Professor Larry Temkin, a prominent figure within moral philosophy, is retiring. His career was celebrated at a conference at Rutgers University by a number of notable speakers and participants. Our d

Larry Temkin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. The State University of New Jersey. ABSTRACT The goal of this talk is modest. It is simply to help illuminate

Equality As Comparative Fairness with Larry Temkin

Recording of a seminar at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, May 2015.

Larry S. Temkin is Distinguished Professor at Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University.ABSTRACTThis talk explores and challenges several common assumptions regarding the assessment of outcome good

Om jämlikhet och vad vi egentligen vill uppnå med den. Intervju med Larry Temkin

Den amerikanske filosofen Larry Temkin har ägnat nästan hela sin forskarkarriär åt att förstå jämlikhet. Han menar att det vi egentligen vill uppnå när vi pratar om jämlikhet är ett slags rättvisa och

Place:Holländargatan 13, Stockholm, or online.REGISTERAbstractTo address climate change we need to reduce net emissions globally. Most international processes and frameworks have involved seeking to g

Equality seems like a simple enough notion. It is about everybody having the same amount of whatever resources we care about. But is it really that simple? The American philosopher Larry Temkin tells

On the 21st of October The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will arrange a seminar with and about The Rolf Schock Laureate in logic and philosophy, professor Derek Parfit. Other speakers include Gusta

Campbell, T. Axiological Retributivism and the Desert Neutrality Paradox. Philosophies 2022, 7, 80. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7040080 Abstract: According to axiological retributivism, people canan outcome in which someone gets what she deserves, even if it is bad for her, can thereby haveintrinsic positive value. A question seldom asked is how axiological retributivism should deal withcomparisons of outcomes that differ with respect to the number and identities of deserving agents.Attempting to answer this question exposes a problem for axiological retributivism that parallels awell-known problem in population axiology introduced by John Broome. The problem for axiologicalretributivism is that it supports the existence of a range of negative wellbeing levels such that if adeserving person comes into existence at any of these levels, the resulting outcome is neither betternor worse with respect to desert. However, the existence of such a range is inconsistent with a setof very plausible axiological claims. I call this the desert neutrality paradox. After introducing theparadox, I consider several possible responses to it. I suggest that one reasonable response, thoughperhaps not the only one, is to reject axiological retributivism.

Frontiers in Psychology AbstractPeople often justify their moral opinions by referring to larger moral concerns (e. g., “It isunfairif homosexuals are not allowed to marry!” vs. “Letting homosexuals matraditions!”). Is there a general agreement about what concerns apply to different moral opinions? We used surveys in the United States and the United Kingdom to measure the perceived applicability of eight concerns (harm, violence, fairness, liberty, authority, ingroup, purity, and governmental overreach) to a wide range of moral opinions. Within countries, argument applicability scores were largely similar whether they were calculated among women or men, among young or old, among liberals or conservatives, or among people with or without higher education. Thus, the applicability of a given moral concern to a specific opinion can be viewed as an objective quality of the opinion, largely independent of the population in which it is measured. Finally, we used similar surveys in Israel and Brazil to establish that this independence of populations also extended to populations in different countries. However, the extent to which this holds across cultures beyond those included in the current study is still an open question.