David Hume's Argument Against Moral Realism
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
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This is a lecture video about a short selection from book 3 of David Hume's famous work of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40). Hume was an empiricist. The lecture of basically a presentation of his argument from empiricism to the conclusion that there are no genuine, objective moral facts residing in actions themselves (rather, there are only sentiments of moral disapprobation or disapproval in us). This lecture of part of Introduction to Ethics.
Not many people know this but David Hume was an absolutely huge man. There is a statue of him in Edinburgh. He had to have been about 8 feet tall.
@@forbidden-cyrillic-handle a failed attempt at comedy or a successful attempt at stupidity?
@@bouncycastle955 A successful attempt at comedy. Sorry you don't understand humor.
@@mrosskne sorry you have the capacity of a moldy potato
@@bouncycastle955 Come on now. Be nice. 👍
@@dundeedolphin wasn't talking to you, dopey
You are the best at explaining philosophical theories. I hope one day you will finish doing videos like this for everything xD
You explain philosophical topics so simply, aptly, clearly, and beautifully! Thanks
Am I crazy or is he writing backwards on the board so we can see it the right way? Because that’s extremely impressive
I bet the picture is reversed left-to-right.
It’s a party trick that he seems very keen on. Humes skepticism about morality is a similar party trick, to impress other, but substantial
Use the philosophical process he's teaching in this to work it out. Lol
he is not writing backwards therefore you are crazy
@@roadtripmovies1087 Hume was an entertainer, he is taken seriously only by the bored and credulous. You can be a skeptic about all that is but what does that show? It shows that man is the measure of all things. Universal skepticism is a strong argument for the primacy of real moral freedom.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” -- Hamlet, Act II scene 2
That's Kant's position. Hume's is more like "There is nothing either good or bad, but _feeling_ makes it so."
Logic is a wonderful gift to natural reason
Good quote.
Shakespeare essentially dealt in morality fables.
He recognised the use of the denial of morality to justify crimes - especially of violence.
But Hamlet was mad as a hatter and as a result we get alot od dead bodies when the curtain falls.
sorry for typos: a lot and of
Thank you for all of your vids. I finished the philosophy playlist and now I'm into ethics. You're an excellent teacher!
I like this guy, and his ability to write backwards is AMAZING.
Of Course, he could be running the camera in "mirror" mode and he's just writing correctly, and it appears to us as if he is writing backwards.
@@baggins181 yeah, look at what hand his watch is on
@@catologic Left handed people mostly have clock on right hand, so that was not so good hint. Shirt buttons is a good hint though.
have you guys not seen the video where he explains his setup?
@@mrosskne no
It is 12:31am and I'm watching this for class, or I WAS until I was brought to tears laughing at that little "No" about Madagascar
your videos really have helped me understand that its philosophy with a focus on psychology that I want to follow and study as both a life career and hobby
It sounds like he’s saying Hume thinks morality doesn’t exist or is unimportant. I think Hume was just saying morality is a personal or human construct and can’t be derived through empirical ‘logical’ means. That’s not to say it’s not central to human existence. Hume certainly didn’t think morality didn’t exist or murder was okay.
Morality exists, and is important, in the same way that the concept (NB the concept not the physical tokens) of money exists i.e. it is a social construct and as such is always relative rather than absolute.
"Take an argument you consider to be valid. Hume's, for instance. Examine it in all lights and see if you can find that matter of fact or real existence which you call validity."
Jeffrey, This is an excellent presentation for the non-philosopher.
Thanks! That is my intended audience!
@@profjeffreykaplan Now I have many, many videos to watch and learn from! Are you familiar with The Beginning of Infinity and The Fabric of Reality by the physicist David Deutsch?
zen mind is beginner's mind
@@themongreldiscourse8853 l thought that “Zen” mind was “no mind.” Maybe you can correct if this is a misconception? Anyway, I am a proponent of Critical Mind. It leads to optimism in that all knowledge is fallible and that humans are universal explainers. In other words, all problems can be solved given the right information.
@@patmoran5339
The principle of "anatman" is best translated as no SELF.
Mind is evident even under hard solipsism. But our impression of a self is really a construction, not something fundamental.
By the way, we know from Gödel that not all problems can be solved given the right information. This is one of the most fascinating results of mathematical logic.
Okay, but in the case of puppy-throwing, we *experience* disapprobation, as Hume claims. Is not disapprobation then not itself an experience? And if so, then what is the cause of the disapprobation? The most natural cause of this experience would be the viciousness of the act. Then, viciousness is necessary to explain the experience of disapprobation, and consequently, viciousness should be something we believe in according to the definition of empiricism. What am I missing?
To the best of my knowledge, Hume's argument is just that morality, or "viciousness" in this case is something that is posited not confirmed. You don't experience it directly and instead, you have to theorize it to be the cause of the disapprobation you feel. Some people do posit its existence but Hume would argue that you don't really need to.
For example, upon discovering this puppy-thrower of ours, a Moral Objectivist might say "The viciousness of that act is universal and unchanging and I must stop it in order to be a good person."
Meanwhile, a Moral Relativist would say "I intuit that action to be vicious, obviously, this other fellow disagrees but according to my own experience of morality I should stop him."
But Hume, (the Moral Anti-Realist) just says "I don't like that, so I'm going to go stop it," and drops the language of morality and viciousness entirely.
Follow Up:
Not sure if this is helping but I think that where you say "The most natural cause of this experience would be..." is where Hume draws that line. Some people might not start from that assumption and it may depend on what you're imagining when you say "viciousness," an evolutionary psychologist might say that it is selectively beneficial for a brain to experience disapprobation toward some actions whether or not there is any kind of secondary cause for it that "really exists" outside your own head.
The nature of the act may cause your disapprobation, but I think Hume's point is that the disapprobation comes first, and then you consider the act vicious because of the nature of your disapprobation. To show that this is the correct way round, he makes the point that you cannot experience "viciousness" directly - so it can only be a quality that you ascribe to the act, not a quality inherent to the act.
If no one disapproved of an act, on what basis could it be considered a vicious act?
@@artmarkham3205 The viciousness of an act is not dependent on someone's approval or disapproval. An act can be objectively vicious or evil or immoral.
