| 1. |
- Andersson, Emil, 1982-
(författare)
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Reinterpreting Liberal Legitimacy
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is an inquiry into the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, formulated by John Rawls in his later writings. According to this principle, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. This view can be interpreted in different ways, and I argue that the presently most popular way of doing so faces serious problems. The aim is to identify and defend a more plausible version of the principle, which overcomes these problems, and yet preserves the most essential and appealing features of the approach. Among the most central issues for how to interpret the principle are how to understand the notion of justifiability to a person, and who should be included in the group of persons referred to as "all citizens". On the currently received view, only justifiability to those who count as "reasonable" matter, and justifiability to these persons is understood in non-moral terms, as being determined by what is accessible to them, given the beliefs that they happen to hold. I argue that we have good reasons to reject both of these suggestions. We should instead spell out justifiability to a person in terms of what could be reasonably accepted in a moral sense, which allows us to retain the appealing idea that legitimacy is dependent on justifiability to all citizens over whom political power is exercised. I further suggest that we can use the original position – Rawls’s version of the social contract – to determine what is justifiable to all in this sense. I defend this suggestion against the expected objection that it will not be able to take reasonable pluralism – the assumption of deep disagreement between citizens – into account, by explaining why we should sharply distinguish this principle of political legitimacy from the theory of Political Liberalism. This distinction also contributes to my response to the objection, raised against this principle, that it is self-defeating. That my suggested interpretation allows us to convincingly respond to this line of criticism is yet another reason as to why it is preferable to the standard view.
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| 2. |
- Arrhenius, Gustaf, et al.
(författare)
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Etiska avvägningar i pandemitider
- 2021
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Ingår i: I en tid av pandemi. - Stockholm : Expertgruppen för studier i offentlig ekonomi, Finansdepartementet. - 9789152500699 ; , s. 59-72
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Bokkapitel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)
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| 3. |
- Arrhenius, Gustaf, et al.
(författare)
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To the editor of Theoria
- 2011
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Ingår i: Theoria: a Swedish Journal of Philosophy. - : Wiley. - 0040-5825. ; 77:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 4. |
- Bakka, Conrad, 1988-
(författare)
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Debunking Debunked? : Challenges, Prospects, and the Threat of Self-Defeat
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Metaethical debunking arguments often conclude that no moral belief is epistemically justified. Early versions of such arguments largely relied on metaphors and analogies and left the epistemology of debunking underspecified. Debunkers have since come to take on substantial and broad-ranging epistemological commitments. The plausibility of metaethical debunking has thereby become entangled in thorny epistemological issues. In this thesis, I provide a critical yet sympathetic evaluation of the prospects and challenges facing such arguments in light of this development. In doing so, I address the following central question: how could genealogical information undermine the epistemic justification of moral beliefs? In Part I, I begin answering the central question by extracting explicit and implicit epistemic principles from three popular debunking arguments. These arguments, due to Gilbert Harman, Richard Joyce, and Sharon Street, generate principles concerning ontological parsimony, explanatory dispensability, epistemic insensitivity, lack of epistemic safety, unexplained reliability, epistemic coincidences, and explanatory constraints on rational belief. Having set out the principles tasked with explaining how genealogical information undermines, Part II of the thesis seeks to evaluate whether debunking arguments built on them succeed. To this end, I consider two types of challenges faced by such arguments. First, there are strategies that attempt to block global moral debunking arguments. I argue that one popular such strategy, the so-called ‘third-factor strategy’, has been misunderstood. When understood correctly, it is of no help in answering debunking arguments. I then flesh out an alternative and more promising strategy for blocking such arguments. I then turn to internal challenges facing debunkers, particularly those who rely on ‘explanationist’ principles. I argue that explanationist debunking arguments, as well as most others, fall prey to one or more of four internal challenges: the implausibility of first-order epistemic principles, the threat of overgeneralization, the threat of self-defeat, and the need for costly metaepistemic commitments.I conclude that current debunking arguments fail to establish that no moral belief is justified. By analyzing why existing arguments fail, I develop two conditions of adequacy that debunkers must satisfy in order to navigate the internal challenges successfully. I end by suggesting future directions that debunkers should pursue to rehabilitate the prospects for global moral debunking arguments.
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| 5. |
- Berndt Rasmussen, Katharina, 1977-
(författare)
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Democracy and the Common Good : A Study of the Weighted Majority Rule
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this study I analyse the performance of a democratic decision-making rule: the weighted majority rule. It assigns to each voter a number of votes that is proportional to her stakes in the decision. It has been shown that, for collective decisions with two options, the weighted majority rule in combination with self-interested voters maximises the common good when the latter is understood in terms of either the sum-total or prioritarian sum of the voters’ well-being.The main result of my study is that this argument for the weighted majority rule — that it maximises the common good — can be improved along the following three main lines. (1) The argument can be adapted to other criteria of the common good, such as sufficientarian, maximin, leximin or non-welfarist criteria. I propose a generic argument for the collective optimality of the weighted majority rule that works for all of these criteria. (2) The assumption of self-interested voters can be relaxed. First, common-interest voters can be accommodated. Second, even if voters are less than fully competent in judging their self-interest or the common interest, the weighted majority rule is weakly collectively optimal, that is, it almost certainly maximises the common good given a large numbers of voters. Third, even for smaller groups of voters, the weighted majority rule still has some attractive features. (3) The scope of the argument can be extended to decisions with more than two options. I state the conditions under which the weighted majority rule maximises the common good even in multi-option contexts. I also analyse the possibility and the detrimental effects of strategic voting. Furthermore, I argue that self-interested voters have reason to accept the weighted majority rule.
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| 6. |
- Brülde, Bengt, 1959, et al.
(författare)
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essentialism och naturliga sorter
- 2008
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Ingår i: Liedman S, Tännsjö T & Westerståhl D (red.). Den svårfångade relativismen: en uppslagsbok. - Stockholm : Thales.
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Jedenheim Edling, Magnus, 1960-
(författare)
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Over-Determination and Act-Consequentialism
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is a discussion of the challenge that cases of over-determination pose to Act-Consequentialism. Although there are many realistic examples of such cases – for example, pollution, overfishing, or the election of an inappropriate politician – I consider structurally purer examples, one of which I call “Case One.” Suppose that you and I independently shoot and kill a third person called “Victim.” Our bullets arrive at the same time and each shot would have killed Victim by itself. Finally, Victim would not have been killed, if neither of us had pulled the trigger. According to the Standard Version of Act-Consequentialism, an action is wrong if and only if it has an alternative whose consequences would be intrinsically better. Case One challenges the Standard Version because there does not seem to be such an alternative to my action: Victim would have died by your shot if I had not shot him, and similar remarks apply to your action.The dissertation is structured as follows. After Chapter One, which briefly introduces the main issues of the dissertation, I turn to Chapter Two – “Preliminaries” – where I outline the Standard Version and highlight the main characteristics of over-determination cases. These cases are divided into cases of redundant difference making and cases of redundant causation. Cases of redundant causation are subdivided further into cases of causal over-determination and pre-emption. I make an important stipulation in this chapter. I say that our actions in Case One and similar cases are “redundant negative difference makers.”In Chapter Three – “Replies” – I consider whether the proponent of Act-Consequentialism might question the intuition that you and I, respectively, act wrongly in Case One. The proponent might accept that we have this intuition but explain it away, or she might deny that we have the intuition and instead point to something else that is wrong in this kind of case. For example, she could suggest that although neither you nor I act wrongly individually, we act wrongly together. I argue that these replies are problematic. For instance, explaining away this intuition might also force us to explain away intuitions that support the Standard Version.In Chapter Four – “Causal Consequences” – I discuss an alternative version of Act-Consequentialism that might seem to fare better. The Standard Version interprets the term “outcome of an action” as referring to the entire possible world that would obtain, if the action were performed. The version I have in mind, the “Causal Consequences Version of Act-Consequentialism,” understands “outcome of an action” as instead referring to the causal consequences of the action. It seems clear that you and I, respectively, cause the state of affairs that Victim dies in Case One. However, I show that the Causal Consequences Version has a number of unattractive implications.In Chapter Five – “the Non-Standard Version” – I suggest another alternative version of Act-Consequentialism. This version – the Non-Standard Version – implies that you and I act wrongly in Case One. Roughly, the Non-Standard Version says that an action is wrong if and only if it has an alternative whose consequences would be intrinsically better, or is a redundant negative difference maker. The Non-Standard Version is similar to a principle suggested by Derek Parfit. However, I shall argue that the Non-Standard Version is preferable to Parfit’s principle.In Chapter Six – “Further Cases” – I discuss a number of cases that challenge the Non-Standard Version. For example, what would the Non-Standard Version imply in a case very similar to Case One but where I would have killed another person, if I had not shot Victim? I argue that the Non-Standard Version handles this and other problematic cases, and that it is therefore a plausible alternative to the Standard Version.
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| 10. |
- Jedenheim-Edling, Magnus, 1960-
(författare)
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The compatibility of effective self-ownership and joint world ownership
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The three main conclusions of this doctoral thesis are: first, that effective self-ownership is compatible with joint world ownership; second, that it is incompatible with private ownership as expressed in right-libertarianism; third, that it is incompatible with private ownership as expressed in left-libertarianism. Effective self-ownership is a technical way of expressing personal freedom, and joint world ownership means that the world is owned by everyone in common and that people, therefore, have an equal say as regards its use. Right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism both support private ownership. The difference between them is mainly their respective view on how private property legitimately can be formed. Crudely put, the right-libertarian believes that ownership may be formed through mixing one's labour with the external resources in question, whereas left-libertarianism recognises ownership only if it is initially equally distributed. Furthermore, it is argued that joint world ownership, right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism and the various versions of these exhaust the field, or that these are, at least, the most obvious alternatives to be reckoned with. It may, therefore, also be concluded that if one finds effective self-ownership valuable, one should also adopt joint world ownership. To be able to assess the arguments of this thesis, one obviously needs to know more about ownership. Therefore, this doctoral thesis will also include a thorough analysis of rights and ownership.This thesis takes part in and elaborates the traditional debate within political theory: whether personal freedom is compatible with material equality. It is by many believed that they are incompatible. The reason for this is that the measures taken to uphold material equality appear to reduce personal freedom. But if effective self-ownership is a reasonable expression of personal freedom and joint world ownership of material equality, then the thesis advocated here claims that the scepticism of their incompatibility is ill founded and that they, indeed, are compatible.
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