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Abstract: Modern parenting is demanding. Parenting of this sort, given its demands, will tend to crowd out other aspects of our lives, including our other relationships. In this article, we raise a distinctive concern about the way in which modern intensive parenting crowds out other relationships. We argue that parenting, given current norms and family structures, is an unpromising site for our character development, and thus for our flourishing, because of the kind of power that parents exercise in the family and because of the context in which they exercise that power. Parents therefore have flourishing based reasons to pursue other relationships, notably friendship, which contributes in distinctive ways to our flourishing in the context of a relationship characterised by equality, not hierarchy. In making these arguments, the article both intervenes in the emerging literature on parental power and strengthens existing critiques of the prioritisation of romantic and familial bonds over and above other forms of relationship. PubDate: 2025-05-28
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Abstract: Underlying Derek Parfit’s non-identity problem is the idea that we can only wrong our offspring if our procreative actions harm them, or make them worse off. For Parfit, the surprising conclusion is that a person cannot be wronged by their own creation, because being created cannot make someone worse off. I appeal to Kant’s moral philosophy to develop a non-harm-based moral framework for procreation that allows us to explain how a person can be wronged by their creation even if they have not been harmed by it. I argue that Kant’s moral framework is uniquely suited to capture our moral obligations to future persons, because his framework locates moral obligations in the will of the actor rather than in the existence of the moral patient or recipient. The morality of procreative choices depends on how well the procreator wills, not on the outcome for their offspring’s wellbeing. My account does not solve the non-identity problem; rather, I argue that if we look at procreation as an imputable action of persons that puts them in a special relation of duty to their offspring, then the moral relevance of their future offspring’s indeterminate genetic identity falls away. PubDate: 2025-05-22
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Social punishments– the informal penalties imposed by private individuals, rather than formal authorities– like the practice of online public shaming have attracted attention from philosophers, other academics, and journalists. Several have emphasized the harmful nature of social punishments, and the tendency of practices like public shaming to be disrespectful and disproportionate. So, what (if anything) justifies practices of social punishment like public shaming' Some authors have pointed out the important role social punishments play in enforcing morally valuable and authoritative norms, like norms against racist or sexist behaviour. In this paper, I argue that while these authors are correct in claiming that social punishments help to enforce valuable norms, their accounts fall short of explaining why private individuals are justified in imposing harm on others. Some obvious and intuitive explanations– like the claim that wrongdoers forfeit their rights against being harmed– fail to show that private individuals are permitted to harm others. As a result, more work needs to be done to develop our accounts of how and why social punishments can be justified. PubDate: 2025-04-29
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Abstract: Self-control is generally regarded as a valuable capacity. However, the value of directly resisting temptations (a central part of our commonsense notion of self-control) has recently come under attack. Directly resisting temptations – as opposed to avoiding them – has been claimed to have several drawbacks, such as being an inefficient way of dealing with temptations, not contributing to an agent’s well-being, or even causing harmful “mental fragmentation.” In fact, some claim that most or all of the values of self-control can be achieved, not by struggling to directly resist temptations, but rather by steering clear of them. In this paper, we seek to push back against this trend. We argue that there are specific values attached to directly resisting temptations that cannot be secured by avoiding them. Drawing on recent psychological evidence, we suggest that a significant part of the value of ‘direct resistance’ is grounded in the fact that it involves the exertion of effort. Due to this feature, we contend, directly resisting temptations can both make our activities feel more meaningful and provide us with a valuable form of self-knowledge. PubDate: 2025-04-28
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Abstract: The paper explores the relation between disagreement and expressions of dissent within public institutions. Public servants can use their powers of office to express dissent with certain aspects of mandates and dispositions, especially when these conflict with their personal morality or broader moral values. Additionally, public servants’ dissent can also be directed towards the raison d’être of a public institution if it perceived as objectionable. The paper focuses on disagreement as a source of dissent within public institutions. Expressions of dissent as a reaction to disagreement would arise from the interplay of the rights and duties accruing to individuals in different capacities and the structural uncertainty that pervades public institutions. Structural uncertainty stems from the open-ended nature of institutional raison d’être, the vagueness and ambiguity of legal provisions and office mandates, and the existence of multiple, non-orderly, and vaguely defined institutional functions and objectives that vary over time and space. The paper explores various types of disagreement resulting from this interplay and underscores how each type of disagreement can trigger expressions of dissent by public servants within public institutions. PubDate: 2025-04-25
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Abstract: In a recent paper, Kim Angell contends that we should increase young people’s voting power. He defends this contention with intuition-based arguments and the All-Affected Principle and All-Subjected Principle. His arguments are informed by a conception of political inclusion according to which people’s democratic enfranchisement should be proportional to the intensity of their preferences for the alternatives being considered. This view, however, is too exclusionary towards persons with low preference intensity—such as ascetics—and creates perverse incentives to adopt expensive tastes. Since this conception of political inclusion plays a pivotal role in Angell’s argument, its weaknesses invalidate his thesis. PubDate: 2025-04-16
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Abstract: This paper defends a novel framework for thinking about our rights against being harmed, paying special attention to the conditions under which they are enforceable through a liability mechanism. It contends that a central purpose of our rights is to specify what steps others are required to take, in their role as agents, to avoid harming us. To be geared towards this relational purpose, rights need to be equipped with a subjective component that lays out how an agent ought to deliberate and conduct herself in light of the epistemic constraints she faces. Based on these ideas, the paper develops a hybrid account of rights according to which the ex ante and ex post duties implied by our rights are entirely subjective. If an agent abides by the duties imposed on her by another person’s rights, she respects these rights. If she violates the duties, she disrespects the rights. The account developed is hybrid because it stipulates that a person’s rights protect her against objectively specified harm, even if the duties imposed on others are merely subjective. I argue that this is less paradoxical than it may seem. The paper then defends an account of liability to defensive harm that grounds an agent’s liability in her disrespect for others’ rights, and which fixes the extent of her liability by reference to what defenders reasonably perceive to be necessary and proportionate defensive harm in light of the agent’s disrespectful conduct. PubDate: 2025-04-09
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Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the most recent moderate republican conception of freedom is not sufficiently plausible in all relevant cases. The most recent moderate republican view does not capture the distinctive character of republican freedom, or freedom of the person, because it focuses exclusively on the type-difference of a supposedly powerful agent, not on the type-difference of those affected by that agent, such as civic-type or non-civic-type. This problem of focusing exclusively on the specific agent-type-difference becomes apparent when considering the possible worlds in which, according to the most recent moderate republican view, the subjects of interference lack freedom as non-domination due to the absence of effective institutional arrangements. In this paper, I show that this ultimately undermines the most recent moderate republican view even in possible worlds where individuals appear to enjoy freedom as non-domination due to the presence of effective institutional structures. PubDate: 2025-04-04
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: According to the E-Functional Account of moral assertion, the practice of making moral assertions persists because moral assertions help their addressees gain moral understanding. Proponents of this view have taken it to support the existence of an evaluative norm of moral assertion, as well as a prescriptive norm of moral assertion. According to the latter, moral assertions must be accompanied by an explanation. For instance, if I am to tell you that eating meat is wrong, I should also tell you why it is wrong. After situating the E-Functional Account in the context of recent work on moral testimony, this article defends an extant objection to the prescriptive norm that the account is taken to support. A further, deeper objection to the E-Functional Account is then raised. This deeper objection targets the claim the practice of moral assertion persists because it enables addressees to gain moral understanding. This deeper objection is mounted by taking a closer look at a particular sub-class of moral assertions that are dubbed Emotionally Forceful Moral Assertions. PubDate: 2025-03-25
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
