Research
I am currently working on issues related to personal responsibility in healthcare provision, as part of a Wellcome Trust funded project. This includes work on the role of health monitoring devices; interactions between the demands of responsibility and other normative issues, such as egalitarian justice; and, more recently, professional responsibilities of medical professionals.
My central research focus outside this project is inter-generational justice in health care: this includes thinking about how the passage of time affects our justice-related entitlements, and has in the past included work - including my PhD - on anti-ageing enhancement. You can hear me talk about some of the issues involved as part of KCL's Health & Society podcast series (2016) here. I also have interests in broader issues of justice in healthcare (particularly related to discrimination).
Other than this, my research interests are in:
(1) animal ethics, particularly deontological constraints on our relationships with animals;
(2) death and why it's (in my view, extremely) bad for us;
(3) subjectivist approaches to value. My main focus is on prudential value, and the value of our lives, but I am also interested in thinking about how (and whether) a radical subjectivism can work in the political sphere;
(4) Autonomy, paternalism and prudence: as with my interest in inter-generational justice, I think about these issues mostly through the lens of the passage of time: how should we think about autonomy and prudential value, for instance, when we can reasonably predict that our minds will change significantly over time?
In 2021, I will start a Wellcome Research Fellowship on the project 'From best interests to sufficient benefit: The ethics of hard decisions in healthcare". The project will bring recent developments in sufficientarian political philosophy to bear on two central questions of health justice: the distribution of resources, and the disagreements over the treatment of critically ill infants and neonates. More details will follow once this project starts.
My central research focus outside this project is inter-generational justice in health care: this includes thinking about how the passage of time affects our justice-related entitlements, and has in the past included work - including my PhD - on anti-ageing enhancement. You can hear me talk about some of the issues involved as part of KCL's Health & Society podcast series (2016) here. I also have interests in broader issues of justice in healthcare (particularly related to discrimination).
Other than this, my research interests are in:
(1) animal ethics, particularly deontological constraints on our relationships with animals;
(2) death and why it's (in my view, extremely) bad for us;
(3) subjectivist approaches to value. My main focus is on prudential value, and the value of our lives, but I am also interested in thinking about how (and whether) a radical subjectivism can work in the political sphere;
(4) Autonomy, paternalism and prudence: as with my interest in inter-generational justice, I think about these issues mostly through the lens of the passage of time: how should we think about autonomy and prudential value, for instance, when we can reasonably predict that our minds will change significantly over time?
In 2021, I will start a Wellcome Research Fellowship on the project 'From best interests to sufficient benefit: The ethics of hard decisions in healthcare". The project will bring recent developments in sufficientarian political philosophy to bear on two central questions of health justice: the distribution of resources, and the disagreements over the treatment of critically ill infants and neonates. More details will follow once this project starts.
Publications
Peer-reviewed publications
18. Forthcoming (with Joshua Parker) Doctors as appointed fiduciaries: A supplemental model for medical decision-making Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (Open access).
Existing models of the doctor-patient relationship either fail to cater well for patients who do not want the responsibility of medical decision-making, or place too much control in doctors' hands as a default. We outline an alternative model, where patients are offered the chance of a formal, but limited, transfer of decision-making responsibility to their doctor.
Preprint
17. Forthcoming. 'Personal Health Surveillance': The use of mHealth in Healthcare Responsibilisation Public Health Ethics (Open access)
'mHealth' or mobile health technologies allow patients to self-monitor behaviours and outcomes in new ways. Some may see mHealth as offering a solution to problems which plague attempts to hold patients responsible for their own health: fairness of burdens and reliance on self-reporting. After noting that these would only really be solved by unacceptably comprehensive forms of personal health surveillance, I suggest a more plausible model is to use personal health surveillance as a 'last resort' for patients who would otherwise independently qualify for responsibility-based penalties. However, I note that there are still a number of ethical and practical problems that such a policy would need to overcome. The prospects of mHealth enabling a fair, genuinely cost-saving policy of patient responsibility are slim.
16. 2021 (with Julian Savulescu) The Right Not to Know: some steps towards a compromise Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24(1): 137-150 (Open access).
Opponents and proponents of the 'right not to know' (see paper 12 below) tend to fall into two opposing camps with respect to autonomy. Proponents typically defend a 'liberty' conception, where autonomy involves freedom to act as one wishes; opponents often advocate a 'duty' conception, where autonomy involves the duty to become informed. We suggest that neither position is tenable in its extreme version, and offer some suggestions for compromise. While the two positions remain distinct, this paper tries to point towards a middle ground.
15. 2020 (with Julian Savulescu). From sufficient health to sufficient responsibility. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 17(3): 423-33. (Open access).
While many sufficientarians see the threshold of sufficiency as marking a point below which responsibility cannot be taken into account, this paper outlines a 'responsibility-sensitive' sufficientarian view for healthcare: responsibility can be taken into account, but only (i) between individuals who are in similar positions with respect to sufficiency, and (ii) when they have shown sufficient responsibility.
14. 2020 (with Joshua Parker). No blame, no gain? From a No Blame culture to a responsibility culture in medicine Journal of Applied Philosophy 37(4): 646-60. (Open access)
Many health systems adopt a 'no blame culture' in response to medical errors, which eschews individual blame in favour of a focus on systems. We argue that the no blame culture fails to distinguish between blame and responsibility, and outline an approach which keeps the positives of (mostly) avoiding blame without ignoring individual responsibility altogether.
This paper was also the subject of an invited post on the blog Justice Everywhere.
13. 2020. Responsibility and the limits of patient choice Bioethics 34(5) 459-66 (Open access).
Discusses how we should determine limits on the choices patients are able to make with respect to their treatment, and considers how we should respond to patients who nonetheless persist with treatments outside this range, or who refuse institutionally accepted forms of care.
12. 2020. The right not to know and the obligation to know (open access). Journal of Medical Ethics 46(5): 300-3 (Open access).
The 'right not to know' is a putative right in healthcare for patients to refuse medically relevant informaiton. I extend an existing argument, based on the burdens placed on others by exercising the right not to know, that suggests that in many cases patients have a moral obligation to know. However, I note that - contrary to the dominant treatment of this issue by Rosamond Rhodes - this does not mean that patients lack a right not to know. Patients can have the right to do what is morally wrong, and it is important to have an institutional protection of patient control over access to information even if some patients will fail moral obligations in exercising this right.
Selected as a JME Feature Article, subject to commentaries from:
Benjamin Berkman
Aisha Deslandes
Lisa Dive and Ainsley Newson
John Harris
My response is here.
11. 2019 (with Julian Savulescu Solidarity and responsibility in health care Public Health Ethics 12(2): 133-44. (Open access)
Argues that healthcare services founded in solidarity can, in some cases, hold patients substantively responsible.
10. 2019 Bursting bubbles: QALYs and discrimination Utilitas 31(2): 191-202
A response to Nick Beckstead and Toby Ord's 'Bubbles under the wallpaper'. Beckstead and Ord argue that even if QALYs are discriminatory against people with disabilities, our only alternative is to abandon a more fundamental commitment. I show that the tensions they use to ground this view occur even without a commitment to avoiding disability discrimination.
Preprint
9. 2018 Health(care) and the temporal subject The Ethics Forum 13(3): 38-64
Defends “momentary sufficientarianism,” as being an important element of healthcare justice: it is a fundamental demand of justice that people are sufficiently well off not across their lives, but at all moments in their lives. Also considers how a pluralist approach, which engages both with people’s lives as a whole and with their states at particular moments, can reconcile the potentially competing claims in healthcare that emerge from these two perspectives.
