I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Philosophy 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 appetitive desire. I have also been thinking about need, self-control, self-knowledge of desire and the ethics of temptation. My work engages with other disciplines like linguistics and psychology.
Publications
- 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, 1-29.
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.
Other
- Desire in Sexual Attraction ±
2024. Joint Winner of the 12th Essay Prize of the Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of 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 develops an empirically-informed account of appetitive desire, their phenomenology and their role in rational agency. A full book proposal is available on request.
- Chapter on Desire and Psychology ±
2025. For Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Desire.
This chapter explores the relationship between work in behavioural and cognitive psychology and the philosophy of desire and motivation.
- Paper on the Ontology of Need ±
under review.
I provide an account of what needs are, in particular, their ontological status with a view to understanding their contribution to causal explanation.
- Paper on Practical Rationality ±
in progress.
I defend an account of practical rationality as a threshold on a scale of reasons-responsiveness. I explore the implications of this view for `transformative' conceptions of rationality and animal agency.
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
The Mind (Spring 2024, University of Leeds)
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I co-taught 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 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.
Please get in touch for my teaching dossier including course outlines.