N. G. Laskowski

research

I'm a philosopher thinking mostly right now about: 

• Metaethics & Ethics: What would morality have to be like to be a part of the natural world? How do our moral concepts hinder or help our own moral development? What exactly makes us humans matter morally?

• Social & Political Philosophy: What's the best way(s) to make sense of sex, gender, disability and other categories of immense social significance, and our thought and talk about them? What kind of presuppositions about the nature of political obligation does the philosophical anarchist make? What does the social world need to be like to make sense of relationships to virtues like honesty?

My approach to philosophy is unapologetically collaborative, with a number of my papers having more than one author.

Selected papers in progress

On the exhaustive natural grounds of particular moral facts

On how gender unrealism solves various problems

On how we conceptualize vices

On ambiguity and gender terms

On Ross, Perry, and analytic naturalism's history

Forthcoming (as such or provisionally)
Review of Ethical Naturalism and the Problem of Normativity by David Copp, Philosophical Review

Metaethical Reductive Naturalism for Humans, Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Human Nature

Nonconcordance and the Metaphysics of Sexual Arousal and Orientation, The Moral Psychology of Sexual Passion

Robust vs Formal Normativity II: No Gods, No Masters, No Authoritative Normativity (w/ N. Howard), Oxford Handbook of Metaethics

2026
Skepticism About Ought Simpliciter Skepticism, Inquiry

Gender Unrealism (w/ N. Howard), Ergo

Honesty and Bad Faith (w/ N. Howard), Political Philosophy

2025
Honest AI, Oxford Intersections: AI in Society

2024
The Stuff That Matters, Oxford Studies in Metaethics

AI Language Models Cannot Replace Human Research Participants (w/ J. Harding,  W. D’Alessandro, and R. Long), AI & Society

2023
Categorical Phenomenalism about Sexual Orientation (w/ T. Whitlow) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

2022
Practical Reasons for Belief Without Stakes (w/ S. Herndandez), Analytic Philosophy

2021
Wronging by Requesting (w/ K. Silver), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics

The World is Not Enough (w/ N. Howard), Noûs

What Makes Normative Concepts Normative (w/ S. Hernandez), Southwest Philosophy Review

Phenomenal Concepts as Complex Demonstratives (w/ N. Howard), Res Philosophica

2020
Resisting Reductive Realism, Oxford Studies in Metaethics

Moral Constraints on Gender Concepts, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

2019
The Sense of Incredibility in Ethics, Philosophical Studies

Moral Realism, Speech Act Diversity, and Expressivism, The Philosophical Quarterly

2018
Epistemic Modesty in Ethics, Philosophical Studies

Conceptual Analysis in Metaethics (w/ S. Finlay), Routledge Handbook of Metaethics

Reductivism, Nonreductivism, and Incredulity about Streumer’s Error Theory, Analysis Reviews

“Double Review” of On What Matters Vol. 3 by Derek Parfit and Does Anything Really Matter? Parfit on Objectivity ed. Peter Singer, Ethics

2017
Review of Speech and Morality by Terence Cuneo, Journal of Moral Philosophy

Rethinking Reductive Realism in Ethics, Dissertation, University of Southern California

2015
Non-Analytical Naturalism and the Nature of Normative Thought: A Reply to Parfit, Journal of Ethical and Social Philosophy

2014
How to Pull a Metaphysical Rabbit Out of an End-Relational Semantic Hat, Res Philosophica