Dr Alex Barber
Senior Lecturer In Philosophy
Biography
Professional biography
Research interests
- Ethics and language: My long-standing interest is in the philosophy of language and linguistics has been focused in recent years on ethical questions relating to language. This has led to a paper on dishonesty and lying, another on linguistic prescriptivism (co-authored), and a third on freedom of expression and deepfakes.
- Role ethics: The various roles we occupy (soldier, parent, friend, monarch, etc.) are ethically charged: we try to do the right thing as a parent or as a friend, etc. Ethicists have studied these roles in isolation from one another, but (with my colleague Sean Cordell) I have been developing a theory of the normative significance of social and professional roles in general. We ran a related AHRC-funded Role Ethics Network (2016-18) with academics from across the globe, culminating in our co-editing a 2023 volume of papers with Oxford University Press. In a spin-off project, we are looking at codes of ethics in collaboration with professionals outside academia. If you are interested in working with us on this, you are welcome to contact us via our Role Ethics Research Group.
- Ethics in the scientific age: It seems clear that ethics is not itself a science in the usual sense, yet science and ethics are related. Ethicists ignore the findings of science at their peril, for example. My contribution to understanding this relation began with an attempt to understand an asymmetry: when our ordinary ethical outlook comes into conflict with an apparent scientific finding, the science can force a revision to our ethics, but not vice versa. That is, science is immune to moral refutation. In a later paper I drew out some implications of immunity this for philosophy.
Teaching interests
- Reason in Action. Milton Keynes: Open University, 2014
- Ethics. Milton Keynes: Open University, 2011
- Language and Thought. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2005
- 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', in Barber, A. and Younger, N., eds, Revolutions, Book 1. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 197–249, 2020
- 'Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin' (co-authored with Jon Pike) in Mackie, R., ed., Revolutions, Book 2. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 113–168, 2020
- ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’, in Jones, R., ed., Reputations. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 217–270, 2019
- ‘Death and Religion in the Late Enlightenment: David Hume’, in A. Lentin, ed., Death of the Old Regime, Milton Keynes: Open University, 2003 (ISBN 0749285958)
- ‘Death and Religion in the Late Enlightenment: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade’, in A. Lentin, ed., Death of the Old Regime, Milton Keynes: Open University, 2003 (ISBN 0749285958)
Projects
Role Ethics Network
This project will advance a number of debates about the place of social roles in political, social and moral life. Building on the work we have done at the Role Ethics Workshop held in 2013, we aim to do this by bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the world and across the disciplines of philosophy, political theory and social sciences. Over 18 months we would aim to hold three workshops followed by a project conference, from which we would seek to publish proceedings in an edited collection. Going by previous bids, the time each of us would spend on this over the project period would average 1.5 hours per week, though this will be subject to calculation bearing in mind the cost constraints of the bid.
Publications
Book
The Ethics of Social Roles (2023)
Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (2009)
Book Chapter
Participatory Wellbeing and Roles (2023)
Role Ethics and Institutional Functions (2023)
An Overview of Social Roles and Their Ethics (2023)
Linguistic Prescriptivism (2021)
Co-extensive theories and unembedded definite descriptions (2005)
Journal Article
Freedom of expression meets deepfakes (2023)
Is metaphysics immune to moral refutation? (2020)
Lying, misleading, and dishonesty (2020)
Understanding as knowledge of meaning (2013)
Science's immunity to moral refutation (2013)
Hedonism and the experience machine (2011)
Sentence realization again: reply to Rey (2008)
Linguistic structure and the brain (2007)
A pragmatic treatment of simple sentences (2000)
