Selected Publications
Books:
- Socialism: A Logical Introduction. 2024. Oxford University Press.
- Free Will and Action Explanation: A Non-Causal, Compatibilist Account. 2016. Oxford University Press.
- Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and Explanation. 2005. MIT Press.
Selected Recent Articles:
- “Is Socialism Viable? A Reply to David Gordon.” February 21, 2024. Mises Institute: Power & Market Blog.
- “Agency, Functions, and Teleology,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Agency, Luca Ferrero, editor. Routledge. (2022)
- “Is Redistribution Theft?” February 5, 2021. Pea Soup: Philosophy, Ethics, Academia.
- “No, the Nazis Were Not Socialists,” October 2020, Jacobin.
- “Rationalizing Principles and Causal Explanation” (with Guido Löhrer), in Explanation in Action Theory and Historiography: Causal and Teleological Approaches, Gunnar Schumann, ed. Routledge. (2019)
- “Anti-Anti-Communism,” Aeon, March 2017, co-authored with Kristen Ghodsee.
- “Davidson’s Challenge to the Non-Causalist”, American Philosophical Quarterly (2016): 85-96, co-authored with Guido Löhrer.
Selected Recent Presentations:
- “Nihilism, Magic, and the Value of Philosophy”
- Joseph E. Merrill Professor of Philosophy Inaugural Address, Bowdoin College, November 2024. Video available here.
- “Whack-a-mole, Agency, and Normativity”
- Delivered at the World Congress of Philosophy, Rome, Italy, August 2024.
FRIAS Project
Nihilism, Magic, and Mystery: An Essay about Rationality, Norms, and Agency.
According to a certain religious tradition, Adam and Eve violated God’s command by eating of the tree of knowledge. God rebukes the couple, saying, “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But a mere three verses later, God says that the pair has now become godlike: “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”
The religious myth is emblematic of a deep philosophical puzzle. Human beings are material, composed of dust; yet we are also able to understand that there is good and there is evil, and we are able to choose between them. In more philosophical terminology, the godlike characteristics referred to in the Genesis creation myth were these: meaning, agency, and normativity.
Many philosophers have wrestled with facets of this puzzle: they have tried to make sense of these mysterious phenomena, while still regarding human beings as just another part of the natural world. Philosophers have tried to avoid the nihilism that seems to result from seeing humanity as mere dust, while also trying to avoid seeing us as godlike, as magical. Philosophers have tried to find a middle ground between dust and divinity, between nihilism and magic.
I will argue, first, that the middle ground is unstable: attempts to give an account of normativity and agency within the confines of natural science fail. But faced with a choice of nihilism or magic, I argue, second, that the nihilistic option is deeply incoherent. Thus, while we are accustomed to thinking of science as investigating the realm of what is real, we must accept that meaning, normativity, and agency are real and yet remarkably discontinuous with the subject matter of natural science.