So I'm Mormon.... the more and more I dig into ethics, morals and philosophy the more I start to doubt religion. Not just mine alone but religion as a whole... idk, I feel bad about it but then again this seems so logical in my quest to understand what life is and how we operate.
atine834 I'm a baptist Christian and I think science and philosophy can help with faith. Of course there are somethings in science like the evolution theory that opposes god but u can differentiate what is right and wrong urself
You are not alone in feeling this way. Authoritative models of morality, in my experience, really suffer under outside scrutiny, since by definition they are based on a sort of 'decree' rather than anything about the acts themselves. It begins to feel very arbitrary... which is not *necessarily* a bad thing, but it *is* definitely a thing.
It's absurd to think that you can just dismiss things that you happen to disagree with in science. There is no basis for being able to differentiate "what is right and wrong urself" without having some basis of justification. Doing that and then looking at science as having any merit at all is massively hypocritical, and so either insincere or self-oblivious. Either understand science and pursue unbiased truth (challenging whatever you want but not simply throwing things out for no reason), or deny it wholesale. Cherry-picking is logically unacceptable, as you should know if you're serious about studying either science or philosophy.
I really appreciate that this episode closed on a notion that one should always be self-examining and trying to understand why they feel a certain way. Thank you CC!
I like Fiorello La Guardia's take on the question of stealing to feed your family. After being legally obligated to fine a woman ten dollars for doing just that during the Depression, he paid her fine out of his own pocket, then fined every person in the courtroom twenty-five cents "for the crime of living in a city where a woman has no choice but to steal or watch her grandson starve."
I've gotten more and more interested in Philosophy lately, and I decided to join my high school ethics bowl team. Whenever I'm interested in any topics, I've found your videos extremely helpful, and recently the philosophy crash course videos have been very useful!
Hey, I don't know if you will see this,but if you have time to answer,can I as you what domain are you working now on,with your degree?I am majoring in philosophy too,but in my country going to university is debt free.
For the burglar story, could you separate moral intentions from moral outcomes? His moral intentions were wrong, but his moral outcome was right. That would leave us with four different categories.
These are principles of many ethical theories. Utilitarianism would say the robber was good as the outcome caused more pleasure than pain to more people. Deontology would say the robber was bad as his intentions were evil. Other theories, such as virtue ethics, attempt to combine the two.
I would consider myself as utilitarian (considering most things at least) and I would say that the burglar did a good thing, but still doesn't deserve praise and also still deserves blame and consequentially judicial persecution. What he did was certainly useful since he saved the life of a fellow human. However, he did attempt to break into someones home and steal stuff. Things would have looked better for him (both in an ethical sense and a judicial sense) if he would have called an ambulance upon encountering the unconscious woman.
+Florian Haydn If the burglar did a good thing, why doesn't he deserve praise? In Utilitarianism the only thing that counts is the outcome of an action. So from a Utilitarianist perspective the burglar's actions were equally as good as the actions of a paramedic saving the old woman's life. If you assign moral value to a person's intentions, you are not a Utilitarian.
ilovemypiano Well, for practical reasons. I agree that this might be breaking with pure Utilitarianism, but he was breaking into another persons home. Laws aren't necessarily moral.
+Florian Haydn So you are arguing that from a purely moral perspective the burglar did the right thing, is a good person and deserves praise, but from the perspective of the law he should be punished. Did I understand that correctly? If yes, why do you think that law and morality should be opposed? Isn't it normal to think that the law should be an implementation of our moral principles?
Invokes Goodwin's Law, but Goodwin's Law seems to be the only way to discuss negative cultures without people possibly accusing you of some secondary agenda.
It seems like the most fundamental question which all ethical frameworks would need to answer is if it's actions, intentions, or results by which someone should be judged. An ethical framework can usually only be built on one of those, but most people would agree that all three matter. So we already have a place where moral intuition can't be easily translated into ethical theory.
One of the nice things about virtue ethics is that it's able to take just about anything into consideration. (It's also one of the difficulties, as it rarely gives one definitive, simple answer as to what one should do.) Your typical ethical theory looks at an isolated event from the point of view of an abstract person and then judges that event. (Is that a good or a bad thing to do, in the abstract?) In contrast, virtue ethics is all about the character of the person. (What kind of person would I be if I did this?) It easily combines action, intention, context, personal history, etc., typically as part of a lifelong project of improving oneself.
Intuitions, even those held by a single person, are most often inconsistent. People are very prone to believing in conflicting principles - it is particularly easy to see that by coming up with not-too-unlikely scenarios where two seemingly unrelated principles cannot hold simultaneously. So that forces absolutists to create hierarchies of principles, however that's no easy task. It is true that consequentialism and intentionalism are two contrasting flavours of ethical theories, however they are not necessarily inconsistent. But even then there are many hidden assumptions - e.g. that people are to be "judged" (assumes the existence of an either reliable or at least powerful arbiter), or that ethical statements have the same truth values as statements about facts, etc. etc. ...and even if one is to decide on preferred metaethical positions, the general principles for guiding actions and to actully engage in ethical practice are usually independent of the metaethical position; also one would be prone to assume certain things about semantics and also will tend not to have treated metasemantic issues at all. So it's rather fascinating, but also a long and difficult task.
Jason93609 All that is true. However, we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss moral intuition. After all, if an ethical system comes to conclusions that go against most peoples' moral intuition would generally be considered deeply flawed for this reason.
Timothy McLean I am not dismissing it! In fact I believe that very few people act guided by rational principle - the vast majority is guided by intuition. But practical ethics is one thing, the academic study of the ideas behind it is quite another...
That's why you develop your own ethical values and express those values to others in hopes of having understanding. The best we can strive for is understanding one another
How are scientific questions not verifiable? We can empirically verify that e.g. the basal ganglia is involved in emotion generation & processing by using functional magnetic resonance imaging or virtually anything else that is written in scientific journals. While they do not represent the 'ground truth' they do provide a best estimate of verification of the hypothesis/scientific question.
I do, but it's a very elementary approach to something so profound, that it gives philosophy a base. That's just daunting. so yes, lightweight here, in a way.
I'm getting good grade in moral ethics course in college all because of your channel. Great content, precise and exclusive. and great animations too. I don't know how to thank you.
@AMellowFellow That depends... some people literally do not think that way. Ask your local priest or someone who is deeply religious... The reason why there are multiple moral theories are mentioned in the video is because not everyone has the same moral theory lmao
Lest anyone be confused, moral relativism in the descriptive, as opposed to normative, sense is NOT a metaethical theory. Since it's simply a statement about how beliefs differ from culture to culture, it makes no statement one way or another about the status of moral facts (whether they exist or not) and so is neither a form of moral realism or anti-realism on it's own. It is an important thing to discuss here since many people get descriptive moral relativism confused with normative moral relativism (which IS a metaethical theory) and/or use descriptive moral relativism as a justification for some other moral antirealist position. Cheers
This is what the human geography crash course SHOULD HAVE been. Informative, and as unbiased as possible. I would still love to see a series on the subject as I finished an ap course in my high school last year, and your videos almost always interest me, even with things I an well versed in.Based on your second channel I don't really agree with many of your political beliefs, so I am very grateful that you try so hard to keep everything so unbiased (and considering how biased people are these days, I respect you more for it as well). Thanks for being awesome!
Hank, I think Wittgenstein "solved", dissolved, the whole moral/ethics problems. I hope you talk about it but if you don't what you're doing is still amazing. keep going!!.
I wonder if Hank will talk about moral calculus. One of the metaethical questions asked earlier in this episode was "Is it right to steal in order to feed your family?". Moral calculus gets an input of objective positive and negative consequences regarding a certain ethical decision and outputs the decision that should be made. So back to that question. Let's say you have 2 children, you are very poor, and your children are starving. You then see a pie that was put to cool on a open window that was left by the baker. You overhear from the baker that a wealthy individual will come by later to pick up and buy this pie. Let's look at the positives and negatives if you steal the pie. +You and your children can keep living and won't die from starvation +This wealthy individual can buy another pie quite easily with no financial concerns -The baker loses time and money spent making the pie -The baker has to spend time and money to make another one -Wealthy individual must wait more time to buy the pie When weighing these pros and cons against each other, we can see that the baker and individual losing some cash and time weighs far less than children dying. There are still many different variable to consider. Would it be more ethical to ask the baker if he can give you the pie for your starving children? What if the baker is also extremely poor? I'm not saying this is the absolute solution to the problems and questions philosophers ask regarding metaethics but it is very interesting.
When I was 16 I had a great fascination with ancient reptiles and studied paleontology nonstop. I developed a great deal of respect for the dinosaurs given as they dominated the world for hundreds of millions of years ( whereas humans had only for a couple thousand ) and that they were so successful in adapting and evolving to countless conditions around the world. I sometimes thought that if dinosaurs had taken their success one step further and developed their own complex civilizations what their ethics would be. I asked myself if even basic moral rules would apply to animals other than humans. Like would murder be wrong for these civilized dinos? Or is that just a rule that applies exclusively to some part of the primate, human, brain that these animals wouldn't have. I thought about these a lot and studied biology, philosophy, psychology, and other sciences in search of an answer. I eventually figured stuff out but I still find it funny to think about how much sleep I lost asking myself if civilized birds would be cool with manslaughter.
I love this series so much! It has opened up my mind to other people's opinions and thoughts, and it has made me question and challenge my own opinions and thoughts. At times I have changed my views of the world because this course introduced me to new and different ways of thinking. I feel that this openness and questioning--this philosophical way of thinking--has bettered me as a person and that it can better other people, too. Thank you Crash Course Team and ThoughtCafe for making an awesome series with so many open-ended, convoluted questions that people around the world can contemplate and enjoy!
Yet another great episode. Thanks CrashCourse :) Although do take some more time to check the errors, here referring to spellings - 'Morality' and 'Cultural' spelled as 'Mortality' and 'Cultiral'. Just pointing it out :) We all make mistakes!
All this is fits nicely into Robert M. Pirsig's ('Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance") Metaphysics of Quality. Totally reorganized reality into a framework that easily explains all these "meta ethical" dilemmas and provides a true moral north.
Sam Harris has a couple talks on UA-cam about objective morality (one of them is a TED talk). It's incredibly convincing. These talks are based on his book "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values".
Lol. No, it's *not* incredibly convincing. The overwhelming majority of philosophers of ethics disagree with his thinking as presented in that very book "The Moral Landscape." If you're ok with non sequiturs galore, then have it. That just wont do for most thinkers, however.
TruthUnadulterated It doesn't matter what other philosophers think. It's about providing sufficient evidence for your arguments. But if you want to argue from authority then know that most scientists don't care what philosophers have to say either.
All Sam does is present an ethical theory (see 7:00), a form of Utilitarianism. One that I tend to agree with, mind you, but no more objective than Mills Utilitarianism, Divine Command, or Social Darwinism.
I think it's really important to just decide a form of ethic and start researching that in the perspective of empirical facts. That might be the most important thing science could do in the 21st century. Neuroscience is a new field of science, which makes a huge difference in dealing with ethical questions.
Steal food from Old lady for family scenario: (My View) good intentions (to feed family) bad method (taking things without asking the owner.) good result (A life was saved at the cost of a broken window) I find it strange to try to lump these three parts together to label the scenario overall good or overall bad. Perhaps the idea of feeding your family at any cost is in itself a bad and poisonous intention... It keeps evil methods in consideration instead of fully dedicating your resources into looking for a non-pain-inducing method. Interesting... Depending on how you label the thief's intentions, the scenario is either 2/3 good or 2/3 bad. Reply Responsibly ;)
I'd love to use this video for my students. However, moral theory is generally not introduced as realism vs. antirealism, and relativism is generally not presented as a realist option. Relativism as realism is not just a minority position, but is largely untenable in philosophical ethics at large. Please consider revising this video with realism vs. relativism or universalism vs. relativism. Few philosophers, if any, find relativism plausible, and identify its metaethical shortcomings both in individual and cultural form. Please review any number of introductory textbooks such as Vaughn, Rachels, Boss, and Ellin (not in print but excellent). Thank you.
While it somewhat branches from consequentialism, I follow an ethical theory with major elements that don't seem to come up with other theories, and I'm curious about how correct that perception is. Its three major elements are Consequential Intention: What you believe will be the results of your action(s) of choice; Action Effort: How much effort you put directly into achieving what would be a good set of results; & Logical Effort: How much effort you put into determining what action(s) would achieve the best results. In a way, it's kind of the result of repeatedly applying utilitarianism to itself.
I personally just follow the flow of the universe. It's based on progression, actual progression by result. Which trickles down into being nice, making hard choices that might seem to give a better outcome, and stuff that support logical progression for the human race. Just like with how the flow of nature already has allowed for intelligent life to become 'real'. We can only wonder what level of intricacy is going to surface next. I want to find out!
I knew I chose the right degree program when the first video I got was my favorite tik tok creator and science communicator, Hank Green. I am so thrilled to continue on down this course.
I adore your approach to presenting, Hank, and have seen other videos of yours. You have a light touch that makes even difficult and serious topics digestible. PBS Digital Studios is lucky to have you working with them. Is there a UA-cam playlist of all the videos you have published, so I can see more? Thanks!
After hearing the thought bubble, Is a judgement of the burglar the most constructive use of our time? For example couldn't we do more "good" by using the info to design a system that helps prevent people from dying of carbon monoxide poisoning in their homes? Is there a name for contemplating just how often we should be deciding if something is even ethical (be it in a fundamental or subjective way)?
Oooooh! So I'm NOT a "Moral Relativist" like those Christians keep calling me! I'm a Moral Anti-Realist! Thank's CrashCourse! I really need to know this! I'm going to enjoy this next few episodes!
You should touch on the cognitvist/non-cognitivist distinction, and truth-aptness. If not dedicate an entire episode to them, I think you should at least mention the depth and complexity of metaethics. With that being said, this is a better introduction to normative ethics than diving right into deontology/consequentialism/virtue ethics etc.
5:42 Yes it makes perfect sense to have the view that each cultures have morals that are right for it. Even if that means "there's no reason to change anything", because it is not our ethics that on their own make us change things, there are more pieces in play which are not discussed in this narrow point of view. Cultural ethics change because someone came from a different view point and changed those ethics, they didn't change all on their own.
It does mean that they are wrong to try and change the moral standards however, as we should already be living with the correct moral truths for our society. Not to mention you would be wrong to tell other cultures that their principles are wrong, such as FGM and capital punishment.
society evolve, then morals evolve accordingly, though you can't give a right wrong on the morals, you can definitely see that it feats a more advanced society or not, it's not less moral or more but attached to a progressive or conservative society
Dorian Gay Basically he assumes two things: he takes consequentialism (specifically utilitarianism) as a starting point for his ethical work. Then he assumes that happiness can be boiled down to brain scans in the foreseeable future. So his conclusion is that we can have a "science of morality" which can empirically determine better or worse actions. His conclusion isn't all that strange, it's just that he doesn't argue the most important parts (his two assumptions) well at all. Also, a lot of people are misinformed about his book. To be clear, he is not saying that science can determine morals. He's saying that is can determine morals once we have "philosophized" the two assumptions first.
That's not true at all. Daniel Dennett is just one example of a philosopher who agrees with Sam Harris about objective morality, if I recall correctly.
it's not true that 'no philosophers actually take his arguments seriously'. you don't have to distort reality in order to criticise it.. just look at the book reviews to see there are mixed reviews by various academics.
I like to distinguish between morality and ethics. Morality is the intent to achieve good, for others as well as for yourself. The goal of morality is the best possible good and least possible harm for everyone. Ethics are rules, and rules are one of the tools we use to improve good and reduce harm for everyone. The distinction between morality and ethics is important, because morality is the meta-ethics of ethics. The rules serve moral intent. And we judge between two rules by how well they achieve good and reduce harm. For example, our laws once supported slavery and protected the slave master's ownership by requiring that runaway slaves be returned to their owners. However, we replaced these laws with new laws that outlawed slavery and later outlawed racial discrimination. Why did we make this change? Because it eliminated the harm being done through servitude and opened up participation in our economy and democracy to everyone. So morality is the meta-ethic of ethics.
I have always been more on the side of Utilitarian morality. That which produces the most pleasure for the most people while at the same time causing suffering to the least number of people and in the lowest severity is ultimately the higher form of good. If abducting me and tearing my body apart to feed to others mean producing a great level of pleasure in other people then of course you should do such in such a way as to minimize my own pain, but it should be done.
I tend to a different version of Utilitarianism, which looks more generally at wants and needs rather than pleasure and pain. Put simply, there is no reason to give more weight to any one person's wants or needs than to anyone else's. Mills Utilitarianism would say Brave New World is a paradise, while I say the United Federation of Planets is a lot closer. And you also have to consider the larger picture; being fed to a bunch of starving people might seem like the best course of action in the short term, and there may indeed be extreme instances when it really is. But would people want to live in a culture where you could be taken and killed without warning?
Ok, but also, in the case of BNW, it's obvious that most pleasure and least pain isn't the proper solution because John defies both of those assumptions -- and I don't think he would be the exception in any society. People are just more complicated than that.
Tiffany Makovic Now I am not really familiar with BNW, honestly I have been told about it and just watched a cliff notes on it, but I am a bit unclear. So the main principle of the World State posits that a drug which makes one happy is good?
Pretty much everything done in the World State is geared toward making sure everyone stays happy -- but mostly just satisfied. Soma (the drug) was one of the clearest ways that was accomplished because it's instant. If you haven't read the book yet I highly recommend it because it will probably change the way you see utilitarianism.
On Objective Morality. I think you would agree that this universe can decay in a certain way that would minimise "bad" experiences in net. I would call this flow of the physical reality "good." So in this sense, objective morality does exist. But is not in the form of dogmatic statements. Rather in the form of the recognition that sacrifices have to be made in order to minimise what bad IS (quality of experience), in one self or otherwise.
I think it is easy to mix up intent and success... you can have bad intent and fail which would result in a good thing, but more often good intent and fail and result in a bad thing. Bad intent is always wrong, but good intentions can fail or rather have unintended consequences. It is hard to calculate all reactions to your actions.
Not everyone who believes in Natural Law believes in God. You can find an atheistic version with people like Murray Rothbard. He argues that man's nature dictates natural law. The natural rights come from what is good for Man by his nature.
That violates natural rights because we aren't talking about collective good, we're talking about individual good, and on an individual level, death is bad for me, and thus, a violation of natural rights.
Doesn't it depend on whether you apply the natural law to serve an individual rather than humanity as a whole (like you did here)? If we chose the former, we could base the morals on empathy which is very much a part of human nature and enables us to live in a more or less peaceful society.
Joshua Urbauer And what are natural laws? Individual or collective? How do you draw the destination. *That violates natural rights because we aren't talking about collective good, we're talking about individual good* then me murdering you is still great for me as suddenly I have lowered the biological competition for me, and the competition for survival of reasoners such as food, spacing and jobs These are the morals of a psychopath. Individual good is moral. People are just tools therefore not wrong to be used and discarded.
I think moral relativism is the right way to go. morality is just opinion but the prevailing opinion is as good as fact. Two societies holding views that each society cannot tolerate SHOULD destroy each other. Only people that think you have to tolerate other people's morality can't make moral relativism work.
SafetySkull A moral nihilist will claim that there is absolutely no foundation for moral principles, and will act completely amorally (i.e. without regard for what is considered moral). An anti realist simply claims there is no truth value to moral statements, but can believe/follow in certain moral principles for various reasons, as a way to proect society for example. Consider a sport, such a football. There are no rules to football ingrained into the fabric of reality, nor are we bound by these possible rules on pain of death or ignorance, but this doesn't mean we don't play by rules. If we decided we didn't like the rules, we could change them, and this would change football. Not having absolute rules doesn't necessitate playing the game without any rules whatsoever. That's the difference between moral antirealism and nihilism.
Josh Cottle I thought the notion that there is no truth to moral statements was error theory, a subclass of moral nihilism. So wait, a moral nihilist necessarily doesn't engage in any activities a society would consider moral? I would argue that even egoism, the poster child for what most people consider to be immoral, can benefit from behaving like a utilitarian once in a while. I behave how I want. But doing so often necessitates following some moral principle or another. I'm not a utilitarian but often-times maximizing the utility function of the universe can feel pretty good. ockhamsbeard.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/moral-anti-realism/ This article seems to suggest that moral antirealism and moral nihilism are one in the same, just that one has a lot of edgy, unintellectual stigma proponents are trying to shake off.
SafetySkull The article you shared argues for a divide between nihilism and antirealism. Nihilism by definition indicates the pointlessness of the topic at hand, a definition not necessarily entailed by antirealism. A nihilist will see moral statements as meaningless and will not act with the intention of being moral whatsoever (they may inadvertently perform moral actions as you mentioned, but they won't be for moral reasons. If they do something for ethical reasons, they aren't a moral nihilist.) An antirealist may not see morality as useless, just that the statements have no truth value.
Fact 1: Morality is individually subjective, socially collective. Fact 2: The universe doesn't care what happens to us (especially Pluto, which is still angry about being demoted from a planet). Conclusion: Objective Moral Absolutes do not exist externally, and can only exist if every single human agrees on a specific topic - which they traditionally never have and doubtfully ever will. Thus, we are stuck with a majority rules form of ethics for our species - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as the majority agrees with me.
While Fact 2 is almost certainly true, "Fact" 1 is not demonstrably factual. Which is the problem. And disagreement doesn't stop something from being true. It doesn't in science, after all; about half of all Americans don't agree that evolution happened, and yet that it did is an objectively true fact. So if there are moral facts, people disagreeing with them doesn't make them less factual, it just makes those people incorrect.
Actually, Fact 1 _is_ demonstrable. Simply survey 100 people on various moral topics, and you will find that most individuals fall into the minority on one or more issues. Thus, the demonstrable moral subjectivity of the individual. Yet it is the majority plurality which dominates, defining our laws and cultural mores, which again is factually observable in how collective societies define ethical systems.
What people *think* is moral is not necessarily germane to what *is* moral. Opinions on morality, like all opinions, are indeed subjective, but that doesn't allow us to conclude anything about objective moral facts. You could survey 100 people on various scientific topics, and you would find that most individuals hold minority views on many of them. But this wouldn't mean that science is individually subjective, it would just mean that people are often wrong. And while societies certainly work collectively to codify moral systems, there is again not necessarily a direct link between what the majority *says* is moral and what actually *is*. The majority of people could be wrong. This is the case in every other area of inquiry (see, again, evolutionary theory), so there's no reason to think it's not the case for morality.
The distinction between something like evolutionary theory which models a physical process regarding a particular mechanism of how nature works in one area, versus morality, which is an internal human process attempting to regulate how people _should_ behave in a society, is quite different. While some people may not hold the opinion that the earth is a sphere or that evolution is a fact, this makes them objectively wrong in that their opinion runs contrary to all reliable empirical evidence. However, in order to demonstrate how a majority of people could be wrong regarding the moral codes they abide by, you would have to provide empirical evidence that their codes are inherently immoral in some objective sense _external_ to what they individually and collectively might believe. To accomplish that, you would need to define morality in such a way as to encompass universal principles which are objectively observable and irrefutable based upon direct evidence. So when you say, "What people think is moral is not necessarily germane to what is moral," implies some objective, well-defined standard. "Is Moral" (as in Morality with a capital "M") just doesn't exist outside of human subjectivity - thus morality can _only_ be a function of what people think and nothing more.
I consider myself a utilitarian, and definitely think that the most ethical thing to do is whatever gives the greatest total amount of happiness or pleasure between all people, though I do think that judging others based on intention can be productive in that it will encourage others to act based on such assumptions. The goal of the utilitarianist isn't to convince others of utilitarianism, just to help encourage behaviours that act in accordance with utilitarianism
@Total Water I do agree it's a tricky situation as a whole, but I'd like to see a good argument for any alternatives. Deontological systems can easily end up with similar issues of huge injustices being made, as such rules can't really account for the clear harm that would come form certain actions. I would argue against the hereditary illness issue in a couple ways, first that killing them would lead to both themselves and anyone relating to them having a huge amount of unhappiness, and people knowing that people being killed in this way happens would cause a lot of public distress. Additionally, living with hereditary illness far from damns you to an unhappy life, it's possible to gain a lot of happiness even in difficult positions. For example I have a brother who is blind and has a lot of heatlh issues due to a genetic disorder but he's a very happy person still. Overall I use utilitarianism as my system because I find it the only one that can really be argued for that's not a self-interest based one like egoism. Ultimately I want to make things the best they can be, for as many people as I can
@Total Water I would disagree with that, but ultimately I think we've reached a point where we'd be trying to argue axiomatic values, which can't really be argued effectively. I did appreciate the conversation though!
I remember taking this at university, but I Kant remember any of it.
So I'm Mormon.... the more and more I dig into ethics, morals and philosophy the more I start to doubt religion. Not just mine alone but religion as a whole... idk, I feel bad about it but then again this seems so logical in my quest to understand what life is and how we operate.
Have you guys tried deluding yourselves with conspiracy theories? There are youtube videos for that too.
atine834 I'm a baptist Christian and I think science and philosophy can help with faith. Of course there are somethings in science like the evolution theory that opposes god but u can differentiate what is right and wrong urself
***** Wow, that's an interesting take on it. I am actually just going to write it all out and do as you said. Cheers!
You are not alone in feeling this way. Authoritative models of morality, in my experience, really suffer under outside scrutiny, since by definition they are based on a sort of 'decree' rather than anything about the acts themselves. It begins to feel very arbitrary... which is not *necessarily* a bad thing, but it *is* definitely a thing.
It's absurd to think that you can just dismiss things that you happen to disagree with in science. There is no basis for being able to differentiate "what is right and wrong urself" without having some basis of justification. Doing that and then looking at science as having any merit at all is massively hypocritical, and so either insincere or self-oblivious.
Either understand science and pursue unbiased truth (challenging whatever you want but not simply throwing things out for no reason), or deny it wholesale. Cherry-picking is logically unacceptable, as you should know if you're serious about studying either science or philosophy.
I really appreciate that this episode closed on a notion that one should always be self-examining and trying to understand why they feel a certain way. Thank you CC!
I like Fiorello La Guardia's take on the question of stealing to feed your family. After being legally obligated to fine a woman ten dollars for doing just that during the Depression, he paid her fine out of his own pocket, then fined every person in the courtroom twenty-five cents "for the crime of living in a city where a woman has no choice but to steal or watch her grandson starve."
i watched the good place and now i'm obsessed with philosophy
I'm really loving how objective and balanced you're being about all of these topics. I appreciate it a lot.
I've gotten more and more interested in Philosophy lately, and I decided to join my high school ethics bowl team. Whenever I'm interested in any topics, I've found your videos extremely helpful, and recently the philosophy crash course videos have been very useful!
Moral of the story:
The burglar was bad at being a burglar.
Jippy Panjo AND he should go to jail for being bad at being a burglar.
Ha ha ha.
To equate burglar to be bad is a tautology.
Jippy Panjo yeah but like, what is a burglar anyway?
True
But also the woman bad at Changing batteries in carbon detector 😂
I did my philosophy dissertation on the Divine command Theory and the effects evolution has on morality. I can't wait to see more of this series
Hey, I don't know if you will see this,but if you have time to answer,can I as you what domain are you working now on,with your degree?I am majoring in philosophy too,but in my country going to university is debt free.
0:22 slight typo.
misspelled "morality" as "mortality"
But, like, what *is* mortality anyway?
CrashCourse Brain procedes to explode.
Aaliyah Adesida, noted that too.
Aaliyah Adesida , what does it feel like having crash course reply to you?.......
CrashCourse, A grammatical construct that has, for Western english speakers, a different meaning than morality.
For the burglar story, could you separate moral intentions from moral outcomes? His moral intentions were wrong, but his moral outcome was right. That would leave us with four different categories.
These are principles of many ethical theories. Utilitarianism would say the robber was good as the outcome caused more pleasure than pain to more people. Deontology would say the robber was bad as his intentions were evil. Other theories, such as virtue ethics, attempt to combine the two.
I would consider myself as utilitarian (considering most things at least) and I would say that the burglar did a good thing, but still doesn't deserve praise and also still deserves blame and consequentially judicial persecution.
What he did was certainly useful since he saved the life of a fellow human. However, he did attempt to break into someones home and steal stuff.
Things would have looked better for him (both in an ethical sense and a judicial sense) if he would have called an ambulance upon encountering the unconscious woman.
+Florian Haydn If the burglar did a good thing, why doesn't he deserve praise? In Utilitarianism the only thing that counts is the outcome of an action. So from a Utilitarianist perspective the burglar's actions were equally as good as the actions of a paramedic saving the old woman's life. If you assign moral value to a person's intentions, you are not a Utilitarian.
ilovemypiano
Well, for practical reasons. I agree that this might be breaking with pure Utilitarianism, but he was breaking into another persons home. Laws aren't necessarily moral.
+Florian Haydn So you are arguing that from a purely moral perspective
the burglar did the right thing, is a good person and deserves praise,
but from the perspective of the law he should be punished. Did I
understand that correctly? If yes, why do you think that law and
morality should be opposed? Isn't it normal to think that the law should
be an implementation of our moral principles?
Fantastic rebuttal to cultural relativism at 5:30 onwards.
hey carl, nice to see you here...
improvement from the "words that hurt" episode
Well, only to normative cultural relativism.
Invokes Goodwin's Law, but Goodwin's Law seems to be the only way to discuss negative cultures without people possibly accusing you of some secondary agenda.
Every now and then PBS as some shows and hosts that aren't too bad.
A very thorough and balanced video, good job Hank and Crash Course team
It seems like the most fundamental question which all ethical frameworks would need to answer is if it's actions, intentions, or results by which someone should be judged. An ethical framework can usually only be built on one of those, but most people would agree that all three matter. So we already have a place where moral intuition can't be easily translated into ethical theory.
One of the nice things about virtue ethics is that it's able to take just about anything into consideration. (It's also one of the difficulties, as it rarely gives one definitive, simple answer as to what one should do.)
Your typical ethical theory looks at an isolated event from the point of view of an abstract person and then judges that event. (Is that a good or a bad thing to do, in the abstract?) In contrast, virtue ethics is all about the character of the person. (What kind of person would I be if I did this?) It easily combines action, intention, context, personal history, etc., typically as part of a lifelong project of improving oneself.
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Intuitions, even those held by a single person, are most often inconsistent. People are very prone to believing in conflicting principles - it is particularly easy to see that by coming up with not-too-unlikely scenarios where two seemingly unrelated principles cannot hold simultaneously. So that forces absolutists to create hierarchies of principles, however that's no easy task.
It is true that consequentialism and intentionalism are two contrasting flavours of ethical theories, however they are not necessarily inconsistent.
But even then there are many hidden assumptions - e.g. that people are to be "judged" (assumes the existence of an either reliable or at least powerful arbiter), or that ethical statements have the same truth values as statements about facts, etc. etc.
...and even if one is to decide on preferred metaethical positions, the general principles for guiding actions and to actully engage in ethical practice are usually independent of the metaethical position; also one would be prone to assume certain things about semantics and also will tend not to have treated metasemantic issues at all.
So it's rather fascinating, but also a long and difficult task.
Jason93609 All that is true. However, we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss moral intuition. After all, if an ethical system comes to conclusions that go against most peoples' moral intuition would generally be considered deeply flawed for this reason.
Timothy McLean I am not dismissing it! In fact I believe that very few people act guided by rational principle - the vast majority is guided by intuition.
But practical ethics is one thing, the academic study of the ideas behind it is quite another...
Moral questions horrofies me, because they has a deep pratical impact on life AND are not verificable, like science questions.
That's why you develop your own ethical values and express those values to others in hopes of having understanding. The best we can strive for is understanding one another
How are scientific questions not verifiable? We can empirically verify that e.g. the basal ganglia is involved in emotion generation & processing by using functional magnetic resonance imaging or virtually anything else that is written in scientific journals. While they do not represent the 'ground truth' they do provide a best estimate of verification of the hypothesis/scientific question.
@@acidtears I think the user meant "unlike science questions"
Nice Rei profile pic 👌
I like how polite you are to your thought bubble and thank it every time :D
slight existential crisis
We got a lightweight over here..
ah it does seem to silly to evaluate existence, doesn't it
yld Not at all. I'm just sayin this video is hardly down the rabbit hole if you know what I mean.
I do, but it's a very elementary approach to something so profound, that it gives philosophy a base. That's just daunting. so yes, lightweight here, in a way.
This isn't particularly existential. Morality isn't the same as meaning.
I'm getting good grade in moral ethics course in college all because of your channel. Great content, precise and exclusive. and great animations too. I don't know how to thank you.
I must say, I like the well-balanced explanations that Hank and team are giving.
BEST EDUCATIONAL CHANNEL ON UA-cam!!!!!!!!! LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!!
Thought it said "Mathematics"
lol me too
Captain_MasonM Same.
same
Same
You came here expecting a crash course on all of mathematics?
to quote every INTP ever
"it depends..."
Me in a nutshell.
Bruh
I love seeing closed mindsets
@AMellowFellow That depends... some people literally do not think that way. Ask your local priest or someone who is deeply religious... The reason why there are multiple moral theories are mentioned in the video is because not everyone has the same moral theory lmao
hey, look its *me*
What I learned from crash course philosophy is some of my ideas have terms.
"Ethics are spooks tho" - Max Stirner (probably)
they are doesnt mean its useless. every spook has its utility.
@@ElDrHouse2010 Spooks are chains. Some chains help us get rid of bigger chains. I don't think ethics is such.
Lest anyone be confused, moral relativism in the descriptive, as opposed to normative, sense is NOT a metaethical theory. Since it's simply a statement about how beliefs differ from culture to culture, it makes no statement one way or another about the status of moral facts (whether they exist or not) and so is neither a form of moral realism or anti-realism on it's own. It is an important thing to discuss here since many people get descriptive moral relativism confused with normative moral relativism (which IS a metaethical theory) and/or use descriptive moral relativism as a justification for some other moral antirealist position. Cheers
This is what the human geography crash course SHOULD HAVE been. Informative, and as unbiased as possible. I would still love to see a series on the subject as I finished an ap course in my high school last year, and your videos almost always interest me, even with things I an well versed in.Based on your second channel I don't really agree with many of your political beliefs, so I am very grateful that you try so hard to keep everything so unbiased (and considering how biased people are these days, I respect you more for it as well). Thanks for being awesome!
Hank, I think Wittgenstein "solved", dissolved, the whole moral/ethics problems. I hope you talk about it but if you don't what you're doing is still amazing. keep going!!.
I have to say, I used to not even think I would watch this in my spare time but now I'm always looking forward to theses videos!
Really good breakdown of a very complex topic. Very impressive!
Who's the consultant on this unit?
What a fun video about mathematics. Truly the queen of sciences.
crash course is my favorite channel! keep it up :)
+
+
I feel sorry for your mother.
SparkyFister aight then
Emma Horan I'm sure your mother is lovely, she raised someone who knows how to not engage with loathsome trolls.
I wonder if Hank will talk about moral calculus. One of the metaethical questions asked earlier in this episode was "Is it right to steal in order to feed your family?". Moral calculus gets an input of objective positive and negative consequences regarding a certain ethical decision and outputs the decision that should be made. So back to that question. Let's say you have 2 children, you are very poor, and your children are starving. You then see a pie that was put to cool on a open window that was left by the baker. You overhear from the baker that a wealthy individual will come by later to pick up and buy this pie. Let's look at the positives and negatives if you steal the pie.
+You and your children can keep living and won't die from starvation
+This wealthy individual can buy another pie quite easily with no financial concerns
-The baker loses time and money spent making the pie
-The baker has to spend time and money to make another one
-Wealthy individual must wait more time to buy the pie
When weighing these pros and cons against each other, we can see that the baker and individual losing some cash and time weighs far less than children dying. There are still many different variable to consider. Would it be more ethical to ask the baker if he can give you the pie for your starving children? What if the baker is also extremely poor? I'm not saying this is the absolute solution to the problems and questions philosophers ask regarding metaethics but it is very interesting.
1:14 the window is open :( he smashes it anyway
*1:41
perhaps the window was jammed
@@jeffreymcneary3055 Still doesn't explain how the Carbon Monoxide didn't escape from the house
@@DIYLabs prior it was escaping too slowly, there was still too much CO in the air.
@@officialkue *opened
I am so confused yet intrigued at the very same time
When I was 16 I had a great fascination with ancient reptiles and studied paleontology nonstop. I developed a great deal of respect for the dinosaurs given as they dominated the world for hundreds of millions of years ( whereas humans had only for a couple thousand ) and that they were so successful in adapting and evolving to countless conditions around the world. I sometimes thought that if dinosaurs had taken their success one step further and developed their own complex civilizations what their ethics would be. I asked myself if even basic moral rules would apply to animals other than humans. Like would murder be wrong for these civilized dinos? Or is that just a rule that applies exclusively to some part of the primate, human, brain that these animals wouldn't have. I thought about these a lot and studied biology, philosophy, psychology, and other sciences in search of an answer. I eventually figured stuff out but I still find it funny to think about how much sleep I lost asking myself if civilized birds would be cool with manslaughter.
I can't wait until I finish watching all these episodes. I'm going to have so many great -isms with which to label myself!
hey john you're great learning a lot
Chase Groll he is Hank not John
+Rainbow Mechanic oh shoot im with my friend named John and got confused! Thank you
Thank you so much, your videos on philosophy and ethics are getting me through my A levels
Slow down please.
Thank you for all of it
I'm glad I've already given this topic some thought-- this series has given me enough existential crises already
Change your logo from an apple to a chom chom! That's probably what cc really stands for!
I love this series so much! It has opened up my mind to other people's opinions and thoughts, and it has made me question and challenge my own opinions and thoughts. At times I have changed my views of the world because this course introduced me to new and different ways of thinking. I feel that this openness and questioning--this philosophical way of thinking--has bettered me as a person and that it can better other people, too. Thank you Crash Course Team and ThoughtCafe for making an awesome series with so many open-ended, convoluted questions that people around the world can contemplate and enjoy!
YES! My favorite branch of philosophy! I'd love to hear which ethical theories you guys identify with.
I'm surprised to hear Hank say "there's just no right answer" to the plain or peanut M&M question.
I know, right? Obviously peanut!
Yet another great episode. Thanks CrashCourse :)
Although do take some more time to check the errors, here referring to spellings - 'Morality' and 'Cultural' spelled as 'Mortality' and 'Cultiral'. Just pointing it out :) We all make mistakes!
All this is fits nicely into Robert M. Pirsig's ('Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance") Metaphysics of Quality. Totally reorganized reality into a framework that easily explains all these "meta ethical" dilemmas and provides a true moral north.
These videos are so interesting and educational. Love 'em
I can't get enough of this course
Typo at 0:23. "Morality" was spelled with an extra _t_, spelling "mortality" instead.
Sam Harris has a couple talks on UA-cam about objective morality (one of them is a TED talk). It's incredibly convincing. These talks are based on his book "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values".
Lol. No, it's *not* incredibly convincing. The overwhelming majority of philosophers of ethics disagree with his thinking as presented in that very book "The Moral Landscape." If you're ok with non sequiturs galore, then have it. That just wont do for most thinkers, however.
TruthUnadulterated
It doesn't matter what other philosophers think. It's about providing sufficient evidence for your arguments. But if you want to argue from authority then know that most scientists don't care what philosophers have to say either.
All Sam does is present an ethical theory (see 7:00), a form of Utilitarianism. One that I tend to agree with, mind you, but no more objective than Mills Utilitarianism, Divine Command, or Social Darwinism.
RicoSeattle the source of objectivism ends up being subjective.
I think it's really important to just decide a form of ethic and start researching that in the perspective of empirical facts. That might be the most important thing science could do in the 21st century. Neuroscience is a new field of science, which makes a huge difference in dealing with ethical questions.
Steal food from Old lady for family scenario: (My View)
good intentions (to feed family)
bad method (taking things without asking the owner.)
good result (A life was saved at the cost of a broken window)
I find it strange to try to lump these three parts together to label the scenario overall good or overall bad.
Perhaps the idea of feeding your family at any cost is in itself a bad and poisonous intention... It keeps evil methods in consideration instead of fully dedicating your resources into looking for a non-pain-inducing method.
Interesting... Depending on how you label the thief's intentions, the scenario is either 2/3 good or 2/3 bad.
Reply Responsibly ;)
Thank you for starting a unit on ethics! I'm really looking forward to this unit, and I'm confident that you will do a great job.
I'd love to use this video for my students. However, moral theory is generally not introduced as realism vs. antirealism, and relativism is generally not presented as a realist option. Relativism as realism is not just a minority position, but is largely untenable in philosophical ethics at large. Please consider revising this video with realism vs. relativism or universalism vs. relativism. Few philosophers, if any, find relativism plausible, and identify its metaethical shortcomings both in individual and cultural form. Please review any number of introductory textbooks such as Vaughn, Rachels, Boss, and Ellin (not in print but excellent). Thank you.
It's always a joy to see these guys pop up into my sub box.
Thank you for the very interesting content. This is super benifical and has greatly increasd my understanding!
While it somewhat branches from consequentialism, I follow an ethical theory with major elements that don't seem to come up with other theories, and I'm curious about how correct that perception is.
Its three major elements are Consequential Intention: What you believe will be the results of your action(s) of choice; Action Effort: How much effort you put directly into achieving what would be a good set of results; & Logical Effort: How much effort you put into determining what action(s) would achieve the best results.
In a way, it's kind of the result of repeatedly applying utilitarianism to itself.
I personally just follow the flow of the universe. It's based on progression, actual progression by result. Which trickles down into being nice, making hard choices that might seem to give a better outcome, and stuff that support logical progression for the human race. Just like with how the flow of nature already has allowed for intelligent life to become 'real'. We can only wonder what level of intricacy is going to surface next. I want to find out!
Wonderfully structured for introductory reasons.
At 0:23, the blurb says 'What is [Mortality]?', where Hank says 'What is Morality?'
That is quite the worse misspelling ever Moral and Death (Mortality)...
Oh Shakespeare
And the metaethics chart, all the times it comes up, also has a spelling error (Descriptive cutiral relativism).
I knew I chose the right degree program when the first video I got was my favorite tik tok creator and science communicator, Hank Green. I am so thrilled to continue on down this course.
I adore your approach to presenting, Hank, and have seen other videos of yours. You have a light touch that makes even difficult and serious topics digestible. PBS Digital Studios is lucky to have you working with them. Is there a UA-cam playlist of all the videos you have published, so I can see more? Thanks!
I really hope you guys cover modern virtue ethics. and go into the weeds a bit on utilitarianism, especially negative utilitarianism
7:20 "Well-ordered" plan, eh? Looks like axiom of choice is right.
Helped me understand the foundation of my ethics course a lot clearer - thanks!
Uhhh, Peanut M&M FOR LIFE! Unless, like Hank said... you're allergic to Peanuts. Then uhh, Peanut M&M's for... err, death?
So, would that be normative cultural relativism for the issue of M&Ms?
I don't think that was a good comparison, it is objective truth that peanut butter M&M's are superior to all other varieties.
This is short sighted. There are pretzel M&Ms, crispy, mint, white chocolate, almond and more.
chomchoms 4 life
Skittles are the best M&Ms.
good timing on this video, before this video I was considering moral antirealism
Thanks for the Captions for the Deaf :) - found you via Ravi Zacharias (RZIM)
After hearing the thought bubble, Is a judgement of the burglar the most constructive use of our time? For example couldn't we do more "good" by using the info to design a system that helps prevent people from dying of carbon monoxide poisoning in their homes? Is there a name for contemplating just how often we should be deciding if something is even ethical (be it in a fundamental or subjective way)?
Oooooh! So I'm NOT a "Moral Relativist" like those Christians keep calling me! I'm a Moral Anti-Realist!
Thank's CrashCourse! I really need to know this! I'm going to enjoy this next few episodes!
BlankPicketSign I am not sure if this comment is sarcastic or not.
If it's sarcastic-- lousy sense of humor. If honest-- someone needs a new hobby.
It is Honest and I need a Hobby =^_^=
so excited for ethics. moral philosophy is so interesting
Add 8:07, isn't viewing *unjustified* killing as amoral begging the question?
Really interesting topic. Looking forward to it.
this reminds me I had a philosophy major friend wonder what happened to him
6:00 - 6:10 _ nailed it perfectly!
OBJECTIVISM for the win
Gratz on 5M Crash Course!
6:58 absolutely right
Right and wrong were never explained so well.
Can't wait for the future videos.
Ach, ja! Cultural relativism! Zis sounds gut!
You should touch on the cognitvist/non-cognitivist distinction, and truth-aptness. If not dedicate an entire episode to them, I think you should at least mention the depth and complexity of metaethics. With that being said, this is a better introduction to normative ethics than diving right into deontology/consequentialism/virtue ethics etc.
Also, I think that bust on your desk with the mustache might have something interesting to say about moral relativism
Is it unethical to screw up myself? Does it in the end hurt those that care about me, making it unethical? Who the hell knows.
5:42 Yes it makes perfect sense to have the view that each cultures have morals that are right for it. Even if that means "there's no reason to change anything", because it is not our ethics that on their own make us change things, there are more pieces in play which are not discussed in this narrow point of view. Cultural ethics change because someone came from a different view point and changed those ethics, they didn't change all on their own.
It does mean that they are wrong to try and change the moral standards however, as we should already be living with the correct moral truths for our society. Not to mention you would be wrong to tell other cultures that their principles are wrong, such as FGM and capital punishment.
society evolve, then morals evolve accordingly, though you can't give a right wrong on the morals, you can definitely see that it feats a more advanced society or not, it's not less moral or more but attached to a progressive or conservative society
no mention of moral nihilism. not surprised.
Alvin Tossler Antirealism is a piece of nihilism, not the other way around, I'm sure he'll go into it later
there is nothing
Alvin Tossler what moral? :p
ETHICS! Thanks for starting this branch of Philosophy.
watching this so i dont have to read 20 pages of reading
Every action is measured by the depth of sentiment from which it proceeds - Emerson
Sam Harris gave a great Ted Talk on a subject similar to this.
He argues that there are objective moral facts that we can achieve.
Great watch.
Not here to debate or anything, but it's worth mentioning that no philosophers actually take his arguments seriously.
Dorian Gay Basically he assumes two things: he takes consequentialism (specifically utilitarianism) as a starting point for his ethical work. Then he assumes that happiness can be boiled down to brain scans in the foreseeable future. So his conclusion is that we can have a "science of morality" which can empirically determine better or worse actions. His conclusion isn't all that strange, it's just that he doesn't argue the most important parts (his two assumptions) well at all. Also, a lot of people are misinformed about his book. To be clear, he is not saying that science can determine morals. He's saying that is can determine morals once we have "philosophized" the two assumptions first.
Christian Gonzalez-Capizzi not a problem most scientists don't take philosophers serious too.
That's not true at all. Daniel Dennett is just one example of a philosopher who agrees with Sam Harris about objective morality, if I recall correctly.
it's not true that 'no philosophers actually take his arguments seriously'. you don't have to distort reality in order to criticise it.. just look at the book reviews to see there are mixed reviews by various academics.
I like to distinguish between morality and ethics. Morality is the intent to achieve good, for others as well as for yourself. The goal of morality is the best possible good and least possible harm for everyone. Ethics are rules, and rules are one of the tools we use to improve good and reduce harm for everyone. The distinction between morality and ethics is important, because morality is the meta-ethics of ethics. The rules serve moral intent. And we judge between two rules by how well they achieve good and reduce harm. For example, our laws once supported slavery and protected the slave master's ownership by requiring that runaway slaves be returned to their owners. However, we replaced these laws with new laws that outlawed slavery and later outlawed racial discrimination. Why did we make this change? Because it eliminated the harm being done through servitude and opened up participation in our economy and democracy to everyone. So morality is the meta-ethic of ethics.
0:24 "mortality"
mistake at 00:22, he said what is "Morality" but the purple text says "Mortality" lol I love this channel :)
I have always been more on the side of Utilitarian morality. That which produces the most pleasure for the most people while at the same time causing suffering to the least number of people and in the lowest severity is ultimately the higher form of good. If abducting me and tearing my body apart to feed to others mean producing a great level of pleasure in other people then of course you should do such in such a way as to minimize my own pain, but it should be done.
I tend to a different version of Utilitarianism, which looks more generally at wants and needs rather than pleasure and pain. Put simply, there is no reason to give more weight to any one person's wants or needs than to anyone else's. Mills Utilitarianism would say Brave New World is a paradise, while I say the United Federation of Planets is a lot closer. And you also have to consider the larger picture; being fed to a bunch of starving people might seem like the best course of action in the short term, and there may indeed be extreme instances when it really is. But would people want to live in a culture where you could be taken and killed without warning?
Anticipation and Fear are harm and a rather long term version of it. Utilitarianism serves to do as little harm as possible
Ok, but also, in the case of BNW, it's obvious that most pleasure and least pain isn't the proper solution because John defies both of those assumptions -- and I don't think he would be the exception in any society. People are just more complicated than that.
Tiffany Makovic Now I am not really familiar with BNW, honestly I have been told about it and just watched a cliff notes on it, but I am a bit unclear.
So the main principle of the World State posits that a drug which makes one happy is good?
Pretty much everything done in the World State is geared toward making sure everyone stays happy -- but mostly just satisfied. Soma (the drug) was one of the clearest ways that was accomplished because it's instant.
If you haven't read the book yet I highly recommend it because it will probably change the way you see utilitarianism.
On Objective Morality.
I think you would agree that this universe can decay in a certain way that would minimise "bad" experiences in net.
I would call this flow of the physical reality "good."
So in this sense, objective morality does exist.
But is not in the form of dogmatic statements.
Rather in the form of the recognition that sacrifices have to be made in order to minimise what bad IS (quality of experience), in one self or otherwise.
Situational ethics ftw
I think it is easy to mix up intent and success... you can have bad intent and fail which would result in a good thing, but more often good intent and fail and result in a bad thing. Bad intent is always wrong, but good intentions can fail or rather have unintended consequences. It is hard to calculate all reactions to your actions.
Not everyone who believes in Natural Law believes in God. You can find an atheistic version with people like Murray Rothbard. He argues that man's nature dictates natural law. The natural rights come from what is good for Man by his nature.
"The Ethics of Liberty" mises.org/library/ethics-liberty
Fi☪†i☯N No, it definitely isn't.
That violates natural rights because we aren't talking about collective good, we're talking about individual good, and on an individual level, death is bad for me, and thus, a violation of natural rights.
Doesn't it depend on whether you apply the natural law to serve an individual rather than humanity as a whole (like you did here)? If we chose the former, we could base the morals on empathy which is very much a part of human nature and enables us to live in a more or less peaceful society.
Joshua Urbauer
And what are natural laws? Individual or collective?
How do you draw the destination.
*That violates natural rights because we aren't talking about collective good, we're talking about individual good* then me murdering you is still great for me as suddenly I have lowered the biological competition for me, and the competition for survival of reasoners such as food, spacing and jobs
These are the morals of a psychopath. Individual good is moral. People are just tools therefore not wrong to be used and discarded.
I think moral relativism is the right way to go. morality is just opinion but the prevailing opinion is as good as fact. Two societies holding views that each society cannot tolerate SHOULD destroy each other. Only people that think you have to tolerate other people's morality can't make moral relativism work.
Is moral antirealism a synonym for moral nihilism?
Moral nihilism is a form of moral antirealism, in the same way as relativism is a form of realism.
What quality does moral nihilism have that other forms of moral antirealism don't have? Josh Cottle
SafetySkull
A moral nihilist will claim that there is absolutely no foundation for moral principles, and will act completely amorally (i.e. without regard for what is considered moral). An anti realist simply claims there is no truth value to moral statements, but can believe/follow in certain moral principles for various reasons, as a way to proect society for example.
Consider a sport, such a football. There are no rules to football ingrained into the fabric of reality, nor are we bound by these possible rules on pain of death or ignorance, but this doesn't mean we don't play by rules. If we decided we didn't like the rules, we could change them, and this would change football. Not having absolute rules doesn't necessitate playing the game without any rules whatsoever. That's the difference between moral antirealism and nihilism.
Josh Cottle
I thought the notion that there is no truth to moral statements was error theory, a subclass of moral nihilism.
So wait, a moral nihilist necessarily doesn't engage in any activities a society would consider moral? I would argue that even egoism, the poster child for what most people consider to be immoral, can benefit from behaving like a utilitarian once in a while.
I behave how I want. But doing so often necessitates following some moral principle or another. I'm not a utilitarian but often-times maximizing the utility function of the universe can feel pretty good.
ockhamsbeard.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/moral-anti-realism/
This article seems to suggest that moral antirealism and moral nihilism are one in the same, just that one has a lot of edgy, unintellectual stigma proponents are trying to shake off.
SafetySkull
The article you shared argues for a divide between nihilism and antirealism. Nihilism by definition indicates the pointlessness of the topic at hand, a definition not necessarily entailed by antirealism. A nihilist will see moral statements as meaningless and will not act with the intention of being moral whatsoever (they may inadvertently perform moral actions as you mentioned, but they won't be for moral reasons. If they do something for ethical reasons, they aren't a moral nihilist.) An antirealist may not see morality as useless, just that the statements have no truth value.
I'm very grateful that such videos exist! :)
Fact 1: Morality is individually subjective, socially collective.
Fact 2: The universe doesn't care what happens to us (especially Pluto, which is still angry about being demoted from a planet).
Conclusion: Objective Moral Absolutes do not exist externally, and can only exist if every single human agrees on a specific topic - which they traditionally never have and doubtfully ever will. Thus, we are stuck with a majority rules form of ethics for our species - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as the majority agrees with me.
While Fact 2 is almost certainly true, "Fact" 1 is not demonstrably factual. Which is the problem.
And disagreement doesn't stop something from being true. It doesn't in science, after all; about half of all Americans don't agree that evolution happened, and yet that it did is an objectively true fact. So if there are moral facts, people disagreeing with them doesn't make them less factual, it just makes those people incorrect.
Actually, Fact 1 _is_ demonstrable. Simply survey 100 people on various moral topics, and you will find that most individuals fall into the minority on one or more issues. Thus, the demonstrable moral subjectivity of the individual. Yet it is the majority plurality which dominates, defining our laws and cultural mores, which again is factually observable in how collective societies define ethical systems.
What people *think* is moral is not necessarily germane to what *is* moral. Opinions on morality, like all opinions, are indeed subjective, but that doesn't allow us to conclude anything about objective moral facts. You could survey 100 people on various scientific topics, and you would find that most individuals hold minority views on many of them. But this wouldn't mean that science is individually subjective, it would just mean that people are often wrong.
And while societies certainly work collectively to codify moral systems, there is again not necessarily a direct link between what the majority *says* is moral and what actually *is*. The majority of people could be wrong. This is the case in every other area of inquiry (see, again, evolutionary theory), so there's no reason to think it's not the case for morality.
The distinction between something like evolutionary theory which models a physical process regarding a particular mechanism of how nature works in one area, versus morality, which is an internal human process attempting to regulate how people _should_ behave in a society, is quite different. While some people may not hold the opinion that the earth is a sphere or that evolution is a fact, this makes them objectively wrong in that their opinion runs contrary to all reliable empirical evidence.
However, in order to demonstrate how a majority of people could be wrong regarding the moral codes they abide by, you would have to provide empirical evidence that their codes are inherently immoral in some objective sense _external_ to what they individually and collectively might believe. To accomplish that, you would need to define morality in such a way as to encompass universal principles which are objectively observable and irrefutable based upon direct evidence. So when you say, "What people think is moral is not necessarily germane to what is moral," implies some objective, well-defined standard. "Is Moral" (as in Morality with a capital "M") just doesn't exist outside of human subjectivity - thus morality can _only_ be a function of what people think and nothing more.
So, which of those premises do you disagree with?
I consider myself a utilitarian, and definitely think that the most ethical thing to do is whatever gives the greatest total amount of happiness or pleasure between all people, though I do think that judging others based on intention can be productive in that it will encourage others to act based on such assumptions. The goal of the utilitarianist isn't to convince others of utilitarianism, just to help encourage behaviours that act in accordance with utilitarianism
@Total Water I do agree it's a tricky situation as a whole, but I'd like to see a good argument for any alternatives. Deontological systems can easily end up with similar issues of huge injustices being made, as such rules can't really account for the clear harm that would come form certain actions.
I would argue against the hereditary illness issue in a couple ways, first that killing them would lead to both themselves and anyone relating to them having a huge amount of unhappiness, and people knowing that people being killed in this way happens would cause a lot of public distress. Additionally, living with hereditary illness far from damns you to an unhappy life, it's possible to gain a lot of happiness even in difficult positions. For example I have a brother who is blind and has a lot of heatlh issues due to a genetic disorder but he's a very happy person still.
Overall I use utilitarianism as my system because I find it the only one that can really be argued for that's not a self-interest based one like egoism. Ultimately I want to make things the best they can be, for as many people as I can
@Total Water I would disagree with that, but ultimately I think we've reached a point where we'd be trying to argue axiomatic values, which can't really be argued effectively. I did appreciate the conversation though!