Online Public Shaming is a form of norm enforcement that involves collectively imposing reputational costs on a person for having a certain kind of moral character. OPS actions aim to disqualify her from public discussion and certain normal human relations. We argue that this constitutes an informal collective punishment that it is presumptively wrong to impose on others. OPS functions as a form of ostracism that fails to show equal basic respect to its targets. Additionally, in seeking to mobilise unconstrained (...) collective power with potentially serious punitive consequences, OPS is incompatible with due process values. (shrink)

Transnational effects are identified as those economic effects which cross state boundaries. Where these effects are negative, as illustrated by the ‘transnational case’, it is asked what the appropriate ethical analysis of such a case might be. If we leave aside a social distributive justice analysis, for reasons given, then a typical move is to claim that transnational economic effects are analysable as human rights violations. The paper examines this claim and identifies the specific view of human rights which motivates (...) it: the ‘outcomes view of human rights’. It is then shown how the outcomes view of human rights ultimately collapses into social distributive justice-type standards and so suffers from the same problems raised against using those standards for transnational effects. An alternative approach to human rights is sketched, although a complete theory of human rights is not offered. Finally, a different type of justice analysis for transnational cases is offered in which a form of international justice proper is proposed. (shrink)

Cosmopolitan critics attack the scope-limitation of justice of egalitarian liberal theorists to states. They treat justice as the production of a given set of outcomes for people regardless of location or relationship. However, in doing so they either ignore the relevant agent towards whom principles of justice are addressed or see the question of agency as a practical, derivative question, of a secondary character. This paper argues that a principle of justice without a clearly justified agent is not a genuine (...) principle at all. This is what writers like Rawls mean by the "subject" of justice (analogous to the grammatical subject of a sentence, i.e.,the agent). We should reflect on agents and why they would or would not justifiably carry certain burdens for others and what kind of benefits or goods they are able to secure. The answers to those questions explain why the idea of cosmopolitan global justice is incomplete, either requiring a global basic structural agency or not applying because no relevant agent is present that can create cooperative arrangements between individual persons across the globe. Other moral principles will still apply globally, but they will be distinct from those that apply to basic-structural agencies. This account is not a practice dependence account, as it bases the distinctness of moral and political principles on purely moral and value-based considerations. (shrink)

Either a person's claim to subsistence goods is held against institutions equipped to distribute social benefits and burdens fairly or it is made regardless of such a social scheme. If the former, then one's claim is not best understood as based on principles setting out a subsistence goods entitlement, but rather on principles of equitable social distribution — a fair share. If, however, the claim is not against a given social scheme, no plausible principle exists defining what counts as a (...) reasonable burden for any of the available agents to secure subsistence. No justifiable principle exists implying generalised perfect duties any agent could clearly follow or clearly breach that secure subsistence conditions for others. At best we can justify rescue duties under very specific conditions, or general but imperfect duties to improve arrangements. Neither of these obviously correlates with human rights standards. Attempts in the literature to overcome the dilemma by claiming basic rights can correlate with imperfect duties or can generate duties to work towards institutions that ‘perfect’ our imperfect duties, are faulty. I then show how the dilemma can be avoided by accounts of human rights focusing on minimum respectful treatment rather than goods or interests. (shrink)

A branch of political philosophy treats human rights as the output of democratic deliberations by a certain kind of polity. This school, represented by theorists like Benhabib and Besson, do not see detailed human rights as constraints on legitimacy but rather as the specification of abstract human rights (such as the "right to have rights") in terms of obligations and the distribution of burdens. This paper argues that the position is untenable as the notion of democratic decision-making depends on sufficiently (...) clear and specified human rights standards and the political respect they guarantee. Furthermore, the form that any democratic deliberation will take must express respect and reasonableness towards both rights recipients and burden-bearers. To do so, a clear sense of human rights must exist as a threshold, as must standards of societal justice and fairness. Human rights must come first, as a background condition of democracy. (shrink)

Toleration and neutrality are not always distinguished. When they are, they are often offered as two complementary solutions for the problem of achieving political unity and a degree of mutual acceptance within a pluralist liberal polity. The essay shows the concepts to be fundamentally distinct, and then argues that instead of being mutually supporting, they are mutually exclusive. Neutralist liberals, it is argued, must give up toleration in favour of the virtue of neutrality on the part of citizens.

The agency objection to applying distributive justice globally is that principles of distributive justice need to apply to the behaviour of a special kind of institutional agent of distributive justice because of the special powers of that agent. No such agent exists capable of configuring cooperative arrangements between all persons globally, and so distributive justice does not apply globally. One response to institutional views of this kind is that they do not rule out Natural Duties of Justice that fall on (...) all of us to bring about institutional agencies capable of global distributive justice. In this article I argue that this move presupposes a particular, teleological, conception of justice whilst institutional accounts most plausibly rest on a non-teleological one. I provide an argument for favouring the non-teleological conception. I also show why alternative ways of arguing for global Natural Duties of Justice do not get around this controversy. The debate is at the level of presuppositions about justice, and relying on a partisan conception is question begging. (shrink)

The debate over the applicability of the concept of (distributive) justice to the international sphere appears to focus on practicalities in the agent of redistribution. The agency objection says there is no appropriate agent of (the equivalent of societal distributive) justice and its aims for the international sphere. A common response is that the agency question is merely a matter of practicality, the concepts of justice and injustice can apply to circumstances in which distributive justice may not currently be practically (...) achievable. The paper argues that this response is based on a particular and contentious (in the debate) understanding of distributive justice as focused on outcomes rather than treatment by specific types of agents. A number of problems with that concept of justice are adduced and the alternative concept set out. Rejecting the agency objection based on an assumed concept of justice to which those making it would not obviously subscribed begs the question against them. (shrink)

A number of theorists have tried to resolve the tension between a western-oriented liberal scheme of human rights and an account that accommodates different political systems and constitutional ideals than the liberal one. One important way the tension has been addressed is through a “neutral” or tolerant, notion of human rights, as present in the work of Rawls, Scanlon and Buchanan. In this paper I argue that neutrality cannot by itself explain the difference between rights considered appropriate for liberal states (...) and rights considered to be human rights proper. The central arguments used by neutralist theorists presuppose, rather than justify, this differential treatment. Instead, that difference can be understood only by reference to the purpose of human rights as distinct from the constitutional rights of a liberal state. This requires us to reassess the point and purpose of a theory of international justice, in contrast to justice for a domestic and politically separate society. In the case of a theorist like Rawls, human rights represent guides to the foreign policy of a liberal state, rather than to principles by which all states are expected to abide. That is because of Rawls’ acceptance that no common, authoritative, third-party, institutions capable of imposing duties on all agents uniformly exist or can exist. This also makes his theory inherently conservative about human rights, given that they are simply to act as a guide to which states can be treated as legitimate when it comes to liberal foreign policy: those that possess institutions that can be said to represent a peoples, rather than being imposed through violence. This standard is lower than the ideal set of rights extended to all in a liberal society. (shrink)

International Human Rights Law is clear in holding only states or state-like entities responsible for human rights abuses, yet activists and philosophers alike do not see any rational basis for this restriction in responsibility. Multi-national corporations, individuals and a whole array of other 'non‐state actors' are capable of harming vital human interests just as much as states, so why single-out the latter as human rights-responsible agents? In this paper I distinguish two ways of looking at human rights responsibility. One is (...) simply in terms of the outcomes that are deemed desirable to avoid (or secure), and the other is in terms of the relationships one sees these moral standards as governing. I argue that the peculiar form of responsibility and responsiveness (the way of 'holding to account')inherent to human rights principles is directed at establishing a particular type of relationship: one in which individuals are empowered in the face of a very special form of communal power. Other kinds of relationship and potential transgression are more appropriately governed by different kinds of moral principles, such as those relating to criminality. The outcomes view fails to incorporate this insight and for that reason fails to see the distinct role played by human rights standards in our moral reasoning: they are precisely valuable because they provide a way to judge the relationship of individuals to the peculiar kind of power exercised by the state. Part of this project is a re-assessment of the methodology employed by philosophers in establishing moral principles and concepts, such as those relating to human rights standards. (shrink)

The paper engages the conceptual question of the nature of rights. First, moral methodology for developing criteria to judge the adequacy of theories for the concept of rights is discussed. Standard methodologies for conceptual theory, such as analysis of language practices, appealing to intuitions to test and correct hypotheses, and mixtures of these with appeals to substantive moral values, are shown to fail in important ways to give us reasons to adopt one or another view of the concept. An alternative (...) methodology is proposed which appeals to the distinct role of concepts in our value scheme (the added value of being able to employ such concepts in our moral judgments). This is then used to develop criteria for a successful theory of rights. Two existing theories are shown, as a matter of illustration, to fail to satisfy the criteria, and finally an alternative theory of rights which does satisfy these criteria is proposed and defended. (shrink)

Sue James recommends an 'enforcement account' of rights, where a right is to be understood simply as an enforceable claim. I show that adopting this analysis of rights implies giving up non-rhetorical, important, uses of the word 'right' which are possible on the best alternative theory of rights to James's position: the ability to deny a moral right's existence, even where claims are effectively enforced; the notion of a right's violation; and the idea that rights imply entitlement to make a (...) demand, and not just enforcement of demands. Thus, adopting James's position implies giving up much more than mere rhetoric about rights. (shrink)

This paper argues that Susan James' definition of rights as 'enforceable claims' suffers from key faults based in its descriptive approach to a normative and evaluative concept (rights). James cannot explain key and valuable functions of the concept of rights as action-guiding and reason-giving, and some upshots of the view are inconsistent with the reasons one would appeal to rights as a distinctive concept. On her view it is difficult to explain how a right can be violated, given that violation (...) appears to imply lack of effective enforcement. (shrink)

Sue James recommends an 'enforcement account' of rights, where a right is to be understood simply as an enforceable claim. I show that adopting this analysis of rights implies giving up non-rhetorical, important, uses of the word 'right' which are possible on the best alternative theory of rights to James's position: the ability to deny a moral right's existence, even where claims are effectively enforced; the notion of a right's violation; and the idea that rights imply entitlement to make a (...) demand, and not just enforcement of demands. Thus, adopting James's position implies giving up much more than mere rhetoric about rights. (shrink)

In this paper, I make three points. The first is that there is indeed a distinctive approach to moral methodology, different from standard moral reasoning, that can be described as “practice-dependence”. I argue that its distinctness lies in recommending an aptness claim , namely that moral principles for regulating social practices must be principles for better fulfilling the point of those practices, a point discoverable in shared understandings of the practice. Participants treat domestic political societies as having a different point (...) to the practice of international relations. On this approach, then, different moral principles apply in each case: principles of distributive justice between citizens in the former and principles of cooperative fairness between states in the latter. My second point is that this approach fails, however, an important test which I call the justifiability constraint . Any formulation of a moral principle assigning rights and duties, benefits and burdens, to people should be justifiable to those persons by reference to a moral value. Yet, as I show, the practice-dependence view cannot offer any justification based on moral value for the aptness claim. My last point is that both endorsers and critics of practice-dependence have mistakenly attributed this approach to theorists who restrict the scope of justice on the basis of moral justification. Such views are, in fact, incompatible with the aptness claim given that they offer plausible independently derived moral grounds for restricting the scope of justice. They are also compatible with the justifiability constraint. For these reasons, I conclude that practice-dependence is a red herring for debates on global justice. (shrink)

What is the appropriate legal response to terrorist threats? This question is discussed by politician Tony McWalter, The Philosophers' Magazine editor Julian Baggini, and philosophers Catherine Audard, Saladin Meckled-Garcia, and Alex Voorhoeve.

