Speaker 1: Sometimes being upset, being angry, feeling resentful is a way
Speaker 1: of defending yourself in the world and respecting yourself. And
Speaker 1: you know, we could tell a similar story about gratitude
Speaker 1: is a way of sort of respecting others and recognizing
Speaker 1: the sacrifices they might make on your behalf. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Scott Hrssevitz, the Director
Speaker 1: of Law and Ethics Program and Professor of Law and
Speaker 1: Philosophy at the University of Michigan. Scott holds degrees from
Speaker 1: University of Georgia, Yale Law School, and University of Oxford.
Speaker 1: He also served as a law clerk for Justice Ruth
Speaker 1: Bader Ginsburg of the U. S. Supreme Court. Today, Eric
Speaker 1: and Scott discuss his new book, Nasty, Brutish and Short
Speaker 1: Adventures in Philosophy with My Kids. Hi, Scott, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. It's really tried to be here. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me. Yeah, we are going to be
Speaker 1: discussing your book called Nasty, Brutish and Short Adventures in
Speaker 1: Philosophy with My Kids. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: we'll start like we always do with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild
Speaker 1: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always a battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops,
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, looks up with their grandparents.
Speaker 1: Is well, which one wins? And the grandparents says, the
Speaker 1: one you feed. So I'd like to start off by
Speaker 1: asking you what that parable means to you in your
Speaker 1: life and in the work that you do. So that's
Speaker 1: a really wonderful story, and I actually hadn't heard it before,
Speaker 1: so it's been fun to think it through a little bit.
Speaker 1: I want to give you two answers. So in my
Speaker 1: day job, I'm a philosopher who teaches in a law school,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot about philosophy questions about law.
Speaker 1: I think especially about the rule of law, what it
Speaker 1: is and how we can sustain it. And one thing
Speaker 1: I think it's really crucial to maintaining the rule of laws.
Speaker 1: I think people need to kind of shared moral outlook.
Speaker 1: They need to agree that we're gonna abide by the
Speaker 1: decision making procedures that we've adopted around here, whether that's
Speaker 1: elections or hearing the legislation, or following decisions that courts make.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that I find
Speaker 1: concerning in our country at the moment is the kind
Speaker 1: of viciousness of our politics and the reluctance of some people,
Speaker 1: especially right now, you know, people on the right to
Speaker 1: accept the results of elections, to adhere to the rule
Speaker 1: of law, and just generally to talk about their opponents
Speaker 1: in ways that are mean spirited and vicious. And so
Speaker 1: I think that one thing that's Parable sort of brought
Speaker 1: up for me is I think all of us in
Speaker 1: our political activities need to think about feeding the kindness
Speaker 1: even when we're interacting with people that we disagree with. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's one thing to think, hey, I have different
Speaker 1: policy ideas than you do, and I'm going to vote
Speaker 1: for my preferred policy preferences. But to demonize people on
Speaker 1: the other side, to treat them viciously, is not going
Speaker 1: to be a way of sustaining a community over the
Speaker 1: long term. So that's sort of like the work life
Speaker 1: professional reaction I had to the parable, I also had
Speaker 1: a very personal reaction to it. You and I were
Speaker 1: just chatting a moment ago before you hit record. You said,
Speaker 1: I'm approaching the interesting years of parenthood and of a
Speaker 1: child who's reaching adolescence. My older son, Rex and we
Speaker 1: definitely butt heads more than we used to, have more
Speaker 1: conflict than we did when he was little, and I've
Speaker 1: made a kind of intentional effort over the last few
Speaker 1: months to really try and orient minor actions with him
Speaker 1: more towards kindness than towards anger. To feed that aspect
Speaker 1: of our relationship rather the other one that we so
Speaker 1: naturally fall into sometimes. Well, I think that's a great
Speaker 1: place to sort of jump off in the book, which
Speaker 1: is about philosophy and children. I mean, I can only
Speaker 1: imagine you arguing or debating with your children. You have
Speaker 1: created some skillful adversaries in the way that you have
Speaker 1: been raising them all along, which is really to think
Speaker 1: for themselves and really think about their opinions. The book
Speaker 1: is really fun because you recount a lot of conversations
Speaker 1: from the children. You say, every kid, every single one,
Speaker 1: is a philosopher. They stop when they grow up. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it may be that part of what it is to
Speaker 1: grow up is to stop doing philosophy and start doing
Speaker 1: something more practical. Talk a little bit more about when
Speaker 1: you say that, what do you mean by philosophy? That's
Speaker 1: a really great question, actually, and it's a question that
Speaker 1: I've struggled with ever since I first took a philosophy
Speaker 1: class and discovered I really liked this subject. My dad,
Speaker 1: when I went home from college, you know, and said
Speaker 1: I was going to major in philosophy, asked the sensible question.
Speaker 1: He said, what's philosophy? And I realized they just had
Speaker 1: no way of answering that question. I started to stammer,
Speaker 1: you know, things that didn't quite sound adequate. And then
Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe I can't tell him what philosophy is,
Speaker 1: I'll show him. And I started talking about this idea
Speaker 1: that maybe we're all just brains and vats, kind of
Speaker 1: like the movie The Matrix, like somebody removed our brains
Speaker 1: from our head and they'll hook them up to elect
Speaker 1: roads and they're stimulating us. And so I said to
Speaker 1: my dad, maybe we think we're at this restaurant having dinner,
Speaker 1: but actually someone's just deceiving us into thinking so, and
Speaker 1: he was like, can they do that? And I said
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the question is how do we
Speaker 1: know they didn't? And he said that's what you want
Speaker 1: to study, with a look on his face that was
Speaker 1: really not encouraging. And so I was kind of flummixed
Speaker 1: ever since that moment to explain what philosophy is. And
Speaker 1: then actually my older son Rex helped me figure it
Speaker 1: out in second grade. The first day of second grade, actually,
Speaker 1: and the teacher asked each kid what they wanted to
Speaker 1: be when they grew up, and she sent home a list.
Speaker 1: Here are all the things. There were firefighters, there were teachers,
Speaker 1: there were engineers. It wasn't hard to pick Rex's entry
Speaker 1: from the list. He wanted to be a math philosopher.
Speaker 1: And when he got home, I said, I said, hey, Rex,
Speaker 1: ms kind says that you want to be a philosopher
Speaker 1: of math. What's philosophy? And just without even thinking about it,
Speaker 1: he said to me, philosophy is the art of thinking.
Speaker 1: And I think that's just a really lovely explanation of
Speaker 1: what philosophy is. I think a philosophical problem is one
Speaker 1: that we make progress on by thinking carefully about ourselves
Speaker 1: about the world around us, in an effort to understand
Speaker 1: both of those things better. And so there's philosophy about
Speaker 1: really every aspect of our lives, right, questions that you
Speaker 1: can ask about us that require us to think deeply
Speaker 1: in order to reach a better understanding. That's what I
Speaker 1: mean by philosophy. Yeah, you quote David Hills, who describes
Speaker 1: philosophy is the ungainly attempt to tackle questions that come
Speaker 1: naturally to children using methods that come naturally to lawyers.
Speaker 1: That's that's great. Yeah, So that really captures my career,
Speaker 1: maybe my humanity in a nutshell, right, which is to say,
Speaker 1: part of the pitch of this book is that kids
Speaker 1: are natural philosophers. They arrive in the world and they're
Speaker 1: confused by lots of things in it, and they don't
Speaker 1: know what the standard of explanation of things are, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to make sense out of it. So they're
Speaker 1: asking really good questions and they're thinking really creatively about
Speaker 1: out the answers to the questions that they ask, and
Speaker 1: then most people kind of leave that behind when they
Speaker 1: start to understand what the standard answers to things are,
Speaker 1: or when they start to learn that serious people don't
Speaker 1: spend time on some of the questions and interest philosophers
Speaker 1: like am I dreaming my entire life? For what is time? Right?
Speaker 1: So as people age, they kind of leave those questions behind.
Speaker 1: A small group of us, the professional philosophers, get stuck
Speaker 1: in the endeavor and we kind of use methods that
Speaker 1: come naturally to lawyers. We you know, make rigorous arguments
Speaker 1: and separate out our premises and don't exactly trade briefs
Speaker 1: like lawyers do. But one person writes an article and
Speaker 1: another person replies, and on and on. But what I
Speaker 1: want to communicate is grown ups can get back to
Speaker 1: doing philosophy. They don't have to do it like lawyers.
