Articles by Thom Brooks

JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY:

An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy http://www.brill.nl/jmp

(ISSN 1740-4681)

Volume 5, Number 2 (2008)

EDITORIAL

Thom Brooks, ‘Editorial’, p. 177

ARTICLES

Burke A. Hendrix, ‘Authenticity and Cultural Rights’, pp. 181-203

Igor Primoratz, ‘Patriotism and Morality: Mapping the Terrain’, pp. 204-226

Rex Martin, ‘Two Concepts of Rule Utilitarianism’, pp. 227-255

Jessica Spector, ‘The Grounds of Moral Agency: Locke’s Account of Personal Identity’, pp. 256-281

Paul Weirich, ‘Utility Maximization Generalized’, pp. 282-299

REVIEW ARTICLE

Colin Tyler, ‘Brian Barry and Writings on Social Justice from the Left’, pp. 301-312

BOOK REVIEWS

Jules Holroyd on Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and Its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy, pp. 313-317

Ben Colburn on Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics, pp. 318-321

Adrian Blau on Reflective Democracy, pp. 322-324

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GJHR Group: 7-9 April 2009 | CFP: 10 September 2008

In addition to several other hats that I wear, one of these hats is co-convener of the Global Justice and Human Rights (GJHR) Group. This group is funded by the UK’s Political Studies Association (PSA).

Each year the GJHR Group is given sessions at the PSA annual conference: last year, we put on our first sessions since coming into existence a few months before. Each was very well attended and we have been awarded up to four sessions for the next annual conference.

The next PSA annual conference will take place at the Manchester Conference Centre from 7th-9th April 2009. The conference website is here.

If any reader would like to present a paper at this conference, then please send your expression of interest to me here no later than 10th September 2008. I would require a proposed title and brief abstract.

These conferences are well attended, regularly attracting over 500 delegates: the PSA annual conference is the second largest political science conference in the world, second only to APSA’s annual conference. Manchester is a fantastic city to travel to as well, if you have not visited the city before.

Today, we have learned the news that the Journal of Moral Philosophy will be a quarterly publication from 2009. This is a major change that I have been hoping to achieve for some time. The JMP was launched in April 2004 and since this time we have published three issues per year. I am particularly delighted that we will be able to publish accepted work more quickly and provide more articles, review articles, discussion pieces, and book reviews to our readers.

At present, the JMP continues to be strong. We receive over 120 submissions per year minimum and our acceptance rate remains 10%. The majority of papers accepted are accepted after revisions. We currently use three referees for submissions and more than 80% of submissions are reviewed in two months or less.

The latest issue of the Journal of Moral Philosophy is now available. Please note that we have moved to Brill and our new website can be found here. (Our previously site with SAGE Publications is here.) All issues of the JMP can be downloaded from IngentaConnect here.

The contents are as follows:

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I have been working on a paper entitled “The Capabilities Approach, Religious Practices, and the Importance of Recognition” that looks into cases where Nussbaum’s capabilities approach and religious practices seem to clash. The paper can be downloaded free here. The paper’s abstract is:

“When can ever be justified in banning a religious practice? This paper focusses on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Certain religious practices create a clash between capabilities where the capability to religious belief and expression is in conflict with the capability of equal status and nondiscrimination. One example of such a clash is the case of polygamy. Nussbaum argues that there may be circumstances where polygamy may be acceptable. On the contrary, I argue that the capabilities approach cannot justify polygamy in any circumstance. Her approach rules out polygamy, but may not rule out all non-monogamous relationships, such as polyamory. Finally, I conclude that the capabilities approach would benefit from a more robust understanding of recognition.”

I would be very interested to hear from readers whether they agree or where the paper could be improved more. Any comments most appreciated!

Recently, British MP’s voted to allow the creation of hybrid embryos for medical research. These embryos would be 99.9% “human” but 0.1% “cow” or “rabbit” — the animal element is simply the use of animal eggs, from which animal DNA is extracted, human DNA implanted, the “hybrid” embryo is then given an electric shock, and then stem cells harvested for use in research. All matter must be destroyed within 14 days. (Q&A on hybrid embryos can be found here.)

This move has been highly controversial for several reasons. Some of these reasons include the following:

1. It is morally wrong to mix human and animal DNA in this way.

This first reason is perhaps the primary reason behind opposition to this legislation. There are several problems with this argument.

First, what do we mean by “morally wrong”? It is easy to claim a position is “morally wrong”; it is difficult to prove a position is morally wrong in a compelling way. That is, deontologists and consequentialists can agree on many ethical issues, but they will not agree on all ethical issues. Who then decides? We would have to see the best arguments on both sides in order to see which view should prevail. It is no use to say that x is “morally wrong” without a full account of morality, not least as there are many different camps and what is wrong (and right) is not self evident.

