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Thanks your welcome from Morocco

This point you make about "subjective" not necessarily meaning "infinitely variable" is important. I don't know if you've ever read Erich Fromm, but he's a wonderful resource on this topic. I find his approach to humanism is more grounded in reality and practicality than many philosophers'. Check out the book "Man for Himself" if you can, I think you'd really like it!

I really like your distinction and intuition here: "On Aristotle's virtues, I much prefer the term "harmony" over "happiness"; a virtuous action as I see it is one that brings about "harmony". It seems more appropriate since "harmony" immediately requires us to focus on interactions between agents and not merely their projected states". However, as a self-interested rational being, (this is more my theory, perhaps influenced by Adam Smith) I have a vested interest in my own happiness and harmony can actually presuppose a conflict with my own happiness. So, while working in the interest of harmony may actually produce a morally greater outcome, I'm not sure it's fair to the individual who ultimately desires happiness. I would actually disagree that those who deceive can produce happiness in themselves on a long-term scale. When we deceive, we are aware of that fact and it produces a negative self-image as one who doesn't uphold the truth. If we are successful in our deceptions then it produces an image of society as something that abides those deceptions, producing a quasi-solipsistic reality in which we feel ourselves capable of creating the illusion of truth. I know she's not the most popular philosopher these days, but Ayn Rand wrote something to the effect of: "when we lie, we make ourselves a slave to our falsehoods". I do agree with your assessment of the golden mean. Moderation is also best in moderation. I think we need excess occasionally in order to achieve anything beyond the merely ordinary, which the ancient Greeks would see as hubris, punishable by divine retribution. I also agree that Plato's class distinctions aren't terribly relevant in our modern society. We need to be able to self-evaluate and self-correct in order to be the best versions of ourselves, and to occasionally handle conflict resolution independently. If I'm being honest, I have some notions about the nature of conflict in modern society that we could discuss, perhaps in a different forum.

@@professorjeff5371 I would be interested to discuss them although if we're only taking a scholarly and impartial approach, I don't mind either! I'm grateful so far to receive the exchanges and thoughts of a philosophy professor as a neophyte to philosophy. Ayn Rand's notions of objectivism is very interesting to me albeit seemingly short on the obligatory sense. Anyway, thank you so much for your time! I'm just a random internet person hopelessly subject to endless questions and the desire to find some resolution through exchanges. I'm one of those who finds a sort of value in thinking out loud -- perhaps something not characterized by wisdom -- with the hopes that my thoughts would be challenged in a productive way such that I can improve my thoughts.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Dark engine! I would like to qualify this whole video with the statement that the notions of "Kantian Deontology" and "Utilitarian Consequentialism" are somewhat reductive/simplified concepts here. A lot of work has been done by philosophers to further nuance those ideas and make them more widely applicable. I have to say I'm having a little bit of a hard time understanding the moral perspective in your second paragraph. It seems you are trying to evaluate the moral nature of someone else based purely on your observation of their actions. As a personal ethos, I believe we should try to be more responsible for our own moral convictions and actions than those of others. I do, however, like the idea of habit that you mention there. Aristotle would agree that moral virtue is a matter of habit, and we are always either becoming more or less virtuous based on our dispositions and actions. Another interesting point about Kant and subjectivity is that he seems to believe all rational subjective beings will arrive at the same moral truth: the categorical imperative, which makes that idea about as close to objectively agreeable as scientific truths. Finally, the part where you talk about "intervention from responsible agents" brings a social element to the moral discussion. I'm not sure if you've read Rousseau, Hobbes, and/or Rawls, but their approaches to the social contract factor in those responsible agents. When we consider morality at that level, it becomes something of a different problem. While most traditional moral theories consider the motivations, actions, and consequences of the individual, political theories evaluate larger structural systems that deal with morality. I think one of the most notable exceptions to this dichotomy is Plato's theory of justice in book 4 of The Republic in which he compares the idea of justice in the individual to justice in society. See my video on that for more!

