You! Yes, you. Check out the Majesty of Reason Discord server! Join here and chat with others about all things philosophy: dsc.gg/majestyofreason And be sure to check out the Majesty of Reason podcast! There are podcast versions of all my videos! Link: open.spotify.com/show/4Nda5uNcGselvKphtKSKvH
Just tried to join the discord. I'm new to discord though I've managed to join a few others already, but this one is giving me problems. I think I joined, it put up the "welcome/just joined" post, but it won't let me do anything. Can't post. Can't reply, can't even do the r reactions for the "select roles" channel. Musta done something wrong....?
Okay... I figured it out. Apparently on the post that says "react to this post to join" you HAVE to react with the check mark reaction and not one of the many others presented.
When Lance brought up the quantum mechanics example I was thinking, "Man I feel like I've heard this before" and I remembered a particular comment on the discussion between Huemer and Loeb that I now realize was made by Dr. Lance Bush! To the point about ordinary language in everyday discussions, the linguist NJ Enfield has this book called "Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" which covers the anthropological reality of language use and, I believe, compliments the conclusions drawn here.
>>Hi all. Happy to answer questions in the comments, so feel free to direct questions at me."" I am not the person to say that to LOL. I have to finish watching the video to ask questions about that but I have some simple moral questions I have been asking mainly an christian and muslim apologist and debate channels but I ask them to everyone, not just theists. Now atheists and agnostics can answer these questions nearly 100% of the time but christians respond with non answers 82%+ of the time and muslims 95%+ of the time. I would just LOVE to have your answers in a comment as another reference. People of all kinds please state if your christian or muslim, atheists, agnostics or any combination of those and then if willing participate in the test. As well, looking for 5 good moral theist questions for atheists/agnostics. #1 You see a child drowning in a shallow pool and notice a person just watching that is able to save the child with no risk to themselves but is not, is that persons non action moral? #2 If you go to save the child, the man tells you to stop as he was told it was for the greater good, but he does not know what that is, do you continue to save the child? #3 Is it an act of justice to punish innocent people for the crimes of others? #4 If you were able to stop it and knew a person was about to grape a child would you stop it? #5 Would you consider a parent who put their kids in a room with a poison fruit and told the kids not to eat it but then also put the best con artist in the room with the children knowing the con artist will get the kids to eat the fruit and the parent does nothing to stop it a good parent?
@@anti-colonialsunni8860 I agree that most people who talk about goodness or badness aren't speaking about modes of being or anything Platonistic, but I also don't think they're presupposing that certain things have value. To value something does not require or necessarily involve the presumption that the thing in question "has value." That's a reification of value, and I see no reason to suppose anyone thinks that way without good evidence that they do so.
@anti-colonialsunni8860 >> 1 Its immoral 2 save the child 3 yes it is"" You find it and act of justice to punish the innocent for the crimes of others? So if someone else murders someone, would you feel justice was done if you were punished for that and the criminal was allowed to go unpunished? It is an answer at least though. >>4 yes 5 no, they are fools"" Good good, you are a rare muslim, you answered all 5. Thank you for your time and effort, you are in the answered column for muslims. Do you want the follow up questions? They are not easy like those were.
@@dominic6752 (1) The same way I think people already go about policy and law: I would do my best to implement policies and laws in accordance with my values. The precise content of those values would be a normative question, and not a metaethical one. Since that may not be a sufficient answer I'd be happy to try to elaborate on it, but I'm not quite sure how to do so. (2) It's hard to give a definitive answer as to whether I "have moral intuitions." As I state in this video, I avoid the use of the term "intuition" in part because I think discussions about it are messy and underdeveloped. What I could say is this: on some construals of what a moral intuition is, I'd have them, on others, I wouldn't (and I might hold that nobody else does, either). So to address any particular claim about whether I "have moral intuitions," you'd have to offer an account of what those are that's sufficiently clear for me to be able to judge whether I think I have them or not (it doesn't have to be perfectly clear or super sophisticated, just enough to evaluate). // For instance, if you saw a baby being assaulted and then thrown in a lake, you would have no intuition about whether that is right or wrong? // I'd immediately and without reservation regard the action to be awful, I would be outraged by whoever did that, and I'd try to stop them and rescue the baby. If all that is sufficient for a "moral intuition," then of course I have moral intuitions. However, while I take your question to be perfectly fine, what I dislike about at least some other people asking if I have an "intuition" is that they'll leverage ambiguity and lack of specificity about what they're asking. I have moral judgments, attitudes, values, preferences, emotions, reactions, and so on. But if I say I have an "intuition," the person asking this may presume that I'm granting certain claims about how human psychology or phenomenology work, or that I am granting whatever epistemic status to my judgments that *they* think an "intuition" in particular has, all the while not actually getting clear on what an "intuition" is. In other words, suppose "intuition" is just a stand in for some kind of mundane judgment. Well, I make moral judgments, so I have "moral intuitions" in that respect. But if an "intuition" is supposed to be some special kind of psychological state that has a certain kind of epistemic status, well, I may not grant that. Does that mean I don't have "moral intuitions"? If so, someone can then misleadingly imply that if I don't have moral intuitions *of that kind*, the kind with the special epistemic status, that I don't have moral judgments *at all*, and thus don't even think killing babies is bad. That wouldn't be true, and it would be a misleading exploitation of their own ambiguous phrasing that's being leveraged to imply that I must either agree with their philosophical views, or else I'm some kind of evil person who doesn't care if people kill babies. It's a false dichotomy, but philosophers do this sort of thing all the time, leveraging ambiguity and pragmatic implication to make opposition look stupid or evil. So this word, "intuition," functions as a kind of ambiguity fulcrum analytic philosophers can exploit to either trip you up by trying to either (a) get you to commit to a bunch of their presuppositions, or (b) imply you're an evil jerk who doesn't care if people kill babies if you don't buy into their specific metaphysical presumptions, epistemic views, or approach to doing philosophy. I'm not a fan of these kinds of rhetorical traps. They almost always involve a "heads I win, tails you lose," approach, but unfortunately they're all too common in analytic philosophy. For an example of why I advise caution in situations like these, see my remarks on normative entanglement (I discuss them in my dissertation, as well as several videos and blog posts). Happy to go into that and elaborate if the concerns I raise here don't make it clear why I am cautious about claims about moral "intuitions."
@anti-colonialsunni8860 >> on three I read that you said immoral instead of moral. That is an injustice as it is not giving someone their due as that punishment is not due for them in particular"" Ok, perfect.
Thanks guys! Great discussion. You both know I enjoy your videos. So it is very cool to have a video of you both chatting on this stuff together. Do it again sometime. Thanks again!
This was ridiculously juicy in the philosophical and scientific sense. Lance is awesome. It's amazing and intimidating (not necessarily in a bad sense) to learn how much work is needed in order to do proper experimental philosophy and scientific research in general about deep topics and interacting with all kinds of people and cultures.
Lance, my concern about studies that probe deeper into the question of metaethics, is that it confuses common people, by asking them something that might become more obscure the closer they look. Like if you ask, what is truth. Well it's whatever is true, or not false. Clarify that... People get confused when asked to provide answers for fundamental things that they perceive. When you start digging, then they're not so sure anymore. And since it's hard to stand by something you don't know how to explain, digging might have the result of making people anti realist as a safe answer to the question. It's hard to commit to a position(realism) that you become confused about through questioning. And a lot of times, the knowledge we have about things is more related to our application of them than it is about our metaphysical explanation of them. Have you thought about this concern?
Yea, I've considered these concerns and discuss something similar in my critiques of existing studies. So, I think your concerns are well-founded. In particular, when you say that people may choose antirealist responses because it's safer: I think that's often true, and one of the problems with these studies is that people may choose antirealist positions not because they are antirealists, but to hedge against expressing certainty or signaling a rigid or inflexible view. Noncognitivist views may be especially appealing for this reason. If you can insist nobody's right or wrong at all, you can avoid having to take a strong stance one way or another. And if you're not sure what you're being asked, that might seem like the most reasonable way to respond.
Cracking discussion and explanation of how research can be hard to interpret. One problem that I have as a "philosophical baby' is that I'm never really sure what people mean when they're discussing"morality". Are they talking about something that applies only to humans? This often seems to be the case as most ,if not all,other any mals , are not normally counted as being moral agents ,but then studies on our fellow primates for example seem to show that they possess some sense of "justice". And I assume that if we encountered an alien species with possibly greater intelligence, (whatever that means) than our own ,they would probably have some sort of moral codes , however different from our own. Maybe it's just me but as a "relatively untrained philosopher" I find it hard to see how to answer questions about moral realism, without knowing whether the term "moral" is being used just in a human sense. If so that would appear to me to be ruling out gods but I know that many would claim that objective morality for example comes from god or gods. Maybe I'm just in over my head.... Anyway, thanks, both.
I think the gastronomic anti realism is a good analogy and the arguments over pineapple on pizza are heated. I also think of arguments over sports. Who is the better player: Messi or Ronaldo? Henry or Bergkamp? I'm not sure there is a fact of the matter about who is the best footballer but it doesn't stop people from insisting the other side is factually wrong.
One interesting thing about those debates is that their objectivity decreases depending on the players being compared. For example, I am not as good at soccer as Messi, that's an objective fact. When we're comparing two really good players, however, the question suddenly becomes harder to answer definitively, and therefore more "subjective". Let's be real though, Messi is obviously better than Penaldo. No debate to be had.
@@piousphilosophy7538 I think the issue is one step deeper. The idea of what makes a great player is stance-dependent. If your idea of a great player is an overweight, 40 year old with a weak left foot and no right foot, no endurance, and a top sprint speed of 10 mph, I am the best player in the world. 😅 When discussing best players, it always seems to focus on forwards as people value goals and assists. How valuable was Buffon during that time for Juve though? Did he save more goals than Messi or Ronaldo accounted for? I don't think there is a stance independent fact of the matter of what makes a good player and what makes player X better than Y. All that said you are right. Messi is the 🐐
Firstly, I have to admit that I slept through most of that. But I think I caught the gist of it. Not your fault, BTW; I have serious sleep problems. What i did managed to watch of the conversation was extremely interesting. Anyhow..... I think people often conflate proscriptive morality with empathetic motivations. This may be partly because there can be a lot of overlap, but for most people there are elements of both within their psychic toolbox so specific moral questions may trigger responses from different motivators. Most proscriptive rules are handed down to us by society. Some can be argued to be merely restatements of an objective or logical reality. Others might be justifiable only by deference to authority. These rules are societal in nature and analyzing them could lead someone toward moral anti-realism. Empathetic moral decisions are more internal. I've heard it said that sociopathy (loosely defined as the tendency to "other" people) is not a definitive flaw but rather a sliding scale such that most people have some small degree of it, but to avoid overcomplicating the issue I'd like to assume that it isn't relevant here. Without that complication empathetic morality can be seen as an expression of something innate and internal. The moral rules it provides seem universal and lead one towards moral realism. Philosophical thinkers who have spent time considering morality have usually done the necessary mental work to break down the cognitive dissonance of these two competing motivators. The common folk likely have not, so they will occasionally respond inconsistently.
You mention a sort of performative tolerance that could be embedded in answers that skew conclusions given their performative rather than factual content. I'll note that this is a huge issue in political polls - some studies that ask political questions that have real-world factual components get asked in one group and in the other group they get asked where there is a financial reward for answering the factual parts accurately. You find that absent this incentive answers skew toward the "political" answer rather than the "factual" answer suggesting that people often answer political questions "to make a point" rather than to answer factually about the world or their beliefs.
Joe, can you do a video with Michael Heumer talking about his argument for reincarnation and a soul. He is an atheist to my knowledge. Id want to see your objections to his arguments.
Lance and Joe, thank you both for this dialogue. It was a delight to watch and I feel edified by having done so. I'd like to make a somewhat lengthy point about the use of language by subject matter experts and lay 'folk', regardless of the field. Technical Jargon, particularly the reuse of ordinary words from a common language into Terms of Art for an academic discipline, is tremendously confusing on both sides of a usage event. There is an implicit assumption of people using a word in the method they regularly encounter its use is the primary definition of a word of phrase... this is, as a jargonous term of art, Straight-up Bonkers. Words have meaning in context and navigating the divide between a subject matter expert and a non-expert is a skill most subject matter experts fail to fully comprehend. Writing questions for surveys becomes an onerous task precisely because the people doing it assume they understand how the language they use will be understood, for they already have the education to use the jargon. It is the same difficulty attempting to understand an idiom from a dead and forgotten language might confer. There is exists a discontinuity in the usage that seems to function, because people routinely assume they understand which definition of a word is being used unless it leads to tremendous confusion, but which routinely goes unnoticed. When one side of a communication is utterly unaware that a term has more definitions, they lack totally the ability to discern which meaning is intended. Deciding on meanings of ambiguity in communication is a fundamental skill of language use and people posses differing ability to conduct it well. The ability to actually communicate is predicated on already sharing enough language to make likely assumptions about what the other person is attempting to say. The continual evolution of language, which can happen at an astonishingly rapid pace in new academic fields, can leave non-experts at a total loss in understanding... even if they believe that they DO understand. To possibly illustrate a point and given the reference to Quantum Mechanics... what do the words: Oberserver, Event, or Action mean? What does a philosopher think they mean vs a physicist vs an elementary art school teacher vs someone in another country?
I find a lot to agree with there. In my own work, I have increasingly emphasized how philosophers move seamlessly between ordinary and technical uses of terms, and often exploit the conflation between the two for various rhetorical purposes, seemingly without even realizing it. I suspect that a philosophical focus on supposedly isolated semantic considerations, to the exclusion of pragmatic implications, has led to a pathological insensitivity to the role pragmatics plays in ordinary language, and that philosophers routinely fail to recognize this. As a result, they leverage arguments that they mistakenly take to have force on legitimate philosophical grounds, when what they're really doing is taking advantage of the pragmatic implications associated with ordinary uses of various ostensibly technical instances of various terms or phrases to illegitimately make their opposition look stupid or silly.
@@lanceindependent Yep. I find the equivocation between Technical Jargon and Dictionary Definition somewhat infuriating. It feels profoundly predatory upon my good and decent Charity of Interpretation for Academic Writing, even if it is unintended. Why have editors and peer-review if I need to be extremely critical on an initial, cursory reading of any given published journal paper to ensure I'm understanding the actual argument by carefully considering the use of a word each time it occurs? Ohh right, publish or perish, citation count, and 'prestige'... yuck. Rhetoricians and their making the weaker argument the stronger, amirite? Thanks for the reply and the video. I really did enjoy the many insights you and Joe shared. Keep up the good work!
Im just leaving this here Argument for Moral Anti-Realism 1. Objective moral facts or properties are either external and independent of subjective human perspectives or not. 2. If objective moral facts or properties are external and independent, they are not reducible to or identical with physical events 3. If objective moral facts or properties are not reducible to or identical with physical events, they would require an ontological status beyond the physical realm. 4. Everything that exists is ultimately physical in nature (physicalism) 5. If objective moral facts or properties exist and are not reducible to the physical, physicalism is false. 6. Objective moral facts or properties are incompatible with physicalism 7. Objective moral facts or properties would require a non-physical realm, akin to a form of moral Platonism. 8. Moral Platonism, as a non-physical and abstract realm, contradicts physicalism 9. If objective moral facts or properties are external and independent entities, then their interaction with the physical world seems be inexplicable 10. The inexplicability of the interaction between objective moral facts or properties on the natural world makes them incoherent. Argument from Pyrrhonian Moral Skepticism 1.Objective moral truths are sui generis moral facts or properties that exist independently of humans, independent of beliefs, opinions, or cultural norms. 2.If objective moral truths exist, they can be established to exist independently of human's mental states. 3.Epistemological challenges, when applied to the context of moral truths, suggest that no reliable method exists to conclusively establish objective moral truths independently of human perspectives. Intuitions, as one potential method, are not sacrosanct or necessarily truth apt. 4.Human mental states are physical events.(viz. functionalism and nominalism) 5.The Problem of the Criterion, when applied to the Münchhausen Trilemma, makes it impossible to establish ontological objective moral facts or properties via epistemological means. 6.Therefore, claiming ontological objective moral facts or properties exist commits a special pleading fallacy. OR Argument For Naturalistic Moral Realism 1. Necessitarianism posits that all existing entities and properties are necessarily the way they are and cannot be otherwise. (per definition) 2. Objective moral facts or properties exist independently of subjective perspectives (per definition). 3. If moral facts or properties exist, they do so necessarily, being grounded in the fabric of reality (by p1). 4. Mental states are physical events (viz functionalism) 5. Physicalism is true (assumption). 6. Under physicalism, the object/subject distinction dissolves. 7. If moral judgments are emergent from physical processes within the brain, they are intrinsically tied to the physical world. 8. If moral facts or properties are reducible to the physical, they are an inherent aspect of the universe's physical nature. 9. Therefore, moral facts or properties, being integral to the physical fabric of the universe, exist necessarily (by p3 and p8). 10. As moral facts must align with necessitarianism (by p2), they are anchored in the fundamental nature of reality. 11. By virtue of their necessary existence, objective moral facts provide a foundational framework for ethical discussions. 12. In conclusion, within a physicalist framework, objective moral facts or properties exist as necessary components of the universe's fabric, enriching our understanding of ethics and underpinning moral realism.
Moral naturalists and natural law theorists would reject (2). Moral naturalists identify moral facts as certain physical properties the same way certain mental properties are identified as brain properties. Natural law theorists hold to teleological realism, so ground moral facts in teleological facts of physical human nature. (5) Depends heavily on one's definition of physicalism. There are versions of physicalism that incorporate supervenience so irreducible moral facts are consistent with this kind of physicalism. If you rule this out in your version of physicalism then that needs to be made clear in the premise, but then you have to argue for why one should accept reductive physicalism over non-reductive physicalism.
@@Insane_ForJesus I gave three arguments, maybe you could have been a bit more specific. I will assume you are referring to the first argument which states that "if objective moral facts or properties are external and independent, they are not reducible to or identical with physical events. " Are you arguing that objective moral facts are external, independent and identical to physical properties/events, and thus reducible? Even if they were identical, they would still have to be external and independent to be objective. My definition of physicalism dissolves the distinction. This is highlighted in my argument For Naturalistic Moral Realism. Physicalism denying supervenience would maintain that abstract objects and mental states are essentially reducible to physical events, intricately connected to and dependent on physical properties alone. Argument 1: The Incoherence of Irreducible Moral Facts 1. If moral facts are irreducible, they must exist independently of physical properties. 2. If moral facts exist independently of physical properties, they cannot be explained in physicalist terms. 3. Therefore, moral facts are not irreducible. The view where moral facts are a type of weak emergence that arise from nature but are irreducible fails to explain the ontological nature of moral properties. If moral facts were irreducible, they would need to exist independently of physical properties which lacks sufficient justification. Supervenience is the claim that there can be no change in moral properties without a corresponding change in physical properties. However, supervenience alone does not explain how this correlation occurs. Argument 2: Supervenience Fails to Address the Explanatory Gap 1. If moral properties supervene on physical properties, then there must be a clear explanation for how and why this supervenience occurs. 2. A physicalist view, incorporating supervenience, fails to provide an adequate explanation for the supervenience of moral properties. 3. Therefore, the physicalist view is insufficient in explaining the ontological relationship between moral and physical properties. Defense of P2. Moral facts prescribe certain actions as right or wrong, without being reducible to descriptive or physical facts. If objective moral facts are reducible to the physical, then they would lose their normative and prescriptive nature, becoming nothing more than descriptive facts about the physical world. Therefore, objective moral facts or properties, if they exist and are external and independent, cannot be fully explained or reduced to physical events, supporting the defense of Premise 2 in the argument for moral anti-realism. Premise 1: If moral facts are identical to physical events, then reductive physicalism should be favored over non-reductive physicalism. Premise 2: If moral facts are distinct from physical events, then non-reductive physicalism would gain stronger support. Premise 3: Moral facts are identical with physical events is more plausible. Conclusion: Therefore, reductive physicalism is more justified than non-reductive physicalism when considering moral facts. Functionalism provides a more robust explanation for the relationship between mental properties and physical properties compared to other theories like substance dualism or identity theory. It suggests that mental properties are not reducible to any specific physical properties but are instead defined by the functions they perform in the physical system.
@@CMVMic Functionalism doesn't sound more robust than identity theory since functionalism equates _having_ a functional role with _being_ a function role. It seems to just collapse into identity theory on close examination and discussion of language.
@@Insane_ForJesus i dont think so. You seem to be conflating being, with becoming. A function is not a thing in itself, it is a dynamic process. Substances have being, not events. Events are the labels we use to describe change, it describes what a substance does, not what a substance is. Functionalism combined with nominalism seems to avoid the identity theory. The being of a mental state is defined by a function, not by its physical nature.
From what i understand moral realism only entails the view that at least one moral claim is objectively true. In that case could people not quite easily be wrongfully found to be moral realists in the questionaires you were talking about? Since the moral issue they think is objectively true might not even be part of it. Or is moral realism more of a sliding scale?
objective morality is like Quantum particles - Without thinking about it, it seems obviously real - but the closer you look at it the less real it seems.
I had similar reservations when I saw Joshua Knobe's results for the lay person's idea of "the true self". Did they get the results they did because people already held such beliefs? Or because the survey worked to prompt such responses?
Josh Knobe and I discussed spontaneous theorizing in one of my recent videos, so you could actually see how Dr. Knobe reacted to this particular possibility.
It's a good idea. It has serious limitations though. People may affirm that they held a position prior to participating in a study because they really did hold such a view, but they mistakenly think they held a view when they don't, or may be responsive to social considerations, like a desire to look competent or well-informed, or to tell researchers something they think the researcher wants to hear (demand characteristics). It's hard to be sure whether such reports accurately reflect prior belief. It's still worth measuring in spite of these limitations, and I should have done something like that regarding metaethics. I *did* ask people a question like this for a study on quantum mechanics and the results were pretty interesting, so it's definitely something that I've considered. Unfortunately, not soon enough to include in studies that had been conducted earlier.
I might've missed it but does Lance Bush have any book recommendations if one wants to learn more about experimental philosophy but to also see the objections/criticisms that is launched at it? One book that seems promising is: Moral Psychology by Valerie Tiberius, published by Routledge.
I didn't recommend any particular books. I haven't kept up to date on general Xphi books, so I am not sure I have any good, up-to-date recommendations. Are you looking for something more specific to metaethics, or to Xphi in general?
@@lanceindependent Yeah, I am looking for recommendations that go more in-depth on experimental philosophy but also on its application towards metaethics.
@@tuav A few options: (1) There are three books I know of on this topic: Polzler: "Moral Reality and the Empirical Sciences (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory)" "A Philosophical Perspective on Folk Moral Objectivism: A Philosophical Perspective (Advances in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology)" Wright: "A Psychological Perspective on Folk Moral Objectivism (Advances in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology)" (2) If you are interested in my approach, you could read my dissertation. It's not (yet) a book, but chapters two and three go into a methodological critique of existing studies. The remaining chapters present a series of empirical studies that support the overall thesis. I offer some general comments on methods and the future of this research at the end. (3) This book might not seem, from the title, to be relevant: "Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory) " However, Part 1 is a "methods and foundations" section and has chapters from Zijlstra and Polzler, both discussing metaethics. The book, overall, looks really cool.
Hi Lance, thanks for all you do philosophy-wise. I’m wondering if you’d say anything more/differently in your debate w Eric Sampson now that you’ve had time to reflect on it? Has your position changed/been updated at all, or is there any new argument(s) you’d put to him? (I already posted this in reply to your comment on here, but thought it might be seen easier this way. If you’ve already responded please disregard)
I'll just repost what I said there here: Ha! I was just thinking about that the past couple of days. Someone recently had a look at that conversation and said that Eric Sampson "smoked" me in that exchange. I don't think that's true, but I do think I could have done a lot better both to raise my own concerns and to respond effectively to Sampson's remarks. My position has not changed in any substantial way that I can think of. I've changed some of the way I frame things, and have streamlined the way I talk about certain topics. But I maintain that there are no good arguments for moral realism and that the form of moral realism Sampson and others endorse is probably not intelligible. I think in the past year I have learned a lot, and have become more accustomed to live discussions of this sort, and I think my overall engagement with moral realists has improved. I think, for instance, that I'd have probably had better and more careful responses, would think on my feet a little better, and would be a bit more prepared for the sorts of points that were raised. I would have to go through that particular discussion to identify more concrete and specific points I could have improved on. That might be worth doing but it's hard to think of anything in particular about a conversation that took place over a year ago. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or anything of the sort, I'd definitely be interested.
@@lanceindependent Argument for Moral Anti-Realism 1. Objective moral facts or properties are posited to be external and independent of subjective human perspectives. 2. If objective moral facts or properties are external and independent, they cannot be reducible to or identical with physical events intrinsic to the nature of physical substances. 3. If objective moral facts or properties are not reducible to physical events, they would require an ontological status beyond the physical realm. 4. Physicalism posits that everything that exists is ultimately physical in nature, and there are no non-physical entities or substances. 5. If objective moral facts or properties exist and are not reducible to the physical, physicalism would be false. 6. The coherence of objective moral facts or properties, therefore, raises questions about the compatibility with physicalism, which is a well-supported and widely accepted ontological position. 7. The existence of objective moral facts or properties would require a non-physical realm, akin to a form of moral Platonism. 8. Moral Platonism, as a non-physical and abstract realm, may not be coherent with our current understanding of the natural world and the physical basis of reality. 9. The assumption of objective moral facts or properties as external and independent entities raises challenges regarding their interaction with the physical world and how they can impact human actions and moral judgments. 10. Therefore, the coherence of objective moral facts or properties becomes questionable if we consider the implications it has on our ontological commitments, such as physicalism and our understanding of the natural world. Argument from Pyrrhonian Moral Skepticism 1.Objective moral truths are sui generis moral facts or properties that exist independently of humans, independent of beliefs, opinions, or cultural norms. 2.If objective moral truths exist, they can be established to exist independently of human's mental states. 3.Epistemological challenges, when applied to the context of moral truths, suggest that no reliable method exists to conclusively establish objective moral truths independently of human perspectives. Intuitions, as one potential method, are not sacrosanct or necessarily truth apt. 4.Human mental states are physical events.(viz. functionalism and nominalism) 5.The Problem of the Criterion, when applied to the Münchhausen Trilemma, makes it impossible to establish ontological objective moral facts or properties via epistemological means. 6.Therefore, claiming ontological objective moral facts or properties exist commits a special pleading fallacy. OR Argument For Naturalistic Moral Realism 1. Necessitarianism posits that all existing entities and properties are necessarily the way they are and cannot be otherwise. (per definition) 2. Objective moral facts or properties exist independently of subjective perspectives (per definition). 3. If moral facts or properties exist, they do so necessarily, being grounded in the fabric of reality (by p1). 4. Mental states are physical events (viz functionalism) 5. Physicalism is true (assumption). 6. Under physicalism, the object/subject distinction dissolves. 7. If moral judgments are emergent from physical processes within the brain, they are intrinsically tied to the physical world. 8. If moral facts or properties are reducible to the physical, they are an inherent aspect of the universe's physical nature. 9. Therefore, moral facts or properties, being integral to the physical fabric of the universe, exist necessarily (by p3 and p8). 10. As moral facts must align with necessitarianism (by p2), they are anchored in the fundamental nature of reality. 11. By virtue of their necessary existence, objective moral facts provide a foundational framework for ethical discussions. 12. In conclusion, within a physicalist framework, objective moral facts or properties exist as necessary components of the universe's fabric, enriching our understanding of ethics and underpinning moral realism.
For both Lance and Joe: I hadn't thought of it before this but why is Divine Command Theory not a version on noncognativism? I assume this is addressed somewhere (perhaps the commands being grounded in God's nature which is The Good differentiates it).
