I don't find strange that Spiderman is in the audience, what I find strange is that he is the only justice enforcer who is improving his capacities for his job... Society would benefit much more if people like Batman, Catwoman, Ironman, etc, and specially the Hulk, were attending these lectures.
Example would be the learning of doing crime by Batman as part of understanding what it takes to defeat criminals later. The dark knight and returns presents a few moral questions.
00:25 - Part 1: Mind Your motive Arguments of Immanuel Kant - Opposing Utilitarianism with the statement that each individual humans have certain dignity that commands our respect. The reason that an individual is sacred doesn't stem from an idea that we own ourselves but instead from an idea that we are all rational beings i.e we are beings capable of reason. Also admits that utilitarians were half right. But he denies Bentham's claim that pain and pleasure are our sovereign masters. 05:57 - Kant's questioning of pleasure and pain - - that acting to maximize utility is not freedom, that is acting as a slave to these appetites and People do not get to choose these appetites & impulses. 07:37 - Kant's Concept of Freedom : to act freely is to act autonomously and to act autonomously is to act according to law that I give myself and not to the laws of nature or laws of cause & effect. 10:02 - People as means vs People as end in themselves. 13:15 - What gives act its moral worth ? what makes action morally worthy consists not in consequences or in the results that flow from it but it has to do with the motive for which act is done. "Motal worth of an action depeds on motive" doing right thing for right reasons. 15:20 - Morality : Duty vs Inclination 15:50 - Example of Shopkeeper and Shortexchange 17:09 - case of suicide 25:42 - Spiderman taking moral lessons so that he can keep saying it in every movie and webseries and animated shows - With great power comes great responsibility. 28:22 - part 2 : The supreme principle of morality - as per kant --> 1. Motive behind Act - motive of duty - doing right thing for right reason - duty vs inclination 2. Freedom - determination of will - Autonomously vs Heteronomously - We are only free when we are acting heteronomously i.e. as per law that we give ourselves. 3. Notion of reason -->Categorical vs Hypothetical imperative 40:40 - Three versions of categorical imperative 1. The Formula of universal law 2. The Formula of humanity as end 3. The Formula of Autonomy - each subject must will maxims that could be universally self-legislated
I love the lectures with Profesor Sandel. The way he leads the alumni is a powerful form to understand, to think, instead of just sitting there. Philosophy is a subtle way that leads to a better easier way of living free. I am 76 years old and barely went to school but I have been an avid reader... and listening to Professor Sandel, I realize that, somehow, having read so many books in my life, have enriched it; and the way I live by is giving respect to others -even when others do not respond in the same way, I feel I am respecting myself, too.. Congratulations Profesor Sandel, you are grate teacher!
I fucking love this guy! He literally makes me excited about learning, and he really makes me want to go to a good university so I can hope to encounter a lecturer like him.
@@robertwilsoniii2048 Good state schools are full of guys like this. Places like Cal Berkeley, U of Michigan, U of Wisconsin, U of Virginia are all public Ivys. Got my BA from one of those and law at Yale. Both offered equally wonderful opportunities to learn.
Couldn’t agree more. The intriguing knowledge and depth of the content he was delivery is truly so very valuable. Can’t stop watching one episode after another, exhausting my electronic device’s battery.
@@xmz341 Guilt goes far beyond the court system. The feeling of guilt is within us when we realize that we have violated another's rights and freedoms.
@@sheilabright2091 The history of Harvard University begins in 1630, when the Puritans settled Boston and immediately made plans for the establishment of a college to train ministers of the gospel. Harvard was officially born in 1636 and took up John 17:3 as its first goal: “And this is life eternal, that they know Thee to be the only very God and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent” (The Geneva Bible). Even to this day, the true goal and history of Harvard is etched in stone: “[One] of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.”
Relax you idiot this is totally normal since it is usually expected to talk about Kant in a philosophy lecture, but it is obviously not the case for Spider-Man 🤓
05:30 Love the combination of philosophy and spider-man. And I love the fact that he is actually allowed to sit there in the lecture in a spider-man suit. xd To be honest, not just the fact that costumes are allowed, but the symbol of who he is and what he stands for that makes it so intriguing. Whilst professor Sandel is talking about the philosophy of Imannuel Kant :D
I've been following this program since No.1, ..now I am on No. 6. Very highly informative, challenging, and deeply of moral values! What a blessing for students taking this course from a talented professor in sync with distinct philosophers like Kant and the rest where inalienable humane values are founded in our Holy and Just God, our CREATOR! Let us praise and magnify our Almighty God! 👏🏻🙏❤️⭐️
What makes this lecture so special than the previous five ones, is the quality if exchange between the Lecturer and the students themselves, they were able to push him further in thinking, and were able as well to produce ideas equivalent to other philosophers ones (Stuart Mill for example) .. I do find and extreme Joy and Pleasure following this course. Thank you Harvard for providing such beautiful online content... Cheers from Morocco
I actually sat in this course 25 years ago. It took me two decades to really fully understand it and inculcate into my life. I see the same blank Looks of incomprehension on those students as I remember in my fellow classmates back then. I also checked all at the same posturing and tangential questions students make to salve their own ego. It makes me really marvel at professor Sandel’s skill to pivot that nonsense back into the lesson. What a massive lesson and how time doesn’t change people, but time changes you. Oh wait, now I sound like Bowie. ;)
I love the way this professor runs his class and the way both he and the students interact. I wish it was like this today! Cordial discourse, agreement, and disagreement.
The aesthetic value of all the videos of Justice is too high. Cute faces, beauty with brains, awesome dialectic teaching, multicultural environment, I just love it and have some favourite people whose face or arguments I don't mind watching n number of times. Finally Micheal Sandels u rock.
Salome: There are similarly bright students at the major state schools. Great classes like this. Great opportunities to expand your mind. I went to great state school - U of Wis - as undergrad and Yale law after that. For those who are motivated, both schools offer wonderful atmospheres, faculty and and opportunity to learn. Drop by your local state u. and sit in on a lecture. It will change your life and maybe this world.
TBH half the questions I've heard in this series seem less well constructed or less predicated on good understanding than I heard in my public high school. I understand these students must be bright but I'm not sure this is the best demonstration--although the lecturer is superb!
For those that are struggling with these ideas I will give some assistance but do not offer a full exposition. Kant's moral theory came after his Critique of Pure Reason, and it really does help to understand that book first before grappling with his ethics. In a nutshell, what Kant called our apriori reasoning, pure reason, is what organizes all our sensations into the continuum of consciousness. But the sensations, all of them, pass through filters over which we have no control, and those filters determine what is sweet from sour, red from blue, in fact sweet, sour red and blue etc are the output of the filter, the input itself does not have those qualities, or at least we have no way of knowing if they do. Reason is what takes the output of the filters and creates the continuum of consciousness. So then we have no choice but to be the slave of reason, and reason is largely or totally unable to make judgements upon itself. Reason is why we say that two sides of a triangle will always add up to a length greater than the third side. We don't have to go out and measure every triangle to be sure, just in case we might find one where the rule does not hold. So we can be at least that sure about reason being more or less foolproof, yet still we can't examine reason by any other measure. In his book about morality Kant attempts to derive ethics or morality from reason. That's not easy to do. But after reading and having at least a fairly good understanding of Critique of Pure Reason then at least it becomes clear that reason must or at least could be the ground for ethics/morality, because it is the only means we have to make a judgement about anything. Rationality is possible because of reason. In rationality we weigh options, putting the positive in the numerator and the negative in the denominator, aiming for a result that is greater than 1. If only one, then the deal is breakeven. If less than one, we lose. But whatever we weigh is understood and assigned value only after reason puts the output of the filter into an organized whole. One might want to argue that the filter is very randomly assembled and then reason, whatever it is, is just acting on a random jumble and deserves no special credit. Kant's claim that it does deserve special credit is the way it does work well in allowing us to interact with the world, for instance geometry and math, which are reason-based, not dependent on empirical facts, are both very valuable with regards interacting with the world. And it is reason, organizing sensation, that informs one that it is best to open the door before trying to pass through the doorway. Reason is what creates one's mental picture of space and time. So then Kant's attempt at grounding ethics/morality on reason is based on it's well proven usefullness in every other realm of consciousness. Reason is what determines what is and what is not beautiful. Individual tastes may vary, but still if one's favorite architecture style is say, Mediteranean Villa, that which determines the best in that style is also what determines the best in say, the style of the Taj Mahal. One can easily say the Taj is beautiful and still prefer another type of beauty, but no one really prefers ugly. So even aesthetics is at the end of the day based in Reason. So then it is up to the reader to determine if Kant makes his case in his ethical/moral argument, because that is a stretch to be sure. One can image a drug kingpin commissioning a very beautiful home in which to live, and may choose very beautiful women as his concubines, and so on, and yet most would agree his chosen livelihood is immoral. Now, the clue to that immorality being immoral, bad, is that the drug kingpin is imposing his will on others, by addicting the end customer, and likely building his empire through extortion, threats of bodily harm and murder, and of course we know that harm and murder usually lay along the path to his power and wealth. Ok, I'll have to stop here as this is already too lengthy.
