On Actualist and Fundamental Public Justification in Political Liberalism

Philosophia - Public justification in political liberalism is often conceptualized in light of Rawls’s view of its role in a hypothetical well-ordered society as an ideal or idealizing form...     

The Political Justification of Migrant Workers in Alberta,Canada

Considering a series of oil-driven economic booms, the use of inter-provincial and international migrant labour has become an important part of labour market policy in the Canadian province of Alberta. The increased use of temporary foreign workers is controversial. Narrative analysis of legislators’ statements in the legislature and the press between 2000 and 2011 reveals the government using three narratives to justify policies encouraging greater use of foreign migrant workers: (1) labour shortages require migrant workers, (2) migrants do not threaten Canadian jobs and (3) migrants are not being exploited. Close scrutiny of each narrative demonstrates them to be largely invalid. This suggests a significant disconnect between the real and espoused reasons for the significant changes to labour market policy, changes that advantage employers and disadvantage both Canadian and foreign workers. The findings are relevant to understand the political dynamics of economically related migration.     

The Irrelevance of Democracy to the Public Justification of Political Authority

Democracy can be a means to independently valuable ends and/or it can be intrinsically (or non-instrumentally) valuable. One powerful non-instrumental defence of democracy is based on the idea that only it can publicly justify political authority. I contend that this is an argument about the reasonable acceptability of political authority and about the requirements of publicity and that satisfying these requirements has nothing to do with whether a society is democratic or not. Democracy, then, plays no role in publicly justifying political authority. I also show that any non-instrumental defence of democracy must make claims about what justice requires and make several further claims that require substantial justification.

Justice,Political Obligation and Public Reason: Rethinking Partisanship and Political Liberalism

In Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies I examine political parties and partisanship within the context of John Rawls’s (Political Liberalism, expanded edn. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005a) theory of political liberalism. I argue that parties and partisanship are vital to Rawls’s political liberalism, since they offer a distinctive and crucial contribution to the process of public justification that is central to it, which combines the articulation of public reasons with the channelling into the public political realm of the particular values and conceptions of the good emerging from parties’ specific constituencies. Furthermore, I argue, partisanship generates a special kind of political obligations, and this further contributes to state legitimacy under conditions of reasonable pluralism. In this paper, I respond to three commentators who have raised important criticisms against my argument. More specifically, Section 1 provides a response to Lea Ypi’s argument that my normative account of partisanship wrongly presupposes that existing liberal societies are reasonably just. Section 2 answers Daniel Weinstock’s concerns regarding the plausibility and internal consistency of my account of partisan political obligations. Finally, Section 3 addresses Kevin Vallier’s criticisms, which challenge my account of public reason and propose an alternative one.

     

Justification magnets

The main message of Philosophy of Science after Feminism is twofold: that philosophy of science needs to locate science within its wider societal context, ceasing to analyze science as if it existed in a social/political/economic vacuum; and correlatively, that philosophy of science needs to aim for an understanding of scientific rationality that is appropriate to that context, a scientific rationality that integrates the ethical with the epistemic. The ideal of socially responsible science that the book puts forward, in fact, maintains that sound social values as well as sound epistemic values must control every aspect of the scientific research process, from the choice of research questions to the communication and application of results. And it is this that raises troubling questions for Matt Brown, Hugh Lacey, and Libby Potter. In this paper I attempt to answer their questions and make explicit exactly what is in the offing if I succeed.     

Emotional Justification

Theories of emotional justification investigate the conditions under which emotions are epistemically justified or unjustified. I make three contributions to this research program. First, I show that we can generalize some familiar epistemological concepts and distinctions to emotional experiences. Second, I use these concepts and distinctions to display the limits of the ‘simple view’ of emotional justification. On this approach, the justification of emotions stems only from the contents of the mental states they are based on, also known as their cognitive bases. The simple view faces the ‘gap problem’: If cognitive bases and emotions (re)present their objects and properties in different ways, then cognitive bases are not sufficient to justify emotions. Third, I offer a novel solution to the gap problem based on emotional dispositions. This solution (1) draws a line between the justification of basic and non‐basic emotions, (2) preserves a broadly cognitivist view of emotions, (3) avoids a form of value skepticism that threatens inferentialist views of emotional justification, and (4) sheds new light on the structure of our epistemic access to evaluative properties.     

Justification and awareness

In Justification Without Awareness, Michael Bergmann attacks Internalism and Mentalism. His attack on Internalism refutes some versions of an awareness requirement for justification but leaves another standing and well-motivated. His attack on Mentalism, while successful, leaves us with a difficult question—what non-mental features play a role in determining justification?—that his own externalist theory fails to answer correctly.     

Luther and Justification

In this article, I reflect on Luther's doctrine on justification as it came out in different ways in some of his seminal writings between 1518 and 1538, all represented in volume 2 of The Annotated Luther. Discovering the righteousness of God as something already given to humans opened fundamentally new perspectives to Luther.     

Justification and Forgetting

This article sets forth a view about how epistemic justification figures in the ongoing justification of memory belief, a view that I call moderate justificational preservationism (MJP). MJP presupposes a nontraditional notion of memorial justification according to which what makes one's present belief that p prima facie justified is that which provided one with prima facie justification to believe that p originally (or some portion thereof). The article offers support for MJP by examining a series of cases that involve forgetting, and in doing so, criticizes views of Jennifer Lackey, David Owens, Michael Huemer, and George Pappas.     

Justification as faultlessness

According to deontological approaches to justification, we can analyze justification in deontic terms. In this paper, I try to advance the discussion of deontological approaches by applying recent insights in the semantics of deontic modals. Specifically, I use the distinction between weak necessity modals (should, ought to) and strong necessity modals (must, have to) to make progress on a question that has received surprisingly little discussion in the literature, namely: ‘What’s the best version of a deontological approach?’ The two most obvious hypotheses are the Permissive View, according to which justified expresses permission, and the Obligatory View, according to which justified expresses some species of obligation. I raise difficulties for both of these hypotheses. In light of these difficulties, I propose a new position, according to which justified expresses a property I call faultlessness, defined as the dual of weak necessity modals. According to this view, an agent is justified in \(\phi\)-ing iff it’s not the case that she should [/ought] not \(\phi\). I argue that this ‘Faultlessness View’ gives us precisely what’s needed to avoid the problems facing the Permissive and Obligatory Views.     

Interpretation and Justification

Whenever understanding is sought we are obliged to justify our interpretations – to demonstrate that they furnish an adequate understanding of the world and its objects. The problem is to know whether this is possible – that what we take to be conclusive justifications do not covertly appeal to other favoured interpretations or systems of explanation, thus obviating the possibility of a neutral justification. By exploring the nature of interpretation, I argue that neutral justifications of interpretations about works of art are indeed possible and that such interpretations can be shown to be true or false.