Carol C. Gould

Beyond Causality in The Social Sciences: Reciprocity as a Model of Non-Exploitative Social Relations

The problem to which I address myself in this paper is the construction of an adequate model of explanation in the social sciences. Causal models of explanation have been criticized as inadequate in their conception of human action. Such criticisms have been offered by, among others, Anscombe, Peters, Melden and Hamlyn in their critique of behaviorism, Winch in his critique of causal explanation in sociology, von Wright in his discussion of explanation in history and the social sciences, and of course Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre in their analyses of consciousness, Dasein and choice. In general, I am in agreement with the well-known criticisms which these philosophers have offered, but I want to go beyond them in various ways. In particular, the criticism of causal models which I shall propose in the first part of my paper will focus not only on the inadequacy of these models in their account of human action, but also on their inadequacy as accounts of interaction. However, in rejecting causal explanations of human action and interaction, I do not intend to exclude causality from the social sciences. Rather, I will claim that human agency is causal insofar as it acts on nonhuman objects. As such, causality will be seen to be a delimited but important aspect of a total explanation in the social sciences.

Coercion, Care, and Corporations: Omissions and Commissions in Thomas Pogge's Political Philosophy

This article argues that Thomas Pogges important theory of global justice does not adequately appreciate the relation between interactional and institutional accounts of human rights, along with the important normative role of care and solidarity in the context of globalization. It also suggests that more attention needs to be given critically to the actions of global corporations and positively to introducing democratic accountability into the institutions of global governance. The article goes on to present an alternative approach to global justice based on a more robust conception of human rights grounded in a conception of equal positive freedom, in which these rights are seen to apply beyond the coercive political institutions to which Pogge primarily confines them (e.g. to prohibiting domestic violence), and in which they can guide the development of economic, social and political forms to enable their fulfillment.

Do Cosmopolitan Ethics and Cosmopolitan Democracy Imply Each Other

This paper addresses the interrelations between cosmopolitanism in ethics and in politics, and suggests that the way in which cosmopolitan ethics and cosmopolitan democracy imply each other is a function of the way both cosmopolitan ethics and democracy are interpreted. However, lest this seem to involve a mere semantic appeal to the definition of terms, there are in fact several interesting ways in which the two philosophical enterprises of cosmopolitan ethics and cosmopolitan democracy will be seen to mutually implicate each other, and some arguments for thinking that these two projects should move in tandem. Central to the argument will be the claim that there are two senses of universality that need to be incorporated within a cosmopolitan ethics: the abstract universality of human rights and the concrete universality of transnational solidarities that are the ground of democratic forms of governance.

Transnational Power, Coercion, and Democracy

In this paper, I want to consider some directions for transforming transnational power from a power over people’s lives to something more democratic. This issue is posed concretely by the development of economic and technological globalization led by large transnational corporations that move freely around the world, new multilateral institutions like the WTO and the IMF, emerging forms of cross-border political linkages and also new global threats of violence and environmental degradation. We can observe that these contemporary developments have not been accompanied by democratic control or even accountability of new political, social, and economic institutions to the people operating within them, despite the modes of transnational communication that this globalization may introduce. The question before us, then, is whether transnational forms of social, political, and economic power can become more responsive to people’s individual and collective decisions, such that the institutions can facilitate people’s power to act together rather than exercising power over them. But in order to deal with the question of how this transformation might occur, we need a clearer understanding of the nature of transnational power, and even more basically of power itself. This will also entail distinguishing power from coercion, with important implications for understanding the forms that transnational democratic governance might take. These implications concern the degree to which democratic transnational power has to be exercised through coercive means or instead whether it can operate in a way more congruent with people’s equal freedom and their social cooperation, rather than depending so heavily as at present on either state power or juridical supremacy.

Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy, and Society.

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Freedom, reciprocity, and democracy 2. Ontological foundations of democracy 3. Social ontology and the question of foundationalism in ethics 4. Economic justice, self-management, and the principle of reciprocity 5. Equal rights, individual differences, and the ideal of self-development: paradoxes in the theory of democracy 6. Contemporary legal conceptions of property and their implications for democracy 7. What are the human rights? 8. Making participation and authority compatible 9. Participation and self-management: a model of democracy 10. Technology and ethics: should technology be left to the experts? 11. The democratic personality: self-development, character, and political participation 12. Cosmopolitical democracy: moral principles among nations Notes Index.

Marx After Marxism

Contrary to the way it has usually been taken, the most enduring legacy of Marx’s thought is philosophical, not practical. Marx’s account of political economy, of class and of revolution have occasioned legitimate criticisms, and the practical outcomes of the social movements based on Marxism have largely been negative. Without denying the power of his critique of capitalism, I will argue here that the most important and viable aspect of Marx’s thought resides in some of his basic philosophical ideas - particularly the normative concepts - and the turn that they led to in political philosophy. This is somewhat ironic, of course, since on the usual view - whether Left or Right - Marx’s normative, philosophical ideas are the least central and certainly the least developed part of his work, compared with the central role of his political economy and revolutionary theory.

Self‐development and self‐management: A response to doppelt

Doppelt criticizes my theory of freedom as self‐development and the related model of workers’ self‐management which I propose. I argue that Doppelt ignores or misconstrues three major features of my view: (1) the systematic grounding of the conception of freedom in the nature of agency and the distinction I draw between abstract and concrete freedom; (2) my derivation of rights of self‐management from the concept of freedom; (3) my argument for a universal right of employment. In general, Doppelts criticism ignores the systematic conception I have offered of equal rights of access to the social and economic conditions of self‐development, a conception which he himself seems to be getting at in his proposed paradigm. I go on to criticize two major features of Doppelts own view, namely, his historical relativism and his interpretation of meaningful work.