This paper discusses the "numbers problem," the problem of explaining why you should sa... more This paper discusses the "numbers problem," the problem of explaining why you should save more people rather than fewer when forced to choose. Existing non-consequentialist approaches to the problem appeal to fairness to explain why. I argue that this is a mistake and that we can give a more satisfying answer by appealing to requirements of charity or beneficence
Immigration controversies never end. If we’re not worried about Syrian refugees or Mexicans looki... more Immigration controversies never end. If we’re not worried about Syrian refugees or Mexicans looking for a better life, we’re concerned with Jews escaping genocide or the Irish seeking food. And whatever we do, we always seem to get it wrong. We are blamed for not doing enough, condemned for doing too much, scoffed at for focusing on other people’s problems, instead of own. How do we sort all of this out? How should we treat people who want or need to relocate to our homeland? What are our obligations to migrants and refugees? Adam Hosein is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University. He is the author of The Ethics of Migration, An Introduction.https://commons.und.edu/why-radio-archive/1002/thumbnail.jp
R ACIAL profiling of black and "AMEMSA" (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian) individua... more R ACIAL profiling of black and "AMEMSA" (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian) individuals is a central topic of political discussion in the United States. In this article, I will present an argument-"the political argument"-that vindicates the critics of racial profiling of black and AMEMSA people. 1 I make an original case that racial profiling creates an unjust relationship between black and AMEMSA people and their state, because it gives them a reasonable sense of inferior political status. 2 I will argue that, in place of a policy of profiling these groups, we should have randomized screening (along with a clear prohibition on profiling them). My argument will be conditional: under present circumstances, profiling these groups would be unjust. I will also give some reasons for thinking that changing these background conditions in ways that would make profiling acceptable is unfeasible. But for people who are more optimistic about what is feasible, my argument will also provide guidance on what it would take to make profiling acceptable.
This essay considers some central arguments given by Helen Frowe and Seth Lazar regarding the per... more This essay considers some central arguments given by Helen Frowe and Seth Lazar regarding the permissibility of killing civilians in war. It raises some objections to their views and defends some alternative bases for weighing harms to combatants against harms to civilians.
Suppose you find yourself in the following "tradeoff" situation. Tradeoff: you own a life saving ... more Suppose you find yourself in the following "tradeoff" situation. Tradeoff: you own a life saving drug which you can give away at only small cost to yourself. "Six people will all certainly die if they are not treated with the drug. But one of the six requires all of the drug if he is to survive. Each of the other five requires only one-fifth of the drug." All six persons are strangers to you What should you do? The costs to you of giving away the drug are low, so you should certainly do so. But to whom should you give it? Nearly all of us judge that you ought to save the five people who require only one fifth of the drug. The "numbers problem" is the problem of saying why it is that you ought to save the five. Consequentialists are thought to have an easy time answering this question. They can say that you should save the five because you would thereby bring about the best state of affairs that you can. But many
Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Raw... more Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Rawlsian framework to develop a theory of rightness, or morality more generally. I argue that there are some good reasons to adopt a contractualist theory of social justice, but that it is a mistake to adopt a contractualist theory of rightness. I begin by illustrating the major shared features of Scanlon and Rawls' theories. I then show that the justification for these features in Rawls' theory, the centrality of cooperative fairness to social justice, cannot be used to defend their use in Scanlon's. Finally, I argue that Scanlon has not provided an adequate alternative defense of these features, and show that they create problems when contractualists try to explain major features of our common-sense morality.
At the heart of the case for Brexit was the idea of 'taking back control'. The British people wer... more At the heart of the case for Brexit was the idea of 'taking back control'. The British people were no longer the directors of their own destiny and needed to reassert control over their own aff airs. Which aff airs, specifi cally? There were multiple targets, but immigration was central: 'Vote Leave', the British people were told, so that '[w]e'll be in charge of own borders'. 2 It was crucial, so the argument went, that the British government, and not individual migrants or Brussels, have the fi nal word over who enters the country. Writing before the Brexit vote, political theorist David Miller (2016) described this connection between immigration and self-determination as follows: In Britain, immigration has come to stand for something more than immigration itself. The British government's inability to control (intra-European) migration is seen as emblematic of a wider loss of control. Many Britons feel that they are no longer in charge of their own destiny: 'Take back our country' is a slogan that resonates along the campaign trail. Similar values have been appealed to in United States by people arguing for greater fortifi cation of the southern border and generally providing increased funding for immigration enforcement. Conservatives insist that the 'rule of law' must be reestablished more fi rmly, meaning that the state must have stricter discretion over whom gains admission. 3 It is crucial that the United States government, and not individual migrants or smugglers, have the fi nal word over admission. What these arguments have in common, at base, is an appeal to the importance of collective self-determination (or related notions of 'national Illusions of Control • 17
In this paper I defend limits on corporate expenditures of the kind that were enacted by the Bipa... more In this paper I defend limits on corporate expenditures of the kind that were enacted by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) and struck down by the Supreme Court in Citizens United. I argue that limits are justified by the need to ensure that the government is representative of the people rather than wealthy corporations who can gain influence through campaign spending. I then present the objection that this argument makes paternalistic assumptions about the abilities of citizens to evaluate speech, assumptions that are themselves undemocratic because they reflect a lack of trust in citizens. The main philosophical contribution of the paper is repose to this objection, which shows that the assumptions needed to defend BCRA are compatible with democratic principles. Along the way, I demonstrate that one can be committed to the kind of regulation embodied by BCRA, which targets campaign speech, just prior to and concerning an election, without having to endorse further regulatio...
AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, 2016
In this paper, I discuss some of the criteria that liberal states have used to choose between pot... more In this paper, I discuss some of the criteria that liberal states have used to choose between potential immigrants. While overtly racist policies have been widely condemned and abolished, many states have still in the recent past selected immigrants based on their ethnicity and/or language competency. I argue that even apparently more benign examples of ethnic and linguistic selection are unacceptable because they tend to express a morally problematic message that members of certain ethnic groups within the territory—the people who are really from there—occupy a privileged position within the political community. And this means, I argue, that they unjustly exclude members of other ethnic groups. Finally, I address some special features of linguistic selection that are sometimes thought to make it justifiable, including the de facto inevitability of promoting some languages more than others, the fact that languages can be learned voluntarily, and the fragility of minority languages in territories where there is another language that is more universally known.
In this paper I consider the role of freedom in the justification of prohibitions on discriminati... more In this paper I consider the role of freedom in the justification of prohibitions on discrimination. As a case study, I focus mainly on U.S. constitutional and employment law and, in particular, restrictions on sex-stereotyping. I present a new argument that freedom can play at least some important role in justifying these restrictions. Not just any freedom, I claim: the Millian freedom to challenge existing stereotypes and contribute to social change. This 'social change account', I argue, can be a useful supplement to the existing theories where their explanations run out. It also draws support from familiar liberal justifications for speech and other liberties, and provides an attractive role for the courts.
The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal is... more The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal issues, such as the need for criminal process protections, prohibitions on torture, the permissibility of the death penalty and so on. These are areas where, at least initially, there seem to be distinctions between harms that the state inflicts and harms that it merely allows. In this paper I will argue for the importance of the doing/allowing distinction as applied to state action. Sunstein, Holmes, Vermeule and others have presented influential arguments for the claim that where the state is concerned the doing/allowing distinction has no moral significance, even if it does elsewhere. I show that these arguments can be resisted. In doing so, I defend some important distinctions and principles that help us understand the state's role in protecting people from harm.
In this paper I focus on one very influential argument for open borders, the freedom of movement ... more In this paper I focus on one very influential argument for open borders, the freedom of movement argument, which says that if we value freedom of movement we must demand open borders. I begin the paper the paper by discussing Joseph Carens' well known version of the argument. I then consider, and reject, David Miller's response to that argument. Finally, I develop my own reply to Carens. Both Carens and Miller, I argue, are mistaken about the proper grounds for freedom of movement. Once we see this, it is clear how we can value freedom of movement without being committed to open borders.
