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Papers

All publications are listed alphabetically.  Click 'more' to list all publications, which can be filtered by year and topic. 

To see papers by a specific author, please see the listing on their bio page.

Past papers (2006-2016) are available here.

Featured publication

'Hobbes on the supernatural from The Elements of Law to Leviathan' by Takuya Okada, published in History of European Ideas (online first, 16 July 2019).

Takuya Okada

Hobbes's unusual religious views in his classical work, Leviathan, are often seen as a product of his attempt to reconcile Christianity with his philosophical materialism. Yet given Hobbes's materialistic view in his earlier works too, this explanatory framework alone is not sufficient for grasping distinctive features of Leviathan. This article remedies this lacuna by paying close attention to an understudied aspect of the development of Hobbes's religious theory from The Elements of Law to Leviathan: his treatment of the supernatural and, particularly, of matters of faith known by supernatural revelation as opposed to natural reason. I argue that over time Hobbes developed an epistemological analysis of supernatural revelation and refined his argument about the sense in which matters of faith are supernatural and about the extent to which they are found in the Bible. It was not materialism per se but the more sophisticated analysis of the supernatural in Leviathan that enabled Hobbes to admit the sphere of the supernatural to a much smaller extent than in De Cive and to discuss in detail what he sees as a matter of faith and beyond the scope of philosophy in De Cive.

Authored by Takuya Okada (2014-15 Oxford-Uehiro-St Cross Visiting Student Scholar).

Much of the work on this paper was undertaken during Mr Okada's visit to the Oxford Uehiro Centre.

Recent Publications

  • Responsibility in healthcare across time and agents.

    Brown, RCH, Savulescu, J
    2019
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    Journal article
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    J Med Ethics
    It is unclear whether someone's responsibility for developing a disease or maintaining his or her health should affect what healthcare he or she receives. While this dispute continues, we suggest that, if responsibility is to play a role in healthcare, the concept must be rethought in order to reflect the sense in which many health-related behaviours occur repeatedly over time and are the product of more than one agent. Most philosophical accounts of responsibility are synchronic and individualistic; we indicate here what paying more attention to the diachronic and dyadic aspects of responsibility might involve and what implications this could have for assessments of responsibility for health-related behaviour.
    ethics, health promotion, philosophical ethics, public health ethics, social aspects

  • Responsibility, prudence and health promotion.

    Brown, RCH, Maslen, H, Savulescu, J
    2019
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    Journal article
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    J Public Health (Oxf)
    This article considers the role of responsibility in public health promotion. Efforts to tackle non-communicable diseases which focus on changing individual behaviour and reducing risk factor exposure sometimes invoke individual responsibility for adopting healthy lifestyles. We provide a critical discussion of this tendency. First, we outline some key distinctions in the philosophical literature on responsibility, and indicate how responsibility is incorporated into health promotion policies in the UK. We argue that the use of some forms of responsibility in health promotion is inappropriate. We present an alternative approach to understanding how individuals can 'take responsibility' for their health, based on the concept of prudence (i.e. acting in one's interests). In this discussion, we do not prescribe or proscribe specific health promotion policies. Rather, we encourage public health professionals to consider how underlying assumptions (in this case, relating to responsibility) can shape health promotion policy, and how alternative framings (such as a shift from encouraging individual responsibility to facilitating prudence) may justify different kinds of action, for instance, shaping environments to make healthy behaviours easier, rather than using education as a tool to encourage responsible behaviour.
    prudence and health promotion, responsibility

  • Against Moral Responsibilisation of Health: Prudential Responsibility and Health Promotion.

