How can we explain kindness and cruelty? Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Why do people so often disagree about moral issues? This course explores the psychological foundations of our moral lives.
Week 6 Office Hours (2014)
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Moralities of Everyday Life
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The Big Answers
We’ll discuss some clever studies that show how our moral behavior is powerfully influenced—often at the unconscious level—by the situations that we find ourselves in. Such findings raise some hard problems about determinism, free will, and moral responsibility. Most of all, if our actions are determined by our brains, our genes, and our situations, in what sense can we be said to be moral agents? The course will end by trying to address this question.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Paul BloomBrooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University
Psychology
[BLANK_AUDIO]
So, I'd like to welcome people back to the
final, Office Hours, with with me and with Christina Starmans.
Before we get to the questions, I opened up a thread asking people for advice, on,
what to do if I was to teach the course again, and I got some excellent advice.
There was a lot of questions, a lot of disagreement about the
quizzes, whether there should be multiple tries, whether they be done differently.
Interesting suggestions along those lines.
There was, a, a lot of questions
about different readings and different materials to use.
Everybody liked the office hours.
The office hours seem to be a very good idea.
And I should, I should add these, and this is not my idea.
I don't know who thought of them originally.
But Dan Ariely used them in his terrific course.
So I've decided to, to adopt them.
There were questions about the lectures.
Now, the lectures, I can't change that much, because they're
already taped, and I'm not planning to retape all of them.
One idea that nobody suggested is from House of Cards, with TV
shows that you watch, there's these asides that Kevin Spacey make, makes.
Make, so he's talking to people.
And all of a sudden he turns and says, the road to power is paved with hypocrisy.
And I might do that periodically, >> [LAUGH].
Even though, that wouldn't add much to the course.
Many people complained about me pacing around.
And I thought about that, and I figured the problem is not with me, it's with you.
So, you're probably watching it sitting down.
I'm sitting dow, you're sitting down, you see me moving.
You should be pacing.
You should be pacing alongside me, and then it'll work out.
So, let's get to the office hour questions.
>> Okay, great.
So, [COUGH] first course-related questions.
Shannon Wahl asks, will the course materials still
be available on Coursera after this week ends?
>> Yes they will.
They'll be up for at least another 90 days.
That's Coursera policy.
So for at least another 90 days you have
the videos, you have the readings, you have everything.
>> Great.
And then Claudia Mann asks how did the experience of giving
this MOOC sort of match your expectations or did anything surprise you?
[SOUND] Yeah, a few things surprised me.
There was less attrition, than I thought there would be.
I wasn't so much worried about people dropping out of the course.
I think, people get very panicked and say this is a big problem.
The sort of course that people drop out.
But I don't see this as a college course.
A college course, there's a huge investment of money, of
time, you need to complete certain courses to get a degree.
So dropping out is a big deal.
This is like a book, or it's like a, a, a TV series, where you
could get a lot out of the beginning, and then just stop reading, or stop watching.
But having said that, a lot of people stuck around,
just, we still have, kind of, a large and vibrant audience.
I, the amount of work to do this course, was more than I expected, both
the lectures and then, the office hours and then the discussion, boards and so on.
All the rest of my surprises, came from discussion boards.
I was surprised at first people took the
evaluation so seriously, since only a small fraction
of people are doing it for a sort
of signature track, but I shouldn't have been surprised.
These evaluations have symbolic value, and that matters to people.
I was, I was, pleasantly surprised by the lack of trolling.
There's, you know there a were half dozen cases where people were textbook trolls.
Where they would come in just to make trouble.
They'd say offensive and opinionated things, to get people going, and so on.
And, in all of the cases I found, I emailed
the people, and told 'em to stop, and they all stopped.
What happened maybe more frequently was there were
some threads which got, a bit out of control.
There was one, spanking thread, that we did have to shut down, and
this was not because people were trolling
or people were malicious, or, or ridiculous.
It's that people had very powerful feelings about
the issue, and because of this, it began
to escalate and started violating Coursera policies, and
entering an environment which isn't a suitably academic environment.
I'm in favor of free speech, but, but this is a classroom, and
has some constraints in a classroom and, and there's some sort of boundaries.
But having said that, what, what most surprised me, and
what mos, what I most took away from the discussion
threads is how generous people were, how intellectually curious, how
energetic and excited they were, and how generous they were.
How, how somebody would come and then say
I'm confused about this, and somebody would explain it.
I'm looking for this reading, and someone would show you how to get it.
And it was I think in part, it just shows, illustrates
some basic, altruism and kindness we find in people, and in part
it shows that very quickly we have become a community, and members
of a community would reach out and help, and help each other.
>> Yeah, I think that's something that actually pleasantly surprised me too.
I was, especially in the first weeks, overwhelmed
by how many people participated in the forums.
>> Yes.
>> And I think actually, it's something that's sort
of really great about this kind of format for a
course as compared to a university, lecture course, where
you often don't have the opportunity for as much discussion.
And so this was a really great experience for
me to get to participate in those kinds of discussions.
>> It's a good point.
I, I mean, I don't think a course like
this, as it is, would replace a university course.
There's a lot of ways in which a university course is better.
But you're pointing out a way in which this is better, actually.
I taught, I taught a version of this at Yale.
And the class wasn't a community.
The class was, was composed of students who would come in at a certain time,
and listen to lectures and go to a section and do the exams and so on.
But this is a community, these are people who get, you
know, I, I got to know people, over the course of things.
I got to be familiar with the names, I got to identify people, by
their views and by their attitudes, and, you know, I didn't agree with everybody.
And I tried, I, I, I, because, I, I tried to adopt a professorial
stance of, of jumping into correct some facts or to, or to add some things.
But not jump and say, hey, you're wrong, I there are 6 arguments why you're wrong.
Or way to go, you that's, you really, but but
without my participation, it did become a community of some cohesion.
>> Yeah.
Okay, next question comes from Igor Sulikov, Sokilov, sorry Igor,
[LAUGH] and so he asks is self binding good or bad?
So we talked about self binding a lot this
week, where we sort of anticipate, some future thing
that we might be tempted to do, and then,
you know, figure out some way to prevent ourselves
>> Yeah
>> from doing this, this bad thing.
But he points out that if you do this, you
sort of give up your ability to you know reason through
your behavior, or sort of make the right choice in the
moment, by just preventing yourself from having a choice at all.
So, is this good for sort of strengthening your character?
>> [SOUND].
>> Yeah, it, it's something which I've struggled about.
I mean, personally I have the willpower of a small child.
So, I try to make my way through the worlds rules which is self binding.
I try not to have alcohol in the house, because [INAUDIBLE] I'll drink it all.
And, and I try not to, I try to discipline myself.
I gotta exercise now.
This is time for work, I shut down my Internet, and so on.
And, and I try to do this with moral things as well.
Sort of an automatic deductions for charity, and stuff like that.
And what if there was a better person?
A person who, they felt they shouldn't drink so much,
they didn't drink so much, didn't matter what was around 'em.
Its, they didn't have to mandate times for exercise, or work, or,
or charity, because they, they just will do it at a share motivation.
Who's the better person?
And, and worse, does my use of self-binding erode my character?
Is it you know, is it sort of condescending to myself?
And, and it's interesting that there are, and I'm going to throw this back at you.
There are different moral views, about how you should live your life.
What's the more moral way to live your life?
And this actually connects with some of the research that you do.
>> Yeah, so so I think from a baseline point this is somewhere where we differ.
So I feel like, self-binding almost feels immoral to me.
That the, the moral action to me feels like, you know, I leave the alcohol on
the counter, and I, you know, train myself to be able to just walk right by it.
That, that's like moral strength of character.
>> Yeah.
>> And that is a view that's captured
most by the philosophy of Aristotle, who thinks
that, sort of, a truly moral action is
one in which, you're wholly committed to that action.
So you're not struggling with the temptation, you're not, sort of,
you know, regretfully doing the right thing while
wanting to, sort of, do the wrong thing.
But you're fully sort of, in harmony internally with this moral action.
But then there's a different moral philosophy, which is
>> Immanuel Kant.
>> Which is captured by, by Kant.
Who feels like, while actually what makes something moral,
is the fact that you're doing it out of duty.
Out of a moral duty so, if you just want to do
the right thing anyway, then that's, that's not really a moral option.
You're just doing what you want to do.
But if you don't want to do it, if you want to you now cheat on your taxes
>> Yeah.
Or something and you sort of, through a moral sense of what's right
and wrong, overcome that bad desire, that's what makes an action truly moral.
And so this is something I've been very interested in, especially
in what, which of these 2 philosophies most captures our moral psychology.
>> Yeah, our moral, our moral judgement of
who's a good person and who's a bad person.
I mean in some cases, kant wins.
So, take the virtue of courage.
We tend to, I think, view somebody as
courageous, if he or she acts despite their fears.
But someone who felt no fear at all, maybe is in a technical sense, courageous,
but we don't view them as virtuous in the same way, because it came easy to them.
If I have no need of money, and you leave your purse and go out, and I don't
steal, people would say, that, they won't say, what
a great guy, if I don't care about money.
But if I desperately need money, and I know you have a lot of money and I
know you wouldn't miss it, yet still I
hold back, then I think I'm a better person.
>> Right.
But, of course, self binding is one step further, which is, we're
not even counting on my impulse to be good at the time.
We're trying to orchestrate the world, so as to make
it impossible for me to add on my worst self.
I mean, there's one thing you can say
about self binders, and that is that they're smart.
They have foresight, they have planning.
They have good intentions.
>> Do you think that the answer to whether, self binding is the more moral
road, or, sort of, strength of character
is the more moral road, depends on outcome?
Are self binders more successful, or are people who work
on, sort of, willpower and strength of character more successful?
[BLANK_AUDIO]
And is that how we judge which one's more moral?
>> Yeah, it's a good question.
[LAUGH] [UNKNOWN] neither one is that successful.
I mean, you, you, you.
Self-binding is this great idea in principle, and what we're
really good is at binding the behaviors of other people.
That's what we do with laws and waiting periods and constitutions and so on.
At a cultural level.
But at a personal level, you know, there, there are far more new year's resolutions,
and then plans, that are set forth and are ever followed, a month later.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And and, it's, it's very difficult to reign into your appetites.
And and I'm not sure whether you're better off
to try to improve your character, or orchestrate your environment.
I guess, you know, you would think about, about doing both.
>> Sure.
[LAUGH]
Do you just, you know, cover all your bases?
>> Cover all your bases and then, and then see if you end up as a good person.
>> [LAUGH] Okay.
Alright, so next question comes from Bjorn Halsson.
Now we talked a lot in this last week about sort of
the power of reason, and how that can feed into our morality.
And Bjorn asks, so, we often use reason for sort of more rationalization
of our views, rather than actual
rational deliberation before, before making the decision.
So how do we know for sure that we're as, how do we, how do
we use reason in a good way, as opposed to in a rationalizing our impulses.
>> Yeah.
So I, I you know in, in the lectures and in the Atlantic article which
I assigned, defend reason as a way
of, of improving our morality, becoming better people.
And this is unpopular.
A lot of people think that, that, they don't deny the
existence of reason, but they think it tends to be self serving.
People like, Hugo Mercier, and, Dan Sperber and John
Height, argue that reason is used as a tool.
It's used for self justification.
And, and you have to be crazy to deny
that that's true, some of the, some of the time.
The hard problem, I guess is, to know when your
own reasoning is in the service of goals you have.
Self justification, or whether it really is designed to
try to find the truth, including the moral truth.
And so, you know, I have to decide whether or not,
I don't know, whether or not to volunteer for a cause.
And if I use my reasons, they know, it's, it makes
more sense for me to stay at home and do something else.
Am I doing it just because I'm lazy, and I'm smart enough to
justify my laziness,or is this, you know, a valid way to do it?
I think part of the answer is, there're certain
institutions, certain cultural institutions, that
could help sharpen your reason.
And I think one of them is exposure to ideas and people who are different.
So, so listen to people who disagree with
you, listen, who have different goals than you.
If you're liberal, listen to conservatives.
If you're conservative, listen to liberals.
And and you might still produce more arguments to
justify yourself, but I think, and this is an
optimistic view, you, in the long run, it will
calibrate your rational capacities more toward leaning to the truth.
And this isn't how science works and
how philosophy works, which is, you have disagreement.
And you know, it's very rare in a disagreement where, I
tell you, oh, I think the Kantian theory of morality's the best.
And then you argue with me, and I say,
damn, you're right, I didn't know that, you win.
People don't do that often.
But my views have changed.
I bet your views have changed
through interaction with people with different views.
And it takes a bit of time.
But, my views on issues like, like abortion, capital punishment, duties
to the poor, have changed a lot even, you know, and,
and I'm old, but you know, but there's a certain point,
and your views change less as you get older and more invested.
My views have changed a bit.
They're never going to change again, because they're,
they're settled now, but, but, but they're good.
[LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH].
So we've talked a bit about how you know, lot of our moral judgments
tend to be sort of emotionally based, at times of situationally based and so on.
Do you think that this kind of rational deliberation doing more philosophy,
reasoning through things, can sort of
calibrate, sort of recalibrate your emotional
responses to things so that, you know, even if you are having
that kind of response to moral situations, it's, it can change through reasoning?
>> I think, I think it can.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
I think disgust is a good case study of that.
Where, you might start off a disgust reaction
towards homosexuals or interracial couples, or something like that.
And, but you might through reason say, there's nothing wrong with this.
That won't make your disgust go away, but it might cause you to focus less on it.
It may cause you to expose yourself to exemplars
of groups that are less, that won't elicit your disgust.
It changes how you frame things, how you evaluate things.
Take racial prejudice in general, if
you're a racially prejudiced person, you'll
see, and you feel hatred and fear and anger towards an out group.
It'll motivate you to always read the newspapers
when the out group does, does the worst things.
To talk to your friends, to tell jokes, to tell stories.
To, to try to, to focus on the worst of that group.
But if you, if you start over those feelings but you don't want to
be that way, I think you could in some way train your emotions.
You could, you could develop friendships with people who belong to that group.
And that will change your emotions.
>> Hm.
>> So, it's all, it's, it's interesting to sort of
reason, and there's emotion, and [UNKNOWN] an arrow straight to them.
I can't all of a sudden say, oh I'm going to like that group.
I'm not going to be disgusted at that.
I'm going to be outraged to this.
But, what reason can do is, it could set up
your environment in different ways, and we're kind of back to self-binding.
And then that could change your, your emotion.
If you're and I think that's actually how it, how it happens.
How people, people who've come to moral conclusions will often change
their world in subtle ways, and then that, will change their feelings.
>> Yeah I think the, the fact that our, the, the sorts of things that
disgust us have changed over time, is kind
of a suggestion that that's going on, right?
So, we've made some decisions about what kinds of things are okay and what aren't.
And we no longer have disgusted things
like, say interracial marriage or something like that.
So that seems to be changing, sort of an emotional response.
>> That's right, so, so when I give an
example of the emotions changing a view, I often
give an example, because I think it's a good
one, of Harriet Beecher Stowe's book, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Which was sort of a, an emotional empathetic appeal,
causing you to think about the suffering of slaves.
And that caused a huge change.
But, the part that's missing from the stories,
you had to choose to pick up the book.
Nobody held a gun to your head and said read this book.
So, by choosing to pick up the book, it is
your reason, dictating I am ready to get my emotions changed.
And, you know, similarly, you know, if I, if I, a
bad person might seek out, seek out sources that would corrode.
And, and, and you know, harshen their emotions.
>> Right, okay, next question comes from Yonis [UNKNOWN]
[COUGH], so we've talked a, a few times about people
who might do immoral things, because of some sort of
defect in their brain; a tumor, or something like that.
[COUGH] and it seems to come up kind of a fair bit.
>> Yeah.
>> In this kind of literature.
Like, oh, I didn't do it.
I had a, I didn't, you know, I'm not responsible, I had a tumor.
>> Right.
>> But he asks, well, could tumors ever
just make you a better, a morally better person?
Or do they always make you worse?
[LAUGH] >> Great, so that's a good question.
So, so take it out from the
take it out from the moral realm for a second.
In fiction the answer is yes, all sorts of
things can happen to you that make you better.
So, you could get, get bitten by a spider and become Spider Man.
You get a painful electric shock and now you're one of the X-Men.
You have a mutation, you're an X-Man, a mutation X-Men.
You you, you in, in the movie I think Phenomenon with John Travolta.
He becomes a super genius.
Turns out later, it's a tumor.
And these are great, fictional stories.
Why does it never happen in real life?
Why in real life do mutations make you sick and maimed and ultimately die?
Why does getting electric shock or bitten by a
spider, tend to have bad outcomes, not good outcomes?
And, and there's a logic to this.
the, the, the American politician,
San Rayburn, said something to the effect of, any jackass
could kick down a barn, it takes a carpenter to build.
And the idea is that, there are things
in the world that are complicated, involving many parts.
And complex structures and so on.
To create those, requires intelligence and foresight and planning.
To destroy something, requires a, just a jackass.
Any sort of insult to the system.
So take that to morality.
There's a million things that could happen to me, that will make me a worse person.
And this is because, what it is to be a good person is a
complicated matter of many parts of your
emotions and your reason and your planning.
And so, typically, if you, if you, you
know, you jam an ice pick into somebody's head,
or they get a tumor, they loose the, the, it's like the barn has been kicked down.
And I think it's part of the nature of the world, that
kind and good behavior is complicated, and rich and structured and intricate.
And so, it could, it could come into
being through, a mechanism that can create such things.
If you're a theist, the mechanism would be God.
Otherwise the mechanism could be Darwinian evolution.
It can be a cultural evolution, or it could be intentional planning by a
reasoned individual, but it's not going to happen
by accident, and a tumor is an accident.
>> Okay, alright now we have a great question from Hamish Russel.
So the poor cat who got tossed into a dumpster, did the cat survive?
>> [LAUGH] The cat is alive and well, living in London now as a minor celebrity.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But strangely unaffected by the fame and
fortune, remaining just a humble and loyal cat.
>> [LAUGH].
I don't know anything about the last part, but the cat, the cat lived.
The guy rescued the cat.
Yes.
>> and, and, and in fact this was,
I remember reading this in the discussion thread.
This is an example of the kindness of our, of our discussion people, which was, as
soon as the question was raised, people jumped
in and said, no the cat's fine, don't worry.
>> Here's a link to the, here, don't worry about the cat.
>> Here's a link to the cat, you know.
Here's the, Kat has a Facebook page, the cat's on Twitter, you know.
You know, hash-tag cat used to be in [INAUDIBLE]
>> [LAUGH].
and, it, it's all good.
>> [LAUGH] Great.
Glad to hear it.
okay, so I'm going to combine a few questions.
We had a number of people asking about your
Atlantic article that we read for this last week,
>> Yeah.
>> and the relationship between reason and free will.
so, can you just talk a little bit more about how those relate?
>> So, these aren't, these don't actually
don't tend to be issues that enrage people
in the same way, but they're very
complicated, intricate, and I think very interesting issues.
And here's how I frame things.
There's, there's a doctrine known as determinism, and determinism
is the idea that that everything we do is cause.
Not by, it's caused by, the state of the universe when it began.
The laws of physics and maybe some random determinancy.
And so because the universe is determined, there's a
sense in which everything we do, has been determined.
Now, we often believe otherwise, I believe that I could choose to lift
the cup up or not, and it's up to me in some sense.
But if determinism is right, that's an illusion.
I'm either going to lift it, or I'm not going to lift it.
But that was known long before I was ever born.
The doctrine that I could choose, that I could have, could have done otherwise.
I could have escaped from the shackles of genes,
and environment, and chemistry, and everything, is known as freewill.
And I think framed that way, free will does not exist.
Free will is a myth.
So I'm a determinist.
So, what difference does it make?
Well, in some sense, I don't think it makes that much of a difference.
Because, we're determined machines, just like dogs
and cats, just like mountains and clouds, but,
the question is what kind of machine are we, what kind of thing are we?
And, I think that, that the evidence suggests that we are
the things capable of the deliberation, of consciousness, of reason, of judgement.
All of these things that make us sort of moral agents, to be distinguished
from clouds and rocks and worms and
distinguishing people with tumors, in these extreme cases.
and, it used to be thought by many philosophers that there's a
conflict between a determined clock work
universe, and consciousness and planning and
reason, and I think what probably convinced most of the world, most
intellectual that there is no conflict, is the invention of the computer.
So the computer is an existence proof, that you could have a machine, a
determined machine, that can explore alternatives, rank
them, judge them, and act upon them.
That can think.
Yet, without any mystical stuff.
Without any [SOUND] Yeah, mystical free will,
without any, any soul or cosmic ether.
And the bet of cognitive science.
The bet of, of modern, the modern science of the mind
is, that, at least, in this regard, we are like computers.
