Oaksford & Chater (O&C) have rejected logic in favor of probability theory for reasons that are irrelevant to mental-logic theory, because mental-logic theory differs from standard logic in significant ways. Similar to O&C, mental-logic theory rejects the use of the material conditional and deals with the completeness problem by limiting the scope of its procedures to local sets of propositions.

Only women can bear the burdens of gestating fetuses. That fact, I suggest, bears on the morality of abortion. To illustrate and explain this point, I frame my discussion around Judith Jarvis Thomson's classic defense of abortion and Gina Schouten's recent feminist challenge to Thomson's defense. Thomson argued that, even assuming that fetuses are morally equivalent to persons, abortions are typically morally permissible. According to Schouten's feminist challenge to Thomson, however, if fetuses are morally equivalent to persons, then abortions are (...) typically morally impermissible because there is a collective moral obligation to care for the vulnerable. The consideration that is my topic, however, poses a problem for that feminist challenge to Thomson. There is reason to believe, I argue, that it is unfair that only women can bear the burdens of gestating fetuses. And, if that is unfair, it would undermine that feminist challenge to Thomson. I show, in other words, that there is a plausible and well‐motivated basis for believing that, even if fetuses are morally equivalent to persons and there is a collective obligation to care for the vulnerable, then abortions are nevertheless typically morally permissible. That is how fairness bears on the morality of abortion. (shrink)

Equality of opportunity is a complex and contested ideal. There is disagreement about what the most plausible account of equal opportunity is, why equal opportunity matters, and how much it matters relative to other considerations that bear on how we ought to act. Over and above those disagreements about the general ideal of equal opportunity, there are further disagreements about what equal educational opportunity requires, why equal educational opportunity matters, and how much it matters relative to other considerations that bear (...) on what educational policies we ought to enact. Much of the literature on equal opportunity and education focuses on equal opportunity and K-12 (i.e., primary- or secondary-level) education. But there is now also a sizeable literature that focuses on distinctive questions about equal opportunity and higher (i.e., tertiary-level) education. That latter set of questions – how the ideal of equal opportunity bears on higher education – is the primary topic of this chapter. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part of the chapter focuses on more theoretical issues in normative ethics and foundational political philosophy. It first surveys some disagreements about the nature, scope, grounds, and stringency of equal opportunity requirements; in light of those disagreements, it then surveys a variety of views about how the ideal of equal opportunity bears on higher education. The second part of the chapter focuses on more practical issues in applied ethics and applied political philosophy. It surveys some contemporary controversies in higher education that implicate concerns about equal opportunity. (shrink)

In The Right to Higher Education, Christopher Martin develops a powerful, autonomy-based argument that there is a moral right to access to higher education. I raise three concerns about whether this argument succeeds. The first is a concern about the conception of autonomy at the heart of Martin’s argument; the second is a concern about possible overgeneralizations of the argument; and the third is a concern about whether Martin’s view is consonant with judgments about fairness.

G. A. Cohen has argued that there is a surprising truth in conservatism—namely, that there is a reason for some valuable things to be preserved, even if they could be replaced with other, more valuable things. This conservative thesis is motivated, Cohen suggests, by our judgments about a range of hypothetical cases. After reconstructing Cohen's conservative thesis, I argue that the relevant judgments about these cases do not favor the conservative thesis over standard, nonconservative axiological views. But I then argue (...) that there is a Mirrored Histories case that is such that, if one shares Cohen's conservative attitude, judgments about this case favor Cohen's conservative thesis over a wide range of non-conservative axiological views. Reflection on this case also suggests a different explanation of apparently conservative judgments that merits consideration in its own right. (shrink)

It is a precept of commonsense morality that parents have permissions to be partial toward their own children in various ways: they are permitted to act in a variety of ways that favor the interests of their own children. But how are such permissions to be reconciled with more general principles of justice? In this article, I discuss this question as it arises for one kind of liberal egalitarian theory of justice. Given their robust commitment to an ideal of equality, (...) such theories face prima facie difficulties in accommodating the commonsense permissions of parental partiality. After sketching the contours of the apparent conflict between equality and parental partiality, I survey some of the ways in which some writers have attempted to reconcile equality and parental partiality, and I criticize these reconciliation proposals, which in different ways subordinate a concern for equality to a concern for parental partiality. I then suggest a different direction for reconciliation, which subordinates a concern for partiality to a concern for equality. This alternative reconciliation strategy, I argue, deserves to be taken seriously by liberal egalitarians; whether it is the most plausible way to reconcile equality and parental partiality depends on one’s view about the moral weight of people’s interest in parenting. (shrink)

According to a standard picture in the educational policy and educational ethics literature, justice requires significant alterations to higher-education arrangements, in order to equalize opportunity and benefit badly-off social groups. I argue that, if political liberalism is correct, then a range of higher-education reforms favored by the standard picture lack support. After canvassing the standard picture (section 2), I explain why political liberalism entails that some institutions have a special status that prohibits certain kinds of interventions on them (section 3), (...) and I explain why this means that political liberalism cannot vindicate the standard picture (sections 4 and 5). (shrink)

