Persons, Identities, and Resposibility

Finally, since 2017 my research has been concerned more and more with the nature of persons and the consequences of that for understanding friendship, interpersonal conflict, silencing, responsibility, personal identity, paternalism, meaning in life, and more.

So far, this work has resulted in several papers, and I have presented parts of it at Stanford, Pittsburgh, UC-Santa Cruz, USC, the Royal Institute for Philosophy, the University of Illinois, SUNY Buffalo, the Australian National University, the University of Sydney, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of Arizona, Dartmouth University, Colgate University, Syracuse University, UCLA, the University of Virginia, and the University of Texas.

I’ve become impassioned by this project, as it promises to draw on and illuminate my past interests while offering simple tools that are easy to translate outside of philosophy. It has also inspired my creation of the Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project at USC. The next step of this research program is to bring together some of the most central ideas into a book about what philosophical theories of the self can tell us about conflict in interpersonal relationships, tentatively titled The Best You Can Be.

A strong representative of this strand of my research is my paper ‘Persons as Things’, forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics.

Bringing You Down

'When Beliefs Wrong.'  Philosophical Topics.

'Persons as Things.'  Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics.

Paternalism and Autonomy

‘Treating Like a Child.’ Forthcoming in Analytic Philosophy.

Conflict and Silencing

'Conflict, Discord, and Strife.'  Paper manuscript.

‘Person as an Evaluative Concept.’ Public lecture, video below.

‘Attributive Silencing.’ Accepted for presentation at the Arizona WiNE in January 2021.

Narrative and the Self

‘Why You’ll Regret Not Reading This Paper.’ In *******.