Alan Milne Memorial Address 2019

Elizabeth Ashford (University of St. Andrews) will give a talk entitled “Hunger’s Unwitting Executioners.”

Elizabeth Ashford is a senior lecturer in Molar Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. She has done a lot of work on global poverty and human rights arguing about the inadequacy of the traditional conception of the duties imposed by human rights. Although the human right to basic necessities has been widely internationally ratified, there has been very little agreement about what obligations it entails. Ashford has argued that on any plausible account of human rights, the human right to basic necessities entails both negative and positive obligations towards compatriots and foreigners, and that the responsibility for fulfilling both kinds of obligations ultimately lies with every agent who is able to do so. Elizabeth Ashford is the editor of Philosophical Quarterly.