•  70
    Evidence-Responsiveness and Autonomy
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (3): 621-642. 2013.
    It is plausible to think that part of what it is to be an autonomous agent is to adequately respond to important changes in one’s circumstances. The agent who has set her own course in life, but is unable to recognize and respond appropriately when evidence arises indicating the need to reconsider and perhaps adjust her plan, lacks an important form of personal autonomy. However, this “evidence-responsiveness” aspect of autonomy has not yet been adequately analyzed. Most autonomy theorists ignor…Read more
  •  56
    Autonomy-Based Accounts of the Right to Secede
    Social Theory and Practice 39 (4): 625-642. 2013.
    Voluntarist accounts of secession are those that attempt to ground a moral right to secede in autonomy. This paper argues that no such account is likely to succeed. After describing the serious problems that plague the most straightforward Voluntarist approach, I examine two recent accounts that employ novel approaches designed to avoid those difficulties. I argue that both accounts fail, shedding considerable doubt on the possibility of a plausible autonomy-based account of the moral right to s…Read more
  •  56
    Autonomy and History: How a Desire Becomes One's Own
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 11 (3): 265-293. 2014.
    A common view among autonomy theorists is that a desire is autonomous only if it has the right sort of history. Usually, an autonomy-compatible history is taken to consist in the desire’s having had proper origins. In a recent article in this journal, Mikhail Valdman has proposed an alternative historical theory on which a desire’s origins are irrelevant. On Valdman’s “agent-engagement” theory, a desire is autonomous if and only if the agent has made it her own by deliberatively deciding it is w…Read more
  •  52
    On the alleged intrinsic immorality of mixed martial arts
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 44 (2): 258-275. 2017.
    In two recent articles, Nicholas Dixon has argued that the intent to hurt and injure opponents which is essential to mixed martial arts makes the sport intrinsically immoral. Although bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism also involves the intentional infliction of pain and injury, Dixon argues that it is morally permissible in many cases. In this paper, I examine the principle underlying Dixon's differentiation of MMA and BDSM. I argue that, when properly elaborated, that principle does no…Read more
  •  48
    Consent and Right Action in Sport
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 39 (1): 11-31. 2012.
    This paper argues that recent treatments of ethics in sport have accorded too much importance to the promotion and portrayal of a sport’s excellences, and too little to the consent of participants First, I consider and reject a fundamental challenge to the idea that consent should play a central role in determining the morality of action in sport – namely, Sean McAleer’s argument to the effect that consent is incapable of rendering normally impermissible actions permissible in sport. I then offe…Read more
  •  42
    Polyglot Multiculturalism and Social Progress
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 21 (2): 275-288. 2007.
    Robert Goodin has usefully distinguished two models of liberal multiculturalism: “Protective multiculturalism,” which justifies multiculturalist policies, such as granting minority cultures group rights, on the grounds that such policies may be necessary to defend those cultures against oppression, and “Polyglot multiculturalism,” which positively values multiculturalism for sake of its benefits to society at large. Typically, it is the autonomy of a society’s members that multiculturalism is th…Read more
  •  41
    Beyond History: The Ongoing Aspects of Autonomy
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 4 (1): 1-32. 2010.
    Historical accounts of autonomy hold that the autonomy of pro-attitudes depends, at least in part, on the way in which they came about. Understandably, such accounts tend to focus the bulk of their attention on identifying the historical conditions necessary for the development of autonomous pro-attitudes. As Alfred Mele has argued, however, in addition to autonomy with respect to the development of one’s pro-attitudes, full or robust personal autonomy requires as well that one be autonomous wit…Read more
  •  36
    In Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together, Michael Bratman refines, systematizes, and defends his “planning theory” of shared agency, various elements of which were sketched in a series of earlier essays on the topic. The book is analytically rigorous and fairly technical at points, but organized and written with extraordinary clarity. It represents a valuable contribution to the literature on shared intention and joint activity, and is essential reading for philosophers working in …Read more
  •  36
    Autonomy, Regress, and Manipulation
    Philosophia 42 (4): 1141-1168. 2014.
    In this paper, I propose a novel deliberation-based theory of autonomy which grounds an agent’s autonomy in her nature as a rationally-reflective being. I defend that theory against competing approaches to autonomous agency by arguing that the theory I propose is best equipped to handle two of the more troublesome problems that theories of autonomy face: the regress problem and the problem of manipulation. Sarah Buss and Peter Railton have each recently claimed that the regress problem which pla…Read more
  •  33
    Autonomy as rule by the self
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (1): 1-6. 2014.
    In the contemporary debate on the nature of autonomy, it is generally taken for granted that autonomy is to be understood as rule by the self, with the debate centring on how that self is to be identified. Garnett [2013b] has recently proposed a theory that rejects the dominant understanding of autonomy as rule by the self and views it instead as resistance to rule by others. According to that theory, an autonomous agent is one whose various ‘autonomy traits’ render her sufficiently resistant to…Read more
  •  23
    One of the central considerations to be taken into account in evaluating the ethics of compensation for donated plasma is respect for donor autonomy. And one of the main arguments against compensated donation systems is that many donors do or would come from circumstances of poverty that restrict their alternatives in a way that compromises those donors’ autonomy. In this paper, I develop and defend a novel version of this “compromised autonomy argument” which improves upon extant versions by em…Read more
  •  23
    Political efficacy, respect for agency, and adaptive preferences
    Journal of Global Ethics 13 (3): 326-343. 2017.
    ABSTRACTSerene Khader and Rosa Terlazzo have each recently proposed theories of adaptive preferences which purport to both respect persons’ agency and provide an effective political tool. While Khader and Terlazzo thus share a similar goal, they take fundamentally different paths in its pursuit: Khader offers a perfectionist account of APs and Terlazzo an autonomy-based theory. In this paper, I argue first that if it is to adequately respect persons’ agency, a theory of APs should in some way in…Read more
  •  23
    Consent, Context, and Obligations: A Response to Ciomaga
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 41 (2): 233-245. 2014.
    In his ‘Rules and Obligations,’ Bogdan Ciomaga defends a pluralist account of moral obligations to follow sport rules by arguing that no single explanation of such obligations will plausibly apply in multiple contexts. I dispute this claim by showing that consent generates rule-following obligations in a very wide variety of the contexts in which sports are played, including each of those Ciomaga cites in support of his pluralist account. The contractualist or consent-based theory of rule normat…Read more
  •  22
    To be an autonomous agent is to determine one’s own path in life. However, this cannot plausibly be seen as a one-off affair. An autonomous agent does not merely set herself on a particular course and then lock the steering wheel in place, so to speak, but must maintain some form of ongoing control over her direction in life—must keep her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel. Circumstances often change in important and unexpected ways, after all, and it is reasonable to think that a cruci…Read more
  •  21
    The Real Value of Fake Teams: An Ethical Defense of Fantasy Sports
    Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 14 (2): 226-240. 2019.
    In the only two articles on the topic of which I am aware, Chad Carlson and Scott Aikin have leveled three objections against fantasy sports—namely, that participation in fantasy sports elicits...
  •  15
    Autonomous Authorization of Deception in Sport
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 43 (2): 179-198. 2016.
    Two recent articles in this journal – one by Morris, the other by Pfleegor & Rosenberg – have revived the philosophical discussion of the ethics of deception in sport which had largely laid dormant since the 1973 publication of Pearson’s ‘Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics’. Morris and Pfleegor & Rosenberg both share with Pearson the view that ethical deceptive sport acts are those that relate to sport-specific skills. However, whereas Pearson ultimately grounds this view in the agreement she …Read more