Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory

About the Book

Rightness as Fairness provides a uniquely fruitful method of 'principled fair negotiation' for resolving applied moral and political issues that requires merging principled debate with real-world negotiation.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION PART I: ETHICS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 1. Distinguishing Truth from Seeming-Truth 2. Seven Principles of Theory-Selection 2.1. Firm Foundations 2.2. Internal Coherence 2.3. External Coherence 2.4. Explanatory Power 2.5. Unity 2.6. Parsimony 2.7. Fruitfulness 3. The Case for Instrumentalism 3.1. The Firmest Foundation 3.2. The Promise of Parsimony, Unity, Explanatory Power, and Fruitfulness 3.3. Advantages over Alternatives 3.3.1. Advantages over Intuitionism 3.3.2. Advantages over Reflective Equilibrium 3.3.3. Advantages over Moral-Language Analysis 3.3.4. Advantages over Constitutivism 3.3.5. Advantages over Second and Third-Personalism 3.3.6. Advantages over Sterba's Dialecticalism 3.3.7. Conclusion 4. Disarming Initial Concerns 4.1. The Wrong Kinds of Reasons? 4.2. Not a Firm Foundation? 4.3. Unconvincing and Artificial? 4.4. Three Promissory Notes 4.4.1. Not the Wrong Kinds of Reasons? 4.4.2. Firm Foundations After All? 4.4.3. Convincing and Intuitive? 5. Conclusion PART II: THE PROBLEM OF POSSIBLE FUTURE SELVES 1. Our Capacities to Care about Our Past and Future 2. The Problem of Possible Future Selves 2.1. Possible Futures 2.2. Possible Psychologies 2.3. Possible Choices 2.4. A Very Real Problem 3. Morality as the Solution? 4. Is the Problem Too Contingent? 5. Two Nonsolutions 5.1. Nonsolution 1: Probable Futures 5.2. Nonsolution 2: Diachronic Motivational Consistency 6. Conclusion: An Unsolved Problem PART III: THE CATEGORICAL-INSTRUMENTAL IMPERATIVE 1. Interests in Diachronic Cooperation 2. Three Types of Interests 2.1. Involuntary Interests 2.2. Semivoluntary Interests 2.3. Voluntary Interests 3. The Categorical-Instrumental Imperative 4. Just Conscience? 5. An Intuitive Solution to the Problem of Possible Future Selves? 6. Conclusion PART IV: THREE UNIFIED FORMULATIONS 1. The Humanity-and-Sentience Formulation 1.1. Possible Other-Human-Regarding Interests 1.2. Possible Nonhuman-Animal-Regarding Interests 1.3. Possible Sentient-Being-Regarding Interests 1.4. Derivation of the Humanity-and-Sentience Formulation 2. The Kingdom-of-Human-and-Sentient-Ends Formulation 3. Advantages over Kantian Ethics 3.1. Firmer Foundations 3.2. Greater Internal Coherence 3.3. Greater External Coherence 3.4. Greater Explanatory Power, Unity and Parsimony 3.5. Greater Fruitfulness 4. Conclusion PART V: THE MORAL ORIGINAL POSITION 1. Rawls' Original Position 1.1. Rawls' Kantian Rationale 1.2. Rawls' Reflective-Equilibrium Rationale 1.3. Rawls' Public Reason Rationale 2. Some Common Critiques 2.1. Kantian Critiques 2.2. Reflective-Equilibrium Critiques 2.3. Public Reason Critiques 3. The Case for a Moral Original Position 4. Corroborating the Critiques 4.1. Corroborating Kantian Critiques 4.2. Corroborating Reflective-Equilibrium Critiques 4.3. Corroborating Public Reason Critiques 5. Conclusion PART VI: RIGHTNESS AS FAIRNESS 1. Derivation of Four Principles of Fairness 1.1. The Principle of Negative Fairness 1.2. The Principle of Positive Fairness 1.3. The Principle of Fair Negotiation 1.4. The Principle of Virtues of Fairness 2. Rightness as Fairness: A Unified Standard of Right and Wrong 3. Rightness as Fairness in Practice: Principled Fair Negotiation 3.1. Kant's Four Cases 3.2. How Numbers Should Count: Trolleys, Torture, and Unwilling Organ Donors 3.3. World Poverty 3.4. Distribution of Scarce Medical Resources 3.5. The Ethical Treatment of Animals 4. Conclusion PART VII: LIBERTARIAN EGALITARIAN COMMUNITARIANISM 1. Libertarianism, Egalitarianism, and Communitarianism 1.1. Libertarianism: Attractions and Critiques 1.2. Egalitarianism: Attractions and Critiques 1.3. Egalitarianism: Attractions and Critiques 2. The Case for Libertarian Egalitarian Communitarianism 3. Additional Advantages 3.1. (Qualified) Fair Negotiation over Divisiveness 3.2. Resolving the Scope and Requirements of Justice 3.3. Resolving the Ideal-Nonideal Theory Distinction 4. Conclusion PART VIII: EVALUATING RIGHTNESS AS FAIRNESS 1. Firmer Foundations 2. Greater Internal Coherence 3. Greater External Coherence 4. Greater Explanatory Power5. Greater Unity 6. Greater Parsimony 7. Greater Fruitfulness 8. Conclusion References Bibliography Index

About the Author :

Marcus Arvan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tampa, US. He works primarily in ethics and social-political philosophy, as well as metaphysics and philosophy of science. His work has appeared in various journals including Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Philosophical Psychology, and The Philosophical Forum.

Review :
I would not offer the author of this manuscript a publishing contract at this point. Let me first give a superficial reason and then more of my personal concerns about the manuscript. First, as I understand, the full manuscript is under review at Routledge currently. I assume that, if Routledge accepts the manuscript, they will get it (and I don't think the manuscript is worth trying to fight for). On the other hand, if the outcome of their refereeing process is that the manuscript is not publishable, then I see no reason why Palgrave Macmillan should do so either. Presumably Routledge has competent academic referees and marketing people. Be that as it may, I do have few main concerns that make me unable to recommend this manuscript. First of all, it tries to cover far too much ground. It has chapters on metaethics, practical reasoning, Kantian ethics, Rawlsian original position and fairness, applied ethics and political theory. I just think that this is too much to cover in one book - many of the previous topics would make solid books of their own. Because of the amount of material covered, in places the argumentation becomes too quick and superficial; not going far enough and deep enough into the interesting controversial topics discussed. I also think that this will be a problem for getting attention and readers. If the book were on just one topic, you could see how the students and faculty focused on that topic would get interested in the book even if it were from a relatively unknown author. However, given that the book is not in any clear sense in any specific topic but rather on all of moral and political philosophy, the reason to pick up the book would be mainly because it is by the person who is the author. Reading a long book like this in most of moral philosophy you might not be working on is a significant investment. I worry that if the book is by a relatively unknown author who has not published in the top journals there would be few people willing to do this. Things might be different if the philosophical content were exceptionally good. I do think that the argumentation is competent and professional but I don't think it is quite excellent enough. So, I worry that if the book were published in this form, there would be relatively few readers and the book would receive not very much attention. I would recommend the author to publish the central ideas of the book in high quality journals to create interest on a work of this magnitude. I am also little sceptical about the main line of reasoning even if this is something that is difficult to evaluate without having read the whole manuscript. The book begins from highly abstract metaethical discussions about the nature of normative facts, epistemology and practical reasoning and through this analysis ends up defending specific conclusions about what should be done in controversial real life ethical problems and what kind of policies around we should arrange the society. I know that some people have attempted ambitious arguments like this before. I just don't see them ever being compelling. If the concrete ethical conclusions turn out to be implausible to some people, they are unlikely to accept all the steps in metaethics and thereafter. And, given how controversial the metaethical claims made in the beginning are, this seems like a wise thing to do. So, I don't see how practical ethical and political questions could ever be solved by abstract theorizing of this sort without just focusing on first-order ethical thinking. To summarize: I think this is a competent proposal but unfortunately, I don't think it is quite focused enough for offering a contract.