Abstract:During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been made in eroding the practice, the principle still governs the philosophical assumptions underlying employment practices in the United States, and, indeed, EAW has been promulgated as one of the ways to address economic ills in other countries. This paper will briefly review the major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW, we (...) shall suggest new avenues for approaching employment issues to achieve the desirable goal of employee dignity and respect. (shrink)

The principle of employment-at-will (EAW) holds that in the absence of an explicit agreement of contractually binding terms of employment, the employment relationship exists so long as both parties will it to continue. In practice, this means that the employer may terminate the employment relationship at any time, for any reason, thus giving rise to cases of wrongful termination. Just cause policies, on the other hand, require that employers follow both substantive and procedural due (...) process in terminating a person’s employment. Most institutions of higher education, public and private, at least implicitly accept the principle of EAW and carry it out in practice. I argue that because of their heritage of Catholic social thought, Catholic universities are obligated to replace the principle and practice of EAW with a just cause policy. I also point out that the very principles underlying Catholic social thought that lead to a rejection of EAW are principles that any highly educated person of good will should accept. (shrink)

Employment-at-will (EAW) is the legal presumption that employers and employees may terminate an employment relationship for any or no reason. Defenders of EAW have argued that it promotes autonomy and efficiency. Critics have argued that it allows for the domination, subordination, and arbitrary treatment of employees. We intervene in this debate by arguing that the case for EAW is contextual in a way that existing business ethics scholarship has not considered. In particular, we argue that the justifiability (...) of EAW for a given jurisdiction depends on existing complementarities among the institutions that constitute the jurisdiction’s political economy. Notably, our view takes seriously the ethical concerns EAW critics have raised by showing how these concerns can be mitigated through public policy measures that do not require eliminating EAW. (shrink)

The principle of employment-at-will (EAW) holds that in the absence of an explicit agreement of contractually binding terms of employment, the employment relationship exists so long as both parties will it to continue. In practice, this means that the employer may terminate the employment relationship at any time, for any reason, thus giving rise to cases of wrongful termination. Just cause policies, on the other hand, require that employers follow both substantive and procedural due (...) process in terminating a person’s employment. Most institutions of higher education, public and private, at least implicitly accept the principle of EAW and carry it out in practice. I argue that because of their heritage of Catholic social thought, Catholic universities are obligated to replace the principle and practice of EAW with a just cause policy. I also point out that the very principles underlying Catholic social thought that lead to a rejection of EAW are principles that any highly educated person of good will should accept. (shrink)

Dismissal is a major issue for distributive justice at work, because it normally has a drastic impact on an employee’s livelihood, self-esteem and future career. This article examines distributive justice under the US’s employment-at-will (EAW) system and New Zealand’s just-cause dismissal system, focusing on the three main categories of dismissal, namely misconduct, poor performance and redundancy. Under EAW, employees have limited protection from dismissal and remedies are restricted to just a few so-called exceptions. Comparatively, New Zealand’s just-cause system (...) delivers much more just outcomes, both in terms of remedies and punishments. Despite a few shortcomings, it should be considered as a reasonable reference for policy changes in the US. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Shape of Ancient ThoughtWill S. RasmussenThe Shape of Ancient Thought. By Thomas McEvilley. New York: Allworth Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvi + 732. $35.00.The Shape of Ancient Thought, Thomas McEvilley's magnum opus of over thirty years' preparation, draws together an encyclopedic array of texts and archaeological evidence from Greece and India, which he employs in clearly written arguments toward an answer to a volatile question: just how indebted (...) to each other are India and Greece for their philosophical ideas and techniques? The subject is volatile in that it often arouses the rancor of challenged claims to intellectual property or cultural superiority, and the author shows admirable sensitivity by arguing to his conclusions in a way that explicitly eschews the lesser motives of rivalry and self-aggrandizement; instead he promotes the appreciation of a passion and genius for philosophy that is shared equally in the East and the West. McEvilley has collected for his purposes a treasury of key passages from Greek and Indian philosophy, and this review will seek to give some idea of the vast scope of his work and to assess its contribution to our understanding of philosophy.In his Foreword McEvilley says that his book will challenge a dichotomy, which prevails in Western thinking, that divides the ancient world of thought into Greek and non-Greek. Greek thought is characterized as that which is rational, and non Greek thought as that which is irrational, antirational, or at least nonrational. He faults E. R. Dodds' The Greek and the Irrational for supporting this dichotomy, by which Orphism and even certain elements of Plato become assigned, solely by virtue of their nonrational character, to Oriental provenance. He condemns as "deeply and glaringly false" W.K.C. Guthrie's History of Greek Philosophy for disparaging the comparison of Indian and Greek philosophy on the grounds that their motives, methods, and background of thought are so utterly different. In such a spirit he undertakes to prove by argumentation and a "sea of evidence" the invalidity of so brusque a dismissal of Indian philosophy.The rest of the Foreword explores how the post-Enlightenment "Oriental Renaissance," that is, the discovery by nineteenth-century Europe of India as "the primal [End Page 182] font of wisdom," aroused troubling questions about racial and cultural superiority. McEvilley traces claims and counterclaims made by philologists, historians, philosophers, and art historians who asserted the hierarchical status of India relative to classical Greece as the source of Western culture. He shows how attitudes toward colonialism in India from the eighteenth century up to the present day have further fueled the politicization of scholarship about India. The scope of this controversy ranges from the view that in the second millennium B.C.E. white invaders called Aryans brought into India both Sanskrit and all that is of any cultural value there, to the view that the hypothesis of an Aryan invasion is a racist myth, that there was virtually no foreign intervention in Indian history, and that India was the origin of all the world's civilizations. He commends the attempts since World War II to approach afresh the question of intercultural influence between East and West, including the founding of Philosophy East and West in 1951, and he declares his own view, which forms the main thesis of the book, namely that there were "significant intrusions first from India to Greece in the pre-Socratic period, and then from Greece back to India in the Hellenistic period" (p. xxxi).In chapter 1 McEvilley presents archaeological evidence from as early as the middle of the third millennium B.C.E. of trade between the Near East and India, and between the Near East and Greece. He argues for "full East-West transport of goods" through the intermediary of the Near East around 1500 to 1300 B.C.E. (p. 4). He argues that by the seventh century B.C.E. the activity of Phoenician merchants and the Persian conquests eastward and westward facilitated the transmission of ideas between the Near East and Greece via the "diffusion channels" of merchants, artisans, mercenaries, philosophers, physicians, and seers. He argues for similar diffusion channels between the... (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate over the ethical status of policies that give an employer the right to discharge an employee without a good reason or notice (i.e., employment at-will policies). This article moves beyond the question of whether the adoption of such a policy is unethical per se under all circumstances, focusing instead on the following question: Assuming that an at-will policy is not unethical per se in all circumstances, what are the ethical issues associated with (...) an employer's implementation and maintenance of an employment at-will policy, and how can these issues be addressed? Three primary ethical concerns are identified and discussed, and specific propositions regarding employers' obligations are presented. The article concludes by offering practical guidance intended to assist at-will employers in meeting the identified ethical obligations. (shrink)