I have thought about whether DCT is best regarded as a form of moral realism or antirealism, but I've never seen anyone suggest it's a form of noncognitivism. I typically take it to treat moral claims as propositional.
@@lanceindependent yeah, I agree that DCT is compatible with anti realism. I was mainly reacting to you saying some forms of noncognativism take moral statements to be commands.
Forgive me for being a dumbass here, but given how much time is spent on the very many problems with asking questions in the format of 'This person takes this stance and this person takes this stance. Could they both be right?' Why ask questions in this way? Considering that language was discussed as integral to this whole endeavor, it seems bonkers to me that the questions would be asked this way. I don't understand why the questions aren't asking specifically for the participant's idea on what morals/ ethics are... What their view on the nature/origin/ understanding of morality is. Do they hold the view that there are some things that are always /never moral? What and why? Is their morality or any particular moral stance something that they have spent time thinking about regarding the reasoning or rationale they have for it... Have they ever held moral views that were different to those they hold now Etc... It seems unnecessarily self-defeating to not actually ask the questions that you want to learn the answers to. Other questions can be asked to determine the participant's psychology regarding how they feel about a particular issue and how their ideas/responses might or might not change based on what they believe majority response is, or whatever... I feel as though in trying to create a study to determine what us normies think rather than philosophers, there is unnecessary dumbing down in what is being asked, or rather, the way it is being asked.
Given how many problems I think the disagreement paradigm has, I don't think we should be using it. However, it's difficult to come up with alternative questions or ways of assessing how people think about moral realism or antirealism that don't have significant problems of their own.
"Epistemic Humility" +1 -straight ethical, af, yo. But, now..... I really need to see Joe start introducing his "controversial stances on things" AS a job, rather than suppressing them in anticipation of potential future vocation-compromise. - depending on what they are. (lol. jk. bein' silly. I'm takin notes, and enjoying the show. Exactly as is. Have thoughts, and helpful insight, relative to Love of Sophia, but am still in scanning, rather; epistemic humility - mode, & will continue assessing and appraising the scaffolding we're using. So glad al gore's blessed rhythm favored providence, in this case, accordingly. Pleased as Π 2b here, Timaeus, The Trouble Maker
I have a question for u Joe: how do I know if I'm ready to publish actual papers in a subfield within philosophy??? 😅 How do I know that I have sufficient/adequate understanding of the subject, given I don't have anyone to guide me??
I've never understood moral realism. In what sense could some moral stance be objectively true, in abstract, and how could anyone discover objective moral truths in the first place?
Would this also for scientific realism? How could someone discover objective "truths" about anything in the first place? In particular, how could they know/be confident that what they observe is objectively "true"
@@thinkingchristian Depends on how goofy you want to get with sollipsism, right? I've made peace with the idea that I can't prove I'm _not_ a brain in a vat and moved on from that because I'd rather ponder the substance of my apparent reality than wonder if everything is illusory. So I guess I'm kind of cheating but, for my purposes, scientific/material "objective truths" are defined, provisionally, in terms of things like consistency or their predictive/explanatory power in the pursuit of useful models for "reality."
@thinkingchristian I think with science, reality exists independent of your opinion, and you get facts that you can't simply ignore while adhering to the scientific method. You can't truly verify it, but it's absurd to not assume reality is real. With morality, there is nothing you have to assume to be moral to avoid absurdity; any axiom will work, even if they might lead to drastically different moral systems.
Obviously, goodness is just preferences. While there are some preferences that are pretty much universal, like LIFE and HEALTH, the other ones are more optional than that. It's important to look at this as a spectrum or a gradient rather than a binary ON or OFF switch. This is the common sense view.
A big problem might be that the people who are deep into experimental philosophy, moral anti-realism, or in general analytic philosophy - tend to be of such personality types that they are pretty unlikely to have a non-superficial conversation with like a typical sports-watching normie person and actually effectively gauge whether they are a realist or an anti-realist. If they did more of that they would maybe have new ideas about which confounds to check for /focus on, which are the ones that tend to repeat most often about this issue when you talk with such people about which answer they gave and why. For example, when asking people a theoretical question of realism vs relativism (vs nihilism) people often think of various issue where they think disagreement is legitimate (or indeterminate), and you have to remind them to think about whether they think there are *any* issues on which there is a realist answer like eg a situation of someone planting evidence to blame an innocent person get them convicted for a crime, or like the holocaust, at least some issue, regardless of whether there are many other issues people morally disagree about where one might not think there's an objective answer; and with that clarification suddenly lots of alleged relativists change their answer, and say something ah ok thats what you mean, yeah I do think there's at least some things like that that are morally objective. Another big one is people not being explained the difference between normative relativism and descriptive relativism. So when asked a specific moral question and what they think about if there is a yes or no answer to that question and how - they are given and explained moral realism, relativism and nihilism as options, they often get the idea to try and answer the question in a kinda 'third person' manner and choose the relativism answer because they're thinking well obviously individuals and societies disagree on this issue, so I need to chose relativism, I do think there's an objective answer to this question, but I can't choose realism because obviously not everyone agrees with me on this. When explained this (and maybe additional certain points similar to it, like that people having emotions about something doesn't necessarily mean emotivist noncog /nihilism) the alleged relativists and nihilists change their answer to realism. The Polzler study had these kinds of huge faults. For example, in a question about what is their theoretical view, around 30% of people choose realism, but then on the the question about what if two people are disagreeing is there an objective answer about who of the two of them is right only one third of those realists say yes. There was 12% of theistic realists, and only half of them answer yes to the disagreement question? We would expect some inconsistency, but half? Obviously some big faults are present, and people are not being explained things. If you have a bunch of theists who are theistic moral objectivists and ask them to give some issue they have a moral view about which they think is morally objective, for example they are pro-life, and then you ask them if two people are disagreeing about abortion one is pro-life and one pro-choice, is there an objective answer about who of these two people is correct, what answer you think you will get? That only half of these theists will say yes? Of course not. It will be close to 100%. Because they would understand what is asked. Another huge tell that this is a very faulty study is that they asked people to consider the question of whether is it right or wrong to deliberately racially discriminate against someone, and whether there is an objective, subjective, or no actual answer to the question - only 2% of people chose the realist option. Really, only 2% think that deliberate racism can be objectively said to be right or wrong? What is incomparably much more likely to be happening there is that people are asked the questions in a bad way. They are asked about the view "Consciously discriminating against someone, by not hiring them for a job they are clearly qualified for, just because of their race is not wrong." and asked to categorize that view under moral realism (encompassing secular and theistic realism), moral relativism (encompassing subjectivism and cultural relativism), and moral nihilism (encompassing error theory and noncog), and what they are doing is categorizing it (overwhelmingly) into subjectivism. Why are they doing this? Because they are trying to give a 'third person' answer, and not having the difference between normative and descriptive relativism in mind, or they are saying this person who supports racism like this is just having a subjectivist view. It's certainly not the case that only 2% holds a realist view about that racist position. And it is mind-boggling that academic nerds are asking people to disregards their lived experience to this amount, it would be okay if a lot of us has this anecdotal experience that most people are moral realists and then these experimenters come with some numbers and say well this data nuances that it's not actually the vast majority its more like two thirds or maybe as low as half, but to come publicly with the "data" that only 2% are moral realists about deliberate racism just shows how much these experiments don't know what they're doing. As someone who has majored philosophy and who has been in may social settings (young, old, left-leaning right-leaning, Christian, Muslim, Atheists, various subcultural, music, political, sports circles, etc) there would be talk about philosophy often spurred on by me mentioning my college studies, and I would talk to people about these issued I mentioned in the comment. My experience, like that of most people who voice their view on this, is that the vast majority of people are moral realists, especially when explained certain things further. And some guy who says he has no moral intuitions or intuitions of any kinds comes along and wants to tell me I should just believe some study that says actually only 2% of people are moral realist. Nonsense. But being that I find this topic very interesting, inspired by this video I decided to go around the internet and make several polls, I had one in an (multi-ethnic) educational community I am in, people around the world in it, one in a group of fans of a leftist TH-camr who explicitly promotes moral subjectivism and rejects moral realism, also a multi-ethnic group, one in a group whose members are mostly North Americans and North Europeans who are interested in urban development and economics, and one in an atheism vs theism debate group. I quoted the view about racism from the study, and asked people to vote for moral realism, relativism, or nihilism, after reading the explanations, where I explained the three positions, and explained these nuances I mention in this comment, to avoid those confounds. The results? All around more than 80% to more than 90% of people are choosing the realist option. So am I crazy, am I living in a simulation, such that I with my Balkan lived experience with the very diverse people I talked to about this - have always encountered people who are in their vast majority moral realists, and by some fluke of coincidence, all the people answering my polls around the internet are also moral realists in their vast majority, and actually this weird study is correct that only 2% of people are moral realists about explicit racism? Or is it the case that the weird (not as an acronym) people from academia are not really good at gauging what the typical lay people think?
In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on moral realism, Sayre-McCord says, "By all accounts, moral realism can fairly claim to have common sense and initial appearances on its side." The claim that moral realism is "common sense" is very common among moral realists. Michael Huemer says, "Most philosophers agree that moral realism is the common sense view" on his blog, Fake Noûs. Philosophers don't just state that they regard it as a commonsense view, but that it is generally regarded as a commonsense view.
@@lanceindependent That's crazy! I always see philosophers say that moral relativism is the default view for people who haven't thought of morality very deeply. The conversation of "morality isn't- 'I like or I don't like' appears to be the text book first lesson. Moral Realism requires so much groundwork, that the "refutation" of "it's not common sense!" just makes me shrug and go "well yeah I know" and I'm left totally unsatisfied. For moral realism you need this groundwork of what constitutes currency in a moral discussion, the idea that things objectively harm or help us in the universe. outlining what 'flourishing' even means. and the idea that every science requires axiomatic assumptions to work. It's hard to imagine that as common sense. Any philosopher who says that has got to mean it hyperbolically or something.
@@CorndogMaker I don't think they mean it hyperbolically. I think they mean it literally. And even antirealists often agree with realists. In fact, realists are often so confident that most people are realists they'll title papers in ways that imply all of their readers are moral realists, even if they don't realize it.
@@lanceindependent With all of the work they do in speech act theory, which is some pretty heavy stuff, as a way of grounding moral duties objectively- the rebuttal of "it's not common sense tho" doesn't touch any of those arguments.
So there is now something called “Experimental Philosophy” that had nothing to do with Philosophy, but consists mostly of surveying non-philosophers regarding their stances on Philosophical subjects? I guess we need a new word for this field that means something like the love of opinions.
@@lanceindependent In that case, the Wikipedia entry needs some work. But more to the point, there are fields that could more appropriately be called experimental philosophy than anything like what is described in this presentation. The foremost already has a name though, Physics.
@@sayrebonifield4663 I don't know what's in the Wikipedia entry. Maybe it could use some work. I see philosophy and the sciences as continuous in their methods and aspirations, and don't really care much for sharp disciplinary divisions. There's certainly going to be work at the intersection of philosophy and physics, and the same holds for the other sciences as well, hence why philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics, biology, etc. is a thing. I take these areas of specialization to have different aims than experimental philosophy. Experimental philosophy has no unified set of aims, but much of it is directed at methodological and metaphilosophical questions about the nature and status of philosophical intuitions. For instance, much of it is directed at whether intuitions are reliable and whether philosophers have expertise of any distinctive kind. Some of it is directed at assessing claims philosophers often make about how ordinary people think, e.g., whether they believe in free will or moral realism. There are a handful of other projects and aims as well. But I don't think physics would cover most of these projects.
(1) Most of my work in experimental philosophy consists of critiquing other people's methods, including survey wording. I even have an entire paper that pretty much exclusively discusses this problem: Bush, L. S., & Moss, D. (2020). Misunderstanding metaethics: Difficulties measuring folk objectivism and relativism. Thus, I am very sympathetic to the kind of critical stance you take here. However, I don't think the problem is that people conduct surveys to avoid doing philosophy. (2) Many papers that incorporate empirical findings and would be considered experimental philosophy also include significant non-empirical work as well (3) I've seen no indication that those who conduct studies do so to eschew philosophy. First, proponents of experimental philosophy (myself included) would argue that doing studies *is* doing philosophy, and that philosophy is not necessarily non-empirical. I am, after all, *also* an empiricist, and I would reject any characterization of philosophy that maintains that it isn't empirical or doesn't employ empirical methods. (4) Related to (2), one might reverse the charge and argue that many philosophers make empirical claims but eschew conducting studies. In many cases, philosophers make substantive empirical claims (e.g., claims about how most people speak or think) without doing any empirical work to support such claims. I may agree that many studies in experimental philosophy significant methodological problems, but armchair theorizing or extrapolating from how one thinks to how everyone else thinks is even worse than doing a survey. At least someone conducting a survey is attempting to do more than rely on anecdote and speculation. (5) Many of the people who conduct studies in experimental philosophy do substantive non-empirical philosophical work as well. Given these considerations, I don't think your suggestion that people conduct surveys to avoid doing philosophy is very likely. However, I do think the reverse is often true: that philosophers who make claims that would be best addressed empirically eschew employing empirical methods. I think the obstinacy of many philosophers to engage with or conduct empirical research even when it is relevant to their claims is a much bigger problem for those who don't do experimental philosophy than the use of surveys to avoid doing philosophy (which I don't think is much of a problem at all).
@@MajestyofReason I was shit posting; I didn't see that Bush was planning on reading and responding to comments. My bad. I certainly don't think the goal of people in x-phi is to avoid doing philosophy nor do I want to deny their skills as philosophers, whatever those may be. Tho it is the case that I do not think surveys given to undergraduates are good philosophical tools. Even if they are carefully worded, which in practice, they rarely are. These aren't the only empirical tools available to philosophers though.
