his belief reasonable. Part VI raises questions of whether our understanding of consent dictates our understanding of dissent. (shrink)