Explore every episode of the podcast Ethics Untangled
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 67. Is structural injustice a thing? With Sonny Kim | 21 Sep 2026 | 00:48:01 | |
The idea of structural injustice - broadly, injustice that results from social structures rather than from the wrongdoing of individuals - is something that has a lot of currency nowadays, but it presents a bit of an ethical puzzle. Basically the puzzle is this: if it doesn't involve wrongdoing by anyone, then in what way is it injustice, but if it does involve wrongdoing by people, in what way is it structural? Sonny Kim is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. In this conversation, he lays out the dilemma a bit more clearly than I've just done, and tells me how he thinks it can be resolved, making sense of the idea of structural injustice and showing where responsibility for it lies. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 66. Should we be worried about voice synthesis? With Matilde Nanni | 07 Sep 2026 | 00:47:42 | |
One of the many technological advances that have been made in recent years is the ability of computers to synthesise people's voices to a very high standard. Voice synthesis can produce new, entirely synthetic voices, but it can also reproduce the voices of real people, to the point where it's difficult if not impossible to tell the synthetic voice apart from the real one. Matilde Nanni, who is based at the University of Inland Norway in Lillehammer, thinks voice donors, i.e. people whose voices are used to train voice synthesis software, can sometimes be harmed through this process in ways we should be concerned about. Here are a few links to recent papers on the topic recommended by Matilde:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 65. Is it wrong to procreate when there are children who need adoptive parents? With Giuli Cavaliere | 20 Jul 2026 | 00:42:44 | |
There are many children in the world who either do not have parents, or do not have parents who can look after them, and who would benefit greatly from being placed with adoptive families. Some ethicists have argued that this state of affairs means that procreation is impermissible - we should not bring more children into the world when there are children we could adopt instead. In this conversation I talk to Giuli Cavaliere, Lecturer in Engaged Philosophy at University College London, who has written about this question, and also about the related question of whether states should fund assisted procreation, again when adoption exists as an alternative. Giuli recommends this paper for an opposing view to hers: Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 64. Should we dispose of bodies in a more environmentally friendly way? With Sarah Carter-Walshaw | 06 Jul 2026 | 00:47:29 | |
Content warning: This episode contains frank discussion of death and of various forms of body disposal, which some might find distressing. Sarah Carter-Walshaw, Lecturer in Applied and Inter-Disciplinary Ethics at IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds, has been thinking about the ethics of what happens to us after we die. The problem is that the current most popular methods of body disposal - cremation and burial, aren't very environmentally friendly. The good news is that other, greener methods are available. The bad news is that, so far at least, these haven’t really caught on. In this conversation we discuss why not, as well as the ethical question of whether we have an obligation to consider these forms of body disposal for ourselves. Sarah is holding a virtual workshop on body disposal ethics at IDEA: The Ethics Centre, University of Leeds on 9 July 2026. Register for free here: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/4RXPASJpiW. Further Reading:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 63. Should we stop keeping pets? With Angie Pepper and Richard Healey | 15 Jun 2026 | 00:44:13 | |
Is it ever morally acceptable to keep pets? While most of us take pet-keeping for granted and think of it as a source of affection, companionship, and care, it is possible to see it very differently. Angie Pepper and Richard Healey argue that pet-keeping is not simply a private choice, but a socio-political institution that raises deep questions about power, control, and harm. In our conversation, I ask them to explain and defend their view that keeping pets is morally impermissible, and to explore what alternatives might look like for our relationships with animals. A short, accessible version of Angie and Richard's paper is here: https://iai.tv/articles/the-unjust-power-dynamics-of-pet-ownership-auid-3518 Another of their papers is here: Healey, Richard, and Angie Pepper. "Interspecies justice: agency, self-determination, and assent", Philosophical Studies 178.4 (2021): 1223-1243. Work with an opposing view: Cochrane, Alasdair (2009). Do animals have an interest in liberty? Political Studies, 57(3), 660–679. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00742.x Cochrane, Alasdair (2014). Born in chains? The ethics of animal domestication. In Lori Gruen (Ed.), The Ethics of Captivity (156–173). Oxford: Oxford University Press. A general intro to the ethics of pet keeping (also with an opposing view): Palmer, Clare and T. J. Kasperbauer (2022). Companion animals. In Benjamin Hale, Andrew Light and Lydia Lawhon (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics (343–354). London: Routledge. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 62. Can organisations be trustworthy? With Matt Clark | 01 Jun 2026 | 00:54:29 | |
Can organisations themselves be trustworthy, or is trustworthiness only a quality of individuals? This question matters for how we think about public institutions, businesses, and charities – and about the responsibilities they bear when people rely on them. Philosopher Matt Clark joins me to unpack what trustworthiness means, what kind of control and awareness an organisation would need in order to count as trustworthy, and why values matter in this context. Along the way, we discuss examples such as the Metropolitan Police and sketch what a genuinely trustworthy organisation might look like. Here's what Matt suggested for further reading:
Hawley expresses scepticism about the possibility of trust in groups, Bennett provides a different argument to Matt's on why trusting groups is acceptable, and Nguyen is referenced by Matt in the podcast as having a different view of trust. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 61. Do we really react emotionally to AI? With Rebecca Wallbank | 18 May 2026 | 00:43:26 | |
In this episode, we’re asking whether people can really have genuine emotional reactions to artificial intelligence. Many of us already feel things towards AIs – whether that’s frustration with a chatbot, affection for a companion robot, or even comfort in talking to a virtual assistant – but should we take these emotions seriously? Philosopher Rebecca Wallbank joins me to explore what counts as a ‘genuine’ emotion, whether our responses to AI differ from our responses to fiction, and what it means to say that these emotions might be profound. Together, we’ll consider whether there’s anything irrational about these reactions, and what their significance might be for our emotional lives in a world increasingly shaped by AI. Here's Rebecca's paper on the topic: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/59762/chapter-abstract/508607528?redirectedFrom=fulltext Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 60. How should long covid change how we think about disability? With Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril | 04 May 2026 | 00:48:49 | |
In this episode, we’re looking at the ethics of long COVID and the ways it is reshaping how we think about disability, care, and community. Long COVID has left millions of people living with chronic symptoms, often without adequate medical or state support. Philosopher Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril joins me to talk about her project, which uses podcasting not only to share stories but also as a disability-centred research method, archiving the knowledge and resilience of disabled communities. We’ll explore ideas such as “disability doulas”, the legacy of HIV activism, and what needs to change in how we respond to disability in the wake of COVID. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 59. How should we care for people living with dementia? With Matilda Carter | 20 Apr 2026 | 00:50:24 | |
In this episode, I'm talking to Matilda Carter, a lecturer in Applied Ethics at IDEA The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds, about the ethics of dementia care, and asking what justice requires for people living with dementia. In her book, Relating to People Living with Dementia as Equals, Matilda argues that the way we think of and treat people living with dementia raises issues concerning power, stigma, and the structures of care. Drawing on a relational conception of justice, Matilda examines how domination and oppression can shape the lives of people with dementia, and why we should recognise their capacity to live authentically. We’ll also discuss advance directives, secure care, and what a more just system of dementia care might look like. Some further reading and other links recommended by Matilda: Self-advocacy books:
Organisations supporting self-advocacy work: Sources discussed in the interview:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 58. Do we need to rethink competence to consent? With Danielle Bromwich | 06 Apr 2026 | 00:54:29 | |
In medical ethics, competence (sometimes called decision-making capacity) refers to a person’s ability to make informed choices about their own healthcare. It is a central concept because respect for patient autonomy depends on the patient being able to understand, evaluate, and communicate decisions about treatment. Danielle Bromwich is a medical ethicist at the University of Leeds. In a paper co-written with Joseph Millum from the University of St Andrews, she argues that the way medical ethics has treated competence has been mistaken, that ethicists have been conflating two distinct concepts, and that this confusion has the potential to lead to bad decisions being made about patient care. We also explore the implications her account has for other domains in which we give and refuse consent, such as sexual relations. The paper we discuss in this episode is available here. Danielle and Joseph have also written a book about consent, which is available here. There will be a further episode of Ethics Untangled featuring Danielle soon in which we talk about the book and the ethics of consent more broadly. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 57. Does AI mean we need to change our concept of moral responsibility? With Enrico Galvagni and Fabio Tollon | 16 Mar 2026 | 00:42:29 | |
People who think and write about the ethics of artificial intelligence sometimes talk about a 'responsibility gap'. The thought is that there are instances of harm resulting from the use of AI systems where it's difficult or impossible to know who or what should be held responsible. Some have further argued that the existence of this gap shows that our current concept of moral responsibility is not fit for purpose, and that we need to change it through a process which philosophers sometimes call 'conceptual engineering'. Enrico Galvagni and Fabio Tollon, both based at the University of Edinburgh, have an interesting contribution to make to this debate - they do think we need to engage in conceptual engineering, but they are interested in whether, and how, the concept of moral responsibility can be preserved, rather than changed. Enrico and Fabio's paper on the topic is here: Engineering responsibility in the age of AI: amelioration or preservation? Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 56. Does drill rap cause violence? With Tareeq Jalloh | 02 Mar 2026 | 00:38:56 | |
In this episode, we’re diving into the ethics of drill rap - a genre that has been celebrated for its creativity and authenticity but also heavily criticised for its alleged links to violence. Drill is often portrayed as uniquely dangerous, and some have called for it to be censored. Philosopher, and Beacon Junior Research Fellow at University College Oxford, Tareeq Jalloh, joins me to get underneath the discourse around drill. We discuss what the evidence shows about drill's supposed role as a cause of violence, as well as the wider social and racial dimensions of the controversy. Together, we’ll ask what’s really at stake when society debates the ethics of drill. Tareeq's paper on the subject is here: T. Jalloh, “ Does Drill Rap Cause Violence, and, Even if it Does, Should it Be Censored?,” Philosophy & Public Affairs (2026): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.70015. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 55. Should pornography be authentic? With Rosa Vince | 16 Feb 2026 | 00:38:49 | |
Content note: This episode discusses pornography in an academic context, focusing on ethical and philosophical arguments. Feminist critiques of pornography have a long history and take many different forms. One influential line of critique focuses on claims about authenticity and the suggestion that certain forms of representation may be ethically problematic, particularly for women. In response, some producers and commentators have argued for the value of ‘authentic’ pornography, appealing to a mixture of ethical and aesthetic considerations and sometimes blurring the distinction between the two. In this episode, Rosa Vince, a philosopher based at IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds, examines these arguments and explains why they find the ethical case for authenticity in pornography unconvincing. The discussion explores questions about representation, discrimination and harm. Some further reading recommended by Rosa:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 54. Do we need more time? With Lisa Herzog | 02 Feb 2026 | 00:39:23 | |
