Piers Norris Turner

Piers Norris Turner is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Science (by courtesy), and Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values (CEHV). He is also a faculty coordinator for the interdisciplinary major in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, serves on the faculty advisory board of the Sustainability Institute, and is an active participant in the OSU Political Theory Workshop. At CEHV, he has been closely involved in the University's Shared Values Initiative and Civil Discourse Project, in addition to collaborating with CEHV's steering committee and staff on a range of programs aiming to support ethical reflection and discussion on campus. In 2023, he received the President and Provost's Award for Distinguished Faculty Service.

His research focuses on utilitarianism and liberal political thought, especially as it relates to the moral and political philosophy of John Stuart Mill. He has published articles in a number of leading journals and is working on a manuscript entitled Mill’s Ethics for the Cambridge Elements of Ethics series. He has co-edited Public Reason in Political Philosophy: Classic Sources and Contemporary Commentaries (Routledge, 2018, with Jerry Gaus) and a collection of unpublished social and political writings by Karl Popper, called After The Open Society (Routledge, 2008, with Jeremy Shearmur).

He has also collaborated with an interdisciplinary team of researchers exploring the principles and processes of corporate data ethics. A wide range of companies are grappling in different ways with the need to engage in uncertain "beyond compliance" thinking about the ethical challenges of predictive data analytics and AI. What constitutes responsible ethical decision-making in that context? A co-authored book Data Ethics Management: Emerging Models for the Governance of Advanced Analytics and AI (Springer), will appear this fall.