interests | publications | dissertation | CV (PDF)
Areas
My main areas of research are:
In my spare time I also enjoy dabbling in philosophy of religion.
Service
I am currently Assistant to the General Editors at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
I’m also currently the leaf editor at PhilPapers for the following categories:
- Epistemic Contextualism and Invariantism [Text, BibTeX, EndNote]
- Altruism and Psychological Egoism [Text, BibTeX, EndNote]
Research Abstract
As Jason Stanley once put it:
Some philosophers are drawn to the subject [of philosophy] via their interest in the nature and structure of the world external to us. Others are drawn to it by an interest in the capacities that make humans distinctive in the world. I am a philosopher of the latter sort. My work thus far has been clustered around the nexus of knowledge, communication, and human action.
I find myself drawn to the subject much in the way that Stanley is. And one of the things that makes humans distinctive in the world is the capacity to guide their behavior by principles that philosophers call “normative.” What’s normative is supposed to be contrasted with what’s non-normative (sometimes called “descriptive” or, more unfotrunately, “factual”). Certain statements, for example, are normative in that they are about what one should do, what one has reason to do, what one ought to do, etc. Other statements, however, lack normative content, such as claims about what a person merely does do. We find so-called “normativity” primarily in both ethics (roughly the study of what we should do) and epistemology (roughly the study of what we should believe). I’m especially interested in normative creatures, that is, creatures that can reason about what to do (or think) and can do this for good or bad reasons. Such creatures philosophers usually call “agents,” though most assume the only agents around are human beings. So, to put it simply, I’m especially interested in what is often called “agency” or the kinds of behavior and thought processes distinctive of rational, self-reflective beings (such as humans) as opposed to so-called “lower animals.” Of course this leads to classic issues about the nature and scope of practical reasoning, rationality, normativity, motivation, reasons, and other central issues in moral psychology and action theory.
My dissertation focuses on the nature of rational motivation. I attempt to defend a broadly Kantian view according to which we have the capacity to “act from duty.” By looking to both empirical and non-empirical considerations, I defend this idea against two key “empiricist” challenges: psychological egoism and so-called “Humean” theories.
In future work, I hope to draw on my research thus far to address the topics of my broader research project—understanding how we act for good reasons, guide our actions by normative principles, and so on. I plan to continue to approach these issues in an interdisciplinary way by looking to both philosophy and scientific psychology, perhaps even doing some so-called “experimental philosophy” (a rising method of inquiry that I think can augment, but not replace, more traditional methods of inquiry in some areas of philosophy).
Favorites
Philosophers
Some historical philosophers who have especially influenced or inspired me (even if I disagree with some or all of their views):
- Hume, Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein.
Some more contemporary philosophers who have especially influenced or inspired me (even if I disagree with some or all of their views):
Quotes
- Some of My Favorite Philosophical Quotes – take a look if you’d like.
