Primary research interests
I work in moral psychology and meta-ethics, mostly on the nature of desires, reasons, and how they relate.
Other research interests
I also have a broad interest in Normative Ethics, Political Philosophy, and Metaphysics. One can see these as stretching out in either direction from meta-ethics: in one direction towards the more practical issues in normative ethics and political philosophy, and in the other direction towards abstract questions about the nature of reality.
Publications
"Slaves of the Passions? On Schroeder's New Humeanism": A critical notice of Mark Schroeder's Slaves of the Passions, in Ratio, Vol 22, Issue 2, June 2009, pp.250-7 (PDF here, subscription required)
Thesis
Below is the current abstract for my thesis, Why Do People Do Things? I hope to upload the thesis here soon.
Morality is supposed to be both authoritative and practical. The former is necessary for morality to have any kind of objective sanction, and yet the latter is necessary if it is to connect with our actions in any meaningful manner. We might think that there is some kind of tension between these two features of morality. Call this general problem The Queerness Problem. I address two interpretations of this problem.
First, it seems as though the authority of morality requires that it is independent of our desires, whereas the practicality of morality requires that it is dependent on our desires. This interpretation of the queerness problem I call The Moral Problem. Is the practical import of moral judgement contingent on the presence of certain non-rational desires? I argue that, in a suitably qualified sense, the distinction between desire and moral judgement has been overblown. Desires just are kinds of judgement. In particular, I argue that desires are beliefs about normative reasons. Most of the thesis is spent arguing for and defending this cognitive theory of desire. Such a theory shows that moral judgements are beliefs about authoritative truths on what we ought to do which also have practical import.
Second, it seems as though the authority of morality requires that it is independent of all of our mental states, whereas the practicality of morality requires that it is dependent on our mental states. This interpretation of the queerness problem I call The Practical Problem. Can we ever act rightly if reasons are features of the world but we are only ever motivated by our beliefs? I argue that, in a suitably qualified sense, this distinction has been overblown. From the perspective of the agent who acts, there is no distinction between features of the world and contents of beliefs. Since this perspective is the one from which we explain actions, it can be true that reasons are authoritative features of the world which also have practical import.
In conclusion, I show how there is no tension between the authority and practicality of morality. There is no queerness problem.