Why, despite its recognized perverse effects, do societies opt for an expanding welfare state? Public choice theory accounts for this in terms of the prevailing choice rule, ?majoritarian?; democracy. This contractarian perspective holds that other, more benign choice rules could be adopted. The reviewer disputes this view on the ground that if the public choice approach is generalized, the choice rule must be seen to be the product of the same influences as the choices within the rule. ?Majoritarian?; democracy maximizes (...) the scope for redistributive legislation, hence also the expected gains front politics; it will be ?chosen?; in preference to more benign rules. (shrink)

Government depends on collective decision making. Even in peaceful democracies, some decide for all. The author challenges the morality of this position. It is not different political systems that are at fault as the nature of politics itself.

George Stigler soutenait que l’économiste, quand il prêchait, ne pouvait faire plus que de recommander une éthique de la rationalité instrumentale, ou de la manière intelligente d’accorder les moyens aux fins. Les fins les plus importantes appartiendraient toutes à un maximande unique, la richesse, tempérée par un altruisme de proximité.L’agnosticisme moral radical de Stigler le conduisit à nier toute distinction entre les choix forcés et libres, les actes licites et illicites, le vol et le commerce dans la mesure où ils (...) aboutissaient de manière égale à l’augmentation de l’utilité. En considérant que le concept de coercition était sans fondement, il identifia la liberté avec la richesse. Cet article expose les raisons analytiques pour lesquelles les arguments de Stigler ne sont pas valables.George Stigler held that the economist, when he preached, could do no more than commend an ethic of instrumental rationality, the intelligent fitting of means to ends. The ends that mattered were all included in a single maximand, wealth, tempered by proximity-altruism.Stigler’s radical moral agnosticism led him to deny any distinction between coerced and free choices, licit and illicit acts, robbery and commerce as long as they were equally utilityenhancing. Finding the concept of coercion baseless, he identified liberty with wealth. The paper furnishes analytical reasons why Stigler’s arguments are invalid. (shrink)

The paper criticises a number of accounts of freedom, including those which analyse freedom in terms of affording individuals ever widening opportunities, those which mistake liberties for rights and those which identify freedoms with duties imposed on others. All these inflated notions of freedom are liable to produce a shrinkage of of freedom in its basic sense of referring to areas of life in which there are rules preventing others from interfering with individuals or groups in doing things which are (...) feasible for them. (shrink)

Ownership is a relation with characteristics that force society to function more effectively and that make property a target of much hostility. Among the intellectual enemies of property, Locke is arguably the most influential. His “enough and as good left for others” condition, that he believed to be easily satisfied, was a failed attempt morally to justify property. Instead, it succeeded in undermining its legitimacy. Hume identified the existence of a convention,—in today's language, a Nash-equilibrium—which, being wholly voluntary and ageless, (...) has attractive moral qualities besides ensuring the “stability of possession”. A recent attack against the “myth of property” by Murphy and Nagel is guided by an erroneous understanding of the nature of conventions. Footnotes1 A three-part essay of the author, under the same title, treating the subject somewhat differently, has been published in August-September 2003 online in the ‘Library of Economics and Liberty’ of Liberty Fund. (shrink)

Most social institutions are supposed to be relatively benign, so that if they did not exist, rational human beings would find it worthwhile to create them. It is comforting to believe that we have the social institutions we wish to have, and we wish to have them because they enhance the common good. The article claims that this belief is in some important cases either a self-delusion or a pious lie. The classic example is the state. We are taught that (...) since it is necessary for efficient social coexistence, it should be regarded as if it were the result of a social contract we have voluntarily entered into. The law-and-economics school generalizes this type of approach in explaining customs and law. Customs and laws evolve in response to needs. They are what they are because they efficiently serve some purpose. Certain primitive customs are rationalized in this way. The article claims that some of these rationalizations are grossly implausible. One primitive custom, reciprocal gift-giving and hospitality, is alleged to be a mutual insurance scheme, an allegation there are strong reasons to doubt. This custom, then, is said to be the ancestor of the modern welfare state. Both the ancient custom and its modern equivalent are efficient because mutual insurance that redistributes risk is itself efficient. The article demonstrates that mutual insurance and the welfare state are different in essential respects, and the legitimising analogy is false. (shrink)

Ownership is a relation with characteristics that force society to function more effectively and that make property a target of much hostility. Among the intellectual enemies of property, Locke is arguably the most influential. His “enough and as good left for others” condition, that he believed to be easily satisfied, was a failed attempt morally to justify property. Instead, it succeeded in undermining its legitimacy. Hume identified the existence of a convention,—in today's language, a Nash-equilibrium—which, being wholly voluntary and ageless, (...) has attractive moral qualities besides ensuring the “stability of possession”. A recent attack against the “myth of property” by Murphy and Nagel is guided by an erroneous understanding of the nature of conventions. (shrink)

