Lewis Williams

Background

I am an Early Career Researcher in Philosophy. I work mainly on moral philosophy and meta-ethics. Before joining Merton College in 2025, I completed my DPhil in Philosophy at Linacre College, University of Oxford.

Teaching

I have tutored the papers General Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Ethics, Practical Ethics, Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technology, Theory of Politics, Knowledge and Reality, and Philosophy of Religion, and supervised an undergraduate dissertation. I have also taught a graduate class entitled Authoritative Normativity.

Research

My current research concerns the relationship between normativity and deliberation. According to a popular view, deliberation is an essentially normative activity - to deliberate is to think about what we ought to do, which outcomes would be good or bad, and what kinds of reasons we have. My research challenges this view. I argue that we can deliberate about what to do without employing normative concepts. My work in this area has drawn heavily upon normative nihilism and meta-normative uncertainty. In the future, I plan to work on meta-normative pluralism, demanding normative theories, and their relationships with deliberation.