@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle "I am replying to a comment that literally says what I claim "nobody said"" Yes. But Jeffrey Kaplan said it, in this video. And the OC that this thread is about is "out of context Jeffrey Kaplan".
Moral error only proves that there are objective moral laws if moral error objectively exists. But to say that it exists assumes that there are objective moral laws. It's a circular argument.
It’s not circular, if moral error is a premise that the unwise moral relativist unwittingly accepts. You must denounce moral error or become a moral objectivist.
@@ricardoveiga007that’s an interesting take. But is that moral error or just inconsistency. If my judgement of an action is inconsistent with my stated moral framework is that moral error or just inconsistent application of my moral framework
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 05:41 🧠 Moral error focuses on beliefs, not actions. 08:38 🌐 Moral relativism can't critique a society's moral code. 11:13 🧠 Moral subjectivism can't criticize a society's moral code. 12:51 ❌ Moral nihilism with error theory can't condemn a society's moral code. 16:55 🚫 Moral nihilism and error theory can't deem a society's moral code morally wrong. 19:29 🎯 External critique needs moral objectivism to assess a society's moral system. Made with HARPA AI
This whole argument seems to be purely motivated reasoning: "I want to condemn people who disagree with me as immoral. Therefore, I choose Moral Objectivism because that is the theory that allows me to do so."
I think you have misunderstood. The argument is that the only valid basis for moral criticism, other than inconsistency/hypocrisy, is if you subscribe to the philosophy of moral objectivism. The rabbit hole goes much deeper, though. Most of the people who say they don't believe in objective morality still criticize as if they do believe in it, and most of the people who say they believe in it have tremendous problems defining it. Or put another way, the large majority of people are shits.
@@planetary-rendez-vous I would argue that this isn't true, though for a somewhat weird reason. If you're a moral skeptic or nihilist, you might not be able to condemn people "without being hypocritical". But, if you're a moral skeptic, you have your own internal moral beliefs, and from that perspective, condemning people who hold different beliefs from you might be something that you personally find moral enough to outweigh the hypocrisy. For instance, because it persuades other people to agree with your beliefs, and thus act in accordance with what you personally think is moral. And obviously a moral nihilist wouldn't consider being hypocritical a "bad" thing, by definition.
@@bennettpalmer1741 Very interesting argument! I never thought of it that way. I would argue, however, that this person might not be making a moral error as you said, according to their own moral theory, but they would be wrong in a purely rhetorical sense. Hypocrisy being a moral error or not also depends on that person's moral beliefs, if being hypocritical is itself wrong according to them, they would be making a moral error in addition. So that person must either be a moral Nihilist or relativist/subjectivist with the belief that it is morally permissible to be hypocritical for the sake of advancing their own moral code. In that case they would be morally right, according to them, but still rhetorically wrong by condemning someone (which assumes that objective moral facts exist) while at the same time claiming that morality depends on each individual/society, or even that it does not exist, which would prevent them from condemning other individuals/societies. We can argue about morality, but rhetoric is like the math of philosophical discourse, it can be proven true or false, or at least erroneous .
I haven't read the text but understand the argument, thanks to your clear description. However, the chapter does not appear to consider one possibility about cultural moral systems that could achieve external critique without moral objectivism. Our cultures are not static, they are evolving from more isolated, independent systems of beliefs to more dependent, integrated systems. You could say that as cultures become more aware and dependent on other cultures due to increased communication, there is pressure exerted between those cultures. These pressures are external but not necessarily universal, and the picture could be of a coalescing of multiple systems into one larger system that accommodates the greater community. Of course there are lots of conflicts in these moral systems as they integrate that need to be resolved, but isn't that the same thing as how an individual community eventually arrives at an agreed moral system? I'm not against moral objectivism, but I don't think it's necessary to establish external critique.
As we know, when two poles come together in social/political opinion we don’t get mixing, rather we get Civil War or just war. So, Blue vs Red in USA, naked dancers and free sex in the West vs heightening modesty and enforced covering of women in cultures of Islamic dominance. These are life and death issues to people and “evolution” is a fantasy of WEIRD cultured people like you and me.
I love these lectures. That said, it feels like most of the work people do in trying to determine whether or not an objective standard exists seems like time-wasting nonsense because, even if objective moral standard does exist, it seems like no one has access to it, and therefore everyone has to assemble their own moral structure from the available subjective philosophies
Morality isn't subjective but it is contextual. And that context isn't subjective but it is arbitrary in scope. And often the full scope cannot be known such as when actions affect the distant future. For instance, murder is wrong. Unless it's self defence. Unless the attack was provoked. Unless that attacker was a captor. Unless the captive deserves to be in captivity. And so on.
How do you know morality isn't subjective? You say: "murder is wrong except if...." but that is just what you believe right. This is just your subjective idea about what is moral or not. It might be that there is an objective moral truth that states the same, but I don't see how anyone can know anything about this objective moral code even if it exists, so assuming its existence is meaningless.
@@Eikenhorst math is hard to understand. Does that mean it's irrelevant and we shouldn't care? And consider this: murder is wrong... Unless if it's in self defence... Unless if the attacker was provoked... Unless if the attacker is a captor... Unless if the captive deserves captivity (eg he is a convicted criminal)... Unless if the law he broke was just... Unless if he is the one who instituted that law... Do you understand how each change of scope changes the determination of right vs wrong? It is deterministic but chaotic and convoluted. In situations where there is not perfect knowledge, approximations are the best we can do. It doesn't mean right and wrong are irrelevant concepts. Just difficult to determine sometimes. Especially if you think of morality as a vector with direction and magnitude. An act can be certainly wrong but inconsequential. And those consequences are still not subjective, but they may be unknowable at the moment of action.
@@austinwoodall5423 But even if you have perfect knowledge about the exact actions, its consequences and even intentions of a person, the very best you can do is give your subjective opinion about what is right and wrong. Subjective because it is shaped by your upbringing, society and personal experiences. For example, someone who lost a family member to a drunk driver might believe it is morally right to let such a person die if they are subject to a car crash, while their family members will feel very different. There is no objective truth, just strong subjective feelings
@@EikenhorstThere is objective truth, its just that truth assumes context; fact - the sky is blue. Now that assumes alot of things, like time of day, & the fact we're on Earth, & what the word "blue" actually means; there's alot of context to go along with that factual statement But it is most certainly a fact of physical reality; fact - murder is wrong. Again, this assumes alot of things, like the situation where this happened, & what the word "wrong" actually means. But just like before, this is a fact of morality Now, morality has constraints, just like physical reality has constraints, but that doesn't disqualify any attempts at validity
@@glint6070 The sky is blue can be considered an objective truth if you indeed assume some bassic things, like you measure a certain wavelength of light and you call that blue. That is quite a difference from calling murder wrong. Nothing you can measure determines that. It is litterally someone that calls murder wrong, then defines what is murder and then calls it wrong. There are no objective facts here (except for someone being death and this caused by someone else), you can't possibly measure the 'wrongness'. If someone disagrees it is wrong there are no facts you can point to that shows that really they are wrong.
I’m only halfway through the vid, but I’m already thinking that moral error only indicates that someone cannot learn and process all the appropriate social conventions at once. You can read a book and learn the wrong lesson. You can literally think it’s telling you something it’s not, if you misinterpret the message. Considering that our bundle of social conventions and the numerous interactions of the pieces within, are exceedingly complex, and that people are coming from vastly different backgrounds -causing differing interpretations of the same observations (or often having different observed phenomena) - it’s pretty easy to see how we “read the same book” but derive differing messages.
A moral subjectiveist would not say someone was wrong. They would say, I don't like that at this time. They can even change their minds. At one time I liked that and now I don't. There is no inconsistencies. You can still do things to people who do things you don't like. A belief is just an idea in your head. You may not like a belief in someone else's head, that is fine.
But should you do something to someone you don't like? Is this all just a game of survival through cooperation? The only justifications for government and justice systems are subjective preference? If so, then does that not mean it's meaningless to try and figure out how we ought to govern ourselves?
@@lolgamez9171 "But should you do something to someone you don't like?" Depends on how much you don't like him. If someone rapes my daughter, yes. They won't be breathing long. I'll take the consequences. "The only justifications for government and justice systems are subjective preference? If so, then does that not mean it's meaningless to try and figure out how we ought to govern ourselves?" It is only meaningless if you think there is no advantage to be gained or no want satisfied. The meaning only comes if you think it will result in something you want, whatever it is. This applies to everyone individually. Generally, I won't participate in a society that makes my life miserable while others live in comfort unless I have some other reason to stay in it.
@@gabrielteo3636 maybe. The point is that circular reasoning is not a good way to prove validity of the thing you try to prove. It can it useful to show relationships among things, go circular all you like! Example: zero is equal to itself. That’s a true statement, and essentially contains circular logic. But zero itself mean none existence in the physical sense. There by itself is not existing in the physical world. Of course it exists as an abstract. What people first should realize when they try to prove something to exist, they should first consider what kind of thing it is. Morality is an abstract, like the concept of god (as perfection). Meaning I can think of a system of moral that is consistent within itself but it might not be the only one, which make it possible to think of other system that contradict the first one. Thereby non of them can be objectively true. If one isn’t fooled by his own bias, it’s very clearly why morality is a subjective matter. Because it’s a mean to control behavior for better or for worse. Once you realize that, you understand each group of people has incentive to control other groups. So as long as there are multiple groups there will be different moral system.
If we assert that someone’s moral framework is fundamentally wrong we are not just saying that you disagree, you are saying that it’s fundamentally wrong. Thus you are asserting that there is a set of moral truths.
Yes, I have organized the videos in the playlists section of my UA-cam page. For example, here are three courses I have built: Intro to Philosophy (with a focus on philosophy of mind): ua-cam.com/play/PL7YPshZMeLIa49ZV_AzD3FMi5ASwPkEIc.html Intro to Ethics: ua-cam.com/play/PL7YPshZMeLIazts4sq6UQ2kpjsUxhHaBd.html Philosophy of Law: ua-cam.com/play/PL7YPshZMeLIYDwqvtqIHm9SOQpSeKVKU0.html
Indeed if you judge someone else's, or another cultures system as factually wrong, then you are assuming some external moral fact that falsifies it. If however you merely judge it as morally wrong by your own standard or that of your own cultures then their is not contradiction or need for objective morality. Internal critiques are probably the only means by which you can really start to seriously disassemble someone else's moral philosophy. Other than that how is pointing out a contradiction or falsity in anyone's understanding of morality a positive argument for Moral Facts actually existing? At best you can try to show that another is assuming Moral Realism and they may not be conscious of that. That a person believes or assumes moral realism is not an argument for it. So Landau's argument fails in it's goal.
The flip side also applies, and those who believe some people are meant to be slaves are using that to externally critique all people are equal. It's eternal yin and yang. Unless we can show why 'all people are equal' cannot be critiqued by 'some people are meant to be slaves', we can't anchor the ship.
I would like to attempt a distinction between moral subjectivism and moral infallibilism: Moral subjectivism: What's morally good or bad depends on the person's subjective views. Moral infallibilism: What's morally good or bad depends on the person's subjective views, *and they can't be wrong about it.* The latter is obviously the stronger and more outlandish claim. And all arguments that I've seen only seem to attack moral infallibilism
In order for someone to be wrong about their subjective belief there must be an objective truth to compare against. So what you’re calling subjectivism seems to me to just be moral objectivism.
@@jacksonletts3724 An objective truth that depends on the person, i.e. a non-universal objective truth. Additionally, nothing says that there can't be multiple correct options for this non-universal objective truth, which Objectivism also seems to disagree with.
Kaplan argues that the only way to critique moral statements would require moral skeptics to have some kind of objective moral standards to "disprove" a statement such as "some people are meant to be slaves". Kaplan thinks that moral nihilsts would have to say something like "slavery is evil", or "all people are equal". Kaplan's argument fails at understanding where the burden of proof lies. I would argue that it's not up to the moral nihilists to disprove the "some people are meant to be slaves' ' statement. But instead, it is up to the moral objectivist to prove the validity of the statement itself. Kaplan argues that moral nihilsts say that the statement “some people are meant to be slaves” is a wrong statement when this in fact isn’t what moral nihilsts say. Just like belief in god, atheists aren’t saying that god doesn’t exist. They are saying that claiming that he does isn’t justifiable. According to the philosopher David Hume, there is no way to derive an “ought” from an “is” . There is no way to prove that something should be done. Such statements must be based on the assumption that well-being/pleasure is a good thing. (which is an unjustified assumption).
Moral statements cannot be objectively proven. We don't have to say that a statement like "some people should be slaves" is an immoral statement, all we need to say is that moral statements cannot be proven to be objective. Once someone can prove that some people are meant to be slaves, then objective morality will be true. The same thing goes for arguing that well-being/pleasure is objectively good. Kaplan claims that it's the moral nihilsts's responsibility to disprove moral statements. But I would argue that it's the moral objectivist's responsibility to prove moral statements, which as far as I know, is impossible. you cannot disprove something that hasn't yet been proven.
The burden of proof is on the one that claims something that is less obvious. (Prima facie statements.) "The Sun rotates around the Earth" was prima facie. You couldn't come with an alternative or say it is false unless you had some PROOF. Galileo had one. The burden of proof was on him. ( Turned out he was right.) But *Galileo* had the burden of proof, and not the *Geocentrists* . Apply that here.
@@boooshes Obviously? It's not that obvious. Prima facie statements are the obvious ones. Because.. "Prima"... are postulated axiomatically. Axioms don't have proofs. They can only be proven false.
@@mrosskne it's not a decision, it is whatever belief is prevalent in all humanity. Before Galileo the obvious belief was that the Sun revolving around the Earth. Thanks to him that belief is no longer the obvious because he fulfilled the burden of proof.
I think it can be coherent for a moral relativist and a moral subjectivist to assert that a moral error has occurred when a conventional morality says, "[some act] is immoral". The moral relativist could say that the openness of that statement is condemning that act in other societies, and that's wrong. The moral subjectivist could say that it is condemning people who do that act and think that it's morally right to do so, and that's wrong. Or maybe I've accidentally slipped some objectivism into relativism and subjectivism; it's possible. Maybe the "wrongness" that they would claim is more of a "philosophical error" than a "moral error".
I think that we are all moral objectivists. But some people don’t want to judge other people (which is fair). So they assert that other people’s moral framework which differs from their own are equally valid. But I find it hard to believe that we really do believe that where, for instance, another society is morally comfortable in slavery or child sacrifice that we don’t believe that is a moral error. We may not want to judge those people but we still believe that they are wrong.
I don't need to go out of a moral system to criticize a fundamental moral belief. I can simply create a more fundamental belief than the existing fundamental belief to criticize it. Where do you think the fundamental belief you wish to criticize came from? It was constructed. Hence, moral relativism/skepticism is true.
Am I crazy or is this just a looping argument? Those who don't believe in objective morality cannot say something is objectively immoral? Yes. The author then implies that if you can't object to perceived immorality as an objective truth, then you cannot object at all. Why? Why can't I say, as a moral relativist, that moral systems that don't punish homosexuality are superior, particularly in this time and place?
Because you'd be lying if you can't tell if something is objectively immoral or not, then you either: a) admit that you can't tell whether something is objectively immoral or not thus admitting you have no ground to make any objections b) object to something even though you don't know whether that something is wrong or not, thus pretending that you know something that you don't, thus lying
@@open9060it's really not that hard. I accept some moral axioms on faith, and when I criticise other systems of morality I do so by saying that they go against my axioms. Its not that I "don't know if it's wrong or not" but rather that I know it's wrong, given my axioms.
@@dalmationblack Then you're not a moral relativist. You are a moral objectivist whenever you think that morality is defined by something other than a culture/person's subjective viewpoint, logical arguments count as "something other than a culture/person's subjective viewpoint" thus making you a moral objectivist. This argument is about why moral skeptics cannot argue for something to be immoral/moral, because moral skepticism (which includes moral relativism) states: All morality is derived from a person's culture/subjective viewpoint, it's not an objective phenomenon that exists outside that person's/culture viewpoint thus a moral relativist doesn't think there is any outside point of reference for moral statements since they're entirely dependent on viewpoint thus a moral relativist cannot judge whether something is moral or immoral outside of their own culture since there're no points of reference to use as a guide to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect thus a moral relativist cannot object to any moral system at all since they have no way to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect (all equally correct means you have no basis to criticize anyone) thus if you are a moral relativist and say "those who punish homosexuality are wrong" you either have to add "in my culture" to that statement or lie either to others (as a moral relativist, you cannot criticize other culture's moral systems since you have no way to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect), or to yourself (you are in fact not a moral relativist since you don't operate on a moral relativist framework).
@@open9060 I'm not a moral objectivist. I base my moral system on certain axioms, but I'm fully aware that there's no objective reason I should prefer those axioms over any others, besides that I happen to prefer them. "thus if you are a moral relativist and say "those who punish homosexuality are wrong" you either have to add "in my culture" to that statement" It has nothing to do with culture (idk why moral objectivists love to harp on "culture" so much; I disagree with my culture on lots of moral issues), but yes I would qualify "under my moral system" to any statement I make, though usually I don't because it's pretty obviously implied "thus a moral relativist cannot judge whether something is moral or immoral outside of their own culture since there're no points of reference to use as a guide to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect" Again with the culture, I never mentioned culture so idk why you keep bringing it up. Culture means nothing to me. And yes, I am perfectly capable of judging if something is moral *within my own moral system*. I don't believe anything beyond this is necessary (or even coherent). "thus a moral relativist cannot object to any moral system at all since they have no way to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect (all equally correct means you have no basis to criticize anyone)" I am perfectly capable of objecting to a moral system if it leads one to do actions which I find immoral under my system. My basis is the system of morality I choose to believe in. Just because I don't have an "objective" reason to choose that system (not that anyone has ever been able to articulate to me what such an objective reason could even look like) doesn't mean I can't use that system anyways.
@@dalmationblack This isn't about you specifically, it's about the definition of moral skepticism itself, which is why culture is used, because moral skepticism itself defines morality as something defined by cultural or personal views. If you, specifically you, define your morality based on personal views then you're a moral subjectivist thus you have no logical or moral grounds to object to any moral actions at all your morals are based on your own personal preferences thus there's no reason why someone else's personal preferences are less or more valid that yours, even if they directly oppose yours you're just saying "I don't like that" but under your own system of belief that's just as valid as someone else saying "I like that"; you and the person arguing against homosexuality are equally right any moral criticisms you make are hollow since you have no external standards in short, if you are a moral subjectivist like you say you are, either you have to concede when someone says "well that's just like your opinion man" or be logically inconsistent with your own beliefs.
Moral code is not right or wrong. It just exists. It is similar to a particular object. Particular object can't be right or wrong. It just is. A STATEMENT ABOUT PARTICULAR OBJECT, yes it can be right or wrong, but the object itself can't.
" Moral code is not right or wrong." What if your moral code compels you to continually harm your fellow man ? That seems like a moral code that is wrong .
Are there any competing moral theories that address this subject that would disagree with Shafer-Landau? I.e. they have a way to argue that at least some moral claims are so egregious they could be called amoral but without needing an external objective morality to make that claim? I'm just curious because if there is I would be really interested to hear the logic behind it.
I think there are two primary ways to get around this argument if you wanted to. 1) Moral Narcissism - Ones own beliefs are the highest moral code so anything that goes against that is immoral. Pragmatically we all behave this way. Think of Plato's argument that no reasonable man knowingly does evil. Now we can just say something is wrong because "I" believe it to be wrong. 2) Moral "Globalism" - More beliefs are judged by the whole society. Beliefs that most believe to be wrong are wrong. If we expand this to all people we can say people not in step are morally wrong. This has an interesting bad effect of if most people in say 1000AD thought slavery was right, then we can't say its wrong very easily. We can appeal to Narcissism and say we are morally right now or we can go atemporal and say all humans who ever lived and ever will live are included and try to make predictions. For example it seems unlikely that most of all of human civilization past, present future, are likely to think that slavery is good. Both of such systems can claim morality exists and stems subjectively from human experience.
The belief described as Moral Nihilism in these lectures gives you a sort of out, in that there is nothing that forbids or compels you to approve or disapprove of any particular belief system. The moral nihilist will see a slave owner and think something like "I am going to stop this person from keeping slaves because I don't like it when there are slaves". Or maybe the moral nihilist will think something like "I don't like it when there are slaves, so I will convince the slave-owner that slavery is wrong according to their own moral principles". The Moral Nihilist knows that "I don't like this thing, so I will make it stop happening" is a _fully sufficient_ motivation to stop something from happening, whether there's an objective morality or not.
The moral views of a society do not necessarily match everyone in that society. That means there very well could be people in the society that don't agree with that standard so a moral subjectivist would be justified in thinking it is wrong. Moral relativism also doesn't require every possible moral statement to be true for a society. It can still be wrong. People agreeing to it doesn't make it right. But ultimately, moral error is typically just imposing your subjective morality onto others. It doesn't demonstrate that there are objective moral laws. At best it shows you may want there to be them.
I get you're teaching what the chapter says And my thought is that just because I think my moral standard is better than someone else's, doesn't make my standard objective. As I chewed on this through your lecture I realize that what makes the cultural collective moral standards "wrong" is when they dictate things like homosexuality is morally bad and the people that disagree are trapped with moral standards they disagree with. Another problem would be when people think their morals have an objective root, but can't demonstrate that. And I would say these are moral systems that don't work, but that doesn't make them inherently morally-wrong. Lots of these scenarios can be erroneous without the error being of moral nature.
@@mrosskne interesting point. But that doesn't address moral objectivity. I don't think murder is objectively wrong. It just doesn't work with most (all?) Societies. So enforcing no-murder is more about the health of society than being an objective moral
This whole argument seems based on the idea that something can be objectively wrong, and that’s a poor basis for a proof that things can be objectively wrong. It would be nice if slavery was objectively wrong. It would be nice if homophobia was objectively wrong. It would be extremely unfortunate if abortion was objectively wrong. But so far the support for all those claims is subjective. All I can do is support what I subjectively believe in and encourage others to join me. But that’s good enough for me.
But I could as a moral skeptic say that I as an individual have certain preferences, I prefer to live in a society which all people are equal than a society where slavery exists
Absolutely. Great, great point. Moral skeptics still get to have preferences. That's sort of like a consolation prize. They can't say that certain moral opinions (i.e., 'slavery is fine') can be in error, but they can still *disprefer* slavery. But is that a satisfying consolation prize? We might think that preferences are not nearly enough. Like I prefer to live in a society with pineapple pizza, because I quite like pineapple pizza. I prefer pineapple pizza. And so too I prefer that there is no slavery. The moral objectivity has something very compelling to say here: if your attitude toward having all people treated with basic dignity and not being enslaved is the same as your attitude toward having pineapple pizza as an option on the menu, then your moral outlook is completely broken. Merely preferring to live in a society without slavery, the moral objectivist will say, is not nearly enough. Surely, the right view is that slavery is not just less preferable, but evil. If all moral skepticism can do is allow us to say that slavery is like a lack of pineapple pizza, then moral skepticism is irredeemably broken.
@@profjeffreykaplan firstly thank you for responding I truly appreciate it and your videos are great! I think I understand what you are saying , morality is more important than to be explained simply as a preference and moral statements to be treated to the same level as "I prefer pineapple pizza more than 4cheese pizza".I would just like to point out ,it seems to me that you are criticising more the result rather than the reasoning of moral skepticism, yes both our intuitions might tell us slavery is more than just not preferable , that it is evil but our intuition that doesn't prove the result wrong.One could made the perfectly reasonable argument that this intuition we both have against slavery is simply a result of the values of the current society we live in, this intuition would not exist if we asked an ancient greek about slavery he would see it as perfectly moral since his society had different values than ours(sorry for my bad english btw!)
@@panoskatrin4910 I agree completely that our shared belief is nothing more than an "intuition", which is just to say that it is some belief we happen to have and we feel that that belief is the natural one to have. And, of course, we could merely have that belief as a result of the societies in which we were raised. But I am not convinced that our intuition cannot prove a metaethical theory (like moral skepticism) wrong. I think that is exactly what our intuition does. The following is a style of argument that comes from G.E. Moore. On the one hand I have the belief that slavery is evil, no matter who practices, or at that point in history. That is one belief that I have. Another belief I have (not really, but let's just suppose for the sake of argument) is that there is a sound argument showing that moral skepticism is true. So I have these two beliefs and they conflict. Only one of them can be correct. Either my first belief is correct and slavery is objectively wrong. Or my second belief is correct and moral skepticism is true. Well, how confident am I in each of these two beliefs. I am moderately confident in the second belief, let's suppose, because it is a philosophical conclusion and I can be moderately confident in those. But philosophy is hard and I would be rational to acknowledge that any belief that results from philosophical argument could very well be false. What about the first belief, my belief that slavery is objectively wrong? Well, I am pretty damn sure of that. I feel quite certain that slavery is wrong. Since I am so much more confident that my moral intuition about slavery is wrong than I am that some philosophical argument for moral skepticism is sound, I should therefore allow my intuition to beat out any inclination toward moral skepticism.
@@profjeffreykaplan thats an interesting argument yet I can bring you a lot of examples where my intuition has been false about the nature of things in the world how can I verify my intuition about slavery is correct?surely just because I feel something is true doesn't mean that it is,sure I might think from my intuition that slavery is objectively wrong but what happens if the intuition of some other individual is the exact opposite?and there have been plenty of individuals in the course of history which shared this belief( I know I have asked questions which are difficult to answer in the comment section,I would also like to state that I dont study philosophy I am here out of pure curiosity)
@@panoskatrin4910 You are definitely right that there are lots of cases where intuitions turn out to be false. And you are right also that we therefore have not demonstrated that all intuitions end up being true. But I wasn't trying to say that you can always trust your intuitions. I suppose that the best way to understand the argument that I was building off of your point that intuitions are just beliefs like any other belief. Some are true, some are false. We have to evaluate what evidence we have for each, how strongly we feel that each is true, and go from there. The belief that moral skepticism is true is a belief. The belief that slavery is objectively wrong is a belief. They can't both be true. So which one is true. I feel quite certain that my belief that slavey is wrong is true. So by belief that moral skepticism is true must be false. You are right that others may have different moral intuitions, but the existence of disagreement doesn't show either that my own intuitions are false, nor that there is not objective truth of the matter. Here is a video I made sort of about that issue ( ua-cam.com/video/9eodr-9V6Z8/v-deo.html ). Also, it might be true that you don't study philosophy in some formal school setting, but if you are reading philosophical works and watching philosophy lecture videos, etc., then you are definitely studying philosophy. And if you are arguing with me in the comments, then, whether you like it or not, you are **doing** philosophy.
There's an excluded middle here that makes the whole thing not work for me. I don't know if there is objective morality or not. I suspect there isn't. I'm unconvinced. I need a compelling reason to believe it does exist. Personally, I'd refer to that position as "skepticism", but somehow Shafer-Landau has us believing that skepticism is a *denial*. I don't deny anything other than my own conviction. Objective morality might very well exist. Someday, I may encounter a compelling argument in its favor. I've heard probably hundreds of arguments in its favor, but I have found exactly zero of them to be compelling. I'm still waiting, though. I'd love to be proven wrong. Not just because convincing me I'm wrong improves my understanding, but because I *really would like to believe* in an objective truth (other than math or physics, that is. I don't have an issue believing that newton's laws of motion or general relativity are objectively true, but that's a wholly different species of objective truth.)
Okay so to remain consistent with condemning anything as immoral, you must believe in moral objectivism, but what is the foundation for that objectivism? Does it mean God has to exist to make that moral objectivism? If someone doesn’t believe in God, would they have to in order to believe in moral objectivism?
Moral objectivism is the belief moral truths exist in the universe objectively like maybe logical or mathematical truths. The proposition, If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C, is an objectively true statement. The truth of this statement is not relative or subjective. God is not a necessary condition for something to be objectively true.
@@peterrosqvist2480 In simple terms, the necessary condition for a fact to be objectively true would be that it would be true independent of human subjectivity. For example, a triangle has three sides is objectively true. It is true independent of the human mind. On the other hand, a case could be made, that the statement, "God exists", is not objectively true because God is a creation of the human mind.
Isn't there another kind of critique accessible to moral skeptics, where one society critiques another, a kind of "imperial critique"? A society with some foundational belief which critiques another based on its *own* foundational beliefs, which also has the superiority of its own system over the target (perhaps all targets) as an internal belief? Doesn't this "superior" society's conventional morality (superior in their own eyes, at least) function in the role otherwise requiring objective morality?
Before listening, I would say yes and no. Yes, if the premise is suitably phrased, moral error proves that there's moral truth. But no, no matter how the premise is phrased, it doesn't prove that those truths take the form of laws. Now, time to hear the lecture. Unfortunately, people mostly don't strive to have our group's conventional morality match objective morality. Mostly, we strive to get our group to accept precepts that will license behavior we want to engage in, or that will condemn behavior an out-group is thought of as engaging in, and so on. We don't need to regard all false moral beliefs as worthy of condemnation. We can accept that people are fallible, while still saying that they have a duty to try to get their moral beliefs right. I'm old enough to have received the claim that homosexual sex is immoral as an unexamined assumption, but young enough to have rejected it immediately at a young age, only slightly ahead of the curve for how the conventional view was changing. I don't think I did anything wrong by passively absorbing the idea, but I think I would have if I had clung to it. I don't assume that there's a clear hierarchy of fundamental and not-so-fundamental moral beliefs, among those held by any individual or society. I think even the beliefs regarded as most fundamental can be re-examined and rejected when their implications become problematic. To me, the key premise is that this kind of re-examination feels like "oops, we were wrong", rather than "meh, we changed our minds"; and that this feeling holds up when we try to doubt it.
