I’m a philosopher at the University of Reading. My research and teaching are mostly in rational choice, metaethics, and normative ethics, especially as they apply to the environment.
I’m from Llanelli, a coastal town in South Wales.
I’ve published a piece about the necessity of ‘negligible’ emissions reductions to mitigate climate change at The Conversation.
In metaethics, I’m interested in Global Normative Nihilism, moral error theory’s more aggressive sibling. Not only categorical/external but also hypothetical/internal reasons claims are false. I argue that this view avoids (or embraces) ‘companions in guilt’ responses to queerness arguments for the moral error theory, and that it offers radical conceptual as well as metaphysical simplicity. It is a depressing (nihilistic!) view, but I argue that it won’t lead to a complete loss of motivation or subjective concern, as some have argued.
Most of my published research focuses on a cluster of issues around incomplete preferences, unsharp or imprecise credences, and value incommensurability. In one sense of the word, two items are incommensurate if neither is better but they are also not precisely equally good. I’ve written a short introduction to incommensurability on its PhilPapers page.
Despite nihilistic tendencies, I am also interested in questions in normative or practical ethics, especially about environmental sustainability.
(2026) The Size of the Universe against Robust Realism, Ethics Vol. 136, No. 2, pp. 246-272. doi: 10.1086/738320
(2025) Moral Risk in Marketised Medicine in a Ratio special issue on risk. Volume 38, pp. 239-247. doi: 10.1111/rati.70003.
(2024) Carbon Offsets and Shifting Harms, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 17(1), 234–255. As part of a special issue on intra- and interpersonal dilemmas in ethics and rational choice, I defend carbon offsets against charges of injustice. With a critical comment by Kian Mintz-Woo and a response from me. (open access pdf copy)
(2024) No
Point of View Except Ours?, Topoi 43: 479–489. doi:
10.1007/s11245-024-10029-8
(open access pdf copy)
(2021) What does incommensurability tell us about agency? in Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making, edited by Henrik Andersson and Anders Herlitz. Routledge.
(2019) Can Streumer simply avoid Supervenience?, Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy vol. 16, no. 3. doi:10.26556/jesp.v16i3.508
(2019) Probabilistic Promotion and Ability, Ergo vol. 6, no. 34. doi:10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.034
(2017) Incommensurability
as Vagueness: a Burden-Shifting Argument, Theoria 83:
341-363. doi: 10.1111/theo.12129
(preprint)
(2016) Tenenbaum and Raffaman on
Vague Projects, the Self-Torturer, and the Sorites, in
Ethics Vol. 126, No. 2, pp. 474-488. doi:10.1086/683533.
(journal
page)
(2014) Heaps and Chains: is
the Chaining Argument for Parity a Sorites?, Ethics Vol.
124, No. 3, pp. 557-571. doi: 10.1086/674844
(journal
page)
(2014) Borderline Cases
and the Collapsing Principle, Utilitas volume 26, issue 01,
pp. 51-60. doi:10.1017/S095382081300023X
(journal
page)
(2021) Review of Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics edited by Christopher Cowie and Richard Rowland, at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
(2018) Review of David Sobel’s From Valuing to Value, Analysis, Volume 78, Issue 3, pp. 583-586. doi:10.1093/analys/any045.
In 2025-6 Semester 1 I taught ‘Happy and Meaningful Lives’ and ‘Current Moral Philosophy’. I have in the past also taught epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and mediaeval philosophy.
Here are some documents for current students:
Tips for writing an undergraduate essay, with a focus on the things I look for when marking.
I’m happy to supervise dissertations and Independent Learning Modules (mini-dissertations) in most areas of phiosophy—please read this guide for my undergraduate dissertation students if you’ve been assigned to me.