•  1
  •  7
    Moral Equality and Age Discrimination
    Law Ethics and Philosophy. forthcoming.
  •  14
    The many faces of laziness
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    What do we owe to the lazy? On the assumption that the lazy are a paradigmatic case of people who are worse off, when they are through a fault, or choice, of their own, one might suspect that the answer is: not very much. This article shows that this suspicion is simple-minded. Four notions of laziness are distinguished. It is then shown that these notions differ – even from a luck egalitarian perspective – in ways bearing on the question of what is owed to the lazy. It is claimed that in some –…Read more
  •  80
    Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the principle should be adopted. Also, we show that there are…Read more
  •  10
    What is the folk concept of discrimination? Discriminators and comparators
    with Søren Serritzlew, Lasse Laustsen, Simone Sommer Degn, and Andreas Albertsen
    Philosophical Psychology. forthcoming.
    According to many theorists, discrimination either requires a better treated comparator or can occur only if the discriminator belongs to a socially salient group different from that of the discriminatee. Both claims are philosophically important since they have important implications for which account of the moral wrongness of discrimination is correct, e.g., if no comparator is required, the wrongness of discrimination cannot result from treating different people as unequals since the unequal …Read more
  •  144
    Construed as a theory of justice, relational egalitarianism says that justice requires that people relate as equals. Construed as a theory of what makes democracy valuable, it says that democracy is a necessary, or constituent, part of the value of relating as equals. Typically, relational egalitarians want their theory to provide both an account of what justice requires and an account of what makes democracy valuable. We argue that relational egalitarians with this dual ambition face the justic…Read more
  •  11
    Does harm or disrespect make discrimination wrong? An experimental approach
    with Andreas Albertsen, Bjørn G. Hallsson, and Viki M. L. Pedersen
    Philosophical Psychology. forthcoming.
    While standard forms of discrimination are widely considered morally wrong, philosophers disagree about what makes them so. Two accounts have risen to prominence in this debate: One stressing how wrongful discrimination disrespects the discriminatee, the other how the harms involved make discrimination wrong. While these accounts are based on carefully constructed thought experiments, proponents of both sides see their positions as in line with and, in part, supported by the folk theory of the m…Read more
  •  7
    Is discrimination wrong because it is undeserved?
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Several leading theorists embrace the Simple Desert Account of Discrimination. This account involves two claims: it claims that a mismatch between what people deserve, on the one hand, and what they get, on the other hand, is (a) integral to discrimination, and (b) wrong. I shall query (a). First, I challenge what I see as the principal, positive argument for the Simple Desert Account. Second, in some cases wrongful discrimination brings about a better match between desert and what people get. S…Read more
  •  15
    Wrongful discrimination against non-pregnant people?
    Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (1): 26-27. 2023.
    Heloise Robinson argues that pregnant women have a higher moral status than non-pregnant persons and that, for this reason, pregnant women ought to be treated ‘noticeably’ better than non-pregnant persons. 1 In this commentary, we present two challenges to Robinson’s argument. First, the compounding disadvantage objection: treating involuntarily, non-pregnant women worse than voluntarily pregnant women unjustly compounds their disadvantage. Second, the identity objection: treating non-pregnant p…Read more
  •  15
    A Duty not to Remain Silent: Hypocrisy and the Lack of Standing not to Blame
    Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4): 933-949. 2023.
    A notable feature of our practice of blaming is that blamees can dismiss blame for their own blameworthy actions when the blamer is censuring them hypocritically and, as it is often put, lacks standing to blame them as a result. This feature has received a good deal of philosophical attention in recent years. By contrast, no attention has been given the possibility that, likewise, refraining from blaming can be hypocritical and dismissed as standingless. I argue that hypocritical refrainers have…Read more
  •  7
    Applied philosophy has been a growing area of research for the last 40 years. Until now, however, almost all of this research has been centered around the field of ethics. A Companion to Applied Philosophy breaks new ground, demonstrating that all areasof philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind, can be applied, and are relevant to questions of everyday life. This perennial topic in philosophy provides an overview of these various applied phi…Read more
  •  9
    The Nature of Applied Philosophy
    In Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy, Wiley. 2016.
    “Applied philosophy” is used to refer to different things. I distinguish between seven different conceptions of applied philosophy – to wit, the relevance, specificity, practical, activist, methodological, empirical facts, and audience conceptions; show how the different conceptions are related; and point to various problems with or challenges to some of the conceptions. While applied philosophy has become a very active field in philosophy since 1970, many associate applied philosophy with appli…Read more
  •  30
    Neuro-Doping and Fairness
    Neuroethics 14 (2): 179-190. 2020.
    In this article, we critically discuss different versions of the fairness objection to the legalisation of neuro-doping. According to this objection, legalising neuro-doping will result in some enjoying an unfair advantage over others. Basically, we assess four versions. These focus on: 1) the unequal opportunities of winning for athletes who use neuro-doping and for those who do not; 2) the unfair advantages specifically for wealthy athletes; 3) the unfairness of athletic advantages not derived…Read more
  •  706
    Ethics, organ donation and tax: a proposal
    Journal of Medical Ethics 38 (8): 451-457. 2012.
    Five arguments are presented in favour of the proposal that people who opt in as organ donors should receive a tax break. These arguments appeal to welfare, autonomy, fairness, distributive justice and self-ownership, respectively. Eight worries about the proposal are considered in this paper. These objections focus upon no-effect and counter-productiveness, the Titmuss concern about social meaning, exploitation of the poor, commodification, inequality and unequal status, the notion that there a…Read more
  •  16
    Bioethics, Volume 35, Issue 7, Page 714-717, September 2021.
  •  54
    In any normal population, health is unequally distributed across different age groups. Are such age-based health inequalities unjust? A divide has recently developed within egalitarian theories of...
  •  40
    The Problem(s) of Constituting the Demos: A (Set of) Solution
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (4): 1021-1031. 2021.
    When collective decisions should be made democratically, which people form the relevant demos? Many theorists think this question is an embarrassment to democratic theory: because any decision about who forms the demos must be made democratically by the right demos, which itself must be democratically constituted and so on ad infinitum; and because neither the concept of democracy, nor our reasons for caring about democracy, determine who should form the demos. Having distinguished between these…Read more
  •  41
    Ethics, organ donation and tax: a reply to Quigley and Taylor
    with Thomas Søbirk Petersen
    Journal of Medical Ethics 38 (8): 463-464. 2012.
    A national opt-out system of post-mortem donation of scarce organs is preferable to an opt-in system. Unfortunately, the former system is not always feasible, and so in a recent JME article we canvassed the possibility of offering people a tax break for opting-in as a way of increasing the number of organs available for donation under an opt-in regime. Muireann Quigley and James Stacey Taylor criticize our proposal. Roughly, Quigley argues that our proposal is costly and, hence, is unlikely to b…Read more
  •  20
    Age change, official age and fairness in health
    Journal of Medical Ethics 46 (9): 634-635. 2020.
    In a recent JME article, Joona Räsänen makes the case for allowing legal age change. We identify three problems with his argument and, on that basis, propose an improved version thereof. Unfortunately, even the improved argument is vulnerable to the objection that chronological age is a better proxy for justice in health than both legal and what we shall call official age.
  •  51
    This introduction discusses some of the background assumptions and recent developments of the current refugee crisis. In this issue, the crisis is not viewed as a primarily European, Western or even Syrian, Afghan, or Iraqi crisis, but as a global crisis that raises complex ethical and political challenges for all humanity. The contributions to this thematic issue discuss a variety of questions relating to the rights and duties of different actors involved in the refugee crisis, and assess some …Read more
  •  38
    Manuscript Referees for The Journal of Ethics: August 2005–July 2006
    with Justin D'Arms, Robert Francesscotti, I. Haji, Susan Hurley, Leonard Kahn, Brian Kierland, Douglas Portmore, Betsy Postow, and Bernard Rollin
    The Journal of Ethics 10 (4): 507. 2006.
  •  70
    Why the all-affected principle is groundless
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 18 (6): 571-596. 2021.
    The all-affected principle is a widely accepted solution to the problem of constituting the demos. Despite its popularity, a basic question in relation to the principle has not received much attention: why does the fact that an individual is affected by a certain decision ground a right to inclusion in democratic decision-making about that matter? An answer to this question must include a reason that explains why an affected individual should be included because she is affected. We identify thre…Read more
  •  24
    : Justice and Egalitarian Relations
    Ethics 133 (3): 445-450. 2023.
  •  68
    Relational egalitarianism and moral unequals
    Journal of Political Philosophy 1-24. 2023.
    Relational egalitarianism says that moral equals should relate as equals. We explore how moral unequals should relate.
  • Who can I blame?
    In Michael Kühler & Nadja Jelinek (eds.), Autonomy and the Self, Springer. 2012.
  •  3
    Erik Rasmussen
    Jurist- og Økonomforbundets forlag. 2014.