About Me
I am a doctoral candidate in philosophy at UMass, Amherst. I research a wide variety of topics from the perspective of an abiding committment to methedological and metaphysical naturalism.
In my dissertation I develop a novel account of moral naturalism. On my view, the moral facts are grounded by appeal to the natural capacaties of individuals in virtue of which things can matter to those individuals. These capacities, very generally, include agency, valuing, and rationality. Anything that has one or more of these capacities to some degree matters in itself because things can matter to it. This kind of responsiveness-dependent accound of why we (and other members of the moral community) matter allows the moral naturalist to ground an expansive conception of the moral facts that both fits with our pre-theoretic intutions and unifies and expalins disparate camps in moral theory.
In addition to my dissertation work, I have ongoing projects in the ethics of self-defense, the ontology of art and artistic creation, the relationship between the ontology of quantum physics and the world as we experience it, the metaphysics of ordinary objects, the metaphysics of gender identity, the nature of transphobia, and the role of artists intentions in determining the features of artworks.
When I'm not working on philosophy you can find me reading an actual, physical newspaper, playing the guitar and other instruments, watching sci-fi tv shows, and listening to the Grateful Dead.
In my dissertation I develop a novel account of moral naturalism. On my view, the moral facts are grounded by appeal to the natural capacaties of individuals in virtue of which things can matter to those individuals. These capacities, very generally, include agency, valuing, and rationality. Anything that has one or more of these capacities to some degree matters in itself because things can matter to it. This kind of responsiveness-dependent accound of why we (and other members of the moral community) matter allows the moral naturalist to ground an expansive conception of the moral facts that both fits with our pre-theoretic intutions and unifies and expalins disparate camps in moral theory.
In addition to my dissertation work, I have ongoing projects in the ethics of self-defense, the ontology of art and artistic creation, the relationship between the ontology of quantum physics and the world as we experience it, the metaphysics of ordinary objects, the metaphysics of gender identity, the nature of transphobia, and the role of artists intentions in determining the features of artworks.
When I'm not working on philosophy you can find me reading an actual, physical newspaper, playing the guitar and other instruments, watching sci-fi tv shows, and listening to the Grateful Dead.