Deepshikha Rathore Kant's Maxim : Make only those laws for yourself, assuming you will obey them, that you would also want all others to make for themselves and obey also. Kant was looking for a law or rule or maxim that had the same certainty as "the length of two sides of a triangle, when added together, will always be greater than the length of the third side". With just a rudimentary introduction to geometry no one will deny the triangle rule. If one did, others would think one an imbecile or dishonest, and then normal, intelligent and honest people would avoid that person. Same with Kant's famous maxim. The triangle rule is understood apriori - it is true even if no one had ever seen a triangle in the real world. From Critique of Pure Reason, it is only apriori claims that are true and undeniable. These claims of course are put into words in order to communicate them, and they actually can be put into words. Apriori claims can be put into words, so we might assume that any matter dictated by reason can be put into words. It is also the nature of apriori claims that they not rely on any particular circumstances and that they extend to infinity both up and down, or we can say are all-encompassing of that over which they lay claim. Kant's famous Maxim meets the criteria for words or a claim that are based on reason. The Maxim can be put into words, it extends infinitely over all humans, from the smallest particle, one person, to all of humanity, and it is impossible to deny (if one is being honest). Also, note that an apriori claim can be used to deduce if another claim (synthetic) is true. So Kant's Maxim can be used as a yardstick or scale to judge any other claim which may seem at first a bit hard to resolve as true or moral or not. Example: Many think the Hindu caste system is just plain morally wrong. The Hindu apologists say that the original claim was merely that a son should take up the work of his father. Now we test that with Kant's Maxim: rule for one must the same as rule for all - infinity in both directions. At first it may seem that "a son should take up the work of his father" is a rule for one and all. However it is not a rule for one and all because it does not include woman or orphans, and "work" is added in without considering that all work is not equal...the infinite spectrum of work is ignored (worst kind of work to best kind of work). So "all sons should take up the work of their father" is very impure by the standard of Kant's Maxim. A proper Kant-Maxim-based corrollary about work would be "all persons shall be free to pursue any work they wish". Of course some will fail at their chosen endeavor, but all that matters is that they be free to try. One that is free to try, and tries and fails will be disappointed, but that is a far different and less negative feeling than that of being prevented from trying.
First of all apologize for my english because is not very good. Second, thank you very much for your explanation. An finally, after all I think that the problem is that reason is not a scientific method, "reason" changes and if we act acconding a law we did ourselves everyone would have his own particular point of view, maybe without sense for the others. I think there´s also a problem about the meaning of "reason", that makes that "something" had to be respected. I mean, one mad person or a fetus of 7th mounths are respectables? because according to the common meaning of "reason" maybe not. I reach to understand more of less Kant but I find shadows and in fact if there isn´t exist one "reason", nearly every act can be defended. Thanks a lot again and goodnight.
vamosacharlar unrato Hi! If you have not read "Critique of Pure Reason" and understood what Kant was saying in that book, then his moral argument will not make much sense. In CPR, Kant was talking about Pure Reason, not someone's "reasons" for doing this or that. I'm now on my third read of CPR, but actually this time I am listening to an audio book of CPR on RUclips. Kant makes several points in CPR, one of which is this: it is Reason that forms one's picture of the world. What enables one to see a glass on the table, reach for it, bring it to the lips, etc is Reason. All mammals (and likely other animals) have this level of Reasoning to various degrees...beavers actually understand how to build their dams, into which they burrow for security and warmth and they likely do know they are creating a pool of water to catch fish. Very basic, Pure Reason allows for shape recognition and imaging the world in 3D. What sets reasoning mammals apart, humans having the best Reasoning, is the extent to which they can categorize and compile all the various sensations, fitting them into one world picture. This is called synthesis. So for instance you hear a chattering sound, your ears and eyes try to find the source of the sound and are directed to a squirrel. Now, you don't see sound waves coming from the squirrel but you see it's mouth moving when you hear the chattering sound. Without any real empirical proof you associate the sound with the squirrel - that is a synthesized thought. It is Reasoning that allows for scientific method. How can we be more certain the chattering sound is coming from the squirrel - few would want more certainty that that given by eyes and ears but lets just say some want to be sure tree is not chattering. Reasoning has the tools of deduction, induction and reduction. These tools make possible the maths. Deduction: I will remove either the tree or the squirrel. It is easier to remove the squirrel so I try that first by scaring it off. The chattering goes away. Induction: I have a squirrel in a large cage with a tree in the cage, but I hear no chattering. So I poke the tree gently with a stick and hear nothing. Same poke to the squirrel and I hear chattering, or scolding. Reduction: I isolate the squirrel in a cage, with nothing else in the cage and I wait. Eventually I hear chattering. Any thought that you CAN have is based in Reasoning. Rationality is comparison...Reasoning allows us to see the difference on which we are comparing. On to Kant's moral argument: from CPR we understand that all humans think from Reasoning (not considering the mentally retarded, imbeciles, etc). So we know we all think alike and this is no longer an assumption based on observing human behavior. Of course Kant was aware that there are cultural differences among peoples and that people have passions. It is his contention that all of that can be seen to be superficial, and can be stripped away by resorting to his Universal Maxim. If Kant is right, then anyone who learns of his Universal Maxim just can't deny it, anymore than they can deny a triangle has three sides. A Westerner can visit India, and let's say has friends there so one is also in the homes of Indians. And immediately one sees they have many customs different from Westerners. For instance there are customs related to respect for elders. Usually, without asking the purpose of such a custom, a gesture perhaps, is obvious. Respect comes from Reasoning, like it or not, and really, who doesn't like it? Now consider a thief - he or she steals, yet does not want other to steal from him/her. Mere counselling about the Universal Maxim may not cure the thief, but then again it might, perhaps even at a later time. So it is not as if Reasoning compels respect and we are unable to do otherwise. Though the ability to do maths is built into us still we require instruction to get beyond counting on the fingers. So parents often try to "Reason" with their children along the lines of the Universal Maxim, and they probably did that even before Kant was born. Parent's say "you can't steal another child's toy, because what if all children did that...then your toys would be stolen!" Immediately or later a child will say to him/herself, "yes, I guess that's right". Now you might say that such an admonishment to a child is an obvious thing to say. Which it is. But is is only obvious due to Reasoning, and the child can only come to see the rightness of it by being able to Reason. Finally it is worth pointing out the Kant's certainty about the Universal Maxim being tied to Reasoning untied moralities from religion in that it should work just as well without religion. But then in the final final analysis Kant thought there was some connection between Reasoning and a perfect creator god of some kind, which put reasoning in humans, and to a lesser extent other animals. Reasoning has the odd feature of placing everything thought about on a spectrum from which we get the concept of infinity in all directions. So humans can think about at least trying to attain perfection, but we know we can't achieve perfect perfection, unless perhaps we had an infinity to do so. Kant may or may not have been trying to make the case for God (of some kind of perfect type). Many have interpreted Kant as establishing a secular basis for Morality, others saw in his work an attempt to validate god, among them Friedrich Neitzsche and Arthur Shopenhaer, both of whom rejected the idea of god(s). One of the interesting features of Reasoning is that is not deconstructable. Evolutionary explanations almost always cite rationality as a basis of thinking, and thus better survival, etc. However such conjectures do not consider how rationality is possible in the first place.
This is brilliant stuff. So pleased it's available on RUclips. This particular lecture on Kant is my favourite one yet. But seriously - why *is* Spider-Man there? Although, he is one of the more archetypal philosophical superheroes - with great power comes great responsibility and all that.
I havent watched all these yet so far there have been points that have caused me to think points that i have agreed with and points i have disagreed with. But i am grateful to be able to watch all these lectures for free on youtube. So thank you to all those who have contributed to making learning easier and more accessible.
IT HAS BECOME PLAIN TO SEE . I AM THANKFUL FOR MICHEAL. HARVARD SHOULD BE VERY THANKFULTO HAVE AN INSTRUCTER LIKE HIM WHERE IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO TEACH MORALS TO SUCH BRILLIANT YOUNG MINDS , WHO SHAPE THE FUTURE ......
1, This is a great lecturer. He knows exactly what to say. Every one of his words sits right where it should be. Considering the finite time in the lecture, his explanation of kantian ethics is the best I've seen. He perfectly avoids the confusing parts of kantian ethics and delivers its essence in a well structured way. 2, The answer from the student Judith is definitely wrong. The lecturer doesn't explicitly point out her mistake but gives her encouragement instead.
I agree, the problem raised by his question was so subtle I didn't even understand why that was a problem first; I had to listen to his question a couple times before it eventually struck my dull mind.
My teacher is a bad ass too and shared this video with us in our ethics class! I'm so obsessed. These concepts are completely new to me and i am excited to learn! Thank you for sharing this video!
I am really enjoying being forced to think but I can't help but think how much more sense all this makes if you have a Supreme Being who is the law giver and ground for most of the reason behind doing the right thing for the right reason.
It's used to remove attention from the student and to return the focus to Sandel. It's a smart move, specially with a big audience, since it allows you to return to the main arguments and not to make this class 2 hours longer.
Questions were intriguing and noteworthy. Only a good professor is an action in futile if not backed by introspective and inquisitive minds of the students. This class is a great example of the ideal amalgamation of the two.
I would've thought Spiderman would've been knowledgeable about the subject and in no need of the course....but since he is there, it's comforting to see that he obviously cares enough to give himself the best opportunity to understand it fully, and is therefore truly autonomous.
What is interesting in the example used here is the principle philosophy of criminal law. Which you may or may not study depending on whether you go on to study criminal law. The principles are "Actus Reus" and "Mens Rea." In American, British law etc... both "Actus Reus" and "Mens Rea" are required justify crimina liability. "Actus Reus" refers to the act or omission that comprise the physical elements of a crime as required by statute. Actus reus includes only a voluntary affirmative act, or an omission (failure to act), causing a criminally proscribed result. The "Actus Reus" elements of a crime can be categorised into three types: conduct; consequences; and circumstances. "Mens Rea" refers to criminal intent. The literal translation from Latin is "guilty mind." The plural of mens rea is mentes reae. A mens rea refers to the state of mind statutorily required in order to convict a particular defendant of a particular crime. Establishing the mens rea of an offender is usually necessary to prove guilt in a criminal trial. The prosecution typically must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the offense with a culpable state of mind. What are the culpable states of mind. The Culpabe states of mind have four hierarchical categories: acting purposely - the defendant had an underlying conscious object to act acting knowingly - the defendant is practically certain that the conduct will cause a particular result acting recklessly - The defendant consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustified risk acting negligently - The defendant was not aware of the risk, but should have been aware of the risk
I am taking a course at the U of S in Saskatchewan, Justice and Injustice in Politics and Law. Our reader is Sandel's Justice, What's the right thing to do? Glad I stumbled across these popular lectures. Thank you to all involved in making this possible.
Qui diable a besoin de valeur morale, de toute façon? Je ne vais pas arrêter d'aider les vieilles dames à travers la route, ou que ce soit, juste parce que le fait qu'il est dans mon caractère de le faire fait Kant pense qu'il est moralement sans valeur. Visser lui!
This is really terrific. It is consistent with the teachings of the enlightened Buddha. And even though a little more complex, gives a very good definition of morality. A big thumbs up!!!
Because 'love is the fulfilling of the law', acting through love, agape, through kindness, through fairness and with consideration is always the right thing to do and is the true motivator of every single being. To choose otherwise is the sad result of duality and can only be excused by reason. Reason is not the law of life. Being is the law of life.
I don't know that autonomy exists at all. I was given a genetic code at birth which ended up controling my hormone levels throughout my life, and the developpement pattern to the different lobes of my brain. I grew up in a household I didn't chose, was taught values and was exposed to ideas that were forced upon me. The experiences I lived, be they coincidental or providential, were not autonomous. I'm subject to some permanent randomness in the brownian motion of the neurotransmiters in the space of my synapses. My neurons have no "free will", not anymore than the atoms that constitute them. I'm a computing machine which works with memories, sensory information and hormone levels as input, emotions and reasoning as algorithms, and choice... as an _output_. Nature. Nurture. Randomness. But autonomy? Autonomy is a delusion, and someone who would base their ethics on autonomy is delusional.
+GregTom2 But this all reminds of this quote from skyrim: "What is better, to be born good - or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?" But really this over-reliance on motive just encourages rationalisation, which is very frequent and subconcious. There is no trace of our reasoning left once the choice has been made, which lets us completelly free to _decide_ why we did something. "Oh I prescribed drug A instead of drug B because the counterindication the patient has to drug A is only theorical, while there is a real difference of cost. Not because I overlooked the patient's condition of congenital heart disease". We lie to protect ourself, and since we forgot the truth, the rationalisation becomes the reason why we acted. Rationalisation is an inbuilt mechanism to prevent anxiety and to maintain self-esteem, behavioral psychology tells us. But is it "good" to encourage delusion about our motives and to lie to ourselves, or is it better to be lucid and truthful?
Your argument does contain a good point- although not exactly the same, there's always been arguments and theories favoring cosmos, the idea that the universe and everything in it are dictated by certain rules, and that what we consider to be freedom or coincidence, or, indeed, ANYTHING that happens, was to happen inevitably because of the governing rules of the universe. Especially nowadays when mathematics and physics are unveiling the patterns of the world that we live in, this sort of argument is gaining strength; that if there was such entity that was aware of all the rules of the universe and the initial arrangement of the cosmos, then he/she/it should be able to predict everything, every phenomenon, every human behavior and feeling and thoughts, at any point in time. If you're interested, try digging into determinism. However, in this case, you should recognize that his idea of autonomy does not extend all the way down to the natural laws, the inevitable. As long as the rules based on which you behave is your own, Kant sees that it is sufficient to be considered autonomy. Also, keep in mind that his argument was formed and presented in an era well before neuroscience, or even psychology, was even a thing. Also, at least in philosophical arguments, claiming that certain idea is "delusional" based on scientific facts is not really good of an argument. Scientific method is only one of the many ways with which you can gather knowledge, and it's also an imperfect one at that (it's an inductive method, and therefore is subjected to possibility of error, regardless of however small). For one, how can you be assured that all of "science" is skewed by some existence that lies beyond our perception (analogous to Descartes' evil demon problem)? + Just to point out a fallacy that you committed; you suggested that "your neurons have no free will, not any more than the atoms that constitute them," presumably to make a point that you as a "conscious" agent does not exist. If that's the case, you're committing a fallacy of composition because you're suggesting that there is lack of property A (consciousness) on the parts (individual neurons), and therefore the collection of the parts, the whole itself (you) also lack the property. That's like suggesting "each part of the phone cannot send a message, and therefore the phone itself is incapable of sending a message" or that "each atom constituting a chair is incapable of upholding my bodyweight, and therefore the chair itself is incapable of upholding my bodyweight." Certain properties are transitive between the parts and the whole, while some properties only emerge as a collection of parts, and some other emerge only as parts (e.g. protons are small, but a tree made out of them are not so small).
It seems that you missed the point of his idea. It's not just having a motive that matters, it has to be a motive that is independent of anything personal or particular about you. Independent of your circumstances, your inclinations, your desires, and all. Only a maxim that is fully detached from specific circumstances and can be generalized as a universal principle is a motive worth pursuing. Therefore, rationalization as a mere tool to make one's act appear more acceptable or palatable is severely insufficient for Kant.
Hi! One really does have to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason first before one can make sense of his moral imperative and what he mean's by autonomy. And as it turns out, a mechanistic world view is not necessarily at odds with the moral imperative. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes the point that reasoning is what makes possible our mechanistic world view, in fact everything that we call world view. Kant's arguement, from CPR to his later moral imperative is: 1) What we know about the world and ourselves we only know through reasoning 2) reasoning does enable humans to interact with the physical world and to gain advantages from that interaction, so it's not a bad thing. 3) reasoning has certain interesting features in that pure reasoning can't be denied...for instance, one can't deny that two sides of a triangle will have total length greater than the third side. 4) It is because of the gravitas of the undeniable feature of reasoning that sought to ground morality on reasoning, as he could not think (nor can anyone else) of any other stable, undeniable part of human thought. 5) other people are part of the physical world we inhabit. As reasoning does aid us in dealing with the part of the world that does not include people, then it may also aid us in dealing with people. 6) The categorical imperative is meant to be like the example of the triangle - it is (he thought and most would agree) undeniable. 7) The "autonomy" not well explained by this lecturer, is meant to be the same as the autonomy of the geometric rules or laws, like that of the triangle. 8) It is said that there is no pure triangle in nature. But we certainly can think it, and then use that apriori thought to find ways to change the physical world for the better. 9) Our physical world is that of humans and everything else. So it certainly could be the case that reasoning will work for both categories. 10) Autonomy is then living according to the categorical imperative, assuming it will improve life in general, just as girders arranged in triangles can make for a strong bridge. The engineer who follows the principals, rules, etc of good bridge building is acting autonomously. If he substitutes cheap rivets to make some money on the side, then he is not acting autonomously.
Most of what you just said was before Kant's time, and that is why you have to look at Kant's works with a certain color of glasses. In Kant's time it was hip and trendy to make a living by theorizing about non provable concepts.
17:35 "for someone who doesnt take his or her life, is to think.. to imagine someone who is miserable" *camera shows closeup of girl in audience that looks concerned* lol
When times got Hard in a family of Sami ,inuites far up North. The elderly did chose to do "The Long Walk" -for the survival of the younger in the family. -just saing its a fact.
I wonder if anybody who was in the audience is watching these episodes now! That would be very interesting! Especially if the person was videotaped back then while listening or speaking. Wouldn’t that be amazing?😇
Watching his lectures and learning from him makes me kinda regret dropping out because the way he teaches actually makes me want to learn. Regretting the choices I've made when I had so many good opportunities that I threw away because I wanted to have fun in the moment... oh well..
Kant has the ability to transcend to the level of transcendental reality Umesh Prasad Singh Calcutta University literary expert and teaching IELTS at Meridean Overseas in Jaipur Rajasthan India.
I got Dory in my head at this point singing just keep watching, just keep watching This is like the 5th time rewatching this. Such a refreshing series.
Make a pill that stops late night sleep side effects like dark circles in eyes, mental health problems, stroke, low eyesight, period problem, heart disease, headache etc for whole life after taking it but notice that this pill has no negative side effects and make a rule all over the world that this pill is free for everyone.
I think the issue here is the lack of a stated difference between people, desires, and actions. As a consequentialist, an ACTION is good if it satisfies my set of good consequences, a DESIRE is good if it will when added to a person, make them want to do more total good, (so the want for a successful business isn't good as that will make you do as many good things as bad ones,) and a PERSON is good if they have those morally good desires. So, I suppose I take my idea of a "good person" from Aristotle, but my idea of a "good action" from consequentialism.
The more I listen the more I tend to equate utilitarianism with a positive explanation (how things actually are) for why people behave the way they do (while also being a justification for their action), while Kantianism with a normative explanation (the way something should be). Obviously, as stated before, utilitarians would argue that utilitarianism is normative because they believe people should act to benefit the greatest number the greatest amount.
Reminds me of an Excerpt from Gita : "Work done with selfish motives is inferior by far to the selfless service. Therefore be a selfless worker. Those who work only to enjoy the fruits of their labor are verily unhappy, because one has no control over the results. Strive for selfless service. Karma-yogis are freed from the bondage of rebirth due to renouncing the selfish attachment to the fruits of all work, and attain blissful divine state of salvation or Nirvana." Similar message by Kant only more element of rationality.
His works and Gita are both invaluable asset to humanity; perhaps only that Gita is better suited for the spiritual, and CPR is more suited for the rational. (Correct me if I'm wrong- I've never actually read Gita)
+MaeLSTRoM1997 quite so. But don't mistake Gita to be void of rationality. If one devotes time, one will find it's full of rational talks... Arjun, full of dilemmas, has all questions which today's Comp Sci grad would like to ask Krishna(if faced under similar situation). Krishna on the other hand tries best to answer it...
actully in geeta there is whole focus on rational and gyan... there is something lacking in kant ... he is mere focusing on rationale but how do we generate this rationale.. the answer given is in geeta.... by knowledge
It is not about selflessness, it is about doing the right thing. What is that? Indian philosophy? For example, what is the rightousness in doing selfless works that will empower a bunch of imoral, ignorant and violent gungsters in South East Asia? That is more akin to being selflessly stupid and harmful, therefore, not the right thing to do! You definitely will not achieve nirvana or scape reincarnation by doing that selfless work, you are more likely to keep reincarnation in hell for the global harm you caused. There are many other examples where doing selfless works may be the wrong thing to do.
There is no moral merit in suffering, or in seeing no results for your work, or in being detached. The merit is in doing what is right regardless of your remuneration, desires and inclinations. What is right may make you happy and welthy or may cause you to suffer and bare no fruits, but that is secondary, therefore irrelevant, on the decision to do what is right.
Kant determines morality as doing the right thing, out of the moral duty. one has a duty to ones own self to act out of the best interest for the right thing by reasoning how one should act towards ones own self & for thoses around them... one should Not act out of desires & needs, because one could be blindly doing something for the interest of ones own self, instead of what is morally right..
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
I don't find strange that Spiderman is in the audience, what I find strange is that he is the only justice enforcer who is improving his capacities for his job... Society would benefit much more if people like Batman, Catwoman, Ironman, etc, and specially the Hulk, were attending these lectures.
nice, the thinnest humor of my week
CzechRiot But catwoman is anti-hero
True i think spiderman is spending the time to improve himself, which is beautiful.
the hulk already has 7 PhDs. i think he wants to stop incurring student debt.
Example would be the learning of doing crime by Batman as part of understanding what it takes to defeat criminals later. The dark knight and returns presents a few moral questions.
00:25 - Part 1: Mind Your motive
Arguments of Immanuel Kant - Opposing Utilitarianism with the statement that each individual humans have certain dignity that commands our respect. The reason that an individual is sacred doesn't stem from an idea that we own ourselves but instead from an idea that we are all rational beings i.e we are beings capable of reason.
Also admits that utilitarians were half right. But he denies Bentham's claim that pain and pleasure are our sovereign masters.
05:57 - Kant's questioning of pleasure and pain - - that acting to maximize utility is not freedom, that is acting as a slave to these appetites and People do not get to choose these appetites & impulses.
07:37 - Kant's Concept of Freedom : to act freely is to act autonomously and to act autonomously is to act according to law that I give myself and not to the laws of nature or laws of cause & effect.
10:02 - People as means vs People as end in themselves.
13:15 - What gives act its moral worth ?
what makes action morally worthy consists not in consequences or in the results that flow from it but it has to do with the motive for which act is done.
"Motal worth of an action depeds on motive"
doing right thing for right reasons.
15:20 - Morality : Duty vs Inclination
15:50 - Example of Shopkeeper and Shortexchange
17:09 - case of suicide
25:42 - Spiderman taking moral lessons so that he can keep saying it in every movie and webseries and animated shows - With great power comes great responsibility.
28:22 - part 2 : The supreme principle of morality - as per kant -->
1. Motive behind Act - motive of duty - doing right thing for right reason - duty vs inclination
2. Freedom - determination of will - Autonomously vs Heteronomously - We are only free when we are acting heteronomously i.e. as per law that we give ourselves.
3. Notion of reason -->Categorical vs Hypothetical imperative
40:40 - Three versions of categorical imperative
1. The Formula of universal law
2. The Formula of humanity as end
3. The Formula of Autonomy - each subject must will maxims that could be universally self-legislated
I love the lectures with Profesor Sandel. The way he leads the alumni is a powerful form to understand, to think, instead of just sitting there. Philosophy is a subtle way that leads to a better easier way of living free. I am 76 years old and barely went to school but I have been an avid reader... and listening to Professor Sandel, I realize that, somehow, having read so many books in my life, have enriched it; and the way I live by is giving respect to others -even when others do not respond in the same way, I feel I am respecting myself, too..
Congratulations Profesor Sandel, you are grate teacher!
These Harvard lectures by Prof.Sandel needs to be watch by all humanity!!!!!!!!
I fucking love this guy! He literally makes me excited about learning, and he really makes me want to go to a good university so I can hope to encounter a lecturer like him.
HexoNerd Good private schools are full of guys like him. You can do it.
철학을 할 수 있는 능력이 있는 이상, 스스로 reflection 하므로써도 재밌게 즐길 수 있으리라 생각합니다
U r literally right about literacy 😁
@@robertwilsoniii2048 Good state schools are full of guys like this. Places like Cal Berkeley, U of Michigan, U of Wisconsin, U of Virginia are all public Ivys.
Got my BA from one of those and law at Yale. Both offered equally wonderful opportunities to learn.
Couldn’t agree more. The intriguing knowledge and depth of the content he was delivery is truly so very valuable. Can’t stop watching one episode after another, exhausting my electronic device’s battery.
spiderman is searching the categoric imperative in order to fight evil!!
Now, let's try to universalize this. If everyone could shoot spider webs....
hahahahahah!
@@MaeLSTRoM1997 🤣
"In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so."
-Immanuel Kant
It is not about guilty. It is about morals. If you violates others for some good's, you are both kind of moral and guilty. It is not contradictory.
That doesn't even hold water anymore.
Most people have no idea of the roots of Harvard and many Ivy League U’s in the USA or elsewhere.
@@xmz341 Guilt goes far beyond the court system. The feeling of guilt is within us when we realize that we have violated another's rights and freedoms.
@@sheilabright2091 The history of Harvard University begins in 1630, when the Puritans settled Boston and immediately made plans for the establishment of a college to train ministers of the gospel. Harvard was officially born in 1636 and took up John 17:3 as its first goal: “And this is life eternal, that they know Thee to be the only very God and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent” (The Geneva Bible).
Even to this day, the true goal and history of Harvard is etched in stone: “[One] of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.”
A fascinating lecture on Kant and all anyone can talk about is Spiderman...
Unfortunately I missed half the lecture because all I could see was him.
I'm 20min into the video and haven't even noticed spider man yet
Oh never mind there he is lol
Okay Boomer.
Relax you idiot this is totally normal since it is usually expected to talk about Kant in a philosophy lecture, but it is obviously not the case for Spider-Man 🤓
His words are like perfume to the ears, It's so addictive listening to him, has a perfect voice for speaking
It is amazing that the professor explains complex ideas in such a clear way!
I'm a 16 year old student and this lecture really helped me understand these subjects, thanks Mr. Sandel.
Hey it's Spiderman
Justice Lecture. Spiderman shows up
I know! hahahahah, but he showed up from nowhere...
ㅋㅋㅋ갑자기
Joins Justice League.
That was scary.
Ahahaha wonderful explanation
Professor Tywin Lanister Respect!
"That is the sensible system that Harvard could do well to consider", I pressed the like button lmao
05:30 Love the combination of philosophy and spider-man. And I love the fact that he is actually allowed to sit there in the lecture in a spider-man suit. xd To be honest, not just the fact that costumes are allowed, but the symbol of who he is and what he stands for that makes it so intriguing. Whilst professor Sandel is talking about the philosophy of Imannuel Kant :D
The reason why spidey doesn't kill
I've been following this program since No.1, ..now I am on No. 6. Very highly informative, challenging, and deeply of moral values! What a blessing for students taking this course from a talented professor in sync with distinct philosophers like Kant and the rest where inalienable humane values are founded in our Holy and Just God, our CREATOR! Let us praise and magnify our Almighty God! 👏🏻🙏❤️⭐️
I can't believe I can watch these all for free instead of paying $30,000 for a uni degree!! what a time to be alive!
Yes Granny
It is always amusing to see that professor Sandel seems to wanna smile every 5 minutes for unknown reasons, but he always holds it back.
Brilliant Ahmady on 24'00" ! The moments you fear and enjoy in any debate: gasping for air and a clear mind. A knock down for the count of eight!
What makes this lecture so special than the previous five ones, is the quality if exchange between the Lecturer and the students themselves, they were able to push him further in thinking, and were able as well to produce ideas equivalent to other philosophers ones (Stuart Mill for example) ..
I do find and extreme Joy and Pleasure following this course.
Thank you Harvard for providing such beautiful online content...
Cheers from Morocco
I actually sat in this course 25 years ago. It took me two decades to really fully understand it and inculcate into my life. I see the same blank Looks of incomprehension on those students as I remember in my fellow classmates back then. I also checked all at the same posturing and tangential questions students make to salve their own ego. It makes me really marvel at professor Sandel’s skill to pivot that nonsense back into the lesson. What a massive lesson and how time doesn’t change people, but time changes you. Oh wait, now I sound like Bowie. ;)
There are so many philosophers you are bound to fall into one if not more by pure accident
I love the way this professor runs his class and the way both he and the students interact. I wish it was like this today! Cordial discourse, agreement, and disagreement.
The questions from Ahmady are very brilliant.
The aesthetic value of all the videos of Justice is too high. Cute faces, beauty with brains, awesome dialectic teaching, multicultural environment, I just love it and have some favourite people whose face or arguments I don't mind watching n number of times. Finally Micheal Sandels u rock.
He's such a charmer ... and that confidence says he knows what he's talking about.
Great lecture series ❤🧐❤
I am watching it in 2020 and it is absolute wealth, a true blessing, acquisition of knowledge from the brainy beings and yet to be smartest creature.
This is pure gold! I wonder if these kids realize how fortunate they are to sit there at Harvard.
Loved the questions by Ahmady! Makes me want to go to Harvard (or such) to study along with such bright students.
Salome: There are similarly bright students at the major state schools. Great classes like this. Great opportunities to expand your mind. I went to great state school - U of Wis - as undergrad and Yale law after that. For those who are motivated, both schools offer wonderful atmospheres, faculty and and opportunity to learn. Drop by your local state u. and sit in on a lecture. It will change your life and maybe this world.
Thats true, but i also agree that there are bright , curious students everywhere, there is just not enought seriousness that there is in harvard
TBH half the questions I've heard in this series seem less well constructed or less predicated on good understanding than I heard in my public high school. I understand these students must be bright but I'm not sure this is the best demonstration--although the lecturer is superb!
@@TeamPill well put
@@TeamPill I mean speaking in front of an entire lecture hall will make you nervous, discouraging a lot of good arguments from being spoken
For those that are struggling with these ideas I will give some assistance but do not offer a full exposition. Kant's moral theory came after his Critique of Pure Reason, and it really does help to understand that book first before grappling with his ethics. In a nutshell, what Kant called our apriori reasoning, pure reason, is what organizes all our sensations into the continuum of consciousness. But the sensations, all of them, pass through filters over which we have no control, and those filters determine what is sweet from sour, red from blue, in fact sweet, sour red and blue etc are the output of the filter, the input itself does not have those qualities, or at least we have no way of knowing if they do. Reason is what takes the output of the filters and creates the continuum of consciousness. So then we have no choice but to be the slave of reason, and reason is largely or totally unable to make judgements upon itself. Reason is why we say that two sides of a triangle will always add up to a length greater than the third side. We don't have to go out and measure every triangle to be sure, just in case we might find one where the rule does not hold. So we can be at least that sure about reason being more or less foolproof, yet still we can't examine reason by any other measure.
In his book about morality Kant attempts to derive ethics or morality from reason. That's not easy to do. But after reading and having at least a fairly good understanding of Critique of Pure Reason then at least it becomes clear that reason must or at least could be the ground for ethics/morality, because it is the only means we have to make a judgement about anything.
Rationality is possible because of reason. In rationality we weigh options, putting the positive in the numerator and the negative in the denominator, aiming for a result that is greater than 1. If only one, then the deal is breakeven. If less than one, we lose. But whatever we weigh is understood and assigned value only after reason puts the output of the filter into an organized whole.
One might want to argue that the filter is very randomly assembled and then reason, whatever it is, is just acting on a random jumble and deserves no special credit. Kant's claim that it does deserve special credit is the way it does work well in allowing us to interact with the world, for instance geometry and math, which are reason-based, not dependent on empirical facts, are both very valuable with regards interacting with the world. And it is reason, organizing sensation, that informs one that it is best to open the door before trying to pass through the doorway. Reason is what creates one's mental picture of space and time.
So then Kant's attempt at grounding ethics/morality on reason is based on it's well proven usefullness in every other realm of consciousness.
Reason is what determines what is and what is not beautiful. Individual tastes may vary, but still if one's favorite architecture style is say, Mediteranean Villa, that which determines the best in that style is also what determines the best in say, the style of the Taj Mahal. One can easily say the Taj is beautiful and still prefer another type of beauty, but no one really prefers ugly. So even aesthetics is at the end of the day based in Reason.
So then it is up to the reader to determine if Kant makes his case in his ethical/moral argument, because that is a stretch to be sure. One can image a drug kingpin commissioning a very beautiful home in which to live, and may choose very beautiful women as his concubines, and so on, and yet most would agree his chosen livelihood is immoral. Now, the clue to that immorality being immoral, bad, is that the drug kingpin is imposing his will on others, by addicting the end customer, and likely building his empire through extortion, threats of bodily harm and murder, and of course we know that harm and murder usually lay along the path to his power and wealth.
Ok, I'll have to stop here as this is already too lengthy.
Read you . Could you explain the maxim behind categorical imperatives , please ?
