Research

My dissertation develops a pluralist account of informed consent. Consent has a specific permission-changing role: it can suspend a patient’s claim against an intervention and thereby render that intervention permissible. Other parts of informed-consent practice—including commitments, expectations, and professional obligations—are better explained by promises and related moral powers.

This framework helps clarify persistent questions in research ethics, conscientious objection, and surrogate decision-making. Rather than treating every normative effect of informed consent as an exercise of patient autonomy, it asks which moral power explains each change in rights and obligations.

Surrogate authority and artificial intelligence

One project examines the difference between accurately predicting a patient’s choice and possessing authority to decide on that patient’s behalf. An AI system might outperform family members at predicting what a patient would choose without thereby acquiring surrogate authority. The case exposes a gap between epistemic success and normative standing and motivates a new account of what makes someone an authorized surrogate.

AI psychotherapy

A second project asks what may be missing even when an AI psychotherapy system produces beneficial outcomes. It distinguishes therapeutic effectiveness from interpersonal and epistemic goods such as recognition, understanding, and being taken seriously by another person.

Other work

My published work also examines philosophical wonder as a method in bioethics. Future projects address neurological criteria of death and the possibility that leading accounts of posthumous harm and benefit converge more than is commonly assumed.