Research Projects
Research Projects
I argue that the procreative asymmetry has plausible epistemic and prudential analogues concerning the acquisition of new beliefs and desires. I hypothesize that these could be instances of a more fundamental asymmetry in our value-based reasons. I provide a unified account that explains all three asymmetries together to support that hypothesis.
Living Without Overall Betterness (Under Review) (Manuscript Available Upon Request)
In ethics, many find the following principle plausible: all else is equal, we ought to choose among our best options. This constrained maximizing principle is more modest and more appealing than an unconstrained maximizing principle endorsed by consequentialists. Moreover, it offers an appealing view about how value informs our moral judgments: in the absence of deontic violations or injustices, value is guiding.
However, many puzzle cases in population ethics, like the Mere Addition Paradox, challenge this principle, because many options in these cases involve no deontic violations. In particular, they invoke a series of pairwise deontic judgments that together violate the transitivity of binary choice ('between A and B, one ought to choose A over B'). This violation means that in these cases, the pairwise judgments cannot all be explained as maximizing a single overall betterness relation (which is commonly taken to be transitive). We are seemingly left with two options: reject some of these judgments, or reject constrained maximizing.
In this paper, I offer an alternative to constrained maximizing that preserves the key idea behind it. I show that we can dispense with the idea of overall betterness without dispensing with the idea that value is guiding. Relying only on modest value claims about what is good for groups of individuals, I show that given some plausible maximizing principles motivated by stability, we can explain all the judgments involved in these puzzle cases as maximizing a family of value relations.
Choice Consistency for Non-Consequentialists (Draft Available Upon Request)
Abstract
While it has been observed that many non-consequentialist moral considerations can lead to deontic judgments that violate basic choice principles, these violations have not received much attention from non-consequentialists. For example, considerations of special relationships, the distinction between killing and letting die, and the procreative asymmetry can lead to deontic judgments that violate the transitivity or acyclicity of pairwise moral choice. These judgments, in turn, can lead to violations of other foundational choice principles. These violations have not been widely discussed by non-consequentialists mainly for two reasons. First, a main reason for endorsing these choice principles is that without them, we cannot explain our deontic judgments as maximizing an overall betterness relation. Proponents of these non-consequentialist considerations are often not wedded to such a maximizing conception of morality. Second, these seemingly inconsistent choice patterns are not unmotivated. On the contrary, each pairwise judgment is straightforwardly explained by these non-consequentialist moral considerations. For proponents of these considerations, these choice principles are thus less appealing in comparison.
This neglect is premature. In this paper, I show that the question of which choice principles are correct for non-consequentialists is an open and thorny question that nonetheless merits our consideration. Although the main argument for these pairwise choice principles and other foundational choice principles is rooted in a maximizing conception of morality, some of them can be motivated on independent grounds. For example, some choice principles are important for non-consequentialists to resist manipulations, where they can be manipulated to end up choosing an option that goes against their own moral commitments. Relatedly, without certain choice principles, these non-consequentialist moral considerations can lead to conflicts between very plausible dynamic choice principles. In the end, by figuring out how best to respond to these arguments can help non-consequentialists develop an illuminating theory of the consistency of moral choice.
Colonialism and Imperialism (In Progress)
(Co-author with Anthony Nguyen): while imperialism and colonialism have often been used interchangeably in philosophy and history, we argue that a distinction can be made. While some senses of the word "colonialism" are morally innocuous (i.e. colonizing Mars), we argue that there is a sense of the word that involves a necessary pro tanto moral wrong, just like how words like "sexism" and "racism" are commonly used. More importantly, we argue that its necessary wrongs are different from that of imperialism. This distinction, we argue, can help us precisely characterize the different wrongs committed by historical empires, and also offer us a new way of looking at historical instances of colonialism and imperialism. One such implication is that on our account, there were colonial practices before the Age of Exploration done by non-Europeans (contrary to what some historians claim), just like there were sexist practices in history before Feminism.