Lecture 2.   Vaccines and Transmitter Rooms: An Alternative to Ex Ante Contractualism (the written version is co-authored with Vishnu Sridharan). 

Abstract: Here is a kind of puzzle explored by Johann Frick and others: It seems permissible to distribute a vaccine  against some minor ailment even if one knows with certainty that someone or other will react badly to it, resulting in terrible pain or even death. By contrast, it is easy enough to come up with examples where it does not seem permissible to torture or kill someone in order to procure some vast quantity of trifling goods. This paper juxtaposes an ex ante contractualist diagnosis of the relevant intuitive contrasts (one that Frick endorses) with a very different diagnosis drawn from the materials of lecture one. The latter diagnosis is shown to be markedly superior.