53 | Solo -- On Morality and Rationality

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2019

⏱️ 125 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does it mean to be a good person? To act ethically and morally in the world? In the old days we might appeal to the instructions we get from God, but a modern naturalist has to look elsewhere. Today I do a rare solo podcast, where I talk both about my personal views on morality, a variety of “constructivism” according to which human beings construct their ethical stances starting from basic impulses, logical reasoning, and communicating with others. In light of this view, I consider two real-world examples of contemporary moral controversies: Is it morally permissible to eat meat? Or is there an ethical imperative to be a vegetarian? Do inequities in society stem from discrimination, or from the natural order of things? As a jumping-off point I take the loose-knit group known as the Intellectual Dark Web, which includes Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, and others, and their nemeses the Social Justice Warriors (though the discussion is about broader issues, not just that group of folks). Probably everyone will agree with my takes on these issues once they listen to my eminently reasonable arguments. Actually this is a more conversational, exploratory episode, rather than a polished, tightly-argued case from start to finish. I don’t claim to have all the final answers. The hope is to get people thinking and conversing, not to settle things once and for all. These issues are, on the one hand, very tricky, and none of us should be too certain that we have everything figured out; on the other hand, they can get very personal, and consequently emotions run high. The issues are important enough that we have to talk about them, and we can at least aspire to do so in the most reasonable way possible. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll.
0:04.5	And today we're going to have another solo podcast that is to say an episode of Mindscape
0:09.3	with only me talking. I think that when I started Mindscape, which was very close to one
0:14.7	year ago, or I think we're close to the anniversary, I'm not sure what it is, but I had in mind
0:19.0	that I'd be doing more than once every year solo episodes. But the truth is I just had
0:24.9	too many interesting people to talk to. So I've had wonderful guests come into my horizon
0:29.1	and it's been a lot of fun talking to them. So there's no regrets there. But I do want
0:33.2	to mix in some more solo episodes. So I made an effort to record this one. The last one,
0:39.8	of course, was a very different one in the sense that I had written a paper on why there's
0:43.8	something rather than nothing for a scholarly collection of essays. And I could basically
0:48.2	go through the arguments in that paper and explain them. So it was kind of figured out
0:52.6	already. It was a completed, sensible work. Today I both want to be a little bit more
0:58.6	controversial, but also be a bit more conversational. That is to say, talk about something where I
1:03.9	don't have a complete polished argument. So it's more of a conversational off the cuff,
1:10.0	ruminating about things, trying to get some thoughts into people's minds, including my own.
1:15.9	So thinking out loud as it were. But I will be a little bit controversial. So I want to talk
1:20.4	about what it means to be a good person or in slightly more formal language. How should
1:25.6	we think about morality and ethics? What is right? What is wrong? In particular, I'm a
1:32.2	naturalist. I don't believe in God or the supernatural. So how should naturalists think about
1:37.6	morality? Of course, I did organize a whole workshop a few years ago on moving naturalism
1:43.7	forward. God, a bunch of people together. So rather than the idea there was rather than
1:49.3	argue about God not existing, which we all agreed on by the construction of who was in the
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