Principles of distributive justice are normative principles designed to guide the allocation of the benefits and burdens of economic activity.

Traditional courtship norms delineate distinct gendered behaviors for men and women based on the model of a dominant, breadwinning male and a passive, dependent female. Previous research shows, however, that as women have increased their access to earned income, there has been a rising ideological and behavioral commitment to egalitarian relationships. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 38 college-educated women, this article explores how women negotiate these seemingly contradictory beliefs in order to understand how and why gendered courtship conventions persist even (...) as heterosexual romantic relationships become more egalitarian. My findings show that while the women reference essentialist beliefs about men’s “nature” to explain their commitment to courtship conventions, they draw on narratives of choice, individualism, and personal autonomy to assert that the symbolic gendering of courtship will not interfere with their desire for an egalitarian marriage. However, women’s behaviors and narratives reinforce notions of gender difference, potentially providing support for other forms of gender inequality. (shrink)

Using philosophical and theological reflection, this book explores the rational grounding for Christian faith, inquiring into the basis for believing the Christian revelation, and using the answers to give an account of Christian faith itself. Setting the discussion in the context of the history of views on revelation, Divine Faith makes an original contribution to historiography and draws out hitherto unnoticed affinities between Catholic and Protestant thought. Re-examining the question from the beginning by asking how it is that the Christian (...) revelation is made, Lamont then looks at the fundamental philosophical issues concerning the nature of knowledge and the reasonableness of belief in testimony that are crucial to an understanding of Christian belief. Through theological considerations on the relations of grace and the church, and new advances in the philosophy of belief in testimony and how God speaks to communicate the Christian religion, this book offers an original and powerful account of the nature of Christian belief. (shrink)

The concept of cultural capital has been increasingly used in American sociology to study the impact of cultural reproduction on social reproduction. However, much confusion surrounds this concept. In this essay, we disentangle Bourdieu and Passeron's original work on cultural capital, specifying the theoretical roles cultural capital plays in their model, and the various types of high status signals they are concerned with. We expand on their work by proposing a new definition of cultural capital which focuses on cultural and (...) social exclusion. We note a number of theoretical ambiguities and gaps in the original model, as well as specific methodological problems. In the second section, we shift our attention to the American literature on cultural capital. We discuss its assumptions and compare it with the original work. We also propose a research agenda which focuses on social and cultural selection and decouples cultural capital from the French context in which it was originally conceived to take into consideration the distinctive features of American culture. This agenda consists in 1) assessing the relevance of the concept of legitimate culture in the U.S.; 2) documenting the distinctive American repertoire of high status cultural signals; and 3) analyzing how cultural capital is turned into profits in America. (shrink)

Karl Widerquist has recently argued that libertarians face two dilemmas. The first dilemma arises because, contrary to what Widerquist takes libertarians to suggest, there is no conceptual link between robust property rights and the libertarian state. Private property rights can legitimately yield non-libertarian states. Libertarians must thus remain committed either to robust property rights or the libertarian state. I call this the ‘Conceptual Dilemma’. The second dilemma is empirical in nature. Libertarians can try to undermine state property rights by showing (...) that the means by which all present states came to have their property was unjust. However, doing so would presumably undermine almost all the property claims of private individuals. So the dilemma is that libertarians can undermine state property rights only by undermining individual property rights, on the one hand. On the other, libertarians can vindicate private property rights of individuals only by vindicating state property rights. I call this the ‘Empirical Dilemma’. I attempt to defuse both of these dilemmas here. I argue that the Conceptual Dilemma relies on a misunderstanding of the libertarian’s commitments. In particular, I show that libertarians need not think robust property rights can yield states more extensive than Nozick’s minimal state. I then argue that Widerquist ignores libertarian scholarship aimed at meeting the Empirical Dilemma. Many libertarians have attempted to demonstrate that there are legitimate private property rights which are illegitimately disregarded by current states. The upshot of this discussion is that there are no genuine dilemmas posed by Widerquist’s ‘A Dilemma for Libertarians’. (shrink)

Courtship conventions are premised on widespread and deeply held cultural beliefs that men and women need and want different things from their romantic relationships. Yet queer relationships challenge the notion of distinct gendered behaviors in romantic relationships, and queer people often explicitly seek to undermine conventional relationship practices. Using interview data from 40 LGBTQ-identified respondents, I examine how queer people negotiate culturally dominant gendered dating and courtship practices. My findings show that, rather than replicate heterosexual norms, respondents actively reject them, (...) seeking new and more egalitarian ways of building romantic relationships. Significantly, the narratives drawn on to justify egalitarian dating practices are similar to those used in their committed relationships. Respondents emphasized egalitarian, flexible, and non-gendered care work in committed relationships, indicating that how people date may potentially set the stage for the dynamics in their relationships. The importance placed on these alternative norms in queer communities, however, contradicts respondents’ assertions that they can create relationships free from cultural constraints, demonstrating how emerging norms can breed their own pressures for conformity. (shrink)

BackgroundDelirium is highly prevalent in the general hospital patient population, characterized by acute onset, fluctuating levels of consciousness, and global impairment of cognitive functioning. Mental capacity, its assessment and subsequent consent are therefore prominent within this cohort, yet under-explored.AimThis study of patients with delirium sought to determine the processes by which consent to medical treatment was attempted, how capacity was assessed, and any subsequent actions thereafter.MethodA retrospective documentation review of patients identified as having a delirium for the twelve months February (...) 2013 to January 2014 was undertaken. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used; demographic and descriptive data collected. A total of n=1153 patients were identified with n=310 meeting inclusion criteria.ResultA random sample of one hundred patients were subsequently reviewed. One third of patients had documentation relating to consent, while four patients had documentation relating to capacity. Median delirium duration was three days, with treatment refusal occurring in twenty-two patients and “duty of care” being used as an apparent beneficent related treatment framework in twelve patients.ConclusionsWhile impaired decision-making was indicated, the review was unable to indicate what patient characteristics flag the need for capacity assessment. Documentation relating to consent processes appeared deficient for this cohort. (shrink)

Many have argued that individuals should receive income in proportion to their contribution to society. Others have believed that it would be fairer if people received income in proportion to the effort they expend in so contributing, since people have much greater control over their level of effort than their productivity. I argue that those who believe this are normally also committed, despite appearances, to increasing the social product — which undermines any sharp distinction between effort- and productivity-based distributive proposals. (...) However, effort-based proposals do emphasise more the importance of people having control over factors affecting their income. The second set of problems I consider is how to implement policies which hold true to this emphasis. I show that there are major problems with the accuracy of using any objective criteria to measure the level of effort a person is expending. Moreover, once any such criteria are employed the problem of ‘moral hazard’arises because people modify their behaviour in such a way as to maximise their income while minimising their effort. This violates the original motivation for using effort. Because of this and other empirical considerations, I argue that productivity may well be a better criterion on which to distribute income even if one is motivated by the same concerns which have prompted effort-based proposals. (shrink)

Eric Mack defends a version of John Locke’s proviso. Mack applies his proviso to original appropriations, uses, and systems of private property. His proviso precludes severely disabling the world-interactive powers of others. Mack specifically warns against using concrete features of the natural world as a baseline for determine whether the proviso has been violated. While his proviso is plausible, I argue that he cannot. eschew employing the receptivity of the natural, unowned world to the extent that he suggests. We cannot (...) determine whether one’s powers are disabled or diminished without knowing how receptive the world would be to those powers had a system of private property not arisen. The upshot of this paper is that the requirements of a well-formulated proviso is an empirical matter. (shrink)

Gordon Barnes accuses Robert Nozick and Eric Mack of neglecting, in two ways, the practical, empirical questions relevant to justice in the real world.1 He thinks these omissions show that the argument behind the Wilt Chamberlain example—which Nozick famously made in his seminal Anarchy, State, and Utopia—fails. As a result, he suggests that libertarians should concede that this argument fails. In this article, we show that Barnes’s key arguments hinge on misunderstandings of, or failures to notice, key aspects of the (...) entitlement theory that undergirds Nozick’s and Mack’s work. Once the theory is properly understood, Barnes’s challenges fail to undermine the Chamberlain example, in particular, and the entitlement theory, in general. (shrink)

The paper corrects misrepresentations of Aquinas's understanding of divine simplicity, argues that the reasons he gives for divine simplicity are persuasive ones, and suggests how Aquinas's account of the Trinity can be used to explain how God can be said to exist necessarily. It gives an account of Aquinas's conception of form and individualised form, and shows how Plantinga's criticism of Aquinas's position on divine simplicity rests on a misunderstanding of Aquinas's notion of form. It describes and makes the case (...) for Aquinas's argument that God must be absolutely simply because he is the uncaused cause of all effects, and any real composition in things constitutes an effect. It shows that Brian Davies is mistaken in claiming that Aquinas does not hold God's existence to be logically necessary. It applies Frege's conception of existence to Aquinas's account of God's simplicity and his psychological analogy for the Trinity, in order to explain how God's existence can coherently be said to be logically necessary. (shrink)

In this paper I shall explain what I take to be the nature of justice; and the method which I shall follow is that of attempting to infer the essential nature of justice from an examination of its actual practical operation. Perhaps the reader will be able to follow the drift of the argument more easily, and be more on his guard against possible misstatements of fact or erroneous inferences, if I mention at the outset the main conclusions to which (...) I hope to lead him. (shrink)

Jennifer Bird-Pollan has recently argued that Nozickians are wrong to oppose the estate tax. Promising to argue from within the Nozickian framework, she presses the fundamental point that the estate tax does not violate anyone’s rights: neither the deceased nor their would-be heirs can claim a right to any holdings subject to the estate tax. This paper shows that Bird-Pollan’s discussion fails on three fronts. First, she frequently misinterprets Nozick, and thus does not defend the estate tax from a Nozickian (...) perspective. Second, even if Bird-Pollan is correct in denying that the deceased and their potential heirs have a right to the holdings in question, it does not follow that the estate tax is licit, because Nozickians can oppose it on other grounds. For example, Nozickians may hold that the enforcement of the estate tax will violate other rights people have. The government’s preemptive claims to holdings subject to estate taxes, along with the force required to enforce those claims, are unjustified. The crucial premise motivating these conclusions is the Nozickian denial that our current state possesses the authority to enforce the estate tax. This is the third front on which Bird-Pollan’s argument fails: she must show that Nozickians ought to believe government has the moral authority to enforce the estate tax, yet she makes no effort to do so. (shrink)

Norman Rufus Colin Cohn, a Fellow of the British Academy, wrote three major histories around a single theme. The Pursuit of the Millennium related the apocalyptic beliefs of twentieth-century totalitarian movements, whether Nazi or Communist, to their origins in medieval heresy. Warrant for Genocide established that the key document of a Jewish world conspiracy, The Protocol of the Elders of Zion, was a nineteenth-century Tsarist forgery. Europe's Inner Demons argued that the belief in a Satanic pact was at the heart (...) of witch persecution in early modern Europe. Within a year of retiring as Director of the Columbus Centre, Cohn was invited to Concordia University, Montreal, to help launch an Institute for Genocide Studies. He regarded his three books as tied to the Columbus Centre agenda and as such compatible with Lord Dacre's own search for what it was in Germany's myths and history that Adolf Hitler's mind could have been working upon in his lost years in Vienna. (shrink)

Marxists claim capitalists unjustly exploit workers, and this exploitation is to show that workers ought to hold more than they do. This paper presents two accounts of exploitation. The Theft Account claims that capitalists steal some of the value to which workers are entitled. The Underpayment Account holds that capitalists are not entitled to pay workers as little as they do, even if the workers are not entitled to the full value they produce. This paper argues that only the Theft (...) Account can explain why workers ought to hold more than they do. The Underpayment Account cannot yield this conclusion. The Theft Account is superior to the Underpayment Account insofar as exploitation is to be an injustice—a wrong that requires the exploited party to hold more. (shrink)

Real and Personal Rights.—In different systems of legal nomenclature the term “right” has different meanings, some writers applying it in a restricted, and others in a wider, sense. I shall use it in its wider sense as including “personal rights,” “proprietary rights,” “powers,” “liberties,” “licences,” and so on. The precise meaning of these various kinds of right need not be discussed here, because all legal rights can be broadly divided into two main classes—“personal rights” and “real rights.” As reference will (...) occasionally be made to this broad distinction, a brief explanation of its character is necessary. According to Gloag and Henderson, the difference between real rights and personal rights is correlative to the distinction between duties and obligations. Thus, if I have the full proprietary right in a certain article, including possession and use, this is called a Real Right; and I can make the demand against men in general, or “the world at large,” that my possession and use should not be interfered with. The world at large owes me the Duty of non-interference. I may, however, lend my property to someone for a stated period; and at the end of this period I have the right that he in particular should perform the specific act of returning my property to me. Here it is said that I have a Personal Right against him, and that he has an Obligation to perform this specific act. (shrink)

1. Aim and Scope of this Paper.—In this paper I shall try to show that “duty” derives its significance from its relation to “interest,” and that the former concept cannot be understood when taken apart from its relation to the latter. Such a doctrine is, I am aware, rejected by some contemporary philosophers; and I shall, I trust, make it sufficiently clear in the sequel why I am unable to accept their view.I am not, however, concerned primarily with criticism of (...) other theories. This paper represents an attempt to interpret a particular province of “the common moral consciousness” and to elicit the principles there implied. I begin by accepting the view that, like natural science, ethics has its data, and that it is the business of ethics to interpret these data which are the contents of the “moral consciousness.” In Section A I discuss various methods which may be used for the discovery of the relevant data, and suggest that initial enquiries can most fruitfully be pursued in the field of law and custom. In Section B I undertake an analysis of the principles of the law relating to promise-keeping. As a result of what is there found, it becomes necessary, in Section C, to discuss the nature of rights and their relation to interests, and, in Section D, the nature of duties and their relation to rights. (shrink)

Philosophy is very largely concerned with speculation upon problems of a highly abstract character, but some of the questions with which it deals have important practical aspects; and I think that social philosophy occupies—and rightly occupies—a dominant place in contemporary thought. If post-war policies are to render more secure the lives, the liberties and the happiness of mankind, they must be based upon sound principles; and it is with the intention of throwing certain of these principles into bold relief that (...) I have ventured to choose the realm of politics and culture as the subject of these reflections. (shrink)

Epistemological differences fuel continuous and frequently divisive debates in the social sciences and the humanities. Sociologists have yet to consider how such differences affect peer evaluation. The empirical literature has studied distributive fairness, but neglected how epistemological differences affect perception of fairness in decision making. The normative literature suggests that evaluators should overcome their epistemological differences by ‘‘translating’’ their preferred standards into general criteria of evaluation. However, little is known about how procedural fairness actually operates. Drawing on eighty-one interviews with (...) panelists serving on five multidisciplinary fellowship competitions in the social sciences and the humanities, we show that Evaluators generally draw on four epistemological styles to make arguments in favor of and against proposals. These are the constructivist, comprehensive, positivist, and utilitarian styles; and Peer reviewers define a fair decision-making process as one in which panelists engage in ‘‘cognitive contextualization,’’ that is, use epistemological styles most appropriate to the field or discipline of the proposal under review. (shrink)

The paper considers the criticisms that Eleonore Stump has made of Richard Swinburne's account of Christian's revelation, as set out in his book "Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy." It argues that Stump's criticisms of Swinburne's theory of biblical interpretation are misguided, but that her criticism of his deistic picture of revelation contains a crucial insight. Direct theories of revelation, which see God as communicating propositions directly to believers, are superior to deistic ones, which see God as communicating propositions only to (...) an original group who then hand on the propositions to everyone else. Stump's suggested alternative to a deistic picture is flawed. A better theory would result from incorporating Swinburne's account of the Church into a direct theory, and holding that God communicates propositions directly to believers in the teaching of the Church. This position combines the insights to be found in Stump and Swinburne, while avoiding their mistakes. (shrink)

“Nation” and “nationalism” are not easily defined; mainly, perhaps, because these words, as popularly used, do not have precise meanings. A nation may mean: A people living under a common government,—as when we speak of British or French “nationals"; or A people with a common racial inheritance—the Jews; or A people, inhabiting a certain tract of the earth's surface, with generally common sentiments and habits of thinking, though possibly of mixed race, and part of a wider political society—the English, as (...) distinguished from the Scottish, or Irish, nation. (shrink)

The paper considers the objections to Christianity raised by David Lewis, which accuse Christians of immorality on the grounds of their worshipping a monstrous being who punishes finite evils by the infinite punishment of hell. It distinguishes between the objection that God is a monster because such punishment would be unjust, and the objection that even if damnation is just, God is a monster because he wills or allows the dreadful evil of hell by creating beings that can be justly (...) damned. It asserts that Aquinas’s defence of the traditional Christian doctrine of hell provides an answer to this objection. The traditional doctrine is that those who die having committed serious sins for which they have not repented will be punished by endless mental and physical suffering in hell. Aquinas argues that the endless punishment of the damned is just because the damned endlessly and freely choose evil, and that it is good because the punishment of impenitentsinners, while bad for the sinners, is good absolutely speaking. The basis for his claim that the damned freely choose evil forever is his understanding of practical reason as ultimately motivated by a choice of a particular kind of life to live, and his view that all motivations that are independent of practical reason have a physical basis. The basis for his claim that the punishment of the damned is a good thing absolutely considered is his teleological view of good and evil. The paper defends these bases and their application to the question of damnation. (shrink)

Peter Geach has claimed that St. Thomas Aquinas's first and second ways are instances of composition arguments, which argue from the parts of a thing having a property to the whole thing having that property. Such arguments are not universally valid, but are valid fr some properties. The paper examines composition arguments and the literature on them, and argues that a valid composition argument can be given for the existence of an uncaused cause of all effects.

Given the growing centrality of interdisciplinarity to scientific research, gaining a better understanding of successful interdisciplinary collaborations has become imperative. Drawing on extensive case studies of nine research networks in the social, natural, and computational sciences, we propose a construct that captures the multidimensional character of such collaborations, that of a shared cognitive–emotional–interactional platform. We demonstrate its value as an integrative lens to examine markers of and conditions for successful interdisciplinary collaborations as defined by researchers involved in these groups. We (...) show that markers and conditions embody three different dimensions: cognitive, emotional, and interactional; these dimensions are present in all networks, albeit to different degrees; the dimensions are intertwined and mutually constitutive; and they operate in conjunction with institutional conditions created by funders. We compare the SCEI platforms to available frameworks for successful interdisciplinary work. (shrink)