Justice Studies 830

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2008 Theories of Justice Writing Schedule

Justice Studies 830

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9:10-12:00

Murkland 104

nick.smith@unh.edu

Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:00-1:00 and by appointment.

For more information on what I expect from papers and how I grade responses and larger essays, see my:

Writing, Rewriting, and Grading Philosophy Papers

My Insider’s Guide to Academic Success

Scroll Down for Potential Final Paper and Extra Credit Topics

Potential Final Papers Topics

MORE TOPICS TBA, AND I ENCOURAGE YOU TO DESIGN YOUR OWN TOPIC

-Have you been Enlightened through your engagement with philosophy this semester? How have your experiences either confirmed or denied the validity of the various conceptions of Enlightenment we have encountered? Is Enlightenment a myth? If not, what are the consequences?

-Have you changed your mind about any philosophical issue over the course of the semester? If yes, describe your conversion. What precipitated this change? Was it the result of enlightened reasoning or social conditions? If you were previously mistaken about something, how can you be sure you aren’t also mistaken about other important beliefs?

-Why should we punish? To “balance the scales of justice”? To exact revenge? To deter crime? To remove the offender from free society? To reform the offender?

-Is punishment a moral act, or is it simply a form of social control?

-Is punishing children different from punishing criminal offenders?

-Is there a difference between torture and punishment?

-Is torture ever justifiable?

-Is death ever justifiable punishment?

-Does punishment strip the punished of her dignity?

-Which rights should prisoners loose? The right to vote? The right to privacy? The right to be a parent?

-Should convicts have the option of paying a fine rather than serving time?

-Does the corporate control of prisons for profit pose moral problems?

-Does A Clockwork Orange make an argument? Is that argument convincing?

-Should sentencing be flexible based on how the offender responds to treatment? Should offenders be required to be in prison and/or undergoing treatment “until they are cured”? Would such a sentence be too indeterminate or appropriately sensitive to the needs of particular offenders?

-Should judges be granted discretion to individually tailor punishments for offenders?

-Is Kant consistent in his support of capital punishment but denunciation of suicide?

-Can Marx both claim that punishment must treat humans as ends and that poverty and other social conditions cause offenders to commit crimes?

-Reconstruct and assess Marx’s theory of punishment.

-Would retributivism be a more compelling theory if poverty was eliminated?

-Assess Murphy’s claim that modern societies largely lack the moral right to punishment.

-Should we punish criminals for the same reasons that we punish children?

-Can a criminal ever forfeit her dignity?

-Can utilitarian and retributivism theories of punishment be reconciled?

-Assess the moral claim that punishment “balances the scales of justice.”

-Assess the ontological claim that punishment “balances the scales of justice.”

-Is punishment a moral act, or is it simply a form of social control?

-Define torture. How is torture different from punishment? Is torture ever justifiable?

-Is death ever justifiable punishment? Survey and assess the leading arguments for and against.

-What types of arguments justify capital punishment in the United States? Kantian? Religious? Brute vengeance or bloodlust?

-Why is the United States one of the only “first-world” nations not to have abolished capital punishment?

-Which rights should prisoners loose? The right to health care? The right to vote? The right to privacy? The right to be a parent?

-Should convicts have the option of paying a fine rather than serving time? Does it matter what type of crime they have committed?

-Should white-collar criminals be punished differently from violent criminals?

-Describe and assess the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a response to corporate crime.

-Does the corporate control of prisons for profit pose moral and/or political problems?

-Assess Dyer’s claims in The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime.

-Evaluate Currie’s solutions to the over-incarceration and perpetual violence in the U.S. offered in Crime and Punishment in America.

-Does the racial composition of capital offenders bear on ethical arguments for or against the death penalty?

-Is state sanctioned violence in the form of punishment unjustifiable?

-Should punishment be abolished?

-Are there viable alternatives to punishment?

-Make explicit and evaluate the moral underpinnings of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

-Must punishments for the same offense by two different offenders always be equal?

-Evaluate the notion of restorative justice.

-Are court-order apologies meaningful punishment?

-Does utilitarian punishment commit to moral commensurability, and if so is it justified in doing so?

-Should cognitively disabled offenders be treated differently from other offenders? For the utilitarian? Kantian

-Should children be treated different from other offenders? For the utilitarian? Kantian?

-Should civil disobedience be treated unlike other crimes?

-Can we and should we distinguish between rehabilitation as punishment and therapy?

-How are asylums different from prisons? How should they be distinguished?

-Why does the prison come into existences as a social institution? Are these initial motivations the same as contemporary motivations?

-Is Foucault an enlightenment or anti-Enlightenment thinker?

-Explain and assess the meaning of the Panopticon of Bentham and Foucault.

-Assess the double meaning of “discipline” for Foucault. Is this hyperbole?

-Could punishment ever be more than social control for Foucault?

-During the semester we have consistently distinguished philosophy from both religion and science. Can we really draw firm and proper distinctions between philosophy and science and/or religion?

How would Kantian ethics treat humans who are arguably not fully rational, for example fetuses of those suffering from deep cognitive disabilities?

If someone other than the mother knowingly and intentionally causes a fetus to be terminated, should they be found guilty of murder? If you are pro-choice in the abortion debate, what problems does this situation present and how might you resolve them? If you are pro-life in the abortion debate, how might such a set of facts strengthen your argument? In other words, what is the moral status of the fetus if it can be terminated by the parents? Should its moral status depend on who terminates it?

Is the notion of a disability an objective claim or a discriminatory social construction?

Why do we seek to prevent the birth of children with disabilities? Is this inappropriate discrimination against the disabled?

Is discrimination against the disabled different than racial or gender discrimination, in that we have no reservations about preventing disabilities and trying to avoid conceiving children with disabilities, but we obviously would not be comfortable (at this point) making the same efforts to eliminate minorities?

Watch Murderball, the 2005 documentary about full-contact quadriplegic wheelchair rugby. Consider any of the following questions: 1. Many of the quadriplegics in the film claim that their disability has actually made their life better. In one interview, Mark Zupan said that he would not turn back the clock and avoid his injury even if he could. How is this possible? How can we compare the loss caused by the injury with what they claim to have gained? Is there any way of achieving the benefits of the injury without actually suffering it?; 2. Murderball chairs cost about $3000. Should tax dollars be spent on such gear for those who wish to play the sport? Does it matter if the injury occurred in a drunken motocross accident or serving the U.S. Military in Iraq?; 3. At one point in their lives, the stars of this film were young men lying in hospital beds and being told that they would never walk again. Many of us could imagine few things more depressing. We now see them full of passion for life and sport. What is required to make this transformation? How would you respond to such a challenge? Consider the role of the will, as described by Kant or otherwise; 4. At one point in the film, one of the athletes recounts a story of having an acquaintance mistake the Quad Olympics for the Special Olympics. He takes this as a profound insult, mistaking him, in his words, for “a retard.” Is he justified in drawing such a sharp distinction between physical and cognitive disabilities?

Can medical or biological characteristics cause individuals to forfeit equality under the law? Consider the Supreme Court’s answer to this question in the contexts of a) race; b) gender and the ability to give birth and be statutorily raped; c) sexual orientation; d) age; e) status as HIV+; and f) disability (including the Court’s 5-4 ruling in 2001 striking key elements of the Americans with Disabilities Act)?

Is it immoral for some parents to have children if they know that there is a high risk of transmitting a serious defect to their offspring? (Purdy) Should it be ILLEGAL for some parents to reproduce because of an increased likelihood that they will transmit a serious defect to their offspring?

What is “speciesism”? Singer claims that “the speciesist allows the interest of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.” Why, according to Singer, is this immoral? Consider his argument: “If the experimenter is not prepared to use an orphaned human infant, then his readiness to us nonhumans is simple discrimination, since adult cats, mice, and other mammals are more aware of what is happening to them, more self-directing, and, so far as we can tell, at least as sensitive to pain, as any human infant. There seems to be no relevant characteristic the human infants possess that adult mammals do not have to the same or a higher degree.” See also his assertion that if “possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?”

The President's Council on Bioethics released its report titled Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry (July 2002): http://www.bioethics.gov/cloningreport/ What were its recommendations? Are they correct?

