States restrict immigration on a massive scale. Governments fortify their borders with walls and fences, authorize border patrols, imprison migrants in detention centers, and deport large numbers of foreigners. Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration argues that immigration restrictions are systematically unjust and examines how individual actors should respond to this injustice. Javier Hidalgo maintains that individuals can rightfully resist immigration restrictions and often have strong moral reasons to subvert these laws. This book makes the case (...) that unauthorized migrants can permissibly evade, deceive, and use defensive force against immigration agents, that smugglers can aid migrants in crossing borders, and that citizens should disobey laws that compel them to harm immigrants. Unjust Borders is a meditation on how individuals should act in the midst of pervasive injustice. (shrink)

Many organisations in rich countries actively recruit health workers from poor countries. Critics object to this recruitment on the grounds that it has harmful consequences and that it encourages health workers to violate obligations to their compatriots. Against these critics, I argue that the active recruitment of health workers from low-income countries is morally permissible. The available evidence suggests that the emigration of health workers does not in general have harmful effects on health outcomes. In addition, health workers can immigrate (...) to rich countries and also satisfy their obligations to their compatriots. It is consequently unjustified to blame or sanction organisations that actively recruit health workers. (shrink)

I am very grateful to the five commentators for taking the time to respond to my article ‘The Active Recruitment of Health Workers: A Defense’.1 I have learned a great deal from each of their commentaries, and I am sorry to say that I will be unable to address all their important comments and criticisms in detail. In this response, I will focus on replying to the commentators’ major objections.In my paper, I suggested that the emigration of health workers from (...) poor countries might not have harmful effects on health outcomes in general, or may only have relatively small negative effects in a wide range of cases. Several commentators challenge my analysis. Carwyn Rhys Hooper suggests that it is prima facie plausible that the emigration of health workers causes harm, and that there is insufficient evidence to reject this claim.2 Gilian Brock3 and Iain Bassington4 argue that my paper failed to consider the full range of possible harms that the active recruitment of health workers brings about. These commentators are correct in that we need more evidence about the effects of migration, and that it may be too soon to arrive at the all-things-considered judgment that the emigration of health workers does not generally enable serious harm.Nonetheless, I believe that the active recruitment of health workers is still permissible. For one thing, I am less confident than Brock that the empirical research on skilled migration clearly establishes that the migration of skilled professionals causes harm to sending countries. There is a sizable body of empirical research that is inconsistent with many of Brock's claims. It is not obvious that the emigration of skilled workers depletes human capital in the sending country.5 ,6 In fact, there is evidence that the opportunity to emigrate …. (shrink)

This paper argues for a dilemma: you can accept liberalism or immigration restrictions, but not both. More specifically, the standard arguments for restricting freedom of movement apply equally to textbook liberal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, religion, occupation and reproductive choice. We begin with a sketch of liberalism’s core principles and an argument for why freedom of movement is plausibly on a par with other liberal freedoms. Next we argue that, if a state’s right to self-determination grounds a prima (...) facie right to restrict immigration, then it also grounds a prima facie right to restrict freedom of speech, religion, sexual choice and more. We then suggest that the social costs associated with freedom of immigration are also costs associated with occupational choice, speech and reproduction. Thus, a state’s interest in reducing these costs gives it prima facie justification to restrict not only immigration but also other core liberal freedoms. Moreover, we rebut the objection that, even if the standard arguments for a prima facie right to restrict immigration also support a prima facie right to restrict liberal freedoms generally, there are differences that render immigration restrictions – but not restrictions on speech, religion, etc. – justified all things considered. In closing, we suggest that the theoretical price of supporting immigration restrictions – viz., compromising a commitment to liberal principles – is too steep to pay. (shrink)

A large body of evidence suggests that the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) improves learning. In courses that use PSI, the material is divided into units, students must pass a test on each unit before advancing to the next unit, there’s no group-level instruction, and students advance in the course at their own pace. While studies find that PSI improves learning outcomes in a wide range of settings, researchers haven’t studied the effectiveness of PSI in critical thinking classes. In this (...) paper, I argue that teaching critical thinking with PSI can effectively promote critical thinking skills. I describe a course that uses PSI to teach critical thinking and I present evidence from pre- and post-tests that indicates that students substantially improved their reasoning skills in this course. I also discuss the costs and drawbacks of using this method of instruction and consider ways of addressing these problems. (shrink)

This paper evaluates an argument for immigration restrictions that appeals to the costs that immigration imposes on the citizens of a recipient state. According to this argument, citizens have associative duties to protect each other’s interests, immigration can damage these interests in certain cases, and the associative duties between compatriots justify immigration restrictions in these cases. Call this: the partiality argument for immigration restrictions. I argue that the partiality argument is unsound. Immigration restrictions violate negative duties to refrain from interfering (...) with people’s liberties and these duties silence compatriots’ associative duties to one another. Furthermore, I argue that compatriots lack associative duties to one another in virtue of the fact that the relationships between compatriots reliably cause injustice to outsiders. (shrink)

