Epistemic austerity: limits to entitlement

Epistemic entitlement is a species of internalist warrant that can be had without any evidential support. Unfortunately, for this kind of warrant the so-called problem of demarcation arises, a form of epistemic relativism. I first present entitlement theory and examine what the problem of demarcation is exactly, rejecting that it is either based on bizarreness or disagreement in favour of the thesis that the problem of demarcation is based on epistemic arbitrariness. Second, I argue that arbitrariness generates a problem for entitlement because it undermines epistemic warrant. Third, I draw out some of the consequences that arbitrariness has for an entitlement epistemology, notably that it threatens to generalise to all our beliefs. Finally, I examine how different solutions to the problem of demarcation fare with respect to the danger of arbitrariness. I argue that none of the considered options succeeds in dealing with the risks of arbitrariness.

Critical Entitlement Theory on post-missionary paternalism in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe

The dynamic of power troubles are the doing and thinking and that knowledge is always contingent, standing above the abyss, as stated by Prof. J. Jansen in 2009. The issue of entitlement affected the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) at the onset of the third millennium. Leadership vacuum at the departure of missionaries led individuals to assume identities and hierarchies believed to have been interwoven into the polity and governing ideology of the COCZ. This connoted towards power, privilege and position for someone to benefit on church investments. The article suggests use of the critical Entitlement Theory (CET) to assess how contemporary situations at mission stations affect local churches and communities. Black elites who took over have created tensions and contradictions in churches by hiring persons who do not question their actions and words and persons who do not have an appreciation of the production and implementation of the church’s governing laws. Critical Entitlement Theory assumes that ‘the privileged ownership and administration theses’ that date back to white privilege in the colonial church created this problem. This ethnographic study discloses how a new interdisciplinary thinking on equity and justice to local Christians can rise to own and manage mission stations in their local congregations.

9. Theories of justice

Theories of justice are at the heart of any serious analysis of law and the legal system. They are an important feature of moral, political, and legal theory. From the Greeks to the present day the question of what constitutes a just society is a fundamental philosophical and practical concern. The disparities in wealth and living conditions between rich and poor countries generates a need for ‘global justice’ that applies to the world at large. This chapter analyses several theories of justice: utilitarianism; the related economic analysis of law; John Rawls’s influential theory of ‘justice as fairness’; Robert Nozick’s ‘entitlement theory’ of justice; the concept of equality; and the novel ‘capability’ approach.

Fairness in drug prices: do economists think differently from the public?

Using dual-entitlement theory as the guide, we conducted a survey of economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research asking them a series of questions about the fairness of drug prices in the United States. Public opinion surveys have repeatedly shown that the public perceives drug prices to be unfair, but economists trained in laws of supply and demand may have different perceptions. Three hundred and ten senior economists responded to our survey. Forty-five percent agreed that drug prices were unfair when people, specifically low-income individuals, could not afford their prescription medications. Sixty-five percent oppose a dollar threshold, or upper limit, on drug prices. The economists recommend the most promising policy change would be to provide the government additional negotiating power and price controls would moderately impact investment in pharmaceutical research and development.

Deep disagreement and hinge epistemology

This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general ‘presuppositions’ of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreements over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis that such disagreements are rationally irresolvable, and ask whether the Wittgensteinian account of deep disagreement—according to which such disagreements are disagreements over hinge commitments—provides adequate support for pessimism. I argue that the answer to this question depends on what hinge commitments are and what our epistemic relation to them is supposed to be. I argue for two core claims. First, that non-epistemic theories of hinge commitments provide adequate support for pessimism. Nevertheless, such theories have highly implausible consequences in the context of deep disagreement. Secondly, at least one epistemic theory of hinge commitments, the entitlement theory, permits optimism about such disagreements. As such, while hinge epistemology is mainly pessimistic about deep disagreement, it doesn’t have to be.