Research

BOOKS

(under contract) Better Not to Know: Why Knowing Less is Sometimes Best (Peter Lang Academic Publishing):

This book explores the nature and value of ignorance in many areas of life using philosophy, economics, and moral psychology, and defends the epistemic goldilocks’ principle: among other factors, benefits and costs constrain how much knowledge and ignorance is best.

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

(forthcoming) Better Spent Elsewhere: Why Philosophy Should Be Funded Less: The Independent Review

Suppose you’ve got millions of dollars to donate. Don’t donate it to academic philosophy. That would be a waste. First, tens of thousands of philosophy books and articles are published yearly, too many to be read. Producing philosophical articles and books faces diminishing returns and diverts money and attention from more important causes. Second, many philosophy books and articles contradict each other; at best, only some can be correct. Third, philosophy classes are poor at instilling critical thinking skills. Fourth, academic philosophy looks like academic rent seeking: gaming the rules of the system to gain resources at the expense of producing value for students and society. We thus have solid reasons to fund philosophy less.

(forthcoming) Should We Hope Apparent Atrocities Are Illusory? Exploring a Puzzle in Moral Axiology: dialectica

The world contains atrocities such as famine and war. Can we rationally hope they are morally illusory? Philosophers have recently focused on the question of the axiology of such claims, and how it relates to hope, e.g., can we rationally hope God exists if that improves the world? First, we have good reason to hope moral atrocities are merely apparent: our world would be morally better than if they weren’t real. However, some argue we know atrocities are real. Even bracketing off whether we have such moral knowledge, perhaps we shouldn’t hope atrocities are morally illusory because that state of affairs would undercut our moral reliability, entail we had false and epistemically unjustified moral beliefs, face moral opportunity costs, and perhaps even deny the dignity of victims of (even only apparent) atrocities.

(forthcoming) That Seems Wrong: Pedagogically Defusing Moral Relativism and Moral Skepticism: International Journal of Ethics in Education

Students sometimes profess moral relativism or skepticism with retorts like ‘how can we know?’ or ‘it’s all relative!’ Here I defend a pedagogical method to defusing moral relativism and moral skepticism using phenomenal conservatism: if it seems to S that p, S has defeasible justification to believe that p—e.g., moral seemings, like perceptual ones, are defeasibly justified. The purpose of defusing moral skepticism and relativism is to prevent these metaethical views from blocking insightful ethical inquiry in the classroom. This approach gently shifts the burden of proof to the relativist or skeptic, and makes such views costlier: if we reject moral seemings as a kind, we must reject other less objectionable seemings too, e.g., intellectual seemings. And finally, this method improves learning outcomes by ‘hooking onto’ student familiarity with seemings, e.g. seeing is (defeasibly justified) believing.

(forthcoming) Some Moral Benefits of Ignorance: Philosophical Psychology

When moral philosophers study ignorance, their efforts are almost solely confined to its exculpatory and blameworthy aspects. Unfortunately, though, this overlooks that certain kinds of propositional ignorance, namely of the personal costs and benefits of altruistic actions, can indirectly incentivize those actions. Humans require cooperation from others to survive, and that can be facilitated by a good reputation. One avenue to a good reputation is helping others, sticking to moral principles, and the like, without calculating the personal costs of doing so, e.g., saving someone from a burning building or sticking to moral principles, without calculating whether it would be too personally costly or sufficiently beneficial. These actions are indirect moral benefits (partly) resulting from that kind of propositional ignorance.

(2023) Why the Heck Would You Do Philosophy? A Practical Challenge to Philosophizing: Logos & Episteme

Philosophy plausibly aims at knowledge; it would thus be tempting to hold that much of the value of doing philosophy turns on securing knowledge. Enter the agnostic challenge: suppose that a philosophical agnostic (named ‘Betsy’) wants to discover only fundamental philosophical truths. However, the intractable disagreement among philosophical experts gives her pause. After reflecting on expert disagreement, she decides that doing philosophy, for her truth-seeking error-avoiding purposes, is irrational. In this paper, I argue that the agnostic challenge isn’t easily overcome. Although there are many reasons to do philosophy, the agnostic challenge implies there is less value to doing philosophy than many philosophers may have believed.

(2023) The Epistemology of Moral Praise and Moral Criticism: Episteme

Are strangers sincere in their moral praise and criticism? Here we apply signaling theory to argue ceteris paribus moral criticism is more likely sincere than praise; the former tends to be a higher-fidelity signal (in Western societies). To offer an example: emotions are often a self-validating as a signal because they’re hard to fake. This epistemic insight matters: moral praise and criticism influence moral reputations, and affect whether others will cooperate with us. Though much of this applies to generic praise and criticism too, moral philosophers should value sincere moral praise and moral criticism for several reasons: it (i) offers an insight into how others actually view us as moral agents; (ii) is feedback to help us improve our moral characters; and (iii) encourages some behaviors, and discourages others. And so as moral agents, we should care whether moral praise and moral criticism is sincere. 

(2023) Moral Language: SAGE Encyclopedia of Leadership Studies

Briefly argues that different kinds of moral language -- deontological versus consequentialist -- signals different traits about the speaker, and that leaders can use that insight to pick and choose the moral language they use to be more effective as leaders; and that leaders can use virtue signaling to shape the norms within the institutions and organizations they lead to socially and morally improve them.

(2022) Why Disdain Replicated Art? Metaphysics and Art in ‘The Elephant in the Brain’: Philosophia

Why disdain (perfectly) replicated art? If art is valuable because it evokes experiences of beauty, they should be comparable. In chapter 11 of The Elephant in the Brain, Simler and Hanson (S&H) argue we actually care about the extrinsic properties of art—e.g. who made it—to signal our intelligence and taste. Here I defend a different explanation for the evidence cited by S&H: the extrinsic properties of art are central to what constitutes art, and play a bigger role fixing the value of art than S&H allow. Further, the potential for diminishing marginal utility on the value of the intrinsic properties of art—seeing the original Mona Lisa is rare; seeing a copy isn’t—explains why we assign such value to the extrinsic properties of art. And thus we have a non-signaling explanation of art consumption, which may or may not complement signaling theory.

(2021) Aspirational Theism and Gratuitous Suffering: Religious Studies

Philosophers have long wondered whether God exists; and yet, they have ignored the question of whether we should hope that He exists—call this stance aspirational theism. In this paper, I argue that we have a weighty pro tanto reason to adopt this stance: theism offers a metaphysical guarantee against gratuitous suffering (i.e. God would not permit gratuitous suffering). On the other hand, few atheist alternatives offer such a guarantee—and even then, there are reasons to worry that they are inferior to the theistic alternative. Given this difference, we have a strong pro tanto, but not all-things-considered, reason to adopt aspirational theism.

(2020) Skeptical Hypotheses and Moral Skepticism -- A Reply to May: Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy

May (2013) argues, pace philosophers like Sinnott-Armstrong (2006), that moral skepticism is less plausible than perceptual skepticism when formulated in terms of epistemic closure (call this the implausibility claim). In this paper, I argue that moral skepticism is no less plausible than perceptual skepticism when formulated in terms of epistemic closure, despite May’s objections: we need only combine the moral nihilist hypothesis with an evolutionary account that explains why would have comparable moral evidence, even if moral nihilism were true. Then I argue pace May that imaginative resistance doesn’t challenge the plausibility of an epistemic closure approach to moral skepticism: it is poor evidence that moral truths hold necessarily. So, we should be skeptical of the implausibility claim.

(2019) Modest Meta-Philosophical Skepticism: Ratio

Intractable disagreement among philosophers is ubiquitous. An implication of such disagreement is that many philosophers hold false philosophical beliefs (i.e. at most only one part to a dispute can be right). Suppose that we distribute philosophers along a spectrum arranged from philosophers with mostly true philosophical beliefs on one end (high-reliability), to those with mostly false philosophical beliefs on the other (low-reliability), and everyone else somewhere in-between (call this is the reliability spectrum). It is hard to see how philosophers could accurately locate themselves on the reliability spectrum; they are prima facie as well positioned as their peers with respect to philosophical matters (call this the placement problem). In this paper, I argue that the reliability spectrum and placement problem lend support to modest meta-philosophical skepticism: we have a pro tanto (but not an ¬all-things-considered) reason to withhold ascent to philosophical claims.

(2015) The Fine-Tuning Argument and the Problem of Poor Design: Philosophia

My purpose, in this paper, is to defend the claim that the fine-tuning argument suffers from the poor design worry. Simply put, the worry is this: if God created the universe, specifically with the purpose of bringing about moral agents, we would antecedently predict that the universe and the laws of nature, taken as a whole, would be well-equipped to do just that. However, in light of how rare a life-permitting universe is, compared to all the ways the universe might be have been life-prohibiting given the laws of physics, strongly suggests that the universe was poorly designed for that purpose. This casts doubt on the claim that God has much to do with designing the universe. First, I introduce the fine-tuning argument, and second, I explain and defend the poor design worry against objections that, while apparently compelling, I argue are misleading.

(2013) Dissecting the Suicide Machine Argument: Insights from the Hales-Licon Debate: Logos & Episteme

I assess the debate over the Suicide Machine Argument. There are several lessons to be learned from this debate. First, there is a fruitful distinction to be made, between tensed and tenseless versions of presentism, despite the temptation to suppose that presentism is a tensed theory of time. Second, once we’ve made the distinction between different kinds of presentism, it is clear that Licon’s objection protects the tenseless version of presentism from the Suicide Machine Argument; however, the argument is still effective against the tensed version. Finally, I argue that if the presentist wants to remain a card carrying presentist, in the face of the challenge posed by Hales, then she must abandon her commitment to tense.

(2013) Properly Functioning Brains and Personal Identity: An Argument for Neural Animalism: SATS

Surely, I am the same person I was several years prior. I must be identical to something that persists. First, I argue that the reductive materialism and Lockean view of personal identity are plausible accounts of our mental life and survival conditions. Second, although these positions appear to be in tension, I argue that a plausible way to reconcile them is a novel kind of animalism. This view says that I am identical to my properly functioning brain (or a part of that brain). Thus, I am identical to my properly functioning brain. Call this view neural animalism.

(2013) On Merely Modal Epistemic Peers -- Challenging the Equal-Weight View: Philosophia

There is a controversy, within social epistemology, over how to handle disagreement among epistemic peers. Call this the problem of peer disagreement. There is a solution, i.e. the equal-weight view, which says that disagreement among epistemic peers is a reason for each peer to lower the credence they place in their respective positions. However, this solution is susceptible to a serious challenge. Call it the merely modal peers challenge. Throughout parts of modal space, which resemble the actual world almost completely, there are hordes of epistemic peers, who disagree with almost any arbitrarily chosen belief had by residents of the actual world. Further, the mere modality of these peers is not itself an epistemic difference-maker. Thus, on the equal-weight view, we should significantly lower the credence we place in most of our beliefs. Surely, this is seriously mistaken. Thus, there are serious considerations that cut against the equal-weight view.

(2012) Sceptical Thoughts on Philosophical Expertise: Logos & Episteme

My topic is two-fold: a reductive account of expertise as an epistemic phenomenon, and applying the reductive account to the question of whether or not philosophers enjoy expertise. I conclude, on the basis of the reductive account, that even though philosophers enjoy something akin to second-order expertise (i.e. they are often experts on the positions of other philosophers, current trends in the philosophical literature, the history of philosophy, conceptual analysis and so on), they nevertheless lack first-order philosophical expertise (i.e. expertise on philosophical positions themselves such as the nature of mind, causality, normativity and so forth). Throughout the paper, I respond to potential objections.

(2012) Another Argument for Animalism -- The Causal Powers Argument: Prolegomena

The causal powers that I have, such as the ability to go to the store for cold beer, are the same causal powers as those had by the human animal closely associated with me. That is, the biological organism that invariably stares back at me, whenever I look in the mirror. Thus, if I want to avoid gratuitous causal overdetermination – i.e. if I want to avoid positing two separate individuals with identical, and thus redundant, causal powers – as I justifiably do, then I should adopt animalism. That is, the view that I have the same persistence conditions as those had by a biological organism.

(2012) Still No Suicide for Presentists -- Why Hales' Response Fails: Logos & Episteme

In this paper, I defend my original objection to Hales’ suicide machine argument against Hales’ response. I argue Hales’ criticisms are either misplaced or underestimate the strength of my objection; if the constraints of the original objection are respected, my original objection blocks Hales’ reply. To be thorough, I restate an improved version of the objection to the suicide machine argument. I conclude that Hales fails to motivate a reasonable worry as to the supposed suicidal nature of presentist time travel. 

(2011) No Suicide for Presentists -- A Response to Hales: Logos & Episteme

Steven Hales constructs a novel argument against the possibility of presentist time travel called the suicide machine argument. Hales argues that if presentism were true, then time travel would result in the annihilation of the time traveler. But such a consequence is not time travel, therefore presentism cannot allow for the possibility of time travel. This paper argues that in order for the suicide machine argument to succeed, it must make (at least) one of two assumptions, each of which beg the question. The argument must either assume that the sequence of moments is invariant, or that time travel through time requires distinct, co-instantiated moments. Because the former disjunct assumes that presentist time travel is impossible and the latter assumes that presentism is impossible, the suicide machine argument fails.

POPULAR PUBLICATIONS

(forthcoming) My Body, My Speech: Self-Ownership and Freedom of Speech: Think

A popular tactic for defending abortion rights is appealing to bodily self-ownership: since I own my body, a fetus has the right to occupy it only if I consent. One cannot be forced to bring a pregnancy to term because that would violate one’s self-ownership. The same logic applies to speech: we have freedom of speech because we produce speech using the bodies that we own. To curtail that speech violates our self-ownership, or in a phrase: my body, my speech.

(forthcoming) ChatGPT Goes to College: Free Inquiry

A new technological era has dawned with the introduction of tools like Chat GPT and Bard that threaten to upend how the world works, including the operations of higher education. And at the schools where such A.I, tools are banned, a college degree will no longer just signal that one is intelligent, conformist, and conscientious, but also that one is good at avoiding detection when using banned tools like ChatGPT and Bard, and also good at integrating such tools into one's workflow. While graduating from college or university will remain a strong signal to employers, the signal composition will shift somewhat because of A.I.

(2023) Driving Up Fatalities: Why Flight Vaccine Mandates Would (Likely) Backfire: Mises Wire

During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was pressure on governments and airlines to mandate Covid vaccines for travel by flight. Though the vaccines likely reduce the worst aspects of the virus, there is doubt about whether flight mandates would save lives. This paper argues such mandates would likely result in greater fatalities overall: at the margins, vaccine mandates increase the cost of air travel, thereby incentivizing substituting driving for flying. Since driving is more dangerous than flying, this is solid reason to doubt a reduction of travel fatalities because of those mandates.

(2023) Does a Just Society Require Just Citizens? Philosophy Now

There is a solid empirical evidence for moral mediocrity: people aim to be about as morally good, and as morally bad, as those around them. This can be good if most people are saints, and very bad if most people are moral monsters. And here we derive an important insight: we can have a just society without just citizens--that is, citizens who act just only from peer pressure, and not from moral reason--provided most people in that society, for whatever reason, happen to act justly. Even though Kant wouldn't approve, the resulting society would be just.

(2022) Freedom of Expression and the Argument from Self-Defense: Think

Some philosophers hold stifling free expression stifles intellectual life. Others reply that freedom of expression can harm members of marginalized groups by alienating them from social life or worse. Yet we should favor freedom of expression, especially where marginalized groups are concerned: it’s better to know who has repugnant beliefs as it allows those groups to identify threats—that is, free expression as self-defense.

(2017) Santa Claus and the Problem of Evil: Philosophy Now

There are many profound philosophical issues involving Santa. For example, we might wonder how we know that Santa doesn’t exist. That is, although it seems obvious that there is no Santa, the reasons usually given for this disbelief are less sound than is often appreciated. In this article I want to explore an argument against Santa that shares a number of features with the problem of evil that has long troubled theologians. This argument against Santa is one way we can know that he doesn’t exist, but without the same vulnerabilities that the usual reasons have.

(2014) The Shuffling Machine and Metaphysical Fatalism: Think

In this paper, I outline a toy argument for metaphysical fatalism – i.e. there is no sense in which the world could have been different than it is. First, I explain a couple of assumptions that I make about the nature of time. These assumptions appear to be plausible and widely held – or, at least, they are reasonable positions to hold. Second, I outline and explain a thought experiment designed to bring our fatalist-friendly intuitions to the forefront.

(2013) Moral Manipulation and the Problem of Evil: Philosophy Now

Although it is good to have the freedom to choose between right and wrong, the free-will defense gets the moral weights wrong. It places too much weight on freedom, and not enough weight on the lives and well-being of innocents. Put differently, the free-will defense simply gets the moral facts wrong.

(2012) The Immorality of Procreation: Think

Many people hold that procreation is morally obligatory; one ought to bring children into existence because they benefit by being brought into existence. Often this line of thinking stems from the notion that procreation is intrinsically valuable; procreation should be pursued for its own sake. Other philosophers hold procreation is immoral because of the great harm it causes as a result of climate change, overpopulation, mental illness, and so forth. If current population growth continues, there will be an ever-shrinking supply of fresh water and food, leading to the suffering of future generations.