Suppose that it was possible to teletransport. The teletransporter would destroy your old brain and body and construct an identical brain and body at a new location. Would you survive teletransportation? Many people think that teletransportation would kill you. On their view, the person that emerges from the teletransporter would be a replica of you, but it wouldn't be you. In contrast, I argue that there's no relevant difference between teletransportation and ordinary survival. So, if you survive ordinary life, then (...) you survive teletransportation. Yet my argument may also show that we have little prudential reason to care about our survival in general. (shrink)

In contrast to Buddhist Reductionists who deny the ultimate existence of the persons, Buddhist Personalists claim that persons are ultimately real in some important sense. Recently, some philosophers have offered philosophical reconstructions of Buddhist Personalism. In this paper, I critically evaluate one philosophical reconstruction of Buddhist Personalism according to which persons are irreducible to the parts that constitute them. Instead, persons are emergent entities and have novel properties that are distinct from the properties of their constituents. While this emergentist interpretation (...) is an interesting and well-motivated reconstruction of the Personalist position, I ultimately reject it on substantive grounds. I distinguish between different kinds of emergentism in the contemporary philosophical literature and show that they fail to support Buddhist Personalism. I thus conclude that Buddhist Personalism is untenable if it’s committed to emergentism about persons. This paper also indirectly defends Buddhist Reductionism by showing that it has crucial advantages over Buddhist Personalism. (shrink)

This paper argues that libertarianism—and only libertarianism—can vindicate immigration's status as a human right whose protection is morally required in nearly all circumstances. Competing political theories such as liberal egalitarianism fail to rule out significant immigration restrictions in a range of realistic conditions. We begin by outlining the core tenets of libertarianism and their implications for immigration policy. Next, we explain why arguments that appeal to alternative principles are unable to provide robust justification for open borders. We conclude by considering (...) whether our argument vindicates libertarianism or undermines open borders. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 269-290, August 2022. This paper argues that libertarianism—and only libertarianism—can vindicate immigration's status as a human right whose protection is morally required in nearly all circumstances. Competing political theories such as liberal egalitarianism fail to rule out significant immigration restrictions in a range of realistic conditions. We begin by outlining the core tenets of libertarianism and their implications for immigration policy. Next, we explain why arguments that appeal to alternative principles are (...) unable to provide robust justification for open borders. We conclude by considering whether our argument vindicates libertarianism or undermines open borders. (shrink)

Boredom is a characteristic of today’s society. At the individual level and at the social level, the Western countries suffer from boredom. There are extrinsic and intrinsic causes that can lead to boredom. In general, the state of boredom is reached when there are no problems to solve, when the profession does not demand our actions, or when we feel disappointed in realizing that the achievements of life do not give us sustained satisfaction over time. Boredom, especially if it becomes (...) chronic, can be considered a negative thing. But it can also have something positive. The silence, stillness and inaction that define boredom are also characteristics that define the initial state of the person before meditation. This study aims to reflect the possibility of getting out of boredom through meditation. We can abandon boredom if we start a path of personal growth through increasing attention and perception; coming out of ourselves, leaving our own reflections and thoughts, reaching personal emptying and a voluntary impoverishment of our exteriority, which opens the door to us to encounter with being. (shrink)

Sieht man von Gustave de Beaumont ab, mit dem er die Amerikareise antrat, und von Louis de Kergorlay, so war sicherlich Jean-Jacques Ampère der engste Freund Tocquevilles. Er besaß im Schloss Tocqueville ein für ihn bestimmtes Quartier und wurde stets mit großer Freude von Tocqueville und seiner Frau empfangen.

Many political theorists argue that immigration restrictions are unjust and defend broadly open borders. In this paper, I examine the implications of this view for individual conduct. In particular, I argue that the citizens of states that enforce unjust immigration restrictions have duties to disobey certain immigration laws. States conscript their citizens to help enforce immigration law by imposing legal duties on these citizens to monitor, report, and refrain from interacting with unauthorized migrants. If an ideal of open borders is (...) true, these laws are unjust. Furthermore, if citizens comply with their legal duties, they contribute to violating the rights of migrants. We are obligated to refrain from contributing to rights-violations. So, citizens are obligated to disobey immigration laws. I defend the moral requirement to disobey immigration laws against the objection that disobedience to the law is excessively risky and the objection that citizens have political obligations to obey the law. (shrink)

