Non-ideal Theory Research Articles

Using the Ideal/Nonideal Distinction in Philosophy of Language (and Elsewhere)

ABSTRACT Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever (C&D) have recently argued that the ideal/non-ideal distinction is ‘useless’ in philosophy of language. This paper responds to C&D’s argument, develops an account of the distinction, and applies it to philosophy of language. Section 1 summarizes C&D’s argument against Charles Mills’s version of the distinction. Section 2 develops an account of the distinction that’s inspired by Mills’s work but that differs from what C&D take Mills’s view to be. Section 3 shows that, pace C&D, this distinction picks out interesting subsets of work in philosophy of language. We say that ideal theories adopt models of the social world that fail to recognize systemic oppression and are therefore systematically inaccurate. Nonideal theories correct these inaccuracies.

On not holding women to higher standards of justice than men: gender justice, even for millionaire women

Abstract In a recent article in this journal, James Christensen, Tom Parr and David Axelsen argue that millionaire salaries are unjust and women have no grounds of fairness to unjust salaries in parity with men. They accept that disrespect is expressed toward women when they are paid less than men because of their gender. Their argument largely replicates a similar argument developed earlier by Anca Gheaus. By drawing on the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory, we argue that Christensen et al. and Gheaus hold women to unacceptably high standards of justice and arguably higher standards than men are held to.

A Non-Ideal Theory of Knowledge

Abstract In her article in this volume Linda Martín Alcoff makes the case for a form of political epistemology that denaturalizes, in the sense of historically and socially situating, procedures of knowledge production and distribution. She pursues this project via a discussion of three twentieth-century thinkers (Horkheimer, Habermas and Foucault) who, she argues, pursued this form of political epistemology, albeit in different ways, and to different ends. In this article I pursue a similar project, but within a different tradition, one that grows out of naturalized epistemology.

Diffusion-induced stress amplification in phase-transition materials for electrodes of lithium-ion batteries

This work sheds the light on the stress amplification in active material particles of electrodes caused by the localized lithium concentration inhomogeneity due to phase transitions. This is a significant issue usually neglected in the literature, as generally the ideal Fickian diffusion model is used to describe the lithium diffusion, which particularly fails when dealing with phase change materials, resulting in the underestimation of the stress. In turn, this results in the underestimation of the fracture behavior of the electrode and the battery degradation, ultimately.To overcome these limitations, this work proposes a mechanical-transport model where the lithium transport is modeled according to the non-ideal solution theory with an equivalent diffusion coefficient depending on the potential of the host material vs Li/Li+. The results show that the proposed model correctly describes the concentration distribution within the particle of phase-change materials (graphite is chosen as a case study), in agreement with the existent experimental measurements. The differences with respect to the traditional Fickian diffusion model is substantial as the stress is up to 85% higher with the proposed model and the concentration distribution can capture the inhomogeneity caused by phase transitions.

Should nonideal theory rely on ideal theory? Lessons from the Frankfurt School

Should nonideal theory rely on ideal theory? Lessons from the <scp>Frankfurt School</scp>

Educational Justice and School Boosting

School boosters are tax-exempt organizations that engage in fundraising efforts to provide public schools with supplementary resources. This paper argues that prevailing forms of school boosting are defeasibly unjust. Section 1 shows that inequalities in public education funding in the United States violate John Rawls’s two principles of domestic justice. Section 2 argues that prevailing forms of school boosting exacerbate and plausibly perpetuate these injustices. Section 3 then contends that boosting thereby defeasibly violates Rawlsian principles of nonideal theory for rectifying injustice. Thus, boosting should be presumptively either made illegal or substantially reformed. Finally, Section 4 responds to potential objections.

Influence of Surfactant Structure on Polydisperse Formulations of Alkyl Ether Sulfates and Alkyl Amidopropyl Betaines.

Surfactants provide detergency, foaming, and texture in personal care formulations, yet the micellization of typical industrial primary and cosurfactants is not well understood, particularly in light of the polydisperse nature of commercial surfactants. Synergistic interactions are hypothesized to drive the formation of elongated wormlike self-assemblies in these mixed surfactant systems. Small-angle neutron scattering, rheology, and pendant drop tensiometry are used to examine surface adsorption, viscoelasticity, and self-assembly structure for wormlike micellar formulations comprising cocoamidopropyl betaine, and its two major components laurylamidopropyl betaine and oleylamidopropyl betaine, with sodium alkyl ethoxy sulfates. The tail length of sodium alkyl ethoxy sulfates was related to their ability to form wormlike micelles in electrolyte solutions, indicating that a tail length greater than 10 carbons is required to form wormlike micelles in NaCl solutions, with the decyl homologue unable to form elongated micelles and maintaining a low viscosity even at 20 wt % surfactant loading with 4 wt % NaCl present. For these systems, the incorporation of a disperse ethoxylate linker does not enable shorter chain surfactants to elongate into wormlike micelles for single-component systems; however, it could increase the interactions between surfactants in mixed surfactant systems. For synergy in surfactant mixing, the nonideal regular solution theory is used to study the sulfate/betaine mixtures. Tail mismatch appears to drive lower critical micelle concentrations, although tail matching improves synergy with larger relative reductions in critical micelle concentrations and greater micelle elongation, as seen by both tensiometric and scattering measurements.

