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mindscape listeners can get a free trial with unlimited access to the entire library start that free trial today at the great courses plus dot com slash mindscape. If you're interested in the kind of philosophical questions we're talking about in today's episode you might want to try a course called understanding the dark side of human nature by Professor Daniel Breyer it's all about why sometimes human beings are not that moral. Are we fundamentally good fundamentally evil what makes us do bad things so sign up for the great coursesplus today and mindscape listeners will be able to learn from anytime anywhere on your TV or mobile device.

Despite occasional and important disagreements, most people are in rough agreement about what it means to be moral, to do the right thing. There’s much less agreement about why we should be moral, or even what kind of answer to that question could be convincing. Philosopher Russ Shafer-Landau is one of the leading proponents of moral realism — the view that objective moral truths exist independently of human choices. That’s not my own view, but ethics and meta-ethics are areas in which I think it’s wise to keep an open mind and listen to smart people who disagree. This conversation offers food for thought for people on either side of this debate.

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Russ Shafer-Landau received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Arizona. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his numerous books are Moral Realism: A Defense and Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? He is the editor of Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and is the founder and organizer of the annual Madison Metaethics Workshop.

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