Background and activities

I do research in ethics and practical/applied philosophy. My interests include:

  • Environmental ethics
  • Decisions under uncertainty
  • Metaethics and methodology

I participate in interdisciplinary research on marine minerals (deep-sea mining) and artificial intelligence. I am co-editor of Etikk i Praksis – Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics.

Publications

Articles

  • Why Environmental Philosophers Should Be 'Buck-Passers' about Value. Environmental Ethics (2022). Link
  • Arguments from Need in Natural Resource Debates. Ethics, Policy & Environment (2021). Link
  • Hard Environmental Choices: Comparability, Justification, and the Argument from Moral Identity. Environmental Values vol. 30(1) s. 111-130 (2021). Link
  • Existence Value, Preference Satisfaction, and the Ethics of Species Extinction. Environmental Ethics vol. 41(2) pp. 165-180 (2019). Link
  • Precaution and Fairness: A Framework for Distributing Costs of Protection from Environmental Risks. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics vol. 31.(1) s. 55-71 (2018). With Daniel Steel. Link
  • Responsibility: The first virtue of innovation? Nordicum-Mediterraneum vol. 9 nr. 4 (2014).

Commentaries and reviews

  • Eric Katz on 'De-Extinction': Ontology, Value and Normativity. Ethics, Policy & Environment (2022). With Ronald Sandler et al. Link
  • Review: W. MacAskill, K. Bykvist, and T. Ord: Moral Uncertainty. Journal of Applied Philosophy (2021). Link
  • Constraints on the Precautionary Principle and the Problem of Uncertainty. American Journal of Bioethics. Volume 17.(3) s. 56-57 (2017). Link
  • Land use quandaries. Etikk i Praksis – Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics,14(1), 85-90 (2020). Link

Conference proceedings (peer-reviewed)

  • Evaluative Uncertainty in Ecosystem Assessment. In 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science and Technology (2016).

Complete list of works in Current Research Information SysTem In Norway (Cristin)

Current research project

«Ethical Aspects of Deep Sea Mining»

Postdoctoral project at NTNU and Northeastern University.

Deep Sea Mining (DSM) involves retrieving mineral deposits from the ocean floor at great depths and in ecologically complex environments. I look at different forms of uncertainty which can affect decision-making on DSM. In particular, I consider non-empirical forms of uncertainty (such as moral uncertainty) and how we might deal with them. I also consider arguments from need in natural resource debates, and develop a theory of how to assess the moral significance of needs.

Phd thesis

Stabell, E. D. 2019. Deep Sea Uncertainty: Studies in Environmental Ethics and Decision-Making. Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Selected talks

  • Northeastern University, USA: "Moral uncertainty: the two-level view". Ethics Institute Speaker Series 11.03.2022
  • American Philosophical Association 2021 Eastern Division Meeting: «Why environmental philosophers should be 'buck-passers' about value». 15.01.2021
  • Instutute for Futures Studies, Sweden: «Existence value and preferentism». The Annual Stockholm Region Workshop on Economics and Philosophy 05.09.2019:
  • University of Oslo: «Hard environmental choices». Practical Philosophy Group Annual Workshop 11.10.2018.
  • NTNU: «Incomparability and the case for problem-solving ethics». Methods in Applied Ethics conference 19.04.2018
  • University of Oslo: «Precaution and fairness». Practical Philosophy Group Annual Workshop 23.11.2017
  • University of British Columbia, Canada: “The Precautionary Principle and Fair Distribution” (with Daniel Steel). W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics 19.04.2017.
  • IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science, and Technology: «Risk and evaluative uncertainty». Vancouver, Canada 14.05.2016.

Visiting researcher

Professional Associations

  • International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE)
  • American Philosophical Association (APA) – International member
  • Society for Applied Philosophy (SAP)