What do you propose as the mechanism for discovering the laws of objective morality? There is a not insignificant amount of people claiming that Shariah law matches it and another not insignificant group of people claiming similarily homophobic and sexist rules as onjective morality (Christian fundamentalists), just for two examples from the top of my head, and I reckon you heavily disagree with either of those, so we would need rather convincing metholdology, because the currently applied ones seem to be able to produce just about any rule set ...
@@christiangreff5764 I don't think there is any easy way. It's inherently difficult. My main argument for the premise that there even is objective morality is that we change our minds about moral questions in ways that feel like "oops, I was wrong", rather than only in ways that feel like "ok, my tastes have changed". A corollary is that citizens should be educated in ways that include plenty of opportunity to become familiar with the former type of feeling under circumstances where it's clearly justified. Then there's my other statement: "Mostly, we strive to get our group to accept precepts that will license behavior we want to engage in, or that will condemn behavior an out-group is thought of as engaging in, and so on." The corollary to that is that we need to develop the discipline of questioning our own motivations, while being forgiving toward expositors of those views we're likely to be biased against. Just accepting that there is truth to be had on the important questions, while understanding truth as something you can be mistaken about (rather than using the word "truth" as rhetorical sleight-of-hand for 'the doctrines chosen by my favorite power structure'), would get us pretty far.
The moral error theorist would not say it is immoral a person holds a false belief of the concept of morality. It would just be a statement of fact. The moral error theorist may say, I don't like that person to hold a false belief, but that's it. Suppose someone believed morality is whatever a unicorn likes and says, "murder is wrong" (unicorns don't approve of murder). The error theorist is making the statement, that person is incorrect in his belief of morality.
Could Moral objectivism be generated (or discovered) through competition BETWEEN conventional moral systems, by encountered moral facts through lived experience at the level of society and on epistemically significant timescales, i.e. allowing time for adverse consequences to work themselves out?
I thought the argument was going to be, in a relativist morality world, where does the ethic that anyone in any society should abide their ethic, come from. The fact that it is possible in a conventional morality to make a moral error, in any possible conventional morality (this being what morality is) if there is no moral imperative to be moral?
What do you mean with a "moral imperative to be moral". The imperative to be moral might just be because you don't want to end up in jail. Maybe less drastic, you don't want to be shunned by people for having stood by while someone drowned because you figured your new pants were more important. I mean, if everyone in the society thinks you are amoral and can't be trusted, this will have big negative consequences, so that is an imperative to be moral already.
Can you claim a moral statement is false by pointing to another moral statement that somehow contradicts it? You wouldn't have to accept objective morality to do this, but it would involve using personal judgement.
Actualy - no, you don`t need objective morality in order to critique conventional morality of a society X from the outside, conventional morality of a _bigger_ society Y of which the society X is the part - will suffice.
"If you think that, then you're a moral objectivist." No. I'm not comparing societies' to a universal, objective moral code when I say that they're wrong about slavery or whatever. I'm comparing them to MY moral code! It's external, and it's not objectivist. Gaping hole in the reasoning.
@@I12Db8U Never heard that term, but every human has individual morality; nobody has access to a universal, objective moral code. Morality is always either subjective or neither subjective nor objective by good semantics I've been exposed to. Even when one picks a "universal" moral code, in the sense of it applies universally, it's not universal in the important sense, that everybody everywhere all the time operates under it.
If you claim that all society moral standards are correct for them, so that your moral code is correct for you, and that it is also better than another society’s moral code, that means not all societies are equal in their moral code and the only way you can claim that is by appealing to an external source, i. e. objective morality. If you claim all all society’s moral code is correct for them, then you can’t claim that yours I better than another without self-contradiction. Either they’re all equal at that level, or they’re not.
@@peterrosqvist2480 "If you claim that all society moral standards are correct for them" I don't. My morality is correct. It's not correct "because all societies' moral standards are correct for them". I am not a society. It doesn't depend on anything. It's morality. Morality is the most subjective thing there is, so it's hardly objective or objectivist. "Either they’re all equal at that level, or they’re not." They're not equal. They are (almost) all better than or worse than others, and they are better than or worse than others depending on how much closer or further from MY moral system they are. "the only way you can claim that is by appealing to an external source, i. e. objective morality." What? I said it was "external", but not in this sense. It is external to societies. My morality is inside me, so internal in that sense. I don't appeal to some outside system of morality. My morality isn't right because it's aligned with the Catholic church's morality, for example. Morality isn't objective, ever. Morality is subjective af. You can't test morality against reality. You can test objective beliefs against reality (given infinite sensitivity, scope, and ability, of course), by definition. Objective beliefs concern reality. Subjective beliefs concern aesthetic taste and morality. Stating THAT I prefer chocolate to vanilla is objective, because I either do or don't, but stating that chocolate is preferable to vanilla is subjective, it's just a circle-jerk self-reference to my subjective taste. Similarly, saying that something is right or wrong, morally, or more right or more wrong, is also just a circle-jerk self-reference to someone's subjective morality. The only thing (that I know of) that we can say about subjective things like taste and morality is that they're OBJECTIVELY wrong whenever and wherever they self-contradict. So if someone states preferences or morals and then acts against them, they're objectively wrong, even though preferences and morality are totally subjective.
@@weksauce You're claiming that one moral system is better than another moral system. By which standard do you make this claim? If you make the claim by your own subjective standard, then from an objective perspective, your perspective is as equal to any other subjective perspective. I'm not claiming any one authority to accurately have the objective moral system, I'm just saying that the way you approach it is contradictory if you don't believe in objective morality. You would need to go backwards from moral subjectivity towards moral nihilism to have a stronger position.
Not saying ether way, people care about moral design based upon what some would call political morality, while if the standard is based upon limiting the labor of people everyone would be held to building a home or shelter fixing a car or completing public works with minimal cost. People who talk as made men that haven’t dug ditches should be treated as such. Do you do the work or are you a fixture trying to organize the ones who do the work? Why does one make more than the other with less detrimental effects?
Are moral systems necessary? (Nihilism being one.) If so, why? Does necessity provide a common, universal basis for all moral codes.? Cf: Eg: Slavery is 'bad' because slavery drives down the wages of free workers and harms them. And other unpleasant economic and social consequences. Must (Can?) a 'moral' moral code be Pareto Optimal: Everyone derives benefits under the code, and no one is harmed.?
Here's a question. Is the moral theory that claims "Everything is morally permissable, including the establishment, breaking, and enforcement of moral codes" a subform of moral objectivism, of moral nihilism, or neither?
I think that it is. When I watched that movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, I was annoyed when the protagonist claimed that the antagonist believed that no truth exists including moral truth BUT went on this grand mission to eliminate all life and later tried to justify it morally; by saying that all life should end because it is pointless. I think the “life should end” part is a moral claim.
You do not have to be giving a critique of a moral system to need objective morality. To even say a normative statement is good beyond just having a preference then one needs objective morality. I do not see how you say anything is immoral or moral beyond preference without objectivity.
isn’t morality just tied to empathy? which we’re obvs socialised to elicit and in what circumstances we ought to feel it etc, but yeh doesn’t our empathy inform our personal conventional morality? more than some bigger thing. like i dont think homosexuality is immoral (i actually think it’s amoral) because i can empathise with not being accepted for who i am …
so basicly: 'i believe i am objectively right' 'which is your opinion' 'and you think that observation is objectively right' 'which is again an opinion' so there is a disconnect on both sides: the objectivist doesnt see that morality is intrinsicly subjective. the relativist doesnt see that relativism if untenable and unworkable because no matter the size of the moral community, morality's normative value requires it's own legitimacy. and there is no better term to justify the special pleading than objective morality. as when you are convinced you are right' your rightness becomes actionable, but hesitation created by ever greater extensions of identity leads to moral nihilism which is a broken tool. the objectivist wants to talk about the tool as having substance and relevance. and the relativist cares more about the truth and virtue. it is a strange breakdown into warring factions.
I just saw a youtube video where a crow used its beak to push a hedgehog over a trafficked road. It must surely exist some fundamental objective morals intrinsic to biological societies… just like the carbon atom is fundamental to biological molecules.
I have seen far more videos of animals doing horrible things to each other, and our sample size of 1 by no means confirms that carbon is fundamental to biological molecules.
Great lecture in this quandary for people in WEIRD societies to face our hypocrisy. “We are all moral subjectivists, isn’t that wonderful? O wait, I want to condemn the Pope and ISIS as morally in error, sooo, maybe we need to put the objectivist jump suit on long enough to do that? Then we can go back and say in the mirror, “ Isn’t it great that we are all becoming more morally subjectivist! I am such an open-minded person!”
No, the video is flipped on a vertical axis (left and right are inverted). Notice how he appears to write using his "left" hand. Most people are right handed.
Very educative videos, this one in particular. Regarding moral objectivism, I think it is impossible because the external stardands cannot come from within a society or another. It has to come like from aliens and that why it makes religions wins since they come from external realities. Even though I'd love to see moral objectivism in this world, It is only a metaphysical claim. In moral nihilism, the error theory proofs that actually morality is just a human construction and that if we take ourselves out of this reality, we could end up by refusing good and evil and accepting everything as an act of will of freedom. As long as we believe, there is a moral error. As long as we believe in the afterlife judgement we will have a moral error, if we don't so we become nihilist and so we have to accept that there shouldn't be any morals at all. Personally for how much I'd love to see moral objectivism, it is impossible without a higher intelligence.
I dont understand why nihilism=horrible apathynor something of that sort. I personally consider myself a nihilist (to some degree anyway) but, at risk of sounding arrogant here) i often tryntongo out of my way to help others more often than the people i know that are religious....
@@Bronco541 though it's been a while I wrote this, but I still have the same kind of thinking. However, from the moment you decide to do something, you're not nihilist at all. In fact, I started recently to think that man who follow his bliss is a virtuous creature since he is following the objective willingness.. With that being said, the act of helping others and getting out of the proper selfishness is what makes humans getting elevated toward objective moralism. God has created the world in its beautiful and uglyness, in his image, and we are here judging what is one and what is the other attribute. So, if we decide to choose it means that we're inclining to the best part of his attributes and by doing so we are saying we can be better since he didn't have a choice. Peace ✌️
The well being of sentient creatures is objectively valuable. I don't need to postulate a higher intelligence to say it would be better if all sensitive creatures had better sensations. I don't need a higher intelligence, to say it would just be bad if every sensitive creature in existence were tortured forever.
Hi Professor Kaplan. Great video! But I think you may have committed an equivocation fallacy when discussing what moral relativists/subjectivists can say about societies with different morals from them. You seem to be using two different senses of the word "wrong": one sense being synonymous with "incorrect/false", the other being *morally* wrong. So while it is true that a moral subjectivist cannot say a society that holds some abhorrent view is factually incorrect, or making false statements, they can say that society is immoral, from the standpoint of the one making the statement. There doesn't seem to be anything problematic or inconsistent with this way of speaking for the subjectivist
No, a subjectivist cannot honestly say that because they have no authority to say that their moral opinion is superior to the one they are attacking. They could say that their morality is different, but the only way they can honestly say that their morality is *better* is if they are a moral objectivist.
@@fluffysheap why does one require authority in order to express their viewpoint? Whose authority is required exactly? Expressing one’s negative opinion of another society’s morals in no way requires that one be objectively better than the other
You’re right that the subjectivist can condemn whatever they wish, but if you compare two opposing subjectivists together, you cannot claim one is right and one is wrong without making an external critique.
@@gardenhead92 Exactly, but that's just your perspective. What about the perspective of someone who says the opposite of you, which one of you is right then?
It is btw. not conclusive, that a moral relativist can't make judgements on other moral systems than his own. He can surely judge others based on his own moral system, but he can also point out inherent flaws in other moral systems. He can also identify consequences of a moral system, e.g. detrimental consequences for the specific society that is governed by it. Only he can't spew out "absolute truth", principles that apply to any group of sentient beings, or even just humans, for all times. Even a look into human history should make pretty clear, that it's hardly likely our moral systems will be criticized in the future, and it's likely that some of our moral beliefs will be considered as wrong by future generations.
No, this is specifically addressing the idea that some other society has 'wrong morals', which necessitates moral objectivism. A moral subjectivist who thinks his views are BETTER than others is fine, but he cannot think his beliefs are TRUER than others, or by definition he is supporting a non-subjective moral standard.
@@yousefsekhri425 "Wrong morals" was clearly being used in the sense of "morally wrong" (aka "forbidden") throughout the lecture, not in the sense of "factually incorrect". The individual subjectivist can easily regard a society's conventional morality as morally wrong, since the subjectivist takes the statement "X is morally wrong" to mean "I (the person uttering this statement) disapprove of X", all that has to happen is for the subjectivist to disapprove of slavery. Then the statement "People in society Y think slavery is right, but they're wrong" means "People in society Y approve of a thing I disapprove of", which is both intelligible and true. It's not an *objective* critique, but if that's the standard, then the entire argument boils down to "You can't say something is *objectively* morally wrong without objective morality" which trivial.
Moral skepticism can actually be influenced by experience and empathy. This is an approach that includes an external factor which is not objective morality. Ideas of morals can come out of personal experience, the feeling of empathy combined with logic and they can 'contaminate' the system from within through word of mouth, example and/or revolution by the ones having adopted similar subjective ideologies. It can work much like evolution works for biological organisms and I can't see no problem in that according to the arguments you made in the video.
This argument doesn't even begin to be relevant against the question in the video. Whether or not one is influenced regarding his morality is irrelevant.
@@planetary-rendez-vous It is very relevant. The video says that a moral subjectivist cannot judge if a belief is right or wrong. My case is that this is not true. A subjectivist cannot condemn a certain belief for its existence but their own personal moral compass can be very different than someone else's and they can still embody a moral code that is based on their personal experience, logic and understanding of the world. That does not mean of course that this person is an objectivist since they understand morality to be an emergent property of interactions and they might be open to changing their minds. They can still, perfectly well, judge a belief and have a debate about it. Being a moral subectivist does not mean you get to invent whatever belief and expect everyone else to take you seriously on that. The process I explained in my comment could be a guiding principle that evolves morality without it necessarily needing to have a single objective true origin or destination and a subectivist could adhere to that as a sort of 'authority' with which to inform and excuse their decision.