Lisa Herzog is Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The subject of this conversation is time, not in the abstract but how much of it we have, and what we might choose to do with it. We start by discussing whether people in general are lacking in free time. And then we move on to why it might be important to try to give people more time, not just for their own health and happiness, but also because of the costs to society and democracy of people being too time-poor. At the end, we get onto some specific policy measures that might help. The conversation is based on a chapter of Lisa's latest book, which you can get here. Some links to further reading as mentioned in the conversation: Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life by Theda Skocpol. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 53. How should social media platforms regulate AI-generated content? With Jeffrey Howard | 19 Jan 2026 | 00:44:23 | |
AI-generated content is a familiar and increasingly prevalent feature of social media. Users post text, video, audio and images which have been created by AI, sometimes being clear that this is what they're doing, sometimes not. This isn’t always a problem, but some ways of using AI-generated content do raise significant dangers. So do social media platforms need to have policies in place specifically to deal with this form of content? Jeffrey Howard is professor of political philosophy and public policy at University College London. In a paper co-authored with Sarah Fisher and Beatriz Kira, he argues that policies that target AI-generated content specifically aren't necessary or helpful. It was great to get the chance to talk to him about why he thinks this, and how platforms should moderate this type of content without shutting down valuable free speech. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 52. Should we all be activists? With Josh Hobbs | 05 Jan 2026 | 00:37:11 | |
Josh Hobbs is back in this episode for his second appearance. Again the subject is political. This time we're discussing whether we should all be activists. More specifically, does the existence of global structural injustice give us a responsibility to respond to those injustices, and should that response take the form of activism? Josh thinks there are reasons to think not everyone could or should be an activist, and introduces some other ways in which people can contribute, including something he calls 'scaffolding activism'. Here's Josh's article on the topic: Between activism and apathy: global structural injustice and ordinary citizens Further reading: With Power Comes Responsibility: The Politics of Structural Injustice — Maeve McKeown What is My Role in Changing the System? A New Model of Responsibility for Structural Injustice Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 51. What can a shallow pond teach us about ethics? With David Edmonds | 15 Dec 2025 | 00:41:33 | |
Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You’re the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you’re wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them - and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty - but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms. David Edmonds is a brilliant philosophical and biographical writer, not to mention an OG philosophy podcaster - if you haven't checked out any of Philosophy Bites's nearly 400 episodes then you definitely should - and ex-BBC broadcaster. His latest book is about the fascinating history of a philosophical thought experiment, from its origins in the work of Peter Singer through its influence on the Effective Altruism movement. In this conversation we focus on some of the philosophical questions surrounding this thought experiment: is it, as Singer claims, analogous to our own position with regard to distant others, and does it have the practical implications that he and the Effective Altruists have taken it to have? Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 50. What can comics such as Heartstopper teach us about ethics? With Simon Meisch | 01 Dec 2025 | 00:39:59 | |
A really interesting conversation with Simon Meisch this week. Simon is a Senior Lecturer for Applied Ethics at the Ethics Centre of the University of Tubingen, and until recently was also a visiting scholar here at IDEA. It's an unusual episode of the podcast in that we aren't talking about a specific ethical issue. Instead, we talk about a particular way of highlighting ethical issues and encouraging discussion of them. That's through engaging with serial narratives, including comic books and TV series. We focused on one particular comic book series, which has been adapted for TV, which is Heartstopper. Aside from enlightening me about that series, Simon makes a convincing case that this is a good way to get at a range of ethical issues, in a way that is complex, subtle and grounded in recognisable situations. Here's the Heartstopper webcomic. Here's Simon's webpage. And here are some other relevant links recommended by Simon:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 49. Are We Deceiving Future Generations About Environmental Crises? With Catriona McKinnon | 17 Nov 2025 | 00:45:34 | |
In this episode I talk to Professor Catriona McKinnon, a political philosopher based at the University of Exeter. The topic is the various environmental crises facing humanity today. Obviously lots to discuss there, but Catriona wants to highlight one issue in particular, which is the way one generation can, with or without knowing it, conceal information from future generations about the depth and nature of a crisis. This an issue of intergenerational justice, and its one that Catriona thinks deserves more attention. Some links: RENEW: Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach https://renewbiodiversity.org.uk/ Catriona's University of Exeter site: https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/32795-Catriona-McKinnon Catriona’s book Climate Change and Political Theory https://www.waterstones.com/book/climate-change-and-political-theory/catriona-mckinnon/9781509521661 A lecture by Catriona on postericide Endangering Humanity: An International Crime: https://youtu.be/htQwrrURVOQ?si=DA17u9hBR6qn-iQm. Her book on postericide will be published in 2026 by MIT Press. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 48. How should you act as an in-house lawyer? With Sharon Bridglalsingh | 03 Nov 2025 | 00:42:44 | |
For the last year and a half, Jim Baxter and the consulting team at IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds, have been working with the Law Society of England and Wales on a project looking at the ethics of in-house law. That project has involved talking to lots of lawyers who are both passionate and insightful about the job and the ethical challenges it presents. None more so than Sharon Bridglalsingh, Director of Law and Governance at Milton Keynes City Council. Sharon was kind enough to come on the podcast and share some of her insights in this wide-ranging conversation. The In-House Ethics Framework which IDEA produced for the Law Society is here: https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/in-house/in-house-ethics-framework/. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 47. Should we be worried about cancel culture? With Alfred Archer and Georgie Mills | 20 Oct 2025 | 00:47:26 | |
Cancelling and cancel culture are terms that we hear a lot these days, and it's one of the many areas where there seems to be more heat than light. The phenomenon of cancelling has become a front in the so-called culture wars, with one side claiming it's a healthy form of protest, or simply confronting people with the consequences of their actions, while the other side sees it as persecution by an unaccountable mob. Philosophers Alfred Archer (Tilburg University) and Georgie Mills (TU Delft) have tried to disentangle some of the different actions that sometimes get called cancelling, and to help us better understand the ethics of this complex phenomenon. The paper this conversation is based on is available here. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 46. Should we be worried about words changing their meaning? With Robbie Morgan | 06 Oct 2025 | 00:46:39 | |
Words such as 'woke', 'emotional labour' and 'gaslighting' get bandied around a lot, especially in online discourse. And as they get bandied around, their meaning can change over time. Of course, changes in the meaning of words are natural, inevitable and, usually harmless. However, Robbie Morgan, back for his record-setting third appearance on Ethics Untangled, thinks we should be worried about these changes in meaning, at least sometimes. This isn't just pedantry - it's a concern about the way changes in meaning can rob us of the means to express important concepts, and also about the way these moves can serve political motivations in an illegitimate way. Here's Robbie's paper on the topic: Morgan, Robert (2025), "Hermeneutical Disarmament", The Philosophical Quarterly 75(3): 1071-1093. Here's Robbie's website. And here are the other sources we discuss in the episode:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 45. Are ethicists paying enough attention to social class? With Orla Carlin | 15 Sep 2025 | 00:45:23 | |
Epistemic injustice is a broad category of injustice relating to knowledge. It can involve people from marginalised or oppressed groups being excluded, silenced, misrepresented, or not taken seriously — in conversations, education, or professional settings — because of their membership to that group. In academic contexts, this kind of injustice can distort entire fields of study. Orla Carlin, a scholar at the University of Leeds, explores how this plays out in relation to class. She argues that the literature on epistemic injustice doesn’t adequately account for epistemic injustice that occurs in virtue of class. One reason, she suggests, is the underrepresentation of working-class voices in academia. Her research asks why this underrepresentation exists and points to deeper, systemic forms of epistemic injustice that affect working class people more broadly, perpetuating a vicious circle in which working class people find it more difficult to enter fields which are dominated by middle class voices, and thereby to shape those fields. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 44. Do large language models gossip? With Lucy Osler | 01 Sep 2025 | 00:41:23 | |
Gossip is an ethically interesting phenomenon when humans do it. It creates a bond between the people doing the gossiping, but it does so by implicitly excluding the person being gossiped about, and can cause harm, especially when the gossip is malicious, or simply isn't true. What I hadn't realised until I spoke to Lucy Osler, a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter, is that large language models like ChatGPT and Claude can gossip, or at least they can do something which looks an awful lot like gossip. In this conversation with Lucy, we got into what might be happening, how it might harm people, and what we might be able to do about it. Following my conversation with Lucy, I had an interesting conversation with ChatGPT about the same topic. In the episode we discuss Kevin Roose's interaction with the chatbot Sydney. Here's Roose's own article about that experience: Why a Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled - The New York Times And here are some academic articles that might be of interest: Fisher, S. A. (2024). Large language models and their big bullshit potential. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(4), 67. Hicks, M. T., Humphries, J., & Slater, J. (2024). ChatGPT is bullshit. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(2), 1-10. Alfano, M., & Robinson, B. (2017). Gossip as a burdened virtue. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 20, 473-487. Adkins, K. (2017). Gossip, epistemology and power. Springer International Publishing AG, Gewerbestrasse, 11, 6330. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 43. How do you assure AI for bias and accessibility in the NHS? With Adam Byfield | 21 Jul 2025 | 00:48:09 | |
Adam Byfield is a Principal Technical Assurance Specialist at NHS England. After his previous appearance on the podcast, discussing providing ethical assurance for AI applications in healthcare, we were keen to get him back to dive into some more specific issues. We chose bias and accessibility, two related issues that are clearly central for anyone concerned with AI, including in healthcare applications. We talked about different forms of bias, how bias can affect accessibility and what forms of bias, if any, might be acceptable. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 42. How should clinicians communicate with young people experiencing mental health difficulties? With Lisa Bortolotti | 07 Jul 2025 | 00:49:54 | |
Professor Lisa Bortolotti is a philosopher at the University of Birmingham, who has been working on a fascinating interdisciplinary project looking at what happens when young people experiencing mental health difficulties talk to clinicians about those difficulties. The project has involved closely examining hours of audio and video material of these encounters, as well as talking to the young people themselves, in the hope of gaining insights which can help clinicians improve their practice. Emerging from the work has been a focus on agency and the agential stance. We discuss what that means and why it's important, drawing on some examples from the project. Links to further reading: Agency project page on the McPin Foundation website: https://mcpin.org/project/agency/ (has a lot of open access resources) Three relevant open access papers:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 41. How should we rebuild trust in journalism? With Tim Watkin | 16 Jun 2025 | 00:47:05 | |
Tim Watkin is a journalist and media manager. He works as executive editor for audio at Radio New Zealand, but is currently on sabbatical at the University of Glasgow, studying how to rebuild trust in journalism as part of a project on Epistemic Autonomy. In this interview we discuss the nature of trust, why it's important, why journalists seem to be losing the public's trust, whose fault this is, and what might be done about it. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 40. How do you decide whether law enforcement and national security operations are ethically justified? With Joe Fogarty | 02 Jun 2025 | 00:49:43 | |
Joe Fogarty has spent over 30 years working in national security and law enforcement, in the UK and elsewhere. He's currently working on cyber-security risks and organised crime for the UK's central government, as the Head of the Government's Cyber Resilience Centre. Recently, he's been looking at security and law enforcement through a philosophical lens, through studying for a Masters in Applied and Professional Ethics at IDEA, the Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. One of the big questions for these areas of work is how to balance privacy concerns against the public good, and we discuss that question, among others, in this interview. Some extra reading suggested by Joe: Omand, D. 2023. Examining the Ethics of Spying: A Practitioner’s View. Criminal Law and Philosophy. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11572-023-09704-5). [Online]. Available from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11572-023-09704-5. Omand, D. and Phythian, M. 2023. Principled Spying - The Ethics of Secret Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/principled-spying-the-ethics-of-secret-intelligence-david-omand/3583190. Fabre, C. 2022. Spying Through A Glass Darkly. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spying-Through-Glass-Darkly-Counter-Intelligence/dp/019891217X. And if listeners are interested in a view from the top of the domestic national security establishment, there is an excellent Reith Lecture by former Head of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller here, which echoes some of the themes in the podcast: BBC Radio 4. 2011. Eliza Manningham-Buller - Securing Freedom: Security. [Online]. Available from http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/2011_reith4.pdf. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 39. How should we motivate cosmopolitanism? With Luke Ulas and Josh Hobbs | 19 May 2025 | 00:46:08 | |
Luke Ulas from the University of Sheffield and Josh Hobbs from the University of Leeds are both interested in cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is a name used for a few different political ideas, but the core thought, according to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, is "the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community." One might think it's an idea that's in retreat, at least in some countries, today. That's one of the issues we discuss, as well as whether there's a crisis of motivation of cosmopolitanism, what that means and what one might do about it. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 38. Should we be using AI to predict patient preferences? With Nicholas Makins | 05 May 2025 | 00:43:53 | |
This episode is part of what's becoming a bit of an informal series of Ethics Untangled episodes, on ethical issues relating to artificial intelligence applications. The particular application we're looking at this time comes from a healthcare setting, and is called a Patient Preference Predictor. It's a proposed way of using an algorithmic system to predict what a patient's preferences would be concerning their healthcare, in situations where they're incapacitated and unable to tell us what their preferences are. Ethicists have raised concerns about these systems, and these concerns are worth taking seriously, but Dr Nick Makins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Leeds, thinks they can be answered, and that the use of these systems can be justified, at least in some circumstances. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 37. What is relationship anarchy? With Natasha McKeever and Luke Brunning | 21 Apr 2025 | 00:53:04 | |
Relationship anarchy is a radical approach to relationships that goes beyond just rejecting traditional monogamy. Relationship anarchists believe that relationships should never involve having power over each other, in the form of holding each other to obligations. So, for example, relationship anarchists reject the idea of restricting one's partner from entering into any form of intimacy with anyone, even with mutual friends. They also reject any hierarchy of relationships - for example having a central relationship with one person whose agreement is needed for you to have relationships with other people. For relationship anarchists, all relationships should be approached individually and no relationship should involve placing restrictions on any partner. Natasha McKeever, and Luke Brunning, all based at the IDEA Centre, have been looking critically at the ethics of relationship anarchy, and I spoke to them in a wide-ranging conversation about this fascinating topic. Some links to further reading: An article by Luke in The Conversation about relationship anarchy. An ABC article about relationship anarchy. A new book about relationship anarchy. A 'Short Instructional Manifesto for Relationship Anarchy' An article by Aleksander Sørlie, Ole Martin Moen on The Ethics of Relationship Anarchy. A book about relationship anarchy by by Juan-Carlos Pérez-Cortés. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 36. Is drag problematic? With Simon Kirchin | 07 Apr 2025 | 00:52:53 | |
Drag is a type of performance which uses clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles. It's an activity with a long and varied history, and continues to be a very popular form of entertainment, as attested by TV shows such as Ru Paul's Drag Race. It's also distinctive in having faced criticism from several different political directions, including conservative, transgender and feminist perspectives. In this conversation with Simon Kirchin, who is Professor of Applied Ethics, Director of IDEA, The Ethics Centre and someone who has experience as a drag performer himself, we mainly focused on the feminist critique. The problem is that drag typically involves men (a relatively advantaged group) imitating women (a relatively disadvantaged group), in a way that plays on often offensive stereotypes about women, for entertainment. Described in that way, it seems uncomfortably similar to blackface, a form of entertainment which follows a very similar dynamic, at least superficially, on racial lines. Professor Kirchin thinks a moral difference between these two activities can be identified, though, and in the conversation he explains why. You can read Simon's article on the topic here. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 35. What should we do about disruptive speech? With Carl Fox | 17 Mar 2025 | 00:47:36 | |
