overview
Chris Heathwood (PhD, UMass, 2005) joined the Department in 2005 and works mainly in theoretical ethics. He also has interests in the philosophy of mind (in particular, the nature of pleasure and pain) and metaphysics. Most of his research has been on the topic of well-being, or of what things are of ultimate benefit and harm to us, and on various topics in metaethics.
Current Research: Prof. Heathwood recently finished a short introductory book called Happiness and Well-Being for Cambridge University Press, set to appear in October 2021. His longstanding research project is a book manuscript defending a desire-satisfaction theory of well-being. Alongside that he is working on papers on whether adaptive preferences are a problem for subjective theories of well-being and on desire satisfactionism and ill-being.
When he's not thinking about these topics or teaching about others, he is often hanging out with his two sons, Henry and Charlie, and wife, Nicki. When he's not doing that, he likes to listen to radio stories (which nowadays usually means podcasts), do Bikram yoga, play golf, watch baseball (Youth as much as MLB), or play music with his friends.
For more information, see Chris Heathwood's personal website and CV.
selected papers
- “Happiness and Desire Satisfaction,” Noûs forthcoming.
- "Which Desires Are Relevant to Well-Being?" Noûs 53 (2019): 664-688
- "Irreducibly Normative Properties," Oxford Studies in Metaethics 10 (2015): 216-244.
- “Subjective Theories of Well-Being," in B. Eggleston and D. Miller (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 199–219.
- "Could Morality Have a Source," Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 6 (2012): 1-19.
- "Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure, and Welfare," Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6 (2011): 79-106.
- "The Relevance of Kant's Objection to Anselm's Ontological Argument," Religious Studies 47 (2011): 345-57.
- "Preferentism and Self-Sacrifice," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2011): 18-38.
- "Moral and Epistemic Open-Question Arguments," Philosophical Books 50 (2009): 83-98
- “Fitting Attitudes and Welfare,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3 (2008): 47-73.
- “The Reduction of Sensory Pleasure to Desire,” Philosophical Studies 133 (2007): 23-44.
- “Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism,” Philosophical Studies 128 (2006): 539-563.
- “The Problem of Defective Desires,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005): 487-504.