•  17
    In the Trolley Case (Figure 1), as devised by Philippa Foot and modified by Judith Jarvis Thomson, a runaway trolley (i.e. tram) is headed down a main track and will hit and kill five unless you divert it onto a side track, where it will hit and kill one.
  •  8
    How to Pool Risks across Generations makes the case for the collective provision of pensions, on fair terms of social cooperation. Through the insurance of a mutual association which extends across society and over multiple generations, we share one another's fates by pooling risks across both space and time. Resources are transferred, not simply between different people, but also within the possible future lives of each person: from one's more fortunate to one's less fortunate future selves. Th…Read more
  •  1
    The Kantian Argument for Consequentialism
    In Jussi Suikkanen & John Cottingham (eds.), Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
  •  2
    Liberty, Equality, Envy, and Abstraction
    In Justine Burley (ed.), Dworkin and His Critics, Blackwell. 2004.
    This chapter contains section titled: I II III IV Acknowledgement.
  • Appropriating Lockean Appropriation on Behalf of Equality
    In James Penner & Michael Otsuka (eds.), Property Theory: Legal and Political Perspectives, Cambridge University Press. pp. 121-137. 2018.
    I argue that the Lockean 'enough and as good' proviso provides support for egalitarian as opposed to libertarian or sufficientarian claims over worldly resources. These egalitarian claims apply to contemporary advanced industrial societies with money-based economies as well as primitive agrarian barter economies. But the full 'luck egalitarian' complement of equality of opportunity for welfare cannot be derived from a Lockean approach that focuses on our egalitarian claims to unowned bits of the…Read more
  •  16
    Prioritarianism, Population Ethics, and Competing Claims
    In Jeff McMahan, Tim Campbell, James Goodrich & Ketan Ramakrishnan (eds.), Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit, Oxford University Press. 2022.
    In his restriction of prioritarianism to cases in which the same people would exist in all the possible outcomes, Parfit stakes out an unstable position, both for himself and more generally. There is no plausible rationale for a prioritarianism that is so restricted, which is consistent with the key features of Parfit’s elaboration and defence of this view and his other commitments. The principles that might be appealed to, in an attempt to justify such a restriction, give rise to a different vi…Read more
  •  159
    Fair Terms of Social Cooperation Among Equals
    Journal of Practical Ethics. forthcoming.
    Rawlsian justice as fairness is neither fundamentally luck egalitarian nor relational egalitarian. Rather, the most fundamental idea is that of society as a fair system of cooperation. Collective pensions provide a case study which illustrates the fruitfulness of conceiving justice in these latter terms. Those who have recently reached the age of majority do not now know how long they will live in retirement or how well any investments they try to save up for their retirement would fare. From th…Read more
  •  543
    We argue that there is a marked shift in the moral weight of an increment in a person's well-being when one moves from a case involving only intra-personal trade-offs to a case involving only inter-personal trads-offs. This shift, we propose, is required by the separateness of persons. We also argue that the Priority View put forward by Parfit cannot account for such a shift. We also outline two alternative views, an egalitarian view and a claims-based view, that can account for this shift.
  •  221
    Reply to Crisp
    Utilitas 23 (1): 109-114. 2011.
    In 'Why It Matters that Some Are Worse off than Others,' we offer a new critique of the Priority View. In a recent article, Roger Crisp has argued that our critique is flawed. In this reply, we show that Crisp fails to grapple with, much less defeat, the central claim of our critique. We also show that an example that Crisp offers in support of the Priority View in fact lends support to our critique of that view.
  •  755
    Equality versus Priority
    In Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 65-85. 2018.
    We discuss two leading theories of distributive justice: egalitarianism and prioritarianism. We argue that while each has particular merits and shortcomings, egalitarian views more fully satisfy a key requirement of distributive justice: respect for both the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons.
  •  30
    In this article, I press a line of objection to Jonathan Quong's moral status account of liability to defensive harm. The claim on which I rest my critique is captured by the article's title: if one can’t lose such a right in these circumstances, one never had it in the first place.
  •  4
    Discussione su "If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?" di G.A. Cohen
    with Ian Carter and Francesco Saverio Trincia
    Iride 14 (34): 609-634. 2001.
    Discussion held in April at a Political Studies Association Roundtable in Manchester, England, on G. A. Cohen’s book If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000). --- Michael Otsuka's contribution sub-titled: "Il personale e politico? Il confine tra pubblico e private nella sfera della giustizia distributiva" = "Is the personal political? The boundary between the public and the private in the realm of distributive justice."
  •  25
    The moral responsibility account of liability to defensive killing
    In Christian Coons & Michael Weber (eds.), The Ethics of Self-Defense, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.
    Some are blameless for posing a threat to the live of another because they are not morally responsible for being a threat. Others are blameless in spite of their responsibility. On what has come to be known as the "moral responsibility account" of liability to defensive killing, it is such responsibility, rather than blameworthiness, for threatening another that renders one liable to defensive killing. Moreover, one's lack of responsibility for being a threat grounds one's nonliability to defens…Read more
  •  157
    Are deontological constraints irrational?
    In Ralf Bader & John Meadowcroft (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Nozick, Cambridge University Press. pp. 38-58. 2011.
    Most deontologists find bedrock in the Pauline doctrine that it is morally objectionable to do evil in order that good will come of it. Uncontroversially, this doctrine condemns the killing of an innocent person simply in order to maximize the sum total of happiness. It rules out the conscription of a worker to his or her certain death in order to repair a fault that is interfering with the live broadcast of a World Cup match that a billion spectators have been enjoying. It rules out such sacrif…Read more
  •  41
    Dworkin's reconciliation of liberty and equality in chapter 3 of 'Sovereign Virtue' presupposes the compossibility of the satisfaction of the envy test and the realization of the principle of abstraction. It is, however, impossible to realize a distribution that is both envy-free and maximally sensitive to plans and preferences. When this conflict between the envy test and the principle of abstraction is brought to light, it will become apparent that Dworkin falls short of a complete reconciliat…Read more
  •  301
    Scanlon and the claims of the many versus the one
    Analysis 60 (3): 288-293. 2000.
    In "What We Owe to Each Other", T. M. Scanlon argues that one should save the greater number when faced with the choice between saving one life and two or more different lives. It is, Scanlon claims, a virtue of this argument that it does not appeal to the claims of groups of individuals but only to the claims of individuals. I demonstrate that this argument for saving the greater number, indeed, depends, contrary to what Scanlon says, upon an appeal to the claim of a group of individuals to be …Read more
  •  84
    According to philosophers who ground your anticipation of future experiences in psychological continuity and connectedness, it is rational to anticipate the experiences of someone other than yourself, such as a self that is the product of fission or of replication. In this article, I concur that it is rational to anticipate the experiences of the product of fission while denying the rationality of anticipating the experiences of a replica. In defending my position, I offer the following explanat…Read more
  •  8
    Property Theory : Legal and Political Perspectives (edited book)
    with James Penner
    Cambridge University Press. 2018.
    Property, or property rights, remains one of the most central elements in moral, legal, and political thought. It figures centrally in the work of figures as various as Grotius, Locke, Hume, Smith, Hegel and Kant. This collection of essays brings fresh perspective on property theory, from both legal and political theoretical perspectives, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the nature of property. Edited by two of the world's leading theorists of property, James Penner and Michael …Read more
  •  91
    How it makes a moral difference that one is worse off than one could have been
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 17 (2): 192-215. 2018.
    In this article, I argue that it makes a moral difference whether an individual is worse off than she could have been. Here, I part company with consequentialists such as Parfit and side with contractualists such as Scanlon. But, unlike some contractualists, I reject the view that all that matters is whether a principle can be justified to each particular individual, where such a justification is attentive to her interests, complaints and other claims. The anonymous goodness of a distribution al…Read more
  •  554
    In the Trolley Case (Figure 1), as devised by Philippa Foot and modified by Judith Jarvis Thomson, a runaway trolley (i.e. tram) is headed down a main track and will hit and kill five unless you divert it onto a side track, where it will hit and kill one.
