Ethics Untangled

Send us Fan Mail Dating apps have transformed the way people meet each other, allowing them to meet more people more quickly, to meet people who don't live near them and, in theory at least, generally to have a much greater choice of potential partner, and to find people who are a closer match for their interests and tastes. But, that being true, people don't seem in general to be very h...

Send us Fan Mail Rob Lawlor is interested in what historical comparisons can tell us about how we should approach the fight against climate change. In his previous appearance on Ethics Untangled, he talked about rationing as a possible approach to the reduction of carbon emissions. In this one, based on a piece of research in which he collaborated with Nathan Wood , he tells us about how he thinks...

Send us Fan Mail Alex Fisher is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. One of his research interests concerns videogames. Specifically, in this conversation, we talk about whether people who play games might experience imaginative contagion, a process by which thoughts, attitudes and emotions which people take on imaginatively while playing games might bleed through into their...

Send us Fan Mail The idea of structural injustice - broadly, injustice that results from social structures rather than from the wrongdoing of individuals - is something that has a lot of currency nowadays, but it presents a bit of an ethical puzzle. Basically the puzzle is this: if it doesn't involve wrongdoing by anyone, then in what way is it injustice, but if it does involve wrongdoing by...

Send us Fan Mail One of the many technological advances that have been made in recent years is the ability of computers to synthesise people's voices to a very high standard. Voice synthesis can produce new, entirely synthetic voices, but it can also reproduce the voices of real people, to the point where it's difficult if not impossible to tell the synthetic voice apart from the real on...

Send us Fan Mail There are many children in the world who either do not have parents, or do not have parents who can look after them, and who would benefit greatly from being placed with adoptive families. Some ethicists have argued that this state of affairs means that procreation is impermissible - we should not bring more children into the world when there are children we could adopt instead. I...

Send us Fan Mail Content warning : This episode contains frank discussion of death and of various forms of body disposal, which some might find distressing. Sarah Carter-Walshaw , Lecturer in Applied and Inter-Disciplinary Ethics at IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds, has been thinking about the ethics of what happens to us after we die. The problem is that the current most popular...

Send us Fan Mail Is it ever morally acceptable to keep pets? While most of us take pet-keeping for granted and think of it as a source of affection, companionship, and care, it is possible to see it very differently. Angie Pepper and Richard Healey argue that pet-keeping is not simply a private choice, but a socio-political institution that raises deep questions about power, control, and harm. In...

Send us Fan Mail Can organisations themselves be trustworthy, or is trustworthiness only a quality of individuals? This question matters for how we think about public institutions, businesses, and charities – and about the responsibilities they bear when people rely on them. Philosopher Matt Clark joins me to unpack what trustworthiness means, what kind of control and awareness an organisation wou...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we’re asking whether people can really have genuine emotional reactions to artificial intelligence. Many of us already feel things towards AIs – whether that’s frustration with a chatbot, affection for a companion robot, or even comfort in talking to a virtual assistant – but should we take these emotions seriously? Philosopher Rebecca Wallbank joins me to explore...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we’re looking at the ethics of long COVID and the ways it is reshaping how we think about disability, care, and community. Long COVID has left millions of people living with chronic symptoms, often without adequate medical or state support. Philosopher Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril joins me to talk about her project, which uses podcasting not only to share stories but a...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I'm talking to Matilda Carter , a lecturer in Applied Ethics at IDEA The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds, about the ethics of dementia care, and asking what justice requires for people living with dementia. In her book, Relating to People Living with Dementia as Equals , Matilda argues that the way we think of and treat people living with dementia ra...

Send us Fan Mail In medical ethics, competence (sometimes called decision-making capacity ) refers to a person’s ability to make informed choices about their own healthcare. It is a central concept because respect for patient autonomy depends on the patient being able to understand, evaluate, and communicate decisions about treatment. Danielle Bromwich is a medical ethicist at the University of Le...

Send us Fan Mail People who think and write about the ethics of artificial intelligence sometimes talk about a 'responsibility gap'. The thought is that there are instances of harm resulting from the use of AI systems where it's difficult or impossible to know who or what should be held responsible. Some have further argued that the existence of this gap shows that our current conce...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we’re diving into the ethics of drill rap - a genre that has been celebrated for its creativity and authenticity but also heavily criticised for its alleged links to violence. Drill is often portrayed as uniquely dangerous, and some have called for it to be censored. Philosopher, and Beacon Junior Research Fellow at University College Oxford, Tareeq Jalloh, joins...

Send us Fan Mail Content note: This episode discusses pornography in an academic context, focusing on ethical and philosophical arguments. Feminist critiques of pornography have a long history and take many different forms. One influential line of critique focuses on claims about authenticity and the suggestion that certain forms of representation may be ethically problematic, particularly for wom...

Send us Fan Mail Lisa Herzog is Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The subject of this conversation is time, not in the abstract but how much of it we have, and what we might choose to do with it. We start by discussing whether people in general are lacking in free time. And then we move on to why it might...

Send us Fan Mail 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 poli...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 - a...

Send us Fan Mail A really interesting conversation with Simon Meisch this week. Simon is a Senior Lecturer for Applied Ethics at the Ethics Centre of the University of Tubingen, and until recently was also a visiting scholar here at IDEA. It's an unusual episode of the podcast in that we aren't talking about a specific ethical issue. Instead, we talk about a particular way of highlightin...

Send us Fan Mail 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 a...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 s...

Send us Fan Mail 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...