I work primarily in metaethics, metaphysics, and epistemology — specifically, on the metaphysics of normative properties and the ethics of belief. 

Publications

Moral Encroachment and #BelieveWomen (forthcoming) Oxford Studies in Epistemology (Penultimate Draft)

What is Non-naturalism? (2022) Ergo 8 [Published Version]

In Defense of the Right Kind of Reason (with Chris Howard) (2022) in Chris Howard and Richard Rowland’s Fittingness (Oxford University Press) [Penultimate Draft]

Epistemic Reasons for Action: a puzzle for pragmatists (2022) Synthese 200/248 [Penultimate Draft] [Published Version]

Banks, Bosses, and Bears: a pragmatist argument against encroachment (2021) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research [Penultimate Draft], [Published Version]

Normativity (2020) in Michael Raven’s Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding

Grounding the Domains of Reasons (2020) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98/1 [Penultimate Draft], [Published Version]

Choosing Normative Properties: a reply to Eklund's Choosing Normative Concepts (2020) Inquiry 63/5 [Penultimate Draft] [Published Version]

In Defense of Practical Reasons for Belief (2017) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95/3 [Penultimate Draft] [Published Version]

Non-naturalism and Normative Necessities (2017) Oxford Studies in Metaethics 12 [Penultimate Draft] [Published Version]

Defending Internalists from Acquired Sociopaths (2017) Philosophical Psychology 30 [Penultimate Draft] [Published Version]

Works in progress

(1) The Applied Moral Turn of the Ethics of Belief Debate (in preparation for Evidentialism at 40: New Arguments, New Angles (edited by Kevin McCain, Scott Stapleford, & Matthias Steup) The pragmatism—anti-pragmatism debate is about whether practical considerations can constitute normative reasons for or against belief. Parties to this debate have traditionally focused on cases in which someone’s believing some proposition would benefit or harm them—the believer—in some way. But recently the ethics of belief literature has taken a moral, and more applied turn, focusing on real-world issues like racial profiling and sexual assault accusations and asking whether sometimes our beliefs themselves, independently of how we act on them, can wrong others. My aim is to clarify the extent to which this applied, moral turn is useful for the pragmatism—anti-pragmatism debate. I argue that focusing on the question of whether our beliefs themselves can wrong others is not useful because it’s irrelevant to the central question in the debate. But I argue that focusing on applied, moral issues is useful because it sheds light on an underlying issue in the debate—whether we can believe for practical considerations. (Draft)

(2) Nonnaturalism without Contingentism (with Chris Howard) Gideon Rosen and Anandi Hattiangadi have recently argued that non-naturalists must accept moral contingentism. We argue, however, that there are multiple good ways for non-naturalists to avoid these arguments. And we take that to be good news for the non-naturalist because moral contingentism amounts to a view of morality that is unsatisfying to a moral realist—or so we argue. (Draft coming soon; in preparation for the 2024 Madison Metaethics Workshop)

(3) "Why be a Non-naturalist?" Naturalists are committed to taking what I call a "language first" approach to answering the question of which properties are normative properties: they must claim that the normative properties are simply whatever natural properties stand in the right metasemantic relation to our normative terms. Non-naturalists, on the other hand, may instead offer a "metaphysics first" approach to answering this question: according to the non-naturalist, whether a property is a normative one does not depend on whether it stands in the right metasemantic relation to our normative terms, but instead on whether it has a sui generis normative essence. I think this difference between the two views is a crucial one, which shows that only non-naturalism secures the sort of ardent realist view according to which reality itself objectively backs certain ways of acting and valuing. (Paper on deck, no shareable draft yet)