Preprint
8. 2018 Ageing and terminal illness: Problems for Rawlsian justice Journal of Applied Philosophy 35(4): 775-89
Critical appraisal of two prominent extensions of John Rawls's theory of justice to health care. A strict application of the difference principle in the case of health care leads to extreme conclusions, given the existence of very young patients whose situation cannot be improved. I also show that the prudential calculations on which one of these views - Hugh Lazenby's - relies are not warranted from within the Rawlsian framework. Age and terminal illness are significant problems for any Rawlsian account of health justice.
Preprint
7. 2017 Paternalism and evaluative shift Moral Philosophy and Politics 4(2): 325-47
Suggests a justification of paternalism that avoids the suggestion that the target of paternalistic interference has made some mistake about what is in her interests. In cases where we can predict that an agent will undergo a significant alteration in their evaluative outlook - an 'evaluative shift' - many otherwise persuasive objections to paternalism lose their force.
Preprint
6. 2017 Enhancement and the conservative bias Philosophy and Technology 30 (3): 339-56
Explores Nicholas Agar’s view that we should avoid 'radical' enhancement in relation to two kinds of radical enhancement: cognitive and anti-ageing. While Agar's worries have some plausibility with respect to radical cognitive enhancement, it is not plausible for radical anti-ageing enhancement.
Preprint
5. 2017 (with Giulia Felappi) Publish or perish Metaphilosophy 48(5): 745-61
Offers a systematic review of the problems involved in reliance on publication numbers in contemporary academic philosophy, and argue that the resulting situation is bad not just for individual philosophers, but for philosophy itself. Suggests potential solutions, including a professional code of conduct for philosophers.
4. 2016 Utilitarianism and animal cruelty De Ethica 3(3). 5-19. (Open access)
Adds further considerations in support of a tension between utilitarianism and concern for animal welfare. Suggests three ways in which utilitarianism comes significantly apart from mainstream concerns with animal welfare. a) It opposes animal cruelty only when it offers an inefficient ratio of pleasure to pain, which is not obviously true of abuses not related to food consumption; b) it faces the problem of the inefficacy of individual decisions; c) the it ignores various pleasures that humans may get from the superior status that a structure supporting exploitation confers.
3. 2016 Fair innings and time-relative claims Bioethics 30(6). 462-8
Greg Bognar offers a prioritarian justification for ‘fair innings’ distributive principles that ration healthcare by age. This article argues that this position is incomplete because of the possibility of ‘time-relative’ egalitarian principles that could complement the kind of lifetime egalitarianism that Bognar adopts.
Preprint
Invited work
2. Forthcoming Grow the pie, or the resource shuffle? Invited commentary on an article by Christian Munthe, Davide Fumagalli and Erik Malmqvist, Journal of Medical Ethics.
1. With Tom Douglas. Learning to Discriminate: The Perfect Proxy Problem in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing. Commissioned for J Roberts, J Ryberg (eds), Principled Sentencing and Artificial Intelligence.
18. Forthcoming (with Joshua Parker) Doctors as appointed fiduciaries: A supplemental model for medical decision-making Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (Open access).
Existing models of the doctor-patient relationship either fail to cater well for patients who do not want the responsibility of medical decision-making, or place too much control in doctors' hands as a default. We outline an alternative model, where patients are offered the chance of a formal, but limited, transfer of decision-making responsibility to their doctor.
Preprint
17. Forthcoming. 'Personal Health Surveillance': The use of mHealth in Healthcare Responsibilisation Public Health Ethics (Open access)
'mHealth' or mobile health technologies allow patients to self-monitor behaviours and outcomes in new ways. Some may see mHealth as offering a solution to problems which plague attempts to hold patients responsible for their own health: fairness of burdens and reliance on self-reporting. After noting that these would only really be solved by unacceptably comprehensive forms of personal health surveillance, I suggest a more plausible model is to use personal health surveillance as a 'last resort' for patients who would otherwise independently qualify for responsibility-based penalties. However, I note that there are still a number of ethical and practical problems that such a policy would need to overcome. The prospects of mHealth enabling a fair, genuinely cost-saving policy of patient responsibility are slim.
16. 2021 (with Julian Savulescu) The Right Not to Know: some steps towards a compromise Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24(1): 137-150 (Open access).
Opponents and proponents of the 'right not to know' (see paper 12 below) tend to fall into two opposing camps with respect to autonomy. Proponents typically defend a 'liberty' conception, where autonomy involves freedom to act as one wishes; opponents often advocate a 'duty' conception, where autonomy involves the duty to become informed. We suggest that neither position is tenable in its extreme version, and offer some suggestions for compromise. While the two positions remain distinct, this paper tries to point towards a middle ground.
15. 2020 (with Julian Savulescu). From sufficient health to sufficient responsibility. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 17(3): 423-33. (Open access).
While many sufficientarians see the threshold of sufficiency as marking a point below which responsibility cannot be taken into account, this paper outlines a 'responsibility-sensitive' sufficientarian view for healthcare: responsibility can be taken into account, but only (i) between individuals who are in similar positions with respect to sufficiency, and (ii) when they have shown sufficient responsibility.
14. 2020 (with Joshua Parker). No blame, no gain? From a No Blame culture to a responsibility culture in medicine Journal of Applied Philosophy 37(4): 646-60. (Open access)
Many health systems adopt a 'no blame culture' in response to medical errors, which eschews individual blame in favour of a focus on systems. We argue that the no blame culture fails to distinguish between blame and responsibility, and outline an approach which keeps the positives of (mostly) avoiding blame without ignoring individual responsibility altogether.
This paper was also the subject of an invited post on the blog Justice Everywhere.
13. 2020. Responsibility and the limits of patient choice Bioethics 34(5) 459-66 (Open access).
Discusses how we should determine limits on the choices patients are able to make with respect to their treatment, and considers how we should respond to patients who nonetheless persist with treatments outside this range, or who refuse institutionally accepted forms of care.
12. 2020. The right not to know and the obligation to know (open access). Journal of Medical Ethics 46(5): 300-3 (Open access).
The 'right not to know' is a putative right in healthcare for patients to refuse medically relevant informaiton. I extend an existing argument, based on the burdens placed on others by exercising the right not to know, that suggests that in many cases patients have a moral obligation to know. However, I note that - contrary to the dominant treatment of this issue by Rosamond Rhodes - this does not mean that patients lack a right not to know. Patients can have the right to do what is morally wrong, and it is important to have an institutional protection of patient control over access to information even if some patients will fail moral obligations in exercising this right.
Selected as a JME Feature Article, subject to commentaries from:
Benjamin Berkman
Aisha Deslandes
Lisa Dive and Ainsley Newson
John Harris
My response is here.
11. 2019 (with Julian Savulescu Solidarity and responsibility in health care Public Health Ethics 12(2): 133-44. (Open access)
Argues that healthcare services founded in solidarity can, in some cases, hold patients substantively responsible.
10. 2019 Bursting bubbles: QALYs and discrimination Utilitas 31(2): 191-202
A response to Nick Beckstead and Toby Ord's 'Bubbles under the wallpaper'. Beckstead and Ord argue that even if QALYs are discriminatory against people with disabilities, our only alternative is to abandon a more fundamental commitment. I show that the tensions they use to ground this view occur even without a commitment to avoiding disability discrimination.
Preprint
9. 2018 Health(care) and the temporal subject The Ethics Forum 13(3): 38-64
Defends “momentary sufficientarianism,” as being an important element of healthcare justice: it is a fundamental demand of justice that people are sufficiently well off not across their lives, but at all moments in their lives. Also considers how a pluralist approach, which engages both with people’s lives as a whole and with their states at particular moments, can reconcile the potentially competing claims in healthcare that emerge from these two perspectives.
