•  106
    As a result there is a considerable literature on the topic. I think, however, that the treatment in the literature is incomplete because there is a failure to examine the relevant emotions in significant detail, and in particular to consider their complexity and the conditions of their warrant. As a result, both defenses and critiques of the motive of duty in terms of reliability are inadequate as they stand
  •  86
    Prioritarianism
    Philosophy Compass 9 (11): 756-768. 2014.
    Prioritarianism can usefully be seen as a corrective to both egalitarianism and utilitarianism. It allegedly corrects for egalitarianism insofar as it tends toward equality but seems immune to the Leveling Down Objection. It allegedly corrects for utilitarianism insofar as it emphasizes improving peoples' lives but is distribution-sensitive, favoring benefiting those who are worse off over those who are better off, other things equal. The best way to understand the view and assess its prospects …Read more
  •  66
    Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates (edited book)
    with Kevin Vallier
    Oup Usa. 2017.
    Contemporary political philosophers disagree about whether theories of justice should be utopian or realistic. Contributors to this volume largely deny that the choice between realism and idealism is binary. Their contributions represent a continuum between realism and idealism that best represents the contemporary state of the debate.
  •  63
    The Ethics of Policing and Imprisonment (edited book)
    Springer Verlag. 2018.
    This volume considers the ethics of policing and imprisonment, focusing particularly on mass incarceration and police shootings in the United States. The contributors consider the ways in which non-ideal features of the criminal justice system―features such as the prevalence of guns in America, political pressures, considerations of race and gender, and the lived experiences of people in jails and prisons―impinge upon conclusions drawn from more idealized models of punishment and law enforcement…Read more
  •  60
    Is Equality Essentially Comparative?
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (2): 209-226. 2007.
    Larry Temkin has shown that Derek Parfit’s well-known Mere Addition Paradox suggests a powerful argument for the intransitivity of the relation “better than.” The crux of the argument is the view that equality is essentially comparative, according to which the same inequality can be evaluated differently depending on what it is being compared to. The comparative view of equality should be rejected, I argue, and hence so too this argument for intransitivity.
  •  58
    Should Desert Replace Equality? Replies to Kagan
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 4 (3): 1-28. 2010.
    Many people are moved by the thought that if A is worse off than B, then if we can improve the condition of one or the other but not both that it is better to improve the condition of A. Egalitarians are buoyed by the prevalence of such thoughts. But something other than egalitarianism could be driving these thoughts. In particular, such thoughts could be motivated, instead, by a combination of the belief that desert should determine how people fare and the belief that, for the most part, people…Read more
  •  57
    More on the Motive of Duty
    The Journal of Ethics 11 (1): 65-86. 2007.
    A number of neo-Kantians have suggested that an act may be morally worthy even if sympathy and similar emotions are present, so long as they are not what in fact motivates right action–so long as duty, and duty alone, in fact motivates. Thus, the ideal Kantian moral agent need not be a cold and unfeeling person, as some critics have suggested. Two objections to this view need to be answered. First, some maintain that motives cannot be present without in fact motivating. Such non-motivating reaso…Read more
  •  51
    Paternalism: Theory and Practice (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2013.
    Is it allowable for your government, or anyone else, to influence or coerce you 'for your own sake'? This is a question about paternalism, or interference with a person's liberty or autonomy with the intention of promoting their good or averting harm, which has created considerable controversy at least since John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Mill famously decried paternalism of any kind, whether carried out by private individuals or the state. In this volume of new essays, leading moral, political …Read more
  •  39
    "With increasingly divergent views and commitments, and an all-or-nothing mindset in political life, it can seem hard to sustain the level of trust in other members of our society necessary to ensure our most basic institutions work. This book features interdisciplinary perspectives on social trust. The contributors address four main topics related to social trust. The first topic is empirical and formal work on norms and institutional trust, especially the relationships between trust and human …Read more
  •  31
    : Equality for Inegalitarians
    Ethics 126 (3): 856-861. 2016.
  •  27
    Religious Exemptions (edited book)
    Oup Usa. 2018.
    Religious exemptions have a long history in American law, but have become especially controversial over the last several years. The essays in this volume address the moral and philosophical issues that the legal practice of religious exemptions often raises.
  •  25
    Are Terrorists Cowards?
    Public Affairs Quarterly 19 (4): 331-342. 2005.
  •  13
    Probabilities, Laws, and Structures (edited book)
    with Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao Gonzalez, Hartmann J., Stöltzner Stephan, and Marcel
    Springer: Netherlands. 2012.
    This volume, the third in this Springer series, contains selected papers from the four workshops organized by the ESF Research Networking Programme "The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective" in 2010: Pluralism in the Foundations of Statistics Points of Contact between the Philosophy of Physics and the Philosophy of Biology The Debate on Mathematical Modeling in the Social Sciences Historical Debates about Logic, Probability and Statistics The volume is accordingly divided in four sect…Read more
  •  9
    The Ethics of Self-Defense
    In Christian Coons & Michael Weber (eds.), The Ethics of Self-Defense, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.
    This introductory chapter has several relatively modest aims, all in the service of preparing readers for the substantive chapters in the volume. First, we provide a basic summary of the contours of debate about the ethics of self-defense. In so doing, we highlight and explain some of the central terms in the debate, as there is a complex, specialized vocabulary that may be unfamiliar to some readers. Second, we distinguish and discuss the different contexts in which the need for self-defense mi…Read more
  •  2
    Satisficing: The Rationality of Preferring What is Good Enough
    Dissertation, University of Michigan. 1998.
    It is widely maintained that self-interested rationality is a matter of maximizing one's own good or well-being. Rationality more generally is also frequently characterized in maximizing terms: the rational thing to do in any decision context is whatever is best in terms of one's interests or will lead to the greatest preference-satisfaction, My dissertation consists of three independent papers that challenge this orthodoxy by lending support to "satisficing," the idea that it is rational to pre…Read more
  • Introduction
    In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates, Oup Usa. 2017.
  • Conversations in International Relations: Interview with Andrew Linklater
    with R. Devetak and S. Kaempf
    International Relations 27 (4): 481--505. 2013.