Value pluralism Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor have been members of the Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d'accommodement reliées aux differences culturelles, which was established in 2007 by the Government of Quebec. In particular Taylor, with Gérard Bouchard, was the President of that Commission. Laïcitè et Liberté de Conscience deals with and deepens the issues faced by the Commission, namely the presence of religion in the public sphere and, more specifically, the claims for accommodation based on religious ...

I argue that the distinction between monism and pluralism about well-being should be understood in terms of explanation: the monist affirms (but the pluralist denies) that whenever two particular things are basically good for you, the explanation of their basic goodness for you is the same. I then consider a number of arguments for monism and a number of arguments for pluralism.

- by Eden Lin
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- Philosophy, Ethics, Normative Ethics, Axiology

Ilya Somin effectively exposes the extent of public ignorance and the ways in which such ignorance may damage democratic outcomes. This underpins his case for a more streamlined state, leaving more to individual “foot voting”—where citizens are better incentivized to choose knowledgeably and rationally. One cannot dispute the fact of deep public ignorance. However, one can question the widespread assumption that ignorance is necessarily ethically significant, always productive of undesirable outcomes, or otherwise implicitly dangerous for democracy. The sheer lack of individual efficacy in mass democracies not only incentivizes ignorance, but also creates conditions wherein such ignorance is individually harmless, and unlikely in the aggregate to greatly contribute to one or another outcome. Beyond this, there may be no way to attain meaningful knowledge in the areas where democratic decision making is most fraught. Indeed, ignorance may at times lead to better outcomes than would knowledge. The seemingly unassailable status of democracy itself, and the valuable institutional stability that this status ensures, seem to be founded upon a bedrock of public ignorance as to the real nature of democracy.

Howard Gruber, a founder member of Psychologists for Social Action, reviewed the dissertation. His review, dated May 7, 1978, as Parkovnick (2015) points out, "... is worth quoting in full, as it captures the very essence of the... more

- by Peter Emanuel Franks
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- Critical Theory, Organizational Behavior, Cultural History, Psychology
- by Marc-Antoine Dilhac
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- Political Philosophy, John Rawls, Liberalism and Toleration, Pluralism

I aim to defend a form of age-based discrimination. Actually I consider two new principles in succession. First I consider a fair innings principle according to which anyone who, without treatment, is expected to die younger than society's average life expectancy merits priority for life-extending treatment in order to help bring them up to society's average. Then I defend a generalisation of this principle, concluding that anyone with a quality-adjusted life expectancy lower than society's average merits priority for any treatment to help bring them up to society's average quality-adjusted life expectancy.
I start by clarifying some of the claims which fair proponents of age-based discrimination need not be committed to. For example, they need not be committed to discriminating directly by the patient's current age, as has traditionally been assumed. This could be seen as wrongfully ageist (and presumably for this reason would be illegal in many jurisdictions). But I will argue that, given the justifications that have been offered for age-based discrimination, the morally relevant consideration is not the patient's current age, but the age at which they are expected to die (which is why the principle I defend is articulated in terms of when people are expected to die, not how long they have lived already). So the fair innings principles that have been defended miss the point, in that they talk in terms of the patient's current age rather than the age at which the patient is expected to die. I then consider a counterexample to age-based discrimination raised by John Harris. Addressing this case requires us to distinguish two types of principle: "straight line" principles according to which the strength of your claim to life-extending treatments declines at a steady rate according to your expected age at death, and threshold or "stepped" principles according to which your entitlement declines faster as your expected age at death rises past a certain age, such as 70. I adopt a threshold principle (a "fair innings" principle) which largely avoids the counterintuitive implications in Harris's case. Specifically, I defend a view according to which the fair innings in a given society is equal to that society's average life expectancy. However the real work is not characterising the principle, but defending it, so as to avoid being ad hoc. I do this with an innovative set of cases in which society's average life expectancy is varied to show its importance for intuitions. I also offer a new set of egalitarian arguments to defend the same principle. Finally, I consider whether a similar principle can be applied to QALYs or their equivalent, and not just life years. I consider a QALY-based proposal from Alan Williams, noticing that it has some counterintuitive consequences. However, I find that if Williams accepts some relatively painless constraints on his weighting factors, he can dodge the counterintuitive consequences. I therefore conclude by endorsing his proposal.

- by Sean Sinclair
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- Applied Ethics, Age Discrimination, Ageism, Moral Philosophy

A lo largo del presente artículo se cuestionan, en primer lugar, las críticas masivas contra los programas multiculturalistas mediante las que se encubren diatribas contra la inmigración, sospecha que no impide, sin embargo, que se preconice la reformulación de tales programas (1). En un segundo paso, se esboza una propuesta para trazar los límites legítimos de las políticas migratorias en el poliédrico ámbito de la diversidad cultural (2). A continuación, se analiza la cuestión más particular de la relación entre políticas migratorias y diferencias confesionales, deteniéndose en el caso de los inmigrantes musulmanes (3). Y, finalmente, se presentan los derechos culturales como un mecanismo idóneo para la salvaguardia de la diversidad cultural (4).

- by Juan Carlos Velasco
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- Multiculturalism, Religious Pluralism, Migration Studies, Value pluralism
- by Esteban Pereira Fredes
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- Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, Legal Theory, Legal Pluralism

John Rawls’ gamification of justice leads him – along with many other monist political philosophers, not least Ronald Dworkin – to fail to take politics seriously enough. I begin with why we consider games frivolous and then show how Rawls’ theory of justice is not merely analogous to a game, as he himself seems to claim, but is in fact a kind of game. As such, it is harmful to political practice in two ways: one as regards the citizens who participate directly in it, and the other as regards those who do no more than follow it. Similar harms, I then argue, come from taking politics too seriously, which is the attitude I ascribe to pluralist political philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, and Bernard Williams. To them, the plural, incommensurable nature of values means that they cannot be reconciled and so that politics must be a matter of negotiating dirty, and often tragic, compromises. What we need instead, I conclude, is a third way, one that is neither monist nor pluralist but in-between the two extremes.

- by Charles Blattberg
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- Aesthetics, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Meta-Ethics
- by Charles Blattberg
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- Ethics, Meta-Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Just War

Since its inception, psychology has struggled with issues of conceptualisation and operationalisation of social-psychological phenomena. The study of social values and points of view has been prone to such difficulties, despite a predominant concern of qualitative distinctions in the variability of both of these phenomena across different individuals and social groups. And whilst interest in both traces a common origin in Rokeach’s studies of narrow-mindedness, the study of both phenomena has since proceeded apace. In this paper, we posit a renewed reconciliation between the two that is best served through a social-psychological model of points of view in terms of the values that inspire them. We draw on critical linguistics to propose a theoretical and methodological framework that can aid a systematic study of value structures as they take different forms and meanings through particular types of points of view. In five stages of qualitative analysis, the model deconstructs utterances into distinct terms that reveal a predominant perspective-taking style that can be utilised towards the categorisation of different points of view, in terms of values that imbue them and that serve to provide them with a coherent angle of constructing a particular narrative.

- by Stavroula Tsirogianni
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- Research Methodology, Qualitative methodology, Values, Hans-Georg Gadamer
- by Matthew S. Adams
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- History, European History, Modern History, Intellectual History

The ‘liberal-communitarian’ debate arose within anglophone political philosophy during the 1980s. This essay opens with an account of the main outlines of the debate, showing how liberals and communitarians tended to confront each other with opposing interpretations of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice (1999; originally published in 1971) and Political Liberalism (2005; originally published in 1993). The essay then proceeds to discuss four forms of ‘liberalism after communitarianism’: Michael Freeden’s account of liberalism as an ideology; Joseph Raz and Will Kymlicka’s perfectionist liberalisms; the liberalism of value pluralists such as Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams; and Judith N. Shklar’s liberalism of fear. It concludes with the suggestion that there are times when liberals of every kind should set aside their ideology, even if only temporarily, in order to listen to their interlocutors with truly open minds.

- by Charles Blattberg
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- Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Liberalism, Hermeneutics

Isaiah Berlin’s pluralism continues to be relevant because of the compelling account of tragic loss that it provides. I advance this argument through a series of four central questions, using them to think with Berlin, but also beyond Berlin, about the promise of pluralism and loss in our political present: Why must there be loss? What makes loss difficult? Why should we expect loss to occur? How does loss orient action? Ultimately, I suggest that the expectation and recognition of tragic loss can alert us to, and help guard us against, the fanaticism, distortion of values, and self-deception that may result from even the most well-meaning and good-faith pursuit of political ideals.

- by Alicia Steinmetz
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- Isaiah Berlin, Value pluralism

We frequently find ourselves in intractable disagreements about the morality of abortion, euthanasia, restrictions to freedom, or eating meat for fun. An adequate reaction to a disagreement requires knowing which type of disagreements we are confronted with. The main aim of my paper is to explain the source of moral disagreements and clarify their nature. I will argue that some moral disagreements are deep conceptual disagreements that similarly to disagreements in logic or ontology, are not resolvable, as the resolution of the disagreement requires the disputants to adopt perspectives that are conceptually unavailable to them. I will suggest four possible sources of moral disagreements: incommensurable fundamental values, different concepts of the good life, different motivating reasons and different concepts of morality.

- by Margit Sutrop
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- Philosophy, Ethics, Social sciences and values, Moral Philosophy

Saat ini pendekatan pendidikan Islam berlangsung melalui proses operasional menuju pada tujuan yang diinginkan, memerlukan model yang melandasinya, sebagaimana yang pertama kali dibangun Nabi. Nilai-nilai tersebut dapat diaktualisasikan berdasarkan kebutuhan perkembangan manusia dan dipadukan dengan pengaruh lingkungan kultural yang ada, sehingga dapat mencapai cita-cita dan tujuan untuk meningkatkan kualitas hidup manusia di segala aspek kehidupannya.
Untuk konteks Indonesia, antara model landasan dan lingkungan kultural (terutama konsep pluralisme) menemu pendekatannya konsepnya pada ide-ide Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), karena konsep pluralisme ala Gus Dur ini sebagian besar muncul dari realitas masyarakat Indonesia serta kecintaannya pada bangsa Indonesia, tidak terkecuali Islam. more click http://ejournal.kopertais4.or.id/index.php/elhikam/article/view/1383

- by Jurnal El-Hikam
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- Religious Pluralism, Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Pluralism, Value pluralism

Cet article vise à défendre le lien entre conversion morale et autonomie. Pour cela, nous nous appuierons sur plusieurs perspectives philosophiques et sociologiques qui ont en commun de mettre en avant la capacité de l’individu à rompre avec sa situation morale initiale, que celle-ci soit politique ou religieuse, pour endosser de nouvelles convictions. Nous verrons que trois notions d’origine aussi différente que le changement de Gesinnung chez Kant, l’instant sartrien et l’alternation chez Berger et Luckmann renvoient à un processus de fondation de soi qui marque le choix entre des systèmes de valeurs incommensurables en même temps qu’une prise de position du converti sur son régime d’appartenance. Cela nous conduira à aborder de front le problème de la possibilité, pour un individu, de maîtriser ses convictions les plus profondes et son identité morale au point de pouvoir en changer par un acte de volonté. C’est précisément cet acte que nous définirons comme la décision d’auto-réification constitutive du sujet autonome.

- by Erwan Sommerer
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- Religion, Sociology of Religion, Philosophy Of Religion, Religious Conversion

In contemporary debates about justice, political philosophers take themselves to be engaged with a subject that’s narrower than the whole of morality. Many contemporary liberals, notably John Rawls, understand this narrowness in terms of context specificity. On their view, justice is the part of morality that applies to the context of a society’s institutions, but only has indirect application to the context of citizens’ personal lives (unlike the rest of morality). In contrast, many value pluralists, notably G.A. Cohen, understand justice’s narrowness in terms of singularity against a plural background. On their view, justice is one fundamental value amongst a plurality of fundamental values. The purpose of my thesis is to establish that the pluralist conception of justice’s narrowness is (a) theoretically significant and (b) true. To establish its theoretical significance, I argue that proper attention to the ways in which different understandings of narrowness inform the work of contemporary egalitarians explains a considerable amount of disagreement between them concerning the content and scope of distributive justice. On the one hand, I’ll argue that if we understand justice’s narrowness in the manner Cohen and other pluralists do, i.e., understand a conception of justice to be a conception of a particular fundamental value, then both luck-egalitarianism and the claim that justice extends to the personal context are compelling. On the other hand, I’ll argue that if we understand justice’s narrowness in a contextual manner, i.e., understand justice to comprise one or more all-things-considered principles adopted for the institutional context, then both luck-egalitarianism and the claim that justice extends to the personal context prove implausible. To establish the truth of the pluralist conception of narrowness, I argue first, that the contextual understanding is only plausible if fairness should be understood procedurally instead of substantively; and second, that substantive fairness cannot be eliminated, as specifying the content of procedural fairness requires a substantive criterion. The upshot is that justice’s narrowness is best understood in terms of singularity against a plural background, rather than in terms of context specificity.

- by Kyle Johannsen
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- Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Legitimacy and Authority, Political Theory
- by David Edward Rose
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- Postmodernism, Gianni Vattimo, Value pluralism
- by Marcos Andrade
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- Intellectual History, Ethics, History of Ideas, Isaiah Berlin
- by Charles Blattberg
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- Business Ethics, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Political Theory

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems are becoming increasingly autonomous and will soon be able to make decisions on their own about what to do, AI researchers have started to talk about the need to align AI with human values. The AI 'value alignment problem' faces two kinds of challenges-a technical and a normative one-which are interrelated. The technical challenge deals with the question of how to encode human values in artificial intelligence. The normative challenge is associated with two questions: "Which values or whose values should artificial intelligence align with?" My concern is that AI developers underestimate the difficulty of answering the normative question. They hope that we can easily identify the purposes we really desire and that they can focus on the design of those objectives. But how are we to decide which objectives or values to induce in AI, given that there is a plurality of values and moral principles and that our everyday life is full of moral disagreements? In my paper I will show that although it is not realistic to reach an agreement on what we, humans, really want as people value different things and seek different ends, it may be possible to agree on what we do not want to happen, considering the possibility that intelligence, equal to our own, or even exceeding it, can be created. I will argue for pluralism (and not for relativism!) which is compatible with objectivism. In spite of the fact that there is no uniquely best solution to every moral problem, it is still possible to identify which answers are wrong. And this is where we should begin the value alignment of AI.

- by Margit Sutrop
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- Ethics, Human Values, Artifial Intellegence, Isaiah Berlin

The terms “patriotism” and “nationalism” are distinguished historically, conceptually, and geographically. Historically, patriotism is shown to have roots in the classical republican tradition of political thought, according to which citizens should give priority to the common good of their political or civic, as distinct from national, community. Conceptually, it is argued that patriotism is best understood as a political philosophy, an account of the form or forms of dialogue that citizens should engage in when responding to their conflicts, whereas nationalism is a political ideology, an account of the kinds of things that citizens should be saying within those dialogues, in particular, when they take the form of negotiation. Patriotism, then, is that political philosophy which endorses the maxim “conversation first, negotiation second, force third,” since conversation between citizens has the best prospects for realizing and developing the common good. Nationalism, by contrast, is the ideology of those who, when it comes to political negotiations, give the greatest weight to the needs of their national community. Finally, regarding geography, patriotism is shown to be concerned with the jurisdiction of the state, whereas nationalism emphasizes the permanent and sharply demarcated territory where the national community is located. The chapter then concludes with the recommendation that we all need to affirm a global patriotism, alongside the more local forms.

- by Charles Blattberg
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- Political Philosophy, Multiculturalism, Political Theory, CIvic Humanism

I argue that our rule of rescue intuitions can be vindicated in terms of a plurality of considerations, which together have intuitively satisfying implications for the cases which trigger such intuitions. This has various implications for healthcare policy, particularly in relation to life-extending treatments.
After clarifying some ambiguities in the rule of rescue debate, I start the investigation proper by considering evidence that some healthcare policy-making is driven by rule of rescue intuitions. I then consider the most popular account of our rule of rescue obligations in terms of the identifiability of the prospective victims (for example, the prospective rescuer knows that a particular person is going to die). I conclude that identifiability is not a morally relevant factor. However, it is closely associated with another feature involving the distribution of risk, and this is more defensible as a morally relevant feature. Specifically, our behaviour in many rule of rescue cases can be explained in terms of an intuitive obligation to prioritise life-extending interventions for people who face a high risk of an early death. I will argue that this intuitive obligation in turn can be explained in terms of another principle I defend elsewhere, viz., a principle saying that we should prioritise life-extending interventions for people whose quality-adjusted life expectancy is below society's average.
However, this account is incomplete. This principle does not explain all of our rule of rescue intuitions. In particular, it does not explain why we prioritise life-extending treatment for those who are given very little notice of their death rather than those who are given more notice. We are averse to letting people die suddenly. I give a new account that explains this in terms of the value of people having time to reconcile themselves to their death, sort out their affairs, say their goodbyes to friends and family. This account explains why our rule of rescue intuitions are stronger in cases involving sudden death than in cases involving sudden quality of life impairments: there is relatively little benefit in being warned about an imminent quality of life impairment sooner rather than later; whereas in the case of one's imminent death, it makes a huge difference to be given some warning.
So the value of an extra month or year depends on the context: an extra month is worth a lot for someone who has just been diagnosed and who is only expected to live a month to live without treatment. But it is worth less for someone is expected to live two years without treatment.
In summary, our rule of rescue intuitions can't be explained by a single unitary rule of rescue principle. Rather they are explained by a plurality of considerations. In healthcare, these sometimes give us a reason to relax our normal assessment criteria in terms of cost and benefit maximisation.
Finally I evaluate NICE's end of life premium in the light of rule of rescue obligations. I propose various ways NICE's end of life premium falls short when seen as an attempt to capture rule of rescue considerations. For example, NICE defines its timings in terms of how long the patient can expect to live as at the time of the treatment decision, whereas my principle implies that the timings should be specified in terms of time from diagnosis.
My principle also implies that in prioritising preventive measures, the priority should go to heart attack prevention rather than preventing slow growth cancers which get detected early, other things being equal, on the grounds that heart attacks kill suddenly, whereas a patient who learns early about a slow growth cancer has notice of their death.

- by Sean Sinclair
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- Applied Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Value pluralism, End of life
- by Andrew Sabl
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- Liberalism, Pluralism, Value pluralism
- by Peter Emanuel Franks
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- Social Change, Social Psychology, Ethnic Studies, Public Administration
- by David Edward Rose
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- Aesthetics and Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Pornography, Value pluralism
- by Domenico Melidoro
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- Religion, Religion and Politics, Liberalism, Religious Pluralism

A critique of Charles Taylor's conception of “hypergoods,” the fundamental, architectonic goods that serve as the bases of our moral frameworks. The basic argument is that Taylor's conception reflects a failure to distinguish adequately between ethics, on the one hand, and art and religion, on the other. This has implications for our understanding of certain social practices and movements as well as for how we should be approaching numerous issues, including those around ordinary life, university debates over the Western canon, and evil.

- by Charles Blattberg
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- Christianity, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy Of Religion
- by Michael Bacon
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- Liberalism, John Rawls, Value pluralism, John Gray
- by Jonathan Allen
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- Intellectual History, Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Liberalism

The relationship between pluralism and liberalism has been at the center of recent considerations of Isaiah Berlin's thought. In particular, liberal theorists have asked whether the value pluralism Berlin endorses actually undermines his liberalism. A common interpretive approach resolves this problem by presenting Berlin's pluralism as “limited” rather than “radical,” and therefore capable of serving as a moral foundation authorizing liberalism. I challenge this re-construction of Berlin's work, arguing that such readings are premised on a conception of judgment Berlin does not share. While many of his readers believe that a judgment on behalf of liberalism requires the identification of a transcontextual ground, Berlin invites us to see human judgment as a meaningful practice that occurs in the absence of absolutes yet does not simply mirror local norms. Berlin's defense of liberalism models this kind of judgment—a judgment that is neither mandated, nor ruled out, by pluralism.

- by Ella Myers
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- Liberalism, Isaiah Berlin, Value pluralism

G.A. Cohen is well known within contemporary political philosophy for claiming that the scope of principles of justice extends beyond the design of institutions to citizens’ personal choices. More recently, he’s also received attention for claiming that principles of justice are normatively ultimate, i.e., that they’re necessary for the justification of action guiding principles (regulatory rules) but are unsuitable to guide political practice themselves. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between these claims as they’re applied in criticism of John Rawls. It argues that ascribing normative ultimacy to justice entails its application to personal choice. However, it also argues that if Cohen’s right about Rawls’s difference principle being regulatory rather than ultimate, then his earlier claim that Rawls must extend it to personal choice on pain of inconsistency is refuted.

- by Kyle Johannsen
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- Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Political Science

Chez Cervantes et chez Rabelais, le roman naît de la rencontre entre des points de vue antagonistes sur la réalité. Prolongeant cette lignée, certains romanciers contemporains enquêtent sur la situation de sociétés déchirées par des conflits de valeurs. Robert Musil, Carlos Fuentes, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie et Édouard Glissant donnent à voir des mondes que la montée en puissance du pluralisme libère et désoriente. En imaginant nos conduites possibles face aux crises qu’entraîne l’accélération de la modernité, ils entrent en dialogue avec les philosophies pluralistes, qui s’efforcent de penser les liens nécessaires à l’équilibre des sociétés multiculturelles. Tout en élaborant une poétique pluraliste, fondée sur l’art de manier les multiplicités, cet essai met en lumière la pensée du politique qui structure ces romans. Il montre avec quelle sensibilité aiguë les romanciers incarnent les échecs répétés de la vie en commun, et quelles armes ils nous donnent pour tenter de les dépasser. Servi par une grande clarté d’écriture, il est aussi une invitation réjouissante et neuve à la lecture de ces œuvres fascinantes.

- by Vincent Message
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- Multiculturalism, William James, Theory of the Novel, Thomas Pynchon

There is now a worldwide consensus on the firm existence of a human right to freedom from slavery. This consensus gives rise to what was thought to be an irrefutable argument that the right to be free from slavery is a jurisprudential universal, with no competent legal system or government able to deny its existence or permit derogation from its tenets. This argument is now being tested by the ideologies, policies and actions of Muslim insurgencies in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria, each claiming that the enslavement of non-believing combatants and war captives and slave trading in such persons is permitted under Islamic law. This article considers the implications of these claims for the future of Islamic law and for its relationship with the world’s legal systems, particularly international humanitarian law. It posits that the claims of these insurgencies, while glaringly out of step with modern views of chattel slavery, should be taken seriously and actually have a great deal of support...

- by Bernard K Freamon
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- Sociology, Jurisprudence, International Human Rights Law, Slavery