Dignity as a constitutional value: Abortion, political communication and proportionality

This article examines the High Court of Australia’s treatment of the concept of dignity as both a value animating the implied freedom of political communication and as a legitimate reason to limit the exercise of that freedom. It does so through the lens of Clubb v Edwards, Preston v Avery, where the Court found that laws establishing safe access zones around abortion clinics were compatible with the implied freedom. The use of dignity as a prism through which to view the interests at stake in both abortion and speech cases is a familiar feature of developments abroad, and the Court has laid the foundations for recognition of dignity as one of the axiological bases of the implied freedom in a manner that generally emphasises individual autonomy over other conceptions of dignity that might be described as operating as a constraint on behaviour to protect other interests. Yet, while the Court has used dignity as the common measure with which to commensurate competing claims, it has yet to convincingly address concerns regarding incommensurability that attend the balancing stage of proportionality review, not to mention the potential objection that its reliance on dignity is not properly grounded in the text and structure of the Constitution. In light of these issues, the role of dignity ought to be tethered to its central role in facilitating political participation so as to more clearly link the concept to the text and structure of the Constitution, and to identify what is at stake when women’s ability to access reproductive health care is impaired or denied.

When Freeing Your Mind Isn’t Enough

In this chapter, Kristie Dotson and Ezgi Sertler probe the transformative potential of framework approaches to social justice. They challenge the idea that framework shifts at different levels equate to changes in the social arrangements they aim to reconceptualize. Ultimately, they claim that framework approaches to social transformation have two limitations that include: (i) failing to lead to the epistemological ingenuity they often promise; and, even where such ingenuity might be achieved, (ii) leaving untouched the actual social arrangements that facilitate the circumstances under analysis. This chapter proceeds in four sections. First, there is an introduction to viewing social justice issues through epistemological approaches. Second, Dotson and Sertler explain what they mean by a framework approach to social transformation. Third, they discuss a framework approach to social justice by looking into framework approaches to understanding “political prisoners” and its potential aims and aspirations. Fourth, they conclude by responding to a potential objection for this framework analysis by assessing the “work” of their own framework analysis.

LAW-DETERMINATION AS GROUNDING: A COMMON GROUNDING FRAMEWORK FOR JURISPRUDENCE

ABSTRACTLaw being a derivative feature of reality, it exists in virtue of more fundamental things, upon which it depends. This raises the question of what is the relation of dependence that holds between law and its more basic determinants. The primary aim of this paper is to argue that grounding is that relation. We first make a positive case for this claim, and then we defend it from the potential objection that the relevant relation is rather rational determination.1Against this challenge, we argue that the apparent objection is really no objection, for on its best understanding, rational determination turns out to actually be grounding. Finally, we clarify the framework for theories on law-determination that results from embracing our view; by way of illustration, we offer a ground-theoretic interpretation of Hartian positivism and show how it can defuse an influential challenge to simple positivist accounts of law.

The Naturalization of Natural Philosophy

A new demarcation is proposed between Natural Philosophy and non-Natural Philosophy—philosophy tout court—based on whether or not they follow a non-standard logic of real processes. This non-propositional logic, Logic in Reality (LIR), is based on the original work of the Franco-Romanian thinker Stéphane Lupasco (Bucharest, 1900–Paris, 1988). Many Natural Philosophies remain bounded by dependence on binary linguistic concepts of logic. I claim that LIR can naturalize—bring into science—part of such philosophies. Against the potential objection that my approach blurs the distinction between science and philosophy, I reply that there is no problem in differentiating experimental physical science and philosophy; any complete distinction between philosophy, including the philosophy of science(s) and the other sciences is invidious. It was historically unnecessary and is unnecessary today. The convergence of science and philosophy, proposed by Wu Kun based on implications of the philosophy of information, supports this position. LIR provides a rigorous basis for giving equivalent ontological value to diversity and identity, what is contradictory, inconsistent, absent, missing or past, unconscious, incomplete, and fuzzy as to their positive counterparts. The naturalized Natural Philosophy resulting from the application of these principles is a candidate for the ‘new synthesis’ called for by the editors.

Beyond the Present

This chapter argues that subjects can be in touch with things outside their immediate environment, and applies this conclusion to compassion. Three cases of being in touch with spatial properties are considered, in which subjects “see in their mind’s eye,” episodically remember, and vividly anticipate properties of objects. Though none of these states are perceptions in the familiar sense, it is argued that they share some of perception’s irreplaceable epistemic goodness. Differences in being in touch are then found to coincide with intuitive moral distinctions in cases in which agents are or are not pained by spatially distant, past, and future pains. Finally, a potential objection is addressed about agents becoming ineffective through getting caught up in some thought of distant pain.

The Truth that Pain is Bad

This chapter articulates several core claims of Compassionate Moral Realism, and argues that the view thereby satisfies the semantic and metaphysical criteria for moral realism. The chapter focuses on the claim that pain is objectively bad, arguing that it is literally true and corresponds to a stance-independent moral fact. After clarifying the meaning of that claim, a partial analysis for “objectively bad” is defended, according to which something is objectively bad if any subject in touch with it would be averse to it. After showing how this partial analysis connects to other philosophers’ analyses of value-related notions and follows from several defensible full analyses, a potential objection based on Moore’s Open Question Argument is considered and answered. It is then shown that “pain is objectively bad” is therefore literally true on this analysis, and that the corresponding fact is stance-independent in the relevant ways.

Lesbian motherhood and mitochondrial replacement techniques: reproductive freedom and genetic kinship

In this paper, we argue that lesbian couples who wish to have children who are genetically related to both of them should be allowed access to mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs). First, we provide a brief explanation of mitochondrial diseases and MRTs. We then present the reasons why MRTs are not, by nature, therapeutic. The upshot of the view that MRTs are non-therapeutic techniques is that their therapeutic potential cannot be invoked for restricting their use only to those cases where a mitochondrial DNA disease could be ‘cured’. We then argue that a positive case for MRTs is justified by an appeal to reproductive freedom, and that the criteria to access these techniques should hence be extended to include lesbian couples who wish to share genetic parenthood. Finally, we consider a potential objection to our argument: that the desire to have genetically related kin is not a morally sufficient reason to allow lesbian couples to access MRTs.

The Philosophical Justification for the Equant in Ptolemy’s Almagest

In this paper I offer a close reading of Ptolemy’s philosophical defense of the equant in Almagest 9.2. I identify the challenge to the equant that his defense is supposed to meet, characterizing it as a dispute concerning the origin and authority of the astronomer’s first principles (ἀρχαί). I argue that the equant could be taken to violate a principle fundamental to the Almagest’s astronomical project, namely, that the heavenly bodies move only in uniform circular motions. I show that Ptolemy is not unaware of this potential objection, and explore two ways in which he seeks to fend it off.

Anchoring a Revisionist Account of Moral Responsibility

Revisionism about moral responsibility is the view that we would do well to distinguish between what we think about moral responsibility and what we ought to think about it, that the former is in some important sense implausible and conflicts with the latter, and so we should revise our concept accordingly. In this paper, I assess two related problems for revisionism and claim that focus on the first of these problems (the reference-anchoring problem) has thus far allowed the second (the normativity-anchoring problem) to go largely unnoticed. Here I develop this new objection to revisionism and argue that, while revisionists can successfully respond to the reference-anchoring problem, the normativity-anchoring problem poses a serious objection to the view. In particular, the methodological commitments used to motivate revisionism make it uniquely difficult for revisionists to justify our continued participation in the practice of moral praising and blaming. I conclude by briefly addressing a potential objection based on a common charge against revisionism: that there is no real difference between the view and its conventional competitors and thus the normativity-anchoring problem is of little interest in the broader dialectic. I argue that both of these claims are false.

Refining Reflexivity

This chapter focuses on reflexivity and how it operates in democratic arrangements, considering a set of possible objections to this study's argument. The first potential objection is that the study has underestimated the capacity of decentralized markets. The chapter directly compares the relative claims about democracy and markets. In doing so, it highlights the ways in which competition operates in the different environments and the relative importance of reflexivity for the two institutional alternatives. The second potential objection is that the study has failed to consider other more centralized institutional arrangements that might embody reflexivity. The chapter then considers three such alternatives: courts and judicial decision making, bureaucracy, and a hybrid form that combines informal norms within formal institutional arrangements. Drawing on the analysis of the effects of social norms on formal decision making, it also assesses whether the positive effects of social norms might, in fact, be most likely to emerge in an environment of democratic decision making.