I gotta be honest, I dont understand what PP is saying a lot of the time. I try very hard to be charitable to continental philosophy, but it is hard to resist the feeling sometimes that the lack of clarity is masking a lack of content. I appreciated the conversation btw, I do not want to be rude to PP.
It's good that someone else noticed the way PP seems to ramble aimlessly instead of making clear points. This is why it is so important for philosophers to study formal logic, so that they can think and communicate with clarity and precision. Philosophy may not seem like the domain of mathematicians, but philosophy without mathematical precision leads to indecipherable nonsense. Formal logic was invented for exactly this reason.
@@Ansatz66 lol I have no issue understanding him (but I do recognize his habit of trailing off at times), but I think that would have to do more with the literature I interact with rather than me not studying formal logic like him.
I think PP has a clear argument behind what he says, but it's Hegelian and not easily stated, and I agree, he doesn't make it easier. Sometimes I really see his position with some clarity and it seems to make sense, then it fades and I lose it. I'm no expert on Hegel though.
If you can imagine something having two colors simultaneously then why cant you imagine an object having two different shapes simultaneously? Imagine a red circle in front of a green background. Now imagine a red square that fits perfectly inside the circle such that the four corners are touching the circle. Now take the parts of the circle that are not covered by the square and make them both red and green all over. There, you have just imagined an object that is both circular and square. The circular square or squarish circle is red and the background is green
I initially thought he was asking how we know that there is an identity in the 1st place. For example, why can't a red mug also be a black door or a green table and so on. This seems obvious intuitively, but still seems to be assumed in the point PP made about Hegel's being and non being. But then he didn't actually make this point. Rather, he only asked about 2 colours simultaneously existing, and that this would not be applicable to 2 shapes simultaneously existing.
The whole chocolate cake section is comic gold. The long pause while he writes premise 1, Kane's face while waiting. There are so many moments in this that could be selectively edited to invalidate philosophical conversations, but in truth. ...it was a great conversation
Nice one pointing out that you have many ways to getting to error theory, my ethics professor is Richard Joyce, and always emphasises this against realists.
@@Junksaint : Math is based entirely in precision of meaning, with particular symbols used in particular places to achieve an exactly intended effect. Some people may not enjoy learning about advanced math, but math does everything it can to be precise and clear. PP seems to have the opposite goal with his stream-of-consciousness style of philosophy where he seems to just say whatever comes to mind with no order or rules. Perhaps doing this is partially a consequence of being an idealist, since it makes him think that we can learn about the world from thought alone and so every random thought that passes through his mind could have meaning, and therefore he might obscure some important truth by forcing his thoughts into an unnatural order.
So when I watched Kane's video on veganism I thought to myself "interesting, my view on metaethics might share more in common with Kane's than I thought", but after watching this it seems not. Am I taking Kane correctly here if I paraphrase his reasoning about veganism to be a kind of persuasion by appealing to his audience's propensity to believe they are reasoning but actually are not? If that is the case, I have two questions. 1. Why choose contractarianism as the basis rather than something else. 2. How could fake reasoning about propositions that are in reality always false, successfully produce persuasion? If someone said "Red is the best color", and I responded rhetorically with "I don't think so, have you considered that red is the color of injury and gore, so it can't be the best" I don't see how this could have any hope of producing persuasion.
I think people engage in moral reasoning. You can reason with false propositions. For instance: if the moon is made of cheese, then the moon is edible; the moon is made of cheese; therefore, the moon is edible. Or consider how people might engage in reasoning about the motivations of fictional characters ("here's why the villain didn't just kill James Bond when he had the chance...") I thought I answered question (1) during the discussion. I took a contractarian line because (a) it's a useful way to approach moral thinking, which many people find plausible for reasons independent of anything to do with the animals issue while (b) prima facie, it denies animals moral standing, which is the view I was trying to promote. As for question (2), I'm happy to leave that one to the psychologists. I don't know exactly why people are swayed by moral thinking, but it would seem that many of us are, even those of us who are firm antirealists. Moral thinking is presumably a product of evolutionary pressure for cooperative behaviour, which is then further ingrained by a host of social factors.
You should get Michael Huemer on the channel to discuss meta ethics. He’s a philosopher with a decent online following who has written about meta ethics, and he’s a moral realist who probably has his position developed a bit more than PP here. It would be an interesting discussion, and I’m sure you’d get some followers from it. He’d also probably go on since he’s done a lot of podcast interviews recently.
@shark That’s not his entire position-or at least it’s not the entire argument-and I’m not sure that it’s unsatisfying. He also tries to explain why every other logically possible type of meta-ethical theory is wrong, which would imply that his is right. But even if all of his work was just “it’s obvious bro”, that wouldn’t be unsatisfying (to me at least) because there are several other things where appealing to obviousness seems best. For example, axioms in math, or basic facts about your conscious experience. I guess if you don’t agree that appealing to obviousness in those cases is a good justification, then I’d see why you think his meta ethical views are unsatisfying.
I watched his realism debate with lance bush published recently, and he seemed very out of depth in that. I got the impression that his philosophy is much less developed than PPs in that debate. A clear example would be PP discussing the Hegelian concept of being and nonbeing here (or even the Parmenidean concept), which is mostly just taken as obvious or for granted (even in conversations where it is relevant to be discussed).
It's probably because all the most intuitive and easiest metaethical theories are realist theories, so moral realism is a very comfortable fit for many people.
@@Ansatz66 Not saying he has sufficient reasoning hold his position rightfully... ...but I'm pretty sure that isn't his reason, and is rather telling that you chose to attribute it thus You'd probably have a better chance at being right if you said something like "it is in the tradition in which he was brought into philosophy" or something but you're basically just saying he's too lazy or cowardly to face the "truth" (that of course you know better than he)
@@MrThephonypope : People aren't usually brought into a philosophical tradition. Any introductory philosophy education will always start by surveying a broad range of philosophical positions. People are indoctrinated into religions, but they're not usually indoctrinated into philosophies. If PP is religious then perhaps his realism might be motivated by religious considerations, and he probably was brought into his religion, but religions don't dictate moral realism. If he's a moral realist for religious reasons, then it's most likely because he finds realism to be a comfortable fit with his religion. "You're basically just saying he's too lazy or cowardly to face the "truth" (that of course you know better than he)." Not at all. Moral realism is the correct position. The reason why realist ethical theories are intuitive and easy is because they require less mental gymnastics to confuse people into being anti-realist.
@@Ansatz66 I think you're missing the point of what I was saying, I have no stake or opinion on why PP would state he's a moral realist, once again I make no claim about whether he has sufficient reasoning to hold that position. I just think your explanation for it is weak and groundless If one wants to know why he holds the opinions he does, a better bet would be to ask him rather than ask the opinion of youtube commentators. At least provide some reasoning for your claim, it just seems very uncharitable to chalk it all up to him being too lazy, intellectually deficient or cowardly to take the other position
@@MrThephonypope I think you misunderstood what Ansatz66 was claiming. He's not making a presumption that PPs motivation is laziness, intellectually deficient, or cowardly. He's making a claim about moral realism and why he thinks anyone in general would accept it; ie, it's the simplest and most intuitive explanation. I think he's claiming that it's more often the case that the simple solution is the correct one. It sounds like you are presuming that to accept the simplest explanation for some phenomena (in this case morality) one must be lazy, intellectually deficient, or cowardly. It might just be the case that the simplest explanation is the correct one.
The way I see it is that morality is ultimately utilitarian in the sense that pretty much every moral system is concerned with the wellbeing of the most people over the longest period of time. The problem is that we must behave in a more deontological way as we don't have access or a great enough understanding of reality to predict the consequences of our actions. Utilitarianism is an absolute non starter as a cultural ethic for mainly this reason. I'm sure there are problems with this and would love for someone to have a go at picking it apart.
PP was way to sleepy here, at least in the latter 2 hours. What i got from his argument is that what we think is the understanding of our personal desire/interest is in fact not an understandable or thinkable thing at all but an imperfect expression of the Absolute's/genus'/community's desire, so the most rational way to attain what we (as Absolute or whatever) desire is to overcome this one-sidedness through reason and communication.
He is pretty much making psychoanalytic point. To be a subject you have to objectify yourself so others can "grasp" you and when you grasp that others grasp you, you can grasp that you are a subject
re: Jean in the café and nothingness providing knowledge, you're equivocating between nothingness as the absence of a particular thing in the context of existence in general and the nothingness as some unthinkable void. You can't universalize or generalize from one to the other. "Nothing" is impossible and the contradiction that demonstrates this is the absence of necessary objects/entities. Chairs can be used as tables ;-)
gotta be an "inspired" error theorist. get some nietzsche, cornel west, & maggie nelson going on to balance out your wittgenstein and van fraassen sadboi vibes
Re: red & green all over. Two individuals can report two different experiences based on differing perceptual apparatus. If you then refine the definition of red to the wavelength of light that is 650 nm then it isn't clear that you can say anything is red all over. Is it the contention that literally every part of the object is reflecting precisely that wavelength over the period of time it takes your perceptual system to identify it? So maybe you're just saying something can't be in this range but also in a very different range...but this is all just a convention to say one range is red vs. green which is fine and sure it applies in many cases but to universalize it a reify it as some necessary property isn't warranted. Quantum processes alone would guarantee that some photons would spontaneously attain different energy states even when reflected off the same substance...so what are you really saying? Just that the justification for saying something is reflecting light of a particular wavelength is the readout on the measuring device...which is justified by appeal to other material facts and on and on.
@@KaneB I don't think we can extrapolate from the weird nature of self referential statements to anything else. True contradictions would make reality incoherent if found anywhere else.
@@TheologyUnleashed There isn't any extrapolation required here. If there are universal laws of logic, they need to cover the weird self-referential statements as well. If the Liar is a true contradiction, then it's a counterexample to the Law of Non-Contradiction, and it shows that there are circumstances where we reason in accordance with some sort of paraconsistent logic. The fact, if it is a fact, that true contradictions cannot hold in other domains doesn't change that. (My own view is that there are situations where the world itself would be best described using contradictory propositions. As it happens, we don't currently have any empirical evidence that such situations obtain. So I agree that the world isn't contradictory, but that's on the basis of empirical considerations, not a priori reasoning.)
Kane, you strike me as an honest person who is actually trying to understand what is there. Pp seems like he is trying to make something that is not there. His game seems futile other then it obfuscates reality and leaves him, and his type, the high priests of humanity.
Ah the irony of error theory. Uses logic to supposedly falsify moral statements and then turns around assumes on face value that no statement can ever be made that is true. And that assumption is based on arguments from incredulity.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
The full discussion on Perspective Philosophy's channel: ua-cam.com/video/zEqQqWUuf1o/v-deo.html
A Philosopher’s favourite phrase: “It depends what you mean by ...?”
Has he considered he might be a psychopath? Seeing an animal suffering and not feeling anything one way or another is indicative of psychopathy.
I gotta be honest, I dont understand what PP is saying a lot of the time. I try very hard to be charitable to continental philosophy, but it is hard to resist the feeling sometimes that the lack of clarity is masking a lack of content. I appreciated the conversation btw, I do not want to be rude to PP.
It's good that someone else noticed the way PP seems to ramble aimlessly instead of making clear points. This is why it is so important for philosophers to study formal logic, so that they can think and communicate with clarity and precision. Philosophy may not seem like the domain of mathematicians, but philosophy without mathematical precision leads to indecipherable nonsense. Formal logic was invented for exactly this reason.
@@Ansatz66 lol I have no issue understanding him (but I do recognize his habit of trailing off at times), but I think that would have to do more with the literature I interact with rather than me not studying formal logic like him.
I think PP has a clear argument behind what he says, but it's Hegelian and not easily stated, and I agree, he doesn't make it easier. Sometimes I really see his position with some clarity and it seems to make sense, then it fades and I lose it. I'm no expert on Hegel though.
@@neoepicurean3772 its totally possible I just don't have the necessary background knowledge. I have done minimal study on Hegel
He was quite clear. Though, I'm sure it'd pay to have a background in the content being discussed.
If you can imagine something having two colors simultaneously then why cant you imagine an object having two different shapes simultaneously?
Imagine a red circle in front of a green background. Now imagine a red square that fits perfectly inside the circle such that the four corners are touching the circle. Now take the parts of the circle that are not covered by the square and make them both red and green all over. There, you have just imagined an object that is both circular and square. The circular square or squarish circle is red and the background is green
Also whats the limit of your ability to see diferrent colors simulatenously? Can you imagine something having 10 different colors?
I initially thought he was asking how we know that there is an identity in the 1st place. For example, why can't a red mug also be a black door or a green table and so on. This seems obvious intuitively, but still seems to be assumed in the point PP made about Hegel's being and non being.
But then he didn't actually make this point. Rather, he only asked about 2 colours simultaneously existing, and that this would not be applicable to 2 shapes simultaneously existing.
The whole chocolate cake section is comic gold. The long pause while he writes premise 1, Kane's face while waiting. There are so many moments in this that could be selectively edited to invalidate philosophical conversations, but in truth. ...it was a great conversation
Nice one pointing out that you have many ways to getting to error theory, my ethics professor is Richard Joyce, and always emphasises this against realists.
Very cool. Love Joyce's work!
