@@madsquishypanda2916 TJump does seem to me to have very low sales-man or academic/P.C.-debater quality. Regardless, all morality boils down to attempting to achieve desired goals which depends on knowing the cause-and-effect relationships that we discover through science. This is true of BOTH utilitarianism and deontology (since you have to "discover" what deontological principles are good in the first place, you kind of have to utilitarianly test them first). Otherwise, everyone is just relying on subjective feelings alone.
@@AsixA6 Morality is objectively based in well-being, bodily autonomy, and informed consent. We then build a set of ethics in respect to these goals. You can reject these fundamentals, as flat-earthers reject the fundamentals of science, but we will mock and exclude you from moral discussions, as scientists mock and exclude flat-earthers. Flat-earthers still benefit greatly from scientific advancement. Amoral/immoral people will still benefit from moral progress.
Humans are really good at dehumanizing people which causes me to be very concerned by a framework that only gives moral consideration to that which is considered human.
Yet science basically stops them from dehumanizing people by sheer definition. So, fear it or not, they can't dehumanize without appealing to various unpopular anti-sciences or unpopular pseudo-sciences. In that later case, science just has to out-science them like it always does. Sure, it requires a lot of sustained effort; but hey, so does everything else worth keeping.
I guess I’d argue that what’s morally right is also beneficial in all aspects of life. In the same way what’s beneficial to human flourishing in other facets of life such as health also connects to morality. My point being that all these areas are interconnected and is just one part of observing the whole.
I think part of AI alignment should be making sure that a hyper intelligent AGI considers itself human. I think the definition of "human" will definitely expand in an optimistic future so that regular people, modified people/cyborgs, uplifted creatures, clones, and advanced artificial minds all count as human, or at least partially human, so that we all consider each other as part of the same thing.
And what stops the humans to label the other humans any other way to justify their cruelty towards other? Dehumanization is as I see it a symptom rather than a cause of something
🤮Steven "Destiny" [Lastname-pending] is such a narcissistic personality-cult diva (like every live-streamer, I suppose) that it's rather hard to believe he actually had some calm good takes and nuanced criticisms, but he did, so good for him (other than his non-science "psych-critical" semi-psychopathological stuff about our delicious and nutritious animals not sensing "real" qualia of pain; I hope he just meant that humans are the only animals capable of adding suffering to pain which can make the pain worse). I'm glad Alex "CosmicSkeptic" O'Conner has been able to improve his health by adding some meat-product into his diet like obligate-carnivore cats and other obligate-omnivores do. Too bad his body was not able to tolerate beans/meat-replacements like most choice-vegans can. It must have been psychologically hurtful to find out he happens to be one of those minority of humans that are obligate-omnivores rather than just the majority of people which are facultative-omnivores.
I'm definitely with Destiny here. I don't think "the earth is flat" and "murder isn't wrong" are on the same level. Even if you believed that actually the world is a simulation or whatever, you could still say that "in this simulation, the earth is round". I don't think statements like 2+2=4 are really affected by whether reality is truly real. Even if this is a "pseudo-reality", we can still find rules that this "pseudo-reality" follows. Morality is complex. Yes, I think most people would agree that murder is wrong. But there is nuance to this statement. I don't think people murder because they think that murder isn't wrong. They simply find a justification for murder. I think most people would be fine with murdering Hitler for example. So, is murder really wrong? I would say it depends. Generally yes, but there are exceptions. "Justified murder" does exist. But also, not everyone agrees with that justification. Like, someone might say that killing Hitler wouldn't be justified because we could also arrest him. Is one person more "objectively correct" in a complex situation like that? Also, when it comes to questions like gay marriage, I don't think you can really prove that it's "morally right" by simply citing statistics. I personally think gay marriage would be right even if people in gay marriage weren't as happy as people in straight marriage. But someone else might say that there is something about traditional marriage that's sacred, and changing the definition of marriage is a slippery slope. Changing this tradition creates uncertainty and the feeling of "instability". We no longer know who's a man and who's a woman, and what it even means to be a man/woman. I don't think citing statistics about the happiness of gay people would change the mind of someone who thinks like that, because their opposition to gay marriage was never about the happiness of individual people. They don't think gay marriage is wrong because it creates unhappiness. They think gay marriage is wrong because it's an attack on tradition and creates instability. All in all, I don't think morality is universal. Yes, there are certain basic things that basically everyone agrees with. But not everyone values the same things to the same degree. To some people, safety is a lot more important than individual freedom for example. To some people, tradition is really important. Why should we only value "well-being"? Also, there's the question about individualism vs collectivism - should we value the well-being of the individual or the well-being of the community as a whole? Maybe someone following their individual dreams actually doesn't lead to the greatest amount of well-being? Maybe we should not let people choose to follow their dreams, and instead we should tell them what's best for them?
"I don't think 'the earth is flat' and 'murder isn't wrong' are on the same level. Even if you believed that actually the world is a simulation or whatever, you could still say that 'in this simulation, the earth is round'." And if causing undo suffering to humans is wrong, than murder is objectively. They are on the same level. The same logic that allows me to assume that we don't live in a simulation is the same logic that allows me to assume that causing undo suffering is wrong, being that there isn't any. I just assume it. Even if causing undo suffereing isn't wrong, murder would still cause undo suffering, the same way that the earth would still be round in the percieved world even if it wasn't real. I do agree that Alex's example of statistics for proving gay marrige is right is flawed. The real reason why it is objectively right is that it doesn't cause undo suffering. If it did cause undo suffering, as it would if a god that sent people to hell for being gay existed, for example, then it wouldn't be right. Your other arguments mainly have to do with the fact that we are ignorant about many factors at play that would influence the validity of specific moral systems. For example, if you could objectively prove that collectivism would lead to more well being that individualism, than individualists would be wrong. But you cant prove that as each and every individual person and their experiences and every single decicision or discovery ever made as a result of the adoption of either system are all variables that would influence which one would actually maximize wellbeing and we simple can't account for all of them, though we can make our best guess. Your other point about traditionalism also doesn't make much sense to me. People that value tradition do so because they think it's what's best(i.e. what will maximize well-being). If they didn't think that, they wouldn't value tradition.
@@caveholeperson4274 The problem I have with your response to OP is "undue suffering" smuggles assumptions and premises. They specifically give the example of Hitler or insert your own example where illegally killing someone would by your beliefs/fact cause sufficiently less "undue suffering" to justify illegally killing someone. All that matters is that it is possible to justifiably illegally kill someone and "murder is wrong" isn't an objective truth for all murders.
@@ennuiii Who determines whether the killing has a valid justification, though? The legal definition of murder has mostly to do with intent. If you kill someone by accident, it's a manslaughter. But if you planned to kill them, it's a murder (not counting self-defence). I like this definition, because it lacks the subjective element of whether it was "justified", and it makes a clear distinction between accidentally killing someone and intentionally killing them.
The reason we don't accept moral or ethical statements as easily as we accept the statement that external reality exists is because the ethical statements require belief in the existence of external reality to begin with and then make additional assumptions on top of that. And while as soon as you accept the external world as being real you can find mountains of empirical data to support that, you can never find solid empirical evidence that a particular ethical statement is correct or incorrect.
The only rule is that there are no rules. That's the truth. Morality and ethics are human constructs..we establish these concepts to create some degree of order amongst us, because we are so intelligent that we can make wild decisions that are not beneficial to the collective but are in fact harmful to us as a species. So we establish a framework of ethics and morality so that people behave themselves
I like your point. Another way one might look at the difference is that no one disputes ‘sense data’ just what sense data actually is. Whereas with morality there isn’t ‘moral data’ that we all agree is even there to dispute its ontological status.
I don't think that's quite it. It's more akin to this: "Some people believe the universe is made from atoms, some people think the universe is made from stories". The arguments about physical nature can be more robustly argued, without complications from individual biases. The arguments about morals doesn't have a framework to argue, and will always be influenced by subjective bias. The reason for this is, most likely we are intelligent enough to quantify intelligence (ie IQ test) but we are NOT wise enough to quantify Wisdom. If we were, then we could create a moral framework which is based on objectivity, and have a framework to argue inside, and not have to rely on subjectivity or be at it's mercy.
I think the difference is in the grounding. "The ocean exists" can be affirmed because we can establish the definition of what an ocean is or could be. "Murder is wrong" can't be affirmed without defining what "wrong" means. The only definitions that I can think of that are grounded coherently are intrasubjective: "what murder results in makes me feel bad", and intersubjective: "what murder results in makes me and the cohort of people who feel similarly to me about murder, feel bad". And this applies to every aspect of what a murder can result in. It makes friends and family of the murder bereaved at the loss of the presence of that person. It destroys the source of economic output of that person, which causes a lower level of unhappiness for those who relied on that output. Punishment wise, it makes the murderer feel bad if they are caught and punished. Even if there were (a) god(s) that punished your soul for once being attached to a body that decided to murder, in an afterlife, the badness would still be the loss of happiness experienced by the soul in the afterlife. So it is subjective no matter how you think about it.
@@TheRepublicOfUngeria on the topic of murder there are also circumstances where murder is acceptable by people. Like in terms of self defense. If you kill someone who's trying to kill you, that's considered Moral and Okay
On the belief about whether the outside exists, I love a story I heard from Zen. I student comes to a master and says, "I've been studying philosophy and can prove you and the outside world don't exist." The master slapped him hard across the face and said,"I'm sure you can."
I might be wrong, but here's how I see this situation: In order to have any meaningful conversation, you're gonna need to make a set of epistemological assumptions (the world is real, our sensations are correct etc.). Without them you won't be able to have any meaningful conversation, whether it's about morality or about physical facts. So this is our Step 1. After Step 1, in conversations about the physical world, you go straight to the evidence, tests etc. that prove or disprove physical facts. As for the moral conversations, you're gonna need to make a second set of assumptions, the Step 2 (murder, stealing, raping are wrong etc.). And this is exactly the difference that makes morality subjective and science objective: both need Step 1, but only the morality needs Step 2. Maybe I missed something tho, I've slept 3 hours...
I would agree with observation I just wouldn't say that it makes science objective and morality subjective - I look at it from the perspective of taking the necessary assumptions as true for me and leaving those unnecessary ones - while believing in external world and in my senses I perceive as crucial for survival the moral intuition (although it's the same as the other ones) doesn't seem that important in order to live.
Or, since you don’t know if anything is really real, instead of having meaningful conversation, you could just sing, dance, laugh and love. Except for the dreadful work you need to do to survive every day.
Good point there. But I think Destiny's stance here would be something like the step 2 assumptions you're making are actually quite different from the step 1 assumptions, particularly when the former can be rigorously tested against even having assumed that these are agreed assumptions. However, the step 2 ones here can't be rigorously tested against even if agreed upon, for that you can very easily interpose exceptions in certain scenarios that they are not, in fact or in ethics, wrong. So ultimately this boils down to the on the balance of probability argument: assumptions about the physical world are far more likely to be tested and therefore a consensus is much easier to result. Assumptions about moral "facts" are much harder to have the same effect, hence moral objectivity (being an absolute term) is very hard to establish.
No. You can watch Sam Harris and Alex’s talk to see why. Accepting that external reality exists is the same thing as saying “good” can be translated to “well-being”. Puts both sides on all fours. From there we can make “moral” claims on whether something maximizes well-being or subtracts. There we have an abundance of evidence and sense data.
Well yeah your correct but I think the point is that if we are willing to make that first assumption beacuse it’s so obvious and 99% of humans agree on it then why aren’t we willing to make the second one? The fact the second one requires the first one isn’t the point here, it’s just the fact that if we all go with the first one since it seems obvious why not apply that same logic to the second?
18:00 actually what destiny posited was very fair. our ability to run tests over and over and gets the same result is so much more reliable and satisfying than almost anything we can do for morals. morals seems like hope while for the physical existence feels testable. we could be living in a similation true, but to me that's a huge cop out.
Completely agree. I just discovered this guy, have watched a number of his videos out of curiosity, and the more I watch, the more tiresome and pointless and full of crap he becomes, because his whole thing is endlessly, fruitlessly, meaninglessly, taking every topic under the sun and holding it to implicitly impossible logical/philosophical standards, talking in circles around even himself, and NEVER saying anything of any substance about anything, because he is so interminably obsessed with looking at all questions through this, ultimately incredibly silly, absolutist philosophical lens that cannot every see the forest for the trees and just have an actual conversation about any topic. It is maddening to me, and I can't believe he just does this same song and dance, interminably, and is able to find what he is doing and saying a worthwhile exercise that should be continued, or that he has a large audience who can listen to these "arguments" repeatedly, and never get an actual real discussion about anything, when he insists on boiling everything down to this level.
When we run tests and get the same result over and over, we’ve reached a conclusion and the thing being tested demonstrated it’s reliability. Why can’t we do the same with morality? Test and probe at it until we have a set of morals that exists in non-contradiction to all observers within the set? A universal morality that never demonstrates that its unreliable; but when it does we change something about it, our universal RELATION to it, to understand the universal idea of Good more, to include what was excluded, so it can once again demonstrate its reliability.
@@swerzye4472 I think the problem is that everybody even people who think morality is objective - interpret the actual moral claims differently. Like ok you say "murder is wrong" but you have no problem bombing children if you are on war with them. You simply redefine what murder is and there you go. Some would never do that and think all killing is wrong even ins self-defense. Some define abortion as murder some don't. Would you kill Hitler in 1942 if you had the chance - would that be good or bad? Most would say it is not bad. OK but what in 1935 before he actually had done anyhing "really wrong". I mean he will do but he did not yet. Lying is wrong. Ok. But lying to a murderer regarding the whereabouts of your family he wants fo kill is not. Almost everybody would agree with that. But is lying to the police OK who want to find your brother who was dealing weed. Would it be wrong if he had hurt somebody or it was not weed but heroine. If he was indeed a murder. If you sit 100 people into a room I guarantee you if you ask questions long enough you will have 100 different sets of answers.
I think Hegel's response to scepticism still stands up. From the Introduction of the Phenomenology of Spirit (section 74): "Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science [Science here means any form of systematic, rational study], which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognises something, it is hard to see why we should not turn around and mistrurt this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes something - a great deal in fact - for granted as truth, supporting its scrupples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute [meaning the perfect Truth] stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet it is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is exluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby qhat calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth."
This was really good. Destiny appeals to empiricism for justifying the objectivity of physical versus moral systems, Alex responds with sure, but our faith in the physical world is still grounded in the assumption that our sense data is accurate at all (That I’m not just some brain in a vat) so why not just extend that same somewhat arbitrary faith in the objectivity of physical systems to the objectivity of moral systems? We can doubt that the physical world exists (What if I’m a brain in a vat?), sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that we feel as though it does. Similarly, we can doubt the fact that objective morality exists, but that doesn’t change the fact that we feel strong intuition that it does. Basically Alex argues for a more pragmatic definition of objectivity-he doesn’t care if something “actually” exists independently of the mind, but just that something “practically” exists independent of the mind because our intuition informs us that it does. Destiny didn’t really have a response for it. Great debate!
Well we have no problem saying mathematics exist because we can agree on axioms, or we can change axioms if something is proven incorrect. But the system is essentially the agreement. Aside from something like the Ten Commandments, how can you define a an objective morality, how is it even finite? If we even agree on axioms but the elements it deals with are subjective senses and interpretations it just seems like an impossibility.
_"Similarly, we can doubt the fact that objective morality exists, but that doesn’t change the fact that we feel strong intuition that it does."_ Okay, but while someone may have a strong intuition about certain moral questions, this same intuition is not shared by everyone. I don't think everyone bases their morality on the exact same principles. Sure, well-being is one of them, but not the only one (or more like, well-being is a really broad concept, and there are different kinds of well-being). I don't think morality is universal. Sure, people do agree on certain really basic things like "murder is wrong" and "stealing is wrong". But that doesn't stop them from doing those things, because they'll find justifications for murder or stealing. In other words, some other moral belief overrides the "wrongness" of murder or stealing in those cases. So, when is a murder justified? There will be a lot of different opinions on that topic, even if everyone accepts the idea that murder is generally wrong. Some people would argue that murder is always wrong - there is no situation where it's justified. Other people might argue that a lot of people would deserve to be murdered. And of course there are also psychopaths who don't even think murder is wrong. But we don't even have to talk about psychopaths - even if we talk about sane people, there are still going to be a lot of differing views on the topic. I guess my point is, even if we could objectively say "murder is wrong", real life situations are always more complex than that. And it's in those more complex situations where people's morality actually starts to matter. That's when there will be a lot of different moral views on things. So, my point is, what's the actual value in saying that "murder is objectively wrong", when in real life basically every situation is going to be much more complex than that? Is there an objective answer to all of these issues? (Because I don't think there is - I think that depends on how much you value certain things. For example should we give murderers a second chance, or would it be justified to murder a murderer? I don't think that question has one objectively correct answer to it.) Like sure, we may come up with an universal law that says that murder is wrong. But I think a more important thing is, what should be the consequence of murdering someone? That's when people's morality actually starts to matter. We can all agree that murder is wrong, but what should we do to murderers? All in all, if everyone feels as if their own morality is somehow objective, but also people's moral views vary quite a lot, whose morality should we treat as the "objectively correct" one? Because people definitely don't have the same moral views. Just look at the abortion debate for example. Which side of the debate people are on depends on how much they value the mother's bodily autonomy vs the potential child's life. My point is, moral questions are quite complex. They are usually a conflict of many different values, and your answer to the moral dilemma has to do with how much importance you put on each value. Let's take another example - the refugee debate. Those who are for stricter border control place more value on safety. Those who are more welcoming to refugees place more value on helping other people. No matter how much you talk about "open border policies" bringing more potential crime to the country, it won't change people's minds, because they still think it's more important to help those people, even if that leads to a bit higher crime rate, because otherwise a lot of innocent people are going to die. And similarly, no matter how much you talk about the importance of helping refugees, and how those people are going to die if you don't help them, it won't change people's minds, because they still think that their own safety is more important. So, what is the objective answer here? Is there a moral obligation to help refugees? Is there a limit to how many refugees should be accepted? It's not that the side that's more concerned with safety doesn't care about innocent people's lives, or that the side that's more concerned with innocent people's lives doesn't care about safety. It's just what people see as more important. Some people think their own safety is more important. Other people think helping innocent people is more important. (I think nationality also plays a part in it. Some people think nationality is an important thing - if the question was about helping citizens of their own country, they would be a lot more open to it, but since the refugees aren't citizens yet, then it's really not their obligation to help those people, and they should look for help elsewhere. But other people think that nationality doesn't really matter - people should be helped regardless of where they come from. I just don't think there's an objective answer here - there are so many different factors at play, and it all depends on your values. Which values do you see as the most important ones? And that's where people differ. Even if they had basically the same values, they might still disagree on what the most important values are.)
@@MaggaraMarine The refugee problem is a little more complex than that. Pro-refugee advocates have never conceded that bringing in refugees increases crime rate, and I believe they cite good data for that point. At a core practical level it's more just a conflict of interest between the business classes who want more cheap labour, and a subset of the working class who get screwed over by that. Then on the periphery you have more higher order value conflicts, but none of it is so idealised as 'safety vs helping others'. Plenty of people just want closed borders because they're racist, and plenty of others only want open borders as a vanity position just to feel good about, because it makes no difference to their lives one way or the other.
@@Hankblue Okay, but basically all of this is irrelevant to my main point. It was just a random example and an oversimplification of the issue, I know. My main point was that there isn't one objective answer to questions like this. Even if it was as simple as safety vs helping others, some people would place more value on safety, whereas others would place more value on helping others. Which one is the "morally correct" answer? But in reality, it's even more complex than that. There aren't just two different positions - there are a lot of many different things that affect decisions like that. It's a lot more complex than "murder is objectively wrong" (that was the example given in the video). That's my point.
U can argue with that same argument for God's existence since it is intuitive. So the question would be, then are all our intuitive beliefs true or supposed to be considered as axioms? And if not, how do we differentiate which is one are objective or true, what would be the standard to choose based on? If they are all objective or can be considered as axioms, then God's existence is as objective as objective morality.
It seems to me that a personal experience that generates an ethical/moral reaction is more like a personal reaction to art rather than your sense experience that generates an empirical "truth" like the earth orbits the sun. So I might "feel" that murder is wrong (like I love Turner's paintings) whereas you might say that murder has no moral value (you are uncaring about Turner's paintings) and someone else might say murder is moral (they hate Turner's paintings). Whereas we might all agree that the scientific (sense) data we have seen indicates that the Earth orbits the sun (to first order). There seems to be a difference between these 2 approaches.
You kinda missed Alex's point. Of course we migh all agree that scientific data indicates that the Earth orbits around the sun. So long of course as we all *assume* that our data is reliable, that our senses correctly interpret the physical world, that the physical world exists, that rules of logic are true and so on. Most of these assumptions rely precisely on our intuition (eg. something can't simultaneously be and not be) and so our morals rely on our intuition.
@@Exchromer but no most don’t rely on intuition most rely on precise repeatable results that can be tested. It’s why things like ocams razor and neutons flaming laser sword exist
@@Dizzy-4 Science has changed over time, just like our ideas of morality. I could point to human rights as evidence of it's utility. FYI, I have a science background and believe the scientific method is the best sensor we have for exploring the natural world. However, I also acknowledge that when you boil science down, and as Alex alludes, you arrive at a point where you're pulling yourself up by your own hair (Münchhausen trilemma).
@@Exchromerof course, but that sort of solipsism is useless. It makes for pretty arguments when trying to compare the real material universe to objective morality but it's not really worth considering
Destiny may have been better served by approaching this debate from a slightly anthropological position. Although on first appearance, it seems like humanity has a very defined and shared set of moral beliefs about certain behaviours that transcend all cultures (e.g., murder or theft), defining both in the realm of actual social practice can be slightly trickier. There are many instances whereby taking someone's property or killing them will be seen as unethical by many people, but not by others. In fact, entire cultures have been built around behaviours other societies consider abhorrent. Of course, this still presupposes some idea of shared morality that is debatable regardless of what is at stake, but it serves to muddy the waters considerably if we are to take a pragmatic view on how we arrive at the premise of this video
True. But on the flip side of that, the vast majority of countries on earth outlaw slavery, where once it was ubiquitous. Even where you have major disagreements, it's not that we don't generally share the same values. We tend to just disagree a about degree.
I don't know... I feel like it all ultimately depends on how you define objective and subjective. People often claim that objective means that something is undeniable. But I don't think that is the meaning at all, that is a consequence of what it means to be objective. An objective property is a property that exists within the object, that can be found within it by any independent observer, as long as they have the proper tools and understanding of how to extract that information. This is stuff like mass, material, electric charge and so on. A subjective property however is a property that doesn't exist within the object itself, but exist within the mind of the people thinking about the object. There is no beautifulness within a flower or tastiness within an apple, it is only beautiful and tasty in the head of people thinking about those objects. One is about the object, the other one is about the subjects analysing the objects. And so even if you are a brain in a vat, and you are experiencing the world through code or whatever. The code is still an object that can be examined and determine their objective properties. Even if the moon is made out of code, or if it stopped existing tomorrow, the code of the moon has properties like its mass at a given time. But if you think it is pretty, that is not something found within the moon, but found within your brain. On how your brain reacts when it sees the moon. The moon is only pretty when someone thinks it is pretty. So following this definitions... I think it is pretty clear that morality cannot possibly be objective, because there is no rightness or wrongness that can be discovered and studied within actions. A murder has objective properties, like the weapon, the time of death, things that can be discovered and independently verified by observers. But the "wrong" part, is something that exists only within the brains of people analysing said murder. A murder is just wrong when someone is there to think it is wrong. It is certainly possible that a different species with different chemical make up than ours, simply cannot see why murder would be wrong. Certainly some animals don't appear to believe it. They are only right or wrong when there is somewhere there to think about them in those terms. Otherwise that property cannot be ever found within those objects.
@NicolasSchaII I truly think it boils down on whether you are investigating the properties of the object of analysis (objective) or if you are investigating the properties of the subjects interacting with the object (subjective). Objective properties are properties that anyone can find within the object. Subjective properties are only found in the brains of the subjects looking at the objects. The apple has a mass, this is one objective property that can be measured by studying it. But you cannot study the apple and find its "prettyness" or "tastiness", those don't exist in the apple, only in the brains of people eating apples.
objective must be something that is not subjected to any specific interpretation or bias. therefore, objective must hold this "divine" position of being beyond our touch because even by discovering an objective fact, our mere gaze corrupts and distorts its "divinity" metaphorically. like with the experiment of the observer in quantum mechanics. we for sure shouldn't compromise on this definition to make it more practical for us human just because it is so unaplicable. we can refer to things as inter-subjective or objective subjected to our comprehension and interpretation.
Sure the basis of ethics is subjective, but we say it's objective relative to the goal that we invented for our selves which is human well-being something that developed in us through evolution. Murder is objectively wrong the same way it's wrong to use contraceptives if you want to concieve a child , it doesn't work to achieve the intended goal
@@21stcenturyrambo16 Chess as in the game is not objective, it does not exists in the real world is just a game, there are chess boards, chess matches but in the wild chess doesn't exist, is just a game that we invented and changed the rules, if we have the goal of winning the chess match or even not losing the game, then there are objectively right and wrong choices that would allow us to get to that goal
@@21stcenturyrambo16yes, but IF, and only if, you can get people to commit to the same goals, then you can objectively evaluate actions with respect to those goals Not exactly perfect, because people will evaluate things differently, and people won’t ever all agree on goals, but it’s a starting point considering most humans DO tend to generally converge on the simplest goals (lack of pain, seeking happiness, freedom, health etc)
@@anonymouszebra1239 What wouldnt be objective by that definition? If we all just agreed that Islam, Christianity, Buddhism is true is that also objective? And who cares what humans tend to gravitate towards? People tend to also gravitate towards a lot of bad stuff.
@@21stcenturyrambo16 Category error. This isn't about agreement or deeming the most popular idea objective. Ethics is about real effects of harm done to sentient beings. It's not about abstract ideas of imaginary sky daddy. And yes, objectivity and subjectivity are based on perspective and method in order to arrive at a conclusion. You're correct that everything can be seen through an objective or subjective lens. This is not extraordinary nor absurd. This is very base level.
I would suggest that answering the ethical question is more fundamental to human-relations than the high level scientific one. Believing in General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics is a lot more difficult than reaching fundamental agreements in regards to the value of human life.
Even if you give it to ethics and say that we should just assume pleasure is good and suffering is bad, it doesn't get us very far if we wanna make a conclusive theory and not just live our lives in a way that we expect is morally okay-ish. It gives us nothing about their relation or any other possible goods and bads, like living in general, consciousness, etc. And just pleasure and suffering don't seem enough to reason up from. And then I have to give it to Steven. As far as I can think of, there doesn't seem to be tests or experiments you can do that really give you conclusive answers. You might ask a billion people that all agree, but you might just have asked the chinese population about eating dogs or what have you.
That's where tjumps moral theory comes in I think. Morality has little to do with pain or pleasure. It has everything to do with consent. The theory predicts simulations of multible AI systems with disparate values will converge on a morality based upon the consent of sentient wills. It also predicts if there are alien civilizations they will converge on a consent based morality. And lastly it predicts in the future something as simple as a rock naturally falling that hits someone unwillingly will be considered immoral.
The problem thers no objective truth in ethics or morals. We have multiple things that is ethically wrong for no reason in the west. Then europe have difrent ethics and China have difrent ethics etc
@@inteallsviktigt The theory basically says objective morality is what collective morality is approaching. In the same way Newton looked at the movement of the planets to discover the principle of gravity. We can look at the movement of moral evolution and discover the principle of morality.
"Even if you give it to ethics and say that we should just assume pleasure is good and suffering is bad-" That word-soup has nothing in common with ethics, or reasoning. Subjectivity does not allow for absolute definitions like that. There are good kinds of suffering, and there are bad kinds of pleasure. In fact, I don't even know what are you trying to say, if anything at all.
@@inteallsviktigt ....therfore given the predictions come true. The consent view of morality is objectively true in the same way gravity is objectively true.
Not sure if I agree with Alex opening statement. Is intuition always unknowable? I think a lot of it is rooted in facts and observations of the world. Then he goes ahead by saying isn't that enough, by human intuition we know objectively that murder is wrong. That's where I begin to agree
Not sure what Alex’s point here is. Yes at a fundamental level there is nothing that is truly objective, because even the concept of objectivity is a choice to believe in. Humans subjectively choose to believe in objectivity The difference between this and moral truth, is that almost all humans believe in a similar concept of objectivity that can be appealed to. Most people do not have similar ethical systems
Saying objective morals don’t exist doesn’t mean murder is ok. You can still argue against it. It’s just that on a scientific level it’s not objectively wrong (but it’s not right either)
I have the answer. Since morality can be an evolutionary trait. You can't say "murder is wrong because all humans feel that way" that's a subjective morality based on evolutionary traits. Organisms are more effective in groups working together. That doesn't mean it's the "moral or right thing to do" it just means it's the best trait for evolution. Unless we see an organism that's intelligent that drosnt need to reproduce then ask if if murder is wrong we can't know if it's objective or a trait from evolution
I feel like when it goes this fundamental the difference between subjective and objective blurs out so much that you can argue anything as being objective. And it's exactly what Alex started doing while trying to make your internal feelings - moral intuitions - objective. The same thing can be said about any feeling.
I've seen Alex's argument presented in a much simpler way by Matt Dillahunty. In simple terms, it is definitely true that there is no way to prove or disprove the fundamental ideas of right & wrong. It is always a subjective framework. You can, however, come to an agreement on a subjective GOAL for morality and then make objective observations in relation to that goal. If we come to an agreement that morality/ethics should be to provide a system where as many humans (or whatever overall group you want to focus on) can have the highest level of happiness, health and freedom while experiencing the least amount of harm, oppression etc etc Now within that system, we can make objective statements based on what helps to further that goal the most. Murder causes extreme harm in that it literally kills someone, affects their families/friends, etc etc. At the same time it provides no direct benefit that outweighs the harm. I am explaining it poorly as I unfortunately don't remember the exact wording he used and what specific podcast he said it on. Hopefully I got the idea across though.
@@angelthman1659 what purpose does an objective morality even serve? Let's make the assumption that a moral standard exists in the universe objectively and independent of people. If it differs from the subjective mkral system i've come to determine is the best I can easily say that the world id better if we ignore this standard. I can just call my system Schmorality, and say that schmorality is better than morality.
In the study of systems, there are systems that have simple rules applying to individual units that result in emergent properties. In systems composed of human individuals, i.e. a society, the simple rules that started us off were safe guarding of one's interests, and the emergent properties are ethics and morality. Over time, there has been a feedback loop where the emergent properties got fed back into the individual's rule sets, creating an ongoing evolution of emergent ethics+morality. You need to start from "is murdering me wrong?" as the axiom (maybe break it down even more) You cannot start from "is murder wrong" as the axiom. (I've really just described the golden rule of course)
@@baishihua Objective morality exists by necessity if you define objectivity as conceptual, not refering to some solid object. And it also exists if you don't define it as absolute, fundamental axiom. The objectivity Destiny refers to is a category error, because by his logic absolutely nothing can ever be objective, including science (it's built up from fundamental values and experiences by subjective entities by necessity). Which he obviously wont admit to because well... let's just say openly identifying as anti-realist is kind of removing yourself from any serious ethics conversation before it even started. A good analogy would be the game of chess. The rules of chess are man made. They're subject to human interpretation. But once you accept the rules, there are objectively better ways to get to the goal of checkmate. Would you define chess as subjective, because you first have to accept the rules of chess which are entirely arbitrary? If that were the case, then you should be able to beat Magnus Carlson or stockfish at about a 50% rate. Morality functions pretty much like that (except there are many more pieces and more rules). The rules of morality might be arbitrary if you disconnect them entirely from the sentient experience, but once you accept that sentience exists and that it matters you're already in the realm of outcomes that are demonstrably better at achieving the goal of a better life or harm reduction. And removing sentience from morality is like removing all hydrogen molecules from water and still calling it water, because the term water is arbitrary and a man made concept. It's intellectually dishonest at best.
Moral behavior only matters to social creatures in the same way language / signaling has utility to social creatures. Neither are thing creatures cope with like a rock or sunshine. Arguing over objective morals is like arguing over which word order is “real”. Seems more like a categorical mistake.
6:20 I think you missed the mark on this one. You can drive it back and say that there's no way to come to an answer without fundamental agreement, but you're missing the point of the argument. There is a potential for the end of the conversation in the case of physical argumentation. Even in the same school of philosophy, the same is not true. To put it on an even playing field, imagine a moral question being asked of humanists, or any other defined school of thought. Is there a philosophy that every advocate of said philosophy agrees with every other advocate about all the political or societal answers to moral questions? Is there a point where there would be no question as to who is right? A basis for proof? Or would it be the same as theology, where the same arguments still happen between Christian schools of thought, branching infinitely until Humanism mimicks Christianity in becoming a school of thought that includes hundreds of mutually exclusive schools of thought all defining themselves as Christian/Humanism?
All morality (and all "good/true" beliefs really) boils down to attempting to achieve desired goals (including "mapping our beliefs" as close to reality as possible) which always depends on knowing the TOTAL UNIVERSAL cause-and-effect relationships that we discover well, and that is best ONLY through science. The fact that ALL useful philosophy/ethics/morals rely on science is true also of BOTH utilitarianism and deontology (since you have to "discover" what deontological principles are good in the first place, you kind of have to utilitarianly test them first). Otherwise, everyone is just relying on subjective feelings alone.
Interesting conversation. I wonder if the "sense" data for moral gut feeling is less concrete and harder to independently varify. People may think they feel that way, but how could we test that they do feel some way? How could we compare our feelings with each other? How could we know that the feeling comes from wrongness, since that is interpretation of the subject? In sense of data of some external reality, we could use specific tools, models and such to get more precise and independent data. While the subjective feeling of "wrongness" feels highly subjective and hard to test for. On the other way i understand the idea of "smuggling" an assumption. Though I would simple think that, given that morality is much more discussed topic then the existance of reality, it's simple a convenient assumption not some contradiction. More like different degrees of how much you expect the common baseline of your subjective view of the objective world or morality is other people to hold.
There is no sense data for morality. Sense data exists to perceive objects in space. Morality isn't an object in space, it's an evaluative judgement about actions by humans based on expectations around standards of behavior.
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” His listeners knew what the cross meant: a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They didn’t think of the cross automatically in religious terms, as we do. They knew it in all of its awful power. Unless you crucify your ego, you cannot be my follower, Jesus says. This move-this terrible move-has to be the foundation of the spiritual life. Bishop Robert Barron "Daily Gospel Reflection (05/27/23)"
Yes belief is an objective external world and ethical beliefs require some basic assumptions. One difference is with beliefs about the external world can be falsified in a way that ethical beliefs can not. It can not be proved the external world physical world is a consistent but assuming that it is and by using objective facts we have been able to create very useful descriptions of how the world is. Ethics on the other hand is full of dilemmas and problems with many possible answers and no clear method to determine which answer is best. I think that is because moral systems are not internally consistent because we make them up from the most subjective of stuff, our own wants and desires which often conflict, can change on a whim and are what we value most.
In everything one has to start with at least a few basic axioms. Even in mathematics, as Kurt Gödel proved, there are things we can KNOW are true but cannot prove...and so in all the sciences we start with the axiom that we can trust our senses (accounting, of course, for their limits in terms of sensitivity and such). It is true in ethics as well, one needs to start from at least one or two basic axioms. This is why Ben Franklin convinced Thomas Jefferson to change his original "sacred and undeniable" in the Declaration of Independence to "self evident." One has to start somewhere. I think the clear advantage of starting with self evident axioms for ethics, rather than starting from a deity or deities, is that the self evident axiom is consistent, whereas deities are "persons" and thus whatever morality one gets from a deity or deities will be not just subjective but completely arbitrary.
I would argue the reason u can separate ethics from that logic is not lack of sense data but more so the fact that morality has has been selected by evolution to which is completely relative to our biological species meaning if we were another organism where things like murder would be to our evolutionary benefit then we would not find them immoral or not even comprehend it at all if the species brain is not as developed but it is all subjective to the organism
Semantics plays a major problem with ethics.. I think morality can be objective or subjective depending on the exact definition or perception of what it is.
You're right. One way of looking at it, is to say let's judge a female and how pretty she is. That's pretty subjective, right? Yep. But let's say this girl is 28 years old, and we got all the girls aged between 18-38 and put them in a line. Let's say that's exactly 1.5 Billion people. Then we got every male in the world aged 18-38 years old, also exactly 1.5 Billion. And every male had a preference and scored the females from least attractive to most attractive. Now if you do the maths, that's a very large figure, BUT it is a finite amount. What that means is that based on complete chance, chaos and randomness, you would actually deduce who is narrowly the most attractive female in the population. AND due to seeing patterns in nature, if you were able to run the experiment, you would actually get strong tendencies, so it won't actually be a huge probability figure. It would be a bell curve, but there would be a decent handful of girls who scored nearly perfectly, and one of them would have narrowly edged out the rest. What does this mean? The significance is that we can solve for subjective opinions and deduce an objective answer. You could do that for which candy tastes best, perfume smells the nicest, which blanket feels best to the touch, or melody sounds the most charming. Okay, but what does this have to do with Morality? Well, morality is a deeply subjective topic. But based on the above thought exercise, it is theoretically possible (but practically difficult), to deduce the Objective Facts out of the Subjective Opinions. So if we crunched the numbers long and hard enough, we would be able to derive some answers, things we see repeating naturally, or converging, as to an objective consensus on morality. So while it might be impossible to have Divine Morality, or Absolute Morality, we could at least derive Objective Morality. We already have the intelligence to quantify intelligence (IQ test), we just don't have the collective wisdom to quantify Wisdom itself..... yet.
@@ekinteko "What that means is that based on complete chance, chaos and randomness, you would actually deduce who is narrowly the most attractive female in the population." by a percentage. it's just like MVP for the NBA. someone gets picked the MVP every year. but are they actually the most valuable player? the answer essentially unknown. the reality is humans are imperfect. so day in and day out the value of a player will fluctuate. same with most attractive girl. is it with makeup? without makeup? with clothes on without clothes on? how funny she is or isn't? like...there are so many factors and almost every factor can be tweaked to the point that you get a different result. so there being an objective truth with imperfect beings doesn't work imo. it will still be percentages. meaning it will still depend on who you ask.
@@thetrib1 Wrong. You failed to comprehend the fabric of the idea. Your analogy to the MVP is flawed because that is merely guessed by people making guesses. My thought experiment showed that it is actually possible, in a real-world sense, to determine who is the most attractive female out there. We do this by having one male rate 1.5 Billion females from least to most desirable. Then we do this with the second male, then third male, until we have all 1.5 Billion males do their ratings. Then you collate the data, and come up with which person had the highest preference. It is a very large figure, but it is finite. So, while it's true we will never be able to conduct such an experiment. At least not with current technological limitations. But it is theoretically possible to conclude objective facts from subjective opinions. It won't depend on who you ask, it is an objective answer. The most attractive female in the world is #597,432 as an example. Sure YOU personally might not find her the most attractive, because that is your individual opinion, but you would find her attractive nonetheless. And most males will do so as well, with a good portion of them nominating her as their top preference. Does the concept make sense now?
Exactly this. I think there is a objective foundation of morality but is surely has a situational layer too. Matt Dillahunty made a good job at explaining it
This conversation revealed to me that while Steven is desperately seeking the solution to answer to the average redpilled fools he speaks with, he lacks the necessary tools to do so. An inherently flawed epistemology can be just as harmful as an intentionally toxic one. While he has the inclinations to put ethics into a more practical view, it still reveals he is entirely out of his depth. In his example of the 4 people in a circle / island, he is aware that a contrarian can cause difficulties for the whole, but he lacks the practical application that these remaining three should still secure their own safety, at the cost of the contrarian individuals freedom. And from there it would circle back fully into ethics, law-giving and education as to why we require these boundaries and securities in the first place, instinctual or not.
You did not get the premise. He already agrees the three should defend themselves, however he thinks there should be a way to convince the fourth' if morals were objective. be less smug
@@leoyoman You did not get the premise. Even if he already agrees the three should defend themselves, he presupposes that not every fourth can be convinced, so he states that there is no conceivable or even subjective way that would prevent the three from >needing< to defend themselves, eventhough ethic laws would do just that, on a much larger scale. In Steven's perspective, there is no "way" and his ethics stagnate as result. Be less idiotic, please.
@@MrYelly burden of proof is on you though. Show that there is a way. You are in no way better than Steven just more smug. Also the fourth being convinced is the crux of the argument not a presupposition. Calling me an idiot is cute of you.
@@leoyoman The burden of proof that empathy is naturally present within animals and people alike? There is plenty of scientific evidence. Steven literally says there is no way to convince the fourth. You say that he thinks there is one. What is this useless, vapid dik riding you present here? Make your own points, instead of misinterpeting the points others never even made. Waste of air.
morality not being objective shouldn't affect the conviction one has to hold & enforce those moral beliefs. destiny acts like the moral landscape we act within is some unmanueverable, unworkable void due to its lack of objectivity, but really it's more like an empty canvas that we can paint whatever we'd like on through our will
I talk to many people online about objective reality and I’m glad to see these two intelligent people I respect can’t come to a clear conclusion either
the objective subjective distinction is taken for granted, and not specified in its nuance or shortcomings, which often leads to this kind of disagreement.
Interestingly it seems that western societies are the outlier here. Other non-western societies seem to have moral intuitions based on authority and purity, with more emphasis on groups and communities less on individual rights.
Murder is subjectively defined, so how can it be objectively wrong? It can only be subjectively wrong, and that's OK, we make subjective judgments all the time.
No definition isn't subjectively defined, because it requires a human to define them. Humans are necessarily dependent on their own senses, which makes everything a human can think, feel or do subjective. This is the anti-realist perspective that sometimes even leads to solipsism. If your goal is to fly to the moon, is it objectively better to use a rocket to do it or a bycicle? Conversely, if your goal is not to harm people, is it objectively better to give somebody with an infection antibiotics or waterboard them? Just because ethics are conditional doesn't mean they're not objective. In order to be consistent in the approach that you're espousing, you'd have to scratch objectivity from your vocabulary, because even science can be reduced to core values and intuition. Objectivity and subjectivity are just two different lenses we can view different scenarios through. Ethics can be both more or less objective or subjective depending on the argument and what you offer to support it. Just like anything else.
I think you can assess morality objectively by simply looking at the outcomes of any moral action or belief. This can be done through sense data as well.
In my opinion morality is subjective, but nearly everyone follows the same morality however some people attempt to apply it consistently as much as possible and some people do not. In certain circumstances people will not acknowledge morals and choose an immoral decision when it conveniences them, for example basically everyone disagrees with animal abuse however most people partake in it every time they go to the supermarket and purchase the flesh of once sentient beings, I think most meat eaters have the same morals as vegans however will make excuses and try to squirm they way of acknowledging their actions being immoral which stops them from noticing a contradiction so they can continue in their hedonism.
Hypocracy and delusion, is what you are aiming at. Everyone agrees that animal abuse is bad, but not everyone can agree to what consitutes as animal abuse. Looking at the islamic festival of Eid, in which they slice the throats of horses and cows, for them to bleed out on the streets, is not what they consider as animal abuse. It's just a cultural festival that requires tolerance and acceptance and such. The yulin festival in china is another example. And somewhere between this scope of extremes, most meat eaters can readily diminish personal involvement or responsibility, for good reason. They don't go out of their way to harm animals, and see value in the diminishing of such suffering. There is a degree of ethics in that.
@@MrYelly If they're actively purchasing products that for most people aren't nowhere near essential, which increases animal abuse, then they do go out of their way to harm animals
@@MrYelly I don't get the hyper-focus on Eid, from a vegan perspective it's obviously wrong since you're killing animals, but how is it any worse than factory farming? If anything, it's a much more preferable.
You must have not interacted much with any hyper-religious person to say that, religious people will justify the most disgusting stuff by citing divine authority.
I would agree with this. Most people tend to have shared core values from which they derive their morals, but due to ignorance, dogma, cognitive dissonance, and tribalism, they end up acting against their own morals and values.
Except we know a person like a psychopath can easily lack these moral intuitions - they're a result of brain hardware. It would be weird to imagine the analogous form of a psychopath when it comes to the external world - someone just born without the intuition than an external world exists. To me it seems pretty clear that moral intuitions are conveniences of our evolution whereas we have the intuition of an external reality because it's actually there, even if that is unprovable.
Morality and ethics are inter subjective. But, the best way we can reach an "objective" ethical code is by "putting ourselves in others shoes". When we do this, we REALLY think and understand the pain or happiness someone feels. Ofcourse some people don't care about others, but, that exists in all situations - you never find all 7 billion of us agreeing on anything. In cases where there is a threat to us, to mitigate the threat, causing harm I think is justified - self interest (to a certain extent) always comes first. Again, I believe that ethics are inter subjective, but, for a more coherent society, we need a set of conduct to be established. Ps - "certain extent" can also be attained using the "putting ourselves in others shoes" principle.
In this case, what are your stances on abortion? I think abortion can be justified coz we're acting on self interest - ofcourse, if you can raise and provide for a child, you are obligated to do so; in other situations, I think it's reasonable to do so.
In this case, does that mean that all interviewers are morally obliged to provide employment to everyone and anyone? No, this is a logical fallacy. Situations also require to analyse other factors - in this problem, we should take into consideration the goals of the business, wheather the candidate is suitable, etc. So, no, "putting ourselves in others shoes" is not the only concept that need to be evaluated.
Personally I don't necessarily grant that my intuition is objectively true. I live as if the external world is real and inhabited by other minds for a few reasons but I don't claim to know this 100% objectively as I don't think I CAN know it. From a moral standpoint, I have my own intuitions that I generally follow but I will go against some of that intuition if it contradicts with several other intuitions or goes against popular consensus enough. However I notice in both modern day and throughout history, morality has been far more varied that worldviews have been, at least at a fundamental level. Most cultures have had some kind of worldview based on the existence of an external world and the existence of other conscious beings. Morally however, the fundementals have varied a lot more. People have based their morality on their own pleasure, the pleasure of their king, the pleasure of a god figure, the wellbeing of their group, the wellbeing of other groups, etc. This gives me more pause to grant morality with the same level of belief as I do an external world. Obviously this conclusion assumes some kind of accuracy of historical data, but if we are going to throw that out for the sake of total honesty, we couldn't have a conversation at all (universal skepticism) I guess my main issue is it seems like my intuitions about the external world are far more consistent with other people intuitions compared to my moral intuitions. It seems to me that moral ideology is socially spread a lot more than it is intuited. Morality itself really only works if we say there is an external world anyway as without it, there would be no victims of our actions, just the equivalent of NPCs which we don't typically extend our empathy to.
After you choose life as a primary ethics, there are only two choices left. #1 Going against your primary choice of life - establishing a self-contradictory set of ideas. #2 Follow the primary choice, values and ethics in all your choices in life - objective ethics. Self-contradictions are irrelevant for a rational discussion on ethics. The dead ones are irrelevant for a rational discussion on ethics. Only one alternative remaisn for we the living: Follow the primary choice, values and ethics in all your choices in life - objective ethics.
For me, the most notable difference between the two is that I can much more easily conceive of a world where objective morality doesn't exist and humans developed a sense of right and wrong because it was beneficial to society (and in some societies, the morality that was landed on was different from other societies), whereas the world I perceive not being real seems much less likely. It's funny to notice how many assumptions my framework for comparing the two relies on. I guess, as others have pointed out, it seems like morality requires all of the first set of assumptions, and then even *within* that set of assumptions, there's comprehendible versions of the world where objective morality doesn't exist.
The way you ask the question can often matter more than the question you ask. In the case of abortion asking _When_ is abortion acceptable will net you more allies than asking the broader question. Sidenote: the abortion question is asked in an ambigous way to divide us. When it comes to the question: is it okay to murder people? even if you get a positive outcome from an individual (either immediately or through debate) that stance may be conditional and only apply to the person they had the debate with, that person may decide that other people are okay to commit murder against just not you. I'm glad we have decided as human beings to choose governence. But I am glad only because I have been groomed to appreciate governance and because it allowed me to live. When it comes to ethical disagreements between governments I would like to say I critisize my own government even to my own detriment and I reject the excuses made for the "crimes" my government commited and instead search for the "truth." I also think it's unethical to continue to make the same choices that led to those crimes to begin with and that every government that chooses to make those choices rightfully deserves a revolution or a reform in which the opposing party is cast out, or reformed. Those same people I would cast out or reform today call me a traitor for wanting my government to be better.
Alex believes that good and bad is based on intuition. This can't be - the germans believed (or had the intuition) that the holocaust was a good phenomenon. Does that make it ACTUALLY good or true? No, infact, we laugh at that very notion. So this begs the question - How CAN we set up a system when said system can be looked upon as "good" by some and "bad" by the remaining?
I think the sense data for morality is a little something called empathy. There is some interesting evolutionary neurobiology pointing towards some of the innate responses in the brain to perceiving the pain of other animals (yes, even non-humans). Another clear evidence here is that most of us have already agreed upon many moral intuitions, like murder and rape are wrong, and demonstrate prosocial behaviours. The way our societies organize and work together relies on our inherent prosocial behaviour. Even with some of the awful things that humans do we are one of the most successful species on the planet due to our cooperativity- our brains mean very little without that fundamental ability to work together.
What exactly do you mean by _objective_ ? Given that ethics is about the conduct of humans, I don't see how ethics can exist without human subjects. By "objective" If you mean universal agreement between all humans, it is evidently not true that ethics is objective.
@@tarikwalters854 So your "ethics" is about judging the _past_ ? 🙄 Only an arrogant imbecile would pretend to know all the consequences of one's action _before_ the action. Where I come from, ethics is about making decisions _without_ complete knowledge of all the consequences. In any case, being factual doesn't mean there has to be a preference for one fact over another. Nothing about something being a fact makes it right or wrong. Something that should have been clear to anyone with more than two functioning braincells.
@11:10 "Why can't we treat moral statements the same way we treat science" Take his earlier example statement "murder is bad". Ok, what if the person murdered was considered worse than the act of murdering him to begin with by a majority of the population? Governments, militaries, police, all kinds of people murder or take another's life... and require planning and fore-thought to do it. Immediately, the usefulness and inflexibility of that moral statement is inherently at odds with the reality of human history. You can't throw "murder is bad" in every possible scenario, like you can with a scientific based test, and come out with the same positive societal outcome that you'd want. In science, we can't really choose what we want the answer to be - while in morality, we do the opposite and have to agree in order for us to know what the right choice is. Science is observable methods to finding answers, morality is the argument of what we ought to do with it. By that definition, morality will always be derived in arguments made from scientific method, but it can't be scientific itself. Morality is the sense and purpose we attempt to make of the science around us; and it's only our common biology that allows us to have common ground, to be able to conceive of morality as necessary in the first place.
@@ElMois872 I believe you, Alex doesn’t seem like the guy who would believe morality is a scientific fact, I don’t remember this video very well it’s been awhile
giving in that ethics exist doesnt mean killing is bad it just means that there are good and bad things you still need to prove that something is bad or good
20:45 no alex!!! there aren't people that are saying science isn't real. people say some type of scientific fact is false. that's what happens. and why they get ignored or ostracized is because of test and experimentation. now...that doesn't mean that the questioner is wrong btw.
People say many things to justify their cruelty whilst protecting the rights of others. Human nature at its worst. They have capacity but no real intelligence.
I’m gonna play devils advocate, what grounds other than your own personal feelings do you have to condemn someone who engages in “cruel” actions for fun.
@@samadams1998 Well it could be personal feelings. I would say personal feelings are sourced from sentience. This may be uniquely human tho. Sentience is the source of pleasure and pain. It is the driving force for all humans, without sentience, we have no reason to value or seek anything. (It’s hard to see an organism value anything if reactions to stimuli doesn’t occur) Almost all multi cellular organisms have a central nervous system. If an organism is living a life seeking pleasure and not just to survive, unlike most organisms on the planet (I’m talking about 1st world country humans) Then yes, condemn them, for inflicting cruelty with the level of awareness they have. Organisms outside of this awareness, the ones living to survive miss out on having (personal feelings about it) because they can’t meet that intellectual threshold given there spot on our evolutionary trajectory. The primary use of their sentence is to survive. Still capable of love and bond of course (or how you would like to measure those) Humans have that extra ability to have perspective, you don’t get that when you’re constantly trying to survive. That’s my take tho, I like these devils advocate situations lol
@@hagenkillman4205 "Then yes, condemn them, for inflicting cruelty with the level of awareness they have." Why must we label some morality value on inflicting cruelty? If we are just atoms in, it is just mechanism. It is what it is.
@@dtphenom it’s not labeling morality value on cruelty. The entire point was dissecting the base of why humans value feelings or “sentience”. What do you think the base to morality is?
Three things 1.We have great portions of the world that have let go of fundamental intuition like linear time or free will for whatever reason ,so why cant we let go of the intuition of moral objectivity.destiny could have done the reverse question.but he was to caught up in trivialities. 2.The maim reason why the intuition of the external world is stronger than that of morality is because moral objectivity requires the existence of the external world,and there are no logical problems presented with believing in a external ,except for the quiestion of if its not the case ,which is not a counter to the believe. If there is no logical problem presented in a belief ,then there is no problem in believing it. 3.The problem with objective morality is that when you ask your self certain question ,you realize there is no way to map it. Why is murder objectively wrong? Most would respond with : 1It is just wrong; why does it have to be that case ,pschopaths do not see murder as necasarily a wrong thing ,what makes you right and him wrong,objectively and irrespevtive of context ,nothing, the only difference is that most see murder as wrong. 2.Because it is against our wellbeing(The ultilitarian and moral egoist stance) yes against what you consider as your wellbeing ,but that is just again is a collective(humans) , but something being considered bad by a collective does not mean it is objectively bad ,for example the end of slave trade was probably considered a bad thing for the slave masters. 3.Bad and good always require a context and is dependant on the person. When we say something is bad or good we always use it in a context based on what we want , what we consider the desired or what is consider closer or farther from a ideal(whether we want that ideal is another thing),and what we desire is a subjective thing that is at most shared by others,but that does not make it objective and gives no basis of saying it is objective.
No. Linguistic definitions in philosophy can lead to breakthroughs in computer science and possibly A.I. Concepts like Boolean logic and Turing machines originate from logic/epistemology of the early 20th century.
When your mind tells you you're taking an action, how do you know you are actually taking the action? So then what does it mean to "take an action as if something is true". Another question. If all this is an illusion, why does the reality illusion have constraints whereas the dream illusion is unconstrained? Why is the waking imagination unconstrained? Why isn't reality illusion also unconstrained? Begging the question then. Where do the reality illusion constraints come from?
Morality is objective. There are three fundamental laws of existence: Order, Chaos, and sustainability. These laws are objective and, in a physical universe, would exist whether or not an observer were around to observe. All living things abide by these three laws whether or not they are aware of it. Existence can only be if these three laws are adhered to. Does that mean God is also bound to these laws? If so, then can God be omnipotent? Abiding by these three laws, one can find the objective answer to all morality questions. The “trolley problem” is easily solvable objectively. The “lifeboat case” can just as easily be solved objectively. The reason why these problems seem so unsolvable to seemingly everyone is that they don’t seem take into account the psychological impacts/ramifications extended to the edge/end of the ripple, only to the first few rings. They also view the scenarios very subjectively without a solid objective basis. The problem then becomes of a subjective nature. But, in a physical universe, objective morality exists whether or not subjects do. Edit: There is definitely “sense data” (empirical evidence) for morality. 😉
@@Levaaant Keep in mind that the “3 laws” are a subjects designations of an observable truth of existence. That even without the subjective label of “3 laws” the objective motions of the “3 laws” would still be. Atoms are the answer. Atoms form the basis of existence within a physical universe. Atoms are inanimate and therefore non-subjects. Atoms exist in a state of chaos and where sustainability of two or more atom bonds are successful, order comes about. With that sustainability and order, emerges physical existence as we know it. If one pays attention to human actions, on a fundamental level, it mimics the actions of atoms: individually, humans would exist in what can be considered a chaotic state. Once they start coming together and finding sustainability, order is produced. Chaos generates order and order generates chaos. It is a never ending cycle of physical existence. Ultimate sustainability is the answer to all moral questions. These 3 laws are fundamental within a physical universe. This is observable/knowable. Edit: If one observes the very basic/universal laws of civilized/sustainable societies, they all adhere to the law of sustainability. Is this true?
I think the distinction is this: You won't have any trouble convincing most people to accept the assumption that "sense data is accurate" before a discussion. When all parties have agreed you can call that objectively true. On the other hand, you'll most likely have a lot of trouble convincing people your proposed set of moral rules are objectively true before a discussion. I aspire to come up with or find a system of ethics that aligns as close as possible with my own personal sense of right of wrong. I would not call this objective though, except if it was agreed to be so for the purpose of a discussion.
I think similarly to Destiny. I liked hearing an intelligent rebuttal to moral relativism. I'll need to consider the distinction between moral facts and scientific facts.
@@swagikuro It has been observed that the reward reactions of brains in humans are different despite the foods they consume being the same/unchanged. Ergo it is objectively verifiable that taste is subjective (as in, difference between human subjects exists despite being provided with the same stimulation). As to whether the statement "I think coke tastes better than pepsi" is true, as in whether we can objectively determine whether the person actually feels this way or is lying, I do not think we have the technological capabilities to say so yet (lie detectors are notoriously unreliable).
Morality is objective and I’ll prove it now with 2 scenarios: Scenario 1 You take your friend out to eat and say, “get what you want, it’s on me.” You get a chicken sandwich and your friend gets a pulled pork sandwich. You think pulled pork is disgusting, but you don’t feel bad or get mad at your friend for eating it because you know it’s his subjective decision to eat what he wants. Scenario 2 You’re sitting in the park enjoying time with your 5-year-old niece. Randomly, some guy comes up and punches her in the face harder than you’ve ever seen anyone get hit. You get furious. Why is your reaction tremendous anger when you tell me and others, “you can’t prove something is objectively right or wrong morally?” See the point? And how do you have compassion and empathy for others? Let’s say your family or friends hypothetically lose a sibling that was raped, beaten, tortured, and killed. Then you say to them, “at least the person or people that did this weren’t objectively wrong for doing it.” If your actions don’t reflect what you say you believe, you don’t actually believe what you say.
If you say that ethics from unprovable intuition means morality is objectively true... you have essentially stated that morality is your god. Unprovable Intuition in morality is faith. 2:26
So here’s a question/counterargument for Induction: If for example i say, “When i eat bread i feel nourished and therefore bread nourishes me” and the counter argument is, “Well, just because the bread you’ve eaten in the past nourishes you doesn’t mean the next will.” This is basically saying i shouldn’t judge anything and make no assumptions and have no expectations because i could be wrong, right? So in response, i think that one of the qualifiers for something to be bread is that it nourishes me. So now for it to be bread, to me, it must nourish me. Is this a valid counterargument?
I don't know if it's because I'm anal or what. but your example doesn't seem like this to me: "This is basically saying i shouldn’t judge anything and make no assumptions and have no expectations because i could be wrong, right?" to me that is saying just because you assume and have expectations, you should be cautious and understand that you could be wrong. essentially tread lightly. any induction argument is going to end up being a tread lightly conclusion imo.
Alex I am impressed by your presentation, but had not realised that you have leanings towards moral (as well as material) realism. I do too; although I use your approach, more fundamentally material realism implies a determinist perspective within which it is hard to fine a coherent space for ethical relativism. I think ethical relativism makes it hard to account for value judgements that we know are more or less as certain as a heliocentric solar system. examples I have discussed with my classes is the proposition that rape is wrong, but also that JS Bach is one of a handful of the greatest composers. At first sight many might assert the latter (but rarely the former) is just a matter of subjective taste, but in reality I do not think we can genuinely conceive of a future world in which it is thought that Bach was not much good at all and there is incredulity that at one time he was rated so highly by practicing musicians.
Alex is an emotivist, not a moral realist or utilitarian. Emotivism treats moral statements as expressions of personal emotions and not objective/true properties.
_"I do not think we can genuinely conceive of a future world in which it is thought that Bach was not much good at all"_ Maybe not, but it might be that at one point people just don't care about his music at all (they won't say it's bad music, but they may not see it as "important" music, if that makes sense). There are a lot of great composers that people have forgotten about - and also there are a lot of composers that are unknown to the Western audience. It's not that people think these composers weren't good. It's just that people aren't familiar enough with their music or their style sounds too "foreign" to people's ears. (BTW, I doubt Bach's music "speaks" to people who aren't familiar with the sound of Western classical music, at least to the same degree as to people from "the West".) Bach wasn't even the top German composer of his time. Telemann was. But nobody really knows Telemann these days. I mean, they may have heard the name, but how many Telemann's pieces are people familiar with? I do think there's a possible alternative timeline where Bach is just one composer among the others. Bach owes a lot of his modern popularity to Mendelssohn who started performing his pieces 80 years after his death. It would definitely be possible that Bach would be one of those forgotten baroque composers that people don't talk that much about. Also if we imagine a world where Western music no longer has the same value as it does today, I'm pretty sure people wouldn't be able to appreciate Bach's music to the same degree. A lot of it has to do with familiarity. For example even when it comes to Western music, when you start listening to music that was written before the baroque period, it just sounds kind of foreign to our ears. Like take Machaut - one of the most famous medieval composers. He was definitely a skilled composer, but his music just sounds weird to the modern ear, because it sounds so different. Bach on the other hand sounds quite "normal" - it's not too different from modern music. So, let's assume that the music of the future just sounds totally different from contemporary music. At one point, it older music will simply sound so archaic that people will have a difficult time with "getting" it, similarly as Machaut's music just sounds a bit strange, and it's difficult to rate his music on the same scale as Bach or Beethoven. There's no denying the fact that Bach was a highly skilled composer. There's definitely a reason behind his popularity that's more than just "subjective taste" alone. But also, I don't think people from other cultures would appreciate his music to the same degree, similarly as people from the West aren't that interested in great artists from other cultures. And if you saw or heard two artists' work from a culture you aren't familiar with, would you instantly be able to assess whose art was more highly regarded? My point is, appreciation of art requires familiarity with the style. You only start to truly understand "quality" once you have familiarized yourself with the style. This applies even when it comes to styles you are more unfamiliar with within the same culture. You first need to get familiar with the basic "language" of the art style in order to actually understand all of the nuances of that style, and recognize greatness in that style. Someone not familiar with baroque music might listen to Bach, Handel and Vivaldi and not hear much difference between them. But once they get more familiar with the baroque style, they'll start hearing more nuances, and suddenly Vivaldi sounds way different from Bach.
@@MaggaraMarine Thank you for your long reply. The possibility that a genre could ultimately become inaccessible, although unknowable could be plausible. The example of Machaut is well chosen, though I think it could be used to support either side. The fact that a genre has become inaccessible does not have to affect its intrinsic quality. Another issue that can be used to support both sides is that some artistic figures succeed in creating the paradigm in which they inevitably appear to be centrally significant. The example I am thinking of is Shakespeare, whose created language has become so imbedded in aspects of the language that subsequent writers (and critics) use, and is so part of the literary landscape that the status of Shakespeare becomes self-perpetuating.
Moral intuition is nested within existential intuition. So it's an assumption that relies on another assumption. Therefore it can't be just as justified an assumption.
The existence of people with nonexistent empathy pathways in the brain (ie. people with psychopathy, antisocial personality disorders, etc.) throws your comment out the window, though.
Ethics is a matter of trust. Who to trust is objective. Vikings had no problem raiding and enslaving. They didn't have the trust you give a bank. You need ethics. Ethics is what a person does when no one is watching. A person with ethics will continue to do their job when the boss is not around.
When I speak about objective morality I take this route: We exist, we experience. Or at least "I exist and I experience" or something exists and experience exists. Existence itself is non-negotiable, let's say, haha. Okay, then as an experiencing existence/thing there is a quality to said experience that is on an infinite spectrum of positive/negative: these words are for sake of communication. I don't know how to label them, or if any labels are true, but the empirical experience of various forms of suffering and uncomfort are real and same with pleasures and joys. I'd say just as we study light and we know we can't study all of it because of our limited senses, and thus we try to create maps of different wavelengths and ways to detect the unseeable waves maybe, morality is doing this with that very real experience that exists and has a quality of suffering or pleasant in seemingly endless varieties. Morality is trying to address the objective reality of many sufferings and happinesses that experiencers know they have, just as the science of light is trying to address the reality of light even though we can't get it all due to our limited sense perception. This kind of by-passes brain in a vat arguments in some ways (not in all ways), by being about the empirically felt experience itself. It may change how we go about being moral to accomplish this experience not having suffering and being pleasant, but it doesn't change the objective aspect of reality that experiencers have experiences that are negative and/or positive. To me that is what morality is about. Some use different theories, datasets, hypotheses, maps, methods, experiments and so on to figure out how to make experience good and not bad, just as we have used so many different theories, technologies, methods to test light and all the different wavelengths and attributes it has. We know we are not done studying light, like, we know for a fact there is more to learn about light, but we don't stop studying and gathering data and collaborating to understand it as objectively as possible. This is how we could treat morality, and I think it would be fruitful.
Beautfull discussion and a topic I wished to discussed by you for a very looooong time! I have a problem with objective morality and the reason is, I don't see it as fundamental and it is in conflict with my sensory intuition that the world exist! As all I learned about the physical world, there are fundamental forces that are very stable, because they existed for billions of years. Now morality, as seen through evolution did develop as a result of the physical world. So how can it be fundamental? And there are sciences showing that certain sensory intuition are in conflict with anotjher and the results if doing the experiments differ from our expectation. Andso I rather sacrifice objective morality and the objectivity of my experiences than to sacrifice the objective external world.
Moral systems are all about drawing a line in the sand and following it, the only way one can do it wrong is by contradicting oneself, and most people do
The problem of induction wouldn't even be solvable if there existed any gods and we could prove that they did exist, because even after that, you couldn't prove that they would never stop existing, you would simply have to infer it.
Moral systems ONLY exist in the context of some goal such as "maximizing wellness." If we accept this, then we can say that certain moral systems or moral acts are objectively "good" or "bad" in that context. And while we cannot know every possible outcome - and therefore we cannot objectively say a moral act will always be "good" or "bad" - it is objectively true that certain moral acts are overwhelmingly more likely to achieve our goal than others. These acts are so overwhelmingly likely to be true that we can then derive general principles to live by such as "murder is wrong." Although there may be some subset of paths in which murder actually maximizes well-being (self defense), the overwhelmingly vast majority of those paths will not achieve the goal. Think of it as playing a game of chess where once you accept the goal to win there becomes some subset of moves which are objectively good and bad and - as a general principle - exposing your king unnecessarily is a bad move because the vast majority of the time it will not achieve your goal.
17:06 "these disagreements can be CLINICALLY solved as long as we agree on SOMETHING" fair point. but if everything is a human invention, and we can't progress without some kind of ultimate value structure/ philosophical bedrock how is that functionally different from "God"? genuinely. btw I like Alex. He seems nice.
At 5:45 Destiny is wrong. Something is NOT not objective because an individual could disagree. That doesn't make anything not objective. Disagreement is not the indicator that something is entirely subjective. I think that is exactly what most of redditors get wrong lol
Idk bc if hypothetically one person presented a logical argument why grape is okay or why owning a slave is okay even if the argument was somehow unbeatable I would still say it’s wrong regardless of it’s logical stance
@@vincearevalo2149 I think a fundamental moral statement is like a logical statement in that its truth doesn’t depend on your belief that it is right or wrong. Not all moral statements are like that, "slavery is wrong" for instance is not a fundamental moral statements, it is derived from fundamental moral statements.
I always found that question interesting, but only from a theoretical standpoint. Because nowadays I feel like, in practice at least, it does not matter if morality is subjective or objective. I mean, let's just imagine we had undeniable proof that morality is objective. However such proof would look like. Let's assume we have a mathematical formula that proves that murder is good or ok. Or we discovered a new law of physics that tells us murder is good. What would that change? Would people really go out an murder people on the basis of some abstract formula? Sure, *some* people might use that as a justification for their crimes, but those are the people that would have probably done the same if we didnt know that murder is ok. The average person would not murder. Why? Because our feeling and emotions, the way we FEEL about those things matter more than any logical argument. If I don't fundamentally *think* that something is the right thing to do, I'm not going to do that. I need to feel that it's the right thing to do in order to do anything. It goes the other way around as well. I don't think people like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bunder would've stopped killing if you showed them that it's objectively wrong, because they would still be emotionally convinced that what they do is ok. An abstract, dry and logical formula is simply too far away from our emotional needs. We even see a familiar phenomenon in politics when it comes to truth. A politician can have the best arguments, backed up by numbers and graphs and what have you, and that is good and useful, but if he can't convince his potential voters on a personal/emotional level, he will have a hard a very hard time. We can have the most efficient solutions to a problem, if we think that solution is *morally* wrong, we won't use it. That's why propaganda was, is and will always be a HUGE part in politics and everywhere where big decision are made.
I don't think you've really examined what it means for us to discover suddenly that 'murder was good'. If I can borrow Alex's analogy, this would be like saying what if maths was wrong and 1 + 1 = 3. We've built and been able to achieve so much based on 1 + 1 = 2 that I can't even imagine what that life begins to look like. What if murder was objectively good is basically the same thing.
@@mannyogu8124 With math in particular it's a bit easier to see what the problem would be. If 1+1 would suddenly be 3, our buildings would collaps and nothing would work anymore. But what EXACTLY would happen if murder was objectively good? Because math is something outside of human actions. If it were wrong with our math we would HAVE to adapt to it and see how we function as a species when 1+1 is 3.....but we don't have to adapt to a different kind of morality, we woul still be able to do what we think it good. Unless you have a good example of what bad things an objective morality that proves that murder is ok/good would do to us that WE can't stop.
@@JohnCena8351 with respect, you're still not really thinking of what it means for murder to suddenly be good. We'd have a lot of explaining to do, if murder were a good. We ought to murder. Can you imagine a life were it would be a good thing to murder as much as right not it's good thing that we don't murder?
@@mannyogu8124 I mean 1. it wouldn't really change anything, because murder wouldn't suddenly be good, it would've always be good. We would've just discovered that, this is what the whole discussion is all about. It's a very abstract thing, but I think I can imagine a world like this. It's hard to determine what "good" would mean in that context. Like, what is that "good" that we ought to seek out? (That's one of the reasons I think morality is subjective btw) Let's say people who get murdered go to paradise and that makes murder good. I could still choose to say I don't want to go to that paradise, I wanna be here. We see that in religious people that grief after a loved one dies even tho they think that person is now with god. Simply because we naturally *feel* as if the death of a loved one is bad, even tho there is no reason to believe that. I just think we could build a lot of rules around an objective morality. We know that people naturally prefer not to be murdered, so we can give every human the right to not get murdered. Exactly the same thing we do right now. Maybe I'm missing something, but what concrete thing would force us to change our current behaviour regarding morality?
@@JohnCena8351 first off, your world were murder meant you went to paradise wouldn't necessarily make paradise okay, it might make assisted suicide obviously okay but no matter how good a place is, right now, it seems terrible to force someone to go anywhere even if it were better for them. We have built a lot of rules around objective morality. They are our laws. I can see how in practice it doesn't matter to any one person but this point where Alex says we can ignore certain people from the conversation is a strong one for me. People who believe in subjective morality are understandably squirmish about saying to certain cultures that some of their practices is wrong. It's certainly an area to tread with humility
Stevens belief system seems kind dangerous to me in a climate where young men are his core audience and they are feeling increasingly lonely and are easily radicalized. Part of that is their inability to see value in things like emotional intelligence, empathy, effective communication, etc. If you go into these spaces, they need a source and a statistic for every damn thing and normal human interactions don’t work like that. Steven being like, we can’t prove if something is morally right or wrong with data, therefore nothing is morally right or wrong, seems very scary in the hands of an incel because p3d0philia is rampant in those spaces. Now I know that he argues against these red pill/manosphere asshats and he does so very effectively and it’s amazing to watch but his ideas still seem pretty dangerous. I know that I way oversimplified his take so if I’m wrong, please let me know.
From what I've seen of him, my guess is he probably wouldnt advocate his own world view just like he wouldn't advocate his own relationship style on young men.
@@kabelomakanatlengsundra456 agree but that’s so problematic…moral frameworks are about how to interact with other people. How can you say “I don’t recommend you adopt this framework of how to treat others” It’s permissible on a relationship level because it’s solely between two+ people
From my expierience the bigots, bullies, opressors, etc. are more likely to believe that one objective morality exist and it's exactly what they believe in.
@@bbiggie97 It isn't about "everything goes". It's about acknowledging that your moral believes aren't absolute. That they're opinion. Bigots not only kill for their opinions, they force others to share them, and call these that oppose them 'evil'. I think most of them DO believe that their opinions are objective fundamental way how things should be.
“Consider that the love of divine charity is so closely joined in the soul with perfect patience, that neither can leave the soul without the other. For this reason (if the soul elect to love Me) she should elect to endure pains for Me in whatever mode or circumstance I may send them to her. Patience cannot be proved in any other way than by suffering, and patience is united with love as has been said. Therefore bear yourselves with manly courage, for, unless you do so, you will not prove yourselves to be spouses of My Truth, and faithful children, nor of the company of those who relish the taste of My honor, and the salvation of souls.” -St. Catherine Of Siena, p. 10
I'd love someone to explain to me how it's possible for nothing to exist outside my mind but yet other people can teach me things I know nothing about. Is my brain able to know something without knowing it knows it on such a large scale. I find that hard to understand.
Old Four Horsemen: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett. New four Horsemen: Sam Harris, Cosmic Skeptic, Destiny, Rationality Rules
@@TrideepNagg fair point. Okay. The fifth. But he was more in his atheist expirence RUclips scene and not sharing stages around town like the others 4 who were also co appearing at events together. Not even sure if they knew who Matt was at that point. Maybe they did. But we’re expanding beyond the original four, i would include totally include Matt and Penn Jillet among others. But I would say, almost like defining wf’s transition into wwf and then wwe, todays torch carrying atheists to my mind would be Steven woodford (rationality rules), Alex O’Connor (cosmic skeptic). And to broaden things slightly more, Shelly Kagan (Yale professor of ethics) debates William lane Craig on Is God Necessary for Morality, i would include into the bubble. Shit Alan watts to take it home
Did it ever occur to anti-realists that they (the observer/thinker) might also not exist? Yes, I think therefore I am, but the self of one person might be just as much of an illusion as the self of others. Eventually, it is a question of probability. Even if no-one really exists, can one realistically take the risk to assume that one's actions have no real consequences, that they do not harm others? That one's choices do not take away someone other's choices? I would say it is unreasonable to take that risk.
I think partially it depends on how you define your terms. In utilitarianism, good is "that which is valued" and bad is "that which is not valued". There are brain states (physical, objective states of matter) which correspond to valuing something or not. With a sufficiently advanced science of the brain and of conscious states, we could provide a total ordering over such states, to say "this state of the universe is better than this other one" in every case. You can of course ask "but does that definition of good get us what we want out of an ethical framework?" To a utilitarian this sounds tautological - if an ethical framework gets us what we want, by definition what we want is what we value and therefore good. But just like with mathematics, Godel showed you have to start with some foundational axiom, which cannot be proven from within the system. But I don't hear many people arguing about whether or not mathematics is objective... It does what we want, so who cares!
@@agentdarkboote people do argue if mathematics are objective and I am personally much more willing to believe that. If I understand your argument right, you propose that subjective vs objective morality doesn't matter, at least in that utilitarian framework. If so, I agree. But what I am asking is, assuming that objective morality exist, how you distinguish more true morality from false. What tests do you conduct to discover that murder or eating shellfish are vile immoral acts?
@@paulster185 it is more of a futuristic test than we are capable of at the moment, but essentially you're looking for the value attributed to the conscious states brought about by each instance. Right now, we have to assume what causes suffering or well being. Some such questions are approximately empirically testable, some won't be for a while.
@@agentdarkboote "more futuristic tests" is a cop-out, obtuse way to say " no idea". The question you skipped is this: How do I know that suffering is morally wrong? How can I check this? In subjective morality it is quite simple: morality is evolved trait, and it is beneficial for genes to carry further this kind of morality. Subjective morality predicts different moral outlooks, moral myopia, change of what is moral depending on environment, that morals will be mostly the same as what is beneficial for the genes, and that in suddenly (from evolutionary perspective) changed environment, like modern world, many of moral instincts will became maladaptive. Oh, and that animals do have morals.
@@paulster185 oh no that's easy I already answered that one. In utilitarianism it is definitionally true. Like asking "how do I know all bachelors are unmarried" or "how do I know all triangles have three sides". Something is good if it is valued, something is bad if it is not valued. Nobody values suffering (not the same as pain or struggle, some people value those) by definition, therefore it is bad. Why is that a good moral framework? Because it gets us what we want (ie what we value) out of a moral framework, again, by definition. I thought you were asking how could we test to see how good or bad an action was. My answer to THAT is either by reasoning about what we know causes suffering to get an approximation, or in the extreme limit which would get you a quantitative answer: a futuristic test, specifically one that could scan every individual neuron for its state, so that we could piece together what the conscious state associated with that arrangement of matter is. Thanks for being **so darned charitable** in your interpretation though 🙄 Edit: and I should say, utilitarianism predicts all of those behaviors you mentioned too, it allows for them to have evolved, because evolution is responsible for what we value and do not value. But it pegs goodness and badness to physical states of brains, which in practice are not currently measurable but may some day be. And in the shorter term it allows us to reason by analogy about what seems to be causing suffering or well-being in other minds, which is not perfect, but is a lot better than what we tend to do.
Even if we trust our sense data, we are epistemically obliged to synthesize all that data into the most parsimonious theory possible. That is, when we see or feel two different things, we should try and come up with a common explanation for both of them, instead of assuming they are each a fundamental kind of truth. And so, we should assume that moral facts are reducible to physical facts, and our moral perceptions have a physical explanation, if that is at all plausible (and it seems awfully plausible to me).
Why not compare moral value judgements to all other "value" judgements, e.g. economic value? Can we say that gold is objectively more valuable than apples? There might be rare situations where apples would be more desireable, but generally the whole world would agree with gold's higher value.
This clip is taken from Within Reason episode 32 with Destiny, available in full here: ruclips.net/video/3VhHtPJhhRM/видео.html
Hey Alex, would you have a discussion with Matt Dillahunty or TJump?
@@erenyeager9371 Dillahunty would be a great conversation. TJump tho? Ick.
@@madsquishypanda2916 TJump does seem to me to have very low sales-man or academic/P.C.-debater quality. Regardless, all morality boils down to attempting to achieve desired goals which depends on knowing the cause-and-effect relationships that we discover through science. This is true of BOTH utilitarianism and deontology (since you have to "discover" what deontological principles are good in the first place, you kind of have to utilitarianly test them first). Otherwise, everyone is just relying on subjective feelings alone.
Alex, you didn’t do very well here. You seem to be arguing the consequent. You don’t like subjective morality so, let’s just called it objective? Huh?
@@AsixA6 Morality is objectively based in well-being, bodily autonomy, and informed consent. We then build a set of ethics in respect to these goals. You can reject these fundamentals, as flat-earthers reject the fundamentals of science, but we will mock and exclude you from moral discussions, as scientists mock and exclude flat-earthers.
Flat-earthers still benefit greatly from scientific advancement. Amoral/immoral people will still benefit from moral progress.
Humans are really good at dehumanizing people which causes me to be very concerned by a framework that only gives moral consideration to that which is considered human.
Yet science basically stops them from dehumanizing people by sheer definition. So, fear it or not, they can't dehumanize without appealing to various unpopular anti-sciences or unpopular pseudo-sciences. In that later case, science just has to out-science them like it always does. Sure, it requires a lot of sustained effort; but hey, so does everything else worth keeping.
This is the real lesson that religion teaches us. Let's agree to disagree.
I guess I’d argue that what’s morally right is also beneficial in all aspects of life. In the same way what’s beneficial to human flourishing in other facets of life such as health also connects to morality.
My point being that all these areas are interconnected and is just one part of observing the whole.
I think part of AI alignment should be making sure that a hyper intelligent AGI considers itself human. I think the definition of "human" will definitely expand in an optimistic future so that regular people, modified people/cyborgs, uplifted creatures, clones, and advanced artificial minds all count as human, or at least partially human, so that we all consider each other as part of the same thing.
And what stops the humans to label the other humans any other way to justify their cruelty towards other?
Dehumanization is as I see it a symptom rather than a cause of something
I still can’t believe that we got a crossover like this
🤮Steven "Destiny" [Lastname-pending] is such a narcissistic personality-cult diva (like every live-streamer, I suppose) that it's rather hard to believe he actually had some calm good takes and nuanced criticisms, but he did, so good for him (other than his non-science "psych-critical" semi-psychopathological stuff about our delicious and nutritious animals not sensing "real" qualia of pain; I hope he just meant that humans are the only animals capable of adding suffering to pain which can make the pain worse).
I'm glad Alex "CosmicSkeptic" O'Conner has been able to improve his health by adding some meat-product into his diet like obligate-carnivore cats and other obligate-omnivores do. Too bad his body was not able to tolerate beans/meat-replacements like most choice-vegans can. It must have been psychologically hurtful to find out he happens to be one of those minority of humans that are obligate-omnivores rather than just the majority of people which are facultative-omnivores.
It’s like watching a WWE Wrestler beat up a disabled kid in a wheelchair.
😅
@@killgriffinnow wtf does it mean?
Yeah it was actually pretty good.
I'm definitely with Destiny here. I don't think "the earth is flat" and "murder isn't wrong" are on the same level. Even if you believed that actually the world is a simulation or whatever, you could still say that "in this simulation, the earth is round". I don't think statements like 2+2=4 are really affected by whether reality is truly real. Even if this is a "pseudo-reality", we can still find rules that this "pseudo-reality" follows.
Morality is complex. Yes, I think most people would agree that murder is wrong. But there is nuance to this statement. I don't think people murder because they think that murder isn't wrong. They simply find a justification for murder. I think most people would be fine with murdering Hitler for example. So, is murder really wrong? I would say it depends. Generally yes, but there are exceptions. "Justified murder" does exist. But also, not everyone agrees with that justification. Like, someone might say that killing Hitler wouldn't be justified because we could also arrest him. Is one person more "objectively correct" in a complex situation like that?
Also, when it comes to questions like gay marriage, I don't think you can really prove that it's "morally right" by simply citing statistics. I personally think gay marriage would be right even if people in gay marriage weren't as happy as people in straight marriage. But someone else might say that there is something about traditional marriage that's sacred, and changing the definition of marriage is a slippery slope. Changing this tradition creates uncertainty and the feeling of "instability". We no longer know who's a man and who's a woman, and what it even means to be a man/woman. I don't think citing statistics about the happiness of gay people would change the mind of someone who thinks like that, because their opposition to gay marriage was never about the happiness of individual people. They don't think gay marriage is wrong because it creates unhappiness. They think gay marriage is wrong because it's an attack on tradition and creates instability.
All in all, I don't think morality is universal. Yes, there are certain basic things that basically everyone agrees with. But not everyone values the same things to the same degree. To some people, safety is a lot more important than individual freedom for example. To some people, tradition is really important. Why should we only value "well-being"? Also, there's the question about individualism vs collectivism - should we value the well-being of the individual or the well-being of the community as a whole? Maybe someone following their individual dreams actually doesn't lead to the greatest amount of well-being? Maybe we should not let people choose to follow their dreams, and instead we should tell them what's best for them?
"I don't think 'the earth is flat' and 'murder isn't wrong' are on the same level. Even if you believed that actually the world is a simulation or whatever, you could still say that 'in this simulation, the earth is round'." And if causing undo suffering to humans is wrong, than murder is objectively. They are on the same level. The same logic that allows me to assume that we don't live in a simulation is the same logic that allows me to assume that causing undo suffering is wrong, being that there isn't any. I just assume it. Even if causing undo suffereing isn't wrong, murder would still cause undo suffering, the same way that the earth would still be round in the percieved world even if it wasn't real.
I do agree that Alex's example of statistics for proving gay marrige is right is flawed. The real reason why it is objectively right is that it doesn't cause undo suffering. If it did cause undo suffering, as it would if a god that sent people to hell for being gay existed, for example, then it wouldn't be right.
Your other arguments mainly have to do with the fact that we are ignorant about many factors at play that would influence the validity of specific moral systems. For example, if you could objectively prove that collectivism would lead to more well being that individualism, than individualists would be wrong. But you cant prove that as each and every individual person and their experiences and every single decicision or discovery ever made as a result of the adoption of either system are all variables that would influence which one would actually maximize wellbeing and we simple can't account for all of them, though we can make our best guess.
Your other point about traditionalism also doesn't make much sense to me. People that value tradition do so because they think it's what's best(i.e. what will maximize well-being). If they didn't think that, they wouldn't value tradition.
@@caveholeperson4274 The problem I have with your response to OP is "undue suffering" smuggles assumptions and premises. They specifically give the example of Hitler or insert your own example where illegally killing someone would by your beliefs/fact cause sufficiently less "undue suffering" to justify illegally killing someone. All that matters is that it is possible to justifiably illegally kill someone and "murder is wrong" isn't an objective truth for all murders.
I get what you're going for but you should replace your use of the word murder with kill, because murder literally means unjustified killing.
@@ennuiii Who determines whether the killing has a valid justification, though?
The legal definition of murder has mostly to do with intent. If you kill someone by accident, it's a manslaughter. But if you planned to kill them, it's a murder (not counting self-defence). I like this definition, because it lacks the subjective element of whether it was "justified", and it makes a clear distinction between accidentally killing someone and intentionally killing them.
The reason we don't accept moral or ethical statements as easily as we accept the statement that external reality exists is because the ethical statements require belief in the existence of external reality to begin with and then make additional assumptions on top of that. And while as soon as you accept the external world as being real you can find mountains of empirical data to support that, you can never find solid empirical evidence that a particular ethical statement is correct or incorrect.
The only rule is that there are no rules. That's the truth. Morality and ethics are human constructs..we establish these concepts to create some degree of order amongst us, because we are so intelligent that we can make wild decisions that are not beneficial to the collective but are in fact harmful to us as a species. So we establish a framework of ethics and morality so that people behave themselves
I like your point. Another way one might look at the difference is that no one disputes ‘sense data’ just what sense data actually is. Whereas with morality there isn’t ‘moral data’ that we all agree is even there to dispute its ontological status.
I don't think that's quite it. It's more akin to this:
"Some people believe the universe is made from atoms, some people think the universe is made from stories".
The arguments about physical nature can be more robustly argued, without complications from individual biases.
The arguments about morals doesn't have a framework to argue, and will always be influenced by subjective bias.
The reason for this is, most likely we are intelligent enough to quantify intelligence (ie IQ test) but we are NOT wise enough to quantify Wisdom. If we were, then we could create a moral framework which is based on objectivity, and have a framework to argue inside, and not have to rely on subjectivity or be at it's mercy.
I think the difference is in the grounding. "The ocean exists" can be affirmed because we can establish the definition of what an ocean is or could be. "Murder is wrong" can't be affirmed without defining what "wrong" means. The only definitions that I can think of that are grounded coherently are intrasubjective: "what murder results in makes me feel bad", and intersubjective: "what murder results in makes me and the cohort of people who feel similarly to me about murder, feel bad". And this applies to every aspect of what a murder can result in. It makes friends and family of the murder bereaved at the loss of the presence of that person. It destroys the source of economic output of that person, which causes a lower level of unhappiness for those who relied on that output. Punishment wise, it makes the murderer feel bad if they are caught and punished. Even if there were (a) god(s) that punished your soul for once being attached to a body that decided to murder, in an afterlife, the badness would still be the loss of happiness experienced by the soul in the afterlife. So it is subjective no matter how you think about it.
@@TheRepublicOfUngeria on the topic of murder there are also circumstances where murder is acceptable by people. Like in terms of self defense. If you kill someone who's trying to kill you, that's considered Moral and Okay
On the belief about whether the outside exists, I love a story I heard from Zen. I student comes to a master and says, "I've been studying philosophy and can prove you and the outside world don't exist." The master slapped him hard across the face and said,"I'm sure you can."
hahaha i dont condone hitting people but sometimes they need it😎👊
Such a perfect Zen story!
Outside of whom, the student? So, why prove it to master, if master is an illusion? 🤨
@@АртурИванов-ч9э cause he figured it out!!!! not...
😂
I might be wrong, but here's how I see this situation:
In order to have any meaningful conversation, you're gonna need to make a set of epistemological assumptions (the world is real, our sensations are correct etc.). Without them you won't be able to have any meaningful conversation, whether it's about morality or about physical facts. So this is our Step 1.
After Step 1, in conversations about the physical world, you go straight to the evidence, tests etc. that prove or disprove physical facts. As for the moral conversations, you're gonna need to make a second set of assumptions, the Step 2 (murder, stealing, raping are wrong etc.). And this is exactly the difference that makes morality subjective and science objective: both need Step 1, but only the morality needs Step 2. Maybe I missed something tho, I've slept 3 hours...
I would agree with observation I just wouldn't say that it makes science objective and morality subjective - I look at it from the perspective of taking the necessary assumptions as true for me and leaving those unnecessary ones - while believing in external world and in my senses I perceive as crucial for survival the moral intuition (although it's the same as the other ones) doesn't seem that important in order to live.
Or, since you don’t know if anything is really real, instead of having meaningful conversation, you could just sing, dance, laugh and love. Except for the dreadful work you need to do to survive every day.
Good point there. But I think Destiny's stance here would be something like the step 2 assumptions you're making are actually quite different from the step 1 assumptions, particularly when the former can be rigorously tested against even having assumed that these are agreed assumptions. However, the step 2 ones here can't be rigorously tested against even if agreed upon, for that you can very easily interpose exceptions in certain scenarios that they are not, in fact or in ethics, wrong.
So ultimately this boils down to the on the balance of probability argument: assumptions about the physical world are far more likely to be tested and therefore a consensus is much easier to result. Assumptions about moral "facts" are much harder to have the same effect, hence moral objectivity (being an absolute term) is very hard to establish.
No. You can watch Sam Harris and Alex’s talk to see why. Accepting that external reality exists is the same thing as saying “good” can be translated to “well-being”. Puts both sides on all fours. From there we can make “moral” claims on whether something maximizes well-being or subtracts. There we have an abundance of evidence and sense data.
Well yeah your correct but I think the point is that if we are willing to make that first assumption beacuse it’s so obvious and 99% of humans agree on it then why aren’t we willing to make the second one?
The fact the second one requires the first one isn’t the point here, it’s just the fact that if we all go with the first one since it seems obvious why not apply that same logic to the second?
18:00 actually what destiny posited was very fair. our ability to run tests over and over and gets the same result is so much more reliable and satisfying than almost anything we can do for morals. morals seems like hope while for the physical existence feels testable.
we could be living in a similation true, but to me that's a huge cop out.
Completely agree. I just discovered this guy, have watched a number of his videos out of curiosity, and the more I watch, the more tiresome and pointless and full of crap he becomes, because his whole thing is endlessly, fruitlessly, meaninglessly, taking every topic under the sun and holding it to implicitly impossible logical/philosophical standards, talking in circles around even himself, and NEVER saying anything of any substance about anything, because he is so interminably obsessed with looking at all questions through this, ultimately incredibly silly, absolutist philosophical lens that cannot every see the forest for the trees and just have an actual conversation about any topic. It is maddening to me, and I can't believe he just does this same song and dance, interminably, and is able to find what he is doing and saying a worthwhile exercise that should be continued, or that he has a large audience who can listen to these "arguments" repeatedly, and never get an actual real discussion about anything, when he insists on boiling everything down to this level.
When we run tests and get the same result over and over, we’ve reached a conclusion and the thing being tested demonstrated it’s reliability.
Why can’t we do the same with morality? Test and probe at it until we have a set of morals that exists in non-contradiction to all observers within the set? A universal morality that never demonstrates that its unreliable; but when it does we change something about it, our universal RELATION to it, to understand the universal idea of Good more, to include what was excluded, so it can once again demonstrate its reliability.
@@jedgrahek1426
Calm down.
@@swerzye4472 I think the problem is that everybody even people who think morality is objective - interpret the actual moral claims differently.
Like ok you say "murder is wrong" but you have no problem bombing children if you are on war with them. You simply redefine what murder is and there you go. Some would never do that and think all killing is wrong even ins self-defense. Some define abortion as murder some don't. Would you kill Hitler in 1942 if you had the chance - would that be good or bad? Most would say it is not bad.
OK but what in 1935 before he actually had done anyhing "really wrong". I mean he will do but he did not yet.
Lying is wrong. Ok. But lying to a murderer regarding the whereabouts of your family he wants fo kill is not. Almost everybody would agree with that.
But is lying to the police OK who want to find your brother who was dealing weed. Would it be wrong if he had hurt somebody or it was not weed but heroine.
If he was indeed a murder.
If you sit 100 people into a room I guarantee you if you ask questions long enough you will have 100 different sets of answers.
Not a cop out at all once you realize every field of study known to man is based off of axiomatic assumptions.
I think Hegel's response to scepticism still stands up. From the Introduction of the Phenomenology of Spirit (section 74):
"Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science [Science here means any form of systematic, rational study], which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognises something, it is hard to see why we should not turn around and mistrurt this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes something - a great deal in fact - for granted as truth, supporting its scrupples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute [meaning the perfect Truth] stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet it is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is exluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby qhat calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth."
This was really good. Destiny appeals to empiricism for justifying the objectivity of physical versus moral systems, Alex responds with sure, but our faith in the physical world is still grounded in the assumption that our sense data is accurate at all (That I’m not just some brain in a vat) so why not just extend that same somewhat arbitrary faith in the objectivity of physical systems to the objectivity of moral systems? We can doubt that the physical world exists (What if I’m a brain in a vat?), sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that we feel as though it does. Similarly, we can doubt the fact that objective morality exists, but that doesn’t change the fact that we feel strong intuition that it does. Basically Alex argues for a more pragmatic definition of objectivity-he doesn’t care if something “actually” exists independently of the mind, but just that something “practically” exists independent of the mind because our intuition informs us that it does. Destiny didn’t really have a response for it. Great debate!
Well we have no problem saying mathematics exist because we can agree on axioms, or we can change axioms if something is proven incorrect. But the system is essentially the agreement. Aside from something like the Ten Commandments, how can you define a an objective morality, how is it even finite? If we even agree on axioms but the elements it deals with are subjective senses and interpretations it just seems like an impossibility.
_"Similarly, we can doubt the fact that objective morality exists, but that doesn’t change the fact that we feel strong intuition that it does."_
Okay, but while someone may have a strong intuition about certain moral questions, this same intuition is not shared by everyone. I don't think everyone bases their morality on the exact same principles. Sure, well-being is one of them, but not the only one (or more like, well-being is a really broad concept, and there are different kinds of well-being). I don't think morality is universal. Sure, people do agree on certain really basic things like "murder is wrong" and "stealing is wrong". But that doesn't stop them from doing those things, because they'll find justifications for murder or stealing. In other words, some other moral belief overrides the "wrongness" of murder or stealing in those cases.
So, when is a murder justified? There will be a lot of different opinions on that topic, even if everyone accepts the idea that murder is generally wrong. Some people would argue that murder is always wrong - there is no situation where it's justified. Other people might argue that a lot of people would deserve to be murdered. And of course there are also psychopaths who don't even think murder is wrong. But we don't even have to talk about psychopaths - even if we talk about sane people, there are still going to be a lot of differing views on the topic.
I guess my point is, even if we could objectively say "murder is wrong", real life situations are always more complex than that. And it's in those more complex situations where people's morality actually starts to matter. That's when there will be a lot of different moral views on things. So, my point is, what's the actual value in saying that "murder is objectively wrong", when in real life basically every situation is going to be much more complex than that? Is there an objective answer to all of these issues? (Because I don't think there is - I think that depends on how much you value certain things. For example should we give murderers a second chance, or would it be justified to murder a murderer? I don't think that question has one objectively correct answer to it.)
Like sure, we may come up with an universal law that says that murder is wrong. But I think a more important thing is, what should be the consequence of murdering someone? That's when people's morality actually starts to matter. We can all agree that murder is wrong, but what should we do to murderers?
All in all, if everyone feels as if their own morality is somehow objective, but also people's moral views vary quite a lot, whose morality should we treat as the "objectively correct" one? Because people definitely don't have the same moral views. Just look at the abortion debate for example. Which side of the debate people are on depends on how much they value the mother's bodily autonomy vs the potential child's life.
My point is, moral questions are quite complex. They are usually a conflict of many different values, and your answer to the moral dilemma has to do with how much importance you put on each value. Let's take another example - the refugee debate. Those who are for stricter border control place more value on safety. Those who are more welcoming to refugees place more value on helping other people. No matter how much you talk about "open border policies" bringing more potential crime to the country, it won't change people's minds, because they still think it's more important to help those people, even if that leads to a bit higher crime rate, because otherwise a lot of innocent people are going to die. And similarly, no matter how much you talk about the importance of helping refugees, and how those people are going to die if you don't help them, it won't change people's minds, because they still think that their own safety is more important. So, what is the objective answer here? Is there a moral obligation to help refugees? Is there a limit to how many refugees should be accepted?
It's not that the side that's more concerned with safety doesn't care about innocent people's lives, or that the side that's more concerned with innocent people's lives doesn't care about safety. It's just what people see as more important. Some people think their own safety is more important. Other people think helping innocent people is more important. (I think nationality also plays a part in it. Some people think nationality is an important thing - if the question was about helping citizens of their own country, they would be a lot more open to it, but since the refugees aren't citizens yet, then it's really not their obligation to help those people, and they should look for help elsewhere. But other people think that nationality doesn't really matter - people should be helped regardless of where they come from. I just don't think there's an objective answer here - there are so many different factors at play, and it all depends on your values. Which values do you see as the most important ones? And that's where people differ. Even if they had basically the same values, they might still disagree on what the most important values are.)
@@MaggaraMarine The refugee problem is a little more complex than that. Pro-refugee advocates have never conceded that bringing in refugees increases crime rate, and I believe they cite good data for that point. At a core practical level it's more just a conflict of interest between the business classes who want more cheap labour, and a subset of the working class who get screwed over by that. Then on the periphery you have more higher order value conflicts, but none of it is so idealised as 'safety vs helping others'. Plenty of people just want closed borders because they're racist, and plenty of others only want open borders as a vanity position just to feel good about, because it makes no difference to their lives one way or the other.
@@Hankblue Okay, but basically all of this is irrelevant to my main point. It was just a random example and an oversimplification of the issue, I know. My main point was that there isn't one objective answer to questions like this. Even if it was as simple as safety vs helping others, some people would place more value on safety, whereas others would place more value on helping others. Which one is the "morally correct" answer?
But in reality, it's even more complex than that. There aren't just two different positions - there are a lot of many different things that affect decisions like that. It's a lot more complex than "murder is objectively wrong" (that was the example given in the video). That's my point.
U can argue with that same argument for God's existence since it is intuitive. So the question would be, then are all our intuitive beliefs true or supposed to be considered as axioms? And if not, how do we differentiate which is one are objective or true, what would be the standard to choose based on? If they are all objective or can be considered as axioms, then God's existence is as objective as objective morality.
It seems to me that a personal experience that generates an ethical/moral reaction is more like a personal reaction to art rather than your sense experience that generates an empirical "truth" like the earth orbits the sun. So I might "feel" that murder is wrong (like I love Turner's paintings) whereas you might say that murder has no moral value (you are uncaring about Turner's paintings) and someone else might say murder is moral (they hate Turner's paintings). Whereas we might all agree that the scientific (sense) data we have seen indicates that the Earth orbits the sun (to first order). There seems to be a difference between these 2 approaches.
You kinda missed Alex's point. Of course we migh all agree that scientific data indicates that the Earth orbits around the sun. So long of course as we all *assume* that our data is reliable, that our senses correctly interpret the physical world, that the physical world exists, that rules of logic are true and so on. Most of these assumptions rely precisely on our intuition (eg. something can't simultaneously be and not be) and so our morals rely on our intuition.
@@Exchromer but no most don’t rely on intuition most rely on precise repeatable results that can be tested. It’s why things like ocams razor and neutons flaming laser sword exist
@@Dizzy-4 Science has changed over time, just like our ideas of morality. I could point to human rights as evidence of it's utility. FYI, I have a science background and believe the scientific method is the best sensor we have for exploring the natural world. However, I also acknowledge that when you boil science down, and as Alex alludes, you arrive at a point where you're pulling yourself up by your own hair (Münchhausen trilemma).
@@Exchromerof course, but that sort of solipsism is useless. It makes for pretty arguments when trying to compare the real material universe to objective morality but it's not really worth considering
Destiny may have been better served by approaching this debate from a slightly anthropological position. Although on first appearance, it seems like humanity has a very defined and shared set of moral beliefs about certain behaviours that transcend all cultures (e.g., murder or theft), defining both in the realm of actual social practice can be slightly trickier. There are many instances whereby taking someone's property or killing them will be seen as unethical by many people, but not by others. In fact, entire cultures have been built around behaviours other societies consider abhorrent. Of course, this still presupposes some idea of shared morality that is debatable regardless of what is at stake, but it serves to muddy the waters considerably if we are to take a pragmatic view on how we arrive at the premise of this video
True. But on the flip side of that, the vast majority of countries on earth outlaw slavery, where once it was ubiquitous.
Even where you have major disagreements, it's not that we don't generally share the same values. We tend to just disagree a about degree.
I don't know... I feel like it all ultimately depends on how you define objective and subjective. People often claim that objective means that something is undeniable. But I don't think that is the meaning at all, that is a consequence of what it means to be objective.
An objective property is a property that exists within the object, that can be found within it by any independent observer, as long as they have the proper tools and understanding of how to extract that information. This is stuff like mass, material, electric charge and so on.
A subjective property however is a property that doesn't exist within the object itself, but exist within the mind of the people thinking about the object. There is no beautifulness within a flower or tastiness within an apple, it is only beautiful and tasty in the head of people thinking about those objects. One is about the object, the other one is about the subjects analysing the objects.
And so even if you are a brain in a vat, and you are experiencing the world through code or whatever. The code is still an object that can be examined and determine their objective properties. Even if the moon is made out of code, or if it stopped existing tomorrow, the code of the moon has properties like its mass at a given time. But if you think it is pretty, that is not something found within the moon, but found within your brain. On how your brain reacts when it sees the moon. The moon is only pretty when someone thinks it is pretty.
So following this definitions... I think it is pretty clear that morality cannot possibly be objective, because there is no rightness or wrongness that can be discovered and studied within actions. A murder has objective properties, like the weapon, the time of death, things that can be discovered and independently verified by observers. But the "wrong" part, is something that exists only within the brains of people analysing said murder. A murder is just wrong when someone is there to think it is wrong. It is certainly possible that a different species with different chemical make up than ours, simply cannot see why murder would be wrong. Certainly some animals don't appear to believe it. They are only right or wrong when there is somewhere there to think about them in those terms. Otherwise that property cannot be ever found within those objects.
The subject object dualism is a semantic problem that needs to be overcome imo.
@NicolasSchaII I truly think it boils down on whether you are investigating the properties of the object of analysis (objective) or if you are investigating the properties of the subjects interacting with the object (subjective).
Objective properties are properties that anyone can find within the object.
Subjective properties are only found in the brains of the subjects looking at the objects.
The apple has a mass, this is one objective property that can be measured by studying it.
But you cannot study the apple and find its "prettyness" or "tastiness", those don't exist in the apple, only in the brains of people eating apples.
objective must be something that is not subjected to any specific interpretation or bias. therefore, objective must hold this "divine" position of being beyond our touch because even by discovering an objective fact, our mere gaze corrupts and distorts its "divinity" metaphorically. like with the experiment of the observer in quantum mechanics.
we for sure shouldn't compromise on this definition to make it more practical for us human just because it is so unaplicable. we can refer to things as inter-subjective or objective subjected to our comprehension and interpretation.
Sure the basis of ethics is subjective, but we say it's objective relative to the goal that we invented for our selves which is human well-being something that developed in us through evolution. Murder is objectively wrong the same way it's wrong to use contraceptives if you want to concieve a child , it doesn't work to achieve the intended goal
If the basis is subjective then the whole thing is.
@@21stcenturyrambo16 Chess as in the game is not objective, it does not exists in the real world is just a game, there are chess boards, chess matches but in the wild chess doesn't exist, is just a game that we invented and changed the rules, if we have the goal of winning the chess match or even not losing the game, then there are objectively right and wrong choices that would allow us to get to that goal
@@21stcenturyrambo16yes, but IF, and only if, you can get people to commit to the same goals, then you can objectively evaluate actions with respect to those goals
Not exactly perfect, because people will evaluate things differently, and people won’t ever all agree on goals, but it’s a starting point considering most humans DO tend to generally converge on the simplest goals (lack of pain, seeking happiness, freedom, health etc)
@@anonymouszebra1239 What wouldnt be objective by that definition? If we all just agreed that Islam, Christianity, Buddhism is true is that also objective? And who cares what humans tend to gravitate towards? People tend to also gravitate towards a lot of bad stuff.
@@21stcenturyrambo16 Category error. This isn't about agreement or deeming the most popular idea objective. Ethics is about real effects of harm done to sentient beings. It's not about abstract ideas of imaginary sky daddy.
And yes, objectivity and subjectivity are based on perspective and method in order to arrive at a conclusion. You're correct that everything can be seen through an objective or subjective lens. This is not extraordinary nor absurd. This is very base level.
I would suggest that answering the ethical question is more fundamental to human-relations than the high level scientific one. Believing in General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics is a lot more difficult than reaching fundamental agreements in regards to the value of human life.
Is it really? I think it's the other way around, actually
Even if you give it to ethics and say that we should just assume pleasure is good and suffering is bad, it doesn't get us very far if we wanna make a conclusive theory and not just live our lives in a way that we expect is morally okay-ish. It gives us nothing about their relation or any other possible goods and bads, like living in general, consciousness, etc. And just pleasure and suffering don't seem enough to reason up from. And then I have to give it to Steven. As far as I can think of, there doesn't seem to be tests or experiments you can do that really give you conclusive answers. You might ask a billion people that all agree, but you might just have asked the chinese population about eating dogs or what have you.
That's where tjumps moral theory comes in I think. Morality has little to do with pain or pleasure. It has everything to do with consent. The theory predicts simulations of multible AI systems with disparate values will converge on a morality based upon the consent of sentient wills. It also predicts if there are alien civilizations they will converge on a consent based morality. And lastly it predicts in the future something as simple as a rock naturally falling that hits someone unwillingly will be considered immoral.
The problem thers no objective truth in ethics or morals.
We have multiple things that is ethically wrong for no reason in the west. Then europe have difrent ethics and China have difrent ethics etc
@@inteallsviktigt The theory basically says objective morality is what collective morality is approaching. In the same way Newton looked at the movement of the planets to discover the principle of gravity. We can look at the movement of moral evolution and discover the principle of morality.
"Even if you give it to ethics and say that we should just assume pleasure is good and suffering is bad-"
That word-soup has nothing in common with ethics, or reasoning. Subjectivity does not allow for absolute definitions like that. There are good kinds of suffering, and there are bad kinds of pleasure.
In fact, I don't even know what are you trying to say, if anything at all.
@@inteallsviktigt ....therfore given the predictions come true. The consent view of morality is objectively true in the same way gravity is objectively true.
Not sure if I agree with Alex opening statement. Is intuition always unknowable? I think a lot of it is rooted in facts and observations of the world. Then he goes ahead by saying isn't that enough, by human intuition we know objectively that murder is wrong. That's where I begin to agree
Not sure what Alex’s point here is.
Yes at a fundamental level there is nothing that is truly objective, because even the concept of objectivity is a choice to believe in. Humans subjectively choose to believe in objectivity
The difference between this and moral truth, is that almost all humans believe in a similar concept of objectivity that can be appealed to. Most people do not have similar ethical systems
If someone thinks murder is ok, you could end that discussion by killing him. He won’t mind. It’s all ok.
So you think that murder is ok as long as the other party doesn't mind?
Well, I kinda agree with you.
Saying objective morals don’t exist doesn’t mean murder is ok. You can still argue against it. It’s just that on a scientific level it’s not objectively wrong (but it’s not right either)
@@linkalot7415 thanks pal, I was being flippant and disrespectful not making a serious argument.
@@linkalot7415 because science has no saying in that affair. Like Alex said at 16:00 or so
I have the answer. Since morality can be an evolutionary trait. You can't say "murder is wrong because all humans feel that way" that's a subjective morality based on evolutionary traits. Organisms are more effective in groups working together. That doesn't mean it's the "moral or right thing to do" it just means it's the best trait for evolution. Unless we see an organism that's intelligent that drosnt need to reproduce then ask if if murder is wrong we can't know if it's objective or a trait from evolution
I feel like when it goes this fundamental the difference between subjective and objective blurs out so much that you can argue anything as being objective. And it's exactly what Alex started doing while trying to make your internal feelings - moral intuitions - objective. The same thing can be said about any feeling.
its really just his vehicle to push veganism.
Yes, this is it!
This gives me hope that one day we can get a Steve Bonnell v Trent Horn debate
That would be crazy.
I assume you saw it right?
@@thetrib1 I did indeed. Sometimes dreams really do come true
@@michaelroy6630 nice lol
I've seen Alex's argument presented in a much simpler way by Matt Dillahunty.
In simple terms, it is definitely true that there is no way to prove or disprove the fundamental ideas of right & wrong. It is always a subjective framework.
You can, however, come to an agreement on a subjective GOAL for morality and then make objective observations in relation to that goal.
If we come to an agreement that morality/ethics should be to provide a system where as many humans (or whatever overall group you want to focus on) can have the highest level of happiness, health and freedom while experiencing the least amount of harm, oppression etc etc
Now within that system, we can make objective statements based on what helps to further that goal the most.
Murder causes extreme harm in that it literally kills someone, affects their families/friends, etc etc. At the same time it provides no direct benefit that outweighs the harm.
I am explaining it poorly as I unfortunately don't remember the exact wording he used and what specific podcast he said it on. Hopefully I got the idea across though.
You did Matt's tap dance perfectly. Neither you nor Matt can say murder is wrong objectively. Sad.
@@angelthman1659 what purpose does an objective morality even serve? Let's make the assumption that a moral standard exists in the universe objectively and independent of people. If it differs from the subjective mkral system i've come to determine is the best I can easily say that the world id better if we ignore this standard. I can just call my system Schmorality, and say that schmorality is better than morality.
@@angelthman1659nobody can though
In the study of systems, there are systems that have simple rules applying to individual units that result in emergent properties.
In systems composed of human individuals, i.e. a society, the simple rules that started us off were safe guarding of one's interests, and the emergent properties are ethics and morality.
Over time, there has been a feedback loop where the emergent properties got fed back into the individual's rule sets, creating an ongoing evolution of emergent ethics+morality.
You need to start from "is murdering me wrong?" as the axiom (maybe break it down even more)
You cannot start from "is murder wrong" as the axiom. (I've really just described the golden rule of course)
Destiny seemed so below the paygrade in this conversation. Great talk Alex!
As they say,
Destiny got destroyed in this debate
;)
As a fan of both of these content creators, I really didn’t see that. Maybe it’s cuz I watched the whole convo?
Did he? I watched the whole conversation and I am still not convinced objective morality exists.
@@hellodumzo I watched the whole convo, and I saw destiny as an idiot, but it IS destiny we're talking about.
@@baishihua Objective morality exists by necessity if you define objectivity as conceptual, not refering to some solid object. And it also exists if you don't define it as absolute, fundamental axiom.
The objectivity Destiny refers to is a category error, because by his logic absolutely nothing can ever be objective, including science (it's built up from fundamental values and experiences by subjective entities by necessity).
Which he obviously wont admit to because well... let's just say openly identifying as anti-realist is kind of removing yourself from any serious ethics conversation before it even started.
A good analogy would be the game of chess. The rules of chess are man made. They're subject to human interpretation. But once you accept the rules, there are objectively better ways to get to the goal of checkmate.
Would you define chess as subjective, because you first have to accept the rules of chess which are entirely arbitrary? If that were the case, then you should be able to beat Magnus Carlson or stockfish at about a 50% rate.
Morality functions pretty much like that (except there are many more pieces and more rules). The rules of morality might be arbitrary if you disconnect them entirely from the sentient experience, but once you accept that sentience exists and that it matters you're already in the realm of outcomes that are demonstrably better at achieving the goal of a better life or harm reduction.
And removing sentience from morality is like removing all hydrogen molecules from water and still calling it water, because the term water is arbitrary and a man made concept. It's intellectually dishonest at best.
Moral behavior only matters to social creatures in the same way language / signaling has utility to social creatures. Neither are thing creatures cope with like a rock or sunshine. Arguing over objective morals is like arguing over which word order is “real”. Seems more like a categorical mistake.
Perfect.
6:20 I think you missed the mark on this one. You can drive it back and say that there's no way to come to an answer without fundamental agreement, but you're missing the point of the argument. There is a potential for the end of the conversation in the case of physical argumentation. Even in the same school of philosophy, the same is not true. To put it on an even playing field, imagine a moral question being asked of humanists, or any other defined school of thought. Is there a philosophy that every advocate of said philosophy agrees with every other advocate about all the political or societal answers to moral questions?
Is there a point where there would be no question as to who is right? A basis for proof? Or would it be the same as theology, where the same arguments still happen between Christian schools of thought, branching infinitely until Humanism mimicks Christianity in becoming a school of thought that includes hundreds of mutually exclusive schools of thought all defining themselves as Christian/Humanism?
All morality (and all "good/true" beliefs really) boils down to attempting to achieve desired goals (including "mapping our beliefs" as close to reality as possible) which always depends on knowing the TOTAL UNIVERSAL cause-and-effect relationships that we discover well, and that is best ONLY through science. The fact that ALL useful philosophy/ethics/morals rely on science is true also of BOTH utilitarianism and deontology (since you have to "discover" what deontological principles are good in the first place, you kind of have to utilitarianly test them first). Otherwise, everyone is just relying on subjective feelings alone.
So if subjective morality is true and a person believes it’s good to be a racist, it’s good?
Interesting conversation. I wonder if the "sense" data for moral gut feeling is less concrete and harder to independently varify. People may think they feel that way, but how could we test that they do feel some way? How could we compare our feelings with each other? How could we know that the feeling comes from wrongness, since that is interpretation of the subject? In sense of data of some external reality, we could use specific tools, models and such to get more precise and independent data. While the subjective feeling of "wrongness" feels highly subjective and hard to test for.
On the other way i understand the idea of "smuggling" an assumption. Though I would simple think that, given that morality is much more discussed topic then the existance of reality, it's simple a convenient assumption not some contradiction. More like different degrees of how much you expect the common baseline of your subjective view of the objective world or morality is other people to hold.
There is no sense data for morality. Sense data exists to perceive objects in space. Morality isn't an object in space, it's an evaluative judgement about actions by humans based on expectations around standards of behavior.
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
His listeners knew what the cross meant: a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They didn’t think of the cross automatically in religious terms, as we do. They knew it in all of its awful power. Unless you crucify your ego, you cannot be my follower, Jesus says. This move-this terrible move-has to be the foundation of the spiritual life.
Bishop Robert Barron "Daily Gospel Reflection (05/27/23)"
Yes belief is an objective external world and ethical beliefs require some basic assumptions. One difference is with beliefs about the external world can be falsified in a way that ethical beliefs can not. It can not be proved the external world physical world is a consistent but assuming that it is and by using objective facts we have been able to create very useful descriptions of how the world is. Ethics on the other hand is full of dilemmas and problems with many possible answers and no clear method to determine which answer is best. I think that is because moral systems are not internally consistent because we make them up from the most subjective of stuff, our own wants and desires which often conflict, can change on a whim and are what we value most.
Big thumbs up for these two having exchanges
In everything one has to start with at least a few basic axioms. Even in mathematics, as Kurt Gödel proved, there are things we can KNOW are true but cannot prove...and so in all the sciences we start with the axiom that we can trust our senses (accounting, of course, for their limits in terms of sensitivity and such). It is true in ethics as well, one needs to start from at least one or two basic axioms. This is why Ben Franklin convinced Thomas Jefferson to change his original "sacred and undeniable" in the Declaration of Independence to "self evident." One has to start somewhere.
I think the clear advantage of starting with self evident axioms for ethics, rather than starting from a deity or deities, is that the self evident axiom is consistent, whereas deities are "persons" and thus whatever morality one gets from a deity or deities will be not just subjective but completely arbitrary.
I would argue the reason u can separate ethics from that logic is not lack of sense data but more so the fact that morality has has been selected by evolution to which is completely relative to our biological species meaning if we were another organism where things like murder would be to our evolutionary benefit then we would not find them immoral or not even comprehend it at all if the species brain is not as developed but it is all subjective to the organism
Semantics plays a major problem with ethics.. I think morality can be objective or subjective depending on the exact definition or perception of what it is.
You're right.
One way of looking at it, is to say let's judge a female and how pretty she is. That's pretty subjective, right? Yep. But let's say this girl is 28 years old, and we got all the girls aged between 18-38 and put them in a line. Let's say that's exactly 1.5 Billion people. Then we got every male in the world aged 18-38 years old, also exactly 1.5 Billion. And every male had a preference and scored the females from least attractive to most attractive. Now if you do the maths, that's a very large figure, BUT it is a finite amount. What that means is that based on complete chance, chaos and randomness, you would actually deduce who is narrowly the most attractive female in the population. AND due to seeing patterns in nature, if you were able to run the experiment, you would actually get strong tendencies, so it won't actually be a huge probability figure. It would be a bell curve, but there would be a decent handful of girls who scored nearly perfectly, and one of them would have narrowly edged out the rest.
What does this mean?
The significance is that we can solve for subjective opinions and deduce an objective answer. You could do that for which candy tastes best, perfume smells the nicest, which blanket feels best to the touch, or melody sounds the most charming.
Okay, but what does this have to do with Morality?
Well, morality is a deeply subjective topic. But based on the above thought exercise, it is theoretically possible (but practically difficult), to deduce the Objective Facts out of the Subjective Opinions. So if we crunched the numbers long and hard enough, we would be able to derive some answers, things we see repeating naturally, or converging, as to an objective consensus on morality. So while it might be impossible to have Divine Morality, or Absolute Morality, we could at least derive Objective Morality. We already have the intelligence to quantify intelligence (IQ test), we just don't have the collective wisdom to quantify Wisdom itself..... yet.
@@ekinteko "What that means is that based on complete chance, chaos and randomness, you would actually deduce who is narrowly the most attractive female in the population." by a percentage. it's just like MVP for the NBA. someone gets picked the MVP every year. but are they actually the most valuable player? the answer essentially unknown. the reality is humans are imperfect. so day in and day out the value of a player will fluctuate. same with most attractive girl. is it with makeup? without makeup? with clothes on without clothes on? how funny she is or isn't? like...there are so many factors and almost every factor can be tweaked to the point that you get a different result. so there being an objective truth with imperfect beings doesn't work imo. it will still be percentages. meaning it will still depend on who you ask.
@@thetrib1 Wrong.
You failed to comprehend the fabric of the idea.
Your analogy to the MVP is flawed because that is merely guessed by people making guesses. My thought experiment showed that it is actually possible, in a real-world sense, to determine who is the most attractive female out there. We do this by having one male rate 1.5 Billion females from least to most desirable. Then we do this with the second male, then third male, until we have all 1.5 Billion males do their ratings. Then you collate the data, and come up with which person had the highest preference. It is a very large figure, but it is finite.
So, while it's true we will never be able to conduct such an experiment. At least not with current technological limitations. But it is theoretically possible to conclude objective facts from subjective opinions.
It won't depend on who you ask, it is an objective answer. The most attractive female in the world is #597,432 as an example. Sure YOU personally might not find her the most attractive, because that is your individual opinion, but you would find her attractive nonetheless. And most males will do so as well, with a good portion of them nominating her as their top preference.
Does the concept make sense now?
Exactly this. I think there is a objective foundation of morality but is surely has a situational layer too. Matt Dillahunty made a good job at explaining it
To be fair to Mr Destiny, we don't wanna lose arguments, and a meta look at experience is very tricky.
This conversation revealed to me that while Steven is desperately seeking the solution to answer to the average redpilled fools he speaks with, he lacks the necessary tools to do so. An inherently flawed epistemology can be just as harmful as an intentionally toxic one. While he has the inclinations to put ethics into a more practical view, it still reveals he is entirely out of his depth.
In his example of the 4 people in a circle / island, he is aware that a contrarian can cause difficulties for the whole, but he lacks the practical application that these remaining three should still secure their own safety, at the cost of the contrarian individuals freedom. And from there it would circle back fully into ethics, law-giving and education as to why we require these boundaries and securities in the first place, instinctual or not.
You did not get the premise.
He already agrees the three should defend themselves, however he thinks there should be a way to convince the fourth' if morals were objective.
be less smug
@@leoyoman You did not get the premise. Even if he already agrees the three should defend themselves, he presupposes that not every fourth can be convinced, so he states that there is no conceivable or even subjective way that would prevent the three from >needing< to defend themselves, eventhough ethic laws would do just that, on a much larger scale.
In Steven's perspective, there is no "way" and his ethics stagnate as result.
Be less idiotic, please.
@@MrYelly burden of proof is on you though. Show that there is a way.
You are in no way better than Steven just more smug.
Also the fourth being convinced is the crux of the argument not a presupposition. Calling me an idiot is cute of you.
@@leoyoman The burden of proof that empathy is naturally present within animals and people alike? There is plenty of scientific evidence.
Steven literally says there is no way to convince the fourth. You say that he thinks there is one. What is this useless, vapid dik riding you present here? Make your own points, instead of misinterpeting the points others never even made. Waste of air.
morality not being objective shouldn't affect the conviction one has to hold & enforce those moral beliefs. destiny acts like the moral landscape we act within is some unmanueverable, unworkable void due to its lack of objectivity, but really it's more like an empty canvas that we can paint whatever we'd like on through our will
I agree with the first sentence, but you lost me as soon as you mentioned "destiny".
They're talking about the man called Destiny in the video, if that's where the confusion lies.
