Ethics Untangled

AI-generated content is a familiar and increasingly prevalent feature of social media. Users post text, video, audio and images which have been created by AI, sometimes being clear that this is what they're doing, sometimes not. This isn’t always a problem, but some ways of using AI-generated content do raise significant dangers. So do social media platforms need to have policies in place specifically to deal with this form of content? Jeffrey Howard is professor of political philosophy and public policy at University College London. In a paper co-authored with Sarah Fisher and Beatriz Kira, he argues that policies that target AI-generated content specifically aren't necessary or helpful. It was great to get the chance to talk to him about why he thinks this, and how platforms should moderate this type of content without shutting down valuable free speech.Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Josh Hobbs is back in this episode for his second appearance. Again the subject is political. This time we're discussing whether we should all be activists. More specifically, does the existence of global structural injustice give us a responsibility to respond to those injustices, and should that response take the form of activism? Josh thinks there are reasons to think not everyone could or should be an activist, and introduces some other ways in which people can contribute, including something he calls 'scaffolding activism'.Here's Josh's article on the topic:Between activism and apathy: global structural injustice and ordinary citizensFurther reading:With Power Comes Responsibility: The Politics of Structural Injustice — Maeve McKeownWhat is My Role in Changing the System? A New Model of Responsibility for Structural InjusticeThe Politics of Politeness: Citizenship, Civility, and the Democracy of Everyday Life | Oxford AcademicEthics 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/

Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You’re the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you’re wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them - and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown? The philosopher Peter Singer published this thought experiment in 1972, arguing that allowing people in the developing world to die, when we could easily help them by giving money to charity, is as morally reprehensible as saving our shoes instead of the drowning child. Can this possibly be true? In Death in a Shallow Pond, David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial idea, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty - but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.David Edmonds is a brilliant philosophical and biographical writer, not to mention an OG philosophy podcaster - if you haven't checked out any of Philosophy Bites's nearly 400 episodes then you definitely should - and ex-BBC broadcaster. His latest book is about the fascinating history of a philosophical thought experiment, from its origins in the work of Peter Singer through its influence on the Effective Altruism movement. In this conversation we focus on some of the philosophical questions surrounding this thought experiment: is it, as Singer claims, analogous to our own position with regard to distant others, and does it have the practical implications that he and the Effective Altruists have taken it to have?Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Simon Meisch, a Senior Lecturer in interdisciplinary ethics at the University of Tübingen, explores how comics can teach complex ethical issues. He highlights the effectiveness of serial narratives, like 'Heartstopper', in engaging diverse students. Meisch discusses how these stories address romantic identity and relationships, providing low-threshold entry points for ethical discussions. He emphasizes the importance of visual storytelling in fostering moral engagement and critically examines themes like consent and forgiveness while noting the need for deeper cultural analysis.

In this episode I talk to Professor Catriona McKinnon, a political philosopher based at the University of Exeter. The topic is the various environmental crises facing humanity today. Obviously lots to discuss there, but Catriona wants to highlight one issue in particular, which is the way one generation can, with or without knowing it, conceal information from future generations about the depth and nature of a crisis. This an issue of intergenerational justice, and its one that Catriona thinks deserves more attention.Some links:RENEW: Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach https://renewbiodiversity.org.uk/Catriona's University of Exeter site: https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/32795-Catriona-McKinnonCatriona’s book Climate Change and Political Theory https://www.waterstones.com/book/climate-change-and-political-theory/catriona-mckinnon/9781509521661A lecture by Catriona on postericide Endangering Humanity: An International Crime: https://youtu.be/htQwrrURVOQ?si=DA17u9hBR6qn-iQm. Her book on postericide will be published in 2026 by MIT Press.Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

For the last year and a half, Jim Baxter and the consulting team at IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds, have been working with the Law Society of England and Wales on a project looking at the ethics of in-house law. That project has involved talking to lots of lawyers who are both passionate and insightful about the job and the ethical challenges it presents. None more so than Sharon Bridglalsingh, Director of Law and Governance at Milton Keynes City Council. Sharon was kind enough to come on the podcast and share some of her insights in this wide-ranging conversation. The In-House Ethics Framework which IDEA produced for the Law Society is here: https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/in-house/in-house-ethics-framework/.Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Cancelling and cancel culture are terms that we hear a lot these days, and it's one of the many areas where there seems to be more heat than light. The phenomenon of cancelling has become a front in the so-called culture wars, with one side claiming it's a healthy form of protest, or simply confronting people with the consequences of their actions, while the other side sees it as persecution by an unaccountable mob. Philosophers Alfred Archer (Tilburg University) and Georgie Mills (TU Delft) have tried to disentangle some of the different actions that sometimes get called cancelling, and to help us better understand the ethics of this complex phenomenon.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/

