Tom Sorell


Tom Sorell is a Canadian philosopher based in the UK. His work mainly concerns the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of science, early modern philosophy, ethics and political philosophy. He is noted for his writings on Hobbes, scientism and applied ethics. Since 2008, he has worked in ethics and technology both as a researcher and as a consultant. He is the author of Hobbes ; Descartes ; Moral Theory and Capital Punishment ; Scientism ; Business Ethics ; Moral Theory and Anomaly ; Descartes Reinvented ; and Emergencies and Politics.

Early life and education

Sorell was born in Mexico City in 1951 to European migrants. The family moved to Vancouver, Canada in 1956 and to Montreal in 1961. He attended the High School of Montreal, entered McGill University in 1968, and graduated in 1972, when he won the Prince of Wales Gold Medal in philosophy. In 1973, he began his BPhil in Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford, England. He was taught by John McDowell, Gareth Evans, John Mackie, and Simon Blackburn. Supervised by B.F. McGuinness, he wrote a thesis on the deep continuity between Wittgenstein's Tractatus and his very late work, On Certainty. After completing his BPhil, Sorell wrote a thesis under the supervision of David Pears, defending a version of the causal theory of knowledge. He was awarded the Oxford DPhil in 1978.

Teaching career

Sorell held temporary lectureships at St. Anne's, Balliol, and Queen's Colleges in Oxford in the mid-1970s before joining the philosophy department at the Open University in 1979, working alongside Rosalind Hursthouse and Janet Radcliffe Richards. In 1992, he was appointed Reader in Philosophy at Essex University, and was promoted to Professor in 1996. From 2003 to 2005 he acted as co-director of the Human Rights Centre at Essex. He moved to Birmingham University in 2006 as John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics. In 2013 he became Professor of Politics and Philosophy at Warwick University, where he directs the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group. He was a Faculty Fellow in the Ethics and the Professions program at Harvard in 1996–7, and a visiting professor in philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013.

Work

Sorell has published extensively in early modern philosophy, especially on Hobbes and Descartes, and has co-edited article collections on history of philosophy and analytic philosophy, on the relationship of canonical to non-canonical figures in early modern philosophy, and on the relationship between ancient and modern philosophers. He claims that history of philosophy and problem-solving analytic philosophy can be highly complementary. His Descartes Reinvented and Emergencies and Politics: A Sober Hobbesian Approach are applications of his views on how to harmonise the disciplines of problem-solving analytic philosophy and history of philosophy. His book Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science articulates a pro-science position while criticising what Sorell sees as a tendency, especially in American philosophy, to overvalue science and overdo naturalism. In ethics, Sorell defends theory against the claims of anti-theorists, including Bernard Williams. His work in applied ethics concerns capital punishment, technology, including robotics and AI, surveillance, privacy, counter-terrorism, organised crime, emergency ethics including pandemic ethics, microfinance, and responsibility in the 2008 financial crisis. His latest work considers the various harms involved in several kinds of online crime and retaliation against online crime. His work in applied ethics is regularly pursued with practitioners in various fields, including law enforcement, intelligence services, technology, business, healthcare and politics.

Major publications

  • with Dempsey, J and Cowton, C. eds. Business Ethics After the Financial Crisis
  • with K. Kadjimatheou, J. Guelke eds. Security Ethics
  • with L Cabera, eds. Microfinance, Rights and Global Justice Emergencies and Politics
  • with Jill Kraye and John Rogers, eds. Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy.
  • with Jill Kraye and John Rogers, eds. Insiders and Outsiders in Early Modern Philosophy.Descartes Reinvented.
  • with John Rogers, eds. Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy.
  • with L. Foisneau and J-C Merle, eds. Leviathan Between the Wars: Hobbes’s Impact on Early Twentieth Century Political Philosophy.
  • with L. Foisneau, eds. Leviathan After 350 Years.
  • With John Rogers, eds. Hobbes and History.
  • ed. Descartes. Dartmouth Readings in the History of Philosophy.Moral Theory and Anomaly. Aristotelian Society Monograph Series.
  • ed. Health Care, Ethics, and Insurance.
  • with R. Ariew, J. Cottingham, eds. and trans. Descartes: Background Source Materials.
  • ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, 3rd edn.
  • ed. The Rise of Modern Philosophy.Descartes .