Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.

For more information, please visit us at NYCCEPTICs.org.

Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I am your host, Massimo Pilucci, and with me as always is my co-host, Julia Galev.

Julia, what are we going to talk about today?

Mazma, today our episode is on philosophical shock tactics.

Oh, I'm shocked.

By what?

What kind of tactics are we talking about?

So we're talking about philosophical arguments that lead to very shocking or absurd seeming

conclusions, usually that offend people or that offend our moral intuitions or our natural

sensibilities.

So these are kind of a favorite of philosophers. And there's a bunch of examples

we're going to touch on today. There are shocking philosophical arguments to the effect that

we should, that it's perfectly morally acceptable to kill young children, that no one should

have any children, that it's immoral to have children, that we would all be better off if everyone were killed instantly tomorrow, that bestiality is perfectly morally acceptable.

The list goes on.

So we're going to talk about why these arguments are compelling to philosophers and to what extent our emotional and moral

reactions to those arguments indicate that there's something wrong with the arguments.

And in fact, as we'll talk about a little later, the reality is that these arguments are

acceptable or compelling to some philosophers philosophers and particularly to what are called

analytical philosophers. That's what I mean when I say philosophers. Yeah, oh, I see. Well, that

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