While pursuing my undergraduate degree at Florida State, I took a political philosophy course that sparked my interest in distributive justice. My final paper for that class, which was a commentary on Jeffrey Moriarty's 'Do CEOs Get Paid Too Much?' (Business Ethics Quarterly, 15.2, April 2005) was later expanded into my honors thesis on desert in wages.
I am interested in pursuing work in ethics, particularly rule-consequentialism, desert, and social philosophy. I am especially interested in topics in economic justice, as my undergraduate thesis would suggest, including the correlation between popular intuitions about economic desert and the operation of the market and government institutions. I would also enjoy pursuing socio-political topics such as healthcare, taxation and redistribution, and public education. The topics of avoiding war, placing restraints on its conduct, and the enforcement of any such restraints interest me deeply, and I feel they are of growing importance in our globalizing world.
Here is a sampling of the seminar papers I have written in graduate school:
- Won't somebody think of the children?: A rule-consequentialist solution to the non-identity problem
I argue that rule-consequentialism can demand from us that we make sacrifices when it would result in a better life for our children while not requiring of us that we procreate when we know it would create a child with a happy life. RC can consistently accommodate both of these positions which are often in tension in other ethical theories. - My father and his father and his father: Generational codes in Hooker's Rule-Consequentialism
I uncover and elaborate a problem in rule-consequentialism, should our understanding of the world change in a way that affects the justification of our moral beliefs. Namely, that we would be forced to teach the next generation a differing, conflicting moral code to the one already in place. I examine a few solutions and, while none is entirely satisfactory, I tentatively endorse one of them. - Sins of Credulity: When it is morally wrong to believe that P
I argue that it is wrong to hold an irresponsibly-formed belief when holding that belief puts something morally valuable at risk. My account is designed to link our intuitions about what is morally valuable and what kinds of beliefs are immoral to hold. That is, if I believe that X is intrinsically valuable, then I will also hold that a poorly-formed belief that puts X at risk, or actively compromises it, is an immoral belief.
I have also written critically on evolutionary morality, assigning responsibility for global climate change, just war theory, genocide, and blame and guilt in moral psychology.