See below for publications and works in progress. 

​Feel free to email me if you're interested in seeing something that isn't linked below.

I like to co-author (I think more philosophers should try this), and have done so with Christian Barry, Siba Harb, Sarah Hannan, Holly Lawford-Smith, and Han van Wietmarschen

Publications

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"Do Parental Licensing Schemes Violate the Rights of Biological Parents" (forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, with Christian Barry)
Available here with a reply by Matthew Liao here.
[Abstract]

• Matthew Liao claims that a human right to parent one's biological children can generate a principled objection to licensing biological parents. As a result, licensing regimes should be rejected even if they were extremely effective at (1) denying abusive or neglectful would-be parents the right to raise a child, and (2) avoiding denial of rights for adequate would-be parents. We reject this principled case against licensing licensing schemes. We begin by questioning Liao's claim that there is a human right to parent one's biological children. Then we argue that, even if there were such a right, it would not support a principled objection to licensing biological parents. Licensing schemes stand or fall based on their effects.

"Childhood Bads, Parenting Goods, and the Right to Procreate" (forthcoming in Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, with Sarah Hannan)
[Abstract]

• Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, together with many other philosophers, think that adults’ interests in raising a child can give them a moral right to parent when they will be adequate parents. We consider whether the same interest could give such adults a moral right to procreate, as a means of acquiring a child to raise. We argue that the interest in parenting cannot support a right to procreate, because the features of childhood that make parenting uniquely valuable for adults are bad for children. Adults may have a right to procreate, but they do not have that right due to their interest in a parent-child relationship.

crispp_h_and_l_final_-_right_to_procreate.pdf
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"Political Liberalism and Political Community" (Journal of Moral Philosophy 2017, with Han van Wietmarschen)
[Abstract]

• The Reciprocity Principle says political decisions should be resolved using only considerations that reasonable citizens could expect each other to accept. We argue that citizens have reason to comply with the Reciprocity Principle, as a way of constituting an attractive form of political community under conditions of pluralism.

political_community_and_reciprocity.pdf
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"Reasonableness, Intellectual Modesty, and Reciprocity in Political Justification" (Ethics 2012, with Han van Wietmarschen)
[Abstract]

• Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral reasons for deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons.

lelandvanwietmarschenrimrpj.pdf
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Under Review &
In Progress

"Exploiting Disadvantage as Causing Harm" (with Siba Harb, conditionally Accepted at Ethics and International Politics for special issue on Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland's Responding to Global Poverty

Paper on Benefitting from Injustice (with Holly Lawford Smith, under review)

Paper on Civic Friendship and Public Reason (in progress)

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Dissertation

Justifying Political Liberalism, Stanford University 2014
[Abstract]

• I articulate an ideal of political community and use it to defend the “political liberalism” advocated by John Rawls, Charles Larmore, and many others. I show that political liberalism’s defining commitment, the principle of reciprocity in justification, is justified by the fact that compliance with the principle promotes an attractive and inclusive form of political community in pluralistic societies.