Welcome to my personal website. Below are links to various other websites with which I am associated. (Sites for which I am responsible are shown underlined.)

Hertford College, Oxford

I am Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford University, where I've been since 1st October 2005. Here is my personal page on the College website, and here is the Philosophy teaching team. Other relevant pages are for PPE (which I ran in the College 2006-18), Computer Science (which I ran in the College 2012-18), and Philosophy Joint Schools, which in Hertford include Computer Science & Philosophy, Philosophy & Modern Languages (PML), and Physics & Philosophy.

David Hume and Digital Humanities

The main focus of my research in recent years has been on philosophical issues arising from the work of David Hume, the greatest figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. From 2005 until 2010, I was Co-Editor of the journal Hume Studies. The website davidhume.org is a long-running project – joint with my doctoral student Henry Merivale – to make Hume's work accessible in authoritative electronic editions, together with high quality secondary material. We are now planning to extend this through the project English Philosophical Texts Online, which aims to make available the works of around 70 early modern authors (including 25% women). Click here for links to my own publications on Early Modern Philosophy, and various other papers and talks. An interview with Nigel Warburton can be found on the Philosophy Bites website or by clicking here: The Significance of David Hume.

Computing and Philosophy

Initially almost by accident, computer programming has played a large part in my life, and I have come to appreciate its creative pleasures and its value for exploring novel ideas. The website PhiloComp.net brings together a wide range of resources relevant to the links between Philosophy and Computing, with the aim of promoting this vision, especially in education. The site is rather dated now, since I made it over a decade ago to press the case for the new degree programme in Computer Science and Philosophy at Oxford University, which admitted its first eight students – four of them at Hertford College – in 2012. This was the first new Philosophy degree programme at Oxford for 39 years, and has since continued to thrive, with 12 colleges now offering places (though Hertford has significantly more than any other college).

Online Media – the Futuremakers Podcast

Since 2018, I have hosted the Futuremakers podcast, involving discussions (usually four-way) with Oxford researchers – both technical and social – working in areas with significant implications for our future. The first season was on Artificial Intelligence, the second on Climate and Sustainability. Both consisted of 10 episodes, involving prominent researchers and some external guests (e.g. MP Caroline Lucas, and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney). The discussions have been fascinating, and I have learned a lot from them.

See the Teaching Page for links to various recorded lecture series. See the Media Page for appearances in the public and online media, including five episodes of Radio 4's In Our Time, two formal debates, two Sunday Times lead stories, and a couple of BBC news interviews.

 

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Peter Millican