“You Feel Like Normal Sex is not Enough Anymore”: Women's Experiences of Coercive and Unwanted Anal Sex with Men

In this article, we explore the gendered dynamics of coercion described by 18 women we interviewed about their experiences of unwanted and nonconsensual heterosexual anal sex. Several women referred to what they believed to be the normative status of heterosexual anal sex. In many cases, the socially coercive effects of perceived norms intertwined with threads of interpersonal coercion, leaving women feeling pressured to agree to, or little room to refuse, anal sex they did not want. We discuss the ways that new sexual norms can translate into new pressures for women within the gendered framework of heterosexual relationships.

Driving liberal change? Global performance indices as a system of normative stratification in liberal international order

The existing literature on Global Performance Indices (GPIs) is mostly dominated by unit-level analyses focused on specifying the relevant properties of the GPIs and the motivations of state actors in being influenced by GPIs. This article advances a systemic approach, which conceives of GPIs as collectively constituting a system of normative stratification in International Relations (IR). By bringing together the literature on GPIs with the relevant IR literatures on international hierarchies and status-seeking, we identify the structural attributes of the GPI-based system of stratification, how these structural attributes shape the distribution of normative status positions among states, and how this distribution is likely to condition the pursuit of status by states. In particular, we argue that the disaggregated structure and relative ranking of states, respectively, generate status ambiguity and immobility, which both dissuade states from seeking higher moral status through improving their scores in the existing indices. We illustrate the patterns of status ambiguity and immobility present in the GPI-based system of stratification through an empirical analysis of the scores and rank positions of the United States, European Union (EU) members, and “rising powers” in five different indices in the past decade.

Group (epistemic) competence

In this paper, I present an account of group competence that is explicitly framed for cases of epistemic performances. According to it, we must consider group epistemic competence as the group agents’ capacity to produce knowledge, and not the result of the summation of its individual members’ competences to produce knowledge. Additionally, I contend that group competence must be understood in terms of group normative status. To introduce my view, I present Jesper Kallestrup’s (Synthese 1–19, 2016) denial that group competence involves anything over and beyond the aggregation of individual competences. I have divided my response into two parts. First, I compare two conceptions of competence from Ernest Sosa’s reliabilist virtue epistemology (Sosa in Philos Stud 142:5–15, 2009; Philos Perspect 24:465–475, 2010a; Knowing full well, Princeton University Press, 2010b; Judgment & agency, Oxford University Press, 2015; Epistemology, Princeton University Press, 2017; in: Silva-Filho, Tateo (eds), Thinking about oneself: The place and value of reflection in philosophy and psychology, Springer, 2019) and David Löwenstein’s (Know-how as competence. A Rylean responsibilist account, Vittorio Klostermann, 2017) account of know-how. Second, I take the results from this comparison and apply them to the issue of group know-how, by the hand of Orestis Palermos and Deborah Tollefsen’s twofold approach to the topic (Palermos and Tollefsen, in: Carter, Clark, Kallestrup, Palermos, Pritchard (eds) Socially extended epistemology, Oxford University Press, 2018). Finally, I return to Kallestrup’s denial to make my point in favour of the conception of genuine group competence as the group normative status to achieve success.

The Place of Suspension and Problems for Evidentialism

Chapter 3 explains what it is to suspend judgment, and how such suspension attains normative status. Problems are raised for a competing view, strict evidentialism, and virtue-theoretic solutions are offered for those problems. This chapter takes some first steps towards an epistemology of suspension within the framework of telic virtue epistemology. It is argued that epistemic negligence and recklessness are hard to square with evidentialist epistemology, and that telic normativity provide the right framework for them. Within this framework judgment and judgmental knowledge are agential in a way that comports well with epistemic negligence and recklessness.