Speaker 1: They don't have to do it like professional philosophers. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's better if you do it like a kid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that, And you know, I think that there
Speaker 1: is an academic element of philosophy of which you're involved in,
Speaker 1: and then there is very much the everyday aspect of philosophy.
Speaker 1: And if we really think about this idea of it
Speaker 1: where it's about thinking, you know, it's about thinking better,
Speaker 1: we can all think better, think more clearly. And there's
Speaker 1: something you say as you're describing what philosophy is, and
Speaker 1: I love this line. You say, the goal is to
Speaker 1: get in the habit of treating your own ideas as
Speaker 1: critically as you treat other people's. And I really love that,
Speaker 1: just that idea of like, if you bring an idea
Speaker 1: to me that I don't like, I can just pick
Speaker 1: it apart all the time. But my own ideas that
Speaker 1: I believe, and I'm believing them probably very largely from
Speaker 1: conditioning and emotional reasons, I don't bring that same degree
Speaker 1: of scrutiny to my own ideas. And I love this
Speaker 1: idea and it really runs its way through the book
Speaker 1: of just getting better at asking questions about things that
Speaker 1: we might be taking for granted or assuming, and looking
Speaker 1: just at life a little bit more critically. And when
Speaker 1: I say critically, I don't mean it in the negative sense.
Speaker 1: I mean it very much in the constructive sense, looking
Speaker 1: at life a little bit more critically and a little
Speaker 1: bit more deeply. Because one of the things that we
Speaker 1: explore on this show so much is how when we
Speaker 1: live our lives on autopilot, they become very shallow, they
Speaker 1: become very unengaged, They start to feel empty and meaningless
Speaker 1: to us. Right. It's when we engage more deeply, we
Speaker 1: go off autopilot and we really start asking ourselves what matters,
Speaker 1: what's important to me? And those are core philosophical questions
Speaker 1: for sure. I think there's really two important things in
Speaker 1: what you said. The first is like thinking critically about
Speaker 1: our own ideas. I pick this up from a professor
Speaker 1: of mine who said, Hey, look, when somebody makes an
Speaker 1: argument and you've got an objection to it, I want
Speaker 1: you to imagine that they already thought of it, and
Speaker 1: that they thought it was so misguided that it wasn't
Speaker 1: even worth mentioning. And try to figure out why they
Speaker 1: might have thought that, where did they think that you
Speaker 1: would gone wrong? And if you get to the end
Speaker 1: of that endeavor and you can't figure out where you've
Speaker 1: gone wrong, then it's time to tell people about your idea.
Speaker 1: But often, you know, if you put yourself in the
Speaker 1: other person shoes, you can actually figure out how here's
Speaker 1: the weakness in this idea that I've got, and I
Speaker 1: try to instantiate that in parenting my kids. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a line early on the book where I say Americans
Speaker 1: like to say that they're entitled to their opinion, and
Speaker 1: that's not how my house works. Right. You articulate an opinion,
Speaker 1: and you should be prepared to defend it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you why, and when you give me an explanation,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna question that explanation over and over again. And
Speaker 1: so you're right. I have raised kids that are really
Speaker 1: adept at arguing because they know that they're going to
Speaker 1: have to to back up the claims that they make.
Speaker 1: But one thing I think is important, the second thing
Speaker 1: I heard and what you were saying. I think it's
Speaker 1: important to remember that not all philosophy is adversarial in
Speaker 1: this way, it's not just about having arguments with other people.
Speaker 1: And our lives are shot through with philosophical questions. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to decide how should I spend my life,
Speaker 1: right like, what's a good life look like, what a
Speaker 1: good life for me look like? Which career is the
Speaker 1: right path? Or am I obligated to maintain a relationship
Speaker 1: with someone who's not treating well? Maybe that person is
Speaker 1: my parents, maybe that person's a friendship. These are all
Speaker 1: just philosophical questions. So one thing I like to remind
Speaker 1: people is that you're doing philosophy all the time. You
Speaker 1: may not think of yourself as doing philosophy, but when
Speaker 1: you're wondering how to be in the world, how to
Speaker 1: act in the world, those are some of the most
Speaker 1: central philosophical questions. And I do think you're right that
Speaker 1: it helps a lot of times just take a step
Speaker 1: back and to think about them that way, and to
Speaker 1: talk to other people about them rather than just move
Speaker 1: through on autopilot. And you know, you've got another line
Speaker 1: that I love, And you say you believe our humanity
Speaker 1: lies partly in our capacity to distinguish what we ought
Speaker 1: to do from what we want to do. Say more
Speaker 1: about that. That's a really powerful idea. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: comes up in a conversation. There's chapters about revenge and
Speaker 1: punishment in the book, since those are some of the
Speaker 1: kinds of issues that arise early on in parenting. You know,
Speaker 1: your kids might take revenge at somebody they think is
Speaker 1: wronging them, or you know, certainly parenting involves kind of
Speaker 1: pervasive questions about whether one should punish, how one should punish,
Speaker 1: what you're trying to accomplish when you punish, And and
Speaker 1: in the course of that punishment chapter that I say
Speaker 1: this line that our humanity lies partly in our ability
Speaker 1: to distinguish what we want to do from what we
Speaker 1: ought to do. And there I'm actually particularly interested in,
Speaker 1: like what's the difference between a person and another central
Speaker 1: character in their book is our dog Bailey. And Bailey
Speaker 1: has once and she pursues her once and whatever she
Speaker 1: thinks is the most effective way. You know, she's been trained,
Speaker 1: so she doesn't just always do immediately what she wants
Speaker 1: to do. She knows that sometimes sitting and waiting for
Speaker 1: the treat is the way of getting the treat, not
Speaker 1: jumping for the treat. But she's driven by her once
Speaker 1: and I think something that is maybe unique among human
Speaker 1: beings is that we don't just have to be driven
Speaker 1: by our wants. We can see this distinction between what
Speaker 1: we want to do and what we should do, and
Speaker 1: we can act on it, or at least I should
Speaker 1: say most of us can. I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the tasks of parenthood is to help your kids appreciate
Speaker 1: this distinction right, to reflect on what they should do,
Speaker 1: to recognize that it may not be what they want
Speaker 1: to do, and to cultivate the habits of mind that
Speaker 1: will let them, as they get older, act on what
Speaker 1: they believe they should do rather than to satisfy their
Speaker 1: immediate ones. Yeah, I'm gonna jump right to the chapter
Speaker 1: on Bailey. I could go a thousand directions in this book.
Speaker 1: This has been a difficult one to prepare for. But
Speaker 1: I can't resist going here because you do bring up
Speaker 1: Bailey and you say, what is it like to be Bailey?
Speaker 1: We spend a lot of time talking about that in
Speaker 1: our house. You know, Bailey is your dog. And I
Speaker 1: love this because I do the exact same thing you say.
Speaker 1: Rex loves to narrate her life, but he doesn't do
Speaker 1: it like a sportscaster. It's not Bailey is in hot
Speaker 1: pursuit of Sammy Squirrel. Rather, he talks as if he's Bailey.
Speaker 1: You know. And my partner and I do this all
Speaker 1: the time with one of our dogs, Lola, like one
Speaker 1: of our dogs Beans, she's like a bat. I don't
Speaker 1: have any idea what it's like to be Beans. I
Speaker 1: can't fathom. She's so animal, but the other dogs seem
Speaker 1: so human in her way. And so, you know, Lola
Speaker 1: will facilitate conversations between us. You know, well, i'd really
Speaker 1: like to have, um, you know this or and so
Speaker 1: that part really struck me. But why I had to
Speaker 1: jump to this is a I love to talk about dogs,
Speaker 1: but be there's a fact in the book that made
Speaker 1: me stop and turn to my partner and go, you've
Speaker 1: got to hear this. And it's a section where we're
Speaker 1: talking about consciousness and we're saying what's it like to
Speaker 1: be a bat or a dog and how we can't
Speaker 1: really fundamentally know. Then you go on to talk about
Speaker 1: how bats echo locate, they put out sound to create
Speaker 1: a picture of the world around them, And then you
Speaker 1: go on to tell a story about a person who
Speaker 1: can do this and it blew my mind. You want
Speaker 1: to share that? Yeah, So this is a story about
Speaker 1: a guy named Daniel Kiss, who people sometimes call the
Speaker 1: real life Batman, and Kiss, as a young child, lost
Speaker 1: his sight and he just started to make clicking noises
Speaker 1: and was clearly using them in something like the way
Speaker 1: about would use them that like they'd reflect off surfaces
Speaker 1: back to his ears, and he would develop a kind
Speaker 1: of understanding of what was around him that allowed him
Speaker 1: to move through the world in really astounding ways. So
Speaker 1: he can, for instance, ride a bike and not just
Speaker 1: a little bit like, but like ride a bike around town.
Speaker 1: He's getting so much information through echolocating. And you know,
Speaker 1: Kiss is an interesting character in his own right because
Speaker 1: he thinks a lot of times folks that are disabled
Speaker 1: or held back by other people's stereotypes about what they're
Speaker 1: capable of. He thinks that, you know, many more people
Speaker 1: who lack site would be capable of the things that
Speaker 1: he does if they were encouraged and given the training
Speaker 1: in an atmosphere that that didn't take them to be
Speaker 1: as limited as we often take them to be. So
Speaker 1: I think Kishes is really important to listen to for
Speaker 1: that reason, but also it connects up with this bigger
Speaker 1: question philosophy that you were alluding to earlier that really
Speaker 1: interests me. It's a question about the inaccessibility of our minds, right,
Speaker 1: and the inaccessibility of other people's minds, of other creatures minds.
Speaker 1: So one of the most famous essays in twentieth century
Speaker 1: philosophy was by a professor named Thomas Nagle called what
Speaker 1: is it Like to Be a Bat? And he was
Speaker 1: observing that bats have this ability that that most human
Speaker 1: beings don't have anything like, and observing the distance between
Speaker 1: our external understanding. We know what a bat can do,
Speaker 1: but we don't know what it's like to be a
Speaker 1: bat doing it. We know what a dog can do,
Speaker 1: but we don't know what it's like to be a
Speaker 1: dog and to experience, say, the rich sense of smell
Speaker 1: that they have. And then what is really interesting for
Speaker 1: me is I think just actually true of the people
Speaker 1: I live with two It was starker when my kids
Speaker 1: are younger, But we would look at you know, are
Speaker 1: six month old, are two year old and think like,
Speaker 1: what is going on in his head? We don't really know. Actually,
Speaker 1: I feel some fel I have better idea what's going on?
Speaker 1: With the dog than I do with my children. And
Speaker 1: they're older now, so they're more like me. And I
Speaker 1: think I have a better guess, but I like to
Speaker 1: remind myself that there really are limitations to my ability
Speaker 1: to understand what it's like to be inside of someone else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just had to get that fact about a guy
Speaker 1: who can ride a bike by echolocation, because it's just stunning.
Speaker 1: You also say that, like, not only that, but the
Speaker 1: scans of his brain suggests that he is processing visual information.
Speaker 1: That's right. So one question is what's it like to
Speaker 1: be Daniel Kish echo locating? And he says he's having
Speaker 1: a visual experience, And when they put him in an
Speaker 1: r M R I machines, it seems like the visual
Speaker 1: cortex is at which makes it plausible that his brain
Speaker 1: renders the information that it's getting in something like the
Speaker 1: way that cited people's brains are rendering the light that
Speaker 1: their eyes are gathering. Still leaves open the question what's
Speaker 1: it like to be a bat? Right? So, like, we
Speaker 1: have a better idea what it's like for Daniel Kish
Speaker 1: to be echolocating because he can talk to us and
Speaker 1: tell us about it, and the bats can't yep. I
Speaker 1: often say if I could have one wish, and maybe
Speaker 1: this is just thinking too small. I'm like, I would
Speaker 1: just like to be in my dog's head for like
Speaker 1: an hour. I just or an octopus is, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what is it like to be an octopus? Right? I've
Speaker 1: got thousands of suckers that I can independently control, and
Speaker 1: I can change the color of my skin. And I mean, now,
Speaker 1: I might say they are not very useful questions, you,
Speaker 1: as a philosopher, would probably say, actually they are, so
Speaker 1: I think they're really interesting questions. Actually, I quote a
Speaker 1: similar line from a famous developmental psychologist I think his
Speaker 1: name is John Flavel, who said that, you know, he
Speaker 1: would trade all of his degrees and honors to experience
Speaker 1: just a few minutes inside a two year old, just
Speaker 1: to have the insider understanding of what it's like, rather
Speaker 1: than the outsiders understanding that he's spent years cultivating. One
Speaker 1: thing I think is actually really interesting about that is
Speaker 1: there was this famous British philosopher in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: a J Air, who was pondering this question of you know,
Speaker 1: what's it like to be other creatures? And Air thought
Speaker 1: there's a way which it didn't make sense, and part
Speaker 1: because he was trying to imagine, like what it would
Speaker 1: look like to fulfill your wish that you like to
Speaker 1: be an octopus. You'd have to give up yourself, right,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be yourself inside an octopus, observing
Speaker 1: that's not what it's like to be an octopus. And
Speaker 1: so Air thought like there's actually just a limit. Even
Speaker 1: if a genie showed up to grant your wish, this
Speaker 1: is not a wish that really can be realized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense. I will say. Back in
Speaker 1: my addiction days, someone once told my brother and I
Speaker 1: that if we drank a bottle of robotus and cough
Speaker 1: syrup and don't know what else it was, we took
Speaker 1: with it like ten other type of cold medicine pills.
Speaker 1: They called this the lizard. And I will say it
Speaker 1: is what I imagine it might be like to be
Speaker 1: a lizard. That I I've ran this experiment. I don't
Speaker 1: recommend it. I don't recommend it all right, So I
Speaker 1: want to go to another area. I'm kind of going
Speaker 1: into the deep end of the pool here, obviously, but
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about identity. I
Speaker 1: explore ideas of identity on this show a lot, and
Speaker 1: some of them from a pretty basic level, like, you know,
Speaker 1: can we identify less as you know, these roles in
Speaker 1: our lives, and all the way down to the really
Speaker 1: profound experiences I've had of sort of the dissolving of
Speaker 1: self through some of my different spiritual practices. And you
Speaker 1: talk about the ship of Theseus? Could you explore that
Speaker 1: real quick? And then I want to go from there
Speaker 1: to a really profound thing that I think you said
Speaker 1: that was really mind opening for me. So let's start
Speaker 1: with Theseus. The Ship of Theseus is a very famous
Speaker 1: philosophical puzzle that dates back thousands of yours really. So
Speaker 1: the original version of the story goes like this, Theseus's
Speaker 1: ship has been put into port in Athens, and over years, people,
Speaker 1: you know, people come and they see it and they
Speaker 1: venerate it. But over the years starts to fall into disrepair.
Speaker 1: And so when a board is rotting out, they remove
Speaker 1: that board, that plank, and they replace it with another one,
Speaker 1: and then you know, they do that again, and they
Speaker 1: do that again, and eventually on down the line, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe decades have gone by, they've replaced every single plank
Speaker 1: on Theseus's ship. And then the question that people want
Speaker 1: to ask about this is, well, is it still Theseus's
Speaker 1: ship if it doesn't have any of the original would?
Speaker 1: And well, let me ask you, what do you think
Speaker 1: is that still Theseus's ship? Uh? I can't answer that
Speaker 1: question without spoiling the payoff that we're headed towards here.
Speaker 1: So I've already persuaded you of the answer I want
Speaker 1: to give to this. It sounds like maybe a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit okay, So so here's the thing. If
Speaker 1: you say, yes, that's not Theseus's ship anymore, then then
Speaker 1: the next question is, can people when did it stop
Speaker 1: being Theseus's ship when the first plank was replaced? Right
Speaker 1: when there was just a slight deviation? That doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it could be true. Like you know, if the
Speaker 1: tail light on your car gets knocked out, you get
Speaker 1: a new tail light, but you don't think, oh cool,
Speaker 1: I got a new car. You know, so you can
Speaker 1: change a little bit without changing the identity of the ship, right,
Speaker 1: But is it when a majority of the planks were changed?
Speaker 1: People and think that sounds very plausible either, because it
Speaker 1: suggests that, like you know, right up until percent plank, like,
Speaker 1: we we had the same ship, then when we tipped fifty,
Speaker 1: we suddenly didn't. That doesn't seem right. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like we can identify easily a spot where it
Speaker 1: stopped being the same ship. And so some people say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: it's still the same ship. Right. Well, then enter Thomas Hobbs,
Speaker 1: the famous English philosopher. He added a little bit onto
Speaker 1: the puzzle. He's like, well, just imagine that each time
Speaker 1: they replaced one of these planks, somebody carries it away,
Speaker 1: put it in a storage garage, the original and you know,
Speaker 1: stores it in case it ever needs to be used again.
Speaker 1: And then an industrious shipbuilder comes along takes all the
Speaker 1: original old planks and reassembles them and just the way
Speaker 1: the original ship was built. Right, Well, that sort of
Speaker 1: sounds like it's Theseus's ship. It's the original planks in
Speaker 1: the original pattern. So if that's Theseus's ship over in
Speaker 1: this storageyard, what's the ship in the dock. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's like endless iterations of this puzzle, but it raises
Speaker 1: this question, you know, how much can you change something
Speaker 1: before you've changed its identity? Yeah, and this gets too
Speaker 1: very central questions about who we are? You know what
Speaker 1: am I? And again, these questions can be asked at
Speaker 1: different levels. And that was the insight that you said
Speaker 1: that I thought was really really good. And you said
Speaker 1: answers to questions about identity I think depend on the
Speaker 1: reasons we're interested in them. Or I would add the
Speaker 1: context in which we're asking the question, and people get
Speaker 1: hung up on this and spiritual circles between, like, on
Speaker 1: one hand, there's a teaching this as well, there is
Speaker 1: no self, and yet we know absolutely Eric is sitting
Speaker 1: here to walking to Scott, right, And so the context
Speaker 1: in which I ask that question has everything to do
Speaker 1: with the answer. If I'm asking about the ultimate core
Speaker 1: of life from a Buddhist perspective, perhaps the answer in
Speaker 1: that light is very different than the answer when I'm
Speaker 1: standing at the d m V and they say, who
Speaker 1: are you? Yeah, So let's just back up one moment
Speaker 1: and think about, like how we apply this ship of
Speaker 1: theseus idea to ourselves, because nobody actually cares about the
Speaker 1: ship of theseus, right, But we can ask the same
Speaker 1: kind of question about our own personal identity, which is
Speaker 1: to say, what makes me the same person I was
Speaker 1: last week? Or last year, or I tell stories about
Speaker 1: my childhood in this book, the same person I was
Speaker 1: when I was dropped off a kindergarten. And it's a
Speaker 1: puzzle because I'm not made out of the same stuff.
Speaker 1: My planks have changed, like pretty much every cell in
Speaker 1: my body has turned over since I was in kindergarten.
Speaker 1: And it's also not arranged the same way, right, Like,
Speaker 1: my brain is wired up wholly differently than it was
Speaker 1: when I was in kindergarten, and I'm bigger, my body
Speaker 1: is different. So that raises this question, like how do
Speaker 1: we have continuity across time? Or do we have any
Speaker 1: sort of continuity across time? And as you say, I'm
Speaker 1: inclined to think that the answers to these questions are
Speaker 1: highly purpose dependent, and I like your addition to this
Speaker 1: highly context dependent. Right, we need just understand, like what's
Speaker 1: at stake about our identity? Why do we care? In
Speaker 1: what situation are we asking about it? And ultimately, I'm
Speaker 1: inclined to think that for some purposes, I'm the same
Speaker 1: person that my mother dropped off at kindergarten, like that
Speaker 1: we kind of share a life story that little kid
Speaker 1: in me. Right, for other purposes, I'm a holy different
Speaker 1: person than that little kid, right when it makes sense
Speaker 1: to be angry at me for things that five year
Speaker 1: old had done. But we do write like you. No,
Speaker 1: nobody's probably getting angry at the five year old, but
Speaker 1: we are getting angry at the person from two weeks ago. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right. And there's a really interesting conversation among philosophers
Speaker 1: who think about punishment. John Locke actually had things to
Speaker 1: say about this. You know, if I'm punishing you today
Speaker 1: for something you did last week, last month, ten years ago, right,
Speaker 1: how can I be confident that I'm punishing the person
Speaker 1: who deserves it. Locke thought that when it comes to punishment,
Speaker 1: what matters is that you remember having done the thing,
Speaker 1: and I think that may be a necessary condition. Actually,
Speaker 1: sometimes people remember things they didn't actually do except as
Speaker 1: a blackout drunk. There's huge amounts that I don't remember
Speaker 1: that I'm sure I did things that are morally offensive.
Speaker 1: That's really excellent, actually, because it suggests it's not even
Speaker 1: a necessary condition. And as soon as you said that,
Speaker 1: I think that's obviously right. We don't give people a pass, say,
Speaker 1: if they commit some serious crime when they were blackout drunk,
Speaker 1: and the standard story we tell in the criminal law
Speaker 1: is so long as the intoxication was voluntary, it was
Speaker 1: done knowing the risk of of this kind of misbehavior
Speaker 1: when one was blacked out. So I think that's good.
Speaker 1: I'll give you one more story actually, which was kind
Speaker 1: of challenging for me in recent years. There was a
Speaker 1: kid in elementary school that I thought of as my nemesis,
Speaker 1: was like a little bit, a little bit of a boy,
Speaker 1: and like five years ago maybe I just got a
Speaker 1: Facebook message from him. Hadn't been in touch with him
Speaker 1: since elementary school, and the Facebook message said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that I didn't treat you very well, and
Speaker 1: I feel bad about that, and I want you to know, like,
Speaker 1: you know, me and the other guys like we actually
Speaker 1: we liked you even though we didn't treat you very nicely.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was super appreciative of the message.
Speaker 1: I thought it was like really like a courageous and
Speaker 1: kind thing to do for him to reach out and
Speaker 1: to say that, But I had kind of complicated feelings
Speaker 1: about that. One thing I said to him when I
Speaker 1: wrote back is hey, I can tell you're not that
Speaker 1: guy anymore. Like I don't feel like you need to
Speaker 1: apologize for what you did in elementary school. It's just
Speaker 1: obvious that you've changed as a person. But the other
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to say, which I think was maybe
Speaker 1: a little more challenging, was I don't need an apology either,
Speaker 1: right like here, my life is going fine. I don't
Speaker 1: feel like you owe me an apology. But what I
Speaker 1: kind of left unsaid was that you know, there was
Speaker 1: a person who did need an apology. There was a
Speaker 1: person who did need better treatment. He's not around anymore.
Speaker 1: So I do think that these are really interesting, like
Speaker 1: his question about it, and you're really interesting. They arise
Speaker 1: in all sorts of ways, and sometimes the person to
Speaker 1: whom you owe your apology or your amends isn't actually
Speaker 1: around anymore to receive it. Going back to the ship
Speaker 1: of theseus, if we assume that childhood being a formative
Speaker 1: part of our overall development, there is some part of
Speaker 1: you in some way that, as we're saying, is still
Speaker 1: a kid who was bullied and that had some we
Speaker 1: don't know what impact. We can't say, we can't tell
Speaker 1: which plank was affected, but we can say, you know
Speaker 1: there's something in there. And so I love these questions
Speaker 1: because they do get to the ways in which we
Speaker 1: define ourselves. Do I define myself as the kid who's
Speaker 1: bullied in school? And what does that say or mean
Speaker 1: about me? Do I define myself as a Republican or
Speaker 1: a democrat? What comes along with that definition? I mean,
Speaker 1: all these identities shape who we are. And so I
Speaker 1: love your formulation because the thing that I've arrived at
Speaker 1: with identity is it's a useful tool. The more loosely
Speaker 1: we can hold it, though, the more flexible we can
Speaker 1: be with it applying on an identity when it's useful. So,
Speaker 1: for example, there's lots of studies that show someone who
Speaker 1: says I'm not a smoker and takes that identity is
Speaker 1: less likely to smoke again then somebody who says I'm
Speaker 1: not smoking right now right. So there's a positive use
Speaker 1: of an identity there, but we know there's negative uses
Speaker 1: of identity. I label myself a certain way and I
Speaker 1: start living into that, And so anytime I can slip
Speaker 1: the ship of theseus into this podcast, I do it.
