November 2023
I’m a philosopher at the University of Reading. My research and teaching are mostly in metaethics, normative ethics, and some related areas. Before joining Reading in 2014, I finished my PhD in Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill. Before that I did my BA in Maths & Philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford. I grew up in Llanelli, a coastal town in South Wales.
Please find my CV (as a pdf) here.
Most of my published research focuses on a cluster of issues around incomplete preferences, unsharp or imprecise credences, and value incommensurability. In one sense of the word, two items are incommensurate if neither is better but they are also not precisely equally good. I’ve written a short introduction to incommensurability on its PhilPapers page.
In my book ‘Mushy Reasons’ or ‘Vagueness in Action’ (I’m undecided about the title) which is under publisher review, I argue that these phenomena are all vagueness. I then defend a decision rule for vague preferences and credences, argue that this avoids some of their nasty consequences (so-called ‘value pumps’) and copes with some related puzzles, most importantly Warren Quinn’s Puzzle of the Self-Torturer and Spectrum Arguments for the intransitivity of ‘better than’.
(2021) What does incommensurability tell us about agency? in Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making, edited by Henrik Andersson and Anders Herlitz. Routledge.
(2017) Incommensurability
as Vagueness: a Burden-Shifting Argument, Theoria 83:
341-363. doi: 10.1111/theo.12129
(preprint)
(2016) Tenenbaum and Raffaman on
Vague Projects, the Self-Torturer, and the Sorites, in
Ethics Vol. 126, No. 2, pp. 474-488. doi:10.1086/683533.
(journal
page)
(2014) Heaps and Chains: is
the Chaining Argument for Parity a Sorites?, Ethics Vol.
124, No. 3, pp. 557-571. doi: 10.1086/674844
(journal
page)
(2014) Borderline Cases
and the Collapsing Principle, Utilitas volume 26, issue 01,
pp. 51-60. doi:10.1017/S095382081300023X
(journal
page)
In more straightforwardly metaethical terrain, I have a number of unpublished papers defending Global Normative Nihilism, which is moral error theory’s more aggressive sibling. Not only categorical/external but also hypothetical/internal resons claims are false. I argue that this view avoids (or embraces) ‘companions in guilt’ responses to queerness arguments for the moral error theory, and that it offers radical conceptual as well as metaphysical simplicity. It is a depressing (nihilistic!) view, but I argue that it won’t lead to a complete loss of motivation or subjective concern, as some have argued.
(2021) Review of Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics edited by Christopher Cowie and Richard Rowland, at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
(2019) Probabilistic Promotion and Ability, Ergo vol. 6, no. 34. doi:10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.034
(2019) Can Streumer simply avoid Supervenience?, Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy vol. 16, no. 3. doi:10.26556/jesp.v16i3.508
(2018) Review of David Sobel’s From Valuing to Value, Analysis, Volume 78, Issue 3, pp. 583-586. doi:10.1093/analys/any045.
Despite nihilistic tendencies, I have lately also become more interested in questions in normative or practical ethics.
(Forthcoming) A paper on healthcare marketisation and the introduction of risk into the doctor-patient relationship. Promised to a Ratio special issue on risk.
(Forthcoming) ‘The Only Moral Flight is My Flight’, which defends carbon offsets against charges of injustice. Promised to an Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics special issue on intra- and interpersonal dilemmas in ethics and rational choice.
In 2023-4 I’m teaching Meaning of Life (first year), Ethical Argument (second year), and Happy, Good, and Meaningful Lives (third year). I have in the past also taught epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and mediaeval philosophy.
Here are some documents for current students:
Tips for writing an undergraduate essay, with a focus on the things I look for when marking.
I’m happy to supervise dissertations and Independent Learning Modules (mini-dissertations) in most areas of phiosophy—please read this guide for my undergraduate dissertation students if you’ve been assigned to me.
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