Research

My research is primarily in ethics, philosophy of action, and the theory of rationality. I am interested in what we ought to do, individually, collectively, synchronically, and diachronically, and in the ways in which these various perspectives can conflict. One unifying theme of much of my work is that our limitations (in what we know, in our motivations to act as we ideally should) bear on these questions. A second unifying theme is that practical reasoning depends on idealized models in ways that are analogous to the use of modeling in the sciences.

Drafts of papers linked below or available upon request.

Embracing Self-Defeat in Normative Theory

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2024

Abstract: Some normative theories are self-defeating. They tell us to respond to our situations in ways that bring about outcomes that are bad, given the aims of the theories, and which could have been avoided. Across a wide range of debates in ethics, decision theory, political philosophy, and formal epistemology, many philosophers treat the fact that a normative theory is self-defeating as sufficient grounds for rejecting it. I argue that this widespread and consequential assumption is false. In particular, I argue that a theory can be self-defeating and still internally consistent, action-guiding, and suitable as a standard for criticism.

published version

Coherence as Joint Satisfiability (with Camilo Martinez)

Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, 2024

Abstract: According to many philosophers, rationality is, at least in part, a matter of one’s attitudes cohering with one another. Theorists who endorse this idea have devoted much attention to formulating various coherence requirements. Surprisingly, they have said very little about what it takes for a set of attitudes to be coherent in general. We articulate and defend a general account on which a set of attitudes is coherent (roughly) just in case and because it is logically possible for the attitudes to be jointly satisfied in the sense of jointly fitting the world. In addition, we show how the account can help adjudicate debates about how to formulate various rational requirements.

published version

Evidence, Causality, and Collective Action

Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2024

Abstract: In collective action problems, large numbers of contributions together produce a good outcome, but any one contribution often makes no difference. Many philosophers think that act consequentialism implies that individuals should not contribute in these cases, given that their contributions cannot be expected to affect the outcome. Nearly everyone has assumed that the relevant expected effects of an action are those effects that are counterfactually dependent on what a given agent does. This assumption is at the heart of causal decision theory. In contrast, evidential decision theory evaluates actions on the basis of whatever can be expected to happen, given that the agent performs some action, where this includes events that are simply correlated with the action. I show that causal and evidentialist versions of act consequentialism can diverge in collective action problems. Evidential decision theory can require us to do our part even when causal decision theory does not.

penultimate draft

Prediction and Idealization in Practical Reasoning

Under Review

Abstract: Is information about how someone will behave of her own volition ever relevant to what she ought to do? On the one hand, treating this information as just one more future contingency can seem like a failure to recognize the agent’s responsibility for her own actions. On the other hand, ignoring it can seem reckless. Most philosophers defend universal principles for how to resolve this tension in any context. I defend an alternative approach on which practical reasoning is a form of prescriptive modeling. Similar to descriptive modeling in the sciences, practical reasoning relies on idealized models. Sometimes, it is reasonable to model an agent’s own behavior as an obstacle to be anticipated. Other times, it is reasonable to treat her behavior as up to her to decide. Which is the better model depends on a variety of tradeoffs that should be made based on context-specific information, not universal principles.

Knowledgeable Moral Mathematics (with Errol Lord)

Under Review

Abstract: We challenge the assumption—common to standard decision-theoretic arguments for doing one’s part in a collective action problem—that there is some chance that your action will trigger a change in the morally relevant outcome. We focus on the choice of whether to buy a factory-farmed chicken. Our central contention is that either a typical consumer is in a position to know that her purchase won’t trigger any change in chicken suffering, or we must embrace a sweeping skepticism about ordinary knowledge claims that rest on statistical evidence.

Incommensurability, Dominance, and the Nihilistic Implications of Consequentialism

Draft available upon request

Abstract: What should you do when you're uncertain about the outcomes of your available options, and you think that the outcomes might be incommensurable in value? I argue that in many of these cases, whatever the state of the world, no choice is better in expectation than any alternative choice. I defend a dominance principle that says that in such cases, any choice is rational. I then use this principle to argue that in situations where our actions affect the identities of future generations, consequentialism implies that anything that we do is morally permissible.