Harry G. Frankfurt has presented a case of a counterfactual intervener CI with knowledge and power to control an agent so he will do A. He concludes that if the agent prefers to do A and there is no intervention by CI, the agent has acted of his own free will and is morally responsible for doing A, though he lacked an alternative possibility. I consider the consequences for freedom and moral responsibility of CI having a complete plan P (...) for all actions of an agent, Lucky, who luckily has preferences that accord with P, and I extend the argument to all citizens of a land, Luckyland, who are like Lucky. I argue the citizens of Luckyland have free will but lack moral responsibility because of the connection between moral responsibility, reactive attitudes and future action. Furthermore, the presence of CI and his plan P may allow free will but is incompatible with freedom of preference. Preference concerns alternatives excluded by CI. I argue that a special higher order preference for the preference structure, a power preference, ends the regress of higher order preference and explains the first order preference. Causal determinism is compatible with freedom of preference explained by a power preference when a power preference would also explain an alternative preference. The remoteness argument for incompatibility fails because of a lack of transitivity causal explanation. The power preference is the self-explained source of freedom of preference. That basic freedom may be limited by government knowledge of our preferences, even if, like Lucky, our preferences do not provoke intervention and we conform of our own free will. (shrink)

Ethicists, regulators and researchers have struggled with the question of whether incidental findings in genomics studies should be disclosed to participants. In the ethical debate, a general consensus is that disclosed information should benefit participants. However, there is no agreement that genetic information will benefit participants, rather it may cause problems such as anxiety. One could get past this disagreement about disclosure of incidental findings by letting participants express their preferences in the consent form. We argue that this freedom (...) of choice is problematic. In transferring the decision to participants, it is assumed that participants will understand what they decide about and that they will express what they truly want. However, psychological findings about people's reaction to probabilities and risk have been shown to involve both cognitive and emotional challenges. People change their attitude to risk depending on what is at stake. Their mood affects judgments and choices, and they over- and underestimate probabilities depending on whether they are low or high. Moreover, different framing of the options can steer people to a specific choice. Although it seems attractive to let participants express their preferences to incidental findings in the consent form, it is uncertain if this choice enables people to express what they truly prefer. In order to better understand the participants' preferences, we argue that future empirical work needs to confront the participant with the complexity of the uncertainty and the trade-offs that are connected with the uncertain predictive value of genetic risk information. (shrink)

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.

"This book on freedom of speech and expression starts with an inter-cultural history of this valued right through the ages and then recalls the benefits for which we rightly value it. But what about speech that frustrates these benefits? Supporters of the benefits of free speech have reason to exercise voluntary self-restraint on speech which frustrates the benefits. They should also cultivate a second remedy: the art, illustrated in chapter 1, and called by Gandhi the art of 'opening ears', (...) by other kinds of speech and conduct. Such voluntary methods are to be preferred to legal constraints. But legal constraint is sometimes necessary. In the 21st century, social media funding based on manipulation of personal speech data requires skilful legislation and enforcement in favour of social media that protect our freedoms"--. (shrink)

"Freedom of expression" is a complex notion that reflects various considerations and raises many questions related to their content and interaction. This paper is an abstract of a book that considers general aspects regarding the justification and the limits of freedom of expression and analyzes exiting law in light of this normative discussion. Particularly, it considers the way to determine the proper scope of freedom of expression; first-order and second-order considerations in favor and against freedom of (...) expression, both in general and regarding central specific kinds of expressions; and possible ways to normatively regulate the field of expressions - in particular to restrict expressions, primarily by law - and specifically the common view that subsequent punishment for an expression is generally preferable to prior restraint of an expression. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine two conflicting strands in the United States Supreme Court's treatment of “freedom of association,” by exploring some aspects of the historical development of the doctrine. It suggests that there are two conceptions of “freedom of association,” an older, traditional one, that eschews forcing odious contact on members of associations, and a newer one which privileges antidiscrimination doctrines over “freedom from association.” These two conceptions still exist on the Court, resulting in irreconcilable decisions (...) such as those permitting the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters, but forcing the Jaycees to accept women. The preference of one conception over the other is also evident in the work of different scholars, whose doctrinal approaches are similarly irreconcilable. The Supreme Court has explained the discontinuities in the doctrine by seeking to characterize it in terms of the First Amendment's “freedom of speech” clause, but the paper argues that it makes more sense, in the context of these two cases, to regard them as related to the First Amendment's “freedom of religion” clauses. (shrink)

Cohen endorses the coercive taxation of the talented at a progressive rate for the sake of realizing equality. By contrast, he denies that it is legitimate for the state to engage in the 'Stalinist forcing' of people into one or another line of work in order to bring about a more egalitarian society. He rejects such occupational conscription on grounds of the invasiveness of the gathering and acting upon information regarding people's preferences for different types of work that would be (...) required to implement such a policy. More precisely, Cohen maintains that the presence versus the absence of such intrusion explains why such Stalinist forcing of the talented is unacceptable whereas the progressive taxation of their income is legitimate. I argue that Cohen's appeal to invasiveness does not adequately capture the moral repugnance of the state's conscripting people into work at a given occupation. I propose that a right to self-ownership, and that which explains such a right, provides a better explanation than Cohen's of why Stalinist forcing is objectionable, whereas progressive taxation is not. 1. (shrink)

In Rescuing Justice and Equality, G.A. Cohen argues that the incentive inequalities permitted by John Rawls's difference principle are unjust since people cannot justify them to their fellow citizens. I argue that citizens of a Rawlsian society can justify their acceptance of a wide range of incentive inequalities to their fellow citizens. They can do so because they possess the right to freedom of occupational choice, and are permitted – as a matter of justice – to exercise this right (...) by making occupational decisions on the basis of a wide range of values and preferences. (shrink)

We consider the role of preferences in the assessment of an agent's freedom, visualized as the opportunity for choice. After discussing several possible intuitive approaches to the problem, we explore an approach based on the notion of preference orderings that a reasonable person may possibly have. Using different sets of axioms, we characterize the rules for ranking opportunity sets in terms of freedom. We also show that certain axioms for ranking opportunity sets are incompatible.

Troubling patterns of suppressed speech have emerged on the corporate internet. A large platform may marginalize potential connections between audiences and speakers. Consumer protection concerns arise, for platforms may be marketing themselves as open, comprehensive, and unbiased, when they are in fact closed, partial, and self-serving. Responding to protests, the accused platform either asserts a right to craft the information environment it desires, or abjures responsibility, claiming to merely reflect the desires and preferences of its user base. Such responses betray (...) an opportunistic commercialism at odds with the platforms’ touted social missions. Large platforms should be developing more ambitious standards for promoting expression online, rather than warring against privacy, competition, and consumer protection laws. These regulations enable a more vibrant public sphere. They also defuse the twin specters of monopolization and total surveillance, which are grave threats to freedom of expression. (shrink)

Recent work has shown that preschool-aged children and adults understand freedom of choice regardless of culture, but that adults across cultures differ in perceiving social obligations as constraints on action. To investigate the development of these cultural differences and universalities, we interviewed school-aged children (4–11) in Nepal and the United States regarding beliefs about people's freedom of choice and constraint to follow preferences, perform impossible acts, and break social obligations. Children across cultures and ages universally endorsed the choice (...) to follow preferences but not to perform impossible acts. Age and culture effects also emerged: Young children in both cultures viewed social obligations as constraints on action, but American children did so less as they aged. These findings suggest that while basic notions of free choice are universal, recognitions of social obligations as constraints on action may be culturally learned. (shrink)

Philosophers have advocated different kinds of freedom, but each has value and none should be neglected in a complete theory of freedom and responsibility. There are three kinds of freedom of preference and action that should be distinguished. A person S may fully prefer to do A at every level, and that is one kind of freedom. A person S may autonomously prefer to do A when S has the preference structure concerning doing A (...) because S prefers to have that very preference structure, and that is a second kind of freedom. A person S may prefer to do A when S could have preferred otherwise, and that is a third kind of freedom. These forms of freedom may be combined, but they are valuable and essentially independent. They all involve the metamental ascendence of preference over desire, but it is autonomous preference that makes a person the author of his or her preference. The responsibility a person has for what he or she does out of a preference for doing it depends on the kinds of freedom of preference the person has and must be ranked in terms of them. (shrink)

Human life in contemporary society is extremely complex and there are various external factors that directly affect the realization in the individual ends. In this work I analyze the effects of the global market economy, manifested by a mode of production and distribution of goods and services in the form of a global network of economic relations, which involve people, transnational corporations and political and social institutions in moral sphere of people, affecting their choices and the realization of these choices. (...) Individual freedom can be understand as a freedom to realize our choices in the environment of a global economic market, but it is still problematic in the sense that the choices of goods and services available in this market do not reflect individual choices, but a set of preferences standardized according to the market itself. In this paper I will reflect about the individual freedom in economic globalization pointing from the debate between Pettit and Berlin that social freedom advocated by Republican Petit can be satisfactory for a start. (shrink)

We consider the role of preferences in the assessment of an agent's freedom, visualized as the opportunity for choice. After discussing several possible intuitive approaches to the problem, we explore an approach based on the notion of preference orderings that a reasonable person may possibly have. Using different sets of axioms, we characterize the rules for ranking opportunity sets in terms of freedom. We also show that certain axioms for ranking opportunity sets are incompatible.

If preference-based freedom rankings are based on all-things-considered preferences, they risk judging phenomena of adaptive preferences as freedom enhancing. As a remedy, it has been suggested to base preference-based freedom rankings on reasonable preferences. But this approach is also problematic. This article argues that the quest for a remedy is unnecessary. All-things-considered preferences retain information on whether the availability of an option contributes to the value that freedom has for a person’s self-expression. If (...) class='Hi'>preference-based freedom rankings use all-things-considered preferences to evaluate whether an option contributes to a person’s self-expression, they are immune to the problem posed by adaptive preferences. (shrink)

The right to religious liberty as for instance set out in the European Convention of Human Rights protects acts of religious observance. Such protection can clash with other considerations, including laws aimed at protecting other state interests. Religious freedom therefore requires an account of when the right should lead to exemptions from other laws and when the right can legitimately be limited. Alan Patten has proposed a Fair Opportunity view of the normative logic of religious liberty. But Patten’s view (...) faces several problems. The normative work in his view is mainly done by added accounts of reasonable claims and of justifiability. So, the Fair Opportunity view in itself does not provide a normative criterion. Defenses of the Fair Opportunity view must therefore turn on the theoretical preferability of its structural features. But the Fair Opportunity view has the wrong form to capture the right to freedom of religion. The form of the right to freedom of religion is due to how its point is to address how states limit the liberty of citizens. Given a practice dependent approach, which assigns importance to the point and purpose of the right to freedom of religion, Patten’s theory is thus problematic. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between the ideal of autonomous preference formation and the danger of paternalism in deliberative democratic theory. It argues that the aim of autonomous preference formation can and should be decoupled from a justification of paternalistic state action aimed at reshaping citizens 'preferences. The problem of nonautonomous preference formation is rooted in the communication structure in which each and every one forms her preferences and hence cannot be solved by some paternalistically judging on (...) others'behalf The argument is based on a new formulation of the deliberative democratic ideal, which emphasizes and clarifies the multiple dimensions of freedom it incorporates. (shrink)

Belgium's policy of not permitting Catholic hospitals to refuse euthanasia services rests on ethical presuppositions concerning the secular justification of political power which reveal the paradoxical character of European liberalism: In endorsing freedom as a value (rather than as a side constraint), liberalism prioritizes first-order intentions, thus discouraging lasting moral commitments and the authority of moral communities in supporting such commitments. The state itself is thus transformed into a moral community of its own. Alternative policies (such as an explicit (...) moral diversification of public healthcare or the greater tolerance for Christian institutions in the Netherlands) are shown to be incompatible with Europe's liberal concern with securing social and material freedom resources, as well as the concern with equality of opportunity, as embodied in the European Union's anti-discrimination labor law. The essay's argument for the preferability of a libertarian solution closes with the challenge that only if the provision of public healthcare can be shown to be rationally indispensable for a morally justified polity, could the exposed incoherence of modern European liberalism be generously discounted. (shrink)

Compatibilism has become an increasingly popular position amongst contemporary philosophers. However, within the philosophy of religion the majority of philosophers continue to adopt an incompatibilist, usually libertarian, view of free will. This book seeks to explore whether it is possible to formulate a coherent compatibilist response to the problem of evil and, if so, whether such a response could help compatibilism to be seen as a viable, or even preferable, alternative to incompatibilism within philosophy of religion."--Back cover.

