Fabienne Peter
Biographic Data
| ID | 5997100 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fabienne Peter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fabienne |
| FAMILY NAME | Peter |
| SIGNATURE | PETER F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Moral affordances and the demands of fittingness
Some situations appear to make moral demands on us – they call for a certain response. How can we account for such paradigmatic moral experiences? And what normative properties or relations are involved? This paper argues that we can account for such moral experiences in terms of moral affordances, where moral affordances are opportunities for fitting action. The paper demonstrates that the concept of affordances helps to generate new insight in …
The Grounds of Political Legitimacy
Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? This is what democratic conceptions of political legitimacy maintain. And they are right to highlight that legitimate political d…
Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side
Truth and Uncertainty in Political Justification
Political deliberation and decision-making typically take place in circumstances of substantial uncertainty about what should be done. Some of this uncertainty concerns decision-relevant empirical facts and some of it concerns decision-relevant normative facts. It is widely accepted that uncertainty about empirical facts should make us cautious and that political justification must take such uncertainty into account. Some have argued, however, th…
The Epistemic Circumstances of Democracy
Does political decision-making require experts or can a democracy be trusted to make correct decisions? Critics of democracy tend to argue that democracy cannot be trusted in this way while advocates tend to argue that it can. Both camps agree that it is the epistemic quality of the outcomes of political decision-making processes that underpins the legitimacy of political institutions. In recent political philosophy, epistemic democrats have embr…
Epistemic Foundations of Political Liberalism
At the core of political liberalism is the claim that political institutions must be publicly justified or justifiable to be legitimate. What explains the significance of public justification? The main argument that defenders of political liberalism present is an argument from disagreement: the irreducible pluralism that is characteristic of democratic societies requires a mode of justification that lies in between a narrowly political solution b…
The procedural epistemic value of deliberation
Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the participants respond to each other in disagreements. I use this accountability thesis to argue that deliberation may be valued not just instrumentally but also for its procedural features. The instrumental epistemic value of deliberation depends on whether it leads to more or less accurate beliefs among the participants. The procedural epis…
CHAPTER 18 Rawlsian Justice
Rawls's theory of justice builds on the social contract tradition to offer an alternative to utilitarianism. Rawls singles out justice‐not maximum welfare or efficiency‐as “the first virtue of social institutions”. Economists were quick to realize the relevance of Rawls's theory of justice for economics. Early contributions in welfare economics and social choice theory typically attempted to incorporate Rawls's ideas into a welfarist framework. C…
Democratic Legitimacy
This book offers a systematic treatment of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. It argues that democratic procedures are essential for political legitimacy because of the need to respect value pluralism and because of the learning process that democratic decision-making enables. It proposes a framework for distinguishing among the different ways in which the requirements of democratic legitimacy have been interpreted. Peter then uses this f…
Rationality and Commitment
13 leading philosophers and economists discuss the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's trenchant critique of rational choice theory, and propose their own answers to the question of how to account for the rationality of committed action
The Political Egalitarian’s Dilemma
Democratic legitimacy and proceduralist social epistemology
A conception of legitimacy is at the core of normative theories of democracy. Many different conceptions of legitimacy have been put forward, either explicitly or implicitly. In this article, I shall first provide a taxonomy of conceptions of legitimacy that can be identified in contemporary democratic theory. The taxonomy covers both aggregative and deliberative democracy. I then argue for a conception of democratic legitimacy that takes the epi…
Justice: Political Not Natural
Ken Binmore casts his naturalist theory of justice in opposition to theories of justice that claim authority on the grounds of some religious or moral doctrine. He thereby overlooks the possibility of a political conception of justice−a theory of justice based on the premise that there is an irreducible pluralism of metaphysical, epistemological, and moral doctrines. In my brief comment I shall argue that the naturalist theory of justice advocate…
Public Health, Ethics, and Equity
In the last fifty years, average overall health status has increased more or less in parallel with a much celebrated decline in mortality, attributed mostly to poverty reduction, sanitation, nutrition, housing, immunization, and improved medical care. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that these achievements were not equally distributed. In most countries, while some social groups have benefited significantly, the situation of others ha…
Gender and the Foundations of Social Choice: The Role of Situated Agency
