Consider two well-defended necessary conditions for creativity: intention and novelty. A product is creative only if it is produced in the right way by an agent’s intentions; and, a product is creative only if it is psychologically novel to the agent who creates it. But if something is novel in this way to an agent, it cannot have been an object of the agent’s intention; if it is something the agent intended, then it is not psychologically new. This raises two related problems. The first is a logical problem of creativity: how is creativity even possible given these necessary conditions? The second is a creditworthiness problem of creativity: even if creativity is possible, how is it something for which it can be apt to credit agents for being the source? To solve both problems, I introduce the Convergence Model of Creative Intention which posits the presence of two different sorts of intentions involved in creativity—planning intentions, which “program for” implementation intentions. I contend that, in successful creative acts, as the agent is seeking to fulfill a broad planning intention, at some point one of her specific implementation intentions brings about the relevant sort of novelty as a feature of the product. In this way, the agent is creditworthy for her engagement in the process that yielded the product. 

In the second chapter of this thesis, I hope to pin down what is praiseworthy about creativity. 

This paper explores how Kant’s moral theory can apply to infants, arguing that they are best viewed as non-person ends-in-themselves. I first show that infants are not persons, which might suggest they are things given Kant’s famous person/thing distinction. However, drawing on Christine Korsgaard’s work in animal ethics, I argue that “person” and “end-in-itself” can be decoupled. I then address infants' moral status, proposing they are non-rational animals who may one day become persons, rather than flawed rational beings. Finally, I address an objection that a Korsgaard sympathizer might raise regarding my application of her ideas to infants. [draft upon request]

This paper argues the principles we find in Audre Lorde’s normatively rich sexual ethics serve as a springboard into her political philosophy. A textual puzzle in Lorde’s writing about sexual encounters is resolved to yield a two-layered ethic that makes sense of judgments about sexual permissibility and sexual goodness. This framework of sexual ethics, the compatibility theory, is then shown to have direct application to Lorde’s ideas about politics. Just as Lorde thinks we ought to prefer good sex to merely consensual sex, she favors a sensitivity to interdependence in the face of difference over a politics of mere tolerance. Ultimately, this paper seeks to demonstrate a unifying thread in Audre Lorde’s thought that going beyond merely permissible acts in our dealings with others to cultivate a richer understanding of interdependence is the preferred route to sexual and political flourishing [in progress].

A paper/chapter, coauthored with Connor K. Kianpour, about how the reasons we have to accept agender identity are likewise reasons to accept aracial identities. [in progress]

1. A paper on how group-directed empathy may work. 

2. A paper on testimonial injustice wherein the person receiving testimony (i.e. the hearer) is the harmed party. 

3. A paper about the "invasive species" concept. (adapted from undergraduate thesis). 

4. A paper on the benefits of trolls/trolling in a liberal society.