How should we build the point of view that we take on the world—the point of view that includes our beliefs, our values, and perhaps also our attitudes to risk? And, once it is built, how should it evolve, how should we act in the light of it, and what normative weight do our actions have when they are based on a point of view built in a particular way? Those are the questions that motivate these lectures, but before we can answer them, we must ask what populates the foundations of epistemic, practical, and moral normativity. What is it that determines what we should believe, how we should form our desires, and how we should act on the basis of them? I'll present an inventory of these foundations that permits many different points of view: different beliefs even for those with the same evidence; different values and different ways of forming them; and in certain situations—rare but important ones—different attitudes to risk. This permissiveness raises a number of problems. If other beliefs are available and permissible, may I rationally switch from one to the other without anything that prompts that? When, from my current point of view, there is evidence I would rather not receive, as I now judge that it would mislead me, what should I do if I nonetheless receive that evidence without choosing to?  That's all on the epistemic side. But the permissiveness of my view raises questions on the practical and moral side as well. The way you form your values determines what normative facts follow from them. When they are formed in certain ways, they cannot underpin genuine and effective consent, even if the values themselves are permissible. What are those ways, and why? What's more, we can change our desires across the course of our life, remaining at all times within the realm of the permissible. How, then, are we to choose on our own behalf, and when can a choice made by the lights of my present values and against the wishes of my future values end up counting as a moral wrong, rather than simply a prudential error?

The lectures will take place at 5pm on Wednesdays in weeks 1 to 6 of Trinity Term 2025.

Lectures 1 and 2 will be held at The HB Allen Centre, Keble College. A drinks reception will follow Lecture 1.

Lectures 3 to 6 will be held in the Philosophy Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities.