Statement on Research
My research focuses on the nature of rational and non-rational motivation in Aristotle's ethical and psychological works. The overarching theme of my research is that Aristotle's views violate the orthodox understanding of rationality as an all-or-nothing property, whether that is understood in terms of presence vs. absence or in terms of a threshold above which something counts as fully rational and below which it counts as non-rational. As I understand him, Aristotle thinks there are multiple functions that rationality can play, and something can have the ability to perform some of these functions while lacking others. Furthermore, these functions form at least a partial hierarchy, so that we can describe one thing as more rational than another insofar as the former can perform all of the rational functions of the latter but the latter cannot perform all of the rational functions of which the former is capable. Thus, for example, I have argued that the species of desire that Aristotle describes as "non-rational" (alogon) are, in adult humans, better understood as "qualifiedly rational", for when we move from entirely non-rational animals to rational adult humans, the nature of these desires changes as well, allowing them to be sensitive to reasons as such, though they lack the ability to manipulate reasons in the way that our rational faculty itself can. This view makes Aristotle significantly different from authors who think that all desires are simply motivational urges which reason shapes only by rerouting them from one target to another, and also significantly different from those who think that rational motivation is a product of purely rational judgment about what we have most reason to do.
Another line of inquiry I have followed regards the necessity of deliberation for rational choice. Aristotle says that we must deliberate prior to choosing and acting in the distinctively human way, but if, as I argue, the desires come to be sensitive to reasons as such, we might wonder why we need a strictly rational process to intervene whenever we act as humans rather than mere animals: are we not already, just in our desires, more than mere animals? Indeed, many authors before me have thought that, given Aristotle's theory of moral development and the virtues as reliable dispositions of the non-rational (or qualifiedly rational) part of the psyche, he was wrong to say that deliberation must precede every instance of choice and proper human action. Some, further, argue that he does not really stay committed to this thesis at all, despite repeating it a number of times. I disagree, arguing that Aristotle is committed to the necessity of deliberation in every instance of genuine choice and action (as opposed to voluntary but non-chosen behavior), and provide an explanation of why he is so committed (and right to be so committed) grounded in an analysis of the rational functions that desire can and cannot play. If I am right, despite the cognitive and rational sophistication Aristotle attributes to desire, it cannot aggregate putative reasons in the way necessary for rational choice; that activity is exclusively the province of the strictly rational faculty.
Future Research
I have a number of other projects on Aristotle's philosophy in the works, some connecting up to contemporary topics in ethics and philosophy of action.
I am currently working on a piece on particularism in both contemporary ethics and Aristotle. It is sometimes claimed that Aristotle is a particularist, and even more often argued that he either is not one or that he is some kind of "moderate" particularist that still makes significant use of principles. I argue against the very notion of such "moderate particularism" and claim that in ethics, either one is a particularist or one is a generalist; there is no halfway position that allows you to help yourself to the seeming advantages of both generalism and particularism. The question, then, is whether or not full-blooded particularism is plausible. As I see it, the answer to this question depends on how we are best to understand statements that are general in form but not meant to be exceptionless statements; things like "cats have four legs" and "lying is morally vicious". I believe Aristotle gives us the best way to understand these defeasible generalizations, and that one can be a full-blooded particularist without rejecting any place for these generalizations in our ethical thought; particularism of the sort defended by, above all, Jonathan Dancy never needed to jettison these as part of the rejection of generalism, for these are not principles, properly speaking.
In the realm of philosophy of action, I am developing an account on which intentional actions are best understood as hylomorphic compounds. I hope to show that when we properly identify the matter and form of an intentional action, it allows us to resolve several classic problems in the philosophy of action. It also provides a new approach to analyzing intentional actions that combines the best insights of both Davidsonian and Anscombean philosophy of action. (Roughly, Davidson gets the matter of an intentional action right, while Anscombe gets the form right. Focusing solely on either misses a crucial part of the correct analysis.) I then turn to Aristotle and argue that while the account developed so far is plausibly his view of merely voluntary (that is, non-chosen) actions, it cannot work for chosen actions, which have, for Aristotle, a distinct metaphysical nature. However, they, too, should be given a hylomorphic analysis and their matter and form identified, which, it turns out, requires building on the previously-offered analysis of intentional actions.