•  769
    In defence of exploitation
    Economics and Philosophy 11 (2): 275--307. 1995.
    Roemer's attempt to undermine the normative reasons that Marxists have thought exploitation important (domination, alienation, and inequality) is vitiated by several crucial errors. First, Roemer ignores the dimension of freedom which is Marx's main concern and replaces it with an interest in justice, which Marx rejected. This leads him to misconstrue the nature of exploitation as Marx understands it. Second, his procedure for disconnecting these evils from exploitation, or denying their importa…Read more
  •  738
    What's wrong with exploitation?
    Noûs 29 (2): 158-188. 1995.
    Marx thinks that capitalism is exploitative, and that is a major basis for his objections to it. But what's wrong with exploitation, as Marx sees it? (The paper is exegetical in character: my object is to understand what Marx believed,) The received view, held by Norman Geras, G.A. Cohen, and others, is that Marx thought that capitalism was unjust, because in the crudest sense, capitalists robbed labor of property that was rightfully the workers' because the workers and not the capitalists produ…Read more
  •  424
    This paper critiques the view, widely held by philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists, that psychological explanation is a matter of ascribing propositional attitudes (such as beliefs and desires) towards language-like propositions in the mind, and that cognitive mental states consist in intentional attitudes towards propositions of a linguistic quasi-linguistic nature. On this view, thought is structured very much like a language. Denial that propositional attitude psychology is an adequa…Read more
  •  414
    Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice
    Legal Studies 17 128-68. 1997.
    THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS. The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can …Read more
  •  406
    Is the family subject to principles of justice? In "A Theory of Justice", John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the, "basic institutions of society", to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the fa…Read more
  •  332
    In this Article, I propose a novel law and economics explanation of a deeply puzzling aspect of business organization in market economies. Why are virtually all firms organized as capital-managed and -owned (capitalist) enterprises rather than as labor-managed and -owned cooperatives? Over 150 years ago, J.S. Mill predicted that efficiency and other advantages would eventually make worker cooperatives predominant over capitalist firms. Mill was right about the advantages but wrong about the resu…Read more
  •  317
    Functional explanation and metaphysical individualism
    Philosophy of Science 60 (2): 278-301. 1993.
    G. A. Cohen defends and Jon Elster criticizes Marxist use of functional explanation. But Elster's mechanical conception of explanation is, contrary to Elster's claims, a better basis for vindication of functional explanation than Cohen's nomological conception, which cannot provide an adequate account of functional explanation. Elster also objects that functional explanation commits us to metaphysically bizarre collective subjects, but his argument requires an implausible reading of methodologic…Read more
  •  295
    The Paradox of Ideology
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (4). 1993.
    A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that n…Read more
  •  276
    From Libertarianism to Egalitarianism
    Social Theory and Practice 18 (3): 259-288. 1992.
    A standard natural rights argument for libertarianism is based on the labor theory of property: the idea that I own my self and my labor, and so if I "mix" my own labor with something previously unowned or to which I have a have a right, I come to own the thing with which I have mixed by labor. This initially intuitively attractive idea is at the basis of the theories of property and the role of government of John Locke and Robert Nozick. Locke saw and Nozick agreed that fairness to others requi…Read more
  •  269
    Debate about legal and policy reform has been haunted by a pernicious confusion about human nature, the idea that it is a set of rigid dispositions, today generally conceived as genetic, that is manifested the same way in all circumstances. Opponents of egalitarian alternatives argue that we cannot depart far from the status quo because human nature stands in the way. Advocates of such reforms too often deny the existence of human nature because, sharing this conception, they think it would pre…Read more
  •  206
    Philosophers have argued that on the prevailing theory of mind, functionalism, the fact that mental states are multiply realizable or can be instantiated in a variety of different physical forms, at least in principle, shows that materialism or physical is probably false. A similar argument rejects the relevance to psychology of connectionism, which holds that mental states are embodied and and constituted by connectionist neural networks. These arguments, I argue, fall before reductios ad absur…Read more
  •  57
    Reduction, elimination, and the mental
    Philosophy of Science 58 (June): 203-20. 1991.
    The antireductionist arguments of many philosophers (e.g., Baker, Fodor and Davidson) are motivated by a worry that successful reduction would eliminate rather than conserve the mental. This worry derives from a misunderstanding of the empiricist account of reduction, which, although it does not underwrite "cognitive suicide", should be rejected for its positivist baggage. Philosophy of psychology needs more detailed attention to issues in natural science which serve as analogies for reduction o…Read more
  •  45
    Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (review)
    Radical Philosophy Review of Books 14 (14): 2-8. 1996.
  •  21
    Philosophy of Science Association
    In Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper & J. D. Trout (eds.), The Philosophy of Science, Mit Press. pp. 58--2. 1991.
  •  20
    If Market Socialism is So Great, Why Doesn’t It Exist? (review)
    Radical Philosophy Review of Books 11 (11): 6-16. 1995.
  •  16
    Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (review)
    Radical Philosophy Review of Books 14 (14): 2-8. 1996.
  •  11
    The State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory
    with Milton Fisk
    Philosophical Review 101 (4): 939. 1992.
  •  3
    A survey of motion planning and related geometric algorithms
    with M. Sharir
    Artificial Intelligence 37 (1-3): 157-169. 1988.
  • In vivo imaging of oral mucositis in an animal model using optical coherence tomography and optical Doppler tomography
    with P. Wilder-Smith, M. J. Hammer-Wilson, J. Zhang, Q. Wang, K. Osann, Z. Chen, H. Wigdor, and J. Epstein
    Purpose: To assess noninvasive optical coherence tomography and optical Doppler tomography for early detection and evaluation of chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis. Experimental Design: Cheek pouches of 10 Syrian golden hamsters were imaged using OCT/ODT during development of chemotherapy-induced mucositis. I.p. injections of 5-fluorouracil and mechanical irritation induced oral lesions. At 2, 4, 7, and 11 days, one hamster was sacrificed and processed for histopathology. OCT images were visual…Read more