Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 539-563, December 2021.

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

With the growing interest in trust in the social sciences, this second edition of the Handbook of Research Methods on Trust provides a fully updated and extended account of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods for empirical research. While many researchers have already drawn inspiration and insight from the previous edition, the dynamic development of trust research calls for further and deeper engagement with methodological issues, particular methods, practical research experience, and current challenges and innovations as offered by this new edition.

I address an argument in value theory which threatens to render nonsensical many debates in modern ethics. Almotahari and Hosein’s :1485–1508, 2015) argument against the property of goodness simpliciter is presented. I criticise the linguistic tests they use in their argument, suggesting they do not provide much support for their conclusion. I draw a weaker conclusion from their argument, and argue that defenders of goodness simpliciter have not responded adequately to this milder conclusion. I go on to argue that moral (...) philosophers ought to abandon the property of goodness simpliciter and focus their attention on the property of being a good state of affairs. I defend this property against Almotahari and Hosein’s criticism, and give reasons to think it is at the heart of moral theory. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a revival of scientific, political and philosophical discourse concerning the notion of ecological limits. This article provides a conceptual overview of descriptive ecological limit claims—i.e. claims that there are real, biophysical limits—and reviews work in political and social philosophy in which such claims form the basis of proposals for normative limits. The latter are classified in terms of three broad types of normative theorising: distributive justice, institutional/legal reform, and the good life. Within these three categories, the (...) article reviews normative proposals for limits on both aggregate‐level and individual‐level ecological exploitation. It also considers the relevance of political and ideological facts to the normative analysis of ecological limits, raising methodological questions about how normative theorists should respond to a world facing escalating ecological challenges. (shrink)

We explore the desirability of an idea that has not received the attention it deserves by political philosophers: that governments should bring privately-owned fossil fuel companies into public ownership with a view to managing their wind-down in the public interest – often simply referred to as ‘nationalising the fossil fuel industry’. We aim to make a conditional case for public ownership of fossil fuel companies. We will assume certain conditions about government motivations and capacities that are similar to assumptions made (...) generally in the philosophical and economic analysis of climate policies: that the government is suitably motivated, has effective control over the companies it acquires, and is able to sustain this motivation and control for long-enough to wind-down acquired companies in the public interest. We argue that bringing fossil fuel companies into public ownership, under these conditions, allows the government to take ten actions that are in the public interest, which will enhance social justice, enable a fair division of burdens and benefits, and strengthen democracy. We consider four plausible objections. While some of these point to the need for further research, they do not undermine our claim that nationalising the fossil fuel industry is a policy option that merits serious consideration. (shrink)

Consequentialists claim that their theory is simply that the right action is whichever one will lead to the best state of affairs - and that this formulation provides a powerful intuitive ground for accepting consequentialism. Recent arguments in value theory threaten to show that this formulation lacks either coherent meaning, because states of affairs cannot be good simpliciter, or philosophical power, because their goodness provides no reason to bring them about. I respond to two such arguments - from Judith Jarvis (...) Thomson and Richard Kraut - contending that none can be made to work in a way which undercuts consequentialism's simple formulation. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Recent scholarly attention to ‘legitimate expectations’ and their role in legal transitions has yielded widely varying principles for distinguishing between legitimate and non-legitimate expectations. This article suggests that methodological reflection may facilitate substantive progress in the debate. Specifically, it proposes and defends the use of a wide reflective equilibrium methodology for constructing, justifying and critiquing theories of legitimate expectations and other kinds of normative theories about legal transitions. The methodology involves three levels of analysis — normative principles, their theoretical antecedents, (...) and considered judgements about their implications in specific cases — and iteration between these three levels in an effort to ensure coherence. The payoffs from applying this methodology to the legitimate expectations debate are illustrated through a discussion of examples from the existing literature. Some proposed innovations to the methodology, including the incorporation of insights from the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, are likely to be of wider interest to political theorists. (shrink)

Reading Rorty can be hard, not because his ideas are especially difficult but because they often are, or at least seem on the face of it to be, quite straightforward and yet somehow wrong. But this is very unlikely: Rorty is not a thinker to get straightforward things wrong. We need, then, a plan for reading Rorty. The plan I suggest finds Rorty engaged, at different points, in three fundamentally different sorts of discourse. In this regard Rorty's reflections on truth (...) in particular bear, we see, a remarkable, and remarkably suggestive, similarity to Plato's reflections on knowledge in his dialogue Theaetetus. As we also see, reading Rorty as engaged at various points in the three sorts of discourse outlined enable us to make good sense of claims that have seemed to many readers, even otherwise sympathetic ones (such as McDowell), to be quite wrongheaded. (shrink)

The term Sustainable Development has been used in many different contexts and consequently has come to represent many different ideas. The purpose of this paper was to explore the underlying meaning of the term Sustainable Development, and to assess the dominant ethic behind such meaning. Through this exploration, we uncovered a change in the semantic meaning of the term, and described what that meaning entails. The term Sustainable Development had the potential, we argue, to stimulate discursive engagement with respect to (...) the future development of society within an ethical framework based around the values of inclusivity, diversity, and integration. The importance of philosophical context within which the term is used influences the definitional process of meaning, and has been simulated into the language of the dominant scientific-economic paradigm. We go on to explore how this meaning change has come about. In doing so we looked to the Enlightenment period and the resulting philosophies to explore the foundations of meaning, and then to the work of Jürgen Habermas to explain how the scientific-economic paradigm came to dominate the meaning of Sustainable Development. (shrink)

Abstract:Contenders for serious, let alone worthwhile, philosophical works consisting entirely of jokes are hard to find. Tom Stoppard's comedy Dogg's Hamlet, built from the materials of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, might be one. Wittgenstein could only use previously acquired language to argue that social performance is a necessary prerequisite for the process of learning that meaningful language in the first place. But Stoppard's audiences can experience the inadequacy of a static, constative theory of language; then they can self-consciously undergo a (...) socialized process of meaningful language acquisition. And that new language allows new jokes; so: did Stoppard put the wit into Wittgenstein? (shrink)

In Part III of his 1879 logic Frege proves a theorem in the theory of sequences on the basis of four definitions. He claims in Grundlagen that this proof, despite being strictly deductive, constitutes a real extension of our knowledge, that it is ampliative rather than merely explicative. Frege furthermore connects this idea of ampliative deductive proof to what he thinks of as a fruitful definition, one that draws new lines. My aim is to show that we can make good (...) sense of these claims if we read Frege’s notation diagrammatically, in particular, if we take that notation to have been designed to enable one to exhibit the (inferentially articulated) contents of concepts in a way that allows one to reason deductively on the basis of those contents. (shrink)

As the second part of a research agenda addressing the idea and meaning of Sustainable Development, this paper responds to the challenges set in the first paper. Using a Foucaudian perspective, we uncover and highlight the importance of discourse in the development of societal context which could lead to the radical change in our epistemological thought necessary for Sustainable Development to reach its potential. By developing an argument for an epistemological change, we suggest that business organizations have an ethical responsibility (...) towards revaluating Sustainable Development, leading to a discourse based on an integrated inclusive process of celebrating diversity in all its forms. The paper goes on to explore the argument for such a change. This exploration is based on three issues: the notion of over simplification in the promotion of development; the idea of an imbalance in the interaction of business and government operating in the larger context of society; and the notion of increasing responsibility with increasing influence in terms of the business organization within society. Having established the argument for an ethical choice by business organizations, we then reflect on how such a change could be incorporated into an organization. (shrink)

Purpose‐driven businesses have a stated objective to contribute to the welfare of society and the planet alongside generating shareholder value. As interest in purpose‐driven businesses grows, an emerging “purpose ecosystem” of advisers, investors, and enablers offers different types of support for businesses wanting to transition to sustainability. This paper examines how the transition towards purpose‐driven business in Australia and the United Kingdom requires addressing challenges facing this support ecosystem at three levels. First, at the individual level where support providers need (...) to build the capabilities of managers who are experiencing tensions around integrating societal and environmental purpose while facing pressure for maximizing shareholder value. Second, the support providers working within the purpose ecosystem offering professional advice and finance face their own tensions between environmental or social objectives and commercial pressures. Third, there are challenges facing actors in the ecosystems aiming to change the wider policy and institutional environment but facing lobbying from those wanting to keep “business as usual.” We identify practical implications for those parts of the purpose‐driven business ecosystem providing support. This includes building capabilities to combine social, environmental, and commercial purpose; coordination among support providers; and creating an institutional environment to avoid “purpose wash.”. (shrink)

Pt. 1. Conceputal issues -- pt. 2. Qualitative research -- pt. 3. Quantitative approaches.

On 15 April 1630, in a letter to Mersenne, Descartes announced that on his view God creates the truths of mathematics. Descartes returned to the theme in subsequent letters and some of his Replies but nowhere is the view systematically developed and defended. It is not clear why Descartes came to espouse the creation doctrine, nor even what exactly it is. Some have argued that his motivation was theological, that God creates the eternal truths, including the truths of logic, because (...) and insofar as God is omnipotent andthe creator of all things. I develop and defend a different reading according to which Descartes was led to espouse the creation doctrine by a fundamental shift in his understanding of the correct mode of inquiry in metaphysics and mathematics: by 1630, the God-created truths came to play the role in inquiry that until then, in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, had been played by images. (shrink)

As a group, Black and Latino boys face persistent and devastating disparities in achievement when compared to their White counterparts: they are more likely to obtain low test scores and grades, be categorized as learning disabled, be absent from honors and gifted programs, and be overrepresented among students who are suspended and expelled from school. They are also less likely to enroll in college and more likely to drop out. Put simply, they are among the most vulnerable populations in our (...) schools. _Schooling for Resilience_ investigates how seven newly formed schools, created specifically to serve boys of color, set out to address the broad array of academic and social problems faced by Black and Latino boys. Drawing on student and teacher surveys, focus groups, interviews, and classroom observations, the authors investigate how these schools were developed, what practices they employed, and how their students responded academically and socially. In particular, they focus on the theory of action that informed each school’s approach to educating Black and Latino boys and explore how choices about school structure and culture shaped students’ development and achievement. In doing so, the authors identify educational strategies that all schools can learn from. This thoughtful, passionately argued volume promises to influence efforts to improve the achievement and life outcomes of Black and Latino boys for years to come. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 772-794, September 2021.

Danielle Macbeth offers a new account of mathematical practice as a mode of inquiry into objective truth, and argues that understanding the nature of mathematical practice provides us with the resources to develop a radically new conception of ourselves and our capacity for knowledge of objective truth.

The most enlightening examination to date of the developments of Frege's thinking about his logic, this book introduces a new kind of logical language, one that ...

This study of arable agriculture in East Anglia, UK, draws on the experiences of farmer participatory research and the use of indigenous knowledge in agricultural development in less developed countries. Farmers were found to be continually doing research, although agricultural science has tended to play it down. Farmers' research was found to be closely linked to the specific locality and the strategies, aspirations, and experiences of farmers. The diversity of agriculture within East Anglia makes local research necessary and the idea (...) of blueprints for agricultural production untenable. The process of generating information can come from learning while working, which may appear to be experiential rather than experimental. Other ideas are generated by observing chance occurrences and some farmers were found to be doing more structured experiments similar to agricultural science. Criticisms of farmers' own research are reviewed. However, this paper proposes that such research should not be compared to scientific method, since agricultural science has the primary objective of generating information while farmers' research is embedded in the local context and is part of the farming practice. It is therefore necessary to have complementary roles for farmers' own research and formal research rather than an attempt to combine or translate indigenous knowledge and farmers' experimentation in agricultural science. (shrink)