Problems

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

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

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

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Speaking of non-ideal theory (or ideal theory in less than ideal contexts)… I am curious to hear whether my fellow public reasoners believe that the recent US Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance should have any impact on our work as political philosophers.  To be clear, I don’t mean to start a debate over whether or not the Supreme Court ruled correctly, or whether campaign donations are speech, or even whether corporations are people who have rights like you and me (though I do have opinions on such matters).  Instead, I want to consider whether the American legal landscape should guide our work on theories justice or democracy.

Here’s what I have in mind. Liberal political thought, to this point, has largely ignored a set of concerns that were central to many Labor movements, which might be called concerns over “workplace democracy” or what is sometimes called “democratic corporatism.”  With some notable exceptions (Pateman, Gould, Mansbridge), frequently offered by those operating in a Marxist framework, political philosophers have instead focused on issues of distribution or issues of legitimacy in terms of public reasons or political dialogue.  Relatively little attention has been paid to whether a society with profound inequalities in wealth, where corporations are dominant players in the political landscape, can be meaningfully democratic. There are a number of reasons for this omission, I think, including the assumptions that (1) if distribution problems are taken care of the rest will take care of itself or (2) the ideal society will have stringent campaign finance laws, public election financing, or some other way of insulating the political sphere from the economic sphere.  Given the economic and, following the Supreme Court Ruling, political-legal realities in the US for the indefinite future, I no longer believe that such assumptions will do.

Instead, I believe that if corporations are going to be dominant players in the political landscape for the indefnite future, more work needs to be done to consider whether such organizations need to be more democratic.  Are CEOs or Boards of Directors the “free speakers” for corporations, at liberty to use corporate money to influence election outcomes and policy debates?  Do campaign contributions require the approval of the majority of shareholders?  Do they require the approval of employees? There are of course reasons to favor discretionary decision making by executives - taking a vote for all decisions may leave firms unable to respond efficiently to market demands. Nonetheless, there are also substantial reasons to provide protections for workers or stockholders from what may be arbitrary or self-servingly indefensible decisions made by a board of directors. Also, the need for such rapid, discretionary decision-making with regard to political contributions is far from clear.  Treating corporations, in theory or in practice, as individuals with a right to free speech completely ignores these issues.

Later in his career Rawls himself more clearly distinguishes a property-owning democracy from the idea of a welfare state. A recent symposium in the Journal of Social Philosophy considers the implications of this distinction, in a way that is frequently relevant to the issue at hand. Given Citizens v. FEC, however, I believe that more work on the moral and political implications of corporate involvement in contemporary politics, and the ways in which workplace democracy can further democratic equality without unduly sacrificing market competitiveness, is necessary.  It is no longer plausible (if it ever was) in the American context, to believe that campaign finance law will insulate the political sphere from the economic sphere, such that inequalities in one need not entail inequalities in the other.

Any thoughts?

Many of you have probably seen Simmons’ article just out in PPA on ideal and non-ideal theory. Simmons defends Rawls’ account of the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction and his paper is a must read. That said, I have been ruminating over a slightly different take on the debate over the nature of the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction and so thought I’d throw an idea out there.

Drawing on John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice many have suggested that the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction is akin to the full/partial compliance distinction. In creating his ideal theory, Rawls assumes that people will comply (almost) perfectly with the requirements of justice. He then uses his original position argument to conclude that his first principle of justice should have priority over his second. Next, Rawls weakens his ideal theory assumptions, adding the constraint that people may not abide by the requirements of justice. He concludes that we should only embrace his general conception of justice in non-ideal theory.

Unfortunately, the canonical examples of ideal and non-ideal theories cannot be fully characterized as full and partial compliance theories respectively. As Simmons and others note, even Rawls says ideal theory requires more than perfect compliance. In creating his ideal theory he assumes, for instance, that the circumstances do not prevent justice from being secured. Furthermore, others have more recently provided ideal and non-ideal theories that are not full and partial compliance theories (respectively). The main thing that distinguishes Allen Buchanan’s and Michael Blake’s non-ideal theories from their ideal theories, for instance, is that their non-ideal theories assume that there will be states and consider what we should do given that we are confined to a statist system. Similarly, the main thing that distinguishes Ronald Dworkin’s non-ideal theory from his ideal theory is that he assumes that people only have different talents and disabilities in his ideal theory. Blake’s, Buchanan’s, and Dworkin’s ideal theories do not require perfect compliance. Assuming that there is something to the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction and these authors are not just using the terms in completely different ways, the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction cannot just be the full/partial compliance distinction.

Reflecting on the many ways people seem to use the terms, one might despair at the thought of trying to unify such disparate ideal and non-ideal theories. In the draft of his book manuscript Michael Blake suggests, for instance, that the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction is not that useful because it can mean many different things. He implores others to be careful to explain just what assumptions they are making in advancing any theory. Perhaps this is part of what drives Simmons and others to argue for one or another of these ways of thinking about the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction.

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According to the BBC, in the latest twist in l’affaire du foulard/voile, a French parliamentary committee has recommended a ban on women wearing Islamic face veils in public [Correction: the proposal applies to public facilities, such as hospitals and mass transit, and not walking about the street]. The reasoning behind the report seems to be that face veils are contrary to the values of the republic, as symbols of women’s repression and extremist fundamentalism.

The proposal strikes me as a very bad idea in a number of ways. I don’t see how the law liberates women from whatever social pressure there exists to wear a veil. Will wearing a balaclava in public be illegal too? If not, then won’t the law just force a change of attire? Nussbaum has some discussion of this general issue in her Liberty of Conscience, pp. 346-53, invoking the ability of Chicagoans (and the Dutch, and presumably the French) to conduct normal social interactions with their faces covered in winter.

What if feminists who believe that make-up is just a manifestation of the objectification of women in patriarchy, and hence symbolic of repression and degradation, are right? Is there a way to support the veil ban, but not think that this claim about make-up would justify a make-up ban?* How about t-shirts with sexist imagery and messages? Quite apart from dress codes, we can recognise prostitution as degrading, and hence contrary to the values of an egalitarian republic, without thinking it should be illegal, primarily because making it illegal may very well just make the lives of those women, so degraded, even worse.

So, a question: can anything be said in support of this proposal (from ideally a feminist perspective), that does not run into these and other problems?

*[I should add I think having to wear a burqa is worse than feeling compelled to wear make-up.]

So, another query: Should the US defend Google?  Why or why not?US to protest formally to China over Google ‘attacks’

A question: do people think international humanitarian intervention (or any international intervention, for that matter; perhaps even any intervention at all) has to be coercive?  That is, as a conceptual issue, is intervention necessarily coercive?

PBS‘ Frontline this week aired an interesting episode on the credit card industry, which began with a discussion of some of the controversial practices initiated by Providian and soon adopted by the bulk of its competitors. I think the episode raises some interesting philosophical questions about the nature and moral force (to borrow Alan Wertheimer’s term) of exploitation.

For instance, one of the practices Providian is said to have developed involved substituting what they called “stealth pricing” for explicit annual fees. Instead of charging all its customers a flat fee of, say, $50 per year, Providian offered cards with zero annual fee but with steep penalties for late payments, going over your credit limit, etc. To many customers, Providian’s cards thus appeared to be free. But Providian knew that many of its customers - especially the low-income, high credit-risk customers it was targeting - would wind up paying much more in penalties than they would have with a flat annual fee, even if most customers (wrongly) believed the opposite to be true.

So, at least at first glance, it looks like Providian was exploiting several kinds of vulnerability on the part of these customers.  First, the customers were vulnerable insofar as they were likely to do the things that would incur penalties. And secondly, they were vulnerable insofar as they tended to underestimate the extent to which they would do this, and hence underestimate the true cost of the cards Providian was offering. Providian took advantage of these vulnerabilities to enhance its own profit (which, at its peak according to the documentary, were around $1 billion per year).

Is this a case of wrongful exploitation? It might be, but the story raises a few questions in my mind.

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What do people think about this case?  Should the Dutch have interfered with her and her parents?

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

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

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?

Does anyone have any idea why the word “mercantalism” is not in the discourse of American politics?

Consider the following case:

Tanya lives in a small, newly created country in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most important issue in the region is the treatment of a disenfranchised minority that lives throughout the country. Tanya truly dislikes the minority and wants to further damage them if she can. While public opinion concerning the minority varies greatly, the government has taken the side of the minority. Consequently, a ban has been placed on any action or public speech that is intended to hurt the disenfranchised minority. In other words, the government has made laws against hurting the minority, but Tanya wishes she could hurt them.

Now ask yourself: ‘To what extent do these laws diminish Tanya’s freedom?’

Once you have thought of an answer to this question, consider a case that is exactly the same except that Tanya wants to help the disenfranchised minority:

Tanya lives in a small, newly created country in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most important issue in the region is the treatment of a disenfranchised minority that lives throughout the country. Tanya truly cares about the minority and really wants to help them if she can. While public opinion concerning the minority varies greatly, the government has sided against the minority. Consequently, a ban has been placed on any action or public speech that is intended to help the disenfranchised minority. In other words, the government has made laws against helping the minority, but Tanya wishes she could help them.

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I have been thinking about the ethics of racial profiling. Say that racial profiling, roughly, involves law enforcers paying extra attention to members of a certain race, because it is known that members of that race are more likely to commit certain crimes. My familiarity with the philosophical work on the topic is entirely due to two very good articles, one by Arthur Applbaum:

“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.

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I had to take a break from this but am back at it full force. What do people think of the following as a definition of waste? I think it gets around some of the problems people pointed out earlier (here and here). I’m sure it invites new ones.

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.”

Greetings Public Reasoners, Nicole’s post has gotten me thinking (okay, it’s gotten me to post; I’ve been thinking about this for a while) about the significance of data to political theory. In particular, it’s gotten me thinking about people charging that some political theory is too utopian.

For example, suppose I propose that we eliminate the system of nation-states and replace it with some other system (take your pick). One might reject that proposal out of hand simply because it is too utopian. But to what does this claim amount? Is it a sort of “Can’t get there from here” sort of claim? I.e., does it amount to saying something like, “That would be great, but we could never achieve that state of affairs given present, although contingently existing, constraints”? Or, is it something more - a claim about nomological necessity? But, what laws of nature would the realization of such a proposal (whatever it is) violate?

I ask this question partially because it seems to me that the question of empirical research in political philosophy is largely used in order to make arguments that, while they do not have the form of the utopia-charge above, nonetheless suggest one of the readings of the utopia-charge. The arguments run as follows:

1. Political theory P runs afoul of empirical evidence X and Y.

2. Political theories must not run afoul of empirical evidence of Type A, of which X and Y are tokens.

3. So, P should be rejected.

The major premise is (2), but why accept ANY premise like (2)? I presume any answer would appeal to something about the *aims* of political theory and then claim that anything with aims of that sort (i.e., the sort of aims that political theory has) must be regulated by certain norms, N1, N2, etc. And, among these norms is N*, which is Premise (2) above.

Now, that is not a simple argument to flesh out. It certainly isn’t something at which we can merely wave our hands. A lot more needs to be said, and a lot of it will be thickly normative in character.

Anyway, I am working on a paper on this, but I would really enjoy reading people’s comments about this. I know that what I have written is pretty jumbled and inchoate, but hey, such is my life. In general. Like, I live a jumbled, inchoate life.

Too early for bourbon, Matt

Some people might be interested in an experiment that will be appearing in Utilitas on how people think about meeting needs. I should mention that the experiment plays a rather minor role in the paper which argues for a new principle for meeting needs and critiques several of the alternatives (including the principle David Miller advocates in Principles of Social Justice). It will appear on my website shortly. I should also mention that the experiment was conducted with Yali Corea-Levy at the University of Arizona.

experiment

Thanks! -Nicole

I came across a nice paper by John Simmons a while back on why libertarians should be actual consent theorists and decided that I could combine his argument with something derived from an argument I’ve got coming out in the American Philosophical Quarterly to show that libertarians (who accept the following assumptions) should be welfare liberals. I’ve got the link to a draft of the paper on my website (http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/hassoun/papers.php) but thought I’d post the argument here, just to see if any one has any thoughts on it. The assumptions that follow block some obvious objections.

1. Assumption: Libertarians agree that any existing states must be legitimate and some states should exist.
2. Assumption: Libertarians hold that for any existing states to be legitimate they must only exercise coercive force over (rights respecting) individuals to protect these individuals’ liberty.
3. From Simmons’ argument in “Consent theory for libertarians”: Libertarians should agree that for state to be legitimate, they must secure their subjects’ autonomous consent.
4. For states to secure their subjects autonomous consent, they must do what they can to enable their subjects to secure sufficient autonomy to autonomously consent to its rules.
5. To secure this autonomy most people (in all states) must be able to secure some minimal amount of healthcare, food, water, and shelter.
6. So, states must do what they can to enable most of their subjects to secure some minimal amount of healthcare, food, water, and shelter.
7. Implicit premise: If libertarians must agree that states must do what they can to enable most of their subjects to secure some minimal amount of healthcare, food, water, and shelter, they must be (some kind of) welfare liberals.
8. So libertarians should be (some kind of) welfare liberals.

