University of Southampton

Faculty Member, Philosophy

Lecturer in Philosophy

Thesis Title: Doing and Allowing; Acting and Omitting

About

After finishing my PhD in August 2008, I spent two years at the University of Sheffield as a temporary lecturer.  I joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Southampton as a Lecturer in Philosophy in September 2010.  I will be a Visiting Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard University from October to December 2011.


I am currently working on a monograph on doing and allowing harm, particularly the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In October 2011, I began a six month Early Career Research Fellowship supported by the Mind Association to work on two final sections of this monograph.

My main research explores the nature and moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing and the distinction between acting and omitting.  These distinctions seem to play a fundamental role in common moral practice.  However, arguments need to be given to prove that the distinctions are indeed morally significant.  I give an analysis of the act/omission distinction based on Jonathan Bennett’s distinction between positive and negative facts about an agent’s conduct.  My analysis of the doing/allowing distinction is a development of Philippa Foot’s idea that an agent who does harm is part of the sequence leading to harm. 

I then defend the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing using the notion of imposition.  Drawing on some comments made by Frances Kamm on the distinction between doing and allowing, I argue that an agent who does harm imposes upon the victim, but an agent who allows harm may not impose upon the victim.  Additionally, an agent who is forbidden from allowing harm is imposed upon by the victim, whereas an agent who is forbidden from allowing harm may not be imposed upon.  Thus a principle which forbids doing harm but permits allowing harm protects person from harmful imposition.  I argue that this protection against imposition is necessary if anything is to belong to us - even our own bodies.  The final step is to show that our bodies do belong to us.

During my research fellowship, I will move upwards (exploring whether my arguments can support and be supported by general ethical theories) and downwards (exploring the implications in applied ethics, in particular for our obligations to respond to global poverty). 

I have also been working on climate change, harm to future individuals and the Non-Identity Problem.  As Derek Parfit pointed out, our current actions affect who comes to exist. The people who suffer the effects of pollution would not have existed if we had not polluted. We thus do not make these future individuals worse off by polluting.  This may seem to imply that we do not harm any future individual by polluting. I focus on responses to the Non-Identity that claim that we can harm an individual in a morally relevant sense even if we do not make them worse off.  I argue that this strategy provides a partial solution to the Non-Identity Problem.  However, it is easier to justify harming an individual if we do not make that individual worse off.  Thus our harm-based reasons to avoid polluting may be less strong than they originally appeared.  I consider the ramifications of the Non-Identity Problem for our understanding of harm.

I am also continuing to pursue my side interest in the philosophy of sex. I'm working on a co-authored paper exploring the lines we draw between "consummative sex" and "just fooling around", with Brian Weaver. Additionally, in a solo project I consider the norms governing the use of erotic material within monogamous relationships.

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