Who matters, and why? What, if anything, makes human beings morally special? What do our evaluations of what makes us unique entail for our obligations to one another? My philosophical research focuses on these foundational questions, problematizes traditional ways of conceptualizing them, and offers alternative answers.

I am a moral philosopher who uses questions about disability and bioethics to rethink foundational questions in ethical and political theory. My work encompasses four, interconnected lines of inquiry: (1) moral status; (2) capacity and communication; (3) bio- and neuroethics; and (4) the emotional, political, and social contexts of disability. I have published on the ways that evaluations of the presence or absence of status-conferring attributes have very real practical consequences, and continue to pursue my own argument for a novel view of the grounds for moral status in my current book project, ‘Love without language’.

My two current applied projects engage qualitative methodologies to (1) assess non-spoken, meaning-conveying communicative practices effective for non-speaking persons and their intimates and (2) the potential of applying virtue ethical frameworks to research and education ethics.

Philosophical interests

Philosophy of disability

A central question of my research has to do with the nature of interpersonal relationship between non-speaking individuals with severe to profound intellectual disability and those with whom they share their lives. A recent publication reconceptualizes profound intellectual disability as non-speaking intellectual disability. Over the past few years, I have broadened this interest to include other non-speaking entities, including non-human animals, ecological entities, and various groups of marginalized people unable to “speak” due to oppressive power structures.

A core philosophical contribution I am currently working on is what I term “relationship-constituted and constituting meaningful expressions,” a morally saturated but ubiquitous form of communication particularly salient for those who cannot speak.

Other interests within this domain include a project on the nature of advocacy and informal political representation for non-speaking entities; a work-in-progress on Master Narratives of intellectual disability; and a paper on the permissibility and fittingness of pity and compassion felt by the non-disabled towards the disabled.

My interest is inspired by my very cool younger brother, Travis, who has been diagnosed as having a profound intellectual disability.

Neuroethics

Moral philosophy

My background is in ethical thought. A longtime virtue ethics sympathist, I spend a lot of time thinking about moral character development, what we owe one another with respect to our interpersonal relationships, and how face-to-face interaction shapes what we think of ourselves and others.

In my book project, I defend a view of moral status grounded in the capacity to communicate to develop and deepen relationships. This capacity, I argue, is social, bi-directional, and presupposes the same capacity in others. It successfully encompasses all human beings, including the most “extreme,” typically excluded cases, including human beings with the most profound forms of disability. The book begins with two historically-oriented chapters on what I take to be extensionally inadequate theories of moral status, or extensionally adequate yet inegalitarian ones. It will then present my positive view of the grounds for moral status and the communicative capacity central to that grounding. The latter half of my book will grapple with challenges that include human fetuses, non-human animals, and ecological entities, as well as the political and social implications of my view. It will close with a sketch of what my argument implies for topics like advocacy and political representation for non-speaking entities by centering the role of those with preexisting relationships with such entities: persons that I suggested can function as friends-in-common between the non-speaking entity and others. While I rely predominantly upon moral theory, bioethics, and philosophy of disability as my theoretical backdrops, my work is empirically grounded by a range of sources. I plan to continue work on this monograph over the next two years, with a targeted completion date of late summer 2025.

Philosophy of medicine

I also have an interest in philosophy of medicine, especially where it intersects with concerns regarding disability, philosophy of biology and/or the potential contributions of philosophical methodologies to precision health.

I am particularly interested in pluralistic expansions of evolutionary theory, especially epigenetics (inspired by Jablonka and Lamb’s work on the subject); neuroplasticity and its implications for our understandings of autism and other non-neurotypical cognitive modes; and other dimensions of connection between philosophy of biology and neuroethics.

I have a secondary interest in other epistemological topics that, I am sure, affects my approach to philosophy of science. My epistemological concerns are typically normatively motivated with ethical questions at their roots. For example, a driving consideration of my dissertation was what moral duties we have with respect to our epistemic activity, particularly when that activity has to do with what we take ourselves to know about those dramatically unlike ourselves.

Qualitative projects

1. Heterogeneous Communication Strategies between Non-Speaking Intellectually Disabled Persons and their Caregivers

   My dissertation research involved conceptualizing a form of communication I termed relationship-constituted meaningful expressions, which are either verbal or non-verbal communicative acts that form within the fabric of particular relationships and gain their significance from that relationship. I argued that they were especially important for pairs of speaking and non-speaking persons, including caregivers of and individuals with non-speaking intellectual disabilities. It has long been a goal to conduct research to empirically verify this claim and to develop implementable strategies for communication with non-speaking persons. No large-scale research program regarding atypical, indexed communication strategies within caregiving contexts has been conducted, to this point. My first step is a set of in-depth qualitative interviews assessing existing practices within families containing at least one individual with a non-speaking intellectual disability. (Funded by Lehigh University, College of Health.)

2. Virtue ethics in medical school curricula (with Ian Peebles)

   Over the past year, I have been writing a conceptual paper about shortcomings in goodwill and healthcare inequities with Dr. Ian Peebles. Our focus has been on disability and race. We identify medical school education and ongoing professional education as promising spaces to combat implicit bias and enable upstream, improved outcomes for marginalized patient groups. We are now developing a larger-scale ongoing project in which we track the connection between medical school ethics curricula and outcome for these patient groups. We plan to develop a pilot curriculum that integrates the philosophical school of virtue ethics, an ethical tradition largely absent from current curricula, which we hypothesize might amend some of the problems we identify in our paper. We are interested in hearing from interested potential collaborators - please reach out! (Funded by Lehigh University, College of Health.)