University of St. Andrews
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2020
CV
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  •  14
    This paper reviews Alec D. Walen’s _The Mechanics of Claims and Permissible Killing in War_.
  •  53
    ‘But You Could Have Hurt Me!’: Risk and Harm
    Law and Philosophy 41 (4): 517-546. 2022.
    This paper answers two questions. First, on the assumption that risk of harm is of moral significance, does risk’s moral significance lay in its being harmful? Second, is risk of harm itself harmful? I argue that either risk is not harmful or that risk is harmful only in a small range of cases. If risk is not harmful, and yet risk is of moral significance, risk’s moral significance cannot lie in its being harmful. And if risk is harmful only in a small range of the cases in which risk is of mora…Read more
  •  23
    Addressing the Addressive Theory of Rights
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 39 (2): 183-193. 2021.
    Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  3
    AI As a Moral Right-Holder
    with John Basl
    In Markus Dubber, Frank Pasquale & Sunit Das (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI, Oxford University Press. 2020.
    This chapter evaluates whether AI systems are or will be rights-holders, explaining the conditions under which people should recognize AI systems as rights-holders. It develops a skeptical stance toward the idea that current forms of artificial intelligence are holders of moral rights, beginning with an articulation of one of the most prominent and most plausible theories of moral rights: the Interest Theory of rights. On the Interest Theory, AI systems will be rights-holders only if they have i…Read more
  •  64
    Beyond Normative Control: Against the Will Theory of Rights
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (4): 427-443. 2020.
    The Will Theory of Rights says that having control over another’s duties grounds rights. The Will Theory has commonly been objected to on the grounds that it undergenerates right-ascriptions along three fronts. This paper systematically examines a range of positions open to the Will Theory in response to these counterexamples, while being faithful to the Will Theory’s focus on normative control. It argues that of the seemingly plausible ways the defender of the Will Theory can proceed, one canno…Read more
  •  238
    Necessity and Liability: On an Honour-Based Justification for Defensive Harming
    Journal of Practical Ethics 4 (2): 79-93. 2016.
    This paper considers whether victims can justify what appears to be unnecessary defensive harming by reference to an honour-based justification. I argue that such an account faces serious problems: the honour-based justification cannot permit, first, defensive harming, and second, substantial unnecessary harming. Finally, I suggest that, if the purpose of the honour based justification is expressive, an argument must be given to demonstrate why harming threateners, as opposed to opting for a non…Read more