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Prof Hallvard Lillehammer

Positions held:
  • Professor of Philosophy, School of Historical Studies
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Hallvard Lillehammer is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Historical Studies. He has taught at Birkbeck since 2013 and was Head of the Department of Philosophy until 2017. Before coming to Birkbeck he taught philosophy for thirteen years at Cambridge University, where he was a Fellow of King's and Churchill College. He has also held appointments at Reading University and King's College London. 

    Administrative responsibilities

    • PGR Director & Research Lead, Birkbeck Philosophy

    Professional memberships

    • Member of the Executive Committee & Trustee, The Royal Institute of Philosophy

    ORCID

    0000-0003-3775-1396
  • Research

    Research

    Research overview

    Hallvard’s research is mainly focused on the interpretation and criticism of basic ideas in ethical and political thought, including reason, objectivity, impartiality, autonomy, indifference and responsibility.

    He is the author of Companions in Guilt: Arguments for Ethical Objectivity (2007), editor of The Trolley Problem (2023), and co-editor of Vicarious Responsibility and Circumstantial Moral Luck (2021); Ramsey’s Legacy (2005); Real Metaphysics (2003), and Genetics, Persons and Responsibility (2001). He has also published widely on a range of topics in ethics, meta-ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics and the history of ethical thought.

    More information on past and present research projects is available here.

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    12

    Current doctoral researchers

    • ANTONIO MATEIRO
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Absence of Belief and Moral Responsibility for Participation in Collective Wrongdoing
      Description:

      In at least some cases, most of us are willing to accept an agent’s not knowing, or sometimes not understanding, as exculpatory for wrongdoing. In other cases, however, claims of ignorance or absence of belief are disputed, being dismissed as dishonest, self-deceptive or as a form of culpable denial. Even in cases of genuine absence of belief, agents may be accused of a kind of morally culpable epistemic failure.  Many of the most interesting of these cases are collective in nature, with the wrongdoing agent’s absence of belief seeming to be rooted in the collective nature of the action for which they’re potentially responsible. This work will aim to take seriously and to understand the possibility of absence of belief as an excuse for an individual’s participation in collective wrongdoing, arguing that dismissal of absence of belief as denial, self-deception or another kind of morally culpable epistemic failure in many of these cases fails to give sufficient weight to the special doxastic and epistemic obstacles which collective life creates for moral agents.

    • CONOR CLARKE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Liberal Democracy, Legitimacy, and 'Bad' Influence
      Description:

      There are many kinds of influence on our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours which are considered 'bad', either morally or epistemically. If we are subject to enough of these influences, then this may have negative implications for the grounds of legitimacy in liberal democracies. My project aims to explain what these bad influences consist in, how they affect legitimacy, and what we can do to manage them.

      The project involves both social epistemology and political philosophy. I have wider research interests in all areas of normative philosophy,

    • IRENE ROMERO SUAREZ
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      The Aesthetic Value of Truth in Literary Fiction
      Description:

      I focus on analysing whether truth or factual knowledge is relevant to the aesthetic evaluation of works of literary fiction. I defend that facts are aesthetically relevant for several reasons. First, works of fiction are created with an aim (or several aims), such as transmitting a message, and achieving this aim can be considered an aesthetic achievement. Second, fiction is aimed at both belief and imagination, and both are constrained by truth to some extent. Third, accuracy constitutes an aesthetic merit and inaccuracy an aesthetic defect. Finally, I argue that the cognitive value of a work is inseparable from the aesthetic one. 

    • MATTHEW ALLEN
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      A Defence of Epistemic Instrumentalism
      Description:

      I defend epistemic instrumentalism with the intention of reconciling the competing folk intuitions which motivate pragmatism and evidentialism.

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • ANDREW DINES
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Ethics Without Errors: Universal Moral Error Theory and the Objection from Loss
      Awarded:
      2023
    • ANDREW NEWTON
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Nothing Personal: On Being Involved in Collective Harm
      Description:

      Human-driven climate change, inequality, structural injustice, financial crises - these collectively-produced harms raise questions of accountability, but that search for accountability quickly descends into paradox. On the one hand, claims regarding the accountability of individual agents or collections of agents abound in reports of government investigations, news reports and commentary, academic papers, and everyday discourse. On the other hand, pre-theoretic views and indeed standard theories of moral responsibility assert that to be accountable for a harm one must have individually directly caused that harm or at least made a substantial difference to its occurrence. Yet the set of individual agents connected to the production of the harm by individual direct causation is often far smaller than the range of claims made about individual accountability. Is there a way to make sense of pre-theoretic claims of accountability for collective harms in the absence of individual direct causation? I find that there is. I take as my starting point the model of participation articulated by Christopher Kutz in his monograph on Complicity, but I replace that model with one that is better able to handle the instances of parallel participation that infuse many collective harm cases. Added to the standard account of individual direct causation, this gives us a supra model of involvement in collective harms.

      Awarded:
      2023
    • RUSSELL CHILD
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      What is the Point of Blaming Corporations?
      Awarded:
      2022
    • HUGO DIXON
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      To what extent is a meaningful life an integrated one?
      Awarded:
      2021
    • JOHN SIMONS
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Moral agency analysed as self-enactment in social roles: A productive recast of Dewey’s pragmatist analysis
      Awarded:
      2021
    • NOEMI MAGNANI
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Is Multiculturalism Bad for Liberals? Autonomy, Culture and Vulnerability
      Awarded:
      2020
    • ASHLEY LANE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      A critique of a priori moral knowledge
      Awarded:
      2018

    Teaching

    Hallvard teaches a range of modules in ethics, meta-ethics and political philosophy across the BA, MA and MRes programmes.        

