Technology Ethics
New technologies expand what people and institutions can do to one another. My work in technology ethics asks what moral limits govern those new powers. I am especially interested in AI persuasion and manipulation, but I also work on reproductive technology, cognitive enhancement, and workplace surveillance. Across these cases, I ask what one party is entitled to know, decide, or demand from another.
The Risks of AI-Generated, Hyper-Personalized Digital Advertisements
Generative systems can use personal data not just to decide which advertisement someone sees, but to generate persuasive content for that particular person. I argue that systems optimized for persuasion could discover and exploit individual “epistemic blind spots,” creating new risks of manipulation and political propagandizing.
Current projects
Choosing What Our Children's Lives Are and Are About — in preparation
Which outcomes are parents entitled deliberately to choose for their future children? I develop a principle of Value Nonimposition: our uncertainty about what a future child will find valuable places limits on what parents should try to decide in advance.
Cognitive Freedom for Me, But Not for Thee — with Owen Arreguy, Aaron Schiff, and Oscar Weir; in preparation
Can widespread cognitive enhancement make the choice not to enhance effectively unfree? We examine both the empirical claim that non-adopters would face serious competitive disadvantages and the normative question of when such disadvantages undermine freedom.
Workplace Surveillance and Employer Authority — current project
What does an employer have a right to from a worker? I am developing an account on which workers can owe adequate performance without owing maximal productivity, and asking what that means for continuous productivity surveillance.
Metaphysics & Philosophy of Science
My work here asks how science constrains our metaphysics. Scientific theories can often be formulated in very different ways, apparently committing us to different kinds of things. I am interested in what, if anything, those differences tell us about what exists, and more generally in how much metaphysical content we can legitimately extract from scientific theory and evidence.
Equivalent Theories and Ontological Commitment
Equivalent formulations of a scientific theory can apparently quantify over different kinds of objects. This creates a problem for the standard view that quantification determines ontological commitment. I argue that the available responses fail and reject the quantificational account.
What Are Empirical Consequences? On Dispensability and Composite Objects
Can empirical evidence favor a theory containing ordinary composite objects over a theory formulated without them? I argue that a metaphysically thicker description does not thereby amount to a distinct empirical consequence, and defend the conclusion that empirical evidence is radically metaphysically neutral.
Current projects
Putnam on Mathematics and Ontological Commitment — revise and resubmit, European Journal for Philosophy of Science
I argue that Putnam's indispensability reasoning is best understood as an argument for the objective truth of mathematics rather than directly for mathematical objects. I develop a “metaphysical picture” account of ontological commitment that allows objective mathematical truth without requiring mathematical objects.
Equivalent Theories and the ‘Arranged X-wise’ Strategy — under review
I argue that scientifically motivated ordinary and arranged-X-wise formulations can be Morita equivalent. If they are two presentations of the same theory, changing the vocabulary may leave the ontology untouched.
No Science without Composites — under review
Using scientific explanations involving magnetotactic bacteria and ferrimagnetic minerals, I argue that composite-free reconstructions can lose scientifically significant explanatory content.
On Dispensability and Indispensability — in revision
I argue that preserving a theory's empirical consequences is too weak a standard for successful dispensing. A replacement should preserve the scientifically significant content that makes the original theory worth accepting, including relevant explanatory structure.