Roughly a decade ago, Richard Kraut published a book with the tantalizing title What is Good and Why? My own work is all, in one way or another, concerned with investigating the same two questions. My research to date has predominantly focused on one species of goodness, namely that which accrues to a life that is going well for the person living it. As at the more general level, two distinct questions arise about this particular variety of goodness. First, what kinds of thing are (most fundamentally) good for a person? Second, what makes it the case that these things, and only these things, are good in this sense? I call these the enumerative and the explanatory questions, respectively. In my PhD thesis (accessible here), I developed and defended a new account of the good life for a person, one that I believe can afford more satisfying answers to these central questions than other approaches on offer.
Publications
Articles
"On Two Interpretations of the Desire-Satisfaction Theory of Prudential Value" Utilitas 31.2 (June 2019), 137-156.
Read-Only Version (via Cambridge Core Share)
Author’s Manuscript (NOT FOR CITATION)
Abstract: This article considers two different ways of formulating a desire-satisfaction theory of prudential value. The first version of the theory (the object view) assigns basic prudential value to the state of affairs that is the object of a person’s desire. The second version (the combo view) assigns basic prudential value to the compound state of affairs in which a) a person desires some state of affairs and b) this state of affairs obtains. My aims in this article are twofold. First, I aim to highlight that these are not mere notational variants, but in fact have quite different implications, so that this distinction is not one that the theorist of prudential value should ignore. More positively, I argue that the object view is better able to capture what is distinctive and appealing about subjective theories of prudential value, on any plausible account of what the central subjectivist insight is.
(with Andrew Reisner) "Moral Reasons for Moral Beliefs: A Puzzle for Moral Testimony Pessimism". Logos and Episteme 6.4 (2015), 429-48.
Abstract: According to moral testimony pessimists, the testimony of moral experts does not provide non-experts with normative reasons for belief. Moral testimony optimists hold that it does. We first aim to show that moral testimony optimism is, to the extent such things may be shown, the more natural view about moral testimony. Speaking roughly, the supposed discontinuity between the norms of moral beliefs and the norms of non-moral beliefs, on careful reflection, lacks the intuitive advantage that it is sometimes supposed to have. Our second aim is to highlight the difference in the nature of the pragmatic reasons for belief that support moral testimony optimism and moral testimony pessimism, setting out more clearly the nature and magnitude of the challenge for the pessimist.
Book Reviews
“Review of Expertise: A Philosophical Introduction by Jamie Carlin Watson”. Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 10.1 (2022), 145-48.