PEA Soup

Illegal immigration is fine.

I recently finished a paper about illegal immigration. Here is my question: Is it wrong to immigrate illegally? Added challenge: Assume (contrary to fact) that immigration laws are justified, and that people typically have a duty to obey the law.

My thesis: Even with those assumptions, the answer is no; there is no moral reason not to violate immigration laws.

Welcome Lawrence Blum!

We're very pleased to announce that Lawrence Blum has joined the list of contributors to PEA Soup.  Lawrence is a Professor of Philosophy at U-Mass, Boston, as well as a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education.  He's written several highly regarded books in moral philosophy, including the very influential Friendship, Altruism, and Morality.  He's also done work on the philosophy of race (see his I'm Not a Racist, But...: The Moral Quandary of Race), philosophy of education, empathy, and care.  Welcome aboard, Lawrence!

Call for Proposals: Ethics and Policy Workshop

The Center for Ethics & Policy at Carnegie Mellon University invites paper abstracts for an inaugural Workshop on Ethics & Policy to be hosted November 4-5, 2016 at the CMU campus in Pittsburgh, PA.  We are pleased to welcome Richard Arneson as our keynote speaker.

In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the publication of Alan Wertheimer’s seminal work Exploitation, the theme for our inaugural workshop is “Exploitation and Coercion”.  Submissions are welcome on any topic germane to the works of Dr. Wertheimer, with preference given to papers related to the relevance of exploitation and/or coercion to current issues in applied ethics and policy.

CFP: Neutrality: Reasons, Values, and Times

From Andrew Forcehimes:

Date: July 12-14, 2017.

Location: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: 

• David Brink (University of California, San Diego)
• Julia Driver (Washington University at St. Louis)
• Douglas Portmore (Arizona State University)
• Michael Smith (Princeton)

Journal of Applied Philosophy Prize Paper (open access)

The Journal of Applied Philosophy awards an annual prize of £1000 to the best article published in each year's volume. The judgement as to the best article is made by the editors of the journal.

The Journal of Applied Philosophy is delighted to announce the winner of the 2015 Essay Prize: Cheshire Calhoun’s paper, "Geographies of Meaningful Living," is available to read on open access until the end of July 2016.

For more about Cheshire Calhoun see her profile here.