i'm an associate professor of philosophy at mcgill university, where i direct the philosophy, technology, & policy lab.
my earlier work was in normative ethics & metaethics. now i work on questions about power, legitimacy, & governance in digital infrastructure. i'm focused on the illegitimate power of centralized social media platforms & ai systems, & on the prospects for legitimate decentralized alternatives.
before joining mcgill, i was a research assistant professor at unc-chapel hill & core faculty in the unc/duke program in philosophy, politics, & economics. i completed my ph.d. at the university of arizona (2017) & an m.a. from brandeis (2011). i was a visiting fellow at harvard in 2017 & at the anu in 2019.
i co-organize CHillNorm with Alex Worsnip & Margaret Shea.
the best way to get in touch with me is by email at chris.howard@mcgill.ca
below is a list of my publications & work in progress.
Fittingness: Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity (co-edited with Rach Cosker-Rowland). Oxford University Press (2022).
'Rational Feelings for Virtual Things?'. Forthcoming in Philosophical Issues.
'Non-naturalism Without Contingentism' with Stephanie Leary. Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics 21.
'The Fittingness-First Approach'. Forthcoming in Connie Rosati & David Copp (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaethics, OUP.
'Forever Fitting Feelings'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (2023): 80-98.
'Fitting Attitude Theories of Value'. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2023).
'In Defense of the Right Kind of Reason' with Stephanie Leary. In Chris Howard and Rach Cosker-Rowland (eds.), Fittingness, OUP (2022).
'Fittingness: A User's Guide' with Rach Cosker-Rowland. In Chris Howard and Rach Cosker-Rowland (eds.), Fittingness, OUP (2022).
'Consequentialists Must Kill'. Ethics 131 (2021): 727-753.
'Weighing Epistemic and Practical Reasons for Belief'. Philosophical Studies 177 (2020): 2227-43.
'Fitting Love and Reasons for Loving'. Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 6 (2019): 116-137.
'The Fundamentality of Fit'. Oxford Studies in Metaethics 14 (2019): 216-236. Winner of the Marc Sanders Prize in Metaethics.
'Fittingness'. Philosophy Compass 13 (2018): e12542.
'In Defense of the Wrong Kind of Reason'. Thought 5 (2016): 53-62.
'Transparency and the Ethics of Belief'. Philosophical Studies 173 (2016): 1191-1201.
'Review of Getting Things Right: Fittingness, Reasons, and Value, by Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way'. Ethics 135 (2024): 189-194.
'Review of Expressing Our Attitudes: Explanation and Expression in Ethics, by Mark Schroeder'. Ethics 127 (2017): 806-812.
[paper on decentralized social]
[paper on decentralized ai]
[book on decentralized social & ai]