@@rl7012 Can you give an exemple ?
@@artmarkham3205 I don’t believe your argument works in the context of empiricism: you don’t experience Madagascar directly, you see it’s color, you sense it’s smells, you touch it.
If no one had ever seen Madagascar or had any reason to believe Madagascar exists, on what basis should we consider it exists?
I believe the question here is whether the “feeling” of disapprobation we experience in front of a vicious act is on the same level as that of our 5 senses.
If it is, then physical manifestations of the disgust we can feel in front of an extremely vicious act, like wanting to throw-up, confirming to you that it is a vicious act, are not really that different from the experience we get from seeing a place like Madagascar and confirming that it exists.
If we take the main moral problem to be suffering or pain, pain might be more empirical. And we take actions as causes and explanations (like electrons), then the vice can be actions which cause an experience of pain or a claim by others of “ouch”. And when we observe puppies being thrown off a bridge, we imagine based on prior experience and prior empirical knowledge “if I went off of a bridge in that way, then I would feel pain (or fear or distress)”. And since many moral claims are of the sort that “such an action is wrong, and such an action causes pain”, then we can preserve as a definition of vice “actions that cause pain” ; and this would preserve most of the things (principles or rules) that we commonly call morality. And in the case of death or intentional murder, the pain would be first the terrific fear caused by the anticipation of being murdered, and secondly the grief and sadness caused in others by our loss.
Pleasure and pain are is-statements, they are not ought-statements. "Pleasure exists" does not mean "pleasure ought to exist".
You cannot prove an "ought" from an "is". Morality cannot be proven; it can only be assumed on faith.
Also, pain can only be measured from the report of the receiver.
@@TomFranklinX *from Hume's perspective.
Boiling everything down to mere feelings (and particularly that the ONLY thing we perceive are literal emotions), is a reductive strategy at best. The point is that we normally derive oughts from further oughts, not as Hume proposes.
Jeffery you’re incredible, if your object is to educated, I have no doubt that it is, you’re succeeding in a major way, thanks.
It's a great argument. In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt brings it right up to date by detailing why we evolved the "disapprobations" we feel when we witness the puppy tosser (or Donald Trump, Priti Patel, etc.). Personally, I've got utilitarian sympathies, but they're an intellectual construct that one can't live out in practice; they're not what what morality "really is". Morality is the way we have evolved to feel about human behaviour in order that we can live successfully in cohesive societies and thus propagate our genes. That's why we're reliably inconsistent and any system (be it deontological or consequentialist) is doomed to fail.
Admitting that progress in moral and political philosophy has been inconsistent, it seems that we are now living in the most peaceful and safest time in the history of human existence. Maybe we can thank cultural evolution rather than biological evolution?
@@patmoran5339 Yes I agree. I'm with Pinker about moral progress and the influence of reason and Enlightenment values. I think we've made this progress by improving our application of reason, by valuing evidence and consistency, in the way we organise our societies. While as individuals we're still pushed and pulled by inconsistent evolved instincts, we can at least apply reason to the laws we pass and the policies of our institutions. I think this is how we make progress, by 'forcing' morality through structures (laws, social conventions) that keep our instincts, our irrational moral emotions in check. Our instincts are not rational - why would they be? They're just the way we evolved to spread genes
@@jonstewart464 Progress is not made by force. Force prevents error correction and elimination and results in pessimism, stagnation, and dehumanization. Better theories result in progress. Also, predicting system failure is just another empiricist claim that the future will resemble the past. The future is completely unpredictable and the primary claim of empiricism that we "derive" knowledge directly through our senses is false. I read Haidt's book. I even did that internet form about morality. A reductionist approach to any science can only result in pseudoscience. Science based on explanation is responsible for progress. There is no ultimate truth, only better misconceptions. Evolutionary psychology and behaviorism have a lot in common. They are both empiricist and reductionist and they both avoid the study of the mind and cultural evolution.
Not quite right. Morality isn't "really" just what we've evolved our baseline disapprobations to be. That's just yet another is. If males happened to evolve the passion to rape women, and find it moral, and the women also evolved a passion to enjoy or at least look past the rape, as not being immoral, would rape then be moral? Would you surrender your own moral conceptions and admit, that's the "real" morality? I doubt you would.
@@Google_Censored_Commenter I'm not a moral realist. I do think we can construct systems of morality based on reason, i.e. utilitarianism, but this is just an example of cooperative human behaviour that works in our own self interest.
Kinda insane you didn't mention the most famous outcome of Hume's work: the is-ought gap.
What is that
@@oswurth8774 That you can't get from any statement about what "is" to a statement about what "ought" to be, without invoking assumptions which contain both "is" and "ought". For example, to get from "torture with no purpose other than sadism causes far more harm to the person tortured than pleasure to the sadistic torturer" to "you should not torture if the only purpose is sadism", you need some assumption like "you should not do things which cause more pain than pleasure". An upshot of this is that empirical scientific research about the world can never be sufficient to reach any moral conclusions.
Yes he is very good. The thing that somewhat redeems my faith in higher education is that he is just talking about ideas behind a "chalkboard" though it is a see-through board. That's the way it used to be, as a former lecturer now retired I considered getting in a local college as an adjunct. Not around here, you have to be versed in high tech presentations, none of this just talking about stuff, and you can not send in a resume and get an interview. No you have to apply online, via a portal and the forms, are not only years out of date, they also contain so many spelling and syntax errors looks like a MAD magazine article.
You had me at the saltiness of the tears of the puppies
Thank you Jeffrey for this cogent explanation.
Doesn't that last part of the definition allow for non empirical beliefs to slip right in? Also if I or someone I trust experiences all kinds of expressions of outrage or disapproval as part of our senses when we see someone get thrown off a bridge, can't we use that last part of the definition to then say it must mean there exists objective morality for why we all sense this. That's one of the problems I see with this argument is that last part of the definition.
Kierkegaard wrestles with this, but from a place of faith. His "Fear and Trembling" makes a study of the Bible's story about God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (the "Akedah", or "Binding of Isaac"). In hope and trust (i.e., by his faith), Abraham intends to obey God, but an angel stops his hand at the last moment. Kierkegaard calls Abraham's decision a "teleological suspension of the ethical", meaning Abraham appealed to a transcendent call that was higher than his ethical obligations. I don't know that I've heard anyone argue for Isaac, but I'm learning to do that. I think that's the point of this crucible of thought and conscience. God countermanded His own command once Abraham's test was complete. And this is what I think we should understand the purpose of God's testing of Abraham (and us) to be: Do you love God or fear God? It's an invitation into deeper relationship and understanding. This is why...
The Judeo-Christian ethic is to love God AND your neighbor. Abraham struggled with both, which is why a Ram (not a Lamb) was provided after the event. In accordance with the sacrificial rites spelled out in Leviticus, a "trespass offering" was provided. It was found in the thicket, in lieu of using Isaac as a burnt offering of devotion (Rene Girard comes to mind). Abraham's was an action of deep faith as he faced losing the son for which he waited so long. And God honored Abraham's devotion. But in the end, God also had to provide a mechanism to redeem Abraham from his imperfect faith and faulty conclusion about God's expectations and God's character.
My point is that morality is tied to the will of God, which we discover by exercising faith. That faith is a matter of rational probability, but in that it is necessarily rooted in our individual experiences, which evoke sensory responses. But those responses and our "knowledge" (in the end, it is by faith) are not empirically testable by anyone else. Consequently, our appeals to an ethical code are important in day-to-day civic life and in our faith communities, but we should be skeptical that we've gotten it all down when we say that we "know" what God expects of us.
If he had been able to see it, a better response from Abraham would have been to show his love of God by showing his love for his neighbor (Isaac), whom God loved, as well. When confronted with this terrible dilemma, Abraham should have trusted God to engage in a debate. That is, Abraham should have challenged God about what he understood God to mean by the test. He should have gone back to God to directly discern how best to love both God and Isaac. I think this would have been God's expectation; or, at least He would have condescended to accept it. Abraham should have cried, "Far be it from you, oh God, to command this terrible thing!" He should have had the courage to do the same for Isaac as what he did for Lot, when God warned that Sodom and Gomorrah was going to be destroyed (another story in Genesis that we see right before the "Binding of Isaac").
Because Abraham failed to do this, he found a "trespass offering" when his gaze turned and saw the ram in the thicket (rams were offered when faithful Israelites committed some sort of sacrilege unknowingly). However, had he interceded on behalf of Isaac, I feel it is likely that the ram would have been presented as an offer of devotion - a "burnt offering." In the moment of decision, Abraham should have tested what "was" (the command) against what only God could say "ought" to be. The command was purposeful, but it wasn't the heart of God. In other words, Abraham had a "law", so to speak, in God's command, but he concluded that the same command was also an "ought", which he soon found wasn't the case.
My point is that the source of morality (God) needed to bridge the divide between Law (what is) and Love (what ought to be). That is Hume's gap. And as a Christian, bridging it can only come by faith in loving, prayerful, and humble engagement with God AND community. This is a secondary message of the Gospel of grace, in Jesus Christ. The primary message is that Jesus is the image of God's self-sacrificial love for us, delivered as promised by the scriptures, to show that our ethical somersaults cannot reconcile us to God. It is only God's demonstrated love in human flesh that makes us see that we are loved and have purpose in Him. From that realization, as validated by Jesus' resurrection, we are free to live a life of purpose that is not about "have to", but about "want to."
"The tears of the puppies, they're salty". So, you are down the bridge, you see the puppy thrower throwing puppies, and instead of stopping him, you taste the puppies' tears, and you scan the brain of the puppy thrower, and you conclude there's nothing wrong in that action.
You should not attend a philosophy class. Church is a better place
Great unpacking of Hume's quotation
There is a way to show that morality does still exist from an empiricist view. If you believe in God which can be argued as a necessary being for our existence, then the morality given by God would therefore be empirical as it is in the character of God as an omnipotent being.
The empiricist definition includes the idea of "someone trustworthy" but there's nothing you can see, hear or touch that makes anything or anyone worthy of trust, so trustworthiness, according to this definition, it's another thing that can't exist. For me at least, it looks like morality would fall into the category of something that "must exist in order to explain our experiences". After all, the disapproval is a feeling, but the colors or sounds are also only things that we are feeling, and that also depend on us to some degree. Some people can't see all colors, some people have better hearing than others, it also depends on the surrounding light, sensory experiences aren't completely universal. Sensory experiences are basically the brain making sense of external inputs, like the light that hit the eyes, if our brain generates a feeling of disapproval when we see a certain action that makes us decide that it's vicious, in the end is the same than our brain generating an image based on bouncing light waves that makes us decide that an observed object has a certain color.
Morality isnt something that would fall into that category unless we admit that morality is subjective and arbitrary. A simple defeater would be the fact that morality changes between different people, something that causes one person to feel disapproval does not necessarily mean it would cause someone else to feel disapproval. If the definition of morality is defined based on objective truths of right and wrong, morality cannot fit into the "must exist..." category as everyone's experience is different. The only way for it to fit it into that category is if we redefine morality to be based on whether or not it illicits a feeling of disgust it disapproval. Now morality perfectly fits into that category but now the problem is that we have redefined morality to be nothing more than just a word to describe a feeling, under this definition morality can never be objective as there is absolutely no link between whether the feeling of disapproval is related to objective right and objective wrong.
Tldr all of this to say that morality cannot fit into any of the boxes within that definition of truth unless we redefine morality to be an arbitrary descriptor. I assume hume suggests you shouldn't believe in morality because he us defining morality as an objective fact of the world, not a descriptor of what causes one person to feel bad.
Imagine you're walking down the street and you witness someone attacked by a knife-wielding maniac. Does witnessing such an act have a sensible effect on you? I think for most people it does. From my own experience, the reaction is an immediate sense of physical revulsion, and this suggests that direct, physical forms of vice -- particularly vice that involves violence wrought upon other sentient beings -- can indeed be sensed.
Most people have a sympathetic sense by which they can vicariously feel what happens to other sentient beings. This is presumeably how, when we read a novel or watch a movie, we can feel what happens to the characters. But this is not imagination. It is a natural response to witnessed events (whether real or fictional). Like the other senses, this sense varies in intensity from one human to another; i.e., some people are more 'sympathetic' than others.