Authoritatively speaking : a speech pragmatic analysis of authority and power

A speaker needs authority to perform some speech acts, such as giving orders. A paradigm example of this is when a manager orders their employee to take out the trash; ordinarily, these words will give the employee a normative reason of considerable strength for them to take out the trash, and so they should take out the trash, all things considered. I will explore three related problems regarding a speaker's authority. First, there is the problem of defining how and within what scope a speaker has the capacity to set norms for others -- I will call this the Authority Problem. An answer to the Authority Problem would settle what constitutes a manager's capacity to change the normative status of their employee. Second, there is the problem of showing how a speaker uses their authority to produce felicitous authoritative speech -- I will call this the Illocutionary Authority Problem. An answer to this problem will show how a manager exercises their capacity to alter the normative status of their employee, assuming they have such a capacity. Third, there is the problem of explaining how a speaker's right to produce authoritative speech can be systematically infringed -- I will call this the Problem of Discursive Injustice. An answer to this problem will explain how a manager can have their orders systematically misfire despite exercising their capacity to alter the normative status of others in the usual way, such as when the employee routinely misapprehends their manager's orders as being requests. To answer each of these problems within the philosophy of language, I draw on recent work in social and political philosophy. I defend the view that a speaker's authority to alter what someone else ought to do (by giving them and taking away normative reasons for action) is constituted entirely by the respect their addressee(s) have for their use of power directed at them. Further, a speaker's powers are the linguistic tools by which they attempt to exert this normative influence over their addressee(s). Finally, a speaker may be discursively entitled to use their power in specific institutions because of the role they occupy, and this speech can systematically misfire despite this entitlement because they are wrongfully deprived of the respect they deserve.

Justice and Internal Displacement

This article develops a normative theory of the status of ‘internally displaced persons’. Political theorists working on forced migration have paid little attention to internally displaced persons, but internally displaced persons bear a distinctive normative status that implies a set of rights that its bearer can claim and correlate duties that others owe. This article develops a practice-based account of justice in internal displacement, which aims to answer the questions of who counts as an internally displaced person and what is owed to internally displaced persons (and by whom). The first section addresses the question of who counts as an internally displaced person by offering an interpretation of the conditions of non-alienage and involuntariness. The second section articulates an account of what is owed to internally displaced persons that draws on and refines the idea of ‘occupancy rights’. The third section sets out an account of the role of the international community in supplementing the protection of internally displaced persons by their own states.

Competing Reasons

One of the most important facts about the normative domain is that some considerations are contributory, rather than decisive, when it comes to determining what we ought to, must, or may do. This chapter investigates different ways that contributory reasons bearing on our options can compete with one another to determine the overall normative status of those options. Two key themes are (i) that the theory of this competition must include a distinct role for reasons against, in addition to reasons for, and (ii) that the theory must allow for comparative verdicts about which options are more strongly supported than others, rather than simply which options are required or permitted. I reject a simple and familiar balancing account of the competition, as well as an account that understands the competition in terms of giving and answering criticisms of the options. I introduce a new account that incorporates a distinct role for reasons against.

Spinoza on the teaching of doctrines: Towards a positive account of indoctrination

The purpose of this article is to add to the debate on the normative status and legitimacy of indoctrination in education by drawing on the political philosophy of Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677). More specifically, I will argue that Spinoza’s relational approach to knowledge formation and autonomy, in light of his understanding of the natural limitations of human cognition, provides us with valuable hints for staking out a more productive path ahead for the debate on indoctrination. This article combines an investigation into the early modern history of political ideas with a philosophical inquiry into a persistent conceptual problem residing at the heart of education. As such, the aim of the article is ultimately to offer an account of indoctrination less fraught with the dangers of epistemological and political idealism that often haunt rival conceptions.

Logic Oughtn't be Normative

Presumably, the exponent of logical normativity believes it to be the case that rational agents ought to reason logically. If the converse holds, and the exponent of logical normativity believes either (a) that it is false that rational agents ought to reason logically or (b) that the claim that rational agents ought to reason logically is not truth–functional, then any attempt to formulate sound arguments in support of their position will be either question–begging or self–contradictory. To argue in favour of the normative status of logic involves the assumption that the issue is substantive. I draw a distinction between deontic and axiological normativity as applied to logical theory and demonstrate that because deontic sentences are not truth–functional, logic cannot be normative in the deontic sense. I conclude that the only sense in which logical theory may be thought of as normative is axiologically.