The Queen's College, Oxford, UK In his article `Facts and Principles', G.A. Cohen attempts to refute constructivist approaches to justification by showing that, contrary to what their proponents claim, fundamental normative principles are fact- in sensitive. We argue that Cohen's `fact-insensitivity thesis' does not provide a successful refutation of constructivism because it pertains to an area of meta-ethics which differs from the one tackled by constructivists. While Cohen's thesis concerns the logical structure of normative principles, constructivists ask how normative principles (...) should be justified . In particular, their claim that justified fundamental normative principles are fact-sensitive follows from a commitment to agnosticism about the existence of objective moral facts. We therefore conclude that, in order to refute constructivism, Cohen would have to address questions of justification, and take a stand on those long-standing meta-ethical debates about the ontological status of moral notions (for example, realism versus anti-realism) with respect to which he himself wants to remain agnostic. Key Words: John Rawls • normative justification • realism versus anti-realism • methodological versus substantive principles. (shrink)

Social liberals and liberal nationalists often argue that cosmopolitans neglect the normative importance of state sovereignty and self-determination. This paper counter-argues that, under current global political and socio-economic circumstances, only the establishment of supranational institutions with some (limited, but significant) sovereign powers can allow states to exercise sovereignty, and peoples? self-determination, in a meaningful way. Social liberals have largely neglected this point because they have focused on an unduly narrow, mainly negative, conception of state sovereignty. I contend, instead, that we (...) should more closely consider the positive aspects of sovereignty, understood as the capacity to maintain internal problem-solving capacities and make meaningful discretionary choices on a range of national issues. (shrink)

In Why Not Socialism?, GA Cohen defines socialism as the combined application of two moral principles: the egalitarian principle and the principle of community. The desirability of a social order organized around these two principles is illustrated by the ‘camping trip’ example. After describing the fundamental features of the camping trip scenario at reasonable length, Cohen argues that the desirability of such a social model is nearly self-explanatory, concluding therefore that the most significant challenges to socialism lie in its feasibility. (...) This article argues that the desirability of the camping trip model as an appropriate ideal for society is less obvious than Cohen acknowledges. To argue my point, I shall compare the camping trip with another social practice that is equally small sized and characterized by strong emotional ties among its members, but in which the conditions of what I shall call ‘goal-monism’ and discontinuity in time do not hold, namely, the family. (shrink)

Abstract:Recently, republicans have been increasingly arguing that the ideal of nondomination can ground both a more plausible account of global justice and better insights for global institutional design than liberal egalitarianism does. What kind of global institutions, however, does nondomination require? The essay argues that a global institutional blueprint based on the republican ideal of nondomination is a multifaceted endeavor. Republican institutions should aim to fulfill three different desiderata: 1) avoiding excessive concentration of power; 2) bringing informal asymmetrical power under (...) institutional control; 3) furthering an active, vigilant citizenry. The three desiderata often pull in different directions. At the global level in particular, they do not converge on a verdict over whether we should switch to a cosmopolitan institutional order, stick to a world of states, or opt for something altogether different. As a result, there is no straightforward pathway leading from the vindication of nondomination as the central principle of global justice to a clear vision for a global institutional order. The issue is, instead, a matter of careful balancing. (shrink)

The continuing ramifications of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 have forced social scientists to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between capitalism, democracy and inequality. In particular, Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Wolfgang Streeck’s Buying Time focus on, respectively, the economic and the political contradictions of capitalistic societies. Piketty argues that capitalism naturally tends towards the exacerbation of rent-based wealth inequality, whereas Streeck suggests that capitalism and democracy are ultimately incompatible. A striking feature of these two contributions is that their authors (...) are social democrats, not Marxists or radical anti-capitalist thinkers. In this review article, I illustrate how the combination of social democratic convictions and the acknowledgment that capitalism cannot be tamed generates interesting tensions between the diagnosis offered by the two monographs and the solutions that are proposed. I end the piece by raising two remarks on the implications that this tension might have for normative political theory. On the one hand, it is time for theory to do more work on political action and agency. On the other, liberal egalitarian theorists might have to acknowledge that they are in the same predicament as Piketty and Streeck: social democracy is their ideal, yet it is perhaps unattainable. If this is the case, liberal egalitarians might be committed to adopt a more confrontational attitude towards capitalism: they might have to become reluctant radicals. (shrink)

The article offers an account of the constructivist methodology in ethics and political philosophy as 1) deriving from an agnostic moral ontology and 2) proposing intersubjective justifiability as the criterion of justification for normative principles. It then asks whether constructivism, conceived in this way, can respond to the challenge of “content skepticism about practical reason”, namely whether it can provide sufficiently precise normative guidance whilst remaining faithful to its methodological commitment. The paper critically examines to alternative way of meeting this (...) challenge, namely John Rawls's original position and O'Neill's Kantian constructivism, analyses what is problematic about both, and endorses a third, possibly intermediate model. Within such a model, the basic features of the original position are accepted, but in a flexible and heuristic manner, thereby accommodating some of O'Neill's concerns. (shrink)

Should the EU be a federal union or an intergovernmental forum? Recently, demoicrats have been arguing that there exists a third alternative. The EU should be conceived as a demoicracy, namely a ‘Union of peoples who govern together, but not as one’. The demoi of Europe recognise that they affect one another’s democratic health, and hence establish a union to guarantee their freedom qua demoi – which most demoicrats cash out as non-domination. This is more than intergovernmentalism, because the demoi (...) govern together on these matters. However, if the union aims at protecting the freedom of the different European demoi, it cannot do so by replacing them with a ‘superdemos’, as federalists want. This paper argues that demoicracy does possess distinctive normative features; it claims, however, that an institutional choice between intergovernmentalism and federalism is necessary. Depending on how we interpret what the non-domination of demoi requires, demoicracy will either ground a specific way of practicing intergovernmentalism or a specific form of federalism. It cannot, however, ground an institutional model which is genuinely alternative to both. (shrink)

Many theoretical publications make assumptions about the facts of globalization, and in particular about the role and autonomy of the nation state. These factual claims and assumptions often play an important role in justifying the normative conclusions, yet remain under-explored. This interdisciplinary volume examines questions that are central to the problems of both social and international justice, and in particular, to their interdependence: How do global and transnational factors influence the capacity of states to be internally just? Has the state (...) lost its capacity for autonomous action in the global economy, and thus its ethical significance for theories of justice? If so, which institutional reforms could address this problem? What is the role of the state in a just international order? The authors address important connections between domestic social justice and global dynamics, by identifying problematic practices and trends in the current global order. They examine political, economic and legal changes and offer normative views on concrete policies and institutions that are particularly important and/or problematic – i.e. international health policies, the World Bank, taxation policies and the World Trade Organization. Focusing on the relationship between social and global justice and establishing connections between political theory and empirical research, this book is vital reading for students and scholars of Politics, International Relations, and Development Studies. (shrink)

Reference to the state is ubiquitous in debates about global justice. Some authors see the state as central to the justification of principles of justice, and thereby reject their extension to the international realm. Others emphasize its role in the implementation of those principles. This chapter scrutinizes the variety of ways in which the state figures in the global-justice debate. Our discussion suggests that, although the state should have a prominent role in theorizing about global justice, contrary to what is (...) commonly thought, acknowledging this role does not lead to anti-cosmopolitan conclusions, but to the defense of an “intermediate” position about global justice. From a justificatory perspective, we argue, the state remains a key locus for the application of egalitarian principles of justice, but is not the only one. From the perspective of implementation, we suggest that state institutions are increasingly fragile in a heavily interdependent world, and need to be supplemented—though not supplanted—with supranational authorities. (shrink)

In his multi-faceted attack on Rawls’s account of justice, G.A. Cohen has argued that the notion of basic structure is necessarily insensitive to the importance of informal social norms to social justice. The paper argues that the most plausible account of the basic structure is not blind to informal social norms in any meaningful sense. Whereas informal, non-legally coercive institutions are not part of the basic structure as such, their careful consideration is necessary for the assessment of whether the basic (...) structure itself is indeed just. This claim is based on an account of what it means for normative principle to apply to institutions, which I expound in detail throughout the paper. Principles apply to institutions, I argue, not in that they restrain their conduct, but in that they indicate which social conditions they should bring about. (shrink)

Under conditions of high capital mobility, states are pressurised into various forms of tax competition to attract or retain capital and investors. When this occurs, the capacity of domestic institutions autonomously to generate fiscal policies is constrained. What exactly, if anything, is unjust about this phenomenon? This paper argues that tax competition puts particular pressure on internationalists, who must acknowledge that its occurrence makes our obligations of global justice more demanding, and that such obligations require supranational institutions in order to (...) be discharged. However, to the extent that tax competition is unjust from an internationalist point of view, this is due to the specific harm it does to states. Thus, the paper makes three contributions to the literature: it shows that tax competition has an impact on the demandingness of internationalist obligations of justice; discharging such obligations commits internationalists to accept a higher level of supranational institutionalization than is currently acknowledged; yet both the specific content of such obligations, and the kind of supranational regulation that is needed to discharge them, differ from those which cosmopolitans support. In sum, there are some cosmopolitan bullets which internationalists must bite, and others which they should continue to resist. (shrink)

Until fairly recently, positions within the global justice debate have been quite polarised along the statism/cosmopolitanism dichotomy. Recently, the dichotomy has been challenged, but the idea that the proximity of a view to cosmopolitanism also tracks its critical potential in political terms has not. This article rejects this premise. In order to do so, it also provides a novel, more systematic challenge to the statism/cosmopolitanism dichotomy. The main suggestion is that we should consider two aspects simultaneously, and identify positions within (...) the debate on the basis of how they relate to both of these. First of all, participants in the debate can make three different kinds of claims, which I shall call moral, political, and institutional. Secondly, views position themselves within a spectrum in each of the three dimensions, rather than deciding between cosmopolitanism and statism – and at different at different points of the spectrum with regard to their moral, political, and institutional commitments respectively. This account gives us a better grasp of what taking a stand in the global justice entails. Crucially, it enables us to understand that the transformative and critical potential of a specific view depends on a variety of factors, and not only on its stand at the moral level. One can be fairly critical of the status quo without endorsing a cosmopolitan, or even nearly cosmopolitan, moral outlook. In short, the moral story is not the whole story. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen argues that John Rawls’s focus on the basic structure of society as the exclusive subject of social justice is misguided. I argue that two understandings of the notion of basic structure seem to be present in the literature, either in implicit or in explicit terms. According to the first, the basic structure is to be equated with a given set of institutions: if they endorse the right principles of justice, the basic structure of society is just; According (...) to the second, a society has a just basic structure if and only if its institutional web manages to realize the relevant principles of justice as well it can. In, the institutional structure is not a given: different social circumstances call for different institutional solutions in order to achieve a just basic structure overall. The first part of the paper make a case for, and explores some of its normative implications. The second part asks which consequences this understanding may have for the idea of a global basic structure. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen argues that John Rawls’s focus on the basic structure of society as the exclusive subject of social justice is misguided. I argue that two understandings of the notion of basic structure seem to be present in the literature, either in implicit or in explicit terms. According to the first, the basic structure is to be equated with a given set of institutions: if they endorse the right principles of justice, the basic structure of society is just; According (...) to the second, a society has a just basic structure if and only if its institutional web manages to realize the relevant principles of justice as well it can. In, the institutional structure is not a given: different social circumstances call for different institutional solutions in order to achieve a just basic structure overall. The first part of the paper make a case for, and explores some of its normative implications. The second part asks which consequences this understanding may have for the idea of a global basic structure. (shrink)

Until fairly recently, positions within the global justice debate have been quite polarised along the statism/cosmopolitanism dichotomy. Recently, the dichotomy has been challenged, but the idea that the proximity of a view to cosmopolitanism also tracks its critical potential in political terms has not. This article rejects this premise. In order to do so, it also provides a novel, more systematic challenge to the statism/cosmopolitanism dichotomy. The main suggestion is that we should consider two aspects simultaneously, and identify positions within (...) the debate on the basis of how they relate to both of these. First of all, participants in the debate can make three different kinds of claims, which I shall call moral, political, and institutional. Secondly, views position themselves within a spectrum in each of the three dimensions, rather than deciding between cosmopolitanism and statism – and at different at different points of the spectrum with regard to their moral, political, and institutional commitments respectively. This account gives us a better grasp of what taking a stand in the global justice entails. Crucially, it enables us to understand that the transformative and critical potential of a specific view depends on a variety factors, and not only on its stand at the moral level. One can be fairly critical of the status quo without endorsing a cosmopolitan, or even nearly cosmopolitan, moral outlook. In short, the moral story is not the whole story. (shrink)

The idea that transnational dynamics challenge the regulatory capacity of the state has hardly ever received as much attention as in contemporary debates. Different voices denounce the crisis of the state and advocate the establishment of supranational institutions with legally coercive power. It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that these voices are concerned with the same cluster of problems. We think that one should resist this temptation. Firstly, not all the problems pointed out by the advocates of supranational (...) sovereignty are of the same kind and structure. Some concern the need to limit the power of states, whereas others address the almost opposite necessity to support and strengthen their problem-solving capacity through forms of international regulation. Secondly, the corresponding solutions are different. In particular, although they may all imply the establishment of supranational institutions, not all such institutions need be global. The creation of a full-blown global rule of criminal law, for instance, would raise serious concerns of global despotism and cultural imperialism, and we therefore make a case for regional and context-sensitive solutions in this case. However, problems of supranational socioeconomic justice can only be addressed through global regulatory institutions, for regional institutions would, in this case, only recreate current problems at the interregional level. (shrink)

This contribution defends Ripstein's attempt to reconstruct Kant's political philosophy as entirely and consistently grounded on the idea of people's innate right to freedom as independence, in particular with respect to charges of circularity raised by other contributors to this symposium. However, it also argues that, if the concept of freedom as independence is to provide a foundation for a full-blown account of political justice, a richer interpretation of it should be provided. In other words, we must be willing to (...) make controversial and empirically informed claims about what counts as a threat to our freedom as independence under specific circumstances. We must have a more embedded account of freedom as independence, one that engages with the contingencies of politics and of the human condition. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen argues that John Rawls’s focus on the basic structure of society as the exclusive subject of social justice is misguided. I argue that two understandings of the notion of basic structure seem to be present in the literature, either in implicit or in explicit terms. According to the first, the basic structure is to be equated with a given set of institutions: if they endorse the right principles of justice, the basic structure of society is just; According (...) to the second, a society has a just basic structure if and only if its institutional web manages to realize the relevant principles of justice as well it can. In, the institutional structure is not a given: different social circumstances call for different institutional solutions in order to achieve a just basic structure overall. The first part of the paper make a case for, and explores some of its normative implications. The second part asks which consequences this understanding may have for the idea of a global basic structure. (shrink)

The paper analyses Rawls's teleology/deontology distinction, and his concept of priority of the right. The first part of the paper aims both 1) to clarify what is distinctive about Rawls's deontology/teleology distinction (thus sorting out some existing confusion in the literature, especially regarding the conflation of such distinction with that between consequentialism and nonconsequentialism); and 2) to cash out the rich taxonomy of moral theories that such a distinction helpfully allows us to develop. The second part of the paper examines (...) the concept of priority of the right. It argues that such a concept should not be identified with that of deontology— indeed, deontological theories do not necessarily assign priority to the right over the good. However, it contends that the concept of priority of the right is essential to explaining what specific kind of deontological theory "justice as fairness" is. Justice as fairness is a deontological theory which assigns priority to the right as a consequence of its commitment to a neutral position with respect to different accounts of what is ultimately valuable and good. (shrink)

Megaregional Trade Agreements: Challenges to Distributive Justice and Self-Determination?

Review: Christian Barry and Sanjay Reddy, International Trade and Labor Standards: A Proposal for Linkage, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008.

Review: Christian Barry and Sanjay Reddy, International Trade and Labor Standards: A Proposal for Linkage, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008.

Review: Christian Barry and Sanjay Reddy, International Trade and Labor Standards: A Proposal for Linkage, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008.

