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127Review of Alex Rosenberg's Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge, London, 2000. pp. 191. For Philosophy Today, 2001 (review)Philosophy Today 14 8-9. 2001.Philosophy of Science is a mid-level text for students with some grounding in philosophy. It introduces the questions that drive enquiry in the philosophy of science, and aims to educate readers in the main positions, problems and arguments in the field today. Alex Rosenberg is certainly well qualified to write such an introduction. His works cover a large area of the philosophy of natural and social sciences. In addition, the author of the argument that the ‘queen of the social sciences’, econo…Read more
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125How to Balance Lives and Livelihoods in a Pandemic.In Julian Savulescu & Dominic Wilkinson (eds.), Pandemic Ethics: From Covid-19 to Disease X., Oxford University Press. pp. 189-209. 2023.Control measures, such as “lockdowns”, have been widely used to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic. Under some conditions, they prevent illness and save lives. But they also exact an economic toll. How should we balance the impact of such policies on individual lives and livelihoods (and other dimensions of concern) to determine which is best? A widely used method of policy evaluation, benefit–cost analysis (BCA), answers these questions by converting all the effects of a policy into monetary equiva…Read more
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117Scanlon on Substantive ResponsibilityJournal of Political Philosophy 16 (2): 184-200. 2007.I argue that Scanlon's Value of Choice View does not offer a plausible account of substantive responsibility. I offer a new account, which I call the Potential Value of Opportunities View. On this view, when a person is in a position to freely and capably make an informed choice, we assess her situation not by the outcome she achieves but by the potential value of her opportunities. This value depends on the value of the various things that she can achieve through her choices, as well as on how …Read more
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111Heuristics and biases in a purported counter-example to the acyclicity of 'better than'Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (3): 285-299. 2008.Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counter-example to the acyclicity of the relationship 'all things considered better than'. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person's painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, t…Read more
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109Incentives and principles for individuals in rawls’ theory of justiceEthics and Economics 3 (1): 1-7. 2005.Philippe van Parijs (2003) has argued that an egalitarian ethos cannot be part of a post- Political Liberalism Rawlsian view of justice, because the demands of political justice are confined to principles for institutions of the basic structure alone. This paper argues, by contrast, that certain principles for individual conduct—including a principle requiring relatively advantaged individuals to sometimes make their economic choices with the aim of maximising the prospects of the least advantag…Read more
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92What Makes Personal Data Processing by Social Networking Services Permissible?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (1): 93-108. 2022.Social Networking Services provide services in return for rights to commercialize users’ personal data. We argue that what makes this transaction permissible is not users’ autonomous consent but the provision of sufficiently valuable opportunities to exchange data for services. We argue that the value of these opportunities should be assessed for both (a) a range of users with different decision-making abilities and (b) third parties. We conclude that regulation should shift from aiming to ensur…Read more
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88Mill and Barry on the Foundations of Liberal RightsThe Philosophers' Magazine 46 78-82. 2009.In On Liberty, Mill famously propounded a view of the good life as the autonomous life. On this view, it is crucial that people develop and exercise, to a high degree, their ability to reason independently about what to believe and what to aim at in life. It is also important that they be able to freely hold and express their beliefs and effectively act on their aims. As Mill put it: The mental and the moral, like the muscular, powers are improved only by being used. ... He who lets the world ..…Read more
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78The good, the right, and the seemly. Ken Binmore interviewedThe Philosophers' Magazine 21 48-51. 2002.An interview with the economist and moral philosopher Ken Binmore about his theory about the origins of our conception of fairness. (Note: A substantially revised and expanded version appears in Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).
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64John RawlsIn Julian Baggini & Jeremy Stangroom (eds.), The Great Thinkers A-Z, Continuum. pp. 199-201. 2004.The political and philosophical problems John Rawls set out to solve arise out of the identity and conflicts of interests between citizens. There is identity of interests because social cooperation makes possible for everyone a life that is much better than one outside of society. There is a conflict of interests because people all prefer a larger to a smaller share of the benefits of social cooperation, and people have ideological differences. The problem a theory of justice has to solve is how…Read more
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55Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage: Applying Principles to Difficult CasesHealth Systems and Reform 3 (4): 1-12. 2017.Progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) requires making difficult trade-offs. In this journal, Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, has endorsed the principles for making such decisions put forward by the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and UHC. These principles include maximizing population health, priority for the worse off, and shielding people from health-related financial risks. But how should one apply these principles in particular cases and how should one adjudicate bet…Read more
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50Inequalities in HIV Care: Chances Versus OutcomesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 11 (12): 42-44. 2011.We analyse three moral dilemmas involving resource allocation in care for HIV-positive patients. Ole Norheim and Kjell Arne Johansson have argued that these cases reveal a tension between egalitarian concerns and concerns for better population health. We argue, by contrast, that these cases reveal a tension between, on the one hand, a concern for equal *chances*, and, on the other hand, both a concern for better health and an egalitarian concern for equal *outcomes*. We conclude that, in these c…Read more
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48Philippa FootThe Philosophers' Magazine 52 (1): 9-9. 2011.A short obituary of the philosopher Philippa Foot.
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30Introduction to the symposium on the Report of the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP)Economics and Philosophy 34 (3): 439-441. 2018.The publication of the first Report of the International Panel on Social Progress is a significant intellectual event, both because of its hugely ambitious aim – of uniting the world's leading researchers from social sciences and the humanities to develop research-based, multi-disciplinary, non-partisan, action-guiding solutions to the central challenges of our time – and because it represents the completion of a mammoth effort in the service of this aim by a diverse set of 269 authors. In its a…Read more
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22This paper explores whether people recognise inconsistency in their own and others’ judgments when they are explicitly prompted to review them. It reports two pre-registered experimental online studies with samples broadly representative of the UK population (N = 814 and N = 1,623). In Study 1, people are more likely to recognise inconsistency in others’ moral (and non-moral) judgments than in their own (positive OTHER-OWN difference). Study 2 replicates this finding and test three explanations …Read more
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21Criteria For the Fairness of Health Financing Decisions: A Scoping ReviewHealth Policy and Planning 38 (1). 2023.Due to constraints on institutional capacity and financial resources, the road to universal health coverage (UHC) involves difficult policy choices. To assist with these choices, scholars and policy makers have done extensive work on criteria to assess the substantive fairness of health financing policies: their impact on the distribution of rights, duties, benefits and burdens on the path towards UHC. However, less attention has been paid to the procedural fairness of health financing decisions…Read more
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20On the social and personal value of existenceIn Iwao Hirose & Andrew Reisner (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning: Themes from the Philosophy of John Broome, Oxford University Press. pp. 95-109. 2015.If a potential person would have a good life if he were to come into existence, can we coherently regard his coming into existence as better for him than his never coming into existence? And can we regard the situation in which he never comes into existence as worse for him? In this paper, we argue that both questions should be answered affirmatively. We also explain where prominent arguments to differing conclusions go wrong. Finally, we explore the relevance of our answers to issues in populat…Read more
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19Heuristics and Biases in a Purported Counterexample to the Acyclicity of "Better Than"CPNSS Working Paper 3 (2). 2007.Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counterexample to the acyclicity of the relationship “all things considered better than”. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person’s painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, to…Read more
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12Preference change and interpersonal comparisons of welfareIn Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Preferences and Well-Being, Cambridge University Press. pp. 265-279. 2006.Preferences are often thought to be relevant for well-being: respecting preferences, or satisfying them, contributes in some way to making people's lives go well for them. A crucial assumption that accompanies this conviction is that there is a normative standard that allows us to discriminate between preferences that do, and those that do not, contribute to well-being. The papers collected in this volume, written by moral philosophers and philosophers of economics, explore a number of central i…Read more
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11The limits of autonomyThe Philosophers' Magazine 46 78-82. 2009.Brian Barry believed liberals should not follow Mill in appealing to the value of autonomy in order to justify liberal rights. Barry believed the basic liberal aim was to find social and political institutions that could be justified to citizens who held differing views about the good life as a fair way of adjudicating between these citizens’ conflicting interests and conceptions of the good.
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9Book review: Shlomi Segall, why inequality matters: luck egalitarianism, its meaning and value, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 256 + x pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781107129818 (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2017.Shlomi Segall’s Why Inequality Matters contains many novel ideas. It should engage researchers with an interest in debates between luck egalitarians and two of their principal opponents, prioritarians and sufficientarians. While, as I shall argue below, not all of its arguments succeed, it also makes contributions which deserve to profoundly influence debates on distributive justice. I proceed as follows. In Section 1, I summarize the book’s central points; in Section 2, I evaluate some of its a…Read more
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4Incentives and principles for individuals in Rawls's theory of justiceÉthique Et Économique 3 (1): 1-7. 2005.Philippe van Parijs (2003) has argued that an egalitarian ethos cannot be part of a post- Political Liberalism Rawlsian view of justice, because the demands of political justice are confined to principles for institutions of the basic structure alone. This paper argues, by contrast, that certain principles for individual conduct—including a principle requiring relatively advantaged individuals to sometimes make their economic choices with the aim of maximising the prospects of the least advantag…Read more
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1ErasmusIn Julian Baggini & Jeremy Stangroom (eds.), Great thinkers A-Z, Continuum. pp. 91-93. 2004.
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Procedural Fairness and the Resilience of Health Financing Reforms in UkraineHealth Policy and Planning 38 (1). 2023.In 2017, Ukraine’s Parliament passed legislation establishing a single health benefit package for the entire population called the Programme of Medical Guarantees, financed through general taxes and administered by a single national purchasing agency. This legislation was in line with key principles for financing universal health coverage. However, health professionals and some policymakers have been critical of elements of the reform, including its reliance on general taxes as the source of fu…Read more
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