Philosophy Exchange Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Are you the same person that you were ten years ago? Derek Parfit says maybe not. In this episode, we explore his radical view that personal identity isn’t about having the same body or soul, but rather about psychological continuity over time. This idea reshapes how we think about responsibility, distributive justice, and the self.

In this episode of Philosophy Exchange, Paula Keller (Cambridge) and Harry Daniels (Oxford) speak with Karl about what role political philosophy should give utopian thinking. Discussion points first include an introduction to what utopias are, and second an overview of how utopias are theorized within recent political philosophy. From here, the discussion turns to the practical question of how utopias can help with identifying and understanding unjust social circumstances.

In this episode you'll hear Johanna interview Graham Doke on Buddhist Philosophy. Graham is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh who follows Mahayana Buddhism. In this episode you'll learn about the basics of Buddhist philosophy, their different schools, how it compares to western analytical philosophy, as well as Graham's experience as a philosopher of both traditions.

For those interested in Buddhist philosophy, here a link to the website of Grahams' teacher and author of the book mentioned in the episode: https://geshetashi.org

We interview Nicholas Makins on his recent publication "Attitudinal Ambivalence: Moral Uncertainty for Non-Cognitivists". In this paper, Makins adopts a non-cognivist account of moral judgements, characterized not as beliefs but as cognitive attitudes, like desires or forms of will. The aim of the article is to show that this view can be better defended if one defines moral doubt not in terms of credential uncertainty (viz., lack of information) but as ambivalence – i.e., a situation where two conflicting desires clash with each other. The fascinating proposal is illustrated via some examples through the podcast conversation, which opens insightful reflection about the nature of moral attitudes and the strategy one should adopt in cases of moral doubt. You can read the paper here https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2021.1908380 

In this episode Karl and Roze are joined by Philosophy Exchange member Johanna Sarisoy to interview Shannon Vallor, Professor at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI). Together, they discuss the future of artificial intelligence (AI) from a variety of perspectives such as what it means to develop moral AI. Further, they discuss how experts can dialogue within academia and to the broader public.

In this episode, we interview Cecily Whitely, a PhD student at the LSE who recently published an article with the title "Aphantasia, imagination and dreaming" (2021). In her article, she test a recent philosophical theory of dreaming as a type of imagination by looking at the empirical research on aphantasic patients, i.e. people who are not able to voluntarily create mental images. Through this appeal to medical enquiry, Whitely shows the inadequacy of the standard philosophical view of dreaming as a form of imagination and proposes her own amended account of dream. The discussion with the author raises interesting questions about dreaming and imagination, but also regarding the interplay of science and philosophy and the role of philosophers of science in the progress of both the disciplines. The paper can be found here - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01526-8 

In this second episode of PX Interview, we chat with Dr. Jonathan Birch, Associate Professor at LSE, specializing in the philosophy of the biological sciences. We asked him about his research on animal welfare, how understanding of animal sentience could transform how we live our everyday life, and what are some top moments of his academic career.

If we put a price on nature is everything up for sale? And if we don’t, is everything up for grabs? We first discuss valuing nature from a philosophical perspective before moving to the question of putting a monetary value on nature. Amongst others, we talk about the Dasgupta review which proposes to include biodiversity in our economic accounting and argue about the pros and cons of doing so.

In this episode Karl and Roze interview Ed Hughes from Google’s DeepMind. They chat about a recent paper* co-written by Ed on Cooperative AI and investigate the following questions: What is cooperative AI and why is it of importance? Further, what are the so-called capabilities of cooperative AI? Finally, should humanity be afraid of this new approach, or will it beneficial for society?

*For those interested, the paper can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08630

In this third episode of the series on Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the Philosophy Exchange, Roze and Karl continue the conversation on values with Demetra Brady who was previously featured in the second episode. They chat on i) why some are concerned about AI systems, ii) what the current approach to AI ethics is from a theoretical and practical viewpoint, and iii) how virtue theory might contribute to AI ethics.