I'm interested in ethics and social/political philosophy, especially with regards to sport and work. While we tend to think of many core aspects of these social structures as uniform, one major aspect of my work lo investigates how they are crucially multidimensional. For example, sport is often misunderstood as uniformly and fundamentally about competition while ignoring the different social roles in which sport finds itself; this muddies our normative understanding of issues as diverse as doping, college athletics, and gender categorization. With regards to work, labor unions are often misunderstood as uniformly and fundamentally about contracts; this ignores the diverse way in which workers historically have and contemporarily continue to organize unions outside the a collective bargaining framework. Further exploring the diverse ways in which sport, work, and other such social structures can be is needed not simply for better understanding the phenomena in question but also for normative guidance in the relevant domains.
More recently, I've started thinking about "everyday viciousness," or the ways we fail to grasp the morally salient features of a situation and so fail to act virtuously. My most developed idea here is about genAI use (see below). The norms of eating non-human animals, generally produced in horrific conditions, often involves a focus on pleasure or even friendliness (with other humans), etc., rather than a fitting recognition of suffering that the virtuous person would respond to with compassion. (Related discussions can be had for various forms of everyday consumption.) American football is the most popular sport in America, but the focus on athlete's skills and performances, incredible though they may be, misses the most salient features of incredible avoidable harm; the virtuous person would not take pleasure in such suffering.
Below you can find some selected works in progress and my publications. My CV can be found here.
Selected works in progress:
The Viciousness of "Epistemically Virtuous" AI Use
A standard response to genAI use harming our intellectual faculties is that we just have to learn to use it well, and once we do we'll be better epistemically. But the focus on using AI in an "epistemically virtuous" way is, I argue, misguided. Acting virtuously requires recognizing the salient features in a situation to figure out what sort of response (in what sort of way) is fitting. The harms of AI use and its production are significant and well (-enough) known that the virtuous person would find those, not the increased intellectual benefits, most relevant. Just as it would be callous for a master painter to use an extraordinary paint they couldn’t find elsewhere to produce a masterful work if the paint were produced in a deeply harmful manner, so too would it be vicious for the intellectual worker to use AI even if it would let them do intellectual things (in a way that) they otherwise could not. How plausibly one finds the unity of the virtues will lead to different specifics results, but wherever one lands on that question it should be clear that (in general), the virtuous person will not use genAI even in "epistemically virtuous" ways.
Abolish American College Football
American college football plays a big role on many college campuses, but there are questions about its fittingness for institutions of higher education. One line of criticism against American football in general is that it causes long-term degenerative brain damage. While I agree that such harms are sufficient to abolish American football itself, there are a range of responses people give in defense. Accepting these common defenses, as we will for purposes of this paper, will nonetheless be insufficient for defending institutions of higher education from sponsoring American football. This is because the brain harms of American football undermine the plausible primary purpose(s) of institutions of higher education; as such, we ought to abolish American college football.
Publications (if you hit a paywall and lack institutional access, please feel welcome to let me know):
"A Sporting Case for Inclusion in High School Sport" The Journal of Ethics. (2025)
"Rethinking Doping" Fair Play (2020)
“Too Much Playing Games – A Response to Kretchmar” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy (2020)
"On Being Part of a Game" Journal of the Philosophy of Sport (2020)
"Pre-Game Cheating and Playing the Game" Sport, Ethics and Philosophy (2019)