This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV.

Most liberals agree that governments should protect certain basic liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of the person. Liberals disagree, however, about whether free market rights should also be protected. By “free market rights,” we mean those rights typically associated with laissez-faire economic systems such as freedom of contract, a right to market returns, and claims to privately own the means of production.We do not use the phrase “economic liberties,” as Tomasi does, because (...) it does not distinguish between the “economic rights” defended by classical liberal and those defended by socialists. Those on the right often see such freedoms as core liberal commitments, while those on the left argue that an economic system should be organized to protect the interests of the less advantaged members of society. If free market rights should be protected, then most existing societies are unjust. These societies fail the liberal standard in the same ways as th .. (shrink)

In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi defends classical-liberal principles not because of real-world considerations but on ideal-theoretic grounds. However, what constitutes a sufficiently “ideal” ideal theory is debatable since, as Tomasi shows, regimes that range from laissez faire to heavily interventionist can all be classified as legitimate from the perspective of ideal theory. Conversely, if ideal theory can allow for realistic constraints, as Rawls does, then we should recognize that even under ideal-theoretic conditions, political actors face logistical, epistemic, and (...) motivational challenges that only intensify in the real world, where questions of feasibility become paramount. (shrink)

Liberal political theory is all too familiar with the divide between classical and welfare-state liberals. Classical liberals, as we all know, insist on the importance of small government, negative liberty, and private property. Welfare-state liberals, on the other hand, although they too stress civil rights, tend to be sympathetic to “positive liberty,” are for a much more expansive government, and are often ambivalent about private property. Although I do not go so far as to entirely deny the usefulness of this (...) familiar distinction, I think in many ways it is misleading. In an important sense, most free-market liberals are also “welfare-state” liberals. I say this because the overwhelming number of liberals, of both the pro-market and the pro-government variety, entertain a welfarist conception of political economy. On this dominant welfarist view, the ultimate justification of the politico-economic order is that it promotes human welfare. Traditional “welfare-state liberals” such as Robert E. Goodin manifestly adopt this welfarist conception. But it is certainly not only interventionists such as Goodin who insist that advancing welfare is the overriding goal of normative political economy. J. R. McCulloch, one of the great nineteenth-century laissez-faire political economists, was adamant that “freedom is not, as some appear to think, the end of government: the advancement of public prosperity and happiness is its end.” To be sure, McCulloch would have disagreed with Goodin about the optimal welfare-maximizing economic policy: the welfarist ideal, he and his fellow classical political economists believed, would best be advanced by provision of a legal and institutional framework — most importantly, the laws of property, contract, and the criminal code — that allows individuals to pursue their own interests in the market and, by so doing, promote public welfare. In general, what might be called the “classical-liberal welfare state” claims to advance welfare by providing the framework for individuals to seek wealth for themselves, while welfarists such as Goodin insist that a market order is seriously flawed as a mechanism for advancing human welfare and, in addition, that government has the competency to “correct market failures” in the provision of welfare. (shrink)

While John Tomasi's Free Market Fairness is ambitious, provocative, and does much to reinvigorate debate about economic justice, his argument for market democracy is not compelling. I discuss two objections. First, I offer doubts about whether “thick” economic freedom is a condition of democratic legitimacy. While Tomasi raises the intriguing possibility that liberal commitments may justify a somewhat more expansive list of economic rights than traditionally recognized, he fails to give a well-worked-out account of these rights. Instead, he argues (...) for unfettered economic liberty without adequately connecting it to citizens' self-authorship, or showing how it could feasibly be protected alongside other basic liberties. Second, I argue that a concern for citizens' agency and economic self-authorship should lead us to endorse a social-democratic regime, not a market-democratic one. Market democracy leaves out or heavily revises key aspects of justice as fairness as developed by Rawls, including fair equality of opportunity and the fair value of the political liberties. Moreover, while Tomasi claims that social democracy rests on a perfectionist prioritizing of citizens' status over their agency, I argue that social democracy is best defended on agency-based grounds. (shrink)