이 논문은 회사에서 고용인에 대한 승진이나 강등, 심지어 해고까지 고용주 임의대로 해도 된다는 전통적 사고방식, 즉 임의 고용 신념의 윤리적 문제점을 지적한다. 각국에서 법정 공방이 계속 이어지는 가운데, 미국에서는 공공 분야의 경영 효율성 등을 이유로 임 의 고용이 다시 확산되는 추세에 있으며, 개발도상국이나 저개발국 같은 법률적 구조가 취 약한 나라에서는 어떤 판결이 이루어지는가와 상관없이 곳곳에서 무단 해고가 성행하고 있다. 임의 고용을 부정적으로 인식하는 우리나라 역시 관련 법령의 명시적 규정에도 불구 하고 여러 중소기업이나 개인회사에서는 암암리 구두 고용 계약 체결이나 그에 따른 (...) 고용 주 마음 내키는 대로 해고를 여전히 파행적으로 행사하고 있다. 고용주의 임의적 처사 가운데 가장 문제시되는 고용주의 무제약적 해고권까지도 용납 된다고 주장하는 이들은 법률적 맥락과 무관하게 몇 가지 근거를 들어 임의 고용을 옹호하 고 있다. 고용주의 해고권 강화를 옹호하는 이들의 주된 논증으로는 ① 고용주와 고용인이 상호 계약의 자유에 기초를 둔 만큼 두 당사자 간 어느 한쪽이 계약을 임의로 파기해도 괜 찮다는 상호성 논증, ② 고용인도 고용주의 여러 소유 가운데 일부로 보고 고용주 개인 소 유권의 외연 확장을 피력하는 소유권 논증, ③ 결과론적 관점에서 임의 고용에 의해 회사 내 업무 효율성이 더욱 강화될 수 있다고 역설하는 효율성 논증이 있다. 이 논문은 부적절한 해고와 관련하여 고용인이 고용주에게 대항할 권리를 가질 수 있다 는 점에 목표로 두고, 그 반대로 먼저 아무런 이유 없이 혹은 심지어 부당한 이유를 들어 서라도 고용인을 임의로 해고해도 괜찮다는 논의들을 집중 검토하고 있다. 이에 따라 이 논문은 그런 세 가지 논증들을 비판적으로 음미하는 일에 많은 부분을 할애하면서, 이에 대해 각각 응수하는 방식으로 임의 고용의 윤리적 문제점을 드러내고 있다. 이를 통해 이 논문은 결국 ‘이유 없이 해고당하지 않을 권리’ 개념 형성을 시도하면서 절차적 정당성 확보의 중요성에 대한 논의를 전개하고 있다. 그리고 이런 논의는 무단 해고로부터 자유로울 권리가 고용인에게 있음을 주장하면서, 고용주의 무제약적 해고권이 제한되면 대신 남은 그 여분의 자리에는 정당한 절차에 대한 고용인의 권리가 채워질 수 있다는 방식으로 이루 어지고 있다. (shrink)

