Currently, I am pursuing a set of interrelated issues that do not fit neatly into any one or two areas of specialization.  My interests range across a wide variety of topics in ethics, the philosophy of art, metaphysics, and general value theory, such as: the nature of pleasure, the relationship between well-being and the meaning of life, theories of love, the metaphysics of death, theories of humor, the appeal of horror, and the nature of aesthetic value.  I have published articles and am actively working on problems in each of the following areas.

Philosophy of Film

As should be apparent from my CV, the first area in which I developed research interests is the philosophy of art.  My initial interest in aesthetics came via the philosophy of film.  I have a long-standing passion for cinema and pursued a graduate minor in film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison while working on my PhD in philosophy.  In the last couple of years, I have written several articles in the philosophy of film and am currently working on related issues arising from recent technological advancements, such as the nature of interactivity, on which I have an article forthcoming.  In a paper forthcoming in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, I argue that film can be a first rate vehicle for doing philosophy.  Putting this theory in practice, I am currently writing a book examining the philosophical contributions made by several exemplary films, such as Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) and Happy Accidents (Brad Anderson, 2000). 

Art and Emotion

I have keen interests in the nature of our emotional engagement with narrative artworks.  So far, I have explored several fundamental problems regarding our emotional responses to art.  In my first foray into the area, I formulated a belief-constrained theory of imaginative engagement in my contribution to the collection Dark Thoughts.  I recently published an article on the relevance of artistic convention to immersion and the problem of imaginative resistance.  I am working on a new defense of the rationality of our emotional response to fiction against the charges of Colin Radford.  In addition, I recently published a paper in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism where I develop a new theory of suspense to explain why fictions are typically much more suspenseful than real life.  I also recently wrote the entry on the “Paradox of Suspense” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Horror

My research on the paradox of emotional response has led to an interest in the philosophy of horror.  I am working on a variety of problems in the area and contributed the entry on horror to the Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy.  I am currently revising a paper arguing that differences in audience responses to some horror movies give us good reason to think that some audience members harbor beliefs in the supernatural.  Recently, I generalized the paradox of tragedy and related paradox of horror into what I call “The Paradox of Painful Art.”  The paradox is essentially a conflict between motivational hedonism and our apparent desire to undergo painful experiences in response to art.  My initial investigations into this problem were recently published in the Journal of Aesthetic Education.  Based on my work in the area I was invited to contribute an article on art and negative affect to Philosophy Compass.  I plan to pursue related problems further by incorporating additional research on theories of pleasure into an exploration of the appeal of horror fiction.

Art and Morality

Much of my research has been focused on the relationship between art and morality—a long-standing topic that is currently at the center of analytic aesthetics and directly relevant to core issues in metaethics.  In a series of independent papers I engage the current literature on the topic, and develop several new arguments in support of moralism about art—the view that moral flaws in an artwork can be detrimental to its aesthetic value.  I am currently finishing up two new papers on the topic, one of which argues for moralism based on the nature of aesthetic properties.

Death

In addition to my ongoing projects in the philosophy of art, I am currently engaged in an integrated research program that spans topics in ethics and, for lack of a better term, “analytic” (as opposed to historical) existentialism.  I have been working on the meaning of life and the philosophy of death.  In a forthcoming paper, I present a novel argument against the desirability of immortality.  And I am currently working on a second paper where I argue that immortality would sap our lives of significance.  Recently I designed and taught a course on the philosophy of death.  My teaching has been catalytic, as I am now working on several additional problems in the area.  In particular, I am developing an argument against the possibility of posthumous harms.  I hope to teach the course again in the near future and develop my lecture notes into a book.

Pleasure

Recently I have been working on a variety of topics in value theory.  In particular, I am pursuing questions related to theories of well-being, such as the nature of pleasure and desire.  For instance, I have developed a defense of a “hedonic tone” theory of pleasure in contrast to what has become the dominant view of pleasure since Sidgwick.  The nature of pleasure is an extremely productive research topic.  Pleasure and its relationship to desire are not only significant to well-being, they are important to our theories of the value of art and our reasons for seeking putatively painful art experiences.  Currently, my research is primarily focused on the role of pleasure in aesthetic value, a topic that has yet to come under sufficiently careful analysis.  .

Humor

I am expanding my initial work on the ethics of humor, which was the focus of the last third of my dissertation.  In a paper forthcoming in The American Philosophical Quarterly, I argue against “comic immoralism”—the claim that ethical flaws can make jokes more humorous.  I am also working on several additional papers that deal with the difficult question “When is it wrong to find something funny?”

Love

I am also working on several problems concerning the nature and value of romantic love.  I am particularly interested in the question of whether we can rationally justify our love for another.  If not, then it becomes very difficult to account for the intuition that love earned through spells or potions is somehow deficient.  My contribution to the excellent, forthcoming collection Philosophy and the Twilight Zone, develops a similar problem for worship. I argue that no entity worthy of worship could exercise the power to compel another's worship.  My basic claim is that the threat to autonomy could never be justified.  I am working on a similar response to the question concerning love.