What’s Next?

I submitted my thesis today. That felt good, though I won’t get to defend it until sometime in June due to my busy external examiner. In the meantime, I thought I’d mention a couple of projects I’m going to start working on (in some cases, again) in the coming weeks.

First, it’ll be good to get back to my equality paper. While I’ve got a solid conference draft, it’ll be nice to work it up to something publishable based on the feedback I should get on it this spring.

Second, I spent some time last summer thinking, while not writing, about David Velleman’s account of love here. It contrasts quite deliberately with Harry Frankfurt’s account here. I think that while both accounts have something to recommend them, neither really gets to the heart of the matter. So, this paper will be a critique of their positions and an attempt to present a third that I’ve only just begun to formulate. I’d expect something like an abstract here in a month or two.

Third, in anticipation of some research I’d like to get into in the fall, I’m going to look at the problem of whether or to what extent we can choose to see something as a reason. Put simply, Scanlon (here) thinks we can’t  and this affects the limits of moral responsibility. I think he’s wrong about both, though right about almost everything else. Still, if I want to get the bigger project off the ground, it would be helpful to have a solid critique of his view in my arsenal, so that’ll be a third paper I hope to have started by may.

I didn’t get into this for the vacations. I got into it to be curious about whatever I happen to be curious about. So that’s what I’ll do with my supposedly free time.

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