This video has over 1500 views. Some Profs can only reach that amount of people in 10 years in the classroom. But even if it had just 1 view, and that by one of your former students (whom you've already reached once in the classroom), they might find something that they didn't when you reached them the first time. Chances are though that most of the people are exposed to your presentation of these ideas for the first time they watch your videos. Just imagine how many people you can reach through the internet with the same effort that you'd require for reaching a handful in the classroom! The differences are easily exponential (your videos with the highest view count literally have 1-2-300k+ views). The internet and the people who share ideas through it are really a blessing! Thanks for your videos, please keep making them.
_The problem of dirty hands_ is, in my view, the better framework for thinking about many of these puzzles. It's the best offshoot of these standoffs because it succeeds at forgoing the instructions of all tightly principled moral theories, specifically in the ultra-difficult cases of supreme emergency and extremity. The SEP has a fantastic entry on Dirty Hands that I can't recommend enough. So here's the thing about means vs. ends in the context of persons: Unmodified deontology along with various forms of absolutism treat _the interests_ of many persons as a mere means to _its own theoretical_ moral ends. They are guilty of doing the same when it comes to the professed moral beliefs of many persons (namely, non-absolutists). To see this, just look at people's actual moral and attitudinal profiles, and appreciate how profoundly they differ. The implications for means/ends splits are earth-shattering. There are people who view adversarial threats and harms as inherently worse on arrival compared to purely non-adversarial threats and harms. So far so good for the absolutist. But then, there are also those who make no categorical distinctions between the threat type or the harm type, and simply look to avoid the higher magnitude threat or harm, be it adversarial or not. How do standard non-consequentialist theories "respect" individuals in the latter group more than consequentialist theories do? Evidently, they don't. They can't. Standard non-consequentialism fails to respect people in the latter group on the exact basis that (welfarist) consequentialism fails to respect (the moral wishes of) those in the former group. It boils down to how we triage natural vs. agential threats and harms. Suppose there were only two moral theories in the history of moral philosophy. For _Theory A_ to crudely view people as a mere means and for _Theory B_ to properly conceive of all individuals as ends unto themselves, all people would either need to be moral and epistemic _blank slates_ from cradle to grave, or they would need to be fully aligned on one of those theories (B) and to have zero time for the other one (A). Are people like this in real life? Not by a long shot. A few amoralists here and there, but most are morally involved to one or another degree. And their moral disagreements know no end. So the rigid non-consequentialist has plenty to answer for here. It is after all absurd to hold that absolutist prohibitions on my being killed for the greater good are there to ensure that *precious I* not be treated as a mere means to an end that's completely detached from me, when I too would endorse my own killing for the reasons the killer has in mind _were I to know of them_ at the time of my killing. When would this be feasible? Whenever, say, killing me puts an end to the above mentioned supreme emergency. I am not voluntarily sacrificing myself in real time, and therefore need to be killed, but that's entirely contingent on my lacking crucial information that my killer doesn't lack at the critical juncture. How is the killer committing a wrongdoing, in such a case? What changes if we swap murder with rape, torture, or any other ghastly act-type? I see no way for the non-consequentialist to answer without courting paternalism for my sake. A failure to respect such boundaries is something we see consequentialists charged with much more frequently. This is a rough sketch of an important point that can be made more carefully and impressively when space permits. The comment is too long as it is, and I haven't even gotten into the crazed prohibitions on suicide, most of it from the anti-welfarist, anti-consequentialist sphere. No amount of doctrine-of-double-effect will help make these constraints fit into the ends/means split their defenders falsely believe they're advancing.
@@thotslayer9914 Might as well be an epistemic nihilist and go into full-blown self-defeating mode (by caring whether your beliefs are true and justified as opposed to false and unjustified). Hopefully this wasn't too long.
At 0:37 he said utilitarianism is a descriptive theory he then gives a definition that completely contradicts this. If you start a sentence with “We ought to do”, it is prescriptive and not descriptive.
I think negative utilitarianism answers a lot of the objections to classical utilitarianism. Omelas is a perfect example of how the suffering of one person can never be justified by the net happiness of a billion people.
It's a great question, Indigo, and shows how many strands of the debate there are... how voluminous the literature is. In the end, I believe negative utilitarianism faces some problems though, again, all forms of utilitarianism describe something important about morality. The first objection is that the negative utilitarian would have a duty to instantly destroy the world if he could (if reducing net suffering is all that matters). This leads to a series of counters and counters... Some even argue neg utilitarianism must be combined with some aspects of deontology. Whatever the case, "Child rape is wrong" is a moral intuition? There have always been people who support and people who oppose child rape. The moral people are the latter because they care about the good of the other as other?
teachphilosophy Haha nah, negative utilitarianism is OP. Nothing can be worse than 11 dimensional hellfire (infinite suffering for infinite souls for infinite time), therefor anything that isn't is by definition better (or not as bad at the very least), easily opening up a logical moral comtinuum. And yes, a coordinated nuclear strike on the Earth's fault lines should sterilize this blue-green hellscape. That is of course assuming we have a complete understanding of biogenesis (which we aren't even close to), and can be certain that the horrors of Darwinian life won't return millions or billions years post omnicide. We also need to be certain the rest of the Universe is sterile (fingers crossed) before pressing the big red button, otherwise our efforts are better placed in advancing the responsible development of artificial general intelligence (by merging with AGI most likely through nanobot BCI's) to reduce suffering in the rest of the Universe and forming alliances with post-biological alien negative utilitarian orders to battle deontological positive utilitarian orders over the fate of Darwinian life in the Universe (history ends with Autobots vs Decepticons).
We consider slavery intrinsically wrong. You don’t have to think about it to know that it is immoral. And yet, for most of history, slavery was commonplace and accepted. If we’re taking a descriptive approach, what might that say about the nature of our deep conscience? And what things do we accept today that might be considered deeply, intrinsically immoral in the future? Just a thought.
Thanks, none of your business. I will release a video on that theme soon. Here are some thoughts to consider: Imagine the slaveowners telling the abolitionists to get with the times. In all times, you will find people opposing slavery and rape. Moral Reformers don't get with the times (Times=what majority believe), they seek to change it. They get with deep morality not the times?
This video has over 1500 views. Some Profs can only reach that amount of people in 10 years in the classroom. But even if it had just 1 view, and that by one of your former students (whom you've already reached once in the classroom), they might find something that they didn't when you reached them the first time. Chances are though that most of the people are exposed to your presentation of these ideas for the first time they watch your videos. Just imagine how many people you can reach through the internet with the same effort that you'd require for reaching a handful in the classroom! The differences are easily exponential (your videos with the highest view count literally have 1-2-300k+ views). The internet and the people who share ideas through it are really a blessing! Thanks for your videos, please keep making them.
Great video, as a philosopher myself, I was looking for a great Phil channel, subscribed
Thanks, CXK.
_The problem of dirty hands_ is, in my view, the better framework for thinking about many of these puzzles. It's the best offshoot of these standoffs because it succeeds at forgoing the instructions of all tightly principled moral theories, specifically in the ultra-difficult cases of supreme emergency and extremity. The SEP has a fantastic entry on Dirty Hands that I can't recommend enough.
So here's the thing about means vs. ends in the context of persons: Unmodified deontology along with various forms of absolutism treat _the interests_ of many persons as a mere means to _its own theoretical_ moral ends. They are guilty of doing the same when it comes to the professed moral beliefs of many persons (namely, non-absolutists). To see this, just look at people's actual moral and attitudinal profiles, and appreciate how profoundly they differ. The implications for means/ends splits are earth-shattering. There are people who view adversarial threats and harms as inherently worse on arrival compared to purely non-adversarial threats and harms. So far so good for the absolutist. But then, there are also those who make no categorical distinctions between the threat type or the harm type, and simply look to avoid the higher magnitude threat or harm, be it adversarial or not. How do standard non-consequentialist theories "respect" individuals in the latter group more than consequentialist theories do? Evidently, they don't. They can't. Standard non-consequentialism fails to respect people in the latter group on the exact basis that (welfarist) consequentialism fails to respect (the moral wishes of) those in the former group. It boils down to how we triage natural vs. agential threats and harms.
Suppose there were only two moral theories in the history of moral philosophy. For _Theory A_ to crudely view people as a mere means and for _Theory B_ to properly conceive of all individuals as ends unto themselves, all people would either need to be moral and epistemic _blank slates_ from cradle to grave, or they would need to be fully aligned on one of those theories (B) and to have zero time for the other one (A). Are people like this in real life? Not by a long shot. A few amoralists here and there, but most are morally involved to one or another degree. And their moral disagreements know no end. So the rigid non-consequentialist has plenty to answer for here.
It is after all absurd to hold that absolutist prohibitions on my being killed for the greater good are there to ensure that *precious I* not be treated as a mere means to an end that's completely detached from me, when I too would endorse my own killing for the reasons the killer has in mind _were I to know of them_ at the time of my killing. When would this be feasible? Whenever, say, killing me puts an end to the above mentioned supreme emergency. I am not voluntarily sacrificing myself in real time, and therefore need to be killed, but that's entirely contingent on my lacking crucial information that my killer doesn't lack at the critical juncture. How is the killer committing a wrongdoing, in such a case? What changes if we swap murder with rape, torture, or any other ghastly act-type? I see no way for the non-consequentialist to answer without courting paternalism for my sake. A failure to respect such boundaries is something we see consequentialists charged with much more frequently.
This is a rough sketch of an important point that can be made more carefully and impressively when space permits. The comment is too long as it is, and I haven't even gotten into the crazed prohibitions on suicide, most of it from the anti-welfarist, anti-consequentialist sphere. No amount of doctrine-of-double-effect will help make these constraints fit into the ends/means split their defenders falsely believe they're advancing.
@@thotslayer9914 Might as well be an epistemic nihilist and go into full-blown self-defeating mode (by caring whether your beliefs are true and justified as opposed to false and unjustified).
Hopefully this wasn't too long.
@@thotslayer9914 What are you saying then?
At 0:37 he said utilitarianism is a descriptive theory he then gives a definition that completely contradicts this. If you start a sentence with “We ought to do”, it is prescriptive and not descriptive.
I think negative utilitarianism answers a lot of the objections to classical utilitarianism. Omelas is a perfect example of how the suffering of one person can never be justified by the net happiness of a billion people.
What about negative utilitarianism, and whether or not Human moral intuition is indeed truly moral?
It's a great question, Indigo, and shows how many strands of the debate there are... how voluminous the literature is. In the end, I believe negative utilitarianism faces some problems though, again, all forms of utilitarianism describe something important about morality. The first objection is that the negative utilitarian would have a duty to instantly destroy the world if he could (if reducing net suffering is all that matters). This leads to a series of counters and counters... Some even argue neg utilitarianism must be combined with some aspects of deontology. Whatever the case, "Child rape is wrong" is a moral intuition? There have always been people who support and people who oppose child rape. The moral people are the latter because they care about the good of the other as other?
teachphilosophy Haha nah, negative utilitarianism is OP. Nothing can be worse than 11 dimensional hellfire (infinite suffering for infinite souls for infinite time), therefor anything that isn't is by definition better (or not as bad at the very least), easily opening up a logical moral comtinuum. And yes, a coordinated nuclear strike on the Earth's fault lines should sterilize this blue-green hellscape. That is of course assuming we have a complete understanding of biogenesis (which we aren't even close to), and can be certain that the horrors of Darwinian life won't return millions or billions years post omnicide. We also need to be certain the rest of the Universe is sterile (fingers crossed) before pressing the big red button, otherwise our efforts are better placed in advancing the responsible development of artificial general intelligence (by merging with AGI most likely through nanobot BCI's) to reduce suffering in the rest of the Universe and forming alliances with post-biological alien negative utilitarian orders to battle deontological positive utilitarian orders over the fate of Darwinian life in the Universe (history ends with Autobots vs Decepticons).
We consider slavery intrinsically wrong. You don’t have to think about it to know that it is immoral. And yet, for most of history, slavery was commonplace and accepted. If we’re taking a descriptive approach, what might that say about the nature of our deep conscience? And what things do we accept today that might be considered deeply, intrinsically immoral in the future? Just a thought.
Prisons, procreation?
Thanks, none of your business. I will release a video on that theme soon. Here are some thoughts to consider: Imagine the slaveowners telling the abolitionists to get with the times. In all times, you will find people opposing slavery and rape. Moral Reformers don't get with the times (Times=what majority believe), they seek to change it. They get with deep morality not the times?