Dissertation

Fundamental Flavors is about the relation between two ideas. First: normativity is plural. We talk about many different flavors or domains of normativity, like the ethical, the epistemic, and the aesthetic. Second: normativity is unified. Sometimes we don’t just talk about individual flavors of normativity; instead, we talk about normativity as a whole, as if it is one cohesive thing. My dissertation shows how unity and plurality are fundamentally in tension across three areas of metaethics—the X-First debate, the metaphysics of value pluralism, and metanormative methodology—and how reconciling them requires adopting a more sophisticated metaphysical toolkit.

Published

The Aesthetic Dimension of Value, forthcoming, Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

James Shelley recently claimed that aesthetic value is a determinate of value. But aesthetic value doesn’t seem to exhibit the same structural features that other determinates do. I give several objections along these lines, and instead propose that aesthetic value is a determination dimension of value.

In Progress. Happy to talk about or share the latest draft of any of these.

A paper on fundamental kinds of value

A paper on non-fundamental kinds of value