You can find a detailed research statement here. Below is a very brief summary.
My primary research interests are in moral philosophy, free will, applied ethics, and moral psychology. Within these subfields my interests include: (i) enhancement, (ii) moral responsibility, (iii) the ethics of appropriately directed emotional responses, (iii) the nature of emotions, (iv) the role that different psychological disorders should play in mitigating moral culpability, and (v) the relations that hold between various normative judgments and fitting emotional responses on the one hand and different conceptions of free will on the other. Other interests include issues surrounding justice, punishment, moral obligation (OIC), virtue ethics, and animal ethics.
Currently, I am working on my dissertation where my research is centered around a moral question: when it is morally permissible to enhance our abilities or capacities to achieve a particular goal? In answering this question I first identify three general ways in which both ethicists and lay persons identify the use of enhancement technology as unethical and show how these considerations miss the mark. The three features boil down to: (1) issues regarding how to define enhancement, (2) issues associated with risk of harm to self and to others, and (3) issues surrounding fairness, most notably issues involving the concept of cheating. After addressing these concerns and showing why they tend to miss the mark, I discuss how the concept of 'achievement' can help guide our moral assessment of a given use of an enhancement technology. My approach is based in a long-standing virtue ethical tradition, but a tradition that has only been appealed to in passing in the literature on this vexing topic. I argue that once we get clear on what an achievement is and how it adds to a well-lived life, then it will become easier to evaluate the morality of any given enhancement. If an enhancement fails to render the action an achievement, then it would be wrong to partake in that enhancement all else being equal. In order for this argument to go through I show why achievements are necessary one’s flourishing. It turns out that my virtue approach is quite friendly to a number of enhancements that many deem “unethical” and thus if my arguments are successful, this could change how many perceive the morality a slew of enhancements ranging from cognitive enhancements to do better on exams and work-related tasks to a number of enhancements in the context of sport.
Another project I have been working on focuses on the moral ramifications of hard incompatibilism. Recently, a growing number of free will skeptics (optimistic free will skeptics, more specifically) have argued that living without free will would not be a big deal. In fact, some have even claimed that the recognition of the truth of hard incompatibilism would make life better (Derk Pereboom 2001; 2014, Gregg Caruso 2015; 2016). I argue, contra Pereboom and others, that many key features of any robust sense of morality as well as some of our most cherished interpersonal relationships would be imperiled without free will: living without free will would be a big deal. Some of the things that would be lost if hard incompatibilism were true would be: moral obligation, a number of fitting emotional responses, as well as the truth of a variety of aretaic evaluations, just to name a few. I have written close to 100 well polished pages on this project and I am looking forward to completing this once the dissertation is complete. Interestingly, this free will project and the enhancement project are connected in ways I did not first understand. Both projects focus on our moral evaluations; the first is focused on how those evaluations are affected by our metaphysical beliefs, the second is focused on beliefs about the moral standing of the use of a given substance to help us achieve our goals. I reckon that these projects could both fall under the heading of "the moral psychology of our moral evaluations".
Lastly, I am working on an edited collection with Carolyn Price titled 'The Moral Psychology of Compassion". The volume is focused on the nature, value, and application of compassion and compassionate responses to others. In January we secured the contract to publish the volume with Rowman and Littlefield and we expect the volume to be completed by October 2017.
My primary research interests are in moral philosophy, free will, applied ethics, and moral psychology. Within these subfields my interests include: (i) enhancement, (ii) moral responsibility, (iii) the ethics of appropriately directed emotional responses, (iii) the nature of emotions, (iv) the role that different psychological disorders should play in mitigating moral culpability, and (v) the relations that hold between various normative judgments and fitting emotional responses on the one hand and different conceptions of free will on the other. Other interests include issues surrounding justice, punishment, moral obligation (OIC), virtue ethics, and animal ethics.
Currently, I am working on my dissertation where my research is centered around a moral question: when it is morally permissible to enhance our abilities or capacities to achieve a particular goal? In answering this question I first identify three general ways in which both ethicists and lay persons identify the use of enhancement technology as unethical and show how these considerations miss the mark. The three features boil down to: (1) issues regarding how to define enhancement, (2) issues associated with risk of harm to self and to others, and (3) issues surrounding fairness, most notably issues involving the concept of cheating. After addressing these concerns and showing why they tend to miss the mark, I discuss how the concept of 'achievement' can help guide our moral assessment of a given use of an enhancement technology. My approach is based in a long-standing virtue ethical tradition, but a tradition that has only been appealed to in passing in the literature on this vexing topic. I argue that once we get clear on what an achievement is and how it adds to a well-lived life, then it will become easier to evaluate the morality of any given enhancement. If an enhancement fails to render the action an achievement, then it would be wrong to partake in that enhancement all else being equal. In order for this argument to go through I show why achievements are necessary one’s flourishing. It turns out that my virtue approach is quite friendly to a number of enhancements that many deem “unethical” and thus if my arguments are successful, this could change how many perceive the morality a slew of enhancements ranging from cognitive enhancements to do better on exams and work-related tasks to a number of enhancements in the context of sport.
Another project I have been working on focuses on the moral ramifications of hard incompatibilism. Recently, a growing number of free will skeptics (optimistic free will skeptics, more specifically) have argued that living without free will would not be a big deal. In fact, some have even claimed that the recognition of the truth of hard incompatibilism would make life better (Derk Pereboom 2001; 2014, Gregg Caruso 2015; 2016). I argue, contra Pereboom and others, that many key features of any robust sense of morality as well as some of our most cherished interpersonal relationships would be imperiled without free will: living without free will would be a big deal. Some of the things that would be lost if hard incompatibilism were true would be: moral obligation, a number of fitting emotional responses, as well as the truth of a variety of aretaic evaluations, just to name a few. I have written close to 100 well polished pages on this project and I am looking forward to completing this once the dissertation is complete. Interestingly, this free will project and the enhancement project are connected in ways I did not first understand. Both projects focus on our moral evaluations; the first is focused on how those evaluations are affected by our metaphysical beliefs, the second is focused on beliefs about the moral standing of the use of a given substance to help us achieve our goals. I reckon that these projects could both fall under the heading of "the moral psychology of our moral evaluations".
Lastly, I am working on an edited collection with Carolyn Price titled 'The Moral Psychology of Compassion". The volume is focused on the nature, value, and application of compassion and compassionate responses to others. In January we secured the contract to publish the volume with Rowman and Littlefield and we expect the volume to be completed by October 2017.
