Let me first start by apologizing for the late delivery of this comment, which unfortunately messed up Blain Neufeld’s carefully drafted schedule. Apologies to Blain and readers for this.

In Chapter 14, Sen elaborates on the relationship between equality and liberty (or freedom) in relation to the capability approach. A number of issues covered in this chapter have become classics in the literature, and will likely be familiar to readers. But Sen also spends some time discussing the distinction between his approach and that of Philip Pettit – an issue that raises some interesting questions I would like to reflect on in this comment. But let me first briefly review the main points covered in this chapter of The Idea of Justice.

Sen begins the discussion in this chapter by rehearsing the idea (famously expressed in his Tanner Lectures) that all plausible theories of justice have some place for equality, reflecting the fundamental insight that, at some basic level, people must be seen (and treated) as equals. The real question to be answered, Sen concludes, is that of the precise metric of equality underlying competing theories. Sen’s own answer to the “equality of what” debate, as readers know, is to advance capability as the appropriate metric of advantage. However, Sen also insists that an egalitarian perspective informed by the capability approach is not committed to strict equality of capability. He gives us several reasons to resist this strong form of capability egalitarianism, affirming the “multiple dimensions in which equality matters” (p. 297). One important point is that capability only affects what Sen calls the opportunity aspect of freedom and is incapable (pun unintended) to fully capture its process aspect. For Sen capability-based considerations are a crucial but not comprehensive part of a general theory of justice.

In the remainder of the chapter Sen shifts his attention to liberty or freedom, in which he wants to bring home the point that freedom too should be considered a complex and multi-dimensional (or plural) value. Sen suggests personal liberty should be given a good deal of priority, because “it touches our lives at a very basic level” (p. 299), but equally cautions against the extreme view of giving freedom absolute priority (such that it would trump any other concern, no matter how important or urgent). But now the question arises how we should conceive of this freedom that takes priority among the long list of factors that affect how well our lives go. Here Sen makes three distinct points, each of which are controversial and allow for considerable disagreement:

1. When freedom is viewed as “effective preference” we should appreciate the importance of the distinction between direct control, indirect control and luck, for the simple reason that there are many ways in which I may get what I want without having a direct say in how I get it. For Sen the mere fact that I have a preference satisfied implies a type of freedom that matters to how well my life is going (“a freedom of some importance”, p. 304).

2. Relatedly, the plural conception of freedom admits of several ways in which freedom is threatened or impeded: through a lack of capability, through genuine interventions, or through a lack of independence (making one’s preference satisfaction “favor-dependent” in one formulation). Sen spends a whole section arguing about the precise relationship between Pettit’s republicanism and his own capability approach, a point to which I return below.

3. Finally, the proper understanding of freedom (individual or collective) must take account of the outcomes of actions in addition to whether they are properly deemed to be free. This insight relates to Sen’s “impossibility of the Paretian liberal”, a theorem that has spawned a cottage industry of technical literature – a topic I’m happy to leave to more qualified readers.

In the remainder of my comment I want to say a few words on what I personally believe is the more interesting contribution of this chapter, the discussion between Sen and Pettit.

In a piece in Economics and Philosophy (2001) Pettit mounted a thinly veiled “defense” of Sen’s capability approach, in reality aimed at converting capability theorists into full-blooded republicans. Pettit’s line, in brief, was that for freedom to do the work Sen wants it to do it needs to be “content-independent”: for me to be free it can’t be the case that I can chose X but not Y. But even more importantly it must be “context-independent”: for me to be free it can’t be the case that I can chose X in context A but not B. The problem of context-dependence is essentially that of the republican’s arch-villain: the Arbitrary Interferer who usurps your freedom through “alien control” (Pettit’s terminology). Pettit argues Sen’s notion of freedom only makes sense when we ensure that whoever brings about my preferences does so because they are my preferences (perhaps through a mechanism of “virtual control”), and so true freedom must ensure my independence from favorable context.

Sen disagrees and suggests that Pettit fails to appreciate the real distinction capability theory aims to capture, namely that between an agent who’s preferences (choices) are satisfied and an agent whose preferences (choices) are not satisfied. He gives us the following three scenarios to reflect on: imagine a disabled person A, who in requires assistance to get out of the house. There are three possibilities:

1. No assistance is forthcoming – A can’t get out of the house;

2. Assistance is forthcoming but only because someone is disposed in a certain way (say a friendly neighbor) – A can get out of the house as long as that person’s disposition doesn’t change;

3. Assistance is available and controlled by A (e.g., a hired help) – A can get out of the house.

Sen now claims that Pettit holds A is only really free in scenario 3 and must equate scenarios 1 & 2, while capability theorists appreciate the important difference between 1 & 2. And this implies capability theorist should resist becoming republicans. Sen’s reply to Pettit seems to turn on two arguments, both of which I find troubling.

First, Sen suggests that Pettit (and fellow republicans) are incapable of appreciating the distinction between scenarios 1 and 2. But surely this is a rather narrow reading of republican political theory. For there is nothing to prevent Pettit & Co. to accept that a broader range of feasible options is part of what makes a life go well, without it necessarily contributing to freedom in the republican sense. In other words, it seems Pettit can easily admit the moral relevance of the distinction between scenarios 1 and 2 but simply maintain that it fails to render A free from domination (Sen does not dispute the latter point). Under such a broader reading, perhaps it would be acceptable to “replace” the republican idea of freedom with the perspective of freedom as capability, as Pettit proposes yet Sen resists (p. 306).

Second, Sen insists that freedom from dependence is all about how robust one’s freedom is, suggesting that it captures a dimension of freedom distinct from the range of free choices (p. 305). But this too seems a little odd. Can we really maintain that we have a free choice when it is by no means certain that this choice is genuinely available (e.g., because it depends on me having a favorable attitude towards you)? For instance, would we really think that me having a 5% probability I can opt for X means I am genuinely free to chose X? If the answer to this question is “no”, perhaps robustness is a much more integral part of freedom – in the way republicans suggest – than Sen allows. And in this case Sen’s beef with Pettit might again be more trivial than Sen’s rebuttal suggests.

In fact the example above is illustrative in a way Sen himself does not really appreciate. It seems obvious to me that Sen and Pettit would rank the scenarios above similarly, with 3 > 2 > 1. The discussion about what precisely counts as “freedom” vs. some other way in which one’s life goes well masks the fundamental agreement between them in terms of which is the preferred outcome. More interesting, perhaps, would be a scenario in which a policy maker had to chose between the following two strategies: A) devote resources to bring Sean from scenario 1 up to 2 or B) devote resources to bring Seamus from scenario 2 up to 3. While Sen would clearly opt for strategy A in this case, I am not certain Pettit would disagree. But equally we could imagine a variation of the story in which Sen might feel compelled to opt for strategy B rather than A simply because the gains in independence in this particular case would trump the potential gains in “pure” capability. And under such circumstances, presumably so would Pettit.

The upshot of all this seems to be that, once we appreciate that republican freedom is perhaps more complex and graduated (less “binary”) than Sen allows, his rebuttal against Pettit appears rather weak. Leaving aside the semantics of what part of agency or well-being genuinely represents “freedom”, when we ask ourselves what really matters for a person’s life to go well perhaps capability theorists and republicans are kissing cousins after all. On a more critical note, the points raised here also make clear that Sen’s strategy of continuously emphasizing plurality and complexity comes at a cost: the broader the perspective we employ to capture what matters to people, the harder it may become to figure out in a concrete, determinate manner how we should compare, rank and chose between competing values or dimensions. Capability theorists may have plenty to say about this – Sen certainly does at various points throughout the book – but I still feel rather uncomfortable with the way things are often left hanging in this chapter. But perhaps more light will be shed on this in the remaining chapters of the book.

In chapter 15 of The Idea of Justice, “Democracy as Public Reason,” Sen defends the idea that democracy is a universal value. Can democracy flourish outside the west? One reason for thinking it can’t is that it (supposedly) has never done so before. To answer this charge, Sen distinguishes between the “institutional structure of the contemporary practice of democracy,” which is “largely the product of European and American experience over the last few centuries” (pp. 322-323), and the political ideals that underlie it. By the former, Sen seems to have in mind the institutions of electoral conflict (competitive elections, secret ballots, political parties, etc.). But these institutions, Sen argues, are simply the latest effort to institutionalize certain fundamental ideals, ideals of “political participation, dialogue and public interaction” (p. 326). These ideals, Sen suggests, are well-nigh universal in their appeal. But once one sees that the institutions are of use primarily as means to the realization of deeper ideals, then one has reason to avoid running the former and the latter together. In particular, one should not assume that because a certain type of institutional structure is up and running (i.e., there are elections, the votes are counted properly, the loser concedes power to the winner) that a satisfactory level of democracy has been achieved. This has been done by many comparativists, such as Sam Huntington. To do this is to focus (once again) on niti to the exclusion of nyaya.

Sen believes that an overly-institutional focus on democracy has caused particular trouble at the global level. John Rawls and Thomas Nagel may be right that there are no democratic global institutions–indeed, no institutions at all comparable to states. But this need not mean that there is no way to realize democratic ideals such as public discussion internationally. There already exist tentative practices of global deliberation, and they are worthy of support and encouragement, whatever the proper scope and limits of international institutions.

Of course, globalized public deliberation is only conceivable if the ideal of public dialogue has universal appeal. Sen believes that this ideal does have deep roots all around the world, including in areas that have little experience with popular elections. Of course, Sen also suggests that the divide between western and nonwestern experiences with democratic institutions is not as clearcut as the democracy-is-a-western-value story would have it. India was inspired by ancient Greece to experiment with formal democratic institutions (at least on a local level) long before the barbarian tribes of northern Europe. But societies have undeniably assigned value to public reason–the ideal underlying these institutions–for a very long time, and virtually everywhere. Sen illustrates this point using the Indian experience. He also discusses the Middle East in this context.

Sen concludes the chapter with a few words about the role of the media in a democratic society. (The transition to this topic is a bit abrupt.) Obviously, to the extent that the idea of public reason underlies and democratic practice, the media matters quite a lot. Sen argues that a well-functioning free press 1) enables the free expression of ideas, which is intrinsically valuable; 2) spreads information and subjects it to critical scrutiny; 3) protects the weak by subjecting the strong to the gaze of the public eye; 4) facilitates the formation of common values by the public; and 5) contributes to the pursuit of justice (though this last contribution is not clearly specified).

I have two concerns regarding Sen’s argument. First, he is rather sketchy in his account of the values that he believes both underlie modern democratic institutions and are shared by virtually all societies and cultures in the world. As noted before, his list of values includes “political participation, dialogue and public interaction” (p. 326). These values are not obviously interchangeable; one could have public participation without effective discussion and deliberation-as California does with many of its statewide referenda. But sometimes he mentions “participatory governance” alone (p. 323). More frequently, he speaks of “government by discussion,” to use Walter Bagehot’s phrase, as the ideal that underlies democratic institutions. Indeed, throughout most of the essay–especially in his discussion of the media–he treats public reason as the sole relevant ideal. (Hence the chapter’s title.) But many democratic institutions do not obviously promote public reason without thereby putting their democratic credentials in jeopardy. Ancient Athens, for example, employed large randomly-selected juries which decided without any deliberation; they also employed randomly-selected administrative boards. These institutions were highly participative, but not very deliberative. (Athens enabled deliberation in other ways.)

More critically, one can have some form of public dialogue without much democracy. Rawls’ “consultative hierarchies” surely allow people to express their views, even though they may have no institutional mechanisms (egalitarian or otherwise) for registering them. And Sen’s expansive understanding of “public reason” seems to include just about any system that allows people to talk without getting punished by someone. This is particularly the case in his discussion of the Middle East, where he runs together “public reasoning and tolerance” as if they were the same thing (p. 333). He presents a good deal of evidence that the Muslim societies of the Middle East were quite tolerant of religious difference. But this is far from establishing that these societies enabled public reason, much less that these societies had a significant democratic component.

Second, Sen relates democracy to justice in this chapter (as he does in most of the book) via the idea of public reason. But while the relationship remains important to him, he says very little about it in this chapter. Perhaps he believes that what he has said in earlier chapters is sufficient, but as this is the first chapter in the book to focus upon democracy, it would have been nice to have seen him review and expand upon his account for the connection between democracy and justice, and how public reason relates to both. It seems clear that Sen believes that democracy can be of value for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons, and that both of these contributions that democracy can make are contributions to justice. But that seems to make the ideal of democracy a sub-ideal of the ideal of justice. If that is Sen’s point, it would be nice to hear him say so explicitly. This would make justice the central underlying value of democracy; public reason would then be important because it contributes to justice, and the contribution it makes to democracy would then be part of that. But at times Sen seems to treat democracy and justice as distinct values, and public reason as somehow making a separate contribution to both. This seems both intellectually unsatisfying and inconsistent with the relationship he does sketch in earlier chapters between democracy and justice.

Just thought some of the political philosophers might have interest in this new program from Yale Cognitive Science:

The Experiment Month initiative is a program designed to help philosophers conduct experimental studies. If you are interested in running a study, you can send your study proposal to the Experiment Month staff. Then, if your proposal is selected for inclusion, we will conduct the study online, send you the results and help out with any statistical analysis you may need. All proposals are due Sept. 1.

For further information, see the Experiment Month website: http://www.yale.edu/cogsci/XM

0915-1800 June 15th 2010, James Martin 21st Century School, Oxford

Speakers:
DR. HELEN FROWE (SHEFFIELD), `Threats and Bystanders’
DR. GERALD LANG (LEEDS), `Self-Defence and Agency’
DR. SETH LAZAR (OXFORD), `Scepticism about the Eliminative/Manipulative Agency Distinction’
PROFESSOR VICTOR TADROS (WARWICK), `Duty and Liability’

Respondents:
JO FIRTH (OXFORD)
DR. JON QUONG (MANCHESTER)
DR. DAVID RODIN (OXFORD)
GUY SELA (OXFORD)

Kima has been drugged and abandoned at the bottom of a well. She wakes up to see Niko hurtling to-wards her. He was walking alongside the (concealed) well when a powerful gust of wind blew him down it. If Kima does nothing Niko’s body will crush her, but he will survive. Or, she can save herself, using her trusty ray gun to disintegrate his body. Most people think Kima is justified in killing Niko to save herself, even though Niko is quite innocent of the threat he poses. But why? One answer is that killing Niko is an example of eliminative agency-Kima is not benefiting from Niko’s presence, but merely eliminating the threat that he poses. This is easier to justify than manipulative agency, which would involve using Niko’s body to secure a benefit she could not enjoy in his absence.This workshop brings together some of the UK’s leading philosophers of self-defence to discuss the eliminative/manipulative agency distinction, and ssess its contribution to the ethics of self-defence.

Lunch served. Papers will be pre-circulated a week in advance. Everyone is welcome, but registration is required. Numbers will be limited so register early to avoid disappointment. Please contact lucy.crittenden (at) politics.ox.ac.uk to register

Thanks!

In Chapter 13, Happiness, Well-being, and Capabilities, Sen concentrates on three issues.  The first is the success of economics as a discipline in accounting for happiness and its importance.  The second is the relationship between happiness and capability. The third is the relationship between capability and well-being.

Turning to the first issue, welfare economics is the discipline devoted to the assessment of the goodness of states of affairs and policies.  According to Sen, it has been and largely remains utilitarian in character.  Happiness is often understood as the sole determinant of human well-being/advantage and as the sole criterion for evaluating societies and policies.  Well-being/advantage is usually defined in terms of utility.  Utility is defined as happiness.  Happiness is understood as desire-fulfillment.  Policy evaluations are based on a comparison of the “sum total of individual welfares.”  Many economists hold that interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible.

Sen advances three criticisms of welfare economics.  First, Sen argues that the new welfare economists are mistaken to think that interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible.  We can, Sen argues, get general agreement on partial orderings of the joy and pain in different lives.  Second, the informational basis of well-being/advantage in welfare economics is incomplete.  It should be broadened to include factors such as substantive opportunities, negative freedoms, and human rights.  Omitting this information prevents us from making important distinctions in our judgments of the relative advantage of individuals who enjoy the same level of happiness, but differ dramatically along these other dimensions.  Omitting this information also leads to distorted assessments.  Individuals who are persistently deprived may adapt to their circumstances to make life tolerable, learning to “take pleasure in small mercies” and refusing to desire or hope for change in their circumstances.  If we assess the well-being/advantage of such individuals on the basis of their happiness alone, then we would fail to get an accurate picture of their actual disadvantage.  Third, Sen argues that contemporary welfare economists fail to sufficiently recognize the limits of using a monetary metric to gauge utility or happiness.  Sen references empirical evidence suggesting that there is not a direct correlation between increasing wealth and increasing happiness and the joylessness of the lives of individuals in prosperous economies.

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Chapter 12, Capabilities and Resources, begins with the well-known contrasts between capabilities (as what opportunities people actually have) and resourcist views. Sen then outlines four kinds of contingencies that figure importantly into the conversion of resources into the lives people can actually lead. These are: personal “heterogeneities,” differences in the physical environment, differences in the social climate, and differences in relational perspectives. Variations in the social climate refer to social structural differences—for example, the availability of publicly funded health care. Differences in “relational perspectives” refer to difference in social norms that may affect the need for resource expenditure to achieve desired goals; for example, in one society, the clothes required to command social respect may be far more expensive than in another. These types of contingencies may be interconnected; an example would be how a physical environment in which there is a great deal of snow interacts with mobility impairments in affecting how people can get around in society.Sen places particular emphasis on the interrelationship between disability and the opportunities provided by resources. He cites familiar data about the interrelationship between disability and poverty, and notes that much disability is preventable (e.g. disabilities that result from preventable infectious diseases such as polio or measles) and that this is a particularly important matter for social justice. Overall, Sen emphasizes both the conceptual and the normative importance of disability for theorizing about justice.

The remainder of the chapter is devoted to criticizing Rawlsian primary goods and Dworkinian hypothetical insurance markets. Sen commends Rawls for paying attention to “special needs,” but contends that the Rawlsian structure mistakenly downplays human difference. Pace Rawls, human variations in conversion capacities should not be seen as derivative matters for attention at the legislative stage. Rather, in Sen’s view they are ubiquitous to how social structures should be organized and analyzed. Sen recognizes that the capabilities approach will not be able to give a complete or even a linear ordering of social states, but contends that it directs us to make the important comparisons about justice.

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Central European University, Budapest, 22-23 July 2010 | CFP: 31 May 2010

Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu by 31 May 2010. The conference is free of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

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Workshops in Political Theory

7th Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
1-3 September 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS: COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY AND GLOBAL JUSTICE
Convenor: Avia Pasternak (University College London)

In recent years there’s a growing interest amongst philosophers and political theorists in questions of collective responsibility. Discussions cover a range of issues: What is the nature of corporate agency? Can groups be held morally responsible for their actions? Could they be punished and, if so, what are the implications for the individual group members?

Answers to these questions are of pertinent relevance to another major debate in contemporary political theory which concerns global justice, or the principles that should govern the distribution of primary goods at the global level: Are the primary holders of duties of global justice groups or individuals? What type of groups should be held collectively responsible for global injustices (states, multinational corporations, peoples, ethnic groups)? Can we ascribe responsibility for global injustices to groups which lack coordination mechanisms and formal decision-making procedures? Should groups like states be held collectively responsible for past wrongs which they have inflicted on other groups (e.g. colonialism)? And how should the responsibility of groups (states, nations, corporations) for global injustices pass on to their members?

This workshop invites papers on these questions and on other topics which reflect upon the relation between collective responsibility and global justice.

If you wish to participate, please send a 500 abstract to avia.pasternak@ucl.ac.uk by May 31, 2010.

More details about the Workshops can be found at http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/polphil/news/article.php?id=343

Chapter 11, the first chapter in a part of the book entitled « The Materials of Justice”, presents us with Sen’s well-known theory of capabilities. The main focus of the chapter is to emphasize that the capability approach is essentially a theory about human freedom, or more precisely, a theory about how freedom should be factored into the assessment of advantage and disadvantage. As against welfarist construals, Sen points out that we care not just that we achieve what we want, but also how we achieve what we want. Whether what we achieve results from our own agency, and whether we were able to exercise our agency on a range of valuable “functionings”, matters to an assessment of how well we do just as much, if not more, as does the result of our activity. We should be interested in “comprehensive outcomes”, not just “culmination outcomes”.

Two aspects of the capability approach are emphasized by Sen. First, the theory has an “informational focus”. As opposed to the approach developed by Martha Nussbaum, Sen’s just tells us what we should be concerned with in the measurement of advantage and disadvantage. He does not tell us what we should do with that information once we achieve it. Nor does he fill in the detail about what, precisely, we have reason to care about. The theory is thus neutral, at least on its face, as between different approaches to distributive justice – egalitarian, sufficientarian, prioritarian, and so on, as it is between various ways of filling out the detail of what we have reason to care about.

Second, the theory is pluralistic. There are a range of things that we have reason to value, that cannot be reduced to one metric. Bundles of desirable functionings will reflect this.

Sen deflects two worries about the capability approach. The first comes from welfarists like Arneson and Cohen who argue, on Sen’s way of putting their arguments, that we should be concerned with what people actually achieve, rather than with what they can achieve. Sen’s response to this is that the capability approach includes the welfarist approach because the functionings realized by an individual are part of the set of functionings that he could achieve. Making this broader set the index of his advantage provides us with better information about advantage because it includes freedom to achieve a range of bundles as an ingredient.

The other worry has to do with commensurability. How can we evaluate options given the irreducible pluralism of reasons to value that Sen affirms? Sen responds by stating, in line with much of the recent literature on evaluation, that incommensurability makes evaluation harder, but not impossible.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

“Science, Knowledge, and Democracy”

TRiP 2011 - Three Rivers Philosophy Conference

University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC  USA

April 1st - April 3rd, 2011

PDF flyer here.

Keynote Speakers:

Elizabeth Anderson (University of Michigan)

Miranda Fricker (Birkbeck, University of London)

Henry Richardson (Georgetown University)

Miriam Solomon (Temple University)

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Workshops in Political Theory
Seventh Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
1-3 September 2010

DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC REASON IN PRACTICE

Convenors:
Enrico Biale (University of Milano-Bicocca and University of Louvain)
Valeria Ottonelli (University of Genova)

What constraints and requirements should democratic public reason meet
in order to be both practically viable and normatively appealing?

Democratic public reason is subject to feasibility constraints. Some of
them are also common to non-democratic models of decision-making, like
the existence of time limits on the decision process and other material
and institutional restrictions on the actual implementation of the
choices to be made. Other constraints on the feasibility of democratic
public reason are peculiar to it, like those pertaining to the actual
knowledge, competence and engagement in politics that can be
realistically expected from the citizens of a democratic polity, and
those relating to the issues that members of a democratic society can
reasonably debate on.
At the same time, democratic public reason needs to respond to normative
requirements and ideals, like publicity and transparency in the
decision-making processes, respect for the rules of correct reasoning,
such as consistency and integrity, the rejection of status quo and
ideological biases, and the search for a sharable basis on which to
ground the debate.

This workshop aims to further explore this tension between the ideal and
the practice of democratic public reason, by addressing the underlying
theoretical and normative issues and by testing the answers that can be
offered to them through the analysis and discussion of case studies.
Papers analysing the tension within specific areas of application of the
ideal of democratic public reason (health care, social justice,
fundamental liberties) are especially welcome.

Those who wish to participate in the workshop are invited to send a 500
word abstract to vottonel@nous.unige.it by the 31st of May 2010.

Additional information about the venue and the workshop can be found at
http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/politicaltheory.

In this chapter Sen explains in more detail the idea of a “realization-focused” approach to justice.  As discussed in earlier posts, Sen’s book is organized around a contrast between “transcendental institutionalism” and “realization-focused comparison” (p.7).  Earlier chapters dealt with the transcendental - comparative contrast.  This chapter explores the rule - realization contrast.  I will begin by reviewing what the Introduction (Ch.1) had to say about this issue.  Sen’s general point was that justice must be concerned with the lives people end up leading, the experiences and development of capacities that these lives involve, not just the institutions and rules within which people make choices.  He also made two more specific points about this realization-focused approach, one about liberty, the other about responsibility and agency, both of which can be framed as responses to objections.  

One natural objection to the focus on realized human capacities is that if just institutions are in place, then whatever happens as a result of the decisions people make within this framework (consistent with the preservation of this framework over time) is neither just nor unjust, since it is the product of voluntary choice under fair conditions.  According to this line of reasoning, any attempt to correct realization-outcomes given a just background structure would involve disrespect for people as autonomous agents.  I think Sen’s response to this objection would be that his focus on realization includes the freedom to choose, as a significant component of well-being (pp.18-19), and so doesn’t involve forcing people to flourish.

A second objection would be that the focus on outcomes ignores the important distinction between what happens and what one does.  The focus on outcomes assumes that the only relationship one can have to a value is to promote its maximal realization (by whatever actions lead to this result) rather than to honour or respect the value in one’s own conduct (e.g. by a commitment not to perform at least some morally objectionable actions no matter their expected result).  I think Sen’s response to this objection would be to assert that a focus on realizations permits assigning signficance to the processes through which states of affairs come about.  His realization-based approach considers the “comprehensive outcome,” not simply the “culmination outcome” (pp.22, 215-217).  As an example, Sen cites the real moral difference between people dying of starvation due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control and people being intentionally starved (p.23).  However, we can acknowledge the moral difference between me starving people and nature starving people while still taking a consequentialist view of morality.  Since the intentional starvation of others is so horrible, one could argue that we should do whatever we can to prevent its occurrence, even if - invent your own outlandish seminar scenario here - we have to starve some people in order to prevent a third party from starving many more people.  Sen would I think respond that a realization-focused approach can assign disvalue to the individual’s doing something bad (for each individual but only for that individual), over and above the disvalue of the bad thing happening.  

Chapter 10 uses Arjuna’s debate with Krishna to develop this idea of a comprehensive or inclusive realization-focused approach to justice.  Arjuna the great warrior is about to fight a major battle.  His cause is just, because his brother is legitimate heir to the throne, but their cousins the Kauravas have usurped the throne.  Arjuna’s duty, conventionally understood, is to lead his side to victory, as his adviser Krishna argues.  Yet Arjuna expresses doubts, because (a) a great many people will die, many of them guilty of nothing more than agreeing to support their friends and kin, and (b) Arjuna will himself have to kill members of his extended kin group, for some of whom he has real affection.  Sen emphasizes three aspects of Arjuna’s thinking.  First, he does not focus only on the suitability of his actions based on past events and existing rules or norms; he also considers what will actually happen to the world (p.212).  However, second, Arjuna is not concerned only with what happens but also with what he himself does (pp.213-4).  Third, in assessing what he himself does, the special relationships he has with specific others matter (pp.214).  Arjuna’s mode of reasoning is thus a good example of the sophisticated, inclusive, “informationally rich” (pp.216-7) consequentialism Sen is advocating.  Sen dislikes the label “consequentialist” (pp.217-8), but seems prepared to tolerate its use in a suitably general sense, as the notes on p.217 and p.210 suggest.  The p.17 note accepts Pettit’s definition of consequentialism, so long as the “consequences” of a decision are taken to include “agencies, processes, [and] relations”.  The p.210 note uses “consequentialism” as part of the definition of utilitarianism as welfarist, sum-ranking consequentialism.  Sen claims that some of the “deontological dilemmas” (p.219) generally presented to discredit narrow consequentialist reasoning (the “colourful counterexamples” from p.217) do not arise for a realization-focused approach that takes a broad view of the consequences that follow from a decision.  A broad view would include “the nature of the agencies involved, the processes used, and the relationships of people” (219).

I have one main concern about this chapter.  It seems to me that Sen’s defense of sophisticated or inclusive consequentialism succeeds only by watering down the distinctiveness of the view.  The claim that we should adopt a realization-focused approach to justice initially seems to be a significant thesis, since it appears to rule out some deontological views.  Yet the defense of the realization-focused approach against deontological objections involves expanding the notion of a “consequence” so that deontological intuitions can be formulated in terms of consequence-based modes of reasoning (e.g. by assigning extra disvalue to my torturing someone that is not for you a similar disvalue).  This move simply relocates the debate between consequentialists and deontologists.  Instead of disagreeing about the form moral reasoning should take, the two sides disagree about the extent to which the function to be maximized must or may include agent-relative components.  I’m not sure it illuminates the debate to cast it as a dispute about whether value functions should have this indexical aspect (or as a question about the exact weight to be assigned to the indexical aspect of value functions).  I can see how standard deontological views can be rendered in this way, so as to be consistent with an account of rational action as choosing the option that maximizes the value of the expected consequences.  The problem is that this broad definition of outcomes would make even the most rule-obsessed view count as a realization-focused theory.  On this account, there would be no purely institutional or rule-focused approaches to justice, but simply realization-focused approaches that place heavier weights, on “agencies, processes [and] relations.”  Presumably Sen wants to argue for an approach to justice that is realization-focused in the more specific sense of placing less weight on processes, etc., but this chapter does not provide an argument for such an approach.  No doubt the rest of the book will speak to this question.  What I suppose I would have liked to see in this chapter is an explanation of why it is preferable to understand the debate between deontology and consequentialism as a dispute about the weighting of the indexical elements of value functions, as opposed to a debate about the form moral reasoning should take.

Democracy and Legitimacy: Dealing with Extremism.
22nd -23rd July 2010
Central European University,
Budapest, Hungary.
(Extended deadline, 15th May 2010)
Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA@ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ@ceu.hu by the 15th May 2010. The conference is free of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?
Meanwhile, the rise of the extreme right, together with heightened discrimination and segregation of disadvantaged minority groups give rise to another set of related questions about what governments may do to protect and assist these groups which might not be able to protect themselves, which might not be able to respond to prejudice against them. Is it permissible to restrict privacy rights by registering ethnic data in order to help fight against discrimination? Is it permissible to use such data for the purpose of reverse discrimination?

The conference is motivated by two sets of reasons: on the one hand we aim to discuss how the recent ‘turn to the right’ might affect liberal democracy and what can be done about it. On the other hand, we plan to do this by bringing together experts in both political theory, legal studies, public and social policy. We believe that cross-fertilisation is beneficial for all camps of enquiry. Therefore, we invite contributions both from a theoretical and a practical perspective.

We invite papers including, but not limited to, the following topics:
Freedom of expression, regulation of “hate speech”
Tolerance
Discrimination (both negative and positive)
Segregation
Freedom of association
Freedom of assembly
Political campaign regulations
Media regulations
Protection of privacy, protection of personal data
State neutrality

Invited speakers:

Matthew Clayton (University of Warwick).
Thomas Christiano (University of Arizona)
Andrew Williams (University of Warwick)
Nils Holtug (University of Copenhagen)
Nikolai Sitter (Central European University)
Emanuela Ceva (University of Pavia)

Postgraduate Essay Prize, 2010

Res Publica: A Journal of Moral, Legal and Social Philosophy

For the sixth year running, Res Publica (the journal of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy) will be awarding a prize for the best paper submitted by a current postgraduate student in 2010.  This may be in any area falling within the journal’s aims and scope, described below.  Entries should conform to the normal requirements for submissions - please see the website address below for details.

All entries must be received by 1 October 2010, with the winner to be announced in January 2011.  The winner will receive £100 and a year’s subscription to the journal.  The winning essay will be published in Volume 17 (2011).

Previous winners:
Alexandra Couto, ‘Privacy and Justification’ 12.3 (2006)
Alasdair Cochrane, ‘Animal Rights and Animal Experiments: An Interest-Based Approach’ 13.3 (2007)
Göran Duus-Otterström, ‘Betting Against Hard Determinism’ (14.3, 2008)
Seth Lazar, ‘The Nature and Disvalue of Injury’ (15.3, 2009)
Guy Sela, ‘Moral Luck and Liability Lotteries’ (forthcoming: 16.3, 2010)

The prize will be judged by a panel of referees, along with the journal editors.

Entries should be submitted via the journal’s website -
www.editorialmanager.com/resp - and labelled Postgraduate Essay Prize.

There is more information about Res Publica at www.springer.com/11158.  Or please contact the co-editors:

Gideon Calder - Email: Gideon.Calder@newport.ac.uk

Jonathan Seglow - Email: j.seglow@rhul.ac.uk

This chapter continues in the vein of the preceding ones by using Rawls as a foil in order to lay out some general concepts that presumably will be developed in the second half of the book.  Accordingly, many of my concerns end up being somewhat duplicative with those raised in earlier comments: namely, that Sen has failed (so far) to really lay out a plan for thinking through justice in a rigorous fashion and that he has a strangely shallow reading of Rawls.Sen begins the chapter by referencing the arguments in chapter 8 about the possibility for rational reasons to take forms that different from the model of purely egoistic actors.  Given that there was no comment on that chapter people might like to take up those questions though I doubt many will find his claims there to be particularly controversial.

The goal of this chapter seems to be the need to reconcile the plurality of impartial reasons (the fact that two people might makes completely opposite choices, without either being irrational) with the need to desire to articulate some standard of objectivity.  In situations where multiple decisions may be rational, how may we still make judgments about what course of action is just? In Rawlsian terms, he is interested here in what it would be reasonable to ask of people, not just what they might rationally choose for themselves.  This is an important effort, and something that has been sorely missing from the book so far.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this chapter really takes us very far down that road.

I am skeptical for two reasons. First, I find the distinction between contractualism and contractarianism to be far less clear than he asserts.  To the extent that the two are dissimilar, I don’t see the value added by Scanlon’s approach that can’t be found elsewhere.  Second, even if we were to accept that significant differences exist between Rawls and Scanlon they seem to be more a matter of the sphere of emphasis.  Scanlon’s approach appears designed to produce judgments about what it would be just to morally ask of someone, while Rawls is more concerned with the question of how to build a politically viable and normatively acceptable basic structure.  Clearly, it is difficult if not impossible to fully detach moral and political philosophy but it would also be a mistake to treat them as synonymous.

