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I think it's right to say that by having long past by and furthering patriarchal norms,

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it seems wrong and far too strong to say that like I have a duty not to.

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You're listening to podcasts, a podcast from modern college University of Oxford, bringing you interviews, seminars and stories from our community.

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Welcome to Episode eight. My name's Martin. I work in communications.

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So what in college? In this episode, I talked to Cora Appleman, a modern student in her third year studying.

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She won the college's change prize for her essay on the philosophy of social justice.

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Congratulations to Connor. We talk through the ideas and themes, pressing questions like What does it take for us to be free people?

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And How should we think about our desires? One desires formed by oppressive social structures.

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We'll dive in a moment. But before we roll the episode. Be aware that at various points in the conversation with directly sexual assault and abuse.

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Thanks for joining me today to discuss your essay and broader issues around philosophy and justice.

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Maybe you can start by just sharing a bit about who you are, what you do, what, and what you study.

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So I'm. I'm Caro. I'm in my third year studying pay, although economics was dropped a while ago now, so it feels like a bit of a distant memory.

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And yeah, outside of my degree in the RA, I was running my degree in women's officer with my friend Nia,

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more generally, often with Nia and other peers.

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And some of those kind of hold up a modern library or I go to as you go through quite a lot.

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So we're going to be talking about your Cheney prizewinning essay.

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Essay deals with issues of freedom and social justice, issues like what does it take for us to be free people?

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And you defend a particular theory of social justice.

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But before we get into the particulars of that theory, there might be some people listening who wonder why theorise about social justice at all.

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Why not just go out and tackle it? Easy question.

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I mean, I'm not going to try and make out that my undergrad essay is somehow equivalent to like

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political protest or actually taking a more active stance on issues of injustice.

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And also, I guess at the end of the day, a large part of the reason why I wrote the essays,

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just because I think it's quite interesting, but I'd like to think that it's not completely irrelevant either.

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I guess specifically this essay is kind of looking at cases where it seems like there's an injustice involved somewhere,

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but it's not actually obvious what that is and what is kind of responsible for the injustice.

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And so it's not clear what kind of just going out there and tackling it would look like riot.

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We didn't first think about why is this unjust in way is it and just so maybe it's of some value.

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Yeah, that makes sense to me.

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One thing I was thinking about as I read your essay is just that, as you pointed out, it's not always clear in a given case, a,

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whether there is injustice going on or if there is, what is the source of the injustice that what makes that particular event or interaction unjust?

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And so you kind of don't really know what tool to apply to something if you don't know what the problem is exactly.

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And maybe Theorising can help us get a clearer grasp of what the problem is.

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Maybe, maybe we'll say and hopefully but let's assume that we're on board for some theorising, at least for the purposes of the podcast.

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The particular theory of social justice you defend is called the Republican theory of Social Justice.

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Could you explain what that theory is and maybe clarify what Republican means in this context?

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Yeah. So it's not us Republicanism, if that's the that worry.

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So in this context, it's basically like a theory of social justice as obtaining where people have freedom in their interpersonal relationships.

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But freedom's understood in quite a specific way as not being dominated.

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So this idea of like freedom of non domination and domination occurs,

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I would say would dominate be if a has the capacity to interfere in these choices in a way that B doesn't control.

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So the Republican view doesn't require that we're never interfered with.

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It just requires that when we're interfered with, it's kind of on our terms.

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Is that right? Yeah. So can you explain a bit more about what the difference would be,

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maybe using example between being interfered with, not on your terms and being interfered with on your terms?

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Yes, I'm I'm going to say, Philip Pettit, I always want to say pity, but I have his name.

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But Philip Pettit, who sort of founded Republicanism and has this quite famous example of like an alcohol covered case.

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So say you decide that you don't want to drink for the next week and you look

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with alcohol in a cupboard and you give me the key and you're like Karl Rove, no matter what I say to you, don't give this back to me.

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If in two days time you then come back and ask for the key, and I say, No,

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I'm interfering with your choices because I'm preventing you from choosing to go and drink.

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But I'm doing so on terms that you laid out. Basically, I'm doing it under your instructions.

