International Encyclopedia of Ethics

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics will be a comprehensive, authoritative print and electronic Ethics resource. Its entries will discuss topics, movements, arguments, and figures in Normative Ethics, Metaethics, and Practical Ethics. It will cover major philosophical and religious traditions; entries will be written by highly respected thinkers from around the world. In its electronic form, each entry will be hyperlinked internally to other entries and externally to electronic editions of the renowned Blackwell Companions and Guides, in all, more than 1500 scholarly articles. The electronic version will be regularly updated, making IEE the preferred resource for any professional, layperson, or student wanting to know more about Ethics. The print edition will be 9-12 volumes. Work on the Encyclopedia is shepherded by an Editor-in-Chief and two Associate Editors. Its content is shaped by the distinguished members of the international Editorial Board. All entries will be reviewed by an independent Review Board. We currently settled on more than 400 topics for entries. We will be adding another 400-500 topics before we are done. From the IEE site (www.hughlafollette.com) you can see the current list of topics, as well as 500+ more topics that the Editorial Board is considering. Feel free to suggest additional topics and potential authors. Follow the link from the bottom of the IEE page.
Hugh LaFollette: hughlafollette@tampabay.rr.com, Editor in Chief

CFP: Climate Change

Call for Papers

What: Climate Change: A Conference on Politics, Policy, and Justice
Where: Bern University, Bern, Switzerland
When: August 19-21, 2009

Please send abstracts (500-800 words) for paper proposals to climateandjustice@gmail.com no later than May 1st. Applicants will know of their acceptance by May 15th. Quality papers will be invited to contribute to an edited collection of the conference proceedings. Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals, as travel funding has been set aside to aid exemplary graduate student presenters. For more information, please see the conference website: www.climateandjustice.org. The site will be continually updated with travel and lodging information, the conference schedule, and other useful information as it becomes available. If you have further questions, please contact Sarah at sbkenehan@gmail.com.

Keynote speakers:
Simon Caney, Oxford
Lukas Meyer, Graz University
Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington

Conference Abstract: Since the late 1980s climate change has been centre-stage in the international policy arena. However, as of yet, little has been done to incorporate all global players while at the same time catalysing the type of action that must be taken in order to combat this problem. There are likely many reasons for this current inaction, including but surely not limited to: questions surrounding climate science and predictions; questions concerning the most effective way to cope with the problem; and questions relating to the fair distribution of the burden of dealing with climate change. The focus of this conference will be to discuss the latter issue, i.e. the role of justice as it arises in the context of climate change. Justice related issues emerge in the debate over climate change policy on many levels. First, and probably most obviously, it must be determined what role each global actor will play in any coordinated effort to mitigate climate change. The answer to this question is not straightforward, as there are numerous factors that must be considered, including whether rights to emit greenhouse gases (GHG) should be divided equally among all nations, or whether rights to emit should be a function of the geographical placement of a nation, the population of a nation, the level of development of a nation, or even perhaps some combination of these elements. Second, and intimately related to the first issue, it has to be decided to what degree (if any) a nation’s historical emissions ought to be considered. As with the first issue, there is no clear-cut way to work through this problem, since there are seemingly justifiable reasons for engaging in all of the following: severely limiting the largest historical emitters’ claims to present and future emissions, considering only the historical record from the point in time in which a nation could reasonably have known of the harm it was contributing to, or, alternatively, agreeing that historical emissions should have no weight in the discussion, but rather all nations should agree on a fair emissions target from the present forward. Third, it must be determined to what degree (if any) future people ought to be taken into consideration when establishing climate change policy, since it has been predicted that the effects of climate change will stretch far into the future. Addressing this question requires having discussions on how future people can have justice claims on current people, what those justice claims might be, and how far into the future these claims reach. Fourth, it must be determined what types of entities have viable justice claims. Is it only individual persons that can make coherent justice claims? Or can nations, industries, businesses, non-human animals, species, ecosystems, and the like have and make meaningful justice claims? Finally, we must determine the level of responsibility individual actors have in mitigating and adapting to climate change, since it is not evident whether this responsibility falls only on nations, or whether it also rests with individuals, businesses, and industries, as well. Clearly then, the issue of justice and climate change is both complex and requires immediate attention.

Academic Earth

Via Virtual Philosopher, I've come across 'Academic Earth', a site devoted to video lectures from lecturers at some of the world's top universities. Of particular interest to me are Steven B Smith's  (Yale) 'Introduction to Political Philosophy' course, and Paula Goldman's (Berkley) 'Current Issues in International and Area Studies'. An amazing resource. 

Philosophers' Carnival

The 88th Philosophers' Carnival is here (I especially enjoyed the post on non-ideal political theory here).

Research Diaries

As part of the assessment for the political philosophy course that I will be teaching in the Autumn, we will be asking the students to complete a research project instead of an exam. This project will be based around a case study relevant to a particular problem or issue covered during the course. Because this will be a new form of assessment for many of the students, and also because we want them to actively reflect on their learning methods, we are going to ask them to keep research diaries during the module, and then to submit a sample or summary of the diary to be marked along with the project.
We will most likely be using the Blackboard system for our online content, and within this there is the capability to set up a diary for each student. These can be completely private, be only viewable by the student and us as course lecturers, or visible to all members of the module. There are of course advantages and disadvantages to each of these options - privacy encourages honesty, and some students will be less productive on a public forum than they will be when they are not worrying about other people's views. On the other hand, the module is trying to encourage collaborative learning, and allowing students to read and comment on each other's diaries would be one route toward this. I am however sceptical whether many level three students would take the time to do this productively.
In order to puzzle some of these issues out I've set up an online research diary for myself as a trial. I'm using Blogger at first because it is so simple to use and I already have an account. I'm going to keep it private to begin with, but I might change this later on depending on how it goes. I do already keep a research diary of sorts, in that I write dated notes to myself when I'm reading or working, and also through my record of supervision meetings. But this will be a way to keep all of these things in one place, that is accessible from both home and University (and on the move via my mobile). Hopefully it will therefore not only help with some of the teaching issues that I'm looking into but benefit my research as well!
If anyone has any thoughts about the usefullness of research diaries and the best format or location for them I'd be interested to hear them.

Fiona Robinson Interview

Interesting interview with Fiona Robinson about the ethics of care on the Carnegie Council's website here (the link is to the transcript, but there is video and audio also).

Brian Barry

As reported here and here, Brian Barry has died. As regular readers will know, my thesis attempts to defend a version of cosmopolitanism based on Barry's theory of justice. This is sad news for political philosophy.

CFP: Valencia -Ethics and International Development

Call for Papers:
Ethics of Human Development and Global Justice: Responsibilities of
Institutions and Citizens for Action on Poverty
Valencia, Spain,
30 November to 2 December, 2009

Contributions are invited for the *Eighth International Conference on Ethics and International Development*
The conference will focus on how various social actors can and ought to take responsibility for acting on poverty and expanding human development. Thus contributions are especially welcome on:
A. Responsibilities of business, political, and civic organizations
B. Responsibilities of active citizenship
C. Grounds of such responsibilities in the ethics of human development
D. Grounds of such responsibilities in theories of global justice
For elaboration of conference themes, see www.development-ethics.org
Proposals (including an abstract of 500 words, author's name, affiliation, contact information, and a biography of under 100 words) should be sent by June 1 to eticadesarrollo@uv.es.