I love the fact he really invited him to the show. Craig was and is the best talk show host of all times.

I liked this video for a couple of reasons. 1) Philosophy is interesting in its own way. 2) How many late night talk shows - or talk shows in general for that matter - have a philosopher as a guest? I suspect it is a short list, perhaps only one name. Thanks for preserving this out-of-the-ordinary interview.

Holy crap bro, you found the moral philosopher. I always wanted to see this one. Top shelf my friend, top shelf.

Holy hell, he actually came on the show

What a thoughtful conversation. I doubt any of the current late night hosts could pull off such a nuanced discussion.

Thank you so much! This is great! Mr. Dancy is smart, poised, witty, and reads the audience and situation well. He follows Craig's lead and also plays a little too (so he doesn't seem hidebound). I wish he had made more appearances.

Just by listening to Craig before in other interviews when the subject came to more intellectual type subjects, you could tell that he would do well discussing philosophy like this. Craig seems like a very intelligent and well learned, well traveled man, and kudos to him to actually bring John on like he said he would do.

I watched this years ago when it aired and was so thrilled when Eleanor Shellstrop referred to him. #thegoodplace

Is it weird that I think this is one of the funniest interviews?

You never disappoint. You knew I preferred Alice Eve talking about free will, and you delivered.

I was gonna ask for this. Thanks JLFly!

Craig held his own well...

For some reason I thought you'd follow with a Hugh Dancy video just to be thorough - a very nice, genital-friendly conversation, highly recommended :D

Great choice of outro bit, my dude.

It's too bad that 1) this interview didn't go longer, and 2) it didn't end with an awkward pause.

Nice one JayLeno Fly! Thanks again :)

Jayleno Fly should make a philosophy compilation, craig seems to be sooo into it, and I've seen him bring it up quite often

Great interview, inspires me to read up on it.

Then he also had Dr. Cornel West who is featured in the 2008 documentary film "Examined Life". Thats what I always liked about Craig, he didnt mind to get a little philosophical.

Fascinating

In Mel Brook's movie 'History of the World: Part 1' the character "Comicus" (played by Mr. Brooks) has the following conversation with the "Dole Office Clerk" (played by Bea Arthur): "Dole Office Clerk: Occupation? Comicus: Stand-up philosopher. Dole Office Clerk: What? Comicus: Stand-up philosopher. I coalesce the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension. Dole Office Clerk: Oh, a *bullshit* artist! Comicus: *Grumble*... Dole Office Clerk: Did you bullshit last week? Comicus: No. Dole Office Clerk: Did you *try* to bullshit last week? Comicus: Yes!" I'll end my comment there.

Jonathan Dancy is high as a kite :D

He actually came on the show!

"Claire Dane's Father-In-Law"?? How about Hugh Dancy's Father!!

I think to put it a different way, he's almost a moral historian. As an example, there may be a guy out there who loves working on his car to, say, make it accelerate faster from jump. The guy working on the car will say "to get it to do A, you should do B." The "philosopher" however would ask not what part to use but rather ask how the guy working on the car came to the conclusion to use A or B to begin with. Imagine the guy couldn't use trial and error by measuring the speed of choice A vs choice B mechanically, the same way there is no "moral measuring machine." The philosopher would ask what led the guy to choose choice A over choice B in this specific situation when in a similar situation with different variables, he may choose B over A based on the particulars. Kind of a Jane Goodall as opposed to a person who wants to teach gorillas sign language for example.

Very interesting subject no doubt.

I think this gentleman made it more complicated than it really is (and I know - > it's complicated) , and this left craig a bit disappointed ... and me too, because as a philosopher I believe that a philosopher should always instigate and do the opposite of what he did there, and I believe that Craig understands this too. it is not that craig did not understand the concept, but he knows what kind of personality he is dealing with and to whom it is being transmitted ..

