I am an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Leeds. I received my PhD from UCL in 2019.
I work primarily in the Philosophy of Mind and Action. My research is about motivation in rational self-conscious agents. I am interested in desire, rational agency, reasons, and how they are related. I am working on a book on desire. I have also been thinking about need, self-control, self-knowledge of desire and affect. My work engages with other disciplines like linguistics and psychology.
Publications
- Needs as Causes | ±
forth. The Philosophical Quarterly.
Facts about need play some role in our causal understanding of the world. We understand, for example, that people have basic needs for food, water and shelter, and that people come to be harmed because their needs go unmet. But what are needs? How do explanations in terms of need fit into our broader causal understanding of the world? This paper provides an account of need attribution, their contribution to causal explanations, and their relation to disposition attribution.
- Urges | ±
2024. The Philosophical Review, 133 (2): 151-191.
Experiences of urges, impulses or inclinations are among the most basic elements in the practical life of conscious agents. This paper develops a theory of urges and their epistemology. I motivate a framework that distinguishes urges, conscious experiences of urges and exercises of capacities we have to control our urges. I argue that experiences of urges and exercises of control over urges play coordinate roles in providing one with knowledge of one's urges.
- The Necessity of 'Need' | ±
2023. Ethics, 133 (3): 329-354.
Many philosophers have suggested that claims of need play a special normative role in ethical thought and talk. But what do such claims mean? What does this special role amount to? Progress on these questions can be made by attending to a puzzle concerning some linguistic differences between two types of ‘need’ sentence: one where ‘need’ occurs as a verb, and where it occurs as a noun. I argue that the resources developed to solve the puzzle advance our understanding of the metaphysics of need, the meaning of ‘need’ sentences, and the function of claims of need in ethical discourse.
- Focus on Slurs (with Poppy Mankowitz) | ±
2022. Mind & Language, 38 (3): 693-710.
Slurring expressions display puzzling behaviour when embedded, such as under negation and in attitude and speech reports. On one hand, they frequently appear to retain their characteristic qualities, such as offensiveness and propensity to derogate. On the other hand, it is sometimes possible to understand them as lacking these qualities. A theory of slurring expressions should explain this variability. We develop an explanation that deploys the linguistic notion of focus. Our proposal is that a speaker can conversationally implicate metalinguistic claims about the aptness of a focused slurring expression. The inclusion of a sentential operator in the sentence (e.g., negation) affects the aptness claim conveyed, resulting in the availability of non-pejorative metalinguistic construals (e.g., that the slurring expression is not apt for certain purposes). The resulting explanation of variability relies on independently motivated mechanisms and is compatible with any theory of slurring expressions.
- Desire and What it's Rational to Do | ±
2021. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 99 (4): 761-75.
It is often taken for granted that our desires can contribute to what it is rational for us to do. This paper examines an account of desire that promises an explanation of this datum, the guise of the good. I argue that extant guise-of-the-good accounts fail to provide an adequate explanation of how a class of desires—basic desire—contribute to practical rationality. I develop an alternative guise-of-the-good account on which basic desires attune us to our reasons for action in virtue of their biological function. This account emphasises the role of desire as part of our competence to recognise and respond to normative reasons.
- Do Affective Desires Provide Reasons for Action? | ±
2021. Ratio, 34 (2): 147-57.
This paper evaluates the claim that some desires provide reasons in virtue of their connection with conscious affective experiences like feelings of attraction or aversion. I clarify the nature of affective desires and several distinct ways in which affective desires might provide reasons. Against recent accounts proposed by Ruth Chang, Declan Smithies and Jeremy Weiss, I motivate doubts that it is the phenomenology of affective experiences that explains their normative or rational significance. I outline an alternative approach that centralises the function of such experiences.
- Desire and Satisfaction | ±
2020. The Philosophical Quarterly, 70 (279): 371-384.
Desire satisfaction has not received detailed philosophical examination. Yet intuitive judgments about the satisfaction of desires have been used as data points guiding theories of desire, desire content and the semantics of 'desire'. This paper examines desire satisfaction and the standard propositional view of desire. First, I argue that there are several distinct concepts of satisfaction. Second, I argue that separating them defuses a difficulty for the standard view in accommodating desires that Derek Parfit described as "implicitly conditional on their own persistence", a problem posed by Shieva Kleinschmidt, Kris McDaniel and Ben Bradley. The solution undercuts a key motivation for rejecting the standard view in favour of more radical accounts proposed in the literature.
Book Chapters, Special Issues
- Desire and Psychology ±
2025. Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Desire. Edited by Alex Gregory
This chapter is about work on the nature of desire in both philosophy and psychology. Desire is a core notion in philosophy. In contrast, ‘desire’, while occasionally used in psychology, is not a term that is as widely employed as other motivational concepts like ‘goal’, ‘reward’ and so on. Some areas of psychological research that focus on appetitive motivation and drug craving, however, do explicitly give a substantial role to desire as a psychological construct. My aim is to outline some work in psychology that can inform philosophical theorising about desire and vice versa, emphasising what philosophy and psychology both stand to gain from closer engagement.
- Needs, Harms and Liberalism (with S. McLeod and A. Tanyi) | ±
2025. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
The harm principle entails the subprinciple that harm to others provides a pro tanto moral reason for legal or social coercion. We address a ‘scope problem’ for that subprinciple: how can what counts as harm be restricted sufficiently, without sacrificing extensional adequacy, to protect the harm principle’s liberal credentials? While recognizing the centrality of such basic liberties as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of movement to any liberalism worthy of the name, a satisfactory solution to the scope problem must secure a distinction between conduct that harms others and conduct that, while it might negatively affect others (casually or relationally), does not harm them. We ground such a distinction in a further distinction between needs and attitudes.
Other
- Desire in Sexual Attraction ±
2024. Joint Winner of the 12th Essay Prize, Centre for Philosophical Psychology, Uni. Antwerp.
This paper develops an empirically informed reward-based account of sexual attraction via consideration of the understudied phenomenon of asexuality, characterised as the absence of sexual attraction. I explain the implications of this view for a recent discussion of asexuality in Brunning and McKeever (2021).
- 'Ethics and the Emotions' (co-edited with Maria Baghramian) | ±
2022. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 30 (3).
I co-edited a special issue of International Journal of Philosophical Studies on ethics and the emotions. It collects nine articles on a range of topics including blame, love, and trust. The issue includes the first place and runner-up prize winners for the 2021 Robert Papazian Prize, and the 2021 PERITIA prize.
In Progress
- Monograph on Desire and Practical Rationality ±
in progress.
This monograph tentatively titled The Activity of Desire develops an empirically-informed account of desire and its role in rational agency. A book proposal is available on request.
- Paper on the Content of Intention (with Poppy Mankowitz) ±
in progress.
We critically evaluate linguistic arguments that purport to threaten propositionalism about the content of intention and desire.
If a paper is not available above, normally because it is under review or at the request of the publisher, please email me for a copy.
Lectures
Topics in Contemporary Philosophical Research (Hilary 2026, Trinity College Dublin)
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This fourth year module explores the nature of desire and its role in our practical lives as rational agents. Questions we will consider include: What is desire? Can we desire something we believe to be bad? How, if at all, can desire make a difference to what it is rational to do? Can desires themselves be rational or irrational? We will consider how desire is related to motivation and action, affective states of mind like pleasure and pain, and the capacity for thought, perception, imagination, and learning. We will pursue a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on work in the history of philosophy on rational agency, as well as cutting-edge work in the philosophy of mind and action, moral psychology, behavioural psychology, and neuroscience, and the philosophy of reasons and rationality.
Topics in Philosophy II B (Hilary 2026, Trinity College Dublin)
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An ancient picture of our psychology contrasts rationality with emotion. Both are central to human life. To be rational involves (in part) being sensitive to reasons on which we reflect and deliberate. But what is it to have emotions like fear, anger, joy, guilt and so on? How do they relate to other states of mind like belief, pleasure, intention, or desire? What’s the point of having various emotions? Do emotions inform us in some way about the world? Are emotions themselves rational or justified, and can they contribute to making certain actions rational? Or are emotions a distorting form of interference in an otherwise orderly psychology? We will examine a number of philosophical theories of emotion, drawing where appropriate on work in cognitive science to enrich our philosophical investigation. Confronting these questions about the nature of emotion will also shed light on and force us to consider issues about the nature of rational agency.
Moral Philosophy (Michaelmas 2025, Trinity College Dublin)
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I am co-teaching the third year course PIU33021: Moral Philosophy. This module will give students a strong grounding in the core elements of moral philosophy: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.
Texts I (Michaelmas 2025, Trinity College Dublin)
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I am co-teaching the second year course Texts I. This module involves reading two texts in philosophy and exploring their topics and themes in depth. My half will focus on Richard Moran's Authority and Estrangement.
The Mind (Spring 2024, University of Leeds)
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I co-taught the first year course PHIL1005: The Mind with Léa Salje with my half of the course focussing on consciousness. Topics covered include: mind-brain identity, the hard problem of consciousness, the knowledge and conceivability arguments, and non-human animal consciousness.
Introduction to Ethics (Autumn 2021-2, UCD)
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I co-taught the first year course PHIL10040: Introduction to Ethics with Christopher Cowley with my half of the course focussing on moral theory. I covered intuitionism, consequentialism, deontology and a special topic on need.
Philosophy Residential Summer School (Summer 2019, UCL)
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I served as an instructor for the 2019 UCL Residential Summer School run by the UCL Access and Widening Participation Office scheme and the UCL Philosophy Department. I ran four sessions introducing students interested in applying to UCL to core areas of theoretical philosophy. This included introductions to Epistemology, Philosophy of Language and Philosophy of Mind.
Seminars
Linguistic Semantics (Spring 2017, UCL)
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Final year and masters-level course on natural language semantics including topics on variables and binding, quantification, counterfactuals, and demonstratives. Course text: Heim & Kratzer, Semantics in Generative Grammar. The course instructor was Ethan Nowak.
Philosophy of Language (Autumn 2017, UCL)
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Second year module on a range of topics in the philosophy of language including: proper names, definite descriptions, modality, mental content, pragmatics, speech act theory. The course instructor was Ethan Nowak.
Introduction to Logic 2 (Spring 2015-6, UCL)
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First year module introducing predicate logic. Course text: Barwise and Etchemendy, Language, Proof and Logic. The course instructor was Luke Fenton-Glynn.
Introduction to Logic 1 (Autumn 2015, UCL)
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First year module introducing propositional logic. Course text: Barwise and Etchemendy, Language, Proof and Logic. The course instructor was Luke Fenton-Glynn.
Knowledge and Reality (Autumn 2014, UCL)
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First year introductory module on a range of topics in epistemology (analysis of knowledge; perception), metaphysics (metaphysics of objects; existence), philosophy of mind (physicalism and consciousness). The course instructor was Rory Madden.
I have provided supervision for a PhD candidate and undergraduate students in the philosophy of mind, action and language.