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Over the years, I have offered what is now an annual ’speech’ on publishing advice aimed at graduate students and junior academics. I recorded much of my early talks in a paper, first posted on the Political Studies Association’s postgraduate website, and later on the Social Science Research Network expecting little to follow beyond, hopefully, helping a few understand publishing better. The response was extraordinary. The essay fast became the most downloaded document on the PSA postgraduate site and the paper has now been downloaded 2,119 times since December 2005. This original essay (’The Postgraduate’s Guide to Getting Published‘) can be downloaded here.

Since originally posting that paper, I have received much advice since and I have developed my speech far more than before to include book contracts, in addition to articles. At long last, I have written a far more substantial essay ‘Publishing Advice for Graduate Students‘ that is available on SSRN here. The paper’s abstract is:

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“Graduate students often lack concrete advice on publishing. This essay is an attempt to fill this important gap. Advice is given on how to publish everything from book reviews to articles, replies to book chapters, and how to secure both edited book contracts and authored monograph contracts, along with plenty of helpful tips and advice on the publishing world (and how it works) along the way in what is meant to be a comprehensive, concrete guide to publishing that should be of tremendous value to graduate students working in any area of the humanities and social sciences.”
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I have tried to provide what is-I hope-excellent advice on virtually all areas of publishing: book reviews, replies/discussions/research notes, articles, book chapters, edited books, and monographs. I am constantly updating my publishing advice and I would greatly welcome any feedback readers might have to offer.

Please do feel free to forward the link to this paper far and wide.

If I may be allowed a chance to make a brief announcement, I am delighted to say that my new monograph, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right, is hot off the press. It is published by Edinburgh University Press and distributed in the United States by Columbia University Press. (It can be found at Amazon.co.uk. Orders in North America can be made here [or now at Amazon.com here — SCM].)

For a taster: Read the rest of this entry »

In our political philosophy reading group yesterday, we read Samuel Scheffler’s new essay “Immigration and the Significance of Culture” published in Philosophy & Public Affairs 35(2) (2007). It can be downloaded here.

There was quite a lot that colleagues objected to in the essay, but a major worry concerns a summary of his views at the end of his essay. Scheffler says:

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“….The implication of my argument, then, is not that all of the political claims advanced under the heading of cultural rights or cultural preservation should automatically be dismissed, but rather that those claims should be redescribed in such a way as to make clear the values, ideals, and principles that are at stake. Ver often, I believe, these will turn out to be moral, religious, or philosophical values or ideals, so that the appeal to cultural will turn out to have been redundant … it may in some cases turn out that there was really no value at all at stake, and that the appeal to culture was sheer bluff: that it was simply an appeal to the brute fact that some people behave in a certain way, which by itself has no normative force….” (p. 124).

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I would be interested to hear what others make of this statement, but let me first offer a few observations. In essence, Scheffler’s argument is that what is of value about culture is not culture itself, but certain values that may (or may not) be present in a given culture. The suggestion is that rather than honour claims from culture, we should honour claims from values: “culture” should then drop from view.

This is a very curious understanding of culture. If I am a part of a culture and find significant a particular way of life relating to this culture, then it is unclear which parts of the culture I honour (or do not honour) based upon which foundational values are worthy (or not worthy) of recognition. It strikes me that “culture” comes to us as a package, perhaps as a package of values rooted in a distinctive way of life. It is a whole, rather than a variety of unconnected parts. Thus, a claim from culture does not pick and choose amongst a variety of values, but takes them together. As a result, Scheffler’s view of culture then strikes me as a bit too fast and loose in its efforts to set culture aside.

Again, I would be very interested to hear what readers think of what is surely an important essay.

The latest issue of the Journal of Moral Philosophy has just been published and all articles are on the topic of ‘metaethics’. Papers were originally presented at a conference organized by Fabian Freyenhagen at King’s College, Cambridge. The issue can be found here. The contents are as follows:

Notes on contributors

Fabian Freyenhagen, ‘Editorial’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 4(3) (2007): 310.

Russ Shafer-Landau, ‘Moral and Theological Realism: The Explanatory Argument’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 4(3) (2007): 311-29.

Michael Ridge, ‘Anti-Reductionism and Supervenience’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 4(3) (2007): 330-48.

John Broome, ‘Does Rationality Consist in Responding Correctly to Reasons?’ Journal of Moral Philosophy 4(3) (2007): 349-74.

Alison Hills, ‘Practical Reason, Value and Action’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 4(3) (2007): 375-92.

Onora O’Neill, ‘Normativity and Practical Judgement’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 4(3) (2007): 393-405.

Thomas Pink, ‘Normativity and Reason’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 4(3) (2007): 406-31.

Referees for volume 4

My thanks again to Hallvard Lillehammer, King’s College, Cambridge’s Faculty of Philosophy, and, most especially, Fabian for organizing such a terrific conference.