Research

Much of moral philosophy focuses on hard cases and abstract principles. My work starts elsewhere — in the texture of ordinary relationships and practices, where moral complexity runs no less deep for being familiar. I examine how our relationships, practices, and institutions scaffold human agency, shaping how we make sense of ourselves and the ethical significance of our world. These capacities do not emerge in isolation: they are cultivated through relationships, sustained by social practices, and formed by our institutions and communities. Understanding ethical life therefore requires attention not only to what people ought to do, but to how they become the kinds of persons capable of giving others their due and living well in the first place.

I pursue these questions from both contemporary and comparative perspectives, bringing early Chinese philosophy into conversation with contemporary analytic philosophy. At the intimate end: what makes blame effective, when paternalism is permissible within close relationships, and why friendship is inherently vulnerable to exploitation. At the impersonal end: the symbolic power of the state, the ethics of taxation, and the historical contingency of modern liberalism. Running through both is an interest in the surprising places moral complexity turns up — in rational persuasion, in debts of gratitude, and in the act of supporting someone on faith.

More recently, I have turned my attention to the ethics of artificial intelligence, asking how AI systems transform the capacities, relationships, practices, and sense of purpose at the heart of ethical life.

In Progress:

“Generative AI and the Loss of Practice” (draft available upon request)

Recent discussions of generative AI have focused on concerns such as algorithmic bias, labor displacement, and accountability. I consider a different question: what is lost when technologies reproduce the products of human activities while bypassing or reducing the human participation in practices that sustain them? Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre's account of internal goods, Joseph Raz's analysis of social forms, and the Confucian account of ritual (li), I argue that many forms of value depend on participation in socially structured activities that cultivate evaluative capacities — the ability to perceive, judge, and respond appropriately to what matters. Generative AI technologies that bypass such participation may weaken the very conditions under which these capacities are formed.

Publications:

“Personal Relationships in Cross-Cultural Perspective: The Aftermath of Moral Failure,” The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Personal Relationships, ed. Sarah Stroud & Monika Betzler (forthcoming)

How should we respond to moral failure within our relationships? In Western thought, repair typically unfolds dialogically — through resentment, apology, and forgiveness — as parties work to restore mutual recognition. Early Confucian thinkers, by contrast, turn attention inward: when wronged, one examines one's own conduct and fulfills one's role with greater care, rather than demanding acknowledgment from the offender. I argue that this contrast reflects deeper differences in self-respect and selfhood — and that the Confucian response is, surprisingly, more individualist than the Western one.

“Confucian AI Ethics,” Philosophy East & West (forthcoming)

The leading approach in AI ethics — preference-based utilitarianism — reduces moral value to preference satisfaction, overlooking the formative and relational conditions of ethical life. Drawing on Confucian ideas of ren (humaneness), yi (appropriate judgment), shu (mutuality), and li (ritual propriety), this paper argues that AI systems are best understood as technologies that already participate in the practices through which character and community are cultivated. At stake is not only what such systems do, but how their design shapes the conditions under which moral capacities, character, and community develop.

“Agency and the Articulation of the Confucian Self,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol 52, no. 3-4 (2026) 

What is the relationship between agency and selfhood? I develop a broadly Confucian account according to which the self is realized and disclosed through practical activity. According to the "articulation model," actions are expressions of the self in the process of gaining articulacy. My discussion draws on the Analects, Mengzi, and Xunzi, and engages with contemporary work by Christine Korsgaard and Talbot Brewer.

“Debts of Gratitude in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Confucian and Western Ethics,” (with Lok Chui Choo), Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol 42, no. 1 (2025) 

Gratitude occupies an important place in both Confucian and Western ethical traditions, yet the two traditions understand it in strikingly different ways. We focus on one key difference: the presence of the notion of "debts of gratitude" in Western thought and its relative absence in Confucianism. We argue that this difference reflects contrasting ethical values, though the two traditions ultimately share more than might initially appear.

“Are Ethical Explanations Explanatory?” (with Casey Lewry and Tania Lombrozo), Cognition, Vol. 250 (2024)

Why were women given the right to vote? "Because it is morally wrong to deny women the right to vote." Such explanations appeal to ethical claims rather than causes, raising questions about whether they genuinely explain anything at all. Across three studies, we show that people's judgments about explanation are shaped by their views about the nature of morality, and that explanations in turn shape inferences about moral commitment.

“Exploitation and Friendship,” Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Friendship, ed. Diane Jeske (2023)

Friendship involves vulnerability, and vulnerability creates opportunities for exploitation. I argue that because vulnerability is an essential feature of friendship, the possibility of exploitation is ineliminable as well. I then consider how we might nonetheless reduce our exposure to unfair treatment within friendships.

“Review: Doing What You Really Want,” Journal of Moral Philosophy, Vol. 20 (2023)

What is Mengzi's conception of human nature? To what extent does his account of human flourishing accommodate genuine conflicts among our values and commitments? In this review essay, I engage Franklin Perkins' interpretation of Mengzi while taking up these broader philosophical questions.

“Conversational Disgust and Social Oppression,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Special Forum Series on 'Walls and Co-Existence', Vol. 48, no. 2 (2021)

Emotions do not merely reflect social hierarchies; they can also help sustain them. I examine how linguistic expressions of disgust in ordinary conversation can activate the morally problematic pressures of underlying structures of oppression. Through the mechanism of presupposition accommodation, such expressions can further generate objectionable disgust contagion — the social transmission of disgust attitudes toward oppressed persons and groups.

“Gratitude and the Common Good,” The Gift and the Common Good: An Intercultural Perspective, ed. Walter Schweidler & Joachim Klose, Nomos-Verlag Akademia (2020)

Gratitude is central to early Confucian ethics, yet the notion of a debt of gratitude is virtually absent from it. Western philosophers, by contrast, commonly discuss gratitude in terms of debts and duties. I argue that this difference reflects deeper contrasts in how social relations are conceived and experienced — and that attending to a social world without the notion of a duty of gratitude sheds unexpected light on the nature of gratitude itself.

“Anticipating Global Justice: Confucianism and Mohism in Classical China,” Global Justice in East Asia, ed. Hugo El Kholi & Jun-Kyeok Kwak, Routledge (2019)

How far do our obligations extend — to those bound to us by family and community, or to all of humanity equally? I argue that this question, central to contemporary debates about global justice, was already at stake in the dispute between the Confucians and Mohists in classical China. The Confucian doctrine of graded love and the Mohist doctrine of impartial concern anticipate, in striking ways, the disagreement between Rawlsians, communitarians, and utilitarians about whether norms of justice apply within bounded communities or extend to all human beings regardless of borders.

“Agency and Deed in Confucian Thought,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 69, no. 2 (2019)

How did the early Confucians understand the relation between agent and deed? I distinguish the Confucian picture from standard causal accounts of action (Davidson, Searle), on which what makes an event an action is the causal involvement of a prior intention. For the early Confucians, I argue, actions express who the agent is: intention, or commitment, is revealed through action rather than standing behind it as its cause. I explore what this expressive account implies for weakness of will, self-deception, and the distinctive form of moral regret — shame as self-disappointment — that emerges from Confucian moral psychology.

“The Virtue of Being Supportive,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 99, no. 2 (2018)

What does it mean to be genuinely supportive of a friend or loved one? I develop an account of supportiveness as a modally demanding virtue. I argue that the virtue furthers the autonomy of the supported person while also promoting a sense of unity in close relationships. More broadly, I explain how supportiveness helps address the familiar challenge of reconciling one's own projects with one's responsibilities to loved ones.

“Paternalism and Intimate Relationships,” The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Paternalism, ed. Kalle Grill & Jason Hanna, Routledge (2018)

Close relationships can alter the moral significance of paternalistic intervention — but how? I argue that the constitutive features of intimate relationships, such as shared history, mutual vulnerability, and trust, can generate stronger reasons to intervene in a friend or lover's affairs while also weakening the presumptive reasons of respect that would otherwise count against it. I also argue that paternalism in intimate relationships differs in important ways from institutional paternalism, where liberty-limitation rather than disrespect for competence is the primary moral concern.

