My main philosophical interests are in metaethics, ethics, and political philosophy. In metaethics, my work has focused on the relationship between agency and normativity. This project has two dimensions. First, I am interested in but somewhat skeptical about "constitutivist" metaethical theories according to which one can explain reasons or normativity in terms of what is constitutive of action or agency. Consequently, I have worked to uncover and diagnose the problems with constitutivist theories such as those developed by Christine Korsgaard, David Velleman, and Michael Smith. My paper about Smith's constitutivism was recently published in Ethics, and a paper about Korsgaard's arguments for the value of humanity is forthcoming in Philosophical Review.
Second, I believe that the nature of agency may shed light on particular metaethical issues even if one rejects constitutivism as a full-fledged metaethical theory. There are a number of possibilities here, but my current interest is to argue that practical deliberation has several constitutive features that together explain normative judgment internalism (NJI): the thesis that, necessarily, if one makes a normative judgment, then one is to some degree motivated to act accordingly, at least under specified "normal" conditions. NJI is often thought to favor non-cognitivism about normative judgment. However, I think a close look at practical deliberation may undermine that argument for non-cognitivism by showing how NJI is compatible with the cognitivist thesis that normative judgments express ordinary beliefs about normative matters.
I also have active research interests in moral and political philosophy. Two topics warrant mention. The first is how we should make decisions under conditions of moral uncertainty--that is, when we don't know what we morally ought to do given some specification of the non-moral facts. I am interested in both the theoretical question of what principles should guide our actions in such circumstances and the practical question of whether those principles favor particular conclusions in certain real-world moral contexts, such as (1) distributive justice and (2) duties of aid to the severely impoverished. Along the way, I address some theoretical problems surrounding reasoning under moral uncertainty, such as whether and how it is possible to make inter-theoretic comparisons of moral value in order to, for example, choose the option with the greatest expected moral value.
The second topic is the basis of moral equality. People of the most diverse moral views--from utilitarians to Kantians, say--generally agree that people are in some fundamental sense moral equals. Everyone's rights or interests matter equally from the moral point of view. However, it is not clear precisely in virtue of what people are moral equals, for individuals differ with respect to many of the properties that might be thought to ground their moral importance, such as their rational capacities. I would like to find the best way to reconcile moral equality with non-moral inequality and to determine whether it has implications for what treating people as moral equals requires.
Second, I believe that the nature of agency may shed light on particular metaethical issues even if one rejects constitutivism as a full-fledged metaethical theory. There are a number of possibilities here, but my current interest is to argue that practical deliberation has several constitutive features that together explain normative judgment internalism (NJI): the thesis that, necessarily, if one makes a normative judgment, then one is to some degree motivated to act accordingly, at least under specified "normal" conditions. NJI is often thought to favor non-cognitivism about normative judgment. However, I think a close look at practical deliberation may undermine that argument for non-cognitivism by showing how NJI is compatible with the cognitivist thesis that normative judgments express ordinary beliefs about normative matters.
I also have active research interests in moral and political philosophy. Two topics warrant mention. The first is how we should make decisions under conditions of moral uncertainty--that is, when we don't know what we morally ought to do given some specification of the non-moral facts. I am interested in both the theoretical question of what principles should guide our actions in such circumstances and the practical question of whether those principles favor particular conclusions in certain real-world moral contexts, such as (1) distributive justice and (2) duties of aid to the severely impoverished. Along the way, I address some theoretical problems surrounding reasoning under moral uncertainty, such as whether and how it is possible to make inter-theoretic comparisons of moral value in order to, for example, choose the option with the greatest expected moral value.
The second topic is the basis of moral equality. People of the most diverse moral views--from utilitarians to Kantians, say--generally agree that people are in some fundamental sense moral equals. Everyone's rights or interests matter equally from the moral point of view. However, it is not clear precisely in virtue of what people are moral equals, for individuals differ with respect to many of the properties that might be thought to ground their moral importance, such as their rational capacities. I would like to find the best way to reconcile moral equality with non-moral inequality and to determine whether it has implications for what treating people as moral equals requires.