The first UOI Research Project Awards are announced
Knowledge is almost universally held to be valuable, instrumentally and for its own sake. But people sometimes choose not to know.
This project is concerned with the conditions under which such choices are justified, on the one hand, and with the conditions under which we provide people with information without first consulting with them, on the other hand. We aim to illuminate a number of pressing practical questions, for example on the role of expertise in decision-making, on freedom of speech, cancel culture, and medical paternalism. We also aim to build capacity in the institute on applied epistemology.
The moral psychology of autonomy in healthcare: This project brings together moral philosophy and experimental psychology to explore autonomy-based rights in healthcare, with a particular focus on how psychological biases can lead to unequal respect for
the medical autonomy of certain groups.
A major focus of the project is investigating the ethics of ‘listening’. We aim to investigate what it means to be ‘genuinely listened to’, how failures of listening impact medical autonomy, and the nature, if any, of moral duties to listen to patients.
Insurance is a crucial social good – it protects individuals from the financial consequences of significant risk events, whose effects may otherwise be individually unaffordable. However, the rise of powerful predictive technologies – such as artificial intelligence, digital health tools, and genetic testing - is changing how insurance companies assess risk, enabling them to develop far more personalized risk assessments. This might help consumers obtain insurance products that are better tailored to their own individual circumstances. However, the use of these technologies to deliver increasingly personalised risk assessments also raises profound questions about foundational ethical principles underlying the provision of insurance, including fairness, privacy, respect for autonomy, and solidarity.
This interdisciplinary research program will explore the ethical implications of the personalized insurance pricing enabled by these sorts of powerful predictive technologies, focusing on life, critical illness, and income protection insurance. Drawing on legal, philosophical, and economic expertise, the project will address two interrelated strands: (1) privacy, consent, and data and (2) fairness, discrimination, and solidarity. Public engagement will be central to the project’s methodology, with stakeholder workshops shaping the research agenda and dissemination strategy.
As the insurance industry continues to develop alongside these powerful predictive technologies, this project will aim to ensure that ethical values retain a crucial role at the heart of the industry, and to support policy-makers and insurers in navigating these new challenges responsibly.