@@shepherd_of_art I don't see where the argument for a moral subjectivist that can judge another's moral. You have simply said that a moral subjectivist can judge other's morality. The logical error regarding this theory as far as I understand is that you base your judgement on your moral principles, but you accept other's moral principles to be true. By definition you cannot judge others for their own moral principles. You either allow yourself to judge and you're no longer a subjectivist, or you don't and keep being a moral subjectivist. > Ideas of morals can come out of personal experience, the feeling of empathy combined with logic and they can 'contaminate' the system from within through word of mouth, example and/or revolution by the ones having adopted similar subjective ideologies. So what if the origin of your morality comes from experience, empathy and logic ? It still remains subjective to you and is not relevant to whether or not morality is subjective or objective. People agreeing with you on your own ideals of morality is simply that, an agreement. People can change their ideas about what morality they think is ideal. Actually that would imply that morality is of some kind objective. If it were truly subjective for a moral subjectivist, then there would be no reason to change your ideas of morals, because their morals are already right, why would they change them to something else ? If they change them to something else, that would be imply something to which they compare their morality to decide the value of, and thus to judge it for being better or worse, a quality that does not come from a subjectivist approach of morality (which only qualifies morality as right, regardless of external judgement).
@@planetary-rendez-vous I do not accept other's moral principles to be 'true'. In fact, I don't think my own moral principles to be true either. It's like saying that liking a specific colour is 'true' or 'false'. It doesn't make sense as a concept. I work with what I have and I mostly stick to my principles because they work for me and not because I value them as truth. I don't think there can ever be any intrinsic truth regarding moral principles which is why I'm not an objectivist. However, I do believe in the process of changing moral principles by keeping a open mind to what can influence one's perception and intellect and emotional understanding. They are not changing and striving towards one specific moral truth that is out there and we are trying to reach, but rather they're evolving as to accommodate the specific sequence of events that brought morality to be accepted in this way at a specific point in time with the new and fresh ideas of people who wish to change parts of the moral system. This system could evolve towards a near infinite number of ways and I think there are many ways in which it can be good and many ways with which it can be bad for humanity as a whole. I can still judge someone's behaviour though to be morally right or morally wrong the same way I can judge someone else's moral ideology as a whole. You can have guiding principles without needing to believe that there is a single way that morals should be handled and we just don't know about it. There are many way more apparent options other than this one which in my eyes makes this idea incredibly implausible.
If moral subjectivism is belief that everyone has their own morality/ethics, AND it's right for them, what is the name of the belief that everyone has their own morality/ethics, and there's no such thing as it being right, much less "right for them"? It's pretty obvious that everyone has their own morality/ethics. It's also pretty obvious that there isn't one/true absolute morality/ethics that's "right". When *I* find moral error in a society that says homosex is wrong or slavery is fine, I'm comparing them to MY morality to come up with that. I'm NOT comparing them to an absolute/universal morality. Another important concept is that any self-contradicting morality/ethics is wrong, even though no morality/ethics is right or absolute.
So if youre a moral subjectivist do you have to respect everyones subjective view of morality or can you say only yours is true and screw everyone elses subjective morality.. only theirs matters??
A moral subjectivism could also use an intersubjective framework to condemn a society. "All conscious, empathetic creatures (including almost all human beings) want their own happiness and the happiness of those they care about, and it is empirically the case that getting rid of slavery, homophobia, sexism, etc. Is the best way to achieve that. Therefore slave holding states are morally wrong insofar as they are factually wrong about the kind of world that is best at achieving their interests." Morality is made up, but almost everyone agrees on some axiomatic values. It's intersubjective.
I don't think it caused any issue for moral subjectivism to critique any established system. Specifically, if a system causes someone to act contrary to their moral code or prevents them from acting in accordance to it, that presents a very clear conflict.. I also don't think one can derive (culture-centric) relativism from subjectivism quite so offhandedly. Unless you define "culture" as "a collection of people with identical moral codes", you cannot really claim that a moral subjectivist would be in agreement with a moral (cultural) relativist.
1. Moral Relativism ad Subjective can criticize other's morals. Unless you are straw manning moral relativism and subjectivism into self-defeating versions where they are supposed to accept non-moral relativist or subjective view points, because of poor wording. That might be the case here, since it seems as if the moral relativist or subjectivism would have to accept any other moral system as long as it is held by a different culture or subject. For example, it seems like the moral relativist in your example would have to accept another culture that says morals are in fact objective to be a true for that society. While I would say that it is more common for self-proclaimed relativists to preach a self-defeating imagery of tolerance between cultures, where the cultures should not interfere with each other, there are many who recognize this as false. The same is kind of true for moral subjectivist A, just because he believes that some things may be right for individual B from B's subjective PV does not mean that subjectivist A can not morally condemn individual B and B's moral beliefs from subjecticist A´s subjective PV. Subjectivist A´s belief that slavery is wrong or Homosexual acts are okay, are even more legitimate for subjectivst A. Him acting on those beliefs and condemn individual B can not be wrong, even if he believes that B is correct from B's view point.
Did you watch the video? Intrinsic critiques are always fine, it’s only when you make an extrinsic critique that you have the issue. If you’re a moral relativist, then it was morally fine for the Aztecs to do human sacrifice. Because their society defines morality differently than ours does. If you’re a moral subjectivist, then it’s morally fine for someone else to rape someone if the rapist thinks it’s morally fine, because morality is subjectively defined. If you’re a moral nihilist then there is no good or evil regardless of who defines it. Now you can condemn human sacrifice and rape and still be a moral relativist or moral subjectivist, but when you compare that view with others, how do you know which is right? If you claim to be a moral subjectivist, and claim that rape is wrong even if the rapists thinks it’s right, because of your own subjective standard, how do we determine which one of you is right without using an external critique? And if we use an external critique then we’d need to have moral objectivism.
@@peterrosqvist2480why must we determine which one of us is right from an external standpoint? from my system of morality I believe the rapist is wrong and that's good enough for me. why should I care about some external standpoint that may or may not exist
Actually, you need that objective morality even for internal criticisms that come with a hierarchy, IE, a right answer to which you ditch. Any claims about which laws are more important/foundational/valuable are meta claims, IE, outside of the system, even if the system acknowledges it. Also, "all people are equal" isn't incompatible with "separate but equal", but freedom of association plus "all people are equal" which is incompatible with segregation.
If there were objective moral laws life would be easier, people could just look at them and think "hey, that think thing I thought was revolting and evil is actually ok" and we would all agree. Because if there were objective moral laws wouldn't they be obvious?
although moral nihlists understand that there are no moral truths conceptually, we still act as if there are. we as humans are evolutionary programmed to feel and act as if objective morality exists. so in the practical sense, we should all act as if objective morality does exist. but in a phylosofical sense objective morality doesn't exist.
Beieve in objective morality when you discover that the objective moral values run completely counter to what you originaly held to and that they are completely abhorrent to you. Luckily that never happens ... kinda sus, now that I think about it ...
It is clear that I come from another conventional morality that thinks that for example slavery is not morally acceptable. Thus when we hear about societies where slaves are being held we think that is amoral. That is just totally subjective though, it doesn't mean that is objectively true that slavery is bad or that an objective morality exists. Just that different societies have different conventional morality and thus they think the other is wrong. A moral objectivist in my eyes is just someone who thinks they somehow know the objective moral truth without any proof and is blaming others for not following his subjective moral truths, believing they are objective.
I'd add that if you show a person that their beliefs are inconsistent, for example that slavery is inconsistent with Christian doctrines about the universality of human brotherhood and that God is Love.... Well, you never know which way they'll jump. You'd think the alleged word of God would take priority but sadly not always.
This fails. At best it only rebuts inconsistent Moral Nihilism. The statement, "Homosexual sex is fine" means "Homosexual sex morally irrelevant". There is no error here to one who accepts Moral Nihilism. To such, everything is morally irrelevant. The statement, "Homosexual sex is immoral" is factually false to one who accepts Moral Nihilism. Though a consistent Moral Nihilist has no basis for condemning Society X. edit: Great video. You explained the book so well that nobody every needs to read it.
"Though a consistent Moral Nihilist has no basis for condemning Society X" Of course, they have no basis for *not* condemning the society either. I see the agreement frequently "if you don't think society is *objectively wrong* , you can't critique it", but why not? If there's no objective morality, then it's also not *objectively wrong* to critique viewpoints you find personally distasteful. The moral nihilist can critique whatever they want, they just can't (consistently) call it objectively wrong. All other critiques are still on the table.
Technically, this is just appealing to a sort of moral subjectivism or relativism. To our society now, it is so obvious that it isn't good to have slavery or to stop homosexuals from doing the thing, but to them then it wasn't. Us now could object and state Moral Error because of OUR relative/subjective standpoint on the matter, not because there are moral objective facts (However, I do think there is a sort of moral objective fact...this argument with moral error isn't what proves it though). What is a moral objective truth? By who's individual or communal standard are we deciding what equals an objective fact/truth? We need to get to the bottom of this before we get to the bottom of is moral objectivism is right.... I say go at it in two ways: 1) Is moral objectivism like 2+2=4? Is it that type of fact? 2) Is it like "Humans breathe oxygen", "Mitochondria are the power house of the cells", "Clouds come from evaporated water", "Bacteria and fungus turn various particles into soil".... So is it a deductive fact like in math beyond symbols, words, and personal preference? Is it an empirical/inductive fact like in our scientific findings, also beyond words and personal preference. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree or not, and no matter what symbols we use; 2+2 is in fact 4, entangled in it's essence/meaning, and Humans breathe oxygen, even if we find one random dude that doesn't, humans breath oxygen and this is the going fact we will work with. So how could morality be like either of these? The inductive part is easy: under nearly every circumstance (repeated time and time again) beings will opt for various good feelings, pleasure, valued things/events, and avoid pain, suffering, bad feelings, discomfort, etc. Beings will only produce or accept the various forms of suffering for the goal and gift of one of the forms of pleasure/joy/valued outcomes, or because they are unaware/incapable of how to change the "painful" circumstance. Even "evil" acts are usually for some valued thing like money, power, sexual pleasure, family dominance, etc. Observe the world, observe many different lives, and you will find this pattern amongst every human and countless other species. Even plants defend against swarms of insects and pathogens, communicated via roots and fungus. We can label this observation "Morality". Humans breathe oxygen, and lifeforms pursue "good" (pleasure, joy, health, security....etc.) and avoid "bad" (pain, loss, death, suffering, illness, etc.), relative to their capacity, awareness and environment. I feel we observe this on a level so high, it is repeated so often, that it is in concord with Humans breathe Oxygen. Is this an acceptable level for something to be a fact? I think so. Empirically, the process nearly all life takes to support it's various types and levels of goodness/pleasure (beyond physical) and to avoid the various types of levels of badness/pain (beyond physical pain), happens and is consistent, albeit highly contextual. I feel it is fair to label this "Morality" in some fashion. For 2+2=4, I go for a very different route, and will offer on request.
Homosexuality is a bad example. How can consensual, enjoyable sex between willing, adult, equal partners be considered an (im)moral act at all. This is not subject to moral judgement at all. It might not be one's own preference, but that is not a moral judgement.
@@someonenotnoone For example, if you like peanut butter, do you think that everybody has to like peanut butter? Do you want to legislate the liking of peanut butter, and do you want to lock people up, or even kill them if they do not like peanut butter?
The statement “Homosexual is fine” is not false under moral error theory. Error theory holds that actions are neither right or wrong. The statement mentioned does not say that an action is right or wrong; it merely states that it is okay, which is the view of error theory. Therefore, under error theory, the statement is true.
Conventional morality is a bunch of beliefs --is a helpful idea to work with. You can't judge founfational conventional morality if there is no objective morality?
Homosexuality is a bad example. How can consensual, enjoyable sex between willing, adult, equal partners be considered an (im)moral act at all. This is not subject to moral judgement at all. It might not be one's own preference, but that is not a moral judgement.
@@someonenotnoone so what do you do when my beliefs contradict yours? Do you appeal to an objective platonic form of moral goodness or gods laws like the moral realists do? Or do you appeal to some sort of naturalistic argument such as the view from nowhere utilitarian argument to convince me you are correct? Are you an emotivist that believes moral statements are purely emotional? Or finally are you an error theorist like me and accept that no moral statement strictly speaking is true?
@@tovialbores-falk3091 Whatever I want. I'm not a robot that has to be pre-programmed. I don't accept that moral statements are not factual. I see no evidence that they are factual. Same way I don't deny any gods exist, but I don't believe in any of them either.
More gold. The channel that keeps on giving.
I badly need an out of context Jeffrey Kaplan compilation video. :D
"Slavery is fine"
@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle Jeffrey Kaplan said it, in this video. I think your Russian nativity is preventing you from understanding the context.
@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle Nah.
@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle "I am replying to a comment that literally says what I claim "nobody said"" Yes. But Jeffrey Kaplan said it, in this video. And the OC that this thread is about is "out of context Jeffrey Kaplan".
@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle We cannot ignore the context. You did. That's the error.
Moral error only proves that there are objective moral laws if moral error objectively exists. But to say that it exists assumes that there are objective moral laws. It's a circular argument.
So both, or nether
It’s not circular, if moral error is a premise that the unwise moral relativist unwittingly accepts.
You must denounce moral error or become a moral objectivist.
No. A moral error can result from inconsistency between a moral statement and the principles of conventional morality (internal critique).
@@ricardoveiga007that’s an interesting take. But is that moral error or just inconsistency. If my judgement of an action is inconsistent with my stated moral framework is that moral error or just inconsistent application of my moral framework
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
05:41 🧠 Moral error focuses on beliefs, not actions.
08:38 🌐 Moral relativism can't critique a society's moral code.
11:13 🧠 Moral subjectivism can't criticize a society's moral code.
12:51 ❌ Moral nihilism with error theory can't condemn a society's moral code.
16:55 🚫 Moral nihilism and error theory can't deem a society's moral code morally wrong.
19:29 🎯 External critique needs moral objectivism to assess a society's moral system.
Made with HARPA AI
That lecture, Sir, was truly inspirational and enlightening. Thank you!
This whole argument seems to be purely motivated reasoning: "I want to condemn people who disagree with me as immoral. Therefore, I choose Moral Objectivism because that is the theory that allows me to do so."
I think you have misunderstood. The argument is that the only valid basis for moral criticism, other than inconsistency/hypocrisy, is if you subscribe to the philosophy of moral objectivism.
The rabbit hole goes much deeper, though. Most of the people who say they don't believe in objective morality still criticize as if they do believe in it, and most of the people who say they believe in it have tremendous problems defining it. Or put another way, the large majority of people are shits.
It's the reverse argument. If you condemn anything then you can't be a skeptic or nihilist. Which makes sense.
the only good reason to choose a belief
@@planetary-rendez-vous I would argue that this isn't true, though for a somewhat weird reason. If you're a moral skeptic or nihilist, you might not be able to condemn people "without being hypocritical". But, if you're a moral skeptic, you have your own internal moral beliefs, and from that perspective, condemning people who hold different beliefs from you might be something that you personally find moral enough to outweigh the hypocrisy. For instance, because it persuades other people to agree with your beliefs, and thus act in accordance with what you personally think is moral. And obviously a moral nihilist wouldn't consider being hypocritical a "bad" thing, by definition.
@@bennettpalmer1741 Very interesting argument! I never thought of it that way. I would argue, however, that this person might not be making a moral error as you said, according to their own moral theory, but they would be wrong in a purely rhetorical sense. Hypocrisy being a moral error or not also depends on that person's moral beliefs, if being hypocritical is itself wrong according to them, they would be making a moral error in addition. So that person must either be a moral Nihilist or relativist/subjectivist with the belief that it is morally permissible to be hypocritical for the sake of advancing their own moral code. In that case they would be morally right, according to them, but still rhetorically wrong by condemning someone (which assumes that objective moral facts exist) while at the same time claiming that morality depends on each individual/society, or even that it does not exist, which would prevent them from condemning other individuals/societies. We can argue about morality, but rhetoric is like the math of philosophical discourse, it can be proven true or false, or at least erroneous .
Wow! These are great, I've learnt so much in a matter of days!
Sooooo..... If it's true that moral facts exists, then moral facts exist.
Did you mean "then" instead of "than?"
@@patmoran5339 probably, but hookah never know? 😂
Thanks!
I haven't read the text but understand the argument, thanks to your clear description. However, the chapter does not appear to consider one possibility about cultural moral systems that could achieve external critique without moral objectivism. Our cultures are not static, they are evolving from more isolated, independent systems of beliefs to more dependent, integrated systems. You could say that as cultures become more aware and dependent on other cultures due to increased communication, there is pressure exerted between those cultures. These pressures are external but not necessarily universal, and the picture could be of a coalescing of multiple systems into one larger system that accommodates the greater community. Of course there are lots of conflicts in these moral systems as they integrate that need to be resolved, but isn't that the same thing as how an individual community eventually arrives at an agreed moral system? I'm not against moral objectivism, but I don't think it's necessary to establish external critique.
Something like this was in my mind aswell after watching the video, and you just put it into words perfectly.
As we know, when two poles come together in social/political opinion we don’t get mixing, rather we get Civil War or just war. So, Blue vs Red in USA, naked dancers and free sex in the West vs heightening modesty and enforced covering of women in cultures of Islamic dominance. These are life and death issues to people and “evolution” is a fantasy of WEIRD cultured people like you and me.
So you can say that something make consensus difficult, but you can't say that it's wrong.
I love these lectures. That said, it feels like most of the work people do in trying to determine whether or not an objective standard exists seems like time-wasting nonsense because, even if objective moral standard does exist, it seems like no one has access to it, and therefore everyone has to assemble their own moral structure from the available subjective philosophies
Morality isn't subjective but it is contextual. And that context isn't subjective but it is arbitrary in scope. And often the full scope cannot be known such as when actions affect the distant future.
For instance, murder is wrong. Unless it's self defence. Unless the attack was provoked. Unless that attacker was a captor. Unless the captive deserves to be in captivity. And so on.
How do you know morality isn't subjective? You say: "murder is wrong except if...." but that is just what you believe right. This is just your subjective idea about what is moral or not. It might be that there is an objective moral truth that states the same, but I don't see how anyone can know anything about this objective moral code even if it exists, so assuming its existence is meaningless.
@@Eikenhorst math is hard to understand. Does that mean it's irrelevant and we shouldn't care? And consider this: murder is wrong... Unless if it's in self defence... Unless if the attacker was provoked... Unless if the attacker is a captor... Unless if the captive deserves captivity (eg he is a convicted criminal)... Unless if the law he broke was just... Unless if he is the one who instituted that law...
Do you understand how each change of scope changes the determination of right vs wrong? It is deterministic but chaotic and convoluted. In situations where there is not perfect knowledge, approximations are the best we can do. It doesn't mean right and wrong are irrelevant concepts. Just difficult to determine sometimes. Especially if you think of morality as a vector with direction and magnitude. An act can be certainly wrong but inconsequential. And those consequences are still not subjective, but they may be unknowable at the moment of action.
@@austinwoodall5423 But even if you have perfect knowledge about the exact actions, its consequences and even intentions of a person, the very best you can do is give your subjective opinion about what is right and wrong. Subjective because it is shaped by your upbringing, society and personal experiences. For example, someone who lost a family member to a drunk driver might believe it is morally right to let such a person die if they are subject to a car crash, while their family members will feel very different. There is no objective truth, just strong subjective feelings
@@EikenhorstThere is objective truth, its just that truth assumes context; fact - the sky is blue. Now that assumes alot of things, like time of day, & the fact we're on Earth, & what the word "blue" actually means; there's alot of context to go along with that factual statement
But it is most certainly a fact of physical reality; fact - murder is wrong. Again, this assumes alot of things, like the situation where this happened, & what the word "wrong" actually means. But just like before, this is a fact of morality
Now, morality has constraints, just like physical reality has constraints, but that doesn't disqualify any attempts at validity
@@glint6070 The sky is blue can be considered an objective truth if you indeed assume some bassic things, like you measure a certain wavelength of light and you call that blue.
That is quite a difference from calling murder wrong. Nothing you can measure determines that. It is litterally someone that calls murder wrong, then defines what is murder and then calls it wrong. There are no objective facts here (except for someone being death and this caused by someone else), you can't possibly measure the 'wrongness'.
If someone disagrees it is wrong there are no facts you can point to that shows that really they are wrong.
I’m only halfway through the vid, but I’m already thinking that moral error only indicates that someone cannot learn and process all the appropriate social conventions at once. You can read a book and learn the wrong lesson. You can literally think it’s telling you something it’s not, if you misinterpret the message. Considering that our bundle of social conventions and the numerous interactions of the pieces within, are exceedingly complex, and that people are coming from vastly different backgrounds -causing differing interpretations of the same observations (or often having different observed phenomena) - it’s pretty easy to see how we “read the same book” but derive differing messages.
I never felt this much enlightenment ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Ur videos are pure gold in knowledge sir ❤❤❤
I've really enjoyed all of your Videos Kudos to you.
A moral subjectiveist would not say someone was wrong. They would say, I don't like that at this time. They can even change their minds. At one time I liked that and now I don't. There is no inconsistencies. You can still do things to people who do things you don't like. A belief is just an idea in your head. You may not like a belief in someone else's head, that is fine.
But should you do something to someone you don't like? Is this all just a game of survival through cooperation? The only justifications for government and justice systems are subjective preference? If so, then does that not mean it's meaningless to try and figure out how we ought to govern ourselves?
@@lolgamez9171 "But should you do something to someone you don't like?"
Depends on how much you don't like him. If someone rapes my daughter, yes. They won't be breathing long. I'll take the consequences.
"The only justifications for government and justice systems are subjective preference? If so, then does that not mean it's meaningless to try and figure out how we ought to govern ourselves?"
It is only meaningless if you think there is no advantage to be gained or no want satisfied. The meaning only comes if you think it will result in something you want, whatever it is. This applies to everyone individually. Generally, I won't participate in a society that makes my life miserable while others live in comfort unless I have some other reason to stay in it.
Well, because to consider moral error one would assume moral is objective. Circular argument basically.
@@MugenTJ That usually doesn't work unless you are a nominalist, too.
@@gabrielteo3636 maybe. The point is that circular reasoning is not a good way to prove validity of the thing you try to prove. It can it useful to show relationships among things, go circular all you like!
Example: zero is equal to itself. That’s a true statement, and essentially contains circular logic. But zero itself mean none existence in the physical sense. There by itself is not existing in the physical world. Of course it exists as an abstract.
What people first should realize when they try to prove something to exist, they should first consider what kind of thing it is. Morality is an abstract, like the concept of god (as perfection). Meaning I can think of a system of moral that is consistent within itself but it might not be the only one, which make it possible to think of other system that contradict the first one. Thereby non of them can be objectively true.
If one isn’t fooled by his own bias, it’s very clearly why morality is a subjective matter. Because it’s a mean to control behavior for better or for worse. Once you realize that, you understand each group of people has incentive to control other groups. So as long as there are multiple groups there will be different moral system.
If we assert that someone’s moral framework is fundamentally wrong we are not just saying that you disagree, you are saying that it’s fundamentally wrong. Thus you are asserting that there is a set of moral truths.
Hello,.is there a sequence to the introductory course? And to the rest? Thanks.
Yes, I have organized the videos in the playlists section of my UA-cam page. For example, here are three courses I have built:
Intro to Philosophy (with a focus on philosophy of mind): ua-cam.com/play/PL7YPshZMeLIa49ZV_AzD3FMi5ASwPkEIc.html
Intro to Ethics: ua-cam.com/play/PL7YPshZMeLIazts4sq6UQ2kpjsUxhHaBd.html
Philosophy of Law: ua-cam.com/play/PL7YPshZMeLIYDwqvtqIHm9SOQpSeKVKU0.html
@@profjeffreykaplan Thank you for the quick reply! And I suppose you know that if I asked it means I want to hear them all... Cheers.
Indeed if you judge someone else's, or another cultures system as factually wrong, then you are assuming some external moral fact that falsifies it. If however you merely judge it as morally wrong by your own standard or that of your own cultures then their is not contradiction or need for objective morality. Internal critiques are probably the only means by which you can really start to seriously disassemble someone else's moral philosophy.
Other than that how is pointing out a contradiction or falsity in anyone's understanding of morality a positive argument for Moral Facts actually existing? At best you can try to show that another is assuming Moral Realism and they may not be conscious of that. That a person believes or assumes moral realism is not an argument for it. So Landau's argument fails in it's goal.
I love these lectures
The flip side also applies, and those who believe some people are meant to be slaves are using that to externally critique all people are equal. It's eternal yin and yang. Unless we can show why 'all people are equal' cannot be critiqued by 'some people are meant to be slaves', we can't anchor the ship.
I would like to attempt a distinction between moral subjectivism and moral infallibilism:
Moral subjectivism: What's morally good or bad depends on the person's subjective views.
Moral infallibilism: What's morally good or bad depends on the person's subjective views, *and they can't be wrong about it.*
The latter is obviously the stronger and more outlandish claim. And all arguments that I've seen only seem to attack moral infallibilism
In order for someone to be wrong about their subjective belief there must be an objective truth to compare against. So what you’re calling subjectivism seems to me to just be moral objectivism.
@@jacksonletts3724 An objective truth that depends on the person, i.e. a non-universal objective truth.
Additionally, nothing says that there can't be multiple correct options for this non-universal objective truth, which Objectivism also seems to disagree with.
@@jacksonletts3724 THIS
Kaplan argues that the only way to critique moral statements would require moral skeptics to have some kind of objective moral standards to "disprove" a statement such as "some people are meant to be slaves".
Kaplan thinks that moral nihilsts would have to say something like "slavery is evil", or "all people are equal".
Kaplan's argument fails at understanding where the burden of proof lies. I would argue that it's not up to the moral nihilists to disprove the "some people are meant to be slaves' ' statement. But instead, it is up to the moral objectivist to prove the validity of the statement itself.
Kaplan argues that moral nihilsts say that the statement “some people are meant to be slaves” is a wrong statement when this in fact isn’t what moral nihilsts say. Just like belief in god, atheists aren’t saying that god doesn’t exist. They are saying that claiming that he does isn’t justifiable.
According to the philosopher David Hume, there is no way to derive an “ought” from an “is” . There is no way to prove that something should be done. Such statements must be based on the assumption that well-being/pleasure is a good thing. (which is an unjustified assumption).
Moral statements cannot be objectively proven. We don't have to say that a statement like "some people should be slaves" is an immoral statement, all we need to say is that moral statements cannot be proven to be objective. Once someone can prove that some people are meant to be slaves, then objective morality will be true. The same thing goes for arguing that well-being/pleasure is objectively good.
Kaplan claims that it's the moral nihilsts's responsibility to disprove moral statements. But I would argue that it's the moral objectivist's responsibility to prove moral statements, which as far as I know, is impossible. you cannot disprove something that hasn't yet been proven.
The burden of proof is on the one that claims something that is less obvious. (Prima facie statements.)
"The Sun rotates around the Earth" was prima facie.
You couldn't come with an alternative or say it is false unless you had some PROOF. Galileo had one. The burden of proof was on him. ( Turned out he was right.) But *Galileo* had the burden of proof, and not the *Geocentrists* .
Apply that here.
@@Adiusa0874 obviously there is also no objective proof regarding who has the burden of proof or if anyone even needs to prove anything at all.
@@boooshes
Obviously? It's not that obvious.
Prima facie statements are the obvious ones. Because.. "Prima"... are postulated axiomatically. Axioms don't have proofs. They can only be proven false.
@@Adiusa0874 Who decides what's obvious?
@@mrosskne it's not a decision, it is whatever belief is prevalent in all humanity.
Before Galileo the obvious belief was that the Sun revolving around the Earth. Thanks to him that belief is no longer the obvious because he fulfilled the burden of proof.
I think it can be coherent for a moral relativist and a moral subjectivist to assert that a moral error has occurred when a conventional morality says, "[some act] is immoral". The moral relativist could say that the openness of that statement is condemning that act in other societies, and that's wrong. The moral subjectivist could say that it is condemning people who do that act and think that it's morally right to do so, and that's wrong. Or maybe I've accidentally slipped some objectivism into relativism and subjectivism; it's possible. Maybe the "wrongness" that they would claim is more of a "philosophical error" than a "moral error".
I think that we are all moral objectivists. But some people don’t want to judge other people (which is fair). So they assert that other people’s moral framework which differs from their own are equally valid. But I find it hard to believe that we really do believe that where, for instance, another society is morally comfortable in slavery or child sacrifice that we don’t believe that is a moral error. We may not want to judge those people but we still believe that they are wrong.
I don't need to go out of a moral system to criticize a fundamental moral belief. I can simply create a more fundamental belief than the existing fundamental belief to criticize it. Where do you think the fundamental belief you wish to criticize came from? It was constructed. Hence, moral relativism/skepticism is true.
Am I crazy or is this just a looping argument? Those who don't believe in objective morality cannot say something is objectively immoral? Yes. The author then implies that if you can't object to perceived immorality as an objective truth, then you cannot object at all. Why? Why can't I say, as a moral relativist, that moral systems that don't punish homosexuality are superior, particularly in this time and place?
Because you'd be lying
if you can't tell if something is objectively immoral or not, then you either:
a) admit that you can't tell whether something is objectively immoral or not thus admitting you have no ground to make any objections
b) object to something even though you don't know whether that something is wrong or not, thus pretending that you know something that you don't, thus lying
@@open9060it's really not that hard. I accept some moral axioms on faith, and when I criticise other systems of morality I do so by saying that they go against my axioms.
Its not that I "don't know if it's wrong or not" but rather that I know it's wrong, given my axioms.
@@dalmationblack Then you're not a moral relativist.
You are a moral objectivist whenever you think that morality is defined by something other than a culture/person's subjective viewpoint, logical arguments count as "something other than a culture/person's subjective viewpoint" thus making you a moral objectivist.
This argument is about why moral skeptics cannot argue for something to be immoral/moral, because moral skepticism (which includes moral relativism) states:
All morality is derived from a person's culture/subjective viewpoint, it's not an objective phenomenon that exists outside that person's/culture viewpoint
thus a moral relativist doesn't think there is any outside point of reference for moral statements since they're entirely dependent on viewpoint
thus a moral relativist cannot judge whether something is moral or immoral outside of their own culture since there're no points of reference to use as a guide to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect
thus a moral relativist cannot object to any moral system at all since they have no way to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect (all equally correct means you have no basis to criticize anyone)
thus if you are a moral relativist and say "those who punish homosexuality are wrong" you either have to add "in my culture" to that statement
or lie
either to others (as a moral relativist, you cannot criticize other culture's moral systems since you have no way to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect),
or to yourself (you are in fact not a moral relativist since you don't operate on a moral relativist framework).
@@open9060 I'm not a moral objectivist. I base my moral system on certain axioms, but I'm fully aware that there's no objective reason I should prefer those axioms over any others, besides that I happen to prefer them.
"thus if you are a moral relativist and say "those who punish homosexuality are wrong" you either have to add "in my culture" to that statement"
It has nothing to do with culture (idk why moral objectivists love to harp on "culture" so much; I disagree with my culture on lots of moral issues), but yes I would qualify "under my moral system" to any statement I make, though usually I don't because it's pretty obviously implied
"thus a moral relativist cannot judge whether something is moral or immoral outside of their own culture since there're no points of reference to use as a guide to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect"
Again with the culture, I never mentioned culture so idk why you keep bringing it up. Culture means nothing to me. And yes, I am perfectly capable of judging if something is moral *within my own moral system*. I don't believe anything beyond this is necessary (or even coherent).
"thus a moral relativist cannot object to any moral system at all since they have no way to decide which system of morality is correct/incorrect (all equally correct means you have no basis to criticize anyone)"
I am perfectly capable of objecting to a moral system if it leads one to do actions which I find immoral under my system. My basis is the system of morality I choose to believe in. Just because I don't have an "objective" reason to choose that system (not that anyone has ever been able to articulate to me what such an objective reason could even look like) doesn't mean I can't use that system anyways.
@@dalmationblack This isn't about you specifically, it's about the definition of moral skepticism itself, which is why culture is used, because moral skepticism itself defines morality as something defined by cultural or personal views.
If you, specifically you, define your morality based on personal views then you're a moral subjectivist thus you have no logical or moral grounds to object to any moral actions at all
your morals are based on your own personal preferences thus there's no reason why someone else's personal preferences are less or more valid that yours, even if they directly oppose yours
you're just saying "I don't like that" but under your own system of belief that's just as valid as someone else saying "I like that"; you and the person arguing against homosexuality are equally right
any moral criticisms you make are hollow since you have no external standards
in short, if you are a moral subjectivist like you say you are, either you have to concede when someone says "well that's just like your opinion man" or be logically inconsistent with your own beliefs.
Moral code is not right or wrong. It just exists. It is similar to a particular object. Particular object can't be right or wrong. It just is. A STATEMENT ABOUT PARTICULAR OBJECT, yes it can be right or wrong, but the object itself can't.
" Moral code is not right or wrong." What if your moral code compels you to continually harm your fellow man ? That seems like a moral code that is wrong .
Are there any competing moral theories that address this subject that would disagree with Shafer-Landau? I.e. they have a way to argue that at least some moral claims are so egregious they could be called amoral but without needing an external objective morality to make that claim? I'm just curious because if there is I would be really interested to hear the logic behind it.
I think there are two primary ways to get around this argument if you wanted to.
1) Moral Narcissism - Ones own beliefs are the highest moral code so anything that goes against that is immoral. Pragmatically we all behave this way. Think of Plato's argument that no reasonable man knowingly does evil. Now we can just say something is wrong because "I" believe it to be wrong.
2) Moral "Globalism" - More beliefs are judged by the whole society. Beliefs that most believe to be wrong are wrong. If we expand this to all people we can say people not in step are morally wrong. This has an interesting bad effect of if most people in say 1000AD thought slavery was right, then we can't say its wrong very easily. We can appeal to Narcissism and say we are morally right now or we can go atemporal and say all humans who ever lived and ever will live are included and try to make predictions. For example it seems unlikely that most of all of human civilization past, present future, are likely to think that slavery is good.
Both of such systems can claim morality exists and stems subjectively from human experience.
The belief described as Moral Nihilism in these lectures gives you a sort of out, in that there is nothing that forbids or compels you to approve or disapprove of any particular belief system.
The moral nihilist will see a slave owner and think something like "I am going to stop this person from keeping slaves because I don't like it when there are slaves".
Or maybe the moral nihilist will think something like "I don't like it when there are slaves, so I will convince the slave-owner that slavery is wrong according to their own moral principles".
The Moral Nihilist knows that "I don't like this thing, so I will make it stop happening" is a _fully sufficient_ motivation to stop something from happening, whether there's an objective morality or not.
@@fieldrequired283 thank you for the response. That makes a lot of sense and it’s an interesting perspective. I appreciate the information!
The moral views of a society do not necessarily match everyone in that society.
That means there very well could be people in the society that don't agree with that standard so a moral subjectivist would be justified in thinking it is wrong.
Moral relativism also doesn't require every possible moral statement to be true for a society. It can still be wrong. People agreeing to it doesn't make it right.
But ultimately, moral error is typically just imposing your subjective morality onto others. It doesn't demonstrate that there are objective moral laws. At best it shows you may want there to be them.
I get you're teaching what the chapter says
And my thought is that just because I think my moral standard is better than someone else's, doesn't make my standard objective.
As I chewed on this through your lecture I realize that what makes the cultural collective moral standards "wrong" is when they dictate things like homosexuality is morally bad and the people that disagree are trapped with moral standards they disagree with. Another problem would be when people think their morals have an objective root, but can't demonstrate that. And I would say these are moral systems that don't work, but that doesn't make them inherently morally-wrong. Lots of these scenarios can be erroneous without the error being of moral nature.
A person who wants to murder in a society that dictates murder is bad is also trapped with moral standards they disagree with
@@mrosskne interesting point. But that doesn't address moral objectivity.
I don't think murder is objectively wrong. It just doesn't work with most (all?) Societies. So enforcing no-murder is more about the health of society than being an objective moral
@@jwmmitch Then what was the point of your statement about homosexuality? What claim does it support?
@@mrosskne my point was moral "wrongness" doesn't indicate moral objective. It's still subjective
This whole argument seems based on the idea that something can be objectively wrong, and that’s a poor basis for a proof that things can be objectively wrong.
It would be nice if slavery was objectively wrong. It would be nice if homophobia was objectively wrong. It would be extremely unfortunate if abortion was objectively wrong. But so far the support for all those claims is subjective. All I can do is support what I subjectively believe in and encourage others to join me. But that’s good enough for me.
But I could as a moral skeptic say that I as an individual have certain preferences, I prefer to live in a society which all people are equal than a society where slavery exists
Absolutely. Great, great point. Moral skeptics still get to have preferences. That's sort of like a consolation prize. They can't say that certain moral opinions (i.e., 'slavery is fine') can be in error, but they can still *disprefer* slavery. But is that a satisfying consolation prize? We might think that preferences are not nearly enough. Like I prefer to live in a society with pineapple pizza, because I quite like pineapple pizza. I prefer pineapple pizza. And so too I prefer that there is no slavery. The moral objectivity has something very compelling to say here: if your attitude toward having all people treated with basic dignity and not being enslaved is the same as your attitude toward having pineapple pizza as an option on the menu, then your moral outlook is completely broken. Merely preferring to live in a society without slavery, the moral objectivist will say, is not nearly enough. Surely, the right view is that slavery is not just less preferable, but evil. If all moral skepticism can do is allow us to say that slavery is like a lack of pineapple pizza, then moral skepticism is irredeemably broken.
@@profjeffreykaplan firstly thank you for responding I truly appreciate it and your videos are great! I think I understand what you are saying , morality is more important than to be explained simply as a preference and moral statements to be treated to the same level as "I prefer pineapple pizza more than 4cheese pizza".I would just like to point out ,it seems to me that you are criticising more the result rather than the reasoning of moral skepticism, yes both our intuitions might tell us slavery is more than just not preferable , that it is evil but our intuition that doesn't prove the result wrong.One could made the perfectly reasonable argument that this intuition we both have against slavery is simply a result of the values of the current society we live in, this intuition would not exist if we asked an ancient greek about slavery he would see it as perfectly moral since his society had different values than ours(sorry for my bad english btw!)
@@panoskatrin4910 I agree completely that our shared belief is nothing more than an "intuition", which is just to say that it is some belief we happen to have and we feel that that belief is the natural one to have. And, of course, we could merely have that belief as a result of the societies in which we were raised. But I am not convinced that our intuition cannot prove a metaethical theory (like moral skepticism) wrong. I think that is exactly what our intuition does. The following is a style of argument that comes from G.E. Moore. On the one hand I have the belief that slavery is evil, no matter who practices, or at that point in history. That is one belief that I have. Another belief I have (not really, but let's just suppose for the sake of argument) is that there is a sound argument showing that moral skepticism is true. So I have these two beliefs and they conflict. Only one of them can be correct. Either my first belief is correct and slavery is objectively wrong. Or my second belief is correct and moral skepticism is true. Well, how confident am I in each of these two beliefs. I am moderately confident in the second belief, let's suppose, because it is a philosophical conclusion and I can be moderately confident in those. But philosophy is hard and I would be rational to acknowledge that any belief that results from philosophical argument could very well be false. What about the first belief, my belief that slavery is objectively wrong? Well, I am pretty damn sure of that. I feel quite certain that slavery is wrong. Since I am so much more confident that my moral intuition about slavery is wrong than I am that some philosophical argument for moral skepticism is sound, I should therefore allow my intuition to beat out any inclination toward moral skepticism.
@@profjeffreykaplan thats an interesting argument yet I can bring you a lot of examples where my intuition has been false about the nature of things in the world how can I verify my intuition about slavery is correct?surely just because I feel something is true doesn't mean that it is,sure I might think from my intuition that slavery is objectively wrong but what happens if the intuition of some other individual is the exact opposite?and there have been plenty of individuals in the course of history which shared this belief( I know I have asked questions which are difficult to answer in the comment section,I would also like to state that I dont study philosophy I am here out of pure curiosity)
@@panoskatrin4910 You are definitely right that there are lots of cases where intuitions turn out to be false. And you are right also that we therefore have not demonstrated that all intuitions end up being true. But I wasn't trying to say that you can always trust your intuitions. I suppose that the best way to understand the argument that I was building off of your point that intuitions are just beliefs like any other belief. Some are true, some are false. We have to evaluate what evidence we have for each, how strongly we feel that each is true, and go from there. The belief that moral skepticism is true is a belief. The belief that slavery is objectively wrong is a belief. They can't both be true. So which one is true. I feel quite certain that my belief that slavey is wrong is true. So by belief that moral skepticism is true must be false. You are right that others may have different moral intuitions, but the existence of disagreement doesn't show either that my own intuitions are false, nor that there is not objective truth of the matter. Here is a video I made sort of about that issue ( ua-cam.com/video/9eodr-9V6Z8/v-deo.html ).
Also, it might be true that you don't study philosophy in some formal school setting, but if you are reading philosophical works and watching philosophy lecture videos, etc., then you are definitely studying philosophy. And if you are arguing with me in the comments, then, whether you like it or not, you are **doing** philosophy.
There's an excluded middle here that makes the whole thing not work for me. I don't know if there is objective morality or not. I suspect there isn't. I'm unconvinced. I need a compelling reason to believe it does exist. Personally, I'd refer to that position as "skepticism", but somehow Shafer-Landau has us believing that skepticism is a *denial*. I don't deny anything other than my own conviction. Objective morality might very well exist. Someday, I may encounter a compelling argument in its favor.
I've heard probably hundreds of arguments in its favor, but I have found exactly zero of them to be compelling. I'm still waiting, though. I'd love to be proven wrong. Not just because convincing me I'm wrong improves my understanding, but because I *really would like to believe* in an objective truth (other than math or physics, that is. I don't have an issue believing that newton's laws of motion or general relativity are objectively true, but that's a wholly different species of objective truth.)
Then you're not a Moral Skeptic, you're a Moral Agnostic.
Error doesn't equal being wrong
Okay so to remain consistent with condemning anything as immoral, you must believe in moral objectivism, but what is the foundation for that objectivism? Does it mean God has to exist to make that moral objectivism? If someone doesn’t believe in God, would they have to in order to believe in moral objectivism?
Moral objectivism is the belief moral truths exist in the universe objectively like maybe logical or mathematical truths. The proposition, If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C, is an objectively true statement. The truth of this statement is not relative or subjective. God is not a necessary condition for something to be objectively true.
@@stevesmith4901 What is the necessary condition for something to be objectively true?
@@peterrosqvist2480 In simple terms, the necessary condition for a fact to be objectively true would be that it would be true independent of human subjectivity. For example, a triangle has three sides is objectively true. It is true independent of the human mind. On the other hand, a case could be made, that the statement, "God exists", is not objectively true because God is a creation of the human mind.
@@stevesmith4901 How do we know the objective world exists independently of human subjectivity?
Isn't there another kind of critique accessible to moral skeptics, where one society critiques another, a kind of "imperial critique"? A society with some foundational belief which critiques another based on its *own* foundational beliefs, which also has the superiority of its own system over the target (perhaps all targets) as an internal belief? Doesn't this "superior" society's conventional morality (superior in their own eyes, at least) function in the role otherwise requiring objective morality?
Before listening, I would say yes and no. Yes, if the premise is suitably phrased, moral error proves that there's moral truth. But no, no matter how the premise is phrased, it doesn't prove that those truths take the form of laws. Now, time to hear the lecture.
Unfortunately, people mostly don't strive to have our group's conventional morality match objective morality. Mostly, we strive to get our group to accept precepts that will license behavior we want to engage in, or that will condemn behavior an out-group is thought of as engaging in, and so on.
We don't need to regard all false moral beliefs as worthy of condemnation. We can accept that people are fallible, while still saying that they have a duty to try to get their moral beliefs right. I'm old enough to have received the claim that homosexual sex is immoral as an unexamined assumption, but young enough to have rejected it immediately at a young age, only slightly ahead of the curve for how the conventional view was changing. I don't think I did anything wrong by passively absorbing the idea, but I think I would have if I had clung to it.
I don't assume that there's a clear hierarchy of fundamental and not-so-fundamental moral beliefs, among those held by any individual or society. I think even the beliefs regarded as most fundamental can be re-examined and rejected when their implications become problematic. To me, the key premise is that this kind of re-examination feels like "oops, we were wrong", rather than "meh, we changed our minds"; and that this feeling holds up when we try to doubt it.
What do you propose as the mechanism for discovering the laws of objective morality? There is a not insignificant amount of people claiming that Shariah law matches it and another not insignificant group of people claiming similarily homophobic and sexist rules as onjective morality (Christian fundamentalists), just for two examples from the top of my head, and I reckon you heavily disagree with either of those, so we would need rather convincing metholdology, because the currently applied ones seem to be able to produce just about any rule set ...
@@christiangreff5764 I don't think there is any easy way. It's inherently difficult.
My main argument for the premise that there even is objective morality is that we change our minds about moral questions in ways that feel like "oops, I was wrong", rather than only in ways that feel like "ok, my tastes have changed". A corollary is that citizens should be educated in ways that include plenty of opportunity to become familiar with the former type of feeling under circumstances where it's clearly justified.
Then there's my other statement: "Mostly, we strive to get our group to accept precepts that will license behavior we want to engage in, or that will condemn behavior an out-group is thought of as engaging in, and so on." The corollary to that is that we need to develop the discipline of questioning our own motivations, while being forgiving toward expositors of those views we're likely to be biased against.
Just accepting that there is truth to be had on the important questions, while understanding truth as something you can be mistaken about (rather than using the word "truth" as rhetorical sleight-of-hand for 'the doctrines chosen by my favorite power structure'), would get us pretty far.
Derrida would like to have a word with those who propose this argument.
The moral error theorist would not say it is immoral a person holds a false belief of the concept of morality. It would just be a statement of fact. The moral error theorist may say, I don't like that person to hold a false belief, but that's it. Suppose someone believed morality is whatever a unicorn likes and says, "murder is wrong" (unicorns don't approve of murder). The error theorist is making the statement, that person is incorrect in his belief of morality.
Could Moral objectivism be generated (or discovered) through competition BETWEEN conventional moral systems, by encountered moral facts through lived experience at the level of society and on epistemically significant timescales, i.e. allowing time for adverse consequences to work themselves out?
I thought the argument was going to be, in a relativist morality world, where does the ethic that anyone in any society should abide their ethic, come from. The fact that it is possible in a conventional morality to make a moral error, in any possible conventional morality (this being what morality is) if there is no moral imperative to be moral?
What do you mean with a "moral imperative to be moral". The imperative to be moral might just be because you don't want to end up in jail. Maybe less drastic, you don't want to be shunned by people for having stood by while someone drowned because you figured your new pants were more important. I mean, if everyone in the society thinks you are amoral and can't be trusted, this will have big negative consequences, so that is an imperative to be moral already.
Can you claim a moral statement is false by pointing to another moral statement that somehow contradicts it? You wouldn't have to accept objective morality to do this, but it would involve using personal judgement.
Actualy - no, you don`t need objective morality in order to critique conventional morality of a society X from the outside, conventional morality of a _bigger_ society Y of which the society X is the part - will suffice.
That’s still an external critique from an outside system. What critiques society Y?
"If you think that, then you're a moral objectivist." No. I'm not comparing societies' to a universal, objective moral code when I say that they're wrong about slavery or whatever. I'm comparing them to MY moral code! It's external, and it's not objectivist. Gaping hole in the reasoning.
So you're a moral egotist rather than a moral objectivist.
@@I12Db8U Never heard that term, but every human has individual morality; nobody has access to a universal, objective moral code. Morality is always either subjective or neither subjective nor objective by good semantics I've been exposed to. Even when one picks a "universal" moral code, in the sense of it applies universally, it's not universal in the important sense, that everybody everywhere all the time operates under it.
If you claim that all society moral standards are correct for them, so that your moral code is correct for you, and that it is also better than another society’s moral code, that means not all societies are equal in their moral code and the only way you can claim that is by appealing to an external source, i. e. objective morality.
If you claim all all society’s moral code is correct for them, then you can’t claim that yours I better than another without self-contradiction. Either they’re all equal at that level, or they’re not.
@@peterrosqvist2480 "If you claim that all society moral standards are correct for them" I don't. My morality is correct. It's not correct "because all societies' moral standards are correct for them". I am not a society. It doesn't depend on anything. It's morality. Morality is the most subjective thing there is, so it's hardly objective or objectivist.
"Either they’re all equal at that level, or they’re not." They're not equal. They are (almost) all better than or worse than others, and they are better than or worse than others depending on how much closer or further from MY moral system they are.
"the only way you can claim that is by appealing to an external source, i. e. objective morality." What? I said it was "external", but not in this sense. It is external to societies. My morality is inside me, so internal in that sense. I don't appeal to some outside system of morality. My morality isn't right because it's aligned with the Catholic church's morality, for example. Morality isn't objective, ever. Morality is subjective af. You can't test morality against reality. You can test objective beliefs against reality (given infinite sensitivity, scope, and ability, of course), by definition. Objective beliefs concern reality. Subjective beliefs concern aesthetic taste and morality. Stating THAT I prefer chocolate to vanilla is objective, because I either do or don't, but stating that chocolate is preferable to vanilla is subjective, it's just a circle-jerk self-reference to my subjective taste. Similarly, saying that something is right or wrong, morally, or more right or more wrong, is also just a circle-jerk self-reference to someone's subjective morality.
The only thing (that I know of) that we can say about subjective things like taste and morality is that they're OBJECTIVELY wrong whenever and wherever they self-contradict. So if someone states preferences or morals and then acts against them, they're objectively wrong, even though preferences and morality are totally subjective.
@@weksauce You're claiming that one moral system is better than another moral system. By which standard do you make this claim? If you make the claim by your own subjective standard, then from an objective perspective, your perspective is as equal to any other subjective perspective.
I'm not claiming any one authority to accurately have the objective moral system, I'm just saying that the way you approach it is contradictory if you don't believe in objective morality. You would need to go backwards from moral subjectivity towards moral nihilism to have a stronger position.
Why shouldn’t this argument prove the existence of an objective best way to prepare a meal, or an objective best way to play Bach?
Not saying ether way, people care about moral design based upon what some would call political morality, while if the standard is based upon limiting the labor of people everyone would be held to building a home or shelter fixing a car or completing public works with minimal cost. People who talk as made men that haven’t dug ditches should be treated as such. Do you do the work or are you a fixture trying to organize the ones who do the work? Why does one make more than the other with less detrimental effects?
Are moral systems necessary? (Nihilism being one.) If so, why? Does necessity provide a common, universal basis for all moral codes.?
Cf: Eg: Slavery is 'bad' because slavery drives down the wages of free workers and harms them. And other unpleasant economic and social consequences.
Must (Can?) a 'moral' moral code be Pareto Optimal: Everyone derives benefits under the code, and no one is harmed.?
Here's a question.
Is the moral theory that claims "Everything is morally permissable, including the establishment, breaking, and enforcement of moral codes" a subform of moral objectivism, of moral nihilism, or neither?
I think that it is. When I watched that movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, I was annoyed when the protagonist claimed that the antagonist believed that no truth exists including moral truth BUT went on this grand mission to eliminate all life and later tried to justify it morally; by saying that all life should end because it is pointless. I think the “life should end” part is a moral claim.
You do not have to be giving a critique of a moral system to need objective morality. To even say a normative statement is good beyond just having a preference then one needs objective morality. I do not see how you say anything is immoral or moral beyond preference without objectivity.
isn’t morality just tied to empathy? which we’re obvs socialised to elicit and in what circumstances we ought to feel it etc, but yeh doesn’t our empathy inform our personal conventional morality? more than some bigger thing. like i dont think homosexuality is immoral (i actually think it’s amoral) because i can empathise with not being accepted for who i am …
so basicly:
'i believe i am objectively right'
'which is your opinion'
'and you think that observation is objectively right'
'which is again an opinion'
so there is a disconnect on both sides:
the objectivist doesnt see that morality is intrinsicly subjective.
the relativist doesnt see that relativism if untenable and unworkable because no matter the size of the moral community, morality's normative value requires it's own legitimacy. and there is no better term to justify the special pleading than objective morality. as when you are convinced you are right' your rightness becomes actionable, but hesitation created by ever greater extensions of identity leads to moral nihilism which is a broken tool.
the objectivist wants to talk about the tool as having substance and relevance. and the relativist cares more about the truth and virtue. it is a strange breakdown into warring factions.
I just saw a youtube video where a crow used its beak to push a hedgehog over a trafficked road. It must surely exist some fundamental objective morals intrinsic to biological societies… just like the carbon atom is fundamental to biological molecules.
I have seen far more videos of animals doing horrible things to each other, and our sample size of 1 by no means confirms that carbon is fundamental to biological molecules.
Great lecture in this quandary for people in WEIRD societies to face our hypocrisy. “We are all moral subjectivists, isn’t that wonderful? O wait, I want to condemn the Pope and ISIS as morally in error, sooo, maybe we need to put the objectivist jump suit on long enough to do that? Then we can go back and say in the mirror, “ Isn’t it great that we are all becoming more morally subjectivist! I am such an open-minded person!”
Why would someone who thinks they decide who should be condemned think they need to rely on moral objectivism? That just doesn't make any sense.
Wait a second... is he writing backwards on a clear board in front of him so that we see it forward?
No, the video is flipped on a vertical axis (left and right are inverted). Notice how he appears to write using his "left" hand. Most people are right handed.
Very educative videos, this one in particular. Regarding moral objectivism, I think it is impossible because the external stardands cannot come from within a society or another. It has to come like from aliens and that why it makes religions wins since they come from external realities. Even though I'd love to see moral objectivism in this world, It is only a metaphysical claim. In moral nihilism, the error theory proofs that actually morality is just a human construction and that if we take ourselves out of this reality, we could end up by refusing good and evil and accepting everything as an act of will of freedom. As long as we believe, there is a moral error. As long as we believe in the afterlife judgement we will have a moral error, if we don't so we become nihilist and so we have to accept that there shouldn't be any morals at all. Personally for how much I'd love to see moral objectivism, it is impossible without a higher intelligence.
I dont understand why nihilism=horrible apathynor something of that sort. I personally consider myself a nihilist (to some degree anyway) but, at risk of sounding arrogant here) i often tryntongo out of my way to help others more often than the people i know that are religious....
*try to go out...
@@Bronco541 though it's been a while I wrote this, but I still have the same kind of thinking. However, from the moment you decide to do something, you're not nihilist at all. In fact, I started recently to think that man who follow his bliss is a virtuous creature since he is following the objective willingness.. With that being said, the act of helping others and getting out of the proper selfishness is what makes humans getting elevated toward objective moralism. God has created the world in its beautiful and uglyness, in his image, and we are here judging what is one and what is the other attribute. So, if we decide to choose it means that we're inclining to the best part of his attributes and by doing so we are saying we can be better since he didn't have a choice. Peace ✌️
The well being of sentient creatures is objectively valuable. I don't need to postulate a higher intelligence to say it would be better if all sensitive creatures had better sensations.
I don't need a higher intelligence, to say it would just be bad if every sensitive creature in existence were tortured forever.
@@lolgamez9171 No, you do need a "higher" intelligence, it's just that you claim to be that "higher" intelligence in the first sentence!
Hi Professor Kaplan. Great video! But I think you may have committed an equivocation fallacy when discussing what moral relativists/subjectivists can say about societies with different morals from them. You seem to be using two different senses of the word "wrong": one sense being synonymous with "incorrect/false", the other being *morally* wrong. So while it is true that a moral subjectivist cannot say a society that holds some abhorrent view is factually incorrect, or making false statements, they can say that society is immoral, from the standpoint of the one making the statement. There doesn't seem to be anything problematic or inconsistent with this way of speaking for the subjectivist
No, a subjectivist cannot honestly say that because they have no authority to say that their moral opinion is superior to the one they are attacking. They could say that their morality is different, but the only way they can honestly say that their morality is *better* is if they are a moral objectivist.
@@fluffysheap why does one require authority in order to express their viewpoint? Whose authority is required exactly? Expressing one’s negative opinion of another society’s morals in no way requires that one be objectively better than the other
You’re right that the subjectivist can condemn whatever they wish, but if you compare two opposing subjectivists together, you cannot claim one is right and one is wrong without making an external critique.
@@peterrosqvist2480 I can clam one is right and one is wrong from my subjective standpoint
@@gardenhead92 Exactly, but that's just your perspective. What about the perspective of someone who says the opposite of you, which one of you is right then?
It is btw. not conclusive, that a moral relativist can't make judgements on other moral systems than his own. He can surely judge others based on his own moral system, but he can also point out inherent flaws in other moral systems. He can also identify consequences of a moral system, e.g. detrimental consequences for the specific society that is governed by it.
Only he can't spew out "absolute truth", principles that apply to any group of sentient beings, or even just humans, for all times. Even a look into human history should make pretty clear, that it's hardly likely our moral systems will be criticized in the future, and it's likely that some of our moral beliefs will be considered as wrong by future generations.
But I can just be a moral subjectivist whose beliefs say that I can judge others. Nothing says I have to follow toleration as well
No, this is specifically addressing the idea that some other society has 'wrong morals', which necessitates moral objectivism. A moral subjectivist who thinks his views are BETTER than others is fine, but he cannot think his beliefs are TRUER than others, or by definition he is supporting a non-subjective moral standard.
@@yousefsekhri425 "Wrong morals" was clearly being used in the sense of "morally wrong" (aka "forbidden") throughout the lecture, not in the sense of "factually incorrect". The individual subjectivist can easily regard a society's conventional morality as morally wrong, since the subjectivist takes the statement "X is morally wrong" to mean "I (the person uttering this statement) disapprove of X", all that has to happen is for the subjectivist to disapprove of slavery. Then the statement "People in society Y think slavery is right, but they're wrong" means "People in society Y approve of a thing I disapprove of", which is both intelligible and true.
It's not an *objective* critique, but if that's the standard, then the entire argument boils down to "You can't say something is *objectively* morally wrong without objective morality" which trivial.
Moral skepticism can actually be influenced by experience and empathy. This is an approach that includes an external factor which is not objective morality. Ideas of morals can come out of personal experience, the feeling of empathy combined with logic and they can 'contaminate' the system from within through word of mouth, example and/or revolution by the ones having adopted similar subjective ideologies. It can work much like evolution works for biological organisms and I can't see no problem in that according to the arguments you made in the video.
This argument doesn't even begin to be relevant against the question in the video. Whether or not one is influenced regarding his morality is irrelevant.
@@planetary-rendez-vous It is very relevant. The video says that a moral subjectivist cannot judge if a belief is right or wrong. My case is that this is not true. A subjectivist cannot condemn a certain belief for its existence but their own personal moral compass can be very different than someone else's and they can still embody a moral code that is based on their personal experience, logic and understanding of the world. That does not mean of course that this person is an objectivist since they understand morality to be an emergent property of interactions and they might be open to changing their minds. They can still, perfectly well, judge a belief and have a debate about it. Being a moral subectivist does not mean you get to invent whatever belief and expect everyone else to take you seriously on that. The process I explained in my comment could be a guiding principle that evolves morality without it necessarily needing to have a single objective true origin or destination and a subectivist could adhere to that as a sort of 'authority' with which to inform and excuse their decision.
@@shepherd_of_art I don't see where the argument for a moral subjectivist that can judge another's moral.
You have simply said that a moral subjectivist can judge other's morality.
The logical error regarding this theory as far as I understand is that you base your judgement on your moral principles, but you accept other's moral principles to be true. By definition you cannot judge others for their own moral principles. You either allow yourself to judge and you're no longer a subjectivist, or you don't and keep being a moral subjectivist.
> Ideas of morals can come out of personal experience, the feeling of empathy combined with logic and they can 'contaminate' the system from within through word of mouth, example and/or revolution by the ones having adopted similar subjective ideologies.
So what if the origin of your morality comes from experience, empathy and logic ? It still remains subjective to you and is not relevant to whether or not morality is subjective or objective. People agreeing with you on your own ideals of morality is simply that, an agreement. People can change their ideas about what morality they think is ideal. Actually that would imply that morality is of some kind objective. If it were truly subjective for a moral subjectivist, then there would be no reason to change your ideas of morals, because their morals are already right, why would they change them to something else ? If they change them to something else, that would be imply something to which they compare their morality to decide the value of, and thus to judge it for being better or worse, a quality that does not come from a subjectivist approach of morality (which only qualifies morality as right, regardless of external judgement).
@@planetary-rendez-vous I do not accept other's moral principles to be 'true'. In fact, I don't think my own moral principles to be true either. It's like saying that liking a specific colour is 'true' or 'false'. It doesn't make sense as a concept. I work with what I have and I mostly stick to my principles because they work for me and not because I value them as truth. I don't think there can ever be any intrinsic truth regarding moral principles which is why I'm not an objectivist.
However, I do believe in the process of changing moral principles by keeping a open mind to what can influence one's perception and intellect and emotional understanding. They are not changing and striving towards one specific moral truth that is out there and we are trying to reach, but rather they're evolving as to accommodate the specific sequence of events that brought morality to be accepted in this way at a specific point in time with the new and fresh ideas of people who wish to change parts of the moral system. This system could evolve towards a near infinite number of ways and I think there are many ways in which it can be good and many ways with which it can be bad for humanity as a whole.
I can still judge someone's behaviour though to be morally right or morally wrong the same way I can judge someone else's moral ideology as a whole. You can have guiding principles without needing to believe that there is a single way that morals should be handled and we just don't know about it. There are many way more apparent options other than this one which in my eyes makes this idea incredibly implausible.
18:10
If moral subjectivism is belief that everyone has their own morality/ethics, AND it's right for them, what is the name of the belief that everyone has their own morality/ethics, and there's no such thing as it being right, much less "right for them"? It's pretty obvious that everyone has their own morality/ethics. It's also pretty obvious that there isn't one/true absolute morality/ethics that's "right". When *I* find moral error in a society that says homosex is wrong or slavery is fine, I'm comparing them to MY morality to come up with that. I'm NOT comparing them to an absolute/universal morality.
Another important concept is that any self-contradicting morality/ethics is wrong, even though no morality/ethics is right or absolute.
So if youre a moral subjectivist do you have to respect everyones subjective view of morality or can you say only yours is true and screw everyone elses subjective morality.. only theirs matters??
yes
A moral subjectivism could also use an intersubjective framework to condemn a society. "All conscious, empathetic creatures (including almost all human beings) want their own happiness and the happiness of those they care about, and it is empirically the case that getting rid of slavery, homophobia, sexism, etc. Is the best way to achieve that. Therefore slave holding states are morally wrong insofar as they are factually wrong about the kind of world that is best at achieving their interests."
Morality is made up, but almost everyone agrees on some axiomatic values. It's intersubjective.
I don't think it caused any issue for moral subjectivism to critique any established system. Specifically, if a system causes someone to act contrary to their moral code or prevents them from acting in accordance to it, that presents a very clear conflict..
I also don't think one can derive (culture-centric) relativism from subjectivism quite so offhandedly. Unless you define "culture" as "a collection of people with identical moral codes", you cannot really claim that a moral subjectivist would be in agreement with a moral (cultural) relativist.
Answer now😳... Out loud😂
1. Moral Relativism ad Subjective can criticize other's morals. Unless you are straw manning moral relativism and subjectivism into self-defeating versions where they are supposed to accept non-moral relativist or subjective view points, because of poor wording. That might be the case here, since it seems as if the moral relativist or subjectivism would have to accept any other moral system as long as it is held by a different culture or subject. For example, it seems like the moral relativist in your example would have to accept another culture that says morals are in fact objective to be a true for that society.
While I would say that it is more common for self-proclaimed relativists to preach a self-defeating imagery of tolerance between cultures, where the cultures should not interfere with each other, there are many who recognize this as false.
The same is kind of true for moral subjectivist A, just because he believes that some things may be right for individual B from B's subjective PV does not mean that subjectivist A can not morally condemn individual B and B's moral beliefs from subjecticist A´s subjective PV. Subjectivist A´s belief that slavery is wrong or Homosexual acts are okay, are even more legitimate for subjectivst A. Him acting on those beliefs and condemn individual B can not be wrong, even if he believes that B is correct from B's view point.
Did you watch the video? Intrinsic critiques are always fine, it’s only when you make an extrinsic critique that you have the issue.
If you’re a moral relativist, then it was morally fine for the Aztecs to do human sacrifice. Because their society defines morality differently than ours does.
If you’re a moral subjectivist, then it’s morally fine for someone else to rape someone if the rapist thinks it’s morally fine, because morality is subjectively defined.
If you’re a moral nihilist then there is no good or evil regardless of who defines it.
Now you can condemn human sacrifice and rape and still be a moral relativist or moral subjectivist, but when you compare that view with others, how do you know which is right?
If you claim to be a moral subjectivist, and claim that rape is wrong even if the rapists thinks it’s right, because of your own subjective standard, how do we determine which one of you is right without using an external critique? And if we use an external critique then we’d need to have moral objectivism.
@@peterrosqvist2480why must we determine which one of us is right from an external standpoint? from my system of morality I believe the rapist is wrong and that's good enough for me. why should I care about some external standpoint that may or may not exist
Hopelessly confused ....
Actually, you need that objective morality even for internal criticisms that come with a hierarchy, IE, a right answer to which you ditch.
Any claims about which laws are more important/foundational/valuable are meta claims, IE, outside of the system, even if the system acknowledges it.
Also, "all people are equal" isn't incompatible with "separate but equal", but freedom of association plus "all people are equal" which is incompatible with segregation.
If there were objective moral laws life would be easier, people could just look at them and think "hey, that think thing I thought was revolting and evil is actually ok" and we would all agree. Because if there were objective moral laws wouldn't they be obvious?
That none of the objective laws of any science are obvious is obvious. Obviously, we wouldn't need scientists if they were obvious.
Is there any idea more depressing than moral nihilism?
although moral nihlists understand that there are no moral truths conceptually, we still act as if there are. we as humans are evolutionary programmed to feel and act as if objective morality exists. so in the practical sense, we should all act as if objective morality does exist. but in a phylosofical sense objective morality doesn't exist.
tout court Nihilism
Maybe pro-antinatalism is harsher.
Nihilism in general. You can be a moral nihilist and a scientific realist.
Beieve in objective morality when you discover that the objective moral values run completely counter to what you originaly held to and that they are completely abhorrent to you. Luckily that never happens ... kinda sus, now that I think about it ...
The argument is wrong.
It is clear that I come from another conventional morality that thinks that for example slavery is not morally acceptable. Thus when we hear about societies where slaves are being held we think that is amoral. That is just totally subjective though, it doesn't mean that is objectively true that slavery is bad or that an objective morality exists. Just that different societies have different conventional morality and thus they think the other is wrong.
A moral objectivist in my eyes is just someone who thinks they somehow know the objective moral truth without any proof and is blaming others for not following his subjective moral truths, believing they are objective.
I'd add that if you show a person that their beliefs are inconsistent, for example that slavery is inconsistent with Christian doctrines about the universality of human brotherhood and that God is Love.... Well, you never know which way they'll jump. You'd think the alleged word of God would take priority but sadly not always.
moral bleefs
This fails. At best it only rebuts inconsistent Moral Nihilism.
The statement, "Homosexual sex is fine" means "Homosexual sex morally irrelevant". There is no error here to one who accepts Moral Nihilism. To such, everything is morally irrelevant.
The statement, "Homosexual sex is immoral" is factually false to one who accepts Moral Nihilism. Though a consistent Moral Nihilist has no basis for condemning Society X.
edit: Great video. You explained the book so well that nobody every needs to read it.
"Though a consistent Moral Nihilist has no basis for condemning Society X"
Of course, they have no basis for *not* condemning the society either. I see the agreement frequently "if you don't think society is *objectively wrong* , you can't critique it", but why not? If there's no objective morality, then it's also not *objectively wrong* to critique viewpoints you find personally distasteful. The moral nihilist can critique whatever they want, they just can't (consistently) call it objectively wrong. All other critiques are still on the table.
Technically, this is just appealing to a sort of moral subjectivism or relativism. To our society now, it is so obvious that it isn't good to have slavery or to stop homosexuals from doing the thing, but to them then it wasn't. Us now could object and state Moral Error because of OUR relative/subjective standpoint on the matter, not because there are moral objective facts (However, I do think there is a sort of moral objective fact...this argument with moral error isn't what proves it though).
What is a moral objective truth? By who's individual or communal standard are we deciding what equals an objective fact/truth? We need to get to the bottom of this before we get to the bottom of is moral objectivism is right....
I say go at it in two ways:
1) Is moral objectivism like 2+2=4? Is it that type of fact?
2) Is it like "Humans breathe oxygen", "Mitochondria are the power house of the cells", "Clouds come from evaporated water", "Bacteria and fungus turn various particles into soil"....
So is it a deductive fact like in math beyond symbols, words, and personal preference? Is it an empirical/inductive fact like in our scientific findings, also beyond words and personal preference. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree or not, and no matter what symbols we use; 2+2 is in fact 4, entangled in it's essence/meaning, and Humans breathe oxygen, even if we find one random dude that doesn't, humans breath oxygen and this is the going fact we will work with.
So how could morality be like either of these?
The inductive part is easy: under nearly every circumstance (repeated time and time again) beings will opt for various good feelings, pleasure, valued things/events, and avoid pain, suffering, bad feelings, discomfort, etc. Beings will only produce or accept the various forms of suffering for the goal and gift of one of the forms of pleasure/joy/valued outcomes, or because they are unaware/incapable of how to change the "painful" circumstance. Even "evil" acts are usually for some valued thing like money, power, sexual pleasure, family dominance, etc.
Observe the world, observe many different lives, and you will find this pattern amongst every human and countless other species. Even plants defend against swarms of insects and pathogens, communicated via roots and fungus.
We can label this observation "Morality". Humans breathe oxygen, and lifeforms pursue "good" (pleasure, joy, health, security....etc.) and avoid "bad" (pain, loss, death, suffering, illness, etc.), relative to their capacity, awareness and environment. I feel we observe this on a level so high, it is repeated so often, that it is in concord with Humans breathe Oxygen.
Is this an acceptable level for something to be a fact? I think so. Empirically, the process nearly all life takes to support it's various types and levels of goodness/pleasure (beyond physical) and to avoid the various types of levels of badness/pain (beyond physical pain), happens and is consistent, albeit highly contextual. I feel it is fair to label this "Morality" in some fashion.
For 2+2=4, I go for a very different route, and will offer on request.
Homosexuality is a bad example. How can consensual, enjoyable sex between willing, adult, equal partners be considered an (im)moral act at all.
This is not subject to moral judgement at all. It might not be one's own preference, but that is not a moral judgement.
How do you think moral judgements differ from preferences?
@@someonenotnoone For example, if you like peanut butter, do you think that everybody has to like peanut butter? Do you want to legislate the liking of peanut butter, and do you want to lock people up, or even kill them if they do not like peanut butter?
The statement “Homosexual is fine” is not false under moral error theory. Error theory holds that actions are neither right or wrong. The statement mentioned does not say that an action is right or wrong; it merely states that it is okay, which is the view of error theory. Therefore, under error theory, the statement is true.
w i s e
Conventional morality is a bunch of beliefs --is a helpful idea to work with. You can't judge founfational conventional morality if there is no objective morality?
Homosexual sex is immoral 😮
Homosexuality is a bad example. How can consensual, enjoyable sex between willing, adult, equal partners be considered an (im)moral act at all.
This is not subject to moral judgement at all. It might not be one's own preference, but that is not a moral judgement.
Moral anti realist theories can't MORALLY condemn another society. I'm shocked.
What? What is moral is up to everyone. Of course people can agree with their own morals while condemning others.
@@someonenotnoone how do you define morality?
@@tovialbores-falk3091 Beliefs, feelings, opinions, judgments about what should and shouldn't happen. Those are morals.
@@someonenotnoone so what do you do when my beliefs contradict yours? Do you appeal to an objective platonic form of moral goodness or gods laws like the moral realists do? Or do you appeal to some sort of naturalistic argument such as the view from nowhere utilitarian argument to convince me you are correct? Are you an emotivist that believes moral statements are purely emotional? Or finally are you an error theorist like me and accept that no moral statement strictly speaking is true?
@@tovialbores-falk3091 Whatever I want. I'm not a robot that has to be pre-programmed.
I don't accept that moral statements are not factual. I see no evidence that they are factual. Same way I don't deny any gods exist, but I don't believe in any of them either.