@@lanceindependent My comment was mostly tongue in cheek, and I did not expect it to be read tbh. So as I told MR, I don't think that people in x-phi are aiming to avoid doing philosophy. Since you gave a serious answer, my sincere feeling on x-phi is that I find surveys, even well-worded ones (tho in practice they rarely are) to be poor philosophical tools. To your point (4) for what it is worth, I think you're right. I think that philosophers working in morality ought to consider and seriously engage with social and cultural anthropology, certain areas of sociology, psychology, and psychoanalysis. So I am certainly not advocating the avoidance of empirical study.
I have some simple moral questions that atheists and agnostics can answer nearly 100% of the time with ease. Christians respond with non answers 82%+ of the time and muslims 95%+ of the time. I hope you will see why once you see the questions. I will leave a comment after this with my explanation on why this happens. People of all kinds please state if your christian or muslim, atheists, agnostics or any combination of those and then if willing participate in the test. As well, looking for 5 good moral theist questions for atheists/agnostics. #1 You see a child drowning in a shallow pool and notice a person just watching that is able to save the child with no risk to themselves but is not, is that persons non action moral? #2 If you go to save the child, the man tells you to stop as he was told it was for the greater good, but he does not know what that is, do you continue to save the child? #3 Is it an act of justice to punish innocent people for the crimes of others? #4 If you were able to stop it and knew a person was about to grape a child would you stop it? #5 Would you consider a parent who put their kids in a room with a poison fruit and told the kids not to eat it but then also put the best con artist in the room with the children knowing the con artist will get the kids to eat the fruit and the parent does nothing to stop it a good parent? And here is another set of questions. The judge ones are less then 3% answer rate from christians and muslims. #1 If you were brainwashed would you know it? #2 If someone said they had a test for brainwashing, would you want to take it? #3 If they then said, if you cannot answer these questions, that means your brainwashed, would you be giving it 100% effort to answer those questions? All criminals are caught red handed of murder 100% guilty and show no remorse. The judges always apply the perfect amount of punishment. All things being equal and for arguments sake. Now I will give an example. There are 4 judges and 10 guilty criminals. Judge #1 orders punishment for all 10 criminals and does not forgive without punishment a single one. Judge #2 forgives without punishment all 10 criminals. Judge #3 forgives without punishment 9 of them and punishes 1 of them. Judge #4 punishes 9 of them and forgives without punishment 1 of them. #4 Which judge is the most/maximally just? #5 Which judge is the most/maximally forgiving? #6 Is judge #3 either most/maximally forgiving or most just? #7 Is judge #4 most/maximally forgiving or most just? #8 Is it possible for any judge to be both most/maximally forgiving and most/maximally just?
If you have 12 minutes the first basic part I will go over is about fast/slow thinking. If you want there is a 12 minute video by veritasium called "the science of thinking" that will explain it very well. I think this is knowledge that can really benefit people if they do not know about it. The next part though I dont know any videos for and I dont know if anyone really had the idea I have before. The knowledge of the fast/slow mind is what is relevant from that video and I think a good starting point for the discussion. The video also gives examples of people doing it live, but it most likely will work on you as well so that is how I will show you. I am going to ask you a question, and I am going to predict the answer you will have pop in your mind at first, and predict that will be a wrong answer. This works on most people and you can try if for yourself on others to see too, its an interesting conversation starter. A bat and a ball together cost 1.10, the bat costs 1.00 more then the ball, how much did the ball cost? You might have an answer flash in your head right away with fast inaccurate fast mind but if you check that answer with your slow but more accurate conscious awareness, you can see that answer is wrong but it takes effort to do. The answer of ten cents is not the right answer but most people have that pop in their head because of the fast thinking mind that we rely on most of the time. The fast unconscious mind is taking everything in and trying to make sense of it really fast. Its 11 million bits a second. But sometimes it makes mistakes. The slow conscious mind is 40-50 bits and lazy but it can check things and bringing the unconscious mistake to conscious awareness it can correct it. The next thing to understand is about carl jung and the 4 ways the unconscious complex he called shadow deals with reality. The shadow is an unconscious complex that is defined as the repressed and suppressed aspects of the conscious self. there are constructive and destructive types of shadow. Carl jung emphasized the importance of being aware of shadow material and incorporating it into conscious awareness lest one project these attributes onto others. The human being deals with the reality of shadow in 4 ways. Denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation. Now I believe what is happening when a question that exposes a conflict in a belief, idea, something that someone said, or even about someone they idolize and the question gets avoided, that is the fast unconscious mind going into denial and the response is often a projection. This also can trigger and emotional response activating the amygdala more and the pre frontal cortex less where rational conscious thought is said to happen and the amygdala starts to get the body to flood itself with chemicals/hormones. Its like the fast mind knows conscious awareness will say its wrong. so it blocks it off to defend itself from admitting its wrong. in cases of denial and because it blocked off the rational mind, the responses are often irrational. Like personal attacks do not address the issue or answer the question. I think we can agree people have a very hard time now days admitting when they are wrong, I am not exempt from this myself I do realize. And we can see how badly questions avoidance effects us if you watch political meetings and watch them avoid questions all day long. Ok, so the first thing to go over is denial as that is the main one I expose with questions. A disowning or refusal to acknowledge something I think is a good definition for it here. There is a really good 2 minute video I use as an example of this. A streamer named vegan gains claiming lobsters have brains after some one said he can eat lobsters because they do not have brains. He googles it and starts to read what it says. When he gets to the part where is says neither insects nor lobsters have brains, he skips it and says they literally are insects then skips over that line and continues to read the rest. Just like in the fast thinking video, his fast mind already read that line and refused to acknowledge it in unconscious denial, and just skipped it. The person then tells him he skipped it and he reads it again and sees the line this time. Still being defensive of his claim and refusing to accept he was wrong, he tried to discredit the source and its the lobster institute of maine. If you would like to see the video for yourself its 2 minutes by destiny clips and the video is called " Destiny Reacts To Vegan Gains Ignoring Search Result That Contradicts Him". Justin turdo avoiding the question of how much his family was paid by the we charity 6 times in a row I think is denial as well. I think jordan peterson not being able to answer his own question of does he believe god exists and asking what do and you mean then saying no one knows what any of those words mean while being seemingly angry is think is another really good example of denial... and projection. And while JP find those words difficult, other people understand them easy. Even he does pretty much any other time they are used. So projection is next up. Psychological projection is a defense mechanism people subconsciously employ in order to cope with difficult feelings or emotions. Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings. Many times a mind in denial will use projections for responses. Someone getting mad and telling the other person to not interrupt when they have been doing that a lot themselves would be an example. I have done this myself. The people who tell me I dont understand my own questions and my point is wrong when they do not even know what the point is are all examples as well. I ask them to steel man my position to show then understand my point and they just avoid that question as well clearly showing they do not understand my point. Now we have integration and/or transmutation. Integration is when you bring an unconscious behavior into conscious awareness and accept it. I know that I interrupt people talking sometimes even though I think that is wrong to do. I have a conscious awareness of it, but I have not been able to completely change the behavior.... yet. That is where transmutation comes in. Transmutation is to completely change that unconscious behavior. From being impatient to being patient, of from distrust to trust, hate into understanding and love even. So was this understandable or confusing? if you understand it, do you think its possibly true? Do you have any questions? If you have any tips I am would gladly listen.
^^^ his *actually* percentages should be measure as: "of the 5% of people who actually bothered responding to my long ass copy pasta, 100% of atheists an agnostics gave me answers I liked, ~90% of the Christians and ~82% of the Muslims"
@@21stcenturyrambo16 >>Man I ain't reading all that shit"" I did not force anyone to. But why bother leaving a comment and exposing how intellectually lazy you are? Would it not have been better to just not read it and not say anything at all then? Why even bother saying you did not read it?
@@user-lv9gm3fe6j The percentages may be made up, but the degree of difference of responses is reasonably supported. People tend to avoid answering questions which make their position look bad. Try asking a believer when religious belief is not front and center in their mind the question "Is it moral to watch an atrocity (such as rape) that one could stop without harm to the victim or the perpetrator?" Most will agree that such is not moral. If one were to ask "Would you label an individual who just watches atrocities that they could stop - as being good?", most would say no. If the idea of God is brought up, then most believers will often make up excuses for either of the afore mentioned scenarios.
It's interesting that crash course philosophy and Peter Singer's video on moral realism seemed to define moral realism differently from you in this video. If I remember right they both defined moral realism as the position that moral facts exist in the world (not necessarily in a stance independent way) and tended to group both moral cultural relativism and moral objectivism under moral realism. I wonder if the difference in definitions represents some kind of significant disagreement within the philosophy community
They do. The differences are largely terminological, and most people in the field are aware that moral realism sometimes refers to the view that there are stance-independent moral facts, and sometimes that there are moral facts (with or without them being stance-independent). I suspect the former is increasingly popular, though sometimes people distinguish the former as "robust" moral realism. Some even include additional features in an increasingly robust degree of realism, such as an epistemic requirement that we know at least one of these moral facts.
Wow, so much articulate nonsense. Not seeing the forest for the trees, I suppose. IRL, literally no one is a moral relativist or subjectivist. Judge people by their ACTUAL actions, not what they say. Besides, morals are either objective/real or they are not at all. It's so sad to see smart people wasting their time like this.
@KRGruner Morals are real in the same way that humor is real. All things being equal, humans have a sense of humor, to what degree, and the specifics of what is humorous to any individual, varies wildly. It is nonsensical to say that there is some objective moral standard, in exactly the same way that it is nonsensical to say that there is some objective humor standard. It is literally impossible to not be relating your subjective view about either of those things, they are, by their nature, terms for something that we describe, by how we feel about them, and we place value judgements on them. While I might get all indignant and insist a certain topic just is not funny, reality cares not one iota, comedians who tell jokes about that topic exist, and JFC, of course, my husband happens to find such comedians god dammed hilarious. This is why headphones were invented, probably... Point is, every single person who just asserts this... out there in the universe, intrinsic property of objective morality, spectacularly fails to demonstrate it exists, or even adequately explain what the hell it could even mean to say it exists. Religious apologists love to claim there's some objective moral standard, and then refute this by elaborating that their god's choice of moral whatever is this thing. Demonstrating that once again it is impossible to discuss morality without a subjective reference, while also demonstrating that what counts as "moral" for some, is absolutely not for others. I am not alone in finding the acts that apologists defend and excuse, utterly reprehensible, and morally bankrupt.
@@Petticca That is literally an insane take on morals. Trying to justify, say, a view that killing 6 million Jews in gas chambers is just a personal preference because, you know, "humor is subjective," is absolutely bonkers. OF COURSE morality is objective! In fact, since the role of morality is to regulate human interactions, it HAS to be objective, otherwise it is completely USELESS. A rule is not a rule unless it applies to everyone. If you and I want to play a game, but you insist on making up or changing the rules based on your whims, we CANNOT play the game. This is completely obvious. So when you say that you find something is "morally reprehensible," in your worldview, that only means you feel something, nothing else, and so I can dismiss it as totally irrelevant. THINK! Don't just emote! If you want to know the basis for morality's objective status, ask yourself if life is preferable to death. That is all you need. That is the standard. And if you say that you prefer death, fine, but then prove it. Like now. You still alive? then you have your answer. Jesus, man, it ain't THAT hard!
1:29:13 I wonder if Dr. Lance is right that you don't stay in a philosophically indeterminate state about these low level philosophical questions indefinitely. I know that's been true for me about some philosophical issues, but for most of them it seems like I become more agnostic and more indeterminate about them the more I learn. For example watching this video and some recent conversations I've had have destroyed my faith that I can count on my internal non-evidential cognitive seemings about the intrinsic value of certain emotive states (or other similar things) to tell me that moral realism is true. And that's made me much more agnostic about moral realism. I think about a month ago my credences were something like 0.9 vs 0.1 for moral realism vs moral anti-realism but now my credences are something more like 0.55 vs 0.45
I think some people move in that direction or remain agnostic. However, if you look at the PhilPapers survey, you'll see that philosopher routinely give decisive answers towards various questions.
Anti-realists can think you did something wrong/bad! They just can’t think it’s stance-independently bad. And as for realists like me, we can think it’s stance-independently wrong/bad! (But I doubt that’s morally wrong in any case, lol)
@@navienslavement hm? I didn't delete your comments or hide them or hide your profile :) I do know that TH-cam tends to _strongly_ censor (remove, hide, hold, etc.) comments, so something may have happened with that. (Though I'm not sure what you're referring to!)
You! Yes, you. Check out the Majesty of Reason Discord server! Join here and chat with others about all things philosophy:
dsc.gg/majestyofreason
And be sure to check out the Majesty of Reason podcast! There are podcast versions of all my videos! Link:
open.spotify.com/show/4Nda5uNcGselvKphtKSKvH
Just tried to join the discord. I'm new to discord though I've managed to join a few others already, but this one is giving me problems. I think I joined, it put up the "welcome/just joined" post, but it won't let me do anything. Can't post. Can't reply, can't even do the r reactions for the "select roles" channel. Musta done something wrong....?
Okay... I figured it out. Apparently on the post that says "react to this post to join" you HAVE to react with the check mark reaction and not one of the many others presented.
When Lance brought up the quantum mechanics example I was thinking, "Man I feel like I've heard this before" and I remembered a particular comment on the discussion between Huemer and Loeb that I now realize was made by Dr. Lance Bush! To the point about ordinary language in everyday discussions, the linguist NJ Enfield has this book called "Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" which covers the anthropological reality of language use and, I believe, compliments the conclusions drawn here.
I should've waited 5 minutes to type all that out because Lance ended up referencing the argumentative theory of reasoning anyway lol
That book sounds interesting! I'll check it out.
@goclbert are you a theist if not a christian? Just curious
@@gg2008yayo I'm not a theist.
@lanceindependent hey lance! I remember already asking you, my question was meant for goclbert
Hi all. Happy to answer questions in the comments, so feel free to direct questions at me.
>>Hi all. Happy to answer questions in the comments, so feel free to direct questions at me.""
I am not the person to say that to LOL. I have to finish watching the video to ask questions about that but I have some simple moral questions I have been asking mainly an christian and muslim apologist and debate channels but I ask them to everyone, not just theists. Now atheists and agnostics can answer these questions nearly 100% of the time but christians respond with non answers 82%+ of the time and muslims 95%+ of the time. I would just LOVE to have your answers in a comment as another reference.
