Peter Lindsay
Biographic Data
| ID | 3626829 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Lindsay |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Lindsay |
| SIGNATURE | LINDSAY P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgia State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
How Advocacy Messages Influence Support for “Ban the Box” in College Admissions
Objectives This paper examines public attitudes toward the “Ban the Box” policy in college admissions in Georgia. It investigates how exposure to framed messages affects support for or opposition to the policy, focusing on its potential impact on campus safety and overall effects. Methods The data are from independent survey experiments conducted on two samples: undergraduate students at a USG institution ( n = 587) and adult residents in Georgia…
Why outcomes matter
A significant strain of libertarian thinking is hostile to the idea that distributions of wealth and/or income (economic outcomes) can be judged according to antecedently determined normative standards. The general conceptual argument can be seen in the works of F. A. Hayek and Robert Nozick, both of whom argued that when governments step in to adjust outcomes, they coercively and intentionally distort the terms on which individuals make their in…
Re-envisioning property
Polanyi, Hayek, and the Impossibility of Libertarian Ideal Theory
In 1944, two seminal works of political and social theory appeared: F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Both works focused on society’s spontaneous resistance to the “marketization” of life. Yet, the authors arrived at opposite normative conclusions. This article attributes the normative distance to a methodological clash over the role and limits of normative theorizing in the concrete and sometimes uncoo…
Ownership by Agreement
This article proposes a way of looking at ownership in which the central conceptual feature is the agreement that brings ownership into existence. On this understanding, ownership is a social fact, and as such derives its legitimacy from the extent to which people living under it give it their uncoerced consent. While any particular system's substantive features can certainly be judged according to independent moral considerations, these consider…
Freedom to Harm
The central claim of this book is that between 1975 and 2005 three broad assaults on the nation's regulatory infrastructure substantially weakened the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Public Interest Era. A secondary claim is that these assaults were driven by laissez-faire ideologues working from within various think tanks, the media, and, eventually, the halls of government. The first claim is impossible to dispute, and Tho…
Possessive Individualism at 50
I went to the University of Toronto in the fall of 1983 to pursue a Master's Degree in what was then called Political Economy. I chose Toronto largely because C.B. Macpherson taught there. Or so I thought. In those pre-internet days, news traveled slowly, and while the brochure I had received in the mail clearly listed him as a member of the faculty, I discovered when I arrived that he had in fact retired.As it happens, his physical absence hardl…
Can we own the past? Cultural artifacts as public goods
This paper examines a concrete political controversy in order to shed light on a broad philosophical issue. The controversy is with regard to who owns cultural antiquities – the nations (often in the developing world) on whose soil they originated, or the museums of developed nations that have, through a variety of means, come into possession of them. Despite their opposing views, both sides accept the claim that ownership can be derived from pri…
Abstract Teaching for a Concrete World
This article argues that instructors should introduce students to abstract concepts only after they have provided concrete illustrations of them. The advantages of working from the concrete to the abstract are twofold: (1) students have an easier time conceptualizing abstractions from within a particular context, and (2) such a context provides them with a greater motivation to do so. In an effort to mirror the pedagogical approach I defend, I be…
Are the judgments of conscience unreasonable
This paper examines the tensions in classical liberal theory – particularly that of Locke and Kant – between reason and conscience, and in contemporary liberal theory between the demands of reasonableness and the dictates of conscience. We intend to show that the relationship between reasonableness and conscience is both unstable and necessary; on occasions there seems to exist a moral obligation to provide public reasons for our conduct and at o…
Norms of Liberty
Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics , Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, pp. xviii, 358. As the sub-title here suggests, Rasmussen and Den Uyl seek to defend a liberalism that does not shy away from deep moral commitments. Instead they seek one with a “robust moral framework,” one that rejects “the claim that ... liberalism is necessarily conn…
Exposing the Invisible Hand
In academic circles, laissez-faire is perceived as a largely discredited idea. Yet an element of the argument—that only unencumbered markets provide societies with a truly neutral means of allocating resources—has, despite years of critique, remained intact. I argue (a) that this element is conceptually false, (b) that it is so for reasons previous critiques have overlooked, and (c) that this oversight explains why laissez-faire, in spite of its …
Markets in Historical Contexts
