Thoughts on the Gender Ratios of Papers Published in Ethics and the Journal of Moral Philosophy

August 25, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in the profession, women in philosophy 20 Comments

Before beginning, I would like to note that what I say here is more in the way of starting a discussion than it is a way of stating anything certain. I hope that people will read what I say in this vein.

* * *

As discussed in this very interesting post at New Apps, in the Journal of Moral Philosophy (JMP), male-coded authors account for 82.5% of authors of all articles inspected. In Ethics, authors coded as male account for 80% of all authors of inspected articles. These are interesting facts. First, conventional wisdom is that women are disproportionately likely to specialize in moral philosophy. So, if there were any area that women tended to publish in, then moral philosophy ought to be it. It is striking then that even in this area of philosophy, women are publishing significantly less than men. Second, both JMP and especially Ethics, which is triple blind, are thought to be top of the line in terms of their peer-review processes. These facts raise the question, what’s going on here?

There are a few things that likely work together:

(1) Implicit gender bias. Even with rigorous peer-review processes, there may be very little blind review anymore. Many of us present our in-progress work in talks and conferences or post it on our personal webpages. As a result, the gender of the author may be known and trigger implicit bias.

(2) Stereotype threat. Stereotype threat may lead women to be less confident about the quality of their work. Both JMP and Ethics have very good reputations in the field. Women may be more likely to think that their work isn’t good enough and fail to submit their papers to journals with high standing. I can say that, until recently, I have fallen prey to this phenomenon.

In response to these points, one might wonder whether women really are disproportionately publishing less than men in these journals. The answer will depend on how many women there are in philosophy and, more specifically, how many women specialize in moral philosophy. Recent data suggests that women represent 22% of philosophers at the faculty level (see here) in the United States. If this number translates to area of specialization – i.e., 22% of moral philosophers are women – then perhaps women are not publishing disproportionately less than men in JMP and Ethics. In fact, the numbers are what we should expect. However, if conventional wisdom is correct and women are more likely to specialize in moral philosophy, then we should expect more than 22% of the papers in JMP and Ethics to be authored by women. Even if the conventional view is right, I am not sure just how much more we should expect. Some beginning ideas can be derived from this discussion. However, in general, it seems to me that we need more data in order to determine how many women specialize in moral philosophy. And, without this information we are unable to determine whether women are genuinely being under represented in journals such as JMP and Ethics.

Imagine that women are proportionately represented in the journals we are discussing (e.g., imagine that 22% of women specialize in moral philosophy and 22% of papers in Ethics and JMP are by women). Could there be any reason for ensuring that more papers by women are published in these journals? Possibly, yes, for two reasons.

A. It could be a partial solution to the alienation problem.

Molly Paxton, Carrie Figor, and Valerie Tiberius,[1] argue that “there is an overall decline in the proportion of women in philosophy as one travels up the academic hierarchy.” For example, women represent 30% of those who graduate with a Ph.D. in philosophy. Yet, only 22% of women are philosophy faculty.

I think that one explanation of the lack of women in philosophy (that relates to the “lack of role models” which is discussed in the Paxton et. al article) is, what I will call, the alienation hypothesis. Because of the small number of women in faculty positions, because of the small number of papers written by women in the most prominent journals, because of the general invisibility of women in philosophy, many women come to feel that there is no place for them in the discipline. This idea may become solidified with more exposure to the discipline as such beliefs are further confirmed. This may explain why the number of women in philosophy decreases stepwise.

Ensuring that there are more papers by women in journals such as Ethics and JMP could potentially be a way to reduce the alienation that women within the field often feel and, in turn, be a way to increase the number of women who graduate with Ph.D.s and eventually seek faculty positions in philosophy.

B. It could be a means of repair for implicit bias.

Furthermore, implicit bias is likely at least partially the cause of the exclusion of women in high standing journals. It is not certain that we are morally responsible for our implicit biases and, in turn, that we owe repair for the bad consequences that result from them. These are hotly contested issues, after all. But, may be we are responsible and may be we do owe repair. If we are and we do, then ensuring that papers by women (and other excluded minorities) have a greater presence in Ethics and JMP and other prominent journals could be a way of making repair for their exclusion.

If there are reasons for ensuring that more papers by women appear in journals of high standing, such as Ethics and JMP, how should we accomplish this? The gold standard of peer review, namely, triple blind, may not be enough for the reasons mentioned above. Some have suggested that, as a compliment to robust peer-review, we should institute a quota of some sort (requiring that a certain amount of published papers are by women in each issue). Would this be a good idea? What might be the drawbacks?

The most obvious objection to quotas is similar to one that arises with general discussions of affirmative action: namely, the quality objection. If it is required that, say, 35% of papers in Ethics and JMP are by women, wouldn’t this require Ethics and JMP to let in papers that wouldn’t normally meet their high standards? In other words, wouldn’t a quota diminish the quality of the work published in these journals? The answer is no, not necessarily. Women often author papers of high quality. This is evidenced in the women-authored papers that are published in Ethics and JMP. However, because of implicit bias, it is likely that high quality papers by women (and other minorities) that have been previously submitted to these journals but were unjustifiably excluded. A quota might give us the pause we need, as reviewers, to ensure that such papers are not excluded any longer.

This isn’t to say that quotas are ultimately the right solution. There are likely many other objections to consider. I hope that we will discuss them and the possibilities of other better solutions, if there are any. I raise this suggestion as what I hope will segue into further discussion about the specific manifestations of the gender problem in philosophy and potential solutions.

Update: Since I wrote this post, a few different discussions about diversity and inclusiveness in publishing have popped up. Sherry Irwin discusses gender ratios in Aesthetics journals at Aesthetics for Birds. Helen DeCruz has written a follow up piece at New Apps about how implicit bias might slip in during reviewing processes, despite reviewers’ best efforts.

[1] Molly Paxton, Carrie Figdor, and Valerie Tiberius, “Quantifying the Gender Gap: An Empirical Study of the Underrepresentation of women in Philosophy,” Hypatia 27.4: 949-957.

More on the Philosopher’s Annual

August 18, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in the profession Tags: feminist philosophy; philosophy of race, philosopher's annual 10 Comments

Despite the fact that the Philosophers Annual (PA) is doing better on the political philosophy front, I have a few worries that were prompted by discussions on Facebook (thanks to J.D. and E.B. and others for bringing my attention to these issues). It seems that the PA has recognized papers in philosophy of race only twice since the year 2000: from the literature of 2001, Robert Bernasconi, “Who Invented the Concept of Race?”; and from the literature of 2000, Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?” Something similar seems to be true of feminist philosophy as well. There have been three papers recognized in the area of feminist philosophy since 2000: from the literature of 2007, Sally Haslanger, “But Mom, Crop Tops are Cute! Social Knowledge, Social Structure and Ideology Critique”; from the literature of 2001, Karen Jones, “The Politics of Credibility”; from the literature of 2000, Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?” Admittedly, I did a quick and incomplete survey (considering only up to the year 2000). If anyone has determined the exact numbers of entries in these two areas since the beginning of the PA, I would be grateful if you could share that information with me.

It cannot possibly be true that of the very best articles in philosophy since 2000 that only 5 of the best articles are in the area of race and gender. That we are led to this conclusion by the PA may suggest that there is something wrong with the methodology behind the PA. So, what exactly is the methodology? Last year, in the comments on Eric Schliesser’s post about the exclusionary nature of the PA, David Chalmers very kindly shared the following:

i’ve been on the editorial board of the philosophers’ annual for years, but its inner workings are still somewhat obscure to me. i believe that the board members are selected by the overall editor, patrick grim, sometimes in response to suggestions from other board members. every year the board members are invited first to nominate articles and then to comment on and rate articles that have been nominated. then a group consisting of grim and three michigan graduate students (who change from year to year) choose the final selection of ten articles based on that information. i always supposed that board members’ comments were used as the main input into that process, but i’ve been told that in fact they’re only used to compile a list of 20 or so finalists — then all prior information is set aside while the four members of the core group read all the articles and compile a top ten. it’s not surprising that as a result, the selections in the annual in recent years show a heavy topical bias toward certain areas, correlating with topics of interest to the overall editors and to people at michigan (most striking in the case of formal philosophy, a specialty of both grim and the michigan program), and a corresponding bias away from certain other areas. of course grim deserves credit for getting the whole process started in the first place; and it’s not at all easy to figure out what a really good system for deciding the results would be.

I am not entirely sure who the “core group” consists of, but if the core group does not contain philosophers who specialize in philosophy of race or feminist philosophy this might explain why those areas are marginalized in the selection process. Similar things can be said about political philosophy and other typically excluded areas.

What should be done about this? As Chalmers suggests, it would be very difficult, if not almost impossible, to create a good selection system (though Alex Guerrero in the comments here suggests that something similar to the PGR might work). Perhaps we should simply eliminate the PA. Or, perhaps, rather than representing itself as choosing the very best articles in philosophy, the PA should represent itself as choosing the best articles from a certain perspective in philosophy. I don’t think that this would necessarily be a bad option. It would just be a matter of laying the cards on the table and we (the readers) would have a clearer idea of what the PA’s game is about.

Update: Brian Leiter thinks my criticism of the PA is unconvincing, noting that many areas outside of the ones I have mentioned have been under-represented or excluded such as the history of philosophy, philosophy of law, and aesthetics. I agree wholeheartedly with him about this and thank him for continuing the discussion. However, the fact that a number of areas have been excluded again and again (for well over a decade) only goes to my point. The PA does not necessarily represent the best articles in Philosophy (as a discipline), but the best articles from a particular perspective. I think this is fine. It just needs to be made clearer by those who run the PA.

Update: phrynefisher at Feminist Philosophers discusses some very important issues about which practitioners get represented in the PA, noting that “90% of this year’s best papers are by men. And this is not an unusual gender ratio for Annual volumes.” This is well worth reading.

The Philosopher’s Annual 2014 (Best Papers of 2013)

August 18, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Last year, I was very critical of the Philosopher’s Annual (see here), noting that there hadn’t been any articles in the area of (mainstream) political philosophy for over a decade. I am very happy to see that this has changed. The pieces by Ypi and Neuhouser were among my own favourites.

The following pieces were selected from the literature of 2013:

Robert Merrihew Adams, “Malebranche’s Causal Concepts,” from The Divine Order, the Human Order, and the Order of Nature: Historical Perspectives, ed. Eric Watkins. Oxford University Press.

Andrew Bacon, “Quantificational Logic and Empty Names,” from Philosophers’ Imprint.

JC Beall, “Free of Detachment: Logic, Rationality, and Gluts,” from Noûs.

Michael Caie, “Rational Probabilistic Incoherence,” from the Philosophical Review.

Kit Fine, “Truth-Maker Semantics for Intuitionistic Logic,” from the Journal of Philosophical Logic.

Matthew Kotzen, “Multiple Studies and Evidential Defeat,” from Noûs.

Marc Lange, “What Makes a Scientific Explanation Distinctively Mathematical?” from the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

Frederick Neuhouser, “Rousseau’s Critique of Economic Inequality,” from Philosophy and Public Affairs.

Ian Phillips, “Afterimages and Sensation,” from Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Lea Ypi, “What’s Wrong with Colonialism,” from Philosophy and Public Affairs.

Brian Leiter tells us that the article, author, and journal links will be posted soon at

http://www.philosophersannual.org

Thanks to the Leiter Reports for the h/t.

Featured Philosop-her: Kyla Ebels-Duggan

August 15, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in political philosophy Tags: autonomy, children, liberalism 3 Comments

I am very happy to welcome Kyla Ebels-Duggan as the next featured philosop-her. Ebels-Duggan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. She works on issues in moral and political philosophy. Recently, some of her work has focused on the intersection of these areas with questions in the philosophy of education. Her recent publications include “Dealing with the Past: Responsibility and Personal History,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 164:1, 2013, 141-161, and “Autonomy as Intellectual Virtue,” forthcoming in The Aims of Higher Education, Harry Brighouse and Michael MacPherson, eds.

Her post follows.

–MK

How Not to Solve the Liberal Dilemma of Childrearing

Kyla Ebels-Duggan

The Amish loom oddly large in philosophers’ reflections on the norms governing childrearing. They’re taken to represent an especially thoroughgoing commitment to communicate their particular normative outlook to their children whole. This places them at one end of a continuum of childrearing practices shared by many parents who seek to give their children a religious upbringing, as well as others—less common, but importantly similar—who look to inculcate various non-religious comprehensive views.

Many people take the Amish approach to childrearing to stand in irreconcilable tension with the central liberal commitment to the autonomy of individuals. This commitment gives rise to a problem that we can call the liberal dilemma of childrearing: the task of raising children seems centrally to involve shaping their values or normative commitments. But, as a general matter, imposing our conceptions of the good on others is thought to be ethically suspect. Children’s particular vulnerability to those primarily responsible for their upbringing arguably makes imposition especially threatening here, even as their need for guidance makes it seem especially necessary. How, then, can conscientious parents both respect their children’s claims to autonomy and responsibly execute their childrearing task?

In a classic article, Joel Feinberg articulates a widely favored response. He argues that children have a right to an “open future,” a right to have options kept accessible until they are adults capable of exercising free choice among them. Feinberg presents securing an open future for children as a superior alternative to teaching them a single worldview or conception of the good, an alternative that solves the liberal dilemma. I understand him as claiming both that ideally conscientious parents aim to give their children an open future, and that children’s entitlement to options can ground state intervention in childrearing practices that do not achieve this aim.

Though broadly shared, both positions embody an important confusion. To get at this confusion, we must consider more closely what it means to have access to options that one can freely choose. If this conception of autonomy is to provide an alternative to teaching a single conception of the good, then simply living according to values one endorses cannot be enough, for surely even the Amish aim to put their children in a position to do this. Their childrearing project will succeed only if their children eventually guide their lives by Amish values of their own accord.

Though the Amish children will thus exercise autonomy in a sense, Feinberg and others hold that their future is not open because they lack access to a range of options. While there are many ways in which a maturing child might be said to have or lack access to options, Feinberg’s leading idea seems to be that of a certain sort of psychological, or we might even say existential, access. Options are accessible to a person in this sense if they seem “live” to her, if she can take them seriously as possibilities for her own life. Thus Feinberg claims that the Amish violate their children’s claims to autonomy insofar as they seek to eliminate from consideration all alternatives to the Amish way of life.

Autonomy, understood as existential access to a range of options, may seem the most natural contrast to attempts to teach a child a single, particular conception of the good. But what should fall within this range? Surely responsible parenting is compatible with, and even requires, putting some possibilities out of psychological reach. For example, many parents self-consciously aim to raise their children to regard everyone as entitled to consideration. If these parents succeed, their children reach maturity with a settled conviction that it is wrong to harm others without very significant reason. This conviction is settled in the sense that they cannot take alternatives, such as thoroughgoing egoism, seriously as a possibility for their lives. But moving that possibility off the table is not only unobjectionable, but also commendable, indeed basic to good parenting.

Anyone who agrees must then sort between possibilities that parents ought to make existentially accessible and those that may or should be closed. This might not seem so hard to do. We think it permissible to exclude egoism because we are confident that treating others with respect is required and not merely an idiosyncratic preference or matter of taste. By contrast, we may find it objectionable to limit children’s options with respect to matters on which we lack confidence or think that there are many valuable yet incompatible possibilities.

But, of course, people disagree about which normative matters are settled as well as which concern areas of value pluralism. Our views about these questions are simply part of our overall normative outlooks. Variety here will lead to derivative disagreements about which options an ideal parent would make accessible, or which a child is entitled to have open. From their own point of view, conscientious parents cannot do better than to rely on their own considered commitments in making such determinations. They will try to give their children existential access to a range of options on matters they judge to be appropriately settled by individual preferences or idiosyncrasies. They will also seek to make a range of possibilities existentially available with respect to questions on which they themselves lack confidence as to which answer is right. It follows that giving children existential access to a given set of options is not an alternative to communicating particular normative commitments, but rather one aspect of doing so.

There are other ways of understanding access to options, but they don’t help the theorist looking to solve the liberal dilemma by providing an alternative to communicating a particular normative outlook. Some conceptions of access place demands on background political and cultural structures, and so lie beyond the immediate control of individuals responsible for childrearing. Others involve imparting skills and information that would be needed to exercise various options. But, like the existential interpretation of access, these raise the question of how to sort between possibilities that children should and should not be empowered to realize. And, again, the conscientious parent can settle such questions only by looking to her own considered convictions.

Continued objections to the Amish parents, and those relevantly like them, thus need to be understood differently from the way that they are often presented. Opponents cannot object merely on grounds that such parents teach their children a particular normative outlook. They must, instead, object to the content of the outlook taught, claiming that these parents are imparting normative convictions that are importantly mistaken. The second order character of the relevant disagreement can obscure the need to interpret the objection this way. Feinberg may grant that the Amish way of life, insofar as this consists in a traditional agrarian lifestyle conceived as devoted to God, is a permissible—perhaps even valuable—choice. By extension he may grant that the parents do no wrong in teaching their children to regard this way of living as valuable. But he must object to their communicating the further conviction that it is uniquely valuable, not merely one of many permissible options. Though second order, this is a substantive commitment on the part of the Amish parents, one they presumably find important.

Understanding the objection as depending on the view that the Amish have, and teach their children, the wrong normative commitments, makes each of the two positions I attribute to Feinberg look more problematic. First, consider his claim that the goal of an open future can and should provide guidance to conscientious parents. He suggests that responsible parents would refrain from teaching their children their particular normative convictions, instead seeking to put them in a position to choose such convictions for themselves. But we have seen that this depends on a false dichotomy. Conscientious parents enact their own commitments in determining the options among which children should be educated to choose. Given their normative outlook, Amish parents would not and should not be moved by Feinberg’s argument to change the ways that they raise their children. From their own point of view, they are not denying their children access to any option that it would be valuable for them to have.

Secondly, if Feinberg’s objection depends on a substantive normative disagreement with the parents, the case for government intervention is much less straightforward. Should those who agree with Feinberg be permitted to intervene in the upbringing of the Amish children to replace the parents’ normative outlook with the one they affirm? May they intervene in any religious upbringing on similar grounds? What about the Marxist upbringing that G.A. Cohen fondly describes in If You’re an Egalitarian? While the discussion above does not settle these questions, it undermines a certain way of arguing in support of intervention. The state cannot interfere with parents’ childrearing on the limited grounds that it is protecting children’s autonomy rights. In intervening, it must also assert entitlement to determine important substantive aspects of the conception of the good into which children are educated.

Featured Philosopher: Jules Holroyd

July 18, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized

I am very happy to welcome Dr. Jules Holroyd as the next featured philosop-her. She is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Her research is in moral psychology and social and political philosophy. In particular, she is interested in implicit bias, responsibility and blame, distributive justice, and feminist philosophy. She has published work in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Philosophical Papers, The Journal of Social Philosophy, and Social Theory and Practice, amongst others. She is currently working with philosophers and psychologists on a 3 year Leverhulme funded project on bias and blame. In future, she hopes to do more work on reparative justice and philosophy of race.

Her post follows.

–MK

What Needs Repairing? Race and Reparations

Jules Holroyd

In this post I’ll present some of the recent work I’ve been doing on reparative justice. I’ll argue briefly that analytic philosophy’s contribution to arguments for reparative measures for transatlantic slavery has been impoverished by the failure to confront the way race is implicated in the wrong (indeed, the multiple wrongs); in particular, the failure to articulate the wrong in need of repair in terms of the production and entrenchment of racial hierarchy. Conceptualising the wrong in need of repair in these terms better enables a defence of reparative obligations of contemporary governments.

Philosophical arguments that engage with reparative obligations for the historical wrongs of transatlantic slavery have two tasks to undertake: firstly, to establish what grounds principles of reparation, and secondly to explain how, if at all, those principles entitle present individuals to reparation for historical wrongs. Some promising philosophical arguments focus on counterfactual claims about how things would have been, had the wrong not occurred (Darby, 2010), but had interactions rather proceeded justly (Butt, 2009). A development of this argument also articulates how things would have been had reparations been paid as due, in a timely fashion, identifying the failure to do so as a further wrong in need of repair (Butt, 2009). As such, these arguments turn on the simple principle that things should be as they would be, had moral standards been upheld. Present individuals are therefore doubly tied to those historical wrongs; firstly because (we feasibly assume) some individuals would be better off had transactions proceeded justly; secondly because those individuals are themselves wronged directly, by the ongoing harm of failure to repair. This principle has an appealing simplicity to it, and indeed is one implicit in the claims of CARICOM’s call for reparations.[1]

Other philosophical arguments turn on the idea of inheritance: some individuals did not inherit what they should have, whilst others inherited misappropriated property and property that was the fruit of forced labour (Boxill, 2003). The importance of familial lines – the idea that such intergenerational relationships are valuable and should be sustained – can help us to see what is important in inheritance, Thompson (2001) has argued. And it can help us to see that one of the wrongs of transatlantic slavery was that it was an ‘injustice destructive of family relationships’ (131), an attempt to wipe out family lines; wrongs which stand in need of repair.

