Overview:

My main research area is normative ethics. I have worked extensively on population and procreation ethics. My BPhil thesis discussed Parfit's last published attempts to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, and the Non-Identity Problem under uncertainty. And I recently collaborated with Kacper Kowalczyk on a paper which addresses a range of issues raised in Jake Nebel's excellent "An Intrapersonal Addition Paradox". At the moment, I am working on a project about well-being and the significance of temporal features.

My second area of research is epistemology. I have written about knowledge-how, skill, epistemic luck, and suspension of judgment. Currently, I am thinking about epistemic consequentialism and about pragmatic encroachment. In the future, I would like to investigate the numerous interconnections between epistemology and ethics.

I also have a strong interest in distinctively practical ethics. I have written about existential risk, predictive algorithms in the criminal justice system, cognitive enhancement, and automation of work. Johann Frick and I are scheduled to co-teach an upper-level undergraduate seminar on the Ethics of Emerging Technologies at Princeton in the spring of 2021.

Publications:

1. Friedman on Suspended Judgment. Synthese. (forthcoming). [abstract]   [pdf]    [online]

Abstract: In a series of articles, Jane Friedman argues that suspended judgment is a sui generis first-order question-directed attitude and that one suspends judgment on some matter if and only if one genuinely inquires into this matter. This paper responds to Friedman's arguments against reductive higher-order propositional accounts of this attitude and raises worries about the details of her positive claim that one suspends iff one inquires. It subsequently defends a novel reductive higher-order propositional account of suspended judgment.

2. On Parfit's Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle. The Philosophical Quarterly. (2020). Winner of the 2018 Essay Prize. [abstract]   [pdf]    [online]

Abstract: In the posthumously published 'Future People, the Non-Identity Problem, and Person-Affecting Principles' (2017), Derek Parfit presents a novel axiological principle which he calls the Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle and claims that it does not imply the Repugnant Conclusion. This paper shows that even the best version of Parfit's principle cannot avoid this conclusion. That said, accepting such a principle makes embracing the Repugnant Conclusion more justifiable. This paper further addresses important questions which Parfit left unanswered concerning: the relative importance of individual and collective goodness, comparisons involving unequal outcomes, how to understand individual goodness, and whether incomparability at the level of individual goodness implies incomparability at the level of overall goodness.

3. Schopenhauer on Suicide and Negation of the Will. The British Journal for the History of Philosophy. (forthcoming). [abstract]   [pdf]    [online]

Abstract: Schopenhauer's argument against suicide has served as a punching bag for many modern-day commentators. Dale Jacquette, Sandra Shapshay, and David Hamlyn all argue that the premises of this argument or its conclusion are inconsistent with Schopenhauer's wider metaphysical and ethical project. This paper defends Schopenhauer from these charges. Along the way, it examines the relations between suicide, death by voluntary starvation, negation of the will, compassion, and Schopenhauer's critiques of cynicism and stoicism. The paper concludes that there may be gaps in Schopenhauer's system, but not where the aforementioned commentators tried to locate them.

Manuscripts in progress and under review:

4. A paper on noncomparativism and cases involving a mere chance of nonexistence (with Kacper Kowalczyk)

5. A paper on ex ante and ex post perspectives in population ethics (with Kacper Kowalczyk)

6. A paper on the significance of a life's shape

7. A paper on the nature of well-being

8. A paper on the structure of epistemic value

9. A paper on epistemic consequentialism and demandingness

10. A paper on double-checking

11. A paper on pragmatic encroachment

If you are interested in reading any of these manuscripts, send me an email.