The Equality Act 2010 brings the concept of indirect discrimination to discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. This has real potential to require a change in practice in certain types of clinical trials of which relevant ethics committees should be aware.

The inclusion of girls and women in sport at all levels depends on single sex categories for most sports from puberty onwards, because of the biological differences between the sexes. Most sport is, by definition, competitive; involving invasion games, teams, leagues, races, competitions and sometimes rankings, from foundation to excellence. Girls and women are underrepresented, particularly in traditional sport, as recognised by the UK Sports Councils and most governing bodies of sport. This paper uses feminist philosophy: Lister on androcentric citizenship, (...) and Fraser on justice as balance, framing, recognition, representation and redistribution. It investigates the impact on the inclusion of girls and women, of eligibility policies adopting ‘self-identification of gender’ guidelines for the inclusion of transgender people in sport, at participation rather than elite levels. It explores fairness and equality as incorporated in law in the 2010 Equality Act in Britain, and contributes to ‘equality evidence’ available to the UK Sports Councils and GBS. These bodies are charged with developing fair and inclusive evidence-based eligibility criteria, in sports participation settings, for both girls and women, and transgender people. (shrink)

The inclusion of girls and women in sport at all levels depends on single sex categories for most sports from puberty onwards, because of the biological differences between the sexes. Most sport is, by definition, competitive; involving invasion games, teams, leagues, races, competitions and sometimes rankings, from foundation to excellence. Girls and women are underrepresented, particularly in traditional sport, as recognised by the UK Sports Councils and most governing bodies of sport. This paper uses feminist philosophy: Lister on androcentric citizenship, (...) and Fraser on justice as balance, framing, recognition, representation and redistribution. It investigates the impact on the inclusion of girls and women, of eligibility policies adopting ‘self-identification of gender’ guidelines for the inclusion of transgender people in sport, at participation rather than elite levels. It explores fairness and equality as incorporated in law in the 2010 Equality Act in Britain, and contributes to ‘equality evidence’ available to the UK Sports Councils and GBS. These bodies are charged with developing fair and inclusive evidence-based eligibility criteria, in sports participation settings, for both girls and women, and transgender people. (shrink)

Self-regarding acts are frequently classified as non-moral; even more frequently, they are assumed to have less moral weight than parallel other-regarding acts. I argue briefly against the first claim, and at greater length against the second. Our intuitions about the lesser moral weight of self-regarding acts arise from imperfectly recognized, and morally relevant, differences between acts which are ordinarily described in misleadingly parallel phrases. ‘Love of self,’ for instance, and ‘love of another’ are not symmetrical attitudes, in spite of the (...) symmetrical grammar. More obviously, one cannot steal from, lie to, nor force oneself in the same way one can do these things to others. I conclude, therefore, that difference in moral weight never stems merely from a difference in the person concerned, but rather from differences between the actions themselves; furthermore, that whatever it is wrong to do to a willing other, it is wrong to do to oneself. (shrink)

The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act enacted a conceptual shift in the meaning of ‘disability.’ Rather than defining ‘disability’ as a disadvantageous physical or mental deficit of persons, it codifies the understanding of ‘disability’ as a defective state of society which disadvantages these persons. In contrast, the standard medical model incorrectly conceptualizes disabled persons as biologically inferior, and thus confines them to the role of recipients of benevolence or care. Turning to an ethic of caring yields counter-intuitive results that conflict (...) with the conceptual apparatus of the ADA. It is argued that in order to liberate social thought from this medical model and thus move the disabled from being socially marginalized to being socially enabled, one must re-conceptualize current practice by adopting the ADA's conceptual framework. Keywords: caring, disability, equality, ethics, health care polic CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper defends the acts/omissions distinction which underpins the present law on euthanasia, from various criticisms, and aims to show that it is supported by fundamental principles. After rejecting arguments that deny the coherence and/or legal relevance of the distinction, the discussion proceeds to focus on the causal relationship between the doctor and the patient's death in each case. Although previous analyses, challenging the causal efficacy of omissions generally, are shown to be deficient, it is argued that in certain cases (...) of causing death by omission the causal authorship of the doctor lapses. The final part of the paper examines why this should be morally significant and proposes an answer in terms of the principle of equality. Assuming all other factors are equal, the infringement of this principle provides an additional reason against actively killing a patient, which is not present in cases of passively letting die. (shrink)

Discusses complex philosophical problems in concrete language to better understand the eternal concepts that shaped Western culture.

Contemporary industrialized societies have been confronted with the fact and consequences of women's increased participation in paid employment. Whether this increase has resulted from women's desire for equality or from changing economic circumstances, women and men have been faced with a crisis in the organization of work that concerns dependents, that is, those unable to care for themselves. This is labor that has been largely unpaid, often unrecognized, and yet is indispensable to human society.

To justify attraction to Dominant Traditional Masculinities and lack of attraction to non-aggressive men, some women defend opinions such as “there are no frigid women, only inexperienced men”. Such statements generate a large amount of sexual-affective insecurity in oppressed men and contribute to decoupling desire and ethics in sexual-affective relationships, which, in turn, reinforces a model of attraction to traditional masculinities that use coercion, thus perpetuating gender-based violence. New Alternative Masculinities represent a type of masculinity that reacts to reverse such (...) consequences with communicative acts, in which they state that women who support such discourses have never met a NAM man or have never experienced a successful sexual-affective relationship where passion, love, desire, and equality are all included. This article presents data analyzing these communicative acts to ultimately find the key to NAM communication that would contribute to changing attraction patterns. The data was collected using communicative daily life stories of three heterosexual white men and one heterosexual white woman, between the ages of 30 and 40. Findings emphasize the importance of self-confidence manifested by NAM men when communicating about sex and facing these offensive mottos in the presence of other men and women. Findings also demonstrate that supportive egalitarian relationships encourage the emergence of self-confidence in NAM men and that NAM men's self-confident communicative acts foster healthy relationships and obliterate coercive ones. (shrink)

This essay seeks to provide a justification for the ‘egalitarian authority claim’, according to which citizens of democratic states have a moral duty to obey (at least some) democratically made laws because they are the outcome of an egalitarian procedure. It begins by considering two prominent arguments that link democratic authority to a concern for equality. Both are ultimately unsuccessful; but their failures are instructive, and help identify the conditions that a plausible defense of the egalitarian authority claim must (...) meet. The first argument (discussed in Section II, after Section I clarifies what authority and democracy are taken to consist in) appeals to the simple idea that fairness disallows granting ourselves special privileges that we deny to others; and it suggests that fairness thus requires obeying democratic decisions rather than acting on our own judgment of the right policy. I show that this argument fails; and its failure indicates that we must invoke a less formal, more substantive understanding of equality to justify democratic authority. The second argument, recently suggested by Thomas Christiano, does just that. Democratic authority is, on this account, not justified by the formal demand for equal treatment but by the distinctive value of showing public equal respect to our fellow citizens. Such public equal respect requires treating as authoritative the democratic decisions in which citizens had an equal say. This argument does not, however, succeed in its goal either. While it plausibly establishes the value of democratic institutions, it does not provide grounds for a duty to obey democratic decisions (Section III). This essay thus develops an alternative argument, according to which egalitarian procedures have authority because, by obeying them, we can avoid acting on certain considerations that must be excluded from our intrinsically valuable egalitarian relationships. The authority of democratic decisions rests on the egalitarian fact that none of us has more of a say than any other, not on the further fact (crucial to the previous argument) that each of us has a positive say (Sections IV and V). The argument in turn helps us understand the limits of democratic authority: it is constrained not only by a demand for equality, and by considerations of justice, but also by a requirement of mutual concern without which our egalitarian relationships lack their distinctive value (Section VI). (shrink)

People often sincerely assert or judge one thing (for example, that all the races are intellectually equal) while at the same time being disposed to act in a way evidently quite contrary to the espoused attitude (for example, in a way that seems to suggest an implicit assumption of the intellectual superiority of their own race). Such cases should be regarded as ‘in-between’ cases of believing, in which it's neither quite right to ascribe the belief in question nor quite right (...) to say that the person lacks the belief. (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)

Significant minority populations confer richness and diversity to British society. Responsive end-of-life care is a universal need that has ascended the public agenda following myriad reports of inadequate provision. Nevertheless, the potential exists for unwitting discrimination when caring for terminally ill patients on the basis of their religion or faith. Recent implementation of the Equality Act 2010, together with the government and professional initiatives, promises to positively impact upon this area of contemporary relevance and concern, although the extent to (...) which facilitative policies can truly enhance patient care will depend upon how these are translated into care at the bedside. The contributions of health professionals will be central in meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities for meeting the religion and faith interests of patients of South Asian descent. (shrink)

Michael Levin, in Feminism and Freedom, argues that sex-stereotyping is inevitable and legitimate since there are innate non-anatomical differences between the sexes. He, further, believes that sex-stereotyping is compatible with members of both sexes acting freely and having equal opportunity in the job market and other areas of life. I will attack both claims, but I will particularly concentrate on the second one. I believe that Levin is only able to make his view sound plausible because of his minimal definitions (...) of “freedom” and “equal opportunity” which I shall argue are not acceptable. The result of his mistake is that he presents us with a false dilemma: We must choose between either a Libertarian ideal---which includes freedom, equal opportunity, the inevitable sex-stereotyping and resulting patriarchal society (since it cannot be eliminated voluntarily)---and Feminism---which denies the legitimacy of sex-stereotyping, insists that unequal outcome means inequality of opportunity and so supports a quota system, and attempts to accomplish its aims, at great cost, by depriving people of freedom. (shrink)

Michael Levin, in Feminism and Freedom, argues that sex-stereotyping is inevitable and legitimate since there are innate non-anatomical differences between the sexes. He, further, believes that sex-stereotyping is compatible with members of both sexes acting freely and having equal opportunity in the job market and other areas of life. I will attack both claims, but I will particularly concentrate on the second one. I believe that Levin is only able to make his view sound plausible because of his minimal definitions (...) of “freedom” and “equal opportunity” which I shall argue are not acceptable. The result of his mistake is that he presents us with a false dilemma: We must choose between either a Libertarian ideal---which includes freedom, equal opportunity, the inevitable sex-stereotyping and resulting patriarchal society (since it cannot be eliminated voluntarily)---and Feminism---which denies the legitimacy of sex-stereotyping, insists that unequal outcome means inequality of opportunity and so supports a quota system, and attempts to accomplish its aims, at great cost, by depriving people of freedom. (shrink)

Rancière’s political thought is the object of growing fascination, particularly as a lens through which to interpret contemporary political protests, yet his conception of axiomatic equality remains unexamined. This article investigates Rancière’s account of equality as a ‘presupposition’, showing that an axiom of equality guides momentary acts of resistance, but also serves as a ‘necessary and sufficient condition’ of all societies, however hierarchical. Although this account holds some appeal, I argue that it restricts equality to two, (...) not especially satisfying possibilities: a temporary revelation or a hidden secret. This rendering of axiomatic equality is symptomatic of Rancière’s general hostility toward institutional politics. Because Rancière tends to depict ‘institutions’ per se as oppressive, equality is positioned ‘outside’ the socio-political order – as its fleeting interruption or disavowed condition of possibility. I argue, on the contrary, that a radically egalitarian politics today should affirm a practice-centered project of institution-building. (shrink)

This essay explores the idea of acting from knowledge. This idea is a thought of ourselves: the distinctive way in which we act, in which we live, resides in this, that our actions, our life, may rest on knowledge. Yet the idea of action resting on knowledge is puzzling, even mysterious. The difficulty springs from the character of judgment that is knowledge: its objectivity. The objectivity of a judgment is a character of its validity: it is objectively valid. Yet it (...) is equally, and therefore, a character of the source of the reality of a valid judgment: a judgment that is knowledge is explained by nothing other than that which constitutes its validity. Now, action from knowledge partakes of this character of the knowledge on which it rests: it is explained by nothing other than what constitutes its validity, that is, its goodness. This dissolves the idea that action springs from a natural power, a power of change, a physis. That is the mystery. What could action be but the act of a natural power, and what could we be but agents of such a power? (shrink)

According to Corey Brettschneider, we can protect freedom of religion and promote equality, by distinguishing religious groups’ claims to freedom of expression and association from their claims to financial and verbal support from the state. I am very sympathetic to this position, which fits well with my own views of democratic rights and duties, and with the importance of recognizing the scope for political choice which democratic politics offers to governments and to citizens. This room for political choice, I (...) believe, is necessary if people are to have any chance of reconciling the conflicting moral and political obligations they are likely to face, however idealized our conception of democracy or morality. Granted that no amount of personal and political choice will ever guarantee that we do not encounter tragic choices, and painfully conflicting moral demands, it is an important feature of democracy – or so I believe – that its rights reflect the importance of mitigating these conflicts so that people are able, as a rule, to act as they ought, so that they do not experience their moral sentiments, beliefs and capacities simply as grounds for recrimination, alienation and despair. I therefore believe that democracies have good reason not to force the consciences of the undemocratic and the intolerant, where it is possible to accommodate such people without threatening the rights of others. However, the fact that I share many of Brettschneider’s intuitions and beliefs does not mean that I share them all. In particular, I find his conception of democracy unduly narrow, and unduly based on a rather idealized conception of the American constitution which is unlikely to appeal to those whose conceptions of democracy are more republican, more socialist, more pragmatic and more international than his. I have explained these worries elsewhere and drawn out some of their implications for his arguments about privacy and judicial review. There is no need to repeat them here. I will also set to one side my worries about his uninflected, overly abstract and rather reified characterization of the State, in the hope that others will discuss this and that, in the end, a more nuanced conception of the State and a more lively appreciation of the conflicting people, institutions, histories and norms which make up most states, will prove consistent with his arguments. Finally, I do not propose to enter into a detailed discussion of the difficulties of Brettschneider’s overly abstract and reified conception of State ‘speech’ and ‘expression’ which, while motivated by the language of American constitutionalism, appears to cover pretty much anything a government might do, from raising and spending taxes, to accepting judicial interpretations of contested constitutional provisions, or to affirmatively pronouncing on the goals that will animate its legislative agenda and its aspirations for citizen’s lives. Again, while I would have wished for a more nuanced and analytical discussion of so central a concept as ‘expression’ and, in particular, expression by ‘the State’, I am uncertain that anything fundamental in Brettschneider’s account of citizen rights and duties would be altered in the process. Instead, then, I want to focus on points in Brettschneider’s argument that intrigue, and sometimes puzzle, me the most and where issues of nuance and clarification might make a substantial difference to our views of equality and religious freedom. (shrink)

People with disabilities are often denied equal access to organ transplantation despite long‐standing federal nondiscrimination mandates. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, people cannot be excluded from consideration for organ transplantation because of disability itself, or because of stereotypes or assumptions about the value or quality of life with a disability. Instead, decisions concerning whether an individual is a candidate for organ transplantation should be based on an individualized assessment of the patient and on objective medical (...) evidence. Recent legal developments underscore these basic guarantees and signal a new focus on the policies, practices, and attitudes that continue to compromise equal access to life‐saving organ transplants for people with disabilities. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to offer a reading of Judith Butler’s understanding of the precarious, the notion which gives rise to her particular understanding of precarity. The first part of the article discusses the transition from the theory of performativity to the theory of precarity and claims that the body provides the link between a performative act and a precarious life. The second part scrutinizes the idea of the precarious as it appears in conjunction with life. Precariousness and (...) precarity are related to dispossessability and dispossession, and to a politically induced inequality. The article concludes with a claim that the notion of the precarious offers itself as a possible point of departure for an entirely different conceptualization of equality, and as a strong basis for coalitional action or collective struggle. The specific positioning of the body and the political desire for radical equality in Butler’s thought makes theories of performativity and precarity interrelated. (shrink)