Libertarians favor a free market for intrinsic reasons: it embodies liberty, accountability, consent, cooperation, and other virtues. Additionally, if property rights against trespasses such as pollution are enforced and if public lands are transferred as private property to environmental groups, a free market may also protect the environment. In contrast, Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's Free Market Environmentalism favors a free market solely on instrumental grounds: markets allocate resources efficiently. The authors apparently follow cost‐benefit planners in (...) endorsing a specious tautology that “defends” allocative efficiency by defining “social welfare” in terms of it. They make no attempt to show that allocative efficiency is a good thing or that it is consistent with environmental protection. By regarding pollution as a compensable external cost rather than as an enjoinable nuisance and by arguing that the government should auction rather than give public lands to environmental groups, moreover, Anderson and Leal offer far less protection of the environment than libertarians do. (shrink)

In a recent comment on the HFEA’s public consultation on sex selection, Soren Holm claimed that proponents of family balancing are committed to embrace a laissez faire approach. Given that arguments in support of sex selection for family balancing also support sex selection for other social reasons, advocates of family balancing, he asserts, are simply inconsistent when calling for a limit on access to sex selection. In this paper, I argue that proponents of family balancing are in no way inconsistent. (...) Provided their advocacy of family balancing is aimed at preventing a severe distortion of the natural sex ratio, they are entirely justified in insisting on restrictions to sex selection. The real question is whether a concern for the sex ratio does indeed call for a limit on sex selection. Based on a recent survey on gender preferences and data from several Gender Clinics, I argue that a restriction on sex selection to family balancing is unwarranted. In the absence of any evidence for a pending sex ratio distortion, we are actually required to adopt a laissez faire approach to sex selection. (shrink)

Distributive justice and political legitimacy are different concepts with different roles. In John Rawls’s justice as fairness, the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society. The primary subject of legitimacy, in contrast, is the exercise of political power. Rawls claims that legitimacy is weaker than justice—a law may be legitimate even though it is unjust. Rawls also claims that a conception of legitimacy would be selected in the original position and that the argument for its adoption "is (...) much the same as, and as strong as, the argument for the principles of justice themselves." But if the parties in the original position have much the same reason to adopt a conception of legitimacy as they have to adopt a conception of justice, why is legitimacy less demanding than justice? If principles of justice and legitimacy are selected in the same way and for the same reasons, their requirements should not diverge. I propose a solution to this conflation problem. I argue that principles of political legitimacy should be selected in a special session of the original position that differs in key respects from the general session in which the two principles of justice as fairness are selected. I also suggest that insofar as the principles of legitimacy selected in this session do allow for some latitude of injustice, as is likely, the demands of legitimacy should take lexical priority over any competing demands of justice. (shrink)

Recently, unrestrained consequentialism has been defended against the charge that it leads to unacceptable trade-offs by showing a tradeoff accepted by many of us is not justified by any of the usual nonconsequenlist arguments. The particular trade-off involves raising the speed limit on the Interstate Highway System. As a society, we seemingly accept a trade-off of lives for convenience. This defense of consequentialism may be a tu quoque, but it does challenge nonconsequentialists to adequately justify a multitude of social decisions. (...) Work by the deontologist Frances Kamm, conjoined with a perspective deployed by several economists on the relation between social costs and lives lost, is relevant. It provides a starting point by justifying decisions which involve trading lives only for other lives. But the perspective also recognizes that using resources in excess of some figure to save a life causes us to forego other live-saving activities, thus causing a net loss of life. Setting a speed limit as low as 35 miles per hour might indeed save some lives, but the loss of productivity due to the increased time spent in travel would cost an even greater number of lives. Therefore, many trade-offs do not simply involve trading lives for some lesser value, but are justified as allowing some to die in order to save a greater number. (shrink)

Many people believe that some things, like kidneys or sex, should not be for sale. Let us call these things “contested commodities.” Against this, Brennan and Jaworksi defend “markets without limits” (hereafter: MwL). According to this thesis: “If you may do it for free, you may do it for money” (2016, p. 10). Since we can give away our kidneys for free and have sex for free, we should be able to do these things for money. (...) Brennan and Jaworksi deftly blend rigorous philosophical argument with the latest research in social science to counter some of the most prominent against commodification. But, I will argue, their arguments stop short of establishing MwL. Brennan and Jaworksi do not say enough in favor of markets in contested commodities. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the potential or actual impact that free-market governmental principles and policies might have, or might have had, in helping to create a more crisis-prone world. It is concerned with organizationally-induced crises where organizations and their environment interact to create disasters. The nature of the crisis-prone organization is discussed in the context of the relevant management literature. It is argued that the disastrous interaction of such an organization with its environment is promoted by a laisser-faire (...) attitude on the part of the authorities. This is illustrated in the context of two recent British disasters involving the King''s Cross Underground fire and the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that the necessity of the present counts against theories of synchronic free will, according to which a person may have free will at a time t0 even once that person has decided at t0 to do something. I defend the theory of diachronic free will against recent critiques drawn from the work of Michael Rota and Katherin Rogers. And I chart some of the implications for the philosophy of religion.

