Richard Baron (philosopher)
Richard Baron (born 1958) is a philosopher living in London. He was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and at Selwyn College, Cambridge.
His first book, Projects and Values, argues for a foundationalist virtue ethic, against the background of a structured approach to the cultural relativity of value-concepts and a conception of the human subject that is inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
His second book, Deliberation and Reason, analyses our processes of deliberation. He argues that we have to see ourselves as enjoying a freedom that is incompatible with determinism, in order to support our self-conception as self-directed subjects. He then argues that we can see ourselves as having that kind of freedom if we overlook the causal closure of the physical, and that this vision of ourselves can sit alongside the scientific account of ourselves.
His third book, Confidence in Claims, is an exercise in applied epistemology. It investigates how features of various academic disciplines should affect our confidence in the correctness of claims that experts in the relevant disciplines make.
He has published articles in Philosophy Now (February 2006 and May 2012) and in the Ethical Record (July 2005, May 2006, March 2011 and October 2013).
He has also had a career as an adviser on tax policy, both for the British Government and for the Institute of Directors.