Luc Bovens
Professor, Philosophy
Caldwell 108B
919-962-2611
lbovens@unc.edu
Website
I graduated from the Department of Philosophy in the University of Minnesota in 1990. I taught in the Department of Philosophy in CU at Boulder from 1990 until 2003 and in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method in the LSE from 2003 until 2017. I have been a Professor in UNC at Chapel Hill since January 2018.
My interests are as follows:
*Rationality. I have a line of work on paradoxes in rationality such as: the surprise exam; Moore’s paradox; the evidential value of miracles; the conjunction fallacy; the lottery and the preface paradoxes; Monty Hall, Judy Benjamin & Sleeping Beauty; and the puzzle of the hats.
*Formal Epistemology. I developed a Bayesian Networks approach to confirmation, evidence and reliability in philosophy of science and to the coherence theory of justification in epistemology.
*Philosophy of economics. I developed a probabilistic angle to the discursive dilemma. I have researched various aspects of the tragedy of the commons—the history of the idea, its relation to game-theory, and its application to climate change. I have a range of articles on Nudge policies and on decision-making under risk and uncertainty. My recent work is on the measurement of regret, on shortlist construction in hiring, and on the biblical origins of 19th century utopian socialist slogans.
*Political science. I published a range of articles on voting power and the representation in federal assemblies, such as the US Electoral College or the EU Council of Ministers. I have also published and blogged on fairness and equal burden-sharing in EU asylum policies analyzing UNHCR data.
*Moral Psychology. I have worked on various topics of moral psychology, such as believing at will, preference change, moral luck, weakness of the will, hope, death, and apologies and forgiveness.
*Bioethics. I have published on a number of topics in bioethics, such as natural family planning and the status of the embryo, the Catholic Church and condom usage by HIV discordant couples, and the Belgian euthanasia legislation for minors.
*Teaching Ethics with Short Stories. I have set up a web site for teaching ethics with short stories in world literature: http://www.teachingethicswithshortstories.com/.
My interests are as follows:
*Rationality. I have a line of work on paradoxes in rationality such as: the surprise exam; Moore’s paradox; the evidential value of miracles; the conjunction fallacy; the lottery and the preface paradoxes; Monty Hall, Judy Benjamin & Sleeping Beauty; and the puzzle of the hats.
*Formal Epistemology. I developed a Bayesian Networks approach to confirmation, evidence and reliability in philosophy of science and to the coherence theory of justification in epistemology.
*Philosophy of economics. I developed a probabilistic angle to the discursive dilemma. I have researched various aspects of the tragedy of the commons—the history of the idea, its relation to game-theory, and its application to climate change. I have a range of articles on Nudge policies and on decision-making under risk and uncertainty. My recent work is on the measurement of regret, on shortlist construction in hiring, and on the biblical origins of 19th century utopian socialist slogans.
*Political science. I published a range of articles on voting power and the representation in federal assemblies, such as the US Electoral College or the EU Council of Ministers. I have also published and blogged on fairness and equal burden-sharing in EU asylum policies analyzing UNHCR data.
*Moral Psychology. I have worked on various topics of moral psychology, such as believing at will, preference change, moral luck, weakness of the will, hope, death, and apologies and forgiveness.
*Bioethics. I have published on a number of topics in bioethics, such as natural family planning and the status of the embryo, the Catholic Church and condom usage by HIV discordant couples, and the Belgian euthanasia legislation for minors.
*Teaching Ethics with Short Stories. I have set up a web site for teaching ethics with short stories in world literature: http://www.teachingethicswithshortstories.com/.