Ian Carter

University of Pavia | UNIPV · Department of Political and Social Sciences

What kind of value attaches to the fact of a particular good being distributed equally rather than unequally? This paper argues that distributive equality has non-instrumental value in virtue of its relation to basic equality-that is, the fact of the relevant individuals being equals in some morally basic sense. This fundamental kind of value of di...

In this paper we steer a course between two views of the value of equality that are usually understood as diametrically opposed to one another: on the one hand, the view that equality has intrinsic value; on the other, the view that equality is a normatively redundant notion. We proceed by analysing the different ways in which the equal possession...

This expansive volume is a celebration of Professor Matthew Kramer. The contributions focus on Kramer’s work on legal philosophy, metaethics, normative ethics, and political philosophy. The volume is divided into six parts, each focusing on a different aspect of Kramer’s work. The first part, Rights and Right-holding, contains five essays addressin...

This is an interview by the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics with Ian Carter. The interview covers Carter's intellectual biography; his extensive writings on the measurement and value of freedom; his reflections on the use of formal methods in philosophical work on freedom and in political philosophy more broadly; his more recent work o...

Recent work on ‘anti-adaptive’ neighbourhoods has highlighted a number of common features, including scale of design, number of designers, mono-functionality, percentage of public space, planning rules and system of ownership. This article aims to provide a more general conceptual analysis of adaptability and anti-adaptability in terms of degrees o...

In this essay I attempt to vindicate the “asymmetry thesis,” according to which ownership of one’s own body is intrinsically different from ownership of other objects, and the view that self-ownership, as libertarians normally understand the concept, enjoys a special “fact-insensitive” status as a fundamental right. In particular, I argue in favor...

In ‘Bureaucratic respectful equality’, Christopher Nathan puts forward two challenges for the author’s claim that basic equality can be grounded in a form of ‘opacity respect’ appropriately shown by the state towards citizens. According to the first challenge, this account is less powerful than the author supposed, inasmuch it does not rule out any...

One Another's Equals. The Basis of Human Equality, Jeremy Waldron. Harvard University Press, 2017, x + 264 pages. - Ian Carter

According to the ‘starting-gate’ interpretation of equality of opportunity, individuals who enjoy equal starts can legitimately become unequal to the extent that their differences derive from choices for which they can be held responsible. There can be no coercive transfers of resources in favour of individuals who disregarded their own futures, an...

Most of the recent work on freedom is concerned with the liberal-republican debate. The latest move in this debate has been made by List and Valentini who argue in favor of a conception of freedom (called “freedom as independence”) that is located midway between the liberal and republican conceptions. In this article, we review some key aspects of...

Capability theorists have suggested different, sometimes incompatible, ways in which their approach takes account of the value of freedom, each of which implies a different kind of normative relation between functionings and capabilities. This paper examines three possible accounts of the normative relation between functionings and capabilities, an...

Toleration and respect are often thought of as compatible, and indeed complementary, liberal democratic ideals. However, it has sometimes been said that toleration is disrespectful, because it necessarily involves a negative evaluation of the object of toleration. This article shows how toleration and respect are compatible as long as ‘respect’ is...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/japp.12022/abstract

The relation between social power and negative freedom is examined, assuming Stoppino's formal classification of power and a 'pure' negative conception of freedom. The aim is twofold: first, to clarify whether and (if so) in what ways a person's negative freedom is diminished when others exercise power over her, thus arriving at an exhaustive analy...

The nature of basic equality (what it is that makes us all equals) can have implications not only for the question of the currency of egalitarian justice but also for that of its ‘site’. The latter question is raised by G. A. Cohen in his critique of John Rawls's theory of justice. In this paper I argue that Rawlsian liberals might provide an answe...

Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers orconstraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions areavailable to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is thepossibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such away as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamentalpurposes. While negative liberty is us...

A person can be described not only as free or unfree to do certain specific things, but also as free to a certain degree, in an overall sense. A person's degree of overall freedom represents some kind of aggregation over her specific freedoms and unfreedoms. In this article I rehearse synthetically some of the reasons, put forward in my previous wo...

In what sense are persons equal, such that it is appropriate to treat them as equals? This difficult question has been strangely neglected by political philosophers. A plausible answer can be found by adopting a particular interpretation of the idea of respect. Central to this interpretation is the thought that in order to respect persons we need t...

This paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a much discussed account of the normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life, argued to be comprehensive at a hig...

How is a person's freedom related to his or her preferences? Liberal theorists of negative freedom have generally taken the view that the desire of a person to do or not do something is irrelevant to the question of whether he is free to do it. Supporters of the pure negative conception of freedom have advocated this view in its starkest form: they...

Examining the question of whether or how far freedom is measurable contributes to the analysis of the concept of freedom in two ways. First, it involves attempting to establish criteria for answering questions about ‘how free’ individuals or societies are. Secondly, it helps to show how far different definitions of freedom really conflict, in as mu...

The paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the purported paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a focal account of normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life and operationalizes that account by mean...

This paper argues in favour of a distinction between ‘freedom’ and ‘freedom of choice’ – a distinction that economists and political philosophers have so far either ignored or drawn wrongly. Drawing the distinction correctly may help to resolve a number of disputes in contemporary political philosophy and non-welfarist normative economics regarding...

Discussion held in April at a Political Studies Association Roundtable in Manchester, England, on G. A. Cohen’s book If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000). --- Michael Otsuka's contribution sub-titled: "Il personale e politico? Il confine tra pubblico e private nella sfera dell...

This is an edited collection of essays in honour of Felix E. Oppenheim.

L'A. defend la these selon laquelle la liberte est independamment evaluable contre les partisans d'un liberalisme politique et d'une justice distributive (R. Dworkin, W. Kymlicka et autres economistes du bien-etre) qui pretendent quantifier la liberte

This paper is about the relevance, to the definition of freedom, of values or goods other than freedom. In this respect,its subject matter is not at all new. However, I do believe that new light can be thrown on the nature of this relationship by paying more attention to another relationship – one which exists within the concept of freedom itself....