Research
My research projects aim to illuminate our experiences often overlooked or obscured in dominant narratives, especially those of socially marginalized and oppressed groups (including Asians and Asian Americans, and women of color). My work further examines whether existing theories or currently dominant frameworks provide adequate resources to support the phenomenology of these people and propose necessary revisions where they fall short.
Theorizing Microaggressions
In this project, I develop a new theory of microaggressions that has important implications for interdisciplinary research on the topic and our collective efforts to combat this pervasive form of injustice.
Unlike blatant discrimination, microaggressions are often not intended as aggressions and yet compose part of structural oppression and can cause substantial harm to those frequently experiencing them. Despite this shared understanding of the phenomenon, scholars continue to debate the definition and criteria for this distinctly subtle and modern species of injustice. At the heart of this debate is a normative question—how should we define microaggressions in order to more effectively combat them in our community? In particular, theorists have focused on two key challenges. First, how can we reliably identify seemingly innocuous individual acts as instances of microaggressions (“the problem of reliable identification”)? Second, how can we settle disagreements over whether a particular incident counts (or should count) as a microaggression (“the problem of unresolved disagreements”)?
In the following papers, I defend a new approach to structuralism. Unlike original structural accounts that identify microaggressions based on whether individual acts in fact casually contribute to sustaining oppressive structures, my new structural account focuses on how these acts compose patterns of injustice carrying out two distinct functions: (i) normalizing scenes of injustice by blending them into our everyday lives and (ii) policing our attempts at resistance. These acts are enabled to carry out these roles in light of their ‘passability’—i.e., their ability to ‘pass’ as genuinely benign behaviors in the given community. I argue that this new structural account can more effectively address the problems of reliable identification and unresolved disagreements by allowing us to build a shared resource of accessible and transmissible knowledge, which can be a foundation for productive conversations among interlocutors with different experiences and perceptions of reality.
Paper on a new structural account of microaggressions (title redacted for anonymous review)
** This paper won the Minorities and Philosophy Ethicist Prize at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress 2024. **
Theories of microaggressions collectively face the following two problems: (i) the problems of reliable identification and (ii) the problem of unresolved disagreements. I first argue that four existing theories of microaggressions—psychological, experiential, structural, and expressivist—fall short of addressing these problems because they rely on knowledge tied to individual actors, individual recipients, or causal impacts of individual acts in identifying microaggressions. I then argue that to make progress, we need a theory that draws on knowledge of microaggressions that is (i) reliably accessible to marginalized groups in light of their experiential expertise and (ii) partly transmissible to other groups who may lack such expertise. Lastly, I propose a new approach to structuralism as a promising alternative. Unlike the original structural approach that identifies microaggressions based on whether individual acts causally contribute to an oppressive system, the new structural account examines how these acts constitute patterns of injustice that distinctly contribute to this system. In particular, it identifies microaggressions based on their distinct feature of ‘passability’ that enables them to carry out the roles of normalizing injustice and policing resistance.
Refining structuralism: Remapping the boundaries of microaggressions (working paper)
I examine how my new structural account substantially reshapes the typology of micro- and macro-aggressions in social and clinical psychology to help us more effectively combat this pervasive form of injustice. Implications of adopting my account include (i) how some paradigmatic examples of microaggressions may lose their ‘passability’ and expire their status in the given community, (ii) how what we consider as notable exceptions to microaggressions (e.g., complimenting English of a non-native person of color) may qualify as microaggressions, and (iii) how some paradigmatic examples of macroaggressions (e.g., biased hiring) may contribute to oppressive structures in ways that are distinctly similar to microaggressions and call for similar means of interventions.
Blame and Forgiveness
In this project, I articulate a new theory of blame and forgiveness that can explain phenomena that have heretofore been rendered inexplicable or unwarranted in the dominant discourse, including our responses to microaggressions. It is based on my dissertation, “Fitting Blame without Blameworthiness” (defended in June 2023 at UNC Chapel Hill, under the supervision of Dr. Susan Wolf).
