Dr Erik Zhang
- Position: Lecturer in Moral and Political Philosophy
- Areas of expertise: normative ethics; applied ethics; metaethics; political philosophy.
- Email: E.Zhang@leeds.ac.uk
- Location: 3.10 Botany House
- Website: Personal Website
Profile
I joined Leeds in August 2024. Previously, I was a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Core Faculty within UNC's Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program. I completed my PhD in Philosophy at Princeton University. I received my BA from Queen's University in Canada.
Research interests
My research interests cover a range of topics in moral philosophy. Currently, I am working on two research projects. The first is on the issue of interpersonal aggregation. I explore and defend an individualist, as opposed to aggregative, justification for the moral relevance of numbers. This project has three parts: (1) an articulation of a general, theoretical framework for adjudicating interpersonal tradeoffs based on the ideal of justifiable to each person, (2) an extension of the framework to structurally complex cases that have been widely discussed in the recent literature on partial aggregation, and (3) an exploration of how best to apply an individualist moral framework to tradeoff situations involving risk.
My second research project is on the topic of promissory obligations. Two papers under this project are in progress. The first paper investigates the question: Under what conditions and why is a promise to perform an otherwise morally impermissible action nevertheless normatively binding? The second paper argues against the influential and dominant position that promissory obligations are the direct upshots of the exercise of normative powers. A planned, third paper will attempt to provide a new account of the normative basis of promissory obligations, one that is based on the idea that promising as an institution serves our non-normative interests in having an expanded degree of control over what happens in the world by acting through the agencies of others.
Two further projects are in their early stage. The first investigates the distinction between moral and non-moral reasons, and the second seeks to provide a clearer account of relational wronging.
These projects have an underlying unity to them. I am interested in exploring the suggestion that the central and guiding ideal of interpersonal morality is that of justifiability to each person. This ideal has two non-consequentialist elements. First, the emphasis on justifiability to each person implies that the fundamental mode of moral justification is individualist and not aggregative in character. And second, the emphasis on justifiability to each person indicates that morality is at base concerned not with what outcomes are brought about, but with how we are to relate to one another as persons. Indeed, promissory obligations are often viewed as paradigm examples of relational obligations. My projects are geared toward gaining a better and deeper understanding of interpersonal morality in relational and nonaggregative terms.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Some research projects I'm currently working on, or have worked on, will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Qualifications
- PhD in Philosophy
- MA in Philosophy
- BA in Philosophy
Research groups and institutes
- Philosophy
- Centre for Aesthetic, Moral and Political Philosophy