Description
One of the great debates in philosophy is whether or not moral rules are created by humans or exist independently from us as absolute truths. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that we could discover objective moral principles, and his theory of the Categorical Imperative was meant to give us a framework for distinguishing between right and wrong. In this episode we give an overview of the Categorical Imperative, including some famous thought experiments that argue both for and against Kant’s idea. We also learn about Kant’s rules for throwing a good dinner party, marvel at Mark’s absolute lack of knowledge about all things Scottish and answer some listener mail about our tagline.
All handsome people enjoy a good paradox, so we decided to open up our paradox box again and pick out a few new ones for this episode. A lot of paradoxes have to do with the way language works, and how it fails us when we try to describe certain aspects of our experience. Often a series of...
Published 11/16/15
Are zombies real? Could we all be zombies? On this special Halloween episode, we raise topics from the dead—specifically we’re reanimating our discussion of philosophical zombies from Episode 2. This time we take a closer look at qualia, a technical term for the experiences that are unique to us...
Published 11/02/15