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46Pandemic justice: fairness, social inequality and COVID-19 healthcare priority-settingJournal of Medical Ethics 49 (4): 283-287. 2023.A comprehensive understanding of the ethics of the COVID-19 pandemic priorities must be sensitive to the influence of social inequality. We distinguish between ex-ante and ex-post relevance of social inequality for COVID-19 disadvantage. Ex-ante relevance refers to the distribution of risks of exposure. Ex-post relevance refers to the effect of inequality on how patients respond to infection. In the case of COVID-19, both ex-ante and ex-post effects suggest a distribution which is sensitive to t…Read more
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103Why Not Community? An Exploration of the Value of Community in Cohen's SocialismRes Publica 28 (2): 303-322. 2022.The work of prominent analytical Marxist G. A. Cohen provides a vision of socialism which has distributive justice and community at its core. While Cohen's view of distributive justice has been hugely influential, much less has been said about community. This article argues that community plays three distinct roles in Cohen's socialism. One is as an independent value, the second is as a necessary adjacent counterpart to justice, which serves both to restrict and facilitate distributive equality,…Read more
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11Ageism Without Anticipation-BlindnessPublic Health Ethics 16 (3): 271-279. 2023.Ageism is the view that it is of greater moral value to allocate health care resources to younger people than to older people. In medical ethics, it is well-known that standard interpretations of distributive principles such as utilitarianism and egalitarianism imply some form of ageism. At times, ethicists argue as if practical complications are the only or main reason for not abiding to ageism. In this article, we argue that inferences to ageism from such distributive principles tend to commit…Read more
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275What Is the Point of the Harshness Objection?Utilitas 32 (4): 427-443. 2020.According to luck egalitarianism, it is unjust if some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own. The most common criticism of luck egalitarianism is the ‘harshness objection’, which states that luck egalitarianism allows for too harsh consequences, as it fails to provide justification for why those responsible for their bad fate can be entitled to society's assistance. It has largely gone unnoticed that the harshness objection is open to a number of very different interp…Read more
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454Relational Justice: Egalitarian and SufficientarianJournal of Applied Philosophy 40 (5): 900-918. 2023.Relational egalitarianism is a theory of justice according to which people must relate as equals. In this article, we develop relational sufficientarianism – a view of justice according to which people must relate as sufficients. We distinguish between three versions of this ideal, one that is incompatible with relational egalitarianism and two that are not. Building on this, we argue that relational theorists have good reason to support a pluralist view that is both egalitarian and sufficientar…Read more
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22The numbers fallacy: rescuing sufficientarianism from arithmeticismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.This paper argues in defence of sufficientarianism that there is a general flaw in the most common critiques against it. The paper lays out sufficientarianism and presents the problems of indifference, of outweighing priority, and of discontinuity. Behind these problems is a more general objection to the abruptness of the sufficiency threshold relying upon an assumption regarding arithmeticism about value. The paper argues that sufficientarians need not accept arithmeticism about value and that …Read more
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30Correction to: Envy, Levelling Down, and Harrison Bergeron: Defending Limitarianism Against Three Common ObjectionsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (1): 165-165. 2023.
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16Disability Discrimination and Patient-Sensitive Health-Related Quality of LifeCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 32 (2): 142-153. 2023.It is generally accepted that morally justified healthcare rationing must be non-discriminatory and cost-effective. However, given conventional concepts of cost-effectiveness, resources spent on disabled people are spent less cost-effectively, ceteris paribus, than resources spent on non-disabled people. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that standard cost-effectiveness discriminates against the disabled. Call this thedisability discrimination problem.Part of the disability discrimination involve…Read more
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53Envy, Levelling-Down, and Harrison Bergeron: Defending Limitarianism Against Three Common ObjectionsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (5): 737-753. 2022.This paper discusses limitarianism in light of three popular objections to the redistribution of extreme wealth: (i) that such redistribution legitimizes envy, which is a morally objectionable attitude; (ii) that it disincentivizes the wealthy to invest and work, leading to a diminished social product, and, thereby, making everyone worse-off; and (iii) that it undercuts the pursuit and achievement of human excellence by depriving successful people of resources through which they may otherwise ex…Read more
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24Against the Applicability Argument for SufficientarianismJournal of Value Inquiry 58 (2): 179-195. 2024.
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19Don’t Downplay “Play”: Reasons Why Health Systems Should Protect Childhood PlayJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 46 (5): 586-604. 2021.Much research has studied the importance of play for children’s development. However, questions of its political importance and our public institutions’ duties to protect it have been largely neglected. This article argues that childhood play is politically important due to having both intrinsic and instrumental value, and it suggests that the duty to protect the capability for play in childhood falls especially on the public health system. If this argument succeeds, it follows that we have stro…Read more
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30Defending Deontic Constraints and Prioritarianism: Two Remarks on Tännsjö’s Setting Health-Care PrioritiesDiametros 18 (68): 33-45. 2021.Torbjörn Tännsjö has written a clear and thought-provoking book on healthcare priority setting. He argues that different branches of ethical theory—utilitarianism, egalitarianism, and prioritarianism—are in general agreement on real-world healthcare priorities, and that it is human irrationality that stands in the way of complying with their recommendations. While I am generally sympathetic to the overall project and line of argumentation taken by the book, this paper raises two concerns with Tä…Read more
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29Being Responsible and Holding Responsible: On the Role of Individual Responsibility in Political PhilosophyRes Publica 27 (4): 641-659. 2021.This paper explores the role individual responsibility plays in contemporary political theory. It argues that the standard luck egalitarian view—the view according to which distributive justice is ensured by holding people accountable for their exercise of responsibility in the distribution of benefits and burdens—obscures the more fundamental value of being responsible. The paper, then, introduces an account of ‘self-creative responsibility’ as an alternative to the standard view and shows how …Read more
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36Pandemic prioritarianismJournal of Medical Ethics 48 (4): 236-239. 2022.Prioritarianism pertains to the generic idea that it matters more to benefit people, the worse off they are, and while prioritarianism is not uncontroversial, it is considered a generally plausible and widely shared distributive principle often applied to healthcare prioritisation. In this paper, I identify social justice prioritarianism, severity prioritarianism and age-weighted prioritarianism as three different interpretations of the general prioritarian idea and discuss them in light of the …Read more
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24Harsh and DisrespectfulSocial Theory and Practice 46 (4): 657-679. 2020.Many policies hinge on determining whether someone’s situation is due to luck or choice. In political philosophy, this prevalence is mirrored by luck egalitarian theories. But overemphasizing the distinction between luck and choice will lead to tensions with the value of moral agency, on which the distinction is grounded. Here, we argue that the two most common contemporary critiques of luck egalitarianism, holding it to be harsh and disrespectful are best understood as illustrating exactly this…Read more
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14Harsh and DisrespectfulSocial Theory and Practice 46 (4): 657-679. 2020.Many policies hinge on determining whether someone’s situation is due to luck or choice. In political philosophy, this prevalence is mirrored by luck egalitarian theories. But overemphasizing the distinction between luck and choice will lead to tensions with the value of moral agency, on which the distinction is grounded. Here, we argue that the two most common contemporary critiques of luck egalitarianism, holding it to be harsh and disrespectful are best understood as illustrating exactly this…Read more
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17Contractualist age rationing under outbreak circumstancesBioethics 35 (3): 229-236. 2020.Age rationing is a central issue in the health care priority‐setting literature, but it has become ever more salient in the light of the Covid‐19 outbreak, where health authorities in several countries have given higher priority to younger over older patients. But how is age rationing different under outbreak circumstances than under normal circumstances, and what does this difference imply for ethical theories? This is the topic of this paper. The paper argues that outbreaks such as that of Cov…Read more
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26Teach Them to Play! Educational Justice and the Capability for Childhood PlayStudies in Philosophy and Education 39 (5): 465-478. 2019.Many consider play a natural part of childhood, and although there is disagreement in the literature on what essentially defines “play” in childhood, philosophical theories of play tend to support this initial consideration. But is childhood play also something we owe each other within a framework of educational justice? This is a question yet to be addressed. In this paper, I answer this question affirmatively. I take off from a generic account of educational justice and argue that childhood pl…Read more
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25Sufficiency and Satiable ValuesJournal of Applied Philosophy 36 (5): 800-816. 2019.This article identifies value‐satiability sufficientarianism as a distinctive version of the sufficiency view, which has been ignored in the literature on distributive justice. This is unfortunate because value‐satiability sufficientarianism is much better equipped than alternative sufficiency views to cope with the standard objections against sufficiency. Most often, sufficientarianism refers to satiability as a feature of moral principles and reasons. But value‐satiability sufficientarianism a…Read more
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46What is Wrong with Sufficiency?Res Publica 25 (1): 21-38. 2019.In this paper, I ask what is wrong with sufficiency. I formulate a generic sufficiency principle in relation to which I discuss possible problems for sufficientarianism. I argue against the arbitrariness–concern, that sufficiency theory need only to identify a possible space for determining a plausible threshold, and I argue against the high–low threshold dilemma concern, that multiple-threshold views can solve this dilemma. I then distinguish between currency-pluralist and currency-monist multi…Read more
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33Playing for social equalityPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 17 (4): 427-446. 2018.This article claims that the protection of children’s capability for play is a central social-political goal. It provides the following three-premise argument in defense of this claim: we have strong and wide-ranging normative reasons to be concerned with clusters of social deficiency; particular fertile functionings play a key role for tackling clusters of social deficiency; and finally the capability for childhood play is a crucial, ontogenetic prerequisite for the development of those particu…Read more
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81Defending Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity and Discarding the AppendixOstium 12 (2). 2016.Since his contribution to the field of personal identity in 1738 Hume’s theory has been debated thoroughly. Throughout the years there have been multiple critiques of Hume’s theory, but despite the fact that all of these generally appear unsatisfactory, Hume’s theory of personal identity is far from being a popular one in the field. I believe the blame partly falls on Hume himself. Hume’s appendix to Treaties is most often read as expressing a deep concern regarding his own theory, and this conc…Read more
Nové Sady, Olomoucký Kraj, Czechia
Areas of Specialization
Theories of Personal Identity |
Methodology in Metaphysics |