Grizzly bears are scary. But what about zombie grizzly bears? What’s makes something horrifying rather than just frightening?

Paul has a theory. It turns out that humans have a psychological way of organizing the world that also creates the possibility of getting really creeped-out. It helps explain the horror of the zombie grizzly why the old Dracula was creepier than Twilight and how war propaganda can turn enemies into monsters.

Today, Paul Sagar and I get into utilitarianism. We talk about thought experiments that involve: drowning kids, ruined loafers, death squads and bioweapons.

The drowning children are from Peter Singer. He's a utilitarian that thinks that we rich first-world types should be giving away all our money to save the global poor from starving and malaria.

Paul disagrees. He brings in another philosopher (Bernard Williams) to argue that worrying about starving children all the time would violate his integrity. As usual, he tries hard not to offend anyone (until he gets to Hiroshima).

Is it ok to laugh at The Cosby Show? To rock to “Rock With You”? To eat with the knife that was used to murder your family? It may seem reasonable to separate the art from the artist and the instrument from the act, but Paul says that’s not how our brains work. He thinks human morality is driven by inconsistent irrational emotions and he think that’s a good thing. In our second Thought Lab, we talk about bad celebrities, moral luck, and why being a good person may not be up to you.

This is the first of a series about thought experiments with Paul Sagar of King’s College London. We talk about dead chickens, incest, blackface and child sex dolls but really it’s about how to use thought experiments, psychologist Jonathan Haidt and whether ruthless consistency is really what anyone wants from a moral philosophy.

Paul Sagar is a lecturer in political theory at King's College London and the guy who played Thrasymachus in book 1.

He actually doesn't like reading Plato very much. I ask him why.