Jefferson Allen McMahan (born 30 August 1954) is an American philosopher. He is currently Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford.

McMahan has published extensively on topics of interest to effective altruism, such as population ethics;^[1][2] existential risk from nuclear war;^[3][4] animal ethics^[5]—including the ethics of eating animals,^[6] the moral status of animals,^[7] and wild animal welfare^{[8][9][10][11]}—; and the demandingness of morality.^[12] He has also published a response to various criticisms of effective altruism.^[13]

Further reading

Petersen, Thomas & Jesper Ryberg (2007) Jeff McMahan, in Thomas Petersen & Jesper Ryberg (eds.) Normative Ethics: 5 Questions, New York: Automatic Press, pp. 67–75.

University of Oxford (2020) Professor Jeff McMahan, University of Oxford.

External links

Jeff McMahan. Official website.

Related entries

Derek Parfit | population ethics | wild animal welfare

1. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (1981) Problems of population theory, Ethics, vol. 92, pp. 96–127.

2. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (2013) Causing people to exist and saving people’s lives, Journal of Ethics, vol. 17, pp. 5–35.

3. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (1986) Nuclear deterrence and future generations, in Avner Cohen & Steven Lee (eds.) Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity: The Fundamental Questions, Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, pp. 319–339.

4. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (1981) British Nuclear Weapons: For and Against, London: Junction Books.

5. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (2003) Animals in R. G. Frey & Christopher Wellman (eds.) A Companion to Applied Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 525–536.

6. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (2008) Eating animals the nice way, Dædalus, vol. 137, pp. 66–76.

7. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (2005) Our fellow creatures, Journal of Ethics, vol. 9, pp. 353–380.

8. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (2010) The meat eaters, The New York Times, September 19.

9. ^

   McMahan, Jeff (2010) Predators: a response, The New York Times, September 28.

10. ^

    McMahan, Jeff (2015) The moral problem of predation, in Andrew Chignell, Terence Cuneo & Matthew Halteman (eds.) Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments about the Ethics of Eating, New York: Routledge, pp. 268–294.

11. ^

    Cf. Faria, Catia (2015) Making a difference on behalf of animals living in the wild: interview with Jeff McMahan, Relations, vol. 3, pp. 81–84.

12. ^

    McMahan, Jeff (2018) Doing good and doing the best, in Paul Woodruff (ed.) The Ethics of Giving: Philosophers’ Perspectives on Philanthropy, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 78–102.

13. ^

    McMahan, Jeff (2016) Philosophical critiques of effective altruism, The Philosophers’ Magazine, vol. 73, pp. 92–99.