7:01 From Firefly Ep4 "The Shindig" "Sure, it'd be humiliating to lay there, while a better man refuses to spill your blood. Mercy is the mark of a great man," Mal stabs Atherton in the gut. "... guess I'm just a good man." Mal stabs him again for good measure. "Well, I'm alright."
The joke aside, the "Mercy is the mark of a great man" line resonated with me a LOT when I first watched the show. It's something that genuinely stuck with me.
@@kaisersoymilk6912 ... You know that's so funny. As I have gotten older I have noticed that more and more... the nature of the "1-trick" or "1-trick pony" as they say. It really jumps out at me more and more... but not even in a bad way like it once did... maybe because I see the commonality of it amongst us all. I noticed that with a friend recently watching a Taika Waititi (sp?) thing... and we were discussing how no matter the setting... it's always absurdist self referential humor bordering on the 4th wall. Sometimes he knocks it out of the park... sometimes not... but Hitler/Thor/Vampires... all just the same "trick"
I think a better quote is from Simon when he says something like “sadistic crap with an attempt to legitimize with fancy prose” or something. About a man over a volcano.
Compare that to Oxymandias from The Watchmen graphic novel and his willingness to do great evil in the belief of saving billions, but still profit from the venture afterwards.
@@Craxin01 "true believers" means nothing. Anyone that espouses any vehement ideology to further a goal is a problem, whether or not they are "true believers". Look at republicans. They all push an ideology they don't practice themselves, and take positions on things like abortion and family values while paying for their mistress's abortion. True belief is irrelevant.
_"Conspiracies of silence, because the larger ideals have to be protected. But you can't have larger ideals if the smaller ones get compromised. It's like building a house without a foundation, Delenn - it can't stand!"_ (Babylon 5, Capt. Sheridan)
An Amazing show. It's too bad that it is happening in America just like in the Show but no one noticed the evil ones taking over. The Political Office... Wanting to control the directed hatred towards the weak, when it is the powerful who are doing the fascist deed with Pres Clarke.
@@aaronbredon2948 Finding a middle ground, yes, OR a New Ground if the two sides are both too much based on antiquated thought patterns (theism, extreme leftism/rightism, tribalism, etc.....).
@@Leith_Crowther indeed. Like many fallacies, it overgeneralizes on a greatly simplified interpretation of a deep truth. The deep truth here being that few philosophical positions are *completely* devoid of some seed of truth; given enough work, it may be possible to extract the tiniest fragment of useful knowledge from a garbage heap of nonsense. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The fallaciousness of the middle ground consists in the assumption that, given any two positions, both sides are likely to be roughly equal in merit and therefore a compromise between the two is closer to the truth than either starting position. Not only is that plainly false, but the middle ground fallacy is exploited by bad actors so often it should immediately raise red flags for everyone.
@@blackshard641 I like to use the analogy of the balancing point. When people say "the answer is somewhere in the middle" I argue that it's more often at the balancing point. And while the point of balance many times can be found in the middle, it is not always so. A sword has it's point of balance near the hilt, otherwise it will be too heavy to swing around, while an axe has it's point of balance closer to the head, in order to chop more efficiently.
I took from Serenity a similar message that i did from other media touching on the subject of consequentialism vs. deontology: both can be effective in answering the question of personal ethos, but neither unilaterally are able to guide a group of any real size, due to the complexities of interaction couples with the relative inflexibility of either ethos to respond to those complexities. Single-notion ethos in any direction lends itself to totalitarian thinking, cult mentality, and "religious innerrence" for a lot of the same reasons. It's the process of "we're right. Think like we think, act like we act, believe as we believe". ... One of my favorite movies and series, though. GREAT essay about this, truly!🎉
I think everyone recognizes this: no deontological system can account for the infinite possible situations where an exception may apply, and noone can foresee every outcome, meaning that consequentialism only works in retrospect. Which is why most people fall in a blend of both, mostly by having a fluid deontological code, or applying some sort of rule utilitarianism where you apply rules that tend to have the best outcome in general, rather than deciding case by case.
One of the things I've always told my son is that one of the things that makes the world a tricky place. Is some people do the right thing for the wrong reason while others will do the wrong thing for the right reasons...
Also, some people do the right thing for the right reasons, and some people do the wrong thing also for wrong reasons. The problem is that the former category of people is outnumbered by the other 3.
@@JM-us3fr It is not. People are equally as complicated as the life is because.. get this... people make the life as it is. There doesn't exist a single person who could be neatly categorized into one of those groups. Not a single good person who hasn't done anything bad, not bad person who haven't done anything good. And then there's the fact that there are vastly differing moral frameworks. I'll give you an example of that from myself. For most people(from my frame of reference, living in northern Europe) when the person who they're conversing with crosses their arms, it sends a message of their partner being arrogant, indifferent or otherwise the opposite of polite. On my case, that is absolutely not the case. That is what I always do in stressful social situations which, as an autist, is almost always. I'm absolutely not doing anything impolite or otherwise wrong. It's just how I cope in these situations. So, on the face value, crossing the arms during a conversation is a bad action, but because life is complicated, the face value here is worthless to classify me in any of those groups you mentioned.
@anteshell ... I'll be really happy when we get back to a point where we don't have to preface every sentence with disclaimers about things that are clearly and obviously true. And shouldn't need to be said except in certain circumstances. Let me ask you: do you HONESTLY think that what op was saying was that some people ONLY EVER do the right things for the wrong reasons, and that other people ONLY EVER do wrong things for right reasons? Do you honest to God believe that op was literally trying to say that people do one thing and one thing only for their entire natural born lives and NEVER deviate even once? Is that ACTUALLY what you think op was saying? How about this: instead of people ever saying what they want to say and leaving a few perfectly reasonable assumptions to the listener, let's make every conversation 50 years long by instead elaborating on what we're NOT saying. So for instance, instead of me saying that men are stronger than women and expecting you to understand that i DON'T mean that every man ever born is stronger than every woman ever born, I'll go on and on and on and on about all the exceptions and fuzziness and blurred boundaries so that no one in the world knows what the fuck I'm talking about and no communication gets done. How about that? Would that make communication easier got everyone involved?
@@patrickshepherd1341 Do you not see the irony of accusing me of interpreting an ambiguous comment incharitably while not giving me the benefit of doubt and assuming I had no ill intentions? Considering the length of your response, I don't think you see that. If you write ambiguously, it is a matter of fact that it will be interpreted ambiguously. Some will understand it in a way you meant it to be understood, but some will not. In that case, you can only blame yourself of being inaccurate in your phrasing, and you don't get to blame others for misunderstanding. You want people to understand the correct way, then phrase your comment in such way that it doesn't leave room for interpretation. This is especially true in this form of communication where it is done through text only, and there aren't any non-verbal context clues on how something should be interpreted. That is the inherent limitation of this particular communication method, and it is up to the speaker to mitigate that limitation. Not up to the listener, or rather the reader.
🎶🎶"Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand. I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me. Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't comin' back. Burn the land and boil the sea. You can't take the sky from me There's no place I can be, since I've found Serenity And you can't take the sky from me." 🎶🎶 They can never stop the signal.
For anyone who hasn't watched Firefly/Serenity, do yourself a favor and watch them. Witness the tragedy which is hollywoods overeagerness to cancel amazing shows before their time.
This is why executives are the worst people to make decisions about art. The show would have flourished and lasted for years had it been supported. Hell, they didn't even release the episodes in the correct order!
Hmm… technically Firefly was Fox Network though, which also owns Fox News, which has pushed pretty vile memes that use “Hollywood” as a dog whistle for antisemitic tropes. I probably agree in the sense you meant it though.
@@Craxin01or maybe in the timeline where Firefly had three full seasons, in Season 3 they got the equivalent of “Spock’s Brain” and “Turnabout Intruder.” Firefly/Serenity has a very small sample size.
i noticed the overagerness is to overextend shows. for example breaking bad could have easily ended in the season before the last season, but they wanted more money, so they made one entire extra season.
I especially loved Mal’s statement to the Operative at the end: “I’m gonna show you a world without sin.” To Mal, I think hiding the truth is what causes the sin in the first place. Not letting people think and move for themselves, robbing them of the choice, is the greater sin. There’s easier, and there’s right. The two almost never line up.
Or he could have also been referring to the Pax virus, as it was supposed to make the population docile and within sin, and what the consequence of "world without sin" was.
@@renynzea A world without sin is exactly what Miranda was. Everyone is dead. That's the point Mal was making: that what the Operative calls 'sin', is a part of life, and the only way to remove it from life is to remove life itself, from everyone. That's a good reason why Mal would be a 'fan of all seven (sins)', as he puts it.
When I first heard that line, I thought it was stupid. But then I thought about it some more and realized that he was actually right. They love their ship and they know it so well because of it. Any sound out of the ordinary or even the smallest thing out of place, would get noticed by someone who really knows and loves the ship. Most notably by Kaylee, who really really listens and speaks for the ship. The one time that Mal ignored the ships needs, it literally blew up in their faces.
When people ask if the ends justify the means, I feel like they often forget that the ends are affected by the means - if the means involve killing someone, the ends must involve that person being dead, and any consequences of that. Really, it's asking whether the ends as a whole are good, irrespective of the means.
A really good thought. There have been so many social movement which have killed so many of their own people for the "greater good" but what good is there which requires the death of millions? The only thing I can think off is power for the winner. That's the only thing I think off, just power for the guy on top.
@@haleffect9011Think about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan or the establishment of the state of Israel. There is no single answer to the dicodomy. It depends on the ends and it depends on the means and it depends on the person considering them.
Another thing that I also think about: If you're willing to do something bad to reach a certain conclusion (what caused me to think this: sacrificing a large number of lives to create a so called utopia), then logically you're going to willing do that same action to maintain it (something goes wrong? well, you already sacrificed so many to create it, whats more to maintain it?) To me, one of the key elements for this kind of question that has to be consider: can you acknowledge what you're doing is bad, a sign of failure on you're part, that you could be better and need to do better in the future? If the answer is yes or I'll try, then at least the issues lessen given the self-reflection. On the other hand, if the answer is no, then my previous statement will likely hold. Also, sorry for the info dump
"Serenity" and its deep moral questions remind me of at least two other video instances. "Star Trek: NG - Season 7, Episode 16. Councilor Troi wants to become a bridge officer, i.e., obtain command rank. She easily passes all the tests except the final simulation of an extreme emergency threatening the ship. She only passes the test when she finally realizes she must order the senior engineering officer to fix the problem, knowing that doing so will likely result in his death. The other instance is the movie "U-571" where American naval personnel capture a German U-boat for its Enigma machine. The U-boat is then attacked by other German elements. In the issuing battles, the young commanding officer must order one of his men into a flooding compartment and confined space to fix a problem, but ultimately drowns. So often, the question cannot be either/or but how much of one versus the other.
It's an echo of the Kobayashi Maru test from STII:TWOK. Sometimes all the choices are bad ones, and there will come a time when clever tricks won't help, only hard decisions (as Kirk, who had cheated his way out of the scenario, is struck with indecision at a critical moment, and only Spock, operating on pure consequentialism and sacrificing himself to repair the warp drive, is able to pull off a bittersweet win).
Also these are militsry contexts which are made up of people who have signed up knowing they may die doing so. An officers job is to make decisions that will kill people, both the ithers and their own. Minimising their own and civilian casualties whilst achieving their objective must be their goal. Mal and the crew are individuals and this is their own moral views.
You can be a chaotic neutral hero. Neutral does not mean you can't be a hero and chaotic isn't evil either. People need to actually look into what these words mean. The context they are from explains it but people don't read apparently.
@@Meriliremin my mind, the lines that show Jayne's alignment to be Chaotic Neutral are on Ariel, (Make something up. Don’t tell ’em what I did.) and this movie (Eating people alive? When does that get fun?). He's clearly not a good man but he does have enough shame and disgust to keep him above being irredeemably evil.
I really enjoy watching videos that make a philosophical analysis of movies, tv-shows and books etc. so this was really refreshing. Hope to see more of it 😊👌
You had me going with that title. Personally, I have a bit of a complicated relationship with Firefly's morals these days, but opposing the idea that consequentialism can be applied on a societal scale without catastrophic errors is definitely something I can get behind.
Or to put more succinctly, don't let yourself become bound to a single idealized concept whether white or black and recognize that there many shades of grey. Don't inflexibly act on a single philosophical idea.
And here I was, thinking the Jon and Alan at Cinema Therapy had dropped another Firefly/Serenity themed episode and was hyped, only to find out that you made this - and I was not disappointed!
Whew! The spotilight on amazing dialogue, the necessary explication of setting and scene, and the analysis on competing perspectives... just mmm! Delicious content and look forward to more! My goodness.
This was an eye-opening treatise of the film's ideas. I love Serenity because I fell in love with Firefly, the TV Series. Thanks for the video, Stephen!
The scenes in the aftermath of the Haven attack are incredible. For me it makes the Operative a great antagonist, because he's not moustache-twizzling evil, he is a intelligent and committed to the point of fanaticism and so can't be reasoned with. The following scene when Mal shoots the unarmed soldier is a very powerful moment, because in the series he tells Simon that if he planned to kill him, he'd be awake, facing Mal and armed. It's subtle hint that Mal has been pushed past his normal boundaries that fans of the show would recognise, but still caters to new viewers.
Luthen Rael from the Star Wars show Andor can see where his path of justifications are leading him. his monologue in episode 10 of the first season is worth a listen even if your not a Star Wars fan.
The issue with the trolly problem is that the question itself is consequentialist, ridged, without variables, and ignores the issue that because you have knowledge and power over the situation, you also have responsibility for it. In this case, where people are going to die or at least be gravy injured either way, making the decision to not pull the lever is allowing 5 people to die when you could have saved them. Someone who's more pragmatic, or really deontological isn't going to give the linear yes or no response to the trolly problem, they'll come up with a theoretical solution to the problem, that may or may not work, but it does not guarantee someone dies, example, "Throw the switch halfway between the trolly's front and rear wheels, which will derail it before it can run over anyone."
That's what modified examples are for. Let's add some variables: Train is going to hit 5 people. If you pull the lever, you have a 90% chance of hitting no one, but a 10% chance of hitting 10. Now do you pull the lever? For whatever weird 3rd option you can think of, just imagine more levers leading to more tracks with the appropriate cost-benefit payouts. Eventually you have to do something or nothing and some number of people will or won't get hurt. How do you make the decision?
@@Nuclearburrit0that 10% risk is debatably worth it. You’ve better odds of loosing Russian roulette, and that’s your own life to gable with. And as another variation, how many people can be tied to the first track before the average man decides killing one man is worth it? Saving 10 at the cost of 1? What about 20? 100? What if the trolly has a nuclear payload on it, and if you don’t flip the switch it will detonate killing everyone in Sanfransisco Bay Area? That could be thousands to millions of lives? At what point does your inaction begin to weigh upon you? At what point does being passive turn into being a benign evil?
@thebanditman5663 thing is, it's the same expected value as the original trolly problem. Flipping the switch kills an average of one person and refraining kills 5, just as in the original problem. So if your goal is to maximize human life, you should flip the switch in the 10 at 10% vs 5 at 100% scenario. As for your other questions. I'd hope people would agree that even at 2 for 1, it's already worth it, since otherwise you're killing 2 people to save 1. You are just as responsible for your inaction as you are for your actions. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to stand back and do nothing. But that's just me. I want to know what you think?
@@Nuclearburrit0 I do think that inaction (especially when you are certain of outcomes in the case of the trolly problem,) is what we could consider the greater evil in most cases. Neglect is a crime for a reason. Of course if you’ve enough forewarning of a situation, you also have more control. In the trolly problem. If you’ve got 2 minutes before the trolly reaches the switch in the tracks, you’ve got two minutes to throw the switch preemptively to save the five, then try to free that one guy with the time you have left.
excellent analysis of my favorite scifi movie (at least as an extension of the best scifi show). :) you surprised me with this one for sure. it's a good format, you should do more of these.
The flaw with Consequentialism is often framed as Ends vs Means, but I think this fundamentally misses the actual moral problem: unintended consequences. Or more accurately, uncertain consequences. On some level we can never know the consequences of the decisions we make until after we make them, and that is where consequentialism fails. Take the examples in Serenity: 1. After Mal dooms the survivor to the Reavers, how does the scene play out? "We couldn't take the weight: he would have slowed us down." -Mal "You know that for certain?" - Zoe The crux of the moral issue isn't that Mal pushed the man off the mule, its that we will never know if his decision to doom the man was necessary. Furthermore, lets look at the means vs ends in question. If Mal is in the wrong here, its because he doomed a man to death, not because he pushed him off a speeder. The ends in this scenario isn't just the crew making it to Serenity alive: that man's life was a part of the ends side of the equation too. After all, he's not coming back. And if he were, with no negative consequences, would Mal's choice in the ethical dilemma have carried any moral weight? 2. When the Alliance experimented to make a more docile population, what went wrong? An entire dead colony, and a new species of horror humans. Now, which are those things, ends or means? Clearly the results of the experiments fall under ends, not means. Now, how would the ethics have been different if the ends have been different? If the experiment had yielded no results at all the horror of what the Alliance had done evaporates. All that's left is what we as the audience know could have happened. If the experiment yielded null results it would have still been wrong, but not because the means were abhorrent, but because the Alliance had rolled the dice on ends that could have been. Pulling this full circle, "Do the ends justify the means?" questions are predominantly questions were the dark "means" are ultimately just dark ends. And that's the real problem I see with Consequentialism: in practice it is common for both its proponents & its critics to only consider the ends that suit their arguments. When making a moral choice, we don't have the luxury to decide on intended consequences alone
Well, I wasn't expecting a video about the movie Serenity. When I saw the notification, I though Serenity must be the name of a TH-cam Christian. Great movie and show. Good video as well.
Well, this was a surprise. Firefly/Serenity was always one of my favorite stories. And the philosophical themes were a big draw. I never expected a @RationalityRules analysis, but you nailed it!
The ends can only justify the means if the ends are reached. I hate it when a "critique" of utilitarianism follows the pattern of step 1: bad guy wants to do X bad thing to achieve Y good goal, step 2: doing X fails to achieve Y step 3: bad guy was bad and his premise (achieving Y will justify X) is bad too. The issue here is that the premise isn't refuted at all. Y wasn't achieved and the ends weren't reached. A utilitarianist can agree that X wasn't justified without compromising their utilitarianism because Y never happened. What these characters fail at is a risk vs reward assessment, not their fundamental moral principles that lead them to make the assessment. You can't properly critique utilitarianism by showing bad execution of an otherwise valid utility function.
I would argue that that's the point. Doing evil act X to reach good goal Y doesn't work because it *can't* work. It's not that the premise wasn't refuted, it's that achieving his premise is unachievable with this goals. You can't murder your way to peace.
@ethos5 maybe, but then your again not making a critique of consequentialism. You're still making an argument about how the bad guy has failed to execute the ideology in the first place. A critique of consequentialism itself needs to at some point say "even tho good goal Y was reached, having done X to achieve it still wasn't justified". Otherwise, the consequentionalist will just agree that the actions taken were bad because they failed. After all, if you could murder your way to peace, then the murder would be justified, right?
@@Nuclearburrit0 "A critique of consequentialism itself needs to at some point say "even tho good goal Y was reached, having done X to achieve it still wasn't justified"." Why? Pointing out that success is impossible, that no matter what "bad action X" is taken, "Good Goal Y" is fundamentally unreachable, *is* a critique.
Well done, Steven. With a plethora of science fiction films and tv shows that deal with varied concepts of morality and ethics, you could easily start a new channel devoted to deep exploration of such topics within the genera. Captain Picard never seems to be at a loss for words in the face of a moral dilemma. The wise words of jedi master Woodford can always provide valuable insight. :)
I think everyone operates under a hybrid of consequentialism and deontology as impacted by personal experiences and loyalties. There is no perfect answer so we get by as best we can.
Presumably there is a question of quantity/magnitude here, ultimately arbitrary and informed by our intuitions and feelings of empathy and so on, that decides when the means are no longer justified by the end. But some times I would say yes, there are situations where I think the ends justify the means. Take exercise: I justify the experience of short term exhaustion and numbness by the longer periods of, well, feeling better about myself and my health. The classic moral arithmetic, which is some times extremely difficult if not impossible to do.
What I find funny is that some people who say that certain things are consequentialist, are ignoring the consequences of the actions they undertake. Like that entire chain of actions just creates more dead bodies.
That's because, for some reason, people who talk about consequentialist ethics tend to assume that all hypothetical or theoretical far-future outcomes are as real as the immediate and observable near-term consequences of the actions. I really don't understand why, because you can have a consequentialist worldview that doesn't take seriously the concept that any particular action is right or wrong without the surrounding context of the consequences thereof, but still prioritizes known effects rather than unknown effects. The arrogance associated with wrongly assuming you can predict the future of your actions perfectly therefore permitting you to do anything to attain that future as though you're acting out a part in a solved equation has the observable and logically definite consequence of justifying limitless cruelty in the short term, for a gain that only goes insofar as you lucked into predicting the future. Even under a strict consequentialist worldview, context determines what makes an action right or wrong, and the consequence of that action's outcome is the strongest cue as to whether it's right or not to continue to do. Goes to show that no matter your preferred methodology towards ethics you still need to be an empiricist rather than a wishful-thinking-ist.
@@beansworth5694 I would argue that those arrogant enough to believe they can predict the future are the people most drawn to consequentialism in the first place, BECAUSE they can use consequentialism to justify their actions.
@@Devin_Stromgren Yeah, we see this a lot in fiction which covers consequentialist ethics. However, in the real world the only hint to that tendency being true for people/organizations that explicitly endorse consequentialism that I've seen is the so-called "longtermist" sect of neoliberal ideology (they also call themselves effective altruists). If you have better examples to call attention to, feel free to give them, but as for longtermist/effective altruists their fault of arrogance doesn't lie so much in wanting to justify infinite personal cruelty but in wanting to handwave away infinite systemic cruelty that's too disadvantageous or unsettling to question. I guess under a certain perspective that's the same dynamic as the one you're pointing out, though.
@@Devin_Stromgren Communists such as MLMs who think that state capitalism is a mode of production worth fighting for are also employing that arrogant sort of consequentialist logic when they act on the assumption that the state will wither away as Marx predicted, but there are other reasons that one would prefer a central socialized economy rather than a privatized one that don't really breach into that phenomenon we were talking about. The fact you're bringing up that dead state in particular, though, gives me the impression you're talking more about people at the levers of power who carry out injustices?
One of the best videos analysing one of the greatest pieces of science fiction ever made. Completely unexpected and very welcome! Please consider checking out Babylon 5 too, you could make a whole series on that!
Is it really a conflict between consequentialism and deontology, or a conflict between two consequentialisms that value different ends? From the crew's perspective, the operative's ends could never justify his means, because his ends -- a fascistic order -- are bad in themselves. When they choose to reveal the Alliance's secret, they aren't doing it because they object to lying or secrets in the abstract -- they obviously don't! They do it because they believe the consequence of holding the Alliance accountable justifies the risks. It seems highly unlikely that they'd still do it if the only possible outcome was negative.
@@BuddhaMonkey7 how are his ends fascistic? They may be totalitarian, but they don’t actually seem to have any of the usual characteristics of fascism.
That's always been my takeaway too, I haven't seen the movie in a while but it still did give me the impression it was thematically putting forward a dialogue about consequentialism, though. An order which requires that level of repression and inhumane violence in order to maintain is what you're fighting for if those are your means to ensure it. Also, yeah, idk if the Alliance is fascist or not- we never see their economic system if I'm recalling the movie correctly, we only really get a good look at what distribution in the fringes of their developed presence is like
That was the best content you've done for a long time. No low hanging, Jordon Peterson style.. It was thought provoking, insightful and truly brilliant
Fine video, RR. I watched Firefly & Serenity recently - such a pleasure. Mal's a ship's captain, outlaw & ex-soldier - his priorities are his crew, protecting income & irking the Alliance which lead to some interesting (moral) decisions.
Rationality Rules, Stephen, great video! These shows , really illustrate how philosophy informs our 'stories'. As for the 'trolly' problem, I'm afraid my choice would matter if I could see the people. 5 old gonna be goners over one young, lol. 👍🏼🌊💙💙💙🌊🥰✌🏽
I consider myself to be a kind of "pragmatically humble" consequentialist that due to this humility trends to deontological approaches. To clarify: I definitely believe that the ends justifies the means in all cases. If action produces greater human wellbeing than action , then it doesn't matter what action is; it is better to do than action . HOWEVER, I'm "pragmatically humble" in that I don't believe I can possibly know what ends my actions will truly have and the more radical/effective an action is, the more problems with unknown unknowns there are. I am therefore forced to deontological approaches as guiding principles that will "most likely" have the best outcomes unless I've been thoroughly convinced otherwise. In practice, this makes me act a lot like a deontologist for some very high percentage of cases, but for the small remainder where I've been convinced the outcome of my actions will be positive, I will act against my usual deontological principles.
Right? The ends does justify the means. But that also means that the ends you want actually has to bloody happen. If they don't, whatever means you used aren't fucking justified anymore now are they? If we can with 100% certainty achieve real peace and happiness for all of humankind until the literal end of the universe, then go bloody nuts. But that will never happen. It's an impossibility. Thing is, I've yet to really see any instances of extreme means justifying the end because they are never able to actually achieve the end they think of. In my mind, it's sort of a catch 22. You gotta reach the end before the means are justified. But you also gotta do the thing in order to reach the end. So in the moment, the means aren't justified. But if you actually achieve an end, that end might justify the means you used to get there. But it will be after the fact. As for the trolly thing, how'd you choose? My take is that you always choose to save 5 people. It's the moral, logical and overall effective choice. By choosing to do nothing, you choose to let 5 people die. The moment you had the chance to help, choosing not to can't be very ethical or moral. So how the fuck is that better then killing 1 and saving 5, or just straight up killing 5. The choice is between killing 5 or possibly murdering 1(depending on the law). In both cases YOU still kill someone. If all you had to do was press a button and five people survive, letting 5 people die is no different from you killing them. Just that you broke no laws so it wasn't murder, the unlawful act of taking a life. Saving the most lives is both the ethical and moral choice. Legally speaking, murdering someone is bad. So the question shouldn't be argued from an ethical or moral standpoint at all. But from a legal one. Since in both cases, you kill people. It's just that one of those choices might be unlawful. So morally speaking, which is what deontologicals all about right? Pulling the lever and saving 5 is correct choice. Evil triumphs because good people do nothing and all that shit. It's not like you even saved anyone by doing nothing, since that one guy was never in any danger to begin with. So logically, realistically, ethically and morally saving 5 people is the better outcome in this scenario. I guess my problem is that I take the trolley conundrum too literal.
I seem to remember a recent talk with a Blackrock big wig talking about how you have to "force behaviors" on people because the ends are worth it. It's worth going and finding out what he was talking about specifically.
@anzov1n agreed. But whatever the reason, they are clearly using their influence to make this particular thing happen. You literally can't turn on the TV, open a book, or browse the internet without seeing it plastered everywhere. It's all over schools to the point where we're replacing other parts of kids' mandatory government education with it. So whatever metaethical system we're talking about here has had some pretty dramatic real world impacts.
@pansepot1490 lol I don't know. It's not the average person. It's not businesses. It's not politicians. It's not children. I have a suspicion I know who it's worth it for, but we'll just leave that in speculation land.
Apparently Michael Scott was an ethical genius. "I wouldn't steal the bread, and I wouldn't let my family starve". This was a wild ride - apparently I'm a lot more like the operative than I'd have liked.
Given how you debunked free will, I think it’s crucial to distinguish between consequentialism in the sense of “the ends justify the means” (a typical attitude for fictional villains), and consequentialism in the “compassionate” sense (“This criminal didn’t choose to commit crimes, because free will doesn’t exist; however, they must still go to jail, to protect the rest of society.”). It’s easy to confuse these two, and thus commit an equivocation fallacy. It kind of reminds me of the conservative critique of the word “materialism”, which also commits an equivocation fallacy: Religious conservatives rely on the negative associations people have towards *consumerism* (materialism = striving for material wealth) to get them to reject a scientific worldview (materialism = everything can be explained by physical causes and effects).
Odd. Usually it is the conservatives who are always trying to hock and sell something. But really, conservatism in the USA isn't conserving anything. It is a throwback to the Victorian age and if there is anything a conservative loves, it is feudalism. They got their business-model-fuedalism by saying that corporations were a person. Conservatives and liberatarians like this idea of single rule and playing the game monopoly. We know how this turns out in both cases. Conservatives like to hold up their buybull and generally absolutely LOVE the idea of kings. Not very American at all. They tend to distort history if given a chance, and aren't a bit interested in facts. Conservatives are now jumping onto the hippie concept of "Consciousness" as being some sort of magical doo dad they need because they failed to produce talking snakes or magic apples, and can't convince even their own flocks of such things. So they will now use "Consciousness" to lull the ignorant into their folds. It is just brain washing. And more magical "spiritual" nonsense to feel bad about feeling good, and to feel good about being bad. They have lots of books to sell on this topic, and that is the whole point of this consciousness cult. They do not want to have somebody shaming them and asking them where their conscience is in all of this consciousness nonsense. It is just a rebranding of the "spirit science" and the prosperity gospel. It has always been a thing in the churches. Give the Priest Class money and the reward will be tenfold in heaven. It is the old carrot and the stick routine in different packaging. Don't give them a dime. Not one.
Well, thanks for making me want to add Firefly and Serenity to my re-watch list😂 and for detailing one of the reasons it was such a good series and an absolute shame it was cancelled!
I don't really bother with metaethics. At the end of the day, what is right is what I can live with, and what is wrong is what I can't. And what I can or can't live with is determined by a million material and psychological variables I couldn't begin to comprehend. If you press me, I'm a negative utilitarian most of the time. But it isn't a religion and the second it doesn't work for me, I'm done with it. There's no bearded a**hole in the sky who will judge my imperfect and inconsistent applications of metaethics.
7:40 The issue with the trolley problem is that as soon as you have access to the lever, you are no longer a passive bystander. You are an active participant who has control of either your action or willing inaction. Therefore, the deontological option is not so clear as both options can be considered a consequence of what you decide to do. The 5 or the 1 are all now subject to your choices, whereas before you were involved, the outcome was preordained.
It seems so common and easy to depict a villan type character as utilitarian were an unexpected outcome or just stupid reasoning paints the utilitarian view as wrong or naive. Its easy for a story to play on a case were our intuitions about moral and immoral actions (at a basic level) were right all along, and the unintuitive and abstrakt justifications were wrong. It does not seem very honest as the other side of the coin is rarely showed and apreciated; were the cruel and hard choices really was shown as the right ones and seen that way. I want to see a story were the ‘good’ people who would not do bad things even for the best reasons are not praised for this automaticly and were perhaps the hero is exactly that for makeing the hard but nessesary sacrifices. I think a story like Naruto has a few characters like that, and there are others as well, but its just not balenced😕
Great video! I've noticed that in materialist philosophy that the experience of pain is considered intrinsically bad, and for me that's a serious flaw in most utilitarian thinking. Pain is a signifier of change more than it is a signifier of something bad. The explanations offered for justifying pain as a measure of a negative moral consequence gloss over this problem by offering that we're choosing to experience a smaller amount of pain to achieve something that gives us more pleasure in the future. But accepting the suffering associated with change isn't measured by the amount of actual pleasure that the change will bring; we're really measuring how good an outcome is and whether or not our perception of pain is a signifier of the knowledge we are gaining in our suffering or if the pain is the signifier of the destruction of something we believe is truly valuable. In other words, it's not our senses that lead us to moral truths but a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between the things that we perceive are valuable and how we should place those values in a hierarchy of dependency.
I'm having trouble figuring out what meaning of "materialist" would apply here. That said, everything you wrote about "pain" would also apply to "pleasure".
Sounds like some Ayn Rand nonsense. I am a scientist and I assure you after two hundred years we have not found talking snakes and magic apples. "Pain can have a purpose" is all well and good if you are not the one who is in pain. Pain indeed does remind you that you are still alive and encourages the continuation of survival. That is all pain is. Pain is also a sign of injury often times. To simplify things further, I distrust when people refuse to talk about principles and then start inserting the word "values" because it just speaks loudly of how they think of things. It turns my stomach when people "value" the ones speaking because of how much they are "worth" in terms of monetary worth. Musk isn't worth a plug nickel because he is too busy simping for Putin. Russia, for the most part runs on the principle of "Might is right." And that is pretty much how every Authoritarian regime runs, fully valuing their slaves and fully valuing that life of luxury, and also fully valuing the usefulness of superstitions to keep people in line. Reading through your last statement this is what it sounds like to me, "In other words, slaves shouldn't worry about not having anything. Work shall set them free." It is the carrot and the stick nonsense. That donkey never gets that carrot. Any pragmatist and every materialist and anybody with a principle in their head who refuses to be a slave will utterly ignore all of that rubbish. Ayn Rand and her "values" and her lofty appreciation of what was material...and her libertarian "values" sure didn't say no in her later years when she was living on welfare. Then suddenly, the principle of people looking out for the less fortunate and this "socialist evil" was what she was more than happy to take and needed in a hurry. I bet she pushed others out of the way in line to get it. Isn't it odd that the more philosophical a person is the more likely they are to lean towards fascism and to hide their speech in such obtuse concepts. I hold to the axiom "There is enough for everybody's need, but not enough for everybody's greed." And no, working out and feeling soreness isn't "pain" in the sense of injury and harm. But that is not the same kind of pain a person has when they have an injury or are wounded. That kind of pain is utterly different. So it must be specified. The reason I only give a little stock in philosophy is because, thought it is named after a "love of wisdom" its practitioners often show very little of it.
@@OceanusHelios For a scientist I'm surprised by your answer. It does seem a bit all over the place, and a bit zealous in it's moral outrage. Pain is a sign of change. It's not intrinsically bad. From something to go from one state to another, the first state must be destroyed. We experience the change as pain. It's not whether an outcome gives us pleasure that we assign value to it. Often we highly value things that never give us any pleasure at all, because we believe them to be fundamentally good. The difference between pain you feel when you put your hand on a hot stove versus pain you place as dependent on a value that is considered good is that your hand is fundamentally good and the pain of a hot stove isn't part of a change to your hand that is necessary to what a hand ultimately is. To preserve the hand, you learn to avoid hot stoves. But if you needed surgery you'd undergo possibly more pain to preserve the hand, not because having a hand gives you special pleasure, but because your hand is fundamentally good. If you could instead cut your hand off and avoid the pain of surgery to change into someone without a hand and experience more pleasure using opiates, your wouldn't be measuring the quantitative pleasure you'd be experiencing. You'd be determining the value of your hand based on a network of values that tell you a story about who you are as a person, and then choosing the option that most ideally aligns with your values.
