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25Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant: A Short History of Failing Kidneys (review)Annals of Science 68 (3): 441-443. 2011.No abstract
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15The Promise and Peril of the Pharmacological Enhancer ModafinilBioethics 28 (8): 436-445. 2012.The neuro-enhancement Modafinil promises to dramatically increase users' waking hours without much sacrifice to clarity of thought and without serious side effects (inducing addiction). For Modafinil to be advantageous, its usage must enable access to goods that themselves improve the quality of one's life. I draw attention to a variety of conditions that must be met for an experience, activity or object to improve the quality of one's life, such as positional, relational, and saturation conditi…Read more
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36The Moral Status of Human‐Animal Chimeras with Human Brain CellsHastings Center Report 49 (5): 34-36. 2019.The moral status of human-animal chimeras that have human brain cells is especially concerning. The concern is that such animals have the same high moral status as human beings. Why? Julian Koplin suggests that support for this concern is based on this claim: capacities unique to humans gives one a high or full moral status. Koplin then proceeds to convincingly object this claim. However, I argue that the concern is instead based on a different claim: for those humans who do have a high moral st…Read more
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168Personhood and Moral StatusIn Antonia LoLordo (ed.), Persons: A History, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 334-362. 2019.This chapter focuses on moral personhood understood in terms of the notion of moral status. An entity is said to have moral status only if it or its interest matters morally for its own sake. Nonutilitarians tend to think of moral status in terms of entitlements and protections that can conflict with, and sometimes override, doing what would maximize the good and minimize the bad. If moral status comes in degrees, and if there is a status of the highest degree (i.e., full moral status), then mor…Read more
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109The Moral Status of ChildrenIn Anca Gheaus, Gideon Calder & Jurgen de Wispelaere (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children, Routledge. pp. 67-78. 2018.Broadly speaking, an entity has moral status if and only if it or its interest matters morally for its own sake. Some philosophers, who think of moral status in terms of duties and rights owed to an entity, allow that moral status can come in degrees, with only some beings having status of the highest degree – that is, full moral status (FMS). We critically review the competing accounts of what qualifies one for FMS. Some accounts demand cognitive sophistication, which excludes many children, wh…Read more
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2Moral Motivation and Moral ActionDissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 2002.For Immanuel Kant moral motivation is the center of ethical concern. This is often understood to entail two claims: acting from duty alone is both necessary and sufficient for moral action, and moral action is in all cases rationally preferable to nonmoral action. Both claims have drawn intense criticism, especially from those who argue for the moral and rational value of emotionally expressive actions such as acts of love, compassion, and sympathy. These critics present Kant with a dilemma. If …Read more
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162Who Has the Capacity to Participate as a Rearee in a Person-Rearing Relationship?Ethics 125 (4): 1096-1113. 2015.We discuss applications of our account of moral status grounded in person-rearing relationships: which individuals have higher moral status or not, and why? We cover three classes of cases: (1) cases involving incomplete realization of the capacity to care, including whether infants or fetuses have this incomplete capacity; (2) cases in which higher moral status rests in part on what is required for the being to flourish; (3) hypothetical cases in which cognitive enhancements could, e.g., help d…Read more
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645The Grounds of Moral StatusStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 0-0. 2018.This article discusses what is involved in having full moral status, as opposed to a lesser degree of moral status and surveys different views of the grounds of moral status as well as the arguments for attributing a particular degree of moral status on the basis of those grounds.
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1281Responsibility Without Wrongdoing or BlameOxford Studies in Normative Ethics 7 124-148. 2018.In most discussions of moral responsibility, an agent’s moral responsibility for harming or failing to aid is equated with the agent’s being blameworthy for having done wrong. In this paper, I will argue that one can be morally responsible for one’s action even if the action was not wrong, not blameworthy, and not the result of blameworthy deliberation or bad motivation. This makes a difference to how we should relate to each other and ourselves in the aftermath. Some people have blown off their…Read more
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215Person-Rearing Relationships as a Key to Higher Moral StatusEthics 124 (2): 242-271. 2014.Why does a baby who is otherwise cognitively similar to an animal such as a dog nevertheless have a higher moral status? We explain the difference in moral status as follows: the baby can, while a dog cannot, participate as a rearee in what we call “person-rearing relationships,” which can transform metaphysically and evaluatively the baby’s activities. The capacity to engage in these transformed activities has the same type of value as the very capacities (i.e., intellectual or emotional sophis…Read more
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39Philosophising outside of the academyJournal of Medical Ethics 41 (6): 491-492. 2015.This brief critique of Frances Kamm’s Bioethical Prescriptions (Oxford University Press, 2013) focuses on the phenomenon of philosophers taking on roles outside of academia, which Kamm discusses in chapter 24, “The Philosopher as Insider and Outsider: How to Advise, Compromise, and Criticize.” Kamm discusses various conflicts that can arise for philosophers who serve as advisors on governmental commissions. One goal many philosophers have in joining such commissions is (a) to promote the public …Read more
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150Acting with feeling from dutyEthical Theory and Moral Practice 5 (3): 321-337. 2002.A central claim in Kantian ethics is that an agent is properly morally motivated just in case she acts from duty alone. Bernard Williams, Michael Stocker, and Justin Oakley claim that certain emotionally infused actions, such as lending a compassionate helping hand, can only be done from compassion and not from duty. I argue that these critics have overlooked a distinction between an action's manner, how an action is done, and its motive, the agent's reason for acting. Through a range of example…Read more
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87Richard Kraut, Against Absolute Goodness , pp. xii+ 224Utilitas 28 (1): 119-122. 2016.In Against Absolute Goodness Richard Kraut aims to show that absolute goodness (or badness) is not reason-giving; it plays no role is justifying or requiring certain attitudes and no role in reasoning about what to do. It passes the buck (it never adds to the weightiness of more specific reasons) and so for practical purposes can be ignored. However, he claims that the notions of ‘a good R’ (e.g. a good play) and ‘good for S’ do justify certain attitudes and play important roles in practical rea…Read more
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48The "Should" Of full practical reasonPhilosophical Books 48 (2): 124-135. 2007.In Ethics and the A Priori Michael Smith discusses two types of claims that invoke the term ‘should.’ The first type invokes the ‘should’ of instrumental reason and the second type invokes the should of full practical reason . I argue that these are not mutually exhaustive categories. There is a third type of should-claim that does not fall into either category, such as when we say to someone who is going to smoke, ‘You should smoke low tar cigarettes.’ This third type of should-claim aims, in a…Read more
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159Categorizing GoodsIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 5, Oxford University Press. 2010.Historically the terms “final,” “unconditional,” and “intrinsic” have played a foundational role in ethical theory. I argue that final/instrumental distinction is best understood in terms of the for-sake-of relation and involves a tri-part division of goods. I show that this first way of categorizing goods is more closely aligned with a second way of categorizing goods in terms of intrinsic/extrinsic goods than has thus far been acknowledged. Lastly, I distinguish yet a third way of categorizing…Read more
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127Mere moral failureCanadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (1): 58-84. 2015.When, in spite of our good intentions, we fail to meet our obligations to others, it is important that we have the correct theoretical description of what has happened so that mutual understanding and the right sort of social repair can occur. Consider an agent who promises to help pick a friend up from the airport. She takes the freeway, forgetting that it is under construction. After a long wait, the friend takes an expensive taxi ride home. Most theorists and non-theorists react to such cases…Read more
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178Emotional expressions of moral valuePhilosophical Studies 132 (1). 2007.In “Moral Luck” Bernard Williams describes a lorry driver who, through no fault of his own, runs over a child, and feels “agent-regret.” I believe that the driver’s feeling is moral since the thought associated with this feeling is a negative moral evaluation of his action. I demonstrate that his action is not morally inadequate with respect his moral obligations. However, I show that his negative evaluation is nevertheless justified since he acted in way that does not live up to his moral value…Read more
Claremont, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |