“The market of Morality is very VOLATILE” …. Genius! Commodification of morality. The response depends on the “market” reaction, and it will determine its “moral value”, but only after the market reacts. To me, this presentation clarifies enormously the ambiguity that socially desirable opinions transit, representing a type of individual Orwellian mental gymnastic to adopt/believe/defend the most popular “current accepted moral value” to validate “social media” personae, and modify it as soon as its “market” value declines. Unhappily I can give only one like to Prof. Moeller presentation! Thank you very much.
Association and acceptance of _The Current Thing_ due to its high short-term speculated market valuation. Which in turn drives an attention economy of junk bonds and stocks and creates drivers of Ponzi schemes willing to perpetuate morally bankrupt ideas (social devaluation) for profit. Example: look up the actual Roe vs Wade case and law and try to make sense of the social value of the woman's case in that regard...amplified by the social response and where we are on similar issues of biology (trans) or philosophy (postmodern)
This reminds me of every scenario I've witnessed in which a person has been verbally insulted by another in a group. Everyone else in the group just stares and there is a heavy atmosphere of anticipation and tenseness. The person who gets insulted looks at the group and decides how to respond in accordance of what they found the atmosphere to be. Okay Im stupid I know but I just wanted to say that.
@@JohnnyDoe911 not stupid at all and just want to add to your contribution as I also find it is really paralel to the topic at hand. What you mention I feel touches what we call social status which has much to do with identity. Often people find themselves "valueing" themselves or others only in contrast to other persons social standing, ones own otherstanding is often permeated by this market logic as mentioned above, in this case the "market transaction" are local so after a flash assessment one has to defend his standing if his position is in jeopardy. Interesting take
@@Crispman_777 to be more precise on my side, could you give me a definition of what you would think the _attention economy_ is referring to in an economic sense? Not to back you into a corner, but to better get a sense of where to backtrack to in my explanation.
The interesting thing is that Will Smith's decision to slap Chris Rock was very probably driven by a perceived need to maintain his moral profile. "Defending the honour of one's family" and stuff. As many people have pointed out, the live has shown that Will was laughing at Rock's G. I. Jane joke before he saw his wife rolling her eyes. Of cuz, his laughing at Rock's joke were perhaps also driven by the desire to present himself as not having a huge ego and being able to take a joke, a desire which was then overrode immediately after he saw his wife reaction.
Yes I think this defending the honour of one's family was applied retroactively and through observation i would argue that these moral signs are not just marketed like commodities, but effectively weaponised as a sort of auto-immune response to an moral attack on the self. In this case I think one of the reasons it didn't work is because the defending of one's honour is currently valued in this 'market' as a cheap stock that is more associated with a conservative value set rather than a 'liberal' one. I suspect we all have a sort of evaluation of the totality of this moral economy in our heads subconciously, with it being in constant flux and dependent on our social interactions, with social media and news sending this process into a sort of overdrive that our ancestors would never have experienced.
Yes but I think it was not defending the honor but rather building his profile for his wife who as I've heard has zero respect for him and has talked about cheating on him with their child's friend.
more interesting is when Chris Rock made extremely racist jokes to Asian kids, An Lee filed a complaint the proper way, resulting in...nothing. now, the western world does condone Anti-asian hatred, but maybe will Smith chose to act this way because he knew the normal, proper, and might I say bureaucratic way will never work, as in the institution can easily make these issues disappear
@@teslastellar The only thing that contradicts that take would be the fact he laughed at the joke initially and then reacted when he saw his partners reaction. Although yes it's probably goes without saying there is some degree of family-value if you like. Still I would say this is not value building but rather saving face on his account, considering the already weak position he is starting from.
I love this channel. You are combining the best elements of eastern and western philosophy. That's a perspective that is vitally important in the world right now.
Great video. As a worker in creative advertising, i can confirm without reservation that the way orgs and corporations adhere to moral norms and cues is exactly consistent with the mechanisms described here. Of course at work we almost never use the word "moral", but rather couch all initiatives in terms of social justice, sustainability, equity etc. Yet the actual impact of our clients' philanthropic/ameliorative actions on their stated moral aims are always secondary in consideration to metrics like "brand love" and "positive sentiment". The work I do with them is deeply muddy and (in my view) morally suspect. But CFW videos have seriously helped clarify things for me and eased my transition to a more carefree and manageable state of mind.
In the same way as consumption, advertising itself is not the problem. When I am ill, I need the information to purchase the proper medicine to treat my sickness. The real problem however is the capitalistic social structure where for-profit institutions owns almost all the advertising opportunities in the world. When their direct intend is for profit and profit only, a seemingly healthy and necessary process of society (like consuming, advertising, and even in some countries, medication) is distorted to go against its original intend.
it's just form of distraction and censorship unifying work force on own terms so they couldn't unity against corporation around own values morals for example fair salary work life balance or producing for humans not for maximum profit whatever harm the products causes
@@pochi3977except these things naturally get corrupted with time as they compete against balanced needs of consumer i would say it is bad because people live delusion these aren't bad by itself and that that people know what is good for them and they have free will it's a Trojan horse thinking like with delusion of free market magically works on itself haha or thinking capital has no agenda and identity
I am always impressed with Prof. Moeller's calm. I myself am stuck within the authenticity paradigm, and so I see the Wimbledon people and think "they are spineless," I see the Oscars people and think, "what cowards."
Appreciate again another enlightening video Herr Professor. I‘m always curious as to what gives rise to values… ‘Morality is the herd - instinct in the individual.’ - Nietzsche ‘Fear is the mother of morality.’ -Nietzsche I wonder if this is the case. With your Wimbledon example it seems like they are taking a pre-emptive position, rather taking a popular position in case of condemnation, preemptive damage control. What bothers me most is the framing of the Ukraine conflict as ‘good’ v ‘evil’ and/or west v east. Whenever I raise the idea that Russia may be responding to encroaching towards its space and antagonism via courting Ukraine to join NATO ( an obsolete institution IMO) they immediately assume I’m justifying Russian aggression and immediately reference the moral images of women and children rather than engaging in a discussion. We’re definitely being conditioned to view this conflict through an oversimplified moral prism where facts don’t matter it’s as you say, one set of laudable values against another set of wicked values.
Meditators understand identity isn't who we are. It's a model that is a construction that's necessary to fit in within society and our family and within our community. But without an Identity we still fit in. We fit in and even more so with ourselves.
One of the interesting things about this morality market is how it influenced by the approved moral directives passed down from media and our ruling classes. It's not like Saudi Arabian athletes face any threat of being banned from a sporting event such as Wimbledon despite the conflict in Yemen. As such, it seems Russian and Belarusian people are acceptable targets of 'othering' as in you can get away with banning their participation without inviting some unpleasant moral kickback that might be associated with banning a non european (i know it's kind of complicated and amusing in Russia's case) like with the example of Saudi Arabia, but i would imagine this is a particular barrier in the case of Israel. I am suggesting that no matter how bad the situation gets in Israel-Palestine relations, any idea of banning Israel athletes would be seen as out of the question considering you would be inviting an nuclear apocalypse style attack on your moral profile from accusations of being an anti-Semite. I guess some kickback to this somewhat liberal outlook the the moral economy comes from figures like Trump, and I would argue Musk without equating them, who seem to thrive from being able to offer a sort of alternative evaluation of these moral stocks from the standard Neoliberal outlook. Just some thoughts.
This is a very good point. Indeed, there are other illegal military conflicts taking place right now, on many corners of the globe. Yet, it is only the Russian / Belarussian athletes who are banned from competing. The reason for the distinction has much to do with the power dynamics at play, and the double standard is most revealing. To me, it just looks like further evidence that The Wimbledon Tournament (and other organizations who have publicly cut ties with Russia in some way) don't give a damn about what's actually happening in Ukraine. This is simply about protecting their profile from losing stock in the "marketplace" of morals.
Yes but your comment implies that there is an underlying moral framework by which these matters can be judged, which political considerations impairs. Personally I don't think that moral thinking consists just of a market place of status and reputational achievement. But its stating the obvious that everyone tries to cover their actions in a moral cloak. Some believe it, some do it cynically. But since morality properly understood is a system by which we self regulate our interactions with others, it is open to discussion based on various commonly accepted principles which include equality, fairness, honesty, consistency, consequences, intention.
The politicians didnt end up being turned into common people. Instead us common people were turned into politicians in our presentation our 'profilicity'.
I like the bit about the lag before the condemnation of Will Smith. I've noticed this sort of thing already much earlier among certain Talkshow of Infotainment show hosts who couldn't make a moral statement to cover an ongoing issue, even taking some time off in order to (likely) ascertain that the position which they would espouse on the issue was the one which would be the most appealing to their (general) viewer base. It all feels a little bit phony, but as Hans-Georg would argue, this is simply the evolution toward a profile-based sense of morality. But the question which I think is important for philosophers, sociologists and economists to address is how the initial "spark" which creates these judgements begins. Is it though anonymous communication (primarily the internet) that these morals and values first begin to take shape, or is it more that someone who is not particularly good at curating a social profile says "You know, act X was right", after which other people who are almost as bad reply to this someone and say "No, act X was most certainly wrong", until perhaps people who now feel safe enough to make a statement (because each time the risk is diluted) might defend Act X again and so on until a critical mass is reached which is safe in ensuring the condemnation of one point or the other in the "universal" means which has just been demonstrated by the Wimbleton example? This would be a very curious thing to inquire about. I'm not sure how to gather the data required to statistically investigate this sort of thing in an unbiased manner, however. If someone has any ideas, let me know.
Ever wondered where the word "accountability" came from? Bourgeois morality developed in an economic context in which bank accounts were becoming common. In our day and age media accounts have become common. Let's see how that plays out.
“Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into Commodities. Money is the general and self-constituted Value of all things. Consequently it has robbed the whole world - the world of mankind as well as Nature - of its peculiar Value.” Marx 1843
I think you make alot of good points, but I would suggest tweaking the "moral economy" dynamics. As you brought up Marx, I would like to give a slight critique from that perspective. The goal of a successful individual in the "moral economy" is not to produce value but to produce surplus value, i.e. profit. In other words, those who succeed in this moral economy are those who's actions produce the greatest rate of return of moral value. This can be done by publicizing their "good" moral decisions, as well as attacking their competitors. This is why I love your point about the "moral economy". It's a competition. Hence, someone's success in the moral economy is compared to others. This leads to morality becoming a spectacle. Also, it's another good point that moral value creates economic value, but Marx would see this relationship as circular, not linear. Those with money can also be more moral since they are not desperate.
No matter what I think of this guy's video opinions, he always does a good job with interesting subject matter and the comment section contains so many gems, like yours.
Interesting and to add on your last sentence those with money are often seen as having "higher status" there higher value, almost a direct correlation from economic to moral value (certain material resources-power having an upper hand depending on its context)
@@davidlester8003 I'm glad that the cultural space of the internet has at least correctly identified certain peoples profiling practices as _Influencers_ , very appropriate labeling before marketing campaigns were able to mobilize. I expect we will see that change, or a heavy push to change that moniker, in the near future.
Corporations plan for the economics. It’s wonderful really. There is something that I remember noting at the time: when Nike did the Colin Kaepernick advertisements, they did them right after or just right before the close of the financial reports for the quarter. This had a practical effect: it gave Nike the ability to gauge the impact and if the campaign wasn’t successful, it wouldn’t impact their quarterly earnings report. In fact their report came in with earnings. This also helped them boost the campaign on the back end.
I'm reading 'The Moral Fool' right now and it's incredible how pertinent this video and that book are to what's happening right now. All I want to do is ask you to please, please comment on the current situation in the US with Roe v. Wade. The timing is remarkable.
@@unknowninfinium4353 Absolutely. It's one of my favourite philosophical manuscripts of the last decade. It's essentially advocating for the amoralist position, in which love and law supplant morality for the primary means of regulating human social behavior.
When you were speaking about how the value of one's profile is linked to presentability, my first thought was that this is another useful lens for understanding cancel culture. Thanks again for another great video!
Thomas Ligotti's book Conspiracy Against the Human Race heavily influenced the first season of True Detective, with some dialogue seemingly lifted directly from the text. If you're interested, you should check his book out.
Very enjoyable video again. I have a thought regarding the Wimbledon example. Perhaps the organisers were envisioning scenarios in which the Russian/Belorussian players were in 'combat' with players from the 'moral' team of the West. What narratives do you think the performative media would construct around these contests? Potentially it creates the situation where an unstable outcome might occur (the immoral wins) and affects the brand of Wimbledon as an arena of individualist endeavour in which the hero/heroine is rewarded. For the All England Lawn Tennis Club the prospect of a fear-culture winner, say Medvedev, triumphing over a performative-culture competitor, Nadal or any other brand, was a narrative they wished to avoid. Of course the competition itself is a model of a market, where brands compete for dominant narratives of success. On another note, it occurs to me, as it did to the character of Rust Cohle, that the performance of immorality is equally marketable, though with a shorter and more incendiary half-life.
Also, the concept of marketability in immoral acts, values or principles explains why are they taken in the first place. I guess the mastery of this business lies in the skill managing both moral and immoral for maximum profit.
A lot of things to talk about in this presentation. First, the split into three values of morality is solid. (value of persons, actions and principles). This creates an importance in establishing which of the three your interlocuter is talking about, but all three are simultaneously viable as all three things can be independently valued. The idea of the shift of morality from interdependence to independence in the seventeenth century. Big problem here. It is known that in most societies there is elite and vulgar culture. This relates back to some degree to the idea of master and slave morality. It is known that in the past, the elite culture had a monopoly on writing. This monopoly has since been broken. Less known, independent philosophy has always been stronger in rural settings and interdependent philosophy in cities. This is primarily due to issues of proximity and resource availability. The elites were more dense in cities. To summarise, if the books say that the purpose of war is to to defend honour or some such, remember that it is the kings, knights and priests who are speaking through these books. There is a minor conflation between social capital and moral value. To explain this difference, I will reference three known values a product has. Use value, market value, and labour value. These values are semi independent of each other, and all three are real, measurable quantities. Using moral value as a term to represent the use value a company extracts out of its moral marketing, is insulting to those who take the term moral value seriously. These are two different numbers. By the three way partition described above, (value of persons, actions and principles), is the use value of moral marketing a value of persons? No. Is it a value of actions? Yes. But it is useful, not moral, and only to the company. Is it a value of principles? No. Is it valuable to utilitarians? Maybe, but indirectly, in the event that the marketing makes the world a better place. As the Carefree Wandering channel is stationed out of China, I find myself wondering if the channel currently has a better view on Chinese culture, and a weaker view on North American and European culture. This could make it difficult to talk about western cultural issues accurately, due to lack of access to offline populations. This channel does have some of the best takes I've ever seen on Daoism.
The 'presentability' of a profile is contextual- 'audiences' are 'segmented'. Which audience one seeks to be appear presentable to IS one's set of moral values. Who you aim to impress is the better part of who you are.
I don’t entirely agree with the argument on what morals actually are, but I definitely do agree with the conclusion of todays conception of morals. Society has now become a marketplace of social relations that entirely relies on prestige and social worth. If someone doesn’t have major social clout they always loose out in social acceptance which denies them access to certain employment and social classes. Employers now have to check your Facebook and twitter pages before even considering your resume or even meeting you in real life. The portrayal of morals is now worth more than the reality of morals, just as your own profile picture is now worth much more than your real life self.
@@xdrowssap4456 Morals are more codes of conduct than any greater metaphysical beliefs, so trying to argue against the existence of morals is actually arguing that there are no codes of conduct in society. Morals aren't given by any God or by the forces of nature, they’re simply a given set of social/personal rules to live by while living within a society. Let's take the example of the “ambitious person” you mentioned. That person is actively exploiting other people by exploiting the morals that have been accepted as the norm by society and are also cheating society out of what it's supposed to give to the people that earn/achieve within the society. This “ambitious person” has used other people's consciences, abilities, and their self-sacrifice to the social whole as an exploit and has only gained their positions in society through the simple effortless exploitation of others' effort/achievements, rather than any kind of attainment through their effort/achievement. It's like someone cheating at a game of monopoly by making everyone else playing (society) look the other way as they take everyone else's money and then put houses on all the available spaces while everyone else collectively follows the rules to the letter. This “ambitious person” hasn't achieved anything, they’ve only gained through coercion of their betters in a parasitic way. In this instance, the ambitious person hasn’t actually done anything of merit while everyone else is diligently abiding by “morals” of some kind as the ambitious person can only gain through others abiding by these social rules of compliance and altruism. The “ambitious person” was given their “victories” by the society because society didn't want to refuse the ambitious person's demands. Cheating at the rules of a game isn't achievement, it's just cheating. The only way people can even succeed at cheating is by having others follow the rules. Without other people's morals the “ambitious person” can never actually achieve/gain anything.
It does come across as a very cynical version of morality if, for example, the oscars have to wait and see how the "actually" feel about the slap. But I suppose that's just me coming at it from an authentic viewpoint of morality. I guess from the perspective of authenticity, it doesn't even make sense for an organisation to have a moral compass since from that perspective, morality should be sometime internal to an individual human, but these days it does seem like we actually demand impersonal organisations to have a moral stance as if they were humans.
Greeting prof. Moeller, thank you for taking the time to teach us hobbyists philosophy, for me it is a real pleasure and honor. Could you please tell us more about Wittgenstein's perspective on morality? I found the example you gave with the moral exploding of the books absolutely fascinating, regarding the absolut and relative usage of the meaning of words.
Recently I was recommended Jonathan Haidt's book, "the Rightous Mind." Which discusses his moral foundations theory. Would you consider that a continuation of Paul Rée's book, "the origin of moral sensations?" If so would Nietzsche's, "the Genealogy of Morality" support the Relationship Regulation Theory?
Sixth 😉. I like the way the video links up the three identity technologies with moral value ‘ mode of production ‘. Will need to watch all many times. The moral economy Luhmann and Marx 🤓😬
A very coherent argument and presentation! I want to try to relate this concept of moral credit and moral financialization to Reckwitz's analyses of social classes and singularization. I wonder if for singularization we can analogize the category of individual distinctiveness with that of moral credit. I think both are associated with the emergence of the "new middle class" (there is a cleavage between old and new middle class for Reckwitz, where the distinction is mostly cultural rather than material/economical) and serve a similar purpose as a status currency, where material symbols and the underlying participation in consumer culture are (at least superficially) questioned and discredited. The "moral economy" in the profane, non-Muellerian sense is of course an adaptation of capitalism to this phenomenon, so I'd say the two different meanings of that term are in fact very tightly related. As always, very thought provoking stuff.
I completely agree with the morality market. I think it is universal and it has always been part of the human society - only the values themselves have changed with the times. Anyone who lives in a group of humans can attest to this if she pays close attention. And the market's currency is prestige and it translates into influence. Maybe the only recent difference is that now it is a global market. But please allow me to offer an alternative reasoning for the Wimbledon decision - still based on the morality market conditions, just different ones. 1. Because we live in democracy we understand (or believe) that people are (at least partly) responsible for the actions of their countries. 2. Russian players did not condemn the war. They should have. Saying that they did nothing wrong does not account for this. Like a bystander to a violent crime, doing nothing is not enough. 3. We, in the western bubble (like you pointed out it seems that Wimbledon only cares for the part of the world that condemns the invasion) believe that we need to cut off Russia. That is because there are 3 parts of Russia - (1)the people that have nothing to do with the outside world (or at least with the Wimbledon bubble) (2) the people that want Russia to be part of the said bubble and condemn the war (or at least try to) and (3) the people who benefit from the regime inside Russia but enjoy the spoils outside it (and who crucially have more power than the others) 4. This bubble (of which Wimbledon is a part of) is trying to prevent that part of Russia from having their cake and eating it too. 5. Tennis players are not part of the first group (they are extremely connected with the global world) and they did not show that they are part of the second. 5. Wimbledon is just playing it's social part in ostracizing any russians that did not condemn the invasion but want to take part in our bubble's activities. * I do not blame the players, I understand the fear of speaking out against a dictator; some of them are also very young and many come from wealthy families (I imagine their parents are part of the third group and educated them accordingly). It is just a matter of responsability and how it is assigned in our minds.
@@mariiabokovnia6958 they are trying. But tennis players from Russia and Belarus keep registering for the tournament (* this is sarcasm, not really my opinion) Countries like Russia and China will not miss opportunities to use sports results for propaganda. If Medvedev wins Wimbledon Russian tv channels will present it as a sign that Russian society is better. And all sorts of internet trolls will spread the same idea online.
I enjoyed the video greatly! I have thought about similar concepts but had never been able to put my observations into a coherent understanding, like in this video. Also, the video discusses how the moral-economy can make or break people in other ways, specifically monetarily. However I have noticed that many can commit taboos and garner negative press only to make even more money. This is something pointed out frequently to those who fear "cancel culture". If this is as real as it seems, than that makes the correlation between negative moral profiles and economic downturns weaker. Just an observation and thought.
The commitment of taboos might increase the value of a profile depending on the moral market, I'd say taboos are similar to investment in risk markets. Using economics-like language is very useful to explain moral behavior, that's for sure.
As the person above said, the financial market also involves risky plays, which sometimes work out and sometimes don't. However, another consideration is market expansion, or even market pivots. Basically the taboo in question may be catering to a different moral market, or even an entirely different audience, which if successful can indeed make you rich. But that's no different from betting on a new product or marketing strategy. Sometimes this can grow your fanbase, sometimes it may be a complete shift to another fanbase which you find more 'profitable' (not necessarily only in monetary terms, you could also just find them more amenable than the one you're abandoning aka making better friends). But this isn't guaranteed, it's a risky play that often backfires. Basically it's important to note whose negative press it is, and who it caters to. It may not be the press that matters for this case.
The Professor's description of morality based on profilicity reminded me of a book I read on Gorgias the sophist. (Gorgias: Sophist and Artist, by Scott Consigny.) Gorgias rejected morality based on judgements from the gods, or general principles. Instead he thought it was something hashed out in the agon, the public debate. Whoever has the best rhetoric and can persuade the public determines morality. The main terms of judgement were honour and shame. The problem is, suppose you live in a community of crooks or similar. They're going to view your deserting the norm as shameful. Though on the other hand, there's always the possibility a strong rhetorician uses it to religious or principled ends. No-one can really then say that it's objectively wrong, if it wins in the agon.
As is happens, their other channel - Philosophy in Motion - has as its latest video an animation precisely on morality among crooks, but from a Daoist angle (the title literally being The Dao of Gangstas).
Does this speak more to what morality “is” or how it’s used? For example, even though the crooks are in power, determining what’s shameful or honorable, one could say the crooks are actually in the “wrong” for taking advantage of others.
I would like to add Nietzsche's famous adress in The Gay Science where he discusses God's death. He asks "how are we going to wash the blades? what new rituals and sacrifices will we have to invent?" (I'm translating from my own version as I don't have it in English). Since God, the idea of a superior principle that we can elaborate our ideas upon, then nothing anymore can be agreed upon as an absolute basis. I think that participates deeply to the wild mood swings of the moral market, because we can see both conservatives and "woke" go on regular witch hunts and purges, and they seem to display zero remorse when they're wrong because the cause is more important. The erect totem is important insofar as it gains them a display of divinity and when it fails, since they base their moral systems only upon the aforementioned gain, then it's written off as a loss in accounting and they embark on the new market campaign. What little idols we have are so fabricated they get stale as soon as they hit mass market, every "star" is disposable. Were we to have a God as a principle (not unlike God as a moral template of Good as a principle in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason), then they could compare their identitarian crusades to a bigger picture and put them into perspective on a longer-term than their apparent current bloodlust, but since the individual is its own microcosm, and thus the template of the universe, it cannot happen, instead, everyone needs to parade WHAT they are and it takes precedence over WHO they are (this applies also to apolitical people and teens on TikTok are a pretty telling example).
My argument is that every identity is unique, due to us being made up of unique particles, but trying to get to an argument about values and ethics is my next step, which is definitely challenging for me. I'm not trying to reflect back, but look at what it would mean if the universe started as a singularity or something, what's it mean to have morality and values.
This is a much clearer explanation than the one in the last video. I can get behind these accurate observations, but only in the descriptive sense. I still firmly believe that these kinds of behaviors are not everything there is to morality, but that's a completely different conversation.
This seems very related to emotivism, which I think can fairly easily be expressed in extra-market terms without really losing meaning. I suppose the desire to avoid the market framing or use it is probably more connected with other ideological planks, but is probably worth thinking about a bit. Curiously one of the strongest earliest moral framework along these lines was that of Hume, who, besides the psychological aspect of such a ethical system, also pointed out that this means it was, to some extent, socially or culturally determined. Even more curiously, the argument you bring up around the 11 minute mark was expanded upon at length by Smith specifically in relation to his stadial theory, build on the recognition of a relationship between the superstructure of society and what Marx would later call the mode of production. Marx didn't have access to where this was most clearly stated, Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, but you can catch wiffs of it in the Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiment, especially when put into conversation with Hume, though Marx might have gotten implicit forms of some of these ideas by way of Ferguson both directly and via his influence on Hegel. To some extent a strongly developed understanding of morality, or at leas its function, along these lines has been present for a long time, though in a great irony expressed most robustly, though his student Millar also contributed quite a bit here especially with regards to gender and rank, in an extra-market fashion by the supposed prophet of homo economicus. Moreover, that very theory would suggest that the reason we would even express it in market terms now is because of the progress material conditions and the social organizations those engender. In more broader terms, i.e., not just on morality, I'd be interested in your idea of markets of profilicity in conversation with Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment, which seems very similar to profilicity but overtly for the benefit of the self instead of the other, and Simmel's Philosophy of Money, where all value is reduced to that of the money form by a specific historical process and the fact that money becomes value in-itself. It seems clear to me that the phenomenon that you describe is indeed happening, but I'm not sure that profilicity is the right highest level framing, it instead is something happening within a broader neoliberal framework, whether you want to call it something like biopower or self-commodification, perhaps even auto commodity-fetishism. "The worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities."
I appreciate you bringing Hume's view on morality into this discussion! I think the psychological element he brings to morality is very important and often underrated. Regarding your last paragraph, I must say, I've lost both you and prof. Moeller. There is a limit to the idea that everything that happens in a public arena is made to satisfy a profile or an identity, I think. It's difficult for me to say where to draw the line, but there is some line somewhere. Sure companies celebrating pride, politicians talking about net 0 carbon emissions and Biden talking about "values" while America had Guantanamo and bombed weddings is all very profilic. But the help provided to Ukraine to defend itself from its aggressor goes beyond. But let me not bore you with too long of an unstructured essay.
@@nicuhosu If it was different, it wouldn't be so selective. Contrast the treatment of Ukrainian refugees to that of ME refugees for instance, and even the language used for each (which fortunately there have been reports on). Contrast the reaction to this war to that of the wars in Yemen or even the wests' own wars. And even the one in Taiwan that hasn't even happened yet, but the hostility is already building up (on both sides, neither of which is Taiwan here btw). The vid isn't saying that people don't really feel these things, just as his definition of prolificity isn't merely being fake. It may feel real and internal, but he's arguing it's also internalized, not somehow god-given or universal or absolute. We socially made our morality (which is often quite tribal btw, as in this case as well), and change it too, but it's spoken of as if it were fundamental and intrinsic.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn appreciate the reply! Yes you make good points! I agree that the nature of the (moral) reaction depends on proximity both culturally and geographically. But that is quite uncontroversial. I still don't see the point behind the point. I agree morality is relative and constructed. So? Does that make it less real? Does it make you intellectually somehow inferior to velueve in "values". There is a case for amorality being made here. But what is that case? As long as I stand by a normative statement such as "countries should not attack other sovereign countries" I am implicitly making a value judgement. Which leads to a certain morality. So... How can I have any "ought" and still be amoral?
@@nicuhosu "Does that make it less real?" It's not clear what's meant by this. What does it mean for a moral to be 'real'? Being relative does by definition make it not universal, and being constructed does by definition make it not fundamental. You didn't say they were either of those things ofc, but it's worth noting that a LOT of people hate the idea of moral relativism, to the point that it's usually used as an insult. They implicitly don't like to think of their morality as relative, nor as constructed. As for "How can I have any "ought" and still be amoral?", that's what previous video on this channel was about. Simply put, it's possible to make an analysis and a decision on how to act without necessarily turning it into a moral judgment. We do that with things that aren't morally charged all the time. Moralizing issues has a host of myriad pathologies that tend to come with it, which ironically don't serve human flourishing (to use Sam Harris' term, as that video is also a response to Harris' ideas). Morality is about good and evil - to be amoral is simply to excise those concepts as you don't need them to navigate life, and our long history has shown their dangers. It's kinda like the next step from an atheist pointing that you don't need to be religious to be good people. Now we question if we need to attach ourselves to notions of what is 'good' in the first place, or if there's a more effective way of looking at the world.
@@nicuhosu I assume Professor Moeller is not making some sort of ontological or essentialist argument about profilicity, but instead a heuristic one. Which is to say that profilicity is a concept by which we can understand actions, it is neither wrong nor right in the abstract. Personally I'm not totally convinced of its usefulness. Instead I merely think there is a way to slot it into conversations I'm a bit more inclined to. Smith for instance isn't making the argument that we have a profile in the sense floated on this channel, though second-order self-observation is core to his "man within the breast." I think the way this is most usefully bridged though is in commodification, and hence profilicity's analogy to literal profiles on social media accounts is actually useful. I do agree many people have reoriented the way in which they understand themselves through others to self-commodification similar to say an Instagram influencer's use of their account. In terms of Ukraine I think the argument is that a materialist analysis, whether that of the Scottish Historical School or of Marx, or even a mere realist IR account, tends to understand the actions of states and sufficiently large firms, both at best amoral institutions, through analysis of interest. Their actions with regards to Ukraine, much as with regards to everything else, ultimately derive from their own conception of what is in their interest. It's worth noting there is some slippage on your end here. You go from claiming that Russia is bad as states shouldn't attack other states, to saying that any reaction to Russia doing this is good. The latter presumably requires some sort of active argument. For instance I don't think many people would agree that Hillary Clinton's analysis that the US should support Ukraine with arms specifically to bog Russia down in a new Afghanistan is particularly morally good.
hmmm idk if this prolific account of morality as communication is all that different from accounts that center personhood and action. In fact, it seems strikingly similar to the remarks that Aristotle makes regarding character. In the Nicomachean Ethics, and elsewhere, he argues that one's moral character (hexis ethike), and more concretely, their identity are constituted by the habits they take up; one's moral identity is produced by their actions. For Aristotle, It is a character, that reflects one's morality toward one's self and others, and I'd say it's this same process of habitation that emerges when curating these moral profiles.
It makes me feel sad to agree with you. I wish people and organisations wouldn't play into these morality markets -- I'd rather they (and I) participate "genuinely".
Clarification question: what is the market? Is it the nexus of communication? Something else? How much does it tie into capitalist relations? It must have been explained in the video but I can’t seem to find it
Will you do a Video on Gilles Deleuze at some point? I think he has that psychedelic quality that you say Hegel has. I was wondering whether you thought Nietzsche’s the Will to Power counted as an example of authenticity morality or as something else, or if Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy has much to say about identity in your sense of the term?
This video is much appreciated, just like your other content. I am highly critical of Putin's invasion, but I find it difficult to talk about the self-righteous breast-beating of our "moral" figures here in the West without being called a Putin-sympathizer. Why is nobody outraged about the exclusion of Russians from sports and cultural events? In the case of Israelis, it would rightly be condemned as antisemitism. If our politicians care so much about white phosphorous being thrown on UN shelters, why do they only care about it in the Russian case? In a similar way, you can be sure that it's about Russia or China whenever you hear about vetoes in the UN security council. A US veto, on the other hand, is a double veto, as Chomsky puts it (not implemented + erased from history). I agree with your claim that morality gets commodified under Capitalism. But I think you can go much further. Maybe humans in general have a tendency to indulge in self-serving illusions to create a streamlined version of reality and to avoid internal conflict. I remember Chomsky pointing out how educated people, especially in the media, are much more indoctrinated than "average" people. They buy into these double standards without being aware of them.
This is a very interesting take on the morphology of identity production and I really appreciate your videos. You're one of the most philosophically engaging channels that try to think the present. In this effort I have a question: if the profile needs to be adjusted to the morality market, is profilicity a new form of a conformism based morality like that of honor? I'd love to have a comunication channel on this since I'm also a philosopher and would like to work on this as well
The comodification of morality works also the other way around: the consumers curtail their spending habits to choose those corporations whose profile complies with their set of values - the main motivation for the western companies to choose a side in the current conflict. However, I would argue, that this isn't anything new, in the honor based morality same mechanisms applied - a person viewed as immoral, lacking honour, was shunned in the same way as the Russians are. I am not sure if we can actually speak about some kind of comodification, actually, just that people now as they have previously choose to associate with those they see as displaying moral values. Thus, the analysis is enlightening but I am not sure if it doesn't go too far. Also, another point of criticism is that it makes look the choice of the moral values for a certain profile arbitrary, which it clearly is not - which could bring us back to the Plato's question about objective and subjective nature of morality (here there is danger of going into infinite regress however, are the principles that we choose to choose our principles objective or subjective? etc. I don't know how to solve this question). I hope that is just something left out for convenience and not the fundamental stance of the model.
I don't understand this point about the volatility. OK, morality is socially constructed. Not a very controversial statement given that the word morality etymologically stems from words that used to mean "customs" or "practice". (Mores, ethos) Any good moral relativist would agree. Just to make it clear, I also fully agree. It seems to me tough that by underlining how relative and contingent morality is, you argue that then we are better off without it altogether. We must shed it like we shed religion from a prominent role in society. (I mean, any normative statement already caries some degree of moral weight, but I digress.) But even if morality is constructed, that doesn't mean it wasn't constructed for a reason or based on some rational principles that would make the world a better place. Wimbledon, to stay at that example, is embedded in a Western system of moral values, as you say, so by banning Russian players it communicates to Russia that its behaviour is unacceptable. Of course it also communicated to the West that is on the bandwagon of punishing Russia, just like many other international companies and organisations. But, if Russia changes its behaviour, ie stops invading its neighbour, there is no reason for Russian players not to be able to play. It's all rather simple. I see no volatility there, I see Wimbledon sticking by a certain principle. If Wimbledon would be debating two competing principles like the one they've adopted vs. the principle that individual players are not responsible for the actions of their states and thus should not be disadvantaged, then it would be volatile. But that is not what is happening. Nadal, Murray and Djokovic already came out criticizing the principle that Wimbledon chose, but they did not change their opinion. I appreciate your though provoking content, but sometimes I struggle to see how one could divorce moral reasoning from existence. Maybe I need to read your book, the Moral Fool. The case you make for amorality is attractive, but difficult to embrace in times like these. It seems to me that certain political systems are demonstrably superior (and I emphasise this empirical aspect) to others. Nations (not autocratic rulers) often then gravitate towards such systems. When popular will is supressed (also like in Hong Kong, though I understand why you would avoid the subject) it is hard not to think that something fundamentally wrong has happened. I also understand that say China may have different values, but I am not sure how much those values come about by free deliberation vs top-down indoctrination.
