Faculty Workshop – Luke Semrau (Bloomsburg University)

Luke Semrau will present his new paper titled “Against Market Individualism”.

Abstract: Theories of the market’s moral limits presuppose Market Individualism, the idea that specific markets are suitable objects of moral evaluation. The paper argues that this methodological commitment is inconsistent with a common normative one: that at least some bad-making properties are causal. Causality is contrastive. To say, for example, that the market in women’s sexual labor erodes the social conditions for properly valuing sex as a shared gift is to say, roughly, that if that market were different, those conditions would be different. If that’s right, then there should be at least some true counterfactuals that isolate the effects of its  transactions. But, I argue, there aren’t. Candidate counterfactuals can either hold other agents’ acts fixed (yielding ineligible worlds), or allow those acts to naturally vary (yielding eligible yet inseparable worlds). Neither option licenses the attribution of causal properties to individual markets. Even if Market Individualism is false, might we retain it as a practical guide to action? I argue no. It predicates market interventions on information that systematically underdetermines their effects, making it unable to fulfill that function. 

In the Hariri building, room 570. Lunch will be served. To register to attend, please email the director of the institute, Michael Douma, at