This paper presents a novel framework for evaluating racial profiling, including 'rational profiling' that does in fact decrease crime rates. It argues that while profiling some groups, such as African Americans and Muslims, is impermissible, profiling others, such as white men, may be permissible. The historical and sociological context matters significantly. Along the way, the paper develops a new theory of what expressive harms are, why they matter, and when it is the responsibility of the state to correct them.

"In The Ethics of Migration: An Introduction Adam Hosein systematically and comprehensively examines the ethical issues surrounding the concept of immigration. The book addresses important questions such as: - Can states claim a right to control their borders and if so to what extent? - Is detention ever a justifiable means of border enforcement? - Which criteria may states use to determine who should be admitted into their territory and how do these criteria interact with existing hierarchies of (...) race and gender? - Who should be considered a refugee? - Which rights are migrants who are present in a territory entitled to? - Is there an acceptable way to design a temporary worker program? - When, if ever, are amnesties for unauthorized migrants appropriate? Featuring case studies throughout, this textbook provides a philosophical introduction to an incredibly topical issue studied by students within the fields of political philosophy, applied ethics, global studies, politics, law, sociology and public policy"--. (shrink)

This paper examines the 'taking back control' over immigration arguments offered for Brexit and for reinforcing the Southern border of the United States. According to these arguments, Brexit and increased border enforcement were needed to ensure collective self-governance for the peoples of Britain and the United States. I argue that 1. In fact these policies did little to enhance collective self-governance properly understood, and 2. They actually thwarted collective self-governance due their racially exclusionary effects on people of color in Britain (...) and the United States. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on one very influential argument for open borders, the freedom of movement argument, which says that if we value freedom of movement we must demand open borders. I begin the paper the paper by discussing Joseph Carens’ well known version of the argument. I then consider, and reject, David Miller’s response to that argument. Finally, I develop my own reply to Carens. Both Carens and Miller, I argue, are mistaken about the proper grounds for freedom (...) of movement. Once we see this, it is clear how we can value freedom of movement without being committed to open borders. (shrink)

This essay considers some central arguments given by Helen Frowe and Seth Lazar regarding the permissibility of killing civilians in war. It raises some objections to their views and defends some alternative bases for weighing harms to combatants against harms to civilians.

Geach and Thomson have argued that nothing is just plain good, because ‘good’ is, logically, an attributive adjective. The upshot, according to Geach and Thomson, is that consequentialism is unacceptable, since its very formulation requires a predicative use of ‘good’. Reactions to the argument have, for the most part, been uniform. Authors have converged on two challenging objections . First, although the logical tests that Geach and Thomson invoke clearly illustrate that ‘good’, as commonly used, is an attributive, they don’t (...) show that ‘good’ lacks an intelligible predicative interpretation. Second, even if the English word ‘good’ fails to express the property of goodness, we can just stipulate that ‘good*’ expresses goodness and thus formulate consequentialism accordingly. The second objection is one way of voicing skepticism about the method of drawing substantive philosophical conclusions from considerations about ordinary language. In this essay, we present an argument, inspired by Geach and Thomson, which isn’t susceptible to the same objections but which supports the same conclusion. The significance of our argument for ethics is obvious; it challenges the intelligibility of standard consequentialism, and even certain forms of non-consequentialism. One might be inclined to think that a more sophisticated consequentialism, which relies on ‘good {possible world/state of affairs/outcome}’ instead of just ‘good’, evades the criticism. But we explain why the criticism can’t be so easily evaded. (shrink)

Many liberal democracies have large populations of “unauthorized” migrants, who entered in contravention of immigration laws. In this paper, I will offer a new argument for allowing long-resident unauthorized migrants to transfer to “legal” status, which would allow them to live and work legally in their country of residence, without fear of deportation. I argue that legalization is required to secure the autonomy of these migrants, and that only by securing their autonomy can the state exercise authority over them legitimately. (...) I also respond to popular objections to legalization and illustrate the distinctive policy implications of my approach. (shrink)