This book presents 12 original essays on historical and contemporary philosophical discussions of judgment. The central issues explored in this volume can be separated into two groups namely, those concerning the act and object of judgment. What kind of act is judgment? How is it related to a range of other mental acts, states, and dispositions? Where and how does assertive force enter in? Is there a distinct category of negative judgments, or are these simply judgments whose objects are negative? (...) Concerning the object of judgment: How many objects are there of a given judgment? One, as on the dual relation theory of Frege and Moore? Or many as in Russell's later multiple relation theory? If there is a single object, is it a proposition? And if so, is it a force-neutral, abstract entity that might equally figure as the object of a range of intentional attitudes? Or is it somehow constitutively tied to the act itself? These and related questions are approached from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. istorical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Artificial Virtues and the Equally Sensible Non-Knaves: A Response to Gauthier Annette C. Baier Gauthier's splendidly dialectical paper1 first sets out Hume's official Treatise account ofhow each personhas a self-interested motive to curb her natural but socially troublesome self-interest, by agreeing to the adoption ofthe artifices ofprivate property rights, transfer by consent, and promise (provided others are also agreeing to adopt them), andhow the sympathy-dependent moral sentiment approves of (...) such a redirection of"the interested passion." Enlightened self-interest gives us the natural obligation tojustice; the fact that it is morally approved turns it into a moral obligation. Self-hatred for any breaches of the moral obligation may come in to bolster the self-interested motivation, and this will be helped along by the extra artifices employed by educators and politicians. So far so good. But now enters the sensible knave, who queries the initial assumption that each will in fact gain more by strict conformity to the rules of the Humean social artifices than by occasional carefully calculated and undetected breaches of them. If the knave is right, then the Treatise story ofhow reasonable self-interested people can get themselves to conscientiously respect property rights (including rights ofbarter), and to keep promises, is in trouble. Only by an erroneous calculation of their interest could they end with the motivation which Hume attributes to them, and finds to be morally approvable.Gauthier argues that there are indications even in the Treatise that Hume is aware ofthe flawed nature ofhis official account, since he attributes "sophistry" to some attempted justifications of honest behaviour, and attributes "feigned acts" of impossible willing to some conscientious promise-keepers. Gauthier finds Hume to have, in the Treatise, a second, less official story ofwhat it takes to be motivated to be just—that it takes error, and letting oneself be taken in by feignings and sophistry. In the Enquiry Concerning the Principles ofMorals this submerged account surfaces in the sensible knave's challenge and Hume's admission that his own answer will not be satisfactory to the knave. The charms of official Humeanjustice, Gauthierconcludes, are spurious, sincethe "anatomy" of the account of the rational motivation to be just is known to be unsound. "The sensible knave's message is thathuman society... lacks any moral foundation." Volume XVIII Number 2 429 ANNETTE C. BAIER This is a sombre tale. One of its unwelcome implications is that Hume himself, really believing that the knave is right, but unwilling tobe seen tohave the bad grace to "dehver a theory, however true which... leads to a practice dangerous and pernicious," is simply trying to "sink" the knave's truth in oblivion by creating a smoke-screen of insincere rhetoric about the greater delights of consciousness of integrity over the knave's satisfaction in his ill-gotten gains. So there really are two sombre tales—one, attributed to Hume, about justice, and one about Hume's dupUcity (or is it mere cynical frivolity?): Gauthier crafts both stories beautifully, directing our attention to bits ofHume's text injust the right order for his dramatic purposes. But is he giving us truth or fiction? I completely agree with Gauthier's version of Hume's official Treatise story, that the moral obligation to justice supervenes on the "natural obligation" for which Hume believes the natural motivation to be collectively redirected self- (or family) interest.2 1 agree that there are one or two passages, especially in the Treatise section, "Of the obUgation of promises," that seem to jar with this account, and which much somehow be explained. I agree that Hume believes that his reply to the knave is, from the knave's point ofview, unsatisfactory. Now for some disagreements. First, about Hume's reply to the knave.3From the viewpointofthevirtuous dues-payingmemberof"the party of humankind," Hume's is a perfectly satisfactory reply. It will be plain truth, for a person with the other Humean virtues (including equity, which is listed as a natural virtue),4 that justice will bring as great or greater good than would judicious injustice. Even if it would be "simply preposterous" to believe that the social order is dangerously threatened by any... (shrink)

On the one hand, there seem to be compelling parallels to moral responsibility, blameworthiness, and praiseworthiness in domains other than the moral. For example, we often praise people for their aesthetic and epistemic achievements and blame them for their failures. On the other hand, it has been argued that there is something special about the moral domain, so that at least one robust kind of responsibility can only be found there. In this paper, I argue that we can adopt a (...) unifying framework for locating responsible agency across domains, thereby capturing and explaining more of our actual practices. The key, I argue, is to identify the right conditions for being morally accountable, which I take to be a matter of having an opportunity of a good enough quality to act well. With this account in hand, I argue that we can adopt a unifying framework that allows us to recognize parallels across domains, even as it points the way to important differences among them. (shrink)

Intuitively, moral responsibility requires conscious awareness of what one is doing, and why one is doing it, but what kind of awareness is at issue? Neil Levy argues that phenomenal consciousness—the qualitative feel of conscious sensations—is entirely unnecessary for moral responsibility. He claims that only access consciousness—the state in which information (e.g., from perception or memory) is available to an array of mental systems (e.g., such that an agent can deliberate and act upon that information)—is relevant to moral responsibility. I (...) argue that numerous ethical, epistemic, and neuroscientific considerations entail that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is necessary for moral responsibility. I focus in particular on considerations inspired by P. F. Strawson, who puts a range of qualitative moral emotions—the reactive attitudes—front and center in the analysis of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In both their external and internal communications, organizations tend to present diversity management approaches and corporate social responsibility initiatives as a kind of morally ‘good’ organizational practice. With regard to the treatment of employees, both concepts largely assume equality to be an indicator of organizational ‘goodness’, e.g. in terms of equal treatment, or affording equal opportunities. Additionally, research on this issue predominantly refers to prescriptive and imperative moralities that address the initiatives themselves, and values them morally. Schopenhauer opposes these (...) moralities by conceptualizing morality as exclusively being based on the incentives of acting instead of the actions themselves. He identifies egoism, compassion, and malice as the sole incentives for every human action, whereby only those actions solely motivated by compassion can be ascribed genuine moral worth. In this context, this article shows that from a Schopenhauerian perspective, CSR and DM initiatives only have a genuine moral worth in so far as the individuals who have initiated or supported their implementation were exclusively motivated by compassion. Stressing the narrative of a business case, if utilized as a façade for true compassion that attaches economic legitimacy to these initiatives, does not necessarily harm their moral worth. The approach and the findings developed in this paper contribute to the discourse on the ethical behavior of organizations, as well as to the discourse on CSR and DM. (shrink)

This paper considers the development and judicial application of the Public Sector Equality Duty now found in section 149 Equality Act 2010, previously in a variety of forms in the Race Relations Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. It identifies a number of emerging themes in the jurisprudence concerned, in particular, with the relationship between the PSED and Wednesbury review, the extent of the information-gathering obligation it imposes, the delegability of PSED (...) decision-making and the timing of PSED challenge. It then considers the uncertainties which remain including, in particular, the application of the duty to various categories of decision-making, and concludes by assessing the impact of the PSED on challenges to ‘cuts’ cases arising from the reductions to public sector funding, and on domestic equality jurisprudence. (shrink)

This paper deals with the policy of affirmative action as an additional means for achieving equality of opportunity in society. It assumes that in modem society-at least in principle-the superior positions are distributed according to merit, and on the basis of fair competition. I argue that formal equality of opportunity injects apparently neutral requirements, such as experience, into the selection procedure for top positions, that, in fact, act particularly against women, since they allow the past employment situation to (...) affect the new selection. I use a statistical argument to show that without preferential treatment towards women, they will not overcome structural obstacles that prevent them from getting top positions. I also use the same argument to show that affirmative action at present contributes to equality of opportunity in the future. (shrink)

This paper deals with the policy of affirmative action as an additional means for achieving equality of opportunity in society. It assumes that in modem society-at least in principle-the superior positions are distributed according to merit, and on the basis of fair competition. I argue that formal equality of opportunity injects apparently neutral requirements, such as experience, into the selection procedure for top positions, that, in fact, act particularly against women, since they allow the past employment situation to (...) affect the new selection. I use a statistical argument to show that without preferential treatment towards women, they will not overcome structural obstacles that prevent them from getting top positions. I also use the same argument to show that affirmative action at present contributes to equality of opportunity in the future. (shrink)

The DACA program, administered by the Department of Homeland Security, protects Dreamers—undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. However, without legislative support, Dreamers face the imminent threat of losing their homes, rights, and deportation. I argue for the passage of the DREAM Act, which would protect Dreamers from unfair targeting and provide a path to citizenship. Dreamers possess a unique social membership in American society, and it is ethically imperative to shield them from deportation and grant them equal rights (...) as fellow citizens if we ought to demonstrate a commitment to addressing oppression and injustice. (shrink)

PREFACEProf. Göran Sundholm of Leiden University inspired the group of Logic at Lille and Valparaíso to start a fundamental review of the dialogical conception of logic by linking it to constructive type logic. One of Sundholm's insights was that inference can be seen as involving an implicit interlocutor. This led to several investigations aimed at exploring the consequences of joining winning strategies to the proof-theoretical conception of meaning. The leading idea is, roughly, that while introduction rules lay down the conditions (...) under which a winning strategy for the Proponent may be built, the elimination rules lay down those elements of the Opponent's assertions that the Proponent has the right to use for building winning strategy. It is the pragmatic and ethical features of obligations and rights that naturally lead to the dialogical interpretation of natural deduction.During the Visiting Professorship of Prof. Sundholm at Lille in (2012) the group of Lille started delving into the ways of implementing Per Martin-Löf's Constructive Type Theory with the dialogical perspective. In particular, Aarne Ranta's (1988) paper, the first publication on the subject, was read and discussed during Sundholm’s seminar. The discussions strongly suggested that the game-theoretical conception of quantifiers as deploying interdependent moves provide a natural link between CTT and dialogical logic. This idea triggered several publications by the group of Lille in collaboration with Nicolas Clerbout and Juan Redmond at the University of Valparaíso, including the publication of the book (2015) by Clerbout / Rahman that provides a systematic development of this way of linking CTT and the dialogical conception of logic. However the Clerbout / Rahman book was written from the CTT perspective on dialogical logic, rather than the other way round. The present book should provide the perspective from the other side of the dialogue between the Dialogical Framework and Constructive Type Theory. The main idea of our present study is that Sundholm's (1997) notion of epistemic assumption is closely linked to the Copy-Cat Rule or Socratic Rule that distinguishes the dialogical framework from other game-theoretical approaches. One way to read the present book is as a further development of Sundholm’s extension of Austin's (1946, p. 171) remark on acts of assertion to inference. Indeed, Sundholm (2013, p. 17) gave the following forceful formulation: When I say therefore, I give others my authority for asserting the conclusion, given theirs for asserting the premisses.Per Martin-Löf, in recent lectures, have utilized the dialogical perspective on epistemic assumptions to get out of a certain circle that threatens the explanation of the notions of inference and demonstration. A demonstration may be explained as a chain of (immediate) inferences starting from no premisses. That an inference J1... Jn—————Jis valid means that the conclusion J can be made evident on the assumption that J1, …, Jn are known. The notion of epistemic assumption thus enters in the explanation of valid inference. We cannot, however, in this explanation understand 'known' in the sense of demonstrated, for then we are explaining the notion of inference in terms of demonstration, whereas demonstration has been explained in terms of inference. Martin-Löf suggests that we here understand 'known' in the sense of asserted, so that epistemic assumptions are judgements others have made, judgements for which others have taken the responsibility; that the inference is valid then means that, given that others have taken responsbility for the premisses, I can take responsibility for the conclusion:The circularity problem is this: if you define a demonstration to be a chain of immediate inferences, then you are defining demonstration in terms of inference. Now we are considering an immediate inference and we are trying to give a proper explanation of that; but, if that begins by saying: Assume that J1, …, Jn have been demonstrated – then you are clearly in trouble, because you are about to explain demonstration in terms of the notion of immediate inference, hence when you are giving an account of the notion of immediate inference, the notion of demonstration is not yet at your disposal. So, to say: Assume that J1, …, Jn have already been demonstrated, makes you accusable of trying to explain things in a circle. The solution to this circularity problem, it seems to me now, comes naturally out of this dialogical analysis. […]The solution is that the premisses here should not be assumed to be known in the qualified sense, that is, to be demonstrated, but we should simply assume that they have been asserted, which is to say that others have taken responsibility for them, and then the question for me is whether I can take responsibility for the conclusion. So, the assumption is merely that they have been asserted, not that they have been demonstrated. That seems to me to be the appropriate definition of epistemic assumption in Sundholm's sense. One of the main tenets of the present study is that the further move of relating the Socratic Rule rule with judgemental equality provides both a simpler and more direct way to implement the constructive type theoretical approach within the dialogical framework. Such a reconsideration of the Socratic Rule, roughly speaking, amounts to the following. 1.A move from P that brings-forward a play-object in order to defend an elementary proposition A can be challenged by O. 2.The answer to such a challenge, involves P bringing forward a definitional equality that expresses the fact that the play-object chosen by P copies the one O has chosen while positing A. For short, the equality expresses at the object-languaje level that the defence of P relies on the authority given to O to be able to produce the play-objects she brings forward. More generally, according to this view, a definitional equality established by P and brought forward while defending the proposition A, expresses the equality between a play-object (introduced by O) and the instruction for building a play-object deployed by O while affirming A. So it can be read as a computation rule that indicates how to compute O's instructions. Let us recall that from the strategic point of view, O's moves correspond to elimination rules of demonstrations. Thus, the dialogical rules that prescribe how to introduce a definitional equality – correspond – at the strategic level – to the definitional equality rules for CTT as applied to the selector-functions involved in the elimination rules. So, what we are doing here is extending the dialogical interpretation of Sundholm's epistemic assumption to the rules that set up the definitional equality of a type.The present work is structured in the following way:•In the Introduction we state the main tenets that guide our book•Chapter II contains a brief overview of Constructive Type Theory penned by Ansten Klev with exercises and their solutions. •Chapter III offers a novel presentation of the dialogical conception of logic. In fact, the first two sections of the chapter provide an overview of standard dialogical logic – including solved exercises, slightly adapted to the content of the present volume. The rest of the sections develop a new dialogical approach to Constructive Type Theory. •Chapters IV and V contain the main body of our study, namely the relation between the Socratic Rule, epistemic assumptions, and equality. The chapter provides the reader with thoroughly worked out examples with comments. •After the Final Remarks the book containsa.An appendix containing a an overview of all the rules for the new formulation of dialogical approach to constructive type theory developed in the book; b.a brief outline of Per Martin-Löf's informal presentation of the demonstration of the axiom of choice.c.two examples of a tree-shaped graph of an extensive strategy. Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Mark van Atten (Paris1), Giuliano Bacigalupo (Zürich), Charles Zacharie Bowao (Univ. Ma Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), Christian Berner (Lille3), Michel Crubellier (Lille3), Pierre Cardascia (Lille3), Oumar Dia (Dakar), Marcel Nguimbi ((Univ. Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), Adjoua Bernadette Dango (Lille3 / Alassane Ouattara de Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire), Steephen Rossy Eckoubili (Lille3), Johan Georg Granström (Zürich), Gerhard Heinzmann (Nancy2), Muhammad Iqbal (Lille3), Matthieu Fontaine (Lille3), Radmila Jovanovic (Belgrad), Hanna Karpenko (Lille3), Laurent Keiff (Lille3), Sébastien Magnier (Saint Dennis, Réunion), Clément Lion (Lille3), Gildas Nzokou (Libreville), Fachrur Rozie (Lille3), Helge Rückert (Mannheim), Mohammad Shafiei (Paris1), and Hassan Tahiri (Lisbon), for rich interchanges, suggestions on the main claims of the present study and proof-reading of specific sections of the text. Special thanks to Gildas Nzokou (Libreville), Steephen Rossy Eckoubili (Lille3) and Clément Lion (Lille3), with whom a Pre-Graduate Textbook in French on dialogical logic and CTT is in the process of being worked out – during the visiting-professorship in 2016 of the former. Eckoubili is the author of the sections on exercises for dialogical logic, Nzokou cared of those involving the development of CTT-demonstrations out of winning-strategies. Special thanks also to Ansten Klev (Prague) for helping with technical details and conceptual issues on CTT, particularly so as author of the chapter introducing CTT. (shrink)

It is practically inevitable that even the best-intentioned public officials occasionally inflict unjust harm on people who should not have to suffer it. They mistakenly arrest innocent suspects, and convict innocent defendants. They erroneously adopt and enforce criminal laws that unduly restrict our freedom. They vote for, implement, and enforce tax laws that unfairly burden some citizens. And yet it is widely assumed that, as long as such officials act in good faith, and follow certain institutional rules, we aren’t permitted (...) to protect the innocent victims of their mistakes by inflicting defensive harm on the officials. As a result, those victims may have to suffer injustices that we could, in principle, prevent. This is so even though, if a private person imposed similarly unjust harm, and did so on the basis of mistaken judgments that were equally in good faith, and just as reliable as the institutional judgments guiding the official, we could permissibly harm that person to defend the victim. This essay considers whether, and how, this asymmetric treatment can be justified. After some ground-clearing that sharpens the question, it briefly considers the dominant explanation offered by political philosophers, which focuses on how resisting official mistakes would impact innocent third parties (most obviously, one’s fellow citizens). Finding these explanations wanting, the essay turns to a less frequently considered alternative: under certain conditions, defending the innocent victim against the official’s mistake is unfair to the official who would be harmed in the process. In particular, if officials act for their subjects (in a quite specific sense), then we may, as a matter of fairness, be barred from harming the officials to protect those subjects from (some of) the unjust harms that officials erroneously inflict. This account chimes with familiar views in the history of political thought that take legitimate political power to be held in trust for the people, and legitimate governments to stand in fiduciary relations to their subjects. It explains why officials may in principle have special moral protection that private persons usually lack, and why we may have to put up with officials’ mistakes even if they inflict injustice on innocent persons. But it also reveals how demanding the conditions are under which officials have such protection, and why many existing legal and political institutions lack the legitimacy, and their officials the special moral protection against defensive harm, that they purport to have. (shrink)

