The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP), along with the Research Group on Constitutional Studies (RGCS) and Departments of Philosophy and Political Science at McGill University, will offer one or more postdoctoral fellowships at McGill in 2011-12.

Area of specialization is open within political theory and political philosophy, but we are especially interested in applicants whose research is relevant to one or more of these GRIPP research themes:
1) The history of liberal and democratic thought, especially early modern thought;
2) Moral psychology and political agency, or politics and affect or emotions or rhetoric;
3) Democracy, diversity and pluralism;
4) Democracy, justice, and transnational institutions

Ph.D. must be in hand by 1 September 2011; preference may be given to candidates whose Ph.D.s will be in hand by 15 April 2011. Preference may also be extended to those with a knowledge of French, and to Canadian citizens or permanent residents; please indicate French knowledge and Canadian status in cover letter.

The fellow will be expected to be in residence at McGill for the academic year and to take part in GRIPP and RGCS workshops and conferences. The stipend will be at least $C 27,000 and may be higher. Summer fellowships, paid teaching on top of the stipend, an a research allowance are possible.

Please submit cover letter, CV, a writing sample of one chapter or paper, research statement, and three letters of recommendation via email to GRIPP.postdoc@gmail.com . Materials may be sent if needed to: GRIPP postdoctoral fellowship, Political Science, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal QC H3A 2T7, but electronic submission is preferred. Deadline: September 15.

Nominations Open: 21-31 August 2010

Via Abbas Raza, 3 Quarks Daily – the website you should be reading if you are not already — are hosting their second annual prize for the best blog writing in philosophy. Akeel Bilgrami will be the judge. The details of last year’s contest are here. You can nominate blog posts written in English in the last year and not longer than 4000 words.

Eastern APA: 28 Dec 2010

For everyone intending to go to the Eastern APA in Boston this year, the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs will be holding a session on the Ethics of Compromise in Democracy on Tuesday 28 December, 2010, from 2pm-5pm. We’ll be looking at the topic of political compromise from a number of angles: compromise in international politics, the epistemology of disagreement, and the role of partisanship in politics. There’s been comparatively little systematic work on this ubiquitous political phenomenon, despite its moral and philosophical complexity, so we’ll be hoping to have a discussion that adds impetus to its study.

Chair: Randall Harp (Vermont)
Speakers:
Eric Beerbohm (Harvard): Compromise among Epistemic Peers
Simon Cabulea May (Virginia Tech): Deep Compromise in Partisan Politics
Dan Weinstock (Montreal): Compromises beyond Peace

Problems with Priority?
A one-day conference hosted by the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT)

19th November 2010
10.30am – 5.30pm
University of Manchester, UK

Speakers
Martin O’Neill (York)
Michael Otsuka (University College London)
Thomas Porter (Manchester)
Alex Voorhoeve (LSE)
Andrew Williams (I.C.R.E.A. and Pompeu Fabra University)

Details
The Priority View is widely seen as a leading alternative to egalitarianism that avoids some of the difficulties associated with the latter.  However, in their 2009 Philosophy & Public Affairs article “Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View” (P&PA vol. 37, no. 2), Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve have offered a new argument to show that the Priority View is vulnerable to fatal objection.  This conference is devoted to exploration and criticism of that new argument and will include a ‘response to critics’ session with Otsuka and Voorhoeve.

Registration and further details
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/events/priority/

Please note: thanks to the Analysis Trust, there are a limited number of subsidised places for graduate students.  These places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Contact
Please contact Noémie Rouault (noemie.rouault@manchester.ac.uk) if you have any queries.

CFP: First Biannual Meeting of the North American Kant Society

The conference is to be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on June 2-4, 2011. Papers can be in any of the three areas of Kant’s philosophy: theoretical, practical or aesthetic. Please identify the area under which you wish your paper to be considered. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes reading time (approx. 3000 words). Papers are due on October 15, 2010 and will be blind reviewed. Please keep identifying information on a separate page. We encourage graduate student submissions. If you are a graduate student, please identify yourself as such. A $100 travel award will be provided for the best graduate paper and this paper will be considered for the annual Markus Herz Prize. Send your submission by email to Sharon Anderson-Gold: anders@rpi.edu

Public Reason, Vol. 2, No. 1, June 2010 is now available online.

Contents:
Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation
Karl Widerquist (Georgetown University – Qatar)

Abortion and the Limits of Political Liberalism
Henrik Friberg-Fernros (University of Gothenburg)

On the Public Reason of the Society of Peoples
Alexander Brown (University of East Anglia)

Crooked Wood, Straight Timber – Kant, Development and Nature
Rafael Ziegler (Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald)

Human Security and Liberal Peace – Some Rawlsian Considerations
Alejandro Agafonow (The Autonomous University of Barcelona)

Compulsory Victim Restitution Is Punishment: A Reply to Boonin
Michael Cholbi (California State Polytechnic University)

Book Reviews:

Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind
Reviewed by Reidar Maliks

Alex Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics
Reviewed by Cristian Iftode

G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality
Reviewed by Kevin William Gray

Public Reason is an open access journal of political and moral philosophy,
but it is also available in print (ISSN 2065-7285; EISSN 2065-8958).
Public Reason publishes articles, book
reviews, as well as discussion notes from all the fields of political
philosophy and ethics, including political theory, applied ethics, and
legal philosophy. The Journal encourages the debate around rationality in
politics and ethics in the larger context of the discussion concerning
rationality as a philosophical problem.

Public Reason is committed to a pluralistic approach, promoting
interdisciplinary and original perspectives as long as the ideal of
critical arguing and clarity is respected. The journal is intended for the
international philosophical community, as well as for a broader public
interested in political and moral philosophy. It aims to promote
philosophical exchanges with a special emphasis on issues in, and
discussions on the Eastern European space.

Starting from 2010 Public Reason publishes two issues per year, in June
and December. Public Reason is an open access e-journal, but it is also
available in print.

Via Edward Lewis, the first part of a two-part interview with Stuart White on political philosophy and the left at the New Left Project. Topics include Cohen on luck egalitarianism and freedom.

Visiting Fulbright Chair in the Theory and Practice of Federalism and Constitutionalism, McGill University, Department of Political Science and Research Group on Constitutional Studies, 2011-2012.Open to US citizens (who are not also Canadian citizens or permanent residents); must have received Ph.D. by the end of 2010. Stipend of $US 25,000 for stays of 4-9 months.Specializations: Normative, jurisprudential, comparative, historical, or analytic/formal studies of constitutional theory and practice, with preference for studies that encompass some aspect of constitutional federalism. Methodologically open within political theory and political science, including intellectual and institutional history.For more information please contact me.To apply click here; application deadline August 2.

22nd-23rd July, Budapest

Registration Open, send an email to Molesa@ceu.hu or MiklosiZ@ceu.hu

http://www.ceu.hu/events/2010-07-22/democracy-and-legitimacy-dealing-with-extremism

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

Meanwhile, the rise of the extreme right, together with heightened discrimination and segregation of disadvantaged minority groups give rise to another set of related questions about what governments may do to protect and assist these groups which might not be able to protect themselves, which might not be able to respond to prejudice against them. Is it permissible to restrict privacy rights by registering ethnic data in order to help fight against discrimination? Is it permissible to use such data for the purpose of reverse discrimination?

The conference is motivated by two sets of reasons: on the one hand we aim to discuss how the recent ‘turn to the right’ might affect liberal democracy and what can be done about it. On the other hand, we plan to do this by bringing together experts in both political theory, legal studies, public and social policy. We believe that cross-fertilisation is beneficial for all camps of enquiry.

Timetable:

THURSDAY, 22 JULY

Registration 9:30

Welcome 9:45

Keynote speech 10:00-11:15

T. Christiano, Democratic Authority and International Institutions

            Commented by Andrew Williams

Coffee 11:15-11:30

Panel 1 11:30-13:00

Enzo Rossi, Justice, Legitimacy and (Normative) Authority for Political Realists

Emanuela Ceva, Resolving, Containing, Managing: What Response to Value Conflicts in Politics?

