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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba;">Monday 25th February 2013</span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba;">13:00–14:30</span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">University of Sydney, Philosophy Common Room</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><strong><br /></strong></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><strong>'A right to avoid blacks?'</strong></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> (<a href="http://www.academia.edu/2572656/A_right_to_avoid_blacks" target="_blank">http://www.academia.edu/2572656/A_right_to_avoid_blacks</a>)</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Nathaniel Adam Tobias <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Coleman</span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><a style="background-color: rgba;" href="http://natcphd.me/" target="_blank">http://natcphd.me</a></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Doctoral candidate)</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Flinders University of South Australia (Honorary Visiting Research Fellow)</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">University of Sydney (Research Affiliate)</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">You have the right, don't you, to avoid anyone, for any reason? This is not just a right you enjoy against a law that forces you to associate with a person you prefer to avoid. On the contrary, it is also a right you enjoy against social criticism. We might express your right as the following generalised principle:</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">G. For any person P, and for any person Q, P has the right to avoid Q for any reason at all.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The principle seems reasonable enough, doesn't it? However, from this generalised principle, some people infer a racialised result. For instance, some people think it follows that, </span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">R: If P is racialised-as-white, if Q is racialised-as-black, and if P's reason for avoiding Q is that P has an unfavourable opinion of 'blacks', then P has a right to avoid Q.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The philosopher Michael Levin gives an example of some people who think we can infer the more specific racialised principle from the generalised principle. Levin tells us that 'Libertarians will wonder why a right to avoid blacks needs any defense at all, since it falls under voluntary association [. . .]' (1996: 313). I presume what Levin's 'Libertarians' mean is that 'a right to avoid blacks' is justified by some theory of voluntary dissociation. I shall argue that 'a right to avoid blacks' is not justified (a) by any contemporary theory of voluntary dissociation or (b) by John Stuart Mill's classical theory of voluntary dissociation.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">***</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba;">Friday 1st March 2013</span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba;">10:30–12:00</span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">University of Sydney, Philosophy Common Room</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><strong><br /></strong></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><strong>'What is wrong with [R.M. Hare's arguments against] slavery'</strong></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Nathaniel Adam Tobias <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Coleman</span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><a style="background-color: rgba;" href="http://natcphd.me/" target="_blank">http://natcphd.me</a></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Doctoral candidate)</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Flinders University of South Australia (Honorary Visiting Research Fellow)</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">University of Sydney (Research Affiliate)</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>In his article, <em>What is Wrong with Slavery</em> (<a href="http://www.utilitarian.net/hare/by/1979----.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.utilitarian.net/hare/by/1979----.pdf</a>), Richard Mervyn Hare—'the greatest utilitarian of this century' (Crisp 2001) and, from 1966 to 1983, occupant of the White's Chair of Moral Philosophy (which the University of Oxford describes as 'perhaps the most prestigious chair of moral philosophy in the world', see <a href="http://goo.gl/9dRM9" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/9dRM9</a>)—advanced a 'landmark' (Darwish 2009: 99), 'enlightening' (Singer 2002: 316), 'decisive...', 'full and persuasive' (Shaw 1999: 122; 1995: 51n19) philosophical argument against slavery. </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Hare's argument has been generally accepted by philosophers. This is clear from the fact that, although it was published in 1979, in an early volume of the journal <em>Philosophy & Public Affairs</em>—which, '[f]or over thirty years', according to Onora O'Neill, 'has set the standard for combining good writing, rigorous philosophical argument and serious political and social engagement'—Hare's article has received no detailed, published, critical response from another philosopher. S. R. L. Clark (1985) is critical, but superficial; Rawls (1994) is superficial and unpublished. I plan to publish just such a detailed critical response. </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>My critical response will be detailed, in that it will carefully distinguish among, and respond separately to, each of the three distinct arguments against slavery that Hare advances, in his article:</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">1. an argument from disutility: Slavery is wrong, because it produces misery.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">2. an argument from inconsistency: Slavery is wrong, because it treats unequally the equal interests of the free and the enslaved person.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">3. an argument from authority: Slavery is wrong, because R. M. Hare said so.</span></div>
<p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Needless to say, I think that each of Hare's three arguments fails.<br /></span></p>
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