This discussion leaves me frustrated upon later reflection. I commend Cameron and Michael for their amiability, and enjoyed the discussion, however it seems to me that no real argument for objective morality was put forwards other than ‘we intuitively feel it’s objective, and so you have to prove why my intuition is wrong’. That seems to me an unfair shifting of the burden of proof. Still, there were some interesting points, such as that regarding how a person can justify scientific objectivity if they don’t grant moral objectivity (something I’d like to clarify in a blog post now that I have thought about it properly), and I’m glad we were able to discuss them. I’ve seen a few people say that I’m confusing moral ontology with moral epistemology. I can see how this confusion may have arisen, but I assure you that I do not believe that epistemological moral scepticism should lead to ontological moral scepticism. I actually think my trying to explain this distinction is what has caused some people to feel I unfairly connect them. Again, I hope to clarify this soon in a blog post. Still, let me know what you thought.
Apologetic "arguments" are merely word games designed to confuse you, and to help theists avoid facing the fact that their arguments are moral relativity and opinion.
The "intuition" is based on WELL-BEING. We all strive for our own well-being and the well-being of others. If we didn't we wouldn't be here anymore. It's a product of evolution. Since we care about well-being we can THEN make objective moral decisions. Mutilation is "WRONG" b/c it's against well-being. Murder is "WRONG" b/c it's against well-being. But the universe doesn't give a shit about well-being. The universe doesn't care about murder or mutilation. That's why we struggle to survive on this tiny little planet. Life is rare b/c the universe doesn't care.
There is no God, and there is no immortality. which means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose, so why are you giving value to a chemical accident without any inadequate basis?
For future podcasts I'd be interested if the parties had more time to think about and properly word their arguments. Maybe for a couple weeks before the podcast/video the two parties could be sent the questions in writing and then write their responses back and forth daily. This would give both of them more time to think about how to approach things and let them get to their point within a reasonable word limit. Then on the actual video day these written responses could simply be read.
I’ve often heard this argument that if something is naturally intuitive that it must be true. It seems that unless you take the position that every intuition is always accurate, then you need to justify the claim that this particular intuition regarding morality is accurate.
demigodzilla not a rational thinker I presume your a atheist he’s determined to think the way he thinks just like you are or do you believe in free will
@demigodzilla Hard to "believe" 😉 (gotta get it right when shooting down fools) There's a big difference between a typo or auto-correct mistake and a rambling, incoherent mess.😂
Sadly CS wasn't in top shape for this debate. He was cornered many times by IP and he showed a lack of understanding of basic moral philosophy as LogosTheos pointed out in the comments.
@dar'man beskar Ordo was bracing myself for an answer like "no, truth is subjective", but, LOL i was wrong. We can counter arguments like that by asking them- is it objectively true that truth is subjective? If subjective truth is true for all, the argument has failed terribly there.
I thought it was funny to hear a reference to philosopher Robert Boyd. He was my Philosophy of Science professor at Cornell many years ago. He forgot to show up for the final exam. We all got an incomplete and he gave us a takehome exam to complete during Christmas Break instead. We were all pretty mad at him.
Morality can't be objective because it depends on the existence of moral agents in the first place. If life were to never have evolved, and this pocket of the universe we call Earth were nothing but a barren wasteland, how could you possibly have the notion that, for example, stealing, killing, and raping is morally wrong? The very concept of these acts cannot exist in a scenario without the existence of life. Whereas the laws of physics and mathematics are truths grounded in the universe independent of our existence (e.g. massive objects are gravitationally attracted to other massive objects), morality is completely dependent on our existence and our subjective experiences of how we feel we should act. For this reason, although we can live as though morality is objective since many of the moral values upheld by the majority of humanity are the same, morality is not, in itself, objective.
SoloStudios you're pressuposing the not existence of God. I agree that If God doesn't exists then there are not sufficient ressons to think human life has value. And from It follows that morality wouldnt be objective
Yan Barros Have u seen the video of cosmicskeptic where he argues that " morality cant be objective even if God exists" its pretty convincing you should check it out
SoloStudios Philosophy proves there can be objective validity to thought alone. It’s a non sequitur to assume that only space time objects can be objectively true. Morality as defined by what is good or evil to do to ones neighbor is an objective domain. Just because it is predicated on thought alone doesn’t prove it can’t be objective. After all everything you consider to be objective is predicated on qualia.
And if all humans are wiped out by themselves (WW III) and all that remains is wild animals, is morality still objective? Animals will kill and sacrifice eachother in order to survive, considered immoral for humans. What if humanity evolved in such a way, so that the children have to rip out the hearts of their mother at age 15 and eat it (because it contains a special substance) in order to survive, would it still be immoral for a child to rip their mothers heart out? No, because then it becomes a means to survive and grow old. What is moral depends on the individual, on the species, on the circumstances, on a virtually endless amount of factors. Is it moral to kill 50 out of 100 ppl? Normally it isn't, but it becomes morally acceptable if there is a limited amount of food and water and that if you don't kill 50, all 100 will die. Subjective asf.
Whew, this must have been exhausting. I agree that it's frustrating i.e. the argument of 'it just feels like morality is objective'. The same goes for free will and determinism I suppose. Well argued, though.
@Adithya Brijesh The problem with using intuition is I could say "I intuit that the world is flat" It can be used to come to false conclusions, so is not reliable
Jordan Peterson makes these arguments that there is some kind of objective "right" or "wrong" rooted in nature itself. His arguments have been interesting. I don't know if they're actually correct though. I would love to see Alex O Connor and Jordan Peterson talk to one another. Both intelligent minds.
I haven't heard the arguments Jordan makes. I do think I lean towards that idea though. Ethics and Morals are abstractions of sentient minds. As such there are emergant interactions that fall under what would be a consistant scale that we may not be able to identify all the elements for, but would be objectively moral. The issue is the actions are contextual so our understanding in situations requires knowledge we can not hold due to infinite variables and extended time frame consequences. So for example we can not know all possible branches of realities based on perfect moral decision making. We can posit that one line may exist. But that would mean our chances to be perfectly moral at any time are effectively zero. I do think that there is a morality set of principles that can represent a model close to that morality. This would have to be based on responsibilities and obligations of individuals to themselves, dependents, other individuals and continuing to other kinds of life. There appears for example to be responsibility and obligations as being the controlling species of all the world's resources. Once you get to the top after all it only can leed to a population collapse of others and then yourself. That in itself is a regulatory functionary in the locality of Earth. The power dynamic means that as a species we are our biggest known living threat. Barring the rise of another super virus.
All his opponent managed to present is "morality is objective because it feels like it's objective". This is a horrible failure of an argument. And I want to be persuaded by objective morality claim. There're just no good argument for it, at least not in this discussion.
@@HEL9000 His point is, we also view the physical world in the same way. We say: "The world around us is objective, because it feels like its objective." There is nothing we can know about the world, if we dont first accept what we "feel" is true, is true. I can attack you saying "the sky is blue" by saying - you need to prove it, its not enough that I see it and you see it. We just dont know, because actually, its all just a feeling in our head telling us the sky is blue.
@@Pellaeon159 with sky and with most physical objects there is a sufficient explanation of why they are the way they are. Also, two people are able to reach a consensus on the physical object. By looking at the sky and seeing its color, by measuring wavelength of light, by understanding properties of atmosphere which makes light scatter in a particular way and give the sky its color. While in its core a distinction between our experiences of outside world and abstract phenomenon like beauty might be arbitrary, I draw a line of objectivity on independence from the observer. If nobody is there to observe the sky, the sky still emits the same light wavelength and the atmosphere still has the same properties, so the color of sky did not change. Without an observer the concept of morality has no sense. If some source of morals will ever be discovered I can say that it is objective. But so far I can say with certainty, morals are not grounded in any Gods of organised religions, certainly not in Christian God. Maybe it is grounded in deistic God, maybe in natural phenomenon. But it is yet to be demonstrated and therefore there's no benefit in assuming it.
Consensus does not equal objectivity. You can have _collective_ morality without it being _objective_ morality. "Our group decided by consensus that circumcision is wrong and unnecessarily cruel to a newborn, so we will act to prevent it." "Our group has a god that demands circumcision, and we believe God's commands are good, so we will act to enforce it." If two groups could conceivably disagree that something is moral, as in the case of circumcision, no matter the size of each opposing group, then clearly morality is not objective. It is only the dominant opinion that determines what is moral for a group, and law (both religious and secular) is only a reflection of that dominant view. Slavery was "moral" until it was no longer the dominant view that it was moral.
Yuval Noah Harai calls this collective belief intersubjectivity in his book Sapiens and it’s a really interesting look into how ideas work and spread. I’d recommend it if you haven’t already read it.
Alex covered that at 18:40. "I think, therefore I am." We act as if there is an objective reality, but have to admit that we only _believe_ that it's objective because it is pragmatic and helps us function, not because it can be demonstrated to be true. Morality is the same. We act as if there is an objective morality, but have to admit that we only believe that it's objective because it is pragmatic, not because it can be demonstrated to be true. Both reality and morality _may be_ objective, but in absence of a means to _demonstrate_ that they are, we can only choose how to interpret these concepts subjectively.
So pretty much majority rules? That’s a silly way to approach morality, if that were the case then why is the stereotype that all atheist are immoral- not true? For the atheist to defend there position they adhere to objective morality, for them to condemn God or the religious they adhere to objective morality, the only problem is they don’t believe in objective morality.
_"So pretty much majority rules? That’s a silly way to approach morality."_ That's democracy. _"For the atheist to defend there position they adhere to objective morality."_ Atheism is nothing more or less than a lack of belief in God. Saying that all atheists make appeals to objective morality ignores all of those who don't in order to make a straw man.
I find it interesting how the majority of the comments here are confident that CS was clearly the more rational one, while the comments on the exact same discussion posted on Capturing Christianity’s channel mostly agree that IP was far more rational. Not really surprising, but I found it amusing.
It might be cool to see a feature on UA-cam where comments are connected, so fx this comment is also on IP's video. That would make more good discussions.
Judging from the behaviour of some animals one would have to assume yes. It actually seems that certain animals have some sort of moral code. Which again isn't universal within the species, so...
Depends on how you defines morality..Matter of fact, is things only good or bad when it involves matter that is alive? Would it be bad for a meteor to destroy an empty planet? Why?
You're projecting human notions of morality on to animals. Before we existed, what objective moral code existed? You're making the presumption whatever we perceive to be moral exists outside of time and space, so that even if we never came into being animals could be said to be making moral or immoral actions. There's no reason to believe this.
Morality is a concept. It's defined by actions and consequences. If I shoot someone who is already dead, but I did not know they were dead, have I acted immorally? In a hypothetical Judo-Christian's God's eyes, yes. In reality, who's to say? My actions have caused no harm. I have not killed anyone.
Mike really needs to learn how to debate without constantly reading from his notes and instead should try to engage directly with his interlocutor's statements.
The only premise of IP's argument that is even partly true is the first - that morality is a rational enterprise - because it is in part. But his second two are just completely baseless. There is no evidence that objective morality exists, and the next is that there has to be a single rational agent to act as a foundation for morality. That MIGHT be true is premise two is true. And his premise that the moral problems and disagreements are "too much" for us to assume a human foundation is again baseless unless we accept the premise of objective morality existing. The premises of his argument are so poor that the argument need not even be heard to know it sucks.
I think objective morality exists, without a single agent or God. That being, some actions are objectively good or bad for the world. And, for example, rape is objectively immoral. And the popular belief, believing people are going -- wanting them -- to burn in hell forever is not just immoral but amoral.
+Retro Workshop I tend to agree, but we have to realize that to the philosophical purist, it is not. Because our assessment of the objective wrong comes from subjective values. But these are values common to almost all but sociopaths, and religious/cultural fanatics. For example the case in 2002, where 30-year-old Mukhtaran Bibi was gang raped on the orders of the village council as an "honour rape" after allegations that her 12-year-old brother had had sexual relations with a woman from a higher caste. Decisions about how people "should" act (morality) is always based on goals and values. If we can find common goals and values we can develop "objective" moral systems based on those - but they are only objective in relation to the goals and values. I suspect that that village council would have seen letting the "Defiling" of the higher caste woman go unavenged (which apparently, to them, requires "defiling" a female of the boys house in retribution) as a greater evil than the gang rape.
@@pdoylemi Yes and no. Yes, except that these are not values common to all. Anthropologists have shown that moral values differ widely from culture to culture across time and space. And you give a good example of this yourself. But dismissing a view that does not confirm with your (or my) own cultural set of values as merely the opinion of religious/cultural fanatics is a form of special pleading. If a culture expresses what you would call a form of religious/cultural fanaticism, that doesn't make it any less a part of their culture or a bearer of their cultural values. Moral values are not cultural except when they conflict with my set of cultural values. I like your general approach, and have tried to square it with myself, but I think it has problems. I have an anthropological perspective. I look at what cultures actually believe. That makes it quite hard to determine what morality means, because not all cultures even have a concept of morality, or think of moral values in the same way, or use the same moral language that we do. There are cultures, for instance, that have no words for ought or should, nor is it possible in many of them for any individual to be considered wrong in anything they say or do. In these cultures, values are upheld by sophisticated forms of ritual, not by moral language. There are other cultures that regard "justice" as absurd. How, they say, can you put something right that has already gone wrong. These cultures do not aim to act justly, but to seek reconciliation and restore social harmony, and that may mean a victim goes unrecompensed, or a perpetrator goes unpunished. Are these forms of morality as we understand the word or are they some other form of evaluation? "Objective" is an ambiguous word. It can mean, independent of human wishes, desires, actions, etc, or it can just mean, not subject to the opinion, wish, feeling, etc of a (subjective) individual. In the second sense, morality can be called objective because you can objectively describe the broad moral beliefs of a particular culture. But though individuals function within the framework of beliefs set by their experience of their own culture, there is room for individual disagreement. In this sense there is also a subjective element to morality. I think the only thing you can say is that morality is not objective in the first 'absolute' sense - unless, of course someone can demonstrate the existence of a god, and so far that's not on the radar. I'd finally add that I think morality has a strong congitive element and in that sense it is a rational enterprise, but I'd also say that it is underpinned biologically by our evolved characteristics as human hyper-cooperators. That latter explains why, though moral values differ from society to society, they do not differ randomly. Sorry for the treatise. Got carried away.
@@richardfield6801 I have to disagree. When debating the religious, they ALWAYS turn to things like murder or child rape - which are nearly universally condemned rather than ideas like killing gays. Nor is saying. "you are wrong, and here is why", special pleading. Special pleading is basically when someone says, "Yes you are right most of the time, but not when my favorite belief is involved!" An example is those who argue that for intelligence to exist there had to be an intelligent creator, but that creator's intelligence did NOT require an intelligent creator. It can ONLY be called special pleading to the extent that I think that actual, demonstrable harm, or a great risk of that is the basis of right and wrong. And objective is not an ambiguous word. It is very clear. If I throw you out of an airplane at 50,000 feet, you are going to die - it is not a matter of opinion. But you are correct - morality, which IS a bit ambiguous can simply be defined by culture - that is so obvious it is ridiculous - but it is not objective unless they define the GOALS of that in some demonstrable way. If I think magic shit piranhas will eat me alive if I don't kill everyone who doesn't believe in them, and so does everyone else in my culture, that is not objective. But I can demonstrate to any sane person the harm of doing things I think are immoral. So if we accept that causing unnecessary harm is bad, we can an objective standard . Of course evaluating these things is always imperfect, but the standard is objective. The shit piranha standard is subjective and only applies to that culture unless they can demonstrate that shit piranhas will eat non-believers. But I agree that morality is rooted in the biological urge for species survival. That's why it is "moral" for mother tortoises to bury their babies in the sand, and let a few survive, or for most fish species to merely create millions of eggs of which most will die, and not care for them.
@@pdoylemi Hi Pat. Yes, the word 'objective' is ambiguous, because it has (at least) two distinct meanings. Objective can refer either to 1. a fact that is independent of the wishes, opinions, assessments etc of human beings ('absolute' objectivity.), and 2. a fact that is independent of the subjective wishes, opinions, assessments, etc of a single individual ('social' objectivity.) These two meanings are distinct because it is possible for facts to be independent of the wishes, feelings, opinions, assessments of an individual but not those of humanity as a whole. Scientific claims are of this second kind. I argued that morality is a social product, and you seemed to agree. That means it can't be objective in an absolute sense, but for any given society it has an objective existence in the relative sense, since it is not dependent on the subjective views of an individual. And it is objective in this sense whether or not those moral values have defined or definable "goals". What "the religious always turn to" doesn't determine what is true or false or reasonable to believe. So I am not sure what to make of your opening comment. Murder and child rape are morally wrong in your society, because the vast majority of people in your society believe so, and that judgement is enshrined in its public attitudes and consciousness and in its legal system, which always has a powerful influence on moral perceptions. I agree with you that child rape and murder are *harmful* but until you can show objectively that "harm" is what determines morality in your (or some other) society, then you are not going to get very far. Your claim is not borne out by an investigation of morality in actual societies. The moral values of a society are often determined not just by considerations of harm but by sectional interests and hierarchies of power. Yes the example you give in your post above is a classic case of a special pleading fallacy. A special pleading fallacy occurs if you set out a general rule but then try to make a special exception to it for a particular purpose, such as justifying a case you are trying to make. If a society other than your own holds moral values you don't approve of because - presumably - they contradict your subjective doctrine of 'harm', that does not mean you can dismiss them as aberrant because, for instance, you believe they are motivated by cultural/religious fanaticism in that society. Until you can show *objectively* that morality is based *solely* on considerations of "harm" then you have no grounds for claiming they are non-moral. Just to be clear, I have no problem with you pointing out that certain practices are harmful, but you have yet to show this is identical to their being immoral. If you are proposing a normative definition of morality that's OK; but if so, that doesn't answer the theist's objection.
It is objectively true that after one hour this becomes a waste of time. It does rise to the level of immorality but I am wasting my time and I am deciding to exercise my free will to go for a run.
23 minutes in, and I can already hazard a guess that this won't go anywhere. One side starts with the assumption that their intuitions are bedrock, and a moral condemnation of anyone who disagrees, then ends by shifting the burden of proof so that his opponent must provide proof positive against his baseless assumptions before he's willing to examine the topic in any detail. This is the mark of unreason. All we can do in the face of it is present better arguments in the hopes that cognitive dissonance eventually erodes their willingness to hold to easy oversimplified answers. I hope you stuck to your guns, and argued honestly, Alex. I'll have to finish watching this one later tonight, when I have more time on my hands.
well, it was a good discussion, even if some of the arguments were frustrating. the guy on the moral realist side concedes that he can't prove his point, but insists that we should simply assume his position, even when a perfectly reasonable alternative is offered. Well, at least these two were quite amiable. a pleasant listen.
That is not what he said. He said that we should trust our intuitions if we dont have logical defeaters for those intuitions and Cameron had to clarify it for the CS by showing that you cant prove the past actually happened or that external world exists, you have your intuitions that those things are true. What was frustrating is CS' ignorance and dogmatic skepticism when it came to the things he dont agreed with.
He said our intuition proves objective morality exists until a defeater appears. Therfore a god exists. Intuition is not reason. It is knowing something without knowing why. A skeptic just stops there. It's a bald assertion that is true because everyone believes it. I would rather say I don't know why everyone believes it than to just insert an explanation that has no basis. You could insert any explanation at this point.
They already mentioned how it is not what everybody believes in and it is not knowing something without knowing why. Are you one of the people who are skeptical that external world exists? That past actually happened?
Wlof25, fair enough, I typed that out a bit hastily. Should have at least tried to relay the argument in a way that the presenter would have agreed with. So, I'll go ahead and address the argument. It's a false analogy. You're correct in suggesting that we can't necessarily prove anything, because it's possible that our senses could be faulty. That was the basis of much of Descartes's work. That said, we do operate as if many conceptions are true, so how do we draw the distinction? Evidence. It's possible that the past popped into existence about 5 seconds ago, but we look at the world and see overwhelming evidence the universe has existed for far longer, therefor, it is unreasonable to claim otherwise, unless of course you're offering new evidence to overturn everything else. Simply feeling that something is true without knowing why falls very short in comparison to our memory of the past, combined with ancient records, combined with objects carbon dated to older than 5 seconds, etc. Our intuitions are provably false in many cases. If you'd like an example, look up the birthday paradox. With a group of merely 23 people, the probability that a pair will share a birthday reaches 50%; at 70 people it reaches 99.9%. The math works out perfectly well, and yet human intuitions reliably fail here. When human intuitions have been proven false in so many cases, relying on them to determine truth is nothing more than an epistemological failure.
At 30 mins in did IP just change his position from “you need to provide a good reason to doubt” to agreeing with Alex that “you should doubt everything?” Did I misunderstand that?
"Morality isnt objective in the literal sense of the word" "But we all feel something is bad so it must be objectively bad" "Everyone agreeing doesn't make it objective" "But we all agree it's objective" "But everyone agreeing doesn't make it true" "Well you can't prove I'm wrong so I'm just gonna believe what I feel." "And... Let's move onto whether god is necessary!" (Btw, showing that it is impossible to connect any specific moral code to something truely objective does in fact prove that it is not objective. We may still be able to all agree on a moral code based on opinions we all share, but it isn't "objective")
In questions of psychology, epistemology, values, and beliefs, I have found that the terms "objective" and "subjective" continually give trouble. I have finally decided to replace them with something like "that which belongs to the material world of space and time that we seem to share and agree on," and "that which appears to originate in human minds." Difficulties remain, but at least some confusion is avoided. I was led to this problem by reading the late thoughts of Carl Gustav Jung on the reality of the Collective Unconscious. He had difficulty in choosing between the two terms to describe that reality. I recommend “On Human Suffering and the Concept of God” - the psychological basis of religious belief neomodernistpoetry.blogspot.com/2018/11/on-human-suffering-and-concept-of-god.html
Even If god exists that doesn't mean morals are objective. It's quite possible that along with free choice god gave us the ability to have subjective moralities. It's the same as people saying there's a creator therefore god. If you prove a creator that doesn't then mean it's whatever you god you pray to. Both are massive jumps in logic and are only assumptions.
Max Fritze "even if you prove deism, you have a long way to prove theism" I forgot who said that, but I think it was Hitchens or Dawkins. I could be wrong.
How do you know that? That is an assumption. If we did not exist to conceptualize gravity, gravity would still exist within the Universe. Moral Ontology is distinct from Moral Epistemology which Michael tries to explain.
Everybody who applies a supposedly "objective morality" to their lives makes them subjective just by evaluating them and deciding to apply it to their lives.
I'm an hour in and feel they need to base their arguments less on feelings and more on logic. Sure you can "feel" something but what one feels isn't always right. not to mention I have some degree of psychopathy and don't even find murder repulsive. I wouldn't do it because of laws and such but otherwise I wouldn't care. so in that way alone its not universally objective. Sure I can agree on a societal standpoint it is likely more beneficial for murder to be illegal but that doesn't make it wrong in my mind.
Morality is simply a descriptive term (adjective?) for a particular type of desire-opinion. Can an adjective even be objective? Morality is a desire-opinion about things, not a thing itself.
Consensus will provide you with the moral position of a group but that does not make it objective. An objective moral truth would have to be universally accepted (not by a group here and now but by everyone, forever, anywhere) and independent of circumstances. I, at least, cannot think of any moral position that would fulfill these requirements.
You can sum up that dude's entire argument as "I'm going to shift MY burden of proof onto you. If you can't disprove it, then I'm justified in believing what I want to believe. Checkmate."
@@christopherfox3891 No, atheists have no burden of proof as we do not make positive claims. Theists make the positive claims, therefore they have the burden of proof. Theists make the positive claims. They can either meet their burden of proof or they can't. IP clearly can't so this what he is reduced to.
@@Azadum atheists absolutely do have a burden of proof. Atheists absolutely must be naturalists, and materialists. You as an atheist have to proof that naturalism and materialism better explains the origin off the universe. Just because you don’t come out and directly take a positive position, doesn’t make it not implied. I’ll show you just how downright STUPID you sound, “I’m not convinced that the universe came from nothing, or that the universe has eternally existed. I’m a theist by default because I lack belief in materialism and naturalism”. If I were to make that argument you would think, “wow, how stupid of an argument”. Now look at yourself in the mirror.
Not true, most Atheists I've known for the last 30 years of my life are completely void of any rhetorical skill and philosophy like this kid is, he's obviously going to school for philosophy. Most atheists I've debated will throw out "flying spaghetti monster" derrrp arguments then afk
@The Mountain I suggest you open your mind, instead of being so quick to throw in the towel 'cause I can see this triggers you. There is absolutely an overwhelming amount of evidence both scientifically to support creationism, and scientifically to account for Jesus and the resurrection. I honestly mean this sincerely, you should check out InspiringPhilosophy's channel where he accounts for all the history, ontological, teological arguments, and debunks every single misconception thrown at creationism and Christianity based on lazy skeptics and misinformation... or, don't and stay ignorant. It's up to you, but I was Agnostic several years ago for almost 20 years till I started to get won over by the overwhelming amount of facts that support it, and I'm a Chemist and scientist at heart, but his evolutionary creationist view and Emergent Universe theory/holographic principle along with his neurological studies are all incredibly consistent with the creationist viewpoint.
@@Jaryism When you say "Atheists I've debated", I'm going to assume you mean atheists who crawl around the Internet looking for fights. In other words, trolls who also happen to be atheists, and so love to troll theists. Am I correct?
@@shroomoid9403 No, you're not correct. I'm 35 years old and this goes back to kids I knew half a life time ago in schoo, college years, and aftwards… even addressing "How can you believe in (Christian) God?" it's rarely ever asked sincerely, and the main problem is.... there's just a LOT of stuff for the Theist to "unpack", and most of the time you're in the minority at the table, most of the time it'd be some narcissistic Atheist who'll throw out his "NO.... because I don't think some tyrant God from the clouds/flying spaghetti monster created us 6000 years ago sick and needs to sacrifice himself to himself to save us", Atheists have these absolute lampooned 10 sec strawmen responses that'll get a laugh of everyone at the table. But the problem is it's dishonest at best... that isn't what ANY Christian actually believes, it shows a lack of understanding on what God represents and the whole Messianic prophecy and what Jesus came to fulfill. It's for people who really aren't looking for an honest conversation, just shut you down in front of the rest of their Atheist peers to "win". Hitchens would say "Extroardinary claims require extraordinary evidence.." well, there's an EXTRAORDINARY amount of history, philosophy and theology to unpack and Atheists want a 20 sec Elevator Summary, well you're not going to get it wit that attitude.
Theistic morality: A individual theist's (subjective) opinion about the (subjective) opinion of ancient barbarians, about the (subjective) opinion of an imagined being, written in sketchy ancient texts. Theistic morality is merely multilayered subjectivity. Apologists play the "where do you get your morality from?" game in order to avoid this fact.
The very fact that this question is asked shows that objective morality does not exist. Objective truths exist only where they can be proven to be true, and that truth would by definition be universal. It's pretty much impossible to prove that any kind of moral is absolutely and universally true.
0x777 I disagree, there were plenty of things our ancestors could not prove, yet remained true. Where do you get your moral principles from is an honest question. Try to be non partisan in the theism vs atheism debate and you’ll have a sharper nuance for discerning these debates.
@Life was Given to us Yes, but those ancestors shouldn’t have believed them until they were shown to be true. You don’t get points for believing something on insufficient evidence just because you happened to be right in that case.
Kevin Allen Points? I don’t hardly consider it a game, but I think your missing the point to what I’m saying...my reply to ox was that for something to be objectively true it does not have to be proven. It’s objectivity is in no way reliant on us. Pluto didn’t change when we stopped considering it a planet, its objectivity remained the same. Likewise that doesn’t make any sense, if I have evidence and I turn our to be right? How can you say it’s insufficient? Perhaps you didn’t see what I seen in the evidence.
@Life was Given to us I see the same evidence as you, except perhaps the magic Holy Spirit thing, but that I cannot access myself. The other evidence has not been particularly convincing to me. What are some things you consider objectively true that aren’t logical tautologies?
Values are subjective; moral is the balance of values because they can contradict one another; moral duty is a result of societal collective morality. It’s all subjective by association. Just different level of abstraction. You all making it more complicated than it should be. I’m a philosopher too, not just any random UA-camr, if that gives my assertion any credit. By struggling with objectivity or subjectivity, don’t forget what are morals to begin with and where they come from. I hope the above definitions help. I thought about this for years being twice as old as Alex. Pick any moral action I can easy show how it is a balance of some set of values , and we feel there is a duty or not mainly because of the collective agreement on such moral . Otherwise one just on operate on personal moral, no duty involved. Law of physics are grounded in nature by the way! Example: I can acknowledge the moral concept of not eating human flesh. The values this is based on are: I love meat, I dont prefer to eat my own race, I am not sure how human flesh taste, I can easily go to other meat sources. So personally don’t find eating human jerky is a good idea. I don’t want to be selected for the BBQ either. As it turns out our culture share this moral with most culture, so we feel a strong duty to abide by this convention. This is subjective for sure because there are culture in which eating another human is perfectly acceptable and they have no moral issue about it. Not to mention there are ppl thinking eating meat in general is not moral altogether because they balance a slightly different set of values.
Atheists, what is the point of winning an argument? To what means does obtaining the knowledge and reason have on your life? I mean, after all we are all heading to the fertiliser pit and the sun will one day explode denying Earth the existance of every living thing. Yet, you all pour your effort and supposed "reasoning" and "logic" but for what? I am genuinely intrigued as to how you can justify using the time and resources to argue for truth when the ultimate end result of the universe is destruction.
And to that I ask: when you make it to the afterlife, will there be a need for progress and change, intellectual or otherwise? Presumably everything in this afterlife is already set, eternal and perfect. How is arguing more useful in a world where the entrance fee is having according to its rules and never deviating than in one where we can try to change things before oblivion?
Final thoughts, that was awesome and both of you did well, but I think alex came out ahead in the first half. As you said, there was less of a disagreement in the last half. Great debate.
He believes in morality as an existing concept- a set of behaviors, that if followed, leads to as much well-being as possible. Such morality can exist without free will. It just doesnt define right or wrong on a fundamental level as we usually put it. But in all intents and purposes, since we are human, the action are right/wrong to us.
I'm not sure why you even believe those two things are in conflict. The problem that the people who reject free will have with the concept isn't the *will* part. It's the *free* part. The decisions you make are influenced by factors that are totally outside your consciousness control, and most of the time you aren't even aware of them. Blood hormone levels are the easiest example. We don't have consciousness control over them, and yet they have a measurable, predictable impact on our decision making. If your testosterone levels go up so does your level of aggression. And again, you don't have conscious control over it. Some outside factor is causing levels to rise, and your decisions are altered as a result. Hell even something as mundane as hunger can influence your decisions. One study I remember showed that hungry judges give out harsher sentences before lunchtime 🤣. I think you get the point. Things that are outside your control exercise control over your will. And unless you find a way to completely escape all of those influences, even the internal physiological processes that your body does subconsciously, you can't rightfully say that our will is free.
@@TonecrafteLuthiery It's like saying, look how many currents and deep undercurrents might be around the ship, totally outside of its control, and of which we are not even aware. It is clear that all the apparent movements of the ship may be explained by those invisible currents. _Therefore, the ship has no engine._ Really, Sam ? You personally guarantee it ?
That’s a problem in skepticism, you can be skeptical all the way to solipsism, and you can do so logically, however there are hardly any solipsist and frequent skeptics who claim prove it or lose it.
And as so, they will never believe in the tea cup, simply because not believing in the tea cup counts as the "null hypothesis," and thus they set the burden of proof for there to be a teacup as way too high to the point where we sometimes can't even rely on our senses to determine if the teacup is true.
@GBF freeloader Sure, We assume that our reality is solid and that our senses show an at least somewhat accurate representation of how reality works. If we didn't accept this assumption, We would still be stuck debating if or if not absolutely anything exists. Look here for more ua-cam.com/video/PqjdRAERWLc/v-deo.html
25:40 someone has to tell you God exists based off of their own ideas. We’re intuitively have morals. We don’t intuitively believe God exists. The idea of God comes from us using what we think to be evidence
I really appreciate this video. Ultimately im strongly backing your argument, but i have to say, while exhausting to watch, this guy is a good debater and pretty articulate for a believer. Id be interested in seeing more debates with both of you, particularly a formal debate sounds really exciting.
Even if 100% of humanity agrees that X is *good* doesnt mean that X is OBJECTIVELY *good* the word *good* is SUBJECTIVE... following that morality only deals in what we believe is *good* and *bad* so it does not matter how someone feels, morality can never be OBJECTIVE
I feel this delves into semantics, we have used good and bad for decades now, and without the idea of good and bad it’s hard to determine wether or not we would have become civilized in any manner, there would be no need for laws, as laws are deterrents to what is considered bad. There is an overlap between subjective thought and objective reality, for instance given you have an aim, let’s say you want to win a chess match, there are objectively good and bad moves you can subjectively make. You may think subjectively that the move your doing is a good move that could win you the game, however your opponent might “objectively” show you that indeed it was a bad move. This analogy has a material aspect to it, which is the board and the chess pieces, however the *game* in and of itself is completely mental, there is no such thing as chess, chess is not objective in anyway. So at the core of this analogy you can have both objectively good and bad moves, about a given thing that is completely founded in subjectivity. This relates to the moral argument, even though we all have a subjective thought on what dictates good and bad ,there is still an objective truth to the notion. The only difference is instead of playing to win, your aim is to be living in a way that is benevolent to your neighbor rather than malevolent. Or at the very least to avoid the malevolent.
Did you even say anything there? Good and bad are opinions stop trying to live in a fantasy where everyones morals are objective. There is no one objectively good thing to pretend as such denies the existence of an opposing view point. Your chess example is shit by the way because there are mathematically optimal moves. Chess is just over complicated tic tac toe as long as you never make a mistake you will always win if your opponent also never makes a mistake then it ends with whomever went first winning. If the player that went second decides he doesnt want to lose he could make it a draw but thats the extent of choice in chess if both players never make a mistake. The fun of chess is that both players are prone to fail since the answer to the question of each board state is incredibly complicated. Another reason your example fails is that you already decided that winning is good and losing is bad. Which as I stated in my OP is subjective. Agreement =/= objectivity
Conquering Thought Did YOU even say anything there? I’m not sure if your having a hard time following along, or if your deliberately being an asshat to try and defend your original statement. Put your ego to the side and deal with your ideas reasonably, or else there’s no point in talking to you... You said, *objective morality is pretending that the concept of pros and cons don’t exist* www.powerthesaurus.org/pros_and_cons Read this list of synonyms and please give yourself a worthwhile facepalm when your read *Good and bad* is one of them...
Why don't you just make the damn leap and go straight for the jugular, attack epistemological realism, you know, the naïve kind saying there are things like attainable 100% value free guaranteed objectivity (mind independence). I'm a bit of a perspectivist myself (nb. not relativism), as you might already know, however, I still say there is an external world, and although I don't exactly go along with survival as the key evolution driver, I of course, espouse the will to power and favor viewing the world and its various unknowable external states as dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: their essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their "effect" upon the same. Anyway as I have alluded to in my work, morality and other some such shared plattitudes are emergent properties of the psychosomatic substrate of being, you should do well to read my Genealogy of Morals. Therefore, although I do not give you a moral system to work with as such, I would that you seek it, and seek it in your truest subjective sense, so that we may over come this wretched state of the last man, that is, social justice, collectivism, affirmative action, god/daemon fearing, and other such slavishly ressentful values. May sense be with you. Thus spoke Zarathustra The road is long and full of dense people, please, take this paper with you. www.kriterion-journal-of-philosophy.org/kriterion/issues/Kriterion-2004-18/Kriterion-2004-18-01-09-mcdermid.pdf
The burden of proof lies with those who assert the existence of objective morality and not with those who do not assert the existence of something. I think perhaps the most effective route to argue against Inspiring Philosophy's notion that objective morality is "intuitive" is to not agree that it is intuitive. Rather than sympathize with his notion that objective morals are intuitive and trying to reason with him, frame subjective morality as the intuitive approach to morality. Because subjective morality really is the more intuitive approach. It is intuitive that people raised in a different culture would have different views. It is intuitive that people, even within the same culture, will have different views as a result of having different life experiences. It is intuitive that individual peoples moral views can even change throughout their lives as they are introduced to new experiences. Intuitively, morals are objectively subjective. Not objective flat out on their own. The human mind is capable of many things. Emotions come after conscious thought, not before. Emotions are a result of conscious thought and not the other way around. Emotions do not control conscious thought. Empathy is an emotion. Those who claim rape is wrong are doing two things. They empathize with the person being raped and they do not empathize with the person doing the raping. It is not beyond the capability of the human mind to change and empathize with the rapist instead. Cleary, morality is not objective.
I find it somewhat condescending for Skeptic to come to a debate to refute the other side only to say that he is above the burden of proof. Here is the fact. To claim something is false you need proof just as much as claiming something true. Otherwise, you're just another faith-based preacher.
@@ShouVertica No, false means not true. You can proof that claims are false. Think of some deductive argument. For given axiom A there are claims, that contradict A. In this scenario these claims are false and will never be true. But i think this is beyond the point. I thought cosmics standpoint is just "We don't know" if he can't disprove something. In this case, everyone may have their own assumptions. But to derive moral maximes from those assumptions two things should be respected: 1) Claims should be supported by logically sound argumentation. 2)The assumptions should be consentual. Since Cosmic can't agree with most Theists assumptions he won't accept the derived maximes. I think Cosmic has every right to evade burden of proof since he usually doesn't make claims.
So far the reasons to believe objective moral is real is: 1) God 2) muh feelings 3) what else would it be? This isn't how your build an argument for objective morality. 1) hasn't been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist 2) your feelings are subjective 3) how about actually demonstrating with reason how you reached the conclusion that morality is objective. (aka bridging the Is ~ Ought gap)
The problem is what is good you can't keep continuing until you know what is good, also define in detail what you mean by intuitively because that's a subjective in itself
I think all of the debates you are in make me frustrated when I watch them. I always feel that you are more willing and able to understand their side and be agreeable for the sake of their arguments than they are. And you always bring up better more well-thought out points than your debate opponents. Like, this guy's arguments essentially boiled down to multiple ways of saying "lots of people agree with me" and "intuition". And needlessly using jargon to make himself sound smarter. :/
I almost agree with you but for one fact. IP isn't just throwing around jargon to seem smart, if you pay close attention he is just reading quotes and then trying to explain another person's arguments. Where as Alex is actually coming up with arguments and reasoning on the fly.
Much of Cosmic Sceptic`s arguments come from a position of Solipsism. He seems to identify as an atheist but argues from a Solipsistic position.. I get that all Solipsistic people are atheist but not all atheists are Solipsistic but this begs the question doesn`t it....why debate at all? if your position is leaning heavily toward Solipsism ultimately? It seems that a lot of the time that you`re taking your thoughts to their logical conclusion you drift into solipsism which kind of makes debating pointless. Solipsism is the result of skepticism on steroids, it has problems in of itself when you try to converse or interact externally from your own consciouness . Solipsism is to reason and logic what pre big bang "conditions" are to mathamatics...it breaks down and becomes useless.
777_777 isn't a Solipsist someone who believes everyone and everything besides themselves aren't real? Saying just God isn't real isn't solipsist. Saying you deny the existence of a metaphysical world (God) and the physical world is solipsist. Cosmic Skeptic didn't say he denounces the physical world as nonexistent.
Traplover7 CS confuses his epistemology with ontology. A solipsist uses his epistemology to determine the ontology of the external world. This is what CS was doing without being aware of it. Go to CosmicSkeptic's comment at the top where he said he has to clarify his confusion between epistemology and ontology in a future video.
777_777 I haven’t watched the debate yet, so I’m really going out on a limb here and I’m just going off of what CS argued in his videos as well as his comment’s assessment of the apologists argument in this debate. From what I can tell, all CS is doing is pointing out that intuition, consensus, and personal values do not get you to objectively existing prescriptions for how you should live your life that are independent of those personal values. Correct me if I’m wrong about my assessment of CS. If I’m right in my assessment, What’s solipsistic about that? Seems reasonable to me. I don’t think it follows from intuition, consensus, or subjective values that we unconditionally ought to do something in accordance with the “innate value” of humans. Why must I concede solipsism then? You may say, “but Tim, surely you’re using intuition or something akin to that to believe in the external world”, and I must say I simply believe that the simplest explanation for my sense experience is that is reflective of a portion of the external world that my evolved senses have developed to perceive and for my brain to interpret. Regardless, I don’t see how CS objections, if taken to their logical conclusion, lead to solipsism.
Tim Pieper Here is a breakdown of ComicSkeptic's erroneous moral theory by atheist philosopher Alex Malpass: useofreason.wordpress.com/2018/07/03/cosmicsceptic-and-objective-morality/
Michael’s level of argument astounded me... 1. Moral realism is self-evident 2. Moral realism is intuitive What high level defence of a hotly debated philosophical claim
Man, IP is a nice enough guy and I'm sure I could have a beer with him...but every single one of his arguments is complete garbage. Special pleading, appeal to intuition, and straight up bad reasoning. "We are constantly changing our morality. After every change, people think that's the best morality we have had. Therefore we are approaching the best possible morality" No. If everyone, everywhere, at any given time thinks they have the best morality, then what people think of their own morality cannot be a reliable indicator of how close to the "perfect" morality they are. Things could be getting exponentially worse with respect to some "ideal" morality and no one would know because everyone thinks their currently morality is the best one. On top of that, I don't know if Alex gets into it, but even if there is some objective morality that exists independent of human minds, there is no mechanism for accessing that knowledge. It can't be "God told me this is moral" because it is dangerously unfalsifiable and it can't be innate intuitions because they aren't at all universal. The uncomfortable truth is that our sense of morality comes from the way we are socialized with some pragmatic instincts on the side. The only reason anyone wants objective morality to be a thing is that they want to point the finger at another tribe and go: "No, you're doing morality wrong. OBJECTIVELY WRONG!". There are objectively more effective and less effective ways of having sustainable relationships with people and running prosperous civilizations. However, we don't really have a moral North Star that we can all agree to follow and, if there is one, we have no way of knowing what it is. The closest approximation to objective morality we've got is arbitrarily picking a set of morals and convincing as many people as possible to follow them, which ironically sounds a lot like religion. The key distinction is that we don't need to pretend that morals are some fixed platonic object decreted by an all-powerful creator. They are just a set of principles we choose to follow when we interact with other people.
WHAT EVER YOUR REASONS ARE ON FOR MORAL REALISM AND OBJECTIVISM YOU CANNOT BASE YOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THIS ON THE BRONZE AGE WRITINGS THE TORAH ( O.T. ) AND N.T. GOSPELS TO WHICH ONE CANNOT IN ALL GOOD CONSCIENCE REFER TO AS A MORAL COMPASS GUIDE SOURCE !
Michael could really ease up on the namedropping and Alex will be more convincing when he stops clinging to moral subjectivism like it is some sort of absolute. Other than that, the dialectical probing, unpacking, and dissection of these concepts was a breath of fresh air.
I can't watch anymore. I heard a man say we should believe something based on intuition and that intuition would tell us the Earth is flat, when scientific research would prove otherwise. Lesson one, don't kill your own opinion.
Wlof25 24:30 "my basic point...why should be doubt this if it seems so intuitively obvious?" It's a 2 hour steam. I know it would've possibly taken you 2 hours to watch it, but knowing where that line was, but come on. You turned a man into straw, that's unjust of you.
Wlof25 no I didn't. That doesn't redact his statement. If he's on an island and says the Earth is flat because intuition, intuition is wrong. He just gave a reason to question intuition. Unless you think that since there isn't proof of X, Y must be true. Then I'm just sorry to hear that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that the sense I'm getting.
Intuition is wrong because there is a defeater for it, what was exactly his point. What was the defeater for intuition that external world exist? What is the defeater that past actually happened?
People like to use rape as an example of something that is objectively wrong my question is if that’s factual why do people still rape and different cultures and countries set different requirements that constitute rape ??
That’s a non sequitur, for morality to be objective; it doesn’t require everyone everywhere to adhere to it. That would be like me saying If the earth is round why do some People believe it’s flat, so therefor that’s not an object truth of reality.
I agree that for morality to be objective it's not required for everyone to adhere to it. Having said that, if there are different opinions of what is morally good and bad who decides who's right? if it's objective then there's only one answer. The earth is round regardless of what people think and regardless of if life ever existed in the universe, so it's objective. Rape only exists within humanity, just like all thoughts of right and wrong, and therefore can't be objective. Our thoughts of what is "right" or "wrong" have changed over the thousands of years that our species has existed and because of that we have to believe that morality is subjective. It's naive to think that our thoughts of morality won't change over the next thousand years and everything we NOW believe to be right and wrong is, in fact, objective (now) and will never change....because it's objective.
Oh yeah, I am at 1:06:00 and I think they got you Alex. You are happy to call science objective, even though we have no idea if what is around us objectively exists. But are not happy calling morality objective, BECAUSE we have no idea if our oughts objectively exist. You say: That car is yellow. I say: nonono, thats just your FEELING. Prove that its yellow. you: well you can see that its yellow right? Me: Well that is just MY feeling its yellow. I cant prove its yellow. So objectively, we have no idea if its yellow. Or if it is a car. Or if its there. Or if you are here. Or if I exist... Why grant the car is yellow, and not argue its just a feeling? EDIT: Ok upon reeding your pinned comment I will have to go read your blog I guess :D I am still torn on this.
I think you guys may be both overestimating people’s innate moral intuition. Not everyone who came across someone raping another would feel the need to stop them; some really would find nothing wrong with it, ie. a psychopath. So I think this discredits Inspiring Philosophy’s point to a degree. In order to prove that our experience of morality is objective, he would have to prove that it stays consistent among all people, and I know from experience that it doesn’t. You both seemed to apply this same principle to FGM - “of course it is wrong!” Well, the very fact that exists warrants that some people do not think it is wrong, specifically the people doing it. Be careful not to project your own moral convictions on issues that require a more complex approach.
22:02 If your intuitions about whether intuitions are sufficient grounding for morality don't align with mine, you're wrong and you need to think it over until you agree. Does anyone else see what's wrong with the form of this argument?
John Landon Miller btw he literally says if you don't agree it's because you havn't delved deep enough into your own moral beliefs. He offered the shitty argument and I fairly paraphased the form.
John Landon Miller lol how? Is that you trying to say I'm drawing an analogy improperly? I didn't draw any analogy. I paraphrased. One more time... try to make an argument. I believe in you.
I'm a theist, but I think Alex, or Cosmic Skeptic, won this argument. I don't believe there is a way to prove objectivity of morality. What I personally do is taking a leap of faith in belief that God and objective morality exist. I think it's the only rational standpoint, and also that Alex is honest when he disbands the idea of objective morality, because most atheists want to disband religion but to keep objectivity of moral values, which is in my opinion quite contradictory. Now, the problem with disbanding objectivity of morality is that no one can actually live that way, because you must forgo all the "oughts" you use in everyday life, and I have yet to witness to a man who is capable of doing that. For example, Alex has stated as the goal of his action complete separation of Church and State. Now, if there is no objective value of living in secular society as opposed to theocracy (except our own interests), why would anybody rationally act upon realizing such a goal? I don't think more secularism in Britain (a pretty secular country) would change his personal life in any way. Also, I don't agree with his 1. video on morality, claiming that it's subjective even if God exists. But that should be a topic of it's own in another debate.
Then you maybe should re watch the debate, or go through arguments for objective morality. CS has troubles understanding what are intuitions and also, as some other people noticed, conflates ontology with epistemology.
thus far i've only watched the 1st half. but alex, what i really wish you would have said is that: any argument for moral objectivism relies at some point on some premise that is only subjectively true. And that it doesn't matter if everyone in the world feels the subjective truth of this premise with every fiber of their being, that doesn't make it objective and it doesn't mean that there's some objective truth that we're tapping into.
I think what he's saying is, don't confuse you trying to subjectify the argument, by being "nice" to me. You've already gone very far in showing how subjective your argument is..
Pain can be seen as good simply because it is evidence that we are alive also for weight lifters specific types of pain shows development in muscles. Unfortunately this being subjective does mean morals or subjective because specifically well- defined morals are not subjective or objective if there's specific enough as detailed in my murder versus genocide comment
1:18:59 if we all can come to the conclusion that the victim’s liberty is stronger than the rapists, then why can’t we say it’s objectively stronger if that’s the best explanation?
I guess my biggest problem with people who believe in God work backwards from what I think is the proper way to think about reality and/or find the truth. With people who believe in God, they act like lawyers - gathering evidence that fits with their case and throwing out evidence that doesn't. They use words as weapons, rather than as a means to communicate (ie using words to place something in a hole, or saying that what they're talking about simply cannot apply to what it applies to because it's in a different category, when it's not). However, the contrast to this would be the scientist mindset, which is NOT natural. There has been a lot of research on this topic, showing how most people are intuitively lawyers rather than intuitively scientists. A scientist does not have an objective, they do not work backwards from their conclusion like a lawyer would (my client is innocent, therefore I must ignore all evidence that proves he's guilty). A scientist only cares about what is true. That's why they take up the position of a skeptic, where you should not believe in the affirmative ANYTHING that is not justified. A scientist also recognizes the degrees to which we can know something is true or not. They can tell the difference between a hypothesis and a scientific theory. They have a hierarchy when it comes to what counts as evidence (authority/assertions, hearsay and one person's senses being at the bottom of that hierarchy). So, long post but again the thing that annoys me is that most religious people / people who believe in a specific God act in the opposite way that I think people should act if they care about the truth. It's funny, because these people act like scientists when they look at the other 99.9999% of religions people have believed in...
John Snow There are also lawyers who do prosecution, who start from the baseline of guilt. Working from there, I think your analogy falls apart for a few reasons. There are several things we believe that are not proven to be true, you cannot for instance prove there are other minds than your own, or that the external universe is real apart from your conscious experience. Yet there are hardly any solipsist. (See philosophy, problems of skepticism) Lastly you think that scientist don’t fudge there data or “evidence” to fit, there theories....they are human too, you should look up some science fraud cases, P hacking is a good search, as well as the reproducibility problem which states that scientist polled admit that 70% of the time they were not able to reproduce others experiments, and 50% of the time there own experiments. Lastly, there are several atheist converts who started ground up to get to theism, there are currently plenty of scientist who believe in God, so I mean this much ought to tell you that you have assumptions about what a scientist is that have nothing to do with being a scientist, science is actually and only a methodology, hypothesis, experiment, observation and repeat. What your advocating for is scientism, which is in sort a quasi religion of the methodology, so i would say on close examination, theist and atheist are not that dissimilar.
"I feel like objective morality exists, therefore it exists; I can't define it, I can't explain it, so I'm unable to show how it would be grounded in reality, so it's not grounded in reality, so it's magic, therefore god." why even talk to those people
IP seems extremely well read and knowledgeable, yet unable to explain himself very well. He namedrops as if that's good enough. To be clear, I'm quite certain that he knows much more about all of this than I do.
Name dropping is for the stupid. If you can explain the concept you only give credit. If you name drop you are telling everyone you don't actually understand the concept.
Alex is a splendid communicator and deserves all the success he is getting with this channel. He genuinely attempts to see 'the other sides point' and then argues in an honest way to illuminate the problems with any argument. Credit to the other lad but he was quite weak here. Although saying that he was trying to argue that morality is objective, so must 'be grounded in' something external to living organisms. Oh it's that God fella... We really should be past this. It's a damn useful fictional construct though the old morality thing.
I haven't watched the video yet, but here's my question. Since you don't believe in free will, why do you even care about morality. Since accountability is the primary factor in wrongdoing, how can anything be immoral anyway.
52:00 This is also MY argument about Objectivity. Universal Subjective Reality, isn't necessarily Objective. But under some definitions of Objectivism, "In philosophy, objectivity is the concept of truth independent from individual subjectivity (bias caused by one's perception, emotions, or imagination)." So if 5 of 5 people have a shared Delusion....that means that they have statistically realized that the Delusion was in fact, Objective Reality. This is my objection to this definition.
18:30 That thought is man made and subjective, why does he accept Descartes cogito as being objectively true? Because philosophy proves that thought can be objective. Likewise I just thought of a paradox, Alex seems to say let’s be skeptical of everything, and by sheer virtue of any doubt one is credible with doubting a thing. Should we then be skeptical and doubting of this line of skepticism?
Sure, but i'd advocate for us to create precedents that most effectively represent reality for us, and change things to help ourselves as a group. You can be skeptical of skepticism if you want to, but that doesn't mean you are saying skepticism is wrong. That is the good thing about skepticism. It is a doubt at something being 100% true under all circumstances.
Frank Lance Skepticism has its uses, absolutely agree, however as of late it seems to be used only down a one way street. Mainly by the anti-theist, but given this line of skepticism i can apply it virtually anywhere, so I’m skeptical of the claim there is no God. Just as some are skeptical there is one. Both forms are rational skepticisms that diverge from there.
A question I find interesting is: Did morality exist before God? This may sound strange but I think it's quite interesting. If morality didn't exist before God, then how can God be a good being? By what standard is he “good“? If God is all powerful and created morality, he basically thought about his definition of right and wrong, then decided what he thinks is right and decided to act that way. In that case morality isn't objective. If morality however exists outside of God, so that it's truly objective, then God has no influence on it and thus isn't all powerful. Sorry for possible spelling mistakes, english is not my first language. If there is a problem with that thought please correct me.
But that still doesn't answer the question if morality exists outside of God or am I wrong? If God was the first thing that ever existed, but morality exists outside of him, them morality is objective and God not allmighty. If God has power over morality, that means he decides what is good or bad, therefore being able to chose what has to be good in order for him to be good. In that case God is allmighty, but morality not objective.
Clade Starfish Oh, ok. I'm still struggling to formulate my thought properly though. I know what I mean, but I don't know how to put it to text. Maybe that would make it clear if my argument is valid or full of fallacies
digitalquartergod This is a *great* question. But knowing theist, the answer they'll give you is "God IS Good", and anything bad is just the "Separation" of god, so its not with god. Now we can argue that if such god is the pinnacle of good, then he can *only* be capable of good (because good can't be bad, its contradiction), and if he can only do good, he can't do bad, therefore he can't do everything and isn't all powerful. And by this premise, god would have to be only capable of creating good things. So there has to be some explanations of Satan, viruses, natural atrocities, and bad people.
Christopher Sterling Wasn't one explanation involving free will? Like “in order to be truely free, it has to be possivle for us to choose between good and evil. Therefore evil has to exist in order for our will to be free“
digitalquartergod "Wasn't one explanation involving free will? Like “in order to be truly free, it has to be possible for us to choose between good and evil. Therefore evil has to exist in order for our will to be free“" Load of BS. Natural Atrocities such as tornadoes happens by this nature that "God" designed. If god is the pinnacle of good, this is impossible. Not to mention we can be all good and all free, since such an all good, all free, and all powerful god supposely exist and we were created in his image at the very least. But here's the thing a something I would like to share with you. There a shower thought about if there is no law, there wouldn't be no crime. Now think about that for a minute. If you think on it hard enough, you'll realize that if god didn't made any rules, there would be no sin. So in a sense, god created sin, because he created rules for us to follow. And since god created sin, and created the punishment for sin, and admittedly knew that no one can fulfill the criteria of entering heaven (A criteria that, again, he created in the first place), then god designed a system to sent people to hell from the very beginning. And if theist start to say that morality is not created, but it is "God's Nature", use this rebuttal and ask, Why do I need to be punish for sin? Which aspect of *morality* demands that I pay for my bad deeds and rewarded for the good ones? Is it absolutely necessary and justifiable for me to suffer endlessly in a pit of fire for sins on earth? Isn't burning me bad? Isn't burning me objectively bad? Can you justify burning me because of a past action you deemed bad? If yes, they just admitted morality is subjectively because it is circumstantial, and dependent of the situation. And since god created the conditions for me to suffer, he is also at fault. If no, then god does not has the right to do bad to me, even if I myself did bad things. But hey at least they're being kinda consistent.
I understand what IP is trying to get, but he doesn’t understand that the things which we take for granted are often the things which need to be questioned the most.
i feel like the other guy (not alex) contradicts himself when he is saying that he can trust his senses but then goes on to say that if they had their memories wiped, they would intuitively think the earth is flat just looking out and seeing the ocean. He literally proved Alex right. When Alex says he can't trust his senses, so he takes nothing for granted, he is basing that off history. We have used our eyes to observe things that we thought were true, but ended up not being true. ie: we thought the earth was flat because we couldn't see the curvature of the Earth. He proves Alex right. The senses can't be trusted and therefore skeptics doubt everything.
15:00 No matter what anyone "thinks" about it, cutting off Sam Harris' head is bad for him. Morality is just the study of how certain things that we can do in society are bad or good for other people.
It seems obvious to me, that for the "Falling through the ice" scenario, the escapee's actions were predicated upon the expectation that the guard would not be a complete arse by arresting the arrest, thus effectively killing his rescuer.
Selflessness met by possible selfishness. The prisoner is trying to survive and acts to save a life, the guard is performing a task, possibly knowing the person will be executed. We also can query in that if the guard had let the prisoner go would he have been executed as well?
33:33 So... he's saying that morality manifest objectively (aka we feel strongly about it) therefore it's true; and cullinary taste andsense of colour does not manifest objectively (i.e. the first we feel less attached to, the second we recognize from eperiences can be mistaken, think optical illusions) therefore they are not true in the objective sense? Wow, okay, that's very weak sauce.
*+John Landon Miller* That makes even less sense to me! I can often have very mixed feelings about what moral judgement/action I think is best suited for a given situation while still being ancored in reality, e.g.: what am I do do about Yemen; how long ought I to shower; how soon should I stand up in the train when I see an old lady walking by; etc.? Whereas my 'carnal' experiences are quite clear: I am quite sure when I'm actually sexually aroused. The moral question of "what then" is more difficul: may I look, stare; how long; what if I'm in a monogamous relationship; etc.? I can feel hunger, quite clearly too, but what to do? Eat now, wait a but for something 'better'; wait for someone else? I feel social and emotional discomfort with someone else's reaction...ought I to act 'nobly' and ignore; cuss them out hoping that they'll think twice doing that in the future, protecting me from further harm as well as making me feel more relieved than if I was polite; should I be polite instead, making it a better experience for them, at the cost of mine, but perhaps at the benefit of a third who may recieve more curtious behaviour in the future? All that said... and still.. whether those feelings actually point to an actual objective there there...is not at all clear.
*+John Landon Miller* I'd agree. Therefore, you need a basis to assert these first principles from, if you don't have a good basis for assuming those, they will not be more than mere [inter]subjective.
Objective morality is the claim that right and wrong are fixed, apart from subjective preference. It’s not making the claim that morality is like a lamp shade or a moon revolving a planet in the classical definition of objective.
Perhaps some of the confusion lies in definitions; moral relativity (the ignorance of generally accepted norms of human civilization) is not the same as the fact that morals are accepted relative to the type of fragile/emotional-laden being that we are. Moral "intuition" is more like our evolved social instincts, which are most responsible for shaping our accepted norms. Theists seem to get hung-up on the idea/ delusion that their intuitions are universal divine commands. Probably somewhat related to their discomfort with evolution itself.
I'm an atheist and I think morality as such is objective. Certain moral values change, but inherent morality is as objective as anything else which is a result of evolution. As objective as a human hand, or an eye. It's a function of empathy and empathy is a function of survival instinct in a social species such as humans (and not only humans). I think the argument often attempted by hardcore moral relativists which essentially boils down to: anything that didn't exist before and independently of humans (by humans they usually mean Homo Sapiens) is not objective, is fundamentally and factually wrong. As we now know animals way older than modern humans show at the very least some proto morality and the universe itself is in constant change. In my opinion, the only way to deny the objectivity of morality is to deny the evolution and even deny the existence of objective reality.
Grace Less No, it wouldn't. As I wrote - morality, inherent morality is as objective as an eye, while specific moral values can vary relative to cultural influence. Still...even with that said, your example is weak. It only says that humans have had to make hard moral choices throughout history. That's it. And? Do you think that those Eskimos didn't feel bad about what they were doing? That they were incapable of empathy?? Or, to put it in more relatable terms: say you're a soldier on the frontlines, or you get attacked and you end up in a kill or be killed situation. Of course, you're either going to flee, or fight to the death. That doesn't mean that you'll turn into a psychopath, or that you'll feel good if you kill another person. Why do you think ptsd is so widespread among the veterans? Usually it's even more about what they did, or seen done than what's been done to them.
Grace Less Of course the feelings come into it if the basis for inherent morality is empathy as science suggests. The morality as such is a feeling, it isn't something you can touch. Feelings btw are also a natural, evolved brain functions and guess what? They are universal across cultures, even across species at some basic level. Fear, sexual desire, disgust, affection etc. is something we all feel. Same with empathy and morality as its its function. That's the inherent morality I'm talking about. Now due to brain plasticity, of course that some of those things will vary and even change from culture to culture. That doesn't mean that the inherent ability to feel and be moral is not objective. Why is that so hard to understand? How do you even know that leaving babies to die was considered "morally right"? It seems that it was a matter of sacrificing the few so that the rest would survive. Do you think they would've been doing that if they had any other choice? Why aren't they doing it now then? Which leads me to the golden rule and it is older than any religion. Why do you think that is exactly? As people are getting rid of irrational beliefs, it turns out that we are going back to the most basic rules inherent in all of us basically saying: treat others as you'd want to be treated. And that's happening universally, all over the globe. How is that not objective? Even if morality, or the biological structure of the eye keep on changing in some unforeseen ways, it's only the proof that evolution is still going on. Which it is. Again, that doesn't make evolution subjective. It is a process affected by the exact same, *objective* laws of physics as everything else in the universe. Btw...universe is also evolving. There was a time in the history of the universe when there were no stars. Existing stars are also changing, with some of them becoming red giants, some neutron stars, some exploding and turning into black holes...etc. So, according to your "logic" anything that changes, is subjective? Stars and the universe itself are subjective too, eh?
Grace Less Btw...killing babies is not morally ok and it never was as far as science and the most ancient history tell us. Name one society in which killing babies was the rule, not an exception. The fact that people in the past, or today for that matter sometimes had to do a morally wrong thing in order for their tribe to survive, doesn't make morality subjective. Quite the opposite. It's the exception proving the rule. And the rule is - survival. Babies are kind of important for survival, no?
Grace Less No...what you are describing is not subjectivity, as I explained. And moral relativism is unpopular because moral relativists have bad arguments. Hitchens said it best: why do you feel more empathy when you see a pregnant woman being beaten up as compared to a guy being beaten up? You feel empathy in both cases, but in case two, everyone across cultures will feel more empathy.
Grace Less The inherent ability to be moral is morality as such. I have repeated that now three times. Should I write AS SUCH in order for you to comprehend the emphasis and the point there? It's not any special set of moral norms as defined per any given culture that we're talking about here. That would be the scientific part. And if you don't believe me, there are plenty of social animals showing proto morality. It's undeniable. Where exactly is your problem with that? The history part confirms this empirically too. I asked you to name one society in history (or you can use present day for all I care) where killing babies was a norm. Instead you wrote a whole wall of meaningless text. I don't think it's me imitating Jordan Peterson here. I live on planet Earth. You?
I guess my problem with his argument about the moral ideal is that morality seems to be highly dependent on the situation. How can there be a moral ideal when morality itself seems to be highly variable? Is this moral ideal just the summation of every possible situation with the best moral option for each one? If so, there are infinite situations that could occur, each one with a specific moral best. Then if you want to go down the rabbit hole even more, each situation webs out and affects other moral situations directly or indirectly. So maybe the moral best in one given situation turns out to be not so moral given the bigger picture. What is the guideline to determining what is the most moral option in any given situation? Something considered moral in one case could be completely immoral in another. Not all moral questions are easy and intuitive.
One point to note with the evolution of a sense of what is moral, specifically that bit about the prison guard, is that evolution doesn't work in absolutes. It seems true that the sense of a moral good in saving the guard didn't improve the escapees fitness, but that doesn't say anything about the fitness boost having that sense confers upon the population overall. I think it's Dawkins who likes to point out that moths fly into flames. By Michael's argument, evolution should have prepared the moth to not fly into flames, but in reality that behavior is just a byproduct of the fitness enhancement navigating by the moon grants. Little stationary fires dont really exist in nature, so the moth had no preparation for them. Likewise, prisons and guards--large societies in general--didnt exist when our moral sense evolved, so it couldn't prepare the escapee for that situation specifically. It could be that his sense of the value of human life overrode other intuitions, or that in the wild there really would be a fitness boost to saving the guy who was chasing you (perhaps you have them in your power and can convince them to your benefit after doing the selfless thing for them--societies have tended to have a concept of blood debts after all).
This discussion leaves me frustrated upon later reflection. I commend Cameron and Michael for their amiability, and enjoyed the discussion, however it seems to me that no real argument for objective morality was put forwards other than ‘we intuitively feel it’s objective, and so you have to prove why my intuition is wrong’. That seems to me an unfair shifting of the burden of proof.
Still, there were some interesting points, such as that regarding how a person can justify scientific objectivity if they don’t grant moral objectivity (something I’d like to clarify in a blog post now that I have thought about it properly), and I’m glad we were able to discuss them.
I’ve seen a few people say that I’m confusing moral ontology with moral epistemology. I can see how this confusion may have arisen, but I assure you that I do not believe that epistemological moral scepticism should lead to ontological moral scepticism. I actually think my trying to explain this distinction is what has caused some people to feel I unfairly connect them. Again, I hope to clarify this soon in a blog post.
Still, let me know what you thought.
CosmicSkeptic shhhhh no spoilers I have like 2 hours left
CosmicSkeptic this was so unbelievably one sided. The host had an obvious bias.
Apologetic "arguments" are merely word games designed to confuse you, and to help theists avoid facing the fact that their arguments are moral relativity and opinion.
Catrina teh gamer kitteh I agree
CosmicSkeptic I commend you for keeping your cool amidst these broken arguments. Keep doing what you do. Loving your content!
Thanks for posting! Really enjoyed the conversation.
The "intuition" is based on WELL-BEING. We all strive for our own well-being and the well-being of others. If we didn't we wouldn't be here anymore. It's a product of evolution. Since we care about well-being we can THEN make objective moral decisions. Mutilation is "WRONG" b/c it's against well-being. Murder is "WRONG" b/c it's against well-being. But the universe doesn't give a shit about well-being. The universe doesn't care about murder or mutilation. That's why we struggle to survive on this tiny little planet. Life is rare b/c the universe doesn't care.
There is no God, and there is no immortality. which means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose, so why are you giving value to a chemical accident without any inadequate basis?
Knowing Christianity, Critiquing Islam another victim of the Bertrand Russell koolaid
Knowing Christianity, Critiquing Islam Immortality on its own doesn't give life value or purpose.
For future podcasts I'd be interested if the parties had more time to think about and properly word their arguments. Maybe for a couple weeks before the podcast/video the two parties could be sent the questions in writing and then write their responses back and forth daily. This would give both of them more time to think about how to approach things and let them get to their point within a reasonable word limit. Then on the actual video day these written responses could simply be read.
I’ve often heard this argument that if something is naturally intuitive that it must be true. It seems that unless you take the position that every intuition is always accurate, then you need to justify the claim that this particular intuition regarding morality is accurate.
It can be supported, there is neurological research about where morals come from in our own brains, and our theory of mind, etc.
@@Preservestlandry that doesn’t make it objective.
In fact, it shows that it is subjective. It requires a specific pathway in the brain to be true.
I love you man, but you sounded like Cosmic strawman rather than Cosmic skeptic
hahahaha, that is a good one, I am gonna plagiarized your statement as I heard on Rationality Drools instead of Rationality Rules
@demigodzilla too much Rationality Drools is bad for mental health
demigodzilla not a rational thinker I presume your a atheist he’s determined to think the way he thinks just like you are or do you believe in free will
@demigodzilla Hard to "believe" 😉 (gotta get it right when shooting down fools)
There's a big difference between a typo or auto-correct mistake and a rambling, incoherent mess.😂
Sadly CS wasn't in top shape for this debate. He was cornered many times by IP and he showed a lack of understanding of basic moral philosophy as LogosTheos pointed out in the comments.
I would like a debate Rationality Rules vs Inspiringphilosophy
@@pepedestroyer5974 cosmic skeptic is much smarter than RR
@dar'man beskar Ordo rightly said. But truth has always existed. If you search, you will find it... And also truth is not subjective
@dar'man beskar Ordo was bracing myself for an answer like "no, truth is subjective", but, LOL i was wrong. We can counter arguments like that by asking them- is it objectively true that truth is subjective? If subjective truth is true for all, the argument has failed terribly there.
@dar'man beskar Ordo _"our brains are not wired for truth but for survival."_
Usually, knowing truth is beneficial to survival.
I thought it was funny to hear a reference to philosopher Robert Boyd. He was my Philosophy of Science professor at Cornell many years ago. He forgot to show up for the final exam. We all got an incomplete and he gave us a takehome exam to complete during Christmas Break instead. We were all pretty mad at him.
Physics and Philosophy go on a date at the Morality bar. It's awkward.
Morality can't be objective because it depends on the existence of moral agents in the first place. If life were to never have evolved, and this pocket of the universe we call Earth were nothing but a barren wasteland, how could you possibly have the notion that, for example, stealing, killing, and raping is morally wrong? The very concept of these acts cannot exist in a scenario without the existence of life. Whereas the laws of physics and mathematics are truths grounded in the universe independent of our existence (e.g. massive objects are gravitationally attracted to other massive objects), morality is completely dependent on our existence and our subjective experiences of how we feel we should act. For this reason, although we can live as though morality is objective since many of the moral values upheld by the majority of humanity are the same, morality is not, in itself, objective.
SoloStudios 🤔👏🏽
SoloStudios you're pressuposing the not existence of God. I agree that If God doesn't exists then there are not sufficient ressons to think human life has value. And from It follows that morality wouldnt be objective
Yan Barros Have u seen the video of cosmicskeptic where he argues that " morality cant be objective even if God exists" its pretty convincing you should check it out
SoloStudios
Philosophy proves there can be objective validity to thought alone.
It’s a non sequitur to assume that only space time objects can be objectively true.
Morality as defined by what is good or evil to do to ones neighbor is an objective domain.
Just because it is predicated on thought alone doesn’t prove it can’t be objective.
After all everything you consider to be objective is predicated on qualia.
And if all humans are wiped out by themselves (WW III) and all that remains is wild animals, is morality still objective? Animals will kill and sacrifice eachother in order to survive, considered immoral for humans.
What if humanity evolved in such a way, so that the children have to rip out the hearts of their mother at age 15 and eat it (because it contains a special substance) in order to survive, would it still be immoral for a child to rip their mothers heart out? No, because then it becomes a means to survive and grow old.
What is moral depends on the individual, on the species, on the circumstances, on a virtually endless amount of factors. Is it moral to kill 50 out of 100 ppl? Normally it isn't, but it becomes morally acceptable if there is a limited amount of food and water and that if you don't kill 50, all 100 will die. Subjective asf.
Whew, this must have been exhausting. I agree that it's frustrating i.e. the argument of 'it just feels like morality is objective'. The same goes for free will and determinism I suppose. Well argued, though.
"I intuit therefore I'm right"
That wasn't what IP was claiming at all...
@@Jaryism They said well everyone intuitively feels this so disprove me.
@Adithya Brijesh The problem with using intuition is I could say "I intuit that the world is flat"
It can be used to come to false conclusions, so is not reliable
@Adithya Brijesh Everyone used to intuit the world is flat. Was the world flat?
@Adithya Brijesh Thats an interesting question. I'm not sure how you figure it out, I guess I'd just say I don't know.
Jordan Peterson makes these arguments that there is some kind of objective "right" or "wrong" rooted in nature itself. His arguments have been interesting. I don't know if they're actually correct though. I would love to see Alex O Connor and Jordan Peterson talk to one another. Both intelligent minds.
I haven't heard the arguments Jordan makes. I do think I lean towards that idea though. Ethics and Morals are abstractions of sentient minds. As such there are emergant interactions that fall under what would be a consistant scale that we may not be able to identify all the elements for, but would be objectively moral. The issue is the actions are contextual so our understanding in situations requires knowledge we can not hold due to infinite variables and extended time frame consequences.
So for example we can not know all possible branches of realities based on perfect moral decision making. We can posit that one line may exist. But that would mean our chances to be perfectly moral at any time are effectively zero.
I do think that there is a morality set of principles that can represent a model close to that morality. This would have to be based on responsibilities and obligations of individuals to themselves, dependents, other individuals and continuing to other kinds of life. There appears for example to be responsibility and obligations as being the controlling species of all the world's resources. Once you get to the top after all it only can leed to a population collapse of others and then yourself. That in itself is a regulatory functionary in the locality of Earth. The power dynamic means that as a species we are our biggest known living threat. Barring the rise of another super virus.
Evolutionary morality starts with an instinct to not harm the herd. The rest is just where society draws to line on each topic.
@@Nick-Nasti i agree
What a lot of Waffle.Round and round in circle's. Can't believe I listened to this for over two hours.!
You are very brave for putting this on your channel
It's not 'brave' to post a video of him kicking IP's butt.
All his opponent managed to present is "morality is objective because it feels like it's objective". This is a horrible failure of an argument. And I want to be persuaded by objective morality claim. There're just no good argument for it, at least not in this discussion.
No, it's called being honest and open if you post a debate no matter the result.
@@HEL9000 His point is, we also view the physical world in the same way. We say: "The world around us is objective, because it feels like its objective." There is nothing we can know about the world, if we dont first accept what we "feel" is true, is true. I can attack you saying "the sky is blue" by saying - you need to prove it, its not enough that I see it and you see it. We just dont know, because actually, its all just a feeling in our head telling us the sky is blue.
@@Pellaeon159 with sky and with most physical objects there is a sufficient explanation of why they are the way they are. Also, two people are able to reach a consensus on the physical object. By looking at the sky and seeing its color, by measuring wavelength of light, by understanding properties of atmosphere which makes light scatter in a particular way and give the sky its color. While in its core a distinction between our experiences of outside world and abstract phenomenon like beauty might be arbitrary, I draw a line of objectivity on independence from the observer. If nobody is there to observe the sky, the sky still emits the same light wavelength and the atmosphere still has the same properties, so the color of sky did not change. Without an observer the concept of morality has no sense. If some source of morals will ever be discovered I can say that it is objective. But so far I can say with certainty, morals are not grounded in any Gods of organised religions, certainly not in Christian God. Maybe it is grounded in deistic God, maybe in natural phenomenon. But it is yet to be demonstrated and therefore there's no benefit in assuming it.
Consensus does not equal objectivity. You can have _collective_ morality without it being _objective_ morality.
"Our group decided by consensus that circumcision is wrong and unnecessarily cruel to a newborn, so we will act to prevent it."
"Our group has a god that demands circumcision, and we believe God's commands are good, so we will act to enforce it."
If two groups could conceivably disagree that something is moral, as in the case of circumcision, no matter the size of each opposing group, then clearly morality is not objective. It is only the dominant opinion that determines what is moral for a group, and law (both religious and secular) is only a reflection of that dominant view. Slavery was "moral" until it was no longer the dominant view that it was moral.
The Mormon Informant so what about physical objective reality? Is It subjective too? Because It does seem alot like the moral objectivity issue
Yuval Noah Harai calls this collective belief intersubjectivity in his book Sapiens and it’s a really interesting look into how ideas work and spread. I’d recommend it if you haven’t already read it.
Alex covered that at 18:40. "I think, therefore I am." We act as if there is an objective reality, but have to admit that we only _believe_ that it's objective because it is pragmatic and helps us function, not because it can be demonstrated to be true. Morality is the same. We act as if there is an objective morality, but have to admit that we only believe that it's objective because it is pragmatic, not because it can be demonstrated to be true.
Both reality and morality _may be_ objective, but in absence of a means to _demonstrate_ that they are, we can only choose how to interpret these concepts subjectively.
So pretty much majority rules?
That’s a silly way to approach morality, if that were the case then why is the stereotype that all atheist are immoral- not true?
For the atheist to defend there position they adhere to objective morality, for them to condemn God or the religious they adhere to objective morality, the only problem is they don’t believe in objective morality.
_"So pretty much majority rules? That’s a silly way to approach morality."_
That's democracy.
_"For the atheist to defend there position they adhere to objective morality."_
Atheism is nothing more or less than a lack of belief in God. Saying that all atheists make appeals to objective morality ignores all of those who don't in order to make a straw man.
I find it interesting how the majority of the comments here are confident that CS was clearly the more rational one, while the comments on the exact same discussion posted on Capturing Christianity’s channel mostly agree that IP was far more rational. Not really surprising, but I found it amusing.
It might be cool to see a feature on UA-cam where comments are connected, so fx this comment is also on IP's video. That would make more good discussions.
I would say that both arguments were terrible
@@keslauche1779 I came here to see the real experts like you
Yeah me too
The first few times he says moral agents I heard moral asians and was comically confused
I read this literally 5 seconds before he said this lol
I think I'll have to go to university myself to understand everything you're saying......
And is blue your favourite colour?
Did morality exist before humans did?
Judging from the behaviour of some animals one would have to assume yes. It actually seems that certain animals have some sort of moral code. Which again isn't universal within the species, so...
Depends on how you defines morality..Matter of fact, is things only good or bad when it involves matter that is alive? Would it be bad for a meteor to destroy an empty planet? Why?
You're projecting human notions of morality on to animals. Before we existed, what objective moral code existed? You're making the presumption whatever we perceive to be moral exists outside of time and space, so that even if we never came into being animals could be said to be making moral or immoral actions. There's no reason to believe this.
Paul Julian yes
Morality is a concept. It's defined by actions and consequences. If I shoot someone who is already dead, but I did not know they were dead, have I acted immorally? In a hypothetical Judo-Christian's God's eyes, yes. In reality, who's to say? My actions have caused no harm. I have not killed anyone.
Mike really needs to learn how to debate without constantly reading from his notes and instead should try to engage directly with his interlocutor's statements.
The only premise of IP's argument that is even partly true is the first - that morality is a rational enterprise - because it is in part. But his second two are just completely baseless. There is no evidence that objective morality exists, and the next is that there has to be a single rational agent to act as a foundation for morality. That MIGHT be true is premise two is true. And his premise that the moral problems and disagreements are "too much" for us to assume a human foundation is again baseless unless we accept the premise of objective morality existing. The premises of his argument are so poor that the argument need not even be heard to know it sucks.
I think objective morality exists, without a single agent or God. That being, some actions are objectively good or bad for the world. And, for example, rape is objectively immoral. And the popular belief, believing people are going -- wanting them -- to burn in hell forever is not just immoral but amoral.
+Retro Workshop
I tend to agree, but we have to realize that to the philosophical purist, it is not. Because our assessment of the objective wrong comes from subjective values. But these are values common to almost all but sociopaths, and religious/cultural fanatics. For example the case in 2002, where 30-year-old Mukhtaran Bibi was gang raped on the orders of the village council as an "honour rape" after allegations that her 12-year-old brother had had sexual relations with a woman from a higher caste. Decisions about how people "should" act (morality) is always based on goals and values. If we can find common goals and values we can develop "objective" moral systems based on those - but they are only objective in relation to the goals and values. I suspect that that village council would have seen letting the "Defiling" of the higher caste woman go unavenged (which apparently, to them, requires "defiling" a female of the boys house in retribution) as a greater evil than the gang rape.
@@pdoylemi Yes and no. Yes, except that these are not values common to all. Anthropologists have shown that moral values differ widely from culture to culture across time and space. And you give a good example of this yourself. But dismissing a view that does not confirm with your (or my) own cultural set of values as merely the opinion of religious/cultural fanatics is a form of special pleading. If a culture expresses what you would call a form of religious/cultural fanaticism, that doesn't make it any less a part of their culture or a bearer of their cultural values. Moral values are not cultural except when they conflict with my set of cultural values. I like your general approach, and have tried to square it with myself, but I think it has problems.
I have an anthropological perspective. I look at what cultures actually believe. That makes it quite hard to determine what morality means, because not all cultures even have a concept of morality, or think of moral values in the same way, or use the same moral language that we do. There are cultures, for instance, that have no words for ought or should, nor is it possible in many of them for any individual to be considered wrong in anything they say or do. In these cultures, values are upheld by sophisticated forms of ritual, not by moral language. There are other cultures that regard "justice" as absurd. How, they say, can you put something right that has already gone wrong. These cultures do not aim to act justly, but to seek reconciliation and restore social harmony, and that may mean a victim goes unrecompensed, or a perpetrator goes unpunished. Are these forms of morality as we understand the word or are they some other form of evaluation?
"Objective" is an ambiguous word. It can mean, independent of human wishes, desires, actions, etc, or it can just mean, not subject to the opinion, wish, feeling, etc of a (subjective) individual. In the second sense, morality can be called objective because you can objectively describe the broad moral beliefs of a particular culture. But though individuals function within the framework of beliefs set by their experience of their own culture, there is room for individual disagreement. In this sense there is also a subjective element to morality. I think the only thing you can say is that morality is not objective in the first 'absolute' sense - unless, of course someone can demonstrate the existence of a god, and so far that's not on the radar.
I'd finally add that I think morality has a strong congitive element and in that sense it is a rational enterprise, but I'd also say that it is underpinned biologically by our evolved characteristics as human hyper-cooperators. That latter explains why, though moral values differ from society to society, they do not differ randomly. Sorry for the treatise. Got carried away.
@@richardfield6801
I have to disagree. When debating the religious, they ALWAYS turn to things like murder or child rape - which are nearly universally condemned rather than ideas like killing gays. Nor is saying. "you are wrong, and here is why", special pleading. Special pleading is basically when someone says, "Yes you are right most of the time, but not when my favorite belief is involved!" An example is those who argue that for intelligence to exist there had to be an intelligent creator, but that creator's intelligence did NOT require an intelligent creator. It can ONLY be called special pleading to the extent that I think that actual, demonstrable harm, or a great risk of that is the basis of right and wrong.
And objective is not an ambiguous word. It is very clear. If I throw you out of an airplane at 50,000 feet, you are going to die - it is not a matter of opinion.
But you are correct - morality, which IS a bit ambiguous can simply be defined by culture - that is so obvious it is ridiculous - but it is not objective unless they define the GOALS of that in some demonstrable way. If I think magic shit piranhas will eat me alive if I don't kill everyone who doesn't believe in them, and so does everyone else in my culture, that is not objective.
But I can demonstrate to any sane person the harm of doing things I think are immoral. So if we accept that causing unnecessary harm is bad, we can an objective standard . Of course evaluating these things is always imperfect, but the standard is objective. The shit piranha standard is subjective and only applies to that culture unless they can demonstrate that shit piranhas will eat non-believers.
But I agree that morality is rooted in the biological urge for species survival. That's why it is "moral" for mother tortoises to bury their babies in the sand, and let a few survive, or for most fish species to merely create millions of eggs of which most will die, and not care for them.
@@pdoylemi Hi Pat.
Yes, the word 'objective' is ambiguous, because it has (at least) two distinct meanings. Objective can refer either to 1. a fact that is independent of the wishes, opinions, assessments etc of human beings ('absolute' objectivity.), and 2. a fact that is independent of the subjective wishes, opinions, assessments, etc of a single individual ('social' objectivity.) These two meanings are distinct because it is possible for facts to be independent of the wishes, feelings, opinions, assessments of an individual but not those of humanity as a whole. Scientific claims are of this second kind.
I argued that morality is a social product, and you seemed to agree. That means it can't be objective in an absolute sense, but for any given society it has an objective existence in the relative sense, since it is not dependent on the subjective views of an individual. And it is objective in this sense whether or not those moral values have defined or definable "goals".
What "the religious always turn to" doesn't determine what is true or false or reasonable to believe. So I am not sure what to make of your opening comment. Murder and child rape are morally wrong in your society, because the vast majority of people in your society believe so, and that judgement is enshrined in its public attitudes and consciousness and in its legal system, which always has a powerful influence on moral perceptions.
I agree with you that child rape and murder are *harmful* but until you can show objectively that "harm" is what determines morality in your (or some other) society, then you are not going to get very far. Your claim is not borne out by an investigation of morality in actual societies. The moral values of a society are often determined not just by considerations of harm but by sectional interests and hierarchies of power.
Yes the example you give in your post above is a classic case of a special pleading fallacy. A special pleading fallacy occurs if you set out a general rule but then try to make a special exception to it for a particular purpose, such as justifying a case you are trying to make. If a society other than your own holds moral values you don't approve of because - presumably - they contradict your subjective doctrine of 'harm', that does not mean you can dismiss them as aberrant because, for instance, you believe they are motivated by cultural/religious fanaticism in that society. Until you can show *objectively* that morality is based *solely* on considerations of "harm" then you have no grounds for claiming they are non-moral.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with you pointing out that certain practices are harmful, but you have yet to show this is identical to their being immoral. If you are proposing a normative definition of morality that's OK; but if so, that doesn't answer the theist's objection.
It is objectively true that after one hour this becomes a waste of time. It does rise to the level of immorality but I am wasting my time and I am deciding to exercise my free will to go for a run.
23 minutes in, and I can already hazard a guess that this won't go anywhere. One side starts with the assumption that their intuitions are bedrock, and a moral condemnation of anyone who disagrees, then ends by shifting the burden of proof so that his opponent must provide proof positive against his baseless assumptions before he's willing to examine the topic in any detail. This is the mark of unreason. All we can do in the face of it is present better arguments in the hopes that cognitive dissonance eventually erodes their willingness to hold to easy oversimplified answers.
I hope you stuck to your guns, and argued honestly, Alex. I'll have to finish watching this one later tonight, when I have more time on my hands.
well, it was a good discussion, even if some of the arguments were frustrating. the guy on the moral realist side concedes that he can't prove his point, but insists that we should simply assume his position, even when a perfectly reasonable alternative is offered. Well, at least these two were quite amiable. a pleasant listen.
That is not what he said. He said that we should trust our intuitions if we dont have logical defeaters for those intuitions and Cameron had to clarify it for the CS by showing that you cant prove the past actually happened or that external world exists, you have your intuitions that those things are true.
What was frustrating is CS' ignorance and dogmatic skepticism when it came to the things he dont agreed with.
He said our intuition proves objective morality exists until a defeater appears. Therfore a god exists. Intuition is not reason. It is knowing something without knowing why. A skeptic just stops there. It's a bald assertion that is true because everyone believes it. I would rather say I don't know why everyone believes it than to just insert an explanation that has no basis. You could insert any explanation at this point.
They already mentioned how it is not what everybody believes in and it is not knowing something without knowing why.
Are you one of the people who are skeptical that external world exists? That past actually happened?
Wlof25, fair enough, I typed that out a bit hastily. Should have at least tried to relay the argument in a way that the presenter would have agreed with. So, I'll go ahead and address the argument. It's a false analogy. You're correct in suggesting that we can't necessarily prove anything, because it's possible that our senses could be faulty. That was the basis of much of Descartes's work. That said, we do operate as if many conceptions are true, so how do we draw the distinction? Evidence. It's possible that the past popped into existence about 5 seconds ago, but we look at the world and see overwhelming evidence the universe has existed for far longer, therefor, it is unreasonable to claim otherwise, unless of course you're offering new evidence to overturn everything else. Simply feeling that something is true without knowing why falls very short in comparison to our memory of the past, combined with ancient records, combined with objects carbon dated to older than 5 seconds, etc.
Our intuitions are provably false in many cases. If you'd like an example, look up the birthday paradox. With a group of merely 23 people, the probability that a pair will share a birthday reaches 50%; at 70 people it reaches 99.9%. The math works out perfectly well, and yet human intuitions reliably fail here. When human intuitions have been proven false in so many cases, relying on them to determine truth is nothing more than an epistemological failure.
At 30 mins in did IP just change his position from “you need to provide a good reason to doubt” to agreeing with Alex that “you should doubt everything?” Did I misunderstand that?
Yes, you did.
"Morality isnt objective in the literal sense of the word"
"But we all feel something is bad so it must be objectively bad"
"Everyone agreeing doesn't make it objective"
"But we all agree it's objective"
"But everyone agreeing doesn't make it true"
"Well you can't prove I'm wrong so I'm just gonna believe what I feel."
"And... Let's move onto whether god is necessary!"
(Btw, showing that it is impossible to connect any specific moral code to something truely objective does in fact prove that it is not objective. We may still be able to all agree on a moral code based on opinions we all share, but it isn't "objective")
In questions of psychology, epistemology, values, and beliefs, I have found that the terms "objective" and "subjective" continually give trouble. I have finally decided to replace them with something like "that which belongs to the material world of space and time that we seem to share and agree on," and "that which appears to originate in human minds." Difficulties remain, but at least some confusion is avoided. I was led to this problem by reading the late thoughts of Carl Gustav Jung on the reality of the Collective Unconscious. He had difficulty in choosing between the two terms to describe that reality. I recommend “On Human Suffering and the Concept of God” - the psychological basis of religious belief
neomodernistpoetry.blogspot.com/2018/11/on-human-suffering-and-concept-of-god.html
This guys voice cracks more than a hundred boys going through puberty
1:21:40 for what a voice crack sounds like
What a jerky thing to say.
Funny how atheists always seem to attack everything they can find, just not the arguments. IP wins.
@@manne8575 I got no issues addressing arguments, wanna throw one my way and I'll address it directly?
Even If god exists that doesn't mean morals are objective. It's quite possible that along with free choice god gave us the ability to have subjective moralities. It's the same as people saying there's a creator therefore god. If you prove a creator that doesn't then mean it's whatever you god you pray to. Both are massive jumps in logic and are only assumptions.
Max Fritze "even if you prove deism, you have a long way to prove theism" I forgot who said that, but I think it was Hitchens or Dawkins. I could be wrong.
Hitchens bro
Well going along with what Michael suggested, what would be a good reason to think moral realism is not true, or that objective morality is not true?
How do you know that? That is an assumption. If we did not exist to conceptualize gravity, gravity would still exist within the Universe. Moral Ontology is distinct from Moral Epistemology which Michael tries to explain.
Everybody who applies a supposedly "objective morality" to their lives makes them subjective just by evaluating them and deciding to apply it to their lives.
Wow Cosmic Skeptic got destroyed!!!
Lil Phag c'mon man you know that's not the case just be honest
Lil Phag No
Lil Phag the fuck? Do you even..... You are a philosophical disgrace
Yeah, cosmic lost this indefinitely.
John Landon Miller your insane if you think cosmic skeptic won this ridiculous
Is it weird that I am a Christian yet I love watching your videos?!
Same here
No, although I would like to know why. Just curious :)
Same
Samee :)
Nah. Being christian doesn't necessarily mean you don't like logical discussions.
I'm an hour in and feel they need to base their arguments less on feelings and more on logic. Sure you can "feel" something but what one feels isn't always right. not to mention I have some degree of psychopathy and don't even find murder repulsive. I wouldn't do it because of laws and such but otherwise I wouldn't care. so in that way alone its not universally objective. Sure I can agree on a societal standpoint it is likely more beneficial for murder to be illegal but that doesn't make it wrong in my mind.
Morality is simply a descriptive term (adjective?) for a particular type of desire-opinion. Can an adjective even be objective? Morality is a desire-opinion about things, not a thing itself.
Watch how CS turns into Cathy Newman on the last 15 minutes. Soooo you are saying...
IP's only argument is just the rephrasing of "Well a lot of people agree with me so....what do you say about that?"
It's Intuitive, Appeal to Authority, etc etc
Consensus will provide you with the moral position of a group but that does not make it objective. An objective moral truth would have to be universally accepted (not by a group here and now but by everyone, forever, anywhere) and independent of circumstances. I, at least, cannot think of any moral position that would fulfill these requirements.
Ox it could be objective moral, and not have a consensus.
0x777 Exactly, which means Christian morals are subjective because god changed his moral behaviour from Old to New Testament.
pilgrimpater hmmm from where to get your slaves to how to treat them lol not a huge leap was it
Inspiring Philosophy definitely won this one
Mike Jones definitely lost this one.
You can sum up that dude's entire argument as "I'm going to shift MY burden of proof onto you. If you can't disprove it, then I'm justified in believing what I want to believe. Checkmate."
That uh…. That’s kinda how debates work
@@famemontana No it's not.
This is exactly what atheists do, IP is just shifting the burden of proof to make it even.
@@christopherfox3891 No, atheists have no burden of proof as we do not make positive claims. Theists make the positive claims, therefore they have the burden of proof. Theists make the positive claims. They can either meet their burden of proof or they can't. IP clearly can't so this what he is reduced to.
@@Azadum atheists absolutely do have a burden of proof. Atheists absolutely must be naturalists, and materialists. You as an atheist have to proof that naturalism and materialism better explains the origin off the universe. Just because you don’t come out and directly take a positive position, doesn’t make it not implied. I’ll show you just how downright STUPID you sound, “I’m not convinced that the universe came from nothing, or that the universe has eternally existed. I’m a theist by default because I lack belief in materialism and naturalism”. If I were to make that argument you would think, “wow, how stupid of an argument”. Now look at yourself in the mirror.
Crazy to see how much Cameron’s channel has improved in only a year. Keep on the good conversations
Inspiring philosophy is awesome ....One of the few Theist that actually post a challenge for Atheist.
Atheist have the much harder debate here. Morality is much harder to ground In naturalism then it is in supernaturalist.
Not true, most Atheists I've known for the last 30 years of my life are completely void of any rhetorical skill and philosophy like this kid is, he's obviously going to school for philosophy. Most atheists I've debated will throw out "flying spaghetti monster" derrrp arguments then afk
@The Mountain I suggest you open your mind, instead of being so quick to throw in the towel 'cause I can see this triggers you. There is absolutely an overwhelming amount of evidence both scientifically to support creationism, and scientifically to account for Jesus and the resurrection.
I honestly mean this sincerely, you should check out InspiringPhilosophy's channel where he accounts for all the history, ontological, teological arguments, and debunks every single misconception thrown at creationism and Christianity based on lazy skeptics and misinformation... or, don't and stay ignorant. It's up to you, but I was Agnostic several years ago for almost 20 years till I started to get won over by the overwhelming amount of facts that support it, and I'm a Chemist and scientist at heart, but his evolutionary creationist view and Emergent Universe theory/holographic principle along with his neurological studies are all incredibly consistent with the creationist viewpoint.
@@Jaryism When you say "Atheists I've debated", I'm going to assume you mean atheists who crawl around the Internet looking for fights. In other words, trolls who also happen to be atheists, and so love to troll theists. Am I correct?
@@shroomoid9403 No, you're not correct. I'm 35 years old and this goes back to kids I knew half a life time ago in schoo, college years, and aftwards… even addressing "How can you believe in (Christian) God?" it's rarely ever asked sincerely, and the main problem is.... there's just a LOT of stuff for the Theist to "unpack", and most of the time you're in the minority at the table, most of the time it'd be some narcissistic Atheist who'll throw out his "NO.... because I don't think some tyrant God from the clouds/flying spaghetti monster created us 6000 years ago sick and needs to sacrifice himself to himself to save us", Atheists have these absolute lampooned 10 sec strawmen responses that'll get a laugh of everyone at the table. But the problem is it's dishonest at best... that isn't what ANY Christian actually believes, it shows a lack of understanding on what God represents and the whole Messianic prophecy and what Jesus came to fulfill. It's for people who really aren't looking for an honest conversation, just shut you down in front of the rest of their Atheist peers to "win". Hitchens would say "Extroardinary claims require extraordinary evidence.." well, there's an EXTRAORDINARY amount of history, philosophy and theology to unpack and Atheists want a 20 sec Elevator Summary, well you're not going to get it wit that attitude.
My head hurts
BS overload. An increasing problem in Trumplandia.
Try drinking plenty of water.
I suggest removing the damaged body part.
Theistic morality: A individual theist's (subjective) opinion about the (subjective) opinion of ancient barbarians, about the (subjective) opinion of an imagined being, written in sketchy ancient texts. Theistic morality is merely multilayered subjectivity. Apologists play the "where do you get your morality from?" game in order to avoid this fact.
The very fact that this question is asked shows that objective morality does not exist. Objective truths exist only where they can be proven to be true, and that truth would by definition be universal. It's pretty much impossible to prove that any kind of moral is absolutely and universally true.
0x777
I disagree, there were plenty of things our ancestors could not prove, yet remained true. Where do you get your moral principles from is an honest question.
Try to be non partisan in the theism vs atheism debate and you’ll have a sharper nuance for discerning these debates.
@Life was Given to us Yes, but those ancestors shouldn’t have believed them until they were shown to be true. You don’t get points for believing something on insufficient evidence just because you happened to be right in that case.
Kevin Allen
Points? I don’t hardly consider it a game, but I think your missing the point to what I’m saying...my reply to ox was that for something to be objectively true it does not have to be proven. It’s objectivity is in no way reliant on us. Pluto didn’t change when we stopped considering it a planet, its objectivity remained the same.
Likewise that doesn’t make any sense, if I have evidence and I turn our to be right? How can you say it’s insufficient? Perhaps you didn’t see what I seen in the evidence.
@Life was Given to us I see the same evidence as you, except perhaps the magic Holy Spirit thing, but that I cannot access myself. The other evidence has not been particularly convincing to me.
What are some things you consider objectively true that aren’t logical tautologies?
Values are subjective; moral is the balance of values because they can contradict one another; moral duty is a result of societal collective morality. It’s all subjective by association. Just different level of abstraction. You all making it more complicated than it should be.
I’m a philosopher too, not just any random UA-camr, if that gives my assertion any credit. By struggling with objectivity or subjectivity, don’t forget what are morals to begin with and where they come from. I hope the above definitions help. I thought about this for years being twice as old as Alex. Pick any moral action I can easy show how it is a balance of some set of values , and we feel there is a duty or not mainly because of the collective agreement on such moral . Otherwise one just on operate on personal moral, no duty involved.
Law of physics are grounded in nature by the way!
Example: I can acknowledge the moral concept of not eating human flesh. The values this is based on are: I love meat, I dont prefer to eat my own race, I am not sure how human flesh taste, I can easily go to other meat sources. So personally don’t find eating human jerky is a good idea. I don’t want to be selected for the BBQ either. As it turns out our culture share this moral with most culture, so we feel a strong duty to abide by this convention. This is subjective for sure because there are culture in which eating another human is perfectly acceptable and they have no moral issue about it. Not to mention there are ppl thinking eating meat in general is not moral altogether because they balance a slightly different set of values.
Atheists, what is the point of winning an argument? To what means does obtaining the knowledge and reason have on your life? I mean, after all we are all heading to the fertiliser pit and the sun will one day explode denying Earth the existance of every living thing. Yet, you all pour your effort and supposed "reasoning" and "logic" but for what?
I am genuinely intrigued as to how you can justify using the time and resources to argue for truth when the ultimate end result of the universe is destruction.
And to that I ask: when you make it to the afterlife, will there be a need for progress and change, intellectual or otherwise?
Presumably everything in this afterlife is already set, eternal and perfect. How is arguing more useful in a world where the entrance fee is having according to its rules and never deviating than in one where we can try to change things before oblivion?
Final thoughts, that was awesome and both of you did well, but I think alex came out ahead in the first half. As you said, there was less of a disagreement in the last half. Great debate.
CS believes in morality yet denies free will? IP should had question him on that.
He believes in morality as an existing concept- a set of behaviors, that if followed, leads to as much well-being as possible. Such morality can exist without free will. It just doesnt define right or wrong on a fundamental level as we usually put it. But in all intents and purposes, since we are human, the action are right/wrong to us.
I'm not sure why you even believe those two things are in conflict. The problem that the people who reject free will have with the concept isn't the *will* part. It's the *free* part.
The decisions you make are influenced by factors that are totally outside your consciousness control, and most of the time you aren't even aware of them. Blood hormone levels are the easiest example. We don't have consciousness control over them, and yet they have a measurable, predictable impact on our decision making. If your testosterone levels go up so does your level of aggression. And again, you don't have conscious control over it. Some outside factor is causing levels to rise, and your decisions are altered as a result. Hell even something as mundane as hunger can influence your decisions. One study I remember showed that hungry judges give out harsher sentences before lunchtime 🤣.
I think you get the point. Things that are outside your control exercise control over your will. And unless you find a way to completely escape all of those influences, even the internal physiological processes that your body does subconsciously, you can't rightfully say that our will is free.
@@TonecrafteLuthiery It's like saying, look how many currents and deep undercurrents might be around the ship, totally outside of its control, and of which we are not even aware. It is clear that all the apparent movements of the ship may be explained by those invisible currents. _Therefore, the ship has no engine._ Really, Sam ? You personally guarantee it ?
@@sapientum8 Don't think you can compare the concept of free will to a ship's engine
@@toxendon I think it a very appropriate analogy which works really well in this case.
"We can never truly know whether or not a cup exists"
-Atheist
That’s a problem in skepticism, you can be skeptical all the way to solipsism, and you can do so logically, however there are hardly any solipsist and frequent skeptics who claim prove it or lose it.
And as so, they will never believe in the tea cup, simply because not believing in the tea cup counts as the "null hypothesis," and thus they set the burden of proof for there to be a teacup as way too high to the point where we sometimes can't even rely on our senses to determine if the teacup is true.
@GBF freeloader Yes, we kind of need too, minus the appeal to existence fallacy
@GBF freeloader Sure, We assume that our reality is solid and that our senses show an at least somewhat accurate representation of how reality works. If we didn't accept this assumption, We would still be stuck debating if or if not absolutely anything exists.
Look here for more
ua-cam.com/video/PqjdRAERWLc/v-deo.html
You can't truly know whether or not it exists in the exact sense that you believe it exists
Just know In debates, whoever has read one more book is gonna be more prepared.
25:40 someone has to tell you God exists based off of their own ideas. We’re intuitively have morals. We don’t intuitively believe God exists. The idea of God comes from us using what we think to be evidence
I really appreciate this video. Ultimately im strongly backing your argument, but i have to say, while exhausting to watch, this guy is a good debater and pretty articulate for a believer. Id be interested in seeing more debates with both of you, particularly a formal debate sounds really exciting.
Even if 100% of humanity agrees that X is *good* doesnt mean that X is OBJECTIVELY *good* the word *good* is SUBJECTIVE... following that morality only deals in what we believe is *good* and *bad* so it does not matter how someone feels, morality can never be OBJECTIVE
Yup
I feel this delves into semantics, we have used good and bad for decades now, and without the idea of good and bad it’s hard to determine wether or not we would have become civilized in any manner, there would be no need for laws, as laws are deterrents to what is considered bad.
There is an overlap between subjective thought and objective reality, for instance given you have an aim, let’s say you want to win a chess match, there are objectively good and bad moves you can subjectively make.
You may think subjectively that the move your doing is a good move that could win you the game, however your opponent might “objectively” show you that indeed it was a bad move.
This analogy has a material aspect to it, which is the board and the chess pieces, however the *game* in and of itself is completely mental, there is no such thing as chess, chess is not objective in anyway.
So at the core of this analogy you can have both objectively good and bad moves, about a given thing that is completely founded in subjectivity.
This relates to the moral argument, even though we all have a subjective thought on what dictates good and bad ,there is still an objective truth to the notion. The only difference is instead of playing to win, your aim is to be living in a way that is benevolent to your neighbor rather than malevolent.
Or at the very least to avoid the malevolent.
Did you even say anything there? Good and bad are opinions stop trying to live in a fantasy where everyones morals are objective. There is no one objectively good thing to pretend as such denies the existence of an opposing view point.
Your chess example is shit by the way because there are mathematically optimal moves. Chess is just over complicated tic tac toe as long as you never make a mistake you will always win if your opponent also never makes a mistake then it ends with whomever went first winning. If the player that went second decides he doesnt want to lose he could make it a draw but thats the extent of choice in chess if both players never make a mistake. The fun of chess is that both players are prone to fail since the answer to the question of each board state is incredibly complicated. Another reason your example fails is that you already decided that winning is good and losing is bad. Which as I stated in my OP is subjective.
Agreement =/= objectivity
Objectice morality is pretending that the concept of pros and cons dont exist
Conquering Thought
Did YOU even say anything there? I’m not sure if your having a hard time following along, or if your deliberately being an asshat to try and defend your original statement.
Put your ego to the side and deal with your ideas reasonably, or else there’s no point in talking to you...
You said, *objective morality is pretending that the concept of pros and cons don’t exist*
www.powerthesaurus.org/pros_and_cons
Read this list of synonyms and please give yourself a worthwhile facepalm when your read *Good and bad* is one of them...
