Jan Narveson

This paper aims to state the obvious – the commonsense, rational approach to child-producing. We have no general obligation to promote either the “general happiness” or the equalization of this and that. We have children if we want them, if their life prospects are decent – and if we can afford them, which is a considerable part of their life prospects being OK – and provided that in doing so we do not inflict injury on others. It’s extremely difficult to do this latter, but affording them, in rich countries, is another matter. With that qualification, by and large people should just go ahead and have (or not have) children – as many as they think they want and can handle – as it suits them.

I take issue with the view that libertarian theory does not imply any particular stand on abortion. Liberty is the absence of interference with people’s wills—interests, wishes, and desires. Only entities that have such are eligible for the direct rights of libertarian theory. Foetuses do not; and if aborted, there is then no future person whose rights are violated. Hence the “liberal” view of abortion: women (especially) may decide whether to bear the children they have conceived. Birth is a good dividing line between the freedom to abort and the point at which society is permitted to take an interest. Once born, children detach from their mothers; no invasion of their bodies is necessary to separate them. Yet some ways of bringing them up can have a negative impact on society. There is a thus legitimate interest in protecting ourselves from the results of truly bad parenting.

This article argues that there is no sound basis for thinking that we have a general and strong duty to rectify disparities of wealth around the world, apart from the special case where some become wealthy by theft or fraud. The nearest thing we have to a rational morality for all has to be built on the interests of all, and they include substantial freedoms, but not substantial entitlements to others' assistance. It is also pointed out that the situation of the world's poor is not that of victims of disasters, but simply of less-developed technology, which can be repaired by full and free trade relations with others. The true savior of the world's poor is the businessman, not the missionary. What we do need to do is strike down barriers to commerce, rather than requisition "aid."

Egalitarians hold that some good things should, in principle, be distributed equally among all people. Which good things? Why just those and not others? Why are they to be equalized only among humans and not, say, between humans and cats? And why is the equalization to be confined within the borders of the author's State, rather than practiced over the whole human race (at least)? Those are all matters for the particular egalitarian to explain, as best he can. None, I think, can be explained satisfactorily, but we cannot press such matters in the present short..

Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality is G.A. Cohens attempt to rescue something of the socialist outlook on society from the challenge of libertarianism, which Cohen identifies with the work of Robert Nozick in his famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Sympathizing with the leading idea that a person must belong to himself, and thus be unavailable for forced redistribution of his efforts, Cohen is at pains to reconcile the two. This cannot be done – they are flatly contrary. Moreover, equality is a nonsense principle, calling for such things as equal distribution of natural resources. But resources, as goods, are not natural: all require work to utilize. The only thing exchanged on markets is services, and estimates of value received are relevantly made only by those party to the exchanges in question. Imposition from above on voluntary exchange can only be socially counterproductive

This critical notice of Skorupski's large work is for the most part strongly positive: "Both as a work of scholarship and as a contribution to philosophy in its own right, an outstanding work". There are careful and detailed discussions of Mill's semantics, logic, philosophy of mathematics, logic of the moral sciences, and ethical writings (but not on religion, democracy, or women). Some issue is taken with Skorupski's account of and support for Mill's utilitarianism; broad agreement is expressed with Skorupski's interpretation and criticism of Mill's other writings. Mill's naturalism emerges as a more coherent view than is usually thought

G. A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality proposes that both concepts need rescuing from the work of John Rawls. Especially, it is concerned with Rawls’ famous second principle of justice according to which social primary goods should be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is to the benefit of the worst off. The question is why this would ever be necessary if all parties are just. Cohen and I agree that Rawls cannot really justify inequalities on the basis given. But he also thinks equality is the correct analysis of justice, though he provides no actual direct arguments for this. He does, however, provide a striking analytical argument claiming that fundamental principles of justice must be fact insensitive, and that Rawls’s view of justice violates this requirement. I argue that the requirement is itself misconceived and that principles of justice cannot possibly be fact insensitive in the sense developed by Cohen. Few philosophers share this view of Cohen’s—which I argue is due to several conceptual mistakes. With these ironed out, the contractarian view, broadly speaking, is seen to be plausible and powerful. Meanwhile Cohen appears to embrace intuitionism, a stance that cannot possibly be acceptable in social philosophy. In the end, Cohen is successful in arguing that Rawls cannot have what he wants, but neither is Cohen successful in claiming that justice is equality.

My main complaint about Dworkin's papers on equality was that he had not said much by way of arguing for it. His intriguing response to this request provides a good start, and I shall confine this brief, further comment to what he says on that basic subject. Space considerations, alas, require me to ignore the other parts of his discussion. Dworkin distinguishes what he calls the “abstract egalitarian thesis” from his particular version of equalitarianism, equality of resources. His strategy is to argue, first, that the latter is the best realization or version of the former, and then to argue for the general thesis itself. In my comments, I shall reverse this order, however, for reasons that will be clear as we proceed. 1. TheEgalitarian Thesis Dworkin states this as follows: “From the standpoint of politics, the interests of the members of the community matter, and matter equally.” The statement is intended to be abstract in the sense that it would “embrace various competing conceptions of equality,” so that in principle we can divide the discussion the way Dworkin has done into the two questions, “Should we accept equality as a principle at all?” and “What is the best version of equality, at what we might call the constitutional level?” But can we really do this? I am not entirely clear that we can. In order to appreciate the difficulty here, at any rate, consider Dworkin's suggestion that ”in order to sharpen the question” – the question whether to accept equality as a principle at all, that is –“I ask you to suppose that the abstract egalitarian principle does provide a good argument for subsidized medicine…” Now, some might think that such a program is paradigm case of what ought to be rejected at the public level, and yet his reasons for such rejection might very well be based on a principle that its proponent would regard as abstractly egalitarian

The invention of computers, and especially their communication capabilities is revolutionary in several ways. They show the paramount importance of communication in human life, as well as facilitating revolutionary improvements in virtually all areas of social life: business, the arts, agriculture, and others. They put in perspective the erroneous outlook of "materialism" -the idea that human well-being is a matter of accumulating material objects, with a corollary that we must be using up the material resources that make such life possible. In fact, we use fewer and fewer material resources to make life better. Given human ingenuity, natural resources simply do not pose any basic restriction on human potential. Humanity can be in for a great future, provided our politics can be kept from wrecking it all. Will we have the wisdom to leave people to their devices and continue to forward all this progress?