Working Papers

Dear all,

I post here in pdf format a paper of mine in which I argue, well, that Rawls’s theory of justice implies the justification of slavery and genocide and is therefore an abysmal failure as far as reflective equilibrium is concerned. Comments are highly welcome

All the best, Uwe  Unsavory Implications of A Theory of Justice and The Law of Peoples

An updated (thanks for the comments!) working draft (now with citations/footnotes) of my ”Human Rights and Liberal Toleration” has been posted to SSRN.com. 

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1436125

I would be most grateful for additional comments and suggestions (to this site or to me directly).  An earlier and much shorter version was presented at the APA Central this past spring; those who provided helpful comments on that occasion will, hopefully, not be disappointed by this continuation of the effort.

Wishing everyone the best for the remainder of the summer (in the Northern Hemisphere). 

Here is my contribution to this podcast symposium; I’d like to add my thanks to Simon May for organizing this online event.

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

 

 "Does the Government Need to Know Your Sex?": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I have a conference length paper on Jim Nickel’s criticisms (from the second edition of “Making Sense of Human Rights”) of Rawls’s “ultraminimalist” conception of human rights in LoP. I seek readers’ comments both because I’d like to get a sense of what objections and questions I’m likely to get when I present the paper, and because I’m hoping to expand the paper both to more fully explore Nickel’s take on Rawls and to couple that discussion with an assessment of Allen Buchanan’s closely related criticisms in “Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Determination.” Thanks in advance for any and all comments. The paper can be found at: http://ssrn.com/author=382674

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

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!

Last night I gave a talk to the Moral Philosophy Seminar in Oxford, which received particularly good questions from Joseph Raz and John Broome (among others). As often, the paper has been posted for discussion on the blog Ethics-Etc (direct link to the paper here). Since it’s really political philosophy, I thought I’d draw attention to that here, for any interested readers.

Abstract:  

This paper challenges the common assumption that democracy requires majority rule. I assume that we can adopt a contractualist approach to uncover the demands of political equality and argue that contractors would not necessarily accept majority rule to make decisions in their society. I first reject broadly consequentialist arguments, arguing that firstly no procedure guarantees ideally best outcomes, secondly that in cases of pluralism there is no need to suppose there is a uniquely best outcome, and thirdly that we need to be fair between different individuals. I develop this need for fairness into a case for weighted lotteries, drawing on the Taurek-Scanlon ‘saving the greater number’ debate. This leads to my conclusion that democratic ideals can be realized by selecting a random vote to determine the outcomes of decisions.

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

I have just posted a version of my SPEP paper from last fall to SSRN, “One View of the Dungeon: The Ticking Time Bomb between Governmentality and Sovereignty” The paper is a critique of one of the standard justifications for torture: “what if there were a ticking time bomb about to blow up Manhattan, and you have the terrorist. Would you torture him to save the lives of millions?” Versions of this argument show up in most efforts to justify torture, and its soundness has been thoroughly criticized by writers such as Kim Scheppele and David Luban. My paper takes a different tack, and tries to understand how the TTB functions as a rhetorical device. The gist of my argument is that it sanitizes the torture question of any real world difficulties, thereby making it appear as an act of governmental efficiency. I frame the paper in terms of Judith Butler’s work on administration detention policies, and in particular her appropriation of Foucault in that essay.

I’ve been accumulating a long file of writing notes and references since SPEP that do not appear in the current version of the paper; I suspect that I will end up with a second paper that goes into much greater detail on the efficiency arguments (as distinct from the rhetorical structure of the TTB scenario). But I am interested in what folks who have an interest in the topic think about the paper as it stands; part of my motivation in posting the current draft is to get myself kick-started into working on the next iteration.

Gordon

Autonomy, Respect, and Arrogance in the Danish Cartoon Controversy

Hi everyone,

I have been working for a while on a paper, which was provoked by the cartoons of Muhammad that were published in Denmark in 2005 and created an international uproar. In the Danish public debate about the cartoons there were a number of dividing lines, but the one I find of particular interest from the perspective of political theory is one drawn between standing firm on Enlightenment values (freedom of expression and democracy) versus giving in to the demand for respect for religious feelings. In my paper I relate this contrast to Galston’s contrast between Enlightenment and Reformation Liberalism, autonomy and diversity. In short, I reject Galston’s dichotomy and argue that the Enlightenment value of autonomy is not the culprit; it is not this principle that is to blame for the lack of respect for Muslims in the Danish cartoon controversy. To make this argument I distinguish different ways in which “autonomy” may be used. In particular, I am concerned with how autonomy is used in justifications for freedom of expression and whether these uses are incompatible with respect for diversity. I argue that if we understand the autonomy that freedom of expression is justified with reference to not as a character ideal that has to be promoted but as a capacity we presuppose everyone has, then this principle rather than creating hierarchies among forms of life is an indispensable principle for grounding equal respect. Properly understood, a commitment to autonomy is not a threat to respect for difference but its precondition.

I am very interested in any thoughts on whether my argument success. In particular, I am not quite satisfied with the concluding section (sec IV) in which I try to respond to objections.

Best,

Christian

My working paper “Inside and Outside Spooner’s Natural Law Jurisprudence” is online; abstract follows:

Lysander Spooner, the foremost legal theorist of 19th century American radical liberalism, might seem to have defended two distinct and incompatible theories of the relation between liberal legal norms and positive law. In early works such as The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1846), liberal legal norms appear to emerge from considerations immanent within the positive law; but in later works like Natural Law, or the Science of Justice (1882), liberal legal norms appear instead to function as an external constraint on the legitimacy, and indeed the legality, of positive statutes. I argue, drawing on earlier natural law tradition as well as on more recent analytic theories of language, and applying Spooner’s canons of interpretation to his own texts, that Spooner’s apparently distinct formulations yield a single consistent approach, a defensible and attractive radical liberal natural-law jurisprudence that transcends the internal/external distinction.

Comments welcome!

Also, I see that my 2004 article “Aristotle’s Egalitarian Utopia: The polis kat’ euchen” is now online in its entirety at Google Books, as a result of the relevant number of Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre’s being online in part.  It explores what Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery, his merit-based system of constitutional classification, and his account of the role of philosophic contemplation in the good life might have to tell us about the character of Aristotle’s ideal state.

I’ve been working for a while on a entry on libertarianism as a political philosophy for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It’s meant to explain the theory and some of the most common objections to it to a undergraduate/graduate student audience. My main goal in writing it was to move beyond the standard Nozickian/self-ownership varities of libertarianism and provide an overview of consequentialist versions of the theory as well. Some mention is also made of teleological and contractarian approaches as well, but mostly just to alert the reader that they exist. At any rate, I think the piece does better than most existing summaries at reflecting the diversity of libertarian theories, even if it isn’t always able to go into great depth regarding the arguments for and against.

The work is still under some revision, so I’d be happy for any feedback I can get. If you think it’s a useful resource for your students, please feel free to share it with them (and I’d be happy to hear about it!). If you think it’s horribly biased, poorly written, conceptually sloppy, etc., I guess I’d be happy in some sense to hear that too.

The article is not up yet on IEP, but can be accessed off of SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1069042.

Thanks!

As I indicated in my comments on an earlier thread about waste, I’ve been working on a paper about Locke’s waste proviso and its application to intellectual property law. Here is (what I hope to be) a pentultimate draft:

Locke, The Waste Proviso, and the Moral Justification of Intellectual Property

It’s long - aside from the usual typo cleanup, one of the main things I’ll be working on before sending it out is concision. Another will be reading and including some of the papers mentioned in the waste thread. In any case, comments are welcome. What follows is the first page or so of the paper, which should serve as an abstract/guide for where I’m going.

ABSTRACT:

Defenders of strong intellectual property rights or of a non-utilitarian basis for those rights often turn to Locke for support. Perhaps because of a general belief that Locke is an advocate of all things proprietary, this move seldom receives careful scrutiny. That is unfortunate for two reasons. First, as I will argue, Locke does not issue a blank check in support of all property regimes, and the application of his reasoning to intellectual property would actually result in a substantially limited rights regime. Second, the attempt to understand intellectual property as an instance of Lockean property, though admittedly anachronistic, offers an opportunity to further our understanding of Locke’s own thought. My major claim will thus be twofold: on the one hand, intellectual property would be an almost paradigmatic case of Lockean property; on the other hand, Locke’s provisos - specifically the widely neglected spoilage proviso - would sharply limit the scope of such entitlements. My secondary claim will be that the spoilage proviso’s neglect is undeserved, and that it deserves a more central place in our understanding of Locke.

The paper proceeds as follows. In the first part, I will examine Locke’s own writings on English print licensing law, which formed the backdrop against which the original copyright statute was developed. In part 2, I attempt to resurrect the spoilage proviso. Part 3 explains why intellectual property would be a paradigm case of Lockean property more broadly. On the basis of the preceding textual work, part 4 attempts a conceptual clarification of waste in Lockean terms, and part 5 applies that analysis to some contemporary intellectual property issues.

Hi Folks.

This is my first post here and I hope I am playing it right.

I noticed recently that people are not writing much on the right or obligation to revolution anymore. At first this seemed to be because those who advocate revolution seem to suffer from a kind of half-hilarious Sartrean bad faith (I am thinking here of the members of the various Trotskyite and other sectarian organizations selling Socialist This and Workers’ That papers) and so not many really wanted to associate themselves with talk about revolution. This seemed to be a shame.

But, then I started looking more closely at the literature of philosophical anarchists and noticed that there has been some ink spilled on arguments against revolution.

So, I decided to write a paper suggesting that we re-think this rejection of revolution, and start to look for new grounds for a right to revolution. I hereby submit for comment and discussion to the readers of Public Reason a little paper about this.

One thing I leave out is empirical data - I don’t know much beyond what I’ve learned from my own college days of living with some of those bad faith Trotskyites (well, a lot of them had bad faith — I know one who is the real deal) and a quick glance at Wikipedia. So, I welcome contributions of empirical data!

Here’s the paper: Rethinking Revolution.

-Matt

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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