Ethics Untangled

Ruby Hornsby is a PhD student at the IDEA Centre. Her research is about 'artificial friends' - robots and their interactions with humans - and whether these interactions can be part of a good human life. What do we get out of friendship and how much of that is possible when the supposed friend we're talking about is not a person with an inner life of their own, but an artificial being that has been programmed to act in a friendly way towards us? And what if our interactions with robots are a bit like our interactions with fictional characters? Does this mean we can't have friendships with them, or is there some form of quasi-friendship that might still be possible, and might have something to offer us? And what about the ethics of these relationships? Do we leave ourselves open to exploitation or deception by entering into them?Some links:Ai-Da House of Lords (2022)Care homes and social robots (2020)Sex robots and companionship (2023) Sony's AIBO dog (2023)Research Ruby did alongside IDEA's Natasha McKeever on sex robots (2022) 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 Professor Fiona Woollard. Professor Woollard is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. She has research interests in normative ethics, applied ethics, epistemically transformative experiences and the philosophy of sex and pregnancy. She has published on topics including the distinction between doing and allowing harm, climate change and the non-identity problem, the moral significance of numbers, pornography and the norm of monogamy.Her recent research has led her to ask a question which turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer: what is a mother? Not necessarily, in her view, a woman with a child. In this interview she explains why she doesn't think this is the right way of defining a mother, and what she thinks is a better way. To get there, we tried to get to grips with some vexed questions about gender.Professor Woollard's page at Southampton is here.Here's the advert we refer to at the start of the interview.Some of the books and papers Professor Woollard talks about in the interview:Ashley, Florence. (forthcoming) ”What Is It like to Have a Gender Identity? Gender Subjectivity and the Phenomenological Constitution of Gender Identity”  Mind.Bettcher, Talia Mae. (2009) “Trans Identities and First-Person Authority” In Laurie Shrage (ed.), You've Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hays, Sharon. (1998) The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. London: Yale University Press.Jenkins, Katharine. (forthcoming) Ontology and Oppression: Race, Gender and Social Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Kukla, Quill and Lance, Mark. (forthcoming) “Telling Gender: The Pragmatics and Ethics of Gender Ascriptions” in ERGO.Ruddick, S. (1980). "Maternal Thinking". Feminist Studies, 6(2), 342–367. 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/

Dr Joe Saunders is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham. He primarily works on ethics and agency in Kant and the post-Kantian tradition. He also has interests in the philosophy of love and media ethics.In this episode we talk about how we should behave online. How bad is social media as a forum for discussion, for example of political or social issues? What specific pitfalls can we fall into and how should we avoid them? What are our responsibilities to each other? And is civility the answer?Here's Joe: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/joe-saunders/And here he is on Twitter (be nice!): https://twitter.com/Saunders_JoeSome of the books and papers which Joe mentions in the episode:Levy, Neil (2021). Virtue signalling is virtuous. Synthese 198 (10):9545-9562.Nguyen, C. Thi (2020). Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Episteme 17 (2):141-161.Olberding, Amy. The Wrong of Rudeness: Learning Modern Civility from Ancient Chinese Philosophy. 2019. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-wrong-of-rudeness-9780190880965Olberding, Amy. Righteous Incivility. Online at: https://aeon.co/essays/whats-the-difference-between-being-righteous-and-being-rudeRonson, Jon. So You've Been Publicly Shamed. 2015. Riverhead Books. https://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-Publicly-Shamed/dp/1594487138Tosi, J. and Warmke, B. Grandstanding: The use and abuse of moral talk. 2020. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/grandstanding-9780190900151 By the way, at one point in the episode I talk about the practice on social media of finding the worst possible version of your opponent's argument in order to dunk on it. I've since become aware of the very useful term 'nutpicking' to refer to this phenomenon: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking.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/

