The Importance of Moral Licensing

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There is an account that, you know, there's these set of findings in the social psychological literature that when you when you do one good thing, you're sort of licensing yourself to do another bad thing. So my theory is that ethicists do it because it's naughty. Oh, this is so bad. Look, I'm having some bacon. Yeah, I need to be punished. Josh: The simplest explanation is that all of this moral theorizing is just completely causally inert as nothing to do with your actual behavior. You might actually end up behaving morally on average about the same way anyway.

Special guest Eric Schwitzgebel joins David and Tamler to discuss the moral behavior (or lack thereof) of ethicists. Does moral reflection make us better people, or does it just give us better excuses to be immoral? Who's more right about human nature--Mencius or Xun Zi? What did Kant have against bastards and masturbating? Plus, we talk about jerks, robot cars, and killing baby Hitler. (Godwin's Law within 1:42--might be a new record for us).

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