•  475
    How People Think About Distributing Aid
    with Nathan Lubchenco and Emir Malikov
    Philosophical Psychology 29 (7): 1029-1044. 2016.
    This paper examines how people think about aiding others in a way that can inform both theory and practice. It uses data gathered from Kiva, an online, non-profit organization that allows individuals to aid other individuals around the world, to isolate intuitions that people find broadly compelling. The central result of the paper is that people seem to give more priority to aiding those in greater need, at least below some threshold. That is, the data strongly suggest incorporating both a thre…Read more
  •  327
    The State of the Discipline: New Data on Women Faculty in Philosophy
    with Sherri Lynn Conklin and Irina Artamonova
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6. 2019.
    This paper presents data on the representation of women at 98 philosophy departments in the United States, which were ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) in 2015 as well as all of those schools on which data from 2004 exist. The paper makes four points in providing an overview of the state of the field. First, all programs reveal a statistically significant increase in the percentage of women tenured/tenure-track faculty, since 2004. Second, out of the 98 US philosophy departments s…Read more
  •  313
    Meeting Need
    Utilitas 21 (3): 250-275. 2009.
    This paper considers the question ‘How should institutions enable people to meet their needs in situations where there is no guarantee that all needs can be met?’ After considering and rejecting several simple principles for meeting needs, it suggests a new effectiveness principle that 1) gives greater weight to the needs of the less well off and 2) gives weight to enabling a greater number of people to meet their needs. The effectiveness principle has some advantage over the main competitors in…Read more
  •  253
    Eternally Separated Lovers: The Argument from Love
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (4): 633-643. 2015.
    A message scribbled irreverently on the mediaeval walls of the Nonberg cloister says this: ‘Neither of us can go to heaven unless the other gets in.’ It suggests an argument against the view that those who love people who suffer in hell can be perfectly happy, or even free from all suffering, in heaven. This paper considers the challenge posed by this thought to the coherence of the traditional Christian doctrine on which there are some people in hell who are suffering and others in heaven who a…Read more
  •  175
    The anthropocentric advantage? Environmental ethics and climate change policy
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (2): 235-257. 2011.
    Environmental ethicists often criticize liberalism. For many liberals embrace anthropocentric theories on which only humans have non?instrumental value. Environmental ethicists argue that such liberals fail to account for many things that matter or provide an ethic sufficient for addressing climate change. These critics suggest that many parts of nature ? e.g. non?human individuals, other species, ecosystems and the biosphere ? often these critics also hold that concern for some parts of nature …Read more
  •  166
    Nanotechnology, enhancement, and human nature
    NanoEthics 2 (3): 289-304. 2008.
    Is nanotechnology-based human enhancement morally permissible? One reason to question such enhancement stems from a concern for preserving our species. It is harder than one might think, however, to explain what could be wrong with altering our own species. One possibility is to turn to the environmental ethics literature. Perhaps some of the arguments for preserving other species can be applied against nanotechnology-based human enhancements that alter human nature. This paper critically examin…Read more
  •  160
    The human right to health
    Philosophy Compass 10 (4): 275-283. 2015.
    Is there a human right to health? If so, what are its grounds? Can a legal or moral human right to health provide any practical guidance when it comes to making decisions about, for instance, the allocation of scarce health resources? There are many possible answers to these questions in the literature. This article surveys some of these replies. First, however, it examines the distinctions between legal and moral human rights and rights to health vs. health care. It then surveys the literature …Read more
  •  149
    Free Trade, Poverty, and Inequality
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 8 (1): 5-44. 2011.
    Anyone familiar with The Economist knows the mantra: Free trade will ameliorate poverty by increasing growth and reducing inequality. This paper suggests that problems underlying measurement of poverty, inequality, and free trade provide reason to worry about this argument. Furthermore, the paper suggests that better evidence is necessary to establish that free trade is causing inequality and poverty to fall. Experimental studies usually provide the best evidence of causation. So, the paper conc…Read more
  •  126
    Consciousness and the Moral Permissibility of Infanticide1
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (1): 45-55. 2008.
    abstract In this paper, we present a conditional argument for the moral permissibility of some kinds of infanticide. The argument is based on a certain view of consciousness and the claim that there is an intimate connection between consciousness and infanticide. In bare outline, the argument is this: it is impermissible to intentionally kill a creature only if the creature is conscious; it is reasonable to believe that there is some time at which human infants are not conscious; therefore, it i…Read more
  •  119
    Human Rights and the Minimally Good Life
    Res Philosophica 90 (3): 413-438. 2013.
    All people have human rights and, intuitively, there is a close connection between human rights, needs, and autonomy. The two main theories about the natureand value of human rights often fail to account for this connection. Interest theories, on which rights protect individuals’ important interests, usually fail to capturethe close relationship between human rights and autonomy; autonomy is not constitutive of the interests human rights protect. Will theories, on which human rights protect indi…Read more
  •  110
    This paper presents new data on the representation of women who publish in 25 top philosophy journals as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report for the years 2004, 2014, and 2015. It also provides a new analysis of Schwitzgebel’s 1955–2015 journal data. The paper makes four points while providing an overview of the current state of women authors in philosophy. In all years and for all journals, the percentage of female authors was extremely low, in the range of 14–16%. The percentage of wome…Read more
  •  109
    Raz on the Right to Autonomy
    European Journal of Philosophy 22 (1): 96-109. 2011.
    : In The Morality of Freedom, Joseph Raz argues against a right to autonomy. This argument helps to distinguish his theory from his competitors'. For, many liberal theories ground such a right. Some even defend entirely autonomy-based accounts of rights. This paper suggests that Raz's argument against a right to autonomy raises an important dilemma for his larger theory. Unless his account of rights is limited in some way, Raz's argument applies against almost all (purported) rights, not just a …Read more
  •  99
    Free Trade and the Environment
    Environmental Ethics 31 (1): 51-66. 2009.
    What should environmentalists say about free trade? Many environmentalists object to free trade by appealing the “Race to the Bottom Argument.” This argument is inconclusive, but there are reasons to worry about unrestricted free trade’s environmental effects nonetheless; the rules of trade embodied in institutions such as the World Trade Organization may be unjustifiable. Programs to compensate for trade-related environmental damage, appropriate trade barriers, and consumer movements may be nec…Read more
  •  73
    Poverty indexes are essential for monitoring poverty, setting targets for poverty reduction, and tracking progress on these goals. This paper suggests that further justification is necessary for using the main poverty indexes in the literature in any of these ways. It does so by arguing that poverty should not decline with the mere addition of a rich person to a population and showing that the standard indexes do not satisfy this axiom. It, then, suggests a way of modifying these indexes to avoi…Read more
  •  71
    What does global justice or charity requires us to give to other people? There is a large theoretical literature on this question. There is much less experimental work in political philosophy relevant to answering it. Perhaps for this reason, this literature has yet to have any major impact on theoretical discussions of global justice or charity. There is, however, some experimental research in behavioral economics that has helped to shape the field and a few relevant studies by political philos…Read more
  •  62
    Conserving Nature; Preserving Identity
    with David B. Wong
    Journal of Chinese Philosophy 42 (1-2): 176-196. 2015.
    There are two broad approaches to environmental ethics. The “conservationist” approach on which we should conserve the environment when it is in our interest to do so and the “preservationist” approach on which we should preserve the environment even when it is not in our interest to do so. We propose a new “relational” approach that tells us to preserve nature as part of what makes us who we are or could be. Drawing from Confucian and Daoist texts, we argue that human identities are, or should …Read more
  •  60
    Against vaccine nationalism
    Journal of Medical Ethics 47 (11): 773-774. 2021.
    While rich countries like the USA and UK are starting to vaccinate their populations against COVID-19, poor countries may lack access to a vaccine for years. A global effort to provide vaccines through the COVAX facility Accelerator) aims to distribute 2 billion vaccinations by the end of next year, but the USA has refused to join and even those rich countries that have joined are entering into bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies to buy up the supply. Canada, for instance, has already …Read more
  •  55
    Global health impact: A basis for labeling and licensing campaigns?
    Developing World Bioethics 12 (3): 121-134. 2012.
    Most of the world's health problems afflict poor countries and their poorest inhabitants. There are many reasons why so many people die of poverty-related causes. One reason is that the poor cannot access many of the existing drugs and technologies they need. Another, is that little of the research and development (R&D) done on new drugs and technologies benefits the poor. There are several proposals on the table that might incentivize pharmaceutical companies to extend access to essential drugs…Read more
  •  53
  •  47
    Empirical Evidence and the Case for Foreign Aid
    Public Affairs Quarterly 24 (1): 1-20. 2010.
    In his groundbreaking article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Peter Singer gave the following argument: Suffering and death from lack of food and shelter and medicine are bad. If we can do something to help prevent suffering and death from lack of food and shelter and medicine without sacrificing anything morally significant , then we should. So we should help prevent this suffering and death by giving foreign aid
  •  47
    Good Enough? The Minimally Good Life Account of the Basic Minimum
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2): 330-341. 2022.
    ABSTRACT What kind of basic minimum do we owe to others? This paper defends a new procedure for answering this question. It argues that its minimally good life account has some advantages over the main alternatives and that neither the first-, nor third-, person perspective can help us to arrive at an adequate account. Rather, it employs the second-person perspective of free, reasonable, care. There might be other conditions for distributive justice, and morality certainly requires more than hel…Read more
  •  46
    Globalization and Global Justice in Review
    Law, Ethics and Philosophy 2. 2014.
    Globalization connects everyone, from the world’s poorest slum dweller tothe richest billionaire. Globalization and Global Justice starts by giving a newargument for the conclusion that coercive international institutions —whosesubjects who are likely to face sanctions for violation of their rules— mustensure that everyone they coerce secures basic necessities like food, waterand medicines. It then suggests that it is possible for coercive institutionsto fulfill their obligations by, for instanc…Read more
  •  42
    The face of the world is changing. The past century has seen the incredible growth of international institutions. How does the fact that the world is becoming more interconnected change institutions' duties to people beyond borders? Does globalization alone engender any ethical obligations? In Globalization and Global Justice, Nicole Hassoun addresses these questions and advances a new argument for the conclusion that there are significant obligations to the global poor. First, she argues that t…Read more
  •  38
    The Problem of Debt‐for‐Nature Swaps from a Human Rights Perspective
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (4): 359-377. 2012.
    At first blush, debt‐for‐nature swaps seem to provide win‐win solutions to the looming problems of environmental degradation and extreme poverty. So, one might naturally assume that they are morally permissible, if not obligatory. This article will argue, however, that debt‐for‐nature swaps are sometimes morally questionable, if not morally impermissible. It suggests that some criticisms of traditional (economic) conditions placed on loans to poor countries also apply to the (environmental) cond…Read more
  •  38
    Sufficiency and the Minimally Good Life
    Utilitas 33 (3): 321-336. 2021.
    What, if anything, do we owe others as a basic minimum? Sufficiency theorists claim that we must provide everyone with enough – but, to date, few well-worked-out accounts of the sufficiency threshold exist, so it is difficult to evaluate this proposition. Previous theories do not provide plausible, independent accounts of resources, capabilities, or welfare that might play the requisite role. Moreover, I believe existing accounts do not provide nearly enough guidance for policymakers. So, this a…Read more