Research
Publications by topic, click to expand:
Moral uncertainty ●
AI ●
Political philosophy ●
Bioethics ●
Animal ethics: [collapse]
- 2021:
- Moral status, luck, and modal capacities: debating Shelly
Kagan. Journal of Applied Philosophy,
38.2, 273-87. [pre-publication
pdf |
doi]
- Synopsis: Those like Kagan who want to argue that
animals have a lower moral status than us can achieve
extensional adequacy only through theoretical commitments
that are difficult to justify
Papers by date:
- Forthcoming:
- Disagreement, AI alignment, and bargaining.
Philosophical Studies. [pre-publication
pdf |
doi]
- Synopsis: When stakeholders disagree about how an AI
should behave, resolving this disagreement through simulated
bargaining is better than resolving it through voting or
expected value maximisation
- Moral uncertainty, pure justifiers, and agent-centred options.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy. [coauthor:
Patrick Kaczmarek |
pre-publication pdf]
- Synopsis: The expected chocieworthiness maximising
approach to moral uncertainty cannot properly handle
agent-centred prerogatives; we propose an alternative that
can
- Moral uncertainty, proportionality, and bargaining. Ergo.
[coauthors: Patrick Kaczmarek and Michael Plant |
pre-publication pdf]
- Synopsis: Bargaining-theoretic approaches to moral
uncertainty have several advantages over the expected
choiceworthiness maximising approach
- Real-world application: Helped to inform
this online tool for choosing a portfolio of charitable
donations
- Gentrification: a philosophical analysis and critique. Journal of Urban Affairs.
[pre-publication
pdf |
doi]
- Synopsis: Forms of gentrification that don't displace
many land users are still pro tanto morally
objectionable insofar as they damage local communities
- 2024:
- Redistribution and selfishness. Analysis, 84.3,
493-503. [pre-publication
pdf |
doi]
- Synopsis: Even in a world of completely unselfish
people, redistributive taxation would still discourage
productive contributions to national wealth
- 2021:
- Moral status, luck, and modal capacities: debating Shelly
Kagan. Journal of Applied Philosophy,
38.2, 273-87. [pre-publication
pdf |
doi]
- Synopsis: Those like Kagan who want to argue that
animals have a lower moral status than us can achieve
extensional adequacy only through theoretical commitments
that are difficult to justify
Commentaries:
- 2024:
- Better than what?: embryo selection, gene editing, and
evaluative counterfactuals. American Journal of Bioethics,
24.8, 55-7.
[pre-publication
pdf |
doi]
- 2023:
- Large language models and biorisk. American Journal of
Bioethics, 23.10, 115-8. [coauthors: William D'Alessandro and Nathaniel
Sharadin | pre-publication
pdf |
doi]
Working papers:
- Moral uncertainty and bargaining. (old title: The property rights approach to moral uncertainty.) Happier Lives
Institute, working paper, October 2022. [pdf
|
hyperlink | email me for a more recent draft]
- Time discounting defended. (old title: Time discounting, consistency, and special
obligations: a defence of Robust Temporalism.) Global Priorities
Institute, working paper no. 11-2021. [pdf
|
hyperlink
| email me for a more recent draft]
- Synopsis: Although almost all other philosophers reject the
idea that temporal proximity could matter morally, I argue that
this view is more defensible than is commonly supposed
- Won the Oxford Global Priorities Institute's 2021
Essay Prize for Global Priorities Research (£1000)
- Summarised and discussed on David Thorstad's
Reflective
Altruism blog: 'Papers
I learned from (Part 1: Time discounting, consistency, and
special obligations)'
Under review:
- [A paper on moral uncertainty]
- Synopsis: Rather than choosing actions that
maximise expected choiceworthiness, perhaps we should
instead choose theories that maximise expected
truthlikeness
- Won the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress' 2024 Young Ethicist
Prize (co-winner; open to any untenured presenters, including
tenure-track faculty; $350)
- [Another paper on moral uncertainty]
- Synopsis: Philosophers of moral uncertainty often suggest that
'statistical normalization' techniques can be used to compare
choiceworthiness values across different moral theories; but I
argue that these techniques have lots of problems.
- [A paper on machine ethics]
- Synopsis: Several AI ethicists have recently suggested a
response to stakeholder normative disagreement that is inspired
by expected utility theory; but I argue that this response has
several problems
In preparation:
- [A paper on personal identity, fission, and fusion]
- Synopsis: A fissioner survives her operation as a scattered
object with Lefty and Righty as her discontiguous parts; her
well-being is the average of Lefty's and Righty's; and Bernard
Williams' 'body swap' cases might also involve this kind of
'survival through parts.'
- [Dissertation monograph on moral uncertainty and bargaining]