•  163
    Literature, Politics, and Character
    with Oliver Conolly
    Philosophy and Literature 32 (1): 87-101. 2008.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature, Politics, and CharacterOliver Conolly and Bashshar HaydarWhat is the relationship between literature and politics? We might interpret this question in terms of causality. For example, we might ask whether literature has any effects in the world of politics and if so how. Auden famously proclaimed that poetry makes nothing happen, while it was central to Brecht's dramaturgy that theatre has certain political effects on its…Read more
  •  151
    Narrative art and moral knowledge
    with Oliver Conolly
    British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (2): 109-124. 2001.
  •  124
    The claim that one is never morally permitted to engage in non-optimal harm doing enjoys a great intuitive appeal. If in addition to this claim, we reject the moral relevance of the doingallowing distinction. In this short essay, I propose a different take on the argument in question. Instead of opting to reject its conclusion by defending the moral relevance of the doingallowing distinction, we can no longer rely on the strong intuitive appeal of the claim that one is never morally permitted to…Read more
  •  117
    Aesthetic principles
    with Oliver Conolly
    British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2): 114-125. 2003.
    We give reasons for our judgements of works of art. (2) Reasons are inherently general, and hence dependent on principles. (3) There are no principles of aesthetic evaluation. Each of these three propositions seems plausible, yet one of them must be false. Illusionism denies (1). Particularism denies (2). Generalism denies (3). We argue that illusionism depends on an unacceptable account of the use of critical language. Particularism cannot account for the connection between reasons and verdicts…Read more
  •  88
    This paper takes a closer look at the incompatibility thesis, namely the claim that consequentialism is incompatible with accepting the moral relevance of the doing-allowing distinction. I examine two attempts to reject the incompatibility thesis, the first by Samuel Scheffler and the second by Frances Kamm. I argue that both attempts fail to provide an adequate ground for rejecting the incompatibility thesis. I then put forward an account of what I take to be at stake in accepting or rejecting …Read more
  •  80
    The Case Against Faction
    with Oliver Conolly
    Philosophy and Literature 32 (2): 347-358. 2008.
    "Faction" is a hybrid genre, aiming at the factual accuracy of journalism on the one hand and the literary form of the novel on the other. There is a fundamental tension however between those two aims, given the constraints which factual accuracy places on characterization, plot, and thematic exploration characteristic of the novel. Further, faction cannot be defended on the grounds that factual accuracy is a literary value in faction. Finally, some aspects of faction, such as its inability to r…Read more
  •  72
    Extreme poverty and global responsibility
    Metaphilosophy 36 (1‐2): 240-253. 2005.
    This essay addresses the questions of whether and how much responsibility for extreme poverty should be assigned to global and domestic institutional orders. The main focus is on whether the global order brings about the existing levels of extreme poverty or merely allows them. By examining Thomas Pogge's recent contribution on this topic, I argue that although he builds a plausible case for the claim that the global order brings about, and not merely fails to prevent, extreme poverty, the moral…Read more
  •  71
    Forced supererogation and deontological restrictions
    Journal of Value Inquiry 36 (4): 445-454. 2002.
  •  62
    Special Responsibility and the Appeal to Cost
    Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (2): 129-145. 2009.
  •  56
    Hypocrisy, Poverty Alleviation, and Two Types of Emergencies
    with Gerhard Øverland
    The Journal of Ethics 23 (1): 3-17. 2019.
    Peter Singer is well known to have argued for our responsibilities to address global poverty based on an analogy with saving a drowning child. Just as the passerby has a duty to save that child, we have a duty to save children ‘drowning’ in poverty. Since its publication, more four decades ago, there have been numerous attempts to grapple with the inescapable moral challenge posed by Singer’s analogy. In this paper, we propose a new approach to the Singerian challenge, through offering a differe…Read more
  •  49
    The Good, The Bad and The Funny
    The Monist 88 (1): 121-134. 2005.
  •  45
    Irreversible generalism: A reply to Dickie
    with Oliver Conolly
    British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (3): 289-295. 2005.
    Irreversible generalism, the view that reasons given for the evaluation of art are general and do not admit of exceptions, is defended from the criticisms levelled against it by George Dickie in ‘Reading Sibley’. The authors' view that Frank Sibley adhered to a form of reversible generalism, the view that reasons given for the evaluation of art are general but can sometimes become reasons to disvalue artworks, according to which there a criterion for distinguishing valenced from neutral aestheti…Read more
  •  42
    The Normative Implications of Benefiting from Injustice
    with Gerhard Øverland
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (4): 349-362. 2014.
    In this article we investigate whether non-culpably benefiting from wrongdoing or injustice generates a moral requirement to disgorge these benefits in order to compensate the victims. We argue that a strong requirement to disgorge such benefits is generated only if other conditions or factors are present. We identify three such factors and claim that their presence would explain why the normative features of certain types of cases of benefiting from wrongdoing differ from cases of benefiting fr…Read more
  •  40
    What do the affluent owe the global poor, an introduction
    with Siba Harb and R. J. Leland
    Ethics and Global Politics 12 (1): 1-4. 2019.
    In Responding to Global Poverty, Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland argue that, while exploitation is morally problematic, responsibilities not to exploit are characteristically less stringent than responsibilities not to harm. They even suggest that exploiters’ responsibilities to assist the exploited may be weaker than the responsibilities of culpable bystanders who are able to help the poor but fail to do so We think Barry and Øverland underestimate the prospects of the exploitation argume…Read more
  •  39
    The moral relevance of cost
    Philosophical Studies 112 (2). 2003.
    Consequentialists do not deny that cost to the agent is a morallyrelevant consideration. For, they do include cost to the agent inthe calculation of the overall good. What they deny, however, isthat cost to the agent is a morally relevant factor independentlyof its impact on the overall good. I argue in this paper that, ifone rejects the claim that cost to the agent is a morallyrelevant factor on its own right, one is then committed toaccepting some `hyper' counter-intuitive moral claims. I call…Read more
  •  32
    The ethics of fighting terror and the priority of citizens
    Journal of Military Ethics 4 (1): 52-59. 2005.
    This paper provides a critical commentary on Kasher and Yadlin's article. I start with a few remarks regarding the authors? claim about the uniqueness of fighting terrorism and their proposed definition of acts of terrorism. The main part of my commentary, however, is devoted to discussing Kasher and Yadlin's Principle of Distinction (Part II of their paper). There, I raise several objections to their proposed ranking of state duties and to the way they use the ranking to justify what they call …Read more
  • Consequentialism and the Appeal to Cost
    Dissertation, Columbia University. 1996.
    This dissertation aims at contributing to the recent discussion in contemporary moral philosophy concerning the level of moral demandingness. ;After defending the validity of granting permission for non-optimal behavior on the basis of the appeal to cost, I proceed to look at how granting permissions on the basis of cost might influence and be influenced by other moral considerations. A special emphasis is given to examining the relation between the appeal to cost and the consequentialist claim …Read more