Aysel Dogan

This article considers some issues concerning the responsibility of people to global distribution of wealth and resources. Skeptics of global redistribution argue that there is no obligation of distributive justice across boundaries. This is because, they say, the poor of developing countries are responsible for their plight, which is induced by misguided economic policies of the governors they elected. Brian Barry is among those who argue against the legitimacy of global obligations of distributive justice on the ground of the political responsibility of the poor. 1 I argue that Barry's arguments against duties of global distributive justice are far from convincing. Before denying assistance to the poor, we should have a clear conception of electoral processes of developing countries and the implications of economic punishment within the context of global distributive justice.

In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls extends the domestic version of his
political conception of justice as fairness to the relations among peoples at the
international level. Rawls argues that not all peoples accept liberal values,1 but
this does not require liberal peoples to leave all nonliberal peoples2 outside the
international community—the society of peoples endorsing the law of peoples. If
a society is not aggressive and is respectful to human rights, and yet nonliberal
such as a “decent hierarchical society,”3 liberal peoples can tolerate it, and
delegates of liberal peoples accept to enter into an international original position
with its delegates. Rawls then contend that delegates of decent hierarchical
societies would agree on a set of principles of international law, such as the
principle of non-intervention, respect for treatises and human rights.
The distinction Rawls made between political liberalism and

Some contend that in the absence of a world state, it is nonsense to speak of the principles of distributive justice. Thomas Nagel is among those who claim that the principles of social justice can only be effectively applied after a world state is established. Nagel supports this claim on the basis of the social contract theory; namely, that a coercive collective authority is necessary to secure obedience to the principles of justice. In this essay, I argue that a world state is neither necessary nor sufficient to fulfill the requirements of social justice among nations. There are good reasons for doubting the efficiency of a world state in satisfying the principles of global distributive justice. Also, there are alternative ways of executing these principles through nation-states on the basis of international agreements or through voluntary international organizations.

The question of whether “justice” has a universal meaning or it has different meanings in various social schemes has been answered by some philosophers in opposite directions. Michael Walzer is among those who argue that principles of justice vary from one society to another in accordance with different meanings of primary goods, arising from particular historical background conditions. There is no single set of primary goods such as money, political power, social posts, and honors, whose meanings are shared across all cultures; nor are there universally shared principles of distributive justice for him. In this paper, I argue that Walzer’s claim that whether distribution of social goods is just or unjust depends on the cultural meanings of the goods is untenable and indeed inherently flawed. I shall also suggest that one may adopt a pluralistic approach to principles of distributive justice without being committed to Walzer’s relativism.

Cosmopolitans hold that our duties of distributive justice to others do not stop at borders. Darrel Moellendorf is among those who defend the view that principles of distributive justice are applicable beyond borders. He suggests as a principle of international justice the global difference principle, which allows inequalities in the distribution of wealth and resources only if they are to the greatest advantage of the least advantaged individuals. In this paper, I try to indicate that Moellendorf’s argument for the global difference principle is far from sustaining it. Instead, I argue for a minimum floor principle of distributive justice on the basis of the idea that each person ought to have an equal standard of living with respect to the fulfillment of their basic interests. I also propose the principle of contribution backed up by the principle of fair equality of opportunity, aiming to equalize background conditions of a competition for socially favored positions, as the basic...

Abstract

Rawls's view that the right is prior to the good has been criticized by various scholars from divergent points of view. Some contend that Rawls's teleological/deontological distinction based on the priority of the right is misleading while others claim that no plausible ethical theory can determine what is right prior to the good. There is no consensus on how to interpret the priority of right to the good; nor is there an agreement on the criteria of teleological/deontological distinction. In this article, I argue that the critics' interpretations of the principle of the priority of right to the good as well as their conceptions of the teleological/deontological distinction have serious shortcomings to the extent that they ignore rich theoretical resources we find in Kant's moral and political philosophy. Kant's conception of human dignity and his division of the doctrine of virtue and the doctrine of right supply powerful arguments to clarify and sustain the idea of the priority of right to the good and the teleological/deontological division.
Keywords:: Kant; Rawls; right; good; human honor; teleological; deontological; just

