Published Articles
The Relation between Moral Reasons and Moral Requirement
Erkenntnis, forthcoming
What is the relation between moral reasons and moral requirement? Specifically: what relation does an action have to bear to one’s moral reasons in order to count as morally required? This paper defends the following answer to this question: an action is morally required just in case the moral reasons in favor of that action are enough on their own to outweigh all of the reasons, moral and nonmoral, to perform any alternative. I argue that this decisive moral reason view satisfies three key desiderata: it is compatible with either affirming or denying the existence of moral options; it vindicates moral rationalism, the thesis that an action can be morally required only if one ought to do it all things considered; and most distinctively, it explains why unexcused moral wrongdoing necessarily shows disregard for moral reasons.
Promises, Offers, Requests, Agreements
[open access published version]
Ergo 9(34): 878-910. 2023.
If I promise to pick you up at the airport, I thereby become obligated to do so. But this is not the only way I could undertake this obligation. If I offer to pick you up, and you accept my offer, I become obligated to pick you up in much the same way. I would also undertake similar obligations if you asked me to pick you up and I accepted your request, or if we made an agreement that I will pick you up at the airport and in exchange you’ll buy me dinner. Why are the normative effects of accepted offers, accepted requests, and agreements so similar to those of promises? I argue that theorists of promising need to answer this question, and so they need to pay attention to offers, requests, and agreements. On the theory I defend, promises, offers, requests, and agreements have such similar normative effects because they all result in joint decisions between the relevant parties. I argue that this ‘joint decision view’ provides an attractive explanation of the similarities and differences between promises, offers, requests, and agreements.
Promises as Proposals in Joint Practical Deliberation
[pre-publication draft] [published version]
Noûs 54(1): 204-232. 2020.
This paper argues that promises are proposals in joint practical deliberation, the activity of deciding together what to do. More precisely: to promise to ϕ is to propose (in a particular way) to decide together with your addressee(s) that you will ϕ. I defend this deliberative theory by showing that the activity of joint practical deliberation naturally gives rise to a speech act with exactly the same properties as promises. A certain kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one's own actions turns out to have the very same normative effects, under the very same conditions, as a promise. I submit that this cannot be a coincidence: we should conclude that promises and the relevant kind of proposals in joint practical deliberation are one and the same.
Moral Psychology as Accountability (with Stephen Darwall)
[pre-publication draft] [published version]
In Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics, edited by Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson, 40-83. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2014.
We argue that experimental work on moral motivation both lends support to and is illuminated by certain philosophical theses about the conceptual connections between moral obligation, blame and guilt, and interpersonal accountability.
The Addict in Us All (with Richard Holton)
[open access published version]
Frontiers in Psychiatry, 5(149): 1-20. 2014.
We propose a unified model of self-control conflict that aims to capture the psychological mechanisms underlying both addiction and ordinary temptation. The upshot of our model is that the self-control challenge faced by addicted persons is not different in kind from that faced by non-addicted persons, though of course the former is far more difficult.
Work in Progress
Titles are redacted for blind review. Please feel free to email me to request drafts of any of the below.
[a paper objecting to rule consequentialism and contractualism]
Rule consequentialism and contractualism both hold that whether a moral principle is true depends on what would happen if it were generally adopted as a basis for conduct. This paper argues that these theories face an epistemic problem. The question of what would happen if different moral principles were generally adopted is a complex empirical question, comparable in difficulty to the question of what would happen if a nation adopted different laws, or if humanity had evolved different traits. Reflection on the epistemic demands of this question, I argue, shows that we have no clue what would happen if different moral principles were generally adopted, and thus no clue what moral principles rule consequentialism and contractualism endorse. The only way to avoid cluelessness is to accept relativism, which enables these theories to test principles on groups small enough to be epistemically tractable. However, I argue that to solve the epistemic problem, one’s testing groups must be fairly small, resulting in a form of relativism that is rather extreme. Thus rule consequentialists and contractualists face a dilemma: they must either accept that we have no clue what actions are right and wrong, or they must endorse an implausibly strong form of relativism.
[a paper proposing a distinction between types of directed obligation]
This paper argues that there are two importantly distinct normative relations that can be referred to using phrases like ‘X is obligated to Y,’ ‘Y has a right against X,’ or ‘X wronged Y.’ When we say that X is obligated to Y to stay off Y’s property, one thing we might mean that X is subject to a deontological constraint against trespassing on Y’s property that Y alone has the power to waive. I call this first relation Hohfeldian directed obligation, in honor of Wesley Hohfeld’s work on rights. A second thing we might mean is that Y is in a unique position to fittingly demand that X stay off her property and resent X if he trespasses without excuse. I call this second relation Strawsonian directed obligation, in honor of P. F. Strawson’s work on resentment. Though these two kinds of directed obligation often coincide, I argue that they are extensionally dissociable and play different normative roles. We cannot provide an adequate theory of ‘obligation to’ until we recognize that this phrase denotes not one relation, but two.
[a paper arguing that moral obligation and directed obligation are two different things]
What is the relation between my being obligated to you to do some action and my being morally obligated to do it? This paper argues that we should not answer this question by reducing one of these statuses to the other. Each kind of obligation can obtain in the other’s absence: I can be obligated to a particular person to ϕ without being morally obligated to ϕ, and I can be morally obligated to ϕ without being obligated to any particular person to ϕ. Instead, I propose that moral and directed obligation are two instances of a more general relation, the obligation relation. On this parallel relations view, I have a directed obligation to you when I bear the obligation relation to you, and I have a moral obligation when I bear the obligation relation to the group of all morally competent persons.
[a paper proposing a theory of joint intention]
This paper presents a novel theory of joint intention. On the proposed view, joint intentions are an element in the ‘score’ of a wider activity of shared agency, much as strikes are an element in the score of baseball. Like a game, shared agency is an activity structured by constitutive rules and a representation of score. When my partner and I jointly decide to go on a walk, we thereby update the score of our activity of shared agency to include a joint intention to do so. This change in score, in turn, affects what the rules of the activity of shared agency require of us. This score account of joint intention has two advantages. First, unlike most individualist accounts, the score account allows joint intentions to come apart from individual intentions: we can jointly intend to go on a walk even if I individually intend not to. I argue that this enables the score account to better capture the normative force of joint intentions. Second, unlike most anti-individualist accounts, the score account explains how facts about joint intention are grounded in facts about individual attitudes and interactions.
Public Philosophy
Interview: Is MrBeast Evil?
YouTube, theScore esports, interview with Josh Bury, July 2023
I talk with Josh Bury about the controversy surrounding the YouTube philanthropist MrBeast. MrBeast is famous for videos in which he does charitable deeds like giving a homeless person $10,000 in cash or paying for 1000 people to get cataract surgery. Bury and I discuss why some people find MrBeast’s videos morally repellent despite their philanthropic aims, distinguishing different objections that might be raised.
Depression and the good
Blog of the APA, Current Events in Public Philosophy Series, June 2023
Drawing on my own experiences with depression, I ask what, if anything, philosophy might have to say about it. I suggest that depression involves a breakdown in the depressed person’s relationship with the good, and that by studying how this breakdown happens, we might learn something about the correct way to appreciate value.
The philosophical case against hoping Trump suffers
The Washington Post, October 2020
Written while Donald Trump was in the hospital with Covid-19, this piece looks at theories of the value of punishment to determine whether Trump’s suffering from Covid has any value. My answer: no, because suffering caused by a disease cannot play the justice-restoring role that makes punishment worthwhile.
People are dying because we misunderstand how those with addiction think
Vox.com, March 2018
One of 5 winners of the 2019 APA Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest
Argues that many harmful-but-persistent ways of thinking about addiction may be implicitly based in the Socratic assumption that people always do what they think is best. Suggests that attending to the divided nature of the mind might help us adopt a more sympathetic and productive approach to addiction.
Can I make the world a better place?
Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Blog, December 2017
Tries to explain why James Lenman's paper "Consequentialism and Cluelessness" has me completely stumped.
Book Reviews
Review of Hanno Sauer, Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow
[open access published version]
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, May 2019
Review of Anthony Simon Laden, Reasoning: A Social Picture
[author's draft] [published version]
Philosophical Review, 125(3): pp. 435-439. 2016.