    Brown, RCH, Maslen, H, Savulescu, J
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Public Health Ethics
    In this article, we outline a novel approach to understanding the role of responsibility in health promotion. Efforts to tackle chronic disease have led to an emphasis on personal responsibility and the identification of ways in which people can 'take responsibility' for their health by avoiding risk factors such as smoking and over-eating. We argue that the extent to which agents can be considered responsible for their health-related behaviour is limited, and as such, state health promotion which assumes certain forms of moral responsibility should (in general) be avoided. This indicates that some approaches to health promotion ought not to be employed. We suggest, however, that another form of responsibility might be more appropriately identified. This is based on the claim that agents (in general) have prudential reasons to maintain their health, in order to pursue those things which make their lives go well-i.e. that maintenance of a certain level of health is (all-things-considered) rational for many agents, given their pleasures and plans. On this basis, we propose that agents have a self-regarding prudential responsibility to maintain their health. We outline the implications of a prudential responsibility approach to health promotion.

  • Irresponsibly Infertile? Obesity, Efficiency, and Exclusion from Treatment.

    Brown, RCH
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy
    Many countries tightly ration access to publicly funded fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF). One basis for excluding people from access to IVF is their body mass index. In this paper, I consider a number of potential justifications for such a policy, based on claims about effectiveness and cost-efficiency, and reject these as unsupported by available evidence. I consider an alternative justification: that those whose subfertility results from avoidable behaviours for which they are responsible are less deserving of treatment. I ultimately stop short of endorsing or rejecting such a justification, though highlight some reasons for thinking it is unlikely to be practicable.

  • No Pain, No Gain? In Defence of Genetically Disenhancing (Most) Research Animals.

    Devolder, K, Eggel, M
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Animals (Basel)
    Every year, around 12 million animals are used for the purpose of scientific research in the European Union alone. The procedures performed on them often cause significant pain and suffering. Despite regulations aimed at reducing this suffering, we can expect millions of research animals to continue to suffer in the near to mid-term future. Given this reality, we propose the use of gene editing to create research animals with a reduced capacity for suffering, in particular, from pain. We argue that our proposal would be in line with moral principles embedded in European regulations regarding animal research, and that it would facilitate compliance with these regulations. We also respond to the strongest argument against our proposal-the 'no pain no gain' argument.
    animal ethics, animal research ethics, bioethics, genetic disenhancement

  • Discriminatory Conscientious Objections in Healthcare: A Response to Ancell and Sinnott-Armstrong.

    Devolder, K
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Camb Q Healthc Ethics
    Aaron Ancell and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (A&SA) propose a pragmatic approach to problems arising from conscientious objections in healthcare. Their primary focus is on private healthcare systems like that in the United States. A&SA defend three claims: (i) many conscientious objections in healthcare are morally permissible and should be lawful, (ii) conscientious objections that involve invidious discrimination are morally impermissible, but (iii) even invidiously-discriminatory conscientious objections should not always be unlawful, as there is a better way to protect patient rights. Pursuant to (iii), A&SA propose a framework that legally allows discriminatory conscientious objections, but that shifts the financial costs associated with such objections from patients to the clinics that employ doctors who discriminate against patients. Though their proposal is controversial, it has attractive features, and merits further discussion. In this paper, I remain neutral on the third claim A&SA advance in support of their proposal, but point out a problem with the two first claims. In the light of my criticisms, I propose to modify their proposal so that costs are shifted to clinics in a broader range of cases.
    Conscientious objection, discrimination, patient rights, private healthcare systems

  • Punishing Wrongs from the Distant Past

    DOUGLAS, T
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Law and Philosophy

  • Parental Partiality and Future Children

    DOUGLAS, T
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy

  • Asbestos Neglect: Why Asbestos Exposure Deserves Greater Policy Attention

    DOUGLAS, THOMAS, Van den Borre, L
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Health Policy

  • A conception of genetic parenthood.

    Douglas, T, Devolder, K
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Bioethics
    We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood-one invoking genetic resemblance and the other genetic inheritance-and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes' second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.
    Heidi Mertes, assisted reproduction, cloning, genetic parenthood, in vitro reproduction, mitochondrial replacement therapy, stem cell derived gametes
    • More
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