The case is from Taurek (1977), p.293. roughly, that we treat all relevantly similar persons simi... more The case is from Taurek (1977), p.293. roughly, that we treat all relevantly similar persons similarly. 3 Thus, the children who are each equally in need of the parent's help should be given the same assistance, employees doing similar jobs should be similarly compensated and so on. Where we are providing benefits, fairness demands, more specifically, that we benefit people in proportion to their eligibility for the benefit. Thus, variations in the size of grants should be in proportion to how qualified their recipients are. Some ethical theories deny that fairness has any fundamental importance. Utilitarians, for instance, deny that one is ever bound by a requirement of fairness. 4 They do think that we should sometimes act as fairness would demand, say by helping our children equally, but only when, and because, so acting would increase aggregate utility, not because it would be fair. According to the standard non-consequentialist accounts of the numbers problem, we are required to be fair in giving aid to needy strangers. They appeal to this general requirement that we be fair to the needy in order to explain why you should save the many in a case such as Tradeoff. But before looking at why exactly they think fairness requires you to save the many, I am going to briefly discuss some prima facie difficulties with showing that it is fair to save the five. It will be useful to consider these initial difficulities, since they will help us to understand the arguments for thinking that 10 I owe this point to Judith Jarvis Thomson. " Hsieh, et al. (2006) make a proposal similar to this in Section 5.
have argued that nothing is just plain good, because 'good' is, logically, an attributive adjecti... more have argued that nothing is just plain good, because 'good' is, logically, an attributive adjective. The upshot, according to Geach and Thomson, is that consequentialism is unacceptable, since its very formulation requires a predicative (non-attributive) use of 'good'. Reactions to the argument have, for the most part, been uniform. Authors have converged on two challenging objections (
This paper examines the 'taking back control' over immigration arguments offered for Brexit and f... more This paper examines the 'taking back control' over immigration arguments offered for Brexit and for reinforcing the Southern border of the United States. According to these arguments, Brexit and increased border enforcement were needed to ensure collective self-governance for the peoples of Britain and the United States. I argue that 1. In fact these policies did little to enhance collective self-governance properly understood, and 2. They actually thwarted collective self-governance due their racially exclusionary effects on people of colour in Britain and the United States.
This paper discusses the "numbers problem," the problem of explaining why you should sa... more This paper discusses the "numbers problem," the problem of explaining why you should save more people rather than fewer when forced to choose. Existing non-consequentialist approaches to the problem appeal to fairness to explain why. I argue that this is a mistake and that we can give a more satisfying answer by appealing to requirements of charity or beneficence
Immigration controversies never end. If we’re not worried about Syrian refugees or Mexicans looki... more Immigration controversies never end. If we’re not worried about Syrian refugees or Mexicans looking for a better life, we’re concerned with Jews escaping genocide or the Irish seeking food. And whatever we do, we always seem to get it wrong. We are blamed for not doing enough, condemned for doing too much, scoffed at for focusing on other people’s problems, instead of own. How do we sort all of this out? How should we treat people who want or need to relocate to our homeland? What are our obligations to migrants and refugees? Adam Hosein is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University. He is the author of The Ethics of Migration, An Introduction.https://commons.und.edu/why-radio-archive/1002/thumbnail.jp
R ACIAL profiling of black and "AMEMSA" (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian) individua... more R ACIAL profiling of black and "AMEMSA" (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian) individuals is a central topic of political discussion in the United States. In this article, I will present an argument-"the political argument"-that vindicates the critics of racial profiling of black and AMEMSA people. 1 I make an original case that racial profiling creates an unjust relationship between black and AMEMSA people and their state, because it gives them a reasonable sense of inferior political status. 2 I will argue that, in place of a policy of profiling these groups, we should have randomized screening (along with a clear prohibition on profiling them). My argument will be conditional: under present circumstances, profiling these groups would be unjust. I will also give some reasons for thinking that changing these background conditions in ways that would make profiling acceptable is unfeasible. But for people who are more optimistic about what is feasible, my argument will also provide guidance on what it would take to make profiling acceptable.
This essay considers some central arguments given by Helen Frowe and Seth Lazar regarding the per... more This essay considers some central arguments given by Helen Frowe and Seth Lazar regarding the permissibility of killing civilians in war. It raises some objections to their views and defends some alternative bases for weighing harms to combatants against harms to civilians.
Suppose you find yourself in the following "tradeoff" situation. Tradeoff: you own a life saving ... more Suppose you find yourself in the following "tradeoff" situation. Tradeoff: you own a life saving drug which you can give away at only small cost to yourself. "Six people will all certainly die if they are not treated with the drug. But one of the six requires all of the drug if he is to survive. Each of the other five requires only one-fifth of the drug." All six persons are strangers to you What should you do? The costs to you of giving away the drug are low, so you should certainly do so. But to whom should you give it? Nearly all of us judge that you ought to save the five people who require only one fifth of the drug. The "numbers problem" is the problem of saying why it is that you ought to save the five. Consequentialists are thought to have an easy time answering this question. They can say that you should save the five because you would thereby bring about the best state of affairs that you can. But many
Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Raw... more Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Rawlsian framework to develop a theory of rightness, or morality more generally. I argue that there are some good reasons to adopt a contractualist theory of social justice, but that it is a mistake to adopt a contractualist theory of rightness. I begin by illustrating the major shared features of Scanlon and Rawls' theories. I then show that the justification for these features in Rawls' theory, the centrality of cooperative fairness to social justice, cannot be used to defend their use in Scanlon's. Finally, I argue that Scanlon has not provided an adequate alternative defense of these features, and show that they create problems when contractualists try to explain major features of our common-sense morality.
At the heart of the case for Brexit was the idea of 'taking back control'. The British people wer... more At the heart of the case for Brexit was the idea of 'taking back control'. The British people were no longer the directors of their own destiny and needed to reassert control over their own aff airs. Which aff airs, specifi cally? There were multiple targets, but immigration was central: 'Vote Leave', the British people were told, so that '[w]e'll be in charge of own borders'. 2 It was crucial, so the argument went, that the British government, and not individual migrants or Brussels, have the fi nal word over who enters the country. Writing before the Brexit vote, political theorist David Miller (2016) described this connection between immigration and self-determination as follows: In Britain, immigration has come to stand for something more than immigration itself. The British government's inability to control (intra-European) migration is seen as emblematic of a wider loss of control. Many Britons feel that they are no longer in charge of their own destiny: 'Take back our country' is a slogan that resonates along the campaign trail. Similar values have been appealed to in United States by people arguing for greater fortifi cation of the southern border and generally providing increased funding for immigration enforcement. Conservatives insist that the 'rule of law' must be reestablished more fi rmly, meaning that the state must have stricter discretion over whom gains admission. 3 It is crucial that the United States government, and not individual migrants or smugglers, have the fi nal word over admission. What these arguments have in common, at base, is an appeal to the importance of collective self-determination (or related notions of 'national Illusions of Control • 17
In this paper I defend limits on corporate expenditures of the kind that were enacted by the Bipa... more In this paper I defend limits on corporate expenditures of the kind that were enacted by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) and struck down by the Supreme Court in Citizens United. I argue that limits are justified by the need to ensure that the government is representative of the people rather than wealthy corporations who can gain influence through campaign spending. I then present the objection that this argument makes paternalistic assumptions about the abilities of citizens to evaluate speech, assumptions that are themselves undemocratic because they reflect a lack of trust in citizens. The main philosophical contribution of the paper is repose to this objection, which shows that the assumptions needed to defend BCRA are compatible with democratic principles. Along the way, I demonstrate that one can be committed to the kind of regulation embodied by BCRA, which targets campaign speech, just prior to and concerning an election, without having to endorse further regulatio...
AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, 2016
In this paper, I discuss some of the criteria that liberal states have used to choose between pot... more In this paper, I discuss some of the criteria that liberal states have used to choose between potential immigrants. While overtly racist policies have been widely condemned and abolished, many states have still in the recent past selected immigrants based on their ethnicity and/or language competency. I argue that even apparently more benign examples of ethnic and linguistic selection are unacceptable because they tend to express a morally problematic message that members of certain ethnic groups within the territory—the people who are really from there—occupy a privileged position within the political community. And this means, I argue, that they unjustly exclude members of other ethnic groups. Finally, I address some special features of linguistic selection that are sometimes thought to make it justifiable, including the de facto inevitability of promoting some languages more than others, the fact that languages can be learned voluntarily, and the fragility of minority languages in territories where there is another language that is more universally known.
