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

  • In Science We Trust? Being Honest About the Limits of Medical Research During COVID-19.

    Veit, W, Brown, R, Earp, BD
    January 2021
    |
    Journal article
    |
    The American journal of bioethics : AJOB

  • Persuasive technologies and the right to mental liberty: The ‘smart’ rehabilitation of criminal offenders

    Ligthart, S, Meynen, G, DOUGLAS, T
    Edited by:
    Ienca, M, Pollicino, O, Liguori, L, Andorno, R, Stefanini, E
    January 2021
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Cambridge Handbook of Information Technology, Life Sciences and Human Rights
    mental liberty, rehabilitation, criminal justice ethics, bodily integrity

  • Personal responsibility for cardiac health: what are the ethical demands?

    Brown, RCH, Savulescu, J
    November 2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Heart (British Cardiac Society)

  • The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports.

    Brown, RCH, Kelly, D, Wilkinson, D, Savulescu, J
    October 2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    The Lancet. Infectious diseases
    There is much debate about the use of immunity passports in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have argued that immunity passports are unethical and impractical, pointing to uncertainties relating to COVID-19 immunity, issues with testing, perverse incentives, doubtful economic benefits, privacy concerns, and the risk of discriminatory effects. We first review the scientific feasibility of immunity passports. Considerable hurdles remain, but increasing understanding of the neutralising antibody response to COVID-19 might make identifying members of the community at low risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19 possible. We respond to the ethical arguments against immunity passports and give the positive ethical arguments. First, a strong presumption should be in favour of preserving people's free movement if at all feasible. Second, failing to recognise the reduced infection threat immune individuals pose risks punishing people for low-risk behaviour. Finally, further individual and social benefits are likely to accrue from allowing people to engage in free movement. Challenges relating to the implementation of immunity passports ought to be met with targeted solutions so as to maximise their benefit.

  • Passport to freedom? Immunity passports for COVID-19.

    Brown, RCH, Savulescu, J, Williams, B, Wilkinson, D
    October 2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Journal of medical ethics
    The COVID-19 pandemic has led a number of countries to introduce restrictive 'lockdown' policies on their citizens in order to control infection spread. Immunity passports have been proposed as a way of easing the harms of such policies, and could be used in conjunction with other strategies for infection control. These passports would permit those who test positive for COVID-19 antibodies to return to some of their normal behaviours, such as travelling more freely and returning to work. The introduction of immunity passports raises a number of practical and ethical challenges. In this paper, we seek to review the challenges relating to various practical considerations, fairness issues, the risk to social cooperation and the impact on people's civil liberties. We make tentative recommendations for the ethical introduction of immunity passports.
    Humans, Pneumonia, Viral, Coronavirus Infections, Public Health, Health Policy, Travel, Certification, Asymptomatic Diseases, Pandemics, United Kingdom, Betacoronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2

  • Compulsory medical intervention versus external constraint in pandemic control

    Douglas, T, Forsberg, L, Pugh, J
    August 2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Journal of Medical Ethics
    Would compulsory treatment or vaccination for Covid-19 be justified? In England, there would be significant legal barriers to it. However, we offer a conditional ethical argument in favour of allowing compulsory treatment and vaccination, drawing on an ethical comparison with external constraints—such as quarantine, isolation and ‘lockdown’—that have already been authorised to control the pandemic. We argue that, if the permissive English approach to external constraints for Covid-19 has been justified, then there is a case for a similarly permissive approach to compulsory medical interventions.
    FFR, mental health law, vaccination, isolation, public health law, compulsion, quarantine

  • Compulsory medical intervention versus external constraint in pandemic control.

    Douglas, T, Forsberg, L, Pugh, J
    August 2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Journal of medical ethics
    Would compulsory treatment or vaccination for COVID-19 be justified? In England, there would be significant legal barriers to it. However, we offer a conditional ethical argument in favour of allowing compulsory treatment and vaccination, drawing on an ethical comparison with external constraints-such as quarantine, isolation and 'lockdown'-that have already been authorised to control the pandemic in this jurisdiction. We argue that, if the permissive English approach to external constraints for COVID-19 has been justified, then there is a case for a similarly permissive approach to compulsory medical interventions.

  • Forensic brain-reading and mental privacy in European human rights law: Foundations and challenges

    DOUGLAS, T, Ligthart, S, Bublitz, C, Kooijmans, T, Meynen, G
    June 2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Neuroethics

  • The Ethics of Creating and Using Human-Animal Chimeras

    DEVOLDER, K, YIP, L, DOUGLAS, T
    April 2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Institute for Laboratory Animal Research (ILAR) Journal
    Rapid advances in gene-editing and stem-cell technology have expanded the range of possible future applications in human-animal chimera research. Most notably, recent developments may allow researchers to generate whole personalized human organs in pigs for the purpose of transplantation into human patients. Though human-animal chimera research in small animals, such as mice, is routine, human-animal chimeric techniques are now increasingly being applied to larger animals. Moreover, these chimeras include increasing amounts of human material, which is potentially present in more morally significant locations, such as the brain and the reproductive system. These developments raise important ethical questions about whether we should create such chimeras, and if so, how we should treat them. Answers to these ethical questions are needed to inform the development of policies regulating human-animal chimera research and its applications. Here, we provide a review of some of the most important or widespread ethical concerns.

  • From Bodily Rights to Personal Rights

    DOUGLAS, T
    Edited by:
    von Arnauld, A, von der Decken, K, Susi, M
    January 2020
    |
    Chapter
    |
    The Cambridge Handbook of New Human Rights: Recognition, Novelty, Rhetoric
    The right to bodily integrity (RBI) may seem inapt for inclusion in this volume, which is supposed to address new human rights, for as A. M. Viens notes, the RBI is a long-standing fixture in the philosophical and legal discussion of rights. However, Viens does, I think, make a good case for the right’s inclusion here. Not only does he note the increasing recognition of a new right to genital integrity derived from the more general RBI, he also argues for a new conceptualisation of the RBI itself: he argues that we ought to decompose the RBI into several constituent rights, delineated according to the different values from which they derive – rights to bodily autonomy, bodily dignity, bodily ownership, well-being, and so on.
    human rights, bodily rights, bodily integrity, personal rights
More