Mark D. White

At Prawfsblawg, friend (and Retributivism contributor) Marc DeGirolami has an interesting (pun intended) post on usury:

Usury -- the practice of lending money at interest -- occupies an unusual place as a historical phenomenon: it is a practice that is condemned in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions (to greater and lesser degrees), but forms the foundational bedrock of modern capitalist societies.  Is there any other practice about which this can be said?

Read more at the link above!

Mark D. White

This afternoon, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ordered a worldwide injunction against the Clinton-era "don't ask don't tell" policy in the United States military, under which homosexual servicemen and women must keep silent about their sexual orientation. As I wrote earlier, this demeans our proud men and women serving their country, both straight and gay: the straight ones, for being presumed unable to serve among gay comrades, and the gay ones, for being blocked from military service and for being encouraged to lie rather than be duscharged. I hope this ruling stands.

Mark D. White

Peter A. Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides were just award the 2010 Nobel Prize for economics for their analysis of markets with search costs and the application of this framework to labor markets in particular. Congratulations to all three!

Mark D. White

To lead up to the release of Accepting the Invisible Hand: Market-Based Approaches to Social-Economic Problems early next month, I will be posting features on each of the chapters, starting with the complete preface today (with hyperlinks) - as always, comments are most welcome.

Mark D. White

The program for the Midwestern Study Group of the North American Kant Society is below:

October 23-24, 2010

University of Western Ontario

(All talks and meals in UC 224a and adjoining rooms unless indicated otherwise)

Saturday, October 23^rd 2010

8:30am-9:00am: Breakfast (continental, provided)

9:00am-9:15am: Welcome

9:15am-11:15am: Session I

9:15am-10:15am: “Kant's Empiricist Rationalism,” Robert Clewis (Gwynedd-Mercy College)

10:15am-11:15am: “Kant's Non-Humean Account of Miracles,” Juan A. Bonaccini (Federal

University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brasil/CNPq)

11:15am-11:30am: Coffee Break

11:30am-12:30pm: Session II

11:30am-12:30pm: “Logical Form and Ethical Content,” Susan S. Hahn (Concordia University)

12:30pm-2:00pm: Lunch (provided)

2:00pm-4:00pm: Session III

2:00pm-3:00pm: “The History of a Distinction: Sensible and Intellectual Cognition from Baumgarten to Kant,” Colin McQuillan (Emory University)

3:00pm-4:00pm: “Systematicity and Symbolization in the Deduction of Judgments of Taste,” Alex Rueger (University of Alberta)

4:00pm-4:30pm: Coffee Break

4:30pm-6:00pm: Keynote Address

Angelica Nuzzo (CUNY Brooklyn): “Moral Space and the Orientation of Practical Reason,”

7:00pm: Dinner (provided, at Marienbad Restaurant)

Sunday, October 24^th 2010

8:30am-9:00am: Breakfast (provided)

9:00am-11:00am: Session IV

9:00am-10:00am: “McDowell on Kant’s Theory of Space,” Jeremy Livingstone (McMaster University)

10:00am-11:00am: “Kant’s Case for the Syntheticity of Mathematics in the First Critique and Afterwards,” Katherine Dunlop (Brown/University of Texas, Austin)

11:00am-11:30am: Coffee Break

11:30am-12:30pm: Session V

11:30am-12:30pm: “Kant, Autonomy, and Revolution,” Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern)

Mark D. White

From PEA Soup:

Call for Papers

Eudaimonia and Virtue: Rethinking the Good Life

University of Miami, February 25th-27th, 2011

Many ancient philosophers argued that our thinking and behavior should be grounded in a conception of eudaimonia, or human flourishing and virtue, instead of, for example, a hedonistic conception of happiness or a subjective conception of well-being. A growing number of contemporary psychologists and philosophers think that there is something deeply correct about this general eudaimonist approach, even if we may not fully accept all of the specific arguments and views propounded, for example, by Aristotle and the Stoics. 

This conference is intended to bring together philosophers and psychologists who are interested in developing a contemporary eudaimonist approach and in discussing how to best appropriate Ancient views. The conference will focus primarily on theory – to discusss what conception of eudaimonia we should accept, what we can and cannot accept in Ancient accounts of eudaimonia, the relation of eudaimonia to morality, virtue, happiness, meaning, and well-being, and the prospects for future eudaimonia scholarship.  There will also be a secondary, but active interest in empirical investigations of eudaimonia.

We are pleased to announce that the invited speakers will include some of the leading eudaimonia scholars from both psychology and philosophy, including Michael Slote, Eric Brown, Dan Haybron, Talbot Brewer, Alan Waterman, Joar Vitterso, and Corey Keyes,

We invite the submission of papers exploring issues like the ones mentioned above and welcome any interested individuals to attend and join the discussion.

