We spend a lot of time discussing reasons in this video. I clarify my concerns with how philosophers theorize about reasons in this video: ua-cam.com/video/gFhMBRyZ4fQ/v-deo.html
Say, I develop a theory of morality based on moral naturalism, and, upon further inspection I realize that the theory actually supports eugenics. Upon this realization I realize that this theory is not correct, because eugenics is immoral. In rejecting this theory, there is some evidence that I am using to count against supporting the theory. Therefore, I am not using the theory to evaluate moral propositions. In fact, I am using the evidence. Therefore, moral theories are simply frameworks I am using to describe this evidence. (This evidence can be certain emotional states, social facts, intuitions etc.) This evidence occurs in the natural world. Therefore, moral theories describe natural phenomena. Natural phenomena are "real" and express objective features of the world. Moral theories function to produce ethical sentences. Therefore, ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world. Hence, moral realism.
@@mrpickle6290 We only have access to reality subjectively and cannot confirm if objective facts exist. If reality is only accessible via a mind (subjectivity) It doesn’t follow that we would then be able to confirm the existence of objective facts (something independent or outside of the mind). If this is true It would follow that all subjective abstractions cannot be verified to be representations of objective reality. You must first prove that things exist independent of the mind to then prove that objective facts exist.
@@mrpickle6290but wouldn’t the belief that eugenics is wrong be a subjective one, and the “evidence” you’re describing is simply your subjective disapproval of eugenics? You don’t like the naturalist theory, because it supports eugenics, which is wrong, it seems to me that you’ve just dismissed the theory because it disagrees with your moral intuitions, which can very likely be explained as subjective feelings you have, rather than anything out there in the world. Allow me to play devils advocate, let’s say I accept a moral theory that advises eugenics, what’s stopping me from accepting the theory, if I lack the intuition that says eugenics is wrong, what makes it wrong?
@@mrpickle6290 eugenics wouldn't be immoral with that theory of morality. If you develop a moral theory that permits something that you dislike then you either A) Discard the theory because you made a mistake in the theory or B) accept the consequences of the theory. This could maybe be worked into a better argument but it falls apart very fast. 1. I construct a theory that describes the universe 2. I find a part of the universe that does not comply with my theory 3. I realise my theory is wrong. I go back and correct my theory to fit with the new evidence or I create an entirely new one. This would work in science, but when it comes to morality we morph our methodology. If I say ''I think rape is good'' then there is very little that you can do to convince me otherwise unless you appeal to my already existing framework and show that my framework is illogical. (I DO NOT SUPPORT RAPE FYI). In order to enforce and convince others of your moral framework you have to fulfil several factors, that being 1. Show that it solves the is-ought problem 2. Show that it is better for the person you are talking to given their nature 3. provide evidence of it.
well sure but thats the whole point on what the realist would disagree on, they are externalists about reasons. e.g. they would say someone has a reason to not beat his wife even if he has no internal reasons, which is a more intuitive result for the realist in this particular locale
Also, what would be a reason not reducable to a desire in respect to human behavior? I recognize that with statements like, "There's a reason this key fits this lock," we would be talking about descriptions of phenomenon in causal relationships to each other(which may or may not boil down to the desires of agents, in so far as we're not interested in running the full gambit of exploring why a person made the key and the lock in the first place); but it's not clear to me that a human could have any reason for any behavior that wouldn't reduce to a desire. I'd love to see someone try, but I get a distinct sense that upon closer inspections, whatever "non-desire" reason is provided we would find that reason motivated by some desire further down the line. "I drink because I'm thirsty", for example, is an incomplete explanatory account, since it's conceivable that a person might not drink even when thirsty and that the thirst and desire to quench it is tied to a desire to survive or aversion to pain/death. This seems like it would be the case with any behavioral reasoning.
Hi Kane. One question: do you think there are any social (political, so to speak) considerations that may have driven you to have an anit-realist view about morality?
@@hiker-uy1bi true, and maybe that has something to do with it. I could see how people who are naturally inclined to think morality isn't real would be less inclined to become moral philosophers. I honestly really only care about moral philosophy because of how common realism is and how puzzling that is to me.
@@Riskofdisconnect i think that it's because we literally grow up being told that 'you have to do x' or that 'x is bad' etcetera, and this is presented as if it was *true*:
"So maybe this actually means that you are one of the only people on earth" imagine saying this unironically in response to something as common as acting rebelliously on principle. my mind is blown.