Oh ffs, not the trolley problem again. My answer will always be the same: It is not my fault people are tied to the tracks, it is either their fault for being captured, or the one who put them there. I will choose whatever I wish in the moment; whether I flip the lever, walk away, or pursue the one who tied them to the tracks. The amount of logical leaps one must have for the trolley problem to even exist is so absurd that it borders on madness. And I refuse to make decisions based on madness if I can help it.
But the trolley problem exists in one form or another all the time. Do you perform an action that, by itself, could be considered immoral if the consequences of that act create a greater good? Yes or no? Or, if you answer "it depends on the situation," what criteria determine the choice?
"Ill means, ill ends" (Ursula le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea). A lesson I have not forgotten. The ends never justify the means as the means determine the ends.
I agree. I'm a full-on consequentialist but really push for an ends justify the means approach and I think it's pretty inevitable to end up in a place where they don't.
I tend to judge actions by their consequences, but with one important caveat, namely that the end CAN justify the means, but whether it actually DOES is a different matter. My general rule is that the end justifies the means if the means produce the end. The trouble with consequentialism is the tendency of consequentialists to mistake intentions for consequences.
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 I think it's mostly the argument used against consequentialism to show its potential danger, but it's also a fundamentally negative outcome from a consequentialist perspective. In a deontologist context it can also become "justice has to be served" even though there's absolutely no good to come from doing so or a situation where people are continuously causing harm which they justify by saying "but I never broke any rules". I'm in favour of a deontologist approach based on consequentialist principles. I don't see a point in dishing out punishment for bad things if it doesn't stop them from happening, at the same time, I'd say attempted murder should still be judged the same as murder even when there were absolutely no negative consequences.
@@PauLtus_B The problem is not judging an action by its consequences, but rather by the intentions behind it. Intentions are not consequences. Otherwise, people would have been beating down the Berlin Wall to get into EAST Germany.
My issue is how do they even evaluate the initial propositions that become their moral precepts. In talking to several of them it does indeed seem to be utilitarian logic. Not that I disagree with the video's points. Moderation often seems to be key.
@@alistairgrey5089 More about how they choose the *initial* moral principles themselves. How do you choose moral principles without a moral system? Does that make more sense?
*_God The Victim_** ?* If "sin", is a crime against God, that would make God, _a victim of crime._ But if God is "all powerful" and can't be harmed, that would make sin, _a victimless crime._
@@paulwittenberger1801Yes, if we use a steel man version of sin. But I think that just highlights the importance of using the correct words. Or at least ensuring we understand what others are saying.
@@paulwittenberger1801yeah, but the point that God isn't a victim still stands. The focus is now that X action harms people rather than God deemed X action wrong.
@@paulwittenberger1801 That would be regular old crime & punishment. The police don't arrest people for committing sins, do they ? _Sins, are religious mythology._
@@paulwittenberger1801 Sin just means anything that the church doesn't like or which isn't kosher. It is like wearing a t-shirt with the wrong slogan on it. That's why there are no laws against this "sin" nonsense. They are unenforcable laws written by the "thought police."
Seems like almost everybody is a consequentialist, just depends on what consequences you are accounting for. In this video you highlighted consequences to illustrate the value of both sides.
Not everyone is a consequentialist. Consequentialism is driven by subjective preference. The proposed actions are in service of the preferences. With deontology, the actions are in service of an objective moral rule. Following the moral rule is not a consequence, it's a starting point.
@@shlockofgod I understand the difference between the concepts. I disagree that one really exists as I don't believe "objective moral rules" exist nor do I think many people have lists of rules to live by and consequences be damned. We are born with very little knowledge of the world and we craft our behavior patterns based on consequences.
@@JesseRitchey The existence of objective moral rules in that sense is irrelevant. The deontologist only need to believe they exist and/or are valid. Deontology could have completely arbitrary rules in theory. The point is that rules can be a starting point, not based on consequences.
More videos like this please! Stopped watching the channel for a while as I was bored of the debunking videos - in the end they always boil down to the same thing and tbh I was contemplating unsubscribing. But I would love to see more philosophical explorations of movies, shows, and video games like this one.
I would argue that everyone is a consequentialist. It is by the consequences of an action that we determine its morality, and breaking a rule we set for ourselves is in itself a bad consequence.
Excellent video. Maybe it is obvious but I always saw Serenity as a showdown between competing principles, and it's cool to hear it broken down logically
@@shlockofgodTim used to, I don't know if he still does, constantly bring things back to moves. Especially super hero films. On top of that he had a famous interaction with Sam Seder where he claimed most villains were utilitarians and most heroes deontologists. That's the short version, anyway. But with most things relating to Tim, he has very little than a surface level understanding. So even when he has a point it's generally pretty banal.
@@shlockofgod Timpool famously thinks he knows about this topic and smugly announced that all movie villains were utiltarians and the heroes were all deontologists. Because he's a simpleton reductionist who thinks in black and white.
A great analysis. One thing I think should have been mentioned is that the operative, although a consequentialist, is unique in that he views also himself as a sacrifice. A lot of consequentialists do the things they do so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labor and think that they deserve the reword of living in utopia for doing the things others won't do. They see themselves as higher than those who didn't commit atrocities and thus the ones most worthy of the greater good they help bring. The operative is different. One of the lines he said to Mal after destroying all places that Serenity viewed as safe, and Mal accused the him doing it just for himself, he answered that he knows he will not receive the reword as he admits that what he does is evil and that he is a monster. He genuinely believes that should utopia come forth, even through his actions, there is no place for him there. He sees himself as just as much a sacrifice as those he kills , and that is something I find very interesting.
Would be great to have a more nuanced representation of consequentialism, if it's going to be addressed for such a large audience. One thinking that the ends justify the means, and doing terrible things as a way to reach said goal and failing to reach said goal, is an example where consequentialism is self-effacing, not self-defeating (or 'incorrect'). Proper expected value considerations are needed when acting under uncertainty, understanding multi-level consequentialism and where practical considerations such as 'rule consequentialism' should play a role in decision making, being averse to 'naive consequentialism', etc. Based on the summary of this movie, it seems like the character did not achieve the best consequences, so by definition did not make the best consequentialist choices. If anything this is an argument of an individual naively relying on their person calculations to justify a large swath of individual, suffering-causing actions, all of which have flow-through effects and, upon proper analysis, likely were not the best approach to improve the world. Love your work Stephen, and longtime follower, but I really think surface level renditions like this does an important normative framework like consequentialism a major injustice, and continue to perpetuates the broader publics' misunderstanding of said framework.
*Secret code of the apologist ?* It's okay to tell lies about your God & religion, as the end goal, is to save sinners from hell. _The ends, justify the means._ *(besides, they know they are right)*
Great video! I just have to add one thing into the equation: It's also how you (the chooser, for want of a better term) view human individuals. IF you view individuals like video game players view NPCs, then decisions are easy (So what if a few million die?). However, if you view individuals as PEOPLE, then you're more likely to make "better" decisions and you can more effectively use BOTH forms of decision making. It's like being the captain of an old sailing vessel. Without discipline, you're more likely to die. So, you keep discipline as necessary without going over into brutality. Your crew will respect you and help you MAINTAIN that discipline without you having to do anything official. Whereas if you think of your crew as faceless nobodies and treat them harshly, they'll turn against you in a heartbeat (the mutiny of the Bounty). There are times for BOTH types of decisions. Fools only use one or the other (and often end up the worse for it).
It's worth noting that the Operative somewhat bridges both philosophies: he is prepared to do anything in pursuit of his goal - and he is not just the agent of these plans but their architect, there is no 'I was following orders' concept (as well there shouldn't be; there can't be legally binding orders on someone who does not legally exist). That said, he also has a concept that his actions, whatever their consequences, are inherently corrupting. He explicitly says "I'm a monster and I have no place in the 'better world' we're making" or words to that effect. This also opens up another can of worms: the Operatives actions are classified and tightly compartmentalised. He sees himself as damned but by doing what he does he sees himself as keeping the rest of the alliance safe and ignorant. Here we get into culpability from the chain of command versus deniability; that is, how much guilt does the alliance hold for his actions? There are people who took his orders knowing they are unethical but appropriately authorised (the alliance crews and soldiers) There are those who didn't *tell* him to commit war crimes but told him 'Get River Tam back At All Costs' and won't know the consequences. (Alliance intelligence) There will be those who allowed the creation of operatives as an entity but do not know any details of what they are employed for (the alliance parliament).
7:01 From Firefly Ep4 "The Shindig"
"Sure, it'd be humiliating to lay there, while a better man refuses to spill your blood. Mercy is the mark of a great man," Mal stabs Atherton in the gut. "... guess I'm just a good man."
Mal stabs him again for good measure. "Well, I'm alright."
Man I love that scene, I still use it from time to time
Typical Whedonism
The joke aside, the "Mercy is the mark of a great man" line resonated with me a LOT when I first watched the show. It's something that genuinely stuck with me.
@@kaisersoymilk6912 ... You know that's so funny. As I have gotten older I have noticed that more and more... the nature of the "1-trick" or "1-trick pony" as they say.
It really jumps out at me more and more... but not even in a bad way like it once did... maybe because I see the commonality of it amongst us all.
I noticed that with a friend recently watching a Taika Waititi (sp?) thing... and we were discussing how no matter the setting... it's always absurdist self referential humor bordering on the 4th wall. Sometimes he knocks it out of the park... sometimes not... but Hitler/Thor/Vampires... all just the same "trick"
I think a better quote is from Simon when he says something like “sadistic crap with an attempt to legitimize with fancy prose” or something. About a man over a volcano.
The operative saying the new world isnt for him because hes a monster really rocked me the first time i saw it
The wors form of zealot is the true believer.
Compare that to Oxymandias from The Watchmen graphic novel and his willingness to do great evil in the belief of saving billions, but still profit from the venture afterwards.
@@Craxin01no. The worst kind of zealot is one with power.
@@TC-sl8ol The ones with power often are true believers.
@@Craxin01 "true believers" means nothing. Anyone that espouses any vehement ideology to further a goal is a problem, whether or not they are "true believers". Look at republicans. They all push an ideology they don't practice themselves, and take positions on things like abortion and family values while paying for their mistress's abortion.
True belief is irrelevant.
_"Conspiracies of silence, because the larger ideals have to be protected. But you can't have larger ideals if the smaller ones get compromised. It's like building a house without a foundation, Delenn - it can't stand!"_
(Babylon 5, Capt. Sheridan)
That's a truly deep show
@@jackalope2302, my _other_ greatest sci-fi program of all time!
An Amazing show. It's too bad that it is happening in America just like in the Show but no one noticed the evil ones taking over. The Political Office... Wanting to control the directed hatred towards the weak, when it is the powerful who are doing the fascist deed with Pres Clarke.
Great movie: it shows us the abhorrent consequences of thinking to be on the right side of things without ever second guessing it.....
Both sides taken to an extreme lead to disaster.
It is by finding a middle ground between the two that progress is made.
@@aaronbredon2948 Finding a middle ground, yes, OR a New Ground if the two sides are both too much based on antiquated thought patterns (theism, extreme leftism/rightism, tribalism, etc.....).
@@aaronbredon2948This is a named fallacy known as the middle ground fallacy.
@@Leith_Crowther indeed. Like many fallacies, it overgeneralizes on a greatly simplified interpretation of a deep truth. The deep truth here being that few philosophical positions are *completely* devoid of some seed of truth; given enough work, it may be possible to extract the tiniest fragment of useful knowledge from a garbage heap of nonsense. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The fallaciousness of the middle ground consists in the assumption that, given any two positions, both sides are likely to be roughly equal in merit and therefore a compromise between the two is closer to the truth than either starting position. Not only is that plainly false, but the middle ground fallacy is exploited by bad actors so often it should immediately raise red flags for everyone.
@@blackshard641 I like to use the analogy of the balancing point.
