Research
Many philosophers think of ethics as the study of how we ought to exercise our will, or what rules we should follow in our practical deliberation. My research concerns those many central parts of ethics that are left out of this conception -- in particular, the ethics of perception and of feeling. How ought we perceive each other? What is the moral dimension to our feelings? Perceptions and feelings are not voluntary, nor are they the conclusions of practical deliberation, and yet they reflect our character, and are morally evaluable in many of the same ways that we are. My research attempts to understand the moral evaluation of perception and feeling, among other things, and their relationship to our moral character. I am especially interested in how these evaluations are affected by the context of oppression.
Dissertation
Perceiving Through the Racial Veil: The Inner Moral Life of Racism
When I was a kid, my mom never let me wear a beanie because she was worried about my safety. I was a young, brown, Mexican-American kid living in southern California. Kids who looked like me and wore beanies were viewed as what today some may call a bad hombre. She was afraid of white kids at school making fun of me, of teachers singling me out as a problematic student, and, most of all, of police perceiving me as a gang member when I got older and reacting to me accordingly. She wanted people to see me for me, not for being a young, brown, Mexican-American kid and everything that was wrapped up in that image. My dissertation is about what my mom wanted to protect me from: racist perception.
Many philosophers think of ethics as the study of how we ought to exercise our will, or what rules we should follow in our practical deliberation. But, following Iris Murdoch, my research explores a central part of ethics left out of this conception. In this first chapter of my dissertation, I present a reading of Iris Murdoch’s philosophy. Centrally for Murdoch, morally bad perception involves perceiving others in a self-preoccupied manner and perceiving virtuously involves perceiving with loving attention. My reading of Murdoch opens the possibility for other forms of distortions, especially those of race, to fit into her account of how we ought to perceive others.
In the second chapter, I argue racist perception involves a racial veil that functions in much the same way as the self-preoccupied veil Murdoch believes inhibits our moral perception. I articulate the various details of the racial veil, specifically how stereotypes and misvaluing impedes our moral perception and argue that this form of perception is morally problematic due to the way it draws one’s attention to the dominant conception of race, which reinforces racial oppression.
It is difficult to determine, though, in what way we can be responsible for moral perception. How can one be responsible for their perception since it seems to lie outside of one’s control? In the third chapter, I argue that while one may not be responsible for one’s perception in the traditional sense, one can take responsibility for one’s perception. This involves not only the actions of considering how we ought to alter our perception but also involves taking ownership of that perception, which is often reflected in feelings of shame or guilt about our misperception. This holds true for both self-preoccupied perception and racist perception, though the content and consequences of those misperceptions shapes the way in which we ought to take responsibility and the role that expressing shame or guilt plays in taking responsibility.
This leaves us with a final question: how do we attend to people of color in a more just and loving way? We should not, as is often acknowledged now, merely trying to ignore race hoping that our misperceptions go with it, but instead be more attentive to race. I argue then that in order to perceive people of color in a more just and loving way we must become more attentive to race. Being attentive to race is like being attentive to an individual, it requires detail oriented attention that is not purely intellectual and epistemic but also moral and empathetic. Attention to race in this way can help us attend to individuals of color by giving us the proper context to imagine what it's like to be them.
Many philosophers think of ethics as the study of how we ought to exercise our will, or what rules we should follow in our practical deliberation. But, following Iris Murdoch, my research explores a central part of ethics left out of this conception. In this first chapter of my dissertation, I present a reading of Iris Murdoch’s philosophy. Centrally for Murdoch, morally bad perception involves perceiving others in a self-preoccupied manner and perceiving virtuously involves perceiving with loving attention. My reading of Murdoch opens the possibility for other forms of distortions, especially those of race, to fit into her account of how we ought to perceive others.
In the second chapter, I argue racist perception involves a racial veil that functions in much the same way as the self-preoccupied veil Murdoch believes inhibits our moral perception. I articulate the various details of the racial veil, specifically how stereotypes and misvaluing impedes our moral perception and argue that this form of perception is morally problematic due to the way it draws one’s attention to the dominant conception of race, which reinforces racial oppression.
It is difficult to determine, though, in what way we can be responsible for moral perception. How can one be responsible for their perception since it seems to lie outside of one’s control? In the third chapter, I argue that while one may not be responsible for one’s perception in the traditional sense, one can take responsibility for one’s perception. This involves not only the actions of considering how we ought to alter our perception but also involves taking ownership of that perception, which is often reflected in feelings of shame or guilt about our misperception. This holds true for both self-preoccupied perception and racist perception, though the content and consequences of those misperceptions shapes the way in which we ought to take responsibility and the role that expressing shame or guilt plays in taking responsibility.
This leaves us with a final question: how do we attend to people of color in a more just and loving way? We should not, as is often acknowledged now, merely trying to ignore race hoping that our misperceptions go with it, but instead be more attentive to race. I argue then that in order to perceive people of color in a more just and loving way we must become more attentive to race. Being attentive to race is like being attentive to an individual, it requires detail oriented attention that is not purely intellectual and epistemic but also moral and empathetic. Attention to race in this way can help us attend to individuals of color by giving us the proper context to imagine what it's like to be them.
Papers
Gender Affirmation and Loving Attention
(forthcoming in Hypatia)
In this paper, I examine the moral dimensions of gender affirmation. I argue that the moral value of gender affirmation is rooted in what Iris Murdoch called loving attention. Loving attention is central to the moral value of gender affirmation because such affirmation is otherwise too fragile or insincere to have such value. Moral reasons to engage in acts that gender affirm derive from the commitment to give and express loving attention to trans people as a way of challenging their marginalization. In the latter part of the paper, I will discuss how my arguments bear on recent arguments by Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak (2018) on the use of gender-neutral language. They argue that we have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone. Their conclusion turns, in part, on a rejection of gender affirmation as a moral duty. The value of gender affirmation, rooted in our moral perception of trans people, should make us skeptical of this conclusion, in favor of a more nuanced and pluralistic approach to the ethics of gendering.
The Racial Veil: Moral Perception and Racist Perceiving
(manuscript)
Philosophers of race and other writers in the Black and Latinx intellectual traditions have remarked on what it is like to live under “the racial gaze,” to be shaped and limited by the way whites perceive us. However, little work has been spent developing how the racial gaze functions in whites’, and other racially privileged people’s, moral psychology. I argue in this paper that the way people often perceive people of color is in itself morally problematic. This claim builds on an insight from Iris Murdoch that our perception can be morally evaluable and extends it to issues of race. I articulate how racial stereotypes and misvaluing distort one’s perception of people of color and that these distortions are organizing around a dominant conception for race that plays an important role in the oppression of people of color. I believe understanding racist perception lays a foundation for understanding the moral dimensions of interpersonal (as opposed to structural) racism.
Arrogance Under Oppression
(manuscript)
In this paper, I examine the attitude of arrogance in contexts of oppression, attempting to do three things. The first is to give an account of the moral psychology of arrogance, where what's central to arrogance is an inattention to others through reflectively endorsed self-preoccupied perception. The second is to utilize this account of arrogance to illuminate why people of historically oppressed groups are often called arrogant, even when they are not acting in a way that reflects the attitude of arrogance. Toward that end I present three possible explanations, two attend to the reasons why the viewers may believe these people are arrogant and one aims to understand the consequences of this practice, concluding that this practice reflects and reinforces the undervaluing of oppressed peoples. Third, I argue that in some cases where oppressed people are arrogant it is not necessarily bad. Instead, such arrogance serves as a form of resistance to oppression which gives it political value, which in turn has a kind of aesthetic value that inspires and motivates others to resist oppression as well. I call this kind of arrogance beautiful arrogance, which is not a vice but all things considered good.
Works in Progress
- A paper on gender identity (with Rowan Bell)
- A paper on perceptual responsibility
- A paper on moral shock
- A paper on letting go of anger
- A paper on reclaiming slurs
- A paper on the morally obnoxious
