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We take in massive amounts of information on a daily basis. Our brains use something called pattern-recognition to try and sort through and make sense of this information. My guest today, the philosopher Megan Fritts, argues that in many cases, the stories we tell ourselves about the patterns we see aren’t actually all that meaningful. And worse, these so-called phantom patterns can amplify the problem of misinformation.
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Most of us probably think of war as violent conflict between countries. There are aggressors and victims, and it’s essentially a battle between groups of people. My guests today, Kyle Fruh and Marcus Hedahl, complicate this notion of war. They argue that many island nations around the world are currently in a war and fighting for their survival. For these places, the enemy isn’t other nation states, it’s climate change.
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Reparations and climate change might at first glance seem unrelated. My guest Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argues that they are inextricably linked, and that racial justice cannot happen without climate justice.
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Regina Rini holds the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition at York University and she joins us today to discuss why we might be disturbed when we learn about the role that psychology plays in our moral decision-making.
We often discuss individual morality and ethics on the show--how people should or should not behave on an interpersonal level. But what about groups of people? How should they make sense of their competing value systems? On today's episode, we're rebroadcasting a show we did with the neuroscientist Joshua Greene, who has an idea about how groups--what he calls modern tribes--should get along. He thinks people should develop something he calls a metamorality. And for him, the best contender for this metamorality is utilitarianism. He also describes how our brains make moral decisions--and why this matters when we're thinking about morality amongst groups of people.
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Although they didn’t set out to, the British philosophers and friends Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot revolutionized the field of ethics in the middle of the 20th century. Our guest today, the philosopher Benjamin Lipscomb, explores the unique friendship and work of four women who changed the face of moral philosophy in his book, The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics.
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Before Jana Mohr Lone became a philosopher, she was a lawyer who worked with families and children. She noticed that the legal system often robbed her clients of a voice. She watched with dismay as children were disempowered again and again. In her current practice as a philosopher, she’s dedicated to using philosophy to help young people experience the power of their own voices. She joins us to discuss her book, Seen and Not Heard: Why Children's Voices Matter.
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Many of us rely heavily on our smartphones and computers. But does it make sense to say we “trust” them? On today’s episode of Examining Ethics, the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen explores the relationship of trust we form with the things we use. We not only can trust non-human objects like smartphones, we tend to trust those objects in an unquestioning way; we’re not thinking about it all that much. While this unquestioning trust makes our everyday lives easier, we don’t recognize just how vulnerable we’re making ourselves to large and increasingly powerful corporations.
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If you don’t know much about gaming, it can be easy to dismiss video games as violent wastes of time or to think of board games as something you pull out when there’s nothing else to do on Thanksgiving. My guest today, the games designer Kat Schrier, believes that there’s something much more to gaming. In her book, We the Gamers, she explores the many ways that civics and ethics educators can use games to build deeply immersive and rewarding learning experiences.
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Calls for increased transparency and oversight are common in the public realm. Our guest today, the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen argues that transparency can actually erode important parts of community life. He claims that while transparency might root out corruption, it also has a sort of chilling effect on the very work people are required to be transparent about.
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Giving away money and resources is great, right? What harm could it do? Philanthropy expert Shariq Ahmed Siddiqui, who is a professor at the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, joins us to explain that the ethics of giving is a lot more complicated than we think.
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Alison Bailey opens her new book, The Weight of Whiteness with an invitation to “wade slowly and mindfully into the weight of whiteness, and to attend to the ways white supremacy has misshapen our nation, our communities, and our humanity.” She writes that while black, indigenous and people of color feel the weight of whiteness daily, most white people tend to numb themselves to this weight.
She argues that white people need to do the work of investigating the weight of whiteness, and its effects not just on the mind, but also on the heart. This work involves philosophy and epistemology, but it also involves genealogy. It requires white people to feel the weight of white supremacy they’ve inherited from their ancestors.
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The last time philosopher Candice Delmas was on the show, we explored civil disobedience. On today’s episode, we’re discussing the uncivil side of disobedience. She explains that the very reasons that we might be obligated to follow the law in just societies can also impose a duty to break the law in societies that are unjust. And she says that this doesn’t always have to be an act of culturally-approved civil disobedience. Sometimes injustice requires behaving without civility.
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Deliberative democracy is a school of political thought in which conversation takes on a central role. It’s different from representative democracy, which involves voting and polling, because it focuses on discussion and understanding to move forward on issues. Sheron Fraser-Burgess, professor of social foundations and multicultural education at Ball State University, explains that educators can take principles from deliberative democracy and apply them to a classroom setting. In her work, she advocates for democratic deliberation, which is a means of teaching students not only how to work through cultural differences, but also how to be better citizens in a democracy.
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Police have had a fraught relationship with communities of color since the earliest days of law enforcement in the eighteenth century. Our guest today, professor of law Ekow Yankah, argues that police power has often been deployed in a misguided attempt to solve deep economic and social problems. And this typically comes at the cost of harming people from marginalized communities. Instead, he argues, we need to imagine healthy communities where police play a background role.
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Nature has always fascinated the philosopher Martin Bunzl. After retiring to California, he was excited to live near the Pacific Crest Trail. The close proximity of the famous foot path inspired him to embark on a new project of thinking while walking. For him, this spectacular setting proved to be fertile ground for reflecting on philosophical puzzles and questions about nature and ethics.
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When the philosopher Allison Wolf heard a news story in 2014 about Central American children migrating to the United States, she was angry. She wasn’t upset about the minors coming in the first place, she was furious about the heartlessness of her fellow Americans reacting to the crisis. It wasn’t until she started writing about immigration that she discovered what was at the heart of the issue. By examining the stories at the center of dehumanizing policies, she realized that feminism, and its focus on oppression, could shed light on the problem of justice and immigration.
Send questions or comments to examiningethics@gmail.com.
For the episode’s transcript, click here.
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The subject of identity politics is part of a constellation of heated issues in the United States. Politics in general has been fraught with conflict in the last decade or so. Naomi Zack, professor of philosophy at Lehman College, CUNY joins us on this episode Examining Ethics to discuss identity politics and argues that it has no place in the government. She offers an alternative vision for the future of American government and identity politics.
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Civil disobedience is an inherently tricky moral issue. It involves intentionally breaking laws, and purposefully upsetting norms. Candice Delmas, professor of philosophy and political science at Northeastern University, is on the show to help us understand civil disobedience, and its potential value to society.
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Ashley C. Ford is a prolific writer who covers a lot of subjects. Some of her most compelling writing is about the ethics of love. In the fall of 2019, we sat down together to discuss her thoughts on--and the ethics of--self-love, relationships and family. Her new memoir, Somebody's Daughter will be out June 1 from Flatiron Books.
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Care impacts all of our lives intimately. Whether you’re the recipient of care, a caregiver, or both, you know that the practice of care can be fraught with ethical and moral questions. On today’s episode of Examining Ethics, we’re going to discuss the basics of care ethics with Maurice Hamington, a professor at Portland State University whose work on care spans decades. He explains that unlike utilitarianism or virtue ethics, care ethics can be difficult to reduce to a simple set of guidelines.
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Many of us have vaccines on the brain recently--whether because we've just received a shot, or because we are trying to access one. Who gets vaccinated and when they get their doses is a decision largely in the hands of state public health officials. Many states use age as the primary factor in determining who gets priority. On this episode of Examining Ethics, Dr. Govind Persad--an expert in bioethics and health care law--argues that legislators should think through more equitable options for distributing vaccines.
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What are the roles that emotions play in politics and civic life? Do feelings like rage, happiness or tension get in the way of political progress, or are they important tools in the fight for social justice? On this episode of Examining Ethics, Christiane interviews Meena Krishnamurthy, a philosopher whose recent work explores the value of political emotions in Martin Luther King Jr.'s writing and activism.
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How did humans turn from animals who were only inclined to help their offspring to the creatures we are today--who regularly send precious resources to total strangers? With me on the show today is Michael McCullough, who explores this difficult question in his book, The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code.
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Brandon Warmke joins Christiane on the show today for a discussion of the importance of moral discourse. In recent years, you may have noticed a rise in the use of hyperbole and grand statement-making on social media, in the news or in political speeches. With his co-author Justin Tosi, Brandon Warmke explore this turn towards big, unapologetic statements in their book Moral Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk.
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