Migration,Open Borders,Human Rights,and Democracy

Two important recent books on migration and justice argue for different approaches to how we should view borders. Alex Sager defends open borders, while Sarah Song argues for the rights of democratic communities to find their own balance between open and closed borders. While both authors present significant considerations in defence of their views, in this article I argue that a human-rights-oriented account of migration justice captures their strengths well while not sharing the weaknesses I identify with each. In addition, the approach I favour offers some progressive pathways for holding each other to account in reducing migration injustice in our actual world, in ways that are both feasible and normatively compelling.     

Justice Beyond Borders

Liberal theories of social justicefocus predominantly on the national, ratherthan international, level, and where they doaddress international concerns they insist thatprinciples of justice at the national levelhave priority over principles at theinternational level. We question the coherenceof this arrangement, given liberal theory'scommitment to moral equality of persons as suchrather than to that of particular sets of persons. What isat issue is whether liberal theory can providea coherent basis for international justice atall. If it is to do so, we suggest that it mustbe prepared to theorise beyond the nationstate, and to take a historical perspectivewhich takes into account the ways in whichcolonial power and exploitation have given riseto the problems of international justice weface today. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Open Minds on Open Borders

This article is a plea, both moral and empirical, for open borders to be put on the agenda of mainstream academic theory. It begins by conceptualizing the liberalization of international labor markets as compensation for those who have not benefitted from the liberalization of capital and commodity markets. To demonstrate that the opportunity costs of maintaining closed borders are unacceptably high, it reports on economic studies suggesting huge gains from relaxing national border controls. The focus then turns to the historical record to argue against the realist notion that closed international borders are inevitable. Flaws are exposed in the logic underlying realist “infeasibility” arguments, as well as in much of the misinformation driving mass opinion against increased immigration into the USA. To explain how such myths are perpetuated by some prominent academic theorists, the focus turns to the “liberal paradox” reinforcing the moral perfectionism by which domestic inequality is condemned, but far greater international inequality is not. The conclusion, inspired by Julien Benda's The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, is that this perfectionism can be avoided by emphasizing intellectual integrity and the courage to follow one's ideas to their full logical consequences.     

Why There Still Are No People

This paper argues that there are no people. If identity isn't what matters in survival, psychological connectedness isn't what matters either. Further, fissioning cases do not support the claim that connectedness is what matters. I consider Peter Unger's view that what matters is a continuous physical realization of a core psychology. I conclude that if identity isn't what matters in survival, nothing matters. This conclusion is deployed to argue that there are no people. Objections to Eliminativism are considered, especially that morality cannot survive the loss of persons.     

Justice Within Different Borders: A Review of Caney's Global Political Theory

This essay examines the central claim of Caney's book, viz., that there is no reason to treat the global sphere differently from the domestic sphere. It suggests that there is much that is valuable in having relatively autonomous, differentiated political communities, which both versions of Caney's scope argument ignore. This insight is explored via a critical assessment of both versions of Caney's scope argument; version 1, which is focused on civil and political rights (and argues that that they should be universalized) and version 2, which applies to theories of distributive justice (particularly Caney's global equality of opportunity principle).     

Why We Still Have to Be Reductionists About Group Memory

Groups do not, in general, pool their members' knowledge successfully. This can be generalized to the point that groups perform more poorly than the sum of their members' individual potential in most tasks with objectively‐measurable standards of performance. In this closing essay of the colloquy, I discuss some matters inspired by the essays responding to my original argument, most notably the status of baseline models and the importance of research relevant to communication content and process during group discussion.     

Why the Duty to Self-Censor Requires Social-Media Users to Maintain Their Own Privacy

Revelations of personal matters often have negative consequences for social-media users. These consequences trigger frequent warnings, practical rather than moral in nature, that social-media users should consider carefully what they reveal about themselves since their revelations might cause them various difficulties in the future. I set aside such practical considerations and argue that social-media users have a moral obligation to maintain their own privacy that is rooted in the duty to self-censor. Although Anita L. Allen provides a paternalist justification of the duty that supports my position that social-media users are obligated to self-censor what they reveal about themselves, I justify the obligation through considerations that are more palatable to liberals than is paternalism. I accomplish this by arguing that the failure to self-censor often creates for others undue burdens that individuals are obligated morally not to create. In particular, social-media revelations often create undue burdens for those, such as employers and university personnel, who are obligated morally to respect individuals’ privacy in their decision-making processes. I also demonstrate that this argument is not for a broad duty to self-censor, but, rather, for a narrow duty that applies to particular circumstances such as certain uses of social media.

     

Why God Lied to Me: Salvationist Theism and Justice

It is widely assumed that God is either incapable of lying to humans or utterly unwilling to do so. However, there appear to be compelling reasons for God to intentionally deceive that are rooted in the traditional conception of God as an agent of salvation for humanity. A terroristic threat like eternal damnation ("hell") illustrates these reasons. God's love for human beings as wayward members of a divine family in concert with the obvious moral and cognitive limitations many humans suffer provide sufficient reason for God to deploy (or allow uncorrected) the threat of eternal damnation. A proper understanding of justice supports the contention that eternal damnation is contrary to justice, and therefore divinely inspired threats of eternal damnation are deceitful.     

Justice,Injustice, and Critical Potential Beyond Borders: A Multi‐Dimensional Affair

Until fairly recently, positions within the global justice debate have been quite polarised along the statism/cosmopolitanism dichotomy. Recently, the dichotomy has been challenged (although somewhat unsystematically), but the idea that the proximity of a view to cosmopolitanism also tracks its critical potential in political terms has not. This article rejects this premise. In order to do so, it also provides a novel, more systematic challenge to the statism/cosmopolitanism dichotomy. The main suggestion is that we should consider two aspects simultaneously, and identify positions within the debate on the basis of how they relate to both of these. First of all, participants in the debate can make three different kinds of claims, which I shall call moral, political, and institutional. Secondly, views position themselves within a spectrum in each of the three dimensions, rather than deciding between cosmopolitanism and statism – and at different at different points of the spectrum with regard to their moral, political, and institutional commitments respectively. This account gives us a better grasp of what taking a stand in the global justice entails. Crucially, it enables us to understand that the transformative and critical potential of a specific view depends on a variety of factors, and not only on its stand at the moral level. One can be fairly critical of the status quo without endorsing a cosmopolitan, or even nearly cosmopolitan, moral outlook. In short, the moral story is not the whole story.     

瞑目为何复睁开?

闻父病死的噩耗后,我火急火燎地返回家里.父亲已经从炕上抬放到铺板上,穿着整齐的寿衣,脸被一张麻纸覆盖着,我在灵前伏首泣血,哭天喊地,哀声动天.     

Why Do We Still Call Them “Paradoxes”

The fact that therapists label some events “paradoxical” may suggest that our current beliefs or theories are limited in their ability to adequately account for those phenomena. It is argued that our underlying belief in objectivity surrounds therapeutic “paradoxes” with a persistently paradoxical aura, and leads to confusion in our understanding of a variety of phenomena. Maturana's ideas regarding structure determinism, instructive interaction, and phenomenal domains are used to suggest an answer to these difficulties. It is claimed that the problematic status of many theoretical concepts (for example, communication, information, resistance, homeostasis, and pathology) is revealing of something quite important — that the experiential validity of instructive interaction repeatedly leads us into implicitly or explicitly employing instructive interaction in a domain where it can never be valid: the domain of theory and explanation.