me
Ok, if you're reading this, then you're either having trouble sleeping or procrastinating. So get back to work ... or get back to sleep.
I'm an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. My main interests are in ethics (especially axiology (especially welfare (especially preferentism)) and metaethics (especially realism, non-naturalism, and nihilism)). I'm also interested in the nature of pleasure. My dissertation was (mainly) on desire-satisfaction theories of welfare. Some of my online papers are on some of these topics. I'm also interested in metaphysics (especially time and identity) and philosophy of religion.
I'm married to Nicki Heathwood. By trade, Nicki is an autism consultant, but she is on an indefinite leave from her company, since we have two fairly new little boys: Henry, who is 2, and Charlie, who is just a few months old. Check out these photos.
I grew upin Los Angeles -- in the San Fernando Valley -- and went to Calabasas High School with Erik Menendez and also, as it turns out, my colleague Mike Huemer (though I didn't know him then). If you're interested in this sort of thing, Ricky Schroder (he goes by 'Rick' now) and Elizabeth Berkeley also went there. It wasn't the first time their paths crossed.
My twin brother, Paul Heathwood, works in finance in New York City. His wife, Jenn Kane Heathwood got to tell Gene Hackman how to say "Oppenheimer Funds: the right way to invest." Don't confuse Jenn Kane Heathwood with the former Jenn Heathwood, my older sister, now Jennifer Russo. Her husband Jim does a mean raptor impression.
My dad is Desmond Heathwood. He started a company called Boston Partners Asset Management, which is now owned by Rabobank. My mom is Ann Heathwood, a retired nurse and, with my dad, a practicing member of the jet set.
I went to college at UC San Diego where I majored in philosophy and met Nicki, along with a bunch of other great people. Patricia Kitcher, who was there then, was generous enough to help write a thesis on Hume.
In between undergrad and grad school, I lived in San Francisco and played in some bands (see music page). I also worked for a company called 2 Places at 1 Time.
I got my Ph.D. from UMass Amherst. I hung out a lot with Kris McX, Stephan "what's the storre" Torre, and all those linked from storre's website, including Van der Gaast, who has a pretty good blog, plus others, including Dan Kaufman, who would later be my colleague here at CU, though I didn't know it then. If it weren't for my advisor at UMass, Fred Feldman, I'd now be annoying my colleagues at McDonald's with my philosophical ideas. Now I just subject my colleagues at CU Boulder to them (well, not all of them -- many I haven't met yet).
I'm into indie pop music and golf (but, naturally, have little time for either nowadays). I play guitar. Oh yeah, I occasionally blog too -- check us out at PEA Soup.
Some people asked me about these squares on my website. Here's a Socratic answer:
Check out this sequence of numbers:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...
This is called the Fibonacci sequence.
Can you discover the pattern? Can you see what it might have to do with these squares?
Anyway, I'm not anything of a mathematician. I just think they're nice images -- simple, elegant, beautiful.
