Below are abstracts of my papers and book chapters.
24. Political Liberalism and Structural Gender Injustice, A Theory of Justice in the 21st Century, Micah Schartzman, Lori Watson and Blain Neufeld, eds., (Oxford: Oxford University Press) forthcoming.
This paper critically assesses two views of how a political liberal society governed by Rawlsian principles can avoid structural gender injustice—“the ethos view” and the “equal citizenship view”—and shows that the second is the stronger of the two. The ethos view argues that structural gender justice can be achieved in a Rawlsian political liberal society if (among other things) there exists an ethos of justice that encourages people to make gender egalitarian choices. The equal citizenship view argues that certain types of structural gender injustice hamper women’s equal citizenship, from which it follows that a political liberal state, which, as such, demands equal citizenship, must use its coercive power to diminish those injustices. The first approach, I argue, is either incompatible with Rawls’s social ontology or, if not, fails to recognize reasonable pluralism. The second approach, I maintain, 1) may be ineffective in eradicating structural gender injustice and 2) has implications for citizenship education that are in tension with the political liberal ideal of state neutrality. These concerns, however, are not decisive: It remains to be seen whether the equal citizenship approach’s untested proposals can be effective. Moreover, the tension with state neutrality is not necessarily a defect, for it points to a deeper tension between two of political liberalism’s main principles—equal citizenship and state neutrality—that must be sorted out by political liberals.
23. Varieties of Gaslighting, Gaslighting: Philosophical Approaches, Kelly Oliver, Hana Kiri Gunn, and Holly Longair, eds., (New York: SUNY Press, 2025): 213-229.
This essay defends an account of gaslighting as constituted by the following: 1) the target of the gaslighting T holds a view V, 2) T's holding V is at least minimally justified, 3) the gaslighter G denies V and tries to get T to adopt his competing not even minimally justified view, typically ~V, 4) G does this by stating or implying that T holds V due to a personal defect that prevents T from seeing the truth, 5) G is not even minimally justified in believing that T's holding V is explained by that non-truth-conducive defect. I arrive at this characterization by examining four paradigm cases of gaslighting and determining their shared features. I rebut a possible counter example to my proposal and show that my approach captures two recent accounts of structural gaslighting.
22. Structural Injustice, Equality of Opportunity and the Basic Structure, Handbook of Equality of Opportunity, Mitja Sardoč, ed., (New York: Springer Press, 2023): 635-652.
This chapter addresses a criticism of John Rawls stating that his theory cannot adequately address structural forms of injustice implicated in inequality of opportunity. It argues that Rawls’s can indeed theorize several of these types of structural injustice. First, it can preclude structural class injustice, including inequality of opportunity between socio-economic classes caused by economic structures. Second, it can address injustice in the division of labor through the principle of fair equality of opportunity. Third it can perhaps address injustice in the internal structure of private corporations, sanctioning democratic forms of organization that increase people’s opportunities to hold jobs with decision-making responsibility. It cannot, however, address nondemocratically organized religious institutions, as that would conflict with its commitment to freedom of conscience. Fourth, it can, on one interpretation, rely on the principle of fair equality of opportunity to indirectly oppose unjust social standards that diminish the opportunities of members of certain groups by portraying them as inferior.
21. Misogyny, “Himpathy,” and Sexual Harassment on Campus, Academic Ethics Today: Problems, Policies and Prospects for University Life, Steven Cahn, ed., (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022): 71-80.
This essay addresses the issue of sexual harassment in education on two fronts. First, I outline and defend an account of sexual harassment. Second, I present a critique of the deliberate indifference standard—the liability standard applied in Title IX lawsuits. My view treats sexual harassment as a form of misogyny understood as a set of hostile social forces frequently experienced by women. Its advantage is that it explains, unlike a well-known alternative view, both sexualized and nonsexualized sexual harassment and sexual harassment in both work and educational settings. The deliberate indifference standard states that an educational institution receiving federal funds is liable for sexual harassment only if an official with the authority to take corrective measures was given actual notice of the harassment and acted with deliberate indifference. My objection to this standard is that it institutionalizes a cultural phenomenon called “himpathy,” a close relative of misogyny. Where misogyny consists of hostility directed toward guiltless women, himpathy consists of sympathy directed toward guilty men—specifically, men who are guilty of violence against women. The deliberate indifference standard codifies himpathy insofar as it embodies two of its main features: the downplaying of perpetrators’ accountability and the erasure of victims’ pain.
20. Gaslighting, Self-Respect and the Kingdom of Ends, Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspectives and Practical Applications, Adam Cureton and Jan-Willem van der Rijt, eds., (New York: Routledge, 2022): 266-282.
This chapter assesses gaslighting from a broadly Kantian viewpoint, arguing, first, that gaslighting is, under certain circumstances, apt to damage targets’ capacity for moral agency and their self-respect. These injuries, I maintain, constitute pernicious obstacles to achieving the Kantian goal of a kingdom of ends. To make my case, I first present the account of gaslighting on which I rely. Second, I identify a certain type of proposition that gaslighters often deny, namely, persons’ credible reports that another’s action toward them was harmful or wrong. Third, I explain how such denials are apt to damage persons’ capacities for moral judgment and their self-respect. Finally, I explain why causing this damage prevents the establishment of a kingdom of ends on earth.
