James Hutton
I am Assistant Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology at TU Delft, Netherlands.
I work on emotions, ethical knowledge, and environmental ethics. I defend the idea that, with the right cognitive habits, we can gain ethical knowledge through emotional experiences. Building on this, I'm developing an "emotion-based" methodology for environmental ethics, which (I think) provides a novel way of overcoming longstanding aporias about environmental value. I also have interests in history of philosophy, especially Kant, the "moral sense" school, and Confucian and Buddhist ethics.
Before Delft, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Edinburgh. Before that, I was a fixed-term Lecturer at UCL. I studied at Oxford, Cambridge, CEU, and HU Berlin. I grew up in Halifax, West Yorkshire. When I'm not doing philosophy, I'm hopefully spending time outside with my dog or inside with my guitar.
Research
[See PhilPeople for up-to-date list]
Hutton, J. (2025) Unreliable Emotions and Ethical Knowledge, Philosophical Quarterly [online first: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaf011]
Hutton, J. (2024) Emotion-Enriched Moral Perception, Philosophical Quarterly [online first: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae101]
Hutton, J. (2023) What Attentional Moral Perception Cannot Do But Emotions Can, Philosophies ('Moral Perception' special issue, ed. Robert Cowan), 8(6), 106. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8060106
Hutton, J. (2022) Moral Experience: Perception or Emotion?, Ethics, 132(3), 570-597. https://doi.org/10.1086/718079
Hutton, J. (2021) Kant, Causation and Laws of Nature. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science: Part A, 86, 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SHPSA.2021.01.003
Hutton, J. (2020) Kant, Animal Minds, and Conceptualism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 50(8), 981–998. https://doi.org/10.1017/can.2020.50
Hutton, J. (2019). Epistemic Normativity in Kant’s “Second Analogy.” European Journal of Philosophy, 27(3), 593–609. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12424
What I'm Working On
Impact / Public Philosophy
Contact
✉️ j dot hutton at tudelft dot nl
https://philpeople.org/profiles/james-hutton-1
I work on emotions, ethical knowledge, and environmental ethics. I defend the idea that, with the right cognitive habits, we can gain ethical knowledge through emotional experiences. Building on this, I'm developing an "emotion-based" methodology for environmental ethics, which (I think) provides a novel way of overcoming longstanding aporias about environmental value. I also have interests in history of philosophy, especially Kant, the "moral sense" school, and Confucian and Buddhist ethics.
Before Delft, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Edinburgh. Before that, I was a fixed-term Lecturer at UCL. I studied at Oxford, Cambridge, CEU, and HU Berlin. I grew up in Halifax, West Yorkshire. When I'm not doing philosophy, I'm hopefully spending time outside with my dog or inside with my guitar.
Research
[See PhilPeople for up-to-date list]
Hutton, J. (2025) Unreliable Emotions and Ethical Knowledge, Philosophical Quarterly [online first: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaf011]
Hutton, J. (2024) Emotion-Enriched Moral Perception, Philosophical Quarterly [online first: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae101]
Hutton, J. (2023) What Attentional Moral Perception Cannot Do But Emotions Can, Philosophies ('Moral Perception' special issue, ed. Robert Cowan), 8(6), 106. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8060106
Hutton, J. (2022) Moral Experience: Perception or Emotion?, Ethics, 132(3), 570-597. https://doi.org/10.1086/718079
Hutton, J. (2021) Kant, Causation and Laws of Nature. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science: Part A, 86, 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SHPSA.2021.01.003
Hutton, J. (2020) Kant, Animal Minds, and Conceptualism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 50(8), 981–998. https://doi.org/10.1017/can.2020.50
Hutton, J. (2019). Epistemic Normativity in Kant’s “Second Analogy.” European Journal of Philosophy, 27(3), 593–609. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12424
What I'm Working On
- an article setting out an "emotion-based" approach to environmental ethics and exploring the epistemic significance of wonder.
- an article on recalcitrant emotions, perceptual learning, and the perceptualist theory of emotion (under review).
- an article on Kant's model of perception and imagination in Schematism chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason (under review).
- a top-secret book project.
Impact / Public Philosophy
- Developing an "ethical assessment framework" for offshore energy for the Dutch Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend.
- Doing public events, e.g. “Emotions and the Climate Crisis” at the Edinburgh Science Festival; "The Five Stages of Climate Grief: Bargaining" at TU Delft; a public-facing event series on "The Ethics of Climate Action" at TU Delft's The Hague Campus.
- Writing and speaking for general audiences, e.g., this Nautilus article, this podcast episode.
Contact
✉️ j dot hutton at tudelft dot nl
https://philpeople.org/profiles/james-hutton-1
