My research focuses on problems in normative ethics, bioethics, and political philosophy that involve procreation. I am particularly interested in whether we can wrong someone by selecting for her genetic traits.
My interest in procreation extends beyond the morality of procreation itself. I treat the case of procreation as a moral data point that both complicates and clarifies our moral theorizing about wrongdoing and the treatment of persons. If a moral theory cannot capture what we owe the persons we create, or if it makes our actual procreative practices incoherent, then we have reason to rethink the assumptions of that moral theory. Th…
My research focuses on problems in normative ethics, bioethics, and political philosophy that involve procreation. I am particularly interested in whether we can wrong someone by selecting for her genetic traits.
My interest in procreation extends beyond the morality of procreation itself. I treat the case of procreation as a moral data point that both complicates and clarifies our moral theorizing about wrongdoing and the treatment of persons. If a moral theory cannot capture what we owe the persons we create, or if it makes our actual procreative practices incoherent, then we have reason to rethink the assumptions of that moral theory. There isn’t a sharp distinction between normative ethics and applied ethics: if a practice is a serious and deeply embedded part of our lives, then we have good practical reason to look for a moral account of that practice that can both make sense of its importance while simultaneously providing us with a normative basis for its evaluation.
