wittgenstein's 1929 lecture on ethics puts this challenge very nicely, i think, especially because he doesnt see it as a challenge so much as the distinguishing feature of morality that makes it a fascinating realm of inquiry
Wow :)) this is so similar to my "what if I don't " question , showing that all there is to morality is its enforcement by force either through government or society and ofcourse , internalization of those treats as we develop into adults. but so what is shorter and better 😂
@@marco_mate5181 No, it's not stupid. Mathematics doesn't have to be construed as normative or as having some kind of authority over us. If a mathematician said you had to do math a certain way, even if you didn't want to, even if it went against your interests, you could just say "no." Nothing would follow. They can try to coerce you or punish you, but so could anyone regarding any set of values. The whole idea of moral normativity having some kind of "authority" over us is a confused phantom of an idea that has no teeth. If we are only motivated by our own goals, and we don't have the goal of complying with moral facts, such facts are, at best, completely inert.
I’m SOO glad you finally touched on the Euthyphro Dilemma! It’s my favourite problem in philosophy! I’d love to hear you take a deep dive into the ‘false dilemma’ objection from Modified DCT (‘God’s nature is the standard of goodness’) and Divine Simplicity (‘God is identical to goodness’). Wes Morriston has an awesome critique of these in his paper ‘Must there be a standard of goodness apart from God?’, in which he points out that a new dilemma arises, now between God’s nature and God himself: ‘is God good because he has these properties? Or are they good because God has them?’ Kane, why does this dilemma resurface? I’ve been trying so hard to figure this out and would love some tutoring for it. Is it an objective problem, like the discovered paradoxes of self reference that pop up everywhere where there is a binary system? Is it that, wherever there are two distinct entities, their relative fundamentality is inevitably called into question? Must one metaphysically ground the other? As for Divine Simplicity, as advocated by Adams and Alston, this has its own problems, as also pointed out by Jeremy Koons in his ‘Can God’s goodness save the DCT from the Euthyphro?’ ‘Good’ in this case becomes an empty term; similar to Moore’s open question argument where Goodness becomes tautological in a closed question. I’m still trying to figure this bit out though
I think that the dilemma resurfaces because whatever we call good is either grounded in something fundamental, or we judge the fundamental thing to be good by the good itself which is a bit more fundamental. But I think all this goes into an infinite regress because you can always ask "why is that fundamental standard good?".
@Boulanger948 I’m sure that it isnt in time but if you’ve not yet found something related to what you asked and if someone else needs something related to this topic you can just find the video where Koon himself talks about this: Can God’s goodness be saved from Euthyphro. Channel: reason through. If you don’t want to hear about Koon’s accomplishments, his life etc just watch from 9:30 (though there will be again the fable about Euthyphro but anyway it may save your time)
@Boulanger948 “In order to deal with this problem, some philosophical theists identify God (or God’s nature) with the Good.9 Other things are said to be good insofar as they, in relevant ways, resemble or ‘image’ God. Unfortunately, this proposal generates a new difficult problem. If it is simply God - that is, the individual being picked out by the word, ‘God ‘- who is identified with the Good, we run the risk of trivializing the claim that God is good. God will be ‘good’, simply in virtue of being identical to Himself” - Morriston 2009. “No, you say, such a thing is impossible. A good God would never allow such a thing. Right enough. But what does it mean to be good? If the Divine Command Theory is correct, then something is good just in case it is favored by God. But then look what happens: to say that God is good is just to say that God is favored by God. Is that really what we mean when we say that God is good?” - SHAFER-LANDAU, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?
Kane, would you consider uploading your bonus videos here on UA-cam as members-only content? It would be great to have all of your videos on the same platform. New viewers would quickly become aware of your members-only content, which also serves as advertising. Additionally, you could also begin each bonus video with your now-famous introduction: "Hello, UA-cam".
Thank you! So far, I've been uploading the bonus videos to UA-cam as unlisted videos and then linking them on Patreon. If I made them members-only, then the folks on Patreon wouldn't be able to access them. I guess I could upload the bonus videos on another service like Vimeo, and use that for the Patreon, while also putting them on YT as member-only videos. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether it's best to split the supporters across two different platforms like that.
I understand. You've built a strong supporter base on Patreon, so I recognize that there could be costs associated with changing or duplicating platforms. On the other hand, I've noticed that many creators are now providing premium content here, which allows viewers like us to access everything in one app. Regarding your Patreon page, does the first tier grant access to all your presentation texts? Thanks!
I feel like this comes down to two things: 1) The question "Why should I care about the moral facts?" is either trivial, as the moral facts just are facts about what you should do or just collapses into 2) 2) Statements like "I can just act in discordance with the moral facts/ I don't want to be moral/rational..." I take to be, as presented in the video, merely psychological
>> 1) The question "Why should I care about the moral facts?" is trivial, as the moral facts just are facts about what you should do If this is a satisfying response to the question as it's posed to moral realists -- "why should I care about the objective moral facts?" -- why isn't it a satisfying response to the question as it's posed to divine command theorist -- "why should I care about God's commands?" The divine command theorist can similarly say that, if her theory is right, the facts about God's commands just are the facts about what you should do. But few philosophers, even those who believe that God exists and makes commands, find this compelling.
@@KaneB I think I would defend the divine command theorist here honestly. But I also agree that if the divine command theorists response doesn't work, then this is a general problem for realism.
@justus4684 seems like there is a deeper worry here. Let's say we found out that there are moral facts, facts about what you should do. But they don't mesh at all with your values. Like, you should spend all your energy screaming at walls. Not because that will prevent dome calamity or help anyone really. It just is a moral fact that you should do that. So you say "that seems like a bad idea". Someone responds "technically it is a good idea". You say "but why should I do that". They say "it is a moral fact". Why should I care. You should care because it is a moral fact. But it is stupid. No, it follows from the moral facts that it is wise. Etc etc. Just sounds like word salad to me and I loose track on what moral realism even means. Seems like I can just agree that I in some sense "should do it and it is good and wise and the proper thing to do" but then just not do it because I hate the idea.
@@Oskar1000 OK let's say its a moral fact that I should scream at walls all day. I still think that the correct answer to "But why should I scream at walls all day?" is something like "Because that's the right thing to do." Besides this, I am more sympathetic to an objection that you can draw out from 2): If I think that screaming at walls all day, or any morally required action for that matter, sucks, what are you gonna do if I don't do it? It seems that morality only bindes those with a specific psychological makeup.
@@justus4684 But then there are infinitely many different potential psychological makeups, each of which responds to a different morality-like normative system. So when you say "should", you really mean "should_75073374387839644735". The objection still stands: what makes this "should" special?
I am Jewish, so I can tell you that I know of no absolute condemnation of slavery. Although the old testament condemns simply going to someone and enslaving them, it does permit a form of indentured labour ie someone can contract to be someone else's slave for a fixed period (seven years) in return for payments at the beginning and end of the period. Interestingly there's also a folk tale about a debate between to schools of Rabbis in talmudic times. One school's view triumphed, and the leader of the losing party stormed out saying "my view was the one that was originally divine intent". That night he had a vision in a dream in which he was told that the divine intention was for humans to be able to reason about good and evil, so the debate amongst the Rabbis was the correct moral arbiter. Thus the divine command is not to use strange oracles into divine commands, but to exercise human moral judgement.
Numbers 25: 44-46 44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. Sorry but the Pentateuch clearly endorses chattel slavery on a racist basis.
From what I've read, the old testament says that while you can't go an kidnap others of your tribe (Hebrews), you can force those rom outside the land to do work for you - Deuteronomy 20:10-11? It also says that you can beat a servant as long as they survive a couple days after...
If the oracle knows everything, she should be able to supply reasons also, and these reasons would be compelling. Providing compelling reasons is what it means to be "omniscient". Dismissing these reasons would just mean you don't want to live morally (saying "so what?" here means abandoning morality that's all). Now, you could say: "there's no such thing as a compelling reason; it's all relative", but saying this defeats the purpose of the thought experiment! why would you in the first place design a thought experiment where some oracle has an orb that provides objective moral facts? If you already accept a relative moral ontology, then the setup of this thought experiment is inconceivable since objective moral ontology can't exist and it's meaningless to discuss its results in your context. The only meaningful thing that you could say here is "I don't care" which defeats the whole purpose of wanting to figure out answers in moral philosophy. If our goal is to "live however we want and/or feel", it's okay. We just can't conflate that with "doing moral philosophy". Or you could just reject the experiment and reject the "So What?" objection and figure out other routes to moral antirealism/relativism (whatever that means). No, I'm probably not exactly a moral realist. My view is a bit complicated.
For the sake of argument, I'll assume there are such things as stance-independently compelling reasons. So you ask the oracle, "What's the reason why it's wrong to drink water out of purple cups?", and the oracle answers, "Because owls hunt at night". And by stipulation of this thought experiment, this is an *objectively compelling* reason, in a way that's independent of whether anyone *is compelled* by it. Now what? I guess you can ask the oracle to give a reason for the compellingness of the reason, but then you'll be met with something even more nonsensical, and so you'll end up in an infinite regress of reasons.
"Please, Kālāmas, don’t go by oral transmission, don’t go by lineage, don’t go by testament, don’t go by canonical authority, don’t rely on logic, don’t rely on inference, don’t go by reasoned contemplation, don’t go by the acceptance of a view after consideration, don’t go by the appearance of competence, and don’t think ‘The ascetic is our respected teacher.’ But when you know for yourselves: ‘These things are unskillful, blameworthy, criticized by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to harm and suffering’, then you should give them up."
31:48 The point made in this section about how the internal nature of morality to human physiology would make it able to be transcended by trans humanist means is really fascinating and I think it will have a large effect on the future of ethical philosophy. Does anyone know of any further information one can find on this aspect of philosophy? Edit: I am trying to get into Bio engineering and the ethics surrounding this field is somewhat relevant to this I think.
As per usual, this can be cleared up with a healthy dose of pragmatism. The problem here is the uncritical use of the term "objective." Upon realizing that "objectivity" is an incoherent idea, the desire to separate "objective" from "subjective" in the first place, just seems silly.
I am no moral realist, but I see 2 problems in your argumentation 1) you always seem to come back to some question of the form: "why should I care about morality set by god, objectivity, rationality, ...?" You sort of adressed this with the ought-to, but then still kept asking the same things. There are two types of why: - the truth-why: what is the 'trueness' of sth. (for example: why do heavy objects fall to the ground) - and the moral-why: what is the value / 'goodness' of sth. Moral realists just believe that these two are the same. They believe that morality has a truth-value. So if you ask: "truth-why should i follow the objective moral system?": Because it is a fact that somehow follows out of logical reasoning. and if you ask: "morally-why should i follow the objective moral system?": Because that question is equivalent to the one above. and "truth-why not the schmoral system?": because it is truthfully (=morally) wrong. 2) If you are presented with an explanation to your question you simply ask "why the explanation". You are always moving your argument up the next step. This isn't really uncommon in philosophy. You could do the same thing with explanations regarding truth. If i give you any explanation about the 'trueness' of sth. you could just keep on asking "why" forever. This is why (i think) all logical systems at some point need axioms (or loops). Anyone who believes in truth or logic or literally anything else needs at least some axioms, so its pretty reasonable to believe in axioms. This means that your strategy doesn't work, and comes to a stop when you reach the axioms. A logical realist would argue, that either: morality rigurously follows out of logical axioms (which is to be proven, and i haven't seen any proof yet) or: morality is axiomatically defined i.e. there are axioms that state what is truthfully right and wrong. (This is of course the laziest way of doing philosophy. Just axiomatically defining something as true is technically an option, but should only really be done if you can be reeeeally 100% sure about it (like with the most basic mathemathical or logical expressions))
I sympathize with the arbitrariness challenge, I feel like some argument from arbitrariness must be sound, but I think this particular formulation might leave some realists unharmed. Kawall seems to assume that if realism is true, moral properties themselves are "normative" and are supposed to be reason-giving. But many naturalists don't seem to believe that, yet they still count as realists in my view. A naturalist will say that moral properties are actually natural properties, e.g. goodness = happiness. They could agree that happiness itself isn't normative and doesn't give you any reason to act. Of course this raises the question "what is normative or reason-giving, then?". They could say it's a conceptual question. If something is "wrong", "obligatory", etc. then, conceptually, "you have a reason". As you said, Kawall might reply "OK, suppose schmoral concepts also entail that there are reasons. why is there a reason to do what morality says instead of schmorality? Suppose morality says killing is wrong, but schmorality says it's right. Why should you not be schmoral, on this view?" I guess the idea is that it is arbitrary whether moral reasons or other reasons are more important than other reasons? I think this is not specifically a problem with realism. The debate doesn't seem to be about realism anymore, but about how we use moral concepts. So if this kind of arbitrariness is problematic, it is a problem for anyone who thinks we have moral reasons that are non-arbitrarily more important than other kinds of reasons, and some anti-realists can believe this too.
//Kawall seems to assume that if realism is true, moral properties themselves are "normative" and are supposed to be reason-giving// Does Kawall elaborate on what it would mean for a property to be normative or "reason-giving"? I question whether that is even intelligible, entirely aside from whether its true. I think part of the problem here is this strange talk of "reasons."
@@lanceindependentI guess I am analyzing his view in terms of reasons because I take it that "why?" is equivalent to "what is the reason?" (at least, when talking about morality), and the argument constantly asks "why should I...". But if you disagree, I could express my worry like this: when Kawall asks "why should I do what morality says?", he seems to think that, on moral realism, the answer must depend on the nature of the stance-independent moral reality itself. But many naturalists seem to think that facts, properties, reality, etc. don't themselves tell you "why" you should do stuff. Instead, it is a conceptual question. They could argue words like "good", "bad", etc. ascribe natural properties, but express normative concepts and it is in virtue of these concepts that we can explain "why" we should act a certain way.
@@ScottMtc Got it. That makes sense. My concern isn't so much with naturalist accounts (I have other problems with those) but with the arbitrariness issue in the context of non-naturalist moral realism. When I ask why I should do something, I might ask instead "Why should I care?" or "What could you say to me to convince me to comply with these facts?" The response I've often received from moral realists when I ask why I should do what's moral is simply that what's moral is what you should do, period. So it's like asking "why should I do what I should do?" So I think if they're going to construe "should" talk this way, my question wouldn't be "Why should I be moral?" But what would it mean, on their view ,for me to be moral, and if I'm told that it concerns what I "should do" I would want to know what that means, too. I suspect no explanation is on offer, because non-naturalist realist conceptions of moral normativity may not mean anything.
Great to see videos on metaethics like this! You provide a response for the utilitarian that I find persuasive (14:50-16:12). The question ‘Why care?’ often seems to mean, ‘Why be motivated?’ I think the short answer is, ‘You might not be motivated, you might not care.’ Recognising that something is worthwhile does not entail that a person will want to achieve it. When it comes to prudential questions, ‘caring’ can be about what we want for our future or it can be about how we find the present. No one cares to experience agony in the present moment, but that does not entail that we will care about whether agony occurs in our future. Here the distinction between a desire satisfaction theory of the good and hedonism or objective list theory with hedonic value is relevant. Hedonism seems to get at least part of this right to me.
One thing that annoys me is that most people usually paint this Abrahamic picture of God. You haven't specifically called the god in this video the christain god or muslim god specific, but you call God a him and say he issues commands. I dont think God commands anyone as you yourself said we have free will, a choice to say, "so what" to Gods Will. This is the ultimate gift of God, free will. As I understand it from listenig to and reading occultists such as Manly P Hall and Mark Passio, there are only 7 wrong actions. Murder, rape, assault, theft, tresspass, lying, and coercion. These actions are wrong because of the real and measurable harm they cause to others in the objective reality we live in known as the 3D physical domain. For example, if someone smashed someone elses face in with a brick, its wrong not because the victim or some bystanders were appaled and thought it was a wrong act but because of the real damage done that is undeniable. The person could have lost vision in an eye, they could have their nose or cheeck bone brocken, or they could have their teeth knocked out. Or all of the above. These are ovservable and measurable effects with a cause and anyone with a brain and isn't a psychopath can clearly see the harm caused by this action because it's undeniable. So what however? We can technically do whatever we want, and if we chose to harm each other and ignore the objective outcomes our actions caused that is well within our ability as humans. However this does not make it right because all the actions I mentioned directly interfere with a persons ability to freely express themselves in the universe. There is such a thing as karma and our karma as humans on the earth is allowing ourselves to be led straight to the slaughter house by people who dont care about. A great example would be Donald Trump or even Elon Musk.
25:58 IMO it's a straightforward conceptual question. The fact that action is prescribed by the moral facts just means that you (morally) should do them, just as the fact that a molecule is made of 2 hydrogen atoms bonded to 1 oxygen atom just means that it's water. It's like asking "Why would this H2O be water?" I understand that before a point in scientific advancement it wasn't trivial to say that H2O is water. Maybe our conceptual understanding of "should" is similarly underdeveloped. The last 2 sentences on that slide just seem to express an ongoing disagreement in metaethics about what is the foundation for moral values. I'm not sure what work they're doing to support the overall point. We already know philosophers disagree on what properties make something moral. Kawall's last response to option 2 just progresses into a general problem of adopting any normative framework. The first framework we come to adopt in life is not one we're reasoned into, but one we just so happen to be shaped by our environment into holding. I always strictly separate the questions "Why should I do what's moral?" and "Why should I care about the fact that I should do what's moral?" When answering the latter, assuming the "should" is understood in a moral sense, my answer might be "It'll help you to more effectively fulfill your moral obligations". If "should" is understood in a non-moral sense, the answer is "I dunno, maybe you shouldn't". IMO as a moral realist, the debate about how much moral truths should matter (in a non-moral sense) to us is boring because I don't care about the consequences. If society abandoned morality entirely, I'd expect them to still care about and act to promote well-being, so I'm happy to let moral philosophy become a fringe field of study like certain parts of science and math and the study of Schmess.
What does it even mean to say that you morally should do something? As far as I can tell, I do what I want. If someone says that I should do something other than what I want to do, how exactly would I even begin to about doing that?
@@lanceindependent The issue here is the common, but mistaken, assumption by many anti-realists that "what you should do" has no impact on what you desire to do. Beyond some hardcore Kantians, almost all moral realists will say that recognizing the fact that you ought to do something generally creates a desire to do it. Exactly how that relation works is complicated - internalism, externalism, etc - but we would simply say that you want to do many things in part because you recognize you should do them. Your mistake, imo, is seeing that a desire is present with every act and assuming that one explains the other, instead of assuming that some third thing (the recognition that something ought to be done) is explaining both of them.
@@lanceindependent When I say that I should do something, same as when I say that I ought to do it, I just mean that it's good for me to do it and bad for me to not do it. I reduce all "oughts" into values (i.e. good/bad) in this way. Now I personally cash out "good" and "bad" in natural terms, namely promoting and hindering well-being respectively, but there are plenty of possible ways to reduce these concepts, of which fulfilling your personal wants is only one.
@@leohuang2610 I agree that various actions promote wellbeing and hinder it, but what if I don't want to do that? Is there some reason I "should" do it anyway? And if so, is it anything other than circular and trivial? If "should" just means "good" and "good" just means that it "promotes wellbeing," then it seems that all of these claims are just roundabout ways of making descriptive claims like "it would promote wellbeing." But I already grant that certain courses of action promote or hinder wellbeing. So what is gained by using the language of "should" and "good" as synonyms for this?
@@jonahmix3232 @jonahmix3232 // The issue here is the common, but mistaken, assumption by many anti-realists that "what you should do" has no impact on what you desire to do. Beyond some hardcore Kantians, almost all moral realists will say that recognizing the fact that you ought to do something generally creates a desire to do it. // Some realists will endorse the view you describe, and some won't. How, as an antirealist, I respond to each of those positions will differ. If the notion that moral beliefs cause desires is an analytic claim, then it's an open empirical question whether anyone actually has moral beliefs: perhaps people are psychologically constituted in such a way that their beliefs don't cause desires. If it's an empirical claim, they're welcome to engage with the relevant empirical literature to show that this is true. I don't know of any convincing empirical case for such claims, nor does it appear to many that many moral realists engage with such research. //Your mistake, imo, is seeing that a desire is present with every act and assuming that one explains the other, instead of assuming that some third thing (the recognition that something ought to be done) is explaining both of them.// I don't think desires are present in every act; I think all voluntary action involves acting in accordance with desires. Is that a mistake? If so, why? Even if, as you suggest, moral beliefs cause moral desires, that's consistent with what I'm saying: some beliefs may change how we act, but if so, they may do so only insofar as they change our desires. So pointing out that some people think beliefs cause desires seems consistent with my views.
Why care about moral facts (if I happen to travel to a locale as a participant observer) seems to correlate with English criminal law that claims it's the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoners guilt based on social normative stance independent of universal moral idealism.
Idk, the question "Why should we be moral?" Sounds meaningless or senseless to me. Like "Why should we do what we should do?" Or "Why should 3 pounds be heavier than 1 pound?"
It doesn't strike me that way at all, nor does it seem meaningless. When I go about making decisions, I act in accordance with my goals. If someone claims I ought to do something other than act in accordance with my goals, I'd like to know why. If they stipulate that there are facts that, by definition, just are facts that I "should" comply with, I can still ask: do I want to comply with these facts? If so, that I "should" do so independent of my desires is irrelevant. I would have done so anyway. If not, then it's not just that I don't have any motivation to comply with the facts: I simply won't comply with them. It's even possible that I *can't* comply with them. How could I choose to do something I don't want to do? The problem here may be that the very notion of insisting one "should" do what they "should" do, independent of their desires, simply recapitulates the underlying unintelligibility of stance-independent normative facts in the first place. They're just nonsense, and never intersect with the way agency and choice actually work.
@@lanceindependentI feel like you're confusing "why should I be moral" with "why would I be moral". "You should be moral" is just a tautology, but no moral realist is committed to the view that everyone or even most people is going to be motivated by any stance independent normative fact.
@@lanceindependent if someone else claims you ought to do something sure you could question it, but if you take it that you should do something (you yourself are convinced it is a moral fact) it doesn't make sense to ask why you should do it... you are already infact convinced it matters.
@seidhrmadhr that is not true. The standard non naturalist view is becoming convinced of the stance independent normative fact is motivating (this was specifically part of what was queer about moral facts for Mackie). This is true of Korsgaard as well even though she is a constructivist (but on the realist side of constructivism)
@@Voivode.of.Hirsir No. I'm not confusing them. I'm stating that as far as I can tell, I only act in accordance with my goals. If someone thinks I should do something other than comply with my goals, I'd like to know why they think this. Can I do something other than act in accordance with my goals? If so, how would I do so? Would I have any practical interest in doing so? Would it serve my prudential interests to do so? To tell me that I morally should do something *because* I morally should do something is a tautology, but that's not really what I'm interested in. I'm interested in why I should even care to be moral in the first place. Are there any nonmoral reasons to be moral? Or are the only reasons to be moral themselves moral reasons? If so, why (nonmorally) should I care about any moral reasons at all? If the answer is that perhaps I shouldn't (nonmorally care, well then: I don't, so I guess I'll go about my business. But if there's some nonmoral reason why I should care, I'd like to know what that is. Insisting that I morally should be moral isn't any more helpful than telling me that schmorally I should be schmoral, or that blorally I should be bloral. In order for me to conform to any particular set of normative standards, including moral standards, as far as I can tell these standards would need to motivate me: I'd need to care about them, and take them on as things I *want* to do. That is, they'd have to be incorporated into my goal set. If that doesn't occur, then it's not clear to me how I *could* comply with the moral facts. In other words, let's say there are facts about what, morally, I should do. But I just don't care about being moral at all. How could I even begin to comply with moral facts that are inconsistent with my goals? Note the comment in my second paragraph: part of my concern is that irreducibly normative notions of "should" may be so inscrutable that it's simply unclear what it means. What does it even mean to say that I morally should do something? If we're not going to be antirealists or naturalists about it, and we're going to insist on some kind of irreducible normativity, then I'm not even sure, on those construals, that "you morally should X" is even a proposition. It would appear to me to just be gibberish.
I have zero background in philosophy, but couldn't a moral realist define morality in terms of "ideal human behaviours", of which the objective moral facts maximise some preferred outcome (like happiness or whatever), and then say that you ought to act morally because it will maximise this desired outcome? Of course I'm using very vague terms like "happiness" but I'm sure a more studied person could construct a stronger form of the same argument
For me the subjectiveness enters when you try to define what are the "ideal human behaviours" or try to decide what are those preferred outcomes. Ideal behaviours to who? Ideal for bringing about what ends? What if the preferred outcome for you is happiness, but for me it's religious piety, and for someone else it's honourableness etc. What makes the action that increases happiness objectively the thing I 'ought' to do, and the action that increases honourableness not, if I value honour and not happiness? The part where the realist is deciding to define objective moral oughts as the ones which maximise X preferred value is where it becomes stance dependant (in my view, I welcome any good challenges to this)
Moral realism claims that there are moral facts that are independent of the mind. By introducing utility, you are saying that moral facts depend on the human mind, not really mind-independent if you ask me.
@@Badboygirltranslesbiangaybi You might be confusing something: A moral realist introducing utility isn't necessarily a problem. You can for instance be a utilitarian naturalist and say "Pleasure is the good". This fact would still obtain in a world where there are no sentient creatures.
Have the various types of moral anti-realists ever considered that maybe what moral statements actually express just depends on the particular language game people are playing? ie. Sometimes the subjectivists are right and they express individual tastes and preferences, sometimes the emotivists are right and they express emotive exclamations, and sometimes the error theorists are right and they actually refer to properties that have the same ontological status as unicorns and witches? It seems pretty obvious to me, as an anti-realist, that moral statements can be any of these things depending on the context and specifically on particular language game that is being played when they are uttered.
It's not common. I'm an antirealist and this is more or less the position I take. I was inspired by this paper: Gill, M. B. (2009). Indeterminacy and variability in meta-ethics. Philosophical studies, 145, 215-234. But such views seem uncommon and don't often appear in the literature. Textbooks and intro books love to introduce the topic with tidy categories and the presumption of a rigid and uniform language. As is typical, mainstream analytic philosophy screws everything up with weird assumptions and bad methods.
I don't understand what is the problem with the triviality response - one ought to care about the moral facts because it's a fact that one ought to care about them. Of course it is not unreasonable to worry whether there could be such facts (or even whether it even makes sense to speak of such) but this is simply what the view is committed to, so take it or leave it. But it's unreasonable to require of the moral realist to give a more informative account - no more than asking a mathematical Platonist to explain why 2+2=4 is true but 2+2=7 is not. That's just how reality is according to his account. (and if there where such a thing as Shmorality, then the same would follow concerning schmoral facts, why is it a problem for the moral realist?)
I only care about my own goals. If the moral facts aren't consistent with those goals, what would it even mean to say I "ought" to care about them? // But it's unreasonable to require of the moral realist to give a more informative account -// No, I don't think it is. Other facts don't dictate what I should or shouldn't do; only normative facts do. So whether 2+2=4 is true, this is just a descriptive fact, and has nothing to do with what I "should" do. I would like a more informative account from moral realists in one simple respect: what would even mean for there to be a fact about what I "should" do, on their view?
@@lanceindependent That sounds like you are invoking the well-known argument from queerness and Hume's is/ought problem. I was under the impression that the argument presented in the video was supposed to bring something new to the table.
@@Fafner888 No, I'm not invoking the is//ought problem nor am I appealing to the argument from queerness. The former has to do with logic and the latter has to do with metaphysics. I'm not raising concerns about logic or metaphysics. I'm raising concerns about meaningfulness. My concerns also not the same concerns as those expressed in the video.
@@lanceindependent The question of meaning is interesting, let me try. -Let’s say the meaning of „You should do x“ is the condition that has to be the case for it to be true. -The condition is, that not doing the the action x is inconsistent with a moral system. -A moral system is a set of rules for one’s behavior. -If moral realism is true, then there is a mind-independent moral system.
Well, not that you are necessarily saying otherwise, but to be clear, I wouldn't think that an inability to show why we should care about moral facts would disprove (or even trivialize) moral realism. If you say that moral facts exist but you don't care, then you would be a moral realist who has a lack of caring about these moral facts which they take to be real. To be real is not necessarily to be something about which it’s cared. I don't see an especially clear problem with showing someone that they are immoral and letting them decide, based on their personality, desires, etc., whether they care about that or not (or, alternatively, whether other people decide to care that someone they know is discovered by them, given the moral facts, to be immoral), at least not a problem for moral realism being true. I could show someone that they are immoral, and then they think, "so what," and then I just think, well, I personally might not want to be immoral, but you ultimately decide for yourself if that matters to you, at least all things considered. I guess one could just build a meaningful "should" into the definition of morality, but while it's perhaps in some sense intuitive to do so, that isn't an especially clear reason to me to look at morality in that way, even if it were from the perspective of a moral realist. That is, it could still be something meaningfully separate without making some kind of truly meaningfully true "ought" (perhaps at best, morality may have a certain beauty that inspires people to do something in the name of it, but again, this needn't universally be the case with everyone, as after all, there is much more to life (such as having fun, consumption, etc.) than, if it exists, morality, as is the case with, say, beautiful, "typically inspiring" pieces of art, or even just factual scientific features of the world, as people do vary). Calling someone immoral could be like calling someone overweight - it's up to them, ultimately, whether, even if that is a fact, it bothers them or not. Should you be overweight? That’s subjective. There is (perhaps) a fact of you being overweight, but whether you want to be that or not (and thus think that you should or shouldn't be) is a subjective issue - maybe you live less long as a result, but you, to a greater degree than in the scenario of not being overweight, enjoy the years in which you do live, and that’s worth it to you. Should you be moral? That’s subjective. There is (perhaps) a fact of you being moral, but whether you want to be that or not is a subjective issue (in the sense in which your desires make you subjectively believe a certain related “ought” statement, although it would be an objective fact that you subjectively believe said “ought” statement). Maybe there is some important lack of a connection an immoral person has with reality or the nature of existence that might make it meaningful to say that they are unaware of the truth of some moral fact or set of such facts. However, such a connection, even if it exists, need not be the end all be all. It doesn't necessarily make sense for it to be important to certain people depending on their specific features and life strategies/goals. I'm open to there being some kind of necessity for morality to be this objectively meaningful “ought” for it to be considered to be something over and above some simpler ontology of facts, but I think such a necessity is something that's much more so intuitively assumed than it is supported by robust, solemn, sedulous arguments. I just think that there are many more potentially interesting things about the kinds of things that we are tempted to regard as things related to morality than merely the ostensible ability to give some kind of objective “authority” to an “ought” statement. I think there are more considerations through which we would want to sift before we were to be confident in our position in the moral realism/moral anti-realism debate. (As an additional musing, one might say that if they discovered a moral fact (which need not be but can be assumed to be through a divine/supernatural source for sake of argument), the feeling of disagreement with said moral fact could just be chalked up to a psychological state of theirs, rather than as some paradoxical relation to the moral fact. One could consistently have a psychological state that makes them want to say something contrary to the moral fact, while also knowing (through rationality or at least not purely psychologically, I suppose, and perhaps knowledge of a moral fact consists of some intricate combination of psychological and rational components) of the moral fact, and this very discrepancy may turn out to be relevant and conducive to a psychological journey to becoming moral. Perhaps it turns out that morality is about removing oneself from the distractions of the evaluations made by one’s psychology, and how their psychology is fooling them into believing something false about the world; what makes something wrong might be something fundamentally, even ontologically, different from the kind of thing that a psychological attitude towards it could reveal/inform, as unintuitive as that may seem, as our intuition might just be wrong while we assume it, without due reflection, to be right. Again, though, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the person “should” care about this moral journey or embark upon it, depending on how strong their desire is to be moral. It could be another way of comparing the ways in which we model and grasp the world versus how the world actually is, and our sense of morality is some vague sense of that that we only understand to a (perhaps fundamentally and immutably) limited degree, but not everyone will be interested in such an introspective process of comparison. I suspect that the Euthyphro Dilemma, as far as I recall, has in the background an assumption that there is some way of psychologically making sense of the nature of the good and bad, and that itself seems to be based on an assumption about (at least certain relevant aspects of) the world needing to be perfectly correlated with (at least some particular combination of) psychological attitudes, when in reality, psychological attitudes are parts of a limited model of the world that may not fully reflect reality but merely be sufficiently useful to humans and such for survival and reproduction. Just as our intuitions can lead us astray in correctly modeling the world in contexts in the natural sciences, so too might it lead to problems in understanding morality, or at least such a state of affairs is not often, if at all, proven to be otherwise. In other words, “the good” in that dilemma may be referring to things that only a psychological model of the world could grasp, but it’s not clear that this should be the measuring stick for existence, in this case, that of the goodness/badness of things. I realize that it’s intuitive to rely on psychology in this way, but I would want something more robust than an intuitive feeling about how we are modeling our world and the facts about it.)
Why can’t God just choose what’s good and bad? Just saying this feels arbitrary doesn’t feel like an argument. Assuming he’s all knowing then what he said would be true no matter what we feel. Even if there was no reason behind it what he said would still be true correct?
This is the Euthyphro dilemma. We have to decide does God say what is good because it is good, or is what God says good because He said it? If what is good is what God says, then it can change _(if God can't change, then it's the latter),_ and if why it is good is because of reasons sufficient for God, then it isn't objective, it's just God's opinion. Then it's enforcement by Him is just the ultimate might makes right system. Since such a god is generally at least all-powerful, there are no reasons sufficient for this god, only their opinion matters. It is a brute fact and arbitrary statement to claim that God is good, a sort of circular argument.
I find your discussion of the "trivial" objection somewhat wanting. You can look at it this way: why should I avoid doing thins that are morally wrong (say, randomly murdering people), well, because that's wrong, because that's immoral. It may be schmorally acceptable to occasionally shoot at passers-by, but that won't convince anybody that I can be allowed to go on doing that. If the moral ought means anything at all, it means that morality is binding, in a way schmorality, or chewbakarality, or what-have-you-rality is not. Why should I care? Because I ought to. Now, you can challenge this argument in various ways (FWIW, I'm not a moral realist myself, so I have sympathy for some such challenges), but all these challenges will morph into quite different challenges to moral realism from the one you are discussing here. The much stronger arbitrariness challenge to realism would be not of the form of "why should I care?" Rather, it's the possibility that things we take to be morally vile can in principle turn out to be "objectively" moral, even imperative, that really poses the big arbitrariness challenge. Moral realism loses its persuasive force once you realise that nothing stops all of us from being fundamentally "objectively" wrong about morality. The realist's challenge, then, is to find ways to argue we are generally right about the objective moral facts, while, say, slave-owners throughout history, or eugenicist, or perpetrators of genocides, were all objectively wrong. And then the next challenge would be to claim, with a straight face, that they would have still reach the same conclusions if they lived in one of those societies throughout history, in which those other views were prevalent. You, however, only mention this point in passing, and don't go into it in any detail.
I understand and appreciate you're not a moral realist and are suggesting a stronger challenge. But I think the realist's response immediately faces a challenge I don't think it's able to meet. So I take my reactions below to be challenges directed at these hypothetical realists, and not necessarily you. Even so, I don't think realists can provide good answers. // You can look at it this way: why should I avoid doing thins that are morally wrong (say, randomly murdering people), well, because that's wrong, because that's immoral.// I shouldn't do something because it's "wrong" or "immoral"? Before even responding with a "so what?" I'd want to first know what that even means. What does it mean for something to be "wrong" or "immoral"? //It may be schmorally acceptable to occasionally shoot at passers-by, but that won't convince anybody that I can be allowed to go on doing that. // Sure, but why would anyone be convinced by saying that something is "morally wrong"? //If the moral ought means anything at all, it means that morality is binding, in a way schmorality, or chewbakarality, or what-have-you-rality is not. // It's "binding"? What does that mean?
@@lanceindependent Your response can be copied and pasted as a response to any argument, in any field (what do I mean by "copied", or "pasted", or “argument", or "mean"?) And sure, there's a challenge there, but it's a challenge to the compactness of meaning and reasoning in general, not to moral realism in particular. And all explanations have to end somewhere...
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 I could ask in those other cases. But I'm not. I'm asking it in this one. If I ask an engineer how bridges work, they could give a very lengthy and detailed explanation. I could keep asking for more, all the way to the point where they're tired of answering. But that's not what I get when I ask what "binding" and other terms mean. I get people not explaining what these terms mean *at all* and then giving reasons why they're not able to explain: the concepts are primitive or unanalyzable, they did explain but I'm just not satisfied with the answer, or they'll just say explanations have to end somewhere. If I went around saying my philosophical positions were correct because of "florpian considerations," which ensured I was correct, and people asked me what they were, I could respond "all explanations have to end somewhere..." and then not explain. Nobody would take this seriously. This isn't an issue of ending an explanation somewhere following a long chain of explanations. It's ending the explanation right at the beginning. And I think that goes on with non-naturalist realist explanations of terms like "external reason." It's not like I say "Why?" 500 times, and they stop on the 500th question. They stop on the very first one!
@@lanceindependent But you *do* know what the English word "binding" means (I'm not referring to book binding, mind you 😃). It's not a term of art somebody invented. I can refer you to the dictionary for a "definition" (or just give you a couple of synonyms myself), but I don't think the issue is that you genuinely don't understand the word, is it? If your view of moral discourse is that it is fundamentally meaningless, then just say so. If you never developed the intuition that some actions are just wrong, abhorent, should not be performed, and people should not be allowed to perform them even if they really want to, then there's not much I can do to explain this intuition to you. But moral discourse crucially appeals to this intuition. If people tell you terms are primitive, they mean that they directly express this intuition. The overwhelming majority of humans appear to indeed have this intuition (but the issue for the moral realist is, of course, that the content of the intuition, *what* triggers moral indignation and what doesn't, is very far from universal).
Someone tells you if you touch a live eletrical wire you will die a slow and painful death. You reply "so what?" Nothing, really. You are free to touch the wire, and there is a corresponding effect to that (you die a painful death). In the same vain, someone says "so what?" to caring about God's commands. Ultimately, you don't have to, but understand that there is a corresponding effect, namely eternal isolation from the source of all Goodness.
I can test and interact with the wire. I can see the consequences to others who touched the wire. I cannot do these with any proposed gods, or if I do, the tests fail to produce positive results. Similarly, we cannot test moral facts.
31:14 Couldn't we for both the moral/schmoral and the rational/schmational facts say that the schm-facts just arent facts about what you ought to do while the moral/rational facts are?
The fact that this has to be taken seriously and addressed makes a mockery of moral philosophy in the same way , "If there are mathematical truths, so what?" would make a mockery of math if they required a response.
@@Rogstin We can test how many tigers are in your home right now. We can't test how many mosquitos are in flight on Earth right now. There is a fact of the matter about how many tigers are in your home right now. But imagine someone believing that there is no fact of the matter about how many mosquitos are in flight on Earth right now because we "can't test it"? Testability in some arbitrary year, has zero bearing on there being a fact of the matter.
@chrisw7347 What makes you think we can't test how many mosquitoes are in flight? It may be a hard and complex thing to test, but it _can_ be done. How do you test a moral truth?
@@Rogstin You are spectacularly good at missing the point. You have not asked your last question very thoroughly, nor have you thought through your first statement very thoroughly. Come back in 5 years.
the issue with euthyphro dilemma as i see it is that it confuses something or misses to point out is its giving God an option to select something outside of his creation and say that this is the right and this is the wrong when its actually not, God created something to be objectivly right and commanded it, the part where God's word is what makes thing happen is missed. the reality didn't exist independtly of God then God said this is right and this is wrong, he created right and wrong in the first places and commanded whats right and told you not to do whats bad and giving you the freedom of choice between the 2. it misses the fact that indeed for God everything is arbitrary in his creation, he can make wrong right and right wrong but as it stands he made objectivly moral choices and objectivly immoral choices and then commanded you to do the right one, you are then rewarded according to your own choices, that is the test of living
The moral facts are intertwined with the structure of the universe. Not being able to offer an explanation of such structure is a rather weak argument. When asking "why should I care about new discovered moral facts" I feel this is along the lines of someone asking-in light of the discovery of einstein's theory of gravity-why should I not use Newtons's theory of gravity or more broadly adopt any other incremtial progress. Why adhere to the realist moral facts? The consequences will be objectively better. If by some means your morality decouples from the objective facts, just like a science denier decoupling form the scientific facts you/they will begin to look less and less as adopting a moral or scientific system the further you move from the facts. Moral realism necessitates that there is not only one moral system that is objectively correct but that it is the only system that could conceivably be though of as moral; or in other words the schmoral system could not ever be coherently though of as a system.
I think the main problem for objective morality is that you can use ought-propositions to refer to different state of affairs. -So one „ought“ may have mind-independent reality as a truthmaker while another „ought“ has your conceptual-scheme as a truthmaker. -The meaning of the two „ought“ is not identical. But they are both still in the category of ought-propositions. -They are both backed up by truth and the actions they demand are not compatible. -So why prefer true objective oughts rather then true subjective oughts? -It seems like the moral realist could only win against the competition if ought-propositions can only refer to objective facts or if there simply are no other ought-systems. -In that case they could say „you should do x“ is true, therefore you should do x. -Of curse one could shrug their shoulders and say „I guess I am evil then“ but this doesn’t seem like a genuine philosophical problem. A moral realist might say that this is just the consequence of free-will that people can choose to be evil.
Sort of. But its more that "morality" is not actually the problem to begin with. "Objectivity" is the problem. There is no sense in which we have access to a "mind-independent reality," which is why referring to it at all only leads to confusion.
@@ericb9804 I don’t see any particular convincing reason for why one should not have access to mind-independent reality. So what is the reason for why you believe it?
@@Opposite271 Think of an example of a statement you would call "objectively true." Anything - math, science, morality, any example at all. Why do you think that statement is "objectively true?" How do you know that statement is "objectively true?" Isn't it because that's what you experience? Isn't "1+2=3" something you experience? Isn't "water is H20" something you experience? Isn't "slavery is bad" something you experience? Isn't the ONLY access you have to this "mind-independent reality" BY WAY OF your human experience, i.e. your mind? Moreover, aren't all of these "objective truths" subject to change given future experience? Don't you reserve the right to change your mind about any of them, if you deem yourself so motivated by an appropriate experience? If so, then I don't understand how we can say this "reality" is "mind-independent." I don't understand how we would identify at such even if it were. But more importantly, I don't understand why it matters either way. To be clear, I agree that "reality" certainly seems "mind-independent" and we can treat it as such for convenience and ease of conversation. And yet, it doesn't really matter if it is or not. Simply declaring that it "must be" doesn't get me any epistemology that I don't already have just by focusing on my experience and ignoring "objectivity" completely.
@@ericb9804 But do all those epistemic worries not miss the point? If a proposition is true by virtue of a mind-independent state of affairs, then it is true regardless of your ability to justify it. But those epistemic worries are not a justification for a complete lack of access, that any access to mind-independent reality has to be mediated by the means of reasoning and sensory experience is nothing new. But Intersubjectivity has the same problem. I have no unmediated direct access to the collective and other minds.
@@Opposite271 "If a proposition is true by virtue of a mind-independent state of affairs, then it is true regardless of your ability to justify it." - Ok, but how would I know if it is or not? It seems to me any declaration of a "mind-independent state of affairs" must also "depend on my mind" in order for me to know it in the first place. I can't help but beg the question here and that seems to be the point to me. "But those epistemic worries are not a justification for a complete lack of access, that any access to mind-independent reality has to be mediated by the means of reasoning and sensory experience is nothing new. But Intersubjectivity has the same problem. I have no unmediated direct access to the collective and other minds." - I agree. But now you just seem to be complaining. Complaining that reaching agreement with other people about any specific detail can be a pain in the ass. And yeah, it sure can. So my point is not that we do or don't have access to "mind-independent" reality. My point is that the concept itself is just useless at best and confusing at worst. I better off just focusing my epistemological efforts ONLY on what I experience, and how communicate that to others. If they agree with me, we can move on to other matters. If not, we have to keep talking it out. Se la vie. There doesn't seem to be any other course of action, and simply saying "such and such is objective" doesn't actually help in any way, so why bother wit it at all?
I want to re-iterate that I love your content, so please don't take this as a general attack. But I think whay you say about motivational internalism and realism is confused in several ways 1) It's of course true that some non-cognitivsts have used internalism to argue for their anti-realist view. But so what, not every claim is worth being taken seriously. It's very obvious that motivational internalism + a non-Humean theory of motivation is perfectly compatible with moral realism, everyone who denies this is just wrong (and obviously you cannot just assume the Humean theory of motivation because that would be obviously question-begging). Only if we accept the Humean theory of motivation do we get any tension between internalism and realism. So to call this a "desperate" move by the realist seems to misunderstand the dialectical context 2) Moral realists who endorse motivational internalism generally don't think that internalism is just a *psychological* fact, but rather a *conceptual* fact - for example, they often analyse "You are obligated to phi" as something like "You have overriding reason to phi, independently of your desires and goals". If that analysis were to be true (and of course you cannot just assume that it isn't, because you have given no argument whatsoever against this analysis, so this would again be obviously question-begging), then saying "I recognise that I have a moral obligation to phi, but I will not phi" amounts to nothing more than saying "I recognise that I have overriding reason to phi, but I will not phi". This is plainly irrational, even according to basically every commonly held theory of internalist reasons (philosophers who are sceptical of categorical reasons are generally perfectly happy to accept "Necessarily, if I take myself to have overriding reason to phi, then I should phi")
Re 1): I don't think it was said that they are incompatible. It was framed as there being a tension. And whether there is a tension will just be a question of how we evaluate the arguments with respect to that. Kane also made the claim that it is often accepted that there is this tension. Whether this is true is a question about what we think the status in the literature is.
Re (1), I'm well aware that some realists endorse motivational internalism. I'm just pointing out that a common argument against realism appeals to motivational internalism. So this criticism just seems like an uncharitable interpretation of what I said. Re (2), even if I grant the conceptual connection between obligations and reasons, I'm puzzled about what the connection is supposed to be motivation, which is a psychological state. I don't see any conceptual impossibility in believing that I have an overriding reason to phi, or believing that it would be irrational not to phi, but then feeling no motivation to phi. Maybe most realists who endorse motivational internalism do take this to be a conceptual impossibility though.
What do you mean “have an overriding reason”? This is just the confused concept that makes people reject realism. Saying because there is a fact of the matter about what one should entails someone *has* a reason is obviously not necessarily true. Something Hume pointed out centuries ago. “Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the entire world to the scratching of my finger”. Even if someone knows a moral reason exists that doesn’t entail they *have* that reason.
I always enjoy your content, but i think that you need to engage more with scholastic ideas about ethics in this investigation, for example aquinas/augustine. (1) the scholastics don't appeal to DCT, they claim that as goodness is Gods nature it proceeds from him in his creation. Whilst his commands lead us towards his nature (i.e. goodness/perfect morality) they don't make things moral, he simply commands only in acord with his nature. (2) the scholastics do not see what is moral as distinct from us, but something embedded in our consciences from our creation in the image of God. I think this gives a more robust conception of morality, and i'd be interested in hearing how it interacts with the ideas you are comparing.
I agree that it'd be cool to see Kane B cover these topics. I'm not sure (1) is going to avoid many of the sorts of worries antirealists like myself have. What does it mean to say that goodness "is God's nature" and that it "proceeds from him in his creation"? Goodness? What is that? And why should anyone care to follow God's commands even in this case? Regarding (2), What does it mean to say one doesn't see morality "as distinct from us" but something embedded in our consciences"? This seems like it's engaging with psychology, and I'd wonder about the extent to which this is an empirical claim and whether it's supported by available empirical data.
Because moral realism is true, these kinds of objections serve to clarify its truth 😉 1) I accept the arbitrariness argument against divine command theory. We see the reasons to disallow slavery and don’t see any convincing reasons to allow it. Thus if God were to enforce slavery, God’s actions would clash with our reason. 2) Likewise, I reject any moral realist system that results in arbitrariness, like it being wrong to wear green clothes or wrong to drink from purple cups. Because morality is grounded in reason, there are no reasonless moral facts. Moral facts are a subset of epistemic facts-facts about what’s truly reasonable. Nothing is magically right or wrong. 3) Saying you don’t care about morality is to say you don’t care about being reasonable. I don’t think it’s possible that you really believe that. I could find SOME conviction you have and discover that, to no surprise, you have REASONS for that conviction, and thus it’ll turn out that you are reason-sensitive. If someone says “I don’t care about being reasonable/rational”, I think they are just lying. “Why should I care about being rational?” is an absurd question because someone who isn’t rational, or doesn’t care about it, wouldn’t ask why questions. “Why” literally means “for what reason”. You “should” care about morality because you can’t not care about it. (There’s also pragmatic reasons to care. Being rational will improve your interpersonal relationships, your performance at work, etc.) And if you truly throw rationality out the window, then you cannot object to ANY belief, worldview, action, behavior, practice, idea, attitude, etc, on the basis of rationality without being a hypocrite. Again, I doubt it’s possible to find such a person. Sure, what COUNTS as reasonable is a great question. But that’s a question that pervades all of philosophy, science, law, and politics. It’s not a special problem just for moral realists, but it’s a problem for all modes of inquiry. (I would argue it’s not a problem for moral realists at all. And moral anti-realists themselves, presumably, believe there are better reasons to be an anti-realist than a realist, so they too are in the same boat). Ex., Is it reasonable to believe Jesus was a purely fictional character? Historians may arrive at different answers, and they will support those answers with historical facts and arguments. 4) I don’t define rationality in terms of self-interest. Rationality / Reason is a faculty that allows us to see logical connections, see the impossibility of contradictions, and engage in a broad reasoning process. What counts as self-interested vs selfish vs selfless and what it means to act in accordance with these is another topic. And because I reduce moral facts to epistemic facts there is no coincidence problem. 5) Funnily enough, I have an arbitrariness argument *against* anti-realism. Anti realists admit that they have personal reasons for, say, objecting to slavery. But those reasons are either bad or good. If they are bad then you shouldn’t have them, and if they are good then you should think others should share the same reasons. If you think your reasons are neither bad nor good, then they are just random, arbitrary reasons. The problem with this is it’s just false. Here’s a reason I have for rejecting slavery: I would be a hypocrite to endorse it, because I don’t want to be enslaved. So to treat others in a way I would hate for them to treat me is textbook hypocrisy. This is absolutely a good reason for rejecting slavery: it’s relevant, it’s honest, and it’s the kind of reason that will appeal to virtuous, well-informed, intelligent people whose faculties of reason are fully intact. If I said I rejected slavery because my favorite color is blue, that would clearly be a bad reason: it’s irrelevant, it’s dishonest, and it would not appeal to a fully rational person.
This problem isnt new. Kant and Hegel were aware of this problem when they prefer an automomy ethics over an heteronomy ethics. Any external law that pretends to rule the behavior of an free subject its not going to work, because in modernity the subject can say “hey, iam a free person, why do i have to obey you? Iam capable of saying what is wrong and what is right on my own!” The atractive feature of kantian ethics is that accept this, reyects moral realism (in the way that has been stated here) but still can claim that humanity has an absolute and objective value. Iam not thinking in Korsgaard theory but instead in Allen Wood’s version of kantian ethics
Most realists probably wouldn't agree, but I really don't see a reason why objective morality has to be compelling. I find moral realism more convincing on a meta ethical level, but I don't see why there has to be some compelling reason to follow these facts. People aren't forced to be rational or prudent, I don't see any reason why there needs to be something more compelling than just the reason they are the moral facts.
It's hard for me to understand how this argument isn't dead in the water, coming from an anti-realist. Presumably, you don't think there's *any* actual fact of the matter about what anyone should or shouldn't do, what standards someone should or shouldn't adopt, what reasons someone should or shouldn't take for action, etc. So I don't see where you're getting any of the "force" necessary to make statements about what is and isn't justified in terms of the moral realist's grounding. If it's meant purely as an internal critique - something like "Moral realists claim to not be arbitrary, but they're actually as arbitrary as the rest of us" - then I don't see why you would think that's a problem anyway. A moral realist's decision to adhere to the moral facts is no more or less "valid" than your decision to adhere to your own desires or interests, right?
Moral anti-realists can still believe in logic, which means they can dispute the realist claim that any objective moral facts must be adhered to. The question of why, as such, isn’t specific to the realist debate but the question of “why does anyone debate philosophy?”, a much more complicated question.
Value can be personal, but also universal. If value is utility/purpose AND rarity/availability, then everything that you can describe has an objectively relative value to everything else. People are not just rare but are unique as individuals and as a human species that creates, preserves, shares, and uses knowledge/learning. Humanity, people, and human knowledge are objectively priceless. Just as it is irrational to destroy something to create another thing of lesser value, it is immoral to diminish the value of something priceless in the interest of another thing of lesser value. Morality is the rationality of things that are priceless. As we more understand the world and can logically understand the relative value of priceless things, our morals will necessarily change. It is not arbitrary. We know there are no inferior races, and it feels wrong to behave as if there are, as the Bible seems to assert.
The theist can say something is good if and only if God decrees it. If God decrees something, it is good AND if something is good, God decrees it. You should consider learning logic before making anymore philosophy videos.
The question was not about "if", it was about "because". Does God decreeing something *cause* it to be good, or does the fact that it's good *cause* God to decree it?
wittgenstein's 1929 lecture on ethics puts this challenge very nicely, i think, especially because he doesnt see it as a challenge so much as the distinguishing feature of morality that makes it a fascinating realm of inquiry
I’m reminded of Scanlon’s “What We Owe to Each Other”. Great discussion as usual Kane 👍🏽.
more ppl need to understand the populist nature of philosophy and how these kinds of questions can be asked and developed by anyone ❤
The one question that can defeat any moral objectivist: so what?
Lol
@@bagpussbagpuss9190So what?
Wow :)) this is so similar to my "what if I don't " question , showing that all there is to morality is its enforcement by force either through government or society and ofcourse , internalization of those treats as we develop into adults. but so what is shorter and better 😂
To a moral realist it would be like saying “ the question that counters mathematical facts is : so what?” Very stupid response.
@@marco_mate5181 No, it's not stupid. Mathematics doesn't have to be construed as normative or as having some kind of authority over us. If a mathematician said you had to do math a certain way, even if you didn't want to, even if it went against your interests, you could just say "no." Nothing would follow. They can try to coerce you or punish you, but so could anyone regarding any set of values. The whole idea of moral normativity having some kind of "authority" over us is a confused phantom of an idea that has no teeth. If we are only motivated by our own goals, and we don't have the goal of complying with moral facts, such facts are, at best, completely inert.
Great content as always. watching from South Africa. ❤
I’m SOO glad you finally touched on the Euthyphro Dilemma! It’s my favourite problem in philosophy!
I’d love to hear you take a deep dive into the ‘false dilemma’ objection from Modified DCT (‘God’s nature is the standard of goodness’) and Divine Simplicity (‘God is identical to goodness’).