Preprint
8. 2018 Ageing and terminal illness: Problems for Rawlsian justice Journal of Applied Philosophy 35(4): 775-89
Critical appraisal of two prominent extensions of John Rawls's theory of justice to health care. A strict application of the difference principle in the case of health care leads to extreme conclusions, given the existence of very young patients whose situation cannot be improved. I also show that the prudential calculations on which one of these views - Hugh Lazenby's - relies are not warranted from within the Rawlsian framework. Age and terminal illness are significant problems for any Rawlsian account of health justice.
Preprint
7. 2017 Paternalism and evaluative shift Moral Philosophy and Politics 4(2): 325-47
Suggests a justification of paternalism that avoids the suggestion that the target of paternalistic interference has made some mistake about what is in her interests. In cases where we can predict that an agent will undergo a significant alteration in their evaluative outlook - an 'evaluative shift' - many otherwise persuasive objections to paternalism lose their force.
Preprint
6. 2017 Enhancement and the conservative bias Philosophy and Technology 30 (3): 339-56
Explores Nicholas Agar’s view that we should avoid 'radical' enhancement in relation to two kinds of radical enhancement: cognitive and anti-ageing. While Agar's worries have some plausibility with respect to radical cognitive enhancement, it is not plausible for radical anti-ageing enhancement.
Preprint
5. 2017 (with Giulia Felappi) Publish or perish Metaphilosophy 48(5): 745-61
Offers a systematic review of the problems involved in reliance on publication numbers in contemporary academic philosophy, and argue that the resulting situation is bad not just for individual philosophers, but for philosophy itself. Suggests potential solutions, including a professional code of conduct for philosophers.
4. 2016 Utilitarianism and animal cruelty De Ethica 3(3). 5-19. (Open access)
Adds further considerations in support of a tension between utilitarianism and concern for animal welfare. Suggests three ways in which utilitarianism comes significantly apart from mainstream concerns with animal welfare. a) It opposes animal cruelty only when it offers an inefficient ratio of pleasure to pain, which is not obviously true of abuses not related to food consumption; b) it faces the problem of the inefficacy of individual decisions; c) the it ignores various pleasures that humans may get from the superior status that a structure supporting exploitation confers.
3. 2016 Fair innings and time-relative claims Bioethics 30(6). 462-8
Greg Bognar offers a prioritarian justification for ‘fair innings’ distributive principles that ration healthcare by age. This article argues that this position is incomplete because of the possibility of ‘time-relative’ egalitarian principles that could complement the kind of lifetime egalitarianism that Bognar adopts.
Preprint
Invited work
2. Forthcoming Grow the pie, or the resource shuffle? Invited commentary on an article by Christian Munthe, Davide Fumagalli and Erik Malmqvist, Journal of Medical Ethics.
1. With Tom Douglas. Learning to Discriminate: The Perfect Proxy Problem in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing. Commissioned for J Roberts, J Ryberg (eds), Principled Sentencing and Artificial Intelligence.
Other publications
2019 John Rawls and the 'Veil of Ignorance' in (Noah Levin, ed.) Introduction to Ethics: An Open Educational Resource pp.92-97
A short chapter in an open-access textbook on Rawls's use of the 'Veil of Ignorance'.
2018 John Rawls' 'A Theory of Justice 1000-Word Philosophy
A brief overview of some central themes in John Rawls' book, A Theory of Justice, intended as a study and teaching aid.
Book reviews
2020 Thinking Through Utilitarianism by Andrew T. Forcehimes and Luke Semrau. Teaching Philosophy 43(2): 201-4
2015 Justice Between the Young and the Old by Dennis McKerlie. Czech Sociological Review 51(3). 562-5
2019 John Rawls and the 'Veil of Ignorance' in (Noah Levin, ed.) Introduction to Ethics: An Open Educational Resource pp.92-97
A short chapter in an open-access textbook on Rawls's use of the 'Veil of Ignorance'.
2018 John Rawls' 'A Theory of Justice 1000-Word Philosophy
A brief overview of some central themes in John Rawls' book, A Theory of Justice, intended as a study and teaching aid.
Book reviews
2020 Thinking Through Utilitarianism by Andrew T. Forcehimes and Luke Semrau. Teaching Philosophy 43(2): 201-4
2015 Justice Between the Young and the Old by Dennis McKerlie. Czech Sociological Review 51(3). 562-5
Work in progress
Comments are very welcome on drafts where these are available.
Patient litigation and professional responsibility (with Josh Parker)
Considers whether applying the insights of our recent paper on professional accountability might help to reduce patient litigation in a way that is consistent with patients' strong rights to pursue compensation and accountability.
Do medical professionals have a responsibility to their patients to avoid burnout? (with Josh Parker)
Considers the current move in the NHS for making the avoidance of 'burnout' a professional obligation for medical professionals, and raises some worries about this approach.
Paper on the metaethics of responsibility and distributive justice (under review)
Outlines an amendment to Victoria McGeer's 'scaffolding' account of responsibility, noting that it seems not to explain the 'distributive' element of our responsibility-centred practices (e.g. in using responsibility to allocate unavoidable burdens).
The prospects for Prospect Utilitarianism
Sufficientarianism is a view of distributive justice that places importance on one or more ‘thresholds’, whereby those who are above the threshold have much weaker claims to additional benefits than those below, and may even have no claims at all. Hun Chung (2017) has recently argued for a new theory of distributive justice that overcomes two central problems faced by sufficientarianism. Sufficientarianism cannot give intuitively compelling answers to ‘lifeboat cases’, where we can save the lives of some but not all of a group, and fails to respect the axiom of continuity. Chung’s says that his alternative, ‘prospect utilitarianism’, gives correct answers to lifeboat cases, and respects continuity. What is more, his theory gets empirical support from work in economics on ‘prospect theory’.
This paper does several things. Firstly, it shows that sufficientarianism can give the intuitively correct answer to lifeboat cases, and that prospect utilitarianism’s ability to do so is less compelling than Chung suggests. Secondly, it shows that the idea of continuity is not an axiom, and thus that sufficientarianism’s failure to respect it is not a good reason to reject the view. Finally, it shows that prospect utilitarianism faces some independent problems, since it too requires a threshold. Chung’s threshold is based on the idea of ‘adequate functioning’. The paper shows that there are problems with this as a threshold, and that it is not adequately supported by prospect theory. As such, the prospects for prospect utilitarianism are poor.
Bringing the myth to life: Three prima facie cases of optional war
War is a morally serious undertaking, and hence requires the threat of severe harm to justify it. Kieran Oberman uses this fact to argue that wars cannot be morally 'optional' (morally permissible, but not required). Oberman considers two traditional grounds of war's optionality (a humanitarian war that will impose great costs on the war-going nation's people; and a self-defensive war that can be refused on the grounds of self-determination) and argues convincingly against them. In particular, the humanitarian case is rejected on the grounds of what Oberman calls the 'Cost Principle': if citizens do not have a humanitarian duty to bear a cost to resolve a humanitarian crisis, the state may not permissibly impose that cost on them. However, I suggest that even if Oberman's arguments are sound, they do not prove that the optional war is a "myth" as he claims. Using humanitarian wars as my focus, I suggest three scenarios that might be grounds for optional war: a state's obligation to incentivise its citizens towards privately supporting a war ('The Private War'); a scenario where it is uncertain whether the war will exceed the principle established by the Cost Principle ('The Forever War'); and a scenario where a state faces two or more interventions, which would individually fall below the threshold, but which collectively exceeds it ('The Multi-War'). While there are ways to resist these conclusions, they require significantly more argument or assumption than Oberman provides.
