Women tend to earn less than their male colleagues. Furthermore, women tend to earn less than men who hold jobs that are nominally different but relevantly similar to their own. Advocates of ‘comparable worth’ protest these facts. Their protest sometimes takes this form: Those differences in pay between men and women are undeserved . The argument for this claim is simple. Some facts are relevant to the wage one deserves for performing a given job; some are not. In the vast (...) majority of cases, the argument continues, gender is not relevant to the wage one deserves; relevant are, say, the skill, responsibility, and working conditions required by the job. When jobs are comparable with respect to these facts, those who work in them deserve equal pay. Therefore, women and men who work the very same jobs deserve equal pay; likewise for women and men whose jobs are nominally different but relevantly similar. (shrink)

Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values.

Sidgwick's ‘Dualism of Practical Reason’ has attracted the attention of many interpreters, and the Dualism itself seems to be an historically important version of the view, recently defended by Thomas Nagel, Susan Wolf, and others, that there exists a fundamental fragmentation of value – that the ‘cosmos of duty is reduced to chaos,’ in Sidgwick's words. In this paper, I consider and reject the leading interpretations of Sidgwick's Dualism, and propose an alternative reading. I conclude by offering what I hope (...) is a plausible but Sidgwickian way out of the Dualism. (shrink)

Is there any sense to the idea of an ``ought''''that is not relative to any particularnormative framework? This ``ought'''' would not bea moral, prudential, legal, aesthetic, orreligious ``ought,'''' but rather an unqualified or just plain ``ought.'''' Thispaper (i) argues for the existence andusefulness of just plain ``ought''''; (ii) locatesthe concept of just plain ``ought'''' within amajor strand in the history of ethics (namely,the perennial attempt to demonstrate thatmorality and prudence are in harmony); and(iii) challenges David Copp''s recent attempt toshow that (...) in fact there is no such thing asjust plain ``ought.'''' A theory of just plain``ought'''' emerges along the way. (shrink)

A widespread view among theists is that there is a moral obligation to obey God’s commands. In this paper, four arguments for this view are considered: the argument from beneficence; the argument from property rights; the argument from justice; and the argument from omnipotence and moral perfection. It is argued that none of these arguments succeeds in showing that there is a moral obligation to obey God’s commands. The paper concludes with the suggestion that there might be, nevertheless, weighty and (...) specifically religious (as distinct from moral) reasons to obey God. (shrink)

According to hyper-Humeanism, the world of “fact” is utterly distinct from the realm of “value”-that is, the realm of morality and religion.This is a well-known philosophical position, and it more or less follows from some well-known philosophical doctrines (e.g., logical positivism, and neo-Wittgensteinianism), but its appeal is not limited to philosophers. Indeed, an acceptance of hyper-Humeanism seems to be at the root of Stephen Jay Gould’s recent defense of the thesis that science and religion are utterly distinct. Gould’s stated aim (...) in defending this thesis is to settle, or perhaps reveal as illusory, various conflicts between science and religion. However, I arguenot only that Gould’s version of this thesis is defective, but also that hyper-Humeanism itself is false. If I am right, then “facts” and “values”-science and religion in particular-can overlap in philosophically interesting ways. (shrink)

The concept of desert, which once enjoyed a central place in political and ethical theory, has been relegated to the margins of much of contemporary theory, if not excluded altogether. Recently a renewed interest in the topic has emerged, and several philosophers have argued that the notion merits a more central place in political and ethical theory. Some of these philosophers contend that justice exists to the extent that people receive exactly what they deserve, while others argue that desert should (...) replace such considerations as rights, need, and equality as the basis for distributions. Still others argue that morality involves a fitting match between one's moral character and a degree of happiness. All of these positions have encountered opposition from egalitarians, libertarians, and those who are skeptical about the coherence of the concept of desert. The first anthology of its kind, What Do We Deserve? is a balanced collection of readings that brings sharply opposing positions and arguments together and stimulates debate over the meaning and significance of desert in current thought. The book begins with eight classical readings on desert (by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Smith, Kant, Mill, Sidgwick, and Ross), and later turns to contemporary interpretations of the issue. The selections examine the concept itself, analyze its relationship to the ideas of freedom and responsibility, engage in the debate between John Rawls and his critics on the merits of desert, and, finally, study the wider role and significance of desert in political and ethical theory. (shrink)

This book is part of the “particularist” trend in modern moral philosophy. But a casual reader might conclude that Wallace endorses a crude form of moral conventionalism—the view that one morally ought to do just what conventional morality demands. Consider some passages: “The proposal is to view morality as a body of practical knowledge, a social artifact that has resulted from what people have learned over time from their efforts to cope with certain practical problems encountered over the course of (...) their lives”. “The position I have been defending implies that our actual practice, in a way, determines what is right and wrong”. (shrink)

Sidgwick's ‘Dualism of Practical Reason’ has attracted the attention of many interpreters, and the Dualism itself seems to be an historically important version of the view, recently defended by Thomas Nagel, Susan Wolf, and others, that there exists a fundamental fragmentation of value – that the ‘cosmos of duty is reduced to chaos,’ in Sidgwick's words. In this paper, I consider and reject the leading interpretations of Sidgwick's Dualism, and propose an alternative reading. I conclude by offering what I hope (...) is a plausible but Sidgwickian way out of the Dualism. (shrink)

This chapter presents a reflective, critical position toward the author’s own addiction and toward himself as an addict. It presents the question of whether addressing addiction as a disease is useful; the idea of addiction as a disease seems less useful in describing “what it is like” for the author than to say that his being was physically, psychologically, and relationally disordered. Despite his desires, he could not find a way to regain order and harmony within himself. It was only (...) the phenomenological possibility of feeling and being better that kept hope alive. The solution to addiction is social; other people who cared for the author personally, together with those with professional knowledge, assisted him in regaining some control that he alone had either lost or could not find. (shrink)

People are unable to report how they decide whether to move backwards or forwards to catch a ball. When asked to imagine how their angle of elevation of gaze would change when they caught a ball, most people are unable to describe what happens although their interception strategy is based on controlling changes in this angle. Just after catching a ball, many people are unable to recognise a description of how their angle of gaze changed during the catch. Some people (...) confidently choose incorrect descriptions that would guarantee failure of interception demonstrating unconscious knowledge co-existing with systematically different conscious beliefs. Where simple solutions to important evolutionary problems exist, unconscious perception needs to be impervious to conscious beliefs. (shrink)

This essay considers the role of the ‘all affected interests’ principle in democratic theory, focusing on debates concerning its form, substance and relationship to the resolution of the democratic boundary problem. It begins by defending an ‘all actually affected’ formulation of the principle against Goodin’s ‘incoherence argument’ critique of this formulation, before addressing issues concerning how to specify the choice set appropriate to the principle. Turning to the substance of the principle, the argument rejects Nozick’s dismissal of its intuitive appeal (...) and considers the two arguments advanced in favour of the principle as a criterion of democratic inclusion: the interlinked interests argument and the tracking power argument. It is shown that neither of these arguments can substantiate a view of the principle as a criterion of democratic inclusion, although both ground a constitutional understanding of the principle as specifying the scope of a duty of justification. It is then proposed that the principle can play an important role in a two-stage resolution of the democratic boundary problem in which it addresses the question of who is entitled to inclusion in the ‘pre-political’ demos that determines whether to constitute a polity. The second stage of this resolution requires an answer to the question of who should constitute the ‘political demos’, that is, the demos of a constituted polity and it is argued that a version of the ‘‘all subjected persons’’ principle can appropriately play this role.Keywords: all affected interests; all subjected persons; democracy; boundary problem; demos problem. (shrink)

Three key elements of Aristotle’s theory of demonstration have Pythagorean antecedents. Demonstration is a revelatory discourse that is 1) inferential, 2) explicitly based on premises that are not themselves demonstrated on the basis of more basic premises, and 3) explanatory, insofar as the premises express those basic facts that are explanatory of the conclusion. The Pythagorean Table of Opposites constitutes a kind of protologic making possible a kind of deduction, which Aristotle would have regarded as a “demonstration,” that reveals the (...) reasons behind Pythagorean commands and prohibitions. Philolaus recognizes ultimate explanatory principles. Both he and Archytas recognize the asymmetry of principles and what is explained on their basis. (shrink)

The topic of recognition has come to occupy a central place in debates in social and political theory. Developed by George Herbert Mead and Charles Taylor, it has been given expression in the program for Critical Theory developed by Axel Honneth in his book The Struggle for Recognition. Honneth's research program offers an empirically insightful way of reflecting on emancipatory struggles for greater justice and a powerful theoretical tool for generating a conception of justice and the good that enables the (...) normative evaluation of such struggles. This 2007 volume offers a critical clarification and evaluation of this research program, particularly its relationship to the other major development in critical social and political theory; namely, the focus on power as formative of practical identities proposed by Michel Foucault and developed by theorists such as Judith Butler, James Tully, and Iris Marion Young. (shrink)

The following suggestions for the interpretation of Parmenides and Melissus can be grouped for convenience about one problem. This is the problem whether, as Aristotle thought and as most commentators still assume, Parmenides wrote his poem in the broad tradition of Ionian and Italian cosmology. The details of Aristotle's interpretation have been challenged over and again, but those who agree with his general assumptions take comfort from some or all of the following major arguments. First, the cosmogony which formed the (...) last part of Parmenides' poem is expressly claimed by the goddess who expounds it to have some measure of truth or reliability in its own right, and indeed the very greatest measure possible for such an attempt. Second, the earlier arguments of the goddess prepare the ground for such a cosmogony in two ways. For in the first place these arguments themselves start from assumptions derived from earlier cosmologists, and are concerned merely to work out the implications of this traditional material. And, in the second place, they end by establishing the existence of a spherical universe: the framework of the physical world can be secured by logic even if the subsequent introduction of sensible qualities or ‘powers’ into this world marks some decline in logical rigour. (shrink)

