•  16
    Our worldview assumes that people are morally responsible. Consider our emotions regarding other people or ourselves. We often feel anger, gratitude, pride, and shame toward them or ourselves. Consider religious beliefs. Jews and Christians believe that God cares whether a person does right by others and freely loves him. Consider moral values. We value dignity, freedom, and rights. The above emotions, beliefs, and values assume that people are responsible. In particular, they assume that a pers…Read more
  •  12
    Immigration and Collective Property
    Analítica 2 12-41. 2022.
    The notion that immigrants have a right to immigrate to the U.S. appears to conflict with the government’s or citizens’ property rights. Michael Huemer has given one of the most interesting and provocative arguments on immigration in years. It turns the dominant view on its head. Unfortunately, the argument fails. U.S. citizens own land, individually, collectively, and via their government. For immigrants to gain a right to enter on it, Huemer must think that the landowners have lost their right…Read more
  •  9
    Space War and Property Rights
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 37 (1): 65-85. 2023.
    Space warfare is warfare that takes place in outer space. It involves ground-to-space, space-to-ground, and space-to-space violence between nations or peoples. The violence can involve kinetic weapons, directed energy weapons, or electronic destruction. International law, specifically, the Outer Space Treaty and SALT I, currently bans weapons of mass destruction from being put into space, although one wonders if one country were to violate the ban whether others would follow suit. In this paper,…Read more
  •  19
    James Stacey Taylor’s book – Markets with Limits: How the Commodification of Academia Derails Debate (New York: Routledge, 2022) – is excellent. He explores the errors that have derailed the discussion of the limits of markets, attempts to rerail the discussion through a clarifying taxonomy, and explains why the derailment occurred. He also argues that academic research should be governed by academic rather than market norms. The first part of his project succeeds. It is less clear whether the s…Read more
  •  267
    The Most Valuable Player
    with Neil Feit
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 28 (2): 193-206. 2001.
    The most valuable player (MVP) of an athletic league is the single best individual player in the league. The MVP award is the institutional recognition of this person, and it is the highest annual award that a player can receive. Despite its widespread consideration and importance, we argue that the concept of the MVP is a fundamentally vague concept. In the context of professional sports, however, such a vague category is valuable in that it promotes the active discussion of different types of …Read more
  •  10
    In punishment, proportionality is the systematic mathematical relationship between the significance of the wrongdoing and the amount of punishment that may be imposed on the wrongdoer. In this chapter, Kershnar argues that there is no adequate equation for proportionality. The lack of an adequate equation rests on intuitions and the absence of a shared metric. If there is no equation for proportionality, then there is no proportionality. This is because if there is no equation for proportionalit…Read more
  •  40
    In this paper, I argue for two theses. First, if Christianity is true, then morality should depend on the metaphysics of the afterlife. Second, if Christianity is true, then contemporary moral theory is mistaken. The argument for the first thesis rests on two premises. If rightness depends on an act’s effects on an individual, then—at least in part—it depends on the long-term effects on him. If rightness depends—at least in part—on the long-term effects on an individual, then it depends on the m…Read more
  •  24
    Proportionality in Self-Defense: With an Application to Covid Vaccination-Mandates
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (1): 67-82. 2022.
    Proportionality matters. Intuitively, proportionality sets the ceiling on the amount of defensive violence that is permissible. A plausible view is that what justifies proportionality also justifies other defensive-violence requirements—for example, discrimination and necessity—and shows why other purported requirements are mistaken—for example, imminence. I argue that if defensive-violence proportionality is a part of moral reality, then there is a systematic justification of it. If there is a …Read more
  •  19
    Michael Robillard and Bradley Strawser’s Outsourcing Duty: The Moral Exploitation of the American Soldier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022) is outstanding. The arguments in it are important, new, and powerful, and it is extremely well-written. It is accessibly written, including eye-opening personal stories (including the authors’ stories), an interesting array of economic and sociological studies, and colorful illustrative quotes from The Bourne Legacy, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Rudyard …Read more
  •  29
    This book argues that no one deserves anything. If this is correct, then sentences that claim that people deserve general things (for example, a life that goes well) or specific things (for example, a particular salary) are false. So are sentences that deny these things if we understand them to assert that people can deserve things even if the individual or group in question does not deserve the thing in question. My argument against desert rests on three claims. (1) There is no adequate theor…Read more
  •  23
    This book looks at a family of views involving the pro-life view of abortion and Christianity. These issues are important because major religious branches (for example, Catholicism and some large branches of Evangelicalism) and leading politicians assert, or are committed to, the following: (a) it is permissible to prevent some people from going to hell, (b) abortion prevents some people from going to hell, and (c) abortion is wrong. They also assert, or are committed to, the following: (d) it i…Read more
  •  30
    Bioethics and Non-Consequentialism
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (2): 289-307. 2021.
    The various features of bioethics center around a person’s right to decide what happens to her body and what she may do with it. This is true for patients and medical professionals. Our intuitions concerning rights in bioethics are similar to our intuitions concerning rights in other areas. Consider, for example, rights concerning movement, privacy, religion, sex, speech, and thought. Intuitively, these rights are consistent with one another, trump other moral considerations, and can be lost. If…Read more
  •  50
    Here, we argue for a mathematical equation that captures desert. Our procedure consists of setting out principles that a correct equation must satisfy and then arguing that our set of equations satisfies them. We then consider two objections to the equation. First, an objector might argue that desert and well-being separately contribute to intrinsic goodness, and they do not separately contribute. The concern here is that our equations treat them as separate contributors. Second, our set of dese…Read more
  •  23
    The Sabermetrics of State Medical School Admissions
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (1): 45-63. 2021.
    In this paper, I argue that medical school admissions should be limited to statistically relevant factors. My argument rests primarily on three assumptions. A state professional school should maximize production. If a state professional school should maximize production, then it should maximize production per student. If a state professional school should maximize production per student, then, within the optimum budget, a state medical school should maximize quality-adjusted medical services per…Read more
  •  20
    On the Ranking of Teams
    Philosophia 50 (2): 567-579. 2021.
    In this paper, we argue that in a possible world there is a determinate ranking of teams. Our argument rests on the premise: In theory, nothing prevents a determinate better than ranking. This premise in turn rests on assumptions with regard to stipulations regarding ‘better than’ and nature of a competition as well as a right answer theory of interpretation. We then speculate that in some actual leagues in some years, there were determinate rankings. We consider objections that focus on ties, n…Read more
  •  789
    The Right-Based Criticism of the Doctrine of Double Effect
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (2): 215-233. 2020.
    If people have stringent moral rights, then the doctrine of double effect is false or unimportant, at least when it comes to making acts permissible or wrong. There are strong and weak versions of the doctrine of double effect. The strong version asserts that an act is morally right if and only if the agent does not intentionally infringe a moral norm and the act brings about a desirable result (perhaps the best state of affairs available to the agent or a promotion of the common good). The weak…Read more
  •  64
    Love is Independent of Moral Responsibility
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (1): 137-155. 2020.
    A concern that accompanies the recognition that people are not morally responsible is how this affects our relationships. In particular, there is concern as to whether the absence of these things eliminates or lessens love. Love is relevant on some of the most plausible theories of well-being. In particular, it might be thought to cause pleasure and fulfill desires and thus bring about well-being on hedonist and desire-fulfillment theories of well-being. It might also be included on the objectiv…Read more
  •  16
    John Martin Fischer’s book, Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life is outstanding. It is very readable (often funny) and has a clear organization that makes it easy to follow. It is tightly argued and fascinating. It discusses ideas with enjoyable references to and discussions of the Buddha, Ram Dass, Gilgamesh, Stephen Jay Gould, Hinduism, Aldous Huxley, the Koran, C. S. Lewis, LSD, Christopher Marlowe, Somerset Maugham, reincarnation, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Star Trek, Jonathan…Read more
  •  488
    For discrimination against women
    Law and Philosophy 26 (6). 2007.
    In this paper, I argue that it is morally permissible and should be legally permissible for state and private professional schools to discriminate against women. By professional schools, I mean law, medical, and business schools. More specifically, I argue that such schools may discount womens applications to the degree that they are likely to produce less than male counterparts. The argument differs with regard to state and private institutions because of the greater moral elbowroom that privat…Read more
  •  68
    Extremely Harsh Treatment
    Reason Papers 33 60-81. 2011.
    Extremely harsh treatment (for example, unanesthetized tooth, branding with a hot iron, violent shaking, repeated beatings, and car-battery shocks to the genitalia) is often considered unjust. On different accounts, extremely harsh treatment fails to respect persons because it infringes on an absolute right, fails to respect a person’s dignity, constitutes cruel or inhumane treatment, violates rules that rational persons would choose under fair and equal choosing conditions, or results in a pers…Read more
  •  79
    Moral Responsibility and Foundationalism
    Philosophia 43 (2): 381-402. 2015.
    If an individual is morally responsible, then there is a responsibility-foundation that makes him morally responsible, but there is no responsibility-foundation that makes him responsible. This rested on the notion that if there were a responsibility-foundation, it would be either an ungrounded choice or an ungrounded character state and that neither can serve as the foundation. The paper then considered three types of objections. First, moral responsibility does not require a responsibility-fou…Read more
  •  353
    The Forfeiture Theory of Punishment: Surviving Boonin’s Objections
    Public Affairs Quarterly 24 (4): 319-334. 2010.
    In this paper, I set out a version of the Forfeiture Theory of Punishment. Forfeiture Theory: Legal punishment is just or permissible because offenders forfeit their rights.On this account, offenders forfeit their rights because they infringed on someone’s rights. My strategy is to provide a version of the Forfeiture Theory and then to argue that it survives a number of initially intuitive seeming objections, most having their origins in the recent work of David Boonin.
  •  67
    For Ownership Theory: A Response to Nicholas Dixon
    Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 12 (2): 226-235. 2018.
    In an earlier paper, Stephen Kershnar argued for the following thesis: An instance of trash-talking is permissible if and only if the relevant sports organization’s system of rules permits the expression. One person trash-talks a second if and only if the first intentionally insults the second during competition. The above theory sounds implausible. Surely, the conditions under which a player may insult another do not depend on what the owners arbitrarily decide. Such an approach doesn’t appear …Read more
  •  232
    Explaining the Geometry of Desert
    with Neil Feit
    Public Affairs Quarterly 18 273. 2004.
    In the past decade, three philosophers in particular have recently explored the relation between desert and intrinsic value. Fred Feldman argues that consequentialism need not give much weight – or indeed any weight at all – to the happiness of persons who undeservedly experience pleasure. He defends the claim that the intrinsic value of a state of affairs is determined by the “fit” between the amount of well-being that a person receives and the amount of well-being that the person deserves. She…Read more
  •  129
    The Paradox of Consent
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 33 (2): 305-318. 2019.
    If consent is valid (that is, morally transformative), then in every case it is either valid or invalid. This is because of the notion that (when valid) consent eliminates a right and a person either has or lacks a right against another. A parallel problem to the paradox of symmetrical attackers applies to consent. That is, there is a case in which two people neither consent nor do not consent to one another. As a practical matter, attorneys, judges, legislators, physicians, and sex partners sho…Read more
  •  105
    Moral responsibility and morality lie at the heart of how we view the world. In our daily life, we feel responsibility-related emotions: gratitude, pride, love, forgiveness, resentment, indignation, and shame. We love those who freely and reciprocally love us. Also, we feel that people act rightly or wrongly, make the world better or worse, and are virtuous or vicious. These policies are central to our justifying how we see the world and treat others. In this book, I argue that our views on thes…Read more
  •  275
    Responsibility-Foundation: Still Needed and Still Missing
    Science, Religion and Culture. forthcoming.
    Responsibility is impossible because there is no responsibility-maker and there needs to be one if people are morally responsible. The two most plausible candidates, psychology and decision, fail. A person is not responsible for an unchosen psychology or a psychology that was chosen when the person is not responsible for the choice. This can be seen in intuitions about instantly-created and manipulated people. This result is further supported by the notion that, in general, the right, the good, …Read more
  •  56
    Consequentialism and the Case of Symmetrical Attackers
    Utilitas 31 (4): 395-413. 2019.
    There are puzzle cases that forfeiture theory has trouble handling, such as the issue of what happens to the rights of two qualitatively identical people who simultaneously launch unprovoked attacks against the other. Each person either has or lacks the right to defend against the other. If one attacker has the right, then the other does not and vice versa. Yet the two are qualitatively identical so it is impossible for one to have the right if the other does not. The Problem of Symmetrical Atta…Read more
  •  549
    Rights and consent in mixed martial arts
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 47 (1): 105-120. 2019.
    MMA fighting in a competition is not necessarily wrong and is often, as far as we can tell, permissible. Our argument has two premises. First, if an act does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint, then it is morally permissible. Second, MMA-violence does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint. The first premise rested on two assumptions. First, if a person does a wrong act, then he wrongs someone. Second, if one person wrongs a s…Read more