Ok, if the mathematics discussed in my last post are right, here’s the upshot:

Condorcet’s Jury Theorem (in its original formulation) says that in an election between A and B (where A  is the right choice and B is the bad choice), for an electorate in which each voter has an independent probability p>.5 of voting for A (the right choice), then as the size of electorate increases, the probability that the electorate will elect A (the right choice) approaches 1. Even for a low value of p, such as p=.51, the probability that the electorate will choose A approaches 1 rather quickly. For instance, with 10,001 voters, the electorate already has about a 99% chance of picking A.

Some epistemic democrats defend democracy using Condorcet’s Jury Theorem. They claim that democracies are adequately modeled by the Jury Theorem, and that the average voter is more likely than not to make a good choice. There’s debate about whether democracies are well-modeled by the theorem (e.g., whether voters make statistically independent choices, and if they don’t, what impact that has). (E.g., see the chapter “The Irrelevance of the Jury Theorem” in Estlund’s [i]Democratic Authority[/i].) I’m with Jerry Gaus and Estlund–I don’t think actual democracies are adequately modeled by the theorem, so I don’t think that we can use the theorem to conclude that they tend to make good choices. (Nor can we use it to conclude that they tend to make bad choices. Note that if p>.5, then as the size of the electorate increases, the theorem says that voters are certain to choose the bad choice. And I think the evidence, if anything, points to p<.5. So, from my perspective, it’s a good thing Condorcet’s Jury Theorem doesn’t apply.)

;However, suppose you do believe that democracies are well-modeled by the theorem. If so, then it’s worth asking how many voters you really need. After all, the probability that the electorate will make the right choice shoots up near 1 pretty quickly, even when p is only slightly higher than .5. Every additional voter adds some small probability that the electorate will make the right choice. However, we get diminishing returns. The question is how rapidly the returns diminish. After all, in a high stakes election, the net value of A over B might be, let’s say, on the order of $10 trillion.

 Imagine that, just like the other voters, my p is .51. Still, suppose that my vote increases the likelihood that we’d make the right choice by 1% or even .001% Because the value of making the right choice is so high, then my additional vote counts for a lot–it has a lot of expected utility. [The expected utility of my vote in this case is the difference in value between A and B times the marginal increase in the probability that the electorate will make the right choice.] So, for example, the 1001st voter is adding only about .02% accuracy to the electorate, but that means her vote is worth $2 billion! [Note: I have the exact number at work, but I’m typing this at home. So it might a little off.] Think of the electorate as being like a machine making a choice that’s worth $10 trillion or $0. If you increase the likelihood that this machine will make the right choice by .02%, you’re increasing the expected utility of the machine’s choice by $2 billion.

So, at what N is the Nth voter only contributing a few dollars worth of accuracy? Let’s suppose that every voter has an opportunity cost of $100. That is, during the time she votes, she could have done something else worth $100 either to her personally or to promote the common good. At what N does adding additional voters become wasteful?

Now that it seems like I’ve gotten Mathematica to cooperate, it looks like for this example, where each voter has a p of .51, the net value of making the right choice is $10 trillion, and where we’re calling votes wasteful when they have an expected utility under $100, votes become wasteful at about N=100,001. (This isn’t exactly right–it’s just about the order of magnitude where the value of a vote is in the 10s. In fact, I’m calculating the value of 100,001st voter at about $26.) Note that if p is higher than .51, the net value of the right choice is lower, or if opportunity costs are higher, then N will be lower. So, N=100,000 might be a high estimate.

So, if you defend democracy using the standard formulation of Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, it seems that you should think having 120 million Americans vote is kind of a waste of time. It would be far better just to have a small number of people vote and have everyone else go about their day. 119,899,999 of these people are just adding unnecessary accuracy to an already impressively accurate machine. They should go do something else instead. We just don’t need mass democracy. It doesn’t do us that much additional good. The first 100 thousand voters contribute more than the next 100 billion. Etc.

Of course, you might say, “Well, if only 100,000 people voted, they might not vote for the common good but for their self-interest at the expense of the common good.” Maybe so. But if you’re saying stuff like that, I take it you don’t think democracies are well-modeled by Condorcet’s Jury Theorem.

All this hangs on my having done the mathematics correctly. So, I’ll double-check the results when I get back to work on Monday.

If the conditions of the Condorcet Jury Theorem hold, then every additional jurist/voter adds some marginal amount of accuracy to the jury as a whole.  However, this jury experiences diminishing marginal returns.  If every juror has a 51% chance of being accurate, then the jury of 101 members has about a 57% chance of being accurate, a jury of 501 members has a 67% chance of being accurate, a jury of 1001 members has a 73% chance of being accurate, a jury of 5001 members has 92% chance of being accurate, and a jury of 10,000 members has a 99.99% chance of being accurate.I’d like to know what the marginal value (in terms of her contribution to accuracy of the jury) of the Nth voter is when N is rather large.

The accuracy of a jury of N members when each juror has  a 51% chance of being accurate is given by the formula below:

Pa (probability the jury is accurate) = SUM [upper bound = N, lower bound = (N=1)/2] (N!/(N-i!)i!) * (.51^i) * (.49^(N-i))

Since that’s likely to be unclear, here’s a link to a nice print out of the formula:http://books.google.com/books?id=CdIOKZWc3oMC&lpg=PP1&dq=public%20choice%20iii&pg=PA129

It’s easy to calculate Pa using Mathematica for values where N < 6500.  After that, Mathematica and other programs can’t handle it. So, what I’d ideally like to do is find some program that can calculate Pa for higher values of N, such as N=50,000, N=500,000, N= 1,000,000, etc.

Alternatively, if there is some way to find the first derivative of this function, that might be helpful as well. Does anyone know how to do this?

What I’d really like to know is what the optimal number of jurors/voters is when the conditions of the Condorcet Jury Theorem obtain.  Even tiny increases in accuracy can have significant value if the value of being accurate is high enough.  So, for example, the marginal value of the 5007th voters is about 0.002%.  But if picking the better candidate is worth, let’s say, $1 trillion dollars, then the expected value of that vote is quite high.  But what’s the marginal impact of the 50,000th vote?  The 100,000th?  The millionth?I’m wondering if you think that democracies are adequately modeled by the Condorcet Jury Theorem (you shouldn’t, by the way), what’s the optimum number of voters?  Let’s say that the net value of being accurate is $1 trillion, and that adding additional voters is suboptimal once the marginal value of a vote goes below $1.  In that case, the optimal number of jurors (N) is given by the formula:1,000,000,000,000 * [Pa(N+1) - Pa(N)] = 1

Alas, despite trying many things over the past week or so, I have no idea how to solve this without a supercomputer.

Another alternative would be to find some upper bound and prove the the actual number is below this (already low) upper bound.  But I’ve been unsuccessful at that.

Yet another alternative is to calculate the real marginal value of votes at a bunch of Ns that Mathematica can handle, then run some regressions to find a function that models the marginal value well, and use that as substitute.  I’ve done that with a few different functions, but the problem is that these functions are of questionable accuracy for high values of N.Any ideas?

Lectureship in Politics (Political Theory) School of Social Sciences Politics
Closing date: 07/07/2009
Reference: HUM/90779

Applications are invited for the above continuing lectureship in Politics, specializing in Political Theory, tenable from 1 September 2009. The successful candidate will join the Politics discipline area and be attached to the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT).We are looking for demonstrable evidence or potential evidence of research excellence in Politics. Applicants must have, or be about to complete, a relevant PhD and have research and teaching interests in the core areas of contemporary analytic political theory including theories of justice (including global justice), equality, rights and responsibility. Applicants must have experience of providing high quality teaching at undergraduate and/or postgraduate level and will teach undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Political Theory, supervise dissertations and make appropriate teaching contributions across Politics, as required.

Salary£32,458 - £35,469 p.a. (Grade 6) / £36,533 - £44,931 p.a. (Grade 7)

Informal enquiries
Name: Professor Alan Hamlin, Head of MANCEPT
Tel: + 44 (0) 161 275 4906
Email: alan.hamlin@manchester.ac.uk

OR
Name: Professor Inderjeet Parmar
Tel: + 44 (0) 161 275 3056
Email: inderjeet.parmar@manchester.ac.uk

Further details: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/jobs/academic/vacancy/index.htm?ref=158532

JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
(ISSN 1740-4681)

Volume 6, Number 3 (2009)

ARTICLES

Alex Friedman, ‘Intransitive Ethics’, pp. 277-97

David Lefkowitz, ‘Partiality and Weighing Harm to Non-Combatants’, pp. 298-316

Gerald Lang, ‘Luck Egalitarianism, Permissible Inequalities, and Moral Hazard’, pp. 317-38

Heath White, ‘Fitting Attitudes, Wrong Kinds of Reasons, and Mind-Independent Goodness’, pp. 339-64

Leo Zaibert, ‘The Paradox of Forgiveness’, pp. 365-93

REVIEW ARTICLE

Robert Stern, ‘The Autonomy of Morality and the Morality of Autonomy’, pp. 395-415

All issues of the Journal of Moral Philosophy are available on Swetswise here and IngentaConnect here.

Subscription information can be found on our Brill website here.

Please direct all enquiries regarding article or discussion submissions to the Editor, Thom Brooks (Newcastle). Please direct all enquiries regarding review articles and books for review to the Reviews Editor, Fabian Freyenhagen (Essex).

Hello!

I’m soliciting feedback on a draft paper on a new way of getting pharmaceutical and biotech companies to extend access on essential drugs and technologies to the poor. I’m also keen to solicit references to other new (or working) papers on pharmaceutical justice.

Here is the abstract:

Fair Trade Bio

Most of the world’s health problems afflict poor countries and their poorest inhabitants. One reason for this is that the poor cannot access many of the existing drugs and technologies they need. Another reason is that little of the research and development done on new drugs and technologies benefits the poor. In light of these facts, several authors argue that there is reason to restructure the incentives pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to encourage them to target their technologies to the poor. This paper defends a package of Fair Trade and Investment strategies that may have this effect. The idea is to rate pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies based on how their policies impact poor peoples’ access to essential drugs and technologies. The best companies, in a given year, will then be Fair Trade certified and be allowed to use a Fair Trade label on their products. Highly rated companies then have an incentive to use the label to garner a larger share of the market as those engaged in trade and investment often prefer to purchase Fair Trade goods and invest in Fair Trade companies. If even a small percentage of consumers or doctors would prefer Fair Trade products, the incentive to use this label could be substantial. And, socially responsible investment companies could include in their portfolio Fair Trade certified companies. Finally, having a Fair Trade certification system for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies would open the door to all kinds of fruitful social activism including boycotts of poorly rated companies, lobbying of insurance companies to include Fair Trade products in their formularies, and so forth. Because, for instance, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies rely, to a large extent, on university research and development, universities might make it a condition of the sale of their licenses that any companies holding their technologies must abide by Fair Trade standards. Of course, the Fair Trade proposal this paper defends will not solve all of the poor’s health problems, but it might have a significant impact.

A draft (to be updated shortly) is here: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/hassoun/papers.php

Thanks! -Nicole

In talking with people about questions of distributive justice, one often encounters a peculiar sort of conflict or tension. It’s not just that different people hold different views on the question. Rather, each individual person seems somehow to be pulled in a number of different directions.

In an exciting new paper in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Christopher Freiman and Shaun Nichols report an experimental study that helps to shed light on this sort of conflict. Subjects were randomly assigned either to receive an ‘abstract’ question or a ‘concrete’ question.

Subjects assigned to the abstract version were told:

Suppose that some people make more money than others solely because they have genetic advantages.

Subjects assigned to the concrete version were told:

Suppose that Amy and Beth both want to be professional jazz singers. They both practice singing equally hard. Although jazz singing is the greatest natural talent of both Amy and Beth, Beth’s vocal range and articulation is naturally better than Amy’s because of differences in their genetics. Solely as a result of this genetic advantage, Beth’s singing is much more impressive. As a result, Beth attracts bigger audiences and hence gets more money than Amy.

All subjects were then asked whether it was fair for the genetically advantaged individuals in the scenario to make more money. Surprisingly enough, subjects in the abstract cases said that the genetically advantaged did not deserve more money, while subjects in the concrete cases said that the genetically advantaged actually did deserve more money.

Freiman and Nichols suggest that this study might be getting at a fundamental conflict between two different aspects of the way people ordinarily think about questions of distributive justice. They then raise a difficult philosophical question: if our intuitions in the abstract case differ from those in the concrete case, which sort of intuition should we trust when we are actually doing philosophy?

Here are some questions I’m thinking about, and I wonder what you think.

