On Monday, March 17, 2025, Dr. Laura Soter, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at York University, presented her talk, “Investigating Obligations to the Self.” at the SP Colloquium Brownbag.
You can find more information about Dr. Soter's work here and her abstract below:
Abstract:
People feel they have obligations towards other people—but might they also think we can have obligations to ourselves? This possibility has not been thoroughly examined in empirical moral psychology. We explore obligations to the self across six studies. In the first four studies, we find evidence that participants endorse the existence of obligations to the self, showing that not all self-directed acts are seen as mere personal preferences, and show that these judgments do not reduce to perceived obligations to others. In the final two studies, we explore potential mechanisms that distinguish acts judged as self-obligations, focusing on the role of harmfulness to the self.