The paper questions Binmore’s identification of justice with fairness and his corresponding focus on bargains to the neglect of conventions, notably of ownership. Section 1 deals mainly with the role ascribed to man’s earliest genetic heritage in shaping fairness norms and the putative effect of such norms on bargaining solutions. Section 2 argues that the scope of fairness as opposed to justice in determining the social order is quite narrow, It sketches a theory of fairness distinct from justice, derived from (...) the principle of treating like cases alike. (shrink)

The concept of justice informs our sense of justice, rather than being formed by it. The concept escapes circularity, resting as it does on foundations that are independent of notions of justice. Those foundations can be found in constituent principles such as responsibility, presumption, and convention. Two realms of justice have to be separated: the realm of 'suum cuique' and of 'to each, according to... '. Contemporary theories of justice, however, tend to maximize their scope by obliterating 'suum cuique'. But (...) the importance of the realm of 'suum cuique, anchors in fundaments of logic and epistemology which allow justice but little leeway. (shrink)

In a recent essay Robert Sugden sets out his view that two foundational institutions of the social order, the convention and the social contract (at least in one variant of the latter) are compatible and that therefore it is not self-contradictory to be a Humean and a contractarian at the same time.¹ The proposition, despite appearances, has greater practical importance than most other doctrinal ones tend to do for if widely conceded, it would render current political thought even more woolly (...) than it is already. If so, a critical scrutiny might be of some use. (shrink)

Ownership is a relation with characteristics that force society to function more effectively and that make property a target of much hostility. Among the intellectual enemies of property, Locke is arguably the most influential. His “enough and as good left for others” condition, that he believed to be easily satisfied, was a failed attempt morally to justify property. Instead, it succeeded in undermining its legitimacy. Hume identified the existence of a convention,—in today's language, a Nash-equilibrium—which, being wholly voluntary and ageless, (...) has attractive moral qualities besides ensuring the “stability of possession”. A recent attack against the “myth of property” by Murphy and Nagel is guided by an erroneous understanding of the nature of conventions. (shrink)

The paper tries to relate classical liberal intuitions about rights and liberties to some of the more formal discussions of the putative impossibility of a Paretian liberal. Its focus is on the interpretation of formal modelling rather than on formal analysis. The theoretical concepts of the formalized approaches more often than not distort the meaning of the non-formalized concepts of classical liberal theory. Using proper explications of the concepts of liberties and rights respectively the alleged paradoxes of liberalism lose their (...) paradoxical character. (shrink)

The ethical practices of credit rating agencies, particularly following the 2008 financial crisis, have been subject to extensive analysis by economists, ethicists, and policymakers. We raise a novel issue facing CRAs that has to do with a problem concerning the transmission of epistemic status of ratings from CRAs to the beneficiaries of the ratings, and use it to provide a new challenge for regulators. Building on recent work in philosophy, we argue that since CRAs have different stakes than the beneficiaries (...) of the ratings in the ratings being accurate, what counts as knowledge concerning credit risk for a CRA may not count as knowledge for the beneficiary. Further, as it stands, many institutional investors are bound by law to make some of their investment decisions dependent on the ratings of officially recognized CRAs. We argue that the observation that the epistemic status of ratings does not transmit from CRAs to beneficiaries makes salient a new challenge for those who think current regulation regarding the CRAs is prudentially justified, namely, to show that the harm caused by acting on a rating that does not have epistemic status for beneficiaries is compensated by the benefit from them acting on a CRA rating that does have epistemic status for the CRA. Unlike most other commentators, therefore, we offer a defeasible reason to drop references to CRAs in prudential regulation of the financial industry. (shrink)

This study sought to determine if hues overlayed on a video recording of a piano performance would systematically influence perception of its emotional arousal level. The hues were artificially added to a series of four short video excerpts of different performances using video editing software. Over two experiments 106 participants were sorted into 4 conditions, with each viewing different combinations of musical excerpts and hue combinations. Participants rated the emotional arousal depicted by each excerpt. Results indicated that the overall arousal (...) ratings were consistent with the nominal arousal of the selected excerpts. However, hues added to video produced no significant effect on arousal ratings, contrary to predictions. This could be due to the domination of the combined effects of other channels of information over the emotional effects of the hypothesized influence of hue on perceived performance. To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate the impact of these hues upon perceived arousal of music performance, and has implications for musical performers and stage lighting. Further research that investigates reactions during live performance and manipulation of a wider range of lighting hues, saturation and brightness levels, and editing techniques, is recommended to further scrutinize the veracity of the findings. (shrink)