Suppose, for the sake or argument, I’ve established that voters have a duty to vote for candidates or policies which they justifiedly believe will promote the common good.  Otherwise, they have a duty to abstain from voting.

Suppose that vote buying and selling are not illegal.  Now, suppose when Alf votes, he only votes for candidates whom he justifiedly believes will serve the common good.   So long as Alf does that, is there anything wrong with him selling his vote?  Is there anything wrong with paying him to vote that way?

In the current draft of The Ethics of Voting, I argue that it’s not wrong.  So long as Alf is justified in voting a particular way for free, then it’s permissible for him to take money to vote that way and it’s permissible to pay him to vote that way.

I’m curious why anyone would think otherwise.  I’ve looked at the literature on vote buying, and I haven’t found any good objections to Alf’s vote selling.  Much of the empirical literature and the a priori public choice models describe vote selling as harmful, but that’s only because they discuss what happens or would happen when people don’t vote to promote the common good.  So while I think these arguments are good arguments for legally prohibiting vote buying, they don’t say much about Alf’s case.  For instance, many (but not all) public choice economists think legal vote selling would lead to rent-seeking, but these arguments assume that voters will vote in self-interested ways rather than abide by a duty to vote for the common good.

Rather than go on about why I think Alf’s case of vote selling is permissible, and rather than discuss some of the objections I consider, I’m just curious why some of you might think Alf would do something wrong in selling his vote.  It may be that I’m overlooking some killer objection.  Thanks!  -J

Audio recordings of the talks delivered at the January 2009 Oxford conference in honor of Jerry Cohen are posted as podcasts here. Most speakers and commentators are included, as are Jerry Cohen’s moving reflections that closed the conference. (The linked page contains many related links, so search the page for “cohen conference.”)

This post is a continuation of my earlier post from December.

Last week President Obama give this excellent speech to the National Academy of Sciences.  He pledged to invest 3% of GDP for science research (basic and applied research).  He also vowed to improve education in math and science.  This represents the largest investment in scientific research and innovation in American history.  With such a monumental investment being made in science one has to wonder:  what do we (i.e. political philosophers) have to say about all this?  Is such an investment just or unjust? And why?

Surely the National Academy of Sciences are part of the “basic structure” of society and thus an investment of this scale must raise some important questions of justice that we can contribute some insights to.  Do we have some developed ideas about such issues?  Do we equip the students we teach with the tools for thinking rationally and critically about such issues?

Here is an exercise I hope you might entertain trying.  Imagine that a reporter has contacted you about President Obama’s investment in science and innovation.  You are asked, as a political philosopher interested in issues of justice, to offer some comments about this policy.  Please consider using the “comments” section to this post below to add your insights and thoughts.  I think this might be a useful exercise to help stimulate interest in this neglected area of the field. 

Cheers,

Colin   

If you are really struggling to come up with anything to say here are some basic questions to consider to help get the juices flowing:  (1) What is science? (2) what is science for? and (3) how large are the stakes involved between the worst possible science policies a government could implement and the best policies? (and what constitutes the worst and best here?)

Ram Neta stars in this short video about the Aristotelian conception of freedom and morality, along side a ship captain, a drowning wife and Sleater-Kinney.

Hi everyone,

A graduate student of mine is interested in doing some research on the topic of human rights.  I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good review article that presents the main debates in the contemporary literature on human rights, or a book that does the same.  I am not interested in a book that primarily offers its own distinctive take on the issue.  Rather, I would like something to help this student start to navigate the literature.

Thanks a lot for any ideas.

Victoria

JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
(ISSN 1740-4681)

Volume 6, Number 2 (2009)

ARTICLES

David DeGrazia, ‘Moral Vegetarianism from a Very Broad Basis’, pp. 143-65

Martin Peterson, ‘The Mixed Solution to the Number Problem’, pp. 166-77

Tim W. Christie, ‘Natural Separateness: Why Parfit’s Reductionist Account of Persons Fails to Support Consequentialism’, pp. 178-95

M. J. Mulnix, ‘Harm, Rights, and Liberty: Towards a Non-Normative Reading of Mill’s Liberty Principle’, pp. 196-217

Lee Ward, ‘Locke on Punishment, Property and Moral Knowledge’, pp. 218-44

DISCUSSION

Mark Silcox, ‘Reply to Rosebury’, pp. 245-48

REVIEW ARTICLE

Manuel Vargas, ‘Taking the Highway on Skepticism, Luck, and the Value of Responsibility’, pp. 249-65

BOOK REVIEWS

Hans Fink on The Retreat of Reason: A Dilemma in the Philosophy of Life by Ingmar Persson, pp. 266-68

Richard Raatzsch on Wittgenstein and Ethical Inquiry: A Defence of Ethics as Clarification by J. Jeremy Wisnewski, pp. 269-72

BOOKS RECEIVED

All issues of the Journal of Moral Philosophy are available on Swetswise here and IngentaConnect here.

Subscription information can be found on our Brill website here.

Please direct all enquiries regarding article or discussion submissions to the Editor, Thom Brooks (Newcastle) (email: t.brooks@newcastle.ac.uk).

Please direct all enquiries regarding review articles and books for review to the Reviews Editor, Fabian Freyenhagen (Essex) (email: ffreyenhagen@yahoo.com).

Hi Everyone,

This paper defends the view that a nation is justified in undertaking a defensive war — conceived of in terms of collective personal self-defense — against mitigated aggression. A nation committing mitigated aggression conditionally threatens — rather than imminently threatens — the lives of the citizens and soldiers of the victim nation in that it will employ lethal military force if and only if the victim nation does not submit to the invasion, the purpose of which is only to conquer and rule. What mitigated aggression threatens is a nation’s political sovereignty and cultural integrity, in short, a nation’s common way of life.

I was led to write this paper after reading David Rodin’s award winning book War and Self-Defense (Oxford 2002), where he argues that while mitigated aggression is immoral and against international law, a nation is not justified in responding to this kind of aggression with lethal force, for such force is disproportionate. The right of lethal self-defense doesn’t extend to everything that’s valuable. If a robber threatens to kill you if you don’t hand over your car, or if you don’t allow him to take what he wants from your house (he will let you live if you give him what he wants), it’s not clear that you are permitted to kill him. Killing the robber would be disproportionate.

In this paper I give an account of why a nation’s common way of life, by itself, is sufficiently valuable to defend via lethal force [incidentally, Jeff McMahan (cf. “War as Self-Defense”, Ethics and International Affairs 18, 2004) and Thomas Hurka (cf. “Proportionality in the Morality of War”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 33, 2005) argue that a nation’s common way of life by itself is insufficiently valuable to lethally defend but that a defensive war against mitigated aggression is nonetheless permissible. McMahan’s article can be accessed here. Hurka’s article can be accessed here]. I start by asking, what exactly, other than our own lives, is sufficiently valuable such that we can lethally defend it? I argue that our “primary” interests, because they are indispensably necessary for our well-being, are worth lethally defending. Following David Archard and Joel Feinberg, I discuss two kinds of primary interests: our central and our welfare interests. Our central interests (e.g. being autonomous) define who and what we are fundamentally and are central to our self-concept. Our welfare interests (e.g. minimal level of income) are necessary for the realization of our more ulterior goals in life, the realization of which is constitutive of our well-being. I then show that our interest in participating in our national community (or common way of life), an interest that mitigated aggression seriously sets back, can be characterized as both a central and welfare interest.

A copy of the paper can be found here.

Colleen Murphy’s comments on the paper can be accessed here.

An audio version of the paper can be found below.

I look forward to receiving any comments you may have!

 

 Why a Defensive War against Mitigated Aggression can be Proportionate: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is just a quick reminder to say that tomorrow (Wednesday 22 April 2009) is the final day for registration for those wishing to attend the conference on “Justice, Rights and Institutions: Themes from the Political Philosophy
of T. M. Scanlon”, taking place at the University of Manchester on 22-23 May 2009.The full line-up of speakers is:

* T. M. Scanlon (Harvard University)
* Waheed Hussain (University of Pennsylvania)
* Rahul Kumar (Queen’s University, Canada)
* A. J. Julius (University of California at Los Angeles)
* Véronique Munoz-Dardé (University College London)
* Serena Olsaretti (University of Cambridge)
* Martin O’Neill (University of Manchester)
* Michael Otsuka (University College London)
* Mathias Risse (Harvard University)
* Zofia Stemplowska (University of Manchester)
* Leif Wenar (King’s College, London)
* Andrew Williams (University of Warwick)
* Jonathan Wolff (University College London)

Full conference details (together with a link to a registration/booking form), can be found online at:

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/martin.oneill/scanlon/

Places at the conference are £60 (£30 for students).

This conference is presented by the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) and the Philosophy and Politics Discipline Areas at the University of Manchester, with the generous financial support of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, the Society for Applied Philosophy, and the Analysis Trust.

Any queries regarding the conference should be addressed to Martin O’Neill at martin.oneill -AT- manchester.ac.uk

An online library of Tanner lectures is up at the University of Utah.

Tucson: 7-9 January 2010 | CFP: 1 June 2009

Mark Timmons (Arizona) is organising a workshop on normative ethics to be held in Tucson on 7-9 January 2010. Keynote speakers are Thomas Hill (UNC), Peter Railton (Michigan), and Holly Smith (Rutgers). From the website:

The First Annual Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics takes place at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson, Arizona, from January 7 to January 9, 2010. Normative ethical theory addresses general questions about the right and the good and attempts to answer such questions as: What sorts of actions are right or wrong and why? What sort of person ought one to become and why? Normative ethical theories, including, for instance, versions of consequentialism, deontology, contractualism, natural law theory, and virtue ethics address such questions. The annual Arizona Workshop will feature new work in normative ethical theory broadly construed, to include not only issues about the right and the good, but meta-theoretical questions about the project of developing and defending normative ethical theories.

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Hello Everyone: My name is Wally Siewert. I am currently based in Santa Barbara California. The paper I would like to discuss with you concerns the European Court of Human Rights and its application of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention allows individuals or groups within a signatory nation to bring before the Commission (a panel of the court’s judges) complaints alleging violations of human rights by the relevant signatory government. In general (though the court’s process has changed over the years) the commission determines whether the court will accept the case and on what basis. They clarify the complaint, the issues involved, and the articles of the Convention implicated via a preliminary finding. Based on this recommendation the court itself will then either deny or take up the complaint, in the latter case requiring the government involved to respond.

The European Court of Human Rights is by far the most effective and best-tested model of a supra-national judiciary. As such, its practices and findings will surely influence similar institutions as they become more globally accepted. One of the central lessons of the court’s history is that decisions often explicitly or implicitly involve a certain “margin of appreciation” which the court grants sovereign governments with respect to administering their own nation. For example, in the “little red schoolbook” case the court granted England the right to determine what kind of material it considered unseemly for school children somewhat independently of the court’s enforcement of the human right to freedom of speech. According to some, allowing such a margin of appreciation is a sensible recognition of diversity, to others it is inappropriately deferential to dated notions of sovereignty. Article 15 of the Convention allows that signatory nations may derogate from their obligations regarding certain (non-fundamental) human rights in times of war or national emergency.

It is my project to explore what role a “margin of appreciation” should play in considering whether a signatory nation has allowably derogated from those rights under Article 15. Should the court allow a measure of discretion to the government in adducing the existence of a national emergency or not? The question addresses an issue right at the cusp between international normative obligations created exclusively by agreement, and international obligations which owe their normative force to some substantive supra-national moral conception of human rights. I will address the issue in two ways. First, we will consider the reasoning and decisions of the court with respect to the two cases which have invoked Article 15. As we will discover, the court’s decisions leave much to be desired regarding clarity in this area. Second, I will consider, with the help of a broad analogy, what might be the appropriate standard from a more conceptual point of view.

I much recommend the movie format of the paper presentation found below. I have included a slide show highlighting important pieces of text as well as images which I hope bring a little life to what can be a dry subject. For those who prefer to read the paper a pdf version may be found here.

I want to heartily thank Basak Cali for the commentary which may be found here.

Below the movie version and an audio only version as well. Enjoy!

 

 Margin of Appreciation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Margin of Appreciation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Victoria University of Wellington: 10-11 December 2009 | CFP: 12 June 2009

From their CFP:

A major conference on the Ethical Foundations of Public Policy will be held in Wellington (New Zealand) on the 10th and 11th of December. It is being hosted by the Institute of Policy Studies (School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington), in association with the Philosophy Programme (Victoria University of Wellington) and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (University of Otago), and sponsored by the ANZSOG Trust. The conference will be opened by Rt Hon Bill English (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance), with closing remarks by Iain Rennie (the State Services Commissioner).

The purpose of the event is to encourage and facilitate debate about the ethical basis for policy making, both in terms of the principles that should inform the behaviour of individual policy analysts and decision makers and the normative considerations that should guide choices over the substantive content of particular policies. To help achieve this objective, the conference will bring together policy makers (i.e. politicians, government officials, political advisers, etc.) and academics/researchers working in a range of disciplines, including economics, law, philosophy, politics, religious studies and theology. Five specific sub-themes have been identified for particular attention: the ethics of advice giving; the ethics of decision making; the nature of justice; protecting the global commons; and measuring progress.

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13th “PRIORITY IN PRACTICE” CONFERENCE

Friday 19 & Saturday 20 June 2009
Trinity College Dublin, IIIS seminar room (Arts Building)

Further information: http://pip2009.wordpress.com/

Registration is now open for the 2009 Priority in Practice conference, held at Trinity College Dublin. The conference is free and everyone is welcome to attend, but you have to register as numbers are limited. To register simply send an email with your name and affiliation to jurgen.dewispelaere@tcd.ie.

Featured speakers include: John Baker (Dublin), Maren Behrensen (Boston), Kimberley Brownlee (Manchester), David Estlund (Brown), Eli Feiring (Oslo), Axel Gosseries (Louvain-la-Neuve), Anca Gheaus (Rotterdam), David Hunter (Keele), Bruce Landesman (Utah), Adina Preda (Dublin), Kristin Voight (Harvard), and Daniel Weinstock (Montreal). The full program is up at http://pip2009.wordpress.com/program/.

The conference is jointly hosted by the Department of Philosophy (Trinity College Dublin), the School of Politics and International Relations (University College Dublin) and the Department of Philosophy, (University College London), and kindly supported by the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy.

We look forward to meeting you all in June

Jurgen De Wispelaere, Iseult Honohan and Jo Wolff

Minho University, Braga: 19 June 2009 | CFP: 30 April 2009

Participating Institutions:
CEHUM-University of Minho
IEP- Catholic University of Lisbon
IFL-New University of Lisbon
LIF-University of Coimbra
University of Lisbon
University of Porto

Scholars of all disciplines usually need opportunities to share their thoughts and to collect feed-back on their work. We hereby invite scholars of moral philosophy as well as of normative political theory who are keen to engage in a discussion with their peers to join in regular meetings at which they can present papers or chapters they are writing, or topics they are working on. The invitation is open both to graduate and PhD students and to senior scholars. The initiative aims to increase the reciprocal knowledge of our fellow researchers within the Portuguese scientific community. However, meetings and participation are open to all interested scholars, both from Portugal and from abroad. In order to accommodate a broad range of research interests and to encourage the dissemination of different ideas, the first meeting will be non-thematic. Papers can be given either in Portuguese, in English, or in French.

The first meeting will take place at the University of Minho, Braga, on Friday, 19 June. If you are interested in presenting a paper on a topic of your choice, please send an abstract (300 to 500 words) by 30 April to the following address: eefp [at] googlegroups.com

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Josh Cohen and Tom Nagel have a piece in the TLS and Times Online on Rawls’s senior thesis on sin and faith. The piece is part of a longer introduction to A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, which also includes Rawls’s 1997 piece, “On My Religion.” I’ve shared the uneasiness felt by some about the posthumous publication of a senior thesis, but from what Cohen and Nagel discuss there are a number of interesting anticipations of ideas later worked out in a secular form in Theory and Political Liberalism, particularly the rejection of teleology and a vivid sense of the arbitrariness of merit.

Also by Cohen, Boston Review have forwarded two recent pieces on libertarianism and on the technology, journalism, and democracy that may be of interest to people.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Public Affairs Quarterly is planning a special issue on “Science and Public Affairs.” We seek submissions on any topic addressing questions of the role of science and technology in public and social policy. Of special interest are papers addressing questions of genetic enhancement, science education, the role of scientific evidence in the law, and the social responsibilities of scientists.

Please send an electronic copy of the paper to Robert Talisse at robert.talisse@vanderbilt.edu, and a hardcopy to Robert Talisse, Editor PAQ, Philosophy Department, 111 Furman Hall, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240.

Hello everyone!

My name is Emanuela Ceva and I’m a political philosopher based at the University of Pavia (Italy). The paper I’d like to discuss with you is an attempt to address (and hopefully provide an answer to) a well-known challenge to proceduralism about justice: if procedural theories of justice were genuinely open-ended, they might lead to controversial outcomes which, by definition, could not be disputed, because they had been produced by a just procedure. On the other hand, if they were committed to ruling out some outcomes by virtue of their inherent qualities, their very procedural nature would be jeopardised.

Those who endorse this position also think that it could be used to declare the implausibility of entirely procedural theories of justice.

As someone who has spent a few years trying to argue that proceduralism is at least a plausible (if not necessary, under certain conditions) alternative to substantivism, I have decided to take up this challenge, and devote this paper to showing that a qualified version of proceduralism may be developed, which is equipped to rebut the critique above.

To this aim, I shall unpack the first horn of the dilemma presented above into a twofold challenge, according to which proceduralism risks (i) fostering an “anything-goes” attitude towards justice and (ii) condemning agents to a “deaf and blind” acceptance of any outcome. In order to refute (i), I shall show that it is possible to construct a version of proceduralism that combines open-endedness with cogent prescriptions on justice. Addressing (ii), I shall concede that, for proceduralists, the outcomes of a just procedure cannot be disputed as unjust. However, this does not imply that a genuine procedural theory of justice may not allow some (admittedly limited, but still significant) space for contesting the substance of outcomes on the ground of values other than justice.

I should mention that I shall not offer an argument here explaining why a theory of justice should go procedural in the first place (a task which I’ve tried to carry out elsewhere - see E. Ceva, ‘Plural Values and Heterogeneous Situations. Considerations on the Scope for a Political Theory of Justice‘, European Journal of Political Theory, vol.6 (3), 2007, pp. 359-375). I shall, rather, focus on a more restricted defence of the plausibility of proceduralism against the dilemma outlined above.

For those who cannot cope with my dodgy accent, the pdf of the paper is available here.

David Lefkowitz’s discussion of the paper may be found here.  I thank David for his thoughtful comments, to which I shall post replies by Monday at the latest.