This review essay discusses two recent attempts to reform the framework in which issues of international and global justice are discussed: Iris Marion Young's ?social connection' model and the practice-dependent approach, here exemplified by Ayelet Banai, Miriam Ronzoni and Christian Schemmel's edited collection. I argue that while Young's model may fit some issues of international or global justice, it misconceives the problems that many of them pose. Indeed, its difficulties point precisely in the direction of practice dependence as (...) it is presented by Banai et al. I go on to discuss what seem to be the strengths of that method, and particularly Banai et al.'s defence of it against the common claim that it is biased towards the status quo. I also discuss Andrea Sangiovanni and Kate MacDonald's contributions to the collection. (shrink)

Contemporary egalitarian political philosophy has become increasingly interested in the ways the international order may protect or undermine states’ capacities to deliver domestic egalitarianism. This paper draws on Miriam Ronzoni’s helpful discussion of the various different ways in which both philosophical and practical commitments can move beyond a contrast between a world of closed societies and a cosmopolis to explore how successful the theorizing prompted by that interest has been. Problems scholars like Peter Mair and Wolfgang Streeck have (...) suggested the EU faces also suggest that there are difficulties views like Ronzoni’s have to overcome to usefully orient us towards the threats posed by the interactions between domestic and international politics. These problems can be usefully framed by what the intellectual historian István Hont called jealousy of trade and used to understand debates between members of what is commonly understood as the republican tradition, especially in the eighteenth century. Jealousy of trade revolves around the way that international economic competition intensifies international political competition, requiring the restructuring of domestic politics to ensure the survival of the state, which then further intensifies international economic competition. The ways of navigating and controlling the increasing costs of an increasingly belligerent international order eighteenth century political theorists found help illustrate the challenges contemporary internationalising egalitarians face. Isaac Nakhimovsky’s work on Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s closed commercial state is, I argue, specially useful given the similarity of some of Fichte’s commitments to those of contemporary internationalising egalitarians. (shrink)

According to Mednick’s (1962) theory of individual differences in creativity, creative individuals appear to have a richer and more flexible associative network than less creative individuals. Thus, creative individuals are characterized by “flat” (broader associations) instead of “steep” (few, common associations) associational hierarchies. To study these differences, we implement a novel computational approach to the study of semantic networks, through the analysis of free associations. The core notion of our method is that concepts in the network are related to each (...) other by their association correlations - overlap of similar associative responses (“association clouds”). We began by collecting a large sample of participants who underwent several creativity measurements and used a decision tree approach to divide the sample into low and high creative groups. Next, each group underwent a free association generation paradigm which allowed us to construct and analyze the semantic networks of both groups. Comparison of the semantic memory networks of persons with low creative ability and persons with high creative ability revealed differences between the two networks. The semantic memory network of persons with low creative ability seems to be more rigid, compared to the network of persons with high creative ability, in the sense that it is more spread out and breaks apart into more sub-parts. We discuss how our findings are in accord and extend Mednick’s (1962) theory and the feasibility of using network science paradigms to investigate high level cognition. (shrink)

'Simulation, Simulacra and Solaris ' examines and contrasts the 1971 science-fiction film Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky with the 2002 film Solaris by Steven Soderbergh. Our text argues for the significance of simulation and simulacra in relation to the conceptual framework of Solaris, adapting as our primary model Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulation and simulacra.

Initial evidence suggests that suppressing a thought prior to sleep results in subsequent dreaming of that thought. The present research examined the influence of cognitive load on dreaming following suppression. In Experiment 1, 100 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and subsequently completed a dream diary. Participants instructed to suppress reported dreaming about the target thought more than controls; dream rebound was predicted by poorer performance on a working memory task. (...) In Experiment 2, 126 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and half of participants also had cognitive load of learning a 9-digit number. Participants receiving the suppression instruction under cognitive load reported greater dream rebound than other participants. These findings indicate that thought suppression prior to sleep leads to dream rebound, and this effect is enhanced by cognitive load. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. We show that neoliberalization and the dismantling of community health services played a major role in turning Northern Italy into a shattered “lazaret”. Moreover, considering Italian activists’ responses to the pandemic, we suggest that they point toward a reinvention of reproduction along two main axes. First, they bring feminist insights to bear with the ecological crisis that created the conditions for COVID-19. In so doing, they direct attention to (...) reproduction as a multidimensional matrix of power relations involving both social and ecological aspects. Second, activists have strived to build infrastructures for the redistribution of care from below. Creating and developing mutual aid networks, activist groups designed a feminist logistics, that is central for creating alternatives to prevalent neoliberal models of circulating care whose flaws have fully emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

In “Hegel, Antigone, and Women,” Philip Kain argues for a socially constructive type of individualism that he also attributes to Hegel’s Antigone. He regards this non-destructive version of individualism as a model for non-liberal or post-liberal feminism. I would like to raise two problems with the argument here. First, does Kain’s conception adequately capture what we mean, at a bare minimum, by individualism, that is, some sort of development and expression of unique particularity? Second, is this concept of individualism, one (...) that is compatible with familial corporatism, in fact attributable to Hegel’s Antigone? Kain proposes that “Hegel’s goal is to get beyond [the] destructive form of individualism [that involves conflict] to an individualism formed by, in harmony with, and reinforcing the institutions of our sociocultural world”. Kain further proposes that we find this in Antigone. For Hegel’s conception of Antigone’s “individualism is... manifested in and through acting in perfect solidarity with the family, religion, and tradition”. “Her individualism,” Kain goes on, “is the sort that allows a self embedded in a context of cultural relations, institutions, and common customs, traditions, and practices to develop an individual identity”. And what is this sense of identity given that she is in “perfect solidarity” with her group and her times? It is this, according to Kain. (shrink)

In “Hegel, Antigone, and Women,” Philip Kain argues for a socially constructive type of individualism that he also attributes to Hegel’s Antigone. He regards this non-destructive version of individualism as a model for non-liberal or post-liberal feminism. I would like to raise two problems with the argument here. First, does Kain’s conception adequately capture what we mean, at a bare minimum, by individualism, that is, some sort of development and expression of unique particularity? Second, is this concept of individualism, one (...) that is compatible with familial corporatism, in fact attributable to Hegel’s Antigone? Kain proposes that “Hegel’s goal is to get beyond [the] destructive form of individualism [that involves conflict] to an individualism formed by, in harmony with, and reinforcing the institutions of our sociocultural world”. Kain further proposes that we find this in Antigone. For Hegel’s conception of Antigone’s “individualism is... manifested in and through acting in perfect solidarity with the family, religion, and tradition”. “Her individualism,” Kain goes on, “is the sort that allows a self embedded in a context of cultural relations, institutions, and common customs, traditions, and practices to develop an individual identity”. And what is this sense of identity given that she is in “perfect solidarity” with her group and her times? It is this, according to Kain. (shrink)

Fiodor Dostoievski rasga el alma humana hasta dejarla herida por el sufrimiento, la culpa y el aislamiento. Y, sin embargo, la derrota no gana la batalla. La escritora sureña estadounidense Carson McCullers escribe sobre la soledad y la miseria del sur de los Estados Unidos con una mirada atenta a los paisajes desolados de la Rusia de Fiodor Dostoievski, no sólo físicos sino esencialmente metafísicos. Esta autora que ya leyó al maestro ruso a los 13 años explora las entrañas humanas (...) desde un terreno rural, desolador, inhóspito y desafortunado, con diferencias raciales, sobreexposición de alcohol y con un concepto de bien moral interno que aparece como una pulsión constante e inagotable. En esta aproximación queremos destacar cómo el misterio del mal, pero también el acto de la voluntad y la incomunicación, son aspectos que unen a ambos autores, especialmente en dos de sus obras maestras, Crimen y Castigo y El corazón es un cazador solitario, respectivamente. (shrink)

Conflicts of interests are typically divided into those that are financial and those that are not. While there is general agreement that financial COIs have a significant impact on decisions and need to be declared and managed, the status of non-financial COIs continues to be disputed. In a recentBMJfeature article it was proposed that religious beliefs should be routinely declared as an interest. The article generated over 41 responses from the medical community and health researchers, which put forward diverse and (...) opposing views. In this paper, we analyse the discourse to shed further light on the reasons put forward for and against declaring religious beliefs. We argue for a middle path in which only material beliefs should be declared, and then only when there are no extenuating circumstances. To this end, we present a framework to help evaluate the materiality of interests that can be used for both financial and non-financial interests. (shrink)