Ethics Untangled – Details, episodes & analysis

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…

Here's a list of papers and authors mentioned by Chris in the discussion:

Baier, A. “Trust and Antitrust.” Ethics 96, no. 2 (1986): 231–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2381376. 

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.

The most recent Edelman Trust Barometer is here:

https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2024-02/2024%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20Global%20Report_FINAL.pdf 

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.

Relevant reading:

1. Alcoff, L. (1991). The Problem of Speaking for Others. Cultural Critique, 20, 5–32.
2. Chapman, E.B. (2022). Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy. Princeton University Press.
3. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1997). “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” in The Souls of Black Folk, ed. David W. Blight and Robert Gooding-Williams, 62–72. Bedford Books.
4. Jagmohan, D. (forthcoming). Dark Virtues: Booker T. Washington’s Tragic Realism. Princeton University Press.
5. King, M.L., Jr. (2010) Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Beacon Press.
6. Mansbridge, J.J. (1983) Beyond Adversary Democracy. University of Chicago Press.
7. Montanaro, L. (2017). Who Elected Oxfam?: A Democratic Defense of Self-Appointed Representatives. Cambridge University Press.
8. Pitkin, H. (1967). The Concept of Representation. University of Los Angeles Press.
9. Rehfeld, A. (2006). Towards a General Theory of Political Representation. Journal of Politics 68, no. 1: 1–21.
10. Saward, M. (2010). The Representative Claim. Oxford University Press.
11. Washington, B.T. “The Standard Printed Version of the Atlanta Exposition Address,” in The Souls of Black Folk: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Terri Hume Oliver, 167–170. W. W. Norton.

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Pilar Lopez Cantero talking about experiences of breakup and how to move on well.

https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/staff/p-lopezcantero

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Kate Lister talking about whether we evolved to be monogamous.

https://leedstrinity.academia.edu/KateLister

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring a Q&A session with Brian Earp and Robbie Arrell.

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Dr Robbie Arrell on consent issues raised by teledildonic technology.

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/ethics/staff/2728/robbie-arrell

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Dr Brian Earp on the ethics of psychedelically-assisted relationship therapy.

https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/people/brian-d.-earp

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring a Q&A with MM McCabe and Troy Jollimore.

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Professor MM McCabe on love and desire in Plato’s symposium.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/mm-mccabe

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Troy Jollimore on whether we love for reasons.

https://www.troyjollimore.com/

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/