I'm currently a Professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. I am also the organizer of the biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), and the series editor of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. I was an Associate Editor of the journal Ethics for 6-1/2 years (I stepped down July 1, 2023), and a recurring visiting faculty at the Lund/Gothenburg Responsibility Project. I was also a co-founder and, until September 2022, co-editor (with David Sobel) of the ethics blog PEA Soup,

My research specialties are agency and responsibility, personal identity and ethics, moral psychology, normative ethics, social/political philosophy, and humor (seriously!). 

My book Responsibility from the Margins (OUP 2015) developed an original tripartite theory of responsible agency by investigating cases of so-called "marginal agency," real-life agents with various psychological disorders or impairments that seem both inside and outside the community of responsible agents. 

I have published over seventy papers, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and book chapters, on a wide variety of philosophical topics. My work has appeared in The Philosophical Review, The Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Ethics (3x), Nous, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy & Public Affairs, as well as in numerous Oxford University Press volumes. My most widely-cited paper was the theoretical basis for my tripartite theory of responsibility: "Attributability, Answerability, Accountability: Toward a Wider Theory of Moral Responsibility" (Ethics 2011). 

My first monograph was called Personal Identity and Ethics (2009, Broadview Press), and it was an introduction to the variety of ways that the metaphysics of personal identity has been taken to bear on many aspects of ethics (both normative and applied). It arose from my writing the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Personal Identity and Ethics in 2005 (and which I've substantially updated every four years since then).

I have a new book coming out in May 2024 with the University of Chicago Press about the relationship between interpersonal humor and morality, called Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life. It discusses the nature of humor; how humor and morality generally bear on one another (and what to do when they do); the moral status of deceptive humor (pranks, leg-pulling), mockery, and stereotyping wisecracks; what makes for a bad sense of humor; and how to find the funny in misery and tragedy (a guide for the humorless).

I've also got another book coming out in August 2024, The Architecture of Blame and Praise: An Interdisciplinary Investigation, with Oxford University Press. It aims to dissolve a number of apparent asymmetries between blame and praise (many overlooked in the literature) in order to give a comprehensive account of the blame/praise system (drawing from philosophy, psychology, and economics) that will better enable us to understand their connection to responsible agency. 

I'm currently writing a book with my colleague Shaun Nichols, on personal identity and the self. The overall aim (which turns out to be a major theme in a lot of my work) is to eliminate the need for any heavy metaphysical lifting in theorizing about the nature of identity, both at a time and across time. 

I did my graduate work at UC Irvine, completing my dissertation on "Selves and Moral Units" in 1996 (mentored first by Greg Kavka, who died too young, and then by Gary Watson).  My first job was at Arkansas State (1996-1997), and at the end of that first year I was traded to the University of Memphis (true story!), where I taught for two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor. After another year of VAP-ing for UC Riverside (1999-2000), I got my first tenure-track job in 2000 at Cal State Northridge, with an office next to the current King of Ethics, Doug Portmore (we were hired in the same year). I left in 2004 for Bowling Green State University, where for five years I had the honor and privilege of working alongside a murderer's row of mainly moral philosophers: Campbell Brown, Christian Coons, Janice Dowell, Dan Jacobson, Jeff Moriarty, David Sobel, and Steve Wall. (This was actually what I think of as my second grad school stint.) I also had the opportunity to start mentoring grad students through their dissertations. I was a Faculty Fellow at Tulane's Center for Ethics and Public Affairs in 2007-8, and after I fell in love with New Orleans, I had the great fortune of being hired by Tulane a year later, and I was there until summer 2021, when I left for Cornell, to join the most excellent moral psychology crew around. Now I work alongside such luminaries in the field as John Doris, Rachana Kamtekar, Shaun Nichols, Laura Niemi, Derk Pereboom, and David Pizarro.

My hobbies: seeing excellent live music, eating excellent food, drinking excellent cocktails, well, you get the idea. I also get out for golf on occasion, which is a blessing and a curse. I'm currently greatly enjoying regular hikes in the gorgeous NY state parks in and around Ithaca. I also write and record music, shoot pool, play basketball, and swim a lot. Indeed, philosophy tends to get in the way of all the fun stuff.

I have been married to my best friend and travel buddy, Marie Lantz, for nearly 28 years. My two daughters Kristin and Ashley live in the midwest, and Kristin's two boys, Parker and Cohen, are my much-beloved grandsons.

Photo Credit: Simon May