About
I'm a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My research is specialized in ethics and metaphysics. I have primary research interests in harm, the ethics of self-defense, applied ethics, the metaphysics of causation, and their intersection.
The notion of imposing a threat of harm and, relatedly, the notion of doing harm are cornerstone notions for the ethics of self-defense. However, there are outstanding questions about them. For one, it is not clear what precisely it means to do harm (and by extension impose a threat of harm). Second, it is not clear whether these notions, however they are articulated, should play a role in ethics that they are widely assumed to play in some literatures (e.g., the self-defense literature).
My current research aims to (i) develop a precise account of these notions and their relationship to causation, (ii) develop an ethical framework that explains their ethical significance, and (iii) apply this framework to concrete ethical issues, including, for example, self-defense, just war theory, the ethics of abortion, and more. I also have plans to extend my current research project to address fundamental issues in political philosophy.
Outside of my current primary research project, I have research intests in moral semantics, counterfactuals, causation, and applied ethics more generally.
