Ethics Untangled

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.Book your place at our public event with Gavin Esler, "Dead Cats, Strategic Lying and Truth Decay", here. 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/

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. Book your place at our public event with Gavin Esler, "Dead Cats, Strategic Lying and Truth Decay", here. 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/

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.Book your place at our public event with Gavin Esler, "Dead Cats, Strategic Lying and Truth Decay", here. 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/

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.Book your place at our public event with Gavin Esler, "Dead Cats, Strategic Lying and Truth Decay", here. 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/

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 all three of them in a wide-ranging conversation about this fascinating topic. Some links to further reading: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.Book your place at our public event with Gavin Esler, "Dead Cats, Strategic Lying and Truth Decay", here. 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/

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.Book your place at our public event with Gavin Esler, "Dead Cats, Strategic Lying and Truth Decay", here. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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

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.Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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

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. When do consequences caused or made worse by work become harm? What are an organisation's responsibilities regarding harm? And what are the responsibilities of health and safety professionals related to harm and doing good? Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

*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?Natasha's paper on this topic has been published (open access) here:https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/is-sex-work-inherently-gendered/3EE28F1EAC9594C89B21F8E47C42D106 Here's some further reading suggested by Natasha:Kingston, Sarah, Natalie Hammond, and Scarlett Redman. 2020. Women Who Buy Sex: Converging Sexualities? London: Routledge.Mac, Juno, and Molly Smith. 2018. Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights. London: Verso. Moen OM ‘Is prostitution harmful?' Journal of Medical Ethics 2014;40:73-81. Sanders, Teela, Jane Scoular, Rosie Campbell, Jane Pitcher, and Stewart Cunningham. 2018. ‘Beyond the Gaze: Summary Briefing on Internet Sex Work'. Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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

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

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.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @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.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @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.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @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.Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangledBluesky: @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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

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. Here's Joe:https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/4794/dr-joseph-bowenhttps://joseph-bowen.weebly.com/He's written about whether the dead have rights in this paper:Bowen, J. 2022.  ‘The Interest Theory of Rights at the Margins: Posthumous Rights', Without Trimmings: The Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy of Matthew Kramer​, Visa Kurki & Mark McBride (eds), (Oxford: Oxford University Press).And here are some other readings which might be of interest:Jeff McMahan, ‘Death and the Value of Life' Ethics 99, 1 (1998), pp. 32-61.Cécile Fabre, ‘Posthumous Rights', in Matthew H. Kramer, and others (eds), The Legacy of H.L.A. Hart: Legal, Political, and Moral Philosophy (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2008).David Boonin, Dead Wrong: The Ethics of Posthumous Harm (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2019).Ben Bradley, Well-Being and Death (New York; Oxford University Press, 2009).Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

This episode is an exploration of the relationship between love and time with Troy Jollimore. As well as being a Professor in the Philosophy Department at California State University, Troy is a successful poet. His first collection of poetry, Tom Thomson in Purgatory, won the National Book Critics Circle award in poetry for 2006. His third, Syllabus of Errors, appeared on the New York Times' list of the best books of poetry published in 2015. He's also a literary critic, and in this interview he illustrates his ideas with examples from films and literature, as well as real life.You can find out more about Troy's work - the philosophy, the poetry and the literary criticism - here:https://www.troyjollimore.com/There's a list of his philosophical papers here, including things he's written about films including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Vertigo and The Big Lebowski, all of which are referred to in the episode:https://www.troyjollimore.com/philosophy-papersYou can read the Song of Solomon (King James version) here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song%20of%20Solomon%201&version=KJV...and you can listen to 'Endless Love' by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bwwo7ctG10Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Dr. Munamato Chemhuru is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Great Zimbabwe University in Masvingo, Zimbabwe, and a Senior Research Associate in Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg in South Africa.He has been working on a project entitled Conceptualising Environmental Justice through Epistemic Justice in Africa, collaborating with former podcast guest Jamie Dow.Munamato's research highlights the way Africans have been subjected to epistemic injustice in the debate around environmental ethics and the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. That's to say, African voices are often ignored, misinterpreted or not taken seriously. This injustice extends to the theoretical frameworks which are used to conceptualise environmental ethics, and towards the end of the interview, Munamato introduces unhu/ubuntu as an alternative ethical framework which promises to enrich our understanding of the ethical terrain in which environmental responsibilities are grounded.Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Politicians sometimes have to make decisions where there is no option that looks good, morally speaking. They may have to get their hands dirty, acting in a way that looks immoral - sometimes powerfully so - in order to avoid some greater evil. This is called the problem of dirty hands, and it's long been of interest to philosophers. However, most of the philosophical work about dirty hands has focused on the person whose hands are dirty: have they acted wrongly, are they blameworthy, how should we respond to them? Christina Nick, a philosopher based at the IDEA Centre, is more interested in the victims of dirty-handed politicians. These victims may have been subjected to quite profound harms as a result of the actions of politicians who were trying to avoid some even worse harm. What does it look like to treat these victims justly? Specifically, are they owed reparations? And if so, what form should these reparations take, and should these reparations be made by, or on behalf of, the politicians who made the decision?Christina Nick is a Lecturer in Applied Ethics atthe IDEA Centre at the University of Leeds. Her PhD thesis “The Problem of Democratic Dirty Hands” examined how we should understand the occurence of moral conflict for public office holders and how we ought to ascribe moral responsibility for the outcomes of such actions in modern democracies.  Here's an article about the Claudy bombing on the BBC website:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-62332152...and the Police Ombudsman's report into the bombing:https://www.policeombudsman.org/Investigation-Reports/Historical-Reports/Police-Ombudsman-s-Claudy-reportHere's an introduction to the philosophical problem of dirty hands in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dirty-hands/Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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 Kate Lister and Pilar Lopez Cantero.Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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-lopezcanteroEthics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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/KateListerEthics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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-arrellEthics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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.-earpEthics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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-mccabeEthics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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 the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: 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 Finn MacKay and Tom O'Shea.Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Dr Tom O'Shea on whether we can be responsible for our attractions.https://www.tomoshea.org/Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A special episode from the Leeds Love Month live talks series, featuring Dr Finn MacKay on queer identities and attraction.https://www.drfinnmackay.co.uk/aboutEthics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

A quick introduction to our special series of episodes featuring recordings from the Leeds Love Month live events organised by the Centre for Love, Sex and Relationships at the University of Leeds.In October 2023, Centre for Love, Sex and Relationships at the University of Leeds ran a series of events under the Love Month banner. There were some really interesting talks, and we thought we'd release them as a special series of Ethics Untangled episodes. So we're giving you them all in one go, and they won't affect the standard episodes, which will carry on going out according to the usual schedule.Here's a list of episodes:Finn MacKay on queer identities and attractionTom O'Shea on whether we can be responsible for our attractionsKate Lister on whether we evolved to be monogamous Pilar Lopez-Cantero on experiences of breakup, and how to move on well Troy Jollimore on whether we love for reasons MM McCabe on love and desire in Plato's symposium Brian Earp on the ethics of psychedelically-assisted relationship therapy Robbie Arrell on consent issues raised by teledildonic technologyEthics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Jules Holroyd is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Her teaching and research focuses on understanding the nature of, and addressing, injustices. In this conversation, she turns her attention to praise.Philosophers have given a lot of attention to blame in the past, but not so much to praise. This might be because praise looks fairly unproblematic on the whole. Praising people is nice! It boosts people's self-confidence, strengthens social bonds, and if we occasionally praise people who don't deserve our praise, who cares? According to Jules Holroyd, a philosopher working at the University of Sheffield, while this attitude is probably right overall, there can be instances in which we praise people in ways that are morally problematic, harmful even, and we should be on the lookout for these cases. In this conversation, we talked about some of the moral norms that govern praise - when it is and isn't appropriate to praise someone - and in particular we looked at the ways in which our acts of praising can signal a commitment to wider social norms, some of which we might not want to endorse.Jules's paper which forms the basis of this conversation is here:Holroyd, J. (2021) Oppressive Praise. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/fpq/article/view/13967She also has this more recent paper on praise: Holroyd, J. (2023) Proleptic praise: a social function analysis. Noûs. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nous.12482 Here are some of the papers Jules refers to in the episode:Coates, Justin. (2019). Gratitude and Resentment: Some Asymmetries. In R. Roberts & D. Telech (Eds.) The Moral Psychology of Gratitude(pp. 160–175). London: Rowman & Littlefield.Jeppsson, S., & Brandenburg, D. (2022). Patronizing Praise. The Journal of Ethics, 26, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-022-09409-2 Khader, S., & Lindauer, M. (2020). The “Daddy Dividend”: The Gender Division of Labour and Regression Towards Patriarchy.APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy,19(2), 6–8. https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apaonline.org/ resource/collection/D03EBDAB-82D7-4B28-B897-C050FDC1ACB4/FeminismV19n2.pdfLippert-Rasmussen, K. (2022). Praising without standing. The Journal of Ethics, 26,229–246. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10892-021-09374-2 Shoemaker, D., & Vargas, M. (2019). Moral torch fishing: A signaling theory of blame. Noûs, 55, 581–602. https:// doi.org/10.1111/nous.12316 Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Rob Lawlor, a philosopher at the IDEA Centre, has been involved in an inter-disciplinary collaboration looking at one possible response to climate change, which is the introduction of rationing. With Nathan Wood and Josie Freear, he's been looking at the history of rationing as well as the ethics. So - not just whether rationing would be morally permissible, but also how it might be received by the public. And what we can learn about this from public attitudes to rationing of food during and after the second world war. When it was first published, the paper got an unusual amount of attention in the media for an academic paper, including lots of positive coverage, but also some disparagement from the likes of Nigel Farage and Richard Littlejohn. As well as discussing the content of the paper, we talked about what that reaction has been like and I gave Rob a chance to respond to some of the ways the paper has been discussed in the media.Here's Rob, Josie and Nathan's paper:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2023.2166342A short paper on a similar topic by Mark Roodhouse:https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/rationing-returns-a-solution-to-global-warmingIn the interview, Rob mentions he thought the best of the news articles about the paper was in the New Republic. Here it is:https://newrepublic.com/article/170914/climate-case-rationingAnd finally, here's what Nigel Farage thought of it:https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1627606639711817728Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Doctors are bound by the ethical requirement to first do no harm. Unfortunately, harm is not something that they can always avoid. Sometimes harm comes about through the actions of doctors, but at other times it comes about because of things they haven't done. David Molyneux is a doctor of medicine who is also working on a doctorate in philosophy, and his PhD thesis is about the difficult ethical questions that arise because of this distinction. Is there a moral difference between doing and allowing harm? But to answer this question, he first needed to get to grips with a prior question: when we allow harm do we thereby cause that harm? And more generally, do allowings, or omissions, cause?Here are some introductory readings on the topic recommended by David:Foot P (1984), Killing and Letting Die, in Steinbock and Norcross, Killing and Letting Die, Second Edition. pp 280-290.  New York: Fordham University Press.McGrath S (2003) Causation and the Making/Allowing Distinction.   Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 114: 81-86Woollard F (2012).    The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing I: Analysis of the Doing ⁄Allowing Distinction.   Philosophy Compass 7: 448–458 Woollard, F and Howard-Snyder, F.  2021.  Doing and Allowing Harm.  The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 edition), Edward N Zalta (ed) URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/fall2021/entries/doing-allowing/   Accessed 15th January 2024.  Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Heather Widdows is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Warwick, with expertise in applied ethics, global ethics, bioethics, moral philosophy and feminist philosophy. She's interested in the demands that the beauty ideal places on people, particularly women. Her book Perfect Me was described as 'ground-breaking' by Vogue, and listed by The Atlantic as one of the best books of 2018. In it, she argues that beauty is now an ethical ideal. Not only are women held to an impossible standard, but failure to live up to that standard is seen as a failure of moral character. In this interview, we talked about several topics connected to beauty, including whether it's reasonable to expect women to refuse to conform to the beauty ideal, and what other effective responses there might be. We also talked about why Heather thinks 'lookism' should be recognised as a form of discrimination based on looks, comparable with sexism or racism.Perfect Me is available to buy here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Me-Beauty-Ethical-Ideal/dp/0691160074You can find other pieces of writing, talks, interviews etc. featuring Heather here: http://www.heatherwiddows.com/If you want to join the #everydaylookism campaign, you can do so here: https://www.everydaylookism.com/Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Happy new year!An unusual episode to kick off 2024 as I talk to Kevin Macnish, host of the Getting Technology Right podcast. If you aren't already a listener to that excellent podcast, I heartily recommend that you become one! In this joint episode, which is also appearing in the Getting Technology Right feed, Kevin and I quiz each other on what we're trying to do with our respective podcasts, and on our experience of working as consultants in ethics, me for the University of Leeds and Kevin for the technology company Sopra Steria. Also, some news! Ethics Untangled episodes will be coming out twice a month from now on. So the next episode, with Heather Widdows, will be out on 15 January, and from then on we'll be putting out episodes on the first and third Mondays of every month. Huzzah!As always, please subscribe and spread the word!Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Traditionally, monogamy has been the form of romantic relationship which people have been assumed to want to pursue. But there has recently been a growing tendency among some to question this assumption, and instead to pursue polyamorous or other forms of romantic attachment. And this tendency has been reflected in philosophical debates too. Some have gone so far as to question whether monogamous relationships can be defended at all, prompting others to think more deeply about what the distinctive value of monogamous relationships, if any, might be. I spoke to Luke Brunning, a Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre, and we explored some of this fascinating ethical territory. Luke Brunning is a Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre, and part of the Centre for Love, Sex and Relationships. His main research interests are romantic relationships, the emotions, applied ethics and moral life. Luke has a book on Romantic Agency coming out in May 2024, and available to order here:https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=romantic-agency-loving-well-in-modern-life--9781509551521... and his previous book on monogamy is here: https://thamesandhudson.com/does-monogamy-work-9780500295694 He was interviewed about that book here: https://mashable.com/article/does-monogamy-work-luke-brunning-book-interview He's also written this article (freely available) on jealousy: https://aeon.co/essays/love-without-jealousy-consider-the-benefits-of-compersion Finally, he also recommends this book on monogamy by Carrie Jenkins:https://www.routledge.com/Why-Its-OK-to-Not-Be-Monogamous/Clardy/p/book/9781032449784 Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Duncan Sheehan is Professor of Business Law at the University of Leeds. He is interested in trusts and personal property law, especially secured transactions law. He has a particular recent interest in the application of the philosophy of action to the law, as well as a wider interest in private law theory more generally.  Unjust enrichment is a distinctive and, some might say, weird area of law. It is supposed to cover cases in which someone acquires a benefit of some kind at the expense of another person in a way that is unjust, and which leads to a requirement for restitution. It's not the same as fraud or theft, partly because the person who has been unjustly enriched might never have intended to be enriched. But it has proven surprisingly difficult for legal scholars to say exactly what it is, or what precisely links all the cases that are usually brought together under the heading of unjust enrichment, which has led some to call for it to be abolished. Nonetheless, Professor Sheehan does think it's a thing, and thinks it should continue to be a thing, and in this conversation he explains why.As someone who was once massively overpaid by my employer (and was honest enough to give the money back, otherwise I probably wouldn't be admitting to it here) I was interested to find out what the law thinks about this issue...Duncan's book, The Scope and Structure of Unjust Enrichment will be published in February 2024. Chapters 1 and 3 cover the issues discussed in the podcast.Duncan also recommends the following two articles:Hedley, S. 'What is Unjust Enrichment for?' (2016) 16 Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal 333 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2805475)Jaffey, P. 