David Schmidtz

Species egalitarianism is the view that all living things have equal moral standing. To have moral standing is, at a minimum, to command respect, to be more than a mere thing. Is there reason to believe that all living things have moral standing in even this most minimal sense? If so—that is, if all living things command respect—is there reason to believe they all command equal respect?1 I explain why members of other species command our respect but also why they do not command equal respect. The intuition that we should have respect for nature is one motive for embracing species egalitarianism, but we need not be species egalitarians to have respect for nature. This paper questions whether species egalitarianism is even compatible with respect for nature.

If ever there were a time in which concerns about equality as a primary issue for social policy disappeared from public view, now is not that time. Recent work in economics on inequality has climbed to the top of best-sellers lists, and the issue was a major talking point in American midterm elections in 2014. The sheer bewildering volume of scholarship and discussion of equality makes it difficult to distinguish signal from noise. What, of all that we know about ways in which we are equal and ways in which we are unequal, matters? If, as seems plausible, we neither are nor should desire to be equal in every respect that we could in theory be equal, in which ways ought we to care about being equal? Does the kind of equality of outcome — perhaps equality of income or wealth — that is frequently the focus of discussion matter most? Does opportunity matter more? What about less material forms of equality such as equality of status, or power, or authority? How do these various forms of equality interact with each other? The essays in this volume represent the work of a number of leading scholars from different disciplines on these questions. Drawing on sources in philosophical analysis, empirical science, and history, they sort through competing claims and counterclaims about the intuitions that drive our concern for equality. Their conclusions are not in unison, but nonetheless represent important advances in our attempts to grapple with this crucial social value.

People ought to get what they deserve. And what we deserve can depend on effort, performance, or on excelling in competition, even when excellence is partly a function of our natural gifts. Or so most people believe. Philosophers sometimes say otherwise. At least since Karl Marx complained about capitalist society extracting surplus value from workers, thereby failing to give workers what they deserve, classical liberal philosophers have worried that to treat justice as a matter of what people deserve is to license interference with liberty. Rawls likewise rejected patterns imposed by principles of desert, calling it “one of the fixed points of our considered judgments that no one deserves his place in the distribution of natural endowments, any more than one deserves one’s initial starting place in society. The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is equally problematic; for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit. The notion of desert seems not to apply to these cases.” Rawls’s view is, in a way, compelling. Inevitably, our efforts are aided by natural gifts, positional advantages, and sheer luck, so how much can we deserve? And if our very characters result from an interplay of these same factors, how can we (capitalists and proletariat workers alike) deserve anything at all? Samuel Scheffler says, “none of the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism assigns a significant role to desert at the level of fundamental principle.” If so, I argue, the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism are mistaken. In particular, there is an aspect of what we do to make ourselves deserving that, although it has not been discussed in the literature, plays a central role in everyday moral life, and for good reason.

What is justice? Questions of justice are questions about what people are due. However, what that means in practice depends on the context in which the question is raised. Depending on context, the formal question of what people are due is answered by principles of desert, reciprocity, equality, or need. Justice, therefore, is a constellation of elements that exhibit a degree of integration and unity. Nonetheless, the integrity of justice is limited, in a way that is akin to the integrity of a neighborhood rather than that of a building. A theory of justice offers individuals a map of that neighborhood, within which they can explore just what elements amount to justice.

This anthology collects 64 accessible classic and contemporary works that fall into the two main categories of research in environmental ethics. The material in the first section of the volume explores the nature of morality from an environmental perspective. It asks is the value of a human being fundamentally different from the kind of value we find elsewhere in nature? What is the role of consumer goods in life? What really matters? The second section explores the current state of our environment, and questions what problems do we face? What is causing or exacerbating those problems? What solutions have been tried? What really works?

This volume collects thirteen of David Schmidtz's essays on the question of what it takes to live a good life, given that we live in a social and natural world. Part One defends a non-maximizing conception of rational choice, explains how even ultimate goals can be rationally chosen, defends the rationality of concern and regard for others (even to the point of being willing to die for a cause), and explains why decision theory is necessarily incomplete as a tool for addressing such issues. Part Two uses the tools of analytic philosophy to explain what we can do to be deserving, what is wrong with the idea that we ought to do as much good as we can, why mutual aid is good, but why the welfare state does not work as a way of institutionalizing mutual aid, and why transferring wealth from those who need it less to those who need it more can be a bad idea even from a utilitarian perspective. Most ambitiously, Part Two offers an overarching, pluralistic moral theory that defines the nature and limits of our obligations to each other and to our individual selves. Part Three discusses the history and economic logic of alternative property institutions, both private and communal, and explains why economic logic is an indispensable tool in the field of environmental conflict resolution. In the final essay, Schmidtz brings the volume full circle by considering the nature and limits of our obligations to nonhuman species, and how the status of nonhuman species ought to enter into our deliberations about what sort of life is worth living

Species egalitarianism is the view that all species have equal moral standing. To have moral standing is, at a minimum, to command respect, to be something more than a mere thing. Is there any reason to believe that all species have moral standing in even this most minimal sense? If so — that is, if all species command respect — is there any reason to believe they all command equal respect. The article summarises critical responses to Paul Taylor’s argument for species egalitarianism, then explains why other species command our respect but also why they do not command equal respect. The intuition that we should have respect for nature is part of what motivates people to embrace species egalitarianism, but one need not be a species egalitarian to have respect for nature. The article closes by questioning whether species egalitarianism is even compatible with respect for nature.

The Theory of Market Failure explores how markets respond, both in theory and in practice, to public‐goods and externality problems. Most of the articles in this anthology find that markets often meet the demand for public goods in a variety of cases where existing theory would lead one to expect market failure. Moreover, upon reflection, existing theory reveals itself to be in need of supplementation by a more realistic picture of how flexible markets (and evolving systems of property rights) respond to the demand for public goods and for the means of internalizing externalities.

Samuel Scheffler says, “none of the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism assigns a significant role to desert at the level of fundamental principle.” To the extent that this is true, the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism are mistaken. In particular, there is an aspect of what we do to make ourselves deserving that, although it has not been discussed in the literature, plays a central role in everyday moral life, and for good reason. As with desert, reciprocity inspires skepticism. What Allen Buchanan calls justice as reciprocity implies that duties of justice obtain only among those who can do each other favors. So characterized, justice as reciprocity is at best only a part of justice – a part that is silent on duties between people who have no favors to offer each other. Still, the more modest root idea of reciprocity – the idea that returning favors is at very least a good thing – remains compelling. What can we say on behalf of this root idea? This article is part of a larger work on the elements of justice. Both parts of it begin with and build on James Rachels’ seminal paper “What People Deserve.”.

Our days are a vast, intricate, evolving dance of mutual understandings. We stop at a traffic light, offer a plastic card as payment for a meal, leave our weapons at home, or enter a voting booth. We live and work in close proximity, at high speed, with few collisions: on our roads and in our neighborhoods, places of worship, and places of business. Somehow, having all those people around is more liberating than stifling. The secret is that we know roughly what to expect from each other. Knowing what to expect enables us to adapt to each other. Not being obliged to conform to expectations—being free to test the previously untested— is likewise a great benefit. The two benefits seem mutually exclusive, yet property rights, combined with freedom of contract, enable us to reap both at once. We can rely on being able to go to market and find someone selling cauliflower at an affordable price. We can also rely on being able to go to market and find someone rendering obsolete what a few years ago had been cutting-edge technology. We make progress by testing what has not previously been tested. We experiment. One problem with experiments is: many of them don’t work.1 Or, the ideas being tested turn out to be bad ideas. Thus a successful society encourages people not only to experiment, but also to shut down experiments whose inspiration proves unsound. What kind of framework encourages experimentation without at the same time perpetuating bad ideas? Here is one hypothesis: in societies that sustain progress over long periods, people are free to experiment at their own expense and free from having to pay for other people’s bad ideas. This is the true test of a system of property. It is natural to assume instead that the true test of a system of property is a question of whether the system is just. That is, philosophers should theorize about justice first, and only then begin to theorize about what can legitimately become a person’s property. I have become skeptical about this.

The issue of social welfare and individual responsibility has become a topic of international public debate in recent years as politicians around the world now question the legitimacy of state-funded welfare systems. David Schmidtz and Robert Goodin debate the ethical merits of individual versus collective responsibility for welfare. David Schmidtz argues that social welfare policy should prepare people for responsible adulthood rather than try to make that unnecessary. Robert Goodin argues against the individualization of welfare policy and expounds the virtues of collective responsibility.

It is widely held that the proper role of criminal punishment is to ensure in a cost-efficient manner that criminal laws will be obeyed. As James Buchanan puts it,the reason we have courts is not that we want people to be convicted of crimes but that we want people not to commit them. The whole procedure of the law is one, essentially, of threatening people with unpleasant consequences if they do things which are regarded as objectionable.According to the deterrence theory of punishment, which I will here accept without argument in order to tease out some of its implications, legislators must be aware of opportunities to maximize the threat value of criminal prohibitions. By maximizing deterrence, we minimize the cost of crime. On the other hand, creating these threats, and carrying them out, is also costly. So we also wish to minimize the cost of avoiding crime. An efficient deterrent, therefore, will be one which minimizes the sum of the costs of crime and crime avoidance, where ‘cost’ is to be broadly construed.

This is an introductory volume to Robert Nozick, one of the dominant philosophical thinkers of the current age. It is part of a new series, Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Each volume in the series will consist of newly commissioned essays that will cover all the major contributions of a preeminent philosopher in a systematic and accessible manner. Robert Nozick is one of the most creative and individual philosophical voices of the last 25 years. His most famous book, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), presents the classic defense of the libertarian view that only a minimal state is just. Nozick has also made significant contributions in later publications to such areas as rational choice theory, ethics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Outside philosophy the book will be of particular interest to professionals and students in political science, law, economics, sociology and psychology.

Both utilitarian and deontological moral theories locate the source of our moral beliefs in the wrong sorts of considerations. One way this failure manifests itself, we argue, is in the ways these theories analyze the proper human relationship toward the non-human environment. Another, more notorious, manifestation of this failure is found in Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion. Our goal is to explore the connection between these two failures, and to suggest that they are failures of act-centered moral theories in general. As such, they cannot be fixed by simply developing a better version of such a theory. Virtue-based theories, we suggest, provide a more promising alternative.