Very Bad Wizards

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Episodes

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Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro•sites.libsyn.com

Very Bad Wizards is a podcast featuring a philosopher (Tamler Sommers) and a psychologist (David Pizarro), who share a love for ethics, pop culture, and cognitive science, and who have a marked inability to distinguish sacred from profane. Each podcast includes discussions of moral philosophy, recent work on moral psychology and neuroscience, and the overlap between the two.

Episodes

Episode 5: Revenge, Pt. 2: The Revenge

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 Passi...

Oct 08, 2012•1 hr 5 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast

Episode 4: Revenge, Pt. 1

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. "...

Sep 20, 2012•52 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast

Episode 3: "We believe in nothing!" (Cultural diversity, relativism, and moral truth)

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...

Sep 08, 2012•1 hr 2 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast

Episode 2: The "Dangerous Truth" about Free Will (Free Will and Morality, Pt. 2)

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! "...

Sep 01, 2012•1 hr 14 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast

Episode 1: Brains, Robots, and Free Will (Free Will and Morality Pt. 1)

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...

Aug 30, 2012•1 hr 11 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast