Dissertation
In my dissertation I addressed problems concerning the moral significance of our affective attitudes toward others. A version of each chapter described below has been published or is being prepared for publication.
“How We Value” argues that affect plays a central role in our valuing the people and things we value. Other philosophers—among them, Samuel Scheffler—have taken emotional responsiveness to be one of several elements of what it is to value something. I argue that emotion and other forms of affect serve to coordinate various ways in which we respond to things we value. Affect drives, and brings coherence to, the patterns of attention, motivation, and practical reasoning we exhibit as valuers. On the picture that emerges, valuing is a form of practical activity. Our theoretical beliefs as to what is or isn’t valuable, I argue, do not play an essential role in this form of activity.
“Is Respect Owed?” challenges an entrenched philosophical picture on which what we feel toward others is beyond the reach of deontic morality. I argue that we have an imperfect duty to experience feelings of respect toward others. This is not a duty to feel, if by that one means a duty which directly regulates our being in emotional states. It is a duty to engage in a kind of attentional practice by means of which we regularly and equitably experience others in certain ways. I show how the view resists objections philosophers have long taken to rule a duty of feeling.
“How to (be)come Justifiably Angry” draws an analogy between anger and familiar forms of self-defense and other defense, arguing that anger can be justified in much the way that defensive force can be justified. The account avoids a deep problem with consequentialist and contractualist justifications of anger, without implying a controversial claim about the moral responsibility of those with whom we are angry. It also provides a new resource for criticizing the proclivity to anger exhibited by many in our current social and political climate.
New Projects
The Ethics of Technology
In my role as Fellow at UNC’s Educating for the Virtues of Attention initiative, I am working on two papers in the ethics of technology. In a paper called “Self-Control in the Attention Economy” I argue that a popular metaphor, “brain rot”, misleads us about the way in which digital distraction is threatening our most valuable attentional practices. Drawing on Chandra Sripada’s work on addiction, I argue that central to a proper explanation are two features: the unreliability of our executive control over our attention and the overwhelming frequency with which we now encounter opportunities for distraction. To reliably attend to what matters, I argue, we need the help of habit and environmental design. In a public-facing piece called “Cigarettes and Robot Lovers” I argue that product labeling is an inadequate response to regulating “humanized” artificial intelligence systems. In certain forms these systems threaten a wider range of goods, and a larger population, than cigarettes ever could.
Moral Epistemology and Moral Learning
In “What (Good) is a Moral Epiphany?” I draw on the cognitive science of insight in problem solving toward understanding “moral epiphanies” as a kind of discontinuous moral learning. The paper argues that a central epistemic function of moral epiphanies is to put us on paths of routine moral learning that can be difficult for us to come to otherwise. I plan to follow this work with a paper on the prospects and perils of employing images and other forms of evocative media toward moral learning. Both papers reflect a broader research interest in moral learning and moral epistemology.
Future-Directed Intention
In a paper called “What’s in a Resolution?” I tackle a familiar puzzle that arises in connection with a device we use to turn fleeting experiences of moral clarity into right conduct over time—namely, resolving to act. Could resolving to do something give one a reason to do it? I argue that it could, and plausibly does, insofar as following through on one’s resolution is itself a form of valuing the object of valuation in light of which one formed the resolution.
Epistemology and the Ethics of Belief
My interest in the ethics of attitudes began with work in the ethics of belief. At the start of my doctoral studies I published a paper in Philosophical Studies entitled “Regrettable Beliefs”. The paper explores an evidentialism-friendly strategy for accommodating intuitions elicited in support of the claim that moral considerations bear on the epistemic justification of belief. I argue that an attitude of regret is called for in response to forming certain beliefs, even if we are epistemically justified in forming them. I am currently developing a paper that argues that certain morally disturbing beliefs, if justifiably believed, nevertheless fail to indicate the epistemic achievement we ought to be aiming for—namely, understanding. The beliefs at issue are held in connection with unsupported generic beliefs, which undermine the contribution they might otherwise make to understanding.