Eszter Kollar, Ethical Insignificance and Political Significance of the Nation

Lunch 13:00-14:00

Panel 2 14:00-15:30

Richard Winfield The Vocabulary of Extremism: State-Sponsored Hate Speech Inciting Violence

Lucia Scaffardi, Freedom of Expression and Its Limits: Racial Hate Speech in Italy

Todd Grabarsky, The Rule of Law and Anti-Hate Speech Legislation in Democratic Germany

Coffee 15:30-15:45

Panel 3 15:45-17:15

Alexa Zellentin, Liberal Neutrality, Equal Citizenship and Cultural Differences

Nils Holtug, Secularism and Liberal Neutrality: The Case of Judges and Religious Symbols

Matthew Clayton, Rebutting Arguments for Religiously-Motivated Disobedience: Rawlsian Considerations

Coffee 17:15-17:30

Panel 4 17:30-19:00

Bernard Rorke, Anti-Roma Speech, Segregation and Discrimination

Stanislav (Stanko) Daniel, Mainstreaming Racism in Politics

Laura Ranca, Media(ted) extremism? Addressing Roma minority representation in Romania’s mainstream media

Wine reception at CEU Japanese Garden 19:00

FRIDAY, 23 JULY

Keynote Speech 10:00-11:15

Anthony Appiah, The theory and practice of cosmopolitanism           

Comments, TBD

Coffee 11:15-11:30

Panel 5 11:30- 13:00

Espen Gamlund, The Requirements of Toleration

Kristian Ekeli, The Political Rights of Anti-liberal Democratic Groups

Ekow Yankah, Rawls, Secular Communication and Exclusion

Lunch 13:00-14:00

Panel 6 14:00-15:30

Willem Korthals Altes, Hate speech, Religion, Discrimination

Janne Teller, May Allah Have Mercy on My Country

Naser Khader (Pending)

Coffee 15:30-15:45

Panel 7 15:45-17:15

David Heller, Regulating Hate Speech in Cyberspace: Local Norms, Global Inforcement?

Suzette Bronkhorst, The Internet and How Extremists Use Its Full Potential

Ronald Eissens, Liberty, Progress and Extremism: Lessons not Learned

Coffee 17:15-17:30

Panel 8 17:30-18:30

Rastislav Dinic, Tradition, Prejudice and Folk Epistemology

John Harris, Doubts about Democracy

Closing dinner at a restaurant in historic downtown Budapest 19:30

I’ve received the announcement below through the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics’ list.  I assume it’s no secret and think it might be of interest to Public Reason members:

Theoretical and Applied Ethics (Revised Announcement)

The editors of a new undergraduate journal, Theoretical and Applied Ethics, are seeking referees for its editorial board. Chris Herrera, associate professor of philosophy at Montclair State University will be general editor of this journal, and Alexandra Perry, lecturer in philosophy at Bergen Community College will be managing editor. T&AE will be geared towards undergraduates, and each paper accepted for publication will have been blind-reviewed by a team of referees, all of whom hold doctorates in their respective specialties. Professor Herrera’s overall goal is to provide an online journal for high-quality papers in areas such as Medical Ethics, Business Ethics, and Ethical Theory. Current plans are for the journal to be published three times each year, with a Fall, Spring, and Summer issue.  The journal’s board of editors will be comprised of faculty from various universities. Suitable applicants will hold a Ph.D. in philosophy, and have an AOS in ethics, philosophy of law, or social philosophy. Interested applicants should send an abbreviated version of their C.V.s, along with a brief letter of introduction to TheoreticalAndAppliedEthics@gmail.com

I have no dog in this fight, as my lack of a Philosophy Ph.D. makes me ineligible on my face.  For that matter, I’m probably also ineligible when off my face.

Sen returns to many of the themes of The Idea of Justice in the final chapter. He begins by noting that people respond to injustice with anger and indignation, but that justice requires reasoned scrutiny of these sentiments (Chapter 1). Public reasoning is central to justice, since “there is a clear connection between the objectivity of a judgment and its ability to withstand public scrutiny” (394; c.f., Chapter 5, 15-17). Decisions need to be seen as just not only for instrumental reasons, but because those that cannot be made public are likely unsound. (388-94)Justice involves the comparison of a plurality of impartial reasons which may conflict (Chapter 9). There is a tendency in moral and political thought to search for a single value that encompasses all others (e.g., pleasure), but reason doesn’t support this reduction. Happily, non-commensurability and incompleteness don’t inhibit our ability to reason objectively about justice. Though we may need to accept “an unresolvable diversity of views,” this is usually “a last resort”. (397, footnote) In many cases, we can identity shared partial rankings to guide our decisions even if our personal reasons behind these rankings are different. (394-401; c.f., Chapter 4)

According to Sen, reasoning about justice should not be confined to a single state or community, but rather be global and cosmopolitan. Justice requires “open impartiality” (Chapters 5-9). Non-compatriots’ interests are relevant to justice, as are their perspectives; these may help correct our parochial biases. Our actions at the level of the state affect people outside its boundaries, so we should consider their interests before acting. For example, the US reaction to the global recession has far reaching consequences to the global and hence most local economies. Also, our values may have their basis in ignorance and exposure to people outside of our circle may give use more adequate information for assessing them. Sen cites Adam Smith’s discussion of infanticide here. (404)

Sen refers loosely to “global democracy”. Unlike many cosmopolitans, he doesn’t reject a global state outright, but rather points to its current infeasibility. He connects the rejection of cosmopolitan accounts of justice with Rawls and Nagel’s view that justice primarily concerns institutional arrangements. If global institutions are necessary for justice, this may support justice’s limited scope. Instead, Sen relies on his conception of democracy as public reasoning and the role of governmental bodies (e.g., the United Nations and its different bodies), citizens’ organizations, “many NGOs, and parts of the news media”. (409) Instead of working toward a global state, we should work to strengthen global public reason. (401-9)

Fourth, Sen’s theory of justice has its roots in social choice theory, not on the social contract. (Chapters 2-6, 9) His theory of justice “concentrates, as the discipline of social choice does, on making evaluative comparisons over distinct social realizations.” (410) This leads to a concern with comparative justice and a focus on actual outcomes, rather than “perfect justice” that primarily examines institutions. (410-2) Sen returns to the distinction between niti and nyaya and reiterates the importance of taking into account actual outcomes instead of concentrating on just institutions or principles. (413)

The role of philosophy in justice is to “play a part in bringing more discipline and greater reach to reflections on values and priorities as well as on the denials, subjugations and humiliations from which human beings suffer across the world.” (413)

Questions and thoughts:

1) Since this is the final chapter, I think it’s worth asking what Sen hoped to accomplish in The Idea of Justice. Is The Idea of Justice a culmination of Sen’s work in political philosophy the way Theory of Justice incorporates and refines the papers that led up to it or is it a summary where the reader must consult Sen’s references to journal publications to fully evaluate his considered views?
I’m inclined to think that The Idea of Justice is not a definitive statement of Sen’s views. (Blaine mentioned that chapter 1 is not really aimed at professional philosophers or political theorists; the same could be said of the book.) First, most of the chapters are far too short on detail and discussion of the literature to satisfy a philosophical audience. Second, most of the discussion is non-technical and accessible in its general outlines to a non-philosophical audience (as the mainly favorable reviews in the mainstream press suggest). Third, Sen gives many references to his journal publications, suggesting that they are relevant to evaluating his fully formed position.

2) If I am right here, then it’s worth asking about the value of Sen’s approach. Who ought a theory of justice to address? One possibility is that it ought to speak to political philosophers and theorists immersed in the most recent scholarly discussions. My impression is that most of the people who have participated in this reading group find Sen’s book unsatisfactory on this account.

Another possibility is that a theory of justice ought to be accessible to a wide range of academics, including economists, sociologists, law, geography, education etc. I suspect that it may be better received by people who aren’t immersed in philosophy, particularly economists. One reason is that if we follow Sen, we can largely bypass the philosophical literature on justice, a plus for people in other disciplines who work on the topic. A third is that the theory should seem relevant to academics in general, politicians, and the reflective public.

Obviously, different work can engage each of these three audiences, but I think we need to ask this question for two reasons. First, how do we fairly evaluate a work? For example, should we assess Sen’s book based on how well it engages recent philosophical literature on justice? Second, the choice of audience is central to political philosophy’s ends. Presumably, political philosophy should have some indirect influence on policy. If Sen had tried to satisfy his philosophical critics, his book would need to be at least twice as long and would have a much smaller audience.

3) Social choice perspective plays a central role in Sen’s theory. In fact, it may be fair to claim that his theory of justice treats political philosophy as a sophisticated branch of normative economics. I believe a fair assessment of Sen’s book would require delving into his work on rationality and social choice. Social choice theory grounds his pluralism and informs his basic “comparative” framework. Sen starts with individual preferences, but subjects them to standards of rationality and public reason and asks how they can be aggregated in a morally salient way. The result is that quite a bit of substantial political theorizing is outside of the hands of political philosophers and left to public reasoning (where political philosophers can weigh in but have no special authority).

