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295Caregiving and role conflict distressClinical Ethics 19 (2): 136-142. 2024.When our nearest and dearest experience medical crises, we may need to step into caregiving roles. But in doing so, we may find that our new caregiving relationship is actually in tension with the loving relationship that motivated us towards care. What we owe and are entitled to as friends, spouses, and family members, can be different from what we owe and are entitled to as caregivers. For this reason, caregiving carries with it the risk of a type of moral distress that I call “role conflict d…Read more
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42Giving the terminally ill access to euthanasia is not discriminatory: a response to ReedJournal of Medical Ethics 50 (2): 123-123. 2024.Philip Reed argues that laws that grant people access to euthanasia on the basis of terminal illness are discriminatory. In support of this claim, he offers an argument by analogy: it would be discriminatory to offer a person access to euthanasia because they are women or because they are disabled, as such restricted access would send the message ‘that life as a woman or as a disabled person is (very often) not worth living’.1 And so it must also be discriminatory to offer people access to eutha…Read more
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578Survivor guiltPhilosophical Studies 180 (9): 2707-2726. 2023.We often feel survivor guilt when the very circumstances that harm others leave us unscathed. Although survivor guilt is both commonplace and intelligible, it raises a puzzle for the standard philosophical account of guilt, according to which people feel guilt only when they take themselves to be morally blameworthy. The standard account implies that survivor guilt is uniformly unfitting, as people are not blameworthy simply for having fared better than others. In this paper, we offer a rival ac…Read more
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397We Should Widen Access to Physician-Assisted DeathJournal of Moral Philosophy 19 (2): 139-169. 2021.Typical philosophical discussions of physician-assisted death have focused on whether the practice can be permissible. We address a different question: assuming that pad can be morally permissible, how far does that permission extend? We will argue that granting requests for pad may be permissible even when the pad recipient can no longer speak for themselves. In particular, we argue against the ‘competency requirement’ that constrains pad-eligibility to presently-competent patients in most coun…Read more
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195Caring by lyingBioethics 35 (9): 877-883. 2021.Caring for loved ones with dementia can sometimes necessitate a loose relationship with the truth. Some might view such deception as categorically immoral, and a violation of our general truth-telling obligations. I argue that this view is mistaken. This is because truth-telling obligations may be limited by the particular relationships in which they feature. Specifically, within caregiving relationships, we are often permitted (and sometimes obligated) to deceive the people with whom we share t…Read more
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1044Self-Deception as a Moral FailureThe Philosophical Quarterly 72 (2): 402-21. 2022.In this paper, I defend the view that self-deception is a moral failure. Instead of saying that self-deception is bad because it undermines our moral character or leads to morally deleterious consequences, as has been argued by Butler, Kant, Smith, and others, I argue the distinctive badness of self-deception lies in the tragic relationship that it bears to our own values. On the one hand, self-deception is motivated by what we value. On the other hand, it prevents us from valuing those things p…Read more
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244Thomason, Krista K. Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 256. $90.00 (review)Ethics 130 (2): 267-271. 2019.
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774Knowing Yourself and Being Worth KnowingJournal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (2): 243-261. 2018.Philosophers have often understood self-knowledge's value in instrumentalist terms. Self-knowledge may be valuable as a means to moral self-improvement and self-satisfaction, while its absence can lead to viciousness and frustration. These explanations, while compelling, do not fully explain the value that many of us place in self-knowledge. Rather, we have a tendency to treat self-knowledge as its own end. In this article, I vindicate this tendency by identifying a moral reason that we have to …Read more
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47Genetic Information, the Principle of Rescue, and Special ObligationsHastings Center Report 48 (3): 18-19. 2018.In “Genetic Privacy, Disease Prevention, and the Principle of Rescue,” Madison Kilbride argues that patients have a duty to warn biological family members about clinically actionable adverse genetic findings. The duty does not stem from the special obligations that we may have to family members, she argues, but rather follows from the principle of rescue, which she understands as the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm is …Read more
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952Agent-Regret and the Social Practice of Moral LuckRes Philosophica 94 (1): 95-117. 2017.Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside our control (the ‘Standard View’), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one’s control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role th…Read more
University Of North Carolina
Department Of Philosophy
Alumnus
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Applied Ethics |
Biomedical Ethics |
Kantian Ethics |
Moral Psychology |
Areas of Interest
Feminist Philosophy |
Social Epistemology |
Testimony |