•  493
    A Simple Analysis of Harm
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (n/a): 509-536. 2022.
    In this paper, we present and defend an analysis of harm that we call the Negative Influence on Well-Being Account (NIWA). We argue that NIWA has a number of significant advantages compared to its two main rivals, the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) and the Causal Account (CA), and that it also helps explain why those views go wrong. In addition, we defend NIWA against a class of likely objections, and consider its implications for several questions about harm and its role in normative …Read more
  •  244
    Parfit on fission
    Philosophical Studies 150 (1). 2010.
    Derek Parfit famously defends a number of surprising views about "fission." One is that, in such a scenario, it is indeterminate whether I have survived or not. Another is that the fission case shows that it does not matter, in itself, whether I survive or not. Most critics of the first view contend that fission makes me cease to exist. Most opponents of the second view contend that fission does not preserve everything that matters in ordinary survival. In this paper I shall provide a critique t…Read more
  •  229
    Past and Future Non-Existence
    The Journal of Ethics 17 (1-2): 51-64. 2013.
    According to the “deprivation approach,” a person’s death is bad for her to the extent that it deprives her of goods. This approach faces the Lucretian problem that prenatal non-existence deprives us of goods just as much as death does, but does not seem bad at all. The two most prominent responses to this challenge—one of which is provided by Frederik Kaufman (inspired by Thomas Nagel) and the other by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer—claim that prenatal non-existence is relevantly dif…Read more
  •  215
    Plural harm: plural problems
    Philosophical Studies 180 (2): 553-565. 2023.
    The counterfactual comparative account of harm faces problems in cases that involve overdetermination and preemption. An influential strategy for dealing with these problems, drawing on a suggestion made by Derek Parfit, is to appeal to _plural harm_—several events _together_ harming someone. We argue that the most well-known version of this strategy, due to Neil Feit, as well as Magnus Jedenheim Edling’s more recent version, is fatally flawed. We also present some general reasons for doubting t…Read more
  •  196
    Being and betterness
    Utilitas 22 (3): 285-302. 2010.
    In this article I discuss the question of whether a person’s existence can be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence. Recently, Nils Holtug and Melinda A. Roberts have defended an affirmative answer. These defenses, I shall argue, do not succeed. In different ways, Holtug and Roberts have got the metaphysics and axiology wrong. However, I also argue that a person’s existence can after all be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence, though for reasons other than those provided …Read more
  •  185
    Am I a Series?
    Theoria 75 (3): 196-205. 2009.
    Scott Campbell has recently defended the psychological approach to personal identity over time by arguing that a person is literally a series of mental events. Rejecting four-dimensionalism about the persistence of physical objects, Campbell regards constitutionalism as the main rival version of the psychological approach. He argues that his "series view" has two clear advantages over constitutionalism: it avoids the "two thinkers" objection and it allows a person to change bodies. In addition, …Read more
  •  149
    What is animalism?
    Ratio 20 (2). 2007.
    One increasingly popular approach to personal identity is called ‘animalism.’ Unfortunately, it is unclear just what the doctrine says. In this paper, I criticise several different ways of stating animalism, and put forward one formulation that I find more promising.
  •  136
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death (edited book)
    with Ben Bradley and Fred Feldman
    Oxford University Press USA. 2012.
    Death has long been a pre-occupation of philosophers, and this is especially so today. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death collects 21 newly commissioned essays that cover current philosophical thinking of death-related topics across the entire range of the discipline. These include metaphysical topics--such as the nature of death, the possibility of an afterlife, the nature of persons, and how our thinking about time affects what we think about death--as well as axiological topics, such …Read more
  •  133
    The preemption problem
    Philosophical Studies 176 (2): 351-365. 2019.
    According to the standard version of the counterfactual comparative account of harm, an event is overall harmful for an individual if and only if she would have been on balance better off if it had not occurred. This view faces the “preemption problem.” In the recent literature, there are various ingenious attempts to deal with this problem, some of which involve slight additions to, or modifications of, the counterfactual comparative account. We argue, however, that none of these attempts work,…Read more
  •  132
    Non-reductionism and special concern
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (4). 2007.
    The so-called 'Extreme Claim' asserts that reductionism about personal identity leaves each of us with no reason to be specially concerned about his or her own future. Both advocates and opponents of the Extreme Claim, whether of a reductionist or non-reductionist stripe, accept that similar problems do not arise for non-reductionism. In this paper I challenge this widely held assumption.
  •  114
    Well-Being Counterfactualist Accounts of Harm and Benefit
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (1): 164-174. 2021.
    ABSTRACT Suppose that, for every possible event and person who would exist whether or not the event were to occur, there is a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were to occur, and a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were not to occur. Do facts about such connections between events and well-being levels always suffice to determine whether an event would harm or benefit a person? Many seemingly attractive accounts of harm and benefit entail an affir…Read more
  •  114
    Constituted simples?
    Philosophia 37 (1): 87-89. 2009.
    Many philosophers maintain that artworks, such as statues, are constituted by other material objects, such as lumps of marble. I give an argument against this view, an argument which appeals to mereological simples
  •  111
    Benefits Are Better than Harms: A Reply to Feit
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    We have argued that the counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit (CCA) violates the plausible adequacy condition that an act that would harm an agent cannot leave her much better off than an alternative act that would benefit her. In a recent paper in this journal, however, Neil Feit objects that our argument presupposes questionable counterfactual backtracking. He also argues that CCA proponents can justifiably reject the condition by invoking so-called plural harm and benefit. In…Read more
  •  99
    Petersson on Plural Harm
    In Andrés Garcia, Mattias Gunnemyr & Jakob Werkmäster (eds.), Value, Morality & Social Reality: Essays dedicated to Dan Egonsson, Björn Petersson & Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Open Books At Lund University. 2023.
    The counterfactual comparative account of harm has counterintuitive implications in cases involving overdetermination and preemption. A popular strategy for dealing with these problems appeals to plural harm—several events being jointly harmful. Björn Petersson criticizes this strategy on the grounds that it conflicts with a strong intuition that helps to motivate the counterfactual comparative account, namely, that harming someone essentially involves making a difference for the worse for her. …Read more
  •  98
    In his recent book, Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler argues that it matters greatly to us that there be other human beings long after our own deaths. In support of this “Afterlife Thesis,” as I call it, he provides a thought experiment—the “doomsday scenario”—in which we learn that, although we ourselves will live a normal life span, 30 days after our death the earth will be completely destroyed. In this paper I question this “doomsday scenario” support for Scheffler’s Afterlife Thesis.…Read more
  •  97
    Kaufman's response to Lucretius
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (4): 470-485. 2008.
    Abstract:  The symmetry argument is an objection to the 'deprivation approach'– the account of badness favored by nearly all philosophers who take death to be bad for the one who dies. Frederik Kaufman's recent response to the symmetry argument is a development of Thomas Nagel's suggestion that we could not have come into existence substantially earlier than we in fact did. In this paper, I aim to show that Kaufman's suggestion fails. I also consider several possible modifications of his theory,…Read more
  •  94
    Fitting Attitudes, Welfare, and Time
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (3): 247-256. 2009.
    Chris Heathwood has recently put forward a novel and ingenious argument against the view that intrinsic value is analyzable in terms of fitting attitudes. According to Heathwood, this view holds water only if the related but distinct concept of welfare—intrinsic value for a person —can be analyzed in terms of fitting attitudes too. Moreover, he argues against such an analysis of welfare by appealing to the rationality of our bias towards the future. In this paper, I argue that so long as we keep…Read more
  •  88
    The Time of Death's Badness
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 37 (5): 464-479. 2012.
    Those who endorse the view that death is in some cases bad for the deceased—a view that, as I shall explain, has considerable bearing on many bioethical issues—need to address the following, Epicurean question: When is death bad for the one who dies? The two most popular answers are "before death" (priorism) and "after death" (subsequentism). Part of the support for these two views consists in the idea that a third answer, "at no time" (atemporalism), makes death unsatisfyingly different from ot…Read more
  •  86
    Causal Accounts of Harming
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (2): 420-445. 2021.
    A popular view of harming is the causal account (CA), on which harming is causing harm. CA has several attractive features. In particular, it appears well equipped to deal with the most important problems for its main competitor, the counterfactual comparative account (CCA). However, we argue that, despite its advantages, CA is ultimately an unacceptable theory of harming. Indeed, while CA avoids several counterexamples to CCA, it is vulnerable to close variants of some of the problems that bese…Read more
  •  82
    Dead and Gone? Reply to Jenkins
    Utilitas 26 (2): 1-3. 2014.
    In a recent article, Joyce L. Jenkins challenges the common belief that desire satisfactionists are committed to the view that a person's welfare can be affected by posthumous events. Jenkins argues that desire satisfactionists can and should say that posthumous events only play an epistemic role: though such events cannot harm me, they can reveal that I have already been harmed by something else. In this response, however, we show that Jenkins's approach collapses into the view she aims to avoi…Read more
  •  76
    According to the “deprivation approach,” a person’s death is bad for her to the extent that it deprives her of goods. This approach faces the Lucretian problem that prenatal non-existence deprives us of goods just as much as death does, but does not seem bad at all. The two most prominent responses to this challenge—one of which is provided by Frederik Kaufman and the other by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer—claim that prenatal non-existence is relevantly different from death. This pap…Read more
  •  74
    Francescotti on fission
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (4): 476-481. 2009.
    Most versions of the psychological-continuity approach to personal identity (PCA) contain a 'non-branching' requirement. Recently, Robert Francescotti has argued that while such versions of PCA handle Parfit's standard fission case well, they deliver the wrong result in the case of an intact human brain. To solve this problem, he says, PCA-adherents need to add a clause that runs contrary to the spirit of their theory. In this response, I argue that Francescotti's counterexample fails. As a resu…Read more
  •  65
    Actual and Counterfactual Attitudes: Reply to Brueckner and Fischer
    The Journal of Ethics 18 (1): 11-18. 2014.
    In a recent article, I criticized Anthony L. Brueckner and John Martin Fischer’s influential argument—appealing to the rationality of our asymmetric attitudes towards past and future pleasures—against the Lucretian claim that death and prenatal non-existence are relevantly similar. Brueckner and Fischer have replied, however, that my critique involves an unjustified shift in temporal perspectives. In this paper, I respond to this charge and also argue that even if it were correct, it would fail …Read more
  •  64
    The Problem of Justified Harm: a Reply to Gardner
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3): 735-742. 2018.
    In this paper, we critically examine Molly Gardner’s favored solution to what she calls “the problem of justified harm.” We argue that Gardner’s view is false and that her arguments in support of it are unconvincing. Finally, we briefly suggest an alternative solution to the problem which avoids the difficulties that beset Gardner’s proposal.
  •  64
    Does Abortion Harm the Fetus?
    Utilitas 1-13. 2021.
    A central claim in abortion ethics is what might be called the Harm Claim – the claim that abortion harms the fetus. In this article, we put forward a simple and straightforward reason to reject the Harm Claim. Rather than invoking controversial assumptions about personal identity, or some nonstandard account of harm, as many other critics of the Harm Claim have done, we suggest that the aborted fetus cannot be harmed for the simple reason that it does not occupy any well-being level.
  •  62
    Harming and Failing to Benefit: A Reply to Purves
    Philosophical Studies 177 (6): 1539-1548. 2020.
    A prominent objection to the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it classifies as harmful some events that are, intuitively, mere failures to benefit. In an attempt to solve this problem, Duncan Purves has recently proposed a novel version of the counterfactual comparative account, which relies on a distinction between making upshots happen and allowing upshots to happen. In this response, we argue that Purves’s account is unsuccessful. It fails in cases where an action makes the …Read more
  •  61
    Well-Being without Being? A Reply to Feit
    Utilitas 30 (2): 198-208. 2018.
    In a recent Utilitas article, Neil Feit argues that every person occupies a well-being level of zero at all times and possible worlds at which she fails to exist. Views like his face the problem of the subject': how can someone have a well-being level in a scenario where she lacks intrinsic properties? Feit argues that this problem can be solved by noting, among other things, that a proposition about a person can be true at a possible world in which neither she nor the proposition exists. In thi…Read more
  •  59
    Roache’s Argument against the Cohabitation View
    Philosophia 39 (2): 309-310. 2011.
    Rebecca Roache’s recent critique of David Lewis’s cohabitation view assumes that a person cannot be properly concerned about something that rules out that she ever exists. In this brief response, I argue against this assumption
  •  58
    ‘Pure Time Preference’: Reply to Lowry and Peterson
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 97 (3): 435-441. 2016.
    A pure time preference is a preference for something to occur at one point in time rather than another, merely because of when it occurs in time. Such preferences are widely regarded as paradigm examples of irrational preferences. However, Rosemary Lowry and Martin Peterson have recently argued that, for instance, a pure time preference to go to the opera tonight rather than next month may be rationally permissible, even if the amounts of intrinsic value realized in both cases are identical. In …Read more