Dissertation Building Reasons Are there any norms that have authority over us that is not due simply to our acceptance of practices that embody them? Many believe such practice-external authority is required if we are to make sense of our normative practices, including moral and political philosophy. I disagree, and argue that while there is no positive answer to the normative question, we don’t need one. I lay out in detail why practice-external normativity cannot be accommodated within the world as we know it. The chief goal of my dissertation, however, is to propose a positive interpretation of normative practices that dispenses with externally authoritative facts directing us what to do. Practical questions, I counter, retain their significance only when pursued from an engaged rather than detached perspective – a perspective we adopt when, driven by our commitments, we actively participate in the selection and evolution of norms, searching for common ground for how to coordinate our joint endeavors. Even though there are no definitive answers, the deliberative enterprise is not unconstrained; it is carried out within a tight web of norms that we do already accept, a web we continuously spin and expand. Publications Promising – A Practice and Nothing More? in: Understanding Promises and Agreements: Philosophical Essays, edited by Hanoch Sheinman, Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010. Presentations Promising – A Practice and Nothing More? The Second Annual Rocky Mountain Ethics Conference (RoME), University of Colorado, Boulder, 2009. Explanation, Justification, and Motivating Reasons. Colloquium Presentation, Eastern APA, Philadelphia, 2008 *** Winner Graduate Student Travel Stipend *** Desire Satisfaction Accounts of Value: Actual Versus Informed. Colloquium Presentation, Pacific APA, Pasadena, 2008 *** Winner Graduate Student Travel Stipend *** New Wave, Arbitrary Moral Facts, and Radical Error. Thirtieth Annual Midsouth Philosophy Conference, Memphis, 2006. Essays Against Reductive Normative Realism (Excerpt from my 3rd Dissertation Chapter) (pdf) Explanation, Justification, and Motivating Reasons. (pdf) Desire Satisfaction Accounts of Value: Actual Versus Informed. (pdf)