The Right to Be Loved received Choice Review’s Outstanding Academic Title award and, in 2017, was the central focus of a summer school in Antwerp.

[15] Liao has written extensively about the ethical questions raised by recent advances in neurotechnology, such as psychopharmaceuticals, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and deep brain stimulation.

Liao analyzes ways in which MMTs can harm ourselves and others, including by alienating us from our true selves, interfering with our moral agency, and forgetting important events.

[22] Liao also has explored the ethical questioned raised by advances in reproductive technology, such as the use of CRISPR-Cas9 for germline gene editing, ‘three-parent IVF’ or mitochondrial replacement therapy, and embryonic stem cell research.

Recently, he forwarded a rights-based theories of reproductive genetic engineering, arguing that people should not use gene editing deliberately to create offspring who will lack any of the fundamental capacities for pursuing a good life.

[23] For instance, assuming that hearing is one such capacity, prospective parents should not use gene editing technologies such as CRISPR with the intention of making their future child deaf.

Liao contrasts this human rights account of reproductive engineering with perfectionist, libertarian, and life-worth-living theories thereof, arguing that the fundamental conditions help establish a lower bound for the permissibility of gene editing.

[25] In addition, Liao has analyzed the ethics of embryonic stem cell research, which may believed should be banned because the process of harvesting them destroys embryos.

For instance, he suggests designing drugs that would make us intolerant of meat, which requires significant energy to produce, or cause future humans to be smaller or shorter.

[30] Liao has also worked on theories of non-consequentialism, reconciling non-aggregation with saving the greater number, and the importance of intentions for moral permissibility.

[31] Liao contends that this victim-centered approach generates counter-intuitive conclusions in dilemmas that other non-consequentialist theories such as the Doctrine of Double Effect can answer easily.

For instance, he has analyzed the Closeness Problem, according to which the DDE is flawed because an agent’s intention might be so fine-grained that it would not constitute intended harm despite the impermissibility of their act.

[33] Liao examines why existing answers to this problem fall short and argues that a pluralistic account of non-consequentialism does not because it draw on other considerations, such as consequences, using others as a mere means, and so on.

[36] For instance, Liao has drawn on evidence that judgments about Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous Loop Case are context-dependent to suggest that her interpretation of the thought experiment is flawed.

[37] More recently, Liao drew together insights from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to argue that intuitions should not be understood as heuristics and explores the broader implications that a novel approach to them might have for discussions about their robustness.