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82Commentary on Ronald Dworkin's "Objectivity and truth: you'd better believe it"Brown Electronic Article Review Service in Moral and Political Philosophy. 1996.Review of: DWORKIN, R., "Objectivity and Truth: You'd Better Believe It." Philosophy & Public Affairs, 25: 87–139.
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151The Kantian argument for consequentialismRatio 22 (1): 41-58. 2009.A critical examination of Parfit's attempt to reconcile Kantian contractualism with consequentialism, which disputes his contention that the contracting parties would lack decisive reasons to choose principles that ground prohibitions against harming of the sort to which non-consequentialists have been attracted. 1.
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549Prioritarianism and the Measure of UtilityJournal of Political Philosophy 23 (1): 1-22. 2015.I argue that prioritarianism cannot be assessed in abstraction from an account of the measure of utility. Rather, the soundness of this view crucially depends on what counts as a greater, lesser, or equal increase in a person’s utility. In particular, prioritarianism cannot accommodate a normatively compelling measure of utility that is captured by the axioms of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s expected utility theory. Nor can it accommodate a plausible and elegant generalization of this…Read more
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71Licensed to Kill (review)Analysis 71 (3): 523-532. 2011.Book review of McMahan J. "Killing in War." Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009. --- Jeff McMahan’s "Killing in War" is, among many other things, a brief against the traditional just war doctrine of the moral equality of combatants – i.e. the doctrine that all combatants ‘have the same moral status, hence the same moral rights, immunities, and liabilities’, including ‘an equal right to kill’, irrespective of whether the war they fight is just or unjust.1 This book is a powerfully argued, nuanc…Read more
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61How to guard against the risk of living too long: the case for collective pensionsIn David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, v. 3, Oxford University Press. 2017.This chapter provides a defense of a type of occupational pension, known as “collective defined contribution”, which is based on the idea that it is possible to limit the employer’s liability to nothing more than a set contribution while retaining many of the benefits of the collectivization of risks of a traditional defined benefit pension. CDC can be defended against a freedom-based objection from the right via an appeal to the following Hobbesian voluntarist justification: CDC constitutes a “…Read more
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80Kamm on the Morality of Killing:Morality, Mortality, Vol. 2, Rights, Duties, and Status. Frances M. KammEthics 108 (1): 197-. 1997.A review essay of Frances Kamm's 'Morality, Mortality', Vol. 2, 'Rights, Duties, and Status' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
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186Self-ownership and equality: a lockean reconciliationPhilosophy and Public Affairs 27 (1): 65-92. 1998.I thank the members of the Law and Philosophy Discussion Group in Los Angeles and those who attended a talk sponsored by the philosophy department at New York University, where I presented earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to thank G. A. Cohen, Stephen Munzer, Seana Shiffrin, Peter Vallentyne, Andrew Williams, and the editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs, who read and provided written commentary on earlier drafts.
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25Owning persons, places, and thingsIn Stephen De Wijze, Matthew H. Kramer & Ian Carter (eds.), Hillel Steiner and the Anatomy of Justice: Themes and Challenges, Routledge. pp. 16--132. 2009.
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253Justice as Fairness: Luck Egalitarian, Not RawlsianThe Journal of Ethics 14 (3-4): 217-230. 2010.I assess G. A. Cohen's claim, which is central to his luck egalitarian account of distributive justice, that forcing others to pay for people's expensive indulgence is inegalitarian because it amounts to their exploitation. I argue that the forced subsidy of such indulgence may well be unfair, but any such unfairness fails to ground an egalitarian complaint. I conclude that Cohen's account of distributive justice has a non-egalitarian as well as an egalitarian aspect. Each impulse arises from an…Read more
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81Equality, ambition and insuranceAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78 (1): 151-166. 2004.Inequality is intrinsically bad when and because it is unfair. It follows that the ideal of equality is not necessarily realised by a distribution of resources which is envy-free prior to the resolution of risks against which people have an equal opportunity to insure. Even if the upshot of such an ex ante envyfree distribution is just, it is not necessarily fair.
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109The paradox of group beneficencePhilosophy and Public Affairs 20 (2): 132-149. 1991.An argument against Parfit's view (in his chapter of Reasons and Persons on five mistakes in moral mathematics) that, rather than maximizing the difference one makes as an individual, one should join that group whose members together make the most positive difference in cases involving imperceptible benefits. It is shown how Parfit's defence of this view has the problematic implication either (1) that each outcome is less beneficial than itself or (2) that "less beneficial than" is not transitiv…Read more
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84Prerogatives to Depart from EqualityRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 58 95-112. 2006.Should egalitarian justice be qualified by an agent-relative prerogative to act on a preference for—and thereby in a manner that gives rise to or preserves a greater than equal share of the goods of life for—oneself, one's family, loved ones, or friends as compared with strangers? Although many would reply that the answer to this question must be ‘yes’, I shall argue here that the case for such a prerogative to depart from equality is much less far-reaching than one might think. I have in mind a…Read more
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198Libertarianism Without InequalityOxford University Press UK. 2003.Michael Otsuka sets out to vindicate left-libertarianism, a political philosophy which combines stringent rights of control over one's own mind, body, and life with egalitarian rights of ownership of the world. Otsuka reclaims the ideas of John Locke from the libertarian Right, and shows how his Second Treatise of Government provides the theoretical foundations for a left-libertarianism which is both more libertarian and more egalitarian than the Kantian liberal theories of John Rawls and Thomas…Read more
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190Incompatibilism and the avoidability of blameEthics 108 (4): 685-701. 1998.I defend an incompatibilist 'Principle of Avoidable Blame' according to which one is blameworthy for performing an act of a given type only if one could instead have behaved in a manner for which one would have been blameless. First, I demonstrate that this principle is resistant to Harry Frankfurt-type counterexample. Second, I present a positive argument for this principle that appeals to the relation of blame to the 'reactive attitude' of indignation. Finally, I argue against the possibility …Read more
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62A Rejoinder to Fischer and TognazziniThe Journal of Ethics 14 (1): 37-42. 2010.In Otsuka ( 1998 ), I endorse an incompatibilist Principle of Avoidable Blame. In this rejoinder to Fischer and Tognazzini ( 2009 ), I defend this principle against their charge that it is vulnerable to Frankfurt-type counterexample.
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124Skepticism about Saving the Greater NumberPhilosophy and Public Affairs 32 (4): 413-426. 2004.Suppose that each of the following four conditions obtains: 1. You can save either a greater or a lesser number of innocent people from (equally) serious harm. 2. You can do so at trivial cost to yourself. 3. If you act to save, then the harm you prevent is harm that would not have been prevented if you had done nothing. 4. All other things are equal. A skeptic about saving the greater number rejects the common-sensical claim that you have a duty to save the greater number in such circumstances
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16On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy (edited book)Princeton University Press. 2011.G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. In these pieces, Coh…Read more
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423Killing the Innocent in Self‐DefensePhilosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1): 74-94. 1994.I presented an earlier version of this paper to the Law and Philosophy Discussion Group in Los Angeles, whose members I would like to thank for their comments. In addition, I would also like to thank the following people for reading and providing written or verbal commentary on earlier drafts: Robert Mams, Rogers Albritton, G. A. Cohen, David Copp, Matthew Hanser, Craig Ihara, Brian Lee, Marc Lange, Derk Pereboom, Carol Voeller, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs. I owe special thank…Read more
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85Freedom of occupational choiceRatio 21 (4): 440-453. 2008.Cohen endorses the coercive taxation of the talented at a progressive rate for the sake of realizing equality. By contrast, he denies that it is legitimate for the state to engage in the 'Stalinist forcing' of people into one or another line of work in order to bring about a more egalitarian society. He rejects such occupational conscription on grounds of the invasiveness of the gathering and acting upon information regarding people's preferences for different types of work that would be require…Read more
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92Quinn on punishment and using persons as meansLaw and Philosophy 15 (2). 1996.In The Right to Threaten and the Right to Punish, Warren Quinn justifies punishment on the ground that it can be derived from the rights of persons to protect themselves against crime. Quinn, however, denies that a right of self-protection justifies the punishment of an aggressor solely on the ground that such punishment deters others from harming the victim of that aggression or others. He believes that punishment so justified would constitute a morally objectionable instance of using the punis…Read more
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220Moral luck: Optional, not brutePhilosophical Perspectives 23 (1): 373-388. 2009.'Moral luck' refers to the phenomenon whereby one's degree of blameworthiness for what one has done varies on account of factors beyond one's control. Applying concepts of Dworkin's from the domain of distributive justice, I draw a distinction between 'option moral luck,' which is that to which one has exposed oneself as the result of one's voluntary choices, and 'brute moral luck,' which is that which is unchosen and unavoidable. I argue that option moral luck is not ruled out on grounds of unf…Read more
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2Il personale è politico? Il confine fra pubblico e privato nella sfera della giustizia distributivaIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 14 (34): 617-623. 2001.