In graduate school, I wrote mostly about the reactive attitudes involved in our moral responsibility practices, especially: anger, guilt, and blame. Recently, I've been thinking more generally about emotional responses and the norms that govern them. Although emotional attitudes are often formed quickly and non-voluntarily, they are nevertheless subject to rational assessment and susceptible to impact by reasons. An idea that guides my research is that attending to how emotions are rationally governed can help to answer questions about their nature and normative significance. Below, I describe several recent and in-progress article projects.
“Blameworthiness and Constitutive Control” (in Philosophical Studies here; preprint here)
Some philosophers believe that people can be blameworthy for things not under their voluntary control: in particular, for non-voluntarily holding certain objectionable attitudes, such as disregard for others’ wellbeing. I argue that these philosophers overlook a particular way in which agents can control some of their attitudes by making choices about what to do that constitute those attitudes. Once this sort of control is recognized, cases that initially appear to be counterexamples to the principle that blameworthiness requires voluntary control turn out not to be counterexamples after all.
Blame's Commitment to Its Own Fittingness (in Fittingness: Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity, eds. Chris Howard and Richard Rowland, OUP; preprint here)
I argue that blame involves what I call “reflexive endorsement”: a subject’s taking the way she is presently reacting to be warranted on the basis of the blamee’s wrongdoing. This feature of blame best accounts for what it is like for blame to be about another’s wrongdoing; provides reason to regard diverse forms of blame as instances of a unified phenomenon; and explains why blame can feel particularly self-righteous. Noting a similarity between this understanding of blame and Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment, I propose that a reflexive structure similar to blame’s may exist in a wide range of adult emotions and suggest that an analogue of blame’s self-righteous feel can be located in the enthralling quality of other sorts of emotional experiences.
"In Defense of Guilt-Tripping" (forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research; preprint here)
It is tempting to hold that guilt-tripping is morally wrong, either because it is objectionably manipulative, or because it involves gratuitously aiming to make another person suffer, or both. In this article, I develop a picture of guilt according to which guilt is a type of pain that incorporates a commitment to its own justification on the basis of the subject’s wrongdoing. This picture supports the hypothesis that feeling guilty is an especially efficient means for a wrongdoer to come to more deeply understand why his behavior was wrong; it is precisely because guilt is painful and involves such a self-reflexive justificatory element that it is able to play this role. This picture also preserves the possibility that deliberately making others feel guilty needn’t involve aiming gratuitously to harm them and needn’t be objectionably manipulative. It follows that deliberately aiming to make wrongdoers feel guilty as a means of facilitating their moral edification is sometimes morally permissible.
“Hypocritical Blame Is Unfitting” (forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics; draft here)
Philosophers disagree about what, if anything, is wrong with blaming hypocritically, but almost all treat the issue as a moral one: Either there is something morally wrong with hypocritical blame or there isn’t. This paper argues that, although there are moral objections to blaming hypocritically, the first and foremost problem with hypocritical blame is that it’s unfitting. More specifically, it is an enabling condition on blame’s fittingness that the blaming subject be committed to the norm she blames a target person for violating. Because of a connection between fittingness and representational accuracy, recognizing this condition on blame’s fittingness in turn has interesting upshots – both for theorizing about the ethics of hypocrisy and for understanding the significance of blame itself.
“The Subtleties of Fit” (joint work with Oded Na’aman; in Philosophical Studies here; preprint here)
A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by. An act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals, and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses: something is laudable if and only if it’s fitting to laud, lamentable if and only if it’s fitting to lament. Call these the fit/value biconditionals. This paper considers three kinds of apparent counterexamples to the fit/value biconditionals and argues that avoiding them requires qualifying the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered.
“Fittingness and Normative Conventions”
Different ways of normatively evaluating affective responses can sometimes yield divergent assessments. For instance, one’s rage about some grave injustice might simultaneously be apt – or “fitting” – to its object, and yet counterproductive. In this paper, I suggest an explanation for why there is genuine reason to have fitting attitudes even when those attitudes are otherwise ill-advised: that the normative force of fittingness norms is grounded in the expressive power of normative conventions. Just as the word “apple” represents apples because it is conventionally correct to use the word “apple” to refer to apples, so too does rage represent its object as enraging because it is conventionally fitting to respond to the enraging with rage. In turn, there are genuine reasons to have fitting affective responses whenever there are reasons to express recognition of the things that our emotions conventionally represent.
“Affective Commitments”
The purpose of this article is to defend and flesh out a certain picture of the mind: one on which many of our attitudes, including many affective attitudes, are at least partially constituted by rational commitments distinctive to the types of attitudes that they are. On this picture, belief, for instance, constitutively involves a of rational commitment distinctive to belief; fear a rational commitment distinctive to fear; pride a rational commitment distinctive to pride; and so on. A major challenge for this “distinctive commitment view” is to articulate the commitments supposedly constitutive of affective attitudes in a way that keeps them distinct from any commitment constitutive of belief – so that, for example, fear doesn’t just collapse into a belief such as “x is fearsome” or “x is liable to cause harm.” I argue, first, that we have reason to believe that many of our attitudes are constituted by distinctive rational commitments, because we have reason to believe that, for many attitudes, (1) the sets of reasons that bear on the rationalization of those attitudes, and (2) the ways in which those reasons bear, are distinctive to the types of attitudes that they are. I then argue that, provided my prior reasoning is correct, the “distinctive commitments view” is best served by holding that each type of affective attitude, A, involves the reflexive commitment: “considerations that rationalize type-A attitudes, bearing in the ways they rationalize type-A attitudes, rationalize this attitude.” I argue that it is impossible for a commitment with this content to constitute any type of attitude other than an attitude of the type, A, to which it refers.
“Grasping through Feeling?”
It’s natural to think that, at least in some domains, understanding can’t be achieved without some sort of emotional response – that a person hasn’t really understood until she’s had the requisite feelings. Yet, while it’s easy to make a case that affect facilitates understanding (e.g., through its attentional effects), it’s harder to explain why affect would be essential to it. This paper investigates the prospects for holding that feelings are essential to, or perhaps identical with, at least some types of understanding. I consider an argument that seeks to identify understanding and affect on the basis of their similar functional roles – but I reject it on the grounds that it doesn’t explain how affect is supposed to be valuable both epistemically, and in a non-instrumental way.
“Another Look at ‘No Priority’”
“Neo-sentimentalism” about evaluative properties – the view that what makes x, say, amusing, or what makes x blameworthy, depends on the fittingness of sentiments like amusement and blame – is currently experiencing a renaissance in the literatures on both moral responsibility and the philosophy of emotions (Shoemaker 2019 and D’Arms & Jacobson 2023, respectively). This article aims to revive a “no-priority” view (in the spirit Wiggins 1987), according to which, while things are amusing or blameworthy because they’re fitting objects of amusement or blame, they are also fitting to be amused by or fitting to blame because they’re amusing or blameworthy. First, I contend that arguments offered recently for the dependence of values on fitting sentiments can be employed just as well to show the dependence of fitting sentiments on values. I then clarify why the “no-priority” view isn’t viciously circular; The idea is that what’s valuable, and which emotions are fitting, has co-evolved.
“Blameworthiness and Constitutive Control” (in Philosophical Studies here; preprint here)
Some philosophers believe that people can be blameworthy for things not under their voluntary control: in particular, for non-voluntarily holding certain objectionable attitudes, such as disregard for others’ wellbeing. I argue that these philosophers overlook a particular way in which agents can control some of their attitudes by making choices about what to do that constitute those attitudes. Once this sort of control is recognized, cases that initially appear to be counterexamples to the principle that blameworthiness requires voluntary control turn out not to be counterexamples after all.
Blame's Commitment to Its Own Fittingness (in Fittingness: Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity, eds. Chris Howard and Richard Rowland, OUP; preprint here)
I argue that blame involves what I call “reflexive endorsement”: a subject’s taking the way she is presently reacting to be warranted on the basis of the blamee’s wrongdoing. This feature of blame best accounts for what it is like for blame to be about another’s wrongdoing; provides reason to regard diverse forms of blame as instances of a unified phenomenon; and explains why blame can feel particularly self-righteous. Noting a similarity between this understanding of blame and Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment, I propose that a reflexive structure similar to blame’s may exist in a wide range of adult emotions and suggest that an analogue of blame’s self-righteous feel can be located in the enthralling quality of other sorts of emotional experiences.
"In Defense of Guilt-Tripping" (forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research; preprint here)
It is tempting to hold that guilt-tripping is morally wrong, either because it is objectionably manipulative, or because it involves gratuitously aiming to make another person suffer, or both. In this article, I develop a picture of guilt according to which guilt is a type of pain that incorporates a commitment to its own justification on the basis of the subject’s wrongdoing. This picture supports the hypothesis that feeling guilty is an especially efficient means for a wrongdoer to come to more deeply understand why his behavior was wrong; it is precisely because guilt is painful and involves such a self-reflexive justificatory element that it is able to play this role. This picture also preserves the possibility that deliberately making others feel guilty needn’t involve aiming gratuitously to harm them and needn’t be objectionably manipulative. It follows that deliberately aiming to make wrongdoers feel guilty as a means of facilitating their moral edification is sometimes morally permissible.
