Altruism
A great discussion of altruism from BBC Radio 4 with Miranda Fricker, Senior Lecturer in the School of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and John Dupré, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Exeter University and director of Egenis, the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society
If both mankind and the natural world are selfishly seeking to promote their own survival and advancement, how can we explain being kind to others, sometimes at our own expense? How have philosophical ideas about altruism responded to evolutionary theory? And paradoxically, is it possible that altruism can, in fact, be selfish?
10 MB : 42'45
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(tip goes to John from the comments)
Comments
Hey, thanks for the tip! :)
And yeah, like I mentioned in the other comment, this is a really terrific radio show. I'm not sure how many of the earlier episodes are available online, but damn do they ever get some smart people on there -- it's really fascinating stuff, and diverse, too.