Selected Papers

(many of these are available on my philpapers page, check it out)

The Pleasures of Knowing: Comments on Sarah Worth's Taste. in Contemporary Aesthetics. 

Publishing, Belief, and Self-Trust.  Episteme, 2023. Responds to some criticisms of the view advanced in my 2019 Analysis paper, and elaborates on the motivations for the view. I argue that the debate involves a talking-past regarding what kind of norm we're trying to devlop: a norm for an ideal philosophy (my critics) or for the non-ideal philosophical practice we currently face (me). In doing so, I show how publishing relates to intellectual self-trust.

Some Probably-Not-Very-Good Thoughts on Underconfidence.  Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.  I consider the epistemic vice of underconfidence, describing how and why it impedes knowledge.  I outline two types of underconfidence before addressing a potential worry about how and why to assign blame for the vice.  (This piece is part of a book symposium on Quassim Cassam's Vices of the Mind.)

Publishing Without Belief.  Analysis.  This paper asks whether there's anything wrong with publishing philosophical work one doesn't believe.  I investigate several possible reasons for thinking there is but ultimately conclude that all of these fail.  In addition, I outline some reasons for allowing publishing without belief.  I conclude that we as a profession should allow publishing without belief.  Do I believe this conclusion?  If I'm right, it shouldn't matter.  You can find a draft of the paper here, but please cite the published version, available here.

The Response Model of Moral Disgust.  2018.  Synthese.  I argue that the debate over disgust's ability to play a role in moral discourse and practice has focused excessively on its epistemic status as a justification for judgments of moral wrongness.  I suggest an alternative account on which disgust is an output of, rather than input to, moral judgment, and argue that it is sometimes a fitting response to moral wrongness.  

Putting Our Morals Where Our Mouths Are: Disgust and Food Ethics.  2018. The Moral Psychology of Disgust, Kumar & Strohminger, eds.  This paper explores the relationship between disgust, food, and morality.  Food is where disgust begins: the disgust response is supposed to have evolved to protect us against ingesting invisible threats such as parasites and poisons.  So food is typically thought to be the paradigmatic elicitor of physical disgust.  But I suggest that food also elicits disgust because of its symbolic and spiritual properties.  In this case, disgust's role is to protect us against ingesting substances that contaminate the soul, a role that extends to food ethics: our disgust at certain foods, such as factory-farmed meat, is a protection against threats to our moral identities.