On this episode of the Utilitarian Podcast, I talk with Neil Sinhababu. Neil is a professor of philosophy at the University of Singapore.

Our conversation has two broad topics: We talk about metaethics and we talk about world government as a way to prevent human extinction.

We discuss consciousness as the basis for ethics, reductionism about ethics, whether morality can be a science and how to handle feeling alienated from your own values.

We then discuss world government as a way to solve collective action problems and decrease extinction risk. I ask whether creating a world government is itself risky, because it might turn totalitarian.

The sound quality on my side is not the best in this episode, but fortunately Neil has lots of interesting things to say, so he speaks the most.

As always, you can reach me at [email protected] if you have questions or suggestions or criticism.