I would be interested in you making a video about this peticular argument for moral realism: P1) If morality is objective then moral realism is correct. (semantic) P2) Morality is objective. C3) Moral Realism is correct. P4) If {X} is externally measurable then it's objective. P5) Morality is externally measurable. C6) Morality is objective. P7) If {X} has external experiments which quantify it, then it's externally measurable. P8) Morality has external experiments which quantify it. C9) Morality is externally measurable. P10) If {X} has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of {X}, then {X} has external experiments which quantify it. P11) Morality has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of morality. C12) Morality has external experiments which quantifies it. P13) If [moral judgements are some phenomena of morality] and [there are external experiments which quantify moral judgements] then morality has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of morality. P14) Moral judgements are some phenomena of morality. P15) There are external experiments which quantify moral judgements. C16) Morality has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of morality. (Argument for P4: P1) If you accept basic semantics of objective as used in scientific literature, then If {X} is externally measurable then {X} is objective P2) You accept basic semantics of objective as used in scientific literature C) If {X} is externally measurable then {X} is objective) It's not my argument, but I would be interested in your opinion of it😊
@@justus4684 Where does that argument come from? There are lots of claims there that seem either vague or hopelessly implausible. I'd want to read a bit more about it before commenting.
@@KaneB I don't know if that argument is present anywhere in the literature. What premises are you talking about specifically, when you say many are implausible or vague? I could try to get an argument for each one of them from the person I got the argument from, if you are interested. If interested is present on your side, I could even ask, if the other person is interested in a conversation with you.
@@justus4684 Some of the problems are: -- The notion of a basic semantics of objective as used in the scientific literature. I have no idea what this means. "Objectivity" is used a host of different ways in scientific contexts. I doubt that there is a "basic semantics" of objectivity in science. It's also not clear why, if morality counts as objectivity per whatever sense is intended by this argument, this would entail moral realism. -- The notion of something being "externally measurable", or having "external experiments". What exactly are external measurements and external experiments? -- The claim that "moral judgments are some phenomena of morality", and more generally, what looks like a conflation throughout the argument of moral judgments with morality itself. There's obviously a distinction between judgments about some domain X and the domain X itself. Nobody doubts that there are facts about the moral judgments that people make (that these can be studied scientifically, etc.). This doesn't tell us anything about whether there are moral facts, moral properties, etc.
Stephen, did you manage to spot the comment I left in the comment section of one of your videos regarding SOCIALISM (you requested that I post my remarks on that objectively-evil economic/political system in a more appropriate place, and I did so)? If not, I can repost my comment HERE.
This is such a fantastic video. Thank you for doing this. Though we're sympathetic to Moral Realism, we think you did an excellent job outlining the Anti-Realist position and defending it from a lot of Common Apologetic arguments. We'd love to see more videos like where you actually take a philosophically informed approach to respond to many different arguments from Christian/Theistic Apologists. We've been really disappointed with the state of TH-cam Atheism, and think you can definitely step into the fold with outlining philosophical critiques while providing an overview of the concepts discussed from an educational perspective (philosophy of religion is unique as it gets to touch so many different branches of Philosophy). Here are some channels you could perhaps offer responses towards? Word on Fire and Bishop Barron - Perhaps the biggest Catholic Evangelical Channel in the United States. Unlike a lot of other clergies, Bishop Barron has made a point to respond to Atheism in a lot of ways and has a lot of videos on Atheism and Philosophy that may be of interest to you. Capturing Christianity - Brings on a lot of philosophical Theists to discuss some of the cutting-edge work in Theistic Apologetics. Trinity Radio - Another apologetics channel with a lot of reach that has a lot of content worth responding to. Thanks again for the awesome video and looking forward to your future work in this area.
Loved this video! I’m currently doing my Philosophy Master’s and I’ve always thought that moral realism was so counterintuitive and strange but found that not many around me agreed with me. I found myself puzzled at how strongly people held moral realist claims, and held them as unquestionable, as if anything else was laughable, shameful or controversial. We have moral attitudes about things but they’re not objective facts about the world. How can these supposed ‘moral truths’ exist independent of a human mind? Humans, human minds, give rise to moral feelings. Morality would not exist without human minds. This video has helped reassure me. I’m not crazy and I’m not alone, haha!
"morality would not exist without human minds".. this is exactly what the moral realist does NOT believe so I'm not sure if that's much of an argument. A moral realist would say that, like numbers, morals exist in some way even if there were no existing humans
I noticed this video only now and your replies are really good. I feel like InspiringPhilosophy didn't really do his homework and also that he didn't try to attack his own position - self criticsm and self reflection is a quality that I feel is too rare among people. Oh, and even though I am in my own thinking actually somewhat close to moral realism (maybe the semi-skimmed version you described in another video) another common conceit among realists that we can see in this video is that they themselves think that their own moral intuitions are actually the objective moral facts we should be looking for. I see no reason why it should be so. Like, why can't it be that the slaver is correct and everybody else is wrong? How can we check? Like it is extremely presumptuous to think that I, the moral realist, have better understanding of what is moral and immoral than what everybody else has and that my society is the correct one etc. It kinda boggles my mind.
Wow, this was great. I've been reading about anti realism and thinking of responses to arguments like IP's and you really laid out the case extremely well
wow, this content is amazing. Excellent responses Kane. Have you finished your PHD? I am looking forward to your first peer-reviewed article on this debate in the literature in meta-ethics. I also have found moral realism to be non-intuitive and that many other philosophy students have intuitions that lean toward error theory.
Thanks! I've done the first draft my of PhD. As for articles, don't hold your breath. It's looking pretty unlikely I'm going to have a career in academia, and there's absolutely no chance that I'd put myself through the misery of journal publishing for any other reason.
@@KaneB It is possible especially since you have the credential [ Sabine Hossenfelder doing it] but I guess it will take a lot of work and investment assuming you want to invest in this endeavor. Whatever you do man good luck, you are a treasure
With regard to moral intuitions, I have 2 other considerations from an anti-realist perspective: 1) It seems hard for me, phenomonologically, to distinguish between a moral responses and other emotional responses. For example, when I see something I perceive as “wrong” maybe my chest tightens, my face warms up, and I have thoughts in the vein of “that’s wrong, I don’t like that”. But if I trip and fall in front of a bunch of people, I might have almost the exact same sensations and maybe have thoughts like “that’s embarrassing, this sucks”. But is there an objective standard of embarrassment? Just from intuition I don’t see how to separate these 2) Ignoring the previous point about the indistinguishable nature of emotions vs moral experiences, it seems like my moral judgements aren’t even internally consistent. For example, when I’m hungry I associate way more things with moral wrongness than I would if I had eaten. Obviously the moral realist can explain this in terms of an improperly functioning brain, but it seems like that dependence on my personal state seems to favor more that moral intuitions are mind dependent as opposed to objective. I’m curious if Kane, or anyone else, has similar intuitions or responses to these. Great video though!!
Re (1), speaking for myself, although moral intuitions sometimes have a similar phenomenology to emotion, very often they don't. If I actually see a person being tortured, I will have a strong emotional response. But if I just consider intellectually the fact that torture is happening in the world, then I don't have any noticeable physiological responses, though I still have the thought, "that's wrong!" Having said that, perhaps the same could be said for emotions -- maybe it's like the difference between, say, actually being chased by a bear and just imagining being chased by a bear. In general, when things are not immediately present to us, they don't provoke such strong reactions. Re (2), I have argued previously that morality is internally inconsistent. Essentially, I'm inclined to think that our moral intuitions are generated by two types of reasoning (broadly corresponding to consequentialist and deontological) that cannot be made compatible. I explain my argument in the first part of this video: th-cam.com/video/w4tRgsHcXQU/w-d-xo.html As for your argument on this point, my concern is that the same might be true for all other cognitive capacities. It wouldn't be surprising if perception, memory, reasoning, etc., were affected by hunger as well. More generally, realists don't need to assume that intuition is perfectly truth-tracking. There are lots of situations where perception and memory lead us astray, or seem to deliver contradictory information (think of optical illusions). Of course, the difficulty with moral intuition is figuring out which moral intuitions are trustworthy. In your example, are your moral intuitions more likely to be reliable when you're hungry, or when you're not hungry? How could we tell?
It seems to me that at least several arguments made by @InspiringPhilosophy are appealing to values that many people share and this has always seemed to contradictory to me because if moral realism were true, shared values would not matter unless the values could somehow be derived from certain objective properties. I suppose a moral realist might try to find the properties that could be used to demonstrate which shared values are "correct", but I'm not sure that would be meaningful to me unless I agreed with the properties that were used by the realist. I think I'm also an anti-realist and in the minority as well. Anyways, I really appreciate your content.
Thank you for your service. The proponents of non-natural moral realism seem so full of themselves and lazy it's casting a bad light on philosophy. I'm not even talking about IP, who is just a self-serving, religious propagandist, but rather leading secular 'scholars' like shafer-landau. His highly educated argument seems to boil down to 'moral realism is true because bad things are wrong'. There are not enough circular face palms in the world...
Well, I can't comment on their character traits; I don't know most of them personally! I do think there are plenty of non-naturalists who have raised interesting arguments, but none of them, in my opinion, are even remotely convincing. The case for non-naturalism seems shockingly weak to me, given how seriously it's taken by professionals in the field. But then, maybe I'm just missing something!
@@hamdaniyusuf_dani Both kinds of realism have zero explanatory value and are entirely disconnected from anything that drives real humans. Both are embarrassing, outdated bubbles of brain-masturbation that need to pop, like yesterday. The debate about moral facts and properties is about as promising as listening to some flat earthers spend 300 years on an analysis of the words I, see and curve in the statement the earth is flat because i don't see curve. Their foundational arguments are appeals to the presupposed impossibility of the contrary. Since none of the involved terms are clearly defined they are also arguments from ignorance. I guess it stems from a history of prescientific theorizing in the context of silly self contradictory ideas like Jehova and free will. Any real advances on Morality will be achieved in the sciences. Moral Naturalism is slightly more respectable than the non naturalist vodoo since its affirmation of Naturalism at least leaves the door open for them to come back to their senses and realize they are clowns that need to shut up and wait for the science to to come in with real results.
Good god. The aesthetic dissonance caused by that music IP uses is jarring to the point that it seems "realistic" to say that they are either morally or aesthetically, but at least epistemically at fault. Here is a rhetorical matter that overlaps all three domains of evaluation! I would argue that if moral realism is to be defended weil, it should be done rationally and in good faith, but also without that music!
In a debate, you ought not to misrepresent your opponent's argument if your goal is to counter the argument, because if you do, you're simply not able to counter the argument. You can't paint a chair blue if you put your brush on a table and walk away. If your goal is something else, then the "debate" is no longer a rational debate, but something else.
I would really like to see you debate Tjump on moral realism. Him and much of his following seem to have resorted to permanently plugging their ears when I speak on the issue. I think you would garner much more respect, if that debate is even something you would find valuable.
Reason makes madness readily apparent. If all arguments need an initial proposition, then those initial propositions must lie in our intuitions. That we can trust our intuitions and base all of our epistemic knowledge on them is foolish. If philosophy is the search for truth, then our intuitions are the very thing we must question.
I enjoy and benefit from your clear explanations. The explanations given by InspiringPhiliosphy are obscure for me, but yours are clear and understandable. This shows the value of good teaching, one that considers the learner. For me, you are a good teacher. As for the music they use, it is so distracting, obscuring their aguements.
Great video! When you mentioned how Inspiring Philosophy considers moral truths to be conceptual truths, I was like, "What? Hasn't that guy ever read Hume?" Upon visiting his channel, I'm going to assume that he's not particularly influenced by Hume.
You should maybe get in touch with President Sunday if you want to talk about Hobbes re: contractarianism. He seems the most astute on political philosophy. I’m not sure if there’s a video of his I’d like to see you respond to, but it’d be a good conversation I think.
Hey Kane. Do you think that you will be doing any debates on positions within moral anti-realism? If you find another anti-realist youtuber that does not share your error-theoretical intuitions, it would be interesting to hear that debate! It was a good time in your channel's history when you and Cole did not share a similar anti-realist position in error-theory, and we could take part in a debate between anti-realists. it would also be interesting to hear your take on the the debate between Finlay and Joyce regarding subjectivism vs error theory ("the error in moral error theory" and "the error in the error in moral error theory" and "errors upon errors"). Or, if people making moral judgments are increasingly judging morality to be something similar to the "naïve relativist undergraduates" you mentioned, then it might not be the case that moral judges are (as) committed to irreducible normativity anymore (John Burgess suggests that error theory is a phase, and makes a parallel to how we held an error theory regarding "sunrise" when we learnt that the earth was not flat, but now hold a naturalist explanation of sunrise as an "appearance" of a rising sun (rather than an actual rising sun), and hence are realists regarding sunrises again). Also, it would be interesting to see a lecture/presentation about the "Parity premise" and "Disparity response" regarding the companions-in-guilt-argument for error-theory, to hear what the current realist response is. You presented the outline of it here, but it does not seems like the account that epistemology is functional normative rather than irreducible normative (as Olson and others claim) is uncontested by the realists (Cuneo och Kyriacou keep defending their position), so it would be interesting to hear the wider debate and its current status.
Yeah, that kind of thing would definitely interest me. I don't actually pay that much attention to other youtubers though. If you know of another antirealist youtuber, I'd be happy to get in touch with them. Certainly, when it comes to debates among antirealists, my views are not nearly so strong. I'm inclined towards error theory at the moment, but honestly, I think there are very good cases to be made for most other antirealist positions. I've been considering converting to, or at least playing around with, some form of moral relativism, just because (a) there's a consensus that it's extremely implausible but (b) the standard arguments against it are actually quite weak, in my view. This might make for an interesting debate with a fellow antirealist. As Jolssoni has mentioned, I have commented on the companions in guilt before. I do intend to revisit that argument in another video though, because I think there's quite a lot more to say about it. I don't know when I'll get around to that.
Another great argument against the "muh intuition" argument is that we also have intuitions about what living a good life means. Indeed, Humans are individual creatures and we each need and pursue something specific to us and our preferences to be living a subjectively meaningful life. It would be absurd, however, to extrapolate that each of our individual sets of preferences are *the* objective standards of what it means to live a meaningful life. They're just preferences, same with our moral intuition. They're right to us, but a star 10 billion lightyears away doesn't care, and thus they literally violate the definition of objective right off the bat - "mind independent".
Kane B, please tell me from a philosophical perspective what I am getting wrong or failing to account for in the following syllogism: Premise 1: If true moral dilemmas exist or are possible, moral realism must be false. Premise 2: True moral dilemmas exist or are possible. Conclusion: Therefore, moral realism must be false.
Also even if such absolute moral truths exist without contradicting one another, how do we know with certainty that our intuitions about right and wrong translates to represent them ? How could we possibly verify them ?
Great video. I have a question. In all seriousness, why should we care if there is an objective morality? If there is an objective moral truth, nobody can agree on what it is anyway. So we're in the same place trying to argue with each other regardless. Like I think there may be an objective morality in the same sense 2 plus 2 is objectively 4. But, the objective morality is more like an impossibly complex math problem that no one has solved yet and perhaps no one can ever solve. Which brings me back to, why should we care?
10:00 - it's easy to interpret saving the child in moral realist terms. Yes it would be strange to say I saved the child because I had an objective moral duty to do so, because it would be strange for an average person to use philosophical language. It would be equally strange for someone to say I saved the child because of my passions or because of my arbitrary internal emotions. Normal responses would be along the lines of "I was just doing what anyone would do in that situation" or "I had to save that poor kid". In saving the child I do recognize moral facts in the world: 1) the fact that the child would lose its ability to flourish if I allowed it to die; 2) that were my community to discover that I allowed the child to die out of my own laziness or cowardice then I would (rightly) be criticized; 3) that I would prove to myself and others that I am the right kind of person (namely, the kind of person who saves children when given the chance, even when doing so comes at some cost to the self); 4) I recognize the fact that the reasons to save the child outweigh the reasons to refrain from doing so. The anti realist here has to say they have arbitrary reasons or purely forced reasons (from biology, evolution, & psychology) for saving the child. But this is just false. If the child lives then it will be able to go on experiencing self-evidently good states of affairs relating to flourishing and happiness. And I might encounter the child's parents and see the sheer happiness and relief they experience when they are reunited with their endangered child, and see the gratitude they have for me helping them. These intrinsically good states are worth it for their own sake; I'm not saving the child purely out of a biological impulse to continue the species for the sake of continuing the species. Flourishing is _intrinsically_ good; worth it for its own sake, and thus an obviously good reason (not a mere arbitrary reason) for performing or refraining from actions. Sure, most people _would_ save the child automatically on instinct. It's because the reasons to save the child are so immediately obvious that we recognize them subconsciously.
I'm not sure if I follow your logic. Why would a moral antirealist be excluded from thinking that flourishing is intrinsically valuable? That's a moral axiom that you're free to adopt, but it isn't an objective fact.
@@nio804 Kane said that what’s motivating him to save the child is not the recognition of some fact (say, the fact that the child is a locus of flourishing and thus saving the child will maximize flourishing), but rather his internal passions and emotions. I’m saying those emotions are not baseless or purely evolutionary artifacts. The emotions are arising _because_ of moral facts. The goodness of happiness is self-evident, not an axiom. And flourishing is happiness plus a few other things (the happiness is virtuous and not derived by evil means, the happiness is character building and not mere entertainment or pleasure, etc).
@@bds8715 I honestly don't understand what the difference is between something being taken as self-evident vs. an axiom. I guess a self-evident thing would be that in logic, a true thing can't also be false; a proposition with which you can't disagree without a contradiction. However, the moral claim that flourishing is good isn't self-evident in that sense. It's possible to disagree and remain consistent. Also, the assertion that the emotions arise from moral facts seems baseless to me; what moral facts do they derive from and how do those facts connect to the emotions? Keep in mind that a fact to me is something that I can verify by observing it somehow (directly or indirectly) or deriving it from other facts. I don't even know what that would mean for moral facts.
@@nio804 hmm… I’m thinking of ‘axiom’ as something that must be assumed to make progress. There’s no support for the axiom (except for maybe the progress it allows you). But when something is self-evident it not only has support, but the strongest support possible: direct access. I see, directly, that happiness is good. And flourishing is better than happiness; it’s a fuller package. My favored theory so far is that when we say “Leaving the child to drown is wrong” is to say “The reasons to try to save the child outweigh the reasons to not try.” The idea is that reasons are real and morality is grounded in reason, and thus morality is real too. When humans evolved, their faculties of reason came online. This gave them access to asking _why_ questions and engaging in a broad reasoning process. When people do evil things, we ask why. We already see, immediately, that the evil in question _answers_ the question of why _not_ do that thing. So when someone _does_ do it, we wonder why. So in short a moral fact is a fact on whether doing X is, on balance, reasonable or unreasonable. To say an action is evil is to say it’s irrational _and_ situated in a moral context (for example, a context where a conscious being is hurt). While calculating this balance is complex and not precise, it’s not hopeless, at least not any more hopeless than doing philosophy more broadly, which too involves engaging in a broad reasoning process. (Eg, you can’t show God exists or doesn’t exist by using pure math or logic. You can try with versions of the problem of evil or with ontological arguments, but in the end you still have to weigh the reasons to believe against the reasons to disbelieve and come to a conclusion.) Reasoning is complicated and difficult and humans don’t reach their full abilities until about 25 years old. That coupled with reasoning emerging out of intelligence which is limited in humans means there’s only so much we can do. To make matters worse we need information to make moral judgments that we often just don’t have. These combined paint a bleak picture of humanity’s ability to make moral progress. And yet we have gotten smarter at morality, recognizing more collectively the sheer evil of slavery, child labor, company towns and coal mines, bigotry and social injustice, etc.
@@bds8715 See, I disagree with your idea of having "direct access" to a moral truth that happiness is good; that's your subjective experience. It's your brain that sees happiness and decides that it's good; you aren't observing some property of the universe external to yourself. I think my main problem with how you describe things is that you speak of "reasons" but I can't find any non-subjective foundation that you describe from which you can derive said reasons. By what objectively verifiable standard do you judge things to be rational or irrational? Also, the way you describe moral facts reads to me more like you're describing moral judgements; a moral fact, as I interpret it, is not the result of evaluating a moral situation and arriving at a judgement. Since it's supposed to be an objective fact, it must be true and verifiable to be true independently of any opinion or judgement by anyone, and I just don't see how that's possible when as far as I can tell morality requires subjective experiences to exist before it becomes meaningful at all. A world that has no subjective experiences can't have morality, since there's no agent there with the capacity to care about anything. If objective moral facts existed, then it seems to be that this world without morality should also contain those objective facts, but that just makes no sense to me at all.
Just some random thoughts for each point while I listened. For the first: But then it goes back to just, “why?” Since the question still remains. Also, what if a person is of the mind that as long as they appear to have won the argument, it’s OK to misrepresent the other persons argument? What if to them, in their subjective experience, they feel satisfied, at least temporarily, in doing so? The criteria has changed, so is it legitimate overall? For the second: the moral realist, who is simply states that they saved the child because they wanted to and it was wrong, would be speaking in shorthand. Their instincts and emotions have been shaped by their objective values, imprinted onto them through various sources. In part by biological realities, then, guided by higher metaphysical principles, eventually, becoming instincts. Their conscience. Someone who was disrupted by growing up as a child soldier fighting in a war zone with reinforced sensibilities to the contrary, despite what they may have otherwise been sympathetic towards, may not have the instincts or desire to save the hypothetical child. Even that extreme example is unnecessary considering the amount of people who only pull out their phones or only watch when people are being beat up on the subway or on the street for instance. For the third: if empiricist arguments happen to advance towards a single point, is not the objective morality possibly being argued for? For the fourth: they are western and eastern countries with roughly the same level of development, shared scientific communication, experiencing relatively similar social conditions, etc. Yet, moral outlooks on a variety of topics are nevertheless still varied. And the importance of community versus the individual or society at large. The level of preemptive self-defense that is morally justified. Keeping understood objective value for the developing young or the elderly, despite their reduced or nonexistent perceptiveness. Objective value itself versus moral relativism, and everything both can lead to depending on the culture, conditions, etc. For the fifth: to make the analogous argument from observable science to studied in-depth explanation, the one who has an instinctual reactions to stop something they find detestable can still exist without later or first, expanding on why such a thing is and or should be felt in the overall grand moral context. A few too many circles were being driven here it would seem. It seemed to me personally.
Wow, you were generous in this response. Not only did you treat a broadly superficial account of central arguments and issues with respect, but you allowed a barrage of racist, ethnocentric, and christocentric assumptions to go completely unchallenged.
Hello Kane, thank you so much for this video. I myself am a Moral anti-realist and disagree strongly with moral realists whether from Christian theists or anti theists. I was wondering if you have any recommendations for books on the strongest arguments for moral anti-realism? Also what are your thoughts (if you have read) of Graham Oppy, Erik Wielenberg, Quinten Smith, Wes Morriston etc.? And strong works and refutations of their attempt to draw/force moral realism upon the atheist?
Also Kane, what is your thought on this moral realist argument: Science tells us objectively that X (let’s say abuse like the example of the video) is harmful to the family, therefore based on these objective facts we can draw an objective conclusion that abuse is objectively wrong? (I hope you understand my question).
Maybe someone else said this, but around the nine minute mark, it’s mentioned that you don’t have to be an egoist to be a moral anti-realist, but then an egoistic claim is made about why the well-being of others might matter to the anti-realist when it is said that it may “make one happy” to make others happy. As an egoist (psychologically and ethically on a non-normative basis) I think this is a soft misrepresentation of egoism, but also demonstrates egoism to be inescapable. I’m not saying i disagree with the initial statement, just that no one can find an example of why anyone would like or dislike something that doesn’t reduce to general self interest.
10:10 You say that you would stop a child from being tortured because you were motivated by passion/emotion and not because of objective facts. What if you were a psychopath and motivated by passion/emotion to allow this to happen? I think InspiringPhilosophy’s use of the word “fact” is a bit misleading; rather, I think it would more appropriate to suggest that there can be actions that minimize harm more than other actions. To address the “moral intuition” problem you outlined in the last segment-yes, we can in fact perceive a scenario (a) where a child is tortured and (b) a scenario where a child is not tortured and recognize that scenario (a) minimizes suffering. In principle, this can be quantified with a neurochemical analysis of the brain, but an extreme scenario like this should be self-evident. To use your example of perceiving light through the eyes: A blind person cannot recognize the objective properties of light hitting an object; likewise, a psychopath cannot recognize the objective harm being done in the aforementioned scenario.
"What if you were a psychopath and motivated by passion/emotion to allow this to happen?" Well, presumably that person wouldn't intervene. The best we could do would be to argue that preventing such actions is indirectly in their self-interest, for the kind of reasons I outlined at 11:19. In any case, postulating objective moral facts doesn't help. A psychopath could be a moral realist, but just not care what the objective moral facts are. No position in metaethics is capable of compelling anybody to act in a particular way. "and recognize that scenario (a) minimizes suffering" I can perceive that certain actions cause or reduce suffering, but I can't perceive that suffering has any particular moral property. (It's worth noting that this is something both myself and IP agree on. IP is not a moral naturalist.)
"rather, I think it would more appropriate to suggest that there can be actions that minimize harm more than other actions" But this is trivial. If "moral realism" simply amounts to the view that some actions can minimize harm relative to other actions, then it's totally uninteresting. Moral realists are claiming much more than this -- at least, as the label "moral realism" is used in metaethics, and by IP.
does a moral anti-realist deny that there are norms? I thought that they just denied objective facts. Norms can be subjective, and the norms of honest debate certainly are subjective.
God laws are perfect right?, it's a premise for moral code i guess, so we have: -don't kill -but what if somebody wants to kill us? -don't kill unless you are in danger -but what if we don't know if somebody tried to kill us or it was accident -don't kill unless you are in danger and the pattern of accidents appears -but what if this person is disabled and is bound to repeat these patterns -don't kill unless you are in danger and the pattern of accidents appear and person is not disabled These contradictions are never ending, is there any point of debating this topic? Maybe we should follow these rules without any exceptions: - dont kill (sacrifice yourself to prove other person that this moral code is right) - dont steal (even when you are starving, and have any other choice, you should sacrifice yourself to prove this point) - Honour thy father and thy mother (even if they are increadibly abusive, toxic, and don't care about you, to prove a point)
Right. It seems odd to give a conceptual explanation for saving the child when the more "morally realistic" (but not realism!) response would be something like "I couldn't just stand there and let that happen and just knew I had to do something and did!" or something to that effect. Quite "real", this morality, but necessarily beyond the personal experience of its reality in ones own response to the situation. That part seems real. But it doesn't on the other hand seem odd to think of an objectivity to such an event which coheres from a body of facts about how such reactions tend to occur and in what people and to what events in whatever circumstances. That could well be on its way to being a science, certainly a behavioral science (and it is). Perhaps that is what it takes to understand the reasons for the "should", but that will neve replace the immediate phenomena of the experience of the "must". And such a science (however ad hoc or well-founded in whatever way and by whatever method), must still be founded on what is internal to the phenomenon it studies, what is substantive, which is not merely the "objectivized behavior" including its testimony about itself (this is Behaviorism and even an AI could parse that analysis out without having first hand experience). It is primarily the auditor's sense that such an injunction is right to obey by his own internal recognititon that this does not contradict his own feelings about it. He is not a blind serf in the kingdom of Oughts. He is himself a sovereign who will accept advice only on his own terms. Even if he self-deliberates morally on his own conduct (because he feels like it perhaps...), he is not an AI-driven robot merely churning out biobehavioral psycholinguistic algorithsm of, in the end, merely physically observable and describable behavior, but he is an agent of passions. Even conscience might be thought of as a desire felt to act a certain way which simply occassions the actions that it does, and we may have to introspect deeply (and study very rigorously the objective features of) our behavior in order to "understand" our conscience. But we could easily just offer that "it seemed like the right thing to do, and I felt compelled to do it because it felt that way" (and perhaps that nothing else felt as much that way, ergo I did that and not something else, if one were a logician who liked talking that way obsessively). That sort of passion-driven (is Hume just using me as a vessel here?) behavior simply happens for all actions in accordant ways and all prescriptions follow upon people's claims only after the fact as to why. None of those arguments could have force unless delivered to someone with the inner-experience of the actions in question and the passions which inform him of the meaning. Of if he didn't have those passions (a deeply apathetic person one might say, perhaps only focally in regard that domain of feelings and actions), then he is very unusual and strange and not normal at all (so not our subject matter per se) or it must seem to him an arbitrary injunction to give him moral prescriptions (like programming an AI). But that would seem to apply to any action. Not all actions seem to have a stimulating effect on us we would call a pang of conscience, but they perhaps all amount to some small and proportional increment of what will only upon certain accumulation or aggregation become pronounced enough to arouse a conscious feeling. That might be proportional to the obviousness of the need for such an appraisal. Perhaps I couldn't tell that the piano was about to fall or didn't know it was being lifted by rope above the sidewalk, or perhaps I didn't see the woman with her baby stroller paused beneath it, so either way I couldn't put the two together and be concerned. But as the rope starts to creak and I notice the piano and its possiblity of falling and its position high above a sidewalk almost all at once (in what order?) I begin to feel a sense of worry in my gut. Then I become aware of the sidewalk with an accompanying sense of increase of anxiety as the abstract possibility is checked for actuality, that someone may be there. And then I see her with her stroller coming along and "BAM", I know what to do and I do it. But in the case of missing any of that information, I may not feel a care, or proportionately less care according to the kind and amount of missing information. There are "oughts" which dictate safety protocols to prevent such scenarios in advance, and there are many ways such things can yet go wrong despite best efforts. But we well know why we should have those rules in place, and we require them if we are decent and intelligent, and we obey them if we are not careless, callous or cruel. That phenomenon is immediately real and does not directly require any moral theory beyond what can be founded upon it. But for someone who is diminished in feeling capacity, or of relevant information, the "oughtness" of the situation is only ever abstract. The only reason that I see morality can have authority along this line is the fundamental driving force of the moral sentiment that arises and to which it draws inspiration and upon which it depends for the force of any claims it makes. All morality does by saying that something ought to be the case is inform me of a situation that may arise that I may not have otherwise considered in a timely or pertinent way if it were not brought to my attention (a sign, a protocol, a rule, a theory, or even a shout to halt) and my response is anticipated by the emitter of the signal to follow from an inherent understanding within me that I should. The elaboration of how and where and when, or the clarification as to why, must always seem to work its way to and from this inherent understanding. All morality as a science or art can ever do is structure convincing arguments as to those further elaborations on what reduces to the obvious "way it feels" to do or not do something at some final point of the argument. So yes, I wouldn't wait until I formulated a theory of morality to save a child about to fall into a well, but I might find it useful for someone to alert me to the child's situation, or to spell out the danger in general by a rule or law that requires proper fencing if I am to have it accessible to children (and hold me liable for failure to do so) if I am for some reason or other indiligent (many people are, and as a mass, the law is to remind the indiligent among us, and warn the diligent to remain so, or get them keen where they might reasonably have been unclear, so the law itself is the diligence of the conscientous exerting its rightful influence upon the less diligent or indiligent). Morality seems more about the description of a science of diligence with respect to moral sentiments already present and considered normal among peers (even a peerage of one). Like the laws based upon it, its force hinges purely on the weight it already carries in mens hearts because of their prior disposition. We can be ignorant or wrong about facts that are relevant to a moral judgement, or we can have a lack of moral function (feeling, power to assess reality, etc) upon which such facts (and ideas about them) hinge for their relevance and importance, but we don't argue about the fundamental core sentiments that must be there for any of it to make sense. For those who stand inside the mystery of moral sentiment, no fundamental explanation is necessary, but for those outside of it none is possible. All else is codification for instructive and inevitably practical purposes (including addressing deviance). Otherwise, it is to say this of the wolf and the lamb: They had a moral argument about what to have for dinner.
Brilliant. Exactly what I think, but better said than I am capable of. Well, almost exactly. One concern, at 17:30 I would like to see you engage Aristotelian/Thomist teleology regarding humans as rational beings *even though* certain individual humans may be defective and incapable of rational thinking. That view undermines your moral disagreement position, but I don’t think it does any harm to your overall antirealist position. Thank you for this video.
I like your analogy between the ways we can see the connection between real objects and sense perceptions, and now I want to write a sci-fi story where someone discovered the moraliton, the fermion that mediates the interaction between the Morality Field and the, oh, say, crystals in the pineal gland.
18:20 "Moral progress can only make sense in terms of realism." This is so stupid... Soccer rules are entirely conventional, and yet progress is apparent. There are people now who are objectively better at getting the ball through the goal. Even the rules have changed. And there are no soccer realists (I hope). Why is it that so many philosophers are so terribly bad at doing philosophy? 🤦🏻♂
I think probably the weakness of your position is the fact that it's not intuitive. If morality is just based on objective methods of reaching a goal like human flourishing, then this would mean or model for morality is based on hypothetical imperatives. But intuitively we don't think this. In fact, we tend to think that having self-serving goals are immoral motivations. It seems that we intuitively perceive morality in the way Kant described, as categorical imperatives. We tend to believe that we should do the right thing because it is the right thing. That our motivations should be to do good for its own sake. But if that's the case, then it seems more principles should be irreducible rather than reducible to certain goals like human flourishing. And when you claim that moral realism isn't really intuitive, it seems all you've shown is that the intuitive nature of morality can be masked behind convoluted jargon. If you were instead to ask people things like "do you think murder is wrong regardless of what people think, even if every person on Earth thought it was right?" Then they would tend to say yes, which supports moral realism. Likewise they would also tend to agree that morality manifests more like a categorical imperative if they understand what that means. So it seems you're wrong about the intuition. And concerning your claim that IP would have the burden of proof because of his inflationary ontology, I actually don't think that's the case. The fact is all of us seem to agree that morality exists as an abstract concept. The question isn't whether morality exists in this way, but rather what the nature of its existence is. Even the moral nihilist would agree that moral principles exist, they'll just believe that they're completely man-made and not based on anything in reality. The only thing that would be inflationary is proposing there is a source for the grounding of morality outside of humans, but this would be the conclusion of the moral argument rather than an assumption. So I really don't see how his ontology would be any more inflationary than yours.
But sometimes what one feels to be the right and good thing might contradict others at the axiomatic level A catholic would claim life is inherently good in and of itself and worth creating or creation itself is good irrespective of the quality of experience, but an antinatalist would disagree with the axiom that life itself has intrinsic value. Now each feels they are right but objectively both cannot be true at the same time. How can we know the feelings like this is wrong and this is right accurately translates and represents moral facts (if they exist) ?
@mithunbalaji8199 there are people who believe the earth is flat. It can't be both flat and round. What does that prove? That the earth doesn't have an objective shape? The disagreement on what is moral doesn't prove there is no objective morality.
The way he presents the argument from epistemic facts is confused. Epistemic values like assuming logic is valid or evidence is important can (and I believe are) still are subjective. We only come to rational agreements only when we share epistemic values and agree on facts, as well as think clearly. A global skepticism can consistently deny the external world exists so long as she doesn't assign value in sensa data at all. There's really nothing we can say or show to disprove them. Likewise, if you see no value in compassion, there's no logical argument that would sway you.
there is to much equivocation in this presentation for me to draw any opinion here. You do realise you said that torturing young children is morally ambiguous at best. You do not suggest any counter to this other than your strong sense of antirealism.
10:30 I'd say a moral person is someone who has unity between their 'passions' and the objective moral facts. People in lower levels may act morally out of a sense of duty, but someone whose more elevated will do so by intrinsic motivations. It's like embodying the principle.
It's a shame that mimetic gamification is seen as the "natural" or "intuitive" default rather than the exploit it is. Few content creators make content which does not operate on moral realist grounds.
I think our intuition of morality comes from evolution. There are now many animals that show moral actions, what I mean by moral action is when an animal does an action that decreases his well-being for the sake of another animal.
The ironic thing is that IP *is* an anti-realist and supports utilitarian ethics, he’s just gaslit himself into thinking he’s a moral realist because he thinks the arbitration of a theistic being is somehow equivalent to objectivity.
@@pedroba76 theism, wether it’s the traditional Devine command theory or the “more nuanced” grounding-in-Gods-nature that folks like Craig tout, just transfers the subjectivity of morality from human individuals or society onto God. When it comes to morality Christians seem to conveniently forget that they claim their God is a personal agent.
You have to respond to Destiny's "Questioning My Moral System & Political Position | SCRIPTED - EP #1 " th-cam.com/video/N-eTcjGsK08/w-d-xo.html How does your view differ from this view? Rem the Bath Boi is a streamer who defends the companions in guilt argument, it might be interesting to talk to him
You didn't say anything meaningful regarding moral experience and moral disagreement, becuase the argument is why should you get ot decide that what they do is immoral if morality is subjective. Then you have to accept that they have different opinions than you. You can still fill it's wrong but you shouldn't have a say in what they decide is moral.
Appeal to emotion (broadly speaking) is probably one of the most efficient way to deal with moral disagreement under anti-realism. And this not a fallacious way since the goal is not tracking truth (some hypothetical moral truths), but having shared values. To illustrate, most people probably formed a negative value towards talibans because they saw a videos of them acting violently. The film Bambi probably made more people care about animals than a book like Animal Liberation has. Etc
Cogito ergo sum; I think therefore I am. I am alive, so being alive is desirable; being dead is undesirable. My thinking derives meaning, so Truth is good, lying is bad. I empathize others are alive like I am; so stealing and murder is bad. Realism equals morality; 'moral anti-realism' is meaningless. Yes, people can play tricks with words to say that what some people claim is 'moral' is against realism. No, Spinoza's god doesn't care if you are gay or want to crossdress, neither should anyone; yes should implies morality...
Why is being alive desirable? I can think of plenty of situations where death is a preferable alternative to living. Why is truth good and lying is bad? Why is stealing bad just because you are alive? You are spewing baseless nonsense.
𝗘𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝗴𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝗶𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 Sub-premise 1a: Atheism does not believe in gods. Sub-premise 1b: Atheism does not believe in other supernatural validation of moral claims. (e.g. Dao, Dharma, Divine Logos) Premise 1: Therefore, Atheism does not believe in supernatural validation for moral claims. Sub-premise 2a: The eventual objective consequence of all actions is Entropy. Sub-premise 2b: Death eradicates all subjective experience of and caring about consequences. Premise 2: Consequentialism/Utilitarianism cannot justify short-term over long-term priorities. Premise 3: Furthermore, Hume's guillotine refutes all moral claims derived from observable facts. Sub-premise 4a: It is not morally wrong to lose interest in (or even to totally change) one’s value judgements. Sub-premise 4b: It is not morally wrong for societies to change value judgements. Sub-premise 4c: It is not morally wrong for individuals to change or resist societal value judgements. Premise 4: Therefore, it is not morally wrong to do anything for or against value judgements; value judgements do no validate moral claims. Conclusion: No validation for moral claims remains; Moral Nihilism is the only rational outlook for Atheism.
kind of odd that InspiringPhilosophy, a Christian apologetic, takes the abolition of slavery to be moral progress. this is despite the fact that the Mosaic law said the Hebrews could take and do all kinds of things to slaves, and the apostle Paul telling slaves to be good slaves
8:32 This is just not understanding moral subjectivism If a subjectivist has a preference for a women not to be enslaved, then it would be immoral to do so under his judgment
Immoral, meaning 'women being enslaved is wrong,' which is equivalent to 'I disapprove of women being enslaved'. If 'x is wrong' is equivalent to 'I disapprove of x', then you don't disagree with someone expressing the opposite, because you two are merely describing your attitudes towards x, meaning that both of you are right. Idk if this is addressed in the video (I haven't watched the whole thing yet), but this objection (that subjectivism fails to account for moral disagreement) is one of the well-known arguments against subjectivism.
@@veridicusmind3722 Depends on what you mean by disagreement Fact is that a subjectivist will not say "We disagree other an objective fact." But it possible that he says "We disagree about, if enslaving a woman is preferable." Just like you can disagree about what ice cream tastes best. You may like chocolate, while I like vanilla. And if you mean by disagreement "Disagreeing about an objective fact" then a subjectivist wouldn't accept that moral disagreement exists, since there are no objective moral facts So if the realist wanted to make like this modus tollens: P1: If moral subjectivism is true, then moral disagreement does not exist P2: Moral disagreement does exist C: Therefore moral subjectivism is not true If disagreement is defined as above, then the subjectivist would accept P1 But you would need arg for P2
@@veridicusmind3722 There are many forms of antirealism other than subjectivism. I'm inclined towards error theory. So I don't analyze "x is wrong" as meaning just "I disapprove of x". As I see it, moral judgments are attempts to describe objective properties, it's just that there are no such properties. I do think that moral judgments are often grounded in a kind of projection of emotional attitudes, but that's not what moral statements literally mean. In any case, that particular argument against subjectivism has always struck me as astonishingly weak. There is a perfectly reasonable sense in which, if Sydney says, "I disapprove of X" and Verity says, "I do not disapprove of X", Sydney and Verity disagree with each other. Granted, their statements do not contradict each other -- there is nothing contradictory about Sydney disapproving of X while Verity does not disapprove of X -- but it seems obvious to me that expressing contradictory propositions is not the only way of expressing disagreement.
@@KaneB I tend to agree with you on the "argument from disagreement". But if someone defines disagreement as "disagreeing about objective facts", then the subjectivist would just not accept that these exist, since you can't have objective moral facts you could disagree on.
@@KaneB I'm aware that there are many types of anti-realism. I was responding to the comment about subjectivism. Suppose that I claim that my house is green, but my friend (who is unknowingly color blind) claim that it is red. We argue back and forth, disagreeing about what kind of properties the house has. Neither me, nor my color blind friend, think that we are merely expressing our mental attitudes to each other; both of us think that we are talking about the properties of my house. However, if two toddlers argue about which ice cream is better (vanilla or chocolate), it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a parent can correct them by informing them that they don't actually disagree, but that they are merely expressing their attitudes to each other. Even if one thinks that this is a kind of disagreement, I don't think it's what most people have in mind when talking about moral disagreement. What exactly do they disagree about? Surely, they don't disagree that each have different attitudes, and neither do they disagree about any objective moral property (since there are none). So it seems to me very unclear about where the disagreement could be grounded.
22:20 Is that not moral objectivism? We are discovering objective moral facts in the sense of the implications of our "shared evolutionary history" as you put it.
I don’t understand your confusing about a moral realist acting out of passion to save a child. I think the idea is their passion is ignited by seeing something that objectively bad. And that feels more authentic than saying you’re reacting that way because that’s how you were raised, or what society says you should feel. Hopefully I didn’t misrepresent anti-realism though 😂🍺
Biologically, the passion is ignited by a mechanism of altruism and compassion in our brains developed by years and years of evolution of the species and of the culture. As a social species, caring for others benefits the survival and spread of humans, thus our brains evolved to care about children.
@@Kuppy0373 Yes, but for pragmatic reasons in an evolutionary sense, not necessarily because it's written in the objective laws of the universe, of reality or because a God commanded so or something. The point is that, according to a purely biological and naturalist viewpoint, our belief and feelings that harming innocent people is bad, did not arise in our consciouness because not harming people is an ""objective good in itself", more because it's useful for our species to believe in this, it's ""useful for evolution"" that I, you and most people feel compassion for people that are suffering. It's pragmatism. It's something kinda depressing, sounds kinda "weird" to acknowledge, but it's a possible view. That our basic moral beliefs as people do not exist because they are objectively true, in the sense that they would still be true even if society didn't exist, but rather that we were "hardwired" to believe that they are true because it's more useful for humankind if most of us believe in this.
14:42 "What can an anti-realist vegan say to a meat eater? Well, first of all, they might appeal to empirical evidence." Isn't it bizarre for an anti-realist to appeal to empirical evidence? What is empirical evidence but observations of objective reality? Under anti-realism, there shouldn't be anything in objective reality to point to regarding morality. One would expect that appealing to empirical evidence would be the tendency of moral realists while anti-realists scoff at such foolishness. 17:47 "When people argue about morality, they will either try to bring empirical evidence to bear on the topic, or appeal to shared values, or shared intuitions or something like that." In other words, when people argue about morality, they appeal to empirical evidence exactly like people would appeal to empirical evidence when arguing about something real. In contrast, when people are arguing about something which is not real, they don't usually bother with empirical evidence. Who would win a fight between Green Lantern and Spider-Man? Which movie is better, Citizen Kane or The Godfather? Notice that when people debate such things they don't tend to use empirical evidence and they don't take the debate seriously because they are aware that the topic of the debate is not real and there is no one correct answer. This bears little resemblance to how people debate moral issues. 24:42 "The moral realist has an inflationary ontology." Not all moral realists have inflationary ontologies. That makes morality sound as if it's something akin to phlogiston, like an invisible moral fluid that flows into good things and through good actions. I wouldn't dare guess what proportion of moral realists are proposing something like that, but it seems so strange and implausible that it would be shocking if it were more than half of moral realists. 25:00 "We can explain moral intuitions (arguably) by appealing to our evolutionary history and our upbringing." It seems awkward for an anti-realist to explain moral intuitions through evolutionary history. Using upbringing makes sense, since people will frequently pass around imaginary ideas through social interaction, but evolution isn't determined by things which are not real. Evolution is a physical process of survival and spreading of DNA, or death. Something which is not real cannot kill you, nor can it help you spread your DNA. How can something imaginary apply evolutionary pressure or in any way influence the process? It's true that we are all the same species and so at first glance it's not surprising that we might share moral intuitions, but if moral intuitions don't have any connection to anything real, then it's strange that we've evolved any moral intuitions at all. Intuitions are crude and unreliable, but they don't tend to develop for no reason. It may be irrational to fear snakes, but some snakes can actually be dangerous, so that intuition is based on something real. 31:20 "What is the connection between moral intuitions and these objective moral properties?" Intuitions evolved in our ancestors because they provided a big enough survival advantage. Moral intuitions evolved because objective moral properties exist and being instinctively aware of these properties gives some species a survival advantage, and this is especially true for social species.