Political philosophers have reason to worry on two fronts: economics and the general public have a greater role in determining the just society. Should they accept this?

In chapter 17, Sen outlines a theory of human rights. He acknowledges that many human rights activists have little patience for philosophical discussions on the nature (and indeed existence) of human rights. He also discusses Jeremy Bentham’s quip that the natural rights are “nonsense on stilts”. Sen insists that if “the idea of human rights … is to command reasoned and sustained loyalty” (356), we must address the skeptics and cynics.

Sen analyzes human rights in terms of their content and their justification (their “viability”) (358). With regard to their content, human rights are moral rights that protect important freedoms and entail social obligations that people promote these freedoms. First, Sen stresses that human rights are moral rights - “really strong ethical pronouncements as to what should be done”. (357) They are not legal rights, though they are often enshrined in legal documents and institutions. (363) Law plays a central role in guaranteeing human rights, but other activities such as education, public monitoring, debate, and protest are also crucial. Indeed, there are cases under which giving human rights legal status may be counterproductive. Fining or jailing men who deny their wives an effective voice in family decisions is probably not the best way to promote women’s equality. (365)

Second, the purpose of human rights is to protect important freedoms. (376-9) As we have seen, Sen’s analysis of freedom includes an “opportunity aspect” and a “process aspect”. The capabilities approach captures the opportunity aspect (capabilities are real opportunities to achieve valuable functionings). (371) But human rights go beyond the capabilities approach in protecting the process according to which achieve these functionings. Two people with access to an identical set of functionings may be in a quite different situation with regard to human rights. For example, the rule of law may guarantee person A’s access valuable functionings, whereas person B may rely on the whim of a benevolent dictator. Leaving aside the fact that dictators generally do a poor job of guaranteeing human rights, many of us also care about how rights are guaranteed.

Sen objects to interest-based accounts of human rights because he thinks they interfere with our intuitions about the importance of freedom. His objection rests on the distinction between people’s “real” interests and the interests they perceive themselves as having. For example, we generally want to protect the human right to free political association, even if people choose to associate with political parties that do not promote their real interests. Sen admits that some interpretations of “interest” incorporate freedom, so some freedom-based and interest-based accounts of human rights converge.

Third, human rights do not protect all freedoms. Rather, they must meet “threshold conditions” of “sufficient social importance to be included as a part of the human rights of that person and correspondingly to generate obligations for others to see how they can help the person to realize those freedoms…” (367) Impartial discussion is needed to determine which rights meet this threshold.

Fourth, human rights entail social obligations. (360) Human rights impose universal ethical reasons for people to prevent their violation, but these reasons do not automatically entail specific actions. Obligations may be perfect, but they are often imperfect and diffuse. We need to ask about the agents’ other obligations, their ability to effectively prevent the violation of the human right, their agent-relative prerogatives, etc.

How does Sen justify a list of human rights and identify the obligations that they entail? On his account, human rights are justified like other ethical claims. To assert a human right is to presume that these claims will meet the standard of “open impartiality” discussed in Chapter 6. Human rights claims that “survive open and informed scrutiny” (385) and “unobstructed discussion” (386) deserve their status - at least until contrary arguments surface. Even if there is widespread agreement about which rights count as human rights, people are bound to disagree about their comparative weight, how they mesh with other ethical considerations, and the structure of the obligations they impose.

Sen is particularly concerned about the justification of second-generation economic and social rights such as the right to subsistence, medical care, and education. (379-85) He discusses two philosophical criticisms of human rights, the “institutionalization critique” and the “feasibility critique”. Onora O’Neill has argued that social, economic, and cultural rights must be institutionalized in a way that clearly identifies obligation-bearers. Human rights without obligation-bearers are not human rights at all. In response, Sen argues that first-generation rights also impose imperfect obligations. For example, citizens have obligations to notify the police when witnessing a crime and the international community has an obligation to act to prevent genocide. Furthermore, O’Neill’s condition that human rights economic, social, and cultural rights must be institutionalized undermines their ability to motivate institutional change.

Similarly, Maurice Cranston argues in his “feasibility” critique that economic and social rights require considerable government action for their realization, something that often cannot be achieved with some countries’ infrastructure and resources. Sen responds by noting that Cranston is mistaken in thinking that first-generation rights simply require that governments and people “leave a man alone.” (384) Maintaining rule of law and social stability is also beyond the means of quite a few governments, but few hold that this discredits their moral force. The proper response to the inability to meet the requirements imposed by a human right is social action.

Like most of the preceding chapters, there are many issues that could be raised, including whether Sen adequately addresses interest-based human rights accounts, fairly rebuts O’Neill and Cranston (and other critics), etc. I’ll conclude with two general questions.

1) Will Sen’s account of human rights satisfy either skeptics or activists? Skeptics are unlikely to be moved by the appeal to reasoned scrutiny and discussion and will still decry the impotence of human rights in the face of realpolitik. Moreover, Sen’s broad treatment of human rights is deflationary, arguably reducing them to important moral rights that have special rhetorical force. His metaphysical modesty and non-committal approach to the actual list of rights may play into the skeptics’ hands who will deny that there is anything particularly special about human rights that lack the sanction of positive law. Sen is a long way from the natural law tradition he discusses in the first part of the chapter. He holds not only that there is a trade-off between human rights - sometimes human rights conflict - but that sometimes other ethical prerogatives or obligations can take precedent over obligations stemming from them.

Similarly, activists will ask how his account supplements their work. We can return to the Preface and ask how the Parisians storming the Bastille, Gandhi or Martin Luther King would view Sen’s account of human rights. Does it help with “the identification of redressable injustice”? (vii) Does it “clarify how we can proceed to address questions of enhancing justice and removing injustice”? (ix) Sen’s account of human rights is in many ways refined common sense. Activists may complain that this doesn’t add much moral clarification or force to their causes.

2) There is a tension between Sen’s pluralism and “assertive incompleteness” and his account of human rights. Recall that Sen argues that impartial discussion may not lead to agreement about just social arrangements, including agreement on the list of human rights and their content. Human rights are moral claims of sufficient social importance that their guarantee entails social duties. Presumably, they should be subject to “plural grounding”. (2) If a human right is sufficiently disputed by reasonable people from a perspective of “open impartiality”, then it should be (tentatively) struck from the pantheon.

My worry is that Sen’s theory of justice may commit him to minimalism about human rights. For example, in the example of the children deciding who receives the flute, Sen seems to consider a libertarian distribution of property reasonable. This would cast doubt on the status of the second-generation rights he defends.

This chapter covers three empirical issues relating to democracy: 1) the connection between democracy (or public reasoning—Sen seems to use these terms interchangeably) and famine, 2) the connection between democracy and economic development and 3) the promotion of tolerance toward minorities. In what follows, I will first restate Sen’s account of democracy (given in the previous chapter), as this is relevant to his interpretation of the data he provides in chapter 16. Second, I will outline his discussions of each of the three topics he takes up, and, third, I will raise a few questions about the causal connections he proposes in the discussion of famine.

Democracy

Sen views democracy as not merely the presence of elections and ballots, but as “government by discussion,” which includes “political participation, dialogue and public interaction (326).” He believes that an unrestrained media is especially important to the functioning of democratic societies, for a number of reasons, one of which plays a central role in his discussion of famines: a free press, Sen tells us, contributes to human security by giving a voice to the vulnerable and disadvantaged and by subjecting the government to criticism. (More on this
below.)

Democracy and Famine

In 1982, in an article in The New York Review of Books, Sen made the observation that “no major famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with regular elections, opposition parties, basic freedom of speech and a relatively free media (even when the country is very poor and in a seriously adverse food situation) (342).” Further, while India was under autocratic British rule, famines were regular occurrences; once India achieved democratic self-rule famines ceased. (Apparently, Sen’s observation about democracy and absence of famine was initially met with a fair amount of skepticism. Now it is widely accepted.) Sen infers from the observed correlation that democracy prevents famine. He offers two reasons in support of this inference. First, democratic governments are accountable to their citizens and subject to uncensored criticism from the media. So, in order to maintain power, democratic governments have a strong incentive to eradicate famines. (Indeed Sen argues later in the chapter that the famine case is really an instance of a broader phenomenon whereby democracy advances human security by giving political incentive to rulers to respond to vulnerable citizens.) Second, because of the informational role of the free press, democratic governments are likely to know about the plight of citizens and therefore about the need for amelioration. By contrast, authoritarian regimes, which suppress public discussion, may be simply uninformed about the severity or extent of a famine and fail to provide assistance for that reason.

