Research
Research
Research Interests:
Normative Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Applied Ethics
Metaethics
Philosophy of Games and Sport
Chinese Philosophy
Philosophy of Race
Environmental Philosophy
Publications:
"Asian Americans, Negative Action, and Racial Indirection." Kim, David H. (ed.). Republic Re-Oriented: Essays in Asian American Philosophy. (Forthcoming at SUNY Press).
ABSTRACT: Asian Americans recently have been prominent members of the opposition against two kinds of measures for increasing racial equity in educational access: (a) use of race-conscious admissions policies, such as affirmative action; and (b) replacing standardized entrance exams with alternative selection systems. In light of this, I seek to address the following question: How should efforts to increase educational access for disadvantaged racial minorities reckon with the fact that many Asian Americans are politically active in opposing both race-conscious and facially race-neutral means for pursuing that aim? Inspired by Derrick Darby's defense of “postracial remedies" in A Realistic Blacktopia: Why We Must Unite to Fight, the answer I offer is that those efforts should employ what I call a “Realistic Blacktopian Approach" to addressing race-based educational access barriers. The approach maintains that while we should remain conscious of the racial dimensions of those barriers, our efforts to address them should prioritize use of race-neutral policies of a specific sort. Namely, they are ones that—despite not issuing race-specific directives—disproportionately improve educational access for Asian Americans and other people of color in a highly transparent way.
"Asian Americans and Affirmative Action." Maya von Ziegesar, David H. Kim, and Ronald R. Sundstrom (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Asian American Philosophy. (Forthcoming at Oxford University Press)
ABSTRACT: The salience of Asian Americans to discussions of affirmative action is at an all time high, as exemplified by the U.S. Supreme Court's litigation of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc.’s (SFFA) lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. This chapter argues that in at least two ways philosophical work on affirmative action or racial equity in educational access more generally could benefit from centering Asian Americans. First, highlighting how Asian Americans have shaped disputes over affirmative action helps with determining the morally best option for pursuing racial equity in higher education now that SFFA legally triumphed over Harvard and North Carolina. Second, indigenous Asian practices and their associated philosophical traditions purportedly influence many Asian Americans' conceptions of merit. Those practices and traditions can help with developing and justifying new admissions programs that implement a conception of merit that is race equity-friendly and unlikely to antagonize Asian Americans.
"The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans as a Basis for Afro-Asian Solidarity: A Civic Republican Conception" [To be included in an edited collection of papers from the Howard University Philosophy of the Black Experience Conference] (Under Consideration at Palgrave Macmillan).
ABSTRACT: [Forthcoming]
“A Confucian Mutualist Theory of Sport.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 50(2) (2023): 256-280.
ABSTRACT: This article develops a novel theory of sport that I call ‘Confucian mutualism’. Confucian mutualism is underpinned by the Confucian Golden Rule and the Confucian conception of human dignity. It resembles the mutualist theory of sport developed by Robert L. Simon in maintaining that sport participants ethically ought to prioritize promoting sporting excellence both in themselves and in their co-participants. However, while Simon’s mutualism maintains that sporting excellence consists in proficiency at sport constitutive skills, Confucian mutualism maintains that sporting excellence consists in success at achieving the Confucian virtues through sport participation. I provide a preliminary case for why Confucian mutualism’s virtue-centric conception of sporting excellence makes it better able than Simon’s mutualism to explain why sporting excellence is stance-independently ethically significant for all sport participants. I do so by trying to show that we have prima facie justification for believing that Confucian mutualism is not vulnerable to certain kinds of criticisms that have been leveled at Simon’s mutualism.
“Saving the Last Person from Radical Scepticism: How to Justify Attributions of Intrinsic Value to Nature without Intuition or Empirical Evidence” (Co-authored with Allen Thompson). Environmental Values 32 (2023): 91-111.
ABSTRACT: Toby Svoboda argues that humans cannot ever justifiably attribute intrinsic value to nature because we can never have evidence that any part of non-human nature has intrinsic value. We argue that, at best, Svoboda’s position leaves us with uncertainty about whether there is intrinsic value in the non-human natural world. This uncertainty, however, together with reason to believe that at least some non-human natural entities would possess intrinsic value if anything does, leaves us in a position to acquire evidence that nonhuman nature has intrinsic value. We appeal to Michael Huemer’s Probabilistic Reasons Principle to argue that we have direct reasons to not act in ways destructive to non-human nature, even if this reason is defeasible. Hence, if having intrinsic value just is being a source of direct reasons, it also implies that non-human nature has intrinsic value.
“On a Purported Disanalogy between Cycling and Mixed Martial Arts” (Co-authored with Benjamin A. White). Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 49(2) (2022): 177-194.
ABSTRACT: Nicholas Dixon’s Kantian argument for why mixed martial arts (MMA) is intrinsically immoral has received several critical responses. We offer an additional critical response. Unlike previous responses, ours does not rely on an interpretation of the categorical imperative that Dixon would find tendentious. Instead, we grant that Dixon’s views about what makes other sports consistent with the categorical imperative are correct and argue from this assumption that MMA is also consistent with the categorical imperative. Our argument focuses on Dixon’s claims about certain cycling tactics, which we call ‘pain-leveraging cycling tactics’. We argue that MMA is consistent with the categorical imperative for the same sort of reasons that Dixon claims make pain-leveraging cycling tactics consistent with the categorical imperative.
Invited Review of On Boxing: Critical Interventions in the Bittersweet Science, By Joseph D. Lewandowski. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport (2024).
Dissertation Abstract:
Essays in Asian American Social and Political Philosophy
This dissertation focuses on issues in the unexplored area of Asian American social and political philosophy. Its constituent essays illustrate that greater scholarly attention to that area is worthwhile for at least two reasons. First, various forms of stigma and disadvantage that beset Asian Americans are similar to, though importantly different from, the sorts that affect other minorities in the U.S. This distinctive social location gives rise to issues that call for serious philosophical engagement. Second, the standpoints of Asian Americans are helpful for theorizing concepts—such as culture, domination, race neutrality, and solidarity—of interest to social and political philosophers.
“Asian Americans, Negative Action, and Racial Indirection,” was written in response to the fact that Asian Americans recently have been prominent members of the opposition against two kinds of measures for increasing racial equity in educational access: (a) use of race-conscious admissions policies, such as affirmative action; and (b) replacing standardized entrance exams with alternative selection systems. In light of this, I seek to address the following question: How should efforts to increase educational access for disadvantaged racial minorities reckon with the fact that many Asian Americans are politically active in opposing both race-conscious and facially race-neutral means for pursuing that aim? Inspired by Derrick Darby's defense of “postracial remedies" in A Realistic Blacktopia: Why We Must Unite to Fight, the answer I offer is that those efforts should employ what I call a “Realistic Blacktopian Approach" to addressing race-based educational access barriers. The approach maintains that while we should acknowledge the racial dimensions of those barriers, our efforts to address them should prioritize use of race-neutral policies of a specific sort. Namely, they are ones that—despite not issuing race-specific directives—disproportionately improve educational access for Asian Americans and other people of color in a highly transparent way.
“The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans as a Basis for Afro-Asian Solidarity: A Civic Republican Defense” draws on work in the African American civic republican tradition and sociologist Claire Jean Kim’s influential racial triangulation framework. That framework describes how Asian Americans, Blacks, and Whites are racialized in relation to one another. I argue that Blacks and Asian Americans morally ought to cultivate a form of Afro-Asian solidarity that helps dismantle cultural elements highlighted by Kim’s framework that raise the vulnerability of both groups to racial domination. I also argue that such Afro-Asian solidarity is crucial for achieving broadly socialist socioeconomic reforms in the contemporary U.S. such that socialist civic republicans should advocate forging it.
In “Pan-Asian Solidarity in Asian America: A Moral Philosophical Conception,” I take inspiration from philosophical work on Black solidarity to address various questions regarding pan-Asian solidarity. Drawing on philosophical and social scientific work on pan-Asian solidarity movements, I argue that the moral value of forging pan-Asian solidarity in contemporary Asian America stems from how it promotes three things: morally desirable preservation of Asian cultures, ethnoracial self-respect and self-esteem among Asian Americans, and political engagement among Asian Americans that benefits both Asian Americans and other Americans of color. I also argue that the ethical value of such solidarity makes Asian Americans pro tanto morally obligated to forge it.