Austen McDougal is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow at NYU's Center for Bioethics. He works on the ethics and moral psychology of the heart, so to speak. His views in ethical theory follow an age-old thread that says ethics is fundamentally, albeit not exclusively, about your motives. In particular, motives for acting have intrinsic significance independent of outcome: being for what matters (motives) is just as important to ethics as bringing about what matters (outcomes). He also argues that agency is fundamentally about deciding your motives and only derivatively about voluntary control over your actions. A number of his recent projects explore the grounds for more compassionate ways of being oriented toward others: for showing attention, grace, and love even when these might not be deserved.
Dr. McDougal's background plays an important role in his philosophical temperament and teaching. As a Mexican-American, he has found teaching Latin American philosophy quite rewarding. Being raised in a bicultural family is also partly responsible for a tendency toward conciliatory frameworks (like the dualism of being for and bringing about that he defends in ethics). His experience with software development informs reflections on the importance of the heart in the context of technology and AI. Finally, Christian themes influence his interests in philosophy of religion and metaethics.
Before NYU, Dr. McDougal was a postdoc at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values with the Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion. He has a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford and a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Computer Science from Princeton.
