Moral Claims Research Articles

The Right to Exclude and the Duty to Include: Self-determination, Equal Opportunity, and Immigration

Abstract The immigration debate in political theory has produced a series of accounts that justify the state’s right to exclude potential immigrants, where the right of self-determination figures prominently. We challenge two prominent accounts of the self-determination-based right to exclude and defend a circumscribed right to exclude and a corollary duty to admit immigrants, based on our ‘people relationship goods’ account of self-determination. Our conception reconciles the moral claims of global opportunity migrants with the well-being and non-alienation interests of the locals. It therefore provides a principled answer to the philosophical question underlying pressing political conflicts today, namely what is the permissible scope of exclusion by self-determining political communities, in light of weighty global moral demands of inclusion.

Core Framing terhadap Penggunaan Tafsir Ibnu Katsir di Media Online

This research was born because of the rise of societal hegemony in the digital era towards Islamic presentations, especially in the treasures of Al-Qur'an interpretation using books written by a mufasir who carries a certain construction. This study aims to discuss the core framing of the use of Tafsir Ibnu Katsir in online media. This research method is qualitative through literature and field studies using media framing theory. The results of this study are to show that core framing is attached to the accumulation of presentation analysis through opening, critical thinking, brainstorming, argumentation, symbols, data and facts, moral claims, closing as well as the core idea of ​​using the source Tafsir Ibnu Katsir on the Islami.co and Bincangsyariah.com websites , namely a peaceful and comprehensive Islamic discourse through the insertion of peaceful narratives and explanations of Al-Qur'an verses both textually and contextually in the presentation. This research is present as a neat effort so that an authoritative and trustworthy study of the Qur'an is not limited to the dimensions of space and time. Studies of the Qur'an can also be present in an accommodative manner and are easily accessible to all groups.

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Mission Accomplished? Balancing Market Growth and Moral Legitimation in the Fair Trade Moral Market

Mission Accomplished? Balancing Market Growth and Moral Legitimation in the Fair Trade Moral Market

The Possession of History and the Dispossession of Silwan’s Palestinians

Since 1967, the slogan “restoring Jerusalem to its Jewish glory” has served as a rallying cry for the further colonization of the occupied eastern part of the city by the Israeli government and settler organizations alike. Jewish settlement in Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods invokes moral claims to Jewish sovereignty based on biblical history and material claims to pre-1948 properties of Jews in these neighborhoods. This essay examines Jewish settler groups’ utilization of Israel’s political-legal infrastructure to advance their colonization projects at the very heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem. More specifically, it examines an area of Silwan where Ateret Cohanim, through its representatives, has initiated eviction lawsuits against dozens of Palestinian families in the Israeli magistrate court, alleging trespass of Jewish-endowed waqf land established in the 1880s. As elsewhere in East Jerusalem, some of the targeted families in Silwan were originally displaced either from areas that became Israel after 1948 or from the Old City in 1967.

Truth, Moral Rightness, and Justification: A Habermasian Perspective on Decolonizing the University

AbstractIn this paper, Anniina Leiviskä examines the moral, political, and epistemic claims of the social justice movement known as “decolonizing the university” from the perspective of Jürgen Habermas's distinction between objective and normative validity and the respective notions of truth and moral rightness. Leiviskä challenges the view, held by some representatives of decolonization, that the normative and epistemic claims of the movement are inseparable from each other and suggests that evaluating the justification of the movement requires holding these claims at least analytically distinguishable. She argues that while the moral and political claims of “decolonizing the university” find strong justification through Habermas's discourse morality, its epistemic claims, especially the rejection of shared standards of knowledge, might have epistemically problematic consequences. Accordingly, Leiviskä suggests here that the epistemic justification of decolonization is conditional on the acceptance of shared epistemic standards — the pragmatic truth concept and the criterion of impartiality — which she develops in the paper on the basis of Habermas's pragmatic theory of truth and rational discourse as a model of justification. Finally, she proposes that the implications of these criteria for practices of higher education and the curriculum should be determined through an open and unconstrained discussion by the members of an inclusive university community.

Philosophy and History, Customs and Ethics

Philosophy and History, Customs and Ethics Hui-Chieh Loy (bio) Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom. By Tao Jiang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China is a serious tour de force of a study. In many ways, I am reminded of Angus Graham's Disputers of the Tao and Benjamin Schwartz' The World of Thought in Ancient China—but updated. A signal difference is that it is more constrained in its coverage of figures, texts, and especially in having the topical focus upon moral-political philosophy. At the same time and within the chosen (narrower) confines, it often examines its subject in greater detail and draws on more recent discussions. One neat thing that Jiang does is to deliberately weave in explicit discussions of how each subsequent thinker or text incorporated or criticized ideas associated with earlier thinkers. (I formulated it this way since there isn't enough historical evidence about who-actually-read-what in the ancient world, citation practices being what they were.) In this regard, I am especially heartened to read, for example, the sections on "Traces of Mohist Elements in the Laozi" (3.3.2), and "Mohist Elements in Han Feizi's Thought" (7.3.3). By no means should the desultory remarks below be counted as a full review or assessment (impressionistically, this is the sort of book I will recommend that my grad students read—there, I've said it). Think of them as humble shards of pottery thrown in the hope for some jade in response. To make my task more focused, I will comment on the Sinology versus Philosophy distinction, and Jiang's treatment of the Mohists. I. Philosophy and History of Philosophy An important part of Jiang's Introduction is devoted to discussing the situation of Chinese Philosophy as a field in the Western Academy, caught between Sinology on the one hand and academic Philosophy on the other. Due to the different scholarly objectives and norms in the two disciplines, scholars working on Chinese Philosophy often find themselves caught [End Page 420] between two distinct audiences who demand different things. Jiang's aim is to propose an "interpretive model to distinguish two sets of scholarly objects operative in Sinology and philosophy. These objects are related and at times overlap, but they are also often irreducibly distinct, i.e., original text versus inherited text, historical author versus textual author, and authorial intent versus textual intent, with the former in the pairs belonging to Sinologists and the latter to philosophers" (p. 7). In general, I am highly sympathetic to the distinctions Jiang draws. But I do wonder if we need to step back and start from a wider context involving what is potentially a deeper divide. Now, it is entirely a caricature but the joke around the water cooler is that philosophers—especially those of a more "analytic" bent—often exude the attitude that they are not in the business of reading old books. Their project is one focused on issues and problems and puzzles that are ultimately about the natural and human world, rather than about texts and their interpretation, or even the historical thinkers themselves. To give some obvious examples, the intellectual questions they see themselves as answering are the likes of: • Can we know that God exists, if God exists at all? • What is the nature of moral claims? Do they admit of truth and falsity? • How is causation related to possibility? • Is a logic that dispenses with the law of non-contradiction viable? • What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? • Is abortion morally justifiable? Sometimes the questions they ask even infringe on the results and insights from nearby fields, for instance linguistics and the natural and empirical sciences: • What is time? • Can a presentist conception of time be made consistent with contemporary physics? • What is the nature of consciousness? How is it related to physical neural states or informational computational processes? • Can computers be sentient? • How is morality related to the passions? • In what sense is a political order that does justice to diversity of moral beliefs...

Severity as a moral qualifier of malady

The overarching aim of this article is to scrutinize how severity can work as a qualifier for the moral impetus of malady. While there is agreement that malady is of negative value, there is disagreement about precisely how this is so. Nevertheless, alleviating disease, injury, and associated suffering is almost universally considered good. Furthermore, the strength of a diseased person’s moral claims for our attention and efforts will inevitably vary. This article starts by reflecting on what kind of moral impetus malady incites. We then analyze how severity may qualify this impetus. We do so by discussing the relationship between severity and need, well-being and disvalue, death, urgency, rule of rescue, and distributive justice. We then summarize our thoughts about severity as a moral qualifier. We conclude that severity is, and should continue to be seen, as a morally significant concept that deserves continued attention in the future.

A Pluralist Approach to Joint Responsibility

A Pluralist Approach to Joint Responsibility

Are Rights of Nature Manifesto Rights (And is That a Problem)?

That nature, including insentient entities such as trees, rivers, or ecosystems, should be recognized as right-holders is an enticing thought that would have substantial practical repercussions. But the position finds little support from moral conceptions of rights and moral distinctions that have judicial relevance in the sense of providing normative reasons for legislation and assessing existing laws. An alternative to viewing rights of nature as proper rights resting on valid moral claims that ought to be legally recognized is to regard them as ‘manifesto’ rights. Such rights are based on political demands and hold even if there is no one with a corresponding duty to fulfill them. I investigate whether rights of nature can be considered manifesto rights. Some objections to regarding rights of nature as manifesto rights will be considered, such as difficulties of delimiting the borders of an environmental entity and making successful analogies with existing (human) rights based on interests and needs. It will be suggested that while some of those challenges can be mitigated by custodianship, it is not clear what needs of insentient entities in nature would justify such claims. It is found that rights of nature depend substantially on legitimate custodians both for delineation of the entity in question and for establishing interest-like characteristics. But rights of nature are not manifesto rights when there is a legitimate custodian having the possibility of evoking duties in others. However, the need for a legitimate custodian in delimitation and establishing normatively relevant characteristics of specific environmental entities defeats universal appeals to rights of nature.

