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Category: General

Children / Duties / Gender / General / Health / Rights

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Pregnancy is not caregiving

In this post, Christie Hartley (Georgia State University) and Ashley Lindsley-Kim (University of British Columbia) discuss their recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy  in which they argue against the claim that the feminist commitment that all persons are owed care could obligate pregnant persons to gestate unwanted fetuses.

Photo Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko, available at https://www.pexels.com/]

Is pregnancy a kind of caregiving? This might seem initially plausible since it is through pregnancy that essential fetal needs are met. Furthermore, at least in some societies, it is commonly thought that pregnancy is a labor of love or that continuing a pregnancy is a way of caring for another. Yet, it is a mistake to think of pregnancy in this way, that is, as a kind of caregiving. Understanding why is crucial for thinking well about the ethics and politics of abortion.

Let’s start with caregiving, which involves providing material or emotional care for another or oneself. Examples of the former include feeding, bathing, or dressing someone; examples of the latter include comforting or simply listening to another. Both types of caregiving are social practices and, as such, involve patterns of behavior that are part of a society or a group’s culture and that emerge or follow from a society or a group’s values and beliefs. Pregnancy, by contrast, is not a social practice. It’s a progressive biological condition characterized by numerous nonvoluntary changes in a female’s body. Some of these changes help maintain and support fetal development; others prepare the body for birthing and breastfeeding. While essential fetal needs (e.g., the fetus’s need for oxygen, nutrients, waste disposal) are met through pregnancy, these needs are not met through social practices.

This is not to deny that cultures have values and beliefs about pregnancy that result in social practices related to pregnancy or that pregnancy is implicated in our social lives. Regarding social practices, pregnant persons often engage in self-care for their pregnancy by, for example, consuming extra calories, or they engage in practices related to supporting fetal development by taking prenatal vitamins or avoiding certain foods. Many pregnant persons also develop a social relationship with their fetus during gestation and express a caring attitude towards their fetus. All these things influence how pregnant persons think about and respond to their pregnancy.

Yet, we should not conflate pregnancy with caregiving. Consider some important differences. Intentionally ceasing material caregiving does not involve some kind of physical intervention, such as surgery or medical care. And, for those who engage in material caregiving, when they are meeting their own needs – by eating, taking medication, etc. – they are not necessarily affecting others (at least, when they are not pregnant). These differences have to do with the fact that material caregiving lacks the distinctive kind of physical intertwinement and entanglement that characterizes pregnancy. Indeed, as the fetus comes into existence, it is necessarily integrated with the pregnant person. From the beginning of a pregnancy, when a fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall, the fetus’s internal entanglement is established. Continued development requires considerable integration with the pregnant person, in addition to the physical expansion of the pregnant person’s body.

Indeed, this kind of considerable physical intimacy is necessary for fetal development, and it is different from other types of intimacy in two important ways. First, this kind of invasive relation poses especially significant risks to a pregnant person’s health and wellbeing. A pregnant body undergoes physiological and anatomical changes – such as weight gain, fluid retention, ligament laxity, hormonal changes, and compression of soft tissues and nerves – which can be painful and debilitating. Additionally, a pregnancy person’s cardiac output increases, putting stress on the heart and putting them at persistent higher risks for cardiovascular disease and premature death for the rest of their lives. Second, physically invasive intimacy fundamentally concerns bodily integrity, and persons have a morally weighty interest in its protection. We are our bodies in an important sense, and pregnancy changes how a person’s body functions, how a person’s internal systems operate, and how a person is internally organized. Moreover, successfully carrying a fetus to term requires birthing, whether a birth is vaginal or cesarean. This is a physically traumatic end to a fetus’s invasive physical integration with a gestating person and, all by itself, raises concerns about forced pregnancy given the importance of bodily integrity.

Comparing pregnancy and material caregiving leads us to ignore the distinctive ways in which a person’s bodily integrity is at stake in pregnancy and not in caregiving. Of course, we certainly do not intend to minimize the demandingness of caregiving or its costs. We hold caregiving to be socially necessary, valuable work that can be demanding and costly and that we have a shared, moral obligation to provide. Yet, analogizing pregnancy to material caregiving suggests that pregnant persons have far more agency over what occurs in the progressive condition of pregnancy than they do. Further, considering pregnancy as a form of caregiving suggests that pregnant persons may have a moral obligation to gestate. This perpetuates the pernicious view that those who can gestate must use their bodies in the sexual and reproductive service of others. This threatens to naturalize sex-based caregiving.

In today’s political climate, thinking of pregnancy as a kind of caregiving is especially dangerous. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) and held that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. At this time, 12 U.S. states have almost completely banned the practice, and Florida, Iowa, Georgia, and South Carolina have banned abortion at about 6 weeks. Other states have taken measures to protect the practice and make it more accessible. In states with restrictive abortion bans, pregnant persons are legally required to gestate and, then, legally required to birth. This forces pregnant persons – overwhelmingly women – to be in the forced service of the state. Given the importance of caregiving duties, the suggestion that pregnancy is a form of caregiving provides support for such sexual servitude.  

Academia / Education / General / Pedagogy / Teaching / Teaching Philosophy / Technology

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Should Universities Restrict Generative AI?

In this post, Karl de Fine Licht (Chalmers University of Technology) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the moral concerns of banning Generative AI in universities.

Rethinking the Ban

Universities face a challenging question: what should they do when the tools that help students learn also raise serious moral concerns?

Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT offer immediate feedback, personalized explanations, and writing or coding assistance. But they also raise concerns: energy and water use, exploitative labor, privacy risks, and fears of academic dishonesty. In response, some universities have banned or severely restricted these tools. That may seem cautious or principled—but is it the right response?

In a recent academic paper, I argue that while these concerns are real, banning GenAI is often not the most justified or effective approach. Universities should instead pursue responsible engagement: adopting ethical procurement practices, educating students on thoughtful use, and leveraging their institutional influence to demand better standards.

Do Bans Make a Difference?

Many arguments for bans focus on harm. Using GenAI may contribute to carbon emissions, involve labor under poor conditions, or jeopardize student privacy. But how much difference does banning GenAI at a single university make?

Not much. Models are trained centrally and used globally. Universities typically rely on existing, pre-trained models—so their marginal contribution to emissions or labor practices is negligible. Even if all universities banned GenAI, it’s not clear this would shift global AI development or halt resource use. Worse, bans may backfire: students may use GenAI anyway, without oversight or support, leading to worse outcomes for learning and equity.

Take climate impact. Training models like GPT-4 requires substantial energy and water. But universities rarely train their own models; they use centralized ones whose training would happen regardless. Further, GenAI’s daily use is becoming more efficient, and in some applications—like architectural design, biodiversity monitoring, and climate modeling—GenAI may even help reduce emissions. The better route is for universities to demand energy-efficient models, support green cloud services, and explore carbon offsetting—not prohibit tools whose use is educationally beneficial and environmentally marginal.

Or consider labor exploitation. Training GenAI models often relies on underpaid workers performing harmful tasks, especially in the Global South. That’s a serious ethical issue. But again, banning use doesn’t necessarily help those workers or change the system. Universities could instead pressure companies to raise labor standards—leveraging their roles as clients, research partners, and talent suppliers. This collective influence is more likely to yield ethical improvements than a local ban.

The Reduction Problem

Even if you think universities are morally complicit by using GenAI—regardless of impact—you face a further problem: consistency. If the right response to morally tainted technologies is prohibition, why stop with GenAI?

Much of higher education depends on digital infrastructure. Computers, smartphones, and servers are produced under similarly problematic labor and environmental conditions. If the logic is “avoid complicity by avoiding use,” then many standard technologies should also be banned. But that leads to a reductio: if universities adopted this policy consistently, they would be unable to function.

This doesn’t mean ethical concerns should be ignored. Rather, it shows that avoiding all complicity isn’t feasible—and that universities must find ways to act responsibly within imperfect systems. The challenge is to engage critically and constructively, not withdraw.

Hidden Costs of Prohibition

There are also moral costs to banning GenAI.

Students continue to use AI tools, but in secret. This undermines educational goals and privacy protections. Vulnerable students—those with fewer resources, time, or academic support—may be most reliant on GenAI, and most harmed by a ban. When students use unvetted tools outside institutional guidance, the risks to their privacy and integrity increase.

Instead of banning GenAI, universities can offer licensed, secure tools and educate students on their appropriate use. This supports both ethical awareness and academic integrity. Just as we teach students to cite sources or evaluate evidence, we should teach them to engage with GenAI responsibly.

Setting Ethical Precedents

Some argue that even small contributions to harm are morally significant—especially when institutions help normalize problematic practices. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t follow that bans are the best response.

A more constructive alternative is to model responsible AI use. That includes setting ethical procurement standards, embedding AI literacy in curricula, and advocating for transparency and fair labor. Universities, especially when acting collectively, have leverage to influence AI providers. They can demand tools that respect privacy, reduce emissions, and avoid exploitative labor.

In other words, universities should take moral leadership—not by withdrawing, but by shaping the development and use of GenAI.

Choosing a Better Path

GenAI is not going away. The real question is how we engage with it—and on whose terms. Blanket bans may seem safe or principled, but they often achieve little and may create new harms.

Instead, universities should adopt a balanced approach. Acknowledge the risks. Respond to them—through institutional advocacy, ethical licensing, and student education. But also recognize the benefits of GenAI and prepare students to use it well.

In doing so, universities fulfill both moral and educational responsibilities: not by pretending GenAI doesn’t exist, but by helping shape the future it creates.

Karl de Fine Licht is Associate Professor in Ethics and Technology at Chalmers University of Technology. His research focuses on the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on public decision-making and higher education. He has published extensively on trustworthy AI, generative AI, and justice in technology governance, and regularly advises public and academic institutions on responsible AI use.

Economics / General / Governance / Liberty / Moral values / Punishment

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How much is too much? Why defining ‘mass incarceration’ is important – and isn’t as easy as it seems

In this post, Vincent Chiao, discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on how to understand the “mass” part of “mass incarceration.”

By Our World In Data. See English Wikipedia: Our World in Data. – https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prison-population-rate. CC BY 4.0,

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. On a per capita basis, the United States incarcerates at a higher rate than any other democracy, with the possible exception of El Salvador. Yet at the same time, a disturbingly large share of crime is never reported much less punished. This raises the simple question: how do we know when a penal system incarcerates too many people? Even as “mass incarceration” has become a staple of both academic research and political discourse over the last decade, and even as renewed attention has been paid to glaring racial disparities, the question of scale – how much is too much – has remained surprisingly elusive.

Why defining excess is not as easy as it seems.

It is tempting to think that it is sufficient to point to the sheer scale of incarceration in the United States. Tempting—but wrong. Most crimes in the United States go unpunished, including “core” crimes of interpersonal violence. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a third of robberies, half of aggravated assaults, and the overwhelming majority of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported, much less punished. Strikingly, one advocacy group estimates that there are approximately 433,000 sexual assaults in the United States every year, and that ‘out of every 1000 sexual assaults, 975 perpetrators will walk free.’ This implies that each year there are approximately 422,000 instances of sexual assault in which no one is held accountable. For context, that is strikingly close to the total number of people admitted to prison in 2021.

It is true that people tend to be incarcerated for longer in the United States than in other parts of the world, but that alone does not show that the United States incarcerates “too many” people. In part, this is because punishments of varying degrees of severity might all be in some sense “proportionate,” and in part because the large number of unpunished crimes creates significant headroom in incarceration rates. The United States could incarcerate many more people, and potentially incarcerate them for longer, without violating basic rights against punishing the innocent or disproportionate punishment of the guilty.

