#56 Simon Blackburn: Metaethics, The Bases of Ethical Systems, Meaning of Life, and Beauty

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Dr. Simon Blackburn taught Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002, and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.

In this episode, the conversation centers around metaethics. We talk about evolutionary theory as the basis of morality; the shortcomings of reason; the is-ought dichotomy; the properties of moral axioms; the ethics of religion; the internal contradictions of moral relativism; the condition of nihilism; free will and personal responsibility; truth and cruelty; pleasure in ethics; religion, science, and the meaning of life; the philosophical problem of immortality; and the relationship between beauty, truth, and morality. 

Time Links:

01:05 What is metaethics?

04:05 Evolutionary theory as the basis of morality 

10:41 The trouble with reason 

22:53 The is-ought problem 

29:36 About moral axioms 

38:50 The ethics of religion 

42:28 Contradictions of moral relativism 

47:45 Nihilism 

52:49 Free will and personal responsibility 

57:50 Can truth be cruel?

1:01:45 Pleasure in ethics

1:05:30 Religion, science, and the meaning of life

1:09:04 Immortality

1:11:21 How is beauty related to truth and morality?

1:17:18 Follow Dr. Blackburn’s work 

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