Consentement, promesse et ordre : les pouvoirs normatifs en matière de moralité, de politique et de droit
Consenting, Promising, and Ordering: Normative Powers in Morality, Politics, and Law

(English will follow)

Poster / affiche

Nous sommes heureux.ses annoncer d’un colloque international intitulé Consentement, promesse et ordre : les pouvoirs normatifs en matière de moralité, de politique et de droit, qui se tiendra à Montréal en mai 2018.

Les pouvoirs normatifs – tels que le pouvoir de promettre, de donner son consentement, de conclure des contrats, de vendre des biens et de donner des ordres – sont au cœur de nos relations interpersonnelles et de nos vies sociales. Nous promettons à nos proches de les aider ou de donner suite à leurs volontés; nous signons des contrats de travail et préparons des testaments; nous donnons notre consentement à des relations sexuelles, à des interventions médicales et (peut-être) à subir l’autorité de l’État; et ceux qui ont une autorité pratique (tels que les responsables militaires et peut-être les parents) imposent des obligations à ceux qui sont sous leur autorité (comme attaquer les combattants ennemis ou rentrer à la maison avant minuit). La grande variété des pouvoirs normatifs et leurs utilisations variées donnent génèrent de nombreuses questions philosophiques sur les pouvoirs normatifs généraux, ainsi que sur des pouvoirs normatifs spécifiques. L’objectif central de ce colloque est de faire progresser nos connaissances quant aux pouvoirs normatifs et leur importance dans les domaines moral, politique et juridique.

Organisateurs.trice du colloque: Richard Healey, Sarah Stroud et Daniel Weinstock.

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We are happy an international conference entitled, Consenting, Promising, and Ordering: Normative Powers in Morality, Politics, and Law, to be held in Montreal in May 2018.

Normative powers – such as the power to promise, to give consent, to make contracts, to sell property, and to give orders – are central to our interpersonal relationships and our social lives. We promise our loved ones to help out, or to carry out their wishes; we sign employment contracts and make wills; we give consent to sexual relationships, medical interventions, and (perhaps) to the authority of the state; and those with practical authority (such as military officials, and perhaps parents) impose obligations on those under their authority (e.g. to attack, or to be home by midnight). The great variety of normative powers, and their varied uses, give rise to an expansive set of philosophical questions about normative powers in general as well as about specific normative powers. The central objective of this conference is to make progress in our knowledge of normative powers and their significance across the moral, political, and legal domains.

For enquiries please contact Richard Healey at: richard.healey[at]mail.mcgill.ca

Conference Organizers: Richard Healey, Sarah Stroud, and Daniel Weinstock.

PROGRAMME

Tuesday/mardi May 15 mai 2018 – Pavillon Lionel-Groulx (3150 rue Jean-Brillant), room /local C-3061, Université de Montréal
12.00-13.00     lunch / dîner
13.00-14.20     Erin Taylor (Washington and Lee University), “The Normative Power of Social Conventions”
14.30-15.50      Katharina Nieswandt (Concordia University), “What Is Conventionalism about Moral Rights and Duties?”
15.50-16.25      coffee and snacks / café et collations
16.25-17.45       Richard Healey (Centre de recherche en éthique), “Immoral Promises”
18.00-19.30     table ronde publique (en français) : Promesses électorales et politiques 
Marc-Antoine Dilhac (Université de Montréal), Sarah Stroud (McGill), et Daniel Weinstock (McGill); animateur : Étienne Brown (Centre de recherche en éthique)
20.00               dinner / souper – Restaurant Barbounya, 234 avenue Laurier West / ouest

Wednesday/mercredi May 16 mai 2018 – Arts W-120, McGill University
9.30-10.00       breakfast and coffee / déjeuner et café
10.00-11.20      Andrea Westlund (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), “Normative Powers and the Economy of Authority”
11.30-12.50      Daniel Viehoff (New York University), “Political Authority as a Normative Power”
12.50-14.00      lunch / dîner
14.00-15.20      Stephen Perry (University of Pennsylvania), “Legitimate Political Authority, Jurisprudence, and Moral Power”
15.20-15.55      coffee / café
15.55-17.15       Victor Tadros (University of Warwick), “Following Orders”
19.00                  dinner / souper – Le beaux arts restaurant, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, 1380 rue Sherbrooke West / ouest

Thursday/jeudi May 17 mai 2018 – Arts W-120, McGill University
10.00-11.20     Tom Dougherty (Cambridge University), “Degrees of Consent”
11.30-12.50      Hallie Liberto (University of Connecticut), “Pursuant versus Compliant Consent”
13.00-15.00     lunch and graduate student poster session / dîner & affiches des étudiant.e.s
15.00-16.20      David Enoch (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Consent, Autonomy, and Adaptive Preferences; or: False Consciousness for Liberals, Part I”

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Le GRIN et le CRÉ sont heureux d’accueillir Jonathan Way, qui nous offrira une présentation intitulée « The Distinctiveness of Fittingness » (préparée avec Conor McHugh).

