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I am a graduate student in the Philosophy Department at the University of Pittsburgh.
I work in ethics, on reasons, rationality, and value. My dissertation is chiefly concerned with how normative reasons relate to desire, value, the will, and reasoning. I defended my dissertation on April 4th. I'm pursuing this research under the mentorship of Nandi Theunissen, Japa Pallikkathayil, James Shaw, Stephen Finlay, and Hille Paakkunainen. 
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Published Work
When Reasons Run Out, Philosophical Quarterly. Forthcoming.
Subjectivists about practical normativity hold that an agent’s favoring and disfavoring attitudes give rise to practical reasons. On this view, an agent’s normative reason to choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream ultimately turns on facts about what appeals to her rather than facts about what her options are like attitude-independently. Objectivists—who ground reasons in the attitude-independent features of the things we aim at—owe us an explanation of why it is rational to choose what we favor, if not simply because favoring is a source of reasons. My aim in this paper is to supply such a story. The proposal is roughly that when an agent cannot base her choices on her judgments about what she has most reason to do, structural rationality extends to her a license to choose something solely on the basis that she favors it, without imbuing favoring with the authority of a normative reason.
The Normative Insignificance of the Will, Philosophical Studies. Forthcoming.
The fact that I am a committed gardener has some practical upshot or other. But what, exactly, is the upshot of the fact that I am committed to some project, person, or principle? According to a standard view, my commitment to gardening provides me with or constitutes a further reason to garden, beyond whatever reasons arise from the commitment-independent merits of gardening. I argue that we should reject this conception of commitment’s practical upshot and its attendant psychological story involving the will. According to the view I develop here, a commitment to X is a decision to take seriously the reasons to which X gives rise, and where necessary, to give those reasons an elevated place in one’s practical thinking.
When Reasons Run Out, Philosophical Quarterly. Forthcoming.
Subjectivists about practical normativity hold that an agent’s favoring and disfavoring attitudes give rise to practical reasons. On this view, an agent’s normative reason to choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream ultimately turns on facts about what appeals to her rather than facts about what her options are like attitude-independently. Objectivists—who ground reasons in the attitude-independent features of the things we aim at—owe us an explanation of why it is rational to choose what we favor, if not simply because favoring is a source of reasons. My aim in this paper is to supply such a story. The proposal is roughly that when an agent cannot base her choices on her judgments about what she has most reason to do, structural rationality extends to her a license to choose something solely on the basis that she favors it, without imbuing favoring with the authority of a normative reason.
The Normative Insignificance of the Will, Philosophical Studies. Forthcoming.
The fact that I am a committed gardener has some practical upshot or other. But what, exactly, is the upshot of the fact that I am committed to some project, person, or principle? According to a standard view, my commitment to gardening provides me with or constitutes a further reason to garden, beyond whatever reasons arise from the commitment-independent merits of gardening. I argue that we should reject this conception of commitment’s practical upshot and its attendant psychological story involving the will. According to the view I develop here, a commitment to X is a decision to take seriously the reasons to which X gives rise, and where necessary, to give those reasons an elevated place in one’s practical thinking.