I am Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rice University in Houston TX, where I have been since 2010. As of July 2024, I will be Associate Professor and Chancellor Jackman Professor in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. For summer 2024, I will be a Fellow at the Human Abilities Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Berlin. For the academic year 2024-2025, I will be a Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values. In 2013-2014 I was a Faculty Fellow at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. I did my graduate work at Yale University, where Shelly Kagan was my primary advisor. Before that, I was an undergraduate at The University of Toronto.
I work in value theory and normative ethics. My first book, Achievement (Oxford University Press, 2015), which is about the nature and value of achievement (as you might guess), was awarded the 2017 APA Book Prize. It is now available in paperback.
My new project is about uniqueness — what it is, and how it’s related to value. I also work on perfectionism, the theory of value that holds that the excellent exercise of our characteristically human capacities is intrinsically good. I’m particularly interested in ill-being — the opposite of well-being — and how perfectionism (or any theory, for that matter) might account for it.
Selected upcoming and recent presentations:
April 2024: “Evil Artifacts,” UT Austin
March 2024: “Consciousness and Irreplaceable Value,” Consciousness series, Zoom
September 2023: “Why You Should Be Miserable,” Conference in honour of Thomas Hurka, University of Toronto
May 2023: “Consciousness and Welfare Value,” Rice Paris Center
May 2023: “Failure,” University of Glasgow
April 2023: “Failure,” Human Abilities Center for Advanced Studies, Berlin
April 2023: “Consciousness and Irreplaceable Value” Université de Liège
February 2023: “Irreplaceable Value,” SMU
December 2022: “Failure,” Ethics of Laziness, Oxford University
November 2022: “Irreplaceable Value,” Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario
November 2022: “Irreplaceable Value,” American Society for Aesthetics, Portland
September 2022: “Irreplaceable Value,” MadMeta, University of Wisconsin, Madison
September 2022: “Irreplaceable Value,” Bowling Green State University
August 2022: “Failure,” University of Neuchâtel
July 2022: “Failure,” WoW-E, University of Edinburgh
December 2021: “Irreplaceable Value,” AGENT Conference, UT Austin, keynote
November 2021: “The Ethics of Space Travel,” SpaceVision Conference, NASA
October 2021: “Irreplaceable Value,” Oberlin
August 2021: “Irreplaceable Value,” British Society of Aesthetics, keynote (Zoom)
February 2021: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” St Andrews (Zoom)
October 2020: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” UC Riverside (Zoom)
September 2020: “Consciousness and Welfare Subjectivity,” Fall of Consciousness (Zoom)
November 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” University of Manitoba
October 2019: “Welfare and Consciousness,” Rice University
October 2019: “Is there a Moral Obligation to go to Mars?” Lone Star, Houston TX
October 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” University of Houston
June 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” Reading University
June 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” Oxford University
June 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” University of Edinburgh
June 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” University of Liverpool
June 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” University of Kansas
April 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” University of Kansas
April 2019: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” APA Pacific, Vancouver, BC
March 2019: “Why You Should Be Miserable,” Conference of the PPE Society, New Orleans, LA
February 2019: Author-meets-critic for Achievement, Central APA, Denver, CO
January 2019: “The Moral Obligation to go to Mars,” Night of Philosophy, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, TX
October 2018: Artist in Dialogue, with artist Matthew Ritchie and choreographer Hope Mohr, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, TX
September 2018: “Uniqueness and Intrinsic Value,” Lone Star, Houston, TX
August 2018: “Perfectionist Bads,” Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, Boulder, CO
June 2018: “Perfectionist Bads and Desires,” Canadian Philosophical Association, Montreal, QC
June 2018: “Uniqueness,” OSU-Croatia Philosophy Conference, Dubrovnik, Croatia
March 2018: “Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons,” DEX, UC Davis, CA
March 2018:”The Badness of Pain,” University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
March 2018: “Uniqueness,” Kwantlen Polytechnic, Surrey, BC