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Making Sense with Sam Harris

#448 — The Philosophy of Good and Evil

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.629.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam Harris speaks with David Edmonds about moral philosophy and effective altruism. They discuss Edmonds's book Death in a Shallow Pond, Peter Singer's famous drowning child thought experiment, arguments for and against thought experiments, "trolleyology," consequentialism, the origins of the Effective Altruism movement, the controversial strategy of "earning to give," Derek Parfit's influence on contemporary ethics, the backlash against effective altruists, Angus Deaton's critique of the efficacy of foreign aid, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at

0:22.2

samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the

0:27.6

support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

0:36.6

I'm here with David Edmonds.

0:38.1

David, thanks for joining me again.

0:39.7

Thanks for having me back.

0:41.7

So David, you have a new book, which I really enjoyed.

0:44.5

It's titled Death in a Shallow Pond, a Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers

0:49.4

in Need.

0:51.1

And you've written a, kind of a short bio of the philosopher Peter Singer, who's also been on the podcast several times and of the effect of altruism movement that he has spawned along with Will McCaskill and Toby Ord, who've also been on the podcast several times. And but it's also a great history of moral philosophy in the analytic tradition.

1:13.9

So I just want to track through the book, really, because it's, I think the virtues of

1:20.3

effective altruism as well as the concerns surrounding it are still worth talking about.

1:26.0

And I think just the core concerns of moral philosophy

1:32.3

and how we think about doing good in the world

1:34.5

are really of the eternal interest,

1:37.4

because it's not at all clear that we think about these things

1:40.0

rationally or effectively or normatively in any other way.

1:43.2

So before we jump in, remind people

1:45.2

what you do, because you know, I've spoken before and you have your own podcast, but, you know,

1:50.0

where can people find your work generally and what are you tending to focus on these days?

1:54.4

Gosh, well, I had a double life as a BBC journalist and a philosopher. I've given up the BBC bit, so it's

2:04.0

all philosophy from now on. I've got a podcast called Philosophy Bites, which I make with a colleague

...

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