•  183
    Personal identity and bioethics: The state of the art
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 31 (4): 249-257. 2010.
    In this introduction to the special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics on the topic of personal identity and bioethics, I provide a background for the topic and then discuss the contributions in the special issue by Eric Olson, Marya Schechtman, Tim Campbell and Jeff McMahan, James Delaney and David Hershenov, and David DeGrazia
  •  96
    McKenna’s Quality of Will
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 9 (4): 695-708. 2015.
    In this paper, I investigate the role played by Quality of Will in Michael McKenna’s conversational theory of responsibility. I articulate and press the skeptical challenge against it, and then I show that McKenna has the resources in his account to deflect it
  •  124
    In this paper I consider Derek Parfit’s attempt to respond to Rawls’ charge that utilitarianism ignores the distinction between persons. I proceed by arguing that there is a moderate form of reductionism about persons, one stressing the importance of what Parfit calls psychological connectedness, which can hold in different degrees both within one person and between distinct persons. In terms of this form of reductionism, against which Parfit’s arguments are ineffective, it is possible to resusc…Read more
  •  69
    The Selves of Social Animals: Comments on Gruen
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (S1): 66-74. 2014.
    In this commentary on Lori Gruen's “Death as a Social Harm,” I first lay out the basics of Gruen's argument, then I offer some critical discussion, and finally I explore whether there might be some metaphysical structure that would support her most provocative idea—that death harms our social selves. What would it take for this idea to be more than metaphor, so that when a loved one dies a part of me has died? In constructing one possibility, I draw from the distinction between identity and what…Read more
  •  64
    Responsibility, Agency, and Cognitive Disability
    In Eva Feder Kittay & Licia Carlson (eds.), Cognitive Disability and its Challenge to Moral Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 201--223. 2010.
    This is a reprint of the paper "Responsibility and Disability," first published in Metaphilosophy in 2009. It articulates some similarities and differences between psychopaths and individuals with mild intellectual disabilities that have important implications for both types of agents' moral and criminal responsibility.