An Overview of Research

Academic

I write about the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics of consciousness - in humans, in animals, in artificial systems, and anywhere else it exists. I'm interested in what things are conscious, how different conscious beings can relate to one another, how we understand other people's conscious perspectives, and how a being having a conscious perspective affects our obligations to it.

• Mental Combination

• Constitutive Panpsychism

• The Extent and Value of Consciousness in Nature

• The Ethics of AI

• Morality and Empathy

• Philosophy of Imagination

• Collective Intentionality

• Philosophy of Gender

Non-Academic

A two-part article in defence of the morality of abortion, focused on what sort of moral weight we should assign to 'potential lives'.

• Potential Lives Can Matter, but Only Through Actual Lives, Part 1

• Potential Lives Can Matter, but Only Through Actual Lives, Part 2

Another article on the morality of abortion, and how ethics, philosophy of mind, and neuroscience intersect:

• When Does a Fetus Have Rights?

Talking about my work on podcasts:

• Interviewed by Richard Brown at Consciousness Live! (2021)

• Interviewed by Jamie Woodhouse at Sentientism (2021)

• Interviewed by Emerson Green at Walden Pod (2022)

• Debated Francois Kammerer on MindChat's Christmas debate, 'Illusionism vs. Panpsychism' (2023)

I've been blogging for a while on WordPress at majesticequality.wordpress.com. The thoughts I post here tend to be more political and more open-ended than published research, but still fairly abstract and philosophical. (Indeed, the blog’s title reflects my anxiety about the potential disconnect between abstract models of justice and lived experience.) I’ve also used it to develop some of my thoughts about the philosophy of gender.

I am strongly supportive of Ukrainians’ resistance to Russian imperialism, and contributed a short statement to the Philosophers For Ukraine project, which you can read here.

I also support the liberation of Palestinians from Israeli occupation and apartheid, and signed this Philosophy for Palestine open letter. As part of this, I am participating in the academic boycott of Israel, and will not participate in academic activities directly associated with Israeli universities which do not actively cut ties with the occupation. I explain my stance on this issue in these posts:

• In Defence of Moral Equivalence: Killing Children is Killing Children

• Nobody Will Be Safer

• Open Letters and Double Standards