RESEARCH

Papers currently under review are marked with an asterisk*
​Please email me if you're interested in reading a draft.
dpayton[at]virginia[dot]edu
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SOCIAL METAPHYSICS &
PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY

PUBLISHED WORK
Emancipatory Methodology [with Elizabeth Barnes] (Ethics, 2025). This is a paper about the role of political commitments in descriptive projects in social ontology. PDF

Social Properties (The Routledge Handbook of Properties, 2024).
This paper is a survey of the existing literature on the social construction of properties. PhilPapers | PDF ​ ​ ​

Searching for Social Properties (Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 2023). This is a paper about what it takes for a property to be social. PhilPapers | PDF
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​WORKS-IN-PROGRESS
Normative Social Ontology (In Progress).
In this paper I respond to a recent challenge for deflationists working in social ontology. I then argue that metaphysical realists working in this literature face similar challenges, and that this symmetry illuminates something important about the role of value on each framework.*

System Caging (In Progress).
This is a paper about the material nature and harms of systemic marginalization.* 

Feminist Methodology and Social Ontology (In Progress). In this paper I identify a tension in deflationary approaches to doing feminist metaphysics. I argue this tension can be resolved, but what it takes to do so illuminates something important about feminist methodology.*

PHILOSOPHY OF SEXUALITY &
AESTHETICS

 PUBLISHED WORK
Scenes as Games: Agency, Autonomy, and Value in BDSM (Hypatia, 2025). This is a paper about the metaphysics & ethics of BDSM scenes, analyzed as games. PhilPapers| PDF​​
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​WORKS-IN-PROGRESS
Sexual Compromises (In Progress).
This is a paper about the ethics of sexual compromises.* 

Disgusting Sex (In Progress). 
In this paper I argue that our aesthetic judgments about sex and our moral judgments about sex are closely related in politically important ways. Abstract

Darkness Visible (In Progress).This is a paper about James Baldwin's analysis of the problem of race in the US, modeled on the problem of evil in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY

Why We Shouldn't Compare Transracial to Transgender Identity [with Robin Dembroff] (Nov. 2020, Boston Review).
Unlike gender inequality, racial inequality primarily accumulates across generations. Transracial identification undermines collective reckoning with that injustice. ​​Published Version