In this regard, we are physical things that are determined.
Yet, we do all sorts of things.
Now, there are a lot of hard questions.
So, the way I put it now, scholars as otherwise different as say Sam
Harris and Dan Bennett, would probably be nodding and agreeing with all of this.
Where people tend to disagree, is whether there is,
whether we could correctly extend a notion of moral responsibility.
So, suppose it was you, suppose you tossed a cat in the bin.
Just because you felt like it.
Cause you wanted to, cause you were angry.
Cause you don't like cats.
I don't know.
You did this.
What we normally say is, you should be ashamed of yourself.
You should be punished.
You did something horribly wrong.
And here's where people differ.
Some people say that the fact that you're determined,
from the get-go, means you couldn't have done anything wrong.
You could not have done otherwise, and if you
couldn't have done otherwise, how could I blame you?
Other people, on some days including me, think the
notion of moral responsibility says, you could be blamed
and punished based on, because although your acts were
determined, they were also at a local level, chosen.
They were at local level, the product of certain cognitive mechanisms that act.
And somebody like that would say, look they aren't inconsistent.
So, suppose there's a fire, and the fire burns down
a house, and you say why did the house burn down?
You say because the fire burned it down.
Now if you're a determinist, you believe that everything
was set in motion, millions or billions of years ago.
But it still doesn't mean that the fire, it
still, still correct to say the fire burned down the
house, cause he had all of these steps and the
final step that led down the house was the fire.
I think the same thing for psychology.
I think to some extent, that it's true that
your actions were caused, but still, it was your
action that led to it, and it was an,
it was an action chosen rationally and consciously and deliberately.
So that's how we'll sort of carve things out.
>> Okay.
A lot of complicated issues there.
>> Very complicated.
>> I feel like we could have a whole another course just discussing this topic.
>> Morality of everyday lives part 2, free will and its discontents.
>> Excellent.
You've got everybody very excited now.
[LAUGH] Okay.
so, next question comes from Victor Pinto, and he
asks about the relationship between morality and aesthetics or art.
So often people seem to be drawn to violent
or dark art and movies and things like that.
What's what's the appeal?
Why are people so drawn to these things?
>> Yeah.
It's a really interesting question.
And, and when I taught The Morals of Everyday Life, I had sort of a rogue,
extra lecture on looking at the sort of perverse pleasures of immorality.
And, and in the question is deep, but here's one way I'd frame it.
The things we are interested in, in, in fiction, are often sex and violence.
And you can say this is kind of a puzzle.
Because, when you look at people's lives, they spend
very little of their lives on sex and violence.
even, you know, James Bond spends more time checking his email and going to
the toilet and shaving and choosing [UNKNOWN]
than he does having sex and killing people.
It's a tiny fraction of your life that's devoted to that.
And, and, so, but why are we so fascinated?
Now, what evolutionary psychologists would say, is that sex
and violence connects to the 2 most important things from
a standpoint of, biological evolution, and, and, and life, which
is sex leads to reproduction, and violence leads to death.
And, and so we're exquisitely attuned to those things.
And I think that's right in part, but I don't think that's the whole story.
So, the appeal of sex is complicated, but it largely has to do, it has, has sort
of other independent things that, that watching or
hearing what depictions of sex can be itself arousing.
But, I think the better answer is sex
and violence are fascinating, because we're fascinated from morality.
And sex and violence are hugely fraught moral domains.
And we have this tremendous itch
to, to, to see good and evil.
I think our natural itch is to see the bad guys punished.
To see comeuppence, revenge, payback.
And so many, and people have analyzed this.
So many stories from, from Shakespeare to Harry Potter.
You could analyze them at different levels.
But they could easily be understood as, there's a real bad person.
And he does bad things.
But ultimately, the good people make him pay.
A tremendous appetite for this.
Now, in order to tell that story, bad things have to happen.
So from this perspective, we don't actually like violence.
We don't like violence per se.
And there's going to be exceptions to this, and exceptional and unusual people.
But we don't like violence per se.
The violence is important because the violence either sets the stage,
for the evil to be established, or it depicts the battle between good and evil.
And this is, you know, an oversimplification, but I think
the broader moral is true, which is, morality fascinates us.
The stories, the movies, the television shows are all moral.
