John Rawls's transition from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism was driven by his rejection of Theory's account of stability. The key to his later account of stability is the idea of public reason. We see Rawls's account of stability as an attempt to solve a mutual assurance problem. We maintain that Rawls's solution fails because his primary assurance mechanism, in the form of public reason, is fragile. His conception of public reason relies on a condition of consensus that (...) we argue is unrealistic in modern, pluralistic democracies. After rejecting Rawls's conception of public reason, we offer an ‘indirect alternative’ that we believe is much more robust. We cite experimental evidence to back up this claim. (shrink)

We present a theory of honor violence as a form of costly signaling. Two types of honor violence are identified: revenge and purification. Both types are amenable to a signaling analysis whereby the violent behavior is a signal that can be used by out-groups to draw inferences about the nature of the signaling group, thereby helping to solve perennial problems of social cooperation: deterrence and assurance. The analysis shows that apparently gratuitous acts of violence can be part of a system (...) of norms that are Pareto superior to alternatives without such signals. For societies that lack mechanisms of governance to deter aggression or to enforce contracts, norms of honor can be a rational means of achieving these functions. The theory also suggests that cultures can become trapped in inefficient equilibria owing to path-dependent phenomena. In other words, costly signals of honor may continue to be sent even when they are no longer providing useful information. (shrink)

Public reason theories are characterized by three conditions: constructivism, representation, and stability. Constructivism holds that justification does not rely on any antecedent moral or political values outside of the procedure of agreement. Representation holds that the reasons for the choice in the model must be rationally explicable to real agents outside the model. Stability holds that the principles chosen in the procedure should be stable upon reflection, especially in the face of diversity in a pluralistic society. Choice procedures that involve (...) at least two-stages with different information, as Rawls’s theory does, will be path-dependent and not meet the condition of representation since it will not be globally coherent. Attempts to solve this problem without eliminating the segmentation of choice in the procedure will run afoul of constructivism or stability. This problem is instructive because it highlights how public reason theories must evolve in the face of increased concerns about diversity. (shrink)

For contractarians, justice is the result of a rational bargain. The goal is to show that the rules of justice are consistent with rationality. The two most important bargaining theories of justice are David Gauthier’s and those that use the Nash’s bargaining solution. I argue that both of these approaches are fatally undermined by their reliance on a symmetry condition. Symmetry is a substantive constraint, not an implication of rationality. I argue that using symmetry to generate uniqueness undermines the goal (...) of bargaining theories of justice. (shrink)

Epicurean contractarianism is an attempt to reconcile individualistic hedonism with a robust account of justice. The pursuit of pleasure and the requirements of justice, however, have seemed to be incompatible to many commentators, both ancient and modern. It is not clear how it is possible to reconcile hedonism with the demands of justice. Furthermore, it is not clear why, even if Epicurean contractarianism is possible, it would be necessary for Epicureans to endorse a social contract. I argue here that Epicurean (...) contractarianism is both possible and necessary once we understand Epicurean practical rationality in a new way. We are left with an appealing version of teleological, individualistic contractarianism that is significantly different from Hobbesian contractarianism. (shrink)

In Rescuing Justice and Equality G.A. Cohen argues that justice requires an uncompromising commitment to equality. Cohen also argues, however, that justice must be sensitive to other values, including a robust commitment to individual freedom and to the welfare of the community. We ask whether a commitment to these other values means that, despite Cohen’s commitment to equality, his view requires that we make room for inequality in the name of justice? We argue that even on Cohen’s version of egalitarianism (...) equality, freedom, and welfare are not always compatible. Justice will require trade-offs between these values. Sometimes, equality will need to be sacrificed. This is a surprising result and to show it, we use two informal impossibility proofs drawn from examples in Rescuing Justice and Equality. (shrink)

Should the norms of honor cultures be classified as a variety of morality? In this paper, we address this question by considering various empirical bases on which norms can be taxonomically organised. This question is of interest both as an exercise in philosophy of social science, and for its potential implications in meta-ethical debates. Using recent data from anthropology and evolutionary game theory, we argue that the most productive classification emphasizes the strategic role that moral norms play in generating assurance (...) and stabilizing cooperation. Because honor norms have a similar functional role, this account entails honor norms are indeed a variety of moral norm. We also propose an explanation of why honor norms occur in a relatively unified, phenotypically distinctive cluster, thereby explaining why it is tempting to regard them as taxonomically distinct. (shrink)

:Self-ownership has fallen out of favor as a core moral and political concept. I argue that this is because the most popular conception of self-ownership, what I call the property conception, is typically linked to a libertarian political program. Seeing self-ownership and libertarianism as being necessarily linked leads those who are not inclined toward libertarianism to reject the idea of self-ownership altogether. This, I argue, is a mistake. Self-ownership is a crucial moral and political concept that can earn its keep (...) if we understand it not as type of property right in the self, but rather as a set of territorial rights one has over one’s body. This territorial conception of self-ownership, which I call the sovereignty conception of self-ownership, avoids the traditional arguments raised against the property conception of self-ownership and has other benefits besides. Accepting this conception of self-ownership, I argue, has considerable moral and political benefits without taking on the costs associated with other forms of self-ownership. (shrink)

In Rescuing Justice and Equality G.A. Cohen argues that justice requires an uncompromising commitment to equality. Cohen also argues, however, that justice must be sensitive to other values, including a robust commitment to individual freedom and to the welfare of the community. We ask whether a commitment to these other values means that, despite Cohen’s commitment to equality, his view requires that we make room for inequality in the name of justice? We argue that even on Cohen’s version of egalitarianism (...) equality, freedom, and welfare are not always compatible. Justice will require trade-offs between these values. Sometimes, equality will need to be sacrificed. This is a surprising result and to show it, we use two informal impossibility proofs drawn from examples in Rescuing Justice and Equality. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

It is a matter of dispute how far back evolutionary explanations of social order should be traced. Evolutionary ideas certainly appear in the work of the ancient Greek philosophers, but it seems reasonable to identify the origins of modern evolutionary thinking in the eighteenth-century natural histories of civil society such as Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (1750: Pt III), Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), and Adam Smith’s Wealth of (...) Nations (1776: Bk III). In these eighteenth-century works, the explanation of current social institutions as an unplanned and generally adaptive development out of earlier and simpler arrangements gained traction. Germany too had a tradition of Naturphilosophie employing general evolutionary ideas, as well as Hegelian-influenced thinking on the development of societies. In 1863, four years after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, August Schleicher’s Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaf, drew on these traditions as well as Darwin’s book to present an evolutionary account of the development of families of languages (Taub 1993), an endeavor that was carried on by a number of scholars in the later part of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This is an undergraduate-level textbook that introduces classical political philosophy as a framework to evaluate the ethics of capitalism up to the present day. It is rooted in historical eighteenth- and nineteenth-century defenses of capitalism, as written by key proponents such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, and applies these arguments to contemporary issues such as wage inequality, global trade, climate change, and the welfare state. The authors aim to engage students in debating the ethics of economic systems-specifically capitalism, (...) socialism, and feudalism-and whether various contemporary economic injustices can be interpreted as legacy of each system. There are also study questions at the end of each chapter and an author-created companion website. (shrink)

For more than twenty years, Peter Vanderschraaf’s work has combined rigorous game-theoretic analysis, innovative use of (social) scientific method, and normative analysis in the context of the social contract. Vanderschraaf’s work has influenced a significant interdisciplinary field of study and culminated in the publication of his book, Strategic Justice: Convention and Problems of Balancing Divergent Interests (OUP, 2019). Building upon his previous work, Vanderschraaf developed a new theory of justice (justice-as-convention) that, despite a mutual advantage approach, considers the most vulnerable (...) members of society and defends the egalitarian bargaining solution. To advance his theory, Vanderschraaf proposes an account of conventions that updates and systematizes David Lewis’s account of conventions, drawing on contemporary developments in game theory and economics. This topical collection brings together game theorists, philosophers, economists, and political scientists to discuss themes from Vanderschraaf’s work. The collection bridges a gap among disjoint but closely related literatures in game theory, bargaining theory, formal philosophy, rationality, equality, justice, and the social contract in order to advance dialogue among scholars in this rich and growing field of study. (shrink)

Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some things we might see as important and they require us to do other things that we might otherwise not do. The question for the contractarian is whether the costs of these social rules can be rationally justified. I argue that traditional contract theories have tended to underestimate the (...) importance of evaluating the cost of enforcement and compliance in the contract procedure. In addition, the social contract has been understood narrowly as a method of justifying specifically moral or political rules. I defend a broader version of contractarianism as a justificatory model that can be used to evaluate any set of social rules or institutions that impose costson agents. In so doing, I argue that contractarianism is a general method of evaluating and justifying the rules that order the structure of social life. (shrink)

Equality is at the heart of liberal, democratic political theory. Despite this, there is considerable disagreement about how we should understand equality in the context of liberal politics. Several different conceptions of equality will recommend different and often conflicting policies and institutions. Further, we can expect, in democratic societies, that citizens will disagree on the correct conception of equality. This leads to the diversity problem of equality—there is no one conception of equality that will be acceptable to all citizens. This (...) is compounded by the complexity problem of generating determinate and predictable results in the institutional application of any particular conception of equality. After identifying these problems and looking at G.A. Cohen’s defense of a thoroughly egalitarian conception of politics, I argue in favor of “democratic equality” as a political ideal. (shrink)