Recall the worst decision that you ever made. Perhaps you passed up an exciting opportunity to pursue your dream, playing it safe by remaining in a secure but unfulfilling job. Looking back, you know that you meant well and were doing the best you could for your future self. You could not have known that your decision would end up being a terrible mistake. Still, you blame yourself. Or, suppose your mother discouraged you from a path that you knew was right for you (e.g., pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy). You know that she meant well. Your mother is a good person, who loves you and wants what is best for you. She just did not understand what philosophy meant to you or why you were not interested in marrying a ‘nice boy.’ Still, you find yourself blaming your mother.
Fitting blame is commonly thought to require a blameworthy agent, who is in some sense ‘at fault’ for their problematic behavior. Warranted blame requires a warranted judgment that the behavior in question manifests some kind of fault in the agent (e.g., problematic motives, faulty character, or deficient quality of will). However, in life, we do often find ourselves blaming an agent both (i) when we cannot reasonably judge whether they are blameworthy and (ii) when we can reasonably judge that they are not blameworthy. In a conventional framework, our phenomenology of blaming and striving to forgive people in these types of situations is rendered incoherent or unwarranted. Instead of dismissing our phenomenology in such cases, I articulate an expanded picture of blame and forgiveness that supports our experiences that play a vital role in shaping our interpersonal lives and fighting structural injustice.
Paper on microaggressions and blame (title redacted for anonymous review)
In this paper, I question one popular philosophical argument against blaming individual actors of microaggressions—namely, that blame is not a fitting response, as most of these actors are not blameworthy. I first argue that we ought to reframe this argument as an epistemic argument. The problem is not that most individual microaggressors are in fact not blameworthy but that due to the characteristic nature of microaggressions that makes it a distinct species of injustice, individual recipients cannot be warranted in judging whether these actors are blameworthy even when they are in fact so. I argue that properly understanding the scope of this epistemic challenge posed by microaggressions unveils the limits of blame as a ‘fault-finding’ response. I then propose an alternative conception of blame as a response to a ‘meaning’ of our actions, which is in part determined by and imported from facts external to individual agents’ internal states of mind. I close by examining whether our responses to an action’s ‘external’ meaning should be construed as a species of blame or a distinct ‘blame-like’ moral response.
Microaggressions, Blame, and Moral Luck (Working paper)
Recent scholars have drawn parallels between microaggressions and the cases of bad moral luck. Similar to agents in moral luck cases, most individual actors of microaggressions are not blameworthy for the harm that they cause; yet, recipients of microaggressions often have immediate emotional reactions that closely resemble blame. (How) can we justify these reactions? I argue that the argument against blame in moral luck cases does not neatly apply to many instances of microaggressions, due to an important discrepancy in how the ‘meaning’ of our actions is determined in these contexts. In cases of bad moral luck, we are merely a causal lever for the harm inflicted on the world; it doesn’t matter that we are the one who pulled it. In many cases of microaggressions, however, the significance of our action is in part constituted by and imported from facts that comprise our agency and shape its manifestation in the world (e.g., the social positions that we occupy and the social and personal relationships that we have with the recipients). I argue that we can attribute a ‘thicker’ sense of ownership to individual agents in these cases of microaggressions, which may ground blaming or ‘blame-like’ reactions from the recipients.
Blame without Fault
This paper introduces a new protest account of blame. Contrary to existing protest accounts of blame (e.g., Pamela Hieronymi, Matthew Talbert, and Angela Smith), I argue that blame as moral protest is not exclusively triggered by our judgment of fault within an agent manifested by their action. Following T.M. Scanlon, I propose to understand blame as a response to the ‘meaning’ of our action, while denying that the blame-warranting meaning of our action is solely determined by facts comprising an agent’s internal states. Instead, I argue that our action often carries a protest-warranting meaning to its recipients that is determined in part by facts external to the agent (e.g., facts about the sociocultural and historical background in which the action takes place). This account provides the resources to vindicate our experiences of blaming an agent even in the absence of our judgment that they are ‘at fault’ or aretaically blameworthy.
Forgiving the Unblameworthy
In the standard view, where forgiveness consists in forgoing of warranted blame, we cannot forgive someone whom we consider ‘unblameworthy’—someone whom we believe is ‘not at fault’ for causing a moral injury that deeply hurts us. At best, we can ‘excuse’ them or ‘let go’ of our angry feelings. I argue that this is an unfortunate result. Drawing on studies on mother-daughter relationships, I argue that we do often succeed in forgiving someone whom we judge not to be ‘at fault,’ and when we do, there is a value to correctly preserving our experience as that of forgiveness, instead of reducing it to similar phenomena. I then propose a revisionary account of blame as a response to a ‘meaning’ of our actions, which allows us to make room for warranted blame and genuine forgiveness in these types of cases.
Other Projects
I have other on-going projects in moral psychology, social epistemology, AI ethics, and pedagogy.
Sulking as Performance (presented in 2024 Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology)
Studies in psychology and psychotherapy typically investigate sulking as an instantiation of particular emotional states, such as anger or hurt feelings. This approach emphasizes the vulnerable or narcissistic selves of individuals disclosed by their sulking behaviors. In this paper, I examine sulking as a distinct type of performative act. Rather than focusing on the internal states of sulking individuals, it shifts our attention to what sulking does and instigates within an interpersonal relationship situated in a broader sociopolitical context. Specifically, it examines how sulking as performance is both enabled by and reinforces patriarchal social structures.
Believing for Reasons of Love (scheduled to be presented in APA Pacific 2025)
Epistemic partialism posits the following two key claims: (i) love and friendship demand that we form certain partial beliefs about our loved ones, and (ii) these demands are in conflict with canonical epistemic norms to believe in accordance with evidence. Critics of this view argue that accepting (i) and (ii) commits us to the contentious theses of pragmatism and doxastic voluntarism. I argue that accepting (i) and (ii) need not commit us to pragmatism or doxastic voluntarism. Drawing on the interaction between the characters in David Auburn’s play Proof (2000), I illustrate that properly carving out space for love and friendship in the doxastic domain may involve more than having partial beliefs for our loved ones; it may also involve that we form these beliefs for distinctive non-evidential reasons that importantly come apart from pragmatic reasons, which I tentatively call reasons of love. I further explain that believing our loved ones on the basis of reasons of lover must remain non-voluntary for it to be a genuine manifestation of love.
Can AI Systems be Moral Agents without Being Moral Patients? (accepted as a workshop paper at the 2023 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems)
A standard assumption in contemporary philosophical debates on moral status is that moral agency imposes a higher bar than moral patiency—all moral agents (e.g., humans) have moral patiency, but many moral patients (e.g., non-human animals) lack moral agency. I argue that recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) may challenge this assumption. Some AI systems may meet the bar for moral agency far before they meet the bar for patiency; if so, there could be some periods during which we have artificial moral agents lacking moral patiency. This observation has interesting implications in both fields. In philosophy, it may imply that contrary to our assumption, our moral circle allows for moral agents lacking moral patiency. Alternatively, it may imply that moral agency and patiency are not independent notions; rather, there may be a deeper, constitutive relation between them. In AI development, this may reveal that discussions of consciousness or anthropomorphizing of AI may be secondary, if not orthogonal, to the role of AI as moral agents.
Anti-solutionism as a Pedagogical Strategy with Joel de Lara (presented at the 2024 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics International Conference)
Thought experiments remain a popular pedagogical tool in philosophy. While these experiments can be a helpful tool for practicing philosophical argumentation, some have criticized them for obscuring complex, real-world problems. We argue that a deeper concern underlying the use of thought experiments in philosophy classrooms (especially in applied ethics) is the broader focus on solutionism and its worrisome impacts on students. We then argue for the value of promoting anti-solutionism as an alternative pedagogical strategy. In defense of this approach, we demonstrate two class activities designed for bioethics and environmental ethics courses with the goal of cultivating an anti-solutionist mindset. Rather than challenging students to solve the problems, we guide them to understand the complex and multifaceted nature of these issues and to recognize the value of moral sensitivity, collaboration, as well as epistemic and moral humility.