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hello there.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. 

​​My research explores questions like:

• how uncertainty about whether others are consenting, unjustly attacking, or promising ever affects (and if so, when) whether making a mistake would violate their rights,
• whether algorithmic risk prediction tools can appropriately be used in service of policing, pre-trial detention decisions, or sentencing,
• ​whether there are problems with basing inferences about individuals on statistics about their demographic groups,
• whether moral considerations affect how much or what kind of evidence is needed to justify beliefs,
• and ​​what the offensiveness of racial epithets and slurs can teach us about the semantics and pragmatics of language.

For more details, check out my research page.

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past

I spent the 2021-22 academic year as an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow and Joint Fellow in Residence at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. Their support made it possible for me to write Rewriting Rights: Making Reasonable Mistakes in a Social Context, under contract with Oxford University Press. More info here! 

Before coming to Michigan, I was an assistant professor in Political Theory in the Department of Politics and University Center for Human Values, and associated faculty in the Department of Philosophy, at Princeton University. 

​Before that (from Sept 2017-July 2019), I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Philosophy at Australian National University. My work there focused on the moral significance of risk, as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) project with Seth Lazar, Lara Buchak, Alan Hajek, Philip Pettit, Frank Jackson, and Katie Steele.

Before that, ​I completed my Ph.D. in political philosophy at the University of Southern California (2017), working primarily with Jonathan Quong, Robin Jeshion, and Mark Schroeder.  

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philosopher portraits

​In my spare time I paint. I've started a series of portraits of philosophers, painting various famous philosophers in style that highlights themes central to the philosopher's work. You can see those paintings here. ​

Google Scholar   |   ORCID.  |.  PhilPeople.  |.  Academia.edu

CV (pdf)

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name change

As of August 2021, I am using 'Jorgensen' as a surname, though my activity prior to that date appears under the name 'Renée Jorgensen Bolinger'. 

When citing work, please simply use the surname under which it was published ( helpful guide here). When referring to me, please use 'Renée Jorgensen'

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contact

rjorgen@umich.edu
​Pronouns: she/her, but 'they' is fine too.
(This is a link to an article by Saguay, Williams, Dembroff & Wodak making the case for defaulting to neutral pronouns in general.)

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articles

• Algorithms and the Individual in Criminal Law
  
• Metalinguistic Negotiations in Moral Disagreement
  
• #BelieveWomen and the Ethics of Belief 
  
• The Language of Mental Illness
• Explaining Justificatory Asymmetries between Statistical and Individualized Evidence'
  The Moral Grounds of Reasonably Mistaken Self-Defense
  
• Demographic Statistics in Defensive Decisions,
  
• Varieties of Moral Encroachment
  
• Contested Slurs: Delimiting the Linguistic Community
  
• Strictly Speaking (co-authored with Alexander Sandgren), 
  
• The Rational Impermissibility of Accepting (some) Racial Generalizations
  
• Moral Risk and Communicating Consent, 
  
• Reasonable Mistakes and Regulative Norms: Racial Bias in Defensive Harm
  
• Review of How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley
  
• Revisiting the Right to do Wrong​
• The Pragmatics of Slurs

see my research page for work in progress.

email

office

rjorgen@umich.edu

Angell  Hall 2232

links

Google Scholar
ORCID
PhilPeople
Academia.edu

address

​Department of Philosophy
University of Michigan
2215 Angell Hall, 435 South State St
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003