2023   Must We Turn the Trolley? The Trolley Problem Cambridge University Press (ed. Hallvard Lillehammer)

Helen Frowe (2018) argues against a common view of the standard Trolley Scenario according to which it is permissible but not required to kill the one as a side effect of saving the five. She argues that saving the five and killing the one is morally required in that scenario. I defend the intuitive verdict that it is permitted but not required to turn the trolley in the Trolley Scenario. First, I show that the crucial premise of Frowe’s argument—the premise that one has a duty to prevent harm to others when one can do so without violating anyone’s rights, and without bearing an unreasonable cost—is false. And second, I present an independent argument (one originally offered by Kamm (2007)) for the permissibility of not turning the trolley in the Trolley Scenario.

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2021   Moral Conscientiousness and the Subjectivism/Objectivism Debate about Moral Wrongness Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics

The Subjectivism/Objectivism debate is a debate about the facts the moral status an action’s moral status is grounded in. Subjectivists maintain that an action’s moral status is grounded in the subjective circumstances of the agent at the time of its performance. Objectivists deny this. This chapter defends the Objectivist view against a recent argument against it by championing a picture of moral conscientiousness which is at odds with a central premise of that argument. The picture of moral conscientiousness defended is one that crucially sees the morally conscientious person’s concern not to act wrongly as degreed and sensitive to the degrees of wrongness of the options facing the morally conscientious agent. After motivating this particular conception of moral conscientiousness and defending Objectivism against the argument against it, the chapter further develops the Objectivist picture of the moral status of actions and explains the Objectivist’s conception of the relation between moral wrongness and what a morally conscientious person ought to do in her choice situation.

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2021   Subjective versus Objective Moral Wrongness Cambridge University Press

Presently, there is a debate between Subjectivists and Objectivists about moral wrongness. Subjectivism is the view that the moral status of our actions, whether they are morally wrong or not, is grounded in our subjective circumstances – either our beliefs about, or our evidence concerning, the world around us. Objectivism, on the other hand, is the view that the moral status of our actions is grounded in our objective circumstances – all those facts other than those which comprise our subjective circumstances. A third view, Ecumenism, has it that the moral status of our actions is grounded both in our subjective and our objective circumstances. After outlining and evaluating the various arguments both against Subjectivism and against Objectivism, this Element offers a tentative defense of Objectivism about moral wrongness.

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2021   Two Arguments for Objectivism about Moral Permissibility Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Is what we’re morally permitted to do grounded in our subjective situation? Subjectivists maintain that it is. Objectivists deny this. I shall offer two arguments for Objectivism about moral permissibility.

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2021   Deontological Decision Theory and Lesser-Evil Options (with Seth Lazar) Synthese

Normative ethical theories owe us an account of how to evaluate decisions under risk and uncertainty. Deontologists seem at a disadvantage here: our best decision theories seem tailor-made for consequentialism. For example, decision theory enjoins us to always perform our best option; deontology is more permissive. In this paper, we discuss and defend the idea that, when some pro-tanto wrongful act is all-things considered permissible, because it is a ‘lesser evil’, it is often merely permissible, by the lights of deontology. We show that this raises new problems for deontological decision theory, and we show that to resolve them, we need to take a more innovative approach to morally evaluating decision-making under risk and uncertainty.

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2020   'Secondary Permissibility' and the Ethics of Harming Journal of Moral Philosophy

There is a moral phenomenon of “Secondary Permissibility” in which an otherwise morally impermissible option is made morally permissible by the presence of another option. In this paper I explain how this phenomenon works and argue that understanding how it works suggests a new model for the structure of the ethics of harming.