Otherwise put: incarceration rates tend to be driven more by policy than by crime. What makes this into a philosophical problem is principled disagreement about what we are trying to do when we punish people for committing crimes. Crime prevention? Reparation? Symbolic vindication? Rehabilitation? Something else? We tend to be more confident that criminals should be punished than we are as to why they should be punished. But that makes it difficult to say if what we are getting is too much, too little, or just about right.

What about crime prevention?

Crime prevention is the most common, and most popular, answer to “why do we punish criminals?” But it is easy to see why one might hesitate. “Is incarceration an efficient way of preventing crime?” quickly leads to comparing the interests of the innocent in not being victimized against the interests of the guilty in not being imprisoned. Not only is that a hard question to answer objectively, but it also involves intrusive value judgments that liberals have reason to eschew. Telling people that their safety isn’t “worth the cost” can easily sound condescending, particularly when the costs mostly fall on those who choose to break the law.

Three conceptions of excess

This presents a difficult, though not insurmountable, challenge. For starters, we could define excess incarceration in strictly Paretian terms: can we release people from jails and prisons without increasing crime? Since this approach makes some people better off without making anyone worse off, it does not require trading off different people’s interests.

Alternatively, we could consider whether alternative modes of preventing crime could substitute for incarceration, again holding crime constant. By holding crime constant, we would only be asking whether there are ways of controlling crime that have a less malign impact on people’s lives than prisons. This too does not involve weighing competing interests.

The main limitation of these approaches is that they take existing levels of criminal victimization as sacrosanct. As a result, a quite substantial degree of incarceration could potentially be justified if it prevented trivial increases in crime. That might lead us to seek a more demanding conception of excess. That will, however, require weighing competing interests – those of potential victims in not having their rights violated and those of potential prisoners in not being incarcerated. As noted, this can easily come across as condescending, and worse, as involving intrusive judgments of worth.

That said, it’s worth noting that very few people are absolutists about crime. Most of us regularly make practical trade-offs between convenience and safety, for instance, which routes we will walk, where to lock our bikes, whether to install a security system. These mundane decisions – along with jury awards, tangible costs, and survey data – reveal how people subjectively value safety versus other goods.

Such information would, of course, need to be carefully considered to control for morally salient biases. Nonetheless, the broader point is that a utilitarian conception of excess is not committed to paternalistically evaluating whether people are wrong to fear crime as much as they do. Its theory of value can be constructed from the bottom up rather than imposed from the top down. Doing so can help mitigate concerns about condescending or intrusive value judgments.

So what?

Mass incarceration is unjust. This is in part because the burdens of incarceration are unfairly distributed, but it is also in part because those burdens are excessive in absolute terms. The moral critique of mass incarceration thus depends on an analytical metric—a theory of what it is to incarcerate too many people. The metric we choose will tell us what it means to truly bring the era of mass incarceration to an end.

Vincent Chiao’s research interests are in public law, with a particular focus on the philosophy of criminal law. He is the author of Criminal Law in the Age of the Administrative State (OUP 2018). Themes in his work include the place of law in formal and informal social orders, punishment and the evolution of cooperation, and the rule of law as a social technology.

Academia / General / Pedagogy / Teaching / Teaching Philosophy

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Teaching Freedom: Revisiting Berlin’s Two Concepts

A photograph showing a tiled wall with an ornate pattern. A poster is stuck on the wall, with a drawing of a hand with a broken chain on it. The text reads "Libertad es Sagrada".
A poster on a wall. Photo provided by author.

This is a guest post by Nick Boden (University of Bristol)

Teachers and academics face questions relating to freedom each day. How will students engage with the material? How should students be in the learning environment? Are students free to choose tasks or are their choices constrained by the practitioners preferred methods? These questions place instructors at the centre of an ongoing debate about freedom. Is freedom simply the absence of constraints? Or is there more going on?

At first glance, Isaiah Berlin’s (1958) idea of positive and negative freedom offers a useful framework. Positive freedom can be thought of as “the freedom to”. Rules or regulations are put into place to increase the options available to you. Negative freedom is explained as “freedom from” constraints. Barriers are removed and options are available to you. For example, advocates of negative freedom would explain being left alone to make decisions and choices increases freedom. Whereas advocates of positive freedom would welcome things like welfare funding, taking away the “freedom from” taxes, to “provide freedom to” buy basic goods whilst unemployed. A form of collective freedom.

