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Prolegomena to a Metaphysics of Real EstateIn Roberto Casati (ed.), Shadows and Socio-Economic Units. Foundations of Formal Geography, Technical University of Vienna. pp. 151--155. 1996.
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34The Non-Political Foundations of the Problem of Dirty HandsThe Journal of Ethics 27 (4): 477-494. 2023.
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7On Power, Conventions, and the Varieties of NormativityIn Christian Kanzian (ed.), Cultures. Conflict - Analysis - Dialogue: Proceedings of the 29th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, Austria, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 417-428. 2007.
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5Human Nature and the Paradox of ForgivenessIn Christer Svennerlind, Almäng Jan & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations: Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday, Ontos Verlag. pp. 728-745. 2013.
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40Rethinking Mixed JustificationsIn Matthew C. Altman (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 221-241. 2022.Those of us who appreciate the force of both retributive and consequentialist rationales for the justification of punishment should be sympathetic to efforts to combine them, so as to develop a more compelling justificatory scheme. In this chapter, however, Zaibert argues that extant mixed justifications have failed in coherently combining these rationales. He attempts to explain this failure by identifying two widespread and interrelated mistakes made by punishment theorists. First, they have s…Read more
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16Figuring Things Out, Morally SpeakingPhilosophy 96 (4): 553-576. 2021.The appeal of the moral principle according to which we should treat like cases alike is so great that it verges on the axiomatic, or on the platitudinous. Recently, however, the principle has been challenged in deeply interesting ways. These ways are interesting because they do not invite skepticism about morality at large, but about the specific claim that what is good (or bad) for an agent in a given situation must be good (or bad) for any other similarly situated agent. I here assess the pos…Read more
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48Punishment With and Without the State: Comments on Linda Radzik’s The Ethics of Social Punishment: The Enforcement of Morality in Everyday LifeCriminal Law and Philosophy 17 (1): 197-206. 2023.Linda Radzick's new book, _The Ethics of Social Punishment_, contains an important discussion of punishment outside the context of the state. By way of celebrating this fine and welcome book, I try to probe some analytical contours concerning punishment seen from the general perspective on which Radzick and I agree. I suggest altogether abandoning the idea that (non-state) punishment needs to be inflicted by an authority. Furthermore, I insist on an account of retributivism that resists the usua…Read more
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20Punishment and RetributionRoutledge. 2006.Punishment is a phenomenon which occurs in many contexts. Discussions of punishment assume punishment is criminal punishment carried out by the State. This book contains an account of punishment which overcomes the difficulties of competing accounts and treats punishment comprehensibly to better understand how it differs from similar phenomena, discussing its justification fruitfully.
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1035The Varieties of Normativity: An Essay on Social OntologyIn Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Intentional Acts and Institutional Facts: Essays on John Searle’s Social Ontology, Springer. pp. 157-173. 2007.For much of the first fifty years of its existence, analytic philosophy shunned discussions of normativity and ethics. Ethical statements were considered as pseudo-propositions, or as expressions of pro- or con-attitudes of minor theoretical significance. Nowadays, in contrast, prominent analytic philosophers pay close attention to normative problems. Here we focus our attention on the work of Searle, at the same time drawing out an important connection between Searle’s work and that of two othe…Read more
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616The metaphysics of real estateTopoi 20 (2): 161-172. 2001.The thesis that an analysis of property rights is essential to an adequate analysis of the state is a mainstay of political philosophy. The contours of the type of government a society has are shaped by the system regulating the property rights prevailing in that society. Views of this sort are widespread. They range from Locke to Nozick and encompass pretty much everything else in between. Defenders of this sort of view accord to property rights supreme importance. A state that does not suffici…Read more
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954Rationality in Action: A SymposiumPhilosophical Explorations 4 (2): 66-94. 2001.Searle’s tool for understanding culture, law and society is the opposition between brute reality and institutional reality, or in other words between: observer-independent features of the world, such as force, mass and gravitational attraction, and observer-relative features of the world, such as money, property, marriage and government. The question posed here is: under which of these two headings do moral concepts fall? This is an important question because there are moral facts – for example …Read more
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105Legal ontology and the problem of normativityThe Analytic-Continental Divide, Conference, University of Tel Aviv. 1999.Applied ontology is the attempt to put to use the rigorous tools of philosophical ontology in the development of category systems which can be of use in the formalization and systematization of knowledge of a given domain. In what follows we shall sketch some elements of the ontology of legal and socio-political institutions, paying attention especially to the normativity involved in such institutions. We shall see that there is more than one type of normativity, but that this fact that has ofte…Read more
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50Prolegomena to a Metaphysics of Real EstateIn Roberto Casati (ed.), Shadows and Socio-Economic Units. Foundations of Formal Geography, Technical University of Vienna. pp. 151--155. 1996.As an object in which property rights can be invested, land is a peculiar hybrid structure that comprehends both spatial and non-spatial aspects. Even in its purely spatial aspect land is treated differently from culture to culture, thus for example in the degree to which property rights in land are held to relate to vague or precisely delineated parcels and to portions of space above and below the surface of the earth. When we examine the non-spatial aspects of landed property, however, the dim…Read more
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221房地产的形而上学In Francesco Di Iorio & Jun Hu (eds.), 能动性与社会动力学——经济学哲学与社会科学哲学论文集 (Agency and Social Dynamics: Essays in the Philosophy of Economics and the Social Sciences), Nankai University Press. pp. 111-125. 2021.The parceling of land into real estate is more than a simple geometrical affair. Real estate is a historical product of interaction between human beings, political, legal and economic institutions, and the physical environment. And while many authors, from Jeremy Bentham to Hernando de Soto, have drawn attention to the ontological (metaphysical) aspect of property in general, no comprehensive analysis of landed property has been attempted. The paper presents such an analysis and shows how landed…Read more
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1204Real Estate: Foundations of the Ontology of PropertyIn Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Erik Stubjkaer & Christoph Schlieder (eds.), The Ontology and Modelling of Real Estate Transactions, Ashgate. pp. 51-67. 2003.Suppose you own a garden-variety object such as a hat or a shirt. Your property right then follows the ageold saw according to which possession is nine-tenths of the law. That is, your possession of a shirt constitutes a strong presumption in favor of your ownership of the shirt. In the case of land, however, this is not the case. Here possession is not only not a strong presumption in favor of ownership; it is not even clear what possession is. Possessing a thing like a hat or a shirt is a rath…Read more
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14Review of Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, ed. Steven E. Aschheim (review)Essays in Philosophy 3 (2): 300-304. 2002.
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10The Theory and Practice of Ontology (edited book)Palgrave Macmillian. 2016.This book provides close examination of ontology and the work of Professor Barry Smith, one of the most prolific philosophers of the modern day. In this book numerous scholars who have collaborated with Smith explore the various disciplines in which the impact of his work has been felt over the breadth of his career, including biology, computer science and informatics, cognitive science, economics, genetics, geography, law, neurology, and philosophy itself. While offering in-depth perspectives o…Read more
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247The Paradox of ForgivenessJournal of Moral Philosophy 6 (3): 365-393. 2009.Philosophers often claim that forgiveness is a paradoxical phenomenon. I here examine two of the most widespread ways of dealing with the paradoxical nature of forgiveness. One of these ways, emblematized by Aurel Kolnai, seeks to resolve the paradox by appealing to the idea of repentance. Somehow, if a wrongdoer repents, then forgiving her is no longer paradoxical. I argue that this influential position faces more problems than it solves. The other way to approach the paradox, exemplified here …Read more
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28Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (3): 447-448. 2012.
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71The Instruments of Abolition, or Why Retributivism is the Only Real Justification of PunishmentLaw and Philosophy 32 (1): 33-58. 2013.Victor Tadros’ The Ends of Harm is the most recent systematic attempt to defend the good old utilitarian justification of punishment. The attempt fails for a variety of reasons, which are here explored. First, the attempt presupposes an implausible account of human’s psychology. Second, the attempt confuses an attack on retributivism with an attack on certain criminal justice systems. Finally, Tadros admits that his justification of punishment is best seen as a mere step along the road to full-b…Read more
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2Teleología del proceso: la teoría ética de John DeweyRevista Venezolana de Filosofía 31 143. 1995.
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1The Theory and Practice of Ontology - Festschrift for Barry Smith (edited book)Palgrave / Macmillan. 2016.This book provides a close examination of ontology and of the work of Professor Barry Smith, one of the most prolific philosophers of the modern day. Numerous scholars explore the various disciplines in which the impact of Smith's work has been felt over the breadth of his career, including biology, computer science and informatics, cognitive science, economics, genetics, geography, law, neurology, and philosophy itself. While offering in-depth perspectives on ontology, the book also expands upo…Read more
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135The fitting, the deserving, and the beautifulJournal of Moral Philosophy 3 (3): 331-350. 2006.Punishment is punishment even if it is not (perceived by the punisher to be) deserved. But punishment which is not (perceived by the punisher to be) fitting is not punishment. This paper explores the differences between desert and fittingness, and argues that incorporating fittingness into thedefinition of punishment is not problematic, whereas incorporating desert in such definition is, in contrast, infamously problematic. The main difference between these two notions turns on the interesting d…Read more
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13Rethinking PunishmentCambridge University Press. 2018.The age-old debate about what constitutes just punishment has become deadlocked. Retributivists continue to privilege desert over all else, and consequentialists continue to privilege punishment's expected positive consequences, such as deterrence or rehabilitation, over all else. In this important intervention into the debate, Leo Zaibert argues that despite some obvious differences, these traditional positions are structurally very similar, and that the deadlock between them stems from the fac…Read more
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43Review of Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, ed. Steven E. Aschheim (review)Essays in Philosophy 3 (2): 300-304. 2002.
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22Of Normal Human Sympathies and Clear Consciences: Comments on Hyman Gross’s Crime and Punishment: A Concise Moral CritiqueCriminal Law and Philosophy 10 (1): 91-108. 2016.Contemporary criminal justice systems are extraordinarily unfair. Focusing on Hyman Gross’s Crimes and Punishment: A Concise Moral Critique, however, I identify ways in which scholarly criticisms of these criminal justice systems tend to miss their target. In particular, I argue against the assumption that in order to criticize these criminal justice systems we need to cast doubt on the very practice of blaming people and on the notion of desert, or that we need to reject wholesale retributive r…Read more
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