Monday, April 27, 2015
Philosophy?
So this reading was obviously not a work of philosophy. As Hurley said in his post, Pogge proposes a scheme for regulating and incentivizing pharmaceutical companies. The reform would have obvious benefits, not the least of which would be the preservation of millions and millions of lives. Thus Pogge believes the scheme is morally desirable. Plus, it doesnt violate 'lockean' property rights. Justice and human rights are even mentioned briefly. But this piece is not a work of philosophy, or even of philosophical value. It's interesting and deserves attention because of it's potential benefits, but im unsure of why we're reading it in a philosophy seminar.
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I talked about some philosophical elements in my blog post. And like Fiona said in her post, some of his grounds for the deep unfairness of IP laws are philosophical in nature (legitimate rule and whatnot).
ReplyDeleteWell this is applied ethics. Global justice that is philosophically coherent, and politically/economically sound. I think Pogge intentionally stays away from too much philosophizing. It'd be interesting to bring in his Rawlsian stuff though, I'd have been interested in that.
Ethics is the study of what we should or ought to do. Pogge is arguing that we should or ought to adopt his alternative to the TRIPS regime of international patents. If this isn't part of philosophy, then what is it part of? The sciences, including the social sciences, concern themselves with what is or will be the case. Ethics concerns itself with what ought to be the case. Pogge is making an argument for what ought to be the case, giving us reasons to make different choices. So Pogge is doing ethics. Why isn't this philosophy?
ReplyDeletePhilosophy has a claim on every normative proposal, but not every normative proposal is philosophically valuble.
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