Stephen Kershnar

There are three attractive principles that are held by many desert theorists. (1) Character-Desert Principle: A person’s character is a ground of moral desert. (2) Limited Responsibility for Character Principle: Persons are not fully morally responsible for their character. (3) Moral Responsibility Principle: If something grounds moral desert in a person, then she is fully morally responsible for it. Each of these principles is backed by some strong intuitions or arguments. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the Moral Responsibility Principle. This principle is not supported by an analysis of act-based desert. This rejection is in line with the observation that desert is affected by a number of factors that are outside of an individual’s control, e.g., degree of autonomy and desire content. It also fits with an explanation of desert in terms of fittingness.

If God is essentially all-good, then he is not morally responsible. If God is maximally great, then he is essentially both omnipotent and omniscient and these latter properties ensure that he is essentially all-good. From essential all-goodness, it follows that he does not have the power to choose evil. This in turn results in his lacking the power to do evil and thus his not being responsible for avoiding it. This conclusion is not defeated by objections that differ based on whether they deny, assert, or are independent of the claim that God is essentially all-good. I conclude that a maximally great being is not possible. Theism might remain true, however, if God is not a maximally great being. However, I claim, without defense here, that the best arguments for theism assume or entail that God is a maximally great being.

A contract in which the potential immigrants to the U.S. waive their right to non-emergency welfare benefits in return for their being allowed to come to the U.S. is not unjust. This is because the right to allow persons to immigrate in return for their waiving any future claim on non-emergency welfare benefits is included in other moral rights that the U.S. has. Nor is the transaction exploitative since it is beneficial to the average immigrant and since he gains a fair share of the transactional surplus. Thus, if such a transaction is permissible for the U.S. citizens and they favor it, then the U.S. government as their agent is other-things-equal obligated to implement it.

The most qualified applicant is the one who has the propensity to maximally satisfy the employer’s preferences. An applicant’s propensity is a function of her willingness to work hard together with the relevant capacity or potentiality to do the tasks constituting a job. Given this account of the most qualified applicant, there is only a weak duty, if any, to hire persons based on their being the most qualified. Such a duty is not justified by reference to rights, desert, fairness, or the maximization of welfare. However, such a duty may come about via promises made by the employer or the employee who does the hiring. These results suggest that anti-discrimination laws cannot be justified based on merit, although other justifications might still be available.

This book is an analysis and evaluation of torture. My take on torture is unique for four reasons. First, it provides a distinct analysis of what torture is. Second, it argues that on non-consequentialist grounds, specifically rights-based ones, torture is sometimes permissible. Third, it argues that torturers are not always vicious. Fourth, it argues that it is plausible that these conclusions apply to some real world cases. In short, it fills the following gap: it evaluates torture from a rights-based perspective and finds that in some cases it is permissible. My book is a unique philosophical exploration of torture. It combines a philosophical analysis of torture with a moral evaluation of it. The philosophical analysis of torture has not received a lot of attention. My analysis defends a minimal view of torture and one that distinguishes the analysis of the concept of torture from the moral evaluation of it. The resulting theory, the minimalist theory, differs noticeably from other analyses. My moral evaluation of torture sharply differs from the rest of the literature. The evaluation focuses on the non-consequentialist approach to morality, that is, it assumes that what makes an action right is not solely whether it brings about the best results. Using the central feature of non-consequentialism, moral rights, I argue that torture is justified in a number of theoretical contexts, including defense, punishment, and when the person to be tortured consents. I then look at the actual world and argue that it is plausible to think that there are real-world cases where torture is justified. My analysis also looks at whether torture is virtuous in an attempt to get at what intuitively repels us about torture. My analysis is not only the first look at the issue, but it also ties in with recent developments in virtue theory. As in the analysis of the permissibility of torture, I try to show that my findings with regard to virtue are not merely of theoretical interest, but are plausible given some real-world cases.

