Fellows 2021

Jessica Fischer

Postdoctoral Fellow

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

October 2021 – July 2022

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»The Weight of Numbers in Social Policymaking«

Project outline:

Most people hold that when costs are equal, we ought to bring about more rather than less good. In fact, this claim that we have a pro tanto duty to maximize the good underwrites a large range of popular approaches in governmental distribution of resources, health care, responses to disaster, and individual action. In my research, I argue that the popular belief that individuals have a pro tanto duty to maximize the good is mistaken and suggest that moral theories which claim that we have such a duty, fail to accurately reflect our common-sense intuitions and moral commitments. (Jessica Fischer)

Research partner:

Jessica Fischer follows the invitation of Rainer Forst, Professor of Political theory at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, and the Justitia Centre for Advanced Studies funded by the Alfons and Gertrud Kassel Foundation.

Scholarly profile of Jessica Fischer

Jessica Fischer received her PhD in Philosophy at University College London in January 2022. Her research was supervised by Véronique Munoz-Dardé, Professor of philosophy. In the spring term 2020 she was a visiting student researcher at Princeton University. Since 2017 she has been teaching at the University College London.

Website:
Please find more information about Jessica Fischer here.

Main areas of research:

Normative ethics, political philosophy

Selected publications:

»The Individualist Objection«, in: Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics (forthcoming).
»Counting People and Making People Count«, in: Philosophy, vol. 96 (2) (2021), p. 229-252.

Jessica Fischer

Scholarly profile of Jessica Fischer

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