In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls’s first argument for the inherent stability of a well-ordered society seeks to establish that citizens of such a society would come to share the same or similar senses of justice. In his late work, Rawls significantly revised his second argument for stability, but he repeatedly pronounced himself satisfied with the first. However, the pluralism that so drastically reoriented Rawls’s mature theory also creates destabilizing forces absent in Theory. These destabilizing forces suggest (...) that a shared sense of justice among citizens will be more difficult to achieve. This paper examines Rawl’s late theory in detail to reconstruct how Rawls, despite his stated satisfaction, addressed the destabilizing effects of pluralism through revisions to his first argument for stability. It argues that in his late theory Rawls no longer claims that a well-ordered society could achieve inherent stability. Instead, a more fragile stability is achieved through a disciplined commitment to publ... (shrink)

"On Sense and Reflexivity" offers the answer to a crucial question that was posed, and left without a satisfactory answer, by Gottlob Frege in "On Sense and Reference" (1892): What is the sense of a proper name? The century-long failure to answer this question has been the main motivation and support for recent nondescriptional accounts of lexical singular terms.

Frege’s claim that proper names have senses has come to seem untenable following Kripke’s argument that names are rigid designators. It is commonly thought that if names had senses, their referents would vary with circumstances of evaluation. The article defends Frege’s claim by arguing that names have word-reflexive senses. This analysis of names’ senses does not violate Kripke’s noncircularity condition, and it differs crucially from related views of Bach and Katz. That names have reflexive senses confirms Frege’s own solution to (...) his puzzle about the content of identity sentences, solves Kripke’s Pierre and Peter puzzles about belief ascription, and entails that bearerless names have meanings. Furthermore, names’ having reflexive senses explains why they designate rigidly. (shrink)

Truth Be Told explains how truth and falsity result from relations that sentences and their constituents have to the circumstances at which they are evaluated. It offers a precise analysis of truth and a diagnosis of the Liar paradox. Current semantic theory employs generalized quantifiers as the extensions of noun phrases. The book provides simpler extensions for noun phrases. These permit intuitive compositions of truth-values and a diagnosis of the Liar and Grelling paradoxes.

Theoreticians of names are currently split into two camps: Fregean and Millian. Fregean theorists hold that names have referent-determining senses that account for such facts as the change of content with the substitution of co-referential names and the meaningfulness of names without bearers. Their enduring problem has been to state these senses. Millian theorists deny that names have senses and take courage from Kripke's arguments that names are rigid designators. If names had senses, it seems that their referents should vary (...) among possible worlds. However, the Millians have the enduring problem of explaining the apparent cognitive content of names. I argue that Mill's original theory, when purged of confusion, provides word-reflexive senses for names. Frege failed to notice senses of this particular sort. Moreover, it is these senses that account for names' rigid designation. When the views of Mill and Frege are understood as complementary, the problems that have faced the divided theorists of names vanish. (shrink)

Frege's thesis that each singular term has a sense that determines its reference and serves as its cognitive value has come to be widely doubted. Saul Kripke argued that since names are rigid designators, their referents are not determined by senses. David Kaplan has argued that the rigid designation of indexical terms entails that they also lack referent–determining senses. Kripke's argument about names and Kaplan's argument about indexical terms differ, but each contains a false premise. The referents of both (...) names and indexical terms are determined by reflexive senses. It is reflexive sense that makes these terms rigid designators. (shrink)

Frege's thesis that each singular term has a sense that determines its reference and serves as its cognitive value has come to be widely doubted. Saul Kripke argued that since names are rigid designators, their referents are not determined by senses. David Kaplan has argued that the rigid designation of indexical terms entails that they also lack referent–determining senses. Kripke's argument about names and Kaplan's argument about indexical terms differ, but each contains a false premise. The referents of both (...) names and indexical terms are determined by reflexive senses. It is reflexive sense that makes these terms rigid designators. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis has fallen out of favor in political philosophy. The influence of figures like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin has led political philosophy to focus on questions about what should be done, and to ignore questions about the usage of words. As a result, contemporary political philosophy lacks a shared understanding of the concept of justice, and a considerable amount of disagreement between political philosophers is, upon reflection, traceable to this. In my book, I call for renewed (...) attention to the manner in which the word ‘justice’ is and should be used. Focusing on the late work of G.A. Cohen, I argue that two major debates in contemporary political philosophy: the debate over luck-egalitarianism and the debate over whether justice imposes demands on citizens’ personal lives; are really just conceptual. Whereas some philosophers have been using the term ‘justice’ to refer to one among a plurality of values, others have been using it to refer to institutional rightness. Though the latter use of ‘justice’ is presently more dominant, I argue that much is to be gained from thinking of justice as one value among many. Doing so sheds light on the nature of both democracy and legitimacy, and, paradoxically, makes better sense of the idea that justice is ‘the first virtue of institutions’. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that Mill’s classification of names as nonconnotative terms is incompatible with Frege’s thesis that names have senses. However, Milldescribed the senses of nonconnotative terms—without being aware that he was doing so. These are the senses for names that were sought in vain by Frege. When Mill’s and Frege’s doctrines are understood as complementary, they constitute a fully satisfactory theory of names.

It is generally accepted that Mill’s classification of names as nonconnotative terms is incompatible with Frege’s thesis that names have senses. However, Milldescribed the senses of nonconnotative terms—without being aware that he was doing so. These are the senses for names that were sought in vain by Frege. When Mill’s and Frege’s doctrines are understood as complementary, they constitute a fully satisfactory theory of names.

Extremism about Demands is the view that morality is significantly more demanding than prevailing common-sense morality acknowledges. This view is not widely held, despite the powerful advocacy on its behalf by philosophers such as Peter Singer, Shelly Kagan, Peter Unger, and G.A. Cohen. Most philosophers have remained attracted to some version of Moderation about Demands, which holds that the behavior of typical well-off people is permissible, including the ways that such people tend to employ their economic and other resources. (...) It is difficult to resist the conclusion that proponents of Extremism have not taken sufficiently seriously the central convictions that motivate the Moderate view. -/- This dissertation offers an improved defense of Extremism about Demands. At its center is an argument that appeals dialectically to requirements of justice that Moderates themselves already implicitly accept. Specifically, I claim that any plausible set of Moderate moral principles will, when applied to a world like ours, yield demands on typical well-off people that far exceed the demands of common-sense morality. -/- My argument has two cruxes. The first is the idea that our concern for justice is at least partially grounded in a concern for individuals’ interests, broadly construed. The other is a principle that I call Injustice entails Obligations, which says that we are collectively subject to requirements of justice that, if fully complied with, would ensure the transition from current injustice to a just state of affairs. Any view that is compatible with both the interest-based view of (part of) our concern for justice and Injustice entails Obligations will, I argue, require sacrifices from typical well-off people that substantially exceed what prevailing common-sense morality requires of them. -/- Moderates typically emphasize the idea that each person has an important interest in pursuing the projects, plans, relationships, and commitments that are most important to her. But they also believe that acceptable Moderate principles will properly balance this idea with the idea that from a properly impartial perspective everyone, and everyone's interests, are equally morally important. Because Moderates accept the latter idea, they are already committed to thinking that in a just world, everyone would have a sufficient minimum share of society’s resources. I argue that even if we limit our focus to distributive justice in a single society such as the United States, and even if we assume that distributive justice requires only a sufficient minimum, the extent to which the status quo must be transformed in order for justice to be achieved is still too great to be compatible with Moderate demands on typical well-off people. -/- There are a number of ways to try to argue that Moderate principles and Injustice entails Obligations are compatible with Moderation about Demands. For instance, it might be argued that all or nearly all of the demands to sacrifice in order to promote justice can be assigned to the super-rich, rather than to typical well-off people. Or it might be argued that the sacrifices of a single well-off person cannot be required because they amount to a mere “drop in the bucket” relative to what needs to be done in order to fully achieve justice. I show that such arguments fail. -/- The argument that I consider in greatest detail derives from John Rawls’s view that the principles of justice apply to the institutions of the “basic structure of society,” and do not apply directly to the conduct of individuals. If this “Institutionalism” is right, then it cannot be the case that individuals are obligated to promote justice directly in the way that I suggest they are. Furthermore, it might seem that a view that assigns all of the burdens of promoting justice to the basic structure satisfies the imperative to transition from injustice to justice, since if the relevant institutions were to begin doing everything that the Rawlsian view says they ought to be doing, the requirements of justice would be met. I argue, however, that there is no understanding of Institutionalism on which it is itself consistent with the following desiderata: Moderate principles, and the associated interest-based view of (part of) the ground of our concern for justice; Injustice entails Obligations; and Moderate demands. So, Institutionalism cannot make Moderate principles and Injustice entails Obligations compatible with Moderate demands. -/- Moderate principles and Injustice entails Obligations, then, remain incompatible with Moderation about Demands. Since there are compelling reasons to accept both Moderate principles and In justice entails Obligations, I conclude that we must reject Moderation about Demands. The obligations that justice places on typical well-off people are substantially more extensive than is acknowledged by prevailing common-sense morality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Knave and the Interests of JusticeJason Baldwin, doctoral student in philosophyHume's account of the artificial virtues of justice and promise-keeping developed in Book III, Part ii of the Treatise is among the most provocative elements of his ethics. His goal there is to tell a naturalistic story of the origin and moral standing of these virtues, a story that makes no appeal to any irreducibly moral motives (...) or properties but instead grounds even our most basic and apparently binding obligations in the same thoroughly human passions and sentiments with which Hume explains all our actions. Several modern critics, including David Gauthier and Stephen Darwall, have claimed that Hume's story of the artificial virtues is inconsistent with his account of natural human motivations, and have further claimed that Hume himself became aware of this problem in the second Enquiry, where he discussed it in the famous "sensible knave" passage in the last paragraphs of the "Conclusion." They therefore claim that Hume abandoned in the Enquiry what is usually taken to be his official Treatise account of justice and promise-keeping, and may also have intended a different account in the Treatise itself.This paper argues that the sensible knave passage neither signals nor requires any significant change in Hume's official Treatise story of the artificial virtues. Part 1 summarizes this official account, Part 2 explains the challenge Gauthier and Darwall believe the sensible knave poses to this account, and Part 3 defends the standard Humean account from this challenge. Whatever other problems Hume's account of justice and promise-keeping may have, the free rider problem, as developed by Gauthier and Darwall through the character of the sensible knave, is not among them.1. The Interest Account of Artificial Virtues1.1 Hume's Predecessor TraditionsHume makes few explicit references to the English-speaking predecessors whose work informs his thinking about the artificial virtues, and I shall follow his example. [End Page 277] But without pretending to survey that rich and varied history, we may usefully think of Hume's approach to justice and its allied virtues as an attempt to preserve the strengths of two opposed predecessor traditions.1 The first tradition, represented most prominently by Hobbes but also by Mandeville, explains the origin of virtues generally, including Humean artificial virtues, in purely naturalistic terms, without any appeal to divinely ordained ends or observer-independent moral facts. Hume shares this humanistic aspiration, but he disavows the cynical skepticism and crude egoism which are usually taken to accompany it. He wants to tell a story about justice which will allow us to admire its genuine moral worth even as we acknowledge its human pedigree.The second tradition, a reaction to the first, is the moral sense school represented by Shaftesbury, Butler, and especially Hutcheson. This tradition insists, against the cynical egoists, on a moral reality to which our sentiments or consciences give us immediate access, an access secured by God's design. Also characteristic of the moral sense theorists is the claim that human nature contains benevolent motives which are the objects of the moral sense's approval and which are just as basic to our constitution as are selfish motives. Hume avails himself of both moral sense strands, albeit in attenuated form. He agrees that justice and injustice are known by the sentiments, and he also believes that benevolent first-order motives are a part of human nature. But Hume rejects the moral sense tradition's Christian teleology, and he is also less optimistic about the potential of benevolence to explain such complex moral behaviors as are involved in our institutions of justice and promise-keeping.Hume's standard Treatise story of the origin of justice and promise-keeping, which we may call the "interest account," has two stages. In the first stage, Hume explains how the practices which constitute justice and promise-keeping arise through the working of our natural interests; in this stage Hume might be seen as working in the broadly naturalistic-egoist tradition. In the second stage, Hume explains how these practices and the motives which underlie them become the objects of moral evaluation, i.e., why... (shrink)

In this paper I take up the question about the unity of justice in Aristotle and advocate for a robust relationship between lawfulness and equality, the two senses of justice that Aristotle distinguishes in Nicomachean Ethics V. My strategy is to focus on Aristotle’s indication in NE V 2 that “other-relatedness” is the common element shared by the two justices and turn to Aristotle’s discussion of the notion of self-love in EN IX 8 to explain what that (...) means. I argue that the other-relatedness of justice can be characterized in terms of proper self-love. Concretely, the discussion of self-love makes clear that those who are concerned with the well-being of others in their community over their own material gain—i.e., those who are lawful and not grasping or pleonectic—are able to see that their own self-interest is in harmony with acting in benefit of their community. This shows that there is an intimate link between lacking pleonectic inclinations and being able to act for the sake of the common good—and in general, between lacking pleonectic inclinations and being virtuous in relation to others. (shrink)

The function of rationality in A Theory of Justice (1971), which is of paramount importance for John Rawls’ (1921–2002) project, is often criticised as ambiguous.David Gauthier, for example, claims that Rawls develops principles for recipients who essentially share his intuitions of morality, without managing to prove theirvalidity. In Political Liberalism (1993), Justice as Fairness (2001) and other writings Rawls himself embarks upon the task to throw more light on this issue, making the Kantian distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’. (...) I intend to demonstrate that in A Theory of Justice the formulation and the compliance with the principles of justice are based on the interaction between the rationality, represented in the idea of the good, and the sense of justice of individuals. (shrink)

This paper argues that a comparative study of the idea of a sense of justice in the work of John Rawls and the early Chinese philosopher Kongzi is mutually beneficial to our understanding of the thought of both figures. It also aims to provide an example of the relevance of moral psychology for basic questions in political philosophy. The paper offers an analysis of Rawls’s account of a sense of justice and its place within his theory (...) of justice, focusing on the features of this capacity and how it develops. It then provides an account of the sense of justice in Kongzi’s thought as it is seen in the Analects. Finally, it shows how examining the similarities and differences between the two accounts can deepen our understanding of both views, as well as our appreciation for the importance of understanding how a sense of justice develops. (shrink)

Take the mystery out of digital photography and join the fun! You don't need to be a professional photographer or a technology expert to take great digital photos! This down-to-basics guide makes it easy to choose the right camera, understand all its dials and controls, take good pictures, make them look even better with your computer, and print them or share them online for friends and family to enjoy. Do your homework — compare camera features to choose those you need (...) at the price you can afford Practice, practice, practice — learn to use camera settings, how to compose good shots, and how light affects a picture The darkroom is now digital — use free software to organize and edit your photos Learn to share — print your pictures at home or through a service, e-mail them to friends, set up an online photo album, or show them off in a digital picture frame Open the book and find: How to pick the camera that best fits your budget and needs Tips for taking great travel photos Accessories you might want for your camera How to get really good pictures of kids and pets Easy ways to get photos from your camera to your computer Tips and tricks for editing pictures on a computer Good reasons for putting your pictures online. (shrink)

A value-packed bundle for value-conscious seniors! Digital photography and cameras is a must-have for the over-55 set, but the technology can be intimidating. This book-and-DVD bundle provides all the plain-English guidance of Digital Photography For Seniors For Dummies along with a one-hour DVD filled with tips for using various camera settings, getting terrific photos, and working with images after they're shot. With advice on choosing and using a digital camera, secrets for super shots, getting images onto the computer and enhancing (...) them, and making prints or sharing pictures online, this value-priced bundle has what seniors want to know. People over 55 are one of the fastest-growing markets for digital cameras; they want to learn to use the equipment quickly and without being intimidated by technology This book-and-DVD bundle provides plenty of information in plain English and at a no-nonsense price Covers choosing a digital camera, understanding the lingo, using the controls, working with different settings, downloading and organizing pictures, performing basic edits, and sharing your photos Easy-to-read type and plenty of colorful illustrations make Digital Photography For Seniors For Dummies a great way to get up to speed The Digital Photography For Seniors For Dummies bundle provides exactly what seniors want-no-frills explanations, the visual aspect of DVD instruction, and a great value. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment by D. Brent Laytham, and: If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice by Maureen H. O’ConnellJoel WardeniPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment By D. Brent Laytham EUGENE, OR: CASCADE, 2012. 209 PP. $24.00If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice By Maureen H. O’Connell COLLEGEVILLE, MN: LITURGICAL (...) PRESS, 2012. 319 PP. $39.95Although, in the Republic, Plato discussed the usefulness (and danger!) of having artists practicing within the civic community, from his time forward, social philosophers, moral theologians, and religious ethicists have tended to avoid [End Page 199] probing too much into the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. To be sure, as organized academic philosophy developed, especially after the Enlightenment, the separate intellectual bailiwick of aesthetics left ethical considerations of what is morally (as opposed to artistically) good to the domain of ethics. The result of such segmentation was to keep both interests’ discussions of “the good” significantly apart.The two books reviewed here represent new (and, hopefully, now less uncommon) attempts to find the correspondence between beauty and goodness. Because both authors think and write specifically from the perspective of Christian ethics, these attempts make use of the resources of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, the sometimes contrasting traditions of Protestant and Catholic spiritual reflection, and the authors’ own personal engagement with sources of beauty or entertainment. Both authors argue in some way that the pursuit of the beautiful (or the enjoyable) bears a relation to goodness. They both also argue that our use of technology and our making of art ought to attend to the building of justice.In his book iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment, D. Brent Laytham investigates varied forms of contemporary entertainment activities and technologies (e.g., the media-sharing website YouTube, video games, fashion magazines, sporting events) and unearths the ways in which these contemporary and technologically facilitated pastimes both support and endanger human social interaction. In particular, he pays close attention to how entertainment(s) help or hinder the drive of a community of believers into lives of discipleship.The thirteen chapters of the book are each organized around a particular technological theme and make good use of sociological reflection on media, as well as some Christian reflection on games, the communal pursuit of fun, and festivity. Laytham, a Methodist, takes a sympathetic stance toward modes of entertainment in how they function, at times, as legitimate means of communication between persons. But he also warns that they can, if used without an understanding of their effects on the inner lives of the persons involved, be damaging. The author often demonstrates remarkable psychological insight, such as when he discusses the pressures put upon teenagers’ sense of physical self-image when based on the values of fashion magazines (140), the spiritual dangers of any kind of escapism (118), and the complicated motivations underlying petty gambling (107). And though reflection questions that are scattered throughout the body of the text are sometimes distracting from the arguments he puts forward (and so maybe would be better placed at the end of each chapter), he clearly wants his critique of media and entertainment to lead to a fuller, better enjoyment of them, a proper enjoyment possible when they are understood in relation to what should be their ultimate purpose: the drawing together of communities of persons. [End Page 200]Moving from a consideration of entertainment to art, properly speaking, Maureen O’Connell’s If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice is a number of things. It is a narrative description of what has happened in one urban environment in the United States, where socioeconomic decline, street violence, and crushing poverty produce needful places for transformative grace; a theological-aesthetic analysis of a genre of fine art, peculiar for the materials used and the venues in which it is displayed; a moral-ethical project inspired by familial ties to a particular city, as well as the fruit of continued interest (and, one might even say, pastoral zeal) on the author’s... (shrink)

Theories about man's moral sensibilities, particularly his sense of justice, tend to reflect either optimism or pessimism about human nature. Among modern theorists Hobbes, Hume, and Freud are perhaps the most outstanding representatives of pessimism. Recently, optimistic theories, which view the sense of justice as linked essentially to the sentiments of love and friendship, have found favor with philosophers. Of these theories John Rawls's is the most notable. Section I considers the conceptual scheme optimists advance to (...) establish this view of the sense of justice and argues that it has serious problems. Section II examines Rawls's account of moral development, which is an especially well worked out account on the optimistic side, and argues that, because it relies on the conceptual scheme discussed in Section I, it too is seriously problematic. Finally, Section III suggests that behind these problems lie reasons favoring a pessimistic view like Hume's or Freud's. (shrink)

Methods in comparative work -- The sense of justice in Rawls -- The sense of justice in the analects -- Two senses of justice -- The contemporary relevance of a sense of justice.

This chapter contains sections titled: Two Forms of Property‐Owning Democracy What Is Stability? Why Does It Matter? The Sense of Justice Participation in Public Life Three Distinctive Features of Rawls's View Democratic Corporatism and Participation Objections Conclusion References.

In this paper, I discuss the relevance of the sense of justice for Rawls’s theory of justice. In the first part, I analyse the interpretation that Rawls offered of moral psychology for evaluating its role in the generation of the sense of justice and the acceptance of the principles of Justice. In the second part, I discuss the difficulties of accepting Rawls's proposal. Finally, I conclude that the research on moral psychology developed by Rawls (...) allows him to recognise a way of supporting his principles of justice that is different from the traditional forms of deductive justification. (shrink)

The paper analyzes Rawls's moral psychology and the claim that a just society must foster a sufficiently strong sense of justice. When Rawls investigates the development of the sense of justice under a just basic structure, he tacitly narrows down the focus: he only demonstrates the development of a sense of justice on the premise that all members of society are already in possession of a full-fledged sense of justice, save the one (...) individual under investigation. This begs the question, largely presupposing what needs to be explained, namely, how citizens at large develop a sense of justice. Rawls's narrowing of perspective leads to distortions in the analysis of stability, particularly with regard to a property-owning democracy. However, in lesser known parts of his work, Rawls offers clues for a more plausible account. Here, the idea is that institutions must be structured such that they enable all of us to nurture the sense of justice of each of us. With this idea of collective self-transformation in place, it becomes clear that economic institutions must be broadly democratized because of their profound educational role. Thus, the choice between a property-owning democracy and liberal socialism falls more strongly upon the latter. (shrink)

Media use is a pervasive aspect of children’s home experiences but is often not considered in studies of the home learning environment. Media use could be detrimental to children’s language and literacy skills because it may displace other literacy-enhancing activities like shared reading and decrease the quantity and quality of caregiver-child interaction. Thus, the current study asked whether media use is associated with gains in children’s language and literacy skills both at a single time point and across a school (...) year and whether age moderates any association. Children (N = 1583) were from preschool through third grade classrooms and language and literacy skills were measured in the fall and spring of the school year. Parents reported how much time their child spends using media on a typical school day. Regression analyses showed that using 4 hours or more of media was related to lower literacy gains, but not to language gains. Multilevel models conducted as a robustness check showed that this effect did not hold when accounting for classroom. In neither set of models was there an interaction between age and media use. Single-time-point models did show some associations that did not manifest in more stringent models, highlighting the limitations of correlational designs that do not have measures of children’s skills over time. Given the concern and popular press coverage around children’s media use, it is important to acknowledge nonsignificant effects in this domain. These nonsignificant associations suggest that societal fears around children’s media use may be exaggerated. Notably, however, characteristics of children’s media use, like educational content or adult co-use, may moderate any effects. The relation between media use and language and literacy growth did not differ across the age range investigated suggesting that, within this range, younger children are not more vulnerable to detrimental effects. (shrink)

BackgroundThe concept of benefit sharing to enhance the social value of global health research in resource poor settings is now a key strategy for addressing moral issues of relevance to individuals, communities and host countries in resource poor settings when they participate in international collaborative health research.The influence of benefit sharing framework on the conduct of collaborative health research is for instance evidenced by the number of publications and research ethics guidelines that require prior engagement between stakeholders to determine the (...) social value of research to the host communities. While such efforts as the production of international guidance on how to promote the social value of research through such strategies as benefit sharing have been made, the extent to which these ideas and guidelines have been absorbed by those engaged in global health research especially in resource poor settings remains unclear. We examine this awareness among stakeholders involved in health related research in Kenya.MethodsWe conducted in-depth interviews with key informants drawn from within the broader health research system in Kenya including researchers from the mainstream health research institutions, networks and universities, teaching hospitals, policy makers, institutional review boards, civil society organisations and community representative groups.ResultsOur study suggests that although people have a sense of justice and the moral aspects of research, this was not articulated in terms used in the literature and the guidelines on the ethics of global health research.ConclusionThis study demonstrates that while in theory several efforts can be made to address the moral issues of concern to research participants and their communities in resource poor settings, quick fixes such as benefit sharing are not going to be straightforward. We suggest a need to pay closer attention to the processes through which ethical principles are enacted in practice and distil lessons on how best to involve individuals and communities in promoting ethical conduct of global health research in resource poor settings. (shrink)

The President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research published in March of 1983 its Report, Securing Access to Health Care: The Ethical Implications of Differences in the Availability of Health Services . Concluding that there are "ethical obligations" on behalf of society which are balanced by individual obligations, the Report provides an ethical framework for ensuring "ultimate responsibility" of the Federal government to arrange for equitable access to health and to a fair (...) share of cost. In doing so the Report neither makes justice nor beneficence the prime moral principle in public health care, it rather calls for a common sense approach in "approximating adequacy". But how to define equality without creating uniformity in a society rich in its diversity, including attitudes towards health? Keywords: justice, beneficence, right to health care, equality, distribution CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

We offer a theory regarding the symbolism of the human body in legal discourse. The theory blends legal theory, the neuroscience of empathy, and biosemiotics, a branch of semiotics that combines semiotics with theoretical biology. Our theory posits that this symbolism of the body is not solely a metaphor or semiotic sign of how law is cognitively structured in the mind. We propose that it also signifies neurobiological mechanisms of social emotion in the brain that are involved in the social (...) and moral decision-making and behavior that law generally seeks to govern. Specifically, we hypothesize that the symbol of a collective human body in the language of law signifies neural mechanisms of pain empathy which generate a virtual, neurally simulated, emotional sense of sharing the feelings or pain of others and of thereby being one-in-body with or virtually equal to them. We speculate that this may be the neural basis of what is signified in legal and political theory as the “body politic” or “sense of equality,” because neuroscience and psychiatry further suggest that such pain empathy may provide the natural, emotional motivation to think and act in a rights-based manner. We conclude that misunderstanding of these neural mechanisms of pain empathy and related misinterpretation of this corporeal symbolism for the same may have long resulted in legal discourse that misinterprets the function of “pain” in the law and misinterprets the associated positive law, specifically the law regarding individual, equality-based rights and criminal justice, in particular, punishment theory. (shrink)

Public streets are central to the built environment, where individuals seek a fair share of the roadway’s benefits and harms. But the American street, an asphalt landscape typically defined and designed for cars, can be inaccessible, unhealthy, and dangerous for the non-motorized, whose transportation choices have the smallest ecological footprint. Concern for social equity and sustainability requires rethinking the street geographically and ethically, and asking: “In what sense is the street a space of justice? How do traditional street (...) regulation and design manifest ethical priorities? And what might a more just street look like, in theory and practice?” Such questions prompt one to engage both the spatial and moral, thus drawing from critical geography and ethics to analyze roadways in terms of fairness and relational wholeness, and argue for what might be called a shalom street. Engaging such ethical concepts with the technical vocabularies of street regulation and design requires analyzing how national model standards and their interpretation enforce and materialize justice on the street.The promise of more just alternatives such as more sustainable and fair “Complete Streets” to live in needs to be explored. (shrink)

The social contract approach to the study if institutions aims at providing a solution to the problem of compliance with rational agreements in situations characterized by a conflict between individual rationality and social optimality. After a short discussion of some attempts to deal with this problem from a rational choice perspective, we focus on John Rawls's idea of 'sense of justice' and its application to the explanation of the stability of a well-ordered society. We show how the relevant (...) features of Rawls's theory can be captured by a behavioral game theory model of beliefs dependent dispositions to comply, and we present the results of two experimental studies that provide support to the theory. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes briefly what John Rawls meant by stability, the role it plays in Theory of Justice (TJ), and the outline of his main strategies for showing that a well‐ordered society based on his principles of justice would be relatively stable. It presents comments on Rawls's use of developmental moral psychology in support of his claim that societies based on justice as fairness would be relatively stable. The chapter discusses Rawls's conception of self‐respect, its role in (...) his arguments for justice as fairness, and whether it is subject to a certain Kantian objection that echoes in our contemporary political culture. It argues that if Rawls's turn to an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines as the basis of stability in Political Liberalism (PL) was well motivated, then why not quietly bypass the earlier work on a sense of justice and self‐respect simply as an acknowledged failure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 5-30 Justice and the Foundations of Social Morality in Hume's Treatise JACQUELINE TAYLOR Hume famously distinguishes between artificial virtues and natural virtues, or, at one place, between a sense of virtue that is natural and one that is artificial. The most prominent of the artificial virtues are those associated with the practices of justice. Commentators have devoted (...) much attention to Hume's explanation of what motivates us to be just. But his main concern in the Treatise is to explain why we approve morally of just conduct.1 While there surely are complexities surrounding the issue of the motivation to be just, in one sense Hume's explanation is quite straightforward: self-interest motivates us to establish and follow the conventions of justice. The real interest in his account of the establishment of justice lies in his further explanation of how those conventions transform our moral psychology, and lead us to form shareable moral points of view from which we can reach agreement on the value of characters. My reading of Hume's account in the Treatise is as follows. Hume attributes to us a social morality, the central notion of which is a moral sensibility that has its origins in nature, but that must be extended by social artifice in order to accommodate the various virtues important to cooperative living. I will contend that the moral psychology embodied in a cultivated sense of morality depends on the redirection of our evaluative propensities and therefore requires the sorts of convention that Hume associates with justice.2 My thesis helps to make sense of the structure of Book III: Hume has genuine philosophical reasons for introducing the artificial virtues prior to the natural ones.3 Jacqueline Taylor is at the Department of Philosophy, Tufts University, Medford MA 02155-7059 USA. email: [email protected] 6 Jacqueline Taylor The main goal of this paper is to show that Hume's philosophy has the resources to explain our ability to balance our appraisal of the artificial and natural virtues, since we need both sorts of virtue to live well. As a foil for my view, I want to use the argument advanced by Barry Stroud and others that Hume faces a special difficulty in explaining how we sustain our approval of particular just acts that considered in themselves appear harmful to the public good. Stroud argues that Hume fails to explain what recommends justice as a virtue to us in all cases, and thus fails to capture the concern we have for fairness.4 While Stroud finds in the second Enquiry the seeds of a view, based on our sympathetic approval of what tends to the good of mankind, that could provide the materials for developing a naturalistic account of how we come to have a concern for justice and fairness, he argues that Hume's interest lies squarely in the origin of justice and not in how people develop shared social attitudes (Stroud, 216-218). I disagree with Stroud's pronouncement that Hume fails to explain sufficiently our moral approval of justice, but I must leave to one side discussion of the particular social attitudes of justice, such as concern for fairness. My focus will be on how we cultivate a range of shared attitudes of moral appraisal and the relation of these to justice. Stroud misjudges Hume's project, at least in part, because he neglects the historical context in which Hume was writing, and overlooks some important differences between Hume and his contemporary, Francis Hutcheson.5 In Book II of the Treatise, in a discussion of virtue and vice as causes of pride and humility, Hume signals the reader that in the next book he will examine "the controversy...whether these moral distinctions be founded on natural and original principles, or arise from interest and education" (T 295). The controversy to which he refers is that between moral sense theorists, such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, on the one side, and members of the Hobbesian or "selfish" school, which includes Mandeville as well as Hobbes, on the other. As he starts Book III, Hume seems to suggest that his... (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a Thomistic alternative to Martha Nussbaum’s justice for animals as outlined in Frontiers of Justice. I argue that an account of analogous justice between humans and animals can generate real and robust obligations towards animals. I first show how Aquinas’s treatment of nonhuman animals in the questions on law evince a wider, shared community between humans and animals by which we see animals and humans as equally under divine providence. I (...) then argue that while Aquinas’s definition of justice excludes animals in its proper sense, his treatment of animals in questions such as those on theft and charity prove that there is room to understand at least an analogous or metaphorical sense by which we can see them as recipients of justice. Finally, I examine Nussbaum’s own account and illustrate key similarities between her view and that of Aquinas. (shrink)

This article brings together two debates in contemporary political philosophy: on the one hand, the dispute between the distributive and relational approaches to equality and, on the other hand, the field of intergenerational equality. I offer an original contribution to the second domain and by doing so, I inform the first. The aim of this article is thus twofold: shedding some light on an under-researched and yet crucial question – ‘which inequalities between generations matter?’ and contributing to a far-reaching debate (...) that touches upon the nature of egalitarianism. After showing that there are two key problems that fall within the scope of intergenerational equality – questions of justice between age groups and questions of equality between birth cohorts – I argue that, contrary to what the default distributive view states, some inequalities between age groups matter independently of their diachronic impact, and so partly for relational reasons. I argue that, even if we are distributive egalitarians, we must endorse the relational egalitarian conception to successfully make sense of some inequalities between age groups. I infer from this both that the putative view that the ‘relational’ conception of equality can be redescribed as distributive must be rejected and that the distributive view requires supplementation by the relational view. (shrink)

Does which side of the fence we are on determine our perceptions of justice? Philosopher Eric M. Cave argues that rules of justice would benefit the members of a community little if individuals lacked an effective desire to comply with these rules. However, sometimes a sense of justice appears to do no more than to limit what individuals can do in pursuit of their own ends. Cave presents a provocative vehicle for self-examination.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Instinct of Nature: Natural Law, Synderesis, and the Moral SenseRobert A. Greene“Instinct is a great matter.”—Sir John FalstaffThis essay traces the evolution of the meaning of the expression instinctus naturae in the discussion of the natural law from Justinian’s Digest through its association with synderesis to Francis Hutcheson’s theory of the moral sense. The introduction of instinctus naturae into Ulpian’s definition of the natural law by Isidore of (...) Seville in the seventh century posed a problem of definition for medieval commentators. Some said that it meant a universal and providential natura naturans; some defined it as the urge to self and species preservation in animals, degenerating in man into sensual and shameful impulses; some advanced the humanistic and paradoxical notion that it referred to a unique exercise of human reason in coming to know the natural law. The contemporaneous revival in the twelfth century of St. Jerome’s puzzling new term “synderesis,” and its gradual definition as the immediate apprehension of the first practical moral principles of the natural law, brought the two terms into proximity and loose association.A half-century later St. Bonaventure made explicit what had remained latent in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas by relocating synderesis in the affective rather than the intellectual part of man’s nature. Accordingly the moral discoveries of synderesis came to be spoken of as not only non-discursive but instinctive in nature—apprehensions for which no reason could be given, apprehensions somehow rooted in affective human experience. During the bilingual early modern period an increasingly secularized, internalized, and reified instinctus [End Page 173] naturae, together with its abbreviated vernacular cognate, “instinct,” came to serve as a substitute and synonym for the obsolescent synderesis. Edward Herbert’s attention to instinctus naturae in his De Veritate (1624), Sir Matthew Hale’s speculations about the place of rational instinct in the natural law, and Francis Hutcheson’s theory of a moral sense all exemplify this semantic legacy.The first entry in Justinian’s Digest has had a disproportionate influence on later speculation about the natural law. It begins a chapter that gives pride of place to general definitions of justice, law, jus naturale and jus gentium, and it is drawn from the writings of the Roman jurisconsult Domitius Ulpianus (d. 223), whose work constitutes forty percent of the Digest. Ulpian defines the natural law, with insistent repetition, as that which nature has taught to, or is common to, all animals:Jus naturale is that which nature has taught to all animals; for it is not a law specific to mankind but is common to all animals—land animals, sea animals, and the birds as well. Out of this comes the union of man and woman [male and female] which we call marriage, and the procreation of children, and their rearing. So we can see that the other animals, wild beasts included, are rightly understood to be acquainted with this law. Jus gentium, the law of the nations, is that which all human peoples observe. That it is not coextensive with natural law can be grasped easily, since this latter is common to all animals whereas jus gentium is common only to human beings among themselves. 1Justinian’s compilers gave Ulpian’s definition striking prominence at the beginning of the Digest and then in the same short chapter quoted the incompatible and more traditional definitions of his contemporaries Gaius and Paulus. They confined the operation of the natural law to mankind and spoke of reason as its source. 2 The compilers had been charged to eliminate just such conflicts; yet here at the very outset they set a conundrum that perplexed commentators [End Page 174] and invited explanation from Isidore of Seville to Hugo Grotius. Their selection of quotations suggests that as lawyers they regarded such general definitions as “for legal purposes no more than ornament to discussion.” 3 For those of a more speculative bent, however, the dilemmas could not have been more fundamental. How was the natural law to be defined in relation to those appetitive and self-preservative urges that man seemed to share with animals? Or did the term law apply only... (shrink)

