Ethics Research Group Spring 2013

From January 1 2013 the ethics research group forms the ethics stream of the new Tilburg Institute for Logic, Ethics and the Philosophy of Science. Meetings in the group will take place alongside the seminars in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science and Logic and Language.

The Spring seminars in Ethics will be as follows:

February 20th, Wednesday 16:45 – 18:30 DZ 119 Sean Gould (Tilburg) Title tbc

March 19th TUESDAY 16:00 – 18:00 DZ152 Edward Harcourt (Oxford) Title tbc

March 27th Wednesday 16:45 – 18:30 DZ119 John van Houdt (Tilburg) ‘A Syntax of Action: Rationality and Fichte’s Aufforderung‘

April 17th Wednesday 16:45 – 18:30 DZ152 Alan Thomas (Tilburg) ‘McDowell on Transcendental Arguments, Scepticism and Error Theory’

Abstract

John McDowell has recently argued that his earlier attempt therapeutically to dissolve the challenge from scepticism needs revision. We can, instead, go sufficiently deeply into the sceptic’s motivations to identify assumptions that she makes that offer the basis for a transcendental argument that undermines radical scepticism about our knowledge of the external world. In this new strategy McDowell’s disjunctivism (non-conjunctivism) now plays a local and tactical role. This paper examines this change of strategy and argues that the only puzzle about McDowell’s position is the “modesty” he claims for his results. An analogy is described between McDowell’s case against the sceptic and one response to an error theory about ethics. A general commitment to interpretationism shows that the interpretation of all ethical thought and talk as truth-apt, but globally false, is unstable. Similarly, the sceptic’s description of all our perceptual states as apt to be perceptual knowledge, but globally false, is unstable. Scepticism arises from the original description of our epistemic situation as a predicament; as resting on a failure to appreciate that there is a class of mental states for which the idea of “having the world in view” is constitutive of the class.

May 1st Wednesday 16:45 – 18:30 DZ152 Machteld Geuskens (Tilburg)  ‘Truth and Trust: the Paradox of the Two Basic Epistemic Relations.

June 11 TUESDAY 10:00 – 18:00 One Day Workshop with Richard Moran (Harvard) The Ruth First Room. Speakers: Machteld Geuskens, Edward Harcourt, Valerie Aucouturier, Sophie Djigo, Filip Buekens, Kathryn Brown, Alan Thomas

Alan Thomas ‘Rawls and Tomasi on Robust Economic Liberty’ Geneva March 13, 2003

March 13 2013

Departement De Science Politique Et Relations Internationales

University of Geneva

Abstract

John Tomasi’s imaginative re-thinking of the libertarian tradition elevates a robust conception of economic liberty to the status of a basic liberty, such that it cannot be interfered with by the lexically subordinated difference principle (whose fate in Tomasi’s scheme remains unclear). It is argued that while there is a clear difference between Rawls and Tomasi over the perfectionist basis of liberalism, there is much less of a difference between them on the role of markets and the securing of robust economic liberty than Tomasi’s presentation acknowledges. Rawls secures in the constitution not the difference principle, but that macro-economic expression of an underlying Principle of Reciprocity that is a necessary condition for the stable expression of the difference principle. Setting aside liberal market socialism, this paper focuses on the implementation of a property-owning democracy as the privileged background for the introduction of a difference principle. With this context in place, the operation of all three of Rawls’s principles – the basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle – constitutes a robust defence of individual economic liberty, but in a way that continues to attach importance to the difference principle. Tomasi’s arguments do not, then, constitute a critique of Rawls; rather, they demonstrate that sympathy with some of the assumptions of libertarian political theory should lead one to adopt Rawls’s theory in one, determinate, fully specified form.

