The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy is a peer-reviewed online journal in moral, social, political, and legal philosophy. The journal welcomes submissions of articles in any of these and related fields of research. The journal is interested in work in the history of ethics that bears directly on topics of contemporary interest, but does not consider articles of purely historical interest.

News

The Globethics library contains vol. 1(2005) to current.

Recent Submissions

  • What Time Travel Teaches Us about Moral Responsibility

    Cyr, Taylor; Tognazzini, Neal (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    This paper explores what the metaphysics of time travel might teach us about moral responsibility. We take our cue from a recent paper by Yishai Cohen, who argues that if time travel is metaphysically possible, then one of the most influential theories of moral responsibility (i.e., Fischer and Ravizza’s) is false. We argue that Cohen’s argument is unsound but that Cohen’s argument can serve as a lens to bring reasons-responsive theories of moral responsibility into sharper focus, helping us to better understand actual-sequence theories of moral responsibility more generally and showing how actual-sequence theorists should respond to a recent criticism.
  • Gaslighting and Peer Disagreement

    Hill, Scott (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    I present a counterexample to Kirk-Giannini’s Dilemmatic Theory of gaslighting. 
  • Paternalism and Exclusion

    van Oosterum, Kyle (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    What makes paternalism wrong? I give an indirect answer to that question by challenging a recent trend in the literature that I call the exclusionary strategy. The exclusionary strategy aims to show how some feature of the paternalizee’s normative situation morally excludes acting for the paternalizee’s well-being. This moral exclusion consists either in ruling out the reasons for which a paternalizer may act or in changes to the right-making status of the reasons that (would) justify paternalistic intervention. I argue that both versions of the exclusionary strategy fail to explain the wrongness of paternalism and that they struggle to accommodate the mainstream view that paternalism is only pro tanto wrong. Their failure consists either in being implausibly strong expressions of antipaternalism or in struggling to spell out the scope of exclusion in an uncomplicated way. After discouraging this exclusionary strategy, I suggest we can capture what is appealing about it—as well as avoiding its pitfalls—by sketching a philosophical model in which we compare the weights of reasons for and against paternalistically interfering. To precisify this sketch, I introduce some conceptual tools from the literature on practical reasoning—in particular, the concept of modifiers—and suggest that these tools offer a better starting point for figuring out what makes paternalism (pro tanto) wrong.
  • The Problem of Basic Equality: A Constructive Critique

    Kirby, Nikolas (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    This paper offers a targeted five-point critique of the current debate about the problem of basic equality. First, it argues that the debate should be refocussed away from any particular concept(ion) of basic equality to a more agnostic proposition about the possibility of establishing equality in any basic moral property. Second, it re-articulates the problem in terms of grounding relations rather than supervenience. Third, it argues that proponents of predominant approach to solving this problem have failed to properly distinguish between two different non-scalar properties defined in terms of scalar properties: ‘range properties’ and ‘bare properties’. Once disambiguated it is clear as to why such an approach must fail. However, this critique does direct our attention to a possible alternative strategy, that is, grounding our equality upon a ‘relative property’.
  • Nonnaturalism, the Supervenience Challenge, Higher-Order Properties, and Trope Theory

    Suikkanen, Jussi (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    Nonnaturalist realism is the view that normative properties are unique kind of stance-independent properties. It has been argued that such views fail to explain why two actions that are exactly alike otherwise must also have the same normative properties. Mark Schroeder and Knut Olav Skarsaune have recently suggested that nonnaturalist realists can respond to this supervenience challenge by taking the primary bearers of normative properties to be action kinds. This paper develops their response in two ways. First, it provides additional motivation for the previous claim about the bearers of normative properties by drawing from the work of H. A. Prichard. Second, and more importantly, it formulates a plausible metaphysical framework based on the contemporary trope theory to explain why action kinds would have their second-order properties, including their normative properties, necessarily.
  • Maxim and Principle Contractualism

    Salomon, Aaron (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    I argue that, in order to address the ideal world problem while remaining faithful to our concept of morality, Contractualists should no longer determine which actions I must perform by seeing whether they accord with certain principles for the general regulation of behavior. Instead, I argue, Contractualists should determine whether it is right or wrong for me to perform an action by evaluating any maxim that might be reflected by my action. I call the resulting view “Maxim Contractualism.” It states that an agent’s action is morally required just in case any maxim that he might adopt that involves not performing that action is one that someone could reasonably reject. Finally, I argue that, although Act Contractualism also provides us with the materials to solve the Ideal World Problem, it is a worse solution because it cannot account for the fact that, sometimes, what would happen if I performed an action over time is relevant to whether I am permitted to perform that action right here, right now.
  • Dismissing Blame

    Snedegar, Justin (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    When someone blames you, you might accept the blame or you might reject it, challenging the blamer’s interpretation of the facts or providing a justification or excuse. Either way, there are opportunities for edifying moral discussion and moral repair. But another common, and less constructive, response is to simply dismiss the blame, refusing to engage with the blamer. Even if you agree that you are blameworthy, you may refuse to engage with the blame—and, specifically, with blame coming from this particular person. This is a common response if the blamer is being hypocritical or meddlesome in blaming the wrongdoer. This paper aims to make sense of this kind of response: What are we doing when we dismiss blame? A common thought is that we dismiss demands issued by blame, but we still must identify the content of the relevant demands. My proposal is that when we dismiss blame, we dismiss a demand to respond to the blame with a second-personal expression of remorse to the blamer.
  • Privileged Citizens and the Right to Riot: A Reply to Pasternak

    Carnes, Thomas (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    Avia Pasternak’s account of permissible political rioting includes a constraint that insists only oppressed citizens, and not privileged citizens, are permitted to riot when rioting is justified. This discussion note argues that Pasternak’s account, with which I largely agree, should be expanded to admit the permissibility of privileged citizens rioting alongside and in solidarity with oppressed citizens. The permissibility of privileged citizens participating in riots when rioting is justified is grounded in the notions that it is sometimes necessary, in accordance with Pasternak’s necessity condition, and that it will oftentimes substantially improve the chances of successfully achieving the just aims the rioting seeks to achieve, in accordance with Pasternak’s success condition. Allowing for this improves Pasternak’s already strong account of permissible political rioting on its own terms.
  • How to Read a Riot

    Mouser, Ricky (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2024-02-14)
    How should we think about public rioting for political ends? Might it ever be more than morally excusable behavior? In this essay, I show how political rioting can sometimes be positively morally justified as an intermediate defensive harm in between civilly disobedient protest and political revolution. I do so by reading political rioters as, at the same time, uncivil and ultimately conciliatory with their state. Unlike civilly disobedient protestors, political rioters express a lack of faith in the value or applicability of civility in interacting with the state under the political status quo. But unlike political revolutionaries who aim at separation from the state, political rioters paradigmatically seek fuller inclusion within it. By rejecting even the appearance of compliance with the political status quo’s systems of justice, political rioters can create a unique venue for systemically marginalized citizens to express warranted disrespect for the state that maintains them in ongoing subjection, as well as their inviolable respect for themselves as persons with dignity beyond the boundaries of civility.
  • Trials and Triumphs of University-Funded Open-Access Publishing: New Leadership for JESP

    Schroeder, Mark (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    Mark Schroeder reflects on nine years of leading JESP, the continuing value of and challenges for the model of university-funded full-open access publishing in philosophy, and announces new leadership of and support for the journal.
  • Allies against Oppression: Intersectional Feminism, Critical Race Theory, and Rawlsian Liberalism

    Arvan, Marcus (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    Liberalism is often claimed to be at odds with feminism and critical race theory (CRT). This article argues, to the contrary, that Rawlsian liberalism supports the central commitments of both. Section 1 argues that Rawlsian liberalism supports intersectional feminism. Section 2 argues that the same is true of CRT. Section 3 then uses Young’s “Five Faces of Oppression”—a classic work widely utilized in feminism and CRT to understand and contest many varieties of oppression—to illustrate how Rawlsian liberalism supports diverse feminist and CRT projects, and why it may be critical to achieve solidarity between feminism, CRT, and Rawlsian liberalism. Finally, Section 4 responds to five objections.
  • The Essence of Structural Irrationality: The Impossibility of Attitudinal Success