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And so that interference would count as controlled for Pettit.

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And it has quite interesting implications in terms of like on a state level,

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because Pettit basically tries to argue that democracy counts as the citizens controlling the states interference if it's.

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Yeah, right. Autocracy. Yeah. If it's sufficiently democratic.

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Yeah. So yeah, there definitely cases in Republicanism where you can interfere and that's not seen as like inhibiting anyone's freedom.

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That's really interesting. Why do you prefer the Republican theory as any other theory on the Republican theory of justice?

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You're dominated if you were exposed to somebodies capacity to interfere with you.

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But because even if they don't actually interfere,

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but they just have the power to essentially that still counts as domination on a Republican account.

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So it's quite different from, say, that liberalism in that sense, which focuses more purely on non interferences.

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And so long as people don't interfere with your choices, you'll, you'll find your free Republicanism can capture, I think,

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more successfully in cases where we feel like there's something unjust, but there isn't any actual interference.

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So I would say if you have a society where say that marital rape were legal and socially condoned, and so it's kind of structurally.

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It and it's not really punished.

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Liberalism might see that as bad and it might say, Hey, we should criminalise this and we should kind of socially sanction this.

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But it's reason for doing so would just be that in cases where a wife were raped by her husband, she would be therefore interfered with.

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It's kind of a ridiculously academic way of talking about that,

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and that would be objectionable Republicanism and kind of go one step further and

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say just the fact that it have the power to is objectionable in and of itself.

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And where he acts on that power, that's worse.

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And that's a kind of a greater injustice.

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But we should criminalise and socially sanction this, not just to try and minimise the chances or the probability of interference occurring,

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but because even if interference never occurred, just living under that power is objectionable.

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Okay, great. That's really helpful. But what your essay deals with is a problem that the Republican theory faces, like a particular objection.

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Can you explain what the problem is? Yeah, so I can talk about it is but the problem from adaptive preferences and so adaptive preferences,

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I am roughly defining as where the options that are available to someone are limited by that oppression.

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And so that preference is formed in response to that repression.

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The sort of running example is where women have a sexual preference for their own subordination,

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but that preference is formed by patriarchal social conditioning.

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I think there are, yeah,

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such sort of strong patriarchal conditioning into these roles that a lot of women do basically prefer subordination in various ways.

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So, I mean, probably the stuff that comes to mind is like more of acid type thing, but also there's a lot broader than that.

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I might also be kind of preference for a man to initiate a day rather than a woman or a man to be the one that proposes rather than the woman.

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So I think it's actually quite widespread. Right. Okay.

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Yes. So we have these adaptive preferences and the concept of then preferences are genuine preferences of the person who has them,

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but nonetheless, they have been shaped by oppressive social structures.

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So why do these adaptive preferences cause a problem for the Republican theory of justice?

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So because, like I spoke about earlier on, the Republican theory of justice, interference is only problematic.

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It only counts as dominating if it's not controlled by the person.

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There'll be lots of cases where adaptive preferences might lead someone to prefer and then say consent to or initiate interferences,

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say a particular sexual act where they might not have consented to it if it weren't for having adaptive preferences.

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But nonetheless they do consent. And intuitively that seems like a case where they control that interference, just like in the alcohol covered case.

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And so that's not necessarily the wrong well, I'm going to argue is not the wrong verdict.

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But it does seem to suggest that Republicanism just has nothing to say about what's unjust in, for example,

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women choosing to be sexually subordinate or people acting on their adaptive preferences more generally.

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Yes, say it's fine following. Then when we look at a case of an adaptive preference at work,

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like a woman preferring to be sexually submissive and consenting to sexual acts that put her in that submissive position,

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there seems to be intuitively there's something in just like around this territory,

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but it seems, at least on first glance, that the Republican theory cannot capture or say anything about the injustice,

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because it seems like in the details of the case,

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the conditions for a trust or free relationship are satisfied that the person is acting of a genuine desire.

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And, you know, if they're consenting to a sexual act that puts them in a submissive position,

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yeah, they're being interfered with, but it's on the basis of their genuine preferences.

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And so we have a situation where intuitively we still want to say there's something in just about us.

