Most of my research lies at the intersection of ethics, philosophy of psychology, and Chinese philosophy. The following contains brief descriptions of my current and future projects in each of these areas.
Moral Psychology and Normative Ethics
Individuals can have flourishing relationships in spite of genuine differences in their moral and religious beliefs, or rancorous relationships in spite of substantial agreement on major moral issues. This everyday phenomenon structures and animates my research in moral psychology and normative ethics. I look to uncover the conditions that foster agreement and accommodation between individuals in diverse, pluralistic groups, and to promote norms favorable to achieving these ends. This is the focus of my dissertation, where I draw upon resources from social psychology and classical Confucian thought to develop a contemporary ethical theory.
Metaethics
My approach to metaethics is naturalistic. My aim is to understand morality as a natural phenomenon, and I use resources from relevant disciplines—such as evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and psychology—to inform my work. Specifically, I am interested in the metaethical divide among naturalists, between pluralistic realists on the one hand and relativists on the other.
Most naturalists accept a plurality of moral systems as being true owing to standard ecological and psychological variation. Such natural variation precludes the possibility that all individuals or societies will have the exact same moral beliefs. However, disagreement persists as to whether this variation is consistent with moral realism, or whether it supports some form of moral relativism. My thoughts in this area have developed in collaboration with Owen Flanagan and David Wong, and are partially reflected in a pair of papers we co-wrote on moral naturalism. However, the issue received only limited treatment in these papers, and I plan to focus more narrowly on the realism/relativism divide in future projects.
Folk Psychology and Philosophical Intuitions
A number of my current research projects aim at probing folk intuitions on topics relevant to moral philosophy (such as free will, responsibility, and agency) and uncovering the mechanisms driving these intuitions. These projects are collaborative and interdisciplinary, using the methods of experimental psychology to investigate philosophical issues. In particular, I have been exploring the folk concept of intentional action (i.e. what it means to do something intentionally), whether individuals find it appropriate to attribute conscious mental states to collectivities (such as corporations and music groups), and whether individuals believe moral responsibility to be possible in a deterministic universe. These two latter projects include significant cross-cultural components.
Some of these projects have uncovered pervasive differences between the intuitions of philosophers and those of ordinary folk, leading to questions concerning the role of intuitions in philosophical theories. For example, what are philosophers doing when they appeal to intuitions about particular cases as evidence in favor of one theory over another (as is often done in ethics and epistemology): are such intuitions taken to be reliable because they cohere with those of other professional philosophers, or because they cohere with a much wider group, including ordinary, pre-philosophical folk? What response is appropriate when philosophers find their intuitions conflicting with those of the folk? These questions have been attracting renewed attention as a result of the kinds of studies outlined above, and as my research enfolds I plan to engage this meta-philosophical debate concerning intuitions and their role in philosophical theories.
Classical Chinese Philosophy
The classical period of Chinese philosophy includes many diverse schools and thinkers. Most of my research thus far has focused on two in particular: Confucius (ca. 6th century BCE), and Zhuangzi (ca. 4th century BCE). Some of my work has aimed at understanding these thinkers within their historical contexts (such as my exploration of Zhuangzi’s skepticism concerning Confucian efforts at social reform). However, I also use classical texts as resources to address philosophical issues of today. At times, these approaches inform one another. For example, while attempting to better elucidate the nebulous virtue of de or ‘moral power’ in Confucius’s Analects, I was drawn to previously overlooked passages highlighting the subtle yet powerful impact of minor details of one’s own comportment on the behavior of others. This in turn led me to investigate the literature on automaticity in social psychology, which highlights the interconnectedness of human social behavior, and to argue for its relevance to contemporary moral theorizing. Samples of my papers on Confucius and Zhuangzi can be found here.
Finally, I have prepared a book-length manuscript study of the two earliest extant commentaries on theDaodejing(also known as the Laozi), a seminal text of both religious and philosophical Daoism and one of the most influential books in Chinese history. These commentaries remain understudied in the West, as they are mired in questions of authorship and intellectual affiliation and lack reliable translations. My manuscript aims to fill this lacuna in Daoist scholarship, addressing the textual issues and providing complete translations of each commentary. It is currently in a second draft, but has been shelved for close to a year while I've pursued other, more time-sensitive projects (including my dissertation). Please click here for a brief abstract of this study, and for samples of my translations.