"Isn't it bizarre for an anti-realist to appeal to empirical evidence?" No. Suppose I have a preference for minimizing suffering, where I take it that this is just something I happen to prefer, not something that is somehow prescribed by objective facts. I just want to minimize suffering. Well, then I can look at empirical evidence about how best to minimize suffering. "Not all moral realists have inflationary ontologies" Sure. There are some moral realists, like yourself, who just have a bizarre semantics for moral terms, so that to say "x is morally good" or "you ought to do x" just means nothing more than "x minimizing suffering" (or something along those lines; apologies if I've misrepresented your view, but I do recall that you're a moral naturalist). This isn't the line that IP takes, though. IP thinks of moral facts as non-natural, abstract entities. "How can something imaginary apply evolutionary pressure or in any way influence the process? " It can't. Obviously the antirealist isn't claiming that, somehow, the nonexistent moral facts influenced the evolutionary process. The antirealist isn't claiming that moral intuitions don't have any connection to anything real. Rather, the point is: humans tend to have "moral intuitions" -- reactions of approbation and disapprobation towards particular forms of behaviour. We can explain why they have these reactions by giving a story about how particular forms of behaviour tended to promote survival and reproduction. We don't need to postulate anything else.
@@KaneB "So that to say 'x is morally good' or 'you ought to do x' just means nothing more than 'x minimizing suffering'." We can just call it "consequentialism." It's best not to get too tied to specifics on exactly which properties define morality, since it's a rather vaguely defined concept, though minimizing suffering is a pretty fair rule of thumb for what morality means. "Suppose I have a preference for minimizing suffering, where I take it that this is just something I happen to prefer, not something that is somehow prescribed by objective facts. I just want to minimize suffering. Well, then I can look at empirical evidence about how best to minimize suffering." So then it's just a curious coincidence that all this comes together to mean that you end up arguing like a moral realist who defines morality as minimizing suffering. You're not an actual moral realist, just indistinguishable from a moral realist when you argue any moral issue. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes so many people moral realists.
@@Ansatz66 No, we can't do that. Or we can, but it would be misleading, because consequentialism is a normative theory, and is compatible with many different metaethical theories. I don't see what the coincidence is supposed to be here. Yes, when realists and antirealists argue about first-order normative questions, they often sound the same. If I ask, say, "is abortion morally wrong?" we can debate that without ever getting into metaethical questions.
@@Ansatz66 Also, if a moral realist simply defines "x is morally good", "you ought to do x", etc., to mean "minimises suffering", then everybody is a moral realist, because everybody recognizes that some actions minimize suffering relative to others. Moral realism is trivial per this definition. I think this is an utterly confused interpretation of moral language, but I don't really care about arguing semantics, so if you insist on using moral terms this way, then fine, I'm a moral realist. Of course, this still leaves open the debate with all the other people who are using the term "moral realist" to indicate much more substantial commitments than this.
@@KaneB : Can't any normative theory be used as a metaethical theory by accepting the normative theory as axiomatic? "If I ask, say, 'is abortion morally wrong?' we can debate that without ever getting into metaethical questions." Isn't it a coincidence that two radically different metaethical theories come together to produce exactly the same normative arguments as if the two people are talking about the same issue? When we have different metaethical theories we're literally talking about different issues, as different as apples and oranges, yet we make the same arguments, and those arguments happen to include empirical observations just as if we were talking about something real. "If a moral realist simply defines 'x is morally good', 'you ought to do x', etc., to mean 'minimises suffering', then everybody is a moral realist, because everybody recognizes that some actions minimize suffering relative to others." That's perfect. That's the ultimate goal of metaethics: to perfectly describe what morality means in a way so that we all understand each other and agree. The perfect metaethical theory will be the theory that everyone subscribes to in the way that they use moral language. If there's a moral realist definition of moral terms that makes everyone a moral realist, then moral realism seems like the best direction to take metaethics. "If you want to insist on using moral terms this way, then fine, I'm a moral realist." That's exactly why I define moral terms this way, because it captures how nearly everyone uses moral language, even people who call themselves anti-realists. It's the best definition I've ever seen by far thanks to this universal applicability. When we use moral language to mean minimizing suffering, everyone understands what we're saying.
14:51 I'm more of an anti-realist/ a relativist and also vegan I usually do a consistency test with the other persons moral system, so I look, if the person is contradicting themselves. That works fine
An anti-moral realist can just claim that consistency is not of any value to them. In fact, it is not seems consistent to think consistency (or anything else) is of value under non-moral realism. So why even bother debating them? Or, be a vegan? As someone who leans toward moral realism (crazy I know...) I fail to understand this. Seems to me that the anti-moral realist, the error theorist in particular, that engages in normative moral discourse, admits that what they believe about ethics is a mistake. Yet they go ahead and try to convince the other that their own mistake is somehow more worthwhile than the mistake this other is commiting. How is that consistent?
@@blueglassar one can perfectly consistently realize that 1. they (as apparently most other people) have moral intuitions too, but 2. there's no reason to suppose such intuitions reflect objective moral facts; their basis is irrational. Let me make an analogy: when you're in love with someone you're convinced they're the best person in the world (1); both your speech and your actions will reflect this; but at the same time you realize everyone else who's in love makes the same judgment, so why should your judgment be more accurate than anyone else's? There's no truth of the matter as to who's the best person in the world (2). In the case of love, you're happy to stick with your emotional intuition regardless of the facts, because it feels good all-around; in the case of moral values, there's often a tradeoff with other values, and (often with the help of others) you can correct your judgment when you realize what you're attached to is a myth.
@@Elisha_the_bald_headed_prophet Firstly, just to clearify, I did not claim that recognizing moral intutions and their irrational basis is inconsistent. My claim is that believing that and then still arguing over those things as if they matter or hold value, is inconsistent. Secondly, I do not think this analogy works. Being in love with someone seems to me as (mostly) a personal issue. One that you do not push upon others and others do not push upon you, as it is none of their concern (at least not strangers it seems). In contrast, moral discourse appears to be everyone's concern. But if the nature of ethical claims (do not murder or be fair, for example) is the same as love, then why try to force a subjective preference upon others? You "love" this moral theory or value and I "love" another. If we both recognize that we have no basis for it then why debate it? Or at least, how is it rational? As I see it, my previous question remains: why try and universalize that which you know (or think) is a mistake? Thirdly, what do you mean by correcting the myth we are attached to with the help of other values?
@@blueglassar 1. In that case, I think what the anti-realist argues for is his metaethical stance, not the content of moral claims (because to do so would be arbitrary). A metaethical claim is not necessarily a moral claim. It's more like a factual claim. I don't think error theorists argue that holding an anti-realist view has any moral value. They might believe it has some intersubjectively epistemic value, meaning only those will agree who prefer true beliefs over false beliefs. But they might also be epistemic anti-realists without loss of consistency. There's no trying to convince the others of a value. OTOH a realist engaging in metaethics might understandably wish to argue that anti-realism is not only false, but also morally reprehensible. E.g. a theistic realist would find it blasphemous to claim that divine law refers to nonexistent stuff and might feel the anti-realist is attacking his values. 2. I chose that example instead of any example of aesthetic judgment because we do not content ourselves with enjoying the person we love like we would a painting or a hot dog. We want to convince others of the perfection of the match, the strength of our commitment, etc. causing a cascade of irrational behaviors... although actually the main goal we're accomplishing is fooling ourselves by means of rationalization. But your next point is more interesting. I agree that we "love" our worldview, which includes a morality component (values). We can't argue about the value claims (at least, an anti-realist shouldn't) but we might very well argue about the factual claims, in order to root out contradictions and decide on the empirically more accurate worldview. As I wrote above, metaethics makes factual claims. 3. Psychology research shows that, although we tend to hang onto our irrational values, it's possible to work on our moral intuitions with other people's help, and even personal reasoning, causing new moral intuitions: i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1627880107i/31719698.jpg (Haidt, The Righteous Mind)
@@Elisha_the_bald_headed_prophet 1. I think there was a misunderstanding. I was not referring to metaethics, at least not directly. My original comment and the one that followed made the claim that if you are an anti-moral realist it makes no sense to argue about normative ethics as if it really matters. Yet, it seems to me that many do just that. They engage in debates and discussions about all sorts of values or moral beliefs, such as consistency and veganism and politics, to name a few. You can say that this or that is a matter of fact or an epistemic value. But under error theory, I think, facts and epistemic values have no merit because moral values are a mistake. If you say, as an error theorist, that consistency is important, you would be mistaken and inconsistent, thus irrational. My problem is with those who claim that morality or some values should be taken seriously, but not really believing in it and at the same time, not willing to admit the irrationality of such a position. Which I suspect are most, or at least many, non-moral realists. Because in truth almost everyone takes ethics, or at least certain values, seriously. 2. I tend to disgree with that. Some people might care of proving to others their relationship is of great worth. Others might not at all. Some might instead be more concerned with proving a certain work of art is of value. It could be a matter of identity, if you feel the art is part of you, in some sense, then you will defend it. Or, you might be the sort of person who does not care what others think, and thus would not bother with any of that. I think that in this regard people can be and are very different. 3. Well maybe, again, this is a psychological issue. It is interesting for sure and might be of value. But it is unrelated to the core of my original claim.
Very unsatisfied with the vast majority of what you said. A lot of it was just your opinion given after a very underwhelming response to your interlocutor's argument.
If you like this kind of content, perhaps you could suggest other videos for me to respond to.
I would be interested in you making a video about this peticular argument for moral realism:
P1) If morality is objective then moral realism is correct. (semantic)
P2) Morality is objective.
C3) Moral Realism is correct.
P4) If {X} is externally measurable then it's objective.
P5) Morality is externally measurable.
C6) Morality is objective.
P7) If {X} has external experiments which quantify it, then it's externally measurable.
P8) Morality has external experiments which quantify it.
C9) Morality is externally measurable.
P10) If {X} has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of {X}, then {X} has external experiments which quantify it.
P11) Morality has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of morality.
C12) Morality has external experiments which quantifies it.
P13) If [moral judgements are some phenomena of morality] and [there are external experiments which quantify moral judgements] then morality has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of morality.
P14) Moral judgements are some phenomena of morality.
P15) There are external experiments which quantify moral judgements.
C16) Morality has external experiments which quantify some phenomena of morality.
(Argument for P4:
P1) If you accept basic semantics of objective as used in scientific literature, then If {X} is externally measurable then {X} is objective
P2) You accept basic semantics of objective as used in scientific literature
C) If {X} is externally measurable then {X} is objective)
It's not my argument, but I would be interested in your opinion of it😊
@@justus4684 Where does that argument come from? There are lots of claims there that seem either vague or hopelessly implausible. I'd want to read a bit more about it before commenting.
@@KaneB
I don't know if that argument is present anywhere in the literature.
What premises are you talking about specifically, when you say many are implausible or vague?
I could try to get an argument for each one of them from the person I got the argument from, if you are interested.
If interested is present on your side, I could even ask, if the other person is interested in a conversation with you.
@@justus4684 Some of the problems are:
-- The notion of a basic semantics of objective as used in the scientific literature. I have no idea what this means. "Objectivity" is used a host of different ways in scientific contexts. I doubt that there is a "basic semantics" of objectivity in science. It's also not clear why, if morality counts as objectivity per whatever sense is intended by this argument, this would entail moral realism.
-- The notion of something being "externally measurable", or having "external experiments". What exactly are external measurements and external experiments?
-- The claim that "moral judgments are some phenomena of morality", and more generally, what looks like a conflation throughout the argument of moral judgments with morality itself. There's obviously a distinction between judgments about some domain X and the domain X itself. Nobody doubts that there are facts about the moral judgments that people make (that these can be studied scientifically, etc.). This doesn't tell us anything about whether there are moral facts, moral properties, etc.
@@KaneB
I think the best option here is, that I try to get a conversation between you two running
Would you be interested in that exchange?
Oh, I'm pumped to listen to this :D cheers Kane!
hi are you considering leaving moral realism?
@@davidh1415, what are YOUR metaethics?
@@TheWorldTeacher i am anti-realism, Kane's fault
Stephen, did you manage to spot the comment I left in the comment section of one of your videos regarding SOCIALISM (you requested that I post my remarks on that objectively-evil economic/political system in a more appropriate place, and I did so)?
If not, I can repost my comment HERE.
I love KaneB so damn much.
This is such a fantastic video. Thank you for doing this. Though we're sympathetic to Moral Realism, we think you did an excellent job outlining the Anti-Realist position and defending it from a lot of Common Apologetic arguments. We'd love to see more videos like where you actually take a philosophically informed approach to respond to many different arguments from Christian/Theistic Apologists. We've been really disappointed with the state of TH-cam Atheism, and think you can definitely step into the fold with outlining philosophical critiques while providing an overview of the concepts discussed from an educational perspective (philosophy of religion is unique as it gets to touch so many different branches of Philosophy). Here are some channels you could perhaps offer responses towards?
Word on Fire and Bishop Barron - Perhaps the biggest Catholic Evangelical Channel in the United States. Unlike a lot of other clergies, Bishop Barron has made a point to respond to Atheism in a lot of ways and has a lot of videos on Atheism and Philosophy that may be of interest to you.
Capturing Christianity - Brings on a lot of philosophical Theists to discuss some of the cutting-edge work in Theistic Apologetics.
Trinity Radio - Another apologetics channel with a lot of reach that has a lot of content worth responding to.
Thanks again for the awesome video and looking forward to your future work in this area.
Loved this video!
I’m currently doing my Philosophy Master’s and I’ve always thought that moral realism was so counterintuitive and strange but found that not many around me agreed with me. I found myself puzzled at how strongly people held moral realist claims, and held them as unquestionable, as if anything else was laughable, shameful or controversial.
We have moral attitudes about things but they’re not objective facts about the world. How can these supposed ‘moral truths’ exist independent of a human mind? Humans, human minds, give rise to moral feelings. Morality would not exist without human minds.
This video has helped reassure me. I’m not crazy and I’m not alone, haha!
Yeah, most philosophers are moral realists, but there's a sizeable minority of us in the opposition. Thanks for the kind words about the video!
"morality would not exist without human minds".. this is exactly what the moral realist does NOT believe so I'm not sure if that's much of an argument. A moral realist would say that, like numbers, morals exist in some way even if there were no existing humans
I also feel the same way, my friend. I'm glad we agree.
Moral truths, like all truths, exists within an eternal transcendent mind, commonly referred to as God.
I noticed this video only now and your replies are really good. I feel like InspiringPhilosophy didn't really do his homework and also that he didn't try to attack his own position - self criticsm and self reflection is a quality that I feel is too rare among people.
Oh, and even though I am in my own thinking actually somewhat close to moral realism (maybe the semi-skimmed version you described in another video) another common conceit among realists that we can see in this video is that they themselves think that their own moral intuitions are actually the objective moral facts we should be looking for. I see no reason why it should be so. Like, why can't it be that the slaver is correct and everybody else is wrong? How can we check? Like it is extremely presumptuous to think that I, the moral realist, have better understanding of what is moral and immoral than what everybody else has and that my society is the correct one etc. It kinda boggles my mind.
Wow, this was great. I've been reading about anti realism and thinking of responses to arguments like IP's and you really laid out the case extremely well
wow, this content is amazing. Excellent responses Kane. Have you finished your PHD? I am looking forward to your first peer-reviewed article on this debate in the literature in meta-ethics. I also have found moral realism to be non-intuitive and that many other philosophy students have intuitions that lean toward error theory.
Thanks! I've done the first draft my of PhD. As for articles, don't hold your breath. It's looking pretty unlikely I'm going to have a career in academia, and there's absolutely no chance that I'd put myself through the misery of journal publishing for any other reason.
@@KaneB if you don't mind me asking, are you going to do fulltime youtube? Your plan for future? [Big "fan" of your] idk the right word for it.
@@blankname5177 Doubtful. I don't see how I could make enough money with it.
@@KaneB It is possible especially since you have the credential [ Sabine Hossenfelder doing it] but I guess it will take a lot of work and investment assuming you want to invest in this endeavor. Whatever you do man good luck, you are a treasure
With regard to moral intuitions, I have 2 other considerations from an anti-realist perspective:
1) It seems hard for me, phenomonologically, to distinguish between a moral responses and other emotional responses. For example, when I see something I perceive as “wrong” maybe my chest tightens, my face warms up, and I have thoughts in the vein of “that’s wrong, I don’t like that”. But if I trip and fall in front of a bunch of people, I might have almost the exact same sensations and maybe have thoughts like “that’s embarrassing, this sucks”. But is there an objective standard of embarrassment? Just from intuition I don’t see how to separate these
2) Ignoring the previous point about the indistinguishable nature of emotions vs moral experiences, it seems like my moral judgements aren’t even internally consistent. For example, when I’m hungry I associate way more things with moral wrongness than I would if I had eaten. Obviously the moral realist can explain this in terms of an improperly functioning brain, but it seems like that dependence on my personal state seems to favor more that moral intuitions are mind dependent as opposed to objective.
I’m curious if Kane, or anyone else, has similar intuitions or responses to these. Great video though!!
Re (1), speaking for myself, although moral intuitions sometimes have a similar phenomenology to emotion, very often they don't. If I actually see a person being tortured, I will have a strong emotional response. But if I just consider intellectually the fact that torture is happening in the world, then I don't have any noticeable physiological responses, though I still have the thought, "that's wrong!" Having said that, perhaps the same could be said for emotions -- maybe it's like the difference between, say, actually being chased by a bear and just imagining being chased by a bear. In general, when things are not immediately present to us, they don't provoke such strong reactions.
Re (2), I have argued previously that morality is internally inconsistent. Essentially, I'm inclined to think that our moral intuitions are generated by two types of reasoning (broadly corresponding to consequentialist and deontological) that cannot be made compatible. I explain my argument in the first part of this video: th-cam.com/video/w4tRgsHcXQU/w-d-xo.html
As for your argument on this point, my concern is that the same might be true for all other cognitive capacities. It wouldn't be surprising if perception, memory, reasoning, etc., were affected by hunger as well. More generally, realists don't need to assume that intuition is perfectly truth-tracking. There are lots of situations where perception and memory lead us astray, or seem to deliver contradictory information (think of optical illusions). Of course, the difficulty with moral intuition is figuring out which moral intuitions are trustworthy. In your example, are your moral intuitions more likely to be reliable when you're hungry, or when you're not hungry? How could we tell?
It seems to me that at least several arguments made by @InspiringPhilosophy are appealing to values that many people share and this has always seemed to contradictory to me because if moral realism were true, shared values would not matter unless the values could somehow be derived from certain objective properties. I suppose a moral realist might try to find the properties that could be used to demonstrate which shared values are "correct", but I'm not sure that would be meaningful to me unless I agreed with the properties that were used by the realist. I think I'm also an anti-realist and in the minority as well.
Anyways, I really appreciate your content.
Thank you for your service. The proponents of non-natural moral realism seem so full of themselves and lazy it's casting a bad light on philosophy. I'm not even talking about IP, who is just a self-serving, religious propagandist, but rather leading secular 'scholars' like shafer-landau. His highly educated argument seems to boil down to 'moral realism is true because bad things are wrong'. There are not enough circular face palms in the world...
Well, I can't comment on their character traits; I don't know most of them personally! I do think there are plenty of non-naturalists who have raised interesting arguments, but none of them, in my opinion, are even remotely convincing. The case for non-naturalism seems shockingly weak to me, given how seriously it's taken by professionals in the field. But then, maybe I'm just missing something!
What do you think about natural moral realism?
@@hamdaniyusuf_dani
Both kinds of realism have zero explanatory value and are entirely disconnected from anything that drives real humans. Both are embarrassing, outdated bubbles of brain-masturbation that need to pop, like yesterday.
The debate about moral facts and properties is about as promising as listening to some flat earthers spend 300 years on an analysis of the words I, see and curve in the statement the earth is flat because i don't see curve. Their foundational arguments are appeals to the presupposed impossibility of the contrary. Since none of the involved terms are clearly defined they are also arguments from ignorance.
I guess it stems from a history of prescientific theorizing in the context of silly self contradictory ideas like Jehova and free will.
Any real advances on Morality will be achieved in the sciences.
Moral Naturalism is slightly more respectable than the non naturalist vodoo since its affirmation of Naturalism at least leaves the door open for them to come back to their senses and realize they are clowns that need to shut up and wait for the science to to come in with real results.
Good god. The aesthetic dissonance caused by that music IP uses is jarring to the point that it seems "realistic" to say that they are either morally or aesthetically, but at least epistemically at fault. Here is a rhetorical matter that overlaps all three domains of evaluation! I would argue that if moral realism is to be defended weil, it should be done rationally and in good faith, but also without that music!
Excellent points, the response to the "burden of proof argument" was hilarious (in a philosophical chuckle kind of way).
In a debate, you ought not to misrepresent your opponent's argument if your goal is to counter the argument, because if you do, you're simply not able to counter the argument. You can't paint a chair blue if you put your brush on a table and walk away.
If your goal is something else, then the "debate" is no longer a rational debate, but something else.
That was the worst defence of anything that I have heard for a long time.
same.
same, even considering that my mind alligns more with the anti-realist view, but for other reasons.
I would really like to see you debate Tjump on moral realism. Him and much of his following seem to have resorted to permanently plugging their ears when I speak on the issue. I think you would garner much more respect, if that debate is even something you would find valuable.
Reason makes madness readily apparent. If all arguments need an initial proposition, then those initial propositions must lie in our intuitions. That we can trust our intuitions and base all of our epistemic knowledge on them is foolish. If philosophy is the search for truth, then our intuitions are the very thing we must question.
I enjoy and benefit from your clear explanations. The explanations given by InspiringPhiliosphy are obscure for me, but yours are clear and understandable. This shows the value of good teaching, one that considers the learner. For me, you are a good teacher. As for the music they use, it is so distracting, obscuring their aguements.
Great video!
When you mentioned how Inspiring Philosophy considers moral truths to be conceptual truths, I was like, "What? Hasn't that guy ever read Hume?" Upon visiting his channel, I'm going to assume that he's not particularly influenced by Hume.
You should maybe get in touch with President Sunday if you want to talk about Hobbes re: contractarianism. He seems the most astute on political philosophy. I’m not sure if there’s a video of his I’d like to see you respond to, but it’d be a good conversation I think.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Hey Kane. Do you think that you will be doing any debates on positions within moral anti-realism? If you find another anti-realist youtuber that does not share your error-theoretical intuitions, it would be interesting to hear that debate! It was a good time in your channel's history when you and Cole did not share a similar anti-realist position in error-theory, and we could take part in a debate between anti-realists.
it would also be interesting to hear your take on the the debate between Finlay and Joyce regarding subjectivism vs error theory ("the error in moral error theory" and "the error in the error in moral error theory" and "errors upon errors"). Or, if people making moral judgments are increasingly judging morality to be something similar to the "naïve relativist undergraduates" you mentioned, then it might not be the case that moral judges are (as) committed to irreducible normativity anymore (John Burgess suggests that error theory is a phase, and makes a parallel to how we held an error theory regarding "sunrise" when we learnt that the earth was not flat, but now hold a naturalist explanation of sunrise as an "appearance" of a rising sun (rather than an actual rising sun), and hence are realists regarding sunrises again).
Also, it would be interesting to see a lecture/presentation about the "Parity premise" and "Disparity response" regarding the companions-in-guilt-argument for error-theory, to hear what the current realist response is. You presented the outline of it here, but it does not seems like the account that epistemology is functional normative rather than irreducible normative (as Olson and others claim) is uncontested by the realists (Cuneo och Kyriacou keep defending their position), so it would be interesting to hear the wider debate and its current status.
Kane addressed companions in guilt earlier here th-cam.com/video/7HHBNU_gXP0/w-d-xo.html
@@jolssoni2499 Ah, great! I missed that one.
Yeah, that kind of thing would definitely interest me. I don't actually pay that much attention to other youtubers though. If you know of another antirealist youtuber, I'd be happy to get in touch with them. Certainly, when it comes to debates among antirealists, my views are not nearly so strong. I'm inclined towards error theory at the moment, but honestly, I think there are very good cases to be made for most other antirealist positions. I've been considering converting to, or at least playing around with, some form of moral relativism, just because (a) there's a consensus that it's extremely implausible but (b) the standard arguments against it are actually quite weak, in my view. This might make for an interesting debate with a fellow antirealist.
As Jolssoni has mentioned, I have commented on the companions in guilt before. I do intend to revisit that argument in another video though, because I think there's quite a lot more to say about it. I don't know when I'll get around to that.
Another great argument against the "muh intuition" argument is that we also have intuitions about what living a good life means. Indeed, Humans are individual creatures and we each need and pursue something specific to us and our preferences to be living a subjectively meaningful life. It would be absurd, however, to extrapolate that each of our individual sets of preferences are *the* objective standards of what it means to live a meaningful life. They're just preferences, same with our moral intuition. They're right to us, but a star 10 billion lightyears away doesn't care, and thus they literally violate the definition of objective right off the bat - "mind independent".
Kane B, please tell me from a philosophical perspective what I am getting wrong or failing to account for in the following syllogism:
Premise 1: If true moral dilemmas exist or are possible, moral realism must be false.
Premise 2: True moral dilemmas exist or are possible.
Conclusion: Therefore, moral realism must be false.
Also even if such absolute moral truths exist without contradicting one another, how do we know with certainty that our intuitions about right and wrong translates to represent them ?
How could we possibly verify them ?
Great video.
I have a question. In all seriousness, why should we care if there is an objective morality? If there is an objective moral truth, nobody can agree on what it is anyway. So we're in the same place trying to argue with each other regardless.
Like I think there may be an objective morality in the same sense 2 plus 2 is objectively 4. But, the objective morality is more like an impossibly complex math problem that no one has solved yet and perhaps no one can ever solve. Which brings me back to, why should we care?
10:00 - it's easy to interpret saving the child in moral realist terms. Yes it would be strange to say I saved the child because I had an objective moral duty to do so, because it would be strange for an average person to use philosophical language. It would be equally strange for someone to say I saved the child because of my passions or because of my arbitrary internal emotions. Normal responses would be along the lines of "I was just doing what anyone would do in that situation" or "I had to save that poor kid".
In saving the child I do recognize moral facts in the world:
1) the fact that the child would lose its ability to flourish if I allowed it to die;
2) that were my community to discover that I allowed the child to die out of my own laziness or cowardice then I would (rightly) be criticized;
3) that I would prove to myself and others that I am the right kind of person (namely, the kind of person who saves children when given the chance, even when doing so comes at some cost to the self);
4) I recognize the fact that the reasons to save the child outweigh the reasons to refrain from doing so.
The anti realist here has to say they have arbitrary reasons or purely forced reasons (from biology, evolution, & psychology) for saving the child.
But this is just false.
If the child lives then it will be able to go on experiencing self-evidently good states of affairs relating to flourishing and happiness.
And I might encounter the child's parents and see the sheer happiness and relief they experience when they are reunited with their endangered child, and see the gratitude they have for me helping them.
These intrinsically good states are worth it for their own sake; I'm not saving the child purely out of a biological impulse to continue the species for the sake of continuing the species.
Flourishing is _intrinsically_ good; worth it for its own sake, and thus an obviously good reason (not a mere arbitrary reason) for performing or refraining from actions.
Sure, most people _would_ save the child automatically on instinct. It's because the reasons to save the child are so immediately obvious that we recognize them subconsciously.
I'm not sure if I follow your logic. Why would a moral antirealist be excluded from thinking that flourishing is intrinsically valuable? That's a moral axiom that you're free to adopt, but it isn't an objective fact.
@@nio804 Kane said that what’s motivating him to save the child is not the recognition of some fact (say, the fact that the child is a locus of flourishing and thus saving the child will maximize flourishing), but rather his internal passions and emotions. I’m saying those emotions are not baseless or purely evolutionary artifacts. The emotions are arising _because_ of moral facts.
The goodness of happiness is self-evident, not an axiom. And flourishing is happiness plus a few other things (the happiness is virtuous and not derived by evil means, the happiness is character building and not mere entertainment or pleasure, etc).
@@bds8715 I honestly don't understand what the difference is between something being taken as self-evident vs. an axiom.
I guess a self-evident thing would be that in logic, a true thing can't also be false; a proposition with which you can't disagree without a contradiction. However, the moral claim that flourishing is good isn't self-evident in that sense. It's possible to disagree and remain consistent.
Also, the assertion that the emotions arise from moral facts seems baseless to me; what moral facts do they derive from and how do those facts connect to the emotions?
Keep in mind that a fact to me is something that I can verify by observing it somehow (directly or indirectly) or deriving it from other facts. I don't even know what that would mean for moral facts.
@@nio804 hmm… I’m thinking of ‘axiom’ as something that must be assumed to make progress. There’s no support for the axiom (except for maybe the progress it allows you). But when something is self-evident it not only has support, but the strongest support possible: direct access. I see, directly, that happiness is good. And flourishing is better than happiness; it’s a fuller package.
My favored theory so far is that when we say “Leaving the child to drown is wrong” is to say “The reasons to try to save the child outweigh the reasons to not try.”
The idea is that reasons are real and morality is grounded in reason, and thus morality is real too.
When humans evolved, their faculties of reason came online. This gave them access to asking _why_ questions and engaging in a broad reasoning process. When people do evil things, we ask why. We already see, immediately, that the evil in question _answers_ the question of why _not_ do that thing. So when someone _does_ do it, we wonder why.
So in short a moral fact is a fact on whether doing X is, on balance, reasonable or unreasonable. To say an action is evil is to say it’s irrational _and_ situated in a moral context (for example, a context where a conscious being is hurt). While calculating this balance is complex and not precise, it’s not hopeless, at least not any more hopeless than doing philosophy more broadly, which too involves engaging in a broad reasoning process. (Eg, you can’t show God exists or doesn’t exist by using pure math or logic. You can try with versions of the problem of evil or with ontological arguments, but in the end you still have to weigh the reasons to believe against the reasons to disbelieve and come to a conclusion.)
Reasoning is complicated and difficult and humans don’t reach their full abilities until about 25 years old. That coupled with reasoning emerging out of intelligence which is limited in humans means there’s only so much we can do. To make matters worse we need information to make moral judgments that we often just don’t have. These combined paint a bleak picture of humanity’s ability to make moral progress. And yet we have gotten smarter at morality, recognizing more collectively the sheer evil of slavery, child labor, company towns and coal mines, bigotry and social injustice, etc.
@@bds8715 See, I disagree with your idea of having "direct access" to a moral truth that happiness is good; that's your subjective experience. It's your brain that sees happiness and decides that it's good; you aren't observing some property of the universe external to yourself.
I think my main problem with how you describe things is that you speak of "reasons" but I can't find any non-subjective foundation that you describe from which you can derive said reasons. By what objectively verifiable standard do you judge things to be rational or irrational?
Also, the way you describe moral facts reads to me more like you're describing moral judgements; a moral fact, as I interpret it, is not the result of evaluating a moral situation and arriving at a judgement. Since it's supposed to be an objective fact, it must be true and verifiable to be true independently of any opinion or judgement by anyone, and I just don't see how that's possible when as far as I can tell morality requires subjective experiences to exist before it becomes meaningful at all.
A world that has no subjective experiences can't have morality, since there's no agent there with the capacity to care about anything. If objective moral facts existed, then it seems to be that this world without morality should also contain those objective facts, but that just makes no sense to me at all.
The video you are responding to seems to have confused normative relativism with moral anti realism
Just some random thoughts for each point while I listened.
For the first: But then it goes back to just, “why?” Since the question still remains. Also, what if a person is of the mind that as long as they appear to have won the argument, it’s OK to misrepresent the other persons argument? What if to them, in their subjective experience, they feel satisfied, at least temporarily, in doing so? The criteria has changed, so is it legitimate overall?
For the second: the moral realist, who is simply states that they saved the child because they wanted to and it was wrong, would be speaking in shorthand. Their instincts and emotions have been shaped by their objective values, imprinted onto them through various sources. In part by biological realities, then, guided by higher metaphysical principles, eventually, becoming instincts. Their conscience. Someone who was disrupted by growing up as a child soldier fighting in a war zone with reinforced sensibilities to the contrary, despite what they may have otherwise been sympathetic towards, may not have the instincts or desire to save the hypothetical child. Even that extreme example is unnecessary considering the amount of people who only pull out their phones or only watch when people are being beat up on the subway or on the street for instance.
For the third: if empiricist arguments happen to advance towards a single point, is not the objective morality possibly being argued for?
For the fourth: they are western and eastern countries with roughly the same level of development, shared scientific communication, experiencing relatively similar social conditions, etc. Yet, moral outlooks on a variety of topics are nevertheless still varied. And the importance of community versus the individual or society at large. The level of preemptive self-defense that is morally justified. Keeping understood objective value for the developing young or the elderly, despite their reduced or nonexistent perceptiveness. Objective value itself versus moral relativism, and everything both can lead to depending on the culture, conditions, etc.
For the fifth: to make the analogous argument from observable science to studied in-depth explanation, the one who has an instinctual reactions to stop something they find detestable can still exist without later or first, expanding on why such a thing is and or should be felt in the overall grand moral context.
A few too many circles were being driven here it would seem. It seemed to me personally.
Wow, you were generous in this response. Not only did you treat a broadly superficial account of central arguments and issues with respect, but you allowed a barrage of racist, ethnocentric, and christocentric assumptions to go completely unchallenged.
Hello Kane, thank you so much for this video. I myself am a Moral anti-realist and disagree strongly with moral realists whether from Christian theists or anti theists.
I was wondering if you have any recommendations for books on the strongest arguments for moral anti-realism? Also what are your thoughts (if you have read) of Graham Oppy, Erik Wielenberg, Quinten Smith, Wes Morriston etc.? And strong works and refutations of their attempt to draw/force moral realism upon the atheist?
Also Kane, what is your thought on this moral realist argument:
Science tells us objectively that X (let’s say abuse like the example of the video) is harmful to the family, therefore based on these objective facts we can draw an objective conclusion that abuse is objectively wrong? (I hope you understand my question).
Maybe someone else said this, but around the nine minute mark, it’s mentioned that you don’t have to be an egoist to be a moral anti-realist, but then an egoistic claim is made about why the well-being of others might matter to the anti-realist when it is said that it may “make one happy” to make others happy. As an egoist (psychologically and ethically on a non-normative basis) I think this is a soft misrepresentation of egoism, but also demonstrates egoism to be inescapable. I’m not saying i disagree with the initial statement, just that no one can find an example of why anyone would like or dislike something that doesn’t reduce to general self interest.
10:10 You say that you would stop a child from being tortured because you were motivated by passion/emotion and not because of objective facts. What if you were a psychopath and motivated by passion/emotion to allow this to happen?
I think InspiringPhilosophy’s use of the word “fact” is a bit misleading; rather, I think it would more appropriate to suggest that there can be actions that minimize harm more than other actions.
To address the “moral intuition” problem you outlined in the last segment-yes, we can in fact perceive a scenario (a) where a child is tortured and (b) a scenario where a child is not tortured and recognize that scenario (a) minimizes suffering. In principle, this can be quantified with a neurochemical analysis of the brain, but an extreme scenario like this should be self-evident. To use your example of perceiving light through the eyes: A blind person cannot recognize the objective properties of light hitting an object; likewise, a psychopath cannot recognize the objective harm being done in the aforementioned scenario.
"What if you were a psychopath and motivated by passion/emotion to allow this to happen?"
Well, presumably that person wouldn't intervene. The best we could do would be to argue that preventing such actions is indirectly in their self-interest, for the kind of reasons I outlined at 11:19. In any case, postulating objective moral facts doesn't help. A psychopath could be a moral realist, but just not care what the objective moral facts are. No position in metaethics is capable of compelling anybody to act in a particular way.
"and recognize that scenario (a) minimizes suffering"
I can perceive that certain actions cause or reduce suffering, but I can't perceive that suffering has any particular moral property. (It's worth noting that this is something both myself and IP agree on. IP is not a moral naturalist.)
"rather, I think it would more appropriate to suggest that there can be actions that minimize harm more than other actions"
But this is trivial. If "moral realism" simply amounts to the view that some actions can minimize harm relative to other actions, then it's totally uninteresting. Moral realists are claiming much more than this -- at least, as the label "moral realism" is used in metaethics, and by IP.
does a moral anti-realist deny that there are norms? I thought that they just denied objective facts. Norms can be subjective, and the norms of honest debate certainly are subjective.
God laws are perfect right?, it's a premise for moral code i guess, so we have:
-don't kill
-but what if somebody wants to kill us?
-don't kill unless you are in danger
-but what if we don't know if somebody tried to kill us or it was accident
-don't kill unless you are in danger and the pattern of accidents appears
-but what if this person is disabled and is bound to repeat these patterns
-don't kill unless you are in danger and the pattern of accidents appear and person is not disabled
These contradictions are never ending, is there any point of debating this topic?
Maybe we should follow these rules without any exceptions:
- dont kill (sacrifice yourself to prove other person that this moral code is right)
- dont steal (even when you are starving, and have any other choice, you should sacrifice yourself to prove this point)
- Honour thy father and thy mother (even if they are increadibly abusive, toxic, and don't care about you, to prove a point)
Would you be interested in a conversation with Michael about this?
Sure, I'm happy to chat with pretty much anybody.
@@KaneB, of the following two categories, to which do you consider that you belong (assuming, of course, that you have sufficient fortitude to read the entire chapter)?:
🐟 14. DIVINE & DEMONIC NATURES:
There are TWO kinds of persons in this dualistic world: one is called “divine” or “saintly” (“sādhu” or “sura”, in Sanskrit), and the other kind is known as “demonic” or “satanic” (“pāpātman” or “asura”, in Sanskrit). There is an extremely fine neutral midpoint between the two natures.
To grasp what constitutes actual holiness (and thereby, discern what constitutes wickedness), simply read the entirety of this Holy Scripture, particularly Chapters 12, 13 and 17. In a nutshell, the more unlawful a person, the more demonic he or she is, whilst the more loving a person, the more saintly he or she is. Again, it is imperative to read the aforementioned chapters in order to understand what is true holiness.
One who is more than fifty percent holy is called “divine”, and one who is more than fifty percent evil is termed “demonic”. There are practically no humans who are one hundred percent divine, or conversely, totally demonic. Each individual falls someplace in the SPECTRUM of this dichotomy, and obviously, one can (and usually does) move up or down the continuum at any time during one's life.
The METHOD of calculating the holiness/wickedness of any particular person is not an exact science. Obviously, it is not possible for a person to take some kind of objective, controlled test in order to determine how holy he or she is at any given point in time, in the same way that one can test any particular person's blood sugar level or body mass index. Logically speaking, the most holy, righteous, and enlightened person on earth at any given time is most qualified to judge the character of all others. That person is most likely to be the current World Teacher (“jagadguru” or “viśvaguru”, in Sanskrit) or, even better, an incarnation of The Divine (“Avatāra”, in Sanskrit). See Chapter 20 in this regards.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of persons in this Age of Darkness (“Kali Yuga”, in Sanskrit), are afflicted with a demonic mentality. It honestly seems to me that, unless by some miracle, if society continues its decadent course, there will be hardly a single holy man or woman remaining in the coming century, or even coming decade. In some countries, even a DECENT person is extremely rare, what to speak of a holy one. Only if legitimate monarchs regain control of each and every nation on earth could this trajectory towards annihilation be reversed.
After residing in The Philippines for an entire decade and meeting literally tens of thousands of individuals (either in person, via telephone text messages, or social media on the Internet), I have yet to come across a SINGLE decent Filipino. Even the very few vegans here are either staunch feminists, socialists, proud homosexual offenders, slutty bitches, or vile sinners who blaspheme or even threaten the life of gentle monks, including the World Teacher himself. And of the estimated 99.99% of Pinoys who are carnists (non-vegan), not a single one can be classified as decent, since they needlessly harm animals, even after it is clearly explained to them that human beings are unquestionably a herbivorous species, and have no need of destroying the lives of poor, innocent animals, and gorging on their decayed, bloody carcasses.
The mere fact that the ignorant citizens of the Philippines recently voted for a blasphemous, self-confessed murderer to be their president, is sufficient evidence of how demonic is that wretched nation.
There are FOUR reasons why a person aspires to holiness and four reasons why he may be attracted to the darkness.
The FOUR kinds of persons who adhere to a system of yoga/religion (“dharma”, in Sanskrit) are as follows:
Those who seek a cure for pain or suffering; the seekers of knowledge; those desirous of material benefits; and those who are truly wise.
The FOUR kinds of persons who do not submit to legitimate authority and choose to live an objectively-immoral lifestyle are:
Deluded evil-doers; irreligious persons (meaning those who do not follow an authorized system of yoga and moral precepts, known in Bhārata as “dharma” or “dhamma”); those whose knowledge has been taken by illusory pursuits (for instance, those seemingly intelligent individuals who are obsessed with one of the arts or sciences); and those afflicted with a nasty, conniving, demonic mentality.
In conclusion, however, it must be emphasized that the ULTIMATE reason for any particular person possessing either a divine or a demonic nature, is not due to any factor under the individual's control.
Rather, it is due to the fact that a person's nature is determined by their genetic code at the time of conception, as well as their environmental conditioning (which may include any mutations in that genetic code), as fully illustrated in Chapter 11 of this Holiest of Holy Scriptures.
Therefore, one ought to have compassion for those unfortunate souls who are afflicted with a demonic mentality, yet not condone their evil actions. Every immoral deed must necessarily be punished in an appropriate manner (see Chapter 12 for further details on this notion).
“The 'world' is ego-mummery. The 'world' is mad. Humankind is in a constant state of extreme psychosis - don't you know?
Therefore, knowing that, choose to take the cure.”
Franklin Jones (AKA Avatar Adi Da Samraj),
American Spiritual Master.
©2014 “The Gnosticon” part seven.
“I see the coming of a new age where barbaric leaders rule over a vicious, broken world, where puny, fearful, hard men live insignificant lives - white hair at sixteen and copulating with animals. Their women perfect whores making love with greedy mouths.
Trees stunted lifeless, no more flowers, no more purity. Ambition, corruption, commerce. It’s the age of Kali, the dark time. Crime stalks the cities, all the waters sucked up by the sky. Scolded earth scorched to dead ash. The rains fall and engulf the earth.
All that remains is a grey sea without man, beast or tree.”
Mārkaṇḍeya Muni, speaking to King Yudhiṣṭhira,
“Mahābhārata”,
Vana Parva: Mārkaṇḍeya-Samasya Parva
@@TheWorldTeacher Can you summarize it a bit more briefly?
@@KaneB, are you VEGAN? 🌱
@@TheWorldTeacher No
Loved it and looking forward to potentially more response videos!
First a haircut, now editing your videos?
I sold out when I shaved off the neckbeard. Now I'll do anything for filthy lucre.
Network effects can explain moral convergence.
Right. It seems odd to give a conceptual explanation for saving the child when the more "morally realistic" (but not realism!) response would be something like "I couldn't just stand there and let that happen and just knew I had to do something and did!" or something to that effect. Quite "real", this morality, but necessarily beyond the personal experience of its reality in ones own response to the situation. That part seems real. But it doesn't on the other hand seem odd to think of an objectivity to such an event which coheres from a body of facts about how such reactions tend to occur and in what people and to what events in whatever circumstances. That could well be on its way to being a science, certainly a behavioral science (and it is). Perhaps that is what it takes to understand the reasons for the "should", but that will neve replace the immediate phenomena of the experience of the "must". And such a science (however ad hoc or well-founded in whatever way and by whatever method), must still be founded on what is internal to the phenomenon it studies, what is substantive, which is not merely the "objectivized behavior" including its testimony about itself (this is Behaviorism and even an AI could parse that analysis out without having first hand experience).
It is primarily the auditor's sense that such an injunction is right to obey by his own internal recognititon that this does not contradict his own feelings about it. He is not a blind serf in the kingdom of Oughts. He is himself a sovereign who will accept advice only on his own terms. Even if he self-deliberates morally on his own conduct (because he feels like it perhaps...), he is not an AI-driven robot merely churning out biobehavioral psycholinguistic algorithsm of, in the end, merely physically observable and describable behavior, but he is an agent of passions. Even conscience might be thought of as a desire felt to act a certain way which simply occassions the actions that it does, and we may have to introspect deeply (and study very rigorously the objective features of) our behavior in order to "understand" our conscience. But we could easily just offer that "it seemed like the right thing to do, and I felt compelled to do it because it felt that way" (and perhaps that nothing else felt as much that way, ergo I did that and not something else, if one were a logician who liked talking that way obsessively). That sort of passion-driven (is Hume just using me as a vessel here?) behavior simply happens for all actions in accordant ways and all prescriptions follow upon people's claims only after the fact as to why. None of those arguments could have force unless delivered to someone with the inner-experience of the actions in question and the passions which inform him of the meaning. Of if he didn't have those passions (a deeply apathetic person one might say, perhaps only focally in regard that domain of feelings and actions), then he is very unusual and strange and not normal at all (so not our subject matter per se) or it must seem to him an arbitrary injunction to give him moral prescriptions (like programming an AI).
But that would seem to apply to any action. Not all actions seem to have a stimulating effect on us we would call a pang of conscience, but they perhaps all amount to some small and proportional increment of what will only upon certain accumulation or aggregation become pronounced enough to arouse a conscious feeling. That might be proportional to the obviousness of the need for such an appraisal. Perhaps I couldn't tell that the piano was about to fall or didn't know it was being lifted by rope above the sidewalk, or perhaps I didn't see the woman with her baby stroller paused beneath it, so either way I couldn't put the two together and be concerned. But as the rope starts to creak and I notice the piano and its possiblity of falling and its position high above a sidewalk almost all at once (in what order?) I begin to feel a sense of worry in my gut. Then I become aware of the sidewalk with an accompanying sense of increase of anxiety as the abstract possibility is checked for actuality, that someone may be there. And then I see her with her stroller coming along and "BAM", I know what to do and I do it. But in the case of missing any of that information, I may not feel a care, or proportionately less care according to the kind and amount of missing information. There are "oughts" which dictate safety protocols to prevent such scenarios in advance, and there are many ways such things can yet go wrong despite best efforts. But we well know why we should have those rules in place, and we require them if we are decent and intelligent, and we obey them if we are not careless, callous or cruel. That phenomenon is immediately real and does not directly require any moral theory beyond what can be founded upon it. But for someone who is diminished in feeling capacity, or of relevant information, the "oughtness" of the situation is only ever abstract.
The only reason that I see morality can have authority along this line is the fundamental driving force of the moral sentiment that arises and to which it draws inspiration and upon which it depends for the force of any claims it makes. All morality does by saying that something ought to be the case is inform me of a situation that may arise that I may not have otherwise considered in a timely or pertinent way if it were not brought to my attention (a sign, a protocol, a rule, a theory, or even a shout to halt) and my response is anticipated by the emitter of the signal to follow from an inherent understanding within me that I should. The elaboration of how and where and when, or the clarification as to why, must always seem to work its way to and from this inherent understanding. All morality as a science or art can ever do is structure convincing arguments as to those further elaborations on what reduces to the obvious "way it feels" to do or not do something at some final point of the argument. So yes, I wouldn't wait until I formulated a theory of morality to save a child about to fall into a well, but I might find it useful for someone to alert me to the child's situation, or to spell out the danger in general by a rule or law that requires proper fencing if I am to have it accessible to children (and hold me liable for failure to do so) if I am for some reason or other indiligent (many people are, and as a mass, the law is to remind the indiligent among us, and warn the diligent to remain so, or get them keen where they might reasonably have been unclear, so the law itself is the diligence of the conscientous exerting its rightful influence upon the less diligent or indiligent).
Morality seems more about the description of a science of diligence with respect to moral sentiments already present and considered normal among peers (even a peerage of one). Like the laws based upon it, its force hinges purely on the weight it already carries in mens hearts because of their prior disposition. We can be ignorant or wrong about facts that are relevant to a moral judgement, or we can have a lack of moral function (feeling, power to assess reality, etc) upon which such facts (and ideas about them) hinge for their relevance and importance, but we don't argue about the fundamental core sentiments that must be there for any of it to make sense. For those who stand inside the mystery of moral sentiment, no fundamental explanation is necessary, but for those outside of it none is possible. All else is codification for instructive and inevitably practical purposes (including addressing deviance). Otherwise, it is to say this of the wolf and the lamb: They had a moral argument about what to have for dinner.
Brilliant. Exactly what I think, but better said than I am capable of.
Well, almost exactly. One concern, at 17:30 I would like to see you engage Aristotelian/Thomist teleology regarding humans as rational beings *even though* certain individual humans may be defective and incapable of rational thinking.
That view undermines your moral disagreement position, but I don’t think it does any harm to your overall antirealist position.
Thank you for this video.
I like response videos.
I like your analogy between the ways we can see the connection between real objects and sense perceptions, and now I want to write a sci-fi story where someone discovered the moraliton, the fermion that mediates the interaction between the Morality Field and the, oh, say, crystals in the pineal gland.
I was waiting for this for years...
18:20 "Moral progress can only make sense in terms of realism."
This is so stupid...
Soccer rules are entirely conventional, and yet progress is apparent. There are people now who are objectively better at getting the ball through the goal. Even the rules have changed. And there are no soccer realists (I hope).
Why is it that so many philosophers are so terribly bad at doing philosophy? 🤦🏻♂
I think probably the weakness of your position is the fact that it's not intuitive. If morality is just based on objective methods of reaching a goal like human flourishing, then this would mean or model for morality is based on hypothetical imperatives. But intuitively we don't think this. In fact, we tend to think that having self-serving goals are immoral motivations. It seems that we intuitively perceive morality in the way Kant described, as categorical imperatives. We tend to believe that we should do the right thing because it is the right thing. That our motivations should be to do good for its own sake. But if that's the case, then it seems more principles should be irreducible rather than reducible to certain goals like human flourishing.
And when you claim that moral realism isn't really intuitive, it seems all you've shown is that the intuitive nature of morality can be masked behind convoluted jargon. If you were instead to ask people things like "do you think murder is wrong regardless of what people think, even if every person on Earth thought it was right?" Then they would tend to say yes, which supports moral realism. Likewise they would also tend to agree that morality manifests more like a categorical imperative if they understand what that means. So it seems you're wrong about the intuition.
And concerning your claim that IP would have the burden of proof because of his inflationary ontology, I actually don't think that's the case. The fact is all of us seem to agree that morality exists as an abstract concept. The question isn't whether morality exists in this way, but rather what the nature of its existence is. Even the moral nihilist would agree that moral principles exist, they'll just believe that they're completely man-made and not based on anything in reality. The only thing that would be inflationary is proposing there is a source for the grounding of morality outside of humans, but this would be the conclusion of the moral argument rather than an assumption. So I really don't see how his ontology would be any more inflationary than yours.
But sometimes what one feels to be the right and good thing might contradict others at the axiomatic level
A catholic would claim life is inherently good in and of itself and worth creating or creation itself is good irrespective of the quality of experience, but an antinatalist would disagree with the axiom that life itself has intrinsic value.
Now each feels they are right but objectively both cannot be true at the same time. How can we know the feelings like this is wrong and this is right accurately translates and represents moral facts (if they exist) ?
@mithunbalaji8199 there are people who believe the earth is flat. It can't be both flat and round. What does that prove? That the earth doesn't have an objective shape? The disagreement on what is moral doesn't prove there is no objective morality.
@@chipan9191 how could you make the claim that objective morality exist
@mithunbalaji8199 the same reasons IP uses.
The way he presents the argument from epistemic facts is confused. Epistemic values like assuming logic is valid or evidence is important can (and I believe are) still are subjective. We only come to rational agreements only when we share epistemic values and agree on facts, as well as think clearly.
A global skepticism can consistently deny the external world exists so long as she doesn't assign value in sensa data at all. There's really nothing we can say or show to disprove them. Likewise, if you see no value in compassion, there's no logical argument that would sway you.
I enjoyed the format and arguments presented in this video, thank you for producing it!
there is to much equivocation in this presentation for me to draw any opinion here. You do realise you said that torturing young children is morally ambiguous at best. You do not suggest any counter to this other than your strong sense of antirealism.
10:30 I'd say a moral person is someone who has unity between their 'passions' and the objective moral facts. People in lower levels may act morally out of a sense of duty, but someone whose more elevated will do so by intrinsic motivations. It's like embodying the principle.
But since 'objective moral facts' are not evident at all, this leaves the judgment up to subjective claims of being 'aligned'
Nice straightforward objections. I'd like to see him reply to this.
It's a shame that mimetic gamification is seen as the "natural" or "intuitive" default rather than the exploit it is. Few content creators make content which does not operate on moral realist grounds.
I think our intuition of morality comes from evolution. There are now many animals that show moral actions, what I mean by moral action is when an animal does an action that decreases his well-being for the sake of another animal.
This is gonna be great
Really enjoyed this response style, look forward to more
The ironic thing is that IP *is* an anti-realist and supports utilitarian ethics, he’s just gaslit himself into thinking he’s a moral realist because he thinks the arbitration of a theistic being is somehow equivalent to objectivity.
can you explaij more why theism is not equivalent to objectivity? (I believe in moral anti-realism myself)
@@pedroba76 theism, wether it’s the traditional Devine command theory or the “more nuanced” grounding-in-Gods-nature that folks like Craig tout, just transfers the subjectivity of morality from human individuals or society onto God. When it comes to morality Christians seem to conveniently forget that they claim their God is a personal agent.
Hell yeah, 👑 King. Response videos are guuuuddd....
Dammmm. He is on fire 🔥🔥🔥
That's what happens when one enters philosophical HELL. ;)
@@TheWorldTeacher lol unless you are an empiricist then u asked for empirical evidence.
@@blankname5177, what is your own METAETHICS? 🧐
:@@TheWorldTeacher I not a realist I know that but not sure what version,,, still exploring :)
@@blankname5177, I’ll make it easier for you:
define the WORD “morality”. 🙃
Really good argument, though most atheists will not be persuaded since their goals are not rational, but based on their own ego and desires.
Yes
Never seen someone misinterpret a group of people so quickly and confidently.
You have to respond to Destiny's "Questioning My Moral System & Political Position | SCRIPTED - EP #1
" th-cam.com/video/N-eTcjGsK08/w-d-xo.html
How does your view differ from this view?
Rem the Bath Boi is a streamer who defends the companions in guilt argument, it might be interesting to talk to him
You didn't say anything meaningful regarding moral experience and moral disagreement, becuase the argument is why should you get ot decide that what they do is immoral if morality is subjective. Then you have to accept that they have different opinions than you. You can still fill it's wrong but you shouldn't have a say in what they decide is moral.
Appeal to emotion (broadly speaking) is probably one of the most efficient way to deal with moral disagreement under anti-realism. And this not a fallacious way since the goal is not tracking truth (some hypothetical moral truths), but having shared values.
To illustrate, most people probably formed a negative value towards talibans because they saw a videos of them acting violently.
The film Bambi probably made more people care about animals than a book like Animal Liberation has. Etc
Cogito ergo sum; I think therefore I am. I am alive, so being alive is desirable; being dead is undesirable. My thinking derives meaning, so Truth is good, lying is bad. I empathize others are alive like I am; so stealing and murder is bad. Realism equals morality; 'moral anti-realism' is meaningless. Yes, people can play tricks with words to say that what some people claim is 'moral' is against realism. No, Spinoza's god doesn't care if you are gay or want to crossdress, neither should anyone; yes should implies morality...
Why is being alive desirable? I can think of plenty of situations where death is a preferable alternative to living. Why is truth good and lying is bad? Why is stealing bad just because you are alive? You are spewing baseless nonsense.
"moral realism" is magical thinking
have you ever thought about talking with Destiny? he talks about philosophy a decent amount
𝗘𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝗴𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝗶𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺
Sub-premise 1a: Atheism does not believe in gods.
Sub-premise 1b: Atheism does not believe in other supernatural validation of moral claims. (e.g. Dao, Dharma, Divine Logos)
Premise 1: Therefore, Atheism does not believe in supernatural validation for moral claims.
Sub-premise 2a: The eventual objective consequence of all actions is Entropy.
Sub-premise 2b: Death eradicates all subjective experience of and caring about consequences.
Premise 2: Consequentialism/Utilitarianism cannot justify short-term over long-term priorities.
Premise 3: Furthermore, Hume's guillotine refutes all moral claims derived from observable facts.
Sub-premise 4a: It is not morally wrong to lose interest in (or even to totally change) one’s value judgements.
Sub-premise 4b: It is not morally wrong for societies to change value judgements.
Sub-premise 4c: It is not morally wrong for individuals to change or resist societal value judgements.
Premise 4: Therefore, it is not morally wrong to do anything for or against value judgements; value judgements do no validate moral claims.
Conclusion: No validation for moral claims remains; Moral Nihilism is the only rational outlook for Atheism.
This was great! 💯
kind of odd that InspiringPhilosophy, a Christian apologetic, takes the abolition of slavery to be moral progress. this is despite the fact that the Mosaic law said the Hebrews could take and do all kinds of things to slaves, and the apostle Paul telling slaves to be good slaves
8:32
This is just not understanding moral subjectivism
If a subjectivist has a preference for a women not to be enslaved, then it would be immoral to do so under his judgment
Immoral, meaning 'women being enslaved is wrong,' which is equivalent to 'I disapprove of women being enslaved'. If 'x is wrong' is equivalent to 'I disapprove of x', then you don't disagree with someone expressing the opposite, because you two are merely describing your attitudes towards x, meaning that both of you are right. Idk if this is addressed in the video (I haven't watched the whole thing yet), but this objection (that subjectivism fails to account for moral disagreement) is one of the well-known arguments against subjectivism.
@@veridicusmind3722
Depends on what you mean by disagreement
Fact is that a subjectivist will not say "We disagree other an objective fact."
But it possible that he says "We disagree about, if enslaving a woman is preferable."
Just like you can disagree about what ice cream tastes best. You may like chocolate, while I like vanilla.
And if you mean by disagreement "Disagreeing about an objective fact" then a subjectivist wouldn't accept that moral disagreement exists, since there are no objective moral facts
So if the realist wanted to make like this modus tollens:
P1: If moral subjectivism is true, then moral disagreement does not exist
P2: Moral disagreement does exist
C: Therefore moral subjectivism is not true
If disagreement is defined as above, then the subjectivist would accept P1
But you would need arg for P2
@@veridicusmind3722 There are many forms of antirealism other than subjectivism. I'm inclined towards error theory. So I don't analyze "x is wrong" as meaning just "I disapprove of x". As I see it, moral judgments are attempts to describe objective properties, it's just that there are no such properties. I do think that moral judgments are often grounded in a kind of projection of emotional attitudes, but that's not what moral statements literally mean.
In any case, that particular argument against subjectivism has always struck me as astonishingly weak. There is a perfectly reasonable sense in which, if Sydney says, "I disapprove of X" and Verity says, "I do not disapprove of X", Sydney and Verity disagree with each other. Granted, their statements do not contradict each other -- there is nothing contradictory about Sydney disapproving of X while Verity does not disapprove of X -- but it seems obvious to me that expressing contradictory propositions is not the only way of expressing disagreement.
@@KaneB
I tend to agree with you on the "argument from disagreement".
But if someone defines disagreement as "disagreeing about objective facts", then the subjectivist would just not accept that these exist, since you can't have objective moral facts you could disagree on.
@@KaneB I'm aware that there are many types of anti-realism. I was responding to the comment about subjectivism.
Suppose that I claim that my house is green, but my friend (who is unknowingly color blind) claim that it is red. We argue back and forth, disagreeing about what kind of properties the house has. Neither me, nor my color blind friend, think that we are merely expressing our mental attitudes to each other; both of us think that we are talking about the properties of my house.
However, if two toddlers argue about which ice cream is better (vanilla or chocolate), it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a parent can correct them by informing them that they don't actually disagree, but that they are merely expressing their attitudes to each other. Even if one thinks that this is a kind of disagreement, I don't think it's what most people have in mind when talking about moral disagreement.
What exactly do they disagree about? Surely, they don't disagree that each have different attitudes, and neither do they disagree about any objective moral property (since there are none). So it seems to me very unclear about where the disagreement could be grounded.
22:20 Is that not moral objectivism? We are discovering objective moral facts in the sense of the implications of our "shared evolutionary history" as you put it.
No. Consensus =\= objective.
Even if there were objective moral facts, evolution doesn’t care about what’s right. It cares about what’s useful.
I don’t understand your confusing about a moral realist acting out of passion to save a child. I think the idea is their passion is ignited by seeing something that objectively bad. And that feels more authentic than saying you’re reacting that way because that’s how you were raised, or what society says you should feel.
Hopefully I didn’t misrepresent anti-realism though 😂🍺
Biologically, the passion is ignited by a mechanism of altruism and compassion in our brains developed by years and years of evolution of the species and of the culture.
As a social species, caring for others benefits the survival and spread of humans, thus our brains evolved to care about children.
@@pedroba76 doesn’t that suggest that there is something real about the value of protecting children?
@@Kuppy0373 Yes, but for pragmatic reasons in an evolutionary sense, not necessarily because it's written in the objective laws of the universe, of reality or because a God commanded so or something.
The point is that, according to a purely biological and naturalist viewpoint, our belief and feelings that harming innocent people is bad, did not arise in our consciouness because not harming people is an ""objective good in itself", more because it's useful for our species to believe in this, it's ""useful for evolution"" that I, you and most people feel compassion for people that are suffering. It's pragmatism.
It's something kinda depressing, sounds kinda "weird" to acknowledge, but it's a possible view.
That our basic moral beliefs as people do not exist because they are objectively true, in the sense that they would still be true even if society didn't exist, but rather that we were "hardwired" to believe that they are true because it's more useful for humankind if most of us believe in this.
I’m happy to see you using gender inclusive language.
ill solve your issue. depends on size of risk or bipolarity. done. anything else??
14:42 "What can an anti-realist vegan say to a meat eater? Well, first of all, they might appeal to empirical evidence."
Isn't it bizarre for an anti-realist to appeal to empirical evidence? What is empirical evidence but observations of objective reality? Under anti-realism, there shouldn't be anything in objective reality to point to regarding morality. One would expect that appealing to empirical evidence would be the tendency of moral realists while anti-realists scoff at such foolishness.
17:47 "When people argue about morality, they will either try to bring empirical evidence to bear on the topic, or appeal to shared values, or shared intuitions or something like that."
In other words, when people argue about morality, they appeal to empirical evidence exactly like people would appeal to empirical evidence when arguing about something real. In contrast, when people are arguing about something which is not real, they don't usually bother with empirical evidence. Who would win a fight between Green Lantern and Spider-Man? Which movie is better, Citizen Kane or The Godfather? Notice that when people debate such things they don't tend to use empirical evidence and they don't take the debate seriously because they are aware that the topic of the debate is not real and there is no one correct answer. This bears little resemblance to how people debate moral issues.
24:42 "The moral realist has an inflationary ontology."
Not all moral realists have inflationary ontologies. That makes morality sound as if it's something akin to phlogiston, like an invisible moral fluid that flows into good things and through good actions. I wouldn't dare guess what proportion of moral realists are proposing something like that, but it seems so strange and implausible that it would be shocking if it were more than half of moral realists.
25:00 "We can explain moral intuitions (arguably) by appealing to our evolutionary history and our upbringing."
It seems awkward for an anti-realist to explain moral intuitions through evolutionary history. Using upbringing makes sense, since people will frequently pass around imaginary ideas through social interaction, but evolution isn't determined by things which are not real. Evolution is a physical process of survival and spreading of DNA, or death. Something which is not real cannot kill you, nor can it help you spread your DNA. How can something imaginary apply evolutionary pressure or in any way influence the process?
It's true that we are all the same species and so at first glance it's not surprising that we might share moral intuitions, but if moral intuitions don't have any connection to anything real, then it's strange that we've evolved any moral intuitions at all. Intuitions are crude and unreliable, but they don't tend to develop for no reason. It may be irrational to fear snakes, but some snakes can actually be dangerous, so that intuition is based on something real.
31:20 "What is the connection between moral intuitions and these objective moral properties?"
Intuitions evolved in our ancestors because they provided a big enough survival advantage. Moral intuitions evolved because objective moral properties exist and being instinctively aware of these properties gives some species a survival advantage, and this is especially true for social species.
"Isn't it bizarre for an anti-realist to appeal to empirical evidence?"
No. Suppose I have a preference for minimizing suffering, where I take it that this is just something I happen to prefer, not something that is somehow prescribed by objective facts. I just want to minimize suffering. Well, then I can look at empirical evidence about how best to minimize suffering.
"Not all moral realists have inflationary ontologies"
Sure. There are some moral realists, like yourself, who just have a bizarre semantics for moral terms, so that to say "x is morally good" or "you ought to do x" just means nothing more than "x minimizing suffering" (or something along those lines; apologies if I've misrepresented your view, but I do recall that you're a moral naturalist). This isn't the line that IP takes, though. IP thinks of moral facts as non-natural, abstract entities.
"How can something imaginary apply evolutionary pressure or in any way influence the process?
"
It can't. Obviously the antirealist isn't claiming that, somehow, the nonexistent moral facts influenced the evolutionary process. The antirealist isn't claiming that moral intuitions don't have any connection to anything real. Rather, the point is: humans tend to have "moral intuitions" -- reactions of approbation and disapprobation towards particular forms of behaviour. We can explain why they have these reactions by giving a story about how particular forms of behaviour tended to promote survival and reproduction. We don't need to postulate anything else.
@@KaneB "So that to say 'x is morally good' or 'you ought to do x' just means nothing more than 'x minimizing suffering'."
We can just call it "consequentialism." It's best not to get too tied to specifics on exactly which properties define morality, since it's a rather vaguely defined concept, though minimizing suffering is a pretty fair rule of thumb for what morality means.
"Suppose I have a preference for minimizing suffering, where I take it that this is just something I happen to prefer, not something that is somehow prescribed by objective facts. I just want to minimize suffering. Well, then I can look at empirical evidence about how best to minimize suffering."
So then it's just a curious coincidence that all this comes together to mean that you end up arguing like a moral realist who defines morality as minimizing suffering. You're not an actual moral realist, just indistinguishable from a moral realist when you argue any moral issue. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes so many people moral realists.
@@Ansatz66 No, we can't do that. Or we can, but it would be misleading, because consequentialism is a normative theory, and is compatible with many different metaethical theories.
I don't see what the coincidence is supposed to be here. Yes, when realists and antirealists argue about first-order normative questions, they often sound the same. If I ask, say, "is abortion morally wrong?" we can debate that without ever getting into metaethical questions.
@@Ansatz66 Also, if a moral realist simply defines "x is morally good", "you ought to do x", etc., to mean "minimises suffering", then everybody is a moral realist, because everybody recognizes that some actions minimize suffering relative to others. Moral realism is trivial per this definition. I think this is an utterly confused interpretation of moral language, but I don't really care about arguing semantics, so if you insist on using moral terms this way, then fine, I'm a moral realist. Of course, this still leaves open the debate with all the other people who are using the term "moral realist" to indicate much more substantial commitments than this.
@@KaneB : Can't any normative theory be used as a metaethical theory by accepting the normative theory as axiomatic?
"If I ask, say, 'is abortion morally wrong?' we can debate that without ever getting into metaethical questions."
Isn't it a coincidence that two radically different metaethical theories come together to produce exactly the same normative arguments as if the two people are talking about the same issue? When we have different metaethical theories we're literally talking about different issues, as different as apples and oranges, yet we make the same arguments, and those arguments happen to include empirical observations just as if we were talking about something real.
"If a moral realist simply defines 'x is morally good', 'you ought to do x', etc., to mean 'minimises suffering', then everybody is a moral realist, because everybody recognizes that some actions minimize suffering relative to others."
That's perfect. That's the ultimate goal of metaethics: to perfectly describe what morality means in a way so that we all understand each other and agree. The perfect metaethical theory will be the theory that everyone subscribes to in the way that they use moral language. If there's a moral realist definition of moral terms that makes everyone a moral realist, then moral realism seems like the best direction to take metaethics.
"If you want to insist on using moral terms this way, then fine, I'm a moral realist."
That's exactly why I define moral terms this way, because it captures how nearly everyone uses moral language, even people who call themselves anti-realists. It's the best definition I've ever seen by far thanks to this universal applicability. When we use moral language to mean minimizing suffering, everyone understands what we're saying.
11:11 heck yeah emotions
👏👏👏👏
just because i dont have morals doesn't mean i dont have a will,
epistemology is trash in my point of view
Its a shame you misrepresented several of the arguments here. I was excited to see a strong challenge to Moral Realistic stances. Too bad.
14:51
I'm more of an anti-realist/ a relativist and also vegan
I usually do a consistency test with the other persons moral system, so I look, if the person is contradicting themselves.
That works fine
An anti-moral realist can just claim that consistency is not of any value to them. In fact, it is not seems consistent to think consistency (or anything else) is of value under non-moral realism. So why even bother debating them? Or, be a vegan?
As someone who leans toward moral realism (crazy I know...) I fail to understand this. Seems to me that the anti-moral realist, the error theorist in particular, that engages in normative moral discourse, admits that what they believe about ethics is a mistake. Yet they go ahead and try to convince the other that their own mistake is somehow more worthwhile than the mistake this other is commiting. How is that consistent?
@@blueglassar one can perfectly consistently realize that 1. they (as apparently most other people) have moral intuitions too, but 2. there's no reason to suppose such intuitions reflect objective moral facts; their basis is irrational.
Let me make an analogy: when you're in love with someone you're convinced they're the best person in the world (1); both your speech and your actions will reflect this; but at the same time you realize everyone else who's in love makes the same judgment, so why should your judgment be more accurate than anyone else's? There's no truth of the matter as to who's the best person in the world (2).
In the case of love, you're happy to stick with your emotional intuition regardless of the facts, because it feels good all-around; in the case of moral values, there's often a tradeoff with other values, and (often with the help of others) you can correct your judgment when you realize what you're attached to is a myth.
@@Elisha_the_bald_headed_prophet
Firstly, just to clearify, I did not claim that recognizing moral intutions and their irrational basis is inconsistent. My claim is that believing that and then still arguing over those things as if they matter or hold value, is inconsistent.
Secondly, I do not think this analogy works. Being in love with someone seems to me as (mostly) a personal issue. One that you do not push upon others and others do not push upon you, as it is none of their concern (at least not strangers it seems). In contrast, moral discourse appears to be everyone's concern. But if the nature of ethical claims (do not murder or be fair, for example) is the same as love, then why try to force a subjective preference upon others? You "love" this moral theory or value and I "love" another. If we both recognize that we have no basis for it then why debate it? Or at least, how is it rational? As I see it, my previous question remains: why try and universalize that which you know (or think) is a mistake?
Thirdly, what do you mean by correcting the myth we are attached to with the help of other values?
@@blueglassar 1.
In that case, I think what the anti-realist argues for is his metaethical stance, not the content of moral claims (because to do so would be arbitrary). A metaethical claim is not necessarily a moral claim. It's more like a factual claim.
I don't think error theorists argue that holding an anti-realist view has any moral value. They might believe it has some intersubjectively epistemic value, meaning only those will agree who prefer true beliefs over false beliefs. But they might also be epistemic anti-realists without loss of consistency. There's no trying to convince the others of a value.
OTOH a realist engaging in metaethics might understandably wish to argue that anti-realism is not only false, but also morally reprehensible. E.g. a theistic realist would find it blasphemous to claim that divine law refers to nonexistent stuff and might feel the anti-realist is attacking his values.
2.
I chose that example instead of any example of aesthetic judgment because we do not content ourselves with enjoying the person we love like we would a painting or a hot dog. We want to convince others of the perfection of the match, the strength of our commitment, etc. causing a cascade of irrational behaviors... although actually the main goal we're accomplishing is fooling ourselves by means of rationalization.
But your next point is more interesting. I agree that we "love" our worldview, which includes a morality component (values). We can't argue about the value claims (at least, an anti-realist shouldn't) but we might very well argue about the factual claims, in order to root out contradictions and decide on the empirically more accurate worldview. As I wrote above, metaethics makes factual claims.
3.
Psychology research shows that, although we tend to hang onto our irrational values, it's possible to work on our moral intuitions with other people's help, and even personal reasoning, causing new moral intuitions:
i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1627880107i/31719698.jpg
(Haidt, The Righteous Mind)
@@Elisha_the_bald_headed_prophet
1. I think there was a misunderstanding. I was not referring to metaethics, at least not directly. My original comment and the one that followed made the claim that if you are an anti-moral realist it makes no sense to argue about normative ethics as if it really matters. Yet, it seems to me that many do just that. They engage in debates and discussions about all sorts of values or moral beliefs, such as consistency and veganism and politics, to name a few. You can say that this or that is a matter of fact or an epistemic value. But under error theory, I think, facts and epistemic values have no merit because moral values are a mistake. If you say, as an error theorist, that consistency is important, you would be mistaken and inconsistent, thus irrational. My problem is with those who claim that morality or some values should be taken seriously, but not really believing in it and at the same time, not willing to admit the irrationality of such a position. Which I suspect are most, or at least many, non-moral realists. Because in truth almost everyone takes ethics, or at least certain values, seriously.
2. I tend to disgree with that. Some people might care of proving to others their relationship is of great worth. Others might not at all. Some might instead be more concerned with proving a certain work of art is of value. It could be a matter of identity, if you feel the art is part of you, in some sense, then you will defend it. Or, you might be the sort of person who does not care what others think, and thus would not bother with any of that. I think that in this regard people can be and are very different.
3. Well maybe, again, this is a psychological issue. It is interesting for sure and might be of value. But it is unrelated to the core of my original claim.
Cool
Based video
Very unsatisfied with the vast majority of what you said. A lot of it was just your opinion given after a very underwhelming response to your interlocutor's argument.
First viewer 😀