Globalization/deglobalization: lessons from liberal monetary orders

Economic globalization never proceeded in a smooth steady trajectory. The current international economy, organized around liberal principles, faces potential problems unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two popular theoretical approaches offer varying reasons for the survivability of the contemporary order. One stresses the benefits associated with participating in liberal international orders, claiming such arrangements are essentially self-sustaining. The rival view emphasizes the uneven distribution of gains, emphasizing the role of leadership, especially for dampening crises. To examine the support for each argument, I examine the evolution of international monetary arrangements. International monetary orders lie at the heart of liberal international economies; no prior liberal monetary order has proven self-sustaining. Liberal international monetary sub-orders depend upon leadership as much as cooperation for their survival—leaders exert efforts to shape followers' actions so long as the leader draws sufficient benefits to make such efforts worthwhile. The economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic provides the latest illustration of this point, though these arguments also suggest experiences across issue-areas will vary.

Importance, Value, and Causal Impact

Many believe that because we are so small, we must be utterly insignificant on the cosmic scale. But whether this is so depends on what it takes to be important. On one view, what matters for importance is the difference to value that something makes. On this view, what determines our cosmic importance is not our size, but what else of value is out there. But a rival view also seems plausible: that importance requires sufficient causal impact on the relevant scale; since we have no such impact on the grand scale, that would entail our cosmic insignificance. I argue that despite appearances, causal impact is neither necessary nor sufficient for importance. All that matters is impact on value. Since parts can have non-causal impact on the value of the wholes that contain them, this means that we might have great impact on the grandest scale without ever leaving our little planet.

Equality for Prospective People: A Novel Statement and Defence

A possible person's conditional expected well-being is what the quality of their prospects would be if they were to come into existence. This article examines the role that this form of expected well-being should play in distributing benefits among prospective people and in deciding whom to bring into existence. It argues for a novel egalitarian view on which it is important to ensure equality in people's life prospects, not merely between actual individuals, but also between all individuals who, given our choices, have a chance of coming into existence. The article argues that such egalitarianism for prospective people springs from equal concern for each prospective person and has plausible implications. It further shows that it has a rationale in respect for both the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons. Finally, it defends this view against a key objection and shows it is superior to a rival view.

Sienkiewicz and the Topography of Ancient Rome

Sienkiewicz, who in Quo vadis strove to render as accurately as possible the topography of ancient Rome—knowledge of which was increasing dramatically thanks to archaeological finds, especially in the catacombs investigated from 1842 by Giovanni Battista De Rossi—as a rule did not disclose his modern authorities. The only glimpse at the novel’s eruditional aspect is his retort to a charge, repeated in the Polish weekly Słowo after unnamed Roman archaeologists, of having committed an anachronism locating St Peter’s first teaching in Ostrianum, the cemetery founded in the third century, in which he emphasized that some leading Roman archaeologists date it to the first century. Neither party realized that they had different cemeteries in mind. Sienkiewicz’s critic thought that he followed De Rossi’s universally accepted identification of Ostrianum with Coemeterium Maius on Via Nomentana, founded in the third century; yet Sienkiewicz surely identified it with the newly discovered ‘hypogeum of the Acilii’ in the Cemetery of Priscilla on Via Salaria, seemingly datable to the late first century. From whom did he get this identification if its acknowledged author, Orazio Marucchi, five years after the novel’s publication still identified Ostrianum with Coemeterium Maius and was unaware that Sienkiewicz located it in the Cemetery of Priscilla? This chapter tries to find out who may have been Sienkiewicz’s informant and why the location of Ostrianum figuring in Quo vadis published in 1896 was first proposed in a scholarly publication only in 1901, by the archaeologist who a few months before had still held the rival view.

Knowledge is Believing Something Because It's True

Modalists think that knowledge requires forming your belief in a “modally stable” way: using a method that wouldn't easily go wrong (i.e. safety), or using a method that wouldn't have given you this belief had it been false (i.e. sensitivity). Recent Modalist projects from Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras defend a principle they call “Modal Security,” roughly: if evidence undermines your belief, then it must give you a reason to doubt the safety or sensitivity of your belief. Another recent Modalist project from Carlotta Pavese and Bob Beddor defends “Modal Virtue Epistemology”: knowledge is a belief that is maximally modally robust across “normal” worlds. We'll offer new objections to these recent Modalist projects. We will then argue for a rival view, Explanationism: knowing something is believing it because it's true. We will show how Explanationism offers a better account of undermining defeaters than Modalism, and a better account of knowledge.

A Community of Principle

This chapter examines the question of the relations between EU law and domestic law from the point of view of a political theory of the European Union. It is common to see EU law under ‘federalism’ or under a theory of ‘statism’. These two views are outlined at the start of this chapter by examining various arguments made for them. They are both rejected. The chapter defends a rival view, the ‘internationalist’ reading of the EU, according to which it is a branch of the law of nations. A careful look at the EU treaties and the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU shows that the EU endorses an internationalist model based on equality and reciprocity. The EU does not replace the relation between citizens and political power. It does not establish a new constitutional law that replaces the national ones. It is a new way of organizing the relations between the various member states whose equality it fully respects. The coherence of European Union law is therefore not provided by uniformity imposed by a single master or constitutional rule, but is given by the political coordination of the laws of the member states achieved under the treaties. Coherence is achieved because the member states have adopted similar, although not identical, constitutional principles.

Can the Berkeleyan Idealist Resist Spinozist Panpsychism?

We argue that prevailing definitions of Berkeley’s idealism fail to rule out a nearby Spinozist rival view that we call ‘mind-body identity panpsychism.’ Since Berkeley certainly does not agree with Spinoza on this issue, we call for more care in defining Berkeley’s view. After we propose our own definition of Berkeley’s idealism, we survey two Berkeleyan strategies to block the mind-body identity panpsychist and establish his idealism. We argue that Berkeley should follow Leibniz and further develop his account of the mind’s unity. Unity—not activity—is the best way for Berkeley to establish his view at the expense of his panpsychist competitors.

Powerful Problems for Powerful Qualities

The powerful qualities view of properties is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. Recently, I have argued that the standard version of the view (associated with C.B. Martin and John Heil) is no different from a rival view: the pure powers position. I have also argued that the canonical version of the powerful qualities view faces the same problem as the pure powers view: the dreaded regress objection. Joaquim Giannotti disagrees. First, Giannotti thinks that the standard version of the powerful qualities view can be differentiated from the pure powers view. Second, Giannotti argues that the powerful qualities view is not susceptible to the regress objection. Third, he argues that there is another reasonable version of the powerful qualities view available, which makes use of the notion of ‘aspects’. In this note, I respond to Giannotti. I argue that all three of Giannotti’s arguments are unsuccessful.

Substance

Locke’s idea of a substance (e.g., a rock, a tree, or a swan) comprises (1) the ideas of the qualities that define its species, and (2) the idea of a substratum in which those qualities inhere. The proper interpretation of (2) is controversial. The traditional view is that substratum is an unperceivable component distinct from any and all of a thing’s qualities; the rival view is that substratum = real essence. This chapter examines three arguments for the traditional view: the argument from change traceable at least to Aristotle, the logico-linguistic argument discussed by J. L. Mackie, and a subtler argument, implicit in Leibniz, based on the division of labor between the referential words and descriptive words in subject-predicate sentences. It discuses the textual evidence that Locke held the traditional view. It argues that despite that view’s incompatibility with Locke’s Empiricism, he accepts it, albeit with misgivings, because of the latter argument.

Sovereignty and Associative Obligations

Conservative American jurisprudence often staunchly maintains that each society—and especially the United States—enjoys an absolute right of sovereignty as against the constraints of international law. This position is often maintained in a philosophically dogmatic way—as a morally unsupported assertion that political authority can only have a domestic source. Yet the social contract tradition, especially in the work of Thomas Hobbes, but also in contemporary arguments by Michael Walzer, offers something of a principled defense of this view. This chapter will outline a fundamental alternative to this conservative position, also located within the social contract tradition. Domestic political authority, on this rival view, partly has its source in the larger state system that constitutes and defines the right of sovereignty with a political social practice of global scope.