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Brute Luck, Option Luck, And Equality Of Initial Opportunities
(University of Chicago, 2002)
In the old days, material egalitarians tended to favor equality of outcome advantage, on some suitable conception of advantage (happiness, resources, etc.). Under the influence of Dworkin's seminal articles on equality , ...
Libertarianism and the State
(Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Classical liberalism emphasizes the importance of individual liberty and contemporary (or welfare) liberalism tends to emphasize some kind of material equality. The best known form of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—is ...
Response-Dependence, Rigidification, and Objectivity
(Springer Verlag, 1996)
A response-dependent account of a given attribute, such as redness or wrongness, identifies the attribute with the disposition to produce specified sorts of response in specified sorts of being under specified conditions. ...
Teleology, Consequentialism, and the Past
(Spring Verlag, 1988)
Act teleological theories are theories that judge an action permissible just in case its outcome is maximally good. It is usually assumed that act teleological theories cannot be past-regarding, i.e., make the permissibility ...
Of Mice and Men: Equality and Animals
(Springer Verlag, 2005)
Can material egalitarianism (requiring, for example, the significant promotion of fortune) include animals in domain of the equality requirement? The problem can be illustrated as follows: If equality of wellbeing is what ...
On the Possibility of Paretian Egalitarianism
(Journal of Philosophy, 2005)
We here address the question of how, for a theory of justice, a concern for the promotion of equality can be combined with a concern for making people as well off as possible. Leximin, which requires making the worst off ...
Why Left-Libertarianism Isn't Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant: A Reply to Fried
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
Over the past few decades, there has been increasing interest in left-libertarianism, which holds (roughly) that agents fully own themselves and that natural resources (land, minerals, air, etc.) belong to everyone in some ...
Capabilities vs. Opportunities for Well-being
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have argued that justice is concerned, at least in part, with the distribution of capabilities (opportunities to function). Richard Arneson, G.A. Cohen, and John Roemer have argued that ...
Left-Libertarianism as a Promising Form of Liberal Egalitarianism
(Center for Philosophic Exchange SUNY Brockport, 2009)
Left-libertarianism is a theory of justice that is committed to full self-ownership and to an egalitarian sharing of the value of natural resources. It is, I shall suggest, a promising way of capturing the liberal egalitarian ...
On the possibility of nonaggregative priority for the worst off.
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)
We shall focus on moral theories that are solely concerned with promoting the benefits (e.g., well-being) of individuals and shall explore the possibility of such theories' ascribing some priority to benefits to those who ...
Infinite Utility and Temporal Neutrality
(Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Suppose that time is infinitely long towards the future, and that each feasible action produces a finite amount of utility at each time. Then, under appropriate conditions, each action produces an infinite amount of ...
Natural rights and two conceptions of promising
(Chicago-Kent College of Law, 2006)
Does one have an obligation to keep one's promises? I answer this question by distinguishing between two broad conceptions of promising. On the normativized conception of promising, a promise is made when an agent validly ...
The Rights and Duties of Childrearing
(William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, 2003)
What rights and duties do adults have with respect to raising children? Who, for example, has the right to decide how and where a particular child will live, be educated, receive health care, and spend recreational time? ...
Infinite Utilitarianism: More Is Always Better
(Cambridge University Press, 2004)
We address the question of how finitely additive moral value theories (such as utilitarianism) should rank worlds when there are an infinite number of locations of value (people, times, etc.). In a recent contribution, ...
Descartes's Self-Doubt
(Duke University Press, 1975)
I shall contend that even though Descartes is sometimes certain that he exists, he sometimes doubts that he exists. He believes that two kinds of things exist when he knows that he exists. On the one hand, what exist are ...
Left-Libertarianism and Private Discrimination
(University of San Diego School of Law, 2007)
Left-libertarianism, like the more familiar right-libertarianism, holds that agents initially fully own themselves. Unlike right-libertarianism, however, it views natural resources as belonging to everyone in some egalitarian ...
Descartes on Theological Knowledge
(International Phenomenological Society, 1982)
Arnauld charged Descartes with circularity in his theological proof. I argue that Arnauld was correct. I also make suggestions about why Descartes fails to see the circularity. Both points are important. Many are uncomfortable ...
Broome on Moral Goodness and Population Ethics
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
In an earlier book, Weighing Goods , John Broome gave a sophisticated defense of utilitarianism for the cases involving a fixed population. In the present book, Weighing Lives, he extends this defense to variable population ...
Hurley on Justice and Responsibility
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2006)
In Justice, Luck, and Knowledge, Susan Hurley defends a reason-responsive account of responsibility, argues that appeals to responsibility cannot provide a justification or non-trivial specification of brute luck egalitarian ...
Libertarianism, Self-Ownership and Consensual Killing
(2011)
I argue that, under a broad range of circumstances, consensual killing (suicide, assisted suicide, and killing another person with their permission) is morally permissible and forcible prevention is not. The argument depends ...