Why Evolution Is So Important for Moral Philosophy?

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Moral philosophers have long been fond of using thoughtthought experiments such as the runaway trolley case, where you choose tween letting five die and killing one to save five. On my view, these intuitions can be useful in driving hypotheses, but they are not themselves a source of moral truth. They are just products of our evolved brin i have a chapter in my book, my new book, intuition pumps and other tools for thinking, where i go over ten of the most famous thought experiments and show why the intuitions they engender are illusions y. I'm grateful to dave for articulating so clearly and insistently, the mistake i've been trying to get people to see

David and Tamler find themselves unable to attach rational meaning to a single act in their entire lives. Let’s say we publish more articles and books. What then? What about our kids? They’re going off to college. Why? What for? We think about the future of the podcast. Let’s say we get bought out by Spotify and become more famous than Joe Rogan, Dolly Parton, and even Yoel Inbar -- more famous than all the podcasters in the world. So what?

And we can find absolutely no reply.

Plus, we take a test to determine whether we can we tell an AI apart from an analytic philosopher. When should we start getting scared of what AIs are gonna do to us, or what we’re doing to them?

*Note: the main segment is on the first half of Tolstoy’s great memoir "A Confession," but you don’t need to be familiar with the text to appreciate the discussion for this one.