Trans and gender-nonconforming people sometimes say that certain gender norms are authentic for them. For example, a trans man might say that abiding by norms of masculinity tracks who he really is. Authenticity is sometimes taken to appeal to an essential, pre-social “inner self.” It is also sometimes understood as a moral notion. Authenticity claims about gender norms therefore appear inimical to two key commitments in feminist philosophy: that all gender norms are socially constructed, and that many domains of gender (...) norms are both morally and prudentially bad. I argue that that this apparent tension is illusory. Concordant with existing trans narratives of authenticity, I articulate an existentialist view that understands authenticity as a socially embedded, constructive project undertaken in a non-ideal social world, rather than a reflective uncovering of a pre-given, essential self. I then show that authenticity and morality can come apart; what is authentic for someone need not be either morally good or good for them. I conclude that the authenticity of gender norms does not cut against the feminist commitments that I identify. This conclusion enables a theoretical space that is both respectful of trans experience and critical of dominant gender norms, an important liberatory goal. (shrink)

Is it defensible to use the concept of a right? Can we justify this concept's central place in modern moral and legal thinking, or does it unjustifiably side-line those who do not qualify as right-holders? Rowan Cruft brings together a new account of the concept of a right. Moving beyond the traditional 'interest theory' and 'will theory', he defends a distinctive role for the concept: it is appropriate to our thinking about fundamental moral duties springing from the good of (...) the right-holder. This has important implications for the idea of 'natural' moral rights-that is, rights that exist independently of anyone's recognising that they do. Cruft argues that only rights that exist primarily for the sake of the right-holder can qualify as natural in this sense.In its relation to property, however, matters are far more complicated because much property is groundable only by common or collective goods beyond the right-holder's own good. For such property, Cruft argues that a non-rights property system-that resembles modern markets but is not conceived in terms of rights-would be preferable. The result of this study is a partial vindication of the rights concept that is more supportive of human rights than many of their critics might expect, and is surprisingly doubtful about property as an individual right. (shrink)

This is a response to Tom McLeish's Boyle Lecture 2021 on the rediscovery of contemplation through science. Several implications are sketched: no single mind can encompass fully what there is to be known; we are likely to be unaware of the full range of what it is that is acting upon us or informing us at any given moment; and the universe that we encounter is a system of interaction and implication in which nothing is simply passive or lifeless.

Gender norms can guide our sense of what we feel like we ought to do, even when we don't want them to. Understanding this norm responsiveness is an important part of understanding how oppressive gender systems are sustained. According to a social constructionist position, gender norm responsiveness happens as a result of social training, or socialization. It's often assumed that this training depends on our gender categories—that, for example, those who occupy the category “man” will be responsive to masculine norms, (...) and so on. Call this a category-based view. But trans and gender-nonconforming people are often responsive to gender norms that don't match our gender categories. This is sometimes taken as evidence for the conclusion that normative masculinity and femininity are somehow innate or pre-socialized. I reject this inference. I argue that we should instead dispense with a category-based view, and instead adopt a traits-based view. Gender norms apply to individuals on the basis of the gender-coded traits that they express. A traits-based view represents a social constructionist account of gender norms which leaves room for trans and GNC experiences of normative gender, and thus represents an important step towards creating inclusive theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTViolating a person's rights is disrespectful to that person. This is because it is disrespectful to someone to violate duties owed to that person. I call these ‘directed duties’; they are the flipside of rights. The aim of this paper is to consider why directed duties and respect are linked, and to highlight a puzzle about this linkage, a puzzle arising from the fact that many directed duties are justified independently of whether they do anything for those to whom they (...) are owed. (shrink)

The introduction introduces the history of the concept of human rights and its philosophical genealogy. It raises questions of the nature of human rights, the grounds of human rights, difference between proposed and actual human rights, and scepticism surrounding the very idea of human rights. In the course of this discussion, it concludes that the diversity of positions on human rights is a sign of the intellectual, cultural, and political fertility of the notion of human rights. The chapter concludes with (...) an overview of the chapters present in the volume. (shrink)

Brazil’s Movement of the Landless emerges from this collection as one of the great social movements of modernity. In historical chapters we see its evolution from confrontations with landowners and police in land invasions in the South of Brazil in the 1970s to become a multi-faceted movement with a presence throughout Brazil. More than a pressure group for Land Reform, it turned to mount a comprehensive challenge, on linked legal, cultural, political and economic fronts to Brazil’s dominant model of development. (...) Its ‘social movement approach’, conjoining challenge to Brazil’s massive inequalities with the formation of active citizens among the marginalised rural poor, has become a model for movements in the urban scene. We see this not just through the rich descriptive accounts of MST actions, but because the contributing editor, Miguel Carter, has pointed the action portraits with theoretical acumen, and, with other contributors, placed them in historical context. (shrink)

The past one hundred fifty years of debate over the use of animals in research and testing has been characterized mainly byad hominem attacks and on uncritical rejection of the other sides’ arguments. In the classroom, it is important to avoid repeating exercises in public relations and to demand sound scholarship.

OBJECTIVES: To compare 2005 and 1995 ethics guidelines from journal editors to authors regarding requirements for institutional review board (IRB) approval and conflict-of-interest (COI) disclosure. DESIGN: A descriptive study of the ethics guidelines published in 103 English-language biomedical journals listed in the Abridged Index Medicus in 1995 and 2005. Each journal was reviewed by the principal author and one of four independent reviewers. RESULTS: During the period, the proportion of journals requiring IRB approval increased from 42% (95% CI 32.2% to (...) 51.2%, p<0.001) to 76% (95% CI 66.4% to 83.1%, p<0.001). In 2005, an additional 9% referred to the Declaration of Helsinki or the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' Uniform requirements for ethical guidelines; 15% (95% CI 8.5% to 22.5%, p<0.01) provided ambiguous or no requirements. The proportion of journals requiring COI disclosure increased from 75% (95% CI 66.6% to 83.3%, p<0.05) to 94% (95% CI 89.4% to 98.6%, p<0.05); 41% had comprehensive requirements, while some addressed only funding source (6%), were vague (10%) or both (14%). Criteria for authorship rose from 40% (95% CI 30.5% to 49.5%, p<0.05) to 72% (95% CI 63.3% to 80.7%, p<0.05). Journals with higher impact factors were more likely to require IRB approval (p<0.01). Journals in anaesthesia and radiology all required IRB approval; requirements in other disciplines varied. CONCLUSIONS: Instructions to authors regarding ethical standards have improved. Some remain incomplete, especially regarding the scope of disclosure of COI. The ethical guidelines presented to authors need further clarification and standardisation. (shrink)

InWorld Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge presents a range of attractive policy proposals—limiting the international resource and borrowing privileges, decentralizing sovereignty, and introducing a “global resources dividend”—aimed at remedying the poverty and suffering generated by the global economic order. These proposals could be motivated as a response topositive dutiesto assist the global poor, or they could be justified onconsequentialistgrounds as likely to promote collective welfare. Perhaps they could even be justified onvirtue-theoreticgrounds as proposals that a just or benevolent person (...) would endorse. But Pogge presents them as a response to the violation ofnegative duties; this makes the need for such remedial policies especially morally urgent—on a par with the obligations of killers to take measures to stop killing.In this essay, I focus on the claim that responsibility for world poverty should be conceived in terms of a violation of negative duties. I follow Pogge in distinguishing two questions (p. 134): What kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) would we be subject to in a just global society where everyone fulfilled their duty and there was no significant risk of injustice? And what kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) do we face given that our global society falls short of the just society?I tackle these questions in reverse order below. I argue, in contrast to Pogge, that positive duties are relevant to our answers to both questions. (shrink)

In this article I argue that, despite the views of such theorists as Locke, Hart and Raz, most of a person's property rights cannot be individualistically justified. Instead most property rights, if justified at all, must be justified on non-individualistic (e.g. consequentialist) grounds. This, I suggest, implies that most property rights cannot be morally fundamental ‘human rights’.

