Publications
Distributive justice and co-operation in a world of humans and non-humans
- Author(s)
- Mark Coeckelbergh
- Abstract
Various arguments have been provided for drawing non-humans such as animals and artificial agents into the sphere of moral consideration. In this paper, I argue for a shift from an ontological to a social-philosophical approach: instead of asking what an entity is, we should try to conceptually grasp the quasi-social dimension of relations between non-humans and humans. This allows me to reconsider the problem of justice, in particular distributive justice. Engaging with the work of Rawls, I show that an expansion of the contractarian framework to non-humans causes an important problem for liberalism, but can be justified by a contractarian argument. Responding to Bell's and Nussbaum's comments on Rawls, I argue that we can justify drawing non-humans into the sphere of distributive justice by relying on the notion of a co-operative scheme. I discuss what co-operation between humans and non-humans can mean and the extent to which it depends on properties. I conclude that we need to imagine principles of ecological and technological distributive justice.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Philosophy
- External organisation(s)
- University of Twente
- Journal
- Res Publica
- Volume
- 15
- Pages
- 67-84
- No. of pages
- 18
- ISSN
- 1356-4765
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-009-9080-8
- Publication date
- 02-2009
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 603113 Philosophy
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Law, Philosophy
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/distributive-justice-and-cooperation-in-a-world-of-humans-and-nonhumans(1d2bc0c1-ce74-401d-b0ee-e70f722ff360).html