Abstract: The right to self-defense has played a major role in objections to gun regulation. Many contend that gun regulations threaten this right. While much philosophical discussion has focused on the relation between guns and this right, less attention has been paid to the argument for the right of self-defense itself. In this article, I examine this argument. Gunrights defenders contend that the right of self-defense is needed to explain why interferences in self-defense are wrong. I propose an alternative explanation for such wrongs, one which does not posit the existence of a self-defense right, and then show how it undermines their claim that there exists a strong presumption against gun regulation. I conclude by articulating the implications of this alternative explanatory account for other rights.
Abstract: In Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It), Elizabeth Anderson argues that most people in the United States and other liberal societies spend their working lives under the kind of autocratic rule we would normally associate with communist dictatorships. They are forced to work in oppressive environments, deprived of many freedoms, and given practically no say over working conditions. Even in their nonworking lives workers are frequently subjected to employer scrutiny and sanction. And the legal framework and economic realities surrounding employment are such that exit is viable for only a small minority. Anderson’s work has generated great interest and, along with it, several criticisms that take exception to her observations, economic assumptions, and conclusions. This paper delineates the various economic claims made against Private Government so as to facilitate further inquiry of these issues.
A paper that argues that nonideal theory faces an internal feasibility paradox.
A paper that, rather than challenging the objection that hypothetical consent cannot ground justified political authority, explores how social contract theory should be modified in light of it.
A paper responding to the claim that the complexity of society and social reform shows that we should abandon ideal theory and pursue non-ideal alternatives in its place.
This paper investigates the implications of the addictiveness of social media use for public health ethics.
This paper responds to the prominent argument that stringent gun regulation can only be justified if the benefits to society far outweigh the costs to gun owners.
Abstract: In my dissertation, I defend the practice of idealization within moral and political philosophy. We idealize when we represent the world and the agents within it as being more perfect than their actual versions. For instance, philosophers have often defended views about what is good, just, and morally right on the grounds that rational or fully informed versions of us would endorse such views. Idealization, they argue, is indispensable because it enables us to step back from our actual, imperfect points of view and consider such questions in a rational and impartial manner. In recent years, many have challenged such use of idealization. They contend that moral and political theories that idealize fail to tell us what morality and justice constitute for actual agents who lack such capacities. I examine four prominent objections to idealization: (1) that idealizing theories fail to be action-guiding; (2) that the ideal worlds they imagine are infeasible; (3) that their recommendation for what is good for us is alienating; and (4) that these theories’ justification for why we should appeal to idealized responses is ad hoc. I argue that there is nothing generally problematic about such idealizations and that once we cast each of these constraints (action-guidingness, feasibility, non-alienation, and adequate motivation) in their proper light, we can see how influential theories that idealize (specifically, ideal theory, and ideal observer theory) can satisfy these constraints. Idealization is unproblematic, in my view, if theories employing it can meet these constraints. By clarifying the role of idealization, my dissertation generates important lessons for how we should pursue the most fundamental questions within moral and political philosophy.