    Fink, Julian (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    The theory of attitude-based (often called ‘structural’) rationality faces a critical gap. While it behaves as if it were examining a unified domain of irrational attitudes (including contradictory beliefs, contradictory intentions, means/end incoherence, akratic incoherence, and cyclical preferences), it offers no unified account of when a set of attitudes qualifies as irrational. Our judgements about attitude-based irrationality seem to rely exclusively on a variety of competing accounts and intuitions. This paper seeks to remedy this situation by offering the first systematic, unified account of when a pattern of attitudes qualifies as irrational. It begins by setting up the core of the view defended in the paper: a set of attitudes is irrational if and only if it is impossible for the attitudes in that set to be jointly successful. I show how this view can account for a key range of irrational combinations of attitudes. I then refine the account to make it sufficiently subjective. In particular, I argue that a set of attitudes is irrational only if the impossibility of those attitudes’ joint success is (i) logically transparent, (ii) subjectively inferable, and (iii) not justifiably denied.
  • Contextualizing, Clarifying, and Defending the Doctrine of Double Effect

    Moschella, Melissa (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    In recent years, a number of authors – such as Kershnar and Kelly, Steinhoff, and Scanlon – have criticized the doctrine of double effect (DDE) as incoherent, lacking an underlying rationale, or leading to counterintuitive conclusions.  These critiques, however, rest on a failure to understand the DDE’s broader theoretical context and presuppositions. This paper aims to clarify and advance the debate regarding the DDE by, first, outlining a contemporary version of the broader normative theory (i.e. the Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law tradition) within which the DDE finds its proper context, and explaining the rationale for the DDE within this context; second, clarifying the DDE’s proportionality condition to avoid common misinterpretations; and, third, showing how the DDE, when properly formulated and understood within the appropriate theoretical context, can withstand the recent criticisms that have been raised against it.
  • Three Shortcomings of the Trolley Method of Moral Philosophy

    Crain, Guy (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    In this paper I argue that the trolley method of moral philosophy has three shortcomings not yet adequately addressed in the literature.  First, trolley problems highlight high stakes ethical decisions.  These decisions do not represent the majority of ethical decisions made by most people, and thus, the trolley method ignores most of moral life.  Second, the trolley method operates by way of a faux-anonymization of moral agents.  This process leads to descriptions of moral agents being unwittingly supplied by those to whom the problems are presented and thereby the formation of a paradigmatic moral agent which excludes a considerable number of real world moral persons.  Lastly, the trolley method mischaracterizes what most moral decision-making is like by presenting a moral agent's decision as isolated, uninfluenced, and made with full self-awareness.
  • Republican Freedom and Liberal Neutrality

    Moen, Lars (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    Institutions promoting republican freedom as non-domination are commonly believed to differ significantly from institutions promoting negative freedom as non-interference. Philip Pettit, the most prominent contemporary defender of this view, also maintains that these republican institutions are neutral between the different conceptions of the good that characterise a modern society. This paper shows why these two views are incompatible. By analysing the institutional requirements Pettit takes as constitutive of republican freedom, I show how they also promote negative freedom by reducing overall interference. To avoid this result, republican institutions must be more restrictive and require that citizens conform to a life of political engagement. But then republican freedom will not be a neutral ideal. Rejecting negative freedom therefore means sacrificing neutrality.
  • Resolution and Resolve: Rationally Resisting Temptation

