How Are Moral Conversions Possible? - A talk with David Wong October 7, 2010

David Wong is the Susan Fox Beischer & George D. Beischer Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. His works include Moral Relativity (University of California Press, 1984) and Natural Moralities (Oxford University Press, 2006).

In this talk, Professor Wong examines three cases of apparent moral conversion: first, a fictional drab functionary of the East German regime, featured in the recent film The Lives of Others, who ends up trying to save the people he is assigned to spy upon; second, the actual case of Oscar Schindler having saved the lives of a great many Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland; and third, C. P. Ellis, a leader of the Ku Klux Klan who improbably worked and became friends with a militant black activist during the desegregation of the Durham, North Carolina public schools. In asking how such dramatic changes for the better are possible, Professor Wong will weave reflections on these cases with theoretical and empirical work on the nature of emotion and its relation to cognitive and perceptual capacities.

Official Website: http://www.ias.umn.edu/calendar.php