Papers by Andrew Schroeder
Hastings Center Report, 2023
Commentaries on the ethics of Covid lockdowns nearly all focus on offering substantive guidance t... more Commentaries on the ethics of Covid lockdowns nearly all focus on offering substantive guidance to policy-makers. Lockdowns, however, raise many ethical questions that admit of a range of reasonable answers. In such cases, policy-making in a liberal democracy ought to be sensitive to which reasonable views the public actually holds—a topic existing bioethical work on lockdowns has not explored in detail. In this essay, I identify several important questions connected to the kind of influence the public ought to have on lockdown decision-making, including how policy-makers ought to handle misinformed or morally suspect viewpoints, and how policy-makers ought to respond to minority viewpoints. I argue that questions like this, concerning the appropriate influence of the public on decision-making, will be central to the field of bioethics as it increasingly focuses on policy and population-level issues and therefore ought to be priorities for future work.
Case Files: Ethics and Professionalism (ed. Cochrane, Toy, Raines)/McGraw-Hill, 2015
Journal of Medical Ethics, 2018
Journal of Economic Methodology, 2017
Review of Hausman's Valuing Health. We sometimes wonder how health is distributed in our society... more Review of Hausman's Valuing Health. We sometimes wonder how health is distributed in our society. We may also want to know about the efficiency of different health programmes. Which public measures promise the greatest overall improvements in health? It can be hard to know how to go about answering questions like these, in large part because the varieties of ill health are heterogeneous, as are their consequences. The solution that health economists have long adopted is to appeal to summary or generic measures of health, such as the QALY, which attempt to put all types of ill health on the same scale. Daniel Hausman works from the assumption that we have reason to want a scalar measure like the QALY. He subjects existing techniques for generating such measures to a thorough critique, ultimately concluding that significant methodological changes are needed.
Philosophy of Science, 2017
Many philosophers of science have argued that social and ethical values have a significant role t... more Many philosophers of science have argued that social and ethical values have a significant role to play in core parts of the scientific process. A question that naturally arises is: when such value choices need to be made, which or whose values should be used? A common answer to this question turns to democratic values-the values of the public or its representatives. I argue that this imposes a morally significant burden on certain scientists, effectively requiring them to advocate for policy positions they strongly disagree with. I conclude by discussing under what conditions this burden might be justified.
Public Health Ethics, 2017
Summary measures of health, such as the quality-adjusted life year and disability-adjusted life y... more Summary measures of health, such as the quality-adjusted life year and disability-adjusted life year, have long been known to incorporate a number of value choices. In this paper, though, I show that the value choices in the construction of such measures extend far beyond what is generally recognized. In showing this, I hope both to improve the understanding of those measures by epidemiologists, health economists and policy-makers, and also to contribute to the general debate about the extent to which such measures should be adjusted to reflect ethical values.
Philosophical Studies, Aug 24, 2017
Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that we can and should “consequentialize” non-cons... more Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that we can and should “consequentialize” non-consequentialist moral theories, putting them into a consequentialist framework. I argue that these philosophers, usually treated as a group, in fact offer three separate arguments, two of which are incompatible. I show that none represent significant threats to a committed non-consequentialist, and that the literature has suffered due to a failure to distinguish these arguments. I conclude by showing that the failure of the consequentializers’ arguments has implications for disciplines, such as economics, logic, decision theory, and linguistics, which sometimes use a consequentialist structure to represent non-consequentialist ethical theories.
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, 2015
Much academic work (in philosophy, economics, law, etc.), as well as common sense, assumes that i... more Much academic work (in philosophy, economics, law, etc.), as well as common sense, assumes that ill health reduces well-being. It is bad for a person to become sick, injured, disabled, etc. Empirical research, however, shows that people living with health problems report surprisingly high levels of well-being - in some cases as high as the self-reported well-being of healthy people. In this chapter, I explore the relationship between health and well-being. I argue that although we have good reason to believe that health problems causing pain and death typically do reduce well-being, health problems that limit capabilities probably don't reduce well-being nearly as much as most people suppose. I then briefly explore the consequences of this conclusion for political philosophy and ethics. If many health problems don't significantly reduce well-being, why should governments go to great expense to prevent or treat them? Why should parents be obliged to ensure the health of their children?
Philosophy of Medicine, 2021
The IHME Covid-19 prediction model has been one of the most influential Covid models in the Unite... more The IHME Covid-19 prediction model has been one of the most influential Covid models in the United States. Early on, it received heavy criticism for understating the extent of the epidemic. I argue that this criticism was based on a misunderstanding of the model. The model was best interpreted not as attempting to forecast the actual course of the epidemic. Rather, it was attempting to make a conditional projection: telling us how the epidemic would unfold, given certain assumptions. This misunderstanding of the IHME’s model prevented the public from seeing how dire the model’s projections actually were.
Metascience, 2019
Review of Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science (eds. Elliott and Richards)... more Review of Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science (eds. Elliott and Richards), Oxford University Press.
Economics and Philosophy, 2019
Many economic measures are structured to reflect ethical values. I describe three attitudes towar... more Many economic measures are structured to reflect ethical values. I describe three attitudes towards this: maximalism, according to which we should aim to build all relevant values into measures; minimalism, according to which we should aim to keep values out of measures; and an intermediate view. I argue the intermediate view is likely correct, but existing versions are inadequate. In particular, economists have strong reason to structure measures to reflect fixed, as opposed to user-assessable, values. This implies that, despite disagreement about precisely how to do so, economists should standardly adjust QALYs and DALYs to reflect egalitarian values.
