Abstract: Matthew Clayton argues that children can and should be independent, despite living in a condition of profound dependence on their parents for most of their basic needs. Children are independent, in Clayton’s sense, as long as their parents do not usurp their agency and conform to an ideal of parental anti-perfectionism. I argue that Clayton’s conception of usurpation overemphasizes parental intentions. This leads to an ideal of independence for children which is overly concerned with the permissibility of parental action, and insufficiently focused on the plight of children. I also argue that the ideal of parental anti-perfectionism is much more demanding than the principle of non-usurpation by which it is motivated. The result is that Clayton’s account leaves a lot of room for interpretation, ranging from a picture on which the intentional enrollment of children in a particular religious or otherwise comprehensive doctrine is impermissible but much other parenting is fine, to a picture on which it is hard to imagine any parent-child relationship that conforms to the anti-perfectionist ideal. 

doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.13093 (open access)

Abstract: Social egalitarianism holds that justice requires that people relate to one another as equals. To explain the content of this requirement, social egalitarians often appeal to the moral equality of persons. This leads to two very different interpretations of social egalitarianism. The first involves the specification of a conception of the moral equality of persons that is distinctive of the social egalitarian view. Social (or relational) egalitarianism can then claim that for people to relate as equals just is for the relations between them to conform to this conception of their moral equality. I will argue against this type of view. Instead, I will argue that social egalitarianism should propose a distinctive conception of social equality as a purely sociological phenomenon. I will show how this conception allows us to formulate the types of normative claims social egalitarianism should make. On this picture, social egalitarianism, instead of identifying social hierarchy as a distinctive kind of wrong, makes standard normative claims about a distinctive kind of social phenomenon. 

Praise: "This is an excellent paper" anonymous referee

doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267123000159 (open access)

Abstract: This article explains how social norms can help to distinguish and understand a range of different kinds of social inequality and social hierarchy. My aim is to show how the literature on social norms can provide crucial resources to relational egalitarianism, which has made social equality and inequality into a central topic of contemporary normative political theorising. The hope is that a more discriminating and detailed picture of different kinds of social inequality will help relational egalitarians move beyond a discussion of the justice or injustice of social equality as a single general category.

Praise: "I have a hard time discerning what could possibly be novel in this paper, beyond a misrepresentation of the literature - including some of the works cited" Anonymous Referee

doi: http://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12387 (open access)

Abstract: Under which conditions are social relationships hierarchical, and under which conditions are they not? This article has three main aims. First, I will explain what this question amounts to by providing a more detailed description of the general phenomenon of social hierarchy.  Second, I will provide an account of what social hierarchy is. Third, I will provide some considerations in favour of this account by discussing how it improves upon three alternative ways of thinking about social hierarchy that are sometimes explicitly endorsed and sometimes suggested or presupposed in writings in philosophy and elsewhere.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12240

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Abstract: One of political liberalism’s central commitments is to a principle of public reason. Political liberals frequently justify this principle by appeal to considerations of respect. In this article, I argue that political liberalism cannot be grounded in a moral principle of respect for persons. Instead, I argue that a particular interpretation of the principle of public reason can be justified as a key component of a political conception of mutual civic respect.

Praise: "I think the overall framework is misguided and ignores large parts of the existing literature" Anonymous Referee.  

doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anaa038

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Abstract: Two of the most systematic and well-developed theories of social norms analyse such norms in terms of patterns of individual attitudes. On Bicchieri’s view, social norms most centrally involve a pattern of preferences among the members of a relevant population, conditional on their normative and empirical expectations of other members. According to Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin, and Southwood (BEGS), social norms most centrally involve patterns of normative attitudes among the members of a given group, grounded in a social practice of that group. This paper argues that the existence of attitudinal social norms speaks in favour of Bicchieri’s preference-based view, and against BEGS’s normative attitude-based view. I will first present some reasons to think that there are attitudinal social norms — social norms that demand not just behaviour, but also a variety of attitudes. I will then argue that with a very minor modification, Bicchieri’s account can properly capture such attitudinal social norms and that the BEGS account cannot. 

Praise: "This is a terrific paper. It is on a good topic, elegantly written, contains a number of extremely interesting and original points, and is carefully argued. It was a pleasure to read and I was persuaded by a lot of it" Anonymous Referee. 

doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594x18798062

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Abstract: I argue that reliance on political testimony conflicts with two democratic values: the value of mutual justifiability and the value of equality of opportunity for political influence. Reliance on political testimony is characterized by a reliance on the assertions of others directly on a political question the citizen is asked to answer as part of a formal democratic decision procedure. Reliance on expert testimony generally, even in the context of political decision-making, does not similarly conflict with democratic values. As a consequence of the argument, citizens have pro tanto reason to rely on their own political judgment when determining their vote, and democratic societies have reason to only ask citizens questions they are able to answer without reliance on political testimony. 

Praise: "This is in principle an interesting contribution to the literature on deference and testimony, but somehow there is something that is not quite right about the paper," Anonymous Referee. 

doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12152

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Abstract: Political liberalism holds that political decisions should be made on the basis of public considerations, and not on the basis of comprehensive religious, moral, or philosophical views. An important objection to this view is that it presupposes doubt, hesitation, or skepticism about the truth of comprehensive doctrines on the side of reasonable citizens. Proponents of political liberalism, such as John Rawls and Jonathan Quong, successfully defend political liberalism against several objections of this kind. In this paper, I argue that recent developments in the epistemology of disagreement require us to revisit these skeptical concerns. I will argue that the correct understanding of political liberalism’s epistemic commitments, in combination with a conciliatory view about peer disagreement, lead to a new skeptical problem for political liberalism. All reasonable citizens who also hold a set of religious, moral, or philosophical beliefs, I will argue, suffer from a breakdown of epistemic rationality. I will show that existing answers to skeptical objections fail to resolve this problem. 

doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/auy002 

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Abstract: According to Matthew Kramer’s aspirational perfectionism, the state is permitted to provide funding for the arts, sciences, and culture with the aim of securing the warranted self-respect of all citizens. This paper argues that although Kramer is right to think that the state has an important role to play in the economy of recognition, his conception of this role is mistaken. I argue, first, that Kramer’s exclusive focus on warrant for self-respect obscures the importance of social phenomena such as stigma, marginalization, and discrimination. Second, I argue that Kramer is mistaken in his reliance on vicarious pride to explain how the various excellences of our fellow citizens provide us with warrant for self-respect. I conclude with a brief sketch an alternative account, according to which the self-respect of citizens of democratic societies is supported by their collective creation and maintenance of just political institutions. 

Praise:  "van Wietmarschen’s outline of my argument for aspirational perfectionism is a buzzing hive of distortion and confusion" Matthew Kramer. 

doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/tht3.381 

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Abstract: In “What’s Wrong with Colonialism,” Lea Ypi argues that the distinctive wrong of colonialism should be understood as the failure of the colonial relationship to extend equal and reciprocal terms of political association to the colonized. Laura Valentini argues that Ypi’s account fails. Her argument targets an ambiguity in Ypi’s account of the relata of the colonial relationship. Either Ypi’s view is that the members of the colonized group are, as individuals, denied an equal and reciprocal political relationship to the colonizer, or Ypi’s view is that the colonized individuals form a collective agent and that it is denied an equal and reciprocal relationship to the colonizer. According to Valentini, both options face insurmountable difficulties. This paper argues that Valentini sets up a false dilemma: the third option is to think of the colonizer as relating in an unequal and non-reciprocal way to the plurality of people subjected to colonial rule. This view, I argue, avoids Valentini’s objections, but it also raises new questions about how we are to understand the distinctive wrong of colonialism.  

Praise: "My hunch is that this could be an extremely important big idea – a plausible fundamental new category of wrongs which has so far been totally neglected by traditional ethical theory," Anonymous Referee. 

doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/17455243-46810052

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Abstract: We consider what justifies the defining principle of political liberalism, the Reciprocity Principle, which states that fundamental political decisions must be justified using only considerations that all reasonable citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. Most existing justifications of the Reciprocity Principle regard it as a requirement of respect, owed to each citizen in order to render permissible the imposition of political force on that citizen. We argue for a different (but compatible) justification, rooted in the fact that citizens' compliance with the Reciprocity Principle makes possible a form of political community suitable for liberal democracies. This conception of community involves two social goods: joint rule and civic friendship. The reasonable religious, moral, philosophical, and cultural pluralism of liberal democracies threatens the achievement of both of these goods. But we show how the Reciprocity Principle plays a key role in overcoming these threats. The result is that the Reciprocity Principle is a principle of political community for pluralistic liberal democracies, supported by the reasons we have to aim for relations of joint rule and civic friendship.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2087654

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Abstract: The central question of the peer disagreement debate is: what should you believe about the disputed proposition if you have good reason to believe that an epistemic peer disagrees with you? In this article, I show that this question is ambiguous between evidential support (or propositional justification) and well-groundedness (or doxastic justification). My discussion focusses on conciliatory views, according to which peer disagreements require you to significantly revise your view or to suspend judgment. I argue that for a wide range of conceptions of evidential support, conciliatory views are false if they are understood entirely in terms of evidential support. Alternative conceptions of evidential support face some serious difficulties. These arguments speak against conciliationism, but I then go on to defend a conciliatory view about well-grounded belief: when you believe p and you have good reason to believe that your epistemic peer disagrees with you, you are not justified in believing p because that belief is no longer well-grounded. This picture of the epistemology of peer disagreement offers a reconciliation of some of the main competing views in the literature: conciliationism is true when we look at well-grounded belief, but a non-conciliatory view like Thomas Kelly’s “total evidence view” is correct when we look at peer disagreement exclusively in terms of evidential support. 

Praise: "though it lies outside my area, I also found Han van Wietmarschen's "Peer Disagreement, Evidence, and Well-Groundedness" (also in The Philosophical Review) to be truly outstanding" Christy Mag Uidhir.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/666499

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Abstract: This paper considers whether and how political liberalism must ask citizens to be intellectually modest. We begin by presenting the politically liberal project and the role of reasonableness in this project. We then present a framework for thinking about different conceptions of reasonableness in a systematic way. We  go on to argue that political liberals should endorse a demanding form of intellectual modesty as part of their conception of reasonableness. We argue against theorists who advocate conceptions of reasonableness that demand less intellectual modesty, claiming that our view is superior to theirs on three fronts. First, our view better rationalizes reasonable citizens’ restraint from appeal to considerations they cannot expect all their fellow reasonable citizens to accept. Political liberals think that such restraint is a necessary response to disagreement in politics, but they also believe reasonable disagreement over political decisions persists, even after citizens exercise the required restraint. Our view’s second advantage is that it better explains why political decisions can be justifiable to all reasonable citizens, in spite of the fact that citizens will continue to disagree reasonably about the conclusions of these decisions. Our view’s third advantage is that it allows reasonable citizens to draw on views that are uncontroversial among experts, even when some less capable reasoners disagree with the experts; competing views do not and we think this makes them intuitively less plausible. We conclude by considering how worries about demandingness apply to our intellectually modest conception of reasonableness.

Praise: "at best [this paper] unpacks the motivation behind Rawls' view and others in the same family by showing why they are better than functionally similar views. This point is sufficiently obvious that it could have been made quite convincingly in a few paragraphs" Anonymous Associate Editor at Ethics.  

doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqv121

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