    Topics of Ph.D students currently or recently supervised include ethical theory, meta-ethics, political philosophy and the history of ethical thought.

    Teaching modules

    • Introduction to Philosophy (SSPL074S7)
    • Introduction to Philosophy (SSPL074S7)
    • Research in Practical Philosophy (SSPL158S7)
    • Morality, Society and Politics (SSPL233S4)
    • Morality, Society and Politics (SSPL233S4)
    • Ethical Traditions (Level 5) (SSPL244S5)
    • Ethical Traditions (Level 7) (SSPL246S7)
    • The Ethics of Life and Death: Humans, Animals and the Environment (Level 5) (SSPL262S5)
    • Theories of Value: Aesthetics and Ethics (Level 7) (SSPL270S7)
    • Special Topics in Philosophy I (Level 6) (SSPL277H6)
    • Foundational Debates in AI (Level 7) (SSPL295S7)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    • Lillehammer, Hallvard, ed. (2022) The trolley problem. Classic Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009255615. (In Press)

    Book Section

    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2023) Constructivism and the Error Theory. In: Miller, C.B. (ed.) Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics (Second Edition). Bloomsbury Handbooks. Bloomsbury. pp. 108-129. ISBN 9781350217881.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2023) Moral and political philosophy. In: Laidlaw, J. (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics. Cambridge Handbooks in Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108591249. (In Press)
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2022) Autonomy and mental health. In: Colburn, B. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Autonomy. Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780367258207. (In Press)
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2022) Keeping track of your trolleys: origins and destinations. In: Lillehammer, Hallvard (ed.) The Trolley Problem. Classic Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009255615. (In Press)
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2022) Debunking what?. In: Machuca, D.E. (ed.) Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780367458447. (In Press)
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2021) Testimony, deference and value. In: Hannon, M. and de Ridder, J. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology. Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780367345907. (In Press)
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2019) Companions in guilt: entailment, analogy, and absorbtion. In: Cowie, C. and Rowland, R. (eds.) Companions in Guilt. Arguments in Metaethics. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138318335. (In Press)
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2017) Error, indeterminacy, and projection in ethics. In: Machuca, D. (ed.) Moral Skepticism: New Essays. Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory. New York, U.S.: Routledge. ISBN 9781138645868.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2017) Projection, indeterminacy and moral skepticism. In: Machuca, D. (ed.) Moral Skepticism: New Essays. Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory. New York, U.S.: Routledge. ISBN 9781138645868.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2017) Ethics, evolution and the a priori: Ross on Spencer and the French Sociologists. In: Ruse, M. and Richards, R. (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook to Evolutionary Ethics. Cambridge Handbooks in Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107589605.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2016) An assumption of extreme significance: Moore, Ross and Spencer on ethics and evolution. In: Leibovitz, U. and Sinclair, N. (eds.) Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 103-123. ISBN 9780198778592.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2014) Who cares where you come from? cultivating virtues of indifference. In: Freeman, T. and Ebtehaj, F. and Graham, S. and Richards, M. (eds.) Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction: Families, Origins and Identities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107038288.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2013) The argument from queerness'. In: LaFollette, H. (ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Chicester, UK: Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 9781405186414.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2013) The companionship in guilt strategy. In: LaFollette, H. (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Chicester, UK: Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 9781405186414.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2012) Autonomy, value and the first person. In: Radoilska, L. (ed.) Autonomy and Mental Disorder. International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199595426.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2011) Consequentialism and global ethics. In: Boylan, M. (ed.) The Morality and Global Justice Reader. Boulder, Colorado, USA: Westview Press. ISBN 9780813344331.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2011) Constructivism and the error theory. In: Miller, C. (ed.) The Continuum Companion to Ethics. Bloomsbury Companions. New York, USA: Continuum. ISBN 9781441121752.
    • Lillehammer, Hallvard (2009) Reproduction, partiality, and the non-identity problem. In: Roberts, M.A. and Wasserman, D.T. (eds.) Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Non-Identity Problem. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine. New York, U.S.: Springer. pp. 231-248. ISSN 1567-8008. ISBN 9781402056963.
  • Business and community

    Business and community

    Outreach

    Philosophy and the "Empirically Tractable'. Interview with Justin Weinberg, Daily Nous, November 2019.

    Trolley Problems and Ethical Intuitions. podcast conversation with Florian Steinberger on London Philosophy Talks, September 2020

    'The Trolley Problem' Chasing Leviathan podcast, January 2023.

    'Slowing down to Speed Up', Interview with Andrey Pavlov & Toby Thompson, Philosophy for Practical Professions, Cranfield University, December 2023.

    Interviewed by Richard Marshall at 3.16AM. November 2019

     

    ‘Moral testimony’. podcast of symposium with Hallvard Lillehammer and Roger Crisp, Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society & the Mind Association, Cambridge University, 12 July 2014.

    On Photo IDs. Interviewed on BBC Russia, September 2021.

    ‘Moral Error Theory and Moral Scepticism’. podcast of a public debate with Bart Streumer & Hallvard Lillehammer, Forum for European Philosophy, London School of Economics, 24 February 2011.

    'Philosophers and the fine art of business'. City A.M., 16 March 2011.