Speaker 1: But secondly, I really thought your idea about the reasons
Speaker 1: that we use them and that context was a really
Speaker 1: helpful way to think about these ideas. So I think
Speaker 1: that for me, like, the really helpful thing in what
Speaker 1: you just said is this idea that we should be
Speaker 1: flexible about what we want to incorporate into our identity
Speaker 1: and think of it as a tool that's sometimes appropriate
Speaker 1: to use and sometimes not. So I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of discussion about this in the philosophical
Speaker 1: literature that you know, say, if I see myself as
Speaker 1: an honest person, right, Like, part of what it means
Speaker 1: to take that on board as a part of my
Speaker 1: identity is that I'm just going to see myself as
Speaker 1: set against dishonesty. I'm not gonna on each occasion, right, Oh, Look,
Speaker 1: is there a good reason to tell ally here is
Speaker 1: they're not like committing that This is how I see
Speaker 1: myself in the world. Is a way of structuring or
Speaker 1: forestalling deliberation that you may not want to get into,
Speaker 1: and that I think can be really constructive. But then,
Speaker 1: as you say, I think that sometimes people often incorporate
Speaker 1: things into their identity and make themselves too rigid, right,
Speaker 1: Like the tool can be overused, right, So that like
Speaker 1: there might be occasions for making commitments in this way,
Speaker 1: and there might be occasions for maintaining flexibility. As much
Speaker 1: as I want to segue into cleverly disguised donkeys, I'm not,
Speaker 1: although I'm teasing that out for listeners. What you just
Speaker 1: said and what we're talking about, I think leads really
Speaker 1: into the idea of us talking about relativism a little bit. Particularly,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this idea of I'm not
Speaker 1: sure i'm going to say this word right, epistemic bubbles
Speaker 1: and echo chambers, because I think this gets a little
Speaker 1: bit too How attached are we to our ideas are
Speaker 1: a form of identity. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about relativism in general, and then epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. Yes,
Speaker 1: the conversations about relativism starting a really interesting way in
Speaker 1: my house. And they started just after the attack on
Speaker 1: the Capitol on January six, and we were sitting around
Speaker 1: the dinner table and Rex said that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: a bad president, sort of thinking about how he had
Speaker 1: encouraged the attack. And Hank, our younger son, said, well,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is a bad president to us, but he's
Speaker 1: a good president to the people that like him. And
Speaker 1: I said, Hank, do you mean that we think he's
Speaker 1: a good president? And they think he's a bad president,
Speaker 1: but that one of us is right and the other
Speaker 1: is wrong. And he said, no, we think he's a
Speaker 1: good president and they think he's a bad president, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing in the middle that says who's right right.
Speaker 1: This was very much the idea he was articulating was
Speaker 1: we each get our own truth. Like, here's a judgment,
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump a good president? And he thought for
Speaker 1: some people's truth, the answers yes, and for other people's truth,
Speaker 1: the answers no. And I wanted to see how far
Speaker 1: I could push this with him. I said, hey, Hank,
Speaker 1: if I take you outside and I say it's raining
Speaker 1: and you say it's not, is one of us wrong
Speaker 1: and the other one right? And he said it's raining
Speaker 1: for you, but not for me. I thought it was
Speaker 1: just kind of wild right that he was, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a tough cookie sometime right like he is, he's
Speaker 1: willing to stick to his guns. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think most of us are not relativists about the rain, right.
Speaker 1: We think it's either raining or it's not. And you know,
Speaker 1: we usually think there's a reason somebody is mistaken if
Speaker 1: they disagree with us. Maybe they just haven't gotten drops
Speaker 1: or maybe they're being difficult, right, But a lot of
Speaker 1: people I think are inclined towards a kind of relativism
Speaker 1: about evalued of judgments, like was that a good or
Speaker 1: bad movie? Is Donald Trump a good or bad president?
Speaker 1: You know his Mozart better than Beethoven. I'm not inclined
Speaker 1: towards relativism. I think there are truths of the matter
Speaker 1: about questions like this, or at least many questions like this,
Speaker 1: And even though the truth can be hard to find out,
Speaker 1: we sh have some humility about whether we've identified the truth,
Speaker 1: and we should be open minded and listen to arguments,
Speaker 1: and like we were talking about earlier, we should wonder
Speaker 1: whether we've got things wrong. But implicit in the idea
Speaker 1: of wondering whether you've got things wrong and being open
Speaker 1: minded to the evidence and listening to people that you
Speaker 1: disagree with you is the possibility of getting it right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the stories in the book reports some of my
Speaker 1: attempts to argue hank back into the idea that some
Speaker 1: things can just be true. But then one of the
Speaker 1: questions that I ask in the book is, well, if
Speaker 1: I'm right about that, if there's truth of the matter,
Speaker 1: about some of these questions. Why is it that we
Speaker 1: disagree so much? Why do we have so much trouble
Speaker 1: settling on the truth? And I think, especially in the
Speaker 1: media environment, we have now two concepts that people find
Speaker 1: really helpful for thinking about this are epistemic bubbles and
Speaker 1: echo chambers. Let's pause for a second before we jump
Speaker 1: off this point. I want to go back to a
Speaker 1: few things you said, and I also hopefully we remember
Speaker 1: to work in how you broke Hank, But I want
Speaker 1: to explore this a little bit more because I am
Speaker 1: someone probably is somewhat inclined towards relativism, but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it's a well thought out opinion. So, except among
Speaker 1: our classical music aficionados, let's take a less charged topic
Speaker 1: than abortion. Let's start with is Boch better than Beethoven?
Speaker 1: Or Beethoven better than Bach? You believe there's a way
Speaker 1: to arrive at an answer to that. To me, that
Speaker 1: seems completely subjective. Yeah, I should confess I have limited
Speaker 1: classical music knowledge, all right, So I'm not prepared to
Speaker 1: defend the view that Bach is better than Beethoven or
Speaker 1: that Beethoven. And I'm not even actually committed to the
Speaker 1: idea that there's necessarily an answer. I think one possibility
Speaker 1: is it's indeterminate. They're good arguments on both sides. But
Speaker 1: let's take arguments that people probably have their friends all
Speaker 1: the time. It's Michael Jordan better than Lebron, or is
Speaker 1: Lebron getter than Jordan? Or Serena Williams the greatest woman's
Speaker 1: tennis player of all time? Or is it stephie Graff
Speaker 1: or is it Martin de rat Alova. These are the
Speaker 1: life blood of lots of drinking sessions, right, the things
Speaker 1: that people love to get together and argue about. And
Speaker 1: I think the fact that we have arguments, and the
Speaker 1: fact that the arguments are passionate, tells us that we
Speaker 1: all presuppose that there's a right answer to this question,
Speaker 1: even if we right now disagree what it is, because
Speaker 1: we're treating it very differently than we treat different kinds
Speaker 1: of conversations. If you and I go get ice cream,
Speaker 1: I might be like, Hey, what kind of ice cream
Speaker 1: do you like? In? What kind of ice cream do
Speaker 1: you like? Well? I like I like all kinds, But
Speaker 1: if I had to put it into a category, I'd
Speaker 1: say chocolate. Okay, So you like chocolate ice cream. Actually
Speaker 1: I like chocolate ice cream too, But I wouldn't think
Speaker 1: that you and I are objectively right as against the
Speaker 1: people who prefer vanilla or the people who prefer salted
Speaker 1: caramel or whatever it is. I would just think, okay, like,
Speaker 1: this is how taste works. There's the thing that tastes
Speaker 1: best to me, and there's the thing that tastes best
Speaker 1: to you. And this is not a disagreement. But when
Speaker 1: we're having an argument about Jordan or Lebron or Serena
Speaker 1: Williams or stephie Graph or Beethoven versus Bach, we're not
Speaker 1: usually treating it that way. We're not saying, hey, I
Speaker 1: like Beethoven, you're saying, hey I like Bach. We're thinking
Speaker 1: there's some criteria of excellence here, whether it's basketball excellence
Speaker 1: or tennis excellence or musical excellence, and we're trying to
Speaker 1: evaluate these people's bodies of work against those criteria of excellence.
Speaker 1: And I think that project assumes that it's possible. There's
Speaker 1: an answer, here's an answer. Was Beethoven better than Scott? Yes, right,
Speaker 1: Beethoven is a lot better than me, And I suspect
Speaker 1: that Beethoven was a lot better than a lot of
Speaker 1: very famous pianists or composers. Was he better than Bach?
Speaker 1: I don't know. We need somebody with some classical music
Speaker 1: knowledge to pop in and help us start that out. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting the word you use there is taste.
Speaker 1: You know, what's a matter of taste and what's a
Speaker 1: matter of objective fact? And I think the reason that
Speaker 1: I would take art generally off the table as there
Speaker 1: being a objective answer, And this gets to how we
Speaker 1: define art. To me, art is about making people feel something,
Speaker 1: and that is extraordinarily subjective. Is Steve v I a
Speaker 1: better guitar player than my friend Chris, who's also the
Speaker 1: editor of this podcast. The answer to that, if anybody
Speaker 1: was looking at technical prowess, would be Steve I, hands down.
Speaker 1: But I would argue that I would much, rather much
Speaker 1: rather here my friend Chris play guitar than Steve I
Speaker 1: because it moves me. I am Chris and knows I
Speaker 1: love his guitar playing. So let's move away from art though,
Speaker 1: But I think now Lebron James versus Michael Jordan is good.
Speaker 1: We're assuming a standard of excellence. So now let's move
Speaker 1: into something slightly more emotionally charged, which is like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm going to regret this, but let's just
Speaker 1: wander right into the abortion debate. That's that's here because
Speaker 1: I often when I look at this, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I look at this from the perspective of someone
Speaker 1: who is anti abortion, and if what I believe is
Speaker 1: that an embryo is a fully formed human being equal
Speaker 1: to what a five year old is, in whatever my
Speaker 1: belief structure is, I'm going to argue fairly, vehemently that
Speaker 1: we should not kill five year olds. Right. If you
Speaker 1: came to me with that proceed and you're like, you
Speaker 1: know what being a parents a drag? If you know,
Speaker 1: if you got a five year old, you want to
Speaker 1: get rid of them, get rid of them, I'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: hang on, and I think most of us would. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, there are plenty of great arguments for
Speaker 1: why we should respect a woman's right to choose, and
Speaker 1: it's her body, and there's there's all these things. How
Speaker 1: do we get to right there? That's where I get stuck.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I know what I believe, I know
Speaker 1: what my moral framework is, but that's not everybody's. And
Speaker 1: should it be everybody, So tell me how you think
Speaker 1: about that. So I just taught a class here at
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan called Life, Death, Love and the Law,
Speaker 1: and it was some law students and some philosophy students,
Speaker 1: and it was really wonderful experience. I had students across
Speaker 1: the political actrum with differing views about the moral permissibility
Speaker 1: of abortion. I'm certain, though, you know, people didn't share
Speaker 1: their personal stories, that some people in the room probably
Speaker 1: had personal experiences, you know, with making those choices, whichever
Speaker 1: way they might have made them. But I set up
Speaker 1: front that there's places in the world where you know,
Speaker 1: people shouted each other about these issues, and they try
Speaker 1: and drown each other out, and they talk to each
Speaker 1: other in ways that are really nasty. And that's not
Speaker 1: what we're going to do in this seminar. Right, if
Speaker 1: you want to be in this seminar, we're going to
Speaker 1: listen to each other really carefully. We're going to share
Speaker 1: our own thoughts and our ideas, and we're going to
Speaker 1: hear what other people have to say about them, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna display the sort of virtues of inquiry that
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. Wondering how we might be wrong right,
Speaker 1: and inviting other people to help us think about how
Speaker 1: we might be wrong. And the students really rose to
Speaker 1: the occasion. We had really deep and insightful conversations about abortion,
Speaker 1: about euthanasia, about lots of these sort of like beginning
Speaker 1: and end of life kinds of questions. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's not the case I think that we arrive at
Speaker 1: agreement about what the truth is in the course of
Speaker 1: those conversations. I think we all got a much deeper
Speaker 1: understanding of the issues. We saw that some arguments that
Speaker 1: we might have thought were good were actually not so good,
Speaker 1: and some arguments that we hadn't entertained before we felt
Speaker 1: attracted to. And so I think the question of like,
Speaker 1: how does one seek truth in these really fraught issues
Speaker 1: is right through this kind of shared inquiry, through this
Speaker 1: kind of shared deliberation to kind of turn the temperature
Speaker 1: down in a way that our culture makes really hard.
Speaker 1: If you only think about this stuff by watching cable
Speaker 1: news or by going on Twitter, you're not going to
Speaker 1: think it through very carefully, you know. I like to
Speaker 1: recommend there's a philosopher named Kate Greasely who teaches at Oxford,
Speaker 1: who I think is the most thoughtful person writing about
Speaker 1: the morality of abortion today. She has a book that
Speaker 1: she co authored called Arguments about Abortion, which is a
Speaker 1: kind of accessible introduction. And then also she was recently
Speaker 1: on the az Reclin podcast is actually a really great
Speaker 1: place um to get her help in thinking through some
Speaker 1: of these issues. So podcasts, actually this one others are
Speaker 1: a really great place to dive deep and think in
Speaker 1: a slower way than you can. But the point of
Speaker 1: all the thinking is that we think we might reach
Speaker 1: the answer, right. So you said, well, look, if you
Speaker 1: think that an embryo is just the same as a
Speaker 1: five year old, then of course you're going to think
Speaker 1: abortion is impermissible. We don't kill five year olds. We
Speaker 1: know that we shouldn't, and I think that's right. But
Speaker 1: then I want to put that view right, that an
Speaker 1: embryo is the same as a five year old under
Speaker 1: a microscope, and I want to find out whether you
Speaker 1: really think it right. And I'm gonna present you with,
Speaker 1: you know, scenarios to consider. And here's one. You work
Speaker 1: in a hospital and there's embryos that are frozen in
Speaker 1: the hospital, and there are you know, five year old
Speaker 1: children around in the hospital, and the hurricane is on
Speaker 1: its way right, and you realize as you're about to
Speaker 1: grab the embryos that there's one and five year old
Speaker 1: who can't walk themselves out. You know, that's why they're
Speaker 1: in the hospital. There's one five year old that's still
Speaker 1: in the hospital that didn't get evacuated. And now you've
Speaker 1: got a choice. You can carry the five year old out,
Speaker 1: or you can carry a dozen embryos out. Which one
Speaker 1: are you going to take? That's the trolley question framed
Speaker 1: up for abortion debate. I mean, I know what I
Speaker 1: would do. I grabbed the five year old. I actually
Speaker 1: think I sort of first encountered this scenario through Kate Greasely,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a really great way actually of
Speaker 1: revealing to a lot of people that even if you
Speaker 1: care about the embry even if you value the embryo,
Speaker 1: even if you think God has made an investment in
Speaker 1: that embryo and we should protect it, most people actually
Speaker 1: don't think it's on a par morally with a five
Speaker 1: year old. Given the choice, they're probably gonna save the
Speaker 1: five year old rather than several embryos. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's through this kind of reflection, that we can
Speaker 1: start to get a deeper understanding of the issues and
Speaker 1: our own views about them, and work towards views that
Speaker 1: we think we can defend this truth. Your whole approach
Speaker 1: here is really kind of what I wanted to get at,
Speaker 1: which is this idea of how do we talk to
Speaker 1: each other more civilly but also more deeply inquiringly, you know,
Speaker 1: how do we ask good questions of ourselves and of
Speaker 1: the people we see things differently with. And you've got
Speaker 1: a line I want to read because I love it.
Speaker 1: You basically said, we should talk to people who think differently,
Speaker 1: and we should be open to revising our views in
Speaker 1: light of what we learned, but we shouldn't give up
Speaker 1: on the idea of truth or the search for it.
Speaker 1: And I love that idea that again we could debate
Speaker 1: which things you could come to objective truths on which
Speaker 1: you couldn't, but the search for it, you know, and
Speaker 1: the attempt to try and investigate. I would have loved
Speaker 1: to have set through your course, and I wish that
Speaker 1: we could, you know, have you lead the national debate
Speaker 1: on all these things, because more than any policy that
Speaker 1: I see happen, and there are plenty that concerned me.
Speaker 1: It's our structure of conversation that is just so disheartening
Speaker 1: to me these days. Yeah, so I think that's right.
Speaker 1: It's the structure of our debates, especially our public debates,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's possible in a quiet seminar room
Speaker 1: to have conversations with good will, but we haven't really
Speaker 1: created public spaces and which we're accustomed to having those conversations.
Speaker 1: Is actually one of the reasons that I suggest towards
Speaker 1: the end of the book, like we should talk to
Speaker 1: our kids about philosophy at home, but it's also something
Speaker 1: we should incorporate into their education that in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world, grade schools have a philosophy quork film,
Speaker 1: or high schools have a philosophy curriculum, And I think
Speaker 1: that those are really terrific ways of getting kids trained
Speaker 1: to have civil conversations with one another, to get them
Speaker 1: in the habit of listening to each other, thinking carefully
Speaker 1: about what other people are saying, hearing their objections, and
Speaker 1: thinking about where you might have gone wrong. I think
Speaker 1: that it would be wonder if that was a more
Speaker 1: regular part of the way we taught children. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's go back to how you broke Hank of his relativism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we'll remember Hank's relativism was super thorough going. It
Speaker 1: applied not just to evaluate of judgments about which many
Speaker 1: people are tempted towards relativism, but it applied to you know,
Speaker 1: matters of like, you know, is it raining outside. So
Speaker 1: I was putting Hank to bed that night, and as
Speaker 1: I kissed him good night, I said, good night, Hank,
Speaker 1: you're the sweetest six year old I know. And he
Speaker 1: said angrily, He's like, I'm not six, um eight? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, maybe to you, but to me, you're six,
Speaker 1: and he lost it. He said eight. Some things are
Speaker 1: just true. Um So, so even in the end, right,
Speaker 1: once I hit on the thing Hank cared about, right,
Speaker 1: he couldn't handle my thinking differently about it. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of what I feel that strongly about
Speaker 1: Chris versus Steve. I definitely excellent. Let's pivot to an
Speaker 1: article that got a lot of press. It was called
Speaker 1: What Shamu taught Me about a Happy Marriage by Amy Sutherland.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about that. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of great things to unpack underneath that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was an article that was at the time
Speaker 1: the most emailed article ever for The New York Times.
Speaker 1: Maybe it still is. It was an article written by
Speaker 1: Amy Sutherland. She was working on a book about animal trainers,
Speaker 1: say like the trainers at Sea World and how they
Speaker 1: get these animals to do extraordinary things like balance the
Speaker 1: ball in their nose. And she's telling the story in
Speaker 1: The New York Times. She says that she realized that
Speaker 1: maybe she could use these animal training techniques on her husband.
Speaker 1: His name was also Scott. She goes home and you know,
Speaker 1: one of his problems maybe also one of my problems,
Speaker 1: as he leaves his clothes on the floor, and so
Speaker 1: she says, well, I learned from the animal trainers that
Speaker 1: you don't give negative feedback. When you get behavior you
Speaker 1: don't like, you just nor it entirely. You act like
Speaker 1: it didn't even happen, right, So that's called least reinforcing syndrome.
Speaker 1: But then when you get positive behavior, like the least
Speaker 1: little step in the right direction, you reward that wildly.
Speaker 1: So she stopped complaining about his clothes on the floor,
Speaker 1: But if he actually picks him up and put it
Speaker 1: in the hamper, she would praise him wildly right, and
Speaker 1: then you know, like he'd like the praise, he maybe
Speaker 1: more close in the hamper, and she'd praise him wildly again.
Speaker 1: And she reports that over time his behavior started to improve, right,
Speaker 1: like he was the sea lion balancing the ball on
Speaker 1: his nose. Right. This caused kind of some tension in
Speaker 1: our house. I saw the article, and I knew that
Speaker 1: I had a problem, and so I kind of disappeared
Speaker 1: our copy of the paper one night. I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you know, Julie, my wife is like
Speaker 1: praising me for something that really ought to be doing anyway,
Speaker 1: like putting my dishes in the sink. Did she see
Speaker 1: that article? And I asked her, I was like, is
Speaker 1: this about Chamu? And it turned out she had seen
Speaker 1: the article. She was trying to shammou me. We made
Speaker 1: an agreement, we weren't going to try and use these
Speaker 1: techniques on each other. And actually, you know, this arise
Speaker 1: is in the book and the context of the chapter
Speaker 1: on punishment, where I say, look, your little kids treat
Speaker 1: them like animals, like when they're two, when they're three,
Speaker 1: they really can't understand yet what they're doing wrong or
Speaker 1: why they should be doing better. So all you can
Speaker 1: do with very little kids is adjust the incentives that
Speaker 1: they face so that you elicit the kind of behavior
Speaker 1: that you want. But I think the aspiration is actually
Speaker 1: to raise a person that you shouldn't treat that way,
Speaker 1: To raise a person who's a person and not an animal.
Speaker 1: And what makes them a person is, as we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, that they can appreciate the difference between
Speaker 1: what they want to do and what they ought to do,
Speaker 1: and they can act on what they ought to do,
Speaker 1: and then it's appropriate for us to feel grateful when
Speaker 1: they behave well and angry when they behave poorly. Part
Speaker 1: of what it means to relate to each other as
Speaker 1: people and not to relate to each other as animals,
Speaker 1: is to have these kinds of reactive attitudes, like I
Speaker 1: get angry, I am appreciative, And I think that that's
Speaker 1: the way spouse's friends really ought to be relating to
Speaker 1: one another. You shouldn't be trying to train your friend
Speaker 1: in the way that you would train an animal. So
Speaker 1: there's lots of interesting things in this. You talk about
Speaker 1: this as seen a person rather than an object, right,
Speaker 1: And there's a philosopher I don't remember her exact name
Speaker 1: or his name, but said, you know, to see a
Speaker 1: person as an object is to see them as something
Speaker 1: to be managed or handled or cured or trained. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is a philosopher named Peter Strawson who is
Speaker 1: a prominent English philosopher in the twentieth century, and he
Speaker 1: distinguished two different ways of looking at human beings. One
Speaker 1: he called the objective attitude is what you just described.
Speaker 1: You just see a person like an object in the world,
Speaker 1: subject to the laws of cause and effect. You know,
Speaker 1: if I push over here, this might happen. If I
Speaker 1: give them this incentive, it might change their behavior in
Speaker 1: that way. And he wanted to contrast that with what
Speaker 1: he called the participant attitude, like your participant in relationships
Speaker 1: with them, maybe as their spouse, maybe as their friend.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're the teacher and somebody else's the student and there. Right,
Speaker 1: he thought, we have these attitudes like gratitude and anger
Speaker 1: and resentment and love. And he thought that, like, it's
Speaker 1: not that these ways of looking at people, the objective
Speaker 1: attitude and the participant attitude are absolutely incompatible. We can
Speaker 1: take both, right, I can look at my spouse objectively
Speaker 1: or look at my kids objectively. And say, oh, look,
Speaker 1: you're tired today. I know that you don't really mean
Speaker 1: what you say. I'm not going to get mad at
Speaker 1: you about it. Or I can hear what you've said,
Speaker 1: understand the way it's insulting, and I can get mad
Speaker 1: about it, right, and Strawson thought there's occasions to have
Speaker 1: both of these attitudes, but he thought it was a
Speaker 1: serious mistake to try and always look at other people objectively,
Speaker 1: because you lose touch with their humanity. You'd lose touch
Speaker 1: with the kinds of relationships that we really value in
Speaker 1: our lives if you only treated other people like they
Speaker 1: were objects or animals. This is a really fascinating topic
Speaker 1: because my primary, I would say, both philosophical, psychological, and
Speaker 1: spiritual orientation has largely been a lot of Buddhist thought,
Speaker 1: and Buddhist thought is very much about being non reactive. Right.
Speaker 1: It praises a certain degree of objectivity, It praises a
Speaker 1: certain degree of seeing that what you're doing is not
Speaker 1: necessarily personal, that it has its causes in the world
Speaker 1: and all that, and so it's easy to see the
Speaker 1: benefits of that. Right. But I love that you're making
Speaker 1: a point that sometimes anger or gratitude is a better
Speaker 1: response than trying to think about how could I get
Speaker 1: that person to behave in a way that doesn't make
Speaker 1: me angry. Say a little bit more about that, because
Speaker 1: that's pretty fundamental. Yeah, So I think anger is an
Speaker 1: emotion that needs some defenders. Actually, we don't need more anger. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's pretty of anger in the world, but the culture
Speaker 1: has kind telling us to let it go, to not
Speaker 1: be angry. And I think it's important to see that
Speaker 1: anger serves some important purposes. In particular, my getting angry
Speaker 1: is sometimes important to my respecting myself. So, you know,
Speaker 1: here's a person who's mistreated me, right, and they've done something,
Speaker 1: you know, like maybe they've exploited me, they've used me. Right.
Speaker 1: If I don't react in any way, right, then I'm
Speaker 1: in a way acquiescing in my own mistreatment, right, you know,
Speaker 1: signaling to that person and others that it's okay to
Speaker 1: treat me this way, and maybe most disturbing me of all,
Speaker 1: possibly accepting for myself that it's okay to treat me
Speaker 1: that way. And so I think anger can be justified
Speaker 1: as a kind of protest. It says, hey, look, it's
Speaker 1: not okay for you to treat me that way. I
Speaker 1: want you to know it. I want you to know
Speaker 1: that I know it. Right now, it's important not to
Speaker 1: be consumed by one's anger and for anger not to
Speaker 1: be the only thing that that one feel. Right. So,
Speaker 1: I think that like the thing that people often have,
Speaker 1: right is people take their anger too far, And so
Speaker 1: it's important to be able to let your anger go
Speaker 1: and not let it take over your life. And I
Speaker 1: think like the buddhis kind britisht practice that you're talking
Speaker 1: about can be an incredible aid towards that. I just
Speaker 1: want to make a pitch for Sometimes being upset, being angry,
Speaker 1: feeling resentful is a way of defending yourself in the
Speaker 1: world and respecting yourself. And you know, we could tell
Speaker 1: a similar story about gratitude is a way of sort
Speaker 1: of respecting others and recognizing the sacrifices they might make
Speaker 1: on your behalf. Yeah, Now, the line between shamooing somebody
Speaker 1: and being grateful is very thin, right, Because if I
Speaker 1: want you to pick up your clothes and put them
Speaker 1: in the basket and you do, I could praise you
Speaker 1: because I'm like, I want more of that behavior. I
Speaker 1: could also say to you, thank you. I'm really happy
Speaker 1: that you did that, which they're very close to each other.
