Research

Areas of Specialization: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law

Areas of Competence: Social Philosophy, Moral Psychology

My research examines the grounds of moral status and the obligations that follow from it, especially in relation to relational equality and distributive justice. I am also interested in practical reasons, the nature and limits of moral demands, the distinctive moral significance of interpersonal relationships and partiality, and the possibility of convergence among competing moral and political theories.

My interests in non-ideal theory include questions of collective control over institutions and the fair distribution of burdens across present and future generations, particularly in the contexts of climate change and investment systems.

I am also developing work on demandingness and interspecies compliance asymmetries, value-based frameworks for legal interpretation, the nature of categorical mental difference, and the moral demands of partiality in end-of-life contexts.

Master's Thesis

Animals, Equal Relations, and the Claims of Distribution (Master's Thesis)

Addresses the specification gap in the moral status literature: can existing accounts ground the fundamental distributive standing of animals? Develops a relation-type approach that explains this connection, arguing that it depends on on whether beings' welfare claims are recognized as authoritative. This establishes animals as legitimate participants in distributive justice, despite their lack of reciprocity.

Works in Progress

Drafts available upon request (sjang4@nd.edu).

Principled Discount Rates for Climate Change

Develops the Burden Transmission Model, which avoids the non-identity problem by grounding obligations in burdens borne by presently existing younger generations and indirectly derives a discount-rate equivalent (r = −ln α, where α represents the rate of burden transmission across generations).

Second-Order Control: Collective Control at the Level of the Investment System

Analyzes Chiara Cordelli's account of alienation in investment. Argues that her explanation focuses on first-order control (the lack of direct control over investment decisions). However, a lack of direct control over investments does not imply a lack of second-order control (the ability to override or exit existing investment structures). It argues that the distinctive wrong of alienation in investment lies in the absence of the latter—structural barriers that prevent the establishment of alternative investment structures.

Irreducibly Relational Reasons

Reexamines Thomas Nagel's early account in The Possibility of Altruism. Argues that friendship-based reasons, such as because he is my friend, are irreducibly relational. Such reasons cannot be shared by or even counterfactually adopted by others, because adopting them would require taking on agent-specific commitments and choices that are constitutive of a particular friendship. Still, objective second-order reasons can recognize the normative significance of these irreducibly relational first-order reasons. This allows us to avoid practical solipsism while preserving the particularity of friendship-based motivation.

The Virtue of Trust and the Limits of Belief

Argues that what is regrettable about trust without belief, when it is regrettable, is not the absence of belief itself, but the failure to sustain a proper relational stance toward others. The absence of belief is regrettable not because of the lack of belief per se, but because it serves as defeasible evidence that one has failed to sustain a relational stance appropriate to the relationship.