Current Academic Research
My philosophical research focuses primarily the ways in which recent technological advancements have created new and pressing moral problems. From 2015-2020, my primary focus was on the environmental impact tied to human uses of technology, particularly those that resulted from our reliance on fossil fuels. I was particularly interested in whether reducing population size over the next century could play a role in reducing humanity's environmental impact. Given the broad scope of that subject, I've dedicated a separate webpage to surveying my work in that area.
Beyond my work on overpopulation, I have investigated various other issues in ethics and epistemology. These topics include (among others) the ethics of targeting vulnerable groups with marketing campaigns, the strength of our moral duties to wild animals and domestic animals, the rationality of not caring whether or not God exists, and the existence of epistemically supererogatory actions. (An epistemically supererogatory action is, roughly, an action that is epistemically good to do but not required by any epistemic duty.)
In addition to continuing my research in environmental ethics, I'm also expanding into some new areas. I have highlighted some of my current research topics below, and you can check out my Publications and Vitae for further information on my past work.
Compensating Future People for Biodiversity Loss
One of the most significant environmental crises of the 21st century is the accelerated rate at which nonhuman species are going extinct. This biodiversity loss results from habitat destruction, climate change, poaching, and various other environmentally destructive human activities. The world that future generations inherit will be one that is far less biologically diverse than the one we currently inhabit. Typically, when we cause harm to someone else, we have a duty to compensate them for the harm they have suffered. Thus, I'm interested in considering the possibility that we have an obligation to compensate future people for biodiversity loss. We may have the technology in the future to resurrect extinct species or to create new species with similar appearances and ecological niches to old species. Could this serve as a means of compensation for future generations – a means of undoing some of the biodiversity loss that we have caused? And if so, is pursuing this research a moral obligation? I'm trying to pin down the answers in one of my current papers.
Understanding Bioddiversity's Value
In What's So Good about Biodiversity?, Don Maier questions whether biodiversity is actually valuable. His central criticism is that all candidates for being the core value of biodiversity do not hold up to critical scrutiny. While most conservation biologists have not been persuaded by Maier's reasoning, an in-depth response to his central arguments has not yet appeared. I argue, in contrast to Maier, that biodiversity is quite valuable even if his central argument is ultimately successful. The value of biodiversity is best understood as a plurality of different but interrelated components, any one of which could be the primary source of its value in a given context.
Human Enhancement
One of the courses I have been teaching at Ohio State is a survey course about the ethics of human enhancement. Teaching this class has made me curious about a number of moral issues in this area. Is there any good reason to prohibit athletes from using performance enhancing drugs? Should universities ban students from non-prescription use of cognitive enhancing drugs? Do mood enhancing drugs, such as psilocybin, threaten to undermine a person's identity, and if so, does that provide a good moral reason to restrict the therapeutic use of these drugs?
Lately, I have been focusing on whether it is morally permissible for otherwise healthy students to use cognitive-enhancing drugs like Adderall to improve their academic performance. Some institutions of higher education, such as Duke University, have explicitly prohibited this behavior in their codes of academic conduct, and it is currently illegal in the United States to possess these drugs without a prescription. However, I am skeptical that there exist any compelling moral reasons to prohibit adults from using these substances. I am also looking to connect my research on overpopulation and sustainability to life-extension. In the not-so-distant future, certain medical treatments or drugs may enable us to extend the human lifespan significantly by halting or countering the effects of aging, but one result of doing this would to increase the number of generations that coexist simultaneously. This would significantly increase the number of people on the planet unless norms concerning procreation changed dramatically. Yet the benefits of anti-aging enhancement could lead to substantial improvements in human welfare and a reduction of trillions of dollars in healthcare costs. I'm curious how anti-aging enhancements might be developed while simultaneously pursuing a population size that is environmentally sustainable.
Microtransactions in Video Games
Microtransactions, in-app purchases made using small sums of money, have become a common feature of videogames. Players routinely buy cosmetics and other small upgrades for their in-game characters through these purchases. Although offering players microtransactions might sound innocuous, microtransactions are not as morally sound as they might appear. One problem is that microtransactions are often presented deceptively: the purchases are done using an in-game currency that masks the fact that players are spending real money, and visual and auditory cues or recommendations to make microtransaction purchases are integrated into the game at predictable intervals. Moreover, microtransactions are often designed in ways that exploit certain players' past histories of gambling addiction, particualrly when the items being purchased are "loot boxes" that only give the player a chance of obtaining the item they really want. The result is that players sometimes spend thousands of dollars in microtransactions unwittingly or unintentionally. Sometimes, the players spending this money are not even adults but minors who have connected their account to a parents' credit card. These incidents raise some important ethical questions about how microtransactions ought to be implemented into videogames (if they are used at all) and how microtransaction purchases should be marketed to gamers. As an avid gamer myself, I'm investigating these questions and trying to determine what moral criteria games with microtransactions should meet.
