Is it Immoral that I Ask for Money?

A recent post on Substack accused me in particular of being ‘deeply unethical’ for asking people to support my public work financially on Substack. Everything on my Substack is freely available, but I do prioritise paid subscribers in terms of responding to comments on articles and selecting questions for my monthly ‘Ask Me Anything.’

The excellent Good Thoughts Substack wrote a good response to the ethics of this issue, which I agree with and don’t think I have much to add to. But seeing as an accusation of profiteering has been raised, I just wanted to share very clearly that every single penny that comes from paid subscribers goes into supporting my public work, as opposed to going on nice things for me. The main expense is paying someone to edit the videos on my YouTube channel, or filming the in-person interviews. I couldn’t do what I’m doing with the channel without this kind support.

Could I not fund this out of my university salary? The post in question speculated about my salary, implying that I should surely have enough money from this. There is a relevant factor that the author of the post in question is unaware of but it’s a bit personal. What I can share is that I have young children, and I don’t think of my university income as ‘my money’ but rather the family money. Of course, I take some of the family income for fun things for myself (sometimes I have a chocolate bar, for example). But I don’t think it’d be reasonable for me to take a sizeable chunk of the family to fund my public philosophy work.

Perhaps some Substack readers will be annoyed that the money is mainly going to my YouTube channel. But I think of the two as being closely related. Often, I use the Substack to give a ‘deeper dive’ into my YouTube video for that week. And I do my monthly ‘Ask Me Anything’ response to subscriber questions on my channel. Moreover, as I talked about in this video, I have ambitions to build a more interactive philosophy community, where people feel less passive and more involved. This could be either a more interactive online space (I’ve been talking to some tech people about this) or a physical gathering which is more interactive than the usual philosophy conference. I don’t enough funds yet to realise any of this, but I see that as the direction of travel.

I’m very grateful to all the paid subscribers who kindly support me with $8 a month. I haven’t announced this yet (stay tuned!) but I have plans after the summer to start filming a 9-part lecture series, incorporating lectures from leading thinkers, which could go live early 2027. This could perhaps even involve some kind of online seminars to discuss the lectures. The more support I get from subscribers, the more I can do with this. At the same time, I will try to continue making everything freely available.

In other news, check out this week’s video on my channel ‘Is Panpsychism Debunked?’

Whether it’s financial, or subscribing, liking, and commenting, thank you for your support. I’m very grateful.

I’m going to take the rest of August of to spend time with family. See you in September, starting with…

Live discussion! I’ll be in conversation with former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams about my book Why? The Purpose of the Universe, Monday September 7th in Blackwells Bookshop in Oxford. You can get tickets here.

“Galileo’s Error” is my book on consciousness and panpsychism.

Check out the Beliefless Spirituality Project that is currently funding my research: https://www.belieflessspirituality.com/

Photo by Shane on Unsplash