Whilst these lines of argument are promising, the project of articulating and defending reparative obligations has, in analytic philosophy, been beset by the assumptions of ‘methodological individualism’. There are two key problematic assumptions: first, that progress can be made by modelling reparative claims on wrongs that occur between individuals. Second, that the wrongs at issue are violations of property rights. These assumptions are at work even when they are critically observed.

For example, Butt is attentive to wrongs perpetrated and obligations borne by states, but follows up arguments for holding states responsible with methodology infused with focus on individual wrongs: the wrong of automobile theft and non-return; the obligations grounded by benefiting from a manipulative and erroneously constructed driveway. Even when focusing more directly on wrongs perpetrated by states, the wrongs at issue are wrongful retention of material goods (works of art). Likewise, Waldron (1992) promisingly observes that ‘the world we know is characterised by patterns of injustice, by standing arrangements – rules, laws, regimes and other institutions – that operate unjustly day after day’ (14). But the suggestive turn to institutional wrongs is immediately followed with a focus on examples of car theft, re-assuming the framing of our thinking about these issues in terms of relations between wronged individuals and transgressions involving discrete material goods. These authors are not unique in this focus; but are notable for proceeding with individualistic assumptions even having identified as crucial to the debate the role of institutions’ and states’ role in perpetuating injustices.

Thompson’s (2001) emphasis on the importance of historical injustices to familial identity moves her focus away from individuals, and instead towards families across generations understood as a sort of community, bound by familial narrative (134). But my contention is that this focus is still too narrowly on individuals qua family members, rather than on structural wrongs.

What is wrong with the assumptions of methodological individualism? This methodology is pernicious in obscuring the uniquely racial aspects of the wrong and legacy of slavery. Firstly, modelling reparations on individual transactions obscures the extent to which institutions such as the state are capable of wrongs beyond those possible in individual relations. States can facilitate and enable wrongdoings that are not only different in scope but also in kind from those perpetrated by individuals. In particular, states have the power to create, maintain, and permit certain normative social structures,[2] including social hierarchies. These wrongs differ in kind from those modelled on property violations committed between individuals, in terms of the temporal endurance of the wrong (both the perpetration of the wrong and its effects may typically span greater lengths of time than those committed by individuals); and, implicated in such wrongs is the normative status of the state’s actions: states can also legitimise and make more likely wrongs perpetrated by other agencies (including individuals). The other concern is that the wrongs of transatlantic slavery cannot be captured by a model that focuses on the misappropriation of property or labour value. These assumptions of methodological individualism provide no room for articulating the wrong of transatlantic slavery as producing and entrenching racialised social hierarchies (wrongs articulated as such by, e.g. Brooks 2004, Davis 2000, Coleman ms.).

To the extent that the assumptions of methodological individualism are in play, the wrongs in need of repair cannot be conceptualised in terms of the production of social structures of racialised hierarchy. But this framing is much needed, not only on grounds of historical accuracy and attention to the substance of reparative claims being made;[3] but also to defend robustly reparations and engage legitimate concerns about reparative claims.

For example, one of the most persistent theoretical objections to claims of reparative justice – in particular those grounded in the counterfactual argument outlined above – is that present day individuals, including yourself, would not exist but for the past wrong; for that precise historical moment was needed in order that the conditions obtained under which you came into existence (the ‘non-identity problem’). How can you claim to be harmed, if you would not otherwise have existed!

By conceptualising (part of) the wrong of transatlantic slavery in terms of its production of racialised hierarchy, this objection can be more robustly addressed. For what matters is, in fact, not that particular individuals who now exist are disadvantaged, whilst other particular individuals are privileged; but rather that any individual racialised as black (the metaphysically possible individual who might have existed had A not been conceived at that exact time) would be disadvantaged qua individual racialised as black; and any individual racialised as white (the possible individuals who might have existed had B not been conceived at that precise moment) would be privileged by their race. The wrongs are suffered by individuals qua member of a racialised demographic group rather than simply qua individuals.[4]

Amongst reparations activists, different kinds of objections have been raised. Some concerns have been raised about claims for monetary compensation: these forms of repair are criticised for being ill-tuned to the scale of the wrongs[5] and, indeed, have been dubbed an ‘imperialist swindle’ (PARCOE). Moreover, the idea that reparations requires a commitment to the non-repetition of wrongful treatment also casts doubt on the adequacy of purely financial reparative measures in the absence of other steps to address persisting racial inequalities.[6]

Conceptualising the wrong to be repaired in terms of the production of racialised hierarchy affirms and engages these concerns. First, any reparative measures committed to non-repetition would have as a primary aim the ending of racialised hierarchy (cf. Darby, 2010). Second, this would have far reaching implications better attuned to the scale of the historical wrongs of transatlantic slavery. Third, this conceptualisation of the wrong to be repaired shows the inadequacy of apology or purely financial compensation whilst racist institutions persist. Finally, this framing of reparative claims and obligations indicates that it is wrong to see a tension between the fulfilment of reparative obligations and ‘forward-looking’ policies that aim to address racial inequalities.

Attuned to this aim, reparative policies would go beyond financial repair, but involve a suite of empirically informed measures addressing the lived experience of racial hierarchy, including educational reinvestment, ending informal segregation, positive action in employment, and the revision of resources that record national histories and collective memory.

——-

The ideas in this post have been developed thanks to correspondance with Nathaniel Coleman and Federico Picinali.

References

Bernard R. Boxill (2003). A Lockean Argument for Black Reparations. Journal of Ethics 7 (1):63-91.

Roy L. Brooks, (2004) Atonement and Forgiveness, A New Model for Black Reparations, University of California Press.

Daniel Butt (2009). Rectifying International Injustice: Principles of Compensation and Restitution Between Nations. Oxford University Press.

Daniel Butt (2007). On Benefiting From Injustice. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (1):129-152.

Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, (ms.) What is wrong with [R. M. Hare’s arguments against] slavery?

Derrick Darby (2010). Reparations and Racial Inequality. Philosophy Compass 5 (1):55-66.

Adrienne D. Davis, (2000) The Case for United States Reparations to African Americans, Human Rights Brief vol 7 (3) http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/vol7/iss3/2

Cecil Gutzmore, ‘Preparation before slavery compensation’ http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/preparation-slavery-compensation (accessed 14/07/2014)

Janna Thompson (2001). Historical Injustice and Reparation: Justifying Claims of Descendants. Ethics 112 (1):114-135.

Jeremy Waldron (1992). Superseding Historic Injustice. Ethics 103 (1):4-28.

Iris Marion Young (2011). Responsibility for Justice. OUP USA.

Caricom news network ‘Pan-African Reparations Coalition writes to CARICOM‘

http://www.caricomnews.net/index.php/caricom/caricom-news/caricom-features/3003-pan-african-reparations-coalition-writes-to-caricom (accessed 14/07/2014)

[1] http://caricom.org/jsp/pressreleases/press_releases_2013/pres285_13.jsp

[2] Iris Marion Young gives a really helpful analysis of structural injustices, which I’ll be drawing on more as I continue to think about these issues.

[3] see text referenced in footnote 1, above. CARICOM identifies the claimants as those ‘disenfranchised and denigrated by the colonial legacy that racially profiles and oppresses them’.

[4] This does not preclude that individuals may also be wronged in other ways, that ground other reparative claims, as individuals.

[5] http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/preparation-slavery-compensation

[6] http://www.caricomnews.net/index.php/caricom/caricom-news/caricom-features/3003-pan-african-reparations-coalition-writes-to-caricom

A Philosophical Profile of Elizabeth Anderson

July 5, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized

Simon Cushing conducted this interview with Elizabeth Anderson on 18 June 2014. The transcript is available here.

Featured Philosop-her: Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins

April 25, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized 5 Comments

I am very happy to welcome Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins. Jenkins is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, and Professor of Philosophy at the Northern Institute of Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen. She is also a member of the musical group 21^st Century Monads and one of the principal editors of Thought. Her first monograph Grounding Concepts was published by OUP in 2008, and her work on the philosophy of flirting has been described as ‘ground-breaking’.

Her post follows.

–MK

Modal Monogamy

Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins

In this post I’ll be talking about romantic love. I’ll call it ‘love’ for short.

My terminological choices from this point on involve a certain amount of stipulative definition. (This is required for clarity and precision in an area where vagueness and ambiguity are pervasive.) I’ll use ‘love relationship’ to describe the relationship that holds between someone who is in love and the person(s) who are the object of this love. I’ll use ‘dyadic’ to describe love relationships that involve exactly two parties: one lover, one beloved. And I’ll use ‘exclusive’ to describe love relationships which are such that the lover in them is the lover in no further love relationships.

An initial clarificatory point: dyadicity and exclusivity so characterised are not the same thing. They are in fact two-way independent. An example of an exclusive but non-dyadic love relationship is that which holds between lover and beloveds in a closed triadic relationship. A closed triad is a relationship in which three people are all in (mutual) love, but none of them is in love with anyone else. An example of a dyadic but non-exclusive love relationship is that between hinge lover and beloved in one of the two love relationships which comprise a V. A V is a relationships situation in which one person is in two (distinct) love relationships with two other parties (who are not in love with each other). The hinge of the V is the person who is party to both relationships.

Note that I’m using this terminology in such a way that in the case of a closed triad the lover bears a single love relationship to her two beloveds jointly, whereas in the case of V the hinge lover bears two distinct love relationships to her two beloveds severally. (It is consistent with this, however, that the lover in the closed triad also bears distinct love relationships to each of her two lovers severally.)

I’ll use ‘monogamous’ to describe love relationships which are both dyadic and exclusive.

Next I want to distinguish two hypotheses:

Moral Monogamy: The only morally permissible love relationships are monogamous ones.

Modal Monogamy: The only metaphysically possible love relationships are monogamous ones.

This post is about Modal Monogamy.

Modal Monogamy appears to be operating as an unstated assumption in many discussions of romantic love, often to the point where it (and/or claims that entail it) are taken as definitive of love, or at least so obvious as to need no defence.

To give a few examples, Robert Solomon tells us that‘[l]ove is the concentration and the intensive focus of mutual definition on a single individual, subjecting virtually every personal aspect of one’s self to this process’. Eva Illouz writes: ‘to love is to single out one person among other possibilities’. Alan Soble says that ‘exclusivity … is actually an essential part of romantic love’, making explicit elsewhere that he means dyadic exclusivity, and that this claim forms part of a conceptual analysis of romantic love. And so on. (All emphases in this paragraph are added.) In a paper (currently in progress) on this topic, I’m engaging with two recent papers on romantic love (published in 2011 and 2013) the theses of which substantively depend upon the truth of Modal Monogamy.

Modal Monogamy and related assumptions even more commonly fly under the radar, leading to the existence of papers, chapters and books on the nature of love which include no explicit statement flagging the assumption but proceed by way of unremarked use of phrases like ‘the couple’, ‘the other person’, and so on, and employ examples, thought experiments and arguments that pertain to exclusive dyads only. Of course, a certain amount of this sort of thing can be done without assuming anything close to Modal Monogamy. But when it pervades entire philosophical investigations, it becomes clear that a methodological presumption has been made that no other kinds of love could possibly be relevant. This presumption is appropriate if Modal Monogamy can be taken to be so obvious as to need no comment, but it is otherwise questionable.

There are various grades of modality weaker than metaphysical modality; correspondingly, weaker variants of Modal Monogamy can be formulated. Some of these variants can also be found as operative assumptions in the literature. Nozick, for example, says that ‘it is not feasible for a person to simultaneously to be part of multiple romantic couples (or a trio), even were the person to desire this’. This looks like a weaker modal claim, concerning what is possible within the bounds of feasibility. Interesting though such weaker modal claims are, in this post I am considering only the claim that non-monogamous love is metaphysically impossible.

It may be that for at least some of those who assume Modal Monogamy, Moral Monogamy is tacitly motivating (or even perhaps even being confused with) it. But I take it to be obvious, once the two theses are laid out side by side, that they are distinct, and that there is no straightforward way to infer from the latter to the former. I also take it to be obvious that any account of love which does not accommodate the possibility of states of affairs which are in fact possible is thereby a mistaken account, regardless of the moral standing of such states of affairs. For current purposes, therefore, the truth-value of Moral Monogamy is irrelevant: even if it is true, [1] Moral Monogamy is both distinct from, and insufficient to motivate, Modal Monogamy. (Compare: an account of killing which made murder metaphysically impossible would be a mistaken account of killing, regardless of whether or not murder is morally wrong. [2])

Despite being so often taken for granted, or even treated as a matter of definition, there is reason to believe Modal Monogamy is in fact false. In fact, there are a number of reasons think so. I’ll offer three here, in descending order of compellingness.

First, there exist many actual (and hence possible) people who take themselves to be in non-monogamous love relationships. Unless all such people are either confused or lying, Modal Monogamy is false. And I know of no reason to suppose that all such people are either confused or lying.

Second, analogies with other kinds of love suggest that non-dyadic and non-exclusive romantic love is possible. For example, it seems possible to have multiple dyadic loving but non-romantic friendships, or a triadic loving but non-romantic loving friendship. Similarly, it is possible to love multiple children, multiple parents, etc. Some might want to respond here that romantic love is to be distinguished from these other kinds of love partly in virtue of the former’s being necessarily limited to the exclusive dyadic case. But such a response assumes Modal Monogamy; as a way to resist the argument from analogy, this would be patently question-begging.

Third, Modal Monogamy is a strong claim. It can be construed as having the form of a double universal quantification: all possible worlds are such that all the love relationships they contain are monogamous ones. Correspondingly, its negation is a weak, doubly existential, claim: at least one possible world has at least one non-monogamous love relationship in it. Thus it’s reasonable to treat the negation as rather plausible by default, and Modal Monogamy as in need of substantial argument if it is to be accepted.

I am not sure what kind of argument could be mounted in favour of Modal Monogamy except perhaps one based on the claim that it is intuitive, true by definition, and/or a conceptual truth (or something in that ballpark). So let me finish by considering that kind of argument.

First, a cautionary note. Unreflective claims about what is ‘intuitive’ run the risk of sliding between what strikes the speaker as commonsensical on the one hand, and what is a matter of definition or a conceptual truth on the other. Philosophers use ‘intuition’-talk for both of these things, but they are very different. (I have a forthcoming paper on this topic.)

With romantic love in particular, there is a serious possibility that slippage of this kind could be mediated and/or rendered undetectable by the prevalence of a particular culturally dominant paradigm (or stereotype) of romantic love, which features monogamy prominently and unquestioningly. This paradigm is so deeply ingrained that one should expect exceptions to it to strike people as ‘counterintuitive’ on first encounter. They certainly aren’t going to feel ‘everyday’ or ‘commonsensical’. But when a paradigm or stereotype is as culturally prevalent as this one is, we should be particularly vigilant about the possibility of mistaking its contours for those of a definition or conceptual analysis.

In addition to this general reason to be cautious about ‘intuition’ when engaging topics where deeply embedded dominant cultural paradigms are operative, there is specific reason to be especially cautious in the case of romantic love. For, even setting monogamy aside, there are many features of the dominant paradigm that should not be understood as limning either metaphysical possibility or our concepts. Perhaps most obviously, these include heteroromanticism and a slew of gender-stereotypical assumptions about romantic behaviours and attitudes.

Given the strength of the arguments against Modal Monogamy, then, together with the relative ease with which ‘intuitions’ in its favour can be explained away, it is my contention that romantic monogamy is best understood as merely a feature of a culturally dominant paradigm of romantic love. It should not be inflated into something more metaphysically significant.

[Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Kris McDaniel and Audrey Yap for comments on this material.]

=====

[1] It isn’t.

[2] It is.

Featured Philosop-her: Luara Ferracioli

April 18, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized 8 Comments

I am very happy to welcome Luara Ferracioli as the next featured philosop-her. She is an assistant professor in Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. She works primarily on questions relating to the ethics of immigration and the ethics of parenting and procreation. Her work is forthcoming in the Journal of Value Inquiry, Review of International Studies and Ethical Theory & Moral Practice.

Her post follows.

–MK

On the Value of Intimacy in Procreation

Luara Ferracioli

What is wrong with anonymous surrogacy and gamete donation? Many feminists have argued that these practices are inherently exploitative or alienating. Yet, one can easily conceive of a world where donating a sperm or egg, and getting pregnant on behalf of someone else are considered highly valuable professional services, which are highly-paid and part of well regulated industries. In this ideal world, no one becomes a gamete donor or a surrogate out of economic necessity or desperation, but because there is a genuine fit between their conception of the good and the fact that procreation requires collective action. In my forthcoming paper “On the Value of Intimacy in Procreation,” I argue that what makes these practices morally wrong even under ideal conditions is the lack of intimacy between parties in the procreative chain.

Let me start by clearly stating the premises and conclusion of my argument:

P1. An agent contemplating procreation has a moral responsibility to only procreate when the social parent or parents (which may or may not include the agent herself) are willing and capable of discharging their parental responsibility sufficiently well.

P2. Assessment of the relevant capacity requires intimacy.

P3. There is no intimacy between parties in anonymous gamete donation and surrogacy.

C. Anonymous gamete donation and surrogacy are prima facie morally wrong.

While P1 seems to be uncontroversial, let me note that it actually departs from much liberal and conservative writings on the ethics of procreation. Conservatives have argued that the transferal of parental rights are necessarily problematic, either because we lack control over the actions of others or because children have a deep psychological need to associate with their biological relatives. Liberals, on the other hand, have argued that willingness alone is sufficient for the transferal of parental rights either because we can presume good enough parenting from those who are eager to parent, or because gamete donation and surrogacy are necessary to create a world where not only fertile heterosexual couples are capable of engaging in so-called “procreative parenting.” I lack the space to engage with all of these views here but let me say a few worlds in response to the liberal position.

First, if we think that children have a basic right to be parented by good enough parents, then morality requires that capacity and willingness obtain for each prospective social parent, and not for prospective parents in general. Second, everyone, not only homosexuals and infertile individuals are in danger of not finding a suitable partner with whom to procreate with. While it is certainly regrettable that some competent prospective procreators never become parents, morality has more pressing issues to address such as the fact that many children continue to have their basic rights violated because many adults continue to go ahead with procreation even though they are not fit for parenting.

So much for a defense of P1. Let me now defend both P2 and P3. The first question to ask here is this: why does intimacy matter? I take it that intimacy matters because the qualities that make for good enough parenting go beyond financial capacity and the lack of a criminal conviction. So when we ask what makes for a good enough parent, we can say that a good enough parent does not treat children with cruelty or disregard, for instance. We can also say that she or he understands that children need assistance in pursuing the good and is willing to assist them in engaging with meaningful projects and relationships throughout their childhood. And finally, we can claim that good enough parents are disposed to protect children’s basic interests by taking seriously advice from experts on their biological and developmental needs. Because these are the sorts of dispositions that present themselves in the course of intimate relationships with one’s partners, friends and family members, anonymous donors and surrogates are unable to transfer their parental responsibilities under adequate epistemic conditions. They are unable to ensure that those who will raise the resulting child are not only willing but also capable of parenting sufficiently well.

But there is a worry here. Can’t fertility clinics assess the parental skills of social parents via a well-trained psychologist? If anything, psychologists are likely to know more about our mental lives than those we are in intimate relationships with. To see whether or not psychologists in a fertility clinic could assess the parental competency of prospective social parents, let us start by asking what makes it the case that psychologists are more likely to know hidden aspects of our mental lives than other people we interact frequently with. It seems that the privileged epistemic position on the part of the psychologist is a direct result of her training and the sort of environment she can offer her client, where there is a clear focus on discussing the most uncomfortable and reveling aspects of the client’s inner life.

But note that when we imagine a psychologist who has a great degree of knowledge about her client’s dispositions and character traits, we are implicitly presupposing a therapy session that meets some standards of adequacy. We are, for instance, imaging that the client enjoys complete trust in the therapist, feeling safe to share the most unflattering aspects of her personality, embarrassing thoughts and morally problematic dispositions. This is why one would be tempted to assume that psychologists would be better placed than anyone else to assess the parental competency of prospective social parents and that my argument fails to show that intimacy is necessary for the assessment of a person’s capacity to parent sufficiently well.

But my argument would only fail if it were true that fertility clinics could in fact offer clients that kind of safe environment, where prospective parents would feel comfortable to reveal the most intimate aspects of their inner lives. And the worry is that precisely because the fertility clinic would be in the business of assessing the client’s parental competency, the trust required for such privileged epistemic access on the part of the psychologist would not obtain. The client, concerned as she would be with how she is being judged, would have very little incentive to open herself to the psychologist as she would if she was in the pursuit of self-knowledge. Because a successful therapy session requires that the therapist foster the belief that the clinician will always act in the client’s best interest, fertility clinics would not actually be in the position to adequately assess the parental competency of their clients. We are therefore back to the privileged aspect of intimate relationships in the assessment of parental competency.

Let me conclude this discussion by saying that my argument only applies to anonymous gamete donation and surrogacy. Those who donate their gamete or serve as surrogates to close friends and relatives do not do anything wrong if they are reasonably confident that their friends and relatives would be good enough parents. Those who assist strangers in their parenting enterprise, on the other hand, fail to transfer their parental rights under adequate epistemic conditions, and in so doing, violate a stringent moral responsibility to only procreate when reasonably confident that good enough parenting will follow.

Featured Philosop-her: Adrienne M. Martin

April 11, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized 2 Comments

I am very pleased to welcome Adrienne M. Martin as the next featured philosop-her. She is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and will take up the Murty and Shankar Chair of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Claremont McKenna College, starting in fall 2014.

Her post follows.

–MK

Consumer Complicity in Factory Farming

Adrienne M. Martin

Many people who become vegetarians do so first out of a concern for the welfare of factory farmed animals. They believe it is wrong to treat animals and people as they are treated in factory farming, and that consuming the meat produced through factory farming makes one complicit in the wrongful means of production. I am interested in articulating a good justificatory rationale for this line of thought.

There are arguably two distinct forms of complicity in cases structured as this one is: first, consumers provide the means and incentive for the primary agents who carry out the wrongful means of production, so consumers are accomplices in the wrongs committed by factory farmers; and, second, the individual consumer participates in the creation of this means and incentive as part of a collective. I’ll focus here on this latter relation, which I’ll call “participant complicity.”

The consumer might resist the idea that she is complicit in the wrongful means of production, because of the collective nature of market support. “My purchase,” she might argue, “makes no difference whatsoever to the continuation of factory farming.”

Shelley Kagan argues that the consumer at least takes the small risk of making a very large difference, in his recent article, “Do I make a difference?” (Philosophy & Public Affairs,Volume 39 , Issue 2 , pages 105–141, Spring 2011). And Elizabeth Harman argues that, even if one doesn’t take such a risk–or if the fact that one takes such a risk is not a moral reason to stop buying factory farmed meat–each consumer contributes to the market support for factory farming as a “joint cause” (article forthcoming in Philosophers Come to Dinner, ed. Chignell, Cuneo, and Halteman, forthcoming from Routledge). According to Harman, being a contributor without being a difference-maker is morally significant.

I want to explore the possibility that there is more to participant complicity than being a joint cause, while agreeing with Harman that one does not have to be a difference-maker (or risk it) to be complicit in a collective wrong.

Worth noting: Harman argues that, sometimes, it is morally wrong to participate as a joint cause of wrongful harm and, sometimes, there is moral reason not to participate, even if it is not morally wrong to do so. I myself am unclear as to whether it is always wrong to be complicit in a wrong, or prima facie wrong, or something there is decisive moral reason not to do, or something there is just some moral reason not to do.

A joint cause of an outcome is precisely a causal contributor that is neither necessary nor sufficient for the outcome. One of six pallbearers is a joint cause in the carrying of the coffin, when four would be able to carry it alone. Here are some ways I can be a joint cause of factory farming but not, I believe, complicit: I can purchase the vegetarian option at a restaurant that also serves factory farmed meat–it is common for restaurants to make greater overhead on their vegetarian options. I can split the tab with meat-eating friends. I can buy meat substitutes made from the soy waste products of factory pig farming. (I’ve heard it rumoured that some pig farmers sell soy waste to companies that use it to make meat substitutes. This may be a conspiracy theory, but the possibility still makes a useful point, here.)

What is the complicity difference between purchasing a factory farmed chicken for dinner and these other actions? I think we should attend to the different consumer groups one joins by making these purchases. In a capitalist market economy, a consumer group is recognizable as such because it has the function of signalling demand for a type of product. institutions, with individual designers involved in their inception and ongoing maintenance and development. And such economic systems do have aims, even if what those aims are is a subject for critical debate about the justifiability of the systems (middle-class prosperity? wealth consolidation in the upper tiers? maximal growth regardless distribution?). Capitalist markets rely on their constituent organizations’ pursuit of a subset of aims, and many constituent organizations are corporations that in turn rely on being able to roughly predict consumer demand for their product. Individual consumers don’t matter much for this purpose, except insofar as their buying patterns combine with others’–insofar, that is, as they are members of consumer groups.*

A person who splits the tab with meat-eating friends does not thereby join the consumer group that signals demand for factory farmed meat, even though she is a joint cause of incentivizing and supporting its production. What needs spelling out, clearly, is what does constitute joining this group. A likely necessary condition is that the consumer knows–or is culpably negligent for failing to know–that her purchase jointly with others signals demand for meat at the prices made possible by high-density stocking. It is also worth considering conditions setting a higher bar, such as requiring that the consumer is committed on pain of inconsistency to endorsing the means of production, or even that she identifies with her purchases in a certain way.

____________

*A somewhat different version of this argument will appear in Philosophers Come to Dinner, op cit. The notion that we should think about participant complicity in terms of functional roles played within aim-oriented groups is inspired by Saba Bazargan’s compelling analysis of combatant liability to be killed, in “Complicitous Liability in War,” Philosophical Studies, April 2012. However, the extension of his analysis to the case of consumer complicity is not straightforward, since the military is more clearly a systematically organized group with a defining set of aims, within which people willingly adopt functional roles.

Featured Philosop-her: Rosa Terlazzo

April 4, 2014 By Meena Krishnamurthy in Uncategorized

I am happy to welcome Rosa Terlazzo as the next featured philosop-her. She is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Kansas State University, and specializes in social and political philosophy. Her current research concerns adaptive preferences, children, autonomy, and political liberalism. Rosa’s work has been published in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.

Her post follows.

–MK

Children, Adults, and Adaptive Preferences

Rosa Terlazzo

Many thanks to Meena for starting this blog, and for letting me be a part of it! In this post, I’m going to discuss a problem at the intersection of two of my areas of interest: adaptive preferences and non-ideal theory. Roughly, the problem is this: while theorizing about adaptive preferences rightly belongs to non-ideal theory, even the best current work on the problem remains idealized in one unacknowledged and unacceptable way: it considers only the needs and interests of adults, and fails to acknowledge the ways in which those of children differ. This is clearly a problem that must be addressed in the adaptive preferences literature, but I’ll suggest that it also provides some broad guidance for the way that ideal and non-ideal theory ought to be done more generally.

It should be clear, I think, that philosophical work on adaptive preferences should be part of non-ideal theory. Broadly, adaptive preferences are those preferences that have been in some way deformed by unjust or otherwise morally unacceptable circumstances, so that those circumstances come to be in some sense preferred despite the harm that they do to the person who prefers them. Although accounts vary, the mechanism of this deformation is generally taken to have something to do with aspiration: persons end up aspiring to the impoverished circumstances that they can actually hope to achieve, precisely because they cannot hope to achieve any better. But whatever the mechanism, as long as the circumstances preferred are harmful, unjust, and actual, it is non-ideal theory that must deal with adaptive preferences. There are various accounts of ideal and non-ideal theory available in the literature, but for my purposes in this post, I can assume Rawls’s original characterization: If ideal theory is concerned with the principles of justice that would govern a perfectly just society, then ideal theory will say nothing about adaptive preferences, since the circumstances that lead to them will be absent in any society that could plausibly count as perfectly just. Any philosophical work on adaptive preferences, then, would seem to fit squarely into the realm of non-ideal theory.

Much of the work actually done on adaptive preferences, however, is nevertheless surprisingly idealized in one important way. Just as Rawls developed his theory of justice as fairness in abstraction from real-world considerations of disability and chronic illness, current work on adaptive preferences abstracts away from an even more omnipresent set of considerations: those involving children. This is a crucial failing for adaptive preference theorists, I think, because any account of adaptive preferences that goes beyond simple conceptual analysis ought to make recommendations for public policy; and indeed, virtually all of those writing on adaptive preferences are equally concerned with the question of what adaptive preferences are and the question of how they may permissibly be responded to by the state. But focusing these discussions only on the needs of adults yields unacceptable public policy prescriptions, since it ignores the interests of children. Let’s see how this is so.

Considering some examples will be useful. Imagine Simone, a wealthy woman who engages in socially sanctioned beauty practices that involve significant discomfort and cost on her part, and Elisa, a poor woman who eats only after her husband has had his fill, even though this means that she often goes hungry. Classically, discussions of appropriate ways of responding to such adaptive preferences have centered around the provision of respect for persons’ autonomy. While adaptive preferences demand attention because they are taken to support unjust or otherwise bad norms and social conditions, many of those writing on adaptive preferences recognize that reasonable persons can disagree about the good, and that some reasonable persons are accordingly likely to disagree with any proposed set of conditions and norms taken to be unjust or bad. It is not completely implausible to think either that Simone might see her beauty practices as a kind of art well worth suffering for, or that Elisa might see extreme self-sacrifice as the highest good. Other theorists argue that persons taken to have adaptive preferences are better understood as making difficult compromises in impossible circumstances, and that how best to navigate these circumstances must be determined by the person forced to do so, not by a third party who lacks her knowledge and need not live with the consequences of her actions. In this case, Simone may rightly take her beauty practices to significantly increase her chances of finding a romantic partner, and Elisa might allow her husband to eat his fill because he engages in physically demanding labor that supports the family financially. Both of these considerations, in conjunction with standard liberal presumptions against paternalism, make many theorists hesitant to recommend using coercive measures to encourage persons with suspected adaptive preferences to act in accordance with “better” or “more just” norms. Instead, what I take to be the best proposals in the literature recommend responses to adaptive preferences that rely on deliberative engagement directed by persons’ own convictions and conceptions of the good. Such proposals respect the autonomy of those taken to have adaptive preferences.

The problem is that children are also subject to adaptive preferences – yet the considerations discussed above do not apply to them. First, there is rightly no general presumption against paternalism when it comes to children. There is of course disagreement about how paternalistic powers ought to be allocated, but there is broad agreement that third parties may generally permissibly act for the good of children even when the children in question do not endorse those actions. Second, it is clear that children’s disagreement about the good is rarely reasonable at early ages, and their views about their own good do not, accordingly, require the same kind of respect owed to adults. Indeed, it seems to me that it is here that paternalism is most clearly justified: paternalism may be aimed not only at preventing immediate harm to children, but at ensuring that their convictions about their own good eventually becomes reasonable. That is, it can help them to develop the skills that they need to make their preferences more a product of their informed and considered choices, and less a product of their limiting circumstances. We cannot simply assume that what adults who have suffered adaptive preferences take to be best for themselves is what will be best for their children. While Simone and Elisa might have good reasons for the choices that they make, their daughters may not be best served by following in their footsteps. Neither woman may have had the chance to consider an initial course of action that included a broader set of attractive possibilities – but their daughters still might. In other words, the considerations relevant to children point not simply towards respecting autonomy in the case of adaptive preferences, but towards promoting it. With the right emphasis on promotion of autonomy, it may be possible to prevent the formation of adaptive preferences in the first place.

These differences between adults and children may seem obvious, but unless we make them explicit in discussions of adaptive preferences, we will be unable to consider their implications for the moral permissibility of policies aimed at responding to adaptive preferences. While I lack the space to respond to these questions here, I offer the following as an initial set of questions raised by recognition of the differences between children and adults:

If we can meaningfully respect the autonomy of adults who already have adaptive preferences, is there really reason to prevent children from forming adaptive preferences in the first place?
If there is reason to prevent adaptive preference formation in children in the first place, is it permissible to use coercive means to do so? At what point does it stop being permissible to do so, and on what grounds?
Given that the adults in a child’s community are a significant component of the circumstances in which that child finds herself, might conflicts arise between promoting the autonomy of children and respecting the autonomy of adults? If such conflicts arise, how should they be adjudicated?

Clearly, none of these questions can be answered without an extended discussion of the ways in which children’s needs and rights differ from those of adults. But just as clearly, these questions must be asked in order for responses to adaptive preferences to be morally justifiable. On at least some plausible answers to the above questions, responses to adaptive preferences will require something very different from (or at least additional to) the deliberative engagement supported by an exclusive focus on the needs of adults.

Before closing, let’s briefly return to the implications that all of this may have for the general way in which non-ideal theory is done. In the literature on non-ideal theory, there is a debate about whether ideal theory is required as a kind of blue-print or aim for the kinds of prescriptions that non-ideal theory should make. Some, like Rawls, hold that it is, arguing that we cannot know if we are moving towards justice without having at least a general idea of what perfect justice looks like. Others, like Amartya Sen, hold that it is does not, since a general conception of perfect justice is not required in order to identify clear injustices in the world and to imagine more just alternatives to them. My discussion of adaptive preferences in this post cannot begin to answer this question. It should, however, highlight one case in which otherwise careful and high-quality work in non-ideal theory can fail to offer permissible and comprehensive action-guidance because it fails to recognize the way in which it idealizes away from another deeply relevant consideration in the non-ideal world. Minimally, the case of adaptive preferences should serve as a cautionary tale for other non-ideal theorists who may inadvertently do the same. More maximally, it provides support for an argument (compatible with and in many ways similar to one made by Ingrid Robeyns) that some considerations will be so central to most plausible theories of justice that no work in either ideal or non-ideal theory may permissibly idealize away from them without explicitly addressing their relationship to justice. Considerations of children’s unique needs, pervasive as they are, will likely fall near the top of this list.