publications

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• The Demands of Necessity (Ethics, forthcoming) --- It is widely believed that there is both a "proportionality" and "necessity" constraint on self-defense. You shouldn't kill someone in self-defense who is only trying to pinch you on the arm; that would be disproportionate. But even when an attacker poses a lethal threat, you shouldn't kill them in self-defense if you can just as well stop their attack with less-than-lethal force; killing them would then be unnecessary. This paper develops an explanation, precisification, and unification of the proportionality and necessity constraints. Unjust attackers would be required to bear a certain amount of cost to avert their own attack were they able. This in turn determines what others may do to them: an attacker can only be made to bear as much cost to avert their attack as they would be required to take upon themselves. The proportionality and necessity constraints, I argue, both express this fundamental principle, only at different levels of generality.
   

• Refusing Protection (Philosophy & Public Affairs, forthcoming) --- You're under attack. I offer my protection. You refuse it. It seems that such refusal can sometimes make it wrong for me to protect you. Why? This paper defends an unorthodox answer to this question, and explores the implications for the ethics of humanitarian interventions. By refusing my protection --- I argue --- you remove me from the class of people with respect to whom your attacker is liable, thereby making it so that your attacker is not liable to suffer defensive harm at my hands.

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under review​​​

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• Fixing Aggregation --- Who should we save when we can only save some? Many theorists want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to claim that some, but only some less serious harms can trade off against more serious harms. They want to claim, for example, that there is no number of people we could save from a papercut that would justify letting one person die, but that there is some number of people we could save from losing one leg that would justify letting one person lose both his legs. Standard attempts to deliver this result appeal to differences in degree of harm. I argue that this approach is untenable, and that we'd do better to appeal to difference in kind.

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• The Price of Duty --- A fire fighter causes extensive damage to your property in order to prevent the spread of a nearby forest fire. It is widely believed that state officials should not have to personally pay compensation for such damages caused in the line of duty. This paper explains why state officials enjoy this immunity from compensatory duty, and unpacks the limits of this immunity.

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• Finding the Missing Moorean Infelicity (Discussion Note) --- It's plainly infelicitous to say, "It's raining, but I don't believe it's raining." Some metaethicists have argued that if Metaethical Expressivism is true, then we should get a similar infelicity when we conjoin moral statements with the denial of being in some non-cognitive state (for example: "Murder is wrong but I don't disapprove of murder"). But this isn't plainly infelicitous. Enter Nils Franzen, who has argued that the non-cognitive state Expressivism needs is the state picked out by the 'finds that...' locution. This note argues that Franzen's argument does not succeed.

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under construction

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• "Mistaken Defense and Liability" --- In the real world, defensive harm is often employed under conditions of limited or false information. There are "false positives": I think you're trying to kill me, but you're really not (perhaps I've been misled by false testimony, or you're bluffing, or your gun happens to be jammed). There are also "false negatives": I think you're merely reaching for your handkerchief when you're really reaching for a knife. I argue that no extant theory of defensive morality can accommodate a certain set of cases involving various false positives and false negatives --- before developing a theory that can.

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• "Fitting Punishment" --- It is often said that "the punishment should fit the crime". Should it? No, I argue. Instead, the punishment should fit the obligations the offender incurs by way of his crime. This paper defends and develops this alternative conception of "fitting punishment".

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• "The Justifier Pays Principle" --- Do we ever owe compensation for harms we neither caused nor are responsible for? Many theorists have thought that we do, on the grounds that a person may owe compensation for some harm simply by benefitting from that harm. I agree that beneficiaries sometimes owe compensation. But this isn't because they receive benefit. Rather, it is typically because it is their interests that justify that harm. We should reject the so-called "Beneficiary Pays Principle" and endorse what I call the "Justifier Pays Principle".

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• "When Border Defense is Indefensible" (co-authored with Thomas Crisp) --- Nations control their borders but such means as fences, detention, deportation, and threats of violence. Many of these practices impose harm: would-be migrants are harmed in an alleged effort to protect the interests of the "authorized" residents of receiving nations. Such treatment calls out for justification. The most plausible justifications (we claim) are those that draw parallels with cases of ordinary self-defense. Applying our best theories of the moral limits of defensive harm to the case of immigration, we develop a sorting between immigration restrictions that wrong would-be migrants and those that don't.

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• "Liability for Autonomous Vehicles" (co-authored with Frank Hong) --- Sometimes it is obvious who should cover the costs of damages caused by autonomous vehicles. If the crash is the result of negligence on the part of the manufacturer, she should pay. And if the crash is the result of negligence on the part of the user, he should pay. But what if the crash is not the product of negligence on anyone's part -- should the costs fall on the manufacturer or the user? Neither, we argue. Assuming that road safety is improved by the proliferation of autonomous vehicles, we argue that the associated non-negligent costs should be shared by the entire pool of road users. This is because distributive justice requires that people share the costs of cooperative projects they are required to participate in, and road users are required to participate in the project of road safety.

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