In this paper I consider the role of freedom in the justification of prohibitions on discriminati... more In this paper I consider the role of freedom in the justification of prohibitions on discrimination. As a case study, I focus mainly on U.S. constitutional and employment law and, in particular, restrictions on sex-stereotyping. I present a new argument that freedom can play at least some important role in justifying these restrictions. Not just any freedom, I claim: the Millian freedom to challenge existing stereotypes and contribute to social change. This 'social change account', I argue, can be a useful supplement to the existing theories where their explanations run out. It also draws support from familiar liberal justifications for speech and other liberties, and provides an attractive role for the courts.
The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal is... more The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal issues, such as the need for criminal process protections, prohibitions on torture, the permissibility of the death penalty and so on. These are areas where, at least initially, there seem to be distinctions between harms that the state inflicts and harms that it merely allows. In this paper I will argue for the importance of the doing/allowing distinction as applied to state action. Sunstein, Holmes, Vermeule and others have presented influential arguments for the claim that where the state is concerned the doing/allowing distinction has no moral significance, even if it does elsewhere. I show that these arguments can be resisted. In doing so, I defend some important distinctions and principles that help us understand the state's role in protecting people from harm.
In this paper I focus on one very influential argument for open borders, the freedom of movement ... more In this paper I focus on one very influential argument for open borders, the freedom of movement argument, which says that if we value freedom of movement we must demand open borders. I begin the paper the paper by discussing Joseph Carens' well known version of the argument. I then consider, and reject, David Miller's response to that argument. Finally, I develop my own reply to Carens. Both Carens and Miller, I argue, are mistaken about the proper grounds for freedom of movement. Once we see this, it is clear how we can value freedom of movement without being committed to open borders.
The case is from Taurek (1977), p.293. roughly, that we treat all relevantly similar persons simi... more The case is from Taurek (1977), p.293. roughly, that we treat all relevantly similar persons similarly. 3 Thus, the children who are each equally in need of the parent's help should be given the same assistance, employees doing similar jobs should be similarly compensated and so on. Where we are providing benefits, fairness demands, more specifically, that we benefit people in proportion to their eligibility for the benefit. Thus, variations in the size of grants should be in proportion to how qualified their recipients are. Some ethical theories deny that fairness has any fundamental importance. Utilitarians, for instance, deny that one is ever bound by a requirement of fairness. 4 They do think that we should sometimes act as fairness would demand, say by helping our children equally, but only when, and because, so acting would increase aggregate utility, not because it would be fair. According to the standard non-consequentialist accounts of the numbers problem, we are required to be fair in giving aid to needy strangers. They appeal to this general requirement that we be fair to the needy in order to explain why you should save the many in a case such as Tradeoff. But before looking at why exactly they think fairness requires you to save the many, I am going to briefly discuss some prima facie difficulties with showing that it is fair to save the five. It will be useful to consider these initial difficulities, since they will help us to understand the arguments for thinking that 10 I owe this point to Judith Jarvis Thomson. " Hsieh, et al. (2006) make a proposal similar to this in Section 5.
have argued that nothing is just plain good, because 'good' is, logically, an attributive adjecti... more have argued that nothing is just plain good, because 'good' is, logically, an attributive adjective. The upshot, according to Geach and Thomson, is that consequentialism is unacceptable, since its very formulation requires a predicative (non-attributive) use of 'good'. Reactions to the argument have, for the most part, been uniform. Authors have converged on two challenging objections (
This paper examines the 'taking back control' over immigration arguments offered for Brexit and f... more This paper examines the 'taking back control' over immigration arguments offered for Brexit and for reinforcing the Southern border of the United States. According to these arguments, Brexit and increased border enforcement were needed to ensure collective self-governance for the peoples of Britain and the United States. I argue that 1. In fact these policies did little to enhance collective self-governance properly understood, and 2. They actually thwarted collective self-governance due their racially exclusionary effects on people of colour in Britain and the United States.
Uploads
Papers by Adam Hosein