mason043@umn.edu

851 Heller
612-625-2526

Professor Mason's
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My main philosophical interests tend to lie at certain points of intersection between value theory and the philosophy of mind and action. My current research and teaching interests are in ethics, where my present concerns include the contribution that reflection on the concept of a practical virtue has to offer to contemporary debate about the practical rationality of moral action. The concept of a practical virtue captures intuitions about admirable action in a way that provides a fruitful perspective, I think, from which to consider the evaluative patterns of reasoning and action we associate with morality and their place in a more general theory of reasons for action.

My interest in moral psychology includes the so-called reactive attitudes, and a desire to explore the implications of theoretical commitments in moral theory for the nature and range of those attitudes one takes to be morally justifiable. In some recent work, I investigate contempt as a moral attitude and begin to offer a defense of its moral propriety in certain circumstances.

Finally, I enjoy thinking and writing about issues in aesthetics.

Selected Publications

"Contempt as a Moral Attitude," Ethics 113:2 (2003).

"Moral Prejudice and Aesthetic Deformity: Rereading Hume's 'Of the Standard of Taste'." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59:1(2001).