I am a Professor and Placement Director in the Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University  

I am also affiliated with Ohio State's Center for Ethics and Human Values, its Sustainability Institute, and the 

Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme 

I am an associate editor with JESP and Ergo, two awesome truly open access philosophy journals

At the broadest level, my research focuses on four philosophical questions about ethics:

• What ought we to do (both generally, and in some of the pressing and hard cases that now confront us)?

• What are we doing when we engage in ethical thought and talk?

• Are there ethical facts? If so, how could they fit into our best overall account of reality?

• What is the best way of going about answering the preceding questions?

In pursuing these questions, I am gripped both by the methodologist’s goal of understanding and improving our practices of inquiry, and by the practitioner’s aim of making substantive progress in philosophical inquiry.

You can read my published and forthcoming work here.

If you have a fetish for CVs, mine can be found here.

I hail from Vancouver, Canada. I live in Columbus, Ohio with my love Amy Shuster, and our child Finn. 

If you are here because my social media pages are shockingly cryptic, you can learn more about me here.

If you would like to get in touch, please drop me an email at:

        mcpherson[dot]164[at]osu[dot]edu  

What I am up to (Spring 2026): 

• • I will be teaching an advanced introduction to metaethics 

  • I am thinking and writing about ethics, about improving our representational resources, and about the relationship between inquiry into our thought and inquiry non-mental reality.

  • I am supporting OSU Philosophy's awesome job candidates as our Placement Director 

  • In my leisure time, I hope to spend a lot of time with my family and friends, make and eat many  delicious vegan meals, do yoga and pilates, lift weights, ride my bike, read some good fiction, and play  the wonderful board game go (aka baduk or weiqi). If you are interested, consider joining me in person at the very friendly Columbus go club!