It is common for philosophers and legal theorists to bemoan the proliferation of the language of rights in popular discourse.1 In a wide range of contemporary public political and ethical debates, disputants are quick to appeal to the existence of rights that support their position – the ‘human rights’ of innocent victims of war, animals’ noninterference rights, individuals’ and businesses’ rights to economic freedom. It is often maintained, with some plausibility, that these public disputes involve hasty and undefended reliance on (...) assumptions that certain specific rights exist, and that such profligacy with the language of rights does little to clarify and enhance public debate. By contrast, the two prominent theoretical analyses of the concept ‘a right’ – the Will Theory and the Interest Theory – are both revisionary theories which, if widely adopted, would require people to revise their usage of the term ‘a right’. The Will Theory is an explicitly revisionary theory, according to which rights can be held only by beings capable of waiving their rights (and hence rights cannot be held by animals or young children).2 I shall argue that traditional versions of the Interest Theory would also require revisions of popular usage of the term ‘a right’ (by implying that certain property rights and promissory rights cannot genuinely qualify as rights). Such revisionary analyses of the concept ‘a right’ might be applauded for aiming to enhance the conceptual clarity of public debate. However, my stance in this paper is avowedly non-revisionary. My aims are to seek an analysis of the concept ‘a right’ that accords with the multifarious ways in which this term is used in everyday ethical and political debates, and to argue that philosophers and legal theorists would benefit from adopting such a non-revisionary approach. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether responsibility could be borne vicariously. I distinguish between three different senses of responsibility: attributional responsibility, practices of holding people responsible, and substantive responsibility. I argue that it is doubtful both whether attributional responsibility could be borne vicariously, and whether it could be appropriate to hold someone vicariously responsible. However, I suggest that substantive responsibility can genuinely be borne vicariously. Getting clear on these conceptual issues has important implications for how we approach more concrete legal and political (...) questions. More specifically, I argue these abstract arguments can be used to inform views on the common-law doctrine of joint enterprise, and on reparations for historic injustice. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

In Why We Build Rowan Moore shows how buildings are driven by human emotions and desires – such as hope, power, money, sex, and the idea of home – and how buildings then shape our experiences.

In this latest work by one of our leading political and legal philosophers, Allen Buchanan outlines a novel framework for assessing the system of international human rights law—the system that he takes to be the heart of modern human rights practice. Buchanan does not offer a full justification for the current system, but rather aims “to make a strong prima facie case that the existing system as a whole has what it takes to warrant our support of it on moral (...) grounds, even if some aspects of it are defective and should be the object of serious efforts at improvement”. (shrink)

In their recent books, National Responsibility and Global Justice and Intricate Ethics, David Miller and Frances Kamm give two similar arguments aimed at preventing their favoured accounts of the moral justification of rights from justifying an excess of demanding assistance rights. Both arguments appeal to the fact that a proliferation of assistance rights would conflict with other rights. In this paper, I show that these arguments fail. As Miller recognises in a footnote, the failure of such arguments appears to support (...) an alternative holistic approach to the moral justification of rights. But I will show that, without significant further argument that Miller and Kamm do not provide, this holistic approach offers no better support for Miller’s and Kamm’s claim that there are few demanding assistance rights. (shrink)

"Proof" has been and remains one of the concepts which characterises mathematics. Covering basic propositional and predicate logic as well as discussing axiom systems and formal proofs, the book seeks to explain what mathematicians understand by proofs and how they are communicated. The authors explore the principle techniques of direct and indirect proof including induction, existence and uniqueness proofs, proof by contradiction, constructive and non-constructive proofs, etc. Many examples from analysis and modern algebra are included. The exceptionally clear style and (...) presentation ensures that the book will be useful and enjoyable to those studying and interested in the notion of mathematical "proof.". (shrink)

Responding to the complicated conditions produced by both the Constantinian Revolution and the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, Augustine concerned himself not so much with “earthly transitions” as with the only transition that he believed had final significance: the transition of Christ from death to life.

This essay responds to Sajjad Rizvi’s analysis of Shi‘a political theology in terms of the risks of over-emphasising the achieved clarity of a religious/political ethic in society. It notes the comparable reserve in Christian political thought, especially in the Augustinian tradition, in respect of a single sacral authority in society, and briefly discusses the various ways in which this has been articulated in mediaeval and modern contexts.

