On the healing edge of emotion research...

RESEARCH:
Methods: Interdisciplinary, Analytic, and Empirical
Areas of Specialization: Metaphysics (Philosophy of Emotion & Philosophy of Mind), Epistemology, Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy of Social Science, Ethics and Policy Studies
Areas of Competence: Experimental Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Moral Psychology
Areas of Interests: Game Theory, Public Choice Theory, Political Economics, Philosophy of Language, History of Western Philosophy (Ancient Greek, Modern, 20th Century, ), and Asian Philosophy (Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian philosophy)

RESEARCH METHOD

I am trained in the Analytic tradition of philosophy, but my philosophical perspectives and insights are also influenced by feminist, continental, and eastern traditions. I take an interdisciplinary approach to philosophy that is founded on the belief that many problems within a specific area of philosophy, along with their solutions, are intimately related to problems and solutions in other areas of philosophy and the sciences. I believe it is important to have or gain a wider perspective on philosophical issues so as not to lose sight of the forest for the trees, although a narrow focus on a particular technical problem may be essential to smoothing out various wrinkles and laying bare a clearer picture of the world as one (or a community) understands it.

This approach to philosophy is reflected in my specialization in the philosophy of emotion. Questions about what emotions are, and their significance in our daily lives, are the common strands that bind my broader interests in the history of philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, epistemology, normative philosophy, feminist philosophy, ethics, experimental philosophy, and public policy. I also understand my specialization in the area of emotion to be in fact a specialization in the area of the philosophy of mind.

My interests and concerns in the philosophy of mind betrays the influence of my training as a feminist philosopher, as well as ethics and public policy. In short, I regard my interest in the philosophy of emotion as a way of pursuing a distinctly feminist research program in the philosophy of mind.

FOUNDATIONS

The sum of my current research will be published in my forthcoming monograph, Interdisciplinary Foundations for the Science of Emotion: Unification without Consilience.

This monograph introduces the principles for interdisciplinary research and theorizing in the science of emotion that I initially developed in my Ph.D. dissertation, as well as my theory of emotion as a kind of cognition and language. It also includes an argument for a reductive realist approach to the study of emotion that maintains the necessity and value of both materialistic and mentalistic languages of explanation (which I refer to as semantic dualism about emotion), a theory of intentionality that unifies theories like Daniel Dennett’s (which regard all intentionality to be derived intentionality) and theories like Galen Strawson’s (which acknowledge what many refer to as “original intentionality” as a distinct kind of intentionality), and a theory of knowledge that unifies reliabilist and evidentialist theories of rationality and justification, and therefore also such theories of knowledge.

My monograph also argues that the establishment of intersubjective truths is the key to solving what I refer to as the problem of skepticism, especially for an interdisciplinary science of emotion, and includes a solution to the problem of the criterion and the problem of translation, as well as an argument that the problem of underdetermination is in fact a feature of interdisciplinary pursuits of knowledge rather than a problem.

CURRENT EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY PROJECT

Cross-Cultural Study of Korean and English Speakers' Conception of Shame & Guilt: Intentional Content, Cognitive Style, Valence, and Relationship Closeness Questions about what shame and guilt are, and how they can be distinguished from other experiences such as embarrassment and humiliation have received considerable attention in both the psychological and philosophical literature on shame and guilt. In this project, I will be concerned with understanding what shame and guilt are, and how they might be related to embarrassment. The first series of studies (I) will be concerned with determining whether or not the concepts of “shame” and “guilt” can be differentiated by the standard distinction about their intentional contents that is made in both philosophical and psychological literature: shame involves a focus on a global, negative self-assessment, and guilt involves a focus on one’s action or behavior. The second series of studies (II) will be concerned with determining whether the experimental philosophy intervention for the employment of the concept of “shame” that was developed and introduced in this survey is an effective intervention. The third series of studies (III) will focus on determining whether the factors of analytic versus holistic cognition and relationship closeness to the “audience” or ”critic” have any effect on a person’s employment of the conception of “shame” compared to the concept of “guilt,” as well as whether they have any effect on the valence of one’s experience in the employment of the concept of “shame” compared to the concept of “guilt.” Furthermore, all three studies will also involve determining whether there are cross-cultural differences between Korean-speakers and English-speakers. Hosted on the Open Science Framework