Kind Of Justification Research Articles

INTRODUCTION: GLOBAL DEMOCRACY AND EXCLUSION

Abstract: Does democracy or popular sovereignty imply exclusion and drawing borders? And if so, what type of exclusion and borders, and what kind of justification can we give for them? Moreover, if democracy really requires some kind of exclusion, is global democracy then a paradoxical union of two contradictory ideals? Can we create a demos on the global level? The focus of this collection of essays is on this potential conflict and its underlying values.

Inclusion versus excellence: Caste and the framing of fair access in Indian higher education

Written for a non-Indian audience, this paper outlines the main issues involved in the current controversy around the expansion of India's positive action programmes to new caste groups and to elite segments of the higher education system. It is concerned mainly with the ideological aspects of the controversy over quotas or ‘reservations’in state-funded elite professional colleges for the ‘Other Backward Classes’, this being the official term for a large (more than 40% of total population) and disparate group of intermediate castes, most of whom are poor and backward although some are prosperous. politically powerful rural castes. The focus is on the two central ideas of inclusion (or social justice) and excellence (or merit) which map the terrain on which battles over access to higher education are fought. Recent evidence on caste inequality (specially in higher education) is discussed. as are the specific contextual factors which complicate questions of fair access to higher education in countries with large and highly unequal populations. The paper ends with a preliminary analYSis of the different kinds of justifications offered for positive action programmes and the modalities which they may follow.

The Challenge of Ethical Relativism in a Coalition Environment

This paper explores the practical ethical challenges faced by a military commander in a coalition environment when that partner does not appear to share the same ethical values. Should one intervene? If one accepts that ethical standards are not absolute, does one have any kind of justification in interfering in such a situation? The implications and validity of ethical relativism are explored and challenged and then a framework is proposed to allow a structured approach to decision-making in such situations that balances considerations of the specific act against the implications in a broader context. Such a framework can be used whether or not ethical relativism is accepted as a valid explanation.

Should research ethics committees meet in public?

Currently, research ethics committees (RECs) in the UK meet behind closed doors—their workings and most of the content of their decisions are unavailable to the general public. There is a...

Restitution and Realism

While the roots of the common law of restitution reach back hundreds of years, the idea that it constitutes a domain of private law was first clearly articulated in the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Restitution in 1932. The U.S. was at the forefront of development in the law of restitution but interest has declined. Recently John Langbein offered an explanation, first in terms of law and economics and then through legal realism. Realism, by Langbein’s estimation, has exacted “a terrible toll” on doctrinal study in the postwar period. One of the principal aims of The Law and Ethics of Restitution, Hanoch Dagan writes, is to disprove this claim. Realism, properly understood, is supportive of doctrine and, he argues, in this context, provides a better account of the law than the prevailing view. This book is a challenging and important work not only in the law of restitution but also in legal theory. My main interest in this Critical Notice is to ask whether the kind of justification for liability in restitution Dagan offers is compelling. While part of what separates Dagan from Langbein is their understanding of legal realism, I take Dagan to be right on this point, and ask whether he’s made the case in favour of a realist account of restitution. I do that by considering two examples of the doctrinal analyses that form the bulk of the book: first by outlining a pair of issues on which Dagan takes a position by setting up the question he aims to ask, and then by considering his rejection of the view to which The Law and Ethics of Restitution offers an alternative.

Supreme Emergencies Revisited

Previous articleNext article No AccessSupreme Emergencies Revisited*Daniel StatmanDaniel Statman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 117, Number 1October 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/508037 Views: 566Total views on this site Citations: 21Citations are reported from Crossref © 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Stefano Semplici Ethics in Emergency Times: The Case of COVID-19, Philosophies 7, no.33 (Jun 2022): 70.https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7030070Adam Cebula Collective Complicity in War Crimes. Some Remarks on the Principle of Moral Equality of Soldiers, Philosophia 48, no.44 (May 2020): 1313–1332.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00208-3Fritz Allhoff, K Potts Medical immunity, international law and just war theory, Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps 165, no.44 (Oct 2018): 256–265.https://doi.org/10.1136/jramc-2018-001020Fernando R. Teson Assassination, (Jun 2019): 1–4.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee454.pub2Annette Schmitt Dirty Hands? No (Moral) Problem!, (Nov 2018): 215–230.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-24529-0_14J. Toby Reiner ‘Supreme Emergencies’, ontological holism, and rights to communal membership, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20, no.44 (Mar 2015): 425–445.https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2015.1004837Jennifer Kling Who owes what to war refugees, Journal of Global Ethics 12, no.33 (Dec 2016): 327–346.https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2016.1248297James W. Nickel Two Models of Normative Frameworks for Human Rights During Emergencies, (Jul 2016): 56–80.https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316336205.004Fernando R. Teson Assassination, (Feb 2013).https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee454Daniel Statman SUPREME EMERGENCIES AND THE CONTINUUM PROBLEM, Journal of Military Ethics 11, no.44 (Dec 2012): 287–298.https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2012.758402Endre Begby, Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse The Ethics of War. Part II: Contemporary Authors and Issues, Philosophy Compass 7, no.55 (May 2012): 328–347.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00476.xIgor Primoratz Civilian Immunity, Supreme Emergency, and Moral Disaster, The Journal of Ethics 15, no.44 (Jul 2010): 371–386.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-010-9077-8Daniel Statman Supreme Emergencies and the Continuum Problem, SSRN Electronic Journal 37 (Jan 2011).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1873806Re’em Segev Sub-Optimal Justification and Justificatory Defenses, Criminal Law and Philosophy 4, no.11 (Sep 2009): 57–76.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-009-9086-5Per Sandin, Misse Wester The Moral Black Hole, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12, no.33 (Feb 2009): 291–301.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9152-zPer Sandin Supreme Emergencies Without the Bad Guys, Philosophia 37, no.11 (Jul 2008): 153–167.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9145-5by Daniel Statman On the Success Condition for Legitimate Self‐Defense Statman, Ethics 118, no.44 (Jul 2015): 659–686.https://doi.org/10.1086/589531Michael L. Gross The Second Lebanon War: The Question of Proportionality and the Prospect of Non-Lethal Warfare, Journal of Military Ethics 7, no.11 (Apr 2008): 1–22.https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570801951368Alex J. Bellamy The Ethics of Terror Bombing: Beyond Supreme Emergency, Journal of Military Ethics 7, no.11 (Apr 2008): 41–65.https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570801953448Daniel Statman The Success Condition for Legitimate Self-Defense, SSRN Electronic Journal 84 (Jan 2006).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.929952Michael L. Gross Is Medicine a Pacifist Vocation or Should Doctors Help Build Bombs?, (): 151–166.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6912-3_9

Ashcroft Among the Senators: Justification, Strategy, and Tactics in the 2001 Attorney General Confirmation Hearing

This essay explores justification in the 2001 Attorney General confirmation hearings. It argues that the hearings were a public fiction of deliberation that allowed the Senators to justify their support for or opposition to nominee John Ashcroft. After discussing the panel's argument, the paper indicates that power positions play a strong role in the kinds of justifications used. The arguments made in the confirmation hearing show that the Democrats on the panel used tactics of justified opposition and that the Republicans used a strategy of justified support to support Ashcroft. Implications for the study of justification in public argument are provided.

Reasons and psychological explanation

There are often many reasons that can be given for the same action. Some reasons are causes, that is, they are present before the action, and without them the action would not have occurred. However, other reasons are, I argue, applied to an action after it has occurred. They are a kind of justification but in affixing a meaning to an action they also change that action's consequences. When we choose one reason over another, we are both justifying the action and bringing into being a possible cause of future action. Good reasons must therefore not only be consistent with the causes of the action that they justify but must also have their own causal powers. Reason descriptions cannot be replaced by descriptions of causes, but nor can reasons be discounted as justifications because they are without any causal properties. A full account of human beings requires both types of explanations, reasons and causes, and some bridge which links the two of them. This paper attempts to lay the foundation for this bridge.

Forensic Ethics

Back to table of contents Previous article Letter to the EditorFull AccessForensic EthicsMiodrag Ristich, M.D.Miodrag RistichSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:2 Nov 2001https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.36.21.0026bIn the September 7 issue, Jack Schoenholtz, M.D., is quoted as saying: “We should not medicate [Russell] Weston to have him appear competent to stand trial. The job of the doctor here must not be to serve the interests of the state.”This is, obviously, his opinion; it is not an ethical principle binding on us all. Every day in this country unwilling criminal defendants are made to give blood specimens, buccal swabs, and possibly other materials, since the Fifth Amendment protection does not apply in these situations. These specimens are then processed by forensic physicians, who are clearly serving the government interest in having criminal cases adjudicated using the best available evidence. Nobody suggests that these physicians are unethical.Whether a criminal defendant is best presented at the bar of justice at his psychotic baseline or in a state of medicated sanity is for the courts to decide and, as the article itself pointed out, judicial opinion on this issue is evolving. However, once the courts have spoken, there is no ethical bar to restoring the defendant to the highest functional level attainable, and the kinds of justifications that Dr. Schoenholtz is reported to be offering are totally unnecessary.New York, N.Y. ISSUES NewArchived

Justifying the State

To escape the state of nature, people would submit to an absolute sovereign. Therefore, absolute sovereignty is justified. So argued Thomas Hobbes. A minimal state, and only a minimal state, could arise by an invisible hand process. Therefore, the minimal state is justified. So argued Robert Nozick. In political philosophy, therefores often seem to come from nowhere. My versions of these arguments are caricatures, of course, but many of us are also left wondering by the real thing. Do Hobbes's contractarian story and Nozick's invisible hand story have anything to do with justifying the state? What would a story have to be like to engage such a task? These questions matter. Rational choice theories like that of Hobbes (and after him, Rawls) and natural rights theories like that of Nozick (and before him, Locke) are the wellsprings of current Anglo-American political philosophy, supplying not only our subject matter but our methods as well.' If they don't make sense, then generally speaking, neither do we. I will distinguish between two different kinds ofjustification in political theory. This distinction can help us avoid being distracted by problems that are mere artifacts of contractarian methodology, only appearing to be relevant to justifying states per se. This will help us explain what is irreparably wrong with hypothetical consent arguments, why we find them appealing nevertheless, and what kind of argument can actually make use of that appealing hypothetical element. The distinction will also clarify the limited sense in which invisible hand processes can be relevant to a state's justification.

The Politics of Justification

THE PRACTICE OF POLITICAL JUSTIFICATION is not just for philosophers, and it does not simply lie behind (as we may hope) our political arrangements. Commitments to reason giving and reason demanding inform some of our most valuable political practices. Judicial review, most obviously, helps ensure legislative and executive acts are reasonable in constitutional terms: In court it is not the fact of power but the display of reasons and evidence counts. Not only the courts, but also Congress and the executive branch sometimes (and quite properly) conscientiously justify their actions in constitutional terms. Constitution aside, much takes place in and around legislatures, elections, and other political fora can be understood as efforts to justify particular policies and programs.1 Liberals demand, as Jeremy Waldron puts it, that the social order should in principle be capable of explaining itself at the tribunal of each person's understanding.2 Liberal, democratic politics is not only about individual rights and limited govemment, it is also about justification, but not about any kind of justification at all. Liberal political justification, even in its ideal form, should be understood politically this article considers why and how. Liberal contractualists typically seek justifications are widely acceptable to reasonable people with a broad range of moral, philosophical, and religious commitments.3 The aim is reasonable agreement: to be both reasonable and agreeable in a widely pluralistic society.4 The appropriate means is a process of reasoning is publicly accessible, but genuinely justificatory.

Justifying morality: The right and the wrong ways

Contemporary philosophers offer three kinds of justification for morality. Some, following Plato, claim that morality is justified by self-interest.1 Others, following Hume as he is frequently interpreted, claim that morality is justified in terms of other-regarding interests, wants or intentions that people happen to have.2 And still others, following Kant, claim that morality is justified in terfns of the requirements of practical reason.3 In The Moral Point of View pub lished in 1958 and in a series of articles continuing to the present, Kurt Baier has defended this third sort of justification for morality.4 In this paper, after years of respectful opposition, I join forces with Baier and argue that only a justification of this third sort can be fully adequate and then only when it is developed in a certain way.5 I begin by showing what is wrong or defective in the other justifications. Then I consider attempts by Baier and others to elaborate the third sort of justification. Drawing upon their work, I present a justification based on the requirements of practical reason that succeeds in demonstrating that the rational egoist acts contrary to reason.

Human needs and the justification of religious belief

That religious beliefs are justified because they satisfy deep human needs is one of the perennial options in the epistemology of religious belief.1 No doubt, for some its appeal is the result of the difficulties they find in other options; but for others its appeal lies elsewhere. The satisfaction of human needs seems to be one of the central reasons many believers actually believe, and the justification afforded by these needs seems to be more compatible with the claim that belief in God is a matter of faith. Those who have offered theistic arguments that appeal to human needs, however, have rarely been clear as to the kind of justification they provide. The classical positions, those of Kant, Kierkegaard and James, have included the respective distinctions between theoretical and practical, objective and subjective, and intellectual and passional to indicate that the appeal to human needs is not on a par with the type of evidential justification characteristic of many other intellectual endeavors. But what precisely are the differences? Philosophers have commonly argued that one of the differences is that appeals to human needs may make believing in God a rational act but do not provide any evidence that what believers believe about him is actually true. Though this is certainly a plausible position, fashioned for the best of motives, it does not accurately capture the significance of human needs for religious belief. Still less does it provide much of a rational justification. In what follows I shall try to show why and at the same time to make a case for regarding the satisfaction of human needs as evidence.

The epistemology of a rule-based expert system —a framework for explanation

Production rules are a popular representation for encoding heuristic knowledge in programs for scientific and medical problem solving. However, experience with one of these programs, mycin, indicates that the representation has serious limitations: people other than the original rule authors find it difficult to modify the rule set, and the rules are unsuitable for use in other settings, such as for application to teaching. These problems are rooted in fundamental limitations in mycin's original rule representation: the view that expert knowledge can be encoded as a uniform, weakly structured set of if/then associations is found to be wanting. To illustrate these problems, this paper examines mycin's rules from the perspective of a teacher trying to justify them and to convey a problem-solving approach. We discover that individual rules play different roles, have different kinds of justifications, and are constructed using different rationales for the ordering and choice of premise clauses. This design knowledge, consisting of structural and strategic concepts which lie outside the representation, is shown to be procedurally embedded in the rules. Moreover, because the data/hypothesis associations are themselves a proceduralized form of underlying disease models, they can only be supported by appealing to this deeper level of knowledge. Making explicit this structural, strategic and support knowledge enhances the ability to understand and modify the system.

Utility and the Value of Persons: A Response to Professor Brandt's Comments

I have four responses to make, the first three very brief and the last not much longer.On the face of it, it looks as though in attributing rights to people one is saying something about their moral position. This is so for both option-rights and welfare-rights. On H.L.A. Hart's account of rights to freedom, that is exactly what one is doing. One is asserting that those who have the right have a special kind of justification for limiting the freedom of others. On Professor Brandt's view, it appears that attributing a right to someone is just an oblique way of saying something about the moral position of others, and nothing more.

Probability Kinematics and Representation of Belief Change

Bayesian, Jeffrey and Field conditionals are compared and it is shown why the last two cannot be reduced to the first. Maximum relative entropy is used in two kinds of justification of the Field conditional and the dispensability of entropy principles in general is discussed.

The ‘Principle’ of Natural Order: or What the Enlightened Sceptics did not doubt

My title advertizes a paradox. The characteristic complaint of the sceptic is that others make assumptions they are not entitled to make. A philosophical sceptic is committed to a systematic refusal to accept such assumptions in the absence of the kind of justification they think is required. A sceptic who, none the less, helps himself to such an assumption, seems to be caught in a paradoxical position. This is the kind of situation in which, it seems, certain eighteenth-century sceptical philosophers were placed in relation to the ‘principle’ of natural order. They did not doubt that there is such a principle, that there is a source or ultimate cause of the order to be found in the universe. And yet, on their own terms, is not the existence of such a principle something we should expect them to have doubted? What I shall try to do in this lecture is to bring out why they did not doubt the existence of such a principle and how serious their failure to do so is for their sceptical position.

The ‘Principle’ of Natural Order: or What the Enlightened Sceptics did not doubt

My title advertizes a paradox. The characteristic complaint of the sceptic is that others make assumptions they are not entitled to make. A philosophical sceptic is committed to a systematic refusal to accept such assumptions in the absence of the kind of justification they think is required. A sceptic who, none the less, helps himself to such an assumption, seems to be caught in a paradoxical position. This is the kind of situation in which, it seems, certain eighteenth-century sceptical philosophers were placed in relation to the ‘principle’ of natural order. They did not doubt that there is such a principle, that there is a source or ultimate cause of the order to be found in the universe. And yet, on their own terms, is not the existence of such a principle something we should expect them to have doubted? What I shall try to do in this lecture is to bring out why they did not doubt the existence of such a principle and how serious their failure to do so is for their sceptical position.

The Importance of the Verbal Content in the Training of Piagetian Conservation Skills

FIELD, DOROTHY. The Importance of the Verbal Content in the Training of Piagetian Conservation Skills. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 1583-1592. Experiments using Piagetian tasks to probe the cognitive capacities of retarded children have shown that verbal-rule explanations are most facilitative for conservation acquisition. To determine the crucial components of the verbal rule, a 2 X 2 X 2 factorial design provided training in identity, reversibility, and compensation explanations, alone and in every combination, for eight matched groups of 48 mildly retarded, nonconserving children. Significant differences between groups were found on the posttest, particularly in the amount of generalization to untrained quantities. Identity was the primary factor in conservation acquisition; reversibility was important as well. Compensation strategy proved to be of no value to these children. Justifications offered by the subjects also were analyzed. There were significant differences in the kinds of justifications given, but these justifications did not follow directly from the kinds of training received. The quantity itself seemed to dictate the rationale: number conservation produced mostly identity justifications, for instance, and length conservation usually produced reversibility answers, regardless of training given.

Uwagi o możliwościach uzasadniania systemów normatywnych

The author begins by asking the question: what kind of justification, if any, can be given in support of a normative system? Within the category of normative systems he allows for a variety of theories, ethical and legal. The are cross-classified, in particular they are divided into open and closed systems with regard to their normative, axiological and informative content.