Read the rest of this entry »

In chapter 15 of The Idea of Justice, “Democracy as Public Reason,” Sen defends the idea that democracy is a universal value. Can democracy flourish outside the west? One reason for thinking it can’t is that it (supposedly) has never done so before. To answer this charge, Sen distinguishes between the “institutional structure of the contemporary practice of democracy,” which is “largely the product of European and American experience over the last few centuries” (pp. 322-323), and the political ideals that underlie it. By the former, Sen seems to have in mind the institutions of electoral conflict (competitive elections, secret ballots, political parties, etc.). But these institutions, Sen argues, are simply the latest effort to institutionalize certain fundamental ideals, ideals of “political participation, dialogue and public interaction” (p. 326). These ideals, Sen suggests, are well-nigh universal in their appeal. But once one sees that the institutions are of use primarily as means to the realization of deeper ideals, then one has reason to avoid running the former and the latter together. In particular, one should not assume that because a certain type of institutional structure is up and running (i.e., there are elections, the votes are counted properly, the loser concedes power to the winner) that a satisfactory level of democracy has been achieved. This has been done by many comparativists, such as Sam Huntington. To do this is to focus (once again) on niti to the exclusion of nyaya.

Sen believes that an overly-institutional focus on democracy has caused particular trouble at the global level. John Rawls and Thomas Nagel may be right that there are no democratic global institutions–indeed, no institutions at all comparable to states. But this need not mean that there is no way to realize democratic ideals such as public discussion internationally. There already exist tentative practices of global deliberation, and they are worthy of support and encouragement, whatever the proper scope and limits of international institutions.

Of course, globalized public deliberation is only conceivable if the ideal of public dialogue has universal appeal. Sen believes that this ideal does have deep roots all around the world, including in areas that have little experience with popular elections. Of course, Sen also suggests that the divide between western and nonwestern experiences with democratic institutions is not as clearcut as the democracy-is-a-western-value story would have it. India was inspired by ancient Greece to experiment with formal democratic institutions (at least on a local level) long before the barbarian tribes of northern Europe. But societies have undeniably assigned value to public reason–the ideal underlying these institutions–for a very long time, and virtually everywhere. Sen illustrates this point using the Indian experience. He also discusses the Middle East in this context.

Sen concludes the chapter with a few words about the role of the media in a democratic society. (The transition to this topic is a bit abrupt.) Obviously, to the extent that the idea of public reason underlies and democratic practice, the media matters quite a lot. Sen argues that a well-functioning free press 1) enables the free expression of ideas, which is intrinsically valuable; 2) spreads information and subjects it to critical scrutiny; 3) protects the weak by subjecting the strong to the gaze of the public eye; 4) facilitates the formation of common values by the public; and 5) contributes to the pursuit of justice (though this last contribution is not clearly specified).

Read the rest of this entry »

Let me first start by apologizing for the late delivery of this comment, which unfortunately messed up Blain Neufeld’s carefully drafted schedule. Apologies to Blain and readers for this.

In Chapter 14, Sen elaborates on the relationship between equality and liberty (or freedom) in relation to the capability approach. A number of issues covered in this chapter have become classics in the literature, and will likely be familiar to readers. But Sen also spends some time discussing the distinction between his approach and that of Philip Pettit – an issue that raises some interesting questions I would like to reflect on in this comment. But let me first briefly review the main points covered in this chapter of The Idea of Justice.

Sen begins the discussion in this chapter by rehearsing the idea (famously expressed in his Tanner Lectures) that all plausible theories of justice have some place for equality, reflecting the fundamental insight that, at some basic level, people must be seen (and treated) as equals. The real question to be answered, Sen concludes, is that of the precise metric of equality underlying competing theories. Sen’s own answer to the “equality of what” debate, as readers know, is to advance capability as the appropriate metric of advantage. However, Sen also insists that an egalitarian perspective informed by the capability approach is not committed to strict equality of capability. He gives us several reasons to resist this strong form of capability egalitarianism, affirming the “multiple dimensions in which equality matters” (p. 297). One important point is that capability only affects what Sen calls the opportunity aspect of freedom and is incapable (pun unintended) to fully capture its process aspect. For Sen capability-based considerations are a crucial but not comprehensive part of a general theory of justice.

In the remainder of the chapter Sen shifts his attention to liberty or freedom, in which he wants to bring home the point that freedom too should be considered a complex and multi-dimensional (or plural) value. Sen suggests personal liberty should be given a good deal of priority, because “it touches our lives at a very basic level” (p. 299), but equally cautions against the extreme view of giving freedom absolute priority (such that it would trump any other concern, no matter how important or urgent). But now the question arises how we should conceive of this freedom that takes priority among the long list of factors that affect how well our lives go. Here Sen makes three distinct points, each of which are controversial and allow for considerable disagreement:

1. When freedom is viewed as “effective preference” we should appreciate the importance of the distinction between direct control, indirect control and luck, for the simple reason that there are many ways in which I may get what I want without having a direct say in how I get it. For Sen the mere fact that I have a preference satisfied implies a type of freedom that matters to how well my life is going (“a freedom of some importance”, p. 304).

2. Relatedly, the plural conception of freedom admits of several ways in which freedom is threatened or impeded: through a lack of capability, through genuine interventions, or through a lack of independence (making one’s preference satisfaction “favor-dependent” in one formulation). Sen spends a whole section arguing about the precise relationship between Pettit’s republicanism and his own capability approach, a point to which I return below.

3. Finally, the proper understanding of freedom (individual or collective) must take account of the outcomes of actions in addition to whether they are properly deemed to be free. This insight relates to Sen’s “impossibility of the Paretian liberal”, a theorem that has spawned a cottage industry of technical literature – a topic I’m happy to leave to more qualified readers.

In the remainder of my comment I want to say a few words on what I personally believe is the more interesting contribution of this chapter, the discussion between Sen and Pettit.

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Just thought some of the political philosophers might have interest in this new program from Yale Cognitive Science:

The Experiment Month initiative is a program designed to help philosophers conduct experimental studies. If you are interested in running a study, you can send your study proposal to the Experiment Month staff. Then, if your proposal is selected for inclusion, we will conduct the study online, send you the results and help out with any statistical analysis you may need. All proposals are due Sept. 1.

For further information, see the Experiment Month website: http://www.yale.edu/cogsci/XM

0915-1800 June 15th 2010, James Martin 21st Century School, Oxford

Speakers:
DR. HELEN FROWE (SHEFFIELD), `Threats and Bystanders’
DR. GERALD LANG (LEEDS), `Self-Defence and Agency’
DR. SETH LAZAR (OXFORD), `Scepticism about the Eliminative/Manipulative Agency Distinction’
PROFESSOR VICTOR TADROS (WARWICK), `Duty and Liability’

Respondents:
JO FIRTH (OXFORD)
DR. JON QUONG (MANCHESTER)
DR. DAVID RODIN (OXFORD)
GUY SELA (OXFORD)

Kima has been drugged and abandoned at the bottom of a well. She wakes up to see Niko hurtling to-wards her. He was walking alongside the (concealed) well when a powerful gust of wind blew him down it. If Kima does nothing Niko’s body will crush her, but he will survive. Or, she can save herself, using her trusty ray gun to disintegrate his body. Most people think Kima is justified in killing Niko to save herself, even though Niko is quite innocent of the threat he poses. But why? One answer is that killing Niko is an example of eliminative agency-Kima is not benefiting from Niko’s presence, but merely eliminating the threat that he poses. This is easier to justify than manipulative agency, which would involve using Niko’s body to secure a benefit she could not enjoy in his absence.This workshop brings together some of the UK’s leading philosophers of self-defence to discuss the eliminative/manipulative agency distinction, and ssess its contribution to the ethics of self-defence.

Lunch served. Papers will be pre-circulated a week in advance. Everyone is welcome, but registration is required. Numbers will be limited so register early to avoid disappointment. Please contact lucy.crittenden (at) politics.ox.ac.uk to register

Thanks!

In Chapter 13, Happiness, Well-being, and Capabilities, Sen concentrates on three issues.  The first is the success of economics as a discipline in accounting for happiness and its importance.  The second is the relationship between happiness and capability. The third is the relationship between capability and well-being.

Turning to the first issue, welfare economics is the discipline devoted to the assessment of the goodness of states of affairs and policies.  According to Sen, it has been and largely remains utilitarian in character.  Happiness is often understood as the sole determinant of human well-being/advantage and as the sole criterion for evaluating societies and policies.  Well-being/advantage is usually defined in terms of utility.  Utility is defined as happiness.  Happiness is understood as desire-fulfillment.  Policy evaluations are based on a comparison of the “sum total of individual welfares.”  Many economists hold that interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible.

Sen advances three criticisms of welfare economics.  First, Sen argues that the new welfare economists are mistaken to think that interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible.  We can, Sen argues, get general agreement on partial orderings of the joy and pain in different lives.  Second, the informational basis of well-being/advantage in welfare economics is incomplete.  It should be broadened to include factors such as substantive opportunities, negative freedoms, and human rights.  Omitting this information prevents us from making important distinctions in our judgments of the relative advantage of individuals who enjoy the same level of happiness, but differ dramatically along these other dimensions.  Omitting this information also leads to distorted assessments.  Individuals who are persistently deprived may adapt to their circumstances to make life tolerable, learning to “take pleasure in small mercies” and refusing to desire or hope for change in their circumstances.  If we assess the well-being/advantage of such individuals on the basis of their happiness alone, then we would fail to get an accurate picture of their actual disadvantage.  Third, Sen argues that contemporary welfare economists fail to sufficiently recognize the limits of using a monetary metric to gauge utility or happiness.  Sen references empirical evidence suggesting that there is not a direct correlation between increasing wealth and increasing happiness and the joylessness of the lives of individuals in prosperous economies.

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Chapter 12, Capabilities and Resources, begins with the well-known contrasts between capabilities (as what opportunities people actually have) and resourcist views. Sen then outlines four kinds of contingencies that figure importantly into the conversion of resources into the lives people can actually lead. These are: personal “heterogeneities,” differences in the physical environment, differences in the social climate, and differences in relational perspectives. Variations in the social climate refer to social structural differences—for example, the availability of publicly funded health care. Differences in “relational perspectives” refer to difference in social norms that may affect the need for resource expenditure to achieve desired goals; for example, in one society, the clothes required to command social respect may be far more expensive than in another. These types of contingencies may be interconnected; an example would be how a physical environment in which there is a great deal of snow interacts with mobility impairments in affecting how people can get around in society.Sen places particular emphasis on the interrelationship between disability and the opportunities provided by resources. He cites familiar data about the interrelationship between disability and poverty, and notes that much disability is preventable (e.g. disabilities that result from preventable infectious diseases such as polio or measles) and that this is a particularly important matter for social justice. Overall, Sen emphasizes both the conceptual and the normative importance of disability for theorizing about justice.

The remainder of the chapter is devoted to criticizing Rawlsian primary goods and Dworkinian hypothetical insurance markets. Sen commends Rawls for paying attention to “special needs,” but contends that the Rawlsian structure mistakenly downplays human difference. Pace Rawls, human variations in conversion capacities should not be seen as derivative matters for attention at the legislative stage. Rather, in Sen’s view they are ubiquitous to how social structures should be organized and analyzed. Sen recognizes that the capabilities approach will not be able to give a complete or even a linear ordering of social states, but contends that it directs us to make the important comparisons about justice.

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Central European University, Budapest, 22-23 July 2010 | CFP: 31 May 2010

Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu by 31 May 2010. The conference is free of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

Read the rest of this entry »

Workshops in Political Theory

7th Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
1-3 September 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS: COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY AND GLOBAL JUSTICE
Convenor: Avia Pasternak (University College London)

In recent years there’s a growing interest amongst philosophers and political theorists in questions of collective responsibility. Discussions cover a range of issues: What is the nature of corporate agency? Can groups be held morally responsible for their actions? Could they be punished and, if so, what are the implications for the individual group members?

Answers to these questions are of pertinent relevance to another major debate in contemporary political theory which concerns global justice, or the principles that should govern the distribution of primary goods at the global level: Are the primary holders of duties of global justice groups or individuals? What type of groups should be held collectively responsible for global injustices (states, multinational corporations, peoples, ethnic groups)? Can we ascribe responsibility for global injustices to groups which lack coordination mechanisms and formal decision-making procedures? Should groups like states be held collectively responsible for past wrongs which they have inflicted on other groups (e.g. colonialism)? And how should the responsibility of groups (states, nations, corporations) for global injustices pass on to their members?

This workshop invites papers on these questions and on other topics which reflect upon the relation between collective responsibility and global justice.

If you wish to participate, please send a 500 abstract to avia.pasternak@ucl.ac.uk by May 31, 2010.

More details about the Workshops can be found at http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/polphil/news/article.php?id=343

Chapter 11, the first chapter in a part of the book entitled « The Materials of Justice”, presents us with Sen’s well-known theory of capabilities. The main focus of the chapter is to emphasize that the capability approach is essentially a theory about human freedom, or more precisely, a theory about how freedom should be factored into the assessment of advantage and disadvantage. As against welfarist construals, Sen points out that we care not just that we achieve what we want, but also how we achieve what we want. Whether what we achieve results from our own agency, and whether we were able to exercise our agency on a range of valuable “functionings”, matters to an assessment of how well we do just as much, if not more, as does the result of our activity. We should be interested in “comprehensive outcomes”, not just “culmination outcomes”.

Two aspects of the capability approach are emphasized by Sen. First, the theory has an “informational focus”. As opposed to the approach developed by Martha Nussbaum, Sen’s just tells us what we should be concerned with in the measurement of advantage and disadvantage. He does not tell us what we should do with that information once we achieve it. Nor does he fill in the detail about what, precisely, we have reason to care about. The theory is thus neutral, at least on its face, as between different approaches to distributive justice – egalitarian, sufficientarian, prioritarian, and so on, as it is between various ways of filling out the detail of what we have reason to care about.

Second, the theory is pluralistic. There are a range of things that we have reason to value, that cannot be reduced to one metric. Bundles of desirable functionings will reflect this.

Sen deflects two worries about the capability approach. The first comes from welfarists like Arneson and Cohen who argue, on Sen’s way of putting their arguments, that we should be concerned with what people actually achieve, rather than with what they can achieve. Sen’s response to this is that the capability approach includes the welfarist approach because the functionings realized by an individual are part of the set of functionings that he could achieve. Making this broader set the index of his advantage provides us with better information about advantage because it includes freedom to achieve a range of bundles as an ingredient.

The other worry has to do with commensurability. How can we evaluate options given the irreducible pluralism of reasons to value that Sen affirms? Sen responds by stating, in line with much of the recent literature on evaluation, that incommensurability makes evaluation harder, but not impossible.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

“Science, Knowledge, and Democracy”

TRiP 2011 - Three Rivers Philosophy Conference

University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC  USA

April 1st - April 3rd, 2011

PDF flyer here.

Keynote Speakers:

Elizabeth Anderson (University of Michigan)

Miranda Fricker (Birkbeck, University of London)

Henry Richardson (Georgetown University)

Miriam Solomon (Temple University)

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Workshops in Political Theory
Seventh Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
1-3 September 2010

DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC REASON IN PRACTICE

Convenors:
Enrico Biale (University of Milano-Bicocca and University of Louvain)
Valeria Ottonelli (University of Genova)

What constraints and requirements should democratic public reason meet
in order to be both practically viable and normatively appealing?

Democratic public reason is subject to feasibility constraints. Some of
them are also common to non-democratic models of decision-making, like
the existence of time limits on the decision process and other material
and institutional restrictions on the actual implementation of the
choices to be made. Other constraints on the feasibility of democratic
public reason are peculiar to it, like those pertaining to the actual
knowledge, competence and engagement in politics that can be
realistically expected from the citizens of a democratic polity, and
those relating to the issues that members of a democratic society can
reasonably debate on.
At the same time, democratic public reason needs to respond to normative
requirements and ideals, like publicity and transparency in the
decision-making processes, respect for the rules of correct reasoning,
such as consistency and integrity, the rejection of status quo and
ideological biases, and the search for a sharable basis on which to
ground the debate.

This workshop aims to further explore this tension between the ideal and
the practice of democratic public reason, by addressing the underlying
theoretical and normative issues and by testing the answers that can be
offered to them through the analysis and discussion of case studies.
Papers analysing the tension within specific areas of application of the
ideal of democratic public reason (health care, social justice,
fundamental liberties) are especially welcome.

Those who wish to participate in the workshop are invited to send a 500
word abstract to vottonel@nous.unige.it by the 31st of May 2010.

Additional information about the venue and the workshop can be found at
http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/politicaltheory.

In this chapter Sen explains in more detail the idea of a “realization-focused” approach to justice.  As discussed in earlier posts, Sen’s book is organized around a contrast between “transcendental institutionalism” and “realization-focused comparison” (p.7).  Earlier chapters dealt with the transcendental - comparative contrast.  This chapter explores the rule - realization contrast.  I will begin by reviewing what the Introduction (Ch.1) had to say about this issue.  Sen’s general point was that justice must be concerned with the lives people end up leading, the experiences and development of capacities that these lives involve, not just the institutions and rules within which people make choices.  He also made two more specific points about this realization-focused approach, one about liberty, the other about responsibility and agency, both of which can be framed as responses to objections.  

One natural objection to the focus on realized human capacities is that if just institutions are in place, then whatever happens as a result of the decisions people make within this framework (consistent with the preservation of this framework over time) is neither just nor unjust, since it is the product of voluntary choice under fair conditions.  According to this line of reasoning, any attempt to correct realization-outcomes given a just background structure would involve disrespect for people as autonomous agents.  I think Sen’s response to this objection would be that his focus on realization includes the freedom to choose, as a significant component of well-being (pp.18-19), and so doesn’t involve forcing people to flourish.

A second objection would be that the focus on outcomes ignores the important distinction between what happens and what one does.  The focus on outcomes assumes that the only relationship one can have to a value is to promote its maximal realization (by whatever actions lead to this result) rather than to honour or respect the value in one’s own conduct (e.g. by a commitment not to perform at least some morally objectionable actions no matter their expected result).  I think Sen’s response to this objection would be to assert that a focus on realizations permits assigning signficance to the processes through which states of affairs come about.  His realization-based approach considers the “comprehensive outcome,” not simply the “culmination outcome” (pp.22, 215-217).  As an example, Sen cites the real moral difference between people dying of starvation due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control and people being intentionally starved (p.23).  However, we can acknowledge the moral difference between me starving people and nature starving people while still taking a consequentialist view of morality.  Since the intentional starvation of others is so horrible, one could argue that we should do whatever we can to prevent its occurrence, even if - invent your own outlandish seminar scenario here - we have to starve some people in order to prevent a third party from starving many more people.  Sen would I think respond that a realization-focused approach can assign disvalue to the individual’s doing something bad (for each individual but only for that individual), over and above the disvalue of the bad thing happening.  

Chapter 10 uses Arjuna’s debate with Krishna to develop this idea of a comprehensive or inclusive realization-focused approach to justice.  Arjuna the great warrior is about to fight a major battle.  His cause is just, because his brother is legitimate heir to the throne, but their cousins the Kauravas have usurped the throne.  Arjuna’s duty, conventionally understood, is to lead his side to victory, as his adviser Krishna argues.  Yet Arjuna expresses doubts, because (a) a great many people will die, many of them guilty of nothing more than agreeing to support their friends and kin, and (b) Arjuna will himself have to kill members of his extended kin group, for some of whom he has real affection.  Sen emphasizes three aspects of Arjuna’s thinking.  First, he does not focus only on the suitability of his actions based on past events and existing rules or norms; he also considers what will actually happen to the world (p.212).  However, second, Arjuna is not concerned only with what happens but also with what he himself does (pp.213-4).  Third, in assessing what he himself does, the special relationships he has with specific others matter (pp.214).  Arjuna’s mode of reasoning is thus a good example of the sophisticated, inclusive, “informationally rich” (pp.216-7) consequentialism Sen is advocating.  Sen dislikes the label “consequentialist” (pp.217-8), but seems prepared to tolerate its use in a suitably general sense, as the notes on p.217 and p.210 suggest.  The p.17 note accepts Pettit’s definition of consequentialism, so long as the “consequences” of a decision are taken to include “agencies, processes, [and] relations”.  The p.210 note uses “consequentialism” as part of the definition of utilitarianism as welfarist, sum-ranking consequentialism.  Sen claims that some of the “deontological dilemmas” (p.219) generally presented to discredit narrow consequentialist reasoning (the “colourful counterexamples” from p.217) do not arise for a realization-focused approach that takes a broad view of the consequences that follow from a decision.  A broad view would include “the nature of the agencies involved, the processes used, and the relationships of people” (219).

I have one main concern about this chapter.  It seems to me that Sen’s defense of sophisticated or inclusive consequentialism succeeds only by watering down the distinctiveness of the view.  The claim that we should adopt a realization-focused approach to justice initially seems to be a significant thesis, since it appears to rule out some deontological views.  Yet the defense of the realization-focused approach against deontological objections involves expanding the notion of a “consequence” so that deontological intuitions can be formulated in terms of consequence-based modes of reasoning (e.g. by assigning extra disvalue to my torturing someone that is not for you a similar disvalue).  This move simply relocates the debate between consequentialists and deontologists.  Instead of disagreeing about the form moral reasoning should take, the two sides disagree about the extent to which the function to be maximized must or may include agent-relative components.  I’m not sure it illuminates the debate to cast it as a dispute about whether value functions should have this indexical aspect (or as a question about the exact weight to be assigned to the indexical aspect of value functions).  I can see how standard deontological views can be rendered in this way, so as to be consistent with an account of rational action as choosing the option that maximizes the value of the expected consequences.  The problem is that this broad definition of outcomes would make even the most rule-obsessed view count as a realization-focused theory.  On this account, there would be no purely institutional or rule-focused approaches to justice, but simply realization-focused approaches that place heavier weights, on “agencies, processes [and] relations.”  Presumably Sen wants to argue for an approach to justice that is realization-focused in the more specific sense of placing less weight on processes, etc., but this chapter does not provide an argument for such an approach.  No doubt the rest of the book will speak to this question.  What I suppose I would have liked to see in this chapter is an explanation of why it is preferable to understand the debate between deontology and consequentialism as a dispute about the weighting of the indexical elements of value functions, as opposed to a debate about the form moral reasoning should take.

Democracy and Legitimacy: Dealing with Extremism.
22nd -23rd July 2010
Central European University,
Budapest, Hungary.
(Extended deadline, 15th May 2010)
Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA@ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ@ceu.hu by the 15th May 2010. The conference is free of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?
Meanwhile, the rise of the extreme right, together with heightened discrimination and segregation of disadvantaged minority groups give rise to another set of related questions about what governments may do to protect and assist these groups which might not be able to protect themselves, which might not be able to respond to prejudice against them. Is it permissible to restrict privacy rights by registering ethnic data in order to help fight against discrimination? Is it permissible to use such data for the purpose of reverse discrimination?

The conference is motivated by two sets of reasons: on the one hand we aim to discuss how the recent ‘turn to the right’ might affect liberal democracy and what can be done about it. On the other hand, we plan to do this by bringing together experts in both political theory, legal studies, public and social policy. We believe that cross-fertilisation is beneficial for all camps of enquiry. Therefore, we invite contributions both from a theoretical and a practical perspective.

We invite papers including, but not limited to, the following topics:
Freedom of expression, regulation of “hate speech”
Tolerance
Discrimination (both negative and positive)
Segregation
Freedom of association
Freedom of assembly
Political campaign regulations
Media regulations
Protection of privacy, protection of personal data
State neutrality

Invited speakers:

Matthew Clayton (University of Warwick).
Thomas Christiano (University of Arizona)
Andrew Williams (University of Warwick)
Nils Holtug (University of Copenhagen)
Nikolai Sitter (Central European University)
Emanuela Ceva (University of Pavia)

Postgraduate Essay Prize, 2010

Res Publica: A Journal of Moral, Legal and Social Philosophy

For the sixth year running, Res Publica (the journal of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy) will be awarding a prize for the best paper submitted by a current postgraduate student in 2010.  This may be in any area falling within the journal’s aims and scope, described below.  Entries should conform to the normal requirements for submissions - please see the website address below for details.

All entries must be received by 1 October 2010, with the winner to be announced in January 2011.  The winner will receive £100 and a year’s subscription to the journal.  The winning essay will be published in Volume 17 (2011).

