Corey Brettschneider argues in Chapter 2 of Democratic Rights that citizens’ status as rulers in a democracy entitles them to claim individual rights based on the core elements of the value theory—equality of interests, political autonomy, and reciprocity.  These democratic rights are substantive rights and not just rights of participation.  After elaborating how the value theory works to ground substantive rights, Brettschneider closes by considering how two fundamental democratic rights—to the rule of law and to freedom of speech—might be argued for from the perspective of the value theory.

(more…)

(more…)

In a number of states and countries, transgender activists and scholars are challenging the rules and regulations for altering one’s sex status on official documents and records.  In this presentation, I explore why each person must have an official or legal sex, and why these identities are subject to the control of our governments.

I include below links to an audio file, as well as presentation slides, with and without the same audio, so you can listen and read along at the same time.  I also include a link to the text of my presentation.   Lori Gruen’s helpful comments are linked below my text.

Presentation slides with embedded audio

Presentation slides without audio

Text

Lori Gruen’s comments

Summary

This chapter begins by describing the view, commonly held among liberal theorists, that there is a conflict between democracy and individual rights. On this view, democracy is defined by a set of political procedures, whereas rights are substantive, or “procedure-independent,” constraints on the outcomes of those procedures. This view leads to the following puzzle in democratic theory:  If democratic procedures confer legitimacy on their outcomes – because the people who are subject to those outcomes have also authorized them – then how can those outcomes be limited by a set of procedure-independent, or substantive, rights? This is what Brettschneider calls the “problem of constraint” (8). (more…)

The paper I am presenting for this podcast symposium is part of an ongoing research interest of mine in how torture becomes institutionalized in military forces that are (in theory at least) committed to the prohibition against torture. I am particularly interested in how the processes of rationalization and normalization contribute to the use of torture, and how language, training, and torture methods effect the moral attitudes of those involved in the authorization and use of torture.

I was inspired to write this paper after noticing that the term “torture lite” was turning up quite frequently in the public debate about torture, used both by those who argue against torture and by those arguing that torture might sometimes be justified. I was interested in how the use of this phrase (and similar phrases such as “enhanced interrogation”) shaped the debate about torture, and in whether this term does pick out a set of torture techniques that are generally or always less severe than more violent torture methods. In particular, I began to wonder how the techniques described as torture lite (for example, extended sleep deprivation, forced standing, noise bombardment, isolation, and manipulation of heat and cold) shaped torturers’ (and others’) moral perception of what is being done to the victims and who is responsible for it. It struck me that so-called torture lite techniques share certain features that tend to mask the effects of these methods on the victims and minimize the torturer’s role in causing the victims’ suffering, and that this might play an important role in making such forms of torture seem more palatable to liberal democracies than would otherwise be the case.

I hope you find the paper interesting to read/listen to. I look forward to reading your comments, and many thanks to Simon May for organizing this symposium.

I haven’t included the footnotes in the podcast of the paper, and I have left some material out in order to make it a manageable length, but you can read the full version of the paper here

David Sussman’s excellent comments are available here

You can listen to the podcast below.

I of course wrote this article with my dissertation advisor and world-class political philosopher Jerry Gaus. The article was originally an invitation to Jerry to write an article that would be part of a symposium on public reason and religion in Philosophy and Social Criticism. Jerry and I had been talking about these issues for nearly a year, so he was magnanimous enough to invite me to be a co-author.

The article I’m reading to you today has the incredibly unwieldy title: “The Roles of Religious Conviction in a Publicly Justified Polity: The Implications of Convergence, Asymmetry, and Political Institutions.” I place the blame for this title squarely on Jerry’s shoulders. The delightful and razor-sharp John Quong will be our commenter. Thank you, John for your able criticisms.

I read the entire paper on the podcast, but I don’t read the footnotes. If you listen to the podcast, you’ll want to see the footnotes in the paper if you had additional questions.

With that said, thank you all for joining me and thanks to Simon May for putting together this very cool, very hip, very innovative and yes, very cheap philosophy conference.

Here’s the PDF.

Here are Jon Quong’s excellent comments.

I’ll post replies on Monday and Tuesday.

Incidentally, we’re hoping to get Jerry in on this, but he will be at a conference over the weekend going on about T. H. Green. (What? You don’t know who T. H. Green is? Well, you should!) I will pester him, but posting provocative comments will help draw him in!

The podcast is below. Enjoy my melodious Southern accent. The file is large (~6 MB) so patience while loading. Its probably better to download it to your computer or MP3 player.

Note: Please do not cite this article without permission from the authors.

A lot of people misread their rights,” [Sabuni] said recently. “They think that freedom of religion means they can do anything in the name of religion, or that human rights mean that they can act however they want against others.” Not true, she said. “If they want to live here, have kids, have grandchildren, they must make an effort to adapt to the society where they live.”

On one hand, her remarks appear almost banal — of course immigrants have adapt, at least in the sense of obeying the law, respecting entrenched norms and values and contributing to various public goods. (It is also the case that larger societies have to adapt to immigrant groups.) On the other hand, it struck me that she might be requiring something quite radical, namely that immigrants abandon substantial parts of their culture. The word “adapt” is ambiguous and says little about what immigrants’ precise moral obligations are.

While it seemed to me that many people agree that immigrants have some obligations to adapt, I found it extremely difficult to identify the grounds for this belief. What is troublesome is that longstanding groups within societies such as aboriginal groups, national minorities and even people who have chosen an “alternative” lifestyle do not have these obligations. Why should recent immigrants be in a different position, particularly if one values liberal autonomy and rights such as freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and freedom of association?

Working out these issues (or attempting to work them out!) led me to write this paper.

My paper can be downloaded here.

Matt Lister’s comments on the paper are available here.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the arrow below:

Part of the purpose of the symposium is to create a forum in which political philosophers around the world can attend and participate in a weekly political philosophy talk, albeit virtually. The authors have been asked to podcast their papers as a way to approximate the conditions of an in-person talk as closely as possible. Each post will contain an mp3 audio file, a pdf document of the paper, as well as a pdf document containing the responder’s comments. Thus, it will be possible to read the paper as the speaker is talking through it.

We hope to have more such symposia in the future. There is no reason why political philosophers should not be able to listen and respond to a quality political philosophy talk every week. Naturally, we are not audio experts, so we may not quite sound like a professional radio station as we proceed. But we should be able to work out problems and make improvements as we gain experience with the medium. All suggestions for improvement are welcome.

You can listen to the podcasts, either directly at the site, or by downloading them through iTunes. You can subscribe to Public Reason podcasts on iTunes by following this link. This way you can download the audio files to your mp3 player and listen to the talks in your car, train, favourite coffee shop, etc. (Whilst you are at it, you can also subscribe to Public Ethics Radio and Ethics Bites.)

This semester’s schedule is over the fold:

(more…)

We’ll also be holding an Estlund-style reading group on Corey Brettschneider’s Democratic Rights starting in a couple of weeks. More on that in due course. If you’d like to organise a reading group on a book of general interest in political theory/philosophy in 2009, please do not wait for an invitation.

I’ve renewed the site registration for two more years. We now have over 170 full members and 70 participants registered on the site. We’re represented in 20 or so countries around the world. We’ve had over 100 000 page views and we’re approaching 50 000 discrete site visits. For a blog, this is small potatoes. But for an academic blog, it’s not too shabby for the first year. If you’d like to help support the site, you can use the links below to purchase items (not necessarily our members’ books) from Amazon.

Members who would like to initiate any other new projects are very welcome to do so.

Here’s the abstract:  Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right.  Citizens should not vote badly.  This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low.  Good governance is a public good.  Bad governance is a public bad.  We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low.  Many democratic theorists agree that we shouldn’t vote badly, but that’s because they think we should vote well.  This demands too much of citizens.

So, in summary, on my view, citizens don’t in general have an obligation to vote, but if they do vote, they should vote well.  What I do in the paper is outline broadly what it means to vote badly, explain why I think you ought not to do it, and then answer various objections.

An outline of the argument is: 1.One has an obligation not to engage in collectively harmful activities when refraining from such activities does not impose significant personal costs.  2. Voting badly is to engage in a collectively harmful activity, while abstaining imposes low personal costs. 3. Therefore, one should not vote badly.

Some of the worries about this argument that I respond to are (among others): A.  If good governance is a public good as I say, shouldn’t everyone who benefits from this good contribute to it? B.  Don’t individual bad votes have incredibly low expected disutility, and if so, why bother prohibit bad voting? C. Does this position imply epistocracy (Estlund’s term, meaning the rule of those who know better) or something like it?  D. Is this view self-effacing? E.  What if citizens are good at judging character, even if they are bad at judging policies?

So, if people are interested, I’ll be writing more about this in the next few days.  Feel free to email me at Jason_brennan [at] brown.edu if you’d like a copy.  (I’ve got to make a final few revisions over the next few weeks anyways, so any comments would of course be welcome.)