Susan Wolf’s compatibilism is unique for being ‘asymmetrical.' While holding that blameworthiness entails being able to avoid acting wrongly, she maintains that our freedom consists in single-mindedly pursuing Truth and Goodness. Comparing and contrasting her position to Saint Anselm’s seminal, libertarian approach to the same subject elicits serious questions, highlighting its drawbacks. How could freedom entail the inability to do certain things? In what sense are reasons causes? What sense can be made of a double standard for assignments (...) of responsibility? Is not self-control inconsistent with being caused to act by things independent of oneself? Does not virtue require struggling against falsehoods and evils by which one could be overcome? Wolf’s compatibilism must be rejected, I shall argue, in light of Anselm’s intuitively satisfying response to these concerns: we should prefer a philosophy that entails more of what we want from freedom without begging unanswerable questions of its own. (shrink)

In Hobbes, freedom of choice requires nonfrustration: the option you prefer must be accessible. In Berlin, it requires noninterference: every option, preferred or unpreferred, must be accessible—every door must be open. But Berlin’s argument against Hobbes suggests a parallel argument that freedom requires something stronger still: that each option be accessible and that no one have the power to block access; the doors should be open, and there should be no powerful doorkeepers. This is freedom as nondomination. (...) The claim is that freedom as noninterference is an unstable alternative between freedom as nonfrustration and freedom as nondomination. (shrink)

What is freedom? Can we measure it? Does it affect policy? This book develops an original measure of freedom called 'Autonomy Freedom', consistent with J. S. Mill's view of autonomy, and applies it to issues in policy and political design. The work pursues three aims. First, it extends classical liberalism beyond exclusive reliance on negative freedom so as to take autonomous behavior explicitly into account. Second, it grounds on firm conceptual foundations a new standard in the (...) measurement of freedom that can be fruitfully coupled with existing gauges. Third, it shows empirically that individual preferences for redistribution and cross-country differences in welfare spending in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries are driven by the degree of 'autonomy freedom' that individuals enjoy. By means of an interdisciplinary approach and a sophisticated econometric methodology, the book takes an explicit stand in defense of freedom and sets the basis for a liberalism based upon people's actions and institutions. (shrink)

How is a person's freedom related to his or her preferences? Liberal theorists of negative freedom have generally taken the view that the desire of a person to do or not do something is irrelevant to the question of whether he is free to do it. Supporters of the “pure negative” conception of freedom have advocated this view in its starkest form: they maintain that a person is unfree to Φ if and only if he is prevented (...) from Φ-ing by the conduct or dispositions of some other person. This definition of freedom is value-neutral in the sense that no reference is made to preferences over options or indeed to any other indicators of the values of options, either in the characterization of “Φ-ing” itself or in the characterization of the way in which Φ-ing can be constrained. (shrink)

The patient preference predictor is a proposed computer-based algorithm that would predict the treatment preferences of decisionally incapacitated patients. Incorporation of a PPP into the decision-making process has the potential to improve implementation of the substituted judgement standard by providing more accurate predictions of patients’ treatment preferences than reliance on surrogates alone. Yet, critics argue that methods for making treatment decisions for incapacitated patients should be judged on a number of factors beyond simply providing them with the treatments they (...) would have chosen for themselves. These factors include the extent to which the decision-making process recognises patients’ freedom to choose and relies on evidence the patient themselves would take into account when making treatment decisions. These critics conclude that use of a PPP should be rejected on the grounds that it is inconsistent with these factors, especially as they relate to proper respect for patient autonomy. In this paper, we review and evaluate these criticisms. We argue that they do not provide reason to reject use of a PPP, thus supporting efforts to develop a full-scale PPP and to evaluate it in practice. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

The aim of our paper is to broaden the international discussion on environmentally friendly lifestyles. In most of the previous research, via a survey technique involving the self-nomination of participants, voluntary simplifiers are presented as part of a social movement typically connected with an urban environment. Our paper follows the third wave of longitudinal research conducted in the post-socialist Czech Republic in the years 1992, 2002 and 2015. The data were collected using in-depth interviews combined with observations in 20 voluntary (...) modest households. The biographical style of interview enables us to interpret the sources of the participants’ motivation for relocating to the countryside or staying in the urban environment as they interpret it retrospectively. Four dominant narratives emerged: 1) narrative of distaste for city life, 2) narrative of a nice life, 3) narrative about living in freedom, 4) narrative of a return to roots. (shrink)

