71 min listen
Episode 6: Trolleys, Utilitarians, and Psychopaths (Part 1)
FromVery Bad Wizards
ratings:
Length:
62 minutes
Released:
Oct 20, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Tamler contemplates ending it all because he can't get 'Call Me Maybe' out of his head, and Dave doesn't try to talk him out of it. This is followed by a discussion about drones, psychopaths, Canadians, Elle Fanning, horrible moral dilemmas, and the biggest rivalry in Ethics: utilitarians vs. Kantians. Links"Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama." by Conor Friedersdorf"Why I Refuse to Refuse to Vote for Obama" by Robert Wright.Dave's study "The Mismeasure of Morals"The write-up of Dave's study in The Economist: "Goodness Has Nothing to Do With It"
Released:
Oct 20, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1): Dave and Tamler talk about the new wave of skepticism about free will and moral responsibility in the popular press from people like Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne, and argue that neuroscientific data adds little of substance to the case other than telling us what we already know: human beings are natural biological entities. Dave comes out as a Star Trek nerd and asks whether we're all, in the end, like Data the android. They also wonder whether a belief in free will is all that's keeping us from having sex with our dogs. Finally, Dave grills Tamler about his new book on the differences in attitudes about free will and moral responsibility across cultures. by Very Bad Wizards