In a contribution to this journal Amos Witzum has challenged a common interpretation of Adam Smith's theory of justice, according to which Smith ‘employed a concept of justice – in the tradition of natural laws theories – whereby rights are related to guarding what is one's own rather than to what is one's due’ (Witzum, 1997, p. 242). Witzum claims that not only does Smith's conception of justice include one's due, and hence, distributional considerations, but the right (...) to one's own ‘stems from the right to what is one's due’ (p. 244). Furthermore, he asserts that ‘as all members of society own their natural faculties, which presumably were given to them to enable them to survive, the fruits of their labour up to subsistence level belong to them by virtue of their ownership of their own faculties’ (p. 259). This leads him to the conclusion that property acquisition gives rise to a duty, on the part of property holders, to ‘distribute subsistence’ and that when wages fall below the subsistence level, the rights of workers have been violated ‘in exactly the same sense that taking an acquired asset away from its owner constitutes a violation of justice’ (p. 244). (shrink)

An ongoing tension exists within the Lockean tradition in political philosophy between the claim that each individual is the “Proprietor of his own Person” and the claim that nature is “that which God gave to Mankind in common.” The former claim points to a realm of discrete individual entitlements only formally equal in the sense of each individual having jurisdiction over his own person and not over any other person, while the latter points either to a collective entitlement to (...) nature or to individual entitlements to substantively equal shares of nature. Were the two realms, that of persons and that of extra-personal nature, separate and independent, no tension would arise from the union of these two claims. But the realms are manifestly interconnected. Individuals acquire, use, labor upon, invest their time and energy on, and transform, more or less in accordance with their purposes, elements of extra-personal nature. And Locke and his followers believe that at least certain of these interactions with segments of nature give rise to individual property rights to the segments thereby appropriated, labored upon, transformed, or whatever. The traditional bridging notion is each person's right to his own labor which is seen as part of each person's proprietorship over himself. According to this tradition, if the right of each individual over his own person is to be respected, individual titles to appropriated, labored upon, or transformed nature must also be respected. The task for anyone seeking to embrace all the strands within this Lockean heritage is to reconcile, a) this right to one's own labor and the system of private property rights tied to it plus the right of self-ownership which lies behind the right to one's own labor, with b) some distributionist ideal, at least with regard to natural resources. (shrink)

Erin M. Cline expresses skepticism of several dimensions of Chun Hin Tsoi’s attempt to establish a classical Confucian view of distributive justice. She admonishes us to distinguish the constructive derivation or development of such a concept from Confucian views from descriptive attribution of those views to the early thinkers themselves. Cline also dissuades us from constructivism that draws indiscriminately across a diversity of texts, since the Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi each offer their own distinct views on matters of (...) class='Hi'>justice, which may variously align or conflict. She then further defends her particular interpretations of Analects passages. These rebuttals conclude by pointing to a shared sensitivity to moral luck in early Confucianism and contemporary liberalism that again draws together the sense of justice in Rawls and Confucius. In closing, Cline reminds us that the dimensions of justice she and Tsoi discuss are deeply interwoven into the rich fabric of values and concerns presented in the Analects, and encourages that we take account of the more robust content and context of these records of Confucius’ teachings. (shrink)

The primary aim of this interpretive essay is to reconstruct some of the most important features of Rawls’s theory of justice, and to offer a hypothesis about how its assumptions and arguments are tied together in a highly structured construction. An almost philological approach is adopted to highlight Rawlsian ideas. First, I consider in what sense Rawls is an individualist and in what sense he is not. Fromthis I conclude that he ought not be charged of psychological (...) egoism or atomism. Then I consider the role of rational choice, the contract and the relation of the latter to the criterion of reflective equilibrium. Here, pride of place is given to the reflexive method, while the role of contract and rational choice, though not denied, is downgraded. Finally, I enquire whether Rawls can be considered a universalist, and suggest that this category, owing to the theory’s practical aim and pragmatic method, is of little use. If successful, my reconstruction should offer a better insight into the theory and dispel some possible misunderstandings. But my presentation should not be read as either an assessment or a defense. (shrink)

Religion is a deriving force for social change in India since ancient times. Although we boast about ancient Indian ideals of social stratification, which made a long lasting discrimination within society, and most of the times we do not do any justice to social-political life of a billion peoples. The study of the relation between religion and politics showed that this relation always made a problematic situation for the indigenous people and always benefitted invaders. The idea of the interface (...) or mixing of religion and politics being problematic and potentially dangerous is a byproduct of the rise of secularism, often regarded as one of the hallmarks of modern society. The concept of social justice is an important concept for the social-political harmony in present times. Social justice denotes the equal treatment of all citizens without any social distinction based on caste, colour, race, religion, sex and so on. It means absence of privileges being extended to any particular section of the society, and improvement in the conditions of backward classes (SCs, STs, and OBCs) and women. Social justice is a public and collective good that involves an equitable sharing of the earth’s power, resources and opportunities to enable people individually and collectively to develop their talents to the fullest. Its realisation requires social relations embedded in trust, acceptance, mutuality, reciprocity and solidarity. Under Indian Constitution the use of social justice is accepted in wider sense, which includes social and economical justice both. Ancient social structure allows us to see the discrimination made to indigenous people with reference to their socio-political life. These evils not only effects Hindu social order rather it also haunts the social structure of newly established religions in Indian continent. The objective of this paper is to disuses the role of religions in imparting social justice to Indian socio-political structure of our society. First we will see the place of religion in society then sees its effect on socio-political order whether it is affirmative or negative which allow us to make any rational conclusion. (shrink)

The debate over the host of moral issues that genetic enhancement technology (GET) raises has been significant. One argument that has been advanced to impugn its moral legitimacy is the ‘unfair advantage argument’ (UAA), which states: allowing access to GET to be determined by socio-economic status would lead to unjust outcomes, namely, create a genetic caste system, and with it the exacerbation and perpetuation of existing socio-economic inequalities. Fritz Allhoff has recently objected to the argument, the kernel of which is (...) that it conflates the use of the technology with its distribution. GET, he argues, would generate unjust outcomes only if it is distributed according to principles of an unjust pattern of distribution; for if we can determine what constitutes a ‘just’ distributive scheme, then the technology can be allocated according to the principles of that scheme. In this paper I argue the following cluster of related claims: (1) both UAA and Allhoff's proposed distributive schemes ignore the importance of non-genetic factors in the development of an individual's characteristics and capacities; (2) if we accept the view that it is good to prevent unjust outcomes that arise because some have exclusive access to GET, then we have to accept wide-ranging distributive schemes; (3) by tracking genetic and non-genetic factors wide-ranging schemes do violate in some sense the widely shared value of neutrality in liberal democracies. (shrink)

A penal ethics for today examines the connections between affect and morality. It scrutinises closely the felt moralities within the apprehension of crime. These felt moralities underpin interventions that are seemingly mobilised by a passion for justice. A penal ethics questions whether these sensibilities really do move moral actors as just feelings. This proposition is readily defended by reference to the emotive moralism in some notable areas. These include legitimation of the death penalty as ‘closure’ for victims, and the (...) emergent imperative to wage ‘virtuous’ wars. Developing an ethics that challenges the contemporary penal field requires a sophisticated theoretical elaboration. An approach of this kind entails the conceptual determination and phenomenological analysis of moral sensibilities. This essay accordingly explores the feeling of being moved by a sense of atrocity. It considers the feeling of being moved to respond justly to one globally noted death from crime. This was a death thought to have reinforced the West’s sense of moral purpose in the movement toward ‘virtuous war’ upon an Iraqi regime framed as ‘brutal’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Just Share: Justice and Fairness in Resource Allocation*Pat Milmoe Mccarrick (bio) and Martina Darragh (bio)Each of us has some basic sense of what the words “fair” or “just” or “fairness” or “justice” mean. Each of us probably also has an idea of what is “fair” in health care. The attempt by the state of Oregon in the mid-1980s to quantify this notion made a previously (...) private exercise a public one. This transition has been chronicled in the bioethics literature that focuses on resource allocation. These works examine both theories of justice and concepts of “health”; the fair distribution of health resources has been of continuing interest since the beginning of bioethics in the 1960s. Early writing on justice includes authors Tom L. Beauchamp, Robert H. Blank, James F. Childress, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Paul T. Menzel, Paul Ramsey, and Robert M. Veatch (VII).During the 1980s, bioethicists such as Daniel Callahan and Norman Daniels proposed thinking of health care decisions not as moments of personal crisis but as choices that span a lifetime, possibly involving tradeoffs in other areas of one’s life, e.g., education. The Oregon experience added another dimension to the discussion. The initial rank-ordering of health services by cost produced a skewed list—for example, surgery for life-threatening conditions ranked below minor, elective procedures. For the project to make sense, the ranking algorithm could not be based on cost alone, but rather on a combination of costs and benefits both to individuals and to the community—“concatenations of individual and group goods” (I, Jecker and Jonsen 1995). Various metaphors have been used in the literature to facilitate discussion of this shift from individual to individual/community trade-offs: medical services as a “commons” (I, Asch 1995, Jecker and Jonsen 1995, Michels 1994); resource allocation as a “lifeboat” (I, Campbell 1995; III, Kaveny 1994); medical care as “shares” in a community health (III, Nelson 1992, Ford and Kissick 1995; II, Anderson 1993); and rationing as traveling through the desert with one jug of water for two people (a story from the Halachah literature) (I, Zoloth-Dorfman 1995). [End Page 81]Such metaphors do not promote any one “theory of justice” but rather draw from the work of a number of bioethicists as well as from theological, sociological, economic, and business literature. The five major conceptions of justice that are referenced most frequently are: “(1) a libertarian conception, which takes liberty to be the ultimate political ideal; (2) a socialist conception, which takes equality to be the ultimate political ideal; (3) a welfare liberal conception, which takes contractual fairness or maximal utility to be the ultimate political ideal; (4) a communitarian conception, which takes the common good to be the ultimate political ideal; and (5) a feminist conception, which takes a gender-free society to be the ultimate political ideal” (I, Sterba 1995).The use of new metaphors also draws on expanded concepts of “health.” “As health care is currently practiced, the most powerful symbols for public and professional alike are those that promise the defeat of time” (I, Campbell 1995). When medical care is perceived as an unrelated series of individual cures, the fact that health care resources are finite cannot be addressed.Reflections concerning the difficulties in limiting the use of health care resources have an ancient lineage and reveal a tight bond with the obsession to postpone death at all costs. Plato in Book 3 of the Republic recognizes the quandary of infinite expectations and finite resources that characterizes the challenge of health care choices. (I, Engelhardt 1996)The proliferation of expensive medical technologies and the loss of autonomy by health care professionals further complicates perceptions of the crucial issues at hand. Some have said that Americans place too much emphasis on individualism to address these issues. Daniels et al. believe that this is too pessimistic a view and that the American commitment to protecting equal opportunity for all provides a firm basis for developing a public consensus on what is fair in health care (III, Daniels, Light, and Caplan 1996). Finally, several authors suggest that the nature of all four principles of medical ethics, not justice alone, must be... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to make sense of Marx's own view about justice in the light of the controversy between classical Marxism and normative Marxism. Normative Marxism claims that Marx's condemnation of capitalist exploitation and his conception of communism entertain a principle of justice, while classical Marxism does not allow any such principle in Marx's thought. However, I argue that although Marx uses normative terms, he does not provide any specific theory of justice. Marx's (...) condemnation of capitalism is based on the real interests of the workers, not on their moral norms, and his communist principle is a principle of distribution (as a principle of equality), not a principle of justice. (shrink)

Recent work has suggested that our cognitive biases and moral psychology may pose significant barriers to tackling climate change. Here, we report evidence that through status and group-based social influence processes, and our moral sense of justice, it may be possible to employ such characteristics of the human mind in efforts to engender pro-environmental action. We draw on applied work demonstrating the efficacy of social modeling techniques in order to examine the indirect effects of social model status and (...) group membership on pro-environmental action tendencies. We find evidence that high- status models increase pro-environmental action, in part, through making such actions seem morally fairer to undertake. This effect of high-status models only occurs when they share a meaningful ingroup membership with the target of influence. Further, we find evidence that this conditional effect of high-status models may also have a direct impact on action tendencies. While the exact behaviors that are influenced may vary across student and non-student samples, we argue that a focus on the “justice pathway” to action and the social-cognitive features of models may offer a good opportunity for cognitive and behavioral scientists to integrate insights from basic research with those stemming from more applied research efforts. (shrink)