I specialize in ethics and feminist philosophy.  My interests in ethics are wide-ranging, including metaethics, moral psychology, normative ethics, and health care ethics. I am particularly interested in moral skepticism, moral authority or bindingness, internalism/externalism, responsibility, agency, deformed desires, social privilege, evil and immorality, and bodily autonomy.  Much of my work intersects ethics and feminism: I apply feminist insights to traditional issues in ethics, and apply the methods of analytic philosophy to issues in feminism. My monograph, The Moral Skeptic (OUP 2009), is an example of how my work imports feminist insights into traditional issues in metaethics and normative ethics. I challenge the traditional picture of the skeptic who asks, "Why be moral?" I argue against the traditional picture that it is too weak and not sufficiently politically sensitive. I argue that a successful defeat of skepticism would address not only the action skeptic, but the disposition skeptic, the motive skeptic, and the amoralist, and would show that not only self-interested behavior but morally unjustified behavior targeting disenfranchised social groups is irrational.  My anthology (co-edited with Sharon Crasnow, OUP, Feb. 2012), Out From the Shadows:  Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, contains 18 chapters (17 new) exhibiting the extensive impact that analytical feminism is making on mainstream philosophy.  My monograph, Feminist Ethics, was just published (March 2024) in the Elements series with Cambridge University Press (ed. Dale Miller and Ben Eggelston).

Other issues I have examined in my published work include fanhood and its implications for defeating moral skepticism, contractarian and feminist attempts to defeat moral skepticism, whether acting from moral motives is rationally required, the internalism/externalism debate about reasons and motivation, responsibility of the privileged for harm to the oppressed, responsibility of the Deferential Wife for her servility, victim-blaming, deformed desires and informed desire tests, the connection between the rationality of dispositions and of actions, the moral status of faculty/student amorous relationships, and sexual harassment.

I am currently working on a paper on moral bindingness and a monograph on bodily autonomy.

Ethics, including metaethics, moral psychology, normative ethics, health care ethics

Feminist philosophy

When I am not doing philosophy, I can sometimes be found refinishing and reupholstering old furniture.  I learned to refinish from my father, and learned to reupholster in a $30 Adult Ed course in Lexington, Kentucky, which turned out to be a very wise investment.  I do old-fashioned, European-style upholstery, using tacks, horsehair, and cotton batting.  I strip down the furniture to the webbing and re-do the piece from the ground up.  Here are a few samples of some of my projects.

This is a chair that matches a couch from a neighbor whose mother didn't want to just put it in the alley, as it belonged to her grandmother.  The neighbor said, "If you take the couch, you have to take the chair."  Both are hand-carved walnut.  The couch was the first couch I reupholstered.  I stripped off the velvet fabric on a 98 degree day, and the velvet stuck to my sweat.

This chair was hand-carved by my grandfather probably in the 1940s when he worked at a furniture factory in Chicago.  I reupholstered it for my brother.  I was very skeptical about the quail meadow pattern on the fabric he picked out, but it seems to go with the chair, and turned out to be one of my favorite projects.  The pattern on the fabric highlights the carving on the wood.

This is the backside of the quail meadow pattern chair.

Side view of the quail meadow pattern chair.  A lot goes into lining up the pattern just so.

This is a chair I reupholstered for my parents, this one hand-carved by my grandfather at the Chicago factory.  I did a third chair in the same fabric for my aunt and uncle. The sweaty couch project.

This is a second chair of the set I did for my parents.

This is my favorite project to date, and the most difficult piece I've worked on -- check out all those buttons!  It's a hand-carved, walnut loveseat that belonged to my grandparents.  When we were cleaning out their house, my mother and uncle asked me if there was anything I wanted.  I pointed to the very dusty faded green loveseat, and they both spun on their heels and said in unison, "This?"  I got the pale seafoam with ivory embroidered fabric on the internet for a song.

Another angle of the loveseat.

This is another couch from a Chicago alley.  It was soaking wet from rain when I rescued it.  Everyone made fun of me for taking "this junk" except for the neighbor who gave me his great-grandparents' couch in the earlier photo.  He said, "I know you'll make it beautiful."

This is a desk from a colleague who acquired it in Liverpool.  Apparently my colleague gave rides to the church to the minister next door so he could perform funeral services at a moment's notice, and got the desk in return.  When I got it, the top was covered with yellow and green contact paper, the handles were coated with chipped white paint, and all the wood needed to be refinished.  I used polyurethane on the body, which is oak, and coated the top with epoxy to even the surface and allow the grain of the various woods (oak and pine) to show through.  I left a lot of the markings on top in case the Beatles had anything to do with them.

A better shot of the grain of the wood on the desk.

This is a chair in progress.  It's an old platform rocker, my first reupholstering attempt that is now getting a make-over because it needed new springs and refinishing. 

Stay tuned for more projects.....