I think IP understands moral philosophy more than CS. I don't see this as a win-lose situation.
I would like a debate Rationality Rules vs Inspiringphilosophy
IP doesn’t know moral philosophy better than me. Hence, he refuses to debate me.
CS understands moral philosophy better than IP. Cs made IP look stupid. Intuition is a feeling. Feelings aren't objective.
Why don't you just make the damn leap and go straight for the jugular, attack epistemological realism, you know, the naïve kind saying there are things like attainable 100% value free guaranteed objectivity (mind independence). I'm a bit of a perspectivist myself (nb. not relativism), as you might already know, however, I still say there is an external world, and although I don't exactly go along with survival as the key evolution driver, I of course, espouse the will to power and favor viewing the world and its various unknowable external states as dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: their essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their "effect" upon the same. Anyway as I have alluded to in my work, morality and other some such shared plattitudes are emergent properties of the psychosomatic substrate of being, you should do well to read my Genealogy of Morals. Therefore, although I do not give you a moral system to work with as such, I would that you seek it, and seek it in your truest subjective sense, so that we may over come this wretched state of the last man, that is, social justice, collectivism, affirmative action, god/daemon fearing, and other such slavishly ressentful values. May sense be with you. Thus spoke Zarathustra
The road is long and full of dense people, please, take this paper with you.
www.kriterion-journal-of-philosophy.org/kriterion/issues/Kriterion-2004-18/Kriterion-2004-18-01-09-mcdermid.pdf
The burden of proof lies with those who assert the existence of objective morality and not with those who do not assert the existence of something.
I think perhaps the most effective route to argue against Inspiring Philosophy's notion that objective morality is "intuitive" is to not agree that it is intuitive. Rather than sympathize with his notion that objective morals are intuitive and trying to reason with him, frame subjective morality as the intuitive approach to morality.
Because subjective morality really is the more intuitive approach.
It is intuitive that people raised in a different culture would have different views.
It is intuitive that people, even within the same culture, will have different views as a result of having different life experiences.
It is intuitive that individual peoples moral views can even change throughout their lives as they are introduced to new experiences.
Intuitively, morals are objectively subjective. Not objective flat out on their own.
The human mind is capable of many things. Emotions come after conscious thought, not before. Emotions are a result of conscious thought and not the other way around. Emotions do not control conscious thought. Empathy is an emotion. Those who claim rape is wrong are doing two things. They empathize with the person being raped and they do not empathize with the person doing the raping. It is not beyond the capability of the human mind to change and empathize with the rapist instead. Cleary, morality is not objective.
I find it somewhat condescending for Skeptic to come to a debate to refute the other side only to say that he is above the burden of proof. Here is the fact. To claim something is false you need proof just as much as claiming something true. Otherwise, you're just another faith-based preacher.
False is just shorthand for insufficient evidence for truth. Don't be silly and argue semantics.
@@ShouVertica No, false means not true.
You can proof that claims are false.
Think of some deductive argument. For given axiom A there are claims, that contradict A. In this scenario these claims are false and will never be true.
But i think this is beyond the point. I thought cosmics standpoint is just "We don't know" if he can't disprove something.
In this case, everyone may have their own assumptions. But to derive moral maximes from those assumptions two things should be respected:
1) Claims should be supported by logically sound argumentation.
2)The assumptions should be consentual.
Since Cosmic can't agree with most Theists assumptions he won't accept the derived maximes.
I think Cosmic has every right to evade burden of proof since he usually doesn't make claims.
@@peterbernev9850 this is just a waste of everyone's time.
@@ShouVertica Exactly! But then again: What is time ought to be filled with?
@@peterbernev9850 not arguing semantics of the word false, that's fir sure
So far the reasons to believe objective moral is real is:
1) God
2) muh feelings
3) what else would it be?
This isn't how your build an argument for objective morality.
1) hasn't been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist
2) your feelings are subjective
3) how about actually demonstrating with reason how you reached the conclusion that morality is objective. (aka bridging the Is ~ Ought gap)
I mean I would settle for beyond reasonable doubt. lol
Peter Mills
True.
Saiite Whats the CSs argument for subjective morality according to you?
@@kingnevermore25
What do you mean by "CSs"
Saiite Cosmic skeptic lol
The problem is what is good you can't keep continuing until you know what is good, also define in detail what you mean by intuitively because that's a subjective in itself
Adam ate the apple and now we get Christmas presents !
See, it all makes sense.
There is NO intellectual side to Bronze Age superstition or faith VS reason. None. Zero. You're kidding yourself. Sorry. Time to grow up.
I think all of the debates you are in make me frustrated when I watch them. I always feel that you are more willing and able to understand their side and be agreeable for the sake of their arguments than they are. And you always bring up better more well-thought out points than your debate opponents. Like, this guy's arguments essentially boiled down to multiple ways of saying "lots of people agree with me" and "intuition". And needlessly using jargon to make himself sound smarter. :/
I almost agree with you but for one fact. IP isn't just throwing around jargon to seem smart, if you pay close attention he is just reading quotes and then trying to explain another person's arguments. Where as Alex is actually coming up with arguments and reasoning on the fly.
Much of Cosmic Sceptic`s arguments come from a position of Solipsism.
He seems to identify as an atheist but argues from a Solipsistic position.. I get that all Solipsistic people are atheist but not all atheists are Solipsistic but this begs the question doesn`t it....why debate at all? if your position is leaning heavily toward Solipsism ultimately?
It seems that a lot of the time that you`re taking your thoughts to their logical conclusion you drift into solipsism which kind of makes debating pointless.
Solipsism is the result of skepticism on steroids, it has problems in of itself when you try to converse or interact externally from your own consciouness .
Solipsism is to reason and logic what pre big bang "conditions" are to mathamatics...it breaks down and becomes useless.
777_777 isn't a Solipsist someone who believes everyone and everything besides themselves aren't real? Saying just God isn't real isn't solipsist. Saying you deny the existence of a metaphysical world (God) and the physical world is solipsist. Cosmic Skeptic didn't say he denounces the physical world as nonexistent.
Traplover7 CS confuses his epistemology with ontology. A solipsist uses his epistemology to determine the ontology of the external world. This is what CS was doing without being aware of it. Go to CosmicSkeptic's comment at the top where he said he has to clarify his confusion between epistemology and ontology in a future video.
777_777 I haven’t watched the debate yet, so I’m really going out on a limb here and I’m just going off of what CS argued in his videos as well as his comment’s assessment of the apologists argument in this debate.
From what I can tell, all CS is doing is pointing out that intuition, consensus, and personal values do not get you to objectively existing prescriptions for how you should live your life that are independent of those personal values.
Correct me if I’m wrong about my assessment of CS.
If I’m right in my assessment, What’s solipsistic about that? Seems reasonable to me. I don’t think it follows from intuition, consensus, or subjective values that we unconditionally ought to do something in accordance with the “innate value” of humans.
Why must I concede solipsism then?
You may say, “but Tim, surely you’re using intuition or something akin to that to believe in the external world”, and I must say I simply believe that the simplest explanation for my sense experience is that is reflective of a portion of the external world that my evolved senses have developed to perceive and for my brain to interpret.
Regardless, I don’t see how CS objections, if taken to their logical conclusion, lead to solipsism.
Tim Pieper Here is a breakdown of ComicSkeptic's erroneous moral theory by atheist philosopher Alex Malpass:
useofreason.wordpress.com/2018/07/03/cosmicsceptic-and-objective-morality/
LogosTheos ok, so a non-solipsist uses what instead of their epistemology to determine the ontology of the external world?
Michael’s level of argument astounded me...
1. Moral realism is self-evident
2. Moral realism is intuitive
What high level defence of a hotly debated philosophical claim
sorry you don't understand some basic things
@@thepath964 Well help us then.
If what @GhostLightPhilosophy surmised was incorrect, then please show us the way.
Explain what IP was actually saying
Man, IP is a nice enough guy and I'm sure I could have a beer with him...but every single one of his arguments is complete garbage. Special pleading, appeal to intuition, and straight up bad reasoning.
"We are constantly changing our morality. After every change, people think that's the best morality we have had. Therefore we are approaching the best possible morality"
No. If everyone, everywhere, at any given time thinks they have the best morality, then what people think of their own morality cannot be a reliable indicator of how close to the "perfect" morality they are. Things could be getting exponentially worse with respect to some "ideal" morality and no one would know because everyone thinks their currently morality is the best one.
On top of that, I don't know if Alex gets into it, but even if there is some objective morality that exists independent of human minds, there is no mechanism for accessing that knowledge. It can't be "God told me this is moral" because it is dangerously unfalsifiable and it can't be innate intuitions because they aren't at all universal. The uncomfortable truth is that our sense of morality comes from the way we are socialized with some pragmatic instincts on the side.
The only reason anyone wants objective morality to be a thing is that they want to point the finger at another tribe and go: "No, you're doing morality wrong. OBJECTIVELY WRONG!".
There are objectively more effective and less effective ways of having sustainable relationships with people and running prosperous civilizations.
However, we don't really have a moral North Star that we can all agree to follow and, if there is one, we have no way of knowing what it is. The closest approximation to objective morality we've got is arbitrarily picking a set of morals and convincing as many people as possible to follow them, which ironically sounds a lot like religion. The key distinction is that we don't need to pretend that morals are some fixed platonic object decreted by an all-powerful creator. They are just a set of principles we choose to follow when we interact with other people.
WHAT EVER YOUR REASONS ARE ON FOR MORAL REALISM AND OBJECTIVISM YOU CANNOT BASE YOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THIS ON
THE BRONZE AGE WRITINGS THE TORAH ( O.T. ) AND N.T. GOSPELS TO WHICH ONE CANNOT IN ALL GOOD CONSCIENCE
REFER TO AS A MORAL COMPASS GUIDE SOURCE !
Michael could really ease up on the namedropping and Alex will be more convincing when he stops clinging to moral subjectivism like it is some sort of absolute. Other than that, the dialectical probing, unpacking, and dissection of these concepts was a breath of fresh air.
I can't watch anymore. I heard a man say we should believe something based on intuition and that intuition would tell us the Earth is flat, when scientific research would prove otherwise.
Lesson one, don't kill your own opinion.
That is not what he said, but I completely understand why you attacked that straw man.
Wlof25 24:30 "my basic point...why should be doubt this if it seems so intuitively obvious?"
It's a 2 hour steam. I know it would've possibly taken you 2 hours to watch it, but knowing where that line was, but come on. You turned a man into straw, that's unjust of you.
And you missed the bunch of times IP said how intuition should be trusted if there is no logical defeaters for it.
Wlof25 no I didn't. That doesn't redact his statement. If he's on an island and says the Earth is flat because intuition, intuition is wrong. He just gave a reason to question intuition.
Unless you think that since there isn't proof of X, Y must be true. Then I'm just sorry to hear that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that the sense I'm getting.
Intuition is wrong because there is a defeater for it, what was exactly his point.
What was the defeater for intuition that external world exist? What is the defeater that past actually happened?
People like to use rape as an example of something that is objectively wrong my question is if that’s factual why do people still rape and different cultures and countries set different requirements that constitute rape ??
Exactly, so it's not objective.
Well, you know the old joke, 9 out of 10 people enjoy group rape...
The question is, does a rapist think that rape is morally wrong?
That’s a non sequitur, for morality to be objective; it doesn’t require everyone everywhere to adhere to it.
That would be like me saying If the earth is round why do some
People believe it’s flat, so therefor that’s not an object truth of reality.
Rape technically wouldn't be objective because am I wrong in saying that the concept of consent is man made.
I agree that for morality to be objective it's not required for everyone to adhere to it. Having said that, if there are different opinions of what is morally good and bad who decides who's right? if it's objective then there's only one answer. The earth is round regardless of what people think and regardless of if life ever existed in the universe, so it's objective. Rape only exists within humanity, just like all thoughts of right and wrong, and therefore can't be objective. Our thoughts of what is "right" or "wrong" have changed over the thousands of years that our species has existed and because of that we have to believe that morality is subjective. It's naive to think that our thoughts of morality won't change over the next thousand years and everything we NOW believe to be right and wrong is, in fact, objective (now) and will never change....because it's objective.
Oh yeah, I am at 1:06:00 and I think they got you Alex. You are happy to call science objective, even though we have no idea if what is around us objectively exists. But are not happy calling morality objective, BECAUSE we have no idea if our oughts objectively exist.
You say: That car is yellow.
I say: nonono, thats just your FEELING. Prove that its yellow.
you: well you can see that its yellow right?
Me: Well that is just MY feeling its yellow. I cant prove its yellow. So objectively, we have no idea if its yellow. Or if it is a car. Or if its there. Or if you are here. Or if I exist...
Why grant the car is yellow, and not argue its just a feeling?
EDIT: Ok upon reeding your pinned comment I will have to go read your blog I guess :D I am still torn on this.
I think you guys may be both overestimating people’s innate moral intuition. Not everyone who came across someone raping another would feel the need to stop them; some really would find nothing wrong with it, ie. a psychopath. So I think this discredits Inspiring Philosophy’s point to a degree. In order to prove that our experience of morality is objective, he would have to prove that it stays consistent among all people, and I know from experience that it doesn’t. You both seemed to apply this same principle to FGM - “of course it is wrong!” Well, the very fact that exists warrants that some people do not think it is wrong, specifically the people doing it. Be careful not to project your own moral convictions on issues that require a more complex approach.
22:02 If your intuitions about whether intuitions are sufficient grounding for morality don't align with mine, you're wrong and you need to think it over until you agree. Does anyone else see what's wrong with the form of this argument?
EverydaySkeptic no, because you missed the point
John Landon Miller which was....?
John Landon Miller btw he literally says if you don't agree it's because you havn't delved deep enough into your own moral beliefs. He offered the shitty argument and I fairly paraphased the form.
EverydaySkeptic You are paralellizing non parallel elements
John Landon Miller lol how? Is that you trying to say I'm drawing an analogy improperly? I didn't draw any analogy. I paraphrased. One more time... try to make an argument. I believe in you.
I'm a theist, but I think Alex, or Cosmic Skeptic, won this argument. I don't believe there is a way to prove objectivity of morality. What I personally do is taking a leap of faith in belief that God and objective morality exist. I think it's the only rational standpoint, and also that Alex is honest when he disbands the idea of objective morality, because most atheists want to disband religion but to keep objectivity of moral values, which is in my opinion quite contradictory.
Now, the problem with disbanding objectivity of morality is that no one can actually live that way, because you must forgo all the "oughts" you use in everyday life, and I have yet to witness to a man who is capable of doing that. For example, Alex has stated as the goal of his action complete separation of Church and State. Now, if there is no objective value of living in secular society as opposed to theocracy (except our own interests), why would anybody rationally act upon realizing such a goal? I don't think more secularism in Britain (a pretty secular country) would change his personal life in any way.
Also, I don't agree with his 1. video on morality, claiming that it's subjective even if God exists. But that should be a topic of it's own in another debate.
Then you maybe should re watch the debate, or go through arguments for objective morality. CS has troubles understanding what are intuitions and also, as some other people noticed, conflates ontology with epistemology.
If moral obligation depends on the amount of knowledge one has about the variables at play, then it is subjective. This isn't an objective obligation.
lol you didn't understand
Really interesting conversation. Loved the cordian tone of the discussion.
Would love to see the two of the debate free will in the future
The Curly Catastrophe
Oh please no!!!
that guys voice cracks more than iphone screens
thus far i've only watched the 1st half. but alex, what i really wish you would have said is that: any argument for moral objectivism relies at some point on some premise that is only subjectively true. And that it doesn't matter if everyone in the world feels the subjective truth of this premise with every fiber of their being, that doesn't make it objective and it doesn't mean that there's some objective truth that we're tapping into.
Cosmic sceptic way out of his depth with this guy
Is that a good thing or a bad thing
1:48:45 Very cute
Haha I couldn’t tell if the British kids response was a joke or not but it was sorta cringey either way
I think what he's saying is, don't confuse you trying to subjectify the argument, by being "nice" to me. You've already gone very far in showing how subjective your argument is..
Pain can be seen as good simply because it is evidence that we are alive also for weight lifters specific types of pain shows development in muscles. Unfortunately this being subjective does mean morals or subjective because specifically well- defined morals are not subjective or objective if there's specific enough as detailed in my murder versus genocide comment
1:18:59 if we all can come to the conclusion that the victim’s liberty is stronger than the rapists, then why can’t we say it’s objectively stronger if that’s the best explanation?
I think a lot of our morality comes from evolutionary tendencies
moontraveler12
Even if that’s the case, that doesn’t tell us anything about it, you have to deal with the mind to understand ethics and morality.
Wrong
I guess my biggest problem with people who believe in God work backwards from what I think is the proper way to think about reality and/or find the truth. With people who believe in God, they act like lawyers - gathering evidence that fits with their case and throwing out evidence that doesn't. They use words as weapons, rather than as a means to communicate (ie using words to place something in a hole, or saying that what they're talking about simply cannot apply to what it applies to because it's in a different category, when it's not).
However, the contrast to this would be the scientist mindset, which is NOT natural. There has been a lot of research on this topic, showing how most people are intuitively lawyers rather than intuitively scientists. A scientist does not have an objective, they do not work backwards from their conclusion like a lawyer would (my client is innocent, therefore I must ignore all evidence that proves he's guilty). A scientist only cares about what is true. That's why they take up the position of a skeptic, where you should not believe in the affirmative ANYTHING that is not justified. A scientist also recognizes the degrees to which we can know something is true or not. They can tell the difference between a hypothesis and a scientific theory. They have a hierarchy when it comes to what counts as evidence (authority/assertions, hearsay and one person's senses being at the bottom of that hierarchy).
So, long post but again the thing that annoys me is that most religious people / people who believe in a specific God act in the opposite way that I think people should act if they care about the truth. It's funny, because these people act like scientists when they look at the other 99.9999% of religions people have believed in...
John Snow
There are also lawyers who do prosecution, who start from the baseline of guilt. Working from there, I think your analogy falls apart for a few reasons. There are several things we believe that are not proven to be true, you cannot for instance prove there are other minds than your own, or that the external universe is real apart from your conscious experience. Yet there are hardly any solipsist.
(See philosophy, problems of skepticism)
Lastly you think that scientist don’t fudge there data or “evidence” to fit, there theories....they are human too, you should look up some science fraud cases, P hacking is a good search, as well as the reproducibility problem which states that scientist polled admit that 70% of the time they were not able to reproduce others experiments, and 50% of the time there own experiments.
Lastly, there are several atheist converts who started ground up to get to theism, there are currently plenty of scientist who believe in God, so I mean this much ought to tell you that you have assumptions about what a scientist is that have nothing to do with being a scientist, science is actually and only a methodology, hypothesis, experiment, observation and repeat.
What your advocating for is scientism, which is in sort a quasi religion of the methodology, so i would say on close examination, theist and atheist are not that dissimilar.
"I feel like objective morality exists, therefore it exists; I can't define it, I can't explain it, so I'm unable to show how it would be grounded in reality, so it's not grounded in reality, so it's magic, therefore god."
why even talk to those people
Why even talk to those people?
Given this and your ridiculous circle jerk strawman, I feel safe in saying you didn’t even watch the debate...
How did you determine that absolute morality can only be attributed to god and how do you know moral absolutes even exist
Try to break that cup over the bridge of your nose if taking a drink from it isn't enough to admit it exists.
IP seems extremely well read and knowledgeable, yet unable to explain himself very well. He namedrops as if that's good enough.
To be clear, I'm quite certain that he knows much more about all of this than I do.
Opens the door for you to research.
Name dropping is for the stupid. If you can explain the concept you only give credit. If you name drop you are telling everyone you don't actually understand the concept.
Holy shit. Al last someone did this. I was hoping that it woul be TMM but this is good
Antonio Lansang the messianic maniac you dont know him ?.
he doesn't do debates, but god damn does he break down IPs dumb arguments
He's a has-been.
TMM give me the title or link to see, plis
@Trollsofico Verwindung You can just go to his channel and type in IP's name.
ua-cam.com/video/vg76y4JeR0c/v-deo.html
Alex is a splendid communicator and deserves all the success he is getting with this channel. He genuinely attempts to see 'the other sides point' and then argues in an honest way to illuminate the problems with any argument. Credit to the other lad but he was quite weak here. Although saying that he was trying to argue that morality is objective, so must 'be grounded in' something external to living organisms. Oh it's that God fella... We really should be past this. It's a damn useful fictional construct though the old morality thing.
Paul Curtis
He lost what are you talking about, he didn’t get stumped but he definitely lost.
But how exactly did he lost?
I haven't watched the video yet, but here's my question. Since you don't believe in free will, why do you even care about morality. Since accountability is the primary factor in wrongdoing, how can anything be immoral anyway.
Because he has no choice....
52:00 This is also MY argument about Objectivity. Universal Subjective Reality, isn't necessarily Objective. But under some definitions of Objectivism, "In philosophy, objectivity is the concept of truth independent from individual subjectivity (bias caused by one's perception, emotions, or imagination)."
So if 5 of 5 people have a shared Delusion....that means that they have statistically realized that the Delusion was in fact, Objective Reality.
This is my objection to this definition.
18:30
That thought is man made and subjective, why does he accept Descartes cogito as being objectively true?
Because philosophy proves that thought can be objective.
Likewise I just thought of a paradox, Alex seems to say let’s be skeptical of everything, and by sheer virtue of any doubt one is credible with doubting a thing.
Should we then be skeptical and doubting of this line of skepticism?
Sure, but i'd advocate for us to create precedents that most effectively represent reality for us, and change things to help ourselves as a group. You can be skeptical of skepticism if you want to, but that doesn't mean you are saying skepticism is wrong. That is the good thing about skepticism. It is a doubt at something being 100% true under all circumstances.
Frank Lance
Skepticism has its uses, absolutely agree, however as of late it seems to be used only down a one way street.
Mainly by the anti-theist, but given this line of skepticism i can apply it virtually anywhere, so I’m skeptical of the claim there is no God.
Just as some are skeptical there is one.
Both forms are rational skepticisms that diverge from there.
Yeah. I personally don't think god does exist, however obviously I couldn't know either way so I just say I don't know. :)
Frank Lance
I’ve more respect for your consistency than many here. 🍻
Conceived In the stars thanks :)
A question I find interesting is: Did morality exist before God? This may sound strange but I think it's quite interesting. If morality didn't exist before God, then how can God be a good being? By what standard is he “good“? If God is all powerful and created morality, he basically thought about his definition of right and wrong, then decided what he thinks is right and decided to act that way. In that case morality isn't objective.
If morality however exists outside of God, so that it's truly objective, then God has no influence on it and thus isn't all powerful.
Sorry for possible spelling mistakes, english is not my first language. If there is a problem with that thought please correct me.
But that still doesn't answer the question if morality exists outside of God or am I wrong? If God was the first thing that ever existed, but morality exists outside of him, them morality is objective and God not allmighty. If God has power over morality, that means he decides what is good or bad, therefore being able to chose what has to be good in order for him to be good. In that case God is allmighty, but morality not objective.
Clade Starfish
Oh, ok. I'm still struggling to formulate my thought properly though. I know what I mean, but I don't know how to put it to text. Maybe that would make it clear if my argument is valid or full of fallacies
digitalquartergod This is a *great* question. But knowing theist, the answer they'll give you is "God IS Good", and anything bad is just the "Separation" of god, so its not with god.
Now we can argue that if such god is the pinnacle of good, then he can *only* be capable of good (because good can't be bad, its contradiction), and if he can only do good, he can't do bad, therefore he can't do everything and isn't all powerful.
And by this premise, god would have to be only capable of creating good things. So there has to be some explanations of Satan, viruses, natural atrocities, and bad people.
Christopher Sterling
Wasn't one explanation involving free will? Like “in order to be truely free, it has to be possivle for us to choose between good and evil. Therefore evil has to exist in order for our will to be free“
digitalquartergod
"Wasn't one explanation involving free will? Like “in order to be truly free, it has to be possible for us to choose between good and evil. Therefore evil has to exist in order for our will to be free“"
Load of BS. Natural Atrocities such as tornadoes happens by this nature that "God" designed. If god is the pinnacle of good, this is impossible. Not to mention we can be all good and all free, since such an all good, all free, and all powerful god supposely exist and we were created in his image at the very least.
But here's the thing a something I would like to share with you. There a shower thought about if there is no law, there wouldn't be no crime. Now think about that for a minute. If you think on it hard enough, you'll realize that if god didn't made any rules, there would be no sin. So in a sense, god created sin, because he created rules for us to follow. And since god created sin, and created the punishment for sin, and admittedly knew that no one can fulfill the criteria of entering heaven (A criteria that, again, he created in the first place), then god designed a system to sent people to hell from the very beginning.
And if theist start to say that morality is not created, but it is "God's Nature", use this rebuttal and ask, Why do I need to be punish for sin? Which aspect of *morality* demands that I pay for my bad deeds and rewarded for the good ones? Is it absolutely necessary and justifiable for me to suffer endlessly in a pit of fire for sins on earth? Isn't burning me bad? Isn't burning me objectively bad?
Can you justify burning me because of a past action you deemed bad?
If yes, they just admitted morality is subjectively because it is circumstantial, and dependent of the situation. And since god created the conditions for me to suffer, he is also at fault.
If no, then god does not has the right to do bad to me, even if I myself did bad things. But hey at least they're being kinda consistent.
I understand what IP is trying to get, but he doesn’t understand that the things which we take for granted are often the things which need to be questioned the most.
i feel like the other guy (not alex) contradicts himself when he is saying that he can trust his senses but then goes on to say that if they had their memories wiped, they would intuitively think the earth is flat just looking out and seeing the ocean. He literally proved Alex right. When Alex says he can't trust his senses, so he takes nothing for granted, he is basing that off history. We have used our eyes to observe things that we thought were true, but ended up not being true. ie: we thought the earth was flat because we couldn't see the curvature of the Earth. He proves Alex right. The senses can't be trusted and therefore skeptics doubt everything.
15:00 No matter what anyone "thinks" about it, cutting off Sam Harris' head is bad for him. Morality is just the study of how certain things that we can do in society are bad or good for other people.
PhysicsPolice right damn you defined morality perfectly better than both these guys
Unless he wants that happen to him at the time of the event
It seems obvious to me, that for the "Falling through the ice" scenario, the escapee's actions were predicated upon the expectation that the guard would not be a complete arse by arresting the arrest, thus effectively killing his rescuer.
Selflessness met by possible selfishness. The prisoner is trying to survive and acts to save a life, the guard is performing a task, possibly knowing the person will be executed. We also can query in that if the guard had let the prisoner go would he have been executed as well?
33:33 So... he's saying that morality manifest objectively (aka we feel strongly about it) therefore it's true; and cullinary taste andsense of colour does not manifest objectively (i.e. the first we feel less attached to, the second we recognize from eperiences can be mistaken, think optical illusions) therefore they are not true in the objective sense?
Wow, okay, that's very weak sauce.
daddyleon No he's saying morality is less nuanced than other carnal experiences
*+John Landon Miller* That makes even less sense to me! I can often have very mixed feelings about what moral judgement/action I think is best suited for a given situation while still being ancored in reality, e.g.: what am I do do about Yemen; how long ought I to shower; how soon should I stand up in the train when I see an old lady walking by; etc.? Whereas my 'carnal' experiences are quite clear: I am quite sure when I'm actually sexually aroused. The moral question of "what then" is more difficul: may I look, stare; how long; what if I'm in a monogamous relationship; etc.? I can feel hunger, quite clearly too, but what to do? Eat now, wait a but for something 'better'; wait for someone else? I feel social and emotional discomfort with someone else's reaction...ought I to act 'nobly' and ignore; cuss them out hoping that they'll think twice doing that in the future, protecting me from further harm as well as making me feel more relieved than if I was polite; should I be polite instead, making it a better experience for them, at the cost of mine, but perhaps at the benefit of a third who may recieve more curtious behaviour in the future?
All that said... and still.. whether those feelings actually point to an actual objective there there...is not at all clear.
daddyleon There is no nihilist morality. You need first principles.
*+John Landon Miller* I'd agree. Therefore, you need a basis to assert these first principles from, if you don't have a good basis for assuming those, they will not be more than mere [inter]subjective.
Alex, you got schooled in this debate. What the heck man?! Thought you would do better! :(
He's still young and developing his ideas.
Hopefully he re asses his beliefs on morality. He’s a young intelligent dude.
By "schooled", do you mean "defeated"? These discussions shouldn't be seen as winning or losing, but which one sounds more plausible and reasonable.
+Truth Matters "Objective" means what?
Objective morality is the claim that right and wrong are fixed, apart from subjective preference.
It’s not making the claim that morality is like a lamp shade or a moon revolving a planet in the classical definition of objective.
Perhaps some of the confusion lies in definitions; moral relativity (the ignorance of generally accepted norms of human civilization) is not the same as the fact that morals are accepted relative to the type of fragile/emotional-laden being that we are. Moral "intuition" is more like our evolved social instincts, which are most responsible for shaping our accepted norms.
Theists seem to get hung-up on the idea/ delusion that their intuitions are universal divine commands. Probably somewhat related to their discomfort with evolution itself.
Who paints a wall that color?
Hmm... I still think Alex should read some Kant about the Categorical Imperative.
Me, too.
I'm an atheist and I think morality as such is objective. Certain moral values change, but inherent morality is as objective as anything else which is a result of evolution. As objective as a human hand, or an eye. It's a function of empathy and empathy is a function of survival instinct in a social species such as humans (and not only humans).
I think the argument often attempted by hardcore moral relativists which essentially boils down to: anything that didn't exist before and independently of humans (by humans they usually mean Homo Sapiens) is not objective, is fundamentally and factually wrong. As we now know animals way older than modern humans show at the very least some proto morality and the universe itself is in constant change.
In my opinion, the only way to deny the objectivity of morality is to deny the evolution and even deny the existence of objective reality.
Grace Less No, it wouldn't. As I wrote - morality, inherent morality is as objective as an eye, while specific moral values can vary relative to cultural influence.
Still...even with that said, your example is weak. It only says that humans have had to make hard moral choices throughout history. That's it. And?
Do you think that those Eskimos didn't feel bad about what they were doing? That they were incapable of empathy??
Or, to put it in more relatable terms: say you're a soldier on the frontlines, or you get attacked and you end up in a kill or be killed situation. Of course, you're either going to flee, or fight to the death. That doesn't mean that you'll turn into a psychopath, or that you'll feel good if you kill another person.
Why do you think ptsd is so widespread among the veterans? Usually it's even more about what they did, or seen done than what's been done to them.
Grace Less Of course the feelings come into it if the basis for inherent morality is empathy as science suggests. The morality as such is a feeling, it isn't something you can touch. Feelings btw are also a natural, evolved brain functions and guess what? They are universal across cultures, even across species at some basic level. Fear, sexual desire, disgust, affection etc. is something we all feel. Same with empathy and morality as its its function.
That's the inherent morality I'm talking about. Now due to brain plasticity, of course that some of those things will vary and even change from culture to culture. That doesn't mean that the inherent ability to feel and be moral is not objective. Why is that so hard to understand?
How do you even know that leaving babies to die was considered "morally right"? It seems that it was a matter of sacrificing the few so that the rest would survive. Do you think they would've been doing that if they had any other choice? Why aren't they doing it now then?
Which leads me to the golden rule and it is older than any religion.
Why do you think that is exactly?
As people are getting rid of irrational beliefs, it turns out that we are going back to the most basic rules inherent in all of us basically saying: treat others as you'd want to be treated. And that's happening universally, all over the globe. How is that not objective?
Even if morality, or the biological structure of the eye keep on changing in some unforeseen ways, it's only the proof that evolution is still going on. Which it is. Again, that doesn't make evolution subjective. It is a process affected by the exact same, *objective* laws of physics as everything else in the universe.
Btw...universe is also evolving. There was a time in the history of the universe when there were no stars. Existing stars are also changing, with some of them becoming red giants, some neutron stars, some exploding and turning into black holes...etc. So, according to your "logic" anything that changes, is subjective? Stars and the universe itself are subjective too, eh?
Grace Less Btw...killing babies is not morally ok and it never was as far as science and the most ancient history tell us. Name one society in which killing babies was the rule, not an exception.
The fact that people in the past, or today for that matter sometimes had to do a morally wrong thing in order for their tribe to survive, doesn't make morality subjective.
Quite the opposite. It's the exception proving the rule. And the rule is - survival. Babies are kind of important for survival, no?
Grace Less No...what you are describing is not subjectivity, as I explained.
And moral relativism is unpopular because moral relativists have bad arguments.
Hitchens said it best: why do you feel more empathy when you see a pregnant woman being beaten up as compared to a guy being beaten up? You feel empathy in both cases, but in case two, everyone across cultures will feel more empathy.
Grace Less The inherent ability to be moral is morality as such. I have repeated that now three times. Should I write AS SUCH in order for you to comprehend the emphasis and the point there?
It's not any special set of moral norms as defined per any given culture that we're talking about here.
That would be the scientific part. And if you don't believe me, there are plenty of social animals showing proto morality. It's undeniable. Where exactly is your problem with that?
The history part confirms this empirically too.
I asked you to name one society in history (or you can use present day for all I care) where killing babies was a norm. Instead you wrote a whole wall of meaningless text. I don't think it's me imitating Jordan Peterson here.
I live on planet Earth. You?
PLEASE SEPARATE ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY
Alfredo Gonzalez he’s been called out on this several times and it’s really frustrating
Can you elaborate on what he's confused about?
I guess my problem with his argument about the moral ideal is that morality seems to be highly dependent on the situation. How can there be a moral ideal when morality itself seems to be highly variable? Is this moral ideal just the summation of every possible situation with the best moral option for each one? If so, there are infinite situations that could occur, each one with a specific moral best. Then if you want to go down the rabbit hole even more, each situation webs out and affects other moral situations directly or indirectly. So maybe the moral best in one given situation turns out to be not so moral given the bigger picture. What is the guideline to determining what is the most moral option in any given situation? Something considered moral in one case could be completely immoral in another. Not all moral questions are easy and intuitive.
One point to note with the evolution of a sense of what is moral, specifically that bit about the prison guard, is that evolution doesn't work in absolutes. It seems true that the sense of a moral good in saving the guard didn't improve the escapees fitness, but that doesn't say anything about the fitness boost having that sense confers upon the population overall. I think it's Dawkins who likes to point out that moths fly into flames. By Michael's argument, evolution should have prepared the moth to not fly into flames, but in reality that behavior is just a byproduct of the fitness enhancement navigating by the moon grants. Little stationary fires dont really exist in nature, so the moth had no preparation for them. Likewise, prisons and guards--large societies in general--didnt exist when our moral sense evolved, so it couldn't prepare the escapee for that situation specifically. It could be that his sense of the value of human life overrode other intuitions, or that in the wild there really would be a fitness boost to saving the guy who was chasing you (perhaps you have them in your power and can convince them to your benefit after doing the selfless thing for them--societies have tended to have a concept of blood debts after all).