When people say "the answer is somewhere in the middle" I argue that it's more often at the balancing point. And while the point of balance many times can be found in the middle, it is not always so.
A sword has it's point of balance near the hilt, otherwise it will be too heavy to swing around, while an axe has it's point of balance closer to the head, in order to chop more efficiently.
I took from Serenity a similar message that i did from other media touching on the subject of consequentialism vs. deontology: both can be effective in answering the question of personal ethos, but neither unilaterally are able to guide a group of any real size, due to the complexities of interaction couples with the relative inflexibility of either ethos to respond to those complexities.
Single-notion ethos in any direction lends itself to totalitarian thinking, cult mentality, and "religious innerrence" for a lot of the same reasons. It's the process of "we're right. Think like we think, act like we act, believe as we believe".
... One of my favorite movies and series, though. GREAT essay about this, truly!🎉
The real question is, is there any lever that loops the track back around so we get them all?
I think everyone recognizes this: no deontological system can account for the infinite possible situations where an exception may apply, and noone can foresee every outcome, meaning that consequentialism only works in retrospect.
Which is why most people fall in a blend of both, mostly by having a fluid deontological code, or applying some sort of rule utilitarianism where you apply rules that tend to have the best outcome in general, rather than deciding case by case.
One of the things I've always told my son is that one of the things that makes the world a tricky place. Is some people do the right thing for the wrong reason while others will do the wrong thing for the right reasons...
Also, some people do the right thing for the right reasons, and some people do the wrong thing also for wrong reasons. The problem is that the former category of people is outnumbered by the other 3.
@@JM-us3fr It is not. People are equally as complicated as the life is because.. get this... people make the life as it is. There doesn't exist a single person who could be neatly categorized into one of those groups. Not a single good person who hasn't done anything bad, not bad person who haven't done anything good. And then there's the fact that there are vastly differing moral frameworks.
I'll give you an example of that from myself. For most people(from my frame of reference, living in northern Europe) when the person who they're conversing with crosses their arms, it sends a message of their partner being arrogant, indifferent or otherwise the opposite of polite. On my case, that is absolutely not the case. That is what I always do in stressful social situations which, as an autist, is almost always. I'm absolutely not doing anything impolite or otherwise wrong. It's just how I cope in these situations.
So, on the face value, crossing the arms during a conversation is a bad action, but because life is complicated, the face value here is worthless to classify me in any of those groups you mentioned.
@anteshell ... I'll be really happy when we get back to a point where we don't have to preface every sentence with disclaimers about things that are clearly and obviously true. And shouldn't need to be said except in certain circumstances.
Let me ask you: do you HONESTLY think that what op was saying was that some people ONLY EVER do the right things for the wrong reasons, and that other people ONLY EVER do wrong things for right reasons? Do you honest to God believe that op was literally trying to say that people do one thing and one thing only for their entire natural born lives and NEVER deviate even once? Is that ACTUALLY what you think op was saying? How about this: instead of people ever saying what they want to say and leaving a few perfectly reasonable assumptions to the listener, let's make every conversation 50 years long by instead elaborating on what we're NOT saying.
So for instance, instead of me saying that men are stronger than women and expecting you to understand that i DON'T mean that every man ever born is stronger than every woman ever born, I'll go on and on and on and on about all the exceptions and fuzziness and blurred boundaries so that no one in the world knows what the fuck I'm talking about and no communication gets done. How about that? Would that make communication easier got everyone involved?
@@patrickshepherd1341 It's Turtles all the way down.
@@patrickshepherd1341 Do you not see the irony of accusing me of interpreting an ambiguous comment incharitably while not giving me the benefit of doubt and assuming I had no ill intentions? Considering the length of your response, I don't think you see that.
If you write ambiguously, it is a matter of fact that it will be interpreted ambiguously. Some will understand it in a way you meant it to be understood, but some will not. In that case, you can only blame yourself of being inaccurate in your phrasing, and you don't get to blame others for misunderstanding.
You want people to understand the correct way, then phrase your comment in such way that it doesn't leave room for interpretation. This is especially true in this form of communication where it is done through text only, and there aren't any non-verbal context clues on how something should be interpreted. That is the inherent limitation of this particular communication method, and it is up to the speaker to mitigate that limitation. Not up to the listener, or rather the reader.
Serenity is always worth a watch.
It's probably my favorite movie
Still wish its general plot could have been expanded into a proper Season 2.
@@ArcaneEther Its a show that deserved a full run as a show and it could have ended with a movie that didn't need to carry the whole thing by itself.
@@ArcaneEther
yeah - that's a shame. Like the Deadwood film. Needed to be a proper series.
It always brings a tear to my eye.
🎶🎶"Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me.
Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea. You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can be, since I've found Serenity
And you can't take the sky from me." 🎶🎶
They can never stop the signal.
For anyone who hasn't watched Firefly/Serenity, do yourself a favor and watch them. Witness the tragedy which is hollywoods overeagerness to cancel amazing shows before their time.
This is why executives are the worst people to make decisions about art. The show would have flourished and lasted for years had it been supported. Hell, they didn't even release the episodes in the correct order!
I feel there has always been one amazing SciFi show per decade for me: Babylon 5 in the 90s, Firefly in the 2000s, and The Expanse in the 2010s.
Hmm… technically Firefly was Fox Network though, which also owns Fox News, which has pushed pretty vile memes that use “Hollywood” as a dog whistle for antisemitic tropes. I probably agree in the sense you meant it though.
@@Craxin01or maybe in the timeline where Firefly had three full seasons, in Season 3 they got the equivalent of “Spock’s Brain” and “Turnabout Intruder.” Firefly/Serenity has a very small sample size.
i noticed the overagerness is to overextend shows.
for example breaking bad could have easily ended in the season before the last season, but they wanted more money, so they made one entire extra season.
I especially loved Mal’s statement to the Operative at the end: “I’m gonna show you a world without sin.” To Mal, I think hiding the truth is what causes the sin in the first place. Not letting people think and move for themselves, robbing them of the choice, is the greater sin. There’s easier, and there’s right. The two almost never line up.
Maybe my favorite line in all
Of cinema
Or he could have also been referring to the Pax virus, as it was supposed to make the population docile and within sin, and what the consequence of "world without sin" was.
@@renynzea A world without sin is exactly what Miranda was. Everyone is dead. That's the point Mal was making: that what the Operative calls 'sin', is a part of life, and the only way to remove it from life is to remove life itself, from everyone. That's a good reason why Mal would be a 'fan of all seven (sins)', as he puts it.
Exactly this!
Exactly this! Bothers me that this isn't highlighted more. There is no such thing as eutopia
"love keeps her in the air, when she ought to fall down"
-Captain Malcom Reynolds on his ship Serenity.
When I first heard that line, I thought it was stupid. But then I thought about it some more and realized that he was actually right.
They love their ship and they know it so well because of it. Any sound out of the ordinary or even the smallest thing out of place, would get noticed by someone who really knows and loves the ship. Most notably by Kaylee, who really really listens and speaks for the ship. The one time that Mal ignored the ships needs, it literally blew up in their faces.
When people ask if the ends justify the means, I feel like they often forget that the ends are affected by the means - if the means involve killing someone, the ends must involve that person being dead, and any consequences of that. Really, it's asking whether the ends as a whole are good, irrespective of the means.
A really good thought.
There have been so many social movement which have killed so many of their own people for the "greater good" but what good is there which requires the death of millions? The only thing I can think off is power for the winner. That's the only thing I think off, just power for the guy on top.
I'm a pretty die-hard consequentialist but I think an "ends justify the means" approach often just ends up in a place where they really don't.
@@haleffect9011Think about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan or the establishment of the state of Israel. There is no single answer to the dicodomy. It depends on the ends and it depends on the means and it depends on the person considering them.
Actually, the real problem is distinguishing consequences from intentions. The key is whether the intentions translate well into reality.
Another thing that I also think about: If you're willing to do something bad to reach a certain conclusion (what caused me to think this: sacrificing a large number of lives to create a so called utopia), then logically you're going to willing do that same action to maintain it (something goes wrong? well, you already sacrificed so many to create it, whats more to maintain it?)
To me, one of the key elements for this kind of question that has to be consider: can you acknowledge what you're doing is bad, a sign of failure on you're part, that you could be better and need to do better in the future? If the answer is yes or I'll try, then at least the issues lessen given the self-reflection. On the other hand, if the answer is no, then my previous statement will likely hold.
Also, sorry for the info dump
"Serenity" and its deep moral questions remind me of at least two other video instances. "Star Trek: NG - Season 7, Episode 16. Councilor Troi wants to become a bridge officer, i.e., obtain command rank. She easily passes all the tests except the final simulation of an extreme emergency threatening the ship. She only passes the test when she finally realizes she must order the senior engineering officer to fix the problem, knowing that doing so will likely result in his death. The other instance is the movie "U-571" where American naval personnel capture a German U-boat for its Enigma machine. The U-boat is then attacked by other German elements. In the issuing battles, the young commanding officer must order one of his men into a flooding compartment and confined space to fix a problem, but ultimately drowns. So often, the question cannot be either/or but how much of one versus the other.
It's an echo of the Kobayashi Maru test from STII:TWOK. Sometimes all the choices are bad ones, and there will come a time when clever tricks won't help, only hard decisions (as Kirk, who had cheated his way out of the scenario, is struck with indecision at a critical moment, and only Spock, operating on pure consequentialism and sacrificing himself to repair the warp drive, is able to pull off a bittersweet win).
Also these are militsry contexts which are made up of people who have signed up knowing they may die doing so. An officers job is to make decisions that will kill people, both the ithers and their own. Minimising their own and civilian casualties whilst achieving their objective must be their goal.
Mal and the crew are individuals and this is their own moral views.
DS9 when Sisko has Garek kill a Romulan diplomat to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion.
Jayne isn't chaotic neutral. He's the hero of Canton! 😁
*Accidental* folk hero because he was trying to save his own ass. Seems pretty chaotic neutral if you ask me. ;)
You can be a chaotic neutral hero. Neutral does not mean you can't be a hero and chaotic isn't evil either. People need to actually look into what these words mean. The context they are from explains it but people don't read apparently.
@@Merilirem Watch the show. Sheesh.
The man they call Jayne!
@@Meriliremin my mind, the lines that show Jayne's alignment to be Chaotic Neutral are on Ariel, (Make something up. Don’t tell ’em what I did.) and this movie (Eating people alive? When does that get fun?). He's clearly not a good man but he does have enough shame and disgust to keep him above being irredeemably evil.
Covering Firefly/Serenity?? You're getting an up vote before I even watch this!
Generically modified Skeptic also talked about Dune some time ago!
@@jackkraken3888 dune has less jokes. you could say it's more gritty i suppose.
@@HarryNicNicholas true but it's nice that these guys are talking about movies!
@@HarryNicNicholas Which is funny given how wacky it is.
I really enjoy watching videos that make a philosophical analysis of movies, tv-shows and books etc. so this was really refreshing. Hope to see more of it 😊👌
You had me going with that title.
Personally, I have a bit of a complicated relationship with Firefly's morals these days, but opposing the idea that consequentialism can be applied on a societal scale without catastrophic errors is definitely something I can get behind.
Or to put more succinctly, don't let yourself become bound to a single idealized concept whether white or black and recognize that there many shades of grey. Don't inflexibly act on a single philosophical idea.
The importance of nuance and the danger of binary thinking.
And here I was, thinking the Jon and Alan at Cinema Therapy had dropped another Firefly/Serenity themed episode and was hyped, only to find out that you made this - and I was not disappointed!
Whew! The spotilight on amazing dialogue, the necessary explication of setting and scene, and the analysis on competing perspectives... just mmm! Delicious content and look forward to more! My goodness.
"I aim to misbehave"
Best line in the film!
Damn you just hit the intersection of two of my greatest loves. Thinking and Firefly.
This was an eye-opening treatise of the film's ideas. I love Serenity because I fell in love with Firefly, the TV Series. Thanks for the video, Stephen!
The scenes in the aftermath of the Haven attack are incredible. For me it makes the Operative a great antagonist, because he's not moustache-twizzling evil, he is a intelligent and committed to the point of fanaticism and so can't be reasoned with.
The following scene when Mal shoots the unarmed soldier is a very powerful moment, because in the series he tells Simon that if he planned to kill him, he'd be awake, facing Mal and armed. It's subtle hint that Mal has been pushed past his normal boundaries that fans of the show would recognise, but still caters to new viewers.
Luthen Rael from the Star Wars show Andor can see where his path of justifications are leading him. his monologue in episode 10 of the first season is worth a listen even if your not a Star Wars fan.
And if you didn't know. Steve spoke about that scene at length on this channel. Media Musings. 😊
The issue with the trolly problem is that the question itself is consequentialist, ridged, without variables, and ignores the issue that because you have knowledge and power over the situation, you also have responsibility for it.
In this case, where people are going to die or at least be gravy injured either way, making the decision to not pull the lever is allowing 5 people to die when you could have saved them.
Someone who's more pragmatic, or really deontological isn't going to give the linear yes or no response to the trolly problem, they'll come up with a theoretical solution to the problem, that may or may not work, but it does not guarantee someone dies, example, "Throw the switch halfway between the trolly's front and rear wheels, which will derail it before it can run over anyone."
I would hate to be gravy injured.
That's what modified examples are for.
Let's add some variables:
Train is going to hit 5 people. If you pull the lever, you have a 90% chance of hitting no one, but a 10% chance of hitting 10.
Now do you pull the lever? For whatever weird 3rd option you can think of, just imagine more levers leading to more tracks with the appropriate cost-benefit payouts.
Eventually you have to do something or nothing and some number of people will or won't get hurt. How do you make the decision?
@@Nuclearburrit0that 10% risk is debatably worth it. You’ve better odds of loosing Russian roulette, and that’s your own life to gable with.
And as another variation, how many people can be tied to the first track before the average man decides killing one man is worth it? Saving 10 at the cost of 1? What about 20? 100? What if the trolly has a nuclear payload on it, and if you don’t flip the switch it will detonate killing everyone in Sanfransisco Bay Area? That could be thousands to millions of lives?
At what point does your inaction begin to weigh upon you? At what point does being passive turn into being a benign evil?
@thebanditman5663 thing is, it's the same expected value as the original trolly problem. Flipping the switch kills an average of one person and refraining kills 5, just as in the original problem. So if your goal is to maximize human life, you should flip the switch in the 10 at 10% vs 5 at 100% scenario.
As for your other questions. I'd hope people would agree that even at 2 for 1, it's already worth it, since otherwise you're killing 2 people to save 1.
You are just as responsible for your inaction as you are for your actions.
All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to stand back and do nothing.
But that's just me. I want to know what you think?
@@Nuclearburrit0 I do think that inaction (especially when you are certain of outcomes in the case of the trolly problem,) is what we could consider the greater evil in most cases.
Neglect is a crime for a reason.
Of course if you’ve enough forewarning of a situation, you also have more control.
In the trolly problem. If you’ve got 2 minutes before the trolly reaches the switch in the tracks, you’ve got two minutes to throw the switch preemptively to save the five, then try to free that one guy with the time you have left.
Nice! I'd really be interested to hear more of your analysis of the philosophy of movies or TV series !
And now the "Firefly" theme song will play in my head for a while...
Not used to seeing film analysis from you. I’m here for it.
excellent analysis of my favorite scifi movie (at least as an extension of the best scifi show). :) you surprised me with this one for sure. it's a good format, you should do more of these.
The flaw with Consequentialism is often framed as Ends vs Means, but I think this fundamentally misses the actual moral problem: unintended consequences. Or more accurately, uncertain consequences. On some level we can never know the consequences of the decisions we make until after we make them, and that is where consequentialism fails.
Take the examples in Serenity:
1. After Mal dooms the survivor to the Reavers, how does the scene play out?
"We couldn't take the weight: he would have slowed us down." -Mal
"You know that for certain?" - Zoe
The crux of the moral issue isn't that Mal pushed the man off the mule, its that we will never know if his decision to doom the man was necessary. Furthermore, lets look at the means vs ends in question. If Mal is in the wrong here, its because he doomed a man to death, not because he pushed him off a speeder. The ends in this scenario isn't just the crew making it to Serenity alive: that man's life was a part of the ends side of the equation too. After all, he's not coming back. And if he were, with no negative consequences, would Mal's choice in the ethical dilemma have carried any moral weight?
2. When the Alliance experimented to make a more docile population, what went wrong? An entire dead colony, and a new species of horror humans. Now, which are those things, ends or means? Clearly the results of the experiments fall under ends, not means. Now, how would the ethics have been different if the ends have been different? If the experiment had yielded no results at all the horror of what the Alliance had done evaporates. All that's left is what we as the audience know could have happened. If the experiment yielded null results it would have still been wrong, but not because the means were abhorrent, but because the Alliance had rolled the dice on ends that could have been.
Pulling this full circle, "Do the ends justify the means?" questions are predominantly questions were the dark "means" are ultimately just dark ends. And that's the real problem I see with Consequentialism: in practice it is common for both its proponents & its critics to only consider the ends that suit their arguments. When making a moral choice, we don't have the luxury to decide on intended consequences alone
Experimenting on a population without consent with the intent of controlling them... is abhorrent regardless of the outcome.
Well, I wasn't expecting a video about the movie Serenity. When I saw the notification, I though Serenity must be the name of a TH-cam Christian. Great movie and show. Good video as well.
Well, this was a surprise. Firefly/Serenity was always one of my favorite stories. And the philosophical themes were a big draw.
I never expected a @RationalityRules analysis, but you nailed it!
That was extremely well done as teaching about those philosophical concepts. Keep up the good work.
The ends can only justify the means if the ends are reached. I hate it when a "critique" of utilitarianism follows the pattern of step 1: bad guy wants to do X bad thing to achieve Y good goal, step 2: doing X fails to achieve Y step 3: bad guy was bad and his premise (achieving Y will justify X) is bad too.
The issue here is that the premise isn't refuted at all. Y wasn't achieved and the ends weren't reached. A utilitarianist can agree that X wasn't justified without compromising their utilitarianism because Y never happened. What these characters fail at is a risk vs reward assessment, not their fundamental moral principles that lead them to make the assessment. You can't properly critique utilitarianism by showing bad execution of an otherwise valid utility function.
That sounds a lot like "real communism hasn't been tried" with extra steps...
@@trumpetpunk42 so?
I would argue that that's the point. Doing evil act X to reach good goal Y doesn't work because it *can't* work.
It's not that the premise wasn't refuted, it's that achieving his premise is unachievable with this goals. You can't murder your way to peace.
@ethos5 maybe, but then your again not making a critique of consequentialism. You're still making an argument about how the bad guy has failed to execute the ideology in the first place.
A critique of consequentialism itself needs to at some point say "even tho good goal Y was reached, having done X to achieve it still wasn't justified".
Otherwise, the consequentionalist will just agree that the actions taken were bad because they failed.
After all, if you could murder your way to peace, then the murder would be justified, right?
@@Nuclearburrit0 "A critique of consequentialism itself needs to at some point say "even tho good goal Y was reached, having done X to achieve it still wasn't justified"."
Why?
Pointing out that success is impossible, that no matter what "bad action X" is taken, "Good Goal Y" is fundamentally unreachable, *is* a critique.
Well done, Steven. With a plethora of science fiction films and tv shows that deal with varied concepts of morality and ethics, you could easily start a new channel devoted to deep exploration of such topics within the genera. Captain Picard never seems to be at a loss for words in the face of a moral dilemma. The wise words of jedi master Woodford can always provide valuable insight. :)
I really enjoyed Serenity, and Firefly too… they were great 😊
Thanks for the vid! You clarified some problems I was having with "the ends justify the means".
That was a fantastic and very educational way too present both viewpoints.
Well done, sir. A brilliant break down of an excellent movie. Thank you for that.
I think everyone operates under a hybrid of consequentialism and deontology as impacted by personal experiences and loyalties. There is no perfect answer so we get by as best we can.
I was honestly a big fan of this video. I hope you can do more analyses of media under a philosophical lens.
Presumably there is a question of quantity/magnitude here, ultimately arbitrary and informed by our intuitions and feelings of empathy and so on, that decides when the means are no longer justified by the end. But some times I would say yes, there are situations where I think the ends justify the means. Take exercise: I justify the experience of short term exhaustion and numbness by the longer periods of, well, feeling better about myself and my health. The classic moral arithmetic, which is some times extremely difficult if not impossible to do.
Firefly and Reality Rules! Two awesome things that are awesome together
One of the best TV series ever created. Greetings from Germany.
Excellent and thought provoking video. Reminds me of Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan at the end of The Watchmen movie, but longer.
What I find funny is that some people who say that certain things are consequentialist, are ignoring the consequences of the actions they undertake. Like that entire chain of actions just creates more dead bodies.
That's because, for some reason, people who talk about consequentialist ethics tend to assume that all hypothetical or theoretical far-future outcomes are as real as the immediate and observable near-term consequences of the actions. I really don't understand why, because you can have a consequentialist worldview that doesn't take seriously the concept that any particular action is right or wrong without the surrounding context of the consequences thereof, but still prioritizes known effects rather than unknown effects. The arrogance associated with wrongly assuming you can predict the future of your actions perfectly therefore permitting you to do anything to attain that future as though you're acting out a part in a solved equation has the observable and logically definite consequence of justifying limitless cruelty in the short term, for a gain that only goes insofar as you lucked into predicting the future.
Even under a strict consequentialist worldview, context determines what makes an action right or wrong, and the consequence of that action's outcome is the strongest cue as to whether it's right or not to continue to do. Goes to show that no matter your preferred methodology towards ethics you still need to be an empiricist rather than a wishful-thinking-ist.
@@beansworth5694 I would argue that those arrogant enough to believe they can predict the future are the people most drawn to consequentialism in the first place, BECAUSE they can use consequentialism to justify their actions.
@@Devin_Stromgren Yeah, we see this a lot in fiction which covers consequentialist ethics. However, in the real world the only hint to that tendency being true for people/organizations that explicitly endorse consequentialism that I've seen is the so-called "longtermist" sect of neoliberal ideology (they also call themselves effective altruists). If you have better examples to call attention to, feel free to give them, but as for longtermist/effective altruists their fault of arrogance doesn't lie so much in wanting to justify infinite personal cruelty but in wanting to handwave away infinite systemic cruelty that's too disadvantageous or unsettling to question.
I guess under a certain perspective that's the same dynamic as the one you're pointing out, though.
@@beansworth5694 I would argue that Communism/the Soviet Union is a prime example.
@@Devin_Stromgren Communists such as MLMs who think that state capitalism is a mode of production worth fighting for are also employing that arrogant sort of consequentialist logic when they act on the assumption that the state will wither away as Marx predicted, but there are other reasons that one would prefer a central socialized economy rather than a privatized one that don't really breach into that phenomenon we were talking about.
The fact you're bringing up that dead state in particular, though, gives me the impression you're talking more about people at the levers of power who carry out injustices?
One of the best videos analysing one of the greatest pieces of science fiction ever made.
Completely unexpected and very welcome!
Please consider checking out Babylon 5 too, you could make a whole series on that!
Is it really a conflict between consequentialism and deontology, or a conflict between two consequentialisms that value different ends? From the crew's perspective, the operative's ends could never justify his means, because his ends -- a fascistic order -- are bad in themselves. When they choose to reveal the Alliance's secret, they aren't doing it because they object to lying or secrets in the abstract -- they obviously don't! They do it because they believe the consequence of holding the Alliance accountable justifies the risks. It seems highly unlikely that they'd still do it if the only possible outcome was negative.
@@BuddhaMonkey7 how are his ends fascistic? They may be totalitarian, but they don’t actually seem to have any of the usual characteristics of fascism.
@@petemccutchen3266 OK, totalitarian, it doesn't really change the argument.
@@BuddhaMonkey7 words mean things.
@@petemccutchen3266 OK, words mean things, it doesn't really change the argument.
That's always been my takeaway too, I haven't seen the movie in a while but it still did give me the impression it was thematically putting forward a dialogue about consequentialism, though. An order which requires that level of repression and inhumane violence in order to maintain is what you're fighting for if those are your means to ensure it. Also, yeah, idk if the Alliance is fascist or not- we never see their economic system if I'm recalling the movie correctly, we only really get a good look at what distribution in the fringes of their developed presence is like
Thank you so much for putting names to these two type of philosophies and Kudos for talking about Serenity
That was the best content you've done for a long time.
No low hanging, Jordon Peterson style..
It was thought provoking, insightful and truly brilliant
This is just about the best thing I've seen you produce. Good stuff, and thanks.
I miss firefly. This was my favorite RR video ever.
Fine video, RR. I watched Firefly & Serenity recently - such a pleasure. Mal's a ship's captain, outlaw & ex-soldier - his priorities are his crew, protecting income & irking the Alliance which lead to some interesting (moral) decisions.
Rationality Rules, Stephen, great video! These shows , really illustrate how philosophy informs our 'stories'. As for the 'trolly' problem, I'm afraid my choice would matter if I could see the people. 5 old gonna be goners over one young, lol. 👍🏼🌊💙💙💙🌊🥰✌🏽
An excellent breakdown of both the movie (which is great, by the way), and the moral and philosophical quandaries it presents. Very well done!
I consider myself to be a kind of "pragmatically humble" consequentialist that due to this humility trends to deontological approaches.
To clarify: I definitely believe that the ends justifies the means in all cases. If action produces greater human wellbeing than action , then it doesn't matter what action is; it is better to do than action . HOWEVER, I'm "pragmatically humble" in that I don't believe I can possibly know what ends my actions will truly have and the more radical/effective an action is, the more problems with unknown unknowns there are. I am therefore forced to deontological approaches as guiding principles that will "most likely" have the best outcomes unless I've been thoroughly convinced otherwise.
In practice, this makes me act a lot like a deontologist for some very high percentage of cases, but for the small remainder where I've been convinced the outcome of my actions will be positive, I will act against my usual deontological principles.
Right? The ends does justify the means. But that also means that the ends you want actually has to bloody happen. If they don't, whatever means you used aren't fucking justified anymore now are they?
If we can with 100% certainty achieve real peace and happiness for all of humankind until the literal end of the universe, then go bloody nuts. But that will never happen. It's an impossibility. Thing is, I've yet to really see any instances of extreme means justifying the end because they are never able to actually achieve the end they think of. In my mind, it's sort of a catch 22. You gotta reach the end before the means are justified. But you also gotta do the thing in order to reach the end. So in the moment, the means aren't justified. But if you actually achieve an end, that end might justify the means you used to get there. But it will be after the fact.
As for the trolly thing, how'd you choose? My take is that you always choose to save 5 people. It's the moral, logical and overall effective choice. By choosing to do nothing, you choose to let 5 people die. The moment you had the chance to help, choosing not to can't be very ethical or moral. So how the fuck is that better then killing 1 and saving 5, or just straight up killing 5.
The choice is between killing 5 or possibly murdering 1(depending on the law). In both cases YOU still kill someone. If all you had to do was press a button and five people survive, letting 5 people die is no different from you killing them. Just that you broke no laws so it wasn't murder, the unlawful act of taking a life.
Saving the most lives is both the ethical and moral choice. Legally speaking, murdering someone is bad. So the question shouldn't be argued from an ethical or moral standpoint at all. But from a legal one. Since in both cases, you kill people. It's just that one of those choices might be unlawful.
So morally speaking, which is what deontologicals all about right? Pulling the lever and saving 5 is correct choice. Evil triumphs because good people do nothing and all that shit. It's not like you even saved anyone by doing nothing, since that one guy was never in any danger to begin with.
So logically, realistically, ethically and morally saving 5 people is the better outcome in this scenario.
I guess my problem is that I take the trolley conundrum too literal.
Amazing quality content! Kudos Stephen!
I seem to remember a recent talk with a Blackrock big wig talking about how you have to "force behaviors" on people because the ends are worth it. It's worth going and finding out what he was talking about specifically.
The ends are worth for whom?
I think it's worth considering that many powerful people don't really adhere to any metaethical systems other than maximize benefit to oneself.
@anzov1n agreed. But whatever the reason, they are clearly using their influence to make this particular thing happen. You literally can't turn on the TV, open a book, or browse the internet without seeing it plastered everywhere. It's all over schools to the point where we're replacing other parts of kids' mandatory government education with it. So whatever metaethical system we're talking about here has had some pretty dramatic real world impacts.
@pansepot1490 lol I don't know. It's not the average person. It's not businesses. It's not politicians. It's not children. I have a suspicion I know who it's worth it for, but we'll just leave that in speculation land.
Serenity is an awesome series and movie. :) Did not notice the philosophy to much when I watched it many years ago, so thank you for this.
Listen to the Joss Whedon commentaries
Really enjoyed this one, Stephen.
Apparently Michael Scott was an ethical genius. "I wouldn't steal the bread, and I wouldn't let my family starve".
This was a wild ride - apparently I'm a lot more like the operative than I'd have liked.
Given how you debunked free will, I think it’s crucial to distinguish between consequentialism in the sense of “the ends justify the means” (a typical attitude for fictional villains), and consequentialism in the “compassionate” sense (“This criminal didn’t choose to commit crimes, because free will doesn’t exist; however, they must still go to jail, to protect the rest of society.”). It’s easy to confuse these two, and thus commit an equivocation fallacy.
It kind of reminds me of the conservative critique of the word “materialism”, which also commits an equivocation fallacy: Religious conservatives rely on the negative associations people have towards *consumerism* (materialism = striving for material wealth) to get them to reject a scientific worldview (materialism = everything can be explained by physical causes and effects).
Odd. Usually it is the conservatives who are always trying to hock and sell something. But really, conservatism in the USA isn't conserving anything. It is a throwback to the Victorian age and if there is anything a conservative loves, it is feudalism. They got their business-model-fuedalism by saying that corporations were a person. Conservatives and liberatarians like this idea of single rule and playing the game monopoly. We know how this turns out in both cases. Conservatives like to hold up their buybull and generally absolutely LOVE the idea of kings. Not very American at all. They tend to distort history if given a chance, and aren't a bit interested in facts.
Conservatives are now jumping onto the hippie concept of "Consciousness" as being some sort of magical doo dad they need because they failed to produce talking snakes or magic apples, and can't convince even their own flocks of such things. So they will now use "Consciousness" to lull the ignorant into their folds.
It is just brain washing. And more magical "spiritual" nonsense to feel bad about feeling good, and to feel good about being bad. They have lots of books to sell on this topic, and that is the whole point of this consciousness cult. They do not want to have somebody shaming them and asking them where their conscience is in all of this consciousness nonsense. It is just a rebranding of the "spirit science" and the prosperity gospel.
It has always been a thing in the churches. Give the Priest Class money and the reward will be tenfold in heaven. It is the old carrot and the stick routine in different packaging. Don't give them a dime. Not one.
Well, thanks for making me want to add Firefly and Serenity to my re-watch list😂 and for detailing one of the reasons it was such a good series and an absolute shame it was cancelled!
I don't really bother with metaethics. At the end of the day, what is right is what I can live with, and what is wrong is what I can't. And what I can or can't live with is determined by a million material and psychological variables I couldn't begin to comprehend. If you press me, I'm a negative utilitarian most of the time. But it isn't a religion and the second it doesn't work for me, I'm done with it. There's no bearded a**hole in the sky who will judge my imperfect and inconsistent applications of metaethics.
Fun, I like these philosophical analyses. Would love to see more!
Excellent video as always. It would be great if you could add your view point and which thinking you adhere to and why.
So you can check to see if he is on your side or not?
One of my favorite movies! Didn't expect this!
"I'm a leaf on the wind..."
Too soon...
@@DjDiffrntit will always be too soon!
Brilliant video, thanks Stephen.
The Operative is entirely correct.
7:40 The issue with the trolley problem is that as soon as you have access to the lever, you are no longer a passive bystander. You are an active participant who has control of either your action or willing inaction. Therefore, the deontological option is not so clear as both options can be considered a consequence of what you decide to do. The 5 or the 1 are all now subject to your choices, whereas before you were involved, the outcome was preordained.
However, one makes you a murderer (regardless of your justifications) while the other makes you a witness (regardless of the outcome).
Thank you for the breakdown of one of my favourite films - now I think I'll need to watch it yet again!
It seems so common and easy to depict a villan type character as utilitarian were an unexpected outcome or just stupid reasoning paints the utilitarian view as wrong or naive. Its easy for a story to play on a case were our intuitions about moral and immoral actions (at a basic level) were right all along, and the unintuitive and abstrakt justifications were wrong. It does not seem very honest as the other side of the coin is rarely showed and apreciated; were the cruel and hard choices really was shown as the right ones and seen that way. I want to see a story were the ‘good’ people who would not do bad things even for the best reasons are not praised for this automaticly and were perhaps the hero is exactly that for makeing the hard but nessesary sacrifices. I think a story like Naruto has a few characters like that, and there are others as well, but its just not balenced😕
Andor! The character Luthen is an excellent example of doing monstrous acts for the greater good and knowing he will be either forgotten or hated.
I really love this format, a philosophical analysis of popular media. Please, Sir, may I have some more?
So it turns out that one of my favorite movies is also one of the most philosophically astute films ever.
Always a good day when something Firefly/Serenity pops up on my feed.
Great video!
I've noticed that in materialist philosophy that the experience of pain is considered intrinsically bad, and for me that's a serious flaw in most utilitarian thinking. Pain is a signifier of change more than it is a signifier of something bad. The explanations offered for justifying pain as a measure of a negative moral consequence gloss over this problem by offering that we're choosing to experience a smaller amount of pain to achieve something that gives us more pleasure in the future. But accepting the suffering associated with change isn't measured by the amount of actual pleasure that the change will bring; we're really measuring how good an outcome is and whether or not our perception of pain is a signifier of the knowledge we are gaining in our suffering or if the pain is the signifier of the destruction of something we believe is truly valuable. In other words, it's not our senses that lead us to moral truths but a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between the things that we perceive are valuable and how we should place those values in a hierarchy of dependency.
I'm having trouble figuring out what meaning of "materialist" would apply here. That said, everything you wrote about "pain" would also apply to "pleasure".
Sounds like some Ayn Rand nonsense. I am a scientist and I assure you after two hundred years we have not found talking snakes and magic apples. "Pain can have a purpose" is all well and good if you are not the one who is in pain. Pain indeed does remind you that you are still alive and encourages the continuation of survival. That is all pain is. Pain is also a sign of injury often times.
To simplify things further, I distrust when people refuse to talk about principles and then start inserting the word "values" because it just speaks loudly of how they think of things. It turns my stomach when people "value" the ones speaking because of how much they are "worth" in terms of monetary worth. Musk isn't worth a plug nickel because he is too busy simping for Putin.
Russia, for the most part runs on the principle of "Might is right." And that is pretty much how every Authoritarian regime runs, fully valuing their slaves and fully valuing that life of luxury, and also fully valuing the usefulness of superstitions to keep people in line.
Reading through your last statement this is what it sounds like to me, "In other words, slaves shouldn't worry about not having anything. Work shall set them free." It is the carrot and the stick nonsense. That donkey never gets that carrot. Any pragmatist and every materialist and anybody with a principle in their head who refuses to be a slave will utterly ignore all of that rubbish.
Ayn Rand and her "values" and her lofty appreciation of what was material...and her libertarian "values" sure didn't say no in her later years when she was living on welfare. Then suddenly, the principle of people looking out for the less fortunate and this "socialist evil" was what she was more than happy to take and needed in a hurry. I bet she pushed others out of the way in line to get it.
Isn't it odd that the more philosophical a person is the more likely they are to lean towards fascism and to hide their speech in such obtuse concepts.
I hold to the axiom "There is enough for everybody's need, but not enough for everybody's greed." And no, working out and feeling soreness isn't "pain" in the sense of injury and harm. But that is not the same kind of pain a person has when they have an injury or are wounded. That kind of pain is utterly different. So it must be specified.
The reason I only give a little stock in philosophy is because, thought it is named after a "love of wisdom" its practitioners often show very little of it.
@@OceanusHelios For a scientist I'm surprised by your answer. It does seem a bit all over the place, and a bit zealous in it's moral outrage.
Pain is a sign of change. It's not intrinsically bad. From something to go from one state to another, the first state must be destroyed. We experience the change as pain. It's not whether an outcome gives us pleasure that we assign value to it. Often we highly value things that never give us any pleasure at all, because we believe them to be fundamentally good.
The difference between pain you feel when you put your hand on a hot stove versus pain you place as dependent on a value that is considered good is that your hand is fundamentally good and the pain of a hot stove isn't part of a change to your hand that is necessary to what a hand ultimately is. To preserve the hand, you learn to avoid hot stoves. But if you needed surgery you'd undergo possibly more pain to preserve the hand, not because having a hand gives you special pleasure, but because your hand is fundamentally good.
If you could instead cut your hand off and avoid the pain of surgery to change into someone without a hand and experience more pleasure using opiates, your wouldn't be measuring the quantitative pleasure you'd be experiencing. You'd be determining the value of your hand based on a network of values that tell you a story about who you are as a person, and then choosing the option that most ideally aligns with your values.
Haven't watched Serenity or Firefly for so many years I forgot all about this.
Oh ffs, not the trolley problem again. My answer will always be the same: It is not my fault people are tied to the tracks, it is either their fault for being captured, or the one who put them there. I will choose whatever I wish in the moment; whether I flip the lever, walk away, or pursue the one who tied them to the tracks. The amount of logical leaps one must have for the trolley problem to even exist is so absurd that it borders on madness. And I refuse to make decisions based on madness if I can help it.
But the trolley problem exists in one form or another all the time. Do you perform an action that, by itself, could be considered immoral if the consequences of that act create a greater good? Yes or no? Or, if you answer "it depends on the situation," what criteria determine the choice?
@@dajolaw I think metaphors go over Drax's head.
"Ill means, ill ends" (Ursula le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea). A lesson I have not forgotten. The ends never justify the means as the means determine the ends.
I agree.
I'm a full-on consequentialist but really push for an ends justify the means approach and I think it's pretty inevitable to end up in a place where they don't.
I tend to judge actions by their consequences, but with one important caveat, namely that the end CAN justify the means, but whether it actually DOES is a different matter. My general rule is that the end justifies the means if the means produce the end. The trouble with consequentialism is the tendency of consequentialists to mistake intentions for consequences.
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 I think it's mostly the argument used against consequentialism to show its potential danger, but it's also a fundamentally negative outcome from a consequentialist perspective.
In a deontologist context it can also become "justice has to be served" even though there's absolutely no good to come from doing so or a situation where people are continuously causing harm which they justify by saying "but I never broke any rules".
I'm in favour of a deontologist approach based on consequentialist principles. I don't see a point in dishing out punishment for bad things if it doesn't stop them from happening, at the same time, I'd say attempted murder should still be judged the same as murder even when there were absolutely no negative consequences.
@@PauLtus_B The problem is not judging an action by its consequences, but rather by the intentions behind it. Intentions are not consequences. Otherwise, people would have been beating down the Berlin Wall to get into EAST Germany.
Under the hood of deontological ethics there's a consequentialist engine, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on.
My issue is how do they even evaluate the initial propositions that become their moral precepts. In talking to several of them it does indeed seem to be utilitarian logic. Not that I disagree with the video's points. Moderation often seems to be key.
@@MichaelDeHaven who decides what is moderate?
Absolutely agree with this under the hood comment.
@@MichaelDeHaven Are you confused about how a deontologist decides what actions are moral?
@@alistairgrey5089 More about how they choose the *initial* moral principles themselves.
How do you choose moral principles without a moral system? Does that make more sense?
Which I could upvote this more!! Thank you - this was really interesting and insightful. 🙂
*_God The Victim_** ?*
If "sin", is a crime against God, that would make God, _a victim of crime._
But if God is "all powerful" and can't be harmed, that would make sin, _a victimless crime._
But sin can also harm man, so it’s not victimless, is it?
@@paulwittenberger1801Yes, if we use a steel man version of sin. But I think that just highlights the importance of using the correct words. Or at least ensuring we understand what others are saying.
@@paulwittenberger1801yeah, but the point that God isn't a victim still stands. The focus is now that X action harms people rather than God deemed X action wrong.
@@paulwittenberger1801 That would be regular old crime & punishment.
The police don't arrest people for committing sins, do they ?
_Sins, are religious mythology._
@@paulwittenberger1801 Sin just means anything that the church doesn't like or which isn't kosher. It is like wearing a t-shirt with the wrong slogan on it. That's why there are no laws against this "sin" nonsense. They are unenforcable laws written by the "thought police."
Big ups for showing C&H during your explanation of the Trolley Problem.
Seems like almost everybody is a consequentialist, just depends on what consequences you are accounting for. In this video you highlighted consequences to illustrate the value of both sides.
Not everyone is a consequentialist. Consequentialism is driven by subjective preference. The proposed actions are in service of the preferences. With deontology, the actions are in service of an objective moral rule. Following the moral rule is not a consequence, it's a starting point.
@@shlockofgod I understand the difference between the concepts. I disagree that one really exists as I don't believe "objective moral rules" exist nor do I think many people have lists of rules to live by and consequences be damned. We are born with very little knowledge of the world and we craft our behavior patterns based on consequences.
@@JesseRitchey The existence of objective moral rules in that sense is irrelevant. The deontologist only need to believe they exist and/or are valid. Deontology could have completely arbitrary rules in theory. The point is that rules can be a starting point, not based on consequences.
@@shlockofgod Yep, that is why I said "nor do I think many people have lists of rules to live by and consequences be damned."
@@JesseRitchey Deontology is not "consequences be dammed". So that's irrelevant.
More videos like this please! Stopped watching the channel for a while as I was bored of the debunking videos - in the end they always boil down to the same thing and tbh I was contemplating unsubscribing. But I would love to see more philosophical explorations of movies, shows, and video games like this one.
I would argue that everyone is a consequentialist. It is by the consequences of an action that we determine its morality, and breaking a rule we set for ourselves is in itself a bad consequence.
Excellent video. Maybe it is obvious but I always saw Serenity as a showdown between competing principles, and it's cool to hear it broken down logically
Someone needs to show this video to Timpool.
Why?
He wouldn't get it.
@@shlockofgodTim used to, I don't know if he still does, constantly bring things back to moves. Especially super hero films. On top of that he had a famous interaction with Sam Seder where he claimed most villains were utilitarians and most heroes deontologists.
That's the short version, anyway. But with most things relating to Tim, he has very little than a surface level understanding. So even when he has a point it's generally pretty banal.
@@shlockofgod
Timpool famously thinks he knows about this topic and smugly announced that all movie villains were utiltarians and the heroes were all deontologists.
Because he's a simpleton reductionist who thinks in black and white.
@@MichaelDeHaven I think most villains ARE utilitarians.
A great analysis.
One thing I think should have been mentioned is that the operative, although a consequentialist, is unique in that he views also himself as a sacrifice. A lot of consequentialists do the things they do so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labor and think that they deserve the reword of living in utopia for doing the things others won't do. They see themselves as higher than those who didn't commit atrocities and thus the ones most worthy of the greater good they help bring. The operative is different.
One of the lines he said to Mal after destroying all places that Serenity viewed as safe, and Mal accused the him doing it just for himself, he answered that he knows he will not receive the reword as he admits that what he does is evil and that he is a monster. He genuinely believes that should utopia come forth, even through his actions, there is no place for him there. He sees himself as just as much a sacrifice as those he kills , and that is something I find very interesting.
Would be great to have a more nuanced representation of consequentialism, if it's going to be addressed for such a large audience. One thinking that the ends justify the means, and doing terrible things as a way to reach said goal and failing to reach said goal, is an example where consequentialism is self-effacing, not self-defeating (or 'incorrect'). Proper expected value considerations are needed when acting under uncertainty, understanding multi-level consequentialism and where practical considerations such as 'rule consequentialism' should play a role in decision making, being averse to 'naive consequentialism', etc. Based on the summary of this movie, it seems like the character did not achieve the best consequences, so by definition did not make the best consequentialist choices. If anything this is an argument of an individual naively relying on their person calculations to justify a large swath of individual, suffering-causing actions, all of which have flow-through effects and, upon proper analysis, likely were not the best approach to improve the world.
Love your work Stephen, and longtime follower, but I really think surface level renditions like this does an important normative framework like consequentialism a major injustice, and continue to perpetuates the broader publics' misunderstanding of said framework.
Great show, great movie. If you have never seen either one, please do.
*Secret code of the apologist ?*
It's okay to tell lies about your God & religion, as the end goal, is to save sinners from hell.
_The ends, justify the means._
*(besides, they know they are right)*
Great video! I just have to add one thing into the equation: It's also how you (the chooser, for want of a better term) view human individuals. IF you view individuals like video game players view NPCs, then decisions are easy (So what if a few million die?). However, if you view individuals as PEOPLE, then you're more likely to make "better" decisions and you can more effectively use BOTH forms of decision making. It's like being the captain of an old sailing vessel. Without discipline, you're more likely to die. So, you keep discipline as necessary without going over into brutality. Your crew will respect you and help you MAINTAIN that discipline without you having to do anything official. Whereas if you think of your crew as faceless nobodies and treat them harshly, they'll turn against you in a heartbeat (the mutiny of the Bounty). There are times for BOTH types of decisions. Fools only use one or the other (and often end up the worse for it).
I think most people are somewhere in between consequencentalism and deontology
Firefly is hands down the best single season of television ever created!
I must be first! Yes!! 😂
i won't tell yo again, get here just a little ahead of time.
Always loved this film. Thanks for deepening my understanding!
It's worth noting that the Operative somewhat bridges both philosophies: he is prepared to do anything in pursuit of his goal - and he is not just the agent of these plans but their architect, there is no 'I was following orders' concept (as well there shouldn't be; there can't be legally binding orders on someone who does not legally exist).
That said, he also has a concept that his actions, whatever their consequences, are inherently corrupting. He explicitly says "I'm a monster and I have no place in the 'better world' we're making" or words to that effect.
This also opens up another can of worms: the Operatives actions are classified and tightly compartmentalised. He sees himself as damned but by doing what he does he sees himself as keeping the rest of the alliance safe and ignorant. Here we get into culpability from the chain of command versus deniability; that is, how much guilt does the alliance hold for his actions?
There are people who took his orders knowing they are unethical but appropriately authorised (the alliance crews and soldiers)
There are those who didn't *tell* him to commit war crimes but told him 'Get River Tam back At All Costs' and won't know the consequences. (Alliance intelligence)
There will be those who allowed the creation of operatives as an entity but do not know any details of what they are employed for (the alliance parliament).
Thanks for all the spoilers!
Joking. Watched it several times.