I have four main areas of specialization:

moral philosophy aesthetics philosophy of mind metaphysics

Moral philosophy:

especially realism, dependence and supervenience, expressivism, motivation, rationality, moral epistemology.

work currently in progress on:

Moral epistemology (moral dependence and objections to empiricist views) This is proving far harder than I thought it would be! Largely the problem of getting a decent notion of 'empirical' with which to have a good debate. The Mark Colyvan Indispensibility book on maths has made a big impression on me.

The virtues of non-naturalism.

Artifactual models of morality; an alternative metaethics? no, I don't think so.

Consequentialism and love; do rule consequentialists do it better? no, I don't think so.

Love. What is it? Why do we value it?

I've even been revisiting quasi-realism recently. Blackburn's 1980 paper "Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory" has an especially interesting discussion of legal thinking.

Aesthetics:

especially aesthetic properties, formalism, theories of art, Kant, music, nature.

work currently in progress on:

I am developing (or trying to develop) a positive view of music and our experience of it; a realist view. I have done my time arguing against the errors of emotion theorists! Time to move on, and forge something positive. I have been reflecting on the point and explanation of our metaphorical descriptions of music, which had led me to reflect on parallel issues about pain, which has led me to issues about private languages and indescribability.

The aesthetics of inorganic nature (yet more reasons to be formalist)

Kant on disinterestedness (I defend many aspects of this idea, but am puzzled by sections 41-42 of CJ).

Nietzsche on Kant on Geneology 3.6. Interpretation and evaluation. I think he is more careful than one might think.

Philosophy of mind:

especially materialism, normativity, causation, propositional attitudes.

work currently in progress on:

More on my own take on mental normativity (distinct from what usually goes under that label!)

Truth, belief and direction of fit (or lack of it)

Rational mental causation. Still unsolved! No one has a good account. What is it to 'take' something to be a reason?

Teleosemantics. Trying to fashion a good objection. Keeps falling through though.

Am reading St. Ludwig Wittgenstein. He gets more interesting the most you realise how spectacularly un'Wittgensteinian' he is. I think there is no private language argument, for example. The best commentary (most of the rest seem quite mad to me) is the Hintikka's book from 1986. Otherwise standard commentators confuse him with Ryle right from the start (Wittgenstein Oxfordised). Reading it in German helps. Also the game theoretic approach to philosophy of language, which all but David Lewis (Convention) ignore, has made philosophy of language interesting to me for just about about the first time. I think there is a plausible economic interpretation of Wittgenstein on language games. But I am on my own in this. People politely edge away from me when I go on about it!

Metaphysics:

especially realism, dependence and supervenience, properties, negative properties.

work currently in progress on:

Negative properties (I'm against them, but I am happy with conjunctive and disjunctive properties).

Truth (I favour a realist approach, since I think the property of truth has causal efficacy)

I occasionally dabble in vagueness; I'm a degree theorist, but for me it is not a semantic thesis at all.

oh, and also, but I suppose its really epistemology... and occasionally I think about ...

A priori knowledge (I'm in favour)

Modal knowledge (given a non-Lewisian realist view)

The cogito (I think it is a case of a priori knowledge)

One theme underlying my interests is normative dependence.