|
|
|
|
|
Sophie Botros has a B.A. in Philosophy with First Class Honours (Birkbeck College, London) and a Ph.D "Freedom of the Will" (King's College, London, where she was supervised by Professor Peter Winch). She has held lecturing posts in the philosophy departments of the University of Essex, and of Stirling. She was Lecturer in Medical Ethics, Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, King's College, London from 1987-1995 where she established a Public Affairs Unit, and organized, and chaired, meetings in the Houses of Commons and Lords, during the passage of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill through Parliament. (The need for Parliament to receive independent ethical advice and be apprised of relevant arguments, which Dr Botros identified, and sought informally to cater for in 1990 with her Unit, was officially recognized the following year, 1991, when the Nuffield Council for Bioethics was founded.) She was also at this time Medical Ethics Adviser to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Aids, and sat on Working Parties concerned with the ethics of medical research. From 1995-2005, she was an Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, London. She
is now an Honorary Research Associate of the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Studies, University of London. She is also a Recognized Teacher of the University.
Her research until recently was mainly in moral philosophy: metaethics, and substantive and applied ethics. But she has also written on rights theory, and has contributed to Phronesis articles and reviews on topics in ancient philosophy, for instance, Stoic fatalism, and weak will in Plato.
Her book Hume, Reason and Morality: A Legacy of Contradiction, was published in February 2006 by Routledge in their Eighteenth Century Philosophy Series. For full details, see her Publications Page. An early review, describing it as "an extremely important book with which anyone attempting to interpret or use Hume's arguments will need to contend", can be found on the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews web-site.
Also, Jonathan Dancy reviews it in the Times Literary Supplement (February 9 2007) where he writes of this "excellent book" that it contains "the most serious and detailed attempt to come to grips with Hume's notorious argument that I know of" and thereby makes "a significant contribution to our understanding". Observing that “there is extensive conversation in Hume studies about the difference morals make in conduct”, Andre C. Willis, in Toward a Humean True Religion (2015) refers to it as “the most noted text in this regard”.
The Philosophy Department of Michigan State University USA held a workshop (June 15-17 2007) on her book, Hume, Reason and Morality:A Legacy of Contradiction. Professor Don Garrett of New York University, and Professor GeofferySayre-McCord of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were, with Dr Botros, invited participants.
Dr Botros’s new book Truth, Time and History: a Philosophical Inquiry was published by Bloomsbury Academic on 21st September 2017. For full details, see her Publications Page. Click here for the Publisher's preview, and orders can placed with Bloomsbury or Amazon by following the links. The following description of the book appears on the Bloomsbury web-site: "Truth, Time and History investigates the reality of the past by connecting arguments across areas which are conventionally discussed in isolation from each other. Breaking the impasse within the narrower analytic debate between Dummett’s semantic anti-realists and the truth value link realists as to whether the past exists independently of our methods of verification, the book argues, through an examination of the puzzles concerning identity over time, that only the present exists. Drawing on Lewis’s analogy between times and possible worlds, and work by Collingwood and Oakeshott, and the continental philosopher, Barthes, the author advances a wholly novel proposal, as to how aspects of ersatz presentism may be combined with historical coherentism to uphold the legitimacy of discourse about the past. In highlighting the role of historians in the creation and construction of temporality, Truth, Time and History offers a convincing philosophical argument for the inherence of an unreal past in the real present."
Dr Botros has acted as a referee for the publisher Routledge, Cambridge University Press, New York and for journals such as The Philosophical Quarterly, Hume Studies and The Journal of Medical Ethics.
She chaired a session at the 33rd International Hume Conference in Koblenz, Germany in August 2006.
Dr Botros has reviewed books on happiness and cosmopolitanism for the Guardian Newspaper Saturday Review.
Dr Botros can be contacted at sophie.botros@sophiebotros.com.
This page last updated: 6th November 2017.