University of Reading
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2002
Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory
  •  4
    In recent decades there has been a great expansion in the number, size and influence of International Non-Governmental Organisations involved in international relief and development. These changes have led to increased scrutiny of such organisations, and this scrutiny, together with increasing reflection by INGOs themselves and their staff on their own practice, has helped to highlight a number of pressing ethical questions such organisations face, such as: should INGOs attempt to provide emerge…Read more
  •  441
    The limits of human nature
    Philosophical Quarterly 49 (197): 452-470. 1999.
    It has become increasingly common recently to construe human natureas setting some pretty stringent limits to moral endeavour. Many consequentialists, in particular, take considerations concerning human nature to defeat certain demanding norms that would otherwise follow from their theory. One argument is that certain commitments ground psychological incapacitiesthat prevent us from doing what would maximize the good. Another is that we would be likely to suffer some kind of psychological demora…Read more
  •  45
    Philosophy and Activism
    Social Theory and Practice 46 (1): 89-109. 2020.
    In this article I develop and defend what I call the ‘Epistemic Argument for Activism.’ According to this argument, some moral and political philosophers have certain features that give them epistemic advantages when tackling topics such as the moral status of certain practices, policies, and institutions (‘PPIs’). Because of these advantages, when these philosophers study those PPIs carefully they generally develop views about the moral status of those PPIs that have a number of enhanced episte…Read more
  •  229
    Transnational medical aid and the wrongdoing of others
    Public Health Ethics 1 (2): 171-179. 2008.
    One of the ways in which transnational medical agencies (TMAs) such as Medicins Sans Frontieres aim to increase the access of the global poor to health services is by supplying medical aid to people who need it in developing countries. The moral imperative supporting such work is clear enough, but a variety of factors can make such work difficult. One of those factors is the wrongdoing of other agents and agencies. For as a result of such wrongdoing, the attempt to supply medical aid can sometim…Read more
  •  2
    Cohen, Nagel and the Rich Egalitarian
    Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 4 (2). 2002.
  •  755
    How Academics Can Help People Make Better Decisions Concerning Global Poverty
    Ethics and International Affairs 26 (2): 265-278. 2012.
    One relatively straightforward way in which academics could have more impact on global poverty is by doing more to help people make wise decisions about issues relevant to such poverty. Academics could do this by conducting appropriate kinds of research on those issues and sharing what they have learned with the relevant decision makers in accessible ways. But aren’t academics already doing this? In the case of many of those issues, I think the appropriate answer would be that they could do so …Read more
  •  95
    Famine and fanaticism: A response to Kekes
    Philosophy 79 (2): 319-327. 2004.
    In this paper, I critically discuss a number of arguments made by John Kekes, in a recent article, against the claim that those of us who are relatively affluent ought to do something for those living in absolute poverty in developing countries. There are, I argue, a variety of problems with Kekes' arguments, but one common thread stems from Kekes' failure to take account of the empirical research that has been conducted on the issues which he discusses.
  •  338
    International Aid
    Social Theory and Practice 30 (2): 161-174. 2004.
  •  374
    Aid and bias
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 47 (6). 2004.
    Over the last few decades, psychologists have amassed a great deal of evidence that our thinking is strongly influenced by a number of biases. This research appears to have important implications for moral methodology. It seems likely that these biases affect our thinking about moral issues, and a fuller awareness of them might help us to find ways to counteract their influence, and so to improve our moral thinking. And yet there is little or no reference to such biases in the philosophical lite…Read more
  •  474
    Fairness and Fair Shares
    Utilitas 23 (1): 88. 2011.
    Some moral principles require agents to do more than their fair share of a common task, if others won’t do their fair share – each agent’s fair share being what they would be required to do if all contributed as they should. This seems to provide a strong basis for objecting to such principles. For it seems unfair to require agents who have already done their fair share to do more, just because other agents won’t do their fair share. The philosopher who has written most about this issue, however…Read more
  •  301
    The Authority Account of Prudential Options
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (1): 17-35. 2015.
    The Authority Account provides a new explanation why commonsense morality contains prudential options—options that permit agents to perform actions that promote their own wellbeing more than the action they have most reason to do, from the moral point of view. At the core of that explanation are two claims. The first is that moral requirements are traditionally widely taken to have an authoritative status; that is, to be rules that morality imposes by right. The second is that in order for moral…Read more
  •  328
    Aid Agencies: The Epistemic Question
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 28 (1): 29-43. 2011.
    For several decades, there has been a debate in the philosophical literature concerning whether those of us who live in developed countries are morally required to give some of our money to aid agencies. Many contributors to this debate have apparently taken it that one may simply assume that the effects of the work such agencies do are overwhelmingly positive. If one turns to the literature on such agencies that has emerged in recent decades, however, one finds a number of concerns about such a…Read more
  •  262
    Global ethics: increasing our positive impact
    Journal of Global Ethics 10 (3): 304-311. 2014.
    Global ethics is no ordinary subject. It includes some of the most urgent and momentous issues the world faces, such as extreme poverty and climate change. Given this, any adequate review of that subject should, I suggest, ask some questions about the relation between what those working in that subject do and the real-world phenomena that are the object of their study. The main question I focus on in this essay is this: should academics and others working in the field of global ethics take new m…Read more