Bashir Makhoul’s Beijing installation Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost is a maze made out of lenticular images of a Palestinian village that leads to a stack of cardboard boxes that could be a town, a military training camp, or just a heap of damaged packing containers. This article reads the installation through an initial misrecognition, seeing the boxes as a version of ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings. This displacement, where one place recalls somewhere else, is pursued through a discussion of W.J.T. Mitchell’s (...) reflections on comparative ‘promised lands’, Israeli artist Larry Abramson’s notion of abstraction as camouflage, Eyal Weizman’s analysis of simulated battle-spaces, and Mark Twain’s critical reading of desert spaces in the western US and Palestine. The article argues that Makhoul’s work calls up a series of associations between times and places that speaks not only to the specific (Israel/Palestine) but to a broader global hermeneutics of empire based on symbolic overdetermination and strategic concealment and erasure. (shrink)

Temkin's book is a very original and deeply unsettling work of skeptical philosophy that mounts an important new challenge to contemporary ethics.

Temkin presents a new way of thinking about equality and inequality that challenges the assumptions of philosophers, welfare economists, and others, and has significant implications on both a practical and theoretical level.

In "Futurc Generations: Further Problems,"‘ and Part Four of Reasons and Persons} Derek Pariit raises many perplexing questions. Although some think his ingenious arguments little more than delightful puzzles, I believe they challenge some of our deepest beliefs. In this article, I examine some of Pariit’s arguments, focusing mainly on "The Mere Addition Paradox." If my analysis is correct, Parfit’s arguments have extremely interesting and important implications that not even Pariit rcalized. In Part I, I present ParHt’s argument for the (...) Merc Addition Paradox, and show that given Pa.rHt’s assumptions, a radical conclusion seems t0 follow; the notion of "bctter th2m"—indced, even the notion of "aH things.. (shrink)

In "Equality, Priority, and Compassion," Roger Crisp rejects both egalitarianism and prioritarianism. Crisp contends that our concern for those who are badly off is best accounted for by appealing to "a sufficiency principle" based -- indirectly, via the notion of an impartial spectator -- on compassion for those who are badly off" (p. 745). A key example of Crisp's is the Beverly Hills case (discussed below). This example is directed against prioritarianism, but it also threatens egalitarianism. In this article, I (...) respond to the Beverly Hills case. I also challenge the wide person-affecting principle and Crisp's welfarist restriction, which some believe underlie the Levelling Down Objection against egalitarianism. My aim in this article is to defend egalitarianism by illuminating both its nature and appeal. (shrink)

This paper aims to illuminate some issues in the equality, priority, or what debate. I characterize egalitarianism and prioritarianism, respond to the view that we should care about sufficiency or compassion rather than equality or priority, discuss the levelling down objection, and illustrate the significance of the distinction between prioritarianism and egalitarianism, establishing that the former is no substitute for the latter. In addition, I respond to Bertil Tungodden's views regarding the Slogan, the levelling down objection, the Pareto Principle, leximin, (...) the principle of personal good, strict moderate egalitarianism, the Hammond Equity Condition, the intersection approach, and non-aggregative reasoning. (shrink)

abstract Some day, perhaps soon, we may have genetic enhancements enabling us to conquer aging. Should we do so, if we can? I believe the topic is both interesting and important, and that it behoves us to think about it. Doing so may yield important insights about what we do care about, what we should care about, and how we should seek to live our lives, both individually and collectively. My central question is this: Is living longer, living better? My (...) paper does not offer a sustained argument for a single, considered, thesis. Rather, it offers a number of snippets of often-unconnected thoughts relevant to the issues my question raises. The paper contains seven sections. Part one is introductory. Part two comments on some current longevity research. Part three indicates the attitudes towards death and science with which I approach these questions. Parts four and five, respectively, discuss some worries about immortality raised by Leon Kass and Bernard Williams. Part six points to some practical, social, and moral concerns that might arise if society's members lived super long lives. Part seven concludes by suggesting that we should favour living well over living longer, and ongoing reproduction over immortality; correspondingly, I suggest that we should think long and hard before proceeding with certain lines of longevity research. (shrink)

The goal of this article is modest. It is simply to help illuminate the nature of egalitarianism. More particularly, I aim to show what certain egalitarians are committed to, and to suggest that equality, as these egalitarians understand it, is an important normative ideal that cannot simply be ignored in moral deliberations. In doing this, I distinguish between equality as universality, equality as impartiality, and equality as comparability, and also between instrumental and non-instrumental egalitarianism. I then characterise the version of (...) egalitarianism with which I am concerned, which I call equality as comparative fairness. I discuss the relations between equality, fairness, luck, and responsibility, and defend egalitarianism against rival views that focus on subsistence, sufficiency, or compassion. I also defend egalitarianism against the Levelling Down and Raising Up Objections, and present several key examples to illustrate egalitarianism's distinct appeal, in contrast to prioritarianism's. I conclude by considering two common questions about my view: first, whether my ultimate concern is really with comparative fairness, rather than equality, so that my view is not, in fact, a substantive, non-instrumental version of egalitarianism, and second, whether my view ultimately reduces to a theory about desert. (shrink)

This article has three main parts, Section 2 considers the nature and extent to which individuals who are well-off have a moral obligation to aid the worlds needy. Drawing on a pluralistic approach to morality, which includes consequentialist, virtue-based, and deontological elements, it is contended that most who are well-off should do much more than they do to aid the needy, and that they are open to serious moral criticism if they simply ignore the needy. Part one also focuses on (...) the United States, and illustrates both how incredibly wealthy the U.S. is and some of the spending habits of its citizens; however, its considerations apply to the well-off generally. Section 3 considers whether justice provides reasons for helping the needy. Noting that justice in an extremely complex notion, it discusses numerous considerations relevant to justices scope and implications, including an extended Rawlsian conception of justice, an absolute conception, a comparative conception, the distinction between natural and social justice, and various elements of common-sense morality. Section 2 also distinguishes between agent-relative justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we act justly, and agent-neutral justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we have reasons of justicefor acting. Correspondingly, it argues that even if one can ignore the needy without acting unjustly, as philosophers like Robert Nozick and Jan Narveson contend, there may be powerful reasons of justicefor addressing their plight. Section 4 briefly address the responsibilities of international organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO). Drawing on Section 2, it is suggested that in addition to standard reasons to act justlytowards needy members of the worlds community, there will be reasons of justicefor such organizations to aid the needy in both present, and future, generations. The article concludes by contending that the well-off in countries like the U.S. have reason to view international organizations like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO as their agents, and to seek to insure that they alleviate misfortunes amongst the worlds needy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Distinguishing Different Kinds of Egalitarianism Equality, Fairness, Luck, and Responsibility Equality of What? The Subsistence Level, Sufficiency, and Compassion Prioritarianism and the Leveling Down Objection19 Equality or Priority? Illustrating Egalitarianism's Distinct Appeal Conclusion Notes.

There is a rich tradition within game theory, decision theory, economics, and philosophy correlating practical rationality with impartiality, and spatial and temporal neutrality. I argue that in some cases we should give priority to people over both times and places, and to times over places. I also show how three plausible dominance principles regarding people, places, and times conflict, so that we cannot accept all three. However, I argue that there are some cases where we should give priority to times (...) over people, suggesting that there is impersonal value to the distribution of high quality life over different times. (shrink)

Preceded by Comprehensive textbook of psychotherapy: theory, and practice / edited by Bruce Bongar, Larry E. Beutler. 1995.

This article discusses many issues raised by Munoz-Dardé, Katz, Ross, and Kagan. In doing this, I accept many of their claims, but reject others. I contend that the Essentially Comparative View can make genuine comparisons, deny that a contractualist approach helps with my book’s puzzles, and grant that my book’s central results are difficult to comprehend. I note important differences between economists’s impossibility results and my own, but accept that they may illuminate each other, using Sen’s Paradox of the Paretian (...) Liberal to illustrate this. I consider my work’s implications for the Sorites Paradox, as well as famous deontological cases. I also significantly reassess the Narrow Person-Affecting View, and some of my responses to Parfit and Broome. Finally, I stress my book’s many arguments challenging the Axioms of Transitivity, the high costs of retaining such axioms, and the importance of not prematurely choosing between highly plausible views that are inconsistent. (shrink)

In "Intrzmsitivity and thc Person-Affecting Principlc,"‘ (IPAP) Alastair Norcross attacks several key claims of my "Intransitivity and thc Merc Addition Paradox" (IMAP).2 This article suggests that N0rcross’s arguments despite: their appca1——lcavc IMAP’s claims mostly intact. Bcforc assessing N0rcross’s arguments, lct mc characterize two key notions distinguished in IMAP: an essentially comparative view of moral ideals and an intrinsic aspect view. On an essentially comparative view (ECU, different factors might bc relevant for comparing diffcrcnt alternatives regarding a given idcal. On such (...) a view, how bad a situation is regarding E1 given ideal is not an intrinsic feature of that situation. There is 110 fact of thc matter.. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing groundswell of support for the idea that universal health coverage should be provided even in the developing world. While I wholeheartedly agree with the eventual goal of attaining universal health coverage globally, and the sooner the better, I have worries as to whether the world's rich countries, or institutions like the World Health Organization, should be pushing the world's poorest countries to take whatever steps are necessary to achieve that goal. My fear (...) is that universal health coverage in the developing world is an intoxicating, but potentially dangerous, idea whose time may not yet have come. This article's aim is not to settle the question of whether the developing world should be urged, or pushed, to adopt policies of universal health coverage. It is merely to explore some worries about the wisdom of such a tack. The article is divided into eight sections. In Section 1, I give a brief introduction. In Section 2, I provide some background for my topic. In Section 3, I discuss the notion of universal health coverage, and what the push for such a goal in the developing world seemingly involves. In Section 4, I raise some general worries I have about the push for universal health coverage in the developing world. In Section 5, I present a wide range of possible justifications for universal health coverage in the developing world. In Section 6, I discuss whether any of the purported justifications of universal health coverage in the developing world actually do so. In Section 7, I consider some comments, objections, and responses. Finally, in Section 8, I offer a brief conclusion. (shrink)

Les liens entre les aspects de la cognition et des émotions d’une part et entre l’esprit et le corps d’autre part ont été bien expliqués par les neurosciences. Les praticiens de la réflexion critique et des processus de l’apprentissage transformateurs dans le domaine de l’ éducation des adultes ont bien saisi cette compréhension plus holistique de la nature humaine, d’une façon autant empirique qu’intuitive. Cependant, la théorie-clé dans ce domaine (la théorie de l’apprentissage transformateur de Mezirow), a fait l’objet de (...) critiques quant à son intérêt pour les aspects rationnels et cognitifs de l’apprentissage. Mais peu de travaux ont étudié les dimensions émotionnelles et sociales de l’apprentissage transformateur.. De même, la conceptualisation des processus de réflexion semble relever davantage de la sophia que de la phronèsis. Cela conduit à considérer cette théorie d’un point de vue idéaliste. Cet article propose une réflexion théorique fondée sur l’analyse de la théorie de Mezirow et sur la compréhension des processus de conceptualisation de la réflexion en mobilisant les connaissances issues des neurosciences. La théorie présentée explique comment la cognition et les émotions sont étroitement liées dans les processus de réflexion. De plus, cette article propose une base conceptuelle et des outils à l’usage de praticiens souhaitant mobiliser la théorie de l’apprentissage transformateur. (shrink)

This article discusses Jan Narveson's "Welfare and Wealth, Poverty and Justice in Today's World," and "Is World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy?" and their relation to my "Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations." Section 2 points out that Narveson's concerns differ from mine, so that often his claims and mine fail to engage each other. For example, his focus is on the poor, mine the needy, and while many poor are needy, and vice versa, our obligations (...) may differ regarding the poor than regarding the needy. Also, Narveson invokes a narrow conception of morality as those rules that government or society may compel people to follow. Given a broader, more plausible, conception of morality, many of Narveson's claims actually support my substantive views. Section 3 shows that many of Narveson's claims are relevant to the best means of aiding the needy, but do not challenge the validity of that end. This is true, for example, of his claims about the role of poor governments, the importance of freedom, the undesirability of mere "handouts," and the effects of bad economic policies. Section 4 defends the importance of my distinction between acting justly and acting for reasons of justice. It illustrates that on several widely shared conceptions of justice there might be agent-neutral reasons of justice to aid the needy, even if from an agent-relative perspective one would not be acting unjustly if one failed to do so. Section 5 contests Narveson's portrayal of egalitarianism as concerned about inequality of wealth, per se, as insensitive to prior wrongs, and as holding that the worse-off have a right to be made better off at the expense of the well-off. In addition, it rejects Narveson's contention that egalitarians violate impartiality, and aim to impose their personal tastes on others. Section 6 challenges a fundamental assumption underlying Narveson's doctrine of mutual advantage. In addition, it denies that egalitarians are irrational merely because equality can conflict with the pareto principle. More generally, by appealing to impersonal ideals, it challenges the widely held view that the pareto principle is a condition of rationality. Section 7 argues that Narveson's meta-ethical assumptions are controversial, internally inconsistent, in tension with his normative views, and ultimately a version of skepticism. In addition, it challenges Narveson's view about the role intuitions play in moral theory. Section 8 clarifies points where Narveson's discussion of my views may be misleading. Finally, the paper notes the role that moral reasons may play in deliberation and action, but emphasizes the philosophical and theoretical nature of my work. My aim is to determine the moral considerations that are relevant to how people should act regarding the needy. Whether people will actually be moved to so act, for those reasons or otherwise, is another matter. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIf representative democracy is not about elected officials responding directly to voters’ preferences, and if the voters do a poor job of voting their interests in referendums, then what is democracy about? In our view, a satisfactory theory of democracy would focus normatively on the social identities and political interests of citizens rather than on their expressed policy preferences, and empirically on the ability of organized or attentive groups to get those identities and interests effectively recognized and acted on in (...) the governmental process. A group-theoretic version of democratic theory along these lines would dispense with the most important illusions of the conventional “folk theory” of democracy. However, much hard work remains to clarify how actual democracies make policy and to construct a wise normative standard—inspirational but not innocent—against which they can be judged. (shrink)

This two-volume collection of essays brings together major contemporary theoretical works on freedom of speech. Volume I, begins with a theoretical overview of freedom of speech and then turns to the topics of what justifies freedom of speech and what kinds of acts raise free speech concerns. Volume II, examines the distinctions among content regulations and between content and content-neutral regulations. It also analyses the concept of the public forum, inciting and hateful speech and lastly the tension between the subsidizing (...) activities of the affirmative state and the negative liberty of freedom of speech. (shrink)

As I read Paula Casal's excellent paper, ‘Sexual Dimorphism and Human Enhancement,’1 three thoughts kept circulating through my mind. First, I found myself largely in agreement with virtually everything she wrote. In particular, if Casal was being accurate and fair in writing that ‘Robert Sparrow alleges that those who…advocate biomedical welfare enhancements are committed to selecting only female embryos because women live longer than men,’1 then she has given compelling reasons for believing that that claim is, on reflection, as ludicrous (...) as it first sounds! In fact, I can think of many additional reasons to those which Casal forcefully adduced for rejecting the view in question, but I do not see the need to present them here, given the abundance of sufficiently compelling reasons Casal already presented.Second, I confess that as I read Casal's article a strong feeling of shame washed over me in virtue of my being a man! Indeed, I found myself thinking that Jonathan Glover's important and chilling book Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century2 was misleadingly, and somewhat unfairly, titled. Heretofore, when I have read Glover's powerful book, which details many of the twentieth century's worst instances of large-scale crimes against humanity, I have often been overcome by a sense of shame of the actions of my species, homo sapiens; but Casal's article suggests that perhaps the scope of my shame has been too wide, and grossly unfair to the distaff members of our species! In the well-worked expression ‘man's inhumanity to man,’ the second use of the word ‘man’ undoubtedly extends to all humans, but the first use overwhelming picks out men insofar as it denotes the actual flesh and blood perpetrators of the horrific actions in question . Accordingly, perhaps a …. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between online dispute resolution (ODR) and trust. We discuss what trust is, why trust is important, and how trust develops. Our claim is that efforts to implement online dispute resolution on a site or service in a manner that promotes trust need to consider ODR as just one tool in a broader toolbox of trust-building tools and techniques. These techniques are amongst others marketing, education, trust seals, and transparency. By evaluating ODR in its proper context (...) as one component of a larger trust strategy, we can more accurately set expectations for its results and position our projects for success. (shrink)

It has been argued that Pareto-improving trade is not as compelling under uncertainty as it is under certainty. The former may involve agents with different beliefs, who might wish to execute trades that are no more than betting. In response, the concept of no-betting Pareto dominance was introduced, requiring that putative Pareto improvements must be rationalizable by some common probabilities, even though the participants’ beliefs may differ. In this paper, we argue that this definition might be too narrow for use (...) when agents are not Bayesian. Agents who face ambiguity might wish to trade in ways that can be justified by common ambiguity, though not necessarily by common probabilities. We accordingly extend the notion of no-betting Pareto dominance to characterize trades than are “no-betting Pareto” ranked according to the maxmin expected utility model. (shrink)

This article responds to Ingmar Persson’s article “Internal or External Grounds for the Nontransitivity of ‘Better/Worse than’”. In his article, Persson argues in favor of an account of supervenience that would be compatible with both an Internal Aspects View, and the nontransitivity of the “better or worse than” relations. This article points out that the Internal Aspects View that Persson favors would fail to capture many features of practical reasoning that most advocates of an Internal Aspects View favor, and that (...) the version of the Internal Aspects View that I discuss in Rethinking the Good does capture. I note, however, that Persson’s view would not only be compatible with my book’s main claims and arguments, it would substantially buttress my results. Accordingly, I would welcome it if Persson could successfully develop and defend his view. Unfortunately, however, my article raises a number of worries about Persson’s view. I consider various different ways of understanding Persson’s position, and argue that none of them ultimately succeed in establishing a plausible version of a genuinely Internal Aspects View that would be compatible with the nontransitivity of the “better or worse than” relations. I acknowledge that if Persson can ultimately make good on his claims, he will have made a substantial contribution to our understanding of the good and the nature of ideals. However, as matters now stand, I am not moved by his arguments to revise the claims I made in Rethinking the Good, correlating the nontransitivity of the “better or worse than” relations with the Essentially Comparative View, rather than the Internal Aspects View. (shrink)