Project Description
RESEARCH AREAS:
History of Ethics
Normative Ethics
Practical Ethics
CONTACT:
(519) 661-2111 x87953
ANTHONY SKELTON
Associate Professor;
Department of Philosophy, Western University
Anthony Skelton is currently an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario and Faculty Scholar (2023-25). He has held visiting positions at the University of Oxford and at Fondation Brocher. His research is in the areas of normative ethics, the history of ethics, and applied ethics. He has published articles in Ethics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, The British Medical Journal, and Utilitas, and in volumes published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Routledge. He is the co-editor (with Lisa Forsberg, Isra Black, and Jonathan Herring) of Consenting Children: Autonomy, Responsibility, Well-Being (Proceedings of the British Academy, Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and of Bioethics in Canada, second edition (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is the author of Sidgwick’s Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2024). In 2015, he received the Arts and Humanities Teaching Excellence Award andin 2019-20 he was the Graham and Gail Wright Distinguished Scholar in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He has written popular pieces for The Conversation, The Globe and Mail, The Winnipeg Free Press, and Western News. He has appeared on television and on radio, including on the BBC, the CBC, CTV News, Global News, and TV Ontario. In 2022, he was the recipient (with Lisa Forsberg) of the American Philosophical Association Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest Prize.
My primary research interests are in moral philosophy and its history. I have written on Sidgwick and related figures, the nature of well-being, achievement, adolescent consent and capacity, and, more recently, the ethics of mandating vaccination and of vaccinating children against COVID-19.
Books:
Consenting Children: Autonomy, Responsibility, Well-Being}, edited with Lisa Forsberg, Isra Black, & Jonathan Herring (Proceedings of the British Academy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2024).
Sidgwick’s Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024).
Bioethics in Canada, second edition, edited with Charles Weijer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Peer-reviewed journal articles:
“Transformative Choice and Decision-Making Capacity“ (with Isra Black & Lisa Forsberg), Law Quarterly Review} 139 (2023), 654-680.
“Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment“ (with Lisa Forsberg & Isra Black), Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy} 30 (2021), 221–247.
“Achievement and Enhancement“ (with Lisa Forsberg), Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (2020), 322–338.
Contributions to edited volumes:
“Sidgwick on Free Will and Ethics“, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility, ed. Maximilian Keiner (New York: Routledge, 2023), 82–94.
“Children’s Prudential Value“, The Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing, ed. Chris Wareham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 38–53.
“Mandating Vaccination“ (with Lisa Forsberg), The Ethics of Pandemics, ed. Meredith Celene Schwartz (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2020), 131–134.
“Practical Ethics in Sidgwick and Kant“, Kantian and Sidgwickian Ethics: The Cosmos of Duty Above and the Moral Law Within, eds. Tyler Paytas & Tim Henning (New York: Routledge, 2020), 13–39.
Commissioned journal articles “Should We Delay Covid-19 Vaccination in Children?” (with Lisa Forsberg), British Medical Journal 374 (2021), 96–97.
Popular writing (selected) “New Publication: `Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment'”} (with Lisa Forsberg and Isra Black), Ethics in the News, 19 April 2022.
“Comment évaluer les risques et les avantages de la vaccination contre la Covid-19 pour les enfants?”, The Conversation, 8 November 2021.
“Ethical Decisions: Weighing Risks and Benefits of COVID-19 Vaccination in Children Ages 5-11″, The Conversation, 1 November 2021.
“We Should Vaccinate Children Against COVID-19 in High-income Countries, Too” (with Lisa Forsberg and Isra Black), Ethics in the News, 28 August 2021.
“3 Reasons for Making COVID-19 Vaccination Mandatory for Children” (with Lisa Forsberg), The Conversation, 13 May 2021.
“Mandating COVID-19 Vaccination for Children” (with Lisa Forsberg), Ethics in the News, 9 April 2021.
Winter 2009, Sidgwick’s Ethics (graduate seminar)
Winter, 2010, Introduction to Ethics and Value Theory
Winter, 2010, Normative Ethics
Autumn, 2010, Introduction to Ethics and Value Theory
Autumn, 2010, Moore’s Ethics (graduate seminar)
Autumn, 2011, Promises, Promises: Sidgwick, Ross, Scanlon (graduate seminar)
Autumn, 2011, Advanced Introduction to Philosophy
Winter, 2012, History of Ethics: Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy
Winter, 2012, Introduction to Ethics and Value Theory
Autumn, 2013, Ethics and Society
Winter, 2013, Ethics and Society
Winter, 2013, Utility, Liberty, Equality: The Case of John Stuart Mill
Autumn, 2014, Ethics and Society
Autumn 2014, Meta-ethics
Winter, 2015, Ethics and Society
Faculty Research Domains
Rotman Institute faculty members are listed below by shared research areas. Visit individual member profiles to learn more.