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2841Evolutionary debunking arguments in three domains: Fact, value, and religionIn James Maclaurin Greg Dawes (ed.), A New Science of Religion, Routledge. 2013.Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? We consider this problem for beliefs in three different domains: religion, morality, and commonsense and scientific claims about matters of empirical fact. We identify replies to evolutionary scepticism that work in some domains but not in others. One reply is that ev…Read more
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6The cyclooxygenase 2 pathway has been implicated in the molecular pathogenesis of many malignancies, including lung cancer. Apricoxib, a selective COX-2 inhibitor, has been described to inhibit epithelial-mesenchymal transition in human malignancies. The mechanism by which apricoxib may alter the tumor microenvironment by affecting EMT through other important signaling pathways is poorly defined. IL-27 has been shown to have anti-tumor activity and our recent study showed that IL-27 inhibited EM…Read more
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9Catholic Legal Education—What’s in a Brand Name? Catholic Social Thought as a Conceptual and Moral Framework for Understanding and Critiquing American Law and Influencing Legal EducationJournal of Catholic Social Thought 7 (2): 467-487. 2010.
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A theologian's itinerary : John Scottus Eriugena's christological ascentIn Adrian Guiu (ed.), A companion to John Scottus Eriugena, Brill. 2020.
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Vaccination EthicsIn Ezio Di Nucci, Ji-Young Lee & Isaac A. Wagner (eds.), The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Bioethics, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2022.
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6The Political Philosophy of Fénelon by Ryan Patrick HanleyJournal of the History of Philosophy 60 (4): 699-700. 2022.In his monograph, Ryan Patrick Hanley offers a revisionist interpretation of the political philosophy of François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai. A series of Enlightenment commentators and their progeny have hailed Fénelon as a political subversive who boldly attacked the injustices of the reign of Louis XIV and who prepared the arrival of an egalitarian society with socialist and pacifist traits. Hanley, however, argues that Fénelon actually defended a more moderate and …Read more
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30Supreme Emergencies, Epistemic Murkiness and Epistemic TransparencyPhilosophy of Management 8 (2): 3-12. 2009.Sometimes, states face emergencies: situations where many individuals face an imminent threat of serious harm. Some believe that in such cases certain sorts of actions which are normally morally prohibited might be permissible. In this paper, I discuss this view as it applies in both the contexts of war and of public health policy. I suggest that the deontologist can best understand emergencies by analogy with the distinction between act- and rule consequentialism. In real world cases, we must o…Read more
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4The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition (review)Journal for Peace and Justice Studies 20 (1): 85-92. 2010.
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6EditorialHeythrop Journal 63 (4): 501-503. 2022.The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 501-503, July 2022.
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27Science, politics and regulation: The trust-based approach to the demarcation problemStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90 (C): 1-9. 2021.
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Canticle: Maritain, John Paul II, Benedict XVIIn Heidi Marie Giebel (ed.), The things that matter: essays inspired by the later work of Jacques Maritain, American Maritain Association. 2018.
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30Death SentencesPhilosophy of Medicine 3 (1). 2022.There are many analogies between medical and judicial practice. This article explores one such analogy, between “medicalization” and “criminalization.” Specifically, drawing on an analogy between a judge’s speech act of delivering a verdict and a physician’s speech act of giving a diagnosis, it suggests a novel account of the phenomenon of “overdiagnosis.” Using this approach, we can make some headway in understanding debates over the early detection of cancer. The final section outlines the rel…Read more
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524Must We Vaccinate the Most Vulnerable? Efficiency, Priority, and Equality in the Distribution of VaccinesJournal of Applied Philosophy 39 (4): 682-697. 2022.In this article, we aim to map out the complexities which characterise debates about the ethics of vaccine distribution, particularly those surrounding the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. In doing so, we distinguish three general principles which might be used to distribute goods and two ambiguities in how one might wish to spell them out. We then argue that we can understand actual debates around the COVID-19 vaccine – including those over prioritising vaccinating the most vulnerable – as…Read more
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16How low can you go? Justified hesitancy and the ethics of childhood vaccination against COVID-19Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (12): 1006-1009. 2022.This paper explores some of the ethical issues around offering COVID-19 vaccines to children. My main conclusion is rather paradoxical: the younger we go, the stronger the grounds for justified parental hesitancy and, as such, the stronger the arguments for enforcing vaccination. I suggest that this is not thereductio ad absurdumit appears, but does point to difficult questions about the nature of parental authority in vaccination cases. The first section sketches the disagreement over vaccinati…Read more
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85“First, Do No Harm”?Social Theory and Practice 48 (3): 525-551. 2022.Screening for asymptomatic disease is a routine aspect of contemporary public health practice. However, it is also controversial, because it leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, with many arguing that programmes are “ineffective,” i.e., the “costs” outweigh the “benefits.” This paper explores a more fundamental objection to screening programmes: that, even if they are effective, they are ethically impermissible because they breach the principle of non-maleficence. In so doing, it suggests a…Read more
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36The Two Virtues of ScienceSpontaneous Generations 10 (1): 47-53. 2022.During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was disagreement over whether the science supported facemask mandates. This paper interrogates debates over this question, paying particular attention to an ambiguity between two scientific virtues: epistemic caution and epistemic responsiveness. I suggest that there is an argument from each virtue to reasons to trust scientists’ claims in policy debate. However, as the case of facemask debates illustrates, it is not clear that scientists can possess both virt…Read more
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68Objectivity in ScienceCambridge University Press. 2021.Objectivity is a key concept both in how we talk about science in everyday life and in the philosophy of science. This Element explores various ways in which recent philosophers of science have thought about the nature, value and achievability of objectivity. The first section explains the general trend in recent philosophy of science away from a notion of objectivity as a 'view from nowhere' to a focus on the relationship between objectivity and trust. Section 2 discusses the relationship betwe…Read more
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273Costa, cancer and coronavirus: contractualism as a guide to the ethics of lockdownJournal of Medical Ethics 48 (9): 643-650. 2022.Lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic involve placing huge burdens on some members of society for the sake of benefiting other members of society. How should we decide when these policies are permissible? Many writers propose we should address this question using cost-benefit analysis, a broadly consequentialist approach. We argue for an alternative non-consequentialist approach, grounded in contractualist moral theorising. The first section sets up key issues in the ethics of l…Read more
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17Scientific deceitSynthese 198 (1): 373-394. 2018.This paper argues for a novel account of deceitful scientific communication, as “wishful speaking”. This concept is of relevance both to philosophy of science and to discussions of the ethics of lying and misleading. Section 1 outlines a case-study of “ghost-managed” research. Section 2 introduces the concept of “wishful speaking” and shows how it relates to other forms of misleading communication. Sections 3–5 consider some complications raised by the example of pharmaceutical research; concern…Read more
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106The Ethics of Lockdown: Communication, Consequences, and the Separateness of PersonsKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 30 (3): 265-289. 2020.In many countries and regions across the world, the initial response to the massive health risks posed by COVID-19 has been the institution of lockdown measures. Although they vary from place to place, these measures all involve trade-offs between ethical goods and imperatives, imposing significant restrictions on central human capabilities—including citizens’ ability to work, socialize, exercise democratic rights, and access education—in the name of protecting population health. As such, it see…Read more
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21Erratum to: The example of the IPCC does not vindicate the Value Free Ideal: a reply to Gregor BetzEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 5 (2): 259-259. 2015.
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28Patient Preference Predictors, Apt Categorization, and Respect for AutonomyJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 39 (2): 169-177. 2014.In this paper, I set out two ethical complications for Rid and Wendler’s proposal that a “Patient Preference Predictor” (PPP) should be used to aid decision making about incapacitated patients’ care. Both of these worries concern how a PPP might categorize patients. In the first section of the paper, I set out some general considerations about the “ethics of apt categorization” within stratified medicine and show how these challenge certain PPPs. In the second section, I argue for a more specifi…Read more
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69The Politics of Certainty: The Precautionary Principle, Inductive Risk and Procedural FairnessEthics, Policy and Environment 22 (1): 21-33. 2019.This paper re-interprets the precautionary principle as a ‘social epistemic rule’. First, it argues that sometimes policy-makers should act on claims which have not been scientifically established....
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65Science, truth and dictatorship: Wishful thinking or wishful speaking?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 78 64-72. 2019.
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35This paper uses the case-study of controversy over the MMT vaccine to suggest that non-expert audiences might have a fairness-based "political" obligation to defer to expert scientific consensus. The first part of the paper notes various reasons why it is implausible to argue that non-experts are epistemically obliged to defer to the consensus. The second draws on the literature on vaccination ethics more generally to argue for the alternative political obligation to defer. The third section con…Read more
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Cambridge UniversityDepartment of History and Philosophy of Science, Pemproke CollegeSenior Lecturer
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |