Great lecture overall, but I think it would be more enriching and interesting if he cited the names of the philosophers (like Kant, I don't know) when explaining the examples. I think giving names and historical facts of the scientists, just like in the other big channels (Numberphile, etc) would raise more interest and get this channel more views
I like how he brought up that formulating ethics may not be possible to due the same way we formulate scientific theories. I had not considered this before. And some years ago if I encountered that argument I might dismiss it, which would be fallacious to do. But if you consider three problems you may conclude that his thought is right: our brains and minds are not all the same, structurally (psychopaths), chemically (born with an anxiety disorder), and inconsistent ways of thinking even if a brain is "normal" (trolley problem). These are all facts about the brain and mind. Forming a scientific theory to base ethics off of need to take these inconsistencies in consideration. I would further point out that we may be able to exclude structure and chemical issues away, but we would still need to deal with issues that arise like in the trolley problem.
Discussing morality and ethics with a general audience who has not studied philosophy is extremely difficult. Ethics is sort of the 'highest level' of a philosophical framework. You have to understand epistemology, metaphysics, and other parts of philosophy before you can have productive discussions about ethics. The example of Joe and the shoes deals with a tremendous panoply of ideas. Discussing whether something like property rights are moral should be tackled long before you deal with violations of property rights. Naturally human beings only have the ability to control access to the things they can hold in their hand. The ability to control something which is not immediately held in your hand requires social acceptance of property rights. That, of course, brings along other things such as permitting a rich man to let a pile of food rot while a poor man starves to death. Property rights are extremely complicated and you can't really have a reasonable discussion about stealing money to buy shows until you have a base to build on.
But why then do I who has not been studying philosophy know that stealing is wrong because the stolen object subject does not belong to me because the other person earned it or it was given too? 'Because I was raised like that' you might say but I hope you will come with a different answer.
Leto85 "because you were raised like that" is essentially the answer. It's not to do with how your parents raised you, but instead is due to the moral principles implicitly valued by the society in which you were raised. If you had been raised in a society that valued larceny, you wouldn't think stealing is wrong. Due to factors better explained by sociology (although it is also easy to intuitively understand without any formal education) such a society would collapse very quickly, which is why you find yourself in a society that values property rights.
Ethics is important not only for practical purposes, but because understanding the significance of our actions brings meaning into our lives through an ontological platform. As acting agents, we intuitively find significance in our actions, and to understand this is to understand that ethics is one of man's highest priorities. As a society which is drowning in materialism, we can no longer focus on theology (the most important of sciences), but must digress, and again discover the rudiments of proper living through exercising the virtues... and whether propagated by evolution or not is irrelevant, the virtues are tested and proven guides for living well. It is those who reject the virtues who blemish society and corrupt her, out of greed, lust, narcissism, jealousy, gluttony, anger and ignorance. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were a God send... their insight is nothing sort of a miracle of the highest degree.
Brady! Y U NO keep the same audio levels in each of your videos? After switching to another video I almost always have to adjust volume. Apart from that great work : )
Very interesting. I wish that guy the most luck in his work. He has an awesome command of English and has no doubt worked hard and sounds like a really smart person. I love seeing people struggle to do great things. It's not easy and no one around us really understands it and a lot of the time we ourselves are afraid of it and don't always believe in it. The easiest is the idea, but what's terrible is getting behind years of work and wondering if it was so great after all.
"Act in such a way that utility is maximized" seems like the most useful rule to me, which is why I follow it and not the categorical imperative. If you're going to say that the categorical imperative is a better rule, I'd be interested to know why you think that.
Keep up videos like these, I didn't like the videos on the godfather, harry potter and sports as much but this video seems more like conventional "philosophy" and therefore I am engaged to a higher level :)
Great video! I keep thinking though...How would you know the 'apple' is 'floating' in philosophy? Seems to me a bit like we're *expecting* a specific answer...like we know already what we want to hear (and then we change our moral theories accordingly)
One thing I've noticed that is common in discussions like this, both in science and ethics, is imprecision. When you say "Newton's theory of gravity is correct." you are omitting a very important qualifier - that it is correct within certain defined conditions. If the theory predicts that the apple falls, but it doesn't, something may be happening outside the bounds of what the theory has been designed to handle on its own. The theory isn't wrong, it just only works within its stated conditions.
Apologies, I got you mixed up with another person with whom I'm debating the same subject. But you're right: the fundamental question is whether it is moral to use force if the end result is greater happiness. I believe that it is, you seem to believe otherwise. If it is immoral to violate liberty for the end goal of greater happiness, why? If it isn't, you and I are really in agreement and are just talking past each other.
And as for how to measure utility, it should be based on the preferences of whatever person or thing you're trying to make a moral decision about, and how strongly they express these preferences and react to you following or not following them. If someone expresses a strong desire not to be murdered, for example, you can safely assume that utility would be decreased if you went against their preference.
I believe there is a golden rule of morality. As thinking beings, it is our duty and obligation to ensure perpetuation intelligent life. Everything else is so coloured by context as to be impossible to define.
I think it is impossible to formulate a law of morality because you cannot objectivly judge something without beeing biased because of your social system you live in, got educted in or some belief you think is at least partially right or wrong. Because the definition of right and wrong needs a viewpoint for which a specific action can be defined right or wrong. In the viewpoint of the one stealing, his actions seem right. In the viewpoint of the one who is the victim it was wrong. In the viewpoint of society the question of right and wrong depends on the beliefs on which this society is made. If it is egalitarian it was cleary wrong. If you live in a society where it is believed that the strongest has the right, it was right. I think it is not possible to find a universally viewpoint, at first you would have to disassociate from a human perspective and e.g. try the viewpoint of the earth. But the earth does not care if you steal something or if you murder someone. It exists even if we destroy ourself and will get destroyed in a view billion years from the sun. On the scale of the universe our whole existance does not really matter and if we kill ourself the energy (I mean the physical energy not some idiotic esoteric bullshit) will get transformed and the universe will go on, nothing - for the viewpoint of the universe (or the energy in the universe) - is lost. I think it is not possible to come to conclusions on right or wrong if you don't specify your viewpoint and/or goals. If you have a goal e.g. to establish a world where no human beeing has to suffer. Stealing (in the most cases) is wrong because it hurts the victim. Murdur is wrong because it hurts the victim and let his personal environment suffer. If you try to establish a world where the human rights are enforced, slavery is wrong. If you try to establish a world where you are the ruler no matter what only the things which will give you more power are right and things which gives power to the people are wrong. You maybe will now scream that dictatorship is clearly wrong, but also only on a viewpoint of human rights and that all humans trying to live together egalitarian but it is not possible to find evidence that a specific viewpoint is better on a universal scale, because as I said, the universe does not care. You can argue to let life live and not to kill is right, but also only for the point of view of the living ones. You can't formulate right and wrong if you don't formulate it from a specified human perspective because something can only be good if it helps a cause and wrong if it does damage the cause. But there is no fundamental right and wrong cause because the causes we fight for do not really exist. We are an animal which can imagine things e.g. gods, religions, nations, money, human rights which do not exist if nobody beliefes in them. There is no no-human force in the world which labels some islands Japanese and says you living there, you are Japanese people. There is no no-human force which makes lines on a map and says you above that line are canadians and you down that line are from the US and if you go down long enough you encounter another line which says, you down that line are mexicans. But these social constructs of states only exist in our minds and if nobody would believe in the papers declaring it a state and if nobody would believe in the lines drawn on maps, the state would cease to exist. There is no no-human force which says that that green paper which states 100$ is worth so and so much goods. There is no no-human force which says every human has rights or animals have rights. I don't want to say that we don't need such believes to coordinate our coexistence on a large scale, but I want to point out that it is only something which we construct ourself and we also beliefe in those construct for if we wouldn't the constructs would break and coexistance would not work (at least on our constructed ways). That does not judge if it is right or wrong but I want to point out that right and wrong is also a human construct and you can only judge something if you have a mental construct you believe in for which the action is good or bad. Right or wrong. Therefore objective judgement without subjective bias is not possible and I will go as far as to say, it does not exist.
Yes, if you want to study morality from a descriptive standpoint you should go about doing that in any descriptive field, like psychology, anthropology, linguistics. Moral philosophy, however, is a normative field. :)
Morals are based on what we feel is right or wrong. And when we reach a moral conclusion, like 'do not lie' we try to explain why we feel this way. We thus arrive at more conclusions which we feel is correct. In the end we reach some irreducible principle, which we just feel is right. Utilitarism, for example, we can't explain; we just feel it's right.
Thank you, I've found that people don't tend to listen when you insult them. As for your statements regarding liberty, I notice that you bring up the pursuit of happiness. It seems to me that, to you, this is (at least part of) the reason we uphold liberty to begin with. Liberty often leads to happiness, after all. But if we accept happiness as the point of liberty, should we not also accept that sometimes liberty gets in the way of happiness? And in such cases, why should we not disregard it?
Very interesting. I would have to though start with rule 0: all morality is arbitrary. All social rules are arbitrary, all conventions are arbitrary. What is interesting discussing these from a philosophical point is that it can be a way to finding the simplest and most efficient way to build an infrastructure of thought which we all can use to communicate our needs and desires. Finding them and using them would then remove the need for "left/right" ideals.
Your point doesn't exclude mine; I am all for critical thinking We do have to attack our assumptions all the time. My ideas is that the end point of critically analysing our assumptions is an axiom. When trying to find out whether killing our stepchildren is right we may arrive at certain axioms like 'killing without any reason is bad'. My idea is that at this point we rely on our gutfeeling that these axioms are true. If we can't boil it down further how do we know it's a true moral statement?
I like that you ask hard questions and are not a weak name caller. Thank you for thinking. I wouldn't go as far to say as a whole it's immoral. If neither of two paths are objections to Liberty in some way, perhaps measuring the results then becomes the superior way to choose. I am not an expert on the field of "consequentialism", I'm just recognizing the concept is suggested as superior to Liberty, It is not. Too the second part.......
This is essentially an argument about "objectivity" ie. physical sciences, versus "subjectivity" ie. a viewpoint. The other question raised is "do we need moral laws at all?" - I would throw into the mix - "do we need consensus on all moral issues?". A perfect example would be euthanasia. ie. This is a perfect example of a case where having a "societal consensus" is NOT in the interests of the individual. Morality should be flexible so "absolute laws" are the wrong approach
To me it's more than clear that moral values are not absolute and do vary from person to person. I think moral values are defined based on individual's "chain of values" (not sure of the term - the thing that determines the importance of certain values to the individual. i.e freedom > health > money). The broadness of the overlapping evaluations of a situation is due to: a) main structure of the chain of values is formed by our nature b) culture and society impose specifics in the value chain
With regard to the example where a parent could elect to save two children at the expense of saving their own (starting at 6m), I don't think there is any conflict here. The parent will choose to save their own child and that is the morally correct thing to do. Sure you can point to that isolated example and make the observation that now two children died instead of one. But when you consider the bigger picture it's obvious why saving the one child (yours) is still the morally correct desire and action. Imagine a world where parents did not have such a strong attachment to their children and could therefore make choices of care based on who needed it most rather than giving priority to their own affairs. Do you think that would result in the best possible consequences? I think it's obvious that it would not. Parents would effectively care less in general. A lot less. Such a species would surely be doomed. So even though there may be localised examples where the parent prioritising their own child results in more suffering for other children, the least overall suffering is probably obtained when parents have a strong will to protect and care for their own children.
There seems to be an underlying assumption that morality must be objective in some sense and the goal is to find the cause for this morality. But isn't there a significant theory of ethics that says it is ultimately subjective? Even if most humans and cultures on earth agree that a certain action is wrong, perhaps because it is generally unhelpful for survival as a species, ultimately those moral feelings were learned from our culture. It seems that is made clear by the differences in morality between cultures and even between individuals within a culture.
Moral subjectivity or moral anti-realism is not popular in contemporary philosophy. Generally, calling morals subjective is seen as saying that there's really no such thing as ethics, which is counterproductive to studying it.
Mathonwy ferch Goewin I don't think calling morality subjective is discrediting the study of it. In fact, I think it enriches the study that much more. Once a philosopher concludes that ethics is subjective his study can turn to exploring the in's and out's of what gives certain cultures and individuals their sense of morality and what as a government we should enforce as law because it is essential for our well being. My opinion is that when one sees morality as subjective the study of ethics becomes that much more perplexing and beautiful.
Shawn Richards And the problem with objective scientific facts about electrons or forces of gravity is that there needs to be something to make real - yet it is impossible for such to ever be verified or proved. Even more problematically for mathematical truths there needs to be something that makes them true. Why is 1+1=2 true? It's just a fact of how the world woks and our definitions of 1 and 2 and + and = It's really not a serious objection.
In reading to find our place in the conversation, I see that I missed the second paragraph above. To say the same thing in fewer words "If it feels good do it." I'm not sure what to say here. Drug addicted and alcoholics are in effect making decisions based on this simple decision tree. They want it, they do it, dammed the results in their life. The rights and respect of others is not taken into account with this philosophy. I'm not sure you understood what I meant by a first principle.
I would think that golden rules for moral theories are quite easy to find if one only chooses a big enough reference frame. The only thing messing up everything is feelings about what should be right or wrong.
1:59 I think it is wrong because it restricts necessary resources from another person, resources that can help them to continue to live. I think that anything wrong is something that makes it harder for life to continue for anyone who does not deserve it, and anything right is something that makes it easier for life to continue for anyone who does deserve it.
What you said about the mother's instincts malfunctioning suggest that her goals are the issue, not her morality. As a mother, her priority, it is assumed, should be the life of her child, not the life of other people's children. For the hospital staff, however, saving two lives are better than one. If morality is only judged through the goals one has, either morality is 100% relative, or goals, the cause of morality, can be judged somehow. How could one judge what is the cause of judgement?
"Without life no accomplishment or satisfaction or pursuit of happiness is possible." Exactly. If I may paraphrase, without life, no happiness is possible. My point is that the value of life is defined by how it is lived. Life itself has no intrinsic value; it is only a means to an end. Saying that life should always be valued is kind of like saying that owning a gun is always a good thing, whether it is used to murder or protect. The end result is all that matters from a moral standpoint.
I don't think that's what he meant. Relativism would be : there is no right nor wrong, only opinions. Here, the last part says somthing like : There is right, there is wrong, but there may be no simple laws to describe them, it's just more complex than that.
Moral decisions have many hidden, weighted variables and as a result are very conditional. It's hard to make general 'laws' when situations can vary so widely.
Well, I'm not sure what we moral theories are meant to explain. Is it that the fact that we experience that sort of good feeling when we give money to charity, and that bad feeling in the bottom of your stomach when you knowingly do something wrong? Or is it more concerned about whether, in a manner of fact way, abortion is right or wrong. A more concise way to ask the question; Do moral theories explain our moral impulse or our moral opinions?
Well consequentialism is an extremely vast umbrella term for many many more precise and refined consequentialist theories. I have a feeling that you don't realise that, but maybe not and you really do just think that all consequentialist theories are wrong, in which case I would agree with you as I'm a moral nihilist myself and if I had to choose between the three theories of normative ethics, i.e teleology, deontology and virtue theory I would choose deontology.
I apologize for my late reply. One thing that I want to make clear, is that the mentioned moral system does not command judgement. Just because someone else is following a different moral system, they should not necessarily be corrected. This is important, since you seem to assume, that if I say that you are acting amorally, I am condemning you, where in fact I am only pointing out that you are not acting optimally from my point of view. As for my tautology, we use different definitions of value
Maybe I wasn't being clear about what I meant by "subjective" in my last message. I meant it in the sense that opinions/facts are formed inside someone's mind and that people disagree, not in the sense that everyone is correct. In every other instance during this conversation I've used the word, I've meant the latter. I agree, though, that we should put an end to this discussion. The character limit doesn't exactly help prevent misunderstandings.
If you follow the categorical imperative, it's true that you will reduce a lot of pain and grief. But there are situations in which the categorical imperative will lead you astray, like those I mentioned earlier. Following utilitarianism in those situations would pose no such issue, and thus it is a better system. Do you see my point? As for whose utility should be maximized, and how it should be measured, I'll admit that these are difficult questions, ones that your system has no trouble with.
Our will is, inevitably, part of a chain of physical reactions that begins outside the brain and ends in it. We don't "believe" that we have free will as much as we're just incapable of grasping all the links in this chain. Yes, this chain leads to an untraceable starting point, and a regress to that point is impossible, but I'm not concerned with "avoiding" this regress because I'm not suggesting we should do it, I know it's not doable. I'm saying that, no matter what the starting point is...
The fact that arguments about moral philosophy center around appeals to intuition is a big clue about the lack of objectivity in the field. That someone can go on at length about how some particular positions may be untenable because they "seem" wrong, while still believing that such matters are facts and not opinions, is just silly.
So liberty is good in the absence of happiness because it is a prerequisite thereto? That's nonsensical. We're discussing a situation in which the exercise of liberty will lead to lower happiness, so clearly, it isn't always necessary for happiness. In this case, it's actually antithetical. As for your question, my first principle is that sensations an entity enjoys are good, and that sensations an entity dislikes are bad. We should therefore seek to maximize the former and minimize the latter.
What do you mean by the difference between true/false and right/wrong? "Right" can't mean "morally good" in this context since it makes no sense to say a statement is morally good. If the difference is something like the difference between an opinion and a fact, you're seeing a relevant difference where there is none. People always perceive their "opinions" to be just as true as "facts" (such as that the sky is blue). Both are subjective views, facts are simply generally accepted as true.
I agree with you, because of the mother's obligation towards the child's well-being. But I do think that there are exceptions. Imagine that the first child is not her own, but a sick child she met on the street and took in for treatment. While there she meets the other two children. I think most people would form an attachment to the first when they agreed to help it, and would still choose the first over the other two, even if there is no genetic relationship.
"it's red" is an improper answer and therefore wrong because the question was really what the object is in the case of your analogy, not "what's the object like in front of you?"
And you say "it's more fruitful to explain moral thoughts in terms of their content instead of neurological circuits", but what I'm saying is that the contents of moral thought ARE neurological circuits. It's like all of those things that used to be explained through non-physical approaches, like eclipses and eerie natural chemical reactions, but only because we didn't know they operated according to physics. Now we do, as much as we know that thoughts operate according to physics as well.
But if the processes of ethical thought are consequences of physical phenomena, what other thing do we have to look at in order to understand them? Is there any other aspect to the development of ethics that can not be reduced to physical phenomena? If not, which is what I believe, then ethics will be explained by the standards of this understanding, that it is the sum of mental processes that play a role in our social behavior. Ethics is a certain layout of brain cells and electrical impulses.
It was Newtons laws that landed the latest bit of tech on Mars, not Einstein's - Newtons work: the maths of a student in his holidays, trying to figure out why the moon doesn't fall, is so accurate that we use it today. Einstein's physics hasn't replaced Newton, rather it has covered areas Newton didn't work out such as what happens at the speed of light and black holes etc, all things Newton didn't have the technology to consider.
"Slavery and Imprisonment do not allow man to thrive." Would you include being happy in your definition of a thriving individual? If so, I think you can see where I'm going with this. If not, once again I must ask why someone would want to thrive in the absence of being happy.
Actually the tree doesn't have to make any sound waves at all. There isn't any mention of an atmosphere or for that matter that physics works in the tree falling" universe as they do in our. It's a philosophical question where you are tested on what your perception of the question. By definition there is no right answer, or rather the right answer to the question is: there is no right answer to the question!
The material of Ethics is not different from that of Physics. It's just that Ethics processes happen on a level that is much harder to see, within the brain, that is. Neurology, and the atomic-level processes that it studies, will one day be able to show us how thought works. Our inability to study the brain is what has kept philosophy so behind natural sciences in terms of experimentation and formulation of behavioral equations. Thanks to them, though, we'll soon get there.
actually what i was trying to saying is if you want to live a emotional and moral life, then do it , judge and condem others. but Remember that they are only in your head and you can let go of them if you really want to. but there is no need to because morals and emotions are the orgiastic side of life. they give life flavors. so i was not saying you have to live like me or i wasn't saying people are blind from there own emotions or moral judgements.
it is a fact that the theft of the wallet to buy the shoes was wrong because the theft was not necessary to sustain the life of the thief. it is pretty simple in the situation that you gave, especially if the thief is wealthy. if the thief were poor, and trying to care for a family, he could sell those shoes to get money to help his/her family. this is where the grey area exists.
For the example of the man stealing the wallet, as long as the stealer won't feel guilty (in other way, that it do not disagree with his nature). I think we can say that for him, stealing for affording the shoes is a vertue, and for the old man, a bad thing. The reason why we are judging the man stealing the wallet is because of our education, values and the links we have to the society we live in. Which can be attached to a particular social frame but not an universal law of morality.
Very common view, this is know as deontology within normative ethics as opposed to consequentialism (or teleology [telos from the greek - end]). I would say taht teleology is probably popular due to it being easier to make relative, and therefore easier to apply in real life. However by nit-picking away at the absolute moral rules of deontological ethical theories you can make rules applicable to every single situation, so you remove the need for relativity.
Yes, then we are using the word differently. If someone says that morality is relative and at the same time says that there are universal objective values, then I agree that it is an inconsistent position.
No I am not talking about whether we are genetically predetermined to having moral networks or if we acquire them by learning. All I am saying is that scientific studies of the the brain won't lead to conclusions about what ethics is, thus attacking your idea that 'the material of ethics isn't different from that of physics'. I agree that physical phenomenom carry ethical statements, but these phenomenom won't explain what ethics is.
If it's subjective, differs from person to person and from time to time, are you not arguing there are no moral absolutes? It's easy to sit on the fence and pontificate there is no need to choose between good and evil.
There is something inside all of us that says "I have value". If that value is violated in any way, it is viewed as "morally wrong". So any moral pronouncement will be utilitarian, pragmatic, subjective or emotive. There is no moral law reflective in this universe. But what of that which is not contained in this universe? Is there a moral Lawgiver or is there not? If there is to be a foundation for morals, how can it possibly come by way of human reason alone?
A lot of these kind of thought experiments seem to ignore the long term effect these actions would have on the "perpetrator"... am I missing something? Why shouldn't moral question take the mental and emotional state of their subjects into account?
Firstly, as our knowledge is always limited, you would obviously have to go with your best estimate of the consequences of an action. Secondly, it is tautologically true that we should do whatever maximises the things we value. I define morality as what one should do. Therefore I don't accept your argument, that we should regard our intuitions as being reliable. Also, my moral intuition is apparently consequentialist.
I am not saying the development is impossible to track. I am saying that since the circuits are created because someone has learned something is morality just, it is impossible to use science to explain what morally justfied means. The only thing that science can conclude, is that 'this network was created, because the individual thinks it is a moral right statement'. If you are going theorize why it was created, then you are effectively on the level of ethics, not in science anymore.
Newton's laws are not wrong, they describe the world very well in their region of applicability, that is for medium sized objects at low velocities. Relativity and quantum stuff expand this region of applicability.
I agree about the youtube comment system isn't the best format when it comes to good and serious discussion. Well, relativism about moral values, I believe, is the position that no such thing as object moral values exist. This is different than saying that people hold different opinions. No one says that there are no disagreements when it comes to moral values. You can do a quick search on wikipedia. They usually got it figured out. :)
It seems like your argument here is that liberty has value because it is the most fundamental of all rights. Therefore I must ask, what is the value of having rights? If I were to say that rights are meaningless, valueless, or not worth protecting, how would you argue against me?
yeah, I wasn't terribly fond of the description of newton's laws as "false" because, as he did mention in other parts of the video, they are not false, but modified, or rather, there are other factors that affect motion besides his laws of motion. However, I don't think there would have been a successful Mars landing without those who did it adjusting many of their calculations for the effects of relativity.
Exactly, but you'll never know all the variables. The butterfly effect analogy defeats this sort of reasoning of cost/benefit calculation. Besides, how are you measure the value of those outcomes? Not participating in a dogfight is good, but does that stop the dogfights? Maybe if the organizers get less bets, they'll think they need ever more brutal dogfights and the old man does something worse than going to the dogfights.
In any normative moral view with a subjective component, there must always be some kind of objective normative rules about how to derive moral rules from subjective things. For example, the view that you should always do the exact opposite of what you think is right is not superior to conventional moral relativism for any clear logical reason. Someone who argues that morality is subjective must be able to explain why that view is wrong/right. That automatically makes them a moral universalist.
My implication is if measuring the results is the standard of a moral theory, that it requires altruism which is immoral. How can it "measuring the results" then be moral. Millions have died under the banners of altruism. It is immoral to presume the right to impose a claim on one person to meet the needs of another. It is opposition of of voluntary exchange. It is attempting to rationalize slavery (involuntary exchange).
Of course, but that notion of "science as an approximation" wasn't used back then. We can say that his theories are now considered to be "less true" than they were thought to be at that time.
A deaf friend wishes to walk on the railroad tracks, I see a train, no time to sign him the jump away, I push him off of the tracks, the train passes, we both survive. I have violated his Liberty to do as he wishes to walk on the track. However, morality is hierarchical. The first principle or standard being "mans life". Our deaf friend thanks me because I valued the preservation of his life over his Liberty in this instant. Nothing immoral or inconsistent with Liberty has occurred.
Ok, first your model is a consequentialist model, meaning that the moral value of an action is being determined by the consequences of the action. In this case the amount of suffering the action causes. The problem is you've limited your investigation only to the initial consequences; but this is an arbitrary limit. What about the consequences of the consequences? You'd have to know the entire history that would result from the action to know whether it was moral or not.
If altruism is immoral when measuring the results, two children living must be less moral than one child living, since altruism would lead to the former. Does it then follow that zero children living would be more moral than one child living?
Well morality is a measure of "goodness" not intelligence and consequentialism requires somebody who uses it to forsee all the consequences. How does consequentialism define what makes a consequence beneficial and how remote a consequence can be taken into account?
+male person Consequentialism is really more defined in opposition to absolutism, which holds that certain actions are immoral regardless of the consequences.
To say that Newton's laws are "not right" or "false" is very naive. Einstein's theory of gravitation is more general than Newton's theory, but that doesn't mean that Newton's theory is "false" in the sense that we should abandon it. When it comes to successful scientific theories, it is not a black-or-white issue. When we say that a theory correct, we just mean that it was able to withstand all the tests that it was subjected to until now and it doesn't at all imply any absolute truth. We haven't yet invented a way to justify the absolute truthfulness of a scientific theory and perhaps we will never be able to. The GPS navigation systems worked correctly only after incorporating the calculations dictated by Einstein's theory of general relativity. However, sooner or later we will hit the limits of Einstein's theory, does that mean that we should call it a "false theory"? Will we then say that the GPS systems were deceiving us all this time by working correctly despite the fact that they were based on a "false theory"!! Of course, this is meaningless.
I don't think there is really laws to judge somebody right or wrong. Because those notions are relative to the person talking: If a crocodile eats an human for example, you cannot judge the crocodile because it's in his nature to eat and eating is for him a vertue. Otherwise for the human, being eated by a crocodile is a bad thing necessarly...
I agree with your first sentence. I think that it is morally permissable to pay for your own child, it is understandable that your motherly instincts would make the other option abhorrent. However, that doesn't make it morally 'right', just not necessarily morally wrong.
Part 3 (your making me think). The argument for 1 child or 2 to live is not only an argument against LIberty. It in fact rationalizes only the most cheaply cured may be treated. It also rationalizes the right to pay for treatment (voluntary exchange for services) is strong if the treatment is cheap, weak if the treatment is expensive. If you are sick and can afford the cure, I impose no moral duty on you to check with me first to see if my wife and I could be cured with your resources.
A man is seen kicking in a garage door and stealing a ladder. He runs away with the booty. But you notice that he runs to a frozen pond and extends the ladder across the surface to a struggling stranger. The stranger is able to use the ladder to pull himself up and onto the surface. The stranger survives the mishap. While a persons Liberty (garage owner) has been violated without his knowledge, it has not be violated without implied consent of a moral mind.
I should have stopped listening when early in the video Liebowitz claimed that contemporary physics considers Newton's laws false. Sure, they are incomplete, but no physicist would call them wrong. All modern theories in physics will confirm Newton's laws and that provides another level of support in addition to data. Physicists don't spend their time looking for data that proves wrong the laws of nature. Should they find any data that contradicts established physical laws, they expand on the law rather than start from scratch. Even the revolutions like Einsteinian relativity or quantum mechanics, did not reject classical mechanics but instead relies on it to demonstrate precisely where its limits are. I think Moral philosophy could learn from this because history shows that revolutions in moral thought seem to leave a lot of unhappy people in its wake. Just as in science, I don't believe it amounts to a contradiction just because a proposed moral law cannot apply to 100% of moral phenomenon.
In short, I claim that Physics and Ethics share the same material because everything is physical. There's nothing in ethical thought that is not a consequence of a physical processes. And I was trying to convey that the physics of a falling apple are much more tangible than those of the brain, but now we know that they both operate under the same physical laws.
best consequences not for everyone but for the individual, it just so happens that a lot of the time the best consequences for the individual are the best consequences for everyone. For example say the golden rule treat those as you like to be treated if everyone treats everyone more or less right everyone is happy but in the case of losing your child over the two children is not enough beneficial for you. but if it were your child or 100 other children it would be different.
Morality is one big gray area to me. I don't see things as good and evil, so I can't grasp how people expect to be taken seriously while judging someone's morality.
in physics a law is something totally different to a law in legislation. you would not treat everybody the same but have an equation and when you got every important factor in it it will give you an answer. a stone falls faster then a feather but the gravition laws are still true for every object you will get a unique answer. thats what they want to make no "stealing is wrong" law but a law that gives you an answer for every possible szenario. that might be impossible but maybe worth a try
The truth is that personal liberty is a luxury we can allow after our societies are productive enough that we aren't forced to demand that everyone help maintain critical parts of society(that may possibly be boring, yucky or whatever, but need to be done) it is not a basis for society. Other examples of this are things like women's liberation and forced marriages. Back in the day, females ad to be forced into a duty of child production to make sure the tribe had the manpower to defend itself.
Great lecture overall, but I think it would be more enriching and interesting if he cited the names of the philosophers (like Kant, I don't know) when explaining the examples. I think giving names and historical facts of the scientists, just like in the other big channels (Numberphile, etc) would raise more interest and get this channel more views
If you highlight a part of the video, I'd be happy to point you in the direction of a source or author!
I like how he brought up that formulating ethics may not be possible to due the same way we formulate scientific theories. I had not considered this before. And some years ago if I encountered that argument I might dismiss it, which would be fallacious to do. But if you consider three problems you may conclude that his thought is right: our brains and minds are not all the same, structurally (psychopaths), chemically (born with an anxiety disorder), and inconsistent ways of thinking even if a brain is "normal" (trolley problem). These are all facts about the brain and mind. Forming a scientific theory to base ethics off of need to take these inconsistencies in consideration. I would further point out that we may be able to exclude structure and chemical issues away, but we would still need to deal with issues that arise like in the trolley problem.
Discussing morality and ethics with a general audience who has not studied philosophy is extremely difficult. Ethics is sort of the 'highest level' of a philosophical framework. You have to understand epistemology, metaphysics, and other parts of philosophy before you can have productive discussions about ethics. The example of Joe and the shoes deals with a tremendous panoply of ideas. Discussing whether something like property rights are moral should be tackled long before you deal with violations of property rights. Naturally human beings only have the ability to control access to the things they can hold in their hand. The ability to control something which is not immediately held in your hand requires social acceptance of property rights. That, of course, brings along other things such as permitting a rich man to let a pile of food rot while a poor man starves to death. Property rights are extremely complicated and you can't really have a reasonable discussion about stealing money to buy shows until you have a base to build on.
But why then do I who has not been studying philosophy know that stealing is wrong because the stolen object subject does not belong to me because the other person earned it or it was given too?
'Because I was raised like that' you might say but I hope you will come with a different answer.
Leto85 "because you were raised like that" is essentially the answer. It's not to do with how your parents raised you, but instead is due to the moral principles implicitly valued by the society in which you were raised. If you had been raised in a society that valued larceny, you wouldn't think stealing is wrong.
Due to factors better explained by sociology (although it is also easy to intuitively understand without any formal education) such a society would collapse very quickly, which is why you find yourself in a society that values property rights.
Ethics is important not only for practical purposes, but because understanding the significance of our actions brings meaning into our lives through an ontological platform. As acting agents, we intuitively find significance in our actions, and to understand this is to understand that ethics is one of man's highest priorities. As a society which is drowning in materialism, we can no longer focus on theology (the most important of sciences), but must digress, and again discover the rudiments of proper living through exercising the virtues... and whether propagated by evolution or not is irrelevant, the virtues are tested and proven guides for living well. It is those who reject the virtues who blemish society and corrupt her, out of greed, lust, narcissism, jealousy, gluttony, anger and ignorance.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were a God send... their insight is nothing sort of a miracle of the highest degree.
Brady! Y U NO keep the same audio levels in each of your videos? After switching to another video I almost always have to adjust volume. Apart from that great work : )
Very interesting. I wish that guy the most luck in his work. He has an awesome command of English and has no doubt worked hard and sounds like a really smart person. I love seeing people struggle to do great things. It's not easy and no one around us really understands it and a lot of the time we ourselves are afraid of it and don't always believe in it. The easiest is the idea, but what's terrible is getting behind years of work and wondering if it was so great after all.
"Act in such a way that utility is maximized" seems like the most useful rule to me, which is why I follow it and not the categorical imperative. If you're going to say that the categorical imperative is a better rule, I'd be interested to know why you think that.
Brady, more of these, now.
Still waiting.
Keep up videos like these, I didn't like the videos on the godfather, harry potter and sports as much but this video seems more like conventional "philosophy" and therefore I am engaged to a higher level :)
Great video! I keep thinking though...How would you know the 'apple' is 'floating' in philosophy? Seems to me a bit like we're *expecting* a specific answer...like we know already what we want to hear (and then we change our moral theories accordingly)
One thing I've noticed that is common in discussions like this, both in science and ethics, is imprecision. When you say "Newton's theory of gravity is correct." you are omitting a very important qualifier - that it is correct within certain defined conditions. If the theory predicts that the apple falls, but it doesn't, something may be happening outside the bounds of what the theory has been designed to handle on its own. The theory isn't wrong, it just only works within its stated conditions.
Apologies, I got you mixed up with another person with whom I'm debating the same subject. But you're right: the fundamental question is whether it is moral to use force if the end result is greater happiness. I believe that it is, you seem to believe otherwise. If it is immoral to violate liberty for the end goal of greater happiness, why? If it isn't, you and I are really in agreement and are just talking past each other.
And as for how to measure utility, it should be based on the preferences of whatever person or thing you're trying to make a moral decision about, and how strongly they express these preferences and react to you following or not following them. If someone expresses a strong desire not to be murdered, for example, you can safely assume that utility would be decreased if you went against their preference.
I believe there is a golden rule of morality. As thinking beings, it is our duty and obligation to ensure perpetuation intelligent life. Everything else is so coloured by context as to be impossible to define.
I think it is impossible to formulate a law of morality because you cannot objectivly judge something without beeing biased because of your social system you live in, got educted in or some belief you think is at least partially right or wrong. Because the definition of right and wrong needs a viewpoint for which a specific action can be defined right or wrong. In the viewpoint of the one stealing, his actions seem right. In the viewpoint of the one who is the victim it was wrong. In the viewpoint of society the question of right and wrong depends on the beliefs on which this society is made. If it is egalitarian it was cleary wrong. If you live in a society where it is believed that the strongest has the right, it was right. I think it is not possible to find a universally viewpoint, at first you would have to disassociate from a human perspective and e.g. try the viewpoint of the earth. But the earth does not care if you steal something or if you murder someone. It exists even if we destroy ourself and will get destroyed in a view billion years from the sun. On the scale of the universe our whole existance does not really matter and if we kill ourself the energy (I mean the physical energy not some idiotic esoteric bullshit) will get transformed and the universe will go on, nothing - for the viewpoint of the universe (or the energy in the universe) - is lost.
I think it is not possible to come to conclusions on right or wrong if you don't specify your viewpoint and/or goals. If you have a goal e.g. to establish a world where no human beeing has to suffer. Stealing (in the most cases) is wrong because it hurts the victim. Murdur is wrong because it hurts the victim and let his personal environment suffer. If you try to establish a world where the human rights are enforced, slavery is wrong. If you try to establish a world where you are the ruler no matter what only the things which will give you more power are right and things which gives power to the people are wrong. You maybe will now scream that dictatorship is clearly wrong, but also only on a viewpoint of human rights and that all humans trying to live together egalitarian but it is not possible to find evidence that a specific viewpoint is better on a universal scale, because as I said, the universe does not care. You can argue to let life live and not to kill is right, but also only for the point of view of the living ones.
You can't formulate right and wrong if you don't formulate it from a specified human perspective because something can only be good if it helps a cause and wrong if it does damage the cause. But there is no fundamental right and wrong cause because the causes we fight for do not really exist. We are an animal which can imagine things e.g. gods, religions, nations, money, human rights which do not exist if nobody beliefes in them. There is no no-human force in the world which labels some islands Japanese and says you living there, you are Japanese people. There is no no-human force which makes lines on a map and says you above that line are canadians and you down that line are from the US and if you go down long enough you encounter another line which says, you down that line are mexicans. But these social constructs of states only exist in our minds and if nobody would believe in the papers declaring it a state and if nobody would believe in the lines drawn on maps, the state would cease to exist. There is no no-human force which says that that green paper which states 100$ is worth so and so much goods. There is no no-human force which says every human has rights or animals have rights. I don't want to say that we don't need such believes to coordinate our coexistence on a large scale, but I want to point out that it is only something which we construct ourself and we also beliefe in those construct for if we wouldn't the constructs would break and coexistance would not work (at least on our constructed ways). That does not judge if it is right or wrong but I want to point out that right and wrong is also a human construct and you can only judge something if you have a mental construct you believe in for which the action is good or bad. Right or wrong. Therefore objective judgement without subjective bias is not possible and I will go as far as to say, it does not exist.
Yes, if you want to study morality from a descriptive standpoint you should go about doing that in any descriptive field, like psychology, anthropology, linguistics. Moral philosophy, however, is a normative field. :)
Being of service (helping) vs. being of disservice. This is what defines morality.
Morals are based on what we feel is right or wrong. And when we reach a moral conclusion, like 'do not lie' we try to explain why we feel this way. We thus arrive at more conclusions which we feel is correct. In the end we reach some irreducible principle, which we just feel is right. Utilitarism, for example, we can't explain; we just feel it's right.
Thank you, I've found that people don't tend to listen when you insult them.
As for your statements regarding liberty, I notice that you bring up the pursuit of happiness. It seems to me that, to you, this is (at least part of) the reason we uphold liberty to begin with. Liberty often leads to happiness, after all. But if we accept happiness as the point of liberty, should we not also accept that sometimes liberty gets in the way of happiness? And in such cases, why should we not disregard it?
Very interesting. I would have to though start with rule 0: all morality is arbitrary. All social rules are arbitrary, all conventions are arbitrary. What is interesting discussing these from a philosophical point is that it can be a way to finding the simplest and most efficient way to build an infrastructure of thought which we all can use to communicate our needs and desires. Finding them and using them would then remove the need for "left/right" ideals.
Your point doesn't exclude mine; I am all for critical thinking We do have to attack our assumptions all the time. My ideas is that the end point of critically analysing our assumptions is an axiom. When trying to find out whether killing our stepchildren is right we may arrive at certain axioms like 'killing without any reason is bad'. My idea is that at this point we rely on our gutfeeling that these axioms are true. If we can't boil it down further how do we know it's a true moral statement?
I like that you ask hard questions and are not a weak name caller. Thank you for thinking. I wouldn't go as far to say as a whole it's immoral. If neither of two paths are objections to Liberty in some way, perhaps measuring the results then becomes the superior way to choose. I am not an expert on the field of "consequentialism", I'm just recognizing the concept is suggested as superior to Liberty, It is not. Too the second part.......
This is essentially an argument about "objectivity" ie. physical sciences, versus "subjectivity" ie. a viewpoint. The other question raised is "do we need moral laws at all?" - I would throw into the mix - "do we need consensus on all moral issues?". A perfect example would be euthanasia. ie. This is a perfect example of a case where having a "societal consensus" is NOT in the interests of the individual. Morality should be flexible so "absolute laws" are the wrong approach
To me it's more than clear that moral values are not absolute and do vary from person to person. I think moral values are defined based on individual's "chain of values" (not sure of the term - the thing that determines the importance of certain values to the individual. i.e freedom > health > money). The broadness of the overlapping evaluations of a situation is due to:
a) main structure of the chain of values is formed by our nature
b) culture and society impose specifics in the value chain
With regard to the example where a parent could elect to save two children at the expense of saving their own (starting at 6m), I don't think there is any conflict here. The parent will choose to save their own child and that is the morally correct thing to do.
Sure you can point to that isolated example and make the observation that now two children died instead of one. But when you consider the bigger picture it's obvious why saving the one child (yours) is still the morally correct desire and action.
Imagine a world where parents did not have such a strong attachment to their children and could therefore make choices of care based on who needed it most rather than giving priority to their own affairs. Do you think that would result in the best possible consequences? I think it's obvious that it would not. Parents would effectively care less in general. A lot less. Such a species would surely be doomed.
So even though there may be localised examples where the parent prioritising their own child results in more suffering for other children, the least overall suffering is probably obtained when parents have a strong will to protect and care for their own children.
There seems to be an underlying assumption that morality must be objective in some sense and the goal is to find the cause for this morality. But isn't there a significant theory of ethics that says it is ultimately subjective? Even if most humans and cultures on earth agree that a certain action is wrong, perhaps because it is generally unhelpful for survival as a species, ultimately those moral feelings were learned from our culture. It seems that is made clear by the differences in morality between cultures and even between individuals within a culture.
Moral subjectivity or moral anti-realism is not popular in contemporary philosophy. Generally, calling morals subjective is seen as saying that there's really no such thing as ethics, which is counterproductive to studying it.
Mathonwy ferch Goewin I don't think calling morality subjective is discrediting the study of it. In fact, I think it enriches the study that much more. Once a philosopher concludes that ethics is subjective his study can turn to exploring the in's and out's of what gives certain cultures and individuals their sense of morality and what as a government we should enforce as law because it is essential for our well being. My opinion is that when one sees morality as subjective the study of ethics becomes that much more perplexing and beautiful.
Shawn Richards You don't understand what "subjective" and "objective" refer to within philosophy.
Ryan Hutton Then please educate me. If I don't understand then I want to learn where my mistake is.
Shawn Richards And the problem with objective scientific facts about electrons or forces of gravity is that there needs to be something to make real - yet it is impossible for such to ever be verified or proved.
Even more problematically for mathematical truths there needs to be something that makes them true. Why is 1+1=2 true? It's just a fact of how the world woks and our definitions of 1 and 2 and + and =
It's really not a serious objection.
In reading to find our place in the conversation, I see that I missed the second paragraph above. To say the same thing in fewer words "If it feels good do it." I'm not sure what to say here. Drug addicted and alcoholics are in effect making decisions based on this simple decision tree. They want it, they do it, dammed the results in their life. The rights and respect of others is not taken into account with this philosophy. I'm not sure you understood what I meant by a first principle.
I would think that golden rules for moral theories are quite easy to find if one only chooses a big enough reference frame. The only thing messing up everything is feelings about what should be right or wrong.
1:59 I think it is wrong because it restricts necessary resources from another person, resources that can help them to continue to live.
I think that anything wrong is something that makes it harder for life to continue for anyone who does not deserve it, and anything right is something that makes it easier for life to continue for anyone who does deserve it.
What you said about the mother's instincts malfunctioning suggest that her goals are the issue, not her morality. As a mother, her priority, it is assumed, should be the life of her child, not the life of other people's children. For the hospital staff, however, saving two lives are better than one. If morality is only judged through the goals one has, either morality is 100% relative, or goals, the cause of morality, can be judged somehow. How could one judge what is the cause of judgement?
"Without life no accomplishment or satisfaction or pursuit of happiness is possible."
Exactly. If I may paraphrase, without life, no happiness is possible. My point is that the value of life is defined by how it is lived. Life itself has no intrinsic value; it is only a means to an end. Saying that life should always be valued is kind of like saying that owning a gun is always a good thing, whether it is used to murder or protect. The end result is all that matters from a moral standpoint.
"Morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told, religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right." H.L Mencken
Was "philosophyphile' taken?
I don't think that's what he meant. Relativism would be : there is no right nor wrong, only opinions. Here, the last part says somthing like : There is right, there is wrong, but there may be no simple laws to describe them, it's just more complex than that.
Moral decisions have many hidden, weighted variables and as a result are very conditional. It's hard to make general 'laws' when situations can vary so widely.
Well, I'm not sure what we moral theories are meant to explain. Is it that the fact that we experience that sort of good feeling when we give money to charity, and that bad feeling in the bottom of your stomach when you knowingly do something wrong? Or is it more concerned about whether, in a manner of fact way, abortion is right or wrong. A more concise way to ask the question; Do moral theories explain our moral impulse or our moral opinions?
Well consequentialism is an extremely vast umbrella term for many many more precise and refined consequentialist theories. I have a feeling that you don't realise that, but maybe not and you really do just think that all consequentialist theories are wrong, in which case I would agree with you as I'm a moral nihilist myself and if I had to choose between the three theories of normative ethics, i.e teleology, deontology and virtue theory I would choose deontology.
I apologize for my late reply.
One thing that I want to make clear, is that the mentioned moral system does not command judgement.
Just because someone else is following a different moral system, they should not necessarily be corrected.
This is important, since you seem to assume, that if I say that you are acting amorally, I am condemning you, where in fact I am only pointing out that you are not acting optimally from my point of view.
As for my tautology, we use different definitions of value
Maybe I wasn't being clear about what I meant by "subjective" in my last message. I meant it in the sense that opinions/facts are formed inside someone's mind and that people disagree, not in the sense that everyone is correct. In every other instance during this conversation I've used the word, I've meant the latter.
I agree, though, that we should put an end to this discussion. The character limit doesn't exactly help prevent misunderstandings.
If you follow the categorical imperative, it's true that you will reduce a lot of pain and grief. But there are situations in which the categorical imperative will lead you astray, like those I mentioned earlier. Following utilitarianism in those situations would pose no such issue, and thus it is a better system. Do you see my point?
As for whose utility should be maximized, and how it should be measured, I'll admit that these are difficult questions, ones that your system has no trouble with.
Our will is, inevitably, part of a chain of physical reactions that begins outside the brain and ends in it. We don't "believe" that we have free will as much as we're just incapable of grasping all the links in this chain. Yes, this chain leads to an untraceable starting point, and a regress to that point is impossible, but I'm not concerned with "avoiding" this regress because I'm not suggesting we should do it, I know it's not doable. I'm saying that, no matter what the starting point is...
The fact that arguments about moral philosophy center around appeals to intuition is a big clue about the lack of objectivity in the field. That someone can go on at length about how some particular positions may be untenable because they "seem" wrong, while still believing that such matters are facts and not opinions, is just silly.
So liberty is good in the absence of happiness because it is a prerequisite thereto? That's nonsensical. We're discussing a situation in which the exercise of liberty will lead to lower happiness, so clearly, it isn't always necessary for happiness. In this case, it's actually antithetical.
As for your question, my first principle is that sensations an entity enjoys are good, and that sensations an entity dislikes are bad. We should therefore seek to maximize the former and minimize the latter.
What do you mean by the difference between true/false and right/wrong? "Right" can't mean "morally good" in this context since it makes no sense to say a statement is morally good.
If the difference is something like the difference between an opinion and a fact, you're seeing a relevant difference where there is none. People always perceive their "opinions" to be just as true as "facts" (such as that the sky is blue). Both are subjective views, facts are simply generally accepted as true.
I agree with you, because of the mother's obligation towards the child's well-being. But I do think that there are exceptions. Imagine that the first child is not her own, but a sick child she met on the street and took in for treatment. While there she meets the other two children. I think most people would form an attachment to the first when they agreed to help it, and would still choose the first over the other two, even if there is no genetic relationship.
@ngt84 I did not mean to start a serious discussion, this was just a quote from The Office TV series. I liked your ethics nuke example, still.
"it's red" is an improper answer and therefore wrong because the question was really what the object is in the case of your analogy, not "what's the object like in front of you?"
And you say "it's more fruitful to explain moral thoughts in terms of their content instead of neurological circuits", but what I'm saying is that the contents of moral thought ARE neurological circuits. It's like all of those things that used to be explained through non-physical approaches, like eclipses and eerie natural chemical reactions, but only because we didn't know they operated according to physics. Now we do, as much as we know that thoughts operate according to physics as well.
But if the processes of ethical thought are consequences of physical phenomena, what other thing do we have to look at in order to understand them? Is there any other aspect to the development of ethics that can not be reduced to physical phenomena? If not, which is what I believe, then ethics will be explained by the standards of this understanding, that it is the sum of mental processes that play a role in our social behavior. Ethics is a certain layout of brain cells and electrical impulses.
It was Newtons laws that landed the latest bit of tech on Mars, not Einstein's - Newtons work: the maths of a student in his holidays, trying to figure out why the moon doesn't fall, is so accurate that we use it today. Einstein's physics hasn't replaced Newton, rather it has covered areas Newton didn't work out such as what happens at the speed of light and black holes etc, all things Newton didn't have the technology to consider.
Interesting stuff, I look forward to more videos.
"Slavery and Imprisonment do not allow man to thrive."
Would you include being happy in your definition of a thriving individual? If so, I think you can see where I'm going with this. If not, once again I must ask why someone would want to thrive in the absence of being happy.
Great video!
Actually the tree doesn't have to make any sound waves at all. There isn't any mention of an atmosphere or for that matter that physics works in the tree falling" universe as they do in our. It's a philosophical question where you are tested on what your perception of the question. By definition there is no right answer, or rather the right answer to the question is: there is no right answer to the question!
The material of Ethics is not different from that of Physics. It's just that Ethics processes happen on a level that is much harder to see, within the brain, that is. Neurology, and the atomic-level processes that it studies, will one day be able to show us how thought works. Our inability to study the brain is what has kept philosophy so behind natural sciences in terms of experimentation and formulation of behavioral equations. Thanks to them, though, we'll soon get there.
actually what i was trying to saying is if you want to live a emotional and moral life, then do it , judge and condem others. but Remember that they are only in your head and you can let go of them if you really want to. but there is no need to because morals and emotions are the orgiastic side of life. they give life flavors. so i was not saying you have to live like me or i wasn't saying people are blind from there own emotions or moral judgements.
it is a fact that the theft of the wallet to buy the shoes was wrong because the theft was not necessary to sustain the life of the thief. it is pretty simple in the situation that you gave, especially if the thief is wealthy. if the thief were poor, and trying to care for a family, he could sell those shoes to get money to help his/her family. this is where the grey area exists.
For the example of the man stealing the wallet, as long as the stealer won't feel guilty (in other way, that it do not disagree with his nature). I think we can say that for him, stealing for affording the shoes is a vertue, and for the old man, a bad thing.
The reason why we are judging the man stealing the wallet is because of our education, values and the links we have to the society we live in.
Which can be attached to a particular social frame but not an universal law of morality.
Very common view, this is know as deontology within normative ethics as opposed to consequentialism (or teleology [telos from the greek - end]). I would say taht teleology is probably popular due to it being easier to make relative, and therefore easier to apply in real life. However by nit-picking away at the absolute moral rules of deontological ethical theories you can make rules applicable to every single situation, so you remove the need for relativity.
Yes, then we are using the word differently. If someone says that morality is relative and at the same time says that there are universal objective values, then I agree that it is an inconsistent position.
No I am not talking about whether we are genetically predetermined to having moral networks or if we acquire them by learning.
All I am saying is that scientific studies of the the brain won't lead to conclusions about what ethics is, thus attacking your idea that 'the material of ethics isn't different from that of physics'. I agree that physical phenomenom carry ethical statements, but these phenomenom won't explain what ethics is.
Is it a common view that the deeds do not have moral values, only the intentions behind them?
If it's subjective, differs from person to person and from time to time, are you not arguing there are no moral absolutes? It's easy to sit on the fence and pontificate there is no need to choose between good and evil.
This was very helpful, thank you!
There is something inside all of us that says "I have value". If that value is violated in any way, it is viewed as "morally wrong". So any moral pronouncement will be utilitarian, pragmatic, subjective or emotive. There is no moral law reflective in this universe. But what of that which is not contained in this universe? Is there a moral Lawgiver or is there not? If there is to be a foundation for morals, how can it possibly come by way of human reason alone?
A lot of these kind of thought experiments seem to ignore the long term effect these actions would have on the "perpetrator"... am I missing something? Why shouldn't moral question take the mental and emotional state of their subjects into account?
Firstly, as our knowledge is always limited, you would obviously have to go with your best estimate of the consequences of an action.
Secondly, it is tautologically true that we should do whatever maximises the things we value.
I define morality as what one should do.
Therefore I don't accept your argument, that we should regard our intuitions as being reliable.
Also, my moral intuition is apparently consequentialist.
I am not saying the development is impossible to track. I am saying that since the circuits are created because someone has learned something is morality just, it is impossible to use science to explain what morally justfied means.
The only thing that science can conclude, is that 'this network was created, because the individual thinks it is a moral right statement'. If you are going theorize why it was created, then you are effectively on the level of ethics, not in science anymore.
Newton's laws are not wrong, they describe the world very well in their region of applicability, that is for medium sized objects at low velocities. Relativity and quantum stuff expand this region of applicability.
I agree about the youtube comment system isn't the best format when it comes to good and serious discussion.
Well, relativism about moral values, I believe, is the position that no such thing as object moral values exist. This is different than saying that people hold different opinions. No one says that there are no disagreements when it comes to moral values. You can do a quick search on wikipedia. They usually got it figured out. :)
Great channel! This video kept reminding me of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the "Black-Sox" baseball scandal.
What if you were to state things as wrong as whether or not they were right. Stealing is not a virtuous action, therefore it must be wrong.
this made me more interested in possibly studying philosophy in college
It seems like your argument here is that liberty has value because it is the most fundamental of all rights. Therefore I must ask, what is the value of having rights? If I were to say that rights are meaningless, valueless, or not worth protecting, how would you argue against me?
yeah, I wasn't terribly fond of the description of newton's laws as "false" because, as he did mention in other parts of the video, they are not false, but modified, or rather, there are other factors that affect motion besides his laws of motion. However, I don't think there would have been a successful Mars landing without those who did it adjusting many of their calculations for the effects of relativity.
Exactly, but you'll never know all the variables. The butterfly effect analogy defeats this sort of reasoning of cost/benefit calculation. Besides, how are you measure the value of those outcomes?
Not participating in a dogfight is good, but does that stop the dogfights? Maybe if the organizers get less bets, they'll think they need ever more brutal dogfights and the old man does something worse than going to the dogfights.
In any normative moral view with a subjective component, there must always be some kind of objective normative rules about how to derive moral rules from subjective things. For example, the view that you should always do the exact opposite of what you think is right is not superior to conventional moral relativism for any clear logical reason. Someone who argues that morality is subjective must be able to explain why that view is wrong/right. That automatically makes them a moral universalist.
My implication is if measuring the results is the standard of a moral theory, that it requires altruism which is immoral. How can it "measuring the results" then be moral. Millions have died under the banners of altruism. It is immoral to presume the right to impose a claim on one person to meet the needs of another. It is opposition of of voluntary exchange. It is attempting to rationalize slavery (involuntary exchange).
would it be wrong to steal the money from the kid's dad to treat the two other kids?
would it be wrong not to do so, given the opportunity?
Ohmygoodness.
This is what I want to get involved in. This is awesome!
Of course, but that notion of "science as an approximation" wasn't used back then. We can say that his theories are now considered to be "less true" than they were thought to be at that time.
A deaf friend wishes to walk on the railroad tracks, I see a train, no time to sign him the jump away, I push him off of the tracks, the train passes, we both survive. I have violated his Liberty to do as he wishes to walk on the track. However, morality is hierarchical. The first principle or standard being "mans life". Our deaf friend thanks me because I valued the preservation of his life over his Liberty in this instant. Nothing immoral or inconsistent with Liberty has occurred.
Ok, first your model is a consequentialist model, meaning that the moral value of an action is being determined by the consequences of the action. In this case the amount of suffering the action causes.
The problem is you've limited your investigation only to the initial consequences; but this is an arbitrary limit. What about the consequences of the consequences? You'd have to know the entire history that would result from the action to know whether it was moral or not.
If altruism is immoral when measuring the results, two children living must be less moral than one child living, since altruism would lead to the former. Does it then follow that zero children living would be more moral than one child living?
Well morality is a measure of "goodness" not intelligence and consequentialism requires somebody who uses it to forsee all the consequences. How does consequentialism define what makes a consequence beneficial and how remote a consequence can be taken into account?
+male person Consequentialism is really more defined in opposition to absolutism, which holds that certain actions are immoral regardless of the consequences.
To say that Newton's laws are "not right" or "false" is very naive. Einstein's theory of gravitation is more general than Newton's theory, but that doesn't mean that Newton's theory is "false" in the sense that we should abandon it. When it comes to successful scientific theories, it is not a black-or-white issue. When we say that a theory correct, we just mean that it was able to withstand all the tests that it was subjected to until now and it doesn't at all imply any absolute truth. We haven't yet invented a way to justify the absolute truthfulness of a scientific theory and perhaps we will never be able to. The GPS navigation systems worked correctly only after incorporating the calculations dictated by Einstein's theory of general relativity. However, sooner or later we will hit the limits of Einstein's theory, does that mean that we should call it a "false theory"? Will we then say that the GPS systems were deceiving us all this time by working correctly despite the fact that they were based on a "false theory"!! Of course, this is meaningless.
I don't think there is really laws to judge somebody right or wrong.
Because those notions are relative to the person talking:
If a crocodile eats an human for example, you cannot judge the crocodile because it's in his nature to eat and eating is for him a vertue. Otherwise for the human, being eated by a crocodile is a bad thing necessarly...
I agree with your first sentence. I think that it is morally permissable to pay for your own child, it is understandable that your motherly instincts would make the other option abhorrent. However, that doesn't make it morally 'right', just not necessarily morally wrong.
Part 3 (your making me think). The argument for 1 child or 2 to live is not only an argument against LIberty. It in fact rationalizes only the most cheaply cured may be treated. It also rationalizes the right to pay for treatment (voluntary exchange for services) is strong if the treatment is cheap, weak if the treatment is expensive. If you are sick and can afford the cure, I impose no moral duty on you to check with me first to see if my wife and I could be cured with your resources.
A man is seen kicking in a garage door and stealing a ladder. He runs away with the booty. But you notice that he runs to a frozen pond and extends the ladder across the surface to a struggling stranger. The stranger is able to use the ladder to pull himself up and onto the surface. The stranger survives the mishap. While a persons Liberty (garage owner) has been violated without his knowledge, it has not be violated without implied consent of a moral mind.
I should have stopped listening when early in the video Liebowitz claimed that contemporary physics considers Newton's laws false. Sure, they are incomplete, but no physicist would call them wrong. All modern theories in physics will confirm Newton's laws and that provides another level of support in addition to data. Physicists don't spend their time looking for data that proves wrong the laws of nature. Should they find any data that contradicts established physical laws, they expand on the law rather than start from scratch. Even the revolutions like Einsteinian relativity or quantum mechanics, did not reject classical mechanics but instead relies on it to demonstrate precisely where its limits are. I think Moral philosophy could learn from this because history shows that revolutions in moral thought seem to leave a lot of unhappy people in its wake. Just as in science, I don't believe it amounts to a contradiction just because a proposed moral law cannot apply to 100% of moral phenomenon.
Can't find really any good arguments against it. Can you explain?
Tiny man on my Android phone, dropping some mad knowledge.
In short, I claim that Physics and Ethics share the same material because everything is physical. There's nothing in ethical thought that is not a consequence of a physical processes. And I was trying to convey that the physics of a falling apple are much more tangible than those of the brain, but now we know that they both operate under the same physical laws.
best consequences not for everyone but for the individual, it just so happens that a lot of the time the best consequences for the individual are the best consequences for everyone. For example say the golden rule treat those as you like to be treated if everyone treats everyone more or less right everyone is happy but in the case of losing your child over the two children is not enough beneficial for you. but if it were your child or 100 other children it would be different.
Morality is one big gray area to me. I don't see things as good and evil, so I can't grasp how people expect to be taken seriously while judging someone's morality.
in physics a law is something totally different to a law in legislation. you would not treat everybody the same but have an equation and when you got every important factor in it it will give you an answer. a stone falls faster then a feather but the gravition laws are still true for every object you will get a unique answer. thats what they want to make no "stealing is wrong" law but a law that gives you an answer for every possible szenario. that might be impossible but maybe worth a try
Why should there be a right and a wrong?
Utilitarianism/consequentialism - look it up (it's mentioned in the video). It comes up against a lot of problems.
The truth is that personal liberty is a luxury we can allow after our societies are productive enough that we aren't forced to demand that everyone help maintain critical parts of society(that may possibly be boring, yucky or whatever, but need to be done) it is not a basis for society. Other examples of this are things like women's liberation and forced marriages. Back in the day, females ad to be forced into a duty of child production to make sure the tribe had the manpower to defend itself.