7 found
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  1. Costa, cancer and coronavirus: contractualism as a guide to the ethics of lockdown.Stephen David John & Emma J. Curran - 2022 - Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (9):643-650.
    Lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic involve placing huge burdens on some members of society for the sake of benefiting other members of society. How should we decide when these policies are permissible? Many writers propose we should address this question using cost-benefit analysis, a broadly consequentialist approach. We argue for an alternative non-consequentialist approach, grounded in contractualist moral theorising. The first section sets up key issues in the ethics of lockdown, and sketches the apparent appeal of addressing (...)
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  2. Must We Vaccinate the Most Vulnerable? Efficiency, Priority, and Equality in the Distribution of Vaccines.Emma J. Curran & Stephen D. John - 2022 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 39 (4):682-697.
    In this article, we aim to map out the complexities which characterise debates about the ethics of vaccine distribution, particularly those surrounding the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. In doing so, we distinguish three general principles which might be used to distribute goods and two ambiguities in how one might wish to spell them out. We then argue that we can understand actual debates around the COVID-19 vaccine – including those over prioritising vaccinating the most vulnerable – as reflecting disagreements (...)
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  3. Longtermism and the Complaints of Future People.Emma J. Curran - 2025 - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad, Essays on Longtermism: Present Action for the Distant Future. Oxford University Press.
    A number of philosophers have argued that if you care about how much goodness your actions generate, or how good the state-of-affairs you actions bring about are, then your attention should be directed towards the very far future. But many don’t care about how much goodness their actions generate, nor do they care about things like “states-of-affairs”. Amongst a multitude of things, many people care about how their actions impact individuals. And they also care about the sorts of justifications they (...)
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  4. Impairing the Impairment Argument.Kyle van Oosterum & Emma J. Curran - 2024 - Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (5):335-339.
    Blackshaw and Hendricks have recently developed and defended the impairment argument against abortion, arguing that the immorality of giving a child fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) provides us with reason to believe that abortion is immoral. In this paper, we forward two criticisms of the impairment argument. First, we highlight that, as it currently stands, the argument is very weak and accomplishes very little. Second, we argue that Blackshaw and Hendricks are fundamentally mistaken about what makes giving a child FAS immoral. (...)
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  5. Longtermism and Aggregation.Emma J. Curran - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    Advocates of longtermism point out that interventions which focus on improving the prospects of people in the very far future will, in expectation, bring about an astronomical amount of good (or agent-neutral value). As such, longtermists claim we have compelling moral reason to engage in long-term interventions. In this paper, I show that longtermism is in conflict with plausible deontic scepticism about aggregation. I do so by demonstrating that, from both the ex-ante and ex-post perspectives, longtermist interventions generate extremely weak (...)
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  6. A Simple Tool for Disincentivizing the Worst Pandemic Bioweapons.Emma J. Curran & Nir Eyal - 2024 - In Nathan A. Paxton, Disincentivising Bioweapons. Nuclear Threat Initiative. pp. 167-178.
    This essay proposes a simple way to incentivize states not to develop pathogens with enhanced pandemic potential (PEPPs) as bioweapons: to tip all state actors that all of them stand to lose from developing such highly lethal, highly transmissible bioweapons. Being highly transmissible, a PEPP used as a weapon could easily spread, infecting a state’s own citizens and leaders. Therefore, no state concerned for its own citizens or leaders can afford to use a PEPP weapon, even having developed or acquired (...)
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  7. Doing Less Than Best.Emma J. Curran - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Cambridge
    This thesis is about the moral reasons we have to do less than best. It consists of six chapters. Part I of the thesis proposes, extends, and defends reasons to do less than best. In Chapter One (“The Conditional Obligation”) I outline and reject two recent arguments from Joe Horton and Theron Pummer for the claim that we have a conditional obligation to bring about the most good. In Chapter Two (“Agglomeration and Agent-Relative Costs”) I argue that agent-relative costs can (...)
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