LSE Philosophy Research: Moral and Political Philosophy — Transcript

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1. 0:04At LSE, we do moral and political
2. 0:06philosophy in the same way we do all
3. 0:09philosophy, which is in an
4. 0:10interdisciplinary manner and in a
5. 0:13socially relevant manner. So moral
6. 0:17philosophy is essentially about
7. 0:19questions such as what is a good or
8. 0:21flourishing life? What do we owe other
9. 0:23people? And what do we owe other
10. 0:25animals? Political philosophy looks at
11. 0:27questions at the level of states or
12. 0:30communities. We look at questions such
13. 0:32as how should we distribute benefits and
14. 0:34burdens fairly? Who should be part of a
15. 0:37community? And how should power be
16. 0:39exercised? In our department, we try to
17. 0:42answer these
18. 0:43questions by drawing on natural and
19. 0:46social science. So for example, we have
20. 0:48colleagues who work on animal sentience
21. 0:51and they draw on new insights from
22. 0:53animal sentience to propose ways in
23. 0:56which we should treat animals. And
24. 0:58that's one of the distinctive bits about
25. 1:00our department. How we try to shape
26. 1:03legislation, shape norms and policy
27. 1:06reports and work with civil society
28. 1:09organizations and even private companies
29. 1:12in order to improve the world.
30. 1:16Many countries have seen an increase in
31. 1:18divisive identity politics. But most
32. 1:20people tend to think that identity
33. 1:22politics is inherently at odds with the
34. 1:25ideal of deliberative democracy. Because
35. 1:27the liberative democracy is about a
36. 1:29rational exchange of reasons. One key
37. 1:32question in my research is whether
38. 1:34deliberative decision-m can decrease
39. 1:36identity based divisions. Is the
40. 1:38deliberative ideal still tenable in
41. 1:41deeply divided societies? and if so,
42. 1:44under which conditions do deliberative
43. 1:46interactions contribute to social
44. 1:48cohesion? Building on that, my research
45. 1:51explores the optimal design of
46. 1:52deliberative decision-making
47. 1:54institutions. Take the British electoral
48. 1:56system as an example. This system with
49. 2:00geographic electoral districts might not
50. 2:03encourage representatives to search for
51. 2:05a common good. It might rather
52. 2:07incentivize them to deepen social
53. 2:09divisions. I work on two questions in
54. 2:13justice. The first is distributive
55. 2:15justice. Who should get what? The second
56. 2:18question is about procedural justice.
57. 2:22Who should decide who gets what? Whose
58. 2:25views are taken into account and whose
59. 2:27interests are heard. I'm especially
60. 2:29proud of working together with people
61. 2:31from lots of different disciplines,
62. 2:33health policy, health economics, public
63. 2:36health, and policy makers to develop two
64. 2:39reports on the two aspects of justice
65. 2:41that are the focus of my research. The
66. 2:43first one for the World Health
67. 2:45Organization was on fair priority
68. 2:47setting with limited resources. The
69. 2:49second one for the World Bank is on how
70. 2:52to make decisions fairly to finance
71. 2:55universal health coverage.
72. 2:59[Music]
73. 3:01So much of my research is about the
74. 3:03ethics of causing harm on the one hand
75. 3:05and protecting people from harm on the
76. 3:07other. Now, what's fascinating but very
77. 3:09difficult about these questions is that
78. 3:11they're often intertwined. In some
79. 3:13cases, it's not possible to protect
80. 3:14people from harm without causing harm in
81. 3:16the process. So, think about cases of
82. 3:18self-defense or war or even justified
83. 3:22violence against oppression. Much of my
84. 3:24research aims to uncover the principles
85. 3:27which can help us distinguish cases of
86. 3:29justified force from unjustified. I've
87. 3:31recently been awarded funding to work on
88. 3:33a project which explores the tension
89. 3:35between protecting people from harm
90. 3:37while respecting their autonomy. The
91. 3:39project is called not in my name, the
92. 3:40ethics of acting for others. One thing
93. 3:42I'm particularly proud of is that my
94. 3:44research directly informs my teaching at
95. 3:46the LSC. I've learned a lot from my
96. 3:48discussions in the classrooms with my
97. 3:49students and I've recently completed a
98. 3:51textbook on the ethics of humanitarian
99. 3:53intervention to help me better introduce
100. 3:55students to those discussions. So my
101. 3:57research focuses on war, poverty, and
102. 4:00migration. We tend to think of these
103. 4:02issues as distinct, but what I've
104. 4:05explored is the ways in which these
105. 4:07issues are actually philosophically
106. 4:09connected. So for instance, when it
107. 4:11comes to
108. 4:12war, when we think about the arguments
109. 4:15against fighting certain wars, we tend
110. 4:18to think about the direct costs of the
111. 4:20violence or the lives lost or the
112. 4:23property destroyed. What gets missed is
113. 4:26the opportunity costs. So that's all the
114. 4:30things that we could have done had the
115. 4:32money that was spent on the war been
116. 4:35directed elsewhere. So for instance, one
117. 4:38possible opportunity cost of war is a
118. 4:42failure to address poverty. And the
119. 4:44thought I've had is that once you factor
120. 4:46in these opportunity cost of war, some
121. 4:50of the wars that we might think could
122. 4:52possibly be justified might turn out to
123. 4:54be unjust. So one thing I'm proud of is
124. 4:57the work I've done in terms of public
125. 4:59facing philosophy. So I think it's so
126. 5:01important to share your research,
127. 5:03whether it's with people who've had
128. 5:05experience in philosophy or no
129. 5:07experience at all. So one thing I've
130. 5:08done is I put on a show at the Edinburgh
131. 5:12Festival that talked about these really
132. 5:15important issues concerning the ethics
133. 5:17of war, but did so using humor and drama
134. 5:22and public debate.
135. 5:24[Music]
136. 5:27The LSC philosophy department is an
137. 5:30amazing place to work in. It's full of
138. 5:33different people looking at different
139. 5:35problems from different perspective. And
140. 5:38in addition to that, we have the
141. 5:39students. They are always the perfect
142. 5:42sounding board to test our research. I
143. 5:45am interested in the power of images. I
144. 5:48am interested in understanding whether
145. 5:50we could learn about philosophical
146. 5:53concepts by looking at them by seeing
147. 5:56them. So imagine how would it look to
148. 5:59visualize the concept of political unity
149. 6:03or the concept of consent or the
150. 6:06philosophical idea of the general will
151. 6:09or the social contract. What would they
152. 6:11look like visually? My research explores
153. 6:15this possibility of learning from our
154. 6:19political vocabulary through the power
155. 6:22of images. We live in a radically visual
156. 6:26culture. So I'm trying to use AI image
157. 6:29generators to push the limits of this
158. 6:32connection I'm trying to draw between
159. 6:34philosophy and visual images. When I
160. 6:37think about our department, which I
161. 6:39joined 20 years ago, one of the things
162. 6:42I'm most excited about is how much we've
163. 6:44grown and how many new areas of moral
164. 6:47and political philosophy we cover. When
165. 6:49I joined, it was just me and one or two
166. 6:51others primarily doing questions in
167. 6:53distributive justice. And now we have
168. 6:56well over a dozen researchers doing
169. 7:00questions such as migration, war, animal
170. 7:03rights, ethics, and AI. And the list
171. 7:06keeps growing. I'm super excited to see
172. 7:08what's going to come next.