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1139Discounting for public policy: A surveyEconomics and Philosophy 33 (3): 391-439. 2017.This article is a critical survey of the debate over the value of the social discount rate, with a particular focus on climate change. The ma- jority of the material surveyed is from the economics rather than from the philosophy literature, but the emphasis of the survey itself is on founda- tions in ethical and other normative theory rather than highly technical details. I begin by locating the standard approach to discounting within the overall landscape of ethical theory, and explaining the a…Read more
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5046CluelessnessProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (3): 311-339. 2016.Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations of the consequences that would result from the various available actions. For any given action, however, the majority of its consequences are unpredictable at the time of decision. Many have worried that this leaves us, in some important sense, clueless. In this paper, I distinguish between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ possible sources of cluelessness. In terms of this taxonomy, the majority of the existing lit…Read more
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5702Population axiologyPhilosophy Compass 12 (11). 2017.Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in ques- tion may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and “person-affecting” theories. Each of these the- ories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coi…Read more
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566Discounting future healthIn Norheim Emanuel Jamison Johansson Millum Otterson Ruger and Verguet (ed.), Global health priority-setting: Cost-effectiveness and beyond, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.In carrying out cost-benefit or cost-effective analysis, a discount rate should be applied to some kinds of future benefits and costs. It is controversial, though, whether future health is in this class. I argue that one of the standard arguments for discounting (from diminishing marginal returns) is inapplicable to the case of health, while another (favouring a pure rate of time preference) is unsound in any case. However, there are two other reasons that might support a positive discount rate …Read more
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663Aggregating extended preferencesPhilosophical Studies 174 (5): 1163-1190. 2017.An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that they cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi :434, 1953) attempts to solve this problem by appeal to people’s so-called extended preferences. This paper presents a new problem for the extended preferences program, related to Arrow’s celebrated impossibility theorem. We consider three ways in which the extended-preference theorist might avoid this problem, and recommend tha…Read more
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144Everett and evidenceIn Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality, Oxford University Press Uk. 2010.Much of the evidence for quantum mechanics is statistical in nature. The Everett interpretation, if it is to be a candidate for serious consideration, must be capable of doing justice to reasoning on which statistical evidence in which observed relative frequencies that closely match calculated probabilities counts as evidence in favour of a theory from which the probabilities are calculated. Since, on the Everett interpretation, all outcomes with nonzero amplitude are actualized on different bra…Read more
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1An unfortunate state of affairsIn David Edmonds (ed.), Philosophers Take on the World, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
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267Time Reversal in Classical ElectromagnetismBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (3): 557-584. 2009.Richard Feynman has claimed that anti-particles are nothing but particles `propagating backwards in time'; that time reversing a particle state always turns it into the corresponding anti-particle state. According to standard quantum field theory textbooks this is not so: time reversal does not turn particles into anti-particles. Feynman's view is interesting because, in particular, it suggests a nonstandard, and possibly illuminating, interpretation of the CPT theorem. In this paper, we explore…Read more
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818Extended Preferences and Interpersonal Comparisons of Well‐beingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (3): 636-667. 2016.An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi () attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents’ preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue…Read more
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120Towards a geometrical understanding of the cpt theoremBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (1): 27-50. 2010.The CPT theorem of quantum field theory states that any relativistic (Lorentz-invariant) quantum field theory must also be invariant under CPT, the composition of charge conjugation, parity reversal and time reversal. This paper sketches a puzzle that seems to arise when one puts the existence of this sort of theorem alongside a standard way of thinking about symmetries, according to which spacetime symmetries (at any rate) are associated with features of the spacetime structure. The puzzle is, …Read more
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202AntiprioritarianismUtilitas 27 (1): 1-42. 2015.Prioritarianism is supposed to be a theory of the overall good that captures the common intuition of . But it is difficult to give precise content to the prioritarian claim. Over the past few decades, prioritarians have increasingly responded to this by formulating prioritarianism not in terms of an alleged primitive notion of quantity of well-being, but instead in terms of von NeumannPrimitivistTechnicalpriority to the worse offMorgenstern utility is a retrograde step
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196On the Everettian epistemic problemStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1): 120-152. 2006.Recent work in the Everett interpretation has suggested that the problem of probability can be solved by understanding probability in terms of rationality. However, there are *two* problems relating to probability in Everett --- one practical, the other epistemic --- and the rationality-based program *directly* addresses only the practical problem. One might therefore worry that the problem of probability is only `half solved' by this approach. This paper aims to dispel that worry: a solution to…Read more
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557A Reconsideration of the Harsanyi–Sen–Weymark Debate on UtilitarianismUtilitas 1-39. 2016.Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for utilitarianism. This claim has been strongly resisted, notably by Sen and Weymark, who argue that while Harsanyi has perhaps shown that overall good is a linear sum of individuals’ von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities, he has done nothing to establish any con- nection between the notion of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility and that of well-being, and hence that utilitarianism does not follow. The present…Read more
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25(a) How to design a nuclear power plant 3. Deutsch/Wallace solution to the practical problem (a) Argue that the rational Everettian agent makes decisions by maximizing expected utility, where the expectation value is an average over branches 4. The semantics of branching - two options..
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36On the Everettian Epistemic ProblemStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1): 120-152. 2007.Recent work in the Everett interpretation has suggested that the problem of probability can be solved by understanding probability in terms of rationality. However, there are *two* problems relating to probability in Everett --- one practical, the other epistemic --- and the rationality-based program *directly* addresses only the practical problem. One might therefore worry that the problem of probability is only `half solved' by this approach. This paper aims to dispel that worry: a solution to…Read more
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334Understanding Deutsch's probability in a deterministic universeStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (3): 423-456. 2004.Difficulties over probability have often been considered fatal to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Here I argue that the Everettian can have everything she needs from `probability' without recourse to indeterminism, ignorance, primitive identity over time or subjective uncertainty: all she needs is a particular *rationality principle*. The decision-theoretic approach recently developed by Deutsch and Wallace claims to provide just such a principle. But, according to Wallace, deci…Read more
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7The debate between substantivalists and relationists about spacetime was given a new lease of life approximately twenty years ago, when John Earman and John Norton published an argument for the conclusion that, in the light of general relativity, substantivalism is untenable. Responses to Earman and Norton’s argument generated a proliferation of ‘substantivalisms’, and a debate between them that was, to the ears of at least some, distinctively metaphysical in character.
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384Probability in the Everett interpretationPhilosophy Compass 2 (1). 2007.The Everett (many-worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics faces a prima facie problem concerning quantum probabilities. Research in this area has been fast-paced over the last few years, following a controversial suggestion by David Deutsch that decision theory can solve the problem. This article provides a non-technical introduction to the decision-theoretic program, and a sketch of the current state of the debate.
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277Empirical Consequences of SymmetriesBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (1): 59-89. 2014.It is widely recognized that ‘global’ symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mechanics and special relativity, can give rise to direct empirical counterparts such as the Galileo-ship phenomenon. However, conventional wisdom holds that ‘local’ symmetries, such as the diffeomorphism invariance of general relativity and the gauge invariance of classical electromagnetism, have no such direct empirical counterparts. We argue against this conventional wisdom. We develop a framework for …Read more
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90On the CPT theoremStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 45 46-65. 2014.We provide a careful development and rigorous proof of the CPT theorem within the framework of mainstream quantum field theory. This is in contrast to the usual rigorous proofs in purely axiomatic frameworks, and non-rigorous proof-sketches in the mainstream approach. We construct the CPT transformation for a general field directly, without appealing to the enumerative classification of representations, and in a manner that is clearly related to the requirements of our proof. Our approach applie…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Probability |