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14Market failureCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 7 (4): 525-537. 1993.The Theory of Market Failure explores how markets respond, both in theory and in practice, to public‐goods and externality problems. Most of the articles in this anthology find that markets often meet the demand for public goods in a variety of cases where existing theory would lead one to expect market failure. Moreover, upon reflection, existing theory reveals itself to be in need of supplementation by a more realistic picture of how flexible markets (and evolving systems of property rights) r…Read more
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8When justice mattersEthics 117 (3): 433-459. 2007.Reasonable people disagree about what is just. Why? This itself is an item over which reasonable people disagree. Our analyses of justice (like our analyses of knowledge, free will, meaning, etc.) all have counterexamples. Why? In part, the problem lies in the nature of theorizing itself. A truism in philosophy of science: for any set of data, an infinite number of theories will fit the facts. So, even if we agree on particular cases, we still, in all likelihood, disagree on how to pull those ju…Read more
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1Our days are a vast, intricate, evolving dance of mutual understandings. We stop at a traffic light, offer a plastic card as payment for a meal, leave our weapons at home, or enter a voting booth. We live and work in close proximity, at high speed, with few collisions: on our roads and in our neighborhoods, places of worship, and places of business. Somehow, having all those people around is more liberating than stifling. The secret is that we know roughly what to expect from each other. Knowing…Read more
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14The Institution of PropertySocial Philosophy and Policy 11 (2): 42-62. 1994.The typical method of acquiring a property right involves transfer from a previous owner. But sooner or later, that chain of transfers traces back to the beginning. That is why we have a philosophical problem. How does a thing legitimately become a piece of property for the first time ? In this essay, I follow the custom of distinguishing between mere liberties and full-blooded rights. If I have the liberty of doing X , then it is permissible for me to do X . But the mere fact that I am at liber…Read more
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10Debra Satz: Why some things should not be for sale: The moral limits of marketsJournal of Philosophy 108 (4): 219-223. 2011.
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7Social Contract, Free Ride: A Study of the Public Goods ProblemInternational Philosophical Quarterly 30 (3): 369-370. 1990.
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28Because It's RightCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (sup1): 63-95. 2007.Morality teaches us that, if we look on her only as good for something else, we never in that case have seen her at all. She says that she is an end to be desired for her own sake, and not as a means to something beyond. Degrade her, and she disappears.— F. H. Bradley
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6Reasons for AltruismSocial Philosophy and Policy 10 (1): 52-68. 1993.This essay considers whether acts of altruism can be rational. Rational choice, according to the standard instrumentalist model, consists of maximizing one's utility, or more precisely, maximizing one's utility subject to a budget constraint. We seek the point of highest utility lying within our limited means. The term ‘utility’ could mean a number of different things, but in recent times utility has usually been interpreted as preference satisfaction . To have a preference is to care , to want …Read more
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9Review of Dale Jamieson, ed. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy (review)Environmental Ethics 25 (1): 99-104. 2003.
Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |