There are four aspects to my research program. First, I aim to provide a philosophical and empirically informed account of the nature of emotion. Second, I examine particular emotions such as shame and disgust and aim to illuminate their role in our social and moral practices. Third, I explore how different normative domains interact with each other. For example, the relationship between moral normativity and humour and between moral and epistemic normativity. Finally, I examine the nature of intellectual humility and its relationship to disagreement and public discourse.
Below is a list of my published papers and some of my work that is still in preparation. Links to the journal pages are in the heading. If you don’t have access to the full version you can download an earlier draft for free through the philpapers link.
Journal Articles
“Wonder upon wonder” in Ethics, Forthcoming.
I give an analysis of the emotion of wonder that unifies its hetereogeneity and explains how questions about the ethics of wonder arise. (Philpapers link)
“The Ambivalent Wisdom of Moral Disgust” in Philosophical Psychology, Forthcoming.
I provide an analysis of moral disgust: they are responses to acts that undermine a given normative order. However, they can latch on to preserving both valuable and reprehensible orders. I suggest this gives us reason to pay attention to them in moral reasoning. (Open-access)
“Having a Good Laugh: The Comic Advantages of Moral Virtue” in the British Journal of Aesthetics, Forthcoming.
I suggest that moral virtue makes you a more reliable comic judge: the virtuous will more reliably judge that funny things are funny. Why? There are perverse incentives and systematic and oppressive distortions on our comic judgment. Moral virtue corrects for that. This claim is plausible even if subjectivism or relativism about humour is true. (Philpapers link)
“Honing the Haptics of the Heart: A New Defence of the Perceptual Theory of Emotion” in Erkenntnis, Forthcoming.
Many object to the perceptual theory of emotion by pointing out that we are more involved in our emotions than with our regular perceptions. I disarm this objection by suggesting that we think about emotions along the lines of tactile rather than visual perception and provide a developmental story as to how our emotions become a part of our agency. (Philpapers link)
“Intellectual Humility without Limits: Magnanimous Humility, Disagreement and the Epistemology of Resistance” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol 110 (2), 604-622. (2025)
Most accounts of intellectual humility are about owning one’s limitations. I suggest that there is a different form of intellectual humility that is instead about not insisting on your legitimate epistemic entitlements. I also discuss how this virtue interacts with the epistemic situation of the marginalised and oppressed. (Open-access)
“Being Seen and Being with Others: Shame and Interpersonal Relationships“ in American Philosophical Quarterly, vol 62 (3), 219-232. (2025)
Is it a mistake to feel shame when you are seen by others in a way that you reject? I suggest the answer is no. Being vulnerable to others in shame is a constitutive part of certain interpersonal relationships. (Philpapers link)
“Emotions as Modulators of Desire” in Philosophical Studies vol 179, 855–878 (2022)
I sketch a framework for thinking about the motivational structure of emotion: it modulates the strength of our occurrent desires. I show how this proposal is consistent with the Humean theory of motivation. (Philpapers link)
“Assertion, Stakes, and Expected Blameworthiness” in Erkenntnis vol 87, 1501–1519 (2022)
I show how we can combine the knowledge norm of assertion with insensitive invariantism while accounting for our intuitions about high and low stakes cases by invoking the notion of rational expected blameworthiness. (Philpapers link)
“Emotion as High-level Perception” in Synthese vol 199, 7181–7201 (2021)
I defend the perceptual theory of emotion by showing how the common objections to it are defused once we understand emotion as a form of high-level perception. (Philpapers link)
Commentaries
“Epiphanic Empires” in Journal of Philosophy of Emotion. 7(2): 16-23. (2026)
This is a commentary on Sophie Grace Chappell’s book Epiphanies. I try to show, contrary to Chappell, that epiphanies could ground moral theory and are less republican than one would like. (Philpapers link)
“The Transformation of Emotion: First and Third Person Perspectives in Developmental Context” in Australasian Philosophical Review. 5 (4): 389-395. (2021)
This is a commentary on Shun Kwong Loi’s lead article. I show how perspective taking plays a role both in the development of mature emotion and the virtuous refinement of emotion. (Philpapers link)
Works in Progress
Drafts available upon request
A paper on emotion and fittingness (Under Review)
How do we think about whether an emotion is fitting? We look to see which sorts of valuable practices the emotion serves to instantiate.
A paper on genealogy and moral encroachment (Under Review) (with Shalom Chalson)
We suggest that a genealogy of knowledge will reveal that what counts as knowing will depend on moral considerations. Knowledge serves to mark out good informants to our co-operative testimonial system. Beliefs that wrong others manifest a disposition that is contrary to the working of that system and so will fail to count as knowledge.
A paper on a new model of moral encroachment (Under Review)
I put forward a new model of thinking about moral encroachment. On this model, moral considerations don’t raise or lower evidential thresholds, or provide reasons for or against belief. Instead, they exclude certain considerations from counting as normative reasons for belief. This solves a bunch of structural issues for the moral encroacher.
A paper on AI and respect (Under Review) (With Simon Goldstein)
Many people think you should respect persons and not chatbots, but in many digital spaces you can no longer reliably distinguish whether or not you are speaking to a chatbot or a person. This means that many digital spaces are such that respectful exchange is no longer possible.
A paper on spiritual encroachment (In progress)
I put forward the position that one’s spiritual dispositions can affect what one knows in the domain of religious epistemology.
Dissertation
The Nature and Normativity of Emotion
My dissertation is an exploration of the role of emotion in our moral and social lives. It consists of a series of essays that explore the nature and normativity of emotion. Some of the material has now been published, while others are hopefully on their way.
Brandon Yip 