On the first point, I find Sen’s characterization of the parties who have standing in the original position to be slightly off.  To me, this reflects a larger problem with the book, that Sen insists on treating the original position literally rather than accepting Rawls’ insistence that it should be understood only a device of representation.  If the original position is understood as a means of thinking through what sorts of exclusions or impositions we ought to be willing to allow, then I find it hard to distinguish this from contractualism.  Yes, it retains a commitment to “advantage-based reasoning” but it does so by insisting that justification must operate under the burden of ignorance about particular position.  To lump this in with other theories guided by a sense of rational advantage doesn’t seem all that helpful.  It is accurate, but not particularly illuminating.

At this point, I will admit to knowing very little about Scanlon’s work, so my statements here are based on Sen’s reading.  I’d welcome comments from those who are more familiar with contractualism, who might be able to elaborate on distinctions that are not clear to me in Sen’s text.  That said, Sen’s efforts to distinguish Scanlon’s approach promise more than they deliver.  To the extent that he does establish are differences, I find it difficult to see how they generate much purchase.

Read the rest of this entry »

German political theorists and IR-specialists are hosting a three-day-conference on International Political Theory in Frankfurt/Main from June 10-12, 2010. While most papers and the bulk of the discussion will be in German, there will be one English language panel on June 11, 4.30 - 8 p.m.:

4:30 - 5:30 Chris Brown, London School of Economics and Political Science: The Normative Foundations of a Post-Western World

5:30 - 6:30 Leif Wenar, King’s College, London: Clean Trade in Natural Resources

6:45 - 7:45 Terry Nardin, National University of Singapore: What is the ‘Political’ in International Political Theory?

For more details and the rest of the program, please see

http://www.politikwissenschaft.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=theoriesektion

Everyone welcome, please register with katharina.grabietz at gmx.de

Dear Public Reasoners,

As some of you may have noticed already, the comment for chapter 8 has not been posted yet.  I regret that I did not notice this myself until today (I have been preoccupied with some unexpected difficulties over the past month, which have made my visits to this blog rather sporadic).

In addition, the commentator for chapter 12 has had to withdraw from the group.  Please contact me if you are interested in stepping in and commenting on chapter 12 (which is scheduled to be posted on May 17).

My own view is that we should continue on schedule despite these developments.  Consequently, if possible, the comment on chapter 9 should be posted on Monday (April  26).  If the comment on chapter 8 is posted later, that should be fine.

Likewise, if no one can comment on chapter 12, then that simply will be one week in which there is, well, no comment.  (This would be somewhat unfortunate, I think, as the chapter looks quite interesting.  Normally I would be happy to write the comment myself, but my schedule in May is simply too hectic to make this commitment.)

I hope that this strategy strikes people as reasonable.  Such glitches are pretty much inevitable, I suspect, in a reading group like this, and I would regret if the project did not continue more-or-less intact because of them.  Please let me know if you think there are any problems with this approach.

Many thanks for your patience and participation.

Blain

In this chapter, which is the first of four in the “Forms of Reasoning” section, Sen develops what might be called, for lack of a better term, an ethical epistemology. That is, he aims for a middle way between the objectivity of what he calls “transcendental institutionalism” and which Nagel pilloried as requiring “the view from nowhere” and the subjectivism of normative judgment that (as Hume writes) “resides in the mind” and which is therefore thought to reduce to forms of cultural relativism about which philosophers can say little of interest. Of course, democratic theorists have likewise sought a third way through deliberation and intersubjectivity, but what Sen has in mind here is rather more abstract–it is a form of moral reasoning rather than a political procedure–and is related to the “open impartiality” discussed in ch. 6. Here, I shall attempt to unpack the role that positionality might play in developing a comparative rather than transcendental theory of justice. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are two questions that strike me as worth thinking about.

Say you wanted to teach a liberal arts-style freshman seminar that introduced students to the idea of reflecting on politics and society, but you didn’t want to turn it into yet another Applied Ethics or Introduction to Political Philosophy class that crammed in all the essential philosophical problems and texts: Capital Punishment, the Duty to Obey the Law, Abortion, Euthanasia, etc., on the one hand, and Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, etc., on the other. Instead, you’d much rather just use plain old essays — well-crafted, accessible, insightful, evocative, memorable essays — written by people who may or may not be academics or part of the academic tradition.

The kind of essay I’m thinking of would be one that didn’t so much need to be explained as experienced, that presents a viewpoint that seizes your imagination in some way, rather than an argument or conceptual apparatus that needs to be taken apart, dusted a little by a qualified technician, and then put back together in sound working order. These would be essays that have a force that can’t really be conveyed to someone who has not read them, and that become part of the background framework of your way of thinking about the political and social world and the stuff in it that matters. They would ideally be long enough to be a substantial read, worth assigning as a text, but not too long to be a task that requires the threat of academic sanctions to be completed. Above all, they must not be difficult to read or boring to think about. They should be the sort of thing people mean when they talk about the art of the essay.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello all,

I’ve just edited a textbook on “Ethics and World Politics” for Oxford University Press, which may be of interest to those teaching global justice or cognate areas.

The book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in political theory/philosophy and international relations. It aims to cover a broad range of issues and approaches, and it is accompanied by a website with assorted pedagogical features (lecture powerpoints, glossary, etc.).

The OUP UK webpage for the volume is here. The OUP US webpage is here.

I hope it proves useful for those teaching the subject,

Best wishes,

Duncan Bell

Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

In this chapter Sen presents a distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ impartiality. He argues that closed impartiality suffers from a number of significant limitations which ought to lead us to favour open impartiality. In this post I will briefly summarize the main claims Sen makes (sect. 1), before offering a few of my own comments (sects. 2-3).

1.
Sen offers Adam Smith’s device of the impartial spectator as an exemplar of what he calls open impartiality. Smith encourages us to imagine our conduct as we think it would be seen by some impartial and fair observer. A fair and impartial observer, Sen suggests, might require considering ‘the judgements that would be made by disinterested people from other societies’ (p. 125). Sen associates closed impartiality with Rawls’s device of the original position, where the aim is to evaluate rules and institutions from the point of view of each person who would be bound by them (suitably constrained behind the veil of ignorance). On this view of impartiality the perspective of outsiders (i.e. those not bound the rules and institutions) is not considered relevant.
Read the rest of this entry »

Two conferences coming up in Montreal:

April 9-10, 2010
Hegel After Spinoza: A Symposium
Friday - 4:00 pm
Keynote Address
John McCumber
Nature vs. Spirit: Hegel’s Reconciliation with Spinoza

Saturday - 10:00 am

Jason Read
“Desire is Man’s Very Essence”: Spinoza and Hegel as Philosophers of Transindividuality

Caroline Williams
Thinking the Subject between Hegel and Spinoza

1:30 pm
Vittorio Morfino
Spinoza in the Science of Logic

Vance Maxwell
Hegel’s Treatment of Spinoza: Its Scope and Limits

4:00 pm
Keynote Address
Warren Montag
Hegel, sive Spinoza: Towards a History of the Problem

This event is sponsored by:The Beatty Memorial Lectures Committee, Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique (GRIPP), the Department of Philosophy, and the Research Group on Constitutional Studies.

April 15-16, 2010
Basic Income at a Time of Economic Upheaval: A Path to Justice and Stability?

“Times of economic turmoil raise difficult questions but also offer radical new opportunities to rethink and perhaps even rebuild the economic fabric of our society. The prospects and challenges of a BIG policy at a time of economic upheaval is the topic of a 2 day conference held on 15-16 April 2010 at the University of Montréal, hosted by the Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CRÉUM), BIEN Canada and the US Basic Income Guarantee network (USBIG).This first collaboration between the US and Canadian chapters of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) includes keynote addresses from Dr. Louise Haagh (University of York), Prof. Guy Standing (University of Bath), and Senator Eduardo Suplicy (São Paulo, Brasil), as well as a contributions by Senators Art Eggleton and Hugh Segal, Tony Martin MP, Amélie Châteauneuf (spokesperson of FCPASQ), Rob Rainer (Executive Director of Canada Without Poverty), Al Sheahen (Executive Committee Member of USBIG), and Sheila Regehr (Director of National Council of Welfare), and many others.

The program is now available on the conference website at http://bigmontreal.wordpress.com/program/
The conference takes place at:
McGill Faculty Club, Ole’s
3450 McTavish Street
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1X9

Everyone is welcome to attend and participation is free. To register for the conference please email Jurgen De Wispelaere at BIGMontreal2010@gmail.com with your name and institutional affiliation.

In this chapter, Sen weaves together three different lines of thought: Wollstonecraft’s critique of Burke, impartiality as a minimalist basis for evaluative objectivity, and the role of convention in the relations among facts and values.

1. Sen identifies two features of objectivity. First, our evaluative language must give us the ability to communicate our beliefs to one another, and second, those beliefs must involve commitment to sufficiently overlapping standards to allow us to debate their correctness. But, as Wittgenstein learned from Gramsci and Sraffa, the common ground required for such communication and engagement is always dependent upon linguistic and social conventions.

Out of this intersection of objectivity and convention, Sen identifies a “dual task” for social reformers. They must communicate using language, imagery, and rules grounded in existing social practice and values. But within those confines, they must find the critical distance needed to advocate change.

Read the rest of this entry »

This chapter tells us more about Sen’s understanding of the ‘transcendental’/comparative distinction. I’m not going to cover all (or even most) of the points he raises in this chapter. Instead, I want to raise a question that builds on a few comments about justification from the discussion of the Introduction (e.g., Cynthia #2, Colin #5/7, Charles #15, David W. #16, Blain #17, Aaron #18). Here is my question: Is Sen’s theory of justice ‘political in the wrong way’? I’m going to suggest that (i) Sen seems to be saying ‘yes’, (ii) he ought to say ‘no’, and (iii) if he says ‘no’, the difference between his approach and ‘transcendental’ ones is greatly diminished (or perhaps removed).

What does Rawls mean by ‘political in the wrong way’? In Part V of the Restatement, he says that political liberalism seeks a kind of consensus that is different from ‘consensus politics’. The latter aims to identify a particular policy that can gain sufficient political support in a particular time and place, without seeking agreement concerning the justification of the policy (and allowing the balance of power between various groups to influence the decision). For example, one might hope to reach agreement on the ‘diagnosis’ that X is unjust, without first (or ever) identifying why X is unjust. Read the rest of this entry »

CEU Budapest: 22-23 July 2010 | CFP: 30 April 2010

Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu before the 30 April 2010. The conference is fee of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

Read the rest of this entry »

I am delighted to announce that the journal Representation has just published a symposium on David Estlund’s book, Democratic Authority. The symposium - which includes papers by Ben Saunders, Andrew Lister, myself, and a reply from David Estlund - grew out of the reading group that was initially hosted here at Public Reason in the early part of 2008.

I should also add, as an associate editor of Representation, that this symposium is part of a broader effort to encourage more political theorists and philosophers to publish in the journal. We are aiming to create a journal which publishes both empirical and theoretical work on representation and democracy, so if you work in these areas, please consider us as a venue.

Sen’s purpose in this comparatively short chapter seems to be to draw a distinction between principles of justice that focus on institutions and those that focus on behaviour and so on consequences, and then condemn “institutionally fundamentalist” principles for failing to take account of what actually happens. This distinction is supposed to be illuminated or perhaps even typified by a contrast Sen begins the chapter with, between the policies of two figures from Indian history, Ashoka and Kautilya. Ashoka, having seen at firsthand the horrors of coercion and violence during a campaign to extend his empire, apparently renounced the normal means of exercising power and instead exhorted his subjects to behave virtuously in a way that Sen reads as showing that he equated moral knowledge and moral motivation in a rather simplistic way. Indeed, as Sen notes, part of the reason that the political order did not totally collapse once Ashoka gave up on enforcing his will through force seems to have been that the administrative reforms implemented by his grandfather’s advisor, Kautilya, had a life of their own. The idea appears to be that focussing on institutions exhibits Ashoka’s utopian idealism about the possibility of spontaneous moral reform whereas focussing on behaviour and its consequences is more like Kautilya’s pragmatic acceptance of human fallibility.

This contrast though, is a different one from the one between institutions and consequences as the relevant units of moral assessment. Since, as Sen makes clear, Kautilya’s reforms were institutional reforms, it could hardly be the same one. The reason for this is that what one thinks are the relevant units of moral assessment and how one thinks about the possibilities for human motivation are two, perhaps related, but nonetheless clearly distinct questions. Blain I think has already mentioned that Sen’s reading of Rawls in this kind of area may not be entirely sympathetic, but there seem to me other cases where this claim borders on the bizarre. Hobbes, for example, is in Sen’s typology an institutionally-focused theorist, as his focus on the figure of the Sovereign presumably justifies. Yet Hobbes is clearly not of the view that human moral motivation can be improved by moral education in anything like the way that Sen presents Ashoka as being. A focus on institutions rather than behaviour or consequences in stating principles of justice may be for a number of reasons. One is that institutions provide and in a certain sense are stable patterns of coordinated behaviour enforced through sanctions, and so can constrain human behaviour in ways that ensure that it remains within at least an acceptable set of outcomes. This, for example, seems to be Hobbes’ reasoning. Not only does that depend on views of human behaviour that Sen at least implies are anathema to institutionally-focussed theorists and so demonstrate the failure of his attempt to align views of human behaviour with the focus of principles of justice, but it also casts doubt on the way that Sen wants to exclude institutional theorists from having a concern with consequences.

This is, on Sen’s account, not a symmetrical exclusion. Theories which focus on realization may take account of the ways in which the consequences they are supposed to be focussing on are produced; the means to these ends can be incorporated into their assessment. The effect of this definition is to make the struggle that institutionally-focussed theories face more difficult by allowing their opponents access to all the resources they can draw on without any parallel expansion of the tools they can make use of. The way Hobbes, though, thinks about the value of institutions is clearly dependent on their consequences. It is not clear that the consequences have any existence independent of the institutions - part of Hobbes’ case is clearly that the only way out of the State of Nature is through a near-absolute sovereign - but neither is it as if the institutions have virtues independent of the production of those consequences.

Read the rest of this entry »

As its title suggests, this chapter is a critical discussion of Rawls’s political philosophy.  However, the chapter is not Sen’s only critical treatment of Rawls’s ideas in the book: some criticisms noted in the ‘Introduction’ are not developed here but elsewhere, and some criticisms mentioned here are developed further later in the book.  Moreover, the chapter is not entirely critical: Sen begins by recounting his long friendship with Rawls, and about halfway through the chapter Sen identifies seven ‘positive lessons’ from Rawls’s political philosophy.  Nonetheless, the bulk of the chapter is critical of Rawls’s views.

The following three criticisms especially struck me as I was reading the chapter:

1. Sen’s claim that if Rawls acknowledges that unanimity on a conception of justice cannot be achieved, then it follows that Rawls’s entire theory of justice is ‘devastated.’
2. Sen’s claim that Rawls simply assumes that citizens will “spontaneously do what they agreed to do in the original position” (61).
3. Sen’s worry that ‘parochial beliefs’ might adversely affect the selection of principles of justice by the parties within the original position.

I found all three criticisms unconvincing.

1.

Sen restates his pluralism with respect to conceptions of justice: “There are genuinely plural, and sometimes conflicting, general concerns that bear on our understanding of justice” (56-7).  Consequently, he does not think that rational agents invariably will converge on a unique set of principles of justice within the original position.  Sen goes on to note that Rawls, in his later writings, acknowledges that alternative conceptions of justice might be selected by the parties in the original position.

(The picture is actually more complicated than Sen presents.  Not only does Rawls acknowledge that the original position device does not necessitate the selection of the two principles of justice as fairness, given the many different considerations to which the parties might appeal in their deliberations [JF, 133-4], he also claims that the original position device itself is only one way to satisfy the ‘criterion of reciprocity,’ and that other liberal theories might employ different justificatory strategies for arriving at principles of justice that satisfy the criterion of reciprocity [PL, xlviii-xlix].)

Read the rest of this entry »

Workshops in Political Theory, Seventh Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University, 1-3 September 2010

TOLERATION AND RESPECT: CONCEPTS, JUSTIFICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

Conveners:
Emanuela Ceva (Institute for Advanced Study, University of Pavia)
Sune Laegaard (Roskilde University)
Federico Zuolo (Institute for Advanced Study, University of Pavia)

Discussions of the ideas of toleration and respect have animated vivid and ongoing debates in political and moral philosophy during the last decades. The formulations given to the idea of toleration have come to range from the negative appeal to non-interference to the positive recognition of difference. In a similar vein, the idea of respect has been object of some serious reformulation building on the works of neo-Kantians up to the most recent applications to issues of cultural diversity and religious liberty. However, the sophistication of the dicussions revolving around each of the two ideas has not been accompanied by a clarification of their reciprocal conceptual and normative relations, thus leading, in fact, to a blurring of the lines between them.

On this backdrop, the workshop will offer an occasion to engage in debates leading to a more systematic exploration of the intricate relations, conceptual and practical, between the two ideas. In particular, papers could address one (or more) of the following issues: Read the rest of this entry »

Two theory-heavy political science conferences released their schedules today: the Canadian Political Science Association , June 1-3, Montreal (with the theory section organized by Jennifer Rubenstein and myself, and including a dedicated workhop on “Non-ideal and institutional theory”) and the New England Political Science Association (theory panels organized by Sharon Krause).For those who just want to see the theory listings for CPSA instead of browsing through the unwieldy 86-page pdf, I’ve separated them out here.

The main point of this chapter is to defend a conception of objectivity in our normative thinking about justice.  Against critics of the ‘Enlightenment tradition,’ Sen defends the idea that we should understand reason as the “ultimate arbitrator of ethical beliefs.”  This is not because “reasoned scrutiny” can provide us with “any sure-fire way of getting things exactly right,” but rather because ethical thinking requires us to be “as objective as we reasonably can,” and reason is our only reliable way of doing this (p. 39).  This role for reason is compatible, Sen points out, with recognizing the dangers of ‘overselling reason,’ or in being overconfident in the conclusions of our own reasoning.  Sen also makes the point that our emotions pose no threat to, and should not be understood as hostile towards, our capacity for reason, despite the fact that historically many Enlightenment thinkers may have ignored or downplayed the cognitive role of the emotions (here Sen mentions, unsurprisingly, Smith and Hume as important exceptions).  Nonetheless, “the need for reasoned scrutiny of psychological attitudes does not disappear even after the power of emotions is recognized” (p. 50).  These general claims all strike me as correct and not especially controversial.

Sen also sketches some of the main elements of his account of ‘ethical objectivity’ in this chapter.  One element is Adam Smith’s device of the ‘impartial spectator.’  Another is Rawlsian public reason.  Public reason provides a ‘public framework of thought’ by means of which arguments can be made in a transparent and mutually justifiable way.  Despite the differences amongst the different accounts of ethical objectivity mentioned in this chapter, Sen notes that “there is an essential similarity in their respective approaches to objectivity to the extent that objectivity is linked…by each of them to the ability to survive challenges from informed scrutiny coming from diverse quarters.”  Despite appropriating Rawlsian public reason to his account of ethical objectivity, though, Sen asserts that “the principles that survive such scrutiny need not be a unique set,” (p.45) and that this marks a significant difference between his position and Rawls’s.  (I don’t think that this is a fair interpretation of Rawls’s position in his later writings, but will postpone this discussion until next week.)

One potentially controversial claim is Sen’s assertion that Rawls’s and Habermas’s respective approaches to public justification ultimately do not differ much.  “If people are capable of being reasonable in taking note of other people’s points of view and in welcoming information,” Sen writes, “then the gap between the two approaches would tend to be not necessarily momentous” (p. 43).  I think that Sen is correct here (at least I think I do – I found his discussion in this section at times to be somewhat opaque), but then I haven’t read Habermas in years.  I’d be curious to know what anyone better informed of Habermas’s criticisms of Rawls thinks.

Sen makes another comment that some readers of a Kantian persuasion might find debateable.  He states: “Since reasoned support can hardly be in itself a value-giving quality, we have to ask: why, precisely, is reasoned support so critical?” (Pp. 39-40.)  I suspect that some Kantians (especially those influenced by Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kant’s theory of value) would disagree.  (Although the comment by Sen is so brief, perhaps I am reading too much into it?)

I found Sen’s comment on Rawls’s idea of ‘reasonable persons’ on the bottom of page 43 somewhat puzzling.  After noting his overall sympathy with the idea of Rawlsian public reason, he writes: “I will not make a big distinction between those whom Rawls categorizes as ‘reasonable persons’ and other human beings… I have tried to argue elsewhere that, by and large, all of us are capable of being reasonable” (p. 43).  He then goes on to remark that his own view is instead similar to Rawls’s idea of ‘free and equal citizens,’ according to which all persons have ‘two moral powers’ (a capacity for a sense of justice, and a capacity to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good).

Sen does not seem to appreciate that Rawls’s idea of ‘reasonable persons’ is a very specific one in political liberalism, and one related directly to the idea of citizens as ‘free and equal.’  The first feature of reasonable persons is that they acknowledge the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’ (i.e., they manifest a “willingness to recognize the burdens of judgement and to accept their consequences for the use of public reason in directing the legitimate exercise of political power” [PL, p. 54]).  The second feature of reasonable persons is that they hold the ‘criterion of reciprocity’ to be a prescriptive norm for the public political relations of citizens (“reasonable persons are ready to propose, or to acknowledge when proposed by others, the principles needed to specify what can be seen by all as fair terms of cooperation” [JaF, pp. 6-7]).  Finally, reasonable persons honour these principles, even at some cost to their own interests.  These features of reasonable persons correspond to citizens’ capacity for a sense of justice, just as the rationality of persons corresponds to citizens’ capacity for a conception of the good.  So the idea of ‘free and equal citizens’ with ‘two moral powers’ is not wholly distinct from the idea of persons understood as ‘rational and reasonable’ in Rawlsian political liberalism.  Moreover, I see nothing in Rawls’s conception of ‘reasonable persons’ that rules out the possibility that ‘all of us’ are capable of being ‘reasonable’ in the relevant sense.

This is obviously a relatively minor criticism.  However, I think that Sen’s comments here are indicative of a problem that becomes more marked in the next chapter, namely, an apparent failure on the part of Sen to address adequately key features of Rawlsian political liberalism.  This problem is well illustrated, I think, by the very label ‘transcendental institutionalism.’  I’ll have more to say about this next week.

Copenhagen: 19-20 August 2010 | CFP: 1 April 2010

The second University of Copenhagen conference in epistemology will be held from 19-20 August 2010. The following is the description:

We tend to think of liberal democracy as providing the most ethically defensible way to set up a modern society. A separate yet highly relevant issue is whether liberal democracies also are preferable from an epistemological perspective, i.e., from the point of view of promoting true over false belief, knowledge over ignorance, and so on. The purpose of this conference — and of the research project that it is part of — is to investigate the norms, practices, and institutions that  determine how belief and knowledge is acquired and transmitted in liberal democracies. Questions to be addressed include but are not limited to the following: Read the rest of this entry »

Hi All,
This is the first post to kick off the reading group on Sen’s new book The Idea of Justice. I want to thank Blain for organizing this and I look forward to participating in it.

I have to admit it is with much anticipation that I begin to read Sen’s book. A few years ago I heard him give this talk which outlined the basics of the arguments he advances in the book. His project struck me as one that I (as a critic of ideal theory) would be very sympathetic with and I hope this book can helpfully advance the methodological debates the discipline is now engaged in. So I have high hopes for this book and look forward to reading it together with the group.

OK, so down to the business at hand. Keeping Blain’s advice about word count (I’m a bit over, sorry!) in mind, I thought I would begin by drawing attention to a crucial passage in the Preface, and then link that with a few of the central issues that follow in the Introduction itself (issues which will, I suspect, play an important role in the overall argument of the book).

In the Preface Sen explicitly states that the theory of justice he seeks to advance “aims to clarify how we can proceed to address questions of enhancing justice and removing injustice, rather than to offer resolutions of questions about the nature of perfect justice” (ix).

The issue of what we want a theory of justice to deliver is arguably one of the most interesting, and hotly debated, topics in the field today. Some obvious examples that immediately come to my mind are David Schmidtz’s analogy between theories and maps in The Elements of Justice, Elizabeth Anderson’s critique of luck egalitarianism, and G.A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality where he distinguishes principles of regulation from principles of justice and maintains that the latter are “fact-free”.

The contrast between Cohen’s position and Sen’s is very stark and worth considering. The vision of political philosophy Sen is invoking, at least in this early chapter of The Idea of Justice, is one primarily concerned with the question “How should be done?”. Whereas for Cohen the primary concern of the philosopher is: “what we should think, even when what we should think makes no practical difference”. I myself come down on the side of Sen on this issue. Those partial to Cohen’s approach might maintain that we ought to privilege deliberating about perfect justice for it is only once we comprehend the ideal that we can properly undertake the practical task of trying to realize justice in the “real world”. Sen notes that he will address this kind of challenge in Chapter 4, so I look forward to seeing how he addresses that concern.