Previous winners:
Alexandra Couto, ‘Privacy and Justification’ 12.3 (2006)
Alasdair Cochrane, ‘Animal Rights and Animal Experiments: An Interest-Based Approach’ 13.3 (2007)
Göran Duus-Otterström, ‘Betting Against Hard Determinism’ (14.3, 2008)
Seth Lazar, ‘The Nature and Disvalue of Injury’ (15.3, 2009)
Guy Sela, ‘Moral Luck and Liability Lotteries’ (forthcoming: 16.3, 2010)

The prize will be judged by a panel of referees, along with the journal editors.

Entries should be submitted via the journal’s website -
www.editorialmanager.com/resp - and labelled Postgraduate Essay Prize.

There is more information about Res Publica at www.springer.com/11158.  Or please contact the co-editors:

Gideon Calder - Email: Gideon.Calder@newport.ac.uk

Jonathan Seglow - Email: j.seglow@rhul.ac.uk

This chapter continues in the vein of the preceding ones by using Rawls as a foil in order to lay out some general concepts that presumably will be developed in the second half of the book.  Accordingly, many of my concerns end up being somewhat duplicative with those raised in earlier comments: namely, that Sen has failed (so far) to really lay out a plan for thinking through justice in a rigorous fashion and that he has a strangely shallow reading of Rawls.Sen begins the chapter by referencing the arguments in chapter 8 about the possibility for rational reasons to take forms that different from the model of purely egoistic actors.  Given that there was no comment on that chapter people might like to take up those questions though I doubt many will find his claims there to be particularly controversial.

The goal of this chapter seems to be the need to reconcile the plurality of impartial reasons (the fact that two people might makes completely opposite choices, without either being irrational) with the need to desire to articulate some standard of objectivity.  In situations where multiple decisions may be rational, how may we still make judgments about what course of action is just? In Rawlsian terms, he is interested here in what it would be reasonable to ask of people, not just what they might rationally choose for themselves.  This is an important effort, and something that has been sorely missing from the book so far.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this chapter really takes us very far down that road.

I am skeptical for two reasons. First, I find the distinction between contractualism and contractarianism to be far less clear than he asserts.  To the extent that the two are dissimilar, I don’t see the value added by Scanlon’s approach that can’t be found elsewhere.  Second, even if we were to accept that significant differences exist between Rawls and Scanlon they seem to be more a matter of the sphere of emphasis.  Scanlon’s approach appears designed to produce judgments about what it would be just to morally ask of someone, while Rawls is more concerned with the question of how to build a politically viable and normatively acceptable basic structure.  Clearly, it is difficult if not impossible to fully detach moral and political philosophy but it would also be a mistake to treat them as synonymous.

On the first point, I find Sen’s characterization of the parties who have standing in the original position to be slightly off.  To me, this reflects a larger problem with the book, that Sen insists on treating the original position literally rather than accepting Rawls’ insistence that it should be understood only a device of representation.  If the original position is understood as a means of thinking through what sorts of exclusions or impositions we ought to be willing to allow, then I find it hard to distinguish this from contractualism.  Yes, it retains a commitment to “advantage-based reasoning” but it does so by insisting that justification must operate under the burden of ignorance about particular position.  To lump this in with other theories guided by a sense of rational advantage doesn’t seem all that helpful.  It is accurate, but not particularly illuminating.

At this point, I will admit to knowing very little about Scanlon’s work, so my statements here are based on Sen’s reading.  I’d welcome comments from those who are more familiar with contractualism, who might be able to elaborate on distinctions that are not clear to me in Sen’s text.  That said, Sen’s efforts to distinguish Scanlon’s approach promise more than they deliver.  To the extent that he does establish are differences, I find it difficult to see how they generate much purchase.

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German political theorists and IR-specialists are hosting a three-day-conference on International Political Theory in Frankfurt/Main from June 10-12, 2010. While most papers and the bulk of the discussion will be in German, there will be one English language panel on June 11, 4.30 - 8 p.m.:

4:30 - 5:30 Chris Brown, London School of Economics and Political Science: The Normative Foundations of a Post-Western World

5:30 - 6:30 Leif Wenar, King’s College, London: Clean Trade in Natural Resources

6:45 - 7:45 Terry Nardin, National University of Singapore: What is the ‘Political’ in International Political Theory?

For more details and the rest of the program, please see

http://www.politikwissenschaft.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=theoriesektion

Everyone welcome, please register with katharina.grabietz at gmx.de

Dear Public Reasoners,

As some of you may have noticed already, the comment for chapter 8 has not been posted yet.  I regret that I did not notice this myself until today (I have been preoccupied with some unexpected difficulties over the past month, which have made my visits to this blog rather sporadic).

In addition, the commentator for chapter 12 has had to withdraw from the group.  Please contact me if you are interested in stepping in and commenting on chapter 12 (which is scheduled to be posted on May 17).

My own view is that we should continue on schedule despite these developments.  Consequently, if possible, the comment on chapter 9 should be posted on Monday (April  26).  If the comment on chapter 8 is posted later, that should be fine.

Likewise, if no one can comment on chapter 12, then that simply will be one week in which there is, well, no comment.  (This would be somewhat unfortunate, I think, as the chapter looks quite interesting.  Normally I would be happy to write the comment myself, but my schedule in May is simply too hectic to make this commitment.)

I hope that this strategy strikes people as reasonable.  Such glitches are pretty much inevitable, I suspect, in a reading group like this, and I would regret if the project did not continue more-or-less intact because of them.  Please let me know if you think there are any problems with this approach.

Many thanks for your patience and participation.

Blain

In this chapter, which is the first of four in the “Forms of Reasoning” section, Sen develops what might be called, for lack of a better term, an ethical epistemology. That is, he aims for a middle way between the objectivity of what he calls “transcendental institutionalism” and which Nagel pilloried as requiring “the view from nowhere” and the subjectivism of normative judgment that (as Hume writes) “resides in the mind” and which is therefore thought to reduce to forms of cultural relativism about which philosophers can say little of interest. Of course, democratic theorists have likewise sought a third way through deliberation and intersubjectivity, but what Sen has in mind here is rather more abstract–it is a form of moral reasoning rather than a political procedure–and is related to the “open impartiality” discussed in ch. 6. Here, I shall attempt to unpack the role that positionality might play in developing a comparative rather than transcendental theory of justice. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are two questions that strike me as worth thinking about.

Say you wanted to teach a liberal arts-style freshman seminar that introduced students to the idea of reflecting on politics and society, but you didn’t want to turn it into yet another Applied Ethics or Introduction to Political Philosophy class that crammed in all the essential philosophical problems and texts: Capital Punishment, the Duty to Obey the Law, Abortion, Euthanasia, etc., on the one hand, and Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, etc., on the other. Instead, you’d much rather just use plain old essays — well-crafted, accessible, insightful, evocative, memorable essays — written by people who may or may not be academics or part of the academic tradition.

The kind of essay I’m thinking of would be one that didn’t so much need to be explained as experienced, that presents a viewpoint that seizes your imagination in some way, rather than an argument or conceptual apparatus that needs to be taken apart, dusted a little by a qualified technician, and then put back together in sound working order. These would be essays that have a force that can’t really be conveyed to someone who has not read them, and that become part of the background framework of your way of thinking about the political and social world and the stuff in it that matters. They would ideally be long enough to be a substantial read, worth assigning as a text, but not too long to be a task that requires the threat of academic sanctions to be completed. Above all, they must not be difficult to read or boring to think about. They should be the sort of thing people mean when they talk about the art of the essay.

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Hello all,

I’ve just edited a textbook on “Ethics and World Politics” for Oxford University Press, which may be of interest to those teaching global justice or cognate areas.

The book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in political theory/philosophy and international relations. It aims to cover a broad range of issues and approaches, and it is accompanied by a website with assorted pedagogical features (lecture powerpoints, glossary, etc.).

The OUP UK webpage for the volume is here. The OUP US webpage is here.

I hope it proves useful for those teaching the subject,

Best wishes,

Duncan Bell

Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

In this chapter Sen presents a distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ impartiality. He argues that closed impartiality suffers from a number of significant limitations which ought to lead us to favour open impartiality. In this post I will briefly summarize the main claims Sen makes (sect. 1), before offering a few of my own comments (sects. 2-3).

