Dr William
Gildea
Moral and political philosophy
ABOUT ME
My research focusses on moral status, basic human equality, and our duties to animals.
It asks: how can we explain the idea that all humans are moral equals? how much do animals matter morally? what is the morality of killing animals? how should the state relate to animals? and other questions.
I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Research in Ethics (CRE) and McGill University, Canada. I am an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a member of the Groupe de Recherche en Ethique Environnementale et Animale in Montreal.
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I did my PhD at Warwick in the UK. I was supervised by Victor Tadros, Patrick Tomlin, Kimberley Brownlee, and Steve Cooke, and was affiliated with the Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs. My PhD examiners were Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Simon Caney. I won a Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence in 2022.
Before I began my PhD, I worked in food policy for an NGO. I also have a B.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Philosophy, Politics & Economics from Warwick.
Headshot credit: Tom Capon.
Other photos: my amateur snaps of Romania’s incredible Carpathian Mountains
RESEARCH
Here’s more on one central strand of my research. The universe contains diverse entities, such as human beings, foetuses, foxes, fish, mountains, ecosystems, and artificial intelligences. Which ones matter morally in and of themselves? To what extent do they matter, and why?
We need a new account of moral status because we face an unsolved puzzle. We tend to believe that humans matter more than animals. Philosophers typically explain this intuition by observing that only humans have the capacity for rationality, autonomy, or some other advanced mental capacity. But these “personhood” views clash with the idea that humans are one another’s equals regardless of whether they have such capacities.
I argue that to preserve human equality, we should reject all moral status hierarchies. Although people throughout history have assumed that animals matter less than humans, such hierarchies prevent us from explaining human equality. And we don’t need hierarchy to explain the key intuition that attracts us to it: viz. that in many cases humans merit priority over animals. For example, I show that we can still explain the idea that our duty not to kill humans – whether or not they have advanced mental capacities – is almost always stronger than the duty we have not to kill animals, even without hierarchy. I develop a new view of the grounds of moral status that interlocks with this view, and I apply an animal rights view to practical and political issues.
PUBLICATIONS and PAPERS
Publications
Gildea, W. 2023. Morality, modality, and humans with deep cognitive impairments. The Philosophical Quarterly, Advance Article: 1-23. (Open access).
Abstract. Philosophers struggle to explain why human beings with deep cognitive impairments have a higher moral status than certain non-human animals. Modal personism promises to solve this problem. It claims that humans who lack the capacities of “personhood” and the potential to develop them nonetheless could have been persons. I argue that modal personism has poor prospects because it's hard to see how we could offer a plausible account of modal personhood. I search for an adequate understanding of modal personhood by considering existing accounts and sketching new ones. But each account fails, either because it objectionably excludes some deeply cognitively impaired humans from the class of modal persons or because it makes modal personhood doubtfully relevant to moral status. And the modal personist cannot solve this problem by appealing to the misfortune suffered by modal persons.
Gildea, W. Forthcoming. Review of David S. Wendler’s ‘Life Without Degrees of Moral Status: Implications for Rabbits, Robots and the Rest of Us’ . Journal of Moral Philosophy.
Work under review
Gildea, W. [Paper defending human and animal equality - title redacted].
Micro summary. We can rescue human equality by maintaining that there is a single moral status, shared with most animals too. Although we would then abandon hierarchies of moral status, we can still account for much of what attracts us to them. We can still explain, for example, why the duty not to kill humans is almost always stronger than the duty not to kill animals.
Working papers
Gildea, W. Why We Matter: Sentience and (a Bit) Beyond. Soon to be under review.
Micro summary. If only one moral status exists, we need a middle ground between personist views and sentience-only views. Personist views are objectionably exclusionary, whilst sentience-only views are too inclusionary, if not of real animals, of hypothetical animals who have no mental capacities at all bar sentience. I propose a new view called sentient individualism.
Trifan, Isa and Gildea, W. Refusing Meat, Shaping Norms. In progress.
Micro summary. Why avoid eating meat if there are doubts about the impact any one individual can have on animals’ lives? We argue that the causal inefficacy debate has failed adequately to recognise social norms as a source of reasons. And it is far clearer that individuals have an impact on social norms, which are crucial in determining how many animals are reared for food and the conditions they find themselves in.
PUBLIC-FACING WORK
Ethics for the Everyday podcast. Coming February 2025.
This podcast tackles ethical dilemmas that arise in the everyday using philosophy, stories, and fun examples. Co-founded and co-presented with Dr Valérie Topf, Dr Matt Perry, and Dr Hannah Battersby.
‘Save pigs, eat dogs?’ The Ecologist, with Raphael Rashid
Interviewed for Praxis Makes Perfect. Episode: ‘Will Gildea on animal ethics’