In various debates about science, appeal is made to the freedom of scientific research. A rationale in favor of this freedom is rarely offered. In this paper, two major arguments are reconstructed that promise to lend support to a principle of scientific freedom. According to the epistemological argument, freedom of research is required in order to organize the collective cognitive effort we call science efficiently. According to the political argument, scientific knowledge needs to be generated in (...) ways that are independent of the major political powers because of the important role it plays for the citizens and their capacity to form well-informed political preferences. Both arguments are examined critically in order to identify their strengths and limitations. I argue that the scientific freedom established by both rests on a number of critical preconditions, and that the arguments’ force must be weighed against competing societal interests and values in each case of their application. Appeal to a principle of scientific freedom should therefore never mark the end, but rather the beginning of a public debate about the ends and means of science. (shrink)

A new history of liberalism which argues that liberalism has been predicated on definite morality and should be viewed as an attempt to encompass both fear and hope. Liberalism, argues Alan Kahan, is the search for a society in which people need not be afraid. Freedom from fear is the most basic freedom. If we are afraid, we are not free. These insights, found in Montesquieu and Judith Shklar, are the foundation of liberalism. What liberals fear has changed (...) over time (revolution, reaction, totalitarianism, religious fanaticism, poverty, and now populism) but the great majority of liberal thinkers have relied on three pillars to ward off their fears and to limit the concentrated power that causes fear: freedom, markets, and morals, or, to put it another way, politics, economics, and religion or morality. Most liberal thinkers emphasize one or two pillars more than another, but it is typical of liberalism down to the Second World War to rely on all three, although there were always minority voices who preferred to stand on only one leg. After WWII, "thin" procedural/market liberals, who wanted to strip any moral or religious basis or purpose from liberalism, dominated "thick" liberal moralists, who thought liberalism needed a moral basis and/or goal. It is the political contention of this book that liberalism is most convincing as program, language, and social analysis when it relies on all three pillars, and that the relative weakness of liberalism at the end of the twentieth century had much to do with neglect of the moral pillar of liberalism. Its historical contention is that for much of the past two centuries it did rely on all three pillars. But Kahan also argues that liberalism is not only a party of fear. It is also a party of hope, or the party of progress. Many of the contradictions typical of liberalism derive from the seemingly contradictory effort to encompass both hope and fear. If in case of conflict fear often trumps hope for liberals (loss aversion applies in politics as much as in economics), and utopia is subject to indefinite postponement, progress in personal autonomy and development has always been at the heart of liberalism. Liberals typically support their hopes on the same three pillars of freedom, markets, and morals which they use to ward off their fears. Nevertheless, in one respect those historians and political theorists who identify liberalism with laissez-faire economics are not wrong. It is characteristic of liberalism then that it bases its hopes not on the state but on civil society, which for liberals is the common source of a free politics, a free market, and of morals. Alan S. Kahan is Professor of History at the Université de Versailles. His previous books include Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion: Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls (Oxford 2015), Alexis de Tocqueville (Continuum Books) and Mind vs Money: The War Between Intellectuals and Capitalism (Transaction Publishing, 2010). (shrink)

Doppelt argues that the democratic socialist conception of human freedom expressed in some recent works of mine lacks philosophical justification and fails to get to the roots of the socialist ideals of dignity, human worth, and self-respect. Doppelt claims to provide a new approach to the grounding of human freedom which allows him to avoid what he regards as the narrowness of my own conception. Not only does Doppelt fail to show that my own conception of freedom (...) is confined to self-management and cannot embrace the dimensions of social life his own paradigm is claimed to take care of, his article fails to raise or resolve the question of the conflict between the democratic socialist and the Rawlsian components that make up his 'new' paradigm. In this reply I discuss the issues Doppelt himself raises in connection with my own work: (1) how to ground human freedom; (2) whether my conception of freedom in democratic socialism is rationally preferable to the conception embodied in contemporary capitalist society; and (3) whether my idea of freedom does indeed exclude those dimensions of life to which Doppelt refers. (shrink)

Adaptive preferences are both a central justification and continuing problem for the use of the capability approach. They are illustrated here with reference to a project examining the choices of young people who had rejected higher education. Jon Elster, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have all criticised utilitarianism on the grounds that a focus on preference-satisfaction fails to acknowledge the human tendency to adapt preferences under unfavourable circumstances and that self-assessments of well-being are therefore likely to be distorted by (...) deprivation. Elster’s addresses preference deformation through the sour grapes phenomenon and retroactive rationalisation. Sen and Nussbaum are more concerned with adaptation as self-abnegation. The capability approach developed by Sen and Nussbaum seeks to address the problem of adaptive preferences by taking into account not only what individuals value but what they have reason to value. However, clear distinctions need to be made between adaptations to the means of achieving well-being and adaptations to its ends. If Elster’s formulations are to be used in capability assessments, they need to articulate with the relative weightings given to relevant functionings and freedoms. This enables a more nuanced understanding of adaptive preferences that can account for the subtleties of the constraints they place upon individual freedoms. (shrink)

Some argue that republican freedom is impossible because since it is always possible that a person or a group of persons possesses arbitrary power to interfere with individuals, no one is free to do anything. To avoid this challenge, in their recent article, Sean Ingham and Frank Lovett invoke the notion of ignorability in terms of which they offer a moderate interpretation of republican freedom. On their view, B is free from A to φ if A’s possible types (...) who prefer to intervene with B’s φ-ing are ignorable. They also try to show that freedom is not determined by the probability of an intervention. However, we argue that they fail to do this and that freedom as non-domination is not entailed by ignorability. (shrink)

When scholars look for anticipations of libertarian ideas in early Chinese thought, attention usually focuses not on the Confucians, but on the Taoists. But in their account of spontaneously evolving social norms, their understanding of the price system, their penchant for public-choice analysis, their enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, their preference for noncoercive interpersonal relations, their call for a laissez-faire economic policy, and their rejection of Taoist primitivism, the Confucians show themselves to be the true precursors of modern libertarianism.

Our goal in this chapter is to draw on empirical work about preference formation and welfare to propose a distinctive form of paternalism, libertarian in spirit, one that should be acceptable to those who are firmly committed to freedom of choice on grounds of either autonomy or welfare. Indeed, we urge that a kind of ‘libertarian paternalism’ provides a basis for both understanding and rethinking many social practices, including those that deal with worker welfare, consumer protection, and the (...) family. (shrink)

In order to be exercised meaningfully, political freedom requires the capacity to actually identify available policy options. To ensure this, society ought to engage in deliberation as a discussion oriented towards mutual learning. In order to highlight this issue, I define deliberation in terms of the participants’ openness to preference change, i.e. the deliberative stance. In the context of the systemic approach to deliberative theory, I find several factors causing the atrophy of such a deliberative stance. I note (...) that this state can occur not only when debaters are representatives or are in the presence of an audience, but also when they face the prospect of a binding decision. It is the latter effect that is a serious challenge to the micro-deliberative strategy, one that strives towards decisional powers being granted to deliberative minipublics. Presenting my findings, I propose—as an alternative to the power-oriented ‘ladder of participation’—a distinction between traditional co-decision and deliberative consultation, the latter one being an environment that is more conducive to deliberative stance. This new typology highlights factors that lead to preference petrification and allows for the appreciation of the non-decisional character of micro-deliberation. All of it leads to the conclusion that, in order to preserve their deliberative character in the systemic context, deliberative minipublics should not always be required to have decision-making powers. (shrink)

This paper presents a non-preference-based approach to the analysis of negative freedom. It is argued that a proper understanding of (different conceptions of) negative freedom necessitates an examination of the consequences of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. For this reason the paper does not focus on freedom rankings of opportunity sets but on freedom rankings of opportunity situations, i.e., pairs consisting of a feasible set and an opportunity set. Three different freedom rankings (...) of opportunity situations are axiomatically characterised. Each of the three rankings forms a generalisation of the purely cardinality-based freedom ranking of opportunity sets presented by Pattanaik and Xu (1990). (shrink)

On American Freedom critiques the value of freedom as it is now manifest in America's political, economic, and cultural life in light of a more robust value of freedom coordinated around human dignity and civic participation. Drawing from historic sources as diverse as James Madison, Adam Smith, and Catherine Beecher - as well as from contemporary sources like George W. Bush and Bob Dylan - the book paints a bleak picture of this most cherished American value. At (...) the same time, On American Freedom outlines a reform initiative that will secure a more preferred value of freedom by simply by reconfiguring the federal system to include reorganized and empowered city-states capable of serving as sites for a fuller form of freedom than Americans now enjoy. (shrink)