People of all kinds please state if your christian or muslim, atheists, agnostics or any combination of those and then if willing participate in the test. As well, looking for 5 good moral theist questions for atheists/agnostics.
#1 You see a child drowning in a shallow pool and notice a person just watching that is able to save the child with no risk to themselves but is not, is that persons non action moral?
#2 If you go to save the child, the man tells you to stop as he was told it was for the greater good, but he does not know what that is, do you continue to save the child?
#3 Is it an act of justice to punish innocent people for the crimes of others?
#4 If you were able to stop it and knew a person was about to grape a child would you stop it?
#5 Would you consider a parent who put their kids in a room with a poison fruit and told the kids not to eat it but then also put the best con artist in the room with the children knowing the con artist will get the kids to eat the fruit and the parent does nothing to stop it a good parent?
@@anti-colonialsunni8860 I agree that most people who talk about goodness or badness aren't speaking about modes of being or anything Platonistic, but I also don't think they're presupposing that certain things have value. To value something does not require or necessarily involve the presumption that the thing in question "has value." That's a reification of value, and I see no reason to suppose anyone thinks that way without good evidence that they do so.
@anti-colonialsunni8860 >> 1 Its immoral 2 save the child 3 yes it is""
You find it and act of justice to punish the innocent for the crimes of others? So if someone else murders someone, would you feel justice was done if you were punished for that and the criminal was allowed to go unpunished? It is an answer at least though.
>>4 yes 5 no, they are fools""
Good good, you are a rare muslim, you answered all 5. Thank you for your time and effort, you are in the answered column for muslims. Do you want the follow up questions? They are not easy like those were.
@@dominic6752 (1) The same way I think people already go about policy and law: I would do my best to implement policies and laws in accordance with my values. The precise content of those values would be a normative question, and not a metaethical one. Since that may not be a sufficient answer I'd be happy to try to elaborate on it, but I'm not quite sure how to do so.
(2) It's hard to give a definitive answer as to whether I "have moral intuitions." As I state in this video, I avoid the use of the term "intuition" in part because I think discussions about it are messy and underdeveloped. What I could say is this: on some construals of what a moral intuition is, I'd have them, on others, I wouldn't (and I might hold that nobody else does, either).
So to address any particular claim about whether I "have moral intuitions," you'd have to offer an account of what those are that's sufficiently clear for me to be able to judge whether I think I have them or not (it doesn't have to be perfectly clear or super sophisticated, just enough to evaluate).
// For instance, if you saw a baby being assaulted and then thrown in a lake, you would have no intuition about whether that is right or wrong? //
I'd immediately and without reservation regard the action to be awful, I would be outraged by whoever did that, and I'd try to stop them and rescue the baby. If all that is sufficient for a "moral intuition," then of course I have moral intuitions.
However, while I take your question to be perfectly fine, what I dislike about at least some other people asking if I have an "intuition" is that they'll leverage ambiguity and lack of specificity about what they're asking. I have moral judgments, attitudes, values, preferences, emotions, reactions, and so on. But if I say I have an "intuition," the person asking this may presume that I'm granting certain claims about how human psychology or phenomenology work, or that I am granting whatever epistemic status to my judgments that *they* think an "intuition" in particular has, all the while not actually getting clear on what an "intuition" is.
In other words, suppose "intuition" is just a stand in for some kind of mundane judgment. Well, I make moral judgments, so I have "moral intuitions" in that respect. But if an "intuition" is supposed to be some special kind of psychological state that has a certain kind of epistemic status, well, I may not grant that. Does that mean I don't have "moral intuitions"? If so, someone can then misleadingly imply that if I don't have moral intuitions *of that kind*, the kind with the special epistemic status, that I don't have moral judgments *at all*, and thus don't even think killing babies is bad. That wouldn't be true, and it would be a misleading exploitation of their own ambiguous phrasing that's being leveraged to imply that I must either agree with their philosophical views, or else I'm some kind of evil person who doesn't care if people kill babies. It's a false dichotomy, but philosophers do this sort of thing all the time, leveraging ambiguity and pragmatic implication to make opposition look stupid or evil.
So this word, "intuition," functions as a kind of ambiguity fulcrum analytic philosophers can exploit to either trip you up by trying to either (a) get you to commit to a bunch of their presuppositions, or (b) imply you're an evil jerk who doesn't care if people kill babies if you don't buy into their specific metaphysical presumptions, epistemic views, or approach to doing philosophy. I'm not a fan of these kinds of rhetorical traps. They almost always involve a "heads I win, tails you lose," approach, but unfortunately they're all too common in analytic philosophy.
For an example of why I advise caution in situations like these, see my remarks on normative entanglement (I discuss them in my dissertation, as well as several videos and blog posts). Happy to go into that and elaborate if the concerns I raise here don't make it clear why I am cautious about claims about moral "intuitions."
@anti-colonialsunni8860 >> on three I read that you said immoral instead of moral. That is an injustice as it is not giving someone their due as that punishment is not due for them in particular""
Ok, perfect.
The thing I like about Lance is that he is careful not to get caught up with the group think.
Sounds like an interesting conversation, excited to watch the whole thing :)
I love the Caesar drinking wine on his 21st birthday example!! That will stick with me.
Here's the original paper from Beebe that discusses this:
Beebe, J. (2015). The empirical study of folk metaethics. Etyka, 50, 11-28.
@@lanceindependent No pay wall! Awesome tyty!
Thanks guys! Great discussion. You both know I enjoy your videos. So it is very cool to have a video of you both chatting on this stuff together. Do it again sometime. Thanks again!
This was ridiculously juicy in the philosophical and scientific sense. Lance is awesome. It's amazing and intimidating (not necessarily in a bad sense) to learn how much work is needed in order to do proper experimental philosophy and scientific research in general about deep topics and interacting with all kinds of people and cultures.
Lance, my concern about studies that probe deeper into the question of metaethics, is that it confuses common people, by asking them something that might become more obscure the closer they look. Like if you ask, what is truth. Well it's whatever is true, or not false. Clarify that... People get confused when asked to provide answers for fundamental things that they perceive. When you start digging, then they're not so sure anymore. And since it's hard to stand by something you don't know how to explain, digging might have the result of making people anti realist as a safe answer to the question. It's hard to commit to a position(realism) that you become confused about through questioning. And a lot of times, the knowledge we have about things is more related to our application of them than it is about our metaphysical explanation of them. Have you thought about this concern?
Yea, I've considered these concerns and discuss something similar in my critiques of existing studies. So, I think your concerns are well-founded. In particular, when you say that people may choose antirealist responses because it's safer: I think that's often true, and one of the problems with these studies is that people may choose antirealist positions not because they are antirealists, but to hedge against expressing certainty or signaling a rigid or inflexible view.
Noncognitivist views may be especially appealing for this reason. If you can insist nobody's right or wrong at all, you can avoid having to take a strong stance one way or another. And if you're not sure what you're being asked, that might seem like the most reasonable way to respond.
"Foundational study on non-philosophers shows that most people are not philosophers"
Haha pretty much.
Cracking discussion and explanation of how research can be hard to interpret. One problem that I have as a "philosophical baby' is that I'm never really sure what people mean when they're discussing"morality". Are they talking about something that applies only to humans? This often seems to be the case as most ,if not all,other any mals , are not normally counted as being moral agents ,but then studies on our fellow primates for example seem to show that they possess some sense of "justice". And I assume that if we encountered an alien species with possibly greater intelligence, (whatever that means) than our own ,they would probably have some sort of moral codes , however different from our own. Maybe it's just me but as a "relatively untrained philosopher" I find it hard to see how to answer questions about moral realism, without knowing whether the term "moral" is being used just in a human sense. If so that would appear to me to be ruling out gods but I know that many would claim that objective morality for example comes from god or gods. Maybe I'm just in over my head.... Anyway, thanks, both.
I think the gastronomic anti realism is a good analogy and the arguments over pineapple on pizza are heated. I also think of arguments over sports. Who is the better player: Messi or Ronaldo? Henry or Bergkamp? I'm not sure there is a fact of the matter about who is the best footballer but it doesn't stop people from insisting the other side is factually wrong.
One interesting thing about those debates is that their objectivity decreases depending on the players being compared. For example, I am not as good at soccer as Messi, that's an objective fact. When we're comparing two really good players, however, the question suddenly becomes harder to answer definitively, and therefore more "subjective".
Let's be real though, Messi is obviously better than Penaldo. No debate to be had.
Messi > Ronaldo, Henry > Bergkamp
@@MajestyofReason absolutely, factually, stance-independently correct!
@@piousphilosophy7538 I think the issue is one step deeper. The idea of what makes a great player is stance-dependent. If your idea of a great player is an overweight, 40 year old with a weak left foot and no right foot, no endurance, and a top sprint speed of 10 mph, I am the best player in the world. 😅
When discussing best players, it always seems to focus on forwards as people value goals and assists. How valuable was Buffon during that time for Juve though? Did he save more goals than Messi or Ronaldo accounted for? I don't think there is a stance independent fact of the matter of what makes a good player and what makes player X better than Y.
All that said you are right. Messi is the 🐐
@@MajestyofReasonhe settled it 😳😳😳
Firstly, I have to admit that I slept through most of that. But I think I caught the gist of it. Not your fault, BTW; I have serious sleep problems. What i did managed to watch of the conversation was extremely interesting.
Anyhow.....
I think people often conflate proscriptive morality with empathetic motivations. This may be partly because there can be a lot of overlap, but for most people there are elements of both within their psychic toolbox so specific moral questions may trigger responses from different motivators.
Most proscriptive rules are handed down to us by society. Some can be argued to be merely restatements of an objective or logical reality. Others might be justifiable only by deference to authority. These rules are societal in nature and analyzing them could lead someone toward moral anti-realism.
Empathetic moral decisions are more internal. I've heard it said that sociopathy (loosely defined as the tendency to "other" people) is not a definitive flaw but rather a sliding scale such that most people have some small degree of it, but to avoid overcomplicating the issue I'd like to assume that it isn't relevant here. Without that complication empathetic morality can be seen as an expression of something innate and internal. The moral rules it provides seem universal and lead one towards moral realism.
Philosophical thinkers who have spent time considering morality have usually done the necessary mental work to break down the cognitive dissonance of these two competing motivators. The common folk likely have not, so they will occasionally respond inconsistently.
You mention a sort of performative tolerance that could be embedded in answers that skew conclusions given their performative rather than factual content.
I'll note that this is a huge issue in political polls - some studies that ask political questions that have real-world factual components get asked in one group and in the other group they get asked where there is a financial reward for answering the factual parts accurately. You find that absent this incentive answers skew toward the "political" answer rather than the "factual" answer suggesting that people often answer political questions "to make a point" rather than to answer factually about the world or their beliefs.
Joe, can you do a video with Michael Heumer talking about his argument for reincarnation and a soul. He is an atheist to my knowledge. Id want to see your objections to his arguments.
1:47:00 Analogy Scope Conflation
Lance and Joe, thank you both for this dialogue. It was a delight to watch and I feel edified by having done so.
I'd like to make a somewhat lengthy point about the use of language by subject matter experts and lay 'folk', regardless of the field.
Technical Jargon, particularly the reuse of ordinary words from a common language into Terms of Art for an academic discipline, is tremendously confusing on both sides of a usage event. There is an implicit assumption of people using a word in the method they regularly encounter its use is the primary definition of a word of phrase... this is, as a jargonous term of art, Straight-up Bonkers.
Words have meaning in context and navigating the divide between a subject matter expert and a non-expert is a skill most subject matter experts fail to fully comprehend. Writing questions for surveys becomes an onerous task precisely because the people doing it assume they understand how the language they use will be understood, for they already have the education to use the jargon. It is the same difficulty attempting to understand an idiom from a dead and forgotten language might confer. There is exists a discontinuity in the usage that seems to function, because people routinely assume they understand which definition of a word is being used unless it leads to tremendous confusion, but which routinely goes unnoticed. When one side of a communication is utterly unaware that a term has more definitions, they lack totally the ability to discern which meaning is intended.
Deciding on meanings of ambiguity in communication is a fundamental skill of language use and people posses differing ability to conduct it well. The ability to actually communicate is predicated on already sharing enough language to make likely assumptions about what the other person is attempting to say. The continual evolution of language, which can happen at an astonishingly rapid pace in new academic fields, can leave non-experts at a total loss in understanding... even if they believe that they DO understand.
To possibly illustrate a point and given the reference to Quantum Mechanics... what do the words: Oberserver, Event, or Action mean? What does a philosopher think they mean vs a physicist vs an elementary art school teacher vs someone in another country?
I find a lot to agree with there. In my own work, I have increasingly emphasized how philosophers move seamlessly between ordinary and technical uses of terms, and often exploit the conflation between the two for various rhetorical purposes, seemingly without even realizing it. I suspect that a philosophical focus on supposedly isolated semantic considerations, to the exclusion of pragmatic implications, has led to a pathological insensitivity to the role pragmatics plays in ordinary language, and that philosophers routinely fail to recognize this. As a result, they leverage arguments that they mistakenly take to have force on legitimate philosophical grounds, when what they're really doing is taking advantage of the pragmatic implications associated with ordinary uses of various ostensibly technical instances of various terms or phrases to illegitimately make their opposition look stupid or silly.
@@lanceindependent Yep. I find the equivocation between Technical Jargon and Dictionary Definition somewhat infuriating. It feels profoundly predatory upon my good and decent Charity of Interpretation for Academic Writing, even if it is unintended.
Why have editors and peer-review if I need to be extremely critical on an initial, cursory reading of any given published journal paper to ensure I'm understanding the actual argument by carefully considering the use of a word each time it occurs? Ohh right, publish or perish, citation count, and 'prestige'... yuck.
Rhetoricians and their making the weaker argument the stronger, amirite?
Thanks for the reply and the video. I really did enjoy the many insights you and Joe shared. Keep up the good work!
