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The Tom Woods Show

Ep. 1251 Are There Objective Moral Truths?

The Tom Woods Show

Tom Woods

Politics, Government, News

4.83.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2018

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the author of the outstanding libertarian book The Problem of Political Authority. Today he discusses his work in "ethical intuitionism," which holds that (1) there are objective moral truths; (2) we know these through an immediate, intellectual awareness, or 'intuition'; and (3) knowing them gives us reasons to act independent of our desires.

Show notes for Ep. 1251

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Tom Woods Show, episode 1251.

0:03.4

Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion.

0:08.0

Your daily dose of liberty education starts here, the Tom Woods Show.

0:14.5

Everybody, don't forget, my friend Bob Murphy has an amazing new book where he takes

0:18.4

all his critiques of Paul Krugman from over the years, all these

0:22.3

devastating smashes, and organizes them in one volume according to topic. And these are topics

0:28.1

you want a master. And Bob will help make you the master of the universe. Check it out at

0:33.6

contra Krugmanbook.com. And I am the narrator of the audiobook version. And you can get that for

0:40.5

free when you check out the audible offer at tom woods audio.com. Hi everybody. Tom Woods here.

0:47.6

Michael Humor joins us once again today. It's been rather a while since we've spoken to him.

0:51.8

But I've talked to him a couple of times about his book,

0:54.8

The Problem of Political Authority, which is a book I love. It's one of the books I recommend

0:59.6

when people are just getting interested in this sort of stuff, and particularly as they're

1:04.0

beginning to radicalize, and they want a full-blown, consistent anarcho-capitalist perspective.

1:14.3

That book just packs a punch, even though the title, the title has a, it's a title that, let's say, sounds okay at philosophical conferences.

1:20.8

Then you crack it open, you realize this thing is on fire.

1:24.5

It's an astonishing book, wonderful book.

1:26.6

But today I want to talk to him about an even

1:28.8

earlier book that he wrote, and that is ethical intuitionism. And in that book, humor makes a

1:34.7

defense of ethical intuitionism where there are objective moral truths. We know them through an

1:41.2

immediate intellectual awareness or intuition, and knowing them gives us

1:46.7

reasons to act independent of our desires. So these are interesting claims, and I want to

...

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