White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy
Fellow of Corpus Christi College

Interests
Normativity, rationality and reasoning. Ethics.

Previous career
1965–1968 Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge: BA in Mathematics and Economics.
1968–1972 Massachusetts Institute of Technology: PhD in Economics.
1972–1973 Bedford College, University of London: MA in Philosophy.
1972–1978 Lecturer in Economics, Birkbeck College, University of London.
1979–1992 Reader in Economics, University of Bristol.
1992–1995 Professor of Economics and Philosophy, University of Bristol.
1995–2000 Professor of Philosophy, University of St Andrews.

Visiting posts at: University of Virginia; All Souls College, Oxford; Australian National University; Princeton University; University of Washington; University of British Columbia, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, University of Canterbury.

1999 Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
2000 Fellow of the British Academy.
2007 Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Books
The Microeconomics of Capitalism, Academic Press, 1983.
Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time, Blackwell, 1991. Paperback 1995.
Counting the Cost of Global Warming, White Horse Press, 1992. (The link is to the complete text of the book.)
Ethics Out of Economics, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Weighing Lives, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, Norton, 19 July 2012.
Rationality Through Reasoning, Blackwell, 2013.

Some papers on normativity and practical reasoning
‘Normative requirements’, Ratio, 12 (1999), pp. 398–419. Reprinted in Normativity, edited by Jonathan Dancy, Blackwell, 2000, pp. 78–99.
‘Normative practical reasoning’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 75 (2001), pp. 175–93.
‘Are intentions reasons? And how should we cope with incommensurable values?’, in Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier, edited by Christopher Morris and Arthur Ripstein, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 98–120.
‘Practical reasoning’, in Reason and Nature: Essays in the Theory of Rationality, edited by José Bermùdez and Alan Millar, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 85–111.
‘Reasons’, in Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, edited by Jay Wallace, Michael Smith, Samuel Scheffler and Philip Pettit, Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 28–55.
‘Does rationality give us reasons?’, Philosophical Issues, 15 (2005), pp. 321–37.
‘Have we reason to do as rationality requires? A comment on Raz’, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 1 (2005).
‘Wide or narrow scope?’, Mind, 116 (2007), pp. 359–70.
‘The unity of reasoning?’, in Spheres of Reason, edited by Simon Robertson, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 62–92.
‘Is rationality normative?’, Disputatio, 11 (2008), pp. 153–71.
‘Requirements’, in Homage ΰ Wlodek: Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz, edited by Toni Rψnnow-Rasmussen, Bjφrn Petersson, Jonas Josefsson and Dan Egonsson.
‘Does rationality consist in responding correctly to reasons?’, Journal of Moral Philosophy, 4 (2007), pp. 349–74.
‘Reasoning with preferences?’, in Preferences and Well-Being, edited by Serena Olsaretti, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 183–208.
‘Motivation’, Theoria, 75 (2009), pp. 79–99.

Some papers on equality
‘What’s the good of equality?’, in Current Issues in Microeconomics, edited by John Hey, Macmillan, 1989, pp. 236–62.
‘Equality versus priority: a useful distinction’,  in Fairness and Goodness in Health, edited by Daniel Wikler and others, World Health Organization, forthcoming.
‘Respects and levelling down’, presented at the European Congress of Analytical Philosophy, Lund, 2002.

Writings on climate change
 Counting the Cost of Global Warming, White Horse Press, 1992. (The link is to the complete text of the book.)
‘Valuing policies in response to climate change: some ethical issues’, contribution to the work of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.
‘The ethics of climate change’, Scientific American, June 2008, reprinted in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2008, edited by Tim Folger and Elizabeth Kolbert, Houghton Mifflin, 2009, pp. 11–18.
‘The most important thing about climate change’, in Public Policy: Why Ethics Matters, edited by Jonathan Boston, Andrew Bradstock and David Eng, ANU E Press, 2010, pp. 101–116. (The link is to an external site.)

Some other recent papers
‘Should we value population?’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 13 (2005), pp. 399–413.
‘Can there be a preference-based utilitarianism?’, in Justice, Political Liberalism and Utilitarianism: Themes from Harsanyi and Rawls, edited by Marc Fleurbaey, Maurice Salles and John Weymark, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
‘Why economics needs ethical theory’, in Welfare, Development, Philosophy and Social Science: Essays for Amartya Sen?s 75th Birthday. Volume 3, edited by Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
‘Representing an ordering when the population varies’, Social Choice and Welfare, 20 (2003), pp. 243–6.
‘What is your life worth?’, Daedalus, 137 (2008), pp. 49–56.

Papers for the World Health Organization
‘Measuring the burden of disease by aggregating wellbeing’ and ‘Fairness, goodness and levelling down’, ‘All goods are relevant’, all in Summary Measures of Population Health: Concepts, Ethics, Measurement and Applications, edited by Christopher J.L. Murray, Joshua A. Salomon, Colin D. Mathers and Alan D. Lopez, World Health Organization, 2002, pp. 91–113, 135–7, and 727–9.
‘Measuring the burden of disease’, ‘Equality versus priority: a useful distinction’ and ‘A comment on Temkin’s trade-offs’, all in Fairness and Goodness in Health, edited by Daniel Wikler and others, World Health Organization, forthcoming.

FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS