Ep. 4: Supererogation - The Spiritual Bank Account
Description
In traditional moral philosophy there are three kinds of actions: Good actions you’re required to do, bad actions you’re not allowed to do, and permittable actions that are neither good nor bad. The philosopher J.O. Urmson introduced a fourth category: Good actions that you’re not required to do. These include things like giving to charity or helping a stranger in distress, and in technical philosophical jargon they are known as supererogatory acts. In this episode we dig into the concept of supererogation and try to figure out if it’s a real thing or just a red herring. We also get the story-behind-the-story of the “good samaritan” and learn all about the church’s secret bank of moral goodness. There’s some good stuff in here for fans of Back to the Future II, and you’ll also learn which member of the cast owns a brand new speedboat.
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