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484A defense of intuitionsPhilosophical Studies 140 (2). 2008.Radical experimentalists argue that we should give up using intuitions as evidence in philosophy. In this paper, I first argue that the studies presented by the radical experimentalists in fact suggest that some intuitions are reliable. I next consider and reject a different way of handling the radical experimentalists' challenge, what I call the Argument from Robust Intuitions. I then propose a way of understanding why some intuitions can be unreliable and how intuitions can conflict, and I arg…Read more
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56A critique of some recent victim-centered theories of nonconsequentialismLaw and Philosophy 39 (5): 503-526. 2020.Recently, Gerhard Øverland and Alec Walen have developed novel and interesting theories of nonconsequentialism. Unlike other nonconsequentialist theories such as the Doctrine of Double Effect, each of their theories denies that an agent’s mental states are relevant for determining how stringent their moral reasons are against harming others. Instead, Øverland and Walen seek to distinguish morally between instances of harming in terms of the circumstances of the people who will be harmed, rather …Read more
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106The Place of Philosophy in Bioethics TodayAmerican Journal of Bioethics 22 (12): 10-21. 2021.In some views, philosophy’s glory days in bioethics are over. While philosophers were especially important in the early days of the field, so the argument goes, the majority of the work in bioethics today involves the “simple” application of existing philosophical principles or concepts, as well as empirical work in bioethics. Here, we address this view head on and ask: What is the role of philosophy in bioethics today? This paper has three specific aims: (1) to respond to skeptics and make the …Read more
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13Correction: Ethics of AI and Health Care: Towards a Substantive Human Rights FrameworkTopoi 42 (3): 903-903. 2023.
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49Ethics 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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176Human 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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36Rightholding, Demandingness of Love, and Parental LicensingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (3): 762-769. 2017.
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39Genetic 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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165Agency and Human RightsJournal of Applied Philosophy 27 (1): 15-25. 2009.What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a human right? James Griffin has persuasively argued that the notion of agency should determine the content of human rights. However, Griffin's agency account faces the question of why agency should be the sole ground for human rights. For example, can Griffin's notion of agency by itself adequately explain such human rights as that against torture? Or, has Griffin offered a plausible explanation as to why one should not broaden th…Read more
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145The 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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147Designing 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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59Do 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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140Parental love pills: Some ethical considerationsBioethics 25 (9): 489-494. 2010.It may soon be possible to develop pills that allow parents to induce in themselves more loving behaviour, attitudes and emotions towards their children. In this paper, I consider whether pharmacologically induced parental love can satisfy reasonable conditions of authenticity; why anyone would be interested in taking such parental love pills at all, and whether inducing parental love pharmacologically promotes narcissism or results in self-instrumentalization. I also examine how the availabilit…Read more
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75Issues in the pharmacological induction of emotionsJournal of Applied Philosophy 25 (3): 178-192. 2008.abstract In this paper, we examine issues raised by the possibility of regulating emotions through pharmacological means. We argue that emotions induced through these means can be authentic phenomenologically, and that the manner of inducing them need not make them any less our own than emotions arising 'naturally'. We recognize that in taking drugs to induce emotions, one may lose opportunities for self-knowledge; act narcissistically; or treat oneself as a mere means. But we propose that the…Read more
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56Ethics review of big data research: What should stay and what should be reformed?BMC Medical Ethics 22 (1): 1-13. 2021.BackgroundEthics review is the process of assessing the ethics of research involving humans. The Ethics Review Committee (ERC) is the key oversight mechanism designated to ensure ethics review. Whether or not this governance mechanism is still fit for purpose in the data-driven research context remains a debated issue among research ethics experts.Main textIn this article, we seek to address this issue in a twofold manner. First, we review the strengths and weaknesses of ERCs in ensuring ethical…Read more
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32Ethical and policy issues relating to progenitor-cell-based strategies for prevention of atherosclerosisJournal of Medical Ethics 33 (11): 643-646. 2007.Experiments have suggested that umbilical cord blood stem cells can be used to prevent diseases such as atherosclerosis. This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding such usage such as the uncertainty that individuals at risk of a disease will actually get the disease; issues related to research with children; safety issues; from where these stem cells would be obtained; and whether these usages should be considered as therapies or as physical enhancements.
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149The Genetic Account of Moral Status: A DefenseJournal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2): 265-277. 2012.Christopher Grau argues that the genetic basis for moral agency account of rightholding is problematic because it fails to grant all human beings the moral status of rightholding; it grants the status of rightholding to entities that do not intuitively deserve such status; and it assumes that the genetic basis for moral agency has intrinsic/final value, but the genetic basis for moral agency only has instrumental value. Grau also argues that those who are inclined to hold that all human beings a…Read more
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270The 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 (PGD) 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 p…Read more
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275Who Is Afraid of Numbers?Utilitas 20 (4): 447-461. 2008.In recent years, many non-consequentialists such as Frances Kamm and Thomas Scanlon have been puzzling over what has come to be known as the Number Problem, which is how to show that the greater number in a rescue situation should be saved without aggregating the claims of the many, a typical kind of consequentialist move that seems to violate the separateness of persons. In this article, I argue that these non-consequentialists may be making the task more difficult than necessary, because allow…Read more
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274The right of children to be lovedJournal of Political Philosophy 14 (4). 2006.A number of international organizations have claimed that children have a right to be loved, but there is a worry that this claim may just be an empty rhetoric. In this paper, I seek to show that there could be such a right by providing a justification for this right in terms of human rights, by demonstrating that love can be an appropriate object of a duty, and by proposing that biological parents should normally be made the primary bearers of this duty, while all other able persons in appropri…Read more
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214The 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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152The 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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243The 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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111Twinning, 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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292Time-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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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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60Neuroethical concerns about moderating traumatic memoriesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 7 (9). 2007.No abstract
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154The 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