journal article
LitStream Collection
doi: 10.1163/17455243-20182701pmid: N/A
There is little agreement about what grounds obligations of distributive justice. This paper defends cosmopolitan coercion theory against recent criticism that coercive rule is not even sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice. On one of the most sustained arguments against the idea that coercion is sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice, critics object that coercion, and other nonvoluntary relationships, cannot fix the scope, or content, of these obligations. At best, critics argue, nonvoluntary relationships can ground obligations of charity or humanity. This paper argues that this Scope/Content Critique fails, in part, because it does not recognize the motivation for coercion theories. Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, the Scope/Content Critique assumes coercion must suffice to ground obligations of distributive justice. Nonvoluntarists can hold there are many things, in addition to nonvoluntary relations, that can ground them.
doi: 10.1163/17455243-20180016pmid: N/A
Effective altruism is purportedly ecumenical towards different moral views, charitable causes, and evidentiary methods. I argue that effective altruists’ criticisms of purportedly less effective charities are inconsistent with their commitment to ecumenicity. Individuals may justifiably support charities other than those recommended by effective altruism. If effective altruists take their commitment to ecumenicity seriously, they will have to revise their criticisms of many of these charities.
doi: 10.1163/17455243-20182796pmid: N/A
According to (welfarist) telic egalitarianism, it is, in one respect, noninstrumentally bad if some people are unfairly worse off than others. This paper is about two ambiguities in telic egalitarianism. The first ambiguity concerns the so-called temporal unit of egalitarian concern (McKerlie 1989; Temkin 1993). This is the question of whether inequality during whole lives, inequality during certain segments of lives, or some combination of these, is what generates egalitarian concern. The second ambiguity concerns the so-called currency of welfarist egalitarian concern (McKerlie 2001; Adler 2012). In the present context, this is the question of whether inequality in overall welfare, inequality in some of the constituents of welfare, or some combination of these, is what generates egalitarian concern. In this paper I argue that the debates about how these two ambiguities are to be resolved are not unrelated. The same reasons that, according to some telic egalitarians, support rejecting the whole-lives-only view about the temporal unit of egalitarian concern support rejecting the overall-welfare-only view about the currency of welfarist egalitarian concern.
doi: 10.1163/17455243-01605001pmid: N/A
In his most recent book, Daniel Batson develops a psychological theory of moral motivation by looking at moral failure. Even under favorable conditions, Batson argues, people frequently behave immorally. In addition to defects of character or judgment and situational pressures, a lack of moral integrity plays an important role in explaining moral failure. Batson’s book sheds light on the most common sources of immoral behavior, providing moral philosophers with the resources to properly target their reasons to be moral.
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