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69Climate Justice, Climate Policy, and the Role of Political PhilosophyEthics, Policy and Environment 22 (2): 145-147. 2019.
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40Review of Ryan Burg, Business Ethics for a Material World: An Ecological Approach to Object Stewardship (review)Business Ethics Quarterly 29 143-146. 2019.
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101Collective Obligations and the Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism: A Reply to Alexander DietzUtilitas 31 (3): 326-333. 2019.In a recent article in this journal, Alexander Dietz argues that what I have called the ‘institutional critique of effective altruism’ is best understood as grounded in the claim that ‘EA relies on an overly individualistic approach to ethics, neglecting the importance of our collective obligations’. In this reply, I argue that Dietz’s view does not represent a plausible interpretation of the institutional critiques offered by others, primarily because, unlike Dietz, they appear to believe that …Read more
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84Collective Obligations and Demandingness ComplaintsMoral Philosophy and Politics 6 (1): 113-132. 2019.It has been suggested that understanding our obligations to address large-scale moral problems such as global poverty and the threat of severe climate change as fundamentally collective can allow us to insist that a great deal must be done about these problems while denying that there are very demanding obligations, applying to either individuals or collectives, to contribute to addressing them. I argue that this strategy for limiting demandingness fails because those who endorse collective obli…Read more
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42Review of The Ethics of Giving: Philosophers' Perspectives on Philanthropy (ed. Woodruff) (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2018.
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394The Institutional Critique of Effective AltruismUtilitas 30 (2): 143-171. 2018.In recent years, the effective altruism movement has generated much discussion about the ways in which we can most effectively improve the lives of the global poor, and pursue other morally important goals. One of the most common criticisms of the movement is that it has unjustifiably neglected issues related to institutional change that could address the root causes of poverty, and instead focused its attention on encouraging individuals to direct resources to organizations that directly aid p…Read more
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111Human Rights, Harm, and Climate Change MitigationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (2-3): 416-435. 2017.A number of philosophers have resisted impersonal explanations of our obligation to mitigate climate change, and have developed accounts according to which these obligations are explained by human rights or harm-based considerations. In this paper I argue that several of these attempts to explain our mitigation obligations without appealing to impersonal factors fail, since they either cannot account for a plausibly robust obligation to mitigate, or have implausible implications in other cases. …Read more
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78Review of Gary E. Varner, Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare's Two-Level Utilitarianism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2012.
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44State Action, State Policy, and the Doing/Allowing DistinctionEthics, Policy and Environment 17 (2): 147-149. 2014.
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120Climate Change, Moral Intuitions, and Moral DemandingnessPhilosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 4 (2): 157-189. 2014.In this paper I argue that reflection on the threat of climate change brings out a distinct challenge for appeals to what I call the Anti-Demandingness Intuition, according to which a view about our obligations can be rejected if it would, as a general matter, require very large sacrifices of us. The ADI is often appealed to in order to reject the view that well off people are obligated to make substantial sacrifices in order to aid the global poor, but the appeal to the same intuition is much l…Read more
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46Review of Robert Garner, A Theory of Justice for Animals: Animal Rights in a Nonideal World (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2014.
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183The Demandingness of Morality: Toward a Reflective EquilibriumPhilosophical Studies 173 (11): 3015-3035. 2016.It is common for philosophers to reject otherwise plausible moral theories on the ground that they are objectionably demanding, and to endorse “Moderate” alternatives. I argue that while support can be found within the method of reflective equilibrium for Moderate moral principles of the kind that are often advocated, it is much more difficult than Moderates have supposed to provide support for the view that morality’s demands in circumstances like ours are also Moderate. Once we draw a clear di…Read more
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128Double Counting, Moral Rigorism, and Cohen’s Critique of Rawls: A Response to Alan ThomasMind 124 (495): 849-874. 2015.In a recent article in this journal, Alan Thomas presents a novel defence of what I call ‘Rawlsian Institutionalism about Justice’ against G. A. Cohen’s well-known critique. In this response I aim to defend Cohen’s rejection of Institutionalism against Thomas’s arguments. In part this defence requires clarifying precisely what is at issue between Institutionalists and their opponents. My primary focus, however, is on Thomas’s critical discussion of Cohen’s endorsement of an ethical prerogative, …Read more
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77Obligations of Productive Justice: Individual or Institutional?Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 21 (6): 726-753. 2018.If it is a requirement of justice that everyone has access to basic goods and services, then justice requires that the work that is necessary to produce the relevant goods and provide the relevant services is performed. Two widely accepted views, however, together rule out requirements of justice to perform such work. These are, roughly, that the state cannot force people to perform it, and that individuals are not obligated to perform it voluntarily. Lucas Stanczyk argues that we should resolve…Read more
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83Benefiting from Unjust Acts and Benefiting from Injustice: Historical Emissions and the Beneficiary Pays PrincipleIn Lukas H. Meyer & Pranay Sanklecha (eds.), Climate Justice and Historical Emissions, Cambridge University Press. pp. 123-140. 2017.It is commonly believed that the history of behavior that has contributed to the threat of climate change bears in a significant way on the obligations of current people. In particular, a number of philosophers have defended the Beneficiary Pays Principle, according to which those who have benefited from unjust emitting activity have a special obligation to bear costs of mitigation and adaptation. I claim that versions of the BPP that have been defended by others share a common problematic featu…Read more
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36Review of Darrel Moellendorf, The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy (review)Ethics, Policy and Environment 19 (1): 108-111. 2016.Moellendorf describes this book as a work of ‘public philosophy’, by which he means that it is a philosophical discussion of an issue of public importance that is aimed at an audience broade...
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137Review of Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy (eds. Illingworth, Pogge, and Wenar) (review)Mind 123 (489): 220-223. 2014.
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102Against Rawlsian Institutionalism about JusticeSocial Theory and Practice 42 (4): 706-732. 2016.One of the most influential claims made by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice is that the principles of justice apply only to the institutions of the “basic structure of society,” and do not apply directly to the conduct of individuals. In this paper, I aim to cast doubt on this view, which I call “Institutionalism about Justice,” by considering whether several of the prominent motivations for it offered by Rawls and others succeed in providing the support for the view that they claim. I argue th…Read more
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77Prospects for an Inclusive Theory of Justice: The Case of Non‐Human AnimalsJournal of Applied Philosophy 34 (5): 679-695. 2017.In this article, I argue that there are three widely accepted views within contemporary theorising about justice that present barriers to accepting that non-human animals possess direct entitlements of justice. These views are that the basis of entitlements of justice is either contribution to a cooperative scheme for mutual advantage or the capacity to so contribute; political liberalism, that is, the view that requirements for coercive state action can be justified only by appeal to the ideal …Read more
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88Business Ethics and Free Speech on the InternetPhilosophia 45 (3): 937-945. 2017.The unique role of the Internet in today’s society, and the extensive reach and potentially profound impact of much Internet content, raise philosophically interesting and practically urgent questions about the responsibilities of various agents, including individual Internet users, governments, and corporations. Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side is an extremely valuable contribution to the emerging discussion of these important issues. In this paper, I focus on the ob…Read more
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University of PennsylvaniaThe Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department)Associate Professor
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |