How to Convince Someone of Anything With Reason

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The episode isn't going to be entirely about masturbation, but it will be about moral persuasion. We just got an email that sort of puts it nicely. What's the role of a good argument? How effective is that in actually getting us to change our minds? And more importantly, I would argue, change our behavior.

Dave and Tamler try their best to do a show without guests--we talk about moral persuasion, motivated reasoning, and whether it's legitimate to use emotionally charged rhetoric in a philosophical argument. Plus, we describe how students proceed through the "Stages-of-Singer," and Tamler finally defends himself against Dave's slanderous accusation of hypocrisy about animal welfare.

Links

Thomson, J. J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs,1, 47-66.

Marquis, D. (1989). Why abortion is immoral. The Journal of Philosophy, 86(4), 183-202.

Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63 (4), 568.

Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum, D. (2009). Motivated Moral Reasoning. In B. H. Ross (Series Ed.) & D. M. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 50: Moral Judgment and Decision Making. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Dawson, E., Gilovich, T., & Regan, D. T. (2002). Motivated Reasoning and Performance on the Wason Selection Task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1379-1387.

Sam's House, an orphanage in Nepal [sams-house.org]

The identifiable victim effect [wikipedia.org]

Tamler's mediocre TEDx talk on Moral Persuasion [youtube.com]

10 Classic South Park Impressions (including Sally Struthers) [youtube.com]

*musical breaks in this episode stolen from DJ Premier and Jay Electronica. Please don't sue.

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