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Displaying: 1-8 of 8 documents


1. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Andrew T. Forcehimes, Luke Semrau Relationship Sensitive Consequentialism Is Regrettable
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Personal relationships matter. Traditional Consequentialism, given its exclusive focus on agent-neutral goodness, struggles to account for this fact. A recent variant of the theory—one incorporating agent-relativity—is thought to succeed where its traditional counterpart fails. Yet, to secure this advantage, the view must take on certain normative and evaluative commitments concerning personal relationships. As a result, the theory permits cases in which agents do as they ought, yet later ought to prefer that they had done otherwise. That a theory allows such cases is a serious defect. We thus conclude that, in terms of how the theories handle personal relationships, agent-relative consequentialism fairs no better than its traditional counterpart.
2. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
August Gorman Depression’s Threat to Self-Governance
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Much of the literature on impairment to self-governance focuses on cases in which a person either lacks the ability to protect herself from errant urges or cases in which a person lacks the capacity to initiate self-reflective agential processes. This has led to frameworks for thinking about self-governance designed with only the possibility of these sorts of impairments in mind. I challenge this orthodoxy using the case of melancholic depression to show that there is a third way that self-governance can be undermined: an agent may fail to form the desire she most wants to act on.
3. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Shane Gronholz Welfare: Does Thinking Make It So?
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According to what I call the judgment view about welfare, a subject S’s life is going well for S only if S judges that S’s life is going well for S. This means that a person’s welfare depends, at least in part, on that person’s own judgment about her welfare. According to this view, it is not possible for a person to have a life that is going well for her if she judges that it is not. In this paper, I challenge this view by showing that there can be cases where a person’s life is going well for her even if she does not judge that it is.
4. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Richard L. Lippke Retributivism and Victim Compensation
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Given the desert-centric character of retributive penal theory, it seems odd that its supporters rarely discuss the undeserved losses and suffering of crime victims and the state’s role in responding to them. This asymmetry in the desert-focus of retributive penal theory is examined and the likely arguments in support of it are found wanting. Particular attention is paid to the claim that offenders, rather than the state, should supply compensation to victims. Also, standard retributive accounts of why the deserving should be punished are shown to support state-supplied victim compensation.
5. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Nahshon Perez What Are Data Good for Anyway?: A Typology of Usages of Data in Contemporary Political Theory
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This article develops a typology of usages for empirical data in normative theorizing in ‎contemporary political theory. A typology of usages is indicated, providing definitions, ‘names’ and an analysis for each ‎usage, and points to the typical stage within political theory research for each usage. The typology is built in a casuistic methodology. It includes the following categories: (i) Spotlighting, (ii) Definition, ‎‎(iii) Conversion, (iv) Institutional clarity, (v) Theoretical clarity, and (vi) Theory improvement. The typology creates a novel toolbox that can be adopted by political theorists; and it clarifies the methods and achievements of data-sensitive political theory.
6. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Tina Rulli Conditional Obligations
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Some obligations are conditional such that act A is morally optional, but if one chooses A, one is required to do act B rather than some other less valuable act C. Such conditional obligations arise frequently in research ethics, in the philosophical literature, and in real life. They are controversial: how does a morally optional act give rise to demanding requirements to do the best? Some think that the fact that a putative obligation has a conditional structure, so defined, is a strike against its being a genuine obligation. I argue that conditional obligations are to be expected in a moral theory that has moral options.
7. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Rosa Terlazzo (When) Do Victims Have Duties to Resist Oppression?
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In this article, I first propose four guidelines that follow from understanding the project of assigning victims duties to resist oppression as an ameliorative project. That is, if we understand the project to be motivated by the urgent aim of ending or mitigating the harm that oppression imposes on the oppressed, I argue that we should focus on developing and assigning duties that satisfy what I call the ability, weighting, fairness, and overdemandingness guidelines. Second, I develop the duty to be a non-normative individual, which satisfies all four guidelines.
8. Social Theory and Practice: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Chad Van Schoelandt Functionalist Justice and Coordination
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This article lays out the “functionalist” view according to which justice is a social technology for adjudicating competing claims, then defends the claim that any functional principles of justice must effectively coordinate the expectations of diverse members of society. From there, it argues that within the functionalist framework there cannot be any adequate conception of justice for society’s basic institutional structure or constitution under conditions of reasonable pluralism. It concludes by discussing the theoretical place of emergent legal and constitutional principles within a functionalist theory.