Labor Migration and Climate Change Adaptation

Social scientific evidence suggests that labor migration can increase resilience to climate change. For that reason, some have recently advocated using labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. This paper engages with the normative question of whether, and under what conditions, states may permissibly use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. I argue that states may use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation and may even have a duty to do so, subject to two moral constraints. First, states must also provide acceptable alternative options for adaptation so that the vulnerable are not forced to sacrifice their morally important interests in being able to remain where they are. Second, states may not impose restrictive terms on labor migrants to make accepting greater numbers less costly for themselves because doing so unfairly shifts the costs of adaptation onto the most vulnerable.

Between tragedy, romance, comedy and satire: narratives of axiological progress in public relations

PurposeOver recent years, public relations (PR) research has diversified in themes and theories. As a result, PR presents itself today as a multi-paradigmatic discipline with competing ideas of progress that mainly circle around questions of ontology and epistemology, i.e. around defining appropriate object and knowledge in PR research.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual article highlights a third crucial question underlying the debate drawing on a narrative approach: The question of axiology, hence, the normative question how PR research shall develop to contribute to societal progress.FindingsThe article presents a model, which describes how normative visions of progress in different PR paradigms – functional, co-creational, social-reflective and critical-cultural – manifest in each distinct combinations of four narrative plots – tragedy, romance, comedy and satire.Originality/valueThese findings complement the current debate on disciplinary progress in PR research by fostering reflection and debate on paradigm development and cross-paradigmatic tensions and exchange from an explicit axiological perspective.

The Legitimacy of Bougainville Secession from Papua New Guinea

What started as a movement to demand a distributive justice in mining revenue in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, the conflict turned into the struggle for secession. From 1970’s the demand for secession have been rife and despite early agreement for more autonomy and more mining revenue for the autonomous region, the demand never faded. Under Francis Ona’s Bougainville Revolutionary Army, the movement take a new heights. Bougainville Revolutionary Army took coercive measure to push the government to acknowledge their demands by taking over the mine at Panguna. Papua New Guinean government response was also combative and further exacerbate the issue. Papua New Guinean Defense Force involvement adding the issue of human rights into the discourse. This paper will seek to analyze the normative question surrounding the legitimacy of the right to secession in Bougainville Island. The protracted conflict has halted any form of development in the once the most prosperous province of Papua New Guinea and should Bougainville Island become independent, several challenges will be waiting for Bougainvilleans.

The Philanthropic Authority: What defines philanthropy and how it relates to democracy

A dangerous tool at the service of the richest or one of the most virtuous individual actions, philanthropy is said to stand in a conflictual relation to democracy. Many scholars have discussed the normative question of why philanthropy might or might not be desirable in a democracy. However, few have paused to address the prior and more fundamental analytical question of what makes philanthropy inherently specific in such a way that may (or may not) raise compatibility issues with the distinguishing features of democracy. I address this question as I offer a characterization of philanthropy as an act carrying a plutocratic and third-personal form of authority, which is in contrast with the mutual and second-personal kind of authority that distinguishes democracy as a form of government. The source of philanthropy’s authority rests in some people’s material resources that can be used to further unilateral decisions based on their individual preferences. This distinguishing feature of philanthropy makes it prima facie incompatible with the logic of democratic authority, which rests in the relations of mutual accountability between citizens as the joint makers of collective decisions. Philanthropy, I argue, inherently betrays this logic because it establishes no specific relation of mutual accountability between the donor and the recipient of the gift. To understand this specificity of philanthropy is important to gain a better understanding of the merits and limits of the different normative proposals to assess the desirability of making space for philanthropy in a democracy.

Challenges of Aligning Artificial Intelligence with Human Values

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems are becoming increasingly autonomous and will soon be able to make decisions on their own about what to do, AI researchers have started to talk about the need to align AI with human values. The AI ‘value alignment problem’ faces two kinds of challenges—a technical and a normative one—which are interrelated. The technical challenge deals with the question of how to encode human values in artificial intelligence. The normative challenge is associated with two questions: “Which values or whose values should artificial intelligence align with?” My concern is that AI developers underestimate the difficulty of answering the normative question. They hope that we can easily identify the purposes we really desire and that they can focus on the design of those objectives. But how are we to decide which objectives or values to induce in AI, given that there is a plurality of values and moral principles and that our everyday life is full of moral disagreements? In my paper I will show that although it is not realistic to reach an agreement on what we, humans, really want as people value different things and seek different ends, it may be possible to agree on what we do not want to happen, considering the possibility that intelligence, equal to our own, or even exceeding it, can be created. I will argue for pluralism (and not for relativism!) which is compatible with objectivism. In spite of the fact that there is no uniquely best solution to every moral problem, it is still possible to identify which answers are wrong. And this is where we should begin the value alignment of AI.

Edith Landmann-Kalischer on Aesthetic Demarcation and Normativity

Two perennial questions in aesthetics, among others, are the demarcation question, viz., what, if anything, distinguishes the aesthetic domain from the cognitive or moral domains, and the normative question, viz., what kind of normativity, if any, does the aesthetic domain involve. Although recent attempts to answer these questions can be found in contemporary literature, in this paper I examine the answers defended by the early phenomenologist Edith Landmann-Kalischer. I show that Landmann-Kalischer answers the demarcation question by blending together a cognitivist account of aesthetic judgment with an objectivist account of beauty, and that she builds an account of aesthetic normativity on this cognitivist and objectivist basis. I contend that her subtle and unified account of aesthetic demarcation and normativity has advantages over other competing hedonist and Kantian views and, as such, merits further consideration in contemporary debates.

Contractual Constructions

Social contract theory can be understood as a form of constructivism. Constructivism is the view that the content of morality can be defined by a procedure, the results of which define principles of actions. Constructivism can be understood as directed both to the normative question of what principles are justifiable and to the meta-ethical question as to the logical status of such principles. In respect of the latter, constructivism holds to a procedure-dependent conception of practical reason rather than a truth-directed view. In the case of social contract theory, the procedure is made up of three elements: an original position; the reasoning of the contracting parties; and the contents of the agreement that those contracting parties conclude with one another. Some contract theorists can be thought of as aspiring to a form of ethical reductionism, involving the defining of moral notions in non-moral terms by means of the constructed procedure, but this is not true of all. In this connection, there is a dispute as to whether rationality is to be defined in terms of self-interest. Constructivism is offered as an alternative to intuitionism, in which it is assumed that principles are in some sense self-evident.

A Classical Jewish Approach to “The Normative Question”

One of the fundamental questions in analytic meta-ethics is what Christine Korsgaard calls “the normative question.” It is a question that typically arises when a moral agent is confronted with a difficult moral obligation, and as a result, asks himself, “Must I really do this? Why must I do it?” In mainstream analytic philosophy, the responses to this question invariably take the form of a philosophical argument that starts from (allegedly) universally compelling premises, and draws from them the conclusion that, therefore, we really must do what morality requires of us—that morality is really binding for us. In this chapter, however, I explore a fundamentally different approach to the “normative question” based on (or inspired by) classical Judaism. First I formulate a parallel “normative question,” as it would arise in a Jewish context, and seek the appropriate classical Jewish response to it. Then, I offer a way of applying it to morality in general.

Introduction

The chapter explains the key issues that the book addresses, its methodological approach, and the structure of the argument. The book proceeds from an observation that, in many contemporary democracies, criminal disenfranchisement remains the only form of exclusion of adult, mentally competent citizens from equal citizenship entitlements. The book therefore aims to determine whether such restrictions could be considered justified in contemporary democracies. The chapter examines the currently predominant empirical approach to the problem and explains the importance of developing a comprehensive normative account of criminal disenfranchisement. After exploring alternative frameworks, the chapter proposes that the answer to the normative question should be sought within the domain of citizenship theory, which allows one to ask questions about the substance of membership duties in a polity and the conditions that one needs to satisfy to enjoy the rights attached to the citizenship status.