Markets in Historical Contexts: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World. Edited by Mark Bevir and Frank Trentmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 268p. $70.00. Since the fall of the Soviet Bloc regimes, it has become accepted wisdom that the market system has triumphed—that relying on the free, independent exchange between economic actors is a far superior way of allocating resources than attempting to “plan” from above. At a general…
Lincoln on Secession
Objective Assessment of Vascular Disease Risk in Prospective Adoptive Parents
The ‘disembodied self’ in political theory
The communitarian critique of liberal agency is reminiscent of two earlier critiques: C. B. Macpherson’s theory of possessive individualism and Marx’s theory of alienation. As with the communitarian critique, Macpherson and Marx saw the liberal individual as being in some way ‘disembodied’. Where they differed from communitarians was in the attention they paid to the actual social relations that gave rise to such an image. The comparison is thus …
Books in Review
Reconstructing Political Pluralism. Avigail Eisenberg
Social Gospel and the Young Boy Problem 1895-1925
Can we own the past? Cultural artifacts as public goods
This paper examines a concrete political controversy in order to shed light on a broad philosophical issue. The controversy is with regard to who owns cultural antiquities – the nations (often in the developing world) on whose soil they originated, or the museums of developed nations that have, through a variety of means, come into possession of them. Despite their opposing views, both sides accept the claim that ownership can be derived from pri…
The ‘disembodied self’ in political theory
The communitarian critique of liberal agency is reminiscent of two earlier critiques: C. B. Macpherson’s theory of possessive individualism and Marx’s theory of alienation. As with the communitarian critique, Macpherson and Marx saw the liberal individual as being in some way ‘disembodied’. Where they differed from communitarians was in the attention they paid to the actual social relations that gave rise to such an image. The comparison is thus …
Re-envisioning property
Polanyi, Hayek, and the Impossibility of Libertarian Ideal Theory
In 1944, two seminal works of political and social theory appeared: F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Both works focused on society’s spontaneous resistance to the “marketization” of life. Yet, the authors arrived at opposite normative conclusions. This article attributes the normative distance to a methodological clash over the role and limits of normative theorizing in the concrete and sometimes uncoo…
Ownership by Agreement
This article proposes a way of looking at ownership in which the central conceptual feature is the agreement that brings ownership into existence. On this understanding, ownership is a social fact, and as such derives its legitimacy from the extent to which people living under it give it their uncoerced consent. While any particular system's substantive features can certainly be judged according to independent moral considerations, these consider…
Abstract Teaching for a Concrete World
This article argues that instructors should introduce students to abstract concepts only after they have provided concrete illustrations of them. The advantages of working from the concrete to the abstract are twofold: (1) students have an easier time conceptualizing abstractions from within a particular context, and (2) such a context provides them with a greater motivation to do so. In an effort to mirror the pedagogical approach I defend, I be…
Exposing the Invisible Hand
In academic circles, laissez-faire is perceived as a largely discredited idea. Yet an element of the argument—that only unencumbered markets provide societies with a truly neutral means of allocating resources—has, despite years of critique, remained intact. I argue (a) that this element is conceptually false, (b) that it is so for reasons previous critiques have overlooked, and (c) that this oversight explains why laissez-faire, in spite of its …
Markets in Historical Contexts
Markets in Historical Contexts: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World. Edited by Mark Bevir and Frank Trentmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 268p. $70.00. Since the fall of the Soviet Bloc regimes, it has become accepted wisdom that the market system has triumphed—that relying on the free, independent exchange between economic actors is a far superior way of allocating resources than attempting to “plan” from above. At a general…
Social Gospel and the Young Boy Problem 1895-1925
Reconstructing Political Pluralism. Avigail Eisenberg
Books in Review
Objective Assessment of Vascular Disease Risk in Prospective Adoptive Parents
The ‘disembodied self’ in political theory
The communitarian critique of liberal agency is reminiscent of two earlier critiques: C. B. Macpherson’s theory of possessive individualism and Marx’s theory of alienation. As with the communitarian critique, Macpherson and Marx saw the liberal individual as being in some way ‘disembodied’. Where they differed from communitarians was in the attention they paid to the actual social relations that gave rise to such an image. The comparison is thus …
Lincoln on Secession
Exposing the Invisible Hand
In academic circles, laissez-faire is perceived as a largely discredited idea. Yet an element of the argument—that only unencumbered markets provide societies with a truly neutral means of allocating resources—has, despite years of critique, remained intact. I argue (a) that this element is conceptually false, (b) that it is so for reasons previous critiques have overlooked, and (c) that this oversight explains why laissez-faire, in spite of its …
Markets in Historical Contexts
Markets in Historical Contexts: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World. Edited by Mark Bevir and Frank Trentmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 268p. $70.00. Since the fall of the Soviet Bloc regimes, it has become accepted wisdom that the market system has triumphed—that relying on the free, independent exchange between economic actors is a far superior way of allocating resources than attempting to “plan” from above. At a general…
Norms of Liberty
Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics , Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, pp. xviii, 358. As the sub-title here suggests, Rasmussen and Den Uyl seek to defend a liberalism that does not shy away from deep moral commitments. Instead they seek one with a “robust moral framework,” one that rejects “the claim that ... liberalism is necessarily conn…
Are the judgments of conscience unreasonable
This paper examines the tensions in classical liberal theory – particularly that of Locke and Kant – between reason and conscience, and in contemporary liberal theory between the demands of reasonableness and the dictates of conscience. We intend to show that the relationship between reasonableness and conscience is both unstable and necessary; on occasions there seems to exist a moral obligation to provide public reasons for our conduct and at o…
Can we own the past? Cultural artifacts as public goods
This paper examines a concrete political controversy in order to shed light on a broad philosophical issue. The controversy is with regard to who owns cultural antiquities – the nations (often in the developing world) on whose soil they originated, or the museums of developed nations that have, through a variety of means, come into possession of them. Despite their opposing views, both sides accept the claim that ownership can be derived from pri…
Abstract Teaching for a Concrete World
This article argues that instructors should introduce students to abstract concepts only after they have provided concrete illustrations of them. The advantages of working from the concrete to the abstract are twofold: (1) students have an easier time conceptualizing abstractions from within a particular context, and (2) such a context provides them with a greater motivation to do so. In an effort to mirror the pedagogical approach I defend, I be…
Possessive Individualism at 50
I went to the University of Toronto in the fall of 1983 to pursue a Master's Degree in what was then called Political Economy. I chose Toronto largely because C.B. Macpherson taught there. Or so I thought. In those pre-internet days, news traveled slowly, and while the brochure I had received in the mail clearly listed him as a member of the faculty, I discovered when I arrived that he had in fact retired.As it happens, his physical absence hardl…
Freedom to Harm
The central claim of this book is that between 1975 and 2005 three broad assaults on the nation's regulatory infrastructure substantially weakened the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Public Interest Era. A secondary claim is that these assaults were driven by laissez-faire ideologues working from within various think tanks, the media, and, eventually, the halls of government. The first claim is impossible to dispute, and Tho…
Polanyi, Hayek, and the Impossibility of Libertarian Ideal Theory
In 1944, two seminal works of political and social theory appeared: F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Both works focused on society’s spontaneous resistance to the “marketization” of life. Yet, the authors arrived at opposite normative conclusions. This article attributes the normative distance to a methodological clash over the role and limits of normative theorizing in the concrete and sometimes uncoo…
Ownership by Agreement
This article proposes a way of looking at ownership in which the central conceptual feature is the agreement that brings ownership into existence. On this understanding, ownership is a social fact, and as such derives its legitimacy from the extent to which people living under it give it their uncoerced consent. While any particular system's substantive features can certainly be judged according to independent moral considerations, these consider…
Why outcomes matter
A significant strain of libertarian thinking is hostile to the idea that distributions of wealth and/or income (economic outcomes) can be judged according to antecedently determined normative standards. The general conceptual argument can be seen in the works of F. A. Hayek and Robert Nozick, both of whom argued that when governments step in to adjust outcomes, they coercively and intentionally distort the terms on which individuals make their in…
Re-envisioning property
How Advocacy Messages Influence Support for “Ban the Box” in College Admissions
Objectives This paper examines public attitudes toward the “Ban the Box” policy in college admissions in Georgia. It investigates how exposure to framed messages affects support for or opposition to the policy, focusing on its potential impact on campus safety and overall effects. Methods The data are from independent survey experiments conducted on two samples: undergraduate students at a USG institution ( n = 587) and adult residents in Georgia…
Political science (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Politics (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Law and economics (9 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (7 works)