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After all, the preferences are kind of formed by these oppressive structures,

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but it's not clear what the Republican view can actually say about that injustice.

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Yes. So okay, you're summarising this eloquently, but I would it in the first place.

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But yeah, that's exactly it. Q You want into defending the Republican view from this objection?

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You think that there is. Like a good way of critiquing the objection, but there's also a way to respond that you don't think is ultimately successful.

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Yes. So what's the. The wrong way to defend the Republican view?

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So I think the wrong way is to try and argue that acting on adaptive preferences and any

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interference consented to based on them actually is unjust on a Republican account.

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So you could try and kind of push back against this idea that consent equals

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control and sort of say actually where consent is based on adaptive preferences,

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it doesn't. And therefore, because it would be uncontrolled interference, it would be domination, it would be unjust.

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All right. So sorry to jump in. So you're saying that according to this response,

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if you're consenting to saying on the basis of your adaptive preferences, it's not really on your terms.

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Yeah. Yeah. So that would be exactly it. You'd have to try and argue that it's not really the agent's true choice.

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Yes. So I think that this response is quite problematic because on the face of it,

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there just clearly are cases where consent does control the interference.

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So like we were the case as we were just speaking about where someone consents to submissive sexual acts but say,

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you know, that partner wouldn't do that unless they were to consent. It seems pretty clear there that they do control that.

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And so to try and argue that even in such cases it's actually not the agent,

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but instead kind of the social restrictions which are shaping that preferences.

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That controls the interference, denies the agency of the person involved,

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and denies the fact that from the inside it still feels just like that preferences and that choosing to act on them and also seems to kind of elide

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the distinction between someone consenting to an interference where their consent is based on adaptive preferences and someone just not consenting.

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Because either way it would be the patriarchal social structures which give their

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sexual partner that capacity to interfere rather than their choice or their consent.

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And I think that hopefully it's obvious that those are two very different cases.

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Yeah, never. That seems right. So let's grant that that that's not a very promising avenue for defending Republican.

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So what is a more promising route?

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So I think and try to argue, not so sure if I succeed on this one, but Republicanism can still say that there is an injustice involved.

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It's not sort of left with nothing to say by recognising that when adaptive preferences are formed, that formation itself is dominating.

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And so even then, if people go on to choose X, Y or Z on the basis of those preferences that need not constitute domination,

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that is still domination, and therefore kind of a Republican idea of injustice involved.

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Yeah. So that sounds like what initially motivated this problem was that intuitively, there's something in just in this like territory roughly.

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And you're saying, okay, what the Republican can do is say we shouldn't locate the injustice in like a particular act of consent.

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So it shouldn't we shouldn't locate the injustice when, for instance,

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a woman via her adaptive preferences consents to a sexually submissive act and where we should locate the injustice and so say

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there's something right about our intuitions is in the fact that those adaptive preferences were formed in the first place.

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Yeah. Okay. You said you're not 100% sure that your response succeeds.

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What are the concerns that you have about it? So kind of up until now and at the beginning when I was explaining what domination is,

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it's sort of this idea that personhood dominates Person B when they have this

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capacity for uncontrolled interference and where adaptive preferences are formed.

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It might not be that there is any person who dominates.

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So it might be that, you know, that's the agent.

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And just through kind of seemingly ostensibly innocuous social structures, like the way that the brought up, the kind of films that we see,

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books that we read or present as such that women ought to be more passive and then ought to be more active and dominant.

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And so thereby this person acquires adaptive preferences.

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It's not very obvious here that there's only one in particular who dominates her.

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So to explain how it is still domination, I think we need to have this concept of systemic domination,

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which is the idea that someone can be dominated because they.

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Systematically disempowered relative to other agents, even if there aren't any other agents are actually doing the dominating.

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And I think that this does work as a response in saying that the formation of adaptive preferences is unjust.

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What I'm less sure about is whether it remains unjust because it involves domination

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or whether it kind of collapses into maybe another thing like oppression.

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Right. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, the concern here is that what started off as an account that.

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Framed in justice as a relationship between two people, the two persons.

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Now, to maintain your response, you kind of have to say that injustice can occur between a person and this slightly more like

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a diffuse group of people when no one agent bears the full brunt of any responsibility,

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but they all kind of participate slightly in some way.

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Yeah, exactly. Which I think is a good thing insofar as I think that much more accurately captures how

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injustices sort of perpetrated a lot of the time and of how it permeates through society.

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But. I guess the worry would be that what made domination this like distinct concept in

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the first place was this idea of a kind of paradigm like master slave relationship,

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where there's someone kind of imposing their will on somebody else.

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So I don't think that it's. Like a flaw of a theory of social justice to focus on the diffuse ways that power can be exercised over people.

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But it might just be that I kind of fail to vindicate Republicanism as that.

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Right. Maybe it maybe the theory has transformed into a different theory.

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Maybe. And I'm still hoping not. Yeah, that is that is interesting.

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And one of the things that you address in the longer form of your essay, which I read is.

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An objection or a concern that I had upon my second read of your essay, and then you addressed what I was concerned about so low down.

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And I was thinking, Yeah, but you know, none of our preferences are entirely free from social control.

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So it has to be. What makes the formation of an adaptive preference unjust has to be more than just that.

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The person didn't autonomously create them in some like social voids.

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Yes. To be so distinct from that. So yeah, I think you appealed to some particular criteria that make adaptive preferences,

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the formation of them an injustice, but not some other preferences.

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Yeah. So yeah, exactly what you're saying. I mean, basically all of our preferences are influenced by our social conditions.

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I mean, I think I mentioned earlier, let's say someone who votes based on what their parents vote on or yeah,

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if my music taste is influenced by the kind of music that my friends listen to, that kind of thing.

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Yeah. So there are cases like that where it's very obvious that social conditioning is involved,

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but we very much wouldn't want to say that that makes the person kind of dominated or that constitutes kind of social injustice.

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I think we can differentiate cases of adaptive preference formation from this kind of more innocuous preference formation,

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because where adaptive preferences are formed,

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it is the case that the person who forms their adaptive preferences is kind of systematically

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disempowered relative to another group that's empowered by their having that preference.

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And so to kind of give an example, if a woman forms a preference for sexual subordination kind of indirectly,

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we can say that that empowers men because it's feeding into patriarchal norms where women are submissive and those norms privilege men.

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And so there's a sense in which by performing adaptive preferences,

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not only is she not in control of her preference formation, but also others are kind of given power relative to her.

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So yeah, the idea is that adaptive preferences, unlike some other, more innocuous kinds of preferences formed by society,

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are that these are ones which end up giving one group power over another.

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I might misconstruing that. That is what I just said, but I'm just debating whether or not that's what I want to say.

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Okay. Right.

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So so I think what I want to try and argue is that kind of regardless of the consequences in the very process of adaptive preference formation,

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one group is empowered relative to the person whose preferences that are and potentially that social group who are disempowered.

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So I say in the essay, I tried to use this, this idea of objectification, which is I mean,

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it satisfies definition and it's quite technical that basically the idea is that if one group of persons has like social power over another,

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then the way that they want someone to be might force that person to actually become that way.

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So I think quite something along the lines of like men wanting women to be subordinate, forces them to become subordinate.

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And I think that with a suitably loose understanding of what we mean by force here,

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I think it is actually quite plausible that the fact that it's benefited men for women to be submissive and for men to have more

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power relative to them has meant that we have masses of media in which that is kind of romanticised or eroticized or promoted,

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and therefore people's preferences are kind of formed according to that.

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And it's the case that men's preferences are also formed according to that.

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But in such a case, it's like the way that men want.

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The idea would be men wanting men to be dominant causes men to become dominant.

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Yeah. Whereas if that's the sort of parallel quote,

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so there's not the same like disempowerment relative to another group that there would be in the case of men and women to be subordinate forces.

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Women to become subordinate. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

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We're definitely going to have to explain like some relevant difference between the formation of adaptive preferences and just any of preferences.

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And what you described strikes me as as good a way as any to make that distinction.

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I think in my mind it returns a little bit to the worry that you have that maybe at the end of this you get a really great theory of justice,

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but it's just not the Republican one.

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But yeah, the reason I say that, my concern is that according to the Republican theory of justice, you know what can.

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Make something unjust. Is this interference of another agent?

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Not on their terms. And that might be fine. Like that might be sufficient to make something unjust,

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but it's not clear now that that's necessary just because in the case of adaptive preference formation,

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it seems like what we're appealing to now is something a little different, something like power exertion,

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where we're no longer talking about terms, whether it's on anyone's terms, I could be entirely mistaken.

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No, I feel like that's a good point. I will try and let push back the other side.

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So far, Republicanism is sort of always about power insofar as it's the capacity for uncontrolled interference problematic.

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And I think that is relevant in the case of adoptive parents, will make sure that it's not on the person's terms.

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So if it were the case that I could consent to how my preferences are formed.

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Yeah. And thereby determine the conditions on which my preferences were formed.

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If I could sort of say, oh yeah, I, I'm really happy to be influenced by patriarchal structures such that I would prefer to have long hair.

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Then I could say, well, nothing's interfered with me in a way that I haven't controlled.

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I think that because our preferences dictate what we choose in the first place,

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it's just not intelligible that we could control the way that our preferences are formed by, say, patriarchal structures.

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So I think that that so is doing some work.

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Yeah, that's how fleshly I think I follow that. I think the mistake I was making was in thinking that.

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Okay, because. Like necessarily.

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You are sort of consenting to your preference formation that the.

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That your lack of consent was morally irrelevant in that case.

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On the Republican theory, you kind of need like two things.

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You need some like interference, say, some kind of exercise of power say.

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And you need for that to not be on your terms, for that to be just out of mind.

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The only mistake is that you don't need that to be an actual exercise of the power or the capacity.

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Yeah. Yeah. Right. True, true. True. When it comes to adaptive preferences,

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they are necessarily subject to the not on your terms condition in the same way

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that any desires which are formed by societal influences satisfy that condition.

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So that condition is almost trivially satisfied.

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But in the case of adaptive preferences and not more innocuous preferences, you also get this capacity or exercise of power over you.

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Well, I have to say, I think your response succeeds to my worry. So that's not more confident than I am.

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But that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that summed it up helpful, actually.

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Cool. Well, let's try things together.

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What does all this show us about justice more. More broadly? Scary question.

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I think it raises some quite interesting questions about the extent of our responsibility to combat injustice.

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But I think on the face of it would want to say that wherever we are responsible for perpetuating injustice,

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we ought not to do that and we ought to act differently. But once we see that, once we see those very convoluted way of serving, what argument works?

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If we see that the formation of adaptive preferences is unjust,

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then there are so many kind of small and seemingly harmless ways that we all contribute to forming one another's adaptive preferences all the time.

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And like I mentioned earlier, I have long hair. Like if I have a daughter and I'm wearing makeup and have my hat on,

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then that might reinforce to her that that's how women ought to dress and that one of them perpetuates patriarchal norms.

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And so I think it's right to say that by having long hair, I am furthering patriarchal norms.

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It seems wrong. I'm far too strong to say that, like I have a duty not to.

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How dare you? So I think there's some interesting questions that are about kind of more broadly.

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Do our actions have to be harmful in order for us to have a duty not to act

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in that way or where we kind of contribute to injustice in more subtle ways?

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Yes. What's our responsibility for not doing that right now?

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That's a really good, good question. And to end on a lighter note, what's your favourite thing about water?

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The people? Can I say that? Yes, absolutely can. And they're the lovely people of order.

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Wonderful outside. And yeah, if people want to get in touch with you over to chat about your ideas or to reach out

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to you in your role as women's officer in the see how is best for them to do that.

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Probably email me. I mean, my water, my emails, just my name or if it was about women's stuff there's an that's you don't women email.

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Yeah sure. I'll include your email in the show notes.

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Great. And congratulations again on winning the essay prize.

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And thank you for sharing it with the modern community.

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Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening.

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If you have any comments or feedback about what cast, we'd love to hear from you and continue improving the show.

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You can leave your feedback by heading to Twitter. BW Hot Water Talks to AC UK slash what comes by up?