My research program is centered on ethics and money.
Considering the two together involves issues in business ethics and ethics and markets, the places where ethics and money collide. In this area, I am currently at work on projects considering the ethics of giving and accepting money and on applying canonical moral theories to yield novel results in both philosophical approaches to business ethics and psychometric measurements.
When considering ethics independently, I have done work on the metaethical issue of normativity, and work in the history of ethics, both as it relates to current debates and seeking to understand it on its own terms. In metaethics, my dissertation Ethics and the Possibility of Failure investigated the error constraint on moral and practical principles. In the history of ethics, I have written papers on Kant, 17th and 18th century British moral philosophers, and ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophy.
I also consider money as an independent philosophical issue. While not currently a recognized subfield of philosophy, money still provokes several distinctly philosophical questions such as the individual ethics of charity and wealth, the justice of wealth distribution, and the metaphysics of money’s reality. I have gathered these issues together into a new class called the “Philosophy of Money,” which recently became a standard part of the University of Calgary’s course offerings, and gained some national attention. At present, I am at work on papers considering counterfeit currency and the powers and limits of what money can buy, while advising an M.A. thesis on the metaphysics of money.
Much of this work is still in progress or working its way through the peer review process, so links and exact titles are not given here to aid the anonymity of peer review. Draft manuscripts are available to interested scholars on request (and feedback is enthusiastically welcomed). Completed work ready for public consumption is available on my PhilPapers page.
