David McCarthy
My main research interests are in ethics, in particular the fundamental evaluative and normative questions of when one situation is better than another, and what we ought to do. Questions about risk and uncertainty are deeply implicated in both of these topics, so I also have strong interests in decision theory, game theory, and philosophy of probability.
My current focus is on the evaluative question, in particular the central question for the ethics of distribution: when is one distribution of goods better than another? In my view, two things are fundamental to answering this question. First, one has to talk about risk or uncertainty from the outset. Second, utilitarianism is the key to the universe.
Much moral philosophy in the last 50 years has articulated a variety of distributive views by contrasting them with a strawman characterization of utilitarianism. Unfortunately, this ignores major developments in utilitarian theory in welfare economics and social choice theory. My main claim is that a proper understanding of utilitarianism provides a better taxonomy of all the alternatives to it, and a better appreciation of why utilitarianism itself is so plausible.
I have been working on this theme for some time. Recent articles in this vein are `Distributive equality’ and `The priority view’. But the centrepiece, with much help from my coauthors Kalle Mikkola and Teruji Thomas, is `Utilitarianism with and without expected utility’. Some of this work is fairly technical, but I manage to teach the material to undergraduates, and I am slowly preparing a more accessible book *The Structure of Good*, under contract with OUP.
Before I complete the book, however, I hope to finish projects on ex ante and ex post egalitarianism; personal and impersonal value; the value of existence; the expected utility axioms; social choice theoretic arguments; egalitarianism and nonexpected utility theory; infinite populations; evaluative measurement; and vagueness and incomparability.
An overarching theme of this project is the immense value of conceptual and mathematical methods developed in disciplines such as welfare economics and decision theory. In a more slowly developing project, I am pursuing the same kind of approach to normative theories. Here, there are very valuable tools in game theory and interactive epistemology.
Supervisors: Barbara Herman and Frank Arntzenius
My current focus is on the evaluative question, in particular the central question for the ethics of distribution: when is one distribution of goods better than another? In my view, two things are fundamental to answering this question. First, one has to talk about risk or uncertainty from the outset. Second, utilitarianism is the key to the universe.
Much moral philosophy in the last 50 years has articulated a variety of distributive views by contrasting them with a strawman characterization of utilitarianism. Unfortunately, this ignores major developments in utilitarian theory in welfare economics and social choice theory. My main claim is that a proper understanding of utilitarianism provides a better taxonomy of all the alternatives to it, and a better appreciation of why utilitarianism itself is so plausible.
I have been working on this theme for some time. Recent articles in this vein are `Distributive equality’ and `The priority view’. But the centrepiece, with much help from my coauthors Kalle Mikkola and Teruji Thomas, is `Utilitarianism with and without expected utility’. Some of this work is fairly technical, but I manage to teach the material to undergraduates, and I am slowly preparing a more accessible book *The Structure of Good*, under contract with OUP.
Before I complete the book, however, I hope to finish projects on ex ante and ex post egalitarianism; personal and impersonal value; the value of existence; the expected utility axioms; social choice theoretic arguments; egalitarianism and nonexpected utility theory; infinite populations; evaluative measurement; and vagueness and incomparability.
An overarching theme of this project is the immense value of conceptual and mathematical methods developed in disciplines such as welfare economics and decision theory. In a more slowly developing project, I am pursuing the same kind of approach to normative theories. Here, there are very valuable tools in game theory and interactive epistemology.
Supervisors: Barbara Herman and Frank Arntzenius
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