James Hutton
I am an Assistant Professor at TU Delft. Before coming to Delft, I was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Lecturer (Teaching) at UCL. I received my PhD from the University of Cambridge.
My research focuses on emotions and their role on ethical decision-making. I defend the idea that we can gain ethical knowledge through emotional experience and apply this to environmental ethics and technology ethics.
In my view, emotions provide foundational—but fallible—starting points for ethical reasoning and discussion. In environmental ethics, this means that we shouldn't try to start out from abstract a priori principles, but from people's emotional experiences of the (dis)value of the nonhuman world and our interations with it.
I'm also interested in the history of philosophy. In the past, I did work on Kant’s epistemology. After losing faith in Kant, I’ve grown more interested in discussions of emotions and moral psychology in (a) the British “moral sense” school and (b) Confucianism. (I taught a course on the latter at Edinburgh.)
I've published in places like the European Journal of Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and Ethics.
I believe that doing philosophy is inherently valuable, but I also believe in its power to shape public policy and discourse for the better. To that end, I've been involved in:
📧 j dot hutton at tudelft dot nl
My research focuses on emotions and their role on ethical decision-making. I defend the idea that we can gain ethical knowledge through emotional experience and apply this to environmental ethics and technology ethics.
In my view, emotions provide foundational—but fallible—starting points for ethical reasoning and discussion. In environmental ethics, this means that we shouldn't try to start out from abstract a priori principles, but from people's emotional experiences of the (dis)value of the nonhuman world and our interations with it.
I'm also interested in the history of philosophy. In the past, I did work on Kant’s epistemology. After losing faith in Kant, I’ve grown more interested in discussions of emotions and moral psychology in (a) the British “moral sense” school and (b) Confucianism. (I taught a course on the latter at Edinburgh.)
I've published in places like the European Journal of Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and Ethics.
I believe that doing philosophy is inherently valuable, but I also believe in its power to shape public policy and discourse for the better. To that end, I've been involved in:
- Developing an "ethical assessment framework" for offshore energy for the Dutch Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend.
- Doing public events on “Emotions and the Climate Crisis” at the Edinburgh Science Festival.
- Writing and speaking for general audiences, e.g., this Nautilus article, this podcast episode.
📧 j dot hutton at tudelft dot nl