Ethics Untangled

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.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.Some further reading:Robbie's chapter entitled "Sex and Emergent Technologies" in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality in which he discusses teledildonics: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003286523-49/sex-emergent-technologies-robbie-arrell.Robert Sparrow and Lauren Karas's paper "Teledildonics and Rape by Deception" that Robbie makes reference to in the podcast: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17579961.2020.1727097Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.Alex has published an article on the same topic in the Journal of International  Criminal Justice, which can be accessed here:He also recommended this article by Anna-Maria Marshall and Daniel Crocker Hale.Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.Graham's article on this topic is here:Bex-Priestley, Graham. “Gender as Name.” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 23, no. 2 (November 2022): 189–213.And here are some articles defending the other views mentioned in the conversation:Biological view: Byrne, Alex. “Are Women Adult Human Females?” Philosophical Studies 177, no. 12 (December 2020): 3783–803.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.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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:Alcoff, L. (1991). The Problem of Speaking for Others. Cultural Critique, 20, 5–32.Chapman, E.B. (2022). Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy. Princeton University Press.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.Jagmohan, D. (forthcoming). Dark Virtues: Booker T. Washington’s Tragic Realism. Princeton University Press.King, M.L., Jr. (2010) Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Beacon Press.Mansbridge, J.J. (1983) Beyond Adversary Democracy. University of Chicago Press.Montanaro, L. (2017). Who Elected Oxfam?: A Democratic Defense of Self-Appointed Representatives. Cambridge University Press.Pitkin, H. (1967). The Concept of Representation. University of Los Angeles Press.Rehfeld, A. (2006). Towards a General Theory of Political Representation. Journal of Politics 68, no. 1: 1–21.Saward, M. (2010). The Representative Claim. Oxford University Press.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.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.You can read Gerald Lang's blog on this topic, and a reply to it by the philosopher Robert Simpson, here:https://peasoupblog.com/2023/11/soup-of-the-day-free-speech-and-academic-freedom-with-contributions-from-gerald-lang-and-robert-simpson/You can find out more about the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act here:https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/16You can read Arif Ahmed's first speech as Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students, or 'Free Speech Tsar', here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/news-blog-and-events/press-and-media/transcript-of-arif-ahmeds-speech-at-kings-college-london/Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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:https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/philosophy/faculty/predrag-cicovackiA few places you can buy The Meaning of Life: A Quick Immersion:https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-meaning-of-life-a-quick-immersion-predrag-cicovacki/17413009?ean=9781949845280https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/THE-MEANING-OF-LIFE-A-Quick-Immersion-by-Cicovacki-Predrag/9781949845280https://www.amazon.co.uk/MEANING-LIFE-Quick-Immersion-Immersions/dp/1949845281I asked Predrag to recommend some further reading and, in line with the general vibe of this episode, he suggested that you might like to reconnect with a book that meant a lot to you in childhood or adolescence. For Predrag, it's The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. The first one that came to mind for me was The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. What about you?Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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.You can find out more about Professor Broussard here:https://meredithbroussard.com/Places you can buy More Than  a Glitch include the following:https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/More-Than-a-Glitch-by-Meredith-Broussard/9780262548328https://www.amazon.co.uk/More-Than-Glitch-Confronting-Ability/dp/0262047659Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/