My current project is on the ethics of criticism. I am interested in how one might lose the standing to criticize others, how we should respond to criticism, how moral and social norms on criticism may be negotiated, and how our relationship to the wrongdoer bears on whether and how we should criticize them. 

My earlier work focuses on questions about the structure of normativity, including the nature of central normative concepts like reasons, ought, and requirement, and the relationships between them. A theme is to consider the ways that alternatives matter in determining the normative status of our options. Most of this work defends contrastive, or alternative-relative, theories of these concepts.

Book

Contrastive Reasons, Oxford University Press, 2017

The book was reviewed by Hallvard Lillehammer on Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, by Chrisoula Andreou in Ethics, and by Alex Worsnip in Philosophical Review. I replied to Andreou's review on PEA Soup. I talked about the book on the New Books in Philosophy podcast.

Articles

'Meddlesome Blame and Negotiating Standing' (forthcoming), Noûs.

'Explaining Loss of Standing to Blame' (2024), Journal of Moral Philosophy, 21: 404-432. 

'Dismissing Blame' (2024), Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 26(3)

'The Reasons First Program', with Errol Lord, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, edited by D. Copp and C. Rosati. 

'Normative Metaphysics for Accountants', with Barry Maguire (2021),  Philosophical Studies, 178: 363-384

'Reasons, Competition, and Latitude' (2021), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 16, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford University Press 

'Competing Reasons' (2021), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, edited by Jessica Brown and Mona Simion, forthcoming with Oxford University Press

'Deliberation, Reasons, and Alternatives' (2019), Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 100(3): 682-702

'Reasons For and Reasons Against' (2018), Philosophical Studies, 175(3): 725-743

'Time-Slice Rationality and Filling In Plans' (2017), for a symposium on Brian Hedden's Reasons Without Persons in Analysis, 77(3): 595-607

'Reasons, Oughts, and Requirements' (2016), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 11, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau

'Contrastivism about Reasons and Ought' (2015), Philosophy Compass 10/6: 379-388

'Deontic Reasoning Across Contexts' (2014), Deontic Logic and Normative Systems: DEON 2014, edited by Cariani, Grossi, Meheus, and Parent. Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 208-223

'Contrastive Reasons and Promotion' (2014), Ethics 125(1): 39-63

'One Ought too Many', with Stephen Finlay (2014), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89(1): 102-124

'Negative Reason Existentials' (2013), Thought 2(2): 108-116

'Reason Claims and Contrastivism about Reasons' (2013), Philosophical Studies 166(2): 231-242

'Contrastive Semantics for Deontic Modals' (2012), in Contrastivism in Philosophy, edited by Martijn Blaauw. Routledge, 116-133

Encyclopedia entries, reviews, etc.

'Ethics and contrastivism' (2014), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Review of The Beam and the Mote: On Blame, Standing, and Normativity, by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Ethics, 135(1): 184-189, 2024

Review of Weighing Reasons, edited by Errol Lord and Barry Maguire, Ethics, 128(1): 255-260, 2017

Review of Reasons, Rights, and Values, by Robert Audi, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2015