  •  81
    Prerogatives to Depart from Equality
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 58 95-112. 2006.
    Should egalitarian justice be qualified by an agent-relative prerogative to act on a preference for—and thereby in a manner that gives rise to or preserves a greater than equal share of the goods of life for—oneself, one's family, loved ones, or friends as compared with strangers? Although many would reply that the answer to this question must be ‘yes’, I shall argue here that the case for such a prerogative to depart from equality is much less far-reaching than one might think. I have in mind a…Read more
  •  185
    Libertarianism Without Inequality
    Oxford University Press UK. 2003.
    Michael Otsuka sets out to vindicate left-libertarianism, a political philosophy which combines stringent rights of control over one's own mind, body, and life with egalitarian rights of ownership of the world. Otsuka reclaims the ideas of John Locke from the libertarian Right, and shows how his Second Treatise of Government provides the theoretical foundations for a left-libertarianism which is both more libertarian and more egalitarian than the Kantian liberal theories of John Rawls and Thomas…Read more
  •  179
    Incompatibilism and the avoidability of blame
    Ethics 108 (4): 685-701. 1998.
    I defend an incompatibilist 'Principle of Avoidable Blame' according to which one is blameworthy for performing an act of a given type only if one could instead have behaved in a manner for which one would have been blameless. First, I demonstrate that this principle is resistant to Harry Frankfurt-type counterexample. Second, I present a positive argument for this principle that appeals to the relation of blame to the 'reactive attitude' of indignation. Finally, I argue against the possibility …Read more
  •  55
    A Rejoinder to Fischer and Tognazzini
    The Journal of Ethics 14 (1): 37-42. 2010.
    In Otsuka ( 1998 ), I endorse an incompatibilist Principle of Avoidable Blame. In this rejoinder to Fischer and Tognazzini ( 2009 ), I defend this principle against their charge that it is vulnerable to Frankfurt-type counterexample.
  •  111
    Skepticism about Saving the Greater Number
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 32 (4): 413-426. 2004.
    Suppose that each of the following four conditions obtains: 1. You can save either a greater or a lesser number of innocent people from (equally) serious harm. 2. You can do so at trivial cost to yourself. 3. If you act to save, then the harm you prevent is harm that would not have been prevented if you had done nothing. 4. All other things are equal. A skeptic about saving the greater number rejects the common-sensical claim that you have a duty to save the greater number in such circumstances
  •  13
    G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. In these pieces, Coh…Read more
  •  409
    Killing the Innocent in Self‐Defense
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1): 74-94. 1994.
    I presented an earlier version of this paper to the Law and Philosophy Discussion Group in Los Angeles, whose members I would like to thank for their comments. In addition, I would also like to thank the following people for reading and providing written or verbal commentary on earlier drafts: Robert Mams, Rogers Albritton, G. A. Cohen, David Copp, Matthew Hanser, Craig Ihara, Brian Lee, Marc Lange, Derk Pereboom, Carol Voeller, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs. I owe special thank…Read more
  •  79
    Freedom of occupational choice
    Ratio 21 (4): 440-453. 2008.
    Cohen endorses the coercive taxation of the talented at a progressive rate for the sake of realizing equality. By contrast, he denies that it is legitimate for the state to engage in the 'Stalinist forcing' of people into one or another line of work in order to bring about a more egalitarian society. He rejects such occupational conscription on grounds of the invasiveness of the gathering and acting upon information regarding people's preferences for different types of work that would be require…Read more
  •  92
    Quinn on punishment and using persons as means
    Law and Philosophy 15 (2). 1996.
    In The Right to Threaten and the Right to Punish, Warren Quinn justifies punishment on the ground that it can be derived from the rights of persons to protect themselves against crime. Quinn, however, denies that a right of self-protection justifies the punishment of an aggressor solely on the ground that such punishment deters others from harming the victim of that aggression or others. He believes that punishment so justified would constitute a morally objectionable instance of using the punis…Read more