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[Moving to the top since the deadline is tomorrow. SCM]

THE APT CONFERENCE 2010 – PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

Reed College, Portland, Oregon, October 21-23, 2010; Proposals Due February 20, 2010

The Association for Political Theory welcomes paper proposals, panel proposals, and proposals for roundtable discussions from all approaches and on all topics in political theory, political philosophy, and the history of political thought. Faculty, advanced PhD candidates, and independent scholars are eligible to apply. We also encourage faculty to volunteer to serve as chairs and/or discussants.

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Global Justice. Concepts, Theories and Constraints: May 18-19, 2010 | CFP: 20 April 2010

Having gained an unprecedented urgency, the topic of global justice has received increasingly public and academic attention, and has lately become a central issue in moral and political philosophy. Our conference seeks to be a forum for discussing the most important theories of global justice, their central concepts and constraints.

Professor Thomas Pogge (Yale University) will deliver the conference keynote address.

The conference will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. The conference is organized by the The Center for the Study of Rationality and Beliefs as part of the research project Reason and Beliefs. Rationality, Public Reason and Education within a Multicultural Society financed by CNCSIS/UEFISCSU.

Submission of papers
We welcome papers concerning any topic related to global justice. Contributions are expected from researchers from different academic fields who are interested in the outlined topic or in closely related ones. Students are also invited to submit papers for the conference, as we intend to organize a student panel. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail as attachment at globaljustice@ub-filosofie.ro until the 20 April 2010. The deadline for submitting the full version of your paper is 10 May 2010. Along with the abstract, please send us your contact details: current affiliation, address and telephone number. The organizers cannot support any travel or accommodation costs.

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We are pleased to announce the third issue of Dissensus, focused on “Droit et philosophie du langage ordinaire”, directed by D. Pieret, with contributions of D. Pieret, B. Leclercq, B. Ambroise, D. Pasteger, S. Goltzberg, N. Thirion, T. Berns & G. Jeanmart, A. Janvier & J. Pieron, A. Herla and T. Bolmain.

Dissensus is the University of Liege (Belgium) peer-reviewed electronic journal in political philosophy. Papers are welcome, in English or French and are to be sent to secretariat.dissensus [at] ulg.ac.be

Dissensus is available on http://popups.ulg.ac.be/dissensus/ and http://www.philopol.ulg.ac.be/dissensus.html.

Dear Public Reason Contributors and Readers,

Below is the schedule for our international online reading group on Amartya Sen’s recent book, The Idea of Justice.  Of course, modifications to the schedule may have to be made as we go along, but hopefully we will be able to maintain, for the most part, a weekly schedule.

I envision this group as operating in a similar fashion to the previous reading groups conducted on this blog (viz., the ones on Estlund and Brettschneider).  Participants may want to look at those discussions in order to get a sense of what is involved.  (Links to both can be found on the left hand side of this webpage.)

Before we get rolling, there are three modest suggestions that I would like to make.

First of all, it is expected that all participants will have done the relevant reading for the week in question.  Consequently, I don’t think that detailed or comprehensive summaries for each chapter will be necessary.  Rather, I would recommend summarizing only the material that you think is especially interesting, controversial, or relevant to the matters that you want to comment upon.

Second, I would recommend that most posts try to stay under 1000 words (ideally ‘well under’).  “Brevity is the soul of wit,” as the Bard says.  We are all busy people, and I worry that posting ‘mini-articles’ may serve as a disincentive for people to read the commentaries in their entirety and to participate in the discussion.

Third, although this probably is quite obvious to us all, I would recommend, if possible, trying to identify 1-3 specific questions, issues, or criticisms for further discussion in each commentary.

Obviously these are meant as suggestions only!  Feel free to write a longer post, or raise 4+ issues (or none at all), if you think that the chapter on which you are commenting warrants it.

We have an extremely impressive group of commentators lined up for this discussion.  Thanks to all of you in advance for your time and effort!  I’m very much looking forward to our discussion.

Best wishes,
Blain

Schedule

Introduction (Feb 22) Colin Farrelly (Queens U)

Part I – The Demands of Justice

1. Reason and Objectivity (March 1) Blain Neufeld (UW-M)
2. Rawls and Beyond (March 8.) Blain Neufeld (UW-M)
3. Institutions and Persons (March 15) Robert Jubb (UCL/Oxford)
4. Voice and Social Choice (March 22) Chris Lowry (CU HK)
5. Impartiality and Objectivity (March 29) Derek Bowman (Brown)
6. Closed and Open Impartiality (April 5) Jonathan Quong (Manchester)

Part II – Forms of Reasoning

7. Position, Relevance and Illusion (April 12) Steve Vanderheiden (Colorado)
8. Rationality and Other People (April 19) Alon Harel (Hebrew U)
9. Plurality of Impartial Reasons (April 26) Charles Olney (UCSC)
10. Realizations, Consequences and Agency (May 3) Andrew Lister (Queens U)

Part III – The Materials of Justice

11. Lives, Freedoms and Capabilities (May 10) Daniel Weinstock (Montreal)
12. Capabilities and Resources (May 17) David Wiens (Michigan)
13. Happiness, Well-being and Capabilities (May 24) Colleen Murphy (Texas A&M)
14. Equality and Liberty (May 31) Jurgen De Wispelaere (CREUM)

Part IV – Public Reasoning and Democracy

15. Democracy as Public Reason (June 7) Peter Stone (Stanford)
16. The Practice of Democracy (June 14) Cynthia Stark (Utah)
17. Human Rights and Global Imperatives (July 21) Alex Sager (Calgary)
18. Justice and the World (July 28) Alex Sager (Calgary)

The Department of Philosophy at Virginia Tech invites applications for a one-year position, to begin August 10, 2010. Rank: Visiting Assistant Professor; AOS: Ethics; AOC: Open. Five courses per year, including one graduate seminar.

Evidence of teaching ability and research potential required. Salary: competitive. Ph.D. completed by August, 2010. In addition to offering a first class MA in Philosophy, the department is also a major component of two interdisciplinary PhD programs: Science and Technology Studies; and The Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought. Virginia Tech is an EO/AA employer and particularly encourages applications from women, veterans, persons with disabilities, and minorities.

Interested candidates are REQUIRED to complete a brief on-line application at www.jobs.vt.edu posting #0100027 and send dossier (cover letter with statement of interest, CV, three letters of recommendation, and evidence of teaching excellence) to Chair, Philosophy Search Committee, Department of Philosophy (0126), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. We will begin reviewing applications as soon as they are received, until the position is filled. Those received by 12 March 2010 can expect full consideration.

Rights, Equality, and Justice:A Conference Inspired by the Moral and Legal Theory of David Lyons

Boston University is proud to honor Professor David Lyons with a conference featuring many outstanding scholars in law and philosophy giving papers and commentaries on important topics about which he has written. Professor Lyons will give a response. Boston University Law Review will publish the papers and proceedings. Information about the conference, along with papers (as we receive them), will be posted on the BU School of Law Web site: http://www.bu.edu/law/events/upcoming/. The conference, which is co-sponsored by the BU School of Law and Department of Philosophy, will be held at BU School of Law, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA.

All are welcome to attend. There is no registration fee, but if you plan to attend, please RSVP to Andrea Larsen, alarsen@bu.edu. If you have academic questions about the program, please contact Professor James E. Fleming, jfleming [at] bu.edu.

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I just wanted to announce the publication of my book with David Schmidtz, A Brief History of Liberty.

It’s something of an unusual book for philosophers, because it’s as much a genuine history (and economics, psychology, law, and sociology) book as it is a philosophy book. I’d summarize our motivation for the project as follows: Dave and I note that historically, philosophers and regular people have used the word “liberty” to refer to a wide range of related things. When philosophers debate what the word “liberty” refers to, or which kind of liberty is most important, they often have a background assumption that liberty, whatever that is, is to be promoted by government in a particular way. But that’s not a good assumption. What role government, or any institution, ought to play in promoting a particular kind of liberty is determined not by conceptual analysis, but by investigating (empirically) what government and other institutions are likely to accomplish. What value any kind of liberty has is also for the most part contingent—we need to see what having certain kinds of liberties does to people, and what happens to people when those liberties are absent. Again, this goes beyond philosophy and requires empirical work. Also, what relationship different kinds of liberty with one another requires empirical work. For instance, while people might debate whether negative or positive liberty is more important, we instead note that empirically, it looks like protecting negative liberty has a long and non-accidental historical track record of promoting positive liberty.

Here’s the table of contents:

Introduction: Conceptions of Freedom.

1. A Prehistory of Liberty: Forty Thousand Years Ago.

2. The Rule of Law: AD 1075.

3. Religious Freedom: 1517.

4. Freedom of Commerce: 1776.

5. Civil Liberty: 1954.

6. Psychological Freedom, the Last Frontier: 1963.