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864Rational Numbers: A Non‐Consequentialist Explanation Of Why You Should Save The Many And Not The FewPhilosophical Quarterly 63 (252): 413-427. 2013.You ought to save a larger group of people rather than a distinct smaller group of people, all else equal. A consequentialist may say that you ought to do so because this produces the most good. If a non-consequentialist rejects this explanation, what alternative can he or she give? This essay defends the following explanation, as a solution to the so-called numbers problem. Its two parts can be roughly summarised as follows. First, you are morally required to want the survival of each stranger …Read more
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96Altruism and Ambition in the Dynamic Moral LifeAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (4): 716-729. 2017.Some people are such impressive altruists that they seem to us to already be doing more than enough. And yet they see themselves as compelled to do even more. Can our view be reconciled with theirs? Can a moderate view of beneficence's demands be made consistent with a requirement to be ambitiously altruistic? I argue that a reconciliation is possible if we adopt a dynamic view of beneficence, which addresses the pattern that our altruism is required to take over time. This frees up theoretical …Read more
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749Fickle consentPhilosophical Studies 167 (1): 25-40. 2014.Why is consent revocable? In other words, why must we respect someone's present dissent at the expense of her past consent? This essay argues against act-based explanations and in favor of a rule-based explanation. A rule prioritizing present consent will serve our interests the best, in light of our interests in having flexibility over our consent and in minimizing the possibility of error in people's judgments about whether we consent
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608On Whether To Prefer Pain to PassEthics 121 (3): 521-537. 2011.Most of us are “time-biased” in preferring pains to be past rather than future and pleasures to be future rather than past. However, it turns out that if you are risk averse and time-biased, then you can be turned into a “pain pump”—in order to insure yourself against misfortune, you will take a series of pills which leaves you with more pain and better off in no respect. Since this vulnerability seems rationally impermissible, while time-bias and risk aversion seem rationally permissible, we ar…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
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Rights in Applied Ethics |
Rights |