States heavily restrict immigration, and many people violate these restrictions. For example, unauthorized immigrants cross borders without official permission, and other actors, such as people smugglers, assist them in doing so. How should we evaluate resistance to immigration law from a moral perspective? In this article, I survey recent work on the ethics of resisting immigration law. In particular, I examine three categories of resistance to immigration law as the following: unauthorized immigration, people smuggling, and citizens' resistance to laws that (...) prohibit them from assisting or interacting with unauthorized immigrants. (shrink)

Several political theorists argue that states have rights to self-determination and these rights justify immigration restrictions. Call this: the self-determination argument for immigration restrictions. In this article, I develop an objection to the self-determination argument. I argue that if it is morally permissible for states to restrict immigration because they have rights to self-determination, then it can also be morally permissible for states to deport and denationalize their own citizens. We can either accept that it is permissible for states to (...) deport and denationalize their own citizens or reject the self-determination argument. To avoid this implication, we should reject the self-determination argument. That is, we should also reject the conclusion that rights to self-determination can justify any significant immigration restrictions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople smugglers help transport migrants across international borders without authorization and in return for compensation. Many people object to people smuggling and believe that the smuggling of migrants is an evil trade. In this paper, I offer a qualified defense of people smuggling. In particular, I argue that people smuggling that assists refugees in escaping threats to their rights can be morally justified. I then rebut the objections that people smugglers exploit migrants, have defective motivations, and wrongly violate the law. (...) My conclusion is that people smuggling is sometimes a permissible way of helping refugees to evade unjust immigration restrictions and compelling states to bear their fair share of the global refugee population. (shrink)

Many people think that citizenship should not be for sale. On their view, it is morally wrong for states to sell citizenship to foreigners. In this article, I challenge this view. I argue that it is in principle permissible for states to sell citizenship. I contend that, if states can permissibly deny foreigners access to citizenship in some cases, then states can permissibly give foreigners the option of buying citizenship in these cases. Furthermore, I defend the permissibility of selling citizenship (...) against the objections that selling citizenship values citizenship in the wrong way, corrupts civic norms, and unfairly discriminates against poor foreigners. I conclude by noting that, although selling citizenship is not intrinsically wrong, it could still be wrong for states to sell citizenship in practice. If existent immigration restrictions are unjust, then it may be impermissible for states to sell citizenship in the real world. (shrink)

States have rights to unilaterally determine their own immigration policies under international law and few international institutions regulate states’ decision-making about immigration. As a result, states have extensive discretion over immigration policy. In this paper, I argue that states should join international migration institutions that would constrain their discretion over immigration. Immigration restrictions are morally risky. When states restrict immigration, they risk unjustly harming foreigners and restricting their freedom. Furthermore, biases and epistemic defects pervasively influence states’ decision-making about immigration policy. (...) States should transfer some of their decision-making authority over immigration to more reliable institutions in order to mitigate the risks that they will unjustly restrict immigration. International institutions that include the interests of potential immigrants would be more reliable with respect to immigration policy than unilateral state decision-making. Thus, states should subject their immigration policies to international control. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Do Buddhist philosophical commitments support a particular theory of well-being? Most authors who have examined this question argue that Buddhist ideas are compatible with multiple theories of well-being. In this paper, I contend that one tradition of Buddhist philosophy—Abhidharma—does imply a specific theory of welfare. In particular, Abhidharma supports hedonism. Most Ābhidharmikas claim that only property-particulars called dharmas ultimately exist and I argue that an Abhidharmic theory of well-being should only refer to these properties. Yet the only dharmas that (...) could plausibly be intrinsically good are phenomenal properties that are good in virtue of how they feel. Thus, the only intrinsically good things are pleasures. I defend this surprising conclusion from various interpretative objections and show that my argument can also inform contemporary philosophical debates about welfare. (shrink)

This article develops a dilemma for Buddhist Reductionism that centers on the nature of normative reasons. This dilemma suggests that Buddhist Reductionism lacks the resources to make sense of normative reasons and, furthermore, that this failure may cast doubt on the plausibility of Buddhist Reductionism as a whole.

This essay explains why there are good reasons to practice philosophy as a way of life. The argument begins with the assumption that we should live well but that our understanding of how to live well can be mistaken. Philosophical reason and reflection can help correct these mistakes. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that philosophical reasoning often fails to change our dispositions and behavior. Drawing on the work of Pierre Hadot, the essay claims that spiritual exercises and communal engagement mitigate the (...) factors that prevent us from living in accord- ance with our conceptions of the good life. So, many of us have reasons to engage in philosophical reasoning along with behavioral, cognitive, and social strategies to alter our behavior and attitudes so that they’re in line with our philosophical commitments. In these respects, many of us should practice philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

Several noted economists and prominent international organizations have recently advocated for the implementation of guest worker programs in developed states. Their primary argument is that guest worker programs would serve as a powerful mechanism for reducing global poverty and inequality. For example, economist Dani Rodrik estimates that guest worker programs in wealthy states would generate $200 billion or more annually for poor countries. According to Rodrik, liberalizing the temporary movement of workers would “produce the largest possible gains for the world (...) economy and for poor countries in particular,” in comparison with other policies, such as trade liberalization. (shrink)

This essay explains why there are good reasons to practice philosophy as a way of life. The argument begins with the assumption that we should live well but that our understanding of how to live well can be mistaken. Philosophical reason and reflection can help correct these mistakes. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that philosophical reasoning often fails to change our dispositions and behavior. Drawing on the work of Pierre Hadot, the essay claims that spiritual exercises and communal engagement mitigate the (...) factors that prevent us from living in accordance with our conceptions of the good life. So, many of us have reasons to engage in philosophical reasoning along with behavioral, cognitive, and social strategies to alter our behavior and attitudes so that they’re in line with our philosophical commitments. In these respects, many of us should practice philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

Some bioethicists and political philosophers argue that rich states should restrict the immigration of health workers from poor countries in order to prevent harm to people in these countries. In this essay, I argue that restrictions on the immigration of health workers are unjust, even if this immigration results in bad health outcomes for people in poor countries. I contend that negative duties to refrain from interfering with the occupational liberties of health workers outweighs rich states' positive duties to prevent (...) harm to people in sending countries. Furthermore, I defend this claim against the objection that health workers in poor countries acquire special duties to their compatriots that render them liable to coercive interference. (shrink)

Some bioethicists and political philosophers argue that rich states should restrict the immigration of health workers from poor countries in order to prevent harm to people in these countries. In this essay, I argue that restrictions on the immigration of health workers are unjust, even if this immigration results in bad health outcomes for people in poor countries. I contend that negative duties to refrain from interfering with the occupational liberties of health workers outweighs rich states' positive duties to prevent (...) harm to people in sending countries. Furthermore, I defend this claim against the objection that health workers in poor countries acquire special duties to their compatriots that render them liable to coercive interference. (shrink)

Attempts to reach an understanding of how to live a Christian life in the contemporary context have never been more necessary. This is the aim of the International Symposium: Beyond Secular Faith, an annual conference held in Granada, Spain. This volume represents the fruits of over seven years of scholarship. The title Beyond Secular Faith suggests we are interested in (re)discovering and reflectively elaborating ways to overcome the limits imposed by the dominant contemporary culture. We are convinced that only a (...) faith liberated from the conceptual restrictions and reductions (put forward by secular philosophy and theology) and centered radically on Christ can flourish in the dimension that is proper to faith; that is, in all spheres of human life. Featuring contributions from internationally recognized philosophers and theologians such as Tracey Rowland, Jarosław Jagiello, Rocco Buttiglione, Alison Milbank, Massimo Borghesi, John Milbank, and others, we will explore a diversity of questions from this common perspective: the light of revelation illuminates how Christians should live in the modern world, leading to a new beginning. (shrink)

Los trabajos que aquí se presentan ofrecen una gran panorámica sobre la reflexión en torno a la vida humana y vienen a continuación de los expuestos en el libro Dimensiones de la vida humana tal como las ofrece la antropología española. Ahora se abordan esas dimensiones desde tres vertientes diferenciadas, la historia, la literatura y la hermenéutica. La vida humana es plural y así son también las vistas sobre ella. Un primer conjunto de textos trata de la imagen del ser (...) humano en diversos momentos de la historia de la filosofía. Un segundo grupo nos acerca a la reflexión filosófica que se da en la literatura, ya que los escritores exploran las posibilidades de la vida humana, con lo que sus creaciones son un excelente mirador que el antropólogo filósofo no puede ignorar. Por último aparece un bloque de investigaciones que se centran en la hermenéutica -con una importante presencia de Paul Ricoeur- y en M. Merleau-Ponty, con motivo de su centenario en 2008. La cantidad de trabajos aquí recogidos es una buena muestra de los estudios que sobre antropología filosófica se están realizando en nuestro país. Cada texto es una ventana abierta que permite una mirada sobre el ser humano, sobre su imagen o sus imágenes. Sobre los autores: Javier San Martín, catedrático de Filosofía en la UNED, ha centrado su investigación en la fenomenología, antropología filosófica y filosofía de Ortega y Gasset. Tomás Domingo Moratalla, profesor de Ética en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, se ha centrado en la filosofía de Paul Ricoeur, la antropología filosófica y la filosofía práctica en clave hermenéutica. (shrink)

Developments in biosemiotics and democratic theory enable renewed appreciation of the possibilities for ecological democracy. Semiotics is the study of sign processes in meaning-making and communication. Signs and meanings exist in all living systems, and all living systems are therefore semiotic systems. Ecological communication can involve abiotic and biotic communication, including human language, facilitating an integration of politics and ecology in the form of ecological democracy encompassing communicative networks in nature and human society.