Research

My current research mainly focuses on themes in moral psychology, specifically responsibility, reactive attitudes, and the appropriateness of emotions. I have also written on topics such as moral motivation, moral worth, axiological values, and formal epistemology.

My master's thesis - advised by Rocco Chirivì - is an analysis of a new foundation of mathematics based on HoTT (homotopy type theory, viz., higher-order groupoids) and the Univalent Axiom.

Dissertation

"The Triangle of Innocence"

My dissertation explores the relationship between victims, meriting sympathy, and having a valid complaint. Victims, I argue, are individuals who have been innocently harmed or wronged by another agent|individuals who suffer a setback through no fault of their own.

Moreover, responsibility for each type of setback depends on different conditions. This fact has two important ethical implications. First, victims, and only victims, possess a distinctive property: they are sympathetic, meaning they merit sympathy. Second, only victims can validly complain about their situation. This, I argue, is explained by the fact that the role of complaint is to seek sympathy. Someone responsible for the setback they complain about is not sympathetic and therefore cannot validly seek compassion from others.

Gathering my thoughts at sunset in Santa Caterina — I definitely couldn't have complained back then!

Chapters Description:

Two Faces of Victimhood

Victims occupy a key role in our moral, political, and social practices; yet, a comprehensive account of victimhood remains elusive in philosophy. I propose a disjunctive account: a victim is someone who has been wronged or innocently harmed. I show that this account suffices to explain the normative footprint of victimhood. Additionally, the two disjuncts are unified by the fact that victims are the only proper objects of sympathy.

Meriting & Seeking Sympathy

People complain about many different things—such as the weather, traffic, being treated unfairly, or being scammed—either to people who are morally responsible or to those who have nothing to do with the issue. I argue that complaint is a speech act primarily aimed not at requesting redress but at soliciting sympathy from the listener. Sympathy is the emotional response we have toward people who are innocent victims.

Norms of Complaint

Imagine that you are invited to a party where wood-fired pizza is served, but you have recently found out that you are gluten-intolerant - eating the amount of gluten contained in a pizza slice will make you sick tomorrow. But your celiac friend is also at the party: if they eat even a single bit, they will risk their life. I argue that, even if you are innocently harmed by your medical condition, you cannot validly complain to your celiac friend. In this case, you lack standing to complain to them about not eating that delicious-looking pizza.

A winter scene from Otranto - can I complain that is not like this when packed with vacationers over the summer months?

Publications:

Is De Dicto motivation manifestly a no-go?

(Forthcoming in Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia)

Tale as old as the "Moral Problem": acting on a de dicto motivation is regarded as manifestly fetishist. But is it so obvious that it is?

Sympathy and Utilitarianism (with Mark Schroeder)

(Provisionally forthcoming in The Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics)

Currently Under Review (email me for a draft)

Moral experts are not that hard to come by (if you know what to look for)

(earlier version presented at the Davis-Standford-Berkeley Grad Conference)

According to some, moral experts must be more knowledgeable than any other moral agent on any moral issue for one to be justified in trusting their testimony and gaining moral knowledge. I argue that this view of moral expertise is unnecessarily too demanding, as moral expertise is a comparative and relative notion.

Fitting Blame vs Standingless Blame

(earlier version presented at the Central APA)

Standingless blame could also be considered inappropriate when it misrepresents the blamer as someone who upholds the norms they are accusing the blamee of violating. However, the force of standingless blame seems to be, all other things being equal, weaker than blame that is inappropriate because it targets an innocent. Can this characteristic also be understood at a representational level?

Moral Worth as a Fine Art (R&R)

Committing to either a Kantian or a Humean view of moral worth is not always the best choice - I argue that moral worth is a multi-dimensional concept and each view can account for one dimension only. The moral worth of an action results from a holistic evaluation.

"Better than" and Transitivity

It looks like this relation is transitive, but this claim has been challenged. I argue that it can address the objections raised.

A view of Castro Marina - my only complaint is that it is too ...[still looking for the right derogatory word]