Please get in touch if you would like to see drafts of my work in progress.
Published papers
"Sugar and spice, and everything nice: What rough heroines tell us about imaginative resistance"
Forthcoming in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
This paper examines the asymmetry between our engagement with male characters in fictional narratives who transgress moral norms and female characters who do the same. I claim that rough heroines present a new puzzling instance of resistance phenomena that cannot be accounted for by even the most recent accounts of imaginative resistance that incorporate considerations of narrative context, such as genre and narrative artistry. I sketch a solution that points to the violation of gender norms and the challenge to power dynamics as the source of resistance. I argue that rough heroines reveal an important element of narrative engagement that has been largely overlooked in the literature: appreciators’ interpretive horizons.
"Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy"
Forthcoming in Philosophy Compass
Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that works’ ethical defects or merits have an impact on their aesthetic value. Against ethical critics, autonomists claim that moral criteria should not be part of the considerations when evaluating works of art as art. Autonomism refers to the view that an artwork’s aesthetic value is independent from its ethical value. The purpose of this paper is to examine how autonomism has been defended in the contemporary discussion in analytic aesthetics. I present three versions of autonomism: Richard Posner’s radical autonomism, James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and James Harold’s moderate autonomism, and Francisca Pérez Carreño’s robust autonomism. I argue that robust autonomism offers a stronger argument against the ethical critic. However, I point to some difficulties for Pérez Carreño’s account, and conclude by suggesting how further work in autonomism might go around them.
Forthcoming in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
This paper examines the asymmetry between our engagement with male characters in fictional narratives who transgress moral norms and female characters who do the same. I claim that rough heroines present a new puzzling instance of resistance phenomena that cannot be accounted for by even the most recent accounts of imaginative resistance that incorporate considerations of narrative context, such as genre and narrative artistry. I sketch a solution that points to the violation of gender norms and the challenge to power dynamics as the source of resistance. I argue that rough heroines reveal an important element of narrative engagement that has been largely overlooked in the literature: appreciators’ interpretive horizons.
"Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy"
Forthcoming in Philosophy Compass
Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that works’ ethical defects or merits have an impact on their aesthetic value. Against ethical critics, autonomists claim that moral criteria should not be part of the considerations when evaluating works of art as art. Autonomism refers to the view that an artwork’s aesthetic value is independent from its ethical value. The purpose of this paper is to examine how autonomism has been defended in the contemporary discussion in analytic aesthetics. I present three versions of autonomism: Richard Posner’s radical autonomism, James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and James Harold’s moderate autonomism, and Francisca Pérez Carreño’s robust autonomism. I argue that robust autonomism offers a stronger argument against the ethical critic. However, I point to some difficulties for Pérez Carreño’s account, and conclude by suggesting how further work in autonomism might go around them.
Work in progress
Ethical and Aesthetic Values
"The diversity of intrinsic moral flaws in fiction"
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debates surrounding the moral value of artworks by providing some clarity on what constitutes a moral flaw in artworks, and which moral flaws should be relevant in determining works’ moral and aesthetic values. I argue that while most of the discussion has simply taken for granted that it is intrinsic moral flaws that should be taken into account, there are further important differences in the type of intrinsic moral flaws that artworks display. I argue that we can distinguish two different types of moral defects in works of fiction, fictional and actual immorality, and that this distinction can have important consequences for debates surrounding the moral value of art.
(Versions of this paper were presented at Interact! British Society of Aesthetics Postgraduate Conference, at the annual meeting of the American Society of aesthetics, and at the work in progress seminar at the University of Hull.)
"The Case for Contextual Autonomism"
Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that an artwork’s ethical defects have an impact on its aesthetic value. The ethical critic is interested in the ethical evaluation of a work’s intrinsic features, to see how its ethical value interacts with its aesthetic value. This paper examines the legitimacy of an intrinsic ethical assessment of works of fiction by questioning what should be regarded as a work’s intrinsic ethical defects. I propose a distinction between fictional and actual immorality in fiction that has important consequences for whether the counter-moral content of fictional narratives can be regarded as an intrinsic moral flaw. I argue that we cannot properly speak of a work’s intrinsic ethical demerits, and that thus we can only aspire to an extrinsic ethical assessment of a narrative that depends entirely on contextual considerations: some features of works of fiction can be regarded as ethically significant in certain contexts. Because the ethical assessment can only be extrinsic and context dependent, I conclude that we should defend Contextual Autonomism.
(This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the British Society of Aesthetics.)
Ethics of imagining
"Someone in my head, but it’s not me: a defence of response amoralism"
This paper argues for response amoralism. I argue that responses to fictional scenarios cannot be ethically assessed because our imaginative engagement with fiction is completely dissociated from moral concerns. The paper examines an extrinsic and an intrinsic argument for the ethical assessment of responses to fiction. I argue that the extrinsic argument fails due to the fictional nature of the scenarios, and that the intrinsic argument fails because the engagement with fictional narratives involves a guided imaginative endeavour that says nothing about our character.
(This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the British Society of Aesthetics.)
The Philosophy of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
"The Socratic Pedagogy of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz" (Co-authored with Sergio Gallegos)
Our paper aims to explore whether there is a philosophical pedagogy that underlies Sor Juana’s works. We argue that there is a philosophical pedagogy in Sor Juana’s works and that it is in many respects a Socratic pedagogy. Further, we claim that the development and use of this pedagogy is no accident since it emerges as a reaction to the paternalistic/authoritarian pedagogic model that was imposed by scholastic philosophy in colonial New Spain in the 17th century. We conclude that Socratic pedagogy is particularly well suited for Sor Juana, a woman, to argue for the right of women to be educated. Socratic pedagogy helps Sor Juana in arguing for the right of women to be recognised as intellectual peers by revealing her as an intellectual peer. This is what makes Sor Juana’s strategy particularly interesting: instead of merely arguing for her position, she demonstrates the very thing she’s arguing for through these seemingly innocuous exchanges.
(This paper was presented at the Oxford Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.)
"The aesthetic cognitivism of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz" (Co-authored with Sergio Gallegos)
In this paper we propose a way of better understanding Sor Juana’s philosophical contributions in her literary work. In particular, we examine Sor Juanas’ Allegorical Neptune to show that this work uses artistic representations to engage appreciators’ imagination as a means to cultivate moral virtues. We argue that Sor Juana’s work should be understood in light of aesthetic cognitivism, acccording to which works of art can convey knowledge through engaging appreciators’ emotions and imagination. We present the main theses of aesthetic cognitivism to show how the claim that artworks can convey knowledge is implicit in Sor Juana’s work. While it is interesting to consider how the philosophical insight contributes to the artistic value of her work, because our aim is to emphasize Sor Juana’s philosophical relevance, we focus on the epistemic claim of aesthetic cognitivism exclusively, namely, that art conveys knowledge by stimulating cognitive activity in appreciators. We conclude by noting the importance of analyzing Sor Juana’s literary work in the light of her aesthetic cognitivism for understanding the philosophical relevance of an author whose production was mainly artistic.
(This paper was presented at the Lehigh University Conference on Women in Early Modern Philosophy.)
"The diversity of intrinsic moral flaws in fiction"
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debates surrounding the moral value of artworks by providing some clarity on what constitutes a moral flaw in artworks, and which moral flaws should be relevant in determining works’ moral and aesthetic values. I argue that while most of the discussion has simply taken for granted that it is intrinsic moral flaws that should be taken into account, there are further important differences in the type of intrinsic moral flaws that artworks display. I argue that we can distinguish two different types of moral defects in works of fiction, fictional and actual immorality, and that this distinction can have important consequences for debates surrounding the moral value of art.
(Versions of this paper were presented at Interact! British Society of Aesthetics Postgraduate Conference, at the annual meeting of the American Society of aesthetics, and at the work in progress seminar at the University of Hull.)
"The Case for Contextual Autonomism"
Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that an artwork’s ethical defects have an impact on its aesthetic value. The ethical critic is interested in the ethical evaluation of a work’s intrinsic features, to see how its ethical value interacts with its aesthetic value. This paper examines the legitimacy of an intrinsic ethical assessment of works of fiction by questioning what should be regarded as a work’s intrinsic ethical defects. I propose a distinction between fictional and actual immorality in fiction that has important consequences for whether the counter-moral content of fictional narratives can be regarded as an intrinsic moral flaw. I argue that we cannot properly speak of a work’s intrinsic ethical demerits, and that thus we can only aspire to an extrinsic ethical assessment of a narrative that depends entirely on contextual considerations: some features of works of fiction can be regarded as ethically significant in certain contexts. Because the ethical assessment can only be extrinsic and context dependent, I conclude that we should defend Contextual Autonomism.
(This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the British Society of Aesthetics.)
Ethics of imagining
"Someone in my head, but it’s not me: a defence of response amoralism"
This paper argues for response amoralism. I argue that responses to fictional scenarios cannot be ethically assessed because our imaginative engagement with fiction is completely dissociated from moral concerns. The paper examines an extrinsic and an intrinsic argument for the ethical assessment of responses to fiction. I argue that the extrinsic argument fails due to the fictional nature of the scenarios, and that the intrinsic argument fails because the engagement with fictional narratives involves a guided imaginative endeavour that says nothing about our character.
(This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the British Society of Aesthetics.)
The Philosophy of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
"The Socratic Pedagogy of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz" (Co-authored with Sergio Gallegos)
Our paper aims to explore whether there is a philosophical pedagogy that underlies Sor Juana’s works. We argue that there is a philosophical pedagogy in Sor Juana’s works and that it is in many respects a Socratic pedagogy. Further, we claim that the development and use of this pedagogy is no accident since it emerges as a reaction to the paternalistic/authoritarian pedagogic model that was imposed by scholastic philosophy in colonial New Spain in the 17th century. We conclude that Socratic pedagogy is particularly well suited for Sor Juana, a woman, to argue for the right of women to be educated. Socratic pedagogy helps Sor Juana in arguing for the right of women to be recognised as intellectual peers by revealing her as an intellectual peer. This is what makes Sor Juana’s strategy particularly interesting: instead of merely arguing for her position, she demonstrates the very thing she’s arguing for through these seemingly innocuous exchanges.
(This paper was presented at the Oxford Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.)
"The aesthetic cognitivism of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz" (Co-authored with Sergio Gallegos)
In this paper we propose a way of better understanding Sor Juana’s philosophical contributions in her literary work. In particular, we examine Sor Juanas’ Allegorical Neptune to show that this work uses artistic representations to engage appreciators’ imagination as a means to cultivate moral virtues. We argue that Sor Juana’s work should be understood in light of aesthetic cognitivism, acccording to which works of art can convey knowledge through engaging appreciators’ emotions and imagination. We present the main theses of aesthetic cognitivism to show how the claim that artworks can convey knowledge is implicit in Sor Juana’s work. While it is interesting to consider how the philosophical insight contributes to the artistic value of her work, because our aim is to emphasize Sor Juana’s philosophical relevance, we focus on the epistemic claim of aesthetic cognitivism exclusively, namely, that art conveys knowledge by stimulating cognitive activity in appreciators. We conclude by noting the importance of analyzing Sor Juana’s literary work in the light of her aesthetic cognitivism for understanding the philosophical relevance of an author whose production was mainly artistic.
(This paper was presented at the Lehigh University Conference on Women in Early Modern Philosophy.)
