Bella's share: Where does morality come from?
- jeanne7629
- Feb 24
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 24
Thank you Bella for sharing this amazing podcast! I'm sharing your thoughts on it below :)
I've always loved both Ricky Gervais and Sam Harris, so I was thrilled to find this podcast series where they sit down together to tackle philosophical questions. I actually found the series a little underwhelming - would have loved the episodes to be longer and get into the theory a little more, but they are funny. This episode, "Where does morality come from", is a topic that I've always found fascinating, not being religious myself. The two of them don't really pull the topic apart in depth, but something Ricky says - "compassion is a survival mechanism" - stuck with me as an interesting idea. Sam's contribution is that morality is derived from our intelligence, which enables us to imagine both the worst possible outcome for all of us (everyone living in misery) and the best, and then being able to reason our way to the latter (i.e. through morality). I finished the podcast wanting to explore the question of whether animals have morality. That is, do they take action based on anything other than their own survival and the survival of their offspring. I bet there are studies out there showing that they do. Will try to find them!
Warning: this is now behind a paid wall - usually we get around it because publications will let you read for free a few articles a month and I try and share things that will allow you to do this. But, you might not be able to access this podcast Bella has shared.
Below is a link to a teaser episode, to give you a taste of what the show is, how amazing the hosts are and then you can make up your mind:
Comments