My research spans Moral and Political Philosophy, Foresight, and Existential Risk Studies. My Google scholar profile is here.
My PhD Thesis was in the field of Population Ethics, and in particular the interpretation of Derek Parfit's 'Repugnant Conclusion' and its implications. This research also includes insights from related fields including Value Theory, the Philosophy of Economics and the Personal Identity. More broadly I am interested in subjects concerning future generations and long term political decision making.
I take a highly analytical approach to my research. I focus on mapping out the logically possible solutions to a problem and then considering different methodologies to choose between them. In Existential Risk Studies my work has focused on developing methodologies for thinking systematically about unprecedented and extreme future events and how these fit into the developing field. In moral philosophy, some key questions I have considered include 'Assuming that the Repugnant Conclusion is very hard to accept, how can we explain why it is so?', 'How can we characterize the features of intuitions that make them easy to reject in a way that allows us to reject some of our intuitions but not others?' and 'What sort of egalitarian theory, if any, could both avoid the 'Leveling Down Objection and explain the moral permeability of 'Mere Addition'.
My PhD Thesis was in the field of Population Ethics, and in particular the interpretation of Derek Parfit's 'Repugnant Conclusion' and its implications. This research also includes insights from related fields including Value Theory, the Philosophy of Economics and the Personal Identity. More broadly I am interested in subjects concerning future generations and long term political decision making.
I take a highly analytical approach to my research. I focus on mapping out the logically possible solutions to a problem and then considering different methodologies to choose between them. In Existential Risk Studies my work has focused on developing methodologies for thinking systematically about unprecedented and extreme future events and how these fit into the developing field. In moral philosophy, some key questions I have considered include 'Assuming that the Repugnant Conclusion is very hard to accept, how can we explain why it is so?', 'How can we characterize the features of intuitions that make them easy to reject in a way that allows us to reject some of our intuitions but not others?' and 'What sort of egalitarian theory, if any, could both avoid the 'Leveling Down Objection and explain the moral permeability of 'Mere Addition'.
