Research

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My dissertation develops and applies a distinction between fit-related and value-related reasons for action which has implications for fundamental issues in normative ethics. I argue that it vindicates some aspects of common sense morality and permits progress on long-standing issues in moral philosophy.

Committee: Geoff Sayre-McCord (advisor), Daniel Muñoz, Sarah Stroud, Chris Howard (McGill University), and Margaret Shea

Publications

• "The Aptic View of Moral Worth", provisionally forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics
  • Suppose Michael rightly helps Pam move because she’s in need. However, he also believes that women are by nature helpless, and helps Pam on that basis. Though he acts rightly, and perhaps for the right reasons, Michael does not deserve credit for doing the right thing. His sexist attitudes towards Pam precludes his acting rightly from having moral worth. When do right actions have moral worth? A right act has moral worth only if it is performed on the basis of the right kind of reasons. But behind our actions are our attitudes. And our attitudes are subject to moral evaluation by way of their fittingness. I propose to explain  morally worthy acts as those right actions that issue from fitting attitudes. In this chapter I develop and defend a novel view of moral worth.  Here is the thought: An agent is moved to action by their attitudes—these include  their motives. Their motives on the whole appraise certain features of their action as morally significant (or not). Moral worth consists in the correctness of this appraisal.

In Progress (drafts available upon request)

• "Killing Weights to Save Constraints" ms. 
  • The Mafia threatens  to kill five people, unless you kill a sixth. What to do? Most agree that it’s wrong to kill the sixth. Morality plausibly includes a constraint on killing. But constraints seem to give rise to a paradox. Famously, the friend of constraints says it is wrong to kill, even to prevent more killings.  But if killing is so bad, then how could it be  wrong to minimize the overall number of killings? This is the so-called Paradox of Deontology. In this chapter I argue that extant accounts of constraints share a fatal flaw: they say killing is wrong because your reasons not to kill outweigh your reasons to kill. The air of paradox that has tirelessly followed constraints is a direct result of such weighing explanations. Weighing explanations tempt us toward maximizing principles. Maximizing principles generate the paradox. I argue that the friend of constraints need only to say that your reason to not to kill defeats your reason to kill. There are many non-weighing ways to say this. For instance, Joseph Raz and others  argue that a certain class of reasons defeat one another by exclusion. I develop a version of this Razian view, and argue that it avoids problems encountered by other versions of the view.
• "Consequentializing Ends" R&R
  • Utilitarianism is an elegant moral theory. There’s something to the idea that we morally ought to make our lives go best. Taken literally, however, utilitarianism flies in the face of our ordinary moral judgments. Utilitarians say you ought to kill the sixth person in Mafia-style cases, for instance. But what if there were a consequentialist theory that says it’s wrong to kill the one to save the five? Enter the consequentializers. They argue that you can make consequentialism say anything.  Constraints, partiality toward your nearest and dearest---whatever you like. You can have your consequentialist cake and eat it, too. Suppose that’s right. What follows? Some say the distinction between consequentialism and non-consequentialism, despite what we teach in Ethics 101, is empty and unimportant. Others say consequentializing will generate a theory that is more compelling than standard versions of Kantianism or Utilitarianism. I say the consequentializers are wrong on both counts. Consequentialism by its very nature can only consider forward-looking reasons for action. But some reasons to act are backward-looking. These versions of consequentialism will say the right things, but for the wrong reasons. 

• "Permission: Impossible" ms. 
  • Suppose we’re having coffee. If I finish my coffee first, I can’t just grab your mug and have some of yours. We owe things to one another, and I owe it to you not to just grab your coffee and drink it. Do we owe anything to ourselves? Some philosophers say so. But if you have duties to yourself, why don’t you violate your  own rights when you grab your own coffee and drink it? Plausibly, your decision to act waives the duty you have against yourself. But any putative duties to ourselves seem to lack the characteristic bindingness of duties. How can we have duties to ourselves if they do not bind us to act?   This is the so-called Paradox of Self-Release. In this paper I argue the paradox is merely apparent. Dissolving the paradox reveals the surprising relationship between moral modality and metaphysical modality. For example, if you do not waive your right against me to not drink your coffee, I would wrong you in sneaking a sip. But if I were to act against my own right without waving it, I would wrong myself. However, it’s metaphysically impossible that I decide to act without waiving my right. But that it is impossible to perform a certain action does not prohibit morality from assigning a deontic verdict to that action. That there is a legitimate case of self-wronging in impossible modal space implies that normative or moral necessity extends beyond metaphysical necessity. This is why the paradox of self-release is merely apparent. Just because you cannot, metaphysically, violate your own right does not mean that it would not be morally wrong for you to do so.