This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel War Burton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.com.

If I want to sell my tape recorder, I can find the buyer, agree a price, and do the

deal. So long as certain conditions are met, for example that the buyer is not deceived and

enters freely into the transaction, there

surely isn't anything to object to here.

But what about people who buy the services of prostitutes?

What about those who choose to sell their organs or their blood or rent their

wounds for surrogate births? The Harvard professor, Michael Sandell, the BBC's

2009 Ref lecturer, argues that there should be moral limits to the market.

Michael Sandel, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

It's great to be with you, it's great to be back in fact, natural.

We're going to focus today on the question, what shouldn't be sold?

Do you think there are things that really should never be sold?

Yes, I think that one of the big questions we have to think through morally and also politically

is what goods and what social practices are corrupted or degraded if bought and sold for money,

if marketized.

So what sort of things are we talking about, eh?

Well, we could begin with some fairly familiar examples.

Take the example long debated a case of prostitution.

Prostitution is the commodification

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