Research Overview 

Journal Articles

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• “Kant on the Obstacles of Reflection: Affects, Passions, and Maxims”, accepted with minor revisions, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (email me for a copy)

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Abstract: I focus on a puzzle in Kant's text. The puzzle is the following: Kant writes that both passions and affects impede reflection. However, he also holds that passions can be paired with reflection, while affects cannot. Importantly, this would imply a contradiction regarding passions: they both impede and can be paired with reflection. I solve the puzzle by arguing that Kant is drawing on two notions of ‘reflection’, and then seek to figure out which kinds. I argue that there is a kind of reflection that both passions and affects impede, and this is the ability to properly assess whether one should act from one’s affect or one’s passion in light of some normative standards. Moreover, I argue that there is a kind of reflection that passions do not impede but that affects impede, and this is the ability to explicitly endorse at least some of the more general maxims that underlie one’s maxim.

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• "A Kantian Account of Aesthetically Sublime Rage", forthcoming, Ergo.

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​Abstract: I develop and defend an account of a specific kind of anger, which Kant calls “aesthetically sublime rage”. Unlike other kinds of anger, aesthetically sublime rage does not play a motivational function for the subject throughout the time she is feeling rage. Because of this, aesthetically sublime rage escapes the problems that anger has when it motivates one to act. Despite not playing such a direct motivational function, aesthetically sublime rage can have an indirect motivational role that is future-directed. As such, it can help the subject achieve and realize moral ends in the future, when the rage subsides and proper reflection is more likely to be achieved.

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• “The Role of Sympathy in Critical Reasoning and the Limitations of Current Medical AI”, forthcoming, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (co-authored with Kyle Stroh). 

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Abstract: The recent developments of medical AI systems (MAIS) open up questions as to whether and to what extent MAIS can be modeled to include empathetic understanding, as well as what impact MAIS’ lack of empathetic understanding would have on its ability to perform the necessary critical analyses for reaching a diagnosis and recommending medical treatment. In this paper, we argue that current medical AI systems’ ability to empathize with patients is severely limited due to its lack of first-person experiences with human interests and that efforts to correct for this deficit – by having MAIS interpret patients’ medical and non-medical interests – will encounter significant obstacles. Finally, we demonstrate how MAIS’ lack of empathy is likely to hinder its performance in crucial aspects of the processes through which useful medical diagnoses are reached and through which appropriate treatment recommendations for patients are determined.   

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• Challenging the Formal Function View: The Role of Conscience and Moral Judgment in Practical Deliberation in Fichte’s System of Ethics”, provisionally forthcoming in Fichte–Studien

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Abstract: What is the relation between conscience and practical deliberation in Fichte’s System of Ethics? An interpretation, which has long been the standard one, holds that conscience plays a first-order material role by telling us what we should do. A recent alternative, called the ‘Formal Function View’, claims that conscience plays only the second-order formal role of testing our convictions. I argue that there are good reasons for rejecting both of these positions. First, one should reject the standard interpretation because it can be shown to be unacceptably arbitrary. Second, one should reject the Formal Function View because a) it misunderstands the role Fichte attributes to theoretical inquiry; and b) it fails to attribute to conscience a distinctive role. Finally, I argue that a modified version of the standard interpretation which avoids vicious arbitrariness is more apt than the Formal Function View for characterizing conscience’s role.

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• “What Is It to Incorporate an Incentive into a Maxim?”, Studia Kantiana, V. 21, N. 2 (2023): 45-60.

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Abstract: The Incorporation Thesis makes it clear that, according to Kant, we are not caused to act by this or that incentive, but rather we let it move us by incorporating it in our maxim. However, Kant does not provide us with a more detailed account of incorporation in which he specifies what incorporation amounts to, why it is necessary, and how it works. In this paper, I aim to lay the foundation for such an account by appealing to Kant’s notion of interest. I argue that to incorporate an incentive into a maxim amounts to forming an interest on the basis of that incentive. Moreover, I argue that Kant’s notion of interest allows for the idea that acting on an inclination does not necessarily involve taking that inclination as the object of one’s reflection.

 

Chapters

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• “Affects, Choice, and Kant’s Incorporation Thesis”, in Rethinking Kant, ed. Edgar Valdez, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024, pp. 97-121.

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Abstract: I focus on the relation between affects and the Incorporation Thesis in Kant’s ethics. I challenge the following view: According to Kant, when affects lead to action, the relation between one’s affect and one’s action is one of being caused to act by one’s affect in such a way that it leaves no room for choice by the agent. I argue that Kant’s text supports an alternative reading of how affects lead to action. On the view I propose, when affects lead to action, the relation between one’s affect and one’s action is such that one unreflectively chooses to act on a maxim adopted either for some implicit reason or for some explicit bad reason.

 

Book Reviews

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• The Nature of Desire, edited by Federico Lauria and Julien A. Deonna, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 18 (2021): 95-98.

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Work in Progress ​​

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• A paper on Kant's account of race (co-authored with Caitlin Hamblin-Yule)

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In which we argue that a significant turning point in Kant’s views on race appears in Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, where Kant’s account of radical evil indicates that he no longer adhered to the thick biological essentialism to which he was committed in his previous works on race.

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• A paper on emotions and moral worth 

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In which I side with those scholars who argue that emotions are connected to value and reasons, but argue that emotions and nonetheless insufficient for genuine moral worth. 

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• A paper on emotions and allyship

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In which I focus on the feeling of sympathy, and argue that Kant’s account of sympathy provides agents with grounds for distinguishing between some good ways and some bad ways of being an ally to members of marginalized groups.​​​

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• ​A paper on Kant's duty of apathy 

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In which I investigate Kant’s duty of apathy as it relates to affects. I focus on the following view: Since we cannot control our affects when we are in a state of affect, the duty of apathy only requires us to cultivate our feelings by making sure that they do not become affects. I show that this view is not supported by Kant’s text, and I argue that the duty of apathy also entails the positive requirement that, when we are in a state of affect, we pay heed to the voice of conscience.

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