It is widely accepted that individuals have rights. It is also widely accepted (though less so) that states have rights, including a right against intervention. Yet, sometimes the rights of individuals become threatened ...

In this dissertation, I seek to answer the following questions: is there such a thing as deontic epistemic normativity -- obligations, permissions, and prohibitions to act in a certain way based on epistemic grounds -- and ...

The conclusion I defend is that "domestic animals" have a moral claim to what I refer to as "basic citizenship rights," and that they do so for the same reason that "non-autonomous humans" do. I define each of these key ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] I clarify the nature of relational egalitarianism, a theory in political philosophy that concerns equality. Relational egalitarians understand equality ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation addresses two issues in the philosophy of war: the prevention of unjust wars, and the moral justification of lethal defense against ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] In practical deliberation, your aim should not always only be to promote objective goodness. Rather, I argue, you should use your own practical ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation addresses two issues in the philosophy of war: the prevention of unjust wars, and the moral justification of lethal defense against ...

How is it that people come to appropriate (privately own) and justly use resources in the world that initially exist within conditions of "common ownership"? The historical story in our world is surely that the strong ...

What the state is remains far from clear in political philosophy. However, the state is also a key concept at work in many discussions in political philosophy. For example, there is a debate about anarchism, the question ...

I argue that weak type-protection is the form our legal intellectual property rights should take. Other intellectual property regimes - specifically, strong type-protection (like that of our current American patent system) ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] I defend a view that individuals have custodial rights over children in virtue of being the genetic parents of the child and that those rights are ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] My project is to offer a new answer to the traditional question: What can justify the resort to war? I defend substantive accounts of the Just Cause ...

My dissertation is to answer these two questions: "Does moral responsibility require choice?" and "If not, what does it require?" Classic accounts of moral responsibility, such as libertarian accounts, assume a volition ...

In my dissertation, I examine the relationship between moral wrongness and negative reactive attitudes. In particular, I inquire (1) whether moral wrongness is conceptually connected to the empirical disposition to hold ...

Given how much harm can be done after the fighting part of wars end, and given recent failures to secure lasting peace after conflicts (e.g. in Afghanistan and Iraq), developing an account of the conditions of a just peace, ...

My dissertation aims to answer two questions: (1) Is democracy epistemically valuable? (2) Is the epistemic value of democracy, if it has any, necessary for justifying its legitimacy? I argue that democracy in certain form ...