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Say you wanted to teach a liberal arts-style freshman seminar that introduced students to the idea of reflecting on politics and society, but you didn’t want to turn it into yet another Applied Ethics or Introduction to Political Philosophy class that crammed in all the essential philosophical problems and texts: Capital Punishment, the Duty to Obey the Law, Abortion, Euthanasia, etc., on the one hand, and Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, etc., on the other. Instead, you’d much rather just use plain old essays — well-crafted, accessible, insightful, evocative, memorable essays — written by people who may or may not be academics or part of the academic tradition.

The kind of essay I’m thinking of would be one that didn’t so much need to be explained as experienced, that presents a viewpoint that seizes your imagination in some way, rather than an argument or conceptual apparatus that needs to be taken apart, dusted a little by a qualified technician, and then put back together in sound working order. These would be essays that have a force that can’t really be conveyed to someone who has not read them, and that become part of the background framework of your way of thinking about the political and social world and the stuff in it that matters. They would ideally be long enough to be a substantial read, worth assigning as a text, but not too long to be a task that requires the threat of academic sanctions to be completed. Above all, they must not be difficult to read or boring to think about. They should be the sort of thing people mean when they talk about the art of the essay.

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Here’s what I have in mind. Liberal political thought, to this point, has largely ignored a set of concerns that were central to many Labor movements, which might be called concerns over “workplace democracy” or what is sometimes called “democratic corporatism.”  With some notable exceptions (Pateman, Gould, Mansbridge), frequently offered by those operating in a Marxist framework, political philosophers have instead focused on issues of distribution or issues of legitimacy in terms of public reasons or political dialogue.  Relatively little attention has been paid to whether a society with profound inequalities in wealth, where corporations are dominant players in the political landscape, can be meaningfully democratic. There are a number of reasons for this omission, I think, including the assumptions that (1) if distribution problems are taken care of the rest will take care of itself or (2) the ideal society will have stringent campaign finance laws, public election financing, or some other way of insulating the political sphere from the economic sphere.  Given the economic and, following the Supreme Court Ruling, political-legal realities in the US for the indefinite future, I no longer believe that such assumptions will do.

Instead, I believe that if corporations are going to be dominant players in the political landscape for the indefnite future, more work needs to be done to consider whether such organizations need to be more democratic.  Are CEOs or Boards of Directors the “free speakers” for corporations, at liberty to use corporate money to influence election outcomes and policy debates?  Do campaign contributions require the approval of the majority of shareholders?  Do they require the approval of employees? There are of course reasons to favor discretionary decision making by executives - taking a vote for all decisions may leave firms unable to respond efficiently to market demands. Nonetheless, there are also substantial reasons to provide protections for workers or stockholders from what may be arbitrary or self-servingly indefensible decisions made by a board of directors. Also, the need for such rapid, discretionary decision-making with regard to political contributions is far from clear.  Treating corporations, in theory or in practice, as individuals with a right to free speech completely ignores these issues.

Later in his career Rawls himself more clearly distinguishes a property-owning democracy from the idea of a welfare state. A recent symposium in the Journal of Social Philosophy considers the implications of this distinction, in a way that is frequently relevant to the issue at hand. Given Citizens v. FEC, however, I believe that more work on the moral and political implications of corporate involvement in contemporary politics, and the ways in which workplace democracy can further democratic equality without unduly sacrificing market competitiveness, is necessary.  It is no longer plausible (if it ever was) in the American context, to believe that campaign finance law will insulate the political sphere from the economic sphere, such that inequalities in one need not entail inequalities in the other.

Any thoughts?

Drawing on John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice many have suggested that the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction is akin to the full/partial compliance distinction. In creating his ideal theory, Rawls assumes that people will comply (almost) perfectly with the requirements of justice. He then uses his original position argument to conclude that his first principle of justice should have priority over his second. Next, Rawls weakens his ideal theory assumptions, adding the constraint that people may not abide by the requirements of justice. He concludes that we should only embrace his general conception of justice in non-ideal theory.

Unfortunately, the canonical examples of ideal and non-ideal theories cannot be fully characterized as full and partial compliance theories respectively. As Simmons and others note, even Rawls says ideal theory requires more than perfect compliance. In creating his ideal theory he assumes, for instance, that the circumstances do not prevent justice from being secured. Furthermore, others have more recently provided ideal and non-ideal theories that are not full and partial compliance theories (respectively). The main thing that distinguishes Allen Buchanan’s and Michael Blake’s non-ideal theories from their ideal theories, for instance, is that their non-ideal theories assume that there will be states and consider what we should do given that we are confined to a statist system. Similarly, the main thing that distinguishes Ronald Dworkin’s non-ideal theory from his ideal theory is that he assumes that people only have different talents and disabilities in his ideal theory. Blake’s, Buchanan’s, and Dworkin’s ideal theories do not require perfect compliance. Assuming that there is something to the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction and these authors are not just using the terms in completely different ways, the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction cannot just be the full/partial compliance distinction.

Reflecting on the many ways people seem to use the terms, one might despair at the thought of trying to unify such disparate ideal and non-ideal theories. In the draft of his book manuscript Michael Blake suggests, for instance, that the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction is not that useful because it can mean many different things. He implores others to be careful to explain just what assumptions they are making in advancing any theory. Perhaps this is part of what drives Simmons and others to argue for one or another of these ways of thinking about the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction.

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The proposal strikes me as a very bad idea in a number of ways. I don’t see how the law liberates women from whatever social pressure there exists to wear a veil. Will wearing a balaclava in public be illegal too? If not, then won’t the law just force a change of attire? Nussbaum has some discussion of this general issue in her Liberty of Conscience, pp. 346-53, invoking the ability of Chicagoans (and the Dutch, and presumably the French) to conduct normal social interactions with their faces covered in winter.

What if feminists who believe that make-up is just a manifestation of the objectification of women in patriarchy, and hence symbolic of repression and degradation, are right? Is there a way to support the veil ban, but not think that this claim about make-up would justify a make-up ban?* How about t-shirts with sexist imagery and messages? Quite apart from dress codes, we can recognise prostitution as degrading, and hence contrary to the values of an egalitarian republic, without thinking it should be illegal, primarily because making it illegal may very well just make the lives of those women, so degraded, even worse.

So, a question: can anything be said in support of this proposal (from ideally a feminist perspective), that does not run into these and other problems?

*[I should add I think having to wear a burqa is worse than feeling compelled to wear make-up.]

For instance, one of the practices Providian is said to have developed involved substituting what they called “stealth pricing” for explicit annual fees. Instead of charging all its customers a flat fee of, say, $50 per year, Providian offered cards with zero annual fee but with steep penalties for late payments, going over your credit limit, etc. To many customers, Providian’s cards thus appeared to be free. But Providian knew that many of its customers - especially the low-income, high credit-risk customers it was targeting - would wind up paying much more in penalties than they would have with a flat annual fee, even if most customers (wrongly) believed the opposite to be true.

So, at least at first glance, it looks like Providian was exploiting several kinds of vulnerability on the part of these customers.  First, the customers were vulnerable insofar as they were likely to do the things that would incur penalties. And secondly, they were vulnerable insofar as they tended to underestimate the extent to which they would do this, and hence underestimate the true cost of the cards Providian was offering. Providian took advantage of these vulnerabilities to enhance its own profit (which, at its peak according to the documentary, were around $1 billion per year).

Is this a case of wrongful exploitation? It might be, but the story raises a few questions in my mind.

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Suppose, for the sake or argument, I’ve established that voters have a duty to vote for candidates or policies which they justifiedly believe will promote the common good.  Otherwise, they have a duty to abstain from voting.

Suppose that vote buying and selling are not illegal.  Now, suppose when Alf votes, he only votes for candidates whom he justifiedly believes will serve the common good.   So long as Alf does that, is there anything wrong with him selling his vote?  Is there anything wrong with paying him to vote that way?

In the current draft of The Ethics of Voting, I argue that it’s not wrong.  So long as Alf is justified in voting a particular way for free, then it’s permissible for him to take money to vote that way and it’s permissible to pay him to vote that way.

I’m curious why anyone would think otherwise.  I’ve looked at the literature on vote buying, and I haven’t found any good objections to Alf’s vote selling.  Much of the empirical literature and the a priori public choice models describe vote selling as harmful, but that’s only because they discuss what happens or would happen when people don’t vote to promote the common good.  So while I think these arguments are good arguments for legally prohibiting vote buying, they don’t say much about Alf’s case.  For instance, many (but not all) public choice economists think legal vote selling would lead to rent-seeking, but these arguments assume that voters will vote in self-interested ways rather than abide by a duty to vote for the common good.

Rather than go on about why I think Alf’s case of vote selling is permissible, and rather than discuss some of the objections I consider, I’m just curious why some of you might think Alf would do something wrong in selling his vote.  It may be that I’m overlooking some killer objection.  Thanks!  -J

A graduate student of mine is interested in doing some research on the topic of human rights.  I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good review article that presents the main debates in the contemporary literature on human rights, or a book that does the same.  I am not interested in a book that primarily offers its own distinctive take on the issue.  Rather, I would like something to help this student start to navigate the literature.

Thanks a lot for any ideas.

Victoria

The claim that the means of production ought to be owned publicly, rather than privately, seems to be one of if not the defining characteristics of socialism.  So it seems pretty important to be clear on what it refers to.

On the most natural reading, a “means of production” would be anything that’s used to produce.  But that seems very, very broad.  Sure, factories are means of production, but so are muffin trays.  So is my brain, and my muscles.

Do socialists hold that even these things should be publicly owned?  Does it depend on how we use them?  Nielsen says that a socialist will allow for personal private property - and muffin trays seem about as personal as one could get.  Does this mean that we’re allowed to bake muffins for ourselves?  For our neighbors?  For our neighbors in exchange for wine?

How, in other words, does a socialist (Marxist or otherwise) demarcate legitimate personal property from means of production?  Or can the two be reconciled in a principled way?  If public ownership of the means of production can be reconciled with private personal property, can it also be reconciled with some notion of self-ownership?

Tanya lives in a small, newly created country in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most important issue in the region is the treatment of a disenfranchised minority that lives throughout the country. Tanya truly dislikes the minority and wants to further damage them if she can. While public opinion concerning the minority varies greatly, the government has taken the side of the minority. Consequently, a ban has been placed on any action or public speech that is intended to hurt the disenfranchised minority. In other words, the government has made laws against hurting the minority, but Tanya wishes she could hurt them.

Now ask yourself: ‘To what extent do these laws diminish Tanya’s freedom?’

Once you have thought of an answer to this question, consider a case that is exactly the same except that Tanya wants to help the disenfranchised minority:

Tanya lives in a small, newly created country in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most important issue in the region is the treatment of a disenfranchised minority that lives throughout the country. Tanya truly cares about the minority and really wants to help them if she can. While public opinion concerning the minority varies greatly, the government has sided against the minority. Consequently, a ban has been placed on any action or public speech that is intended to help the disenfranchised minority. In other words, the government has made laws against helping the minority, but Tanya wishes she could help them.

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“Racial Generalizations, Police Disretion and Bayesian Contractualism.” In J. Kleinig (ed) `Handled with Discretion: Ethical Issues in Police Decision Making.’ New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

and one by Mathias Risse and Richard Zeckhauser (linked to here):

http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~mrisse/papers_Misc.htm

Both articles argue that under the right conditions - and conditions not too different from those obtaining in many countries at present - racial profiling is justified.

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Waste is “either (a) any process wherein something useful ceases to be useful or becomes less useful or (b) the output of such a process.”

For example, suppose I propose that we eliminate the system of nation-states and replace it with some other system (take your pick). One might reject that proposal out of hand simply because it is too utopian. But to what does this claim amount? Is it a sort of “Can’t get there from here” sort of claim? I.e., does it amount to saying something like, “That would be great, but we could never achieve that state of affairs given present, although contingently existing, constraints”? Or, is it something more - a claim about nomological necessity? But, what laws of nature would the realization of such a proposal (whatever it is) violate?

I ask this question partially because it seems to me that the question of empirical research in political philosophy is largely used in order to make arguments that, while they do not have the form of the utopia-charge above, nonetheless suggest one of the readings of the utopia-charge. The arguments run as follows:

1. Political theory P runs afoul of empirical evidence X and Y.

2. Political theories must not run afoul of empirical evidence of Type A, of which X and Y are tokens.

3. So, P should be rejected.

The major premise is (2), but why accept ANY premise like (2)? I presume any answer would appeal to something about the *aims* of political theory and then claim that anything with aims of that sort (i.e., the sort of aims that political theory has) must be regulated by certain norms, N1, N2, etc. And, among these norms is N*, which is Premise (2) above.

Now, that is not a simple argument to flesh out. It certainly isn’t something at which we can merely wave our hands. A lot more needs to be said, and a lot of it will be thickly normative in character.

Anyway, I am working on a paper on this, but I would really enjoy reading people’s comments about this. I know that what I have written is pretty jumbled and inchoate, but hey, such is my life. In general. Like, I live a jumbled, inchoate life.

Too early for bourbon, Matt

experiment

Thanks! -Nicole

1. Assumption: Libertarians agree that any existing states must be legitimate and some states should exist.
2. Assumption: Libertarians hold that for any existing states to be legitimate they must only exercise coercive force over (rights respecting) individuals to protect these individuals’ liberty.
3. From Simmons’ argument in “Consent theory for libertarians”: Libertarians should agree that for state to be legitimate, they must secure their subjects’ autonomous consent.
4. For states to secure their subjects autonomous consent, they must do what they can to enable their subjects to secure sufficient autonomy to autonomously consent to its rules.
5. To secure this autonomy most people (in all states) must be able to secure some minimal amount of healthcare, food, water, and shelter.
6. So, states must do what they can to enable most of their subjects to secure some minimal amount of healthcare, food, water, and shelter.
7. Implicit premise: If libertarians must agree that states must do what they can to enable most of their subjects to secure some minimal amount of healthcare, food, water, and shelter, they must be (some kind of) welfare liberals.
8. So libertarians should be (some kind of) welfare liberals.

Thoughts?

Thanks, -Nicole

This move has been highly controversial for several reasons. Some of these reasons include the following:

1. It is morally wrong to mix human and animal DNA in this way.

This first reason is perhaps the primary reason behind opposition to this legislation. There are several problems with this argument.

First, what do we mean by “morally wrong”? It is easy to claim a position is “morally wrong”; it is difficult to prove a position is morally wrong in a compelling way. That is, deontologists and consequentialists can agree on many ethical issues, but they will not agree on all ethical issues. Who then decides? We would have to see the best arguments on both sides in order to see which view should prevail. It is no use to say that x is “morally wrong” without a full account of morality, not least as there are many different camps and what is wrong (and right) is not self evident.

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