[Update: I’ve added a bloggingheads video of Jason and blogger Will Wilkinson (Cato Institute) on this paper below the fold — SCM]

(more…)

Is everyone else as amazed as I am about the recent decision by the Ladies Professional Golf Association [where 45 of the top 120 players on the circuit are South Korean] to demand that all players be conversant in English?  I am not prone to such comments, but I can’t help but wonder if this could happen anywhere other than the U.S.  I am particularly taken aback by how easily the association feels it can justify such a decision in branding/marketing terms.  Consider the quote from the deputy commissioner (via NY Times):

“We live in a sports-entertainment environment,” said Libba Galloway, the deputy commissioner of the tour, the Ladies Professional Golf Association. “For an athlete to be successful today in the sports entertainment world we live in, they need to be great performers on and off the course, and being able to communicate effectively with sponsors and fans is a big part of this.”

Nothing personal ladies, just business.  This explanation doesn’t seem too far removed from, “Our fans and sponsors would rather not see South Koreans win so many tournaments, so we will begin every tournament by penalizing South Korean players three strokes.  If they don’t like it, they can go home.  Nobody is forcing them to play.”

This makes me wonder, as a legal/moral issue, where the appropriate line lies between “workplace discrimination” and “responsible business practices given the needs/demands of your patrons.”  Clearly, it is illegal for a restaurant owner to not hire a server because he is worried about losing his racist patrons.  Conversely, Bucknell University is justified in expecting that its faculty members are able to teach in English.

The relevant question seems to be, “Is this characteristic/skill central to performing the job?”  According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,  “A rule requiring that employees speak only English on the job may violate Title VII unless an employer shows that the requirement is necessary for conducting business. If the employer believes such a rule is necessary, employees must be informed when English is required and the consequences for violating the rule.”

The language “if the employer believes such a rule is necessary” is quite striking, and seems to potentially be in conflict with the demand in the previous sentence that employers show that the requirement is necessary for conducting business. As the LPGA case illustrates, decisions regarding  “what is necessary for conducting business” can be quite controversial/potentially racist.

Any thoughts on these matters?  Can someone point me to particularly excellent literature on the subject?

1. What should the social world be like?
This, I think, is the domain of social philosophy, properly understood.  One part of that domain, I think, is the political—leading to questions 2 and 3.  The domain of the social, though, is broader and includes how people act in social situations—i.e., here is where we should probably place questions about (non-governmental) power differentials and such (the parenthetical, of course, implies that we can differentiate between governmental and non-governmental power).  I suspect that those that call themselves “political theorists” are often more interested in other aspects of social philosophy than are those that call themselves “political philosophers.”  I’d be interested in knowing if others think that is right or wrong.

2. Should there be a government?
Perhaps this is the primary question of political philosophy.  If the answer is “no,” then the third question might not be asked.  (It might be asked even if the answer is “no” though since even if we should not have a government, we may not have a choice in the matter and would want to determine the best option possible.)  In any case, I think there are a number of elements to this question: Can anyone have a right to rule?  Does anyone have that right? Does anyone have a duty to obey?

3. What sort of government should we have?  This has, I think, 3 sub-questions:
a. Who, of those in a society, should rule?
b. What should the government have the power to do?
c. How should the powers be codified? Are they codifiable? How are the codifications to be understood and interpreted? (philosophy of law)

For completeness, I think we might also say:
The first question “What should the social world be like?” is a part of a broader question: “How should we be and what should we do?”  That, I think, means that Social Philosophy is properly conceived of as part of Ethics—which strikes me as right.  With that addition, we can recognize this tree (or something like it) where each lower field is a branch of the field above it:

Philosophy
Value Theory (as well as Metaphysics and Epistemology and …)
Ethics (as well as aesthetics and …)
Social Philosophy (as well as Normative Ethics, meta-Ethics, and applied ethics)
Political Philosophy (as well as race theory, gender theory, and …)
Philosophy of Law (as well as … )

What do people think about all of this?

** Sept 1: Thanks to those (half dozen or so) who have sent comments along directly to me.  Very helpful!

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:

(more…)

“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!

“Racial Generalizations, Police Disretion and Bayesian Contractualism.” In J. Kleinig (ed) `Handled with Discretion: Ethical Issues in Police Decision Making.’ New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

and one by Mathias Risse and Richard Zeckhauser (linked to here):

http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~mrisse/papers_Misc.htm

Both articles argue that under the right conditions - and conditions not too different from those obtaining in many countries at present - racial profiling is justified.

(more…)

Waste is “either (a) any process wherein something useful ceases to be useful or becomes less useful or (b) the output of such a process.”