The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal issues, such as the need for criminal process protections, prohibitions on torture, the permissibility of the death penalty and so on. These are areas where, at least initially, there seem to be distinctions between harms that the state inflicts and harms that it merely allows. In this paper I will argue for the importance of the doing/allowing distinction as applied to state action. Sunstein, Holmes, Vermeule (...) and others have presented influential arguments for the claim that where the state is concerned the doing/allowing distinction has no moral significance, even if it does elsewhere. I show that these arguments can be resisted. In doing so, I defend some important distinctions and principles that help us understand the state’s role in protecting people from harm. (shrink)

Many liberal democracies have large populations of “unauthorized” migrants, who entered in contravention of immigration laws. In this paper, I will offer a new argument for allowing long-resident unauthorized migrants to transfer to “legal” status, which would allow them to live and work legally in their country of residence, without fear of deportation. I argue that legalization is required to secure the autonomy of these migrants, and that only by securing their autonomy can the state exercise authority over them legitimately. (...) I also respond to popular objections to legalization and illustrate the distinctive policy implications of my approach. (shrink)

The role of responsibility in our common-sense morality of self-defense is complex. According to common-sense morality, one can sometimes use substantial, even deadly, force against people who are only minimally responsible for posing a threat to us. The role of responsibility in self-defense is thus limited. However, responsibility is still sometimes relevant. It sometime affects how much force you can use against a threatener: less if they are less responsible and more if they are more responsible. Is there a well-motivated (...) theory that can explain both why the role of responsibility is limited and why it is sometimes relevant? It is hard to see what theory could unify these disparate elements of our common-sense morality, and if one cannot be found then we may simply have to revise some of our pre-theoretic beliefs. But it would be an important advantage of a theory if it could justify those beliefs. I will argue that there is a theory of this kind: surprisingly, the familiar rights theory of self-defense, defended by Judith Thomson, can do so if it is suitably supplemented. Along the way I will survey some alternative theories of self-defense and show why they are not up to the task. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the role of freedom in the justification of prohibitions on discrimination. As a case study, I focus mainly on U.S. constitutional and employment law and, in particular, restrictions on sex-stereotyping. I present a new argument that freedom can play at least some important role in justifying these restrictions. Not just any freedom, I claim: the Millian freedom to challenge existing stereotypes and contribute to social change. This ‘social change account’, I argue, can be a useful (...) supplement to the existing theories where their explanations run out. It also draws support from familiar liberal justifications for speech and other liberties, and provides an attractive role for the courts. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss some of the criteria that liberal states have used to choose between potential immigrants. While overtly racist policies have been widely condemned and abolished, many states have still in the recent past selected immigrants based on their ethnicity and/or language competency. I argue that even apparently more benign examples of ethnic and linguistic selection are unacceptable because they tend to express a morally problematic message that members of certain ethnic groups within the territory—the people who (...) are really from there— occupy a privileged position within the political community. And this means, I argue, that they unjustly exclude members of other ethnic groups. Finally, I address some special features of linguistic selection that are sometimes thought to make it justifiable, including the de facto inevitability of promoting some languages more than others, the fact that languages can be learned voluntarily, and the fragility of minority languages in territories where there is another language that is more universally known. (shrink)

This paper discusses the "numbers problem," the problem of explaining why you should save more people rather than fewer when forced to choose. Existing non-consequentialist approaches to the problem appeal to fairness to explain why. I argue that this is a mistake and that we can give a more satisfying answer by appealing to requirements of charity or beneficence.

In this paper I discuss justice in the distribution of resources, both within states and across different states. On one influential view, it is always unjust for one person to have less than another through no fault of her own. State borders, on this account, have no importance in determining which distributions are just. I show that an alternative approach is needed. I argue that distributions of wealth are only unjust in so far as they issue from unfair treatment. It (...) follows that not all inequalities in the distribution of goods are unjust. I use these results to explain how state borders do play a role in determining which inequalities are unjust, since some of these inequalities issue from unfair treatment of citizens by the state. (shrink)

Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Rawlsian framework to develop a theory of rightness, or morality more generally. I argue that there are some good reasons to adopt a contractualist theory of social justice, but that it is a mistake to adopt a contractualist theory of rightness. I begin by illustrating the major shared features of Scanlon and Rawls’ theories. I then show that the justification for these features in Rawls’ theory, the (...) centrality of cooperative fairness to social justice, cannot be used to defend their use in Scanlon’s. Finally, I argue that Scanlon has not provided an adequate alternative defense of these features, and show that they create problems when contractualists try to explain major features of our common-sense morality. (shrink)

Thousands of youth suffering from acquired brain injury or other early-life neurological disease live, mature, and learn with only limited communication and interaction with their world. Such cognitively capable children are ideal candidates for brain-computer interfaces. While BCI systems are rapidly evolving, a fundamental gap exists between technological innovators and the patients and families who stand to benefit. Forays into translating BCI systems to children in recent years have revealed that kids can learn to operate simple BCI with proficiency akin (...) to adults. BCI could bring significant boons to the lives of many children with severe physical impairment, supporting their complex physical and social needs. However, children have been neglected in BCI research and a collaborative BCI research community is required to unite and push pediatric BCI development forward. To this end, the pediatric BCI Canada collaborative network was formed, under a unified goal to cooperatively drive forward pediatric BCI innovation and impact. This article reflects on the topics and discussions raised in the foundational BCI-CAN meeting held in Toronto, ON, Canada in November 2019 and suggests the next steps required to see BCI impact the lives of children with severe neurological disease and their families. (shrink)

New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

Background:The decision-making process should be done according to a set of rules and principles so as to be fairly understood.Objectives:The aim of this study was to identify the basic principles and rules used by nurses to understand justice in nurse managers’ decision-making processes based on a procedural justice model.Research design and participants:This research was a qualitative study based on directed content analysis, which was performed on a group of 15 nurses working in different hospitals in Tehran, Iran. An in-depth semi-structured (...) interview was used as the method of data collection for this study.Ethical consideration:This research has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. The respondents were informed about the aim of the study, about voluntary participation, anonymity and confidentiality.Findings:The results of this study showed that in order to understand procedural justice, nurses use several rules, including: duties organization, managerial support, consistency, bias-suppression, accuracy, correctability, representativeness, and ethicality.Conclusion:Nursing leaders must consider the importance of justice rules as one of many strategies to ensure the nurses’ perception of fairness in decision-making processes. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout (...) social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology’s transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that (...) they might obtain it, that this could lead to catastrophe, and that we might build and deploy such systems anyway. The second argument claims that the development of human-level AI will unlock rapid further progress, culminating in AI systems far more capable than any human — this is the Singularity Hypothesis. Power-seeking behavior on the part of such systems might be particularly dangerous. We discuss a variety of objections to both arguments and conclude by assessing the state of the debate. (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value either (...) when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)

Inspired by Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology, I propose a position on practical knowledge that can be called the ‘know-how-first view’; yet whereas Williamson is one of the pioneers of the new intellectualism about know-how, I employ the know-how-first view to argue against intellectualism and instead develop a know-how-first version of anti-intellectualism. Williamson argues that propositional knowledge is a sui generis unanalyzable mental state that comes first in the epistemic realm; in parallel, I propose that know-how is a sui generis unanalyzable power (...) that comes first in the practical realm. To motivate this suggestion, I put forward two arguments: drawing on dispositionalist ideas, I argue that the practical component of know-how is unanalyzable; based on an investigation of the natures of intentionality and intelligence, I argue that know-how is prior to intentional and intelligent abilities in the order of explanation of agential action. Deploying this know-how-first anti-intellectualism, I then set out know-how-first solutions to two challenging problems for anti-intellectualism: the sufficiency problem and the necessary condition problem. (shrink)

Toward an ontology of the social-historical -- Proto-institutions and epistemological encounters -- Anthropological aspects of subjectivity: the radical imagination -- Hermeneutical horizons of meaning -- The rediscovery of physis -- Objective knowledge in review -- Rethinking the world of the living being -- Reimaging cosmology -- Conclusion: the circle of creation.

Bringing political philosophy out of the ivory tower and within the reach of all, this book provides us with tools to cut through the complexities of modern ...

Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take ...

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

This chapter provides empirical evidence about everyday attitudes concerning euthanasia. These attitudes have important implications for some ethical arguments about euthanasia. Two experiments suggested that some different descriptions of euthanasia have modest effects on people’s moral permissibility judgments regarding euthanasia. Experiment 1 (N = 422) used two different types of materials (scenarios and scales) and found that describing euthanasia differently (‘euthanasia’, ‘aid in dying’, and ‘physician assisted suicide’) had modest effects (≈3 % of the total variance) on permissibility judgments. These (...) effects were largely replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 409). However, in Experiment 2, judgments about euthanasia’s moral permissibility were best predicted by the voluntariness of the treatment. Voluntariness was a stronger predictor than some demographic factors and some domain general elements of moral judgments. These results help inform some debates about the moral permissibility of euthanasia (e.g., the slippery slope argument) suggesting that some of the key premises of those arguments are unwarranted. (shrink)

Companies' urge to maximise their profits and their attempts to remain in the highly competitive globalised market gave birth to the TQM concept and have kept it alive. TQM is a comprehensive look which encompasses virtually every aspect of the value chain as well as the human resource and customer satisfaction. Therefore, a great number of companies feel obliged to implement its rules, and procedures. However, the concept is rather complicated and culture-bound, and calls for further research in new settings. (...) The aim of this study is to examine the influences of critical success factors of TQM on customer focus therefore, employees are classified based on their perceptions from critical success factors of total quality management and consequently the level of customer focus is compared between the different classifications. The findings reveal that there is significant difference on the level of the customer focus between the established groups of employees. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.

In Freedom: An Impossible Reality (FAIR), Raymond Tallis finds room in a law-abiding universe for a uniquely human form of agency, capable of envisioning and pursuing genuinely open possibilities, thereby deflecting rather than merely inflecting the course of events, in accordance with self-owned intentions, reasons and goals. He argues that the genuinely free human pursuit of such propositional attitudes depends on our acting from a “virtual outside”, at an epistemic distance from the physical world that reveals not only what is (...) the case, but that it is the case. The enactive approach in cognitive science and philosophy of mind aims to supersede the cognitivist traditional that has long dominated the field, by reframing cognition as an agentʼs immediate, embodied engagement with its environment. In an appendix of FAIR, Tallis argues that this approach risks both eliminating propositional attitudes, and collapsing the epistemic distance between agent and world. He concludes that if enactive theorists are to distinguish between genuinely pursuing an intention and merely responding to a stimulus, their corrective to cognitivism is in need of a correction of its own. This paper argues that such a correction is already to be found within the enactive literature, and furthermore, that it bears striking similarities to Tallis own account of what makes human agency unique. It is therefore concluded that the case for freedom set out in FAIR is compatible with the enactive approach. (shrink)

The paper gives a brief characterization of philosophical problems; points up something of their significance for the culture, the social order, and our lives; indicates the methodology appropriate for the problems; and presents a view of the cultural mission of philosophy today. Philosophy attempts to bring under critical review and to correct errors in the cultural mind of our civilization, the prevailing assumptions and beliefs about our knowledge‐yielding powers, the various sectors of the culture, and the basic structure of the (...) world. It holds the cultural mind accountable to the unavoidable presuppositions of experience, thought, and action. Errors in the cultural mind can lead to distortions in the development of the culture and to social and personal pathologies. I contend that our modern Western cultural mind undermines the humanistic dimension of the culture, and ultimately the whole culture, by a restricted view of our knowledge‐yielding powers and the resulting impoverished view of reality. The mission of philosophy today is to point out the errors in our cultural mind and to work for a humanistic cultural reformation. (shrink)

With massive corruption uncovered in numerous recent corporate scandals, investigating psychological processes underlying unethical behavior among employees has become a critical area of research for organizational scientists. This article seeks to explain why people engage in deceptive and fraudulent activities by focusing on the use of moral-disengagement tactics or rationalizations to justify egregious actions at work. In addition, participation in goal-setting is argued to attenuate the relationship between moral disengagement and unethical behavior. Across two studies, a lab simulation and field (...) survey, a measure of moral disengagement was developed for use with working adults. The hypothesized main and interactive effects of moral disengagement, participation, and unethical behavior were tested and largely confirmed. (shrink)