Ben Davies
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Lecturer in Political Philosophy
PGR Seminar Lead
Full contact details
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
214b
9 Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 4DT
- Profile
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Ben was awarded his PhD in 2015 from King's College London, writing on the ethics of research into manipulating the human ageing process. His work since then has focused on a range of applied ethical and, increasingly, political issues that arise in health practice. This has included topics such as justice between different generations; responsibility (for patients, medical professionals, and those running health systems); discrimination within the health care system and how to respond to it; and the question of whether we can set thresholds (e.g., saying that someone's level of health is 'good enough' even if not perfect) in a morally acceptable way.
He is now developing work on several projects.
- The idea of 'health capital', i.e. understanding health as a resource and what that implies for justice (with Prof. Thomas Schramme, University of Liverpool);
- The politics of health guidance, especially related to infant care (with Dr Clare Moriarty, Trinity College Dublin);
- The environmental impacts of healthcare, and what steps can ethically be taken to mitigate them (with Dr Joshua Parker, University of Lancaster);
- How democratic health priority-making decisions should be, and what this would look like in practice.
Ben joined the University of Sheffield in 2023. His broader teaching interests cover areas of practical ethics beyond healthcare, and topics in political philosophy.
- Qualifications
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PhD Philosophy, KCL; MA Philosophy, KCL; BA Philosophy and Politics, University of Edinburgh.
- Research interests
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- Ageing
- Animal ethics
- Autonomy
- Disability, especially its challenge to mainstream ethics and political theory
- Discrimination
- Professional ethics
- Well-being and prudence
He is happy to hear from students interested in these topics, or other topics in bioethics broadly construed. He is also interested in professional collaboration with people who work in health practice at any level.
- Publications
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Edited books
- Responsibility and Healthcare. Oxford University PressOxford.
Journal articles
- Mapping, moralizing, and more: response to commentaries. American Journal of Bioethics, 25(4), W3-W7. View this article in WRRO
- Health capital and its significance for health justice. Public Health Ethics, 18(1). View this article in WRRO
- War on all fronts: a theory of health security justice by Nicholas G. Evans, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2023. pp. 258. $45.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780262545433. Bioethics, 38(9), 823-824. View this article in WRRO
- Disability discrimination in emergencies: the return of Taurek?. Ethic@: an International Journal for Moral Philosophy, 22(3), 1048-1062. View this article in WRRO
- Deference or critical engagement: how should healthcare practitioners use Clinical Ethics Guidance?. Monash Bioethics Review, 42(1), 1-15. View this article in WRRO
- Feeding infants: choice-specific considerations, parental obligation, and pragmatic satisficing. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 27(2), 167-183. View this article in WRRO
- Institutional responsibility is prior to personal responsibility in a pandemic. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 58, 215-234. View this article in WRRO
- What do ‘humans’ need? Sufficiency and pluralism. Ethics, Policy & Environment. View this article in WRRO
- A new paradox for well-being subjectivism. Analysis, 83(4), 673-682. View this article in WRRO
- Medical need and health need. Clinical Ethics, 18(3), 287-291. View this article in WRRO
- Rationing, responsibility, and vaccination during COVID-19: a conceptual map. The American Journal of Bioethics, 24(7), 66-79. View this article in WRRO
- Healthcare priorities: the “young” and the “old”. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 32(2), 174-185. View this article in WRRO
- Affirmative action in healthcare resource allocation: vaccines, ventilators and race. Bioethics, 36(9), 970-977. View this article in WRRO
- The prospects for ‘prospect utilitarianism’. Utilitas, 34(3), 335-343. View this article in WRRO
- Doctors as appointed fiduciaries: a supplemental model for medical decision-making. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 31(1), 23-33. View this article in WRRO
- Responsibility and the recursion problem. Ratio, 35(2), 112-122. View this article in WRRO
- ‘Personal health surveillance’: the use of mHealth in healthcare responsibilisation. Public Health Ethics, 14(3), 268-280. View this article in WRRO
- Grow the pie, or the resource shuffle? Commentary on Munthe, Fumagalli and Malmqvist. Journal of Medical Ethics, 47(2), 98-99. View this article in WRRO
- The right not to know: some steps towards a compromise. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 24(1), 137-150. View this article in WRRO
- From sufficient health to sufficient responsibility. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 17(3), 423-433. View this article in WRRO
- No blame no gain? From a no blame culture to a responsibility culture in medicine. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 37(4), 646-660. View this article in WRRO
- ‘The right not to know and the obligation to know’, response to commentaries. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(5), 309-310. View this article in WRRO
- The right not to know and the obligation to know. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(5), 300-303. View this article in WRRO
- Responsibility and the limits of patient choice. Bioethics, 34(5), 459-466. View this article in WRRO
- Solidarity and responsibility in health care. Public Health Ethics, 12(2), 133-144. View this article in WRRO
- Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination. Utilitas, 31(2), 191-202. View this article in WRRO
- Ageing and terminal illness: Problems for Rawlsian justice. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 35(4), 775-789. View this article in WRRO
- Publish or perish. Metaphilosophy, 48(5), 745-761. View this article in WRRO
- Utilitarianism and animal cruelty: further doubts. De Ethica, 3(3), 5-19. View this article in WRRO
- Paternalism and evaluative shift. Moral Philosophy and Politics, 4(2), 325-346. View this article in WRRO
- Enhancement and the conservative bias. Philosophy & Technology, 30(3), 339-356. View this article in WRRO
- Fair Innings and Time‐Relative Claims. Bioethics, 30(6), 462-468.
- Justice Between the Young and the Old. SOCIOLOGICKY CASOPIS-CZECH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 51(3), 562-566.
Book chapters
- Physician, Heal Thyself, Responsibility and Healthcare (pp. 247-268). Oxford University PressOxford
- Introduction: Responsibility and Health Care, Responsibility and Healthcare (pp. 1-32). Oxford University PressOxford
- Learning to Discriminate: The Perfect Proxy Problem in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing In Ryberg J & Roberts JV (Ed.), Sentencing and Artificial Intelligence
- Responsibility and Healthcare. Oxford University PressOxford.
- Research group
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Please get in touch if you are interested in being supervised in topics in political philosophy and applied ethics, especially related to health and health care, broadly construed.
Current PhD Students
Joseph Holmes (Primary); Nan Li (secondary); Jose Tarín (visiting); Igor Chaves (visiting)
- Teaching interests
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Bioethics
Political Philosophy
Practical Ethics
- Teaching activities
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Bioethics
Global Justice
New Directions in Philosophy
Science, Medicine and Society
- Professional activities and memberships
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Associate Editor, Journal of Practical Philosophy