Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
  •  1
    Third-Party Risks in Research: Should IRBs Address Them?
    IRB: Ethics & Human Research 29 (3). 2007.
    The risks to groups posed by research involving human beings—including genetics research—should be conceived of as a species of third-party risks. The important task of protecting third parties from the risks posed by the conduct and the findings of research should not be assigned to IRBs because they are not designed or equipped to handle such a broad responsibility. The serious problems raised by third-party risks require an integration of policy-making and regulation that is beyond the scope …Read more
  •  238
    Motives and Markets in Health Care
    Journal of Practical Ethics 1 (2): 64-84. 2013.
    The truth about health care policy lies between two exaggerated views: a market view in which individuals purchase their own health care from profit maximizing health-care firms and a control view in which costs are controlled by regulations limiting which treatments health insurance will pay for. This essay suggests a way to avoid on the one hand the suffering, unfairness, and abandonment of solidarity entailed by the market view and, on the other hand, to diminish the inflexibility and ineffic…Read more
  • Philosophy of economics “, Internet”
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. forthcoming.
  •  20
    Experimenting on Models and in the World (review)
    Journal of Economic Methodology 15 (2): 209-216. 2008.
  •  24
    Racionalidad, bienestar y economía normativa
    Revista Internacional de Filosofía Política 12 45-55. 1998.
  •  53
    Constructive empiricism contested
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63 (1): 21-28. 1982.
    Constructive empiricism, Bas van fraassen's new variety of anti-Realism, Maintains that science aims at empirically adequate, Rather than true theories and that, In fully accepting a theory, One should believe only that it is empirically adequate. A theory is empirically adequate just in case it has a model in which all observable phenomena may be embedded. I challenge van fraassen's main arguments and argue that the observable/unobservable distinction will not bear the weight that van fraassen …Read more
  •  9
    Why Look Under the Hood?
    In Daniel M. Hausman (ed.), Essays on Philosophy and Economic Methodology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 70-73. 1992.
  •  88
    Why don't effects explain their causes?
    Synthese 94 (2). 1993.
  •  122
    Group risks, risks to groups, and group engagement in genetics research
    Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 17 (4): 351-369. 2007.
    : This essay distinguishes between two kinds of group harms: harms to individuals in virtue of their membership in groups and harms to "structured" groups that have a continuing existence, an organization, and interests of their own. Genetic research creates risks of causing both kinds of group harms, and engagement with the groups at risk can help to mitigate those harms. The two kinds of group harms call for different kinds of group engagement
  •  32
    Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare
    Cambridge University Press. 2011.
    This book is about preferences, principally as they figure in economics. It also explores their uses in everyday language and action, how they are understood in psychology and how they figure in philosophical reflection on action and morality. The book clarifies and for the most part defends the way in which economists invoke preferences to explain, predict and assess behavior and outcomes. Hausman argues, however, that the predictions and explanations economists offer rely on theories of prefer…Read more
  • Book Review (review)
    Economics and Philosophy 15 (2): 289-295. 1999.
  •  75
    People have thought about economics for as long as they have thought about how to manage their households, and indeed Aristotle assimilated the study of the economic affairs of a city to the study of the management of a household. During the two millennia between Aristotle and Adam Smith, one finds reflections concerning economic problems mainly in the context of discussions of moral or policy questions. For example, scholastic philosophers commented on money and interest in inquiries concerning…Read more
  •  205
    Are markets morally free zones?
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (4): 317-333. 1989.
    Markets are central institutions in societies such as ours, and it seems appropriate to ask whether markets treat individuals justly or unjustly and whether choices individuals make concerning their market behavior are just or unjust. After all, markets influence most important features of our lives from the environment in which we live to the ways in which we find pleasure and fulfillment. Within market life we collectively determine the shape of human existence.<1>.
  •  48
    The Composition of Economic Causes
    The Monist 78 (3): 295-307. 1995.
    Discusses the composition of economic causes. Applications of John Stuart Mill’s inductive method to economics; Problems with the deductive method; Effect of multiple causal factors in economics; Derivation of economic laws; Mill’s arguments for deductive economics.
  • Defending Microeconomic Theory
    Philosophical Forum 15 (4): 392. 1984.
  • No Title available: Reviews
    Economics and Philosophy 15 (2): 289-295. 1999.
  •  87
    Causal priority
    Noûs 18 (2): 261-279. 1984.
  •  190
    Revealed preference, belief, and game theory
    Economics and Philosophy 16 (1): 99-115. 2000.
    The notion of ‘revealed preference’ is unclear and should be abandoned. Defenders of the theory of revealed preference have misinterpreted legitimate concerns about the testability of economics as the demand that economists eschew reference to (unobservable) subjective states. As attempts to apply revealed-preference theory to game theory illustrate with particular vividness, this demand is mistaken.
  •  1
    Causal Asymmetries
    Mind 109 (436): 933-937. 2000.
  •  57
    Making Interpersonal Comparisons Coherently
    with Martin Barrett
    Economics and Philosophy 6 (2): 293. 1990.
    Many ethical theories, including in particular consequentialist moral the ories, require comparisons of the amount of good possessed or received by different people. In the case of some goods, such as monetary income, wealth, education, or health, such comparisons are relatively unproblematic. Even in the case of such goods there may be serious empirical measurement problems, but there appear to be no difficulties in principle. Thus Cooter and Rappoport maintained that there was no serious diffi…Read more
  •  118
    Health, Naturalism, and Functional Efficiency
    Philosophy of Science 79 (4): 519-541. 2012.
    This essay develops an account of health, the functional efficiency theory, which derives from Christopher Boorse's biostatistical theory. Like the BST, the functional efficiency theory is a nonevaluative view of health, but unlike the BST, it argues that the fundamental theoretical task is to distinguish levels of efficiency with which the parts and processes within organisms and within systems within organisms function. Which of these to label as healthy or pathological is of secondary importa…Read more
  •  29
    Rationality and Knavery
    Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 5 67-79. 1998.
    This paper makes a modest point. Suppose one wants to evaluate alternative policies, institutions or even constitutions on the basis of their consequences. To do so, one needs to evaluate their consequences and one needs to know what their consequences are. Let us suppose that the role of economic theories and game theory in particular is mainly to help us to use information we already possess or that we can acquire at a reasonable cost to judge what the consequences will be. We do not necessari…Read more