Attachment is deeply important to human life. When one person becomes ‘attached’ to another, their sense of security turns on their emotional, social, and physical engagement with that person. This kind of security-based attachment has been extensively studied in psychology. Yet attachment theory (in the specific sense studied by psychologists) has not received adequate attention in analytic theories of social justice. In this paper, we conceptualize attachment’s nature and value, addressing when and why attachments place justice-based claims on individuals and (...) institutions, in an attempt to establish the centrality of attachment theory to liberal political philosophy. We first characterize security-based attachment and differentiate it from related phenomena (§1). We then explore its value, theorizing the connection between attachment, care, and companionship, drawing on the ethics of care (§2). We explain when and why security-based attachment generates claims of justice within liberal theory, noting some important difficulties (§3). Finally, we sketch some implications in three domains: the rights of those who have suffered pregnancy loss, the rights of grandparents vis-à-vis grandchildren, and the rights of attached friends to social and political recognition (§4). (shrink)

Effective altruism implies that we should donate to an asteroid deflection program at the expense of saving a nearby child’s life. I argue that anyone who finds this result counterintuitive has prima facie reason to reject, or at least doubt that their own values commit them to, effective altruism.

Some moral principles require agents to do more than their fair share of a common task, if others won’t do their fair share – each agent’s fair share being what they would be required to do if all contributed as they should. This seems to provide a strong basis for objecting to such principles. For it seems unfair to require agents who have already done their fair share to do more, just because other agents won’t do their fair share. The (...) philosopher who has written most about this issue, however, Liam Murphy, argues that it is not unfair to do so, at least in the standard sense of that term. In this paper, I give Murphy’s reasons for saying this, explain why I think he’s wrong, and then say a little about why this issue might be important. (shrink)