PUBLICATIONS

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What Are We to Do? Making Sense of 'Joint Ought' Talk Philosophical Studies (forthcoming), co-authored with Margaret Shea

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We argue for three main claims. First, the sentence ‘A and B ought to φ and ψ’ can express what we a call a joint-ought claim: the claim that the plurality A and B ought to φ and ψ respectively. Second, the truth-value of this joint-ought claim can differ from the truth-value of the pair of claims ‘A ought to φ’ and ‘B ought to ψ.’ This is because what A and B jointly ought to do can diverge from what they individually ought to do: it may be true that A and B jointly ought to φ and ψ respectively, yet false that A ought to φ and false that B ought to ψ; and vice-versa. Third, either of two prominent semantic analyses of ‘ought’ – Mark Schroeder’s relational semantics, and Angelika Kratzer’s modal semantics – can model joint-ought claims and this difference in truth-value.

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Joint Ought Philosophy and Public Affairs 52 (2024): 42-68. ​

Selected for a PEA Soup Discussion.

 

​Suppose that it would be best if some set of people all did A, significantly worse if they all did B, and worst of all if some did A while some did B. Now suppose that they’re all going to do B, regardless of what the others do. It seems as though each of these people ought to pick B, given what the others are going to do. Yet it also seems as though something has gone wrong. This leads to a puzzle: how can it be wrong for everyone to act as they ought? In this paper, I resolve this puzzle by arguing that there are joint ‘oughts’ which apply irreducibly to pluralities of agents, and which can pull in different directions to ‘oughts’ holding of given individuals; even if everyone individually ought to pick B, what they jointly ought to do is all pick A.​

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Faces of Vicarious Responsibility The Monist 104 (2021): 238-250.

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Can a person vicariously bear responsibility on another’s behalf? This idea is counterintuitive. Yet many real-world practices seem to lend it validity. In the paper, I distinguish three forms of responsibility, and argue that one of them – ‘substantive responsibility’ – can genuinely be borne vicariously. I then show how this abstract claim can further our understanding of concrete legal and political issues: specifically, the common-law doctrine of joint enterprise, and reparations for historic injustice.

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IN THE PIPELINE

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A paper which offers an account of joint reasoning.

 

A paper which argues that joint obligations do not transmit to individual obligations to do one’s part (R&R).

 

A paper addressing a puzzle about ‘self-depriving’ solidarity, whereby a person acts in solidarity by forgoing a good which others lack.

 

A paper which describes and motivates a distinctive form of forgiveness, which I call 'forgiveness as humility'.

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RECENT TALKS

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Thinking Together

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• Philadelphia Normative Philosophy Conference 2024

• Social Ontology 2024

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Why Cooperate? Team Reasons, Participation, and Unwillingness

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• Laval Everything Agency Conference 2024

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What Are We to Do? The Semantics and Ethics of the Joint Ought

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• Chapel Hill Normativity Workshop 2023

• Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress 2023

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Joint Ought

 

• Berkeley Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and  Political Theory 2022

• Humboldt Normativity Conference 2022

• Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress 2022

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