Ethics Untangled

Jim Baxter

Ethics Untangled is a series of conversations about the ethical issues that affect all of us, with academics who have spent some time thinking about them. It is brought to you by the IDEA Centre, a specialist unit for teaching, research, training and consultancy in Applied Ethics at the University of Leeds.
Find out more about IDEA, including our Masters programmes in Healthcare Ethics and Applied and Professional Ethics, our PhDs and our consultancy services, here:
ahc.leeds.ac.uk/ethics
Ethics Untangled is edited by Mark Smith at Leeds Media Services.
Music is by Kate Wood.

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Top 10 Ethics Untangled Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Ethics Untangled episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Ethics Untangled for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Ethics Untangled episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

20. What's the Meaning of Life? With Predrag Cicovacki

Ethics Untangled

06/17/24 • 49 min

Never let it be said that we don't tackle the big questions on this podcast. This week we're discussing no less a subject than the meaning of life, with Predrag Cicovacki.

Predrag is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross (USA), where he has been teaching since 1991. He has served as a visiting professor in Germany, Russia, Luxembourg, Serbia, France, and India. He's interested in problems of good and evil, violence and nonviolence, philosophy of war and peace, and ethics.

In 2021, in the midst of very difficult personal circumstances and a global pandemic, Predrag set to work on a book called The Meaning of Life: a Quick Immersion. It's a great book: very clear, heartfelt, personal and full of insights. I hugely enjoyed reading it, and enjoyed even more the opportunity to talk to Predrag about it.

You can find out more about Predrag here:
https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/philosophy/faculty/predrag-cicovacki
A few places you can buy The Meaning of Life: A Quick Immersion:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-meaning-of-life-a-quick-immersion-predrag-cicovacki/17413009?ean=9781949845280
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/THE-MEANING-OF-LIFE-A-Quick-Immersion-by-Cicovacki-Predrag/9781949845280
https://www.amazon.co.uk/MEANING-LIFE-Quick-Immersion-Immersions/dp/1949845281
I asked Predrag to recommend some further reading and, in line with the general vibe of this episode, he suggested that you might like to reconnect with a book that meant a lot to you in childhood or adolescence. For Predrag, it's The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. The first one that came to mind for me was The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. What about you?

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.
Twitter/X: @EthicsUntangled
Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/

28. What's Wrong With Conspiracy Theories? With Patrick Stokes

Ethics Untangled

11/18/24 • 47 min

Conspiracy theories seem to be an increasingly prevalent feature of public discourse. No sooner has some significant event taken place, but the internet is full of alternative explanations for that event, involving hidden and nefarious decision-makers. These theories run the gamut from the wildly outlandish to the somewhat plausible, and your view may differ on where the line should be drawn. There are a number of questions about the rationality of conspiracy theories - whether we should reject them wholesale as irrational, for example, or consider each one on its merits. But there are also some interesting ethical questions, and philosophers, including Patrick Stokes, associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University in Melbourne, have been increasingly turning their attention to these questions. What are the moral costs of accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist? But also, what are the moral costs of accusing someone of being a conspirator? In what ways might conspiracy theorising be corrosive of trust? And how should we respond to people we know who believe conspiracy theories? I really enjoyed this conversation with Professor Stokes, on the line from Melbourne, on what I think is a really important topic which needs some philosophical attention.

21. Should We Be Worried About Academic Freedom and No-platforming? With Gerald Lang

Ethics Untangled

07/01/24 • 39 min

In May 2023, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill received Royal Assent after two years of debate in Parliament. The new Act will strengthen the statutory duty already imposed on English higher education providers by previous legislation to secure freedom of speech within the law. Arif Ahmed, a former philosophy professor at Cambridge University, has been appointed as a Director overseeing free speech at the Office for Students, informally known as the 'Free Speech Tsar'.

Free speech is one of several fronts in the so-called culture wars. Ahmed has been at great pains to say that his office, and he, will be politically neutral. The idea is to protect the right of academics to express their views, wherever on the political spectrum those views fall. But is there a role for legitimate gatekeeping of academic speaking opportunities? And is there a principled way of making decisions about when, if ever, academics should be prevented from speaking on the grounds that what they say might be harmful? Gerald Lang, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds, has been trying to dig under the headlines to get at the ethical concerns underlying this debate.
You can read Gerald Lang's blog on this topic, and a reply to it by the philosopher Robert Simpson, here:
https://peasoupblog.com/2023/11/soup-of-the-day-free-speech-and-academic-freedom-with-contributions-from-gerald-lang-and-robert-simpson/
You can find out more about the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act here:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/16
You can read Arif Ahmed's first speech as Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students, or 'Free Speech Tsar', here:
https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/news-blog-and-events/press-and-media/transcript-of-arif-ahmeds-speech-at-kings-college-london/

18. Do the Dead Have Rights? With Joseph Bowen

Ethics Untangled

05/20/24 • 42 min

Ethical questions about the dead are frequently interesting, puzzling, surprising, and weird. All of these things become clear in this conversation with Dr Joseph Bowen. Joe is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds, specialising in moral, political, and legal philosophy. As well as whether the dead have rights, his research focuses on the nature of rights and directed duties, the justifications for and constraints on harming, the nature and scope of duties to rescue, and just war theory.
Here's Joe:
https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/4794/dr-joseph-bowen
https://joseph-bowen.weebly.com/
He's written about whether the dead have rights in this paper:
Bowen, J. 2022. ‘The Interest Theory of Rights at the Margins: Posthumous Rights’, Without Trimmings: The Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy of Matthew Kramer, Visa Kurki & Mark McBride (eds), (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

And here are some other readings which might be of interest:

Jeff McMahan, ‘Death and the Value of Life’ Ethics 99, 1 (1998), pp. 32-61.
Cécile Fabre, ‘Posthumous Rights’, in Matthew H. Kramer, and others (eds), The Legacy of H.L.A. Hart: Legal, Political, and Moral Philosophy (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2008).
David Boonin, Dead Wrong: The Ethics of Posthumous Harm (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2019).
Ben Bradley, Well-Being and Death (New York; Oxford University Press, 2009).

14. Is There Ever Anything Wrong With Praising People? With Jules Holroyd

Ethics Untangled

03/04/24 • 42 min

Jules Holroyd is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Her teaching and research focuses on understanding the nature of, and addressing, injustices. In this conversation, she turns her attention to praise.
Philosophers have given a lot of attention to blame in the past, but not so much to praise. This might be because praise looks fairly unproblematic on the whole. Praising people is nice! It boosts people's self-confidence, strengthens social bonds, and if we occasionally praise people who don't deserve our praise, who cares? According to Jules Holroyd, a philosopher working at the University of Sheffield, while this attitude is probably right overall, there can be instances in which we praise people in ways that are morally problematic, harmful even, and we should be on the lookout for these cases. In this conversation, we talked about some of the moral norms that govern praise - when it is and isn't appropriate to praise someone - and in particular we looked at the ways in which our acts of praising can signal a commitment to wider social norms, some of which we might not want to endorse.
Jules's paper which forms the basis of this conversation is here:
Holroyd, J. (2021) Oppressive Praise. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/fpq/article/view/13967
She also has this more recent paper on praise:
Holroyd, J. (2023) Proleptic praise: a social function analysis. Noûs. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nous.12482
Here are some of the papers Jules refers to in the episode:
Coates, Justin. (2019). Gratitude and Resentment: Some Asymmetries. In R. Roberts & D. Telech (Eds.) The Moral Psychology of Gratitude(pp. 160–175). London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Jeppsson, S., & Brandenburg, D. (2022). Patronizing Praise. The Journal of Ethics, 26, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-022-09409-2
Khader, S., & Lindauer, M. (2020). The “Daddy Dividend”: The Gender Division of Labour and Regression Towards Patriarchy.APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy,19(2), 6–8. https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apaonline.org/ resource/collection/D03EBDAB-82D7-4B28-B897-C050FDC1ACB4/FeminismV19n2.pdf
Lippert-Rasmussen, K. (2022). Praising without standing. The Journal of Ethics, 26,229–246. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10892-021-09374-2
Shoemaker, D., & Vargas, M. (2019). Moral torch fishing: A signaling theory of blame. Noûs, 55, 581–602. https:// doi.org/10.1111/nous.12316

9. What's Wrong (or Right) With Monogamy? With Luke Brunning

Ethics Untangled

12/04/23 • 44 min

Traditionally, monogamy has been the form of romantic relationship which people have been assumed to want to pursue. But there has recently been a growing tendency among some to question this assumption, and instead to pursue polyamorous or other forms of romantic attachment. And this tendency has been reflected in philosophical debates too. Some have gone so far as to question whether monogamous relationships can be defended at all, prompting others to think more deeply about what the distinctive value of monogamous relationships, if any, might be. I spoke to Luke Brunning, a Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre, and we explored some of this fascinating ethical territory.
Luke Brunning is a Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre, and part of the Centre for Love, Sex and Relationships. His main research interests are romantic relationships, the emotions, applied ethics and moral life.
Luke has a book on Romantic Agency coming out in May 2024, and available to order here:
https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=romantic-agency-loving-well-in-modern-life--9781509551521
... and his previous book on monogamy is here: https://thamesandhudson.com/does-monogamy-work-9780500295694
He was interviewed about that book here: https://mashable.com/article/does-monogamy-work-luke-brunning-book-interview
He's also written this article (freely available) on jealousy: https://aeon.co/essays/love-without-jealousy-consider-the-benefits-of-compersion

Finally, he also recommends this book on monogamy by Carrie Jenkins:

https://www.routledge.com/Why-Its-OK-to-Not-Be-Monogamous/Clardy/p/book/9781032449784

8. Is Unjust Enrichment a Thing? With Duncan Sheehan

Ethics Untangled

11/06/23 • 44 min

Duncan Sheehan is Professor of Business Law at the University of Leeds. He is interested in trusts and personal property law, especially secured transactions law. He has a particular recent interest in the application of the philosophy of action to the law, as well as a wider interest in private law theory more generally.
Unjust enrichment is a distinctive and, some might say, weird area of law. It is supposed to cover cases in which someone acquires a benefit of some kind at the expense of another person in a way that is unjust, and which leads to a requirement for restitution. It's not the same as fraud or theft, partly because the person who has been unjustly enriched might never have intended to be enriched. But it has proven surprisingly difficult for legal scholars to say exactly what it is, or what precisely links all the cases that are usually brought together under the heading of unjust enrichment, which has led some to call for it to be abolished. Nonetheless, Professor Sheehan does think it's a thing, and thinks it should continue to be a thing, and in this conversation he explains why.
As someone who was once massively overpaid by my employer (and was honest enough to give the money back, otherwise I probably wouldn't be admitting to it here) I was interested to find out what the law thinks about this issue...
Duncan's book, The Scope and Structure of Unjust Enrichment will be published in February 2024. Chapters 1 and 3 cover the issues discussed in the podcast.
Duncan also recommends the following two articles:
Hedley, S. 'What is Unjust Enrichment for?' (2016) 16 Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal 333 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2805475)

Jaffey, P. 'The Unjust Enrichment Fallacy and Private Law' (2013) 28 Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 115 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3799149)

5. How Should We Act in Political Campaigns? With Joseph Lacey

Ethics Untangled

08/06/23 • 43 min

Joseph Lacey is Associate Professor of Political Theory at University College Dublin. He is about to embark on a five-year project looking at the moral agency of participants in elections. That's politicians, special advisers, journalists and so on. But it's also you and me: people who engage with political messaging, perhaps take some interest in what's going on behind the scenes and, ultimately, vote in elections. In this episode Joseph talks about the questions he's interested in, his plans for the research, what's distinctive about the method he's going to use, and what he hopes to get out of it.
Here are some readings suggested by Joseph as good and relevant to the topic:

Beckman, Arthur. 2018. ‘Political Marketing and Intellectual Autonomy: Political Marketing & Intellectual Autonomy’. Journal of Political Philosophy 26(1): 24–46.

Beerbohm, Eric. 2016. ‘The Ethics of Electioneering’. Journal of Political Philosophy 24(4): 381–405.

Green, Jeffrey. 2010. The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lipsitz, Keena. 2004. ‘Democratic Theory and Political Campaigns’. Journal of Political Philosophy 12(2): 163–89.

Scammell, Margaret. 2014. Consumer Democracy: The Marketing of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Archive episode [Season 3 Episode 2]: Outreach services for sex work in Nottingham

Ethics Untangled

03/16/23 • 30 min

In this episode, medical student and IDEA alumna Georgina returns with guests Jude and Carys who work closely with sex workers in Nottingham. Jude is the Sexual Health Outreach and Health Promotion team lead at Nottingham University Hospital Trust. Carys is the operations manager for POW Nottingham, a voluntary organisation supporting those in the sex work industry.

In this episode, Jude and Carys explain the outreach services that POW provides, and how this is supported by the Sexual Health Outreach and Health Promotion team. They also discuss the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on outreach services like theirs, and in particular how vulnerable sex workers have been affected by this.

Released November 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.

26. Should We Be Worried About Teledildonics? With Robbie Arrell

Ethics Untangled

10/21/24 • 39 min

Should we be worried about teledildonics?

*CONTENT WARNING. This episode contains frank descriptions of sexual practices of various kinds, and discussion of sexual assault and rape, including rape by deception.*

Teledildonics is a word that refers to the use of networked electronic sex toys to facilitate sexual or quasi-sexual interactions between people at a distance. It's a relatively new type of technology, but one that is becoming more advanced. Clearly, it's a technology that opens up interesting new possibilities! But Robbie Arrell, Lecturer in Applied Ethics at the IDEA Centre, thinks it also raises some serious concerns, not all of which have yet been fully understood. In this conversation, Robbie outlines some of these worries, and begins to consider how we might address them.
Some further reading:

Robbie's chapter entitled "Sex and Emergent Technologies" in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality in which he discusses teledildonics: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003286523-49/sex-emergent-technologies-robbie-arrell.
Robert Sparrow and Lauren Karas's paper "Teledildonics and Rape by Deception" that Robbie makes reference to in the podcast: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17579961.2020.1727097

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How many episodes does Ethics Untangled have?

Ethics Untangled currently has 67 episodes available.

What topics does Ethics Untangled cover?

The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts and Philosophy.

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The episode title '11. What Should We Do About the Beauty Ideal? With Heather Widdows' is the most popular.

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The average episode length on Ethics Untangled is 38 minutes.

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Episodes of Ethics Untangled are typically released every 1 hour.

When was the first episode of Ethics Untangled?

The first episode of Ethics Untangled was released on Mar 16, 2023.

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Ethics Untangled

Jim Baxter

Top 10 Ethics Untangled Episodes

FAQ

How many episodes does Ethics Untangled have?

What topics does Ethics Untangled cover?

What is the most popular episode on Ethics Untangled?

What is the average episode length on Ethics Untangled?

How often are episodes of Ethics Untangled released?

When was the first episode of Ethics Untangled?

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