Christopher Frugé

I’m a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford in St John’s College. While finishing up grad school, I was a Departmental Lecturer (Visiting Assistant Professor) in the Faculty of Philosophy and Hertford College at Oxford. I received my Ph.D. from Rutgers in 2023.

I work on foundational and normative ethics as well as metaphysics. I’m interested in how we can create genuinely new aspects of reality, with an eye toward implications for value and death. I’m developing a subjectivist account of wellbeing that treats personal value as a genuinely real artifact, where this allows us to create value for ourselves that persists posthumously. I aim to eventually expand this artifactual approach to an account of self-regarding and other-regarding reasons. As a framework for this conception of normativity, I’m developing a metaphysics of dependence and properties that can capture how we can create not just concrete but also abstract artifacts, including genuinely normative creations.

Publications

Articles

12. Against Instantiation. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Forthcoming.
Synopsis: I defend a sparse a conception of universals where they aren’t instantiated but rather things simply have their properties with no interposed relationality.

11. Janus-Faced Grounding. Ergo. Forthcoming. (Blog post summarizing the paper)
Synopsis: I argue that the grounding of grounding must at some point come to and end.

10. Aggregating Personal Value. Oxford Studies in Metaethics 19. 2024.
Synopsis: I argue that overall wellbeing is subjective.

9. Combining Good and Bad. In Mauro Rossi & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Perspectives on Ill-Being. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming. (Invited)

8. Value After Death. Ratio 35(3): 194-203. 2022. [Published version]
Synopsis: I argue that we can have wellbeing after death. Revised my claim from “Permanent Value” to hold instead that we can have wellbeing after death without existing.

7. Structuring Wellbeing. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105(3):  564-580. 2022. [Published version]
Synopsis: We should distinguish between the grounds of wellbeing and the connections linking those grounds to wellbeing. I defend a broadly subjectivist view that makes different choices along these two axes of dependence when it comes to objectivism vs subjectivism, monism vs pluralism, and variabilism vs invariabilism.

6. Artifactual Normativity. Synthese 200(126): 1-19. 2022. [Published version]
Synopsis: I argue that normativity is a special sort of artifact, hence subjective yet real.

5. Joints and Basic Ways. Inquiry. Forthcoming. [Published version]
Synopsis: There are ungrounded properties that are not perfectly structural, and there are perfectly structural properties that are grounded.

4. Permanent Value. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8(2): 356-372. 2022. [Published version]
Synopsis: I formulate a version of temporal nihilism and reject it by arguing that people can exist and have wellbeing while they aren’t alive.

3. Epicureanism and Skepticism about Practical Reason. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50(2): 195-208. 2020. [Published version]
Synopsis: Epicureanism about death leads to skepticism about practical reason.

2. Possible Intentions and the Doctrine of Double Effect. Ethics, Medicine and Public Health 8: 11-17. 2019. [Published version]
Synopsis: Appealing to possible intentions to intend benefit and not harm does not salvage the Doctrine of Double Effect.

1. Unbunking Arguments: A Case Study in Metaphysics and Cognitive Science. In Alvin Goldman & Brian McLaughlin (eds.), Metaphysics and Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press: 384-402. 2019. [Published version] (Invited)
Synopsis: An epistemically positive analogue of debunking arguments can give some epistemic justification to certain metaphysical judgments.

Reviews

4. Review of Dale Dorsey’s A Theory of Prudence. The Journal of Moral Philosophy. Forthcoming.

3. Review of Guy Fletcher’s Dear Prudence. Utilitas 33(4): 505-509. 2021. [Published version]

2. Review of Andreas Müller’s Constructing Practical Reasons. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24(3): 859-861. 2021. [Published version]

1. Review of Jessica Wilson’s Metaphysical Emergence. Philosophy in Review 41(3): 221-223. 2021. [Published version]

Email

christopher dot fruge at sjc.ox.ac.uk

CV

As of October 2023

Employment

Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford (Current)

Departmental Lecturer, University of Oxford (2023)

Teaching

Thesis Advising. Oxford. Michelmas & Hilary 2023-2024.

Graduate Seminar: Subjectivism and Mistakes. Oxford. Trinity 2023.

Ethics 103. Oxford. Trinity 2023.

Mill’s Utilitarianism. Oxford. Trinity 2023.

Practical Ethics. Oxford. Trinity 2023.

Ethics 103. Oxford. Hilary 2023.

Intro to Logic. Rutgers. Spring 2022.

Intro to Logic. Rutgers. Fall 2021.

Logic, Reasoning, and Persuasion. Rutgers. Spring 2021.

Logic, Reasoning, and Persuasion. Rutgers. Winter 2020.

Intro to Metaphysics. Rutgers. Fall 2020.

Logic, Reasoning, and Persuasion. Rutgers. Summer 2020.

Bioethics. Rutgers. Spring 2020.

Logic, Reasoning, and Persuasion. Rutgers. Winter 2019.

Intro to Early Modern Philosophy. Rutgers. Fall 2018.

Presentations

23. Offloading Value. Center for Values and Social Policy. CU Boulder. 2024 (Invited)

22. Offloading Value. Oxford Metaphysics & Epistemology Group. University of Oxford. 2023. (Invited)

21. Aggregating Personal Value. 17th Annual Madison Metaethics Workshop. University of Wisconsin, Madison. 2022.

20. Aggregating Personal Value. Social Ontology & Collective Intentionality. University of Vienna. 2022.

19. Aggregating Personal Value. Rocky Mountains Ethics Conference XV. Boulder, Colorado. 2022.

18. Aggregating Wellbeing. Conference on Interspecies Comparisons of Welfare. London School of Economics. 2022.

17. Ways of Existence. Symposium at the Pacific APA. Vancouver. 2022.

16. Value After Death. Fourth International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life. University of Pretoria, South Africa. 2022.

15. Value After Death. 2021 International Association for the Philosophy of Death and Dying Symposium. 2021.

14. Permanent Value. Philosophical Perspectives on Aging-Seminar. La Sapienza, Università di Roma. Danish Institute in Rome. 2021.

13. Value After Death. Great Lakes Philosophy Conference. Siena Heights University. 2021.

12. Normativity from Nothing. Social Ontology 2020. University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. 2020.

11. Possessing Value. End-of-Life and Euthanasia. Czech Academy. 2019.

10. Against Collective Responsibility. Social Ontology 2018. Tufts. 2018.

9. Unbunking Arguments: A Case Study in Metaphysics and Cognitive Science. Bochum-Rutgers Workshop in Philosophy. Bochum Ruhr-University. 2017.

8. Shared Parts and Political Authority: Groups as Individuals in Spinoza. Southwest Seminar in  Early Modern Philosophy. UC-Riverside. 2016.

7. Shared Parts and Political Authority: Groups as Individuals in Spinoza. Spinoza-Leibniz Workshop. Michigan State University. 2016.

6. Two Existence Conditions on Harm. 2016 Meeting of the International Association of the Philosophy of Death and Dying. Syracuse University. 2016.

5. Two Existence Conditions on Harm. Austin Graduate Ethics and Normativity Talks. University of Texas. 2015.

4. Two Existence Conditions on Harm. 67th Annual Northwest Philosophy Association Conference. North Idaho College. 2015.

3. Novel Properties and Composition. 9th Annual Brown University Graduate Philosophy Conference. Brown University. 2014.

2. Novel Properties and Composition. 66th Annual Northwest Philosophy Association Conference. Central Washington University. 2014.

1. Toward a Theory of the Group as a Whole. 31st Annual I.S.P.S.O. Conference. University of Oxford. 2013.