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I am a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and I'm the Program Chair for Normative Ethics at the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. Also, I currently serve as Editor-in-Chief of Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy. My research focuses on morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two, but I have also written on well-being, moral worth, posthumous harm, moral responsibility, and the non-identity problem. Currently, I'm working on a book entitled Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends. Kantsequentialism is a new moral theory that combines the best aspects of both utilitarianism and Kantianism. It holds that our obligations to adopt ends (i.e., our telic obligations) are more fundamental than our obligations to perform actions (i.e., our praxic obligations). 

Recently, I completed two other books. One is a short book entitled Morality and Practical Reasons, which is part of Cambridge University Press's Elements series. The other is entitled Opting for the Best: Oughts and Options (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). The latter concerns what I take to be the least controversial normative principle concerning action: you ought to perform your best option—best, that is, in terms of whatever ultimately matters. The book sets aside the question of what ultimately matters to focus on more basic issues, such as: What are our options? Which options do we assess directly in terms of their own goodness, and which do we assess in terms of their relations to the goodness of other options? What do we hold fixed when assessing how good an option is? Do we, for instance, hold fixed the agent’s present beliefs, desires, and intentions? And do we hold fixed the agent’s predictable future misbehavior? Lastly, what is it for something to matter? That is, what, in the most general terms, determines the goodness of an option?

One of the book's more controversial theses is that we have obligations not only to voluntarily perform actions, but also to non-voluntarily form reasons-responsive attitudes (e.g., desires, beliefs, and intentions). For, as I argue, agents have, in the relevant sense, just as much control over which attitudes they form as which acts they perform. This is important because what effect an act will have on the world depends not only on which acts the agent will simultaneously and subsequently be performing, but also on which attitudes she will simultaneously and subsequently be forming. 

My first book — Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) — defends a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral convictions and shares with other consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons. Although the primary aim of the book is to defend a particular consequentialist theory (viz., commonsense consequentialism), it defends this theory as part of a coherent whole concerning our commonsense views about the nature and substance of both morality and rationality.

Before coming to the University of Notre Dame in 2025, I taught at Arizona State University from 2005-25, at California State University, Northridge from 2000-05, and at the College of Charleston from 1998-00. I’ve also held fellowships at Tulane University, Princeton University, and the Australian National University. 

I received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and political science from the University of California, San Diego in 1991, and master's and doctorate degrees in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1993 and 1998, respectively (see here for my academic genealogy). Also, as a graduate student, I spent 1994 at Monash University studying with Michael Smith and Peter Singer, among others. Before all that, I attended elementary school at Ahuimanu Elementary School, middle school at Le Jardin Academy, and high school at Punahou School and Torrey Pines High School. Lastly, I am one of the founders of, and a past contributor to, PEA Soup—a blog dedicated to the discussion of philosophy, ethics, and academia.

In my free time, I enjoy hiking, cooking, traveling, and just spending time with my wife of over 25 years, Erin. We're empty-nesters now that our daughter, Fiona, is off at Scripps College studying linguistics. We also have three dogs: Isis, Seth, and Nephthys. They are all Basenjis. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys were siblings born to Geb (earth) and Nut (sky). We went with the Egyptian theme because the breed is believed to have been a favorite of the pharaohs, as we find depictions of the breed in Egyptian tombs and art dating back thousands of years.