A persistent criticism of radical embodied cognitive science is that it will be impossible to explain “real cognition” without invoking mental representations. This paper provides an account of explicit, real-time thinking of the kind we engage in when we imagine counter-factual situations, remember the past, and plan for the future. We first present a very general non-representational account of explicit thinking, based on pragmatist philosophy of science. We then present a more detailed instantiation of this general account drawing on nonlinear (...) dynamics and ecological psychology. (shrink)

The question whether cognition ever extends beyond the head is widely considered to be an empirical issue. And yet, all the evidence amassed in recent years has not sufficed to settle the debate. In this paper we suggest that this is because the debate is not really an empirical one, but rather a matter of definition. Traditional cognitive science can be identified as wedded to the ideals of “smallism” and “localism”. We criticize these ideals and articulate a case in favor (...) of extended cognition by highlighting the historical pedigree and conceptual adequacy of related empirical and theoretical work. (shrink)

Our commentary articulates some of the commonalities between Baumeister et al.'s theory of socially differentiated roles and Strategic Differentiation-Integration Effort. We expand upon the target article's position by arguing that differentiating social roles is contextual and driven by varying ecological pressures, producing character displacement not only among individuals within complex societies, but also across social systems and multiple levels of organization.

Este artículo presenta una lectura de los números 14 a 16 de la Constitución Dogmática Lumen gentium, sobre la posibilidad de salvación para los no-católicos, dentro del marco de la “hermenéutica de la reforma en la continuidad”, propuesta por el papa Benedicto xvi. En diálogo con los teólogos que han tratado este tema desde el Concilio Vaticano ii, se analiza aquí las líneas de continuidad e innovación que se encuentran en la Lumen gentium, identificando los elementos doctrinales esenciales del axioma (...) extra ecclesiam nulla salus y describiendo la nueva síntesis operada en el Concilio. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Types of Knowledge in Technology A Neglected Topic Empirical Studies Philosophical Explorations References and Further Reading.

: In his Theological Political Treatise Spinoza lays the groundwork for the secular project of separation between religion and public life which will be characteristic of Western politics throughout Modern and Contemporary Ages. This project, however, is marked by a number of tensions which can already be seen in Spinoza’s work. This article tries to delineate the philosopher’s argument, identify and make explicit its main concepts and point to some of the tensions still working within the secular project, tensions which (...) arise from the philosophical reasoning employed by this project since its inception, as can be seen in Spinoza’s work. Keywords: Spinoza; Theological Political Treatise; secularism; freedom; religion; politics. (shrink)

Many marine invertebrates have the ability to combine tissues with conspecifics and form chimeras. This ability is usually accompanied by the presence of a polymorphic self/non-self recognition system that allows integration of closely related individuals, but blocks interactions between those more distantly related. The presence of a discriminatory allorecognition system suggests that there are costs and benefits to chimerism that are correlated to relatedness, but the nature of these costs and benefits is still poorly understood. Interestingly, allorecognition is found throughout (...) the animal kingdom, with examples in nearly all the multicellular phyla; however, the role of allorecognition in these different species is not always clear. In addition, the molecular mechanisms underlying allorecognition in different species are not related, suggesting a unique origin for each species. This brings up the question as to whether there is a universal need for self/non-self recognition processes among the metazoa, or if these systems evolve in response to different selective pressures. We are studying allorecognition and chimerism in the colonial ascidian, Botryllus schlosseri. Allorecognition takes place at the tips of the extracorporeal vasculature, and can result in a parabiosis, or a rejection reaction that blocks vascular fusion. Fusion has both hypothesized benefits as well as well-documented costs. This article will focus on characterizing the costs and benefits of fusion and chimerism in Botryllus, and put them into the broader context of the role of allorecognition in the metazoa. (shrink)

This article reports results of an experiment designed to analyze the link between risky decisions made by couples and risky decisions made separately by each spouse. We estimate both the spouses and the couples’ degrees of risk aversion, we assess how the risk preferences of the two spouses aggregate when they make risky decisions, and we shed light on the dynamics of the decision process that takes place when couples make risky decisions. We find that, far from being fixed, the (...) balance of power within the household is malleable. In most couples, men have, initially, more decision-making power than women but women who ultimately implement the joint decisions gain more and more power over the course of decision making. (shrink)

While the effect of humanitarian intervention on the recurrence and intensity of armed conflict in a crisis zone has received significant scholarly attention, there has been comparatively less work on the negative externalities of introducing peacekeeping forces into conflict regions. This article demonstrates that large foreign forces create one such externality, namely a previously non-existent demand for human trafficking. Using Kosovo, Haiti, and Sierra Leone as case studies, we suggest that the injection of comparatively wealthy soldiers incentivizes the creation of (...) criminal networks by illicit actors. We theorize further that the magnitude of increase in trafficking should be directly proportional to the size of the foreign force, with larger forces producing larger increases. We find that both hypotheses hold with varying levels of confidence across our three case studies. Despite the benevolent intent of peacekeeping missions, the possibility that they may contribute to human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation runs counter to the spirit of such interventions. This is especially problematic given that trafficking rings, once established, may be adapted to provide weapons and narcotics, thereby planting the seed of further destabilization. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory offers one of the most powerful and comprehensive critiques of art and of the discipline of aesthetics ever written. The work offers a deeply critical engagement with the history and philosophy of aesthetics and with the traditions of European art through the middle of the 20th century. It is coupled with ambitious claims about what aesthetic theory ought to be. But the cultural horizon of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory was the world of high modernism, and much has (...) happened since then both in theory and in practice. Adorno's powerful vision of aesthetics calls for reconsideration in this light. Must his work be defended, updated, resisted, or simply left behind? This volume gathers new essays by leading philosophers, critics, and theorists writing in the wake of Adorno in order to address these questions. They hold in common a deep respect for the power of Adorno's aesthetic critique and a concern for the future of aesthetic theory in response to recent developments in aesthetics and its contexts. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an alternative phenomenological account of depression as consisting of a degradation of the degree to which one is situated in and attuned to the world. This account contrasts with recent accounts of depression offered by Matthew Ratcliffe and others. Ratcliffe develops an account in which depression is understood in terms of deep moods, or existential feelings, such as guilt or hopelessness. Such moods are capable of limiting the kinds of significance and meaning that one can (...) come across in the world. I argue that Ratcliffe’s account is unnecessarily constrained, making sense of the experience of depression by appealing only to changes in the mode of human existence. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s critique of traditional transcendental phenomenology, I show that many cases of severe psychiatric disorders are best understood as changes in the very structure of human existence, rather than changes in the mode of human existence. Working in this vein, I argue that we can make better sense of many first-person reports of the experience of depression by appealing to a loss or degradation of the degree to which one is situated in and attuned to the world, rather than attempting to make sense of depression as a particular mode of being situated and attuned. Finally, I argue that drawing distinctions between disorders of structure and mode will allow us to improve upon the currently heterogeneous categories of disorder offered in the DSM-5. (shrink)

We are living in an algorithmic age where mathematics and computer science are coming together in powerful new ways to influence, shape and guide our behaviour and the governance of our societies. As these algorithmic governance structures proliferate, it is vital that we ensure their effectiveness and legitimacy. That is, we need to ensure that they are an effective means for achieving a legitimate policy goal that are also procedurally fair, open and unbiased. But how can we ensure that algorithmic (...) governance structures are both? This article shares the results of a collective intelligence workshop that addressed exactly this question. The workshop brought together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to consider barriers to legitimate and effective algorithmic governance and the research methods needed to address the nature and impact of specific barriers. An interactive management workshop technique was used to harness the collective intelligence of this multidisciplinary group. This method enabled participants to produce a framework and research agenda for those who are concerned about algorithmic governance. We outline this research agenda below, providing a detailed map of key research themes, questions and methods that our workshop felt ought to be pursued. This builds upon existing work on research agendas for critical algorithm studies in a unique way through the method of collective intelligence. (shrink)

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

El artículo presenta una interpretación del texto de Cant 1, 6-7 en el contexto de la polémica antidonatista de Agustín. En la primera parte del artículo se toma en cuenta el sermo 46, para reconstruir la exégesis de Agustín sobre dicho texto, señalando otras explicaciones paralelas del mismo texto en diversas obras del Hiponate, para destacar, entre otras cosas, el status quaestionis de la presencia de este sermón en la Augustinus-Forschung. La segunda parte del artículo ofrece una posible lectura donatista (...) del texto de Cant 1, 6-7. Se trata de una lectura diferente de la ofrecida por Agustín. El artículo presenta la hipótesis de que en el centro de la exegesis donatista de Cant 1, 6-7 se encontraba una lectura martirial del sintagma tabernacula pastorum, mientras que la interpretación agustiniana del sintagma in meridie estaría orientada hacia un sentido geográfico del mismo, desplazando la polémeica con los donatistas, en torno a la identidad de la Iglesia, de un contexto martirial a un contexto meramente geográfico. (shrink)