Ep. 1: Utilitarianism - I’ve Got a Serial Killer's Liver
Description
Is doing the most good for the most people always the right thing to do? The moral theory known as “consequentialism” holds that our decisions should be guided by their outcomes. Utilitarianism is one type of consequentialism, which says that our moral choices should be focused on maximizing happiness or “utility” across the whole of humanity. One way to sum up utilitarianism is to say that “the ends justify the means.” In this episode we take a hard look at the implications of utilitarianism and review the writings of John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and Bernard Williams. We also ask some tough questions, like, “would you kill one innocent person to save five others?” and “what’s it like to work in a coffee mine?” Find out what happens in the Hospital of Utilitarianism and get some pro tips from famous philosophers on weird stuff to put in your will.
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