Curriculum Vitae
Contact
Name: Daniel Weltman
Email: danny dot weltman at ashoka dot edu dot in
Mail: If you send something to Ashoka there's about a 60% chance it will get to me
Office: Old Academic Block/Admin Building/AC01 610
Employment
2024 - Present: Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ashoka University.
2018 - 2024: Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ashoka University.
Education
2018: PhD in Philosophy at University of California San Diego.
2011: BA in Philosophy and Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis.
Articles
(With Gil Hersch) "It's Not the Slope that Matters: Well-Being and Shapes of Lives." Journal of Moral Philosophy, forthcoming.
"What Do We Want? To Eliminate Gender! When Do We Want It? Later!" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming.
"The Paper Chase Case and Epistemic Accounts of Request Normativity." Thought, forthcoming.
"Colonialism is Per Se Wrong only if Colonialism is not Per Se Wrong: Supersession and the Bourgeois Predicament." Public Affairs Quarterly Vol 38 No 3, 239-66, 2024.
"Saving Cosmopolitanism from Colonialism." Ethics & Global Politics, Vol 17 No 4, 25-44, 2024.
"A Cosmopolitan Instrumentalist Theory of Secession." The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol 61 No 3, 527-51, 2023.
"What Makes Requests Normative? The Epistemic Account Defended." Ergo, Vol 9 No 64, 1715-43, 2023.
(With Gil Hersch) "A New Well-Being Atomism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol 107 No 1, 3-23, 2023.
"Covert Animal Rescue: Civil Disobedience or Subrevolution?" Environmental Ethics, Vol 44 No 1, 61-83, 2022.
"Territorial Exclusion: An Argument against Closed Borders." Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Vol 19 No 3, 257-290, 2021.
"Illiberal Immigrants and Liberalism's Commitment to its Own Demise." Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol 34 No 3, 271-297, 2020.
Discussion Notes, Comments, Replies, Etc.
"On Covert Civil Disobedience and Animal Rescue: A Reply to Milligan." Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Vol 25 No 2, 2023.
"How Requests Give Reasons: The Epistemic Account versus Schaber's Value Account." Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol 26, 397–403, 2023.
"Colonialism, Injustices of the Past, and the Hole in Nine." Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol 88 No 2, 288-300, 2023.
"On the Alleged Laziness of Moral Realists." The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol 54 No 3, 511-518, 2020.
"Must I Accept Prosecution for Civil Disobedience?" The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 70 No 279, 410-418, 2020.
"Helping Buchanan on Helping the Rebels." Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Vol 15 No 1, 75-84, 2019.
Pedagogical Research
"Short Writing Assignments in Philosophy." American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy, Vol 9, 149-71, 2024.
Book Reviews
Review of J. P. Messina, Private Censorship (2024). The Journal of Value Inquiry, forthcoming.
Review of Elizabeth Anderson, Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back (2023). The Journal of Value Inquiry, forthcoming.
Review of Cara Nine, Sharing Territories: Overlapping Self-Determination and Resource Rights (2022). Journal of Moral Philosophy, forthcoming.
Review of Matthew Cull, What Gender Should Be (2024). Journal of Social Ontology, Vol 10 No 1, 2024, 100-3.
Review of Carol J. Adams, Alice Cracy, and Lori Gruen (eds.), The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (2023). Teaching Philosophy, Vol 46 No 4, 594-8, 2023.
Review of Ben Bramble, The Passing of Temporal Well-Being (2018). Journal of Moral Philosophy, Vol 18 No 6, 670-3, 2021.
Conference Presentations (
)(* = Invited) and Colloquium Talks (
)
"Gender Proliferation is Gender Elimination"
Social Ontology Faces the Future (Boğaziçi University, 2024)
"Saving Cosmopolitanism from Colonialism"
Territories, Peoples, Nations (Northwestern University in Qatar, 2024)
"Who is the Self in Self-Determination?"
MANCEPT 2023: Decolonial Conceptions of Territory, Sovereignty, and Self-determination (Online, 2023)
Against Agent Regret
New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE (April 10, 2023)
Duke Kunshan University, Kunshan, China (October 21, 2019)
*"Machine Learning Ethics"
AI@Ashoka Workshop (Ashoka University, 2023)
"Arbitrariness and Conventionalism: In Support of Pro-Arbitrary Views"
Persons, Ethics and Society: Assessing Conventionalism about Personhood (Online, 2022)
"Subrevolutions: A Conceptual and Moral Exploration"
MANCEPT 2021: Political Resistance and Contemporary Injustice (Online, 2021)
"Territorial Exclusion: An Argument against Closed Borders"
Philosophy of Migration and Asylum (Online, 2021)
"Animal Rights Abolitionism is Racist"
Ethics in a Global Environment 2021 (Online, 2021)
"Animal Rescue: Civil Disobedience or Subrevolution?"