Climate Justice and Political Feasibility

This article argues that rising economic inequality and the decline in political trust across Western countries have systematic normative implications for Western governments’ pursuit of climate justice. The article argues that it is an essential but neglected task of nonideal political theory to identify political feasibility constraints on the pursuit of climate justice and reflect on how to overcome them. The article identifies two feasibility constraints in contemporary Western countries, the inequality constraint and the legitimation constraint, as important elements of a nonideal theory of climate justice. It argues that the French Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) movement arose as a form of bottom-up motivational resistance to President Macron’s decarbonization policies, precisely because those policies did not take sufficient heed of the inequality and legitimation constraints. Furthermore, the article sketches elements of a roadmap for a feasible pathway for Western governments to decarbonize and observe their citizens’ duties of climate justice and argues that the framework of feasibility constraints offers a coherent, novel and urgent rationale for adopting redistributive measures such as the Carbon Fee and Dividend and participatory-democratic measures such as Citizen Assemblies as component parts of a feasible pathway to a decarbonized economy.

"You kind of blame it on the alcohol, but. . .": A discourse analysis of alcohol use and sexual consent among young men in Vancouver, Canada.

There is growing awareness about issues of sexual consent, especially in autonomy-compromising or "non-ideal" contexts, including sex involving alcohol. Understanding the conditions needed for consensual sex to occur in this emergent milieu is critically important, especially for young men (ages 18-30 years) who normatively combine drinking alcohol with sex and are most often perpetrators of sexual violence. This study offers a discourse analysis of young men's alcohol use and sexual consent. Data are drawn from qualitative interviews with 76 young men (including gay, bisexual, queer, and straight men) in Vancouver, Canada, from 2018 to 2021. Informed by Kukla's non-ideal theory of sexual consent and critical and inclusive masculinities, this analysis identified three discursive frames: careful connections, watering it down, and blurred lines. In careful connections young men discussed their efforts to actively promote sexual and decisional autonomy for themselves and their sexual partners when drinking. Yet, in watering it down young men invoked discourses of disinhibition, deflection, and denial to normalize alcohol use as being somewhat excusatory for sexual violence, downplaying the role and responsibility of men. Lastly, men operationalized blurred lines through a continuum of consent and of "meeting (masculine) expectations" when discussing sexual violence and victimization while intoxicated. Together, these discursive frames provide insights into the gendered nature of sexual violence and the extent to which idealized notions of sexual consent play out in the everyday lives of young men who use alcohol with sex. Findings hold philosophical and pragmatic implications for contemporary efforts to scaffold sexual consent.

Non-ideal theory, cultural studies, and the transgender inclusion debate

ABSTRACT This paper centers two complementary theoretical approaches to advance the debate about transgender women’s inclusion in elite women’s sports – namely, non-ideal theory and cultural studies. In doing so, the paper highlights divisions between ideal theory and non-ideal theory, normative internalism in sports and normative externalism in sports, and essentialist views of sports compared to non-essentialist views of sports. The paper’s main agenda is to show the value of applying non-ideal theory, externalism, and non-essentialism to the discourse over transgender inclusion.

Ideal theory needs a realistic defense

The growth of non-ideal theory and of political realism has had a profound influence on methodological inquiry in political philosophy. It is now the norm for authors defending ideal theory to take special care to show that it can relate to the real world in the right sort of way. Two recent books—David Estlund’s Utopophobia: On the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy ( 2020 ), and Ben Laurence’s Agents of Change: Political Philosophy in Practice ( 2021 )—fit this mold. Both authors argue that ideal theory can be practical, and Estlund additionally argues that it can be valuable even if it lacks practical value. In this commentary, I argue that something important is missing from these defenses of ideal theory: they both fail to be realistic in a “second-order” way. I suggest that other recent work comes closer to meeting this standard.

Norms for political cynics. A metatheoretical exploration of the relation between power and normativity in politics

ABSTRACT Supporters of political realism and republicanism as well as students of political feasibility and non-ideal theory progressively focus on the dimension of power in the political relation. Yet we lack the theoretical framework to represent these features of power. In this essay, I take a first step towards designing the necessary conceptual tools for such a framework by analyzing the relations between the concepts of power and normativity that define the political relation. Adopting a ‘methodological cynicism’, I analyse the reasons that motivate cynics who are only interested in power to obey a norm against force or violence and to seek legitimacy. This allows us to characterize external or mediate relations between power and normativity (such as the relation underlying political theory’s ambition of offering normative guidance for power) and identify internal and immediate relations between power and normativity.

Dynamic modeling of cylindrical roller bearings by considering non-through defects and additional forces

Cylindrical roller bearings are essential components in rotating mechanical systems, and ensuring their reliable operation is importance. Accurate modeling of cylindrical roller bearing defects is therefore crucial for enabling effective predictive maintenance strategies in various industries. However, previous studies have overlooked the presence of additional forces that occur when rollers enter and exit non-through defects, leading to inaccuracies in bearing vibration calculations. This work proposes a novel model that captures the bearing vibrations during this process, by considering the defect edge feature of the cylindrical roller bearings. The contact force between the roller and the defective ring is calculated by using the non-ideal Hertzian contact theory, while the additional force is characterized by a time-varying function based on the geometric relationship and Hertzian contact theory. To validate the proposed model, comparison work is carried out between the contact forces calculated using this model and those obtained from existing models, demonstrating the significance of the additional force during the process of rollers entering and exiting non-through defects. Furthermore, the effects of the outer ring defect width, length, and edge angle on cylindrical roller bearing vibrations are investigated and discussed. Compared with the previous studies, this work considers both the additional forces caused by the defect and defect edge feature, and combines the non-ideal Hertzian contact theory to obtain a more reasonable dynamic of the defective cylindrical roller bearings.

An Egalitarian Case for Class-Specific Political Institutions

Political theorists concerned with ways to counteract the oligarchic tendencies of representative government have recently paid more attention to the employment of “class-specific institutions” (CSIs)—that is, political institutions that formally exclude wealthy elites from decision-making power. This article disputes a general objection levelled against the justifiability of CSIs, according to which their democratic credentials are outweighed by their explicit transgression of formal political equality—what I call the political equality objection. I claim that, although CSIs do not satisfy political equality fully, their exclusionary thrust is inter alia justified in virtue of the fact that they unfold against the background of badly ordered, class-divided societies. Parallel to recent arguments in nonideal theory arguing for the priority of the right to resist economic oppression over the protection of private property rights, access to the empowering properties of CSIs should take priority over the full satisfaction of formal political equality. Yet, I also claim that the justification of CSIs depends on their orientation toward overcoming class divisions because, otherwise, we might end up wrongly naturalizing those divisions—a conclusion that needs to be avoided to reply to the political equality objection. The result is, I believe, a convincing egalitarian case for the democratic justifiability of CSIs.

The Role of Social Research in Opposing Injustice

This study uses a post-disciplinary and synthetic methodology to explore how social research can contribute to helping those struggling against injustice. First, it reviews recent initiatives that have emerged from sociology and moral and political philosophy to reconnect normative inquiry with empirical social science. Second, applying Amartya Sen’s nonideal theory of justice, it brings these diverse initiatives together and develops a systematic proposal for social justice. It proposes that (1) injustice can be reduced through public reasoning in which people exercise practical reason on what constitutes injustice and what actions should be taken to remedy it; (2) all of us are agents of change whose reasoning and action have leverage in reducing injustice; and (3) theoretical concepts invented by academics can move public reasoning towards the reduction of injustice by affording people, including those struggling against injustice, with critical perspectives and discursive resources. Third, to increase the effectiveness of the proposal, it delineates three routes through which academics can contribute to making public reasoning more inclusive, interactive, and iterative: (1) as public intellectuals, academics can disseminate their normative and empirical research to the general public and make public reasoning more interactive; (2) through coalition-building, academics can help marginalised people come up with solutions to the injustices they face and help magnify marginalised people’s voices to influence public reasoning; and (3) through teaching, academics can cultivate normative consciousness amongst students coupled with their habit of developing refined opinions, using impartial spectators, and acknowledging the human rights of different others, all while working towards making universities more inclusive.

Property and non-ideal theory

ABSTRACT According to the standard story, there are two defensible theories of property rights: historical and institutional theories. The former says that you own something when you’ve received it via an unbroken chain of just transfers from its original appropriation. The latter says that you own something when you’ve been assigned it by just institutions. This standard story says that the historical theory throws up a barrier to redistributive economic policies while the institutional theory does not. In this paper, I argue that the standard story is wrong in almost every detail. For a start, neither of these theories are defensible. Both generate absurd consequences when combined with our non-ideal circumstances. In actuality, no unbroken chains of just transfers stretch from original appropriations to what we now possess. And our actual institutions are very seriously unjust. So both theories imply that we actually own almost nothing. I revise these theories so that they avoid this absurd consequence. Yet, when we do this, their distributive implications flip. The institutional theory throws up serious barriers to redistribution while the historical theory tears them down. In our non-ideal circumstances, the distributive implications of these theories are the opposite of what is standardly presumed.

Solvent Polarity and Framework Hydrophobicity of Hf-BEA Zeolites Influence Aldol Addition Rates in Organic Media

Solvent identity and pore polarity are known to influence Lewis acidic catalysis in zeolite pores for a variety of liquid-phase chemistries. We investigated how these parameters alter the rates of self-aldol addition of ethyl pyruvate (EP), a model biomass-derived compound, over hydrophobic and hydrophilic Hf-BEA zeolites in both toluene and acetonitrile solvents. Aldol addition rates are of first order across the entire EP activity range (0.02–0.4) for all four systems, consistent with the nucleophilic attack by the enolate as the rate-determining step and a single adsorbed EP as the most abundant reactive intermediate. Apparent first-order rate constants span 2 orders of magnitude across the four systems; at 363 K, the highest rates were observed over hydrophobic Hf-BEA-F in toluene (kapp = 0.36 (mmol) (mmol closed Hf)−1 (s)−1), while the lowest rates were observed in hydrophilic Hf-BEA-OH in an acetonitrile solvent (kapp = 0.0026 (mmol) (mmol closed Hf)−1 (s)−1). Apparent reaction enthalpies and entropies for each system, estimated using non-ideal transition-state theory, revealed that despite the substantial rate constant variation across the four systems, apparent enthalpies for Hf-BEA-F in both solvents and Hf-BEA-OH in acetonitrile were within the error of each other (∼70 kJ mol–1). Reactions performed using Hf-BEA-OH with toluene featured a higher apparent enthalpic barrier of 83.8 kJ mol–1. The differences between the systems are attributed to hydrogen-bonding interactions between the EP molecules and polar silanol nests during catalysis in toluene using Hf-BEA-OH, which hinder EP adsorption to the active site in the hydrophilic framework. These hydrogen-bonding interactions are not present when acetonitrile is used as the solvent, as acetonitrile itself binds to and blocks silanol groups. Equilibrium EP absorption measurements indicate that while both toluene and acetonitrile are present in pores during catalysis, neither solvent forms a tight solvation shell around EP in the pores that must be disrupted prior to EP adsorption. These findings show that aldol addition kinetics are not significantly modified by solvent polarity in hydrophobic frameworks beyond site-blocking effects; however, silanol nests in hydrophilic frameworks significantly alter substrate adsorption to the active site.

Intersectional Feminist Theory as a Non-Ideal Theory: Asian American Women Navigating Identity and Power

This paper develops an account of intersectional feminist theory by critically examining the notion of identity implicitly assumed in major critiques of intersectionality. Critics take intersectionality to fragment women along the lines of identity categories such as race, class, and sexuality. Underlying this interpretation, I argue, is the metaphysical assumption that identity is a fixed entity. This is a misunderstanding of identity that neglects how identity is actually lived. By exploring how Asian American women experience their “Asian” identity in their everyday lives (e.g., the “Asian-as-patriarchal vs. White-as-gender-progressive” stereotype, growing anti-Asian racism amid COVID-19, and Asian-Black feminist solidarities), I demonstrate that Asian identity is not fixed but changing according to how it is related to power. I identify and discuss three characteristic types of the identity-power relationship: manifestation of power-as-oppression through the construction of identity, reproduction of power-as-oppression, and creation of new forms of power, namely resistance and solidarity, through the reconstruction of identity. The lives of multiply-oppressed women (e.g., Asian women) can be understood as the locus at which the identity-power relationship is worked out, that is, the power dynamics of oppression are manifested, reproduced, and resisted through the (re)construction of identity. Building on this analysis and engaging discussions on non-ideal theory in social/political philosophy, I argue that intersectional feminist theory can be best explained as a non-ideal theory in a strong sense: a theory that, by focusing on the lives of the multiply oppressed, presents the intersecting dynamics of oppression as central and theory-guiding.

The importance of contingently public goods

The importance of contingently public goods

AN EXPLORATION OF JUSTICE: IDEAL AND NONIDEAL THEORY PERSPECTIVES ON THE CONSTITUTION

This article explores and analyses the concept of justice in postapartheidSouth Africa and whether the 1996 Constitution of theRepublic of South Africa is just. This is done through critical analysisand juxtaposition of the varieties of justice presented by constitutionaloptimists and constitutional abolitionists. The paper will show how theprinciples of Ideal Theory and Non-Ideal Theory feature in the politicalnarratives of the constitutional optimists and abolitionists,respectively. Further, this paper allows for introspection surroundingthe conception of justice and how justice is realised in society. Finally,it will be argued that the conception of justice that manifests in societyis subjective to the interests of the agents that hold the economicmeans to influence political power.