Peer-reviewed Articles

  1. 2024 “Types of Testimony and their Reliability.” Synthese 203 (203), 1-27.

    Abstract: It is a seemingly innocuous fact that people learn from the testimony of authorities. Children learn from parents, students learn from teachers, and laypeople learn from experts. What makes this appearance a little less innocent, however, is that some of these same people would have believed sources of testimony that are not authoritative, e.g., unreliable peers and charlatans. Since such hearers of testimony could form as many false beliefs as true ones, they appear to be unreliable consumers of testimony. Therefore, we might be tempted to question whether such hearers really do learn from authorities on account of their apparent unreliability. The standard response to this conflict of intuitions (henceforth referred to as “Goldberg’s puzzle”) is to affirm the reliability of the consumers of testimony by excluding problematic speakers from the type of testimonial exchange in which the hearer is engaged. I will argue that the standard response is ad hoc because it does not provide a principled basis on which to identify the type of testimonial exchange in which the hearer is engaged. In order to improve the standard response, I will argue that conceiving of the relevant testimo nial exchanges as achievements of joint agency requires holding fixed the practical identities of both hearer and speaker across the relevant worlds that are being used to evaluate the reliability of the testimonial exchange according to a standard possible worlds semantics for counterfactuals and that such a characterization of the modal space provides a principled basis for solving Goldberg’s puzzle.

  2. “Natural and Practical Goodness” under review

    Abstract: This paper addresses the Authority of Nature Challenge to Aristotelian Naturalism: if moral virtue is merely a kind of natural goodness, why should we care about being virtuous? Classic Aristotelian Naturalism (as represented in the works of Foot, Thompson, and Hursthouse) explains natural goodness in terms of generic descriptions of species, but this account fails to show how such goodness is practically normative in the only way that it might plausibly be, viz., prudentially. To resolve this, I develop a “vital-teleological account” of natural goodness, which evaluates organisms by their individual teleological structures and highest-order functions (bodily, sensory, affective, cognitive, and agential activity). Flourishing, understood as the successful exercise of these functions, is then found to be intrinsically prudentially valuable. Because virtues partially constitute excellence in our agential, affective, and cognitive activities, they also partially constitute well-being. Thus, we should value virtue (at least) because it intrinsically benefits its possessor.

Dissertation Abstract

Human Nature and Practical Normativity

The idea that human nature is practically normative (whether morally or prudentially) has the potential to alienate us from morality, our well-being, and even our own bodies insofar as we might not find what is considered “normal” in humans to be a reason-giving standard. This may especially be the case when we believe ourselves to legitimately diverge (physically or otherwise) from this standard or when we find that it assigns no intrinsic value to what we find pleasant or desirable. Indeed, this standard might even be positively resisted since the traits that contingently survive natural selection do not necessarily align with moral norms nor with norms of personal well-being at times. Nevertheless, it seems that the practical norms that govern how we ought to treat our friends, bodies, and minds (for example) should be informed by the nature of those very same things. In my dissertation, I develop a practically normative conception of human nature that avoids fundamental appeal to the “normal” and thereby addresses the former challenges in favor of the latter intuition.

Selected Presentations

  1. “Virtue, Value, and Natural Goodness,” American Philosophical Association (APA) Pacific Division Meeting, April 2026.

  2. “Human Nature and Prudential Normativity,” APA Central Division Meeting, February 2026.

  3. “Perfectionist Politics, Reasonable Pluralism, and Moral-Epistemic Humility,” Pluralistic Philosophy Workshop, Georgetown University, October 2022.

  4. “Against a Normative Conception of Species: A New Evolutionary Objection to Foot’s Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism,” 27th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, January 2021.

  5. “Safety to the Rescue: A Response to Miracchi’s Counterexamples to Indirect Virtue Epistemology,” 13th Southeast Graduate Philosophy Conference, University of Florida, March 2019.

  6. “Ontological Economy in Leibniz’s Possible Worlds: A Comparative Critique,” The Continuing Relevance of Leibniz Graduate Philosophy Conference, Franciscan University of Steubenville, April 2016.

Works in Progress

  1. “Nature, Life, and Human Flourishing”

    Abstract: Perfectionist theories of well-being hold that human well-being consists in the development and exercise of characteristic human capacities. A key implication of this view is that human nature is prudentially normative: it provides standards for what we ought to value and pursue for our own self-interest. However, perfectionism faces two serious challenges: the Wrong Properties Objection (WPO), which claims that perfectionism includes irrelevant or harmful properties in its account of well-being, and the Deep Problem (DP), which questions the value of the perfectionist ideal itself. This paper refines WPO into the broader Inadequate Properties Objection (IPO) and argues that both IPO and DP jointly threaten the claim that human nature can ground norms of well-being. Moreover, there are many versions of perfectionism insofar as there are many ways that perfectionist theories delimit the human capacities (or aspects of human nature) that are relevant to well-being. After arguing that the two leading versions of perfectionism (one based on essential human capacities and the other on rational agency) both fail to overcome IPO and DP, I propose a novel version of perfectionism: the Capacities for Life Approach (CLA). CLA identifies as prudentially relevant those capacities that underwrite the fundamental dimensions of human life—bodily, sensory, cognitive, affective, and agential. CLA avoids the under- and over-inclusiveness of previous accounts by focusing on successful (rather than merely actual) exercises of these capacities. Moreover, since life is an inherently attractive ideal, CLA is uniquely poised to overcome DP. By offering both a more intuitively satisfying extension and a more motivationally attractive intension of the perfectionist ideal, CLA vindicates the prudential normativity of human nature. I conclude that CLA represents a promising new direction for perfectionist theories of well-being.