'The Unjust Enrichment Fallacy and Private Law' (2013) 28 Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 115 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3799149) Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Dr Jamie Dow is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the IDEA Centre. He is particularly interested in Ancient Philosophy, and much of his research is concerned with what philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle can tell us about the ethical questions we face today. Recently, he's been thinking about the use of aesthetic features in persuasive speech. Sonorous, humorous or rhetorically elegant language can help us to get our message across more effectively and change people's minds. There are lots of ways of doing this. We might want to describe our opponent's position in a humorous way to invite our listeners to join us in ridiculing it. We might want to vary the rhythm and pitch of our speech to lend it musicality. We might want to begin successive sentences with a repeated phrase, in a sequence of three (a 'tricolon') where the final sentence cleverly subverts the expectation set up by the preceding two. Or pepper our prose with pellets of punchy alliteration.But is this stuff okay, or is there always something morally suspect about this kind of approach? If we want people to come round to our point of view for the right reasons, shouldn't we be focusing purely on the content of what we're saying? To try to answer this question, Jamie uses two examples of persuasive speech which use aesthetic approaches very effectively - speeches by Barack Obama and Martin Luther King. He also talks about the implications of his research for people who are using persuasive speech in everyday life.You can hear the Obama speech here (the section discussed in the podcast starts at around 21:25):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQnlnk6Y7Kk&t=207sThe King speech is here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgVrlx68v-0Jamie's paper, published in the British Journal of Aesthetics, is here:https://academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aesthj/ayac061/7187071Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Paula Satne is a Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre. Her research focuses on theoretical and applied issues related to human evil and the ethics and politics of forgiveness and memory.  Her recent research is on Kantian forgiveness, political forgiveness and public commemoration of politically motivated wrongdoing, punishment, pacifism, and conflict resolution, and our shared complicity and responsibility for structural injustice (i.e., climate change, poverty, and war). Krisanna Scheiter is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Union College. She specializes in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Her research focuses on Plato and Aristotle's accounts of emotion, desire, imagination, and thinking. Most recently her work explores Plato and Aristotle's account of the mind, knowledge, and truth. In addition, she continues to examine Aristotle's account of revenge and why he thinks sometimes we are justified in seeking revenge against wrongdoers. In this episode I met with both of them to discuss the edited volume they have recently published on punishment, forgiveness and revenge. These are ideas that are interesting on a personal level: is it good to forgive? Are there any circumstances in which we might be required to forgive? Can there ever be any value in taking revenge on people who have wronged us? But they also arise on a societal or international level: should groups of people forgive or forget historic wrongs that have been perpetrated against them? What is the point of punishment, and does the state have the right to punish its citizens? Apologies for the slight sound issues with this episode, which was recorded remotely.This episode includes discussion of the death penalty in the context of a discussion of Seneca's views. Both Krisanna and Paula want to make it clear that, unlike Seneca, they do not personally endorse the death penalty.Paula and Krisanna's book, Conflict and Resolution: The Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge and Punishment is available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-77807-1.A chapter from the book, written by Paula, is available open access here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-77807-1_16.Krisanna's chapter (not open access) is here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-77807-1_2Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Joseph Lacey is Associate Professor of Political Theory at University College Dublin. He is about to embark on a five-year project looking at the moral agency of participants in elections. That's politicians, special advisers, journalists and so on. But it's also you and me: people who engage with political messaging, perhaps take some interest in what's going on behind the scenes and, ultimately, vote in elections. In this episode Joseph talks about the questions he's interested in, his plans for the research, what's distinctive about the method he's going to use, and what he hopes to get out of it. Here are some readings suggested by Joseph as good and relevant to the topic:Beckman, Arthur. 2018. ‘Political Marketing and Intellectual Autonomy: Political Marketing & Intellectual Autonomy'. Journal of Political Philosophy 26(1): 24–46.Beerbohm, Eric. 2016. ‘The Ethics of Electioneering'. Journal of Political Philosophy 24(4): 381–405.Green, Jeffrey. 2010. The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lipsitz, Keena. 2004. ‘Democratic Theory and Political Campaigns'. Journal of Political Philosophy 12(2): 163–89.Scammell, Margaret. 2014. Consumer Democracy: The Marketing of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Robbie Morgan is a lecturer and consultant here at the IDEA Centre. His research focuses on issues in the philosophy of sex, particularly as this intersects with feminist philosophy. As well as sexualisation, he's currently engaged in research about language change, the metaphysics of touch, conscientious objection in medicine, and the value of consensual sexual activity. In this conversation, we discuss sexualisation. Unwanted sexualisation is at the very least an inappropriate behaviour. At worst it can be an illegitimate exercise of power which involves harassing, bullying, or terrorising another person. But how exactly should we define sexualisation, and what if anything is distinctively harmful about it?Here are the readings Robbie mentions in the episode:Anonymous. 2011. “What It's like to Be Pregnant in Philosophy.” What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy? 2011. https://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/what-its-like-to-be-pregnant-in-philosophy/.Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 1995. “Objectification.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 24 (4): 249–91.Olberding, Amy. 2014. “Subclinical Bias, Manners, and Moral Harm.” Hypatia 29 (2): 287–302.Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1781/1953), The Confessions. Translated by J.M. Cohen. Penguin Books: 108-109.Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Twitter: @EthicsUntangledFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/