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The University of Southampton
Southampton Ethics Centre

Fractal Solidarity Seminar

Time:
16:00
Date:
8 March 2022
Venue:
Online

For more information regarding this seminar, please email Dr Brian McElwee at B.M.Mcelwee@southampton.ac.uk .

Event details

Part of the seminar series organised by the Southampton Ethics Centre.

This seminar will be presented by Barry Maguire.

I once defended the thesis that an individual’s reasons are all fully explained by facts about the value of the consequences of their available options. I now think that this approach is not merely false, but pernicious. It gives individuals at every choice point responsibility on their own for the entire world. Ethics is conceived as a question about how to make the biggest impact I can on the world. (And it is often argued that this impact can be considerable.) This all sounds a bit white male, and naïve, and hubristic. One deep problem is that this approach omits the moral importance of proper ways of working with others. In response to this problem, the most conservative revision to this broadly individualistic approach simply adds value-responsive group reasons that transmit to individuals. Then individuals have direct value-based reasons and indirect group-participation value-based reasons, and some procedure for balancing them. Garrett Cullity’s Concern, Respect, and Cooperation is a sophisticated book-length defence of a pluralistic view of this kind. He argues that the titular values are three fundamentally distinct sources of ethical authority. I attempt to push back, on behalf of a view that builds collaboration in at the outset. I argue that concern, respect, and cooperation, suitably refined, are all part of one ideal mode of engagement with others, whether these others are 'patients' or fellow collaborators. This mode of engagement constitutes solidarity with others. I suggest that solidarity, so understood, is the one and only fundamental source of ethical authority. This proposal aims to integrate standards of justification in moral and political philosophy. 

To receive the meeting link please contact Dr Brian McElwee.

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