This discussion responds to important questions raised about my theory of fairness in the global economy by Christian Barry, Charles Beitz, A.J. Julius and Kristi Olson. I further elaborate how moral argument can be ‘internal’ to a social practice, how my proposed principles of fairness depend on international practice, how I can admit several relevant conceptions of ‘harm’ and why my account does not depend on a problematic conception of societal ‘endowments’.

This is a chapter in the book titled 'Mind that Abides' published in 2009 by John Benjamins and edited by David Skrbina. It introduces a view of panpsychism as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness motivated by insights from cognitive science, neuroscience, and general systems. It contrasts with the incomplete anthropocentric NCC (neural correlates of consciousness) view that dominates in neuroscience, and suggests experimental and conceptual methods of verification.

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments developed earlier to defend (...) a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)