Amartya Sen defends a rich conception of social choice theory against tendencies to limit social choice theory to the formal investigation of rules of collective decision-making. His understanding of social choice theory makes the field a natural candidate for exploring gender issues in the evaluation of democratic policy. Not surprisingly, Sen has applied the insights he developed from his study of social choice to the evaluation of gender inequ…
Critical Realism, Feminist Epistemology, and the Emancipatory Potential of Science: A Comment on Lawson and Harding
In a recent contribution to this Journal , Tony Lawson (1999) claims that the methodological framework of critical realism fits the "explanatory and emancipatory projects" of feminist economics. This essay challenges his claim on the basis that a "naive" notion of science underlies critical realism. It argues that for feminist economists, a rethinking of traditional notions of scientific inquiry is just as important as the rethinking of methodolo…
Ethical Dimensions of Health Equity
This chapter clarifies ethical concepts related to the complex issue of health equity. It discusses the concept of health, its causes, and distribution. It explores questions such as: What is equity in health? How is it linked to social justice? Why should we be concerned with inequities in health anyway? Can moral philosophy inform judgements about health equity? In doing so, the chapter reviews the relevance of existing theories of social justi…
Health Equity and Social Justice
There is consistent and strong empirical evidence for social inequalities in health, as a vast and growing literature shows. In recent years, these findings have helped to move health equity high on international research and policy agendas. This paper examines how the empirical identification of social inequalities in health relates to a normative judgment about health inequities and puts forward an approach which embeds the pursuit of health eq…
Gender and the Foundations of Social Choice: The Role of Situated Agency
Amartya Sen defends a rich conception of social choice theory against tendencies to limit social choice theory to the formal investigation of rules of collective decision-making. His understanding of social choice theory makes the field a natural candidate for exploring gender issues in the evaluation of democratic policy. Not surprisingly, Sen has applied the insights he developed from his study of social choice to the evaluation of gender inequ…
Democratic legitimacy and proceduralist social epistemology
A conception of legitimacy is at the core of normative theories of democracy. Many different conceptions of legitimacy have been put forward, either explicitly or implicitly. In this article, I shall first provide a taxonomy of conceptions of legitimacy that can be identified in contemporary democratic theory. The taxonomy covers both aggregative and deliberative democracy. I then argue for a conception of democratic legitimacy that takes the epi…
The procedural epistemic value of deliberation
Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the participants respond to each other in disagreements. I use this accountability thesis to argue that deliberation may be valued not just instrumentally but also for its procedural features. The instrumental epistemic value of deliberation depends on whether it leads to more or less accurate beliefs among the participants. The procedural epis…
Critical Realism, Feminist Epistemology, and the Emancipatory Potential of Science: A Comment on Lawson and Harding
In a recent contribution to this Journal , Tony Lawson (1999) claims that the methodological framework of critical realism fits the "explanatory and emancipatory projects" of feminist economics. This essay challenges his claim on the basis that a "naive" notion of science underlies critical realism. It argues that for feminist economists, a rethinking of traditional notions of scientific inquiry is just as important as the rethinking of methodolo…
Ethical Dimensions of Health Equity
This chapter clarifies ethical concepts related to the complex issue of health equity. It discusses the concept of health, its causes, and distribution. It explores questions such as: What is equity in health? How is it linked to social justice? Why should we be concerned with inequities in health anyway? Can moral philosophy inform judgements about health equity? In doing so, the chapter reviews the relevance of existing theories of social justi…
Health Equity and Social Justice
There is consistent and strong empirical evidence for social inequalities in health, as a vast and growing literature shows. In recent years, these findings have helped to move health equity high on international research and policy agendas. This paper examines how the empirical identification of social inequalities in health relates to a normative judgment about health inequities and puts forward an approach which embeds the pursuit of health eq…
Gender and the Foundations of Social Choice: The Role of Situated Agency
Amartya Sen defends a rich conception of social choice theory against tendencies to limit social choice theory to the formal investigation of rules of collective decision-making. His understanding of social choice theory makes the field a natural candidate for exploring gender issues in the evaluation of democratic policy. Not surprisingly, Sen has applied the insights he developed from his study of social choice to the evaluation of gender inequ…
Critical Realism, Feminist Epistemology, and the Emancipatory Potential of Science: A Comment on Lawson and Harding
In a recent contribution to this Journal , Tony Lawson (1999) claims that the methodological framework of critical realism fits the "explanatory and emancipatory projects" of feminist economics. This essay challenges his claim on the basis that a "naive" notion of science underlies critical realism. It argues that for feminist economists, a rethinking of traditional notions of scientific inquiry is just as important as the rethinking of methodolo…
