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145The premise of this symposium is that the principle and ideal developed in Brown v. Board of Education2 and its successor cases lie at the heart of the rationale for affirmative action in higher education. The principle of the school desegregation cases is that racial segregation is an injustice that demands remediation. The ideal of the school desegregation cases is that racial integration is a positive good, without which “the dream of one Nation, indivisible”3 cannot be realized. Both the pri…Read more
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140Ethical Assumptions in Economic Theory: Some Lessons from the History of Credit and BankruptcyEthical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (4): 347-360. 2004.This paper evaluates the economic assumptions of economic theory via an examination of the capitalist transformation of creditor–debtor relations in the 18th century. This transformation enabled masses of people to obtain credit without moral opprobrium or social subordination. Classical 18th century economics had the ethical concepts to appreciate these facts. Ironically, contemporary economic theory cannot. I trace this fault to its abstract representations of freedom, efficiency, and markets.…Read more
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117An Epistemic Defense of Democracy: David Estlund's Democratic AuthorityEpisteme 5 (1): 129-129. 2008.In Democratic Authority, David Estlund (2008) presents a major new defense of democracy, called epistemic proceduralism. The theory claims that democracy exercises legitimate authority in virtue of possessing a modest epistemic power: its decisions are the product of procedures that tend to produce just laws at a better than chance rate, and better than any other type of government that is justifiable within the terms of public reason. The balance Estlund strikes between epistemic and non-episte…Read more
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95The Democratic University: The Role of Justice in the Production of Knowledge*: ELIZABETH S. ANDERSONSocial Philosophy and Policy 12 (2): 186-219. 1995.What is the proper role of politics in higher education? Many policies and reforms in the academy, from affirmative action and a multicultural curriculum to racial and sexual harassment codes and movements to change pedagogical styles, seek justice for oppressed groups in society. They understand justice to require a comprehensive equality of membership: individuals belonging to different groups should have equal access to educational opportunities; their interests and cultures should be taken e…Read more
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90How Should Egalitarians Cope with Market Risks?Theoretical Inquiries in Law 9 (1): 239-270. 2008.Individuals in capitalist societies are increasingly exposed to market risks. Luck egalitarian theories, which advocate neutralizing the influence of luck on distribution, fail to cope with this problem, because they focus on the wrong kinds of distributive constraints. Rules of distributive justice can specify (1) acceptable procedures for allocating goods, (2) the range of acceptable variations in distributive outcomes, or (3) which individuals should have which goods, according to individual …Read more
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87The Epistemology of DemocracyEpisteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 3 (1): 8-22. 2006.This paper investigates the epistemic powers of democratic institutions through an assessment of three epistemic models of democracy: the Condorcet Jury Theorem, the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem, and Dewey's experimentalist model. Dewey's model is superior to the others in its ability to model the epistemic functions of three constitutive features of democracy: the epistemic diversity of participants, the interaction of voting with discussion, and feedback mechanisms such as periodic electio…Read more
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83The Imperative of IntegrationPrinceton University Press. 2010.More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial America, butThe Imperative of Integration indicates otherwise. Elizabeth Anderson demonstrates that,…Read more
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77Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press, 2020, pp. ix + 1093Economics and Philosophy 37 (1): 150-156. 2021.
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73Comment on Dawson's 'Exit, Voice and Values in Economic Institutions'Economics and Philosophy 13 (1): 101. 1997.
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73Uses of value judgments in feminist social science: A case study of research on divorceHypatia 19 (1): 1-24. 2004.The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This paper supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. A case study of feminist research on divorce reveals numerous legitimate ways…Read more
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59Inequality Reexamined, Sen Amartya. Harvard University Press, 1992, 207 + xiv pagesEconomics and Philosophy 11 (1): 182. 1995.
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49If truth is not unproblematic, then neither is it inaccessible. And, telling the truth is decidedly a political act. "From the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character," declared Hannah Arendt, in her essay, "Truth and Politics." "Unwelcome opinion can be argued with, rejected, or compromised upon," she goes on, "but unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies." Moreover, at this late date in the twentieth century, we know that social …Read more
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42Emotions in Kant’s Later Moral Philosophy: Honour and the Phenomenology of Moral ValueIn Monika Betzler (ed.), Kant's Ethics of Virtues, De Gruyter. pp. 123-146. 2008.
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18Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and CapabilitiesCambridge University Press. 2010.This book brings together a team of leading theorists to address the question 'What is the right measure of justice?' Some contributors, following Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, argue that we should focus on capabilities, or what people are able to do and to be. Others, following John Rawls, argue for focussing on social primary goods, the goods which society produces and which people can use. Still others see both views as incomplete and complementary to one another. Their essays evaluate the…Read more
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16My scholarly work on the problem of race relations began with a general inquiry into the theory of economic inequality. Specifically, my 1981 paper, "Intergenerational Transfers and the Distribution of Earnings," which appeared in the journal Econometrica, introduced a model of economic achievement in which a person's earnings depended on a random endowment of innate ability and on skills acquired from formal training. The key feature of this theory was that individuals had to rely on their fami…Read more
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14Book Review: Free Market FairnessFree Market Fairness, by TomasiJohn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012 (review)Political Theory 41 (1): 163-166. 2013.
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13Epistemología de la DemocraciaLas Torres de Lucca: Revista Internacional de Filosofía Política 11 (1): 117-127. 2022.Este trabajo investiga las capacidades epistémicas de las instituciones democráticas a través de una evaluación de tres modelos epistémicos de democracia: el Teorema del Jurado de Condorcet, el Teorema ‘Diversidad supera Habilidad’ y el modelo experimentalista de Dewey. El modelo de Dewey es superior a los demás en su capacidad de modelar las funciones epistémicas de tres características constitutivas de la democracia: la diversidad epistémica de los participantes, la interacción de la votación …Read more
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3Mill's Utilitarianism: Critical Essays (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1997.John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism continues to serve as a rich source of moral and theoretical insight. This collection of articles by top scholars offers fresh interpretations of Mill's ideas about happiness, moral obligation, justice, and rights. Applying contemporary philosophical insights, the articles challenge the conventional readings of Mill, and, in the process, contribute to a deeper understanding of utilitarian theory as well as the complexity of moral life
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2The Democratic University: The Role of Justice in Knowledge ProductionIn Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller & Jeffrey Paul (eds.), The Just Society, Cambridge University Press. pp. 186--219. 1995.
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1„Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and Defense “in Yuri Balashov and Alex RosenbergIn Yuri Balashov & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.), Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings, Routledge. pp. 459--88. 2002.
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