Alex Fisher

This is an easy way to follow more people working on the philosophy of intimacy and relationships. Help @lukebrunning.bsky.social build up the list.

Ethics Untangled - Everyday Ethics With the Experts Presents Does Drill Rap Cause Violence? with Tareeq Jollah What does the evidence show about drill's supposed role as a supposed cause of violence? What are the wider social and racial dimensions of teh controversy? What's really at stake when society debates the ethics of drill? Ethics untangled logo Podcast produced by IDEA the ethics centre bringing ethics to life

This episode of @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social sees Jim speaking with philosopher Tareeq Jalloh about the ethics of drill rap - often celebrated for its creativity & authenticity, yet heavily criticised for its alleged links to violence.
What’s really at stake when society debates the ethics of drill?

Zoom link is here:
royalinstitutephilosophy.org/event/repres...

The talk will also be recorded.

This event is part of the British Philosophy Fortnight from Monday 16th to Sunday 29th March, organised by @thebpa.bsky.social.

Check out their other events here:
bpa.ac.uk/philosophyma...

As part of #BPF2026, I'll be speaking online at @triphilosophy.bsky.social - 1pm, Tuesday 17 March.

Following #IWD, come and find out how we can fight back against misogyny's growing use of various digital representations against women!

#philsky #philosophymatters

All are welcome! Zoom link below

FULLY FUNDED PHDs IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

I'm looking for *two* PhD students to join my ERC project on refugee-led approaches to displacement justice. The positions are funded for four years, and you get to join our lovely community in Bristol. Please share widely!

philjobs.org/job/show/30997

Getting my presentation ready for Friday's conference on friendship (free and fully online!). Program and registration details here: philevents.org/event/show/1...

Please share. The International Association for Computing and Philosophy is one of the best communities to engage with if you are doing any philosophy (epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, etc.) related to computational technologies.

Submit your abstract!

#philsci #philsky #philtech #AIethics

The mental aspects of urban justice

Affinity: the mental aspects of urban justice by @lopezcantero.bsky.social epistemicinjusticeinhealthcareproject.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #philpsy #philsky #epistemicinjustice

Happy LGBTQ+ History Month!

To celebrate, we’ve been asking CLSR members how their experiences shape their work, and what it’s like being LGBTQ+ in philosophy 👇

Special shoutout this month and all months to the amazing work going on over at @being.transinphilosophy.org - check them out!

Break-up duties and the limits of deliberation: A reply to Betzler Abstract. Leaving a relationship without talking to the other person seems, in principle, morally callous. Monika Betzler argues that people initiating bre

The 1st publication of my research on break-ups & morality. I argue that we don't have a duty to explain to our partners the reasons for breaking up with them. Read the short article for my argument against giving excessive weight to reasons in break-ups, & do reply if you have thoughts

People who have written academic philosophy books: bracketing the contract/editorial stuff, and advertisement etc…what advice would you give to someone writing their first book?

Aesthetics and Video Games Aesthetics and Video Games introduces current issues and ideas in philosophical aesthetics that help us to better understand why video games are different from…

Overall, the book makes a significant contribution to how philosophers & games theorists think about games and the different kinds of appeal they can hold.

And it is very readable, including a wide diversity of games discussed – often with charming personal anecdotes!

bloomsbury.com/9781350104839

Papers Please (2013)

Journey (2012)

Fortnite (2017)

EA FC 26 (2025)

Finally, Bartel argues that (a bit like photography) some games are art, and some are not.

Games like Papers Please or Journey are designed primarily to satisfy aesthetic aims.

But others, e.g. competitive multiplayer games (Fortnite, Valorant, FIFA), are not, and are played more like sports.

I think this kind of argument successfully legitimises much ethical criticism of games.

But it doesn't hold much sway against those who seem able to *completely* separate the moral from the aesthetic – both in games and other artistic media!

Tbh, I'm not sure what we can say against this view...

Meme about how some gamers only selectively take issue with departures from established mythology in games.

In the penultimate chapter, Bartel turns to the ethics of games, arguing against gamers who advocate "keeping politics out of games".

Bartel draws on work in aesthetics to show how moral matters can affect our aesthetic experience, hence ethical aspects of games can affect their aesthetic value.

Bartel says these games offer us a valuable form of *peaceful boredom* in contrast to the bustle of working life.

They free us from the relentless goal-seeking attitude in the workplace, as we are offered a sandbox world to mess around in however we please – driving around slowly, dressing up, etc.

Why do players (myself included) spend hours driving massive trucks at the speed limit around a scale model of Europe? (Euro Truck Simulator)

Or agonise over the clothing and appearance of their avatar in role-playing games? (Some spend more time in the character creator than playing the game!)

Bartel on the dollhouse attitude: "It is distinctive for its lack of means-ends reasoning, its de-emphasis on goals and quantifiable outcomes, and for the way that players project their own stories onto a game's world and characters."

3. Dollhouse attitude Scholars have written lots about the gameplay and narratives of games, but this third attitude is I think the key contribution of the book.

Bartel thinks we often treat games like dollhouses for adults, and this attitude can make sense of otherwise puzzling player behaviours:

Imaginative contagion and moral corruption Imaginatively adopted attitudes and ways of thinking sometimes persist, bleeding into day-to-day thoughts and interactions. Such imaginative contagion is often reported in the context of theatrical a...

(I've written elsewhere about how interactivity can affect the aesthetic properties of fictional narratives

doi.org/10.1007/s112...

and how the above kind of role-playing in videogames is aesthetically appealing, but potentially can carry a moral risk:

doi.org/10.1111/phpr...)

Screenshot of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

Concept art of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016)

Screenshot of Dishonored 2 (2016)

Screenshot of Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)

Seeing the consequences of different choices is why I love RPGs like the Witcher franchise and "immersive sims" like Deus Ex & Dishonored.

Meanwhile, immersive role-playing is what I most enjoyed about Red Dead Redemption 2, with its slow pace encouraging you to adopt the character's perspective.

Quote: "Videogames allow us to peek behind the curtain, to choose differently, and thus see how things might have been."

2. Narrative attitude

We also sometimes instead appreciate the story and lore of a game's fictional world.

Games as interactive media allow new and interesting aesthetic experiences, as we can see the consequences of making different choices, and get really immersed in role-playing as a character.

Beat Saber, competitive multiplayer games, and many other videogames generate valuable experiences of absorption and striving by carefully balancing our goal-seeking attitude with elements like uncertainty and various game mechanics.

These games have good *gameplay*: they are fun/satisfying to play

Book cover of C. Thi Nguyen, Games: Agency As Art (2020)

Bartel claims there are three main player attitudes:

1. Goal-seeking attitude

Like in sport, Bartel outlines how the value of some games comes from aiming to achieve some goal, drawing on @add-hawk.bsky.social's work on aesthetic striving play and research in psychology on flow states.

Excerpt from the book: "The central claim of this book is that the aesthetics of video games has as much to do with the player as it has to do with the game itself."

Bartel's main aim is to shift philosophers' focus away from properties of games and their designers' intentions, and onto the attitudes players adopt

Because games are interactive, players determine content unlike in paintings/novels. So their attitudes are key to the aesthetic experience of games.

Image of book cover

I had the pleasure of reviewing @cjbartel.bsky.social's new book *Aesthetics and Video Games* for the Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism.

Here's an illustrated thread summarising the book and my thoughts:

You can read my full review here: philpapers.org/rec/FISAAV

#philtech #games #gamestudies

For more on how these AI-generated "fake" sexual images harm:

bsky.app/profile/alex...

3. Fines

If abusive images are "treated with the same severity the same as child sexual abuse material and terrorist content", then Ofcom need to be willing to *ban* platforms/AI tools like they would those producing CSAM/terrorist content.

Or impose *significant* fines, which they tend not to do!

2. AI images are easy to generate

Even if individual images are taken down within 48hrs and banned from being reposted, users will keep generating slight variants and bombard people with them.

Platforms only have to take down and ban an *individual* reported image vs preventing the wider behaviour

This is a good step in punishing platforms that host (and ultimately profit from) these images.

A few concerns though:

1. It's vague whether this includes only "real" images or also AI-generated ones. And if so, just nude images or also bikini ones, as Grok created on X? It should cover these too.

Putin’s megaphone: Orbán’s far-right push into UK universities is fuelled by Russian oil | Good Law Project Good Law Project has uncovered a network funded by Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán, that uses profits from refining Russian oil to platform far right and anti-trans campaigners in the UK

A conservative network led by Michael Gove and Nigel Farage’s senior adviser James Orr has spent more than half a million pounds pushing a far-right agenda – some of it fuelled by profits from Russian oil 🛢️⬇️
https://goodlaw.social/wyg8