Philosophy Exchange Podcast

Do we have moral duties to people who don’t yet exist? By grappling with puzzles like this, Parfit helped found population ethics, a branch of moral philosophy which considers how many people should exist and what we owe to people who are not yet born. We explore Parfit’s unsettling ideas about future generations – and why, decades later, we’re still grappling with the questions he raised. We also...

Followers of three moral theories, Kantianism, consequentialism and contractualism, have long argued against each other. Parfit believed they were actually converging – climbing the same mountain from different sides. In this episode, we outline his “Triple Theory”, a bold synthesis that suggests moral theories may agree more than we think. If true, this strengthens the case for objective morality...

Can it be rational to prefer scratching your finger to preventing the destruction of the world? The tension between self-interest and morality has been described as the “profoundest problem in ethics”. But, as we discuss in this episode, Derek Parfit thought this was wrong. He argued for an objective rather than a subjective view of rationality, meaning it can be rational to act morally.

Is morality real or just a matter of opinion? And if real, what kind of reality? Derek Parfit argued that there are objective moral facts, akin to mathematical truths, and that we can discover them through reason. In this episode, we explain why he thought this – and why he worried that, if he were wrong, life might be meaningless.

Why should we help the badly-off? Often, we appeal to the idea of reducing inequality. In this episode, we discuss prioritarianism, Derek Parfit’s alternative theory which holds that we should give priority to the badly-off because helping them matters more morally. We also consider how Parfit’s views on personal identity help to defend prioritarianism from a major philosophical objection.

Are you the same person that you were ten years ago? Derek Parfit says maybe not. In this episode, we explore his radical view that personal identity isn’t about having the same body or soul, but rather about psychological continuity over time. This idea reshapes how we think about responsibility, distributive justice, and the self.

In this episode of Philosophy Exchange, Paula Keller (Cambridge) and Harry Daniels (Oxford) speak with Karl about what role political philosophy should give utopian thinking. Discussion points first include an introduction to what utopias are, and second an overview of how utopias are theorized within recent political philosophy. From here, the discussion turns to the practical question of how uto...

In this third episode of the philosophy of psychiatry series we are interviewing Jodie Russel on her work on the mind-shaping view of psychiatry. Jodie explains how scientific disorder concepts inform and shape the way in which people perceive themselves and their disorder. We are also talking about some of the risks and benefits of mind-shaping in psychiatry. (Interviewers: Nina de Boer, Bennett...

In this second episode of the philosophy of psychiatry series, we are interviewing Nina de Boer on her work on network models in psychiatry. Amongst other things, Nina explains the difference between network models of disorders and more traditional conceptions of disorders and we chat about benefits and challenges of network models. (Interviewers: Bennett Knox, Jodie Russel, Johanna Sarisoy).

This is the first episode of our series on philosophy of psychiatry, where PhD students chat about their work in Philosophy of Psychiatry and the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry. This episode focuses on Bennett Knox and their work on the (lack of) inclusion of pathologised individuals into the conceptualisation or definition of mental disorders.

In this episode we chat with Dr. Alice Murphy, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy. We asked her about her research on the role of aesthetics and aesthetic values in science, as well as the role of surprise in scientific thought experiments. The discussion brings us to explore the relation between aesthetic and epistemic values and the connection between...

The average CEO (or 'super manager') was paid as much as 320 times the average worker's salary in the US in 2020 - with similarly large disparities in the UK and other European countries.  In this episode, Rob and Karl discuss the ethics of executive pay with Sandy Pepper, Emeritus Professor of Management at the LSE and author of a new book, 'If You're So Ethical Why Are You So Highly Pa...

In this episode, Ina is joined again by Joe Roussos, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, Marcel Jahn, a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and Lukas Beck, a postdoctoral researcher in the Scientific Assessments, Ethics and Public Policy working group and a member of the Rivet Project at the Mercator Research...

In this episode, Ina is joined by Joe Roussos, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, Marcel Jahn, a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and Lukas Beck, a postdoctoral researcher in the Scientific Assessments, Ethics and Public Policy working group and a member of the Rivet Project at the Mercator Research Instit...

In this episode Karl and Johanna interview John Zerilli, a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Oxford. Together, they discuss what explainable AI is and how different types of AI can be more or less transparent. Further, they discuss how machine learning models might be used for measurement just as they are used for prediction and explanation

In this episode you'll hear Johanna interview Graham Doke on Buddhist Philosophy. Graham is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh who follows Mahayana Buddhism. In this episode you'll learn about the basics of Buddhist philosophy, their different schools, how it compares to western analytical philosophy, as well as Graham's experience as a philosopher of both traditions. For those intereste...

We interview Nicholas Makins on his recent publication "Attitudinal Ambivalence: Moral Uncertainty for Non-Cognitivists". In this paper, Makins adopts a non-cognivist account of moral judgements, characterized not as beliefs but as cognitive attitudes, like desires or forms of will. The aim of the article is to show that this view can be better defended if one defines moral doubt not in terms of c...

In this episode Karl and Roze are joined by Philosophy Exchange member Johanna Sarisoy to interview Shannon Vallor, Professor at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI). Together, they discuss the future of artificial intelligence (AI) from a variety of perspectives such as what it means to develop moral AI. Further, they discuss how experts can dialogue within academia and to the broader public.

In this episode, we interview Cecily Whitely, a PhD student at the LSE who recently published an article with the title "Aphantasia, imagination and dreaming" (2021). In her article, she test a recent philosophical theory of dreaming as a type of imagination by looking at the empirical research on aphantasic patients, i.e. people who are not able to voluntarily create mental images. Through this a...

In this second episode of PX Interview, we chat with Dr. Jonathan Birch, Associate Professor at LSE, specializing in the philosophy of the biological sciences. We asked him about his research on animal welfare, how understanding of animal sentience could transform how we live our everyday life, and what are some top moments of his academic career.

If we put a price on nature is everything up for sale? And if we don’t, is everything up for grabs? We first discuss valuing nature from a philosophical perspective before moving to the question of putting a monetary value on nature. Amongst others, we talk about the Dasgupta review which proposes to include biodiversity in our economic accounting and argue about the pros and cons of doing so.

In this episode Karl and Roze interview Ed Hughes from Google’s DeepMind. They chat about a recent paper* co-written by Ed on Cooperative AI and investigate the following questions: What is cooperative AI and why is it of importance? Further, what are the so-called capabilities of cooperative AI? Finally, should humanity be afraid of this new approach, or will it beneficial for society? *For those...

In this third episode of the series on Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the Philosophy Exchange, Roze and Karl continue the conversation on values with Demetra Brady who was previously featured in the second episode. They chat on i) why some are concerned about AI systems, ii) what the current approach to AI ethics is from a theoretical and practical viewpoint, and iii) how virtue theory might cont...

In this new series, we interview PhD students and young academics about a recently published papers. In today's episode Jakob interviews University of Sydney's Walter Veit on his paper "Model Diversity and the Embarrassment of the Riches". Using the discussion on model pluralism in economics which followed Dani Rodrik‘s "Economics Rules", he argues that model pluralism as a thesis about the relati...

In this episode we discuss inference to the best explanation (IBE), its difference from induction and deduction, as well as its several applications in science and philosophy. The talk then naturally moves to reflections upon what an explanation is, and what are the values that come into play when one assesses the explanatory strength of scientific hypotheses.