Moral principles extrapolate on this sense of sympathy. Morality, therefore, has its origins within the purview of the 'real'.
I disagree; I wouldn’t feel physical revulsion, but mental and emotional revulsion. This would then prompt me to physically respond. Deriving the “sense” of morality, a subjective mental and emotional understanding, from one’s physical dispositions seems like a behaviorist perspective, a branch of philosophical thought that has grown to be deeply contested.
you still can't extrapolate your or any other person's sympathetic senses into an objective statement that morality exists - that it is. just because the entire human species has survival instincts and also group instincts that elicit sympathy for people trying to survive does not in itself make the concept of "survival" an objective good
Nice and clear. Rather than show a lack of the existence of morality, it shows the limits of the applicability of empiricism to subset of human existence. Morality and God are experienced in " non empirical" ways or beyond limits of empiricism.
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Great lecture. Thanks
Hume just blew my brain, no joke. What a radical.
If I try to find 'what is wrong with 2+2=5' there also are no facts, and it's something in my head, based on rules that live on our heads. So similarly, what is the implication that there are no statements of fact in killing puppies that cannot be resolved with an underlying principle that although not material, is still valid or congruent, just like math is?
Seems obvious that morality is not in the act but in the context - who and why the act was done. Or as Holmes put it “Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.”
What confuses me about Hume is that he clearly esteems using reason to build his philosophy. If he did not value reason and supporting claims with premises, he would not make arguments. But, because he makes arguments, it follows that he values reason. Looking at the situation of the puppy being thrown off the bridge, it is true that you cannot sense with your five senses the "vice" in that situation. However, considering his already established acceptance of the validity of reason, can reason not be sufficient proof for the "vice" seen in throwing a puppy off the bridge? For example, one may establish that it is wrong to throw the puppy off the bridge because it causes undue harm to the puppy and the owner (provided it has one), and causing undue harm is wrong because a society with that belief is one that would not survive. This is based off of reason, not the emotional reaction to the puppy. The moral arguments for *why* throwing the puppy is wrong may vary based off of premises, but the fact of the matter is that reason, not feelings, are used in establishing the moral principles.
Furthermore, let's assume that all morality is entirely subjective and based on individual interpretation. Actions are not objectively right or wrong, they are assumed so by the individual, there are no universal moral principles. Isn't the assumption that morality is entirely subjective a universal moral principle in and of itself? Subjective morality is an idea that is cross-cultural and applies to all humanity, therefore it is a universal moral principle, but main idea behind subjective morality is that there are no universal moral principles, and thus it contradicts itself.
Just a short response in an effort to answer what you said here from the perspective of the video as it is laid out here (or maybe I should say - a plausible response from a Humean perspective) -- "one may establish that it is wrong to throw the puppy off the bridge because it causes undue harm to the puppy and the owner", there is no reason to accept that causing undue harm is in itself a vice in any other manner than established in the video - which is within one's own breast so to speak. Another might feel absolutely fine with it, and so the vice is not yet found in the object.
"causing undue harm is wrong because a society with that belief is one that would not survive", this assumes that societal survival is a good, which is yet to be established if one is still looking for where to find morality in the first place. Remember, what is happening in Hume's quote here is we are searching for vice itself. We are trying to establish wrongness - to state something is a good, doesn't resolve the issue - which is finding morality in the first place, outside of just how one feels within themselves.
" The moral arguments for why throwing the puppy is wrong may vary based off of premises, but the fact of the matter is that reason, not feelings, are used in establishing the moral principles" - 1. That would have to be demonstrated, and 2. it may be rejected by certain empiricists as it is not a kind of empirical fact. 3. This would likely/possibly run into Hume's is/ought distinction.
" Furthermore, let's assume that all morality is entirely subjective and based on individual interpretation" - Hume is arguing an anti-realist position, not a subjective position. He is arguing here that morality is not real. So that assumption is already to miss the argument made here. Let me phrase it another way and maybe that will help to clarify - what Hume is doing is looking for an empirical example/proof/fact/demonstration, etc of where we can find vice/wrongness. He is searching for where we can pinpoint, "This is what makes the act wrong." And he is arguing that it cannot be found, all that we have is not in the object of vice (viciousness) itself, but a response within ourselves against that specific vice. Which doesn't find wrongness empirically, and one could argue doesn't show wrongness at all as people might have conflicting feelings on a given vice.
"Actions are not objectively right or wrong, they are assumed so by the individual, there are no universal moral principles. Isn't the assumption that morality is entirely subjective a universal moral principle in and of itself? Subjective morality is an idea that is cross-cultural and applies to all humanity, therefore it is a universal moral principle, but main idea behind subjective morality is that there are no universal moral principles, and thus it contradicts itself."
After reading what I wrote above, hopefully you will understand how this does not apply to Hume here.
I hope I helped clear up some confusion, and gave you some more interesting insight on Hume's argument here. Have a lovely day!
It is so true that reason is the source of morality that dehumanization (of slaves, of enemies, of strangers, even of animals) has been tremendously effective in the past to keep behavior immoral. What I am saying is, malformed arguments (but convincing enough) have justified immoral actions enough to keep them alive for centuries. That's the work of reason, albeit defective reason. It's not the work of sentiment, feeling, the 5 senses, intuition etc.
@@JacquesduPlessis11 great response 👏
I love this - you really made it Hume's ideas easy to understand! You keep making references to paragraphs read today; where can I find the text?
I don't really get it. I don't see just "brown" with my sight sense, I see a living brown creature which ceases to exist due to the actions of the bridge person.
"‘Moral is only that which coincides with your feeling of beauty and with the ideal in which you embody it." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky would argue that your reaction to the puppy throwing is to its ugliness (or lack of beauty). If beauty is relative then so is morality, by this logic. If, on the other hand, as the old philosophers and theologians maintained, beauty is the embodiment of goodness then we can root morality in more than mere emotions.
To Dostoevsky, that beauty and goodness is not an abstract concept but best understood as the person of Christ.
Similarly, If we assign some kind of objective value to puppies e.g. how much potential happiness they might provide, then wastefulness is the vice identified
All morality is the result of evolved emotional responses to stimuli
@@mrosskne Plus our social agreement to mutually arrange things so that we can keep our emotional responses felicitous for ourselves.
