AT: What is the main motivator behind your actions in the field of ethics and what you do every day?

BC: I think that this is more of a motivation for doing philosophy as a field in general, and this relates especially to the climate, but I think that there tend to be a lot of ethical and normative debates that are hidden in contemporary policy discussions and go on unexamined by a lot of folks. I find my personal enjoyment and satisfaction in thinking through those sorts of underlying questions. But it is super helpful and necessary for doing good policy and is in my case, my main interest or motivator. People, who are interested in more interpersonal ethics: how should like you and I as friends relate to each other? How should parents and children relate to each other or something? I think the same thing there. People can take on unreflective assumptions about how those sorts of relationships or interactions unfold. And it's a philosopher's job to think a little bit more deeply about why those assumptions are true, and where those assumptions came from.

AT: How does autonomy influence an individual's actions toward climate change? What is the significance of our role in the broader picture of the environment?

BC: My position is that we shouldn't worry too much about the individual, 'Did you buy the electric car or not?' I'm more on the side of focusing on politics--I do think you have a duty to engage in political action and to vote in the appropriate ways. And people tend to want this roadmap for exactly what they should do. And the sort of an unfortunate fact of the whole situation is that I think it's true that there's not a lot each individual can do and that a lot of cons of the ongoing crisis, there's a select few, namely particular fossil fuel executives, but it's a small portion of the population. But speaking from a position of relative like, surrounded by people at Harvard who are talking about these things, I think you can't take that position too far and think that your actions have no influence, especially when you're talking to people like David Keith, who's working on solar geoengineering and who knows? Maybe our conversation about ethics will influence the way how people think about these issues.

AT: Can you explain the process of working on your Ph.D. dissertation?

BC: Every Thursday, all the other Ph.D. Students will meet with some professors, read a paper together and then talk about it. One of our papers, like a two-hour session on that. I think when philosophy is done well, it's done in conversation and with other people. So there's a lot of, 'Oh, it turns out my dissertation touches on the philosophy of action or something. And I'm not an expert on the POA, so I'll go ask my friend who does POA to read something, then we'll get a coffee, and it's work. But every day is a little different, which is part of why I love it. And it's very easy to switch here. I've been thinking about the same things for five years or however long I have been doing this, and in Ph.D., you can overlap longer-term timescales, so if I decided I wanted to do feminist philosophy or something, it's pretty easy to switch your main interests, which is also kind of exciting. You're not stuck researching one kind of tree for the rest of your life.