Here's Hoping...

I've just submitted my paper on David Miller's theory of rights to The Philosophical Quarterly. I choose Phil Quarterly on the advice of my supervisors who both agreed that it would be a good place to send it to, given the stature of the journal and their average response times. Given that this is the first time I've submitted a paper I'm finding the whole process rather intimidating. Still, I think it's the strongest paper I've ever written, and given that it is on a timely topic and is tightly focused so I'm tentatively hopeful. This hope is kept firmly in check however with the knowledge that Phil Quarterly is a very good journal and that I would be extremely lucky to be successful. I'm hoping for a fairly quick response and for some helpful reviewer comments even if (when?) it does get rejected. That way I can modify the paper and try again elsewhere.

CONFERENCE: Justice and Borders

This sounds like a very interesting day...

JUSTICE AND BORDERS
A one-day political theory conference hosted by University College Dublin on May 2, 2008 at the Royal Irish Academy, Dawson Street, Dublin

Speakers
Elizabeth Ashford (St. Andrews)
Simon Caney (Oxford)
David Miller (Oxford)
Hillel Steiner (Manchester)

The conference is organized by the UCD School of Politics and International Relations in collaboration with the School of Philosophyand the School of Social Justice. We gratefully acknowledge UCD Seed Funding support for this conference.
If you are interested in attending the conference, please contact Adina.Preda@ucd.ie. There is no conference fee but places are limited so please book by March 31st.

Journal Submission

I've had some really encouraging feedback about my paper on Miller's theory of rights for the ALSP conference, and my supervisor thinks it would be a good candidate for publication. Apart from the task of getting it up to scratch for submission, I've also got to decide where to submit it to. This, it seems, is an important decision, for several reasons.
The done thing is to only submit to one journal at a time, and journals can take up to a year to come back to you, so it's important not to aim too high and completely wreck your chances. However, getting accepted to a quality journal will enhance your CV no end, so it is worthwhile being a bit ambitious.
There is also the issue of which type of journal to submit to - a political theory journal or a more traditional philosophy journal. I've been advised that a philosophy journal would be a better idea because politics departments (in the UK at least) will regard that highly, whereas the reverse is not so true - philosophy departments might consider political theory publications less impressive. This accords with my general impression of UK departments, but given that I'm currently in a philosophy department perhaps that's not so suprising?
My initial impression is that the Journal of Applied Philosophy might me a good choice, although they have recently published a paper specifically on David Miller. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad sign. The Journal of Moral Philosophy is also a possibility.

ALSP paper

I sent my paper for the ALSP conference to the organisers on Friday. For anyone else who is interested I've made it available on Google Docs here.

CFP: 6th Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy

This CFP caught my eye out of the steady stream from Philos-L...

6th Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy
16th and 17th September 2008
Call for Papers

On the 16th and 17th of September 2008, the Human Development, Capability and Poverty International Research Centre at the Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia (Italy), will host the sixth edition of the Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy. This two-day conference is meant to offer graduate students an opportunity to present papers, get helpful feedback in a friendly atmosphere, and exchange ideas both with peers andwith leading academics in the field of political philosophy. In addition to parallel sessions devoted to students' presentations, there will also be two plenary sessions. Plenary speakers in past editions have been, Hillel Steiner, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Peter Jones, Gianfrancesco Zanetti, Jonathan Wolff, Michele Nicoletti, Philippe Van Parijs, Sebastiano Maffettone, Giovanni Giorgini, and Andrew Williams.

This year's keynote speakers will be:
David Miller (University of Oxford)
Alessandro Ferrara (Universita' di Roma, Tor Vergata)

Graduate students interested in giving papers should send their contributions (max 2500/3000 words in English) accompanied by a short abstract (max 300 words in English), by Sunday 25th May 2008. Papers may focus on any area within political philosophy, and presentations should take no longer than twenty minutes to allow at least another twenty minutes of discussion. Please note that the 25th of May is also the deadline for registration for anyone who wishes to attend the conference without presenting a paper. Conference registration is free of charge. Paper givers will be offered accommodation in local university colleges. Accommodation fees and details will be arranged individually. Anyone who wishes to attend the conference without presenting a paper can write to check availability. Details about meal arrangements and conference programme to follow.

Please address all correspondence (including paper submissions and additional inquiries) to the conference email address: graduate.conference@iuss.unipv.it Updated information will shortly be available on the conference website: www.iusspavia.it/hdcp

Graduate Seminar 27th Feb

Yesterday I gave a draft of my paper on Miller for the ALSP conference at the department's graduate research seminar. I will be posting the paper here tomorrow when I've sent it to the conference organisers.

Generally I think the response to the paper was good, and there were several helpful questions and comments. The main point of contention seemed to be my argument that Miller's use of needs to ground his theory of basic rights in National Responsibility and Global Justice leaves them lacking objectivity, given his arguments in Principles of Social Justice (PSJ). Many people had the same thought - why can't Miller just have objective basic human rights at the global level as well as contextually specific needs based justice within solidaristic communities? I wanted to show that his contextual arguments in PSJ make this difficult - if the concept of needs has no content without a community-defined conception of harm, then how can needs ground basic rights without there being such a community at the global level? If Miller is committed to such a community, if he holds to the view that needs have no content without a community-defined concept of harm, then it seems to me that his basic rights are contingent on that community. Basic rights as I understand them can't be contingent in this way - mainly because of the work we want to do with them.

There were also a few questions about what exactly the difference was between a global 'solidaristic community' and humanity as such. The concern was that I was placing too much weight on there being something importantly different between the two. I think there is an important difference, because the solidaristic community that Miller describes is a type of relationship between persons, whereas humanity as such is just the set of all persons - there might not be any relationships between them at all. If there was a solidarisitc community that encompassed all persons then the rights it would support would be universal, but this is contingent on the membership of the community encompassing everyone - and it might not be the case that it did so.

Overall it was a helpful discussion in that it flagged up the areas which are likely to attract the most criticism, and which need more work.

Graduate Research Seminar

I'll be speaking at our department's graduate research seminar on Wednesday 27th Feb. I'm going to present one of the conference papers that I am working on, although I'm not sure yet which one to choose. The paper on Miller is probably more accessible to a general audience, but I'm not sure if it will be done in time.

ALSP 08 Abstract

The abstract for my paper for ALSP is reproduced below:

In recent work (National Responsibility and Global Justice 2007) David Miller has proposed a system of global basic rights, argued for via a humanitarian strategy, focusing on basic human needs. His position however remains non-cosmopolitan; he remains committed to strong national responsibility and social (rather than global) justice. His theory of social justice (Principles of Social Justice 1999) is pluralistic; he argues that there are three different principles of justice which apply within three different modes of relationship. One of these is the principle of need, which applies within solidaristic communities. Miller argues that need as a principle of justice is only feasible within such communities because they provide the necessary practical conception of need. This paper will explore the relationship between Miller's views in these two books. I will suggest that Miller's use of needs to underpin his system of basic rights might indicate that he is in some way committed to there being a global solidaristic community. If this were the case then it would provide ammunition for cosmopolitanism. I will suggest a way of reply for Miller, which will utilise his distinction between basic needs and societal needs to show how he might deny the existence of a global solidaristic community.