Currently, I have three articles under review for publication.
"Death and Interpersonal Welfare Aggregation"
This paper asks, How should we account for an individual’s death in the evaluation of a population? First, I show that this question matters for the evaluations made by consequentialist theories of distributive justice. Then, I give a clear and principled account for how one could answer that question. My strategy is to bring together the value-theoretic concept of the bearers of value and a set of views in the metaphysics of time. The intersections here give some preliminary results; then, I show how the metaphysician’s truthmaking problem and the value theorist’s ‘good for’ concept can be used to derive a complete set of positions on this issue. I conclude by applying these positions to the problem of death and welfare aggregation and making some tentative remarks in favor of the principle I name Persistence, which holds that both an individual and her welfare value persist after her death.
"Pairwise Comparison for Interpersonal Welfare Aggregation"
This article defends the aggregative absolutism of an absolute, welfarist prioritarianism. This view combines a Rawlsian Leximin distributive rule with a welfarist consequentialism and, as such, is akin to utilitarianism and various egalitarianisms, relative prioritarianisms, and mixed consequentialist views. The argument unfolds in two major steps. In the first, I search for an algorithm for interpersonal welfare aggregation, that is, a guide to ranking states of affairs given the welfare values of their various members. I survey several utilitarian proposals: momentary unit summing and whole-life summing with lives considered in parallel, in sequence, and at random. These are rejected because they each entail some distortion of the way that value exists in the world. I derive three principles that an evaluative algorithm must respect and propose that there is already a fitting candidate on the market: pairwise comparison. In the second major step of the argument, I adapt pairwise comparison to the consequentialist framework and apply it to interpersonal welfare aggregation. The resulting rankings are extensionally equivalent to the rankings of the Leximin rule. I finish by defending an unrestricted application of that rule. Results here include that we ought to save the many over the few in Taurek-style rescue cases and that we ought to let small values (like a single finger) tip the scales even when very great values (like a whole human life) hang in the balance.
"Welfare Aggregation and Value Concepts: An Argument for a Reorientation"
This paper is concerned with the relationships between goods in life, the goodness of a life, and the goodness of states of affairs and with the value concepts that we use to categorize these various goods. I identify a view about the structure of value—“Bento”—that underlies intuitive support for utilitarianism. Then I offer five objections to that view that are grounded in intuitions about individual welfare. Several of these objections concern the distribution of welfare within a life, while others concern extreme highs or lows. Some support alternative intrapersonal aggregative rules rather than utilitarianism’s Summing, but one argues that welfare does not aggregate according to any straightforward accounting principle. Continuing, I argue that these objections, together, warrant a new view of value, the Life-Centric View. On this view, final value is located (only) at the level of an individual life; the standard candidates for final goods—pleasure, achievement, knowledge, etc.—are demoted to contributory goods. Finally, I close with some remarks on the implications of the Life-Centric View for interpersonal aggregation. These include the inaptness of utilitarianism, but they also reflect favorably on prioritarian alternatives.
I also have the following articles in preparation.
"Annie and Non-Ideal Theory"
I describe a perspective on non-ideal, consequentialist moral theory that takes such a theory to be a “theory-for-use.” The central concept of this perspective is “availability,” which narrows the field of possible outcomes according to an agent’s psychology and her circumstances. I illustrate the concept with a thought experiment in which a passenger must try to land an aircraft. I show how availability complicates the distinctions between a criterion of right and a decision procedure and between agent-relative and agent-neutral duties. I also address the possibility of conflicting duties, the relation of availability to other concepts relating to rational choice, and the special moral role that some agents play because of their causal powers. I suggest that availability might be used to answer some objections to consequentialism: specifically, the Divided World thought experiment, but also—though I do not explore these—objections regarding action-guidance, demandingness, and conceptual clarity.
"Implicit Bias: Accounting for Attributability"
It has become common to distinguish two concepts of responsibility: attributability and accountability. A potential application for this distinction is the question of responsibility for harms caused by implicit bias. One suggestion here is to hold individuals accountable for the bad effects of their implicit biases but withhold ascriptions of attributive responsibility for those biases and their resultant behaviors. I argue that this is a mistake: accountability requires attributability. I support this claim with counterexamples and by establishing a moral parallel between being harmed by bias and being held accountable in the absence of attributability. Finally, I argue that we need not give up on accountability for implicit bias. I show how adopting George Sher’s view of responsibility can correct a mistaken idea of what attributability requires. I also show how this view can be combined with research in cognitive science to account for attributability for implicit biases.
My dissertation was defended in 2025.
Welfare Prioritarianism
I defend welfare prioritarianism, a teleological theory of distributive justice that gives absolute priority to the worst-off individuals in a society. The view is inspired by two apparently disparate elements: utilitarianism’s telic consequentialism and Rawls’s Difference Principle. Rawls’s principle implies that a just society is one that does the most for those who have the least. The telic component requires that this distributive rule—or any alternative—be adopted because it brings about the best outcome, where this evaluation is based only on the welfare of individual members of society. So justice is not founded on deontic concepts: fairness, agreement, and the like. Nor is the evaluation determined by the value of “free-floating” goods like equality or fraternity. If utilitarianism’s slogan is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” then welfare prioritarianism’s is “the best for the worst-off.”