I have research interests in moral philosophy, broadly construed.

Ethical Theory

I was always moved by Consequentialism’s Compelling Idea – roughly, the idea that it is always permissible to bring about the best available outcome. This idea is hard to resist. But once you accept it, it’s hard to avoid accepting other less intuitive commitments. I ended up as a utilitarian. 

I have written about consequentialism and adjacent topics in a series of papers coauthored with Andrew T. Forcehimes. A paper in Australasian Journal of Philosophy argues against agent-relative consequentialism; one in Philosophia defends actualism; one in Journal of the American Philosophical Association defends the mental state theory of well-being against the Experience Machine objection; one in Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy defends objective act consequentialism from a challenge and critiques an alternative; one in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice argues that there are no distinctively moral reasons; one, finally, in Journal of Applied Philosophy, argues against agglomeration in an account of the duty of beneficence.

I also have a coauthored book out in November 2019 with Hackett titled Thinking Through Utilitarianism: A Guide to Contemporary Arguments. We divide the theory into 9 principles - 5 normative and 4 evaluative - and work through the best contemporary arguments for each. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

Applied Ethics 

Kidney Markets

We have literally almost twice as many kidneys as we need. Nearly everyone has an extra they wouldn’t notice missing. That’s a miracle of nature. Skilled doctors can safely transplant these otherwise useless kidneys into the bodies of those who need them. That’s a miracle of medicine. So, why do so many people die each year for want of a functioning kidney? 

Federal law prohibits the exchange of human organs for ‘valuable consideration’. Kidney sales are illegal. You are permitted to save a life if you freely give up your spare. But you are not permitted to save a life if you require compensation. This has resulted in a persistent shortage of transplantable kidneys and much avoidable suffering. 

The law should change. It’s morally imperative that we introduce a regulated kidney market. Here’s a sketch of a promising proposal: 

The means by which kidneys are allocated to transplant recipients, according to medical need, not ability to pay, would not change. The market would be monopsonistic, with the government as the sole buyer. The payment would be high. Evidence suggests $100,000 would still save money as compared to dialysis under the status quo. People from a range of economic strata will find this option attractive. The competition to vend will be fierce. Only the healthiest candidates will have a chance. Relative to the population, kidney sales will be extremely uncommon. Just like donors, vendors will give informed consent, and receive expert treatment and follow-up medical care. 

Of course transplant recipients and vendors will benefit. But there’s another class of market beneficiaries: would-be donors. Their family member in need of a transplant gets a kidney from a healthy vendor. We know this outcome is extremely valuable to these people as they were prepared to undergo nephrectomy to bring it about.   

I’ve argued in a series of papers that given the tremendous welfare benefits to be had and the lack of any compelling countervailing reasons, we must permit regulated kidney sales.  

My work on this topic appears in Public Affairs Quarterly, Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Bioethics, Think, and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.  

The Moral Limits of the Market

My theoretical and practical interests come together in a third research project. I’m working on a theory of the market’s moral limits. Existing theories, I have argued in Journal of the American Philosophical Association, proceed on a mistake. They treat specific markets, sets of transactions individuated by the good or service exchanged, as assessable. So, for example, if markets in women’s sexual labor are morally objectionable this is because those transactions have some objectionable property. I show that this assessment does not capture what’s normatively relevant about a market.