Submitted papers should have either a reading time of 20 minutes with 10 minutes for discussion, or a reading time of 40 minutes with 20 minutes for discussion, and be submitted by email by December 15th, 2010. Submissions and inquiries should be sent to [email protected].

Further information about the conference will soon be available at www.education.miami.edu/eudaimonia.

Mark D. White

It isn't due to be published until next February, but It just arrived, and I'm already excited about a forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press entitled Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics, edited by Lawrence Jost and Julian Wuerth, and featuring contributions from some of the leading figures in both schools of ethics. This is sure to be an invaluable contribution to the burgeoning literature comparing, contrasting, and (sometimes) combining these two systems of ethics, including Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue by Nancy Sherman, and Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty, edited by Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting.

From the publisher's website:

In western philosophy today, the three leading approaches to normative ethics are those of Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and utilitarianism. In recent years the debate between Kantian ethicists and virtue ethicists has assumed an especially prominent position. The twelve newly-commissioned essays in this volume, by leading scholars in both traditions, explore key aspects of each approach as related to the debate, and identify new common ground but also real and lasting differences between these approaches. The volume provides a rich overview of the continuing debate between two powerful forms of enquiry, and will be valuable for a wide range of students and scholars working in these fields.

The contributors and chapters:

1. Marcia Baron, Virtue ethics in relation to Kantian ethics: an opinionated overview and commentary
2. Rosalind Hursthouse, What does the Aristotelian Phronimos know?
3. Allen Wood, Kant and agent-oriented ethics
4. Barbara Herman, The difference that ends make
5. Talbot Brewer, Two pictures of practical thinking
6. Julian Wuerth, Moving beyond Kant's moral agent in the Grounding
7. Lara Denis, A Kantian conception of human flourishing
8. Paul Guyer, Kantian perfectionism
9. Nancy Sherman, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant on anger
10. Christine Swanton, Kant's impartial virtues of love
11. Michael Slote, The problem we all have with deontology
12. Timothy Chappell, Intuition, system, and the 'paradox' of deontology

Mark D. White

When it rains...

As the New York Times and many other news organizations have reported, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (together with New York State governor David Patterson) are petitioning the U.S. Department of Agriculture for permission to block the city's 1.7 million food stamp recipients from using the funds to purchase soda and other sugary drinks.

Of course, this is nothing new or surprising from Mayor Bloomberg, who has already enacted curbs on trans fats in city restaurants as well as increased limitations on smoking (possibly to be extended to city parks and other public outdoor areas). But this recent move is different in that it applies only to recipients of the food stamp welfare program, and therefore is an additional limitation on how state-provided funds may be spent (alcohol, tobacco, and prepared foods are already blocked) (After all, a food stamp recipient may have other sources of cash income which he or she can use to buy soda as well as alcohol, cigarettes, and so forth.)

The obvious argument for such restrictions is that the state--which is to say the taxpayers--are providing recipients with aid to help ameliorate the effects of poverty, so the state is wholly within its rights to limit the use of that aid as a condition of receiving it. Setting aside the classical liberal or libertarian arguments, both principled and pragmatic, against welfare programs, which are not my concern at the moment, one can still question, given the existence of food stamp programs, the ethics of placing paternalistic restrictions of the use of such aid.

If the state is gonig to provide aid to its worst-off citizens, the least manipulative way to do that is to provide cash (such as in Milton Friedman's negative income tax proposal). As a further step, if the state wants to focus on food poverty, it may issue food stamps (actually a debit card now, but the name has stuck) that are limited to purchases of food (and basic household items such as soap), assuming that food will be one of the primary purchases made by citizens in poverty (after housing, which the state also actively subsidizes). This is manipulation and paternalistic, but in the grand scheme of things, it is rather mild.

But one can question if the state goes too far when it narrowly defines what food items are to be excluded, based on what it wants people to consume or not. Note the city's proposed formula (from the linked Times article):

The ban would affect beverages with more than 10 calories per 8 ounces, and would exclude fruit juices without added sugar, milk products and milk substitutes. A 12-ounce soda has 150 calories and the equivalent of 10 packets of sugar, according to the health department. City health officials say that drinking 12 ounces of soda a day can make a person gain 15 pounds a year.

It does not take a prognosticator to predict the maneuvers by the soft drink industry to work around that (such as CAFE standards affected the automotive industry). (And I'm not even going to touch the bit about soda's ability to "make a person gain" weight, as if consumers cannot adjust their exercise and diet routines to accommodate the occasional Coke.) But my main point is the micromanagement involved in such precise delineations of what can and cannot be purchased with food stamps (especially given the other resources, however meager, that may be at recipients' disposal to buy the occasional Coke).

But I must give the mayor credit--he is not shy about his intentions, saying:

This initiative will give New York families more money to spend on foods and drinks that provide real nourishment.

And that's the crux of the issue: the mayor will decide which "foods and drinks provide real nourishment" for the city's 1.7 million food stamp recipients. Of course, he has already made that choice for all New York City residents insofar as he banned trans fats from restaurants. But limiting the use of food stamps is no less paternalistic for the welfare program aspect of the situation; restricting welfare assistance to food is limiting enough, but giving recipients a state-approved shopping list is going too far.

You can't make every New Yorker healthy, Mayor Bloomberg. But you can respect their choices, and let them bear the consequences of their actions. Even a real parent would do that.

Mark D. White

Not long ago, in my chapter for Essays on Philosophy, Politics & Economics: Integration & Common Research Projects, edited by Christi Favor, Gerald Gaus, and Julian Lamont, I wrote the following as a cautionary tale regarding the political implications of "libertarian paternalism" (or "nudges"):

Suppose the members of a local election board, who are charged with designing the ballot for an upcoming presidential election, “know” who the local voters should choose, based on what is good for them, and are afraid they might choose the other candidate based on emotional appeals and negative advertising. So they use BLE [behavioral law and economics] principles to structure the ballot in such a way that more voters will “choose” the “right” candidate. They are still free to choose the “wrong” candidate, but the ballot was designed to lead the voters to the “right” conclusion—the candidate that represents their “true interests.” I hope this “nudge” seems less benign and illustrates the danger of BLE policies when taken beyond the realm of more personal choices like saving... (p. 212) 

Little did I know that this precise type of voter manipulation--albeit tremendously obvious and clumsy--may have been practiced by none other than Adolf Hitler. Dan Ariely brings us this news:

Hitler seems to have had a few of these tricks up his sleeve as well, as seen here in this 1938 voting ballot:

Translation: ”Referendum and Großdeutscher Reichstag; Ballot; Do you agree with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was enacted on 13 March 1938 and do you vote for the party of our leader; Adolf Hitler?; Yes; No”

And before anyone says it, this is not a facile attempt on my part to link those with whom I disagree to Hitler; I abhor such rhetorical tomfoolery. It is not the identity of the perpetrator here that interested me, but rather the use of nudging in the election process--such as it was--and its correspondence with what I wrote.

Mark D. White

Following up on Jonathan's post on rules, norms, and contracts from July, I just came across (thanks to ContractsProf Blog) a paper titled "Strategic Default: The Popularization of a Debate Among Contract Scholars" by Meredith R. Miller of Touro College - Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, forthcoming in Cornell Real Estate Journal. I have yet to read it in its entirety, but in it Miller seems to discuss well the conflict between morality'promise and efficiency in interpreting contractual agreements, especially as this debate was conducted in the public sphere as well as the academic. From the abstract:

A June 2010 report estimates that roughly 20% of mortgage defaults in the first half of 2009 were “strategic.” “Strategic default” describes the situation where a home borrower has the financial ability to continue to pay her mortgage but chooses not to pay and walks away. The ubiquity of strategic default has lead to innumerable newspaper articles, blog posts, website comments and editorial musings on the morality of homeowners who can afford to pay but choose, instead, to walk away. This Article centers on the current public discourse concerning strategic default, which mirrors a continuing debate among scholars regarding whether the willful breach of a contract has a moral element.

For those scholars that maintain that it is possible to describe and prescribe contract law with a general, unifying theory, the debate is primarily one between promise-based theories and economic theory. This debate between promissory and economic theory reflects a perpetual volley concerning whether contract law should reflect the primacy of morality or efficiency.

The argument of those that support strategic default reads like a case for efficient breach. Many of these commentators argue that the mortgage contract simply presents home borrowers with a choice: pay or surrender the property in foreclosure. If a homeowner is deep underwater, she is better off defaulting and the lender is no worse off relative to the bargain (after all, the lender agreed to foreclosure as a remedy). However, those who argue in favor of strategic default are counteracting a prevailing social norm that it is fundamentally immoral to willfully breach a contract. Many of the blog comments and even newspaper editorials have reflected a general sense that the homeowners who strategically default are acting shamefully.

The public discussion further mirrors the academic debate about whether encouraging efficient breach enables the greatest public good or, instead, undermines the very convention of contracting. On the one hand, strategic default serves as an example of how encouragement of breach of contract may lead to a breakdown of confidence in the marketplace and, in turn, could inhibit market activity. On the other, it is difficult to muster sympathy for lenders, whose imprudent loans are a large piece of the systemic problems that precipitated the housing crisis.

In the end, to the extent that questions of morality are nuanced and contextual, the example of strategic default elucidates the futility of either morality or efficiency as a unifying descriptive or normative theory of contract law. Indeed, it suggests that instead of focusing on individual contracts between borrowers and lenders, a more fruitful public discourse should be reframed to focus on appropriate systemic reforms to prevent the practices that played a part in devastating outcomes for the housing industry, families and communities. Because the concerns about strategic default – neighborhood depreciation and market collapse – are systemic, the solutions should be driven by those concerns, rather than shaming individual borrowers who decide to walk away.