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General

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Is there a place for hope in law?

This post is co-authored with Kimberley Brownlee.

We humans are wired to hope. The very act of planning is fueled by hope that tomorrow will come, that the object of our hope is achievable, and that we will have the resolve to take concrete actions towards it.

Such a personal emotion might seem to have little place in the law. After all, hope is not something a court can simply grant. And yet, recent developments in European human rights law have begun to suggest that the law might have a role in fostering, or even protecting, the fragile social conditions that make hope possible. Specifically, European human rights law has begun to develop the idea that there may be a legal right to hope in the context of prison sentences, and particularly life sentences.[1] This refers to the notion that sentences must carry ‘a prospect of release and possibility of review’.[2] It raises a host of interesting questions – many of which were investigated at a recent LSE Law working paper series which we participated in.

Our view, shared by many contributors to that series, is that there should be a larger place for hope in the law. Hope is a crucial part of a human life. It is best understood as the emotional and cognitive counterpart to planning: it galvanizes our resolve and motivates us to act as if the hoped-for outcome were possible—even in the face of setbacks.[3] When you truly hope to finish that work project, learn to make sourdough, or develop a better relationship with a loved one, you take steps to make that happen – with an invested heart – despite the challenges that those tasks might give rise to.

No Explicit Right to Hope

Yet, the relationship between hope and the law is not a simple one because we cannot have an explicit right to hope. Rights are entitlements to treatment or resources. Yet, hope is neither a treatment nor a resource that anyone could supply; it is a subjective sense of positivity that a person feels. We can provide a person with adequate conditions in which to experience hope, but completing the puzzle requires that person to take up what is available to them. This introduces a key legal tension: while rights can secure external goods, hope is partly internal and volitional.

© Matt Perry

Nonetheless, hope is well-connected to other things that people can provide. Hope is a highly social enterprise. In hard times, our hopes are bolstered by our friends, family, and even memories of love and care. We also draw strength from the wider social world: in music, art, sport, and the sense of being seen and valued in community. Furthermore, the very things we hope for tend to be highly social.[4] Our hopes often revolve around connection—to love and be loved, to be accepted, valued, and needed.[5] In prison, hope might mean seeing family again, hugging our kids, being forgiven, starting over, or finding someone who accepts us despite our criminal record. Staying connected to those who believe in us is often key to change.

These thoughts speak in favour of a broader idea: that to secure hope, we ought not to focus on hope per se, but the conditions that allow hope to thrive in the first place.

What makes hope possible

Although we cannot have a right to hope, we can have rights to the things that make hope possible. Our capacity to hope rests on our sense of social recognition, inclusion, and acceptance. Hope and other forms of positivity such as joy, gratitude, and compassion, are cultivated in childhood as parts of a healthy emotional profile that we cannot develop without adequate nurturing from caregivers.[6] Moreover, we cannot sustain a healthy emotional profile over the course of our lives without adequate access to social inclusion.[7] To be able to hope, we have to feel that there is something worth hoping for – and so we have to feel that we are worthy of love and loving, and of basic forms of social attention and acceptance from others.

As a growing field of literature in philosophy is beginning to show,[8] these are things to which we can and should have a right. We should have rights to opportunities to form social bonds, to form lasting connections over time, to participate in the life of the community, and to avoid being exposed to the many risks that arise from isolation, ostracism, and marginalisation.[9] The banner statistic is that isolation and loneliness are worse for our health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.[10] A 2023 US National Advisory on Social Connection summarised recent findings that unwanted isolation and loneliness not only correlate with physical health morbidities, but also correlate with more overtly social and emotional ills such as anxiety, despondence, depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation and behaviour.[11]

So, although there may be no right to hope, there is a place for hope in the law: the law can foster and protect the conditions under which hope can survive and – ideally – thrive in community with others. Given the significance of the relationship between hope and sociality, the state must attend to the social pre-conditions for hope.

How to nurture hope

In the context of punishment, that means several practical things. Policies must focus on long-term, preventative measures. This begins in childhood, with stable environments, nurturing relationships, education, and social integration. For those in prison—especially serving life sentences—maintaining social connections is crucial, both with loved ones and within the prison community, requiring adequate visitation, social opportunities, and protection from harm. Mental health support is also essential to help individuals retain a sense of self-worth, which underpins their ability to hope. Finally, upon release, individuals must be met with strong social and material support to counter isolation and marginalisation, and to foster a renewed sense of belonging that can sustain hope and reduce recidivism.

Hope cannot be granted like a legal verdict. But it can be nurtured – through careful public policy, social connection, and the quiet recognition that no one is beyond the reach of redemption.

[1] See Sarah Trotter ‘Hope’s Relations: A Theory of the “Right to Hope” in European Human Rights Law’ (2022) 22 Human Rights Law Review.

[2] Vinter and Others v UK Applications Nos 66069/09 et al., Merits and Just Satisfaction (2013), para 12.

[3] See Victoria McGeer & Philip Pettit, ‘The self-regulating mind’ (2002), Language & Communication, 22(3), 281-299; Philip Pettit, P., ‘Hope and its place in mind’ (2004), The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 592(1), 152-165.

[4] Our claim here is not that the object of hope is always social in nature.

[5] Kimberley Brownlee, Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms (Oxford University Press 2020); Ariel Gordy, Helen Han Wei Luo, Margo Sidline & Kimberley Brownlee, ‘The missing measure of loneliness: A case for including neededness in loneliness scales’ (2021) International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(1).

[6] S. Matthew Liao, The Right to be Loved (Oxford University Press 2015).

[7] Matthew Lieberman, Social: Why our brains are wired to connect (Oxford University Press 2013), ch. 1.; Vivek Murthy, Office of the US Surgeon General, ‘Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The US Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community’ (2023), https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf.

[8] See e.g. Kimberley Brownlee (ed.), David Jenkins (ed.) & Adam Neal (ed.), Being Social: The Philosophy of Social Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2022).

[9] Liao, ‘The Right to be Loved.’

[10] Julianne Holt-Lunstad, ‘The Potential Public Health Relevance of Social Isolation and Loneliness: Prevalence, Epidemiology, and Risk Factors’ (2017), Public Policy and Aging Report 27, no. 4: 127–130.

[11] Murthy, ‘Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation’.

Economics / General / Liberty / Rights

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ARE NUDGES FAILING VULNERABLE POPULATIONS?

In this post, Viviana Ponce de León Solís discusses her article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on  how nudging interventions can have uneven effects on low-income individuals, potentially worsening inequalities.

Image by Reinhard Dietrich from Wikimedia Commons

Nudges can be powerful tools for influencing behavior, but their impact on vulnerable populations—especially low-socioeconomic status groups (SES)—remains a topic of debate. Research reveals three possible outcomes: these groups may respond more strongly, less strongly, or similarly to nudges compared to the general population. While the type of nudge—cognitive, affective, or behavioral—matters, the real key to success lies in the intervention’s design and its ability to address the unique barriers faced by the target audience. Without careful consideration, “one-size-fits-all” nudges risk deepening inequalities or stigmatizing vulnerable communities.

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Economics / General / Moral values / Work

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What’s so bad about workism?

In this post, Matthew Hammerton (Singapore Management University) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the phenomenon and value of people making work the primary source of meaning in their life.

Created with DeepAI

Some people center their life on work. They identify with their job and derive most of their life’s meaning from it. The writer Derek Thompson coined the term ‘workism’ to describe this phenomenon. Other people center their life on family (think of a stay-at-home parent who finds raising children deeply meaningful), a hobby, or something else entirely. Finally, some people don’t center their life on any single thing. Instead, they try to live a well-rounded life, drawing meaning and identity from a plurality of sources.

Are each of these lifestyles reasonable ways to live a life, or are some of them mistakes that lead to less fulfilling lives? In recent years, workism has come under fire and been dismissed as an especially poor life choice. In my article ‘What is wrong with workism?’ I challenge that view and defend workism as a viable way to live a good life. In case you are wondering, I am not a workist myself—I find meaning from a plurality of sources. Still, from a philosophical perspective, I don’t see what’s wrong with some people choosing to center their lives on work.  

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Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / Public Philosophy

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Beyond the Ivory Tower Interview with Toby Buckle

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, a conversation between Sara van Goozen and Toby Buckle. Toby Buckle runs the popular Political Philosophy Podcast. He has a BA in PPE from Oxford University and an MA in Political Philosophy from the University of York. He spent many years working with political and advocacy groups in the United States, such as Human Rights Campaign, Environment America,  Working Families Party and Amnesty International. He started his podcast around seven years ago, and has interviewed academics including Elizabeth Anderson, Orlando Patterson, Phillip Pettit, and Cecile Fabre, as well as politicians (such as Senator Sherrod Brown, or Civil Rights Commission Chair, Mary Francis Berry), commentators (such as Ian Dunt) and public figures (such as Derek Guy AKA Menswear Guy). He is the editor of What is Freedom? Conversations with Historians, Philosophers, and Activists (Oxford University Press, 2021). He writes regularly for Liberal Currents. In this interview, we discuss running a podcast, the enduring relevance of historical philosophers, and what young academics can do to build a public profile.

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General

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School attendance

According to the UK government, any child who misses more than 10% of school is “persistently absent” from school. Alarming news headlines inform us that this “persistent absence” is now at record rates of 20%. As a parent and a social philosopher interested in the topics of illness and disability, I find the guidance more worrying than these numbers.

Schools in the UK usually provide 190 days of instruction a year. Missing 10% or 19 days means missing just under 4 weeks of school. We have to remember, however, that these 190 days are not distributed randomly over the year. During the summer, when the number of contagious illnesses is lowest, there is a long break from school. The guidance does not differentiate according to age either. Schooling is compulsory between the ages of 5 and 18, which means children usually start school at age 4. While a 14 year old might be able to go to school with even a relatively bad cold, a 4 year old (or 7 year old) will not be able to do so. Small children delight in close proximity to each other – hence they are likely to pick up both head lice and viral illnesses more quickly from each other too than adults would. They are also likely to do things which result in injuries like broken bones. As a result they are likely to be ill more often. Family size also matters. According to a study conducted in 2009, families with one child had a respiratory viral infection in the household about a third of the time, but this rocketed to more than half the time for families with two or more children. By contrast, families with only adults had viral infections in the household only 7% of the time. Children are simply ill a lot. It is easy for them to miss two weeks of school between September and February, when schools start internal procedures to tackle “pesistent absence” half-way through the school year.

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Climate / Distribution / Economics / Environment / General / Governance

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Quo vadis carbon tax?

Carbon taxes represent a key part of humanity’s current strategy to avoid global warming above 2 degrees Celsius. They work by making carbon-intensive activities more expensive, thus encouraging individuals to reduce these activities. Given the existential threat climate change poses to our societies, one would hope that such a key policy tool was both effective and enjoyed broad public support. Neither of these things are true today. Why is that and what needs to change?

The carbon tax is a so-called steering tax. Its goal is to change people’s behaviour, not to raise revenue for the government. The current version of the carbon tax in place in most countries does not change people’s behaviour as effectively as it could and should. To see why, consider two frequently ignored facts.

First, rich people emit considerably more than the average person. Studies on socioenvironmental inequality estimate that the top 10% of emitters are responsible for about 50% of individual carbon emissions. Think of private jets, which emit up to 4.5 tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per hour, that is three times as much as the average human on the planet can emit per year if we want to meet our climate targets. Second, someone who falls in this category will usually not even bat an eye at a carbon price of, say, 100 Euros per tCO2e, let alone change their consumption habits. For context, the price of carbon in the European Union Emissions Trading System has oscillated around 80 Euros per tCO2e over the last three years.

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