@@donnievance1942 Work on your English skills
For me, there is a logical fallacy there. Because if we feel bad about an act then there is a feeling connected to that act. We can only experience reality through our feelings. Therefore, our feeling bad is part of our experience and so is morality
Two elements to consider in response to this.
1: You are conceding that the moral quality of the act exists only within your mind, or only as a consequence of what is in your mind.
Which is to say, it's imaginary, and moreover, *you* imagined it. "Killing puppies is wrong because I think it's bad" is not a very convincing argument, and forcing you to make that argument is the strength of Hume's argument.
2: The fact that you feel bad is still just a fact, the way that the puppykiller's glee at killing the puppies is a fact. You still have to show, somehow, that the fact that you feel bad when you see it makes the puppykilling wrong.
Hume's argument is not that people dont have feelings about morality, it's that all facts about morality exist only in the heads of the people considering them, not in the actions being considered themselves.
@@fieldrequired283 But isn't that all of our senses that just exist in our heads? I'm going off the left definition on the board, it says or you can beleive in things that explain why you must experience them (that lets in a lot of non empirical beliefs like God, objective morality etc etc) I mean say someone I trust or myself feel feelings of disgust when a dog or human gets trhown off a bridge, (moral emotivism) can't I say the thing I beleive that describes that sense of disgust when I see it is some sort of objective morality? It appears to me that last part of the definition on his board on the left allows a lot to slip in.
@@hatersgotohell627
The definition is a little more particular than that. Empiricism does not allow for every thing that _could_ explain observations, but only demands you admit those things that observations _cannot be explained without._
So while you can notice the feeling of disgust and might reasonably conclude that the feeling of disgust has a cause, you would still need to independently prove that the disgust can only be explained by there being objective, mind-independent morality that causes disgust.
@@hatersgotohell627
So, according to empiricism, to conclude the existence of objective morality from the observation of subjective morality, you would have to demonstrate that subjective morality _can only be explained_ by the existence of objective morality, which is a hard case to make.
Another brilliant lecture!
1) Acredite no que você pode sentir com seus sentidos ou acreditar na sensação de uma pessoa confiável ou deduzir da percepção de algo a necessidade de existência de algo mais
What is the different between Moral sentimentalism and purely Epistemic sentimentalism
Thanks so much
What about the "result" of the action? Isn't the suffering of the puppies, that can be experienced by the senses, enough to make the action immoral?
This line of reasoning is based on an assumption, that every real thing is experienceable and knowable through that limited set of senses. If we extend the list of senses to include the sense of moral judgment (wrongness and righteousness) the whole reasoning collapses. And even if we don't include that sense, we still operate based on unfalsifiable assumption that everything that is real and existing is experienceable through that limited set of senses.
If we define vice as: an act disregarding the interests and/or well-being of conscious creatures. Then, this gets way more interesting.
We can absolutely empirically observe and test whether or not we worsen the well-being of conscious creatures. What Hume correctly points out, is that there's no objective fact that says we ought to value the well-being of conscious creatures. It's pretty hard to come up with something related to morality that doesn't relate to well-being of someone though. ie. I've never found anything.
This is a good point and it shows us how atheists are intellectually dishonest. In every negative commentary on religion from the hitchens types, they rely on presupposing that “bad” exists in any objective sense. A truly honest empiricist would have to be an moral anti-realist, but yet so few of them really are.
Great lecture. It seems like this should only be a challenge to naturalistic conceptions of moral realism. So if it's successful, it would be entirely survivable for the non-naturalist realists out there :)
I am not sure why this view would not apply to non-naturalist realists, could you explain it from your perspective? I might be mistaken, but I see no reason why it wouldn't apply to realists in general.
@@JacquesduPlessis11 Because non-naturalists hold that moral facts are normative facts (not natural facts). They're not deriving oughts from is statements, they're deriving oughts from oughts.
@@husky_helianthus Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.
I understand what you mean, but I am not sure how one would establish such a fact? If you can provide me an example, I might change my perspective on morality. Also, how do you establish the initial ought?
@@JacquesduPlessis11 No worries. I just want to point out that this idea of establishing such a fact is seperate from the is-ought critique of realist positions. That being said there is a whole lot more to say about how to establish what I would label as a non-natural moral realist position.
One such example would be to look at the normativity of epistemic facts as a so called partner in crime or companion in guilt to moral facts (of the non-natural sort). i.e. it is unreasonable to hold onto a belief against all evidence / good argumentation. This could be an example of an epistemic fact having certain normative authority over us (supplying us with oughts). The philosopher Terence Cuneo is the man who put this kind of argument on the map in his book the Normative Web.
Another potential angle would be to look at our practice of blaming evil doers. The philosopher Russ Shafer-Landau has (and continues) to argue that blameworthiness implies there being reasons against acting (or perhaps refraining from acting) in certain ways. And that such reasons by hypothesis are categorical in nature (not tied to what we want). Heres how I visualise such a concept.
If a baby was to hit somebody it would be incorrect to blame them for committing such an action. They're not a moral agent and thus moral reasons don't apply to them. But say it was me who hit someone, say I did it for fun and I had no desire to refrain from such an action (say I don't care for the potential consequences either) it would make sense to say that I am blameworthy for my actions, because I failed to follow the moral reasons I'm beholden to.
I'll link a paper where Shafer-Landau expresses this point in 2 ways. www.jstor.org/stable/20619406?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (you'll have to create a free account in order to read it in full).
Shafer-Landau & Terence Cuneo have also appeared in a variety of interviews on meta-ethics on UA-cam that I would also recommend watching.
@@husky_helianthus I’m fairly certain that this is provable of any ought statement, as it requires at least one ought statement to itself be derived.
What if you turn your experience to the puppies? They surely feel pain. Does this mean nothing?
Awesome explanation, as always! Thanks, Professor! :)
I wonder how Hume would explain how our thoughts about objects are so disconnected from the objects themselves. You should do a video on Hussrls intentionality.
This argument reminded very much of one Judge Holden
What about emotions like moral emotivism doesnt that still work with sensing the vice of it.
"God dammit- we're all out of salt!!.......................Bring me those puppies!!!"