Suppose that it would be best if some set of people all did A, significantly worse if they all did B, and worst of all if some did A while some did B. Now suppose that they’re all going to do B, regardless of what the others do. It seems as though each of these people ought to pick B, given what the others are going to do. Yet it also seems as though something has gone wrong. This leads to (...) a puzzle: how can it be wrong for everyone to act as they ought? In this paper, I resolve this puzzle by arguing that there are joint ‘oughts’ which apply irreducibly to pluralities of agents, and which can pull in different directions to ‘oughts’ holding of given individuals; even if everyone individually ought to pick B, what they jointly ought to do is all pick A. (shrink)

I do not answer my title’s question in this paper. Instead, my aims are first to show that the question is worth asking, secondly to show that its answer will not be trivial, and thirdly to show that it is unclear what the answer is. From these three conclusions it follows that many contemporary Hohfeldian approaches to the conceptual analysis of rights (including those of Sumner, Jones, Kramer, Wenar and myself)1, while potentially capable of extensional accuracy, overlook an essential but (...) unidentified feature of rights: the feature which explains why duties are not rights. The paper challenges theorists to investigate what this feature is. (shrink)

Basic rights are often of great instrumental value in securing protection for important human needs and interests. The first two sections of this paper defend the thesis that basic rights are also valuable independently of their instrumental role. Taking my cue from Frances Kamm's suggestion that basic rights reflect or express human worth, in the third, fourth and fifth sections I develop the proposal that the non-instrumental value of basic rights derives from their constitutive role in a universal form of (...) community or fellowship. The importance of basic rights' instrumental role is reaffi rmed in the final section of the paper, which builds on the earlier sections to offer a 'mixed' theory according to which basic rights have both instrumental and non-instrumental value. (shrink)

The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspective – but they are intense sites of data generation, algorithmic processing, and cross-platform (...) data-sharing; bound up with competing cultures of production, exploitation and use. In this paper, we describe the ways various forms of data are incorporated into, and emerge from, hook-up apps’ business logics, socio-technical arrangements, and cultures of use to produce multiple and intersecting data cultures. We propose a multi-layered research agenda for critical and empirical inquiry into this field, and suggest appropriate conceptual and methodological frameworks for exploring the social and political challenges of data cultures. (shrink)

Stove attempts to undermine Hume's argument on induction by denying Hume the claim that induction presupposes the uniformity of nature. I argue that Stove's attack on Hume's argument fails. *A paper from which the present piece was derived was read at the Hume Symposium. Flinders Medical Centre, South Australia, in July 1990, where George Couvalis and David Gauthier made helpful criticisms of my argument.

This book demonstrates how the pedagogical decision making of university academics can be shaped by engagement with an educational philosophy known as "relationship-centred education". Beginning with critical analysis of concepts such as student engagement, student satisfaction, and student-centred learning, the author goes on to investigate how literature relating to social justice challenges educators to consider these terms in particular ways. From this basis, the book explores the factors featuring in inclusive, respectful, diverse and student-centred environments. In analysing these factors, the (...) author illuminates the perspectives of university teachers who struggle with the unique challenges of working in the academy; including an increasingly broad set of employment demands and narrower criteria for determining 'impact', all while retaining focus on the transformative potential of higher education. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of transformative learning, as well as social justice within higher education. Leonie Rowan is Associate Professor in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Australia. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

Henry Chadwick's achievement overall remains immense. The range of his learning in classical and post-classical literature, both Greek and Latin, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Fathers and, increasingly, the early medievals was rare by any standard, and his success in making it available to the non-specialist reader as well as the expert was striking. Chadwick played a pivotal role in redefining a whole area of scholarship. Individual works, both long and short, still occupy a significant place in the literature (...) of their subjects–especially the work on Origen, Augustine, and Boethius. The translations that frame his career–the Contra Celsum and the Confessions–illustrate his capacity to get into the skin of ancient authors. Chadwick was without doubt the foremost patristic scholar of his generation in the English-speaking world, and one of the foremost in Europe. He will be remembered with enormous gratitude and affection by a large number of scholars to whom, by direct or indirect teaching and example, he taught their business. (shrink)