PP is clearly a smart guy but his speech is so scattered and discursive I can barely follow anything he says
More like a high tier math professor lol the writings and formulas are what matter, not small talk
@@Junksaint : Math is based entirely in precision of meaning, with particular symbols used in particular places to achieve an exactly intended effect. Some people may not enjoy learning about advanced math, but math does everything it can to be precise and clear. PP seems to have the opposite goal with his stream-of-consciousness style of philosophy where he seems to just say whatever comes to mind with no order or rules. Perhaps doing this is partially a consequence of being an idealist, since it makes him think that we can learn about the world from thought alone and so every random thought that passes through his mind could have meaning, and therefore he might obscure some important truth by forcing his thoughts into an unnatural order.
he's just scottish
@@blakaligula3745 he's from Northern England tho
@@RitiksProductions listen, I'm american and northern england is basically scotland to me. The accent sounds the same
It seems like perspective philosophy is constantly trying to show off his erudition in philosophy
So when I watched Kane's video on veganism I thought to myself "interesting, my view on metaethics might share more in common with Kane's than I thought", but after watching this it seems not. Am I taking Kane correctly here if I paraphrase his reasoning about veganism to be a kind of persuasion by appealing to his audience's propensity to believe they are reasoning but actually are not?
If that is the case, I have two questions. 1. Why choose contractarianism as the basis rather than something else. 2. How could fake reasoning about propositions that are in reality always false, successfully produce persuasion?
If someone said "Red is the best color", and I responded rhetorically with "I don't think so, have you considered that red is the color of injury and gore, so it can't be the best" I don't see how this could have any hope of producing persuasion.
I think people engage in moral reasoning. You can reason with false propositions. For instance: if the moon is made of cheese, then the moon is edible; the moon is made of cheese; therefore, the moon is edible. Or consider how people might engage in reasoning about the motivations of fictional characters ("here's why the villain didn't just kill James Bond when he had the chance...")
I thought I answered question (1) during the discussion. I took a contractarian line because (a) it's a useful way to approach moral thinking, which many people find plausible for reasons independent of anything to do with the animals issue while (b) prima facie, it denies animals moral standing, which is the view I was trying to promote.
As for question (2), I'm happy to leave that one to the psychologists. I don't know exactly why people are swayed by moral thinking, but it would seem that many of us are, even those of us who are firm antirealists. Moral thinking is presumably a product of evolutionary pressure for cooperative behaviour, which is then further ingrained by a host of social factors.
You should get Michael Huemer on the channel to discuss meta ethics. He’s a philosopher with a decent online following who has written about meta ethics, and he’s a moral realist who probably has his position developed a bit more than PP here. It would be an interesting discussion, and I’m sure you’d get some followers from it. He’d also probably go on since he’s done a lot of podcast interviews recently.
@shark That’s not his entire position-or at least it’s not the entire argument-and I’m not sure that it’s unsatisfying. He also tries to explain why every other logically possible type of meta-ethical theory is wrong, which would imply that his is right.
But even if all of his work was just “it’s obvious bro”, that wouldn’t be unsatisfying (to me at least) because there are several other things where appealing to obviousness seems best. For example, axioms in math, or basic facts about your conscious experience.
I guess if you don’t agree that appealing to obviousness in those cases is a good justification, then I’d see why you think his meta ethical views are unsatisfying.
I watched his realism debate with lance bush published recently, and he seemed very out of depth in that. I got the impression that his philosophy is much less developed than PPs in that debate.
A clear example would be PP discussing the Hegelian concept of being and nonbeing here (or even the Parmenidean concept), which is mostly just taken as obvious or for granted (even in conversations where it is relevant to be discussed).
Please tell me PP explained why he’s a moral realist here
It's probably because all the most intuitive and easiest metaethical theories are realist theories, so moral realism is a very comfortable fit for many people.
@@Ansatz66 Not saying he has sufficient reasoning hold his position rightfully...
...but I'm pretty sure that isn't his reason, and is rather telling that you chose to attribute it thus
You'd probably have a better chance at being right if you said something like "it is in the tradition in which he was brought into philosophy" or something but you're basically just saying he's too lazy or cowardly to face the "truth" (that of course you know better than he)
@@MrThephonypope : People aren't usually brought into a philosophical tradition. Any introductory philosophy education will always start by surveying a broad range of philosophical positions. People are indoctrinated into religions, but they're not usually indoctrinated into philosophies. If PP is religious then perhaps his realism might be motivated by religious considerations, and he probably was brought into his religion, but religions don't dictate moral realism. If he's a moral realist for religious reasons, then it's most likely because he finds realism to be a comfortable fit with his religion.
"You're basically just saying he's too lazy or cowardly to face the "truth" (that of course you know better than he)."
Not at all. Moral realism is the correct position. The reason why realist ethical theories are intuitive and easy is because they require less mental gymnastics to confuse people into being anti-realist.