I find it interesting conversing with people who think about life and the various dilemmas, conundrums and quadaries that occur on our journeys through it. So many people just live life, but never actually think about it, try to understand it, question it or theorise about it, it's only function seems to be to provide them with a series of self gratifying moments.

I love all the pretty girls and movie stars, but this is the best episode ever!

Wow, - Stephen Fry was right that was heavy. The trouble was Craig kept changing the scenarios, as I don't think he even understood after about 30 seconds what the very learned gent was talking about, - it was way over his head, (for once), as I'm sure it was the audiences as well. Thank-you for putting it on I had never seen it, and am now reading his book, - it is never too late to learn a different outlook on life.

Moral Philosopher: "Did you Bulls#!t last week?" No. "Did you Try to Bulls#!t last week?"

Too high and I'm still high. Nothing else to lose!

this why craig is awesome

I like this guy. He basically started out saying that religion is a great mistake :)

Holy shit craig needs a fucking podcast!

Really interesting.......made my head hurt. I think Craig wanted easy definitions lol

Bless...Craig did his best lol

its better than Desmond Tutu's interview, man! thx JLFly

Anyone know who he was interviewing when he talked about how thoughts are free of morals and so there is no right or wrong within the mind. It was a similar sort of clip to this outro

"As a philosopher, I'm not in the business of telling people how to live, I'm in the business of trying to understand something". So you're trying to... define things? I thought definitions were bad.

Holy crap. This fits her character in the 90's in that show with Jared Leto. For real. Life and coincidence

It would have been hilarious if Craig could have sat in on this man's lectures playing the part of Geoff.

Does his laugh reminds you of Sheldon?

I worked with a policeman in Canada and his name was Phill. I coined his name to be Phill Officer. Just watched Claire Danes yesterday and then this popped up, where’s the leather pants?

To me philosophers are like a bland candy coated with a tasty spicy layer: At first it is interesting, but after that, when you start debating about the nature of morality and how things might be defined, it gets very bland and I just get the overall feeling that nothing is gained by stretching this debate.

Craig is clever. The idea that morality is entirely contextual and not bound by principles per se is difficult to comprehend. But Craig did very well in tring to tease this out.

How could you not define terms? Thats absolutely essential when you want to understand someone else.

Situational ethics... plain and simple.

This reminds me of the time Baron Cohen interviewed Jacob Rees-Mogg while in his Ali G persona. The only difference here is that Craig Ferguson is himself!

and this has just 80k views!!!! i pity modern society

I don't really know this line of thought. I know a bit about moral philosophy though, and in that conversation, the actual problem in the reasoning of the professor is "what is normality". You cannot skip the argument just because it contradicts your point. Context, situationality, moral relativism: ok, I'm with you. then you throw in "normal" and expect no follow up questions? that's odd...

A lot of people think that philosophy is just asking, of various concepts X, But what counts as X? And it is just a game where you invoke this question at various points to come back at somebody. But this is not what philosophy is. There are rules, sorry. It's like jokingly trying to be a footballer with your pro footballer friend by going round kicking random objects. Dancy smiles through it

He didn't bring the leather pants!

Damn, the audio is heavily out of sync :/ but I guess there was nothing you could do about it.

🤣🤣🤣 halfway through the professor was starting to enjoy himself....

I feel like I didn't really learn anything about moral particularism from this video

Only one talk show host could hold his own with this guest, and make this work as well as it did. Thank god Geoff didn't say "in your pants" at any point here. (Even though I'd still like to see the response)

Is moral particularism just a modern repackaging of relativism? It has to be more than counter stance against Kant right?

If I guy is stealing things out a car helping him would be wrong? I think he is mistaking what helping a person is for helping the person commit theft. Helping people is always the right thing to do. But what is it to help the thief that is right? You talk to the thief, help him understand how stealing stuff out a vehicle not yours is wrong. Or maybe call the police, he goes to prison, and is shown how it's wrong to steal. That is helping the theif. Your helping him to become a beneficial citizen.

it's a fair cop

5:12 tldr: context matter

He thinks right and wrong should be felt instinctually.

C S Lewis describes the human condition of mortality perfectly in his book. Mere Christianity

So he says definitions are a mistake while defining his approach. It would seem he needs a more unique approach to meet his own criteria

Your pet is sick and suffering. Do you end its life? If you stick to the strict principle of 'must save life', you don't euthanize it, so you watch as your pet suffers through painful seizures every 15 minutes. Pet A has lost its will to live. Every breath is painful. It kept having episodes and you kept sending it to the vet for painful procedures to prolong its life so it can continue to exist. If you stick to the moral principle of 'we gotta put the pet out of its misery', you bring the pet to the vet. Pet B however, freaks the fuck out and tries its best to escape because it knows what is coming and it doesn't want that. That pet wants to live even though it will suffer. Nevermind that its quality of life would not be as good. But because you have a strict principle of not letting that poor pet suffer, you put it to sleep. Moral particularism just means you throw those strict moral principles out of the window and do what is right in the particular situation.

I have to say, this was both more and less interesting than I thought. Also, the exchanges with Alice Eve (the full conv., not just the bit in the outro) showed her to be very well-read and well educated. Nice to see the conventional stereotypes get a firm kick in the wrinklys...

This conforms with what I extracted from college philosophy classes---philosophy is just a series of intellectual exercises and is fundamentally useless in everyday problem solving...in the real world and the law, definitions are critical. In the real world, racism is characterized as a bad thing...but how can one determine whether something or someone is "racist" without first defining "racism"? In this regard, there is a lot of particularism going on in the world...

I get the impression Craig Ferguson understands a lot more of this than he lets on. Dancy... struggled, definitely struggled to discuss in a non-academic manner his philosophy; I don't think the 'interview patter' helped (Ferguson was certainly 'selling the chamois,' and I'm sure he would have preffered not to be).

This interview was in April 2010, but Claire's were on February 5, 2010 and October 10, 2011 Claire was not in May 2010, otherwise that would be really crazy. Sorry, I was lost for a second when I saw the date... honest mistake, of course.

until somebody gives me a realistic situation in which rape is morally justifiable I'm calling bullshit on the entire approach...

Sounds a bit like moral relativism, just using different terms?

john malkovich please

Ja ja ja .... that was GOOD .... very different than talking to bimbos !!!!!!!!!!!

An interesting person but I certainly would not wish he were my father.

Philosophy gives me a headache.

So his whole thing is -- context matters. Do you really need a PhD to figure this one out?

Love his book Just cost $100.00

Craig is 100% more useful than the professor. Possibly smarter as well.

I was really happy when Craig cornered him on defining "normal". His whole thing about not defining things isn't just cheating, but completely defies rules of logic and conversation. Everything he says hinges on definitions and he's quite comfortable with them when they suit his argument, but when they don't, he just pretends they don't matter. This is a trick politicians should start using -- just make a statement, then when you're questioned about it say -- oh let's not define things.

If morality is so obvious that it cannot be defined, moral relativism and situational ethics could not exist! If they did, you couldn't define or describe them, according to a moral particularist. If a particular tree falls in the forest, if it is moral you cannot describe it! I think moral particularism is a joke, therfore I am amused!

While I followed along with his thought I found myself disagreeing with some of his tenants. I’m assuming that the degree awarded upon graduation from this school of thought is a B.S. degree (much like my degree in English Literature should be, since I bs’d my way to it).

Without the unified moral compass for society the issue is social deviance becomes norms and then morality becomes justifiably objective for everyone. This means everyone plays by their own rules and the rules can change as they cover their own conscience from feeling remorse for their mistakes which to me is the precursors and the seeds of anarchy. This is why a Godless society is the most dangerous one and a man with no religious principles has no moral limits for he just amends the code of ethics he himself once lived by in order to justify his own sins.

“Define normal”… “why?” 😂

Am i the only one who sees craig is winning the argument and the guy has no idea how to respond to him

thanks a lot! I actually looked it up myself hehe 😊 Also, Craig's a smart guy; he was clearly not sold by this guy's bullshit, but basically have him the stage and let him go on saying Craig's wrong and all that crap... Thanks for this anyways!!

Someone is paying this charlatan to..do nothing.

Philosophers tend to create confusion rather than solve problems.

He's just another moral relativist.

I feel the good doctor talks in circles. Craig is a sharp cat - IMO Craig showed moral particularism for what Zachary indicated it is - relativism.

So morality depends on context and things are nuanced and complex with varying shades of grey. Does this really need an entire academic field dedicated to it? Seems common sense to me.

The problem is that his examples are all based on intuition. Intuitively, we think helping people is good. We don't think we need any proof -- we think we just know. Yet by the same faculty, we also don't think we should help someone break into a car. Dancy's take is that it's not intuition, but the principle that helping people is good, that is at fault. One premise, intuitively derived, is wrong because it is at odds with another, more particularized principle, also based on intuition. Heaven forbid he actually challenge moral intuition itself... Dancy claims not to believe in universal principles while arguing from a (falsely) supposed universal principle: that morality is intuitive. His entire philosophy is one huge performative contradiction.

Craig is more of a philosopher than the philosopher

From Stanford, "Moral Particularism, at its most trenchant, is the claim that there are no defensible moral principles, that moral thought does not consist in the application of moral principles to cases, and that the morally perfect person should not be conceived as the person of principle. There are more cautious versions, however. The strongest defensible version, perhaps, holds that though there may be some moral principles, still the rationality of moral thought and judgement in no way depends on a suitable provision of such things; and the perfectly moral judge would need far more than a grasp on an appropriate range of principles and the ability to apply them. Moral principles are at best crutches that a morally sensitive person would not require, and indeed the use of such crutches might even lead us into moral error." You can search for it with this text. Any attempt to link it is removed by YTub. My interpretation is that a moral person takes the appropriate action in a given situation and does not follow principles because principles fail and lead to inappropriate actions in particular situations.

it's not that complicated. perhaps the professor was incoherent at first but then he gave the example with jokes and I understood immediately what he meant. suppose Geoff says balls. for the most part, it's funny as hell, due to timing. the comedic genius behind it is that he knows precisely when it will be funny and times it correctly. if Geoff was just interrupting Craig and yelling balls all the time, it wouldn't be funny, it would be annoying and ruin the show. so yeah, balls is funny, but not by definition or some principles of comedy, but because of context. and no, it's not relativism like some here suggests. balls is funny, according to most people, for the most time. it has nothing to do with some people defining their own sense of comedy or whatever, comedy is funny, but trying to define this 'funny' is useless and a waste time. if anything, it seems more to be a rebranding of intuitionism rather than relativism. if I'm doing the professor justice, it seems like he's claiming the same for morality. Craig wanted simple easy answers to many questions in a short time, while trying to keep it entertaining. the professor did the best he could. perhaps a talk show setting isn't the place to discuss complicated ideas. I enjoyed it nonetheless

So relativism?

A little too pompous for my liking.

The guy's pretentious and spouting opinions as fact. Separating parental moralism (his "small society") from the larger sway of societal (moral and legal determinants) doesn't even make any sense, and suggesting that humor is intrinsic to a joke and not determined by mutual understanding (linguistic, idiomatic, social, contemporary) makes even less sense. Guess this senselessness makes his ideas seem arcane and, therefore, too precise for the common mind. Duh.

Ok so I listened to this garbage, so I see why he has no clear answers no right or wrong. Nothing with a concrete base. Morality is something the professor can't grapple with morality he would have to have a basis which he has none. With out morality we would have no value. Value of life. Value of reason. Example a pile of dog poop is worth the same as a human life. If there is no morality there is no value, no purpose.