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Research
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In their efforts to achieve reflective equilibrium, modern moral and political philosophers commonly test principles against cases drawn from contemporary Europe or North America. One of my central research projects (parts of which became my dissertation) involves expanding the range of cases used in reflective equilibrium to other times and places.
In "Settler Colonialism and the Philosophy of Immigration," I argue that the most popular arguments for open borders - the view that people should nearly always be able to live and travel wherever they wish - are parallel to arguments historically made to justify settler colonialism. Unless seriously qualified, these arguments have the counterintuitive consequence that most historical settler colonialism was justified; they also have dire consequences for the rights of indigenous peoples today. However, most of the popular arguments for closed borders - the view that the open borders position is false - also fail to account for the rights of indigenous peoples. Many such arguments even lead to the counterintuitive conclusion that rich countries like the United States have a right to exclude potential immigrants while indigenous peoples have no right or a weaker right to keep potential settlers off their lands. Therefore, I conclude that philosophers of immigration should explicitly consider the implications of the arguments they make for the rights of indigenous peoples in order to produce a better theory of immigration rights than we currently possess.
In "What (Else) Is Wrong With Settler Colonialism," I offer my own justification of territorial rights and (some) border controls based on Neo-Roman republicanism. This is the view that the purpose of political institutions is to protect people from domination, where domination is understood as subjection to the arbitrary will of another. There is a growing literature on the question of what (if anything) is wrong with colonialism apart from obvious wrongs that are often (but not always) perpetrated by colonizers such as physical violence, enslavement, and the displacement of colonized people from their homes. I argue that colonialism is a wrong even in the absence of violence etc. because it involves domination in the sense just mentioned, viz., subjection to the arbitrary will of another. Furthermore, I argue that rights to control territory and impose (some) restrictions on immigration are justified as a means of preventing domination by settlers.
Philip Pettit, the most influential neo-Roman republican, has argued that a state is necessary to secure non-domination. This would seem to imply that my justification of territorial rights as a means of preventing domination does not apply to non-state societies. For if a state is necessary to secure non-domination, then a non-state society lacks the ability to secure non-domination for its members with or without territorial rights. In "Republicanism Without the State," I respond to this objection by drawing on defenses of non-state forms of governance in American Indian/First Nations philosophy as well as the actual history of non-state societies to rebut Pettit’s arguments: non-state societies can successfully protect their members from domination, and have actually done so.
In "What Is a People?: A Defense of Acephalous Bodies Politic," I consider the definition of a people, i.e. the kind of political community that can have rights of self-government, territorial control, etc. A wide range of arguments both in the history of western philosophy and in contemporary analytic political philosophy purport to show that some sort of centralized collective decision-making body or process is necessary for a group of individuals to constitute a people. This implies that many historical and some contemporary indigenous peoples are not peoples at all since they lack such a body or process. I argue, on the other hand, that both the problem of demarcating the boundaries of a people and of engaging in self-governance can be solved without a central authority.
I also have a research project in democratic theory. "Against Epistocracy: A Response to Jason Brennan" as its name suggests responds to the argument for epistocracy (rule by good knowers) put forward by Jason Brennan. Brennan argues that government by the better informed among the citizens will produce better outcomes. I argue, however, that it follows from Brennan's own account of the psychology of voters that the opposite is the case. This is because Brennan thinks that higher information voters with more knowledge of and engagement in politics (the group he calls "hooligans") are epistemically worse than the low information low political engagement voters (the group he calls "hobbits") because the hooligans are significantly more biased and fit their admittedly greater amount of knowledge into the narrative that favors their political party. Thus, giving more power to higher information voters will exclude the hobbits, the voters more likely to change their votes based on the actual effect of policies, and give more power to the hooligans, who will keep cheering (and voting) for their political team as they produce harmful policy.
Relatedly, I am in the early stages of work on a paper responding to the debate between epistocrats and various kinds of democrats by arguing that the idea of consensus-based democracy as developed by African philosophers like Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye should be taken seriously as a position in contemporary western political philosophy. Wiredu and Gyekye have powerful arguments that the problems with western democracies pointed to by epistocrats and other critics are the result not of rule by the people but of the incentive structure created by majority rule. They also give powerful moral arguments that majority rule is not truly democratic. I defend this sort of democracy against majoritarian objections, especially the objection that government by consensus involves domination by the minority.
I also have an independent project in normative ethics that involves defending Rossian Pluralism, the view that there are multiple irreducible grounds of rightness. Over the last century, utilitarians, Kantians, and (more recently) virtue ethicists have spent a great deal of time developing more and more sophisticated versions of their views in response to objections and criticisms. Rossian Pluralism, however, has remained largely unexplored. This is a shame because Rossian Pluralism can handle many classic puzzles in moral theory in a more satisfying and less ad hoc way than the more popular moral theories.
In "The Problem of Supererogation: A Rossian Response,” I argue that Rossian pluralism successfully solves the problem of supererogation most famously raised by J. O. Urmson. This problem arises for most, if not all, moral theories and involves how it can be that an action can go above and beyond what is morally required. The problem is particularly acute for moral theories, like utilitarianism and Rossian pluralism, that include the idea that we have a standing positive obligation to aid others (the prima facie duty of beneficence in the case of Rossian Pluralism). Take an act of self-sacrifice: Urmson's example is a soldier jumping on a grenade. It seems that either there is no moral reason weightier than saving the soldier's comrades, in which case jumping on the grenade is obligatory, or there is a weightier reason (duties to the soldier's family perhaps or a Kantian concern with not making oneself a mere means for saving others), in which case jumping on the grenade would be not only not required but positively wrong. Rossian pluralism, I argue, can account for supererogation in a non-ad hoc way if slightly modified from Ross's original presentation to include the idea that the prima facie duty of non-maleficence extends to the self. Because Rossians see prima facie duties as correlates of claims, one can choose to waive one's claim not to be harmed. This means that there is something to be weighed morally against the prima facie duty of beneficence to sacrifice oneself in these sorts of cases making it morally permissible not to sacrifice oneself, but an agent can choose to waive this claim.
"Obligation and Responsibility: A Rossian Response to Bernard Williams" argues that Rossian pluralism can accommodate what Bernard Williams calls "agent regret" in a way that many other moral theories cannot. This is because for Ross, when prima facie duties are overridden, they do not simply disappear but leave remainders. This means that even if one’s action is excused or justified or obligatory, there can be duties of reparation towards those whose claims one did not honor. Thus Rossians can recognize the importance of what one has done in a way that Williams convincingly argues other moral theories cannot.
"Just Enough Thoughts: On Relational Prima Facie Duties" argues that Rossian pluralism can draw on insights from both care ethics and Confucian ethics to overcome Bernard Williams's "one thought too many" objection. Williams imagines a case in which a man can save either his wife or a stranger from drowning. He holds that there is something wrong with the man saving his wife because it is permissible in this type of situation to save one's wife rather than merely because it's his wife. I believe, however, that Rossians have the resources to say that the very fact that it is his wife can itself be a moral reason for the man to choose to save his wife.
Finally, I plan to write at least one more paper in this project responding to the objection that Rossian pluralism fails because it lacks a decision procedure. My response will be in two parts. First, I will argue that in practice, all moral theories require judgement for their application, just as Rossian pluralism does. Second, there are tools that Rossians (as well as the advocates of other moral theories) can use besides simply thinking about a case and going with what seems right, the most important of these tools being casuistry.
In the near future, I am interested in exploring the philosophy of practical rationality. Popular theories of rationality seem to produce counterintuitive consequences. Take one type of case frequently discussed in the rationality literature, poor street vendors who buy a small pleasure each day, like a cup of coffee, despite the fact that they could save the money spent on coffee instead and, at least in theory, eventually lift themselves out of poverty. Theories of ideal rationality tend to hold that one is rational if one acts so as to promote one's expected utility. They therefore tend to hold that the street vendors are irrational. Theories of bounded rationality, on the other hand, take a leaf from the rule consequentialist book and argue that one is rational if one acts according to the principles that will maximize expected utility in the long term given one's limitations as an agent and the circumstances one typically finds oneself in. They therefore imply that the street vendors are rational if they choose to buy coffee instead of saving their money because they are following norms of deliberation that maximize their expected utility but irrational otherwise. I draw on the resources of non-consequentialist ethics, such as the Kantian idea of an imperfect obligation, to conceptualize rationality in a non-maximizing way. This yields the conclusion that people, like the street vendors, can be rational despite neither maximizing expected utility directly nor following norms that would best maximize expected utility if followed consistently.
Another topic I would like to explore in the near term is disability selective abortion. It is widely accepted in the literature that the most powerful argument against disability selective abortion is expressive, relying on the message communicated by this practice to people with disabilities. I argue, however, that the expressive objection misses what is pro tanto wrong with disability selective abortion namely discrimination against disabled fetuses. There is something pro tanto wrong about this sort of discrimination, in my view, even though fetuses do not have a right to be born and do not have the same moral status as human beings who have been born.
Yet another topic I would like to explore in the future pertains to the moral force of slippery slope arguments. Sometimes, the thing at the bottom of a slippery slope argument is genuinely to be avoided--if it is true that legalizing physician assisted death leads logically or practically to state sponsored involuntary euthanasia, we should not legalize physician assisted death. Often, however, slippery slope arguments are of the form "we cannot grant rights to group X because then we would be logically required/practically likely to grant rights to more stigmatized group Y." Lynn Hunt discusses a number of such now uncontroversially bad arguments made regarding expanding voting rights during the French Revolution e.g. that Protestants should not be granted voting rights because then it would be inconsistent not to grant voting rights to Jews and that free Blacks should not be granted voting rights because then it would be inconsistent not to abolish slavery in the (very lucrative) French colonies. A more contemporary (and controversial) example I am particularly interested in exploring is the widely discussed argument made prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell that the state should not recognize the marriages of same sex couples because if it did, there would be no reason not to recognize polygamous marriages. This raises a number of interesting questions in the ethics of social movements such as: when if ever it is morally permissible for group x to throw group Y under the bus by claiming that group Y is justly stigmatized so should not get the rights that group X does? It also raises questions in normative epistemology regarding whether we should be particularly skeptical of arguments that we should stop the slide down a slope of granting rights at a certain point.