Justice and Arbitrary Boundaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 234-254
Author(s):  
Gerald Lang
Keyword(s):  
International Justice ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Basic Equality ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
To Come ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
A Charge ◽  
Interspecies Relations

This chapter deals with three problems of discrimination, arising from our membership of certain communities. The first of these concerns the debate between cosmopolitans and non-cosmopolitans about international justice. It is just a lucky accident that we were born where we were, but these arbitrary facts can make a huge difference to life chances. Rawlsian non-cosmopolitans thus risk a charge of incoherence if they combine an acceptance of these sources of arbitrariness with a commitment to anti-arbitrariness principles of justice. The Irrelevance Interpretation of Rawls’s justice as fairness advanced in Chapter 7 is used to defuse this charge of incoherence. The second problem concerns the ‘basic equality’ project of establishing robust foundations for human moral equality by locating a morally significant property that every human possesses, and possesses equally. It is contended that the basic equality project is wrongheaded, and that we need not worry about descriptive inequalities among human beings. The third problem concerns interspecies relations and the charge of ‘speciesism’. It is maintained that much anti-speciesist literature rests upon the doctrine of ‘moral individualism’, and that this doctrine is severely flawed. To come to a satisfactory view of what we owe to each other, we need to pay attention to both the properties individuals possess, and also the properties they lack. To do that, in turn, requires that these individuals be situated in certain communities, including species-specific communities.

How to Justify Principles of Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Zhang Guoqing
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
The Core ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Veil

AbstractJohn Rawls assumes that in the original position, under the veil of ignorance, after bargaining amongst each other, free, equal, moral and rational persons would make a rational decision to accept the principles of justice as fairness and thus the principles are established. Critics, however, question the authenticity and validity of this justification strategy. When rational individuals take the principles of justice as an original agreement, it is not a real contract. Rawls’s conception of justice as fairness is just a personal notion, some individuals may accept it, but it is impossible to be accepted by all human beings in a real world. Therefore there is a justification/acceptance paradox of those principles which are the core of his political philosophy. So how should we justify those principles? Its answers may be provided not in the light of a philosophical justification but of a scientific one.

scholarly journals Critiquing Anthropocentrism in Henry Ole Kulet’s Vanishing Herds

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-55
Author(s):  
Pushpa Raj Jaishi
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
East African ◽  
To Come

Vanishing Herds (2011) is Henry Ole Kulet’s novel that hovers around the ecological depletion caused by the anthropocentric attitude of the human beings. Set in the East African Savannah, the novel grapples with the critical issue of anthropogenic environmental degradation. The novel is based on the tribulations of a young Maasai couple –Kedoki and Norpisia whose epic journey through the wilderness provides a window through which the destruction of the physical environment can be viewed. Additionally, the text catalogues the challenges faced by a pastoralist community’s attempt to come to terms with the socio-economic realities of a fast-evolving contemporary society. The paper is an attempt to study this novel under the surveillance of green lens and throw light on the ecological destruction especially the clearing of the forest by human self centered endeavors and to critique the anthropocentric attitude of the human beings that render the environment at the verge of destruction.

Can animals sing? On birdsong, music and meaning

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hektor KT Yan
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
A Value ◽  
Music And Meaning ◽  
To Come ◽  
Factual Issue ◽  
The Way

This article deals with conceptual questions regarding claims to the effect that humans and animals share artistic abilities such as the possession of music. Recent works focusing on animals, from such as Hollis Taylor and Dominique Lestel, are discussed. The attribution of artistic traits in human and animal contexts is examined by highlighting the importance of issues relating to categorization and evaluation in cross-species studies. An analogy between the denial of major attributes to animals and a form of racism is drawn in order to show how questions pertaining to meaning can impact on our understanding of animal abilities. One of the major theses presented is that the question of whether animals possess music cannot be answered by a methodology that is uninformed by the way concepts such as music or art function in the context of human life: the ascription of music to humans or non-humans is a value-laden act rather than a factual issue regarding how to represent an entity. In order to see how humans and animals share a life in common, it is necessary to come to the reflective realization that how human beings understand themselves can impact on their perception and experience of human and non-human animals.

Justice as Fairness: For Groups?

1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 607-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Homogeneous State ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Almost All

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls assumes that the principles of justice are for individuals in a society, and in general he assumes that the society is an ethnically homogeneous state. He thus follows the tradition associated with the dominant form of the social contract theory, which focuses on the individual and the state. His assumptions neglect the fact that almost all states are ethnically plural or heterogeneous, and that many of them confer special status and rights on ethnic groups as collective entities; for example, many of them confer special status and rights on indigenous groups, on groups disadvantaged by prior discrimination, and on minorities and other groups conceded a right to survive as distinct cultural entities. Status and rights for groups necessarily mean differentiation among individuals depending on their membership; and this in turn means that a theory of justice that focuses on the individual and neglects the group both fails to account for existing practices and fails to give guidance where the practices are at issue.

Artificial intelligence: criminal and procedural aspects

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-89
Author(s):  
Igor I. Kartashov ◽  
Ivan I. Kartashov
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Legal Advice ◽  
Judicial Practice ◽  
Legal Expert ◽  
To Come ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Self Learning

For millennia, mankind has dreamed of creating an artificial creature capable of thinking and acting “like human beings”. These dreams are gradually starting to come true. The trends in the development of modern so-ciety, taking into account the increasing level of its informatization, require the use of new technologies for information processing and assistance in de-cision-making. Expanding the boundaries of the use of artificial intelligence requires not only the establishment of ethical restrictions, but also gives rise to the need to promptly resolve legal problems, including criminal and proce-dural ones. This is primarily due to the emergence and spread of legal expert systems that predict the decision on a particular case, based on a variety of parameters. Based on a comprehensive study, we formulate a definition of artificial intelligence suitable for use in law. It is proposed to understand artificial intelligence as systems capable of interpreting the received data, making optimal decisions on their basis using self-learning (adaptation). The main directions of using artificial intelligence in criminal proceedings are: search and generalization of judicial practice; legal advice; preparation of formalized documents or statistical reports; forecasting court decisions; predictive jurisprudence. Despite the promise of using artificial intelligence, there are a number of problems associated with a low level of reliability in predicting rare events, self-excitation of the system, opacity of the algorithms and architecture used, etc.

Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders

1987 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph H. Carens
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Third World ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Michael Walzer ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Third ◽  
Oppressed People ◽  
Open Borders ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Third World

Many poor and oppressed people wish to leave their countries of origin in the third world to come to affluent Western societies. This essay argues that there is little justification for keeping them out. The essay draws on three contemporary approaches to political theory — the Rawlsian, the Nozickean, and the utilitarian — to construct arguments for open borders. The fact that all three theories converge upon the same results on this issue, despite their significant disagreements on others, strengthens the case for open borders and reveals its roots in our deep commitment to respect all human beings as free and equal moral persons. The final part of the essay considers communitarian objections to this conclusion, especially those of Michael Walzer.

scholarly journals The social struggle against death: Human strategies for immortality

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (13-14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Galić
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Biological Part ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Human Death

Death is an infallible part of the human life, and what makes humandifferent from all other beings is fact that he knows that he isgoing to die. Knowing this, human beings are spending their wholelife knowing that the day of their end is going to come. It is clear thatdeath has its biological part, also as a huge event in the existenceof all life forms, including human, death has its philosophical pointof view, and finally, unlike some may disagree, death itself is a hugesocial phenomena as well, and as such, the social influence of deathdeserves close attention and its own part in the social science studies.This paper analyzes the presence of the death in human culture, includinginstitutions, rituals and beliefs following the discourse of lateZygmunt Bauman who left huge influence on this field of study. Sincethe earliest forms of communities, humans are trying to overcomethe death, the state of “after-life” and some form of immortality ofthe being is something that is common to all religions and beliefs everknown to mankind, which stands as a evidence that the final void ofnon-existence know to us as death is something that always presentedhorror in the mind of the humans.

Filosofia, politica e società ai tempi della pandemia. Agamben e la «paranoia della ragione»

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 617-642
Author(s):  
Antonio Di Chiro
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Intimate Relations ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

In this essay we will try to analyze the thought of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben on the pandemic. The aim of the work is twofold. On the one hand, we will try to demonstrate that Agamben’s positions on the pandemic are not to be understood as mere extemporaneous statements, but as integral parts of his philosophy. On the other hand, we will try to show how these positions are based on a deeply paranoid and anti-scientific vision, since Agamben believes that the effects of the epidemic have been exaggerated by the centers of power in order to create a “state of exception” that allows to crumble social life and to use the fear of poverty as a tool to dominate society. We will try to demonstrate that it is precisely starting from the critique of Agamben’s positions that it is possible to rethink a philosophy and a politic to come and a new reorganization of social and intimate relations between human beings.

The Grounds of Justice

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Pluralist Approach

This book explores the question of what it is for a distribution to be just globally and proposes a new systematic theory of global justice that it calls pluralist internationalism. Up to now, philosophers have tended to respond to the problem of global justice in one of two ways: that principles of justice either apply only within states or else apply to all human beings. The book defends a view “between” these competing claims, one that improves on both, and introduces a pluralist approach to what it terms the grounds of justice—which offers a comprehensive view of obligations of distributive justice. It also considers two problems that globalization has raised for political philosophy: the problem of justifying the state to outsiders and the problem of justifying the global order to all.

Afterword Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea

2019 ◽  
pp. 257-272
Author(s):  
Michael O. West
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Republic ◽  
To Come ◽  
A Charge

It is a truism that black folk in the United States are an international people. From the beginning of the republic, they were compelled by force of domestic (national) circumstances to internationalize their struggle for liberation, the founders having excluded them from the US social contract. The initial affidavit of exclusion is right there in the inaugural document of the social contract, the Declaration of Independence, which, ever so cryptically, damned the king of England for having “excited domestic insurrections amongst us.” This was an attack on the self-emancipatory activities of the enslaved descendants of Africa, who were exploiting the chaos caused by the anticolonial rebellion to claim their freedom, sometimes in cahoots with the British colonialists. Unable or unwilling to confront their own contradictions, the authors of the Declaration of Independence condemned the self-determination of the slaves as the doing of outside agitators, a charge that would be hurled at African American movements and activists for generations to come—up to the present time, in fact....

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