Published

(1) "Affective Strategies of Self-Control: Hidden Risks and Cognitive Rigidity," Philosophical Psychology (2025) DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2483682  

Many theorists argue that self-control produces only positive outcomes with no apparent downsides. Of course, while exercises of self-control could be put to bad use in cases of cognitive rigidity like anorexia, the value of self-control remains prominent in everyday life. Nevertheless, some worries remain. Do some ways of exercising self-control incur greater risks for developing cognitive rigidity than others? That is, do all exercises of self-control have equally positive outcomes? I synthesize empirical findings to show that some popular ways of bolstering self-control have greater risks for developing cognitive rigidity than others. Hence, not all exercises of self-control have equally positive outcomes. While strategies of using emotions to bolster self-control have recently been met with a great deal of enthusiasm, some of these strategies incur greater risks for developing cognitive rigidity than others. For example, while using emotions like anger could initially bolster self-control, these emotions could become addictive and invite cognitive rigidity in the long run. Similarly, while using implementation intentions could initially bolster self-control, this strategy could thwart cognitive flexibility necessary for goal disengagement. Finally, certain ways of bolstering self-control with negative emotions like shame could increase cognitive rigidity by causing one to “get stuck” in self-control mode.

I aim to develop these findings to support my regulatory theory of mental processes. In particular, while exercising self-control purports to preserve expression of authentic preferences, it often takes on an emotion-regulatory role in our psychology (e.g., while fighting off temptations to slack off at work would initially regulate anxiety about work deadlines, they often shift to alleviating anxiety in general). 

(2) “Mindreading, Emotion-Regulation, and Oppression,” Synthese (2022) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03805-9 

I extend the practical account of mindreading (i.e., the view that we engage in attribution of propositional attitudes to ourselves and others in order to shape mental states in accordance with social norms) to outline the psychological mechanisms behind oppressive interpersonal dynamics. I synthesize empirical findings to show that while theorizing fosters emotional distance by “reframing” affective cues from a 3rd person point of view, simulation fosters feelings of interpersonal intimacy and psychological continuity. As a result, theorizing and simulation play distinct roles in socio-emotional regulation and maintenance of oppressive power hierarchies. While theorizing allows oppressors to maintain emotional distance during self and other interpretation, simulation compromises the oppressed’s abilities to maintain emotional distance and look past their circumstances. 

I aim to extend these findings towards outlining empirically detailed interventions to oppressive interpersonal dynamics. For example, therapeutic interventions for perpetrators of oppression would involve de-emphasizing the use of theorizing and practicing simulative skills. Controlled exercises in assuming “low-ranking” roles in interpersonal interactions would trigger simulative processes and ultimately compromise their ability to remain emotionally insulated from their actions.

(3) “Emotion’s Role in the Unity of Consciousness,” Philosophical Psychology (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2021.1915971

In subjects with the split-brain syndrome, some conscious states appear to be disunified (e.g., visual states), while others remain unified (e.g., affective states). While placing emphasis on the disunities, disunity accounts conclude that split-brain subjects have two subjective perspectives and not one.

I argue that affective unity is more important than perceptual disunity in delineating our subjective perspective. Unlike enjoying an objective perspective, enjoying a subjective perspective entails experiencing aspects of your phenomenal field in terms of their overall relation to you. What it’s like to be you at any given time entails experiencing certain aspects of the phenomenal field as peripheral to others. Emotion creates and sustains a center/periphery structure in our phenomenal field by signaling orders of perceived importance as well as orders of perceived changeability (e.g., to someone feeling grief, the experience of getting a ticket is felt as peripheral/unimportant to the experience of grief; to someone feeling depressed, the experience of reaching a hilltop is felt as peripheral/unattainable to the experience of laying down to rest). Since emotion plays a greater role than perception in creating and sustaining this periphery/center structure, and split-brain patients remain affectively unified, split-brain patients retain a unified subjective perspective on the world

 I hope to extend these findings towards outlining the psychological processes behind self-interpretation and motivation. In particular, “affect-colored glasses” could determine our felt ability to change our circumstances and imagine a different way of being. For example, ingroup pride in the context of oppression could contribute to close-mindedness or an inability to imagine a different layout of the world. In turn, feelings of shame in the context of oppression could contribute to “learned helplessness,” or the inability to see past one’s circumstances.

(4) “Tracking Intentionalism and the Phenomenology of Mental Effort,” Synthese, (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02347-x 

I argue that the phenomenology of mental effort, or the feeling of working hard mentally, is not a matter of representing features in a certain way. 

Most of us are familiar with the phenomenology of mental effort accompanying cognitively demanding tasks, like focusing on the next chess move or performing lengthy mental arithmetic. In this paper, I argue that phenomenology of mental effort poses a novel counterexample to tracking intentionalism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is a matter of tracking features of one’s environment in a certain way. I argue that an increase in the phenomenology of mental effort does not accompany a change in any of the following candidate representational contents: representation of externally presented features, e.g. brightness, contrast, representation of task difficulty, representation of the possibility of error, representation of trying to achieve some state of affairs, representation of bodily changes like muscle tension, or representation of change in cognitive resource availability and lost opportunity cost. While tracking intentionalism about some phenomenal experiences like pain might obtain, it does not seem to obtain for all phenomenal experiences. This puts the intentionalist in an uncomfortable position of trying to explain why some phenomenal experiences have representational content and others do not. Since many believe that tracking intentionalism or something like it provides the best chance of naturalizing consciousness, these arguments deserve detailed consideration.

I hope to extend these findings towards outlining the psychological processes behind self-interpretation. If feelings of mental effort come and go rather haphazardly, they should not be taken as sure signs of mental agency or “naturalness” during self-interpretation. That is, feelings of mental effort or lack thereof during self-interpretation should not be taken as a sign that a given self-conception is somehow more “natural” or authentic.

In Preparation 

• "The Regulatory Process Theory of Mental Processes: Cultivating Agential Skills"

In the near future, I aim to develop a book called The Regulatory Process Theory of Mental Processes: Cultivating Agential Skills.

I will start by expanding on the motivation behind the regulatory process theory of mental processes. In particular, I will outline the tension between epistemic and instrumental roles of mental processes. For example, while emotions purport to reveal important truths about the world (e.g., feeling sad at your friend's departure reveals your care), they also serve tacit instrumental roles in our mental economy (e.g., athletes tacitly drum up feelings of anger to maximize performance, artists trigger feelings of anxiety to heighten creativity, and oppressors capitalize on feelings of indignation and disgust to obscure less palatable emotions.) Similarly, while attributing mental states to oneself and others purports to reveal truths about these states, theorizing fosters emotional distance by "reframing" affective cues from a third-person point of view, while simulation fosters feelings of interpersonal intimacy and psychological continuity. As a result, while theorizing allows oppressors to maintain emotional distance during self and other interpretation, involuntary self-directed simulation during threatening situations compromises the oppressed's abilities to maintain emotional distance and look beyond their circumstances. In the same vein, while exercising self-control purports to preserve expression of authentic preferences, it often takes on an emotion-regulatory role in our psychology (e.g., while fighting off temptations to slack off at work would initially regulate anxiety about work deadlines, they often shift to alleviating anxiety in general). 

The tension between epistemic and emotion-regulatory functions of various mental processes gives rise to ‘mental rigidity.’ For example, while oppressors grow to rely on instrumental uses of certain emotions in everyday life (e.g., anger obscures feelings of inadequacy), they grow powerless to interrogate them for justification, thereby perpetuating their own close-mindedness. Similarly, while initial exercises of self-control offer immediate benefits to autonomy, they could slip to compromise our ability to disengage (e.g., if staying on track at work alleviates anxiety in general, relinquishing self-control might leave one vulnerable to the very emotions it regulates). 

I aim to extend these findings by arguing that alleviating mental rigidity requires developing self-complexity (i.e., developing self-conceptions that have little conceptual and associative overlap). In this way, the overall emotion regulatory load of any single instrumental emotion or affective attitude would be diffused, leaving more room for interrogating any given emotion for justification.