Sharing Homes and Beds: Baptist-Bootlegger Coalitions and the Politics of Authenticity in the Regulation of Los Angeles's Short-Term Rental Markets

Platform economy politics reflect a trend of corporations working with civic actors to achieve shared political goals, reconfiguring once adversarial relationships (e.g., management vs. labor, homeowners vs. tenants). Yet theories on urban politics and policymaking often do not account for such “Baptist-Bootlegger” coalitions (Smith and Yandle 2014; Yandle 1983). This article analyzes how the efforts of two competing Baptist-Bootlegger coalitions shaped the 2018 short-term rental (i.e., Airbnb, HomeAway) ordinance in Los Angeles, CA, USA. I argue that a subtly coordinated partnership of housing groups, neighborhood activists, and hotel market incumbents leveraged their individual authenticity and resources to successfully articulate a shared vision with policymakers. Conversely, an opposing coalition of short-term rental platforms and hosts more explicitly combined their efforts under an organizational framework that conflated economic and moral claims; this hybrid organizational identity was perceived as less authentic by policymaking audiences and precluded potentially more strategic forms of organizing.

Advancing Value Pluralist Approaches to Social Policy Controversies: A Case Study of Welfare Conditionality

Abstract‘Value pluralism’ is a strand of analytical philosophy that posits the plurality of morally significant values. By enabling systematic mapping of the diversity of moral registers within which social policy concerns might legitimately be considered, we contend that value pluralist-inspired analysis can aid constructive policy dialogue. Our argument is founded on four claims: first, as a matter of normative principle, value pluralism represents a defensible ethical standpoint; second, as a matter of fact, people are attracted to a plurality of moral values; third, as a matter of democratic legitimacy, pluralism offers a means of (partially) reconciling rival moral claims; fourth, as a matter of political strategy, pluralism offers a pragmatic approach that can engage protagonists on their own terms. To demonstrate its efficacy, we apply this pluralist approach to the vexed question of welfare conditionality, which we interrogate via six normative perspectives (rights, utilitarianism, contractualism, communitarianism, paternalism and social justice).

Human Brain Organoids and Consciousness: Moral Claims and Epistemic Uncertainty

Human brain organoids provide a remarkable opportunity to model prenatal human brain biology in vitro by recapitulating features of in utero molecular, cellular and systems biology. An ethical concern peculiar to human brain organoids is whether they are or could become capable of supporting sentience through the experience of pain or pleasure and/or consciousness, including higher cognitive abilities such as self-awareness. Identifying the presence of these traits is complicated by several factors, beginning with consciousness—which is a highly contested concept among neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers and so there is no agreed definition. Secondly, given human brain organoids are disembodied, there is no practical way to identify evidence of consciousness as we might in humans or animals. What would count as evidence of organoid consciousness is an emerging area of research. To address concerns about consciousness and human brain organoids, in this paper we clarify the morally relevant aspects of human consciousness, phenomenal experience and embodied development and explore the empirical basis of consciousness to develop a defensible framework for informed decision-making on the moral significance and utility of brain organoids, which can also guide regulation and future research of these novel biological systems.

Uncompensated claims to fair emission space risk putting Paris Agreement goals out of reach

Addressing questions of equitable contributions to emission reductions is important to facilitate ambitious global action on climate change within the ambit of the Paris Agreement. Several large developing regions with low historical contributions to global warming have a strong moral claim to a large proportion of the remaining carbon budget (RCB). However, this claim needs to be assessed in a context where the RCB consistent with the long-term temperature goal (LTTG) of the Paris Agreement is rapidly diminishing. Here we assess the potential tension between the moral claim to the remaining carbon space by large developing regions with low per capita emissions, and the collective obligation to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Based on scenarios underlying the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report, we construct a suite of scenarios that combine the following elements: (a) two quantifications of a moral claim to the remaining carbon space by South Asia, and Africa, (b) a ‘highest possible emission reduction’ effort by developed regions (DRs), and (c) a corresponding range for other developing regions (ODR). We find that even the best effort by DRs cannot compensate for a unilateral claim to the remaining carbon space by South Asia and Africa. This would put the LTTG firmly out of reach unless ODRs cede their moral claim to emissions space and, like DRs, pursue highest possible emission reductions, which would also constitute an inequitable outcome. Furthermore, regions such as Latin America would need to provide large-scale negative emissions with potential risks and negative side effects. Our findings raise important questions of perspectives on equity in the context of the Paris Agreement including on the critical importance of climate finance. A failure to provide adequate levels of financial support to compensate large developing regions to emit less than their moral claim will put the Paris Agreement at risk.

:Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature

Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) and Jan Potocki’s Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie (The Manuscript Found in Saragossa) (1804–47) are an inspired pairing. Both works “solicit belief in the unreal” and trouble the moral claims made for fiction (38). Showing how Maturin’s paratext deliberately muddies the relationship between the real and the fictional by emphasizing the plausibility of its bizarre occurrences, the chapter uncovers an uneasy and surprising strain of truthfulness in the Gothic novel. These narratives exemplify the persistent appeal of literary “wonder,” thus complicating the “rise” of the realist novel, but they also allow Bartoszyńska to reframe the scope of the nineteenth-century novel.3 Mapping the profusion of baroque tales of exotic travel, supernatural powers, superstition, religious alterity, love, and desire, the discussion reveals the nineteenth-century novel not as costively national, but as unnervingly global. These novels assemble mysterious narratives to produce “the image of a vast, interconnected realm, an intersubjective space that is co-created by the various people within it” (44). This, she argues, is an instance of what Alexander Beecroft calls entrelacement, a formal corollary of the “paranoiac interconnectedness of life in a globalized era.”4 The Gothic approach to fictionality is strikingly modern.

Contractevolism: A promising novel way to evaluate moral claims?

Contractevolism: A promising novel way to evaluate moral claims?

Is Morality Open to the Free Will Skeptic?

The primary aim of this essay is to consider whether free will skeptics’ assertions of moral claims pertaining to human agents and their actions are consistent with the rejection of the kind of moral responsibility—namely, that which requires free will—that is espoused by virtually all of them. In order to address this issue, I will examine one of the most well-known and detailed defenses of morality by a free will skeptic; namely, that provided by Derk Pereboom in his book Living without Free Will. I conclude that free will skeptics should dispense with making any moral assertions with regard to human agents or their actions since doing so does little more than muddy up the conceptual waters by recasting moral terms in ways that are at odds with their traditional or folk usage.​

Expressivism and moral independence

AbstractMetaethical expressivism faces the perennial objection that its commitment to non‐cognitivism about moral judgment renders the view revisionary of our ordinary moral thought. The standard response to this objection is to say that since the expressivist's theoretical commitments about the nature of moral judgment are independent of normative ethics, the view cannot be revisionary of normative ethics. This essay seeks to evaluate the standard response by exploring several senses of independence that expressivism might enjoy from normative ethics. I develop a taxonomy on which, at least by the expressivist's own lights, normative ethics is not dependent on non‐cognitivism about moral judgment in a way that might render that claim itself normative ethical. The argument will require us to formulate a theory of moral subject matter according to the expressivist, a matter of independent interest. Although this discussion will essentially vindicate the standard response to the perennial objection, it will also highlight a major limitation thereof. This is that even for the expressivist, the taxonomic independence of non‐cognitivism about moral judgment from normative ethics does not guarantee its moral independence from normative ethics; that is, showing that non‐cognitivism about moral judgment is not a moral claim is not itself to show that it is not a morally relevant claim. I conclude by arguing that the question of moral dependence, usually discussed under the heading of objectivity, is ultimately first‐order moral rather than taxonomic, and so can only be resolved on first‐order moral grounds.

Toward a Theory of Marginalized Stakeholder-Centric Entrepreneurship

The neglect of marginalized stakeholders is a colossal problem in both stakeholder and entrepreneurship streams of literature. To address this problem, we offer a theory of marginalized stakeholder-centric entrepreneurship. We conceptualize how firms can utilize marginalized stakeholder input actualization through which firms should process a variety of ideas, resources, and interactions with marginalized stakeholders and then filter, internalize, and, finally, realize important elements that improve a variety of related socioeconomic, ethical, racial, contextual, political, and identity issues. This input actualization process enables firms to innovate with marginalized stakeholders and develop marginalized stakeholder capabilities. To this end, firms fulfill both their moral and entrepreneurial claims to marginalized stakeholders.

Experiments in peripheral urbanization: Building and unbuilding commons in urban India

Peripheral urbanization is the predominant mode of producing space in the Global South, in which residents build their own homes and neighborhoods, becoming citizens and political agents in the process. In this article, I bring feminist ethnographic attention to community infrastructure such as childcare centers built collectively by women residents in MGR Nagar, an informal urban settlement in Chennai, India, as understudied examples of autoconstruction in peripheral urbanization. Marxist feminism enables a theorization of these infrastructures of social reproduction as urban commons that assert collective spatial autonomy and enable moral claims on urban space, while serving the everyday needs of its residents. The subsequent demolition of the childcare center caused symbolic and material loss to residents. However, the ceding of territorial autonomy and spatial privileges was a way for them to make new material and political gains in the city, suggesting that a feminist politics of space is possible in which legitimacy and responsibility are demanded from the state. The commons in turn can be seen as durable countertopographies enabling a politics of place in multiple locations.