Tom Dougherty

I'm a Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an Associate Editor of the journal, Ethics. If you'd like to get in touch, my email is emailtom@unc.edu. My CV is here. My dog's name is Hazel.


My first book, The Scope of Consent, was published in 2021. It investigates what consent is in order to explain which actions are permitted by someone's consent.


My second book, Consent under Duress, entered the production stage in January 2024. It investigates how consent is undermined by different types of duress.


I've recently started a new project on relational morality and wronging. I am also writing essays on being nonjudgmental, welfare, contractualism, and antitrust.


Here is a full list of my publications, along with links to them.

Books


The scope of consent  (penultimate version before copyediting)

Oxford University Press, 2021


Consent under duress, (penultimate version before copyediting)

Oxford University Press, forthcoming


Philosophy articles and chapters


Social scripts and sexual agency

Ergo, forthcoming


Paradoxical proposals and consent

in M. Timmons (ed.) Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics,

Volume 13 (Oxford University Press 2024), pp. 9-30


Social constraints on sexual consent

Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 21 (2022): 393–

414


Morality and institutional detail in the law of torts: reflections on Goldberg's and Zipursky's Recognizing Wrongs, (with J. Frick)

Law and Philosophy, 41 (2022): 1-37


Republicanism, justice, and equality of opportunity

in D. Sobel & S. Wall (eds.) Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, (Oxford University Press 2021), pp. 105-126


Coerced consent with an unknown future

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 103 (2021): 441–461


Sexual consent without passivity

Journal of Tort Law, 14 (2021): 27–43


Why does duress undermine consent?

Nous 55 (2021): 317–333


Sexual misconduct on a scale: gravity, coercion, and consent

Ethics 131 (2021): 319–344


The grounds of the disclosure requirement for informed consent. 

American Journal of Bioethics 21 (2021): 68–70


Informed consent, disclosure, and understanding

Philosophy and Public Affairs 48 (2020): 119–150


Disability as solidarity: political not (only) metaphysical

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2020): 219–224


On Wrongs and Crimes: does consent require only an attempt to communicate?

Criminal Law & Philosophy 43 (2019): 409–423


Consent, abandonment, and communication

Law and Philosophy 38 (2019): 387–405


Affirmative consent and due diligence

Philosophy and Public Affairs 46 (2018): 90–112


Altruism and ambition in the dynamic moral life

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2017): 716–729


The burdens of morality: why act-consequentialism demands too little

Thought 5 (2016): 82–85


Moral indeterminacy, normative powers and convention

Ratio, Special Issue on Ethical Indeterminacy 29 (2016): 448–465


Yes means yes: consent as communication

Philosophy and Public Affairs 43 (2015): 224–253 


Future bias and practical reason

Philosophers' Imprint 15 (2015): 1–16


Expecting the unexpected (with S. Horowitz & P. Sliwa)

Res Philosophica 92 (2015): 301–321      


Vague value

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2014): 352–372


A deluxe money pump

Thought 3 (2014): 21–29


Fickle consent

Philosophical Studies 167 (2014): 25–40


Rational numbers: a non-consequentialist explanation of why you should save the many and not the few

Philosophical Quarterly 63 (2013): 413–427


Sex, lies, and consent

Ethics 123 (2013): 717–744


Aggregation, beneficence and chance

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 7 (2013): 1–19 


No way around consent: a reply to Rubenfeld on rape by deception

Yale Law Journal Forum 123 (2013): 321–334


Agent-neutral deontology

Philosophical Studies 163 (2013): 527–537


On whether to prefer pain to pass

Ethics 121 (2011): 521–537                       


Handbook and encyclopedia chapters


Consent: ethical issues

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online), forthcoming


Enthusiastic consent to sex

The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics, ed. D. Boonin, forthcoming


Deception and consent

The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Consent, eds. A. Mueller & P. Schaber (2018)


Vagueness and indeterminacy in ethics

The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, eds. T. McPherson & D. Plunkett (2018)


Female under-representation articles


Why do female students leave philosophy? The story from Sydney (with S. Baron and K. Miller)

Hypatia 30 (2015): 467–474


Why is there female under-representation among philosophy majors? Evidence of a pre-university effect (with S. Baron & K. Miller)

Ergo 2 (2015): 329–365


Female under-representation among philosophy majors: a map of the hypotheses and a survey of the evidence (with S. Baron & K. Miller)

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 1 (2015): 1–31