I'm confused. This feels like an argument against universal/absolute morality because the morality of the action is not inherent to it. I don't see why I can't believe in my own subjective feelings of disapproval and call the things that I disapprove of immoral (aka relative morality).
He's not arguing against subjectivism. He's arguing against objectivism. He's saying that nothing is objectively wrong. He's not denying that it may be subjectively wrong to us. He's also not denying that we may come to social agreements about what is right and wrong based on our shared subjective feelings.
My favorite part of this video is at 22:12 when he says "and we haven't found...um...Mermaid tools." Good stuff. What kind of tools would mermaids have? I'm thinkin' drills.
This an interesting conundrum. My feeling is we need to adjust the original principle one more time. It is still incomplete. In addition to “our regular five senses we add a sixth sense and that is ‘feelings’. Taking the Principle as written in this video, ‘ we believe things and by extension believe they belong or exist as part of the world like electrons. Seeing an action or vice, of the existing thing ( the killing of puppies) elicits a judgment (moral or otherwise) based on what we believe exists is needed to exist. I am not sure this is an adequately theory but it’s the best I can come up with.
But feelings are conditioned by culture/environment and so, not universal. People from culture A ‘feel’ drowning kittens is wrong. People in culture B may not feel much, and just find it the most expedient solution to a problem.
@@Jennifer-wr9si Feelings are conditioned by culture, but they operate from a genetic commonality. Impulses toward empathy, compassion, altruistic willingness to undertake risks for others, and impulses toward cooperativeness are properties of normal psychology everywhere. Culture modifies or distorts these impulses to varying degrees, and there are normal counter-impulses as well, but our evolutionary heritage is the basis for morality.
Re: Hume. I should also be experiencing the cries and whimpering of the puppies, the blood, the lifeless bodies, a sense in which I perceive the nature of the act (cruelty) that differs from, say, what I might experience as I witness an act of altruism or heroic sacrifice. What am I missing?
4:18 - i like how he says nude in 3 different ways
I really don't see how this argument holds up. I am definitely open to have misunderstood this so If I'm missing something please tell me.
Okay so lets say I'm an empiricist and lets take the example of someone willfully murdering someone. We have the murderer, the victim of the murder and me who is witnessing it. Just to make my argument clearer I will consider that the victim experiences pain during the murder. The pain and knowledge of losing ones life is a vicious experience for the victim. I consider the victim trustworthy and in this case I believe in the existence of things someone thristworthy experiences, as in the experience of the victim.
In this case I will argue that this is a terrible experience for the victim which means that the vice exists outside my own experience if we are able too look at the victim and not only the object, the murderer. And if we are only considering the object, the murderer, then why would we not be allowed to consider the victim?
With regard to puppy tossing, don’t we see the vice in the act of needlessly causing helpless creatures to suffer, or in the act of depriving them of their lives?
Great talk, thanks. Do Hume’s ideas lead us to differentiate between the outer objective world of empiricism and the inner personal world of subjectivism? Presumably both worlds must coexist as we are consciously aware of both of them.
What distinguishes the senses from the feelings? How can Hume tell that the feeling of wrongness is not a sense? because if it is a sense, then I did experience a vice, and if it is not a sense, then what differentiates it from the senses?
Idk the experience part; it relays/assumes that the things you experience are "real"~ someone with schizophrenia can experience something that we wouldn't classify as real.
How can it be assumed that the 'sense' of right and wrong isn't just as valid as your sense of sight? That the puppy being brown isn't a consequence of your *internal* eye impairment/colour blindness?
Those have different senses more or less developed than others, even monkeys and other animals have this sense of 'fairness' and become reactive when those terms are breached.
I feel that humes make a good point that morality doesn't exist physically, but I would counter that or expand oupon it by saying morality does exist within the mind. I believe morality is similar to an idea. In how they are created and can come into the world if we express them. I guess a loose example can be a car in how it did not exist until someone thought of it and expressed it physically. Sure, morality can't be shown in the physical world, but the point is in the way it brought about through the mind.
You are describing the difference between concrete and abstract nouns.
Hume overlooked the result: Sweet little puppy bodies all bashed against rocks. When we apprehend morality or immorality, we contrast an event that takes place in time to another possible event that also takes place in time--someone who holds puppies and pets them and feeds them and loves them. A death-dealing event versus a life-sustaining event. These lie at the core of human moral sense.
No, that was his result... You sense all of these things, but you don't sense morality. It's a seperate analysis.
david hume is a radical philosopher
It sounds like Hume's argument invokes occams razor. Could you make the same argument against this as you would against using occam's razor against norms? We can't see epistemix norms.
Oh yes! Absolutely! I think I make the exact point that you have in mind in this public talk that I gave almost a year ago (video here: ua-cam.com/video/68eum5j6QXE/v-deo.html).
Interesting argument. I've always struggled with morality. One definition that's nearly acceptable is that morality is the difference between your actions when you think you're alone compared to when you think someone is watching you.
If there is any difference, I only see proof that one is lacking it yet aware of its existence.
Wasn’t the premise of belief only for entities? Morality isn’t an entity, it’s a property.
When a person acts incorrectly, like using salt instead of sugar in a recipe, you cannot see any "incorrectness" when you just look at the action. Immorality is acting in denial of the inherent nature of the being in question; it is acting incorrectly, which is why we call it "wrong". There's no "vice" to see, but there is an objective quality of wrongness to be understood.
Thought: Morals could an innate human characteristic without being supernatural. They could be a definite structure in our genes or in our brain’s structure that leads to broad morals. This would lead to many people and societies having similar morals but does not require them coming from a devine or extrinsic source. They could be laws of nature not placed upon humans, but behaviors that humans evolved because they lead to individual and group survival
True ,there could be . But the question arises ,are they necessary behaviours which increase survival or moral behaviours ? If environment change our behaviours would change . So morality might be our adaptation then nothing moral about it.
Pls, help me, it seems more like Subjectivism.
The plural of platypus is platypoda -- not "platypi"
🤓
No, platypodes, not platypoda is the Greek plural form. However, that is not used, despite the Greek etymological roots of the word. They are called platypuses just like every other common word in English. Platypi is really stupid, because that is a Latin plural, and the word does not have Latin roots.
