In recent decades, economists have played an active role in shaping public policy by publicly recommending the adoption of certain policies. These recommendations are often based on normative assumptions that are not the product of economic analysis; nor are they shared by the laypeople to whom these recommendations are made. Inducing people to adopt public policies for reasons that are neither the product of expertise, nor shared by the people, is a form of manipulation that violates the ideals of a (...) liberal democratic society. Thus, the economists’ recommendations constitute an abuse of their expertise. (shrink)

In recent decades, economists have played an active role in shaping public policy by publicly recommending the adoption of certain policies. These recommendations are often based on normative assumptions that are not the product of economic analysis; nor are they shared by the laypeople to whom these recommendations are made. Inducing people to adopt public policies for reasons that are neither the product of expertise, nor shared by the people, is a form of manipulation that violates the ideals of a (...) liberal democratic society. Thus, the economists’ recommendations constitute an abuse of their expertise. (shrink)

Republicans are divided on the question of whether domination is best understood in terms of capacities to act intentionally or of certain structural aspects of society. I offer a model combining each aspect derived from Frederick Douglass’s philosophy. Douglass referred to slavery in both interpersonal terms (to individuals) and structural (to the community), focussing on the unique and pervasive role played by social prejudice which distorts public reason thereby disabling the functioning of republican institutions. While Douglass’s insights constitute a significant (...) contribution to neo-republican theory in their own right, they also offer a slave’s perspective on the central republican concept of domination and shows how historic African American writers made innovative theoretical contributions to republicanism. Both of these have long been overlooked by republican scholars to the philosophical detriment of the tradition. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel theory of the meaning of moral equality. This theory has two original and significant implications: first, it shows—contra what is commonly held in the literature—that adults and children are not always each other’s equals; rather, the former are sometimes inferior and sometimes superior to the latter, depending on the interest at stake. Second, it reveals that human beings’ comparative moral status changes across time, and what matters is that they are each other’s equals at simultaneous (...) segments of their lives. (shrink)

Two central questions concerning the role that persistent disagreements about philosophical, ethical, and religious issues in liberal societies are raised in this paper: (i) whether the state’s authority may be justified on the basis of controversial views and (ii) whether the state may rely on controversial views when exercising authority. Many assume whatever motivates philosophers to respect disagreement in justifying the state—answering “no” to (i)—seems to also require the state to respect disagreement when it acts—answering “no” to (ii). Here I (...) defend the consistency of answering “no” to (i) and “yes” to (ii), a position I call “political perfectionism.” I argue, first, that one prominent reason for answering “no” to (i)—that citizens should be able to endorse the authority of the state—is consistent with answering “yes” to (ii) and, second, that the intuitions underlying why political liberals want citizens to be able to endorse the authority of the state can motivate answering “yes” to (ii). (shrink)

We propose a new account of collective moral obligation. We argue that several agents have a moral obligation together only if they each have (i) a context-specific capacity to view their situation from the group’s perspective, and (ii) at least a general capacity to deliberate about what they ought to do together. Such an obligation is irreducibly collective, in that it does not imply that the individuals have any obligations to contribute to what is required of the group. We highlight (...) various distinctive features of our account. One such feature is that moral obligations are always relative to an agential perspective. (shrink)

This article argues that prevailing accounts of structural injustice, which focus on the way our replication of social practices has unjust consequences for individuals, tend to be insufficiently attentive to the differential power relations within the institutions that structure these practices. For economic exploitation, a structural account would instead locate domination in the operation of the system itself, and would distinguish it from the general constraint characteristic of all social practices as given or inherited. The argument further suggests limits to (...) unitary group agency approaches to corporations, and proposes construing them as artifacts as much as agents, while corporate responsibility would need to better track the division of power between top managers and workers within firms. (shrink)

Moral agents possess a moral point of view: they have a moral identity or a moral self-conception. This implies that, in order for an organization to be a moral agent, it must have a moral point of view. Importantly, acquiring such a point of view is a social process. In light of this, I argue that collective moral agency is a social construct. It follows that organizations can but need not be moral agents. This raises questions about the validity of (...) our corporate responsibility practices. In particular, as an organization might lack moral agency, it can be illegitimate to hold it responsible for its actions. I go on to investigate the interests that members might have in preventing or promoting collective moral agency and thereby address the political dimension of this social construct. (shrink)

Both individuals and groups sometimes make use of proxy agents who perform actions on their behalf. Although these kinds of actions are vital to our social and political lives, they raise deep questions about agency and responsibility. One concern is whether and in what ways a principal can be responsible for actions performed by way of their proxy. I argue here that two conditions are necessary if a principal is to be considered responsible for such actions in a deep sense. (...) First the proxy must be properly authorised, and second the action performed must cohere with the principal’s deliberative perspective. A consequence of this is that successful proxies will often be those who learn to adopt and act from the perspective of the principal they represent. The capacity to reason from the perspective of another individual or group is therefore of great importance in the work of spokespersons and other proxies. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to show that there is a way to consider corporations and organizations as agents without attributing to them mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Looking at the constitutional setup and structure of corporations and organizations, as well as the professional status and role of its principal operative members, provides us with sufficient information to classify them as agents. Corporations and organizations are agents, I argue, because their operative members, (...) acting in accordance with their professional role, turn them into decision-making and acting entities. Second, the paper argues that such a non-mentalistic account still allows us to hold corporations and organizations morally responsible for their impact on the social world and the environment. Taking into account the professional identity and role of senior managers also allows us to show why they might be accountable for a corporation’s unethical, let alone illegal practices. (shrink)

Pathologies of agency affect both groups and individuals. I present a case study of agential pathology in a group, in which supposedly rogue members of a group act in light of what they take the group’s interests and attitudes to be, but in a way that goes against the group’s explicitly stated agential point of view. I consider several practical concerns brought out by rogue member action in the context of a group agent, focusing in particular on how it undermines (...) the agency of the group and whether or not the group agent itself may be responsible for it. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that if a set of plausible conditions obtain, then driving a standard vehicle rather than riding in an autonomous vehicle (AV) will become analogous to driving drunk rather than driving sober, and therefore impermissible. In addition, we argue that a ban on the production, sale, and purchase of new standard vehicles would also become justified. We make this case in part by highlighting that the central reasons typically offered in support of state-mandated vaccination will also (...) support mandating AV use. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of our argument for the obligations of vehicle-producing firms. (shrink)

The production of vaccines for COVID-19 has been far from ideal in terms of meeting world demand, thereby mitigating the infections and deaths caused by the pandemic. Part of the reason production has been inefficient is that those pharmaceutical companies that own the vaccine do not have sufficient productive capacity to meet demand. Resultantly, many have advocated for waiving patent rights to the vaccine so it can be massively produced worldwide. Pharmaceutical companies and their advocates have opposed this waiving of (...) patent rights. In this article, I respond to the arguments that oppose waiving patents and contend that there is a case for temporarily waiving them. Mainly, I present a negative argumentative strategy that upholds the view that patents ought to be waived. However, in light of my arguments, the absence of positive reasons to withhold the patents implies that there are positive views for temporarily waiving them. (shrink)

This paper argues that climate injustice will be compounded in the future as a result of the deferred nature of many climate impacts. My claim is that the temporal disconnect between emissions and climate harm threatens future people’s ability to access what I call “resistance goods,” which rely on forms of address, often realised in oppositional political action. I identify three resistance goods—self-assertion, solidarity and testimony—and show that each is threatened by the temporality of climate change. A compound of climate (...) injustice is that it will be experienced as demeaning, isolating and silencing by many future people. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the work of W. E. B. Du Bois to expose the disastrous effects of white supremacy in the U.S. and the world. While his early works suggest that white supremacy might be rehabilitated by the careful presentation of contrary evidence, in later works he catalogs the primary features of whiteness, including an infantile comportment, a pathological attachment to innocence, and an epistemic incapacity to absorb evidence of its own error. To capture the scope of the (...) delusion of whiteness on Du Bois’s account, I suggest the term “irrevocable license.” The remainder of the paper uses Du Bois’s account to examine the case of a “Karen”—a white woman who obliviously and inappropriately interferes with the lawful actions of a family of color—and further considers police violence against people of color as an outgrowth of white irrevocable license. (shrink)

Public reason liberals expect individuals to have justificatory reasons for their views of certain political issues. This paper considers how groups can, and whether they should, give collective public reasons for their political decisions. A problem is that aggregating individuals’ consistent judgments on reasons and a decision can produce inconsistent collective judgments. The group will then fail to give a reason for its decision. The paper considers various solutions to this problem and defends a deliberative procedure by showing how it (...) incentivizes information sharing and leads to outcomes most acceptable to the group members. (shrink)

A complete theory of the permissibility of sex must not only determine the permissibility of sex between typical adult humans. In addition, it must also adequately take into consideration sex acts involving non-human animals, children, and humans with intellectual disabilities. However, when trying to develop a non-discriminatory account that includes these beings, two worrying problems of animal sex arise. To surpass them, I argue for a reformulation of the standard theory. To produce a truly inclusive account our theory should be (...) focused on assent, dissent, the significance of sex, and the similarity of the beings engaging in the sex act. (shrink)

What is the relation between non-domination and rights in the sense of claim-rights? This article argues that this relation is a tight one: rights turn out to be a necessary constituent of non-domination, or they are necessary, in a non-causal sense, for non-domination to come into existence and have its distinctive normative character. In particular, rights are necessary to constitute the following features of non-domination: the authority that non-domination signifies and the respect it demands; the kind of accountability that the (...) non-arbitrariness condition of non-domination demands; and the robustness of non-domination. The article then suggests that rights, even if necessary for non-domination, are not also sufficient. It concludes by illustrating how the protection of rights often supports, rather than contradicts, other republican aims. (shrink)

School boosters are tax-exempt organizations that engage in fundraising efforts to provide public schools with supplementary resources. This paper argues that prevailing forms of school boosting are defeasibly unjust. Section 1 shows that inequalities in public education funding in the United States violate John Rawls’s two principles of domestic justice. Section 2 argues that prevailing forms of school boosting exacerbate and plausibly perpetuate these injustices. Section 3 then contends that boosting thereby defeasibly violates Rawlsian principles of nonideal theory for rectifying (...) injustice. Thus, boosting should be presumptively either made illegal or substantially reformed. Finally, Section 4 responds to potential objections. (shrink)

A central tenet of moral individualism is that only an entity’s intrinsic (non-relational) properties can ground moral status because only intrinsic properties give rise to agent-neutral reasons. However, I show that the two main approaches to making the agent-neutral/agent-relative distinction fail to exclude morally salient relational (extrinsic) properties from giving rise to agent-neutral reasons. As such, moral individualism accounts of moral status are false. Further, arguments that depend on moral individualism’s central tenet—like the argument from “marginal” cases—are unable to defend (...) their thesis by merely claiming that special relations cannot ground moral status. (shrink)

“Home office” has become a reality for many employees. What is normatively at stake in this shift in the geography of work, given the various forms of structural injustice in our societies? Drawing on the normative criteria of employee well-being and protection from harm, autonomy, non-discrimination, environmental impact, and the role of workplaces as spaces of social encounters, I defend two claims: First, decisions about where individuals work need to be proceduralized on a fair basis, giving employees a voice. Second, (...) giving up the workplace requires a broader discussion about alternatives spaces for social integration. (shrink)

What may democratic citizens hope for? In order to answer this question, this article takes its cue from John Rawls’s notion of reasonable hope. Rawls is acutely aware of a tension we face in demarcating the limits of hope in democratic politics, yet fails to resolve it: hope should allow us to critically distance ourselves from the existing social world, yet not be entirely disconnected from it. In order to do justice to both desiderata, I propose to distinguish between individual (...) and collective levels of reasonable hope, with democratic institutions and practices mediating between the two. (shrink)

Theories such as effective altruism contend that people are morally obligated to give to charitable organizations that will efficiently do the most net good. The assumption is that aiding people who are most in need will create the most good; yet, it may be more inefficient to reach those most in need. In response, I outline my Inefficiency Principle in which efficiency has less moral weight when aiding those lacking in basic capabilities, and efficiency has more moral weight when aiding (...) those who are lacking in more complex capabilities. This principle acknowledges the obstacles in assisting those most in need while sustaining the moral importance of efficiency. (shrink)

The term ‘identity politics’ is used to refer to a wide range of political movements. In this paper, we look at the theoretical ideas underpinning two strongly, mutually opposed forms of identity politics, and identify some crucial differences between them. We critically compare the identitarian ideology of the New Right with feminist standpoint theory, focusing on two issues: relativism and essentialism. In carrying out this critical comparison we illuminate under-theorized aspects of both new right identitarianism and standpoint theory; demonstrate how (...) the two are distinct; reveal the depth and pervasiveness of the new right ideology’s flaws; and show what a coherent left-wing identity politics could look like. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that Aristotle’s view of habituation gives rise to a ‘paradox of moral education.’ The inculcation of habit, they contend, seems antithetical to the cultivation of virtue. I argue that this alleged paradox arises from significant misunderstandings of Aristotle’s view. Habit formation need not be at odds with the development of the kinds of intelligent, reflective capacities required for virtue. Indeed, Aristotle seems right to insist on an important role for habit in the cultivation of virtue. I (...) suggest that habit formation is part of the story of how the virtuous come to see the world aright. (shrink)