Benjamin Alan Sachs-Cobbe

Dr. Sachs-Cobbe is working on issues concerning work and the welfare state. We have a welfare state already, and we could make it bigger/more generous and thereby move towards a world in which each individual's share of society's wealth is less connected to the work they do. Dr. Sachs-Cobbe's research is exploring whether there are good reasons not to make that move. More narrowly, his current work is on meritocracy, the distinction between good and bad work, making welfare conditional on work, on whether the state should institute a job guarantee, and on moral issues concerning the state pension.

Prior to adopting the above-mentioned research focus, Dr. Sachs-Cobbe's research included work on contractarianism, on how individuals and the state ought to treat non-human animals, on ethical theory, on coercion, and on the ethics of reesearch on human subjects.

Dr. Sachs-Cobbe was born and raised in San Diego, California.  He received a bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois and a PhD at the University of Wisconsin.  Prior to coming to St. Andrews he was an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Program in Environmental Studies and the Department of Bioethics at New York University, and prior to that a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health (U.S.).

Dr. Sachs-Cobbe teaches classes on ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, animal ethics, philosophy of economics, and distributive justice.