Location: Edgecliffe G03 Title: Is the future a utility monster? Abstract: I will revisit Nozick’s utility monster thought experiment and draw an analogy between imagined utility monsters and the long-term future. I argue that the far future can be seen as a real-life utility monster. This is the case if the three premises that form the ... Read more
Title: Threshold Deontology: Some Lessons from Vagueness Abtract: Threshold Deontology is the view that the positive consequences of an act do not normally override moral constraints, but when the positive balance of the consequences of an act is sufficiently great, it may be morally permitted, and possibly required to engage in an act that is ... Read more
Title: Is There Anti-Fittingness?" Abstract: The permissible and the forbidden are privative opposites: each is a lack of the other. The good and the bad are, by contrast, polar opposites: badness is anti-goodness, not non-goodness. What about the fitting and the unfitting, the appropriate and the inappropriate, the apt and the inapt, the warranted and ... Read more
Title: Justice and the Problem of Alienation Abstract: I will focus on why alienation is a problem for many of our major theories of justice (discussing political liberalism, capabilities approach and republicanism) and what might be done about it. Location: Edgecliffe G03
Title: Debating proportionality at the edge of sentience Abstract: Can octopuses feel pain and pleasure? What about crabs, shrimps, insects or spiders? How do we tell whether a person unresponsive after severe brain injury might be suffering? When does a fetus in the womb start to have conscious experiences? Could there even be rudimentary feelings ... Read more
Title: World on Fire: Climate, Extinction, Pandemic Location: Edgecliffe G03
Title: Welfare and Felt Duration Abtract: How should we understand the duration of a pleasant or unpleasant sensation, insofar as its duration modulates how good or bad the experience is overall? Given that we seem able to distinguish between subjective and objective duration and that how well or badly someone’s life goes is naturally thought ... Read more
This talk is part of our series on Climate Ethics Title: The Ranked Range View Location: Edgecliffe G03 Abstract: The bad effects of climate change will affect, and be affected by, the number of people who will exist, and their quality of life. Thus, when evaluating our climate policies and actions, we need to know ... Read more
Title: Encroachment and epistemic negligence Abstract: In this talk, I argue that the moral duty of non-negligence is a fruitful way to understand and motivate the claim that moral reasons can ‘encroach’ on epistemic norms. More forcefully: we should readily affirm that on the epistemic norms governing agents like us—that is, who have limited cognitive ... Read more
Title: Contingency and the Present Location: School V