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Meeting OZSW Study group Political Philosophy

25 September 2015 @ 14:00 - 17:00

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Meeting of the Study group Political Philosophy with presentations by Titus Stahl, Constanze Binder and Eric Schliesser.
To register for this meeting please send an email to l.c.j.van.apeldoorn@phil.leidenuniv.nl. Papers will be distributed one week in advance. During the meeting the speakers will briefly introduce their paper, followed by a commentary and a general discussion. Everyone is expected to have read the papers before the meeting. The meeting is organised by Tim Meijers and Laurens van Apeldoorn in collaboration with the Leiden Centre for Political Philosophy.
Programme: Collective Responsibility for Oppression Titus Stahl, Groningen University My paper discusses the question of who is responsible when social groups face oppression. My claim is that, in almost all cases of oppression, there is a group that is collectively responsible for it. In order to attribute responsibility for oppression, we must first find out what oppression is and how it is to be distinguished from similar phenomena, such as unjust distribution of power, socially caused harm or domination. I draw on the work of Cudd and Haslanger and extend their conceptions of oppression. I argue that institutional oppression always and coercive and economic oppression virtually always depend on there being a social practice with norms which are shared by the oppressors and that this is sufficient for attributing the relevant group a (defeasible) collective responsibility for the oppression. Thus, it is virtually always true that there is an oppressive group that is collectively responsible for oppression. Commentator: Ronald Tinnevelt, Radboud University The Separation of Economics from Virtue: A Historical–Conceptual Introduction Eric Schliesser (Ghent University / University of Amsterdam) The aim of this paper is to explain what philosophical commitments drove mainstream professional economists to understand their own discipline as leaving no space for ethics (including virtue) between, say, 1883 and 1977. In particular, I argue that economics embraced a technocratic conception of politics and science. An important theme of my paper is that philosophers, too, embraced and continue to embrace a number of commitments about philosophy and science that entrench a sharp division of labor between philosophers and economics and that keep not just ethics, but virtue, outside of economics. Many of these philosophers’ commitments were adopted by economists, such that they could assume, in practice, that there is a self-sufficient apolitical domain of pure economics. So, in effect, this paper explores the origin and nature of a conceptual split between economics and ethics. Commentator: Rutger Claassen, Utrecht University Walking a mile in your shoes Constanze Binder, Erasmus University This paper explores approaches to comparative justice (Sen 2009) by drawing on Social Choice Theory. We introduce a procedure to correct for the influence of unquestioned parochial values on individual justice rankings: individuals are put into the position of other members of society allowing them to question (and possibly change) their justice ordering. In a first step, it is shown under which conditions this procedure leads to a domain restriction such that majority rule yields a social justice ordering. In a second step, it is examined how the introduced procedure can be used to distinguish between ‘reasoned-' and ‘unreasoned' consensus. The paper concludes with a discussion as to how the findings cast doubt on the unqualified acceptance of the (weak) Pareto condition. Commentator: Peter Timmerman, Groningen University (TBC)  

Details

Date:
25 September 2015
Time:
14:00 - 17:00
Event Categories:
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Venue

Leiden University
M. de Vrieshof 4, zaal 12
Leiden, 2311 BZ Netherlands
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To register for this meeting please send an email to l.c.j.van.apeldoorn@phil.leidenuniv.nl. Papers will be distributed one week in advance. During the meeting the speakers will briefly introduce their paper, followed by a commentary and a general discussion. Everyone is expected to have read the papers before the meeting.

The meeting is organised by Tim Meijers and Laurens van Apeldoorn in collaboration with the Leiden Centre for Political Philosophy.


Programme:

Collective Responsibility for Oppression
Titus Stahl, Groningen University

My paper discusses the question of who is responsible when social groups face oppression. My claim is that, in almost all cases of oppression, there is a group that is collectively responsible for it. In order to attribute responsibility for oppression, we must first find out what oppression is and how it is to be distinguished from similar phenomena, such as unjust distribution of power, socially caused harm or domination. I draw on the work of Cudd and Haslanger and extend their conceptions of oppression. I argue that institutional oppression always and coercive and economic oppression virtually always depend on there being a social practice with norms which are shared by the oppressors and that this is sufficient for attributing the relevant group a (defeasible) collective responsibility for the oppression. Thus, it is virtually always true that there is an oppressive group that is collectively responsible for oppression.

Commentator: Ronald Tinnevelt, Radboud University

The Separation of Economics from Virtue: A Historical–Conceptual Introduction
Eric Schliesser (Ghent University / University of Amsterdam)

The aim of this paper is to explain what philosophical commitments drove mainstream professional economists to understand their own discipline as leaving no space for ethics (including virtue) between, say, 1883 and 1977. In particular, I argue that economics embraced a technocratic conception of politics and science. An important theme of my paper is that philosophers, too, embraced and continue to embrace a number of commitments about philosophy and science that entrench a sharp division of labor between philosophers and economics and that keep not just ethics, but virtue, outside of economics. Many of these philosophers’ commitments were adopted by economists, such that they could assume, in practice, that there is a self-sufficient apolitical domain of pure economics. So, in effect, this paper explores the origin and nature of a conceptual split between economics and ethics.

Commentator: Rutger Claassen, Utrecht University

Walking a mile in your shoes
Constanze Binder, Erasmus University

This paper explores approaches to comparative justice (Sen 2009) by drawing on Social Choice Theory. We introduce a procedure to correct for the influence of unquestioned parochial values on individual justice rankings: individuals are put into the position of other members of society allowing them to question (and possibly change) their justice ordering. In a first step, it is shown under which conditions this procedure leads to a domain restriction such that majority rule yields a social justice ordering. In a second step, it is examined how the introduced procedure can be used to distinguish between ‘reasoned-‘ and ‘unreasoned’ consensus. The paper concludes with a discussion as to how the findings cast doubt on the unqualified acceptance of the (weak) Pareto condition.

Commentator: Peter Timmerman, Groningen University (TBC)

 

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The OZSW event calendar lists academic philosophy events organized by/at Dutch universities, and is offered by the OZSW as a service to the research community. Please check the event in question – through their website or organizer – to find out if you could participate and whether registration is required. Obviously we carry no responsibility for non-OZSW events.