Here is one negative of Rationality '' Errors Believed as Truth'' You know from experience that clever wordplay can disguise falsity and error, particularly when motivated by less than honest motives. Sure, 'Rationally Derived'' and agreed to by the Honest. And I think you seriously Overestimate the average persons ability to a) understand an argument and b) accept such an argument when their emotional state overrides them. Here's a fact about Humans '' They will never all agree on any argument.'' If you agree with me, you know I am right, If you disagree you prove my point. How does you position deal with those who are idiots or malicious?
Peter, have you come across this work? I think that's very much needed in this conversation to come to a robust conclusion: cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/books/UPB/Universally_Preferable_Behaviour_UPB_by_Stefan_Molyneux_PDF.pdf
Hey Peter, I was struck by the end of your conv. I don’t understand how this hypothetical super computer is different in any appreciable way from the omniscient aspect of god. If I reformulate the question to: if god convinced you that rationality was supreme would you believe it? It sounds poor but how is it different? If it’s a hypothetical computer how can we know it’s workings (especially once we move into the quantum realm) isn’t that moving us into a world of trying to understand the ineffable mind of god?
He was also the person that first introduced me to the culture war, and all the intersectionality nonsense, 5 or 6 years ago. I branched out from there exploring left and right speakers, and a variance of SO many other subjects. I thought, at the time, that things were heading down a very troubling road, and things have only gone further and gained speed on that route.
Carl is great, and remember he is an English traditionalist, he was simply challenging Peter. They were exchanging ideas mostly about the enlightenment and postmodern worldviews. “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without completely accepting it.”
Carl was right, the flaw in this conservation appears to be an unwillingness to adhere to anything non-materialistic, namely Aristotle's primum mobile, as there is no reason that what is beyond rational is irrational
Another problem is that he is taking his contemporary views regarding rationality and assuming its the right view, the view capable of perceiving moral truth. He hand waves post modernism despite it probably being useful here.
Forgive me if this thought is too amateur on the subject, but it occurred to me that perhaps the idea of an absolute moral truth is actually only an idea we developed because of theology, and despite being an Atheist, Peter only has it because of being embedded in a Judeo-Christian society, not because it is itself a rational conclusion. Atheists like Sam Harris have tried to keep the idea of moral absolutes via his thought experiment of the Moral Landscape, but that itself might be an example of an irrationally originated belief that folks like Harris are merely trying to rationalize after the fact, having lost the original reason for it but not wanting to give it up. Indeed the Moral Landscape seems to make some hand wavey assumptions about suffering being bad that Carl was rejecting here, although perhaps that isn't a fair assessment as obviously heroin addiction vs sports training are examples given that are exceptions to the shortcut heuristic of suffering. But I think the point remains, it seems that rationality is often more likely to be used to justify preexisting assumptions and values than to derive new ones, and likely it cannot be used to determine values at all. Rationality seems to me to be in common with the conclusion I reached over the question: is math discovered or invented. As far as I am aware, all mathematical systems start with some assumptions and/or definitions, and then explore within those systems of rules. Thus the definitions and assumptions are invented, but everything that flows from them is discovered in the space defined by them. Sufficiently accurate starting assumptions can get you Newtonian Physics, but that runs out of usefulness when you need relativity or quantum mechanics. In real life, many mathematical concepts are likely absurd thought experiments. For example the idea of infinity. It's probably impossible to have an infinitely thin line that goes infinitely in both directions forever, outside of the thought experiment. This has implications in the real world, within an "is math real" kind of question when the rubber meets the road. For example: If infinity only exists in mathematical model thought experiments, then it's obvious why our systems break down in black holes or at the big bang. The starting assumptions and definitions are insufficient to accurately predict things where they break down and differ from actual reality. Rationality seems like the mathematical process of following whatever rules we have built up to start with. Like Math, it can do an incredible amount of work for us in finding truth things, but unlike math, the assumptions and definitions you start with are not explicit. If you had different starting values, your rationality would bring you to radically different conclusions in the same way as how the facts derived from geometry are significantly different if you are working on a Cartesian Plane instead of the surface of a sphere or torus, or some higher dimensional hyperbolic shape. If this analogy holds, then rationality IS over privileged, not because it ceases to be the most important tool in our toolkit, but because it's a tool in service to something else, AND limited by your starting preconceptions. One starting preconception Peter seems to be holding onto is the idea of an absolute moral truth that is good everywhere. In reality something may only be true only in flatland, and NOT on a 7 dimensional parabolic curve, or even a plain old 3D sphere. Morality could be entirely particular and not universal at all whatsoever. Note that that does not mean that immoral things become moral or vice versa in a particular frame of reference, nor does it mean that all frames of reference are equally useful and valid for the kind of creatures we are and societies that we have. I am not making a social constructionist argument, because the best starting assumptions will produce better (more functionally useful) models of truth/reality for the kind of creatures that felt irrationally compelled to subconsciously or otherwise define them. On a Cartesian Plane a triangle has 180 degrees, and the existence of a different value on some other geometry isn't relevant to us if that's not the situation we find ourselves in.
You have to hand it to Sargon, for an autodidact political philosopher he gave a professional philosopher close to a lesson in critical thinking there. For all his critics, Carl has done both the reading and the thought, and his thoughts and opinions are far from the cookie cutter vomit of mere punditry.
Yes, he's smart and hard working. I think he's only in his early 40's too, so I imagine he'll say many interesting things to say over the coming decades.
I could write a novel on my thoughts on this conversation, but I'll just keep it simple by saying this conversation needs a part 2. You guys were just getting to the heart of it and it would be a travesty if you didn't do this again and pick up where you left off. Keep up the great conversations
Only on YT can you enjoy a long form conversation between an assistant Professor from Portland USA and an autodidactic working class man from Swindon UK.
@@seandrew7837 Did you know that in ancient Bhārata (India), a person who consumed ANY type of animal was known as a “Chandāla” (dog-eater) and was not even included in mainstream society, but was an outcast?🥩 So, do you ADMIT that you are an animal-abusing criminal, Mr. Dog-eater? 😬🙄😬
Oh yeah, great moral relativist position he's upholding. Sorry, but that's the woke position. Seems to have smoked too much chronic if his eyes are anything to go by.
@@zootsoot2006 He's just being realistic. If you appeal to the rationality of your argument to someone with completely different priors, they'll be able to reject it because they arrived at their own set of values based on those priors. Beating an innocent man to death with a rock is a moral wrong in my eyes, and that of all sane human beings. The rock doesn't care, and neither does the psychopath holding it. There is no objective, universal morality, but I still think that we must sometimes, with force if necessary, apply our own moral judgement to those who do not share our values. Do you disagree?
@@MrVeps1 Yes I disagree. There is an objective, universal morality. And everyone thinks so, whether they consciously acknowledge it or not. Without such a belief, we'd all just shrug ourselves off the planet.
@@zootsoot2006 That position seems a bit too universal. For your position to make sense, the people who do not believe in objective morality must be prevented from “giving up” due to a subconscious belief in objective morality. It seems more likely they just haven’t yet reached the conclusion that everything is pointless, possibly by purposefully ignoring the issue, never reaching it, or bypassing it through their subjective morality.
Carl's content is the stuff of legend, his videos defending Peterson back in 2016 when nobody would were simply fantastic. He has seen all of this shit coming and I doubt even he would believe it would be this bad. I work in big pharma, director level, and what's going on in the workplace is beyond insane, I've kept receipts and I'm desperate to lay this all out on a storyboard but don't know where to begin. I'm going for another internal position and I've already been told if I'm up against a non-white in the final interview they *must* invoke the "equity policy" - which means I don't get the job for being white. Yet we already employ 43% non-whites!!
I work in big law. Every month I have to spend 2 hours ‘learning’ about the history of slavery and racism. The history only includes white people taking black slaves. Nothing else. It is so woke my ears bleed. They told me white people do not make eye contact enough with ‘minorities’. 😂
@@designforlife704 I kept quiet during the plenary zoom part of the ‘education’. But my great great uncle was part of the east Africa squadron fighting African slavers to free African slaves. He suffered from what would generally be considered as PST (due to the slavers scuttling their slave ships drowning their slaves in order to get away. He was effector pensioned out. But this meant his family fell into poverty as a result. I intend to make these points if we touch on slavery again. People who don’t work for large corps and particularly US prof services and corps will struggle to understand the madness. It’s not far from cokes “be less white”
Send an email over to your HR department that you’re concerned about being discriminated again for your non-binary sexuality. Since it’s a claim inherently devoid of any actual meaning there’s no proof that could ever be offered - which is the point. But it might get you the protection against discrimination that you’re seeking.
And even if they weren't, and were born as a blank slate, it would be impossible for them to have an opinion on anything because they wouldn't know/understand what anything is. The argument Peter makes is rather "If I placed myself with all that I know/understand and my biases in that starting place" which doesn't really get us anywhere.
This is just playing out the old philosophical problem of how rational justification is impossible, because once you reach the bottom it becomes circular, and circular arguments are rationally inadmissible. Therefore, rationality is irrational by its own lights, and rationalists have no grounds to object to people who recognize different sources of authority and justification. This is the problem at the root of 90% of philosophy.
You’re one hell of a conversationalist, Peter. I loved this, and I’d like to request a “Peter Boghossian Podcast” where you have regular, interesting, conversations like this.
I agree, I actually looked for this convo on my podcast app because I remembered seeing it here. I prefer to avoid TH-cam for stuff like this so I don't get distracted and watch 100 build videos and then forget why I opened it in the first place.
If you have an anxiety disorder or paranoia you know first hand how rationally can quickly become a sort of tyrant. Watch as your mind comes up with rational reasons for why you feel that way. This is why it's so hard to think your way out of those feelings because it's based on emotion first and then rational justification.
@@soulfuzz368 you are trapped in a well of sand logic says your stuck nonlogic says you can climb up but how do you climb? so um logic won't help you in real life when s hits the fan.
@@soulfuzz368 logic says you talk your way out of a situation but in reality you need to react to the danger infront of you not talk react logic will get you hurt or dead in reality.
@@antlerr yeah it isn’t always the best tool for the job, that is where intelligence comes in. A smart person knows when logic is the best tool and when it is dangerous.
@@williammarshal2190 No we are winning. Zoomers laugh at critical social justice. The boycott against the new Harry Potter games is a laughable failure. No one wants the products any of products these losers are demanding we buy, and we’ve made a parallel media that circumvents the traditional structure. It feels great! Oh, and your God doesn’t exist, too!
Carl you just have to imagine you're a formless consciousness suspended in a black void running computations through an algorithm to build a stainless steel technocracy. It's not complicated Carl.
The thought experiment offers ideals and principles to construct a society. When the agents know their place, they can construct systems to their advantage. But if they do not know their place, the systems and structures they create are *fair*
@@drpeterboghossian The problem with your thought experiment is that we do not know if there Is such an argument, even hypothetically. If you base a chain of reasoning on a false premise, sure you can reason to a conclusion, but that conclusion may well not have any basis in reality beyond your imagination. So it's all well and good proposing some hypothetical rational argument that convinces one of the existence of Moral Truths, but what if there is no such argument, and Carl is correct in his assessment that, at root, our perception of reality is itself in some way fundamentally Irrational And given that I would classify 'Morality' as 'Codified Value Judgements', I do not see how they can be 'objective' [part of the structure of reality] and not simply 'conceptual'; and thus amount to subjective judgements of an external objective state. Which is to say that Reality is Objective, but our valuation and judgement of reality is subjective.
33:25 "Empirically, no one wants to be a slave" IDK, I still see people wearing masks when I go out. The past two years have pretty thoroughly proven to me the willingness of some to happily have their lives dictated to them. I will concede though, this is a case where your immediate preconceptions of the word "slave" are very important.
FACTS. The lockdowns proved very clearly that there is subset of ppl who much prefer being told how to think, how to act, and what to do. They absolutely love not having the responsibility to make decisions for themselves.
@@umiluv They don't want to be slaves. They want to be children. A slave is created. A child is the thing that is cared for, told what to do, has all decisions made for it, and is shielded from consequence. I would think more highly of a person who desired slavery. It is an achievable goal even if absurd, and not without consequence. Better to be the thing you set out to be, than be it because you were too weak to be anything else.
@@aranisles8292 yes, but the branch covidians clapped like seals for releasing criminals. There were plenty of beds left open in the wake. What they wanted was rent moritorium and bail bonds for when they smash things up in a tantrum. I was not saying no-one desires slavery. Just that the specific group mentioned is infantilized, and wishes to be children. Which is a far less reasonable ask than slavery.
I mean you just have to look at some of the reasons for slavery. One was being conquered and another was debt. Loads of people would chose slavery over being killed in a genocide in the case of being conquered and many would choose stable slavery over being destitute on the streets. It wrung of slavery is bad so I wont thought expirement on cases where it would be chosen
I think the reason people hate RINOS so much is because they are moral relativists. they rationalize things like globalism even when betraying their own principles because they rationalize it as bi-partisan agreement that separates themselves from zealots... as if projecting themselves as being cool headed and rational for self preservation IS actually more rational than standing behind their own stated beliefs with conviction. These people wan't to be martyrs but they are too scared to die, or even sacrifice their career... so instead they do nothing but gaslight and manipulate to make the actual martyrs look like tin foil hat wearing neer-do-wells.
I liked your comment as it is both correct and incorrect at the same time. Correct because Carl was using moral particularism to explain why people believe that their particular belief system is 'correct/true/valid'. Incorrect because Carl clearly stated that if 'universal values' do not exist (or we cannot determine them) then metaphysical truths i.e. theological/religious principles can be valid in addition to moral particularity. That being said, my thoughts are that religions are codified forms of moral particularity i.e. the moral rules applicable to certain geographical locations at least, but could also include and may be better explained by other things such as family structure and time.
The smuggling of values into the 'original position' occurs the moment you introduce a metric by which you judge. That metric is your values. However meta you go, this remains true.
Isn't Peter's position that of Bentham and the Utilitarians? Their's was an attempt to produce a calculus of morals, but, it fell apart when it was pointed out that there was an underlying presumption of shared values that would enable such a calculus (Carl's position) i.e. it relied on something external to itself and was thereby incomplete and thus untenable.
Excellent conversation.. I think Boghossian's problem is that the notion that you can make claims of universal morality on atheist, materialist and rationalist grounds is absurd.. Without God(or any other conception of The Divine), you can not philosophically justify universal morality, like so many other transcendental categories..
Contractions are agony - but its an absolutely necessary pain to bring your child safely into the world. It's a good, positive pain, even if you want to punch your husband at the time.
@@hmsealey3243 Great point. I was also thinking about pain if we have stood (or sat on something) nasty. It is a positive warning for us to remove ourselves from what is causing our body harm.
Yeah, this is basically the point of the naturalistic fallacy. You can't conflate "good" with "pleasure", so neither should you conflate "suffering" with "wrong". Pleasure can be good, suffering can be wrong, but a critique of pure utilitarianism based on maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering is that you could justify euthanizing sad people and keeping those not predisposed to feeling constant pleasure drugged out of their minds in eternal bliss and ecstacy.
Rorty: ”Rationality is often considered to be the endeavour to exhibit the universal validity of one’s position ” Nietzsche: ”What has universal validity to do with me? ”
29:24 I don't think the critique should be of Reason, but of knowledge. Because no person has perfect knowledge, Reason must be treated carefully. Sometimes we know what is Good by experiencing it, even when we cannot reason there because we operate in imperfect knowledge. 44:37 Very nice bringing this from some type of "universal values" to just saying "this is my value and my neighbor's values", our notion of what is Good. It might be universal, but we are not the universe or God so we cannot make that claim. We have to act within who we are and what we know, and we need to own that. 52:12 Peter, I think the issue, like above, is not Reason, but lack of knowledge. If presented with some type of eye opening knowledge (in this case with a fantastic AI), then reason still rules. I think the fundamental issue is in reality we operate with vastly imperfect knowledge. 59:40 I agree with Carl here that it is through this experience of reality that we know what actually works and what is Good. To tie it in with your AI thought experiment prior, to date AI is trained experience, not logic. The AI that plays Go so well played against itself many many times and modern AI that we can with is trained on a large body of experience of works.
Yep, its funny because flaws and memes within the training set will bias the AI in pretty much the same way carl was arguing rationality smuggles in moral claims. The body of training data is integral to the rational and logic driven ai
@@assortmentofpillsbutneverb3756 Yeah, machine learning is the science of recreating brain function in a computer. We ape the feedback mechanisms, the strengthening and weakening of connections between neurons, and basically create an artificial brain tailored to have a "gut-feeling" or "intuition" about its area of expertise. There will always be bias, and the more we move away from the analysis of large, chaotic systems like weather, power consumption and economics, and towards more small scale and personal things, the more bias is introduced.
Wow yeah you guys got to do a part 2 that was good a conversation, It was interesting to see Carl come to the realisations that he did as he was going through the motions with you. Great job just exploring the ideas and seeing where they lead, Thankfully the pursuit of real intellectual enquiry is not dead yet in this post fact age that we now live in. There is hope yet it would seem.
@@spacejunk2186 all of history supports the claim. And you are right, it's ugly. Philosophy only invents contrived conditions for their claims to be true.
I think Carl's points are super interesting. It's impossible for a human to think in a way that a human cannot think. We can *imagine* what it is like to be a dog or a tree or a binary star, but every thought is still the human's perspective on that thing because we aren't that thing. The same is true of one's birthplace. Thus, coming up with a morality that is entirely universal, that would presumably appeal to all humans and cows and AI and space aliens is basically impossible to concoct because we cannot be a thing we aren't.
@@14percentviking - you would think for someone who believes himself to be so rational, he would consider the possibility of a personal bias due to where he grew up in the world. It’s the first thing you learn to note when learning about being objective in science. 🤷♀️
@@dontcallthemliberals3316 yes. A Russian and and American think differently not just because of environment but because the words, and meanings of, are different.
tbh i wouldnt worry about dogs, trees and aliens, when its already impossible to have universal morality for all humans - ofcourse unless everyones cool with getting rid of X amount of cultures and traditions etc that go against the said "universal" morality. I mean sure its "universal" if everyone else is dead i guess, but is that the right way to go about it lol
This was hard to watch, the closest way for me to describe it is that Peter is so deep in materialism he is basically religious. It's like trying to teach a color blind person what color is.
@@xjmg007 It is definitely a difficult thing to deal with. While I would still consider myself pretty deep into materialism I've just decided that there are some things that I'm willing to not worry about rationally deriving.
Much respect Peter, but this is the mindset of Liberal Hegemony. It's that idea that would only make sense if we went from a pseudo-empire (where we break a country then shrug our shoulders) to a real empire (where we take full responsibility). I prefer the example model that Ron Paul laid out.
Around the 50 minute mark: Sargon is on the mark here: It is impossible to have 'objective' ethics without some metaphysical reason that exists outside of human beings.
Sargon is an atheist, actually. He's not religious, he does think religion is a more positive influence on culture than most modern thinkers believe. Mostly due too religion providing a moral structure and a clear sense of right and wrong.
@@katnerd6712 to add to this, he believes religion is good because the vast majority of society doesn’t have the time or interest to rationally determine what is “good” morally, so religion gives them a pre-determined morality that they can follow.
Peter seems to under estimate the power of natural instinct, survival, greed, desperation. The list goes on. These things can never be beaten by a simple thing such as rationality.
if more people could experience and take note of how skilled trades are taught for example you'd see how so much human capital is locked into intuition alone. My experience is that the majority of artisans can't explain much of what they do, why and how they do it, but they still have the knowledge somewhere. This is part of why I can't stand the people who insist on language and text as a primary mode of communication or theorizing. I'm fairly certain visual communication and demonstration is far more primal. This is why I think Foucault and Habermas doesn't belong in Art History for example, which is the study of a far more basic form of human communication and ingenuity.
But what society has been the most successful about lifting the most people up in regards to their standard of living? I mean food, housing, opportunity, life expectancy. But that's using rationality so I guess it's already flawed. 😊
I am very far away politically from Carl, but I am not a moral realist, and ended up agreeing with him for a lot of the debate. The “original position” strips away anything that gives someone identity, and leaves you with a method that presupposes harm-reducing egalitarian liberalism. (which I even agree with) Imagine proposing this to a devout muslim, specifying that you would all have no religion starting out. He would right well say, “what would I be without Allah? This hypothetical is immoral.” Morals are not rationally derivable, and any attempt runs into the same problems as those who have rationally tried to prove God’s existence for thousands of years.
@@HarryBalzak In different disciplines the terms are used in a different way. Carl’s position is less idealistic when applied, but moral realism is the view that moral statements represent objective truths about reality. If you look up “moral realism,” that’s what it will roughly say.
@@beatleswithaz6246 I don't particularly appreciate that words can have completely different meanings based on context and the only way to know is to already know.
@@HarryBalzak Yeah, it’s especially true in the humanities/politics when a word will have a completely different political, economic, and philosophical definition. Terms like realism, liberalism, and objectivism have been butchered. I definitely agree.
Great conversation. I agree with Carl. But I didn't arrive at this point by reading a ton of philosophy. I got on a plane. Travelling extensively to places off the beaten track puts what he is saying right in front of your face. We are a product of the culture we grow up in at the time we are living in. People who deny this are like fish swimming in a tank saying "what water?" There's no getting away from it. We can't remove our moral values away from ourselves, our history, culture and what we experience & feel in our lives. And I agree that not everything can be rationalised. Rationalise love, music, beauty....
There are however universal concepts of good and evil, in every culture. Also pain and pleasure. Those concepts are absolute. Culture is only interposer between individual and archiving good or evil.
@@randalldraco3822 I don't think good & evil and pain & pleasure are universal concepts or absolutes. I can list many examples of things that we think are "good' that ppl in other cultures believe are "evil", and vice versa. Pain and pleasure is kind of murky too. Not in terms of the physical sensation but in terms of our perception of it and whether it is associated with "good or bad" outcomes. Not to mention some people who actually appear to get off on pain. If you can't apply these things across cultures or people, and they vary so much, then they are not "universal concepts/absolutes".
@@GenXWomanthis is a very slight disagreement but I think anything can be rationalized but for something like music for example, rationalism is definitely not the best way to experience it. Love can be rationalized by learning how and why we feel certain emotions on a biological level. Again, this is missing out but definitely possible.
This was an excellent conversation. I was especially impressed with Carl, he has improved his argumentation skills 1000 times in recent years, and gotta say, I felt that he had the most convincing argument. Which, if I can summaries for my own benefit if nothing else, comes down to "You can't create a 'universal' 'rational' moral system, because what individuals consider to be rational varies depending what their own starting point deems as rational." Yes, very post-modern, and yes, annoyingly difficult to refute. On the AI front, well there is chatGPT (I believe there is even a Sargon AI version somewhere). Maybe Peter could have a chat with that and see if it agrees with the real Carl! (or can come up with the rational moral system he is looking for) Hope it gets some more attention for LotusEaters. Them's doing good work.
There is nothing that the post-modernists said correctly that wasn't said decades prior, and very much better, by Nietzsche; it's a shame the post-modern school has usurped credit for making the obvious case against "objective moral truth" considering that this is not an argument unique to them.
Yes. There is no possibility of a universal perspective which is knowable to humans. The post-modern lens itself does show us a truth. The problem is the deconstructionists’ use of the post-modern lens. We cannot say they are “incorrect,” we must admit our biases and then righteously act from that prejudiced position. They are not incorrect or even objectively “evil,” they are simply unacceptable, and contest between the sides is inevitable. Either we lie down and get borg’ed, or we stand and fight without lying about our priorities. That is the difference between us: we state our true intentions, while the deconstructionist Progressive lies in order to extort our civility.
People are understanding "universal" and "rational/logical" wrong. It doesn't mean what people think it means, it doesn't give you magical powers to stop Nazi or communists just by saying they are wrong. Even proving they are wrong. Gosh, they will tell you they are wrong, evil and they don't care.
Rationality and reason are social constructs. They change across time and across cultures. The Greek had a different way of thinking about the world than the Romans. The Romans had different views than the people's of Germania. The Germania peoples had a different reasoning than Eastern countries. You may hate post modernism, but your feelings don't make the position incorrect. Therefore, the idea there is a specific set of reasoning rules that would allow us to grasp moral turth is absurd
I've heard greay things of Peter but this was definitely not a good first impression of his work. Carl made his point in the opening. Different cultures value different things and forcing our beliefs on others is an excercise in futility.
As is the notion that Western aid come only with the most noble of strings. Western governments use aid as a tool to get other countries to do what they want and many times as a weapon to saddle a country in unpayable debt to effectively own that country's political system and strip out their assets. The West will support the worst of dictators as long as they do what the deep state/ corporate "leaders" want. If they don't tow the line, they get removed, see: Gaddafi, Hussain, etc.
Aren't morals woven into the fabric of the universe because men are part of the universe and have the concept of morals? Putting man outside of the universe seems wrongheaded. Anyway, thanks for the great discussion!
Sargon isn't great at articulating his position, he needs to read (or reread) David Hume's critique of reason in order to defend it better. And Peter ESPECIALLY needs to read it, since he's so dead wrong on this issue. You can't rationally define your way into what we ought to do. You can only rationally deduce what you ought to do to achieve some predetermined goal.
These are the types of conversations that should be standard in schools. I respect the amount of time they take to ask questions and consider the responses.
"you can't assume because a country is more prosperous (it's almost universally because it's democratic)" I'd love to see this justified. Almost no empires where 'the sun never sets' were democratic, and even in recent history they are more like oligarchies.
@@drpeterboghossian MORALITY IS ABSOLUTELY OBJECTIVE: To put it even more tersely, whenever any individual person performs any action whatsoever, it is OBJECTIVELY either beneficial (that is, moral), neutral (amoral), or harmful (immoral). Thus, every single volitional act performed by humans above the age of reason, belongs to one of the three aforementioned categories without ambiguity, from a purely objective “God’s-eye-view” perspective. However, as explained, the adjudication to which of the three categories any particular deed belongs, is entirely predicated on the system of justice extant in one’s nation, community, or country. Hopefully, now that this Holiest of Holy Scriptures has been published, the world will come to understand morality in a far more scientific manner than it has in past millennia, in order to avoid the trajectory of moral decadence plainly visible in the present age. Analogically, on the macro level, there is a definite, objective separation between a person’s bodily form and the surrounding environment. However, in order to view the precise borderline between that person and his or her surroundings, one needs to zoom-in to the microscopic level (or even the sub-atomic level) and even so, the borderline is rather hazy and indistinct, especially when viewing bodily cavities and hairs. Likewise, an immoral action is OBJECTIVELY immoral, even though it may require the keen eyesight of a highly-trained observer to judge it so. Simply because there may be a great deal of disagreement regarding the morality of an action, does not entail that morality is subjective.
One thing I really appreciate about Carl Benjamin these days, is that he is such an *honest* thinker. He simply doesn't want to take the shortcuts, and it's a rare trait. I have to admit to very pleasant surprise of his evolution as quite the deep thinker, it's inspiring!
Carl has been there for quite some time. He has quite a few articles critiquing the Enlightenment and liberalism which came from the Enlightenment on his Lotus Eaters website.
@@umiluv he has done to an extent, yes. But he still has certain views that are grounded in Enlightenment thinking. Whether he realises that I'm not sure. For starters, he's an atheist. Which means he can't believe in the divine right of kings, as he doesn't believe in the divine. He still has some way to go before returning to a medieval mindset, which is what we must do.
@@joer9156 he does seem to hold some as we all do because its what we were born in and live in, also you will never return to a medieval mindset recreating an era simply is not possible
@@tikiwiki7428 we will never return to that culture, no, but I think there is a way of thinking that can be tapped into regardless. Jonathan Pageau talks about how the world is becoming "reenchanted" whether we want it or not, and if we don't learn how to approach that in the correct way, we'll end up with more craziness like the George Floyd worship, withh the crazy icons of him like Christ, people "taking a knee" etc. That will just get more extreme. We need to learn how to surf that wave and make it work, and I think we can learn a lot from the medieval mindset in regards to achieving that.
You can tell Carl is coming at this from a non-religious view. And that's why his argument is so strong. Universal morality hasn't been proven to exist in any capacity ever. You can rationalize basically anything if you talk long enough.
Carl is the only man I can think of to get in trouble with Johnny Law for saying he WOULDN'T rape a woman. I think he hurt her feelings pretty bad with that.
What original position? How do you determine what that is without having some irrational values? That's the point Sargon is making. In the case of slavery, is the original position focused on the individual or the civilization? Because you have to have a set starting point.
It's telling and more than a little worrisome that a former university professor of philosophy is so blinkered by modernism that he feels confident arguing for a universal morality based in reason, yet is wholly opposed to moral systems that oppose homosexuality. I believe there is a rational moral system that addresses homosexuality, but that system- natural law- proscribes it. I don't know of an "evidence based" or rational moral framework that approves of it without "smuggling in" other values ahead of time.
On the last point of the conversation, Peter has incorrectly presumed that just because you can change someone's mind you are revealing that a universal truth exists just because you're not appealing to culture.
A question for Peter: How do you tell the difference between good and bad, without being arbitrary (in the sense of philosophical justified, true belief)?
Interesting. If you don't want slavery then the enlightened idea of the sovereignty of the individual is the supreme moral. It is not rational and you can't get there starting from rationality. What you have to do is force this idea unfortunately.
Amazing conversation. I think that no rational argument can be made that will convince every human being in existence. No matter how well constructed the argument, some percentage of people will always believe that it is a trick by Satan, Loki, or a djinn in order to lead them astray.
John Rawls was wrong. All rational people will NOT come to the same conclusions on ethics and morals. A priori, we start with different values. So we begin from different locations and we end up at different places. This does not mean we should NOT apply rationality in preference to irrationality or instinct. It means we must defend our values in debate, and experiment, and may even have to change or accommodate them to others. I'm not making a Big Tent argument. I'm making a "let's evolve rationally argument". Sargon scares me sometimes because it's never clear what he's replacing rationality with - as a basis for judgement. Rationality is not my highest value; empiricism is.
I couldn't agree more. My _subjective_ values are actually pretty close to "Enlightenment values" that Peter supports, but all the arguments for "objective", "a priori", "rationally derivable" etc. seem fallacious to me. That includes John Rawls's, John Stuart Mill's, Ayn Rand's, Murray Rothbard's and all the rest of them. I am also opposed to Sargon's anti-rationality, because not applying rationality to one's values makes one more likely to get into conflicts which could have been avoided. Even though I disagree with Sargon's values, I still want him to be rational, so that he at least doesn't do things that hurt himself _and_ others. And I wouldn't say that I "value" empiricism more than rationality, but the thing that I call "rationality" is always _downstream from_ empiricism. Any rationality that empirically doesn't work, isn't rationality at all.
Our moral values and intuitions evolved to facilite relatively small scale tribal groups and lineage selection. They are necessarily locally biased as their purpose is survival of ourselves and our tribe, not everyone else or Truth. Reason could hypothetically lead us to an empirical verified set of universally most optimized moral values, but our knowledge is too imperfect to believe we can get there.
Pretty much agree, rationality can help min/max but most people with wisdom realize there is more games and life than min/max especially when you ask the question of min/max what
6 mins in and I already see the issues: Peter is discussing materialistically, while the question of ethics is a metaphysical one. And Carl is able to see this problem from afar.
Very glad that you guys discussed sovereignty, as I see this as the most pressing issue for my own country these days. So I'm Norwegian, and trough our history and culture we have been shaped into a country that values sovereignty as a fundemental value. And this philosophy has served us extremely well. It was this thinking that led our state to kick out English landowners/companies that bought up our rivers and watersfalls for hydropower, and nationalized it instead, something that kickstarted the industry and economy of our nation. Half a century later the same thing happened with oil, and that in turn has made us into the powerhouse of an economy(for our size and population atleast) we are today. But these days we are seeing more and more pressure from specifically the US, China and the EU trying to chip away at this at every opportunity they can. This is ofc not helped by our current politicans that seem to rather want to play world politics rather than listen to the citizens. But again, our focus on sovereignty has made us into one of the most successful western nations, with both our happiness index, equality and wealth being much higher than most others. And again, the biggest threat against our way of life, are our supposed "allies" these days. So I am very much invested in seeing this topic becoming more prevelant in general debates, as I honestly think more countries should look seriously at this issue and decide for themselves what they think would serve them best. As for a "universal set of values" there is a very obvious counter argument if one thinks of a species different than ours. A hivemind being the most obvious example. For a member of that kind of species, they would likely not see the suffering of any "individual" member of the hive as something bad, at least looking at the instincts of ants and other species. So yes, all of these "universal" values they talk about here are without a doubt human centric.
Carl is no slouch, considering he is an autodidact oik. As a representative/example of a thinking common man, very few Joe's down the pub could have lasted 5 minutes in that discussion.
@@agenticmark I don't think Peter can help himself, he Is a Professor. Carl can take it, and has humility. But you can see Peter Was pushed to reconsider, and was (i think pleasantly) surprised to hear some of Carl's positive assertions and pronouncements, but even more pleased and surprised that Carl had fully reasoned, and sourced, answers that didn't just fall down . Carl held his own and earned some cred. Carl knows he is an Oik, and has the humility to do the work, and bide his time, and Earn the respect. And frankly, does Sargon or any of Us really care about approval of the Academy? Part of the problem is people giving undue respect to 'experts'. Carl did not defer to expertise, as far as i could see. Remember this is a long game
i cut off the video after 5 minutes because of the constant interjection and not letting carl finish a single goddamn thought, it drove me fucking crazy, it's way too distracting and derailing for me
@@dutchdykefinger stick with it. Carl drives Peter back on his heels many times, and in the end Carl forces Peter to posit some hypothetical perfect argument as his ace card, in lieu of the argument he couldn't actually articulate. Carl had him beat
My big issue with rationally designing a world from a neutral position where you didn't know where you end up, is that there is no universal neutral position. If you are a Muslim, it is obviously rational to want to design a world that will make as many people Islamic and virtuous as possible as it will prevent the most amount of suffering and live up the best to God's ideals. If you are a fascist who view homosexuality as a degeneration of society that corrupts and ruins it, your rational universal world would then prosecute homosexuals harshly because your rationality holds homosexuality as a fundamental crime to society of the same ilk as rape, theft and murder. A communist is going to view anything capitlaistic as inherently oppressive and a crime, a libertarian is always going to view a overbearing government as a crime, etcetera. There is no possibility of rationally designing a world from an abstract, unbiased neutral position.
Further on regarding slavery, one can easily support slavery in such a system if they have slavery be punishment for a crime, as was also frequently done throughout history. If one designs so that anyone who is a murder is then made a slave, they then also can view it justified themselves being a slave if they committed such a crime in the system. Then in regards to slavery where it is tied to racial prejudice and is generational, if one for example takes the German perspective in viewing other races as inherently inferior and needed to be chattel to the Germans due to innate characteristics, they would rationally support such racial slavery. The examples of universal morality getting proposed by Peter are consistently being based from a subsection of western thought of the current time, which is hardly universal when you can take people of the same area and time period with the same prompt and end up with different "Universal" moralities. The question is really more "How would you design a system where you only care about material comforts and you are a psychopathic atheist with no sense of morality, and you don't know where you will end up", and is hardly a good baseline for establishing universal morality.
Every single society, group of people or tribe assumes they are right. That their moral values/religion/belief system/ideology is the correct one. Spreading that moral value/religion/belief system seems like a no-brainer since, if everyone believed what is "right" the world would be a better place. Missionaries believed this. We believe this when we complain about other countries and their lack of tolerance towards the LGBTQ community. The heart of man doesn't change. Speaking as a Christian, there is a reason that self-righteousness is warned against in the Bible. Self righteousness is deadly. It's the thing that hangs witches, burns heretics, persecutes gay people and cancels transphobes. If we are correct and righteous, then others must, by definition, be wrong and evil. Once identified as an evil person, well, it doesn't matter what happens to you. In truth, the world is more nuanced than that, and I don't believe there can ever be a consensus of opinion as to what is the universal truth that underpins reality. Is it a theistic world? Is it an atheist world? Should we all have freedom to "do what thou wilt?" Should we follow a moral code? Should we all follow the same moral code? Should we condemn Aztec society for fulling out the hearts of their victims on their pyramids? Or should be just smile and say "each to their own?" All that happens is that one view of the universe, one set of moral values, is chosen and others must follow it at gunpoint. Because you cannot cause seven billion people to think and believe the same way. As an author, I have used my dystopian novels to explore issues like this. Every worldview can become tyrannical once it's imposed. We are all colonisers at heart because we all believe in our own righteousness. The British evangelists wanted to civilise the "savages" and pagans. Today, tolerant, progressive people whose rallying call is to "be kind," want to civilise the savages who do not believe being gay is natural and acceptable. There is no "being kind" to those people. We are all evangelists too. We have found the "truth" and are compelled to tell others. We haven't changed much in thousands of years. We just think ourselves better than our ancestors who sacrificed one person for the safety of all. Is that so different say, from Vaccine mandates where more than one person will certainly die (statistically, if you vaccinate an entire country, several people will die from a severe reaction) sacrificed for the safety of all. We would hold up our hands and say how very different that scenario is, but our ancestors were as self-righteous as we are.
It is hard to not slip into nihilism when people tell you that rationality has no real value and that morality is relative, while at the same time complaining when one tries to export ones own morals to somewhere else. It feels like backstabbing.
I'm surprised to hear that Boghossian thinks there are moral facts. I am further from Peter's position than I am from Carl's, which is the opposite of what I expected. I don't know much about Sargon of Akkad. I should look into him a bit more.
REASON IS A VALUE SYSTEM. "To hierarchically prioritize values" is a tautology. A value IS a hierarchy of priorities by definition -one thing valued over another and therefore given priority. This is the blindspot of most self proclaimed "Rationalists." Reason is a heuristic we practice to recognize true things. It can also be flawed. But there is no reasoning without a value-based framework - which is why critical thinking is a skill. It is a discipline composed of rigorous values with its own biases. What also needs to be acknowledged is biases are not necessarily bad (despite what unconscious bias training is claiming). We all have gravitational bias - we all prefer our heads be above our feet (most of the time). The real work of critical reasoning is not to strip us of biases, but to challenge them, and discriminate toxic from healthy biases. I really respect that Carl is pushing to recognize this and that Peter is putting in real effort to challenge his on blindspot.
In the discussion about the Supercomputer and the 'Ultimate Argument about Life, the Universe, and Morality' i could help but further analogise THHG2TG. What makes peter think that such an argument would BE intelligible in the first place. His very hypothesis may be 'impossible in reality', and thus utterly moot. Again, another way Reason can lead one astray. First Rule of Think Club should be '' Don't Believe Everything You Think''
Peter just doesn't have the same level of deep critical thinking as Carl. Peter has read a lot, while Carl has thought deeply about things himself. I honestly thought Peter was well measured and highly intelligent before watching this. He's just not though is he...
His bias is preventing himself from being open minded. Carl was willing to question everything, including his own presuppositions. Also, his belief that the post-modernists are not wrong has been around for a while now for Carl when he was having a discussion with Jonathan Pageau. Peter’s disdain for the post-modernists hides his ability to see why their ideas are so successful. It’s because they are right in the assessment of the issue, just not their solution (as Jordan Peterson has noted previously as well in his lecture series).
It also just looks like someone from the Age of Enlightenment desperate to keep the sands from flowing through his fingers. Many ppl who are desperate to keep ahold of the rational, ultra-liberal, new atheist mindset are just being left behind. The lockdowns, the activism. It has all shown how people will default to being irrational, authoritarian, and even make up their own religion if one doesn’t exist. All of Peter’s presumptions have been disproven in 2020. We are in a post-coof world and some ppl desperately are clinging on to the pre-coof world.
The idea of "Universal moral principles" fails for the same reason as "The self-evident existence of god". If they were indeed universal or self-evident, there would be neither dissent, nor debate.
Peter, I think where you go “wrong” in this discussion is in your deferral to Reason. Reason is a tool. Mankind makes tools. Nothing Mankind makes is guaranteed to be flawless. Therefore Reason may end up being proven incorrect. Mankind uses tools. Tools should never use Mankind. By deferring to Reason, you are deferring to a Tool. That is the problem. Outsourcing your own deliberations to an outside authority.
This reminds me of the same problem I had listening, several years ago, to Sam Harris's attempt to rationally derive some sort of moral system. I share the same biases that he, and Peter, and Carl, and millions of others have. I want this to work. But, having grown up with these values, like Carl, I can't let the "smuggled assumptions" go, precisely because I've been trained, and have trained myself, to think critically, and the truth is, things like "wellbeing" and "rationally derived" are already carrying value judgments that conflict with the stated goal of universality.
The contingent thing that I think Carl is looking for is God. That's part of what brought me to Christianity, is there a basis for human rights? Why human over blades of grass? Does morality exist beyond personal or cultural preferences. Peter borders on sounding like a presuppositional Christian apologist with regard to rationality.
I love Carl but my biggest critique of him is that he says these are English values. He’ll even note the Protestant work ethic as being British but he never acknowledges the PROTESTANT part as being critical in that. He has not studied enough of the Bible or Christian philosophy and it really is a blind spot for him in terms of understanding the philosophical history of the Western world and where much of it comes from - both as derived from and to oppose Christian philosophy.
Why not Islam? Try to answer that question. Carl is not going to God, because, funnily enough, he sees no reason to think God exists, or which one of the many gods is the one. It all boils down to the word 'why'.
11:45 the US shouldn’t promulgate values. That’s imperialism. Let people make their own choices and then either trade with them on a voluntary basis or don’t, but otherwise leave them alone. If you want to spread your values: set a good example.
And the Chinese are promulgating their own values. Whereas the US hegemony is rooted in the rules-based liberal order post WWII (with its inherent moral structures blended with power), the Chinese are offering a return to the norm in international relations. Instead of "If you take this money, you need to genuflect to these sets of values, by which you will be incorporated into a system of soft power" it's the simpler "take this money and when push comes to shove, we have a lever on you". That lever is, of course, much harder power than the current US order, but its pressure is wielded in shorter, sharper measure. Countries are then left with the choice? Stay with the slow but constant "nudging" of US soft power, or accept the rare but sudden yank of a classical imperial leash. Time will tell.
Slaves aren't universally bad or undesirable to be. You'll say "you wouldn't want to be one from the pre civil war US" and I'd agree, but you wouldn't have to raise the standards much before you get someone who'd voluntarily be a slave. Even US ones had food, clothing and shelter. You could absolutely have a 'service guarantees citizenship' slave contract where you sign over five years of your life to do hard (but fair) labor where you're taken care of (healthcare, dental) and are part of a work group that gets important things built or renovated and after that you're free to pursue the life you want. Psychologically you encourage brotherhood and when there are internal conflicts you separate the problem and put them with others who are likely to be better aligned. Failing all else you simply evict them. You don't want life-long slaves anyway, at some point it goes from being convenient to cruel and inefficient. You rotate work fields, so they're self sufficient in cooking, cleaning and mending clothes. There are benefits to that. You get well regulated meals, a stable sleep schedule, a hard and fit body, you feel that you've done your time and earned your citizenship and you have discipline that you can apply to the next things you want to learn to do. Others will respect you for having done it, not unlike military service. There's minutia in there to iron out, like psychological effects of people becoming unsympathetic and rigid, but you can't deny that when you tweak "slavery" it absolutely isn't necessarily undesirable, certainly not universally. You take other examples from history and you get indentured servitude that many found to be fulfilling and honorable.
I followed Carl back when he still thought of himself as a liberal and were friends with Amazing Atheist and Thunderfoot. Times sure have changed, probably not for the better.
The whole atheism movement was kind of where the postmodern social justice thing broke out. That movement was so popular and we watched it degenerate and fizzle as soon as that virus spread.
I think chasing universal "good" using the mechanism of "rationality" is a great way to end up with hundreds of millions of dead people burned on the pyre of "the greater good." The seductive reasoning here is that "I'm a moral person so I can make moral judgements for others." No, you can't... and the idea that you could (or should) invalidates your premise.
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I'm delighted to see the overwhelmingly positive response to this conversation. I enjoyed this conversation with Carl and I'm glad you did too!
Here is one negative of Rationality '' Errors Believed as Truth'' You know from experience that clever wordplay can disguise falsity and error, particularly when motivated by less than honest motives.
Sure, 'Rationally Derived'' and agreed to by the Honest. And I think you seriously Overestimate the average persons ability to a) understand an argument and b) accept such an argument when their emotional state overrides them.
Here's a fact about Humans '' They will never all agree on any argument.'' If you agree with me, you know I am right, If you disagree you prove my point.
How does you position deal with those who are idiots or malicious?
Peter, have you come across this work? I think that's very much needed in this conversation to come to a robust conclusion: cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/books/UPB/Universally_Preferable_Behaviour_UPB_by_Stefan_Molyneux_PDF.pdf
Great discussion! Really enjoyed it.
Can you release the full 2 hour conversation?
Hey Peter, I was struck by the end of your conv. I don’t understand how this hypothetical super computer is different in any appreciable way from the omniscient aspect of god. If I reformulate the question to: if god convinced you that rationality was supreme would you believe it? It sounds poor but how is it different? If it’s a hypothetical computer how can we know it’s workings (especially once we move into the quantum realm) isn’t that moving us into a world of trying to understand the ineffable mind of god?
Sargon is THE reason I started paying attention to political issues. I'm not sure if I'm happy about it or not lol
Ignorance truly is bliss.
He was also the person that first introduced me to the culture war, and all the intersectionality nonsense, 5 or 6 years ago. I branched out from there exploring left and right speakers, and a variance of SO many other subjects. I thought, at the time, that things were heading down a very troubling road, and things have only gone further and gained speed on that route.
Carl is great, and remember he is an English traditionalist, he was simply challenging Peter. They were exchanging ideas mostly about the enlightenment and postmodern worldviews.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without completely accepting it.”
GamerGate and Sargon played a big part in my political awakening.
Carl in not Sargon though. Carl has become a big disappointment.
He should change his name to Sargon. He looks more like a Sargon than a Carl.
He was one of the first people I followed as well. Cult hero.
Carl was right, the flaw in this conservation appears to be an unwillingness to adhere to anything non-materialistic, namely Aristotle's primum mobile, as there is no reason that what is beyond rational is irrational
Another problem is that he is taking his contemporary views regarding rationality and assuming its the right view, the view capable of perceiving moral truth. He hand waves post modernism despite it probably being useful here.
Forgive me if this thought is too amateur on the subject, but it occurred to me that perhaps the idea of an absolute moral truth is actually only an idea we developed because of theology, and despite being an Atheist, Peter only has it because of being embedded in a Judeo-Christian society, not because it is itself a rational conclusion.
Atheists like Sam Harris have tried to keep the idea of moral absolutes via his thought experiment of the Moral Landscape, but that itself might be an example of an irrationally originated belief that folks like Harris are merely trying to rationalize after the fact, having lost the original reason for it but not wanting to give it up. Indeed the Moral Landscape seems to make some hand wavey assumptions about suffering being bad that Carl was rejecting here, although perhaps that isn't a fair assessment as obviously heroin addiction vs sports training are examples given that are exceptions to the shortcut heuristic of suffering.
But I think the point remains, it seems that rationality is often more likely to be used to justify preexisting assumptions and values than to derive new ones, and likely it cannot be used to determine values at all.
Rationality seems to me to be in common with the conclusion I reached over the question: is math discovered or invented.
As far as I am aware, all mathematical systems start with some assumptions and/or definitions, and then explore within those systems of rules. Thus the definitions and assumptions are invented, but everything that flows from them is discovered in the space defined by them.
Sufficiently accurate starting assumptions can get you Newtonian Physics, but that runs out of usefulness when you need relativity or quantum mechanics.
In real life, many mathematical concepts are likely absurd thought experiments. For example the idea of infinity. It's probably impossible to have an infinitely thin line that goes infinitely in both directions forever, outside of the thought experiment. This has implications in the real world, within an "is math real" kind of question when the rubber meets the road.
For example: If infinity only exists in mathematical model thought experiments, then it's obvious why our systems break down in black holes or at the big bang. The starting assumptions and definitions are insufficient to accurately predict things where they break down and differ from actual reality.
Rationality seems like the mathematical process of following whatever rules we have built up to start with. Like Math, it can do an incredible amount of work for us in finding truth things, but unlike math, the assumptions and definitions you start with are not explicit. If you had different starting values, your rationality would bring you to radically different conclusions in the same way as how the facts derived from geometry are significantly different if you are working on a Cartesian Plane instead of the surface of a sphere or torus, or some higher dimensional hyperbolic shape.
If this analogy holds, then rationality IS over privileged, not because it ceases to be the most important tool in our toolkit, but because it's a tool in service to something else, AND limited by your starting preconceptions.
One starting preconception Peter seems to be holding onto is the idea of an absolute moral truth that is good everywhere. In reality something may only be true only in flatland, and NOT on a 7 dimensional parabolic curve, or even a plain old 3D sphere. Morality could be entirely particular and not universal at all whatsoever.
Note that that does not mean that immoral things become moral or vice versa in a particular frame of reference, nor does it mean that all frames of reference are equally useful and valid for the kind of creatures we are and societies that we have. I am not making a social constructionist argument, because the best starting assumptions will produce better (more functionally useful) models of truth/reality for the kind of creatures that felt irrationally compelled to subconsciously or otherwise define them. On a Cartesian Plane a triangle has 180 degrees, and the existence of a different value on some other geometry isn't relevant to us if that's not the situation we find ourselves in.
This interview really illustrates why Carl has become so prominent. He really gets it
You have to hand it to Sargon, for an autodidact political philosopher he gave a professional philosopher close to a lesson in critical thinking there. For all his critics, Carl has done both the reading and the thought, and his thoughts and opinions are far from the cookie cutter vomit of mere punditry.
Yes, he's smart and hard working. I think he's only in his early 40's too, so I imagine he'll say many interesting things to say over the coming decades.
@@jon8864 Another decade of reading, thought, and media presence, and he will rival the vast majority of present day public intellectuals
@@LordEriolTolkien can't wait.
@@jon8864 he's a father, husband and business man too. An intelligent everyman.
He's certainly done his homework and put the work in too, he's always been intelliegent but he's come very long way since he's Sargon days.
I could write a novel on my thoughts on this conversation, but I'll just keep it simple by saying this conversation needs a part 2. You guys were just getting to the heart of it and it would be a travesty if you didn't do this again and pick up where you left off. Keep up the great conversations
We need more ongoing public first principles discussions of received orthodoxies. This was really great, Peter and Carl. Thank you.
Only on YT can you enjoy a long form conversation between an assistant Professor from Portland USA and an autodidactic working class man from Swindon UK.
He teaches ASSISTANCE? 🤔
@@ReverendDr.Thomas why the pedantry?
@@seandrew7837 Good Girl! 👌
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
@@ReverendDr.Thomas no. What you on about, sweetheart?
@@seandrew7837 Did you know that in ancient Bhārata (India), a person who consumed ANY type of animal was known as a “Chandāla” (dog-eater) and was not even included in mainstream society, but was an outcast?🥩
So, do you ADMIT that you are an animal-abusing criminal, Mr. Dog-eater? 😬🙄😬
Wow I have never heard Benjamin but he killed it in this conversation. Thanks to you both!
Oh yeah, great moral relativist position he's upholding. Sorry, but that's the woke position. Seems to have smoked too much chronic if his eyes are anything to go by.
@@zootsoot2006 He's just being realistic. If you appeal to the rationality of your argument to someone with completely different priors, they'll be able to reject it because they arrived at their own set of values based on those priors. Beating an innocent man to death with a rock is a moral wrong in my eyes, and that of all sane human beings. The rock doesn't care, and neither does the psychopath holding it. There is no objective, universal morality, but I still think that we must sometimes, with force if necessary, apply our own moral judgement to those who do not share our values. Do you disagree?
@@MrVeps1 Yes I disagree. There is an objective, universal morality. And everyone thinks so, whether they consciously acknowledge it or not. Without such a belief, we'd all just shrug ourselves off the planet.
@@zootsoot2006 That position seems a bit too universal. For your position to make sense, the people who do not believe in objective morality must be prevented from “giving up” due to a subconscious belief in objective morality. It seems more likely they just haven’t yet reached the conclusion that everything is pointless, possibly by purposefully ignoring the issue, never reaching it, or bypassing it through their subjective morality.
Check on the conversation they had together mentioned at the beginning of this talk… you can find it as “kindly inquisitors”
Carl's content is the stuff of legend, his videos defending Peterson back in 2016 when nobody would were simply fantastic. He has seen all of this shit coming and I doubt even he would believe it would be this bad.
I work in big pharma, director level, and what's going on in the workplace is beyond insane, I've kept receipts and I'm desperate to lay this all out on a storyboard but don't know where to begin.
I'm going for another internal position and I've already been told if I'm up against a non-white in the final interview they *must* invoke the "equity policy" - which means I don't get the job for being white. Yet we already employ 43% non-whites!!
I work in big law. Every month I have to spend 2 hours ‘learning’ about the history of slavery and racism. The history only includes white people taking black slaves. Nothing else. It is so woke my ears bleed. They told me white people do not make eye contact enough with ‘minorities’. 😂
@@mattkile1976 I tried to discuss the East Arab slave trade and was reprimanded.
No joke.
@@designforlife704 I kept quiet during the plenary zoom part of the ‘education’. But my great great uncle was part of the east Africa squadron fighting African slavers to free African slaves. He suffered from what would generally be considered as PST (due to the slavers scuttling their slave ships drowning their slaves in order to get away. He was effector pensioned out. But this meant his family fell into poverty as a result. I intend to make these points if we touch on slavery again. People who don’t work for large corps and particularly US prof services and corps will struggle to understand the madness. It’s not far from cokes “be less white”
@@mattkile1976 never stop speaking out mate
Send an email over to your HR department that you’re concerned about being discriminated again for your non-binary sexuality. Since it’s a claim inherently devoid of any actual meaning there’s no proof that could ever be offered - which is the point. But it might get you the protection against discrimination that you’re seeking.
Every human is born in a particular place and time. Only here in modern Western modernity can individuals pretend to reject where they came from.
Exactly
Very well put
And even if they weren't, and were born as a blank slate, it would be impossible for them to have an opinion on anything because they wouldn't know/understand what anything is. The argument Peter makes is rather "If I placed myself with all that I know/understand and my biases in that starting place" which doesn't really get us anywhere.
This is just playing out the old philosophical problem of how rational justification is impossible, because once you reach the bottom it becomes circular, and circular arguments are rationally inadmissible. Therefore, rationality is irrational by its own lights, and rationalists have no grounds to object to people who recognize different sources of authority and justification.
This is the problem at the root of 90% of philosophy.
It was an hour of talking with some interesting ideas but nothing really emerged
I love how much Carl's views have evolved. Been a fan since gamer gate.👍🏻
You’re one hell of a conversationalist, Peter. I loved this, and I’d like to request a “Peter Boghossian Podcast” where you have regular, interesting, conversations like this.
You
I second that!
I agree, I actually looked for this convo on my podcast app because I remembered seeing it here. I prefer to avoid TH-cam for stuff like this so I don't get distracted and watch 100 build videos and then forget why I opened it in the first place.
I would listen. Hell I would pay $5 a month for it. And currently I only pay for audible.
If you have an anxiety disorder or paranoia you know first hand how rationally can quickly become a sort of tyrant. Watch as your mind comes up with rational reasons for why you feel that way. This is why it's so hard to think your way out of those feelings because it's based on emotion first and then rational justification.
Bingo
Very well said. That is why I think of logic and rationality as a tool. It can help you get what you want but it can’t tell you what you strive for.
@@soulfuzz368 you are trapped in a well of sand logic says your stuck nonlogic says you can climb up but how do you climb? so um logic won't help you in real life when s hits the fan.
@@soulfuzz368 logic says you talk your way out of a situation but in reality you need to react to the danger infront of you not talk react logic will get you hurt or dead in reality.
@@antlerr yeah it isn’t always the best tool for the job, that is where intelligence comes in. A smart person knows when logic is the best tool and when it is dangerous.
Gamergate has had more lasting impact than its most fervent supporters could have ever dreamed. Hold the line, boys. We are winning.
We are losing and have been for a long time. But God wins in the end.
Convert to Islam or suffer.
@@williammarshal2190 No we are winning. Zoomers laugh at critical social justice. The boycott against the new Harry Potter games is a laughable failure. No one wants the products any of products these losers are demanding we buy, and we’ve made a parallel media that circumvents the traditional structure. It feels great! Oh, and your God doesn’t exist, too!
@@spacejunk2186LOL, good one!
@@haircutdeluxe Gamer Gate! ROFL!! Video games are full of LGBTQWHATEVER now. Great work, dude.
Carl you just have to imagine you're a formless consciousness suspended in a black void running computations through an algorithm to build a stainless steel technocracy. It's not complicated Carl.
Great comment lol...
They won't take pomo critique seriously...woke fd their brains up..I get it kindve lol
You cannot base an entire society on a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT that starts with people that have never and will never exist.
Exactly the problem with Mssrs Marx and Engels.
We kinda did though.
The thought experiment offers ideals and principles to construct a society. When the agents know their place, they can construct systems to their advantage. But if they do not know their place, the systems and structures they create are *fair*
@@drpeterboghossian The problem with your thought experiment is that we do not know if there Is such an argument, even hypothetically. If you base a chain of reasoning on a false premise, sure you can reason to a conclusion, but that conclusion may well not have any basis in reality beyond your imagination. So it's all well and good proposing some hypothetical rational argument that convinces one of the existence of Moral Truths, but what if there is no such argument, and Carl is correct in his assessment that, at root, our perception of reality is itself in some way fundamentally Irrational
And given that I would classify 'Morality' as 'Codified Value Judgements', I do not see how they can be 'objective' [part of the structure of reality] and not simply 'conceptual'; and thus amount to subjective judgements of an external objective state. Which is to say that Reality is Objective, but our valuation and judgement of reality is subjective.
America.
33:25 "Empirically, no one wants to be a slave"
IDK, I still see people wearing masks when I go out. The past two years have pretty thoroughly proven to me the willingness of some to happily have their lives dictated to them. I will concede though, this is a case where your immediate preconceptions of the word "slave" are very important.
FACTS. The lockdowns proved very clearly that there is subset of ppl who much prefer being told how to think, how to act, and what to do. They absolutely love not having the responsibility to make decisions for themselves.
@@umiluv They don't want to be slaves. They want to be children. A slave is created. A child is the thing that is cared for, told what to do, has all decisions made for it, and is shielded from consequence.
I would think more highly of a person who desired slavery. It is an achievable goal even if absurd, and not without consequence.
Better to be the thing you set out to be, than be it because you were too weak to be anything else.
Empirically, some people want to be in prison, so it's not a stretch to believe that some people want to be slaves.
@@aranisles8292 yes, but the branch covidians clapped like seals for releasing criminals. There were plenty of beds left open in the wake.
What they wanted was rent moritorium and bail bonds for when they smash things up in a tantrum.
I was not saying no-one desires slavery. Just that the specific group mentioned is infantilized, and wishes to be children. Which is a far less reasonable ask than slavery.
I mean you just have to look at some of the reasons for slavery. One was being conquered and another was debt. Loads of people would chose slavery over being killed in a genocide in the case of being conquered and many would choose stable slavery over being destitute on the streets. It wrung of slavery is bad so I wont thought expirement on cases where it would be chosen
Moral particularism vs moral absolutism. This was delightful to listen to!
I think the reason people hate RINOS so much is because they are moral relativists. they rationalize things like globalism even when betraying their own principles because they rationalize it as bi-partisan agreement that separates themselves from zealots... as if projecting themselves as being cool headed and rational for self preservation IS actually more rational than standing behind their own stated beliefs with conviction. These people wan't to be martyrs but they are too scared to die, or even sacrifice their career... so instead they do nothing but gaslight and manipulate to make the actual martyrs look like tin foil hat wearing neer-do-wells.
I liked your comment as it is both correct and incorrect at the same time. Correct because Carl was using moral particularism to explain why people believe that their particular belief system is 'correct/true/valid'. Incorrect because Carl clearly stated that if 'universal values' do not exist (or we cannot determine them) then metaphysical truths i.e. theological/religious principles can be valid in addition to moral particularity. That being said, my thoughts are that religions are codified forms of moral particularity i.e. the moral rules applicable to certain geographical locations at least, but could also include and may be better explained by other things such as family structure and time.
The smuggling of values into the 'original position' occurs the moment you introduce a metric by which you judge. That metric is your values. However meta you go, this remains true.
That was a fascinating discussion, I held Carl in high esteem and even more so now
Isn't Peter's position that of Bentham and the Utilitarians? Their's was an attempt to produce a calculus of morals, but, it fell apart when it was pointed out that there was an underlying presumption of shared values that would enable such a calculus (Carl's position) i.e. it relied on something external to itself and was thereby incomplete and thus untenable.
