Chloë FitzGerald
My research has always revolved around the ethics of the opaque parts of the mind, those murky areas that we find difficult to control. This led me from moral philosophy to empirical research on implicit biases and their potential effects in health care and other areas. My focus now is on how research can be used to combat sexism, racism and other forms of inequality and discrimination. I am working on various books aimed at raising the public awareness of implicit stereotypes and bias, particularly in Catalonia (Spain), where I reside.
I was a research fellow at iEH2 (Institute for Ethics, History and the Humanities), Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva from 2017 to 2020.
Before that, I was a postdoctoral fellow on the Swiss National Science Foundation project, ‘Understanding implicit bias in clinical care’, with Primary Investigator Samia Hurst from October 2013 to February 2017 at iEH2. We conducted empirical research into the presence of implicit weight and mentall illness bias in physicians in different specialties and with different levels of experience, testing an intervention to reduce these biases. In the year preceding, I was a postdoctoral fellow on the project 'ENABLE - Protecting Vulnerable People in Health Care', also headed by Samia Hurst. We conducted a systematic literature review on the presence of implicit bias in health care professionals.
From September 2011 - September 2012, I was a postdoctoral fellow on the CIHR-funded interdisciplinary project, ‘Let conscience be their guide? Conscientious refusals in reproductive health care’, headed by Carolyn McLeod in the Philosophy department of the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
In 2011, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l'Université de Montréal (CRÉUM) for 9 months, where I worked with my supervisor, Christine Tappolet, and, Daniel Weinstock, the director of CRÉUM, among others.
I defended my PhD thesis in Philosophy, ‘Moral intuitions: what they are and how we should use them’, at the University of Manchester in March 2011. The PhD was funded by the Wellcome Trust and I was supervised by Peter Goldie and Jonathan Quong. I analysed recent empirical and philosophical work on emotion and moral judgement to provide an accurate descriptive picture of the phenomena involved in moral intuition.
I was a research fellow at iEH2 (Institute for Ethics, History and the Humanities), Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva from 2017 to 2020.
Before that, I was a postdoctoral fellow on the Swiss National Science Foundation project, ‘Understanding implicit bias in clinical care’, with Primary Investigator Samia Hurst from October 2013 to February 2017 at iEH2. We conducted empirical research into the presence of implicit weight and mentall illness bias in physicians in different specialties and with different levels of experience, testing an intervention to reduce these biases. In the year preceding, I was a postdoctoral fellow on the project 'ENABLE - Protecting Vulnerable People in Health Care', also headed by Samia Hurst. We conducted a systematic literature review on the presence of implicit bias in health care professionals.
From September 2011 - September 2012, I was a postdoctoral fellow on the CIHR-funded interdisciplinary project, ‘Let conscience be their guide? Conscientious refusals in reproductive health care’, headed by Carolyn McLeod in the Philosophy department of the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
In 2011, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l'Université de Montréal (CRÉUM) for 9 months, where I worked with my supervisor, Christine Tappolet, and, Daniel Weinstock, the director of CRÉUM, among others.
I defended my PhD thesis in Philosophy, ‘Moral intuitions: what they are and how we should use them’, at the University of Manchester in March 2011. The PhD was funded by the Wellcome Trust and I was supervised by Peter Goldie and Jonathan Quong. I analysed recent empirical and philosophical work on emotion and moral judgement to provide an accurate descriptive picture of the phenomena involved in moral intuition.
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PhD Thesis by Chloë FitzGerald
1. Our moral intuitions are best understood through examining our individual value structures, which are made up of evaluative dispositions, including emotional dispositions. Drawing on recent developments in philosophy and psychology, I show in Chapter 2 how our value structures are partially opaque to us and characteristically involve conflicting and incompatible elements.
2. Moral intuitions are not a unitary phenomenon. They can include a suite of heterogeneous responses, which may co-occur and be connected in interesting ways. In Chapter 3, I present my broad definition of moral intuition, according to which, to be intuitive, a suite of responses must involve either an emotional feeling or an intuitive moral feeling. I introduce the notion of intuitive moral feelings as pre-cognitive promptings to judge.
3. Emotions are more than simple flashes of affect, as they are often taken to be by empirical researchers such as Jonathan Haidt, Joshua Greene and Marc Hauser, whom I criticise in Chapter 4. I put forward a philosophically and psychologically more sophisticated and subtle account of emotion and its connections to moral intuition.
4. It is a mistake to treat intuitive responses to imaginary cases as ‘data’ to be accommodated by moral principles, as exemplified in the practice of normative ethicists such as Frances Kamm. In Chapter 5, I argue that these responses should be taken as providing data about ourselves; I also claim that the type of imaginary case used does not fully engage our evaluative capacities. Instead, ethicists should consider the full gamut of responses they experience to a wide range of cases drawn from real life and literature.
5. ‘’Know thyself!’ Ethical reflection is enriched by self-scrutiny and moral intuitions should be used partly for self-interpretation. In Chapter 6, I recommend that normative ethicists reflect on their shared and conflicting responses with full awareness of the murkiness of their underlying dispositions. Rather than ‘I know where you’re coming from’, the aim should be greater self-knowledge: ‘I know where I’m coming from’. The causal historical reasons for one’s intuitions can be illuminating, providing self-knowledge which helps to guard against prejudice and self-deception.