•  228
    The Axiology of Pain and Pleasure
    Journal of Value Inquiry 1-24. forthcoming.
    There is little more common in ethics than to think pain is intrinsically bad and pleasure is intrinsically good. A Humean-style error theory of the axiology of pain and pleasure is developed against these commonsense claims. We defend the thesis that the value of pain and pleasure is always contingent and only instrumental. We survey prominent theories of both intrinsic value and pain/pleasure, all of which assume that pain and pleasure are intrinsically valuable. We base our error theory o…Read more
  •  34
    Understanding Self-Injury through Body Shame and Internalized Oppression
    Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 26 (4): 295-313. 2019.
    Although clinical understandings of self-injury, the deliberate mutilation of body tissue, have developed significantly since the phenomenon was first studied, the predominant stereotype of who self-injures is still White, teenage girls.1 White girls as well as White women are, indeed, at risk for SI, and sociocultural explanations appealing to oppressive socialization—particularly the influence of Western beauty norms—have been offered to explain their high rates of SI. Yet evidence exists to c…Read more
  •  24
    Self-Saboteurs and Ethical Relationships
    Social Theory and Practice 45 (2): 249-285. 2019.
    Common-sense morality tells us we should help our loved ones who suffer. Self-saboteurs complicate this intuition: ought we help someone who wants to suffer? In this paper, I discuss mechanisms of and motivations for self-sabotaging behavior. I then turn to the ethical complications of these cases: the risk of becoming complicit in another’s self-sabotage; the acceptable limits of caring for a self-saboteur; and the permissibility of paternalistic interference. I argue that while there is some p…Read more
  •  10
    Reframing Abortion Lessons
    Teaching Ethics 22 (2): 201-217. 2022.
    A perennial topic in introductory ethics classes, abortion has offered students a real-life issue to critically analyze. In this paper, I argue that a popular approach to teaching abortion in such classes fails to attend to the relevant political context of the issue and that this contributes to harms against pregnant people. I will argue for these conclusions by identifying three related problems with such an approach: these lessons frame a political issue as apolitical, value impartiality over…Read more
  •  12
    Emotions Under Trauma
    Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 3 (1): 31-38. 2021.
    While emotions can play positive, contributory roles in our cognition and our lives, they frequently have the opposite effect. Michael Brady’s otherwise excellent introduction to the topic of emotion is unbalanced because he does not attend to harms emotions cause. The basic problem is that emotions have a normative aspect: they can be justified or unjustified and Brady does not attend to this. An example of this is Brady’s discussion of curiosity as the emotional motivation for knowledge. More …Read more
  •  4
    Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic (review)
    Philosophy and Global Affairs 1 (1): 165-167. 2021.
  •  12
    Community Repair of Moral Damage from Domestic Violence
    Social Philosophy Today 38 47-65. 2022.
    I argue that communities have a moral responsibility to repair and prevent moral damage that some survivors of domestic violence may experience. This responsibility is grounded in those communities’ complicity in domestic violence and the moral damage that may result. Drawing on Claudia Card’s work on domestic violence, I first explain two forms of moral damage that some survivors may experience. These are: 1) normative isolation, or abusive environments that are marked by distorted moral standa…Read more
  •  12
    Self-Saboteurs and Ethical Relationships
    Social Theory and Practice 45 (2): 249-285. 2019.
    Common-sense morality tells us we should help our loved ones who suffer. Self-saboteurs complicate this intuition: ought we help someone who wants to suffer? In this paper, I discuss mechanisms of and motivations for self-sabotaging behavior. I then turn to the ethical complications of these cases: the risk of becoming complicit in another’s self-sabotage; the acceptable limits of caring for a self-saboteur; and the permissibility of paternalistic interference. I argue that while there is some p…Read more
  •  70
    Complicit Suffering and the Duty to Self-Care
    Philosophy 93 (2): 251-277. 2018.
    Moral questions surrounding suffering tend to focus on obligations to relieve others’ suffering. In this paper, I focus on the overlooked question of what sufferers morally owe to themselves, arguing that they have the duty to self-care. I discuss agents who have been shaped by moral luck to contribute to their own suffering and canvass the ways in which this damages their moral agency. I contend that these agents have a duty to care for themselves by protecting and expanding their agency, which…Read more