Here are some papers I am working on. Please do contact me if you are interested in these topics and you'd like to discuss them or see a draft of my work.
Love first, ask questions later
Abstract: In this essay, I will advance a view about the nature of agapic love. The claim I will defend is that agape is a kind of loving openness. Agape, I argue, is similar to personal love in that it is rational in form: it requires justification by reference to the love-worthiness of the other. But it is dissimilar from personal love in that this justification must come retroactively. I will animate a tension within the very idea of agapic love by first advancing an attractive view – drawing from Martin Buber – according to which agape requires disregarding individuating characteristics of the other (§1), and then by drawing from Simone Weil to advance an exactly contrary view (§2). Despite this tension, I will explore the deeper compatibility of the two views and argue that they can be construed as complimentary episodes that together comprise the stance of agapic love (§3).
The musicality of verbal address
When people speak to one another they are sensitive to the music of one another’s voices. As well as using musical devices like intonation, rhythm, timbre, and dynamic variation to aid our interlocutors in parsing the words that we utter, such qualities imbue our speech with additional meaning. For instance, such qualities are vehicles for the communication of a speaker’s emotions. Moreover, while some of these extra-linguistic meanings are recognised and decoded by our addressees, forming one layer of pragmatically communicated meaning, others are not. That is, sometimes our speech bears certain musical characteristics – certain melodies, rhythms, tempi, and so on – which are not even intended to convey any specific information by the speaker. In this work, I draw attention to this underlying aesthetic quality of the soundscape – the musical context – within which our verbal communication is set. I argue that we implicitly appraise the aesthetic qualities of one another's voices. I go on to consider how such appraisals might figure in one's practical relations to others - that is, whether implicit aesthetic judgements can play a role in determining reasons for acting in others' interests.
Acquaintance: with people, with moral facts
In this paper, I argue that interpersonal encounters can be an important site of moral cognition. Specifically, it is in an interpersonal encounter that one can come to have a well-founded belief in the intrinsic value of another’s life. I propose this view as a variation of ethical intuitionism – according to which certain moral facts can be known non-inferentially. This variation, which I call Interpersonal Acquaintance, has several theoretical advantages. Chiefly, intuitionism can often struggle to meet the charge that what it calls moral knowledge is mere dogmatism. But Interpersonal Acquaintance is able to appeal to features of the phenomenology of interpersonal encounters that suggest that the beliefs formed as a result of such encounters are not dogmas. The result is a vision of moral knowledge in which becoming acquainted with another person in the colloquial sense is the process by which one can become acquainted, in the epistemological sense, with certain important moral facts.
Varieties of second-personal reasons
Abstract: There is a tradition of thought, beginning with German Idealist philosophers Fichte and Feuerbach, passing through phenomenologists and existentialists such as Levinas, Buber, and Løpstrup and arriving at contemporary ethicists such as Thompson and Darwall. This tradition have all endeavoured to explain the practical significance of the second-person relation. That is, they have all offered accounts of how one's practical reasoning is altered by one's relation to another as an I to a you. What's more, the accounts that have been offered are all what I call structural accounts. They posit that the second-person relation affects the structure of practical reasoning. In this paper, I offer an alternative, substantive account. That is, I argue that entering into second-personal relations with others does indeed affect one's practical reasoning, but it does this not by altering the structure of one's agential thought, but by changing what reasons can become available. Second-person relations make possible the emergence of an wide variety of different kinds of practical reasons. Recognising this takes away the appeal of the traditional, structural accounts of the practical significance of such second-personal relations.
Deontic second-personality and its limits
Abstract: There is a trend in recent moral philosophy to analyse the moral significance of the second-person standpoint. That standpoint is typically understood in an abstract way: as the perspective that anyone could take up in relation to any agent, such that the second-person could call the agent’s actions into question through second-personal address. This is abstract in the sense that the relation between an agent, A, and a second-person B, can be analysed for ethical significance while B is thought of as a purely imaginary, featureless interlocutor. In this paradigm, that is, we do not need to know anything about B’s interests, capacities, or value in order to understand B’s relation to A, qua second-person relation. In this paper, I will argue that thinking of the second-person relation in this abstract way has two significant limitations. One is that it obscures the further ethical significance that more concrete second-personal relations can have. The second is that, contrary to several proponents of this line of thinking including Stephen Darwall, the abstract quality of this second-person relation prevents it from playing a significant explanatory role in a theory of moral normativity.
Love first, ask questions later
Abstract: In this essay, I will advance a view about the nature of agapic love. The claim I will defend is that agape is a kind of loving openness. Agape, I argue, is similar to personal love in that it is rational in form: it requires justification by reference to the love-worthiness of the other. But it is dissimilar from personal love in that this justification must come retroactively. I will animate a tension within the very idea of agapic love by first advancing an attractive view – drawing from Martin Buber – according to which agape requires disregarding individuating characteristics of the other (§1), and then by drawing from Simone Weil to advance an exactly contrary view (§2). Despite this tension, I will explore the deeper compatibility of the two views and argue that they can be construed as complimentary episodes that together comprise the stance of agapic love (§3).
The musicality of verbal address
When people speak to one another they are sensitive to the music of one another’s voices. As well as using musical devices like intonation, rhythm, timbre, and dynamic variation to aid our interlocutors in parsing the words that we utter, such qualities imbue our speech with additional meaning. For instance, such qualities are vehicles for the communication of a speaker’s emotions. Moreover, while some of these extra-linguistic meanings are recognised and decoded by our addressees, forming one layer of pragmatically communicated meaning, others are not. That is, sometimes our speech bears certain musical characteristics – certain melodies, rhythms, tempi, and so on – which are not even intended to convey any specific information by the speaker. In this work, I draw attention to this underlying aesthetic quality of the soundscape – the musical context – within which our verbal communication is set. I argue that we implicitly appraise the aesthetic qualities of one another's voices. I go on to consider how such appraisals might figure in one's practical relations to others - that is, whether implicit aesthetic judgements can play a role in determining reasons for acting in others' interests.
Acquaintance: with people, with moral facts
In this paper, I argue that interpersonal encounters can be an important site of moral cognition. Specifically, it is in an interpersonal encounter that one can come to have a well-founded belief in the intrinsic value of another’s life. I propose this view as a variation of ethical intuitionism – according to which certain moral facts can be known non-inferentially. This variation, which I call Interpersonal Acquaintance, has several theoretical advantages. Chiefly, intuitionism can often struggle to meet the charge that what it calls moral knowledge is mere dogmatism. But Interpersonal Acquaintance is able to appeal to features of the phenomenology of interpersonal encounters that suggest that the beliefs formed as a result of such encounters are not dogmas. The result is a vision of moral knowledge in which becoming acquainted with another person in the colloquial sense is the process by which one can become acquainted, in the epistemological sense, with certain important moral facts.
Varieties of second-personal reasons
Abstract: There is a tradition of thought, beginning with German Idealist philosophers Fichte and Feuerbach, passing through phenomenologists and existentialists such as Levinas, Buber, and Løpstrup and arriving at contemporary ethicists such as Thompson and Darwall. This tradition have all endeavoured to explain the practical significance of the second-person relation. That is, they have all offered accounts of how one's practical reasoning is altered by one's relation to another as an I to a you. What's more, the accounts that have been offered are all what I call structural accounts. They posit that the second-person relation affects the structure of practical reasoning. In this paper, I offer an alternative, substantive account. That is, I argue that entering into second-personal relations with others does indeed affect one's practical reasoning, but it does this not by altering the structure of one's agential thought, but by changing what reasons can become available. Second-person relations make possible the emergence of an wide variety of different kinds of practical reasons. Recognising this takes away the appeal of the traditional, structural accounts of the practical significance of such second-personal relations.
Deontic second-personality and its limits
Abstract: There is a trend in recent moral philosophy to analyse the moral significance of the second-person standpoint. That standpoint is typically understood in an abstract way: as the perspective that anyone could take up in relation to any agent, such that the second-person could call the agent’s actions into question through second-personal address. This is abstract in the sense that the relation between an agent, A, and a second-person B, can be analysed for ethical significance while B is thought of as a purely imaginary, featureless interlocutor. In this paradigm, that is, we do not need to know anything about B’s interests, capacities, or value in order to understand B’s relation to A, qua second-person relation. In this paper, I will argue that thinking of the second-person relation in this abstract way has two significant limitations. One is that it obscures the further ethical significance that more concrete second-personal relations can have. The second is that, contrary to several proponents of this line of thinking including Stephen Darwall, the abstract quality of this second-person relation prevents it from playing a significant explanatory role in a theory of moral normativity.