Public Health, Ethics, and Equity
In the last fifty years, average overall health status has increased more or less in parallel with a much celebrated decline in mortality, attributed mostly to poverty reduction, sanitation, nutrition, housing, immunization, and improved medical care. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that these achievements were not equally distributed. In most countries, while some social groups have benefited significantly, the situation of others ha…
Justice: Political Not Natural
Ken Binmore casts his naturalist theory of justice in opposition to theories of justice that claim authority on the grounds of some religious or moral doctrine. He thereby overlooks the possibility of a political conception of justice−a theory of justice based on the premise that there is an irreducible pluralism of metaphysical, epistemological, and moral doctrines. In my brief comment I shall argue that the naturalist theory of justice advocate…
The Political Egalitarian’s Dilemma
Democratic legitimacy and proceduralist social epistemology
A conception of legitimacy is at the core of normative theories of democracy. Many different conceptions of legitimacy have been put forward, either explicitly or implicitly. In this article, I shall first provide a taxonomy of conceptions of legitimacy that can be identified in contemporary democratic theory. The taxonomy covers both aggregative and deliberative democracy. I then argue for a conception of democratic legitimacy that takes the epi…
Rationality and Commitment
13 leading philosophers and economists discuss the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's trenchant critique of rational choice theory, and propose their own answers to the question of how to account for the rationality of committed action
CHAPTER 18 Rawlsian Justice
Rawls's theory of justice builds on the social contract tradition to offer an alternative to utilitarianism. Rawls singles out justice‐not maximum welfare or efficiency‐as “the first virtue of social institutions”. Economists were quick to realize the relevance of Rawls's theory of justice for economics. Early contributions in welfare economics and social choice theory typically attempted to incorporate Rawls's ideas into a welfarist framework. C…
Democratic Legitimacy
This book offers a systematic treatment of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. It argues that democratic procedures are essential for political legitimacy because of the need to respect value pluralism and because of the learning process that democratic decision-making enables. It proposes a framework for distinguishing among the different ways in which the requirements of democratic legitimacy have been interpreted. Peter then uses this f…
Epistemic Foundations of Political Liberalism
At the core of political liberalism is the claim that political institutions must be publicly justified or justifiable to be legitimate. What explains the significance of public justification? The main argument that defenders of political liberalism present is an argument from disagreement: the irreducible pluralism that is characteristic of democratic societies requires a mode of justification that lies in between a narrowly political solution b…
The procedural epistemic value of deliberation
Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the participants respond to each other in disagreements. I use this accountability thesis to argue that deliberation may be valued not just instrumentally but also for its procedural features. The instrumental epistemic value of deliberation depends on whether it leads to more or less accurate beliefs among the participants. The procedural epis…
The Epistemic Circumstances of Democracy
Does political decision-making require experts or can a democracy be trusted to make correct decisions? Critics of democracy tend to argue that democracy cannot be trusted in this way while advocates tend to argue that it can. Both camps agree that it is the epistemic quality of the outcomes of political decision-making processes that underpins the legitimacy of political institutions. In recent political philosophy, epistemic democrats have embr…
Truth and Uncertainty in Political Justification
Political deliberation and decision-making typically take place in circumstances of substantial uncertainty about what should be done. Some of this uncertainty concerns decision-relevant empirical facts and some of it concerns decision-relevant normative facts. It is widely accepted that uncertainty about empirical facts should make us cautious and that political justification must take such uncertainty into account. Some have argued, however, th…
The Grounds of Political Legitimacy
Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? This is what democratic conceptions of political legitimacy maintain. And they are right to highlight that legitimate political d…
Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side
Moral affordances and the demands of fittingness
Some situations appear to make moral demands on us – they call for a certain response. How can we account for such paradigmatic moral experiences? And what normative properties or relations are involved? This paper argues that we can account for such moral experiences in terms of moral affordances, where moral affordances are opportunities for fitting action. The paper demonstrates that the concept of affordances helps to generate new insight in …
Sociology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Law and economics (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Democracy (7 works) · Economics (7 works)