I'm a researcher at the RAND Corporation, where I work on issues at the intersection of artificial intelligence and security. I’m also affiliated with Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics, as a Visiting Scholar.

While my academic research ranges across philosophical topics, I have an abiding interest in meritocracy. I’ve written a monograph advancing a meritocratic theory of justice, Justice and the Meritocratic State, which is available Open Access. I’m also the author of the “Meritocracy” entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Before coming to academia, I served in the U.S. Navy and as a case officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. My CV can be found here, and you can e-mail me at thomas DOT mulligan AT georgetown DOT edu.

Publications

Book: Justice and the Meritocratic State (2018) Routledge

Journal articles and book chapters:

(20) “Espionage in Our AI Future” (Forthcoming) Studies in Intelligence
(19) “Equal Opportunity, Not Reparations” (2024) Handbook of Equality of Opportunity 605-620
(18) “Intuition about Justice: Desertist or Luck Egalitarian?” (w/ H. Brouwer) (2024) Journal of Ethics 28: 239-62
(17) “Optimizing Political Influence: A Jury Theorem with Dynamic Competence and Dependence” (2024) Social Choice and Welfare 63: 509-30
(16) “A Bayesian Solution to Hallsson’s Puzzle” (2023) Inquiry 66: 1914-27
(15) “Meritocracy” (2023) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(14) “How East Meets West: Justice and Consequences in Confucian Meritocracy” (2022) Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture 37: 17-38
(13) “The Epistemology of Disagreement: Why Not Bayesianism?” (2021) Episteme 18: 587-602
(12) “Equal Pay for All: An Idea Whose Time Has Not, and Will Not, Come” (2021) Debating Equal Pay for All: Economy, Practicability and Ethics 21-35
(11) “Social Choice or Collective Decision-making: What Is Politics All About?” (2020) What Is Pluralism? 48-61
(10) “Why Not Be a Desertist? Three Arguments for Desert and Against Luck Egalitarianism” (w/ H. Brouwer) (2019) Philosophical Studies 176: 2271-88
(9) “Do People Deserve their Economic Rents?” (2018) Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 11: 163-90
(8) “Plural Voting for the Twenty-first Century” (2018) Philosophical Quarterly 68: 286-306
(7) “What’s Wrong with Libertarianism: A Meritocratic Diagnosis” (2018) The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism 77-91
(6) “Uncertainty in Hiring Does Not Justify Affirmative Action” (2017) Philosophia 45: 1299-1311
(5) “A Note on the Epistemology of Disagreement and Politics” (2016) Political Theory 44: 657-63
(4) “Disagreement, Peerhood, and Three Paradoxes of Conciliationism” (2015) Synthese 192: 67-78
(3) “The Limits of Liberal Tolerance” (2015) Public Affairs Quarterly 29: 277-95
(2) “On the Compatibility of Epistocracy and Public Reason” (2015) Social Theory and Practice 41: 458-76
(1) “On Harry Frankfurt’s ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’” (2015) Ethics 125: 1171-73