A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Yearly Archive: 2021

Children / General / Liberty / Rights

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Having slaves and raising children

When I said yes to co-writing a book on surrogacy, I thought it would be just a straightforward application of my general view that moral rights over children, including the right to custody, are grounded in children’s own interests rather than in any interest of the right holder. And in a way it is: in a nutshell, I argue that custody is a prerogative, and hence cannot be sold or gifted. A practice that permits people to transfer it at will is illegitimate. But, along the way, I’m making interesting discoveries; one of them is just how far one may push the analogy between holding slaves and raising children in a world like ours, which has not yet fully outgrown the long tradition of denying rights to children. Many contemporary philosophers of childrearing should find the analogy plausible, even if they don’t share my view about the justification of the right to custody. Let me explain. (more…)

Health / Rights

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A Puzzle about Disability and Old Age

In this post, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen discusses their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the connections between disability-related disadvantages and old-age-related disadvantages.

Many think that being disabled and being old are worse for a person than being able-bodied and being young respectively. However, many think differently about these two disadvantages. Specifically, they think that while the disadvantages of disabled people are (largely) due to ableism, the disadvantages of old age are not due to ageism, but simply reflects a regrettable, unavoidable fact of life. In a recent article, I argue that this view is untenable. More generally, I suggest in the light of how our thinking of one of these forms of disadvantages constrains our thinking about the other that much of the previous debate about the badness of disability and old is misdirected.

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Children / Gender / General / Governance / International / Liberty

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Ending Child Marriage in the UK

On 16 June 2021, Sajid Javid MP introduced a Private Members’ Bill into the UK Parliament to raise the minimum age of marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to 18. This follows earlier attempts by Pauline Latham MP to criminalise child marriage. Currently, teenagers aged 16-18 may marry with their parent’s consent (in Scotland, they can already marry without parental consent). From an international law perspective, this Bill would end child marriage in the UK (which the international community has pledged to stop by 2030). Philosophically, it raises interesting questions about what decisions people should be permitted to make at 16; and the balance between maximising people’s options, and protecting a small number from significant harm.

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Distribution / Duties / Health

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We have a duty to pay for kidneys

In this post, Aksel Sterri discusses their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the ethics of a government-monopsony market in kidneys.

Two million people suffer from kidney failure worldwide. They either die or live difficult lives on dialysis while waiting for kidneys to become available for transplant, from dead or living donors. Our failure to meet the need for kidney transplants is a moral failure that calls for a change in how we procure kidneys. In a recent paper, I argue members of nation states have a collective duty to pay kidney donors to ensure that people in need receive a new kidney.

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Punishment / Rights

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A Criminal Law for Semi-Citizens

In this post, Cristián Irarrázaval Zaldívar and Ivó Coca-Vila discuss their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on how to legitimate punishment in the context of varying forms of citizenship.

Ask yourself why an English court can legitimately punish an Indonesian who committed an offence in Japan but now lives in the UK, or a Spanish judge can punish a young Senegalese criminal offender who, after months crossing through Africa, enters Spain illegally and subsists in absolute hardship hidden from state authorities. Probably your answer would be something along the lines that punishment is necessary to prevent harm. Indeed, that is how most criminal law scholars respond. However, among contemporary authors, it is increasingly common to assert that the criminal law of a given state should be applicable only to those who, at the time of the commission of the offence, had some kind of political bond with it, namely, to those who belonged to the polity as “citizens”. In our recent article, we explain why the advantages of this approach outweigh the downsides, at least as long as we take seriously the fact that citizenship is not all-or-nothing, but comes in degrees. (more…)

Children / Climate / Duties

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On our special relationship with future generations

In this post, Charlotte Unruh discusses their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the basis of our duties to future generations.

Do you sometimes picture future generations as strangers in a faraway galaxy? Strangers who we know little about, aside from the fact that our actions can affect their lives?  In a recent paper, I argue that there is a crucial difference between (very) remotely living strangers and future generations. There is a special relationship that obtains between present and future people. We bring future generations into existence. I suggest that this gives rise to special responsibilities to embed long-term thinking in politics, business, and society. (more…)

Education / General

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What Epistemic Profiles Should We (Not) Foster?

It is often said that the main task of teachers is to foster learning. But what kind of learning? What knowledge can we hope to attain through such learning? And what kinds of people should children aspire to become in the process? We imagine that fostering learning in the right way would ensure not only that adults lead flourishing lives, but that they can help others in acquiring knowledge. As epistemologists show, some intellectual virtues are other-regarding, meaning that individuals can and should affect others in their knowledge acquisition and intellectual flourishing; such is, for instance, the drive to discover socially relevant findings, or honesty and integrity in communicating information (Turri and Alfano, 2017). (more…)

Democracy / Distribution / Economics / General

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More equal compared to what? How central banks are fudging the issue on inequality

Since the financial crisis of 2007, central banks have become the central tool of macroeconomic management, being described as the “only game in town.” To avert financial meltdown and, subsequently, to stimulate the economy, they have launched unconventional monetary policies such as quantitative easing (QE). The latter injects huge amounts of liquidity into the economy through large-scale purchases of financial assets by central banks. Central banks have doubled down on QE in reaction to the Covid-crisis.

QE has unintended side-effects. By pushing up the prices of the financial assets purchased, it favours already well-to-do asset holders. Given these consequences, central banks found themselves in the spotlight and pressured to justify their policies.

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Gender / Punishment / Rights

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Is the criminal law the best tool to fight discrimination and hate-based violence?

In the past few months, a central topic of discussion in Italian public debate has been the Ddl Zan, a proposed bill to combat discrimination and violence on the grounds of sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability. The bill does not create any new crimes but extends to these categories existing criminal legislation that currently covers discrimination and violence on the grounds of racial, ethnic and religious reasons as well as incitement to commit such acts. Such acts of discrimination and violence and their incitement can either be punished with a fine or a prison sentence to up to 4 years or, in case these actions already constitute a more serious crime, the penalty can be increased to up to double. The Ddl Zan also includes measures to support victims as well as broader initiatives to fight discrimination and inequalities, including the creation of a National Day against homophobia. Unsurprisingly, the bill has been the object of a heated debate. The LGBTQ+ movement and the majority of the feminist movement as well as other progressive forces are fighting for its approval, while conservatives argue that the bill endangers freedom of speech and imposes a supposedly divisive worldview. Setting this aside, I want to address another issue in connection to this bill, namely that of whether the criminal law should be regarded as the right instrument to fight discrimination and this kind of violence.

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Academia / Democracy / General / Governance

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Should we revive the ancient practice of ostracism?

A well-known aphorism by George Santayana says that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Less well-known, though, is the sentence used to preface this aphorism, namely that “when experience is not retained […] infancy is perpetual”. While the former is often used to highlight the importance of learning from past mistakes, the latter underlines the importance of learning from the beneficial (albeit defunct) practices of the past. But can historical practices inform contemporary political philosophy? Anthoula Malkopoulou’s insightful analysis of the Athenian institution of ostracism suggests a positive response. On her view, we should understand ostracism as a mechanism of democratic self-defence, which could plausibly be revived in a modern version. In the following lines I will further explore this suggestion.

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