NEWS
Against Moral-Aesthetic Prescriptivism: Rejecting the Foundations of the Moralism Versus Immoralism Debate
30th June 2025
My article, "Against Moral-Aesthetic Prescriptivism: Rejecting the Foundations of the Moralism Versus Immoralism Debate", has just been published in The British Journal of Aesthetics.
The paper challenges the widely held assumption that artworks prescribe moral or immoral attitudes to their audiences, and that audiences are required to adopt these attitudes to engage with the work properly. I argue that this foundation is mistaken, and that many artworks prompt moral exploration rather than prescription.
This has implications for how we understand the relationship between morality and aesthetic value in art.
You can read my paper here.
Publication - Violent Video Games, Recruitment, and Extremism
March 3rd 2025
My co-authored paper (with Professor Tom Sorell), "Violent Video Games, Recruitment, and Extremism" was published in Criminal Justice Ethics.​
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In this paper, we look at the function of
violent extremist games in the process of radicalisation by extremist groups. We distinguish different possible uses including the normalisation, and recruitment to extremist groups, and the undermining of liberal democracy. We argue that there are ​strong moral objections to the use of games for these purposes.
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You can read our paper here.
Publication - Evaluation of Trust as Performance
January 30th 2025
My review of A Telic Theory of Trust by Adam Carter has been published in meta-science.​​
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You can read my review here.