Christian Tarsney
Position:
Campus:
UTSC,Biography:
- PhD, University of Maryland
- BA, University of Minnesota
Christian Tarsney works mostly in ethics, with a focus on ethically motivated decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. He is interested in questions like how much weight we should give to tiny probabilities of extremely good or bad outcomes, how to deal with uncertainty about basic moral principles, and how to make choices that affect (or might affect) the size of the future population. He also recently started thinking about philosophical questions related to artificial intelligence, like what it means for an AI system to be “deceptive” and whether there is a natural tendency for AI agents to engage in power-seeking behavior. Finally, he has a side interest in philosophy of time, particularly in the “bias toward the future” — our strong but strangely hard-to-justify preference that pleasant experiences be in the future rather than the past, and unpleasant experiences in the past rather than the future.
Dr. Tarsney earned his PhD at the University of Maryland, and before coming to U of T, held research positions at the University of Groningen’s Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford’s Global Priorities Institute, and UT Austin’s Population Wellbeing Initiative.
For more information, please visit Christian Tarsney’s personal website.
Main Research Interests:
Ethics, Decision Theory, Philosophy of AIOther Research Interests:
Philosophy of TimePublications:
Book
Small Probabilities and High Stakes, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Elements series).
Peer Reviewed Articles
forthcoming A Dominance Argument Against Incompleteness, Philosophical Review, withHarvey Lederman & Dean Spears.
forthcoming Expected Value, to a Point: Moral Decision-Making under Background Uncertainty, Noûs.
forthcoming Deception and Manipulation in Generative AI, Philosophical Studies (special issue).
2025 Against Anti-Fanaticism, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 110(2): 734–
53.
2024 Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds, Ergo 11: 238–87, with Teruji Thomas.
2024 Metanormative Regress: An Escape Plan, Philosophical Studies 181(5): 1001–23.
2023 Egyptians, Aliens, and Okies: Against the Sum of Averages, Utilitas 35(4):
320–26 (discussion), with Michael Geruso & Dean Spears.
2023 The Epistemic Challenge to Longtermism, Synthese 201(6): 1–37.
2023 Average Utilitarianism Implies Solipsistic Egoism, Australasian Journal of Philoso-
phy 101(1): 140–151.
2022 Belief in Robust Temporal Passage (Probably) Does Not Explain Future-Bias,
Philosophical Studies 179(6): 2053–75, with Andrew Latham, Kristie Miller, & Hannah
Tierney.
2022 Robust Passage Phenomenology Probably Does Not Explain Future-Bias, Syn-
these 200(1): 1–23, with Andrew Latham, Kristie Miller, & Hannah Tierney.
2021 Vive La Différence? Structural Diversity as a Challenge for Metanormative
Theories, Ethics 131(2): 151–82.
2020 Future Bias in Action: Does the Past Matter More When You Can Affect It?,
Synthese 198(12): 11327–49, with Andrew Latham, Kristie Miller, & James Norton.
2019 Normative Uncertainty and Social Choice, Mind 128(512), 1285–1308 (discussion).
2019 Rejecting Supererogationism, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100(2): 599–623.
2018 Moral Uncertainty for Deontologists, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21(3):
505–20.
2018 Intertheoretic Value Comparison: A Modest Proposal, Journal of Moral Philosophy
15(3): 324–44.
2017 Thank Goodness That’s Newcomb: The Practical Relevance of the Temporal
Value Asymmetry, Analysis 77(4): 750–59.
2017 Does a Discount Rate Measure the Costs of Climate Change?, Economics &
Philosophy 33(3): 337–65.