Brain in a Vat

What makes the 'you' of yesterday the same 'you' today? Should we care about future people who don't yet exist, and should we prevent climate change if it means preventing people from coming into existence?

Is there a core to who we are that is unchanging or unique? Do people have characters, personalities, or neither? Brain in a Vat bookshop (Shopify): https://smarturl.it/BrainShop Brain in a Vat bookshop (Amazon): https://smarturl.it/BrainAmazonShop

In our final episode for 2021, we reveal a surprise we've been working on all year, and tell you about the exciting episodes planned for 2022.

Destructive forces have been eroding the University of Cape Town, Africa’s leading university. David Benatar tells the sad, true tale of what has been transpiring. It is a saga of lunacy, criminality, pandering, and identity politics. The mad and the bad – the deranged, deluded, the depraved – have been granted endless latitude in bullying and abusing others.

What are possible worlds? Could you have been born to different parents, and could the laws of physics be different? Barry Lam explains how David Lewis’s views on possible worlds can help us understand everything from the nature of time to free will. Listen to more of Barry’s episodes on David Lewis on Hi-Phi nation here: https://hiphination.org/season-5/

Is it possible to hope for something good, but feel despair that it won't happen? Is it virtuous to feel hopeful? Can hoping make you act recklessly? 

Eric Sampson, a moral philosophy expert from Rhodes College, dives into the labyrinth of moral disagreement in today's world. He challenges listeners to ponder how to hold confidence in their moral beliefs amidst numerous conflicting views. Sampson critiques the methods used to arrive at moral conclusions and discusses the perplexities of engaging with moral nihilists. The conversation also touches on the stubbornness of moral beliefs and the intricate ties between personal values and philosophical reasoning, advocating for epistemic humility.

Marginalized people, animals, found objects, wires and childlike drawings inhabit the unlocatable worlds presented in Ballen's artworks. Ballen describes his works as existential psychodramas that touch the subconscious mind and evoke the underbelly of the human condition. They aim to break through the repressed thoughts and feelings by engaging him in themes of chaos and order, madness or unruly states of being, the human relationship to the animal world, life and death, universal archetypes of the psyche and experiences of otherness.  https://www.youtube.com/c/RogerBallenPhotography https://www.rogerballen.com/ YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/oODP1IsFj5I

Rebecca Tuvel, Dan Cullen and Eric Samson interview Peter Singer about pandemic ethics. Are lockdowns and mandatory vaccines morally justified? What should governments have done differently? Why were there calls to cancel this lecture?   https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2021/09/peter-singer-invited-to-give-a-zoom-talk-about-pandemic-ethics-by-the-philosophy-department-at-rhode.html  https://dailynous.com/2021/09/28/faculty-at-rhodes-college-urge-cancellation-of-online-talk-by-peter-singer/

Should you disobey the law, at least some of the time? If justice isn’t simply enforcing the law, then what is it? And what sorts of laws would we have in a just society?