International Society of Environmental Ethics 17th Annual Meeting (Online, 2020)
Pre-RoME Workshop on Animal Ethics (University of Colorado, Boulder, 2019)
"'I Shouldn't Have to Ask': Request Injustice as a Challenge to Freedom"
The Sexual Politics of Freedom Conference, The Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, National University of Ireland-Galway (Online, 2020)
"Gender Abolitionism: Not Now, But Later"
MANCEPT 2020: What is Gender and What Do we Want it to Be? (Online, 2020)
Social Ontology 2019, the 6th Biennial ENSO Conference (Tampere University, 2019)
"Cole’s Challenge, Boundaries, and Theories of Territory"
Roundtable on the 20th Anniversary of Phillip Cole's Philosophies of Exclusion (Online, June 2020)
"What Makes Requests Normative? The Epistemic Account Defended"
2019 Southampton-Humboldt Normativity Workshop (University of Southampton, 2019)
"The Shifting Boundary Problem"
Moral and Political Philosophy at the Border Conference (University of Texas at El Paso, 2019)
"Civil War, Regime Change, and Self-Determination"
International Society of Military Ethics 2014 Meeting (Notre Dame University, 2014)
Public Philosophy
Robert Nozick’s ‘Wilt Chamberlain’ Argument for Libertarianism
Article for 1000-Word Philosophy, October 2024
The Buddhist Theory of No-Self (Anātman/Anattā)
Article for 1000-Word Philosophy, February 2023
G. E. M. Anscombe’s "Modern Moral Philosophy"
Article for 1000-Word Philosophy, May 2022"Can They Suffer?": Bentham on our Obligations to Animals
Article for 1000-Word Philosophy, March 2022Reason is the Slave to the Passions: Hume on Reason vs. Desire
Article for 1000-Word Philosophy, November 2021“Nasty, Brutish, and Short”: Thomas Hobbes on Life in the State of Nature
Article for 1000-Word Philosophy, July 2021Philosophy Phriday: Personal Identity and Personal Idantity
Article for The Daily Ant, June 2018
Teaching
For more details (including a syllabus for each course) see my Teaching page.
Philosophy 2090: Introduction to Early Chinese Philosophy (Spring 2025) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 2678: AI Ethics (Spring 2023) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 2770: Political Philosophy (Monsoon 2021) (Spring 2024) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 3695: Personal Identity and Ethics (Monsoon 2021) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 3486: Kant's Political Philosophy (Spring 2021) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 4730: Advanced Ethics (Monsoon 2020) (Monsoon 2023) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 2730: Introduction to Ethics (Monsoon 2020) (Monsoon 2023) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 1000: Introduction to Philosophy (Spring 2020) (Spring 2021) (Spring 2023) (Monsoon 2024) (Ashoka)
Critical Thinking Seminar 1053: Ethics and Technology (Spring 2020) (Ashoka)
Foundation Course 16: Environmental Ethics (Monsoon 2019) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 2807: The Creation and Destruction of States: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Monsoon 2019) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 3630: Metaethics (Spring 2019) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 2665/Critical Thinking 153: Ethics and Technology (Spring 2019) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 216: Normative Ethics (Monsoon 2018) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 404: Advanced Political Philosophy (Monsoon 2018) (Spring 2024) (Ashoka)
Philosophy 164: Technology & Human Values (Summer 2017) (UCSD)
Philosophy 162: Contemporary Moral Issues (Summer 2016) (UCSD)
Philosophy 164: Technology & Human Values (Summer 2015) (UCSD)
Research Supervision
Undergraduate Thesis on Laws (2024-25) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Political Philosophy (2024-25) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Surveillance Capitalism (2023-24) (Ashoka)
Master's Student in Liberal Studies (2022-23) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Markets and Democracy (2022-23) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Depression (2022-23) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on AI Ethics (2022-23) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Personal Identity (co-supervisor with Marya Schechtman) (2022-23) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Care Ethics (co-supervisor with Vrinda Dalmiya) (2022-23) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Moral Laziness (1 Undergraduate Student) (2021-22) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Plato (2021-22) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Social Norms (2021-22) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Social Contract Theory (2 Undergraduate Students) (Summer 2021) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on AI Minds and AI Ethics (1 Undergraduate Student) (Spring 2021) (Ashoka)
Member, PhD Student Research Committee, Amzad Ansari (2021-Present) (IIT Delhi)
Member, PhD Student Research Committee, Vaishali Singh (2021-Present) (IIT Delhi)
Member, PhD Student Research Committee, Praveen Gond (2020-Present) (IIT Delhi)
Independent Study on Bioethics (2 Undergraduate Students) (Monsoon 2020) (Ashoka)
Master's Student in Liberal Studies (2020-21) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Expressivism (co-supervisor with Raja Rosenhagen) (2020-21) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on History of Western Ethics (1 Undergraduate Student) (Summer 2020) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Virtue Ethics (1 Undergraduate Student) (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Kantian Metaethics (2 Undergraduate Students) (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Bioethics (2 Undergraduate Students) (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Normative Ethics (2 Undergraduate Students) (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Equality (1 Undergraduate Student) (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Virtue Ethics (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Environmental Ethics (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Autonomous Weapons (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on Buddhist Ethics (co-supervisor with Alex Watson) (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Undergraduate Thesis on the Ethics of Immigration (co-supervisor with Pratap Bhanu Mehta) (2019-20) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Philosophy Research (2 Undergraduate Students) (Summer 2019) (Ashoka)
Independent Study on Animal Ethics (3 Undergraduate Students) (Spring 2019) (Ashoka)
Conference Commentaries
"Dirty Hands and Climate Change: Why the Powerful Do Not Have an Absolute Right to Avoid Wrong when Reducing Greenhouse Gas" by Benjamin Howe (ISEE 17th Annual Meeting, Online, 2020)
"Human Identity, Animal Identity, and Reflective Endorsement" by Rachel Robison-Greene (Pre-RoME Workshop on Animal Ethics, Online, 2020)
"A Platitudinous Solution to the Democratic Boundary Problem" by Vuko Andrić (RoME, Boulder CO, 2019)
"The Case against Legislative Office Qualifications" by Udit Bhatia (Manuscript Workshop on Epistemic Democracy, Epistocracy and the Legislature, Delhi, 2019)
"Impersonal Paternalism" by Steven Wall (New Directions in Social Theorizing, San Diego CA, 2019)
"Is Normative Consent a Theory of Authority" by Chris King (Pacific APA, Seattle WA, 2018)
"A House Is Not a Home: The Domestic Analogy in Just War Theory" by Elizabeth Lanphier (Pacific APA, San Diego CA, 2017)
"Coercion and Distributive Justice: A Defense" by Douglas MacKay (Pacific APA, San Diego CA, 2014)
Refereeing
American Journal of Political Science, Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy (x3), Environmental Ethics (x3), Erkenntnis (x2), Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, European Journal of Political Theory, Inquiry, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (x5), Journal of Social Philosophy (x2), Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Journal of Value Inquiry, Philosophers’ Imprint (x4), Philosophical Studies (x4), Philosophies (x2), Radical Philosophy Review, Res Publica, Social Theory and Practice (x2), The Philosophical Quarterly (x2), Palgrave Macmillan (book proposal), Routledge Philosophy (book proposal; book manuscript), Swiss National Science Foundation (grant application)
Service
Member, Academic Integrity Committee, Ashoka (2019 - Present).
Member, Foundation Courses Steering Committee, Ashoka (2019 - Present).
Philosophy Coordinator, Politics Philosophy and Economics Program, Ashoka (2020 - Present).
I have handled organization for the Philosophy Department's Colloquium Speaker Series (2019-21) and the undergraduate Thesis Research Seminar (2019-23).
I served on the advisory board for the UCSD Summer Program for Women in Philosophy from 2016 until 2018.
I have organized some reading groups, including a Borders, Territory, and Obligations group (co-organizer, 2012-13), a Chinese, Islamic, and Indian Philosophy group (2016), a Feminist reading group (2016-18), and a value theory reading group (2016-18).
Awards
Summer Graduate Teaching Scholar Fellowship, University of California San Diego 2015.
Borders, Territory, and Obligations Reading Group Grant (with Alan Ward), UCSD Center for Humanities 2012-13.
SHORE Fellowship, University of California San Diego 2011.
Antoinette Dames prize for best Political Science honors thesis, Washington University in St. Louis 2010-11.