That sounds like a meta use of the idea! Is the economy zerosum? I think profile building and communicating values alters the system as more of a vote/ buy in.
what do you think of ai companies? do you thingk the metrics of your relationship ower soshil standing with the flesh and blud imperfect relationships will become of a secondary importance a cieend of soshal credit score that wee actively dezier to maintain. sorry for the spelling i am dyslexic. this is really a very good video thanks
There are 2 separate issues here, the moral character of the actor and the moral effect of what he does, and secondly the whole issue of "virtue signalling." A person acts with moral intent when his action, is broadly speaking, intended to benefit another person or a wider group. But an act that has moral intent may have negative consequences for various reasons. It may have unforeseen collateral damage to others. As a matter of technique, it may not achieve the intended effect on the person to whom it was addressed. So a common response is: "I understand your intent was good but your way if doing it was stupid." So the beneficial character of an act is always qualified by limitations on the actor's information and practical effectiveness. We may condemn a person for not taking an ordinary level of care as to information and technique and we may exonerate another person because, recognising their intent and sufficient care we say they "couldn't have foreseen" the consequence. There can be also be a whole discussion of the overt and subconscious motivations involved. But all this is a quite a different operation to what is presently called "virtue signalling" whereby a person presents a moral show in order to be well thought of by an specific or more general group. This is not moral behaviour at all because it has no intent to benefit anyone else. The intended benefit is to one's own social profile and commercial standing. So I disagree with the presentation of morality here. I think Georg is investigating something interesting in the rise of profilicity . But I don't think you can just say that the morality of intention and consequence was based in authenticity and has been superceded by a morality based on profilicity. What's actually happening is that organisations are using moral language to make people feel good about consuming their product. IMO, this is manipulation, not morality and is a different category of behaviour - marketing - albeit masquerading as moral character. One can have an interesting discussion about the extent to which marketing is subverting moral behaviour, but I don't think that will go very far if we don't distinguish one category from the other. I should add that the intent to act morally, ie for the benefit of others, is really as much about the "spiritual" development of the person acting as it is the wellbeing of another. Recognition of this has a long history.
Internal mode of communication that follows a certain of mode of production of identity value. hmmm... That doesn't mean I can't work towards making arguments to change what we value as a society within the market.
Slavoj Zizek claims that “Western Buddhism” is the predominant ideology of global capitalism. What is HGMs position on this? Is The Moral Fool another fetish for us who are being thrown around by market forces?
I argue with people daily that relate economics with moral values, they justify the death penalty and such like that based upon cost to society to keep them in prison. I get that, but it's not how I define morality myself.
I am unclear what Professor Moeller wants organisations to do other than "curate" their profile in such circumstances. The recognition that a tennis tournament or an awards show does not exist in a vacuum is a good thing and that they give thought and voice at all to signalling disapproval in the face of egregious and abhorrent actions is better than the alternatives. See also Stewart Lee on "the values of the Car Phone Warehouse"
WARNING IM TRYING TO GET YOUR ATTENTION! ... I would be curious your thoughts, if Profilicity has any connections to the work of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard. Society of the Spectical and Simulacra and Simulation. Great work.
Very interesting. I guess I basically agree. You've correctly pointed out the flaws in approach to morality imo. The most obvious critcism I can make is how you poitn out that non-western countries have a different opinion of the war in Ukraine. Well they've been fed misinformation to put it bluntly. -If they've been given accurate information they would agree that it is wrong. So to say they have an alternative view is just wrong. They have a different opinion becuase they're not discussing the same war figuratively. I do still agree the tennis ban was the wrong move. But apart from that I agree. But it leaves more questions. So this then means we should be amoral? or can we do morality differntly? and what do you think the dangers are of amorality, if any? Is it then a choice between two bad options? It seems like morality and amorality both have many downsides to me.
I remain fascinated but unconvinced. The carefully curated self-for-public-consumption, whether this is constructed with the technology of sincerity, authenticity or profilicity, seems to me lacking in integrity and honesty. Don't people have a true, private morality that is unrelated to power & impressing others? For example, in Buddhism, it's understood that seeing the empty nature of the self opens up universal fellow-feeling and compassion, which is a basis for genuinely wanting to help and not harm. This is not for public consumption or self-satisfaction. Do you think this is a fairy-tale or is it that you have another name for this than 'morality'?
Might Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter, on the basis of “free-speech”, be sort of similar to this moral-economy? Since he sold some of his stake in companies he owns to make the purchase, it does seems like he’s almost rather explicitly trading some of his high profile value to make the purchase. And of course he’s justifying the purchase based on values such as independence and free-speech. This only seems to have raised his social/moral/profile capital even higher than it was before. This isn’t to say it’s good or bad. It might be that, even if it’s all some big egocentric move, that he’s doing something that is good for the social sphere as a whole.
I don't think it will necessarily be bad, but I'm almost sure Twitter or "the social sphere as a whole" won't be better off because of Elon's purchase.
I won't comment on the moral outcome of Musk's purchase, but I will say that I think it has nothing to do with "free speech" and everything to do with securing Musk's profits.
@@diogoneves6275 I shouldn’t have said “is good for the social sphere” because of course that implies a value judgement. I’m fairly indifferent to the notion of free-speech as it’s obviously highly contradictory and hard to ‘get right.’ More generally I mean that Musk is bound by the general peer, in this sense whether he cares about free-speech or not, he will at least have to operate the company with said value[s] in mind. Which will, from the perspective of his rabid fans, be in the social good.
On Platon's notion of moral. A God-given morality and a historically formed morality are by no means contradictory. We must define the words we use. What is God? God is what creates the world we live in. Contrary to the biblical view, creation is not in the beginning, but ongoing. Whenever an entangled quantum state involves an inaccessible entity new quantum worlds are irreversibly created. We fall into one of these and call it reality. All development of the enormous information processing dissipative structure, which we call life, and the development of biological species are part of this creation process. Different species have different properties that guaratee their survival. The human species is especially cooperative and one important property is the fact that the individuals are born in a very immature state, so that years of teaching and caring are necessary to form a viable person. Together with the development of these features corresponding adequate behaviors evolved that helped to ensure the survival of the species. These behaviors constitute the god-given moral. A market of social esteem is something completely different and is more related to opportunism and lack of character than to moral.
Couldn't we define morality based on objective truths, for example a scientific measurement of net positive/negative stimuli, if that could be done. Should you clarify you are using the "civil" definition of the word morality instead of for example a religious definition which could in theory be grounded with rules or is that clarification unnecessary . Found the video very interesting, had never thought of ethics in such a manner and am guilty of using ethics as a method of measuring my own and others value and I have created a profile for myself based on them.
So the pusch of critical theory into academia and beyond could be construed as the equivalent in the moral economy of that of corporate raiders in the financial economy.
so people are just constructing morality based on feedback of the crowd rather than creating systems of values based on what they independently actually value…. that is sad to me.
Interesting video, thank you! However, the conclusion does not seem to follow from the arguments. Yes, corporations and individuals sometimes use moral language as a social signaling tool to improve their status without any sincere commitment to the moral values they profess. But to jump to the conclusion that therefore morality is just a mode of communication seems mistaken. Would you say that all companies that talk about their care for the environment are guilty of greenwashing? Or that anyone who is a vegan is necessarily only motivated to build their profile but has no true commitment to the moral value of sentient beings? Of course there are many examples of insincere signaling, i.e., a social signal that does not align with the signalers ethical values, but to conclude from that basis that true commitment to ethical values is impossible is deeply cynical. I suspect that the one who says that morality is all communication is inadvertently saying something that is not so flattering about themselves. Namely, that they have (or had) what can only be described as an almost Machiavellian tendency to use moral language as communication void of any true commitments to ethical ideals.
Interesting points, but I’d be curious to know what is your prescription for this “moral economy”, which seems to have embedded itself or at least amplified itself within the current paradigm of profilicity. For example, do we abandon societal regard in order to maximise individual authenticity?
you are equating moral values in societies with economic values? which literally the reactions of the peers of any specific society is very different towards thos two distinct categories
Morality is subjective. it always did an always will depend on the people that construct the moral zeitgeist. And this is a shame really because we all know that both good people and evil people contribute to the creation of this continuous evolving moral zeitgeist.
This is an economy class 101 video. Value propositions have always created a economically competitive advantage. This is not a revolutionary discovery. I dare you to give a controversal example of the capitalized chinese market and its profile building. I would argue that there is a moral economy of authority instead of a moral economy of self, especially in the chinese market. This feels more transcendental. It depends where one draws the line.. Greetings, Marx.
Much of what is stated as "Values" is simply a form of propaganda. Identity is only important as an existential need to a being that understands it is finite. Identity holds insanity at bay. It is a coping device and beyond its "Value" as a coping device only has value (Is useful) when person becomes authentic which the false identity created as a coping device prevents. To find authentic identity a person much release false identity but this triggers an existential crisis so only takes place under duress. Morals and identity are interdependent. Each required to reach the sanity of authenticity. The masses of humanity are insane to a lessor or greater degree because of inauthenticity. Somerset Maugham's novel captures nicely in "The Razors Edge" a man's search for meaning (Authenticity/ Sanity). Will Smith, as most actors, is inauthentic (insane) as a byproduct of his profession and fame. As an "Influencer he spreads the sickness of insanity by trapping people in their own inauthenticity who idolize him (Insanity as social contagion)
An interesting video but the arguments here seem weak in certain ways. The main issue is that you claim to be discussing morality per se, but it's not clear why your claims should apply to morality per se as opposed to moral beliefs or social practices that concern moral beliefs. It is this reduction of morality to moral beliefs that I take issue with, since it seems to needlessly commit you to relativism. I don't see what is gained by attributing the features you discuss to morality rather than to, say, moral beliefs or moral institutions or systems.
“The market of Morality is very VOLATILE” …. Genius! Commodification of morality. The response depends on the “market” reaction, and it will determine its “moral value”, but only after the market reacts. To me, this presentation clarifies enormously the ambiguity that socially desirable opinions transit, representing a type of individual Orwellian mental gymnastic to adopt/believe/defend the most popular “current accepted moral value” to validate “social media” personae, and modify it as soon as its “market” value declines.
Unhappily I can give only one like to Prof. Moeller presentation! Thank you very much.
Association and acceptance of _The Current Thing_ due to its high short-term speculated market valuation. Which in turn drives an attention economy of junk bonds and stocks and creates drivers of Ponzi schemes willing to perpetuate morally bankrupt ideas (social devaluation) for profit.
Example: look up the actual Roe vs Wade case and law and try to make sense of the social value of the woman's case in that regard...amplified by the social response and where we are on similar issues of biology (trans) or philosophy (postmodern)
This reminds me of every scenario I've witnessed in which a person has been verbally insulted by another in a group. Everyone else in the group just stares and there is a heavy atmosphere of anticipation and tenseness. The person who gets insulted looks at the group and decides how to respond in accordance of what they found the atmosphere to be. Okay Im stupid I know but I just wanted to say that.
@@JohnnyDoe911 not stupid at all and just want to add to your contribution as I also find it is really paralel to the topic at hand. What you mention I feel touches what we call social status which has much to do with identity. Often people find themselves "valueing" themselves or others only in contrast to other persons social standing, ones own otherstanding is often permeated by this market logic as mentioned above, in this case the "market transaction" are local so after a flash assessment one has to defend his standing if his position is in jeopardy. Interesting take
@@JH-ji6cj I don't quite understand your example. Could you explain?
@@Crispman_777 to be more precise on my side, could you give me a definition of what you would think the _attention economy_ is referring to in an economic sense? Not to back you into a corner, but to better get a sense of where to backtrack to in my explanation.
The interesting thing is that Will Smith's decision to slap Chris Rock was very probably driven by a perceived need to maintain his moral profile. "Defending the honour of one's family" and stuff. As many people have pointed out, the live has shown that Will was laughing at Rock's G. I. Jane joke before he saw his wife rolling her eyes. Of cuz, his laughing at Rock's joke were perhaps also driven by the desire to present himself as not having a huge ego and being able to take a joke, a desire which was then overrode immediately after he saw his wife reaction.
Yes I think this defending the honour of one's family was applied retroactively and through observation i would argue that these moral signs are not just marketed like commodities, but effectively weaponised as a sort of auto-immune response to an moral attack on the self. In this case I think one of the reasons it didn't work is because the defending of one's honour is currently valued in this 'market' as a cheap stock that is more associated with a conservative value set rather than a 'liberal' one.
I suspect we all have a sort of evaluation of the totality of this moral economy in our heads subconciously, with it being in constant flux and dependent on our social interactions, with social media and news sending this process into a sort of overdrive that our ancestors would never have experienced.
Yes but I think it was not defending the honor but rather building his profile for his wife who as I've heard has zero respect for him and has talked about cheating on him with their child's friend.
more interesting is when Chris Rock made extremely racist jokes to Asian kids, An Lee filed a complaint the proper way, resulting in...nothing. now, the western world does condone Anti-asian hatred, but maybe will Smith chose to act this way because he knew the normal, proper, and might I say bureaucratic way will never work, as in the institution can easily make these issues disappear
@@teslastellar We're speculating here but looks like a solid take. Celebrities have a multi-faceted profile wich overlaps in this kind of situations.
@@teslastellar The only thing that contradicts that take would be the fact he laughed at the joke initially and then reacted when he saw his partners reaction. Although yes it's probably goes without saying there is some degree of family-value if you like. Still I would say this is not value building but rather saving face on his account, considering the already weak position he is starting from.
I love this channel. You are combining the best elements of eastern and western philosophy. That's a perspective that is vitally important in the world right now.
Great video. As a worker in creative advertising, i can confirm without reservation that the way orgs and corporations adhere to moral norms and cues is exactly consistent with the mechanisms described here.
Of course at work we almost never use the word "moral", but rather couch all initiatives in terms of social justice, sustainability, equity etc. Yet the actual impact of our clients' philanthropic/ameliorative actions on their stated moral aims are always secondary in consideration to metrics like "brand love" and "positive sentiment".
The work I do with them is deeply muddy and (in my view) morally suspect. But CFW videos have seriously helped clarify things for me and eased my transition to a more carefree and manageable state of mind.
Change jobs. Imagine spending your life misleading others.
In the same way as consumption, advertising itself is not the problem. When I am ill, I need the information to purchase the proper medicine to treat my sickness. The real problem however is the capitalistic social structure where for-profit institutions owns almost all the advertising opportunities in the world. When their direct intend is for profit and profit only, a seemingly healthy and necessary process of society (like consuming, advertising, and even in some countries, medication) is distorted to go against its original intend.
Holy shit, perhaps you need to think again - only a little deeper this time, looking past your need for self validation!
it's just form of distraction and censorship
unifying work force on own terms
so they couldn't unity against corporation around own values morals for example fair salary work life balance or producing for humans not for maximum profit whatever harm the products causes
@@pochi3977except these things naturally get corrupted with time as they compete against balanced needs of consumer
i would say it is bad because people live delusion these aren't bad by itself and that that people know what is good for them and they have free will
it's a Trojan horse thinking
like with delusion of free market magically works on itself haha
or thinking capital has no agenda and identity
I am always impressed with Prof. Moeller's calm. I myself am stuck within the authenticity paradigm, and so I see the Wimbledon people and think "they are spineless," I see the Oscars people and think, "what cowards."
Appreciate again another enlightening video Herr Professor.
I‘m always curious as to what gives rise to values…
‘Morality is the herd - instinct in the individual.’ - Nietzsche
‘Fear is the mother of morality.’ -Nietzsche
I wonder if this is the case.
With your Wimbledon example it seems like they are taking a pre-emptive position, rather taking a popular position in case of condemnation, preemptive damage control.
What bothers me most is the framing of the Ukraine conflict as ‘good’ v ‘evil’ and/or west v east.
Whenever I raise the idea that Russia may be responding to encroaching towards its space and antagonism via courting Ukraine to join NATO ( an obsolete institution IMO) they immediately assume I’m justifying Russian aggression and immediately reference the moral images of women and children rather than engaging in a discussion.
We’re definitely being conditioned to view this conflict through an oversimplified moral prism where facts don’t matter it’s as you say, one set of laudable values against another set of wicked values.
Meditators understand identity isn't who we are. It's a model that is a construction that's necessary to fit in within society and our family and within our community. But without an Identity we still fit in. We fit in and even more so with ourselves.
One of the interesting things about this morality market is how it influenced by the approved moral directives passed down from media and our ruling classes. It's not like Saudi Arabian athletes face any threat of being banned from a sporting event such as Wimbledon despite the conflict in Yemen.
As such, it seems Russian and Belarusian people are acceptable targets of 'othering' as in you can get away with banning their participation without inviting some unpleasant moral kickback that might be associated with banning a non european (i know it's kind of complicated and amusing in Russia's case) like with the example of Saudi Arabia, but i would imagine this is a particular barrier in the case of Israel. I am suggesting that no matter how bad the situation gets in Israel-Palestine relations, any idea of banning Israel athletes would be seen as out of the question considering you would be inviting an nuclear apocalypse style attack on your moral profile from accusations of being an anti-Semite.
I guess some kickback to this somewhat liberal outlook the the moral economy comes from figures like Trump, and I would argue Musk without equating them, who seem to thrive from being able to offer a sort of alternative evaluation of these moral stocks from the standard Neoliberal outlook. Just some thoughts.
This is a very good point. Indeed, there are other illegal military conflicts taking place right now, on many corners of the globe. Yet, it is only the Russian / Belarussian athletes who are banned from competing. The reason for the distinction has much to do with the power dynamics at play, and the double standard is most revealing.
To me, it just looks like further evidence that The Wimbledon Tournament (and other organizations who have publicly cut ties with Russia in some way) don't give a damn about what's actually happening in Ukraine. This is simply about protecting their profile from losing stock in the "marketplace" of morals.
It’s very hard not to be cynical 🤨 or perhaps we should be
Yes but your comment implies that there is an underlying moral framework by which these matters can be judged, which political considerations impairs. Personally I don't think that moral thinking consists just of a market place of status and reputational achievement. But its stating the obvious that everyone tries to cover their actions in a moral cloak. Some believe it, some do it cynically. But since morality properly understood is a system by which we self regulate our interactions with others, it is open to discussion based on various commonly accepted principles which include equality, fairness, honesty, consistency, consequences, intention.
The politicians didnt end up being turned into common people. Instead us common people were turned into politicians in our presentation our 'profilicity'.
I like the bit about the lag before the condemnation of Will Smith. I've noticed this sort of thing already much earlier among certain Talkshow of Infotainment show hosts who couldn't make a moral statement to cover an ongoing issue, even taking some time off in order to (likely) ascertain that the position which they would espouse on the issue was the one which would be the most appealing to their (general) viewer base. It all feels a little bit phony, but as Hans-Georg would argue, this is simply the evolution toward a profile-based sense of morality.
But the question which I think is important for philosophers, sociologists and economists to address is how the initial "spark" which creates these judgements begins. Is it though anonymous communication (primarily the internet) that these morals and values first begin to take shape, or is it more that someone who is not particularly good at curating a social profile says "You know, act X was right", after which other people who are almost as bad reply to this someone and say "No, act X was most certainly wrong", until perhaps people who now feel safe enough to make a statement (because each time the risk is diluted) might defend Act X again and so on until a critical mass is reached which is safe in ensuring the condemnation of one point or the other in the "universal" means which has just been demonstrated by the Wimbleton example?
This would be a very curious thing to inquire about. I'm not sure how to gather the data required to statistically investigate this sort of thing in an unbiased manner, however. If someone has any ideas, let me know.
Ever wondered where the word "accountability" came from?
Bourgeois morality developed in an economic context in which bank accounts were becoming common.
In our day and age media accounts have become common. Let's see how that plays out.
“Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into Commodities. Money is the general and self-constituted Value of all things. Consequently it has robbed the whole world - the world of mankind as well as Nature - of its peculiar Value.” Marx 1843
I think you make alot of good points, but I would suggest tweaking the "moral economy" dynamics. As you brought up Marx, I would like to give a slight critique from that perspective.
The goal of a successful individual in the "moral economy" is not to produce value but to produce surplus value, i.e. profit. In other words, those who succeed in this moral economy are those who's actions produce the greatest rate of return of moral value. This can be done by publicizing their "good" moral decisions, as well as attacking their competitors.
This is why I love your point about the "moral economy". It's a competition. Hence, someone's success in the moral economy is compared to others. This leads to morality becoming a spectacle.
Also, it's another good point that moral value creates economic value, but Marx would see this relationship as circular, not linear. Those with money can also be more moral since they are not desperate.
No matter what I think of this guy's video opinions, he always does a good job with interesting subject matter and the comment section contains so many gems, like yours.
Interesting and to add on your last sentence those with money are often seen as having "higher status" there higher value, almost a direct correlation from economic to moral value (certain material resources-power having an upper hand depending on its context)
@@davidlester8003 I'm glad that the cultural space of the internet has at least correctly identified certain peoples profiling practices as _Influencers_ , very appropriate labeling before marketing campaigns were able to mobilize. I expect we will see that change, or a heavy push to change that moniker, in the near future.
Corporations plan for the economics. It’s wonderful really. There is something that I remember noting at the time:
when Nike did the Colin Kaepernick advertisements, they did them right after or just right before the close of the financial reports for the quarter.
This had a practical effect: it gave Nike the ability to gauge the impact and if the campaign wasn’t successful, it wouldn’t impact their quarterly earnings report. In fact their report came in with earnings. This also helped them boost the campaign on the back end.
I'm reading 'The Moral Fool' right now and it's incredible how pertinent this video and that book are to what's happening right now. All I want to do is ask you to please, please comment on the current situation in the US with Roe v. Wade. The timing is remarkable.
Worth the recommendation? Moral fool?
@@unknowninfinium4353 Absolutely. It's one of my favourite philosophical manuscripts of the last decade. It's essentially advocating for the amoralist position, in which love and law supplant morality for the primary means of regulating human social behavior.
@@SlightofHands Thanks dude.
Hope you are having a good day.
Love the disclaimer at the end. Gonna ignore it, probably, but love it.
When you were speaking about how the value of one's profile is linked to presentability, my first thought was that this is another useful lens for understanding cancel culture. Thanks again for another great video!
Have a look at moeller ‘s video on wokism
@@sash3497 yeah, I've watched that one as well. It's also good.
Thomas Ligotti's book Conspiracy Against the Human Race heavily influenced the first season of True Detective, with some dialogue seemingly lifted directly from the text. If you're interested, you should check his book out.
Oh, so that's how morality works nowadays! Now I get it, thanks professor!
Very interesting analysis 👍
Values change, but virtue endures.
Yes, but they are inseparable in practice, unless one becomes an ascetic.
Very enjoyable video again. I have a thought regarding the Wimbledon example. Perhaps the organisers were envisioning scenarios in which the Russian/Belorussian players were in 'combat' with players from the 'moral' team of the West. What narratives do you think the performative media would construct around these contests? Potentially it creates the situation where an unstable outcome might occur (the immoral wins) and affects the brand of Wimbledon as an arena of individualist endeavour in which the hero/heroine is rewarded. For the All England Lawn Tennis Club the prospect of a fear-culture winner, say Medvedev, triumphing over a performative-culture competitor, Nadal or any other brand, was a narrative they wished to avoid. Of course the competition itself is a model of a market, where brands compete for dominant narratives of success. On another note, it occurs to me, as it did to the character of Rust Cohle, that the performance of immorality is equally marketable, though with a shorter and more incendiary half-life.
Good point, sports tournaments are in a more complicated position for their profilicity than products or services brands.
Also, the concept of marketability in immoral acts, values or principles explains why are they taken in the first place.
I guess the mastery of this business lies in the skill managing both moral and immoral for maximum profit.
A lot of things to talk about in this presentation. First, the split into three values of morality is solid. (value of persons, actions and principles). This creates an importance in establishing which of the three your interlocuter is talking about, but all three are simultaneously viable as all three things can be independently valued.
The idea of the shift of morality from interdependence to independence in the seventeenth century. Big problem here. It is known that in most societies there is elite and vulgar culture. This relates back to some degree to the idea of master and slave morality. It is known that in the past, the elite culture had a monopoly on writing. This monopoly has since been broken. Less known, independent philosophy has always been stronger in rural settings and interdependent philosophy in cities. This is primarily due to issues of proximity and resource availability. The elites were more dense in cities.
To summarise, if the books say that the purpose of war is to to defend honour or some such, remember that it is the kings, knights and priests who are speaking through these books.
There is a minor conflation between social capital and moral value. To explain this difference, I will reference three known values a product has. Use value, market value, and labour value. These values are semi independent of each other, and all three are real, measurable quantities. Using moral value as a term to represent the use value a company extracts out of its moral marketing, is insulting to those who take the term moral value seriously. These are two different numbers.
By the three way partition described above, (value of persons, actions and principles), is the use value of moral marketing a value of persons? No. Is it a value of actions? Yes. But it is useful, not moral, and only to the company. Is it a value of principles? No. Is it valuable to utilitarians? Maybe, but indirectly, in the event that the marketing makes the world a better place.
As the Carefree Wandering channel is stationed out of China, I find myself wondering if the channel currently has a better view on Chinese culture, and a weaker view on North American and European culture. This could make it difficult to talk about western cultural issues accurately, due to lack of access to offline populations. This channel does have some of the best takes I've ever seen on Daoism.
You also hear the same reference when people say "our democracy".
The 'presentability' of a profile is contextual- 'audiences' are 'segmented'. Which audience one seeks to be appear presentable to IS one's set of moral values.
Who you aim to impress is the better part of who you are.
I don’t entirely agree with the argument on what morals actually are, but I definitely do agree with the conclusion of todays conception of morals. Society has now become a marketplace of social relations that entirely relies on prestige and social worth. If someone doesn’t have major social clout they always loose out in social acceptance which denies them access to certain employment and social classes. Employers now have to check your Facebook and twitter pages before even considering your resume or even meeting you in real life. The portrayal of morals is now worth more than the reality of morals, just as your own profile picture is now worth much more than your real life self.
@@xdrowssap4456 Morals are more codes of conduct than any greater metaphysical beliefs, so trying to argue against the existence of morals is actually arguing that there are no codes of conduct in society. Morals aren't given by any God or by the forces of nature, they’re simply a given set of social/personal rules to live by while living within a society.
Let's take the example of the “ambitious person” you mentioned. That person is actively exploiting other people by exploiting the morals that have been accepted as the norm by society and are also cheating society out of what it's supposed to give to the people that earn/achieve within the society. This “ambitious person” has used other people's consciences, abilities, and their self-sacrifice to the social whole as an exploit and has only gained their positions in society through the simple effortless exploitation of others' effort/achievements, rather than any kind of attainment through their effort/achievement.
It's like someone cheating at a game of monopoly by making everyone else playing (society) look the other way as they take everyone else's money and then put houses on all the available spaces while everyone else collectively follows the rules to the letter. This “ambitious person” hasn't achieved anything, they’ve only gained through coercion of their betters in a parasitic way. In this instance, the ambitious person hasn’t actually done anything of merit while everyone else is diligently abiding by “morals” of some kind as the ambitious person can only gain through others abiding by these social rules of compliance and altruism.
The “ambitious person” was given their “victories” by the society because society didn't want to refuse the ambitious person's demands. Cheating at the rules of a game isn't achievement, it's just cheating. The only way people can even succeed at cheating is by having others follow the rules. Without other people's morals the “ambitious person” can never actually achieve/gain anything.
It does come across as a very cynical version of morality if, for example, the oscars have to wait and see how the "actually" feel about the slap. But I suppose that's just me coming at it from an authentic viewpoint of morality. I guess from the perspective of authenticity, it doesn't even make sense for an organisation to have a moral compass since from that perspective, morality should be sometime internal to an individual human, but these days it does seem like we actually demand impersonal organisations to have a moral stance as if they were humans.
I love your videos. Thanks for making them!
Great again
Greeting prof. Moeller, thank you for taking the time to teach us hobbyists philosophy, for me it is a real pleasure and honor. Could you please tell us more about Wittgenstein's perspective on morality? I found the example you gave with the moral exploding of the books absolutely fascinating, regarding the absolut and relative usage of the meaning of words.
Recently I was recommended Jonathan Haidt's book, "the Rightous Mind."
Which discusses his moral foundations theory.
Would you consider that a continuation of Paul Rée's book, "the origin of moral sensations?"
If so would Nietzsche's, "the Genealogy of Morality" support the Relationship Regulation Theory?
Very interesting. Thanks
23:27 Well said: [morality nowadays] is oriented towards a marked which has to be continually observed.
5... Nice thumb nail.
Sixth 😉. I like the way the video links up the three identity technologies with moral value ‘ mode of production ‘. Will need to watch all many times. The moral economy Luhmann and Marx 🤓😬
A very coherent argument and presentation! I want to try to relate this concept of moral credit and moral financialization to Reckwitz's analyses of social classes and singularization. I wonder if for singularization we can analogize the category of individual distinctiveness with that of moral credit. I think both are associated with the emergence of the "new middle class" (there is a cleavage between old and new middle class for Reckwitz, where the distinction is mostly cultural rather than material/economical) and serve a similar purpose as a status currency, where material symbols and the underlying participation in consumer culture are (at least superficially) questioned and discredited. The "moral economy" in the profane, non-Muellerian sense is of course an adaptation of capitalism to this phenomenon, so I'd say the two different meanings of that term are in fact very tightly related.
As always, very thought provoking stuff.
thanks prof.
I completely agree with the morality market. I think it is universal and it has always been part of the human society - only the values themselves have changed with the times. Anyone who lives in a group of humans can attest to this if she pays close attention. And the market's currency is prestige and it translates into influence. Maybe the only recent difference is that now it is a global market.
But please allow me to offer an alternative reasoning for the Wimbledon decision - still based on the morality market conditions, just different ones.
1. Because we live in democracy we understand (or believe) that people are (at least partly) responsible for the actions of their countries.
2. Russian players did not condemn the war. They should have. Saying that they did nothing wrong does not account for this. Like a bystander to a violent crime, doing nothing is not enough.
3. We, in the western bubble (like you pointed out it seems that Wimbledon only cares for the part of the world that condemns the invasion) believe that we need to cut off Russia. That is because there are 3 parts of Russia - (1)the people that have nothing to do with the outside world (or at least with the Wimbledon bubble) (2) the people that want Russia to be part of the said bubble and condemn the war (or at least try to) and (3) the people who benefit from the regime inside Russia but enjoy the spoils outside it (and who crucially have more power than the others)
4. This bubble (of which Wimbledon is a part of) is trying to prevent that part of Russia from having their cake and eating it too.
5. Tennis players are not part of the first group (they are extremely connected with the global world) and they did not show that they are part of the second.
5. Wimbledon is just playing it's social part in ostracizing any russians that did not condemn the invasion but want to take part in our bubble's activities.
* I do not blame the players, I understand the fear of speaking out against a dictator; some of them are also very young and many come from wealthy families (I imagine their parents are part of the third group and educated them accordingly). It is just a matter of responsability and how it is assigned in our minds.
So why this so called bubble doesn't play its very "moral" tennis inside the bubble? Just with all very democratic sportsmen?
@@mariiabokovnia6958 they are trying. But tennis players from Russia and Belarus keep registering for the tournament (* this is sarcasm, not really my opinion)
Countries like Russia and China will not miss opportunities to use sports results for propaganda. If Medvedev wins Wimbledon Russian tv channels will present it as a sign that Russian society is better. And all sorts of internet trolls will spread the same idea online.
I enjoyed the video greatly! I have thought about similar concepts but had never been able to put my observations into a coherent understanding, like in this video.
Also, the video discusses how the moral-economy can make or break people in other ways, specifically monetarily. However I have noticed that many can commit taboos and garner negative press only to make even more money. This is something pointed out frequently to those who fear "cancel culture". If this is as real as it seems, than that makes the correlation between negative moral profiles and economic downturns weaker. Just an observation and thought.
The commitment of taboos might increase the value of a profile depending on the moral market, I'd say taboos are similar to investment in risk markets.
Using economics-like language is very useful to explain moral behavior, that's for sure.
As the person above said, the financial market also involves risky plays, which sometimes work out and sometimes don't. However, another consideration is market expansion, or even market pivots. Basically the taboo in question may be catering to a different moral market, or even an entirely different audience, which if successful can indeed make you rich. But that's no different from betting on a new product or marketing strategy. Sometimes this can grow your fanbase, sometimes it may be a complete shift to another fanbase which you find more 'profitable' (not necessarily only in monetary terms, you could also just find them more amenable than the one you're abandoning aka making better friends). But this isn't guaranteed, it's a risky play that often backfires.
Basically it's important to note whose negative press it is, and who it caters to. It may not be the press that matters for this case.
Oh! This is so cool!
none of this guy's arguments miss!
I noticed a lot of companies withdrew from Russia because it would spoil their image to carry on - and so economic/market value
It is said that Rust Cole's character is based off David Benatar's philosophy. Could you make a video about antinatalism in the future?
No, he is based on The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti
The Professor's description of morality based on profilicity reminded me of a book I read on Gorgias the sophist. (Gorgias: Sophist and Artist, by Scott Consigny.) Gorgias rejected morality based on judgements from the gods, or general principles. Instead he thought it was something hashed out in the agon, the public debate. Whoever has the best rhetoric and can persuade the public determines morality. The main terms of judgement were honour and shame. The problem is, suppose you live in a community of crooks or similar. They're going to view your deserting the norm as shameful. Though on the other hand, there's always the possibility a strong rhetorician uses it to religious or principled ends. No-one can really then say that it's objectively wrong, if it wins in the agon.
As is happens, their other channel - Philosophy in Motion - has as its latest video an animation precisely on morality among crooks, but from a Daoist angle (the title literally being The Dao of Gangstas).
@@ArawnOfAnnwn thanks! I'll give it a watch.
Does this speak more to what morality “is” or how it’s used? For example, even though the crooks are in power, determining what’s shameful or honorable, one could say the crooks are actually in the “wrong” for taking advantage of others.
I would like to add Nietzsche's famous adress in The Gay Science where he discusses God's death. He asks "how are we going to wash the blades? what new rituals and sacrifices will we have to invent?" (I'm translating from my own version as I don't have it in English).
Since God, the idea of a superior principle that we can elaborate our ideas upon, then nothing anymore can be agreed upon as an absolute basis.
I think that participates deeply to the wild mood swings of the moral market, because we can see both conservatives and "woke" go on regular witch hunts and purges, and they seem to display zero remorse when they're wrong because the cause is more important.
The erect totem is important insofar as it gains them a display of divinity and when it fails, since they base their moral systems only upon the aforementioned gain, then it's written off as a loss in accounting and they embark on the new market campaign.
What little idols we have are so fabricated they get stale as soon as they hit mass market, every "star" is disposable.
Were we to have a God as a principle (not unlike God as a moral template of Good as a principle in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason), then they could compare their identitarian crusades to a bigger picture and put them into perspective on a longer-term than their apparent current bloodlust, but since the individual is its own microcosm, and thus the template of the universe, it cannot happen, instead, everyone needs to parade WHAT they are and it takes precedence over WHO they are (this applies also to apolitical people and teens on TikTok are a pretty telling example).
I have the hubris to believe that I can actually create my own argument for identity and then morality, using just naturalism.
My argument is that every identity is unique, due to us being made up of unique particles, but trying to get to an argument about values and ethics is my next step, which is definitely challenging for me. I'm not trying to reflect back, but look at what it would mean if the universe started as a singularity or something, what's it mean to have morality and values.
oh and yes, morality is based upon language to me too, but also based upon moral intuition, disgust, empathy, etc...
This is a much clearer explanation than the one in the last video. I can get behind these accurate observations, but only in the descriptive sense. I still firmly believe that these kinds of behaviors are not everything there is to morality, but that's a completely different conversation.
This seems very related to emotivism, which I think can fairly easily be expressed in extra-market terms without really losing meaning. I suppose the desire to avoid the market framing or use it is probably more connected with other ideological planks, but is probably worth thinking about a bit. Curiously one of the strongest earliest moral framework along these lines was that of Hume, who, besides the psychological aspect of such a ethical system, also pointed out that this means it was, to some extent, socially or culturally determined. Even more curiously, the argument you bring up around the 11 minute mark was expanded upon at length by Smith specifically in relation to his stadial theory, build on the recognition of a relationship between the superstructure of society and what Marx would later call the mode of production. Marx didn't have access to where this was most clearly stated, Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, but you can catch wiffs of it in the Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiment, especially when put into conversation with Hume, though Marx might have gotten implicit forms of some of these ideas by way of Ferguson both directly and via his influence on Hegel.
To some extent a strongly developed understanding of morality, or at leas its function, along these lines has been present for a long time, though in a great irony expressed most robustly, though his student Millar also contributed quite a bit here especially with regards to gender and rank, in an extra-market fashion by the supposed prophet of homo economicus. Moreover, that very theory would suggest that the reason we would even express it in market terms now is because of the progress material conditions and the social organizations those engender.
In more broader terms, i.e., not just on morality, I'd be interested in your idea of markets of profilicity in conversation with Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment, which seems very similar to profilicity but overtly for the benefit of the self instead of the other, and Simmel's Philosophy of Money, where all value is reduced to that of the money form by a specific historical process and the fact that money becomes value in-itself. It seems clear to me that the phenomenon that you describe is indeed happening, but I'm not sure that profilicity is the right highest level framing, it instead is something happening within a broader neoliberal framework, whether you want to call it something like biopower or self-commodification, perhaps even auto commodity-fetishism. "The worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities."
I appreciate you bringing Hume's view on morality into this discussion! I think the psychological element he brings to morality is very important and often underrated.
Regarding your last paragraph, I must say, I've lost both you and prof. Moeller. There is a limit to the idea that everything that happens in a public arena is made to satisfy a profile or an identity, I think. It's difficult for me to say where to draw the line, but there is some line somewhere.
Sure companies celebrating pride, politicians talking about net 0 carbon emissions and Biden talking about "values" while America had Guantanamo and bombed weddings is all very profilic. But the help provided to Ukraine to defend itself from its aggressor goes beyond. But let me not bore you with too long of an unstructured essay.
@@nicuhosu If it was different, it wouldn't be so selective. Contrast the treatment of Ukrainian refugees to that of ME refugees for instance, and even the language used for each (which fortunately there have been reports on). Contrast the reaction to this war to that of the wars in Yemen or even the wests' own wars. And even the one in Taiwan that hasn't even happened yet, but the hostility is already building up (on both sides, neither of which is Taiwan here btw). The vid isn't saying that people don't really feel these things, just as his definition of prolificity isn't merely being fake. It may feel real and internal, but he's arguing it's also internalized, not somehow god-given or universal or absolute. We socially made our morality (which is often quite tribal btw, as in this case as well), and change it too, but it's spoken of as if it were fundamental and intrinsic.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn appreciate the reply!
Yes you make good points! I agree that the nature of the (moral) reaction depends on proximity both culturally and geographically. But that is quite uncontroversial.
I still don't see the point behind the point. I agree morality is relative and constructed. So? Does that make it less real? Does it make you intellectually somehow inferior to velueve in "values". There is a case for amorality being made here. But what is that case? As long as I stand by a normative statement such as "countries should not attack other sovereign countries" I am implicitly making a value judgement. Which leads to a certain morality. So... How can I have any "ought" and still be amoral?
@@nicuhosu "Does that make it less real?" It's not clear what's meant by this. What does it mean for a moral to be 'real'? Being relative does by definition make it not universal, and being constructed does by definition make it not fundamental. You didn't say they were either of those things ofc, but it's worth noting that a LOT of people hate the idea of moral relativism, to the point that it's usually used as an insult. They implicitly don't like to think of their morality as relative, nor as constructed.
As for "How can I have any "ought" and still be amoral?", that's what previous video on this channel was about. Simply put, it's possible to make an analysis and a decision on how to act without necessarily turning it into a moral judgment. We do that with things that aren't morally charged all the time. Moralizing issues has a host of myriad pathologies that tend to come with it, which ironically don't serve human flourishing (to use Sam Harris' term, as that video is also a response to Harris' ideas). Morality is about good and evil - to be amoral is simply to excise those concepts as you don't need them to navigate life, and our long history has shown their dangers. It's kinda like the next step from an atheist pointing that you don't need to be religious to be good people. Now we question if we need to attach ourselves to notions of what is 'good' in the first place, or if there's a more effective way of looking at the world.
@@nicuhosu I assume Professor Moeller is not making some sort of ontological or essentialist argument about profilicity, but instead a heuristic one. Which is to say that profilicity is a concept by which we can understand actions, it is neither wrong nor right in the abstract.
Personally I'm not totally convinced of its usefulness. Instead I merely think there is a way to slot it into conversations I'm a bit more inclined to. Smith for instance isn't making the argument that we have a profile in the sense floated on this channel, though second-order self-observation is core to his "man within the breast."
I think the way this is most usefully bridged though is in commodification, and hence profilicity's analogy to literal profiles on social media accounts is actually useful. I do agree many people have reoriented the way in which they understand themselves through others to self-commodification similar to say an Instagram influencer's use of their account.
In terms of Ukraine I think the argument is that a materialist analysis, whether that of the Scottish Historical School or of Marx, or even a mere realist IR account, tends to understand the actions of states and sufficiently large firms, both at best amoral institutions, through analysis of interest. Their actions with regards to Ukraine, much as with regards to everything else, ultimately derive from their own conception of what is in their interest.
It's worth noting there is some slippage on your end here. You go from claiming that Russia is bad as states shouldn't attack other states, to saying that any reaction to Russia doing this is good. The latter presumably requires some sort of active argument. For instance I don't think many people would agree that Hillary Clinton's analysis that the US should support Ukraine with arms specifically to bog Russia down in a new Afghanistan is particularly morally good.
I have to embed ‘British values’ into my teaching. I really don’t know where to start with that one 😱😱😱
hmmm idk if this prolific account of morality as communication is all that different from accounts that center personhood and action. In fact, it seems strikingly similar to the remarks that Aristotle makes regarding character. In the Nicomachean Ethics, and elsewhere, he argues that one's moral character (hexis ethike), and more concretely, their identity are constituted by the habits they take up; one's moral identity is produced by their actions. For Aristotle, It is a character, that reflects one's morality toward one's self and others, and I'd say it's this same process of habitation that emerges when curating these moral profiles.
More videos like this one, Moe!
It makes me feel sad to agree with you. I wish people and organisations wouldn't play into these morality markets -- I'd rather they (and I) participate "genuinely".
Clarification question: what is the market? Is it the nexus of communication? Something else? How much does it tie into capitalist relations? It must have been explained in the video but I can’t seem to find it
cheers
Will you do a Video on Gilles Deleuze at some point? I think he has that psychedelic quality that you say Hegel has. I was wondering whether you thought Nietzsche’s the Will to Power counted as an example of authenticity morality or as something else, or if Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy has much to say about identity in your sense of the term?
This video is much appreciated, just like your other content.
I am highly critical of Putin's invasion, but I find it difficult to talk about the self-righteous breast-beating of our "moral" figures here in the West without being called a Putin-sympathizer.
Why is nobody outraged about the exclusion of Russians from sports and cultural events? In the case of Israelis, it would rightly be condemned as antisemitism. If our politicians care so much about white phosphorous being thrown on UN shelters, why do they only care about it in the Russian case? In a similar way, you can be sure that it's about Russia or China whenever you hear about vetoes in the UN security council. A US veto, on the other hand, is a double veto, as Chomsky puts it (not implemented + erased from history).
I agree with your claim that morality gets commodified under Capitalism. But I think you can go much further. Maybe humans in general have a tendency to indulge in self-serving illusions to create a streamlined version of reality and to avoid internal conflict. I remember Chomsky pointing out how educated people, especially in the media, are much more indoctrinated than "average" people. They buy into these double standards without being aware of them.
I believe that they would argue that they are exerting pressure on russia to change their ways by excluding players, not observing the market...
There is only one question to me, and that is the question of how to harmonize the part with the whole.
Few among men in history can honestly say, "Will Smith just slapped the shit outa me!"
Awesome
Was the editor adding in that warning at the end an example of this "moral market" thing, but between the channel and us the audience?
Cuz if so subscribed
This is a very interesting take on the morphology of identity production and I really appreciate your videos. You're one of the most philosophically engaging channels that try to think the present. In this effort I have a question: if the profile needs to be adjusted to the morality market, is profilicity a new form of a conformism based morality like that of honor? I'd love to have a comunication channel on this since I'm also a philosopher and would like to work on this as well
I'd argue it is. But unlike honor, which is atheist stable for quite a while, post social media profilicity is very volatile and disorienting.
I'm having a hard time drawing a distinction between this idea of "moral esteem" and "virtue signaling".
Can someone lay out the difference for me?
Maybe moral esteem is stable held value, and virtue signaling is unrealized value? Under an economic metaphor.
You have a similar view to Charles Taylor. Have you read the Sources of the Self? Curious to know your thoughts.
Nice song choice at the end lol translated in english it would sound so aggressive ahah
The comodification of morality works also the other way around: the consumers curtail their spending habits to choose those corporations whose profile complies with their set of values - the main motivation for the western companies to choose a side in the current conflict. However, I would argue, that this isn't anything new, in the honor based morality same mechanisms applied - a person viewed as immoral, lacking honour, was shunned in the same way as the Russians are. I am not sure if we can actually speak about some kind of comodification, actually, just that people now as they have previously choose to associate with those they see as displaying moral values. Thus, the analysis is enlightening but I am not sure if it doesn't go too far. Also, another point of criticism is that it makes look the choice of the moral values for a certain profile arbitrary, which it clearly is not - which could bring us back to the Plato's question about objective and subjective nature of morality (here there is danger of going into infinite regress however, are the principles that we choose to choose our principles objective or subjective? etc. I don't know how to solve this question). I hope that is just something left out for convenience and not the fundamental stance of the model.
Clubhouse is another alternative to Discord if you are looking for a platform to live chat
I don't understand this point about the volatility.
OK, morality is socially constructed. Not a very controversial statement given that the word morality etymologically stems from words that used to mean "customs" or "practice". (Mores, ethos) Any good moral relativist would agree. Just to make it clear, I also fully agree.
It seems to me tough that by underlining how relative and contingent morality is, you argue that then we are better off without it altogether. We must shed it like we shed religion from a prominent role in society. (I mean, any normative statement already caries some degree of moral weight, but I digress.)
But even if morality is constructed, that doesn't mean it wasn't constructed for a reason or based on some rational principles that would make the world a better place. Wimbledon, to stay at that example, is embedded in a Western system of moral values, as you say, so by banning Russian players it communicates to Russia that its behaviour is unacceptable. Of course it also communicated to the West that is on the bandwagon of punishing Russia, just like many other international companies and organisations. But, if Russia changes its behaviour, ie stops invading its neighbour, there is no reason for Russian players not to be able to play. It's all rather simple.
I see no volatility there, I see Wimbledon sticking by a certain principle. If Wimbledon would be debating two competing principles like the one they've adopted vs. the principle that individual players are not responsible for the actions of their states and thus should not be disadvantaged, then it would be volatile. But that is not what is happening. Nadal, Murray and Djokovic already came out criticizing the principle that Wimbledon chose, but they did not change their opinion.
I appreciate your though provoking content, but sometimes I struggle to see how one could divorce moral reasoning from existence. Maybe I need to read your book, the Moral Fool. The case you make for amorality is attractive, but difficult to embrace in times like these. It seems to me that certain political systems are demonstrably superior (and I emphasise this empirical aspect) to others. Nations (not autocratic rulers) often then gravitate towards such systems. When popular will is supressed (also like in Hong Kong, though I understand why you would avoid the subject) it is hard not to think that something fundamentally wrong has happened. I also understand that say China may have different values, but I am not sure how much those values come about by free deliberation vs top-down indoctrination.
Is it possible to asses wether this moral economy has any impact on the total suffering experienced by humans in general? Is there less of it?
That sounds like a meta use of the idea!
Is the economy zerosum?
I think profile building and communicating values alters the system as more of a vote/ buy in.
what do you think of ai companies? do you thingk the metrics of your relationship ower soshil standing with the flesh and blud imperfect relationships will become of a secondary importance a cieend of soshal credit score that wee actively dezier to maintain. sorry for the spelling i am dyslexic. this is really a very good video thanks
There are 2 separate issues here, the moral character of the actor and the moral effect of what he does, and secondly the whole issue of "virtue signalling."
A person acts with moral
intent when his action, is broadly speaking, intended to benefit another person or a wider group. But an act that has moral intent may have negative consequences for various reasons. It may have unforeseen collateral damage to others. As a matter of technique, it may not achieve the intended effect on the person to whom it was addressed. So a common response is: "I understand your intent was good but your way if doing it was stupid." So the beneficial character of an act is always qualified by limitations on the actor's information and practical effectiveness. We may condemn a person for not taking an ordinary level of care as to information and technique and we may exonerate another person because, recognising their intent and sufficient care we say they "couldn't have foreseen" the consequence.
There can be also be a whole discussion of the overt and subconscious motivations involved.
But all this is a quite a different operation to what is presently called "virtue signalling" whereby a person presents a moral show in order to be well thought of by an specific or more general group. This is not moral behaviour at all because it has no intent to benefit anyone else. The intended benefit is to one's own social profile and commercial standing.
So I disagree with the presentation of morality here. I think Georg is investigating something interesting in the rise of profilicity . But I don't think you can just say that the morality of intention and consequence was based in authenticity and has been superceded by a morality based on profilicity. What's actually happening is that organisations are using moral language to make people feel good about consuming their product. IMO, this is manipulation, not morality and is a different category of behaviour - marketing - albeit masquerading as moral character. One can have an interesting discussion about the extent to which marketing is subverting moral behaviour, but I don't think that will go very far if we don't distinguish one category from the other.
I should add that the intent to act morally, ie for the benefit of others, is really as much about the "spiritual" development of the person acting as it is the wellbeing of another. Recognition of this has a long history.
However, that last part of the Wimbleton statement would apply under pretty much any mode of morality.
Internal mode of communication that follows a certain of mode of production of identity value. hmmm... That doesn't mean I can't work towards making arguments to change what we value as a society within the market.
Slavoj Zizek claims that “Western Buddhism” is the predominant ideology of global capitalism. What is HGMs position on this?
Is The Moral Fool another fetish for us who are being thrown around by market forces?
Nic Pizzolatto(script writer of True Detective) plagiarized "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomas Ligotti.
I argue with people daily that relate economics with moral values, they justify the death penalty and such like that based upon cost to society to keep them in prison. I get that, but it's not how I define morality myself.
I am unclear what Professor Moeller wants organisations to do other than "curate" their profile in such circumstances. The recognition that a tennis tournament or an awards show does not exist in a vacuum is a good thing and that they give thought and voice at all to signalling disapproval in the face of egregious and abhorrent actions is better than the alternatives. See also Stewart Lee on "the values of the Car Phone Warehouse"
WARNING IM TRYING TO GET YOUR ATTENTION!
...
I would be curious your thoughts, if Profilicity has any connections to the work of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard.
Society of the Spectical and Simulacra and Simulation.
Great work.
He comments on these works specifically in You and your profile. It’s a well deserved read!
I wish he would have commented on Rusts anti-natalism
Very interesting. I guess I basically agree. You've correctly pointed out the flaws in approach to morality imo.
The most obvious critcism I can make is how you poitn out that non-western countries have a different opinion of the war in Ukraine. Well they've been fed misinformation to put it bluntly. -If they've been given accurate information they would agree that it is wrong. So to say they have an alternative view is just wrong. They have a different opinion becuase they're not discussing the same war figuratively. I do still agree the tennis ban was the wrong move.
But apart from that I agree. But it leaves more questions. So this then means we should be amoral? or can we do morality differntly? and what do you think the dangers are of amorality, if any? Is it then a choice between two bad options? It seems like morality and amorality both have many downsides to me.
19:01 I heard "socialist team" and I was very confused.
I remain fascinated but unconvinced. The carefully curated self-for-public-consumption, whether this is constructed with the technology of sincerity, authenticity or profilicity, seems to me lacking in integrity and honesty. Don't people have a true, private morality that is unrelated to power & impressing others?
For example, in Buddhism, it's understood that seeing the empty nature of the self opens up universal fellow-feeling and compassion, which is a basis for genuinely wanting to help and not harm. This is not for public consumption or self-satisfaction. Do you think this is a fairy-tale or is it that you have another name for this than 'morality'?
Might Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter, on the basis of “free-speech”, be sort of similar to this moral-economy? Since he sold some of his stake in companies he owns to make the purchase, it does seems like he’s almost rather explicitly trading some of his high profile value to make the purchase. And of course he’s justifying the purchase based on values such as independence and free-speech. This only seems to have raised his social/moral/profile capital even higher than it was before.
This isn’t to say it’s good or bad. It might be that, even if it’s all some big egocentric move, that he’s doing something that is good for the social sphere as a whole.
I don't think it will necessarily be bad, but I'm almost sure Twitter or "the social sphere as a whole" won't be better off because of Elon's purchase.
I won't comment on the moral outcome of Musk's purchase, but I will say that I think it has nothing to do with "free speech" and everything to do with securing Musk's profits.
@@diogoneves6275 I shouldn’t have said “is good for the social sphere” because of course that implies a value judgement. I’m fairly indifferent to the notion of free-speech as it’s obviously highly contradictory and hard to ‘get right.’ More generally I mean that Musk is bound by the general peer, in this sense whether he cares about free-speech or not, he will at least have to operate the company with said value[s] in mind. Which will, from the perspective of his rabid fans, be in the social good.
is it good because it got 100k likes or it got 100k likes because it is good?
Either way it HAS TO BE GOOD because the dislike counter is disabled either way. Disagreement as moral outrage and unacceptable.
On Platon's notion of moral.
A God-given morality and a historically formed morality are by no means contradictory. We must define the words we use. What is God? God is what creates the world we live in. Contrary to the biblical view, creation is not in the beginning, but ongoing. Whenever an entangled quantum state involves an inaccessible entity new quantum worlds are irreversibly created. We fall into one of these and call it reality. All development of the enormous information processing dissipative structure, which we call life, and the development of biological species are part of this creation process. Different species have different properties that guaratee their survival. The human species is especially cooperative and one important property is the fact that the individuals are born in a very immature state, so that years of teaching and caring are necessary to form a viable person. Together with the development of these features corresponding adequate behaviors evolved that helped to ensure the survival of the species. These behaviors constitute the god-given moral.
A market of social esteem is something completely different and is more related to opportunism and lack of character than to moral.
Couldn't we define morality based on objective truths, for example a scientific measurement of net positive/negative stimuli, if that could be done. Should you clarify you are using the "civil" definition of the word morality instead of for example a religious definition which could in theory be grounded with rules or is that clarification unnecessary .
Found the video very interesting, had never thought of ethics in such a manner and am guilty of using ethics as a method of measuring my own and others value and I have created a profile for myself based on them.
So the pusch of critical theory into academia and beyond could be construed as the equivalent in the moral economy of that of corporate raiders in the financial economy.
so people are just constructing morality based on feedback of the crowd rather than creating systems of values based on what they independently actually value…. that is sad to me.
Interesting video, thank you! However, the conclusion does not seem to follow from the arguments. Yes, corporations and individuals sometimes use moral language as a social signaling tool to improve their status without any sincere commitment to the moral values they profess. But to jump to the conclusion that therefore morality is just a mode of communication seems mistaken.
Would you say that all companies that talk about their care for the environment are guilty of greenwashing? Or that anyone who is a vegan is necessarily only motivated to build their profile but has no true commitment to the moral value of sentient beings? Of course there are many examples of insincere signaling, i.e., a social signal that does not align with the signalers ethical values, but to conclude from that basis that true commitment to ethical values is impossible is deeply cynical.
I suspect that the one who says that morality is all communication is inadvertently saying something that is not so flattering about themselves. Namely, that they have (or had) what can only be described as an almost Machiavellian tendency to use moral language as communication void of any true commitments to ethical ideals.
Interesting points, but I’d be curious to know what is your prescription for this “moral economy”, which seems to have embedded itself or at least amplified itself within the current paradigm of profilicity. For example, do we abandon societal regard in order to maximise individual authenticity?
I support conventional american assumptions about morality.
i know I can trust you because of Blame
you are equating moral values in societies with economic values?
which literally the reactions of the peers of any specific society is very different towards thos two distinct categories
13:20
Well
Still the same.
Morality is subjective. it always did an always will depend on the people that construct the moral zeitgeist. And this is a shame really because we all know that both good people and evil people contribute to the creation of this continuous evolving moral zeitgeist.
This is an economy class 101 video. Value propositions have always created a economically competitive advantage. This is not a revolutionary discovery. I dare you to give a controversal example of the capitalized chinese market and its profile building. I would argue that there is a moral economy of authority instead of a moral economy of self, especially in the chinese market. This feels more transcendental. It depends where one draws the line.. Greetings, Marx.
Much of what is stated as "Values" is simply a form of propaganda. Identity is only important as an existential need to a being that understands it is finite. Identity holds insanity at bay. It is a coping device and beyond its "Value" as a coping device only has value (Is useful) when person becomes authentic which the false identity created as a coping device prevents. To find authentic identity a person much release false identity but this triggers an existential crisis so only takes place under duress. Morals and identity are interdependent. Each required to reach the sanity of authenticity. The masses of humanity are insane to a lessor or greater degree because of inauthenticity. Somerset Maugham's novel captures nicely in "The Razors Edge" a man's search for meaning (Authenticity/ Sanity). Will Smith, as most actors, is inauthentic (insane) as a byproduct of his profession and fame. As an "Influencer he spreads the sickness of insanity by trapping people in their own inauthenticity who idolize him (Insanity as social contagion)
sir masculinity and toxic masculinity and give a philosophical view of taxi driver and fight club
An interesting video but the arguments here seem weak in certain ways. The main issue is that you claim to be discussing morality per se, but it's not clear why your claims should apply to morality per se as opposed to moral beliefs or social practices that concern moral beliefs. It is this reduction of morality to moral beliefs that I take issue with, since it seems to needlessly commit you to relativism. I don't see what is gained by attributing the features you discuss to morality rather than to, say, moral beliefs or moral institutions or systems.