My research interests lie mainly in normative ethics, metaethics, and political philosophy. There are two broad research projects that I am working on now.
The first project focuses on imperfect moral rights. On almost all contemporary analyses of moral rights, rights are thought to share certain basic features. For instance, it is thought that persons against whom the right is held must be identifiable for this right to exist. Rights are also thought to put the right-holder in a position to demand their observance. Finally, they are thought to be enforceable. This project aims to question this standard picture of moral rights by investigating the distinction between perfect and imperfect moral rights, which has been largely abandoned in contemporary moral philosophy. Imperfect moral rights differ from standard, more familiar perfect moral rights by lacking some of their features, for instance, by being unclaimable or unenforceable. The project pursues the hypothesis that this distinction is helpful in addressing a number of controversially discussed questions, such as whether people in need have moral rights to be helped, whether people in close personal relationships have moral rights against one another, and whether benefactors have moral rights to gratitude.
The second project concerns the nature of moral responsibility and conditions of moral responsibility. As part of this project I have been thinking about the possibility of the concept of moral responsibility that all parties to the debate could agree upon. At this point, there seems to be no such concept, with the majority thinking about moral responsibility in a Strawsonian fitting-response sense, while others thinking about it in terms of appropriateness of certain judgments, yet others taking a ledger view. I am also interested in the epistemic condition of moral responsibility and whether moral ignorance could ever serve as an excusing factor.
Here is my work, sorted by research topics:
Imperfect Duties:
Imperfect Rights:
Collective Harm Cases:
Moral Responsibility:
The first project focuses on imperfect moral rights. On almost all contemporary analyses of moral rights, rights are thought to share certain basic features. For instance, it is thought that persons against whom the right is held must be identifiable for this right to exist. Rights are also thought to put the right-holder in a position to demand their observance. Finally, they are thought to be enforceable. This project aims to question this standard picture of moral rights by investigating the distinction between perfect and imperfect moral rights, which has been largely abandoned in contemporary moral philosophy. Imperfect moral rights differ from standard, more familiar perfect moral rights by lacking some of their features, for instance, by being unclaimable or unenforceable. The project pursues the hypothesis that this distinction is helpful in addressing a number of controversially discussed questions, such as whether people in need have moral rights to be helped, whether people in close personal relationships have moral rights against one another, and whether benefactors have moral rights to gratitude.
The second project concerns the nature of moral responsibility and conditions of moral responsibility. As part of this project I have been thinking about the possibility of the concept of moral responsibility that all parties to the debate could agree upon. At this point, there seems to be no such concept, with the majority thinking about moral responsibility in a Strawsonian fitting-response sense, while others thinking about it in terms of appropriateness of certain judgments, yet others taking a ledger view. I am also interested in the epistemic condition of moral responsibility and whether moral ignorance could ever serve as an excusing factor.
Here is my work, sorted by research topics:
Imperfect Duties:
- Kantian Imperfect Duties and Supererogation: A Case for Compatibility (draft available upon request)
- Imperfect Duties and Collective Harm Cases (draft available upon request)
- Beneficence, Latitude, and Demandingness: Clarifying the Misconceptions (draft available upon request)
- Nature of Obligatory Ends (draft available upon request)
Imperfect Rights:
- Imperfect Right to Non-Indifference (draft available upon request)
Collective Harm Cases:
- There Are No (Purely Phenomenal) Collective Impact Cases in Which You Can't Make a Difference (draft available upon request)
Moral Responsibility:
- In Search of a Weak Good Will (draft available upon request)
- The Concept and Conceptions of Moral Responsibility (Date Palm Compote, 2020, 15: 101–107) (in Russian)
- Metaphysics of Moral Responsibility: Comments on a Paper by E. Loginov, M. Gavrilov, A. Mertsalov, and A. Iunusov (Eticheskaja mysl’ / Ethical Thought, 2021, 21(2): 26–34) (in Russian)
