astronomy

Hilary Greaves

Hilary Greaves is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hilary Greaves rather than just read about it. In short: Hilary Greaves (born 1978) is a British philosopher, currently serving as professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. From 2017 to 2022, she was the founding director of the Global Priorities Institute, a research centre for effective altruism at the university supported by Open Philanthropy.

Key takeaways

Hilary Greaves belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hilary Greaves to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hilary Greaves from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hilary Greaves (born 1978) is a British philosopher, currently serving as professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. From 2017 to 2022, she was the founding director of the Global Priorities Institute, a research centre for effective altruism at the university supported by Open Philanthropy.

Education Greaves earned a BA in philosophy and physics from the University of Oxford in 2003, and a PhD in philosophy from Rutgers University in 2008. Her doctoral thesis was titled Spacetime Symmetries and the CPT Theorem and was supervised by Frank Arntzenius. She has held appointments at Merton College and Somerville College and, since 2016, has been a professor of philosophy at Oxford.

Research Greaves' current work is on issues related to effective altruism, particularly in connection to global prioritisation. Her research interests include moral philosophy (including foundational issues in consequentialism, interpersonal aggregation, population ethics, and moral uncertainty), formal epistemology, and the philosophy of physics, particularly quantum mechanics. In October 2022, she was featured in Vox's Future Perfect 50 for her work on longtermism. She has argued that, just as geographical distance should make no difference to how important it is to alleviate a person's suffering (to the extent that one is able to), temporal distance is likewise morally irrelevant. Greaves has defended her longtermist position in terms of both utilitarian outcomes and intergenerational justice.

Selected publications

Books Greaves, Hilary, and Theron Pummer (eds). Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues. Oxford University Press, 2019. ISBN 9780192578303 Greaves, Hilary, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad (eds). Essays on Longtermism: Present Action for the Distant Future. Oxford University Press, 2025. ISBN 9780191979972

Peer-reviewed articles Greaves, Hilary. 2013. "Epistemic Decision Theory". Mind. 122, no. 488: 915–952. Greaves, Hilary, and David Wallace. 2006. "Justifying conditionalization: Conditionalization maximizes expected epistemic utility". Mind. 115, no. 459: 607–631. Greaves, Hilary. 2010. "Towards a Geometrical Understanding of the CPT Theorem". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 61, no. 1: 27–50. (Winner of the James T. Cushing Memorial Prize in History and Philosophy of Physics.)

References

External links Official website Hilary Greaves publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hilary Greaves

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hilary Greaves claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hilary Greaves before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hilary Greaves ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hilary Greaves

In research: Hilary Greaves appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hilary Greaves in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hilary Greaves is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1978 births, 21st-century British philosophers, Alumni of the University of Oxford, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hilary Greaves outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hilary Greaves in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hilary Greaves means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hilary Greaves out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hilary Greaves in simple terms?

Why does Hilary Greaves matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hilary Greaves?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hilary Greaves.