Alan Thomas ‘Critique and Utopia’: Amartya Sen’s Critique of Rawls’s ‘Transcendental Institutionalism’ Friday November 30 15:15

‘Critique and Utopia’: Amartya Sen’s Critique of Rawls’s ‘Transcendental Institutionalism’

15:15 – 16:00

Part of the workshop ‘Fairness and Norms’ that accompanies the 2013 Descartes Lectures

Abstract

This paper evaluates Sen’s critique of Rawls in The Idea of Justice. It is argued that Sen and Rawls are simply at cross-purposes over the predicates “ideal” and “non- ideal”. Sen’s critique has two components: one diagnostic and one normative. The diagnostic component claims that a “transcendental institutionalist”, such as Rawls, assesses institutions to the exclusion of individual motive; furthermore, he does so from the standpoint of an ideal or “perfect” theory of justice. The normative component claims that the theorist of justice ought, rather, to compare two specific social states via the method of pair-wise comparison without the assumptions of “ideal theory”. The linchpin of the overall argument that connects the two components is this: assume that pair-wise comparisons can be made only if one presupposes the underlying ideal of that social state than which none other is better. This assumption would be analogous to a “chain fallacy”: the scope confusion involved in arguing from “every chain has an end” to “there is an end to all chains”. Sen attributes this fallacy to Rawls: the putative assumption that the method of pairwise comparison is a local instance of the application of the content of a “perfect” theory of justice. Any local and specific appeal to the “more just than” relation between two social states depends on the idea of the “identification of a possibly unavailable perfect situation that could not be transcended”. [Sen, 2009, p. 9] His conclusion is that dropping the goal of formulating a theory of “perfect” justice allows one to proceed with the method of pairwise comparison alone. The goals of Sen’s approach to justice are “enhancing” justice or “removing” injustice with no role for utopian speculation.

This paper demonstrates that Sen’s critique both rests on flawed assumptions and is normatively unacceptable in its own right (independently of issues about Rawls exegesis). Sen’s account reveals a mistake about the use of the terms “ideal” versus “nonideal” in Rawls’s own use. These terms refer to the assumption that a theory is implemented with full compliance or with less than full compliance; it is hard to see how comparisons of social states in terms of justice could dispense with this distinction. Rawls adds further distinctions: between non-compliance that is deliberate and voluntary or non-compliance that it the product of natural limitations or unfortunate circumstance. Nothing here implies that “ideal” is a predicate of the content of Rawls’s two principles; the word “perfect” is used for the relation between those principles and the institutional arrangements that express them. Sen has undoubtedly identified an issue here: Rawls takes it to be important to a theory of justice that it reflexively explain the possibility of its generating support for itself over time. There is a question as to whether these functional criteria are intrinsic, or extrinsic, to Rawls’s process of “construction”. If these criteria are intrinsic to the process, then G A Cohen complained that Rawls was tainting the content of justice. But, on the extrinsic reading that I favour, when one asks the question of whether the theory is feasible under ideal conditions (where full compliance is assumed) or non-ideal conditions (where it is not), this issue is wholly distinct from the truth or falsity of the principles of justice thus applied. Rawls’s functional criteria are not determinative for the truth of the two principles; one can agree with that point while not agreeing with Cohen that this leads to Platonism. So it is not appropriate for Sen freely to substitute, as he does, the word “perfect” for the word “ideal” in his characterization of the content of the two principles that make up justice as fairness.

This use of “perfect” instead of “ideal” maneuvers Rawls into a position where his view can be characterized by Sen as committed not to a transcendental account of justice, but to a transcendent one, specifically, a form of Platonism of justice of the kind explicitly endorsed by Rawls’s critic, Cohen. If “ideal theory” is not “perfect theory” then Sen’s putative methodological innovation can be explained as one aspect of what Rawls would call imperfect compliance theory. The method of pairwise comparison is not a method that Rawls cannot endorse. So it cannot be true that the contrast between “transcendental institutionalism” and “realization-focused comparison” is “quite momentous”. [Sen, 2011, p. 7] Furthermore, there are Rawlsian reasons to reject Sen’s alternative of working within non-ideal theory alone without the normative goal of formulating a realistically utopian view. A. John Simmons has argued that Sen’s restrictive comparativist methodology has untoward consequences in setting ourselves appropriate normative goals in the theory of justice. As Simmons notes, all of Rawls’s adjustments in non- ideal theory are with the overall and integrated goal of pursuing justice as a whole. I examine this problem in the specific case of the claim that we ought to retreat from welfare state capitalism and endorse a property-owning democracy instead. I contrast a Rawlsian view on that issue with one recently put forward by Ingrid Robeyns, where Robeyns puts Sen’s methodology to use. It is argued that Robeyns strategy illustrates the pitfalls of restricting oneself to comparativist claims alone in the theory of justice.

April 12, 2013 Workshop on Free Market Fairness, Tilburg University

A one day workshop at Tilburg University on the themes arising from John Tomasi’s book, Free Market Fairness, Princeton University Press, 2012. Professor Tomasi will give the keynote address after a discussion of the main theses of his book by political philosophers from the Netherlands, the UK, the USA and Switzerland.

Academics and postgraduate researchers are welcome to attend: there will be a registration fee of 40 euros that covers lunch and beverages over the course of the day. (If you do not require either beverages or meals – there are catering venues on campus – and you are a student or staff member of a university in the Netherlands, attendance is free.)

If you plan to attend please e-mail a.thomas [at] uvt.nl

Venue: The Ruth First Room

09:30 – 10:00 Alan Thomas (Tilburg) ‘Rawls and Tomasi on Robust Economic Liberty’.

10:00 – 1o:15 Discussion of paper 1

10:15 – 10:45 Waheed Hussain (Wharton School, U Penn)  ‘Self-Authorship and Recognition in a Market Democracy’.

10:45 – 11:00 Discussion of paper 2

11:00 – 11:15 Coffee break

11:15 – 11:45 Ryan Muldoon (U. Penn) tbc.

11:45 – 12:00 Discussion of paper 3

12:00 – 12:30 Ingrid Robeyns, (Rotterdam) tbc.

12:30 – 12:45 Discussion of paper 3

12:45 – 14:00 Lunch at Tilbury Restaurant (on campus)

14:00 – 14:30   Martin O’Neill (York) ‘Justification, Reciprocity and Maximin: Saving Justice from Neoclassical Liberalism’.

14:30 – 14:45 Discussion of paper 4

14:45 – 15:15 Lisa Herzog, (Goethe University, Frankfurt) ‘Preaching to the Lockean Choir? Human Motivation and the Feasibility of Economic Utopias’.

15:15 – 15:30 Discussion of paper 5

15:30 – 15:45 Coffee Break

15:45 – 16:15 Thad Williamson (Jepson School of Leadership Studies)  ‘Exploitation of labor, positional goods, and political economy: three challenges to/for Free Market Fairness’

16:15 – 16:30  Discussion of paper 6

16:30 – 17:30 Keynote Lecture, John Tomasi (Brown University)

17:30 – 18:00 Round Table Discussion: The Market Democratic Research Programme

19:00 Conference Dinner, Meesters Restaurant

Ethics Research Group: Sander Voerman Tuesday October 23 15:00 – 17:00

‘Moral Disagreement and Human Psychology’

Room Dante Building 119

Intuitively, moral discourse involves moral disagreements: situations such that when A says “doing X is right under circumstances C,” B can contradict A by saying “X is not right under C.” This implies that there is a certain kind of objectivity to moral judgment, but what kind? According to Michael Smith, A gets his judgment right if and only if all conceptually possible agents get it right when approving of X under C and wrong when disapproving of X under C, regardless of how their contingent psychological attitudes might differ from those of A. By contrast, what I call “relationalist” accounts analyze the truth conditions of a moral judgment in terms of such contingent attitudes of the agent making the judgment. Smith argues that such accounts fail to account for the objectivity required to explain moral disagreements. In this paper I defend relationalism against Smith. On the account I have developed elsewhere, the truth conditions of moral judgments involve opaque volitional attitudes of an agent that this agent herself can be mistaken about. Thus, A and B might both have such attitudes in support of doing X under C, which A is getting right and B wrong. I argue that this explains their disagreement if A and B assume, as part of the conversational implicature of their judgments, that their opaque attitudes are the same. I examine two types of reasons for making such an assumption. The first is when species-wide attitudes are involved as a matter of common human psychology. This makes moral judgments just as objective as judgments about human physiology such as “the heart is located in the left side of the body.” I speculate why certain basic moral values might be shared in this species-wide sense. The second type of reason applies in situations where A and B share a cultural background that may be constitutive of the attitudes at stake. This implies that the attitudes will not be shared cross- culturally, which may seem to imply an unattractive cultural relativism. However, I will argue that relativism is usually understood in a transparent sense, and that my opaque relationalism is a much more plausible alternative. Furthermore, I will argue that the absence of shared attitudes may even be plausible in certain intra-cultural cases. Thus, if we must choose between saving m loved ones or n strangers, with m<n, the vaguely determinable m/n ratio at which one should start saving the strangers might not even be shared intraculturally, let alone species-wide.

Workshop in honour of Stephan Hartmann

A one day workshop to celebrate the contribution of Stephan Hartmann to the philosophy department at Tilburg University and, in particular, his role in the founding and direction of TiLPS.

All members of an academic institution are welcome, particularly graduate students, but please e-mail your plan to attend to a.thomas@uvt.nl

One Day Workshop in Honour of Stephan Hartmann November 27 Ruth First Room, (C186) Tilburg University 11:00 –

11:00 Welcome, coffee.

11:15 – 11:30 Opening Remarks: Arie De Ruijter, Dean of the Humanities Faculty

11:30 – 12:15 Paper 1 Chiara Lisciandra (Munich and Tilburg), Matteo Colombo (Tilburg) and Marie Postma (Tilburg), ‘Conformorality: A Study on Normative Judgement and Conformity’

12:15 – 12:30 Discussion of Paper 1

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch, Tilbury.

13:30 – 14:15 Paper 2  Igor Douven (Groningen) ‘Conditionals and Closure’

14:15 – 14:30 Discussion of Paper 2

14:30 – 15:00 Coffee

15:00 – 15:45 Jan Sprenger (Tilburg), ‘Modelling Disagreement’

15:45 – 16:00 Discussion of Paper 3

16:00 – 16:45 Round Table: workshop participants and Stephan Hartmann

16:45 – 17:00 Closing remarks: Jacques Hagenaars, Head of the Philosophy department.

18:00 Workshop dinner, Auberge du Bonheur

Sean Gould and Morgan Zedalis October 1 at 16:00

‘Reacting to Wolves’

Dante 119

16:00 – 18:00

Sean Gould and Morgan Zedalis (Sean Gould presenting)

Bastiaan Hoorneman September 17th at 16:00 (Note change of date)

Re-Scheduled Event:

Bas Hoorneman

University of Amsterdam

Room Dante 119

16:00 – 18:00

‘An Argument Against Reasons Fundamentalism’

CEISR Conference, Portsmouth June 30

http://www.port.ac.uk/research/ceisr/europeanstudiesconference/conferenceprogramme/parallel6/

Towards a European Society? Parallel Session 6: June 30 9.00-10.45

Europe and the Cosmopolitan Citizen

Chair: Kathryn Brown, Tilburg University, Netherlands

Kathryn Brown, Tilburg University, Netherlands
David Owen, Southampton University, UK
Bert van Roermund, Tilburg University, Netherlands
Alan Thomas, Tilburg University, Netherlands
Discussions of cosmopolitanism focus on elucidating common values that bind individuals together across the boundaries of traditional, territorially defined nation-states. Accordingly, images of ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ have recently been posited as ways of articulating shared European identities and concerns in a variety of political, artistic, and theoretical contexts. This interdisciplinary panel analyzes the advantages and limitations of proposing a cosmopolitan ideal in contemporary debates about Europe. Drawing together researchers in the fields of social and political philosophy, law, and visual art, this panel considers the following questions: in what ways do the contingencies of a shared historical narrative undermine the norms of cosmopolitan identification? What art forms and narrative structures do contemporary artists use to advance the ideal of a European cosmopolitan citizen? How are such works received by audiences? Do the institutions and practices of European societies show that we have not, in fact, moved beyond the nation-state? Is there a ‘democratic deficit’ between the ideal of a world citizen and the political reality of a trans-national alliance such as the idea of Europe?

Principles in Practice, 28th June, Churchill College Cambridge

http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/news_events/principles_in_practice/principles_in_practice.html

Confirmed speakers: 

Prof. Alan Thomas, Tilburg University
Prof. Christian List, London School of Economics
Prof. Jonathan Dancy, University of Reading and University of Texas
Dr. Maike Albertzart, University of Cambridge
Prof. Michael Bratman, Stanford University
Prof. Onora O’Neill, University of Cambridge
Prof. Richard Ashcroft, Queen Mary University of London
Dr. Stephen John, University of Cambridge