Being better is possible
There is a reason why the topic of ethics has been of enduring importance for thousands of years. It is not simply that it represents humanity’s best attempt to define what makes for a good life. Beyond that, ethics is based on a deep understanding of how human agency shapes the world we inhabit.
This understanding begins with the recognition that nearly everything we encounter in life could have been different… but for the choices made by other people. Limited only by the laws of physics, human choice is the most powerful force on this planet. So, naturally, understanding the deep structure of human choice is of immense significance. Because only then can we really explain the world.
Ethics touches every aspect of our daily lives. Understanding this is especially important in times of profound and unsettling change; such as we experience today. At the global level, we are confronted by increasing geopolitical instability, threats to social cohesion and deep uncertainty about whether powerful technologies, like AI, will be a blessing or a curse for humanity. These larger forces ultimately translate into the ‘bread and butter’ issues of daily life – job security, access to affordable health care, housing and energy… the thousands of variables that affect us for better or for worse. Many of those issues coalesce in concerns about the kind of world that will be inherited by our children and unborn future generations. In essence, will Australia realise its potential to be a secure, just and prosperous nation or, will we elect to be something less than we might have been – if only we had chosen more wisely?
The Ethics Centre has a vision for the kind of world we hope to support. Our initiatives which include developing critical thinking skills in young Australians through our education programs, strengthening social cohesion through live events such as Festival of Dangerous ideas, creating decision making frameworks for businesses, and providing free, accessible ethics counselling help support a world in which “privilege has been tempered by fairness; in which power has been checked by conscience; in which good and right prevail – for the benefit of all”. This might seem a little ‘abstract’ or, perhaps, naïve. But one needs only to look at the state of the world to see how different things could be if such an ideal was given practical effect.
We reject the idea that it is ‘naïve’ to hope for something better. In fact, we positively embrace this possibility. We place the emphasis on being ‘better’ – not perfect, just better. We choose ‘better’ because ‘better’ is possible. It is within the reach of every person’s grasp. No matter how small the choice we make, the collective impact can be colossal.
So, what does it mean to ‘choose better’? It might be a word of thanks to someone who assists you. It could be found in a morning greeting to the person who sits next to you on the bus. It might be the willingness to pay a few cents more for the eggs laid by free-range chooks. It could be checking in with someone who appears to be distressed. It could be ‘playing fair’ rather than by exploiting a loophole in the rules of the game. The list of possibilities is endless. That is, ‘better’ need not involve grand gestures and inspiring acts of heroism. So, this is not an agenda for those privileged by wealth, power or opportunity. Yes, the relatively powerful have the capacity to make a larger contribution to the greater good. But we are all equal in being able to do something – proportional to our capacity – to make a positive difference to the world.
We need to hold firm to this truth – and reject any suggestion that our efforts to be and do better are futile.
As you go about your life, I would invite you to pause and look around at the world that surrounds you… and wonder. How did the familiar landscape come to be the way it is? How different might the built environment have been but for the choices made? What drove those choices? What values and principles are embedded in the physical forms you encounter? Are the institutions you rely upon realising or betraying their purposes? What lies behind the actions of the people with whom you meet and interact? What is driving the behaviour you observe and experience?
There are plenty of things to be concerned about in the world – many good causes deserving our support. Homelessness, disadvantage, discrimination and other forms of injustice… these are just some of the ills that trouble society. All are the symptoms of ethical failure. Like any symptom, each must be attended to. But if we care equally about prevention, rather than cure alone, then it is essential that we invest in Australia’s ‘ethical infrastructure’. That is the essence of The Ethics Centre’s appeal for ongoing support – an appeal that asks us to invest in the deep structures that determine the contours of our lives. We thank everyone who supports this work; for choosing to make a better world.
The Ethics Centre equips Australians with the practical tools to navigate a complex world. Help us continue our work by making a tax-deductible donation to our Annual Appeal before 30 June.
BY Simon Longstaff
Simon Longstaff began his working life on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory of Australia. He is proud of his kinship ties to the Anindilyakwa people. After a period studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, he pursued postgraduate studies as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.” Simon is an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW, a Fellow of CPA Australia, the Royal Society of NSW and the Australian Risk Policy Institute.
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Ethics Explainer: The Trolley Problem
Imagine you are the driver of a runaway trolley (tram) that is barrelling down the tracks towards five workers. You have the option to do nothing and let five people be run over, or the option to divert the trolley onto another track and kill one person on the other track instead.
This is Philippa Foot’s famous trolley problem, popularised by Judith Jarvis Thompson. This thought experiment encourages us to interrogate our moral intuitions and think about the moral differences between actively causing death (pulling a lever to get the trolley to change tracks) and passively or indirectly causing death (doing nothing, allowing the trolley to kill five people).
The doctrine of double effect
The problem comes from Foot’s most influential paper The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect, published in 1967. Here, she talks about the Doctrine of the Double Effect, which explains why some actions might be permissible because of their intent and positive outcomes, despite their foreseeable negative outcomes as well. The trolley problem is one example where the doctrine of double effect can be employed, but she also uses various other cases.
Foot says, “The words ‘double effect’ refer to the two effects that an action may produce: the one aimed at, and the one foreseen but in no way desired. By ‘the doctrine of the double effect’ I mean the thesis that it is sometimes permissible to bring about by oblique intention what one may not directly intend.”
In this way, it’s arguable that pulling the lever in the trolley problem is permissible because of the intention to prevent the trolley from running over five people, despite the foreseeable (but undesired) result of the action also being that the trolley runs over one person.
Utilitarianism
This thought experiment has become commonly associated with the ethical framework of consequentialism, or more specifically utilitarianism: a framework that prioritises the greatest good for the greatest number. Philosophers have used the trolley problem, and endless variations of it, to argue both for and against utilitarianism, with classic utilitarian views arguing that it would be morally preferable (and thus obligatory) to pull the lever.
There has also been much discourse about whether trolley problems are a useful measure of utilitarianism at all. The objections tend to mirror general objections to the emphasis of thought experiments – specifically, that they are unrealistic and unrepresentative and that they tend to elicit different psychological reactions than real moral situations. Despite this, they remain prevalent in philosophy, law, psychology and everyday media.
The self-driving trolley problem
One of the main criticisms of the trolley problem is its apparent inapplicability to reality: When in our everyday lives are we faced with such black-and-white situations where the outcomes of our actions are so prescribed and dire?
Historically, this may have been a compelling argument, but for many years technology has been advancing to such a degree that the trolley problem is quickly becoming a reality. Not because there has been an increase in out-of-control trains, but because of self-driving vehicles.
