Philosophy of Fiction

“Imagination and the Permissive View of Fictional Truth,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming. [pre-print].

I argue that we can have fictions where contradictions are true, everything is true, or nothing is true. Imagination-based worries about such fictions can be shown to be about sensory imagination, which isn’t necessary for fictional truth.

“A New Class of Fictional Truths,” The Philosophical Quarterly 2021. [pre-print].

I argue that our current classification of fictional truth (explicit/implicit truths) miss out on an important class of fictional truths: those generated by formal features. Visual and auditory features of a text (e.g. italics, indentation, sibilants) can create distinct fictional content, so a satisfactory theory of fictional truth ought to be able to account for the work done by formal features.

If balls were books I wanted to read!

Philosophy and Literature

“Metaphysics as a Means in ‘Burnt Norton’,” Philosophers’ Imprint, forthcoming. [pre-print]

I discuss an example where philosophical commentary is utilized for literary purposes. The example enriches the way we understand the possible relationships between philosophy and literature.

“Camus and Sartre on the Absurd,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 2021. [pre-print]

“The absurd” is a technical term for both philosophers, and they mean different things by it. I show how their different understandings of the absurd led to Sartre’s misreading of The Stranger, and how this oversight highlights the differences between the Sartrean and the Camusian absurd. In order to draw out their philosophical differences, I provide a reading of the novel that contrasts with Sartre’s.

“Lyric Self-Expression” w/ John Gibson, in Art, Representation, and Make-Believe, Routledge, ed. Sonia Sedivy, 2021. [pre-print]

Philosophers ask just whose expression, if anyone’s, we hear in lyric poetry. Walton provides a novel possibility: it’s the reader who “uses” the poem who makes the language expressive. But worries arise once we consider poems in particular social or political settings, those which require a strong self-other distinction, or those with expressions that should not be disassociated from the subjects whose experience they draw from. One way to meet this challenge is to consider the poem expressive of a plural subject, which frees us from looking for a particular individual whose voice we hear in the work, whether she be fictional or actual.

The Tractatus’s Form and Conclusion [on the back burner]

I show how the form of the Tractatus connects the Picture Theory of Meaning and the infamous ending of the work for the practical conclusion Wittgenstein sought to draw. The Tractatus should be read as an experiential reductio whose conclusion involves rejecting a practice instead of a proposition.

Philosophy of Music

“Convention and Representation in Music,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 2023. [pre-print]

I argue against the formalists and insist that music can have representative content. In particular, I argue that conventions should not be discounted as a genuine way for music to represent content.

“A Dual-Process Model of Xunzi’s Philosophy of Music,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2023. [pre-print].

Though Xunzi set the standard for Chinese aesthetics for millennia, there is no systematic account that brings together all his views on music and moral cultivation. I explain why currently existing accounts can’t capture all the commitments, and I turn to analytic aesthetics to provide a new Dual-Process Model of Xunzi’s philosophy of music.

Korean Philosophy

“Juche in the Broader Context of Korean Philosophy,” Philosophical Forum, 2023. [pre-print].

There is ongoing debate on whether Juche is indigenous, Marxist-Leninist, or Confucian—or if it’s a real philosophy at all. I show how characteristics that philosophers identify to be unique or pronounced in premodern Korean philosophy can be found in Juche as well. Juche can be understood as a politically inflected outgrowth that is embedded within the larger context of Korean philosophy.

“Defending Juche Against an Uncharitable Analysis,” APA Studies: Asian and Asian American Philosophy, 2023.

I introduce Juche (주체/主體), the official philosophy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”) and defend it against the allegation that it is a nonsensical philosophy. My goal isn’t to defend the regime, but to present its ideology in the most charitable way so its merits and demerits can be seen more clearly in future engagements.

“Metaphors in Neo-Confucian Korean Philosophy,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2021, symposium. [pre-print]

I look at two Korean philosophical works—the Four-Seven debate and Book of the Imperial Pivot— and suggest that metaphor’s empathy-inducing and perspective-giving capacities made it an especially helpful mode of philosophizing in the history of Korean philosophy because Neo-Confucians had a conception of the mind that closely connected it to the heart (xin 心).

“Introduction to the Symposium on Korean Aesthetics: The Beginning is Half,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2021, symposium. [pre-print]

I provide historical and cultural contexts for Korean aesthetics for the symposium I guest-edited and give summaries of the articles that appear in it.

“Art Beyond Morality and Metaphysics: Late  Joseon Korean Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2019. [pre-print]

I introduce a cultural movement called “Joseon Wind” and show how Korean artists and philosophers used art to combat epistemic injustice and Sinocentrism in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Philosophy of Time

Shifting Time and Reference [on the back burner]

I show that McTaggart goes wrong not because of the “Indexical Fallacy” per se (argued by Lowe) but because of the indexical fallacy. Perry’s recent theory of undexical uses of indexical words, where indexicals’ semantics rely not on the context of utterance but on a different binding quantifier, shows us that the “indexical fallacy” is not a problem after all.

Philosophy of Religion

“The Life and Influence of Thomas Aquinas” in Curta & Holt (eds.), Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History, 2016. [pre-print].

A short account of Aquinas’ works and influence.