Not about literal destiny.
I talk to many people online about objective reality and I’m glad to see these two intelligent people I respect can’t come to a clear conclusion either
the objective subjective distinction is taken for granted, and not specified in its nuance or shortcomings, which often leads to this kind of disagreement.
alex’s argument breaks down if you can find a a subset of societies in history where his moral intuitions do not match their moral intuitions
Every civilization enslaving each other for thousands of years
No, because you can find subsets of people who don't share the same intuition of the outside world.
The argument breaks down from outliers?
@@gofrisutoyes!
Interestingly it seems that western societies are the outlier here. Other non-western societies seem to have moral intuitions based on authority and purity, with more emphasis on groups and communities less on individual rights.
Murder is subjectively defined, so how can it be objectively wrong? It can only be subjectively wrong, and that's OK, we make subjective judgments all the time.
No definition isn't subjectively defined, because it requires a human to define them. Humans are necessarily dependent on their own senses, which makes everything a human can think, feel or do subjective. This is the anti-realist perspective that sometimes even leads to solipsism.
If your goal is to fly to the moon, is it objectively better to use a rocket to do it or a bycicle?
Conversely, if your goal is not to harm people, is it objectively better to give somebody with an infection antibiotics or waterboard them?
Just because ethics are conditional doesn't mean they're not objective.
In order to be consistent in the approach that you're espousing, you'd have to scratch objectivity from your vocabulary, because even science can be reduced to core values and intuition.
Objectivity and subjectivity are just two different lenses we can view different scenarios through. Ethics can be both more or less objective or subjective depending on the argument and what you offer to support it. Just like anything else.
I think you can assess morality objectively by simply looking at the outcomes of any moral action or belief. This can be done through sense data as well.
The problem is you are presupposing which actions would be considered moral and immoral.
@@moe3645well said
@@moe3645 Even more fundamentally, they're presupposing a utilitarian outlook where the 'best outcome' is the ultimate measure of good.
@@Hankbluecouldn't have said better
Morals are subjective. They don’t exist in grounded fact.
In my opinion morality is subjective, but nearly everyone follows the same morality however some people attempt to apply it consistently as much as possible and some people do not. In certain circumstances people will not acknowledge morals and choose an immoral decision when it conveniences them, for example basically everyone disagrees with animal abuse however most people partake in it every time they go to the supermarket and purchase the flesh of once sentient beings, I think most meat eaters have the same morals as vegans however will make excuses and try to squirm they way of acknowledging their actions being immoral which stops them from noticing a contradiction so they can continue in their hedonism.
Hypocracy and delusion, is what you are aiming at. Everyone agrees that animal abuse is bad, but not everyone can agree to what consitutes as animal abuse. Looking at the islamic festival of Eid, in which they slice the throats of horses and cows, for them to bleed out on the streets, is not what they consider as animal abuse.
It's just a cultural festival that requires tolerance and acceptance and such. The yulin festival in china is another example. And somewhere between this scope of extremes, most meat eaters can readily diminish personal involvement or responsibility, for good reason. They don't go out of their way to harm animals, and see value in the diminishing of such suffering. There is a degree of ethics in that.
@@MrYelly If they're actively purchasing products that for most people aren't nowhere near essential, which increases animal abuse, then they do go out of their way to harm animals
@@MrYelly I don't get the hyper-focus on Eid, from a vegan perspective it's obviously wrong since you're killing animals, but how is it any worse than factory farming? If anything, it's a much more preferable.
You must have not interacted much with any hyper-religious person to say that, religious people will justify the most disgusting stuff by citing divine authority.
I would agree with this. Most people tend to have shared core values from which they derive their morals, but due to ignorance, dogma, cognitive dissonance, and tribalism, they end up acting against their own morals and values.
Except we know a person like a psychopath can easily lack these moral intuitions - they're a result of brain hardware. It would be weird to imagine the analogous form of a psychopath when it comes to the external world - someone just born without the intuition than an external world exists. To me it seems pretty clear that moral intuitions are conveniences of our evolution whereas we have the intuition of an external reality because it's actually there, even if that is unprovable.
How can you say murder is objectively wrong, but individual boycott of such thing is not a moral imperative?
Morality and ethics are inter subjective. But, the best way we can reach an "objective" ethical code is by "putting ourselves in others shoes". When we do this, we REALLY think and understand the pain or happiness someone feels. Ofcourse some people don't care about others, but, that exists in all situations - you never find all 7 billion of us agreeing on anything. In cases where there is a threat to us, to mitigate the threat, causing harm I think is justified - self interest (to a certain extent) always comes first. Again, I believe that ethics are inter subjective, but, for a more coherent society, we need a set of conduct to be established.
Ps - "certain extent" can also be attained using the "putting ourselves in others shoes" principle.
In this case, what are your stances on abortion?
I think abortion can be justified coz we're acting on self interest - ofcourse, if you can raise and provide for a child, you are obligated to do so; in other situations, I think it's reasonable to do so.
In this case, does that mean that all interviewers are morally obliged to provide employment to everyone and anyone? No, this is a logical fallacy. Situations also require to analyse other factors - in this problem, we should take into consideration the goals of the business, wheather the candidate is suitable, etc. So, no, "putting ourselves in others shoes" is not the only concept that need to be evaluated.
Personally I don't necessarily grant that my intuition is objectively true. I live as if the external world is real and inhabited by other minds for a few reasons but I don't claim to know this 100% objectively as I don't think I CAN know it.
From a moral standpoint, I have my own intuitions that I generally follow but I will go against some of that intuition if it contradicts with several other intuitions or goes against popular consensus enough.
However I notice in both modern day and throughout history, morality has been far more varied that worldviews have been, at least at a fundamental level. Most cultures have had some kind of worldview based on the existence of an external world and the existence of other conscious beings.
Morally however, the fundementals have varied a lot more. People have based their morality on their own pleasure, the pleasure of their king, the pleasure of a god figure, the wellbeing of their group, the wellbeing of other groups, etc.
This gives me more pause to grant morality with the same level of belief as I do an external world. Obviously this conclusion assumes some kind of accuracy of historical data, but if we are going to throw that out for the sake of total honesty, we couldn't have a conversation at all (universal skepticism)
I guess my main issue is it seems like my intuitions about the external world are far more consistent with other people intuitions compared to my moral intuitions.
It seems to me that moral ideology is socially spread a lot more than it is intuited. Morality itself really only works if we say there is an external world anyway as without it, there would be no victims of our actions, just the equivalent of NPCs which we don't typically extend our empathy to.
After you choose life as a primary ethics, there are only two choices left.
#1 Going against your primary choice of life - establishing a self-contradictory set of ideas.
#2 Follow the primary choice, values and ethics in all your choices in life - objective ethics.
Self-contradictions are irrelevant for a rational discussion on ethics.
The dead ones are irrelevant for a rational discussion on ethics.
Only one alternative remaisn for we the living:
Follow the primary choice, values and ethics in all your choices in life - objective ethics.
For me, the most notable difference between the two is that I can much more easily conceive of a world where objective morality doesn't exist and humans developed a sense of right and wrong because it was beneficial to society (and in some societies, the morality that was landed on was different from other societies), whereas the world I perceive not being real seems much less likely. It's funny to notice how many assumptions my framework for comparing the two relies on.
I guess, as others have pointed out, it seems like morality requires all of the first set of assumptions, and then even *within* that set of assumptions, there's comprehendible versions of the world where objective morality doesn't exist.
this was so so so helpful for me. thanks guys
The way you ask the question can often matter more than the question you ask. In the case of abortion asking _When_ is abortion acceptable will net you more allies than asking the broader question. Sidenote: the abortion question is asked in an ambigous way to divide us.
When it comes to the question: is it okay to murder people? even if you get a positive outcome from an individual (either immediately or through debate) that stance may be conditional and only apply to the person they had the debate with, that person may decide that other people are okay to commit murder against just not you.
I'm glad we have decided as human beings to choose governence. But I am glad only because I have been groomed to appreciate governance and because it allowed me to live.
When it comes to ethical disagreements between governments I would like to say I critisize my own government even to my own detriment and I reject the excuses made for the "crimes" my government commited and instead search for the "truth." I also think it's unethical to continue to make the same choices that led to those crimes to begin with and that every government that chooses to make those choices rightfully deserves a revolution or a reform in which the opposing party is cast out, or reformed. Those same people I would cast out or reform today call me a traitor for wanting my government to be better.
Nuance and context matters, I agree. And truth often comes with personal costs.
Alex believes that good and bad is based on intuition. This can't be - the germans believed (or had the intuition) that the holocaust was a good phenomenon. Does that make it ACTUALLY good or true? No, infact, we laugh at that very notion. So this begs the question - How CAN we set up a system when said system can be looked upon as "good" by some and "bad" by the remaining?
I think the sense data for morality is a little something called empathy. There is some interesting evolutionary neurobiology pointing towards some of the innate responses in the brain to perceiving the pain of other animals (yes, even non-humans). Another clear evidence here is that most of us have already agreed upon many moral intuitions, like murder and rape are wrong, and demonstrate prosocial behaviours. The way our societies organize and work together relies on our inherent prosocial behaviour. Even with some of the awful things that humans do we are one of the most successful species on the planet due to our cooperativity- our brains mean very little without that fundamental ability to work together.
Fascinating exchange!
Nothing is objective except that logic is relationships that always replicate and is indistinguishable from objective.
What exactly do you mean by _objective_ ?
Given that ethics is about the conduct of humans, I don't see how ethics can exist without human subjects.
By "objective" If you mean universal agreement between all humans, it is evidently not true that ethics is objective.
And the consequences of said conduct which is factual and also why it’s objective.
@@tarikwalters854 So your "ethics" is about judging the _past_ ? 🙄
Only an arrogant imbecile would pretend to know all the consequences of one's action _before_ the action.
Where I come from, ethics is about making decisions _without_ complete knowledge of all the consequences.
In any case, being factual doesn't mean there has to be a preference for one fact over another. Nothing about something being a fact makes it right or wrong.
Something that should have been clear to anyone with more than two functioning braincells.
I guess my first question would be to define ethics. By ethics do they mean consequentialist ethical principles ?
What they mean, is calling something good, or bad.
@@avoidedmonster4117 OK. Like a good steak dinner or a bad one?
@11:10
"Why can't we treat moral statements the same way we treat science"
Take his earlier example statement "murder is bad".
Ok, what if the person murdered was considered worse than the act of murdering him to begin with by a majority of the population? Governments, militaries, police, all kinds of people murder or take another's life... and require planning and fore-thought to do it.
Immediately, the usefulness and inflexibility of that moral statement is inherently at odds with the reality of human history. You can't throw "murder is bad" in every possible scenario, like you can with a scientific based test, and come out with the same positive societal outcome that you'd want. In science, we can't really choose what we want the answer to be - while in morality, we do the opposite and have to agree in order for us to know what the right choice is.
Science is observable methods to finding answers, morality is the argument of what we ought to do with it. By that definition, morality will always be derived in arguments made from scientific method, but it can't be scientific itself. Morality is the sense and purpose we attempt to make of the science around us; and it's only our common biology that allows us to have common ground, to be able to conceive of morality as necessary in the first place.
No ethics cannot be objective. I’m shocked that the cosmic skeptic believes this.
I don't think he does, rather, I think he was playing devil's advocate for some parts of the convo, but I may be wrong
Look at Alex older videos, he argues for subjective morality, not objective
@@ElMois872 I believe you, Alex doesn’t seem like the guy who would believe morality is a scientific fact, I don’t remember this video very well it’s been awhile
@@wakemanz1 like he sais at 16:00 here, the intuition is enough to make it as objective as it can be, on the same level as epistemic truths.
giving in that ethics exist doesnt mean killing is bad it just means that there are good and bad things you still need to prove that something is bad or good
20:45 no alex!!! there aren't people that are saying science isn't real. people say some type of scientific fact is false. that's what happens. and why they get ignored or ostracized is because of test and experimentation. now...that doesn't mean that the questioner is wrong btw.
like, the argument wasn't about whether or not morals are real. it was about how you come to a resolution when there's a moral disagreement.
As a Christian, this right here, "what does wrongness look like?" is a really good question.
People say many things to justify their cruelty whilst protecting the rights of others. Human nature at its worst. They have capacity but no real intelligence.
I’m gonna play devils advocate, what grounds other than your own personal feelings do you have to condemn someone who engages in “cruel” actions for fun.
@@samadams1998 Well it could be personal feelings. I would say personal feelings are sourced from sentience. This may be uniquely human tho. Sentience is the source of pleasure and pain. It is the driving force for all humans, without sentience, we have no reason to value or seek anything. (It’s hard to see an organism value anything if reactions to stimuli doesn’t occur) Almost all multi cellular organisms have a central nervous system. If an organism is living a life seeking pleasure and not just to survive, unlike most organisms on the planet (I’m talking about 1st world country humans) Then yes, condemn them, for inflicting cruelty with the level of awareness they have. Organisms outside of this awareness, the ones living to survive miss out on having (personal feelings about it) because they can’t meet that intellectual threshold given there spot on our evolutionary trajectory. The primary use of their sentence is to survive. Still capable of love and bond of course (or how you would like to measure those) Humans have that extra ability to have perspective, you don’t get that when you’re constantly trying to survive. That’s my take tho, I like these devils advocate situations lol
@@hagenkillman4205 "Then yes, condemn them, for inflicting cruelty with the level of awareness they have." Why must we label some morality value on inflicting cruelty? If we are just atoms in, it is just mechanism. It is what it is.
@@dtphenom Apply that same logic to human on human violence
@@dtphenom it’s not labeling morality value on cruelty. The entire point was dissecting the base of why humans value feelings or “sentience”. What do you think the base to morality is?
Hume lives on. We can't prove cause and effect, but we still love to play pool.
Feel like this has already been done and we use the long term well-being of the individual to decide whether it’s good or bad?
Three things
1.We have great portions of the world that have let go of fundamental intuition like linear time or free will for whatever reason ,so why cant we let go of the intuition of moral objectivity.destiny could have done the reverse question.but he was to caught up in trivialities.
2.The maim reason why the intuition of the external world is stronger than that of morality is because moral objectivity requires the existence of the external world,and there are no logical problems presented with believing in a external ,except for the quiestion of if its not the case ,which is not a counter to the believe. If there is no logical problem presented in a belief ,then there is no problem in believing it.
3.The problem with objective morality is that when you ask your self certain question ,you realize there is no way to map it.
Why is murder objectively wrong? Most would respond with :
1It is just wrong; why does it have to be that case ,pschopaths do not see murder as necasarily a wrong thing ,what makes you right and him wrong,objectively and irrespevtive of context ,nothing, the only difference is that most see murder as wrong.
2.Because it is against our wellbeing(The ultilitarian and moral egoist stance) yes against what you consider as your wellbeing ,but that is just again is a collective(humans) , but something being considered bad by a collective does not mean it is objectively bad ,for example the end of slave trade was probably considered a bad thing for the slave masters.
3.Bad and good always require a context and is dependant on the person. When we say something is bad or good we always use it in a context based on what we want , what we consider the desired or what is consider closer or farther from a ideal(whether we want that ideal is another thing),and what we desire is a subjective thing that is at most shared by others,but that does not make it objective and gives no basis of saying it is objective.
Modern Philosophy is the game of applying a tool (language) to our intuitions and trying to make sense of the outcome. Isn't it stupid?
I don't know, is you calling it stupid based on an intuition you had?
Thinking that only "modern" philosophy has this kind of difficulty, suggesting that pre-modern hasn't, is even worse, isn't it?
No. Linguistic definitions in philosophy can lead to breakthroughs in computer science and possibly A.I. Concepts like Boolean logic and Turing machines originate from logic/epistemology of the early 20th century.
When your mind tells you you're taking an action, how do you know you are actually taking the action? So then what does it mean to "take an action as if something is true".
Another question. If all this is an illusion, why does the reality illusion have constraints whereas the dream illusion is unconstrained? Why is the waking imagination unconstrained? Why isn't reality illusion also unconstrained?
Begging the question then. Where do the reality illusion constraints come from?
Morality is objective.
There are three fundamental laws of existence: Order, Chaos, and sustainability. These laws are objective and, in a physical universe, would exist whether or not an observer were around to observe. All living things abide by these three laws whether or not they are aware of it. Existence can only be if these three laws are adhered to. Does that mean God is also bound to these laws? If so, then can God be omnipotent?
Abiding by these three laws, one can find the objective answer to all morality questions. The “trolley problem” is easily solvable objectively. The “lifeboat case” can just as easily be solved objectively.
The reason why these problems seem so unsolvable to seemingly everyone is that they don’t seem take into account the psychological impacts/ramifications extended to the edge/end of the ripple, only to the first few rings. They also view the scenarios very subjectively without a solid objective basis.
The problem then becomes of a subjective nature. But, in a physical universe, objective morality exists whether or not subjects do.
Edit: There is definitely “sense data” (empirical evidence) for morality. 😉
What are the 3 laws through?
@@Levaaant Keep in mind that the “3 laws” are a subjects designations of an observable truth of existence. That even without the subjective label of “3 laws” the objective motions of the “3 laws” would still be.
Atoms are the answer. Atoms form the basis of existence within a physical universe. Atoms are inanimate and therefore non-subjects. Atoms exist in a state of chaos and where sustainability of two or more atom bonds are successful, order comes about. With that sustainability and order, emerges physical existence as we know it.
If one pays attention to human actions, on a fundamental level, it mimics the actions of atoms: individually, humans would exist in what can be considered a chaotic state. Once they start coming together and finding sustainability, order is produced.
Chaos generates order and order generates chaos. It is a never ending cycle of physical existence. Ultimate sustainability is the answer to all moral questions. These 3 laws are fundamental within a physical universe. This is observable/knowable.
Edit: If one observes the very basic/universal laws of civilized/sustainable societies, they all adhere to the law of sustainability. Is this true?
I think the distinction is this:
You won't have any trouble convincing most people to accept the assumption that "sense data is accurate" before a discussion. When all parties have agreed you can call that objectively true.
On the other hand, you'll most likely have a lot of trouble convincing people your proposed set of moral rules are objectively true before a discussion.
I aspire to come up with or find a system of ethics that aligns as close as possible with my own personal sense of right of wrong. I would not call this objective though, except if it was agreed to be so for the purpose of a discussion.
I think similarly to Destiny. I liked hearing an intelligent rebuttal to moral relativism. I'll need to consider the distinction between moral facts and scientific facts.
If you accept that we can make objective statements about subjective ideas; then, yes, ethics can be objective.
I can make the objective observation that the subjective belief of a flat earth exists - why would that make ethics objective lol
@@KangMinseok "I think coke tastes better than pepsi"
Do you accept this is an objective statement? If not, why?
@@swagikuro It has been observed that the reward reactions of brains in humans are different despite the foods they consume being the same/unchanged. Ergo it is objectively verifiable that taste is subjective (as in, difference between human subjects exists despite being provided with the same stimulation). As to whether the statement "I think coke tastes better than pepsi" is true, as in whether we can objectively determine whether the person actually feels this way or is lying, I do not think we have the technological capabilities to say so yet (lie detectors are notoriously unreliable).
Lol that’s still subjective
Morality is objective and I’ll prove it now with 2 scenarios:
Scenario 1
You take your friend out to eat and say, “get what you want, it’s on me.”
You get a chicken sandwich and your friend gets a pulled pork sandwich. You think pulled pork is disgusting, but you don’t feel bad or get mad at your friend for eating it because you know it’s his subjective decision to eat what he wants.
Scenario 2
You’re sitting in the park enjoying time with your 5-year-old niece. Randomly, some guy comes up and punches her in the face harder than you’ve ever seen anyone get hit. You get furious. Why is your reaction tremendous anger when you tell me and others, “you can’t prove something is objectively right or wrong morally?”
See the point?
And how do you have compassion and empathy for others? Let’s say your family or friends hypothetically lose a sibling that was raped, beaten, tortured, and killed. Then you say to them, “at least the person or people that did this weren’t objectively wrong for doing it.”
If your actions don’t reflect what you say you believe, you don’t actually believe what you say.
If you say that ethics from unprovable intuition means morality is objectively true... you have essentially stated that morality is your god. Unprovable Intuition in morality is faith. 2:26
So here’s a question/counterargument for Induction: If for example i say, “When i eat bread i feel nourished and therefore bread nourishes me” and the counter argument is, “Well, just because the bread you’ve eaten in the past nourishes you doesn’t mean the next will.” This is basically saying i shouldn’t judge anything and make no assumptions and have no expectations because i could be wrong, right? So in response, i think that one of the qualifiers for something to be bread is that it nourishes me. So now for it to be bread, to me, it must nourish me. Is this a valid counterargument?
I don't know if it's because I'm anal or what. but your example doesn't seem like this to me: "This is basically saying i shouldn’t judge anything and make no assumptions and have no expectations because i could be wrong, right?" to me that is saying just because you assume and have expectations, you should be cautious and understand that you could be wrong. essentially tread lightly.
any induction argument is going to end up being a tread lightly conclusion imo.
Alex I am impressed by your presentation, but had not realised that you have leanings towards moral (as well as material) realism. I do too; although I use your approach, more fundamentally material realism implies a determinist perspective within which it is hard to fine a coherent space for ethical relativism.
I think ethical relativism makes it hard to account for value judgements that we know are more or less as certain as a heliocentric solar system. examples I have discussed with my classes is the proposition that rape is wrong, but also that JS Bach is one of a handful of the greatest composers. At first sight many might assert the latter (but rarely the former) is just a matter of subjective taste, but in reality I do not think we can genuinely conceive of a future world in which it is thought that Bach was not much good at all and there is incredulity that at one time he was rated so highly by practicing musicians.
Alex is an emotivist, not a moral realist or utilitarian. Emotivism treats moral statements as expressions of personal emotions and not objective/true properties.
_"I do not think we can genuinely conceive of a future world in which it is thought that Bach was not much good at all"_
Maybe not, but it might be that at one point people just don't care about his music at all (they won't say it's bad music, but they may not see it as "important" music, if that makes sense). There are a lot of great composers that people have forgotten about - and also there are a lot of composers that are unknown to the Western audience. It's not that people think these composers weren't good. It's just that people aren't familiar enough with their music or their style sounds too "foreign" to people's ears. (BTW, I doubt Bach's music "speaks" to people who aren't familiar with the sound of Western classical music, at least to the same degree as to people from "the West".)
Bach wasn't even the top German composer of his time. Telemann was. But nobody really knows Telemann these days. I mean, they may have heard the name, but how many Telemann's pieces are people familiar with?
I do think there's a possible alternative timeline where Bach is just one composer among the others. Bach owes a lot of his modern popularity to Mendelssohn who started performing his pieces 80 years after his death. It would definitely be possible that Bach would be one of those forgotten baroque composers that people don't talk that much about.
Also if we imagine a world where Western music no longer has the same value as it does today, I'm pretty sure people wouldn't be able to appreciate Bach's music to the same degree. A lot of it has to do with familiarity. For example even when it comes to Western music, when you start listening to music that was written before the baroque period, it just sounds kind of foreign to our ears. Like take Machaut - one of the most famous medieval composers. He was definitely a skilled composer, but his music just sounds weird to the modern ear, because it sounds so different. Bach on the other hand sounds quite "normal" - it's not too different from modern music.
So, let's assume that the music of the future just sounds totally different from contemporary music. At one point, it older music will simply sound so archaic that people will have a difficult time with "getting" it, similarly as Machaut's music just sounds a bit strange, and it's difficult to rate his music on the same scale as Bach or Beethoven.
There's no denying the fact that Bach was a highly skilled composer. There's definitely a reason behind his popularity that's more than just "subjective taste" alone. But also, I don't think people from other cultures would appreciate his music to the same degree, similarly as people from the West aren't that interested in great artists from other cultures. And if you saw or heard two artists' work from a culture you aren't familiar with, would you instantly be able to assess whose art was more highly regarded? My point is, appreciation of art requires familiarity with the style. You only start to truly understand "quality" once you have familiarized yourself with the style. This applies even when it comes to styles you are more unfamiliar with within the same culture. You first need to get familiar with the basic "language" of the art style in order to actually understand all of the nuances of that style, and recognize greatness in that style. Someone not familiar with baroque music might listen to Bach, Handel and Vivaldi and not hear much difference between them. But once they get more familiar with the baroque style, they'll start hearing more nuances, and suddenly Vivaldi sounds way different from Bach.
@@MaggaraMarine Thank you for your long reply. The possibility that a genre could ultimately become inaccessible, although unknowable could be plausible. The example of Machaut is well chosen, though I think it could be used to support either side. The fact that a genre has become inaccessible does not have to affect its intrinsic quality.
Another issue that can be used to support both sides is that some artistic figures succeed in creating the paradigm in which they inevitably appear to be centrally significant. The example I am thinking of is Shakespeare, whose created language has become so imbedded in aspects of the language that subsequent writers (and critics) use, and is so part of the literary landscape that the status of Shakespeare becomes self-perpetuating.
Moral intuition is nested within existential intuition. So it's an assumption that relies on another assumption. Therefore it can't be just as justified an assumption.
Destiny on 11:37: "There is 0 sense data for morality"
Mirror neurons enter the chat
Thalamus: "Am I a joke to you?"
Yeah that’s actually his argument, that it’s just in your head not in the outside world
@@GW-gy1my
The existence of people with nonexistent empathy pathways in the brain (ie. people with psychopathy, antisocial personality disorders, etc.) throws your comment out the window, though.
This doesn't actually invoke morality though, empathy is distinct from a universal 'right' or 'wrong'
assuming intersubjective normative morality based on empathy and mirror neurons
Ethics is a matter of trust. Who to trust is objective. Vikings had no problem raiding and enslaving. They didn't have the trust you give a bank. You need ethics. Ethics is what a person does when no one is watching. A person with ethics will continue to do their job when the boss is not around.
When I speak about objective morality I take this route:
We exist, we experience. Or at least "I exist and I experience" or something exists and experience exists. Existence itself is non-negotiable, let's say, haha.
Okay, then as an experiencing existence/thing there is a quality to said experience that is on an infinite spectrum of positive/negative: these words are for sake of communication. I don't know how to label them, or if any labels are true, but the empirical experience of various forms of suffering and uncomfort are real and same with pleasures and joys.
I'd say just as we study light and we know we can't study all of it because of our limited senses, and thus we try to create maps of different wavelengths and ways to detect the unseeable waves maybe, morality is doing this with that very real experience that exists and has a quality of suffering or pleasant in seemingly endless varieties. Morality is trying to address the objective reality of many sufferings and happinesses that experiencers know they have, just as the science of light is trying to address the reality of light even though we can't get it all due to our limited sense perception.
This kind of by-passes brain in a vat arguments in some ways (not in all ways), by being about the empirically felt experience itself. It may change how we go about being moral to accomplish this experience not having suffering and being pleasant, but it doesn't change the objective aspect of reality that experiencers have experiences that are negative and/or positive.
To me that is what morality is about. Some use different theories, datasets, hypotheses, maps, methods, experiments and so on to figure out how to make experience good and not bad, just as we have used so many different theories, technologies, methods to test light and all the different wavelengths and attributes it has. We know we are not done studying light, like, we know for a fact there is more to learn about light, but we don't stop studying and gathering data and collaborating to understand it as objectively as possible. This is how we could treat morality, and I think it would be fruitful.
Beautfull discussion and a topic I wished to discussed by you for a very looooong time!
I have a problem with objective morality and the reason is, I don't see it as fundamental and it is in conflict with my sensory intuition that the world exist! As all I learned about the physical world, there are fundamental forces that are very stable, because they existed for billions of years. Now morality, as seen through evolution did develop as a result of the physical world. So how can it be fundamental?
And there are sciences showing that certain sensory intuition are in conflict with anotjher and the results if doing the experiments differ from our expectation.
Andso I rather sacrifice objective morality and the objectivity of my experiences than to sacrifice the objective external world.
Moral systems are all about drawing a line in the sand and following it, the only way one can do it wrong is by contradicting oneself, and most people do
The problem of induction wouldn't even be solvable if there existed any gods and we could prove that they did exist, because even after that, you couldn't prove that they would never stop existing, you would simply have to infer it.
Moral systems ONLY exist in the context of some goal such as "maximizing wellness." If we accept this, then we can say that certain moral systems or moral acts are objectively "good" or "bad" in that context. And while we cannot know every possible outcome - and therefore we cannot objectively say a moral act will always be "good" or "bad" - it is objectively true that certain moral acts are overwhelmingly more likely to achieve our goal than others. These acts are so overwhelmingly likely to be true that we can then derive general principles to live by such as "murder is wrong." Although there may be some subset of paths in which murder actually maximizes well-being (self defense), the overwhelmingly vast majority of those paths will not achieve the goal. Think of it as playing a game of chess where once you accept the goal to win there becomes some subset of moves which are objectively good and bad and - as a general principle - exposing your king unnecessarily is a bad move because the vast majority of the time it will not achieve your goal.
17:06 "these disagreements can be CLINICALLY solved as long as we agree on SOMETHING"
fair point. but if everything is a human invention, and we can't progress without some kind of ultimate value structure/ philosophical bedrock
how is that functionally different from "God"?
genuinely.
btw I like Alex. He seems nice.
Most people that I’ve seen who are moral skeptics seem to be whirling in existential crisis/ dread. I don’t know if that indicates anything
At 5:45 Destiny is wrong. Something is NOT not objective because an individual could disagree. That doesn't make anything not objective. Disagreement is not the indicator that something is entirely subjective. I think that is exactly what most of redditors get wrong lol
I think morals are as objective as logic
Idk bc if hypothetically one person presented a logical argument why grape is okay or why owning a slave is okay even if the argument was somehow unbeatable I would still say it’s wrong regardless of it’s logical stance
@@vincearevalo2149 I think a fundamental moral statement is like a logical statement in that its truth doesn’t depend on your belief that it is right or wrong. Not all moral statements are like that, "slavery is wrong" for instance is not a fundamental moral statements, it is derived from fundamental moral statements.
I always found that question interesting, but only from a theoretical standpoint.
Because nowadays I feel like, in practice at least, it does not matter if morality is subjective or objective.
I mean, let's just imagine we had undeniable proof that morality is objective. However such proof would look like. Let's assume we have a mathematical formula that proves that murder is good or ok. Or we discovered a new law of physics that tells us murder is good.
What would that change? Would people really go out an murder people on the basis of some abstract formula? Sure, *some* people might use that as a justification for their crimes, but those are the people that would have probably done the same if we didnt know that murder is ok.
The average person would not murder. Why? Because our feeling and emotions, the way we FEEL about those things matter more than any logical argument.
If I don't fundamentally *think* that something is the right thing to do, I'm not going to do that. I need to feel that it's the right thing to do in order to do anything.
It goes the other way around as well. I don't think people like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bunder would've stopped killing if you showed them that it's objectively wrong, because they would still be emotionally convinced that what they do is ok.
An abstract, dry and logical formula is simply too far away from our emotional needs.
We even see a familiar phenomenon in politics when it comes to truth. A politician can have the best arguments, backed up by numbers and graphs and what have you, and that is good and useful, but if he can't convince his potential voters on a personal/emotional level, he will have a hard a very hard time.
We can have the most efficient solutions to a problem, if we think that solution is *morally* wrong, we won't use it.
That's why propaganda was, is and will always be a HUGE part in politics and everywhere where big decision are made.
I don't think you've really examined what it means for us to discover suddenly that 'murder was good'. If I can borrow Alex's analogy, this would be like saying what if maths was wrong and 1 + 1 = 3. We've built and been able to achieve so much based on 1 + 1 = 2 that I can't even imagine what that life begins to look like. What if murder was objectively good is basically the same thing.
@@mannyogu8124 With math in particular it's a bit easier to see what the problem would be. If 1+1 would suddenly be 3, our buildings would collaps and nothing would work anymore.
But what EXACTLY would happen if murder was objectively good? Because math is something outside of human actions. If it were wrong with our math we would HAVE to adapt to it and see how we function as a species when 1+1 is 3.....but we don't have to adapt to a different kind of morality, we woul still be able to do what we think it good.
Unless you have a good example of what bad things an objective morality that proves that murder is ok/good would do to us that WE can't stop.
@@JohnCena8351 with respect, you're still not really thinking of what it means for murder to suddenly be good. We'd have a lot of explaining to do, if murder were a good. We ought to murder. Can you imagine a life were it would be a good thing to murder as much as right not it's good thing that we don't murder?
@@mannyogu8124 I mean 1. it wouldn't really change anything, because murder wouldn't suddenly be good, it would've always be good. We would've just discovered that, this is what the whole discussion is all about.
It's a very abstract thing, but I think I can imagine a world like this. It's hard to determine what "good" would mean in that context. Like, what is that "good" that we ought to seek out? (That's one of the reasons I think morality is subjective btw)
Let's say people who get murdered go to paradise and that makes murder good.
I could still choose to say I don't want to go to that paradise, I wanna be here.
We see that in religious people that grief after a loved one dies even tho they think that person is now with god. Simply because we naturally *feel* as if the death of a loved one is bad, even tho there is no reason to believe that.
I just think we could build a lot of rules around an objective morality. We know that people naturally prefer not to be murdered, so we can give every human the right to not get murdered. Exactly the same thing we do right now.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what concrete thing would force us to change our current behaviour regarding morality?
@@JohnCena8351 first off, your world were murder meant you went to paradise wouldn't necessarily make paradise okay, it might make assisted suicide obviously okay but no matter how good a place is, right now, it seems terrible to force someone to go anywhere even if it were better for them. We have built a lot of rules around objective morality. They are our laws. I can see how in practice it doesn't matter to any one person but this point where Alex says we can ignore certain people from the conversation is a strong one for me. People who believe in subjective morality are understandably squirmish about saying to certain cultures that some of their practices is wrong. It's certainly an area to tread with humility
Stevens belief system seems kind dangerous to me in a climate where young men are his core audience and they are feeling increasingly lonely and are easily radicalized. Part of that is their inability to see value in things like emotional intelligence, empathy, effective communication, etc. If you go into these spaces, they need a source and a statistic for every damn thing and normal human interactions don’t work like that. Steven being like, we can’t prove if something is morally right or wrong with data, therefore nothing is morally right or wrong, seems very scary in the hands of an incel because p3d0philia is rampant in those spaces.
Now I know that he argues against these red pill/manosphere asshats and he does so very effectively and it’s amazing to watch but his ideas still seem pretty dangerous.
I know that I way oversimplified his take so if I’m wrong, please let me know.
From what I've seen of him, my guess is he probably wouldnt advocate his own world view just like he wouldn't advocate his own relationship style on young men.
@@kabelomakanatlengsundra456 agree but that’s so problematic…moral frameworks are about how to interact with other people. How can you say “I don’t recommend you adopt this framework of how to treat others”
It’s permissible on a relationship level because it’s solely between two+ people
From my expierience the bigots, bullies, opressors, etc. are more likely to believe that one objective morality exist and it's exactly what they believe in.
@@paulster185 I'm not sure if it's "everything goes" vs. total objective morality. I think there's a middle ground somewhere.
@@bbiggie97 It isn't about "everything goes". It's about acknowledging that your moral believes aren't absolute. That they're opinion.
Bigots not only kill for their opinions, they force others to share them, and call these that oppose them 'evil'.
I think most of them DO believe that their opinions are objective fundamental way how things should be.
Can somebody please explain to me, why was Cosmical Sceptic talking to this guy?
“Consider that the love of divine charity is so closely joined in the soul with perfect patience, that neither can leave the soul without the other. For this reason (if the soul elect to love Me) she should elect to endure pains for Me in whatever mode or circumstance I may send them to her. Patience cannot be proved in any other way than by suffering, and patience is united with love as has been said. Therefore bear yourselves with manly courage, for, unless you do so, you will not prove yourselves to be spouses of My Truth, and faithful children, nor of the company of those who relish the taste of My honor, and the salvation of souls.”
-St. Catherine Of Siena, p. 10
I'd love someone to explain to me how it's possible for nothing to exist outside my mind but yet other people can teach me things I know nothing about. Is my brain able to know something without knowing it knows it on such a large scale. I find that hard to understand.
Piers Morgan, take note of how an argument should be carried out
Old Four Horsemen: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett.
New four Horsemen: Sam Harris, Cosmic Skeptic, Destiny, Rationality Rules
Matt dillahunty?
@@TrideepNagg fair point. Okay. The fifth. But he was more in his atheist expirence RUclips scene and not sharing stages around town like the others 4 who were also co appearing at events together. Not even sure if they knew who Matt was at that point. Maybe they did. But we’re expanding beyond the original four, i would include totally include Matt and Penn Jillet among others. But I would say, almost like defining wf’s transition into wwf and then wwe, todays torch carrying atheists to my mind would be Steven woodford (rationality rules), Alex O’Connor (cosmic skeptic). And to broaden things slightly more, Shelly Kagan (Yale professor of ethics) debates William lane Craig on Is God Necessary for Morality, i would include into the bubble. Shit Alan watts to take it home
Did it ever occur to anti-realists that they (the observer/thinker) might also not exist?
Yes, I think therefore I am, but the self of one person might be just as much of an illusion as the self of others. Eventually, it is a question of probability. Even if no-one really exists, can one realistically take the risk to assume that one's actions have no real consequences, that they do not harm others? That one's choices do not take away someone other's choices?
I would say it is unreasonable to take that risk.
How morality can even be possible objective? What it even means?
I think partially it depends on how you define your terms. In utilitarianism, good is "that which is valued" and bad is "that which is not valued". There are brain states (physical, objective states of matter) which correspond to valuing something or not. With a sufficiently advanced science of the brain and of conscious states, we could provide a total ordering over such states, to say "this state of the universe is better than this other one" in every case.
You can of course ask "but does that definition of good get us what we want out of an ethical framework?" To a utilitarian this sounds tautological - if an ethical framework gets us what we want, by definition what we want is what we value and therefore good.
But just like with mathematics, Godel showed you have to start with some foundational axiom, which cannot be proven from within the system. But I don't hear many people arguing about whether or not mathematics is objective... It does what we want, so who cares!
@@agentdarkboote people do argue if mathematics are objective and I am personally much more willing to believe that.
If I understand your argument right, you propose that subjective vs objective morality doesn't matter, at least in that utilitarian framework. If so, I agree.
But what I am asking is, assuming that objective morality exist, how you distinguish more true morality from false. What tests do you conduct to discover that murder or eating shellfish are vile immoral acts?
@@paulster185 it is more of a futuristic test than we are capable of at the moment, but essentially you're looking for the value attributed to the conscious states brought about by each instance.
Right now, we have to assume what causes suffering or well being. Some such questions are approximately empirically testable, some won't be for a while.
@@agentdarkboote "more futuristic tests" is a cop-out, obtuse way to say " no idea".
The question you skipped is this: How do I know that suffering is morally wrong? How can I check this?
In subjective morality it is quite simple: morality is evolved trait, and it is beneficial for genes to carry further this kind of morality.
Subjective morality predicts different moral outlooks, moral myopia, change of what is moral depending on environment, that morals will be mostly the same as what is beneficial for the genes, and that in suddenly (from evolutionary perspective) changed environment, like modern world, many of moral instincts will became maladaptive. Oh, and that animals do have morals.
@@paulster185 oh no that's easy I already answered that one. In utilitarianism it is definitionally true. Like asking "how do I know all bachelors are unmarried" or "how do I know all triangles have three sides". Something is good if it is valued, something is bad if it is not valued. Nobody values suffering (not the same as pain or struggle, some people value those) by definition, therefore it is bad. Why is that a good moral framework? Because it gets us what we want (ie what we value) out of a moral framework, again, by definition.
I thought you were asking how could we test to see how good or bad an action was. My answer to THAT is either by reasoning about what we know causes suffering to get an approximation, or in the extreme limit which would get you a quantitative answer: a futuristic test, specifically one that could scan every individual neuron for its state, so that we could piece together what the conscious state associated with that arrangement of matter is. Thanks for being **so darned charitable** in your interpretation though 🙄
Edit: and I should say, utilitarianism predicts all of those behaviors you mentioned too, it allows for them to have evolved, because evolution is responsible for what we value and do not value. But it pegs goodness and badness to physical states of brains, which in practice are not currently measurable but may some day be. And in the shorter term it allows us to reason by analogy about what seems to be causing suffering or well-being in other minds, which is not perfect, but is a lot better than what we tend to do.
Even if we trust our sense data, we are epistemically obliged to synthesize all that data into the most parsimonious theory possible. That is, when we see or feel two different things, we should try and come up with a common explanation for both of them, instead of assuming they are each a fundamental kind of truth. And so, we should assume that moral facts are reducible to physical facts, and our moral perceptions have a physical explanation, if that is at all plausible (and it seems awfully plausible to me).
This is moral naturalism right?
Why not compare moral value judgements to all other "value" judgements, e.g. economic value? Can we say that gold is objectively more valuable than apples? There might be rare situations where apples would be more desireable, but generally the whole world would agree with gold's higher value.