The famous Japanese novelist offers his personal interpretation of a classic work on samurai ethics, everyday life, and spiritual salvation.

In Otsuka ( 1998 ), I endorse an incompatibilist Principle of Avoidable Blame. In this rejoinder to Fischer and Tognazzini ( 2009 ), I defend this principle against their charge that it is vulnerable to Frankfurt-type counterexample.

Michael Otsuka sets out to vindicate left-libertarianism, a political philosophy which combines stringent rights of control over one's own mind, body, and life with egalitarian rights of ownership of the world. Otsuka reclaims the ideas of John Locke from the libertarian Right, and shows how his Second Treatise of Government provides the theoretical foundations for a left-libertarianism which is both more libertarian and more egalitarian than the Kantian liberal theories of John Rawls and Thomas Nagel. Otsuka's libertarianism is founded on (...) a right of self-ownership. Here he is at one with 'right-wing' libertarians, such as Robert Nozick, in endorsing the highly anti-paternalistic and anti-moralistic implications of this right. But he parts company with these libertarians in so far as he argues that such a right is compatible with a fully egalitarian principle of equal opportunity for welfare. In embracing this principle, his own version of left-libertarianism is more strongly egalitarian than others which are currently well known. Otsuka argues that an account of legitimate political authority based upon the free consent of each is strengthened by the adoption of such an egalitarian principle. He defends a pluralistic, decentralized ideal of political society as a confederation of voluntary associations. Part I of Libertarianism without Inequality concerns the natural rights of property in oneself and the world. Part II considers the natural rights of punishment and self-defence that form the basis for the government's authority to legislate and punish. Part III explores the nature and limits of the powers of governments which are created by the consensual transfer of the natural rights of the governed. Libertarianism without Inequality is a book which everyone interested in political theory should read. (shrink)

The causal nature of evolution is one of the central topics in the philosophy of biology. The issue concerns whether equations used in evolutionary genetics point to some causal processes or purely phenomenological patterns. To address this question the present article builds well-defined causal models that underlie standard equations in evolutionary genetics. These models are based on minimal and biologically plausible hypotheses about selection and reproduction, and generate statistics to predict evolutionary changes. The causal reconstruction of the evolutionary principles shows (...) adaptive evolution as a genuine causal process, where fitness and selection are both causes of evolution. 1 Introduction2 The Philosophical Puzzle3 Causal Models4 Causal Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics4.1 Univariate quantitative genetics model4.1.1 The causal graph4.1.2 Structural equations4.1.3 Deriving evolutionary transition functions4.2 One-locus population genetics model5 Evolution as a Causal Process5.1 Selection as a causal process5.2 Causes of evolutionary change6 Conclusion. (shrink)

Over the past decade philosophers of biology have discussed whether evolutionary theory is a causal theory or a phenomenological study of evolution based solely on the statistical features of a population. This article reviews this controversy from three aspects, respectively concerning the assumptions, applications, and explanations of evolutionary theory, with a view to arriving at a definite conclusion in each contention. In so doing I also argue that an implicit methodological assumption shared by both sides of the debate, namely the (...) overconfidence in conceptual analysis as a tool to understand the scientific theory, is the real culprit that has both generated the problem and precluded its solution for such a long time. (shrink)

Some are blameless for posing a threat to the live of another because they are not morally responsible for being a threat. Others are blameless in spite of their responsibility. On what has come to be known as the "moral responsibility account" of liability to defensive killing, it is such responsibility, rather than blameworthiness, for threatening another that renders one liable to defensive killing. Moreover, one's lack of responsibility for being a threat grounds one's nonliability to defensive killing. In "Killing (...) the Innocent in Self-Defense" (1994), I offered an early formulation and defense of such an account. In Section I of this chapter, I renew my defense of the claim that it is impermissible to kill a passive nonresponsible threat in self-defense. In Section II, I renew my defense of the claim that it is permissible to kill a blameless but morally responsible threat in self-defense. (shrink)

How to Pool Risks across Generations makes the case for the collective provision of pensions, on fair terms of social cooperation. Through the insurance of a mutual association which extends across society and over multiple generations, we share one another's fates by pooling risks across both space and time. Resources are transferred, not simply between different people, but also within the possible future lives of each person: from one's more fortunate to one's less fortunate future selves. The book opens with (...) an investigation of the longevity and investment risk that even a single individual on a desert island would face in providing for her old age. From this atomistic starting point, it builds up, within and across the chapters, to increasingly collective forms of pension provision. By joining together, it is possible to tame the risks we would face as individuals each with our own private pension pot. A collective pension can be justified as a 'social union of social unions': an enduring corporate body, which is formed by agreements to pool risks, in a manner that involves reciprocity between the various individuals that constitute the collective. Even though all individuals age and die, a collective pension scheme remains evergreen, as the average age of members remains relatively unchanged, through the influx of new members to replace those who retire. It is therefore possible to smooth risks indefinitely across as well as within generations, to the mutual advantage of each. (shrink)

I argue that prioritarianism cannot be assessed in abstraction from an account of the measure of utility. Rather, the soundness of this view crucially depends on what counts as a greater, lesser, or equal increase in a person’s utility. In particular, prioritarianism cannot accommodate a normatively compelling measure of utility that is captured by the axioms of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s expected utility theory. Nor can it accommodate a plausible and elegant generalization of this theory that has been (...) offered in response to challenges to von Neumann and Morgenstern. This is, I think, a theoretically interesting and unexpected source of difficulty for prioritarianism, which I explore in this article. (shrink)

This paper deals with the debates over _kālamṛtyu_ (“timely death” or human death at the end of the life span) and _akālamṛtyu_ (“untimely death” or premature death that occurs when the life span still remains). In cultural areas like ancient India, where the _karman_ doctrine or the law of _karman_ is firmly rooted, such “timely death” and “untimely death” have seemed to be the catalysts for the philosophical and ethical debates. Assuming that a person’s life itself would be affected by (...) the person’s past _karman_s, each life span and death of individual persons would have been predetermined by their past _karman_s, and consequently, any efforts for preserving or prolonging life span in this world would have no meaning. If it were so, in the first place, does the _karman_ doctrine leave room for “untimely death”? This paper discusses how Buddhist literature, especially the _Questions of King Milinda_ (_Milindapañha_), and the Āyurvedic literature approach the above issues. (shrink)

Free will in intentional consciousness is exposed to skeptics since it was found that subconscious neural activities, what is called readiness potential, precedes the intention to an action. The question of whether free will is an authentic illusion has been argued not only in psychology but physics and philosophy. Most of scientists, however, think that the intentional consciousness who believes to have his/her own free will, is determined by readiness potential in advance, and that free will cannot coexist with determinism. (...) We here point out that knowing to be determined in advance cannot be verified till local event at a local site can be known from a different local site without disturbing the event. That is the assumption of locality. We here show that determinism, free will and locality are three essential elements in consciousness, and show that they constitute trilemma. The fact that one of three elements must be abandoned can lead to three types of consciousness. Absence of free will can constitute type I consciousness which is consistent with symptoms in autism spectrum disorder such as weakened theory of mind. Absence of determinism can constitute type II consciousness which is consistent with symptoms in schizophrenia such as thought insertion, self-other integration. Absence of locality can constitute type III consciousness which is consistent with typical people. We can find the entanglement of intentional consciousness with unconsciousness including readiness potential only in type III consciousness. Finally, we show that sense of agency and free will cannot be established until consciousness as an entanglement is implemented. (shrink)

I propose that liberal egalitarians and libertarians can find common ground in support of an unfamiliar means of forcing well off individuals to come to the assistance of the least well off. Such means would not, as is typically the case, involve the taxation of the income of all well off individuals. Rather, assistance would be provided by the taxation of only those well off individuals who have been properly convicted of performing justifiably criminalized acts that they had no right (...) to commit. In Section I, I argue that many liberal egalitarians will discover that a strong case can be made for the taxation of only the unjust, since such a scheme would mitigate the objectionable nature of the coercion that must be applied in order to provide for the least well off. In Section II, I argue that libertarians who reject standard schemes of redistributive taxation will not also be able to resist the case for taxation of the unjust. In Section III, I defend taxation of the unjust against the objection that it would call for punishment in excess of what justice permits. (shrink)

Section II of this article originated as a commentary on Véronique Munoz-Dardé’s “The Distribution of Numbers and the Comprehensiveness of Reasons.” I have delivered subsequent versions of this article at the University of Reading, UCLA, the University of Bristol, the University of Leeds, and the University of Oxford, and thank all who commented on those occasions. I am also grateful to G. A. Cohen, Iwao Hirose, Véronique Munoz-Dardé, Alex Voorhoeve, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for their written (...) comments. (shrink)

I defend an incompatibilist 'Principle of Avoidable Blame' according to which one is blameworthy for performing an act of a given type only if one could instead have behaved in a manner for which one would have been blameless. First, I demonstrate that this principle is resistant to Harry Frankfurt-type counterexample. Second, I present a positive argument for this principle that appeals to the relation of blame to the 'reactive attitude' of indignation. Finally, I argue against the possibility of blamelessly (...) stumbling into a 'moral blind alley' where one would be blameworthy for whatever one is capable of doing. (shrink)

I presented an earlier version of this paper to the Law and Philosophy Discussion Group in Los Angeles, whose members I would like to thank for their comments. In addition, I would also like to thank the following people for reading and providing written or verbal commentary on earlier drafts: Robert Mams, Rogers Albritton, G. A. Cohen, David Copp, Matthew Hanser, Craig Ihara, Brian Lee, Marc Lange, Derk Pereboom, Carol Voeller, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs. I owe (...) special thanks to Timothy Hall and Seana Shiffnn for their insightful and helpful comments. (shrink)

Some are blameless for posing a threat to the lives of another because they are not morally responsible for being a threat. Others are blameless in spite of their responsibility. On what has come to be known as the “moral-responsibility account” of liability to defensive killing, it is such responsibility, rather than blameworthiness, for threatening another that renders one liable to defensive killing. Moreover, one’s lack of responsibility for being a threat grounds one’s nonliability to defensive killing. The chapter defends (...) the claim that it is impermissible to kill a passive nonresponsible threat in self-defense. It further defends the claim that it is permissible to kill a blameless but morally responsible threat in self-defense. (shrink)

Philosophy & Public Affairs, 34 (2006): 109-35.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 59-69 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist Views on Ritual Pactice Protestant Character of Modern Buddhist Movements Yukio MatsudoUniversity of HeidelbergWhat is the relationship between ritual and ethical activities in Nichiren Buddhism, as practiced in the Soka Gakkai (SG)? SG is a lay Buddhist organization which is, as such, involved extensively in secular affairs, specifically in the field of educational, cultural, social, and peace-promoting programs. (...) The question is, therefore, not at all whether there is a connection of religious practice and ethical activities. Rather it begs an explanation regarding its ideological background. In this respect a further reflection on a metareflection level would be useful to clarify the "modern" character of SG, which may be discussed in relation to Christian Protestantism since it has been regarded as a spiritual background for the formation of modern ethos such as individualism, egalitarianism, and social engagement. Thus, I will depict the fundamental feature of Nichiren Buddhism as "reformative Buddhism," which makes the practice of Buddhism congruent with "modern" understanding of religious roles in daily life as well as social engagement. On the other hand, I will also discuss some problems being inherent to the Western acculturation of the reformed and "engaged Buddhism." 1 The Ethical Activities of the SG in the World Ethical and Social Aspects of the Movement It is generally well known that the lay Buddhist organization, SG, as a whole has initiated wide and multifaceted activities even in an international level in order to transform its religious ideals into social reality, specifically in the field of educational, cultural, social, and peace-promoting programs. For this purpose it established educational institutes ranging from kindergartens to universities as well as research [End Page 59] institutes such as the Institute of Oriental Philosophy (founded 1961), the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century (founded 1993), the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research (founded 1996), and other centers for ecological researches. For promoting mutual respect and understanding through cultural expressions and exchanges several institutes have been established, like the Min-On Concert Association (founded 1963), the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum (founded 1991), and La Maison Littéraire de Victor Hugo in Bièvre, France (founded 1992). On a global level, its political involvement is, for a large part, situated as a NGO in the frame of the UNO and the UNESCO. With the help of the UNO, SG has organized all over the world expositions translating its concerns for peace, e.g., "Nuclear War: Threat to our World" and "War and Peace." With the Simon Wiesenthal Center it organized an exhibition "The Courage to Remember: Anne Frank and the Holocaust Exhibition." The issue of human rights is another of its major concerns. Commemorating the forty-fifth anniversary of the United Nations' adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, SG held an exhibition entitled "Toward the Century of Humanity: An Overview of Human Rights in Today's World" at the UN office in Geneva. Also, money received from fund-raising activities has been donated to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and related agencies to provide medical supplies and food, and to support educational programs in the areas concerned. To expose the horrors of war, SG has also published life histories written by members about their sufferings in war: "Women against War," "Cries for Peace," and "Peace is our Duty." Segmental Differentiation of Organizational Structure To meet the requirements of functional differentiation of today's modern societal life SG is organized in a segmental and hierarchical structure. The basic structure is the regional units, organized in a hierarchical model, and all members are integrated "in each group" in their residence area. At the same time each member belongs to a specific "division" which is organized according to gender, age, and occupation. There are the four divisions of men, women, young men, and young women. Additionally there are divisions for school boys and girls, university students, as well as divisions according to occupation such as artists, lawyers, medical doctors, academics, and so on. These divisional differentiations reflect the need... (shrink)

We argue that there is a marked shift in the moral weight of an increment in a person's well-being when one moves from a case involving only intra-personal trade-offs to a case involving only inter-personal trads-offs. This shift, we propose, is required by the separateness of persons. We also argue that the Priority View put forward by Parfit cannot account for such a shift. We also outline two alternative views, an egalitarian view and a claims-based view, that can account for (...) this shift. (shrink)

The causal nature of evolution is one of the central topics in the philosophy of biology. The issue concerns whether equations used in evolutionary genetics point to some causal processes or purely phenomenological patterns. To address this question the present article builds well-defined causal models that underlie standard equations in evolutionary genetics. These models are based on minimal and biologically plausible hypotheses about selection and reproduction, and generate statistics to predict evolutionary changes. The causal reconstruction of the evolutionary principles shows (...) adaptive evolution as a genuine causal process, where fitness and selection are both causes of evolution. 1 Introduction2 The Philosophical Puzzle3 Causal Models4 Causal Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics4.1 Univariate quantitative genetics model4.1.1 The causal graph4.1.2 Structural equations4.1.3 Deriving evolutionary transition functions4.2 One-locus population genetics model5 Evolution as a Causal Process5.1 Selection as a causal process5.2 Causes of evolutionary change6 Conclusion. (shrink)

In "What We Owe to Each Other", T. M. Scanlon argues that one should save the greater number when faced with the choice between saving one life and two or more different lives. It is, Scanlon claims, a virtue of this argument that it does not appeal to the claims of groups of individuals but only to the claims of individuals. I demonstrate that this argument for saving the greater number, indeed, depends, contrary to what Scanlon says, upon an appeal (...) to the claim of a group of individuals to be saved. (shrink)

Cohen endorses the coercive taxation of the talented at a progressive rate for the sake of realizing equality. By contrast, he denies that it is legitimate for the state to engage in the 'Stalinist forcing' of people into one or another line of work in order to bring about a more egalitarian society. He rejects such occupational conscription on grounds of the invasiveness of the gathering and acting upon information regarding people's preferences for different types of work that would be (...) required to implement such a policy. More precisely, Cohen maintains that the presence versus the absence of such intrusion explains why such Stalinist forcing of the talented is unacceptable whereas the progressive taxation of their income is legitimate. I argue that Cohen's appeal to invasiveness does not adequately capture the moral repugnance of the state's conscripting people into work at a given occupation. I propose that a right to self-ownership, and that which explains such a right, provides a better explanation than Cohen's of why Stalinist forcing is objectionable, whereas progressive taxation is not. 1. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to display the main lines of a left-libertarian argument I defend in my book Libertarianism without Inequality. I argue that left-libertarian theory can coherently combine robust rights to self-ownership and egalitarian rights to world-ownership. This allows us to oppose paternalism and consequentialism while defending a strongly egalitarian conception of justice. The model I advocate is one of equality of opportunity for welfare, and I show what justifies this choice. I conclude by clarifying one of (...) the consequences of my theory concerning the legitimacy conditions of political authority: viz. that admitting the existence of illiberal or hierarchical societies is consistent with full respect for people’s status as autonomous, rational agents and for the choices they make in fair circumstances of equality. (shrink)

• 15% of your grade: a short (1,500 word limit) paper due at 4 pm on September 26, on an assigned topic distributed two weeks in advance of the due date • 15% of your grade: an in-class mid-term exam on either October 23 or 30 (exact date TBC) • 30% of your grade: a longer (2,500 word limit) paper due by 4 pm on November 25, on an assigned topic distributed two weeks in advance of the due date • (...) 30% of your grade: a final exam on December 8 (1:00-2:50 p.m.) • 10% of your grade: participation in recitations.. (shrink)

We discuss two leading theories of distributive justice: egalitarianism and prioritarianism. We argue that while each has particular merits and shortcomings, egalitarian views more fully satisfy a key requirement of distributive justice: respect for both the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons.

For a prioritarian by contrast to a utilitarian, whether a certain quantity of utility falls within the boundary of one person's life or another's makes the following moral difference: the worse the life of a person who could receive a given benefit, the stronger moral reason we have to confer this benefit on this person. It would seem, therefore, that prioritarianism succeeds, where utilitarianism fails, to ‘take seriously the distinction between persons’. Yet I show that, contrary to these appearances, prioritarianism (...) fails, in ways strikingly parallel to those in which utilitarianism fails, to take this distinction seriously. In so doing, I draw on and develop an earlier critique of prioritarianism by disentangling and pressing two distinct separateness-of-persons objections offered there. One objection is that prioritarianism is insensitive to ‘prudential justifications’. The other is that it is insensitive to the competing claims of different individuals. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that it makes a moral difference whether an individual is worse off than she could have been. Here, I part company with consequentialists such as Parfit and side with contractualists such as Scanlon. But, unlike some contractualists, I reject the view that all that matters is whether a principle can be justified to each particular individual, where such a justification is attentive to her interests, complaints and other claims. The anonymous goodness of a distribution also (...) matters. My attempt to reconcile contractualist and consequentialist approaches proceeds via a serious of reflections on cases. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr’s classical work on the nature of causation in biology has had a huge influence on biologists as well as philosophers. Although his distinction between proximate and ultimate causation recently came under criticism from those who emphasize the role of development in evolutionary processes, the formal relationship between these two notions remains elusive. Using causal graph theory, this paper offers a unified framework to systematically translate a given “proximate” causal structure into an “ultimate” evolutionary response, and illustrates evolutionary implications (...) of various kinds of causal mechanisms including epigenetic inheritance, maternal effects, and niche construction. These results not only reveal the essential interplay between proximate and ultimate causation in the study of evolution, but also provide a formal method to evaluate or discover non-standard or yet unknown evolutionary phenomena. (shrink)

An argument against Parfit's view (in his chapter of Reasons and Persons on five mistakes in moral mathematics) that, rather than maximizing the difference one makes as an individual, one should join that group whose members together make the most positive difference in cases involving imperceptible benefits. It is shown how Parfit's defence of this view has the problematic implication either (1) that each outcome is less beneficial than itself or (2) that "less beneficial than" is not transitive.

We critically examine Denis Walsh’s latest attack on the causalist view of fitness. Relying on Judea Pearl’s Sure-Thing Principle and geneticist John Gillespie’s model for fitness, Walsh has argued that the causal interpretation of fitness results in a reductio. We show that his conclusion only follows from misuse of the models, that is, (1) the disregard of the real biological bearing of the population-size parameter in Gillespie’s model and (2) the confusion of the distinction between ordinary probability and Pearl’s causal (...) probability. Properly understood, the models used by Walsh do not threaten the causalist view of fitness. (shrink)

In 'Why It Matters that Some Are Worse off than Others,' we offer a new critique of the Priority View. In a recent article, Roger Crisp has argued that our critique is flawed. In this reply, we show that Crisp fails to grapple with, much less defeat, the central claim of our critique. We also show that an example that Crisp offers in support of the Priority View in fact lends support to our critique of that view.

The aim of this article is to refute Ronald Dworkin's claim that the provision of an equal opportunity to insure against risks is sufficient to render differences in people's circumstances that are the result of luck consistent with his theory of equality of resources. Section I addresses bad luck in the circumstances of individuals in the form of mental or physical incapacitation resulting from the vicissitudes of nature. Section II addresses bad luck which is the result of the choices of (...) other individuals to give or bequeath. (shrink)