I am Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kent and Editor-in-Chief of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. I am also Member of the Advisory Committee of the British Society for Ethical Theory (BSET).
My research programme centres on the contours and structures of agency as revealed under various kinds of threats, including systematic distortions of one’s self-understanding. Key contributions to date include: (1) demonstrating how and why even severe mental disorders may be consistent with personal autonomy, (2) developing a comprehensive account of action as actualisation, which goes beyond intention and planning, and (3) putting forward a process-oriented conception of moral responsibility to address contested cases, such as moral luck and epistemic injustice. This programme is made possible by analytic Aristotelianism, a heuristic approach to conceptual analysis that anchors an open-ended, yet rigorous inquiry into essentially contested concepts, such as autonomy and responsibility.
I am now developing an interdisciplinary philosophical project on the role of habit in agency. The research aims to create a shared theoretical space for the investigation of agency and habit as mutually illuminating and highly interdependent concepts. It breaks away form a long intellectual tradition that sees them as either incompatible or belonging to different levels of the explanation of conduct. The underlying ambition is to provide a new comprehensive theory of agency that integrates habit as a key dimension in order to advance our understanding of central, yet essentially contested concepts of great normative and practical significance: autonomy, responsibility and rationality.
My research programme centres on the contours and structures of agency as revealed under various kinds of threats, including systematic distortions of one’s self-understanding. Key contributions to date include: (1) demonstrating how and why even severe mental disorders may be consistent with personal autonomy, (2) developing a comprehensive account of action as actualisation, which goes beyond intention and planning, and (3) putting forward a process-oriented conception of moral responsibility to address contested cases, such as moral luck and epistemic injustice. This programme is made possible by analytic Aristotelianism, a heuristic approach to conceptual analysis that anchors an open-ended, yet rigorous inquiry into essentially contested concepts, such as autonomy and responsibility.
I am now developing an interdisciplinary philosophical project on the role of habit in agency. The research aims to create a shared theoretical space for the investigation of agency and habit as mutually illuminating and highly interdependent concepts. It breaks away form a long intellectual tradition that sees them as either incompatible or belonging to different levels of the explanation of conduct. The underlying ambition is to provide a new comprehensive theory of agency that integrates habit as a key dimension in order to advance our understanding of central, yet essentially contested concepts of great normative and practical significance: autonomy, responsibility and rationality.
Recent papers:
Pathologies of Agency. 2022. In Ferrero, L. (ed.): The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Agency. Routledge, Abingdon, UK; pp. 169-177
Distinguishing Value-Neutrality from Value-Independence: Toward a New Disentangling Strategy for Moral Epistemology. 2022. In Mark McBride and Visa AJ Kurki (eds.), Without Trimmings: The Legal, Moral and Political Philosophy of Matthew Kramer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 205-217
Circumstance, Answerability and Luck. 2021. The Monist 104(2):155–167
Pathologies of Agency. 2022. In Ferrero, L. (ed.): The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Agency. Routledge, Abingdon, UK; pp. 169-177
Distinguishing Value-Neutrality from Value-Independence: Toward a New Disentangling Strategy for Moral Epistemology. 2022. In Mark McBride and Visa AJ Kurki (eds.), Without Trimmings: The Legal, Moral and Political Philosophy of Matthew Kramer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 205-217
Circumstance, Answerability and Luck. 2021. The Monist 104(2):155–167