1.
Sen offers Adam Smith’s device of the impartial spectator as an exemplar of what he calls open impartiality. Smith encourages us to imagine our conduct as we think it would be seen by some impartial and fair observer. A fair and impartial observer, Sen suggests, might require considering ‘the judgements that would be made by disinterested people from other societies’ (p. 125). Sen associates closed impartiality with Rawls’s device of the original position, where the aim is to evaluate rules and institutions from the point of view of each person who would be bound by them (suitably constrained behind the veil of ignorance). On this view of impartiality the perspective of outsiders (i.e. those not bound the rules and institutions) is not considered relevant.
Read the rest of this entry »

Two conferences coming up in Montreal:

April 9-10, 2010
Hegel After Spinoza: A Symposium
Friday - 4:00 pm
Keynote Address
John McCumber
Nature vs. Spirit: Hegel’s Reconciliation with Spinoza

Saturday - 10:00 am

Jason Read
“Desire is Man’s Very Essence”: Spinoza and Hegel as Philosophers of Transindividuality

Caroline Williams
Thinking the Subject between Hegel and Spinoza

1:30 pm
Vittorio Morfino
Spinoza in the Science of Logic

Vance Maxwell
Hegel’s Treatment of Spinoza: Its Scope and Limits

4:00 pm
Keynote Address
Warren Montag
Hegel, sive Spinoza: Towards a History of the Problem

This event is sponsored by:The Beatty Memorial Lectures Committee, Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique (GRIPP), the Department of Philosophy, and the Research Group on Constitutional Studies.

April 15-16, 2010
Basic Income at a Time of Economic Upheaval: A Path to Justice and Stability?

“Times of economic turmoil raise difficult questions but also offer radical new opportunities to rethink and perhaps even rebuild the economic fabric of our society. The prospects and challenges of a BIG policy at a time of economic upheaval is the topic of a 2 day conference held on 15-16 April 2010 at the University of Montréal, hosted by the Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CRÉUM), BIEN Canada and the US Basic Income Guarantee network (USBIG).This first collaboration between the US and Canadian chapters of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) includes keynote addresses from Dr. Louise Haagh (University of York), Prof. Guy Standing (University of Bath), and Senator Eduardo Suplicy (São Paulo, Brasil), as well as a contributions by Senators Art Eggleton and Hugh Segal, Tony Martin MP, Amélie Châteauneuf (spokesperson of FCPASQ), Rob Rainer (Executive Director of Canada Without Poverty), Al Sheahen (Executive Committee Member of USBIG), and Sheila Regehr (Director of National Council of Welfare), and many others.

The program is now available on the conference website at http://bigmontreal.wordpress.com/program/
The conference takes place at:
McGill Faculty Club, Ole’s
3450 McTavish Street
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1X9

Everyone is welcome to attend and participation is free. To register for the conference please email Jurgen De Wispelaere at BIGMontreal2010@gmail.com with your name and institutional affiliation.

In this chapter, Sen weaves together three different lines of thought: Wollstonecraft’s critique of Burke, impartiality as a minimalist basis for evaluative objectivity, and the role of convention in the relations among facts and values.

1. Sen identifies two features of objectivity. First, our evaluative language must give us the ability to communicate our beliefs to one another, and second, those beliefs must involve commitment to sufficiently overlapping standards to allow us to debate their correctness. But, as Wittgenstein learned from Gramsci and Sraffa, the common ground required for such communication and engagement is always dependent upon linguistic and social conventions.

Out of this intersection of objectivity and convention, Sen identifies a “dual task” for social reformers. They must communicate using language, imagery, and rules grounded in existing social practice and values. But within those confines, they must find the critical distance needed to advocate change.

Read the rest of this entry »

This chapter tells us more about Sen’s understanding of the ‘transcendental’/comparative distinction. I’m not going to cover all (or even most) of the points he raises in this chapter. Instead, I want to raise a question that builds on a few comments about justification from the discussion of the Introduction (e.g., Cynthia #2, Colin #5/7, Charles #15, David W. #16, Blain #17, Aaron #18). Here is my question: Is Sen’s theory of justice ‘political in the wrong way’? I’m going to suggest that (i) Sen seems to be saying ‘yes’, (ii) he ought to say ‘no’, and (iii) if he says ‘no’, the difference between his approach and ‘transcendental’ ones is greatly diminished (or perhaps removed).

What does Rawls mean by ‘political in the wrong way’? In Part V of the Restatement, he says that political liberalism seeks a kind of consensus that is different from ‘consensus politics’. The latter aims to identify a particular policy that can gain sufficient political support in a particular time and place, without seeking agreement concerning the justification of the policy (and allowing the balance of power between various groups to influence the decision). For example, one might hope to reach agreement on the ‘diagnosis’ that X is unjust, without first (or ever) identifying why X is unjust. Read the rest of this entry »

CEU Budapest: 22-23 July 2010 | CFP: 30 April 2010

Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu before the 30 April 2010. The conference is fee of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

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I am delighted to announce that the journal Representation has just published a symposium on David Estlund’s book, Democratic Authority. The symposium - which includes papers by Ben Saunders, Andrew Lister, myself, and a reply from David Estlund - grew out of the reading group that was initially hosted here at Public Reason in the early part of 2008.

I should also add, as an associate editor of Representation, that this symposium is part of a broader effort to encourage more political theorists and philosophers to publish in the journal. We are aiming to create a journal which publishes both empirical and theoretical work on representation and democracy, so if you work in these areas, please consider us as a venue.

Sen’s purpose in this comparatively short chapter seems to be to draw a distinction between principles of justice that focus on institutions and those that focus on behaviour and so on consequences, and then condemn “institutionally fundamentalist” principles for failing to take account of what actually happens. This distinction is supposed to be illuminated or perhaps even typified by a contrast Sen begins the chapter with, between the policies of two figures from Indian history, Ashoka and Kautilya. Ashoka, having seen at firsthand the horrors of coercion and violence during a campaign to extend his empire, apparently renounced the normal means of exercising power and instead exhorted his subjects to behave virtuously in a way that Sen reads as showing that he equated moral knowledge and moral motivation in a rather simplistic way. Indeed, as Sen notes, part of the reason that the political order did not totally collapse once Ashoka gave up on enforcing his will through force seems to have been that the administrative reforms implemented by his grandfather’s advisor, Kautilya, had a life of their own. The idea appears to be that focussing on institutions exhibits Ashoka’s utopian idealism about the possibility of spontaneous moral reform whereas focussing on behaviour and its consequences is more like Kautilya’s pragmatic acceptance of human fallibility.

This contrast though, is a different one from the one between institutions and consequences as the relevant units of moral assessment. Since, as Sen makes clear, Kautilya’s reforms were institutional reforms, it could hardly be the same one. The reason for this is that what one thinks are the relevant units of moral assessment and how one thinks about the possibilities for human motivation are two, perhaps related, but nonetheless clearly distinct questions. Blain I think has already mentioned that Sen’s reading of Rawls in this kind of area may not be entirely sympathetic, but there seem to me other cases where this claim borders on the bizarre. Hobbes, for example, is in Sen’s typology an institutionally-focused theorist, as his focus on the figure of the Sovereign presumably justifies. Yet Hobbes is clearly not of the view that human moral motivation can be improved by moral education in anything like the way that Sen presents Ashoka as being. A focus on institutions rather than behaviour or consequences in stating principles of justice may be for a number of reasons. One is that institutions provide and in a certain sense are stable patterns of coordinated behaviour enforced through sanctions, and so can constrain human behaviour in ways that ensure that it remains within at least an acceptable set of outcomes. This, for example, seems to be Hobbes’ reasoning. Not only does that depend on views of human behaviour that Sen at least implies are anathema to institutionally-focussed theorists and so demonstrate the failure of his attempt to align views of human behaviour with the focus of principles of justice, but it also casts doubt on the way that Sen wants to exclude institutional theorists from having a concern with consequences.

This is, on Sen’s account, not a symmetrical exclusion. Theories which focus on realization may take account of the ways in which the consequences they are supposed to be focussing on are produced; the means to these ends can be incorporated into their assessment. The effect of this definition is to make the struggle that institutionally-focussed theories face more difficult by allowing their opponents access to all the resources they can draw on without any parallel expansion of the tools they can make use of. The way Hobbes, though, thinks about the value of institutions is clearly dependent on their consequences. It is not clear that the consequences have any existence independent of the institutions - part of Hobbes’ case is clearly that the only way out of the State of Nature is through a near-absolute sovereign - but neither is it as if the institutions have virtues independent of the production of those consequences.

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