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 currently an Early Career Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Warwick. I have a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Warwick, where my work was supervised by Victor Tadros, Patrick Tomlin, Kimberley Brownlee (2019-20) and Steve Cooke. I passed my viva in February 2024 with no corrections. My examiners were Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Simon Caney.
I was a visiting researcher at the University of British Columbia’s W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics and the University of Oxford’s Global Priorities Institute in 2023.
I have taught undergraduates in both the Philosophy and Politics departments at Warwick, winning 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
RESEARCH
Here’s more on one central strand of my research and why it matters. 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 UNDER REVIEW
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. [Paper defending human and animal equality - title redacted]. Under review.
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.
Gildea, W. Sentience and the other bases of moral status. 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.
OTHER WORKING PAPERS