Two principles, concerning custodianship and no retrospective right of ownership, will be fundamental to the just management of natural assets in future. Because natural assets are not man-made, the rights of ownership are not confined to the present generation that controls their exploitation. I have proposed an ethical requirement of custodianship towards future generations in which the present generation compensates future generations for the exploitation of natural assets by bequeathing the equivalent value of man-made assets. Because natural assets are discovered (...) through a geological lottery, prior to search there is a natural veil of ignorance as to which locations will be endowed favourably and unfavourably. This creates a useful role for a polity to secure a just distribution of resource rents for all citizens rather than let them be dissipated through search and accrue highly unequally. But justice requires that ex post, well-endowed regions forfeit the right of ownership over those natural assets which have been discovered. Justice requires the rule of no retrospective right of ownership. (shrink)

The rise in world prices of natural resources, coupled with the resource discoveries induced by high prices, is transforming Africa's opportunities. The economic future of Africa will be determined by whether this opportunity is seized or missed. The history of resource extraction in Africa is not encouraging. This paper reviews and develops the political economy of natural resources as a guide to how Africa might avoid a repetition of that history.

The proposal that Europe should sell the right to immigration to reflect the access to public goods raises two ethical objections. One draws on the proposition of Michael Sandel that there are things that ‘money can’t buy’. Public goods are the result of a reciprocal exchange of obligations within a community.As such, they are not transactions in a market and putting a price on them can inadvertently weaken their essentially moral nature. The other objection is that selling the right to (...) immigrate would enable the elites of poor countries to exit their obligations to those left behind in their own societies. While potentially damaging poor societies by removing their most able people, it would create the comfortable illusion in Europe that we were being more generous to people from poor countries. (shrink)

In this critical notice, I argue that the semantic view championed by Thompson no logical advantage over the syntactic view of theories, especially in the area of interpretation. Each weakness of the syntactic view has a corresponding weakness in the semantic view. In principle the two are not different in power, but it is sometimes better to adopt one rather than the other, for practical reasons. I agree with Thompson that many issues in the philosophy of biology can be illuminated (...) by the semantic view, but that other things, especially deriving specific prediction, are best understood with the syntactic view. (shrink)

Emily Paul has recently argued that Brian Leftow’s account of why the import of God’s becoming Incarnate is not temporal but modal fails. She argues that Leftow’s required modal variation is not satisfied. That is, we do not have the required variation across logical space concerning the Incarnation. Paul examines her argument on two possible worlds theories: theistic ersatzism and (what I call) Lewisian theism. She thinks that both possible worlds theories face difficulties. I argue that Paul (...) fails to provide a compelling argument against Leftow because, firstly, her defence of one her premises fails, and, secondly, she misjudges what is required for some of Leftow’s claims to be true. I also argue that some of the problematic consequences that Paul raises for theistic ersatzism and Lewisian theism either are not problematic or can be avoided. (shrink)