My research is in the philosophy of language and in ethics. I also have many vested interests in topics across epistemology, logic, and related areas. I also have strong teaching interests in some areas in the history of philosophy. 

Below you will see information about my background and experience in teaching.

Much of my recent work is on generics, especially (1) their place in ethical theory and (2) on the harms that generics can convey and questions about what we can do to mitigate these harms. I am also working on some issues in moral epistemology. You can read more about this, as well as some recent news, below.

I am a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno. Before coming to UNR, I taught at the University of Sussex and the University of St Andrews.

I am also a Research Fellow at the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics at the University of Baltimore.
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I did my PhD and MLitt in Philosophy in the St Andrews-Stirling Graduate Programme where I was a member of the Arché Philosophical Research Centre for Logic, Language, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. I did my BA in Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Feel free to get in touch. I'd love to hear from you.

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Recent News, Events, & Updates

  • New paper

    'Moral principles as generics' - forthcoming in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

  • Review

    Review of Alex Worsnip's Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality (OUP) forthcoming in the Journal of Moral Philosophy.

  • Recent workshop

    Workshop for PhD students on 'Generic Generalizations in Science, Ethics and Society' at the University of Oslo in June 2022. Co-taught with Mark Bowker and Mirela Fus. More information here!

  • Recent Talks

    Recent talks at Baltimore, Edinburgh, Sussex, St Andrews, Vienna (ECAP) on challenging prejudicial language. Recent talk on the epistemology of normativity at Glasgow (European Epistemology Network). Recent talks on generics and moral principles at the University of York (departmental colloquium) and CU Boulder (Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress).

  • Arché Anniversary Conference

    Hosted the Arché 20th Anniversary Conference in St Andrews 19-21 June 2019. Member of the organizing committee. See here for more details!

  • University-Wide Teaching Award

    Students' Association Teaching Award 2019. Awarded to only one PhD candidate across all departments at the University of St Andrews. A press release is available here.

Research

Publications

Moral principles as generics

Journal of the American Philosophical Association (Forthcoming)
I argue that moral principles involve the same sort of generalization as ordinary yet elusive generic generalizations in natural language such as 'Tigers are striped' or 'Peppers are spicy'. A notable advantage of the generic view is that it simultaneously allows for pessimism and optimism about the role and status of moral principles in our lives. It provides a new perspective on the nature of moral principles on which principles are not apt for determining the moral status of particular actions while they may be apt, and even fundamental, to our acquisition of moral knowledge. A natural consequence of the view is variation amongst moral principles, with some regularly warranting exceptions, and some appearing arguably exceptionless. It is also argued that this generic conception of moral principles has significant advantages, as a normative model of moral reasoning, over the view of moral principles as defaults which has been advanced in recent years. ​
Generics and weak necessity

Inquiry (2018)
A prevailing thought is that generics have a covert modal operator at logical form. I claim that if this is right, the covert generic modality is a weak necessity modal. In this paper, I provide evidence for this claim and I sketch a theory. In particular, I will show that there are some important distributional parallels between generics and sentences with overt weak necessity modals: both sorts of sentences share behavior in nonmonotonic reasoning environments and also lack genuine epistemic readings. Acknowledging these parallels and the connection here is in the service of both our understanding of genericity and of weak necessity. Finally, I propose an understanding of generics as involving a covert weak necessity modal and argue that this is a promising path to pursue in relation to different issues related to the interpretation of generics. ​

Current Projects

The role of generics in ethics

Moral Principles
  • Provides support for the thesis that moral principles are best understood as generic generalizations. 
  • Argues that this supports a particularist model of moral reasoning. 

The language of prejudice

Normative Generics
  • I argue that normative generics are diverse in various under-appreciated ways and investigate how to fit them into our broader understanding of generics. 
  • This paper also categorizes and investigates various uses and possible options for challenging troublesome normative generics.

Themes in non-ideal epistemology

Empathy and moral knowledge
  • Recent work in philosophy and psychology has contested the value of empathy in moral philosophy by arguing that empathy is a biased and unreliable source of knowledge. 
  • This paper argues that we need an inferential as opposed to a perceptual view of empathy to account for its role in enabling us to alter, modify, and add to what we regard as new areas of moral concern.​

Teaching

Please contact me directly for information about the upcoming Fall 2023 semester at UNR. 

Awards

Students' Association Teaching Award (2019) 

  • In 2019, I received a university-wide teaching award given to only one graduate teaching assistant across all departments. See here for a press release.  
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PhD Teaching Prize (2017)

  • In 2017, I won a department-wide competition to develop and teach my own honours seminar. The award is based upon the submission of the original design of a course for advanced undergraduate students and was judged by a committee of faculty members. I was subsequently given the opportunity to be lecturer on a course I designed on empathy which covered a range of issues in social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action. 
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Best Tutor in Philosophy (2014) 

  • In 2014, I received the award of Best Tutor in Philosophy while teaching a first-year introduction to epistemology and logic. This is a student-run award and I was selected on the basis of receiving the best overall feedback and highest score of 7.95/8 on independent student evaluation forms.
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​ravithakral@icloud.com