My research addresses questions concerning how we ought to structure our inner and social lives, spanning Buddhist philosophy, ethics (especially moral psychology), and feminist philosophy.
One primary research project explores the moral psychology of attention and emotion, with a special focus on mindfulness. My dissertation, Mindfulness, Morality, and the Good Life, engages cross-culturally with Buddhist philosophy to address contemporary topics in moral psychology and value theory.
My interests in Buddhist philosophy are focused around Buddhist ethics and moral psychology, with a special interest in issues of relevance to contemporary Buddhist communities. For example, I am interested in the morally transformative role of joy in Buddhist psychology. I am also interested in ethical questions surrounding LGBTQ+ inclusion within Buddhist monastic orders. My interests in Buddhist philosophy are supported by language training in Pāli (reading proficiency for research) and Sanskrit (intermediate reading), as well as over a decade of experience as a Buddhist practitioner across multiple traditions, particularly the Plum Village tradition of Vietnamese Zen Master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh.
Another research project in feminist philosophy explores the obligations of institutions and individuals to mitigate the structural subordination of marginalized groups (particularly LGBTQ+ subordination). My publication, “Delegitimizing Transphobic Views in Academia,” is part of this project.
Publications
“Delegitimizing Transphobic Views in Academia,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 30(4), 2025.
In this paper, I argue that academic institutions have a pro tanto obligation to delegitimize transphobic views, which in many contexts is undefeated. By this, I mean academic institutions generally should not take such views seriously as viable candidates for belief, though sometimes this obligation may be outweighed by other considerations. Three premises together justify this conclusion. First, if academic institutions do not delegitimize transphobic views, then they structurally perpetuate the subordination of trans people. Second, institutions have a pro tanto obligation to avoid structurally perpetuating subordination, which can only be defeated when such avoidance is excessively burdensome. Third, academic institutions can delegitimize transphobic views in a manner that is not excessively burdensome, at least in many contexts. More specifically, delegitimizing transphobic views aligns with important institutional norms and a robust notion of academic freedom.
Dissertation Chapters (drafts available upon request)
“Mindfulness, Aversion, and Morality“
Contemporary mindfulness is often conceived of not merely as a therapeutic technique, but as a valuable way of life. Yet mindfulness is also commonly thought to preclude aversive emotions and negative moral judgments directed at an object. This raises a tension between mindfulness and morality: mindfulness precludes sustaining aversive attitudes towards an object, but such attitudes are commonly held to be crucial to the moral life (e.g., anger at injustice). I argue that contemporary theories of mindfulness must accommodate sustaining at least some aversive attitudes within a mindful state if mindfulness is to be appropriately recommended as a way of life. I then develop a positive account of mindfulness that makes such accommodations, arguing that mindfulness is best conceived of as involving an orientation of openness—a receptive acknowledgment of the object as it is. Openness can accommodate aversion while aligning with the spirit of prominent accounts of mindfulness, making an openness-based account of mindfulness well-suited to be recommended as a way of life.
“Mindfulness for Anger-Embracers“
While central to the moral life, ‘hot’ moral emotions like anger at injustice are subject to a regulatory problem—they are often too gripping, leading us to react too quickly, too harshly, or in an otherwise unskillful manner. Mindfulness has been presented as a way to regulate such emotions. Mindfulness advocates, however, have historically disavowed hot emotions. For mindfulness to appeal to those who embrace hot moral emotions, then, a convincing case must be made regarding how living a mindful life can address the regulatory problem on terms they can accept. This paper aims to make such a case, by arguing that embracing a mindful way of life enables the anger-embracer to properly sculpt their hot moral emotions, thus addressing the regulatory problem without sacrificing these emotions’ moral value. As such, anger-embracers, by their own lights, ought to embark on the project of becoming mindful moral emoters, integrating mindfulness into their lives in a thoroughgoing way.
“On the Value of Living in the Present Moment“
While living in the present moment often facilitates goods like pleasure, knowledge, and meaning, there is plausibly more to the story. In this paper, I argue that certain modes of engaged, present-centered attention (what I call presence) are non-instrumentally valuable because they are our only ways of attentionally engaging with life as it is, which plays a constitutive and foundational role in a good life. I focus on two modes of presence: episodic presence, which involves extended instances of presence connected to one’s cares and concerns, and habituated presence, understood as a stable pattern of attention that gives normative significance to living in the present moment. Episodic presence manifests attentional engagement in particular moments. Habituated presence, however, realizes the more stable attitude of valuing life as it is, making it distinctly valuable, especially when valued for itself.
Other Papers (drafts available upon request)
“Mindfulness, Moral Agency, and the Attention Economy“
In “Mindfulness, Moral Agency, and the Attention Economy,” I explore the harms of the attention economy (the sector of the economy that commodifies attention, like social media) and argue that despite structural barriers, mindfulness can help us mitigate these harms. More specifically, I argue that (i) the attention economy harms our moral agency by undermining our capacity for embodied, present-centered attention and (ii) mindfulness has a valuable, though incomplete, role in addressing this harm. Instead, addressing this harm requires a dual strategy, which involves, on the one hand, regulating how companies design and implement attention-capturing technologies, and, on the other removing barriers and creating incentives for everyday people to cultivate mindfulness. Neither strategy alone is sufficient to address the attention economy’s harm to our moral agency.
“The Case for Mindfulness-Based Bioethics”
I am currently developing a project on how mindfulness might improve bioethics methods. Many standard methods in bioethics—such as principlism and casuistry—leave a significant gap between their methodological frameworks and concrete ethical directives. In seeking pluralist justifiability, these approaches deliberately limit their theoretical commitments, but this opens the door for practitioners’ implicit biases to shape outcomes. Existing efforts to narrow this gap remain insufficient. I argue that bioethicists should address this problem not only through additional conceptual refinements, but also through self-corrective practices integrated into ethical deliberation itself. I propose incorporating mindfulness as a practical, evidence-based strategy to improve bioethical reasoning. A mindfulness-based approach to bioethics aims to enhance practitioners’ capacity to notice and counteract bias, thereby improving the quality of ethical decision-making within established methods like principlism.
Planned future projects
- A paper on the relationship between Buddhist compassion and Lordean rage (and other liberatory forms of anger), particularly within Thich Nhat Hanh’s moral psychology
- A paper on praise and blame within early Buddhist ethics
- A paper on ethical concepts related to attention in early Buddhist ethics, in particular the conceptual distinctions between samma (right/wise), yoniso (wise), and kusala (wholesome)
- A paper on the moral value of joy, drawing on Buddhist philosophical notions of sympathetic joy (mudita) and spiritual joy/rapture (pīti)
- A paper on the ethics of creating a nonbinary Buddhist monastic order
Logan Mitchell 