“Respect and the Efficacy of Blame,” Oxford Studies in Agency & Responsibility, Vol. 4, ed. David Shoemaker (2017)

Why does blame sometimes succeed in changing people's attitudes and behavior, and sometimes fail? I examine the role played by respect—specifically, the desire to maintain the respect of others—in making blame effective. I offer an account of blame's operation across three kinds of cases: standard, intermediate, and proleptic. I then suggest that effective blame directed toward the morally distant can approximate manipulation and coercion, leaving a moral residue.

“Supporting Intimates on Faith,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 81 (2017)

Supporting those we care about often requires a kind of faith in them. Drawing on Lara Buchak's account of faith as a non-doxastic, risk-taking attitude and Philip Pettit's notion of modally demanding value, I argue that faith-based support can play an important role in fostering autonomy and promoting solidarity within close relationships.

“Tax Ethics” (with Geoffrey Brennan), in A Companion to Applied Philosophy, eds. K. Lippert-Rasmussen, K. Brownlee, & D. Coady, Wiley-Blackwell (2016)

Taxation raises two normative questions that are often conflated: what tax arrangements a society ought to adopt, and how citizens ought to relate to an existing system. We argue that these questions are genuinely distinct and require separate treatment — and that the broadly Rawlsian account advanced by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel in The Myth of Ownership obscures important features of both.

“Vulnerability in Intimate Relationships,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, Spindel Supplement: 'Exploitation', Vol. 54 (2016)

Love and friendship make us vulnerable in distinctive ways. I argue that this vulnerability is not merely a contingent feature of close relationships but an essential one. Because it is essential, the possibility of wrongful exploitation can be mitigated but never entirely eliminated.

“The Morality of State Symbolic Power,” Social Theory and Practice, Special Issue on 'Dominating Speech', Vol. 42, no. 2 (2016)

States exercise power not only through laws and coercion but also through symbols — monuments, memorials, holidays, street names. I argue that this symbolic power raises a distinctive problem of legitimacy: political symbols can influence citizens' values by bypassing their rational capacities, failing to respect their autonomy. Nevertheless, I argue that the deployment of nonrational political symbolism can be permissible when it results from democratic procedures and is surrounded by liberal institutions that ensure transparency, counter-speech, and public justification.

“Rational Persuasion as Paternalism,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 42, no. 1 (2014)

Can giving someone good reasons for action ever be objectionably paternalistic? I argue that it can. Rational persuasion may express distrust in another person's capacity to evaluate evidence and may intrude upon their deliberative activities in ways that conflict with respect for agency and autonomy. I then identify the factors that determine whether the provision of reasons is respectful.

“Exploring Meta-Ethical Commitments: Moral Objectivity and Moral Progress,” (with Tania Lombrozo and Kevin Uttich), in Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology, eds. H. Sarkissian & J. Cole Wright, Bloomsbury Press (2014)

How are people's metaethical commitments related to one another? We compare two influential empirical approaches to measuring belief in moral objectivity (Goodwin and Darley 2008 and Sarkissian et al. 2011) and examine its relationship to belief in moral progress and belief in a just world.

“An Error Theory for Liberal Universalism,” Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 21, no. 3 (2013)

How might a liberal universalist explain the failure of past societies to recognize liberal values? Taking up a challenge posed by Bernard Williams, I develop a theory of error that appeals to socio-historical conditions that rendered liberal values and reasons epistemically inaccessible while also limiting people's motivation to act on them.

“Lamentable Necessities,” Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 66, no. 4 (2013)

Modern liberalism — with its commitments to individual freedom and political equality — is something most of us have strong reasons to value. But its emergence may have depended on certain large-scale historical injustices: slavery in Ancient Greece, absolutist monarchy in pre-modern Europe, the European conquest of the New World. What should we make of this? I explore how those who greatly value modern liberalism ought to evaluate the injustices that may have been necessary conditions for its emergence.

Online Video:

“Blame's Efficacy and the Moral Community,” 11th East-West Philosophers' Conference, May 2016