Impartial Reasoning Research Articles

Philosophical Premises for Saint-Pierre’s Project of the Perpetual Peace

The article analyzes the traditional and innovative worldview components in the political doctrine of Saint-Pierre, developed in his work Project for the Establishment of Perpetual Peace in Europe. Reflecting on the political prospects of mankind, the abbot highlighted the psychological motives that, in his opinion, determine acts of rulers. He proceeded from the idea that human nature does not change, his worldview is characterized by the belief that the final forms of government are already present in his epoch and are not subject to transformation. In his view, the existing political structure prevailing in various countries should not be changed, but there should be formed a supranational collective body, authorized to carry out international arbitration. Referring to Henry IV’s plan for universal peace in Europe, Saint-Pierre did not literally repeat it, although in order to promote his ideas he presented himself as a follower of the great monarch. Proclaiming the value of impartial reasoning, the abbot attached particular importance to convincing the rulers that war is not beneficial to them personally or to their subjects. He connected happiness with the wealth and prosperity of society, subordinating politics to morality. Recognizing progress in the intellectual and economic spheres, he treated wars as a factor impeding mankind’s progress. Unlike most philosophers of Enlightenment, Saint-Pierre did not adhere to anticlericalism. He believed that the other states would join gradually join united Europe, although this process would certainly be very long. Saint-Pierre attached exceptional importance to the legal side of the issue, to the formal agreement, and he definitely underestimated economic differences among nations.

The assumptions of ethical rationing: An unreasonable man’s response to Magelssen et al.

Contributors to the debate on ethical rationing bring with them assumptions about the proper role of moral theories in practical discourse, which seem reasonable, realistic and pragmatic. These assumptions function to define the remit of bioethical discourse and to determine conceptions of proper methodology and causal reasoning in the area. However well intentioned, the desire to be realistic in this sense may lead us to judge the adequacy of a theory precisely with reference to its ability to deliver apparently determinate answers to questions that strike most practitioners and patients as morally arbitrary. By providing ethical solutions that work given the world as it is, work in clinical ethics may serve to endorse or protect from scrutiny the very structures that need to change if real moral progress is to be possible. Such work can help to foster the illusion that fundamentally arbitrary decisions are ‘grounded’ in objective, impartial reasoning, bestowing academic credibility on policies and processes, making it subsequently harder for others to criticise those processes. As theorists, we need to reflect on our political role and how best to foster virtuous, critical practice, if we are to avoid making contributions to the debate that not only do no good, but may even be harmful. A recent debate in this journal illustrates these issues effectively.

Beyond Just Justice – Creating Space for a Future‐Care Ethic

AbstractDistributive justice relies on metaphors about spatial distribution. Modelling cross‐temporal relations on cross‐spatial relations in this way obscures how earlier groups become the later ones. Procedural justice metaphors rely on metaphors of (contemporaneous) contract and thereby on impartial reasoning. Their dominance is already problematic in the case of contemporary relations, but is even more so in the case of relations across time, where the conditions for later parties are controlled and created by earlier ones. Future generations should not be thought of as a distinct group living at a different temporal “location,” but as who we will become. Thus, the frame of “justice” is much less appropriate for our relations to them than the frame of “care”.

On Health Justice. Some Thoughts and Responses to Critics.

On Health Justice. Some Thoughts and Responses to Critics.

Moral Cognition and the Law and Ethics of Armed Conflict

In contemporary political science, many believe that normative restrictions on armed conflict are an outgrowth of Western culture and the just war tradition. Drawing on historical evidence, which shows that political actors in Ancient China and the early Islamic empire endorsed civilian protection rules, I claim that such norms are more common than most International Relations (IR) theorists suppose. For IR theory, this raises an important puzzle: How can we explain why similar normative ideas emerged in human societies that are otherwise very different? Building on research in cognitive science, social psychology, and social neuroscience, I argue that most people have natural cognitive and emotional predispositions that bias the emergence and transmission of cultural norms that protect non-combatants. More specifically, capacities for perspective-taking and empathy shape how people interpret the limits of their moral commitments, and when these capacities are engaged, intuitional heuristics affect how they judge the morality of killing in war. What is more, I claim that three key contextual variables moderate the connection between innate moral intuitions and the development of civilian protection norms: (i) societal interdependence, (ii) the social empowerment of marginal actors, and (iii) the creation of norms in argumentative contexts that require impartial moral reasoning. I argue that rationalist and constructivist theories of norm emergence will be able to better explain the emergence, the durability, and the institutional design of the norms of war by incorporating this naturalistic theory of moral cognition.

The Idea of Justice

The Idea of Justice

Utility and Impartiality: Being Impartial in a Partial World

This article proposes an eclectic and holistic model of ethics and ethical thinking. It uses this tripart model to show how partialities can be integrated into impartial moral reasoning. Ethical reasoning is divided into three problem areas or “levels”—cases, frameworks, and ultimate ethical goals. Each level employs its own form of reasoning. For evaluating cases, the author advocates an eclectic application of principles; for evaluating frameworks of principles, the author advocates contractualism; for evaluating ethical theory as a whole, the author advocates a notion of the human good inspired by Aristotelian perfectionism. This article argues that utilitarianism, which is one part of eclectic deliberation, is hampered by the idea that ethical reasoning must be based on a single moral criterion or “master” principle. The article concludes by showing how this eclectic model, supplemented by “mitigated impartialism,” provides a systematic method for assessing partialities, with reference to the problem of patriotism in journalism.

An Empirical Inquiry into the Relation of Corrective Justice to Distributive Justice

We report the results of three experiments examining the long‐standing debate within tort theory over whether corrective justice is independent of, or parasitic on, distributive justice. Using a “hypothetical societies” paradigm that serves as an impartial reasoning device and permits experimental manipulation of societal conditions, we first tested support for corrective justice in a society where individual merit played no role in determining economic standing. Participants expressed strong support for a norm of corrective justice in response to intentional and unintentional torts in both just and unjust societies. The second experiment tested support for corrective justice in a society where race, rather than individual merit, determined economic standing. The distributive justice manipulation exerted greater effect here, particularly on liberal participants, but support for corrective justice remained strong among nonliberal participants, even against a background of racially unjust distributive conditions. The third experiment partially replicated the first experiment and found that the availability of government‐funded insurance had little effect on demands for corrective justice. Overall, the results suggest that while extreme distributive injustice can moderate support for corrective justice, the norm of corrective justice often dominates judgments about compensatory duties associated with tortious harms.

An Impartial Reasoning Solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma: Rejoinder to a Comment by Oded Stark

An Impartial Reasoning Solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma: Rejoinder to a Comment by Oded Stark

Moral Reasoning of High School Student Athletes and General Students: An Empirical Study versus Personal Testimony

The purpose of this study was to analyze cognitive moral reasoning of high school student athletes and their nonathlete peers (n = 1,330). Students were evaluated with the Hahm-Beller Values Choice Inventory in the Sport Milieu. Nonathletes (NA) scored significantly higher (M = 67.75, SEM = 0.39) compared to team sport (TS) athletes (M = 62.10, SEM = 0.40). Females scored significantly higher (M = 68.78, SEM = 0.34) than males (M = 60.97, SEM = 0.38). Female NA (M = 69.54, SEM = 0.33) and female TS athletes (M = 67.50, SEM = 0.35) scored significantly different compared to male TS athletes (M = 59.21, SEM = 0.42). This study supports cognitive research data of collegiate athlete populations. Interscholastic athletes reason from a less consistent, impartial, and reflective moral reasoning than do nonathletes.

An impartial reasoning solution to the prisoner's dilemma

The notion that fairness can be determined by using impartial reasoning is examined and an argument is advanced that experimental methods can be used to determine what is fair in certain well-defined contexts. Implications for the prisoner's dilemma are examined. The standard game theoretic prescription of defection in the two-person prisoner's dilemma is contrasted with the prescription generated by rational self-interested players playing the game from an “impartial reasoning” point of view. The incentive structure in such a situation is shown to be similar to that in the familiar “You cut the cake and I choose” rule. The incentive is to be as fair as possible and it reveals the ethical content of rational self-interested behavior. When players choose in ignorance of whether the strategic choice is for themselves or their counterpart their choices are ipso facto fair. The indicated choice of mutual cooperation furnishes a partial explanation for the observed cooperation in experimental contexts. The moral prescriptions that individuals experience are shown to be a function of their risk propensities and to vary as a function of the cardinal properties of games. Implications for behavior in other games are briefly discussed.

Law, Deconstruction, and the Resistance to Theory

ideal. And this in turn gives rise to the history of variant legal creeds and philosophies, the debate between conservatives, liberals, and radicals all of whom adopt some particular view of how the balance can best be struck. What de Man suggests is that the rhetoric of law more specifically, the tensions that develop in its language between constative and performative modes may be at the root of these differences and affect them in ways not fully understood by exponents of this or that principled viewpoint. Now there might, on the face of it, seem little to choose between de Man's deconstructionist reading of the Social Contract and the arguments put forward by members of the critical legal studies movement. They also make practice of exposing contradictions and antinomies, pointing to areas where law is indeterminate, and claiming that judgments are arrived at not on the basis of impartial reasoning, or in pursuit of justice and truth, but always under pressure of competing political interests. Furthermore, they would appear to follow his example by treating legal discourse in rhetorical terms, as language that works to persuade, win over, or (most often) simply to coerce subjects into accepting the current institutional status quo. Any attempt to derive code of practice from first principles, rules, or natural justice is regarded by these delegitimising critics as ruse in the service of authority and power. Their main target is the doctrine of legal formalism, classically defined (in the words of Roberto Unger) as in the availability of deductive or quasi-deductive method capable of giving determinate solutions to particular problems of legal choice.39 This belief found its most articulate expression in the work of Hans Kelsen, the neo-Kantian theorist who sought to ground jurisprudence in self-sufficient system of priori concepts, ground rules, and regulative terms, and hence to save it from the looming threat of cultural and ethical relativism.40 This strong version of the formalist case has since been subjected to widespread criticism and nowadays has few adherents. But the doctrine survives, according to Unger, in current attempts to distinguish between questions that belong strictly within the province of legal debate, and issues that open into wider contexts of socio-political argument. Formalism in this sense can be defined more generally as a commitment to, and belief in the possibility of, method of legal justification that contrasts with open-ended disputes about the basic terms of social life, disputes that people call ideological, philosophical, or visionary.41 It is the aim of the critical legal studies movement to demolish the grounds of any such distinction, to show that legal reasoning is always bound up with particular interests, values, priorities, or visions of the social good. And this can best be