This chapter considers the key values underlying and explaining important features of international law as a system of law. It uses that value analysis as a way of interpreting international law and of asking whether, within those values, international law can be made to serve certain 'global cosmopolitan' re-distributive aims. The chapter argues that the constraints of international law mean that it is not an appropriate medium for global re-distributive goals commonly associated with theories of societal justice. Because those features (...) and constraints are based in values that international law distinctly serves, those constraints cannot simply be ignored, overridden, or changed judicially. (shrink)

There are limits to what can be achieved using the means and medium of international law. This article explores those limits by providing an innovative theory of the nature of international law and how we should understand its limits in terms of value theory. A "four functions" theory is proposed, and these functions are used to interpret areas of international law in terms of their distinctive and valuable contribution to a specific area of human relations. On the basis of this (...) analysis of international law and international legal interpretation, the paper argues that the cosmopolitan aims of a number of moral cosmopolitan scholars fail to taken into account the value limits of international law. This is presented as a value problem, not a problem of feasibility or practicality. (shrink)

Despite receiving high praise from Professors Barry, Narveson, Flew, and Gray (see the first page of the paperback), the Saladin Meckled-Garcia review (M-G) puts the level of Escape from Leviathan (EFL) as “undergraduate” and rates it one star. While undergraduates may profit from reading EFL, it is not mainly at their level. M-G either applies unusually high standards of philosophical argumentation or is simply philosophically perplexed.

Despite receiving high praise from Professors Barry, Narveson, Flew, and Gray (see the first page of the paperback), the review puts the level of Escape from Leviathan (EfL) as “undergraduate” and rates it one star. While undergraduates may profit from reading EfL, it is not mainly at their level. Norman Barry specifically warns “this book is not to be recommended to beginners”. The review either applies unusually high standards of philosophical argumentation or is simply philosophically perplexed.

« À la fin de son œuvre Les Aventures d’Alice aux pays des merveilles, Lewis Carroll dévoile en un bref paragraphe la nature onirique de l’histoire vécue par la fillette et y souligne le rôle spécifique joué par les bruits alentour ayant accompagné son assoupissement. Ainsi les sons du vent, de l’étendue d’eau voisine, des animaux et de la vie sociale alimentaient incidemment le récit hallucinatoire, œuvrant, dans le brouillard du signifiant propre au sommeil, à la reconfiguration du sens par (...) le non-sense. Ce que donne à lire la conclusion de l’œuvre est un cas typique de paréidolie noise, ce processus d’identification formelle chimérique, où les bruits devenus informes s’avèrent enfin disponibles pour y projeter d’autres formes. Un tel phénomène se retrouve sans doute dans la traque des EVP ( electronic voice phenomena ) qui hante l’histoire des médias et des technologies de reproduction sonore, soit ces voix fantomatiques supposément entendues dans la friture hertzienne d’un poste de radio ou tapies dans le bruit de fond d’un enregistrement. Qu’entendons-nous alors dans ces bruits? Et plus particulièrement, que nous disent ces voix du processus même de la pensée philosophique, lorsque la clarté censée la définir s’abandonne aux lignes de fuite de son brouillage? ». (shrink)

The truth of a statement depends on the world in two ways: what the statement says is true if the world is as the statement says it is; on the other hand, what the expressions in the statement mean depends on what the world is like (for instance, on what conventions are in place). Each of these two kinds of dependence of truth on the world corresponds to one of the dimensions on the two-dimensional semantic framework, developed in the 1970’ (...) in the work of Evans, Kaplan, Kripke and Stalnaker. The introduction provides a systematic overview of the framework, the ideas of its earlier originators, recent developments and criticism. Finally, it gives a brief overview over the contributions to the volume. (shrink)