Speaker 1: But you're saying it's the spirit, yeah, exactly. So it
Speaker 1: may involve the same sentence that would be said either way,
Speaker 1: but we all know the difference between maybe we can
Speaker 1: always tell, but we all appreciate there's a difference between
Speaker 1: the thank you that's offered sincerely and the thank you
Speaker 1: that's offered strategically. And actually, my wife wanted to thank
Speaker 1: me sincerely for putting my clothes in the laundry hamper,
Speaker 1: right because it's not it's not like a situation where
Speaker 1: I've gone above and beyondest like I like, I did
Speaker 1: the minimum, I did what I should do on that occasion, right, Like,
Speaker 1: chances are that thank you is strategic, And if Sutherland's
Speaker 1: husband had thought about it, he may have recognized that, actually,
Speaker 1: she's not as appreciative she seems to be, uh, she
Speaker 1: seems to be in the moment. But I guess I
Speaker 1: want to make a pitch for not feeling these motions,
Speaker 1: are expressing these emotions strategically though sometimes perhaps that's helpful,
Speaker 1: But for being the kind of person and having the
Speaker 1: kinds of relationships where you feel and express these emotions
Speaker 1: sincerely without letting them take control of your life when
Speaker 1: they're not constructive. Yeah, and I really love how you
Speaker 1: said that we're all going to do a little of
Speaker 1: both of these right with context. We're back to this
Speaker 1: idea of there being context. But I really love this
Speaker 1: line where you said she stopped reasoning with him. This
Speaker 1: is talking about the animal trainer and her husband. She
Speaker 1: stopped reasoning with him and started shaping him. And I
Speaker 1: love that distinction, right that if I'm always trying to
Speaker 1: shape you into being somebody else, I am treating you
Speaker 1: more as an object versus reason with you. Now, I
Speaker 1: might be diving off the deep end again, but we're
Speaker 1: talking about the belief that people are capable of reason.
Speaker 1: We talked about how you should shape a three year
Speaker 1: old because a three year old isn't fully capable. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna do it. It It seems like a terrible idea,
Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna do it. Sure, is there a
Speaker 1: case that says certain people aren't intelligent enough to know
Speaker 1: to figure out what's right, to figure out to reason
Speaker 1: through to the right thing. What's your response to that?
Speaker 1: You know, I think I'm a little bit resistant in
Speaker 1: putting it in terms of intelligence, because I think it's
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. But there's a kind of question
Speaker 1: that is confronted constantly within the criminal justice system about
Speaker 1: who's responsible for what they do and who's not right
Speaker 1: because we think that many, most people are responsible for
Speaker 1: the choices that they make and are appropriate objects of
Speaker 1: the condemnation that's associated with punishment. But we also think
Speaker 1: that there are people in the world that are suffering
Speaker 1: from various sorts of disabilities that may inhibit their ability
Speaker 1: to understand the choices that they're making or to control
Speaker 1: the choices that they're making, and we have some doubt
Speaker 1: that these people are appropriate objects of punishment, in part
Speaker 1: because we have some doubt that they're appropriate objects of
Speaker 1: of condemnation. We don't think that we're in a position
Speaker 1: and to demanded better than they did. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: a little bit about like one of my favorite papers
Speaker 1: in philosophy I love to read with my students is
Speaker 1: by philosopher named Gary Watson. He writes about one of
Speaker 1: the most heinous murders that you'll ever read about. Just
Speaker 1: tells the story of somebody who murders two teenagers in
Speaker 1: a way that's shockingly callous, and you read this story
Speaker 1: and you have, like his harsh a judgment of a
Speaker 1: human beings. He would do this as you would have
Speaker 1: of anybody. And so Watson kind of meditates on that
Speaker 1: reaction for a little bit, and then he says, well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you the story of this guy's upbringing.
Speaker 1: And then he describes what his childhood was like, and
Speaker 1: my shutter every time I think of it. You know,
Speaker 1: I won't describe it here, but it's the most abusive
Speaker 1: childhood I've ever heard described. His mother kind of resented
Speaker 1: his existence, and his parents deeply mistreated him physically and emotionally.
Speaker 1: And you know, Watson gets to the end of that
Speaker 1: and he says, well, well, now I think, of course,
Speaker 1: now I understand, right. I don't think how could it
Speaker 1: have been otherwise, because I know some people survive that
Speaker 1: abuse and didn't do these things. But I do think,
Speaker 1: but I see why you you had so little regard
Speaker 1: for other people, because the world showed you so little regard.
Speaker 1: And what Watson ends up saying is something I feel
Speaker 1: very deeply. He says, at the end of these it's
Speaker 1: not like I can choose one or the other perspective.
Speaker 1: He says, My anger at the man this person is
Speaker 1: now just sits alongside my empathy for the child that
Speaker 1: he was. I find it very hard to form an
Speaker 1: overall view of this human being and to understand how
Speaker 1: I should react to them and how I should treat
Speaker 1: them in the world. And I think that's actually one
Speaker 1: of the deepest questions for the criminal justice system. As
Speaker 1: we learn more about causes of behavior and limitations that
Speaker 1: the people in different circumstances face, it's to sort of
Speaker 1: straddle these two perspectives. The engage perspective of we're really
Speaker 1: angry about what you did, we expected better from you,
Speaker 1: is tempered by this other perspective where we think the
Speaker 1: world hasn't treated you so well and we understand maybe
Speaker 1: why you weren't capable of better. Yeah. I don't have
Speaker 1: full answers for you for how to reconcile this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I could go down this for hours and we
Speaker 1: have minutes left. But I do think that this is
Speaker 1: a really interesting topic. I think it's gonna become more
Speaker 1: interesting in the criminal justice system. As you say, as
Speaker 1: we begin to understand more about the effects of trauma
Speaker 1: on people's responses. You know, a question I ask, is
Speaker 1: a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic? Is how much choice
Speaker 1: two people have when it comes to these substances, right,
Speaker 1: And we do know that the data seems unequivocal that
Speaker 1: the more trauma you've suffered, the much higher incidences of
Speaker 1: substance abuse you have. With substance abuse, I think it's
Speaker 1: a little bit easier to be like, well, let's not
Speaker 1: penalize an addiction, you know, but we do things as
Speaker 1: addicts that probably do need punishing. This gets very complicated,
Speaker 1: and I look at my own life and I think
Speaker 1: back to the degree of choice I feel today around
Speaker 1: these substances, and I feel like I have as much
Speaker 1: choice as anybody who's never had a problem, more or less. Right,
Speaker 1: I probably have to do some things to maintain that,
Speaker 1: but more or less. But there was a day where
Speaker 1: the amount of choice I felt I had was just
Speaker 1: a hair's breath. You know. It's interesting to have felt
Speaker 1: both those things in the same human being, around the
Speaker 1: same thing at really different times. You know, I was
Speaker 1: transporting opiates from my mother recently with no problem. But
Speaker 1: I would have robbed you at gunpoint for those ones
Speaker 1: upon a time. And so I think that you know
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I don't think there are easy
Speaker 1: answers to these questions because there is a compassion element
Speaker 1: of it, but there is also a fairness to the
Speaker 1: victims element of it. There's also a protecting our society
Speaker 1: elements of it. And I think these things are really
Speaker 1: really complicated, and I would love to spend like four
Speaker 1: hours with you talking about these things. I think they're fascinating,
Speaker 1: but we are out of time and we didn't even
Speaker 1: get to cleverly disguised donkeys. Um. But my question for
Speaker 1: you is do you have a few minutes for a
Speaker 1: post show conversation? Absolutely I do, and listeners, if you
Speaker 1: would like access to the post show conversation and the
Speaker 1: joy of giving a gift to this podcast and its listeners,
Speaker 1: go to when you feed dot net slash joint against Scott.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. The book is a true joy
Speaker 1: to read. It's funny, it's engaging, it's deep. The notes
Speaker 1: I have on are accountless, so I encourage listeners to
Speaker 1: check it out, and again, thank you. This was so
Speaker 1: much fun. Thanks for having me on. If what you
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