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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'm pursuing this research under the mentorship of Nandi Theunissen, Japa Pallikkathayil, James Shaw, Stephen Finlay, and Hille Paakkunainen. |
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.
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.