Resumen: Este artículo analiza cómo se encadenan los planos de lo ontológico y lo óntico en la Teoría Política del Discurso de Ernesto Laclau. Se concluye que, desde el plano ontológico, la hegemonía constituye una forma político-discursiva de articulación y universalización relativa, precaria, contingente y parcial de los particularismos en significantes vacíos que actúan como puntos nodales. Desde el nivel fenoménico-político, Laclau pone en juego estos conceptos para mostrar el desplazamiento y contaminación discursiva entre lo particular y lo universal en (...) la operación hegemónica, que transforma las identidades políticas y construye un orden comunitario y un nuevo sentido común. Desde el nivel ético-político, la conceptualización de la hegemonía se articula a la construcción discursiva de una estrategia socialista y a una democracia radical. Este proyecto político lucha contra los esencialismos y las formas de explotación y opresión social y por un horizonte de liberación que amalgame las luchas de los grupos subordinados y reconozca las diferencias y particularidades como constitutivas y deseables. La teoría formal del populismo presenta algunas inconsistencias óntico-ontológicas en este esquema. Sin embargo, su sobredeterminación simbólica disuelve las disyunciones tajantes entre la lógica y el análisis histórico-político y entre la forma y el contenido. Ello pone de manifiesto el mutuo anudamiento entre lo óntico y lo ontológico y la centralidad de la noción gramsciana de hegemonía para el análisis político y crítico de fenómenos y procesos históricos contemporáneos.: This article analyzes how the ontological and ontic planes are interconnected in Laclau’s political discourse theory. It is concluded that, on the ontological level, hegemony constitutes a political-discursive form of relative, precarious, contingent and partial universalization and articulation of particularities in empty signifiers that act as nodal points. On the phenomenological-political level, Laclau shows the displacement and discursive contamination between the particular and the universal in the hegemonic operation which transforms political identities and builds a communitarian order and a new commonality. On the ethical-political level, the conceptualization of hegemony is articulated as the discursive construction of a socialist strategy and a radical democracy. This political project fights against essentialisms and forms of exploitation and social oppression of subordinate groups, and in favor of a horizon of liberation that recognizes conflicts and differences as constitutive and desirable. The formal theory of populism presents some ontic-ontological inconsistencies in this scheme. However, its symbolic overdetermination dissolves the disjunctions between logic and historical-political analysis and between form and content. This reveals the mutual interconnection between the ontic and the ontological, and the central relevance of the Gramscian notion of hegemony for the political and critical analysis of contemporary historical phenomena and processes. (shrink)

The conventional view of banking crises sees them as an inherent problem of fractional‐reserve banking systems. According to this view, government regulation in the form of an alert central bank (acting as a “lender of last resort"), or deposit insurance, or both is needed to keep isolated bank failures from generating systemwide panic. But this view does not mesh with historical experience, which points to government regulation itself as the most likely cause of banking crises.

The 20th century is the aeon for the social and national liberation of the individual. Freedom is a boon and basic right of every individual’s existence. Human freedom is infringed by certain social and economic order. This research paper undertakes the task to reveal the reasons behind the pandemonium of humankind living in capitalism; the basic fact for the rise and development of socialism around the globe. This paper is divided into six parts. Part I is introduction. Part II deals (...) with historical need to replace capitalism by socialism. Part III explores the economic decisive factors in capitalism. Part IV explores the economic decisive factors in socialism. Part V leads to threats of neo-colonialism. Part VI is conclusion. This research finally leads to the conclusion that socialism is the system for the abolition of regime of exploitation created by capitalism. It aims at transforming a just society based upon principles of equality, fraternity, democracy and fair play. (shrink)

