I’m interested in the ways in which our rationality and agency are socially embedded – about how our ways of thinking and deciding are conditioned by features of social organization, community, technology, and art practices. I’m particularly interested in the way in which designed social structures – games, echo chambers, bureaucracies – can change how we reason, value, and act.

There’s also a list of my public philosophy efforts.

Book

Games: Agency as Art (Oxford University Press, 2020) (Book summary) Awarded the 2021 American Philosophical Association Book Prize)

This book grew from the seed of:

Games and the Art of Agency (Philosophical Review 128 (4), 2019: 423-462). (2020 APA Article Prize; selected for Philosopher’s Annual “10 Best Philosophy Articles of 2019”)

There have been three symposia discussing the book, with my responses.

Papers

Social Epistemology

Value Capture (Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, forthcoming)

Hostile Epistemology (keynote for the 2022 North American Society for Social Philosophy conference, forthcoming in Social Philosophy Today)

Transparency is Surveillance (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 105 (2), 2022: 331-361) (and here’s a short summary)

Trust as an Unquestioning Attitude (runner-up for Sanders Epistemology Prize. Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 7. Gendler et. al., eds. OUP, 2022: 214-244)

The Seductions of Clarity (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 89 2021: 227-255) (also available as a video lecture)

How Twitter Gamifies Communication (Applied Epistemology, J. Lackey ed., OUP. 2021: 410-436) (There is also a shortened version for students, with suggested classroom exercises.)

Playfulness Versus Epistemic Traps (Social Virtue Epistemology, Alfano et al eds., Routledge. 2022: 269-290)

Was it Polarization or Propaganda? (Journal of Philosophical Research 46 2021: 173-191)

Moral Outrage Porn with Bekka Williams (Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 18 (2) 2020: 147-172) (selected for Philosopher’s Annual “10 Best Philosophy Articles of 2020”)

Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles (Episteme 17 (2) 2020: 141-161)

Cognitive Islands and Runaway Echo Chambers (Synthese 197 (7) 2020: 2803-2821)

Escape the Echo Chamber (Aeon Magazine, 2018)

Expertise and the Fragmentation of Intellectual Autonomy (Philosophical Inquiries, 6 (2) 2018: 107-124)

“From Disagreement to Humility” (Wright and Snow (eds.), Humility: It’s Nature and Function. OUP. 2019: 325-353)

Autonomy, Understanding, and Moral Disagreement (Philosophical Topics 38 (2), 2010: 111-29)

An Ethics of Uncertainty (PhD Dissertation, 2011)

Aesthetics

Art as a Shelter from Science (Aristotelian Society Supplementary, 97 (1), 2023: 172-201

Trust and Sincerity in Art (Ergo, 8 (2), 2021: 21-53)

The Engagement Account of Aesthetic Value (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, forthcoming)

The Arts of Action (Philosopher’s Imprint, 20 (14), 2020: 1-27)

Autonomy and Aesthetic Engagement (Mind, 129 (516) 2020: 1127-56 ) (audio recording)

Monuments as Commitments: How Art Speaks to Groups and How Groups Think in Art (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 100 (4), 2019: 971-994).

Cultural Appropriation and the Intimacy of Groups, with Matt Strohl (Philosophical Studies, 176 (4), 2019: 981-1002)

The Uses of Aesthetic Testimony (British Journal of Aesthetics 51 (1), 2017: 19-36)

Philosophy of Games

Games Unlike Life, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. 23:3 (2022). (In a symposium on my article, “Games and the art of agency”.)

Defending Games: Reply to Hurka, Kukla, and Noe. Analysis 81:2 (2021). (In a symposium on my book, Games: Agency as Art)

The opacity of play: a reply to commentators. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport. 48:3 (2021). 448-475. (In a symposium on my book, Games: Agency as Art)

The Right Way to Play a Game (Game Studies, 19 (1), 2019)

Philosophy of Games (Philosophy Compass, 12 (8), 2017)

Competition as Cooperation (Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 44 (1), 2017: 123-37)

“Games and the Moral Transformation of Violence” (in The Aesthetics of Videogames, ed. Tavinor and Robson. Routledge. 2018: 181-197)

The Forms and Fluidity of Game Play (in Games, Sports, and Play, ed. Hurka. OUP. 2019: 54-73)

Good Violence, Bad Violence: The Ethics of Competition in Multiplayer Games, with Jose Zagal (DiGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG)

Reviews and Replies

The aesthetic homogenization of cities (APA Studies in Feminist Philosophy, 22 (1), 2022: 7-10)

Review of Jennifer Lena’s Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 78 (2): 257-261)

Group-Strapping, Bubble, or Echo Chamber? (a reply to Kenneth Boyd’s “Epistemically Pernicious Groups and the Group-Strapping Problem) (Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective)

Recorded Talks

Games, Public Policy, and the Pandemic (UNC Chapel Hill PPE, 2020)

I’m interviewed about “Games and the art of agency”, and the backstory of how the article came to be, for this episode of the Journal Entries podcast.