Excellent conversation.. I think Boghossian's problem is that the notion that you can make claims of universal morality on atheist, materialist and rationalist grounds is absurd.. Without God(or any other conception of The Divine), you can not philosophically justify universal morality, like so many other transcendental categories..
Brilliant - Sargon is exactly right - Pain and suffering cannot be classed as 'wrong' . . . if there are circumstances in which they are necessary.
Contractions are agony - but its an absolutely necessary pain to bring your child safely into the world. It's a good, positive pain, even if you want to punch your husband at the time.
@@hmsealey3243 Great point.
I was also thinking about pain if we have stood (or sat on something) nasty. It is a positive warning for us to remove ourselves from what is causing our body harm.
@@buddhistsympathizer1136 Yes, people born without pain receptors are in constant danger. Pain has its place.
Yeah, this is basically the point of the naturalistic fallacy. You can't conflate "good" with "pleasure", so neither should you conflate "suffering" with "wrong". Pleasure can be good, suffering can be wrong, but a critique of pure utilitarianism based on maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering is that you could justify euthanizing sad people and keeping those not predisposed to feeling constant pleasure drugged out of their minds in eternal bliss and ecstacy.
Necessary according to what and whom?
59:01 it’s a mistake to accept the Whig theory of history where new developments are equated with progress.
Rorty: ”Rationality is often considered to be the endeavour to exhibit the universal validity of one’s position ”
Nietzsche: ”What has universal validity to do with me? ”
Nietzche did care about universality. His bit on the eternal return was a way to ground it.
One of the best conversations I’be heard in a while and I listen to a lot. Thanks to bot of you!
I agree 100% with this statement.
wow sargon gotten alot sharper over the years
29:24 I don't think the critique should be of Reason, but of knowledge. Because no person has perfect knowledge, Reason must be treated carefully. Sometimes we know what is Good by experiencing it, even when we cannot reason there because we operate in imperfect knowledge.
44:37 Very nice bringing this from some type of "universal values" to just saying "this is my value and my neighbor's values", our notion of what is Good. It might be universal, but we are not the universe or God so we cannot make that claim. We have to act within who we are and what we know, and we need to own that.
52:12 Peter, I think the issue, like above, is not Reason, but lack of knowledge. If presented with some type of eye opening knowledge (in this case with a fantastic AI), then reason still rules. I think the fundamental issue is in reality we operate with vastly imperfect knowledge.
59:40 I agree with Carl here that it is through this experience of reality that we know what actually works and what is Good. To tie it in with your AI thought experiment prior, to date AI is trained experience, not logic. The AI that plays Go so well played against itself many many times and modern AI that we can with is trained on a large body of experience of works.
That's cuz the law of God is written on every human heart. She me times we feel it & sometimes we don't. Absolute Morality is fact & always true.
Yep, its funny because flaws and memes within the training set will bias the AI in pretty much the same way carl was arguing rationality smuggles in moral claims. The body of training data is integral to the rational and logic driven ai
@@assortmentofpillsbutneverb3756 Yeah, machine learning is the science of recreating brain function in a computer. We ape the feedback mechanisms, the strengthening and weakening of connections between neurons, and basically create an artificial brain tailored to have a "gut-feeling" or "intuition" about its area of expertise. There will always be bias, and the more we move away from the analysis of large, chaotic systems like weather, power consumption and economics, and towards more small scale and personal things, the more bias is introduced.
Wow yeah you guys got to do a part 2 that was good a conversation, It was interesting to see Carl come to the realisations that he did as he was going through the motions with you. Great job just exploring the ideas and seeing where they lead, Thankfully the pursuit of real intellectual enquiry is not dead yet in this post fact age that we now live in. There is hope yet it would seem.
@25:00 i love Carl's take. The rationalists want to say that anything that is arrived at outside of rationality is bad. That is *wrong*. Applause.
Wouldn't it be a real kick in the philosopher's pants if morality itself was, at base, irrational. Careers would end in a heartbeat
@@LordEriolTolkien I don't know who this is by : "morality is what is good for the group".
There's the discipline killer you were looking for.
This can turn around to bite you very quick. When you cannot ask "why", ugly things will happen.
@@spacejunk2186 all of history supports the claim. And you are right, it's ugly.
Philosophy only invents contrived conditions for their claims to be true.
I think Carl's points are super interesting. It's impossible for a human to think in a way that a human cannot think. We can *imagine* what it is like to be a dog or a tree or a binary star, but every thought is still the human's perspective on that thing because we aren't that thing. The same is true of one's birthplace. Thus, coming up with a morality that is entirely universal, that would presumably appeal to all humans and cows and AI and space aliens is basically impossible to concoct because we cannot be a thing we aren't.
It's a massive shame that Peter couldn't understand Carls points about this
@@14percentviking - you would think for someone who believes himself to be so rational, he would consider the possibility of a personal bias due to where he grew up in the world. It’s the first thing you learn to note when learning about being objective in science. 🤷♀️
It gets way deeper when you hit languages and how much your first language impacts your conceptualization and bias.
@@dontcallthemliberals3316 yes. A Russian and and American think differently not just because of environment but because the words, and meanings of, are different.
tbh i wouldnt worry about dogs, trees and aliens, when its already impossible to have universal morality for all humans - ofcourse unless everyones cool with getting rid of X amount of cultures and traditions etc that go against the said "universal" morality. I mean sure its "universal" if everyone else is dead i guess, but is that the right way to go about it lol
Props to Carl, and his impressive ability to translate, follow, and tolerate Peter's wood-chipper like way of communication
This was hard to watch, the closest way for me to describe it is that Peter is so deep in materialism he is basically religious. It's like trying to teach a color blind person what color is.
this
i had to turn it off, the constant interjection and not letting carl finish was drinving me fucking nuts, let the guy finish a sentence already.
@@xjmg007 It is definitely a difficult thing to deal with. While I would still consider myself pretty deep into materialism I've just decided that there are some things that I'm willing to not worry about rationally deriving.
If I had been interrupted that many times I would have gotten angry. Peter’s communication style is insufferable.
@@xjmg007 I had to stop watching it about 15 minutes in because I just couldn't stand the guy.
Dang, this one and Michael malice interviewing Carl dropping at the same time.
Thanks for that!
I listen to the Malice first via podcast app and then afterwards opened up TH-cam and voilà! Carl again, thanks. 😊
Cheers for the heads up
Much respect Peter, but this is the mindset of Liberal Hegemony. It's that idea that would only make sense if we went from a pseudo-empire (where we break a country then shrug our shoulders) to a real empire (where we take full responsibility). I prefer the example model that Ron Paul laid out.
Peter is fully in the grip of the Boomer Truth Regime
Yup, Peter is stuck in the Boomer Truth Regime
Finally.
Carl, I followed you from the very start, what are the most important insights you gained from that rollercoaster ride?
Around the 50 minute mark: Sargon is on the mark here: It is impossible to have 'objective' ethics without some metaphysical reason that exists outside of human beings.
Sargon is an atheist, actually. He's not religious, he does think religion is a more positive influence on culture than most modern thinkers believe. Mostly due too religion providing a moral structure and a clear sense of right and wrong.
Reasons for anything humans do cannot exist "outside human beings." What does that even mean? Just make shit up? How a the marxists wrong then?
@@katnerd6712 to add to this, he believes religion is good because the vast majority of society doesn’t have the time or interest to rationally determine what is “good” morally, so religion gives them a pre-determined morality that they can follow.
@@katnerd6712 he isn’t acting like one
@@katnerd6712 I’m not sure Sargon would describe himself as an atheist anymore, it would be interesting to hear him clarify this
Of all the Internet shitlords from old TH-cam who would bang on about politics back in the day, Carl is the only one that really did the work.
i love how the shitposter is giving the professor of philosophy a good run for his money.
Pete would do well to remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Peter seems to under estimate the power of natural instinct, survival, greed, desperation. The list goes on. These things can never be beaten by a simple thing such as rationality.
if more people could experience and take note of how skilled trades are taught for example you'd see how so much human capital is locked into intuition alone. My experience is that the majority of artisans can't explain much of what they do, why and how they do it, but they still have the knowledge somewhere.
This is part of why I can't stand the people who insist on language and text as a primary mode of communication or theorizing. I'm fairly certain visual communication and demonstration is far more primal. This is why I think Foucault and Habermas doesn't belong in Art History for example, which is the study of a far more basic form of human communication and ingenuity.
But what society has been the most successful about lifting the most people up in regards to their standard of living? I mean food, housing, opportunity, life expectancy. But that's using rationality so I guess it's already flawed. 😊
I am very far away politically from Carl, but I am not a moral realist, and ended up agreeing with him for a lot of the debate. The “original position” strips away anything that gives someone identity, and leaves you with a method that presupposes harm-reducing egalitarian liberalism. (which I even agree with) Imagine proposing this to a devout muslim, specifying that you would all have no religion starting out. He would right well say, “what would I be without Allah? This hypothetical is immoral.” Morals are not rationally derivable, and any attempt runs into the same problems as those who have rationally tried to prove God’s existence for thousands of years.
I think you meant, "I am a moral realist[not a moral idealist]".
Carl is being a realist here.
@@HarryBalzak In different disciplines the terms are used in a different way. Carl’s position is less idealistic when applied, but moral realism is the view that moral statements represent objective truths about reality. If you look up “moral realism,” that’s what it will roughly say.
@@beatleswithaz6246 I don't particularly appreciate that words can have completely different meanings based on context and the only way to know is to already know.
@@HarryBalzak Yeah, it’s especially true in the humanities/politics when a word will have a completely different political, economic, and philosophical definition. Terms like realism, liberalism, and objectivism have been butchered. I definitely agree.
@@beatleswithaz6246 Ah. So it is just another part of the socialist/communist agenda being forced upon society.
Got it.
Thanks.
Great conversation.
I agree with Carl. But I didn't arrive at this point by reading a ton of philosophy.
I got on a plane.
Travelling extensively to places off the beaten track puts what he is saying right in front of your face.
We are a product of the culture we grow up in at the time we are living in. People who deny this are like fish swimming in a tank saying "what water?"
There's no getting away from it. We can't remove our moral values away from ourselves, our history, culture and what we experience & feel in our lives.
And I agree that not everything can be rationalised.
Rationalise love, music, beauty....
There are however universal concepts of good and evil, in every culture. Also pain and pleasure. Those concepts are absolute.
Culture is only interposer between individual and archiving good or evil.
@@randalldraco3822 idk man. Some cultures don't believe rape or pedophilia is a bad thing
@@randalldraco3822 I don't think good & evil and pain & pleasure are universal concepts or absolutes.
I can list many examples of things that we think are "good' that ppl in other cultures believe are "evil", and vice versa.
Pain and pleasure is kind of murky too. Not in terms of the physical sensation but in terms of our perception of it and whether it is associated with "good or bad" outcomes. Not to mention some people who actually appear to get off on pain.
If you can't apply these things across cultures or people, and they vary so much, then they are not "universal concepts/absolutes".
Yes! Beauty isn’t rational but longed for by many.
@@GenXWomanthis is a very slight disagreement but I think anything can be rationalized but for something like music for example, rationalism is definitely not the best way to experience it. Love can be rationalized by learning how and why we feel certain emotions on a biological level. Again, this is missing out but definitely possible.
How many ways can you describe Hume's guillotine without saying "you can't get an IS from an OUGHT."
This was an excellent conversation. I was especially impressed with Carl, he has improved his argumentation skills 1000 times in recent years, and gotta say, I felt that he had the most convincing argument.
Which, if I can summaries for my own benefit if nothing else, comes down to
"You can't create a 'universal' 'rational' moral system, because what individuals consider to be rational varies depending what their own starting point deems as rational." Yes, very post-modern, and yes, annoyingly difficult to refute.
On the AI front, well there is chatGPT (I believe there is even a Sargon AI version somewhere). Maybe Peter could have a chat with that and see if it agrees with the real Carl! (or can come up with the rational moral system he is looking for)
Hope it gets some more attention for LotusEaters. Them's doing good work.
There is nothing that the post-modernists said correctly that wasn't said decades prior, and very much better, by Nietzsche; it's a shame the post-modern school has usurped credit for making the obvious case against "objective moral truth" considering that this is not an argument unique to them.
Rationality is a tool, not an answer. If you go as if rationality is the end goal, and not a tool to use on the path, you get lost.
Yes.
