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16Geoengineering, Ocean Fertilization, and the Problem of Permissible PollutionScience, Technology, and Human Values 36 (2): 190--212. 2011.Many geoengineering projects have been proposed to address climate change, including both solar radiation management and carbon removal techniques. Some of these methods would introduce additional compounds into the atmosphere or the ocean. This poses a difficult conundrum: Is it permissible to remediate one pollutant by introducing a second pollutant into a system that has already been damaged, threatened, or altered? We frame this conundrum as the ‘‘Problem of Permissible Pollution.’’ In this …Read more
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44Is Justice Good for Your Sleep? (And therefore, Good for Your Health?)Social Theory and Health 7 (4): 354-370. 2009.In this paper, we present an argument strengthening the view of Norman Daniels, Bruce Kennedy and Ichiro Kawachi that justice is good for one's health. We argue that the pathways through which social factors produce inequalities in sleep more strongly imply a unidirectional and non-voluntary causality than with most other public health issues. Specifically, we argue against the 'voluntarism objection' – an objection that suggests that adverse public health outcomes can be traced back to the free…Read more
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48Fukushima Daiichi, Normal Accidents, and Moral Responsibility: Ethical Questions about Nuclear EnergyEthics, Policy and Environment 14 (3). 2011.Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 263-265, October 2011
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33Ecoscapes: Geographical Patternings of Relations (edited book)Lexington Books. 2006.This volume presents the concept of Ecoscape as spatial interrelations, or spatially patterned processes, that are constitutive of an environment_an ecosystem. Contributors investigate environmental issues concerning the human impact on geohistory, food distribution, genetically modified biota, waste management, scientific mapping, and the rethinking of human identity
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52Technology, the Environment, and the Moral Considerability of ArtifactsIn Evan Selinger, Jan Kyrre Berg Olson & Soren Riis (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Technology, Palgrave-macmillan. 2008.
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45Remediation and Respect: Do Remediation Technologies Alter Our Responsibility?Environmental Values 18 (4): 397-415. 2009.In this paper we examine the relation between technologies that aim to remediate pollution and moral responsibility. Contrary to the common view that successful remediation technologies will permit the wheels of industry to turn without interruption, we argue that such technologies do not exculpate polluters of responsibility. To make this case, we examine several environmental and non-environmental cases. We suggest that some strategies for understanding the moral problem of pollution, and part…Read more
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47Identity crisis: Face recognition technology and freedom of the willEthics, Place and Environment 8 (2). 2005.In this paper I present the position that the use of face recognition technology (FRT) in law enforcement and in business is restrictive of individual autonomy. I reason that FRT severely undermines autonomous self-determination by hobbling the idea of freedom of the will. I distinguish this position from two other common arguments against surveillance technologies: the privacy argument (that FRT is an invasion of privacy) and the objective freedom argument (that FRT is restrictive of one's free…Read more
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29Restoration, Obligation, and the Baseline ProblemEnvironmental Ethics 36 (2): 171-186. 2014.Should we restore degraded nature, and if so, why? Environmental theorists often approach the problem of restoration from perspectives couched in much broader debates, particularly regarding the intrinsic value and moral status of natural entities. Unfortunately, such approaches are susceptible to concerns such as the baseline problem, which is both a philosophical and technical issue related to identifying an appropriate restoration baseline. Insofar as restoration ostensibly aims to return an …Read more
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28TakingsIn Baird Callicott & Robert Frodeman (eds.), Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Macmillan Reference. 2008.
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24Open to debate: Moral consideration and the lab monkeyAmerican Journal of Bioethics 8 (6). 2008.No abstract
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151Gavagai Goulash: Growing Organs for FoodThink 5 (15): 61-70. 2007.Recent advancements in stem-cell research have given scientists hope that new technologies will soon enable them to grow a variety of organs for transplantation into humans. Though such developments are still in their early stages, romantic prognosticators are hopeful that scientists will be capable of growing fully functioning and complex organs, such as hearts, kidneys, muscles, and livers. This raises the question of whether such profound medical developments might have other potentially fr…Read more
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60Culpability and Blame after Pregnancy LossJournal of Medical Ethics 33 (1): 24-27. 2007.The problem of feeling guilty about a pregnancy loss is suggested to be primarily a moral matter and not a medical or psychological one. Two standard approaches to women who blame themselves for a loss are first introduced, characterised as either psychologistic or deterministic. Both these approaches are shown to underdetermine the autonomy of the mother by depending on the notion that the mother is not culpable for the loss if she "could not have acted otherwise". The inability to act otherwis…Read more
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283What's so moral about the moral hazard?Public Affairs Quarterly 23 (1): 1-26. 2009.A "moral hazard" is a market failure most commonly associated with insurance, but also associated by extension with a wide variety of public policy scenarios, from environmental disaster relief, to corporate bailouts, to natural resource policy, to health insurance. Specifically, the term "moral hazard" describes the danger that, in the face of insurance, an agent will increase her exposure to risk. If not immediately clear, such terminology invokes a moral notion, suggesting that changing one's…Read more
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20The Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics (edited book)Routledge. 2016._The Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics_ is comprised of sixty original essays, which focus on how ethical questions intersect with real and pressing policy issues. Rather than overviewing abstract conceptual categories, the authors focus on specific controversies involving the environment. Clearly written contributions on Fossil Fuels, Urban Sustainability, Novel Ecosystems, and many other subjects make accessible these issues‘ empirical and political dimensions as well as their theore…Read more
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55Experience and the environment: Phenomenology returns to earth (review)Human Studies 28 (1). 2005.
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53Non-Identity for Non-HumansEthical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5): 1165-1185. 2016.This article introduces a non-human version of the non-identity problem and suggests that such a variation exposes weaknesses in several proposed person-focused solutions to the classic version of the problem. It suggests first that person-affecting solutions fail when applied to non-human animals and, second, that many common moral arguments against climate change should be called into question. We argue that a more inclusive version of the person-affecting principle, which we call the ‘patient…Read more
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University of Colorado, BoulderAssistant Professor
Boulder, Colorado, United States of America
PhilPapers Editorships
Environmental Philosophy |