We seem to be quite confident in our valuing ascriptions: we say we value, for example, philosophy, or kindness in a partner. Yet what is the mechanism that allows us to generate such self-knowledge? If someone were to ask ‘Are you sure you value philosophy? It does not seem like it’, how might we go about establishing a convincing answer?

Currently I am focusing on arguing that one prominent tool we may use to establish whether we value is the imagination. That is, knowledge about our valuing states can be obtained through an examination of our emotional responses to imaginative scenarios. Specifically, I argue that when we engage in imaginative exercises involving a particular object p and experience emotional reactions to these scenarios, the resulting emotional responses can be construed as evidence for the presence of underlying (emotional) dispositions integral to valuing p. 

This work is underpinned by previous work I have done into the notion of valuing, which I take to be partly constituted by a set of emotional dispositions towards the valued object. In the course of developing this view, I have also introduced a taxonomy of valuing: I argue that we can value emotionally, intellectually, strongly, and weakly. Emotional valuing is when we have significantly more emotional dispositions than cognitive dispositions towards the valued object. Intellectual valuing is the opposite situation. Strong valuing is when we have a substantial amount of both kinds of dispositions, and weak valuing is when we only have a small amount of both.

I am also working on a project where I apply the notion of self-knowledge to sexual orientation. I suggest that there is an assumed epistemology of sexual orientation both in academic philosophy and in society at large: we assume we know how to learn about our own sexuality. However, that assumption leads to significant epistemic challenges in non-heterosexual populations, which I aim to address by developing a different epistemology of sexual orientation.

Lastly, my MPhil thesis focused on emotional recalcitrance. I argued that emotional recalcitrance does not actually exist: for recalcitrance to exist, there would need to be a conflict between a belief and the emotion. However, I argued that the emotion in such situations is often misunderstood: instead of p, our emotion is making a different claim (say, p*). In that case, there is no case of p and not-p, but rather one of p and p*, which may be compatible.