Telic egalitarianism is famously threatened by the levelling down objection. In its canonical form, the objection purports to show that it is not, in itself, an improvement if inequality is reduced. In a variant that is less often discussed, the objection is that telic egalitarians are committed to believing that sometimes one ought to reduce inequality, even when doing so makes no one better off. The standard egalitarian response to this ‘all things considered’ variant of the levelling down objection is (...) to embed egalitarianism in a pluralist consequentialist moral theory. In section 1, I briefly recapitulate this familiar strategy. In section 2, I argue that this standard pluralist consequentialist response is inadequate. The inadequacy of the standard response, I argue, stems from the fact that the following are jointly inconsistent: (1) a commitment to levelling down's impermissibility; (2) standard pluralist egalitarian consequentialism; (3) inequality being of non-trivial importance; and (4) the most plausible measures of inequality's badness. In section 3, I show that egalitarians can better respond to the all-things-considered levelling down objection by embedding egalitarianism in a nonconsequentialist moral theory. (shrink)

Many egalitarians incorporate a concern for interpersonal welfare inequality as part of their favored axiology – that is, they take it to be a bad-making feature of outcomes. It is natural to think that, if inequality is in this sense a bad, it is an impersonal bad (one that makes an outcome worse, while not in itself being worse for any person). This natural thought has been challenged. Some writers claim that egalitarian judgments can be accommodated by adopting an expanded (...) view of a person's good, according to which being worse off than others is one of the factors that, in itself, makes one's life go worse. The putatively impersonal bad of inequality is thereby “dispersed” among individuals. I argue that this dispersion strategy fails. In a slogan: if you care about inequality, do not disperse it. (shrink)

In Why Not Socialism? G.A. Cohen articulates a version of socialism characterized by two values—equality and community—but, being a value pluralist, Cohen is not sanguine about the practical consistency of those values. This paper deals with the relationship between Cohen's formulations of the values of community and equality. I argue that Cohen faces a dilemma: either community and equality are not even in principle consistent, or else they are conceptually compatible. I argue, moreover, that despite the cost to Cohen's value (...) pluralism of accepting the dilemma's second horn, it carries the felicitous consequence of obviating the contingent conflicts between community and equality about which Cohen is concerned. Finally, I suggest that accepting the second horn—that is, the grounds of compatibility between community and equality—is helpful in resolving a puzzle recently raised by John Roemer about Cohen's picture of socialism. (shrink)

Many egalitarians believe that there is a pro tanto reason to remedy inequalities of opportunity in access to higher education. This consensus, I argue, masks practical disagreement among egalitarians: in many real-world choice contexts, egalitarians will disagree about which policies are to be endorsed, both from the point of view of equality and all things considered. I focus my discussion on a real-world case (the ‘big squeeze’ – so-called because the children of welloff families ‘squeeze out’ the children of less (...) well-off families from access to highly selective US universities) that has recently been discussed by Amy Gutmann. I argue that while (a) the ‘big squeeze’ is condemned by the ideal of equal opportunity, nevertheless (b) different egalitarians will favor different policies in response to the ‘big squeeze’, and (c) one intuitive, and apparently egalitarian, response lacks support from most plausible egalitarian views. (shrink)

Macmurray provides a conceptual and personal reference point around which we can locate a tradition of social humanism that unfolds from the British idealists to the communitarians. Some communitarian themes appear in the thought of the idealists: these include a vitalist analysis of behaviour, a 'thick' view of the person, and a positive concept of freedom defined in relation to others. Macmurray developed these themes and introduced others largely as a result of reworking idealism so as to come to terms (...) with the crisis of reason associated with the First World War. He rejected objective idealism with its concept of absolute mind for a personal idealism that incorporated an action-based metaphysics. Doing so prompted him to adopt other communitarian themes: these include an appeal to friendship and love, a contrast between society and community, and an appeal to religion to transcend the limits of justice. While contemporary communitarians have inherited much from philosophers such as Macmurray, they have also developed the tradition of social humanism. Philosophers such as Sandel, Taylor and Walzer have done so through grappling with the implications of multiculturalism for the idea of a cosmopolitan community. Ethical socialists like Tony Blair and Raymond Plant have done so through grappling with issues such as a decline in solidarity as it influences the welfare state. (shrink)

Humanist sociologists are activists rooted in the reality of history and change and guided by a concern for the 'real life' problems of equality, peace, and social justice. They view people as active shapers of social life, capable of creating societies in which everyone's potential can unfold. Alfred McClung Lee introduces this volume with 'Sociology: Humanist and Scientific' and develops the theme that a sociology that is humanist is also scientific. The other nine selections are grouped into four parts: 'The (...) Individual and Social Life;' 'Social Institutions: Technology, Science, and Formal Organization;' 'Political Structures: Issues of Justice and Equality;' and 'Methodological Critiques and Counterproposals.'. (shrink)

Personal observations and survey data are used to examine the future of the village in a restructured food and agricultural sector in the former Soviet Union. Specific comparisons are made between the subjective quality of life of residents in two villages in the former Soviet Union (one in southern Russia and one in eastern Ukraine) and two villages in northwest Missouri. Residents of the Russian and Ukrainian villages have substantially lower assessments of specific domains of their lives than do American (...) villagers. Respondents in the Russian and Ukrainian sample express an interest in some aspects of privatization of services and consumer goods but, by and large, exhibit little interest in replacing the collective farms with household-level private farming. Historical factors, different incentive structures, and the possibilities for different institutional arrangements are discussed. (shrink)