What is the relationship between law (political or divine) and ethics? Do we freely fashion ethical principles and then record them in the law, or does the law indoctrinate us into what we must think is ethical by demanding that we comply with its rules?

How do legal and medical conceptions of sexuality create social norms? How do these institutions respond to a) children born intersexed (without clear designation that they are male of female); b) homosexuality and “sex-changes”; c) promiscuity and prostitution; d) birth control and reproductive technology; or e) population control?

Should health care be provided according to need or wealth? Should, for example, limited antidotes to biological weapons be sold to the highest bidder?

What should guide our society: the market or the government? Are their any attractive alternatives to these choices?

Should all medical goods and services be bought and sold? Should there be an open market for buying and selling organs? Infants?

Evaluate the court’s opinions in Bowers v. Hardwick and Texas v. Johnson.

Is the very idea of “human nature” an excuse for the status quo?

Are some forms of corporal punishment just? Consider the propriety of forced sterilization, castration, psychosurgery, involuntary medication, torture, and death as punishment.

Should medicine and drugs be regulated? Pay particular attention to whether the use of drugs such a Prozac, ecstasy, marijuana, and heroin should be legally controlled.

Are drug addicts rational? If not, can they freely choose to use drugs?

Is libertarianism, also know as pure capitalism, just? Evaluate the arguments provided by Hospers and/or Nathanson. Does capitalism maximize human well-being?

Are ethics relevant to economics? Isn't economics just ruthless competition for survival?

Should, as libertarians argue, all social goods (such as schooling, health care, land, and donor organs) be distributed according to one’s ability to pay?

Should health care be provided according to need or wealth?

Evaluate the ethics merits of socialized vs. privatized medicine.

Should everything be for sale, such as body parts, sex, infants, or rights to vote, pollute, or kill? If I want to sell my lung in order to earn money to provide for my family, for example, should the law prohibit me from doing so?

Evaluate Posner’s call for a free market in human infants.

Evaluate how any one or more ethical concepts relate to commodification: objectification, exploitation, coercion, harm, consent, and/or instrumentalization.

View Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things. Consider any of the following questions: 1. What drives the characters to either sell or buy organs? What causes these motivations? Are the sellers responsible for the conditions that cause them to sell their organs? Do any of these motivations compromise their freedom to enter into these transactions?; 2. Many of the donors sell their organs in desperation. What causes their desperation? Are they responsible for it? Can desperation be coercive?; 3. Are any of the donors exploited or coerced in these transactions?; 4. Would any of the difficulties experienced by the donors be removed if the transactions did not occur on a black market?; 5. What support does the film provide for the “displacement thesis”?

What does it mean for the U.S. to give cash awards to civilians killed by our military in Iraq or Afghanistan? Should all of these lives equal the same amount? How do these payments contribute to the international conception of the U.S. and its values?

Is the September 11^th Compensation fund just? Should compensation be allocated by how much the victim earned? Is the loss of an investment banker worth more than the loss of a janitor?

EXTRA CREDIT POSSIBILITIES

MORE TOPICS TBA

FOR ALL EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENTS, WRITE 1500 WORDS IN GOOD FAITH ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS BELOW AND RECEIVE ONE PERCENTAGE POINT TO YOUR FINAL AVERAGE.

Extra Credit 1

1. What is Enlightenment? Is it real?

2. For Kant, what is the only unconditionally good thing? Why?

3. What is a hypothetical imperative? Give three examples. Why does Kant seek something beyond the hypothetical imperative?

4. What is the categorical imperative? How does it work? How is it supposed to establish the objectivity of ethical principles?

5. State the practical imperative. List ten examples of violations of the practical imperative.

6. What does it mean to say that something has inherent value, and why is this so important for Kant?

7. What does Kant mean by “self-governance”?

8. If Kant is right, what should be the relationship between the moral law and the political law? Should everything that is immoral be illegal?

9. Why, for Kant, should humans be afforded dignity? Is he right about this?

10. Are some things simply and unconditionally ethically wrong? How do you know?

11. Is Kant’s theory of enlightenment true? Is this a trick question?

12. Is reason real or just another myth cooked up by philosophers to make humans feel important? What evidence do we have either way?