​@@professorjeff5371 Thanks for your time! On this point: >> It seems you are trying to evaluate the moral nature of someone else based purely on your observation of their actions. As a personal ethos, I believe we should try to be more responsible for our own moral convictions and actions than those of others. Above all else I apply my judgments to myself first and foremost; virtue ethics tends to be most appealing to me from a probablistic consequentialist perspective since I have found it extremely beneficial to make a conscious effort to both practice good habits and overcome my worst (I compare it to practicing playing Poker with sound mind to overcome our worst psychological habits). There's no person I tend to judge more harshly than myself when I did something foolish, although I take a somewhat third-person perspective in evaluating my past self. Yet I apply the same standards to evaluating my own actions in hindsight as anyone else's even though I prioritize myself in my evaluations (after all, I have the most direct control over my own actions and can only appeal to others at best). For example, I have had my trust betrayed multiple times in the past, and sometimes with devastating consequences to me. Yet I can't see what I did as wrong since I lacked bad intentions and could not have possibly known that my trust would be betrayed in foresight. So the actual consequences of such betrayals are actually inconsequential from my perspective. What is consequential to me are the probabilistic consequences of what I could expect should I have developed trust issues and started treating every single person I ever encounter with suspicion; that seems weighted so negatively if we repeat that over and over. So in spite of having my trust betrayed multiple times, I conclude that trust is a virtue and that I should remain a trusting person in spite of the risks since the potential benefits appear to strongly outweigh the risks. Meanwhile, when I see someone develop trust issues from a betrayal and start treating even complete strangers with paranoid suspicion, then that seems like act consequentialism in mindset which I consider a grave mistake in evaluating a lone action as wrong as a result of one unlucky consequence which could not have possibly been expected to be foreseen. The proper evaluation of it from my perspective in determining whether an action was right or wrong should look at the likely net benefits/costs should the action be repeated an infinite number of times to try to assess whether the expected value is positive or negative. >> Another interesting point about Kant and subjectivity is that he seems to believe all rational subjective beings will arrive at the same moral truth: the categorical imperative, which makes that idea about as close to objectively agreeable as scientific truths. I tend to strongly doubt that claim and think morality is hopelessly subjective (although not without patterns, and not without the ability to achieve a high degree of intersubjective consensus). For example, suppose some of us -- through hypothetical technology or magic -- developed omniscience. We became all-knowing about the universe and could predict all possible consequences of all possible actions. In that case, all scientific questions would be resolved without any degree of uncertainty, but I doubt moral questions would be. In fact, it might raise more questions about moral truths. We would then know, for example, that simply moving a rock would end up eventually killing someone perhaps 200 years down the line even though we applied no forceful action; given such certainty we might as well have pulled the trigger. We would know that if we fail to steal a specific person's guns, they would (not merely could) go on to use them to perform a mass shooting. We would know exactly who is and isn't trustworthy and in precisely what contexts. We'd know exactly which children would grow up to be productive citizens and which wouldn't, and to what degree. We could even foresee that allowing rather than preventing certain atrocities would have net benefits in terms of utility in the grandest scheme of things. Even if those who are now omniscient could agree on some measure of utility, there might be infinite possible universes of equal net utility when considering the net over infinite amounts of time. One omniscient being might favor a high-tech universe of equal utility resembling Star Trek. Another might favor a low-tech universe of equal utility with primitive beings returning to a greater state of harmony with nature. One might favor more patriarchal societies, the other matriarchal. It seems to me like we now have more reasons to diverge in terms of what sorts of societies and overall universe we prefer, not less. From my perspective, the reason so many of us can converge on notions like how killing an innocent person is morally reprehensible is because of our absence of knowledge which prevents us from being able to tell the possible benefits of doing so. We can't foresee that the person, currently innocent, may go on to commit mass murder, for example. Yet we would given sufficient knowledge. I believe instead that it is our ignorance about consequences that allows us to reach wide intersubjective consensus about the actions most guaranteed to cause harm.

​@@professorjeff5371 I have to study more about these other philosopers you mentioned but I wonder if there are any who -- as I would -- relate morality to a skill-based game of chance like Poker (not roulette which is solely luck-based, and weighted towards bankrupty given the house edge). To become a skilled poker player requires evaluating our decisions not based on their actual consequences, but their expected value (their probabilistic consequences). For example, I may lose my entire stack of chips calling all-in with aces against a person with deuces, but that's not a bad decision if a deuce community card is dealt which causes my pair of aces to lose a three-of-a-kind of deuces. It's actually a good decision to call here with aces in spite of bad consequences because I made the best possible action despite my unfortunate results. I put my chips in with a positive expected value; folding aces would have a negative expected value. if I repeated that situation over and over of aces vs. deuces, I would come out enormously rich. If, instead, I had deuces and beat aces the way I described, it would be a mistake to think that is a good move, since repeating that move and over would bankrupt me very quickly. Therefore it's a bad move to call with deuces against aces even when it produces good consequences. In the same sense, selfishly lying to someone and getting away with (even for the rest of my life) with only positive consequences to me would be a bad move despite the positve consequences, because it has a negative expected value. I'm conflating a lucky consequence with an expected one. Kant seems as though he would find lying wrong for violating his axiom about universal law, but I would instead frame it based on expected value (I also think he's becoming horribly impractical in his paper "On the Supposed Right to Lie From Benevolent Motives"). Yet becoming the greatest Poker player (which I see analogous to becoming the greatest moral agent) requires factoring in as much nuanced information as possible informing our actions which Kantian ethics immediately seems to ignore. To be the greatest Poker player requires factoring in the most nuanced aspects of our player position (turn order), statistics, board texture, opponent psychology, our own psychology, history, plausible hand ranges, pot equity, fold equity, bet sizing, the way other players perceive us, the way we perceive them (and challenging any faulty assumptions which mislead our perceptions akin to overcoming superstitious ideas like racism, sexism, etc), our worst psychological habits, etc. It is akin to becoming not only the idealistic Stoic Sage, but the smartest of them all: most capable of predicting every possible consequence of every possible action and assigning probabilities to each... not only a Stoic Sage but an omniscient Stoic Sage: one capable of reading minds and overcoming the worst habits of his own.

@@darkengine5931 I like the poker analogy you employ here, and while I realize I'm not replying to every point you've made. I think it might be most important to realize the limitations of all human subjectivity. Your analogy about the Greatest Poker Player reminds me quite a bit of Dr. Manhattan from the Watchman comic - a wonderful thought experiment in its own right. If you were to acquire all the nuanced information that you outline here, you would cease to be human in an important sense. You would rise above fallibility, which I don't think is a desirable aim in itself. Our ability to err, recognize it, and grow is one of the most rewarding experiences of being human. This is also a large part of why I generally identify as a Nietzschian thinker. As he says in so many words, most notably in The Gay Science, life is about destruction, creation, growth, error, and calamity. To avoid these is to avoid the essence of life. I'd also like to touch on this notion of our "bad habits". From what perspective are these habits "bad"? Are they harmful to others? Isn't possible that others deserve harm from time to time? Are they harmful to the self? I believe that self-harm could be the most valuable lesson on occasion. Does their "badness" derive from a higher external authority? Why is that authority correct? In very much the same way that Kantian morality is too general and absolute, I think we must evaluate all our maxims, ideas, and actions on a case-by-case basis. They must be tested in action, and if error ensues, then we've learned an indispensable lesson.

​@@professorjeff5371 I consider a habit bad if, as with the Poker analogy, it would produce a negative outcome if repeated over and over again and likely to be repeated over and over as a being of limited foresight. For example, my worst vice is drinking. The most probable consequence should I continue to engage in my drinking habits are health conditions like liver cirrhosis, repeated stupidity (I've no shortage of stupidity from my drunken misadventures), and regret. I'm still thinking in terms of probable consequences and expected values to determine the probable effects of repeating such actions over and over, given as much or as little nuance that appears relevant to predicting those probable consequences. The risks tend to most immediately be aligned towards me but there are certainly risks to others (to my colleagues, family, my wife, etc) should I continue to indulge in this worst habit. So I consider this among the most immoral traits/habits I can discern so far, and the most immediate area worthy of improvement. At the same time, I would not conclude from my experience and habits that indulging in drinks is always morally wrong, since some people -- unlike me -- are able to moderate such habits while I tend to fail (I never stop at one glass of wine over dinner). They wouldn't repeat those actions over and over. It isn't habit-forming for such people, so I'm in favor of exceptions when they apply -- mostly I'm in favor of taking into account as many factors as possible to assess the moral weight or lack thereof behind an action which seems immediately allergic to a Kantian mindset. Besides that, I can't find myself as one capable of doing "good for goodness sake" absent mention of a hypothetical Santa Claus with presents. I don't know if that's a flaw in my personality (I'm constantly and rigorously interrogating my motivations) or if the people who think they're doing good for goodness sake just failed to most deeply and uncomfortably question exactly why they're doing it.

I'm so glad you liked it! Are there any other topics you'd like to see a video on?

That's awesome! Is there any kind of moral philosophy you'd like to learn more about?

@@professorjeff5371 im kinda just watching your lectures

I'm so glad you liked it! Are there any other topics in philosophy you'd like to see me cover?

Glad it helped! Are there any other topics in philosophy that you would like to see covered?

@@professorjeff5371 none right now but thanks

Glad you liked it! Are there any other topics in philosophy you'd like to see covered?

Professor, you look great. This presentation is so helpful. Thank you.

Thanks iam grateful