Many of the moral and political disputes that loom large today involve claims (1) in the register of respect and offense that are (2) linked to membership in a subordinated social group and (3) occasioned by symbolic or expressive items or acts. This essay seeks to clarify the nature, stakes, and characteristic challenges of these recurring, but often disorienting, conflicts. Drawing on a body of philosophical work elaborating the moral function of etiquette, I first argue that the claims at issue (...) implicate a communicative apparatus of the same basic kind—a system that I term the “etiquette of equality.” That regime, I suggest, can serve a kindred function of facilitating the expression of morally appropriate attitudes. I also argue, however, that the etiquette of equality exhibits three problematic features that counsel ambivalence about its mounting significance: (1) the costly overdetermination of relevant signals; (2) a recursive tendency toward inflation in respect’s demands; and (3) a related set of incentives for testing, and then affirming, a group’s status through the assertion and symbolic remediation of dignitary harm. The upshot is a better understanding of the trade-offs and predicaments we face in a vital area of public life. (shrink)

Theories of structured meanings are designed to generate fine-grained meanings, but they are also liable to overgenerate structures, thus drawing structural distinctions without a semantic difference. I recommend the proliferation of very fine-grained structures, so that we are able to draw any semantic distinctions we think we might need. But, in order to contain overgeneration, I argue we should insert some degree of individuation between logical equivalence and structural identity based on structural isomorphism. The idea amounts to forming an equivalence (...) class of different structures according to one or more formal criteria and designating a privileged element as a representative of all the elements, i.e., a first among equals. The proposed method helps us to a cluster of notions of co-hyperintensionality. As a test case, I consider a recent objection levelled against the act theory of structured propositions. I also respond to an objection against my methodology. (shrink)

In Barclay's Bank v. O'Brien(1993) the House of Lords extended the undue influence rules to heterosexual and homosexual cohabitees, a move that was widely welcomed and has been endorsed in Royal Bank of Scotland v. Etridge (No. 2) (2001). The paper argues that the extension to homosexual couples is inappropriate, since undue influence is largely a problem of heterosexuality. It is not accidental that there have been no reported cases of undue influence between lesbian or gay partners, not because abuses (...) of power do not occur within such relationships, but because they are free of the central causal factor of undue influence: not intimacy per se but the gendered power dynamic within heterosexual intimacy that has characterised almost all reported cases. The first part of the paper examines the courts' treatment of gay and lesbian couples in other areas of equity and concludes that the absence of gender role assumptions leads courts to treat lesbian and gay claimants more equitably than they do heterosexual women. The second part focuses on the potential for gay and, especially, lesbian relationships to act as models of more egalitarian relationships than heterosexual ones. The dominant discourse of inclusion within the gay and lesbian legal lobby is problematised, and the paper concludes that what is needed is social and judicial recognition of what is different, not what is the same, about our relationships. (shrink)

The article examines methods of distinguishing positive and negative duties within the provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights as applied by the European Court of Human Rights. It highlights problems with tying positive duties to acts and negative duties to omissions, and sets out a supplemental delineation method when those problems lead to systematic classification errors: duties sort as positive if they have the capacity for multiple fulfilment options and negative if they only allow one fulfilment option. These (...) delineation criteria allow for a more consistent reconstruction of case law and point to a causal mechanism for alleged asymmetries in proportionality review and margins of appreciation. Lastly, there are revisionary implications for human rights scholarship. Judgments have been sorted as positive rights cases because they feature a requirement that states commit to legislative amendment, yet performative acts of amendment may be continuous with underlying negative duties. (shrink)

One feature of the neo/liberal possessive self is the propertied character of certain beliefs: treated as belonging to those who hold them, recognized and supported in acting on the world, and protected. While an ownership paradigm predates anti-discrimination and human rights regimes, these regimes have consolidated and extended the propertied status of certain identity beliefs in ways that naturalize and siloize them. But if beliefs’ propertied character is politically problematic, can it be unsettled and reformed? This paper considers one possible (...) mode for doing so, namely play. Oftentimes, play works to secure and assert the propertied attachments people have to their beliefs; but some forms of play offer other possibilities. Focusing on the state as a complex site of play relations and encounters, this article explores how state play engages identity beliefs in a contemporary legal drama of colliding beliefs between conservative Christians and liberal gay equality advocates. (shrink)

U.S. multinational enterprises must now follow the policies of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in their overseas operations, at least with respect to U.S. expatriate employees. Doing so in a culture which discourages gender equality in the workplace raises difficult issues, both practically and ethically. Vigorously importing U.S. attitudes toward gender-equality into a social culture such as Japan or Saudi Arabia may seem ethnocentric, a version of ethical imperialism. Yet adapting to host country norms (...) risks a kind of moral relativism. This article supports the view that MNEs which promote workplace equality in a host country such as Japan, which is actively involved in the international economic and political community, is not ethical imperialism in any pejorative sense and is preferable to a moral relativism or social contract approach.We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

Principle of equality of arms is part of fair trial concept, which encompasses several guarantees linked to the defence opportunities during the criminal procedure. The accused person is entitled to a fair trial. Balance of rights between the parties is bedrock for procedural fairness and the judge has to perform his competence in providing all necessary preconditions as for the trial to be fair. There are differences between interpretation and implementation of equality of arms in the jurisprudence of (...) European court on human rights and international criminal courts. Decisions of ECtHR are much more similar with domestic understanding of equality of arms as reasonable opportunity of the defence to present the case without disadvantages vis-à-vis the prosecutor, due to inherent inequity between the parties. When analyzing proceeding before the ad hoc Tribunals, there is “more liberal interpretation” of this principle, which allowed the Prosecutor to invoke equality of arms, as well. ICTY Trial Chamber in Aleksovski case concluded that application of the concept of a fair trial in favor of both parties is understandable because the Prosecution acts on behalf of and in the interests of the international community, including the interests of the victims of the offence charged and also has held that it is difficult to see how a trial could ever be considered to be fair where the accused is favored at the expense of the Prosecution. This interpretation has been justified with dependence of the international Tribunals on state cooperation and due to the fact that international criminal courts have no autonomous enforcement agencies at their disposal. Fortunately, ICC Statute considered equality of arms as solely afforded to the defence, or to the Prosecutor on the behalf of accused. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I explore how emotions operate under conditions of injustice. Specifically, my interest is in how one should deploy their emotions in order to combat patriarchally informed, affective ways of making sense of and responding to the social world. My dissertation consists of the following three papers. In the first paper, “Vindictive Anger,” I argue for two claims. First, that anger is not necessarily made morally worse whenever and to the extent that it involves a desire for payback. (...) Second, that in certain cases, anger’s retributive component is precisely what moralizes the emotion. Victims of sexual violence, I argue, paradigmatically deploy their anger as a way of getting their transgressor or, in some cases, the broader moral community, to more fully understand, through affect, the wrongness of their action. One can see this occur in the anger expressed by Chanel Miller in her victim’s impact statement, read aloud during the case of People v. Turner. When anger functions in this way, I propose, it serves to moralize the emotion. In the second paper, titled “Feminism and Suspect Femininity,” I ask how feminists should feel towards women who conform to suspect norms of appearance, and of hyper-femininity in particular. I present a novel type of empathy – proleptic empathy – which avoids treating women as either pitiful victims or as accomplices deserving of harsh moral criticism. Proleptic empathy requires switching back and forth between two types of imaginings: on the one hand, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from her will. On the other, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from external cultural influences. In the third paper, “Transitional Moral Contexts,” I address how one should feel towards the perpetrators who figure in the cases that have gone by the language of ‘grey rape’ or ‘bad sex’. These cases are ones that are rife with disagreement, especially amongst members of the moral community, who even disagree over whether they ought to count as cases of ‘sexual assault’ or ‘rape’. My suggestion is that the reason we have such difficulty adjudicating individuals’ responsibility for cases of bad sex is because these are instances of transitional moral contexts where what it is to act morally is in the process of being actively negotiated by the moral community. With this analysis in place, I present reasons for and against deploying shame against those who falter in these cases. (shrink)

In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the fast and equitable distribution of effective vaccines worldwide is one of the challenges faced by international institutions in charge, as global equity in vaccine supply has not yet been achieved. Our paper explains the current state of ethical research on equity in global COVID-19 vaccine allocation, focusing on the COVAX Facility established by the WHO, acting as the global vaccine distributor. The article presents a detailed analysis of the first year of (...) COVAX allocation in 2021 identifying problematic aspects of its allocation framework regarding the implementation of COVAX’s fundamental allocation principles. We argue that the COVAX Facility has developed a proper concept to deal with global vaccine allocation—but to address uncovered defaults, we introduce the ‘Prioritized Distribution of Equal Shares’ model—a both ethical and practically feasible alternative allocation framework to protect the value of human lives in both high- and low-income countries through fair and fast global vaccine distribution in health emergencies. Nonetheless, we argue that the COVAX Facility remains the main organization to provide equitable access to vaccines. Yet, the global community has to consider further aspects such as patent protection, vaccine production and the lack of power of global structures to address the inequities that have arisen. Since new wars and further crises have arisen, a shift in public global attention endangers the processing of COVID-19-related issues. That is why now more than ever extensive efforts to achieve vaccine equity are needed. (shrink)

The cumulative open-endedness of human cultures represents a major break with the social traditions of nonhuman species. As traditions are altered and the modifications retained along the cultural lineage, human populations are capable of producing complex traits that no individual could have figured out on its own. For cultures to produce increasingly complex traditions, improvements and modifications must be kept for the next generations to build upon. High-fidelity transmission would thus act as a ratchet, retaining modifications and allowing the historical (...) buildup of complex traditions. Mechanisms acting against slippage are important, of course, but cultures also need to move forward for the ratchet to retain anything important. In this article, I argue that studies of modification-generating processes and the many ways they shape cumulative culture have been overlooked. Key to a better understanding of cultural modification processes is taking seriously that cultural traditions consist of complex, hierarchically structured recipes. Taking such structures seriously and assessing the different ways they can vary in cultural design space, a novel picture for the onset of cumulative cultural evolution emerges. I argue that a possible impediment for cumulative culture in nonhuman animals may in fact reside not so much in the fidelity of their social transmission but rather in the constraints, internal and external, on their capacity to modify complex, hierarchically structured cultural recipes. (shrink)

Should egalitarian justice be qualified by an agent-relative prerogative to act on a preference for—and thereby in a manner that gives rise to or preserves a greater than equal share of the goods of life for—oneself, one's family, loved ones, or friends as compared with strangers? Although many would reply that the answer to this question must be ‘yes’, I shall argue here that the case for such a prerogative to depart from equality is much less far-reaching than one (...) might think. I have in mind a prerogative to depart from a specific form of equality: namely, equality of opportunity for such advantages as resources or welfare. I mean to refer to the strong form of equal opportunity elaborated and defended by Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen whereby, roughly speaking, two people have equal opportunity for advantage if they face the same choices and will end up at the same level of advantage if they make the same choices. (shrink)

Discursive dynamics play an important role in shaping the meanings of gender equality. The article discusses the relation between hegemonic discourses on gender equality policies and feminist taboos. It suggests that feminist scholars could paradoxically be trapped in hegemonic discourses on gender equality policies that may lead to taboos about particular approaches to and interpretations of such policies. Three main feminist hegemonic discourses are considered to act as taboos. They deal with the possibility to overcome patriarchy, the (...) role of elites and other groups of actors in processes of gender transformation and the merits of incremental change. The article further discusses the implications of the postulate about hegemonic discourses and taboos on gender equality for feminist knowledge production and reflects on the potential of Bacchi’s notion of ‘reflexivity’ to overcome them. (shrink)