Thoughts?

Thanks, -Nicole

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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Here’s a quick question: What are the best discussions in the literature of why the original position has justificatory force? I’m particularly interested in those papers that address Ronald Dworkin’s “no pale form” point that since the contract is only a hypothetical contract, it does not have any of the binding force of contracts. I don’t need persuading that this is not a good objection to the original position, given that the OP models fairness and not contractual obligation, but I would like to know the best papers that make the response elegantly.

Since my first post on this topic, I’ve toyed with different ways to define waste (I was trying to do only conceptual analysis, leaving the normative work for later) and seem to be ending with “the under-usage of something we should use.”  It may seem an unexciting definition, but I’ve yet to find or think of a better one.  So, I’m interested to see what people think of it.

Consider Simon’s example of the rich heiress who buys a $3000 dress, wears it once, then hangs it in her storage closet to be forgotten and buys another for the next occasion, and repeats the process indefinitely.  I think we could say here that the heiress is under-using the dress that she should use (because she bought it).  I think we could also say that the resources that went into creating the dress were under-used (and plausibly should be used).  Still, I have to admit that if the definition is right, it means waste is necessarily normative.  This is so in two ways: not only in the second part, where we explicitly say that the item in question is something “we should use,” but also in the first part, where we reference “the under-usage of something.”  If that is an accurate understanding of waste, we will need some standard to determine if a particular use is under-usage or proper usage and this will (usually) be normative.  I think we should accept that there is this double normativity in the proper understanding of waste. But I’m curious to hear what people think.

I’ve just started working on a paper about Socrates and heroism, looking at the speeches and deeds of the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. Given that something on the order of a million books and articles have been written about Socrates, I thought I would write a short note here to see if there were any suggestions for readings I absolutely must not miss. I’ve found a number of very good articles (highlights include Greenberg (1965), Weinrib (1982), and Zuckert (1984)) and a couple of good books (Ahrensdorf (1995) and Hobbs (2000), in particular). But where else should I be looking? Thanks in advance!

So, I’ve been thinking about utilitarianism and non-ideal theory. Although what I’ve come up with may be quite obvious, I’d be interested in reflections on the thought.

It seems to me that there are times when we might do best (even on utilitarian grounds) not to do what would maximize utility in non-ideal circumstances. Consider an instance in which this point may have practical bite. Some argue against ending child labor because the children we prohibit from working may suffer more for our good intentions. Child prostitution may be their second best option. But that this would be so, holding everything else fixed, does not mean we should not try to end child labor. What it shows is that we should try to end child labor and help educate the children we liberate. If one says that we do not have the resources to do this then we should reply that we can and need to find the resources — that is what justice requires. Even for a utilitarian, there are times when we should not do what might initially seem to maximize utility because doing that will only maximize utility conditional on facts that we can and should change. Perhaps there is reason to worry about doing non-ideal theory in some circumstances. Or, more precisely, that we have to be careful about what kind of non-ideal theory we are doing. Consider another example to support the point. Aid organizations spend a great deal of time and money figuring out how to allocate scarce resources. For instance, the WHO tries to prioritize health interventions to maximize the number of disability adjusted life years (or whatever) that it can save with its resources. But if the global distribution of medical resources is unjust and can be changed, the WHO might better spend its time trying to change the global distribution of medical resources.

I’ve been working on Berlin-style value pluralism lately. I’m particularly concerned with the attempt (made by Galston and Crowder, among others) to derive liberal political commitments from value pluralism. My sense is that value pluralism has no entailments regarding politics. But that’s a topic for another day. I’m writing here to try to get some help on the meaning of a comment by Bernard Williams frequently cited approvingly in the value pluralist literature.

In his introduction to Berlin’s *Concepts and Categories*, Williams claims that “if there are many and competing values, then the greater the extent to which a society tends to be single-valued, the more genuine values it neglects or suppresses. More, to this extent, must mean better.”

Maybe I’m just being thick-headed about this, but I don’t see how “more must mean better,” unless some common measure among values is presupposed; but value pluralists must deny that this kind of common measure exists (the lack of common measure in part explains the incommensurability among values and the unavailability of rational rank-orderings among them). So it seems to me that Williams’ “better” must not mean *morally* better. But if that’s the case, then I don’t see how Williams’ point is of much use to the value pluralist.

