OXFORD

PHILOSOPHY

2015

22

15

12

20

8
18

OXFORD
PHILOSOPHY

26

CONTENTS

2015

Welcome from the Chair of the Faculty Board Edward Harcourt

5 News
7

New People

The Philosophical Heritage of Medieval Oxford Cecilia Trifogli

12

Accommodating Injustice Rae Langton

15

Practical Ethics Jeff McMahan

18

Equality, Diversity and Professional Philosophy Fiona Jenkins

20

Computer Science and Philosophy in Life and at Oxford Peter Millican and Jenny Yang

22

In Conversation Jesse Norman

24

Reassessing Biopsychosocial Psychiatry Will Davies

26

New Books

24

28

27

CONTACT US

CREDITS

Oxford Philosophy

Editors

Faculty of Philosophy
Radcliffe Humanities
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter
Woodstock Road
Oxford, OX2 6GG
UK

email: news@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
tel: +44 (0)1865 276926

Art Direction
& Design
Photography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
James Knight
Paul Lodge

Keiko Ikeuchi
www.keikoikeuchi.co.uk
Keiko Ikeuchi
(Cover,4,5,8,15,21,27, and
Back Cover)
Shutterstock
WikiCommon

For news, events and further

information, please visit:

27 Tetralogue Timothy Williamson

www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Cover: John Lockes Desk at Christ Church

The editors would like to thank the

following people for their kind help
and assistance:
Lindsay Judson
Annelies Lawson
Jo Kay
Christ Church, Oxford

Views expressed in this publication are

not necessarily those of the Faculty of
Philosophy or the University of Oxford.

NEWS

WELCOME

Unveiling of Portraits of Women Philosophers

from the Chair of the Faculty Board

On 21 January 2016, the Faculty was proud to hold the formal unveiling of
the portraits of distinguished Oxford women philosophers that were featured
in Oxford Philosophy 2014. The ceremony was attended by one of those
featuring in the portraits Professor Dorothy Edgington as well as friends
and family of the other honorands.

Edward Harcourt

The installation of the portraits augments a collection that was previously

housed in the Ryle Room at 10 Merton Street, and which now appear on the
gallery outside the new Ryle Room in the Radcliffe Humanities building.

Keble College

who left us in the course of 2015 to become Bursar at

Nuffield. Tom became HAF (as it was then not called) in the
early 2000s, but had been with the Faculty in one role or
another for even longer, as evidenced by the hairstyles in
some nostalgic photographs on show at his well-attended
farewell in the summer.

hough it now seems like a long time ago, the big

news shortly after I wrote my last introductory piece
for Oxford Philosophy was the REF the Research
Excellence Framework, a septennial government review
in which all UK university departments are rated on the
quality of their research, and on which in turn depends a
substantial chunk of our funding. As the sixth edition of this
publication was able to note briefly, Oxford came out as the
top-rated UK philosophy department, with respect both to
the proportion of Faculty members whose work received
the top 4* rating and to the quantity of research produced
that was rated 4*. For the uninitiated, unlike GCSEs where
if you do well you get an A, but if you do really well you get an
A* all REF grades are starred, a curious bit of bureaucratic
hype. And in case my conjoining the words quantity and
research elicits a sigh, REF assessments are made on the
basis of ones best four article-length pieces in a roughly
seven-year period no good at capturing the contributions
of the Wittgensteins or the Gettiers who publish nothing for
decades, but nonetheless some way from the assessment
by weight which I suspect is the picture some older hands
may carry in their heads as an example of how things are not
as they used to be. In any case, the recent REF was a huge
success for the Faculty. The only challenge it poses which
we are confident we will be able to rise to is how to do as
well or better next time.

A good news story which I mentioned last year, and which

has now reached a conclusion, is the Teaching Fund. The
Fund originated in a 60m commitment by the university
to secure match funding in order permanently to endow
75 tutorial fellowships in colleges, with around 50 of
these earmarked for the Humanities. It is pleasing to note
that Philosophy secured the highest number of tutorial
fellowships funded by the Teaching Fund of any faculty in the
Humanities, endowing in perpetuity no less than 12 posts.
Our warm thanks to the colleges and to their donors for the
magnificent contributions which made this achievement
possible.
Though we depend significantly on the generosity of private
donors, the last year has also seen the Faculty continue its
record of success in attracting funding from charities and
research councils to fund both individual research and its
many collaborative research projects. The research funded
from these sources thats under way in the Faculty at the
moment includes work on responsibility and healthcare
(Wellcome Trust), uncertainty and precaution (European
Research Council), virtue and understanding (Templeton
Foundation) and the development of character (Arts and
Humanities Research Council). No less significant, in its
way, to the intellectual vitality of the Faculty is the very
large number of distinguished philosophers we are able to
host each year. Last year these included Rae Langton from
Cambridge for the John Locke lectures (Accommodating
Injustice), Christine Korsgaard from Harvard for the Uehiro
Lectures (Fellow Creatures: The Moral and Legal Standing
of Animals) and Sarah-Jane Leslie from Princeton, who gave
the Gareth Evans lecture. This Hilary Term another series of
Uehiro lectures from Samuel Scheffler of NYU, addressing
the question Why Worry About Future Generations?
is taking place. Already the largest concentration of
philosophers at least in the west, the Oxford Faculty is very
fortunate to be able to attract so many more of the worlds
leaders in our field to come and talk to us.

The last academic year saw the Faculty not only appoint
Ofra Magidor since 2007 a tutorial fellow at Balliol as the
new Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, but
also make no less than five new appointments to tutorial
fellowships: in ancient philosophy, Luca Castagnoli (Oriel,
from Durham) and Dominic Scott (LMH, from the University
of Virginia via Kent); in moral philosophy, William MacAskill
(Lincoln, from Emmanuel College, Cambridge) and Andreas
Mogensen (Jesus, from All Souls); and in the philosophy
of language, Paul Elbourne (Magdalen, from Queen Mary
University of London). A warm welcome to them all. Sadly,
however, the staff losses to competitor institutions which I
mentioned last year also continued, with the departure due
at the end of this academic year of David Wallace (Balliol) to
the seemingly insatiable University of Southern California,
and of Thomas Johansen (Brasenose) to Oslo. Both will be
much missed.

Dorothy Edgington right.

Nick Ralwins, husband
of the late Susan Hurley,
left. Brothers of the late
Kathy Wilkes, Patrick,
Andrew and Robin, below.

John Locke Lectures 2016-20

The John Locke Lectures are among the worlds most distinguished lecture series in philosophy.
The series began in 1950, funded from the generous bequest of Henry Wilde.
Ted Sider (Rutgers University) will give the next series of lectures, in Trinity Term 2016.
The title will be The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science.
Dates and topics of individual lectures will be posted on our website in due course.
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures
The Faculty is also delighted to announce that the following people have agreed to give the John
Locke Lectures in Oxford in the following years: 2017 Michael Smith (Princeton); 2018 Peter
Railton (Michigan); 2019 Philip Pettit (Princeton /ANU); 2020 Susan Wolf (UNC, Chapel Hill)

Another significant departure was that of Tom Moore, the

Facultys long-serving Head of Administration and Finance,

NEWS

NEW PEOPLE

Ofra Magidor Elected 11th Waynflete Professor

The 1st September 2015 saw Ofra Magidor (Fairfax Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Balliol
College) succeed John Hawthorne as Waynflete Professor-elect of Metaphysical Philosophy
in the Faculty of Philosophy. She will become Waynflete Professor of Philosophy on 1st
October 2016, at which time she will also become a Fellow of Magdalen College. Previous
holders of the chair include R.G. Collingwood, Gilbert Ryle, P.F. Strawson, and Dorothy
Edgington. Ofras research interests are in Metaphysics, Philosophy of Logic and Language,
Epistemology, and the Philosophy of Mathematics. She is author of the book Category
Mistakes and has published work on a wide range of other topics, including the metaphysics
of persistence, arbitrary reference, the problem of vagueness, possible worlds semantics,
and strict finitism.

Luca Castagnoli Oriel College

Luca studied philosophy at the University of Bologna and the University of California,
Berkeley, and in 2005 obtained a PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He was
a Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and then a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer
in Ancient Philosophy at Durham University for eight years. He has published a monograph
on ancient self-refutation arguments and some two dozen articles on a variety of ancient
philosophical subjects, especially logic and epistemology. He is working on his next two
monographs, on Greek logic and ancient philosophical theories of memory, and editing The
Cambridge Companion to Ancient Logic.

