Skip to main content

WalkerT

Dr Tom Walker

Senior Lecturer in Ethics (PhD Sheffield)

Contact Details

Room 19.303
+44 28 9097 3626
Email: tom.walker@qub.ac.uk

Teaching Areas
Moral Theories, Applied Ethics

Research Interests
My research is concentrated in three main areas within ethics. The first is the extent to which it is appropriate to hold people responsible for the consequences of their behaviour, particularly where those consequences arise over relatively long periods of time or are the result of previous behaviour which substantially reduces the person’s autonomy. My second main area of research concerns  the permissibility of interventions to change people’s behaviour in order either to benefit them or to protect their future autonomy. In looking at this question my main focus in on policies designed to promote the health of the population by changing behaviours such as smoking, drinking and overeating. The third strand of my research concentrates on questions of fairness in resource allocation – concentrating on medical and social care resources.

Recent/selected publications

  • ‘Respecting autonomy without disclosing information’, Bioethics, forthcoming
  • ‘Informed consent and the requirement to ensure understanding’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2012, volume 29 number 1, pp.50-62
  • ‘Ulysses contracts in medicine’, Law and Philosophy, 2012, volume 31 number 1, pp.77-98
  • ‘Why we should not set a minimum price per unit of alcohol’, Public Health Ethics, 2010, volume 3 number 2, pp.107-114
  • ‘Who do we treat first when resources are scarce?’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2010, volume 27 number 2, pp.200-211
  • ‘What principlism misses’, The Journal of Medical Ethics, 2009, volume 35 number 4, pp.229-231
  • ‘Giving addicts their drug of choice: The problem of consent’, Bioethics, volume 22 number 6, pp.314-320