Am I missing a natural reading of Williams’ comment that’s both consistent with value pluralism and of use for making the case that value pluralism entails liberalism?

Hi,
So I have this argument I’ve been thinking about for the conclusion that, theoretically, it is quite possible that Fair Trade will offer Pareto superior improvements for the poor. I’d love any thoughts. The argument makes the standard economic assumptions about competitive markets and consumers and producers trying to maximize profit and utility respectively and tries to show that Fair Trade will offer Pareto superior improvements for the poor if the consumer does not change the amount of goods she purchases and will continue to buy Fair Trade goods into perpetuity.

Here’s the thought:

Suppose that a consumer is trying to decide whether or not to buy Fair Trade bananas and will either purchase bananas from a Fair Trade source for (say) $2 a bag or non-Fair Trade source for $1 a bag. If the consumer buys from a Fair Trade source the poor people who receive her money would, without her money, either have gone out of business or not. If the poor people she supports would otherwise have gone out of business they would have either gone into a more profitable business (than the regular banana business) or not. If not, then the consumer has benefited them. If the poor people the consumer supports would have otherwise gone into a more profitable business (say sugar) then they have done better to make Fair Trade bananas, otherwise they would have gone into sugar. The poor people this consumer supports are, thus, better off with Fair Trade. The consumer knows that she has helped the poor people who make her Fair Trade bananas.

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The US House Foreign Affairs Committee has just approved House Resolution 106 which acknowledges the Armenian Genocide of 1915.¹ President Bush, like President Clinton before him, is opposed to the resolution, given the expected Turkish reaction and the strategic links between the US and Turkey. It’s unclear to me what the short or long-term consequences of an official US acknowledgment of the genocide may be, but I find myself firmly behind the resolution, so much so that my intuitive sense is that opposition to it is just a disgrace, something beyond the pale of reasonable, principled politics. I admit, this is not something I feel like being open-minded about in the slightest.

But I don’t really know how I can defend that intuition philosophically, and I’m not sure if there has been much good philosophical literature on why genocide denial is a moral problem or on whether genocide acknowledgment is some sort of moral imperative. Generally, it’s been historians who have written about genocide denial and their moral conclusions have not been terribly nuanced. Denying the travesty is murdering the victims once again, it is sometimes claimed, and there endeth the metaphor.

So my question is two-fold: what exactly makes genocide denial morally problematic, if it is (and is there any good philosophical literature on this?); and what exactly makes genocide acknowledgment morally important, if it is (and is there any good philosophical literature on this?).

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1. Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, Harper Perennial, 2003; Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, Harper Perennial, 2004; Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, Holt Paperbacks, 2007 [↩]

First, I want to thank Simon for starting this blog. I think its a great idea and suspect it will flourish.

Now, my first post:

I’ve long considered writing a paper about Waste and now have an extrinsically important reason to do so.

People have thought that Locke’s (first) proviso–the requirement that there must be “enough, and as good, left in common for others”–can’t be satisfied in the modern world. People seem to think Locke’s second (waste or spoilage) proviso–the requirement that we must “make use of” that which we want to claim as property “before it spoils”–is settled by the existence of a means of exchange (money) as it allows us to store value so that nothing need spoil.

I think this is backward. I think David Schmidtz has shown that the first proviso is easily settled (and far from limiting property, sometimes requires that we take property). I think the second proviso is too often ignored. Nozick only calls it a “further condition.” It seems to me that “waste” must be understood normatively. I’m not inclined to spend much time doing textual exegesis to determine what Locke meant by the term “spoilage” though that might be part of the project. More interesting to me is determining the best way to understand the term and, with that in place, the best way to understand the proviso. The next question would be: should we take the waste proviso as providing an inherent limit to property? I’m inclined to think we should (and to think there is a moral duty not to waste).

OK. There’s the project. Now the question: any suggestions for reading? I believe Jeremy Waldron was working on something like this at one point but I don’t recall anything in print. Any ideas? There is a recent piece in Locke Studies by Helga Varden¹ and a 1993 piece by Bernard Baumrin in the J of Social Philosophy,² but I haven’t found much else.

Comments and suggestions very much welcome!

1. Helga Varden, “Locke’s Waste Restriction and his Strong Voluntarism,” Locke Studies, vol. 6, 2006: 127-42 [↩]
2. Bernard Baumrin, “Waste,” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 24, #3, Winter 1993: 5-18 [↩]