Paul Elbourne Magdalen College

Edward Harcourt wins AHRC Network Award
Edward Harcourt (Keble College) has won an AHRC Research Network award for a network
entitled The Development of Character: Attachment Theory and the Moral Psychology
of Vice and Virtue. The award will fund three international conferences in the course
of 2016 and 2017, at the Centre for Advanced Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University,
Munich; at Oxford; and at the University of California, Davis. Attachment theory correlates
genetic endowment, early nurture and other environmental conditions with attachment
classifications, and these in turn with character traits like the capacity for intimacy, cooperativeness, and resilience. It has thus captured the interest of policy-makers who see
building character as a key to combating social deprivation.

Paul read Literae Humaniores and took an MPhil in General Linguistics and Comparative
Philology at Oxford (Corpus Christi College) before doing his PhD at MIT. There he
followed the interdisciplinary PhD programme in semantics, which involves training in
both linguistics and philosophy. Before returning to Oxford, he taught at Marlboro College
in Vermont, New York University, and Queen Mary University of London. His research
interests lie in natural language semantics and the philosophy of language.

William MacAskill Lincoln College

Nick Bostrom at the UN and in The New Yorker

On October 7th Nick Bostrom, Director of Oxfords Future of Humanity Institute, spoke
alongside Max Tegmark from the Future of Life Institute at the United Nations Headquarters
in New York. The event was titled CBRN National Action Plans: Rising to the Challenges
of International Security and the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence. UN delegates were
briefed on the development of national action plans to respond to CBRN (chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear) threats, and also received a briefing led by Nick and Max Tegmark,
aimed at enhancing awareness of the current and likely future capabilities of artificial
intelligence and autonomous robotics.
In November 2015, Nick was also featured in The New Yorker. The article The Doomsday
Invention, which features Nick and his best-selling book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers,
Strategies and throws light on Nicks philosophical ideas and on the Future of Humanity Institute.

Hilary Greaves and Paul Lodge Receive

University Teaching Excellence Awards
Hilary Greaves (Somerville College) and Paul Lodge (Mansfield College) were
both recipients of University Teaching Excellence Awards in 2015, two of
only seven awarded across the whole of the Humanities Division. Awards
are given either to individuals or to teams as a public acknowledgement of
excellence in teaching and learning. Hilary received her award (in absentia)
for the development of teaching methods focussed around the creation
of a supportive community among students using an innovative structure
modelled on scientific research groups. Paul received an award for his
contribution to the ongoing efforts to increase the representation of
women in the Philosophy Faculty through the development of courses on
early modern women philosophers and on recent work on the status of
women in academic philosophy.

Will returns to Oxford following a Junior Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College,

Cambridge. Prior to this he completed the BPhil and DPhil in philosophy at Oxford, having
been an undergraduate in philosophy at Cambridge. He works on decision-making under
normative uncertainty and on effective altruism, the theory of how individuals can do the
most to make the world a better place. He has published articles on normative uncertainty
in Ethics, Mind and the Journal of Philosophy. He is also the author of Doing Good Better:
Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference, an introduction to the idea
of effective altruism.

Andreas Mogensen Jesus College

Andreas joins us from a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, where he completed a
DPhil on evolutionary debunking arguments in ethics in 2014. Prior to that he was a BPhil
student at Jesus College, having completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy
at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. His research interests focus primarily on issues in
moral epistemology and normative ethics, with side interests in applied ethics, political
philosophy, and the philosophy of biology. Andreas also acts as a senior advisor to Giving
What We Can, a charity established by moral philosophers and philosophy students
working in Oxford to encourage greater giving to the most effective causes.

Dominic Scott Lady Margaret Hall

Dominic Scott works mainly in ancient Greek philosophy, though he also has research and
teaching interests in normative and applied ethics. He was a lecturer in the Philosophy
Faculty at Cambridge for 18 years, and a Fellow of Clare College for 20. He has also been
a Professor at the University of Virginia and held visiting appointments elsewhere in the
US, including Harvard and Princeton. In 2015-16 he is a Visiting Fellow in Philosophy at
Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt and the
Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundations. He has written and edited a number of books
on ancient philosophy and recently co-authored a book on the current state of the
Humanities, The Humanities World Report 2015.

Robert Grosseteste

The PhilosophicalHeritage

of Medieval

Oxford

Professor Cecilia Trifogli (All Souls) explores Oxfords rich

philosophical culture in the middle ages and the way in which it
is currently being revived for contemporary audiences.

hilosophy at Oxford has

illustrious origins. Starting
from the time of its foundation
at the beginning of the 13th century
until the end of the 14th century, the
University of Oxford was renowned,
together with the University of Paris,
as a great centre for the study of
philosophy. One of its first chancellors
was Robert Grosseteste (c. 11681253), an eminent philosopher and
theologian, who had a pivotal role in the
introduction of Aristotelian thought to
Oxford. The two most famous medieval
thinkers active at Oxford are no doubt
John Duns Scotus and William Ockham,
but there are many other less known
figures who contributed to the prestige
of Oxford philosophy in the Middle
Ages: for example, Roger Bacon and
Robert Kilwardby in the 13th century;
Henry of Harclay, Walter Burley, Adam
Wodeham, Thomas Bradwardine and
John Wyclif in the 14th century.

The closest medieval analogue to

our present-day Philosophy Faculty
would be the so-called arts faculty.
In Oxford, like everywhere else at
the time, the teaching programme

in this faculty was organized around

set texts, and these were almost
exclusively works by Aristotle (in Latin
translation): especially the Physics,
De Anima, the Metaphysics, and the
Ethics. Aristotle was regarded as the
greatest, if not the only, philosophical
authority by medieval thinkers, as
their standard reference to him,
the Philosopher, clearly indicates.
Accordingly, a large portion of medieval
philosophical literature is in the form
of commentaries on Aristotles works.
However, what we would nowadays
consider philosophical thinking was
not restricted to the lecturing on
Aristotles works in the arts faculty.
On the contrary, substantial and also
original philosophical discussions
took place in the faculty of theology,
and so the writings of the theology
professors constitute another major
source for the study of medieval
philosophy. In particular, it is in their
commentaries on Peter Lombards
Sentences (the main text-book of
the theology faculty) that Scotus and
Ockham gave the most comprehensive
presentation of their own philosophical
views. More generally, the nature
of the set texts and of the teaching
in the theology faculty, compared

to that of the philosophy faculty,

allowed a much greater degree of
freedom in the choice of philosophical
topics to be singled out for in-depth
discussions, not confined to those
arising from Aristotles texts. Thus,
the philosophical heritage of medieval
Oxford comes from two distinct
institutional settings: the Aristotelian
faculty of philosophy and a more
flexible faculty of theology.

Medieval Oxford excelled both in the

field of Aristotelian studies and in the
innovative areas of philosophical
speculation. In the field of Aristotelian
studies, a clear example comes from
the early phase of the reception of
the Physics around the middle of
the 13th century: far from providing
a mere exegesis of this difficult
Aristotelian text, the great majority
of the arts faculty of this period
engaged with it critically, and showed
an impressive philosophical insight:
indeed, they largely set the agenda
for the discussion of the Physics for
the next one hundred years. They
also displayed a very high degree of
independence from the authoritative

views of the Commentator par

excellence, namely, Averroes, who was
often criticized. Oxford scholarship on
Aristotles Physics definitely eclipsed
that of Paris in that period. Among the
innovative discussions, one of the
most remarkable, for both its extension
and philosophical sophistication, was
that concerning the ontological status
of universals at the beginning of the
14th century. The main protagonists
of this debate were all Oxford scholars:
Scotus, Ockham, Burley, Henry of
Harclay, and Walter Chatton. Many
other areas can be mentioned to
which Oxford gave an outstanding
contribution, often surpassing that of
Paris: the debates on the ontological
status of relations, of quantity, and of
successive things, on the intellectual
cognition of singulars, the application
of mathematical methods to
philosophical and theological problems
pursued by a group of Oxford scholars
known as the Oxford calculators or
also Mertonians.

