Michael Da Silva
Biographic Data
| ID | 3602105 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Da Silva |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Da Silva |
| SIGNATURE | DA SILVA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southampton |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7021-9847 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The epistemic condition on political authority
A claimed epistemic condition on legitimate authority appears in numerous academic debates. Yet the condition admits multiple specifications and is asked to serve numerous roles in each debate. Work in the democratic legitimacy and authority allocation debates in which the condition is most often invoked rarely intersects. This article argues that a plausible account of the epistemic condition should generalize across both debates. It then offers…
Subsidiarity as a Normative Political Concept: Contemporary and Historical Reflections
Subsidiarity is a principle holding that final decision-making authority (viz., the power not to have another entity substitute its own decisions, issue fines, etc.) should presumptively belong to the candidate authority claimant “closest” to the decision or those affected by or subject to that decision.1 Most definitions of subsidiarity include a proviso holding that its constitutive presumption only applies where a unit is capable of addressing…
Subsidiarity, States, and Intermediate Groups: Maintaining Subsidiarity's Distinct Contribution to Moral Philosophy
Subsidiarity typically refers to the presumption that issues should be addressed at the most “local” level capable of addressing them. The nature of the presumption, how to specify the “local” and the entities with valid claims, and how to interpret “capability” remain contested. Yet these basic features figure in most accounts of subsidiarity.1 Subsidiarity so-understood is asked to play numerous roles in numerous contexts.2 Yet dominant histori…
Itamar Mann, lifeboats and climate politics: An introduction
This introduction to the Agora outlines the issues raised by and arguments in Itamar Mann’s article, ‘From survival cannibalism to climate politics: Rethinking Regina vs Dudley and Stephens ’, and the four commentaries thereon
The Epistemic Case for Federalism: A Framework and Critical Analysis
Philosophers of federalism and political epistemologists address common issues and face similar burdens in establishing their claims. Yet federalism studies and political epistemology rarely intersect, leaving core concepts in each undeveloped and core questions unaddressed. This work demonstrates the value of treating them together. It synthesizes prior work in both fields to specify and evaluate leading epistemic arguments for decentralization …
A(nother) democratic case for federalism
This work offers a new democratic case for federalism, understood as a form of governance in which multiple entities in a country possess final decision-making authority (viz., can make decisions free from others substituting their decisions, issuing fines, etc.) over at least one subject (e.g., immigration, defense). It argues that leading solutions to the democratic boundary problem provide overlapping arguments for federalism. The underlying l…
Federalism as an institutional doctrine
Federalism is, minimally, a method of allocating final decision-making authority over subjects (e.g., crime, healthcare, and immigration) in a governance unit (e.g., country). Faced with questions of the form “who can decide what when,” federal bodies, like the United States., Canada, Australia, and Germany, provide at least two entities (federal governments, provinces, cities, etc.) with final decision-making “powers” over at least one subject. …
In Defense of Claim Rights
The claim-right model of rights contends that Hohfeldian "claim-rights" defined in terms of a constitutive correlativity with directed duties mark a distinctive phenomenon encompassing paradigmatic moral rights. Recent criticisms suggest this traditional model faces a dilemma: any plausible specification (1) is extensionally or explanatorily inadequate or (2) cannot serve a distinct normative purpose intended by those invoking rights. This work d…
From moral rights to legal rights? Lessons from healthcare contexts
Many believe the existence of a moral right to some good should lead to recognition of a corresponding legal right to that good. If, for instance, there is a moral right to healthcare, it is natural to believe countries should recognize a legal right to healthcare. This article demonstrates that justifying legal rights to healthcare is more difficult than many assume. The existence of a moral right is insufficient to justify recognition of a corr…
Morality and Access to Essential Medicines: Pairing the Theoretical and Practical
This is the guest editors' introduction for a special issue of the journal
Comportamentos humanos habituais em crianças e adolescentes: Uma revisão narrativa
Introdução: A atividade física (AF), o comportamento sedentário (CS) e o sono são comportamentos dependentes que interagem ao longo das 24 horas e acionam diferentes processos fisiológicos que afetam a saúde. Objetivo: Apresentar os comportamentos que compõe às 24 horas, bem como suas características, benefícios, instrumentos/forma de mensuração e as recomendações de saúde de cada comportamento para crianças e adolescentes. Métodos: Realizou-se u…
When to Fill Responsibility Gaps: A Proposal
1 Crash synthesizes and builds on the sinking of the Herald discussed by Pettit 2007 and the Mount Erebus aircraft crash discussed by Collins 2019 in the related collective duty gap context. 2 I use a tanker here to parallel Crash.Wildlife and food issues commonly follow spills, like the Exxon Valdez and non-tanker-based Deepwater Horizon cases.So too do debates as to who, if anyone, is responsible for a spill.Himmelreich 2019:734 discusses Exxon…
A Millian Case against Epistemic Arguments for Federalism
John Stuart Mill is central to parallel debates in mainstream contemporary political epistemology and philosophy of federalism concerning the epistemic dimension(s) of legitimate authority. Many scholars invoke Mill to support epistemic arguments for democratic decision-making and decentralized federalism as a means of conferring democratic legitimacy. This article argues that Millian considerations instead provide reason to reject common epistem…
Responsibility Gaps
Responsibility gaps arise when there is a mismatch between the amount of responsibility that can be attributed to any person or collection of persons on leading accounts of moral responsibility and the amount that robust intuitions suggest should be allocated to someone in a case. Claimed responsibility gaps arise in numerous philosophical debates, including those concerning government, corporate, and other forms of group agency and new technolog…
Explainability, Public Reason, and Medical Artificial Intelligence
The contention that medical artificial intelligence (AI) should be ‘explainable’ is widespread in contemporary philosophy and in legal and best practice documents. Yet critics argue that ‘explainability’ is not a stable concept; non-explainable AI is often more accurate; mechanisms intended to improve explainability do not improve understanding and introduce new epistemic concerns; and explainability requirements are ad hoc where human medical de…
Subsidiarity and the Allocation of Governmental Powers
Every country must allocate final decision-making authority over different issues/subjects within its boundaries. Historically, many scholars working on this topic implicitly assumed that identifying the features providing entities with justified claims for authority and the entities possessing those features would also identify which groups should have which powers (or vice versa). However, many candidate allocative principles select multiple en…
Public Health, Internal Borders, and the Ends of Federalism
Questions concerning border closures during pandemics often focus on international borders or rights-based considerations. Closures of internal borders in federal countries, such as Canada, raise independent concerns regarding who can close internal borders when. Those questions are not exhausted by rights-based considerations and cannot be resolved using brute empirical measures. They instead implicate the nature and ends of federalism. This tex…
The Federal Contract: A Constitutional Theory of Federalism , by Stephen Tierney
A Constitutional Theory of Federalism combines insights from legal and political philosophy and comparative law but explicitly distinguishes itself by its application of Tierney's conception of constitutional theory.It should interest scholars in each of these fields.This review briefly summarizes Tierney's major analytical moves and comments on just a few of his important arguments.Tierney's central claim is that federalism is best understood by…
Autonomous Artificial Intelligence and Liability: A Comment on List
Legal doctrine as human rights ‘practice’
‘Practical’ approaches to human rights hold that analysis of legal human rights must attend to the practice(s) of international human rights law and that the nature and justification of international human rights is best determined by attending to their role(s) in international human rights law’s system of normative practices, not analogous moral rights outside it. These core tenets plausibly explain the apparent normativity of international huma…
Nations as justified substate authorities
Many classic and contemporary works on the moral status of ‘nations’ examine whether nations have unique features that require providing them with a distinctive status. Yet identifying features that can ground distinct national rights to secession or co‐national partiality, for two prominent examples, remains exceedingly difficult. Many accordingly question whether there is anything morally ‘special’ about nations. This work seeks to address this…
Healthcare federalism in an age of nation-to-nation interaction
National Journal of Constitutional Law 77 also highlight coordination issues and cite other sources seeking an increased federal role.My early research during the first wave of the pandemic
Federalism: Contemporary political philosophy issues
Federalism has important implications for basic philosophical concepts, including authority and distributive justice. Philosophers played key roles in the development of federalism as a(n at least purportedly) normative doctrine. However, federalism remains peripheral in contemporary political philosophy, leading to periodic calls for renewed scrutiny. This article identifies questions that any complete philosophical account of federalism should …
Teaching and Learning Guide for: Federalism: Contemporary political philosophy issues
The Pluralist Right to Health Care: A Framework and Case Study
Offering a new conception of the right to health care as a complex but morally justifiable and realistically achievable right, this book helps resolve persistent problems with the idea of health rights.
Federalism: Contemporary political philosophy issues
Federalism has important implications for basic philosophical concepts, including authority and distributive justice. Philosophers played key roles in the development of federalism as a(n at least purportedly) normative doctrine. However, federalism remains peripheral in contemporary political philosophy, leading to periodic calls for renewed scrutiny. This article identifies questions that any complete philosophical account of federalism should …
A(nother) democratic case for federalism
This work offers a new democratic case for federalism, understood as a form of governance in which multiple entities in a country possess final decision-making authority (viz., can make decisions free from others substituting their decisions, issuing fines, etc.) over at least one subject (e.g., immigration, defense). It argues that leading solutions to the democratic boundary problem provide overlapping arguments for federalism. The underlying l…
A Millian Case against Epistemic Arguments for Federalism
John Stuart Mill is central to parallel debates in mainstream contemporary political epistemology and philosophy of federalism concerning the epistemic dimension(s) of legitimate authority. Many scholars invoke Mill to support epistemic arguments for democratic decision-making and decentralized federalism as a means of conferring democratic legitimacy. This article argues that Millian considerations instead provide reason to reject common epistem…
Responsibility Gaps
Responsibility gaps arise when there is a mismatch between the amount of responsibility that can be attributed to any person or collection of persons on leading accounts of moral responsibility and the amount that robust intuitions suggest should be allocated to someone in a case. Claimed responsibility gaps arise in numerous philosophical debates, including those concerning government, corporate, and other forms of group agency and new technolog…
Nations as justified substate authorities
Many classic and contemporary works on the moral status of ‘nations’ examine whether nations have unique features that require providing them with a distinctive status. Yet identifying features that can ground distinct national rights to secession or co‐national partiality, for two prominent examples, remains exceedingly difficult. Many accordingly question whether there is anything morally ‘special’ about nations. This work seeks to address this…
Correlativity and the Case Against a Common Presumption About the Structure of Rights
The Pluralist Right to Health Care: A Framework and Case Study
Offering a new conception of the right to health care as a complex but morally justifiable and realistically achievable right, this book helps resolve persistent problems with the idea of health rights.
Nicole Hassoun: Global Health Impact: Extending Access to Essential Medicines, 2020
Covid-19 and Health-Related Authority Allocation Puzzles
COVID-19-related controversies concerning the allocation of scarce resources, travel restrictions, and physical distancing norms each raise a foundational question: How should authority, and thus responsibility, over healthcare and public health law and policy be allocated? Each controversy raises principles that support claims by traditional wielders of authority in “federal” countries, like federal and state governments, and less traditional en…
Individual and ‘national’ healthcare rights: Analysing the potential conflicts
Individual rights to healthcare (RTHCs) are increasingly common in law. Yet even plausible theoretical defences thereof raise a classic problem in the philosophy of rights: How do individual rights relate to ‘collective’ rights within the same domain? Collective rights are common in international law and in the domestic laws of states that recognize RTHCs. These collective rights often include health‐related components. There are at least prima f…
Health Rights: Individual. Collective. ‘National?’
The Traces Left Behind: On Appropriate Responses to Right Acts with Wrong Features
Fulfilling one’s all-things-considered duty sometimes requires violating pro tanto duties. According to W. D. Ross and Robert Nozick, the pro tanto-duty-violating, wrong-making features of acts in these cases can leave ‘traces’ of wrongfulness that require specific responses: feeling compunction for the wrongfulness and/or providing compensation to the negatively affected person. Failure to respond in the appropriate way to lingering wrong-making…
Autonomous Artificial Intelligence and Liability: A Comment on List
Legal doctrine as human rights ‘practice’
‘Practical’ approaches to human rights hold that analysis of legal human rights must attend to the practice(s) of international human rights law and that the nature and justification of international human rights is best determined by attending to their role(s) in international human rights law’s system of normative practices, not analogous moral rights outside it. These core tenets plausibly explain the apparent normativity of international huma…
Nations as justified substate authorities
Many classic and contemporary works on the moral status of ‘nations’ examine whether nations have unique features that require providing them with a distinctive status. Yet identifying features that can ground distinct national rights to secession or co‐national partiality, for two prominent examples, remains exceedingly difficult. Many accordingly question whether there is anything morally ‘special’ about nations. This work seeks to address this…
Healthcare federalism in an age of nation-to-nation interaction
National Journal of Constitutional Law 77 also highlight coordination issues and cite other sources seeking an increased federal role.My early research during the first wave of the pandemic
Federalism: Contemporary political philosophy issues
Federalism has important implications for basic philosophical concepts, including authority and distributive justice. Philosophers played key roles in the development of federalism as a(n at least purportedly) normative doctrine. However, federalism remains peripheral in contemporary political philosophy, leading to periodic calls for renewed scrutiny. This article identifies questions that any complete philosophical account of federalism should …
Teaching and Learning Guide for: Federalism: Contemporary political philosophy issues
Explainability, Public Reason, and Medical Artificial Intelligence
The contention that medical artificial intelligence (AI) should be ‘explainable’ is widespread in contemporary philosophy and in legal and best practice documents. Yet critics argue that ‘explainability’ is not a stable concept; non-explainable AI is often more accurate; mechanisms intended to improve explainability do not improve understanding and introduce new epistemic concerns; and explainability requirements are ad hoc where human medical de…
Subsidiarity and the Allocation of Governmental Powers
Every country must allocate final decision-making authority over different issues/subjects within its boundaries. Historically, many scholars working on this topic implicitly assumed that identifying the features providing entities with justified claims for authority and the entities possessing those features would also identify which groups should have which powers (or vice versa). However, many candidate allocative principles select multiple en…
Public Health, Internal Borders, and the Ends of Federalism
Questions concerning border closures during pandemics often focus on international borders or rights-based considerations. Closures of internal borders in federal countries, such as Canada, raise independent concerns regarding who can close internal borders when. Those questions are not exhausted by rights-based considerations and cannot be resolved using brute empirical measures. They instead implicate the nature and ends of federalism. This tex…
The Federal Contract: A Constitutional Theory of Federalism , by Stephen Tierney
A Constitutional Theory of Federalism combines insights from legal and political philosophy and comparative law but explicitly distinguishes itself by its application of Tierney's conception of constitutional theory.It should interest scholars in each of these fields.This review briefly summarizes Tierney's major analytical moves and comments on just a few of his important arguments.Tierney's central claim is that federalism is best understood by…
Federalism as an institutional doctrine
Federalism is, minimally, a method of allocating final decision-making authority over subjects (e.g., crime, healthcare, and immigration) in a governance unit (e.g., country). Faced with questions of the form “who can decide what when,” federal bodies, like the United States., Canada, Australia, and Germany, provide at least two entities (federal governments, provinces, cities, etc.) with final decision-making “powers” over at least one subject. …
In Defense of Claim Rights
The claim-right model of rights contends that Hohfeldian "claim-rights" defined in terms of a constitutive correlativity with directed duties mark a distinctive phenomenon encompassing paradigmatic moral rights. Recent criticisms suggest this traditional model faces a dilemma: any plausible specification (1) is extensionally or explanatorily inadequate or (2) cannot serve a distinct normative purpose intended by those invoking rights. This work d…
From moral rights to legal rights? Lessons from healthcare contexts
Many believe the existence of a moral right to some good should lead to recognition of a corresponding legal right to that good. If, for instance, there is a moral right to healthcare, it is natural to believe countries should recognize a legal right to healthcare. This article demonstrates that justifying legal rights to healthcare is more difficult than many assume. The existence of a moral right is insufficient to justify recognition of a corr…
Morality and Access to Essential Medicines: Pairing the Theoretical and Practical
This is the guest editors' introduction for a special issue of the journal
Comportamentos humanos habituais em crianças e adolescentes: Uma revisão narrativa
Introdução: A atividade física (AF), o comportamento sedentário (CS) e o sono são comportamentos dependentes que interagem ao longo das 24 horas e acionam diferentes processos fisiológicos que afetam a saúde. Objetivo: Apresentar os comportamentos que compõe às 24 horas, bem como suas características, benefícios, instrumentos/forma de mensuração e as recomendações de saúde de cada comportamento para crianças e adolescentes. Métodos: Realizou-se u…
When to Fill Responsibility Gaps: A Proposal
1 Crash synthesizes and builds on the sinking of the Herald discussed by Pettit 2007 and the Mount Erebus aircraft crash discussed by Collins 2019 in the related collective duty gap context. 2 I use a tanker here to parallel Crash.Wildlife and food issues commonly follow spills, like the Exxon Valdez and non-tanker-based Deepwater Horizon cases.So too do debates as to who, if anyone, is responsible for a spill.Himmelreich 2019:734 discusses Exxon…
A Millian Case against Epistemic Arguments for Federalism
John Stuart Mill is central to parallel debates in mainstream contemporary political epistemology and philosophy of federalism concerning the epistemic dimension(s) of legitimate authority. Many scholars invoke Mill to support epistemic arguments for democratic decision-making and decentralized federalism as a means of conferring democratic legitimacy. This article argues that Millian considerations instead provide reason to reject common epistem…
Responsibility Gaps
Responsibility gaps arise when there is a mismatch between the amount of responsibility that can be attributed to any person or collection of persons on leading accounts of moral responsibility and the amount that robust intuitions suggest should be allocated to someone in a case. Claimed responsibility gaps arise in numerous philosophical debates, including those concerning government, corporate, and other forms of group agency and new technolog…
Political science (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law and economics (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Federalism (9 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (9 works)