Colour me surprised, but I always thought that desires are merely motivations to act one way or another, they are not reasons to act without other additional prompts/data. Moreover, what do you mean at 22.21 that we can be wrong about our desires? You surely can not mean that we are not clear about what satisfies a desire?
39:00 I don’t understand why an anti-realist would assume(grant) there are objectively good or bad states for the sake of following through with this argument. I just don’t get this.
I think the idea is that the antirealist only has to grant: (1) According to the realist, there are objectively good or bad states of affairs. That seems uncontroversial. (2) Antirealism could be wrong; i.e. as an antirealist, I could have make a mistake somewhere in my reasoning. Again, fairly uncontroversial; we are all fallible, after all. It follows from these that even if I'm an antirealist, I should grant that it is epistemically possible that there are objectively good or bad states of affairs. This is all Benne needs for his argument. (It will also be true that, by similar reasoning, the realist should grant that it is epistemically possible that there are no objectively good or bad states of affairs.)
@@KaneB thank you for your response. I’ve recently been listening Huemer’s argument along these lines and in both cases, I’m having difficulty seeing how they are ultimately showing there are any facts of the matter. It always seems to me they are conflating universal(in the descriptive sense) with objective. Huemer talks about evaluating normative props for truth apt-ness from a linguistic perspective which seems compelling so I’m thinking about that, but otherwise they’re just not getting me across the line. I have no formal training so admittedly, I’m fumbling my way through this. I appreciate your content; it’s very helpful to me as a hobbyist. Edit: and I will now re-listen to this with your explanation in mind
Kane B. Please add a "join" button to your youtube channel so that I can support you. I hate using patreon, it doesn't work for me. Plus, youtube channel memberships help build community.
Don‘t forget UA-cam gets a cut of that. Whilst offering little in return as opposed to Patreon. If you’re not interested in a return then why not donate directly which would mean Kane gets 100% of the amount.
At the end he said he was going to run back through his argument, but all he did was say let's seek moral knowledge, combined with the assertion that you have something to do in this life, as though that entails a motivator for seeking moral knowledge. That has yet to be shown. Listening to all this and I still don't know what a reason is other than the perception of one's own desire or inclination to engage in an action. A property of something can cause this in an agent, but it can also cause the opposite, or nothing. This is the simple difficulty in assigning a concept like a goodness or badness to said property, when those are analytically exclusive concepts, and so can't be applicable universally as a property within the same thing without a contradiction issue. Anti-realism is much more elegant and doesn't suffer from these logical flaws.
I think it would help the metaethics debate so much if we could really get to the root meaning of the idea of objective and precisely how anyone knows what it is. I see this as an imaginary, unattainable concept in the area of morality. And yet it pervades the debate.
It's been a while, but I think in Michael Huemer's book on moral intuitionism, he defines objective as "not subjective" (they're a binary, so anything not subjective is objective). He then defined "subjective" as properties which are "constituently dependent upon mental events". "Constituently dependent" means they are "made up of" mental events. To understand the concept, imagine a brick wall. The construction of the brick wall is dependent upon both the bricklayer and the bricks. The dependence upon the bricklayer is "causal dependence", he is the means by which the bricks are stacked into a wall. Without him, the wall wouldn't be built, but he's not "a part of" the wall itself. The dependence upon the bricks is "Constituent dependence", they are what constitute the wall. Without them, the wall ceases to exist. For why it is important to define "subjective" properties as specifically *constituently* dependent on mental events, consider the placebo effect. A person may have a reduction in the physical markers of a disease process (e.g. tumor size) due to a mental event (e.g. positive thinking). Even if this is mediated by physical events (e.g. decreased release of cortisol leading to increase in immune function, or something), the reduction of the tumor size is still *casually* dependent upon their mental state, but we wouldn't want to say their tumor is *subjectively* shrinking. For an example of a property which is constituently dependent upon mental events (i.e. subjective), consider humor. For a joke to be "funny", that means it has the property of people finding it humorous. It's inconceivable that there could be a very funny joke which nobody in the world finds humorous, just as it's inconceivable that there could be a brick wall without any bricks. The "funniness" of a joke is made out of people's humor responses to it (i.e. a joke is funny iff it gets laughs), so "funniness" is subjective. The length of a joke (how long it takes to tell) is objective, nobody's thoughts make up time. Note the length of the joke might be *relative* to the teller (i.e. it takes longer for some people to tell than others), but the length in each case is objective.
@@donanderson3653 I can grasp this explanation. And in the metaethics discussion see its implications that there is nothing either right or wrong for rightness and wrongness are expressions of minds. There is no objectivity about it.
agree with your concern. objective = mind independent. subjective = contingent on mind. best way to provide evidence for a hypothesis is novel testible predictions.
Moral relativism arises from ontological skepticism, which is fundamentally an absurd premise that defies reasonableness given the harsh reality of life. You can be upset at gravity, but the moment you fall from a plane at 3000 ft is the moment you should kiss your bacon goodbye. Gravity just exists, outside of you. Whether you are capable of coming to the reasonable conclusion that it does is irrelevant. Such is also the case with moral frameworks, which generally arise from a number of social dynamic considerations, or from religious dogma, but never from a vacuum.
Moral realism is I think simply stating that there is a moral world ”out there” that tells us something real about the status of our actions and ourselves, independent of our preferences. Any good morality tale is supposed to show this if it is to be successful in its purpose.
Even accepting the assumptions in Bens thesis that are discussed in the video, it seems to me that Ben also makes a (wrongful) assumption about congruency of subjective goodness and objective goodness; if we don’t know what objective moral knowledge / goodness entails, we cannot not that it is compatible with our subjective ends, right? In which case what is subjectively good does not correspond with what is objectively good, so maximising “subjectively expected objective moral goodness” isn’t necessarily subjectively desirable. And since we don’t know if objective goodness exist, motivation for seeking such knowledge needs to come from subjective desires / reasons (1st person reasons, as I think Ben calls them) for the argument to work.
As I understand it, a crucial part of his argument is that you will have a greater than 50% credence that, if you were to discover the objective moral facts, you would act in accordance with them. That is, you have a greater than 50% credence that you will be motivated to act in accordance with the moral facts. If you don't have a greater than 50% credence in that, his argument doesn't go through.
Yeah I agree. I don’t think that assumption is compatible with the emphasis Ben places on taking a moral scepticism as a starting point point though, because it already vaguely presupposes the content of objective moral goodness. Or at least it seems unlikely from that assumption that moral goodness is something that would be considered horrible by regular people
As a moral nihilist(no, not for any edgy reasons like wanting to treat people poorly etc), I would definitely contend the statement, "torturing babies is wrong". Not because I think there aren't good reasons or desires to object to the torture of babies, but because I think the statement is linguistically speaking obtuse and the term "wrong", confounding and unnecessary. There are plenty of accurate descriptors for "torturing babies" that you can make which would consistute fair reasons for most humans to feel opposed to the torture of babies - non of which are made apparent or laid out intellectually when using moralistic language. For example, torturing babies is likely in most use-cases anti-social, cruel and sadistic. Higher sentience social animals like the human ape have evolved to find this displeasing. The fact that moralists are so concerned about using vague moral language to describe this, and as a means of castigating people who reject the use of such language, betrays what the real purpose behind the moral language is in the first place and what the real concern of moralists is: Not an actual analytical appreciation of behavior, values and desires in conflict and/or how to best achieve pluralistic and functional harmony between people, but the actual simulacran judgement of right/good and wrong/bad/evil, in and of themselves. Likely, as means of exercising social control. I.E using the ambiguous nature of the terms to piggy-back off of whatever associations people draw from them(irrespective of what actually informs the terms individually) to elicit certain responses favorable to their desires and values. For example, maybe you want to define "wrong" as that which is anti-social, cruel and sadistic, and I suppose that might seem fine on the surface. However, it begs the question what service the term "wrong" actually provides and why you wouldn't just speak plainly. To me, the answer seems obvious. It's because the real pay-off is in the associations of the term rather than what it actually refers to. After all, I could merely reject your definition, or say that I don't care whether I'm being anti-social, cruel or sadistic; at which point most moralists would likely simply say, "well, that would make you evil". Therein lies the silliness of the exercise. After all, what the moralist is asserting at that point is merely a masked tautology. I.E "that would make you anti-social, cruel and sadistic". We already knew this, hence that conclusion was entirely unnecessary. The fact that it was made anyways then, suggest again that the moralist is more concerned with their ability to use the terms as they exist in common parlance to provoke moral consensus and outrage against their opponent rather than engage with the true substance of what is being said. It is not clear to me at all what most moralists refer to when they use the terms "right" and "wrong"(especially when they're realists) and it's made even less clear when they actually try to define them since I'm left to wonder why they used them in a first place. Though, if I were to venture a guess(aside from the simulacran piggy-back), they probably subconsciously recognize that not using them would betray how hollow their actual values are in a lot of cases. For example, suppose Christians stopped using "good" and "evil" and instead said what those words refer to in their theology - consistent/inconsistent with the will/nature of god - then clearly any interlocutor could simply say, "well I don't care about God's will/nature" and move on with their day. Same is true for Utilitarians or Deontologists(in response to a "I don't give a shit about the "greater good" or about your supposed "virtues""). This is a non-issue for Nihilists, because we'll just meet every person where they're at. Just like I have my values and desires, you have yours. In so far as they don't come into conflict, there is no problem. If they do, we'll just have to solve it either through discourse or violence. Obviously, this is literally and equally true for any moralist when faced with conflicting values and desires. The only distinction is that the Nihilist don't need to obscure this and are spared having to engage in a pointless and illusory conversation that are basically just intellectualized obfuscations of name-calling and character assassinations. 😅
