RSS Parrot

Riots, Blame, and Evaluative Outlooks

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24779/

Published: July 27, 2026 20:40

Agents are often blamed for the evaluative outlook their behavior manifests. Standard accounts of this form of attributability blame assume that the relevant evaluative outlooks must be sustained by an individual’s character, such as their cares,…

The Procreation Asymmetry: Some Puzzles

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24331/

Published: July 27, 2026 20:30

According to (one version of) the Procreation Asymmetry, it is wrong to create people with bad lives, but we are not morally required to create people with good lives. While many philosophers are attracted to the Asymmetry, it has proved notoriously…

"As If": Reasonable Mistakes and Defensive Liability

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24433/

Published: July 3, 2026 18:30

Jonathan Quong has recently developed a novel theory of the morality of defensive force, centered on the idea that one makes herself liable to defensive harm when and because she acts as if other people lack moral rights they in fact possess. This essay…

Towards A Rawlsian Theory of Productive Justice

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24867/

Published: June 18, 2026 15:00

Many political philosophers believe that freedom of occupational choice rules out both using legal means to force people to work and holding individuals under a moral duty to serve in socially useful professions. Most political philosophers also believe…

In the Shadows: Academic Knowledge and Remedial Action

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24252/

Published: June 8, 2026 15:40

Open access activists and shadow libraries violate laws that restrict access to academic research. Is such lawbreaking morally permissible? This paper defends an affirmative answer. We argue that the illegal sharing of academic research constitutes a form…

Feasibility as Probability: Rejecting Hard Constraints and the (Im)possibility Distinction

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24773/

Published: June 8, 2026 15:30

A proper understanding of feasibility is important for a number of ongoing methodological debates within political theory. This paper challenges the frequent reliance in feasibility discussions on distinguishing between “hard” and “soft” constraints…

The Ambitions of Kantian Political Philosophy

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/18469/

Published: June 3, 2026 16:00

Kantian political philosophers and their critics tend to accept an ambitious construal of Kant’s contribution to political thought, according to which his framework aims to answer all the main questions of political philosophy, including those about…

When We May Not Experiment: On the Ethics of Randomized Controlled Trials in Policy and Development

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/18423/

Published: April 28, 2026 16:40

When are governments, non-governmental actors, or researchers permitted to randomly assign citizens to different policies to learn their effects? Randomized policy experiments are increasingly used in development research. Yet randomization involves…

Can Contractualism Be an Account of What We Owe to Each Other?

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/22987/

Published: April 2, 2026 15:30

According to contractualism, very roughly, an action x of type X is wrong, at least in one unified and distinct way, iff and because any principle permitting actions of type X could be reasonably rejected. According to what I will call the “Thesis,”…

For Your Own Good? Authority, Categorical Reasons, and Paternalism

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/23000/

Published: February 24, 2026 18:50

Instrumentalist accounts of authority seek to justify relations of authority—that is, relations in which one person has the ability to give binding directives to another—on the basis of some good, benefit or service that such relations provide for those…