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 these two types of values with the element of surprise of scientific investigation.

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 Paid?'. Sandy has carried out original research on what top executives themselves believe about questions of justice, fairness and equality, arguing that considering their perspectives can enhance our understanding of 'market failures' in executive pay and how to fix them. The discussion also covers the fall and rise of inequality in the 20th and 21st centuries and the role of empirical research in philosophy.

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 Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin. Together, they continue their discussion on models in science and philosophy that aim to provide normative guidance to agents, so-called normative models. Today’s episode focuses on the limits of normative models, points of contention between the authors and questions for further 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 Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin. Together, they discuss the authors’ recent work on models in science and philosophy that aim to provide normative guidance to agents, so-called normative models. Today’s episode focuses on the authors' recent papers on the topic, the relevance of normative models and the core philosophical challenges they pose.

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 interested in Buddhist philosophy, here a link to the website of Grahams' teacher and author of the book mentioned in the episode: https://geshetashi.org

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 credential uncertainty (viz., lack of information) but as ambivalence – i.e., a situation where two conflicting desires clash with each other. The fascinating proposal is illustrated via some examples through the podcast conversation, which opens insightful reflection about the nature of moral attitudes and the strategy one should adopt in cases of moral doubt. You can read the paper here https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2021.1908380 

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 appeal to medical enquiry, Whitely shows the inadequacy of the standard philosophical view of dreaming as a form of imagination and proposes her own amended account of dream. The discussion with the author raises interesting questions about dreaming and imagination, but also regarding the interplay of science and philosophy and the role of philosophers of science in the progress of both the disciplines. The paper can be found here - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01526-8 

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.