This study analyzes the at-will employment doctrine using a tool that encompasses the complementarity of results-based utilitarian ethics, rule-based duty ethics, and virtue-based character ethics. The paper begins with a discussion of the importance of the problem followed by its evolution and current status. After describing the method of analysis, the central section evaluates the employment at-will doctrine, and is informed by Lord Acton's dictum, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The conclusion explores (...) the implications of the findings. (shrink)

Algorithmic decision-making based on profiling may significantly affect people’s destinies. As a rule, however, explanations for such decisions are lacking. What are the chances for a “right to explanation” to be realized soon? After an exploration of the regulatory efforts that are currently pushing for such a right it is concluded that, at the moment, the GDPR stands out as the main force to be reckoned with. In cases of profiling, data subjects are granted the right to receive meaningful information (...) about the functionality of the system in use; for fully automated profiling decisions even an explanation has to be given. However, the trade secrets and intellectual property rights (IPRs) involved must be respected as well. These conflicting rights must be balanced against each other; what will be the outcome? Looking back to 1995, when a similar kind of balancing had been decreed in Europe concerning the right of access (DPD), Wachter et al. (2017) find that according to judicial opinion only generalities of the algorithm had to be disclosed, not specific details. This hardly augurs well for a future right of access let alone to explanation. Thereupon the landscape of IPRs for machine learning (ML) is analysed. Spurred by new USPTO guidelines that clarify when inventions are eligible to be patented, the number of patent applications in the US related to ML in general, and to “predictive analytics” in particular, has soared since 2010—and Europe has followed. I conjecture that in such a climate of intensified protection of intellectual property, companies may legitimately claim that the more their application combines several ML assets that, in addition, are useful in multiple sectors, the more value is at stake when confronted with a call for explanation by data subjects. Consequently, the right to explanation may be severely crippled. (shrink)

This new edition of Will Kymlicka's best selling critical introduction to contemporary political theory has been fully revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last eleven years, particularly the new debates over issues of democratic citizenship and cultural pluralism. The book now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multiculturalism, in addition to updated chapters on utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism, and feminism. The many thinkers discussed include G. A. (...) Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, William Galston, Carol Gilligan, R. M. Hare, Chandran Kukathas, Catherine Mackinnon, David Miller, Philippe Van Parijs, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, John Roemer, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Iris Young. Extended guides to further reading have been added at the end of each chapter, listing the most important books and articles on each school of thought, as well as relevant journals and websites. Covering some of the most advanced contemporary thinking, Will Kymlicka writes in an engaging, accessible, and non-technical way to ensure that the book is suitable for students approaching these difficult concepts for the first time. This second edition promises to build on the original edition's success as a key text in the teaching of modern political theory. (shrink)

This paper resolves a paradox concerning colour constancy. On the one hand, our intuitive, pre-theoretical concept holds that colour constancy involves invariance in the perceived colours of surfaces under changes in illumination. On the other, there is a robust scientific consensus that colour constancy can persist in cerebral achromatopsia, a profound impairment in the ability to perceive colours. The first stage of the solution advocates pluralism about our colour constancy capacities. The second details the close relationship between colour constancy and (...) contrast. The third argues that achromatopsics retain a basic type of colour constancy associated with invariants in contrast processing. The fourth suggests that one person-level, conscious upshot of such processing is the visual awareness of chromatic contrasts ‘at’ the edges of surfaces, implicating the ‘colour for form’ perceptual function. This primitive type of constancy sheds new light on our most basic perceptual capacities, which mark the lower borders of representational mind. (shrink)

This study examines the ethical position and behaviour of multinational mining companies regarding hazardous employment and health and safety of employees in the South African mining industry. Mining companies have long had a reputation for being unethical on health and safety issues. Too often there are occurrences of fatal accidents, which bring the ethical behaviour of multinational mining companies into question. The litmus test for the mining companies is to devise benchmark standards that will reduce accidents tremendously at (...) their place of operations. This study addresses this issue by examining measures and regulations set up to check the occurrences of mining accidents in South Africa. It follows that the remedy needs to be fundamental and thoroughgoing. (shrink)

The author attempts to encompass the self, or a self, that, while at some times appears to be his own, at other times not, thus encompassing and continually morphing. It is a mixture of poetry and prose.

Colour constancy is a foundational and yet puzzling phenomenon. Standard appearance invariantism is threatened by the psychophysical matching argument, which is taken to favour variantism. This argument, however, is inconclusive. The data at best support a pluralist view: colour constancy is sometimes variantist, sometimes invariantist. I add another potential explanation of these data, complex invariantism, which adopts an atypical six-dimensional model of colour appearance. Finally I prospect for a unifying conception of constancy among two neglected notions: discriminatory colour constancy and (...) relational colour constancy. The former arguably marks a common core capacity that is present across widely differing viewing contexts. (shrink)

This paper presents a new response to the colour similarity argument, an argument that many people take to pose the greatest threat to colour physicalism. The colour similarity argument assumes that if colour physicalism is true, then colour similarities should be scrutable under standard physical descriptions of surface reflectance properties such as their spectral reflectance curves. Given this assumption, our evident failure to find such similarities at the reducing level seemingly proves fatal to colour physicalism. I argue that we should (...) dispense with this assumption, and thus endorse the inscrutability of colour similarity. This strategy is inspired by parallels between the colour similarity argument and the explanatory gap between mind and body made vivid by Jackson’s (1986) knowledge argument, and in particular by type-B physicalist responses to that argument. This inscrutability response is further motivated by cases in chemistry and biochemistry in which analogous scrutability theses fail to hold. Along the way, I present a challenge to standard formulations of the colour similarity argument based on the extreme context sensitivity of the similarity relation. Most presentations of the argument fail to control for such contextual variation, which raises the distinct possibility that the argument equivocates on the similarity relation across its premises. Although ultimately inconclusive, this context challenge forces a significant reformulation of the colour similarity argument, and highlights the need for much greater care in handling claims about colour similarity. (shrink)

In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler argues that nonviolent movements must replace a dominant neurotic identitarianism with a commitment to preserving relational life. However, Butler also argues that because relationality is volatile, freedom and equality cannot be accomplished through a simple negation of separation. Instead, nonviolence must be directed at moments of relational volatility precisely when violence is compelled. Drawing on Klein’s theory of subjectivity—in which imagining ourselves as other is a precondition for imagining ourselves independent—and on Benjamin’s vision (...) of conflict resolution in encountering the other without instrumentality, Butler asks that we meet such moments by honoring interdependence. While affirming much in Butler’s analysis, this article locates (1) a tension between Butler’s poststructuralist and psychoanalytic commitments, (2) the reification of a non-relational liberal subject as hegemonic, and (3) a tendency towards theoretical exclusivity. Through addressing these weaknesses, we can retain more of a positive role than Butler affords to traditional elements of the nonviolent toolkit such as love, morality, and upholding human rights prefaced on the integrity and dignity of the individual, to augment their theory as one among many resources for a diverse and multicultural nonviolent pursuit of social and political progress. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu was the most influential sociologist of the later 20th Century. The framework he developed continues to inspire countless researchers across the globe and provokes intense debates long after his death. Novel concepts, innovative applications and countless elaborations spring up every day, bulking out and shaping a distinct, if not always entirely consistent, body of work that might be characterised as a recognisable tradition. For those coming to Bourdieu for the first time, therefore, and interested in using his ideas (...) in their own research, it no longer makes sense to confine oneself to the ideas of the man himself. An overview of the varied ways his concepts and arguments have been deepened and updated to make sense of new times or to fill certain gaps, and how insights on seemingly disconnected topics weave together into a bigger picture, is not just desirable but essential. Bourdieu and After aims to provide exactly this overview. Working closely with Bourdieu's own writings, but also covering a wide range of research and literature inspired by him, it aims to guide the reader through the key principles, the major and minor concepts and the concrete findings of Bourdieusian sociology as clearly and comprehensively as possible. It explains the difficult and often overlooked philosophical foundations, walks through the logic of famous terms like 'field', 'habitus' and 'capital' and demonstrates how they have been or can be used to provide powerful accounts of colonialism, the emergence of nation states and the rise of global social relations. It covers topics that Bourdieu was famous for analysing, like class and educational inequality, yet also traverses subjects that he said little on but which others influenced by him have tackled in depth, such as ethnicity, sexuality and family. Along the way Atkinson seeks to undermine some of the common criticisms levelled at Bourdieu while identifying remaining gaps and limitations. Rather than simply recognise the problems, however, Atkinson proposes possible solutions too - solutions that are facilitated, he argues, by characterising Bourdieusian sociology as what he calls 'relational phenomenology'. (shrink)

In the final pages of On What Matters, Volume II, Derek Parfit comments: ‘We live during the hinge of history... If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period... What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history.’ This passage echoes Parfit's comment, in Reasons and Persons, that ‘the next few centuries will be the most important in human history’. -/- But is the claim that we live (...) at the hinge of history true? The argument of this paper is that it is not. The paper first suggests a way of making the hinge of history claim precise and action-relevant in the context of the question of whether altruists should try to do good now, or invest their resources in order to have more of an impact later on. Given this understanding, there are two worldviews - the Time of Perils and Value Lock-in views - on which we are indeed living during, or about to enter, the hinge of history. -/- This paper then presents two arguments against the hinge of history claim: first, that it is a priori extremely unlikely to be true, and that the evidence in its favour is not strong enough to overcome this a priori unlikelihood; second, an inductive argument that our ability to influence events has been increasing over time, and we should expect that trend to continue into the future. The paper concludes by considering two additional arguments in favour of the claim, and suggests that though they have some merit, they are not sufficient for us to think that the present time is the most important time in the history of civilisation. GPI Working Paper No. 12-2020. (shrink)

This work systematically explicates and defends four key claims in Kant's moral philosophy: The human will is some form of practical reason. The supreme criterion for determining the morality of our choices is provided by an a priori moral law. We find this law to be a source of felt value; it commands unqualified respect. We must suppose the human will is free. ;Traditionally, Kant has been read as holding that these claims imply that the responsible moral agent (...) is a noumenon whose will is a pure practical reason structured completely a priori by the moral law. I show that this position must be rejected on philosophical grounds because it implies that the agent is not free, has an impotent and vacuous will, and is neither obligated nor capable of acting out of a sense of respect for the moral law. ;I argue an alternative reading of Kant is textually sound and philosophically superior. This alternative view, which is explicated and defended in detail, holds that: The human will is empirical practical reason. The moral law is an a priori structure which is always applied a posteriori. It is not constitutive but regulative. The feeling of respect is an intuition of the formal pattern of the subjective time order which results insofar as the a priori structure of empirical practical reason directs or commands the movement of our attention. The responsible moral agent is neither a phenomenal object or a noumenal object but rather a subject, a being of a third and distinct ontological kind. ;In working out such an interpretation, I also reconstruct Kant's account of the relations between the faculties of imagination, understanding, reason, and will, holding them to be simply alternative employments of a single, underlying power of synthesis. I also recharacterize the fundamental project of Kant's critical enterprise in order to locate his moral philosophy within it, arguing that his central concern is with how judgment is possible. (shrink)

Summary A famous debate between John Ray, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and Augustus Quirinus Rivinus at the end of the seventeenth century has often been referred to as signalling the beginning of a rift between classificatory methods relying on logical division and classificatory methods relying on empirical grouping. Interestingly, a couple of decades later, Linnaeus showed very little excitement in reviewing this debate, and this although he was the first to introduce the terminological distinction of artificial vs. natural methods. In (...) this paper, I will explain Linnaeus's indifference by the fact that earlier debates were revolving around problems of plant diagnosis rather than classification. From Linnaeus's perspective, they were therefore concerned with what he called artificial methods alone ? diagnostic tools, that is, which were artificial no matter which characters were taken into account. The natural method Linnaeus proposed, on the other hand, was not about diagnosis, but about relations of equivalence which played a vital, although largely implicit role in the practices of specimen exchange on which naturalists relied to acquire knowledge of the natural world. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in philosophy of action that there is and must be teleologically basic action: something done on an occasion without doing it by means of doing anything else. It is widely believed that basic actions are exercises of skill. As the source of the need for basic action is the structure of practical reasoning, this yields a conception of skill and practical reasoning as complementary but mutually exclusive. On this view, practical reasoning and complex intentional action depend (...) on skill and basic action, but the latter pair are not themselves rationally structured: the movements a basic action comprises are not intentional actions, and they are not structured as means to an end. However, Michael Thompson and Douglas Lavin have argued that action that bears no inner rational structure is not intentional action at all, and that therefore there can be no such thing as basic action. In this paper, I argue that their critique shows that standard conceptions of basic action are indeed untenable, but not that we can do without an alternative. I develop an alternative conception of skill and basic action on which their basicness is not to be equated with simplicity: like deliberation and non-basic action, they are teleologically complex, but their complexity takes a different form. On this view, skill contrasts with deliberation—not because it is not a manifestation of practical reason, but because the two are specifically different manifestations of practical reason. (shrink)

Inflationists have argued that truth is a causal-explanatory property on the grounds that true belief facilitates practical success: we must postulate truth to explain the practical success of certain actions performed by rational agents. Deflationists, however, have a seductive response. Rather than deny that true belief facilitates practical success, the deflationist maintains that the sole role for truth here is as a device for generalisation. In particular, each individual instance of practical success can be explained only by reference to a (...) relevant instance of a T-schema; the role of truth is just to generalise over these individualised explanations. I present a critical problem for this strategy. Analogues of the deflationist’s individualised explanations can be produced by way of explanation of coincidental instances of practical success where the agent merely has the right false beliefs. By deflationary lights, there is no substantive explanatory difference between such coincidental and non-coincidental instances of practical success. But the non-/coincidental distinction just is an explanatory distinction. The deflationist’s individualised explanations of non-coincidental instances of practical success must therefore be inadequate. However, I argue that the deflationist’s prospects for establishing an explanatory contrast between these cases by supplementing her individualised explanations are, at best, bleak. The inflationist, by contrast, is entitled to the obvious further explanatory premise needed to make sense of the distinction. As such, pending some future deflationary rejoinder, the deflationary construal of the principle that true belief facilitates practical success must be rejected; and with it the deflationary conception of truth. (shrink)

A central thinker on the question of the animal in continental thought, Élisabeth de Fontenay moves in this volume from Jacques Derrida’s uneasily intimate writing on animals to a passionate frontal engagement with political and ethical theory as it has been applied to animals—along with a stinging critique of the work of Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri as well as with other “utilitarian” philosophers of animal–human relations. Humans and animals are different from one another. To conflate them is to be (...) intellectually sentimental. And yet, from our position of dominance, do we not owe them more than we often acknowledge? In the searching first chapter on Derrida, she sets out “three levels of deconstruction” that are “testimony to the radicalization and shift of that philosopher’s argument: a strategy _through_ the animal, exposition to an animal or to this animal, and compassion _toward_ animals.” For Fontenay, Derrida’s writing is particularly far-reaching when it comes to thinking about animals, and she suggests many other possible philosophical resources including Adorno, Leibniz, and Merleau-Ponty. Fontenay is at her most compelling in describing philosophy’s ongoing indifference to animal life—shading into savagery, underpinned by denial—and how attempts to exclude the animal from ethical systems have in fact demeaned humanity. But Fontenay’s essays carry more than philosophical significance. _Without Offending Humans_ reveals a careful and emotionally sensitive thinker who explores the unfolding of humans’ assessments of their relationship to animals—and the consequences of these assessments for how we define ourselves. (shrink)

Western democracies have developed a number of effective models for accommodating ethnocultural diversity. One of these involves the use of federal or quasi-federal forms of territorial autonomy to enable self-government for national minorities and indigenous peoples. These forms of territorial autonomy are in general a success. The merits of these models have been underestimated because many people measure success by an inappropriate criterion: namely, the absence of secessionist mobilization. This cannot be the correct standard for evaluating democratic multination states. The (...) success of a common Western approach to territorial autonomy is related, in a complex way, to a particular view about the legitimacy and perhaps even inevitability of secessionist mobilization. (shrink)

Michael Burawoy’s recent book-length engagement with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu constitutes, at root, a Marxist critique of its inability to conceive of the dominated as anything other than duped and submissive, despite this sitting uneasily with Bourdieu’s own research and political practice later in life. Burawoy wonders whether Bourdieusians will be able to recognise the limits of their master’s thought, and set about revising and extending it, in the same way as Marxists did of their own master. This (...) article responds by doing precisely that. After clarifying a different reading of misrecognition, symbolic violence and habitus, it draws out a Bourdieusian theory of social change and a ‘thicker’ conception of contemporary social orders that can accommodate or dissolve Burawoy’s arguments while maintaining fundamental separation from the Marxist project. (shrink)

‘Moral hazard’ is an economic term which commonly refers to situations in which people have a tendency to increase their exposure to risk when the costs of their actions, should they get unlucky, befall someone else. Once insured, for example, a person might have little reason, financially speaking, to be careful if he will get fully reimbursed for his losses should things go wrong, especially if he does not risk an increase in his insurance premium fees. In this article, (...) I argue that moral hazards are not morally neutral. To this end, I distinguish between concepts that call for a moral value judgement but do not have a fixed moral value and those that call for a moral value judgement and also have a fixed moral value. In short, this article examines questions that lie at the intersection of ethics and economics. (shrink)

The telling of tales is always a troubling business, and the way in which we tell stories about ourselves and about others always involves a degree of ethical risk. Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-Storytelling explores the troubling nature of storytelling through a reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is a thinker who has a complex relationship with literature and with storytelling. At times, Levinas is a teller of powerful tales about ethics; at other times, on ethical grounds, he disavows (...) storytelling altogether. Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-Storytelling explores the tensions between philosophy and storytelling that run throughout Levinas's work. By asking about how Levinas tells and untells his stories, and by risking the telling of tales that Levinas himself does not dare to tell, this book opens up new ways of thinking about Levinas's ethics of responsibility. It may be, as Levinas often insists, that storytelling presents us with ethical dangers; but Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-Storytelling makes the case that an ethics of responsibility may demand that, whilst mindful of these dangers, we nevertheless continually seek out new stories to tell about ourselves, about others and about the world. (shrink)

Through a close reading of Plato’s Euthyphro, I reopen an old question: what would it look like to think piously? Although the dialogue itself is aporetic with regard to the definition of piety as such, I show that a specifically philosophical piety emerges: namely, the capacity to deal well with sameness and difference. A look at central features of the dialogues that provide the Euthyphro’s dramatic context confirms this claim.

Though everyday life accords a great deal of significance to practical abilities—such as the ability to walk, to speak French, to play the piano—philosophers of action pay surprisingly little attention to them. By contrast, abilities are discussed in various other philosophical projects. From these discussions, a partial theory of abilities emerges. If the partial theory—which is at best adequate only to a few examples of practical abilities—were correct, then philosophers of action would be right to ignore practical abilities, because they (...) could play no fundamental role in an account of human agency. For the idea that practical abilities *do* play a fundamental role in human agency to be worth considering, an alternative conception of them is needed. As a first step, I attempt some of the necessary ground-clearing work. (shrink)

Julia Annas proposes to shed light on the intelligence of virtue through an analogy with the intelligence of practical skills. To do so, she first aims to distinguish genuine skills and skillful actions from mere habits and routine behaviour: like skills, habits are acquired through habituation and issue in action immediately (i.e. unmediated by reasoning about what to do), but the routine behaviour in which habit issues is mindless and unintelligent, and cannot serve to establish or illuminate the intelligence of (...) virtuous action. In a second step, she argues that virtue has the same kind of intellectual structure—and is acquired through the same kind of habituation—as skill. I argue that Annas’s proposal fails at the first step: her conceptions of the rational articulacy of skill and the immediacy that characterizes its exercise in action cannot be squared. I offer an alternative conception of the intelligence of skill and its exercise that draws on Aristotle’s conception of rational capacities as two-way powers. But as a virtue is not a two-way power, virtues and skills do not share a common intellectual structure. (shrink)

The ideas (i) that skill is a form of knowledge and (ii) that it can be taught are commonplace in both ancient philosophy and everyday life. I argue that contemporary epistemology lacks the resources to adequately accommodate them. Intellectualist and anti-intellectualist accounts of knowledge how struggle to represent the transmission of skill via teaching and learning (§II), in part because each adopts a fundamentally individualistic approach to the acquisition of skill that focuses on individual practice and experience; consequently, learning from (...) an expert’s teaching is rendered at best peripheral (§III). An account of the transmission of skill that focuses on guided practice is shown to be immanent in an anti-individualist account of skill (§IV) that takes seriously the Aristotelian ideas that skills are rational capacities and second natures by developing the thought that doing, teaching, and practising are three moments of an a priori unity: the life-cycle of a skill (§V). (shrink)

Education aims at more than supplying learners with information, or knowledge of facts. Even when the transmission of information is at stake, abilities relevant to using that information are among the things that teachers aim, or ought to aim, to inculcate. We may think that abilities for critical reflection on knowledge, and critical thinking more generally, are central to what teachers should cultivate in their students. Moreover, we may hope that students acquire not merely the ability to (e.g.) think critically, (...) but the propensity or habit of doing so. We hope that critical thinking will be something they *do* do, not something they merely *can* do; that they will become, not merely capable of inquiry, but inquisitive; and so on. If education aims at more than the inculcation of propositional knowledge, are these other aims non-cognitive, or non-epistemic? This essay aims to make progress on this question by critically examining Gilbert Ryle's conceptions of skill and habit. (shrink)

Truth pluralists say that truth-bearers in different “discourses”, “domains”, “domains of discourse”, or “domains of inquiry” are apt to be true in different ways – for instance, that mathematical discourse or ethical discourse is apt to be true in a different way to ordinary descriptive or scientific discourse. Moreover, the notion of a “domain” is often explicitly employed in formulating pluralist theories of truth. Consequently, the notion of a “domain” is attracting increasing attention, both critical and constructive. I argue that (...) this is a red herring. First, I identify the theoretical role for which pluralists appeal to domains, which is to answer what I call the “Individuation Problem”: saying what determines the way in which a particular truth-bearer is apt to be true. Second, I argue that pluralists need not appeal to domains for this purpose. I thus conclude that, despite the usual way of glossing the view, there is no role for the notion of a “domain” to play in the pluralist’s theory of truth. I argue that this defuses the “Problem of Mixed Atomics” and allows the pluralist to sidestep potentially intractable disputes about the nature of domains. (shrink)

Perhaps Butler is too dismissive of the emancipatory potential of the liberal tradition and could do more to show how mania and the “fiction” of a relational self can be mobilized to turn violent self-preservation into nonviolent, collective-self-preservation. Nevertheless, her call to build a radically egalitarian world—based on the commitment to a daily practice of deidentifying with even our deepest convictions if they problematize viewing any life as anything less than incalculably valuable—invokes the sublime, nonviolent force of Mandela, King, and (...) Gandhi. Butler does all this in a manner capable of grappling with the multiple, competing streams in popular discourse that have led to such voices losing status as the wisest, most radical, and pragmatic life affirmations in the history of our species. The ability to hold up the nonviolent beacon of humanity to the best postmodern scrutiny marks Butler’s latest book as an essential message for our shared human community, standing, as we do, at the precipice where boundless life-affirmation meets unimaginable destructiveness. (shrink)