19. Moral Desert, Rawls’s Justice as Fairness, and the Gendered Division of Labor, Caring for Liberalism, Amy Baehr and Asha Bhandary, eds., (New York: Routledge, 2021): 168-186.
My main objective in this article is to argue that there is no place for an institutionalized gendered division of labor in Rawls’s theory of justice. The basic structure of society may not be arranged so that it induces men to do public work and women to do domestic caring work. This is because such an arrangement, insofar as it is founded upon a doctrine of prescriptive natural sex differences, invokes an ideal of sex-specific moral desert. My case depends upon an interpretation of Rawls’s remarks about moral desert that challenges the received view. Outlining that is my second objective. The third is to describe what the basic structure might look like in the absence of an institutionalized gendered division of labor and why such an arrangement is demanded by what Rawls calls a “property owning democracy”.
18. Luck, Nature and Institutions, Moral Philosophy and Politics, 8, 2 (2021): 235-260.
In addition to having an institutional site or scope, a theory of distributive justice might also have an institutional ‘reach’ or currency. It has the first when it applies to only social (and not natural) phenomena. It has the second when it distributes only socially produced (and not naturally occurring) goods. One objection to luck egalitarianism is that it has absurd implications. In response, Tan has defended a luck egalitarian account that has a strictly institutional reach. I argue, first, that Tan’s view contains two fatal ambiguities and, second, that, to be sound, it requires an institutional currency. This second argument implies that virtually all extant luck egalitarian currencies are incompatible with his approach. I argue, third, that the alleged absurd implications often have little to do with the extent of luck
egalitarianism’s reach.
17. Why Luck Egalitarianism Fails in Condemning Oppression, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 6, 4 (2020): 1-17.
Luck egalitarianism has been criticized for 1) condoning some cases of oppression and 2) condemning others for the wrong reason—namely, that the victims were not responsible for their oppression. Oppression is unjust, however, the criticism says, regardless of whether victims are responsible for it, simply because it is contrary to the equal moral standing of persons. I argue that four luck egalitarian responses to this critique are inadequate. Two address only the first part of the objection and do so in a way that risks making luck egalitarianism inconsistent. A third severely dilutes the luck egalitarian doctrine. A fourth manages to denounce some instances of oppression for the right reason, but at the same time permits other instances of oppression and condemns yet others for the wrong reason.
16. Political Liberalism and Male Supremacy, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 37, 5 (2020): 873-879.
In Equal Citizenship and Public Reason, Watson and Hartley dispute the claim that Rawls’s doctrine of political liberalism must tolerate gender hierarchy because it counts conservative and orthodox religions as reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I argue that their defense in fact contains two arguments, both of which fail. The first, which I call the ‘Deliberative Equality Argument’, fails because it does not establish conclusively that political liberalism’s demand for equal citizenship forbids social practices of domination, as the authors contend. The second, which I call the ‘Equal Liberties Argument’, fails because it supports a particular version of political liberalism and not the doctrine itself.
15. Gaslighting, Misogyny and Psychological Oppression, The Monist, 102, 2 (2019): 221-235.
This paper develops a notion of manipulative gaslighting, which is designed to capture something not captured by epistemic gaslighting, namely the intent to undermine women by denying their testimony about harms done to them by men. Manipulative gaslighting, I propose, consists in getting someone to doubt her testimony by challenging its credibility using two tactics: “sidestepping” (dodging evidence that supports her testimony) and “displacing” (attributing to her cognitive or characterological defects). I explain how manipulative gaslighting is distinct from (mere) reasonable disagreement, with which it is sometimes confused. I also argue for three further claims: that manipulative gaslighting is a method of enacting misogyny, that it is often a collective phenomenon, and, as collective, qualifies as a mode of psychological oppression.
14. The Presumption of Equality, Law, Ethics and Philosophy 6 (2018): 7-27.
Many distributive egalitarians do not endorse strict equality of goods. Rather, they treat an equal division as having a special status such that departures from equality must be justified. They claim, then, that an equal division is “presumptively” just. Though the idea that equality is presumptively just and that departures from it may be just has intuitive appeal, making a case for this idea proves difficult. I argue, first, that extant “presumption arguments” are unsound. Second, I distill two general philosophical morals: luck egalitarians have not adequately defended the presumption of equality and they face serious obstacles in doing so; Rawls has defended it, but only indirectly via the contract apparatus. This approach narrows the presumption’s appeal. Third, I consider and reject two alternative ways of understanding the presumption of equality that might avoid the problems revealed by my examination of extant views. The first appeals to the idea of value pluralism. The second treats the presumption as a view about the burden of proof. I conclude, ultimately, that it is misleading to think of distributive egalitarianism as typically having the form of a presumption argument.
13. Luck, Opportunity and Disability, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 16, 3 (2013): 383-402.
This paper argues that luck egalitarianism, especially in the guise of equality of opportunity for welfare, is in tension with the ideal of fair equality of opportunity in three ways. First, equal opportunity for welfare is compatible with a caste system in employment that is inconsistent with open competition for positions. Second, luck egalitarianism does not support hiring on the basis of qualifications. Third, amending luck egalitarianism to repair this problem requires abandoning fair access to qualifications. Insofar as luck egalitarianism cannot support fair equality of opportunity, it cannot do justice to the claims of the disabled. Indeed, in the absence of fair equality of opportunity, disabled people are likely to be marginalized.
12. There’s Something About Marla: Fight Club and the Engendering of Self-Respect, Fight Club, Thomas E. Wartenberg, ed., (New York: Routledge, 2012): 51-77.
This paper offers an interpretation of Fight Club that focuses upon the character of Marla (Helena Bonham Carter). I begin with the assumption that both the narrator (Edward Norton) and Marla suffer from diminished self-respect and are seeking a means for reclaiming a sense of worth. I argue that the only option for Marla, within the terms of the film’s logic, is to define her worth derivatively, by association with the narrator. Fight Club, then, despite its somewhat self-effacing attitude about the rejuvenation of masculinity that it portrays, reinforces a familiar patriarchal story: men’s sense of worth lies in their joint world-making activities. Women’s sense of worth lies in their attachment to individual men who undertake these activities.
11. Rawlsian Self-Respect, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 2, Mark Timmons, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 238-261.
John Rawls appeals to the good of self-respect to justify many features of “justice as fairness”—the highly influential account of distributive justice presented in A Theory of Justice. Most who have considered the role of self-respect in Rawls’s theory have agreed that Rawls’s argument rests upon an irreparable equivocation between two different ideals of self-respect. In the face of this critical consensus, I attempt to resurrect Rawls’s approach. I show first that Rawls relies upon an unambiguous notion of self-respect, though he sometimes is unclear as to whether this notion has merely instrumental or also intrinsic value. I show, second, that Rawls’s main objective in arguing that justice as fairness supports citizens’ self-respect is not, as many have thought, to show that his principles support citizens’ self-respect generally, but to show that his principles counter the effects of the market on lower class citizens’ sense of worth. This discussion establishes that Rawls, in the end, sees self-respect primarily as an intrinsic good.
10. Abstraction and Justification in Moral Theory, Hypatia 24, 4 (Fall 2010): 825-833.
Ethicists of care have objected to traditional moral philosophy’s reliance upon abstract universal principles. They claim that the use of abstraction renders traditional theories incapable of capturing morally relevant, particular features of situations. I argue that this objection sometimes conflates two levels of moral thinking: the level of justification and the level of deliberation. Specifically, I claim that abstraction, or attention to context, at the level of justification does not entail, as some critics seem to think, a commitment to abstraction, or attention to context, at the level of deliberation. It follows that critics who reject a theory’s use of abstraction at the level of justification have not shown that the theory recommends abstraction at the level of deliberation and that it therefore compels the deliberating agent to overlook morally salient details.
9. Respecting Human Dignity: Contract Vs. Capabilities, Metaphilosophy 40, 3-4 (July 2009): 366-381.
There appears to be a tension between two commitments in liberalism. The first is that citizens, as rational agents possessing dignity, are owed a justification for principles of justice. The second is that members of society who do not meet the requirements of rational agency are owed justice. These notions conflict because the first commitment is often expressed through the device of the social contract, which seems to confine the scope of justice to rational agents. So, contractarianism seems to ignore the justice claims of the severely cognitively impaired. To solve this problem, Martha Nussbaum proposes the capabilities approach. The justifiability condition, on this approach, is met by the idea of overlapping consensus. This essay argues that overlapping consensus cannot meet liberalism’s justifiability condition, nor is it more inclusive of the cognitively impaired. Therefore, we have reason to retain the contract device and look for another way to ensure that liberalism respects the justice claims of all.
8. Contractarianism and Cooperation, Politics, Philosophy and Economics 8, 1 (February 2009): 73-99.
7. How to Include the Severely Disabled in a Contractarian Theory of Justice, Journal of Political Philosophy 15, 2 (June 2007): 125-147.
6. Fundamental Rights and the Right to Bear Arms, Criminal Justice Ethics 20, 1 (Winter/Spring 2001): 25-Reprinted in Mary Alice Trent-Williams, ed., Ethics in the 21st Century Workplace (Pearson Longman, 2004).
5. Hypothetical Consent and Justification, The Journal of Philosophy 97, 6 (June 2000): 313-334.
4. Pornography, Verbal Acts and Viewpoint Discrimination,” Public Affairs Quarterly 12, 4 (October 1998): 429-445.
3. Decision Procedures, Standards of Rightness and Impartiality, Noûs 31, 4 (December 1997): 478-495.
2. Is Pornography an Action? The Causal Vs. the Conceptual View of Pornography’s Harm, Social Theory and Practice 23, 2 (Summer 1997): 277-306.
1. The Rationality of Valuing Oneself: A Critique of Kant on Self-Respect, Journal of the History of Philosophy 35, 1 (Jan. 1997): 65-82.