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Month: June 2017

David Wong’s Interview at 3AM: “The Pluralist”

David Wong is the Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.

the pluralist

Interview by Richard Marshall.

Click here for the whole interview!

I think that all moralities adequately serving the function of fostering social cooperation must contain a norm of reciprocity—a norm of returning good for good received. Such a norm is a necessity, I argue, because it helps relieve the strains on motivation of contributing to social cooperation when it comes into conflict with self-interest. I also identify a constraint I called “justifiability to the governed,” which implies that justifications for subordinating people’s interests must not rely on falsehoods such as the natural inferiority of racial or ethnic groups or the natural incapacities of women.

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