    Bruxvoort, Abigail (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    Folk psychology holds that resolving to do something is effective in resisting temptation. What is a resolution? Resolutions are often understood as two-tier intentions or an intention-desire pair. However, both accounts of resolution are subject to a problem. Why should we expect the second-order aspect of resolutions to resist temptation? Even if we posit that we have additional or independent reasons for the second-order intention or desire, these reasons will be insufficient in the face of temptation, because temptation makes one’s reasons for acting on tempting desires very salient. From the first-person perspective there is no neutral deliberative space from which to take stock of reasons when being tempted. I conclude that rationally resisting temptation instead requires forestalling temptation through the practical virtue of resolve. Resolve understood as a virtue involves dispositions to deliberate and desire in accordance with one’s resolutions.
  • Combatants, Masculinity, and Just War Theory

    Parsons, Graham (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-12-12)
    Over that last several decades the ethics of war has grown into a major subfield in philosophy at the same time as large literatures have developed on the relation between gender and war as well as feminist approaches to the ethics of war. This article aims to contribute to these literatures and to bring them into closer contact. It argues that canonical just war theorists such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel, and Walzer rely on appeals to masculinity to help ground the obligations of soldiers to participate in war upon command. This appeal helps them overcome their otherwise weak arguments for the political subordination of soldiers, or what I call the Internal Problem of the soldier. It also helps explain a problem that has vexed contemporary ethics of war scholars, namely, the supposed equal right to kill combatants in war, or what I call the External Problem of the soldier. If this is true, then just war theorists should be much more concerned with the gender and war literature and find common ground with feminists who have treated the problem of the political standing of soldiers as a philosophical priority. 
  • Agnosticism and Pluralism about Justice

    Adam Gjesdal (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-11-27)
    Political liberalism views a public policy as justified when reasonable citizens subject to it have sufficient reasons to endorse it. But this endorsement condition does not specify how reasonable citizens in democracies are to exercise their equal say in deciding which policies to support prior to enactment. Citizens may regard many policy options as reasonable but only one as truly just. The dominant view among political liberals, which I call agnosticism, takes no stand on how citizens ought to rank these reasonable alternatives to determine which to support. Agnostics see all criteria for comparing reasonable policies as on a par, whether they be theories of justice or coin flips. I show how Quong’s (2011) analysis of reasonableness leads to agnosticism. I then develop the pluralist alternative, which holds that citizens should support the reasonable policy they regard as most just. What I call pluralism sees multiple conceptions of justice as correct, or “most reasonable.” I show that pluralism offers a compelling alternative to agnosticism in that it can both make sense of an individual citizen’s duty to support what they regard as just policy and respect the fact that citizens reasonably disagree about what the most just policy is.
  • Against Deference to Authority

    Quigley, Travis (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-11-27)
    Joseph Raz’s service conception of law remains one of the best known theories of political authority. Setting aside ongoing debates about the nature of authority, I locate a problem in the basic justificatory structure of the service conception. I show that the service justification of the state does not yield the conclusion that the law generates exclusionary reasons, which are meant to be the key hallmark of authority. An automatic but defeasible habit of obeying the state is likely to lead to better outcomes than exclusionary deference to the state. Given the instrumental justification of the service conception, this means that exclusionary reasons to defer do not obtain. Habituation and automaticity have been developed in other contexts and are here extended to the context of political authority. The possibility of habitual obedience undercuts Raz's theory while suggesting a new approach to the question of political authority
  • The Case for Voting to Change the Outcomes Is Weaker Than It May Seem: A Reply to Zach Barnett

    Liron, Amir; Enoch, David (USC School of Philosophy, 2023-11-27)
    Because you are highly unlikely to cast the deciding vote in the next elections, it is often said that you don’t have a reason to vote in order to change the outcomes. In a recent paper, however, Zach Barnett forcefully argues that this is a mistake. He shows how it follows, from rather conservative assumptions, that in many real-life cases the expected social value of voting is higher than its cost. Barnett is successful, we believe, in showing that the commonly held belief – that voters do not have a reason to vote in order to change the outcomes – is way too hasty. However, Barnett is – we argue in this paper – too quick on one key premise, and once this is noticed, it becomes unclear how often Barnett’s reasoning can point to a justification of voting to change the outcomes. Barnett’s reasoning, we conclude, may apply to significantly less real-life scenarios than he suggests.

View more