Timothy Campbell, Ph.D.: Currently, I am a member of the Continuing Education Advisory Committee with Connections Counseling, PLLC. I’ve been involved with continuing education and coursework since I assisted with the Youth at Risk course in 2010. The research mission of Connections Counseling is tryng to promote the idea of Evidence-based Practice, making online courses available for clinicians and social workers. I’ve assisted the organization in several ways.
I spend a lot of time thinking about certain basic concepts that social workers and other clinicians use, such as the concepts of health and mental health. What is mental health? How does it differ from non-mental health? How, if at all, can we measure mental health? What are the best ways of promoting mental health? Answers to these questions might inform many of the practices of social workers and clinicians.
My interest in ethics began when I was an undergraduate. I took a couple of ethics courses and found them to be much more interesting than any of my other classes. I enjoyed thinking about ethical puzzles, and I liked being forced toward positions that I found counterintuitive by way of making my beliefs consistent or coherent. I liked arriving at philosophical conclusions through argumentation, having reasons for my beliefs, and identifying and questioning dogmas. That’s how I got my start and what moved me into this field.
I am currently exploring the implications of different views of personal identity for population ethics, focusing especially on normative questions relating to future generations.