My research focuses on three general areas: ethical theory, environmental values and their public expression, and the ethical dimensions of collectives.

First, in ethical theory my research involves the development of a practice-based account of indirect consequentialism. While, traditionally, indirect consequentialism has taken the form of rule utilitarianism, I take social practices to provide a more viable mediating condition. Integrating directed reasons with a social practice framework provides an intriguing and novel way to bind theoretical matters of ethics to our social practices, thereby tying ethical theory to lived experience. In pursuit of this research interest I have written papers on promising, agent-relative reasons, thick concepts, social practices, interpersonal commitment, and the normative significance of membership in collectives.

My current project is focused on clarifying the relation between the obligations we have to other persons and shared social practices. Many of our most basic moral obligations seem directed at other people. I keep my promises to you, for example. The reasons associated with those obligations are only comprehensible within a shared context. At the same time it also seems that the requirement to keep my promise is not dependent on the context in which that promise was made. This project aims to elucidate the interplay of context, “directed reasons,” and the justification of those reasons. Directed reasons rely for their normative significance on the authority one individual has with respect to another; that authority provides grounds for justified complaint if the reason is not properly acknowledged. For example, my making a promise to you gives you in particular a reason to demand compliance of me, a demand no one else can make. There are non-directed reasons as well. If a person is in need of assistance, say, from drowning, then presumably anyone capable of assisting has reason to do so. While the former, directed reason requires reference to the authority had by an individual to demand satisfaction, the latter does not. Intuitively, these two general types of reasons map onto two types of obligation: those essentially directed at individuals, such as obligations that arise from promising, and those not so directed, such as the obligation to promote the well being of humanity.

Directed reasons play a central role not only in theoretical ethics, but also in our everyday lives. Central as they are to our social practices and interpersonal relations, directed reasons contribute to our sense of who we are, of our identity. They are important both as part of what it is to be human, a universal concern, and what it is to live in a particular social context. The question I hope to answer in this project is this: how might we integrate directed reasons within a social practice framework? Directed reasons are part and parcel of interpersonal relations, and they permeate the normative texture of our social practices (for our purposes here we should understand social practices to be rule governed or regularity exhibiting performances in a socially recognized setting). This, in turn, motivates a larger question: How are obligations that are grounded in our interpersonal relations, with all of their cultural and situational particularity, related to the universal and human elements of ethics? Providing an account of the connections between directed reasons, interpersonal commitments and social practices is crucial to answering this larger question.
I maintain that social practices have more robust normative features than are usually recognized, and, therefore, are capable of providing the required authority for directed reasons and their attendant commitments. By examining the way directed obligations rely on practices I shall show that directed reasons are not merely grounded in practice, they are actually constituent parts of practices. Consider that directed commitments like promising rely on the practice conferred-status or standing of those holding and those subject to an interpersonal commitment. Without practices to provide the background context directed reasons would be incomprehensible; practices provide the normatively salient standings (such as promisor and promisee) necessary for directed reasons. If a reason is to be directed, practice-dependent statuses will be required, where these standings will be a matter of common understanding.

The requirement that there be a common understanding leads us to see these standings as part of what Bernard Williams would call “thick” moral concepts. Thick moral concepts like courage or treachery, contrasted with “thin” moral concepts like good, bad, right and wrong, require appeal to factual matters and, in the case of directed reasons, to the actual practices of those who have mastered such concepts in order to recognize their normative significance. An account of the obligations of directed reasons in terms of social practices requires appealing to descriptive features of social practices to make sense of the normative significance of those directed reasons. Thick concepts provide a means of characterizing the practice dependent standings required by directed reasons such that the normative and descriptive features of these standings are properly interwoven. Finding the balance between these contextual interpersonal relations underpinning our directed reasons and the moral framework we presumably share in virtue of larger social and political contexts constitutes a larger theoretical concern of this project.

Second, in environmental ethics my research focuses on the nature of environmental values and the way characteristic features of those values both inform policy and are shaped by certain background environmental conditions. I claim that one cannot provide an adequate account of environmental values without considering both the normative significance of the sysematic background conditions that enable those values, and the way in which those values might be publicly expressed. There are important lessons to be learned from the interdependence of preconditions of value, the values themselves, and derivative policies. The pressures presented by the processes of the environment itself, the accommodation of individual valuers, and the satisfaction of the body politic as a whole may often constrain policy in different ways. By examining the relations and mutual constraints between environmental values and environmental policy we will not only learn much about the nature of environmental values, we will also be able to develop general guidelines for the formation of viable environmental policy. I expect the project will demonstrate that we need to rethink the nature of civic engagement and the democratic processes at work in the formation of environmental policy.

In a related project, I am interested in addressing what I call the environmental moral problem.  Building off of Michael Smith’s discussion of what he calls the moral problem, I identify two themes in the environmental ethics literature of the past few decades. The first concerns the sense of loss, anguish, and, on good days, hope, in response to our environment and the changes we see in it. The second concerns the characterization of right action and right policy with respect to the environment. I argue that the well-recognized need to acknowledge both these themes in an environmental ethic constitutes the environmental moral problem. The environmental moral problem, I argue, reflects a tension between the practical significance of particular instances, and the justificatory significance of general principles. I suggest a commitment to engagement with science and public policy commits us to privileging the principle-oriented form of environmental ethics, but to do so in a way that integrates the practical, motivating significance of particular instances.

In pursuit of these projects, I have written papers on value pluralism, the role of thick concepts in environmental ethics and policy, integrity in environmental deliberation and policy, and the nature of environmental value. I have also used my interests in the relation between environmental values and policy to generate critiques of various policies and related positions. In particular, I have been involved in various dimensions of climate ethics, including the difficulties of balancing development against mitigation strategies and considering the theoretical and practical dimensions of adapting to a world with a climate unlike that in which our ethical and social frameworks developed.

Third, I have an ongoing research interest in the nature and structure of collective agents, and those groupings of individuals that do not constitute collective agents but are still causally, and even normatively, efficacious. I have written on collective responsibility and its relation to collective agency, on the normative influence collectives can have on their individual members, and I have written encyclopedia entries on the moral status of groups and collective responsibility.

Through a project linking this interest in collective constitution and agency to my interests in environmental value and social practices I intend to provide an account of the sorts of institutional structures appropriate for adaptive management. One might wonder whether it is possible for any real institution charged with the formation, implementation, or enforcement of environmental policy to satisfy the conditions necessary for collective agency such that that institution might be adequately accountable for that policy or even responsive to changes in the environment. If it is not possible or the conditions under which such robust institutions are possible are extremely limited, what are the consequences for matters of policy, for the object of that institution’s concern, and for an adequate theory of environmental value? I suspect we can learn nearly as much about the nature of environmental value theory from the practical matters of institutionalizing policy as we can learn about practical matters of environmental policy from environmental value theory.