“Hypocritical Blame Is Unfitting” (forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics; draft here)
Philosophers disagree about what, if anything, is wrong with blaming hypocritically, but almost all treat the issue as a moral one: Either there is something morally wrong with hypocritical blame or there isn’t. This paper argues that, although there are moral objections to blaming hypocritically, the first and foremost problem with hypocritical blame is that it’s unfitting. More specifically, it is an enabling condition on blame’s fittingness that the blaming subject be committed to the norm she blames a target person for violating. Because of a connection between fittingness and representational accuracy, recognizing this condition on blame’s fittingness in turn has interesting upshots – both for theorizing about the ethics of hypocrisy and for understanding the significance of blame itself.
“The Subtleties of Fit” (joint work with Oded Na’aman; in Philosophical Studies here; preprint here)
A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by. An act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals, and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses: something is laudable if and only if it’s fitting to laud, lamentable if and only if it’s fitting to lament. Call these the fit/value biconditionals. This paper considers three kinds of apparent counterexamples to the fit/value biconditionals and argues that avoiding them requires qualifying the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered.
“Fittingness and Normative Conventions”
Different ways of normatively evaluating affective responses can sometimes yield divergent assessments. For instance, one’s rage about some grave injustice might simultaneously be apt – or “fitting” – to its object, and yet counterproductive. In this paper, I suggest an explanation for why there is genuine reason to have fitting attitudes even when those attitudes are otherwise ill-advised: that the normative force of fittingness norms is grounded in the expressive power of normative conventions. Just as the word “apple” represents apples because it is conventionally correct to use the word “apple” to refer to apples, so too does rage represent its object as enraging because it is conventionally fitting to respond to the enraging with rage. In turn, there are genuine reasons to have fitting affective responses whenever there are reasons to express recognition of the things that our emotions conventionally represent.
“Affective Commitments”
The purpose of this article is to defend and flesh out a certain picture of the mind: one on which many of our attitudes, including many affective attitudes, are at least partially constituted by rational commitments distinctive to the types of attitudes that they are. On this picture, belief, for instance, constitutively involves a of rational commitment distinctive to belief; fear a rational commitment distinctive to fear; pride a rational commitment distinctive to pride; and so on. A major challenge for this “distinctive commitment view” is to articulate the commitments supposedly constitutive of affective attitudes in a way that keeps them distinct from any commitment constitutive of belief – so that, for example, fear doesn’t just collapse into a belief such as “x is fearsome” or “x is liable to cause harm.” I argue, first, that we have reason to believe that many of our attitudes are constituted by distinctive rational commitments, because we have reason to believe that, for many attitudes, (1) the sets of reasons that bear on the rationalization of those attitudes, and (2) the ways in which those reasons bear, are distinctive to the types of attitudes that they are. I then argue that, provided my prior reasoning is correct, the “distinctive commitments view” is best served by holding that each type of affective attitude, A, involves the reflexive commitment: “considerations that rationalize type-A attitudes, bearing in the ways they rationalize type-A attitudes, rationalize this attitude.” I argue that it is impossible for a commitment with this content to constitute any type of attitude other than an attitude of the type, A, to which it refers.
“Grasping through Feeling?”
It’s natural to think that, at least in some domains, understanding can’t be achieved without some sort of emotional response – that a person hasn’t really understood until she’s had the requisite feelings. Yet, while it’s easy to make a case that affect facilitates understanding (e.g., through its attentional effects), it’s harder to explain why affect would be essential to it. This paper investigates the prospects for holding that feelings are essential to, or perhaps identical with, at least some types of understanding. I consider an argument that seeks to identify understanding and affect on the basis of their similar functional roles – but I reject it on the grounds that it doesn’t explain how affect is supposed to be valuable both epistemically, and in a non-instrumental way.
“Another Look at ‘No Priority’”
“Neo-sentimentalism” about evaluative properties – the view that what makes x, say, amusing, or what makes x blameworthy, depends on the fittingness of sentiments like amusement and blame – is currently experiencing a renaissance in the literatures on both moral responsibility and the philosophy of emotions (Shoemaker 2019 and D’Arms & Jacobson 2023, respectively). This article aims to revive a “no-priority” view (in the spirit Wiggins 1987), according to which, while things are amusing or blameworthy because they’re fitting objects of amusement or blame, they are also fitting to be amused by or fitting to blame because they’re amusing or blameworthy. First, I contend that arguments offered recently for the dependence of values on fitting sentiments can be employed just as well to show the dependence of fitting sentiments on values. I then clarify why the “no-priority” view isn’t viciously circular; The idea is that what’s valuable, and which emotions are fitting, has co-evolved.