Words such as 'woke', 'emotional labour' and 'gaslighting' get bandied around a lot, especially in online discourse. And as they get bandied around, their meaning can change over time. Of course, changes in the meaning of words are natural, inevitable and, usually harmless. However, Robbie Morgan, back for his record-setting third appearance on Ethics Untangled, thinks we should be worried about these changes in meaning, at least sometimes. This isn't just pedantry - it's a concern about the way changes in meaning can rob us of the means to express important concepts, and also about the way these moves can serve political motivations in an illegitimate way.Here's Robbie's paper on the topic:Morgan, Robert (2025), "Hermeneutical Disarmament", ​The Philosophical Quarterly 75(3): 1071-1093.Here's Robbie's website.And here are the other sources we discuss in the episode:Beck, Julie (2018), “The Concept Creep of ‘Emotional Labor’”, The Atlantic.Bloomfield, Leonard (1983), Introduction to the Study of Language. Amsterdam/Philidelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, p.240.Brownmiller, Susan (1990), In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. 1st ed. New York: Dial Press, pp.182, 280-285.Déjacque, Joseph, Hartman, Janine C., and Lause, Mark A. (2012), In the Sphere of Humanity: Joseph Déjacque, Slavery, and the Struggle for Freedom. Cincinnati, Ohio: University of Cincinnati Libraries.Fricker, Miranda (2007), Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hamilton, Patrick (1939, Gas Light. 1st ed. London: Constable.Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2012), The Managed Heart. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. London: University of California Press.Lead Belly (2015) “Scottsboro Boys.” In Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, 4:26. MacGuill, Dan (2021), “Did People Refer to Gaslighting During the Era of 'I Love Lucy'?”, Snopes. Norri, Juhani (1998), “Gender-Referential Shifts in English.” English Studies 79 (3): 270–87, p.281.Rothbard, Murray N. (2007), The Betrayal of the American Right. Edited by Thomas E. Woods Jr. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, p.83.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/

Epistemic injustice is a broad category of injustice relating to knowledge. It can involve people from marginalised or oppressed groups being excluded, silenced, misrepresented, or not taken seriously — in conversations, education, or professional settings — because of their membership to that group.In academic contexts, this kind of injustice can distort entire fields of study. Orla Carlin, a scholar at the University of Leeds, explores how this plays out in relation to class.She argues that the literature on epistemic injustice doesn’t adequately account for epistemic injustice that occurs in virtue of class. One reason, she suggests, is the underrepresentation of working-class voices in academia. Her research asks why this underrepresentation exists and points to deeper, systemic forms of epistemic injustice that affect working class people more broadly, perpetuating a vicious circle in which working class people find it more difficult to enter fields which are dominated by middle class voices, and thereby to shape those fields.Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

Gossip is an ethically interesting phenomenon when humans do it. It creates a bond between the people doing the gossiping, but it does so by implicitly excluding the person being gossiped about, and can cause harm, especially when the gossip is malicious, or simply isn't true. What I hadn't realised until I spoke to Lucy Osler, a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter, is that large language models like ChatGPT and Claude can gossip, or at least they can do something which looks an awful lot like gossip. In this conversation with Lucy, we got into what might be happening, how it might harm people, and what we might be able to do about it.Following my conversation with Lucy, I had an interesting conversation with ChatGPT about the same topic.In the episode we discuss Kevin Roose's interaction with the chatbot Sydney. Here's Roose's own article about that experience:Why a Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled - The New York TimesAnd here are some academic articles that might be of interest:Fisher, S. A. (2024). Large language models and their big bullshit potential. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(4), 67.Hicks, M. T., Humphries, J., & Slater, J. (2024). ChatGPT is bullshit. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(2), 1-10.Alfano, M., & Robinson, B. (2017). Gossip as a burdened virtue. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 20, 473-487.Adkins, K. (2017). Gossip, epistemology and power. Springer International Publishing AG, Gewerbestrasse, 11, 6330.Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetlLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/