Deepshikha Rathore Kant's Maxim : Make only those laws for yourself, assuming you will obey them, that you would also want all others to make for themselves and obey also.
Kant was looking for a law or rule or maxim that had the same certainty as "the length of two sides of a triangle, when added together, will always be greater than the length of the third side".
With just a rudimentary introduction to geometry no one will deny the triangle rule. If one did, others would think one an imbecile or dishonest, and then normal, intelligent and honest people would avoid that person. Same with Kant's famous maxim.
The triangle rule is understood apriori - it is true even if no one had ever seen a triangle in the real world. From Critique of Pure Reason, it is only apriori claims that are true and undeniable. These claims of course are put into words in order to communicate them, and they actually can be put into words.
Apriori claims can be put into words, so we might assume that any matter dictated by reason can be put into words. It is also the nature of apriori claims that they not rely on any particular circumstances and that they extend to infinity both up and down, or we can say are all-encompassing of that over which they lay claim.
Kant's famous Maxim meets the criteria for words or a claim that are based on reason. The Maxim can be put into words, it extends infinitely over all humans, from the smallest particle, one person, to all of humanity, and it is impossible to deny (if one is being honest).
Also, note that an apriori claim can be used to deduce if another claim (synthetic) is true. So Kant's Maxim can be used as a yardstick or scale to judge any other claim which may seem at first a bit hard to resolve as true or moral or not.
Example: Many think the Hindu caste system is just plain morally wrong. The Hindu apologists say that the original claim was merely that a son should take up the work of his father. Now we test that with Kant's Maxim: rule for one must the same as rule for all - infinity in both directions. At first it may seem that "a son should take up the work of his father" is a rule for one and all. However it is not a rule for one and all because it does not include woman or orphans, and "work" is added in without considering that all work is not equal...the infinite spectrum of work is ignored (worst kind of work to best kind of work). So "all sons should take up the work of their father" is very impure by the standard of Kant's Maxim.
A proper Kant-Maxim-based corrollary about work would be "all persons shall be free to pursue any work they wish". Of course some will fail at their chosen endeavor, but all that matters is that they be free to try. One that is free to try, and tries and fails will be disappointed, but that is a far different and less negative feeling than that of being prevented from trying.
rh001YT Thank you .
First of all apologize for my english because is not very good.
Second, thank you very much for your explanation.
An finally, after all I think that the problem is that reason is not a scientific method, "reason" changes and if we act acconding a law we did ourselves everyone would have his own particular point of view, maybe without sense for the others.
I think there´s also a problem about the meaning of "reason", that makes that "something" had to be respected.
I mean, one mad person or a fetus of 7th mounths are respectables? because according to the common meaning of "reason" maybe not.
I reach to understand more of less Kant but I find shadows and in fact if there isn´t exist one "reason", nearly every act can be defended.
Thanks a lot again and goodnight.
vamosacharlar unrato Hi! If you have not read "Critique of Pure Reason" and understood what Kant was saying in that book, then his moral argument will not make much sense.
In CPR, Kant was talking about Pure Reason, not someone's "reasons" for doing this or that.
I'm now on my third read of CPR, but actually this time I am listening to an audio book of CPR on RUclips.
Kant makes several points in CPR, one of which is this: it is Reason that forms one's picture of the world. What enables one to see a glass on the table, reach for it, bring it to the lips, etc is Reason. All mammals (and likely other animals) have this level of Reasoning to various degrees...beavers actually understand how to build their dams, into which they burrow for security and warmth and they likely do know they are creating a pool of water to catch fish.
Very basic, Pure Reason allows for shape recognition and imaging the world in 3D.
What sets reasoning mammals apart, humans having the best Reasoning, is the extent to which they can categorize and compile all the various sensations, fitting them into one world picture. This is called synthesis. So for instance you hear a chattering sound, your ears and eyes try to find the source of the sound and are directed to a squirrel. Now, you don't see sound waves coming from the squirrel but you see it's mouth moving when you hear the chattering sound. Without any real empirical proof you associate the sound with the squirrel - that is a synthesized thought.
It is Reasoning that allows for scientific method. How can we be more certain the chattering sound is coming from the squirrel - few would want more certainty that that given by eyes and ears but lets just say some want to be sure tree is not chattering. Reasoning has the tools of deduction, induction and reduction. These tools make possible the maths.
Deduction: I will remove either the tree or the squirrel. It is easier to remove the squirrel so I try that first by scaring it off. The chattering goes away.
Induction: I have a squirrel in a large cage with a tree in the cage, but I hear no chattering. So I poke the tree gently with a stick and hear nothing. Same poke to the squirrel and I hear chattering, or scolding.
Reduction: I isolate the squirrel in a cage, with nothing else in the cage and I wait. Eventually I hear chattering.
Any thought that you CAN have is based in Reasoning.
Rationality is comparison...Reasoning allows us to see the difference on which we are comparing.
On to Kant's moral argument: from CPR we understand that all humans think from Reasoning (not considering the mentally retarded, imbeciles, etc). So we know we all think alike and this is no longer an assumption based on observing human behavior.
Of course Kant was aware that there are cultural differences among peoples and that people have passions. It is his contention that all of that can be seen to be superficial, and can be stripped away by resorting to his Universal Maxim. If Kant is right, then anyone who learns of his Universal Maxim just can't deny it, anymore than they can deny a triangle has three sides.
A Westerner can visit India, and let's say has friends there so one is also in the homes of Indians. And immediately one sees they have many customs different from Westerners. For instance there are customs related to respect for elders. Usually, without asking the purpose of such a custom, a gesture perhaps, is obvious. Respect comes from Reasoning, like it or not, and really, who doesn't like it?
Now consider a thief - he or she steals, yet does not want other to steal from him/her. Mere counselling about the Universal Maxim may not cure the thief, but then again it might, perhaps even at a later time. So it is not as if Reasoning compels respect and we are unable to do otherwise. Though the ability to do maths is built into us still we require instruction to get beyond counting on the fingers. So parents often try to "Reason" with their children along the lines of the Universal Maxim, and they probably did that even before Kant was born. Parent's say "you can't steal another child's toy, because what if all children did that...then your toys would be stolen!" Immediately or later a child will say to him/herself, "yes, I guess that's right". Now you might say that such an admonishment to a child is an obvious thing to say. Which it is. But is is only obvious due to Reasoning, and the child can only come to see the rightness of it by being able to Reason.
Finally it is worth pointing out the Kant's certainty about the Universal Maxim being tied to Reasoning untied moralities from religion in that it should work just as well without religion. But then in the final final analysis Kant thought there was some connection between Reasoning and a perfect creator god of some kind, which put reasoning in humans, and to a lesser extent other animals. Reasoning has the odd feature of placing everything thought about on a spectrum from which we get the concept of infinity in all directions. So humans can think about at least trying to attain perfection, but we know we can't achieve perfect perfection, unless perhaps we had an infinity to do so. Kant may or may not have been trying to make the case for God (of some kind of perfect type). Many have interpreted Kant as establishing a secular basis for Morality, others saw in his work an attempt to validate god, among them Friedrich Neitzsche and Arthur Shopenhaer, both of whom rejected the idea of god(s).
One of the interesting features of Reasoning is that is not deconstructable. Evolutionary explanations almost always cite rationality as a basis of thinking, and thus better survival, etc. However such conjectures do not consider how rationality is possible in the first place.
Rational beings having capacity to reason and value the dignity of humanity. Thank you.
This is brilliant stuff. So pleased it's available on RUclips. This particular lecture on Kant is my favourite one yet.
But seriously - why *is* Spider-Man there? Although, he is one of the more archetypal philosophical superheroes - with great power comes great responsibility and all that.
Saw the spider-man and immediately checked comments XD
same here
That's the right thing to do....
😂Me tooo!! I pressed pause to check🤣
Hahhaa
Same here
Ahmady is very smart! Glad he asked that 2 questions
Please can someone tell me why the hell there's a spider-man in the audience?
+Fadhila Agustina So Spider man cannot study in Harvard? You can why hot him huh?
aokaddaoc I didn't say he can't study in Harvard, I was just curious about him wearing spider-man costume to this kind of event hahaha
I'm baffled, too, and now that I've seen him, I can't concentrate on anything else Sandel is saying! lol.
It's Halloween.
Hes learning about Justice
I havent watched all these yet so far there have been points that have caused me to think points that i have agreed with and points i have disagreed with. But i am grateful to be able to watch all these lectures for free on youtube. So thank you to all those who have contributed to making learning easier and more accessible.
IT HAS BECOME PLAIN TO SEE .
I AM THANKFUL FOR MICHEAL.
HARVARD SHOULD BE VERY THANKFULTO HAVE AN INSTRUCTER LIKE HIM WHERE IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO TEACH MORALS TO SUCH BRILLIANT YOUNG MINDS , WHO SHAPE THE FUTURE ......
1, This is a great lecturer. He knows exactly what to say. Every one of his words sits right where it should be. Considering the finite time in the lecture, his explanation of kantian ethics is the best I've seen. He perfectly avoids the confusing parts of kantian ethics and delivers its essence in a well structured way.
2, The answer from the student Judith is definitely wrong. The lecturer doesn't explicitly point out her mistake but gives her encouragement instead.
In my view professor Michael Sandal is an example of absolute perfection.He impressed me very much.Great!😂🎉🎉
There were a lot of intelligent questions from the students from this one
I was really impressed at the complexity and ease given the time constrains of their questions. This is Harvard though so.
I agree, the problem raised by his question was so subtle I didn't even understand why that was a problem first; I had to listen to his question a couple times before it eventually struck my dull mind.
Good morning;
The best in my opinion is that hearing Sandel it seems to be easy to understand the filosophy, moral and society.
;-)
Kind regards
Strong link Between our Action and interest.The Greatest of all is to Act Freely without any interest ...??????
"It's chaos. Be kind" 4 words to live by.
My teacher is a bad ass too and shared this video with us in our ethics class! I'm so obsessed. These concepts are completely new to me and i am excited to learn! Thank you for sharing this video!
Thank you Professor Sandel for posting this. It made this principle easier for me to understand.
and thank you Harvard.
I am really enjoying being forced to think but I can't help but think how much more sense all this makes if you have a Supreme Being who is the law giver and ground for most of the reason behind doing the right thing for the right reason.
This lecturer is amazing. Thank you so much!
This is SO inspiring...In fact it should be broadcasted so there's no wars or conflicts.
It's used to remove attention from the student and to return the focus to Sandel. It's a smart move, specially with a big audience, since it allows you to return to the main arguments and not to make this class 2 hours longer.
Questions were intriguing and noteworthy. Only a good professor is an action in futile if not backed by introspective and inquisitive minds of the students. This class is a great example of the ideal amalgamation of the two.
Love it! Philosophy is so amazing as can be applied to our decision making process aka cognitive neuroscience. Beautiful!
Universal Law of Humanity
Great questions raised by Amati.
I would've thought Spiderman would've been knowledgeable about the subject and in no need of the course....but since he is there, it's comforting to see that he obviously cares enough to give himself the best opportunity to understand it fully, and is therefore truly autonomous.
The german constitution puts the human dignity first and therefore over everything. That's quite remarkable, especially in view of this very lecture.
They have something to make up for.
What is interesting in the example used here is the principle philosophy of criminal law. Which you may or may not study depending on whether you go on to study criminal law. The principles are "Actus Reus" and "Mens Rea." In American, British law etc... both "Actus Reus" and "Mens Rea" are required justify crimina liability.
"Actus Reus" refers to the act or omission that comprise the physical elements of a crime as required by statute. Actus reus includes only a voluntary affirmative act, or an omission (failure to act), causing a criminally proscribed result.
The "Actus Reus" elements of a crime can be categorised into three types:
conduct;
consequences; and
circumstances.
"Mens Rea" refers to criminal intent. The literal translation from Latin is "guilty mind." The plural of mens rea is mentes reae. A mens rea refers to the state of mind statutorily required in order to convict a particular defendant of a particular crime. Establishing the mens rea of an offender is usually necessary to prove guilt in a criminal trial. The prosecution typically must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the offense with a culpable state of mind. What are the culpable states of mind.
The Culpabe states of mind have four hierarchical categories:
acting purposely - the defendant had an underlying conscious object to act
acting knowingly - the defendant is practically certain that the conduct will cause a particular result
acting recklessly - The defendant consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustified risk
acting negligently - The defendant was not aware of the risk, but should have been aware of the risk
I didn't know that spiderman went to harvard. lmao
I am taking a course at the U of S in Saskatchewan, Justice and Injustice in Politics and Law. Our reader is Sandel's Justice, What's the right thing to do? Glad I stumbled across these popular lectures. Thank you to all involved in making this possible.
I would have felt privileged to have professors of this caliber when I went to Uni.
what gives your action is your instant reaction to the action! period!
When one is confronted by a situation that requires one to make a moral decision - be a Kant.
Brilliant, I needed a lought :)
And I agree.
Emmanuel Kant is talking to all of us ,the voters and Policians.We have a duty to understand and Respect the universal Law of Humanity
Qui diable a besoin de valeur morale, de toute façon? Je ne vais pas arrêter d'aider les vieilles dames à travers la route, ou que ce soit, juste parce que le fait qu'il est dans mon caractère de le faire fait Kant pense qu'il est moralement sans valeur. Visser lui!
***** I Kant thank him enough.
***** How? You're lying half on top of me.
R Grantaire How do you tell people to get a room when they're already in a room TALKING TO EACH OTHER VIA RUclips COMMENTS.
***** I'm already regretting it.
A Courfeyrac You're just jealous that you're not the Supreme Gay anymore.
This is really terrific. It is consistent with the teachings of the enlightened Buddha. And even though a little more complex, gives a very good definition of morality. A big thumbs up!!!
I am pleased to be so informed by this Harvard course. Thank you.
Because 'love is the fulfilling of the law', acting through love, agape, through kindness, through fairness and with consideration is always the right thing to do and is the true motivator of every single being. To choose otherwise is the sad result of duality and can only be excused by reason. Reason is not the law of life. Being is the law of life.
I love the professor's joke at 1:18!🤣
The more I watch the more of a fan I become of him. Damn he is good.
I don't know that autonomy exists at all. I was given a genetic code at birth which ended up controling my hormone levels throughout my life, and the developpement pattern to the different lobes of my brain. I grew up in a household I didn't chose, was taught values and was exposed to ideas that were forced upon me. The experiences I lived, be they coincidental or providential, were not autonomous. I'm subject to some permanent randomness in the brownian motion of the neurotransmiters in the space of my synapses. My neurons have no "free will", not anymore than the atoms that constitute them. I'm a computing machine which works with memories, sensory information and hormone levels as input, emotions and reasoning as algorithms, and choice... as an _output_.
Nature. Nurture. Randomness.
But autonomy?
Autonomy is a delusion, and someone who would base their ethics on autonomy is delusional.
+GregTom2 But this all reminds of this quote from skyrim: "What is better, to be born good - or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"
But really this over-reliance on motive just encourages rationalisation, which is very frequent and subconcious. There is no trace of our reasoning left once the choice has been made, which lets us completelly free to _decide_ why we did something. "Oh I prescribed drug A instead of drug B because the counterindication the patient has to drug A is only theorical, while there is a real difference of cost. Not because I overlooked the patient's condition of congenital heart disease". We lie to protect ourself, and since we forgot the truth, the rationalisation becomes the reason why we acted. Rationalisation is an inbuilt mechanism to prevent anxiety and to maintain self-esteem, behavioral psychology tells us.
But is it "good" to encourage delusion about our motives and to lie to ourselves, or is it better to be lucid and truthful?
Your argument does contain a good point- although not exactly the same, there's always been arguments and theories favoring cosmos, the idea that the universe and everything in it are dictated by certain rules, and that what we consider to be freedom or coincidence, or, indeed, ANYTHING that happens, was to happen inevitably because of the governing rules of the universe. Especially nowadays when mathematics and physics are unveiling the patterns of the world that we live in, this sort of argument is gaining strength; that if there was such entity that was aware of all the rules of the universe and the initial arrangement of the cosmos, then he/she/it should be able to predict everything, every phenomenon, every human behavior and feeling and thoughts, at any point in time. If you're interested, try digging into determinism.
However, in this case, you should recognize that his idea of autonomy does not extend all the way down to the natural laws, the inevitable. As long as the rules based on which you behave is your own, Kant sees that it is sufficient to be considered autonomy. Also, keep in mind that his argument was formed and presented in an era well before neuroscience, or even psychology, was even a thing. Also, at least in philosophical arguments, claiming that certain idea is "delusional" based on scientific facts is not really good of an argument. Scientific method is only one of the many ways with which you can gather knowledge, and it's also an imperfect one at that (it's an inductive method, and therefore is subjected to possibility of error, regardless of however small). For one, how can you be assured that all of "science" is skewed by some existence that lies beyond our perception (analogous to Descartes' evil demon problem)?
+ Just to point out a fallacy that you committed; you suggested that "your neurons have no free will, not any more than the atoms that constitute them," presumably to make a point that you as a "conscious" agent does not exist. If that's the case, you're committing a fallacy of composition because you're suggesting that there is lack of property A (consciousness) on the parts (individual neurons), and therefore the collection of the parts, the whole itself (you) also lack the property. That's like suggesting "each part of the phone cannot send a message, and therefore the phone itself is incapable of sending a message" or that "each atom constituting a chair is incapable of upholding my bodyweight, and therefore the chair itself is incapable of upholding my bodyweight." Certain properties are transitive between the parts and the whole, while some properties only emerge as a collection of parts, and some other emerge only as parts (e.g. protons are small, but a tree made out of them are not so small).
It seems that you missed the point of his idea. It's not just having a motive that matters, it has to be a motive that is independent of anything personal or particular about you. Independent of your circumstances, your inclinations, your desires, and all. Only a maxim that is fully detached from specific circumstances and can be generalized as a universal principle is a motive worth pursuing. Therefore, rationalization as a mere tool to make one's act appear more acceptable or palatable is severely insufficient for Kant.
Hi! One really does have to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason first before one can make sense of his moral imperative and what he mean's by autonomy. And as it turns out, a mechanistic world view is not necessarily at odds with the moral imperative. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes the point that reasoning is what makes possible our mechanistic world view, in fact everything that we call world view. Kant's arguement, from CPR to his later moral imperative is:
1) What we know about the world and ourselves we only know through reasoning
2) reasoning does enable humans to interact with the physical world and to gain advantages from that interaction, so it's not a bad thing.
3) reasoning has certain interesting features in that pure reasoning can't be denied...for instance, one can't deny that two sides of a triangle will have total length greater than the third side.
4) It is because of the gravitas of the undeniable feature of reasoning that sought to ground morality on reasoning, as he could not think (nor can anyone else) of any other stable, undeniable part of human thought.
5) other people are part of the physical world we inhabit. As reasoning does aid us in dealing with the part of the world that does not include people, then it may also aid us in dealing with people.
6) The categorical imperative is meant to be like the example of the triangle - it is (he thought and most would agree) undeniable.
7) The "autonomy" not well explained by this lecturer, is meant to be the same as the autonomy of the geometric rules or laws, like that of the triangle.
8) It is said that there is no pure triangle in nature. But we certainly can think it, and then use that apriori thought to find ways to change the physical world for the better.
9) Our physical world is that of humans and everything else. So it certainly could be the case that reasoning will work for both categories.
10) Autonomy is then living according to the categorical imperative, assuming it will improve life in general, just as girders arranged in triangles can make for a strong bridge. The engineer who follows the principals, rules, etc of good bridge building is acting autonomously. If he substitutes cheap rivets to make some money on the side, then he is not acting autonomously.
Most of what you just said was before Kant's time, and that is why you have to look at Kant's works with a certain color of glasses. In Kant's time it was hip and trendy to make a living by theorizing about non provable concepts.
It's the coolest teacher, Noone ever talked about justice with Simpsons and Spiderman
17:35 "for someone who doesnt take his or her life, is to think.. to imagine someone who is miserable" *camera shows closeup of girl in audience that looks concerned*
lol
Can't unsee that now xD
When times got Hard in a family of Sami ,inuites far up North. The elderly did chose to do "The Long Walk" -for the survival of the younger in the family. -just saing its a fact.
All these people are so lucky. They are the classmates of spiderman.
17:12 Just noticed Spidey taking notes. Well done, well done...
i just Kant stop watching these videos
I love this lecturer. I would wish to be in his lecture hall always. Great professor.
I wonder if anybody who was in the audience is watching these episodes now! That would be very interesting! Especially if the person was videotaped back then while listening or speaking. Wouldn’t that be amazing?😇
kant's teachings much needed this days.
There is spiderman in the audience?!
Michael answered Ahmady's two questions in exactly same way I figured out. Amazing insight.
So good lectures even Spiderman is attending them.
Kants critique of pure reason is rooted in realism.
To all Welcome to the Internet fans, here ya go 25:42
Watching his lectures and learning from him makes me kinda regret dropping out because the way he teaches actually makes me want to learn. Regretting the choices I've made when I had so many good opportunities that I threw away because I wanted to have fun in the moment... oh well..
Kant has the ability to transcend to the level of transcendental reality Umesh Prasad Singh Calcutta University literary expert and teaching IELTS at Meridean Overseas in Jaipur Rajasthan India.
I got Dory in my head at this point singing just keep watching, just keep watching
This is like the 5th time rewatching this. Such a refreshing series.
Why do you watch these?
Peter Parker Go home you drunk.
He is a good student of harvard
48'20" Humanity as an end in itself. Sandel gets to the point. Good and clear explanation of Kant's KI.
I love how people in Harvard actually ask meaningful questions and don't just try to sound smart. thank you Harvard for producing these people
Make a pill that stops late night sleep side effects like dark circles in eyes, mental health problems, stroke, low eyesight, period problem, heart disease, headache etc for whole life after taking it but notice that this pill has no negative side effects and make a rule all over the world that this pill is free for everyone.
have you guys noticed how the claps at the end are just sound effects?
I didn't... I did notice some people clapping at the end of some of the vids, but it is pretty loud
Absolutely agree…humanity cannot alone be an ending…because loneliness doesn’t exist in reality…❤❤❤
25:20 No shit, there is actually a guy attending the class in a spider-man costume
Du kan gjøre hva som helst, så lenge du er grei og snill! The Kardomme law!
You can do everything, as long you are nice and kind. Kardomme loven!
It would be so great if there was a way to track some of these individuals now and see what they did in next 10 years of their lives.
I think the issue here is the lack of a stated difference between people, desires, and actions. As a consequentialist, an ACTION is good if it satisfies my set of good consequences, a DESIRE is good if it will when added to a person, make them want to do more total good, (so the want for a successful business isn't good as that will make you do as many good things as bad ones,) and a PERSON is good if they have those morally good desires. So, I suppose I take my idea of a "good person" from Aristotle, but my idea of a "good action" from consequentialism.
Great professor
The more I listen the more I tend to equate utilitarianism with a positive explanation (how things actually are) for why people behave the way they do (while also being a justification for their action), while Kantianism with a normative explanation (the way something should be). Obviously, as stated before, utilitarians would argue that utilitarianism is normative because they believe people should act to benefit the greatest number the greatest amount.
Anyone else notice the kid in the audience dressed as spiderman?
Respect the dignity of person
Reminds me of an Excerpt from Gita :
"Work done with selfish motives is inferior by far to the selfless service. Therefore be a selfless worker. Those who work only to enjoy the fruits of their labor are verily unhappy, because one has no control over the results.
Strive for selfless service. Karma-yogis are freed from the bondage of rebirth due to renouncing the selfish attachment to the fruits of all work, and attain blissful divine state of salvation or Nirvana."
Similar message by Kant only more element of rationality.
His works and Gita are both invaluable asset to humanity; perhaps only that Gita is better suited for the spiritual, and CPR is more suited for the rational. (Correct me if I'm wrong- I've never actually read Gita)
+MaeLSTRoM1997 quite so. But don't mistake Gita to be void of rationality. If one devotes time, one will find it's full of rational talks... Arjun, full of dilemmas, has all questions which today's Comp Sci grad would like to ask Krishna(if faced under similar situation). Krishna on the other hand tries best to answer it...
actully in geeta there is whole focus on rational and gyan... there is something lacking in kant ... he is mere focusing on rationale but how do we generate this rationale.. the answer given is in geeta.... by knowledge
It is not about selflessness, it is about doing the right thing. What is that? Indian philosophy? For example, what is the rightousness in doing selfless works that will empower a bunch of imoral, ignorant and violent gungsters in South East Asia? That is more akin to being selflessly stupid and harmful, therefore, not the right thing to do! You definitely will not achieve nirvana or scape reincarnation by doing that selfless work, you are more likely to keep reincarnation in hell for the global harm you caused. There are many other examples where doing selfless works may be the wrong thing to do.
There is no moral merit in suffering, or in seeing no results for your work, or in being detached. The merit is in doing what is right regardless of your remuneration, desires and inclinations. What is right may make you happy and welthy or may cause you to suffer and bare no fruits, but that is secondary, therefore irrelevant, on the decision to do what is right.
Kant determines morality as doing the right thing, out of the moral duty. one has a duty to ones own self to act out of the best interest for the right thing by reasoning how one should act towards ones own self & for thoses around them... one should Not act out of desires & needs, because one could be blindly doing something for the interest of ones own self, instead of what is morally right..
A simple and good synthesis.