I write about valuing as finite creatures: about how human relations and histories shape the nature and value of such responses as love, investment, and respect.

In my dissertation, The Work of Love, I justify interpersonal love and explain its value, to illuminate how valuing and value are related generally. The world contains countless people; why distinguish a given person by loving them? Love is justified by a relationship going well — by your fit or attunement with each other. Love being a paradigmatic valuation, this suggests we don’t typically value as we should just by appreciating people and things as objective sources of value. Good if contingent relationships are fundamental in ethics, to valuing for humans.

I plan to further defend this conjecture, arguing reciprocal respect is justified when it is a virtue; and moral concern and emotions are best assessed as the building blocks of these virtuous relations.

Another branch of research asks (what I argue are) central metanormative questions: Why does anything rather than nothing matter; is it arbitrary that things mattered? What could it be for contingent facts about us to generate something’s significance?

Finally, I am working on history and practical reasoning. I argue:

1. That some deeply-held attachments change our reasons for action, despite their unruly origins.

2. That regret is an unfitting response to loss if it involves thinking, “I wish that lost good never existed.”

3. That al-Ghazali has a noteworthy solution to a puzzle about moral understanding and arbitrary traditions.