Jacob Barrett
Biographic Data
| ID | 3873544 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jacob Barrett |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jacob |
| FAMILY NAME | Barrett |
| SIGNATURE | BARRETT J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7342-4213 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
In defense of moderation
A decision theory is fanatical if it says that, for any sure thing of getting some finite amount of value, it would be better to almost certainly get nothing while having some tiny probability (no matter how small) of getting sufficiently more finite value. Fanaticism is extremely counterintuitive; common sense requires a more moderate view. However, a recent slew of arguments purport to vindicate it, claiming that moderate alternatives to fanati…
Philanthropy for the Disenfranchised
Philanthropy has an uneasy relationship with democracy. It distributes decision‐making power plutocratically, in proportion to wealth. It allows unelected, unaccountable, and often untrustworthy individuals to shape social outcomes. And it does so in domains where democracy should be authoritative. Yet, at the same time, philanthropy does much good, and hardly anyone would claim we should eliminate it altogether. So how can we make philanthropy c…
A Simple Solution to the Scope Problem
According to the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare, something is good for me to the extent that I desire it. This theory faces the “scope problem”: many of the things I desire, intuitively, lie beyond the scope of my welfare. Here, I argue that a simple solution to this problem is available. First, I suggest that it is a general feature of desires that they can differ not only in their objects but also in their “targets,” or for the sake of w…
Social beneficence
A background assumption in much contemporary political philosophy is that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, taking priority over other values such as beneficence. This assumption is typically treated as a methodological starting point, rather than as following from any particular moral or political theory. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. To frame my discussion, I argue, first, that justice does not in principle overr…
Decelerating Digital Archives
The Download is where we highlight the work scholars are doing with and around digital technology. In this issue, Ph.D. student Jacob Barrett (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), discusses the benefits and complications that arise when using computational text analysis as a research tool within the social sciences and humanities. Here he focuses specifically on the marginalization of minority communities in digital humanities data and o…
Agents of Change
Allowing Belief
Following the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 where a protest led to the later-termed armed insurrection, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) was removed from her committee assignments for the role she played and her beliefs in QAnon. Greene’s passive language in her apology about being “allowed to believe things that weren’t true” landed, for her critics, as a disingenuous attempt to absolve herself of any blame. From…
Ethical Veganism and Free Riding
The animal agriculture industry causes animals a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. Many ethical vegans argue that we therefore have an obligation to abstain from animal products in order to reduce this suffering. But this argument faces a challenge: thanks to the size and structure of the animal agriculture industry, any individual’s dietary choices are overwhelmingly unlikely to make a difference. In this paper, we criticize common replie…
Sam Gill, The Proper Study of Religion
Has the academic study of religion come of age' (p.6)?Sam Gill poses this important question in his exciting and reflective book, The Proper Study of Religion: Building on Jonathan Z. Smith.Using Smith and work from throughout his life, Gill shows that the question above cannot be answered with a simple 'yes' and turns to his own creative engagement with Smith's work as an avenue to find possible solutions for the field becoming 'proper'.To Gill,…
Brian Carwana – A Professor to the Public
“The Profession” profiles scholars with a background in Religious Studies who have employed their training in compelling ways in, around, and outside of the academy. Brian Carwana works as the Executive Director of the Encounter World Religions Centre in Toronto, Canada. From working in venture capital, to studying to be a history teacher, to ultimately earning a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto, Carwana’s story shows how a…
Ideology Critique and Game Theory
Ideology critics believe that many bad social practices persist because of ideology, and that critiquing ideology is an effective way to promote social reform. Skeptics draw on game theory to argue that the persistence of such practices is better explained by collective action problems, and that ideology critique is causally inefficacious. In this paper, I reconcile these camps. I show that while game theory can help us identify contexts where id…
Deviating from the ideal
Ideal theorists aim to describe the ideally just society. Problem solvers aim to identify concrete changes to actual societies that would make them more just. The relation between these two sorts of theorizing is highly contested. According to the benchmark view, ideal theory is prior to problem solving because a conception of the ideally just society serves as an indispensable benchmark for evaluating societies in terms of how far they deviate f…
Leading Works in Religion and Law
“The Experiment” presents scholars of religion with an opportunity to draw upon their training to reflect upon a contemporary issue. Editorial assistant Jacob Barrett engages with a recent edited volume from Routledge titled Leading Works in Law and Religion that, while focusing on the identity of the subfield of law and religion within the discipline of legal studies in the United Kingdom and Ireland, provides many sites for comparison with the …
Critical Theory in World Religions
The World Religions Paradigm (WRP) remains popular in classrooms despite its embedded problems that scholars have recognized for decades. The primary ways of responding to those problems have been either to continue teaching the WRP out of convenience or to reject it, removing World Religions courses from a curriculum completely. Using Jonathan Z. Smith’s six rules on teaching an undergraduate religion course from his essay “Approaching the Colle…
Subjectivism and Degrees of Well-Being
In previous work, I have argued that subjectivists about well-being must turn from a preference-satisfaction to a desire-satisfaction theory of well-being in order to avoid the conceptual problem of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. In a recent paper, Van der Deijl and Brouwer agree, but object that no version of the desire-satisfaction theory can provide a plausible account of how an individual's degree of well-being depends on the satisf…
Is Maximin egalitarian
Social Reform in a Complex World
Our world is complex—it is composed of many interacting parts—and this complexity poses a serious difficulty for theorists of social reform. On the one hand, we cannot merely work out ways of ameliorating immediate problems of injustice, because the solutions we generate may interact to set back the achievement of overall long-term justice. On the other, we cannot supplement such problem solving with theorizing about how to make progress towards …
Efficient Inequalities
Interpersonal comparisons with preferences and desires
Most moral and political theories require us to make interpersonal comparisons of welfare. This poses a challenge to the popular view that welfare consists in the satisfaction of preferences or desires, because interpersonal comparisons of preference or desire satisfaction are widely thought to be conceptually problematic, and purported solutions to this problem to lead to a hopeless subjectivism about these comparisons. In this article, I argue …
Interpersonal comparisons with preferences and desires
Most moral and political theories require us to make interpersonal comparisons of welfare. This poses a challenge to the popular view that welfare consists in the satisfaction of preferences or desires, because interpersonal comparisons of preference or desire satisfaction are widely thought to be conceptually problematic, and purported solutions to this problem to lead to a hopeless subjectivism about these comparisons. In this article, I argue …
Deviating from the ideal
Ideal theorists aim to describe the ideally just society. Problem solvers aim to identify concrete changes to actual societies that would make them more just. The relation between these two sorts of theorizing is highly contested. According to the benchmark view, ideal theory is prior to problem solving because a conception of the ideally just society serves as an indispensable benchmark for evaluating societies in terms of how far they deviate f…
Sam Gill, The Proper Study of Religion
Has the academic study of religion come of age' (p.6)?Sam Gill poses this important question in his exciting and reflective book, The Proper Study of Religion: Building on Jonathan Z. Smith.Using Smith and work from throughout his life, Gill shows that the question above cannot be answered with a simple 'yes' and turns to his own creative engagement with Smith's work as an avenue to find possible solutions for the field becoming 'proper'.To Gill,…
Is Maximin egalitarian
Social Reform in a Complex World
Our world is complex—it is composed of many interacting parts—and this complexity poses a serious difficulty for theorists of social reform. On the one hand, we cannot merely work out ways of ameliorating immediate problems of injustice, because the solutions we generate may interact to set back the achievement of overall long-term justice. On the other, we cannot supplement such problem solving with theorizing about how to make progress towards …
Efficient Inequalities
Interpersonal comparisons with preferences and desires
Most moral and political theories require us to make interpersonal comparisons of welfare. This poses a challenge to the popular view that welfare consists in the satisfaction of preferences or desires, because interpersonal comparisons of preference or desire satisfaction are widely thought to be conceptually problematic, and purported solutions to this problem to lead to a hopeless subjectivism about these comparisons. In this article, I argue …
Is Maximin egalitarian
Leading Works in Religion and Law
“The Experiment” presents scholars of religion with an opportunity to draw upon their training to reflect upon a contemporary issue. Editorial assistant Jacob Barrett engages with a recent edited volume from Routledge titled Leading Works in Law and Religion that, while focusing on the identity of the subfield of law and religion within the discipline of legal studies in the United Kingdom and Ireland, provides many sites for comparison with the …
Critical Theory in World Religions
The World Religions Paradigm (WRP) remains popular in classrooms despite its embedded problems that scholars have recognized for decades. The primary ways of responding to those problems have been either to continue teaching the WRP out of convenience or to reject it, removing World Religions courses from a curriculum completely. Using Jonathan Z. Smith’s six rules on teaching an undergraduate religion course from his essay “Approaching the Colle…
Subjectivism and Degrees of Well-Being
In previous work, I have argued that subjectivists about well-being must turn from a preference-satisfaction to a desire-satisfaction theory of well-being in order to avoid the conceptual problem of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. In a recent paper, Van der Deijl and Brouwer agree, but object that no version of the desire-satisfaction theory can provide a plausible account of how an individual's degree of well-being depends on the satisf…
Brian Carwana – A Professor to the Public
“The Profession” profiles scholars with a background in Religious Studies who have employed their training in compelling ways in, around, and outside of the academy. Brian Carwana works as the Executive Director of the Encounter World Religions Centre in Toronto, Canada. From working in venture capital, to studying to be a history teacher, to ultimately earning a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto, Carwana’s story shows how a…
Ideology Critique and Game Theory
Ideology critics believe that many bad social practices persist because of ideology, and that critiquing ideology is an effective way to promote social reform. Skeptics draw on game theory to argue that the persistence of such practices is better explained by collective action problems, and that ideology critique is causally inefficacious. In this paper, I reconcile these camps. I show that while game theory can help us identify contexts where id…
Deviating from the ideal
Ideal theorists aim to describe the ideally just society. Problem solvers aim to identify concrete changes to actual societies that would make them more just. The relation between these two sorts of theorizing is highly contested. According to the benchmark view, ideal theory is prior to problem solving because a conception of the ideally just society serves as an indispensable benchmark for evaluating societies in terms of how far they deviate f…
Decelerating Digital Archives
The Download is where we highlight the work scholars are doing with and around digital technology. In this issue, Ph.D. student Jacob Barrett (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), discusses the benefits and complications that arise when using computational text analysis as a research tool within the social sciences and humanities. Here he focuses specifically on the marginalization of minority communities in digital humanities data and o…
Agents of Change
Allowing Belief
Following the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 where a protest led to the later-termed armed insurrection, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) was removed from her committee assignments for the role she played and her beliefs in QAnon. Greene’s passive language in her apology about being “allowed to believe things that weren’t true” landed, for her critics, as a disingenuous attempt to absolve herself of any blame. From…
Ethical Veganism and Free Riding
The animal agriculture industry causes animals a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. Many ethical vegans argue that we therefore have an obligation to abstain from animal products in order to reduce this suffering. But this argument faces a challenge: thanks to the size and structure of the animal agriculture industry, any individual’s dietary choices are overwhelmingly unlikely to make a difference. In this paper, we criticize common replie…
Sam Gill, The Proper Study of Religion
Has the academic study of religion come of age' (p.6)?Sam Gill poses this important question in his exciting and reflective book, The Proper Study of Religion: Building on Jonathan Z. Smith.Using Smith and work from throughout his life, Gill shows that the question above cannot be answered with a simple 'yes' and turns to his own creative engagement with Smith's work as an avenue to find possible solutions for the field becoming 'proper'.To Gill,…
A Simple Solution to the Scope Problem
According to the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare, something is good for me to the extent that I desire it. This theory faces the “scope problem”: many of the things I desire, intuitively, lie beyond the scope of my welfare. Here, I argue that a simple solution to this problem is available. First, I suggest that it is a general feature of desires that they can differ not only in their objects but also in their “targets,” or for the sake of w…
Social beneficence
A background assumption in much contemporary political philosophy is that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, taking priority over other values such as beneficence. This assumption is typically treated as a methodological starting point, rather than as following from any particular moral or political theory. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. To frame my discussion, I argue, first, that justice does not in principle overr…
In defense of moderation
A decision theory is fanatical if it says that, for any sure thing of getting some finite amount of value, it would be better to almost certainly get nothing while having some tiny probability (no matter how small) of getting sufficiently more finite value. Fanaticism is extremely counterintuitive; common sense requires a more moderate view. However, a recent slew of arguments purport to vindicate it, claiming that moderate alternatives to fanati…
Philanthropy for the Disenfranchised
Philanthropy has an uneasy relationship with democracy. It distributes decision‐making power plutocratically, in proportion to wealth. It allows unelected, unaccountable, and often untrustworthy individuals to shape social outcomes. And it does so in domains where democracy should be authoritative. Yet, at the same time, philanthropy does much good, and hardly anyone would claim we should eliminate it altogether. So how can we make philanthropy c…
Philosophy (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Psychology (4 works)