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Philosophy & Public Affairs 51 (2023), 4
Why is it wrong to engage in manipulation, when it is wrong to do so? Manipulating someone can be wrong not (or not only) because it's manipulative, but because it has other bad effects. I am interested in the first sort of wrong. What is it about wrongful instances of manipulation that makes them…
Philosophy & Public Affairs 51 (2023), 3
Two debates over value are nearly coeval with philosophy itself. One debate is over what is good for its own sake (intrinsically good), the other is over what contributes to an individual's welfare (“what would make this person's life go, for him, as well as possible”). These two debates, over “the…
Philosophy & Public Affairs 51 (2023), 2
Imagine a classroom discussion of Lawrence v. Texas , the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision holding sodomy laws unconstitutional. 1 One student argues that the Court's ruling was correct because a state may not base its criminal laws on bare moral disapproval. Another student picks up on…
Philosophy & Public Affairs 51 (2023), 1
It is a striking fact about us that we care deeply about what could have happened, but didn't. In this paper, I explore the significance of this concern for theorizing about the goodness of a life. To get a feel for the issues that we will be examining, consider the case of Sophie Germain, a French…
Philosophy & Public Affairs 50 (2022), 4
All welfare states distribute many of the costs of children across society at large to different degrees. Policies such as publicly funded parental leave, free or subsidized child-care, and child benefits, distribute some of the costs of raising children between parents and non-parents. Welfare…