13. While Kant is in some sense an originator of the modern scientific method, he is quick to note the limits of science. What are these limits? Do we now treat science like a religion? If so, what are the dangers of this?

Extra Credit 2

Read Peter Landesman’s article in the New York Times Magazine on the trade in sexual slaves in the United States. Read the article via the texts I provided in a previous email, or listen to the NPR story here: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1617594

In Kantian terms, what is wrong with this practice? Is Kant right about this?

Extra Credit 3

Read Chapters I-IV i

2. Jeremy Bentham, and not John Stuart Mill, is the founder of utilitarianism. According to Bentham's "Principle of Utility," actions are right when they increase happiness, and he defines utility as the property of producing happiness. The objective of utilitarianism, therefore, is to maximize utility/happiness. Bentham is also a hedonist, meaning that happiness for him is simply having pleasure and avoiding pain. Bentham designed this system in response to Kant, and he began his most famous work with the following challenge to Kant and all Kantians:

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will but serve to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it , deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.....Has the rectitude of this principle ever been formally contested? It should seem that it had, by those who have not known what they have been meaning. Is it susceptible to any direct proof? it should seem not: FOR THAT WHICH IS USED TO PROVE EVERYTHING, CANNOT ITSELF BE PROVED: A CHAIN OF PROOFS MUST HAVE THEIR COMMENCEMENT SOME WHERE. TO GIVE SUCH A PROOF IS IMPOSSIBLE AS WELL AS IT IS NEEDLESS."

Besides Bentham's terrible punctuation, consider any of the following:

a) Is pleasure the right thing to build an ethical system around? Is happiness the right thing to build an ethical system around? Are either good?

b) Bentham calls Kant's project "needless" and dealing in "caprice rather than reason." Is he right? Are Bentnam and Mill more "reasonable" than Kant?

c) While Kant believes only motives and intentions can determine if an action is truly ethical, Bentham and Mill find the value of an act in its consequences only. Which position is stronger?

3. Is Female or Male Circumcision a Public Health Crisis? For and overview of female circumcision, see http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/femgen/fgm1.htm. For a comparison between female and male circumcision, see http://www.noharmm.org/morepages.htm

Extra Credit 4

My dog, the Honorable E. Grady Jolley

1. Assess Bentham’s claim: “But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would avail? The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk, but Can they suffer?”

2. What is “speciesism”? Peter Singer claims that “the speciesist allows the interest of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.” Why, according to Singer, is this immoral? Consider his argument: “If the experimenter is not prepared to use an orphaned human infant, then his readiness to us nonhumans is simple discrimination, since adult cats, mice, and other mammals are more aware of what is happening to them, more self-directing, and, so far as we can tell, at least as sensitive to pain, as any human infant. There seems to be no relevant characteristic the human infants possess that adult mammals do not have to the same or a higher degree.” See also his assertion that if “possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?”

Extra Credit 5

Watch Murderball, the 2005 documentary about full-contact quadriplegic wheelchair rugby. In addition to watching the film, this semester you have the opportunity to meet its star.

Consider any of the following questions:

1. Many of the quadriplegics in the film claim that their disability has actually made their life better. In one interview, Mark Zupan said that he would not turn back the clock and avoid his injury even if he could. How is this possible? How can we compare the loss caused by the injury with what they claim to have gained? Is there any way of achieving the benefits of the injury without actually suffering it?

2. Murderball chairs cost about $3000. Should tax dollars be spent on such gear for those who wish to play the sport? Does it matter if the injury occurred in a drunken motocross accident or serving the U.S. Military in Iraq?

3. At one point in their lives, the stars of this film were young men lying in hospital beds and being told that they would never walk again. Many of us could imagine few things more depressing. We now see them full of passion for life and sport. What is required to make this transformation? How would you respond to such a challenge? Consider the role of the will, as described by Kant or otherwise.

4. At one point in the film, one of the athletes recounts a story of having an acquaintance mistake the Quad Olympics for the Special Olympics. He takes this as a profound insult, mistaking him, in his words, for “a retard.” Is he justified in drawing such a sharp distinction between physical and cognitive disabilities?