There is no possibility of a universal perspective which is knowable to humans. The post-modern lens itself does show us a truth. The problem is the deconstructionists’ use of the post-modern lens. We cannot say they are “incorrect,” we must admit our biases and then righteously act from that prejudiced position. They are not incorrect or even objectively “evil,” they are simply unacceptable, and contest between the sides is inevitable. Either we lie down and get borg’ed, or we stand and fight without lying about our priorities. That is the difference between us: we state our true intentions, while the deconstructionist Progressive lies in order to extort our civility.
People are understanding "universal" and "rational/logical" wrong.
It doesn't mean what people think it means, it doesn't give you magical powers to stop Nazi or communists just by saying they are wrong. Even proving they are wrong.
Gosh, they will tell you they are wrong, evil and they don't care.
@@lloydgush "Gosh, they will tell you they are wrong, evil and they don't care. "
Wrong.
Rationality and reason are social constructs. They change across time and across cultures. The Greek had a different way of thinking about the world than the Romans. The Romans had different views than the people's of Germania. The Germania peoples had a different reasoning than Eastern countries.
You may hate post modernism, but your feelings don't make the position incorrect.
Therefore, the idea there is a specific set of reasoning rules that would allow us to grasp moral turth is absurd
I've heard greay things of Peter but this was definitely not a good first impression of his work. Carl made his point in the opening. Different cultures value different things and forcing our beliefs on others is an excercise in futility.
The notion that Chinese aid comes with no strings is absurd. They have different strings, implicit and explicit.
As is the notion that Western aid come only with the most noble of strings. Western governments use aid as a tool to get other countries to do what they want and many times as a weapon to saddle a country in unpayable debt to effectively own that country's political system and strip out their assets. The West will support the worst of dictators as long as they do what the deep state/ corporate "leaders" want. If they don't tow the line, they get removed, see: Gaddafi, Hussain, etc.
Aren't morals woven into the fabric of the universe because men are part of the universe and have the concept of morals? Putting man outside of the universe seems wrongheaded. Anyway, thanks for the great discussion!
Sargon isn't great at articulating his position, he needs to read (or reread) David Hume's critique of reason in order to defend it better. And Peter ESPECIALLY needs to read it, since he's so dead wrong on this issue. You can't rationally define your way into what we ought to do. You can only rationally deduce what you ought to do to achieve some predetermined goal.
These are the types of conversations that should be standard in schools. I respect the amount of time they take to ask questions and consider the responses.
There should only be private schools.
"you can't assume because a country is more prosperous (it's almost universally because it's democratic)" I'd love to see this justified. Almost no empires where 'the sun never sets' were democratic, and even in recent history they are more like oligarchies.
Just because you are an empire does not mean you are prosperous.
An excellent conversation between two of my favorite peeps!
One of my favourite quotes from an actual philosophy book is "It was revealed to me in a dream".
Good work as usual, Peter. You're asking great questions & I have faith that you'll get there. 🙏
Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉
Great and lowly are RELATIVE. 😉
Faith?? Don’t you mean rationality.
Many thanks!
@@drpeterboghossian
MORALITY IS ABSOLUTELY OBJECTIVE:
To put it even more tersely, whenever any individual person performs any action whatsoever, it is OBJECTIVELY either beneficial (that is, moral), neutral (amoral), or harmful (immoral). Thus, every single volitional act performed by humans above the age of reason, belongs to one of the three aforementioned categories without ambiguity, from a purely objective “God’s-eye-view” perspective. However, as explained, the adjudication to which of the three categories any particular deed belongs, is entirely predicated on the system of justice extant in one’s nation, community, or country. Hopefully, now that this Holiest of Holy Scriptures has been published, the world will come to understand morality in a far more scientific manner than it has in past millennia, in order to avoid the trajectory of moral decadence plainly visible in the present age.
Analogically, on the macro level, there is a definite, objective separation between a person’s bodily form and the surrounding environment. However, in order to view the precise borderline between that person and his or her surroundings, one needs to zoom-in to the microscopic level (or even the sub-atomic level) and even so, the borderline is rather hazy and indistinct, especially when viewing bodily cavities and hairs.
Likewise, an immoral action is OBJECTIVELY immoral, even though it may require the keen eyesight of a highly-trained observer to judge it so. Simply because there may be a great deal of disagreement regarding the morality of an action, does not entail that morality is subjective.
@@rafal5863 no. I mean faith. Faith in things that have evidence.
One thing I really appreciate about Carl Benjamin these days, is that he is such an *honest* thinker. He simply doesn't want to take the shortcuts, and it's a rare trait. I have to admit to very pleasant surprise of his evolution as quite the deep thinker, it's inspiring!
Good to see Carl finally seeing the flaws in the "Enlightenment" and critiquing it. He would do well to read 'Nihilism' by Eugene (Fr Seraphim) Rose.
Carl has been there for quite some time. He has quite a few articles critiquing the Enlightenment and liberalism which came from the Enlightenment on his Lotus Eaters website.
@@umiluv he has done to an extent, yes. But he still has certain views that are grounded in Enlightenment thinking. Whether he realises that I'm not sure. For starters, he's an atheist. Which means he can't believe in the divine right of kings, as he doesn't believe in the divine. He still has some way to go before returning to a medieval mindset, which is what we must do.
I see you're a man of culture. We must convert Carl and bring him into the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church! ☦
@@joer9156 he does seem to hold some as we all do because its what we were born in and live in, also you will never return to a medieval mindset recreating an era simply is not possible
@@tikiwiki7428 we will never return to that culture, no, but I think there is a way of thinking that can be tapped into regardless. Jonathan Pageau talks about how the world is becoming "reenchanted" whether we want it or not, and if we don't learn how to approach that in the correct way, we'll end up with more craziness like the George Floyd worship, withh the crazy icons of him like Christ, people "taking a knee" etc. That will just get more extreme. We need to learn how to surf that wave and make it work, and I think we can learn a lot from the medieval mindset in regards to achieving that.
You can tell Carl is coming at this from a non-religious view. And that's why his argument is so strong. Universal morality hasn't been proven to exist in any capacity ever. You can rationalize basically anything if you talk long enough.
Carl is the only man I can think of to get in trouble with Johnny Law for saying he WOULDN'T rape a woman. I think he hurt her feelings pretty bad with that.
What original position? How do you determine what that is without having some irrational values? That's the point Sargon is making. In the case of slavery, is the original position focused on the individual or the civilization? Because you have to have a set starting point.
It's telling and more than a little worrisome that a former university professor of philosophy is so blinkered by modernism that he feels confident arguing for a universal morality based in reason, yet is wholly opposed to moral systems that oppose homosexuality.
I believe there is a rational moral system that addresses homosexuality, but that system- natural law- proscribes it. I don't know of an "evidence based" or rational moral framework that approves of it without "smuggling in" other values ahead of time.
Lotus Eaters have a new video up on the Gender Unicorn in "training" in schools, very disturbing stuff. A must watch with his colleagues.
I feel as though Carl proved conservatism with post modernism towards the end.
Incredible.
lol
On the last point of the conversation, Peter has incorrectly presumed that just because you can change someone's mind you are revealing that a universal truth exists just because you're not appealing to culture.
I'd love a conversation between Carl Benjamin & Bret Weinstein. A priori.
A question for Peter: How do you tell the difference between good and bad, without being arbitrary (in the sense of philosophical justified, true belief)?
Interesting. If you don't want slavery then the enlightened idea of the sovereignty of the individual is the supreme moral. It is not rational and you can't get there starting from rationality. What you have to do is force this idea unfortunately.
Amazing conversation. I think that no rational argument can be made that will convince every human being in existence. No matter how well constructed the argument, some percentage of people will always believe that it is a trick by Satan, Loki, or a djinn in order to lead them astray.
Or they might have their own rational counter argument and think you're an idiot.
John Rawls was wrong. All rational people will NOT come to the same conclusions on ethics and morals. A priori, we start with different values. So we begin from different locations and we end up at different places. This does not mean we should NOT apply rationality in preference to irrationality or instinct. It means we must defend our values in debate, and experiment, and may even have to change or accommodate them to others. I'm not making a Big Tent argument. I'm making a "let's evolve rationally argument". Sargon scares me sometimes because it's never clear what he's replacing rationality with - as a basis for judgement. Rationality is not my highest value; empiricism is.
I couldn't agree more. My _subjective_ values are actually pretty close to "Enlightenment values" that Peter supports, but all the arguments for "objective", "a priori", "rationally derivable" etc. seem fallacious to me. That includes John Rawls's, John Stuart Mill's, Ayn Rand's, Murray Rothbard's and all the rest of them.
I am also opposed to Sargon's anti-rationality, because not applying rationality to one's values makes one more likely to get into conflicts which could have been avoided. Even though I disagree with Sargon's values, I still want him to be rational, so that he at least doesn't do things that hurt himself _and_ others.
And I wouldn't say that I "value" empiricism more than rationality, but the thing that I call "rationality" is always _downstream from_ empiricism. Any rationality that empirically doesn't work, isn't rationality at all.
Temporary suffering is healthy, chronic suffering needs addressing.
Well put and succinct.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Not according to my values lololol.
Chinese aid _doesn't come with strings attached?_
What, are you high?
Our moral values and intuitions evolved to facilite relatively small scale tribal groups and lineage selection. They are necessarily locally biased as their purpose is survival of ourselves and our tribe, not everyone else or Truth. Reason could hypothetically lead us to an empirical verified set of universally most optimized moral values, but our knowledge is too imperfect to believe we can get there.
Pretty much agree, rationality can help min/max but most people with wisdom realize there is more games and life than min/max especially when you ask the question of min/max what
Great stuff. Think I lean towards Carl on this subject
6 mins in and I already see the issues:
Peter is discussing materialistically, while the question of ethics is a metaphysical one.
And Carl is able to see this problem from afar.
lol
Very glad that you guys discussed sovereignty, as I see this as the most pressing issue for my own country these days. So I'm Norwegian, and trough our history and culture we have been shaped into a country that values sovereignty as a fundemental value. And this philosophy has served us extremely well.
It was this thinking that led our state to kick out English landowners/companies that bought up our rivers and watersfalls for hydropower, and nationalized it instead, something that kickstarted the industry and economy of our nation. Half a century later the same thing happened with oil, and that in turn has made us into the powerhouse of an economy(for our size and population atleast) we are today.
But these days we are seeing more and more pressure from specifically the US, China and the EU trying to chip away at this at every opportunity they can. This is ofc not helped by our current politicans that seem to rather want to play world politics rather than listen to the citizens.
But again, our focus on sovereignty has made us into one of the most successful western nations, with both our happiness index, equality and wealth being much higher than most others. And again, the biggest threat against our way of life, are our supposed "allies" these days.
So I am very much invested in seeing this topic becoming more prevelant in general debates, as I honestly think more countries should look seriously at this issue and decide for themselves what they think would serve them best.
As for a "universal set of values" there is a very obvious counter argument if one thinks of a species different than ours. A hivemind being the most obvious example. For a member of that kind of species, they would likely not see the suffering of any "individual" member of the hive as something bad, at least looking at the instincts of ants and other species. So yes, all of these "universal" values they talk about here are without a doubt human centric.
@@ForbiddenFollyFollower Lol😅
As a professor, Peter feels superior to Carl. That’s why he interrupts and talks over him.
Carl is no slouch, considering he is an autodidact oik. As a representative/example of a thinking common man, very few Joe's down the pub could have lasted 5 minutes in that discussion.
@@LordEriolTolkien Carl is very well read and thought. That is why it annoys me how Peter treats him (and all non professors) very portlandian of him
@@agenticmark I don't think Peter can help himself, he Is a Professor. Carl can take it, and has humility. But you can see Peter Was pushed to reconsider, and was (i think pleasantly) surprised to hear some of Carl's positive assertions and pronouncements, but even more pleased and surprised that Carl had fully reasoned, and sourced, answers that didn't just fall down . Carl held his own and earned some cred.
Carl knows he is an Oik, and has the humility to do the work, and bide his time, and Earn the respect. And frankly, does Sargon or any of Us really care about approval of the Academy?
Part of the problem is people giving undue respect to 'experts'. Carl did not defer to expertise, as far as i could see.
Remember this is a long game
i cut off the video after 5 minutes because of the constant interjection and not letting carl finish a single goddamn thought, it drove me fucking crazy, it's way too distracting and derailing for me
@@dutchdykefinger stick with it. Carl drives Peter back on his heels many times, and in the end Carl forces Peter to posit some hypothetical perfect argument as his ace card, in lieu of the argument he couldn't actually articulate.
