Collapse, social tipping dynamics, and framing climate change
In this article, we claim that recent developments in climate science and renewable energy should prompt a reframing of debates surrounding climate change mitigation. Taken together, we argue that these developments suggest (1) global climate collapse in this century is a non-negligible risk, (2) mitigation offers substantial benefits to current generations, and (3) mitigation by some can generate social tipping dynamics that could ultimately make renewables cheaper than fossil fuels. We explain how these claims undermine familiar framings of climate change, wherein mitigation is understood as self-sacrifice that individuals and governments must be morally persuaded or incentivized to undertake.
Inclusive dignity
The idea of dignity is pervasive in political discourse. It is central to human rights theory and practice, and it features regularly in conceptions of social justice as well as in the social movements they seek to understand or orient. However, dignity talk has been criticized for leading to problematic exclusion. Critics challenge it for undermining our recognition of the rights of non-human animals and of many human individuals (such as children, the elderly, and people with disabilities). I argue that, on a plausible articulation of it, the idea of dignity does not lead to these exclusions and that it in fact helps defend an appropriately inclusive moral and political treatment of all individuals. Difficult issues about equality and diversity indeed arise, but a dignitarian approach can provide good answers to them or at least help make them clearer and more tractable.
Enhancement and desert
It is sometimes claimed that those who succeed with the aid of enhancement technologies deserve the rewards associated with their success less, other things being equal, than those who succeed without the aid of such technologies. This claim captures some widely held intuitions, has been implicitly endorsed by participants in social-psychological research and helps to undergird some otherwise puzzling philosophical objections to the use of enhancement technologies. I consider whether it can be provided with a rational basis. I examine three arguments that might be offered in its favour and argue that each either shows only that enhancements undermine desert in special circumstances or succeeds only under assumptions that deprive the appeal to desert of much of its dialectic interest.
Dividing the indivisible: Apportionment and philosophical theories of fairness
Philosophical theories of fairness propose to divide a good that several individuals have a claim to in proportion to the strength of their respective claims. We suggest that currently, these theories face a dilemma when dealing with a good that is indivisible. On the one hand, theories of fairness that use weighted lotteries are either of limited applicability or fall prey to an objection by Brad Hooker. On the other hand, accounts that do without weighted lotteries fall prey to three fairness paradoxes. We demonstrate that division methods from , which has hitherto been ignored by philosophical theories of fairness, can be used to provide fair division for indivisible goods without weighted lotteries and without fairness paradoxes.