At the broadest level my research concerns justice. I’ve worked on questions ranging from political authority, democratic theory, distributive justice, and public reason liberalism. Presently, I am also collaborating in social psychological work on authoritarian personalities. My work has drawn on a diverse array of methods, included among them are social choice theory, agent-based modeling, and, of course, more typical philosophical argumentation, as well as often drawing on insights in the empirical social sciences.
Before coming to Virginia, I completed my PhD at the University of Arizona. The title of my dissertation is Equality and the Morality of Social Status. The claim at the heart of the dissertation is that there is a distinctive kind of social status relation, which I call public social status, within which persons ought to be equals. This claim makes up the principle of equal public social status, and this principle is grounded by the fact that inequalities of public social status undermine the freedom of the low status.
Papers If you are interested in a paper and cannot access it, please feel free to email me and I will send it your way. My email: aam5jm@virginia.edu
"Reciprocity and the Rule of Law," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Forthcoming Fair play theories of political obligation hold that one has a duty to reciprocate the benefits one receives from others' compliance with the law by complying in return. Recent criticisms of the view maintain that individuals have discretion in choosing how to discharge their debts of reciprocity, such that there is a gap in the fair-play account. I reply to this criticism and argue that reciprocation in kind by complying with the law is necessary to satisfy the conditions of the rule of law.
"Relational Egalitarianism and Democracy," Journal of Moral Philosophy (2021) Relational egalitarians believe that democratic institutions are justified because relating as equals requires equality of political power. You might object that we can relate as equals despite there being inequalities of power between us. I develop an account of social status and argue that based on available sociological theory and evidence, we have good reason to hold that inequalities of power will cause inequalities of social status. I conclude that the relational egalitarian justification of democracy is vindicated.
"Justice, Reciprocity, and the Boundaries of State Authority," Journal of Political Philosophy (2022) I propose a hybrid theory of political authority according to which some state is authoritative only if it is sufficiently just, and because citizens bear duties of reciprocity toward one another concerning compliance with the state. This fair-play functionalist hybrid maintains a commitment to basic intuitions that motivated functionalism, but avoids common problem cases for functionalism, such as the particularity problem or the problem of unilateral secession. Fair play functionalism also has an appealing and simple mechanism for explaining how historical injustices can fade over time.
"Adjudicating Distributive Disagreement," Synthese (2021) Get the model code here What kinds of voting rules work best for resolving disagreement about distributive justice? This paper a develops a computational model to address this question, with the added twist that agents adjust preferences in light of disappointment to be more selfish.
"Democratic Public Justification," Canadian Journal of Philosophy (2020) It would seem natural to think that democracy would be a reliable means to track what laws or policies that are publicly justified. But why? I examine the mechanisms by which democratic institutions would choose publicly justified outcomes, and argue that they might not be as reliable as first thought. I go on to argue that such unreliability can ameliorated through the use of lotteries in democracy.
"The Epistemic Limits of Shared Reasons," European Journal of Philosophy (2020) The hallmark of theories of public reason is acceptance of reasonable pluralism. I argue that reasonable pluralism spells trouble for theories that hold public reasons must be shared. Whatever features of individuals that give rise to reasonable pluralism will also give rise to pluralism about public reason.