Misinformation, fake news, hate speech, satire, the arts, political protest. These are all examples of what you might call disruptive speech. A free speech absolutist would say that all of these forms of speech should be tolerated, if not welcomed. On the other hand, it does look as though some of them are disruptive in a good way, and others are disruptive in a bad way. But can we tell the good from the bad in a way that isn't just politically partisan? Carl Fox, Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre, thinks we can, and that we should treat different forms of disruptive speech differently. Here is Carl's paper on the subject in the Journal of Social Philosophy. Carl co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Media Ethics with fellow Ethics Untangled alumnus Joe Saunders, which contains a chapter by Carl on satire and stability. For further reading, there's Amy Olberding's book on manners and civility. In the interview, Carl mentions a paper on lying by Don Fallis. That's here: Fallis, D. 2009. “What Is Lying?” Journal of Philosophy 106(1): 29–56. And then there's the classic text on freedom and its limits, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty: Mill, J. S. 1974. On Liberty. London: Penguin. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 34. Is AI stealing artists' labour? With Trystan Goetze | 03 Mar 2025 | 00:47:52 | |
Recent developments in AI, including image generation and large language models, have created huge excitement and opened up some really interesting possibilities. But they've also attracted significant criticisms, not least of which is the accusation that they involve large scale theft. This is because they are trained on huge datasets that include the original work of many people, who go uncredited and are unlikely to have given consent to their work being used in this way. Focusing on AI art and the work of artists on which it is built, Trystan Goetze, Senior Lecturer in the Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University, argues that these criticisms are well founded. In Dr Goetze's view, these systems are guilty of stealing artists' labour. Here's a link to Dr Goetze's paper on the topic. Here's a transcript of Bob Dylan's Musicares acceptance speech, that I mention towards the end of the conversation. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 33. Is Internet access a human right? With Merten Reglitz | 17 Feb 2025 | 00:45:46 | |
When I was doing my undergraduate degree back in the 90s, the Internet was a bit of a novelty. It was fun to play with, and you could see theoretically how it was probably going to be quite important. I'm not sure I would have predicted how completely it now pervades every area of human life, though: work, civil society, leisure and social interactions. There's still, however, a significant digital divide. Not everyone has easy access, or any access to the internet, and its systemic importance in all of these areas means this is more of a disadvantage than it's ever been. Merten Reglitz, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, thinks it's time we recognised internet access not just as a significant good, but as a human right. Here is Merten's recently published book on the topic, an overview of it and an article that sets out the book’s main defence of the idea of a new right. An article and another article opposing the idea that internet is a human right. The latest figures on global connectivity from the ITU. Freedom House’s ‘Freedom of the Net’ reports on internet freedom. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 32. Where's the harm in health and safety? With Simon Cassin | 03 Feb 2025 | 00:46:07 | |
After time in the army and the fire service, Simon Cassin became a health and safety professional, and is now the managing director of a training and development consultancy called Ouch. Unusually for someone working in health and safety, he's dedicated some serious study to understanding the deep philosophical ideas underlying the profession, focusing particularly on the idea of harm. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 31. Why is sex work so gendered? With Natasha McKeever | 20 Jan 2025 | 00:40:16 | |
*CONTENT WARNING: This podcast contains some frank discussion of sex and sex work.* While there are all kinds of sex work, by far the most common scenario involves a man paying a woman for sex. It is, in other words, a highly gendered activity. Why? It turns out the answer to this question isn't as obvious as it might at first seem. It turns out, in fact, that there are multiple possible explanations, some of which fit better with the evidence than others. Natasha McKeever has been examining this evidence and trying to come up with a definitive answer, to an explanatory question which also intersects with some ethical questions. For example, would the world be a better place if sex work was less gendered, or if it didn’t exist at all? Moen OM ‘Is prostitution harmful?’ Journal of Medical Ethics 2014;40:73-81. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 30. What should doctors be doing with your data? With Jon Fistein | 06 Jan 2025 | 00:49:07 | |
Do you know what medical information is held about you? Do you know who is allowed to have access to it? Doctors collect lots of data - often quite personal - about their patients. This data needs to be collected, stored, and shared, sometimes quite widely, so that the patients can receive effective care, but also so that the medical profession can better understand diseases, how they spread and how to treat them. In the UK, there is plenty of guidance for GPs about what information they can store, who should have access to it, and when. In fact, according to Jon Fistein, a doctor himself as well as an academic looking at the ethics of health data, there's too much guidance, it's too complex, and it's not always consistent. As a result, most GPs don't really understand what the requirements are, let alone patients. We talked about what can be done about this, and why the traditional idea of patient information being kept 'in the strictest confidence' isn't really going to cut it in today's data-driven healthcare context. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 29. What is touching through? With Robbie Morgan and Will Hornett | 02 Dec 2024 | 00:51:50 | |
