Utilitas Abstract According to positive egalitarianism, not only do relations of inequality have negative value, as negative egalitarians claim, but relations of equality also have positive value. The eg

Is it possible to study emotions using mathematical models? Frank Schweizer is one of the resesarchers who have tried and he finds for example that we are quite nice to each other online. He came to te

The importance of socio-economic background will become increasingly important for school success. But segregation in the school area is steadily growing and inequality is increasing, a development tha

The Paris Institute for Advanced Study and the 2100 Fondation in partnership with the Institute for Futures Studiesare launching the first Positive Future competition in order to encourage the elaboration

Adina Preda: Can there be positive human rights?

Research seminar with Adina Preda, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. Abstract This paper aims to establish that there can be human rights to socio-economic goods or services

Research seminar with Adina Preda, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin.AbstractThis paper aims to establish that there can be human rights to socio-economic goods or services, ; the worry is that positive rights cannot have correlative duties assignable to everyone in the world. I then clarify the notion of correlativity and raise doubts about this claim. The paper concludes that there is no conceptual reason why positive rights cannot be general although they would probably look different from the socio-economic rights currently enshrined in international legal documents; the paper does not, however, argue that there are such moral rights. 

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.

Utilitas, Volume 31, Issue 3, pp.213-230. doi.org/10.1017/S0953820818000341 Abstract In this article we distinguish two versions of the non-identity problem: one involving positive well-being and one inv

I: Intelligence, Vol. 84 AbstractRecent evidence suggests a positive association between fertility and cognitive ability among Swedish men. In this study we use data on 18 birth cohorts of Swedish men t

in Analysis, Volume 80, Issue 2 AbstractKurt Gödel’s version of the Ontological Proof derives rather than assumes the crucial (yet controversial) Possibility Claim, that is, the claim that it is possib