Publications
Counterfactual Reasoning in Art Criticism (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2022)
When we evaluate artworks, we often point to what an artist could have done or what a work could have been in order to say something about the work as it actually is. Call this counterfactual reasoning in art criticism. On my account, counterfactual claims about artworks involve comparative aesthetic judgments between actual artworks and hypothetical variations of those works. The practice of imagining what an artwork could have been is critically useful because it can help us understand how artworks achieve specific aesthetic effects. I conclude by responding to an objection to my account on the basis that it violates the widely accepted acquaintance principle in aesthetics, on which aesthetic judgments must be based on firsthand perceptual encounters with their objects.
Under review
I am happy to provide drafts of these papers upon request.
- A paper that argues that integrity requires that we be prepared to die for our commitments.
- A paper that argues that resolutions are reason-giving: when a person resolves to φ, she incurs a normative reason to φ over and above the reasons that led her to form the resolution in the first place.
Dissertation: "Essays on Integrated Agency"
My dissertation, which I defended in July 2022 at the University of Michigan, offers an account of the role of integrity in our agency. I argue that the unification of the various facets of our agency into a coherent whole is essential for our self-governance: our ability to be the authors of our own lives and to act in ways that reflect what we stand for. When we are fragmented--when our commitments conflict, or we otherwise fail to live up to what they require of us--we experience inner conflicts that hinder our ability to be self-governing.
- Here is my dissertation.
Current projects
I am happy to provide drafts of these papers upon request.
- Starting Over: a paper that provides an account of "practical restructuring"–or how we exercise agency over the people we are–by examining a phenomenon where, after a period of depression or personal turmoil, people sometimes express a desire for a "fresh start" or "clean slate."
- Can Consent Be Irrevocable?: a paper that argues that morally valid consent must be revocable because we do not have the diachronic agential authority to strip our future selves of the right to revoke consent. (Here is a recording of a talk I gave based on the paper at UNAM.)
- Self-Governance, Other People: a paper that compares individual-focused conceptions of integrity in Western philosophy to conceptions of integrity in non-Western traditions (especially African philosophy and Confucianism) that emphasize the unification of community rather than of the individual.
- Practical Saints: a paper that argues that someone whose agency is fully integrated will probably not live as well as someone who experiences some incoherence, despite being fully self-governing.
- Safe Love: a paper that defends a safety condition on love, such that an agent loves someone only if she could not have easily not loved them.
- On Being Inconsolable: a paper that provides an account of what makes something a consolation, and why we sometimes find ourselves to be inconsolable.
- Pretentiousness: a paper that argues that pretentiousness should not be understood in terms of pretense, but accessibility: a person is pretentious when she hoards hoards valuable experiences and prevents others from accessing them.
Public Writing
Here are a few short pieces for general audiences.
- Here is a post I wrote for the Daily Noûs on behalf of MAP International about graduate student service work recognition in 2020.
- Here is a contribution I made to an Aesthetics for Birds roundtable on engaging objectionable song lyrics in 2018.
- Here is a post I wrote for The Spoke about renaming university buildings currently named after imperialists and slaveholders in 2017.