Cows, crickets and clams: On the alleged 'vegan' obligation to eat different kinds of meat
Some people think that the logic behind veganism implies an obligation to eat certain kinds of meat - different authors have defended this claim with regard to animals as complex as cows, to as simple as insects and shellfish. I take cows, crickets and clams to stand for three different animal categories: animals that can definitely suffer; animals that might be able to suffer, and animals who are as likely to suffer as are plants. I then note that the primary principle behind defences of 'vegan' meat-eating depend on the 'least harm' principle (LHP). But LHP is implausible, and not the only possible motivator for veganism. I consider the implications of the primary alternative to LHP - a deontological theory of rights - for the alleged obligation(s) to eat certain kinds of meat.
In defence of welfare subjectivism
Subjectivist theories of welfare base individual welfare on particular mental attitudes. Bradley suggests that all such theories generate paradoxical results in cases where the subject has the relevant positive attitude towards their life going badly. One view that apparently circumvents this paradox, suggested by Dorsey, is a view that bases welfare on the individual’s judgments that something is good or bad for them. However, Lin argues that subjectivist views cannot account for infant welfare. This suggests that subjectivists should adopt a far simpler attitude as grounding welfare than in Dorsey's theory.
I argue that subjectivists must respond to these twin worries with a disjunctive theory. Your welfare is determined by judgement subjectivism, unless you cannot make the relevant judgements. Then, your welfare is determined by your desires. I defend this view against objections from Lin, and the charge that it is ad hoc.
The Universe doesn't care: Against the rationalist defence of moral realism
Evolutionary debunking accounts claim that the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs provide a problem for moral realists because evolutionary explanations of our moral beliefs have more plausibility than realist accounts. A certain kind of response, which I term ‘rationalist’ offers a dual response to evolutionary debunking. First, they offer a supposedly plausible account of how we acquire objective moral knowledge through use of our rationality. Second, they claim that certain moral beliefs are not amenable to evolutionary explanation. I argue that neither of these putative advantages survives further scrutiny. An appeal to ‘rational insight’, although it makes reference to a somewhat familiar faculty, gives no useful explanation of how we come to know moral facts. Moreover, the supposedly problematic moral beliefs are in fact amenable to evolutionary explanation. As such, rationalist accounts are, like other realist accounts, on the wrong side of the balance of justification against evolutionary debunking.
Patient litigation and professional responsibility (with Josh Parker)
Considers whether applying the insights of our recent paper on professional accountability might help to reduce patient litigation in a way that is consistent with patients' strong rights to pursue compensation and accountability.
Do medical professionals have a responsibility to their patients to avoid burnout? (with Josh Parker)
Considers the current move in the NHS for making the avoidance of 'burnout' a professional obligation for medical professionals, and raises some worries about this approach.
Paper on the metaethics of responsibility and distributive justice (under review)
Outlines an amendment to Victoria McGeer's 'scaffolding' account of responsibility, noting that it seems not to explain the 'distributive' element of our responsibility-centred practices (e.g. in using responsibility to allocate unavoidable burdens).
The prospects for Prospect Utilitarianism
Sufficientarianism is a view of distributive justice that places importance on one or more ‘thresholds’, whereby those who are above the threshold have much weaker claims to additional benefits than those below, and may even have no claims at all. Hun Chung (2017) has recently argued for a new theory of distributive justice that overcomes two central problems faced by sufficientarianism. Sufficientarianism cannot give intuitively compelling answers to ‘lifeboat cases’, where we can save the lives of some but not all of a group, and fails to respect the axiom of continuity. Chung’s says that his alternative, ‘prospect utilitarianism’, gives correct answers to lifeboat cases, and respects continuity. What is more, his theory gets empirical support from work in economics on ‘prospect theory’.
This paper does several things. Firstly, it shows that sufficientarianism can give the intuitively correct answer to lifeboat cases, and that prospect utilitarianism’s ability to do so is less compelling than Chung suggests. Secondly, it shows that the idea of continuity is not an axiom, and thus that sufficientarianism’s failure to respect it is not a good reason to reject the view. Finally, it shows that prospect utilitarianism faces some independent problems, since it too requires a threshold. Chung’s threshold is based on the idea of ‘adequate functioning’. The paper shows that there are problems with this as a threshold, and that it is not adequately supported by prospect theory. As such, the prospects for prospect utilitarianism are poor.
Bringing the myth to life: Three prima facie cases of optional war
War is a morally serious undertaking, and hence requires the threat of severe harm to justify it. Kieran Oberman uses this fact to argue that wars cannot be morally 'optional' (morally permissible, but not required). Oberman considers two traditional grounds of war's optionality (a humanitarian war that will impose great costs on the war-going nation's people; and a self-defensive war that can be refused on the grounds of self-determination) and argues convincingly against them. In particular, the humanitarian case is rejected on the grounds of what Oberman calls the 'Cost Principle': if citizens do not have a humanitarian duty to bear a cost to resolve a humanitarian crisis, the state may not permissibly impose that cost on them. However, I suggest that even if Oberman's arguments are sound, they do not prove that the optional war is a "myth" as he claims. Using humanitarian wars as my focus, I suggest three scenarios that might be grounds for optional war: a state's obligation to incentivise its citizens towards privately supporting a war ('The Private War'); a scenario where it is uncertain whether the war will exceed the principle established by the Cost Principle ('The Forever War'); and a scenario where a state faces two or more interventions, which would individually fall below the threshold, but which collectively exceeds it ('The Multi-War'). While there are ways to resist these conclusions, they require significantly more argument or assumption than Oberman provides.
Cows, crickets and clams: On the alleged 'vegan' obligation to eat different kinds of meat
Some people think that the logic behind veganism implies an obligation to eat certain kinds of meat - different authors have defended this claim with regard to animals as complex as cows, to as simple as insects and shellfish. I take cows, crickets and clams to stand for three different animal categories: animals that can definitely suffer; animals that might be able to suffer, and animals who are as likely to suffer as are plants. I then note that the primary principle behind defences of 'vegan' meat-eating depend on the 'least harm' principle (LHP). But LHP is implausible, and not the only possible motivator for veganism. I consider the implications of the primary alternative to LHP - a deontological theory of rights - for the alleged obligation(s) to eat certain kinds of meat.
In defence of welfare subjectivism
Subjectivist theories of welfare base individual welfare on particular mental attitudes. Bradley suggests that all such theories generate paradoxical results in cases where the subject has the relevant positive attitude towards their life going badly. One view that apparently circumvents this paradox, suggested by Dorsey, is a view that bases welfare on the individual’s judgments that something is good or bad for them. However, Lin argues that subjectivist views cannot account for infant welfare. This suggests that subjectivists should adopt a far simpler attitude as grounding welfare than in Dorsey's theory.
I argue that subjectivists must respond to these twin worries with a disjunctive theory. Your welfare is determined by judgement subjectivism, unless you cannot make the relevant judgements. Then, your welfare is determined by your desires. I defend this view against objections from Lin, and the charge that it is ad hoc.
The Universe doesn't care: Against the rationalist defence of moral realism
Evolutionary debunking accounts claim that the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs provide a problem for moral realists because evolutionary explanations of our moral beliefs have more plausibility than realist accounts. A certain kind of response, which I term ‘rationalist’ offers a dual response to evolutionary debunking. First, they offer a supposedly plausible account of how we acquire objective moral knowledge through use of our rationality. Second, they claim that certain moral beliefs are not amenable to evolutionary explanation. I argue that neither of these putative advantages survives further scrutiny. An appeal to ‘rational insight’, although it makes reference to a somewhat familiar faculty, gives no useful explanation of how we come to know moral facts. Moreover, the supposedly problematic moral beliefs are in fact amenable to evolutionary explanation. As such, rationalist accounts are, like other realist accounts, on the wrong side of the balance of justification against evolutionary debunking.