Wes Morriston has an awesome critique of these in his paper ‘Must there be a standard of goodness apart from God?’, in which he points out that a new dilemma arises, now between God’s nature and God himself: ‘is God good because he has these properties? Or are they good because God has them?’
Kane, why does this dilemma resurface? I’ve been trying so hard to figure this out and would love some tutoring for it.
Is it an objective problem, like the discovered paradoxes of self reference that pop up everywhere where there is a binary system? Is it that, wherever there are two distinct entities, their relative fundamentality is inevitably called into question? Must one metaphysically ground the other?
As for Divine Simplicity, as advocated by Adams and Alston, this has its own problems, as also pointed out by Jeremy Koons in his ‘Can God’s goodness save the DCT from the Euthyphro?’ ‘Good’ in this case becomes an empty term; similar to Moore’s open question argument where Goodness becomes tautological in a closed question. I’m still trying to figure this bit out though
I think that the dilemma resurfaces because whatever we call good is either grounded in something fundamental, or we judge the fundamental thing to be good by the good itself which is a bit more fundamental.
But I think all this goes into an infinite regress because you can always ask "why is that fundamental standard good?".
@Boulanger948 yep! It’s called Divine Simplicity, and faces its own problems. See Koons’: ‘Can God’s goodness save him from the Euthyphro?’
@Boulanger948 I’m sure that it isnt in time but if you’ve not yet found something related to what you asked and if someone else needs something related to this topic you can just find the video where Koon himself talks about this: Can God’s goodness be saved from Euthyphro. Channel: reason through. If you don’t want to hear about Koon’s accomplishments, his life etc just watch from 9:30 (though there will be again the fable about Euthyphro but anyway it may save your time)
@Boulanger948
“In order to deal with this problem, some philosophical theists identify God (or God’s nature) with the Good.9 Other things are said to be good insofar as they, in relevant ways, resemble or ‘image’ God. Unfortunately, this proposal generates a new difficult problem. If it is simply God - that is, the individual being picked out by the word, ‘God ‘- who is identified with the Good, we run the risk of trivializing the claim that God is good. God will be ‘good’, simply in virtue of being identical to Himself” - Morriston 2009.
“No, you say, such a thing is impossible. A good God would never allow such a thing. Right enough. But what does it mean to be good? If the Divine Command Theory is correct, then something is good just in case it is favored by God. But then look what happens: to say that God is good is just to say that God is favored by God. Is that really what we mean when we say that God is good?” - SHAFER-LANDAU, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?
Kane, would you consider uploading your bonus videos here on UA-cam as members-only content? It would be great to have all of your videos on the same platform. New viewers would quickly become aware of your members-only content, which also serves as advertising. Additionally, you could also begin each bonus video with your now-famous introduction: "Hello, UA-cam".
Thank you! So far, I've been uploading the bonus videos to UA-cam as unlisted videos and then linking them on Patreon. If I made them members-only, then the folks on Patreon wouldn't be able to access them. I guess I could upload the bonus videos on another service like Vimeo, and use that for the Patreon, while also putting them on YT as member-only videos. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether it's best to split the supporters across two different platforms like that.
I understand. You've built a strong supporter base on Patreon, so I recognize that there could be costs associated with changing or duplicating platforms. On the other hand, I've noticed that many creators are now providing premium content here, which allows viewers like us to access everything in one app. Regarding your Patreon page, does the first tier grant access to all your presentation texts? Thanks!
I love how I can see your obs screen for half a second at the start
Yes I completely agree I don't care whether some omnisicient being told me what the moral the facts are ,I would still hold the same views that I do
I feel like this comes down to two things:
1) The question "Why should I care about the moral facts?" is either trivial, as the moral facts just are facts about what you should do or just collapses into 2)
2) Statements like "I can just act in discordance with the moral facts/ I don't want to be moral/rational..." I take to be, as presented in the video, merely psychological
>> 1) The question "Why should I care about the moral facts?" is trivial, as the moral facts just are facts about what you should do
If this is a satisfying response to the question as it's posed to moral realists -- "why should I care about the objective moral facts?" -- why isn't it a satisfying response to the question as it's posed to divine command theorist -- "why should I care about God's commands?" The divine command theorist can similarly say that, if her theory is right, the facts about God's commands just are the facts about what you should do. But few philosophers, even those who believe that God exists and makes commands, find this compelling.
@@KaneB I think I would defend the divine command theorist here honestly. But I also agree that if the divine command theorists response doesn't work, then this is a general problem for realism.
@justus4684 seems like there is a deeper worry here. Let's say we found out that there are moral facts, facts about what you should do. But they don't mesh at all with your values.
Like, you should spend all your energy screaming at walls. Not because that will prevent dome calamity or help anyone really. It just is a moral fact that you should do that.
So you say "that seems like a bad idea". Someone responds "technically it is a good idea". You say "but why should I do that". They say "it is a moral fact". Why should I care. You should care because it is a moral fact. But it is stupid. No, it follows from the moral facts that it is wise.
Etc etc.
Just sounds like word salad to me and I loose track on what moral realism even means. Seems like I can just agree that I in some sense "should do it and it is good and wise and the proper thing to do" but then just not do it because I hate the idea.
@@Oskar1000 OK let's say its a moral fact that I should scream at walls all day. I still think that the correct answer to "But why should I scream at walls all day?" is something like "Because that's the right thing to do."
Besides this, I am more sympathetic to an objection that you can draw out from 2):
If I think that screaming at walls all day, or any morally required action for that matter, sucks, what are you gonna do if I don't do it?
It seems that morality only bindes those with a specific psychological makeup.
@@justus4684 But then there are infinitely many different potential psychological makeups, each of which responds to a different morality-like normative system. So when you say "should", you really mean "should_75073374387839644735". The objection still stands: what makes this "should" special?
I am Jewish, so I can tell you that I know of no absolute condemnation of slavery. Although the old testament condemns simply going to someone and enslaving them, it does permit a form of indentured labour ie someone can contract to be someone else's slave for a fixed period (seven years) in return for payments at the beginning and end of the period. Interestingly there's also a folk tale about a debate between to schools of Rabbis in talmudic times. One school's view triumphed, and the leader of the losing party stormed out saying "my view was the one that was originally divine intent". That night he had a vision in a dream in which he was told that the divine intention was for humans to be able to reason about good and evil, so the debate amongst the Rabbis was the correct moral arbiter. Thus the divine command is not to use strange oracles into divine commands, but to exercise human moral judgement.
Numbers 25: 44-46
44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
Sorry but the Pentateuch clearly endorses chattel slavery on a racist basis.
From what I've read, the old testament says that while you can't go an kidnap others of your tribe (Hebrews), you can force those rom outside the land to do work for you - Deuteronomy 20:10-11? It also says that you can beat a servant as long as they survive a couple days after...
Thanks!
Thanks for the support, I appreciate it!
If the oracle knows everything, she should be able to supply reasons also, and these reasons would be compelling. Providing compelling reasons is what it means to be "omniscient". Dismissing these reasons would just mean you don't want to live morally (saying "so what?" here means abandoning morality that's all). Now, you could say: "there's no such thing as a compelling reason; it's all relative", but saying this defeats the purpose of the thought experiment! why would you in the first place design a thought experiment where some oracle has an orb that provides objective moral facts? If you already accept a relative moral ontology, then the setup of this thought experiment is inconceivable since objective moral ontology can't exist and it's meaningless to discuss its results in your context. The only meaningful thing that you could say here is "I don't care" which defeats the whole purpose of wanting to figure out answers in moral philosophy. If our goal is to "live however we want and/or feel", it's okay. We just can't conflate that with "doing moral philosophy". Or you could just reject the experiment and reject the "So What?" objection and figure out other routes to moral antirealism/relativism (whatever that means).
No, I'm probably not exactly a moral realist. My view is a bit complicated.
For the sake of argument, I'll assume there are such things as stance-independently compelling reasons.
So you ask the oracle, "What's the reason why it's wrong to drink water out of purple cups?", and the oracle answers, "Because owls hunt at night". And by stipulation of this thought experiment, this is an *objectively compelling* reason, in a way that's independent of whether anyone *is compelled* by it. Now what?
I guess you can ask the oracle to give a reason for the compellingness of the reason, but then you'll be met with something even more nonsensical, and so you'll end up in an infinite regress of reasons.
"Please, Kālāmas, don’t go by oral transmission, don’t go by lineage, don’t go by testament, don’t go by canonical authority, don’t rely on logic, don’t rely on inference, don’t go by reasoned contemplation, don’t go by the acceptance of a view after consideration, don’t go by the appearance of competence, and don’t think ‘The ascetic is our respected teacher.’ But when you know for yourselves: ‘These things are unskillful, blameworthy, criticized by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to harm and suffering’, then you should give them up."
31:48 The point made in this section about how the internal nature of morality to human physiology would make it able to be transcended by trans humanist means is really fascinating and I think it will have a large effect on the future of ethical philosophy. Does anyone know of any further information one can find on this aspect of philosophy?
Edit: I am trying to get into Bio engineering and the ethics surrounding this field is somewhat relevant to this I think.
Another video on an argument against moral realism. My dude must really hate moral realism😆
Appreciate the upload.
Yea, it's awesome. I'd pay money for more videos like this.
As per usual, this can be cleared up with a healthy dose of pragmatism. The problem here is the uncritical use of the term "objective." Upon realizing that "objectivity" is an incoherent idea, the desire to separate "objective" from "subjective" in the first place, just seems silly.
Concise and on point. Awesome.
I am no moral realist, but I see 2 problems in your argumentation
1) you always seem to come back to some question of the form: "why should I care about morality set by god, objectivity, rationality, ...?"
You sort of adressed this with the ought-to, but then still kept asking the same things.
There are two types of why:
- the truth-why: what is the 'trueness' of sth. (for example: why do heavy objects fall to the ground)
- and the moral-why: what is the value / 'goodness' of sth.
Moral realists just believe that these two are the same. They believe that morality has a truth-value.
So if you ask:
"truth-why should i follow the objective moral system?":
Because it is a fact that somehow follows out of logical reasoning.
and if you ask:
"morally-why should i follow the objective moral system?":
Because that question is equivalent to the one above.
and
"truth-why not the schmoral system?":
because it is truthfully (=morally) wrong.
2) If you are presented with an explanation to your question you simply ask "why the explanation". You are always moving your argument up the next step.
This isn't really uncommon in philosophy. You could do the same thing with explanations regarding truth. If i give you any explanation about the 'trueness' of sth. you could just keep on asking "why" forever. This is why (i think) all logical systems at some point need axioms (or loops).
Anyone who believes in truth or logic or literally anything else needs at least some axioms, so its pretty reasonable to believe in axioms. This means that your strategy doesn't work, and comes to a stop when you reach the axioms.
A logical realist would argue, that either:
morality rigurously follows out of logical axioms (which is to be proven, and i haven't seen any proof yet)
or:
morality is axiomatically defined i.e. there are axioms that state what is truthfully right and wrong. (This is of course the laziest way of doing philosophy. Just axiomatically defining something as true is technically an option, but should only really be done if you can be reeeeally 100% sure about it (like with the most basic mathemathical or logical expressions))
I sympathize with the arbitrariness challenge, I feel like some argument from arbitrariness must be sound, but I think this particular formulation might leave some realists unharmed.
Kawall seems to assume that if realism is true, moral properties themselves are "normative" and are supposed to be reason-giving. But many naturalists don't seem to believe that, yet they still count as realists in my view. A naturalist will say that moral properties are actually natural properties, e.g. goodness = happiness. They could agree that happiness itself isn't normative and doesn't give you any reason to act. Of course this raises the question "what is normative or reason-giving, then?". They could say it's a conceptual question. If something is "wrong", "obligatory", etc. then, conceptually, "you have a reason".
As you said, Kawall might reply "OK, suppose schmoral concepts also entail that there are reasons. why is there a reason to do what morality says instead of schmorality? Suppose morality says killing is wrong, but schmorality says it's right. Why should you not be schmoral, on this view?"
I guess the idea is that it is arbitrary whether moral reasons or other reasons are more important than other reasons? I think this is not specifically a problem with realism. The debate doesn't seem to be about realism anymore, but about how we use moral concepts. So if this kind of arbitrariness is problematic, it is a problem for anyone who thinks we have moral reasons that are non-arbitrarily more important than other kinds of reasons, and some anti-realists can believe this too.
//Kawall seems to assume that if realism is true, moral properties themselves are "normative" and are supposed to be reason-giving//
Does Kawall elaborate on what it would mean for a property to be normative or "reason-giving"? I question whether that is even intelligible, entirely aside from whether its true.
I think part of the problem here is this strange talk of "reasons."
@@lanceindependentBeats me. I haven't read Kawall's paper, so I can't even say if he would agree with how I'm characterizing his view.
@@ScottMtc Fair enough! I'll look for the paper and add it to the infinite pile of papers to read. Thanks!
@@lanceindependentI guess I am analyzing his view in terms of reasons because I take it that "why?" is equivalent to "what is the reason?" (at least, when talking about morality), and the argument constantly asks "why should I...". But if you disagree, I could express my worry like this: when Kawall asks "why should I do what morality says?", he seems to think that, on moral realism, the answer must depend on the nature of the stance-independent moral reality itself. But many naturalists seem to think that facts, properties, reality, etc. don't themselves tell you "why" you should do stuff. Instead, it is a conceptual question. They could argue words like "good", "bad", etc. ascribe natural properties, but express normative concepts and it is in virtue of these concepts that we can explain "why" we should act a certain way.
@@ScottMtc Got it. That makes sense. My concern isn't so much with naturalist accounts (I have other problems with those) but with the arbitrariness issue in the context of non-naturalist moral realism. When I ask why I should do something, I might ask instead "Why should I care?" or "What could you say to me to convince me to comply with these facts?"
The response I've often received from moral realists when I ask why I should do what's moral is simply that what's moral is what you should do, period. So it's like asking "why should I do what I should do?"
So I think if they're going to construe "should" talk this way, my question wouldn't be "Why should I be moral?" But what would it mean, on their view ,for me to be moral, and if I'm told that it concerns what I "should do" I would want to know what that means, too. I suspect no explanation is on offer, because non-naturalist realist conceptions of moral normativity may not mean anything.
30:00 'we can just raise the original challenge again'
Great to see videos on metaethics like this! You provide a response for the utilitarian that I find persuasive (14:50-16:12).
The question ‘Why care?’ often seems to mean, ‘Why be motivated?’
I think the short answer is, ‘You might not be motivated, you might not care.’
Recognising that something is worthwhile does not entail that a person will want to achieve it. When it comes to prudential questions, ‘caring’ can be about what we want for our future or it can be about how we find the present. No one cares to experience agony in the present moment, but that does not entail that we will care about whether agony occurs in our future. Here the distinction between a desire satisfaction theory of the good and hedonism or objective list theory with hedonic value is relevant. Hedonism seems to get at least part of this right to me.
One thing that annoys me is that most people usually paint this Abrahamic picture of God. You haven't specifically called the god in this video the christain god or muslim god specific, but you call God a him and say he issues commands. I dont think God commands anyone as you yourself said we have free will, a choice to say, "so what" to Gods Will. This is the ultimate gift of God, free will.
As I understand it from listenig to and reading occultists such as Manly P Hall and Mark Passio, there are only 7 wrong actions. Murder, rape, assault, theft, tresspass, lying, and coercion. These actions are wrong because of the real and measurable harm they cause to others in the objective reality we live in known as the 3D physical domain. For example, if someone smashed someone elses face in with a brick, its wrong not because the victim or some bystanders were appaled and thought it was a wrong act but because of the real damage done that is undeniable. The person could have lost vision in an eye, they could have their nose or cheeck bone brocken, or they could have their teeth knocked out. Or all of the above. These are ovservable and measurable effects with a cause and anyone with a brain and isn't a psychopath can clearly see the harm caused by this action because it's undeniable.
So what however? We can technically do whatever we want, and if we chose to harm each other and ignore the objective outcomes our actions caused that is well within our ability as humans. However this does not make it right because all the actions I mentioned directly interfere with a persons ability to freely express themselves in the universe. There is such a thing as karma and our karma as humans on the earth is allowing ourselves to be led straight to the slaughter house by people who dont care about. A great example would be Donald Trump or even Elon Musk.
25:58 IMO it's a straightforward conceptual question. The fact that action is prescribed by the moral facts just means that you (morally) should do them, just as the fact that a molecule is made of 2 hydrogen atoms bonded to 1 oxygen atom just means that it's water. It's like asking "Why would this H2O be water?" I understand that before a point in scientific advancement it wasn't trivial to say that H2O is water. Maybe our conceptual understanding of "should" is similarly underdeveloped.
The last 2 sentences on that slide just seem to express an ongoing disagreement in metaethics about what is the foundation for moral values. I'm not sure what work they're doing to support the overall point. We already know philosophers disagree on what properties make something moral.
Kawall's last response to option 2 just progresses into a general problem of adopting any normative framework. The first framework we come to adopt in life is not one we're reasoned into, but one we just so happen to be shaped by our environment into holding.
I always strictly separate the questions "Why should I do what's moral?" and "Why should I care about the fact that I should do what's moral?" When answering the latter, assuming the "should" is understood in a moral sense, my answer might be "It'll help you to more effectively fulfill your moral obligations". If "should" is understood in a non-moral sense, the answer is "I dunno, maybe you shouldn't".
IMO as a moral realist, the debate about how much moral truths should matter (in a non-moral sense) to us is boring because I don't care about the consequences. If society abandoned morality entirely, I'd expect them to still care about and act to promote well-being, so I'm happy to let moral philosophy become a fringe field of study like certain parts of science and math and the study of Schmess.
What does it even mean to say that you morally should do something?
As far as I can tell, I do what I want. If someone says that I should do something other than what I want to do, how exactly would I even begin to about doing that?
@@lanceindependent The issue here is the common, but mistaken, assumption by many anti-realists that "what you should do" has no impact on what you desire to do. Beyond some hardcore Kantians, almost all moral realists will say that recognizing the fact that you ought to do something generally creates a desire to do it. Exactly how that relation works is complicated - internalism, externalism, etc - but we would simply say that you want to do many things in part because you recognize you should do them. Your mistake, imo, is seeing that a desire is present with every act and assuming that one explains the other, instead of assuming that some third thing (the recognition that something ought to be done) is explaining both of them.
@@lanceindependent When I say that I should do something, same as when I say that I ought to do it, I just mean that it's good for me to do it and bad for me to not do it. I reduce all "oughts" into values (i.e. good/bad) in this way. Now I personally cash out "good" and "bad" in natural terms, namely promoting and hindering well-being respectively, but there are plenty of possible ways to reduce these concepts, of which fulfilling your personal wants is only one.
@@leohuang2610 I agree that various actions promote wellbeing and hinder it, but what if I don't want to do that? Is there some reason I "should" do it anyway? And if so, is it anything other than circular and trivial? If "should" just means "good" and "good" just means that it "promotes wellbeing," then it seems that all of these claims are just roundabout ways of making descriptive claims like "it would promote wellbeing."
But I already grant that certain courses of action promote or hinder wellbeing. So what is gained by using the language of "should" and "good" as synonyms for this?
@@jonahmix3232 @jonahmix3232 // The issue here is the common, but mistaken, assumption by many anti-realists that "what you should do" has no impact on what you desire to do. Beyond some hardcore Kantians, almost all moral realists will say that recognizing the fact that you ought to do something generally creates a desire to do it. //
Some realists will endorse the view you describe, and some won't. How, as an antirealist, I respond to each of those positions will differ.
If the notion that moral beliefs cause desires is an analytic claim, then it's an open empirical question whether anyone actually has moral beliefs: perhaps people are psychologically constituted in such a way that their beliefs don't cause desires. If it's an empirical claim, they're welcome to engage with the relevant empirical literature to show that this is true. I don't know of any convincing empirical case for such claims, nor does it appear to many that many moral realists engage with such research.
//Your mistake, imo, is seeing that a desire is present with every act and assuming that one explains the other, instead of assuming that some third thing (the recognition that something ought to be done) is explaining both of them.//
I don't think desires are present in every act; I think all voluntary action involves acting in accordance with desires. Is that a mistake? If so, why? Even if, as you suggest, moral beliefs cause moral desires, that's consistent with what I'm saying: some beliefs may change how we act, but if so, they may do so only insofar as they change our desires. So pointing out that some people think beliefs cause desires seems consistent with my views.
Why care about moral facts (if I happen to travel to a locale as a participant observer) seems to correlate with English criminal law that claims it's the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoners guilt based on social normative stance independent of universal moral idealism.
“How to summon Lance Bush”
I think a video from Kane B titled "How I was convinced of moral realism" would get me here even more quickly.
Bros like to trash moral realism💀
@@GottfriedLeibnizYT I critique it, sure. I think it's one of the most implausible positions in all of philosophy.
@@lanceindependent if I say “moral realism” 3 times, will you appear?
Idk, the question "Why should we be moral?" Sounds meaningless or senseless to me. Like "Why should we do what we should do?" Or "Why should 3 pounds be heavier than 1 pound?"
It doesn't strike me that way at all, nor does it seem meaningless. When I go about making decisions, I act in accordance with my goals. If someone claims I ought to do something other than act in accordance with my goals, I'd like to know why. If they stipulate that there are facts that, by definition, just are facts that I "should" comply with, I can still ask: do I want to comply with these facts? If so, that I "should" do so independent of my desires is irrelevant. I would have done so anyway. If not, then it's not just that I don't have any motivation to comply with the facts: I simply won't comply with them. It's even possible that I *can't* comply with them. How could I choose to do something I don't want to do?
The problem here may be that the very notion of insisting one "should" do what they "should" do, independent of their desires, simply recapitulates the underlying unintelligibility of stance-independent normative facts in the first place. They're just nonsense, and never intersect with the way agency and choice actually work.
@@lanceindependentI feel like you're confusing "why should I be moral" with "why would I be moral". "You should be moral" is just a tautology, but no moral realist is committed to the view that everyone or even most people is going to be motivated by any stance independent normative fact.
@@lanceindependent if someone else claims you ought to do something sure you could question it, but if you take it that you should do something (you yourself are convinced it is a moral fact) it doesn't make sense to ask why you should do it... you are already infact convinced it matters.
@seidhrmadhr that is not true. The standard non naturalist view is becoming convinced of the stance independent normative fact is motivating (this was specifically part of what was queer about moral facts for Mackie). This is true of Korsgaard as well even though she is a constructivist (but on the realist side of constructivism)
@@Voivode.of.Hirsir No. I'm not confusing them. I'm stating that as far as I can tell, I only act in accordance with my goals. If someone thinks I should do something other than comply with my goals, I'd like to know why they think this. Can I do something other than act in accordance with my goals? If so, how would I do so? Would I have any practical interest in doing so? Would it serve my prudential interests to do so?
To tell me that I morally should do something *because* I morally should do something is a tautology, but that's not really what I'm interested in. I'm interested in why I should even care to be moral in the first place. Are there any nonmoral reasons to be moral? Or are the only reasons to be moral themselves moral reasons? If so, why (nonmorally) should I care about any moral reasons at all? If the answer is that perhaps I shouldn't (nonmorally care, well then: I don't, so I guess I'll go about my business. But if there's some nonmoral reason why I should care, I'd like to know what that is.
Insisting that I morally should be moral isn't any more helpful than telling me that schmorally I should be schmoral, or that blorally I should be bloral. In order for me to conform to any particular set of normative standards, including moral standards, as far as I can tell these standards would need to motivate me: I'd need to care about them, and take them on as things I *want* to do. That is, they'd have to be incorporated into my goal set.
If that doesn't occur, then it's not clear to me how I *could* comply with the moral facts.
In other words, let's say there are facts about what, morally, I should do. But I just don't care about being moral at all. How could I even begin to comply with moral facts that are inconsistent with my goals?
Note the comment in my second paragraph: part of my concern is that irreducibly normative notions of "should" may be so inscrutable that it's simply unclear what it means. What does it even mean to say that I morally should do something? If we're not going to be antirealists or naturalists about it, and we're going to insist on some kind of irreducible normativity, then I'm not even sure, on those construals, that "you morally should X" is even a proposition. It would appear to me to just be gibberish.
I have zero background in philosophy, but couldn't a moral realist define morality in terms of "ideal human behaviours", of which the objective moral facts maximise some preferred outcome (like happiness or whatever), and then say that you ought to act morally because it will maximise this desired outcome? Of course I'm using very vague terms like "happiness" but I'm sure a more studied person could construct a stronger form of the same argument
I guess you coule argue that in the same vein, shmoral acts will maximise shmoral outcomes
@@m.f.3347 If someone doesn't have those preferences, how would you convince them?
For me the subjectiveness enters when you try to define what are the "ideal human behaviours" or try to decide what are those preferred outcomes. Ideal behaviours to who? Ideal for bringing about what ends? What if the preferred outcome for you is happiness, but for me it's religious piety, and for someone else it's honourableness etc. What makes the action that increases happiness objectively the thing I 'ought' to do, and the action that increases honourableness not, if I value honour and not happiness?
The part where the realist is deciding to define objective moral oughts as the ones which maximise X preferred value is where it becomes stance dependant (in my view, I welcome any good challenges to this)
Moral realism claims that there are moral facts that are independent of the mind. By introducing utility, you are saying that moral facts depend on the human mind, not really mind-independent if you ask me.
@@Badboygirltranslesbiangaybi You might be confusing something:
A moral realist introducing utility isn't necessarily a problem. You can for instance be a utilitarian naturalist and say "Pleasure is the good". This fact would still obtain in a world where there are no sentient creatures.
Kane's my favorite morality hater
Have the various types of moral anti-realists ever considered that maybe what moral statements actually express just depends on the particular language game people are playing? ie. Sometimes the subjectivists are right and they express individual tastes and preferences, sometimes the emotivists are right and they express emotive exclamations, and sometimes the error theorists are right and they actually refer to properties that have the same ontological status as unicorns and witches? It seems pretty obvious to me, as an anti-realist, that moral statements can be any of these things depending on the context and specifically on particular language game that is being played when they are uttered.
It's not common. I'm an antirealist and this is more or less the position I take. I was inspired by this paper:
Gill, M. B. (2009). Indeterminacy and variability in meta-ethics. Philosophical studies, 145, 215-234.
But such views seem uncommon and don't often appear in the literature. Textbooks and intro books love to introduce the topic with tidy categories and the presumption of a rigid and uniform language. As is typical, mainstream analytic philosophy screws everything up with weird assumptions and bad methods.
I don't understand what is the problem with the triviality response - one ought to care about the moral facts because it's a fact that one ought to care about them. Of course it is not unreasonable to worry whether there could be such facts (or even whether it even makes sense to speak of such) but this is simply what the view is committed to, so take it or leave it. But it's unreasonable to require of the moral realist to give a more informative account - no more than asking a mathematical Platonist to explain why 2+2=4 is true but 2+2=7 is not. That's just how reality is according to his account. (and if there where such a thing as Shmorality, then the same would follow concerning schmoral facts, why is it a problem for the moral realist?)
I only care about my own goals. If the moral facts aren't consistent with those goals, what would it even mean to say I "ought" to care about them?
// But it's unreasonable to require of the moral realist to give a more informative account -//
No, I don't think it is. Other facts don't dictate what I should or shouldn't do; only normative facts do. So whether 2+2=4 is true, this is just a descriptive fact, and has nothing to do with what I "should" do. I would like a more informative account from moral realists in one simple respect: what would even mean for there to be a fact about what I "should" do, on their view?
@@lanceindependent That sounds like you are invoking the well-known argument from queerness and Hume's is/ought problem. I was under the impression that the argument presented in the video was supposed to bring something new to the table.
