Act Consequentialism and the No-Difference Challenge

2020 ◽  
pp. 633-654
Author(s):  
Holly Lawford-Smith ◽  
William Tuckwell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Real World ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Difference Making ◽  
Act Consequentialism

According to act-consequentialism, only actions that make a difference to an outcome can be morally bad. Yet, there are classes of actions that don’t make a difference, but nevertheless seem to be morally bad. Explaining how such non-difference making actions are morally bad presents a challenge for act-consequentialism: the no-difference challenge. In this chapter we go into detail on what the no-difference challenge is, focusing in particular on act consequentialism. We talk about how different theories of causation affect the no-difference challenge; how the challenge shows up in real-world cases, including voting, global labor injustice, global poverty, and climate change; and we work through a number of the solutions to the challenge that have been offered, arguing that many fail to actually meet it. We defend and extend one solution that does, and we present a further solution of our own.

scholarly journals Multifaith Third Spaces: Digital Activism, Netpeace, and the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geraldine Smith ◽  
Anna Halafoff
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Real World ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Digital Activism ◽  
Faith Traditions ◽  
Third Spaces ◽  
Material Religion

Multifaith spaces typically imply sites where people of diverse faith traditions gather to participate in shared activities or practices, such as multifaith prayer rooms, multifaith art exhibitions, or multifaith festivals. Yet, there is a lack of literature that discusses online multifaith spaces. This paper focuses on the website of an Australian multifaith organisation, the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC), which we argue is a third space of digital activism. We begin by outlining the main aims of the multifaith movement and how it responds to global risks. We then review religion and geography literature on space, politics and poetics, and on material religion and embodiment. Next, we discuss third spaces and digital activism, and then present a thematic and aesthetic analysis on the ARRCC website drawing on these theories. We conclude with a summary of our main findings, arguing that mastery of the online realm through digital third spaces and activism, combined with a willingness to partake in “real-world”, embodied activism, can assist multifaith networks and social networks more generally to develop Netpeace and counter the risks of climate change collaboratively.

Narrating Global Warming

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Smith
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Real World ◽  
Risk Evaluation ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Warming Climate ◽  
Binary Oppositions

This article examines global warming using the narrative genre model of risk evaluation. The narrative genre model of risk evaluation offers a systematic and comparative way of looking at the form and structure of storytelling and its consequences for human action. It is based on a number of claims, for example: uncertain events and real world facts are “clues”; we can see things as low mimetic, romantic, tragic, or apocalyptic; binary oppositions play a role as building blocks for wider storytelling activity. The article first provides a background on the issues of global warming, climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions before discussing the rise and growing acceptance of the apocalyptic genre as part of the discourse on global warming. It then considers the critique of apocalypticism, arguing that it is not only a bad genre guess that can be mocked, but also a hegemonic and anti-democratic force. It concludes with a commentary on how the narration of global warming is taking place at two levels.

Developing nations risk backsliding in COVID recovery

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Climate Targets ◽  
Public Revenue ◽  
Decisive Action ◽  
Interest Payments ◽  
A Share

Significance These dynamics harm developing states disproportionately and are driving a rise in global poverty. Traditional recovery policies tend to be harmful for the environment; these are especially problematic today, because the time for decisive action on climate change is limited. Impacts The UN saw developing states growing by 5% in 2015-30 at the SDG launch; this was not met by 2020 and is highly unlikely by 2025. In low-income states, debt interest payments doubled as a share of public revenue from 2008-17 and will rise more, squeezing other spending. Climate benefits of less activity were short-lived in past crises, and rebounds climate-unfriendly; clear climate targets should help now.

scholarly journals Poverty Alleviation, Global Justice, and the Real World

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
The Real ◽  
Past Work ◽  
Thomas Pogge

The modern literature on responding to global poverty is over fifty years old and has attracted the attention of some of the most prominent analytical political theorists of the age, including Brian Barry, Charles Beitz, Simon Caney, Thomas Pogge, John Rawls, and Peter Singer. Yet in spite of this extraordinary concentration of brainpower, the problem of global poverty has quite clearly not been solved or, indeed, adequately defined. We are therefore entitled to ask two questions of any new contribution to this literature: first, what does it have to offer that past work does not; and second, what reason is there to think that, this time, it will truly make a difference. These questions will be posed below, but before undertaking this task it may be useful to offer an overview of the field, with particular attention to why the problem of global poverty seems so intractable.

Combing the same beach: Analytic eclecticism and the challenge of theoretical multilingualism

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 404-419
Author(s):  
Eric M. Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Real World ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Research Traditions

Sil and Katzenstein present analytic eclecticism as a pragmatic, problem-driven, policy-oriented heuristic, posed against the paradigmatism and parsimony inhibiting the study of world politics. I argue that Sil and Katzenstein’s approach is both promising (in that it is one of the more flexible available frameworks to bring separate research traditions into fruitful dialogue) and potentially problematic (if it limits itself to the triad of realism, liberalism, and constructivism). Informed by a recent methodological turn in post-positivist International Relations (IR) and Political Science, this essay takes seriously eclecticism’s commitment to theoretical multilingualism by imagining an eclectic engagement beyond the heuristic’s original purview and calling for eclectic attention to reflexivity, constitutive theorizing, and the dynamics of power and ethics. The article reflects on existing disciplinary power dynamics and disparities and the urgent demand for scholars to more fully contribute to developing effective approaches to real-world threats, such as climate change.

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