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2020   Subjectivism and Objectivism about Moral Rightness/Wrongness Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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2020   Avoidable Harm Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

What a person can do is often thought to be crucially relevant to the all-things-considered moral obligations she has. For instance, it is often thought that a person can be morally obliged to do something only if she can do that thing. But what people are able to do is relevant to our moral obligations in ways other than that captured by this much-vaunted ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’ principle. In particular, whether a person is able to avoid suffering a harm is also crucially relevant to agents’ moral obligations in certain scenarios. In this paper I shall argue that a notion of avoidable harm is morally relevant to an agent’s moral obligations in a number of distinct places in moral theory. I’ll also argue that the notion of avoidable harm at play in each of these places is the very same notion. I’ll do this by showing that the morally relevant notion of avoidable harm is one with a number of particular features and that these features are necessary for it to play the role that it does in each of the places in moral theory in which it does.

            My goal is not merely to explicate the morally relevant notion of avoidable harm, but to exploit it. I hope to show that an investigation into the nature of morally relevant avoidable harm can shed light on other morally relevant concepts. In particular, it can help us to better understand both the notion of ability relevant to moral permissibility and moral permissibility itself. As I shall endeavor to show, appreciation of the nature of the morally relevant notion of avoidable harm will motivate the moral relevance of a particular conception of cross-temporal ability over that of a popular rival as well as provide indirect support for both Objectivism and Possibilism about moral permissibility.

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2019   An Argument for Objective Possibilism Ergo

Two debates in normative ethics are the Subjectivism/Objectivism debate and the Actualism/Possibilism debate. Both have settled into rather intractable stalemates. My goal is to break through these stalemates and establish that the correct moral theory must be an Objective Possibilist one. I first argue that no Subjective Possibilism is plausible. I then argue that Actualism cannot adequately accommodate the intuitive moral data in cases of permissible beneficial sacrifice—cases in which it is permissible to harm some in order to prevent harm from befalling others. Insofar as Actualism and Subjective Possibilism are both false, some version of Objective Possibilism must be true.

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2018   Sartorio on Omissions and Responsibility for Outcomes Teorema

In Causation and Free Will, Carolina Sartorio presents and defends a compatibilist account of free will. In what follows I consider a wrinkle for her theory and suggest a couple different ways of ironing it out.

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2017   Thomson's Trolley Problem Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy

No one has done more over the past four decades to draw attention to the importance of, and attempt to solve, a particularly vexing problem in ethics—the Trolley Problem—than Judith Jarvis Thomson. Though the problem is originally due to Philippa Foot (“The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”), Thomson showed how Foot’s simple solution would not do and offered some solutions of her own. No solution is uncontroversial and the problem remains a thorn in the side of non-consequentialist moral theory. Recently, however, Thomson has changed her mind about the problem. She no longer thinks she was right to reject Foot’s solution to it. I argue that, though illuminating, Thomson’s current take on the Trolley Problem is mistaken. I end with a solution to the problem that I find promising.

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2017   The Numbers Count Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

Numbers Skeptics deny that when faced with a choice between saving some innocent people from

harm and saving a larger number of different, though equally innocent, people from suffering a

similar harmyou ought to save the larger number. In this article, I aimto put pressure on Numbers

Skepticism.

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2017   The Epistemic Condition on Moral Blameworthiness: A Theoretical Epiphenomenon in Robichaud, P. and Wieland, J. W. (eds.) Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition

It is often said that there are two main necessary conditions on a person’s being morally blameworthy for something: a metaphysical condition and an epistemic condition. The metaphysical condition requires that the person in question bear some relation of control over that for which she is blameworthy and the epistemic condition requires that she stand in some epistemic relation to it. I’m skeptical of both conditions. In this essay I focus on the epistemic condition. The epistemic condition, I argue, is a theoretical epiphenomenon: for those f-ings for which one is morally blameworthy, most fundamentally, there is no particular epistemic relation one must stand in to one’s f-ing for one to be morally blameworthy for it. The thought that there is an epistemic condition on moral blameworthiness is a consequence of a failure to appreciate that what people are most fundamentally morally blameworthy for are not their actions or even the consequences of their actions. Rather, what people are most fundamentally morally blameworthy for are their attitudes to and mental bearing toward those things of intrinsic value around them. Once this is recognized, the epistemic condition simply falls away.

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2014   A Sketch of a Theory of Moral Blameworthiness Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

In this paper I sketch an account of moral blame and blameworthiness. I begin by clarifying what I take blame to be and explaining how blameworthiness is to be analyzed in terms of it. I then consider different accounts of the conditions of blameworthiness and, in the end, settle on one according to which a person is blameworthy for phi-ing just in case, in phi-ing, she violates one of a particular class of moral requirements governing the attitudes we bear, and our mental orientation, toward people and other objects of significant moral worth. These requirements embody the moral stricture that we accord to these others a sufficient level of respect, one that their moral worth demands. This is a familiar theme which has its roots in P. F. Strawson’s pioneering views on moral responsibility. My development of it leads me to the conclusion that acting wrongly is not a condition of blameworthiness: violating a moral requirement to perform, or refrain from performing, an action is neither necessary nor sufficient for being blameworthy. All we are ever blameworthy for, I will argue, are certain aspects of our mental bearing toward others. We can be said to be blameworthy for our actions only derivatively, in the sense that those actions are the natural manifestations of the things for which we are strictly speaking blameworthy.

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2011   'Ought' and Ability Philosophical Review

A principle that many have found attractive is one that goes by the name “'Ought' Implies 'Can'.” According to this principle, one morally ought to do something only if one can do it. This essay has two goals: to show that the principle is false and to undermine the motivations that have been offered for it. Toward the end, a proposal about moral obligation according to which something like a restricted version of 'Ought' Implies 'Can' is true is floated. Though no full-fledged argument for this proposal is offered, that it fits with a rather natural and intuitive picture of the structure of morality and seems to explain certain salient features of the debate over whether the principle is true, goes some way toward recommending it.

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2011   Fischer on Blameworthiness and 'Ought' Implies 'Can' Social Theory and Practice

John Martin Fischer has argued that Frankfurt scenarios can be employed to undermine the deontic principle “Ought” Implies “Can.” In this paper I critically evaluate Fischer’s arguments.

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2010   In Defense of Objectivism about Moral Obligation Ethics

There is a debate in normative ethics about whether or not our moral obligations depend solely on either our evidence concerning, or our beliefs about, the world. Subjectivists maintain that they do and objectivists maintain that they do not. I shall offer some arguments in support of objectivism and respond to the strongest argument for subjectivism. I shall also briefly consider the significance of my discussion to the debate over whether one’s future voluntary actions are relevant to one’s current moral obligations.

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2010   Against the Mind Argument Philosophical Studies

The Mind Argument is an argument for the incompatibility of indeterminism and anyone’s having a choice about anything that happens. Peter van Inwagen rejects the Mind Argument not because he is able to point out the flaw in it, but because he accepts both that determinism is incompatible with anyone’s having a choice about anything that happens and that it is possible for someone to have a choice about something that happens. In this paper I first diagnose and clear up a confusion in recent discussions of the Mind Argument and then go on to show why it is a bad argument. 

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2008   The Standard Argument for Blame Incompatibilism Noûs

Blame Incompatibilism is the thesis that if determinism is true, no one is blameworthy for anything. Recently, this once-unfashionable thesis has undergone a resurgence. This tide needs stemming. In this paper I argue that the standard argument for Blame Incompatibilism is unsound.

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2008   A Defense of Local Miracle Compatibilism Philosophical Studies

David Lewis has offered a reply to the standard argument for the claim that the truth of determinism is incompatible with anyone’s being able to do otherwise than she in fact does. Helen Beebee has argued that Lewis’s compatibilist strategy is untenable. In this paper I show that one recent attempt to defend Lewis’s view against this argument fails and then go on to offer my own defense of Lewis’s view.

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2008   Warfield on Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom Faith and Philosophy 

Warfield (1997, 2000) argues that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible. He assumes for conditional proof that there is a necessarily existent omniscient being. He also assumes that it is possible for there to be a person who both does something and could have avoided doing it. As sup- port for this latter premise he points to the fact that nearly every participant to the debate accepts the falsity of logical fatalism. Appealing to this consen- sus, however, renders the argument question-begging, for that consensus has emerged only against the backdrop of an assumption that there is no neces- sarily existent omniscient being.