Rach Cosker-Rowland

I'm an Associate Professor in Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of Leeds. I work mainly on normativity, ethics, gender, and social and political philosophy.

Much of my recent work has been on on the nature of gender identity, gender concepts and metaphysics (and how they are related to gender identities), and transgender rights. I have also done a lot of work on the structure of normativity, the relationship between different normative properties (reasons, value, fittingness, and their normative significance). Some of this work on normativity intersects with my work on gender, as I propose accounts of gender concepts and gender identities in terms of reasons and fit (on my view, our gender identity is the gender that we take to fit us).

I have also done a lot of work on moral disagreement and its metaphysical, epistemological, practical, and political implications. And I have published several papers on the moral error theory and in particular the implications of the moral error theory for epistemic normativity.

Fourth, a project on gender identity, what it is, how it relates to gender more broadly, and the moral and political rights that gender identity generates. The big idea behind this project is that if we understand gender identities as consisting in normative experiences, and gender concepts and properties as normative properties, we can better understand and demystify gender identity, better understand the relationship between gender identity and gender, understand why gender identities merit respect, and better explain why there are such seemingly intransigent disagreements about gender.