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“Participation and Collective Harm” (w/ Jan Willem Wieland), Journal of Moral Philosophy. Forthcoming
Abstract. Many global problems nowadays are collective action problems. It is only because many people act in some way that certain problems arise. But when can one be said to participate in such groups in the first place? As Derek Parfit asked, “When we appeal to what groups together do, whom should we count as members of these groups?” As Julia Nefsky has shown, this problem has proven to be notoriously tricky, and without any adequate solution. We present a solution. The proposed account not only overcomes a number of problems for participation-based views, according to which there is reason not to participate in such groups, but also helps make precise a prominent alternative view, according to which there is reason to help bring about better outcomes.
“Participation and Superfluity” (w/ Jan Willem Wieland), Journal of Moral Philosophy, Vol. 17 (2), pp. 163-187. 2020
Abstract: Why act when the effects of one’s act are negligible? For example, why boycott sweat-shop or animal products if doing so makes no difference for the better? According to recent proposals, one may still have a reason to boycott in order to avoid complicity or participation in harm. Julia Nefsky has argued that accounts of this kind suffer from the so-called “superfluity problem,” basically the question of why agents can be said to participate in harm if they make no difference to it. This paper develops and responds to Nefsky’s challenge.
“Attributionism and Counterfactual Robustness”(w/ Jan Willem Wieland), Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 95 (3), pp. 594-599. 2017
Abstract: In this journal (AJP 2016), Vishnu Sridharan presents a novel objection to attributionism, the view according to which agents are responsible for their conduct when it reflects who they are or what they value. The key to Sridharan's objection is that agents can fulfil all attributionist conditions for responsibility while being under the control of a manipulator. In this paper, we show that Sridharan's objection falls prey to a dilemma—either his manipulator is counterfactually robust, or she is not—and that neither of its horns undermines attributionism.
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Work in Progress
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(under review)...
...in which I note that there is an important normative distinction between collective harm-by-omission cases and mere-failure-to-benefit cases. I suggest that this normative distinction arises due to the presence of requiring reasons in the former cases (and their absence in the latter cases). Moreover, paying attention to the distinction between requiring and other sorts of reasons is necessary to account for (all-things-considered) obligations in collective action contexts. I show how other accounts in the literature fail to make sense of the relevant distinctions, and are less extensionally adequate for it.