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26An Argument for All‐Luck EgalitarianismPhilosophy and Public Affairs 49 (4): 350-378. 2021.Philosophy & Public Affairs, EarlyView.
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54An Argument for All‐Luck EgalitarianismPhilosophy and Public Affairs 49 (4): 350-378. 2021.Luck egalitarianism is the view that equality requires the influence of luck on distributive outcomes to be neutralized. The standard version of the view, brute-luck egalitarianism, neutralizes brute luck (the upshot of non-declinable risks) while allowing option luck (the upshot of declinable risks) to stand. This article argues that this view should be rejected in favour of all-luck egalitarianism, which neutralizes brute luck and option luck alike. There are three parts to this overall argume…Read more
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251Discrimination and Equality of OpportunityIn Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination, Routledge. pp. 140-150. 2017.Discrimination, understood as differential treatment of individuals on the basis of their respective group memberships, is widely considered to be morally wrong. This moral judgment is backed in many jurisdictions with the passage of equality of opportunity legislation, which aims to ensure that racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, sexual-orientation, disability and other groups are not subjected to discrimination. This chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings of discrimination and equality o…Read more
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247Luck Egalitarianism and the History of Political ThoughtIn Camilla Boisen & Matthew C. Murray (eds.), Distributive Justice Debates in Political and Social Thought: Perspectives on Finding a Fair Share, Routledge. pp. 26-38. 2015.Luck egalitarianism is a family of egalitarian theories of distributive justice that give a special place to luck, choice, and responsibility. These theories can be understood as responding to perceived weaknesses in influential earlier theories of both the left – in particular Rawls’ liberal egalitarianism (1971) – and the right – Nozick’s libertarianism (1974) stands out here. Rawls put great emphasis on the continuity of his theory with the great social contract theories of modern political t…Read more
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253Reflective EquilibriumIn Adrian Blau (ed.), Methods in Analytical Political Theory, Cambridge University Press. pp. 46-64. 2017.The method of reflective equilibrium focuses on the relationship between principles and judgments. Principles are relatively general rules for comprehending the area of enquiry. Judgments are our intuitions or commitments, ‘at all levels of generality’ (Rawls 1975: 8), regarding the subject matter. The basic idea of reflective equilibrium is to bring principles and judgments into accord. This can be achieved by revising the principles and/or the judgments. I first look at normative political jud…Read more
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41EgalitarianismOxford Bibliographies in Political Science. 2018.Equality as a bare concept refers to two or more distinct things or people being the same in some dimension. Different forms of equality are distinguished by the dimension that is held to be the same. Within political theory, three main forms of equality can be distinguished: moral equality, political equality, and substantive equality. “Moral equality” refers to each individual having the same inherent dignity as a human being, and therefore being worthy of respect. “Political equality,” by con…Read more
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338Enough is too much: the excessiveness objection to sufficientarianismEconomics and Philosophy 38 (2): 275-299. 2022.The standard version of sufficientarianism maintains that providing people with enough, or as close to enough as is possible, is lexically prior to other distributive goals. This article argues that this is excessive – more than distributive justice allows – in four distinct ways. These concern the magnitude of advantage, the number of beneficiaries, responsibility and desert, and above-threshold distribution. Sufficientarians can respond by accepting that providing enough unconditionally is mor…Read more
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472Rawlsian Justice and Palliative CareBioethics 29 (8): 536-542. 2015.Palliative care serves both as an integrated part of treatment and as a last effort to care for those we cannot cure. The extent to which palliative care should be provided and our reasons for doing so have been curiously overlooked in the debate about distributive justice in health and healthcare. We argue that one prominent approach, the Rawlsian approach developed by Norman Daniels, is unable to provide such reasons and such care. This is because of a central feature in Daniels' account, name…Read more
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237Responsibility and distributive justice (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2011.Under what conditions are people responsible for their choices and the outcomes of those choices? How could such conditions be fostered by liberal societies? Should what people are due as a matter of justice depend on what they are responsible for? For example, how far should healthcare provision depend on patients' past choices? What values would be realized and which hampered by making justice sensitive to responsibility? Would it give people what they deserve? Would it advance or hinder equal…Read more
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523A framework for luck egalitarianism in health and healthcareJournal of Medical Ethics 41 (2): 165-169. 2015.Several attempts have been made to apply the choice-sensitive theory of distributive justice, luck egalitarianism, in the context of health and healthcare. This article presents a framework for this discussion by highlighting different normative decisions to be made in such an application, some of the objections to which luck egalitarians must provide answers and some of the practical implications associated with applying such an approach in the real world. It is argued that luck egalitarians sh…Read more
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145Yascha Mounk, The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State (review)Ethics 129 (3): 489-492. 2019.The notion of responsibility has come to play a leading role in both political discourse and political philosophy. Yasha Mounk’s The Age of Responsibility provides a wide-ranging exploration of this zeitgeist. As the author notes, ‘[t]his book stands at an unusual methodological intersection. It contains elements of intellectual history, social theory, comparative politics, and normative political philosophy’ (26). Philosophical theories of free will and moral luck battle for space with analyses…Read more
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692Describing equalityLaw and Philosophy 28 (4). 2009.This articles proposes that theories and principles of distributive justice be considered substantively egalitarian iff they satisfy each of three conditions: (1) they consider the bare fact that a person is in certain circumstances to be a conclusive reason for placing another relevantly identically entitled person in the same circumstances, except where this conflicts with other similarly conclusive reasons arising from the circumstances of other persons; (2) they can be stated as 'equality of…Read more
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2394Unit-ideas Unleashed: A Reinterpretation and Reassessment of Lovejovian Methodology in the History of IdeasJournal of the Philosophy of History 6 (2): 195-217. 2012.This article argues for an unconventional interpretation of Arthur O. Lovejoy’s distinctive approach to method in the history of ideas. It is maintained that the value of the central concept of the ‘unit-idea’ has been misunderstood by friends and foes alike. The commonality of unit-ideas at different times and places is often defined in terms of familial resemblance. But such an approach must necessarily define unit-ideas as being something other than the smallest conceptual unit. It is therefo…Read more
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346In Defence of Global EgalitarianismJournal of Global Ethics 8 (1): 107-116. 2012.This essay argues that David Miller's criticisms of global egalitarianism do not undermine the view where it is stated in one of its stronger, luck egalitarian forms. The claim that global egalitarianism cannot specify a metric of justice which is broad enough to exclude spurious claims for redistribution, but precise enough to appropriately value different kinds of advantage, implicitly assumes that cultural understandings are the only legitimate way of identifying what counts as advantage. But…Read more
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1886Theories of Distributive Justice and Post-Apartheid South AfricaPolitikon 41 (1): 23-38. 2014.South Africa is a highly distributively unequal country, and its inequality continues to be largely along racial lines. Such circumstances call for assessment from the perspective of contemporary theories of distributive justice. Three such theories—Rawlsian justice, utilitarianism, and luck egalitarianism—are described and applied. Rawls' difference principle recommends that the worst off be made as well as they can be, a standard which South Africa clearly falls short of. Utilitarianism recomm…Read more
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5IntroductionCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (5): 505-507. 2016.
