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.     

Open philosophizing

The main part of this paper is part of a lecture given on 11 March 1985 at the University of Oslo. The notes were added in November 1987.     

Open risk assessment

As criminal justice actors increasingly seek to rely on more evidence-informed practices, including risk assessment instruments, they often lack adequate information about the evidence that informed the development of the practice or the tool. Open science practices, including making scientific research and data accessible and public, have not typically been followed in the development of tools designed for law enforcement, judges, probation, and others. This is in contrast to other government agencies, which often open their processes to public notice and comment. Lack of transparency has become pressing in the area of risk assessment, as entire judicial systems have adopted some type of risk assessment scheme. While the types of information used in a risk tool may be made public, often the underlying methods, validation data, and studies are not – nor are the assumptions behind how a level of risk gets categorized as “high” or “low.” We discuss why those concerns are relevant and important to the new risk assessment tool now being used in federal prisons, as part of the First Step Act. We conclude that a number of key assumptions and policy choices made in the design of that tool are not verifiable or are inadequately supported, including the choice of risk thresholds and the validation data itself. Unfortunately, as a result, the federal risk assessment effort has not been the hoped-for model for open risk assessment.     

Epistemological Open Questions

While there has been a great deal of recent interest in parallels between metaethics and metaepistemology, there has been little discussion of epistemological analogues of the open question argument (hereafter: OQA). This is somewhat surprising—the general trend in recent work is in the direction of emphasizing the continuity between metaethics and metaepistemology, and to treat metanormative questions as arising in parallel in these two normative domains. And while the OQA has been subjected to a wide variety of objections, it is still influential in metaethics. In this paper, I aim to show that an epistemological version of the OQA is just as promising as its moral cousin. That's not to say that I'll unqualifiedly endorse either argument. Rather, my aim is to show that there is just as strong a prima facie (really, secunda facie) case for an OQA in metaepistemology as there is in metaethics—I leave open whether the ultima facie case collapses.     

Egocentric Space

Abstract

I discuss the relation between egocentric spatial perception and the capacity for bodily activity, with specific reference to Merleau-Ponty.     

Public Space

“Public space” is the space where individuals see and are seen by others as they engage in public affairs. Hannah Arendt links this space with “public freedom.” The being of such freedom, she asserts, depends on its appearing. It consists of “deeds and words which are meant to appear, whose very existence hinges on appearance.” Such appearance, however, requires the public space. Reflecting on Arendt’s remarks, a number of questions arise: What does the dependence of freedom on public space tell us about the nature of freedom? How does public freedom relate to the freedom of a private individual? Does the latter also depend on its appearing? Which is generatively prior: freedom or public space, i.e., the actions that publicly manifest freedom or the space required for their appearance? How does public power shape this space? In this article, I approach these questions through a phenomenological study of public space.