Research
My research is primarily in ethics (especially moral psychology and metaethics) and ancient philosophy.
Publications
• “Classic Hedonism Reconsidered”, Utilitas [forthcoming]. See here.
Few views have seen a more precipitous fall from grace than hedonism, which once occupied a central position in the history of ethics. Recently, however, there have been efforts to revive interest in the view, ranging from arguments in staunch defense of hedonism to well-motivated pleas for contemporary ethicists to at least take the view seriously. In this article, I argue for the seriousness of hedonism on metaethical grounds. Taking John Stuart Mill’s argument for hedonism in Utilitarianism as a test case, I show that historically classic hedonism was not argued for in isolation as an ethical view, but was rather grounded metaethically via a commitment to two positions: (1) an empiricist epistemology, and (2) the view that pleasure occurs in sensation. Together, these two positions provided principled grounds for various iterations of classic hedonism. Moreover, these two positions are still serious options in both contemporary epistemology and the contemporary literature on the nature of pleasure. Insofar as a contemporary ethicist takes those two views seriously, they ought to take classic hedonism seriously as well. That is, to truly discount classic hedonism as a viable position in value theory, one must argue against at least one of those positions, and this is a non-trivial task.
Papers Under Review
• A paper on Aristotle’s account of indefinite phantasia in De Anima III.11
• A paper on the role of social norms in the categorization of mental health disorders
Papers in Preparation
• “An Aristotelian Argument for the Intrinsic Value of Pleasure”
Is pleasure intrinsically good? This was a central question and topic of debate in ancient ethics, and the most common ancient arguments given in favor of the intrinsic value of pleasure were conative arguments, according to which we know that pleasure is intrinsically good because all seek or desire it for its own sake. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle endorses both the claim that pleasure has intrinsic value as well as the general form of the conative argument as a way to argue effectively for the claim. However, he does not provide his own conative argument; instead, he both critiques and defends the conative argument of hedonist philosopher Eudoxus in Nicomachean Ethics X.2. In this article, I reconstruct a distinctively Aristotelian conative argument from this analysis of Eudoxus. According to the reconstructed argument, pleasure has defeasible intrinsic value, where the defeater is the faulty exercise of the faculty of perception. This reconstruction ultimately provides a richer understanding of Aristotle’s views on the value of pleasure, the relationship between Aristotle’s ethics and philosophy of perception, and the middle path he charted between Eudoxus and Plato in Nicomachean Ethics X.2.
• “From the Cradle to the Grave: The Epicurean Cradle Argument”
The most prominent ancient arguments for the intrinsic value of pleasure are found in Epicureanism. The Epicureans are thought to have two arguments which they take to establish their hedonism: the empiricist argument from immediate experience and the so-called “cradle” argument, according to which we know that pleasure is the highest good because we observe that animals and infants naturally pursue it. In this paper, I propose and defend a new interpretation of the cradle argument, arguing that it does not stand on its own argumentatively but is rather meant to direct the audience to the empiricist argument.
Dissertation
• Dissertation, Pleasure as Evaluative Perception
Pleasure is a familiar and normal part of everyday life. Consider the pleasure of stepping into a warm bath. There are at least three seemingly intertwined features of this experience. The first is perceptual: the experience involves the sensory feeling of the warm water on the skin of one’s legs. The second is evaluative: the warm water feels good on the skin. The third is motivational: one’s desire to submerge oneself fully in the bath. Ancient philosophy typically incorporated all of these elements in their discussions of pleasure, thereby furnishing unified and systematic accounts—none moreso than Aristotle’s. Rooted in and inspired by Aristotle’s account of pleasure, I advance a novel framework with which to investigate foundational questions about pleasure. According to what I call the Evaluative Cognition framework, pleasure is best understood not as an object or property of experience, but as a form of evaluative perception—a way of sensing that something is good for the perceiver. Experiencing something as pleasant is a way of finding it good without necessarily thinking that it is good. Taking pleasure in something is a way of valuing it at the level of perception rather than thought, and it is possible for these valuing modalities to conflict with one another (for example in cases of akrasia). A striking consequence of this framework is its rejection of a commonly accepted axiom in value theory: the claim that pleasure is intrinsically good (and pain intrinsically bad). That the Evaluative Cognition framework leads to the rejection of this axiom may at first glance seem to warrant dismissing the framework out of hand. However, I contend that understood as a mode of evaluative cognition, pleasure (and pain) can still play a foundational role in how we understand the relationship between value and action. Pleasure is a primitive form of valuing for human and non-human animals. It is best understood as a biological mechanism which, when working properly, leads animals to things that are genuinely good for them.