Dylan, Pentangle, Fairport Convention - these are the Folk.
Im just leaving this here
Argument for Moral Anti-Realism
1. Objective moral facts or properties are either external and independent of subjective human perspectives or not.
2. If objective moral facts or properties are external and independent, they are not reducible to or identical with physical events
3. If objective moral facts or properties are not reducible to or identical with physical events, they would require an ontological status beyond the physical realm.
4. Everything that exists is ultimately physical in nature (physicalism)
5. If objective moral facts or properties exist and are not reducible to the physical, physicalism is false.
6. Objective moral facts or properties are incompatible with physicalism
7. Objective moral facts or properties would require a non-physical realm, akin to a form of moral Platonism.
8. Moral Platonism, as a non-physical and abstract realm, contradicts physicalism
9. If objective moral facts or properties are external and independent entities, then their interaction with the physical world seems be inexplicable
10. The inexplicability of the interaction between objective moral facts or properties on the natural world makes them incoherent.
Argument from Pyrrhonian Moral Skepticism
1.Objective moral truths are sui generis moral facts or properties that exist independently of humans, independent of beliefs, opinions, or cultural norms.
2.If objective moral truths exist, they can be established to exist independently of human's mental states.
3.Epistemological challenges, when applied to the context of moral truths, suggest that no reliable method exists to conclusively establish objective moral truths independently of human perspectives. Intuitions, as one potential method, are not sacrosanct or necessarily truth apt.
4.Human mental states are physical events.(viz. functionalism and nominalism)
5.The Problem of the Criterion, when applied to the Münchhausen Trilemma, makes it impossible to establish ontological objective moral facts or properties via epistemological means.
6.Therefore, claiming ontological objective moral facts or properties exist commits a special pleading fallacy.
OR
Argument For Naturalistic Moral Realism
1. Necessitarianism posits that all existing entities and properties are necessarily the way they are and cannot be otherwise. (per definition)
2. Objective moral facts or properties exist independently of subjective perspectives (per definition).
3. If moral facts or properties exist, they do so necessarily, being grounded in the fabric of reality (by p1).
4. Mental states are physical events (viz functionalism)
5. Physicalism is true (assumption).
6. Under physicalism, the object/subject distinction dissolves.
7. If moral judgments are emergent from physical processes within the brain, they are intrinsically tied to the physical world.
8. If moral facts or properties are reducible to the physical, they are an inherent aspect of the universe's physical nature.
9. Therefore, moral facts or properties, being integral to the physical fabric of the universe, exist necessarily (by p3 and p8).
10. As moral facts must align with necessitarianism (by p2), they are anchored in the fundamental nature of reality.
11. By virtue of their necessary existence, objective moral facts provide a foundational framework for ethical discussions.
12. In conclusion, within a physicalist framework, objective moral facts or properties exist as necessary components of the universe's fabric, enriching our understanding of ethics and underpinning moral realism.
Moral naturalists and natural law theorists would reject (2). Moral naturalists identify moral facts as certain physical properties the same way certain mental properties are identified as brain properties. Natural law theorists hold to teleological realism, so ground moral facts in teleological facts of physical human nature. (5) Depends heavily on one's definition of physicalism. There are versions of physicalism that incorporate supervenience so irreducible moral facts are consistent with this kind of physicalism. If you rule this out in your version of physicalism then that needs to be made clear in the premise, but then you have to argue for why one should accept reductive physicalism over non-reductive physicalism.
@@Insane_ForJesus I gave three arguments, maybe you could have been a bit more specific. I will assume you are referring to the first argument which states that "if objective moral facts or properties are external and independent, they are not reducible to or identical with physical events. " Are you arguing that objective moral facts are external, independent and identical to physical properties/events, and thus reducible? Even if they were identical, they would still have to be external and independent to be objective. My definition of physicalism dissolves the distinction. This is highlighted in my argument For Naturalistic Moral Realism. Physicalism denying supervenience would maintain that abstract objects and mental states are essentially reducible to physical events, intricately connected to and dependent on physical properties alone.
Argument 1: The Incoherence of Irreducible Moral Facts
1. If moral facts are irreducible, they must exist independently of physical properties.
2. If moral facts exist independently of physical properties, they cannot be explained in physicalist terms.
3. Therefore, moral facts are not irreducible.
The view where moral facts are a type of weak emergence that arise from nature but are irreducible fails to explain the ontological nature of moral properties. If moral facts were irreducible, they would need to exist independently of physical properties which lacks sufficient justification.
Supervenience is the claim that there can be no change in moral properties without a corresponding change in physical properties. However, supervenience alone does not explain how this correlation occurs.
Argument 2: Supervenience Fails to Address the Explanatory Gap
1. If moral properties supervene on physical properties, then there must be a clear explanation for how and why this supervenience occurs.
2. A physicalist view, incorporating supervenience, fails to provide an adequate explanation for the supervenience of moral properties.
3. Therefore, the physicalist view is insufficient in explaining the ontological relationship between moral and physical properties.
Defense of P2.
Moral facts prescribe certain actions as right or wrong, without being reducible to descriptive or physical facts. If objective moral facts are reducible to the physical, then they would lose their normative and prescriptive nature, becoming nothing more than descriptive facts about the physical world.
Therefore, objective moral facts or properties, if they exist and are external and independent, cannot be fully explained or reduced to physical events, supporting the defense of Premise 2 in the argument for moral anti-realism.
Premise 1: If moral facts are identical to physical events, then reductive physicalism should be favored over non-reductive physicalism.
Premise 2: If moral facts are distinct from physical events, then non-reductive physicalism would gain stronger support.
Premise 3: Moral facts are identical with physical events is more plausible.
Conclusion: Therefore, reductive physicalism is more justified than non-reductive physicalism when considering moral facts.
Functionalism provides a more robust explanation for the relationship between mental properties and physical properties compared to other theories like substance dualism or identity theory. It suggests that mental properties are not reducible to any specific physical properties but are instead defined by the functions they perform in the physical system.
@@CMVMic Functionalism doesn't sound more robust than identity theory since functionalism equates _having_ a functional role with _being_ a function role. It seems to just collapse into identity theory on close examination and discussion of language.
@@Insane_ForJesus i dont think so. You seem to be conflating being, with becoming. A function is not a thing in itself, it is a dynamic process. Substances have being, not events. Events are the labels we use to describe change, it describes what a substance does, not what a substance is. Functionalism combined with nominalism seems to avoid the identity theory. The being of a mental state is defined by a function, not by its physical nature.
From what i understand moral realism only entails the view that at least one moral claim is objectively true. In that case could people not quite easily be wrongfully found to be moral realists in the questionaires you were talking about? Since the moral issue they think is objectively true might not even be part of it. Or is moral realism more of a sliding scale?
objective morality is like Quantum particles - Without thinking about it, it seems obviously real - but the closer you look at it the less real it seems.
I had similar reservations when I saw Joshua Knobe's results for the lay person's idea of "the true self". Did they get the results they did because people already held such beliefs? Or because the survey worked to prompt such responses?
Josh Knobe and I discussed spontaneous theorizing in one of my recent videos, so you could actually see how Dr. Knobe reacted to this particular possibility.
@@lanceindependent Cool! I'll have a look.
What if you asked whether one of the answers accurately described your position before you took the test?
It's a good idea. It has serious limitations though. People may affirm that they held a position prior to participating in a study because they really did hold such a view, but they mistakenly think they held a view when they don't, or may be responsive to social considerations, like a desire to look competent or well-informed, or to tell researchers something they think the researcher wants to hear (demand characteristics). It's hard to be sure whether such reports accurately reflect prior belief. It's still worth measuring in spite of these limitations, and I should have done something like that regarding metaethics. I *did* ask people a question like this for a study on quantum mechanics and the results were pretty interesting, so it's definitely something that I've considered. Unfortunately, not soon enough to include in studies that had been conducted earlier.
I might've missed it but does Lance Bush have any book recommendations if one wants to learn more about experimental philosophy but to also see the objections/criticisms that is launched at it?
One book that seems promising is: Moral Psychology by Valerie Tiberius, published by Routledge.
I didn't recommend any particular books. I haven't kept up to date on general Xphi books, so I am not sure I have any good, up-to-date recommendations. Are you looking for something more specific to metaethics, or to Xphi in general?
@@lanceindependent Yeah, I am looking for recommendations that go more in-depth on experimental philosophy but also on its application towards metaethics.
@@tuav A few options:
(1) There are three books I know of on this topic:
Polzler:
"Moral Reality and the Empirical Sciences (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory)"
"A Philosophical Perspective on Folk Moral Objectivism: A Philosophical Perspective (Advances in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology)"
Wright:
"A Psychological Perspective on Folk Moral Objectivism (Advances in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology)"
(2) If you are interested in my approach, you could read my dissertation. It's not (yet) a book, but chapters two and three go into a methodological critique of existing studies. The remaining chapters present a series of empirical studies that support the overall thesis. I offer some general comments on methods and the future of this research at the end.
(3) This book might not seem, from the title, to be relevant: "Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory) "
However, Part 1 is a "methods and foundations" section and has chapters from Zijlstra and Polzler, both discussing metaethics. The book, overall, looks really cool.
Hi Lance, thanks for all you do philosophy-wise. I’m wondering if you’d say anything more/differently in your debate w Eric Sampson now that you’ve had time to reflect on it? Has your position changed/been updated at all, or is there any new argument(s) you’d put to him?
(I already posted this in reply to your comment on here, but thought it might be seen easier this way. If you’ve already responded please disregard)
I'll just repost what I said there here: Ha! I was just thinking about that the past couple of days. Someone recently had a look at that conversation and said that Eric Sampson "smoked" me in that exchange. I don't think that's true, but I do think I could have done a lot better both to raise my own concerns and to respond effectively to Sampson's remarks.
My position has not changed in any substantial way that I can think of. I've changed some of the way I frame things, and have streamlined the way I talk about certain topics. But I maintain that there are no good arguments for moral realism and that the form of moral realism Sampson and others endorse is probably not intelligible.
I think in the past year I have learned a lot, and have become more accustomed to live discussions of this sort, and I think my overall engagement with moral realists has improved. I think, for instance, that I'd have probably had better and more careful responses, would think on my feet a little better, and would be a bit more prepared for the sorts of points that were raised.
I would have to go through that particular discussion to identify more concrete and specific points I could have improved on. That might be worth doing but it's hard to think of anything in particular about a conversation that took place over a year ago. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or anything of the sort, I'd definitely be interested.
@@lanceindependent
Argument for Moral Anti-Realism
1. Objective moral facts or properties are posited to be external and independent of subjective human perspectives.
2. If objective moral facts or properties are external and independent, they cannot be reducible to or identical with physical events intrinsic to the nature of physical substances.
3. If objective moral facts or properties are not reducible to physical events, they would require an ontological status beyond the physical realm.
4. Physicalism posits that everything that exists is ultimately physical in nature, and there are no non-physical entities or substances.
5. If objective moral facts or properties exist and are not reducible to the physical, physicalism would be false.
6. The coherence of objective moral facts or properties, therefore, raises questions about the compatibility with physicalism, which is a well-supported and widely accepted ontological position.
7. The existence of objective moral facts or properties would require a non-physical realm, akin to a form of moral Platonism.
8. Moral Platonism, as a non-physical and abstract realm, may not be coherent with our current understanding of the natural world and the physical basis of reality.
9. The assumption of objective moral facts or properties as external and independent entities raises challenges regarding their interaction with the physical world and how they can impact human actions and moral judgments.
10. Therefore, the coherence of objective moral facts or properties becomes questionable if we consider the implications it has on our ontological commitments, such as physicalism and our understanding of the natural world.
Argument from Pyrrhonian Moral Skepticism
1.Objective moral truths are sui generis moral facts or properties that exist independently of humans, independent of beliefs, opinions, or cultural norms.
2.If objective moral truths exist, they can be established to exist independently of human's mental states.
3.Epistemological challenges, when applied to the context of moral truths, suggest that no reliable method exists to conclusively establish objective moral truths independently of human perspectives. Intuitions, as one potential method, are not sacrosanct or necessarily truth apt.
4.Human mental states are physical events.(viz. functionalism and nominalism)
5.The Problem of the Criterion, when applied to the Münchhausen Trilemma, makes it impossible to establish ontological objective moral facts or properties via epistemological means.
6.Therefore, claiming ontological objective moral facts or properties exist commits a special pleading fallacy.
OR
Argument For Naturalistic Moral Realism
1. Necessitarianism posits that all existing entities and properties are necessarily the way they are and cannot be otherwise. (per definition)
2. Objective moral facts or properties exist independently of subjective perspectives (per definition).
3. If moral facts or properties exist, they do so necessarily, being grounded in the fabric of reality (by p1).
4. Mental states are physical events (viz functionalism)
5. Physicalism is true (assumption).
6. Under physicalism, the object/subject distinction dissolves.
7. If moral judgments are emergent from physical processes within the brain, they are intrinsically tied to the physical world.
8. If moral facts or properties are reducible to the physical, they are an inherent aspect of the universe's physical nature.
9. Therefore, moral facts or properties, being integral to the physical fabric of the universe, exist necessarily (by p3 and p8).
10. As moral facts must align with necessitarianism (by p2), they are anchored in the fundamental nature of reality.
11. By virtue of their necessary existence, objective moral facts provide a foundational framework for ethical discussions.
12. In conclusion, within a physicalist framework, objective moral facts or properties exist as necessary components of the universe's fabric, enriching our understanding of ethics and underpinning moral realism.
Maybe contingent upon "Schrödinger's Categories" being such a cool & catchy title? 🐱👍
For both Lance and Joe:
I hadn't thought of it before this but why is Divine Command Theory not a version on noncognativism? I assume this is addressed somewhere (perhaps the commands being grounded in God's nature which is The Good differentiates it).
I have thought about whether DCT is best regarded as a form of moral realism or antirealism, but I've never seen anyone suggest it's a form of noncognitivism. I typically take it to treat moral claims as propositional.
@@lanceindependent yeah, I agree that DCT is compatible with anti realism. I was mainly reacting to you saying some forms of noncognativism take moral statements to be commands.
Forgive me for being a dumbass here, but given how much time is spent on the very many problems with asking questions in the format of
'This person takes this stance and this person takes this stance. Could they both be right?'
Why ask questions in this way?
Considering that language was discussed as integral to this whole endeavor, it seems bonkers to me that the questions would be asked this way.
I don't understand why the questions aren't asking specifically for the participant's idea on what morals/ ethics are...
What their view on the nature/origin/ understanding of morality is.
Do they hold the view that there are some things that are always /never moral? What and why?
Is their morality or any particular moral stance something that they have spent time thinking about regarding the reasoning or rationale they have for it...
Have they ever held moral views that were different to those they hold now Etc...
It seems unnecessarily self-defeating to not actually ask the questions that you want to learn the answers to.
Other questions can be asked to determine the participant's psychology regarding how they feel about a particular issue and how their ideas/responses might or might not change based on what they believe majority response is, or whatever...
I feel as though in trying to create a study to determine what us normies think rather than philosophers, there is unnecessary dumbing down in what is being asked, or rather, the way it is being asked.
Given how many problems I think the disagreement paradigm has, I don't think we should be using it. However, it's difficult to come up with alternative questions or ways of assessing how people think about moral realism or antirealism that don't have significant problems of their own.
"Epistemic Humility" +1
-straight ethical, af, yo.
But, now..... I really need to see Joe start introducing his "controversial stances on things" AS a job, rather than suppressing them in anticipation of potential future vocation-compromise.
- depending on what they are. (lol. jk. bein' silly. I'm takin notes, and enjoying the show. Exactly as is. Have thoughts, and helpful insight, relative to Love of Sophia, but am still in scanning, rather; epistemic humility - mode, & will continue assessing and appraising the scaffolding we're using.
So glad al gore's blessed rhythm favored providence, in this case, accordingly.
Pleased as Π 2b here,
Timaeus, The Trouble Maker
Lance's sound is usually better than this... What happened ?
You know, you're right. I wonder if this was recording from my webcam mic instead of my actual mic.
I have a question for u Joe: how do I know if I'm ready to publish actual papers in a subfield within philosophy??? 😅 How do I know that I have sufficient/adequate understanding of the subject, given I don't have anyone to guide me??
I've never understood moral realism. In what sense could some moral stance be objectively true, in abstract, and how could anyone discover objective moral truths in the first place?
Imagining yourself in a situation and feeling the goodness or badness of it.
Alternatively by building a larger particle collider.
@@MrCmon113 Can't tell if you're serious but I feel like using yourself as the yardstick for morality is a pretty antirealist perspective?
Would this also for scientific realism? How could someone discover objective "truths" about anything in the first place? In particular, how could they know/be confident that what they observe is objectively "true"
@@thinkingchristian Depends on how goofy you want to get with sollipsism, right? I've made peace with the idea that I can't prove I'm _not_ a brain in a vat and moved on from that because I'd rather ponder the substance of my apparent reality than wonder if everything is illusory.
So I guess I'm kind of cheating but, for my purposes, scientific/material "objective truths" are defined, provisionally, in terms of things like consistency or their predictive/explanatory power in the pursuit of useful models for "reality."
@thinkingchristian I think with science, reality exists independent of your opinion, and you get facts that you can't simply ignore while adhering to the scientific method. You can't truly verify it, but it's absurd to not assume reality is real.
With morality, there is nothing you have to assume to be moral to avoid absurdity; any axiom will work, even if they might lead to drastically different moral systems.
You guys are saying 'compounds', right? It's plausibly confounds to my ears, coming from confounding factors. Also matches how you defined it.
"Confounds."
@@lanceindependent Ah great, thanks!
What do you think about transcendental argument?
Obviously, goodness is just preferences. While there are some preferences that are pretty much universal, like LIFE and HEALTH, the other ones are more optional than that. It's important to look at this as a spectrum or a gradient rather than a binary ON or OFF switch.
This is the common sense view.
Love me some Lance!
has Dr. Bush asked if they are into Comics, if he asks about Multiverse Questions? :D Both DC and Marvel have Multiverses...
I didn't ask.
why's he look like tom holland .. does he ever take off his eye glasses
A big problem might be that the people who are deep into experimental philosophy, moral anti-realism, or in general analytic philosophy - tend to be of such personality types that they are pretty unlikely to have a non-superficial conversation with like a typical sports-watching normie person and actually effectively gauge whether they are a realist or an anti-realist. If they did more of that they would maybe have new ideas about which confounds to check for /focus on, which are the ones that tend to repeat most often about this issue when you talk with such people about which answer they gave and why.
For example, when asking people a theoretical question of realism vs relativism (vs nihilism) people often think of various issue where they think disagreement is legitimate (or indeterminate), and you have to remind them to think about whether they think there are *any* issues on which there is a realist answer like eg a situation of someone planting evidence to blame an innocent person get them convicted for a crime, or like the holocaust, at least some issue, regardless of whether there are many other issues people morally disagree about where one might not think there's an objective answer; and with that clarification suddenly lots of alleged relativists change their answer, and say something ah ok thats what you mean, yeah I do think there's at least some things like that that are morally objective.
Another big one is people not being explained the difference between normative relativism and descriptive relativism. So when asked a specific moral question and what they think about if there is a yes or no answer to that question and how - they are given and explained moral realism, relativism and nihilism as options, they often get the idea to try and answer the question in a kinda 'third person' manner and choose the relativism answer because they're thinking well obviously individuals and societies disagree on this issue, so I need to chose relativism, I do think there's an objective answer to this question, but I can't choose realism because obviously not everyone agrees with me on this. When explained this (and maybe additional certain points similar to it, like that people having emotions about something doesn't necessarily mean emotivist noncog /nihilism) the alleged relativists and nihilists change their answer to realism.
The Polzler study had these kinds of huge faults. For example, in a question about what is their theoretical view, around 30% of people choose realism, but then on the the question about what if two people are disagreeing is there an objective answer about who of the two of them is right only one third of those realists say yes. There was 12% of theistic realists, and only half of them answer yes to the disagreement question? We would expect some inconsistency, but half? Obviously some big faults are present, and people are not being explained things. If you have a bunch of theists who are theistic moral objectivists and ask them to give some issue they have a moral view about which they think is morally objective, for example they are pro-life, and then you ask them if two people are disagreeing about abortion one is pro-life and one pro-choice, is there an objective answer about who of these two people is correct, what answer you think you will get? That only half of these theists will say yes? Of course not. It will be close to 100%. Because they would understand what is asked.
Another huge tell that this is a very faulty study is that they asked people to consider the question of whether is it right or wrong to deliberately racially discriminate against someone, and whether there is an objective, subjective, or no actual answer to the question - only 2% of people chose the realist option. Really, only 2% think that deliberate racism can be objectively said to be right or wrong? What is incomparably much more likely to be happening there is that people are asked the questions in a bad way. They are asked about the view "Consciously discriminating against someone, by not hiring them for a job they are clearly qualified for, just because of their race is not wrong." and asked to categorize that view under moral realism (encompassing secular and theistic realism), moral relativism (encompassing subjectivism and cultural relativism), and moral nihilism (encompassing error theory and noncog), and what they are doing is categorizing it (overwhelmingly) into subjectivism. Why are they doing this? Because they are trying to give a 'third person' answer, and not having the difference between normative and descriptive relativism in mind, or they are saying this person who supports racism like this is just having a subjectivist view. It's certainly not the case that only 2% holds a realist view about that racist position. And it is mind-boggling that academic nerds are asking people to disregards their lived experience to this amount, it would be okay if a lot of us has this anecdotal experience that most people are moral realists and then these experimenters come with some numbers and say well this data nuances that it's not actually the vast majority its more like two thirds or maybe as low as half, but to come publicly with the "data" that only 2% are moral realists about deliberate racism just shows how much these experiments don't know what they're doing.
As someone who has majored philosophy and who has been in may social settings (young, old, left-leaning right-leaning, Christian, Muslim, Atheists, various subcultural, music, political, sports circles, etc) there would be talk about philosophy often spurred on by me mentioning my college studies, and I would talk to people about these issued I mentioned in the comment. My experience, like that of most people who voice their view on this, is that the vast majority of people are moral realists, especially when explained certain things further. And some guy who says he has no moral intuitions or intuitions of any kinds comes along and wants to tell me I should just believe some study that says actually only 2% of people are moral realist. Nonsense.
But being that I find this topic very interesting, inspired by this video I decided to go around the internet and make several polls, I had one in an (multi-ethnic) educational community I am in, people around the world in it, one in a group of fans of a leftist TH-camr who explicitly promotes moral subjectivism and rejects moral realism, also a multi-ethnic group, one in a group whose members are mostly North Americans and North Europeans who are interested in urban development and economics, and one in an atheism vs theism debate group. I quoted the view about racism from the study, and asked people to vote for moral realism, relativism, or nihilism, after reading the explanations, where I explained the three positions, and explained these nuances I mention in this comment, to avoid those confounds. The results? All around more than 80% to more than 90% of people are choosing the realist option.
So am I crazy, am I living in a simulation, such that I with my Balkan lived experience with the very diverse people I talked to about this - have always encountered people who are in their vast majority moral realists, and by some fluke of coincidence, all the people answering my polls around the internet are also moral realists in their vast majority, and actually this weird study is correct that only 2% of people are moral realists about explicit racism? Or is it the case that the weird (not as an acronym) people from academia are not really good at gauging what the typical lay people think?
YAY
I never knew a moral realist to say that it's "common sense"
In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on moral realism, Sayre-McCord says, "By all accounts, moral realism can fairly claim to have common sense and initial appearances on its side."
The claim that moral realism is "common sense" is very common among moral realists.
Michael Huemer says, "Most philosophers agree that moral realism is the common sense view" on his blog, Fake Noûs. Philosophers don't just state that they regard it as a commonsense view, but that it is generally regarded as a commonsense view.
@@lanceindependent
That's crazy! I always see philosophers say that moral relativism is the default view for people who haven't thought of morality very deeply.
The conversation of "morality isn't- 'I like or I don't like' appears to be the text book first lesson.
Moral Realism requires so much groundwork, that the "refutation" of "it's not common sense!" just makes me shrug and go "well yeah I know" and I'm left totally unsatisfied.
For moral realism you need this groundwork of what constitutes currency in a moral discussion, the idea that things objectively harm or help us in the universe. outlining what 'flourishing' even means. and the idea that every science requires axiomatic assumptions to work. It's hard to imagine that as common sense.
Any philosopher who says that has got to mean it hyperbolically or something.
@@CorndogMaker I don't think they mean it hyperbolically. I think they mean it literally. And even antirealists often agree with realists. In fact, realists are often so confident that most people are realists they'll title papers in ways that imply all of their readers are moral realists, even if they don't realize it.
@@lanceindependent With all of the work they do in speech act theory, which is some pretty heavy stuff, as a way of grounding moral duties objectively- the rebuttal of "it's not common sense tho" doesn't touch any of those arguments.
@MajestyofReason, are you a determinist?
So there is now something called “Experimental Philosophy” that had nothing to do with Philosophy, but consists mostly of surveying non-philosophers regarding their stances on Philosophical subjects? I guess we need a new word for this field that means something like the love of opinions.
Experimental philosophy has been around for a while and it doesn't involve just conducting surveys.
@@lanceindependent In that case, the Wikipedia entry needs some work. But more to the point, there are fields that could more appropriately be called experimental philosophy than anything like what is described in this presentation. The foremost already has a name though, Physics.
@@sayrebonifield4663 I don't know what's in the Wikipedia entry. Maybe it could use some work.
I see philosophy and the sciences as continuous in their methods and aspirations, and don't really care much for sharp disciplinary divisions. There's certainly going to be work at the intersection of philosophy and physics, and the same holds for the other sciences as well, hence why philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics, biology, etc. is a thing.
I take these areas of specialization to have different aims than experimental philosophy. Experimental philosophy has no unified set of aims, but much of it is directed at methodological and metaphilosophical questions about the nature and status of philosophical intuitions. For instance, much of it is directed at whether intuitions are reliable and whether philosophers have expertise of any distinctive kind. Some of it is directed at assessing claims philosophers often make about how ordinary people think, e.g., whether they believe in free will or moral realism. There are a handful of other projects and aims as well. But I don't think physics would cover most of these projects.
Experimental Philosophy: Doing poorly worded surveys to eschew doing philosophy.
Those engaged in experimental philosophy don't tend to eschew doing philosophy; in fact, usually they're quite good philosophers themselves!
(1) Most of my work in experimental philosophy consists of critiquing other people's methods, including survey wording. I even have an entire paper that pretty much exclusively discusses this problem:
Bush, L. S., & Moss, D. (2020). Misunderstanding metaethics: Difficulties measuring folk objectivism and relativism.
Thus, I am very sympathetic to the kind of critical stance you take here. However, I don't think the problem is that people conduct surveys to avoid doing philosophy.
(2) Many papers that incorporate empirical findings and would be considered experimental philosophy also include significant non-empirical work as well
(3) I've seen no indication that those who conduct studies do so to eschew philosophy. First, proponents of experimental philosophy (myself included) would argue that doing studies *is* doing philosophy, and that philosophy is not necessarily non-empirical. I am, after all, *also* an empiricist, and I would reject any characterization of philosophy that maintains that it isn't empirical or doesn't employ empirical methods.
(4) Related to (2), one might reverse the charge and argue that many philosophers make empirical claims but eschew conducting studies. In many cases, philosophers make substantive empirical claims (e.g., claims about how most people speak or think) without doing any empirical work to support such claims. I may agree that many studies in experimental philosophy significant methodological problems, but armchair theorizing or extrapolating from how one thinks to how everyone else thinks is even worse than doing a survey. At least someone conducting a survey is attempting to do more than rely on anecdote and speculation.
(5) Many of the people who conduct studies in experimental philosophy do substantive non-empirical philosophical work as well.
