More questions may be easier to answer than just one question.
Polya, How to Solve It, p. 121
In ethics, I’m always getting into “more questions,” but my papers focus on three in particular. Here is an overview.
Duties to Self
What do we owe to ourselves? Some say nothing: the very idea of a duty to self is incoherent. I respond to this worry in The Paradox of Duties to Oneself (AJP). And in Wronging Oneself (JPhil, with Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt), I argue for that we owe ourselves the same basic things that we owe to anybody else. I then use this view to derive a theory of supererogation in From Rights to Prerogatives (PPR).
You can find an overview of the topic in my SEP article. More recently, I reviewed Paul Schofield’s Duty to Self for Ethics. My thinking has been influenced by Paul’s, as well as by Tom Hill, G. A. Cohen (on Hobbes), Yuliya Kanygina, Janis Schaab, Michael Cholbi, and Conni Rosati.
Supererogation
Does morality always demand our very best, or do some “supererogatory” deeds lie beyond the call of duty? In Supererogation and the Limits of Reasons (Springer Handbook on Supererogation, ed. David Heyd, with Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt), we argue that supererogation can’t be understood as a conflict of reasons—say, moral reasons telling us to make sacrifices, and non-moral reasons telling us to prioritize ourselves. The key to supererogation is the concept of a prerogative, a thing that gives us a permission to act in a certain way without giving us any reason to do so. In From Rights to Prerogatives, I argue that we can derive prerogatives from duties—though not from others’ duties towards us. The source of prerogatives lies in waivable duties to ourselves.
Sometimes, the supererogation debate turns on tricky definitional issues. In Infinite Options, Intransitive Value, and Supererogation (Philosophical Studies), I have a little fun with these.
In Three Paradoxes of Supererogation (Noûs), I take on some substantive problems: the classic Paradox of Supererogation, Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox, and Horton’s All or Nothing Problem. As I see them, these paradoxes all emerge from the fact that supererogation involves multidimensional moral evaluations—for me, that means a clash between reasons (which tell us to do what’s best) and prerogatives (which let us sometimes decline). But my solution doesn’t strictly require prerogatives, much less does it assume that we can derive them from duties to self. I revisit the All or Nothing Problem in Exploitation and Effective Altruism (PPE). With Theron Pummer, I revisit all three paradoxes, and give an even harder version of Kamm’s, in Supererogation and Conditional Obligation (Philosophical Studies).
My work was influenced early on by Frances Kamm, Tom Hurka, Doug Portmore, Jonathan Dancy, Justin Snedegar, Joe Horton, Renée Jorgensen, Dale Dorsey, David Heyd, Paul Hurley, Marcia Baron, and Shelly Kagan (on the “self-constraint argument”). I’ve also learned a lot from talking with Chris Tucker, Seth Lazar, Theron Pummer, Joe Bowen, and Kerah Gordon-Solmon.
Multidimensionality
How do different values combine to determine what’s best overall? I got into this question while writing Three Paradoxes, and my hunch was to keep drawing on social choice theory, the study of how individual votes can be combined into a collective choice.
Multidimensional values are everywhere in ethics. The key to spotting them is nonfungibility: if A and B are good along different dimensions, then choosing A is a loss in some respect, even if it’s not worse than B overall.
In Sources of Transitivity (E&P), I argue that multidimensionality, not (just) Temkin’s “essential comparativity,” is the key to modeling nontransitive value relations. (I made a similar argument in Three Paradoxes about “menu-relativity.”) In [WIP], I argue that multidimensionality, not Parfit’s “imprecision,” is the key to modeling “sweetening” cases and defining parity. In The Many, the Few, and the Nature of Value (Ergo), I apply these ideas to the quesiton of whether “the numbers should count” when deciding whom to save. I also claim that different lives have nonfungible values; so, the goodness of each life is measured by its own dimension.
But what are dimensions? In Dimensions of Value (Noûs, with Brian Hedden), we try out a definition: dimensions of value are genuine and distinct ways in which a thing can be good or bad, to which overall value is responsive. We then ask what “responsiveness” should amount to. Working through some examples from Ruth Chang, we end up with two principles: the familiar Strong Pareto (A is better overall if better in one way, at least as good in all others) and a novel hypothesis we call Dimensionalism (how A and B compare overall depends only on how they compare along the relevant dimensions).
My influences here are Amartya Sen, Brian Hedden, Kieran Setiya, Tyler Doggett, Toby Handfield, Caspar Hare, Ruth Chang, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Derek Parfit, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Larry Temkin, and Richard Yetter Chappell. The elusive John Taurek is a constant inspiration.
I’ve also written about uncertainty (Knowledge of Objective ‘Oughts’, PPR, with Jack Spencer), context-dependent explanation (Defeaters and Disqualifiers, Mind; Grounding Nonexistence, Inquiry), and intentional action (The Rejection of Consequentializing, JPhil; Thinking, Acting, Considering, AJP).
Next up is a book connecting duties to self to supererogation, called What We Owe to Ourselves, which I’ve been working on for nearly ten years.
Once that’s done, I hope to devote a bit more time to my other interests: politics, economics, and (especially) mathematics. But I can’t imagine tearing myself away from normative ethics for very long. It’s just too interesting, and there’s still so much left to learn.