v13n6: Chung on Robson, on When to Limit the Market

“When to Limit the Market” by Victor Chung

A COMMENTARY ON Gregory Robson (2023), “How to Object to the Profit System (and How Not to),” J Bus Ethics 188: 205–219, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05317-5

Gregory Robson (2023) argues that a moral objection to the market is successful only if it shows that a representative sample of business activity is unethical. He calls this the Normative Representativeness Requirement (NRR). I argue that we should not endorse the NRR for two reasons. First, an objection can be successful even if it fails to satisfy the NRR. Second, Robson motivates the NRR by appealing to a general epistemic requirement against hasty generalizations, yet this epistemic requirement only applies when one attempts a generalization—and objections to markets need not do so.

To download the full PDF, click here: Chung on Robson


Victor Chung is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. https://tollendoponens.github.io/

 



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