Common Room Philosophy

This episode is an interview/discussion with David Bather Woods. David is an assistant professor in the University of Warwick's philosophy department, and a previous guest of this podcast.  

In this episode, we discuss various questions about evil and evil-doers, including:

- Do you have to be free to be evil?

- If we aim to understand evil-doers, do we risk forgiving them?

- If our situations were different, could we all do evil things?

- What makes an evil act evil, rather than just very bad?

Some links:

- David's popular episode on Schopenhauer

Books David recommended:

- Being Evil: a philosophical perspective by Luke Russell

- Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil by Hannah Arendt

- At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities by John Améry

- Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy by Susan Neiman

- The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil by Claudia Card 

- Evil: A History edited by Andrew P. Chignell 

If you have any feedback for the show, positive or critical, it would be very welcome. Check out the anonymous feedback form here.

This episode is an interview with Miles Leeson. Miles is the director of research at the Iris Murdoch research centre at Chichester university, and the host of the Iris Murdoch society podcast. 

In this episode we discuss the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, the links between her explicitly philosophical work and her literature, and her answer to the question “can fiction help us see the world as it really is?”. 

It seems that fiction has a troubled place within our culture. If we think of science as the only valid way to discover reality, then what does fiction become? It may be seen as an entertaining expression of personal voice or fantasy, but it would have a very dubious claim to revealing reality. In this podcast, we explore how Murdoch's work pushes against this view.

We discuss:

- Who Iris Murdoch was, and what here primary concerns in Philosophy were

- The role of art and 'vision' in her philosophical arguments and fiction

- Whether Murdoch believes in a moral reality

- Whether fiction can help us see the world as it really is

Some links:

Miles's recommended first Murdoch book: 

https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Iris-Murdoch/The-Nice-And-The-Good/141113

And first Murdoch philosophy book:

https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Iris-Murdoch/Existentialists-And-Mystics--Writings-on-Philosophy-and-Literature/16396120

Miles's five books interview on Iris Murdoch:

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/iris-murdoch-miles-leeson/

The Iris Murdoch Society Podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/user-548804258

If you have any feedback for the show, positive or critical, it would be very welcome. Check out the anonymous feedback form here: https://forms.gle/XWRA5RtGgREmLtTh6

For the first episode of the second season of Common Room Philosophy, I interview Professor Karen Simecek. Karen is currently writing a book on the use of the lyrical voice in poetry; for this podcast we discuss ideas from that work such as the role of voice in poetry and the ethical relationship between the performance poet and the audience member. We then apply these insights to the subject of philosophy, discussing how to make our conversations more kind and our practices more collaborative. Listen to this episode if you are interested in having better conversations about philosophy or listening better to poetry. 

Some links to readings mentioned in the episode:

More on Karen and her work: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/simecek/

Karen’s poetry book recommendation- Jen Hadfield’s Nigh-No-Place: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/nigh-no-place-889

Another poet Karen mentions- Anthony Anaxagorou: https://anthonyanaxagorou.com/

Pamela Sue Anderson's talk on speaker vulnerability: https://www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/read-pamela-sue-andersons-iwd-keynote/

Interview and audio editing by Toby Tremlett (@toby_tremlett). Find us on Twitter at @RoomPhilosophy.

If you have any feedback for the show, positive or critical, it would be very welcome. Check out the anonymous feedback form here: https://forms.gle/XWRA5RtGgREmLtTh6

This episode is an interview with Warwick Philosopher Adina Covaci. We discuss her route into philosophy, why ethics professors might not act ethically and her recent argument for the wrongness of regularly deferring to others on your moral opinions. 

Listen to this podcast for an exploration of questions such as:

What book would Adina send back to her 16 year old self?

Why is it wrong to repeatedly engage in moral deference? 

What is practical deliberation, and why is it important to our lives?

Is obeying government Covid-19 guidelines an example of repeated moral deference?

This interview was conducted and edited by Toby Tremlett

Follow us on Twitter @RoomPhilosophy for the chance to ask questions that could be featured in our interviews.

If you have any feedback for the show, positive or critical, it would be very welcome. Check out the anonymous feedback form here: https://forms.gle/XWRA5RtGgREmLtTh6

This episode is the second part of an interview with political philosopher Sameer Bajaj. (It can be listened to out of order)

Listen to this podcast for an exploration of questions such as:

What is the best theoretical challenge to democracy?

Should we replace elected officials with citizens selected at random?

Why should we vote when individually we are causally inconsequential?

What justifies protest? 

This interview was conducted and edited by Toby Tremlett

Follow us on Twitter @RoomPhilosophy for the chance to ask questions that could be featured in our interviews. 

This bonus episode is an edited recording of a talk with Peter Singer and Josh Morrison, chaired by Alastair Fraser-Urqhart. 

Listen to this episode to hear discussion of the ethics of human challenge trials, and how we might do advocacy effectively. The speakers are Josh Morrison, co-founder of 1Day Sooner, and Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University. 

Advocating for human challenge trials might be one of the best ways that you can personally speed up the fight against Covid. If you were convinced by the arguments in this talk, click on the link below and sign the petition:

Link to the petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/551311

Link to website: https://1daysooner.org/

This episode is part 1 of an interview with political philosopher Sameer Bajaj. Sameer's research focuses on democracy and the duties of democratic citizens. In this part of the conversation, we discuss Sameer's path into philosophy, the books that every democratic citizen should read, and whether the US and the UK are actually democratic. 

Come back next week for part 2 of our conversation, where we will discuss the best theoretical objections to democracy, the question of which protests are justified and much more. 

This interview was conducted and edited by Toby Tremlett

This episode is an interview with public philosopher Roman Krznaric. Roman is a founding member of the school of life, and has previously published books on empathy (Empathy: why it matters and how to get it) and redefining existentialism for the modern world (carpe diem regained). We discuss issues of empathy in this episode, but the discussion is focused around the ideas and problems raised by Roman's new book: The Good Ancestor- how to think long-term in a short term world.

Listen to this episode for an exploration of questions like:

Why should we help future generations when there are so much suffering and injustice in the world today?

How can we use creativity to help us empathise with future generations? 

What should the goal of humanity be?

And many more...

This interview was conducted and edited by Toby Tremlett

This episode is an interview with Warwick Philosophy's Barney Walker. We discuss how his interest in philosophy began, what it is to be a good or even great philosopher, how the difference between knowledge and true belief matters and the subject matter of philosophy of mind. 

Listen to this episode for an exploration of questions like:

What is a great philosopher and who actually was one? 

How should we approach the questions about the nature of inquiry that arise from Plato's Meno?

What is philosophy of mind, and why does it lead to such counter-intuitive theories?

This interview was conducted and edited by Toby Tremlett

This episode is an interview with Warwick Philosophy's Guy Longworth. We discuss how his interest in philosophy began and was maintained, his ideas around testimony and self knowledge, and how ambitious philosophers should be in the claims that they make. 

Listen to this episode for an exploration of questions such as:

What is philosophy for?

What is at stake in research about testimony?

Is there a tension between an interest in Austin, a philosopher who in many respects had quite a modest view of the appropriate aims of good philosophy, with an interest in philosophers in the rationalist tradition, who often had much more grand ambitions?

This interview was conducted and edited by Toby Tremlett.