Ethics in Action Podcast

The US seems more polarized than it's been in decades. Can we communicate across ideological and political chasms? What does it mean to have a dialogue with someone we profoundly, even vehemently disagree with? If we do have such a dialogue, does it make us any less polarized? Do the effects last?  We talk with Professor Barthold about her new book: Overcoming Polarization in the Public Square: Ci...

In the last few months, in the wake of recent protests against systemic racism, Confederate and other monuments have been torn down and defaced. What are these monuments supposed to convey?  What's the argument for taking them down? Dana and I revisit our conversation about the ethics and politics of monument removal in light of recent events. Take a look at Dana's recent essay on the Politics of...

Before Covid 19 turned the world upside down we worried about Artificial General Intelligence and, ultimately, Super-intelligence - the moment when our machines, powered by sophisticated AI, catch up with us and, ultimately, out-perform us. But how coherent, how pressing, are these concerns, really?  Dan Feldman is a senior research fellow at the UMB Applied Ethics Center. He is a software enginee...

In the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides provides a vivid description of the physical and social toll that a terrible plague took on Athens, a year or so into its war with Sparta. What explains the staying power of Thucydides' account? And what can we learn from it as we grapple with our own (albeit far less deadly) Covid 19 crisis?  Greg Fried is Professor of philosophy at Boston Colle...

What are the moral criteria for triaging patients when the healthcare system is overwhelmed? How is Massachusetts thinking about this? And, more broadly, what is the appropriate balance between preserving public health and limiting an economic meltdown? Please note: the last 3 minutes of this conversation are missing due to a Zoom malfunction. So it ends a bit abruptly. But the important stuff is...

Jeppe von Platz teaches philosophy at the University of Richmond. His research focuses on political philosophy, political economy, and the history of philosophy. He has published on questions of distributive justice, the status of economic rights, just war theory, how we should respond to systemic injustices, and Kant’s practical philosophy. Jeppe's book Theories of Distributive Justice: Who Gets...

UMass Boston's Jennifer Radden has made numerous seminal contributions to the philosophy of psychiatry. She has just published an entry on Mental Disorders in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. We talk about how philosophy can help us think about mental health and disorders.  

How will the rise of AI change state and federal bureaucracies? Are AI mediated politics more democratic? More fair? What does post human governance look like? James Hughes is a senior research fellow at the Applied Ethics Center at Mass Boston. He is a bioethicist and sociologist who serves as the associate provost for institutional research, assessment, and planning at UMass Boston. He holds a d...

Faneuil Hall, one of Boston's most celebrated public spaces and tourist attractions, is named after Peter Faneuil - an 18th century merchant and slave trader. Nir Eisikovits and UConn's Dana Miranda discuss the debate around renaming Faneuil Hall and place it in the context of the national debate around problematic monuments and memorials - from Charlottesville to Yawkey Way.  Dana Francisco Miran...

Eisikovits and Corradetti discuss the relevance of Kant's celebrated essay "Towards Perpetual Peace" Is peace a process to be constantly managed or an outcome? Why does Kant think that republicanism is conducive to peace? What's the best way to understand his call for creating a world state? Is that a concrete political proposal? A tool for assessing our own political behavior? In what ways is Kan...

Eisikovits and Keenan discuss the need to create a culture of ethics on college campuses. How is it that the university - one of the few institutions that teaches ethics - does not give much thought to what it means for it to create an ethical climate on campus? How are the prevalence of sexual assault, the mistreatment of adjunct faculty and racial tensions on campuses related to this failure? Ja...

Nir Eisikovits hosts Thomas Brudholm of the University of Copenhagen for a discussion about the philosophy of hate, anger, and resentment. The two discuss whether there are more and less legitimate forms of hate, whether it should be understood as an emotion or as an attitude, and whether a philosophical understanding of hate can help us make better sense of these very tense political times. Resou...

Debating Confederate monuments and Civil War memorials in light of the violence in Charlottesville. 

Nir Eisikovits and Ken Greenberg talk about the prominent role of honor in the antebellum south and its relationship to the institution of slavery. They also discuss Greenberg’s recent work on Nat Turner’s rebellion and the challenges of creating a historical account from necessarily incomplete evidence and records.