Here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to. If a draft is not posted here, please feel free to request it via email.
“A Rossian Capability Approach”
(in progress)
If proponents of the so-called capability approach claimed only that human capabilities are relevant from the moral point of view, virtually no one would disagree. But capability theorists are instead advancing a distinctive thesis about distributive justice, and it is a thesis that can reasonably be questioned. Nevertheless, I believe these questions have decisive answers, and that the main issue is how the distribution of capabilities is relevant to justice, not whether it is. This essay presents an approach to distributive justice, inspired by the intuitionism of W.D. Ross, that explains how capabilities can play a central role without generating the serious problems standardly pressed by opponents. I argue for the superiority of the Rossian approach over the capability theories of Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, and Elizabeth Anderson. The essay concludes with a discussion of Rawls’s remarks on intuitionism in political philosophy. I hold that the Rossian view gives us all we can reasonably hope for, and that Rawls’s inability to establish more is itself evidence for this conclusion.
“Efficiency and Equity in Health: Philosophical Considerations”
(pdf)
Forthcoming in Anthony Culyer (ed.), Encyclopedia of Health Economics.
Efficiency and equity are central concepts for the normative assessment of health policy. Drawing on the work of academic philosophers and philosophically sophisticated economists, this article identifies important philosophical questions implicated by the notions of efficiency and equity and then summarizes influential answers to them. Promising avenues for further philosophical research are also highlighted, especially in the context of health equity and its elusive ethical foundations.
“Energy Policy and the Social Discount Rate”
(pdf)
Forthcoming in Ethics, Policy & Environment (special issue on the Japanese nuclear disaster).
Recent debates over the economics of climate change underscore the importance of what at first blush is a narrow technical issue in welfare economics and cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Yet even before the need to study the economics of climate change, debate over both nuclear energy policy and water resource policy highlighted the fateful role that social discount rates play in policy prescriptions (Lind 1982, p. 2). The recent Japanese nuclear tragedy is an unfortunate reminder that the ethics of burning fossil fuels must not overshadow the ongoing ethical issues associated with nuclear power. It is also a reminder that getting the social discount rate right is as central for nuclear policy as it is for climate policy. This commentary aims to provide a non-technical introduction to some of the key ethical issues and arguments surrounding the choice of social discount rates.
“Real and Alleged Problems for Daniels’s Account of Health Justice”
(pdf)
Forthcoming in Journal of Medicine & Philosophy.
Norman Daniels’s theory of health justice is the most comprehensive and systematic such theory we have. In one of the few articles published so far on Daniels’s new book, Just Health, Benjamin Sachs argues that Daniels’s core “principle of equality of opportunity does not do the work Daniels needs it to do.” Yet Sachs’s arguments for rejecting Daniels’s framework are deeply flawed. Where these arguments do not rely on significant misreadings of Daniels, they ignore sensible strands in Just Health that considerably dull their force. After disarming Sachs’s arguments against Daniels’s theory, I end by explaining why I agree with Sachs’s conclusion: Daniels’s equality of opportunity-based account of health justice rests on shaky foundations.
“Emergency Contraception and Conscientious Objection”
(pdf)
Journal of Applied Philosophy 27, no. 3 (August 2010): 290-304.
Emergency contraception—also known as the morning after pill—is marketed and sold, under various brand names, in over one hundred countries around the world. In some countries, customers can purchase the drug without a prescription. In others, a prescription must be presented to a licensed pharmacist. In virtually all of these countries, pharmacists are the last link in the chain of delivery. This article examines and ultimately rejects several standard moves in the bioethics literature on the right of pharmacists conscientiously to refuse to dispense emergency contraception. Its central thesis is that the standard “moderate” solution to this problem is mistaken. Thus, when all publicly relevant interests are given their due, it is not acceptable to allow refusals in the big city, where pharmacies are plentiful, but forbid them in rural settings, where pharmacies are scarce. Rather, there should be strong public policy requiring that all pharmacists dispense emergency contraception to customers who request it, regardless of pharmacists’ moral or religious objections.
“Justice and Profound Cognitive Disability”
How are the needs of the profoundly cognitively disabled addressed by the demands of justice? In this essay I explain how one central plank of domestic justice generates reasons to show special concern for a sizeable portion of this disabled population. Although this plank cannot situate the profoundly cognitively disabled directly within the ambit of justice, it can include them indirectly, by virtue of what we owe their parents, whose well-being is intimately bound up with the well-being of their child. This parent-centered approach faces a number of hurdles. I attempt to defuse four worries in particular, namely (1) that it cannot address the needs of abandoned or neglected children, (2) that it treats children as mere means to the well-being of their parents, (3) that it entails equally strong state concern for (e.g.) non-parents’ beloved pets, and (4) that it entails problematic double-counting, as when the state has both direct and indirect reasons to display robust concern for one’s close friend. I conclude that the parent-centered approach offers one genuine reason of domestic justice to address the needs of many profoundly cognitively disabled children.
“Legitimacy and Stability in Rawls’s Political Liberalism”
(pdf)
This paper seeks to correct pervasive misunderstandings of what Rawls means by “legitimacy” and “stability” in his doctrine of political liberalism. I also intend it to be a short reader’s guide to Rawls’s book Political Liberalism.