Transition to the market economy in post-socialist Ukraine, followed by the destruction of the ‘working mother’ gender contract, has led to the emergence of new forms of women’s identities. But the formation of new identities in the transformational period appeared to be mediated by free market ideology, linked to the development of consumer capitalism and dissemination of western consumer standards and lifestyles. The seeming diversity of the new identities promised by the ‘free market’ turned out to be reduced (...) to two models: housewife and businesswoman. Imported along with western mass culture, they can easily be inscribed onto the Ukrainian cultural context. At the same time, the everyday practice of economic survival through informal business and the difficulties of adaptation to the market economy have a profound impact on women’s identity formation. (shrink)

John Tomasi's Free Market Fairness treats both traditions with depth, nuance, and unremitting fair-mindedness, and then points us toward a synthesis. Social democrats and libertarians equally need to read this book.

This book is the first detailed reconstruction of the late work of John Rawls, who was perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. Rawls's 1971 treatise, A Theory of Justice, stimulated an outpouring of commentary on 'justice-as-fairness,' his conception of justice for an ideal, self-contained, modern political society. Most of that commentary took Rawls to be defending welfare-state capitalism as found in Western Europe and the United States. Far less attention has been given to Rawls's 2001 book, Justice (...) as Fairness: A Restatement. In the Restatement, Rawls not only substantially reformulates the 'original position' argument for the two principles of justice-as-fairness but also repudiates capitalist regimes as possible embodiments. Edmundson further develops Rawls's non-ideal theory, which guides us when we find ourselves in a society that falls well short of justice. (shrink)

This paper examines what would be a fair distribution of the right to emit greenhouse gases. It distinguishes between views that treat the distribution of this right on its own (Isolationist Views) and those that treat it in conjunction with the distribution of other goods (Integrationist Views). The most widely held view treats adopts an Isolationist approach and holds that emission rights should be distributed equally. This paper provides a critique of this 'equal per capita' view, and the isolationist assumptions (...) on which it depends. It examines four arguments for this view, finding each wanting. It then presents two general challenges to the 'equal per capita' view, and, indeed, any views which treat the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions in isolation from other goods. It concludes by outlining and defending an alternative (Integrationist) approach to the distribution of rights to emit greenhouse gases. (shrink)

In this paper I am not so much concerned with movements of the mind, as movements of the will. But my question bears a similarity to that of the tortoise. I want to ask whether the will is under the control of fact and reason, combined. I shall try to show that there is always something else, something that is not under the control of fact and reason, which has to be given as a brute extra, if deliberation is ever (...) to end by determining the will. This is, of course, a Humean conclusion, and the only novelty comes in the way I wish to argue for it. I believe that many philosophers think, erroneously, that Hume relies on a naive and outdated conception of facts, or on an even more naive and outdated conception of reason, in order to put passion on their throne. My tortoise defends Hume: what we do with our premises is not itself construed as acceptance of a premise. As it stands the project is only described metaphorically. Presumably everything, including movement of the will, is under the control of facts in some sense, for even if they are only facts about our physiology or chemistry, still, they make us move. I am interested only in cognitive control, or control by the apprehension of fact and reason. (shrink)

The debate on the influence of markets on virtues has focused on two opposite hypotheses: the doux commerce thesis and the self-destruction thesis. Whereas the doux commerce hypothesis assumes that capitalism polishes human manners, the self-destruction hypothesis holds that capitalism erodes the moral foundation of society. This paper will develop a more balanced position by using the virtue ethics developed by Aristotle, which distinguishes several virtues. The research will focus on the question for which virtues the doux commerce or self-destruction (...) thesis is likely to hold. An extensive literature survey shows that market competition tends to stimulate diligence, crowd out temperance, generosity, and sociability, and stimulate envy. The effect on other virtues – i.e. courage, high-spiritedness, justice, and prudence – is ambiguous. (shrink)

What is the relation between what we ought to do, on the one hand, and our epistemic access to the ought-giving facts, on the other? In assessing this,it is common to distinguish ‘objective’ from ‘subjective’ oughts. Very roughly, on the objectivist conception what an agent ought to do is determined by ought-giving facts in such a way that does not depend on the agent’s beliefs about, or epistemic access to, those facts; whereas on the subjectivist conception, what an agent ought (...) to do depends on his beliefs. This paper defends the need for, and explicates, a third category of ‘ought’: ‘warranted oughts’. Section 1 introduces the distinction between objective and subjective ‘oughts’. Sections 2–3 draw attention to some serious problems with each. Section 4 examines, though rejects, a recent attempt to replace subjective ‘oughts’ with objective ‘wide-scope oughts’ operating on belief-action combinations. Section 5 explicates the notion of a warranted ‘ought’ and defends the account against some possible objections. The resulting a picture is one in which an adequate analysis of practical normativity requires both objective and warranted ‘oughts’. Section 6 concludes by responding to a worry about countenancing both. (shrink)

This article reconstructs and reflects on the 1989 debate between Jerry Cohen and myself on market socialism in the light of Cohen's ongoing defence of communitarian socialism. It presents Cohen's view of market socialism as ethically deficient but a modest improvement on capitalism, and outlines some market socialist proposals from the 1980s. Our debate centred on the issues of distributive justice and community. I had argued that a market economy might be justified by appeal to desert based on productive contribution, (...) but Cohen saw effort as the only relevant desert base, and claimed that only non-comparative judgements of economic desert were possible. Market-derived inequalities, therefore, could not be deserved. He also condemned markets for relying on the motives of greed and fear, and therefore as destructive of community. In reply, I asserted that markets also liberated people from fixed social roles, and that market competition could be viewed differently, as providing the most effective way for people to contribute to each other's welfare. In retrospect, this debate can be seen to raise questions about the nature of justice and the purpose of political philosophy that have come to the fore in recent exchanges between ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’. (shrink)

We design an agent based Monte Carlo model of antibiotics research and development to explore the effects of the policy intervention known as Market Entry Reward on the likelihood that an antibiotic entering pre-clinical development reaches the market. By means of sensitivity analysis we explore the interaction between the MER and four key parameters: projected net revenues, R&D costs, venture capitalists discount rates, and large pharmaceutical organizations' financial thresholds. We show that improving revenues may be more efficient than reducing costs, (...) and thus confirm that this pull-based policy intervention effectively stimulates antibiotics R&D. (shrink)

A legal system is any institution or set of institutions in a given society that provides dispute resolution in a systematic and reasonably predictable way. it does so through the exercise of three functions: the judicial, the legislative, and the executive. The judicial function, the adjudication of disputes, is the core of any legal system; the other two are ancillary to this. The legislative function is to determine the rules that will govern the process of adjudication (this function may be (...) merged with the judicial function, as when case law arises through precedents, or it may be exercised separately), while the executive function is to secure submission (through a variety of means, which may or may not include violence) to the adjudicative process and compliance with its verdicts. A government or state (for present purposes i shall use these terms interchangeably) is any organisation that claims, and in large part achieves, a forcibly maintained monopoly, within a given geographical territory, of these legal functions, and in particular of the use of force in the executive function. now the market anarchist objection to government is simply a logical extension of the standard libertarian objection to coercive monopolies in general.1 First, from a moral point of view, among people regarded as equals2 it cannot be legitimate for some to claim a certain line of work as their own privileged preserve from which others are to be forcibly excluded; we no longer believe in the divine right of kings, and on no other basis could such inequality of rights be justified. Second, from an economic point of view, because monopolies are insulated from market competition and hold their customers by force, they lack both the information and the incentive to provide consumers with fair, efficient, and inexpensive service. The anarchist accepts these arguments, and merely asks why they should apply with any less force to the provision of legal services. (shrink)

This question presupposes a prior question: would a free nation need to defend itself from foreign aggression? Some would answer no: the rewards of cooperation outweigh the rewards of aggression, and so a nation will probably not be attacked unless it first acts aggressively itself.

Mikhalevich & Powell are to be commended for challenging the “invertebrate dogma” that invertebrates are unworthy of ethical concern. However, developing an evolutionarily inclusive ethics requires facing some of the more radical implications of rejecting hierarchical scala naturae and human-centered conceptions of the biological world. In particular, we need to question the anthropocentric assumptions that still linger in discussions like these.

What primitive concepts does formal ontology require? Forsaking as too indirect the linguistic way of discerning the categories of being, this paper considers what primitives might be required for representing things in themselves (noumena) and representations of them in a thoroughly crafted large autonomous multi-purpose database. Leaving logical concepts and material ontology aside, the resulting 32 categories in 13 families range from the obvious (identity/difference, existence/non-existence) through the fairly obvious (part/whole, one/many, sequential order) and the surprisingly familiar (illocutionary modes, mass/count, (...) indexical/descriptive) to the controversial (moment/fundament, transparent/opaque) and the arcane (modes of class delimitation, taxonomic rank, aspects of designators). Any such list is speculative and tentative, but the test of this one will be in its implementation, a new departure for philosophical category theories. (shrink)

According to Kim, events are constituted by objects exemplifying property(ies) at a time. In this paper I wish to defend Kim's theory of events from one source of criticism, extending it by taking into account a number of ideas developed by Davidson. In particular, I shall try to avoid events proliferation – one of the most serious problems in Kim's theory – by using a suggestion Kim himself advances, that is, by taking adverbs and the like to be events' (...) rather than properties' modifiers. Keywords: events, properties, adverbs, modifiers. (shrink)

This article points out the challenges to current models for media ethics that arise from the private ownership of public media, and it proposes a new model that integrates Adam Smith's free-market theory and his system of moral reasoning. The model creates moral obligations to maintain the integrity of a system for anyone who profits from it. This model renews an appeal for the contemporary notion of transparency and is built on an analogy between the system of the (...) class='Hi'>free market for creating wealth and the system of the free press for producing reliable market information. (shrink)

: The question of whether science may usefully be viewed as a market process has recently been addressed by Mäki (1999), who concludes that "either free-market economics is self-defeating, or else there must be two different concepts of free market, one for the ordinary economy, the other for science." Here I argue that such pessimism is unwarranted. Mäki proposes (see also Wible 1998) that the conduct of economic research itself be taken, self-reflexively, as a test case for any (...) suggested economics of science. While agreeing that we may expect economics to apply to the conduct of economic research itself, I demonstrate that there is a lack of cogency, both in Mäki's argument for his proposal and in his attempt to implement a reflexivity test. Mäki asks what would be exchanged in the scientific "market for ideas" (see also Sent 1997). The answer is that recognition is exchanged for the opportunity to use another's research results. The identification of an organized and pervasive system of exchange establishes a firm basis for analyzing science as a market process. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed, in the global justice literature, that global injustices are best characterised in terms of the violation or unfulfilment of human rights. I suggest that global justice theorists are overconfident on this point. For decolonising peoples, contemporary global injustice is likely to be characterised in terms drawn from local histories of injustice and the constellations of thick ethical concepts they contain. To make the point I describe how the Māori of New Zealand, who do not reject human (...) rights, typically make no reference to human rights in political argument. I argue that the Māori are reasonable to consider human rights talk to be ‘one thought too many’, and the considerations that make this so typically apply in other postcolonial contexts of political activity. (shrink)

Can market socialism realize the socialist vision of the good society by ending exploitation and alienation, substantially reducing inequalities of wealth and income, ensuring full employment, and correcting other market irrationalities? A comparative analysis of the organizational forms of capitalism (notably the small owner?operated firm and the large corporation) and market socialism (the self?managed cooperative that rents its capital from the state) reveals the relative efficiencies of capitalism in reducing transaction costs, in turn reducing the opportunities for exploitation. By contrast, (...) the transaction cost inefficiencies of the organizations of market socialism permit and encourage forms of exploitation that are precluded or discouraged under capitalism. (shrink)

According to a widespread interpretation of Berkeley’s philosophy, advocated, for example, by Kant and Reid, Berkeley’s main claim in the Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge is that there are no material, but only mental entities. In the following essay, it is argued that this reading of Berkeley’s idealism is mistaken. Berkeley does not hold ontological idealism, that is, the view that there is not a material world, to be true, but only counterfactual idealism, that is, the claim that (...) material entities counterfactually depend upon mental substances for their existence. While defending this interpretation of Berkeley’s philosophy, I examine in some detail his theory of ideas and his account of corporeal substances. I conclude by discussing several objections to the reading of Berkeley’s idealism advanced in this essay. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJohn Tomasi argues that a theory of justice should include economic liberty since it provides people with a way of living self-authored lives. However, as Aristotelians have pointed out, even seemingly neutral theories of justice rely on non-neutral conceptions of the good. In Tomasi's case, the ideal of self-authorship assumes that it is good to exert economic agency and in so doing, exercise one's economic liberty. Thus, Tomasi equates self-authorship with participation in market activities, tacitly universalizing what is, in fact, (...) a narrow and objectionable conception of the good. (shrink)

