Connor K. Kianpour

Liberal political morality prizes the freedom to enter and exit intimate associations, and romantic relationships are often treated as paradigmatic sites of this freedom. Yet when romantic partners are also coparents, exit can deprive children of established caregiving structures on which their welfare, security, and developing autonomy depend. This paper argues that children hold positive associational rights to the continuity of such structures once they have been conferred. These rights generate defeasible relational obligations for coparents to sustain a joint caregiving partnership, even at significant personal cost. Crucially, the obligations defended here are not grounded in biological parenthood or in mere interests in an intact family from the outset. They arise only in cases of deprivation, where a child's life has already been organized around a shared caregiving framework, and not in cases of mere absence. By distinguishing relational obligations from other parental duties, the paper develops a liberal yet child-centered account of romantic exit, according to which children's claims to continuity can justifiably constrain adults' freedom to disassociate.

Philosophers tend to treat immoral jokes as best avoided, if not outright condemned. This essay challenges that consensus. I argue that many immoral jokes, far from undermining moral life, can enhance it. If moral features influence a joke’s funniness—as comic moralists and immoralists both claim—then humour can track our deepest norms, helping us perceive moral incongruity. That is the basis for what I call the humour-as-moral-error-detection thesis (HMED). Troubling jokes do not just risk harm. They can also crack open reflection, rattle certainties, and cultivate the very moral growth that critics of offensive humour aim to preserve. Joking’s distinctive features, such as its non-literality and play, make it especially well-suited to this task. Rather than viewing immoral jokes solely as threats to be policed, I propose a permissive ethical stance: one that treats immoral humour as a site of moral-epistemic possibility, and invites audiences to engage rather than retreat.

I argue that certain special obligations members of certain marginalized groups have to one another, if any such obligations exist, cannot be explained in terms of reciprocity. First, I motivate reciprocity of the oppressed (RO)––the term I’ve coined for the view that members of a particular marginalized social group have special obligations, corresponding to perfect duties, to one another grounded in reciprocity. Then, I argue that RO can, at most, generate special obligations, corresponding to imperfect duties, for members of certain marginalized groups. After, I clarify what sorts of obligations reciprocity could generate for members of certain marginalized groups and, in doing so, show that RO can vindicate only modest conclusions about the duties that members of a marginalized group have to one another.

Many believe that it is wrong for parents to prevent their children from associating with other adults. Many also believe that it is wrong for parents to prevent their children from continuing to associate with adults whose association with them is crucial to the children’s well-being. Call these adults the important associates of children. In this essay, I will argue that the considerations favoring the two judgments just mentioned also favor a further judgment. In particular, I will argue that important associates are presumptively obligated to continue associating with the children to whom they are important associates. This means that the important associates of children who dissolve their association with a child without proper justification wrong these children by doing so.

Are private citizens ever morally permitted to abduct children and keep them in their custody, to protect them from their severely abusive or neglectful parents? Should private citizens face legal penalties for abducting children and keeping them in their custody, to protect them from their severely abusive or neglectful parents? In this essay, I offer arguments that support an affirmative answer to the first question and a negative answer to the second. Ultimately, I come out supporting a legal regime that keeps what I call defensive kidnapping illegal, but in which public officials may use discretion when enforcing laws that criminalize kidnapping. Under such a regime, children who were severely abused or neglected by their parents but saved by a loving, capable private citizen would be spared from admission into the precarity of the child welfare system.

I first argue that forms of regulated parenting are presumptively justified whereas private parenting is not. Then, I argue that the reasons we have to believe that regulated parenting is justified give us reasons to believe that individuals who are objectionably intolerant—that is, they subscribe to prejudicial dogmas such as racism, sexism, and homophobia to such an extent that their ability to direct caring attitudes toward, for example, Black people, women, and/or gay people is significantly impaired—ought not to rear children. Finally, I argue that if these people ought not to rear children, we have special reason to institute a scheme of parental licensing to ensure they do not.

It is important for members of marginalized groups to express political views relevant to how members of their respective groups should be treated. Recently, however, it has been argued that there are some contexts––that is, contexts in which members of marginalized groups are tokenized and have considerable power to influence political outcomes that would affect their other group members––in which certain marginalized group members ought not express certain political views relevant to how members of their respective groups should be treated. In this essay, I examine two arguments defending this conclusion (the proportional representation and unjust enrichment arguments) and conclude that both fail. Then, I argue that recognizing that members of marginalized groups are permitted to speak their minds, even in these contexts, favorably affirms their broad political speech rights.

Strong comic immoralism maintains that every time a humorous demonstration (for example, a joke) involves a moral defect, it is enhanced aesthetically in virtue of having this moral defect. I want to show that strong comic immoralism is a coherent position, that it is possible to defend, and that there is, in fact, some reason to defend it. By doing this, my hope is that, moving forward, those who are interested in questions about the relationship between immorality and the aesthetic value of jokes will take more seriously the objections that may be presented against their views by the strong comic immoralist, rather than claiming that “no one on this side of Satan” would be one.

The defection thesis holds that members of marginalized social groups are obligated not to express views important to others in the group that are regarded by the others as substantively wrong. In this essay, I evaluate arguments that seek to vindicate the defection thesis and conclude they all fail. Then, I argue that we have reason to believe sanctioning defectors in certain ways is wrongful and that the expression of their contentious ideas is good for members of marginalized groups. We are left to conclude both that members of marginalized groups have no obligation to suppress certain heterodox views and that it is likely wrong to sanction them for expressing these views even if it were wrong for them to do so.

I argue that factory farming should be abolished consistent with the principles of classical liberalism. To make my case, I first argue that anti-cruelty is a commitment of classical liberalism. In Section 3, I explain how the commitments of classical liberalism, including a commitment to anti-cruelty, give us weighty reasons to abolish factory farming. Then, I consider and respond to the objection that the property rights of factory farmers override the strength of reasons for the abolition of factory farming. Finally, I conclude by flagging some other possible implications of taking seriously a liberal commitment to anti-cruelty.

Most non-human animals live in the wild and it is probable that suffering predominates in their lives due to natural events. Humans may at some point be able to engage in paradise engineering, or the modification of nature and animal organisms themselves, to improve the well-being of wild animals. We may, in other words, make nature 'red in tooth and claw' no more. We argue that this creates a tension between environmental ethics and animal ethics which is likely insurmountable. First, we argue that concern for the environment can be compatible with helping individual wild animals but should see redesigning nature as morally impermissible. Second, we argue that if we are concerned with animal well-being, we may reject that we have a duty to help wild animals even to the point of redesigning nature, but we must nevertheless concede that it is permissible to do so under certain circumstances. We show how this permissibility can be derived from three animal rights views: Tom Regan's, a novel account inspired by Thomas Pogge and a libertarian approach to animal rights.

First, I spell out the details of a Hegelish conception of property. To clarify what makes this account unique, I compare it to a labor-mixing conception of property that finds its origins in Locke. In doing so, I highlight strengths of a Hegelish account of property over its Lockean alternative. Then, I show how dolphins, consistent with a Hegelish account of property, are property owners of their oceanic habitats. Finally, I outline the strengths of a Hegelish account of property as it would apply to dolphins and perhaps other nonhuman animals in protecting them. It is not my aim to argue that a Hegelish account of nonhuman property is the only viable path toward recognizing nonhuman property. Rather, I hope to show that such an account holds promise as a tool in the conceptual toolbox handled by theorists of the political turn in animal ethics.

In her Pharmaceutical Freedom, Jessica Flanigan argues that antibiotics can be regulated consistent with her otherwise largely deregulatory view with respect to pharmaceuticals and recreational drugs. I contend in this essay that the reasons for justifying antibiotic regulation are reasons that can be offered to justify the regulation of many other drugs, both pharmaceutical and recreational. After laying out the specifics of Flanigan’s view, I suggest that it is amenable to the regulation of drugs like varenicline. Though such drugs can legitimately improve the quality of a patient’s life by helping them quit smoking, they could be permissibly regulated if they expose others to impermissible risks. I then argue that recreational drugs like alcohol could be regulated using the same reasoning. In the penultimate section of this essay, I anticipate objections that one might have to my extension of arguments favoring antibiotic regulation to drugs correlated with aggression. Flanigan might find my extrapolation of her view as entirely plausible and accept that her view is relatively friendly to these regulations, or she might reconsider her antibiotic caveat if these regulations are overly paternalistic on her understanding. I conclude by briefly considering the benefits and drawbacks of adopting each view.

I will first offer a general understanding of the flavor of libertarianism I will be using as the foundation for my argument for open borders. Then, I will summarize the argument put forth by Joseph Carens in “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” which consummates the importance of open border policy in maintaining the efficacy of property rights. After, I will supplement an additional argument to Carens’s in order to strengthen it. In this section, I will interpret Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia such that it informs the importance of the enforcement of a right of free movement and I will furthermore detail how border restrictions directly violate that right. In the final section of this paper, I will address criticisms made both by libertarian and liberal thinkers against the enforcement of a right of free movement. One of the liberal criticisms, in particular, will serve as a jumping-off point for a conversation highlighting the ways in which libertarian arguments for open borders differ from liberal arguments for open borders. These differences, I contend, illuminate how disparate these philosophical traditions are, especially in the manner that they conceive of rights.