Jens Jørund Tyssedal

It is often suggested that the advent of powerful AI will create abundance and that it can thereby contribute to securing social harmony. This paper draws on Hirsch’s study of different kinds of limits to growth to show that this is false, just like all other visions of abundance have been. This matters because the persistence of conflicts of interest in societies with powerful AI implies the persistence of incentives to misuse this powerful technology. The narrative about AI, abundance and social harmony functions as ideology to the extent that it obscures the real risks of AI misuse while inflating the apparent benefits of AI.

This paper identifies and examines what I argue is Cohen’s real principle of egalitarian labour justice, Equality of Work and Income. The argument turns on two often underappreciated aspects of Cohen’s view: the fundamental, fact-free level of reasoning that Cohen thinks is the correct level for inquiring into the fundamental nature of values and principles, and the fact that Cohen includes job satisfaction in the metric of equality, and thereby effectively protects the same occupational interests that freedom of occupational choice is there to protect. I argue that therefore, the familiar freedom objection to Cohen’s egalitarianism fails to get off the ground. This also means that no egalitarian ethos is needed to respond to it. Rather, the real difficulties for the principle of Equality of Work and Income are the same as the familiar challenges to equality of welfare. The paper thus aims to re-rescue Cohen’s egalitarianism from the debate on the freedom objection, but also to clarify the real challenges for Cohen’s view, and the real significance of the egalitarian ethos.

Hvordan kan man besvare normative spørsmål i politisk teori? Et vanlig svar i analytisk politisk teori er: ved å søke ei reflektert likevekt basert på normative intuisjoner (eller ”veloverveide normative dommer”). Er den en god metode? Denne artikkelen presenterer ei etablert innvending mot intuisjonismen som kjennetegner denne metoden: Våre normative intuisjoners opphav i vår arts evolusjonshistorie er vanskelig å forene med at disse er interessante som utgangpunkt for normativ refleksjon. Normativ politisk teori bør derfor ikke baseres på intuisjoner. Et vanlig motsvar er at det ikke finnes alternativer. Artikkelen viser at dette er et dårlig argument ved å presentere tre alternativer: først et fra Rawls, deretter konsekvensialisme som alternativ, og til slutt skisserer den et nytt alternativ basert på metaetisk subjektivisme.

How can we study normative questions, the subject matter of normative moral and political philosophy? A common answer is: by relying on our normative intuitions. This paper argues that this method lacks support: we have no good reasons to think we can learn about the normative by relying on our normative intuitions (or ‘considered judgements’). This is argued by examining the six most promising justifications that have been offered for relying on normative intuitions: (1) tracking via a third factor; (2) analogies or companions in guilt; (3) taking intuitions at face value, or phenomenal conservatism; (4) that there are no alternatives; (5) coherentism and reflective equilibrium; and (6) articulation of implicit normative commitments, or mentalism. None of these provide robust support for the practice of relying on normative intuitions. What we should rely on when studying normative questions remains a burning question for anyone who wants to do normative moral or political philosophy.

‘Positional goods’, a term coined by Fred Hirsch, is an important concept in economics, social sciences and philosophy; however, it is used in different ways. This paper recovers Hirsch’s concept of positional goods as scarce goods that are fixed or near-fixed in supply and argues for the usefulness of this concept. Hirsch’s concept may have explanatory power beyond the concept used by most economists – that of Robert Frank. Moreover, Hirsch’s concept is more explanatorily basic and useful than the concept used by most philosophers – that of Brighouse and Swift.

Work is often said to be hard to define. A precise working definition may nevertheless be valuable for analytical purposes, such as discussing justice in the distribution of work or the future of work. This paper takes a conceptual engineering approach to the concept of ‘work’. It examines the most common features of definitions of work in the contemporary philosophy of work: pay, negation of leisure, effort, social contribution, necessity/instrumentality and production of a benefit/external good. Of these, it argues that the latter two can be refined into two equally suitable, co-extensive working definitions: Work is activity that is instrumental and intermediary to satisfy needs and wants, and Work is activity that produces a benefit (or intermediary product to a benefit) external to the worker(s) doing the activity. These are useful working definitions by virtue of coming close to a core of ordinary language ‘work’, being easily adaptable for various purposes, and for tracking a central feature of the human condition of particular importance for the philosophy of work.

Socialism is a large and diverse political tradition, unified by opposition to capitalism. Economically, socialists also typically support common ownership or some form of social, democratic control over the bulk of the means of production. There are various views on whether this requires central planning or is compatible with some form of market economy. Others understand socialism as a set of values, and either way, those who understand socialism in economic terms are often motivated by what they see as the ills of capitalism and the values that can be realized in a socialist society in their pursuit of these economic changes. Socialist values include ending exploitation and alienation and replacing them with human flourishing and self-realization, community, distributive justice, equality, and freedom. Some also see socialism as the way to environmental sustainability, gender equality, and racial justice. The question of socialist strategy—how to achieve socialism—has often been posed as a dichotomy between reform and revolution. This inadequately captures the content of fundamental disagreements among socialists. Instead, the disagreement can be understood as varying views on the use of parliamentary democracy in a capitalist state, the pace of social change, and the nature of the envisioned changes.

How can work be a genuine good in life? I argue that this requires overcoming a problem akin to that studied by Marx scholars as the problem of work, freedom and necessity: how can work be something we genuinely want to do, given that its content is not up to us, but is determined by necessity? I argue that the answer involves valuing contributing to the good of others, typically as valuing active pro-sociality – that is, valuing actively doing something good for others. This makes work better in one way, and may even make work something we are genuinely glad to have in our lives. Contemporary philosophical thinking about good work tends to focus on how work can be good for the person doing it, by providing, for example, self-realization or social relationships, while underappreciating the special importance of valuing social contribution. People will typically only really want work if they want a part of their lives to be about the good of others. This also means that work may be a part of the best life, something we should take into account when discussing work-related policies and the desirability of a ‘post-work’ future.

Meaningful work is an important ideal, but it seems hard to give an adequate account of meaningful work. In this article, I conduct a revisionary conceptual analysis of ‘meaningful work’, i.e. a conceptual analysis that aims at finding a better and more useful way to use this term. I argue for a distinction between cases where work itself is meaningful and cases where other sources of meaning are found at work. The term ‘meaningful work’ is most useful for the former cases. I then argue for the reasons account of what makes work itself meaningful: work is meaningful if (and to the extent that) there are good reasons to do it. I compare this to established accounts of meaningful work, such as subjective meaningfulness, self-realization, alienation, the unity of conception and execution, autonomy, social contribution, and Veltman’s four-dimensional account. None of these capture the distinct concern that the concept ‘meaningful work’ should capture, or they do so less well than the reasons account. This also shows that work can be meaningful regardless of whether it is good in other respects, such as in inherent interest or opportunities for self-realization.

There has recently been a revived interest in temporal justice among political philosophers. For example, lone mothers have, on average, 30 h less free time per week than people in couples without children. Recent work has focussed on free time as a distinct distributive good, but this paper argues that it would be a mistake for a theory of temporal justice to focus only on shares of free time. First, I argue that the concept of free time does not succeed in tracking discretionary control over time. All of time is a resource, and the particular moral relevance of free time must be established otherwise. Second, hours of time differ in use value, and we cannot fully track our concerns about the allocation of time, whether free or necessary, without taking this into account. We care about free time but also about ‘quality time’. To explain this observation, I develop an account of the value of time as a resource. The value of time periods differs with the prospects for which a time period can be used, that is, what we can do and be with it. What we are allocating when we are allocating time is not just hours; it is hours of time with a certain value. Finally, I argue that a concern for the value of time is compatible with a resourcist theory of temporal justice.