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411Equality for Prospective People: A Novel Statement and DefenceUtilitas 33 (3): 304-320. 2021.A possible person’s conditional expected well-being is what the quality of their prospects would be if they were to come into existence. This paper examines the role that this form of expected well-being should play in distributing benefits among prospective people and in deciding who to bring into existence. It argues for a novel egalitarian view on which it is important to ensure equality in people’s life prospects, not merely between actual individuals, but also between all individuals who, g…Read more
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398Difficult Trade-Offs in Response to COVID-19: The Case for Open and Inclusive Decision-MakingNature Medicine 27 10-13. 2021.We argue that deliberative decision-making that is inclusive, transparent and accountable can contribute to more trustworthy and legitimate decisions on difficult ethical questions and political trade-offs during the pandemic and beyond.
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394Security and the 'war on terror': a roundtableIn Julian Baggini & Jeremy Strangroom (eds.), What More Philosophers Think, Continuum. pp. 19-32. 2007.What is the appropriate legal response to terrorist threats? This question is discussed by politician Tony McWalter, The Philosophers' Magazine editor Julian Baggini, and philosophers Catherine Audard, Saladin Meckled-Garcia, and Alex Voorhoeve.
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380Why inequality matters: luck egalitarianism, its meaning and value. (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 3. 2017.I review Shlomi Segall's book 'Why Inequality Matters'. I argue that it conclusively establishes that alongside egalitarians, prioritarians and sufficientarians must sometimes regard a prospect as better (in at least one respect) when it is not better (in terms of well-being) for anyone. Sufficientarians and prioritarians must therefore relinquish a treasured anti-egalitarian argument. It also makes a powerful case that among these three views, egalitarians are in the best position to explain su…Read more
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377Policy Evaluation under Severe Uncertainty: A Cautious, Egalitarian ApproachIn Conrad Heilmann & Julian Reiss (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics, Routledge. pp. 467-479. 2021.In some severely uncertain situations, exemplified by climate change and novel pandemics, policymakers lack a reasoned basis for assigning probabilities to the possible outcomes of the policies they must choose between. I outline and defend an uncertainty averse, egalitarian approach to policy evaluation in these contexts. The upshot is a theory of distributive justice which offers especially strong reasons to guard against individual and collective misfortune.
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375Response to RabinIn Adam Oliver (ed.), Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press. 2013.This chapter analyses the behavioural economist Matthew Rabin's work on biases in decision-making. Rabin argues that these biases cause self-harm and that we should tax individuals to ensure that they do not give in to these biases. The chapter's core question is whether there is a soft-paternalistic justification for these taxes. The answer is nuanced. It argues that Rabin’s description of these biases as “irrational” is not always appropriate—sometimes, for example, they are merely a form of …Read more
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372Bernard MandevilleThe Philosophers' Magazine 20 53. 2002.A short account of the philosopher Bernard Mandeville's key ideas.
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368Review of Hugh LaFolette: The Practice of Ethics (review)Social Choice and Welfare 34 497-501. 2010.A review of Hugh LaFolette's Practical Ethics
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349Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage: A PrecisHealth Economics, Policy and Law 11 (1): 71-77. 2016.We offer a summary of the WHO Report "Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage".
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345Pursuing equal opportunities: the theory and practice of egalitarian justice, by Lesley A. Jacobs [book review] (review)Economics and Philosophy 21 (1): 155-161. 2005.Book review of Lesley A. Jacobs' Pursuing Equal Opportunities: The Theory and Practice of Egalitarian Justice.
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342Healthy Nails versus Long Lives: An Analysis of a Dutch Priority Setting ProposalIn Nir Eyal, Samia A. Hurst, Christopher Murray, S. Andrew Schroeder & Daniel Wikler (eds.), Measuring the Global Burden of Disease: Philosophical Dimensions, . pp. 273-292. 2020.How should governments balance saving people from very large individual disease burdens (such as an early death) against saving them from middling burdens (such as erectile dysfunction) and minor burdens (such as nail fungus)? This chapter considers this question through an analysis of a priority-setting proposal in the Netherlands, on which avoiding a multitude of middling burdens takes priority over saving one person from early death, but no number of very small burdens can take priority over …Read more
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340Universal Health Coverage, Priority Setting and the Human Right to Health.The Lancet 390 (10095): 712-14. 2017.As health policy-makers around the world seek to make progress towards universal health coverage, they must navigate between two important ethical imperatives: to set national spending priorities fairly and efficiently; and to safeguard the right to health. These imperatives can conflict, leading some to conclude that rights-based approaches present a disruptive influence on health policy, hindering states’ efforts to set priorities fairly and efficiently. Here, we challenge this perception. We …Read more
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313Response to Our CriticsHealth Economics, Policy and Law 11 (1): 103-111. 2016.We reply to critics of the World Health Organisation's Report "Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage". We clarify and defend the report's key moral commitments. We also explain its role in guiding policy in the face of both financial and political constraints on making fair choices.
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311Have Reforms Reconciled Health Rights Litigation and Priority Setting in Costa Rica?Health and Human Rights 21 (2): 283-293. 2019.The experience of Costa Rica highlights the potential for conflicts between the right to health and fair priority setting. For example, one study found that most favorable rulings by the Costa Rican constitutional court concerning claims for medications under the right to health were either for experimental treatments or for medicines that should have low priority based on health gain per unit of expenditure and severity of disease. In order to better align rulings with priority setting criteri…Read more
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310Should losses count? A critique of the complaint modelChoice Group Working Papers. 2006.The Complaint Model is an interpretation of Scanlon’s contractualism which holds that (1) an individual can reasonably reject a distribution of well-being when her complaint against that distribution is larger than any other person’s complaint against any other distribution. The Complaint Model further holds that (2) the size of an individual’s complaint against a distribution is a function of (2a) her absolute level of well-being under that distribution, with the size of her complaint increasin…Read more
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298Prioriteit voor patienten met een lagere levenskwaliteitFilosofie En Praktijk 31 40-51. 2010.This paper critically analyses the priority-setting rules used by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK and proposed by the Netherlands' Council on Public Health and Health Care (RVZ). It argues that neither gives proper weight to improving the lot of those who are worse off than others.
