Hard Choices – Professor Ruth Chang (Oxford)

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We all face hard choices. What career should I pursue? Should I marry? Have children? How much should I give to charity? Should I give up my car and go vegan in order to help alleviate global warming? In this talk I explain what hard choices are, and what, in particular, makes them hard. It turns out that how we relate to the world in the decisions we make is fundamentally askew. By thinking about our place in the world differently, we uncover a distinctive way of thinking about our hard choices and what to do in the face of them. 

Ruth Chang is Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at University College Oxford, having previously been Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey and a law associate working on a (pro bono) death penalty case and several (non pro bono) product liability and medical malpractice cases.

Professor Chang's current academic work concerns the nature of values and reasons, decision-making and reasoning, love and commitment, and the nature of the self. Her research has appeared in the media as far afield as Taiwan and Brazil, as well as across Europe and the English-speaking world. She has worked with a variety of industries, including video gaming, pharmaceuticals, head-hunting, banking and finance, and a variety of institutions, including the U.S. Navy, the CIA, National Geographic, and the World Bank.