Institutskolloquium

Interventionist Causal Exclusion: Taking Stock of the Debate
17-19Uhr

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Abstract

In "Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale", Debra Satz (2012) develops a framework for morally assessing market exchanges. The core idea is that a market exchange is a social practice that generates externalities that extend well beyond the immediate vicinity of the exchange itself. Satz’s key claim is that market exchanges generate social externalities that affect the social fabric of democratic society itself. In Satz’s view, unregulated markets permit particular kinds of exchanges that do not cohere well – if at all – with a fundamental democratic ideal, that of equal social standing. This paper pursues four goals: First, I will reconstruct the normative principle, the principle of equal social status (PESS), underlying Satz's noxious markets framework. Secondly, I will demonstrate that PESS is seriously defective. Thirdly, I will reveal the reasons why it is defective – it rests on an erroneous analogy between social and economic externalities. Finally, I will present a revised version of the PESS that does not seem to generate counter-intuitive moral judgements and can thus better support the concept of noxious markets.

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Despair has a bad reputation among philosophers: in contrast to its antidote hope, which is deemed to motivate and strengthen our resolve, despair is considered unproductive, impotent or even nihilistic. Against this narrative, in this talk I argue that in scenarios where we are highly invested in an unlikely end, despair can be justified both intrinsically and instrumentally. On the one hand, despair can be fitting as an expression of an agent’s reluctance to give up on an end even though they may not currently be able to see how it may come about. On the other hand, in disposing us to critically reflect on our goals and ways to realize them, despair can protect us from fixation and thus helps us to hope well. To play this productive role in our practical lives, however, despair has to be transient (rather than permanent) and specific (rather than fundamental). 

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Universals are putative objects like wisdom, morality, redness, etc. Although we believe in properties (which, we argue, are not a kind of object), we do not believe in universals. However, a number of ordinary, natural language constructions seem to commit us to their existence. In this paper, we provide a fictionalist theory of universals, which allows us to speak as if universals existed, whilst denying that any really do.

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