Jenkins and Sherman hold that belief in the value of work is artificially inculcated and that a ‘leisure society’ is desirable and possible, as well as being necessitated by the introduction of microprocessors. After distinguishing between meaningful work and labour (first section), I reply obliquely to their case by contending that meaningful work affords most people their best chance of the necessary good of self-respect (second section), and that it constitutes the exercise of an essential human capacity, the development of (...) which is necessary to human wellbeing (third section). Because of the contingent connections between employment on the one hand and meaningful work and self-respect on the other, we should recognise the value of work and plan for full employment (fourth section). (shrink)

If you are more likely to continue a course of action in virtue of having previously invested in that course of action, then you tend to honor sunk costs. It is widely thought both that (i) individuals often do give some weight to sunk costs in their decision-making and that (ii) it is irrational for them to do so. In this paper I attempt to cast doubt on the conventional wisdom about sunk costs, understood as the conjunction of these two (...) claims. (shrink)

A Moorean fact, in the words of the late David Lewis, is ‘one of those things that we know better than we know the premises of any philosophical argument to the contrary’. Lewis opens his seminal paper ‘Elusive Knowledge’ with the following declaration.

Human beings are highly irrational, at least if we hold to an economic standard of ‘rationality’. Experimental economics studies the irrational behavior of human beings, with the aim of understanding exactly how our behavior deviates from the Homo economicus, as ‘rational man’ has been called. Insofar as philosophical theories depend upon rationality assumptions, experimental economics is the source of both problems and (at least potential) solutions to several philosophical issues. This article offers a programmatic and highly biased survey of some (...) of these issues, with the hope of convincing the reader that experimental economics is well-deserving of careful study by philosophers. (shrink)

Traditionally Kant's theory of punishment has been seen as wholly retributive. Recent Kantian scholarship has interpreted the theory as more moderately retributive: punishment is deterrent in aim, and retributive only in so far as the amount and type of penalty is to be determined by retributive considerations (the ius talionis). But it is arguable that a more coherent Kantian theory of punishment can be developed which makes no appeal to retribution at all: hypothetical contractors would have no good reason to (...) endorse punishment distributed retributively. This position is first sketched behind Rawls's neo‐Kantian ‘veil of ignorance’, and it is suggested that the same theory will emerge from Scanlon's more relaxed neo‐Kantian position. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article considers various arguments put forward, on the subject of ‘sexual justice’, by Janet Radcliffe Richards in her book, The Sceptical Feminist: a Philosophical Enquiry. These arguments rest upon a version of ‘the difference principle’, and owe much to the exposition of this principle by John Rawls. It is argued that Radcliffe Richards fails to support her argument for sexual justice by reference to the difference principle. Indeed, it is argued that reliance by Radcliffe Richards upon this principle (...) vitiates her advocacy of sexual justice. The article concludes by putting forward an obvious alternative to the difference principle; and with a suggestion as to why Radcliffe Richards fails to acknowledge the strength of this alternative. (shrink)