Brain in a Vat

Buy the books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0987XX8M2 What are your favorite episodes of Brain in a Vat? We've taken ours and made them into books. With special forewords from leading philosophers and exclusive debates between guests, these books bring you the best content we have in an easily digestible format. Buy your books now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0987XX8M2

Kershnar presents a dilemma: we’re responsible for our decisions because they’re caused by our psychology. But do we choose our psychology? If we do, then it seems that choice couldn’t have been a morally responsible choice, since our psychology didn’t choose it. But if we didn’t choose our psychology, then we can’t be responsible for the choices that come from our psychology. Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff  Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen

Mark and Jason join their producer in this retrospective season finale.   Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff  Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen Brain in a Vat bookshop (Shopify): https://smarturl.it/BrainShop  Brain in a Vat bookshop (Amazon): https://smarturl.it/BrainAmazonShop

What does it all mean? If we live on a pail blue dot in a vast and uncaring universe can our lives have cosmic meaning? Is it better never to have been born? Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff  Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen  Brain in a Vat bookshop (Shopify): https://smarturl.it/BrainShop Brain in a Vat bookshop (Amazon): https://smarturl.it/BrainAmazonShop

Do we have a right to sex, and is there an obligation to sexually fulfill the disabled? Should sex work be not only legal, but obligatory?   Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff  Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen

Should we remove offensive monuments at the cost of erasing history? Is there an unacceptable cost to open borders? And what would a just tax system look like? Hosts: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff Producer: Jimmy Mullen

Are moral facts baked into reality, the way facts about socks or rocks are? Or should we think about morality in a more pragmatic way: that it doesn’t matter whether ethics are ‘in the world’ – only that ethics guide our actions effectively?    Andrew’s Book, ‘Pragmatist Quietism’: https://www.andrewsepielli.com/book-pragmatist-quietism Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff  Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen  Brain in a Vat bookshop (Shopify): https://smarturl.it/BrainShop Brain in a Vat bookshop (Amazon): https://smarturl.it/BrainAmazonShop

Why should we punish the guilty? Is it because they’ve done something wrong, to remove them from society, or to dissuade others from wrongdoing? Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff  Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen

Thaddeus Metz, expert in African Ethics, discusses its potential as a superior moral framework. Topics include prioritizing loved ones in moral choices, the importance of communal relationships, the difference between shame and guilt, harmony in various contexts, and the ethics of mocking foolish beliefs.

Could we be systematically mistaken about the world around us? Would we be wrong about everything if we turned out to be a brain in a vat, a mind manipulated by an evil demon, or born into a virtual simulation? Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff  Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen