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82Publicity and Egalitarian JusticeJournal of Moral Philosophy 5 (1): 30-49. 2008.Recently, the issue of publicity has surfaced in discussions of the correct interpretation of the Rawlsian principles of justice. In an intriguing critique of G.A. Cohen's preferred interpretation of the difference principle as a principle that is incompatible with incentive-based inequalities, Andrew Williams points to a gap in Cohen's argument, alleging that Cohen's interpretation of the difference principle is unlikely to be compatible with the Rawlsian endorsement of publicity. Having explor…Read more
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2Nationalism and Multiculturalism in a World of Immigration (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2009.
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105Democratic Egalitarianism versus Luck Egalitarianism: What Is at Stake?Philosophical Topics 40 (1): 117-134. 2012.This paper takes a fresh look at Elizabeth Anderson’s democratic egalitarianism and its relation to luck egalitarianism in the light of recent trends toward greater socioeconomic inequality. Anderson’s critique of luck egalitarianism and her alternative ideal of democratic equality are set out. It is then argued that the former is not very powerful, and that the latter is vulnerable to many of Anderson’s criticisms of luck egalitarianism. The paper also seeks to show that, on many of the issues …Read more
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136Luck egalitarians versus relational egalitarians: on the prospects of a pluralist account of egalitarian justiceCanadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (2): 220-241. 2015.Pluralist egalitarians think that luck and relational egalitarianism each articulates a component in a pluralist account of egalitarian justice. However, this ecumenical view appears problematic in the light of Elizabeth Anderson's claim that the divide arises because two incompatible views of justification are in play, which in turn generates derivative disagreements – e.g. about the proper currency of egalitarian justice. In support of pluralist egalitarianism I argue that two of Anderson's de…Read more
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240Against self-ownership: There are no fact-insensitive ownership rights over one's bodyPhilosophy and Public Affairs 36 (1). 2008.
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65Two puzzles for deontologists: Life-prolonging killings and the moral symmetry between killing and causing a person to be unconscious (review)The Journal of Ethics 5 (4): 385-410. 2001.Some form of agent-relative constraint against the killing of innocent personsis a central principle in deontological moraltheories. In this article I make two claimsabout this constraint. First, I argue that somekillings of innocents performed incircumstances usually not taken to exculpatethe killer are not even pro tanto wrong.Second, I contend that either there is noagent-relative constraint against the killingof innocents or this constraint has a verydifferent shape from that which deontolog…Read more
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141Responsible nations: Miller on national responsibilityEthics and Global Politics 2 (2): 109-130. 2009.In National Responsibility and Global Justice, David Miller defends the view that a member of a nation can be collectively responsible for an outcome despite the fact that: (i) she did not control it; (ii) she actively opposed those of her nation’s policies that produced the outcome; and (iii) actively opposing the relevant policy was costly for her. I argue that Miller’s arguments in favor of this strong externalist view about responsibility and control are insufficient. Specifically, I show th…Read more
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66Justice and the allocation of healthcare resources: should indirect, non-health effects count? (review)Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 13 (3): 237-246. 2010.Alternative allocations of a fixed bundle of healthcare resources often involve significantly different indirect, non-health effects. The question arises whether these effects must figure in accounts of the conditions under which a distribution of healthcare resources is morally justifiable. In this article we defend a Scanlonian, affirmative answer to this question: healthcare resource managers should sometimes select an allocation which has worse direct, health-related effects but better indir…Read more
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123Racial profiling versus communityJournal of Applied Philosophy 23 (2). 2006.abstract A police technique known as racial profiling draws on statistical beliefs about crime rates in racial groups. Supposing that such beliefs are true, and that racial profiling is effective in fighting crime, is such profiling morally justified? Recently, Risse and Zeckhauser have explored the racial profiling of African‐Americans and argued that justification is forthcoming from a utilitarian as well as deontological point of view. Drawing on criticisms made by G. A. Cohen of the incentiv…Read more
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65Luck EgalitarianismBloomsbury Academic. 2015.Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen tackles all the major questions concerning luck egalitarianism, providing deep, penetrating and original discussion of recent academic discourses on distributive justice as well as responses to some of the main objections in the literature. It offers a new answer to the “Why equality?” and “Equality of what?” questions, and provides a robust luck egalitarian response to the recent criticisms of luck egalitarianism by social relations egalitarians. This systematic, theore…Read more
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20Human rights and Cohen’s anti-statismPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (2): 165-185. 2014.G. A. Cohen’s critique of standard liberal interpretations of the difference principle has been very influential. According to Cohen, justice is not realized simply because the state’s tax policies and other distributive tools maximize the position of the worst off. Rather – possibly in addition to, but not to the exclusion of, certain state policies – justice requires talented people to improve the position of the worst off through their actions in their daily lives. Specifically, it prohibits …Read more
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54Neuroprediction, Truth-Sensitivity, and the LawThe Journal of Ethics 18 (2): 123-136. 2014.A recent argument by Nadelhoffer et al. defends a cautious optimism regarding the use of neuroprediction in relation to sentencing based, in part, on an assessment of the offender’s dangerousness. While this optimism may be warranted, Nadelhoffer et al.’s argument fails to justify it. Although neuropredictions provide individualized, non-statistical evidence they will often be problematic for the same reason that basing sentencing on statistical evidence is, to wit, that such predictions are ins…Read more
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6Must morality motivate?Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 37 (1): 7-36. 2002.Internalism – here the view that moral judgments entail motivation – is often taken to support non-cognitivism about morality. However, Michael Smith has defended a variety of it in combination with a cognitivist account of morality. Despite the eminence of Smith’s contribution, his case in favour of internalism is flawed. I distinguish several internalist positions and argue that Smith’s version, unlike standard ones, expresses a view about, not the nature of the state one is in when one makes …Read more
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48Discrimination and the aim of proportional representationPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (2): 159-182. 2008.Many organizations, companies, and so on are committed to certain representational aims as regards the composition of their workforce. One motivation for such aims is the assumption that numerical underrepresentation of groups manifests discrimination against them. In this article, I articulate representational aims in a way that best captures this rationale. My main claim is that the achievement of such representational aims is reducible to the elimination of the effects of wrongful discriminat…Read more
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128Kamm on inviolability and agent-relative restrictionsRes Publica 15 (2): 165-178. 2009.Agent-relative restrictions prohibit minimizing violations: that is, they require us not to minimize the total number of their violations by violating them ourselves. Frances Kamm has explained this prohibition in terms of the moral worth of persons, which, in turn, she explains in terms of persons’ high moral status as inviolable beings. I press the following criticism of this account: even if minimizing violations are permissible, we need not have a lower moral status provided other determinan…Read more
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246“We are all Different”: Statistical Discrimination and the Right to be Treated as an IndividualThe Journal of Ethics 15 (1): 47-59. 2011.There are many objections to statistical discrimination in general and racial profiling in particular. One objection appeals to the idea that people have a right to be treated as individuals. Statistical discrimination violates this right because, presumably, it involves treating people simply on the basis of statistical facts about groups to which they belong while ignoring non-statistical evidence about them. While there is something to this objection—there are objectionable ways of treating o…Read more
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287The badness of discriminationEthical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2): 167-185. 2006.The most blatant forms of discrimination are morally outrageous and very obviously so; but the nature and boundaries of discrimination are more controversial, and it is not clear whether all forms of discrimination are morally bad; nor is it clear why objectionable cases of discrimination are bad. In this paper I address these issues. First, I offer a taxonomy of discrimination. I then argue that discrimination is bad, when it is, because it harms people. Finally, I criticize a rival, disrespect…Read more
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58Understanding ParticularismTheoria 71 (2): 118-137. 2005.Adherents of particularism draw rather strong implications of this view. However, particularism has never been stated in a canonical way. We locate the core of particularism as a claim about how different reasons combine to generate the Tightness or wrongness of an action. Using the notion of an ordering of alternatives containing separable factors, we show that particularism can be stated more generally as the denial that there exist separable factors.With this definition in place, we show that…Read more
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84Inequality, incentives and the interpersonal testRatio 21 (4): 421-439. 2008.This article defends three claims: even if Rawls' difference principle permits incentives to induce talented people to be more productive, it does not follow that it permits inequalities; the difference principle, when adequately specified, may in some circumstances permit incentives and allow that the worst off are not made as well off as they could be; and an argument for incentives might pass Cohen's interpersonal test even if it is unsound and might not pass it even if it is sound. 1
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48Genetic Discrimination and Health InsuranceRes Publica 21 (2): 185-199. 2015.According to US law, insurance companies can lawfully differentiate individual health insurance premiums on the basis of non-genetic medical information, but not on the basis of genetic information. The article reviews the case for such genetic exceptionalism. First, I critically assess some standard justifications. Next, I scrutinize an argument appealing to the view that genetically based premium differentiation expresses that persons do not all merit equal concern and respect. In the final se…Read more
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9Does Moral Responsibility Presuppose Alternate Possibilities?In A. van den Beld (ed.), Moral Responsibility and Ontology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 89--101. 2000.
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73Luck-Egalitarianism: Faults and Collective ChoiceEconomics and Philosophy 27 (2): 151-173. 2011.A standard formulation of luck-egalitarianism says that ‘it is [in itself] bad – unjust and unfair – for some to be worse off than others [through no fault or choice of their own]’, where ‘fault or choice’ means substantive responsibility-generating fault or choice. This formulation is ambiguous: one ambiguity concerns the possible existence of a gap between what is true of each worse-off individual and what is true of the group of worse-off individuals, fault or choice-wise, the other concerns …Read more
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44Benjamin Eidelson, Discrimination and Disrespect: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Hardcover € 48,30. pp. 267Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (2): 451-454. 2017.
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5The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination (edited book)Routledge. 2017.While it has many connections to other topics in normative and applied ethics, discrimination is a central subject in philosophy in its own right. It plays a significant role in relation to many real-life complaints about unjust treatment or unjust inequalities, and it raises a number of questions in political and moral philosophy, and in legal theory. Some of these questions include: what distinguishes the concept of discrimination from the concept of differential treatment? What distinguishes …Read more
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74Legitimate allocation of public healthcare: Beyond accountability for reasonablenessPublic Health Ethics 2 (1): 59-69. 2009.PhD, Institute of Public Health, Unit of Medical Philosophy and Clinical Theory, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, P.O. Box 2099 1014 Copenhagen. Tel: +45 30 32 33 63; Email: s.lauridsen{at}pubhealth.ku.dk ' + u + '@ ' + d + ' '/ /- ->Citizens’ consent to political decisions is often regarded as a necessary condition of political legitimacy. Consequently, legitimate allocation of healthcare has seemed almost unattainable in contemporary pluralistic societies. The problem is that ci…Read more