Arizona State University
Philosophy - School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
PhD, 2021
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory
  •  108
    Why prevent human extinction?
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. forthcoming.
    Many of us think human extinction would be a very bad thing, and that we have moral reasons to prevent it. But there is disagreement over what would make extinction so bad, and thus over what grounds these moral reasons. Recently, several theorists have argued that our reasons to prevent extinction stem not just from the value of the welfare of future lives, but also from certain additional values relating to the existence of humanity itself (for example, humanity's “final” value, or the value o…Read more
  •  254
    Alienation, Engagement, and Welfare
    Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    The alienation constraint on theories of well-being has been influentially expressed thus: 'what is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive …. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him' (Railton 1986: 9). Many agree this claim expresses something true, but there is little consensus on how exactly the constraint is to be understood.…Read more
  •  201
    Unconscious Pleasure as Dispositional Pleasure
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    A good deal of recent debate over the nature of pleasure and pain has surrounded the alleged phenomenon of unconscious sensory pleasure and pain, or pleasures and pains whose subjects are entirely unaware of them while experiencing them. According to Ben Bramble, these putative pleasures and pains present a problem for attitudinal theories of pleasure and pain, since these theories claim that what makes something a sensory pleasure or pain is that one has a special sort of pro- or con-attitude t…Read more
  •  1047
    What's wrong with virtue signaling?
    with Jesse Hill
    Synthese. forthcoming.
    A novel account of virtue signaling and what makes it bad has recently been offered by Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke. Despite plausibly vindicating the folk’s conception of virtue signaling as a bad thing, their account has recently been attacked by both Neil Levy and Evan Westra. According to Levy and Westra, virtue signaling actually supports the aims and progress of public moral discourse. In this paper, we rebut these recent defenses of virtue signaling. We suggest that virtue signaling onl…Read more
  •  411
    On Sense and Preference
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (3): 280-302. 2022.
    Determining the precise nature of the connection between preference, choice, and welfare has arguably been the central project in the field of welfare economics, which aims to offer a proper guide for economists in the making of policy decisions that affect people’s welfare. The two leading approaches here historically – the revealed preference and latent preference approaches – seem equally incapable of so guiding economists. I argue that the deadlock here is due to welfare economists’ failure …Read more
  •  736
    The psychological basis of collective action
    Philosophical Studies 178 (2): 427-444. 2021.
    Sometimes, a group of people can produce a morally bad outcome despite each person’s individual act making no difference to whether the outcome is produced. Since each person’s act makes no difference, it seems the effects of the act cannot provide a reason not to perform it. This is problematic, because if each person acts in accordance with their reasons, each will presumably perform the act—and thus, the bad outcome will be brought about. I suggest that the key to solving this problem is to m…Read more
  •  740
    Human Enhancement and the Proper Response to Climate Change
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 23 (1): 85-96. 2020.
    Several philosophers have argued that human enhancements should be considered a potential solution to climate change. In this paper, I consider one such argument offered by S. Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache. I argue that, while their argument is plausible, we have an even stronger reason to consider enhancements a potential solution. In particular, enhancements could align our interests with the promotion of a proper response to climate change: if enhancements were in our inte…Read more
  •  663
    Do Fitting Emotions Tell Us Anything About Well-Being?
    Utilitas 32 (1): 118-125. 2020.
    In a recent paper in this journal, Tobias Fuchs has offered a ‘working test’ for well-being. According to this test, if it is fitting to feel compassion for a subject because they have some property, then the subject is badly off because they have that property. Since subjects of deception seem a fitting target for compassion, this test is said to imply that a number of important views, including hedonism, are false. I argue that this line of reasoning is mistaken: seems fitting does not imply i…Read more
  •  632
    What is the point of helping?
    Philosophical Studies 177 (6): 1487-1500. 2020.
    In some cases, a group of people can bring about a morally bad outcome despite each person’s individual act making no difference with respect to bringing that outcome about. Since each person’s act makes no difference, it seems the effects of the act cannot provide a reason not to perform it. This is problematic, because if each person acts in accordance with their reasons, each will presumably perform the act—and thus, the bad outcome will be brought about. Recently, Julia Nefsky has argued tha…Read more
  •  537
    Imprecise lexical superiority and the (slightly less) Repugnant Conclusion
    Philosophical Studies 176 (8): 2103-2117. 2019.
    Recently, Derek Parfit has offered a novel solution to the “Repugnant Conclusion” that compared with the existence of many people whose quality of life would be very high, there is some much larger number of people whose existence would be better but whose lives would be barely worth living. On this solution, qualitative differences between two populations will often entail that the populations are merely “imprecisely” comparable. According to Parfit, this fact allows us to avoid the Repugnant C…Read more