Carl had him beat
Chinese aid comes with less strings than US aid? FFS.
Atheism is Dead
"We can never adopt a god's-eye view." I think is one of the wisest things ever said.
My big issue with rationally designing a world from a neutral position where you didn't know where you end up, is that there is no universal neutral position. If you are a Muslim, it is obviously rational to want to design a world that will make as many people Islamic and virtuous as possible as it will prevent the most amount of suffering and live up the best to God's ideals. If you are a fascist who view homosexuality as a degeneration of society that corrupts and ruins it, your rational universal world would then prosecute homosexuals harshly because your rationality holds homosexuality as a fundamental crime to society of the same ilk as rape, theft and murder. A communist is going to view anything capitlaistic as inherently oppressive and a crime, a libertarian is always going to view a overbearing government as a crime, etcetera. There is no possibility of rationally designing a world from an abstract, unbiased neutral position.
Further on regarding slavery, one can easily support slavery in such a system if they have slavery be punishment for a crime, as was also frequently done throughout history. If one designs so that anyone who is a murder is then made a slave, they then also can view it justified themselves being a slave if they committed such a crime in the system. Then in regards to slavery where it is tied to racial prejudice and is generational, if one for example takes the German perspective in viewing other races as inherently inferior and needed to be chattel to the Germans due to innate characteristics, they would rationally support such racial slavery. The examples of universal morality getting proposed by Peter are consistently being based from a subsection of western thought of the current time, which is hardly universal when you can take people of the same area and time period with the same prompt and end up with different "Universal" moralities. The question is really more "How would you design a system where you only care about material comforts and you are a psychopathic atheist with no sense of morality, and you don't know where you will end up", and is hardly a good baseline for establishing universal morality.
It's just me, right?
Sometimes, when Carl is looking up in thought, he resembles a fur-covered Christopher Hitchens.
Every single society, group of people or tribe assumes they are right. That their moral values/religion/belief system/ideology is the correct one. Spreading that moral value/religion/belief system seems like a no-brainer since, if everyone believed what is "right" the world would be a better place. Missionaries believed this. We believe this when we complain about other countries and their lack of tolerance towards the LGBTQ community. The heart of man doesn't change. Speaking as a Christian, there is a reason that self-righteousness is warned against in the Bible. Self righteousness is deadly. It's the thing that hangs witches, burns heretics, persecutes gay people and cancels transphobes. If we are correct and righteous, then others must, by definition, be wrong and evil. Once identified as an evil person, well, it doesn't matter what happens to you.
In truth, the world is more nuanced than that, and I don't believe there can ever be a consensus of opinion as to what is the universal truth that underpins reality. Is it a theistic world? Is it an atheist world? Should we all have freedom to "do what thou wilt?" Should we follow a moral code? Should we all follow the same moral code? Should we condemn Aztec society for fulling out the hearts of their victims on their pyramids? Or should be just smile and say "each to their own?"
All that happens is that one view of the universe, one set of moral values, is chosen and others must follow it at gunpoint. Because you cannot cause seven billion people to think and believe the same way.
As an author, I have used my dystopian novels to explore issues like this. Every worldview can become tyrannical once it's imposed. We are all colonisers at heart because we all believe in our own righteousness. The British evangelists wanted to civilise the "savages" and pagans. Today, tolerant, progressive people whose rallying call is to "be kind," want to civilise the savages who do not believe being gay is natural and acceptable. There is no "being kind" to those people. We are all evangelists too. We have found the "truth" and are compelled to tell others. We haven't changed much in thousands of years. We just think ourselves better than our ancestors who sacrificed one person for the safety of all. Is that so different say, from Vaccine mandates where more than one person will certainly die (statistically, if you vaccinate an entire country, several people will die from a severe reaction) sacrificed for the safety of all. We would hold up our hands and say how very different that scenario is, but our ancestors were as self-righteous as we are.
I love your book "The Privileged Few." I'm just re-reading it.
@@elsiesaunders4607 Thank you. That means a lot.
It is hard to not slip into nihilism when people tell you that rationality has no real value and that morality is relative, while at the same time complaining when one tries to export ones own morals to somewhere else. It feels like backstabbing.
I'm surprised to hear that Boghossian thinks there are moral facts. I am further from Peter's position than I am from Carl's, which is the opposite of what I expected. I don't know much about Sargon of Akkad. I should look into him a bit more.
The Lotus Eaters has some excellent analysis of philosophy. It’s my favorite part of their media output.
Fantastic conversation, gentlemen. It’s great to see two competing ideas discussed openly. Please have more, our civilization needs more of this.
REASON IS A VALUE SYSTEM. "To hierarchically prioritize values" is a tautology. A value IS a hierarchy of priorities by definition -one thing valued over another and therefore given priority. This is the blindspot of most self proclaimed "Rationalists." Reason is a heuristic we practice to recognize true things. It can also be flawed. But there is no reasoning without a value-based framework - which is why critical thinking is a skill. It is a discipline composed of rigorous values with its own biases. What also needs to be acknowledged is biases are not necessarily bad (despite what unconscious bias training is claiming). We all have gravitational bias - we all prefer our heads be above our feet (most of the time). The real work of critical reasoning is not to strip us of biases, but to challenge them, and discriminate toxic from healthy biases. I really respect that Carl is pushing to recognize this and that Peter is putting in real effort to challenge his on blindspot.
So either the game is rigged or everyone just really cares about woke sensibilities.
24:42 Going through pain is what athletes and people need to go through when they exercise to become stronger and healthier.
And people will deliberately self-inflict pain when they are comfortable enough to experience insufficient stimulus.
In the discussion about the Supercomputer and the 'Ultimate Argument about Life, the Universe, and Morality' i could help but further analogise THHG2TG. What makes peter think that such an argument would BE intelligible in the first place. His very hypothesis may be 'impossible in reality', and thus utterly moot. Again, another way Reason can lead one astray.
First Rule of Think Club should be '' Don't Believe Everything You Think''
I'm so glad you're on our team Carl Benjamin.
Peter just doesn't have the same level of deep critical thinking as Carl. Peter has read a lot, while Carl has thought deeply about things himself. I honestly thought Peter was well measured and highly intelligent before watching this. He's just not though is he...
His bias is preventing himself from being open minded. Carl was willing to question everything, including his own presuppositions. Also, his belief that the post-modernists are not wrong has been around for a while now for Carl when he was having a discussion with Jonathan Pageau.
Peter’s disdain for the post-modernists hides his ability to see why their ideas are so successful. It’s because they are right in the assessment of the issue, just not their solution (as Jordan Peterson has noted previously as well in his lecture series).
It also just looks like someone from the Age of Enlightenment desperate to keep the sands from flowing through his fingers. Many ppl who are desperate to keep ahold of the rational, ultra-liberal, new atheist mindset are just being left behind.
The lockdowns, the activism. It has all shown how people will default to being irrational, authoritarian, and even make up their own religion if one doesn’t exist. All of Peter’s presumptions have been disproven in 2020.
We are in a post-coof world and some ppl desperately are clinging on to the pre-coof world.
Nobody wants to be nihilistic, which is What Peter is trying to avoid.
The idea of "Universal moral principles" fails for the same reason as "The self-evident existence of god".
If they were indeed universal or self-evident, there would be neither dissent, nor debate.
This fails for the exact reason Peter said in the video, namely that anyone who disagreed would just be wrong.
@@grantgooch5834 If anyone disagrees, it's not universal, though, is it?
Which makes the people in this comment section saying that Carl is so close to finding God rather hillarious.
Peter, I think where you go “wrong” in this discussion is in your deferral to Reason.
Reason is a tool.
Mankind makes tools.
Nothing Mankind makes is guaranteed to be flawless.
Therefore Reason may end up being proven incorrect.
Mankind uses tools.
Tools should never use Mankind.
By deferring to Reason, you are deferring to a Tool.
That is the problem. Outsourcing your own deliberations to an outside authority.
You guys should both talk with Douglas Murray and Camille Paglia. Good show as always 👍🏻
This reminds me of the same problem I had listening, several years ago, to Sam Harris's attempt to rationally derive some sort of moral system.
I share the same biases that he, and Peter, and Carl, and millions of others have. I want this to work. But, having grown up with these values, like Carl, I can't let the "smuggled assumptions" go, precisely because I've been trained, and have trained myself, to think critically, and the truth is, things like "wellbeing" and "rationally derived" are already carrying value judgments that conflict with the stated goal of universality.
The contingent thing that I think Carl is looking for is God. That's part of what brought me to Christianity, is there a basis for human rights? Why human over blades of grass? Does morality exist beyond personal or cultural preferences. Peter borders on sounding like a presuppositional Christian apologist with regard to rationality.
I love Carl but my biggest critique of him is that he says these are English values. He’ll even note the Protestant work ethic as being British but he never acknowledges the PROTESTANT part as being critical in that.
He has not studied enough of the Bible or Christian philosophy and it really is a blind spot for him in terms of understanding the philosophical history of the Western world and where much of it comes from - both as derived from and to oppose Christian philosophy.
Why not Islam? Try to answer that question.
Carl is not going to God, because, funnily enough, he sees no reason to think God exists, or which one of the many gods is the one.
It all boils down to the word 'why'.
@59:00 Peter : "my belief is that moral values are rationally derivable [etc]". There you have it. Your *belief*. Thanks for playing.
11:45 the US shouldn’t promulgate values. That’s imperialism. Let people make their own choices and then either trade with them on a voluntary basis or don’t, but otherwise leave them alone. If you want to spread your values: set a good example.
And the Chinese are promulgating their own values. Whereas the US hegemony is rooted in the rules-based liberal order post WWII (with its inherent moral structures blended with power), the Chinese are offering a return to the norm in international relations.
Instead of "If you take this money, you need to genuflect to these sets of values, by which you will be incorporated into a system of soft power" it's the simpler "take this money and when push comes to shove, we have a lever on you". That lever is, of course, much harder power than the current US order, but its pressure is wielded in shorter, sharper measure.
Countries are then left with the choice? Stay with the slow but constant "nudging" of US soft power, or accept the rare but sudden yank of a classical imperial leash.
Time will tell.
Why should it not? What reason can you give? And don't come with morals since morals dont matter, as we have learned. Only power.
Slaves aren't universally bad or undesirable to be.
You'll say "you wouldn't want to be one from the pre civil war US" and I'd agree, but you wouldn't have to raise the standards much before you get someone who'd voluntarily be a slave.
Even US ones had food, clothing and shelter. You could absolutely have a 'service guarantees citizenship' slave contract where you sign over five years of your life to do hard (but fair) labor where you're taken care of (healthcare, dental) and are part of a work group that gets important things built or renovated and after that you're free to pursue the life you want.
Psychologically you encourage brotherhood and when there are internal conflicts you separate the problem and put them with others who are likely to be better aligned. Failing all else you simply evict them. You don't want life-long slaves anyway, at some point it goes from being convenient to cruel and inefficient.
You rotate work fields, so they're self sufficient in cooking, cleaning and mending clothes.
There are benefits to that. You get well regulated meals, a stable sleep schedule, a hard and fit body, you feel that you've done your time and earned your citizenship and you have discipline that you can apply to the next things you want to learn to do. Others will respect you for having done it, not unlike military service.
There's minutia in there to iron out, like psychological effects of people becoming unsympathetic and rigid, but you can't deny that when you tweak "slavery" it absolutely isn't necessarily undesirable, certainly not universally. You take other examples from history and you get indentured servitude that many found to be fulfilling and honorable.
I followed Carl back when he still thought of himself as a liberal and were friends with Amazing Atheist and Thunderfoot. Times sure have changed, probably not for the better.
The whole atheism movement was kind of where the postmodern social justice thing broke out. That movement was so popular and we watched it degenerate and fizzle as soon as that virus spread.
Yes, Maximal Liberalism is the causal problem, were you not listening?
@@ktrigg2 A real example of; if you believe in nothing, then you'll fall for anything.
amazing atheist is a piece of shit now, well he already was in 2011
I think chasing universal "good" using the mechanism of "rationality" is a great way to end up with hundreds of millions of dead people burned on the pyre of "the greater good."
The seductive reasoning here is that "I'm a moral person so I can make moral judgements for others." No, you can't... and the idea that you could (or should) invalidates your premise.