Today's question is one which you might not immediately recognise as important or, so to speak, pressing. The question is, what is touching through? It also might not be immediately apparent why this is an ethical question. As Robbie Morgan from the IDEA Centre and Will Hornett from the University of Cambridge explain, however, it's a metaphysical question which has ethical implications. For instance, since assault is defined as unwanted touching, we need to know whether touching has taken place before we can decide whether an assault has taken place. Then there may be cases where, if touching has taken place, it’s taken place through something, and these cases may be tricky to adjudicate. Anyway, in this conversation Robbie and Will introduce some possibilities for what touching through is, before arguing for their preferred explanation. You can decide if you think they’ve put their finger on it. So to speak. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 28. What's wrong with conspiracy theories? With Patrick Stokes | 18 Nov 2024 | 00:47:25 | |
Conspiracy theories seem to be an increasingly prevalent feature of public discourse. No sooner has some significant event taken place, but the internet is full of alternative explanations for that event, involving hidden and nefarious decision-makers. These theories run the gamut from the wildly outlandish to the somewhat plausible, and your view may differ on where the line should be drawn. There are a number of questions about the rationality of conspiracy theories - whether we should reject them wholesale as irrational, for example, or consider each one on its merits. But there are also some interesting ethical questions, and philosophers, including Patrick Stokes, associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University in Melbourne, have been increasingly turning their attention to these questions. What are the moral costs of accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist? But also, what are the moral costs of accusing someone of being a conspirator? In what ways might conspiracy theorising be corrosive of trust? And how should we respond to people we know who believe conspiracy theories? I really enjoyed this conversation with Professor Stokes, on the line from Melbourne, on what I think is a really important topic which needs some philosophical attention. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 27. How do you assure AI in the NHS? With Adam Byfield | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:47:55 | |
Adam Byfield is Principal Technical Assurance Specialist at NHS England. His job involves providing ethical assurance for technical systems which are used in the NHS, including those which employ artificial intelligence. It's well known that AI, as well as providing some really exciting benefits, raises some distinctive ethical issues, but it was really interesting to talk to someone who is at the sharp end of trying to address these issues. How do you test AI systems in a healthcare setting? What are you looking for? What kind of assurance can you provide to patients and the public? I'm very grateful to Adam for taking the time to talk to me about this really important topic. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 26. Should we be worried about teledildonics? With Robbie Arrell | 21 Oct 2024 | 00:39:52 | |
Should we be worried about teledildonics? *CONTENT WARNING. This episode contains frank descriptions of sexual practices of various kinds, and discussion of sexual assault and rape, including rape by deception.* Teledildonics is a word that refers to the use of networked electronic sex toys to facilitate sexual or quasi-sexual interactions between people at a distance. It's a relatively new type of technology, but one that is becoming more advanced. Clearly, it's a technology that opens up interesting new possibilities! But Robbie Arrell, Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre, thinks it also raises some serious concerns, not all of which have yet been fully understood. In this conversation, Robbie outlines some of these worries, and begins to consider how we might address them.
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 25. Should lawyers be fighting for a cause? With Alex Batesmith | 07 Oct 2024 | 00:47:39 | |
Alex Batesmith has had a fascinating career. After beginning as a criminal barrister in Leeds, he went on to work as a United Nations prosecutor in Cambodia and Kosovo, working on cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. He's now a legal scholar working at Leeds University, and has been researching the values and motivations of international criminal lawyers. In this conversation we discussed the idea of 'cause lawyering'. Cause lawyers are lawyers who practice law primarily because of their moral, political or ideological commitments. An example of someone who has arguably been a cause lawyer is the UK's new Prime Minister Kier Starmer, whose previous career as a human rights lawyer appears to have been motivated at least partly by some broader moral commitments, including opposition to the death penalty for example. It's interesting to consider how this outlook complicates the ethical framework under which lawyers operate, which traditionally balances duties to the client with duties to the court, and to the rule of law. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 24. Is your gender like your name? With Graham Bex-Priestley | 16 Sep 2024 | 00:51:10 | |
Gender is, of course, one of the most contentious ethical and political topics you can find at the moment. There are numerous practical and policy debates - for example those relating to medicine, prisons and sport - which can seem completely intractable, and which provoke the strongest possible opinions on all sides. Sitting behind these practical questions, however, is a cluster of theoretical questions, which can be summarised as questions about what gender actually is. Graham Bex-Priestley, a Lecturer at the IDEA Centre, has a novel approach to these questions. He suggests that we should think of someone's gender as being something like their name. In this interview, he explains why. Family resemblance view: Heyes, Cressida. Line Drawings: Defining Women through Feminist Practice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. Social position via perceived reproductive role view: Haslanger, Sally. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Social constraints and enablements view: Ásta. Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Critical gender view: Dembroff, Robin. “Beyond Binary: Genderqueer as Critical Gender Kind.” Philosophers’ Imprint 20, no. 9 (April 2020): 1–31. Note the “critical gender” view is about rejecting and destabilising dominant gender ideology and is not to be confused with the “gender critical” movement, which accepts the biological view. Existential self-identity view: Bettcher, Talia Mae. “Trans Identities and First-Person Authority.” In You’ve Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity, edited by Laurie Shrage, 98–120. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pluralist view: Jenkins, Katharine. Ontology and Oppression: Race, Gender, and Social Reality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. See also Cull, Matthew J. What Gender Should Be. London: Bloomsbury, 2024. Performative view: Judith Butler's early books (Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matter) are the classics, but they can be difficult. In contrast, Butler's latest book is written for a public audience: Butler, Judith. Who's Afraid of Gender? Allen Lane, 2024 (many of the topics in this book are discussed in their Cambridge public lecture of the same title). Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 23. What is trust? With Christopher McClean | 02 Sep 2024 | 00:34:19 | |
Chris McClean is the global lead for digital ethics at Avanade, a large tech innovation and consulting firm. He's also studying for his PhD at the University of Leeds, spending his time thinking about risk and trust relationships, especially in cases with a significant power imbalance, and where the people making the decisions are different from those exposed to the risk resulting from those decisions. At the end of this conversation, we explored some practical questions related to Chris's day job, about what trust implies for business and the professions and in the digital realm, but in order to get there we first got stuck into the deeper question of what trust means… Hawley, K. “Trust, Distrust and Commitment.” Noûs 48, no. 1 (2014): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12000. Holton, R. “Deciding to Trust, Coming to Believe.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72, no. 1 (March 1994): 63–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409412345881. Kirton, A. (2020). Matters of Trust as Matters of Attachment Security. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 28(5), 583–602. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2020.1802971. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 22. How should we think about informal political representation? With Wendy Salkin | 15 Jul 2024 | 00:49:27 | |
For this episode, I spoke to Wendy Salkin, a philosophy professor at Stanford University, about informal political representatives: people who speak or act on behalf of groups in the political sphere without being elected to do so. Familiar examples include Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malala Yousafzai, and Greta Thunberg. Informal political representatives raise awareness of issues and bring about political change, often achieving things that people with more formal power cannot or do not. But their existence also raises some ethical questions. Do they need to be authorised? Can they be held accountable? What if the things they say diverge from the views of the people they represent? Professor Salkin's book on this subject, Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation, was released by Harvard University Press on July 9th.
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 21. Should we be worried about academic freedom and no-platforming? With Gerald Lang | 01 Jul 2024 | 00:39:16 | |
In May 2023, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill received Royal Assent after two years of debate in Parliament. The new Act will strengthen the statutory duty already imposed on English higher education providers by previous legislation to secure freedom of speech within the law. Arif Ahmed, a former philosophy professor at Cambridge University, has been appointed as a Director overseeing free speech at the Office for Students, informally known as the 'Free Speech Tsar'. Free speech is one of several fronts in the so-called culture wars. Ahmed has been at great pains to say that his office, and he, will be politically neutral. The idea is to protect the right of academics to express their views, wherever on the political spectrum those views fall. But is there a role for legitimate gatekeeping of academic speaking opportunities? And is there a principled way of making decisions about when, if ever, academics should be prevented from speaking on the grounds that what they say might be harmful? Gerald Lang, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds, has been trying to dig under the headlines to get at the ethical concerns underlying this debate. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 20. What's the meaning of life? With Predrag Cicovacki | 17 Jun 2024 | 00:49:25 | |
Never let it be said that we don't tackle the big questions on this podcast. This week we're discussing no less a subject than the meaning of life, with Predrag Cicovacki. Predrag is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross (USA), where he has been teaching since 1991. He has served as a visiting professor in Germany, Russia, Luxembourg, Serbia, France, and India. He's interested in problems of good and evil, violence and nonviolence, philosophy of war and peace, and ethics. In 2021, in the midst of very difficult personal circumstances and a global pandemic, Predrag set to work on a book called The Meaning of Life: a Quick Immersion. It's a great book: very clear, heartfelt, personal and full of insights. I hugely enjoyed reading it, and enjoyed even more the opportunity to talk to Predrag about it. You can find out more about Predrag here: Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 19. What is technological bias and what should we do about it? With Meredith Broussard | 03 Jun 2024 | 00:33:14 | |
Meredith Broussard is a data journalist and associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, as well as research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. Her book More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech explores the way technology reinforces inequality and asks the question, what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in mostly functional machinery—what if they're coded into the system itself? It's a great read, full of eye-opening examples and insights, from a writer with the technical and ethical expertise to get to the heart of what is clearly a very significant challenge for society. We were only able to scratch the surface in this short conversation, but it's changed my thinking about technology ethics, and I was very grateful to Professor Broussard for taking the time to talk to us. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||
| 18. Do the dead have rights? With Joseph Bowen | 20 May 2024 | 00:42:18 | |
Ethical questions about the dead are frequently interesting, puzzling, surprising, and weird. All of these things become clear in this conversation with Dr Joseph Bowen. Joe is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds, specialising in moral, political, and legal philosophy. As well as whether the dead have rights, his research focuses on the nature of rights and directed duties, the justifications for and constraints on harming, the nature and scope of duties to rescue, and just war theory. And here are some other readings which might be of interest:
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds. As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA. Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bluesky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idea_leeds/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl | |||