Expanding our moral circle

Philosopher's Zone

#Australia #Philosophy #Society #ABC Radio Nationals

27:29

Gary Sinise is an award winning actor, on the stage, TV and big screen. He is best known for playing Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump. Inspired by this role and his family members, Gary is now the head of the Gary Sinise Foundation, which offers support for service members who need help with mental wellness, trauma, physical recovery, and loss. He Also plays concerts worldwide for our nation’s defenders and their families, boosting morale and offering gratitude for their sacrifices as part of the Lt. Dan Band. Jay and Gary discuss the changing needs of American service members and their families, the many services the Gary Sinise Foundation provides, how Gary’s work helped him through personal loss and much more. Today's episode was produced by Tani Levitt and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website Allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation. Episode Chapters (0:00) intro (1:11) Veterans’ changing needs over the past half century (7:57) Veterans’ appreciation of Gary’s portrayal of Lt. Dan (10:25) By helping others, we step out of ourselves (11:46) The Lt. Dan Band (15:29) How the death of Gary’s son Mac impacts his activism (17:33) Bringing services to American heroes wherever they are (19:45) Accurate portrayals of veterans in film and TV (20:58) How can people get involved with the Gary Sinise foundation (24:24) Goodbye For video episodes, watch on www.youtube.com/@therudermanfamilyfoundation Stay in touch: X: @JayRuderman | @RudermanFdn LinkedIn: Jay Ruderman | Ruderman Family Foundation Instagram: All About Change Podcast | Ruderman Family Foundation To learn more about the podcast, visit https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/ Looking for more insights into the world of activism? Be sure to check out Jay’s brand new book, Find Your Fight , in which Jay teaches the next generation of activists and advocates how to step up and bring about lasting change. You can find Find Your Fight wherever you buy your books, and you can learn more about it at ⁠⁠www.jayruderman.com⁠⁠ .…

about a year ago 39:45

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Our "moral circle" encompasses fellow humans, other primates, dogs, cats and other animals to which we attribute feelings and interests. But as science teaches us more about the inner lives of insects, marine animals and even microbes, it becomes more and more apparent that we might need to include them in our moral circle as well. Furthermore, we may need to bestow moral significance on an upcoming population of artificial intelligences. How can we possibly care for them all, and accommodate their various conflicting interests?

955 episodes

Expanding our moral circle

Philosopher's Zone

3,378 subscribers

published about a year ago

MP3•Episode home

955 episodes

#Australia #Philosophy #Society #ABC Radio Nationals

All episodes

1
Nationalism and immigration 33:12

11 hours ago33:12

33:12

Nationalism is often associated with rightwing politics and anti-immigration sentiment - but is that a necessary connection? This week we're looking at various forms of nationalism, and asking if there's something about the structure of the nation-state itself that fosters an exclusionary attitude to outsiders.…

1
Speech acts and AI 34:39

7 days ago34:39

34:39

Speech acts - utterances that have the power to make things happen in the world - are increasingly being created by AI, especially in certain workplaces where it's not uncommon to receive orders and instructions from an algorithm. The power of a speech act is often understood as emanating from the intention of its author - but if AI lacks the capacity for intention, how much authority do AI-generated workplace commands really have?…

1
Belief, emotion and trust 35:30

14 days ago35:30

35:30

The traditional philosophical view of belief is that it's a rational cognitive affair, evidence based and directed toward truth. According to this account, things like delusion and religious belief are "edge cases", exceptions that prove the rule. But this week we're considering not only that belief may be closely tied to emotion, but that it may actually be a form of emotion itself.…

1
In defence of workism 31:00

22 days ago31:00

31:00

"Workism" is defined as the tendency to put work at the centre of one's identity and life meaning - and according to many recent commentators, it's a bad thing. Workism is said to throw life out of balance, and to expose workists to the risk of deep existential trauma if they lose their job. But according to this week's guest, the arguments against workism don't stack up.…

1
How feminism changed primatology 34:15

29 days ago34:15

34:15

For decades, primatologists believed that primate societies were structured around aggressive alpha males - until a remarkable push from feminist scientists in the 1960s and 70s changed the narrative. So why does the "dominant alpha male" story persist in human culture?

1
History and the left 28:25

5 weeks ago28:25

28:25

The defeat of the Democrats in last November's Presidential election has prompted much soul-searching on the political left. But according to this week's guest, there's still an important point being missed: the fact that while the left pays close attention to historical injustices committed by the West, it's strangely blind to its own history of complicity with oppression.…

1
Henri Bergson, philosopher of past and future 34:21

6 weeks ago34:21

34:21

100 years ago, Henri Bergson was the most famous philosopher on earth, drawing traffic-stopping crowds to his public lectures and scandalising the French intellectual elite with his popularity among women. His ideas resonated at a time when people were anxious about the rise of new and strange scientific discoveries and technologies - which makes him a thinker well worth exploring in 2025.…

1
Style wars pt 2: Scandals and hoaxes 31:09

7 weeks ago31:09

31:09

What should we think when an academic Humanities journal unsuspectingly publishes a paper that's been written as a hoax, full of fashionable jargon and deliberately specious arguments? Does this demonstrate that the Humanities set a higher value on shallow intellectual trends than on rigorous scholarship - or is there something more nuanced and complicated going on?…

1
Style wars pt 1: Postwar France and a new philosophical mode 33:03

8 weeks ago33:03

33:03

In the aftermath of the Second World War, France was in a state of creative ferment that affected politics, culture - and philosophy. A new mode of philosophical writing emerged in the form of the review, and it was being done in an idiom that we've since come to recognise as typical of modern French theory: dense, experimental, multivocal, open-ended, very much the opposite of traditional analytic philosophical style. It grabbed scholarly attention then, and is still controversial today.…

1
LIVE EVENT: What use is philosophy? 51:32

9 weeks ago51:32

51:32

Does philosophy answer questions, or just keep asking them over and over again? Some say that compared to the sciences, philosophy has few runs on the board when it comes to measurable results. And then there's the issue of sexism in the discipline, and Western philosophy's colonial past. In this live panel discussion recorded in Brisbane, we put philosophy's feet to the fire.…

1
Queer theory and animal rights 37:08

10 weeks ago37:08

37:08

This week we're exploring links between queer liberation and animal subjugation, and discovering how the struggles for acceptable queer identity are often entwined with entrenching animal exploitation. Along the way we get into some fascinating history of sexual violence, colonial constructs of the human, and those ever-shifting categories of "natural" and "deviant" behaviour. This program includes themes of sexual assault and animal abuse that some listeners may find distressing.…

1
AI, reliability and trust 33:45

11 weeks ago33:45

33:45

AI is making all kinds of important decisions for us these days, but how far can we trust it? Or rather, what kind of trust is appropriate to bring to AI? The inner workings of "black box" AI are inscrutable even to its creators, so if transparency and explainability are essential to the development of trust, then we could be in trouble. It all depends on how we think about trust.…

1
Innocence and "child rescue" in the colonial imagination 37:26

12 weeks ago37:26

37:26

The forced removal of First Nations children from their families was active government policy in Australia between the 1910s and the 1970s, and still continues today under the banner of child protection. Today we're hearing that the story of the Stolen Generation has a historical parallel in the "child rescue" movement in 19th century Britain, when so-called "ragged children" were taken from their families - in many cases, abducted - and placed in institutions, to be trained and moulded into productive citizens.…

1
What is a conspiracy theory? 28:11

13 weeks ago28:11

28:11

We all feel we know what a conspiracy theory is: it's a belief held by other people about a conspiracy or conspiracies. Nobody likes being identified as a conspiracy theorist - including conspiracy theorists - and this makes life difficult for social scientists, psychologists and other researchers. When it comes to philosophy and the business of nailing down exactly what a conspiracy theory is, things get even muddier.…

1
Getting past post-truth 38:00

14 weeks ago38:00