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752Responsibility and Distributive Justice: An IntroductionIn Carl Knight & Zofia Stemplowska (eds.), Responsibility and distributive justice, Oxford University Press. 2011.This introductory chapter provides an overview of the recent debate about responsibility and distributive justice. It traces the recent philosophical focus on distributive justice to John Rawls and examines two arguments in his work which might be taken to contain the seeds of the focus on responsibility in later theories of distributive justice. It examines Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’, the ‘luck egalitarianism’ of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, as well as the criticisms of their …Read more
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672Distributive LuckSouth African Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 541-559. 2012.This article explores the Rawlsian goal of ensuring that distributions are not influenced by the morally arbitrary. It does so by bringing discussions of distributive justice into contact with the debate over moral luck initiated by Williams and Nagel. Rawls’ own justice as fairness appears to be incompatible with the arbitrariness commitment, as it creates some equalities arbitrarily. A major rival, Dworkin’s version of brute luck egalitarianism, aims to be continuous with ordinary ethics, …Read more
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207Luck Egalitarianism: Equality, Responsibility, and JusticeEdinburgh University Press. 2009.How should we decide which inequalities between people are justified, and which are unjustified? One answer is that such inequalities are only justified where there is a corresponding variation in responsible action or choice on the part of the persons concerned. This view, which has become known as 'luck egalitarianism', has come to occupy a central place in recent debates about distributive justice. This book is the first full length treatment of this significant development in contemporary p…Read more
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438Equality and InformationEthical Perspectives 19 (3): 469-499. 2012.Traditional outcome-orientated egalitarian principles require access to information about the size of individual holdings. Recent egalitarian political theory has sought to accommodate considerations of responsibility. Such a move may seem problematic, in that a new informational burden is thereby introduced, with no apparent decrease in the existing burden. This article uses a simple model with simulated data to examine the extent to which outcome egalitarianism and responsibility-sensitive ega…Read more
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365What is Grandfathering?Environmental Politics 22 (3): 410-427. 2013.Emissions grandfathering maintains that prior emissions increase future emission entitlements. The view forms a large part of actual emission control frameworks, but is routinely dismissed by political theorists and applied philosophers as evidently unjust. A sympathetic theoretical reconsideration of grandfathering suggests that the most plausible version is moderate, allowing that other considerations should influence emission entitlements, and be justified on instrumental grounds. The most pr…Read more
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4784Luck EgalitarianismPhilosophy Compass 8 (10): 924-934. 2013.Luck egalitarianism is a family of egalitarian theories of distributive justice that aim to counteract the distributive effects of luck. This article explains luck egalitarianism's main ideas, and the debates that have accompanied its rise to prominence. There are two main parts to the discussion. The first part sets out three key moves in the influential early statements of Dworkin, Arneson, and Cohen: the brute luck/option luck distinction, the specification of brute luck in everyday or theore…Read more
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1248In Defence of Luck EgalitarianismRes Publica 11 (1): 55-73. 2005.This paper considers issues raised by Elizabeth Anderson’s recent critique of the position she terms ‘luck egalitarianism’. It is maintained that luck egalitarianism, once clarified and elaborated in certain regards, remains the strongest egalitarian stance. Anderson’s arguments that luck egalitarians abandon both the negligent and prudent dependent caretakers fails to account for the moderate positions open to luck egalitarians and overemphasizes their commitment to unregulated market choices. …Read more
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2022Climate change and the duties of the disadvantaged: reply to CaneyCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (4): 531-542. 2011.Discussions of where the costs of climate change adaptation and mitigation should fall often focus on the 'polluter pays principle' or the 'ability to pay principle'. Simon Caney has recently defended a 'hybrid view', which includes versions of both of these principles. This article argues that Caney's view succeeds in overcoming several shortfalls of both principles, but is nevertheless subject to three important objections: first, it does not distinguish between those emissions which are hard …Read more
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425Responsibility, Desert, and JusticeIn Carl Knight & Zofia Stemplowska (eds.), Responsibility and distributive justice, Oxford University Press. 2011.This chapter identifies three contrasts between responsibility-sensitive justice and desert-sensitive justice. First, while responsibility may be appraised on prudential or moral grounds, it is argued that desert is necessarily moral. As moral appraisal is much more plausible, responsibility-sensitive justice is only attractive in one of its two formulations. Second, strict responsibility sensitivity does not compensate for all forms of bad brute luck, and forms of responsibility-sensitive justi…Read more
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479Inequality, Avoidability, and HealthcareIyyun 60 72-88. 2011.This review article of Shlomi Segall's Health, Luck, and Justice (Princeton University Press, 2010) addresses three issues: first, Segall’s claim that luck egalitarianism, properly construed, does not object to brute luck equality; second, Segall’s claim that brute luck is properly construed as the outcome of actions that it would have been unreasonable to expect the agent to avoid; and third, Segall’s account of healthcare and criticism of rival views. On the first two issues, a more convention…Read more
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University of GlasgowSenior Lecturer
Glasgow, Glasgow City, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland