Moral responsibility and moral psychology study how people take responsibility for their actions and hold others responsible. These areas explore practices such as blame, praise, gratitude, and forgiveness, as well as the emotions that accompany them, such as resentment, indignation, trust, guilt, and others. Together, they form a rich network of moral practices and emotional responses.

My work focuses on one aspect of this network: how these practices interact with social inequality, injustice, and marginalization. Much of my research begins from an observation that is both striking and familiar: members of marginalized groups are often excluded, silenced, or dismissed in moral responsibility practices and exchanges of moral emotion. They are what Vanessa Carbonell (2019) calls “second-class moral citizens” within our moral community.

This fact profoundly affects how we should think about moral responsibility and moral psychology. It raises a range of questions.

Interpreting Responsibility

A first set of questions concerns how our existing frameworks of moral responsibility might misjudge cases involving marginalized people. Suppose members of marginalized groups have not been sufficiently involved in moral conversations (and in the development of moral responsibility frameworks.) In that case, our current accounts are likely to miss some considerations or misrepresent the meaning of some marginalized people’s actions, as well as the degree to which they are responsible for them. The first task, then, is to identify these cases and revise our theories so they can more accurately assess the behavior and responsibility of marginalized people.

Project 1: "Responsibility and the Social Dimension of Addiction,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 2025. [Link to paper]

Abstract: Addiction in practice possesses a distinct social dimension. Consistent empirical evidence shows that a range of social challenges can significantly increase the likelihood of developing and sustaining addiction. These challenges include economic recession; violence and public safety concerns; deficits in housing, education, and healthcare; marginalization of social minorities; social injustice and inequality; and political instability. Philosophers have reason to investigate whether and to what extent these social factors might mitigate or exempt a person’s responsibility and blameworthiness for addiction-related wrongdoing. However, current discussions on addiction and responsibility predominantly emphasize the physiological and psychological aspects of addiction, focusing on how it affects a person’s responsibility through its influence on cognitive and volitional capacities. Attention to addiction’s social dimension is notably lacking. In this article, I articulate and defend a duress-like approach to excusing addiction-related infractions that is particularly suited to addressing the intricate social factors involved in addiction and helps to fill existing theoretical gaps in the current literature.

Project 2: “Rethinking Distrust: An Emotion-Based Approach to Its Epistemic Value” (in progress)

Abstract: This paper examines cases where marginalized people’s distrust of privileged groups is accurate but overlooked. Privilege-sustaining ignorance can prevent society from recognizing untrustworthiness in those who hold power. When marginalized people perceive this and respond with distrust, they may find it hard to show why their distrust is justified, and others may dismiss it. I argue that existing theories of the epistemology of distrust are not well equipped to capture such cases and propose an emotion-based account of distrust that better identifies when marginalized people’s distrust is “onto something.”

The Consequence of Exclusion

A third set of questions concerns how exclusion from moral conversation affects marginalized people. What kinds of reactions might such exclusion provoke? They may lose faith in the community, feel contempt toward it, seek private forms of justice, or resign themselves to a second-class moral status. When we encounter cases where marginalized people’s negative attitudes or actions are responses to exclusion, can we recognize them as such? And how should the fact that these attitudes or actions are reactions to exclusion shape our moral evaluation of them?

Project 1:  "Exclusion from Moral Conversation: Responsibility, Defiance, and the Marginalized Wrongdoer" (in progress)

This project discusses cases of wrongdoers who are themselves victims of structural injustice and wrongdoers who have suffered adverse circumstances early in life in the context of the conversational theory of moral responsibility and the social exclusion in moral conversations. 

Project 2: "Internalized Oppression and Moral Conversation" (in progress)

This project discusses cases where victims of sexual violence receive victim-blaming from their community and later develop self-blame. 

“Mating Dances and the Evolution of Language: What’s the next step?” with Cameron Buckner, Biology and Philosophy, 2017. [Link to paper]