Very Bad Wizards

Dave and Tamler continue their discussion about their favorite topic.  They talk about the evolutionary origins of retributive behavior, cross-cultural differences in revenge norms, and the proportionate punishment for someone who gives your wife a foot massage. They also play a clipfrom an interview they conducted in Nosara with local attorney Andres Gonzalez about the Costa Rican treatment of the criminals they call ‘pobrecitos.’ Links “Would you give a man a foot massage?”   Robert Frank’s Passions Within Reason, one of the best books of the last 100 years. Tamler’s article “The Two Faces of Revenge” Dave’s post for the Harmony Blog: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become a Philosopher-in-Residence.” Support Very Bad Wizards

Dave allows Tamler to rant about Sam Harris’s strawman attacks on moral relativism before launching into discussion about revenge, justice, True Grit, and Michael Dukakis. Though they differ on many issues, Tamler and Dave agree that it’s hard to satirize a guy with shiny boots.   Links Sam Harris in the Huffington Post. “Brute force is better with Nazis.” The answer that launched a series of Bush presidencies. “This ain’t no coon hunt.” ·Justice and Honor, Tamler’s Psychology Today blog post. "Partial Desert" blog post at Flickers of Freedom. Support Very Bad Wizards

Tamler and Dave discuss recent work in philosophy and psychology about the differences in moral values and practices across cultures. We talk about the implications of moral diversity: does  it mean that we cannot criticize that practices of other cultures? How should we regard moral disagreement? Are there objective “truths” in ethics? Somehow we need to play clips from The Big Lebowski and Pulp Fiction in order to resolve these questions. Links "No Donnie, these men are nihilists, nothing to be afraid of." Interview with Jon Haidt. "Pigs are filthy animals" Support Very Bad Wizards

Tamler and David discuss whether giving up our belief in free will makes us more likely to abandon our moral standards.  Links “You Can’t Handle the Truth!”  Jesse Bering “Scientists say free will probably doesn’t exist, but urge: “Don’t stop believing!”  Excellent accessible description of the Vohs and Schooler study that we discuss. Tamler’s blog post in Psychology Today criticizing the pessimistic views of Smilansky and Vohs and Schooler: "No Soul?  I can live with that.  No free will?  Aaahhhh!".   “Eat the poo-poo.”  “Like ice cream…”   Josh Knobe on free will and experimental philosophy.   Tamler's dialogue on some of the problems with current experimental work on free will: "Free Will and Experimental Philosophy: An Intervention." “I want him dead!  I want his family dead!”   Uhlmann, Zhu, Pizarro & Bloom  “Blood is Thicker: Moral Spillover Effects Based on Kinship” Support Very Bad Wizards

Dave and Tamler start out talking about the new wave of skepticism about free will and moral responsibility in the popular press from people like Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne.   Neuroscience figures heavily in their arguments, but Dave and Tamler agree that neuroscientific data adds little of substance to the case other than telling us what we already know: human beings are natural biological entities.  Dave also accuses Tamler of being a hipster philosopher for abandoning a view once it got popular.  Next, we talk about what kind freedom we need to have in order to deserve blame and punishment. Do we need to create ourselves out of the swamps of nothingness? Dave comes out as a Star Trek nerd and asks whether we're all, in the end, like Data the android.  They also wonder whether a belief in free will is all that's keeping us from having sex with our dogs.   Finally,  Dave grills Tamler about his new book on the differences in attitudes about free will and moral responsibility across cultures. After seeing ho