Research

My publications are listed here and talks & presentations, here.

In normative ethics, I am working on several papers and one book project on moral responsibility, moral autonomy, moral testimony, and moral worth. I am deeply interested in intrinsic motivation, which I take to be the key to moral autonomy, and am keen to suss out the effects of our social and legal practices on intrinsic moral motivation. My research suggests that these effects are largely negative. 

In the ethics of AI, I am particularly interested in what it would take for machines to be moral and on the effects of AI on our concepts of value and meaning and on our social and legal practices. I am developing a project on the ethics of technological disruption - with particular attention to how rapid technological development adversely affects the conditions of autonomy. I also continue my work on moral responsibility (and related issues like authorship and merit) in technologically advanced contexts.

My dissertation, entitled "From Moral Influence to Moral Autonomy: Responsibility Reconsidered," offers a novel way of looking at responsible agency - as something less demanding than it is traditionally viewed. It identifies the thing we're really after - moral autonomy - as something connected to yet distinct from responsibility. I am interested in further developing the notion of moral autonomy presented in the dissertation as well as exploring implications of the account of responsibility developed therein.