Peter Vallentyne

This is the second volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields. The papers in this volume address a range of central topics and represent cutting edge work in the field. They are grouped into three main themes: ideal theory, the moral assessment of states, and issues in social reliations.

Libertarianism holds that agents initially fully own themselves. Lockean libertarianism further holds that agents have the moral power to acquire private property in external things as long as a Lockean Proviso—requiring that “enough and as good” be left for others—is satisfied. Radical right-libertarianism, on the other hand, holds that satisfaction of a Lockean Proviso is not necessary for the appropriation of unowned things. This is sometimes defended on the ground that the initial status of external resources as unowned precludes any role for a Lockean Proviso. I shall show that this is a bad argument. Although I would argue that satisfaction of a Lockean Proviso is indeed a necessary condition for the appropriation of unowned things, I shall not attempt to establish that here. My goal here is more modest: to rebut one argument against the Lockean Proviso.

This problem has already been discussed by a number of authors.[i] Typically, however, authors take one of two extreme positions: they hold that all welfare should be taken at face value, or they hold that "suspect" welfare should be completely ignored. My contribution here is the following: First, I introduce the notion of unauthorized (suspect) welfare, of which welfare from meddlesome preferences, offensive tastes, expensive tastes, etc. are special cases. Second, I formulate four conditions of adequacy, applicable to any welfare-based theory, for dealing with unauthorized welfare. These conditions require that unauthorized welfare be "discounted" (play a restricted role) but not be completely ignored. Thus, I shall be exploring a position intermediate between taking "unauthorized" welfare at face value and simply ignoring it. Moreover, the four conditions jointly determine exactly how existing welfare-based theories need to be revised so as to be appropriately sensitive to unauthorized welfare.

Earl Conee is a well known contemporary defender of the impossibility of moral dilemmas. In his 1982 paper "Against Moral Dilemmas" he argued that moral dilemmas are impossible because the existence of such a dilemma would entail that some obligatory action is forbidden, which is absurd. More recently, in "Why Moral Dilemmas are Impossible" he has defended the impossibility of moral dilemmas by claiming that the moral status of an action depends in part on the moral status of its alternatives. I will here argue that this claim -- as he understands it -- is sufficiently controversial to undermine the force of his argument.