There has been a great deal of skepticism towards the value of the realism/anti-realism debate. More specifically, many have argued that plausible formulations of realism and anti-realism do not differ substantially in any way. In this paper, I argue against this trend by demonstrating how a hypothetical resolution of the debate, through deeper engagement with the historical record, has important implications for our criterion of theory pursuit and science policy. I do this by revisiting Arthur Fine’s ‘small handful’ argument for (...) realism and show how the debate centers on whether continuity should be an indicator for the future fruitfulness of a theory. I then demonstrate how these debates work in practice by considering the case of the Human Brain Project. I close by considering some potential practical considerations of formulating meta-inductions. By doing this, I contribute three insights to the current debate: 1) demonstrate how the realism/anti-realism debate is a substantive debate, 2) connect debates about realism/anti-realism to debates about theory choice and pursuit, and 3) show the practical significance of meta-inductions. (shrink)

A classic result in the foundations of Yang-Mills theory, due to J. W. Barrett ["Holonomy and Path Structures in General Relativity and Yang-Mills Theory." Int. J. Th. Phys. 30, ], establishes that given a "generalized" holonomy map from the space of piece-wise smooth, closed curves based at some point of a manifold to a Lie group, there exists a principal bundle with that group as structure group and a principal connection on that bundle such that the holonomy map corresponds to (...) the holonomies of that connection. Barrett also provided one sense in which this "recovery theorem" yields a unique bundle, up to isomorphism. Here we show that something stronger is true: with an appropriate definition of isomorphism between generalized holonomy maps, there is an equivalence of categories between the category whose objects are generalized holonomy maps on a smooth, connected manifold and whose arrows are holonomy isomorphisms, and the category whose objects are principal connections on principal bundles over a smooth, connected manifold. This result clarifies, and somewhat improves upon, the sense of "unique recovery" in Barrett's theorems; it also makes precise a sense in which there is no loss of structure involved in moving from a principal bundle formulation of Yang-Mills theory to a holonomy, or "loop", formulation. (shrink)

With the waves of reform occurring in mental health legislation in England and other jurisdictions, mental capacity is set to become a key medico-legal concept. The concept is central to the law of informed consent and is closely aligned to the philosophical concept of autonomy. It is also closely related to mental disorder. This paper explores the interdisciplinary terrain where mental capacity is located. Our aim is to identify core dilemmas and to suggest pathways for future interdisciplinary research. The terrain (...) can be separated into three types of discussion: philosophical, legal and psychiatric. Each discussion approaches mental capacity and judgmental autonomy from a different perspective yet each discussion struggles over two key dilemmas: whether mental capacity and autonomy is/should be a moral or a psychological notion and whether rationality is the key constitutive factor. We suggest that further theoretical work will have to be interdisciplinary and that this work offers an opportunity for the law to enrich its interpretation of mental capacity, for psychiatry to clarify the normative elements latent in its concepts and for philosophy to advance understanding of autonomy through the study of decisional dysfunction. The new pressures on medical and legal practice to be more explicit about mental capacity make this work a priority. (shrink)

This essay develops, within the terms of the recent New York Declaration, an account of the shared responsibility of states to refugees and of how the character of that responsibility effects the ways in which it can be fairly shared. However, it also moves beyond the question of the general obligations that states owe to refugees to consider ways in which refugee choices and refugee voice can be given appropriate standing with the global governance of refuge. It offers an argument (...) for the normative significance of refugee’s reasons for choosing states of asylum and linked this to consideration of a refugee matching system and to refugee quota trading conceived as responsibility-trading, before turning to the issue of the inclusion of refugee voice in relation to the justification of the norms of refugee governance and in relation to the institutions and practices of refugee governance through which those norms are given practical expression. (shrink)

One of the predominant iterations of the metaphor of entanglement in the nineteenth century is found in the closing paragraph of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Darwin’s image of an “entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about,” serves as a synecdoche for the patterns of biological interdependence and variation that animate the evolutionary process of natural selection.1 The “entangled bank” is both the scene and the (...) symbolic illustration of creaturely increase and multiplication. We cannot escape the influence of heredity in Darwin’s schema, just as surely as the imagined bank of vegetation will wreathe and entwine.. (shrink)

Locke usually uses the term “judgment” in a rather narrow but not unusual sense, as referring to the faculty that produces probable opinion or assent.2 His account is explicitly developed in analogy with knowledge, and like knowledge, it is developed in terms of the relation various ideas bear to one another. Whereas knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas, judgment is the presumption of their agreement or disagreement. Intuitive knowledge is the immediate perception (...) of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, e.g., white is not black. If we perceive the idea of white, and the idea of black, nothing more is needed to perceive that white and black disagree with respect to identity. We just see or intuit it. Demonstrative knowledge is more complicated. Suppose we have or perceive the idea of the internal angles of a triangle, and also the idea of two right angles. Unless one is a prodigy, we can’t just “see” that these two ideas agree with respect to equality; we require a demonstration. For Locke, such a demonstration requires that we find another idea, such as 180 degrees, so that we can intuit that this idea stands in the relation of equality both to the internal angles of a triangle, and to two right angles. Thus a demonstration, for Locke, is a chain of ideas. (shrink)

This article argues that the practical difficulties and normative dilemmas at stake in the European refugee crisis as a crisis of EU integration extend beyond refugee policies into what we may call ‘the citizenship regime’ of the European Union in ways that are consequential for refugees, member states, and the European Union. It advances arguments for the relatively rapid access to citizenship of refugees, demonstrates that this norm has at least some acknowledgment in the policies of EU member states and (...) considers what further differentiation of refugees from other classes of migrant might be a part of developing a just and legitimate Common European Asylum Regime. It argues that there are some reasons to favour a CEAS in which refugees receive EU citizenship prior to national citizenship in a member state. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Symbolic Classification and The Emergence of a Metaphysics of CausalityOwen Goldinwhat is distinctive about metaphysics as a mode of thought that emerged in the fifth century before the Common Era? How did it emerge out of early ways of conceptualizing the world as a whole, and why? Many answers have been proposed. One common view is that earlier modes of thought personify natural agencies; once this is abandoned, the (...) way is open for discerning more complex regularities among natural events.1 Another view is that the process of "rationalization" introduced by the Greeks involves an implicit appeal to the individual's natural intelligence, in contrast to a dependence on an "inherited stock of wisdom."2 A third view is that the first Greek philosophers introduced inference as a way of navigating conceptual relationships, independent of the sorts of personal interactions among divinities related in mythical narrative.3 According to a fourth account, the mode of rationality that allowed for the development of ancient Greek metaphysics was a social [End Page 3] practice with the aim of persuasion, brought on by more democratic involvement in societal deliberations concerning law and policy.4To these I add a fifth way of answering the question. Crucial to the emergence of Greek metaphysics is explicit distinction of ontological/causal priority and posteriority. Ancient Greek scientific explanations developed out of older, archaic modes of conceptualization, which I maintain have deep parallels with modes of conceptualization shared by many nonliterate cultures. Such modes of thought rest on an implicit worldview which can be called a metaphysics, in a loose sense, and are still worthy of philosophical consideration.I begin with a red flag that will be raised for many as soon as we start talking about the metaphysical traditions of nonliterate cultures. What counts as a metaphysical tradition? I make some distinctions. In the loosest sense, an account or tradition is metaphysical if it reflects a coherent worldview concerning the kinds of beings that there are and how they are related to one another. According to a stricter sense of the term, a tradition is metaphysical if it involves working through this worldview in an explicit and systematic matter. In an even stricter sense, a tradition is metaphysical if, in addition to being explicit and systematic, it merits being classified as "philosophical," itself not an unproblematic term. I here stipulate that an account is philosophical if it does not rest on premises that are specific to certain cultural traditions and employs inferential arguments that are in principle subject to refutation.Generally speaking, there are two ways in which a tradition that is metaphysical in the strictest sense can listen to one that is metaphysical in a looser sense. First, a metaphysician might examine the latter tradition in order to explore how, historically, it served as the root for the former. An example is Aristotle's interest in Hesiod as expressing metaphysical intuitions that later philosophers unpacked.5 By studying [End Page 4] the ontological presuppositions of the sort of account from which our own metaphysics is derived, one learns more about our own ontological presuppositions and what we gain from them.6 This sort of dialogue carries with it the danger that the later thinker presupposes that—in the spirit of "you have to start somewhere"—the earlier thinkers were simply doing a bad job working through their own theories; Aristotle has often been accused of precisely this.7Another sort of dialogue is possible as well. An alternative metaphysical tradition can reveal the possibility of a radically different way of conceptualizing the causal and ontological structure of the world, one with its own advantages. In such a case there is shared set of problems at issue, shared points of reference within the philosophical literature, and a shared understanding of what philosophical argument is. But philosophical insight might also emerge from the kind of dialogue in which a developed metaphysics that conforms to certain standards of inferential argument confronts a way of thinking that is metaphysical in a looser sense. A substance-based ontologist can be led to reflect on whether the world has to be cut up as she does by studying Aztec... (shrink)