Cappe

  • ANU
  • CSU
  • University of Melbourne

CURRENT RESEARCH

Criminal Justice Ethics

  • Police Corruption
  • Loyalty, Whistleblowing and Witness Protection More..

Business and
Professional Ethics

  • Corporate Responsibility for Economic and Ethical Sustainability
  • Regulating Communication in the Professions More..

Ethical Issues
in Biotechnology

  • The Ethics of Life-extending Technology
  • The Ethics of Sex Selection More..

IT and Nanotechnology
Ethics of Emergent
Technology

  • E-Government
  • The Precautionary Principle in Nanotechnology More..

Political Violence and
State Sovereignty

  • Morality of "Dirty Hands" as an Issue in Political Leadership
  • Ethics, Technology and the "New Wars" More..

Welfare Ethics

  • Obligations of Individual Citizens of Wealthy Nations in Relation to International Poverty
  • The Obligations of Welfare Recipients More..

WHAT'S NEW

What's new in CAPPE publications?
View Publications, Click here

MULTIMEDIA CENTRE

Multimedia Centre

Professor Justin O'Brien

'The crisis of failing strategies'

Professor Larry May

Just War Theory and Chemical/Biological Weapons

Professor Tony Coady

Morality and Political Violence

UPCOMING
EVENTS

CAPPE ANU Seminar

Why Social Justice Matters  - Associate Prof. Ian Hunt (Flinders)
Monday 19th May 2008 More....

CAPPE UniMelb Seminar

Justification & 'The Reasonable' - Dr. Steve Curry (CAPPE)
Wednesday 21st May 2008 More....

Criminal Justice Ethics Workshop: Criminalization

CAPPE, ANU
Thursday 3rd July 2008 More....

Globalising Ethics & Politics

Prospective ANU Research student workshop
24th-26th July 2008
More....

UPCOMING EVENTS IN CANBERRA

 

SEMINARS

The Centre presents a series of weekly seminars at the ANU in Canberra. In 2008, seminars will usually be held on Wednesdays at 4:00pm, in the Arts Meeting Room (directly below CAPPE), Ground Floor, Haydon Allen Building (Building 022), The Australian National University.

 

Monday 19th of May at 2pm will be Associate Professor Ian Hunt (Flinders University).

Title:  Why Social Justice Matters
Abstract

This paper assesses Brian Barry ‘s attempt in Why Social Justice Matters to argue the importance of social justice, and to show what public policies for a modern capitalist society, such as the US or UK, flow from its requirements. Barry deplores the ideological assumptions that have obscured the importance of social justice but he does not address their intellectual roots. I claim that, if philosophers are to argue the importance of social justice for public policy, we must first address the philosophical ideas that have persuaded leaders of public opinion and policy makers in OECD countries to put their emphasis on efficiency, and to dismiss issues of equality or equity on the basis of its supposed efficiency cost. Leaving aside claims about the presumed benefits of perfectly competitive markets, I address Hayek’s nihilistic theory and Nozick’s defence of ‘natural liberty’, and show that both fail to dismiss any question of the fairness of free market capitalist societies other than arising from past wrongdoing.

Though Rawls’s Theory of Justice is forbiddingly complex, it provides a simple criterion of the fairness of the rules by which our societies operate to produce the inequalities Barry deplores. I claim that once we apply this criterion to our institutions, it becomes apparent that the task of achieving justice in accord with Rawls’s criterion requires such substantial change as to be beyond the capacity of changes to public policy. Other contemporary theories of social justice that question the justice of present societies do not clearly identify closer ideally just societies than Rawls’s ideal. I conclude that we have better prospects of achieving an ‘overlapping consensus’ for public policy purposes around a ‘non-ideal’ theory and principles for making unjust societies fairer.

 

Wednesday 28th of May at 4pm will be Dr Clive Hamilton (Visiting Fellow, Regulatory Institutions Network, ANU).

Title:  Do We Prefer What We Choose?
Abstract

In this paper I will argue, following David George, that we possess first and second-order preferences, with the latter representing a deeper order of preference. Modern economics recognises only first-order preferences, and advertising tends to persuade us to act on them alone, which is often contrary to our interests.

On this basis I will argue that, in addition to political liberty and individual liberty, there is a third form of liberty, “inner freedom”, defined by Hayek as the freedom to act according to one’s own considered will, by one’s reason or lasting conviction. I will suggest that self-deception and akrasia (weakness of will) erode inner freedom, and that in consumer society we are becoming less free.

 

Wednesday 4th of June at 4pm will be Assistant Professor Iwao Hirose (McGill University and CAPPE, University of Melbourne).

Title:  Disability Discrimination in Health Care Allocation
Abstract

I will examine the logical structure of the argument against unequal treatment on the basis of disability in health care allocation. I will first examine, and reject, the "two-level common-sense" objection, which best captures our intuition against disability discrimination in health care. Then, I will propose an argument against disability discrimination in health care. Finally, I will address some problems with my proposal.
 

Wednesday 11th of June at 4pm will be a JOINT CAPPE/Faculty/RSSS Seminar: Dr Laura Schroeter and Dr Francois Schroeter (University of Melbourne).

Title:  A Third Way in Metaethics
Abstract

What conditions must one meet in order to count as competent with the meaning of a thin evaluative predicate like ‘is the right thing to do’? According to minimalists like Allan Gibbard and Ralph Wedgwood, all that's required for competence is that one use the predicate to express one’s own motivational states. According to analytic descriptivists like Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Christopher Peacocke, competence requires speakers to grasp some determinate reference-fixing criterion for an action’s being right. Both approaches face serious difficulties. We suggest that these difficulties derive from a shared background assumption that competence conditions must be explained in terms of a determinate conceptual role. We propose a new way of characterizing competence conditions for evaluative terms: what’s required for competence is participation in a shared epistemic tradition with a term. Our approach, we argue, better explains the nature of evaluative inquiry and the extent of disagreement about evaluative questions.
 

Previous Seminars...

 

Enquiries to Dr Daniel Star: daniel.star@anu.edu.au or (02) 61259628