Philosophical Studies, 2016
Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that we can and should "consequentialize" non-cons... more Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that we can and should "consequentialize" non-consequentialist moral theories, putting them into a consequentialist framework. I argue that these philosophers, often treated as a group, in fact offer three separate arguments, two of which are incompatible. I show that none represent significant threats to a committed non-consequentialist, and that the literature has suffered due to a failure to distinguish these arguments. I conclude by showing that the failure of the consequentializers' arguments has implications for disciplines, such as economics, logic, decision theory, and linguistics, which sometimes use a consequentialist structure to represent non-consequentialist ethical theories.
Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 1, 2011
Define teleology as the view that requirements hold in virtue of facts about value or goodness. T... more Define teleology as the view that requirements hold in virtue of facts about value or goodness. Teleological views are quite popular, and in fact some philosophers (e.g. Dreier, Smith) argue that all (plausible) moral theories can be understood teleologically. I argue, however, that certain well-known cases show that the teleologist must at minimum assume that there are certain facts that an agent ought to know, and that this means that requirements can't, in general, hold in virtue of facts about value or goodness. I then show that even if we grant those 'ought's teleology still runs into problems. A positive justification of teleology looks like it will require an argument of this form: O(X); if X, then O(Y); therefore O(Y). But this form of argument isn't in general valid. I conclude by offering two positive suggestions for those attracted to a teleological outlook.
Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2014
There is virtually no philosophical consensus on what, exactly, imperfect duties are. In this pap... more There is virtually no philosophical consensus on what, exactly, imperfect duties are. In this paper, I lay out three criteria which I argue any adequate account of imperfect duties should satisfy. Using beneficence as a leading example, I suggest that existing accounts of imperfect duties will have trouble meeting those criteria. I then propose a new approach: thinking of imperfect duties as duties held by groups, rather than individuals. I show, again using the example of beneficence, that this proposal can satisfy the criteria, explaining how something can both have the necessity characteristic of duty, while also allowing agents the latitude which seems to attach to imperfect duties.
Population health metrics, Jan 12, 2012
When disability-adjusted life years are used to measure the burden of disease on a population in ... more When disability-adjusted life years are used to measure the burden of disease on a population in a time interval, they can be calculated in several different ways: from an incidence, pure prevalence, or hybrid perspective. I show that these calculation methods are not equivalent and discuss some of the formal difficulties each method faces. I show that if we don't discount the value of future health, there is a sense in which the choice of calculation method is a mere question of accounting. Such questions can be important, but they don't raise deep theoretical concerns. If we do discount, however, choice of calculation method can change the relative burden attributed to different conditions over time. I conclude by recommending that studies involving disability-adjusted life years be explicit in noting what calculation method is being employed and in explaining why that calculation method has been chosen.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2013
Theorists of health have, to this point, focused exclusively on trying to define a state—health—t... more Theorists of health have, to this point, focused exclusively on trying to define a state—health—that an organism might be in. I argue that they have overlooked the possibility of a comparativist theory of health, which would begin by defining a relation—healthier than—that holds between two organisms or two possible states of the same organism. I show that a comparativist approach to health has a number of attractive features, and has important implications for philosophers of medicine, bioethicists, health economists, and policy makers
Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 2018
In this paper I look at the much-discussed case of disabled parents seeking to conceive (or “sele... more In this paper I look at the much-discussed case of disabled parents seeking to conceive (or “selecting for”) disabled children. I argue that the permissibility of selecting for disability does not depend on the precise impact the disability will have on the child’s wellbeing. I then turn to an alternative analysis, which argues that the permissibility of selecting for disability depends on the impact that disability will have on the child’s future opportunities. Nearly all bioethicists who have approached the issue in this way have argued that disabilities like deafness unacceptably constrain a child’s opportunities. I argue, however, that this conclusion is premature for several reasons. Most importantly, we don’t have a good way of comparing opportunity sets. Thus, we can’t conclude that deaf children will grow up to have a constrained set of opportunities relative to hearing children. I conclude by suggesting that bioethicists and philosophers of disability need to spend m...
Issues in Science and Technology, 2020
I look at the two main approaches used to count COVID-19 deaths and show how each of those approa... more I look at the two main approaches used to count COVID-19 deaths and show how each of those approaches can appear to both overcount COVID deaths (including deaths it should exclude) and undercount COVID deaths (excluding deaths it should include). I trace this to the fact - well-known to philosophers - that causal attribution is interest-relative. Which deaths we should attribute to COVID (as opposed to other causes) will depend on our particular interests and values. Contrary to what many journalists and researchers report, there is therefore no such thing as the "true" COVID death toll. Understanding this can help us to become more sophisticated consumers of COVID information. I conclude by suggesting that scientists, by reflecting on society's varied interests and values, are in a position to construct measures of COVID-caused mortality that are potentially as useful, or more useful, than the measures we currently have.
Measuring the Global Burden of Disease: Philosophical Dimensions (ed. Eyal et al.)/Oxford, 2020
This chapter suggests that descriptive epidemiological studies like the Global Burden of Disease ... more This chapter suggests that descriptive epidemiological studies like the Global Burden of Disease Study can usefully be divided into four tasks: describing individuals’ health states over time, assessing their health states under a range of counterfactual scenarios, summarizing the information collected, and then packaging it for presentation. The authors show that each of these tasks raises important and challenging ethical questions. They comment on some of the philosophical issues involved in measuring health states, attributing causes to health outcomes, choosing the counterfactual against which to assess causes, aggregating and summarizing complex information across multiple domains, discounting, age-weighting, handling fetal deaths, measuring health inequalities, representing uncertainty, and assessing personal responsibility for health outcomes.
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Papers by Andrew Schroeder