If an autonomous car has to “choose” between hitting one person head-on or steering off the road towards a group of people in an unavoidable collision situation, which is preferable? In a regular car, we rely on reflex and deal with the fallout with relatively little moral culpability. Autonomous cars are preprogrammed, though. They can be designed to deal with emergency situations decisively and in a more “thoughtful” way than any human would be able to respond.
Part of this design essentially entails reckoning with many variations on the trolley problem. Researchers from MIT ran a survey called Moral Machine from 2016–2020 that aimed to gauge public opinion on how machines should make decisions when faced with these kinds of moral dilemmas. The results varied greatly between the 200+ participating countries – with, for example, some cultures prioritising the young over the old, and others showing the opposite preference – demonstrating a clear cultural relativity in how we resolve ethical trade-offs.
This raises questions about implementation and enforcement. Should there be global standards for autonomous vehicle logic? Should we allow a level of customisation to reflect cultural or personal moral preferences?
What was once a thought experiment reserved for philosophy classrooms is now a very live debate, one that will only become more important as the technology spreads.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
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A cage called freedom: Cultural diversity in contemporary literature
As a writer and reader, I am unequivocally conscious of the blatant lack of cultural representation evident in the art I consume.
Historical power dynamics, not limited to patriarchy and white supremacy, have catalysed a passive acceptance for this inequality by engraining prejudice into Western society and culture. This results in those who are otherwise supportive of diversity remaining acquiescent, and others believing that such discrimination is unproblematic. While this inequity is reflected in the literary world, storytelling has historically acted as a medium to expose injustice and advocate for marginalised communities. Yet power structures supporting mainstream groups ensures that many such texts remain difficult to obtain and lack recognition in contemporary society.
I am embarrassed to admit that the first book I read by a culturally diverse woman was this year, partly due to my own fault of not seeking out such an author sooner. But more significantly due to the fact that I was never exposed to such authors – their stories not often easily accessible. This seems to be the norm in Western societies, and the comfortable bubble created by and for cultural majorities makes it difficult for diversity to be considered in mainstream literature.
As writer Magdalene Abraha notes, authors who have fractured through this bubble encounter alternative obstacles, often feeling pressured to write on topics of race, discrimination, and gender, or ‘write what you know’. She goes on to identify how authors have been rejected on the merits that their books aren’t representative enough of these topics. However, it is not the responsibility of culturally diverse women to educate others on the reality of race, gender, and discrimination. This underlying expectation limits them by their identity rather than their creativity, contrasting with the artistic freedom that white male authors enjoy.
The alternative side to this concept is that stories that do explore discrimination, race, and the identities of culturally diverse women are often seen as being political texts. So much so that many stories, like The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas, have been banned due to ‘heavy content’, where this ‘heavy content’ is an accurate representation of reality for a cultural minority.
Cynthia Robinson Young, another woman and author of colour, states that “…pretty much everything I write is political. It isn’t intentional. I thought it was life”, for even in the mindset of contemporary society, cultural representation is viewed as a challenge against white supremacy. As a young writer this is an odd and somewhat unsettling concept to comprehend, that my own story should be considered inherently political.
The paradoxical nature of the literary world offers the illusion of cultural celebration, advocating that ethnically diverse authors are free to write their truths and pour their culture onto the page. Many bookstores now have a special category dedicated to culturally diverse authors, protagonists are more diversified, stories are more subjective, and social media trends offer recommendations to diversify one’s bookshelf, a collection of the same popular books recycled by different content creators. Although, I fear that this is just a trendy facade.
For how many culturally diverse women can create without their gender or ethnicity interfering with their writing, book sales, promotions, and overall ability to become published in the first place? It is a cage masked by the title ‘freedom’.
Editor Seema Mahaniam highlights how systematic oppression of culturally diverse women still exists in the literary world. They are not granted the same opportunities as white authors and should their debut novel fail to meet advancements, it is viewed as a reflection of all ethnic authors. As a culturally diverse woman, I can’t help but feel a sense of bitterness to this knowledge. Why is it that in contemporary society, in a world where equality and diversity is spoken about at nearly every corner, my identity should still be seen as a barrier?
“Literary agents say that publishers’ appetite for books that examine race and racism has dwindled… the literary landscape still skews heavily toward white writers.”
The movement for cultural inclusion has been ongoing for decades, and statical evidence indicates that little change has been made despite recent advertisements of cultural inclusion. The 2014 hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks and 2020’s #PublishingPaidMe revealed an alarming discrepancy between the book sales and advancements for white and culturally diverse authors. A 2018 study by The First Nations and People of Colour Writers Count indicated that of 1000 Australian books only 1% were by First Nation authors and 7% by culturally diverse authors. In 2023, Lee & Low released a report indicating that white employees overwhelmed their publishing workforce, totalling 72.5%. Such statistical evidence reveals the reality of cultural diversity in literature; that is to say, it’s fictitious.
Of course, ethnic representation in stories is significant to offer culturally diverse readers the opportunity to feel a sense of empowerment within self-identity and culture. However, I never found myself bothered by this as a child. I loved stories purely for what they offered a shy and somewhat lonely little girl. Magic, escapism from the racism battled in school, and a sense of wonder in a not-so-wonderful world.
It was normal that all authors were white, as were most characters, and therefore I didn’t question it. Rather, I sought connections with characters via their personalities, and it wasn’t until I read Zoya Patel’s Reflections on Representation that I realised how common this experience is for many culturally diverse readers. Through analysis of her personal experience and literary ethics, she explores how cultural representation in literature presents an opportunity for readers from cultural majorities to engage with diversity by understanding the perspectives, struggles, and morals of characters who depict ethnic minorities. Our shared experience indicates that culturally diverse women have fostered an ability to seek self-representation in literature regardless of cultural divergences. Empathising with human experience is not limited by ethnicity, culture, or gender identity and is something any reader can achieve. In reflection of this concept, I hope that the rationing of culturally diverse women is removed with the continuous challenging of white supremacy standards.
Storytelling holds the capability to offer avenues of understanding and compassion, promoting equality while exposing the realities of ethnic and gender diversity for many writers. Literature, like all art, is reflective of our world and thus should accurately communicate this diversity through both art and artist. As a writer and reader, I hope for the day when books by culturally diverse women may sit on a bookshelf, alongside other works, without the need for justification or the labelling of their divergence.
A Cage Called Freedom: Cultural Diversity in Contemporary Literature by Sheona Tattersall is one of the Highly Commended essays in our Young Writers’ 2025 Competition. Find out more about the competition here.