English summary: Within the span of a single century (from the mid-15th to the mid-16th centuries), the Greek language, which was well on its way to oblivion, became the focus of one of the most heated debates of the Renaissance period. Greek was accused by what was then a Catholic and Latin Europe of being a vehicle for ancient paganism, Byzantine schism, and even Lutheran heresy. The Council of Trent, which deemed that Roman authority was being undermined by the Vulgate's (...) philological criticism, went so far as to confirm the obvious collusion that existed between Greek and heresy. In fact, behind such accusations can be discerned the power struggles that were taking place between ecclesiastical, academic and political factions. Analysis of such confrontations and of the difficulties that Humanists had in circumventing them, infers that, despite its ultimate success, Greek literature remained suspect in Europe throughout the Counter-Reformation. In this very meticulous study, based on previously unpublished texts, of what was at stake in this anti-Greek movement (a resistance actually based on free, progressive and critical thought), the author combines the thoroughness of an historian with a mine of true anecdotes about the moral standards of that era : the censure practices, legal disputes, self-serving denouncements, etc. That, indeed, were the most evident driving forces behind the intellectual and power struggles. French description: Le grec, disparu d'Europe depuis les Grandes Invasions, fit un retour spectaculaire au XVe siecle. Mais l'enthousiasme des humanistes pour la langue d'Homere a fait oublier la violence des resistances que lui opposerent les maitres scolastiques. Lorsque Erasme osa contester la Vulgate latine au nom de la verite grecque (1516), le scandale eclata publiquement et Luther en prit argument pour contester l'autorite de Rome, si bien que les hellenistes furent accuses de faire le jeu de la Reforme. Le statut du grec se vit etroitement lie a celui de l'hebreu, l'autre langue sacree rivale du latin (l'Affaire Reuchlin). Pour extirper le mal a sa racine, le concile de Trente decida finalement d'imposer la legitimite du latin biblique (1545) et d'interdire l'acces aux sources grecques et hebraiques, puis de mettre a l'index les principaux hellenistes et leurs imprimeurs. Les etudes grecques allaient en rester durablement affaiblies dans l'Europe de la Contre-Reforme. En faisant revivre les oeuvres et les hommes qui en furent les acteurs, et en devoilant ses veritables enjeux, ce livre retrace les deux siecles de cette bataille du grec, restee un point aveugle dans l'histoire de la culture occidentale. Jean-Christophe Saladin est docteur en Histoire. (shrink)

What place, if any, does love have in Kantian ethics? This chapter is divided into three parts. First, I discuss Kant’s own account of moral versus non-moral love as found throughout his various writings and show how this closely parallels his account of moral versus non-moral friendship. Second, I discuss contemporary Kantian accounts of both friendship and love, highlighting how they go beyond, and in some ways seem to significantly improve upon, Kant’s own views via their appeal to Kant’s Formula (...) of Humanity. Lastly, I discuss the overall merits of what I call ‘Kantian moral love’. I argue that while Kantian moral love might rightly identify, from the moral point of view, how we ought to act and think when loving other people, it fails to provide a complete account of love, crucially leaving out certain key elements from the wide range of loving relationships we find ourselves in, especially romantic love. That is, while Kantian moral love might successfully identify a morally ideal way to love other people, it falls short of capturing the full essence of love—mainly because love is not simply a moral affair but also a matter of the heart. (shrink)

This review note surveys some important aspects of a recent publication by Amos Edelheit, A Philosopher at the Crossroads: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Scholastic Philosophy. While focus over the last decades has been placed on Pico’s thought in relation to Jewish Kabbalah and mysticism, Edelheit hopes to emphasize the importance of the scholastic tradition (or, rather, the pluriform and various tradition of late medieval and Renaissance scholasticism) in Pico’s thought, and the ways in which this intellectual context places (...) this unique Renaissance thinker at a sort of ‘crossroads’. Beyond providing a brief overview of the three main parts of the text, this note examines more closely Edelheit’s study of Pico’s 900 Theses and the methodological approach which involves a reconstruction of the dialectical context for each thesis. The Latin scholastics are real conversational partners for Pico: he is versed in the 13th-century scholastic sources, is certainly familiar with contemporaneous scholastic thought, and is able to employ scholastic methods and terminology within his wider philosophical project. While scholastic philosophy was very much alive at the end of the fifteenth century, Pico’s new and inclusive approach to philosophy and the history of philosophy, never eschewing the Latin masters, departs from both scholastic and humanist trends. (shrink)

The author introduces us to the mythology, system of thought and social practices of the Inuit in an attempt to discover their conception of social sex (or gender). Unlike the binary conception that predominates among westerners, the Inuit have a tripartite system in which some individuals, men or women, straddle the social frontier between the sexes/genders. This third social sex, which is prominent in mythology and among the great mythical figures, is also found at the heart of shamanistic mediations, as (...) well as in many families, where the identity of dead relatives is transmitted to the 'newborn', regardless of their sex. When the sex is different, the children are cross-dressed till puberty, after which time they have to take on the gender corresponding to their sex, but a number of these young people used to become shamans and so continued to assume the mediations of the third social sex. This construction occurs without any reference to sexual orientation. (shrink)

I argue racial injustice undermines the reliability of news source reports in the information domain of racial injustice. I argue that this in turn undermines subjects’ doxastic justification in inferences they base on these news sources in the racial injustice information domain. I explain that racial injustice does this undermining through the effect of racial prejudice on news organizations’ members and the effect of society's racially unjust structure on non-dominant racial group-controlled news sources.

The work of Emmanuel Levinas has been both abundantly recognized and criticized in moral philosophy. This Janus-faced attitude is also present in ecological theories, which find fertile ground in Levinas’ thought without being able to explain its apparent anthropocentrism. Opposing hermeneutical paths tend to focus either on otherness as an absolute alterity, implying a potentially unlimited responsibility for all alterities, or on otherness as a re-foundation of humanism, leading to the conclusion that responsibility is unlimited only among humans. Here I (...) seek to disentangle Levinas from these two extreme interpretations, first by reviewing ecological readings of his philosophy, in both the Francophone and Anglophone spheres, and second by analyzing specific Levinasian terms that might be particularly helpful for a non-anthropocentric or deep ecology. The main results of this investigation are a distinction between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of vulnerability, an explanation of Levinasian compulsory or methodological humanism, and a schematic model of sensibility as enjoyment/vulnerability capable of supporting deep ecology without the traditional notions of free will, rights, or values. (shrink)

I argue racial injustice undermines the reliability of news source reports in the information domain of racial injustice. I argue that this in turn undermines subjects’ doxastic justification in inferences they base on these news sources in the racial injustice information domain. I explain that racial injustice does this undermining through the effect of racial prejudice on news organizations’ members and the effect of society's racially unjust structure on non-dominant racial group-controlled news sources.

O presente trabalho objetiva demonstrar uma experiência em contexto de educação online em um curso superior de tecnologia no qual um modelo de avaliação formativa, com foco em competências, foi efetivamente modelado e utilizado. Para o seu desenvolvimento, foram consideradas as proposições de Pereira et al. (2009), sobre as metacompetências essenciais a serem desenvolvidas em estudantes na contemporaneidade, e Pereira et al. (2015) sobre uma cultura de avaliação baseada em competências.

Ce texte a déjà paru dans ÉTUDES/INUIT/STUDIES, 24, no 2, 2000, p. 89-113. Québec : Département d'anthropologie de l'Université Laval. Nous remercions Bernard Saladin d'Anglure de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Résumé : Les rites inuit de la première fois, qui célèbrent les premières performances effectuées par les enfants et les adolescents inuit, ont été souvent mentionnés par les ethnographes de l'Arctique mais jamais véritablement analysés comme « séquence cérémonielle », pour - Anthropologie.

Education is a fundamental pillar in human development, and its evolution throughout history has been influenced by a variety of factors, including imaginative culture and human nature. In this study, we explore how educational methods have evolved in response to the interaction between these two aspects. We look at how human creativity, imagination, and adaptation have influenced the way we teach and learn, from early forms of knowledge transmission to more contemporary approaches focused on active student engagement and the development (...) of practical skills. Our research is based on a comprehensive review of the academic literature in the fields of education, evolutionary psychology, cultural anthropology, and imagination studies. We explore how societies have used imagination as a tool to transmit knowledge and values, as well as to foster creativity and individual expression. We also examine how adaptive aspects of human nature, such as the ability to learn collaboratively and adapt to changing environments, have influenced the way educational methods are designed. Our results show a clear evolution in educational methods over time, from approaches focused on the one-way transmission of knowledge to more interactive and participatory models that encourage exploration and discovery. We identify common patterns in the way societies have used imagination and adaptation to promote learning and socialization and discuss the implications of these findings for contemporary education. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between imaginative culture, human nature, and education. It provides a solid foundation for the design of educational methods that harness the innate creativity and adaptability of human beings and offers guidance for educators and policymakers on how to promote meaningful and lasting learning in today's world. (shrink)