Journal of Applied Philosophy最新文献

The ambition to decarbonize societies calls for a normative theory of just transitions. An important aspect of such a theory is to scrutinize the moral entitlements of stakeholders whose status quo expectations get frustrated in the course of sustainability transitions. The concept of legitimate expectations (LE) has been advanced as a core constituent of such a theory but has also been criticized for the conceptual confusion it attracts. In this article I address this criticism by elucidating the concept and its normative grounds. This yields two theoretical insights that are novel to the debate on LE. First, I argue that there are three different kinds of claims that go by the name of LE, whose normative grounding structures differ. Second, I argue that warranted appeals to having LE should have some degree of justificatory support, but that the degree of justification may weaken over time. Accordingly, while LE are morally weighty and give rise to pro tanto duties, they may be superseded if circumstances change. In closing, I show how this account can help to interpret and evaluate claims about transitional climate justice.

In this article I develop an objection to Longtermism – the view that concern for the long-term future is a moral imperative – that is often gestured at, but not fleshed out. I call this the Far-Future Priority Objection: Longtermism may entail significant resource reallocation and systemic neglect of the worst off today. I argue that Longtermism's endorsement of efficiency leads to repeated priority of distributive allocations to the far-future, so Longtermists must allow for moral concerns in addition to efficiency in order to mitigate the objection. The two most promising ways of doing this are to eschew strong versions of Longtermism in favor of weaker versions or incorporate deontic side-constraints. However, I argue that neither of these responses successfully undermines the Far-Future Priority Objection without abandoning fundamental tenets of Longtermism itself.

According to the obscuring objection against mainstream political philosophy, there has been a long-standing dominant research paradigm focusing on distributive justice. This has made it difficult to call attention to important social facts, such as discrimination and oppression. The purpose of this article is not to defend the claim that mainstream political philosophy obscures important social facts. We instead focus on how obscuring arises. There are undoubtedly several different forces at play in the development of a research field, but the focus here is to spell out mechanisms that enforce obscuring which draw from influential theories in pragmatics. The account starts with the assumption that conversations are structured around mutual assumptions among interlocutors. We argue that the contents of these mutual assumptions represent certain general norms for efficient conversation and unequal social power among interlocutors, both of which constitute an important part of how obscuring arises.

Ours is an age of incessant hustle, where resting increasingly seems like a privilege out of reach for many or else a liability to be undertaken sparingly and with discretion. In this context, we might wonder whether we have lost sight of the importance of taking a break. What place might rest have in leading a meaningful life? Unfortunately, recent philosophical theories of meaning in life have not only neglected the importance of rest but also reinforced our cultural obsession with the value of activity and the pursuit of achievements. In contrast to this prevailing tendency, this article will begin by offering an analysis of rest as the temporary suspension of active involvement in projects for the sake of rejuvenation. I then argue that rest can genuinely imbue our lives with meaning, yet not all conceptions of meaningful rest are equally existentially significant.

Prison officers play a vital role in shaping prison conditions. Assessing their responsibility for, and potential role in reforming, the prison's failures is an urgent and important task in corrective justice efforts. This article takes up this task, with a focus on the US prison context, by applying and critically examining two general theories of institutional action: the ‘outward’ perspective, which emphasizes rule-following to achieve institutional purposes, and the ‘inward’ perspective, which brings to the fore the relational aspect of institutional life and officeholders' interrelated responsibility for guiding institutional action. After presenting the prison's purpose and its documented failures in Section 2, I frame the ordinary liberal reformist approach in terms of the outward perspective in Section 3, and outline a more promising public ethic of office accountability with the inward perspective in Section 4. I sketch in Section 5 a third, ‘downward’ perspective to challenge both, given their neglect of the prison staff culture and the broader epistemically unjust landscape that deem incarcerated people dangerous and untrustworthy. I conclude that to correct the prison's dysfunctions and achieve its raison d'être, we need to distrust officers.

In this article, we argue that felt discontinuity of self plays a role in recovery from substance use disorders. We rely on a view of the self that identifies continuity of the self with the maintenance of a self-concept, and we use it to propose an explanation of how individuals with substance use disorders form concepts of self around those disorders. We argue further that individuals can experience a discontinuity of self, that is, an identity crisis, in two ways. First, a person with a substance use disorder might experience a discontinuity of self when they attempt to maintain a self established prior to developing a substance use disorder. This type of identity crisis might motivate recovery as the individual will seek to resolve it through attempts to maintain an earlier concept of self that is not centered on substance use. Second, a person might experience a discontinuity of self as they seek to establish a self that is not grounded in substance use, which might make recovery more difficult by the need to establish a new concept of self.