What sort of entitlements should citizens have in a just society? In this book, Rutger Claassen sets out a theory of what he terms 'navigational agency', whereby citizens should be able to navigate freely between social practices. This shows how individuals can be at the same time free and autonomous in striving for their own goals in life, but also embedded in social practices in which they have to cooperate with others. He argues that for navigational agency, people need three (...) sets of core capabilities: those which allow human empowerment in civil society, a decent level of socio-economic subsistence, and political participation in democratic decision-making procedures. The idea of navigational agency, the book argues, provides an alternative to currently dominant versions of the capability approach to social justice, and strengthens its liberal foundations. (shrink)

Background: Giving money as a direct incentive for patients in exchange for depot medication has proved beneficial in some clinical cases in assertive outreach . However, ethical concerns around this practice have been raised, and will be analysed in more detail here.Method: Ethical concern voiced in a survey of all AO teams in England were analysed regarding their content. These were grouped into categories.Results: 53 of 70 team managers mentioned concerns, many of them serious and expressing a negative attitude towards (...) giving money for depot adherence. Four broad categories of ethical concern following Christensen’s concept were distinguished: valid consent and refusal , psychiatric paternalism , resource allocation , organisational relationships , with a residual category others and unspecified .Discussion: The main concerns identified are discussed on the background of existing ethical theories in healthcare and the specific problems of community mental health and AO. Points for practice are derived from this discussion. A way forward is outlined that includes informed consent and an operational policy in the use of incentives, further randomised controlled trials and qualitative studies, and continuing discussions with all stakeholders, especially service users. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. First, it sets out an interpretation of the relevant logic E of relevant entailment based on the theory of situated inference. Second, it uses this interpretation, together with Anderson and Belnap’s natural deduc- tion system for E, to generalise E to a range of other systems of strict relevant implication. Routley–Meyer ternary relation semantics for these systems are produced and completeness theorems are proven. -/- .

This book introduces the reader to relevant logic and provides the subject with a philosophical interpretation. The defining feature of relevant logic is that it forces the premises of an argument to be really used in deriving its conclusion. The logic is placed in the context of possible world semantics and situation semantics, which are then applied to provide an understanding of the various logical particles and natural language conditionals. The book ends by examining various applications of relevant logic and (...) presenting some interesting open problems. It will be of interest to a range of readers including advanced students of logic, philosophical and mathematical logicians, and computer scientists. (shrink)

This article offers a synthesis of and conclusion to the contributions included in the Special Issue 'Rethinking the European Social Market Economy'. Based on different understandings of citizenship in the European Union and the roles of the EU and its member states in providing social protection arrangements, it develops a typology of four models of the EU's role in social protection. It then discusses the contributions to this Special Issue in light of this typology and draws a number of overarching (...) conclusions. (shrink)

Externalities are an important concept in economic theories of market failure, aiming to justify state regulation of the economy. This article explores the concept of externalities from a philosophical perspective. It criticizes the utilitarian nature of economic analyses of externalities, showing how they cannot take into account values like freedom and justice. It then develops the analogy between the concept of externalities and the 'harm principle' in political philosophy. It argues that the harm principle points to the need for a (...) theory of basic interests to judge when a harm is imposed. Similarly, externality analyses should use such a theory of basic interests as the basis for judgments about legitimate state intervention. This proposal is defended against objections, and illustrated with a case study of the US Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act, which shows how the judicial reasoning implicitly interprets externalities in terms of basic interests. (shrink)

This contribution offers an introduction to the Special Issue 'Rethinking the European Social Market Economy'. It places the Special Issue against the background of the debate on free markets versus social protection in the European Union and the inclusion of the notion of 'social market economy' in the Treaty on European Union. It sketches the meaning and development of the social market economy concept, and introduces the key questions underlying this Special Issue and the contributions included in it.

Corporations wield power in today’s economies, and political theories of the corporation argue about the legitimacy conditions of corporate power. This paper argues in favour of a double-fiduciary theory for corporations. Based on a concession theory of markets, it sees all markets as authorized by states (in the name of society), for the purpose of creating economic value, or wealth. Hence corporations, as much as non-incorporated firms, have a fiduciary duty to the state/society to create wealth, in the competitive structure (...) of the market. However, their pursuit of wealth often creates unbalanced relations of power between corporations and their stakeholders, which can at some point be classified as instances of domination. Therefore, corporations need to be subjected to a second fiduciary duty, i.e. not to dominate others in the economy. This duty is also, in the final instance, owed to the state/society. In an era when everyone can incorporate their business, states/societies can be interpreted as having, through corporate law, mandated shareholders as ‘proximate beneficiaries’, to incentivize corporations to create wealth. Now states/societies need to think about how to prevent corporations from dominating others. New mechanisms of accountability towards stakeholders and/or citizens as proximate beneficiaries are needed. Only in this way can corporations be effectively held to account for both of the fiduciary duties which characterize their normative status. (shrink)

Our present crises are growing more urgent, pervading many domains of public life—economic, political, environmental, and social. This motivates scholars to find more adequate, combinatory perspectives from which to explain them. One such effort, under the broad heading of Law and Political Economy (LPE), challenges an established view of legality that insulates the market and its dominant actors from critique and accountability. The established view is based on two misconceptions. First, it sees the real function of a capitalist legal device, (...) whether in contracts, antitrust, property, or corporate law, in terms of efficient wealth creation; this function is its underlying rationale and normative aim. Second, it tends to remove equality, coercion, and legitimacy—the core problems of power—from the scope of economic appraisal. When laws and policies are fashioned out of these ideas, democratic institutions will be unable to counter the dominance of capital. New analytical approaches are therefore necessary (Purdy et al. 2020). Along with researchers in associated fields, LPE scholars are attempting to better understand the legal constructions in which financial and political power are anchored and to develop new ways of integrating the economy into democratic life. Robé is a leading voice in these debates. His new book, Property, Power, and Politics, encloses in one volume his ideas on the role of incorporated firms—and of markets, property, and finance—in the larger dynamics of global politics. In this symposium, interlocutors with backgrounds in law, political science, and philosophy engage with this rich analysis. This introduction provides an overview of the book’s arguments (sections 2 and 3) and then introduces the contributions (section 4). (shrink)

Authors critical of corporate power focus almost exclusively on one solution: bringing it under democratic control. However important this is, there are at least two other options, which are rarely discussed: reducing powerful firms’ size and influence, or accepting corporate power as a necessary evil. This article provides a comparative perspective for evaluating all three options. It argues that the trade-offs we face in responding to corporate power have a trilemmatic structure. The pure strategies of accepting powerful firms, breaking them (...) up, or rendering them more accountable are each incompatible with one of three important values: power balance, economies of scale, and minimizing agency costs, respectively. While the latter two concepts are purely economic and efficiency-based, the value of power balance can be grounded in a variety of reasons. Different normative interpretations of power balance are discussed, along with their implications for policy choices within the trilemma. (shrink)

Dysfunction or injury of pain-transmitting primary afferents' central pathways can result in pain. The organism as a whole responds to such injury and consequently many symptoms of neuropathic pain develop. The nervous system responds to painful events and injury with neuroplasticity. Both peripheral sensitization and central sensitization take place and are mediated by a number of biochemical factors, including genes and receptors. Correction of altered receptors activity is the logical way to intervene therapeutically. [berkley; blumberg et al.; coderre & katz; (...) dickenson; mcmahon; wiesenfeld-hallin et al.]. (shrink)

Human beings are embedded in diverse social, cultural and political groups through which we make sense of our technologically mediated lived experience. This article seeks to reaffirm the postphenomenological subject as a primarily social subject. Critics maintain that the current postphenomenological framework does not adequately address the social, cultural and political context in which human-technology relations take place. In recent years, various additions to postphenomenology have been suggested in order to address this contextual deficit. In this article, I argue that (...) a return to the phenomenological roots of postphenomenology reveals underexamined analytical tools that allow for greater socio-cultural and political sensitivity. I take Don Ihde’s supposed macroperceptual and microperceptual divide as a point of departure in claiming that postphenomenology has too hastily turned away from the subject as primarily socially situated. I draw upon the phenomenological tradition, particularly the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, to develop a social postphenomenological approach. This approach is informed by the Schutzian notions of action, the stock of knowledge at hand and consociates. In the resulting account, the postphenomenological schema of _I—Technology—World_ is reconstrued as _We—Technology—World_. (shrink)

Business corporations are important, often powerful actors within the economy. They are able to exercise power over other actors, such as employees, consumers and nation-states. This contribution discusses how corporate power is constituted (ontological question), for what purpose it should be exercised, (normative question) and how it should be controlled (governance question). It focuses on the competing anwers to these questions that have been proposed by three political theories of the corporation. Concession theories emphasize the state's role in chartering corporations, (...) and hence require corporations to act in the public interest. Contractualist theories present corporations as tools for contract partners (most often shareholders), with corporate purpose focused on the benefits to these partners. Real entity theories focus on the corporation as an autonomous, separate entity with a purpose to be determined by the group seeking incorporation. (shrink)

A theory of ersatz impossible worlds is developed to deal with the problem of counterpossible conditionals. Using only tools standardly in the toolbox of possible worlds theorists, it is shown that we can construct a model for counterpossibles. This model is a natural extension of Lewis's semantics for counterfactuals, but instead of using classical logic as its base, it uses the logic LP.

One of the most pressing points in the philosophy of sport is the question of a definition of sport. Approaches towards sport vary based on a paradigm and position of a particular author. This article attempts to analyse and critically evaluates a recent definition of sport presented by Jim Parry in the context of argument that e-sports are not sports. Despite some innovations, his conclusions are in many ways traditional and build on the previous positions. His research, rooted in the (...) conceptual analysis, starts with a stipulation that sport is paradigmatically Olympic sport. He defines it then as an ‘institutionalised, rule-governed contest of human physical skill’ i.e., identifies six necessary elements of sport: human (not animals), physical (not chess), skill (not jogging), contest (not mountaineering), rule-governed (not ‘field sports’), institutionalized (not hula-hooping). Our claim is that this definition, despite its methodological clarity, is not accurate and does not sufficiently represent sport outside the Olympic context. First, to say for something to be a sport it is necessary to be a contest leads to a narrow concept of sport. Secondly, Parry’s account lacks the emphasis on game and play-like structures that are inherently present in sport (even in the Olympic sport), namely non-necessity, non-ordinariness, arbitrariness and gratuitousness. We try to direct the attention precisely on these structures and offer an alternative account of sport understood as a modern ‘hard core’ sport that nevertheless reaches important congruences with Parry’s definition. The originality of this contribution lies in presenting the essential qualities of modern ‘hard core’ sports, which, although sometimes hidden in the modern emphasis on high level performances, competition, and results, play an important role in the question how sport ought to be played and approached. (shrink)

The article discusses a fundamental problem that has to be faced if the general capability approach is to be developed in the direction of a theory of justice: the selection and justification of a list of capabilities. The democratic solution to this problem (defended by Amartya Sen) is to leave the selection of capabilities to a process of democratic deliberation, while the philosophical solution (defended by Martha Nussbaum) is to establish this list of capabilities as a matter of philosophical theory. (...) The article investigates the debate between these two different positions and argues in favour of the philosophical solution. First, it distinguishes political from epistemological reasons for (not) making capability lists. Second, it shows that the democratic position must incorporate at least some philosophical theorising in general and a theory of democracy in particular. Third, the article argues that the democratic position presupposes that the philosophical position will bypass the democratic process while actually it does not. The philosophical position is actually more respectful of democracy than the democratic position. Fourth, while philosophers may exercise caution and connect their capability lists to actual democratic debates and other empirical sources, this kind of epistemological virtue ironically may heighten the chance of receiving reproaches on the political level. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that liberal-egalitarian theorists of justice should take power, especially economic power, seriously and make it explicit. We argue that many theories of justice have left power implicit, relying on what we call the “primacy of politics” model as a background assumption. However, this model does not suffice to capture the power relations of today’s globalized world, in which the power of nation states has been reduced and material inequality has sky-rocketed. We suggest replacing it by (...) a “political economy” model that emphasizes the possibility of self-reinforcing cycles. Doing so has direct implications for how to theorize justice, not only on the non-ideal, but also on the ideal level. (shrink)

We group the existing variants of the familiar set-theoretical and truth-theoretical paradoxes into two classes: connective paradoxes, which can in principle be ascribed to the presence of a contracting connective of some sort, and structural paradoxes, where at most the faulty use of a structural inference rule can possibly be blamed. We impute the former to an equivocation over the meaning of logical constants, and the latter to an equivocation over the notion of consequence. Both equivocation sources are tightly related, (...) and can be cleared up by adopting a particular substructural logic in place of classical logic. We then argue that our perspective can be justified via an informational semantics of contraction-free substructural logics. (shrink)

Authors like Iris Young and Philip Pettit have come up with proposals for theorizing ‘structural injustice’ and social relations marred by ‘domination’. These authors provide conceptual tools for f...

Political theory today has expanded its scope to debate business corporations, conceiving of them as political actors, not (just) private actors in the market place. This article shows the continuing relevance of Thomas Hobbes’s work for this debate. Hobbes is commonly treated as a defender of the so-called concession theory, which traces the legitimacy of corporations to their being chartered by sovereign state authorities for public purposes. This theory is widely judged to be anachronistic for contemporary business corporations, because these (...) can now be freely formed, on the basis of private initiative. However, a close reading of the crucial passages in Hobbes’s work reveals a more subtle view, which rejects this private/public dualism. Hobbes’s reflections on the companies of merchants of his day provide room for business corporations’ pursuit of private purposes, while keeping them embedded in a public framework of authority. Moreover, by criticizing the monopoly status of these companies, he opens up a way to integrate market failure arguments from modern economics into concession theory. The “neo-Hobbesian concession theory” emerging from this analysis shows how concession theory can accommodate private initiative and economic analysis, and thus be a relevant position in the debate about the modern business corporation. (shrink)

There has been a remarkable shift in the relation between market and state responsibilities for public services like health care and education. While these services continue to be financed publicly, they are now often provided through the market. The main argument for this new institutional division of labor is economic: while (public) ends stay the same, (private) means are more efficient. Markets function as ‘mere means’ under the continued responsibility of the state. This paper investigates and rejects currently existing egalitarian (...) liberal theories about this division of labor and it presents and defends a new theory of marketization, in which social rights and democratic decision-making occupy center-stage. (shrink)

Diogenes, Ahead of Print. In the study of Chinese thought, the products of the Han dynasty have historically been identified as those most antithetical to Western rationalism. In many of these narratives, the commentarial tradition and systems of complementary yin and yang receive the most attention. The present work draws on Mawangdui texts, the writings of Dong Zhongshu, the Huainanzi, and ultimately Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing to complexify this view. Within these examples one discovers divergent philosophies of opposites and (...) yin and yang that confound the notion of a monolithic and solely holistic Han cosmology. Ultimately, this paper seeks to promote Heshanggong’s Commentary as an exemplar of Eastern Han Daoist yin-yang theory that subdivides these two principles into mode and substance. Such an interpretive move explains the commentary’s valorization of yin modes but not yin substances, and yang substances but not yang modes. Furthermore, this approach unveils new insights about the relationship of the Dao and Heaven, the history of Daoism, and the varieties of correlative cosmologies in the Han. (shrink)

Heath’s paper on privatization defends a broadly welfarist-economic approach in thinking about the legitimacy of privatizations. This approach is ‘instrumentalist’ (in contrast to deontological approaches). In this response, I accept the value of an instrumentalist approach to privatization, but argue against Heath’s welfarist version of it, and argue in favor an alternative. First, the ends we seek when thinking about socially vital goods (our theory of public interests) should go beyond Pareto-efficiency. Second, as to the means we employ to realize (...) these ends, we need a view of markets which takes into account not just their competitiveness, but also the distribution of power. This means we need to differentiate market types. Third, we need to differentiate ownership types beyond the standard shareholder-owned company. Alternative ownership structures may be able to realize public interests more easily and hence make privatization less problematic. On these three issues, the picture Heath sketches leaves out too many of the variables that, in the end, may be decisive in whether or not a privatization is acceptable. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin wrote his prophetic essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” almost a century ago, yet it is still pertinent today. Benjamin warned that as art becomes devoid of aura through reproduction, less attention is needed to engage with it. What role does aura play in AI-generated work? Despite recent advances in AI it produces “artwork” that for the most part operates as entertainment. It can’t produce work that has grown out of reckoning with culture (...) the way artists do in their efforts to provide space for grappling with deep questions that ultimately inform culture. Nevertheless, AI is potentially more disruptive to Art than to any other field. If AI becomes the dominant producer of art, this could lead to a sort of consensus trance with a generation of people consuming “art” that does not inspire questioning and new understandings of the world we live in. For centuries, the term “computer” referred to living, breathing humans. Today, no person can claim the title. Is this the fate of “artist”? By problematizing the ways we use AI, artists can help address the problem of how we as a culture should engage with it. (shrink)

Volume 33, Issue 8, November 2020, Page 1096-1120.

The paper describes a computational model that we have implemented in an experimental dialogue system. Communication in a natural language between two participants A and B is considered, where A has a communicative goal that his/her partner B will make a decision to perform an action D. A argues the usefulness, pleasantness, etc. of D, in order to guide B's reasoning in a desirable direction. A computational model of argumentation is developed, which includes reasoning. Our model is based on the (...) studies in the common-sense conception of how the human mind works in such situations. Theoretical considerations are followed by an analysis of Estonian spoken human–human dialogues. First, calls of clients to travel agencies are studied where a travel agent could use various arguments in order to persuade a client to book a trip. The analysis demonstrates that clients are primarily looking for information; argumentation occurs in a small number of dialogues. Secondly, calls of s... (shrink)

The capability approach is one of the main contenders in the field of theorizing social justice. Each citizen is entitled to a set of basic capabilities. But which are these? Martha Nussbaum formulated a set of ten central capabilities. Amartya Sen argued they should be selected in a process of public reasoning. Critics object that the Nussbaum-approach is too perfectionist and the Sen-approach is too proceduralist. This paper presents a third alternative: a substantive but non-perfectionist capability theory of justice. It (...) presents a two-level concept of individual agency as connected to social practices. It then argues basic capabilities are those necessary to for the agency necessary to navigate freely and autonomously between different social practices. (shrink)

Should society intervene to prevent the risky behavior of precocious teenagers even if it would be impermissible to intervene with adults who engage in the same risky behavior? The problem is well illustrated by the legal case of the 13-year-old Dutch girl Laura Dekker, who set out in 2009 to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone, succeeding in January 2012. In this paper we use her case as a point of entry for discussing the fundamental (...) question of how to demarcate childhood from adulthood. After summarizing the case, we identify a ‘demarcation dilemma’ that frames much of the public and expert debate. On the one hand, it seems morally imperative ‘to treat like alike’, which means that both children and adults should be allowed to undertake all actions for which they have the relevant competences. On the other hand, requiring proportional treatment of children and adults seems to neglect the special nature of childhood as a distinct stage in life that ends at a specific age. We introduce the notion of a ‘regime of childhood’ to deal with this problem. This regime includes several dimensions, including the limited liability for children, the supervisory responsibilities of parents, the role of age-based thresholds, and the overarching purpose of childhood as a context for developing autonomy. We argue that, all things considered, there are good reasons not to shift to a regime that offers individual children the option of qualifying for adulthood on the basis of age-neutral criteria. (shrink)

The quantified relevant logic RQ is given a new semantics in which a formula for all xA is true when there is some true proposition that implies all x-instantiations of A. Formulae are modelled as functions from variable-assignments to propositions, where a proposition is a set of worlds in a relevant model structure. A completeness proof is given for a basic quantificational system QR from which RQ is obtained by adding the axiom EC of 'extensional confinement': for all x(A V (...) B) -> (A V for all xB). with x not free in A. Validity of EC requires an additional model condition involving the boolean difference of propositions. A QR-model falsifying EC is constructed by forming the disjoint union of two natural arithmetical structures in which negation is interpreted by the minus operation. (shrink)

Typically seniors like others choose to avoid institutional care. However, when age-related infirmity requires it, they not only enter into the care of others, but they also do so as vulnerable members of society. As their frailty increases with age, so does their dependence on the professionals who care for them and on the enforcement of policies concerning their care. A qualitative case study involving seniors and their carers revealed that breaches of confidentiality, unprofessional behaviour and the non-enforcement of policy, (...) continue to hide the physical and emotional abuse perpetrated by nursing and other staff on vulnerable consumers. Professional ethics, including at a corporate level, enforcing policy, protecting whistleblowers and creating reporting mechanisms for aged care researchers, are amongst the recommendations arising from this study. (shrink)

This paper discusses philosophical arguments for presenting scarcity and/or abundance as characteristic of the human condition. It criticizes those positions which presenthuman action as characterized by either 'universal scarcity' or 'universal abundance'. Universal scarcity is associated with instrumental activity and argues that the possibility of abundance supposes a Utopia of intrinsic activity which is inconceivable. Universal abundance is defended by Georges Bataille, who conceives of human life as the necessary expenditure of an original abundance. Both positions are criticized: even on (...) their own terms, abundance reappears in the worldview of universal scarcity and vice versa. Finally, a perspective is presented where scarcity and abundance are complementary, on three different levels. On the level of the general structure of action, scarcity is implied by the fundamental ideological structure of action while abundance is implied by the fact that our actions are not dictated by (strict) necessity. At the level of social practices in general and the more specific level of the modern economic practices of work and consumption, scarcity arises wherever action is best interpreted as the satisfaction of socially formulated needs. Abundance here arises in so far as we can free ourselves of these social needs, either by subjecting them to criticism and reformulation,or by revising our membership of social practices. (shrink)