This paper is concerned to make three points about money-metric poverty in India: first, that the standard poverty-line approach to measuring poverty considerably underestimates poverty, and that the particular protocols by which India’s official poverty lines are determined are arbitrary and misleading; second, that a view of poverty in which the achievement of a satisfactory level of income is seen as a valuable end in itself, and which is captured in something like Kaushik Basu’s (...) ‘quintile income statistic’, suggests a high order of income-poverty in the country which belies the relatively encouraging trends exhibited by headcount ratios based on official poverty lines; and third, that the continued co-existence of large amounts of poverty with large amounts of inequality needs to be redeemed by some deliberate redistributive strategy aimed at providing something like a guaranteed basic minimum income to every citizen of the country—for reasons, at least, of self-interest, if not justice. (shrink)

This article explains some moral dimensions of a transnational feminist research project designed to provide a better standard or metric for measuring poverty across the world. The author is an investigator on this project. Poverty metrics incorporate moral judgments about what is necessary for a decent life, so justifying metrics requires moral argumentation. The article clarifies the moral aspects of poverty valuation, indicates some moral flaws in existing global poverty metrics, and outlines some (...) conditions for a better global metric. It then explains the methodology used in our project, providing its moral rationale and discussing some remaining moral concerns. (shrink)

This article reflects critically on the methodology of one feminist research project which is ongoing as we write. The project is titled “Assessing Development: Designing Better Indices of Poverty and Gender Equity” and its aim is to develop a better standard or metric for measuring poverty across the world. The authors of this article are among several philosophers on the research team, which also includes scholars from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology and economics. This article begin by explaining (...) why a new and better poverty metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. It then describes our methodological goals and strategies and summarizes our research findings, showing how they diverge from standard assessments as a result the feminist methods we used. We conclude with some methodological lessons we learned and questions that we think remain to be addressed. (shrink)

The supplemented edition of this important reader includes a substantive new introduction by the author on the changing nature of feminist methodology. It takes into account the implications of a major new study included for this first time in this book on poverty and gender (in)equality, and it includes an article discussing the ways in which this study was conducted using the research methods put forward by the first edition. This article begins by explaining why a new and better (...) poverty metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. Feminist research is a growing tradition of inquiry that aims to produce knowledge not biased by inequitable assumptions about gender and related categories such as class, race, religion, sexuality, and nationality."Just Methods" is designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines. Rather than being concerned with particular techniques of inquiry, the interdisciplinary readings in this book address broad questions of research methodology. They are designed to help researchers think critically and constructively about the epistemological and ethical implications of various approaches to research selection and research design, evidence-gathering techniques, and publication of results.A key theme running through the readings is the complex interrelationship between social power and inequality on the one hand and the production of knowledge on the other. A second and related theme is the inseparability of research projects and methodologies from ethical and political values. (shrink)

There is a familiar problem in moral theories that recognize positive obligations to help others related to the practical room these obligations leave for ordinary life, and the risk that open-ended obligations to help others will consume our lives and resources. Responding to this problem, Kantians have tended to emphasize the idea of limits on positive obligations but are typically unsatisfactorily vague about the nature and extent of these limits. I argue here that aspects of Kant’s discussion of duties of (...) virtue owed to ourselves suggest a useful metric we can use in discussing these limits and that generalizing this account and combining it with elements of Barbara Herman’s view, offers us an attractive model of moral deliberation with the resources we need to engage the critic’s challenge properly. (shrink)

This book addresses a range of relevant theoretical issues, including the possibility of an interpersonally comparable measure of well-being, or “utility” metric; the moral value of equality, and how that bears on the form of the social welfare function; social choice under uncertainty; and the possibility of integrating considerations of individual choice and responsibility into the social-welfare-function framework. This book also deals with issues of implementation, and explores how survey data and other sources of evidence might be used to calibrate (...) both a utility metric and a social welfare function, and whether distributive goals are ever best pursued through regulation rather than the tax system. In working through this range of theoretical and practical issues, the book draws from a wide variety of literatures, including philosophical scholarship on equality, responsibility, the nature of well-being, and personal identity over time; the social choice literature within economics; applied economic literatures concerning the measurement of inequality and poverty; legal and policy-analysis scholarship on cost-benefit analysis, environmental justice, and the choice between regulation and taxation; and the burgeoning field of “happiness studies”. (shrink)

Measures of need-based justice that have been proposed lately rely on a single dimension of need that is taken into account. This is shown to be problematic since humans experience different kinds of need that appear to be incommensurable.

The value of education is commonly measured in terms of its ability to improve economic growth or the earnings of individuals. According to that approach, education enables society or individuals to accumulate a stock of human capital, which can then be used to generate macro or micro level income growth.1 In this chapter our aim is to examine education in Turkey based on the human capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and, more recently, by Martha Nussbaum (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000). (...) The capabilities approach rejects a development strategy based on human capital, firstly, because it does not require that all individuals receive a sufficient education and, secondly, because it is based on an impoverished metric of human well-being. In the first place, an approach to development that is based on human capital may postpone extending a basic education to some children if that is the optimal strategy for expanding economic growth or combating income poverty. It may be argued, for example, that the social conditioning of gender roles means it is more costly to expand the educational attainment levels of female children. Thus, prioritizing investment in the length and quality of education available to male children may be seen as a more cost effective way of driving economic growth. The postponement strategy may be further defended on the grounds that income poverty can be best overcome by letting the fruits of growth trickle-down or be redistributed to the poor, rather than by directly improving the earnings potential of the poor. According to the capabilities approach each individual has a fundamental right to at least a basic education because without it they lack the necessary preconditions for doing things and achieving results that they have reason to value. In other words, society has a duty to ensure that each individual can acquire at least a sufficient education, irrespective of their relative ability to contribute towards income growth.. (shrink)

There is a surprising amount of philosophy underlying the way we choose to measure poverty, including in the matter of the seemingly uncomplicated task of specifying an income poverty line. The present essay examines some of these issues of fact, value, and reasoning as they apply to the enterprise of assessing magnitudes of, and trends in, global money-metric poverty.

Regardless of unpredictable and contingent geopolitical events such as last year’s surprising rejection of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands, this coming year will certainly witness a large surge in patriotism. The Winter Olympics in February, and the World Cup in the summer, both promise to whip national sentiments into a fever pitch. One other thing is certain, though: journals of philosophy and ethics will continue to debate the virtues of cosmopolitanism, as this number of Ethical Perspectives does (...) through its contributions below.Why is this? Why do philosophers and academics hold on to this idea of cosmopolitanism, an idea utterly lacking in the convictions of the general public? Is it perhaps because the first cosmopolitans were in fact philosophers? The first to identify himself as a cosmopolitan was Diogenes the Cynic, and Plato’s dialogues paint many of the Sophists in cosmopolitan hues. Although people generally support the idea of internationalism as far as it promotes trade, travel, and football tournaments, once it begins to meddle in internal affairs, as it does with outsourcing and transnational constitutions, they tend to fall back upon the patria. They killed Socrates for corrupting the youth of Athens, not the youth of the world.Whether it is the service and manufacturing industries of Asia and India ‘stealing’ American jobs, or widespread fears of Brussels’ legendary bureaucrats, the non-academic public consistently turns from its tepid embrace of cosmopolitanism to patriotism whenever threatened. Are we too quick to label this as self-interest or even selfishness? Or is there something else at work in the debate between cosmopolitanism and patriotism? Some approaches to cosmopolitanism are certainly guilty of an absolute removal of difference, of wishing away the nation state, of replacing it with an international body based on purely universal principles, and of wiping away the competencies of nations on many levels. The call for the world state can come across as an appeal for an anodyne and internationalist homogeneity based on a clinical morality that, for all its sensitivity, runs roughshod over the well-engrained cultural, legal, and social beliefs of many peoples.Clearly, this is what many Europeans fear, and to a large degree, Americans as well in their dislike for the International Court of Justice. Even the economic hegemony of outsourcing removes national power, and replaces it with pure economic rationality.Our contributors below do not advocate these reductions, although some may point to them. Key to each contribution below is sensitivity to the world as it is, to its need for difference even in the face of an ever-increasing globalisation that sometimes is connected with cosmopolitanism. Yet, every proponent of cosmopolitanism must sketch how it is possible in practice. Of course, an obvious problem is how to dwell consequently as a cosmopolitan. Not many contemporary cosmopolitans would be prepared to follow Diogenes’ commitment to rootlessness: living in exile after having been included in a forgery conviction aimed at his father, the ascetic Diogenes called a barrel his home. Such was his drive to live a levelled life that he cast away his only bowl upon seeing a poor peasant boy drinking from cupped hands. Today’s cosmopolitan leads a much more prosaic life, and hence the problem with cosmopolitanism begins as something mundane. Does not a cosmopolitan still pay national taxes? Does not a cosmopolitan still need a national passport and second country visas? But, the questions quickly turn ontological: how can one shed oneself of one’s nationality, of one’s belonging, as if it is just an accident of one’s own constitution, instead of as an important property of one’s own constitution? In other words, belonging is important: a citizen of the world still values citizenship. Clearly, the absolute cosmopolitan reduction is an absurdity: one is always rooted, in some sense. Even cosmopolitanism is rooted in a specific Western mindset, and is no self-evident preference of human existence.As Rudi Visker’s contribution so clearly shows through an investigation of the narcissism of minor differences, these questions revolve around the question of confrontation with alterity. What I am, in no small way plays off what I am not. I cannot be everything, if I am something. Freud’s analysis of minor differences reveals that members of a group identify with that group on the basis these minor differences. What is self-evident to a particular culture marks that culture off from another culture, a culture that by definition does not share the same set of the self-evident. To be a foreigner, as any ex-patriot can attest, is to stand outside of the self-evident, whether this means interpreting gestures, understanding commercial practices, or, as Freud would have it, staying on the correct side of national taboos. There is thus a dialectic of inner and outer, a dialectic which refuses a reduction of one to the other. As Visker puts it, recognising the stranger within oneself is quite different than recognising the stranger outside of oneself, and to confuse these as being the same is not only to misunderstand the very issue at stake, it is also a dangerous trivialisation of difference.But clearly, there is something viable and laudable in the idea of cosmopolitanism, since it stresses the universal moral community of humanity. Cosmopolitanism is an attempt to see all human subjects as subject to the same moral law. Indeed, the sort of federation to which cosmopolitanism leads, at least in a modified Kantian expression as Bert van Roermund tells us, even gives us good grounds to recognise the legitimacy and moral equivalence of states. Importantly, the international legal order does not draw its power from any supranational force, but from the choice of independent national actors to recognise it. Hence, this cosmopolitan order depends on nationhood, and good standing within this order depends on the degree to which a country decides to participate. Again, the universal here depends on well-rooted particularity, a particularity able to choose for the universal.What do we do, then, with outlaw nations, those nations that are hostile to the choice for the universal? Through a clear reading of Hegel, Paul Cobben proposes that the metric for a state’s legality is the measure to which it permits the moral freedom of its citizens to bloom. A free person requires a free legal order; only in such can a person obtain the full measure of human rights due. States that do not permit this blooming are illegitimate; they contradict the nature of the human person, and citizens dwelling under the yoke of these have the right to ask for outside assistance in removing this illegitimate power above them. However, for this plea to be met, two conditions must obtain: the oppressed people must have the wherewithal to form a political order after the removal of the illegitimate state, and the action must be grounded in the principles and support of a legal community, which in essence would be a world federation of states. In fact, it is morally incumbent upon all legal states to aim at such a world federation, upon pain of contradiction.Our duty to others does not end with the politically oppressed; the economically oppressed also lay a moral claim upon us. So, as Toon Vandevelde asks in his contribution, what about the global poor? The poor are hungry and in need of shelter and a future, but to address these issues at the level of rights is in a way heartless: what good does it do to legislate that everyone has the right to food, when this right can never be called upon, or enforced, in any meaningful sense? Moreover, approaches that demand non-prioritised generosity not only ignore the fundamental economic fact of scarcity, they also run the risk of creating the moral hazard of dependence on charity. The true cosmopolitan approach is the recognition of our common humanity and of our concomitant duty to help others as far as this help does not endanger us. This duty is compounded by the marginalisation of the poor through globalisation, a globalisation that they did not ask for. The extent of our help is indeterminate, but its direction is clear: it must aim to integrate those poor who wish it within our international systems, and so to ease their own transitions from poverty.Both Gil Anidjar and Maria Bonnafous-Boucher continue this theme of economy, but each from a highly specific viewpoint. Indeed, their contributions are perhaps somewhat darker, delving into an aspect of the unspoken underneath the choice for the universal. Anidjar begins with the relation between religion and economy within the interplay of Judaism and Christianity, whereas Bonnafous-Boucher focuses on the development of political economy through a Foucaultian lens. Although highly distinct contributions, both share the insight that the economy is now the central theme of our power structures, and that economy, isolated from questions of morality or justice, must likewise play a decisive role within the structure of cosmopolitanism, or, at minimum, the political unity of peoples. For, national government long ago ceded to a promiscuous mix of governance, and religion to economy. This nexus enthrones governance as an economic rationale stripped of all other trappings, and inscribes any possible cosmopolitanism within a framework of an aggressive capitalism, a kind of economic theology, a kind of hegemony in which state boundaries are essentially liquefied. Capital, after all, knows no boundaries. (shrink)

This book, now open-access from OUP, develops a normative theory of political responsibility for solidarity with poor populations by engaging closely with empirical studies of poor-led social movements in the Global South. Monique Deveaux rejects familiar ethical framings of problems of poverty and inequality by arguing that normative thinking about antipoverty remedies needs to engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of “pro-poor,” poor-led social movements. Defending the idea of a political responsibility for solidarity, nonpoor outsiders—individuals, institutions, and (...) states—can help to advance a transformative anti-poverty agenda only by supporting the efforts of these movements. (shrink)

In a number of publications A.N. Prior considered the use of what he called ‘metric tense logic’. This is a tense logic in which the past and future operators P and F have an index representing a temporal distance, so that Pnα means that α was true n -much ago, and Fn α means that α will be true n -much hence. The paper investigates the use of metric predicate tense logic in formalising phenomena ormally treated by such devices as (...) multiple indexing or quantification over times. (shrink)

This paper examines one aspect of the legacy of the Value-Free Ideal in conservation science: the view that measurements and metrics are value-free epistemic tools detached from ideological, ethical, social, and, generally, non-epistemic considerations. Contrary to this view, I will argue that traditional measurement practices entrenched in conservation are in fact permeated with non-epistemic values. I challenge the received view by revealing three non-epistemic assumptions underlying traditional metrics: (1) a human-environment demarcation, (2) the desirability of a people-free landscape, (...) and (3) the exclusion of cultural diversity from biodiversity. I also draw a connection between arguments for retaining traditional metrics to “scientific colonialism,” exemplified by a fortress conservation model. I conclude by advocating for abandoning the myth of the intrinsic value-freedom of measurement practices and embracing metrics aligned with societal and scientific goals. (shrink)

Poverty is a social problem. Its alleviation has been one of the major issues that occupy a significant place in the scale of preference of developmental policies of several nations, international organizations, church and other interested stakeholders. Thus, the thrust of this work centers on poverty alleviation strategies of selected Churches in Anambra State: namely how this institution participates in some economic activities, skill acquisition programmes, and empowerment programmes, among others in view of controlling the scourge of (...) class='Hi'>poverty. The research methods employed here are: both qualitative and quantitative - survey and documentary research methods of data collection. The survey method collects data through designed research questionnaire and oral interview with some respondents respectively, while in qualitative approach is the content analysis of written sources such as books, journal articles and online sources that are relevant to the research. The findings of this research show that poverty is human-induced problem manifested in the mismanagement of resources and other forms of ills. Selected churches in Anambra State has reduced the effects of poverty through its collaboration with the State and Non-Governmental Organizations in poverty reduction programmes. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's Poverty of the Stimulus Argument is one of the most famous and controversial arguments in the study of language and the mind. Though widely endorsed by linguists, the argument has met with much resistance in philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophical critics have often failed to fully appreciate the power of the argument. In this paper, we provide a systematic presentation of the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument, clarifying its structure, content, and evidential base. We defend the argument against (...) a variety of philosophical criticisms, new and old, and argue that the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument continues to deserve its guiding role in the study of language and the mind. (shrink)

Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. This problem is solvable, despite its magnitude.

Poverty is one of the most serious moral issues of our time that does not yet get the appropriate response it deserves. This book first gives an in depth moral analysis and evaluation of the complex manifestations of poverty. It then offers a series of ethical reasons to motivate everyone to engage in the struggle to eradicate poverty. -/- Social science research results are synthesized into a definition and explanation of poverty that provide proper background for (...) moral evaluation. Poverty is defined as a many-faceted phenomenon consisting of tightly interwoven characteristics that play out in a complexity of manners depending on the unique circumstances in individual situations. -/- The following series of claims are defended in the book: (1) Poverty is a complex phenomenon that can have a wide ranging series of negative impacts on individuals and societies; (2) Poverty must be understood from a variety of ethical perspectives and through different metaphors; (3) Poverty and its consequences undermine the dignity of its sufferers and thus must be eradicated for its inhuman consequences; (4) Poverty affects all the networks humans are involved in and thus diminishes the quality of life of all human beings; (5) We must evaluate all possible dimensions of the phenomenon of poverty in terms of values of ethics and justice generally shared in contemporary liberal democracies. (6) Poverty can best be addressed through collective human action after re-imagining the goal and purpose of political institutions and a reformulation of the purposes aid ought to be for. (shrink)

We classify countable metrically homogeneous graphs of diameter 3.

Metrics shape our social worlds in many and more ways. Everyday quantifications of our preferences, our behaviors and our relationships, alter us and the institutions that we constitute. This essay takes a brief look at the metrics of business ethics through two analytic devices. Representation explains the notion that metrics can capture or demonstrate ethics and performativity explains the notion that metrics can shape or constitute ethics. The analytic distinction between representation and performativity is obscured in (...) practice when metrics become targets, indeed much of the social power of metrics comes from their use as targets. Hence, we should pay attention to the world of practice in which measuring and doing are entangled. However, we should not lose sight of the limitations of measurement and the possibility that there are areas of ethical life best left unmeasured. (shrink)

On its publication in 1957, _The Poverty of Historicism_ was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.' A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on (...) the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker. (shrink)

This study examines whether the chief executive officer’s poverty experience has an impact on firms’ corporate social responsibility. We find that firms’ CSR performance increases with CEOs’ poverty experience; specifically, firms with CEOs who experienced early-life poverty are associated with more socially responsible activities and fewer socially irresponsible activities, such as on-the-job consumption, and are more associated with key stakeholder-related rather than community-related CSR. We further find that the positive relationship between the CEO’s poverty experience and (...) CSR strengthens for well-educated or powerful CEOs. Our evidence is consistent with our conjecture that CEOs who experienced early-life poverty have stronger compassion and prosocial psychology. Consequently, these CEOs are more willing to make long-term investments in socially beneficial activities, leading to better CSR performance, which further confirms the altruistic motivation of CSR. (shrink)

The idea that sentences can be closer or further apart in meaning is highly intuitive. Not only that, it is also a pillar of logic, semantic theory and the philosophy of science, and follows from other commitments about similarity. The present paper proposes a novel way of comparing the ‘distance’ between two pairs of propositions. We define ‘\ is closer in meaning to \ than \ is to \’ and thereby give a precise account of comparative propositional similarity facts. Notably, (...) our definition eschews metric assumptions, which are unrealistic in most applications of interest. (shrink)

In this chapter we argue that poverty should be seen as a violation of dignity, drawing on two of Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative – the formula of humanity and the formula of the kingdom of ends. In our view, poverty should not be seen primarily in terms of exploitation, nor of failures to help people in need. A Kantian perspective should give proper weight to the actual and potential agency of those who suffer poverty. This (...) is a question about power, not just the distribution of material resources. Theoretically, we will place particular emphasis on the rarely remarked reference to “ends and means” in the formula of the kingdom of ends. People are sometimes treated merely as means, which is one sort of disrespect for their equal moral status. Another form of disrespect, deeper and more general in form, is the denial of decent opportunities to act as means for others. The resulting powerlessness, we suggest, should be central to an adequate understanding of poverty and its violations of dignity. (shrink)

The question of whether biologists should continue to use the Linnaean hierarchy has been a hotly debated issue. Invented before the introduction of evolutionary theory, Linnaeus's system of classifying organisms is based on outdated theoretical assumptions, and is thought to be unable to provide accurate biological classifications. Marc Ereshefsky argues that biologists should abandon the Linnaean system and adopt an alternative that is more in line with evolutionary theory. He traces the evolution of the Linnaean hierarchy from its introduction to (...) the present. He illustrates how the continued use of this system hampers our ability to classify the organic world, and then goes on to make specific recommendations for a post-Linnaean method of classification. Accessible to a wide range of readers by providing introductory chapters to the philosophy of classification and the taxonomy of biology, the book will interest both scholars and students of biology and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

What are the ethical implications of global poverty for immigration policy? This article finds substantial evidence that migration is effective at reducing poverty. There is every indication that the adoption of a fairly open immigration policy by rich countries, coupled with selective use of immigration restrictions in cases of deleterious brain drain, could be of significant assistance to people living in poor countries. Empirically there is nothing wrong with using immigration policy to address poverty. The reason we (...) have to reject such an approach is not empirical but normative. People have human rights to stay in their home country and to migrate elsewhere. Counter poverty measures that require people to move or to stay are likely to violate these rights. Everyone should be free to migrate but no one should be forced to migrate. Using immigration policy to address global poverty, in place of alternatives, fails on both these counts. (shrink)

Data and metrics play an unmistakably powerful role in today's society. Over the years, their use has expanded to cover almost every sphere of everyday life. This book provides a critical investigation into what we can call a ""metric culture"" in which practices of self-tracking and quantification have become more popular than ever before.

£ The existence of a model for a logic program is generally established by lattice-theoretic arguments. We present three examples to show that metric methods can often be used instead, generally in a direct, straightforward way. One example is a game program, which is not stratified or locally stratified, but which has a unique supported model whose existence is easily established using metric methods. The second example is a program without a unique supported model, but having a part that is (...) ‘well-behaved.’ The third example is a program in which one part depends on another, illustrating how modularity might be treated metrically. Finally we use ideas from this third example to prove a general result from [3]. The intention in presenting these examples and the theorem is to stimulate interest in.. (shrink)

First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to save (...) the good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to save (...) the good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

It is shown that for compact metric spaces the following statements are pairwise equivalent: “X is Loeb”, “X is separable”, “X has a we ordered dense subset”, “X is second countable”, and “X has a dense set G = ∪{Gn : n ∈ ω}, ∣Gn∣ < ω, with limn→∞ diam = 0”. Further, it is shown that the statement: “Compact metric spaces are weakly Loeb” is not provable in ZF0 , the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory without the axiom of regularity, and (...) that the countable axiom of choice for families of finite sets CACfin does not imply the statement “Compact metric spaces are separable”. (shrink)

Each year, millions of people die from poverty-related causes. In this groundbreaking and thought-provoking book, Gwilym David Blunt argues that the only people who will end this injustice are its victims, and that the global poor have the right to resist the causes of poverty. He explores how the right of resistance is used to reframe urgent political questions: is illegal immigration a form of resistance? Can transnational social movements, such as the indigenous rights movement, provide the foundations (...) for civil resistance to global poverty? If peaceful resistance fails, is armed struggle justified? Do people living in affluent states have a responsibility to help even if it requires them to break the law? Giving clear historical examples and engaging with fields including philosophy, international law, history, and international political studies, this volume addresses real-world issues from terrorism to activism. It will be important for anyone interested in applied philosophy and global injustice. (shrink)

Hailed on publication in 1957 as "probably the only book published this year that will outlive the century," this is a brilliant of the idea that there are ...

Citation metrics are statistical measures of scientific output that draw on citation indexes. They purport to capture the impact of scientific articles and the journals in which they appear. As evaluative tools they are mostly used in the natural sciences, but they are also acquiring an important role in the humanities. While the strengths and weaknesses of citation metrics are extensively debated in a variety of fields, they have only recently started attracting attention in the philosophy of science. (...) This paper takes a further step in this direction and presents an analysis of citation metrics from the perspective of a Kuhnian model for the development of science. To do so, it assesses the argument made against the use of citation metrics for scientific research by Gillies (2008). According to Gillies, citations metrics tend to over-protect normal science at the expenses of revolutionary science–in other words, reinforce the status quo rather than supporting innovations and breakthroughs. Unlike Gillies, this paper focuses on the context of normal science and shows that citation metrics can in fact arbitrarily hinder its development when they do not take field-specific differences into account. In light of this, the paper cautions against their use for evaluative purposes. To argue for this conclusion, the paper shows that citation metrics fail to “carve science at its joints” and thus cannot be relied upon as indicators of scientific quality that can support the development of normal science. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with child poverty from an ethical perspective and applies the normative concept of vulnerability for this purpose. The first part of the paper will briefly outline children’s particular vulnerability and distinguish important aspects of this. Then the concept will be applied to child poverty and it will be shown that child poverty is a corrosive situational vulnerability, with many severe consequences. In this part of the paper normative reasoning and empirical literature will be (...) brought together. Then, the next section will establish why this increased vulnerability of poor children and the harm to their well-being and well-becoming, which they suffer for this reason, are of ethical concern. It will be discussed that child poverty is a structural problem based on social, political and economic factors. The concluding section will then briefly outline why it is imperative to protect children from the vulnerabilities associated with poverty. (shrink)

In this article, the last in the symposium on world poverty and human rights, Pogge replies to his critics Mathias Risse, Alan Patten, Rowan Cruft, Norbert Anwander, and Debra Satz.

Poverty is more than a ‘welfare status’ among others. In this paper I want to show that poverty is not only a failure of distribution of income but that it is a state of humiliation. In the first section I will examine poverty knowledge, how poverty is conceptualised and what norms are inherent in the measures of the poor. In the second section I will show that poverty is humiliating because it is bound to failure (...) and deficiency. To be poor means to be unable to take care for oneself. In the third and final section I will turn to social critique and its relation to the subjects of poverty. There are good reasons to be sceptical of the poor and their judgements and to seek for objective criteria, but this cannot replace the subject and their experience. (shrink)

What has the dispositional analysis of properties and laws (e.g. Molnar, Powers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003; Mumford, Laws in nature, Routledge London, 2004; Bird, Nature’s metaphysics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007) to offer to the scientific understanding of physical properties?—The article provides an answer to this question for the case of spacetime points and their metrical properties in General Relativity. The analysis shows that metrical properties are not ‘powers’, i.e. they cannot be understood as producing the effects of spacetime on (...) matter with metaphysical necessity. Instead they possess categorical characteristics which, in connection with specific laws, explain those effects. Thus, the properties of spacetime do not favor the metaphysics of powers with respect to properties and laws. (shrink)

General relativity poses serious problems for counterfactual propositions peculiar to it as a physical theory. Because these problems arise solely from the dynamical nature of spacetime geometry, they are shared by all schools of thought on how counterfactuals should be interpreted and understood. Given the role of counterfactuals in the characterization of, inter alia, many accounts of scientific laws, theory confirmation and causation, general relativity once again presents us with idiosyncratic puzzles any attempt to analyze and understand the nature of (...) scientific knowledge must face. (shrink)

This book brings together philosophical approaches to explore the relation of recognition and poverty. This volume examines how critical theories of recognition can be utilized to enhance our understanding, evaluation and critique of poverty and social inequalities. Furthermore, chapters in this book explore anti-poverty policies, development aid and duties towards the (global) poor. This book includes critical examinations of reflections on poverty and related issues in the work of past and present philosophers of recognition. This book (...) hopes to contribute to the ongoing and expanding debate on recognition in ethics, political and social philosophy by focusing on poverty, which is one highly important social and global challenge. -/- “If one believed that the theme of “recognition” had been theoretically exhausted over the last couple of years, this book sets the record straight. The central point of all the studies collected here is that poverty is best understood in its social causes, psychic consequences and moral injustice when studied within the framework of recognition theory. Regardless of how recognition is defined in detail, poverty is best captured as the absence of all material and cultural conditions for being recognized as a human being. Whoever is interested in the many facets of poverty is well advised to consult this path-breaking book.” Axel Honneth, Columbia University. (shrink)

Poverty is a complex, embodied reality comprising the existential, social, material, and spiritual. This paper draws from liberation theologies from North and South America, defining poverty as a religio-historical realidad. Martin Luther King Jr. observed a disembodied spirituality in many American churches who remained apathetic or antagonistic during the Civil Rights Movement. Conversely, James Cone reversed the issue by providing a theological system which utilizes hyper-materialistic presuppositions. By examining the broader Liberation tradition, a more robust theological definition of (...) poverty can be construed. Systems of poverty are systems of death, whereas enrichment are processes of life. Embodiment was used during colonial Christianity as a market identity in order to justify conquest. Liberation theologians reclaim creatureliness in their fight against poverty, and fight for restored identity. Each section of the paper addresses major trajectories within the broad Liberation tradition. North American liberationists analyze poverty from the perspective of racial oppression enforced through visible bodies. South American liberationists created a systematic, biblical definition of poverty while primarily addressing economic exploitation. Feminists addressed their male-dominated worlds addressing quality and quantity of life issues. Both North American and South American theologians agree that Christ identifies with the poor and understands their plight. In the end, Christ is understood as a liberator who is Lord over the material, spiritual, personal, and social. (shrink)

The paper introduces a broad family of metrics applicable to finite and countably infinite strings, or, by extension, to formal structures serving as semantics for countable languages. The main focus is on applications to sets of pointed Kripke models, a semantics for modal logics. For the resulting metric spaces, the paper classifies topological properties including which metrics are topologically equivalent, providing sufficient conditions for compactness, characterizing clopen sets and isolated points, and characterizing the metrical topologies by a concept (...) of logical convergence. We then apply the approach to maps from dynamic epistemic logic, showing that product updates with action models yield continuous maps, hence allowing for an interpretation of the iterated updates as discrete time dynamical systems. (shrink)

The large number of hungry people in a global economy based on industrialization, privatization, and free trade raises the question of the ethical dimensions of the worsening food crisis in the world in general and in developing countries in particular. Who bears the moral responsibility for the tragic situation in Africa and Asia where people are starving due to poverty? Who is morally responsible for their poverty - the hungry people themselves? the international community? any particular agency or (...) institution? In the context of Article 3 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security" (UNDHR, 1948), the ethical question of poverty and hunger becomes a major human concern that should be discussed publicly and resolved by whatever means available. But how can the poor and hungry realize their right to life and security if their very survival is at stake? This paper maintains that responsibility for global poverty at present lies in recent neo-liberal trends in the global economy and with those individuals and organizations who, though small in number, have acquired a disproportionate share of the world's assets and financial resources. That being the case, it is suggested that our monetary and financial policies are in need of drastic changes with regard to global responsibility towards the hungry and impoverished. (shrink)

Poverty eradication has been identified as the largest challenge facing international society in its quest for a peaceful, prosperous, and just world. Kokaz responds to this challenge by proposing a global poverty eradication principle.

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Poverty can be an ephemeral life stage of a young person whose skill sets will become more valuable with training and experience, a personal setback such as losing a job, or a systemic affliction that puts a whole community in danger of widespread famine. A common theme of this volume’s essays is that we cannot understand poverty and famine unless we acknowledge that poor people are not mouths to be fed but agents. Amartya Sen got this right, crediting (...) Adam Smith for the seeds of his insight. What has been enabling people by the billions since Smith’s time to work their way out of poverty? (shrink)

Poverty refers to a core set of basic human deprivations, and poverty alleviation refers to efforts by individuals and institutions to reduce these deprivations. Poverty and poverty alleviation are two of the most important topics in global studies. In a variety of disciplines in global studies, the most important questions include understanding what poverty is, what it is like to be poor, what causes poverty, how poverty can be alleviated, and how poverty (...) is reproduced or reduced by different institutional arrangements. (shrink)