I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Philosophy at Florida State University in 2021. Before that, I received my M.A. from the Department of Philosophy at Texas Tech University in 2015.
My research interests include ethical theory and moral psychology (broadly construed).
The research in my dissertation, “Moral Agency and Situationism,” defends philosophical accounts of character and moral responsibility from different empirically-motivated challenges raised by a number of philosophers. These philosophers have appealed to social scientific evidence in support of the view that most people fail to act on the basis of reasons far more often than is ordinarily recognized. According to the so-called “situationist” research program in social psychology, a wealth of empirical evidence suggests that, with respect to human action, various ethically and rationally arbitrary features of our situations are often pulling the strings, rather than the reasons we have when acting. This evidence sits uneasily with philosophical accounts of moral character and moral responsibility that emphasize rational control in the production of human behavior. My dissertation argues that interpretations of both the situationist empirical record as well as philosophical theories of moral agency have been exaggerated to create the illusion of incompatibility.
My empirically-informed approach to moral psychological research is also employed in my teaching methods. There is a vast amount of empirical literature on the best pedagogical strategies for helping students get the most out of a course, and I take these findings as a helpful starting point in designing academic courses. I take evidence-based pedagogy as offering prima facie support for particular course policies.