@@Fafner888 No, I'm not invoking the is//ought problem nor am I appealing to the argument from queerness. The former has to do with logic and the latter has to do with metaphysics. I'm not raising concerns about logic or metaphysics. I'm raising concerns about meaningfulness. My concerns also not the same concerns as those expressed in the video.
@@lanceindependent
The question of meaning is interesting, let me try.
-Let’s say the meaning of „You should do x“ is the condition that has to be the case for it to be true.
-The condition is, that not doing the the action x is inconsistent with a moral system.
-A moral system is a set of rules for one’s behavior.
-If moral realism is true, then there is a mind-independent moral system.
Well, not that you are necessarily saying otherwise, but to be clear, I wouldn't think that an inability to show why we should care about moral facts would disprove (or even trivialize) moral realism. If you say that moral facts exist but you don't care, then you would be a moral realist who has a lack of caring about these moral facts which they take to be real. To be real is not necessarily to be something about which it’s cared.
I don't see an especially clear problem with showing someone that they are immoral and letting them decide, based on their personality, desires, etc., whether they care about that or not (or, alternatively, whether other people decide to care that someone they know is discovered by them, given the moral facts, to be immoral), at least not a problem for moral realism being true. I could show someone that they are immoral, and then they think, "so what," and then I just think, well, I personally might not want to be immoral, but you ultimately decide for yourself if that matters to you, at least all things considered.
I guess one could just build a meaningful "should" into the definition of morality, but while it's perhaps in some sense intuitive to do so, that isn't an especially clear reason to me to look at morality in that way, even if it were from the perspective of a moral realist. That is, it could still be something meaningfully separate without making some kind of truly meaningfully true "ought" (perhaps at best, morality may have a certain beauty that inspires people to do something in the name of it, but again, this needn't universally be the case with everyone, as after all, there is much more to life (such as having fun, consumption, etc.) than, if it exists, morality, as is the case with, say, beautiful, "typically inspiring" pieces of art, or even just factual scientific features of the world, as people do vary).
Calling someone immoral could be like calling someone overweight - it's up to them, ultimately, whether, even if that is a fact, it bothers them or not. Should you be overweight? That’s subjective. There is (perhaps) a fact of you being overweight, but whether you want to be that or not (and thus think that you should or shouldn't be) is a subjective issue - maybe you live less long as a result, but you, to a greater degree than in the scenario of not being overweight, enjoy the years in which you do live, and that’s worth it to you. Should you be moral? That’s subjective. There is (perhaps) a fact of you being moral, but whether you want to be that or not is a subjective issue (in the sense in which your desires make you subjectively believe a certain related “ought” statement, although it would be an objective fact that you subjectively believe said “ought” statement).
Maybe there is some important lack of a connection an immoral person has with reality or the nature of existence that might make it meaningful to say that they are unaware of the truth of some moral fact or set of such facts. However, such a connection, even if it exists, need not be the end all be all. It doesn't necessarily make sense for it to be important to certain people depending on their specific features and life strategies/goals.
I'm open to there being some kind of necessity for morality to be this objectively meaningful “ought” for it to be considered to be something over and above some simpler ontology of facts, but I think such a necessity is something that's much more so intuitively assumed than it is supported by robust, solemn, sedulous arguments. I just think that there are many more potentially interesting things about the kinds of things that we are tempted to regard as things related to morality than merely the ostensible ability to give some kind of objective “authority” to an “ought” statement. I think there are more considerations through which we would want to sift before we were to be confident in our position in the moral realism/moral anti-realism debate.
(As an additional musing, one might say that if they discovered a moral fact (which need not be but can be assumed to be through a divine/supernatural source for sake of argument), the feeling of disagreement with said moral fact could just be chalked up to a psychological state of theirs, rather than as some paradoxical relation to the moral fact. One could consistently have a psychological state that makes them want to say something contrary to the moral fact, while also knowing (through rationality or at least not purely psychologically, I suppose, and perhaps knowledge of a moral fact consists of some intricate combination of psychological and rational components) of the moral fact, and this very discrepancy may turn out to be relevant and conducive to a psychological journey to becoming moral.
Perhaps it turns out that morality is about removing oneself from the distractions of the evaluations made by one’s psychology, and how their psychology is fooling them into believing something false about the world; what makes something wrong might be something fundamentally, even ontologically, different from the kind of thing that a psychological attitude towards it could reveal/inform, as unintuitive as that may seem, as our intuition might just be wrong while we assume it, without due reflection, to be right. Again, though, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the person “should” care about this moral journey or embark upon it, depending on how strong their desire is to be moral. It could be another way of comparing the ways in which we model and grasp the world versus how the world actually is, and our sense of morality is some vague sense of that that we only understand to a (perhaps fundamentally and immutably) limited degree, but not everyone will be interested in such an introspective process of comparison.
I suspect that the Euthyphro Dilemma, as far as I recall, has in the background an assumption that there is some way of psychologically making sense of the nature of the good and bad, and that itself seems to be based on an assumption about (at least certain relevant aspects of) the world needing to be perfectly correlated with (at least some particular combination of) psychological attitudes, when in reality, psychological attitudes are parts of a limited model of the world that may not fully reflect reality but merely be sufficiently useful to humans and such for survival and reproduction. Just as our intuitions can lead us astray in correctly modeling the world in contexts in the natural sciences, so too might it lead to problems in understanding morality, or at least such a state of affairs is not often, if at all, proven to be otherwise.
In other words, “the good” in that dilemma may be referring to things that only a psychological model of the world could grasp, but it’s not clear that this should be the measuring stick for existence, in this case, that of the goodness/badness of things. I realize that it’s intuitive to rely on psychology in this way, but I would want something more robust than an intuitive feeling about how we are modeling our world and the facts about it.)
wow, "and?" the argument.
20:52 indeed, why do I care about halos and not the shalos wrapped around shmoral facts?
Good question!
Why can’t God just choose what’s good and bad? Just saying this feels arbitrary doesn’t feel like an argument. Assuming he’s all knowing then what he said would be true no matter what we feel. Even if there was no reason behind it what he said would still be true correct?
This is the Euthyphro dilemma. We have to decide does God say what is good because it is good, or is what God says good because He said it?
If what is good is what God says, then it can change _(if God can't change, then it's the latter),_ and if why it is good is because of reasons sufficient for God, then it isn't objective, it's just God's opinion. Then it's enforcement by Him is just the ultimate might makes right system.
Since such a god is generally at least all-powerful, there are no reasons sufficient for this god, only their opinion matters.
It is a brute fact and arbitrary statement to claim that God is good, a sort of circular argument.
I find your discussion of the "trivial" objection somewhat wanting. You can look at it this way: why should I avoid doing thins that are morally wrong (say, randomly murdering people), well, because that's wrong, because that's immoral. It may be schmorally acceptable to occasionally shoot at passers-by, but that won't convince anybody that I can be allowed to go on doing that. If the moral ought means anything at all, it means that morality is binding, in a way schmorality, or chewbakarality, or what-have-you-rality is not. Why should I care? Because I ought to.
Now, you can challenge this argument in various ways (FWIW, I'm not a moral realist myself, so I have sympathy for some such challenges), but all these challenges will morph into quite different challenges to moral realism from the one you are discussing here.
The much stronger arbitrariness challenge to realism would be not of the form of "why should I care?" Rather, it's the possibility that things we take to be morally vile can in principle turn out to be "objectively" moral, even imperative, that really poses the big arbitrariness challenge. Moral realism loses its persuasive force once you realise that nothing stops all of us from being fundamentally "objectively" wrong about morality. The realist's challenge, then, is to find ways to argue we are generally right about the objective moral facts, while, say, slave-owners throughout history, or eugenicist, or perpetrators of genocides, were all objectively wrong. And then the next challenge would be to claim, with a straight face, that they would have still reach the same conclusions if they lived in one of those societies throughout history, in which those other views were prevalent.
You, however, only mention this point in passing, and don't go into it in any detail.
I understand and appreciate you're not a moral realist and are suggesting a stronger challenge. But I think the realist's response immediately faces a challenge I don't think it's able to meet. So I take my reactions below to be challenges directed at these hypothetical realists, and not necessarily you. Even so, I don't think realists can provide good answers.
// You can look at it this way: why should I avoid doing thins that are morally wrong (say, randomly murdering people), well, because that's wrong, because that's immoral.//
I shouldn't do something because it's "wrong" or "immoral"? Before even responding with a "so what?" I'd want to first know what that even means. What does it mean for something to be "wrong" or "immoral"?
//It may be schmorally acceptable to occasionally shoot at passers-by, but that won't convince anybody that I can be allowed to go on doing that. //
Sure, but why would anyone be convinced by saying that something is "morally wrong"?
//If the moral ought means anything at all, it means that morality is binding, in a way schmorality, or chewbakarality, or what-have-you-rality is not. //
It's "binding"? What does that mean?
@@lanceindependent Your response can be copied and pasted as a response to any argument, in any field (what do I mean by "copied", or "pasted", or “argument", or "mean"?) And sure, there's a challenge there, but it's a challenge to the compactness of meaning and reasoning in general, not to moral realism in particular. And all explanations have to end somewhere...
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 I could ask in those other cases. But I'm not. I'm asking it in this one. If I ask an engineer how bridges work, they could give a very lengthy and detailed explanation. I could keep asking for more, all the way to the point where they're tired of answering. But that's not what I get when I ask what "binding" and other terms mean. I get people not explaining what these terms mean *at all* and then giving reasons why they're not able to explain: the concepts are primitive or unanalyzable, they did explain but I'm just not satisfied with the answer, or they'll just say explanations have to end somewhere.
If I went around saying my philosophical positions were correct because of "florpian considerations," which ensured I was correct, and people asked me what they were, I could respond "all explanations have to end somewhere..." and then not explain. Nobody would take this seriously. This isn't an issue of ending an explanation somewhere following a long chain of explanations. It's ending the explanation right at the beginning. And I think that goes on with non-naturalist realist explanations of terms like "external reason." It's not like I say "Why?" 500 times, and they stop on the 500th question. They stop on the very first one!
@@lanceindependent But you *do* know what the English word "binding" means (I'm not referring to book binding, mind you 😃). It's not a term of art somebody invented. I can refer you to the dictionary for a "definition" (or just give you a couple of synonyms myself), but I don't think the issue is that you genuinely don't understand the word, is it?
If your view of moral discourse is that it is fundamentally meaningless, then just say so. If you never developed the intuition that some actions are just wrong, abhorent, should not be performed, and people should not be allowed to perform them even if they really want to, then there's not much I can do to explain this intuition to you. But moral discourse crucially appeals to this intuition. If people tell you terms are primitive, they mean that they directly express this intuition. The overwhelming majority of humans appear to indeed have this intuition (but the issue for the moral realist is, of course, that the content of the intuition, *what* triggers moral indignation and what doesn't, is very far from universal).
Someone tells you if you touch a live eletrical wire you will die a slow and painful death.
You reply "so what?"
Nothing, really. You are free to touch the wire, and there is a corresponding effect to that (you die a painful death).
In the same vain, someone says "so what?" to caring about God's commands.
Ultimately, you don't have to, but understand that there is a corresponding effect, namely eternal isolation from the source of all Goodness.
I can test and interact with the wire. I can see the consequences to others who touched the wire. I cannot do these with any proposed gods, or if I do, the tests fail to produce positive results.
Similarly, we cannot test moral facts.
31:14
Couldn't we for both the moral/schmoral and the rational/schmational facts say that the schm-facts just arent facts about what you ought to do while the moral/rational facts are?
Sure. But they are facts about what I schmought to do...
@@KaneBYes, symmetrically, schmoral/schmational facts are facts about what you schmought to do😏
The fact that this has to be taken seriously and addressed makes a mockery of moral philosophy in the same way , "If there are mathematical truths, so what?" would make a mockery of math if they required a response.
We can test mathematical truths. We can not test moral truths.
@@Rogstin We can test how many tigers are in your home right now. We can't test how many mosquitos are in flight on Earth right now. There is a fact of the matter about how many tigers are in your home right now. But imagine someone believing that there is no fact of the matter about how many mosquitos are in flight on Earth right now because we "can't test it"? Testability in some arbitrary year, has zero bearing on there being a fact of the matter.
@chrisw7347 What makes you think we can't test how many mosquitoes are in flight? It may be a hard and complex thing to test, but it _can_ be done. How do you test a moral truth?
@@Rogstin You are spectacularly good at missing the point. You have not asked your last question very thoroughly, nor have you thought through your first statement very thoroughly. Come back in 5 years.
@@chrisw7347 _Come back in 5 years._ Will you have something to add then?
10:24: As the realist sees it, *at most* one of those systems describes the moral facts. It's a nitpick, but a meaningful one, I feel.
Only one system describes the schmoral facts as well
@@Oskar1000 But why one and not zero?
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 Is there some asymmetry here between the moral and the schmoral?
@@Oskar1000 No. Have I claimed there was one?
the issue with euthyphro dilemma as i see it is that it confuses something or misses to point out is its giving God an option to select something outside of his creation and say that this is the right and this is the wrong when its actually not, God created something to be objectivly right and commanded it, the part where God's word is what makes thing happen is missed. the reality didn't exist independtly of God then God said this is right and this is wrong, he created right and wrong in the first places and commanded whats right and told you not to do whats bad and giving you the freedom of choice between the 2.
it misses the fact that indeed for God everything is arbitrary in his creation, he can make wrong right and right wrong but as it stands he made objectivly moral choices and objectivly immoral choices and then commanded you to do the right one, you are then rewarded according to your own choices, that is the test of living
Do you still do philosophy lessons online? Because I sent you a mail but you haven't responded.
Yes. Could you re-send it?
@@KaneB I re-sent.
There is a fact about what is good.
Why should i act good anyway?
Dumb Question (with all due respect).
The moral facts are intertwined with the structure of the universe. Not being able to offer an explanation of such structure is a rather weak argument. When asking "why should I care about new discovered moral facts" I feel this is along the lines of someone asking-in light of the discovery of einstein's theory of gravity-why should I not use Newtons's theory of gravity or more broadly adopt any other incremtial progress. Why adhere to the realist moral facts? The consequences will be objectively better. If by some means your morality decouples from the objective facts, just like a science denier decoupling form the scientific facts you/they will begin to look less and less as adopting a moral or scientific system the further you move from the facts. Moral realism necessitates that there is not only one moral system that is objectively correct but that it is the only system that could conceivably be though of as moral; or in other words the schmoral system could not ever be coherently though of as a system.
I think the main problem for objective morality is that you can use ought-propositions to refer to different state of affairs.
-So one „ought“ may have mind-independent reality as a truthmaker while another „ought“ has your conceptual-scheme as a truthmaker.
-The meaning of the two „ought“ is not identical. But they are both still in the category of ought-propositions.
-They are both backed up by truth and the actions they demand are not compatible.
-So why prefer true objective oughts rather then true subjective oughts?
-It seems like the moral realist could only win against the competition if ought-propositions can only refer to objective facts or if there simply are no other ought-systems.
-In that case they could say „you should do x“ is true, therefore you should do x.
-Of curse one could shrug their shoulders and say „I guess I am evil then“ but this doesn’t seem like a genuine philosophical problem. A moral realist might say that this is just the consequence of free-will that people can choose to be evil.
Sort of. But its more that "morality" is not actually the problem to begin with. "Objectivity" is the problem. There is no sense in which we have access to a "mind-independent reality," which is why referring to it at all only leads to confusion.
@@ericb9804
I don’t see any particular convincing reason for why one should not have access to mind-independent reality.
So what is the reason for why you believe it?
@@Opposite271 Think of an example of a statement you would call "objectively true." Anything - math, science, morality, any example at all.
Why do you think that statement is "objectively true?" How do you know that statement is "objectively true?"
Isn't it because that's what you experience? Isn't "1+2=3" something you experience? Isn't "water is H20" something you experience? Isn't "slavery is bad" something you experience? Isn't the ONLY access you have to this "mind-independent reality" BY WAY OF your human experience, i.e. your mind?
Moreover, aren't all of these "objective truths" subject to change given future experience? Don't you reserve the right to change your mind about any of them, if you deem yourself so motivated by an appropriate experience?
If so, then I don't understand how we can say this "reality" is "mind-independent." I don't understand how we would identify at such even if it were. But more importantly, I don't understand why it matters either way.
To be clear, I agree that "reality" certainly seems "mind-independent" and we can treat it as such for convenience and ease of conversation. And yet, it doesn't really matter if it is or not. Simply declaring that it "must be" doesn't get me any epistemology that I don't already have just by focusing on my experience and ignoring "objectivity" completely.
@@ericb9804
But do all those epistemic worries not miss the point?
If a proposition is true by virtue of a mind-independent state of affairs, then it is true regardless of your ability to justify it.
But those epistemic worries are not a justification for a complete lack of access, that any access to mind-independent reality has to be mediated by the means of reasoning and sensory experience is nothing new. But Intersubjectivity has the same problem. I have no unmediated direct access to the collective and other minds.
@@Opposite271 "If a proposition is true by virtue of a mind-independent state of affairs, then it is true regardless of your ability to justify it." - Ok, but how would I know if it is or not? It seems to me any declaration of a "mind-independent state of affairs" must also "depend on my mind" in order for me to know it in the first place. I can't help but beg the question here and that seems to be the point to me.
"But those epistemic worries are not a justification for a complete lack of access, that any access to mind-independent reality has to be mediated by the means of reasoning and sensory experience is nothing new. But Intersubjectivity has the same problem. I have no unmediated direct access to the collective and other minds." - I agree. But now you just seem to be complaining. Complaining that reaching agreement with other people about any specific detail can be a pain in the ass. And yeah, it sure can.
So my point is not that we do or don't have access to "mind-independent" reality. My point is that the concept itself is just useless at best and confusing at worst.
I better off just focusing my epistemological efforts ONLY on what I experience, and how communicate that to others. If they agree with me, we can move on to other matters. If not, we have to keep talking it out. Se la vie. There doesn't seem to be any other course of action, and simply saying "such and such is objective" doesn't actually help in any way, so why bother wit it at all?
I want to re-iterate that I love your content, so please don't take this as a general attack. But I think whay you say about motivational internalism and realism is confused in several ways
1) It's of course true that some non-cognitivsts have used internalism to argue for their anti-realist view. But so what, not every claim is worth being taken seriously. It's very obvious that motivational internalism + a non-Humean theory of motivation is perfectly compatible with moral realism, everyone who denies this is just wrong (and obviously you cannot just assume the Humean theory of motivation because that would be obviously question-begging). Only if we accept the Humean theory of motivation do we get any tension between internalism and realism. So to call this a "desperate" move by the realist seems to misunderstand the dialectical context
2) Moral realists who endorse motivational internalism generally don't think that internalism is just a *psychological* fact, but rather a *conceptual* fact - for example, they often analyse "You are obligated to phi" as something like "You have overriding reason to phi, independently of your desires and goals". If that analysis were to be true (and of course you cannot just assume that it isn't, because you have given no argument whatsoever against this analysis, so this would again be obviously question-begging), then saying "I recognise that I have a moral obligation to phi, but I will not phi" amounts to nothing more than saying "I recognise that I have overriding reason to phi, but I will not phi". This is plainly irrational, even according to basically every commonly held theory of internalist reasons (philosophers who are sceptical of categorical reasons are generally perfectly happy to accept "Necessarily, if I take myself to have overriding reason to phi, then I should phi")
Re 1): I don't think it was said that they are incompatible. It was framed as there being a tension. And whether there is a tension will just be a question of how we evaluate the arguments with respect to that.
Kane also made the claim that it is often accepted that there is this tension. Whether this is true is a question about what we think the status in the literature is.
Re (1), I'm well aware that some realists endorse motivational internalism. I'm just pointing out that a common argument against realism appeals to motivational internalism. So this criticism just seems like an uncharitable interpretation of what I said.
Re (2), even if I grant the conceptual connection between obligations and reasons, I'm puzzled about what the connection is supposed to be motivation, which is a psychological state. I don't see any conceptual impossibility in believing that I have an overriding reason to phi, or believing that it would be irrational not to phi, but then feeling no motivation to phi. Maybe most realists who endorse motivational internalism do take this to be a conceptual impossibility though.
What do you mean “have an overriding reason”? This is just the confused concept that makes people reject realism. Saying because there is a fact of the matter about what one should entails someone *has* a reason is obviously not necessarily true. Something Hume pointed out centuries ago. “Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the entire world to the scratching of my finger”.
Even if someone knows a moral reason exists that doesn’t entail they *have* that reason.
I always enjoy your content, but i think that you need to engage more with scholastic ideas about ethics in this investigation, for example aquinas/augustine.
(1) the scholastics don't appeal to DCT, they claim that as goodness is Gods nature it proceeds from him in his creation. Whilst his commands lead us towards his nature (i.e. goodness/perfect morality) they don't make things moral, he simply commands only in acord with his nature.
(2) the scholastics do not see what is moral as distinct from us, but something embedded in our consciences from our creation in the image of God.
I think this gives a more robust conception of morality, and i'd be interested in hearing how it interacts with the ideas you are comparing.
I agree that it'd be cool to see Kane B cover these topics. I'm not sure (1) is going to avoid many of the sorts of worries antirealists like myself have. What does it mean to say that goodness "is God's nature" and that it "proceeds from him in his creation"? Goodness? What is that? And why should anyone care to follow God's commands even in this case?
Regarding (2), What does it mean to say one doesn't see morality "as distinct from us" but something embedded in our consciences"? This seems like it's engaging with psychology, and I'd wonder about the extent to which this is an empirical claim and whether it's supported by available empirical data.
Because moral realism is true, these kinds of objections serve to clarify its truth 😉
1) I accept the arbitrariness argument against divine command theory. We see the reasons to disallow slavery and don’t see any convincing reasons to allow it. Thus if God were to enforce slavery, God’s actions would clash with our reason.
2) Likewise, I reject any moral realist system that results in arbitrariness, like it being wrong to wear green clothes or wrong to drink from purple cups. Because morality is grounded in reason, there are no reasonless moral facts. Moral facts are a subset of epistemic facts-facts about what’s truly reasonable. Nothing is magically right or wrong.
3) Saying you don’t care about morality is to say you don’t care about being reasonable. I don’t think it’s possible that you really believe that. I could find SOME conviction you have and discover that, to no surprise, you have REASONS for that conviction, and thus it’ll turn out that you are reason-sensitive. If someone says “I don’t care about being reasonable/rational”, I think they are just lying. “Why should I care about being rational?” is an absurd question because someone who isn’t rational, or doesn’t care about it, wouldn’t ask why questions. “Why” literally means “for what reason”. You “should” care about morality because you can’t not care about it. (There’s also pragmatic reasons to care. Being rational will improve your interpersonal relationships, your performance at work, etc.) And if you truly throw rationality out the window, then you cannot object to ANY belief, worldview, action, behavior, practice, idea, attitude, etc, on the basis of rationality without being a hypocrite. Again, I doubt it’s possible to find such a person.
Sure, what COUNTS as reasonable is a great question. But that’s a question that pervades all of philosophy, science, law, and politics. It’s not a special problem just for moral realists, but it’s a problem for all modes of inquiry. (I would argue it’s not a problem for moral realists at all. And moral anti-realists themselves, presumably, believe there are better reasons to be an anti-realist than a realist, so they too are in the same boat). Ex., Is it reasonable to believe Jesus was a purely fictional character? Historians may arrive at different answers, and they will support those answers with historical facts and arguments.
4) I don’t define rationality in terms of self-interest. Rationality / Reason is a faculty that allows us to see logical connections, see the impossibility of contradictions, and engage in a broad reasoning process. What counts as self-interested vs selfish vs selfless and what it means to act in accordance with these is another topic. And because I reduce moral facts to epistemic facts there is no coincidence problem.
5) Funnily enough, I have an arbitrariness argument *against* anti-realism. Anti realists admit that they have personal reasons for, say, objecting to slavery. But those reasons are either bad or good. If they are bad then you shouldn’t have them, and if they are good then you should think others should share the same reasons. If you think your reasons are neither bad nor good, then they are just random, arbitrary reasons. The problem with this is it’s just false. Here’s a reason I have for rejecting slavery: I would be a hypocrite to endorse it, because I don’t want to be enslaved. So to treat others in a way I would hate for them to treat me is textbook hypocrisy. This is absolutely a good reason for rejecting slavery: it’s relevant, it’s honest, and it’s the kind of reason that will appeal to virtuous, well-informed, intelligent people whose faculties of reason are fully intact. If I said I rejected slavery because my favorite color is blue, that would clearly be a bad reason: it’s irrelevant, it’s dishonest, and it would not appeal to a fully rational person.
This problem isnt new. Kant and Hegel were aware of this problem when they prefer an automomy ethics over an heteronomy ethics. Any external law that pretends to rule the behavior of an free subject its not going to work, because in modernity the subject can say “hey, iam a free person, why do i have to obey you? Iam capable of saying what is wrong and what is right on my own!” The atractive feature of kantian ethics is that accept this, reyects moral realism (in the way that has been stated here) but still can claim that humanity has an absolute and objective value. Iam not thinking in Korsgaard theory but instead in Allen Wood’s version of kantian ethics
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Most realists probably wouldn't agree, but I really don't see a reason why objective morality has to be compelling. I find moral realism more convincing on a meta ethical level, but I don't see why there has to be some compelling reason to follow these facts. People aren't forced to be rational or prudent, I don't see any reason why there needs to be something more compelling than just the reason they are the moral facts.
That's fine, but in that case, we antirealists can not only suspect that moral realism is nonsensical or false, but irrelevant even if it were true.
It's hard for me to understand how this argument isn't dead in the water, coming from an anti-realist. Presumably, you don't think there's *any* actual fact of the matter about what anyone should or shouldn't do, what standards someone should or shouldn't adopt, what reasons someone should or shouldn't take for action, etc. So I don't see where you're getting any of the "force" necessary to make statements about what is and isn't justified in terms of the moral realist's grounding. If it's meant purely as an internal critique - something like "Moral realists claim to not be arbitrary, but they're actually as arbitrary as the rest of us" - then I don't see why you would think that's a problem anyway. A moral realist's decision to adhere to the moral facts is no more or less "valid" than your decision to adhere to your own desires or interests, right?
Moral anti-realists can still believe in logic, which means they can dispute the realist claim that any objective moral facts must be adhered to. The question of why, as such, isn’t specific to the realist debate but the question of “why does anyone debate philosophy?”, a much more complicated question.
Value can be personal, but also universal. If value is utility/purpose AND rarity/availability, then everything that you can describe has an objectively relative value to everything else.
People are not just rare but are unique as individuals and as a human species that creates, preserves, shares, and uses knowledge/learning. Humanity, people, and human knowledge are objectively priceless. Just as it is irrational to destroy something to create another thing of lesser value, it is immoral to diminish the value of something priceless in the interest of another thing of lesser value.
Morality is the rationality of things that are priceless. As we more understand the world and can logically understand the relative value of priceless things, our morals will necessarily change. It is not arbitrary. We know there are no inferior races, and it feels wrong to behave as if there are, as the Bible seems to assert.
The theist can say something is good if and only if God decrees it. If God decrees something, it is good AND if something is good, God decrees it. You should consider learning logic before making anymore philosophy videos.
You appear to be confused. Your statement amounts to 'If God decrees something ... 'God decrees it'.
@@martinbennett2228 it's how iff statements work.
A theist can say that, but what does that have to do with the video and how does it indicate any failure on my part to understand logic?
The question was not about "if", it was about "because". Does God decreeing something *cause* it to be good, or does the fact that it's good *cause* God to decree it?
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н I'm saying there's a third option - if and only if.