I currently separate my research interests into two main camps: professional ethics and the relationship between ethics and the nature of persons. Curiously, these two areas tend to overlap more than I originally thought they did. In the professional ethics camp, I include bioethics and business ethics (though I do have some nascent projects in engineering ethics). In the other camp, I include my interest in Kantian ethics and the connections between ethics and personal identity. My dissertation was on Parfit's suggestion that the reductionist theory of personal identity supports utilitarian moral thinking. I argued that it wasn't so. My current work in that area is also connected to Parfit's work on our obligations to people who do not yet exist.

Below I list areas I am now thinking about and, where possible, links to drafts or papers.

Kantian Ethics

My latest interest is Kantian Ethics, but I have a lot of catching up to do, so right now I'm reading everything I can, including doing a very close reading of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Every once in a while I post something about this reading on my blog. I'm mostly attracted to the view that acting morally is also acting freely. I'm interested in seeing whether Kantians or neo-Kantian ethics can address problems that some forms of consequentialism deal with quite well, such as our obligations to future generations and animals.

Business Ethics

My research in business ethics is mainly in the ethics of marketing and the globalization of business. My most developed project is an analysis of Ford's 2005 move to remove its ads from certain gay magazines (it quickly rescinded this move). It struck me as a bad decision, but I couldn't put my finger on what part of it was actually troubling, since companies shift advertising dollars around all the time without ethical problems. My analysis ends up being that advertising implies a commitment to sell a product or service to someone who is interested for some price. This often-underemphasized feature of advertising not only explains the outrage at Ford's move, but also shines light on the practices of advertising to children and advertising pharmaceuticals. I hope to upload a draft to this site soon.

Bioethics

I have two on-going projects in bioethics. The first is supporting the higher-brain criterion of death from a non-pragmatic perspective. I argue that death may actually be a transition in one's natural kind, which would make it--to some degree--metaphysically or scientifically discoverable. This is connected to my dissertation research, which argues for an analysis of personal identity in terms of the capacity for consciousness as a potential non-reductionist alternative to Parfit's reductionism. My other project in bioethics is connected to wondering what Kantians might say about our obligations to future generations. In this paper, I argue that the debate about whether genetic enhancement of certain traits is morally forbidden is basically over. A new debate, however, will rise to take its place: whether wide-scale genetic enhancement is morally required. There are certainly good utilitarian reasons to have such a position if the technology works out. I argue, however, that whereas genetic therapy programs may be morally required, genetic enhancement programs will always remain morally permissible, even on utilitarian grounds. I then suggest some neo-Kantian reasons for believing this.

The Meaning of Life

Since teaching a seminar on the meaning of life in Spring 2007, I've been thinking about new ways of responding to old arguments. Right now, I have a shady new notion of destiny that distinguishes it from inevitability and mere fate. I hope to be able to pursue this project further in the next year or so, but it's nowhere near ready for public consumption.