Postes occupés

2014-2015

Étudiant-e, Éthique fondamentale

Biographie

I am a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at McGill University working under the supervision of Sarah Stroud and Andrew Reisner. I began my doctoral studies in 2009. I received a B.A. Honours in philosophy from Concordia University (Montréal, Qc) in 2006, and an M.A. in philosophy from Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC) in 2008. I also have a B.F.A. in Fine Arts from Concordia University.

My main philosophical interest is in the philosophy of normativity. More particularly, my research focuses on the nature of normative requirements. It aims to explain what makes certain sources of requirements normative, but not others. The hope is that my account of normative requirements will vindicate the normativity of rationality and thereby contribute to a relatively new and important debate in the philosophy of rationality.

I am also interested in what may be called the “fundamentalist question about normativity”. There is a substantive question whether there exists a fundamental or primitive normative unit. Some plausible concepts include reasons, oughts, and fittingness. I am inclined to think that reasons are the most fundamental normative units, and, as such, I am also interested in the prospects of the buck-passing account of value.

I am also interested in issues in metaethics (e.g. the realism/anti-realism debate), applied ethics (particularly, the treatment of non-human animals), epistemology, and logic (particularly, issues in deontic logic). When not doing philosophy, I enjoy cooking and taking long hikes with my dog.

Publications

Guindon, Bruno. 2014. « Sources, raisons et exigences », Les Ateliers de l’éthique/The Ethics Forum, vol. 9, no, 2, pp. 152-165.