A short trailer to let you know what Ethics Untangled is all about, including an extract from episode 1.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 podcast discusses the ethics of the controversial medical condition of Borderline Personality Disorder, examining whether the high prevalence of diagnoses of Borderline Personality Disorder in female patients who have experienced trauma is the result of implicit biases around gender, and whether excessive blame towards patients with Borderline Personality Disorder constitutes a form of hermeneutic injustice. Along the way, we discuss the specifics of BPD, and explain the cutting-edge philosophical concepts of epistemic injustice and hermeneutic injustice – assuming no prior knowledge."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 this episode, Dr Andrew Kirton talks to Dr Jim Baxter about the issues explored in Jim’s new book, Moral Responsibility and the Psychopath: The Value of Others.  Are psychopaths morally responsible? Should we argue with them? Remonstrate with them, blame them, sometimes even praise them? Is it worth trying to change them, or should we just try to prevent them from causing harm? And how should society treat them, particularly if they have committed crimes? To answer these questions, we first need to understand what a psychopath is, which means engaging with insights from psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience. We also need to know what moral responsibility is, which is a deep and difficult philosophical question. And then we need to join the dots, applying the criteria of moral responsibility to a category of person whose emotional engagement with the world may be shallow, but who are not obviously irrational. In a conversation that ranges across all of these areas, Jim ultimately argues that at least some psychopaths lack the ability to value others, which is fundamental to moral life, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. Finally, the discussion turns to the implications of this position for how psychopaths should be treated in the criminal law. 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 this episode, Dr Andrew Kirton talks to Dr Jim Baxter about the issues explored in Jim’s new book, Moral Responsibility and the Psychopath: The Value of Others.  Are psychopaths morally responsible? Should we argue with them? Remonstrate with them, blame them, sometimes even praise them? Is it worth trying to change them, or should we just try to prevent them from causing harm? And how should society treat them, particularly if they have committed crimes? To answer these questions, we first need to understand what a psychopath is, which means engaging with insights from psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience. We also need to know what moral responsibility is, which is a deep and difficult philosophical question. And then we need to join the dots, applying the criteria of moral responsibility to a category of person whose emotional engagement with the world may be shallow, but who are not obviously irrational. In a conversation that ranges across all of these areas, Jim ultimately argues that at least some psychopaths lack the ability to value others, which is fundamental to moral life, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. Finally, the discussion turns to the implications of this position for how psychopaths should be treated in the criminal law. 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 this episode we have special guest Panashe Chinya. Panashe is a medical student at the University of Leeds, who previously intercalated on the MA in Biomedical and Healthcare Ethics at the IDEA Centre.The presentation and subsequent discussion are based on the dissertation that Panashe completed during her MA at IDEA which asks if mandating moral enhancement for health care professionals as a means to deal with racism and implicit biases in the field could be ethically justified. Could moral enhancement really help to combat racial injustice in healthcare? Can responsibilities to patients be balanced against the autonomy and moral freedom of the health care professional? And how do we square concerns around impacts to personal identity that moral enhancement might raise with the duty of care that health care workers have to their patients? 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/

IDEA alumna Georgina speaks to Anna Westin. Anna is a philosopher, artist, and musician. She is a Visiting Lecturer at St Mary’s University Twickenham, and also at LST, Canterbury Christ Church University and Azusa Pacific University. In this episode, Georgina and Anna discuss Anna’s research into the potential harms of sex work, including physical and psychological harms, and the risk of objectification. They also consider the notion of transactional relationships and Anna’s work with victims of human trafficking. Released December 2021. Presented by Georgina James. Georgina is a final-year medical student at the University of Leeds and is also a graduate of our Campus MA Biomedical and Health Care Ethics. Georgina returned to IDEA in the summer of 2021 for her academic elective, and produced this podcast series during this time.  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 this episode, we welcome Dr Andrew Stanners - hospital doctor and healthcare ethics teacher at the IDEA Centre. He is also a trustee for the UK Clinical Ethics Network.This episode is a continuation of our previous discussion about real trolley problems, and we explore two possible solutions to the complexity of decision-making when we have to choose who gets treatment. Andrew presents an account for needs and another for reflective equilibrium as a way of confronting this issue.Released 30 July 2020. Presented by Gabriela Arriagada Bruneau.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/