The philosophical heritage of medieval

Oxford is not of purely historical
interest. On the contrary, it still has
great value today as specifically
philosophical heritage, to a great and
pervasive extent that I myself would
not have imagined before coming to
Oxford in 1999. In my sixteen years
of teaching in the Philosophy Faculty,
where there is strong emphasis on the
philosophical interest of the history
of philosophy, I have lectured on a
great variety of topics in medieval
philosophy: some falling within the
contemporary philosophical orthodoxy
but others quite outlandish, like for
example, the Aristotelian view of
the continuum and the question of
the unity or plurality of substantial
forms in a material substance. The

philosophical insight provided by

the medieval sources has received
positive feedback, sometimes in
very modern terms: This is cool
stuff!, as an undergraduate once
commented in response to my
attempt to make sense of a very
obscure part of Scotus discussion
of individuation. Discussions of this
material with students have been
stimulating. The new BPhil system
has helped consolidate my confidence
in the lasting philosophical interest

The philosophical
heritage of medieval
Oxford is not of purely
historical interest.
On the contrary, it
still has great value
today as specifically
philosophical heritage
of medieval speculations. Students
on the BPhil are on a course whose
attraction is in part the opportunity to
work with those at the very forefront of
modern trends in philosophy, but some
BPhil students, after receiving their
first exposure to medieval thought
in my graduate classes, then chose
medieval philosophy as one of their
essay options: this is quite an excellent
outcome and one of which I am very
proud. I do hope that many more BPhil
students will be attracted to the
subject in the years to come.

The Oxford experience, however, has

also urged me to bring into focus
a major problem that scholars of
medieval philosophy have to face when

10

they try to show the philosophical

importance of this part of the history
of philosophy: that of making medieval
philosophical ideas conceptually
accessible to the contemporary
philosophical audience. In their original
sources these ideas are hidden under
a thick layer of highly technical jargon,
mostly of Aristotelian origin, which
is assumed as familiar and thus left
unexplained. The translation of the
original Latin texts into English or any
other modern language is not adequate
to solve this problem. What is needed
is a kind of conceptual translation,
aimed both at clarifying the literal
sense of medieval writings and at
pointing out the relevant philosophical
issues that they address. This is a
very hard task and is being taken more
and more seriously in the current
scholarship, especially in the Englishspeaking world. It is worth mentioning
here two scholars who were in Oxford
until not long ago, in the theology
faculty (interestingly enough!) and
who have accomplished this task in
an admirable way: Marilyn McCord with
her pioneering works on Ockham, and
Richard Cross with his recent studies
on Scotus.

In addition to the problem of making

the philosophical heritage of medieval
Oxford conceptually accessible, there
is the more basic one of making it
materially accessible. With a few
notable exceptions, this extremely
rich heritage is for the most part
buried in medieval manuscripts,
handwritten in tiny script, difficult to
decipher and with a complex system
of abbreviations. It is yet to be made
available in modern editions. The
importance of making medieval works
accessible as printed texts cannot
be underestimated. There is no doubt

that our present knowledge of even

major figures like Scotus and Ockham,
whose works have in the most part
been edited, remains somewhat limited
by the fact that we do not yet have
access to many of their contemporary
sources. While the fundamental value
of editions is recognized by all genuine
scholars of medieval philosophy, even
those without any personal inclinations
to text-editing, editorial projects rarely
find the institutional support that they
deserve from universities and funding
bodies in Britain today. It is therefore
crucially important that the project of
editing medieval philosophical texts
of British (predominantly Oxonian)
origin has a prestigious institutional
home in the British Academy and its
series Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi
(Medieval British Authors).

The series started long ago, with the

publication of the Memorials of St.
Anselm in 1969, but it is only in recent
years, since Professor John Marenbon
was appointed as Project Director for
the series and I took over in 2007 the
chair of the Medieval Texts Editorial
Committee that supervises the project,
that the series has consolidated its
status as the institutional home for the
edition of medieval philosophical texts.

It has indeed attracted a large number

of very good proposals concerning
works of major medieval philosophers
like Grosseteste, Kilwardby, Adam of
Buckfield, Wyclif by highly qualified
scholars. The intended audience of
the editions published in this series
consists primarily but not exclusively
of scholars of medieval philosophy. In
most cases the works published are
of a general philosophical interest
and have the potential to attract
specialists who come to medieval
philosophy from a background in
philosophy, rather than in history or
theology. Since these new specialists
do not always read Latin, the decision
that the Latin texts edited in the series
should normally have facing English
translation is indeed relevant. We
think that in this way the series is able
to play a significant role not only in
showing the interest and importance of
British (especially Oxford) philosophy
in the Middle Ages, but also more
generally in promoting the study
of medieval thinkers in Philosophy
departments.

I have myself devoted large part of

my scholarly activities to the editing
of medieval philosophical texts. In
particular, I have contributed two

11

volumes to the Auctores Britannici

Medii Aevi series the edition of the
question On the Intellectual Soul by
the Oxford 14th-century philosopher
Thomas Wylton (joint work with
Lauge Nielsen and Gail Trimble,
published in 2010) and the edition
of the commentary on Aristotles
Physics by the Oxford 13th century
philosopher Geoffrey of Aspall (joint
work with Silvia Donati and Jennifer
Ashworth, in print), and I have plans
for further contributions. Text-editing
is something I utterly enjoy and of
the importance of which I am totally
convinced. A good edition, compared to
a monograph on a fashionable theme,
is something that will be read and used
for a much longer time: a good edition
is for forever (or almost).

John Locke Lectures 2015

Accommodating

INJUSTICE

How to hinder justice with words

In Trinity Term 2015, Rae Langton (University of Cambridge) gave

the John Locke lectures. Her series Accommodating Injustice
saw her develop the ideas of the 32nd Whites Professor of Moral
Philosophy J. L. Austin to tackle contemporary issues surrounding
the establishment of authority and patterns of domination and
subordination in public speech.

s philosophers, we could do a better job of

accommodating injusticein the sense of attending
to actual injustice, making space for it in our theorizing,
instead of being so ready to build our castles in the air. But as
speakers and hearers, we do a good job of accommodating
injusticein the sense of adjusting to injustice, and helping
it along. We do many things with words, as J.L. Austin said,
and what we do with words can help build and perpetuate
injustice in ways that follow rules of accommodation.
By accommodation I mean a process of adjustment that
tends to make speech acts count as correct play. This
familiar phenomenon has been studied by linguists and
philosophers, and occurs in widely varying contexts, from
informal presupposition introductions (Even George could
win), to ceremonial performatives (I hereby name this ship
the Queen Elizabeth). It has a four-part pattern, described
by David Lewis: an utterance, a requirement, the holding of
certain felicity conditions, and a felicitous outcome. The
implications of accommodation for philosophy of language
have been discussed widely; for epistemology, to some

through commands, standard-shifting, generics, and presuppositions about

normality (Lecture 2). Knowledge follows rules of accommodation, through lies
and misleading assertions, standard-shifting, stake-shifting, and the adjustment
of credibility and confidence (Lecture 3). These in turn silence some speakers, by
placing limits on correct play, when attempted speech acts misfire, or fail to be
accommodated (Lecture 4). Our accommodating attitudes, as hearers, are part
of the problem, and they have two roles, as psychological effects, and as felicity
conditions for the speaker. (Lecture 5).
This means that our account of accommodation needs extending. It needs
to be mapped at two levels: first, an evolving abstract normative structure,
tracking the speech acts performed (illocution in Austins terms); and second,
the evolving epistemic and psychological states of participants, tracking some
significant effects (perlocution in Austins terms). These mappings dont
compete, but complement each other. The account of evolving common ground
needs expanding to include conative and affective states, as well as cognitive, to
help model speech acts that appeal to non-doxastic states, including desire and
emotion: for example, advertising, pornography, propaganda, and hate speech.
Speech acts are enabled by absence, a hearers failure to block, as well as by
presence, a hearers uptake: whether a speech act is happy depends on extrinsic
factors, including later acts and omissions of others. There are implications for
metaphysics: a speech acts nature at a given place and time depends noncausally on what happens elsewhere and later. There are implications for silence:
it includes illocutionary failure, misfires, and failures of accommodation. And
there are implications for politics: free speech requires more than state noninterference.
Attending to these problems thus makes visible some solutions (Lecture 6).
Speech acts are revealed as things we do together with words, involving the
attitudes, acts and omissions of hearers and bystanders, as well as speakers.
Free speech looks different on this picture, and demands richer resources: the
action, not merely inaction, of other agentsstates, institutions, hearers and
bystanderscan be needed to secure it.

degree; for ethics and politics, barely at all. I shall put a

spotlight on the way injustice feeds into accommodation,
and emerges from it.

Rae Langton
Professor of Philosophy and Professorial
Fellow of Newnham College, University of
Cambridge

We shall be looking at the darker side of something with a

familiar bright side. Accommodation is ubiquitous, inevitable,
and responsible for the good, as well as the bad, in our lives
as speakers and hearers. Knowledge, humour, and intimacy
all depend on it. Even accommodations dark side relies on
something bright, on human virtues, our powers to make
sense of each other, trust each other, and co-operate. But,
to borrow Iagos words, it can turn those very virtues into
pitch, and out of our own goodness make a snare that does
enmesh us all.
When we are alert to accommodations pattern, we will see
many instances, said Lewis. He was right. Philosophers
have focused on presupposition, and standards for
knowledge. But there is much more. Authority follows rules
of accommodation, and this includes epistemic and practical
authority (Lecture 1). Norms follow rules of accommodation,

12

13

THE LECTURES Accommodating Injustice

The John Locke Lectures took place over a period of six weeks in Trinity Term 2015.
The following are outlines of individual lectures themselves.
LECTURE 1 Accommodating authority
Both the exercise and the distribution of authority follow rules of accommodation. Authority is a felicity condition for
performing certain speech acts, such as knighting or firing, which themselves in turn can alter facts about authority.
The conferral and removal of authority can happen formally, via ceremonial speech acts, or informally, via presupposition
accommodation. Authority can be practical or epistemic. Practical authority can also be grounded in epistemic authority,
as when a doctors expertise enables her to issue commands. Drawing on work by Ishani Maitra, I argued that the informal
accommodation of epistemic and practical authority explains how subordinating speech can get authority, including
informal hate speech that ranks certain people as inferior, and destroys their credibility.

LECTURE 2 Accommodating norms

Background social norms determine whether and how an attempted speech act is accommodated. Social norms
themselves follow rules of accommodation, in a variety of ways: through authoritative speech acts of permitting or
requiring; through informal conversational exercitives that alter permissibility facts within conversations (as Mary Kate
McGowan has described); and through speech acts that normalize certain behavior. Presupposition-introduction can be
a potent normalizer. Anti-semitic propaganda can presuppose it is normal to despise Jews, and that this is widely known.
Pornography can presuppose that women who say no dont refuse, and that this is widely known. Presupposing that a
behaviour is normal is a double-whammy: conveying that the behavior is normal, and that knowledge of it is normal too.

LECTURE 3 Accommodating knowledge

Accommodation plays a routine role in this transmission of knowledge and ignorance, through assertions, and
presupposition accommodation. Rules of accommodation bear on knowledge in four other ways, depending on ones
account of knowledge, and all have potential political import. First, standards for knowledge can shift over time, following
rules of accommodation. Second, what matters can follow rules of accommodation the issue of stakes. Third, the
distribution of credibility can follow rules of accommodation the issue of epistemic authority. Speakers can alter the
epistemic standing of participants (themselves or others), benefiting through inflation, or suffering through loss, of
credibility, including self-credibility. Fourth, accommodation enables what we can call makers knowledge of socially
constructed truths, in the way a judge who delivers sentence knows what the sentence will be.

LECTURE 4 Silence as accommodation failure

Justice Brandeis said the remedy for evil speech is more speech, not enforced silence: bad speech can be fought with
good. This is admirable but mistaken. Besides material constraints on time, money, or education, there are distinctive
structural handicaps on a capacity to fight bad speech with good. Sometimes it is difficult or impossible to get good
speech accommodated. Illocutionary disablement is encountered when a speaker is allowed their words, but literally
cannot do what they intend with them: for example, a woman says No, meaning to refuse sex, but fails to have her refusal
recognized. Sometimes it is difficult or impossible to block bad speech, and prevent its accommodation. For example, it can
be hard to block presuppositions, given the deflection of hearer attention, the asymmetric pliability of accommodation, the
cost of being uncooperative, and the cost of contradicting apparent shared knowledge.

LECTURE 5 Accommodating attitudes

Our attitudes as hearers are involved in accommodation, and not only through the updating of belief in light of what
speakers say. In illocutionary accommodation, our attitudes serve as felicity conditions for the force of a speakers
utterance (cf. the notion of uptake in J. L. Austin), whereas in perlocutionary accommodation, our attitudes are among the
effects of a speakers utterance. On this picture, the attitudes of hearers are not only effects, but also partial determinants
of what a speaker does with words. And accommodation will also need to include attitudes that go beyond belief, such as
desire and hatred, if we are to understand the workings of speech that enacts norms, sparks desire, or recruits hearers to
hatred.

PRACTICAL

ETHICS
Whites Professor of Moral Philosophy,
Jeff McMahan (Corpus Christi) takes a
critical look at the place of the burgeoning
field of practical ethics within the study
and teaching of ethics.

information not available to the general public,

about what is right and what is wrong.

or much of the twentieth century, many

philosophers, particularly in Britain, were
contemptuous of the idea that reasoning
about substantive moral issues could be
considered philosophy. According to A. J.
Ayer, for example, moral philosophy explains
what people are doing when they make moral
judgements; it is not a set of suggestions as
to what moral judgements they are to make.
All moral theories in so far as they are
philosophical theories, are neutral as regards
actual conduct. This, he observed, is one
reason why many people find moral philosophy
an unsatisfying subject. For they mistakenly
look to the moral philosopher for guidance.
Similarly, C. D. Broad wrote that it is no part of
the professional business of moral philosophers
to tell people what they ought or ought not to
do. Moral philosophers, as such, have no special

As Peter Singer noted in his Tanner Lecture in

Oxford early this past summer, this exalted view
of philosophy as too pure to descend to the
consideration of practical matters is now a relic
of a narrow and long discarded conception of
philosophy. Nor had it been the prevailing view
prior to the twentieth century. The classical
Greek and Roman philosophers, as well as Kant,
Mill, and Sidgwick (who published a book with the
title Practical Ethics), would have been surprised
to learn from Ayer that a substantial proportion of
their work was not actually philosophy.
Even though what is variously referred to as
practical ethics or applied ethics is now
universally recognized as a legitimate area

LECTURE 6 How to undo things with words

Rules of accommodation allow unjust social norms and patterns of authority to emerge from speech acts in informal
ways, and from unlikely sources, even from the helpful acts and omissions of those who dont speak. Hate speech and
pornography exploit these mechanisms, as do social generics and more. If the force of a speech act can be enabled by
failure to block, there are implications for the responsibility of individual hearers, individual bystanders, institutions and the
state. All are more-than-complicit fellow actors in what we do together with words. Given the costs and challenges, there
can be no perfect duty to block or interrupt the injustices described. What then? More active individuals: the cultivation
of epistemic virtues of alertness and judgement; practical virtues, capacities to intervene and block where one is able, as
an imperfect duty. More active institutions: free speech as not merely non-interference, but a capability to be supported,
requiring concrete economic and educational resources (cf. the work of Martha Nussbaum and Susan Brison); and a role for
the state as not only a practical, but an epistemic authority, promoting conditions for knowledge, since some knowledge is
part and parcel of justice.

14

15

of philosophy, it is still regarded by some

philosophers as a ghetto within the broader
area of moral philosophy. This view is in one way
warranted, as there is much work in such subdomains of practical ethics as bioethics and
business ethics that is done by writers whose
expertise is in medicine, health policy, business,
or some area other than moral philosophy, and
whose standards of rigour in moral argument
are deplorably low. These writers also tend
to have only a superficial understanding of
normative ethics. Yet reasoning in practical
ethics cannot be competently done without
sustained engagement with theoretical issues
in normative ethics. Indeed, Derek Parfit believes
that normative and practical ethics are so closely
interconnected that it is potentially misleading
even to distinguish between them. In his view,
the only significant distinction is between ethics
and metaethics, and even that distinction is not
sharp.

as a side effect, and that the reason not to do

harm is significantly stronger than the reason
to prevent equivalent harm from being done by
others, one will find it difficult to avoid being
committed to a form of pacifism.
Similarly, one cannot reach defensible
conclusions about the moral dimensions of
issues such as climate change, reparations for
historical injustice, and screening for disability
without addressing central issues in population
ethics, such as the so-called Non-Identity
Problem, how reasons deriving from impersonal
considerations might weigh against harms and
benefits to particular individuals, and so on. Nor
is it possible to get to the bottom of problems
such as abortion and the use of animals for food
or experimentation without confronting some
of these same issues in population ethics, or
without investigating the bases of moral status,
the conditions for the possession of rights, and
indeed the metaphysics of personal identity.

One cannot, for example, understand the morality

of war without addressing a broad range of
issues both in normative ethics and in other
areas of philosophy, such as: the bases of moral
liability to be harmed or killed; the nature of
proportionality as a constraint on the different
forms of justification for harming; whether
non-consequentialist reasoning can apply in
conditions of factual and normative uncertainty;
whether people can constitute group agents that
can be collectively responsible; whether agents
intentions are relevant to the permissibility of
their action; whether there is a constraint against
doing harm that is stronger than the reason to
prevent equivalent harm from occurring; and so
on. If, for instance, one believes both that there
is no moral difference between causing harm as
an intended means and causing the same harm

Because of these dependencies, one debate

within practical ethics concerns the precise
nature of the relation between practical and
normative ethics. One reason for preferring the
label practical ethics to applied ethics is that
the latter may seem to beg this question by
suggesting that the relation must be top-down,
with normative ethics having a certain logical
priority. This view certainly has its advocates.
R.M. Hare, for example, thought that one must
first analyse the logic of moral language, then
derive from that analysis the correct theory
of metaethics, then extract from that the
correct normative ethical theory (two-level
consequentialism), and finally apply this latter
theory to the practical questions to determine
what the answers are. Relatively few moral

16

Practical moral problems inevitably raise theoretical issues

but these issues cannot be adequately understood in
abstraction from their application to practical problems.
philosophers work this way now. Some work
almost entirely from the bottom up, addressing
practical issues without any commitment to a
normative theory but with the aim of reasoning
toward general principles that may eventually,
presumably with some refinement, be subsumed
within a normative theory we reach only at the
end of this process. Some, indeed, think it
presumptuous to suppose that one could be
confident about having the correct normative
theory without having first thought carefully
about a broad range of practical moral issues
to determine what considerations are morally
significant and also to be able to test candidate
theories for the plausibility of their implications
for the issues. William James once wrote that
no one sees farther into a generalization than
his own knowledge of the details extends.
One might similarly contend that no one sees
more deeply into a normative theory than his
understanding of its implications extends.
I believe there is an essential interdependency
or symbiosis between practical and normative
ethics. It is difficult to do good work in either
without at the same time working in the other.
Practical moral problems inevitably raise
theoretical issues of the sorts mentioned
earlier but these issues cannot be adequately
understood in abstraction from their application
to practical problems. Thus, not only does
good work in normative ethics deepen our
understanding of practical moral problems
but good work in practical ethics illuminates
theoretical issues in normative ethics as well.

Although I have only recently arrived in Oxford

and still have only a limited sense of how moral
philosophy is taught here, the impression I
derived from marking undergraduate examination
scripts in ethics this past spring is that to the
extent that practical ethics is taught at Oxford
at all, the dominant approach is top-down, from
theory to practice. Students seem thoroughly
schooled in the debates among partisans of
consequentialist, Kantian, deontological, and
virtue ethics, and also seem well acquainted
with the varieties of anti-theory in ethics,
from particularism to Williamss critique of
the ambitions of systematic ethical theory.
They seem trained to analyse and evaluate
the competing normative theories and the
opposing approaches to ethics in ways that
are independent of thinking about substantive
moral issues. Yet if what I have said about the
interdependence of normative and practical
ethics is true, we surely need to integrate a
substantially greater component of practical
ethics into the undergraduate curriculum. Oxford
has for many years had a highly active Centre for
Practical Ethics and the Philosophy Faculty now
appears in the Philosophical Gourmet Report
rankings with the highest rating in applied ethics
of any Anglophone philosophy department in
the world. We are therefore exceptionally well
positioned to undertake a salutary expansion of
our undergraduate offerings in moral philosophy.

17

Equality, Diversity
and Professional Philosophy
Oxford D Phil Fiona Jenkins (Australian National University) explores the ways
in which academic philosophers are engaging with the under-representation of
women in their ranks.

n May 2015 Oxford hosted a workshop addressing

a problem that has been increasingly receiving
attention - the question of diversity and equality in
philosophy. The workshop also tackled the ethics of
a range of aspects of our academic lives, including
staff-student relationships, writing responsible
references, and standards of conduct in philosophical
conversation. The workshop brought together
participants and contributors from around the world
to discuss issues that have recently won philosophy
a certain degree of bad publicity.
So: whats the problem? Professional philosophy
today looks not that different from how it looked
25 years ago, in terms of the gender, colour and
class of its tenured practitioners. Despite its place
among the humanities, philosophy has a lower rate
of appointing female professors than many of the
areas of science that have so far been better known
for their problematic gender gap. Over 80% of full
professors of philosophy in the UK are men, and
the picture is slightly worse in the USA as well as
Australia. Philosophys problem with women has in
fact been known and discussed for years, but recent
commentary has also focused on the dearth of
black philosophers, and many other minorities who
are either not choosing philosophy or seem to be
squeezed out at all levels. Given that enrollments of
undergraduate students in philosophy classes are
fairly gender-balanced (though less so in Oxfords
PPE degree than in Philosophy degrees elsewhere
in the UK), it is worth asking how it can be the case
that the ranks of professional philosophy are still
disproportionately filled with men (at about 75% of all
continuing positions) who are white and generally of a
similar class and background.
Before a conversation about this as a practical
problem to be fixed, it is worth thinking about why
it matters. For many in the profession, there seems
to be a deep disjunction between a willingness to
accept that there are equality issues to be address,
and an unwillingness to see them as being very
important, especially for philosophy itself. There are
various ways to articulate the sense that it does not

matter much. One professor of philosophy explained

to me that although in principle he was sympathetic
to the concern about womens underrepresentation,
given the financial rewards of philosophy as a career
relative to other, more lucrative choices, he was not
too fussed. Another version of the view that women
might well be choosing to avoid philosophy for their
own good reasons appeared in David Papineaus
Times Literary Supplement review of a book I coedited, Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?
(OUP 2013). Professional philosophy, he suggests,
is a bit like professional snooker: its not that women
are incapable but that they cant be bothered with, to
quote Steve Davis, something that must be said is a
complete waste of time trying to put snooker balls
into pockets with a pointed stick.
Neither intervention sells philosophy very high.
Papineau does argue that its snooker-ish tendencies
are in part an indictment of philosophy itself, which
has veered toward a scholastic preoccupation with
the technical minutiae of established positions,
suiting men who relish competition per se, but not
women (no small generalisation here) who require
pursuits to be important in their own right. He also
agrees that if there are forms of bias that exclude
women, then these should be addressed on grounds
of equality. He takes it that it would be a mistake,
however, to believe that the gender imbalance in
philosophy as a profession fundamentally affects the
character and epistemic integrity of philosophy as a
discipline.
Does equality and diversity matter in a way thats
intrinsic to good philosophy? One response to this
question is to point out how much philosophers
draw on experience to make their arguments.
If that experience is relatively shared among a
homogeneous group, how much easier is it to believe
one has found broad agreement and how much
easier is it to speak, as if from a position of universal
truth, about what is morally permissible and the
like? Papineau proposes in the TLS that while good
practice in [politics, law and medicine] often demands
familiarity with the problems of marginalized groups,

18

this line of thought has no obvious application to

philosophy. Amia Srinivasan, who co-authored with
Daniela Dover a paper presented at the conference,
responds with the well-made point that theorizing
well about, say, inequality, pornography or racial hate
crimes to take a few central topics of philosophical
interest might require one to know something
about being poor, a woman, or non-white. Insofar as
philosophy is in the business of getting the world right,
it would seem useful to have more philosophers who
are acquainted with some of its less savoury aspects.
My own paper at the workshop came at the question
of why this matters from another angle, by looking
at how perceptions of excellence in philosophy
track social networks and status hierarchies better
than they track anything we might reliably regard
as independent evidence of value. This inflects the
character of the discipline in multiple ways, limiting
in particular the importance accorded to the major
contributions of feminist philosophers across all
fields of the discipline. For instance, the fact that we
differentiate between epistemology and feminist
epistemology and that the latter rarely appears in the
most highly-ranked journals, tells a story both about
how women's contributions to research continue to be
overlooked by many men and about the failure of most
philosophy to grapple with gender as a basic aspect of
identity, experience and social relations.
One of the differences I observe between disciplines
like philosophy, politics and economics and others
like sociology, anthropology and history is that
in many contexts in the latter group there has
been a productive uptake of feminist scholarship,
leading to general acknowledgment that a complex
understanding of gender is fundamental in research
design and analysis. In disciplines and regions
where this exchange has taken place there are also
higher levels of women's participation and status.
In philosophy, on the other hand, there is a powerful
perception of what constitutes mainstream work
that reinforces long-standing practices of exclusion
of the many Asian philosophies, or of race-based
perspectives as much as of feminist work.

Women in Philosophy:
What Needs to Change?
Ed. Katrina Hutchison and
Fiona Jenkins (OUP 2013)

Some very important work is going on to challenge

and change all this, and particularly the poor
judgment it can tend to support. At the workshop
Sally Haslanger, who has been powerfully setting the
agenda in this discussion for some years, tackled
head-on the shifts in understanding philosophical
method that are needed to foster diversity. Helen
Beebee, a former British Philosophical Association
president, described the BPAs guide to good practice
which departments in the UK are invited to sign up
to. Jennifer Saul talked about the measures she has
taken as Chair of her department to shift patterns
in appointment toward greater balance, by applying
findings from the psychological literature on how
implicit bias affects decision.
It was wonderful to have these ideas presented and
debated among an at least fairly diverse group of
around 70 men and women (and perhaps even some
non-normative genders in between) who attended
the day. There is plenty of food for philosophical
thought in the issues surrounding the continuance
of the great (white) man tradition into our discipline
today and plenty of work to do to foster the better
practices that will in turn support more rigorous and
diverse philosophising.

19

Computer Science and Philosophy

in LIFE and at OXFORD

Peter Millican and Jenny Yang (both of Hertford College) offer us tutor and student
perspectives respectively on our fledgling degree course Computer Science and Philosophy.

oung people applying for

university often have little idea
of where their interests will
lead over the next several years, and
school experience can be misleading,
especially with subjects like
mathematics that are so different
at university. Many students end up
studying degrees that they tolerate
rather than love, and this gives a
powerful argument for Oxfords joint
programmes. Computer Science and
Philosophy is wonderfully flexible,
with a very wide range of interesting
courses on both sides, a third year
which can be up to 75%-25% either
way, and an optional fourth year
which can be 100% on one side if
desired. Thus a student can though
appropriate choices end up doing
as much of either subject as would
be done in a three-year single
honours programme, and all of these
choices can be made as he or she
progresses, responding to changing
interests and opportunities.
The only course specific to
Computer Science and Philosophy,
Turing on Computability and
Intelligence, comes in the first
year, giving a solid theoretical basis
to the joint degree. It is packed
with fascinating and perplexing
arguments, from Cantors work
on infinite sets, through Hilberts
programme, Gdels Theorem, and
leading up to Turings seminal 1936
paper (which, unlike Gdel, we cover
in gory detail, studying the original

text in full). Having thus explored

the foundation of computer science
in the Turing Machine, we finish off
with discussion of Turings 1950
paper on the Turing Test, and its
legacy in recent philosophy of mind.
Unlike the companion degrees
combining philosophy with
mathematics or physics, however,
there is no compulsion for students
to continue focusing explicitly on
the overlap of the two disciplines.
Computer science and Philosophy
have so many links going well
beyond the obvious areas of logic,
artificial intelligence, and the ethics
of information and of automated/
robotic systems that any attempt
to cover it thoroughly would be
hopeless. Better to allow students
to choose their own path, which
might focus on logic and theory, or
AI and cognitive science, but equally
might extend to such things as the
aesthetics of computer creativity, or
the epistemology of the computer
models on which so much research
now depends (from astrophysics,
biochemistry and climate change,
through economics, politics and
sociological trends, to zoological
dynamics). Students can enjoy and
benefit from the variety of the two
subjects even when studied entirely
independently. But in fact there is
virtually no area of philosophy to
which computing skills are irrelevant
(e.g. I have used computational
analysis of texts in my scholarship

20

on David Hume, and computational

modelling of ethics and economic/
political systems). And many
areas of computing lead quickly
to philosophical questions when
pursued deeply.
The new degree is still small, but
it has been delightful to teach the
excellent students it has attracted.
Alongside their academic studies,
a fair proportion have been applying
their skills practically, working
independently during vacations
towards what they hope will be
successful startup companies,
and attracting interest from major
employers. Computer science
opens the door to wonderful careers
(in terms of pay, hours, working
conditions, and intellectual interest),
while philosophy ensures that
these young people will stand well
above most of the techie crowd
in their ability to communicate,
discuss, and argue a case, whether
with managers, in the boardroom,
or with politicians. Just as PPE,
another wonderfully flexible degree,
has equipped many in the past
for prominent leadership roles, I
confidently expect the same for
Computer Science and Philosophy.
Professor Peter Millican
Gilbert Ryle Fellow, Hertford College

always enjoy telling people that I study Computer

Science and Philosophy. Just the name of my
course is enough to get people thinking, drawing
connections between two disciplines that are
generally seen as very different. This is justified to an
extent computer science can most generously be
said to date back 200 years, while philosophy is over
ten times older. But much of the supposed difference
is rooted in misconception.
Two years ago, I was loaded with such misconceptions
as I sought my dream degree. I thought that computer
science was mostly hacking, and philosophy mostly
meditating on the human condition. Thankfully I was
wrong. Computer Science and Philosophy offers
huge freedom and variety both in content and in
methodology. On both sides of the course, there is
theory and practice. Both programming and developing
arguments can be highly creative and highly technical.
The course involves deep analysis, as well as throwing
out wild ideas; rigid proof as well as experimentation;
evaluating the work of others and developing your own.
We learn of historical contributions and contemporary
developments in both fields. There are also plenty of
beautiful and elegant results: some absolute, others
deeply ambiguous.
Much of what we learn in the first year ties back to
logic and computability. At the beginning of the 20th
century, logicians such as Hilbert and Russell were
eager to find a formal system of axioms and deductive
rules from which all logical and mathematical truths
could be deduced. Gdels Incompleteness Theorems
showed that for any consistent system, there would
be some unprovable truth including the systems own
consistency.
Then, perhaps we could settle for an incomplete
system, if there were a decision procedure that would
tell us whether a given sentence was provable within
the system. The issue of finding this procedure was
named the Entscheidungsproblem. Church and Turing
independently developed proofs that this procedure
was impossible. In their proofs, published in the same
year, each of them developed an idea that would
become a foundation of computer science. Church
created the lambda calculus, which became the basis
for functional programming languages such as LISP
and Haskell. The Turing machine embodied aspects
that are fundamental to todays computers, most
notably programmability: a single machine could
perform any computation, given the right program.
It is highly rewarding to study the abstract roots of
computer science, while simultaneously utilising the
technologies they led to.

Computer Science and

Philosophy offers huge
freedom and variety both in
content and in methodology.
Although the formal limitations of machines have
been shown, there are still many questions concerning
their capabilities. Could a machine be conscious? The
problem of consciousness has occupied philosophers
for centuries. The intuitive arguments against
materialism date back to Leibniz in any thinking
machine, we could find only pieces which push one
against another, but never anything by which to
explain a perception. This must be sought, therefore,
in the simple substance, and not in the composite
or in the machine. But contemporary debates are
less welcoming to the concept of immaterial souls,
and Turing would happily grant one to a computer
anyhow. Other potential sources of consciousness are
suggested: self-reference and quantum processes, to
name but a couple. These are found unconvincing and
the debate rumbles on.
Many feel uneasy with how deeply technology
has become integrated into our lives. Cautionary
thinkpieces are common: a web search for the
phrase machine taking over nets 90 million results.
Philosophical analysis lets us make sense of how
technology alters concepts that are fundamental to
us intelligence, knowledge, meaning, personhood,
reality. Both computer science and philosophy are
essentially linked in our developing world.
Jenny Yang
Computer Science and Philosophy, Hertford, 2014

21

IN CONVERSATION

Would Parliament benefit from more philosophers?

I doubt it. But it would benefit if more MPs had done some
philosophy.