Transition has not always been a success story. In some cases failure was due to the introduction of topdown legislature, which was not always compatible with the existing informal rules of the game. In other cases transition was just a euphemism for a fight for power with little substantial change.Still, most Western analysts indulged in analysing all East-European economies according to a rather standard pattern. This paper explains this approach by referring to the need to maintain rentseeking policies in the (...) West, to create new rents in the East. Western governments complied with the constructivistic view willingly, especially in the EU area, for social engineering was instrumental in order to acquire and expand consensus on the principles of state interference.La transition n’a pas toujours été une réussite. Dans certains cas, les échecs ont été dus à l’ instauration d’un corps législatif directif souvent incompatible avec les règles de jeu informelles. Dans d’autres cas, la transition fut un simple euphémisme pour une lutte pour le pouvoir, peu susceptible de donner lieu à des changements significatifs.De plus, la plupart des chercheurs occidentaux ont analysé les économies de l’Europe de l’Est avec les outils du modèle néoclassique standard. L’auteur explique cette orientation en invoquant la volonté de maintenir les politiques de recherche de rente à l’Ouest, et d’en créer de nouvelles à l’Est. Les gouvernements occidentaux ont volontairement cédé à une vision constructiviste, notamment dans la zone de l’Union Européenne, car l’ingénierie sociale a été un instrument majeur dans la réalisation et l’extension du consensus autour des principes d’interventions étatiques. (shrink)

The virtue of internalizing environmental costs so that prices reflect full social opportunity costs at the margin, reaffirmed by Terry Anderson and Donald Leal, is unarguable. Beyond that, however, Anderson and Leal's Free Market Environmentalism neglects the classic works in the intellectual tradition to which it is supposed to be a contribution; is unconvincing and inconsistent in the functions it ascribes to the ?environmental entrepreneur?; conflates problems of distribution and scale with the problem of allocation; ignores international dimensions; and (...) misrepresents the debate over ?sustainable development.? (shrink)

When the accrediting association for collegiate schools of business, AACSB International, reformulated its accreditation standards to include a systematic assessment of undergraduates’ progress in analytic and reflective thinking, our interdisciplinary team looked at available instruments. Logistical problems, concerns about validity, and an interest in assessing quantitative skills not covered in the available instruments led us to devise the Texas Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills™ (TACTS™). As part of the process we followed a suggestion from Scriven and Fisher and incorporated novel (...) multiple-rating items. We went through a lengthy process of test validation, employing both expert consultants and a large-scale comparison between performances on a standard critical thinking skills test and the TACTS™. Consequently, our university is in a position to regularly assess the progress made by undergraduates from our College of Business in acquiring the relevant analytic and reflective thinking skills. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy is an engaged theoretical enterprise with a critical perspective on any philosophical positions which may perpetuate male dominance. It also seeks a general understanding of what needs to be changed in the social world so as to empower women. According to this general characterization, many socialist thinkers could be counted as feminist philosophers, since they assume that male domination has its roots in systems of private property and believe that empowering women requires constructing socialist alternatives to capitalism. However, (...) for the purposes of this article I will consider only those thinkers who wrote specifically about the relation between women's situation and socialism, thus setting aside writers like Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt, important though they may be for the development of anticapitalist thought in general. (shrink)

We argue that the lack of large cross-cultural differences in many games with student subjects from developed countries may be due to the nature of the games studied. These games tap primarily basic psychological reactions, like fairness and reciprocity. Once we look at norm-enforcement, in particular punishment, we find large differences even among culturally rather homogeneous student groups from developed countries.

ABSTRACT The recent study of African politics suggests that while African voters tend to be ambivalently positive about democratic reforms, they are even less supportive of market reforms. African states have, if anything, been ahead of their publics in instituting economic reforms. But African leaders have failed to explain or defend these policies to their electorates. This may reflect their own ambivalence—at best—about capitalism.

This essay armies that Kant's philosophy provides a justification for free markets. The myths about Kant are that he was a recluse, knew nothing about business, and that his epistemology divorced reason from reality, while his primary interest was metaphysics. Yet Kant's categorical imperative demands obedience even in the face of uncertainty about the external world. Adam Smith described this principle as the inward testimony of an impartial observer. Smith and Kant put individual decisions at the center of morality, (...) but agreed that people have a tendency to make morally inferior choices. Those who propose to regulate the economy are as troubled by this tendency as those they regulate. The self-sacrifice prescription is economically, psychologically, and morally unstable. In recommending market competition. Smith was unconsciously applying a Kantian formula. Market decisions are individual decisions. Individuals prefer to do business with those they trust: this is an incentive to honesty. A morality that depends upon incentives is imperfect but superior to a morality imposed by force. (shrink)

This article is devoted to examine two theories on the origin of cognition. The first of them is a neurobiological theory by de authors V. Mountcastle and J. Hawkins working separately. The second one is a theory from the Cognitive Psychology by D. Gentner. It is interesting to check that exists a strong congruence between both of them despite they have absolutely different methodologies. Two different ways lead to postulate the analogy and their mechanisms as the main element of cognition. (...) The present article gives reasons for embracing the analogy as being the main cause of the origin of knowledge in the infant. Besides, it explains why language is the main cause of adult human intelligence and it also denies the need of existence of any innate lexicon or vocabulary. (shrink)

What is typical of Hayek's challenge concerning socialism is that he always maintained that this question was for economic theory to decide. Sketching the historical background of what has come to be known as the "socialist calculation debate" (section 1), I try to link this debate with the Menger-Wieser Zurechnungsproblem and show that the Pareto-Barone approach has determined the theoretical form of this economic controversy. I then go on to explore Hayek's 'inapplicability' argument (section 2) and try to show how (...) it is related to Mises' 'logical impossibility’ argument. This is followed by an examination of Hayek's second argument (section 3), which I refer to as 'the evolutionary argument'. I display what is the specific gist of this argument and connect it tightly to the first one. I then discuss certain methodological issues (section 4) pertaining to the allegedly radical difference between Mises' arguments and Hayek's tentative refutation of socialism. Here I challenge the received view that Mises' based his case on the 'impossibility in principle' of socialism, whereas Hayek's own position was to challenge the 'possibility in practice' of a centrally planned economy. This reading (especially by Willem Keizer) of Hayek's contribution to the debate seems to me misguided and unwarranted. I attempt to propose, on the contrary, that both lines of reasoning involve the same kind as arguments since both of them should be interpreted as impossibility theorems. Finally (section 5) I try to give an appropriate and adequate answer to the question raised in the title of this paper. (shrink)

The Book „Economy, Democracy, and Liberal Socialism“ is a milestone in combining Rawlsian thought and critical theory in order to argue for market socialism with a strong form of economic democracy. This introduction gives an overview over the articles in the special issue discussing this proposal.

In this collection, twelve philosophers, historians, and political philosophers-scholars with a diverse set of disciplinary and political leanings-assess aspects of socialism in light of its recent reversals. Some of the essays consider what made the socialist project seem compelling to its advocates, examining the moral and political values that made socialism appealing to intellectuals. Others evaluate whether there are aspects of socialism that ought to be preserved, such as its quest for equality and community. Some essays examine whether free-market (...) systems need to be further modified in response to ongoing socialist critiques. Several others argue for the continuing validity of socialism in its social democratic incarnation, suggesting ways in which socialism may still have a productive future. Still others condemn the socialist project as inherently misguided in theory, while also portraying 'really existing socialism' as cataclysmic in practice. (shrink)

Dans une société où le vêtement doit rendre visibles toutes les hiérarchies sociales, le port par les femmes de tout ou partie du costume masculin, a longtemps été considéré comme une atteinte grave aux commandements divins, avant d’être condamné par la loi civile et la morale dominante. Pour celles qui osèrent s’habiller en hommes, le transvestisme fut d’abord un moyen de survie : déguisement des persécutées et des amoureuses, habillement commode des pauvresses et des patriotes. Il leur permit aussi de (...) rendre visibles des revendications de liberté physique, d’égalité économique et de dépassement du cadre binaire des relations de sexe. Images de subversion politique et/ou d’affirmation d’une identité sexuelle non conforme. (shrink)