Connor K. Kianpour

Welcome to my site! I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Rhodes College for the 2024-2025 academic year. I received my PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado Boulder, and wrote my dissertation under the supervision of David Boonin. My dissertation inquired into whether members of oppressed groups have special moral obligations to one another. I also have interests in children’s rights/child welfare policy, sexual ethics, bioethics/public health policy, the philosophy of humor, and the moral significance of the body. For more on the issues I am currently spending my time thinking and writing about, scroll down! On this site, you are able to access my various publications (Research). You can also find my CV and keep up with academic conferences that I will be attending.

The Duties of the Marginalized

My dissertation work focused on the question, “What, if anything, serves as the grounds for the special obligations that members of certain marginalized groups have to one another?” I argue that what we are owed, morally speaking, does not change depending upon whether one is a man or woman, gay or straight, Black or white, etc. Because of this, members of certain marginalized groups cannot be said to have special obligations to their other group members in virtue of their social group membership alone. I also argue that reciprocity, solidarity, and epistemic privilege are unsuccessful at grounding the purported obligations that members of marginalized groups are said to have to one another.

Offensive Humor

I’ve defended a version of moderate comic immoralism, which holds that moral defects sometimes makes jokes funnier. But I am slowly becoming partial to strong comic immoralism, which holds that moral defects always make jokes funnier. My defense of strong comic immoralism’s plausibility has been published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. In addition to the aesthetic dimensions of offensive humor, I am interested in the moral dimensions of offensive humor––when, if ever, is it ok to tell jokes that possess moral defects, and why?

The RightS of the Vulnerable

At the moment, I am particularly interested in questions about how child welfare policy should be designed to best approximate the demands of justice for children in liberal society. I am a (moderate) proponent of parental licensing, a proponent of decriminalizing the “defensive kidnapping” of children from severely abusive or neglectful households by private citizens, a (moderate) proponent of racial randomization in adoption, and subscribe to an odd view about how the costs of childrearing should be shared across liberal society. I am currently working on a book project right now in which I stake out and defend these views. My interest in the rights of the vulnerable has also led me to publishing about the rights of animals––particularly, that (some) animals may have property rights, and that concern for animal rights stands in tension with environmentalism.

Other Interests

Some other topics that I have published about include the ethics of pharmaceutical regulation and the ethics of immigration. Some other topics about which I am currently thinking and writing include the relationship between liberalism and sexual ethics, the the injustice of mandatory calorie labeling practices, the injustice of beauty norms, identity abolition, and the moral limits of academic inquiry.