Giacomo Floris
Biographic Data
| ID | 4371287 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Giacomo Floris |
| GIVEN NAMES | Giacomo |
| FAMILY NAME | Floris |
| SIGNATURE | FLORIS G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0904-570X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
On Being Aesthetic Unequals
Aesthetic appearance is a powerful source of various forms of unjust social relations, such as demeaning stereotypes, discrimination, harassment, and social exclusion. Surprisingly, however, the issue of aesthetic injustice has been largely overlooked in the relational egalitarian literature. This article addresses this gap by examining aesthetic injustice in the context of homelessness. It argues that individuals experiencing homelessness are su…
What we owe to impaired agents
According to relational egalitarians, a just society is one where the state considers and treats persons as equals, and persons stand in relations of equality with one another (Anderson, 1999; Lippert-Rasmussen, 2018; O'Neill, 2008; Scheffler, 2003; Schemmel, 2021; Wolff, 1998). Relational egalitarians, however, have so far been mainly concerned with how fully competent adults must be considered and treated as equals, whereas they have said much …
Intergenerational moral inequality and the long-term future
According to longtermism, present persons should promote the value of the far future. While this view has so far been primarily discussed within a consequentialist normative framework, less has been said about what longtermism entails from a deontological perspective. This paper aims to address this shortcoming. I argue that, from a deontological standpoint, distant future people have a present moral status qua ‘expected persons’. Therefore, they…
Justice and Future Generations
What do we we owe to future persons if we are to build a society in which all people are treated as free and equal? Answering this question requires rethinking both theories of justice and theories of democracy. This is because while it seems plausible to hold that a just society should not privilege the interests of present persons alone, this intuition raises difficult questions. How can future people be represented in present decisions? Should…
Arbitrariness and the threshold for moral status
It is widely held that entities have moral status if they possess a status-conferring property to a sufficient degree. However, this means that for at least one degree to which an entity can possess the status-conferring property and that grounds moral status, there is some incrementally lower degree of possessing the property that does not ground moral status. Critics maintain that this renders any threshold for moral status arbitrary. In this p…
The Invisible Social Class
In this article, I develop a novel relational egalitarian theory of social exclusion that explains how society fails to treat socially excluded individuals – such as people experiencing homelessness, individuals with substance use disorders and mental illness and sex workers – as equals. I argue that society places and keeps excluded individuals at the very bottom of the social status hierarchy by treating them as socially invisible, or by render…
What Is the Point of Harm Reduction? A Relational Egalitarian Perspective
Harm reduction is one of the most controversial and widely discussed approaches in public health and social policy, addressing a broad range of pressing societal issues, including drug addiction, sex work, alcohol and tobacco use, and homelessness. Surprisingly, however, harm reduction has received very little philosophical scrutiny. In this article, I aim to fill this gap. First, I provide a systematic analysis of the core features and normative…
What Does It Mean to Be Moral Equals
This paper develops a novel theory of the meaning of moral equality. This theory has two original and significant implications: first, it shows—contra what is commonly held in the literature—that adults and children are not always each other’s equals; rather, the former are sometimes inferior and sometimes superior to the latter, depending on the interest at stake. Second, it reveals that human beings’ comparative moral status changes across time…
The Idea of Equality in Environmental Ethics
In recent decades, it has often been argued by environmental ethicists that human beings and the natural world ought to be considered as equals in some basic sense. The aim of this paper is to make sense of this view by examining what role, if any, the idea of equality ought to play in environmental ethics. Specifically, we have two aims: the first aim is to identify those environmental claims that are distinctively egalitarian. The second aim is…
Are Adults and Children One Another’s Moral Equals
Parental Love and Filial Equality
It is widely accepted that parents have a fundamental moral obligation to consider and treat their children as each other’s equals. Yet the question of what grounds the equality of status among children in the eyes of their parents has so far been largely neglected in the literature on the philosophy of childhood and the ethics of parenthood. This paper fills this gap by developing a novel theory of the basis of filial equality: it argues that pa…
Contingency, arbitrariness, and the basis of moral equality
Hardly anyone denies that (nearly) all human beings have equal moral status and therefore should be considered and treated as equals. Yet, if humans possess the property that confers moral status upon them to an unequal degree, how come they should be considered and treated as equals ? It has been argued that this is because the variations in the degree to which the status‐conferring property is held above a relevant threshold are contingencies t…
A pluralist account of the basis of moral status
Standard liberal theories of justice rest on the assumption that only those beings that hold the capacity for moral personality (CMP) have moral status and therefore are right-holders. As many pointed out, this has the disturbing implication of excluding a wide range of entities from the scope of justice. Call this the under-inclusiveness objection . This paper provides a response to the under-inclusiveness objection and illustrates its implicati…
On the Basis of Moral Equality
The principle of moral equality is one of the cornerstones of any liberal theory of justice. It is usually assumed that persons’ equal moral status should be grounded in the equal possession of a status-conferring property. Call this the property-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This approach, however, faces some well-known difficulties: in particular, it is difficult to see how the possession of a scalar property can account for pe…
Two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality
In his recent book, Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights, Andrea Sangiovanni argues that the principle of moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors insofar as this constitutes an act of social cruelty. In this short piece, I will raise two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality: first, Sangiovanni’s account seems to give rise to disturbi…
Arbitrariness and the threshold for moral status
It is widely held that entities have moral status if they possess a status-conferring property to a sufficient degree. However, this means that for at least one degree to which an entity can possess the status-conferring property and that grounds moral status, there is some incrementally lower degree of possessing the property that does not ground moral status. Critics maintain that this renders any threshold for moral status arbitrary. In this p…
The Invisible Social Class
In this article, I develop a novel relational egalitarian theory of social exclusion that explains how society fails to treat socially excluded individuals – such as people experiencing homelessness, individuals with substance use disorders and mental illness and sex workers – as equals. I argue that society places and keeps excluded individuals at the very bottom of the social status hierarchy by treating them as socially invisible, or by render…
On the Basis of Moral Equality
The principle of moral equality is one of the cornerstones of any liberal theory of justice. It is usually assumed that persons’ equal moral status should be grounded in the equal possession of a status-conferring property. Call this the property-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This approach, however, faces some well-known difficulties: in particular, it is difficult to see how the possession of a scalar property can account for pe…
Two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality
In his recent book, Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights, Andrea Sangiovanni argues that the principle of moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors insofar as this constitutes an act of social cruelty. In this short piece, I will raise two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality: first, Sangiovanni’s account seems to give rise to disturbi…
A pluralist account of the basis of moral status
Standard liberal theories of justice rest on the assumption that only those beings that hold the capacity for moral personality (CMP) have moral status and therefore are right-holders. As many pointed out, this has the disturbing implication of excluding a wide range of entities from the scope of justice. Call this the under-inclusiveness objection . This paper provides a response to the under-inclusiveness objection and illustrates its implicati…
Are Adults and Children One Another’s Moral Equals
Parental Love and Filial Equality
It is widely accepted that parents have a fundamental moral obligation to consider and treat their children as each other’s equals. Yet the question of what grounds the equality of status among children in the eyes of their parents has so far been largely neglected in the literature on the philosophy of childhood and the ethics of parenthood. This paper fills this gap by developing a novel theory of the basis of filial equality: it argues that pa…
Contingency, arbitrariness, and the basis of moral equality
Hardly anyone denies that (nearly) all human beings have equal moral status and therefore should be considered and treated as equals. Yet, if humans possess the property that confers moral status upon them to an unequal degree, how come they should be considered and treated as equals ? It has been argued that this is because the variations in the degree to which the status‐conferring property is held above a relevant threshold are contingencies t…
What Does It Mean to Be Moral Equals
This paper develops a novel theory of the meaning of moral equality. This theory has two original and significant implications: first, it shows—contra what is commonly held in the literature—that adults and children are not always each other’s equals; rather, the former are sometimes inferior and sometimes superior to the latter, depending on the interest at stake. Second, it reveals that human beings’ comparative moral status changes across time…
The Idea of Equality in Environmental Ethics
In recent decades, it has often been argued by environmental ethicists that human beings and the natural world ought to be considered as equals in some basic sense. The aim of this paper is to make sense of this view by examining what role, if any, the idea of equality ought to play in environmental ethics. Specifically, we have two aims: the first aim is to identify those environmental claims that are distinctively egalitarian. The second aim is…
Justice and Future Generations
What do we we owe to future persons if we are to build a society in which all people are treated as free and equal? Answering this question requires rethinking both theories of justice and theories of democracy. This is because while it seems plausible to hold that a just society should not privilege the interests of present persons alone, this intuition raises difficult questions. How can future people be represented in present decisions? Should…
Arbitrariness and the threshold for moral status
It is widely held that entities have moral status if they possess a status-conferring property to a sufficient degree. However, this means that for at least one degree to which an entity can possess the status-conferring property and that grounds moral status, there is some incrementally lower degree of possessing the property that does not ground moral status. Critics maintain that this renders any threshold for moral status arbitrary. In this p…
The Invisible Social Class
In this article, I develop a novel relational egalitarian theory of social exclusion that explains how society fails to treat socially excluded individuals – such as people experiencing homelessness, individuals with substance use disorders and mental illness and sex workers – as equals. I argue that society places and keeps excluded individuals at the very bottom of the social status hierarchy by treating them as socially invisible, or by render…
What Is the Point of Harm Reduction? A Relational Egalitarian Perspective
Harm reduction is one of the most controversial and widely discussed approaches in public health and social policy, addressing a broad range of pressing societal issues, including drug addiction, sex work, alcohol and tobacco use, and homelessness. Surprisingly, however, harm reduction has received very little philosophical scrutiny. In this article, I aim to fill this gap. First, I provide a systematic analysis of the core features and normative…
On Being Aesthetic Unequals
Aesthetic appearance is a powerful source of various forms of unjust social relations, such as demeaning stereotypes, discrimination, harassment, and social exclusion. Surprisingly, however, the issue of aesthetic injustice has been largely overlooked in the relational egalitarian literature. This article addresses this gap by examining aesthetic injustice in the context of homelessness. It argues that individuals experiencing homelessness are su…
What we owe to impaired agents
According to relational egalitarians, a just society is one where the state considers and treats persons as equals, and persons stand in relations of equality with one another (Anderson, 1999; Lippert-Rasmussen, 2018; O'Neill, 2008; Scheffler, 2003; Schemmel, 2021; Wolff, 1998). Relational egalitarians, however, have so far been mainly concerned with how fully competent adults must be considered and treated as equals, whereas they have said much …
Intergenerational moral inequality and the long-term future
According to longtermism, present persons should promote the value of the far future. While this view has so far been primarily discussed within a consequentialist normative framework, less has been said about what longtermism entails from a deontological perspective. This paper aims to address this shortcoming. I argue that, from a deontological standpoint, distant future people have a present moral status qua ‘expected persons’. Therefore, they…
Philosophy (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Free Will and Agency (5 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Law (4 works)