Arthur Krieger

I am a bioethicist and a philosopher of psychiatry. Much of my work aims to clarify the puzzling phenomenon of addiction, by combining philosophical resources with insights from neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and people with lived experience. I am one of the few philosophers currently arguing that addiction is a compulsion, in the sense that it often makes us incapable of doing otherwise. Building on my descriptive work, I also write on various ethical dimensions of addiction, including moral responsibility for addictive behavior, ethical issues around prescribing habit-forming drugs, and the intersection of medical ethics and public health approaches (especially Harm Reduction). I have broader research interests in healthcare ethics and the philosophy of medicine.