@@Ansatz66 I think you're missing the point of what I was saying, I have no stake or opinion on why PP would state he's a moral realist, once again I make no claim about whether he has sufficient reasoning to hold that position. I just think your explanation for it is weak and groundless
If one wants to know why he holds the opinions he does, a better bet would be to ask him rather than ask the opinion of youtube commentators. At least provide some reasoning for your claim, it just seems very uncharitable to chalk it all up to him being too lazy, intellectually deficient or cowardly to take the other position
@@MrThephonypope I think you misunderstood what Ansatz66 was claiming. He's not making a presumption that PPs motivation is laziness, intellectually deficient, or cowardly. He's making a claim about moral realism and why he thinks anyone in general would accept it; ie, it's the simplest and most intuitive explanation.
I think he's claiming that it's more often the case that the simple solution is the correct one. It sounds like you are presuming that to accept the simplest explanation for some phenomena (in this case morality) one must be lazy, intellectually deficient, or cowardly. It might just be the case that the simplest explanation is the correct one.
The way I see it is that morality is ultimately utilitarian in the sense that pretty much every moral system is concerned with the wellbeing of the most people over the longest period of time. The problem is that we must behave in a more deontological way as we don't have access or a great enough understanding of reality to predict the consequences of our actions. Utilitarianism is an absolute non starter as a cultural ethic for mainly this reason.
I'm sure there are problems with this and would love for someone to have a go at picking it apart.
PP was way to sleepy here, at least in the latter 2 hours. What i got from his argument is that what we think is the understanding of our personal desire/interest is in fact not an understandable or thinkable thing at all but an imperfect expression of the Absolute's/genus'/community's desire, so the most rational way to attain what we (as Absolute or whatever) desire is to overcome this one-sidedness through reason and communication.
He is pretty much making psychoanalytic point. To be a subject you have to objectify yourself so others can "grasp" you and when you grasp that others grasp you, you can grasp that you are a subject
nice Video, very informing and entertaining. And also i have to thank you for your introduction videos on philosophy very informing.
re: Jean in the café and nothingness providing knowledge, you're equivocating between nothingness as the absence of a particular thing in the context of existence in general and the nothingness as some unthinkable void. You can't universalize or generalize from one to the other. "Nothing" is impossible and the contradiction that demonstrates this is the absence of necessary objects/entities. Chairs can be used as tables ;-)
gotta be an "inspired" error theorist. get some nietzsche, cornel west, & maggie nelson going on to balance out your wittgenstein and van fraassen sadboi vibes
Lmao
Re: red & green all over. Two individuals can report two different experiences based on differing perceptual apparatus. If you then refine the definition of red to the wavelength of light that is 650 nm then it isn't clear that you can say anything is red all over. Is it the contention that literally every part of the object is reflecting precisely that wavelength over the period of time it takes your perceptual system to identify it? So maybe you're just saying something can't be in this range but also in a very different range...but this is all just a convention to say one range is red vs. green which is fine and sure it applies in many cases but to universalize it a reify it as some necessary property isn't warranted. Quantum processes alone would guarantee that some photons would spontaneously attain different energy states even when reflected off the same substance...so what are you really saying? Just that the justification for saying something is reflecting light of a particular wavelength is the readout on the measuring device...which is justified by appeal to other material facts and on and on.
I think all the liar paradox shows is that you can do weird things with self referential statements.
It seems plausible to me that one of the weird things you can do with them is generate true contradictions.
@@KaneB I don't think we can extrapolate from the weird nature of self referential statements to anything else. True contradictions would make reality incoherent if found anywhere else.
@@TheologyUnleashed There isn't any extrapolation required here. If there are universal laws of logic, they need to cover the weird self-referential statements as well. If the Liar is a true contradiction, then it's a counterexample to the Law of Non-Contradiction, and it shows that there are circumstances where we reason in accordance with some sort of paraconsistent logic. The fact, if it is a fact, that true contradictions cannot hold in other domains doesn't change that.
(My own view is that there are situations where the world itself would be best described using contradictory propositions. As it happens, we don't currently have any empirical evidence that such situations obtain. So I agree that the world isn't contradictory, but that's on the basis of empirical considerations, not a priori reasoning.)
I’ve been looking forward to this 😎
Great Video
Any plans to upload your thoughts on Black Lives Matter as a Video for political philosophy
Kane, you strike me as an honest person who is actually trying to understand what is there. Pp seems like he is trying to make something that is not there. His game seems futile other then it obfuscates reality and leaves him, and his type, the high priests of humanity.
Ah the irony of error theory. Uses logic to supposedly falsify moral statements and then turns around assumes on face value that no statement can ever be made that is true. And that assumption is based on arguments from incredulity.