Ethics, responsibility and the carbon budget. This project aims to provide a rigorous ethical framework for dividing the world’s remaining ‘carbon budget’ (CB). In order to avoid climate change the world must drastically limit its emissions of greenhouse gases. The project will develop a new analysis of how our assumptions concerning risk and harm shape conception of the CB. It will also provide a new understanding of how future emission rights should be allocated given that countries have emitt ....Ethics, responsibility and the carbon budget. This project aims to provide a rigorous ethical framework for dividing the world’s remaining ‘carbon budget’ (CB). In order to avoid climate change the world must drastically limit its emissions of greenhouse gases. The project will develop a new analysis of how our assumptions concerning risk and harm shape conception of the CB. It will also provide a new understanding of how future emission rights should be allocated given that countries have emitted vastly different quantities of greenhouse gases in the past. The project will analyse how the CB will impact the climate transition plans of countries such as Australia. The project will thus bring significant new research in philosophy to bear on a practical issue.Read moreRead less
Reasons and Rationality. The project explains how we assess the truth and falsehood of everyday claims about what people have reason to do. It also explains what legitimizes our practice of praising and blaming people for their success and failure at doing what we think they have reason to do. In so doing it provides a foundation for both our ordinary practice of holding people responsible, and for the more institutionalised counterpart of this ordinary practice in the law.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130101601
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$337,940.00
Summary
Wellbeing, preferences, and basic goods. Since individual choice and public policy aim at promoting wellbeing, it is crucial to understand what wellbeing is. This project develops an account of wellbeing that is grounded in individual preferences, but acknowledges that people sometimes desire what is harmful to them.
Ethics and risk. This project aims to develop a theory of risk. From the extreme to the everyday, from warfare to the drive to work, the modern world is unimaginable without mutual imposition of risk. Philosophers must explain how risks can be justified, or risk irrelevance. This project will use the tools of ethics (the study of right and wrong action) and decision theory (the study of rational decision-making under uncertainty) to develop a comprehensive theory of the ethics of risk. This proj ....Ethics and risk. This project aims to develop a theory of risk. From the extreme to the everyday, from warfare to the drive to work, the modern world is unimaginable without mutual imposition of risk. Philosophers must explain how risks can be justified, or risk irrelevance. This project will use the tools of ethics (the study of right and wrong action) and decision theory (the study of rational decision-making under uncertainty) to develop a comprehensive theory of the ethics of risk. This project is expected to improve understanding of the risks people impose on others as individuals and as a society.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE180100001
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$383,183.00
Summary
Buddhist ethics and moral psychology. This project aims to investigate the ethical and moral psychological foundations of Buddhist thought. It aims to critically analyse the theoretical differences between Buddhist philosophical traditions to reveal a plurality of theoretical grounds on which Western thinkers can embrace Buddhist insights. The project is expected to advance intellectual engagement between Buddhist and Western ethicists, and to demonstrate the importance of a collaborative, inter ....Buddhist ethics and moral psychology. This project aims to investigate the ethical and moral psychological foundations of Buddhist thought. It aims to critically analyse the theoretical differences between Buddhist philosophical traditions to reveal a plurality of theoretical grounds on which Western thinkers can embrace Buddhist insights. The project is expected to advance intellectual engagement between Buddhist and Western ethicists, and to demonstrate the importance of a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to global philosophy.Read moreRead less
The Ethics of Net Zero. This project aims to provide the first systematic study of key ethical issues connected to the adoption of net zero targets—pledges to make no net addition to the global atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. It expects to fill a significant knowledge gap, by addressing the full range of ethical questions raised by the adoption, promotion, and coordination of net zero targets by national and subnational climate actors. Expected outcomes of the project include deta ....The Ethics of Net Zero. This project aims to provide the first systematic study of key ethical issues connected to the adoption of net zero targets—pledges to make no net addition to the global atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. It expects to fill a significant knowledge gap, by addressing the full range of ethical questions raised by the adoption, promotion, and coordination of net zero targets by national and subnational climate actors. Expected outcomes of the project include detailed guidelines for determining ethically sound net zero policy and practice. The project should provide significant benefits to stakeholders in the government, corporate and NGO sectors, including best practice advice on the setting and implementation of net zero targets.Read moreRead less
The Evolution of the Social Brain: How Emotions and Moral Judgement Interact in the Generation of Cooperative Behaviour. Understanding the psychological forces that underpin human interactions is a necessary step to knowing how to improve those interactions. Comprehending the complex interplay of emotions and moral judgements lying behind decision-making in the social sphere will help explain such things as corruption, risk-taking, domestic violence, and political affiliation. Such knowledge can ....The Evolution of the Social Brain: How Emotions and Moral Judgement Interact in the Generation of Cooperative Behaviour. Understanding the psychological forces that underpin human interactions is a necessary step to knowing how to improve those interactions. Comprehending the complex interplay of emotions and moral judgements lying behind decision-making in the social sphere will help explain such things as corruption, risk-taking, domestic violence, and political affiliation. Such knowledge can guide the design of effective social policy, and is vital for a realistic educational strategy. This project will strengthen Australia's excellent reputation in philosophy, bring here leading scholars from diverse fields, build international research networks, and in particular forge an ongoing partnership between the ANU and the California Institute of Technology.Read moreRead less
The Demands of Reason. We may reason well or badly, depending on whether we satisfy two kinds of demands. We must register all and only relevant considerations and we must respond correctly to them. But ‘the demands of reason’, as described in this project, remain inadequately understood. Drawing on work from philosophy, psychology, political and legal theory, and the social sciences, this project aims to investigate the nature, power and reach of reason’s demands. It aims to shed light on what ....The Demands of Reason. We may reason well or badly, depending on whether we satisfy two kinds of demands. We must register all and only relevant considerations and we must respond correctly to them. But ‘the demands of reason’, as described in this project, remain inadequately understood. Drawing on work from philosophy, psychology, political and legal theory, and the social sciences, this project aims to investigate the nature, power and reach of reason’s demands. It aims to shed light on what they are; whether they have the positive transformative power attributed to them by enlightenment thinkers; and whether they can be adduced to explain the nature and origin of other important normative demands, such as the demands of morality, prudence and law.Read moreRead less
The Structure of Moral Reasoning: Hume, Kant and the Evidence from Psychopathology and Neuroscience. What can moral philosophers hope to learn from the sciences of the mind? Recent work on the disorders of autism and psychopathy, has promised to reshape a longstanding philosophical debate between Kantians and Humeans on the role of empathy (sympathy) in moral thinking. This project will draw out the implications of a range of neuroscientific findings for key questions in moral theory and also co ....The Structure of Moral Reasoning: Hume, Kant and the Evidence from Psychopathology and Neuroscience. What can moral philosophers hope to learn from the sciences of the mind? Recent work on the disorders of autism and psychopathy, has promised to reshape a longstanding philosophical debate between Kantians and Humeans on the role of empathy (sympathy) in moral thinking. This project will draw out the implications of a range of neuroscientific findings for key questions in moral theory and also consider how the normative and conceptual claims made by such theories, about what must be true of a moral judgment, are connected to descriptive claims about the psychology of the moral agents who make them.Read moreRead less