Research Areas

Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of economics (esp. health measurement), philosophy of biology and medicine, bioethics

Current and Future Research

My research in ethics and political philosophy largely focuses on the form of and relationship between basic normative concepts. My dissertation explored these issues, and I'm currently working on related papers on the nature of imperfect duties and on moral obligation. (In both cases, I believe much existing work doesn't adequately account for the kind of necessity involved in such claims.)

I'm also writing about a bundle of issues concerning health -- what it is, if and how we can measure it, and what obligations its absence gives rise to. Health measurement is a growing field, taking on an important role in resource allocation. Many governments, international bodies (WHO, World Bank), NGOs (Gates Foundation, Health Impact Fund), and insurance systems either do distribute resources based on health measurements or intend to. But attempts to measure health face a number of conceptual problems, some on the surface and others much harder to see. There is also the further question of how to use health measurements once we have them. Few people think that straight maximization -- allocating resources so as to achieve the greatest total health benefit -- is the answer. In particular, most people think that considerations of fairness and equality are relevant. But how to incorporate those concerns is not clear.

Publications

You Don't Have to Do What's Best! (A problem for consequentialists and other teleologists). Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 1, ed. Mark Timmons, Oxford University Press, 2011; uncorrected draft

Define teleology as the view that requirements hold in virtue of facts about value or goodness. Teleological views are quite popular, and in fact some philosophers (e.g. Dreier, Smith) argue that all (plausible) moral theories can be understood teleologically. I argue, however, that certain well-known cases show that the teleologist must at minimum assume that there are certain facts that an agent ought to know, and that this means that requirements can't, in general, hold in virtue of facts about value or goodness. I then show that even if we grant those 'ought's teleology still runs into problems. A positive justification of teleology looks like it will require an argument of this form: O(X); if X, then O(Y); therefore O(Y). But this form of argument isn't in general valid. I conclude by offering two positive suggestions for those attracted to a teleological outlook.

Rethinking Health: Healthy or Healthier Than? Forthcoming in the British Journal for Philosophy of Science; uncorrected draft

Some gradable concepts are more naturally analyzed in terms of their comparative form. Taller than, for example, seems more basic than tall, since we can define the latter in terms of the former: to be tall is to be taller than a sufficient number of objects in some comparison class. For other concepts it's the reverse: straight is plausibly more basic than straighter than, since we can formulate the idea of perfect straightness, which can then be basis for assessing relative straightness. Without argument, theorists of health have assumed that (or at least acted as if) health should be put in the latter category. I argue, though, that there is good reason to think that it should be grouped with the former: healthier than is more basic than healthy. I show that this apparently minor shift in focus has important consequences for debates in the philosophy of medicine, bioethics, and for the measurement of health.

Incidence, Prevalence, and Hybrid Approaches to Calculating DALYs. Population Health Metrics 10(19), 2012.

When disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) are used to measure the burden of disease on a population in a time interval, they can be calculated in several different ways: from an incidence, pure prevalence, or hybrid perspective. I show that these calculation methods are not equivalent and discuss some of the formal difficulties each method faces. I show that if we don't discount the value of future health, there is a sense in which the choice of calculation method is a mere question of accounting. Such questions can be important, but they don't raise deep theoretical concerns. If we do discount, however, choice of calculation method can change the relative burden attributed to different conditions over time. I conclude by recommending that studies involving disability-adjusted life years be explicit in noting what calculation method is being employed and in explaining why that calculation method has been chosen.

Imperfect Duties as Group Obligations. Forthcoming in the Journal of Moral Philosophy; uncorrected draft

There is virtually no philosophical consensus on what, exactly, imperfect duties are. In this paper, I lay out three criteria which I argue any adequate account of imperfect duties should satisfy. Using beneficence as a leading example, I suggest that existing accounts of imperfect duties will have trouble meeting those criteria. I then propose a new approach: thinking of imperfect duties as duties held by groups, rather than individuals. I show, again using the example of beneficence, that this proposal can satisfy the three criteria, explaining how something can both have the necessity characteristic of duty, while also allowing agents the latitude which seems to attach to imperfect duties.

Works in Progress

Drafts of some of these papers may be available. Please contact me if you'd like to see one. Also, see my C.V. for a list of recent presentations.

The Normativity in DALYs, and What to Do About It

Measuring Health and the Problem of Changing Populations

An Agent-Neutral, Teleological Deontology

Gluttony isn't Worse than Drunkenness: Kant and Comparative Moral Judgments

Dissertation

Divorcing the Good and the Right
(advisors: Thomas Scanlon, Christine Korsgaard, Selim Berker)

Our everyday moral discourse recognizes (at least) two distinct groups of normative concepts. On the one hand are deontic concepts, like required, forbidden, right, and wrong. Deontic claims purport to limit our options: to say that something is required is to claim that in some sense it's the only available option. To say that something is forbidden is to rule out that option. Evaluative concepts, on the other hand, don't work that way. To say that something is good is to recommend it without ruling out other options. To say that something is bad is to discourage it, but isn't to say that it's not an option.

Philosophers have typically assumed that deontic and evaluative concepts are related in some way. Sometimes explicit arguments for the connection are given, for example by consequentialists, who hold that what makes an action required is that it's best. Other times the relationship is left implicit, as when Rawlsians move from the claim that justice demands we maximize the position of the worst off to the conclusion that each increase in their welfare is a good thing.

In my dissertation I argue that this assumption of a connection is mistake: there isn't any close relationship between deontic and evaluative concepts. I then show that this conclusion has important consequences for debates in normative ethics and also gives us insight on how to reconcile moral and non-moral values.

For a more detailed description of my project, see my dissertation abstract.