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In the CAVE: An ethics podcast, is back with Season 7 of the show! Join your hosts, Professor Paul Formosa and Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers, from the Macquarie University Ethics and Agency Research Centre, as they explore a range of philosophical topics focused on the question of how we can live well as moral agents in an ethically complex world.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Applied ethics and moral agency • AI: alignment, copyright, authorship, education, workplace, gender, social robots • Health ethics: conscientious objection, devices, uterus transplant, pandemic • Food/animal ethics • Belief, rationality, conspiracy theories • Race, religion, democracy • Memory, identity, loneliness • Tech attention economy • Conservation biotech • Morality in games and filmThis podcast is an academic ethics and philosophy show hosted by Macquarie University scholars Paul Formosa and Wendy Rogers (with occasional guest hosting). Across its episodes, it uses contemporary controversies and everyday practices as entry points into normative and conceptual questions about how to live well as moral agents in a complex social and technological world.
A recurring theme is the ethical impact of emerging technologies. The discussions examine generative AI in relation to copyright, creative labor, authorship, education, alignment and safety, and the wider risks of low-quality synthetic content. Related episodes consider social robots and voice assistants, including how design choices such as gendered “personalities” shape human behavior, and how digital platforms and smartphones influence attention, mind-wandering, radicalisation, and belief formation.
The podcast also returns often to moral psychology and epistemology: how beliefs relate to emotion, why people maintain “bad beliefs,” whether conspiracy-theory endorsements reflect sincere belief, and how emotions like anger figure in practices of moral responsibility. Several conversations connect these issues to social power and injustice, including deliberative exclusion in democracy, epistemic appropriation of concepts originating in marginalized communities, and philosophical debates about race as a social kind.
Bioethics and applied ethics are another core strand, with attention to healthcare conflicts and institutions: conscientious objection, AI in clinical decision-making, medical device company representatives’ dual roles, pandemic moral dilemmas, gender bias in surgery, reproductive technologies such as uterus transplantation, and the ethics of using animals in research. Environmental and food ethics also appear through discussions of animal welfare, meat consumption, milk production, sustainability claims, and the prospects of synthetic biology in conservation.
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Special Episode: AI, Copyright, and Model Collapse, with Professor Alain Strowel 2025-Aug-26 30 minutes |
Ontology and the Ethics of Milk: A Relational Materialist Approach2025-Jul-22 25 minutes |
Loneliness and Being Other/ed in Autism2025-Jul-15 29 minutes |
Synthetic Biology and the Goals of Conservation, with Christopher Lean2025-Jul-08 31 minutes |
Feeling is Believing? Exploring Belief as Emotion with Professor Miriam Schleifer McCormick2025-Jul-01 31 minutes |
The Gamer's Dilemma: Navigating Morality in Virtual Worlds, with Dr. Tom Montefiore2025-Jun-25 27 minutes |
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Public Reason and Conscientious Objection in Healthcare, with Dr Doug McConnell 2025-Apr-10 34 minutes |
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Do People Really Believe in Conspiracy Theories? With Dr Robert Ross 2025-Apr-10 17 minutes |
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Can ChatGTP be an author? Exploring the ethics of AI creative writing assistance with Paul Formosa. 2025-Mar-03 33 minutes |
Exploring the roles of medical device reps in Australian hospitals: ethical challenges, with Dr Brette Blakely2025-Feb-24 30 minutes |
The law and religious privilege, with Mareike Riedel2024-Jul-16 30 minutes |
Epistemic Appropriation and the history of being “woke”, with Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky2024-Jul-09 27 minutes |
Film-Philosophy, Cinematic Ethics and the Transformative Experience of Film, with Robert Sinnerbrink2024-Jul-02 33 minutes |
Empathy, Moral Understandings and Psychopaths with Heidi Maibom2024-Jun-25 29 minutes |
AI Special Series Pt 3: Responsible AI and the Future of Education, with Virginia Dignum2024-Jun-18 18 minutes |
AI Special Series Pt 2: Generative AI and Copyright – Where to from here? With Rita Matulionyte2024-Jun-11 26 minutes |
AI Special Series Pt 1: The AI Alignment Problem, with Raphaël Millière2024-Jun-04 28 minutes |
Should we aim for a world without work? With Jean-Philippe Deranty2023-Dec-12 42 minutes |
From Theory to Practice: The Ethics of Uterus Transplantation with Mianna Lotz2023-Dec-05 28 minutes |
Legal Identity and Human Rights with Christopher Sperfeldt2023-Nov-28 23 minutes |
AI, Robots and Gender with Inês Hipólito2023-Nov-21 26 minutes |
AI, Ethics and Meaningful Work with Sarah Bankins2023-Nov-14 24 minutes |
Do human races exist? An exploration of social constructionism about race with Adam Hochman2023-May-15 22 minutes |
Remembering and self-narratives with Regina Fabry2023-May-08 24 minutes |
The Pleistocene Social Contract with Kim Sterelny2023-May-01 21 minutes |
Animal welfare and food ethics with Rachel Ankeny2023-Apr-24 27 minutes |
Smartphones, mind-wandering, and the attention economy with Jelle Bruineberg2023-Apr-17 17 minutes |
Exclusion and Uptake in Deliberative Democracy with Professor Sarah Sorial2022-Sep-20 18 minutes |
Bad Beliefs with Professor Neil Levy2022-Sep-13 18 minutes |
Enculturation, Cognition and Technology with Professor Richard Menary2022-Sep-06 19 minutes |
Moral Conflicts in a Pandemic with Professor Wendy Lipworth2022-Aug-30 15 minutes |
Moral Responsibility and Anger with Professor Michael McKenna2022-Aug-23 30 minutes |
In the CAVE Season Two Coming this Wednesday!2022-Aug-22 1 minute |
Gender Bias in Surgery with Dr Katrina Hutchison2022-Feb-14 29 minutes |
YouTube, Radicalisation, and Conspiracy Theories with A/Prof Mark Alfano2022-Feb-14 14 minutes |
The Ethics of using Animals in Research with Dr Jane Johnson2022-Feb-14 14 minutes |
The Ethics of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare with Professor Wendy Rogers2022-Feb-14 18 minutes |
The Ethical Impacts of Social Robots on Human Autonomy with A/Prof Paul Formosa2022-Feb-14 21 minutes |