Many people, if asked, would probably say that we are morally responsible only for actions we voluntarily and intentionally choose to perform. But the phenomenon of unintentional omission poses a special problem for this view about the preconditions of moral responsibility. Imagine a lifeguard who carelessly fell asleep while ...

I argue that there are two sorts of pride--the emotion of pride and the character trait of pride--and defend descriptive and normative accounts of each sort of pride. The emotion of pride involves an evaluation that one is living in accordance with one's personal ideals; having the character trait of pride is having a firm ...

Philosophers have developed sophisticated theories of domestic legitimacy that discuss how a coercive state could be justified to its citizens. Yet, theorizing about global justice is characterized by a pervasive methodological failure: principles of justice are presented without any consideration of whether the current (or ...

This dissertation makes the moral case for equitably transitioning away from fossil fuels in line with keeping global warming as close as possible to the Paris Climate Agreement’s more stringent target of keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It argues that we should do so while relying as little as ...

Within the ethics of self-defense, the predominant view is that there are liability justifications for harming. A minority position, which I call radical pacifism, denies that there are liability justifications for harming. This dissertation offers three separate arguments against the predominant view and for the radical ...

Exploitation is an important concept in moral and political philosophy. There is an increasing focus on exploitation as an important concept that limits how clinical research is conducted. Yet, there is disagreement at nearly every level regarding the source of wrongness of exploitation, its connection to injustice, and the ...

Deep-Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an FDA-approved treatment for symptoms of motor disorders—with experimental use for psychiatric disorders. DBS, however, causes a variety of side effects. The next generation of DBS systems—Closed-Loop DBS (CL-DBS)—will be able to record users’ neural activity in real time and adjust stimulation ...

I argue for an account of René Descartes’ theory of love that is deeply rooted in his metaphysics and heavily influences his moral philosophy. Descartes maintains that the soul “join[s] itself in volition” to those it loves (AT XI: 387; Voss: 62). The main aim of my dissertation is to explain what it means to join oneself ...

This dissertation argues that genocide, in settler colonies like the US, is a processual and structural condition, not an event; one that does not require genocidal intent, since genocide is the background hum—the rhythm—that organizes and orients institutions and politics. Although my focus is, by and large, on violence ...

This project centers on the question: Given the everyday and structural dynamics of gender oppression, how should we treat others’ genders in our everyday interactions with them, particularly given that those everyday interactions are often subject to or structured by disputed meaning? To address this question, I focus on ...