David Boonin’s book, The Problem of Punishment, combines an incredible command of the literature with an organized and careful discussion. With the possible exception of Michael Moore’s book, Placing Blame, this is the best book ever written on the philosophy of punishment. His overall thesis is that legal punishment is wrong. Boonin argues that the purported justifications of punishment fail the Foundational Test or the Entailment Test. (1) Foundational Test: A theory satisfies the foundation test if and only if it does not have implications that are so counterintuitive that there is sufficient reason to reject the theory. (2) Entailment Test: A theory satisfies the Entailment Test if and only if it entails that legal punishment is permissible. Despite the book’s brilliance, Boonin’s overall strategy is mistaken. He tries to show that no theory can justify punishing all and only people who violate the law and entail that all such offenders should receive proportionate punishments. He also argues that many of the theories fail on their own terms, but let us leave aside these specific criticisms. Consider the following question: Are the laws in question are perfectly just or not? If the laws are perfectly just, then we are talking about an ideal set of laws. The ideal laws might well perfectly track one of the factors such as desert, forfeiture, or fairness because doing so is what makes them perfectly just. In this case, the theory in question will pass the Entailment Test. If the laws are not perfectly just, then it is not clear why it is desirable for a theory to justify punishing all offenders. For example, if the state does not allow someone to engage in free speech, practice the religion of her choice, or deny intercourse to her husband, it is not clear why in such cases we should think that an adequate theory should justify state punishment. Boonin’s book is must reading for anyone who wants to explore the moral status of punishment. His overall strategy, however, is mistaken.

Affirmative action programs are not justified by compensatory justice. They place a disproportionate burden on white-male applicants. White-male applicants do not owe compensation because they committed a relevant wrongdoing or because they benefitted from another’s wrongdoing. They did not commit a relevant wrongdoing. Receipt of an unjust benefit, when unavoidable and mixed with hard work, does not justify a duty to compensate a victim of the injustice. Thus, the compensatory-justice argument for affirmative action fails.

The moral theory justifying punishment will shape the debate over numerous controversial issues such as the moral permissibility of the death penalty, probation, parole, and plea bargaining, as well as issues about conditions in prison and access to educational opportunities in prison. In this essay I argue that the primary goal of the criminal justice system is to inflict suffering on, and only on, those who deserve it. If I am correct, the answer to issues involving the criminal justice system should be answered in large part by considering whether the practice in question furthers the infliction of suffering on, and only on, those who deserve it.

In two recent cases, Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306. and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244., the Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause permitted state schools to use race-sensitive admissions in order to obtain the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body. The diversity-based argument for race-sensitive admissions, scholarships, awards, and other opportunities at universities should have been rejected because it does not consider the full range of costs and benefits and because the more narrow educational effects probably weigh against such programs. However, this does not suggest that applicants' race, ethnicity, and gender should be ignored. Rather the same consideration that led to the defeat of the diversity argument, i.e., reasoning capacity, supports the consideration of demographic factors. However, attention to such factors further undermines the consequentialist case for affirmative action

Sexual fantasy is a non-perceptual thought that is sexually arousing. It has several paradigmatic features. The structure of a fantasy involves an agent taking pleasure in an object that is often a visual depiction of an event. The fantasy is under the agent’s control and has a semantic content. Since mere sexual fantasizing about someone respects the individual who are depicted in the fantasy, the rightness of a sexual fantasy depends on whether consequentialism is true and, if so, whether the particular fantasy brings about better results an alternative activities. Sexual fantasies can be intrinsically good or bad depending on whether the pleasure is malicious and whether the fantasy contains a false statement. The vast majority are not intrinsically bad since they neither involve an unfitting attitude toward something that is itself bad nor commit the subject to a falsity. Hence, if one rejects consequentialism, then most sexual fantasies, including many of the most violent ones, are neither wrong nor intrinsically bad.

In "Kant on Freedom and the Appropriate Punishment," the author begins by noting that in The Metaphysics of Morals , Kant asserts that a wrongdoer should be given a punishment that is similar to his wrongdoing. He then makes two interpretive claims with regard to this assertion.First, he claims that the best way to understand this assertion in the context of other things Kant says is that the state is obligated to punish a wrongdoer in a way that imposes on the wrongdoer an amount of suffering equal to what he caused and through an action that is similar in type to the wrongdoer's offense. The argument in support of this claim occurs in section II and rests on two more specific interpretive claims about Kant's theory: that state punishment should resemble the wrongdoer's acts and should involve the same level of suffering as was involved in the original wrongdoing and that punishment in accordance with these constraints is an obligatory duty.Second, the author claims that on Kant's theory this principle of appropriate punishment is justified because it restores equality in the distribution of freedom for members of the state. The argument in support of this claim occurs in section III. The argument rests in part on Kant's justification of the state and coercion in terms of the value of equalized freedom. By applying this same justification to Kant's principle of appropriate punishment, the author claims to be able to account for the principle as well as to relate the principle to Kant's political theory. Der vorliegende Beitrag beginnt mit der Feststellung, daß Kant in der Metaphysik der Sitten geltend macht, ein Übeltäter solle eine Bestrafung erleiden, die mit seiner Tat vergleichbar ist. Im Hinblick auf diese Forderung Kants werden zwei Thesen aufgestellt.Erstens wird behauptet, die genannte Forderung sei vor dem Hintergrund sonstiger Äußerungen Kants am besten dahingehend zu verstehen, daß der Staat verpflichtet sei, einen Übeltäter in einer Weise zu bestrafen, die diesem ein Maß von Leid zufügt, das dem von ihm selbst verursachten gleichkommt. Geschehen müsse dies durch eine Handlung, die in ihrer Art dem vom Übeltäter begangenen Verbrechen entspricht. Die Begründung dieser These erfolgt in Abschnitt II und stützt sich wiederum auf zwei mehr in die Einzelheiten gehende Thesen zu Kants Theorie: Staatliche Bestrafung sollte den Handlungen des Übeltäters ähneln und Leid in einer Größenordnung mit sich bringen, wie es auch die ursprüngliche Tat zur Folge hatte. Bestrafung in Übereinstimmung mit diesen Bedingungen ist eine Pflicht.Zweitens wird die Auffassung vertreten, dieses Prinzip angemessenen Strafens sei im Rahmen der Theorie Kants gerechtfertigt, weil es für die Mitglieder des Staates die Gleicheit in bezug auf die Verteilung der Freiheit wiederherstelle. Die Begründung dieser These findet sich in Abschnitt III und beruht zum Teil auf Kants Rechtfertigung von Staat und Zwang durch den Verweis auf den Wert gleichmäßig verteilter Freiheit. Die Übernahme eben dieser Rechtfertigung auch für Kants Theorie angemessenen Strafens soll sowohl dazu dienen, das Prinzip selbst zu begründen, als auch dazu, es in Kants politische Theorie einzuordnen

If the ground of punishment is a culpable wronging, what is it about a culpable wrongdoing that allows it to morally justify deserved punishment? In particular, we want to know what it is about a culpable wrongdoing that accounts for the intrinsic value of punitive desert or the punitive-desert-related duties that comprise retributivism. I analyze both together in the context of seeking a justification for The Principle of Deserved Punishment, (1). (1) The Principle of Deserved Punishment. A person deserves punishment because, and only because, she has performed a culpable wrongdoing. One approach is that more general moral principles justify it. On this approach, these moral principles support the claim that deserved punishment is morally justified and the claim that it is justified on the ground of a culpable wrongdoing. In this article, I argue against this approach. Elsewhere I argue for the truth of retributivism (which focuses on deserved punishment) based on its being the best explanation of our considered moral judgments. This latter account allows punitive desert and retributivism to function as more fundamental normative entities than is suggested by theories that attempt to derive it from other moral principles.

In summary, Hellman’s book is well worth reading. It is powerful, well-written, and interesting and explains much of the prominent case law on discrimination. Her theory, however, is false because her explanation of wrongful discrimination fails to track a wrong-making feature. Her theory does not focus on a right-infringement in or unfair treatment of the person whom is discriminated against. It also does not focus on an incorrect attitude in the person who discriminates. These intuitively seem to exhaust the reasons that make an act wrong because it wrongs someone. Her account of wrongful discrimination fails to identify the correct wrong-making feature.

In Grutter, preferential treatment was held to be Constitutional on the basis of the contribution of “diverse” students to the education of their classmates. An implicit assumption in this argument, at least given how schools such as Michigan have interpreted it, is that the contribution involves making it more likely that the other students adopt the beliefs (or perspective) of the minorities. Three beliefs seem relevant here: justice is concerned with equality, racial and ethnic minorities are currently treated unequally, and the state has a mandate to combat this type of injustice. I argued that the first two beliefs are likely false and that in any case they are already well represented on campuses. If my arguments succeed, then this narrow experiential diversity argument is incapable of establishing the moral permissibility, let alone Constitutionality, of these programs. A broader consequentialist argument may avoid this objection but only at the extent of introducing Constitutionally irrelevant considerations.

In this essay, I argue for the claim that the MVP is the player who provides the greatest net benefit to his team. I then argued for the following model of a player’s net benefit to her team. (1) A person’s, X’s, net benefit to the team is a function of the difference in team success when X plays and when her actual or likely backup plays. I argued that this model best satisfies our intuitions, measures actual value rather than expected value, does not depend on arbitrary assumptions, and tends to track the way in which a team would economically value a player. The two do not align exactly, since economic valuation is future looking and net benefit is backward looking. Leaving aside concerns about player-related contribution, this model provides a right answer to the question of who is a league’s MVP. It also captures the comparative value of players within a team.

