-
20Obesity and Responsibility for HealthIn Ben Davies, Gabriel De Marco, Neil Levy & Julian Savulescu (eds.), Responsibility and Healthcare, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 184-209. 2024.This chapter examines the case for health care policies aimed at holding obese individuals responsible for their weight and for obesity-related health issues. In particular, it considers the merits of two arguments for policies that would seek to make obese individuals bear some of the higher health care costs associated with being that way. On the fairness argument, it is claimed that such policies would serve the interests of fairness by holding obese individuals to account for irresponsible l…Read more
-
Rawls on global economic justice : a critical examinationIn Sarah Roberts-Cady & Jon Mandle (eds.), John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions, Oup Usa. 2020.
-
38Rawls on global economic justice: a critical examinationIn Jon Mandle & Sarah Roberts-Cady (eds.), Rawls on global economic justice: a critical examination, Oxford University Press. pp. 313-328. 2020.This chapter canvasses the debate between John Rawls and his cosmopolitan critics over the demands of economic justice that arise beyond state borders. In particular, it examines the merits of four defenses of the position Rawls advances in The Law of Peoples that justice does not call for a cross-society egalitarian distributive principle: first, that such a principle would fail to hold states responsible for their economic position; second, that because societies do not have a fundamental inte…Read more
-
290Individual Responsibility, Large-Scale Harms, and Radical UncertaintyThe Journal of Ethics 25 (3): 267-291. 2021.Some consequentialists argue that ordinary individuals are obligated to act in specific, concrete ways to address large-scale harms. For example, they argue that we should each refrain from meat-eating and avoid buying sweatshop-made clothing. The case they advance for such prescriptions can seem intuitive and compelling: by acting in those ways, a person might help prevent serious harms from being produced at little or no personal cost, and so one should act in those ways. But I argue that such…Read more
-
249Relational egalitarianismPhilosophy Compass 15 (7): 1-12. 2020.In the past few decades, there has been a growing literature on relational egalitarianism. Relational egalitarianism is a view on the nature and value of equality. In contrast to the dominant view in recent debates on equality—distributive egalitarianism, on which equality is about ensuring people have or fare the same in some respect—on the relational view, equality is a matter of the terms on which relationships are structured. But what exactly does it mean for people to relate as equals? And …Read more
-
145The injustice of fat stigmaBioethics 33 (5): 577-590. 2019.Fat stigma is pervasive. Being fat is widely regarded a bad thing, and fat persons suffer numerous social and material disadvantages in virtue of their weight being regarded that way. Despite the seriousness of this problem, it has received relatively little attention from analytic philosophers. In this paper, I set out to explore whether there is a reasoned basis for stigmatizing fatness, and, if so, what forms of stigmatization could be justified. I consider two lines of reasoning that might b…Read more
-
28Waldron, Jeremy. One Another’s Equals: The Basis of Human Equality. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2017. Pp. 280. $29.95 (review)Ethics 128 (4): 840-845. 2018.
-
42Equality for Inegalitarians, by George Sher: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. x + 182, £17.99 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (2): 408-411. 2016.What are society's distributive obligations to its members? The central contribution of this book lies in its novel response to this question. The response is hard to classify. In featuring a largely hands-off government and allowing for significant material inequality, Sher's vision of a just society has a distinctively (right-)libertarian flavour. However, he does not give an historical account of legitimate holdings. Indeed, he embraces a commitment that suggests an allegiance with liberal eg…Read more
-
77Global Institutionalism and JusticeIn Stan van Hooft & Wim Vandekerckhove (eds.), Questioning Cosmopolitanism, Springer. pp. 167-182. 2010.According to ‘global institutionalism,’ individuals who do not share a state have duties of justice to one another, and this is explained, in part, by the institutional connections that obtain between them. In this chapter, I defend this view against two challenges. First, I consider challenges raised by ‘non-institutionalists,’ who deny that facts about global institutional interaction bear on the nature of duties of justice that arise between particular individuals. Second, I address challenge…Read more
-
229Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases, Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster , 152 pp., $24.95 cloth (review)Ethics and International Affairs 19 (3): 103-106. 2005.
-
369On the Scope and Grounds of Social equalityIn Fabian Schuppert and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer Edited by Carina Fourie (ed.), Social Equality: Essays on What It Means to be Equals, Oxford University Press. pp. 186-208. 2015.On social equality, individuals ought to relate on terms of equality. An important issue concerning this theory, which has not received much attention, is its scope: which individuals ought to relate on egalitarian terms? The answer depends on the theory’s grounds: the basis upon which demands of social equality arise when they do. In this chapter, I consider how we ought to construe the scope and the grounds of social equality. I argue that underlying the considerations social egalitarians adva…Read more
-
578The Commitments of CosmopolitanismEthics and International Affairs 24 (3): 319-333. 2010.Gillian Brock's "Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account" and Darrel Moellendorf's "Global Inequality Matters" present carefully crafted accounts of the obligations we have to non-compatriots and offer practical proposals for how we might get closer to meeting these obligations
-
603Against Institutional Luck EgalitarianismJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 8 (1): 1-19. 2014.Kok-Chor Tan has recently defended a novel theory of egalitarian distributive justice, institutional luck egalitarianism (ILE). On this theory, it is unjust for institutions to favor some individuals over others based on matters of luck. Tan takes his theory to preserve the intuitive appeal of luck egalitarianism while avoiding what he regards as absurd implications that face other versions of luck egalitarianism. Despite the centrality of the concept of institutional influence to his theory, Ta…Read more
-
22What is so special about the state?In Gabriele de Angelis & Diogo P. Aurelio (eds.), Sovereign Justice: Global Justice in a World of Nations, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 109-128. 2010.According to 'statism,' the distinctive nature of the state association gives rise to certain demands of distributive justice that exclusively obtain within the state and apply between fellow citizens. This chapter is devoted to critically examining the merits of the statist position. I consider three main strategies that statists employ in defense of their claim about the scope of egalitarian distributive justice—based on, respectively, the relevance of coercion, co-authorship of the state's te…Read more
-
788Two Wrongs Don’t Make a RightSocial Theory and Practice 37 (4): 679-696. 2011.Virginia Held argues that terrorism can be justified in some instances. But unlike standard, consequentialist justifications, hers is deontological. This paper critically examines her argument. It explores how the values of fairness, responsibility, and desert can serve to justify acts of terrorism. In doing so, two interpretations of her account are considered: a responsibility-insensitive and a responsibility-sensitive interpretation. On the first, her argument collapses into a consequentialis…Read more
-
994Equal Standing in the Global CommunityThe Monist 94 (4): 593-614. 2011.What bearing does living in an increasingly globalized world have upon the moral assessment of global inequality? This paper defends an account of global egalitarianism that differs from standard accounts with respect to both the content of and the justification for the imperative to reduce global inequality. According to standard accounts of global egalitarianism, the global order unjustly allows a person’s relative life prospects to track the morally arbitrary trait of where she happens to be …Read more
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory |
Applied Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory |
Applied Ethics |