The Hon Jesse Norman MP

In your view, what is most difficult about, and what

constitutes success in, policy-making?
Effective policy-making is deeply dependent on context as
well as policy. As Burke says, Circumstances give in reality
to every political principle its distinguishing colour and
discriminating effect. Successful policymaking is cautious,
proportionate, clear in direction, consensual where possible
and builds on what has been achieved already. Alas, it is
rarely done this way today.

Jesse Norman is Conservative MP

for Hereford and South Herefordshire
and Chairman of the Culture, Media
and Sport Select Committee. He read
Literae Humaniores (Lit Hum) at
Merton College and later did a PhD in
philosophy at UCL.

Successful policymaking
is cautious, proportionate,
clear in direction,
consensual where possible
and builds on what has
been achieved already.

In recent times, the humanities have come under attack

and are sometimes considered as less worthy of study
and of funding than the STEM subjects. What is your
view on the future and the merit of the humanities and
the arts in education?
Dont fret. The humanities and arts have a glorious future.
The question for any technocratic activity is what to aim
at, what to admire. Thats where a liberal education is so
valuable.
How did your academic career inform your careers in
banking and in politics?

You read Lit Hum and later did a PhD in philosophy, but
youre also a historian who has written on Burke. Lit Hum
is often feted as a strongly interdisciplinary degree: how
much do you feel it shaped you in terms of your aptitudes
and later interests?

Theres not much philosophy in finance! I went from being

a Director at Barclays to my graduate work in philosophy at
UCL, and then to stay on at UCL for a bit. But I have found
philosophy a superb training for politics, in making and
assessing different arguments, analysing other peoples
positions, reflecting on different priorities, policy analysis
and so on. It also encourages listening and a certain
modesty about ones own capabilities, which can only be
good for anyone in politics.

Very much. Lit Hum does not have the cultural centrality it
exercised even a half-century ago. But its genius is that it
combines two settled and modally distinct kinds of inquiry
philosophy and history with a deep immersion in ancient
literature and textual analysis. I find myself constantly
drawing on it even now, three decades after I left Oxford.

How would you suggest that the study of philosophy

might be useful in politics / to politicians?

Lit Hum students often specialise in ancient philosophy,

but your PhD thesis was on philosophy of mathematics.
Thats quite an unusual trajectory. How did it come about
that you developed these particular interests?

See above. But actually philosophy can have its drawbacksas the career of Arthur Balfour reminds us. I think the
study of history is far more useful even than philosophy in
politics, as offering some protection at least against foolish
innovation and arrogance. Thats certainly one lesson I have
learned from writing about Burke and, now, Adam Smith.

My MPhil was on visual reasoning in logic, with particular

respect to the work of the American philosopher C. S.
Peirce, a man much neglected now but whom I regard as
one of the greats. My PhD then addressed how we reason
with diagrams in geometry, using Euclid. Its not specifically
focused on ancient philosophy as such, though; in part its
an attack on logicist views of mathematical reasoning, and
an attempt to give a modern vindication of some claims by
Kant in the first Critique.

Is a career in politics the best way for a principled,

idealistic person to change the world for the better?
Yes, provided that they come to it with genuine experience,
patience and an independent mind. And, with some glorious
exceptions, over the age of 35.
Can you tell us some of your favourite philosophers, and
explain how they have influenced you in your work (either
positively or negatively)?
Aristotle, Kant, Peirce, Hume and (though these are more
contested) Smith and Burke. It would take far too long
to explain how theyve influenced me, but readers are
welcome to guess at how from stuff I have written on
topics that are loosely in the philosophies of politics and
economics, much of which is free and online at my website
(www.jessenorman.com).

Are there any politicians who strike you as having a

particularly philosophical approach to politics?
Not today. I think Lincoln and Burke are the two greatest
exponents of politics as a kind of philosophic practice.

Do you have any particularly fond recollections of

studying philosophy at Oxford, e.g. of tutorials or of
tutors?

Lit Hum was often held to be a degree for those preparing

to govern. Similar things are said of PPE. Is the degrees
current strong showing in the House a good thing?

Yes. I was rather lucky to have John Lucas and David

Bostock as my tutors. Very little indeed escaped them.

No: I think PPE is positively dangerous in some respects.

I have written about its perils on my website (www.
jessenorman.com).

22

23

Reassessing

Biopsychosocial Psychiatry
Will Davies introduces the Oxford Loebel Lectures and Research
Programme, where he is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow

s a branch of medicine, psychiatry is under continual pressure

to conform to a reductive biomedical model, according to which
genuine mental disorders are classified as diseases, to be
characterised primarily in biological terms. But contemporary psychiatry
also draws heavily on psychotherapeutic approaches, which focus on
the psychosocial factors involved in mental disorder. Here concepts of
abnormal or impaired belief, experience, and social structure take priority
over concepts of neural dysfunction. This heterogeneity continues to
generate much uncertainty concerning the conceptual foundations
for psychiatry. What exactly is psychiatry a science of? Mind or brain?
Individual or society? Dysfunction or deviance? Answering these
questions requires a broad, reflective, and analytical view of psychiatric
research and practice: these questions demand philosophical attention.
One compelling and yet inchoate thought is that psychiatry surely
spans many different levels of explanation: biological, psychological,
and social. Such holistic concepts date back to Hippocrates, but
during the second half of the twentieth century found new voice in
George L. Engels biopsychosocial model (BPS) of psychiatric illness.
BPS was as broad as it was ambitious. Engel saw BPS not only as an
all-encompassing framework for clinical practice; it was intended to
usher in a non-reductive metaphysics for mental illness. Given its scope,
it is not altogether surprising that BPS has as yet failed to translate
into any clearly identifiable research programme. And yet psychiatrists
everywhere continue to pay lip service to the BPS ideal of psychiatry as
an integrative discipline. The BPS model is, in a sense, everywhere and yet
nowhere.
The Oxford Loebel Lectures and Research Programme (OLLRP) was
founded in 2013 with the aim of reassessing the biopsychosocial
model of psychiatric illness. The OLLRP was established through the
generosity of Dr Pierre Loebel, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry
and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Washington, and his wife
Felice Loebel. In over forty years as a psychiatrist, Dr Loebel developed
deep concerns about the theoretical basis for the field. Bringing
together philosophers, psychologists, and psychiatrists, the OLLRP
seeks to review the best available evidence for interactions between
the biological, psychological, and social factors that contribute to mental
illness, and to clarify and conceptualise these interactions. The agenda
is not so much retrospective as prospective: what relevance does the
BPS model have for research and practice in contemporary psychiatry?
In what ways does the BPS model permeate or implicitly guide scientific
thinking in such areas? Can we reconceive the BPS model in more
plausible, detailed, terms, in order to capture its continuing influence
within psychiatry?

24

Given its scope, it is not

altogether surprising that
BPS has as yet failed to
translate into any clearly
identifiable research
programme. And yet
psychiatrists everywhere
continue to pay lip service to
the BPS ideal of psychiatry as
an integrative discipline.

The project has already seen several significant events in Oxford. The inaugural
Loebel Lectures were delivered in October 2014 by Professor Kenneth S.
Kendler, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Virginia Commonwealth
University. Prof Kendlers research has sought to clarify the complex
interrelations between genetic and environmental factors in the development
and onset of psychiatric illness and other behavioural disorders. Combining
techniques from molecular genetics and genetic epidemiology, this work has
clarified the ways in which genetic predispositions and environmental insults
combine to cause disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression and
alcoholism. Kendlers Lectures reviewed some key findings, arguing that they
illustrate the dappled, or multi-level, nature of psychiatric causation.
Kendlers conclusion raises issues that are familiar to those working in the
general philosophy of science, and areas such as philosophy of biology
and psychology. How are we to make sense of claims such as that low
socioeconomic status can be a cause of schizophrenia, or that social defeat
can be a cause of depression? Can such claims be cashed out in terms
of causal mechanisms? Do they require such explanations? What are the
consequences of these aetiological claims for the classification of mental
disorders? These questions were among those taken up by commentators on
Kendlers Lectures, whose contributions are to be gathered in a forthcoming
volume with Oxford University Press, entitled Rethinking Biopsychosocial
Psychiatry.
The Loebel Lectures for 2015 were given by Professor Steven E. Hyman,
director of the Stanley Centre for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute
of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Prof Hyman discussed a number of
theoretical challenges facing modern psychiatry. In particular, the potentially
dehumanising threat of mechanistic explanations from neuroscience, and
the under-appreciated complexity of the gene-environment interactions
involved in psychiatric illness. 2016 will see Professor Essi Viding, Professor
of Developmental Psychopathology at UCL, deliver the third set of Loebel
Lectures.
In terms of research, the OLLRP has an outstanding interdisciplinary advisory
board, who are providing valuable input and guidance on our projects.
Professor Glyn Humphreys, Watts Professor of Experimental Psychology,
recently published a series of articles on the visual perception of social
cues, particularly in relation to self-relevant and high-reward stimuli.
This research has the potential to inform us about psychiatric disorders
involving misperceptions or misattributions of self-relevance, and to
improve understanding of the perceptual corollaries of disorders in which
representations of self are distorted or impaired. Prior to his sudden and
untimely passing in January 2016, Glyn and I were working together on a
theoretical paper discussing these issues. Another collaborator, Professor
Neil Levy, has written widely on issues concerning agency and responsibility,
consciousness, and the nature of addiction. We are developing the idea
that mental illness consists in some dysfunction in the subjects capacities
to respond appropriately to reasons, capacities that are themselves
socially scaffolded. As such, we argue, these capacities can be impaired by
deleterious or disadvantageous changes in ones social environment. Although
such socially-constituted impairments typically are not sufficient for mental
disorder, they nonetheless play a key role in explaining the onset of many
mental illnesses.
While the OLLRP was prompted by lingering questions about the BPS model,
it is moving well beyond that into more detailed consideration of multi-level
psychiatric causation; the role of social perception in mental illness; and an
externalist metaphysics of mental disorder. Our continued focus on these
issues hopefully will shed new light on the conceptual foundations for
psychiatry, and thereby improve clinical understanding of these complex,
unwieldy, and ultimately harmful and distressing phenomena.

25

NEW BOOKS

A selection of the books published by members of the Oxford Philosophy Faculty in 2015

Doing Good Better

William Macaskill (Faber and Faber, 2015)

The philosophy of effective altruism applies data and scientific reasoning to the normally
sentimental world of doing good. In Doing Good Better, William MacAskill introduces the
principles underlying effective altruism and sets out a practical guide to increasing your impact
through your charity, volunteering, purchases and choice of cause. On a whistle-stop tour of the
key issues facing a would-be do-gooder, he answers questions like: Why are some charities far
more effective than others? How can cosmetic surgeons do more good than charity workers?
Does boycotting sweatshops make things better or worse for the global poor?

Humanities World Report 2015,

Dominic Scott (with Poul Holm and Arne Jarrick)

Available to download from the Palgrave website

The first of its kind, this book gives an overview of the humanities worldwide. Published as an Open
Access title and based on an extensive literature review and enlightening interviews conducted with
90 humanities scholars across 40 countries, the book offers a first step in attempting to assess
the state of the humanities globally. Its topics include the nature and value of the humanities, the
challenge of globalisation, the opportunities offered by the digital humanities, variations in funding
patterns around the world, and the interaction between humanities and society.

TETRALOGUE
Im Right, Youre Wrong
(OUP, 2015)

Timothy Williamson
Wykeham Professor of Logic

Essays on Ethics and Feminism

Sabina Lovibond (OUP, 2015)

Essays on Ethics and Feminism is a selection of the shorter writings of Sabina Lovibond, one of the
most distinctive voices in contemporary philosophy since the 1980s. This work lays claim to a broad
thematic unity based on its affiliation to the realist or rationalist tradition in moral philosophy. Some
of the essays seek to clarify the relation of feminism to that tradition, to anti-rationalist tendencies,
and other conceptual resources for critical thinking which were called into question over (roughly)
the last third of the twentieth centurynot least by feminist writers heedful of continental European developments.

The Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwicks Methods of Ethics

Roger Crisp (OUP, 2015)

Roger Crisp presents a comprehensive study of Henry Sidgwicks The Methods of Ethics, a
landmark work first published in 1874, offering a fresh view of the text which will assist any moral
philosopher to gain more from it. Crisp argues that Sidgwick is largely right about many central
issues in moral philosophy: the metaphysics and epistemology of ethics, consequentialism,
hedonism about well-being, and the weight to be given to self-interest, and he argues that
Sidgwicks long discussion of common-sense morality is probably the best discussion of
deontology we have.

The Ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Katrien Devolder (OUP, 2015)

Embryonic stem cell research holds unique promise for developing therapies for currently incurable
diseases and conditions, and for important biomedical research. However, the process through which
embryonic stem cells are obtained involves the destruction of early human embryos. Katrien Devolder
focuses on the tension between the popular view that an embryo should never be deliberately harmed
or destroyed, and the view that embryonic stem cell research, because of its enormous promise, must
go forward. She provides an in-depth ethical analysis of the major philosophical and political attempts to
resolve this tension. Devolder argues that the central tension in the embryonic stem cell debate remains
unresolved. This conclusion has important implications for the stem cell debate, as well as for policies
inspired by this debate.

26

The dialogue is one of the oldest forms of philosophical writing,

going back at least to Plato. Berkeley wrote his Three Dialogues,
Hume his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and parts
of Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations read like a
conversation between two voices, perhaps inside his head. At
philosophy conferences, the discussion periods are often more
illuminating than the preceding lectures. These days, however,
academic writing in philosophy rarely takes dialogue form.
Complex sub-clauses, footnotes, and formulas are awkward in
conversation. Much of my own research is best articulated in
academic style. But some ways of thinking (or of not thinking)
about philosophically important matters such as truth and
falsity, disagreement and intolerance are so widespread
and influential in society and culture beyond the philosophy
profession that they need to be addressed by philosophers in
non-academic terms too. Recalling the distinctive strengths of
dialogue form, I realized how well-suited it is for such a book.
Most people have had the experience of talking with others
coming from profoundly different points of view on politics,
morality, religion, science, art ... Such conversations often
end in deadlock, each side convinced that it is right and the
other wrong, its arguments strong and the others weak, but
frustrated at its inability to persuade the other. An onlooker,
overhearing the conversation, may notice a symmetry in the
situation and wonder whether there is really an objective truth
of the matter. Even the participants, if not immune to selfdoubt, may imagine how things would look to a third party and
wonder the same thing. Theres a political dimension to such
disputes too: if one side has more power they may be able
to enforce their viewpoint on the other, at least in outward
behaviour. Some think that only relativism about truth and
falsity permits a fully tolerant attitude towards diverse points
of views. For relativists, truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Others think that toleration needs a different basis because
such relativism is incoherent and self-defeating. Thus deadlock

in a dispute generates a second-order dispute about the meaning

of the deadlock. The second-order dispute may itself reach
deadlock. The two disputes interact with each other: for instance,
can one simultaneously accept both a religious claim and
relativism about the truth-value of that claim?

A dialogue can enact such debates on the page. Mine is called
Tetralogue because it has four characters. Two disagree on
scientific versus magical explanations of an everyday event,
the other two on relativist versus absolutist interpretations of
that disagreement. The first dispute sparks the second, which
intertwines with it. I set the dialogue on a train because there
one can easily be drawn into a long conversation with strangers,
however annoying one finds them. Sometimes, it is their way of
arguing that annoys one most. But caring about how to argue is a
step towards arguing well. Philosophy is not, and should not be, an
emotion-free zone. Readers will, I hope, find plenty to annoy them
in Tetralogue.

Watch Tim interviewed about Tetralogue on Youtube

https://youtu.be/IHFKwGgBPQU

27

Lockes Desk
John Lockes desk is now in the
possession of his former college,
Christ Church. Locke is believed
to have designed the desk for his
own use, and commissioned its
manufacture while he was still a
Student of Christ Church, but living
in London.
For nearly three decades he used
it not only for writing but also for
filing his ever-growing collection
of papers letters, speeches,
love-poems, lists of his books,
furniture and other items, financial
documents, and papers written as
Secretary to the Board of Trade.
These meticulously organised
papers remained in the desk long
after Lockes death in 1702,
as an heirloom of the Lovelace
family: now known as the Lovelace
collection, they comprise one of
the most important collections of
personal papers to survive from the
17th century, and are now in the
Bodleian Library along with most of
the surviving volumes of Lockes
extensive library.
Lindsay Judson
Christ Church

Oxford Philosophy
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Oxford