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269The Pleasures of TranquillityHomo Oeconomicus. 2022.Epicurus posited that the best life involves the greatest pleasures. He also argued that it involves attaining tranquillity. Many commentators have expressed scepticism that these two claims are compatible. For, they argue, Epicurus’ tranquil life is so austere that it is hard to see how it could be maximally pleasurable. Here, I offer an Epicurean account of the pleasures of tranquillity. I also consider different ways of valuing lives from a hedonistic point of view. Benthamite hedonists value…Read more
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255Is Poverty Our Problem? Introduction to the forum on world poverty and the duty of assistance.The Philosophers' Magazine 36 (4th qu): 46-49. 2006.This paper provides an introductory discussion of questions about three moral duties in the context of global poverty: the duty to aid; the duty not to harm; and the duty to promote just global institutions.
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242How Do People Balance Death against Lesser Burdens?In Matthew Lindauer, James R. Beebe & Justin Sytsma (eds.), Advances in Experimental Political Philosophy, Bloomsbury. pp. 123-158. 2023.
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242This World Bank Report offers a new conception of fair decision processes in health financing. It argues that such procedural fairness can contribute to fairer outcomes, strengthen the legitimacy of decision processes, build trust in authorities, and promote the sustainability of reforms on the path to health coverage for all.
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240Reply to CrispUtilitas 23 (1): 109-114. 2011.In 'Why It Matters that Some Are Worse off than Others,' we offer a new critique of the Priority View. In a recent article, Roger Crisp has argued that our critique is flawed. In this reply, we show that Crisp fails to grapple with, much less defeat, the central claim of our critique. We also show that an example that Crisp offers in support of the Priority View in fact lends support to our critique of that view.
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188Defending transitivity against zeno’s paradoxPhilosophy and Public Affairs 31 (3). 2003.This article criticises one of Stuart Rachels' and Larry Temkin's arguments against the transitivity of 'better than'. This argument invokes our intuitions about our preferences of different bundles of pleasurable or painful experiences of varying intensity and duration, which, it is argued, will typically be intransitive. This article defends the transitivity of 'better than' by showing that Rachels and Temkin are mistaken to suppose that preferences satisfying their assumptions must be intrans…Read more
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186Equality of opportunity and opportunity dominanceEconomics and Philosophy 20 (1): 117-145. 2004.All conceptions of equal opportunity draw on some distinction between morally justified and unjustified inequalities. We discuss how this distinction varies across a range of philosophical positions. We find that these positions often advance equality of opportunity in tandem with distributive principles based on merit, desert, consequentialist criteria or individuals' responsibility for outcomes. The result of this amalgam of principles is a festering controversy that unnecessarily diminishes t…Read more
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183Egalitarianism under Severe UncertaintyPhilosophy and Public Affairs 46 (3): 239-268. 2018.Decision-makers face severe uncertainty when they are not in a position to assign precise probabilities to all of the relevant possible outcomes of their actions. Such situations are common—novel medical treatments and policies addressing climate change are two examples. Many decision-makers respond to such uncertainty in a cautious manner and are willing to incur a cost to avoid it. There are good reasons for taking such an uncertainty-averse attitude to be permissible. However, little work has…Read more
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181Conversations on ethicsOxford University Press. 2009.Can we trust our intuitive judgments of right and wrong? Are moral judgements objective? What reason do we have to do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong? In Conversations on Ethics, Alex Voorhoeve elicits answers to these questions from eleven outstanding philosophers and social scientists: -/- Ken Binmore; Philippa Foot; Harry Frankfurt; Allan Gibbard; Daniel Kahneman; Frances Kamm; Alasdair MacIntyre; T. M. Scanlon; Peter Singer; David Velleman; Bernard Williams. -/- The exchanges ar…Read more
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180Transitivity, the Sorites Paradox, and Similarity-Based Decision-makingErkenntnis 64 (1): 101-114. 2006.A persistent argument against the transitivity assumption of rational choice theory postulates a repeatable action that generates a significant benefit at the expense of a negligible cost. No matter how many times the action has been taken, it therefore seems reasonable for a decision-maker to take the action one more time. However, matters are so fixed that the costs of taking the action some large number of times outweigh the benefits. In taking the action some large number of times on the gro…Read more
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173The grammar of goodness: an interview with Philippa FootHarvard Review of Philosophy 11 32-44. 2003.An interview with Philippa Foot about her book 'Natural Goodness' and the development of her thought. (Note: A slightly revised version appears in Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).
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169Kant on the cheap: Thomas Scanlon interviewedThe Philosophers' Magazine 16 29-30. 2001.A short interview with Thomas Scanlon about his contractualist moral theory. (Note: A revised and expanded version appears in Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).
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160A mistrustful animal: Bernard Williams interviewedHarvard Review of Philosophy 12 (1): 81-92. 2004.A discussion with Bernard Williams about main themes in his work. (Note: a version of this interview appears in 'Conversations on Ethics' (OUP, 2009).)
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135Harry Frankfurt on the necessity of lovePhilosophical Writings 23 55-70. 2003.An conversation with Harry Frankfurt about his views on love, free will, and responsibility, as well as his general approach to philosophy. (Note: a revised version appears in Alex Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).
London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Epicurus |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Economics |