•  10155
    Philosophers debate over the truth of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the thesis that there is a morally significant difference between doing harm and merely allowing harm to happen. Deontologists tend to accept this doctrine, whereas consequentialists tend to reject it. A robust defence of this doctrine would require a conceptual distinction between doing and allowing that both matches our ordinary use of the concepts in a wide range of cases and enables a justification for the alleged mora…Read more
  •  555
    A moral reason to be a mere theist: improving the practical argument
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 79 (2): 113-132. 2016.
    This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same …Read more
  •  495
    No Fats, Femmes, or Asians
    Moral Philosophy and Politics 2 (2): 255-276. 2015.
    A frequent caveat in online dating profiles – “No fats, femmes, or Asians” – caused an LGBT activist to complain about the bias against Asians in the American gay community, which he called “racial looksism”. In response, he was asked that, if he himself would not date a fat person, why he should find others not dating Asians so upsetting. This response embodies a popular attitude that personal preferences or tastes are simply personal matters – they are not subject to moral evaluation. In this …Read more
  •  123
    Manipulation and Machine Induction
    Mind 131 (522): 535-548. 2022.
    One type of soft-line reply to manipulation arguments, which I call ‘the another-agent reply’, focuses on the existence of some controlling agent and how this can undermine the actor's moral responsibility. A well-known challenge to this type of reply is the so-called ‘machine induction’ case. This paper provides an argument for why ‘machine induction’ presents no real challenge to the another-agent reply. It further argues that any soft-liner who does not leave room for the existence of some co…Read more
  •  75
    What it means to respect individuality
    with Ye Liang
    Philosophical Studies 178 (8): 2579-2598. 2020.
    Using pure statistical evidence about a group to judge a particular member of that group is often found objectionable. One natural explanation of why this is objectionable appeals to the moral notion of respecting individuality: to properly respect individuality, we need individualized evidence, not pure statistical evidence. However, this explanation has been criticized on the ground that there is no fundamental difference between the so-called “individualized evidence” and “pure statistical ev…Read more
  •  40
    Consequentialism and the boundary of morality
    with Xiaoru Hong and Xiyang Wang
    Philosophical Psychology 33 (3): 351-368. 2020.
    A series of our experimental studies show that some actions which consequentialists would treat as morally right or wrong were not regarded by ordinary people as a matter of morality. These results...
  •  28
    Objectivity in Quantum Measurement
    with Sheng-Wen Li, C. Y. Cai, and C. P. Sun
    Foundations of Physics 48 (6): 654-667. 2018.
    The objectivity is a basic requirement for the measurements in the classical world, namely, different observers must reach a consensus on their measurement results, so that they believe that the object exists “objectively” since whoever measures it obtains the same result. We find that this simple requirement of objectivity indeed imposes an important constraint upon quantum measurements, i.e., if two or more observers could reach a consensus on their quantum measurement results, their measureme…Read more
  •  12
    This paper reviews Veli Mitova’s recent article, “The collective epistemic reasons of social-identity groups,” which proposes and defends a collectivist account of epistemic reasons for social-identity groups. The paper first discusses what makes a collectivist account appealing in the context of moral obligations, a context from which Mitova apparently draws inspiration for her collectivist account of epistemic reasons. The paper then considers two issues that may make a collectivist account of…Read more
  •  10
    Transmission electron microscopy observation of a deformation twin in TWIP steel by anex situtensile test
    with J. B. Liu, W. Liu, Y. W. Zeng, and K. Y. Shu
    Philosophical Magazine 91 (31): 4033-4044. 2011.
  •  9
    New York—This Big Family of World Culture
    Chinese Studies in History 36 (2): 60-62. 2002.
  •  9
    First-principles density functional theory study of generalized stacking faults in TiN and MgO
    with S. K. Yadav, J. Wang, R. Ramprasad, A. Misra, and R. G. Hoagland
    Philosophical Magazine 94 (5): 464-475. 2014.