@@donnievance1942: Tomayto...tomahto...let's call the whole thing off
😉
So impressed that the multitalented Charlie Day also teaches philosophy! 😂
6:46 is the key word here trust? Because there are certainly people who claim to have experienced things I don't believe in. Like seeing bigfoot
All of humanity is based upon sharing our consciousness, to say that we need to reject that inherent reality would in turn throw everything we think or hear from other people out the window. Literally it just turns into solipsism.
What if I knew a person that said, “I was thrown off a bridge once. It was terrifying and painful. I would not want it to happen again.” Am I justified in believing that this is a vicious act then?
you are justified to believe that it is terrifying and painful, but there is no way to prove it is vicious
Research the is-ought gap If you want more information on this topic. Simplified it means that just because something is a certain way in the world does not mean it has to be that way or has to be a different way, it simply exists. Just because suffering exists does not mean it has to exist nor does it mean it shouldn't exist.
Garden of Eden 😮
Morality doesnt exist without sense, but sense in the wider definition - ie including feeling. I only know something like throwing a puppy off a bridge is wrong if it feels wrong.
Your watcher of the psychopath throwing puppies is Chalmers’s Zombie who has no consciousness and so has no internal senses that can be stimulated. A zombie has no soul. The soul has three parts, mind, will and emotions. This video is the most disturbing of all your teaching I have watched. However,Jeffrey thank you for another wonderful teaching.
can we say that morality must exist to explain social stability??
Yes. Even stronger: it was predestined to appear as without it, we would be killing eachother - only those with a relatively good sense of morality will be able to reproduce, start families, raise psychologically healthy kids ....
Or to explain why we experience disgust or bad feelings at murder... that last part of the definition on left is very loose
But we also experience our feeling that we can call " this is viceous".
I was halfway through writing a comment intended for the Peter Singer video, got distracted by my toddler, and when I went back to it, comments were turned off. I've had this half-formed annoyance ever since. So to discharge it, I'm just going to say here, I thought it was really weird how Jeffrey Kaplan kept saying things to the effect of 'everyone you know thinks this [spending on non-essentials] is fine', when that is not my experience. I'd assumed most people have a low-level persistent feeling of responsibility, reinforced every time one faces a chose to spend money or effort that could be spent on helping the proverbial drowning child. I didn't realise there were large portions of thinking people who don't feel this. Sorry, I don't want to trigger any abusive rants here to risk getting this comment section kicked too, just needed to get this off my mind. I was genuinely surprised (and dismayed?) it was apparently so easy to assume most listeners would relate to living in a world where all your friends and acquaintances give nothing to charity or causes and think nothing of spending superfluously.
16:35 before I listen to you tell me what Hume says: does he consider the feeling inside me as I watch a person throw puppies off a bridge unto hard rocks. Doesn't the feeling or sense of vice come from within me? Like the disgust and horror I might feel while I watch something like that happen?
The answer is yes. Hume basically argues that my feelings on the vice are just mine and there's no real vice. There's no organ of vice located in the human body, and there's no element of vice on the periodic table. Vice is nowhere to be found, and I guess it isn't neccesary for vice to exist either.
Yes, but that is the whole point. Your feeling of digust is _your_ feeling. Its not an existence outside of you.
But I also see the suffering of the puppies, which is something I experienced, just like anybody else, I think suffering is vicious.
Help! Wouldn't the vice, the evil, and the bad have to exist to explain the behaviour of the dog trowing we witnessed? We observed the act of doing something by an willfull agent whose motive can be categorised as evil, akin to the way we atribute the atraction between magnetic materials based on their structure and laws that govern this category of interactions?
This argument doesn't quite work. Does a real unicorn have to exist to explain the thoughts and drawings and writings about unicorns that humanity has produced? I don't think so.
Just as there is no non-imaginary unicorn, there is no non-imaginary morality. Just because you look at a horse and imagine a horn on it doesn't mean unicorns are real.
@@fieldrequired283 unicorn exists as an idea in the information space and manifests in the real world in dialogue, arts and crafts. While the unicorn doesn't exist as an animals it is very real as a definition and in it's manifestations. Same with morality, you can define it and it exists in the information space as well as is manifested in behaviour, in actions and in their outcomes in the real world.
@@predatoryanimal6397
So we're agreed that Morality is exactly as real as all other imaginary things?
The word "real" generally has the implication of "non-imaginary", so if you broaden it to include literally anything anyone has thought of or talked about, it sort of ceases to have any useful meaning.
The way you use the argument here, you would be making the case for _""""real"""_ unicorns and _""""real""""_ morality as ideas people _really_ think about, but not real in the same way a rock or a tree is real.
@@predatoryanimal6397
And personally, I'm of the mind that if your definition of "real" can't distinguish between a rock and a dragon, it's a useless definition.
@@fieldrequired283 my definition of real is the same as yours. I think the problem is that I'm using the word morality as a category in which I group different types of actions and behaviors which exist: like word animal is very broad and doesn't exist in itself but there exist real world examples of animals like one individual male zebra running in an African Savannah. So the same way morality exists only as an example of immoral act of murder and vice as the particular mental state of the killer. And the same way as you can extend your definition of animal to include or exclude a particular individual living being based on genetic or other objective feature, you can also define a rock as to exclude coal if you define it based on mineral composition or to include coal based on it being extracted from earth and looking like other objects you call rocks. So you can also define morality to include some real acts and/or mental states and/or behaviors.
Great video, thank you, nts watched all of it 22:06
Can't Empiricsts value the Golden Rule or have some other value? Are feelings from putting yourself in the place of the murdered not experienced? If feelings and empathy don't exist, then doesn't this discount all non-physical experience, so they must exist or sentience wouldn't. Therfore sentiment is real experience, but like the physical senses can be inaccurate under certain circumstances.
This is great - are you still creating content?
Given the current state of AI in image/text/sound - generation, isnt Empiricism no longer "up to date" because you can no longer trust in what you see/hear (experience) to some extend?
Why are the reports I receive from my sense of morality any less valid than those from my sense of sight or sense of logic? 🤔
They are just your sense....
