In recent years, Adam Cureton has developed new courses on disability and the ethics of artificial intelligence, published two new books, and been honored as a Lindsay Young Professor in UT’s Department of Philosophy. His work has also been recognized with UT’s Chancellor’s Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award.

In Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and Our Interests of Reason (Oxford University Press, 2025), he examines why the capacities for reason and autonomy matter morally and how they shape the authority we have over our own lives. 

“The book is rooted in Kantian ethics, but its larger concern is quite practical,” Cureton said. “It asks what it means to treat people as capable of judgment, self-direction, and participation in a shared moral life.”

His book Respecting Disability: Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships (also published by Oxford University Press in 2025) focuses on what respect for disabled people requires in everyday relationships, institutions, medicine, education, and public policy. 

“I became interested in these questions because disability is often discussed only in terms of welfare, disadvantage, or accommodation,” he said. “Those issues matter, but they do not fully capture the moral importance of how disabled people are perceived, addressed, included, and treated as equals.”

Cureton is now extending both lines of work in new projects.

In The Constitution of Reasons: A Charter for Public Moral Deliberation, he develops an account of moral deliberation as a public practice in which people reason together as equals. And in Appreciating Disability he examines what it means not merely to respect disabled people, but also to recognize and respond well to the value of disabled people, disabled traits, and disabled forms of life. 

“The common thread across these projects is an interest in how we understand one another as persons, how our institutions embody moral attitudes, and how ethical theory can help us live together more justly and thoughtfully,” Cureton said. 

Interdisciplinary Perspectives 

His work is shaped by conversations that extend well beyond the Department of Philosophy, where he is director of undergraduate studies. Cureton also has worked with students in the Honors program, the Haslam Scholars Program, and interdisciplinary courses in disability and AI. 

“Students often bring experiences and questions that sharpen the philosophical issues considerably, especially when we discuss disability, technology, medicine, and public policy,” he said.

His disability work has included engaging with disability advocacy groups, Student Disability Services, accessibility initiatives, and the Knoxville Mayor’s Council on Disability. “I have spoken with professional and public audiences about disability and work, clinical respect, disaster, and inclusion, and these conversations have helped keep the research connected to the institutional settings where the issues often arise,” Cureton said. 

A fellowship through UT’s Denbo Center for Humanities and the Arts supported his disability research, and Denbo continues to support that work by hosting an interdisciplinary Medical Humanities research seminar in which Cureton and other philosophers participate. “More recently, my work in ethics and AI has been connected with UT’s Generative AI Faculty Fellowship, where I have developed teaching and programming aimed at helping faculty think more carefully about how AI should be used in education,” he said. 

Cureton developed and teaches Philosophy 246 Ethics and Technology, a lower-division course designed for students from across the university. The course introduces students to ethical questions involving machine learning, generative AI, algorithmic bias, privacy, automation, education, work, and public trust.

“What makes the course especially interesting is that students are not only studying AI as an object of ethical analysis,” he said. “They are also learning how to evaluate AI-generated arguments, compare them with philosophical and empirical sources, and think carefully about the responsible use of these systems in their own academic work.”

The Philosophy of Disability course he developed, Philosophy 383, also draws students from many majors and connects moral and political philosophy with medicine, education, law, technology, and social policy. 

“Both courses reflect my broader interest in making rigorous philosophical thinking available to students who may never have considered taking a philosophy course,” he said.

Cureton credits the university’s intellectual environment with allowing serious philosophical work to thrive. 

“UT has given me the opportunity to build ambitious research projects while also developing new courses, mentoring students, leading curricular initiatives, and working across disciplines,” he said. “The two books published in 2025 grew out of many years of sustained research, but they were also shaped by students, colleagues, public conversations, and the institutional support that makes long-term scholarly work possible.”

Across the university, questions about autonomy, disability, AI, justice, medicine, and public deliberation are not confined to one department, he noted. “They arise wherever people must make difficult decisions together. My aim has been to show that philosophy can contribute both conceptual depth and practical guidance to those questions, while helping students become more careful, independent, and responsible thinkers.”

Nurturing Responsible Thinkers

“I was initially drawn to philosophy because it gave me a way to think carefully about questions that seemed both deeply important and unusually difficult: what we owe to one another, what it means to live well, how we should reason together when we disagree, and what it is about persons that makes them worthy of respect,” Cureton said. “I was especially attracted to moral philosophy because it combines abstract, systematic thinking with questions that arise continually in ordinary relationships, institutions, and public life.”

His interest in Kantian ethics grew from the thought that people are not simply recipients of benefits or harms but also agents with their own judgments, values, and authority over their lives. “That insight led me to questions about autonomy, dignity, respect, and moral deliberation,” he said.

Cureton’s work in the philosophy of disability developed from recognizing that familiar moral ideas have often been applied too narrowly. “Disabled people may be treated with concern or good intentions while still being patronized, excluded, underestimated, or understood principally in terms of deficit,” he said. “Disability provides an especially revealing context for examining what respect, equality, inclusion, and appreciation really require.”