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251Exchange is one thing, economic competition another. Exchange is possible without competition; and economic competition (of sorts) is possible without exchange. Put exchange and competition together and, roughly, you get the free market. There are many philosophical discussions of the free market; a sizeable number about free exchange; but - - aside from in the context of consequentialist defences of the market - - who this century has had much to say about economic competition?
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31Shelby, Tommie. Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. 352. $29.95 (review)Ethics 128 (2): 510-515. 2017.
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8Poverty, Social Expectations, and the FamilyIn Nicolás Brando & Gottfried Schweiger (eds.), Philosophy and Child Poverty: Reflections on the Ethics and Politics of Poor Children and Their Families, Springer. pp. 69-89. 2019.A persistent right-wing discourse on poverty insists that, in many cases, poverty is the result of domestic incompetence, improvidence, or male irresponsibility. Poverty is, on this view, to some significant degree, the result of poor management and irresponsible choices. Poverty researchers, by contrast, typically argue that there is very little evidence to support this diagnosis, and that poverty is largely simply a matter of lack of financial resources to live the type of life that is regarde…Read more
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53I—The Presidential AddressEquality and HierarchyProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119 (1): 1-23. 2019.Hierarchy is a difficulty for theories of equality, and especially those that define equality in relational or social terms. In ideal egalitarian circumstances it seems that hierarchies should not exist. However, a liberal egalitarian defence of some types of hierarchies is common. Hierarchies of esteem have no further consequences than praise or admiration for valued individual features. Hierarchies of status, with differential reward, can, it is often argued, also be justified when they serve …Read more
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65Evaluating interventions in health: A reconciliatory approachBioethics 26 (9): 455-463. 2011.Health-related Quality of Life measures have recently been attacked from two directions, both of which criticize the preference-based method of evaluating health states they typically incorporate. One attack, based on work by Daniel Kahneman and others, argues that ‘experience’ is a better basis for evaluation. The other, inspired by Amartya Sen, argues that ‘capability’ should be the guiding concept. In addition, opinion differs as to whether health evaluation measures are best derived from con…Read more
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31Evaluating Interventions in Health: A Reconciliatory ApproachBioethics 26 (9): 455-463. 2012.Health‐related Quality of Life measures have recently been attacked from two directions, both of which criticize the preference‐based method of evaluating health states they typically incorporate. One attack, based on work by Daniel Kahneman and others, argues that ‘experience’ is a better basis for evaluation. The other, inspired by Amartya Sen, argues that ‘capability’ should be the guiding concept. In addition, opinion differs as to whether health evaluation measures are best derived from con…Read more
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23The regulation of drugs presents a challenge for liberalism: how can punishing a person for an action that harms only himself or herself be justified? For public policy a related difficulty is to justify the differential treatment of drugs and alcohol. Philosophical arguments suggest that current regulations are unjustified, and that some currently illegal drugs should be treated no more harshly than alcohol. However, such arguments make little or no impact in public policy discussions. This gen…Read more
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18Critical noticesInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 5 (2). 1997.An Essay On Rights By Hillel Steiner Basil Blackwell, 1994. Pp. x + 305. ISBN 0-631-19027-9. Price 14.95 Connectionism and eliminativism: reply to Stephen Mills in Vol. 5, No. 1.
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99DisadvantageOxford University Press. 2007.What does it mean to be disadvantaged? Is it possible to compare different disadvantages? What should governments do to move their societies in the direction of equality, where equality is to be understood both in distributional and social terms? Linking rigorous analytical philosophical theory with broad empirical studies, including interviews conducted for the purpose of this book, Wolff and de-Shalit show how taking theory and practice together is essential if the theory is to be rich enough …Read more
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7Proper Ambition of Science (edited book)Routledge. 2000.First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company
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1Of Responsibility1In Carl Knight & Zofia Stemplowska (eds.), Responsibility and distributive justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 216. 2011.
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2Part Two. PapersIn Jonathan Wolff & G. A. Cohen (eds.), Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy, Princeton University Press. pp. 245-324. 2013.
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20The Apparent Asymmetry of ResponsibilityIn Carl Knight & Zofia Stemplowska (eds.), Responsibility and distributive justice, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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1834An ethical framework for global vaccine allocationScience 1. 2020.In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, s…Read more
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306The Moral Problem of Risk Impositions: A Survey of the LiteratureEuropean Journal of Philosophy 20 (S1). 2012.This paper surveys the current philosophical discussion of the ethics of risk imposition, placing it in the context of relevant work in psychology, economics and social theory. The central philosophical problem starts from the observation that it is not practically possible to assign people individual rights not to be exposed to risk, as virtually all activity imposes some risk on others. This is the ‘problem of paralysis’. However, the obvious alternative theory that exposure to risk is justifi…Read more
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77Lectures on the History of Moral and Political PhilosophyPrinceton University Press. 2013.However, throughout his career he regularly lectured on a wide range of moral and political philosophers of the past. This volume collects these previously unpublished lectures
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43Fighting risk with risk: solar radiation management, regulatory drift, and minimal justiceCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 23 (5): 564-583. 2020.Solar radiation management (SRM) has been proposed as a means of mitigating climate change. Although SRM poses new risks, it is sometimes proposed as the ‘lesser evil’. I consider how research and implementation of SRM could be regulated, drawing on what I call a ‘precautionary checklist’, which includes consideration of the longer term political implications of technical change. Particular attention is given to the moral hazard of ‘regulatory drift’, in which strong initial regulation softens t…Read more
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62PovertyPhilosophy Compass 14 (12). 2019.Poverty is often defined as lacking the financial resources to meet a set of basic needs. Here, I consider four questions. First, how is the relevant level of basic needs to be determined? Second, given that the possibility of satisfying basic needs is not solely determined by possession of financial resources, is poverty better understood or measured at least in part in non-financial terms? Third, what, if anything, is owed to people in poverty and by whom? And finally, what social policies sho…Read more
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The Rational and the Moral Order: The Social Roots of Reason and Morality (review)Review of Metaphysics 49 (4): 912-912. 1996.Kurt Baier has written a rich, elegant and detailed account of reason, morality, and their relation. Three leading ideas give focus to the book: a person can have a morality only if he grows up in a society constituting a moral order; a person's morality consists primarily in dispositions to conform his behavior to directives he believes justified by the best principles of justification; and the best principles are those that pass a test of practical reason.
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51Forms of differential social inclusionSocial Philosophy and Policy 34 (1): 164-185. 2017.:Advocates of social equality need to develop an account of the society they favor. I have argued elsewhere that social equality should be conceived negatively: in terms of opposition to asymmetric and alienating relations such as hierarchy, domination and social exclusion, rather than in terms of a positive model of equality. This essay looks in detail at social exclusion, or rather “differential social inclusion,” and especially at the mechanisms that create exclusion and bind excluded groups …Read more
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |