The Good Delusion | What's The Closest We Can Get To Objective Ethics?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 เม.ย. 2019
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-------------------------------------VIDEO NOTES-------------------------------------
Thanks to Dorset Humanists (www.dorsethumanists.co.uk) for hosting this talk and for providing the footage. I tried to record my own audio, but it suffered from some ugly electrical interference due to the live microphone, so I had to use the in-camera audio.
The camera cuts out around halfway through for a few minutes, but returns afterwards, and the audio is retained from the other microphone.
One thing to note: at one point I reference Derek Parfit and define pleasure in terms of what 'is wanted when experienced'. This seems now to be circular, since I'm trying to argue that pleasure is the only thing desired in itself. Rather than simply redefining pleasure to mean what is desired, I'm trying to demonstrated that 'desiring what is pleasurable' is essentially a tautology, so don't take my definition there as a step towards the conclusion of my argument, but the conclusion itself. Thanks for watching!
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Dorset Humanists: www.dorsethumanists.co.uk
My previous video on objective morality: • Sam Harris is Wrong Ab...
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![ทททททททท #27 [หลุยส์ เค โตมายังไง ณ สระบุรี]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CaKoYw_Xmtg/mqdefault.jpg)
Sorry about the audio quality (check the description). I hope this video can clear up my views on ethics.
One thing to note: at one point I reference Derek Parfit and define pleasure in terms of what 'is wanted when experienced'. This seems now to be circular, since I'm trying to argue that pleasure is the only thing desired in itself. Rather than simply redefining pleasure to mean what is desired, I'm trying to demonstrated that 'desiring what is pleasurable' is essentially a tautology, so don't take my definition there as a step towards the conclusion of my argument, but the conclusion itself. Thanks for watching!
The audio quality is one thing, which you explained, but did you actually film this in 360P? That's quite ... nostalgic of you. ;)
Not that its bad, is looks like an older home video. For a person who likes the charming older movie style, it works for me.
And good dealing with the slight nervosity on stage, you didnt let it disturb the flow. You will get pretty calm on sage with experience, my guess. Speaking before a crowd is hard. You do genuinly great.
@@nuanceblacksywin4868 you were only a bit early, watched this in 1080^^
@Jakob S Because who wouldn't want to have random people from a comment section on his podcast...
You've come a long way Alex. I'm from Iraq and I follow your channel. Thankfully, I speak English which allowed me to be exposed to different view points and thus I was able to escape the stone-age way of thinking in my environment and culture.
None I’m happy for you :)
P.S we share a first name
Be safe
None
Be careful in Iraq. Lots of people aren’t very welcoming of atheists as I’m sure you are well aware.
@@mysigt_ That's a miracle!
@Jakob S Yes, I did.
My jealousy of your intelligence grows each day. Thank you for both educating me and humbling me consistently
Alex, you are spoiling us with so much content! Please keep doing so
I'm going to call it. The next Hitch. Can't wait for Alex to get bigger!
Damn, I hope you're right.
@RDE Lutherie He is young
He's lacking suave coolness.
I agree, Alex is so young, and he will grow. People are comparing him to an older Hitch, and just like any young man Hitch didn't start there. If it never happens, he is still a massive intellect who will make a mark I think.
@RDE Lutherie I get what you're saying, I was referring to the fact that it seems like he is going to be a prominent person in the skeptic community. I believe he is going to have the influence that Hitch did. I see him as a torch bearer of the community. They definitely are different people, and at this point seem to have different personalities to an extent.
My goodness this stuff (how can ethics exist with determinism) is exactly what's been on my mind lately. I love that he's adressing it.
exactly I feel like this dude is me in the future lol
Determinism doesn't actually change anything. Praise and blame, for example, are deterministic tools for behavior modification. And if causal inevitability excuses the thief who steals your wallet, then it also excuses the judge who chops off his hand.
@@grahamthomason8796 1. The desire to punish is triggered by the harm the criminal has done. The criminal is never punished for having free will. 2. The nature of the punishment is determined by one's theory of justice. The term "just deserts" is a short version of "what he justly deserves". So, what is your theory of justice, what is justice all about?
As a person with a personality disorder (diagnosed), basically a psychopath, I struggle with ethics every day. I have a fondness for the concept of social contract which helps me make decisions in the way I interact with people continuously, but I still see the world as my little ant farm to poke at and observe. I understand that I am not good for society and make deliberate decisions on my behaviour that keeps my ant farm the way I want it to run. I like Alex's videos because they help me understand other peoples behaviour and how I 'ought' to treat them.
It is positive that you recognize it and deal with it intelligently.
I think that is beautiful and more people should think like that
@Jake L A sociopath wants to hurt people. A psychopath doesn't have any emotions so doesn't care enough to want to hurt people. There is a difference.
Garden Larder it’s the other way around actually
@@Josh-cz3oo People have been arguing over which is which for a long time, but was cleared up a few years ago. Your definition is wrong.
I love that you keep posting! Nice work!
"This is being filmed, and will be put up on his youtube channel, which, hopefully, will give us some publicity as well." I fucking love honesty like this.
If you already agree with Alex on free will skip to here: 34:25
Thank you! I think this is gonna be helpful for a lot of people. Although I must admit, I love hearing Alex talk even if I've heard him say the same thing before.
Can you give a summary of the argument?
@@ThinkClub You don't choose your desires. Your actions are either involuntary or based on desire, therefor you can't have free will. Also, physics. Unless you're free of physics, free will is either non existent or at the very least so restricted that you practically can't count any freedom as free. And you can't get an ought from an is without additional premises.
@@ThinkClub Here it is as a 3 minute audio clip: soundcloud.com/user-707415166/alex-j-oconner-morality-summary
And here's the script to that:
2019-04-24
Alex's definitions:
Pleasure: "what is desired, when experienced"
Pain: "what is desired to not be the case, when experienced"
Free will: "the ability to have chosen differently"
I'll try my best to steel-man his argument but I don't actually agree with it so bear that in mind.
First, he argues that free will does not exist. There are a number of ways to argue this, but Alex employs a philosophically based argument around desire. Essentially it is that you do not control your desires, but you can never do anything other than what you desire, at least consciously. Obviously unconscious action or forced action is not free will. Therefore, you do not control what you do. If you supposedly did something you didn't desire to do, it actually would be demonstrating a greater desire, such as giving your wallet to a mugger demonstrating that you have a greater desire to stay alive than to keep your wallet, so given the circumstance you actually do desire to give the mugger your wallet.
Next, he argues that all human action is in pursuit of pleasure. If you go the gym, you may experience pain temporarily, but the goal is to experience pleasure resultant from health in the long term. Sometimes our actions are irrational with regards to this, but he argues that our conscious decisions are always made to maximize our own pleasure, so far as we can tell at the moment that we make that decision.
These two points come together like this:
Free will's non-existence means saying someone "should" or "shouldn't" do or have done something is meaningless because there's no way they could or could have done otherwise. "Should" requires "could, differently", but free will denies it.
He then says this:
If we desire pleasure and only pleasure, then I could say that an action you take is incorrect or wrong with regards to maximizing your own pleasure, *objectively*. For instance, a murderer (who, remember, is trying to maximize their own pleasure according to Alex, as are we all) would be *objectively wrong* that his action would maximize his pleasure, and so this becomes a basis of what functions as objective morality.
Now Alex clearly concedes that he does not break the is-ought barrier, and that this system exists entirely within the realm of is. He acknowledges that he is not proposing a system in which you could say someone "should" or "shouldn't" do something, but that they "would" or "wouldn't" *if they knew better*. He says this is "indistinguishable from ethics".
I personally find issue with this because accepting it as a system would risk a real system of oughts existing and thus being missed by us, and I think that his system is still fundamentally morally nihilistic, and therefore abiding or not abiding by it is meaningless, thus we should continue to search for real ethics. I should say I don't believe real ethics, or real oughts, exist, because of the is-ought barrier and free will not existing, as well as the simple fact of philosophical disagreement over morality which is so high as to indicate there is probably not a solid argument for moral realism yet. However, the alternative to having a way to say whether actions should be done in an objective sense is moral nihilism, which I expect is correct, but it is not meaningful. Therefore I would argue that we need to continue trying to find real ethics, to maximize the chance that, if something ought to be done, it is done.
But that's just me, Alex's argument is intriguing and it seems he and Rationality Rules now agree, which makes sense since it is very similar to what Rationality Rules suggested in his morality overview video a few months ago.
@@stylis666 Do you know your physics? Study quantum mechanics, there is uncertainty built into the system. Physics has evolved since the Newtonian days.
I've been watching your videos for a long time now and I appreciate your ability to put philosophical ideas into words. You have inspired me in more ways than I can express. I'm glad that in my lack of free will, my 'timeline' has included your videos and the philosophical ideas you express. Can't wait for the next video. Thanks!
This might be the best video I've ever seen in TH-cam (related to this topic) since I signed up 10 years ago. Amazing content Alex! Thanks a lot from a chilean follower.
Such an awoke,honest,rational,intelligent ans compassionate brother he is🙏
In short:
Alex defines “You should do this”
as
“You would do this if you knew the truth”.
Or phrased a different way: An agent commits a wrong action if the presupposition of said action is false, AND knowledge of said falsehood would change said action.
Or phrased yet another way: The only thing keeping a bad person bad is their ignorance.
Interesting stuff! Feel free to correct me.
I can also write it out in modal logic. Let O stand for “obligatory”, p stand for “presupposition”, K stand for “known”, N stand for “necessarily”, and A be an action. We also use - to denote the negation of a statement. Then according to Alex’s definition of “should”, we can extrapolate his definition for “obligation” (and therefore “ought”) as follows:
O(A)=-p(-A) and (K(-p(-A)) implies N(A))
Or in words:
“The action A is obligatory if the presupposition of its negation is false and knowing it is false implies A necessarily occurs”
no correction needed.... IF we all knew the outcome of every possible action we do, i doubt someone would ever do something wrong... but i'm not sure that knowing the outcome would be enough, you also have to fully understand it.
Arkano Wade We can include “understand” in the definition of “know”
Arkano Wade You make a good point though. Right and wrong exist only under the assumption that ignorance exists
@@JM-us3fr pretty sure you dont have to make that assumption... just look around you you will find plenty of proof that humanity is ignorant.... lol
Such a well spoken and well thought out person. A very calming yet strengthening temperament and tone.
But also, thanks a lot for a lot, you have actually completely changed the way I think about a lot of things. I started watching your videos during a hell of a tough time in my life and they helped out, thanks man
I love his video's! He really gives such good comebacks, without (in my opinion) sounding ignorant or coming across like he hates it.
Thank you Alex for being such a highlight of my day. I really like listening to debates like this.
@Ruby Badilla Thoughts like this may have been viewed as ordinary in the past. The same, however, can be said of blood letting. This doesn't make it a good medical procedure. You need to realize that the position you're arguing from is infallible in the sense that nothing I say can convince you that you're wrong. You'll just dismiss it as "demons" or find some other way to ignore any logical argument laid out to you. It must be nice to pretend like you know what other people think.
@Ruby Badilla Says the king of presumptions
@Ruby Badilla Wouldn't you call assuming that you know gay people know that they're doing wrong rather PRESUMPTUOUS. Oh wait, you're probably ignoring me now because you found something to nitpick and thus you can pretend like I wrote nothing else.
@Ruby Badilla Oh my bad Daddy, I didn't realize those who are gay aren't people. If you're just trolling, whatever. But if you sincerely believe what you say, you are wrong, Take time to think about your beliefs and see whether they hold up to scrutiny.
@Ruby BadillaAre you illiterate?
You are an inspiration. You encourage me to read and learn. Thank you.
You cannot rest assured that there is "objective ethics" until (based on your philosophy) there is a way to scientifically quantify "pleasure" which is practically impossible given how subjective it is (the same way we can never discover a way to uncover people's exact thoughts/read minds)
The problem with pleasure and pain is that many things that give us pleasure are objectively bad for us, like heroin and cocaine, and some things that are painful are objectively good for us, like childbirth and vaccines against diseases like polio and measles. Objectively, we call something "good" if it meets some real need we have as an individual, as a society, or as a species. And we call something "bad" if it causes unnecessary harm to us.
@@marvinedwards737 Yes but not everyone knows/agrees on what is exactly good or bad for them.
The argument for objective ethics in the video requires free will not to exist. It relies on the idea that we can determine right from wrong based on what maximizes pleasure (which is impossible). Why should one believe a correct answer (to what maximizes pleasure) exists if it is still not found yet/we may never find it? No matter how technologically advanced we get, decision-making and "pleasure" are as not as simple as finding a region for it in the brain and measuring it
@@monaelsayed345 Well, since free will (a choice we make free of coercion or other undue influence) certainly exists, an objective ethics cannot require that it does not. Alex is wrongly suggesting that determinism eliminates free will, but causal determinism only eliminates causal indeterminism, which is quite a different matter. Every freedom that we have, to do anything at all, requires reliable cause and effect. Therefore, "freedom from causation" is an irrational concept, an oxymoron, a self-contradiction.
The basis for an objective morality is what is objectively good for us and what is objectively bad for us. We call something "good" if it meets a real need that we have as an individual, as a society, or as a species. We call something "bad" if it unnecessarily harms us or prevents us from meeting our real needs.
A botanist, for example, can tell us what is objectively good and bad for a specific plant. Some need more Sun, some less. Some require more water, others may be harmed by too much water.
It is objectively good to give a glass of water to someone dying of thirst in the desert. But it is objectively bad to give that same glass of water to someone drowning in the swimming pool.
Everyone can agree on most of these simple basic issues of what is objectively good or objectively bad for us. These are issues of real needs at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
As we move up the hierarchy, things begin to get fuzzier and become more gray than black and white. For example, is it better for everyone if we adopt Medicare for All, or if we continue to base health care on private insurance companies?
But arguments over which of two rules or two actions is morally better will, I believe, ultimately come down to our estimates as to which one will be better or worse for everyone. And the issue should be about what is good or bad for us, rather than about which is more pleasurable.
Regarding the question of having a procedure done to change desires and whether that affects identity, I think it depends on the specifics. If the procedure randomizes your desires then I don't know, but if you actually select beforehand what your new desires will be (I want to want), then it's almost as if you are more yourself after the procedure than before, like a more concentrated version. Because you got the chance to actually sort out which of your desires were strongest, most defining, and trim away others
I think it all has to do with if they change your desires about how you treat others (other desires I think are irrelevant to the morality topic (1)). but if your desires went from (finding pleasure in being nice to people) to (finding pleasure in mainly, and almost exclusively, in trolling to people) then I'd call their pleasure changes, and morality hence after, to have changed.
(1) being the same person or not is another question from whether they'll remain moral or not. If I knew someone as a nature person, and later he became a car, drifting and those accessory things, I'd call them the same name and treat them exactly life before (assuming how they treat others was still the same obv), but I don't think will call the same person I knew before.
Great talk Alex! I share many of your insights, and I love seeing someone as concise as you put all the bits and pieces together. 👍
Except the pieces do not fit. It is all based upon the delusion that causal inevitability is a meaningful and relevant fact. It is neither. Every event that ever happens, from the motion of the planets to the thoughts and feelings you're having right now, were causally necessary from any prior point in eternity, and inevitably must happen. Unfortunately, this logical fact is neither meaningful nor relevant to any practical issue. And it certainly has nothing at all to do with free will or moral and legal responsibility.
Marvin Edwards Alex’s account here is to avoid ascribing responsibility to anyone. There is no ought, only is. Because some beliefs are true and some are false, we can advocate for people to believe true beliefs about what will give them pleasure.
@@JoeHinkle11 The problem with Utilitarian philosophy is that pleasure and pain are not accurate guides to behavior. For example, childbirth is very painful, and yet the species requires it for survival, so despite being painful it is a good thing. Same applies to childhood vaccinations. They hurt, but they prevent future disease. On the pleasure side, you have opioids, which feel great until you're dead. So, pleasure is not a reliable guide to what is good for us. Feelings are malleable. So the correct sequence is to first determine what is actually good for us, and then choose to feel good about it.
We assign responsibility for bad actions to the most meaningful and relevant causes. To be meaningful, a cause must efficiently explain why the event occurred. To be relevant, the cause must be something we can actually do something about. Neither the Big Bang, nor universal causal inevitability, meet these two criteria of meaning and relevance. So, suggesting that we should consider the Big Bang or causal inevitability responsibility, instead of us, is way off the mark, and defies common sense. So, Alex is mistaken when he suggests we should do so.
Ya its funny to me that you are or were at this point in the video a freshman at Oxford. When in many ways you could quite easily write a dissertation already. Your knowledge of the literature regarding the subjects you discuss is marvelous. I only wish I could quote Mills from Utilitarianism. Im sure i was forced to read some of that in college but didnt care at the time. Now im done with school and and thirstier for knowledge than ever and willing to go back to books like Leviathan. Im so happy you already can appreciate the works we are forced to read in college and dive into them. I wasnt ready at that point in my life but only a few years later I read more than I ever cared to in college. Love your content and message keep up the good work.
I needed to hear this Alex. Great job. I can’t think of a more important issue to sharpen up on than ethics.
Damn Alex this is a ground breaking tought. I hope you are writing a book about this. Nothing has stirred my mind more than this speech in probably years.
You are a very witty, composed, and polite young man. You speak absolute logic. I see a bright future ahead of you!
Brilliantly thought out, and brilliantly delivered. I've long had this view of morality, but I couldn't have articulated it quite as clearly as you.
Moral naturalism for the win!
I don’t currently have time to watch or listen to this, but I’m so intrigued! Keep it up!
Brilliant performance in the Q&A Alex. Firm answers, but after full consideration of the questions, whilst always staying open minded.
I am a Christian, but love hearing intelligently thought out perspectives. I'm hoping you'll re-record this talk with better audio!
Alex, your content is amazing. After watching I immediately shared this with all of my philosophy friends.
You have those? I'm jealous. If I get one or two of my friends to discuss one philosophic topic per year, I'm lucky and one of them thinks water has memory and the other accused me of adhering to dogma when I started a conversation about free will with the question if she believes we have free will in any sense of the words. So instead of talking about what free will means to us and if we have it we spent an hour on discussing why I started the discussion with that question. On hindsight I realized I just asked it because the ball seemed to be on my side and I just wanted to open the conversation. I was caught off guard and went along and wondered if I wanted to push her to take a position to prove her wrong and I didn't. If I had more practice I could avoid such problems.
@@stylis666 trust me, you would just keep going in circles, especially when discussing such topics with women.
Rex Austin Sexist asshole
@@rexaustin2885 that really goes for most unphilosophically minded people, men or women
@@jezah8142 generalisations are not completely untrue.
Seems like a very solid idea. Looking forward to thinking about this myself, discussing it with friends, and if we're lucky, seeing some real impact come out of this idea. Impressive stuff.
my brain is very satisfied with this amazing realization about Freewill and morality and where does everything stand thank you very much 😊😊☺️
Ok, I agree with most of your speech, my big problem is with the idea that we are only motivated by pleasure. Yes, I agree that we're motivated by our desires, and we desire pleasure, but I also think we have a desire for behaving as we think is moral, that isn't really part of our pleasure-based system of motivation.
I think this moral system of self-motivation is based on certain instinctual moral intuitions which are modified, expanded upon and sometimes somewhat negated by our individual philosophical reasoning and ideas we've been socialized into internalizing.
I think this moral system of motivation is overlaps with or is intwined with our pleasure-based motivational system in the sense that following our moral inclinations tend to also give us some pleasure, and not not following them tends to make us feel ashamed. But just because there is some spill-over from one to the other doesn't mean they're the same system, I think they're competing motivational system.
The way you describe your view of a solely pleasure-based motivational system seems kind of unfalsifiable to me, because whenever someone behaves in a way that doesn't maximize their pleasure, you can just say they must've had some sort of irrational impulse or intuition in their pleasure-calculation. So if there are other motivational forces, you can just sort of declare that they're part of the pleasure-based motivational system or you can characterize them only as "irrational interference in the pleasure-calculation". That seems unfalsifiable to me.
If you ask people if they'd prefer to spend the rest of their lives in some sort of pleasure-simulation world, where they forget the real world, most people say they would rather live an imperfect or even kind of miserable life, even if it's clearly worse. I would agree, since whilst I certainly don't mind getting enjoyment out of indulging in fantasy worlds of fiction and simulation, I still value the idea that I'm "in contact with reality". I'm not sure any promise of pleasure would be enough to outweigh that conviction, although it may be that if you THREATENED me with making my real-world life a hell-like misery, then I might cave in and prefer to instead be taken to a good or just decent-ish fantasy world.
Anyway, my point is that you can characterize this preference for "a harsh truth over a comforting lie" as a "pleasure calculation-error" or "logical interference", but I think that simply means you're pre-supposing that pleasure is supposed to be the only motivational factor, and that morality has no value beyond it's personal practicality or indirect ability to bring pleasure.
But I don't think that ethics-based motivation is somehow "not real" compared to pleasure-based motivation, I think they're both evolved and important part of the human neuro-chemical decision-making process. Neither of them seem more objectively "true" than the other, so it makes perfect sense to say that moral motivation is just as valid a basis for making a choice as pleasure is. Both of these systems are malleable based on how you condition them, and I think you can condition yourself to change how much power they have relative to one another, neither is more objectively correct.
For that matter, you could probably even propose some sort of meta-ethical model that places fear-based motivation as central, even though we tend to recognize fear as something that can "interfere" with our hedonistic or idealistic decision-making process.
I think what Alex means by pleasure here is literally anything that is desirable. It's perhaps the wrong word but the idea I think is that the only reason we as humans take any action is because we have some reason to do so. In our minds there must be some benefit that we think we get from taking this action over all other actions or else we would do one of those instead. Now that benefit may be to gain some physical pleasure but it also could equally be from "doing the right thing" or avoiding guilt etc.
Try reversing the simulation world example. What if you were to find out that you are currently living in the simulation and everyone you know is part of it. You can choose to wake up to the real world but you know your life will be much worse, do you do it?
Another interesting thought experiment along the same lines is to ask yourself, do you value truth above all else? If for example, there was some true fact you could learn about the universe that you knew ahead of time would not bring you any benefit and would only cause suffering, would you still want to know this fact? I think in many cases the reason we value truth is because it is a means to an end. The better we understand the universe then the better decisions we can make. But if there was a fact that would only bring us suffering with no benefit would it be worth knowing?
@@andywilson5677 I also think that many people are confused with the meaning that Alex use for the word "desire" (maybe he could change it to motivation or something similar), Alex use it in a sense that any person want to do X because they get some kind of benefit in some way, even when it looks like a selfless act. Not only like something that makes instantly more happy and making your brain to produce more dopamine.
I try to be as ethical as I can (vegan obviously), I suffer getting in arguments with meat-eaters all the time, my social life suffers too, my continuous thought about how cruel humans are is tiring me, that's all against my pleasure.
But again, me striving to be a moral person drives me pleasure, and not being moral would probably drive me much more misery and would probably take all meaning out of my life.
I would argue that the pleasure difference between being moral than immoral surpasses the loss of pleasure of being moral, so I'm 100% agreeing with Alex, everything we do is only for the sake of pleasure, even choosing to be moral or virtuous or honorable or anything that seems to drive pain, the thought of being so for your whole life gives you an overall higher pleasure, or at least you think so until you try otherwise and just stop being moral and look back on "how naive you were".
Enjoying your video tremendously. Around minute 60, you point out that someone might objectively derive more pleasure when performing an evil act than from refraining from it. I agree, and I believe the current argument for objective ethics breaks on that case. It can’t be objectively ethical if we are calling it evil.
One could argue that once one accepts that we do not have free will (so we do not truly have responsibility for our apparent choices), the whole idea of ethics is wiped away. There’s no point discussing what one should do if determinism is responsible for what one actually does.
This gets at something foundational to ethics that I have not heard mentioned by Sam Harris, although you mentioned it in another video:
The whole point of ethics is to allow us to distinguish good behaviors from bad behaviors. There are two main scenarios: I need to direct someone’s behavior (make a choice for a future action); I need to judge someone’s behavior (retrospectively).
If we accept that there is no free will, then there may be no point using ethics to help choose future behaviors, because we have no choice. But we can use ethics to judge our behavior after the fact.
Although our lack of free will prevents us from making moral choices in the moment, we can bias our future choices by educating ourselves on ethical behavior. In a sense, past considerations about ethics can become part of the causal chain for our future behaviors. Some people may be impervious to this sort of influence, but it seems to work for many. So, if we want to live in a more ethical society, we are well served to bias as many people as we can toward ethical choices.
So, now ethics is “back”; it has a purpose despite our lack of free will in any given moment. Unfortunately, there is still no objective basis on which ethics can rest. If ethics exists to help us distinguish good from bad behaviors, we still need to define good and bad. Given the history of philosophy on the topic, there is no objective basis on which this can be done. One’s basis will depend on one’s goals, and science cannot choose the goals.
Science can help. Rape is objectively, demonstrably bad for the victim - so, if your goal is to promote the general welfare of each individual, then rape is unethical. But science cannot prove that the goal of your ethics should or must be to promote the welfare of each individual. Nor can science prove that one ought to establish a system of ethics.
Personally, I favor individual rights and I believe that ethics makes life better for me and society at large, but these are just my preferences. Someone else might believe that population-level considerations are more important, so could argue that 50% of us should be extinguished now to prevent global climate changes from extinguishing the whole race. That seems like an expensive insurance policy to me.
Could there not be a kind of objective ethics even though some would gain more pleasure from the “evil” act that most would not choose.
It’s like each person has an objective subjectivity to what would bring them the most pleasure.
We can defend good and bad by what brings an individual pleasure and pain. Because free will doesn’t exist this has to be the case.
Each person then attempts to gain pleasure in different ways subjective to there desires based on causes not in their control and the knowledge they have at the time of each decision. - but it’s objective as to what would be the best option for them, however it’s impossible to know the best option before making the decision and even with hein sight still impossible really, but there is technically an objectivity to each individual. If that makes sense… just not a practicable one.
@@24eu - We can choose to define good and bad in anyway we like - but there is no scientific basis on which to make that choice. "Because free will doesn't exist this had to be the case." Can you explain how the absence of free will forces that definition of good & bad? I just don't see the connection.
@@24eu - I think your answer to my question about your other comment will shed light on this. I'll wait for your reply on that.
YES! thank you so much for this video! This has me very excited because these conclusions are exactly the ones I've come up with on my own in fact. With all humbleness and using pure observation, I stress that I am quite an intelligent person. I was simply observing how I was able to reach these conclusions with my intellect. It makes me very thrilled and grateful in a sense to have this "gift of intelligence" you could say, which allow people like us to see this deep into the world. Of course there are pros and cons to everything, atleast that's the conclusion I've come up with from my perception of reality, so being highly intelligent isnt all great and can also come with some negatives. It can be mentally straining. You can often get a sense of hopeless especially if you're an overthinker like me. Nonetheless I wouldn't have it any other way and I would always to choose to keep my intellect. On a different related note, the only personal problem I've had is lacking linguistic ability/intelligence to portray what I'm thinking with good articulation enunciation. Unfortunately, I cant be as articulate as you, and I cant enunciate as well as you, especially not in person. I greatly admire that about you. If you could just hypothetically view and fully understand my mind without language as we know it through speaking, You would clearly see that my reasoning and logic, which have enabled me to reach the same conclusions as you, is very similar to your reasoning and logic. We both simply seem to think very similar in that aspect. You have a very bright mind and it's actually very reassuring to find someone out there able to explain these conclusions that me, you, and possibly more, have come up with. These are life changing conclusions that I wish were taken into more consideration by the world; that's a whole different matter on it's own that would most likely require a revolution which would take a long time before happening, if it were to ever even happen. I've never met anyone before with this kind of understanding that I have as well. It seems rare. I imagine not many people do think like this because I've come up to the conclusion that it actually takes someone with a good, if not great, amount of intelligence to be able to think of these things. Intelligence that is determined differently for each individual which is out of their control bc of the exact argument, and reasoning behind the argument, that you stated in this video which is , "We dont have free will." That being said, the way the world and society is today, contributes to the prevention of most of us not prevailing to that level of intelligence. When I speak of intelligence, I'm following the multiple intelligence theory. I mean every bit of intelligence that makes up an individual. I realize I am only 17 and still developing better social skills which comes just from more experience in life. I have faith that one day I will make something of myself, and will be able to portray my perspectives to the world like you do 🙂.
As always thank you for sharing this video.
42:50 this got me thinking of a slightly different scenario: someone knows that they’ll die in 10 seconds no matter which way they respond to a threat,
But one “choice” will mean they die painlessly, along with a bunch of other people, and the other will mean they experience agony while dying, but the other people will presumably have a better chance of surviving and living on in a potential world after our subject no longer exists.
This has me thinking about why different people would make one “choice” over the other in this case, if as informed about the reality of the scenario as we can be.
The pleasure of acting altruistically and avoiding even momentary guilt just before your annihilation must be compelling enough to override the displeasure of concluding one’s existence in excruciating physical pain.
Accepting that pain so that others can just have some chance of living on in a world you won’t exist to experience yourself seems like the obvious right choice for me to make.
But I’m just trying to imagine How a human mind could be that spontaneously virtuous in an instance like this. And how might someone react differently if given different amounts of time to process their options.
Would you reconsider ? and then over and over in your mind again ? haha
(Paralysis of indecision and doing nothing is usually the easiest default)
I think acting morally based on what we imagine could happen for others in a future after we no longer exist ourselves seems like an amazingly human quality, that goes beyond reasoning.
I do wish even more people would be instilled with this degree of care for imagined things like the future of our planet’s environment for our descendants, for generations after our own lives end.
I don’t know how to justify Why I should care, I just really do.
I suspect the guy falling on the grenade would likely have died anyway. And what better way to end a good life than a good death.
The key aspect is to understand that no one, as of yet, is making objective moral claims about what should or shouldn't be done. In order to do that, we first need to establish an entire field of science investigating evidence and weighing claims.
You do come up with a great thought experiment, but I would argue it falls into the same realm as the 'organ transplant' or the 'passing survivors on a boat' examples.
Ultimately, your decision on what to do in these circumstances will be derived from what you perceive to maximize your well-being. It could always be wrong, but it's a necessary action if you agree with the 'we don't have free will' argument.
Therefore, the person's decision should never be deemed 'right' or 'wrong'. Our inclination is to say that allowing others to die for your own self worth is 'wrong', but only because most of us live in a culture which admired heroics and self-sacrifice.
You can add another layer to your thought experiment, which is to say that the hypothetical spirits of these victims, which you allowed die for your own reduction of suffering, are always reminding you of what you did. This is almost a physical representation of the concept of guilt. Under this circumstance, I would argue someone is far more likely to allow more suffering in their own death, because a period of long-term suffering with guilt would be deemed as less pleasurable.
Likewise, you would think someone would be far more likely that they allow others to die for their own limit on suffering if the thought experiment included the notion that 'you will never feel the guilt which occurred as a result of your actions. You will forget all about it and it won't impact you in any way'. Even though it hurts a moral person to say that, we have to acknowledge that the likelihood of someone sacrificing others, in this circumstance, becomes far more likely than in the previous one.
What matters, therefore, is not whether the action can be defined as right or wrong. If someone can change their belief, they necessarily change what they define as right or wrong. What matters is their interpretation of what will bring maximum pleasure. In this way, they are never making a 'right' or 'wrong' decision, because they are only ever acting in accordance with their true beliefs.
Therefore, in order to establish 'right' and 'wrong', it needs to be placed into the framework of 'what is maximally beneficial to well-being while reducing suffering'. If that is the presupposition we start from, you can scientifically verify and determine which actions objectively lead you to the goal or well-being.
To answer your hypothetical: I wouldn't deem an individual as either righteous or morally reprehensible for either choice in that scenario. What I could do, although I lack sufficient understanding of the nuanced situation as a whole, is determine whether or not the person's actions will lead to a net benefit of overall well-being. Therefore, with enough information, we could say that one choice is right and the other is wrong.
Key take away: We need to allow science to investigate this field of research, rather than maintaining the stigma that science should never tell us how to live our lives. Cause guess what, it already does. My grandma takes medicine, my boss drives to work in a car, and my cousin is a vegetarian. All of these actions are values which are derived from scientific investigation. Ethical questions should be as well.
Oh this is gonna be a good one
I would watch this now, but I'm not in the mood to hear my voice at the moment, so...yeah...
But thanks very much again for doing this talk, it was very insightful and certainly thought-provoking.
I forget who said this but this really resonated with me. "The meaning of life is whatever keeps you from killing yourself." Feel like we can reword this with pleasure. "Pleasure is whatever keeps you from killing yourself."
Survival instinct keeps you from killing yourself. There is inherent pleasure in the idea of not being dead, at least for the moderately healthy mind.
Blessed with so much new content!!!
bless·ed
made holy; consecrated.
ho·ly
dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred.
Consecrated
of bread and wine in Christian belief declared to be or represent the body and blood of Christ.
Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)
@@johnbuckner2828 😂😂😂nice one
Hey Alex, any chance you can get some audio-expert to remaster such recordings?
Forgive me, if someone already did :p
On my speaker, it's occasionally a little hard to clearly hear what you said.
Greetings
You are amazing Alex! Love your talks! :)
Great stuff, each video and talk gets better.
Interesting ideas. Some comments:
-How can you possibly measure the amount of pleasure someone gets from an action? Your argument seems to require this to be possible. How can you determine which action will provide someone with maximum pleasure without experiencing every possible action? At any given time, there are infinite possible decisions you could make. I don't see how it is practical or possible to investigate which option will provide optimal pleasure if pleasure can't be measured, and we cannot simulate every possible action.
-I guess my issue comes from the idea that there are no moral 'facts' (at least not in my opinion). What I mean is, I don't think it is possible to collect empirical, moral data about the world. As far as I'm concerned, morality is inherently subjective. You provided an example where rape is wrong because we are a social species, and the decision to 'not rape' would therefore maximize one's pleasure. But what if an individual wasn't interested in being social? What if rape truly provided that person with maximum pleasure? And even if that was the case, how could it possibly be determined? You are essentially saying 'Person A committed action X. Action X does not provide person A with optimal pleasure because of reason Y.' However, reason Y requires a subjective judgement based on a third party observer. I don't see how it is an objective fact. Unless you are literally scanning people's brains to determine what is giving them pleasure, I don't see how you can determine what will provide someone with maximum pleasure.
-Just because everything we do is an attempt to maximize pleasure does not mean that maximizing pleasure is what we should be concerned with when deciding what is right or wrong (I recognize that you make a distinction between this theory and ethics due to the fact that you claim to not bridge the is-ought gap, but I would say that your system is virtually indistinguishable from an ethical system).
-I think you need to properly address the case where someone desires to commit actions which would be conventionally viewed as evil, i.e. murder. From what I understand, your system implies if someone obtains maximum pleasure from murdering people, that action is valid.
-I would like to see some real life examples where this theory could be used.
Ironically, the essential position is rooted in the assumption that objectivity is necessarialy valuable.
Am I missing something to suggest that we should maximise collective pleasure not individual pleasure?
@@RedstoneNinja99 yeah thats what I was thinking.
Plus I think what he means is that is one was truly philosophically aware and informed on the issue to the point you have not a single justification for said evil action it would likely be in their interest not to do the evil thing as they'd feel as though they did something against their own belief system.
There are plenty of homicidal people that don't kill because of ethics, social contract or both.
@@gagrin1565 Nice observation
For the first minutes i was like "whaaat" but after about 10minutes i was totally into this video.
Such a fascinating talk. I’m a mathematician so I can thankfully follow your logic quite accurately :)
Alex, thanks for the topic. Now, I see free will as my hand on the rudder steering back and forth between opposing desires. When the desires are fairly balanced against one another, I have relatively greater control over which wins out. That may not be much free will but I believe that is what is referred to as free will.
The 2 dislikes are Stefan Molyneux and his alt account
It looks like Stefan made 2 more accounts
Nope.
Glad to find someone out there actually explaining this very well.
Understanding the illusion of “as-if free will” is one thing which gives me more patience with others, and myself, and also having this understanding is what caused me to only want to punish people for undesirable actions if it serves the purpose of causing them and others to want to behave themselves better.
I feel some contempt for those who’s concept of justice is just in service of their predominant desire for revenge - i.e. and eye for an eye is what they feel entitled to, and watching the execution of a criminal is meant to satisfy them emotionally.
But of course I can be sure these vengeful types didn’t choose whichever upbringing instilled them with such primitive values. But maybe sharing how I look down on that attitude will be the stimulus which brings some readers closer to agreeing.
....or perhaps my ‘choice’ of the phrase “I look down on” will trigger some comment readers to perceive this as arrogance or elitism and become more distracted by emotions about that than considering my intended point. so maybe if I’d gone with typing words like “how i feel” instead, that would have been a slightly more sympathetic stimulus to reach you through your device’s pixels. :P
But oh well, too late once I click this comment button !
But psychologists and sociologists have studied the causes of human behavior, and specifically criminal behavior, without abandoning free will. In fact, rehabilitation presumes that a person is not a slave of their upbringing, but can learn to make better choices in the future. Without free will, there is no rehabilitation.
Free will is not "freedom from causation". Free will is when we decide for ourselves what we will do, free of coercion or other undue influence (mental illness, hypnosis, etc.).
@@marvinedwards737 I'm seeing your assertions here, but not any explanations/evidence.
I've been very familiar with the concept of true free will since I was a little Catholic child. it's a pretty ubiquitous notion, and very essential to justifying threats like divine eternal punishment of "bad" actors.
Of course administering just punishments in a consistent response to undesired behavior can be useful on our human level as it can be a strong stimuli to cause people to act in more desirable ways. It forms a link in the chain of causality which forms social order, which we tend to enjoy more than less predictable chaos.
I experience my choices without omniscient foresight as to what I was going to choose before I choose it. Only some advanced machines can accurately detect our brain's decisions before we become consciously aware of them.
So, on a regular basis, I'm just going to carry on living my life like my thoughts and actions are up to me, don't worry... because, what else could I possibly do?
Even total apathy and remaining passive would be probably experienced as a choice.
But this discussion is on a more fundamental ontological level than what things feel like to us, and our societal agreements and our justice systems.
Anyway, if you're interested in convincing me that there is truly randomness if the possible thoughts and actions I could do next, then maybe suggest some explanation and evidence for how I could do something other than what is determined by my strongest desire in the moment, or what I'm forced to, by causes external to my brain.
Alex provides extensive explanations on this channel which you could try to refute.
I actually would be really interested to find some new proof for true libertarian free will being somehow conceivably possible.
or do you have an idea for how we can freely choose what desires we want to feel ?
Or to choose which thoughts will go through our head before they do ?
@@anthonypc1 Choosing is a deterministic process that inputs two or more options, applies some criteria of comparative evaluation, and outputs a single choice.
o We typically choose what we WILL do. Our will is a specific intent that motivates and guides our subsequent actions.
o Operationally, FREE will is a freely chosen "I will ...". Freely chosen means the choice was free of coercion (e.g., a "gun to the head") or other undue influence (e.g., hypnosis, mental illness, authoritative command, etc.)
o There is no conflict between the fact that my choice is reliably caused and that the meaningful and relevant cause of my choice happens to be me.
o The suggestion that determinism is some boogeyman that robs us of control of our lives and choices implants a delusion, which is basically fatalistic.
o Determinism is nothing more than everyday reliable cause and effect.
o Reliable causation has distinct classes of mechanisms: physical, biological, and rational.
So, do you find yourself disagreeing with any of those points?
@@anthonypc1 It is not necessary that I create myself in order to have free will. It is only necessary that I BE myself choosing, for me to be the controller of my choice.
Very enlightening! And totally convincing. Great!
Nicely done Thank you for sharing.
Has Alex published any writing? If so, where can I read it. Thanks.
Whilst i agree with the point being made regarding our desire for what you call "pleasure", I think "pleasure" is not the correct word. I think (though admittedly i haven't spent very long thinking about it) that what we desire is a 'positive outcome' or the avoidance of 'negative outcomes'.
By using the word pleasure it implies that we make decisions to be happy or satisfied, to seek gratification. This isn't always the case, as made clear by your example of a soldier jumping on a grenade. He or she does so to minimise negative outcomes (in this case for others) . Pleasure doesn't come into it. This probably seems pedantic but i really think pleasure, in it's true definition is the wrong word here.
Yes, it is a split-second call that he will feel less (physical) pain in that present moment, than he will feel (mental/emotional) pain in the future (if he doesn't sacrifice his life for his fellow soldiers.
Well-being / suffering is far better terminology. It is the terminology proposed by Sam Harris, and it does a far better job of explaining 'pleasure isn't always just a hit of dopamine'.
Some people find enjoyment in pain, for instance. So clearly, they don't have the goal of avoiding pain. But they do certainly still have the goal of avoiding suffering.
This is fantastic. I believe you have stumbled upon something extremely important here. I can't think of any objections to your points and am interested to see if anyone does. Well done.
@eroMoD eroMoD what do you mean by 'new math'? Do you just mean common core math or something else?
To the first part, wouldn't that depend on your views? A materialist could say our brain states are composed of atoms behaving in certain ways to produce thoughts (in this case math) and in that way it is connected to matter by thoughts being composed of a series of connections at the atomic level. What would change would be our behaviour towards ethical problems, things like revenge, blame and so on.. Im not sure i understand what point you are making if you could elaborate. I'm new to this so sorry for lack of understanding.
@eroMoD eroMoD i'm failing to make the connection. can you specify what thoughts you are objecting to? I don't see how anything in this talk assumes conservation laws would be broken?
Regarding the assumption that your strongest desire is the one you believe brings most pleasure: Suppose someone wants to skydive but they are too scared to jump out of the plane, even though they know jumping would give more pleasure. Or an alcoholic who drinks themself to death, even though they want to live. Desires may not be ordered in the way numbers are.
While I do agree with many of the points you are making, I think that your crucial argument is predicated on a semantics game: You simply define everything that is being desired as pleasurable and everything pleasurable as to be desired. As far as I understand it, there is no meaningful distinction between the two terms in the way that you are using them. I would agree that people only do what they desire, but I would not say that everything they desire is necessarily pleasurable. Especially the example of the soldier jumping on a grenade being a case of momentary pleasure surpassing potential future pleasure seems very shaky to me. I think it is possible to train or indoctrinate someone into fulfilling obligations that they think they owe to society, even at the detriment of their own pleasure. Living up to these obligations is desirable to them, even though it is not pleasurable.
Another point of contention to me is that you equate the absence of pain with pleasure which I think is simply false. There is a neutral state in between, in the same way that something that isn't bitter is not automatically therefore sweet. For instance, a depressed person might commit suicide not in order to derive pleasure from the act, but to make the suffering stop and achieve a total absence of emotion instead.
Yeah I agree. I don’t think he needs to reference pleasure per se. you can rephrase his entire argument without it
The problem is that 'pleasure' has a most commonly used narrow meaning, a felt sense, for example, that this ice cream tastes good. Theres also a second type of pleasure which my be called 'contentment' (or Pleasure 2) which is subjectively different from Pleasure 1. Pleasure 1 exists but isn't needed for his argument, which is why he could have done a better job spelling out this difference, because there is a difference!
I see the point in the second half of your comment but here is the thing...
The "neutral state" is just a state where the negative emotion hormones, neurotransmitters and the positive emotion ones are in equilibrium, so its really just a gray area in between white and black.
So something that isnt pain is indeed pleasure because the neutral state contains both within.
The human brain cannot reach the neutral by having an absence of negative emotion hormones, neurotransmitters and postive emotion hormones, neurotransmitters, but only by means of equilibrium.
Contrarily, in the case of sweet and bitter you can achieve the neutral state without any bitter or sweet molecules, just an absence.
. But in the end I dont think it makes a difference whether we are talking about desire for pleasure, desire to avoid pain, or both, his argumentation still seems to stand.
EDIT: typo
My desire to watch this video outweighs my desire to read for my test
Thank you very much for your work, which inspires me to engage with the topics you prepare so expertly.
I think I identified a kind of equivocation fallacy with the way you use the term 'desire' in your argumentation. In my opinion you describe with desire two distinct mental phenomena with important differences for the argument.
1. A desire in the narrow sense would be an experienced urge to act in that specific moment in order to get more or less of a currently experienced pleasant, unpleasant or neutral sensation. (No problem with the notion, that desires only act on the perceived pleasantness. Our universe probably does not contain any objective pleasantness, like it does not provide inherent cuteness or blueness. It's just the way we subjectively experience.)
2. Equally you use the term 'desire' for cognitive concepts in the mind, which are based on memories or expectations of actions and their consequences on sensations. The crucial difference is they are not experienced as urges in that very moment.
Put differently thoughts based on expected or past sensations are not the same as an urge to act on a presently experienced sensation. Non the less colloquially one can put the label 'desire' on both of them.
Actually the fundamental conditions to be able to take a decision to act or not to act on a desire in the narrow sense is that one is fully aware of the urge in that very moment and that the mind is sufficiently equanimous so that you are not overwhelmed by the desire. Mentally deriving should's / should not's from past actions/sensations, which as I understand cannot be done strictly rationally due to the Is-Ought divide, is just a way to improve the likelihood that you might become aware and equanimous enough next time, to be able to refrain to follow the urge, by connecting conflicting mental goals with the triggering objects. (Unfortunately as we all know that method is only mildly successful most of the times)
Still libertarian free will is out of the picture, because one does not have direct control neither of ones awareness nor of ones equanimity. But it is conceivable to devise learning, training and other supporting methods to improve ones habitual awareness and equanimity in the present moment, so that ones chances increase to get more moments to act free from ones own desires / aversions.
To sum up, the model is that past suffering experienced motivates us to find ways out of it. Maybe a case could be made, that maximising awareness and equanimity leads to objectively better outcome in any situation. Is there any conceivable situation where more awareness and more equanimity could be considered bad? If not it might be objectively good, or not?
Although nervous to publish my thoughts, I hope I made a good case.
Sorry for the complicated style - I am not a native english speaker.
I appreciate any feedback on errors or inconsistencies i have overlooked.
I wish I could say well thought and said but probably half of what you said just went across my head and I couldn't keep up with it.
About the definition, I think you're kinda right I feel but I, again, don't know how to rephrase it better than you did.
I loved your thoughtful response anyway. Thanks for that.
This is a great video that really cleared up my understanding of morality in a world without free will. My one sticking point is that when you discuss there being objective answers to moral questions you pin it to the individual. However, I think a measure of general utilitarianism/humanism would flesh this out more. Like how Genghis Khan may actually get more pleasure from his conquest, but on the whole the uncounted masses who suffered outweighs that. This may have been your point and you didn't get it across, but besides that an excellent talk.
Could you do a video on antinatalism?
th-cam.com/video/ZUCenKvOzhI/w-d-xo.html
Has two conversations, one with David Benatar, and another with Humane Hancock
No views, 13 likes. Well done youtube, you’ve managed to break the laws of maths
So amazingly original
The laws of logic*
@@najif7644 there is no logic....
@@najif7644 logic is an illusion
Every video on TH-cam has this comment.
Great video, Alex. I'm going to suggest you debate the ship of theseus with some intelligent people you know, be it on or off camera.
I debated this with my father for two hours, where we naturally started out from opposing views and had to clash until we resolve it. We probably went through nearly all the important flaws and without spoiling it for othwrs we agreed on the seemigly only consistent answer.
I suggest this because I found the "is a person who we change within defined variables still the same person" a surprisingly difficult question for you, which I understand since it seemed a little off-topic from the moral perspective and more of a meta-physical question, but still after quite an enlighting debate this doesn't really seem like a dilemma anymore, now it seems something one knows like the back of their hand.
Gosh I had no idea you were reading Theology! That's some commitment right there. I wouldn't have been able to spend that much time of my life on religions LOL. 😊
First of all, great video Alex, I enjoyed it! Nonetheless I'd like to give a few of my contentions. If I understood correctly, your proposition is that we act according to what we think maximizes our pleasure; hence, a _good_ moral action is that action which maximizes our pleasure and so there's _always_ an objective good action and an objective bad action (whether we know it prior to haven acted, or not). However, I feel as if you are explaining the process by which humans act, but that in itself doesn't inform us of what is actually good or bad except in the context of what gives us pleasure [as defined by you].
It might be true that every human acts according to his or her desires, and that there isn't free will, but how does that tell me about my actions being good or bad at all in a more general sense? a particular action such as raping a woman might be bad in the sense that it doesn't maximize my pleasure objectively (I would go to jail and my life would be ruined long term); but in a world in which there isn't a punishment for it, does that mean that raping women is good since it maximizes my pleasure without punishment? Another example is slavery. Back in the 18th century and 19th century [in America], a master had every right to buy or sell slaves and use them as he willed. Having a slave maximized his pleasure even if at the expense of the slave. So my question is, are we able to say that slavery is objectively bad in that case? Am I missing something? I don't know if Alex will see this comment, so anyone else is free to answer too.
Isn’t something bad if its action causes harm to another?
Well said. I had exact same issues about ethical theory presented by Alex.
@@justlookingaround9834 that would assume that harm is "bad" or "evil"
I think as a species we get more pleasure out of being empathetic than feeling powerful so overall that’s why we change society to be more empathetic towards issues that hurt others. Ex: the world goes vegan only now because we realize it is causing harm and making us want to be empathetic. I think In that example a slave owner would do it without even realizing what he’s doing is wrong but if he truly knew the extent of harm he was doing he wouldn’t be able to do it and would give up the slaves
I think that we as a society can change what is objectively right or wrong in this theory. Maybe it was “right” before or if you get away with it. But we try as a society to make it as “wrong” as possible for someone to do that.
As he said, this isn’t morality it’s simply the facts of the world.
Thanks Alex, great talk!
To all the German fans out there I want to recommend Michael Schmidt-Salomon's book "Jenseits von Gut und Böse", in which he discusses this topic (illusion of free will, the chaotic-deterministic nature of the universe and its implications for our legal systems etc) in great detail. Unfortunately there's no English translation yet, but to all of Alex' fans who don't speak German, his shorter "Manifesto of Evolutionary Humanism" is a good read, too.
Evolutionary humanism is a term coined by Julian Huxley, one might call it a form of secular humanism that emphasizes the evolutionary roots of our species and its ever-changing, ever-developing nature. But this is my layman's take on it, a better explanation can be found here: www.giordano-bruno-stiftung.de/en/leitbild/evolutionary-humanism
I really liked this reasoning. It made perfect sense to me.
37:11 (videomark for me)And this is the time, when Alex's explanations inspired me to write a sort of interpretation about the Kain and Abel written by András Sütő.
Excellent talk! I’m going to nitpick a little, but it is philosophy so hopefully I can be forgiven:
You briefly stumbled into this yourself at 38:10 but your argument does seem to come dangerously close to defining pleasure as “that which is desired” leading to circularity when you claim we desire what is pleasurable. I’m not sure you addressed this clearly enough. Perhaps pleasure is akin to a retrospective affirmation of desire - something was pleasurable if, after/during it happened, we would still desire it. Even more preferable would be an entirely biological description, e.g. humans act in a way that does xyz... but that’s a long way off, if possible at all.
My understanding is that you claim “you should do x” is equivalent to “if I were you, I would do x” (a recommendation) in combination with some form of “x would bring you the most pleasure”. This is intuitive in some cases but I feel there are plenty of counterexamples. A coward can perfectly coherently say “you should be brave” even if they themselves would not be.
Your definition seems to differ slightly from how moral language is actually used, and thus constitutes a redefinition. All this does is shift conceptual boundaries - there is still no objective morality in the way that “objective morality” is actually used.
We sort of have an objective morality following logically from the assertion that "life is good". All living organisms are subject to biological drives to survive, thrive, and reproduce. This results in "purposeful" or "goal-directed" behavior. When a species evolves intelligence, it acquires the ability to behave "deliberately" based on imagination, evaluation, and choosing. A botanist can tell us objectively that "this plant will thrive only in direct sunlight" and "this other plant requires shade". We objectively say that sunlight is "good" for one and "bad" for the other. Theoretically, we can make similar objective moral statements about certain simple human behavior. Like, "it is objectively good to give the man dying of thirst in the desert a glass of water", and "it is objectively bad to give the man drowning in the swimming pool a glass of water".
@@marvinedwards737 I don't know if you've read Ayn Rand's work but that is essentially her claim too - that your own life is the standard of value and the source of objective morality.
@@newmillennial4248 Ayn Rand has problems for me because of her blind faith in capitalism's ability to regulate itself. I believe Alan Greenspan was a fan of hers and his hands off strategy, like his failure to regulate the derivatives market added to the crash in 2008. I haven't read anything by her, but I think I saw the movie "The Fountainhead" a while back. Did she write any essays specifically on morality?
58:00 I haven't finished the whole video so apologies if this is addressed elsewhere, but I'm not convinced that a rapist isn't necessarily maximising his pleasure when doing so. You say that you believe he is wrong to think he is maximising pleasure based on the premise (among others) that we are a social species. But does this account for sociopaths? What maximises pleasure for one person isn't necessarily what maximises pleasure for the rest of us. The wide range of paraphilias suggests it isn't that simple IMO.
1:01:40 Okay, so it is addressed a bit further, and you do acknowledge that perhaps it might end up being true that they maximise pleasure through acts like rape, but that this is an inevitability of the lack of free will and nothing could change their minds anyway. But actually, we know that penalties and otherwise negative consequences do influence whether people commit such acts (in some but not all cases), and therefore their pleasure is decreased by the consequence of the action, rather than because the act itself is not maximally pleasurable. But whether a person commits an act because the consequence is bad doesn't really speak for the ethics of the act, it speaks only for us all navigating a world in which we interact and in which we have collectively agreed that certain acts must be punished in order to maximise collective pleasure at the expense of some people's individual pleasure. How does this ethical viewpoint account for that? Ethics is objective but only individually objective for each person with no necessary consistency across humanity? How are we therefore anywhere approaching universal ethics in any useful way?
I think he believes that setting the moral rights in a way that would punish the rapist, would bring humans a stable society in which is also profitable to the rapist. He himself would not desire the fear of an unstable society where he might get raped or killed at any moment without any system of morals (or in this case more specifically laws) advocating his security.
Yes I took issue with this also, it's a cop out to me. It's a bit of a no true scotsman argument as a happy rapist is simply dismissed as "not truly happy" with the assertion he just doesn't know how unhappy he really is.
@@zahraakbari5433 but how does his desire of not getting raped in society outweigh the desire for the rapist to rape? still doesn't get away from the fact its still subjective
You are a great speaker. Well done.
lovely video keep up the good work
*I thought that was a pimple on your cheek for a second.*
When we talk about maximizing pleasure, are we talking everyone's pleasure or "my" individual pleasure? Like with the djingis khan example, he certainly derived pleasure from raping women, which he expected, there's not necessairily a belief he upholds that is wrong, yet his actions cannot be declared morally right or can they? The people he raped would say he was wrong in his actions, a historian might say he was wrong, Khan would say he was right. So is morality now bound to subjective perspectives?
The Is Ought Problem. Utilitarnism cannot solve this
15:00 My example with the scenario you were talking about. I can somewhat do some things that would prevent me from having the desire to sleep in. For example I can go to bed early or excercise to feel more tired earlier, because I know, that if I don't, the desire to sleep in will be stronger. Also, with techniques like meditation, you can (to some degree) modify your desires as your explore what they are and why you have them.
All of that is on top of your "base" desire from well being / pleasure. Why do you go to bed early? So you don't sleep in. Why don't you want to sleep in? Because you will be late for work. Why don't you want to be late for work? Because you might get fired.....etc but at the end of that long chain is something that FEELS unpleasant for you to experience that you want to avoid or something that feels good that you wish to experience more of. Any modifying of your desires doesn't change this as they are on a higher level from you base reason as to why you wish to do anything at all.
@@andywilson5677 If you take this in this extreme level, it still doesn't make sense. It's all about the definitions and wordplay.
Thank you Alex. Please keep working on the distinction of "pleasure" from the "hedonic treadmill", it is going to lead people astray of your point.
„If you saw things the way I do, you would act like I do“ undoubtedly right. But the same is true the other way around.
Is there a way to determine, say, a rape is NOT the way for the rapist to go in order to maximise his pleasure? What if the punishment and imprisonment doesn’t bother him and the short thrill was „worth it“ for him?
That being said; what’s objectively right (in the way you defined this) for you might not be for the other since he „lives in a different brain“.
So morality - i.e. what’s ought to be done in order to maximise pleasure- stays very much subjective.
What about the victim?? and if you want to say that the victim might enjoy that to, then we have no argument.... lol
Arkano Wade
no I highly doubt that - I wouldn’t say it’s impossible though (strange fetish maybe).
I was just talking about the rapist‘s desires. For him rape might be the thing that will maximise his pleasure.
I had the same exact point arise in my head but eventually was able to understand Alex's argument, and what I think he was saying was that actions such as rape, even though, as you said the rapist maximised his subjective experience of pleasure despite having to go to prison, can be deemed objectively immoral because it minimises pleasure in society or the poeple affected by the rape. So taking Alex's example of a person with a cough going to the hospital and being confronted with 5 people in need of organ transplants, to whom he is a perfect match, if the society is to allow for taking someone's life in such situations, even if you could reasonably argue that giving those 5 people organs from the person with a cough would maximise pleasure in these particular circumstances, in the long run it would make the public fear for their lives or experience some psychological pain, which we want to avoid. So I think when he talks about objective ethics he means that it's possible to objectively say that this mentioned action causes more harm than good so it minimises the majority's pleasure.
I still don't really see how you could prove the rapist wrong and convince him that it isn't pleasurable for him to harm other people, so I kind of still agree with you. But maybe the solution is to just look at the bigger picture.
Also, I definitely agree that the goal that humans generally agree on, which is maximising pleasure, is purely subjective and self-serving.
@@Eirene1313 I think it is misguided to use pleasure and pain as measures of good and bad. Many things that feel good (like heroin) are objectively bad for us. Many things that feel bad (childbirth, vaccinations) are objectively good for us. Therefore, objective morality is a matter of what is objectively good for us and objectively bad for us. Feelings are malleable. So, the correct sequence should be to determine first what is objectively good for us, and then choose to feel good about it.
@@marvinedwards737 I'd say that when it comes to assessing whether something is good or bad, it's key to look at the long term effects of an action or to consider the bigger picture. You're right that there are situations where it pays off to sacrifice something for the greater good, so to speak, but it still results in a more pleasurable feeling than if one decided to do otherwise, so it's still consistent with my point, I think. It's about learning as much as you can so that you can actually make the best, most informed decision for yourself and others, one that would bring the most pleasure.
As for your last point, I don't think It's possible to "choose to feel good". If you care about learning true things and causing the least amount of harm then by studying you are better equipped to "determine what's objectively good for us" and as a result you're more pleased with your choices because you justifiably believe they are the right ones (even if they brought some suffering).
Ought's are determined by the goal of the person/group. same as the saying "A ship without a destination has no favorable wind" A group/person without a goal, no ought can be logically applied to them.
As for choice, two conflicting desires, what a fallacy to say, whatever choice you made that was the strongest desire. Desires can be controlled and self generated. The very act of doubt is the proof for freedom of will. Where there is no evidence possible for any choice, doubt is present, and one MUST make a choice. You have free will to choose, but not free from not making any choices.
Also, Alex, you are a Calvinist without even knowing it.
And finally, if what you claim is true, if at all you are claiming anything, your words are empty, and meaningless, because lets face it, if all that we do is set and cannot be altered in any way shape or form. Then all these talks, and debates, bring nothing, because nothing can be brought forth in the first place. and I jump to this. if you truly believe man has no free will, then Alex, you MUST agree with this: That Hitler and you are both good and evil to the same extent, no more no less.
He's definitely not Calvinist.
Mostly because Calvinism is part of Christianity.
@@appleislander8536 Yes I know, but one major belief of calvinists is that everything is set by God and is played out as God set it, thus meaning there is no real free will to choose.
Right. If determinism removes responsibility, then where do we find the responsibility to correct things that we feel are wrong. The correct answer is that determinism does not change anything, least of all free will. Philosophy has played a little hoax upon itself, and is wandering about in a rather confused state on this issue.
As a first year university student myself, you are truly inspiring.
If you're seriously studying the issue, see marvinedwards.me/2019/03/08/free-will-whats-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/
That's for the existential crisis! Of course this is a good thing. I'm glad I can now think about if freewill exists!
I don't think you can deduce from "the universe must be deterministic or not-deterministic" that "the universe must be deterministic or *random*". You're assuming that the only way to not be deterministic is to be random. If souls with legitimate free will existed, they would be a non-random source of unpredictability in the universe. Now it's hard to picture how such a soul could be making choices that aren't either random or caused by outside factors or some internal state of theirs, but I don't think you can dismiss them simply based on "A or not-A".
One alternative form of non-determinism is prescience, or in other words, making decisions based on the future instead of the past or the present. Sometimes in computer science there are non-deterministic algorithms which are viewed this way, just by assuming that the algorithm makes whatever choices will reach a successful outcome. It's a purely mathematical exercise, since we can't build prescient computers.
Of course that has nothing to do with humans, since we don't have prescience. On the contrary, everything about our minds suggests that we are determined by the current state of the world, like the things we see and the things we remember and so on. There's no apparent reason to suppose that any part of the decision making process is non-deterministic.
When you get in your car to drive to work, you are operating under the supposition of a deterministic world view. If we lived in a non-deterministic world, and some of the time your car didn't work when you start it, you would rely less on your car. When your car breaks down, you bring it to a mechanic because you assume that its break down had a cause which can be reliably alleviated with a fix, which is why you feel comfortable paying the mechanic for his service.
Science, as a whole, necessitates a deterministic world view. Without it, there would be little to no purpose for observation and investigation, and we would see many more hypotheses being disproven as a result of a non-deterministic world.
Non-determinism is an illusion which lies in our gap of understanding between cause and effect.
"Tide goes in, tide goes out. We can't explain that!?" But yes we can.
@@newscore4964 "When you get in your car to drive to work, you are operating under the supposition of a deterministic world view. If we lived in a non-deterministic world, and some of the time your car didn't work when you start it, you would rely less on your car."
Determinism is the philosophy that _everything_ is determined by prior conditions. It goes way beyond merely supposing that your car works reliably. It is a philosophy about the entire universe and everything inside it. As it happens, very few things in this world seem reliable enough to justify determinism on the grounds of reliability. Sometimes your car doesn't work; if that were enough to disprove determinism, then we'd all throw out determinism.
It makes more sense to base determinism on the study of scientific laws. It seems that there are mathematical rules for calculating outcomes for any situation. This is especially obvious for something like a pool ball, but it's easy to imagine all of life working this way, and when something seems to be difficult to predict (like the weather) we tend to suppose that the issue is merely that it is too complicated for us to do all the necessary calculations.
We certainly don't need determinism just to suppose that our cars will work reliably. That's like saying that anyone who thinks their car will start must also believe that weather could be predicted with enough calculations. These two beliefs are totally unconnected.
"Science, as a whole, necessitates a deterministic world view. Without it, there would be little to no purpose for observation and investigation, and we would see many more hypotheses being disproven as a result of a non-deterministic world."
With or without determinism, the purpose of observation and investigation is to try to better understand the world. Even if the world were non-deterministic we'd still want to learn about it as best we can, or else we'd never even be aware that it is nondeterministic. We study the world in the hope that we can find predictable patterns, and until we try we have no way of knowing whether we'll succeed.
As it happens, many scientific hypotheses are disproven. That is the ordinary process of science. People make hypotheses, then test them, and throw out the hypotheses that fail. The failed hypotheses don't tend to make the newspapers, but they still happen in vast numbers.
"Non-determinism is an illusion which lies in our gap of understanding between cause and effect."
Surely determinism is the far more popular position of the two. The world always seems quite orderly, with a strong connection between cause and effect. If there is some illusion of non-determinism, it is very subtle.
@@Ansatz66 "Determinism is the philosophy that everything is determined by prior conditions."
The term is used in different ways, by different intellectuals overtime. Religious determinism, for instance, is fundamentally more radical than contemporary notions of determinism due to there being a conscious actor shaping the determination. In a more contemporary sense, especially among secular philosophers, it is more strictly attached to the question of 'every effect of the universe having a cause'. This is what I mean by the term, and the presupposition our science relies upon.
"it's easy to imagine all of life working this way, and when something seems to be difficult to predict (like the weather) we tend to suppose that the issue is merely that it is too complicated for us to do all the necessary calculations."
This is exactly what I mean by "Non-determinism is an illusion which lies in our gap of understanding between cause and effect." Non-determinism is not the default position, due to our substantial evidence for a deterministic universe. Non-determinism has to establish why it exists: it's a fallacy to assume that just because it can exist, and we don't know whether it exists, therefore it must exist.
"As it happens, many scientific hypotheses are disproven."
This is the entire point of what I was saying. We make hypothesis for the exact purpose of having the ability to be disproven. Why do we do that? Because we start with the pre-supposition of a deterministic universe.
In a non-deterministic universe, investigating claims and making predictions would hold no value. It is precisely because we can reliably test claims and make predictions which allows us to do science, and gives it importance.
@@newscore4964 "In a non-deterministic universe, investigating claims and making predictions would hold no value. It is precisely because we can reliably test claims and make predictions which allows us to do science, and gives it importance."
Let's not create a false dilemma between a world in which every effect has a cause and a world in which nothing ever causes anything. There is plenty of space between those two things, and anywhere in between leaves plenty of room for investigation by science. For example, we might live in a world where weather really is non-deterministic, and yet cars still work reliably and can be understood by science. Just because the universe would be technically nondeterministic due to some effects having no cause, that doesn't mean that no effects are ever predictable by science.
Alex, you say that you Have to look at the organ thievery and death of an innocent to save five others in the context that other people knew. No you don’t. What happens when nobody else would know about it? I’ve heard this argument before and you skirt the issue of right or wrong by introducing a specific scenario.
The equivocation at 32:00 is clear. To discount a compatibilist argument Alex derides the redefinition of "free will" yet all explanations of free will are in a sense redefinitions, that is redefinition in and of itself implies no lesser validity.
Free will has a certain meaning and any correct definition must reflect that meaning. Alex is claiming that the compatibilists are giving free will a definition that does not reflect the actual meaning of the term, and so he says that they are redefining free will and taking away its meaning.
This is a very reasonable objection. The only apparent flaw in this objection is that Alex is mistaken about the meaning of free will. The compatibilists provide a definition that very closely reflects the actual meaning of free will, especially when most other definitions are incoherent.
@@Ansatz66 Sorry. No. Alex would not even agree with you that free will has a certain meaning. It has a meaning which is to be negotiated by reason and argument. His mistake was to deride his opponents for offering a different definition, without actually addressing that definition.
@@Ansatz66 I also see another potential fallacy in the premise that the evolution of the universe necessitates that the behavior of agents in the universe is deterministic. The problem is that physicists don't agree on whether the origin of the universe represented a state of zero entropy, because if it did then the existence of any irregularity in the universe might have only arisen through purely random quantum fluctuation (hence, stars, planets and people). If determinism is true, then every act in the causal chain could be said to regress back to a random state, and if you remove the time dimension you could just as easily make the case therefore that literally EVERYTHING that now exists is purely random. Based on what we actually know, you can make almost the exact same arguments for both determinism and randomness.
Alex. A fine presentation indeed. I just watched you on AXP last week. Good to see you, Steven, and Rachel in Austin with the ACA gang.
I'm currently looking through a behavioral economics lens. A lot of Daniel Kahneman's work on bounded rationality, procedural rationality, and his two systems of cognition, one of which is arguably hedonistic as well as heuristic, can add more robustness to Alex's thesis. What's interesting about behavioral economics is that it bends over backward to maintain the good standing of libertarian free choice. Even more interesting, its ethic, advanced largely by Richard Thaler, dubbed 'libertarian paternalism' provides an intriguing and highly pragmatic framework from which determinism can be presented in stark contrast to the current free-will underpinning. In my view, the emphasis on free will is only there to placate 'commercial' pressures. It's economics after all.
No, John. The philosophical definition of free will, as "freedom from causal necessity/inevitability", is bogus. It is a little hoax that philosophy has played upon itself. Ordinary people correctly understand free will to be a choice we make for ourselves that is "free of coercion and undue influence". To see the hoax dissected in detail, see marvinedwards.me/2019/03/08/free-will-whats-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/ Or, simply figure it out for yourself, like I did.
Great vid. The example you put out from Sam Harris regarding the murderer with a tumor pressing on the amygdala is an actual person called Charles Whitman.
There are more examples than Whitman-though he is infamous.
Ahhh I see what you did there
Everything you're saying aligns with my worldview and why I don't believe in free will. I also don't believe in free will from a neuropsychological perspective, but I definitely agree with you from a purely philosophical perspective.
Thanks for this Alex.:-)
Ah, he's gone down the determinism hole. I hope he's able to find his way back out.
He's been a determinist forever though. It's not like his logic is flawed though, just his definitions aren't meaningful.
Can you explain why determinism is wrong?
@@lllULTIMATEMASTERlll I think determinism can be right, but only if you define free will in a meaningless way, or if you define the self as just your consciousness and no other parts of your identity (like your memories and emotions). With the same definitions we would all likely reach the same conclusion (except people who believe in libertarian free will but I don't see how that could exist without a god)
As antinatalist who thinks life is an imposition , i liked the video , mainly talks about determinisim
There is one thing you can always say as a matter of ethical fact: that ethics itself ought to be pursued. We maximize the chance the what ought to be done is actually done (at some point) by pursuing the knowledge of what ought to be done. If we settle for anything less than objectivity, we are risking some objective ethics existing and us not being aware, which would be "bad", or more specifically which oughtn't be the case. It seems extremely unlikely that what ought to be done would be done without anyone knowing what ought to be done.
I would then argue that this proposition itself should be the basis of all ethics, since it's the only ethical fact we can really know. There are plenty of nice byproducts like humans having value since we have the ability and intent to seek that truth, but it seems that this is a reasonable and solid grounding for ethics.
Andy Chamberlain Music Can you explain why it is a fact “that ethics itself ought to be pursued”?
Everything you said is completely logical. Even though you call it similar to ethics. You talk about egoism mostly. BUT...
The hardest part about all of thing is figuring out what you want/find pleasurable. For me, I think all desires are optional. Since all is equal, you can't make a decision. So decision of inaction...
I don't think defining free will as the ability to act differently if we rewind time is sensible. My compatibilist free will is that self is the consciousness and experiences. Experiences create most desires. Free will is the ability for a different person in the same specific situation to make a different choice than you.
This definition does not lose all meaning because people are still culpable for their actions and choice has meaning. With determinism we lose the meaning of choice. Your definition of free will has less meaning than mine because you've intentionally defined it so that it cannot exist.
You said that free will is the different set of possible actions that people would do in the same situation as you. But you have to keep in mind that if that person had the same life experiences, same childhood, same genes and same education, etc. He/she WILL do exactly the same thing as you in the situation no matter what, because their actions will be predetermined by the previous chain events of causality.
@@martiddy I said the same specific situation. I didn't say they had the same experiences. Based on my definition of self people with identical experiences and genetics are essentially the same person. To place a different person in a situation would mean to place someone with different experiences or genes in a situation, and if they respond differently there was a choice to be made
@@matteo-ciaramitaro Well, some people think that our actions are caused by some mysterious energy or soul, so for those people if you had the same genes and life experiences, you could could still make different actions than other people in the same situation. Obviously, I don't believe that of course.
@@martiddy Lol I mean if we go that route there could be gods too and then libertarian free will and objective morality could just exist because magic
@@martiddy The final prior cause of a deliberate act is the act of deliberation that precedes it. If my choice is inevitable, then it is also inevitable that it will be me that does the choosing. There is no "bypassing" me. Prior causes can skip over me to bring about the event without my knowledge and consent. Free will does not mean my choice was not inevitable. It simply means that my choice is free of coercion or other undue influence. The failure to properly define free will is a failure of philosophy on this topic.
Ok so im an hour into this now Alex. Very interesting but i have to disagree with you very strongly @1:00:00. To paraphrase your argument: You say to the rapist that it is "fact" that if he saw things the way you saw them then he would see that his actions are not in fact maximising his pleasure and he would change his ways, i.e not rape.
2 things to say about this:
Firstly, yes of course he would come to that conclusion if he saw things exactly your way. That is to say that If his brain chemistry mirrored yours, he couldn't fail to come to the same conclusion as you. It would be impossible for him not to see things exactly as you see them and reach the same conclusions about ways to maximise his pleasure. That is by definition. Yet likewise, if you saw things exactly the way he sees them then by definition, your behavior would mirror his. You would conclude, like him, that rape would maximise pleasure. So this argument does nothing to say which is objectively good or bad.
Secondly, it is a mistake to call rape objectively wrong because "as a social species, your pleasure will be maximised if you don't rape" That might be true for you and for the vast majority of us. However, for him with his brain chemistry, it really could be the case that his pleasure is maximised by raping people. Like many other social species there are norms that exist within the general population (i.e don't rape) and there are minorities within that population who break those social or societal norms for their own benefit. Rape is a good example of this. Members of other species rape for the same reason some humans do. Because they have evolved to desire the pleasure they get from raping, which drives them to rape and thus father children through rape victims. Clearly if every male had this biological imperative society would break down and we wouldn't work as a social species. But rape works as a biological reproduction strategy precisely because not every man uses it. Most men in a population don't have that brain chemistry. For those that do, many of them really do get more pleasure from it than if they didn't rape ( and really do get a higher chance of passing on their genes too).
Now to be clear im absolutely not advocating for rape and i think it is absolutely wrong, but subjectively within our current ethical framework.
There's a simple solution for it. Do you want to live in a world where the rape of your wife and daughter are legal and encouraged? The feeling of safety is important for our well being and happiness. It doesn't matter what the rapist thinks, he's just wrong and so are you. The desire to reproduce is irrelevant as well. Our species doesn't require everyone to be happy or to reproduce.
More than that, it's very possible that the rapist has a hereditary (genetic) defect causing the person to want to rape and not be able to restrain themselves. In that case it's far more moral for that person to get help and take medicine to suppress the desire to rape.
Just that you have desires doesn't make it moral or smart to act on them.
@Trolltician Secular societies have a good basis for morality; well being and arguments and evidence to show why that works.
Theists have no basis for morality whatsoever. Just within christianity there are over 2000 denominations and billions of people who don't agree on what the christian god(s) think is moral in any situation and there is no way for any of them to prove if their interpretation is correct, so we're forced to measure the correctness of every particular moral to what we think is good. So, just the fact that at least 2 christians can and do disagree on morality shows that the christian god is useless as a source for morality. Christians therefor have no basis for morality.
You can extrapolate that to all religions that claim to have divine moral laws.
@Trolltician Please try and be nice. No need to insult people and call them names because they have a different view.
@Trolltician dude,dont ruin a civil discussion
@Trolltician What are you getting out of this? You just went on a tangent, insulting people who were just telling you to calm down. And you want us to take you seriously? Half of the replies to other comments you've given insults with no substance to back yourself up. God, if all you can do is mock people who disagree with your views, then you're perhaps one of the most unintelligent people I have ever met.
Instead of reason and agreement, you resort to acting like a child. That's not how it works and nothing will have ever worked if people had your mindset. Grow up and act like a civil person, did it occur that you can, you know, actually argue relevant points instead of insulting everyone you reply to?
I really like your grenade example. A split-second call based on their best guess that this short term, extreme level of physical pain, will nevertheless be overwhelmed by the long-term mental/emotional pain if they do not jump on the grenade. If good and bad does not truly exist, then the aim must be to create more situations that lead to likely pleasure rather than to likely pain, which is why war is 'bad' of course. Although it is argued that it is at times necessary. Most would agree that even with the astronomical level of pain that World War 2 caused, it was likely less pain then would have been caused if those German and Japanese regimes had been allowed to fully succeed in their 'desires'.
I would personally define free will as that your desires control your actions as opposed to direct effects of simple physics with no experience involved and that those desires are largely the result of your perception of your circumstances
57:00
You cannot say this. You cannot prove objectively that not raping will maximize a person's pleasure. You cannot objectively state a measure of standard against a subjective thought. That's like saying you can measure how much love someone has or how much justice they have. This makes no sense.
It may be a fact that if I was you I would do as you do. But now you're falling down on the authority issue.
The microphone hurts my ears
Don't put microphones in your ears.
Loved your talk Alex! Can you do a video compatabalism vs determinism?
Well, there can be no "versus" in compatibilism. But if you're curious, see marvinedwards.me/2019/03/08/free-will-whats-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/
I'm so glad I found this channel