Extra Credit 6

Laci Peterson

If you are pro-choice in the infanticide debate, what should the remedy be if someone besides its parents kills a 21 day old infant (either with Tay-Sachs or perfectly healthy)? Should the infant be understood as property of the parents, thus making monetary compensation more appropriate than murder charges? Should the value of such property be adjusted by how much the child is worth, with a tay sachs baby obviously worth less than healthy baby. Is there anything wrong with conceiving of human life in these terms? In other words, what is the moral status of the infant if it can be terminated by the parents? Should its moral status depend on who terminates it?

Assess the ethical and legal arguments in the Utah murder charges brought against a woman in Utah who refused a Caesarean section and allegedly therefore caused the death of one of her unborn twins. For details, see: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20040316.html

Extra Credit 7

Watch The Corporation, which is now available at most video stores. Apply the usual extra credit rules.

1. The film claims that corporations single-mindedly pursue one object: to maximize the return on investments for its shareholders. Is this correct? What are the consequences of this for medicine? Is it problematic?

2. According to the logic of the film, none of the individuals working within a corporation necessarily need to do anything terribly immoral in order for the corporation to commit atrocities. How can this be? Can this be compared with the rather benign work of those who performed the administrative work of the holocaust?

3. Are corporations prototypes for humans of the future of medicine?

4. One interviewee claims that many of our environmental problems could be solved if we privatized everything, including water. Is their any merit to this claim? How do we draw a line between privatizing water and privatizing food, land, healthcare, education, etc.?

5. Does the film underestimate to importance corporations have for our culture? How can we compare the costs with the benefits?

Extra Credit 8

1. Evaluate Posner’s call for a free market in human infants? Should the process of human adoption be opened to the free market, such that genetic parent or parents would be paid by the adopting parent or parents? Adopted children would of course maintain all ordinary rights of children.

2. Is paid surrogacy moral? Is paid surrogacy more, less, or equally moral that an open market in babies?

3. Should there be an open market in human organs? If I want to sell my lung in order to earn money to provide for my family, for example, should the law prohibit me from doing so? Does it make a difference if I want to sell my heart?

4. Evaluate Wilkinson’s claim on page 129-130: “The Westerner, it is said, uses poverty to “force” (coerce) the poor person into giving up the organ. On the picture sketched so far, this coercion claim is true only if the Westerner in question is responsible for the vendor’s property. But is she responsible? This question is simply too big to be taken on in any detail here, raising as it does fundamental issues in political philosophy about the distribution of goods and about duties of rich to the poor.”

5. Should DNA be patentable?

6. Is there anything that shouldn’t be for sale?

7. According to Wilkinson, someone coerces me if they threaten to kill my dog unless I pay them $5000. But if a veterinarian refuses to treat my fatally injured dog unless I pay her $5000, she does not coerce me because she does not threaten my dog but rather offers to help me for a fee. Can he maintain this position?

8. Marx writes: “the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract.” Explain and assess this assertion, defining the meaning of value, commodity, human labour, and abstract.

9. Was Jesus more of a communist or capitalist? Evaluate arguments listed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_communism

Extra Credit 9

View Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things. Consider any of the following questions:

1. What drives the characters to either sell or buy organs? What causes these motivations? Are the sellers responsible for the conditions that cause them to sell their organs? Do any of these motivations compromise their freedom to enter into these transactions?

2. Many of the donors sell their organs in desperation. What causes their desperation? Are they responsible for it? Can desperation be coercive?

3. Are any of the donors exploited or coerced in these transactions?

4. Would any of the difficulties experienced by the donors be removed if the transactions did not occur on a black market?

5. What support does the film provide for the “displacement thesis”?

Extra Credit 10

A vulture stalks a starving child

Is libertarianism, also know as pure capitalism, more just than socialism? Evaluate the arguments provided by Hospers, Neilson, and/or Nathanson. Which, for example, provides more freedom, equality, fairness, or happiness? Should, as libertarians argue, all social goods (such as schooling, health care, land, and donor organs) be distributed according to one’s ability to pay? Is there anything that shouldn’t be determined by the laws of the market, or should free market principles preside over all aspects of life?

Extra Credit Papers should be a minimum of 1500 words.

Nick Smith · Associate Professor of Philosophy · University of New Hampshire · Nick.Smith@unh.edu