Very Bad Wizards

Latest Episodes:

Episode 3: "We believe in nothing!" (Cultural diversity, relativism, and moral truth) Sep 08, 2012

Show notes

Tamler and Dave discuss recent work in philosophy and psychology about the differences in moral values and practices across cultures. We talk about the implications of moral diversity: does it mean that we cannot criticize that practices of other cultures? How should we regard moral disagreement? Are there objective "truths" in ethics? Somehow we need to play clips from The Big Lebowski and Pulp Fiction in order to resolve these questions.

Links

"No Donnie, these men are nihilists, nothing to be afraid of."

Interview with Jon Haidt.

"Pigs are filthy animals"

Support Very Bad Wizards

Episode 2: The "Dangerous Truth" about Free Will (Free Will and Morality, Pt. 2) Sep 01, 2012

Show notes

Tamler and David discuss whether giving up our belief in free will makes us more likely to abandon our moral standards.

Links

"You Can't Handle the Truth!"

Jesse Bering "Scientists say free will probably doesn't exist, but urge: "Don't stop believing!" Excellent accessible description of the Vohs and Schooler study that we discuss.

Tamler's blog post in Psychology Today criticizing the pessimistic views of Smilansky and Vohs and Schooler: "No Soul? I can live with that. No free will? Aaahhhh!".

"Eat the poo-poo." "Like ice cream…"

Josh Knobe on free will and experimental philosophy.

Tamler's dialogue on some of the problems with current experimental work on free will: "Free Will and Experimental Philosophy: An Intervention."

"I want him dead! I want his family dead!"

Uhlmann, Zhu, Pizarro & Bloom "Blood is Thicker: Moral Spillover Effects Based on Kinship"

Support Very Bad Wizards

Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1) Aug 30, 2012

Show notes

Dave and Tamler start out talking about the new wave of skepticism about free will and moral responsibility in the popular press from people like Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne.

Neuroscience figures heavily in their arguments, but Dave and Tamler agree 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 also accuses Tamler of being a hipster philosopher for abandoning a view once it got popular.

Next, we talk about what kind freedom we need to have in order to deserve blame and punishment. Do we need to create ourselves out of the swamps of nothingness? 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. After seeing how long they've been carrying on, they then agree to talk about all the stuff they left out in the next episode.

Links

Coyne, J. "Why You Don't Really Have Free Will."

Sam Harris. "Free Will."

Eddy Nahmias. "Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?"

Galen Strawson "Luck Swallows Everything."

Support Very Bad Wizards