Christine Tappolet, “Valeurs et émotions: les perspectives du néo-sentimentalisme,” Dialogue, 51(2012): 7-30.

Résumé: Selon le néo-sentimentalisme, juger qu’une chose possède une propriété évaluative consiste à juger qu’une réaction affective ou émotionnelle lui est appropriée, mais cette position peut se décliner en plusieurs versions radicalement différentes. Contre sa version normative, je considère que sa version descriptive est plus plausible, car elle peut mieux répondre à l’exigence de normativité qui découle de l’argument de la question ouverte de Moore et à l’objection des raisons du mauvais type. Enfin, je soutiens que la circularité en cause ne s’apparente pas à un cercle vicieux : entendu en un sens épistémique, le néo-sentimentaliste demeure instructif.

Get it here.

Centre for Ethics postdoctoral fellow Dominic Martin, discussion the corruption scandals in Quebec: here.

Wed, Oct 10, 2012, Ethics at Noon talk:

“Counting the Numbers Fairly: The Equal Proportional Satisfaction of Incommensurable Values”

Bruce Chapman
Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

Paper available on request: admin.ethics@utoronto.ca
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Interdependence and the Sources of Domination

James Bohman
Department of Philosophy
St. Louis University

Oct. 1, 3-5pm, Larkin 200

Background Reading:
Philip Pettit, “A Republican Law of Peoples” (here).
James Bohman, “Democracy Across Borders: Response to Critics” (here).

Dominic Martin, “The Contained Rivalry Requirement and a ‘Triple-Feature’ Program for Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics (2012). Get it here (gated).

Abstract: This paper proposes a description of the moral obligations of economic agents. It will show that a threefold division should be adopted to distinguish moral obligations applying to their interactions in the market, obligations applying to their interactions inside business firms and obligations applying to their interactions with agents outside the market. Competition might be permissible in the first case since markets are special patterns of social interactions (called adversarial schemes). They produce their benefits when agents try to satisfy exclusive preferences at the expense of others. However, moral obligations inside the firm and moral obligations outside the market are of a different nature. This argument will be developed in the two first parts of this paper. In the third part, it will outline the relevant strengths of that account in relation with two popular views of economic agents’ moral obligations: the shareholder primacy view and the stakeholder theory.

Monday Sept. 17, 2012: Seminar Talk

Collective Responsibility and Collective Obligation
Tracy Isaacs
Department of Philosophy & Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research
University of Western Ontario

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Kathryn Walker and Will Kymlicka (eds). Rooted Cosmopolitanism (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012).

About the Book
Canadians take pride in being good citizens of the world, yet our failure to meet commitments on the global stage raises questions. Do Canadians need to transcend local attachments and national loyalties to become full global citizens? Is the very idea of rooted cosmopolitanism simply a myth that encourages complacency about Canada’s place in the world?

This volume brings together leading scholars to assess the concept of rooted cosmopolitanism, both in theory and practice. In Part 1, authors examine the nature, complexity, and relevance of the concept itself and show how local identities such as patriotism and Quebec nationalism can, but need not, conflict with cosmopolitan values and principles. In Part 2, they reveal how local ties and identities in practice enable and impede Canada’s global responsibilities in areas such as multiculturalism, climate change, immigration and refugee policy, and humanitarian intervention.

By examining how Canada has negotiated its relations to “the world” both within and beyond its own borders, Rooted Cosmopolitanism evaluates the possibility of reconciling local ties and nationalism with commitments to human rights, global justice, and international law.

Simone Chambers, “Justice or Legitimacy, Barricades or Public Reason?: The Politics of Property-Owning Democracy” in Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson, Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond (London: Wiley, 2012) (link).

Wed, May 16, 2012: Public Lecture

David Schweickart
Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University of Chicago

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Self-interest vs. the Common Good: On a Central Issue in Economic Ethics

Manuel Wörsdörfer
Goethe-University Frankfurt
and
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Ethics

Wednesday, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Seminar Series
Discrimination as Negligence

Sophia Reibetanz Moreau
Professor of Philosophy and Law
University of Toronto

Mon, Mar 5, 2012
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Joseph Heath, “Business Ethics and the ‘End of History’ in Corporate Law,” Journal of Business Ethics 106, (2012). Get it here (gated).

Abstract: Henry Hansmann has claimed we have reached the “end of history” in corporate law, organized around the “widespread normative consensus that corporate managers should act exclusively in the economic interests of shareholders.” In this paper, I examine Hansmann’s own argument in support of this view, in order to draw out its implications for some of the traditional concerns of business ethicists about corporate social responsibility. The centerpiece of Hansmann’s argument is the claim that ownership of the firm is most naturally exercised by the group able to achieve the lowest agency costs, and that homogeneity of interest within the ownership group is the most important factor in achieving lower costs. He defends this claim through a study of cooperatives, attempting to show that homogeneity is the source of the competitive advantage most often enjoyed by shareholders over other constituency groups, such as workers, suppliers and customers, when it comes to exercising control over the firm. Some business ethicists, impressed by this argument, have taken it to be a vindication of Milton Friedman’s claim that profit-maximization is the only “social responsibility” of management. I would like to suggest that this conclusion does not follow, and that the “Hansmann argument” lends itself to a less minimalist view, what I refer to as a “market failures” approach to business ethics.