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OBJECTIVE MORALITY - Alex O'Connor and Roger Crisp
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ย. 2023
- Alex O'Connor interviews Roger Crisp on objective morality.
Objective morality
Alex O'Connor
Cosmicskeptic
Interview
Philosophy
There is an objective morality and it just so happens to perfectly align with my personal belief system.
I don't think most philosohers will argue they are that certian on controversial issues. The typical move is that the reason that there is such broad agreement on something obvious like "We shouldn't torture babies" is because we have aprehended the moral truth... but any individual might be wrong on a more diffucult issue like abortion
@@tjcofer7517Ok but there are people who think it's ok to torture babies, so now what does the materialist say? There is nothing that literally everybody agrees on. So who is right in that case? What makes the "don't torture babies" side the "moral truth"?
It's all predicated upon the argument being "morality is objective" - a materialist can make a moral claim and attribute it to "emotional appeal" and leave it at that. It doesn't need a objective justification in the form of a God, and it is easily challenged by any contradicting opinion which would, per materialists standards, tend to hold equal validity (this might need scrutiny). I don't really understand the grand debate for between those who lack religious opinions unless there is a claim for a abstract thing influencing human behavior, rather than (as it appears) an emergent behavior of our species and other species that has proven to be wildly subjective over the millennia. Am I missing a huge chunk of what motivates the discourse here? @@jeremyinvictus
@@thomabow8949 No I think you pretty much have it right. But the reason atheists are so reluctant to do what you're suggesting (admit it's subjective and emotional and move on) is because many of them are very emotionally invested in the idea that "we don't need religion," and can survive on rationality alone. Once they accept that rationality can't get you values (which it cannot), they are essentially admitting their entire worldview is insufficient on its own. Whether it's Sam Harris word-salading his way around the issue or whether it's Matt Dillahunty literally running away, they're never going to admit it.
@@jeremyinvictus
We'd also have to consider creatures whos in their biology to kill babies. E.g. lions. Its plausible to imagine other sentient beings having this capacity, its just that humans have generally avoided this practice
It would be amazing if you interviewed Iain McGilchrist, I always wondered how Alex would react to his ideas
Yes please
Alex is so impressive in how he steers this conversation in most important directions.
Great chat! Really enjoyed Roger's down to earth, common sense responses. It's a relief when philosophy keeps hold of what we ordinarily know that we know.
There's a difference between sticking to what we know, and being unable to question our assumptions. Moral realists really need to start taking Nietzsche's genealogy seriously. This Moorean epistemology should have died with Moore
@@dominickearney6009 Do you think Roger is unable to question his assumptions? I don't know much about him, but I would have thought he's spent quite a lot of time doing exactly this, he's just reached different conclusions to you. What appeals to me is that he's quite open that there's something "murky" about the foundational prescriptive premises on which an objective morality must be built.
As for taking Nietzsche's genealogy seriously...no thanks. If we want to look at where our moral intuitions come from, we've now got a much more useful evolutionary perspective to draw on. Jonathan Haidt does this in The Righteous Mind, giving a description of how human moral emotions work, and why. The conclusion I take from this is anti-realist: evolution has endowed us with moral emotions which guide our behaviour, but which are contradictory and don't form any coherent moral system; they don't even align with our moral reasoning (System 1 vs System 2 in Kahneman's terms). However, we can choose to construct a moral system using reason, and based on facts (some form of utilitarianism) - this can be useful, but I can't justify the claim that this would reflect any kind of stance-independent moral truth.
To talk about objective morality one has to establish from which direction one is tackling the issue. If you are hitting it from the materialist side simply trying to understand where these preferences come from right and wrong doesn't really play a role. Then a thing is objective when it actually exists. It's objective that we have a nebulous common morality which subjectively differs. There is no justified reason why murder doesn't pass the vibe check but that doesn't mean that it has rizz. Every subjective emerges out of the objective.
Please define "morality" and "good" for us all...... does it relate to human wellbeing or suffering and how we treat each other ? Is it relative or absolute ? Objective or subjective if objective then name the specific source? What purpose does it serve ie what the goal of a moral system ? 🤔
If these basic questions are beyond you then please don't waste either my time or your own in further discussion
@@trumpbellend6717 I see the name adequately fits you perfectly. The only thing objective about morality is that it objectively exists but just like say the conception of the species of the dog, it exists because of a recognizable pattern of relations. Dogs exist even if not all dogs have pointy ears or 4 legs and morality exists even if not everyone for example holds that murder is wrong. Morality is not someting invented or reasoned into but an emergent phenomenon of social life and by studying a society you can say with good accuracy what it's objective ergo actually existing morality is. Trying to talk about moral propositions as if they exist independent of the socio material relations they emerge from is a waste of time. And if you choose to respond to me again please keep your tone in check for if your goal is to in any way convince me of anything I propose you actually consider that being an antagonistic idiot does the polar opposite.
@@MasterOfBaiter
It's "objective" that morality exists as a CONCEPT do you accept that ?? "Good" and "Evil" are words used to describe movement or points on a reference standard or scale conceptualised by man that is based upon human wellbeing and the values it incorporates like, empathy and equality. Whilst "God" is also a man made CONCEPT, the perceived whims of your "God" do not reflect these shared values and thus are irrelevant in any discussion of morality.
@@trumpbellend6717 or maybe the fact that I reject your model of how to understand morality? Again what are you trying to do? Are you trying to convince me of anything if so making me dislike you is objectively contra productive. Not a very scientific outlook if that's the case.
@@MasterOfBaiter
Is morality derived from a "God" ?
Saying there is an objective morality is like saying there is an objective opinion (which per definition can't be true).
Morality is based on our subjective perception of both external circumstances and subjective truths. This relation defines morality as something inherently subjective.
Like every other atheist who believes in objective morality, at the end of the day, after so many words and wise nods from both Alex and the good professor, the answer seems to be "it just is". Not a very convincing metaphysical system in my opinion.
The issue is neither is God, and God is actually a lot worse because none of the arguments are convincing, and many of the parts of the bible make it seem highly likely that it was written by bronze age goat herders are Dawkins stated.
So if you have two choices - pretend that a God exists and imagine that there are rules for you to follow, or live in reality and try to deal with it as it presents itself. Most people prefer to deal with reality because they know the fairytale is just that - a fairytale. It has no substance, so it can't be taken seriously. They are not going to based their morals on Zeus or Thor either because they know those gods are also fairy tales and it is silly to base your life on a lie.
And so at that point, you are simply forced into having to deal with some uncomfortable situations, like there being no objective moral values. But frankly I don't see it as a problem or need it to be objective in my case. All I care about is that the people who think it is okay to kill people are locked up or kept away from us. And that is what society does. So there is actually no problem having a relative value that murder is wrong, becuase most of society shares that value and enshrines it in law. And whats more, relative moral systems can change and update themselves over time as we discover ways to fine-tune our moral beliefs or change them altogether, such as in the case of how we treat factory-farmed animals.
What could be a metaphysical system?
When it comes to the truth of moral statements, I view them through the lens of consistency rather than truth. I don’t believe there are untrue moral views, but at the same time I think there are universal moral presuppositions. For example if a person believes suffering to be good, I’d do as Sam Harris and ask them to consult a hot stove. This doesn’t mean that the view of suffering being good is false per se, but for someone to be consistent with that moral philosophy they’d have to inflict immense amounts of suffering upon themselves.
A good person isn’t good because they have the “correct” moral view. They’re correct because they have a moral view and act consistently according to that.
Does this approach stand up to scrutiny? I immediately have to think of people who are extremely dedicated to their beliefs, and truly make an effort to apply them consistently -- it just so happens that their beliefs are bad. For example, I can hold the belief that consistently praying to some deity will get rid of my cancer. But it's not like my belief here is just as valid as any other belief about cancer. I only hold it because I don't know any better.
@@AlexanderReiswich you do raise some very solid critiques, however to respond the specific example you provided, I’d say just praying isn’t consistent. If you look at the evidence and submit it to analysis properly, you’d conclude that the choice that maximises good would be proper treatment.
To elaborate a bit, if someone genuinely views suffering as a moral good, as someone who thinks the exact opposite, it’d also be my duty to try and prevent them from inflicting suffering upon others. It’s not because my moral system is more correct, it’s merely because that’s what would be consistent with my underlying assumptions about ethics
@@adne4336 Hmm, I think the term "consistent" becomes rather confusing in the prayer example. I would suggest that the term "true" would be better, after all, because the relevant question is: what do you *truly* value? Your health? Or something else, i.e. your religion?
But I believe I understand your broader point: consistency is something that we can look for to determine the values that a person truly holds -- consistency in this way is a tool to reveal truth. If a person chooses to punch people in the face for no reason whenever they get the chance, then we can conclude that it is "good" or moral from their point of view to do so. This doesn't necessarily mean that we should accept or respect their belief -- if our values do not align with theirs, we still have a duty to prevent them from punching people in the face. But due to the consistency of their behavior, we can determine what their true values likely are, and act accordingly.
@@AlexanderReiswich you make very solid points, however I think the term true is a bit problematic when it comes to ethics.
I think all ethical systems come with a couple of axioms. For utilitarianism it’s simply that happiness is desirable, for kantianism it’s the categorical imperatives and for a deontologist it’s that certain actions are always desirable/undesirable.
Most of these fundamental axioms we can’t disprove and hence they can’t be true or false. However if a utilitarian goes out and punches people in the face it wouldn’t necessarily be an incorrect ethical decision, but it would be inconsistent with their fundamental axioms.
@@adne4336 I actually disagree somewhat -- the reason why "truth" is often considered problematic relative to ethics is because we think of ethics as a normative discipline (which I'd agree with of course). Norms are necessarily independent of subjective preferences. Therefore, they're axiomatic, or assertory, absent an objective truth value.
But having a subjective preference is not normative -- it's descriptive. If I believe that punching people for no reason is moral for me, it doesn't imply that punching people is moral for everyone. It simply means that I accept this particular proposition, and demonstrably prove that I do by consistently acting upon it. Thus, my preference can be empirically and objectively established as a fact.
Ironically, subjective preferences are exactly the type of thing that can be determined objectively. But again, this is only true relative to a subject. The mistake that you're referring to is made when we attempt to separate the norm or value from the subject, which is of course not possible.
thank you alex, for being who you are. i´ve learned a lot , love you man. please, keep going.
Great video 😊
I always thought it was foolish to argue that nothing is sacred. It's a BIG TIME double-edged sword, because it can definitely be used against you.
Objective morality argument:
Phenomena that happen in reality are objective and can be logically and objectively analyzed to arrive at truth
Thoughts and feelings about morality are phenomena that happen in reality
Therefore, thoughts and feelings about morality are objective and can be logically and objectively analyzed to arrive at truth
Examples:
Cruelty can’t happen if all parties involved like the action
Compassion can’t happen if all parties involved dislike the action
The moral landscape is what got me on the objective morality.
I'm also an externalist so... Yeah.
Objective: not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
Objective opinion is an oxymoron.
17:41 to 18:05
"That which is not wanted when experienced" would actually be a good description of suffering, and it's odd that Professor Crisp would disagree with it, considering he gives the exact reasoning behind that definition his approval, almost immediately after stating said disagreement. "Pain" would be the unwanted sense data, and the "judgement that it's bad" and "not wanted" would be an abstraction on that sense data. So then, reducing the sensation of "pain" down to its relevant attribute, being unwanted, that sensation would fit perfectly into the cognitive subcategory of "suffering," as the given definition can be distilled down to basically mean "unwanted sense data." Suffering, then, would not be a "sensation" as Professor Crisp defined it, but rather a subcategory of sensations that have the reducible attribute of being unwanted. I would argue that "suffering" denotes a qualitative judgement of the degree to which a sensation is "not wanted," ie. the sensation being pronounced to the point that it is elevated from the subcategory "discomfort" into "suffering," but being unwanted would still be a reducible attribute of those sensations regardless.
Also, as a comment on the discussion as a whole, I found this to be thoroughly underwhelming and sloppy in its description of the systems being talked about. The entire time all that was really mentioned was one or two assertions made by proponents of objective morality, with basically no mention of the reasoning behind those assertions. I understand that the two of you have a different perspective on this issue, but given that both of you are supposedly well-educated experts in the field of philosophy, I would expect more care to be given in describing the ideas being talked about if you are making a video on the subject. Also the lack of even a passing mention of Rand was frustrating.
That's because you are conflating things here. Gravely.
People see pain and stuff they dislike.
moral anti-realist to moral realist - 'give us your best argument'
moral realist - 'all human suffering is bad'
random animal - 'human suffering can lead to human death, which is good for me'
so much for moral objectivity
morality is subjective, value principles lie on a spectrum. however, it is one's moral duty to argue they lay at the most objective end of the spectrum as possible.
When morality isn't objective, it's unnecessary to correct errors in thought. In fact, in some cultures it may be frowned upon. So don't bother with it.
however, we can also imagine a scenario not based on external drawn situations, such as the suffering of being engulfed by white blood cells as a bacteria, surely no human has yet to experience such fear and suffering, and so this imagined experience is entirely subjective, so how do we equate one's subjective suffering with another person's subjective suffering? and if equated, does that make that objective among the two of them?
That it’s intrinsic to life, makes it objective. If it was a conscious decision it would be at risk of being called subjective.
Morality can be no more objective than beauty or humor. A sunset can not be objectively beautiful nor a joke objectively funny, in the same way an intent, action, or consequence can not be objectively moral. Morality, humor, and beauty are constructs of the human mind and are all therefore dependent on the subject.. the human, making them definitionally subjective.
Such discussions always raise the question: Have those Anglo-American (self-called) "analytic philosophers" ever read Kant or any philosophy before Frege? Tiring.
A brute fact of life is that is tries to survive and reproduce. Does every organism so this? Well if it doesn’t then we won’t be seeing it for long.
If life does try to survive and reproduce then these are facts we can say are objectively true.
You would have to prove "trying." Evolution isn't a conscious act. Whatever survives, survives, and does so mostly without conscious effort.
14:30 Suffering is a fact in the world and I think suffering is intrinsically bad.
You might endure suffering in order to achieve a good, but suffering is never good for its own sake. From this I think it’s reasonable to say that suffering is objectively bad and that it would be objectively good if there were less needless/purposeless suffering in the world.
But i think suffering is intrinsically good, and thus making people suffer is objectively moral. What i really think is that there is no such thing as intrinsically good or bad and that the premise of objective morality is flawed from the start.
@@Doppe1ganger You are objectively wrong. You say that you think suffering is intrinsically good, but the evidence that you are lying is that you don’t actually live that way.
@@MarkLeBay You're making no sense and don't seem to understand the words you're using.
@@Doppe1ganger Then I’ll write to clarify for the benefit of those who can understand English:
You, and every other conscious creature that has ever or could ever exist, avoids suffering unless there is something to be gained by the suffering.
If you claim that the experience of suffering is something that you seek for yourself for its own sake ( i.e., you consider suffering a good), you are lying.
@@MarkLeBay Ah i see, whoever disagrees with your morality is lying, because if they weren't than your morality wouldn't be an objective fact. Dangerously deluded. What if my morality involves me not suffering, and everyone else suffering? What if my morality involves the ultimate elimination of suffering, the end of everything. Now consider this as not only my subjective preference for how i want things to be, but as a claim that it is morally objectively true and universal, and you only disagree with it because you're ignorant of the voice in my head that is god. Everyone's morality is obviously subjective, contextual to their lives and relative to everyone else. Sorry, but that is reality.
Would you ever talk about generic subjective continuity and it’s implications, especially on things like antinatalism
That's utterly ridiculous. I feel very positive about reproduction.
@@gooddaysahead1 The arguments for antinatalism are pretty strong, doesn’t matter how positive you feel about reproduction
@johnchesterfield9726 Mine was on off the cuff remark. On the surface, it seems a bit silly. Maybe i'm missing something. I still think enter pin evolution rule the day on most things...As a broad outlook.
@@gooddaysahead1is it the reproduction you feel positive about or the copulation? 😉
@@johnchesterfield9726 Are they? don't think so....
Not all suffering is wrong. Kids that go through painful practice, homework, etc, they are growing through their suffering. Hardship builds character. Therefore, you would need a definition of "unnecessary" suffering or "undue suffering".
You dare to conflate "homework" with the suffering that a child with bone cancer and their families go through or those that endured years of sexual abuse. 😡😡🤢🤮 Shame on you and those like you that sacrifice both your humanity and your reasoning at the alter of Yahweh for the promise of an afterlife. It's a price I'm not willing to pay
You have to differentiate between something being intrinsically wrong and something being instrumentally wrong. Not all suffering is instrumentally wrong, as it may lead to more good things down the road. But in those cases, the only reason it's not wrong in that regard, is because other good things result from it that 'compensate' the bad part. To figure out if any painful practice as you call it is worth it, you still count the suffering as a negative. It's just that the positives may outweigh it. So speaking intrinsically instead of instrumentally: in your cases suffering could still be viewed as always wrong.
@@joephorbach2656 agreed
I find it hilarious that Roger simply replaced the word “objective” with the word “fact” in his definition, but then refused to define “fact” on the grounds that it would take too long 😂😂😂
There might be objective morality.
Meanwhile, we will have to put up with what we've got.
It is true that nobody deserves anything good or bad to happen to them because the only way that someone would deserve something is if the way they are would be their fault. But the only way the way people are would be their fault is if they willingly chose to come into existence and if they created themselved and made themselves be exactly the way that they want to be, but that's not possible.
People are forced to be the way that their type of genetics and their types of life experiences programs them to be throughout their life no matter if they want to be that way or not.
Who and how someone happens to be is an extremely unfair unjust lottery that is dependent on what type of genetics that they happen to have and depending on what types of life experiences that they happen to have throughout their life.
This is your brain on atheism.
then how are we to judge and punish?
@@elora50511 if someone does unfortunately happen to have the type of genetics and the types of life experiences that causes them to choose to do illegal things, then even though it's not their fault that that they exist and unfortunately happen to be that way, none the less they need to be stopped.
@@elora50511 if someone unfortunately happens to have the type of genetics and the types of life experiences that causes them to choose to do illegal things, then even though it's not their fault that they exist and unfortunately happen to be that way, none the less they need to be stopped.
But it would be much better if no life forms existed at all because then no one would be a victim of existing and suffering against their will and if no life forms existed then that would be just fine because then no one would know or care that they didn't exist. antinatalism
@@elora50511 if someone does illegal things then they still need to be stopped even though it's not their fault that they exist and unfortunately happen to be that way.
It seems to me that the religious understanding of morality is that it must be rooted in the will of an enforcer, and as God is the most powerful entity in existence and has the ability to enforce whatever He wants, the concepts of 'good' and 'bad' simply refer to actions which are either in accordance or conflict with the will of God. Any irreligious approach to ethics will automatically be dismissed by most religious people because they will argue that, without an all-powerful enforcer, there can be no binding moral obligations.
In other words, god is not bound by logic, space or time. Square circle, he can make 2+2 = 79. Such rubbish. Religion is a waste of neurons.
To say something is wrong because and only because God says so, is to say, he doesn't say it's wrong because he knows it to be so, but that it's wrong merely cause he decided it so, and he decided it so why? Is there a logic to why? Then it goes back to he says so because he knows so. And if that's the case then god is irrelevant to something being wrong or right.
The idea that the problematic nature of torture isn't evident or intrinsic to the thing itself, but instead we must go searching for some external proof written on some stone tablet or hidden message written in atoms for us to find, or some mysterious higher being appeal to authority, makes me embarrassed to be part of the human race.
Why, when listening to philosophers, psycholigists and religious people, they speak of moral, values, oughts they sound totally disconnected from our biological and evolutionary evolment.
I mean, I get more moral teaching form listening to Robert Sapolsky and Richard Dawkins than the Jordan Petersons and philosophers.
To be fair JP is at least one step ahead by understanding psychology as a science on a deeper level lol
Evolutionary psychologists are the ones with the best scientific grasp on it all, in my opinion.
@@andrewworth7574evolutionary psychologists can find explanation for everything, yet evidence for nothing
If you've not read it, you'll like The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. He gives a detailed analysis of morality from an evolutionary perspective. Up there with Sapolsky (but not Dawkins, who's sadly turned into a reactionary prat in old age).
How is objective defined? I did not hear that clearly developed. If it is the typical "mind independent" definition, I don't see how moral can be objective. Morality is grounded in a value, such as avoiding suffering is important to do because our experience of suffering is bad and we value avoiding suffering. This valuing is only a function of a subjective experience of a mind. Thus, morality is not at all mind independent.
Am I missing something?
so, we are betting on the axioms of existence to support all the moral codes standing on top of these axioms, however, one can still commit suicide and/ or torture oneself, does that indicate there can be no lower limit to the causal of the suffering, especially when it's self-inflicted? and does this mean there really isn't any solid foundation for any moral claims and it's all subjective?
Morality's subjective view, is the basis of an individual. Collective and or communal morality is a combination of many subjective morality views and by that nature, it's objective. It's the difference between a single page in a book and the entire book.Why this is even a problem is beyond me.
A cumulation of many (overlapping) subjective views does not equate to an objective view; it equates to an intersubjective view -- which is entirely distinct from an objective view.
Your reasoning is flawed. A great many subjective opinions concerning a proposition does not GENERATE an objective fact regarding that proposition.
The best that it can be said to do is CONFIRM an objective fact. In other words, that fact has to already exist. Then individual opinions can serve as approximations to it, and the statistical average of these may approach the fact itself. But the fact has to exist in its own right, with no need for any opinions at all.
In any case, this matter of morality is easily accounted for, as a consequence of our evolution as a social species. We actively want to cooperate, most of the time, for many purposes, but we also have other instincts which can come into conflict with our prosocial ones. Morality is somewhat messy because of this, and also because of variation among individuals.
This kind of morality is necessarily subjective even at a species level. A different species with different physical requirements, subject to different evolutionary pressures, will evolve a different balance of instincts. Each species as a whole, therefore, develops its own subjective positions with respect to morality.
If there were to be an objective morality, it would have to hold even in the absence of all these different species. In other words, it would have to hold in a lifeless universe, subject therefore only to physical properties such as the charge on an electron. We could, as a distinctly artificial exercise, come up with some construction of an "objective morality" based on such physical properties, but it doesn't seem to map to our ordinary intuitions about morality at all.
Possibly, if we had other universes to compare against, having different physical properties, we might try to claim that some of those universes are "better" or "worse" than others, based on some value like the potential to give rise to life or consciousness or complexity.
We can imagine other universes that are very regular or very disordered, not that they would be "bad" universes, but they would be less interesting to explore. You've seen one orthogonal crystal lattice, you've pretty much seen them all. Again, this doesn't look much like what we'd ordinarily recognize as morality, but if it must necessarily be objective then I think it's the best that can be proposed. I don't find that it has much application.
Ayn Rand had the right approach in her essay Objectivist Ethics. Her key insight is to ask "what is value" and "why does man need morality". Value is what a living thing acts to gain or keep. It's objective if you can show that performing that action keeps the organism alive. Unlike inanimate matter, living things face the alternative of life or death. So, the concept of value originates in the fact that living things must act to continue to be a living thing. As for needing morality, she notes that most organisms have built-in processes for gaining food and avoiding dangers. Man does not. You will feel hunger and thirst, but you will not know what is poisonous or what is healthy. To learn about the world, man uses reason. For Rand, reasoning is the act of non-contradictory identification. The primary virtue is Rationality. We know this is objective, because we can see that the proper use of Reason results in living and flourishing humans.
I feel like these convos never get anywhere. It's just talking, for the sake of talking
Philosophy in a nutshell
@@Luftgitarrenprofithat's not true, philosophy provides a couple of great insights with possible applications every couple centuries approximately, not more frequently than that, though.
What sort of conversations do you think get somewhere?
Maybe you would like it if they boxed. Maybe they should just threaten each other. There are some people who don't like ideas. You might be one of them. 😢
@@gooddaysahead1 this dismissive response makes *you* seem like the type who doesn’t like ideas. We should approach all with charity.
So ..."I think so" is the answer?
16:06 “…P being made true by R, R being made true by Q…”
Why are these letters out of order?
Probably just to annoy you
Atheism, like Catholicism, I suspect, depends upon objectivity (of some sort, but always with a quality of tangibility, thing-ness, presenting itself) in morality (the customs in strengthening rather than weakening the basic principles of socially acceptable interactions, in practice, indeed, therefore - pertaining to manners, one's disposition toward self and others, thus some commonly shared rules of right conduct). Even in matters where subjectivity must dominate - in taste, personal commitment, submission to a shared code .. a degree of objectivity must underlie the atheist's sense of 'decency' = comeliness, fitting to the occasion, as it does (did) for the (old time) Catholic because .. tarrah .. the code must be .. shared, not solitary, even when one is alone. Utility, at heart, is a sense of what is useful .. to a moral agent (the doer of the deed), and cannot easily be 'shared', as held in common, it is still subjective even where objectivity is paramount, e.g. concepts like justice, character, pledge, debt, etc.
Most humans, regardless of their philosophy or ideology, will individually resort to usefulness, in the kinds of behaviour where we seek to attain a goal - as 'valued' (the cost or desirability of a thing = 'object/ objective', above) by the doer of the deed or for someone we want to please or appease. So, even utilitarianism - if only by appearances, not in right judgment - will involve some objective consideration and not limit itself to subjective concerns or aims or ends (to get what one wants or perhaps what one thinks is for the .. 'best' .. outcome, all things considered).
Thus a subordinate (aka subjective) reason may well trump the objective (aka ordinate/ ordinary) use, and that for the very best of abiding reasons .. in matters of faith (truth, e.g. justice), hope (will e.g. mercy), and charity (love e.g. commitment); that easy (until one actually tries to do it, of course) .. Yey!
Keep the Faith; tell the truth, shame the devil, and let the demons shriek.
God bless. ;o)
I have a problem with Alex's idea: "People have a preference for pleasure"
Do our preferences define pleasure directly? If so, does that not make them truth apt?
For something to be a preference, does there need to be such a thing as a person who doesn't prefer pleasure? as distinct from someone who takes pleasure from not-so-typical things.
Additionally, the concept of morality is meaningless if it doesn't have some impact on the interests of conscious creatures. The claim that morality is grounded on the interests of conscious creatures in at least some way is pretty strong. There is nothing else worth talking about on topic. One of Sam's lines that I liked from his book before he went off the rails on Hume, was something like: Show me an object that has no impact on the well-being of conscious creatures, and I'll show you the most boring object in the universe.
"For something to be a preference, does there need to be such a thing as a person who doesn't prefer pleasure?"
This was the only thing in your comment that set off a bell, but I think I'm reading it in two separate ways - I would say a preference is a subjective thing and isolated to the being and its interests, it's not predicated upon entity having its own host of preferences. If you're claiming a moral system is derived/motivated from pleasure-pursuits then I would argue yes perhaps, any conflicts would arise from restricted access to a pleasure, or hinderances, between peoples.
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This is however too variable - a variant where it's something along the lines of "survival and survival of like" mixed with "pleasure" is an apt set of factors that would explain both commonalities as well as the broad subjectivity we can witness between moral systems across history.
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If you mean by this that a person "does not prefer pleasure" innately, then in a "pleasure motivated moral system" could not really be called a moral one. However, if this person existed, and others existed who do operate under a pleasure-moral system, it doesn't necessary eradicate the idea of it. A moral system emerges entities. I can certainly imagine one construing "one who does not prefer pleasure" having the definition shifted to "whatever that person pursues" being the governing factor of their moral system. Which only points to the subjectivity behind whatever "ideals" may arise from such a thing. Your substitution of "interests" is solid here.
Pleasure does however embody the general flavor of diction that I think can be used in place of "interest" which is a bit more broad than "pleasure". This "flavor" would for instance advocate for humans to kill their infants, burn their food, poison their food, shit in their water sources, etc. as it may "impede pleasure". An added factor of "survival of self and of like (be it familial, tribal, or even species level)" which is not exactly outside of the realms of observed behavior of most lifeforms.
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All of that was me trying to force-fit the "pleasure preference" you referred to Alex mentioning into the world. It's not exactly the view I hold beyond the little addendum I wrote in the section above. It has never struck me as some grand mystery, no more than most other biological and psychological phenomenon. I think what motivates a lot of the discourse is people desperately clinging to some validation, or objective justifier for their beliefs. It can be disconcerting for people to conceptualize a world where it is not - the fear I do not understand. I always detect a vague fear of some kind of like destruction or emptiness in this. I am curious if this is a evolved societal trait or is a consequence of a world mostly proliferated by secularized (to a degree) religious moralities, instead of things that developed atheistically across time.
@@thomabow8949 Thank you for the thoughtful response.
For clarity, I'm pointing out that saying "People have a preference towards pleasure" is similar (not identical to) saying "People have a preference towards what they have preferences towards." It doesn't follow that there are not objective, truth-apt,facts to be known about what provides any individual the most subjective well-being. If well-being is established as a starting point, then morality becomes objective. We can study and make truth claims that can be right or wrong about it. An entire field, positive psychology, already has. Good health is at least as subjective, and we have several fields dedicated to discerning objecting truth-apt facts about it.
Well-being (pleasure/suffering) is definitely a subjective value, but to me it's absolutely bedrock. There can't be any meaningful moral claim without reference to this value. So why not start here?
13:02 I might be wrong, but it seems like when Alex attempts to steel man Naturalistic moral realism/objectivism, he always ends up giving a definition for a sort of moral hedonism/Epicureanism. I’m a naturalistic moral realist, and I utterly denounce these philosophies. The notion that what what is good is what makes us feel pleasure is antithetical to every piece of western wisdom. No great thing in human history has happened without suffering, so how can suffering be so objectively wrong? Can someone enlighten me?
Morality is objective! Why? Because I can’t imagine it any other way. Smh
The price one has to pay to call religion objectively evil is they have to claim morality is objective. Otherwise why are they even complaining?
Morality is by definition something subjective, its made up by humans. There is a reason morality is (sometimes very) different in different parts of the world,its because its subjective.
What you're referring to is descriptive moral relativism, i.e. the study of how different individuals or cultures understand morality. It doesn't contradict the idea of objective morality, per se.
As we all know, it's possible for different people to believe different or even contradictory things about a given topic -- it's conceivable for them all to be completely wrong, or for some to be right in specific ways, or for one to be right in every way. The idea of objective morality is that it's possible to be right and wrong about questions of a moral nature. Therefore, it's possible for different people to believe wildly different things about it -- but this has no bearing on the subject matter itself.
There are a number of different ways how we can think of objective morality. One idea is that moral rules are "real" precisely to the extent that they are honored. If 97% of people in a given society follow the rule "you should not steal", then that moral rule is 97% "real" -- in a way that is empirically measurable, and therefore objective.
Another approach is to recognize that subjective preferences are actually objective, in a sense: if I have a preference for X, then it is possible to independently observe and verify whether my preference actually exists. My preference is of course limited to myself, but it can nevertheless be as real as any other fact about my material existence. Given that subjective preferences are "real" in this sense, we can conclude that it's possible to make objective assessments about them. For example, if I believe that theft is immoral, this implies that I should not steal, and I should not condone acts of theft. If I can be objectively observed not to steal and not to condone acts of theft, it can be concluded that I do, in fact, consider theft to be immoral (precisely to the degree that I follow up on my stated conviction). My preference therefore becomes an objective fact.
Now, let's say that you wish to be a "good" person, but you don't know what it means to be "good", or moral. The only thing you know is that I consider theft to be bad, or immoral. From this, you can logically conclude that you should also consider theft to be bad relative to me, if you want to be "good" (relative to me), as this makes you "good" from my point of view.
This approach is a bit more difficult to wrap your head around, because it superficially sounds like moral subjectivism. For example, if I consider theft to be moral, you might conclude that in order for you to be moral relative to me, you must be accepting of my preference towards theft. But this is not so: you don't have to accept other people's moral preferences, at all. Rather, you simply apply the moral rules that other people hold, relative to them. So if I believe that theft is morally OK, it follows that it's morally OK for you to consider theft to be morally permissible relative to *me*. In other words, if I don't respect other people's property rights, then I can't credibly expect other people to respect my property rights.
This describes the type of moral logic that we intuitively use all the time and consider to be self-evident -- maybe for good reason.
@@AlexanderReiswich jesus, that is a hell of a reply. Great reading tho I still think because there is also no such thing as good or bad It makes no sense for morality to be objective. There is only what we make of it, what our opinions are. For example, somebody killing somebody else is alway based on a deeper feeling which isnt controlled by the individual, not really. In the end we are just not in control at all of our feelings and so, no free will, no good or bad, no obiectove morality. Only opinions.
Doesn't moral truth make more sense if we see it as being TRANSJECTIVE or INTERSUBJECTIVE?
It's grounded in the subjective because it's a form of value derived from conscious experience, but it's also a social/collective system and therefore has an objective dimension.
In this framing, moral truth is an affordance. It's made real by the combination of the subjective and objective.
The subjectivity of morality is why it matters to anyone. The objectivity of morality is why it matters to everyone.
Thoughts?
That's exactly correct. The problem is that most people get caught up on the terms objective and subjective and see those as a dichotomy of which only one can be true, while in reality it's more of a spectrum of intersubjective agreement on axioms with preferably objective application within an open framework. It's neither fully objective, nor fully subjective. Just like chess, journalism or the judical system.
This problem arises in philosophy, because philosophical objectivity is essentially unattainable by any being that has an experience.
The subjective vs objective morality debate is nothing but mental masturbation and should simply be ignored.
@@Luftgitarrenprofi I'm glad you agree!
In terms of the "agreement on axioms" I also find that implications of moral disagreement are vastly overestimated, if they exist at all. It's true that moral truth is "contingent" on axioms of somekind but my sense is that those axioms are derived from our nature and the nature of experience rather than from our transient preferences or opinions.
If morality aims to answer the question "how should we treat each other?" rather than "how should I act?" then the answer itself must maintain the social context of the question. There doesn't appear to be diversity in how people want to be treated, not on the fundamental level. Morality takes on a logical layer, which I think is basically Sam Harris' whole point. There is basically not real discussion to be had about it
Intersubjectivity isn't terribly interesting; it simply describes commonalities between various subjective viewpoints. To say that moral truth is intersubjective is to claim that consensus is what justifies it's truth-value. I don't think this is a reasonable claim to make: if 9 out of 10 people agree that theft is moral, does this make it moral for them to rob the one guy that disagrees? But maybe I'm simply not fully grasping your proposition...
@@AlexanderReiswich Your description is usually the strawman stark defenders of either moral realism or anti-realism create by oversimplifying the concept and reducing it solely to consensus instead of nuanced considerations of shared experiences, perspectives, and dialogues that contribute to understanding rather than just counting votes for truth.
But it also perfectly demonstrates the false dichotomy between philosophical subjectivity and objectivity I highlighted.
The intricacies are in the substance of a perspective, not just simply in a view being stated and expected to be accepted in a vacuum.
Intersubjectivity means, in essence, to accept that while moral axioms are ultimately subjective, they are shared amongst not even just humans but many sentient beings. And from there frameworks based on rationality and objective evaluation can be created.
And before you go any further yourself, I'll do you a favor and take it to the extreme for you:
If a psychopath doesn't agree and wants to harm others while not feeling empathy, then no argument could convince them to feel (not necessarily do) otherwise. This is not a flaw of intersubjective morality, but a fact about a degree of the human/sentient condition. It is a flaw and sound critique of moral realism, I agree. Because it negates universal moral truth as absolute and objective fact about the universe, which is not a problem of intersubjective morality, because it doesn't make this claim.
To be precise, I'd probably agree with the moral realist philosopher in the video on most points, but find it inaccurate to claim pure objectivity on something ultimately based on (shared) intuition. That's exactly why in more recent times the term intersubjectivity became popular in the field.
@@landonpontius2478 I've read the moral landscape and while I agree with most arguments being made, I don't agree with the use of the term objectivity and complete disregard of the naturalistic fallacy (Hume). I believe if Harris used the term intersubjectivity instead of objectivity, he could have (like most moral realists) avoided unnecessary critique and brought his point across without joining the (in my opinion misplaced and misdirecting) polarized debate of subjectivity vs objectivity.
"True for me" is a phrase people need to stop using. Truth is the _one_ set of facts about reality. It doesn't vary by person, so there's no your truth, my truth, or "true for me".
Some ideas don't involve a truth statement. For example if someone calls Transformers (2007) a good movie, that's opinion; it's not universally true for everyone. The fact that we can make a related truth statement, _"Joe thinks Transformers is a good movie,"_ doesn't suddenly cause the topic to be objective. It's objectively true Joe holds that opinion, but not objectively true it's a good movie.
Morality is exactly like that. It doesn't appear to involve truth statements. My opinion that beheading apostates is wrong doesn't make it objectively wrong any more than a Muslim's opposite opinion makes it right.
Morality is extremely important. Good morals are critical to civilization. But we don't need to delude ourselves that they're objective in order to agree on a working set of morals that enables civilization to flourish.
Absolutely agree with you that "true for me" is utter nonsense and that people should - yes "should" - stop saying it. Disappointing, then, that in the next paragraph you come out with the nonsensical remark "it's not universally true for everyone". I guess what you mean is that not everyone likes Transformers. But it's possible that Transformers is, objectively, either a good film or a bad film, which an expert in film-making could help us to understand (i.e. in terms of what makes it a good film, if it is, or what makes it a bad film, if it is).
@@davidrobinson7684 So your position is that "Transformers is a good movie" is an objective fact of reality? That it's true universally for everyone?
Because I feel like you missed the critical point where we switched from (a) topics where a truth was involved to (b) topics where there was no truth involved, where it's merely opinion.
To measure movie quality is a subjective thing. You can objectively aggregate subjective opinions, but that doesn't make the opinions themselves objective.
If you disagree, then your position must be that murder would become objectively good, if murderers (specifically those who subjectively believe murder is acceptable or good) killed all non-murderers. See the problem?
@@majm4606why assume one couldn’t analyze film and the purpose of it in order to arrive at objective standards by which to judge such that its not a matter of opinion? I’ve seen films I know are good but that I simply don’t like. It wasn’t a matter of opinion, I based my judgement of the films qualities based on what I know about film.
No, my position is that the sentence "Transformers is a good movie" may, at least in movie-making circles, be either true or false. "Good" here is obviously not in the moral sense, but in the sense of "well-crafted" or "of artistic merit". I agree that an aggregation of subjective opinions doesn't make an objective opinion, but are all opinions subjective? (If they are, then why qualify "opinion" with "subjective"?) Every proposition we state is an opinion. Scientists have opinions on scientific matters, but that does not mean such opinions are not objective (i.e. based on evidence), even though they may turn out to be false.
In your last two paragraphs you are arguing against moral relativism. And I certainly see the problem with moral relativism. You actually make a good case for the wrongness of murder being a moral fact (which I would agree with). What would the moral subjectivist say about murder? Simply that objectively speaking there is nothing wrong with murder; it's just a matter of how we feel about it. Can you see the problem with that?
@@majm4606
@@francescaerreia8859 *"And the purpose of it,"* exactly. You have to choose a subjective goal first. Then, objective measurements of that goal follow.
So regarding morality: if a killer's morals include the subjective goal, _"kill as many as possible,"_ once they've chosen that goal everyone can objectively measure progress towards it. *Does that make killing objectively good?* I think it's clear that it doesn't.
So the films you watched weren't _objectively good._ You just could tell they appealed to people whose subjective criteria for movies would've been satisfied.
Why do you need or want to prove “objective morals”? Lol. You want to be seen as good that badly? .. aren’t you eventually going to force a selfish opinion anyway eventually? Regardless if you wish for sweet kindness or harsh tyranny.. isn’t it always selfish?
Why is this so hard? Objective = set a standard, in this case objective moral "objectives" is the well being of humanity (individual and society), so if objective morality comes from god then you have the problem of an opinion and not a standard, objective is regardless of a god's opinion which is where theist don't seems to get it, it is to achieve an objective.
Wonder what Alex would do if he was presented with an actual objective morality framework. One which has good defined in clear objective form.
Thoughts?
Do you have one to present?
@@RichWoods23 Yes I do
@@ConceptHut Care to share it?
@@RichWoods23 Are you asking me to share the framework in a TH-cam comment or just the definition of good simpliciter?
@@ConceptHut It sounds like both would be needed if anyone is to evaluate your idea.
Objective morality cannot exist as long as people aren't exactly identical. We have different innate values from biology to experience and that cannot ever be reconciled. Nor should it be. What we need is a framework that allows for a mutually prosperous existence and everything beyond that is and should remain more local.
Saying "Objective Morality" is an oxymoron, a figure of speech in which contradictory terms appear in conjunction.
Ethical moral values are a social agreement within some group over the degree to which behaviors within that society are good vs bad. By definition that is subjective and relative.
Even something which might seem clear as "Murder" is wrong, there is not an agreement within humanity over what counts as murder and what punishment should be met out for murder.
Let us consider something which one might think is more likely to be universally agreed upon by everyone... the ethical moral value that "anyone seeking to cause the extinction of their entire species is very bad". The vast majority of human beings alive and of human beings who have been alive in the past but are now dead, would agree that "anyone seeking to cause the extinction of their entire species is very bad". However, within, for example, Christianity, we have a widespread belief that Armageddon is coming or is here and that the result of Armageddon will be that every single living human being will be killed in the war and those who are true to God will go to Heaven, thus this belief in Armageddon is a belief in "seeking to cause the extinction of their entire species", yet that is considered good because it is being sought in the name of God. Besides Christians, there are other groups of people who believe in ""seeking to cause the extinction of their entire species", for example the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement.
Thus this extreme example of what we might think should be very black and white is in fact subjective and relative.
So, when considering something vastly more foggy and not as sharply defined as "do not cause harm to others" is clearly NOT OBJECTIVE, but subjective and relative.
It's not accurate to say that moral values equate to social consensus; these are distinct concepts. Moral values can be subjective (held by an individual) or intersubjective (shared by a group). In the latter case, consensus is a relevant factor. But it's not determinant of validity. For example, if I believe that red is the best color, and everyone else in my society believes that blue is the best color, it's not like my preference is being invalidated by the group preference. Subjective preferences are independent from each other, which is what makes them subjective in the first place. Whether there is such a thing as objective morality is therefore a separate question: it's perfectly possible (theoretically) for there to be an objective moral truth, and at the same time for everyone in society to be wrong about it.
But even if there is no objective moral truth, and at the same time complete universal agreement regarding some moral principle, this does not mean that the principle itself is true -- it's only true to say that there is absolute agreement regarding it. It's important to distinguish between agreement and adherence; for example, if there is adherence to a particular moral rule, then it would be plausible to say that that moral rule is "real" to the degree it's adhered to. But this would constitute an argument for objective morality.
@AlexanderReiswich, I appreciate your reply and that you are thinking deeply about this subject.
You wrote: “It's not accurate to say that moral values equate to social consensus; these are distinct concepts. Moral values can be subjective (held by an individual) or intersubjective (shared by a group).”
All intelligent life has ethical moral values, something many humans do not understand. Furthermore, human individuals are actually not individual intelligences, but swarm intelligences with a self-aware conscious swarm intelligence that is designed to believe it thinks it is an individual when in fact it is a swarm intelligence. This is how and why an individual can debate with themselves over their personal ethical moral values.
Ethical moral values are what some group of intelligences agree upon to what degree behaviors are good and/or bad, understanding that with complex intelligences behaviors are often a mixture of both good and bad as agreed upon by the group of intelligences deciding this.
Different groups can come to different agreements as to what those ethical moral values are, as a result each human individual swarm intelligent mind has at least a slightly different set of ethical moral values than any other human individual swarm intelligence. Similarly, groupings of human individuals also have at least slightly different sets of ethical moral values.
To get groups to reasonably follow the same set of ethical moral values within our civilization we create codified rules and laws defining them. Even so, it is very difficult to get everyone to always completely agree upon those codified ethical moral values.
Because ethical moral values are the opinions of intelligences agreeing, they are all subjective. Furthermore, they are relative to the circumstances which can change to what degree a group agrees that some behavior is good and/or bad. For example, killing someone is frequently agreed upon as being bad, but depending upon the circumstances around killing someone that opinion can change from very bad, to somewhat bad, to neutral, to good, to very good.
Now, it is logically better to decide upon what an ethical moral value is through using as objective of information related to that ethical moral value and then to analyze it in as logical rational reasoning manner as possible. However, in the end, the decision made is still a subjective opinion over to what degree a behavior is good and/or bad.
An example of how different this can be, there are significantly large groups of people who have different opinions about how good and/or bad it is for someone to believe in and seek to cause the extinction of their entire species. While one might think this would clearly be considered very bad by everyone, there are groups that believe, depending upon the relative circumstances, it is a very good thing to do.
Along those lines, there is literally not a single ethical mora value I know of which is truly universally held by all humans alive.
@@MusingsFromTheJohn00 I'm not entirely sure how literally you mean it when you say that humans should be understood as swam intelligences. Strictly speaking, swarm intelligence isn't a "real" thing; it's an *appearance* of intelligence (coordination / intent) that occurs naturally, without direction. This isn't really true for humans, as we rely on communication and other techniques to achieve what may superficially look like swarm intelligence. That being said, it's possible to argue that both intelligence within individual humans and swarm intelligence are just abstractions that don't literally exist. So this is intended as more of a comment than an argument.
In any case, I think it's important to keep in mind that not only values are subjective -- all of our perception is. Objectivity can be said to be "qualified" subjectivity. Every phenomenon that we experience is a mental model in our minds. The degree to which it is able to describe, explain and correspond to observations is the degree to which it's objective -- but it never truly represents the thing in itself. As we can see in the example with swarm intelligence, it is possible to have a mental model with an objective quality of something that doesn't even physically exist; therefore, it doesn't seem implausible to suggest that there can be a model of morality with an objective quality -- despite the fact that it doesn't represent anything that literally exists. There are other ways to measure the "moral validity" of propositions than to look at the extent they're agreed upon intersubjectively -- which is something that we wouldn't necessarily consider a great standard for determining truthfulness in other contexts, either.
@@AlexanderReiswich I mean the literally, science is showing, the human mind is a swarm intelligence and that all living intelligence we know of is swarm intelligence.
I can go into this in great detail if you are interested or I can point you to some videos or references for it. In brief, each individual cell in the human body is a massively complex swarm intelligence that is effectively a level of nanotech super intelligence still beyond the tech level of human civilization, though we are rapidly reverse engineering this technology, are already using pieces of it in primitive ways, and will probably master it within decades to not more than a century from now. All the cells in the human body are part of the overall human swarm mind, but for the higher intelligence we can restrict ourselves to looking at primarily neuron and astrocyte cells, of which there are ~172 billion cells, though the count has a potential significant level of uncertainty and may be considerably lower or more likely considerably higher. Each of the ~86 billion neurons in the brain have on average ~7,000 synapses. It is estimated that a single astrocyte can contact ~100,000 synapses in the hippocampus, ~300 to ~600 dendrites in the cortex, and protoplasmic astrocytes may connect to about 2 million synapses. Synapses and dendrites are also just one form of intelligent communication between cells, because cells also use electromagnetic fields, biochemical gradients, vesicle virus like messaging which can deliver proteins, bits of RNA, bits of DNA, etc. While some of these messaging paths are simple, some are not so simple.
The thing to understand with in the mind is the tremendous degree of complexity which builds up from just being an individual cell into being something vastly more complex. Within that swarm intelligence is laying like an onion, separate definable regions like soap bubbles, overlapping regions like overlapping spheres, fast highways of information flow where the pattern of the highways effects the pattern of intelligence, and that this is not just neurological as once thought but happening down into the level of RNA and DNA as playing an active dynamic part of how our minds think from moment to moment.
Then we can look at things on a higher level and understand that what we call the self-aware conscious mind is a sub-swarm intelligence which acts like a pilot or leader to make centralized fast decisions for the whole of the human mind/body, and part of the consequence of that is that the self-aware conscious pilot thinks of itself as an individual instead of a swarm and perceives everything through a virtual reality created by subconscious to it parts of the human mind, thus what we think of as ourselves is by design somewhat a hallucinating delusional intelligence. Thus, trying to gain a better understanding of the actual reality we live in can at times seem mind blowing.
Now...
We don't need to know those details to understand that ethical moral values are by nature subjective and relative, but it can help.
It is one of the reasons why we should try to develop our ethical moral values based off as objective of facts as we can while applying logical rational reasoning to debate and decide what we agree should be the codified ethical moral values our society will enforce with punishments against those who do not follow the rules made.
@@AlexanderReiswich oh, if you are not aware of how human minds are swarm intelligences, you might not be aware of some of the very exciting research being done around learning the language of cells and how to talk to them.
This has extremely exciting potential because it means that before we fully understand how a human cells works, we will learn how to communicate with those human cells and tell them to do things like repair damage normally thought unrepairable, regenerate limbs, cure cancers, reverse aging, fix eyesight to perfect vision, fix hearing to perfect functioning, etc. We might need only a decade or more advancement to achieve these things through talking to cells without having to first fully reverse engineer how cells work which will likely take decades longer.
Surely morality evolves, it seems to stem from pleasure and pain response in our animal evolution. It extends out into the world when we develop empathy which is a consequent of mirror neurones and enlightened self interest which develops from reciprocal behaviour. "Moral behaviours" are consequences of social interaction. Ethics are about how we think other people should behave. Most people are made moral by evolution and social conformity and morality goes out the window survival is at stake. The avoidance of suffering is literally hardwired biology. God is not necessary and the concept of god being "good". " Why "good"? why not indifferent? Also the straight line argument seems flawed. Straight lines are simple at the extreme end of minimally crooked lines. All lines are crooked.
Objective morality has not yet worked and will never work where there is authority. Why' because if i am subject to any kind of authority (psychologically ) it is limited. Any form of authority is limited and i am no longer free to find out or discover that which is whole or unlimited. Just as thought being limited ' cannot be used to free myself from the bonds of conditioning. if i am conditioned' i must first free myself from that conditioning to get to the truth. The mind must be totally silent with no movement of thought. Then one can have insight into this problem. If i do not do this' then i am trying to solve a problem using my own authority and conditioning that has the problem embedded into it and is limited. Do you see this.
Look its Cosmic Skeptic.
Hi Alex darling I have a subjective preference for you to come to Australia xx
This kind of thing drives me nuts. A person consults his own intuition and declares that an objective truth. How is that good philosophy?
The beginning point of any supposed objective moral framework is always necessarily based on (subjective) intuition. Achieving objective morality is more of a theoretical ideal rather than an absolute (empirical) certainty.
Take chess as an example. Chess is ultimately subjective. It's a made up game that has rules both parties need to agree to and follow in order to play the game of chess. No objective necessity forces them to do this, but once they don't follow the rules they're no longer playing chess. If you agree to the rules and follow them, there are objectively better moves to get to the goal of checkmate or draw.
Most people will still acknowledge that chess is objective and there are objectively better ways to get to goals within the framework of chess, even if it's ultimately subjective and dependent entirely on the desire to play a game of chess.
That's the kind of objective a moral realist talks about and why you'll often see them put heavy emphasis on avoidance of suffering and promoting well being.
You'd be correct in pointing out that the academic philosophical definition of "objective" typically implies something that is independent of individual opinions or perspectives. If a moral framework is primarily based on subjective intuition, it may indeed be challenging to meet this strict criterion of objectivity.
In philosophical discourse, this tension is acknowledged, and scholars engage in complex debates about whether objective morality can truly be established. Some argue for a form of "intersubjective objectivity," where moral principles are considered objective to the extent that they are widely shared and reasoned across different perspectives, even if they are ultimately rooted in human subjectivity.
It's important to note that the pursuit of objective morality is a longstanding philosophical endeavor, and there isn't a universally agreed-upon resolution to this debate. The challenge lies in reconciling the inherent subjectivity of human experience with the desire for a universally valid and objective moral framework.
And yes, objective morality is more about ideal and desire than ultimately true normative claims that are universally true and absolute from the root.
In short, while the beginning point might be subjective in all cases, the framework can be objective once certain fundamental goals are agreed upon.
What I will agree to though is that the semantics of how especially the words objective and "moral facts" are often used by (in this case non-theist) moral objectivists can seem disingenous on first glance.
Moral philosophy (including metaethics) nowadays is a mess. What you can acheive in ethics is to make your ethical system more consistent etc. Philosophers should concentrate on that, not chasing after some "objective" grounding.
@@BiznizTrademark It's not a mess at all. Philosophers have been debating subjective vs objective morality since Plato and Aristotle.
Just because the debate has evolved and as a result been made more complex over time doesn't make it a mess.
Again. All I here from atheist philosophers
Is that morals are simply brute facts. Okay but according to who?
Well, it's definitely more consistent than moral relativity. That philosophy never gets anybody anywhere.
Could an evolutionary argument be considered objective?
It’s objectively true that humans have evolved with empathy. But our judgments about what we deem acceptable treatment of one another is subjective. Each of us has our own opinions. They are often similar enough to have general agreement on certain topics. But a judgment can never be objective. Judgments are necessarily subjective.
One can objectively observe that something is damaging or life threatening, but the judgment that damage or danger is bad is always a judgment. Is it bad for a person to damage a vegetable in order to eat it? The answer depends completely on whether you are the person or the carrot. Subjective.
But isn't the "observation" that something is damaging or life-threatening also a judgement? You judge a situation to be dangerous, and that judgement is a function of you as subject; but it may well be an "objective" judgement, based on observation of the facts rather than just a sense of fear. "Dangerous" is a resultant property, as is "bad".@@ourmobilehomemakeover662
"Objective Morality" is an oxymoron. Morality is an abstract concept and all abstract concepts are subjective. There's no objective morality the same way there is no objective luck or objective controversy.
"You can't have luck without an objective luck giver". See how stupid it sounds when you replace one abstract idea with another?
I agree. How I think about that is when people argue for objective morality by gving examples of heinous crimes & ask if it's good - I just say for whom? Maybe not for you or the victim, but maybe for the criminal.
@@arpit.sharma I think when people argue for 'Objective Morality', all they're saying is that they don't know what the word 'objective' means.
@@andydee1304 Yea. I discovered Alex recently & just heard his views on veganism. He said that it's about minimising the animal suffering as we can't completely eradicate it. What are your views on it?
@@arpit.sharmaI have no reason to believe that the animals we eat (cows, pigs, sheep, chicken) have the ability to experience suffering. They can experience pain, but suffering is an abstract concept and there's no evidence that they are capable of abstract thought. You don't see cows grieving other cows.
All abstract concepts aren't subjective. In mathematics the axioms are subjective, but once you accept those, anything that follows objectively flows from those axioms.
It didnt look like Roger enjoyed this interview. Alex was kinda relativising thruth just for the sake of it, and not to get somewhere.
Alex seems to throw the paint at the canvas for the sake of throwing the paint. Not to convey any meaning.
Why would you put avoiding suffering next to the will to put money in your bank account? Suffering and its avoidance has a much wider implication outside of your own being than putting money to your account.
If you suffer, others will suffer, and thus a whole society will suffer if there will be no counter force. Attempting to dismantle normative rules by highlighting the insiginificance of ones subjective desire throws out the whole meaning of morality.
Alex seems ultimately nihilisitc.
I think hes try to cash it out in logical terms so that there can be shown similarities. Of course the lived experience of those 2 are different. But the transactional structure of them similar. Its what I got from that. Sometimes these discussions are embedded in strong nuance that its almost impossible to know what it is they are truly saying
265 subscribers?
God’s Top Ten Rules for Life
God gave Moses 611 commandments in all, but these are the ones God considered to be the foundation for the objective moral standard that humans previously lacked.
But are they ? Let's take a look.
1-3: Commandments about Himself.
4: Obey your parents (apparently no parent had ever thought of that one previously).
5. Don't murder. Okay, good one, but religious and secular laws against murder existed long before the Mosaic era (see Code of Hammurabi).
6. No adultery. Another good one, but apparently having multiple wives, concubines, and taking child virgins as sex slaves didn't count as adultery.
7. Don't steal. (See #5 above)
8. Don't lie. Okay, that's a no-no, but top ten? Seriously? Especially when slavery and beating wives didn't make the cut. (Also see #5)
9&10: Thought crimes. Pack your bags; we're all going to Hell.
Morality comes from two sources:
Human instincts and human cultures.
Justify your claims, please.
@maltea9354 Objective morality does not have to come from "on high."
Using sentient being as mere means for self/cultural aggrandizement...
seems clear. Thank you for your inspiration, Mr. Kant.
Treating a human as if they have absolutely no intrinsic value...
seems clear.
I think we could consider these universal moral claims crisscrossing history and cultures.
Fairly pragmatic...
Without being a verbal fetishist.
I'm not trying to start a new country or write a brand new constitution for a culture, but I think these points are a good start.
@maltea9354 Did you really use the word "ergo?"
What century is this?
I'll raise you aforementioned and notwithstanding.
What good is philosophy if you can't have fun?
@maltea9354 well put.
I argue that all social animals show signs of what can reasonably be described as innate moral codes in their social interactions and that those moral codes vary from species to species.
I'd argue that as any given society changes to adapt to its environment, the moral codes that society operates under will change to support that process of adaptation. The cultural moral codes of Western societies today are very, very different to those that existed 100 years ago, but the innate codes programed into us by evolution, in terms of the way we treat other members of our in groups, remain the same.
Yes but.
These are such basic tenants that I would have a hard time imagining a culture not having something like these as their core morality. But I am limited to my imagination which is bracketed by my culture and time.
For anyone who thinks that objective morality exists in a universe without an outside authority (God) can you declare Dawkins wrong in his claim,
"In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
How does the atheist say as Alex tends to want to do (~11;00) that suffering is bad? It seems very unlikely, in a universe absent God, that Dawkins is wrong.
It would seem to me that Dawkins was working with an assumption similar to, "We are an amalgam of accidentally assembled atoms and their constituents." or "I'm a person in the prime of life, and my objective value (that of a sack of chemicals) won't differ 1 minute after I die (in a couple of minutes from now) or a thousand years after I die. A sack of chemicals is worth a sack of chemicals. Isn't that what Dawkins was likely alluding to with, "there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."?
// "No evil no good nothing but blind pitiless indiference" //
Lol you do realise that those were attributes that Dawkins was applying to "the universe itself" *NOT* mankind. 🤭😅 Morality is a CONCEPT and as such exists in the same way the number ZERO exists. Absent a human to evaluate it or be impacted by it the term means nothing ( no pun intended 😁 )
@@trumpbellend6717
Dawkins's quote is quite clear and speaks for itself.
*"Lol you do realise that those were attributes that Dawkins was applying to "the universe itself" NOT mankind."*
You do realize that *mankind* is a part of the universe?
Of no more ultimate significance or value than any other sack of chemicals. All are accidental amalgams of atoms and their constituents. How could you state it more clearly than "nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." That we have synapses resulting in pain and others resulting in pleasure - well, yes, different chemical combinations yield different results. Again, "nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
@@samdg1234
//"You do realise that mankind is part of the universe"//
Lol SO WHAT ?? The brown logs I flush down that toilet are _"part of the universe"_ does that mean that they should exhibit "morality" ?? 🤭😂🤣🤣
Is "the universe" capable of formulating "CONCEPTS" ?? Lol no of course not dear, Conversely mankind is entirely capable of creating CONCEPTS including thousands of subjective invisible "Gods" like the one that you adhere and aspire to dear 😜
@@samdg1234
Why Don you simply define "morality" and "good" for us all...... does it relate to human wellbeing or suffering and how we treat each other ? Is it relative or absolute ? Objective or subjective, if objective then name the specific standard? What purpose does it serve ie what the goal of a moral system ? 🤔
Is your OPINION regarding the "correct" God who's allegedly the basis for morality a "SUBJECTIVE" one or a "OBJECTIVE" one ?? 🙄
Can we use *ANY* "God" as the basis for this "objective" moral standard you speak of or just the SPECIFIC SUBJECTIVE invisible being *YOU* determined to be the "correct" one out of the many thousands man has preposed.? 🙄 🤔
If its the latter then in actuality its *YOU* and YOUR SUBJECTIVE OPINION that is determining morality dear. if its the former, then asserting objectivity to any moral claim based upon a "God" becomes a completely vacuous useless concept 👍
The claim that theistic morality is somehow superior because its "objective" is ridiculous. Theists are merely substituting their own subjective moral standards with the morals standards of the god they subjectively determine represents the "correct objective" morality. 🙄🤔
If these basic questions are beyond you then please don't waste either my time or your own in further discussion
@@samdg1234
Your argument suffers from "The fallacy of composition," ie. what is true of a member of a group is not necessarily true for the group as a whole. Just because things within the universe can create concepts like morality, does not mean that the universe itself can create concepts. For instance, while it is absolutely true that within a flock of sheep that every member ("an individual sheep") has a mother, it does not therefore follow that the flock has a mother.
I'm tired of taking conversations about objective morality seriously. There is absolutely no argument in favor of it that doesn't boil down to an emotional "seems like there should be" plea. Can we please stop platforming arguments for evidenceless fantasies? (free will I'm looking at you too)
Clearly you have never read (or understood) Rand.
@@equaltoreality8028 I never finished Atlas Shrugged but I did roll my eyes all the way through the Fountainhead. I'd be happy to hear what you think I'm missing.
@@VandalayIndustries82 It's hard to say what your missing with out first understanding what you think Rand is saying.
@@equaltoreality8028 Sounds like you're asking me to state Ayn Rand's position on objective morality and I don't know what it is. I don't recall any obvious argument for it in the Fountainhead. Why don't you just tell me your own best reasoning is?
@@VandalayIndustries82 No, I am ask you what you think Rands position is if you can remember any of it. all I am trying to do is gange what I need to start.
Subjectivism is dead and Thomas Nagel killed it
A subjective statement 😂
@@rishabhthakur8773 If my first comment really was subjective then that means your comment is an objective statement! nice try squirt
There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Shakespeare
Shakespeare was wrong (in that).
Alex does an excellent job of probing to get to a useful statement. Roger Price has no great answers in this interview.
I could not agree more. I have zero desire to listen to this man talk on any subject where as Alex just always makes things so relatable and relatively simple and also makes bloody sense. Mr crisp seems to think if he sounds like he's smart people will think he is 😂
@@user-nb7kw2fy2x
So, to both of you (here so far), can objective morality exist without God's existence? And if so, how do these atheists (even for one depressed by the conclusion) not see that it does?
"The position of the modern evolutionist is that morality is a biological adaptation, no less than our hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when someone says, 'love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory."
- Michael Ruse
A theist’s moral epistemology need not differ broadly from the humanist’s own moral epistemology. Epistemological objections are thus red herrings which need not detain us. I’m contending that theism is necessary that there might be moral goods and duties, not that we might discern the moral goods and duties that there are. As Kurtz puts it, “The central question about moral and ethical principles concerns their ontological foundation (if they really exist). If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, are they purely ephemeral?”
- William Lane Craig
"In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
- Richard Dawkins
We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me…. Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of fact, will not take you to morality.
- Kai Nielsen
Sometimes this also just means you don't have the prerequisites to understand. Do you assume you will understand a discussion on theoretical physics directly?@@user-nb7kw2fy2x
Morality is not subjective, it is contextual and we are always missing a little bit of context. People can make an objectively moral choice that is ultimately wrong because they do not have all the knowledge of a non-existent god.
So objective morality relies on the correct context, but also one can be objectively moral based on wrong context, but also be morally wrong while being right. You make zero sense.
You're arguing for subjective morality fyi. And here's a happy surprise,.you're correct. Maybe for the first time in a while 😊
Can you give me an example of an objectively morally good choice?
If there is objective sentience then there is objective morality.
Because? So tell me, is it objectively moral to paint the town red or blue?
@@Doppe1ganger Given what context?
@@GrantH2606 the context of what is objectively, verifiably, undoubtedly, scientifically, the morally (in)correct, good/evil thing to do.
Yes. "Objectivity" in this context concerns judgement, which is a function of the subject. The subject (agent) can be more or less objective in his / her judgement, by giving due consideration (or not) to all the morally relevant facts of the case, and putting aside (or not) reasons based purely on self-interest. We do this all the time without even realizing it. One of the central fallacies in the argument against moral realism is that for morality to be "objective" there must exist a "moral object" that is entirely mind-independent. It is only within the presumptions of an outmoded, 18th century view of science that entirely mind-independent objects of any kind are thought to exist (or of which we can have any knowledge). See Hilary Putnam on the subject.
@@davidrobinson7684 Wordgarble. What does objective even mean if just thinking/believing it suffices. And that's the "science" of today, everyone has their own truth, and they're all objectively true regardless of contradiction. We went from 18th century to pre Aristotle. 🤦
Moral antirealism is the best position to take in metaethics.
If that is "true" then it isn't "really" true, or if it is false then moral realism is the best position to take, or if it is neither true nor false then it's just an expression of your preference.
That's just your feeling.
There is right and wrong. Anything else like cutting children's sexual organs off is an abomination.
So childhood testicular cancer, caught too late to allow for any treatment other than orchiectomy, is an abomination?
It’s fun to entertain these conversations and questions.
A pattern I’m seeing or a conclusion I’ve come to is that, at some point you have to submit to god. What I mean by submit to god is to come to the realization that there are mysteries and objective truths, or best principles for a given situation that could only come to from the creator of the universe.
Lmfao this is grasping
But then you would have to ask how this creator derives such principles. As we know from the Euthyphro dilemma, it doesn’t give any better of an answer
A pattern I’m seeing, or a conclusion I’ve come to, is that there remains insufficient evidence to meet the claim that you at some point have to submit to someone's proposed god.
@@RichWoods23 the source and origin of the universe. Good luck buddy.
@@bradbradman6050 I recognise that you believe that the source of our universe is a creator god, but your belief is meaningless to anyone other than yourself unless you are able to provide evidence for it. Can you do so?
So, if you're a masochist and a person sexuality attracted to young children, you can be confidently assured that acting on your pedophelic proclivities is objectively immoral because I intuitively feel that it is? Is that really the argument here? I'm sure it's not, but that's what I thought I heard.
Havent watched the video but based on my understanding of ethical intuitionism youre recapitulation is incorrect. Its not “thats wrong because i feel its wrong”, its “that seems wrong, that ‘seeming’ is evidence that it is infact objectively wrong, therefore unless proven otherwise, we ought to assume it is. “
He isnt appealing to his subjective feeling about something, he is appealing to our brains ability to perceive objective truth through intuitions. Idk if that makes sense
@crab6084 Your explanation makes sense. I have a thousand problems with it, though. Firstly, it seems like there's a god to most people. Does that hint at objective truth?
@@crab6084If all other states of affairs in the world were the same, would an increase in suffering be good or bad?
I think we can agree that it would be bad. It’s objectively true that needless suffering is bad.
In the case of a masochist, suffering is a means to an end and so there are secondary moral questions.
@@russ4moose even with or without the existence of a god (with or without the capital 'G'), objective truth can still exist, in fact it must.
The idea of AN objective truth seems not only plausible but necessary in the ultimate explanation of how we came to be here. We are here and so something must have caused that using specific, discernible methods (whether pre-planned or not - that point isn't relative). Whatever has occurred must be objectively true as it has demonstrably happened for us to exist and have this conversation.
Whilst objective truth must, logically, exist as we do that does not mean that ALL viewpoints where a person may be expressing 'their truth' are by definition objective as anything that requires specific perspective is, by definition, subjective.
TL:DR Objective truth exists but not all claims of truth are objective.
@@MarkLeBay No we can't agree. Needless to whom? If i get a kick out of seeing someone suffer, than i know i'm being morally justified to make someone suffer? Objective morality deserves to be in the trashbin along side religious truths which in the minds of the delusional justified holy wars, alongside other infantile ideas such as karma, free will,...
This guy is so empty man. So sad to see this is the best that academia can pump out... Well, I guess I'll figure it out myself.
Boring. The (wrong or not) facts says nothing about objective morality. The (good or not) morality says nothing about objective facts. There's no such thing as objective morality, ethics, good or evil.
@@equaltoreality8028 Laughable.
@@equaltoreality8028 Yes, that is correct. Except that "the standard" is, what does my family, neighborhood, village, region, country, continent, world, think. Morality is just preference. I don't think we consider the preference of the bugs we swat, but malaria is so fucking annoying. Imagine trying to consolidate all contradictory preferences into one objective morality. Good luck. Anyways, i have a big stick and my preference is to laugh at idiots trying and failing to argue objective morality. I wish more people shared my preference. I think it would help humanity to outgrow infantile stupid unhelpful and harmful magical thinking.
@@equaltoreality8028 Start by making a cohesive argument, any argument.
@@equaltoreality8028 Idk, what's the point of never even having made a reasonable argument?
Your last statement doesn't follow from the first two and is entirely irrelevant.
God's world, God's rules. Yes morality is objective. See Exodus chapter 20.
Read Plato's Euthyphro
The claim inherent in your first two words needs to be demonstrated true first.
@RichWoods23 have you ever said "that's not fair" before?
@@roysherwin9348 Why do you ask? Is that what you're saying now?
@RichWoods23 saying "that's not fair" is appealing to a universal (objective) moral standard. There's your evidence.