permissibility
Putting costs and benefits of ordeals together
Economics and Philosophy 37 Abstract This paper addresses how to think about the permissibility of introducing deadweight costs (so-called ‘ordeals’) on candidate recipients of goods in order to attain b
Laura Valentini: There Are No Natural Rights: Rights, Duties and Positive Norms
Laura Valentini, Associate Professor of Political Science at London School of Economics ABSTRACTMany contemporary philosophers—of a broadly deontological disposition—believe that there exist some pre-i. In this paper, I defend this unpopular view. I argue that all rights are grounded in —namely, norms constituted by the collective acceptance of gives “oughts”—, provided the norms’ content meets some independent standards of moral acceptability. This view, I suggest, does justice to the relational nature of rights, by explaining how it is that right-holders acquire the authority to demand certain actions (or omissions) from duty-bearers. Furthermore, the view does not divest human beings of fundamental moral protections. Even if, absent some rights-grounding positive norms, obligations cannot be to others, we still have (non-directed) placing constraints on how we may permissibly treat one Another.
