The OZSW studygroup Moral Psychology warmly invites you to an online lecture on microaggression  by Regina Rini, author of the book The Ethics of Microaggression (Routledge 2021). The lecture will be followed by commentaries by Lisa Bastian and Tom Claes, and a plenary discussion. After registration via Katrien.Schaubroeck@uantwerpen.be (before June 10) you will receive a Zoomlink.

TIME: Monday June 14 2021, 3 pm – 5 pm, via Zoom

TITLE: Microaggression and forward-looking moral responsibility

SPEAKER: Regina Rini (York University, Toronto)

ABSTRACT: Microaggressions  are relatively minor insulting events, made disproportionately harmful  by their participation in an oppressive pattern of similar insults. People who commit microaggressions (and  nearly all of us do) are often unaware of what they are doing or unable  to control their actions in the moment. Since ignorance and lack of  control are famous excusing conditions for moral responsibility, it may seem that people who cause microaggressive harm  cannot be held morally responsible. Lately, a range of forward-looking accounts of moral responsibility have been introduced to deal with  oppressive harms. A forward-looking account of responsibility is  targeted at future actions rather than those already completed. In the  paper I show that none of these accounts are fully satisfactory in balancing the competing moral requirements of decency (toward  perpetrators) and solidarity (toward victims). I diagnose this failure  as falling in a gap between Kantian and Humean accounts of moral agency.  Instead I propose an alternative model, Durkheimian agency, which I claim makes most sense of ourselves as moral agents  extended across time and social structure.

BIO: Regina Rini holds the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition at York University, Toronto. She teaches and writes on a number of topics at the intersection of normative  theory and social science. Her previously published research is mostly  about the relevance of cognitive science to moral theory. Currently she is  working on new projects related to the ethics of microaggression, the  relationship between moral disagreement and moral agency, and the role  of partisanship in political epistemology. Before moving to York in  2017, she was Assistant Professor of Bioethics at NYU. Before that she held a  postdoc in Moral Cognition at Oxford University. She is the author of The Ethics of Microaggression (Routledge, 2021).

https://reginarini.net/
https://www.routledge.com/The-Ethics-of-Microaggression/Rini/p/book/9781138713147#

RESPONDENTS

Lisa Bastian is assistant professor at the VU Amsterdam

https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/lisa-bastian

Tom Claes is professor at the University of Ghent

https://research.flw.ugent.be/nl/tom.claes

PROGRAMME

3 p.m. – 3.45 p.m.Lecture by Regina Rini (York, Toronto)
4 p.m. – 4.15 p.m. : Commentaries by Lisa Bastian (VU) and Tom Claes (UGhent)
4.15 p.m.-5 p.m.: plenary discussion