curriculum vitae

Positions Held

Assistant Professor of Philosophy, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 9/03-present

Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 9/00-8/03

Adjunct Philosophy Faculty, Massachusetts Bay Community College, Wellesley, Mass., 9/99-5/00

Adjunct Philosophy Faculty, North Shore Community College, Beverly, Mass., 1/00-5/00

Education

University of Virginia (1994-1999); Charlottesville, Virginia

Ph.D. Philosophy, 8/99 (Dissertation: “Publicity and practical reason: Between subjectivism and Kantianism.”)

M.A. Philosophy, 5/96 (Thesis: “The relativization of the Cartesian ego.”)

Harvard University (1998-99); Cambridge, Massachusetts

Visiting Dissertation Fellow, Department of Philosophy

Swarthmore College (1991-1994); Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

B.A. Philosophy and History, with Honors, 5/94

⇑ Back to top

Personal Data

Ethnicity: Hispanic

Born November 16, 1972, Portland, Ore.

Areas of Specialization (AOS) and Areas of Competence (AOC)

⇑ Back to top

Publications

I. Articles

“Race, capital punishment, and the cost of murder.” Philosophical Studies, 127 (2006): 255-282.

“Cruelty and competency for execution.” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, 37 (2005): 123-140.

“Suicide.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004

“Contingency and divine knowledge in Ockham.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 77.1 (2003): 81-91.

“Suicide intervention and non-ideal Kantian theory.” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 19 (2002): 245-259.

“A felon’s right to vote.” Law and Philosophy, 21 (2002): 543-564.

“A contractualist account of promising.” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 40 (2002): 475-491.

“From epistemology to ethics.” Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Value Inquiry. (2002)

“Dialectical refutation as a paradigm of Socratic punishment.” Journal of Philosophical Research, 27 (2002): 371-79.

“Kant and the irrationality of suicide.” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 17:2 (April 2000): 159-76.

“Egoism and the publicity of reason: A reply to Korsgaard.” Social Theory and Practice, 25:3 (Fall 1999): 491-517.

“Judgments of aesthetic experience.” Eidos 12:2 (June 1995, "Kant"): pp. 5-25.

II. Reviews

Review of Lieberman, Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide. Metapsychology, 12/03.

Review of Blauner, How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person’s Guide to Suicide Prevention. Metapsychology, 7/03.

Review of Joyce, The Myth of Morality, Utilitas, 16 (2004): 227-229.

Review of Callahan, Promoting Healthy Behavior: How Much Freedom? Whose Responsibility?. Doody’s Medical Reviews, 8/4/00.

Review of Stroud, "The aim of affirmative action," Brown Electronic Article Review Service, 4/18/00

III. Teaching-Related Scholarship

“The dynamics of team teaching.” Brooklyn College Faculty Newsletter 6:1 (2002)

⇑ Back to top

Presented Papers

“The murderer at the door: What Kant might have said.”

(a) Tenth International Kant Congress, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 9/05

(b) California State University, Bakersfield, 11/04

“Wide internalism and rational changes in desire.”

(a) American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, Boston, Mass., 12/04

(b) Claremont Colleges Works in Progress Group, Claremont, Calif., 3/04

“Our acquaintance with practical reasons.” Conference on Values, Rational Choice, and the Will, Stevens Point, Wisc., 4/04

“Race, capital punishment, and the cost of murder.”

(a) American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division Meeting (Symposium paper), Pasadena, Calif., 4/04

(b) Pace University, 4/03

(c) Emerson College, 3/03

(d) Department of Philosophy, University of Buffalo, 12/02

“Skepticism and Prichard’s point.” International Symposium on Skepticism in Contemporary Epistemology, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrook, Québec, Canada, 10/03

“Depression, practical reason, and the pursuit of happiness.” American Philosophical Association, Central Division Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio, 4/03

“Race, capital punishment, and two kinds of arbitrariness.” American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division Meeting, San Francisco, Ca., 3/03

“A Millian reply to the egoist, or Giving virtue a try.” American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, Philadelphia, Pa., 12/02

“Securing altruistic commitment by Millian means.” The Ethics of Altruism, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, England, 4/02

“Ethics and the environment.” New York City Department of Parks, Brooklyn, N.Y., 4/02

“A felon’s right to vote.”

(a) 29th Conference on Value Inquiry, Tulsa, Okla., 4/01

(b) Brooklyn College Philosophy Society, 4/01

(c) Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs, New York Chapter, New York University, 11/01

“Contractualism and the unity of rightness.” American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division Meeting, San Francisco, Ca., 3/01

Comment on Olsaretti, “Substantive responsibility and the value of choice.” American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, New York, N.Y., 12/00

“Promising and Scanlon’s profligate pal.” American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division Meeting, Albuquerque, N.M., 4/00

“Intervention and the Kantian psychology of suicide.” Presented to the Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, San Diego, Ca., 2/00

“Kant and the irrationality of suicide.” South Central Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Tex., 11/99

“Suicide intervention, Kantian-style.” Quotidian Ethics: Moral Deliberations in Everyday Life, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 8/99

“Suicide, intervention, and Kantian agency.” Presented to the Department of Philosophy, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, 4/99

“Egoism and the publicity of reason: A reply to Korsgaard.” CUNY Philosophy Conference, New York, N.Y., 4/98

“The pain of refutation: Dialectic as Socratic punishment.” Rutgers Graduate Philosophy Conference, Rutgers University, N.J., 4/98

“From epistemology to ethics.” 26th Conference on Value Inquiry, University of Montevallo, Montevallo, Alab., 4/98

“Was Socrates a skeptic about punishment?" Virginia Philosophical Association Annual Meeting, Charlottesville, Va., 10/97

“Ethical scientism and the search for values in nature.” Reasons to Believe: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Naturalistic and Non-naturalistic Perspectives, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Penn., 7/97

⇑ Back to top

Current Research

Practical rationality, moral skepticism, moral epistemology

1. “Egoist conversion.” (article manuscript, under review)
2. “Our acquaintance with practical reason.” (article manuscript, under review)
3. “Wide internalism and rational change of desire.” (article manuscript, under review)
4. “Depression, practical reason, and the pursuit of happiness.” (article manuscript, under review)

Normative ethics

1. “The murderer at the door: What Kant might have said.” (article manuscript, under review)

Punishment

1. “Retributivism and the rule of law.” (article manuscript, in preparation)

Applied ethics

1. “Kant, suicide, and self-love.” (article manuscript, under review)
2. “Self-manslaughter.” (article manuscript, under review)

⇑ Back to top

Teaching Experience

Courses taught

Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy

• Moral Philosophy
• Freedom and Human Values
• Issues of Life and Death
• Ethical Problems of Contemporary Life
• Philosophical Problems in the Law
• Business Ethics
• Race, Justice and Equality
• Political Philosophy
• Theory and Practice of Capital Punishment
• Capstone Seminar: War

History

• Early Modern Philosophy
• Ancient Philosophy

Other

• Introduction to Philosophy
• Introduction to Philosophy (Honors)
• Logic
• Minds and Bodies
• Knowledge, Existence, and Values
• Capstone Seminar: Philosophical Issues in Mental Illness

Independent studies supervised

• Kant’s Theory of Punishment
• Metaethics, Error Theory and Realism

Teaching honors and activities

Organizer, Philosophy Department Writing Workshop, 3/05

Selected to teach Interdisciplinary Seminar in Brooklyn College Honors College, 2001

Graduate Associate, University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center, 1997-98

Finalist, 1996-97 Seven Society Graduate Teaching Fellowship

⇑ Back to top

Dissertation

Publicity and Practical Reason: Between Subjectivism and Kantianism (John Marshall, advisor; A. John Simmons, Talbot Brewer, and George Klosko, dissertation committee)

Dissertation Summary

A consideration of contemporary Hobbesian social contract theories of morality (e.g., that of D. Gauthier) and contemporary Kantian constructivist theories of morality (J. Rawls, C. Korsgaard, T.M. Scanlon, J. Habermas), arguing that the latter theories have failed to justify the constraints of 'reasonableness' they impose upon the choice of public principles of justice and hence cannot conclude that their theories are superior to Hobbesian theories. The dissertation argues for a revised form of constructivism, epistemic constructivism, according to which individual agents have reason to support broadly liberal principles of justice, not due to a desire to maximize their preference satisfaction but out of concern for the reasonableness of their respective conceptions of the good from a partially public point of view. Morality is therefore a system of mutual advantage, generated neither from a moral value of overlapping consensus, nor from any moral value at all, but only from the epistemic commitment to public justifiability. Epistemic constructivism thus retains a broadly constructivist notion of reasonableness while better accommodating (though not refuting) Hobbesian theories.

⇑ Back to top

Service, Offices, and Professional Activities

Departmental service

Principal organizer, 2005 Ethics Conference

Co-organizer, 2004 Ethics Conference

College and University service

Faculty advisor, Ethics Club

Participant, Faculty Learning Community, “What is a Learning-Centered University?”, 2005

Department representative, CLASS Learning and Teaching Committee, 2003, 2004

Professional development

Participant in National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar on “Punishment, Politics, and Culture,” Amherst College, July 2004

Participant in Cal Poly Faculty Reading Group (“Cultivating Humanity”), spring 2004

Professional activities

Editor, Studies in the History of Ethics

Manuscript reviewer, Journal of Ethics

Manuscript reviewer, Journal of Value Inquiry

Manuscript reviewer, Journal of Applied Philosophy

Manuscript reviewer, Social Theory and Practice

Manuscript reviewer, Philosophy in the Contemporary World

Member, American Philosophical Association

Member, North American Kant Society

⇑ Back to top

Awards and Honors

Department Professor of the Year, 2005

PSC-CUNY Research Award, 2001-02

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, 1998-99

(selected from among top Ph.D. candidates in all Arts & Sciences departments at Virginia)

Philosophy Department Dissertation Fellowship, 1997

University of Virginia President's Fellow, 1994-97

Language Competencies

French (reading competency)

⇑ Back to top

References

John Marshall, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia

A. John Simmons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia

Jorge Secada, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia

Talbot Brewer, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia

for above, contact:
Department of Philosophy
P.O. Box 400780
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4780
(343) 924-7701

Jonathan Adler, Professor of Philosophy
Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center
2900 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11210
718-951-5311

⇑ Back to top

Updated 1/3/2006