Given these considerations, I don't think your suggestion that people conduct surveys to avoid doing philosophy is very likely. However, I do think the reverse is often true: that philosophers who make claims that would be best addressed empirically eschew employing empirical methods.
I think the obstinacy of many philosophers to engage with or conduct empirical research even when it is relevant to their claims is a much bigger problem for those who don't do experimental philosophy than the use of surveys to avoid doing philosophy (which I don't think is much of a problem at all).
@@lanceindependent Thanks!
@@MajestyofReason I was shit posting; I didn't see that Bush was planning on reading and responding to comments. My bad. I certainly don't think the goal of people in x-phi is to avoid doing philosophy nor do I want to deny their skills as philosophers, whatever those may be. Tho it is the case that I do not think surveys given to undergraduates are good philosophical tools. Even if they are carefully worded, which in practice, they rarely are.
These aren't the only empirical tools available to philosophers though.
@@lanceindependent My comment was mostly tongue in cheek, and I did not expect it to be read tbh. So as I told MR, I don't think that people in x-phi are aiming to avoid doing philosophy. Since you gave a serious answer, my sincere feeling on x-phi is that I find surveys, even well-worded ones (tho in practice they rarely are) to be poor philosophical tools. To your point (4) for what it is worth, I think you're right. I think that philosophers working in morality ought to consider and seriously engage with social and cultural anthropology, certain areas of sociology, psychology, and psychoanalysis. So I am certainly not advocating the avoidance of empirical study.
It baffles me that any fellow naturalist can believe in moral realism. You have to ignore all the available data.
I have some simple moral questions that atheists and agnostics can answer nearly 100% of the time with ease. Christians respond with non answers 82%+ of the time and muslims 95%+ of the time. I hope you will see why once you see the questions. I will leave a comment after this with my explanation on why this happens.
People of all kinds please state if your christian or muslim, atheists, agnostics or any combination of those and then if willing participate in the test. As well, looking for 5 good moral theist questions for atheists/agnostics.
#1 You see a child drowning in a shallow pool and notice a person just watching that is able to save the child with no risk to themselves but is not, is that persons non action moral?
#2 If you go to save the child, the man tells you to stop as he was told it was for the greater good, but he does not know what that is, do you continue to save the child?
#3 Is it an act of justice to punish innocent people for the crimes of others?
#4 If you were able to stop it and knew a person was about to grape a child would you stop it?
#5 Would you consider a parent who put their kids in a room with a poison fruit and told the kids not to eat it but then also put the best con artist in the room with the children knowing the con artist will get the kids to eat the fruit and the parent does nothing to stop it a good parent?
And here is another set of questions. The judge ones are less then 3% answer rate from christians and muslims.
#1 If you were brainwashed would you know it?
#2 If someone said they had a test for brainwashing, would you want to take it?
#3 If they then said, if you cannot answer these questions, that means your brainwashed, would you be giving it 100% effort to answer those questions?
All criminals are caught red handed of murder 100% guilty and show no remorse. The judges always apply the perfect amount of punishment. All things being equal and for arguments sake.
Now I will give an example. There are 4 judges and 10 guilty criminals. Judge #1 orders punishment for all 10 criminals and does not forgive without punishment a single one. Judge #2 forgives without punishment all 10 criminals. Judge #3 forgives without punishment 9 of them and punishes 1 of them. Judge #4 punishes 9 of them and forgives without punishment 1 of them.
#4 Which judge is the most/maximally just?
#5 Which judge is the most/maximally forgiving?
#6 Is judge #3 either most/maximally forgiving or most just?
#7 Is judge #4 most/maximally forgiving or most just?
#8 Is it possible for any judge to be both most/maximally forgiving and most/maximally just?
If you have 12 minutes the first basic part I will go over is about fast/slow thinking. If you want there is a 12 minute video by veritasium called "the science of thinking" that will explain it very well. I think this is knowledge that can really benefit people if they do not know about it. The next part though I dont know any videos for and I dont know if anyone really had the idea I have before.
The knowledge of the fast/slow mind is what is relevant from that video and I think a good starting point for the discussion. The video also gives examples of people doing it live, but it most likely will work on you as well so that is how I will show you. I am going to ask you a question, and I am going to predict the answer you will have pop in your mind at first, and predict that will be a wrong answer. This works on most people and you can try if for yourself on others to see too, its an interesting conversation starter.
A bat and a ball together cost 1.10, the bat costs 1.00 more then the ball, how much did the ball cost?
You might have an answer flash in your head right away with fast inaccurate fast mind but if you check that answer with your slow but more accurate conscious awareness, you can see that answer is wrong but it takes effort to do. The answer of ten cents is not the right answer but most people have that pop in their head because of the fast thinking mind that we rely on most of the time.
The fast unconscious mind is taking everything in and trying to make sense of it really fast. Its 11 million bits a second. But sometimes it makes mistakes. The slow conscious mind is 40-50 bits and lazy but it can check things and bringing the unconscious mistake to conscious awareness it can correct it.
The next thing to understand is about carl jung and the 4 ways the unconscious complex he called shadow deals with reality. The shadow is an unconscious complex that is defined as the repressed and suppressed aspects of the conscious self. there are constructive and destructive types of shadow. Carl jung emphasized the importance of being aware of shadow material and incorporating it into conscious awareness lest one project these attributes onto others. The human being deals with the reality of shadow in 4 ways. Denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation.
Now I believe what is happening when a question that exposes a conflict in a belief, idea, something that someone said, or even about someone they idolize and the question gets avoided, that is the fast unconscious mind going into denial and the response is often a projection. This also can trigger and emotional response activating the amygdala more and the pre frontal cortex less where rational conscious thought is said to happen and the amygdala starts to get the body to flood itself with chemicals/hormones.
Its like the fast mind knows conscious awareness will say its wrong. so it blocks it off to defend itself from admitting its wrong. in cases of denial and because it blocked off the rational mind, the responses are often irrational. Like personal attacks do not address the issue or answer the question. I think we can agree people have a very hard time now days admitting when they are wrong, I am not exempt from this myself I do realize. And we can see how badly questions avoidance effects us if you watch political meetings and watch them avoid questions all day long.
Ok, so the first thing to go over is denial as that is the main one I expose with questions. A disowning or refusal to acknowledge something I think is a good definition for it here. There is a really good 2 minute video I use as an example of this. A streamer named vegan gains claiming lobsters have brains after some one said he can eat lobsters because they do not have brains. He googles it and starts to read what it says. When he gets to the part where is says neither insects nor lobsters have brains, he skips it and says they literally are insects then skips over that line and continues to read the rest. Just like in the fast thinking video, his fast mind already read that line and refused to acknowledge it in unconscious denial, and just skipped it.
The person then tells him he skipped it and he reads it again and sees the line this time. Still being defensive of his claim and refusing to accept he was wrong, he tried to discredit the source and its the lobster institute of maine. If you would like to see the video for yourself its 2 minutes by destiny clips and the video is called " Destiny Reacts To Vegan Gains Ignoring Search Result That Contradicts Him". Justin turdo avoiding the question of how much his family was paid by the we charity 6 times in a row I think is denial as well. I think jordan peterson not being able to answer his own question of does he believe god exists and asking what do and you mean then saying no one knows what any of those words mean while being seemingly angry is think is another really good example of denial... and projection. And while JP find those words difficult, other people understand them easy. Even he does pretty much any other time they are used.
So projection is next up. Psychological projection is a defense mechanism people subconsciously employ in order to cope with difficult feelings or emotions. Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings. Many times a mind in denial will use projections for responses. Someone getting mad and telling the other person to not interrupt when they have been doing that a lot themselves would be an example. I have done this myself. The people who tell me I dont understand my own questions and my point is wrong when they do not even know what the point is are all examples as well. I ask them to steel man my position to show then understand my point and they just avoid that question as well clearly showing they do not understand my point.
Now we have integration and/or transmutation. Integration is when you bring an unconscious behavior into conscious awareness and accept it. I know that I interrupt people talking sometimes even though I think that is wrong to do. I have a conscious awareness of it, but I have not been able to completely change the behavior.... yet. That is where transmutation comes in. Transmutation is to completely change that unconscious behavior. From being impatient to being patient, of from distrust to trust, hate into understanding and love even.
So was this understandable or confusing?
if you understand it, do you think its possibly true?
Do you have any questions? If you have any tips I am would gladly listen.
Man I ain't reading all that shit
^^^ his *actually* percentages should be measure as: "of the 5% of people who actually bothered responding to my long ass copy pasta, 100% of atheists an agnostics gave me answers I liked, ~90% of the Christians and ~82% of the Muslims"
@@21stcenturyrambo16 >>Man I ain't reading all that shit""
I did not force anyone to. But why bother leaving a comment and exposing how intellectually lazy you are? Would it not have been better to just not read it and not say anything at all then? Why even bother saying you did not read it?
@@user-lv9gm3fe6j
The percentages may be made up, but the degree of difference of responses is reasonably supported. People tend to avoid answering questions which make their position look bad.
Try asking a believer when religious belief is not front and center in their mind the question "Is it moral to watch an atrocity (such as rape) that one could stop without harm to the victim or the perpetrator?" Most will agree that such is not moral. If one were to ask "Would you label an individual who just watches atrocities that they could stop - as being good?", most would say no.
If the idea of God is brought up, then most believers will often make up excuses for either of the afore mentioned scenarios.
A: "This is moral"
Cool, man.
It's interesting that crash course philosophy and Peter Singer's video on moral realism seemed to define moral realism differently from you in this video. If I remember right they both defined moral realism as the position that moral facts exist in the world (not necessarily in a stance independent way) and tended to group both moral cultural relativism and moral objectivism under moral realism. I wonder if the difference in definitions represents some kind of significant disagreement within the philosophy community
They do. The differences are largely terminological, and most people in the field are aware that moral realism sometimes refers to the view that there are stance-independent moral facts, and sometimes that there are moral facts (with or without them being stance-independent). I suspect the former is increasingly popular, though sometimes people distinguish the former as "robust" moral realism. Some even include additional features in an increasingly robust degree of realism, such as an epistemic requirement that we know at least one of these moral facts.
Lance scares me and I agree with everything he says
Wow, so much articulate nonsense. Not seeing the forest for the trees, I suppose. IRL, literally no one is a moral relativist or subjectivist. Judge people by their ACTUAL actions, not what they say. Besides, morals are either objective/real or they are not at all. It's so sad to see smart people wasting their time like this.
@KRGruner
Morals are real in the same way that humor is real.
All things being equal, humans have a sense of humor, to what degree, and the specifics of what is humorous to any individual, varies wildly.
It is nonsensical to say that there is some objective moral standard, in exactly the same way that it is nonsensical to say that there is some objective humor standard.
It is literally impossible to not be relating your subjective view about either of those things, they are, by their nature, terms for something that we describe, by how we feel about them, and we place value judgements on them.
While I might get all indignant and insist a certain topic just is not funny, reality cares not one iota, comedians who tell jokes about that topic exist, and JFC, of course, my husband happens to find such comedians god dammed hilarious. This is why headphones were invented, probably...
Point is, every single person who just asserts this... out there in the universe, intrinsic property of objective morality, spectacularly fails to demonstrate it exists, or even adequately explain what the hell it could even mean to say it exists.
Religious apologists love to claim there's some objective moral standard, and then refute this by elaborating that their god's choice of moral whatever is this thing.
Demonstrating that once again it is impossible to discuss morality without a subjective reference, while also demonstrating that what counts as "moral" for some, is absolutely not for others. I am not alone in finding the acts that apologists defend and excuse, utterly reprehensible, and morally bankrupt.
@@Petticca That is literally an insane take on morals. Trying to justify, say, a view that killing 6 million Jews in gas chambers is just a personal preference because, you know, "humor is subjective," is absolutely bonkers. OF COURSE morality is objective! In fact, since the role of morality is to regulate human interactions, it HAS to be objective, otherwise it is completely USELESS. A rule is not a rule unless it applies to everyone. If you and I want to play a game, but you insist on making up or changing the rules based on your whims, we CANNOT play the game. This is completely obvious. So when you say that you find something is "morally reprehensible," in your worldview, that only means you feel something, nothing else, and so I can dismiss it as totally irrelevant. THINK! Don't just emote! If you want to know the basis for morality's objective status, ask yourself if life is preferable to death. That is all you need. That is the standard. And if you say that you prefer death, fine, but then prove it. Like now. You still alive? then you have your answer. Jesus, man, it ain't THAT hard!
@@KRGrunerthat is the most retarded thing I have ever heard.
1:29:13 I wonder if Dr. Lance is right that you don't stay in a philosophically indeterminate state about these low level philosophical questions indefinitely. I know that's been true for me about some philosophical issues, but for most of them it seems like I become more agnostic and more indeterminate about them the more I learn. For example watching this video and some recent conversations I've had have destroyed my faith that I can count on my internal non-evidential cognitive seemings about the intrinsic value of certain emotive states (or other similar things) to tell me that moral realism is true. And that's made me much more agnostic about moral realism. I think about a month ago my credences were something like 0.9 vs 0.1 for moral realism vs moral anti-realism but now my credences are something more like 0.55 vs 0.45
I think some people move in that direction or remain agnostic. However, if you look at the PhilPapers survey, you'll see that philosopher routinely give decisive answers towards various questions.
I disliked without watching and you can't say I did a bad thing 😎
Anti-realists can think you did something wrong/bad! They just can’t think it’s stance-independently bad. And as for realists like me, we can think it’s stance-independently wrong/bad! (But I doubt that’s morally wrong in any case, lol)
@@MajestyofReasonshut up nerd 😎
@@MajestyofReasonyo my top G (from maGesty ofc), did you shadow my quality effort post?
@@navienslavement hm? I didn't delete your comments or hide them or hide your profile :)
I do know that TH-cam tends to _strongly_ censor (remove, hide, hold, etc.) comments, so something may have happened with that. (Though I'm not sure what you're referring to!)
@@MajestyofReasonah, TH-cam hates nerds, very nerdphobic of them. We keep on rollin tho 🤓🤜🤛😎