One of the main lines of research in algorithmic fairness involves individual fairness (IF) methods. Individual fairness is motivated by an intuitive principle, similar treatment, which requires that similar individuals be treated similarly. IF offers a precise account of this principle using distance metrics to evaluate the similarity of individuals. Proponents of individual fairness have argued that it gives the correct definition of algorithmic fairness, and that it should therefore be preferred to other methods for determining fairness. I argue that (...) individual fairness cannot serve as a definition of fairness. Moreover, IF methods should not be given priority over other fairness methods, nor used in isolation from them. To support these conclusions, I describe four in-principle problems for individual fairness as a definition and as a method for ensuring fairness: (1) counterexamples show that similar treatment (and therefore IF) are insufficient to guarantee fairness; (2) IF methods for learning similarity metrics are at risk of encoding human implicit bias; (3) IF requires prior moral judgments, limiting its usefulness as a guide for fairness and undermining its claim to define fairness; and (4) the incommensurability of relevant moral values makes similarity metrics impossible for many tasks. In light of these limitations, I suggest that individual fairness cannot be a definition of fairness, and instead should be seen as one tool among several for ameliorating algorithmic bias. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses a series of hybridization experiments carried out by Nils Herman Nilsson-Ehle between 1900 and 1907 at a plant breeding station in Svalöf, Sweden. Since the late 1880s, the Svalöf station had been renowned for its ‘scientific’ breeding methods, which basically consisted of an elaborate system of record-keeping through which the offspring of individual plants were traced over generations while being meticulously described. This record system corresponded to a certain breeding technique and certain theoretical convictions . (...) Inspired by Tschermack’s translation of Mendel’s Pisum-paper, Nilsson-Ehle began his experiments in 1900 and published a first, major synthesis of his findings in 1908. If one compares these experiments as documented in the breeding records, with their representations in print, one encounters discrepancies in terms of procedure and presentation of data. This can be explained by the fact that Nilsson-Ehle was obliged to follow the recording and breeding procedures institutionalised at Svalöf, and these procedures, grounded in a taxonomic discourse, left little room for Mendelian hybridisation experiments. The twists and turns that this story takes are analysed in terms of Bachelardian philosophy of science, where the ‘epistemological obstacle’ functions as a central, analytic category. In contrast to Bachelard, however, I will characterise these obstacles as being of an institutional, rather than mental, nature. Thus characterized, moreover, they turn out to have been prerequisites as much as barriers to scientific progress. (shrink)

"The Marriage Translation" argues that a Benjaminian account of translation can shed new light on the ways in which contemporary practices of queer alliance transform, and are transformed by, legal and political discourse. In a constellation of readings—of arguments for the French pacs, of Benjamin's essays on translation, and on Goethe's Elective Affinities, as well as of two photos of the illegal weddings celebrated in San Francisco and in Bègles, France—the article emphasizes the ways social contexts are sometimes reinvigorated and (...) at other times ignored by the demand for certain forms of legal recognition. (shrink)

THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer Universitys Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at Americas founding. The book begins with a comparison between the flood accounts in Genesis and the Mesopotamian (...) Atra-Has's and advances all the way to the 2014 Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The intervening chapters examine the contributions of figures such as Emperor Julian, Roger Williams, Cecilius Calvert, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founders. Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak. (shrink)

The paper works out an account of the piety proper to philosophical thought. The investigation proceeds as a critical interpretation of three enigmatic claims made by Martin Heidegger about ‘the piety of thinking,’ but the paper is not simply exegetical; the interpretive work is constantly in service of an attempt to think through the phenomenon independently. Plato’s Euthyphro and Nietzsche’s critique of scientific piety both hover in the background of Heidegger’s pronouncements, and they are given special attention here. Through the (...) investigation, philosophical piety is shown to be a virtuous capacity to respond with fitting submission to the truth as what is insurmountably prior to us. To respond fittingly is, at least, to deal well with sameness and difference, which in the case of piety means to recognize two features of our situation: that philosophical questioning necessarily arises out of a fundamental listening, or affirmation, and that we always belong to being but only ever across a gap. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates current developments in marketing fair trade labelled products and "no sweat" manufactured goods, and argues that both the fair trade and ethical trade movements increasingly rely on strategies for bottom-up change, converting consumers "one cup at a time". This individualistic approach, which we call "shopping for a better world", must, we argue, be augmented by more collectivist approaches to affect transformative change. Specifically, we look at the concept of mission-driven organizations pursuing leadership roles in developing affinity (...) relationships to promote fair and ethical trade and developing ethical spaces. Increasingly, a range of organizations are restructuring their operations, so that their mission is reflected in ethical practices throughout their operations, including product sourcing and product sales. First, ethical purchasing policies operated by non-profits and public agencies represent markets through which fair/ethical products reach end consumers. The efforts discussed to create ethical spaces through direct democracy and electoral mandate build on a broad-based affinity with the principles of fair and ethical trade. Second, we explore the potential for "mission-driven" non-profit organiza- tions, such as zoos and aquaria for merging their mission of conservation education with their marketing activities through the operation of their shops and cafes. Interesting initiatives to link the conservation message to food choices is being undertaken by a number of zoos and aquaria, while there is scope for increased linkages in the giftware sold in their shops. (shrink)

Why do racist oppression and capitalist exploitation often seem so inescapable and intractable? To describe and explain adequately the persistence of racist ideology, to specify its role in the maintenance of racial capitalism, and to imagine the conditions of its abolition, we must understand racist ideology as a form of false consciousness. False consciousness gets things “right” at the level of appearance, but it mistakes that appearance for a “deep” or essential truth. This chapter articulates a novel, positive account of (...) first-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about the world that are sustained and superficially justified by objective social arrangements, and of second-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about how one has come to hold the beliefs that one does. To dismantle racist ideology requires political movements that craft theoretical interventions highlighting the inessentiality and contingency of despised racial groups’ oppressed status, as well as practical interventions aimed at directly undermining the oppressive conditions that are reflected in racist beliefs about the “naturalness” or “appropriateness” of these groups’ degraded status. (shrink)