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Machines & Meaning

A podcast exploring AI ethics through the lens of great philosophers. Each episode pairs a thinker from history with a contemporary question about technology, power, and human values.

S1 E12
December 22, 2025 12 min

Ibn Khaldun’s Warning: When Tools Become Purposes

Ibn Khaldun

Examines how AI gains rhetorical elevation to collective purpose through asabiyyah and what happens when tools are mistaken for civilizational goals.

S1 E11
November 11, 2025 15 min

Credibility Deficits: Miranda Fricker and the Illusion of AI Literacy

Miranda Fricker

Explores testimonial injustice and how AI creates new credibility hierarchies — determining whose voices are heard and whose are systematically discounted.

S1 E10
October 13, 2025 15 min

AI’s Aesthetic Trap: Søren Kierkegaard’s Three Spheres of Existence

Søren Kierkegaard

How AI may trap us in Kierkegaard’s aesthetic sphere — simulating fulfilment and novelty without enabling genuine ethical or spiritual development.

S1 E9
September 8, 2025 13 min

Hannah Arendt and AI’s Collective Thoughtlessness

Hannah Arendt

Arendt’s concept of ‘thoughtlessness’ reveals the conditions that enable systematic harm — not through malice, but through collective non-engagement.

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S1 E8
August 4, 2025 14 min

Aristotle’s Phronesis and the Wisdom to Judge Ourselves

Aristotle

Examines practical wisdom and the meta-cognitive competencies humans need to remain professionally relevant alongside increasingly capable AI.

S1 E7
July 1, 2025 13 min

Permanent Intermediates: Martin Heidegger and AI’s Erosion of Mastery

Martin Heidegger

How AI undermines the path to expertise, creating perpetually functional but never truly masterful practitioners trapped in permanent intermediacy.

S1 E6
June 1, 2025 14 min

The Accountability Threshold: Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of Double Effect

Thomas Aquinas

Applies the doctrine of double effect to AI’s unintended consequences — when harm is foreseen but not intended, who bears responsibility?

S1 E5
May 1, 2025 16 min

Universal Laws: Kant’s Categorical Imperative and AI’s Immutable Rules

Immanuel Kant

Draws parallels between Kant’s categorical imperative and the challenge of creating immutable, universalisable ethical frameworks for AI.

S1 E4
April 1, 2025 15 min

The Detriment of Constructs: Simone de Beauvoir and Our AI Categories

Simone de Beauvoir

Examines how rigid categorisation and binary thinking restrict AI governance and our comprehension of what these systems actually do.

S1 E3
March 2, 2025 15 min

The Calculation Default: What René Descartes Teaches Us About Reasoning Models

René Descartes

Analyzes AI reasoning models through Descartes’ method of doubt — what happens when systems confront problems that exceed mathematical certainty?

S1 E2
February 3, 2025 12 min

Who’s Adapting to Whom? Lewis Mumford’s Warning for Technics

Lewis Mumford

Investigates whether technology serves human needs or whether humans are increasingly adapting themselves to serve the demands of technology.

S1 E1
December 31, 2024 12 min

The Narrative Machine: LLMs Through the Eyes of Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre

Explores narrative fragmentation and whether language models contribute architecturally to the dissolution of coherent moral traditions.

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Angel Evan

AI Ethics · Philosophy · Technology

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