Déborah Marber

Research Fellow

Project: “The Moral and Epistemic Virtue of Imagination in the Age of Anxiety”

Dr. Marber’s project aims to investigate the idea that the imagination is a virtue which can be developed to serve both our moral and epistemic well-being. The first part of her project will build onto the idea that the imagination is a skill and accounts which tie virtues to skills to inquire whether the imagination may be a moral and epistemic virtue. The second part of her project will draw from studies in positive psychology to analyse and evaluate the ways in which learned constraints on the imagination and imaginative resistance may hinder our epistemic and moral well-being. The aim of this project will be to explore whether and how a virtuous imagination may help us combat the epistemic and moral harms (e.g., anxiety, depression, misinformation, etc.) prevalent in our age of rapid socio-technical change.

Bio: Deb Marber is an Honorary Research and Teaching Associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol (UK) and, from August 2022, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion. Her research sits at the intersection of epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. She is especially interested in the relationship between believing and imagining, as well as how it bears on action, well-being, and society. She graduated with a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews in June 2021.

Website: www.debmarber.info