Research

My publications are listed here and talks & presentations, here.

My primary research interests are moral responsibility, autonomy, moral autonomy, the social and legal practices associated with each, as well as their relationship with data technologies (especially AI and social robotics). I am also deeply interested in related issues like moral worth, moral motivation, and moral testimony. 

A primary theme in my research is the relationship between the environment and individual agency. I hold that this relationship is highly complex, since the environment is both vital for and sometimes counterproductive to individual agency.

I am particularly interested in what it would take for machines to be moral and on the effects of AI on our beliefs, values, and social practices. I also continue my work on moral responsibility (and related issues like authorship and merit) in technologically advanced contexts (especially generative AI). Interestingly, because of my research on philosophical theories of moral responsibility, I am increasingly eager to reorient the responsibility discussion in AI contexts in a more down-to-earth, practical direction.

My dissertation, entitled "From Moral Influence to Moral Autonomy: Responsibility Reconsidered," offers a novel way of looking at responsible agency - as something less demanding than it is traditionally viewed. It identifies the thing we're really after - moral autonomy - as something connected to yet distinct from responsibility. I am interested in further developing the notion of moral autonomy presented in the dissertation as well as exploring implications of the account of responsibility developed therein.