According to fitting-attitudes accounts of value, evaluative properties are to be analysed in terms of what’s fitting to value – e.g. the admirable is what’s fitting to admire, the delightful is what’s fitting to delight in, the loathsome is what’s fitting to loathe. Such accounts raise the question of what it is to be fitting to value something. While some proponents of fitting-attitudes accounts analyse fittingness in terms of reasons, obligations, or permissibility, others have suggested that fittingness is a distinctive and unanalysable normative property.  This paper defends this latter view. We proceed by noting three marks of fittingness: that incentives for attitudes do not bear on their fittingness, that fitting is stronger than permissibility but weaker than obligation, and that absences of attitudes cannot be fitting. We argue that these marks allow us to distinguish fittingness from other normative properties and cast doubt on the prospects of analysing fittingness in other normative terms. The upshot is support not only for fitting-attitude accounts of value but for fitting-attitude accounts of other normative properties too.

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Conférence co-présidée:

Jacob T. Levy (McGill), Josiah Ober (Stanford), Melissa Schwartzberg (NYU)

Voir www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/PTPS.

(.pdf)

Thursday May 10

10:45-11 am

Opening remarks: Jacob T. Levy, McGill

11 am- 12:45 pm

Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, Queen’s: Theories of Justice, the Strains of Commitment, and Realistic Utopias

Suzanne Dovi, Arizona: The Four Janus-Faces Of Misogyny: Or How To Measure Bad Behavior?

David Wiens, UCSD: Ideal Theories in Political Science: Lessons from Game Theory and Statistics

Chair/ discussant: Catherine Lu, McGill

2-3:45 pm

Jenna Bednar, Michigan: Federalism as a Mechanism of Collective Problem Solving

Michael Neblo, Ohio State: Building a Directly Representative Democracy

Jack Knight, Duke and Melissa Schwartzberg, NYU: The Moral Limits of Bargaining

Chair/ discussant: Rob Reich, Stanford

4:15-6 pm

Samuel Bagg, McGill: Democratic Theory As Political Action

Menaka Philips, Tulane, and Jennifer Forestal, Stockton: « Democracy Dies in Darkness »: Anonymity, Accountability, and Information as a Public Good

Andrew Sabl, Yale/Toronto: The Strange Career of Aggregative Democracy

Chair/ discussant: Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania

6-6:15 pm

Reflections: Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania, and President-Elect, American Political Science Association

6:15-7:15 pm

Reception in celebration of the awarding of the 2018 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science to Jane Mansbridge 

Sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and the Department of Political Science, McGill University

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Friday May 11

9 am

Opening remarks: Jane Mansbridge, Harvard

9:15-11 am

Federica Carugati, Indiana: Tradeoffs of Inclusion: Development Before Liberalism

David Stasavage, NYU: Origins of Early Democracy

Josiah Ober, Stanford: Rationality and the origins of social cooperation in Greek thought

Chair/ discussant: Christa Scholtz, McGill

11:15 am – 1 pm: Graduate student panel

Aberdeen Berry, McGill: Arendtian Judgment and Pluralism

Alec Crisman, McGill: Instrumentalism and the Space of Non-Democracy

Vertika: Seeking Agency in the Interstices of Power

Chair/ discussant: Jane Mansbridge, Harvard

2:30-4:15 pm

William Roberts, McGill: Ideologies of domination and democratic theory

Deva Woodly, New School: From Idea To Ideology

Laurel Weldon, Purdue: Active Solidarity: Strategies For Transnational Political Cooperation In Contexts Of Difference, Domination And Distrust

Chair/ discussant: Kelly Gordon, McGill

4:15-4:30 pm

Reflections: Melissa Schwartzberg, NYU

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Saturday May 12

9-11 am

Sean Ingham, UCSD: Rule by Multiple Majorities: A New Theory of Popular Control

Mariah Zeisberg, Michigan: A New Political Jurisprudence

Daniel Weinstock, McGill: The Political Theory of Really Existing Democracies: The Case of Electoral Reform

Barry Weingast, Stanford: Should Majoritarians Embrace Countermajoritarian Constitutional Provisions?

Chair/ discussant: Victor Muñiz-Fraticelli, McGill

11:15 am – 1 pm

Kevin Elliott, Columbia: The Uses and Abuses of Public Opinion in Political Theory

Alison McQueen, Lisa Blaydes and Justin Grimmer, Stanford: Mirrors for Princes and Sultans

Arash Abizadeh, McGill: Representation, Bicameralism, and Sortition

Chair/ discussant: Edana Beauvais, McGill

1-1:15 pm

Closing remarks: Josiah Ober, Stanford

Conference co-chairs: Jacob T. Levy (McGill), Josiah Ober (Stanford), Melissa Schwartzberg (NYU)

A conference of the Research Group on Constitutional Studies, a unit of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds at McGill University, and the Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique.

This conference is made possible by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the John Templeton Foundation.

With additional support from the McGill Department of Political Science, the Centre de Recherche en Éthique, and the Research Group on Global Justice of the Lin Centre.

To register, please e-mail rgcs.mcgill@gmail.com with your name and institutional affiliation.

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Les membres du CRÉ sont heureux.ses d’accueillir Carl Knight (Glasgow University) qui nous offrira une présentation intitulée « Leaving Nothing to Chance ».

Résumé

The most prominent theory of distributive justice to have emerged since John Rawls’ justice as fairness is luck egalitarianism, which aims to accommodate considerations of individual choice and responsibility within a theory of equality. The standard luck egalitarian view, ‘brute-luck egalitarianism’, allows the distributive effects of option luck (the results of deliberate gambles) to stand while neutralizing the effects of brute luck (the results of unchosen risk). This paper argues for a radical ‘all-luck egalitarianism’, which unlike brute-luck egalitarianism neutralizes the effects of option luck as well as brute luck.

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Rencontre annuelle entre les chercheurs.ses du Centre de recherche en éthique (CRÉ) et du Centre for Research on Ethics (C4E) de la University of Toronto.

Programme!

Les représentant.e.s de l’équipe du CRÉ seront cette année:

Étienne Brown
Willem van der Deijl
Charles Dupras
Pablo Gilabert
Hazar Haidar
Christine Tappolet & Mauro Rossi

Seront aussi du voyage: Paul Boswell, Richard Healey et Angie Pepper.

Les représentant.e.s de l’équipe du C4E, pour leur part, seront:

Aaron Ansell
Hilary Cameron Evans
John-Stewart Gordon
Simon Lambek
Richard Moon
Stephanie Silverman

Titres et résumés des présentations

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On reçoit Dominic Martin (UQÀM), qui est responsable de l’un des thèmes phares du CRÉ, soit l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle. Dominic nous offrira une présentation intitulée « Search Ranking to Neural Networking and The Obligation of Account-Giving ».

Résumé

Algorithmic accountability — that is, holding to account the people or organizations that design, or use, algorithms — is not a new issue. People started questioning the legitimacy of Google’s search-ranking algorithms, or credit ranking scores, two or three decades ago. On a broad construal, even the last-century debates on socialist calculations raises issues of algorithmic accountability. If the allocation of the means of production is managed centrally rather than being left to market mechanisms, governments are compelled to engage in extensive calculations to decide where to distribute each good in the economy. One may wonder if these calculations are possible, or even fair.

But recent developments in information technologies, the increasing usage of quantitative data, the so-called Big Data paradigm and major breakthrough in artificial intelligence have pushed the issue of algorithmic accountability to a new level. Cathy O’Neil claims that the mathematical models powering the data economy are nothing less than “Weapons of Math Destruction,” a play on words suggesting the potential destructive power algorithms. According to Frank Pasquale, we now live in a “Black Box Society,” wherein secret algorithms control money and information.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the extent to which we have an obligation of account-giving regarding the usage of algorithms in society. More precisely, what are the people or organizations that design or use algorithms be accountable about, and who among these people should be accountable? Obligations of account-giving do not apply similarly to every situation, individual or group.

In the first part of the paper, I will clarify the notion of algorithmic accountability, to show, among other things, that it captures important insights about what people value in their social arrangements. Beyond that, however, the notion also suffers from a form of conceptual expansionism, where the scope and meaning of accountability has been extended in a number of directions. Furthermore, while more accountability always seems generally desirable, I will posit that there must be a point where our obligation of account-giving reaches a limit. In the second part of the paper, I will introduce three of these limits, namely: the epistemic limit, the efficiency limit and non-proportional harms.

In part three of the paper, I will claim that governments — and private organizations to a lesser extent — should be held to account for the validity of the models that support the algorithms they use for automating decision processes. They should be clear about the role of humans in automated decision processes. They should also be held to account for the potential discriminatory impacts of these algorithms, and they should be accountable, although to a lesser extent, for the effects of these algorithms on social equality. In the fourth and last part of the paper, I will show that new technologies in artificial intelligence, and especially neural networks, raise additional issues of accountability, given the complexity of the internal functioning of these systems. I will then suggest a series of measures or tools to help the people that design or use these systems be more accountable.

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À l’occasion de la parution du livre Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics de Catherine Lu, RGCS, CIPSS, CHRLP et ISID co-organisent une table ronde.

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Dans le cadre des ateliers du GRIN, Ulf Hlobil (Concordia University) offrira une présentation intitulée “On Weighing Reasons with Defeaters”.

Résumé

According to the Reasoning View about normative reasons, R is a normative reason to φ just in case R can figure as a premise in good reasoning that results in φ-ing. As is widely recognized among advocates of the Reasoning View (e.g. Setiya, Way, Asarnow), the most important challenge for the Reasoning View is to give an account of how reasons can be outweighed. It is also widely recognized that this is best done by appeal to the defeasibility of reasoning. After introducing the Reasoning View, I start by criticizing different accounts of weights in terms of defeasibility. I then offer my own account of the weights in terms of defeasibility. A crucial feature of the account is that it distinguishes premises of practical reasoning from background attitudes. Along the way, I introduce notions of enablers, obligations, and virtuous action. I end by suggesting that the “objective ought” and “objective reasons” are idealizations, and that the “subjective ought” and “subjective reasons” are primary.

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