Cosmopolitans hold that our duties of distributive justice to others do not stop at borders. Darrel Moellendorf is among those who defend the view that principles of distributive justice are applicable beyond borders. He suggests as a principle of international justice the global difference principle, which allows inequalities in the distribution of wealth and resources only if they are to the greatest advantage of the least advantaged individuals. In this paper, I try to indicate that Moellendorf's argument for the global difference principle is far from sustaining it. Instead, I argue for a minimum floor principle of distributive justice on the basis of the idea that each person ought to have an equal standard of living with respect to the fulfillment of their basic interests. I also propose the principle of contribution backed up by the principle of fair equality of opportunity, aiming to equalize background conditions of a competition for socially favored positions, as the basic principles of a complete account of global distributive justice. KEY WORDS: Cosmopolitanism, the difference principle, distributive justice, fair equality of opportunity, Moellendorf.

One of the powerful arguments against free trade is that it is a zero-sum game. Due to differences in the cost of production, capital tends to concentrate in some countries and gains accrued as a result of this process in one region of the world are obtained at the expense of another region. That is, free trade might have some positive effects on the welfare of people in one place, but this is because it leads to a reduction in the welfare of people in another place. In this paper, I argue that on conceptual grounds the alleged causal link between liberalization of international trade and its negative impacts on the welfare of people is hardly tenable, even though the ongoing trade relations among nations display a zero-sum picture. Freedom of trade might be advocated on the basis of producers' equality of opportunity to enter the market and consumers' freedom of choice in buying goods and services in addition to considerations about effi cient use of resources. Resumo: Um dos argumentos vigorosos contra o livre comércio afi rma que ele é um jogo de soma zero. Por causa de diferenças no custo da produção, o capital tende a se concentrar em alguns países, e os ganhos acumulados como resultado desse processo numa região do mundo são obtidos às expensas de outra região. Isto é, o livre comércio poderia ter alguns efeitos positivos sobre o bem-estar das pessoas num lugar, mas isto ocorre porque leva a uma redução do bem-estar das pessoas em outro lugar. Neste artigo, sustento que, por razões conceituais, a suposta ligação causal entre a liberalização do comércio internacional e seus impactos negativos sobre o bem-estar das pessoas difi cilmente é sustentável, embora as relações comerciais contínuas entre países exibam um quadro de soma zero. A liberdade de comércio poderia ser defendida com base na igualdade de oportunidades dos produtores para entrar no mercado e com base na liberdade de escolha dos consumidores na compra de bens e serviços, além de considerações sobre o uso efi ciente dos recursos. Palavras-chave: livre comércio, globalização, corporações multinacionais, consumidor, efi ciência, igualdade de oportunidades, liberdade de escolha. Filosofia Unisinos 11(2):130-140, mai/ago 2010

In spite of several attempts to explicate the relationship between a scientific hypothesis and evidence, the issue still cries for a satisfactory solution. Logical approaches to confirmation, such as the hypothetico-deductive method and the positive instance account of confirmation, are problematic because of their neglect of the semantic dimension of hypothesis confirmation. Probabilistic accounts of confirmation are no better than logical approaches in this regard. An outstanding probabilistic account of confirmation, the Bayesian approach, for instance, is found to be defective in that it treats evidence as a formal entity and this creates the problem of relevance of evidence to the hypothesis at issue, in addition to the difficulties arising from the subjective interpretation of probabilities. This essay purports to satisfy the need for a successful account of hypothesis confirmation by offering an original formulation based on the notion of instantiation of the relation urged by an hypothesis.

I argue that animals have rights in the sense of having valid claims, which might turn out to be actual rights as society advances and new scientific-technological developments facilitate finding alternative ways of satisfying our vital interests without using animals. Animals have a right to life, to liberty in the sense of freedom of movement and communication, to subsistence, to relief from suffering , and to security against attacks on their physical existence. Animals' interest in living, freedom, subsistence, and security are of vital importance to them, and they do not belong to us; they are not the things we have already possessed by virtue of our own nature.