In the podcast (below), I read the full paper (and have added a brief commentary on the tables) but not the footnotes - which I have kept to a minumun, anyway.

Last but not least, I’d like to thank Simon for setting up this great virtual venue for seminars. I hope you’ll enjoy the paper and I very much look forward to any comments or suggestions on it.

Best, emanuela

 

 Just Procedures with Controversial Outcomes: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Though I’m a political philosopher, Marxism/Socialism is not my area of expertise.  Still, I was surprised when, while teaching an essay by Kai Nielsen the other day, I discovered that I really don’t know what a means of production is supposed to be.

The claim that the means of production ought to be owned publicly, rather than privately, seems to be one of if not the defining characteristics of socialism.  So it seems pretty important to be clear on what it refers to.

On the most natural reading, a “means of production” would be anything that’s used to produce.  But that seems very, very broad.  Sure, factories are means of production, but so are muffin trays.  So is my brain, and my muscles.

Do socialists hold that even these things should be publicly owned?  Does it depend on how we use them?  Nielsen says that a socialist will allow for personal private property - and muffin trays seem about as personal as one could get.  Does this mean that we’re allowed to bake muffins for ourselves?  For our neighbors?  For our neighbors in exchange for wine?

How, in other words, does a socialist (Marxist or otherwise) demarcate legitimate personal property from means of production?  Or can the two be reconciled in a principled way?  If public ownership of the means of production can be reconciled with private personal property, can it also be reconciled with some notion of self-ownership?

Brave New World 2009, the Fourteenth Annual Postgraduate Conference organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), will take place on Tuesday 23rd and Wednesday 24th June 2009 at the University of Manchester.

We are pleased to announce that our guest speakers this year are:
Professor Chandran Kukathas (London School of Economics)
Dr Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen)

Deadline for submission of abstracts: March 31st 2009

The Brave New World conference series is now established as a leading international forum exclusively dedicated to the discussion of postgraduate research in political theory. The conference offers a great opportunity for postgraduates from many different countries and universities to share experiences, concerns and research interests, to exchange stimulating ideas and to make new friends - all in a financially accessible and highly informal setting.

Participants will also have the chance to meet and talk about their work with eminent academics, including members of faculty from the University of Manchester as well as our guest speakers, who will deliver keynote addresses at the event. Guest speakers in previous years have included Brian Barry, Simon Caney, G.A. Cohen, Cecile Fabre, Jerry Gaus, Peter Jones, Susan Mendus, David Miller, Onora O’Neill, Michael Otsuka, Bhikhu Parekh, Carole Pateman, Anne Philips, Thomas Pogge, Henry Shue, Quentin Skinner, Adam Swift, Philippe Van Parijs, Andrew Williams, and Jonathan Wolff.

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Hi everyone,I’m currently writing a book called The Ethics of Voting, and thought I’d ask you for advice and comments about what you’d like to see and what you think is important.  The book will cover the personals ethics of voting (questions concerning how individuals should behave) but not, for the most part, the political philosophy of voting (e.g., questions concerning who has the right to vote or how best to structure government institutions).

So, the basic questions of voting ethics that I plan to respond to are 1) Do I have an obligation to vote?  2)  If I do vote, do I have obligations to vote in particular ways?  3)  Is it acceptable to buy, trade, or sell my vote (not my right to vote, but my how I will vote)?  Related questions concern the source of any obligations, epistemic or other justificatory requirements, issues concerning whether citizens should be directed toward the common good or some other end, and so on.

As I’m envisioning it now, the chapters will roughly go something like this.  The introduction explains why voting is morally important.  Chapter 1 articulates various arguments in favor of a duty to vote and shows why they fail.  However, it also produces three arguments that seem pretty plausible and don’t look like they fail.  Chapter 2 articulates a theory of civic virtue and of citizens duties which refutes these remaining three arguments.  So the conclusion is that citizens don’t have an obligation to vote.  Chapter 3 discusses cases where citizens should refrain from voting rather than vote.  My view is that citizens have duties regulating how they vote if they do vote, but not a duty to vote.  In particular, a necessary but not sufficient condition for good voting is that citizens must be justified in the beliefs they base their votes upon.  Chapter 4 considers a wide range of objections and issues having to do with deference, autonomy, and abstention.  For instance, it considers issues about whether abstention involves a loss of autonomy, or whether one should always defer to known epistemic and moral superiors.  Chapter 5 argues that citizens have an obligation to vote for the common good rather than narrow self-interest, at least under normal circumstances.  It also gives a liberal account of the common good.  Chapter 6 argues that there is no special ethics of vote buying, trading, or selling.  Instead, what determines whether these things are right and wrong is specified by the obligations we have not to vote badly and to vote for the common good when we do vote.  So long as we don’t violate these rules, we don’t do anything wrong by buying, trading, or selling votes, though doing so may not be admirable.  (For what it’s worth, I haven’t written chapter 6 yet, so I might change my mind about these conclusions once I sit down to defend them at length.)   Chapter 7 will discuss relevant social scientific research to ask, in light of this research and my theory, how good are actual voters.  Finally, I might have a chapter 8, which will go over some issues of policy, such as compulsory voting.  I’ve written drafts of the introduction and chapters 1-4 at this point.So, that’s roughly what I expect to do.

 My question for you, if you’re interested in helping me shape the project, is what do you think I should cover?  What are some important issues or questions?  Obviously I didn’t specify everything that will go in the book (e.g., I will cover tactical/strategic voting), so if I didn’t list it, it doesn’t mean I haven’t thought of it.  However, there’s no doubt that there’s at least one obvious thing that I’ve overlooked. If you were writing the book, what would you talk about? How would you organize it?  So, I’m open to any and all suggestions.

Thanks!  -J

PS. For what it’s worth, I’m already spending a few pages in the current draft responding to an objection from Aaron Maltais that he posted here in response to my “Polluting the Polls” post. So, I really do find your suggestions helpful.

Appel à participations : Évaluations morales des technologies controversées dans les conférences citoyennes

Le CEHUM (Université du Minho) organise un colloque de deux jours ayant pour thème les « évaluations morales des technologies controversées dans les conférences citoyennes» qui aura lieu les 14 et 15 mai 2009, à Lisbonne (Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa). Les chercheurs participant à ce colloque incluent :

Joana Baguenier (CEHUM, Université du Minho - Université Paris IV, Sorbonne)
João Cardoso Rosas (CEHUM, Université du Minho)
Anca Gheaus (Equality Studies Centre, University College Dublin)
Simon Joss (SSHL, University of Westminster)
Roberto Merrill (CEHUM, Université du Minho)
Florence Quinche (Université de Nancy)
Bernard Reber (CERSES, CNRS-Université Paris Descartes)
Sabine Roeser (Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology)
Daniel Weinstock (CRÉUM, Université de Montréal)

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This paper concerns the prospects of pure proceduralist deliberative democratic theories. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson give what seems to be the most prominent set of arguments against such pure proceduralisms in their “Deliberative Democracy Beyond Process”.* Briefly put, they argue that deliberative democrats must not be pure proceduralists because pure proceduralisms cannot seriously endorse a principle that all deliberative democrats aim to seriously endorse: the principle of reciprocity. I argue that their arguments are unsuccessful. If my arguments work they also have the positive value of indicating where debates over the prospects of pure proceduralist deliberative democratic theory should head.

I’m interested developing a novel pure procedualist deliberative democratic theory. So I wrote this paper as part of a general interest in tackling extant objections in the literature. The same general interest got me involved in responding to some of Corey Brettschneider’s arguments against pure proceduralisms in the reading group (on his book) on this blog last semester.

*in Journal of Political Philosophy, 2002, 10: p.153-174 - and subsequently anthologized widely.

C’mon out and join the discussion!

Paper: Jordan Dodd. On Gutmann and Thompson’s Arguments…’

Comments: Simon May. Comments on Dodd’s ‘On Gutmann and Thompson’s Arguments…’

 

 Dodd. On Gutmann and Thompson's Arguments that Deliberative Democrats Shouldn't be Pure Proceduralists: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Dodd. On Gutmann and Thompson's Arguments that Deliberative Democrats Shouldn't be Pure Proceduralists: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Appel à contributions : Le multiculturalisme a-t-il un avenir ?

Le centre Nosophi (Sorbonne-Paris 1), LNS-IUF (Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3) et le CEHUM (Université du Minho) organisent un colloque de deux jours sur le multiculturalisme qui aura lieu à Paris les 26 et 27 février 2010. Les chercheurs invités participant à ce colloque incluent :

Catherine Audard (London School of Economics)

João Cardoso Rosas (Université du Minho)

Will Kymlicka (Université de Queen’s)

Cécile Laborde (University College London)

Justine Lacroix (Université libre de Bruxelles)

Catherine Larrère (Sorbonne-Paris I)

Alain Renaut (Sorbonne-Paris IV)

Daniel Weinstock (Université de Montréal)

Michel Wieviorka (EHESS)

Si le multiculturalisme a toujours été un projet politique controversé, il a aussi su rallier ces dernières années différents types de partisans, des défenseurs radicaux d’une politique de la différence, aux avocats de la lutte pour la reconnaissance, en passant par la défense d’un libéralisme de gauche, ou encore par celle d’un républicanisme critique.

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On the 24th and 25th of September 2009, the Human Development, Capability and Poverty International Research Centre at the Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia (Italy), under the joint patronage of the Italian Society for Political Philosophy and the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy, will host the seventh edition of the Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy.

This two-day conference is meant to offer graduate students an opportunity to present papers, get helpful feedback in a friendly atmosphere, and exchange ideas both with peers and with leading academics in the field of political philosophy. In addition to parallel sessions devoted to students’ presentations, there will also be two plenary sessions. Plenary speakers in past editions have been: Hillel Steiner, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Peter Jones, Gianfrancesco Zanetti, Jonathan Wolff, Michele Nicoletti, Philippe Van Parijs, Sebastiano Maffettone, Giovanni Giorgini, Andrew Williams, David Miller and Alessandro Ferrara. This year’s keynote speakers will be:

Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University), speaking on “Unpolitical Democracy”
Michael Otsuka (University College of London), speaking on “Risking Life and Limb”

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Hi public reasoners. So, as you all know, GA Cohen let rip an attack against the fact-sensitivity of fundamental political principles in his 2003 PPA article, “Facts and Principles,” and then in his book Rescuing Justice and Equality.  People have responded to this in a number of ways (e.g., Thomas Pogge’s essay in response to Cohen, found in a special issue of Ratio dedicated to Cohen’s book is both excellent and hilarious).

Well, I am going to throw my hat in the ring. What I’ve appended here is a thought-piece - something I am just throwing out there - for discussion.   It’s a little long for a blog post, so it’s in paper format.  I’d like to get people’s take on this stuff.  So, I hope that people will read it and start commenting. The basic idea is this: As a conceptual matter, it could be the case that political principles are fact-sensitive.  Cohen never considers this option.  So his argument fails pretty badly - more or less right out of the gate.  I hope folks will be interested enough in this to read it and offer some discussion pointers.

Thanks,Matt.

fact-sensitivity.pdf

Broadly, this paper is concerned with the folk concept of freedom. In the paper, I consider non-philosophical intuitions about freedom by examining what ordinary people think about several interesting cases in which an agent’s freedom is restricted. I also compare the role which value is given in the folk theory to two other well known theories of freedom, one promoted by T.H. Green and the other by Isaiah Berlin. The result is not only philosophically interesting, but informative about how ordinary philosophical conceptions function.

I was originally led to write this paper by a combined interest in the concept of freedom and the influence of morality on intuitions.

I would love to hear your comments so please join in the discussion.

See the video presentation

Paper:Jonathan Phillips. Freedom: Morality and Folk Intuitions

Comments:Matt Zwolinski. Comments on Phillips’ Folk Conception of Freedom

PowerPoint: Freedom: Morality and Folk Intuitions

 

 Freedom: Morality and Folk Intuitions: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We’ll be starting this semester’s podcast symposium this Friday. We have five papers this semester. The first paper is available for download for people who are interested in reading it prior to this Friday’s presentation:

• 27 February: Jonathan Phillips (UNC), “Freedom: Morality and Folk Intuitions.” Comments by Matt Zwolinski (USD).

“Positive and negative theories of liberty hold drastically different accounts of the role for value judgments in regard to freedom. This paper discusses the implications of one special type: moral judgments, and considers how moral judgments may affect ordinary intuitions about freedom in particular. This ‘ordinary’ concept of freedom contrasts both positive and negative theories of liberty and has some interesting implications of its own.”

The remaining papers are: Read the rest of this entry »

Hi All,

This isn’t really my area, but I’ve been thinking a bit about public reason lately (in preparing to comment on a paper at the APA) and I could think of no better place to put my thoughts than here. I must say, first, that I’ve only taken a quick look at jerry Gaus’ and Chirstopher Eberle’s books so I must apologize to them if I misconstrue anything they say in what’s below. I should also say that, after the APA, I think I better understand what is going on with justificatory liberalism than when I wrote this up. I think I see the crucial premise underlying the view: that coercion on the basis of reasons people could never accept is so important that it trumps all (other) controversial moral concerns. What I’m still not seeing, though, is the argument for that premise. Though I agree that there is a pro tanto reason against such coercion, I don’t see any reason to think it is definitive. So, I guess what is below is a request for help in locating this argument. Here goes:

Liberalism is defined by a commitment to some kind of freedom. But there are many different ways of understanding freedom and, hence, liberalism. On some theories, each individual’s freedom from arbitrary interference is of primary importance. On others, negative freedom is important but people’s positive freedoms or capabilities also merit consideration. Yet other theories balance a concern for different kinds of freedom against other things of value.

On one particular brand of liberalism, justificatory liberalism, respecting others’ freedom requires advocating policies only on the basis of public reason. Many justificatory liberals believe that religious reasons are not appropriately public. Recently, justificatory liberals have turned toward epistemology arguing that the best epistemic theories support accounts of public reason that yield their desired ethical results. Some justificatory liberals suggest, for instance, that liberalism requires advancing policies only on secular bases.

Learning this, I was at first a bit taken aback, for it had not occurred to me that settling a debate in epistemology could decide a debate about whether it is appropriate to appeal to religious principles in justifying public policy (for instance). And, upon reflection, I see little reason to think, epistemology should bear that kind of weight. I am wondering if anyone might help me see why it should. (Though, my primary objective in this post is to suggest that a complaint that seems to be hidden in the appeal to public reason against relying on religious principles in policy debates is a poor one).

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• Date: 20-21 November, 2009
• Location: University of Manchester

The Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) is delighted to announce a conference celebrating the career of our distinguished colleague, Professor Hillel Steiner.  Professor Steiner’s pioneering work on freedom, rights, exploitation, and justice has profoundly influenced moral, political, and legal philosophy over the last forty years. This conference will bring together scholars from around the world to discuss some of the central themes from Professor Steiner’s work. Participants will include:

• Ian Carter (University of Pavia)
• G.A. Cohen (University of Oxford & University College London) (provisional)
• Eve Garrard (University of Keele & University of Manchester)
• Alan Hamlin (University of Manchester)
• Matthew Kramer (University of Cambridge)
• William Lucy (University of Manchester)
• Eric Mack (Tulane University)
• David Miller (University of Oxford)
• Serena Olsaretti (University of Cambridge)
• Michael Otsuka (University College London)
• Jonathan Quong (University of Manchester)
• Zofia Stemplowska (University of Manchester)
• Peter Vallentyne (University of Missouri)
• Philippe Van Parijs (Universite catholique de Louvain)

Further details regarding registration and accomodation will be forthcoming later this spring. For more details regarding MANCEPT please visit us at:www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/researchgroups/mancept/ 

Kant’s three maxims of “public sense” are:

(1) Think for yourself (the motto of the enlightenment)

(2) Think from the standpoint of everyone else

(3) Think consistently

Kant inspires me…. so I made this:  “3 Wishes”

Cheers,

Colin

I recently created a facebook group for Public Reason, although not for any particular purpose. I may put stuff up there from time to time, and anyone else is welcome to do so too.

PETTIT AND HIS CRITICS

Saturday, 14th March 2009

Research Beehive 2.21
Old Library Building
Newcastle University

Philip Pettit is one of the most significant moral and political philosophers today. This conference will bring together new work on Pettit’s many philosophical contributions by three philosophers-Thom Brooks (Newcastle), Cecile Laborde (University College London), and Michael Ridge (Edinburgh)-with replies to each by Philip Pettit.

PROGRAMME

10.30-11.00am
Registration (tea/coffee)

11.00-12.30pm
Speaker: Michael Ridge (Edinburgh), An Opportunity for Expressivists? Sincerity, Belief Expression and Ecumenical Expressivism
Respondent: Philip Pettit (Princeton)

12.30-1.15pm
Lunch

1.15-2.45pm
Speaker: Thom Brooks (Newcastle), Moral and Political Freedom
Respondent: Philip Pettit (Princeton)

2.45-3.00pm
Tea/coffee

3.00-4.30pm
Speaker: Cecile Laborde (UCL), Tbc
Respondent: Philip Pettit (Princeton)

REGISTRATION

Registration is £20 waged or £15 unwaged/student. This price includes registration, all teas/coffees, and lunch. The conference website includes information on the programme, travelling to Newcastle, and online registration (found here).

The conference is open to all and it is supported generously by the Newcastle Institute for the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (NIASSH); the Newcastle Ethics, Legal, and Political Philosophy Group; the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology; and the Journal of Moral Philosophy.

UPDATE: There is also a Facebook Event website set up as well, found here.

Trinity College Dublin: 19-20 June 2009 | CFP: 2 March 2009

13th “PRIORITY IN PRACTICE” CONFERENCE

Further information: http://pip2009.wordpress.com/

The conference will employ the informal format familiar from the London PiP conferences with consecutive papers and ample room for discussion. We are looking for papers in the broad field of political and social philosophy discussing various philosophical or normative aspects of public policy issues, and will consider any topic or approach that fits these broad parameters. Please note that we are restricted in terms of how many papers we can schedule, and that priority will be given to papers that genuinely merge theory and practice.

To submit a paper simply email a brief abstract (300 words max.) to jurgen.dewispelaere@tcd.ie by Monday 2nd March.

The conference is free and everyone is welcome to attend, but you have to register as numbers are limited.

The conference is jointly hosted by the Department of Philosophy (Trinity College Dublin), the School of Politics and International Relations (University College Dublin) and the Department of Philosophy, (University College London).

We look forward to meeting you all in June

Jurgen De Wispelaere, Iseult Honohan and Jo Wolff

Anyone interested in human rights, mass atrocity, or humanitarian intervention will know the work of Alison Des Forges, author of Leave None to Tell the Story, the definitive work on the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Des Forges was killed last night in the crash of Flight 3407 in Buffalo, along with 49 others. Human Rights Watch have a memorial notice up.