@@ERACISMneworleans1 So? 🤷♂️
Maybe I am off, as I am not hold philosopher phd, but it seems to me that placing morality into a definition of belief as "the existence of stuff" is not where it belongs, rather its more natural place belongs in the "meaning" of stuff. Of course this brings us to moral relativism, as meaning is relative... So I am off to watch your Williams and Kant videos that are queued up next.
Well, I would submit in rebuttal that the feeling of disapprobation is evidence of something fundamental without which the disapprobation would have no existence and so according to the empirical definition of what one ought to believe in one should believe in morality just as one would believe in electrons which though not being directly seen provide good and necessary explanation to the the things that are directly experienced. If Hume argues that the vice is to be found only in the breast of the individual it still begs the question of why it should be found there at all. That something which gives rise to the feeling of disapprobation where the vice is to be found can be called morality. So then we arrive empirically at the start and then a priori at the finish at morality as it were electrons which no naked has seen. And it makes sense that morality should be so locally found for where else should it be found in order to have the most effect? In the same way one's sense of taste is found locally to have the effect of keeping the individual safe from that which is poisonous to the individual vs that which is safe for nourishment. And what may be harmless to a bird or a snake is poisonous to a man so that there is evidently a wondrous regulation to it all.
Thanks for the summary...enjoyed the video
What can we detect in the properties of two separate objects that justify us in believing in “distance”? Nothing. So should we be skeptical that distances are real? Of course not. Distances are “relational”. They require two or more objects in space for it to exist. Likewise, I believe morality is a “relational” property. Namely, the relationship between desires people have and the reasons others have to cause those desires to change in some way.
20:24
Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. - Psalms 137
Is this an appropriate rebuttal? We can say that introspection is also a sense, and in the same way we can justify Madagascar's objective existence; lots of individuals sensing Madagascar and sensing it in the same way. We can say that murder is objectively wrong as to explain why individuals all have that same sense. Of course I'm not saying that this statement is true, as perhaps we all think murder is wrong because of evolution related reasons, but I'm saying just in principle, maybe some experiences can be explained best or only by the existence of objective morality, if we allow that our intuitions about the morality of actions as a sense just like sight.
It seems arbitrary that we would say the sense that throwing puppies off the bridge is only in you but not in the act but, say, the color of the puppies is external to you.
Absent you, there is neither a color nor a sense of moral outrage. It seems like the two sense are arguably on a par in some sense.
The question is: is a sense of morality as strong a sense as sight or hearing?
It's not logically reasonable to use the empiricism argument to draw the conclusions that morality is questionable, because the empirical argument was never an absolute to begin with but built upon additive observations pretty much as demonstrated in this video. Hume 's experiment shows either that mortality doesn't exist OR that the empirical criterium is incomplete.
Is there a word to describe something that isn't the product of an individual will, but the product of all individual wills? Subjectivity is understood to refer to personal experiences, which may have been misapprehended. Objectivity is reality as it is, independent of subjective experience, but theres no way any observer could ever aprehend something that by definition, isn't subjective, so even the hypothetical makes no sense: "What does objective reality look like?" It depends on where you are, on what kind of eyes you have, how large you are, how fast you're moving relative to the thing being observed, etc. It seems that the world only has the shape that it does because of our relationship to it, because of what it means to us.
What about the sensation and experience of horror, trauma, nervous system dysregulation witnessing the destruction or suffering of another being. Or for instance the fact that some veterans suffer horribly for actions that were even deemed moral, but were involved in taking the lives of others. Could morals be a real physiological mechanism designed through evolution to further our species?
Those are is-statements. We can say that suffering exists, that's an is-statement. From this statement it is impossible to suggest that suffering ought not exist. This is called the is-ought gap. Just because something is a certain way does not mean we can decide whether it ought to be or ought not to be. In order to decide that we need unprovable presuppositions. For example the most common presupposition is that suffering should be as limited as possible. Only then can we say that that something is wrong with the puppies suffering. The problem though as I have already stated is that unjustifiable presuppositions are necessary to cross the is-ought gap, if it's unjustifiable that means that there is no objective fact or truth to the matter ultimately making it arbitrary. This is the reason Hume and many other philosophers suggest morality doesn't exist, it's subjective and arbitrary.
You can be the most manly man soldier but watching your brother die in battle has got to take it's toll
you are missing the critical metaphysical point
@@Jankyito but ... for something to be subjective or arbitrary, are these not states of something that DOES exist? Otherwise it cannot have such states... Morality is our gut feeling and it sure as hell exists, be it different per individual and in groups averaging out into some social acceptable culture morality. But no, there is no absolute fixed morale - be it that in millions of years the different stomach feelings are grown quite similar in on determining something good or bad.
@@SPDLand again, you're are hitting the is-ought wall. Just because human beings have a general similarity in that gut feeling does not mean it should be that way nor does it mean we should enforce it. Not only that but it's also fallacious reasoning, if I show you a human that didn't have that gut feeling are they incapable of being moral? If we define morality by that gut feeling we will live in a world where something is only bad when you feel bad about it. Essentially phycopaths are all good as they feel no bad. If we define morality by the general consensus of people's bad feelings we run into the fact that morality is essentially run by societies. This means that in certain societies slavery would be moral, the subjugation of women would be moral, and the sexualization of children would be moral. This is why morality either needs to be objective outside of a human frame of reference, because if it's not morality would ultimately become completely arbitrary. And again why would we decide that the gut feeling we feel should be the definition of morality, there is absolutely nothing liking the two other than you feel like they are linked. In conclusion morality doesn't exist as there is nothing to prove the objectivity of morality.
That last part of the definition on left though kinda ruins it because we can experience feelings of disapproval for murder and yiu can can say that explains the stuff aka those feelings we experience.. morality that is
Moral realism means they're real objective things, not real subjective things.
@someonenotnoone yes but the subjective things experienced with by many can be explained by his last part of the definition on the left that says OR can explain the stuff that we experience.. it allows for non empirical things to slip in.
@@hatersgotohell627 It doesn't allow for non empirical things to slip in because if you can't show evidence for it, it isn't demonstrated as empirical. A shadow cast by the moon is evidence of the moon, but then you can just turn around and look at the moon to verify it.
Wait, shouldn't empathy be a sense by which we understand the world. for example the people of ancient Rome made their emotions known over the dying moans from Elephants from their slaughter within the Colosseum.