This is why there are so many cop shows and doctor shows on TV.
But not many associate professor shows.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And, and, and not many you know, because, and if they make a show about
academia, it will simply be to show the
conflict, and moral dilemmas, and violence and so on.
>> Should I fake my data?
>> Should I fake my data?
>> Should I not fake my data?
>> Right.
But, but in some way, I think the idea is, you
know, is somebody, some, there's a serial killer on the loose.
And, and, and we're going to try to find him.
Is more morally gripping than somebody sent me a real long email.
Do I have to answer it?
>> [LAUGH].
Which is a moral dilemma I think that we have to deal with in my life.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Do you think that participating or watching these kinds
of shows is a way of practicing our moral judgements?
Yeah, I do actually.
I think, I think in some way, so, so, so you, you say, why do kids play?
And there's a good theory of this, which I think is right.
Is that what play is, is actually a form of practice.
So, what kids do when they play is they
run around, they fight, they take on different roles.
And I think by doing so, you entrain the system.
Why do adults play?
Well for adults, what adults play is, is for
large part, picking up a novel or watching TV.
And there I think what we're doing is, we're exercising our moral capacities.
We're, we're, we're exploring moral dilemmas.
And this is in some way the difference
between something for kids and something for adults.
Kids are not that morally sophisticated, so they
could have a simple good guy bad guy story.
For adults it's different, and we want to, we want to push.
The moral dilemmas get richer, and richer, and richer.
Until you're dealing with a TV show, like The
Sopranos, or The Wire, or The Good Wife, or Dexter.
Or, there's a whole good thread on a lot
of these, where the good is actually not purely good.
But the good's partially evil.
And, and it's very difficult to wrap our heads around it.
And when done right, there's, there's a huge pleasure with wrestling, with us.
>> In this way, I think that, TV and
movies is not too different from moral philosophy in general.
>> It is, it is true.
they're, they're sort of
so, so take the films of Christopher
Nolan, whi, which are all about philosophical problems.
And like a, a, a moral dilemmas in case, of the,
the, the newest, the newest Batman movie has several moral dilemmas.
Issues of personal identity and so on.
In the very bad wizards excerpt, I mentioned, there's a lot of examples of
this, and at, at the sort of least interesting what they do, is they steal.
They take philosophers moral dilemmas and we stick 'em into movies.
You know, but at their best, and many movies
are at their best, they think of moral problems,
that philosophers could have never dreamed of, and they
enact them, and they force you to deliberate over them.
>> Okay, last question of our
last office hours, comes from Patricia Anderson.
So, in the very first lecture, you mentioned your gray hound dog, Tessy.
You said that you were a bit concerned
about how, how she would survive the course.
So Patricia asks, well, first of all, how is she?
And second of all, did your choice of a greyhound have any moral significance?
>> I'll answer those in reverse order.
I didn't I didn't choose to get a dog.
My wife and I, we had 2 young kids.
She felt that kids needed a dog.
Kids would benefit from a dog.
I don't really like dogs.
I'm saving this confession for the end of the course, because if I said
this in week 1, no one would attend, but I'm not crazy about dogs.
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So, so, but finally we agreed, we put it off, and we agreed to get a dog.
So she goes to a shelter, and yes, her choice to get Tessie.
Tessie was a retired racer.
Her name, her original racing name, was Slick Chick Mielke,
>> [LAUGH].
And she had a perfectly unbalanced record of winning several
races first place and being last place in many other races.
They closed down the track, and then Slick Chick Mielke was due to be euthanized.
And this moved my wife to no end, and we got her, and we raised her.
And and then I, one of the big surprises was,
and I don't like dogs, I grew to love her.
I grew, I, I'm very very attached to her.
And that's a big surprise.
And then as to her prognosis, I was
pessimistic at the beginning of course, cause she
had all these health problems and was moving
slower and not eating, but we changed her diet.
We did give her some medication for her joints.
We paid a veterinarian a lot of money to, to do stuff to her.
And now, it's like she's aging in reverse.
And that she is much more vibrant.
She can make it up the stairs.
She bounds around the house.
And we suspect we have many years, left with her.
So, the moral to the story, I guess is that, 2 morals.
One is people could change, cause I changed, and sometimes
surprisingly good things happen, and that's a good place to end.
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[MUSIC].
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