Research

I work in moral and political philosophy and their respective histories. My main research project has two parts. The first is a novel interpretation of Hume's theory of justice on which the demands of justice are the result of the social project of successfully solving certain important problems in a way that would be approved from what Hume calls the General Point of View. I develop Hume's views of both the demands of justice, including the moral standards to which these demands are subject, and the virtue of justice, understood as a trait of character rather than a property of our social institutions.

The second part of my central research project is a defense of the theory I attribute to Hume as a genuine contender with the other prominent theories of justice in the philosophical literature. The theory that I attribute to Hume is a form of conventionalism, pure forms of which are much maligned in contemporary moral and political philosophy. I seek to rehabilitate conventionalism about justice.

Though my central research agenda focuses on the interpretation and prospects of Hume's theory of justice, I have very broad interests across ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law, including within practical ethics, metaethics, the history of moral and political philosophy, and normative jurisprudence. For example, I have working papers on the ethics of consent, political obligation, the moral worth of an action, Mill's theory of value, and the critique of justice presented by Thrasymachus, Rousseau, and Marx.

Here are brief abstracts for some of my current papers:

Publications

"Hume's Account of the Scope of Justice" (published in Hume Studies)

Hume’s account of the scope of justice, many think, is implausibly narrow, applying almost exclusively to respect for property rights. Such a view would indeed be highly objectionable because it would leave out of the scope of justice altogether requirements to keep our promises, obey the law, and refrain from threats and violence (among many others). I argue that Hume's theory of justice, properly understood, avoids this objection. And seeing how is instructive because once we understand his account correctly, we can appreciate its resources for offering attractive explanations of why a number of diverse phenomena fall within the scope of justice. Overcoming this challenge is a major stepping stone on the way to seeing Hume’s theory of justice as a genuine competitor with the other major theories of justice in the philosophical literature.

"Hume's Justice and the Problem of the Missing Motive" (forthcoming in Ergo)

The task that Hume explicitly sets himself in 3.2 of the Treatise is to identify the motive that renders just actions virtuous and constitutes justice as a virtue. But surprisingly, he never provides a clear account of what this motive is. This is the problem of the missing motive. The goal of this paper is to explain this problem and offer a novel solution. To set up my solution, I analyze a recent proposal from Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and illustrate what it gets right and what it gets wrong. I develop a solution that retains the benefits of his proposal while addressing its defects. The result is a significant advancement in our understanding of Hume’s theory of justice.

In Progress or Under Review

*Title Redacted* (R&R Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy)

A paper on the ethics of consent

"The Obligation and Value of Justice in Hume"

This paper develops an interpretation of Hume’s accounts of the obligation and value of justice. According to my interpretation, Hume takes the obligation of justice to depend (in part) on the conventions that define the rules of justice realizing a distinctive form of value, which I call functional value. Along the way, I argue for a revisionary view of what Hume thinks the objects of moral evaluation are and highlight its significance for properly understanding Hume’s theory of justice.

"Moral Worth, Moral Motivation, and Hume's Circle Argument"

There is a robust philosophical literature on virtuous motivation. Is the virtuous person motivated to do what's right, read de dicto or de re? Philosophers take different views on this question. But this literature has, surprisingly, failed to engage with an argument in Hume (what has come to be known as the circle argument), which bears directly on this question. On my reading, Hume takes the distinctive position that while de dicto moral motivation might be constitutive of a particular virtue (what we might call the virtue of "dutifulness"), it cannot be the motive of the virtuous person in toto. Instead, possession of any other virtue (e.g., justice, beneficence, etc.) requires that a virtuous person be motivated by those things of value with which the virtue in question is concerned.

"A Humean Account of Political Obligation"

This paper develops a Humean account of political obligation, i.e., the moral obligation to obey the law of one's state. For Hume, political obligation is an instance of what we might call obligation by convention. When an active social convention meets certain moral standards, it generates an obligation to abide by its demands, at least among participants. I develop an account of what these moral standards are, and I argue that the vast majority of people count as participants in the legal conventions of their states. Thus, at least as long as their state's legal conventions meet the relevant standards, citizens have a moral obligation to obey the law.

"Mill's Euthyphro Dilemma"

This paper argues that Mill's famous test for distinguishing between higher and lower pleasures--the "competent judges" test--can be interpreted in either of two ways, each corresponding to one side of a Euthyphro dilemma. In particular, do the competent judges prefer the higher pleasures because they are higher or are the higher pleasures higher because the competent judges prefer them? According to several prominent interpretations, Mill opts for the first option, but I argue on the basis of textual evidence that Mill is committed to the second. I go on to argue that this interpretation helps to explain several other seemingly mysterious features of Mill's theory of value. My conclusion is that Mill's theory of value is both consistent and insightful, though I take no stand here on whether it is ultimately successful.

"Three More Against Justice: Thrasymachus, Rousseau, and Marx"

This paper defends the claim that three figures in the history of philosophy--Thrasymachus, Rousseau, and Marx--each have fundamentally the same critique of the demands of justice, namely, that they are foisted upon the powerless for the benefit of the powerful. The goal of this paper is to bring out and subject to critical analysis this overlooked tradition of philosophical thought about the nature of justice.