I adopt an empirically informed approach to normative theorising for my research, drawing on moral psychology to explore dimensions of moral agency and applying them to examine moral and societal issues that shape many people’s lives.
The papers I have written recover the parts of human life I believe that have largely been masked and distorted by theories giving too much power to people showing certain attributes and leaving too little to others.
They fall along two major themes:
1) Everyone strives for their own meaningful life, whether it is intelligible to us or not. They may stand up for themselves, feel anguish and powerless, or simply remain unseen. These are all forms of striving.
2) The “good” types of moral cognition—good in the sense of yielding morally desirable outcomes—aren’t as good as we often assume.
Basically I believe we make some of us look too perfect and others too dull and weak.
I aim to, piece by piece, recreate facets of “real” human experience, prompting a reconsideration of how we relate to others, in what way what we do now shapes the present and future of society. Particularly, if equal respect is one dimension of moral obligation, what does it truly require of us, beyond stating at the institutional level all individuals’ equal legal and moral standings ?
Here is a list of published and in-review papers
(Click on the papers for the main ideas)
Ying, Heng. “Beyond “moral progress”: A dual‐character conception of moral change.” Metaphilosophy 56, no. 2 (2025): 194-208. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12723
At the beginning of developing this paper, I thought I was challenging the perspective that grounds the evaluation of moral progress entirely in the violation of or compliance with liberal principles. But I think there is actually a notable and universal phenomenon we should notice: many moral systems–irrespective of how influential they are in contemporary moral inquiry–tend to examine moral progress in virtue of the values and principles they prefer. Thus, regardless of which moral system we talk about, there is a universal tendency to focus on what one prefers and overlooks the lives of those who hold divergent and contradictory concerns and needs. So, I won’t say this paper is a critique of liberalism in the studies of moral progress, although the accounts I criticised adopt liberal values. I present a general way for viewing human society and history, the lives of individuals across the world, and their interconnections regardless of the moral perspectives we start from.
Ying, Heng. “Explaining Moral View Change: Second-Order Moral Reasoning.” The Journal of Value Inquiry (2025): 1-18. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-025-10069-2
The main contribution of this paper, as far as I understand it myself, is freeing us from the causal-mechanistic view common in science when explaining changes in individuals’ moral views. Our key focus shouldn’t be generalised knowledge claims or truth statements, such as what conditions cause/forestall a change. Instead, we should recognise individuals’ freedom and capacity to determine what is morally important to them (without necessarily engaging in higher-order cognition) regardless of the view they hold and the change they go through. This suggests a process of continually exploring what individuals find important and following their perspectives to understand why certain things are so important to them. It is in fact a requirement for us: how are we able to see and understand others in their own entirety?
In review:
- “Moral Conflict and Moral Agency:” I argued for an agential account of moral conflict. The view that individuals are divided by group memberships obscures the deeper connections among individuals. They are connected by the psychological processes underlying belief formation.
- “Moral Progress and Self-limiting Moral Thinking:” I argued that the independent thinking we often associate with leaders of progressive movements is in fact self-limiting.
- “From Biological Conditioning to Moral Agency: Rethinking Moral Judgments:” I challenge the view that moral judgments are essentially biologically conditioned processes–many empirical studies hold this assumption. I aim to re-enliven moral judgments by offering an agent-centred account. Freedom to choose responsive modes is a fundamental dimension of human existence.
In progress:
Moral psychology:
1) I refute the Humean model of individual moral psychology. The main issue lies in the individualistic interpretative paradigm that informs the empirical studies supporting the model. I selected three types of studies to discuss this issue–Jonathan Haidt’s social intuitionist account of moral judgment, Antonio Damasio’s clinical research on patients with brain lesions and diminished emotional capacities, and studies on psychopathy.
New projects:
“Sibling Injustics”
“Asymmetrical Moral Thinking”
All papers, I would say, intend to shift our perceptions of the human conditions, the interconnections among individuals, and their embedment within broader social processes. I think about moral obligations (duties, responsibilities or whatever we owe each other) from a first-personal perspective. The important question is: what are the first things we must see there in human life? The answer to this question shows where our obligations lie, and these obligations often require us to make intentional efforts to calibrate ourselves--where we stand now, what we are capable of, and what we have been doing--against what we must see there.
I welcome any comment and discussion on these topics.
