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

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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[rafaelchavez]

Great interview Ricardo.!I enjoyed it very much. Thanks.

[lau-guerreiro]

Do you know if the idea that 'life has mening' if you can find meaning in each moment, is his own idea, or whether this is an established idea from another philosopher?

[Epistemophilos]

It's telling that Blackburn straw-mans Christianity. Heaven, for example, is not sitting on a pew singing psalms forever. It is hard to respect a professional philosopher who succumbs to such fallacies.

[juanmilano]

Read Stefan Molyneux's Universally Preferable Behavior. A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.