Research Overview
A broad theme of my research is that reflecting on the functions and roles of our concepts and practices can often shed light on philosophical debates.
My dissertation project defended a pluralist, function-based account of blame and examined its implications for blame’s fittingness and productivity. I’m currently working on a paper that uses this account to characterize the phenomenon of victim-blaming.
Another major project concerns the moral value of self-directed emotions. I believe that contemporary analytic philosophy remains too guilt-centered, and I challenge this picture by defending the significance of shame and embarrassment in our moral practices.
In epistemology, I defend a role-based theory of intellectual virtues and apply it to intellectual humility and intellectual pride. I contend that humility and pride are complementary virtues and should be regarded as equally important.
Selected Publications
Embarrassment and the Social Dimensions of Moral Agency
European Journal of Philosophy, 2026
Argues that embarrassment performs significant functions within the social dimensions of moral agency, despite its moral risks.
Deserved Guilt? A Challenge from Small Wrongdoings
Inquiry, 2026
Challenges the claim that wrongdoers deserve to feel guilty by considering cases involving ordinary, small wrongdoings.
What Is Counterproductive About Angry Blame?
Philosophers’ Imprint, 2025
Develops a new argument for why angry blame is counterproductive: not because it is inherently bad, but because it is designed to do too much.
Intellectual Humility: Beyond the Learner Paradigm
Erkenntnis, 2025
Argues that the existing accounts of intellectual humility focus too much on what it is to be an intellectually humble learner, and proposes a better account.
Rethinking Functionalist Accounts of Blame
The Journal of Ethics, 2024
Challenges the existing functionalist definitions of blame: they can only define a type of practice and cannot be used to explain when a token belongs to the type.
Response-Dependence in Moral Responsibility
American Philosophical Quarterly, 2022
Argues that reactive attitudes are too fine-grained to ground facts about degrees of moral responsibility.
Shame and the Scope of Moral Accountability
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2021
Argues that shame is a reactive attitude and a way of holding oneself accountable.
The Communication Argument and the Pluralist Challenge
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2021
Challenges a common line of reasoning about morally responsible agency based on a pluralist, function-based account of blame.
The Experimental Critique and Philosophical Practice
Philosophical Psychology, 2018.
Contrasts philosophical intuitions, which are often about general principles and are context-rich, with those case-specific intuitions often investigated in X-Phi.