-
175Vote MarketsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (4): 759-774. 2014.This paper argues for the legalization of vote markets. I contend that the state should not prohibit the sale of votes under certain institutional conditions. Jason Brennan has recently argued for the moral permissibility of vote selling; yet, thus far, no philosopher has argued for the legal permissibility of vote selling. I begin by giving four prima facie reasons in favour of legalizing vote markets. First, vote markets benefit both buyers and sellers. Second, citizens already enjoy significa…Read more
-
117Goodness and Moral Twin EarthErkenntnis 79 (2): 445-460. 2014.Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons’s “Moral Twin Earth” thought experiment allegedly undercuts virtually any form of naturalist moral realism. I argue that a neo-Aristotelian conception of moral properties defeats Moral Twin Earth. Developing themes in the work of Peter Geach, Philippa Foot, and Rosalind Hursthouse, I sketch an Aristotelian moral semantics that is unique in construing terms like ‘right’ and ‘good’ exclusively as attributive adjectives that denote relational properties. On this view, …Read more
-
146Self-ownership and disgust: why compulsory body part redistribution gets under our skinPhilosophical Studies 172 (12): 3167-3190. 2015.The self-ownership thesis asserts, roughly, that agents own their minds and bodies in the same way that they can own extra-personal property. One common strategy for defending the self-ownership thesis is to show that it accords with our intuitions about the wrongness of various acts involving the expropriation of body parts. We challenge this line of defense. We argue that disgust explains our resistance to these sorts of cases and present results from an original psychological experiment in su…Read more
-
34Cosmopolitanism Within Borders: On Behalf of Charter CitiesJournal of Applied Philosophy 30 (1): 40-52. 2013.Economist Paul Romer proposes the establishment of charter cities. Charter cities would resemble special economic zones; that is, small regions that experiment with economic rules that differ from those governing their larger ‘host’ countries. Yet unlike a special economic zone, a charter city would also experiment with its own legal and political rules. The rules, in turn, can be enforced by a third-party coalition of representatives of foreign countries that enforce these rules at home. Host c…Read more
-
74Why Be Immoral?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (2): 191-205. 2010.Developing themes in the work of Thomas Hill, I argue that servility is an underappreciated but pervasive reason for moral transgression. Recognizing servility as a basic cause of immorality obliges us to reconsider questions about the rationality of morality. Traditional answers to the problem of the immoralist, which tend to be stated in terms of enlightened self-interest, fail to properly engage the problems posed by 'servile immorality.' In response to these problems, I develop a Humean vers…Read more
-
88How Neuroscience Can Vindicate Moral IntuitionEthical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (5): 1011-1025. 2015.Imagine that an anthropologist returns from her study of a group of people and reports the following:They refuse to kill one person even to avert the death of all involved—including that one person;They won’t directly push someone to his death to save the lives of five others, but they will push a lever to kill him to save five others;They punish transgressors because it feels right, even when they expect the punishment to cause far more harm than good—and even when the harm done by the punishme…Read more
-
14Book review: Edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro. Environmental virtue ethics. New York and oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005 (review)Ethics and the Environment 11 (1): 133-138. 2006.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Environmental Virtue EthicsChristopher Freiman (bio)Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, pp. 240. ISBN 0-7425-3389-1 (hardback), $75.00; ISBN 0-7425-3390-5 (paperback) $28.95.For most of its life, environmental ethics has been the province of consequentialism and deontology. But a growing number of environmental ethicists have found these…Read more
-
32David Schmidtz and Christopher FreimanIn David Estlund (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 411. 2012.
Williamsburg, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |