Konstantin Morozov

What is the relationship between ethics and human nature? According to Aristotle, ethics is deeply rooted in human nature. According to Immanuel Kant, a substantive conception of human nature cannot underlie ethics. Many philosophers have attempted to reconcile Kant and Aristotle on this issue, and this article continues this line of thought. It offers an argument against the moral permissibility of non-monogamous relationships that does justice to both views. It first considers the general conceptual framework for thinking about monogamy and non-monogamy. It then turns to the “straightforward argument” against the permissibility of non-monogamy, which rests on the claim that humans are naturally inclined to form monogamous couples. This argument fails because it moralizes non-evaluative facts about human nature and fails to provide criteria for distinguishing between morally good and bad features of that nature. A more ambitious Aristotelian argument maintains that monogamy is essentially tied to romantic love, which is an objective good and thus necessary for human well-being. This argument also fails because it fails to justify the premise that loveless sexual relationships undermine the possibility of well-being, and it also misidentifies our motivation for condemning vicious intimate relationships. Finally, the most successful Kantian argument begins with the claim that all persons have equal intrinsic value and therefore should not be objectified. This imposes two constraints on our intimate relationships: first, we must treat our partners as non-interchangeable persons, and second, we must pursue a shared end with our partners, not simply a private end. Together, these constraints justify a moral presumption against loveless relationships, and since love is monogamous, they also justify the impermissibility of non-monogamous relationships.

This article addresses the normative challenge to panpsychism. This challenge stems from the need to reconcile panpsychism with both sentientism and the normative asymmetry between living and nonliving entities. Two unsuccessful strategies for addressing this challenge are considered. First, one might argue that the moral implications of panpsychism are not so significant as to have any impact on our actual practice. However, panpsychism presupposes a more inclusive approach to animal consciousness and potentially leads to the notion that our nervous system includes multiple auxiliary subjects. Second, counterexamples to sentientism can be proposed. However, such counterexamples have not yet been proposed. A more successful approach to resolving the normative challenge is panqualityism, according to which fundamental properties are unrealized qualia, or “mental qualities”. Panqualityism faces the Q-zombie objection, which stems from the conceivability of beings that have mental qualities and cognitive access to them but lack a distinct sense of self. Panqualityism can resolve this problem by denying the existence of a distinct sense of self, but this potentially undermines the idea of separateness of persons. Since this idea underlies the imposition of strict deontic constraints on our actions, it still implies counterintuitive moral consequences. Panqualitiysts have three ways to respond to this problem: embrace consequentialism, embrace agent-neutral deontology, or reject the very division of moral theories into agent-neutral and agent-relative.

This article examines the attempts of many libertarian philosophers to justify the self-ownership principle using the second formulation of the categorical imperative. It begins by reconstructing the self-ownership principle, according to which each person has a natural property right over her body and person. There are many versions of this principle, each recognizing a different set of such property rights; but what all formulations have in common is their radical anti-paternalism and, consequently, the permissibility of self-destructive behaviour. The paper then reconstructs and analyses two Kantian arguments for self-ownership. According to the first, persons have intrinsic value and should therefore never be used as mere means for someone else’s ends, which forbids ownership of other people. According to the second, persons must own their own bodies and persons in order to realise the personal and moral autonomy needed to uphold the moral law. Next, the article describes two ways in which self-ownership can be reconciled with different theories of personal identity: internalist and externalist. Internalism holds that the body is either identical with the person or part of the person. Externalism holds that the body is external to the person, which is a nonphysical mental substance. For Kantian libertarians, these two approaches present a dilemma. If they accept internalism, then self-ownership is incompatible with the categorical imperative because it involves self-instrumentalization. Since all persons are of equal value, instrumentalizing oneself is just as impermissible as instrumentalizing other persons. However, if Kantian libertarians accept externalism, then self-ownership simply does not follow from the categorical imperative because violating property rights to external re­sources is not itself an instrumentalization of their owner. Thus, the categorical imperative and self-ownership are incompatible.

According to illusionism, there is no phenomenal consciousness, only an illusion of it. Since the phenomenal character of experience plays an important role in explaining and justifying its normative status, illusionism faces a normative problem. The problem is that illusionism, by denying phenomenal experience, potentially undermines our moral commitments. In this article, I defend the normative problem and consider solutions to it proposed by François Kammerer, Keith Frankish, Artem Besedin, Maxim Gorbachev, Artem Iunusov, and Taras Tarasenko. As I show, none of these solutions is satisfactory. I conclude by offering two alternative solutions that either weaken illusionism or accept antirealist implications for metaethics.

Today, generative artificial intelligence systems have become widespread and are increasingly used for commercial purposes. Since these systems are trained on copyrighted content, this raises the issue of exploitation of creative labor. John Rawls’s theory of justice offers a promising solution to this problem. Because of its priority of basic rights over considerations of economic gain, this theory of justice imposes strict restrictions on the use of other people’s content in training neural networks, and therefore requires government regulation in this area. In addition, Rawls’s theory also justifies the provision of a guaranteed basic income both as a means of compensation for past violations of rights and as a means of distributing fair shares of social wealth.

One of the main objections to utilitarianism is the separateness of persons thesis. According to it, each person possesses a unique subjective perspective, making it impossible to aggregate the well-being of individuals. At first glance, this assertion is purely descriptive and therefore cannot justify any normative conclusions. However, it can be understood as pointing to a significant normative fact: each person has intrinsic value, and therefore their well-being should not be considered simply as part of some aggregated social good. This objection was used by two of the leading Kantian moral philosophers of the 20th century, John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Although they agreed in their rejection of utilitarianism, they differed on how we should treat our talents. Nozick supported the self-ownership principle, according to which each person has exclusive ownership of their talents, while Rawls proposed that the distribution of natural talents should be considered collective property. Rawls’s and Nozick’s positions on talents can be reconciled with the reciprocity principle, which requires an egalitarian distribution of the fruits of social cooperation. However, this principle leaves the interests of the disabled inadequately protected. To address this problem, a duty-sensitive self-ownership could be adopted to accommodate the natural duty to help those in need. But even such an extremely weakened form of self-ownership, if we are to consider it self-ownership at all, must prohibit paternalistic interventions. However, separateness of persons, if we associate it with the intrinsic value of human persons, must allow for some forms of paternalism, since its complete denial demonstrates our disregard for the good of others. Thus, Rawls’s position is more consistent with the idea of separateness of persons, but only if we interpret it as a rejection of self-ownership, rather than an acceptance of its more modest liberal interpretation.

New natural law (NNL) is an approach in contemporary normative and applied ethics, legal and political philosophy and moral theology that is closely associated with the work of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen. NNL arose in the second half of the 20th century as a result of a critical revision of the neo-scholastic natural law, as well as an attempt to reconcile Thomism with contemporary analytical philosophy. NNL is based on the idea that there are a number of basic goods that are valuable to all people, such as life, friendship, knowledge, beauty, love, practical reason, etc. NNL theorists further argue that all people have natural rights to have these goods in their lives free from targeted harm. Some more orthodox Thomists criticize NNL on the grounds that such a commitment to respect the goods in the lives of all people implicitly relies on a Platonic concept of the good, which gives these goods an ontological status independent of their actualization in a particular life. While some NNL theorists do accept Platonic conceptions of the good, there are alternative ways of justifying such a duty by appeal to more “subjective” notions. In this case, the duty of respect for the goods in someone else’s life will be included in the conditions for the actualization of goods in one’s own life. Four arguments of this kind can be proposed, referring to four different goods: friendship, justice, harmony with oneself and practical reason.

Some contemporary philosophers, such as Gary Chartier, Matt Zwolinski, and Miranda Fleischer, propose that a basic income should be seen as an instrument for rectifying historical injustices. This article examines the arguments for this proposal based on Robert Nozick’s historical theory of justice. The first part of the article formulates the normative basis of Nozick’s theory, as well as his three principles of distributive justice: the principle of original appropriation, the principle of voluntary transfer, and the principle of rectification. Nozick himself believed that, in modern societies, the principle of rectification may require the redistributive policies envisaged by John Rawls’s difference principle. The second section examines reasons why historical justice theorists should prefer basic income, including the arguments by Milton Friedman, Matt Zwolinski, and Philippe Van Parijs. The third section responds to several objections to rectification redistribution proposed by Loren Lomasky and Jan Narveson. In order to counteract these objections, Hillel Steiner’s liberal theory of exploitation is proposed, which serves as an additional argument in favor of the fact that rectification can be organized through a basic income.

Phenomenal consciousness is the capacity for subjective experience. Some philosophers argue that phenomenal consciousness poses a major problem for physicalism because it cannot be reduced to any physical properties or processes. Illusionism is a form of physicalism that solves this problem by denying the reality of phenomenal consciousness. According to illusionism, such consciousness does not exist, but we have only the illusion of such consciousness. Realists about phenomenal consciousness, including both physicalists and anti-physicalists, have put forward a number of arguments against illusionism. One of these is David Chalmers’s Moorean argument that the existence of phenomenal consciousness is part of common sense. And we should always adhere to common sense when we compare it with controversial speculative philosophical theories, of which illusionism is an example. This argument has recently been criticized by Evgeny Loginov. He argues that Moorean argument fails to refute illusionism because ‘phenomenal consciousness’, like ‘qualia’, ‘subjectivity’, and ‘what-it-is-likeness’ are technical philosophical terms. And common-sense propositions should not contain any technical terminology. If, however, the argument uses more ordinary words like ‘feelings’, ‘experiences’, and ‘sensations’, the argument will allow for a functional interpretation of these concepts that the illusionist might accept. I propose a formulation of Moorean argument that is free of technical terms and does not admit of a functional interpretation. First premise: ‘If pain is somehow experienced, then illusionism is false’. Second premise: ‘Pain is somehow experienced’. Conclusion: ‘Illusionism is false’. This version of Moorean argument says nothing about the nature of phenomenal consciousness, and so allows for the possibility that reductive physicalism, and hence weak illusionism, might be true. But it rules out the possibility of strong illusionism and other eliminativist positions about phenomenal consciousness. At least until we have good scientific evidence against the existence of phenomenal consciousness, which illusionists have not yet offered.

In the Republic, Plato presents the story of magic ring of Gyges. The ring makes its wearer invisible, allowing him to commit evil without fear of punishment or retribution. This story is an early presentation of the central problem of moral motivation. It is that three plausible claims seem incompatible. First, we have rational reasons to act morally. Second, there are absolute moral prohibitions. Third, rational reasons for action have motivating force. Some philosophers reject the existence of absolute prohibitions. Others reject the existence of rational reasons for moral action. Still others suggest that rational reasons have no motivating force. There is, however, a solution to the central problem that avoids each of these implausible moves. It is that rational reasons have motivating force only for the right agents, e. g., the practically rational, the fully informed, the virtuous, and so on. This is so because rational reasons for action depend on something having intrinsic value, to which appropriate agents respond in the right way. This answer helps explain why some people might be tempted by ring of Gyges despite having rational reasons to avoid it. It remains an open question, however, whether such a theory of moral motivation depends on anything like a Platonic conception of the good.

Do people have any natural welfare rights? This article examines this question from the perspective of the most influential contemporary natural rights concept, the new natural law theory. This theory was developed by John Finnis, Germaine Grisez, and Joseph Boyle in the second half of the 20th century and remains an influential position in moral, legal and political philosophy. The first section of this article describes the general theoretical foundations of the new natural law theory: basic goods and basic principles of practical rationality. According to the new natural law, natural human rights are normatively protected interests in the realization of basic goods, the normative protection of which is provided by a pluralistic concept of practical rationality. The following sections consider how this general description justifies giving all people natural welfare rights and institutionalizing these rights in the form of a basic income. The second section is devoted to the natural law concept of property, which includes a left-libertarianesque equal right to common resources. The third section is devoted to the formulation of a more practice-oriented natural right of property, which is based on a strict requirement of moral autonomy or self-constitution. It is demonstrated how this right simultaneously justifies both limited property rights and redistribution to guarantee everyone the minimum resources for moral autonomy. However, this same claim to autonomy limits the forms of provision of this minimal share of resources to a basic income, since it protects the broadest opportunities to independently dispose of one’s share of resources, using them in various self-constitutive projects. The conclusion concludes sums up that the new natural law allows for various forms of institutionalization of basic income, but justifies a strong presumption in favor of its unconditional provision.

Traditionally, monogamy has been the dominant form of romantic relationships, but today, more and more people practice consensual non-monogamy, including open relationships and polyamory. Proponents of such formats also call them “ethical non-monogamy”. This article critically examines the moral permissibility of non-monogamous relationships. It first offers a liberal argument for traditional sexual ethics, which views romantic love as a necessary condition for the moral permissibility of sexual relations. This argument is based on the liberal principle, dating back to Immanuel Kant, that a person should not be used as a mere means or instrument. Only in loving sex do people not use their partners as instruments for their own pleasure. It then offers an evolutionary argument for modal monogamy, that is, the thesis that romantic love can only be monogamous. It concludes that only in monogamous relationships can people treat each other with due respect. Paradoxically, it is monogamy that best advances feminist goals and serves as the most progressive and emancipatory moral framework for sexual relations.

This article is a critical response to Roman Kochnev’s Parfitian Teletransportation or Error Management and Andrei Nekhaev’s Teletransportation, Replication and Mereology. It defends the principle of the mereorganic continuity from the criticisms made by Kochnev and Nekhaev. First, the concept of survival is analyzed and how its meanings differ in ordinary speech and in Derek Parfit’s psychological theory of identity. Then, the context of the principle of the mereorganic continuity in the phenomenalist theory of identity is described. Based on this context, Kochnev’s and Nekhaev’s objections are refuted. In particular, it is shown that these objections are based on an incorrect interpretation of the principle and the role it should play in our theories of personal identity. It is concluded that the mereorganic continuity is a commonsense proposition that cannot be rejected without good reason, and neither Kochnev nor Nekhaev were able to offer such reasons.

This article presents a critique of Sergei Sazonov’s entrepreneurial theory of ownership. The article first reconstructs Sazonov’s response to the private duty imposition objection. It then demonstrates that Sazonov’s theory cannot overcome this objection because it is based on an ambiguity in the meaning of the word ‘use’. The entrepreneurial theory of ownership understands ‘use’ in a rather narrow and contradictory sense, which differs from the meaning in which this concept appears in objections to theories of original appropriation.

For much of the second half of the 20th century, discussions of social justice were dominated by distributive egalitarianism. According to this approach, justice requires an equal distribution of economic and social goods among people. Distributive egalitarianism has been criticized from two directions. On the one hand, relational egalitarians argue that equality should be understood not as an equal distribution of goods, but as social relations free of discrimination and oppression. On the other hand, sufficientarians argue that distributive equality does not matter as long as everyone has a minimally decent share of goods. A recent approach that synthesizes both lines of criticism is relational sufficientarianism. Its proponents, such as Justin Tosi, argue that justice requires only minimally decent social relations, but not fully egalitarian ones. The main argument for this position is that relational sufficientarianism better explains our intuitive acceptance of tolerable hierarchies. Such hierarchies lack aspects of discrimination and oppression, but they also lack instrumental value and are distinctly inegalitarian in nature. This article offers a response to Tosi’s argument from the perspective of Rawlsian relational egalitarianism. This theory can explain the acceptability of tolerable hierarchies because they limitthe requirement for egalitarian relations to the basic structure of society. The limitation of this requirement is explained by the principle of liberal neutrality, which also rules out the principle of desert as a possible justification for hierarchical relations. The article concludes that, at this stage, relational egalitarianism has significant explanatory advantages over relational sufficientarianism.

Robert Nozick formulated the libertarian theory of justice, which condemns any form of redistribution of wealth and income. However, Nozick himself recognized the “Lock­ean proviso”, which limits the scope of permissible appropriations and transfers of pro­perty. Nozick offered his own interpretation of this proviso, which would exclude any re­distributive implications inherent in stricter readings of this condition. This article exa­mines whether Nozick’s proviso succeeds in avoiding redistributive implications. Various objections to the standard interpretation of Nozick’s proviso raised by Gerald Cohen, Hil­lel Steiner, John Arthur, Brian Powell, Eric Mack, and Steven Daskal motivate us to re­think the proviso. To this end, three redistributive reinterpretations of Nozick’s proviso, proposed by Peter Vallentyne, Matt Zwolinski, and Steven Daskal, are considered. Both Vallentyne and Zwolinski propose using Nozick’s proviso as an argument for basic in­come, although their approaches differ. Vallentyne suggests that Nozick’s proviso im­poses compensation obligations on appropriators of natural resources, then distributing that compensation in proportion to the extent to which the appropriation has made some­one worse off. But since everyone has the right to a minimum compensation payment, it can be provided in the form of a basic income. Zwolinski focuses more on the prop­erty system as a whole, but highlights the fact that its positive externalities do not af­fect certain individuals. And the most inclusive way to reach everyone who is entitled to compensation is to pay it as a basic income. Daskal proposes to limit the payment of compensation for violation of the proviso to job requirements. However, an analysis of Daskal’s argument shows that he fails to justify these requirements, and therefore his line of argument leads to a dilemma between a basic income or an even more egalitarian policy – market socialism.

This article addresses a normative problem for panpsychist views of consciousness. This problem arises when panpsychism is combined with sentientism. According to sentientism, entities endowed with phenomenal consciousness have a special moral status. According to panpsychism, all entities in the universe have phenomenal consciousness in some form. Synthesizing these positions leads to a violation of the normative asymmetry between living and nonliving entities, and potentially leads to a revision of established moral beliefs. The article argues that we have good reasons for both panpsychism and sentientism, and therefore we cannot avoid the normative problem by simply rejecting one of them. We identify four strategies that panpsychists might employ to address the normative challenge they face: narrowing morally relevant phenomenal properties to valence properties, abandoning panpsychism in favor of panprotopsychism, dissociating the phenomenal and normative aspects of experience, and revising our ethics to include new entities. However, none of the strategies provides a definitive solution to the normative problem, because they either have counterintuitive implications or undermine the motivation for developing panpsychist theories of consciousness. We conclude that the normative problem poses a serious obstacle to the justification of panpsychism as a theory of consciousness that satisfies the requirements of reflective equilibrium.

Which normative approach to bioethics can best explain and justify the widespread moral intuitions? Libertarians claim that it is the principle of self-ownership, which confers on all persons a natural property right over their bodies. Such a right explains the impermissibility of physical assault on the body, forced labor, and hard paternalism. But it also entails a number of intuitively implausible consequences, such as an unlimited right to sell one’s organs or oneself into slavery, absolute property rights in extrapersonal objects, the absence of positive duties to help others, and the impermissibility of even soft paternalism or taxation of labor. Libertarians believe that we must accept these consequences in order to preserve our own coherence. This article formulates and justifies an alternative approach, the principle of bodily integrity. Placed in the broader context of natural law theory, this principle explains and justifies the widespread intuitions without allowing for counterintuitive consequences. It argues that all people have a universal obligation not to intentionally damage basic human goods in their own lives and in the lives of others. Bodily integrity is one such basic good. The advantage of this principle is that it better fits our understanding of the moral status of children and people with cognitive disorders. The article then examines the implications of these approaches for organ donation. While self-ownership suggests radical reforms in this area, including the legalization of commercial markets in human organs, bodily integrity leads to more moderate legislation in this area, which is already in place in a number of countries.

Liberalism remains the dominant political philosophy of the 21st century, despite the challenges it faces. One of these challenges was the rise of right-wing populism, which is based on anti-liberal nationalist rhetoric. However, some political philosophers try to combine liberalism and nationalism. This article explores the plausibility of such a hybrid theory. This article examines the compatibility of nationalism with the three main forms of liberalism: neutralist, perfectionist and republican. Liberal neutralism is incompatible with nationalism because the policy of national self-determination violates the principle of state neutrality between reasonable conceptions of the good life. Liberal perfectionism is incompatible with nationalism because the rationale for nationalist policies doesn’t refer to any deeper aspects of human nature other than external phenotypic traits, and a preference for national community as the basis for political self-government is arbitrary. Liberal republicanism is incompatible with nationalism because it faces problems of domination and inclusion. The problem of domination is that nationalist policies prevent the maximization of non-domination both between nations and within nations. The problem of inclusion is that nationalists have no nonarbitrary reason to limit political communities to the boundaries of nation-states. The article concludes with seven arguments for a synthesis of liberalism and nationalism. An analysis of these arguments demonstrates that none of the reasons given can motivate liberals’ appeal to nationalist values. Thus, nationalism is incompatible with liberalism, and consistent liberal nationalism is impossible.

In recent years, Fabian Wendt’s sufficientarian or moderate libertarianism has stood out among theories of distributive justice. This theory is based on the project pursuit argument and recognizes individual’s rights to self-ownership and ownership of external resources. But the second of these rights is limited by the sufficiency proviso, which requires that all people have a minimum sufficient share of resources to engage in personal projects. This article takes a critical look at moderate libertarianism, showing that its limitation to the sufficiency threshold is incompatible with its reliance on the project pursuit argument, since this argument implicitly assumes a presumption of equal concern for persons. In the absence of additional reasons, this presumption requires that people as projects pursuers be given not a sufficient, but an equal share of external resources.

According to the difference principle, social and economic inequalities are justified only when they maximize the benefits of the least advantaged. John Rawls attempted to justify this principle using the thought experiment known as the veil of ignorance. The idea is that it would be rational for all people to agree to the principle if they did not know what position they would occupy in society. John Harsanyi objected to this argument on the grounds that the difference principle is rational only for people with low-risk propensity. For those willing to risk their position, the utilitarian expected-utility maximization principle is no less rational. Thus, Rawls’s veil of ignorance discriminates against people based on their risk propensity. Many Rawlsians respond to this objection by arguing that there is no discrimination because people leave their risk propensity behind the veil of ignorance. This article defends Harsanyi’s objection against this response. People cannot leave their risk propensity behind a veil because they need it to choose principles of justice based on their impact on their own life prospects. However, the article offers a different response to Harsanyi’s objection. His objection fails because it ignores the fact that principles of justice must not only be rational but also reasonable. The expected-utility maximization principle is rational but not reasonable because it imposes risks on other people, which is not the case with the difference principle. However, to use this response to Harsanyi’s objection, Rawlsians must abandon the neutralist liberalism of later Rawls and elaborate the Kantian foundations of his early philosophical project.

We can formulate the zombie argument in two versions: strong and weak. In its weak version, the zombie argument asserts an explanatory gap between facts about human physiology and subjective mental life. According to this argument, since we can conceive of zombies, there is some epistemic gap between our neurophysiology and the phenomenal consciousness that accompanies it. By “conceivability” here is meant not simply the ability to imagine a zombie, but rather the ability to conceive of the idea of ​​a zombie in a logically consistent way. That is, a zombie is conceivable if we can conceive of the idea of ​​a zombie without finding an obvious contradiction in it [Chalmers 2013, 128]. This in itself does not prove that consciousness is non-physical. Perhaps consciousness is somehow reducible to physical processes, but we don't yet know how. Perhaps advanced physics of the future will provide an answer to the question of how exactly the physical brain generates subjective consciousness [Stoljar 2006], or perhaps it will forever remain a mystery [McGinn 1989]. In any case, the conceivability of zombies and the resulting epistemic gap do not in themselves refute materialism (the same as “physicalism”). A stronger version of the argument, defended by David Chalmers, suggests that the conceivability of zombies entails their possibility. And if zombies are possible, then physicalism is false. For in that case, the gap between physical and phenomenal facts is no longer simply epistemic, but rather ontological. The real possibility of zombies means that the full set of physical facts is not sufficient for phenomenal consciousness to exist. There must be other non-physical (mental) entities, facts, or properties that provide consciousness. The world we live in is then dualistic, since it contains both physical and mental entities, facts and properties.

Left-libertarianism comes in two main varieties: equal share and equal opportunity for well-being. Although equal share left-libertarians have supported a basic income guarantee, its equal opportunity counterparts either ignore a basic income in their theorizing or reject it. This article offers four reasons why left-libertarians should consider a basic income as a way to promote equality of opportunity for well-being: a basic income enhances self-respect, a basic income opens up the possibility of personal projects beyond traditional employment, a basic income protects negative freedom, and a basic income minimizes potential for abuses and mistakes of centralized authorities. Peter Vallentyne’s objection to basic income is also considered. His asset-oriented account of the Lockean proviso is rejected in favor of an equality-promoting account that requires a substantial basic income.

Many political and moral philosophers try to reconcile freedom and equality. One such theory is left-libertarianism, which establishes exclusive property rights over one’s own body and egalitarian property rights over natural resources. These rights are realized through the policy of unconditional basic income. Recently, left-libertarianism has come under fire from another similar approach, reciprocal libertarianism. This concept combines exclusive rights over one’s own body with the requirement for an egalitarian distribution of the fruits of social cooperation among those who make a fair contribution to its system. On the face of it, reciprocal libertarians reject basic income because it doesn’t satisfy the fair contribution condition. This article explores the case for a basic income from a reciprocal libertarian perspective. In particular, two institutional regimes will be examined: reciprocal left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism. Each is compatible with a basic income coupled with broader redistribution according to the principle of reciprocity.

Is a basic income ethically justifiable? This article offers several arguments in favor of a basic income from the perspective of Robert Nozick’s historical theory of justice. The first section outlines three basic principles of Nozick’s theory and explains its connections to libertarianism and natural rights theory. The second section argues for the adoption of the Lockean proviso as a limitation on the principle of original appropriation. It then presents three interpretations of the Lockean proviso: the Nozick’s proviso, the sufficiency proviso, and the egalitarian proviso. All three provisos, albeit on different grounds, offer justification for a basic income. The third section turns to the principle of rectification of historical injustice. Together with Rawls’s difference principle and Steiner’s liberal theory of exploitation, the principle of rectification can also provide a justification for a basic income. The article concludes that, from an ethical perspective, a basic income is a promising form of redistribution.

The article is a commentary on the work of Roman Kochnev Teletransporter and Other Troubles, which is a critical remark on the work of Alexey Kardash Teletransporter and Origami. First, the article reconstructs Kardash’s argument against survival in Parfit’s teletransporter, as well as Kochnev’s criticism. Next, the principle of mereorganic continuity proposed by Kardash is defended as a condition for the survival of the person. To answer Kochnev’s criticism, examples of stolen gametes are simulated, which demonstrate that mereorganic continuity is a detector of causal relationships necessary for the survival of the person. The article concludes by addressing the problem of the implicit dualism inherent in Parfitian views on survival in teletransporter.

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick made the argument that income redistribution violates the Kantian categorical imperative. Nozick’s retrospective enslavement argument is still used today in discussions about the moral justification of taxation. This article explicates four implicit premises of Nozick’s argument: the self-ownership principle, its fullness, the absence of restrictions on the appropriation of natural resources, and the absence of restrictions on the distribution of the fruits of cooperation. Without additional justification for each of these premises, Nozick’s argument cannot show that income redistribution violates the categorical imperative.

Most right-libertarians deny the permissibility of government redistribution, referring to the inviolability of private property rights. In a rare exception, Eric Mack offers a right-libertarian argument for luck sufficientarianism based on the catastrophe clause. In this view, people who find themselves in trouble through no fault of their own may violate someone else’s property rights in minor ways to save their own lives. But since a literal interpretation of this clause makes property rights too uncertain, Mack proposes a system of redistribution that will protect people from dire circumstances. As it only applies to those who find themselves in poverty through no fault of their own, Mack’s argument rules out a basic income. However, one can combine Mack’s argument with basic income by arguing that responsibility-insensitive sufficientarianism is superior to luck sufficientarianism. First, luck sufficientarianism allows for the counterintuitive conclusion that people who have made mistakes in their lives do not deserve help from the rest of the community, even if they are engaged in some socially important activity. Second, luck sufficientarianism unduly interferes with people’s private lives to distinguish between deserving and undeserving recipients of social assistance, and inevitably excludes some deserving recipients from the pool of recipients. Third, a condition for holding people responsible for their choices is that they have agency. But maintaining agency requires the presence of some kind of material resources that would protect people from the fear and stress associated with poverty. Thus, responsibility-insensitive sufficientarianism is superior to luck sufficientarianism as an interpretation of the catastrophe clause. And within a libertarian framework, this requires introducing a basic income. First, a basic income technically guarantees everyone protection from extreme poverty and destitution. Second, a basic income guarantees everyone autonomy in how they manage their resources. Third, a basic income does not require means testing and is therefore responsibility-insensitive. Mack’s catastrophe clause therefore offers a right-libertarian argument for a basic income.

The liberal-egalitarian concept formulated by John Rawls in his book A Theory of Justice is still vehemently debated today. Critics of this concept include, among others, Rodion Belkovich and Sergei Vinogradov, according to whom Rawlsians inevitably face a dilemma: they need to reject either the difference principle or luck egalitarianism, and each of these solutions leads to the erosion of the basic foundations of Rawls’s theory. The article presents a detailed analysis of the arguments put forward by Belkovich and Vinogradov and demonstrates that the dilemma they identified is flawed for three reasons. First, it blurs the distinction between luck egalitarianism and “straight egalitarianism,” which assumes the complete equality of income and wealth in society. Luck egalitarians do not support the idea of absolute equality in distribution and consider inequality that reflects people’s responsibility for their own choices fair. Second, Rawlsian egalitarianism is essentially equated with luck egalitarianism, while they represent two clearly distinguishable approaches. Third, the kidnapper’s argument, which proves that the difference principle is incompatible with luck egalitarianism, does not provide solid reasoning against the difference principle. The argument is only applicable under limited conditions, when the difference principle is embedded as an assumption in the “argument from incentives,” which in turn is put forward by the potential beneficiaries of this incentive. According to the author’s conclusion, the above mentioned considerations clearly indicate that Rawlsians do not face any dilemma of choosing between luck egalitarianism and the difference principle, and the criticism of Rawls’s theory proposed by Belkovich and Vinogradov should be considered groundless.

Liberalism and paternalism are often seen as incompatible on the grounds that liberalism recognizes autonomy as the highest value, while paternalism limits autonomy for the sake of more valuable goods such as health and safety. This article offers an argument for the compatibility of liberalism and paternalism. At the heart of the argument is the philosophical distinction between having autonomy and exercising autonomy. The second way of defending autonomy is indeed incompatible with paternalism, but the first justifies paternalism when its purpose is to limit choices that reduce one’s autonomy. A modified version of John Rawls’s veil of ignorance is presented to justify the preference for having autonomy over exercising autonomy. The practical consequences of this form of liberal paternalism are then examined and analyzed using three examples: voluntary sale of oneself into slavery, addiction to opioid drugs, and compliance with road safety measures (seat belt, motorcycle helmet). The argument presented provides a justification for liberal paternalism that does not rely on any controversial or perfectionist conception of the good, and is therefore compatible with the classical interpretation of liberal neutrality. It concludes by considering the compatibility of the proposed argument with other versions of liberal paternalism, including perfectionist, respectful, Kantian, libertarian, and left-libertarian paternalism. The conclusion is that all versions except the left-libertarian one is compatible with the justification described, while Peter Vallentyne’s left-libertarian paternalism suffers from internal inconsistency.