Assistant Professor
University Hall 5011
(205) 934-4805
Pronouns: he/him
Research and Teaching Interests: Ethics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of race
Office Hours: By appointment only
Education:
- BA, Princeton University, Philosophy
- MA, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Philosophy
- PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Philosophy
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Select Publications
- What's in an Aim? Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 17 (forthcoming).
- Vice and Virtue in Sikh Ethics. The Monist 104(3), 319-336 (2021)
- Evidentialism doesn’t make an exception for belief. Synthese 198, 5477–5494 (2021).
- Anscombe on Acting for Reasons. Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, eds. Ruth Chang and Kurt Sylvan (2020).
- Moral Worth, Credit, and Non-accidentality. Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 10 (2020).
- Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99(2), 409-430 (2019).
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Academic Distinctions and Professional Societies
- Phi Beta Kappa, American Philosophical Association
I was born and raised in the beach town of Santa Cruz, California. As a teenager, I became a professional jazz guitarist, and thought that was what I wanted to do with my life. But in my senior year of high school, I took a college philosophy class on a whim and loved it. I ultimately majored in philosophy and minored in jazz performance in as an undergraduate at Princeton University. Unsure about whether to pursue music or philosophy as a career, I made a last-minute decision to apply to graduate programs in philosophy, and ended up at UNC Chapel Hill.
My experience as a graduate student at UNC not only cemented my decision to become a professional philosopher, but instilled in me an enduring love for Southern food and Carolina basketball. I received my PhD from UNC in 2020 and taught for a year at Syracuse University before moving to UAB. When I’m not doing philosophy, I enjoy playing guitar, watching football and basketball, cooking, weightlifting, tabletop gaming, and playing with my dog, Frisbee.
My research and teaching interests are very broad, but they all center around normative questions: questions about how to live our lives. Some of these are more foundational normative questions, such as what it is in virtue of which we have reasons to act, think, and feel in certain ways. When addressing these foundational issues, I like to take a unified approach to questions about how to act, think, and feel as all aspects of the same fundamental questions about how to live. Because of this, my research and teaching interests straddle the boundaries between ethics, epistemology, and other related areas. I’m also increasingly interested in more applied normative questions, especially ones having to do with the nature of racism and other forms of discrimination: what they are, what’s wrong with them, and how they should be combated.
You can read more about my research, teaching, and other professional activities on my personal website.
Scholars @ UAB Profile