E85 - Alex O’Connor: Philosopher Reflects On Death, Atheism, Morality & Meaning
Know Thyself
André Duqum
4.8 • 658 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2024
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we are joined by the Cosmic Skeptic, Alex O'Connor, for a fascinating look into philosophy, atheism, and the pursuit of an ethical life. Alex has gained recognition for his unique perspective on reality, which he interprets through the lenses of materialism and agnosticism. This makes for an intriguing conversation as André and him engage in a deep dive into various topics.
The discussion revolves around their viewpoints on God, religion, consciousness, and morality. They dissect the potential dangers of intellectualizing and its impact on our understanding of the world. Furthermore, they tackle an interesting question: can the study of ethics lead to an individual becoming more ethical in their actions?
Alex also shares his thoughts on near death experiences, artificial intelligence, and facing the fear of death.
André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books
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Timecodes:
0:00 Intro
1:36 What it Means to Live a "Good" Life
5:37 Defining Meaning and Purpose
9:34 What Makes Something Bad or Good
14:15 The Balance of Open Mindedness
16:03 Atheism & Theism: Where's the Line?
18:30 Is God Dead? Being an Agnostic vs Atheist
21:10 The Ignorance of Belief
24:35 Distinguishing Between Wisdom & Knowledge
30:35 What is God?
34:41 How Studying Theology Changed Alex's Perspective
39:53 Religon & Tribalism: Why We're Afraid of Opposing Opinions
45:35 What It Looks Like to Live Ethically
49:44 The Danger of Over-Intellectualizing
58:37 Materialism Facing off with Consciousness
1:03:09 Are Near Death Experiences Real?
1:08:38 Why The Fear of Death is Valuable
1:24:09 The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
1:26:38 Why He's Changed His Mind on Consciousness
1:28:18 Making the Most of Our Lives
1:30:19 Conclusion
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Alex J. O’Connor is founder of the “Cosmic Skeptic” YouTube channel, podcast and blog, platforms dedicated to the publication of philosophical ideas and debates in an accessible format.
A graduate of philosophy and theology from St. John’s College, Oxford University, Alex is an international public speaker and debater, having delivered addresses across multiple continents at conferences, universities, and local drinking groups, as well as debated ethics, religion, and politics with a number of high-profile opponents before college audiences, on radio talk shows and on national television.
Alex’s online videos have been collectively viewed around fifty million times, attracting over 500,000 people to subscribe to his regular content. He has produced videos with notable experts in respected fields, such as Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, Bishop Robert Barron, and William Lane Craig.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cosmicskeptic/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CosmicSkeptic
Website: https://cosmicskeptic.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | for someone like myself who's more or less a materialist. |
| 0:02.7 | Personal experience is probably the only way that I think I would ever be able to be convinced of God's existence. |
| 0:08.0 | I remember waltzing into university and I had this YouTube channel where I talked about atheism |
| 0:13.0 | and feeling like I'm pretty good at this stuff. |
| 0:15.0 | I was learning about approaches to the discussion that completely upended the way that I was talking about it. |
| 0:20.0 | What is a strongly held belief that you've changed your perception on? |
| 0:24.8 | Well, people really want a need generally is to know how to live. |
| 0:30.1 | And if philosophy is supposed to be for any purpose, it has to be something like that. |
| 0:34.0 | You could study ethics as an academic discipline and yet have absolutely no |
| 0:38.3 | change in how ethical a person you are. So then what are you doing? The more interesting and useful |
| 0:42.8 | kind of philosophy is the philosophy that tells you how to live. If I told you you had a week to live, |
| 0:48.1 | how is that going to change your life? Seems like if you remind people of their death, it changes |
| 0:52.4 | their behaviors. Our knowledge that we're going |
| 0:54.6 | to die makes us want to do things which will outlive us. It's a way of escaping death. It's a way |
| 0:59.0 | of denying death. Without this fear of death, maybe we wouldn't be motivated to do anything at all. |
| 1:09.7 | Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Know Theirself. Today we're sitting down with a graduate of philosophy and theology from St. John's College, Oxford University. And he is a debater, public speaker, YouTuber, podcaster, many things around the non-so existential questions of life about ethics, morality, God, religion, free will. |
| 1:29.3 | Much of what we're going to be diving into today, Alex O'Connor. |
| 1:33.2 | Hey, it's good to be here. |
| 1:34.5 | Yeah. |
| 1:36.2 | What does it mean for you to live a good life, a ethically grounded and virtuous life, which |
| 1:42.8 | might be two different things, but how do you |
| 1:44.3 | delineate that? Well, people often equivocate on the word good. And I suppose one of the points |
... |
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