The compensatory‐justice justification of affirmative action requires a comparison of the actual world in which the injured person lives with a relevantly similar possible world in which this person lives but where the unjust injuring act never occurred, in order to identify the degree of harm brought about by the unjust injurious act. The problem is that some unjust injuring acts, particularly acts of slavery, led to intercourse and the later creation of the ancestors of many members of minority groups. Hence, there is no possible world in which these individuals exist and in which the injustice, e.g., slavery, did not occur. As a result, the counterfactual test does not allow us to measure or even understand the existence of a compensatable injury to these persons. I provide an inheritance‐based account of compensation that escapes this.

Carl Cohen’s and James Sterba’s debate is an impressive discussion of the legality and morality of various types of affirmative action and a must read for researchers in this field. These two issues bifurcate. The legality of preferential treatment consists of two different issues: Is preferential treatment Constitutional? Does preferential treatment violate laws other than the Constitution? The morality of preferential treatment also consists of two issues: Is preferential treatment right? Is it good? The discussion in this book is wide-ranging and the authors provide a fascinating set of legal and empirical arguments that are a nice complement to the moral arguments that underlie their positions on affirmative action. The only problem with the book is that the moral arguments are somewhat abbreviated. In summary, the debate between Cohen and Sterba is insightful, well researched, and worth reading. Their legal arguments are particularly interesting. In the end, however, neither Cohen nor Sterba provide a plausible argument with regard to whether preferential treatment has effects that make it worth pursuing. Nor does either provide a strong moral case for or against preferential treatment as compensation.

We should adopt the following principle with regard to compensatory justice. (1) If an unjust act benefits an innocent person and there is no reasonable way to assess the amount of damages to the victim, then compensatory justice does not require that the innocent beneficiary pay compensation for those damages. We cannot reasonably assess the amount of damages to current racial minorities that have resulted from past discriminatory acts. Problems arise in determining the identity of the injured parties, the identity of the injuring agents and injuring acts (and omissions), and the degree of injury that directly resulted from these acts (or omissions). Since such compensable damages cannot be accurately estimated and since white male applicants are innocent beneficiaries of past discriminatory acts, the value of compensatory justice does not justify strong affirmative action programs.

In the middle of the twentieth century, many philosophers came to believe that the problem of morally justifying punishment had finally been solved. Defended most famously by Hart and Rawls, the so-called “Mixed Theory” of punishment claimed that justifying punishment required recognizing that the utilitarian and retributive theories were in fact answers to two different questions: utilitarianism answered the question of why we have punishment as an institution, while retribution answered the question of how to punish individual wrongdoers. We could thus reconcile the two great competing theories of punishment, and show how they were both right and not in conflict at all. Unfortunately, it gradually became apparent that the solution would not work. This essay attempts to set out thereasons why the Mixed Theory was bound to fail, and why the problem of reconciling the utilitarian and retributive goals remains with us.

This book provides a philosophical analysis of adult-child sex and pedophilia. The sex intuitively strikes many people, including myself, as sick, disgusting, and wrong. The problem is that it is not clear whether these judgments are justified and whether they are aesthetic or moral. By analogy, many people find it disgusting to view images of obese people having sex, but it is hard to see what is morally undesirable about such sex. Here the judgment is aesthetic. This book looks at the moral status of such adult-child sex. In particular, it explores whether those who engage in adult-child sex have a disease, act wrongly, or are vicious. In addition, it looks at how the law should respond to such sex given the above analyses.

Stephen Kershnar’s model of the most valuable player fails. It does not track total value and this is what a team values, although perhaps the best model should focus on player-related value. In any case, the model does not succeed as a model of player-value because player-value is indeterminate. The indeterminacy results from boundary problems with the player-role and, perhaps also, indeterminacy in the baseline state. In addition, Kershnar’s framework is misguided because winning is not intrinsically valuable and is not even something wanted for its own sake. The MVP problem remains unsolved.

Slavery harmed the slaves but not their descendants since slavery brought about their existence. The descendants gain the slaves’ claims via inheritance. However, collecting the inheritance-based claim runs into a number of difficulties. First, every descendant usually has no more than a portion of the slave’s claim because the claim is often divided over generations. Second, there are epistemic difficulties involving the ownership of the claim since it is unlikely that a descendant of a slave several generations removed would have retained the claim of inheritance given the loss of wealth and disinheritance that often characterizes families. There are also problems in determining the amount of inheritance. This is in part because of the problems of calculating in the effects of offsets, especially crime-related offsets, which are owed by a significant portion of the descendants. Even if this inheritance claim can be established with sufficient confidence certain entities may not be asked to pay it. The federal government does not owe compensation since as a historical matter it permitted but did not cause enslavement. The beneficiaries of slavery do not owe compensation since merely receiving the benefit of an unjust activity does not by itself generate a debt of compensation. When combined these problems constitute an overwhelming case against reparations.

In general, capitalists deserve profits and losses for their contribution to the general welfare. Market imperfections and the range of permissible prices (at least within the boundaries of exploitation) prevent the alignment from being a direct one, but the connection generally holds. In the context of the market, this thesis preserves the central place of moral responsibility in moral desert. It also satisfies the fittingness and proportionality conditions of moral desert and provides a backward-looking and pre-institutional ground of it. In addition, the focus on contribution unifies several different types of act-based desert, specifically deserved profits and losses, deserved punishment, and deserved wages. Hence, to the extent that desert-satisfaction is relevant in the selection of an economic system, this result strengthens the case for capitalism.

Retributivism is the notion that punishment is justified because, and only because, the wrongdoer deserves it. Proportionality is central to retributivism. A proportional punishment is one in which the severity of a punishment is proportional to the seriousness of the offense (for example, its wrongness or harmfulness). Michael Tonry’s collection is must reading for punishments theorists. The articles are well-chosen and the reflections of theorists such as Andreas von Hirsch, R. A. Duff, and Douglas Husak who have shaped punishment theory and who now consider the future of the principles that have governed their work, makes for interesting reading. The tie-in between retributivism and the practice of punishment is enlightening and sometime too often absent in the philosophical literature.

In the context of state educational institutions, young white males are owed a duty to respect their interest or desert tokens. Not all white males have waived this duty since many white males have not performed the relevant types of culpable wrongdoing. Merely having benefitted from an unjust injury act or being a member of a community that owe a debt of compensation to racial minorities and women are not sufficient grounds to override the duty owed to the white male. Since the three most plausible attempts to provide a compensatory justice justification for strong affirmative action programs at state educational institutions fail, I conclude that the following is false. (1) Other things being equal, a state educational institution may choose to hire a less qualified candidate over a more qualified candidate because the weight given to the race or gender of the less qualified candidate relates to the elimination of a debt of compensatory justice. Hence, unless strong affirmative action programs at state educational institutions can be justified by reference to some other value, such as the value of diversity, the state ought to eliminate such programs.

The slavery contract is not a rights violation since the right not to be enslaved and the right not to give out a benefit are waivable and the conjunction of their voluntary waiver is not itself a rights violation. The case for the contract being pejoratively exploitative is not clear. Hence given the general presumption in favor of liberty of contract, such a transaction ought to be permitted. The contract is also not invalid on the grounds that the wrongdoer’s consent to it necessarily reflects involuntariness or irrationality or on the grounds that it is logically impossible for the wrongdoer to satisfy the contract. Allowing such contracts may not have desirable consequences, but for the liberal this by itself is not a sufficient reason against allowing them. One case where the slavery contract might be relevant is where a victim’s agent or the state agrees to waive its claim to harsh punishment in return for the offender agreeing to be enslaved.

In this paper, I argue that many violent sexual fantasies are not vicious. In the first part of this article, I sketch out the nature of violent sexual fantasies and note that many people regularly have them. I then argue many violent sexual fantasies are not vicious. My argument strategy is to explore what makes an attitude vicious and then to note that the vice-making feature need not be present in such fantasies and is in fact probably not present in many of them. I then explore some of the implications of this finding for the nature of virtue and pornography policy.

A person deserves a punishment if and only if he did a culpable wrongdoing and in virtue of this it is other-things-being intrinsically good that he receive punishment and if he were to receive that punishment then it would be through a non-deviant causal chain that includes the culpable wrongdoing. The wrongdoing may be institutional or pre-institutional depending on whether the moral right that the wrongdoer trespasses upon is dependent on a political institution’s goal. Desert in general, and punitive desert in particular, has a ground for which the agent is blameworthy or praiseworthy and it does not itself general a duty on anyone’s behalf. Both features make desert a different type of moral entity than a moral right. In addition, the two stand in a different relation to autonomy: rights protect a sphere in which autonomy may be exercises whereas desert, including punitive desert, provides a guide to the exercise of autonomy. They thus have different connections to one of the most important value-creating features of a person. This difference between desert and moral rights indicates the need for a separate analysis of each in the context of punishment.