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Papers by Beth Kahn
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2014
This paper identifies 'the tragedy of the commons' as an essentially aggregative harm and conside... more This paper identifies 'the tragedy of the commons' as an essentially aggregative harm and considers what agents in such a scenario owe to one another. It proposes that the duty to take reasonable precautions requires that agents make efforts to establish collective solutions to any essentially aggregative harm to which they would otherwise contribute. Baylor Johnson has argued that the general obligation to promote the common good requires that agents make efforts to establish a collective agreement to avert a potential tragedy of the commons. This article agrees with Johnson's analysis but argues that there are also negative duties, which give commons users additional moral reason to take collective action to prevent the destruction of the utility of the commons. These duties link commons users to resolving this particular problem and provide grounds to demand that they make greater efforts to prevent the destruction of the commons compared to bystanders. The article suggests that fulfilling negative duties can require establishing collective institutions with the power to regulate human action and interaction. This analysis could be applied to a range of social problems which result from the aggregation of actions and practices.
This paper aims to make a contribution to the debate concerning the moral obligations which follo... more This paper aims to make a contribution to the debate concerning the moral obligations which follow from the facts of the pervasiveness of acute poverty and the extent of global wealth and income inequality. I suggest that in order to make progress in this debate we need to move beyond two dominant ways of thinking about when the demands of distributive justice apply. The first approach focuses solely on the global distribution of resources, regardless of background social relations and institutions. This approach, exemplified by Simon Caney, identifies positive ‘humanity based’ obligations to promote or support institutions that fulfil the socio-economic rights of other humans. The second approach concentrates on the justice of the coercively enforced institutional arrangements governing access to resources. This approach, shared by theorists like Thomas Pogge, focuses on negative obligations not to harm other humans by imposing upon them resource regimes which avoidably fail to sec...
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2014
This paper identifies 'the tragedy of the commons' as an essentially aggregative harm and conside... more This paper identifies 'the tragedy of the commons' as an essentially aggregative harm and considers what agents in such a scenario owe to one another. It proposes that the duty to take reasonable precautions requires that agents make efforts to establish collective solutions to any essentially aggregative harm to which they would otherwise contribute. Baylor Johnson has argued that the general obligation to promote the common good requires that agents make efforts to establish a collective agreement to avert a potential tragedy of the commons. This article agrees with Johnson's analysis but argues that there are also negative duties, which give commons users additional moral reason to take collective action to prevent the destruction of the utility of the commons. These duties link commons users to resolving this particular problem and provide grounds to demand that they make greater efforts to prevent the destruction of the commons compared to bystanders. The article suggests that fulfilling negative duties can require establishing collective institutions with the power to regulate human action and interaction. This analysis could be applied to a range of social problems which result from the aggregation of actions and practices.
This paper aims to make a contribution to the debate concerning the moral obligations which follo... more This paper aims to make a contribution to the debate concerning the moral obligations which follow from the facts of the pervasiveness of acute poverty and the extent of global wealth and income inequality. I suggest that in order to make progress in this debate we need to move beyond two dominant ways of thinking about when the demands of distributive justice apply. The first approach focuses solely on the global distribution of resources, regardless of background social relations and institutions. This approach, exemplified by Simon Caney, identifies positive ‘humanity based’ obligations to promote or support institutions that fulfil the socio-economic rights of other humans. The second approach concentrates on the justice of the coercively enforced institutional arrangements governing access to resources. This approach, shared by theorists like Thomas Pogge, focuses on negative obligations not to harm other humans by imposing upon them resource regimes which avoidably fail to sec...