logo
episode-header-image
Sep 2013
54m 55s

Episode 31: An Anthropologist's Guide to...

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
About this episode

In the first of a two-part episode, we discuss one of our favorite recent papers--Tage Rai and Alan Page Fiske's 2011 paper on how social relationships shape and motivate our moral emotions and judgments.  We also talk about Sam Harris' $20,000 Moral Landscape  Challenge, and whether there's any real chance of convincing him that the arguments he made in The Moral Landscape (first published in English in 2011) are wrong. 

Links

Sam Harris' Moral Landscape Challenge [samharris.org]

Alan Fiske's overview of Relational Models Theory [sscnet.ucla.edu]

Tage Rai's research [kellogg.northwestern.edu]

Rai, T. S., & Fiske, A. P. (2011). Moral psychology is relationship regulation: moral motives for unity, hierarchy, equality, and proportionality. Psychological review, 118, 57-75. [irsp.ucla.edu]

 

Support Very Bad Wizards

Up next
Sep 30
Episode 317: For Shame
What is the psychology of shame? Is the experience of shame a human universal? How can we investigate the nature of shame across cultures? David and Tamler dive into Richard Shweder’s “Towards a Deep Cultural Psychology of Shame.” We talk about the methodological challenges of st ... Show More
1h 23m
Sep 16
Episode 316: A Four-Letter Man (Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber")
David and Tamler go big game hunting and explore their first Hemingway short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” We dig into his characteristic themes of courage, cowardice, shifting power dynamics in marriages, and what it truly means to live a happy life. Plus, ne ... Show More
1h 33m
Sep 2
Episode 315: Ceaseless Striving (Schopenhauer’s Pessimism)
David and Tamler tackle the topic chosen by our beloved Patreon supporters in the first VBW madness tournament – Schopenhauer. We discuss his essays “On the Sufferings of the World” and “The Vanity of Existence,” their strikingly modern perspectives on human life and behavior and ... Show More
1h 30m
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2023
Making Sense of Foundations of Morality | Episode 3 of The Essential Sam Harris
In this episode, we try to trace morality to its elusive foundations. Throughout the compilation we take a look at Sam’s “Moral Landscape” and his effort to defend an objective path towards moral evaluation. We begin with the moral philosopher Peter Singer who outlines his famous ... Show More
44m 37s
Oct 2018
Sam Harris on using reason to build our morality
Many philosophers draw a hard line between the worlds of facts and values, but not Sam Harris. In this thought-provoking conversation with Chris, he makes the case that reason can indeed answer moral questions, and then explores the many controversies that emerge from that claim. ... Show More
1h 2m
Dec 2020
Morality Before Metaphysics | Simon Blackburn, Raymond Tallis, Joanna Kavenna
Should we prioritize morality over scientific research? Our experts discuss.Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesAre our descriptions of the world independent from our morality? And should philosophy aim to interpret the world or to c ... Show More
48m 59s
Dec 2022
#305 — Moral Knowledge
Sam Harris speaks with Erik Hoel about the nature of moral truth. They discuss the connection between consequentialism and Effective Altruism, the problems with implementing academic moral philosophy, bad arguments against consequentialism, the implications of AI for our morality ... Show More
1h 7m
Dec 2019
The moral philosophy of The Good Place (with Mike Schur and Pamela Hieronymi)
After creating and running Parks and Recreation and writing for The Office, Michael Schur decided he wanted to create a sitcom about one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: What does it mean to be a good person? That’s how The Good Place was born.Soon into the s ... Show More
1h 44m
Dec 2020
Best of: The moral philosophy of The Good Place
After creating and running Parks and Recreation and writing for The Office, Michael Schur decided he wanted to create a sitcom about one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: What does it mean to be a good person? That’s how NBC's The Good Place was born. Soon int ... Show More
1h 44m
Feb 2023
227 | Molly Crockett on the Psychology of Morality
Most of us strive to be good, moral people. When we are doing that striving, what is happening in our brains? Some of our moral inclinations seem pretty automatic and subconscious. Other times we have to sit down and deploy our full cognitive faculties to reason through a tricky ... Show More
1h 11m