Duties to Animals: Rawl's Dilemma

Rawls on Race/Race in Rawls

John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) is widely credited with having revived post–World War II Anglo American political philosophy. This book together with his later writings are routinely judged to constitute the most important body of work in that field. Indeed, with the collapse of Second World and Third World socialist ideologico-political alternatives, liberalism in one form or another h...

Revisiting Rawls

The present paper revisits the issue of rational decision making in John Rawls’ original position. Drawing on Isaac Levi’s theory of decision, I discuss how we can defend Rawls against John C. Harsanyi’s charge that maximin reasoning in the original position is irrational. The discussion suggests that systematic application of Levi’s theory is likely to have important consequences for ethics an...

Rawls and Kantian Constructivism

Contrary-To-Duties in Games

The aim of the paper is to bring to the realm of game theory the well-known deontic notion of contrary-to-duty (CTD) obligation, so far not investigated in relation to optimality of strategic decisions. We maintain that, under a game-theoretical semantics, CTDs are well-suited to treat sub-ideal decisions. We also argue that, in a wide class of interactions, CTDs can used as a compact represent...

Rawls and Non-rational Beneficiaries

What is a just society? How to distribute limited resources, opportunities, access, guarantees, and so forth, to members of a community who are of vastly different natural and acquired capacities? Perhaps the most promising approach to an answer is that suggested by John Rawls. Rawls’ famous thoughtexperiment, in A Theory of Justice – the invitation to take up the perspective of “the original p...