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219The organism view defendedThe Monist 89 (3): 334-350. 2006.What are you and I essentially? When do you and I come into and go out of existence? A common response is that we are essentially organisms, that is, we come into existence as organisms and go out of existence when we cease to be organisms. Jeff McMahan has put forward two arguments against the Organism View: the case of dicephalus and a special case of hemispheric commissurotomy. In this paper, I defend the Organism View against these two cases. Because it is possible to devise more McMahanian-…Read more
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105The Normativity of Memory ModificationNeuroethics 1 (2): 85-99. 2008.The prospect of using memory modifying technologies raises interesting and important normative concerns. We first point out that those developing desirable memory modifying technologies should keep in mind certain technical and user-limitation issues. We next discuss certain normative issues that the use of these technologies can raise such as truthfulness, appropriate moral reaction, self-knowledge, agency, and moral obligations. Finally, we propose that as long as individuals using these techn…Read more
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60The Loop Case and Kamm’s Doctrine of Triple EffectPhilosophical Studies 146 (2): 223-231. 2008.Judith Jarvis Thomson's Loop Case is particularly significant in normative ethics because it questions the validity of the intuitively plausible Doctrine of Double Effect, according to which there is a significant difference between harm that is intended and harm that is merely foreseen and not intended. Recently, Frances Kamm has argued that what she calls the Doctrine of Triple Effect, which draws a distinction between acting because-of and acting in-order-to, can account for our judgment abou…Read more
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245The idea of a duty to loveJournal of Value Inquiry 40 (1): 1-22. 2006.Can there be a duty to love someone? The kind of love we will consider is the kind of highly intense interaction that two human beings seek that involves not only strongly valuing another person for the person’s sake and wanting to promote the person’s well-being for the person’s sake, but also desiring to be physically and psychologically close to each other and desiring that the other person reciprocates our love. This kind of interaction features in romantic love, parental love, love between …Read more
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115Twinning, inorganic replacement, and the organism viewRatio 23 (1): 59-72. 2010.In explicating his version of the Organism View, Eric Olson argues that you begin to exist only after twinning is no longer possible and that you cannot survive a process of inorganic replacement. Assuming the correctness of the Organism View, but pace Olson, I argue in this paper that the Organism View does not require that you believe either proposition. The claim I shall make about twinning helps to advance a debate that currently divides defenders of the Organism View, while the claim I shal…Read more
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297Time-Relative Interests and AbortionJournal of Moral Philosophy 4 (2): 242-256. 2007.The concept of a time-relative interest is introduced by Jeff McMahan to solve certain puzzles about the badness of death. Some people (e.g. McMahan and David DeGrazia) believe that this concept can also be used to show that abortion is permissible. In this paper, I first argue that if the Time-Relative Interest Account permits abortion, then it would also permit infanticide.
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215The embryo rescue caseTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 27 (2): 141-147. 2006.In the debate regarding the moral status of human embryos, the Embryo Rescue Case has been used to suggest that embryos are not rightholders. This case is premised on the idea that in a situation where one has a choice between saving some number of embryos or a child, it seems wrong to save the embryos and not the child. If so, it seems that embryos cannot be rightholders. In this paper, I argue that the Embryo Rescue Case does not independently show that embryos are not rightholders.
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21The ethics of using genetic engineering for sex selectionJournal of Medical Ethics 31 (2): 116-118. 2005.It is quite likely that parents will soon be able to use genetic engineering to select the sex of their child by directly manipulating the sex of an embryo. Some might think that this method would be a more ethical method of sex selection than present technologies such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis because, unlike PGD, it does not need to create and destroy “wrong gendered” embryos. This paper argues that those who object to present technologies on the grounds that the embryo is a person …Read more
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134The Duty to Disclose Adverse Clinical Trial ResultsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (8): 24-32. 2009.Participants in some clinical trials are at risk of being harmed and sometimes are seriously harmed as a result of not being provided with available, relevant risk information. We argue that this situation is unacceptable and that there is a moral duty to disclose all adverse clinical trial results to participants in clinical trials. This duty is grounded in the human right not to be placed at risk of harm without informed consent. We consider objections to disclosure grounded in considerations …Read more
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510The Basis of Human Moral StatusJournal of Moral Philosophy 7 (2): 159-179. 2010.When philosophers consider what moral status human beings have, they tend to find themselves either supporting the idea that not all human beings are rightholders or adopting what Peter Singer calls a 'speciesist' position, where speciesism is defined as morally favoring a particular species—in this case, human beings—over others without sufficient justification. In this paper, I develop what I call the 'genetic basis for moral agency' account of rightholding, and I propose that this account can…Read more
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148The Closeness Problem and the Doctrine of Double Effect: A Way ForwardCriminal Law and Philosophy 10 (4): 849-863. 2016.A major challenge to the Doctrine of Double Effect is the concern that an agent’s intention can be identified in such a fine-grained way as to eliminate an intention to harm from a putative example of an intended harm, and yet, the resulting case appears to be a case of impermissibility. This is the so-called “closeness problem.” Many people believe that one can address the closeness problem by adopting Warren Quinn’s version of the DDE, call it DDE*, which distinguishes between harmful direct a…Read more
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112The Ashley treatment: Best Interests, Convenience, and Parental Decision MakingHastings Center Report 37 (2): 16-20. 2007.The story of Ashley, a nine-year-old from Seattle, has caused a good deal of controversy since it appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 3, 2007.1 Ashley was born with a condition called static encephalopathy, a severe brain impairment that leaves her unable to walk, talk, eat, sit up, or roll over. According to her doctors, Ashley has reached, and will remain at, the developmental level of a three-month-old.
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207The buck-passing account of value: lessons from CrispPhilosophical Studies 151 (3). 2010.T. M. Scanlon's buck-passing account of value (BPA) has been subjected to a barrage of criticisms. Recently, to be helpful to BPA, Roger Crisp has suggested that a number of these criticisms can be met if one makes some revisions to BPA. In this paper, I argue that if advocates of the buck-passing account accepted these revisions, they would effectively be giving up the buck-passing account as it is typically understood, that is, as an account concerned with the conceptual priority of reasons or…Read more
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520Selecting children: The ethics of reproductive genetic engineeringPhilosophy Compass 3 (5): 973-991. 2008.Advances in reproductive genetic engineering have the potential to transform human lives. Not only do they promise to allow us to select children free of diseases, they can also enable us to select children with desirable traits. In this paper, I consider two clusters of arguments for the moral permissibility of reproductive genetic engineering, what I call the Perfectionist View and the Libertarian View; and two clusters of arguments against reproductive genetic engineering, what I call the Hum…Read more
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23Response to Commentators on “Rescuing Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research: The Blastocyst Transfer Method”American Journal of Bioethics 5 (6). 2005.Despite the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem cells, many people believe that HES cell research should be banned. The reason is that the present method of extracting HES cells involves the destruction of the embryo, which for many is the beginning of a person. This paper examines a number of compromise solutions such as parthenogenesis, the use of defective embryos, genetically creating a “pseudo embryo” that can never form a placenta, and determining embryo death, and argues that no…Read more
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41Rightholding, Demandingness of Love, and Parental LicensingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (3): 762-769. 2017.
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144Rescuing human embryonic stem cell research: The blastocyst transfer methodAmerican Journal of Bioethics 5 (6). 2005.Despite the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem (HES) cells, many people believe that HES cell research should be banned. The reason is that the present method of extracting HES cells involves the destruction of the embryo, which for many is the beginning of a person. This paper examines a number of compromise solutions such as parthenogenesis, the use of defective embryos, genetically creating a "pseudo embryo" that can never form a placenta, and determining embryo death, and argues t…Read more
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251Putting the trolley in order: Experimental philosophy and the loop casePhilosophical Psychology 25 (5): 661-671. 2012.In recent years, a number of philosophers have conducted empirical studies that survey people's intuitions about various subject matters in philosophy. Some have found that intuitions vary accordingly to seemingly irrelevant facts: facts about who is considering the hypothetical case, the presence or absence of certain kinds of content, or the context in which the hypothetical case is being considered. Our research applies this experimental philosophical methodology to Judith Jarvis Thomson's fa…Read more
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165Intentions and Moral Permissibility: The Case of Acting Permissibly with Bad IntentionsLaw and Philosophy 31 (6): 703-724. 2012.Many people believe in the intention principle, according to which an agent’s intention in performing an act can sometimes make an act that would otherwise have been permissible impermissible, other things being equal. Judith Jarvis Thomson, Frances Kamm and Thomas Scanlon have offered cases that seem to show that it can be permissible for an agent to act even when the agent has bad intentions. If valid, these cases would seem to cast doubt on the intention principle. In this paper, I point out …Read more
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183Human Engineering and Climate ChangeEthics, Policy and Environment 15 (2). 2012.Anthropogenic climate change is arguably one of the biggest problems that confront us today. There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life for all people around the world, and that existing solutions such as geoengineering might be too risky and ordinary behavioural and market solutions might not be sufficient to mitigate climate change. In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which invo…Read more
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42Genetic Information, the Principle of Rescue, and Special ObligationsHastings Center Report 48 (3): 18-19. 2018.In “Genetic Privacy, Disease Prevention, and the Principle of Rescue,” Madison Kilbride argues that patients have a duty to warn biological family members about clinically actionable adverse genetic findings. The duty does not stem from the special obligations that we may have to family members, she argues, but rather follows from the principle of rescue, which she understands as the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm is …Read more
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60Health (care) and human rights: a fundamental conditions approachTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 37 (4): 259-274. 2016.Many international declarations state that human beings have a human right to health care. However, is there a human right to health care? What grounds this right, and who has the corresponding duties to promote this right? Elsewhere, I have argued that human beings have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. Drawing on this fundamental conditions approach of human rights, I offer a novel way of grounding a human right to health care.
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51Ethics of AI and Health Care: Towards a Substantive Human Rights FrameworkTopoi 42 (3): 857-866. 2023.There is enormous interest in using artificial intelligence (AI) in health care contexts. But before AI can be used in such settings, we need to make sure that AI researchers and organizations follow appropriate ethical frameworks and guidelines when developing these technologies. In recent years, a great number of ethical frameworks for AI have been proposed. However, these frameworks have tended to be abstract and not explain what grounds and justifies their recommendations and how one should …Read more
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62Do Mitochondrial Replacement Techniques Affect Qualitative or Numerical Identity?Bioethics 31 (1): 20-26. 2016.Mitochondrial replacement techniques, known in the popular media as 'three-parent' or 'three-person' IVFs, have the potential to enable women with mitochondrial diseases to have children who are genetically related to them but without such diseases. In the debate regarding whether MRTs should be made available, an issue that has garnered considerable attention is whether MRTs affect the characteristics of an existing individual or whether they result in the creation of a new individual, given th…Read more
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151Designing humans: A human rights approachBioethics 33 (1): 98-104. 2018.Advances in genomic technologies such as CRISPR‐Cas9, mitochondrial replacement techniques, and in vitro gametogenesis may soon give us more precise and efficient tools to have children with certain traits such as beauty, intelligence, and athleticism. In this paper, I propose a new approach to the ethics of reproductive genetic engineering, a human rights approach. This approach relies on two claims that have certain, independent plausibility: (a) human beings have equal moral status, and (b) h…Read more
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27Disclosing Clinical Trial Results: Publicity, Significance and IndependenceAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (8): 3-5. 2009.Participants in some clinical trials are at risk of being harmed and sometimes are seriously harmed as a result of not being provided with available, relevant risk information. We argue that this situation is unacceptable and that there is a moral duty to disclose all adverse clinical trial results to participants in clinical trials. This duty is grounded in the human right not to be placed at risk of harm without informed consent. We consider objections to disclosure grounded in considerations …Read more
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17Correction: Ethics of AI and Health Care: Towards a Substantive Human Rights FrameworkTopoi 42 (3): 903-903. 2023.
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Trinity College, DublinGraduate student
Areas of Interest
20th Century Philosophy |
Asian Philosophy |