BY Sheona Tattersall
Sheona is currently a Master of Arts (Writing and Literature) student. She has a passion for creative writing and an interest in exploring the ethics of literature and diversity.
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The Drama raises the thorny question of what it means to lie to those we love
Let’s say you’re on your way to a first date. You’re entering into a situation that requires you to present the best version of yourself. It’s unlikely that you’ll begin by talking about something heinous you once did – bullying someone, stealing from a loved one, or even just committing some minor act of very human cruelty.
And if you did obscure that part of your past, no-one at this stage would judge you – we don’t expect immediate and totalising honesty, not even in the initial stages of intimacy. But we do tend to expect honesty at some point. The question is: when?
The Drama, the new film by provocateur Kristoffer Borgli, dramatises this extraordinarily thorny question of honesty in relationships, and the question of what we owe our partners. In Borgli’s black comedy, a relationship unravels after it comes to light that Emma (Zendaya) has withheld from her hubby-to-be Charlie (Robert Pattinson) that she once planned – but crucially, did not go through with – a school shooting.
Charlie’s ensuing spiral of doubts make sense: he thought he knew his partner fully. This revelation reveals that he didn’t.
Ethically permissible lies versus deception
So at what point did Emma start deceiving Charlie – and did she ever owe him this particular truth? If she had revealed on their first meeting that she had once prepared to mow down her fellow students, nobody would expect her to get a second date.
If Emma was an actual murderer, he would have been owed such knowledge much earlier. But given Emma didn’t actually commit an act of bloodshed, Borgli’s masterstroke is choosing a boundary case; one which we do, as an audience, find as shocking as Charlie, but doesn’t exactly fall into the domain of total deception.
Clearly, Charlie feels he should have known about Emma’s one-time plans. We might agree with him. Yet there’s no exact moment when that permissible lie turns into deception. We’d find it ridiculous to believe that there could be some arbitrary line – two years into the relationship, say – when her behaviour shifts from acceptable to unacceptable.
And then there’s the murkiness of the potential act itself. Let’s invert the revelation at the heart of The Drama, to try and discover what exactly keeps prodding at both Charlie, and at us. What if, instead of once planning a violent act that she then kept under wraps, Emma had hidden a kind act, an ethical act? What if she’d once donated a kidney and never told Charlie?
In that case, we’d expect him to be surprised, maybe. But we wouldn’t expect him to be shocked. And we certainly wouldn’t expect him to unravel.
What we learn then is that the potential crime here is not just that Emma lied: it’s that she theoretically benefited from that lie. If she’d told the truth about the planned shooting, she would have run the risk of Charlie leaving her, or the relationship falling apart. Lying about it thus gets her more of what she wants – Charlie’s love – and less of what she doesn’t – punishment, loneliness, pain.
Conversely, hiding an ethically positive act doesn’t seem wrong to us, because there’s no perceived benefit from the deception – if anything, this hypothetically virtuous Emma would be hindering herself by not getting deserved plaudits for her good actions.
But that in turn leads to an even bigger question. Does Emma actually deserve to be hindered by what she did?
The extraordinary nature of forgiveness
Again, The Drama would be much less thorny – and much less interesting – if Emma had committed a clear ethical wrong. A movie where she obscured a murder in her past would prompt a cleaner emotional reaction from the audience: impossible to forgive.
But the desire to murder is not something that we tend to find unforgivable. It’s a taboo, certainly, to admit that we’ve spent any real time plotting the death of people around us. But that doesn’t mean that nobody does it – in fact, I’d even suggest that most of us have hated someone enough to think viscerally about harming them, even if we’d never do it. Moreover, Emma’s revelation is unveiled in the context of a discussion about other awful acts committed by her friends – and they actually did the things that they’re opening up about. Nobody else but Emma seems to experience any long-term consequences from the ethical wrongs that they’ve committed, revealing a spectrum of what’s considered “bad behaviour”, with Emma’s action designated by the group as unforgivable.
Which is interesting, because for a lot of the things we think, but don’t act on we usually deem them “ugly” instead of considering them “wrong”. We don’t like ugly actions, and we tend to encourage people not to commit them. But our reaction to them is commensurate with their perceived harm – we don’t frequently act as though they are deserving of punishment. In fact, we tend to forgive them – and particularly in the context of love.
That’s because the person who reckons their partner has never done anything ugly is deceiving themselves, or worse, has put their loved one on an unhealthy pedestal. Forgiveness is part of the machinery of love. In fact, it’s one of the most common ways we show love.
Knowing someone means knowing all of them, which inevitably means coming into direct contact with their ugliness. And deciding to love them all the same is a radical act of romance.
Did Emma commit an ethical wrong? Probably. When did she do it? Who knows. And is Charlie truly blame-free in all of this? Perhaps in her relationship Emma never felt comfortable enough to open up about her past? Maybe she found herself being treated judgementally, or without grace, by Charlie in other situations? Could that explain her silence? When we talk about what our partners owe us, we’re talking about a complex situation of ethical grey areas, butting up against one another, a world that can so often lack resolute rights or wrongs.
That’s where Emma and Charlie end up – a world with neither heroes and villains. But in its concluding moments, The Drama ultimately becomes deeply romantic, in its lopsided way. Charlie and Emma end up starting again – not ignoring what has come to light over the course of the film, the complex mess of boundary-case ethical acts, but showing that they can proceed even with them there. Choosing, in a simple, beautiful, and very human way, to forgive one another.
BY Joseph Earp
Joseph Earp is a poet, journalist and philosophy student. He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Sydney, studying the work of David Hume.
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Welcome to Country comes from a place of deep, sincere respect
It was just a few days after my seventeenth birthday that I arrived on Groote Eylandt, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, for the first time.
I had left school without any savings and needed to earn enough income to support myself when eventually (I hoped) I would attend university. But for the time being, in early in 1976, I would be working as a ‘Service Attendant’ (a cleaner and ‘dog’s body’) in one of the most remote communities in Australia.
That was the beginning of an extraordinary set of experiences – some of the most memorable of my life – which included being adopted into the kinship structure of the Anindilyakwa people. My connection to the Lalara Clan remains active and has been preserved for five decades.
From time-to-time, I would be invited to travel to the south of the main island, to visit the community of Yenbakwa. This was located within the lands of the Amagula Clan and had been resettled by the community under the leadership of the formidable Nanjiwarra Amagula. A major cultural and political figure, Nanjiwarra had become disillusioned with life within the Anglican mission established as Angurugu. Instead, he thought his clan would flourish if it returned to its homelands to live a traditional life that had been refined over thousands of years. And, indeed, the Yenbakwa I visited was a kind of ‘paradise on earth’. It was highly organised and functional. Life was simple. But the environment was clean and scrupulously cared for by people well-fed from the remarkable bounty offered by what was at hand in land and sea.
Travelling to Yenbakwa always followed a protocol. It was not that one simply headed down to arrive unannounced. This protocol applied to Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike. A key moment was when you arrived at the boundary of the Amagula lands. All clan lands are clearly delineated. The boundaries are well known. You do not cross into another person’s Country without permission. So, we would always meet with a group of Amagula warriors at a pre-arranged time and place. There we would be welcomed before being escorted further into the Amagula lands and down to Yenbakwa. On arrival, we would be allocated a tree where we were to camp. Typically, some of the women would help set up the site while we would join the men and go hunting … or perform some other appropriate task. This sense of ‘respecting boundaries’ extended into the night. Families would typically gather around a fire near a tree that was their ‘base’ (my inadequate description not theirs). Again, protocol prescribed that you would approach no further than the edge of the firelight. There you would wait to be recognised and then, perhaps, invited into the gathering.
I mention all of this because when I first encountered a ‘Welcome to Country’ it was, for me, the most normal thing in the world. It was not a ‘made up’ convention. It was a simple expression of a traditional practice that I had personally experienced ‘for real’ back on Groote Eylandt in the 1970s. So, I am perplexed by the criticism of a custom that is intended to be a symbol of unity and our collective belonging to ‘Country’. Indeed, I think that the source of opposition arises out a significant misunderstanding of what lies at the heart of a ‘Welcome to’ or ‘Acknowledgement of’ Country.
An immediate clue lies in the words spoken at such times. Perhaps it slips by unnoticed; however, when addressing ‘Country’ the first thing to be mentioned is people. Not places, not geographic features … but people. So, people in the Sydney CBD will speak of the Gadigal people – one of the clans that make up the Eora nation. This is because at least in the areas I know best (Groote Eylandt) there is no distinction between ‘people’ and ‘Country’.
From this perspective, we do not live ‘on’ Country. We are ‘of’ Country – related to all that is … seen and unseen … in an unbroken chain of being.
Perhaps most important of all is that this belonging extends to everybody living within the boundaries of ‘Country’. A person equally belongs irrespective of gender, religion, culture, genetics … or any other marker of difference. That is, Indigenous people do not claim to belong any more or less than anyone else.
Where the difference lies is in who has authority to ‘speak for Country’. Again, I will only speak for what I know. On Groote, ‘authority’ is divided between those who speak for a clan’s Country as a whole and those (from a different clan) who are responsible for the sacred sites within another person’s country. It is a complex, balanced system that has been developed over millennia – and it works. The responsibility to ‘speak’ for Country and to ensure it is well-cared for extends to caring for any person who enters into that Country. New arrivals become part of it all – and need to be looked after. So, in some traditional rituals of welcoming, people would be smoked or touched with the sweat of local people so that they carry the local scent. At other times and places, the ancestors will be called out to; letting them know who is about (ancestors have an ongoing presence). Finally, the right to ‘speak for Country’ is not automatically conferred. One has to earn the right – no matter who you are. That is why for many Indigenous Australians education in culture is both compulsory and life-long.
Taken as a whole, I think that, wherever possible, one should look to local First Nations people, who have earned the right to ‘speak for Country’, to undertake the ‘Welcome’. It is also why we acknowledge Country by paying respect to those who have cared for Country over thousands of generations. We do so in the same way that we respect any group of people who have devoted themselves to the common good.
We should do so knowing that this is not to confer a distinction on people who are different to us – but to acknowledge the fundamental equality of our belonging.
Given the remarkable diversity of modern Australia – with people living here from every part of the world; with a swirling mixture of languages, cultures, and religions there is one indisputable thing that we all share in common. It is that we all live on Country that has been cared for, forever. I can think of nothing more unifying than being welcomed into, and in turn acknowledging Country – as was done when I first visited Yenbakwa half a century ago.
This article is an edited version that was originally published in The Australian.
Image: Aunty Rhonda Dixon presents Welcome to Country at Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2022, photo by Ken Leanfore
BY Simon Longstaff
Simon Longstaff began his working life on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory of Australia. He is proud of his kinship ties to the Anindilyakwa people. After a period studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, he pursued postgraduate studies as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.” Simon is an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW, a Fellow of CPA Australia, the Royal Society of NSW and the Australian Risk Policy Institute.
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Behind the veil: When are we entitled to unmask the anonymous?
Anonymity can help people speak truth to power or remain safely out of the limelight. But it can also be used to avoid accountability. When should we have a right to know who someone really is?
Do you know the true identity of the elusive street artist, Banksy? What about the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto? Do you know the name of the person (or people) behind the notorious “Q” drops that drove the QAnon conspiracy movement?
If you are curious, the good news is that reporters have worked hard to unmask these hidden figures: a recent Reuters article claims to have definitively revealed the identity of Banksy; an exhaustive New York Times investigation purports to have pinpointed the man behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym; and a 2021 HBO documentary delves into the colourful characters that appear to have posted as Q.
But should we read these articles or watch this documentary? Are we entitled to know who they are? Or do the subjects deserve to remain anonymous?
There are some very good reasons why someone might want to remain anonymous. Anonymity can protect those who speak truth to power or express views that go against the dominant narrative. It’s a protective feature that allows journalists to uncover facts in the public interest without putting sources at risk. It enables people to voice opinions that can be judged on their merit without listeners being distracted by the messenger. It can also help people avoid the invasive limelight that inevitably surrounds anyone who draws the attention of the public eye.
However, the same shield of anonymity can also help people escape accountability for their actions.
Who says what
In a liberal society, each of us has a basic right to privacy. That means we have a right to restrict the distribution of personal information about us. That extends to a right to remain anonymous in spaces where our true identity isn’t required. But these are not inviolable rights; there will be circumstances where necessity or other factors override our right to remain anonymous.
One of those factors is that, sometimes, people need to know who is saying something in order to know whether it’s legitimate or not. There’s a big difference between some random person on the street declaring you “guilty” and a judge in a courtroom doing the same thing. Similarly, it’s important to know that the person giving you advice on drug dosage is a certified medical professional rather than someone’s unqualified uncle (a point that is often overlooked in online discourse).
This is why it was arguably justified to unmask Q, who purported to be an operative within the United States government. Their very name implied they had Q clearance, which gives access to highly classified information. If they were not who they said they were, people would likely have seen their posts in a very different light.
Had Q been making statements that were in the public interest, such as leaking evidence of serious wrongdoing by the government, then it might justify maintaining anonymity to protect their safety. However, many of Q’s posts gave demonstrably false information and fuelled destructive conspiracy theories, so there was good reason to override anonymity and seek to reveal their identity.
Public interest is a key test when deciding whether it’s justified to override someone’s wish to remain anonymous. However, public interest doesn’t just mean whatever the public is interested in, it means information that is of benefit to the public.
In the case of Satoshi Nakamoto, one of the journalists responsible for seeking his true identity stated that it was in the public interest to do so:
“One of the most significant inventors of the past century was unknown. That didn’t seem right to me. Eighteen months ago, I decided enough was enough. I needed to know who this person was, and I felt strongly that the public should too.”
But was it really necessary to know the name of the individual who invented Bitcoin? Unlike Q, it was the message that Nakamoto had that was important, not the messenger. The Bitcoin architecture could have been written by anyone and it would have still had the same impact. Just because people are intensely curious about who the inventor was doesn’t necessarily justify overriding their desire for anonymity.
Held to account
However, sometimes it’s important to know who someone is because they need to be held accountable for the influence they have. If Nakamoto were the CEO of a major technology company, we would want to have a way to question him about his intentions or to criticise bad decisions. However, once the Bitcoin paper was published, its operation is entirely out of Nakamoto’s hands. That doesn’t mean the individual behind the pseudonym might not be involved in Bitcoin businesses today. But in that case, we just hold them accountable for their actions in their current role.
There is one dimension that one could argue is in the public interest: some estimates say Nakamoto has over a million Bitcoin to his name, worth upwards of US$80 billion. Were he able to sell it all at the current market rate, that would make him one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
That power makes it more important to understand Nakamoto and his intentions when it comes to generating personal wealth and the future of Bitcoin. Although, to date, Nakamoto has not sold a single Bitcoin. Even if Nakamoto did start selling his stash of Bitcoins – which, in itself, might lead to revealing his identity – that doesn’t necessarily justify unmasking him. Any holder of great wealth is entitled to dispose of it as they please, within the bounds of the law.
On the other hand, Nakamoto’s tremendous potential wealth places a target on his back should his identity be revealed. Malicious actors could seek to extort or intimidate them into handing over some of their wealth. That gives us a good reason to be very cautious when deciding whether to reveal his true identity.
Outside the law
Public interest was also cited as a reason to unmask the street artist, Banksy. The Reuters journalists claim that “the public has a deep interest in understanding the identity and career of a figure with his profound and enduring influence on culture, the art industry and international political discourse”. However, as stated above, just because the public wants to know something doesn’t mean it has a right to know.
But Reuters also appealed to accountability.
“The people and institutions who seek to shape social and political discourse are subject to scrutiny, accountability, and, sometimes, unmasking. Banksy’s anonymity – a deliberate, public-facing, and profitable feature of his work – has enabled him to operate without such transparency.”
One of the central tenets of ethics is that individuals ought to be held accountable for their actions (with qualifiers, of course). And one of the reasons some people might seek anonymity is to avoid accountability.
But would the power of Banksy’s art to “shape social and political discourse” change if his name was known (we already know he’s an English man of middle age from previous works)? Perhaps one could level claims of cynicism or hypocrisy if his message was at odds with his lifestyle. But that might be one reason Banksy wishes to remain anonymous: so that the message isn’t distracted by the messenger.
Another factor is that Banksy’s art is – in most jurisdictions – illegal. That appears to be one of the justifications that Banksy had for concealing his identity early in his career.
Although, these days, it seems most authorities are inclined to welcome a Banksy work in a public space, due to the attention it draws and value it creates, rather than wanting to lock him up. So, it appears that even those who could hold Banksy legally accountable are already choosing not to do so, making his unmasking less justified in this regard.
Banksy has also made it clear that he is mistrustful of authority and many mainstream institutions, and anonymity is necessary for him to be able to speak truth to power. Indeed, should his identity be confirmed, then it would be significantly more difficult for him to travel and do his work in public spaces, or to avoid being arrested.
What these cases all show is that we need to carefully weigh an individual’s right to privacy and desire for anonymity against other concerns to ensure we have good reason to unmask them. If anonymity enables deception or prevents people being held to account for harming others, then there might be good reason to reveal their true identity.
But we must remember that, in the absence of good reasons to unmask someone, we ought to respect their desire for anonymity. Sometimes revealing someone’s true identity might put them at serious risk. So, just because we’re intensely curious about someone is, that doesn’t necessarily justify revealing their true identity.
Image: Dominic Robinson, Flickr
BY Tim Dean
Tim is the Resident Philosopher at The Ethics Centre, where he holds the Manos Chair of Ethics, and is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney. He has a Doctorate in philosophy from the University of New South Wales on the evolution of morality and specialises in ethics, public philosophy and critical thinking. He is the author of How We Became Human and has worked as an editor and writer for media outlets including The Conversation, Cosmos and Australian Life Scientist. He is the recipient of the Australasian Association of Philosophy Media Professionals’ Award for his work on philosophy in the public sphere. He has delivered workshops for businesses, NFPs and governments across Australia and Asia, including Facebook, Commonwealth Bank, KPMG, Sydney Opera House, Art Gallery of NSW, Clayton Utz, RSPCA, state and local governments, and many others.
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Illegal animal ownership and the coming ethical shift
In 2020, the world became briefly obsessed with Tiger King, a lurid portrait of exotic animal owners in the United States. Viewers were entertained by the spectacle, but beneath the chaos lay a far deeper question: why do we tolerate the private ownership of wild creatures at all?
For decades, the keeping of exotic pets, tigers, monkeys, snakes, and even endangered species has been accepted, sometimes celebrated, and often trivialised.
Today, exotic animal ownership is framed through the language of fascination and freedom. An individual posting a photo with a capuchin monkey or a tiger cub is seen as eccentric, perhaps indulgent, but rarely immoral. Social media has reinforced this perception: animals become props in displays of uniqueness, wealth, or adventure. Beneath this lies a familiar assumption, that humans may own and confine animals so long as “care” is provided. After all, dogs, cats, and horses are kept under this same logic; exotic pets are simply imagined as an extension of that tradition.
This is the widely held ethical stance of our time: ownership is permissible, provided the owner is attentive, and the animal survives. It is sometimes argued that exotic pets can be kept ethically if an owner is conscientious. Yet responsibility cannot undo captivity’s intrinsic harms. To confine a leopard to a cage, however large, is to deny it the roaming it evolved to do. The deprivation is structural, not accidental.
Still, harm is thought to arise only when neglect or cruelty is obvious.
This collapses under scrutiny. To provide food, shelter, and medical care is not to provide a life worth living. A monkey raised in isolation, or a tiger confined to a cage, cannot express the instincts and social behaviours that define their species – a phenomenon well-documented in studies of animal deprivation, such as Harry Harlow’s experiments on social isolation in rhesus monkeys.
What is portrayed as “care” often amounts to prolonged deprivation.
Beyond individual suffering, the practice generates wider consequences. The demand for exotic pets drives illegal trafficking, stripping wild populations of already vulnerable species. Animals smuggled in appalling conditions frequently die before reaching their buyers; a hidden toll rarely acknowledged. Where they survive, ecological disruption follows: Florida’s Everglades, overrun by invasive pythons once kept as pets, as reported by the National Geographic, is a cautionary tale. Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons now threaten native wildlife after being released into the wild. The exotic pet trade has also been implicated in the spread of zoonotic diseases, some with pandemic potential.
Taken together, these realities show that ownership is not an isolated act of personal freedom but an ethical entanglement with ecosystems, species survival, and human wellbeing.
A history of widening ethical concern
The idea that today’s tolerance of exotic pets will endure is contradicted by history. Societal ethics evolve, and practices once normalised are later judged harshly. Only a generation ago, elephants performing tricks in circuses were symbols of joy; today, such displays are condemned as cruelty. Dolphins in marine parks, once crowd-pleasers, are increasingly seen as victims of confinement. Whaling was defended as tradition until it was widely recognised as barbaric.
In each case, the ethical lens widened: human enjoyment and cultural prestige could no longer justify animal suffering. Exotic pet ownership is on the same trajectory. What seems acceptable today will soon be viewed as exploitative and anachronistic.
As scientific knowledge of animal sentience deepens, the ethical case against exotic pet ownership will sharpen. It is not merely a matter of legality but legitimacy. Future generations are unlikely to accept the claim that affection can justify possession. The very idea of “owning” a wild creature will be seen as incompatible with respect for its autonomy and wellbeing.
Instead, we are moving toward an ethic of stewardship. Rather than treating animals as curiosities to be acquired, there will be growing recognition of the responsibility to preserve habitats, support sanctuaries, and protect species in the wild. A monkey belongs not in a suburban home but to the forests that shape its instincts. A tiger does not need a private enclosure but a functioning ecosystem. Within this ethical framework, claim ownership of such beings will appear arrogant, an outdated relic of human entitlement.
The appeal to personal freedom carries weight, but freedoms that cause serious harm are never absolute. We regulate weapons, smoking, and pollution because individual liberty cannot override collective well-being. The same reasoning applies here: the harm to animals, ecosystems, and public health outweighs personal preference.
This ethical shift is not only about animals; it reflects how humanity conceives its place in the natural world.
The ownership of exotic animals continues with a pattern of domination: we collect, confine, and display living beings as extensions of ourselves. To reject this is to embrace humility, acknowledging that not everything can be possessed; that respect sometimes requires distance.
There is also a broader trend in the gradual expansion of who and what is deemed worthy of ethical concern. Once, children, women, and marginalised groups were excluded from full recognition. Over time, the circle widened. Now, it extends beyond humanity itself. Exotic animal ownership will be one of the practices left behind as this circle continues to grow.
In the next twenty years, the widespread view will collapse under evidence of animal suffering, ecological damage, and disease risk. More importantly, it will fall because it no longer fits with the kind of ethical society we aspire to be. Future generations will look back at our era with disbelief, asking how we ever imagined that affection could excuse possession. The shift will mark not only a victory for animals but a step towards a more responsible, less arrogant humanity, one that values stewardship above ownership, and respect above curiosity.
Illegal animal ownership and the coming ethical shift by Rhiannon Gee is one of the Highly Commended essays in our Young Writers’ 2025 Competition. Find out more about the competition here.
BY Rhiannon Gee
Rhiannon Gee is a passionate animal lover and advocate for the ethical treatment of wildlife. She writes about the evolving relationship between humans and animals, exploring how compassion and responsibility can shape a more humane future.
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Ethics Explainer: Critical thinking
In a world awash with spin, misinformation and AI slop, critical thinking has become an indispensable survival skill.
While scrolling through social media, you spot a post shared by a good friend. It’s from a popular (and attractive) influencer, who is claiming that sunscreen is toxic. The post resonates with you, especially since the last time you bought a new sunscreen, you broke out in a rash.
But how do you know if what they say is true? On the surface, their argument seems persuasive, but does it stack up? And what are the stakes if you get it wrong? If it turns out sunscreen isn’t toxic, then you could end up with nasty burns, or worse.
The modern world is an informational minefield. Every day we slog through hundreds of claims that purport to be true, but any one of them could end up being false or misleading. Influencers have been known to peddle misinformation. Activists, advertisers and politicians all put their spin on the facts to promote their interests. Artificial intelligence is further muddying the waters with hallucinations, deepfakes and so-called “AI slop”.
The cost of falling for falsehoods can be profound, both to us and to society as a whole. We need to be equipped to handle this epistemically hostile environment. This is where critical thinking becomes a key survival skill for the 21st century.
Not uncritical
One way to define critical thinking is to consider its opposite. An uncritical thinker will accept everything on face value. They will be prone to biases, like stereotyping or being swayed by someone’s appearance rather than the strength of their argument.
They will mistake subjective statements, such as “I don’t like pineapple on pizza” for objective statements, like “pineapple on pizza is bad”. They will overgeneralise from a few anecdotes or examples, like viewing a minority with suspicion because of one unpleasant encounter.
They will employ motivated reasoning, such as seeking out information that makes them feel (or look) good, rather than what is true. And they will latch on to the first explanation for some phenomenon, whether it’s the correct one or not.
A critical thinker, on the other hand, will be mindful of how biases and other irrational forces can sway their views, and will endeavour to avoid those and settle on beliefs rationally by drawing on good reasons and evidence.
They won’t just accept things at face value, but will ask questions, like: is the source reliable? Is the argument sound? Is the supporting evidence strong? After weighing up all these factors, they will hold their beliefs with a strength proportional to the reasons and evidence they can muster in their favour.
Misconceptions
Critical thinking is more than just being critical. The latter is about finding fault in someone or something. Critical thinking, on the other hand, is more about thinking carefully about what we hear.
It’s also not the same things as philosophical scepticism, which is the thesis that we cannot know what is and is not true. This kind of scepticism sets an impossibly high bar for knowledge. But critical thinking doesn’t go as far. Instead, it sets the bar at what we can demonstrate to be true by appealing to reason and evidence.
Critical thinking is also different from cynicism, which is just assuming the worst about what we see and hear. If you immediately assume that a politician is lying, or that a corporation’s environmental efforts are greenwashing, without looking at the evidence, then you’re being cynical. If you decide they are lying or greenwashing after you’ve carefully looked at the reasons and evidence supporting those beliefs, then you’re exercising critical thinking.
Finally, critical thinking is not the same as critical theory. The latter is a philosophical and social science project that seeks to improve society by revealing sources of oppression, and is associated with thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas.
Critical mass
So what about that social media post about sunscreen that seemed so appealing? A critical thinker would start by reflecting on any biases they might have when watching it. It was shared by a friend, and they know that they’re prone to weigh things more heavily when their friends endorse them. That’s a good reason to pause and ensure they’re not being overly credulous.
They would also know that they are more likely to assume an attractive or high-status speaker will be trustworthy – which is why coffee companies like to have handsome actors in their ads. So a critical thinker w0uld try to detach the message from the messenger, and scrutinise the former on its merits.
A critical thinker would also be mindful of the sources that the influencer cites. Are they reliable experts? Do they have any vested interests, like working for a company that sells a sunscreen alternative? Is their evidence high quality, such as the product of a double-blind clinical trial?
They would also be wary of allowing their subjective experience to flavour how they interpret the post. Just because they got a rash from the last sunscreen they bought doesn’t mean that all sunscreen is toxic. It’s possible that they just had an allergy, or something unrelated caused the rash, and it happened to coincide with them applying the sunscreen.
And they would be on the lookout for logical and argumentative fallacies, like an appeal to authority or popularity, or begging the question, which might undermine the soundness of the argument.
A critical thinker would weigh all these things, and come to a conclusion about the claims about sunscreen, acknowledging that they could always be wrong – so not allowing themselves to arrive at a point of unwarranted certainty.
Employing critical thinking takes some time and effort. However, if you care about not being duped by misinformation or falling for spin, then it’s an indispensable skill to cultivate.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
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The price of playtime
Before they learn to read, some children have already built an entire online audience. Their lives – from birthday parties to emotional breakdowns – are shared, sponsored, and monetised.
In a digital world driven by content and clicks, the world of kidfluencing forces us to confront a difficult question: what do we owe the children growing up on camera?
Kidfluencing refers to the practice of featuring children prominently in monetised social media content, often on platforms like Youtube, Instagram and Tiktok. Typically, these accounts are run by parents or guardians, but the child’s personality, appearance and daily life are the main attraction.
It’s a phenomenon that raises serious ethical questions, not only about labour laws and consent, but also the commodification of identity in a digital economy. There’s a difference between recording your child’s first steps as a cherished family memory and uploading them to a platform that pays per view. Kidfluencing transforms ordinary family life into entertainment, monetised through brand deals and advertising.
One of the most well-known examples is Ryan’s World, a YouTube channel that began when Ryan Kaji was just three years old, after videos of him enthusiastically unboxing and reviewing toys went viral. Filmed largely at home with his parents behind the camera, the channel quickly expanded into skits, branded merchandise and licensing deals, amassing millions of subscribers worldwide. According to Forbes, Ryan Kaji (and by extension, his family) earned over $29 million in 2020 alone, making him one of the highest-paid Youtubers in the world.
On Instagram and TikTok, children model clothes, promote products and star in sponsored content – sometimes before they can even spell their name. At face value it seems like a bit of harmless fun, or for some, a win-win. The child gets toys, fame, maybe a financial head start in life. The parents maintain control over the content, often managing accounts and brand deals behind the scenes, with household finances often tied to its success. The audience is entertained. However, things are rarely as simple as they appear.
No child can fully grasp the implications of being filmed, the permanence of their digital footprint, or consent to a video that may follow them into adulthood. With growing reports of exploitation, the risks become harder to ignore.
Unlike traditional child actors, who are protected by specific labour laws and compensated through trust accounts (e.g. the Coogan law in the US), kidfluencers operate in a largely unregulated space. In 2020, France became one of the first countries to mandate that earnings from children in monetised content be placed in secure funds. By contrast, Australia remains in a legal grey zone, leaving young content creators vulnerable not just to online predators but, more troublingly, to exploitation within their own homes.
In many kidfluencing households, the line between parent and producer is blurred. The parents become managers, marketers and editors. Their home becomes a set, and their childhood becomes content. High profile cases such as YouTube star Piper Rockelle – who rose to fame in early adolescence as part of a ‘squad’ channel, illustrates the risk of this dynamic, with lawsuits from former collaborators alleging emotional abuse, coercive filming practices and adult control over earnings recently surfacing. It’s easy to say that the parents only want the best for their children, but what happens when the child’s image pays the mortgage? How easy is it then to switch off the camera, to reject a lucrative brand deal, when another viral moment could be seconds away?
There’s a creeping danger when parenting becomes performative, when the child’s real-life experiences are filtered through purely what is most ‘engaging’ in the online world.
As philosopher Jean Baudrillard warned, we live in an era of simulacra, where the representations of reality become reality. For kidfluencers, this means the curated online persona, that is optimised for algorithms and audience approval can overtake the authentic self, encouraging children to perform an identity shaped by what attracts views rather than who they are offline.
A child’s right to privacy, to make decisions and mistakes and to grow without millions watching, should not be a luxury. It is essential to healthy development. Yet, in the rush to publicly document every cute moment in pursuit of greater engagement and revenue, we are building a digital archive that a child never agreed to create and cannot erase. Philosopher John Stuart Mill once argued that “the worth of a state in the long run is the worth of the individuals composing it.” Denying children meaningful control over their own identities undermines that worth from the very beginning.
What happens when children are denied the right to meaningfully choose how they participate in the state of their own lives? Imagine turning 16 and discovering a decade of your most vulnerable and embarrassing moments permanently online, shared not by bullies, but by your own parents. In a society that rightly criticises government surveillance and defends the right to be forgotten, how it be justified denying children of those same rights within their homes?
So where does that leave us? Should children be banned from appearing online altogether? Not necessarily. However, allowing kidfluencing to continue ethically requires a far more robust framework than currently exists. Such a framework would need to recognise children as rights-bearing individuals, not extensions of a family brand. This could include clear limits on filming hours, mandatory protection of earnings in independent trust accounts and regular review of a child’s participation as they grow older and gain the capacity to meaningfully consent or withdraw consent altogether.
Just as importantly, ethical boundaries must be drawn between parenting and employment. Children should not be pressured to perform or disciplined for not consenting or be valued primarily for their commercial output. Oversight mechanisms, whether legal or platform-based, are necessary to ensure parents are not acting simultaneously as guardians and employers without accountability. Above all, this requires a cultural shift, one that values the unseen, unrecorded moment of childhood as deeply as the ones we post.
In today’s digital age, parents act as the curators of their children’s identities, shaping how they are seen long before children can define themselves. When moments of play, emotion and vulnerability are repeatedly framed for public consumption, a child’s sense of self risks becoming entangled with performance and audience approval. The danger is not only exploitation for profit, but the gradual erosion of a child’s ability to grow, change and experiment with identity away from public scrutiny. A childhood lived under observation can narrow who a child feels allowed to be.
We owe it to children to protect their right to develop an identity that is not permanently fixed, searchable or shaped by the expectations of strangers. Let them just be kids.
The price of playtime by Dana Carr is one of the Highly Commended essays in our Young Writers’ 2025 Competition. Find out more about the competition here.
BY Dana Carr
Dana is a 16-year-old student with a passion for STEM and the entailing ethical issues of rapidly emerging technologies. Often running, making music, or baking - where she likes to find time to reflect, now more than ever, her interest in how the digital world shapes young people.
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There’s more to conspiracy theories than meets the eye
We know conspiracy theories can be harmful, but we also know conspiracies do happen. In an age of mistrust, the real challenge isn’t simply rejecting conspiracy theories, but knowing how to react to them.
Note: this article contains spoilers for the film, Bugonia.
In Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2025 film Bugonia, a pharmaceutical company CEO, Michelle (played by Emma Stone) is kidnapped by a conspiracy theorist, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Teddy and Don are convinced Michelle is an extraterrestrial, part of a race of ‘Andromedans’ that Teddy believes are responsible for the gradual disappearance of the world’s honey bees.
The film seems timely in many ways – bee colonies really have been collapsing – not least in depicting a conspiracy theorist as something far more dangerous than a mere harmless crank. That choice seems very much of the moment.
But in Bugonia, the conspiracy theorists turn out to be right. Andromedans really are running the world, and Michelle really is one of their leaders.
I don’t know if Lanthimos spends his spare time poring over academic philosophy journals. Yet his movie echoes a debate that’s been raging among philosophers for the last decade or more: should we be fighting back against conspiracy beliefs, and their increasing role in public life? Or does treating conspiracy theory – and theorists – as a problem to be solved cause more harm than good?
Harms of conspiracy
It’s easy to think of conspiracy theories as a sort of harmless game (after all, some are just that), yet conspiracy theories can be harmful in a number of ways. At the extreme, some conspiracy theorists – just like Bugonia’s Teddy – have been motivated to carry out acts of harassment or violence. In December 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch burst into the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlour in Washington DC armed with a semi-automatic rifle, intending to expose a cabal of elite paedophiles. Six years later, a trio of conspiracy theorists in rural Queensland murdered two police officers and a neighbour before being killed themselves.
Conspiracy harms exist on a larger scale too. Consider the role of conspiracy thinking in the return of vaccine-preventable disease, or the hundreds of thousands of deaths attributed to HIV denialism on the part of Thabo Mbeki’s government in South Africa. Conspiracy theories invite distrust of governments, institutional science, and other institutions critical to healthy civil society.
There’s also a general moral cost to conspiracy theorising, just insofar as it’s a practice built on suspicion. You can’t have a conspiracy without conspirators, and that means every conspiracy theory is also an accusation – and levelling an accusation is not a morally neutral act.
Some philosophers of conspiracy theory, known as ‘generalists’, appeal to such harms (among other arguments) to claim that conspiracy theories are always suspect. To generalists, conspiracy belief is both a result of sloppy reasoning and a source of social and political harm, and we’d be better off if we could stop them from spreading.
But if conspiracy theories can be harmful, the ways in which we respond to them are also fraught with danger.
Loaded terms
‘Conspiracy theory’, at least as used in the media and in political discourse, isn’t a neutral term. To say “that’s a conspiracy theory” is to rule that theory out of contention straight away. Likewise, “you’re a conspiracy theorist” is a way of saying “we don’t have to take what you’re saying seriously”.
That can be a problem for two reasons. First, this loaded use of terms can give cover to bad actors: if a politician can dismiss an allegation against them as a ‘conspiracy theory’, they can avoid proper scrutiny too easily.
Secondly, there’s a risk of violating what Miranda Fricker has famously called epistemic justice.
In dismissing someone as a conspiracy theorist we risk failing to treat them with the dignity due to them as a fellow rational agent.
This danger is made worse by the fact that conspiracy belief can be more common amongst marginalised groups. It’s easier to believe powerful groups are secretly trying to manipulate or exploit you when they’ve done it before.
After all, as other philosophers of conspiracy theory point out, conspiring with others is something that humans sometimes do. If that weren’t the case, much of history would be unintelligible to us. Unless we want to deny that a conspiracy of Nixon staffers led to the Watergate scandal, or that al Qaeda terrorists conspired to attack targets with hijacked planes, we can’t simply dismiss any given conspiracy theory purely because it’s a conspiracy theory.
Threading the needle
So we find ourselves in a quandary. Conspiracy theories erode social trust, encourage suspicion, and can lead to harmful behaviours. (They also suffer from a lack of falsifiability, and a poor track record for turning out to be true). Yet in a democratic society, a standing suspicion of power is also vital, and epistemic justice demands we not simply write people off as stupid or crazy. So how do we balance these things?
One option is to accept that people – including very powerful ones – do sometimes conspire with each other, but set the bar for entertaining a conspiracy theory drastically higher than for non-conspiracy explanations. We have good epistemic and moral reasons to refuse to engage in conspiracy thinking unless the evidence becomes overwhelming. Conspiracy thinking is somewhere we should not want to go, unless and until we have no other rationally available choice.
That comes with a danger of being duped. We might fail to spot the next Watergate, or worse. In Bugonia, Teddy uncovers a genuine alien conspiracy. As it happens, his doing so doesn’t help anyone: Michelle escapes, tells her fellow Andromedans their experiment on Earth has failed, and instantly wipes out the entire human race.
Even so, Teddy got lucky. The rest of us would still have been justified in trying to foil his kidnap attempt – even though he was, improbably, right all along. In the real world, we just have to take the risk that the Teddys of this world are probably wrong.
Probably.
BY Pat Stokes
Dr Patrick Stokes is a senior lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University. Follow him on Twitter – @patstokes.
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