Hi kane why do you think that dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal of the unholy trinity of Parmendean/Platonic/Aristotlean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and it's close ally, the epistemic fallacy with it's ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kiekegaardian and Nietszhean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard
@@37saya42 I know, I just did and I take it back. the guy kane was talking to made some really silly points especially at the "seeking moral knowledge" part of the convo
I am an error theorist but I think Ben makes some good arguments. While I agree with both the metaphysical argument and the epistemic argument against moral realism, these beliefs are based on a posteriori knowledge. I cannot eliminate the possibility that there are either natural or non-natural moral facts that are true using only my observations. Therefore there is a possibility that intrinsically compelling moral facts, which I gather is similar to what Ben calls "moral knowledge", exist. I think Ben gets a little lost when he spends so much time discussing what moral knowledge could be and how to acquire it. This, in my opinion, is irrelevant to the meta-ethical discussion. I think he would have a stronger argument had he said "all of our normative claims and intuitions are subjective (desire-dependent), and therefore morally inert. There is a possible world where we have access to moral knowledge and are therefore capable of moral goodness. This world is preferable to morally inert worlds and it is preferable to realize it." If all known moral facts are false anyways so we don't have any desire-independent reasons to not maximize the probability that we obtain moral knowledge, whether that is by "seeking" or otherwise. Leave the details to normative ethicists. Even if you strongly suspect that there are no true moral facts, you don't really lose anything by trying to obtain moral knowledge while you stand to gain a lot. Of course any moral knowledge you find is very likely to be orthogonal to your moral intuitions and judgment so it is probably unsatisfactory to many people. I am not a philosopher so I'm sure there are numerous mistakes with the way I formulated this argument. It is essentially an ontological argument and a weak form of moral realism, but I do find it persuasive.
Having ' independent reasons based on a position aka stans begs the question. Where is the individual moral agent situated in the social identity stratification. So one agent might minimally disagree whilst the other strongly which entails soft moral realism qua social position. The up shot is only God all things equal could be a moral realist. So in the case of prudential reasons qua third person a moral realist defaults ultimately to God as moral community and takes on vested powers qua mystery connection with God. However what arises from hard moral authoritarian ism are a plethora of infinity paradox's that flow on to moral certainty. If moral certainty entails minimally desire independent reasons then moral interdependent reasons seems necessary from both first and third person perspectives. So the social category ' doctor of medicine' moral interdependent reasons as having social comparative rational roles that are desire independent reasons. So one scientist may have a desire to be CEO of the corporation independent of the reason for collaborative research in creating God like AI. So interdependent reasons by necessary involve more than one individual but independent reasons involve social isolation aka narcissistic desire for power within a social structure. This further suggests a form of quasi moral realism to account for a class of persons that are part of an imaged moral community that includes themselves as subjective moral objective ists as having God like insight ( religious high net worth individuals) which is possible but with the caveat of being part of a social structure that fails on accounts that justifies moral realism. However by being part of a cohort of seekers of moral knowledge the subjective moral realist has a valid claim in being not alone in the quest and therefore there is a sense of realism that bolsters self esteem. This entails moral luck by being lucky to be as it were chosen to know. The quasi element holds true due to the notion of there world religions that are not identically morally aligned and so any subject if joining two religious movements would create a syncretic system that entails by necessary correction being a sceptic. So in this sense moral realism has a family resemblance with art realism. A cohort may claim to know true beauty but others see it as art brut. Art critics justification is based on an appeal to the art work being the best in a style whist the moral critics appeal to a moral claim being clear and reasonable universally does suggest a moral community but not necessarily communities at large. However once the subject believes Irricogible moral facts in a social category their only reasonable goal is to enforce it outside the group as in a international human rights convention.
@@mark110292 Oh yeah, maybe I got a bit fired up when I reading some of the comments during that part of the discussion. The people in the chat were kinda triggering me because I'm so sensitive about this topic lol
We spend a lot of time discussing reasons in this video. I clarify my concerns with how philosophers theorize about reasons in this video: ua-cam.com/video/gFhMBRyZ4fQ/v-deo.html
That was a good video. I hope to see more of this myself.
Looking forward to listening!
And what's the judgment?
I guess I will continue to wait for someone to make moral realism make sense.
Say, I develop a theory of morality based on moral naturalism, and, upon further inspection I realize that the theory actually supports eugenics.
Upon this realization I realize that this theory is not correct, because eugenics is immoral.
In rejecting this theory, there is some evidence that I am using to count against supporting the theory.
Therefore, I am not using the theory to evaluate moral propositions. In fact, I am using the evidence.
Therefore, moral theories are simply frameworks I am using to describe this evidence. (This evidence can be certain emotional states, social facts, intuitions etc.)
This evidence occurs in the natural world.
Therefore, moral theories describe natural phenomena.
Natural phenomena are "real" and express objective features of the world.
Moral theories function to produce ethical sentences.
Therefore, ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world.
Hence, moral realism.
@@mrpickle6290 We only have access to reality subjectively and cannot confirm if objective facts exist. If reality is only accessible via a mind (subjectivity) It doesn’t follow that we would then be able to confirm the existence of objective facts (something independent or outside of the mind). If this is true It would follow that all subjective abstractions cannot be verified to be representations of objective reality. You must first prove that things exist independent of the mind to then prove that objective facts exist.
@@ArbitaryExistence Can you prove that the mind exists?
@@mrpickle6290but wouldn’t the belief that eugenics is wrong be a subjective one, and the “evidence” you’re describing is simply your subjective disapproval of eugenics? You don’t like the naturalist theory, because it supports eugenics, which is wrong, it seems to me that you’ve just dismissed the theory because it disagrees with your moral intuitions, which can very likely be explained as subjective feelings you have, rather than anything out there in the world. Allow me to play devils advocate, let’s say I accept a moral theory that advises eugenics, what’s stopping me from accepting the theory, if I lack the intuition that says eugenics is wrong, what makes it wrong?
@@mrpickle6290 eugenics wouldn't be immoral with that theory of morality. If you develop a moral theory that permits something that you dislike then you either A) Discard the theory because you made a mistake in the theory or B) accept the consequences of the theory.
This could maybe be worked into a better argument but it falls apart very fast.
1. I construct a theory that describes the universe
2. I find a part of the universe that does not comply with my theory
3. I realise my theory is wrong. I go back and correct my theory to fit with the new evidence or I create an entirely new one.
This would work in science, but when it comes to morality we morph our methodology. If I say ''I think rape is good'' then there is very little that you can do to convince me otherwise unless you appeal to my already existing framework and show that my framework is illogical. (I DO NOT SUPPORT RAPE FYI).
In order to enforce and convince others of your moral framework you have to fulfil several factors, that being 1. Show that it solves the is-ought problem 2. Show that it is better for the person you are talking to given their nature 3. provide evidence of it.
It seems to me that as soon as we start talking about reasons, we have become stance dependent, and therefore lose objectivity
I don't get the difficulty people have with accepting that.
well sure but thats the whole point on what the realist would disagree on, they are externalists about reasons. e.g. they would say someone has a reason to not beat his wife even if he has no internal reasons, which is a more intuitive result for the realist in this particular locale
@@yyzzyysszznn what is the external reason?
@@uninspired3583 well they would say its the moral reason as this isnt an argument for moral realism but an entailment of the position
@@yyzzyysszznn I'm not looking for a categorical description, what is the actual external reason?
Nice argument moral realist, unfortunately my thirst for baby blood is unquenchable and deeply rooted in my system of desires
Also, what would be a reason not reducable to a desire in respect to human behavior?
I recognize that with statements like, "There's a reason this key fits this lock," we would be talking about descriptions of phenomenon in causal relationships to each other(which may or may not boil down to the desires of agents, in so far as we're not interested in running the full gambit of exploring why a person made the key and the lock in the first place); but it's not clear to me that a human could have any reason for any behavior that wouldn't reduce to a desire.
I'd love to see someone try, but I get a distinct sense that upon closer inspections, whatever "non-desire" reason is provided we would find that reason motivated by some desire further down the line.
"I drink because I'm thirsty", for example, is an incomplete explanatory account, since it's conceivable that a person might not drink even when thirsty and that the thirst and desire to quench it is tied to a desire to survive or aversion to pain/death. This seems like it would be the case with any behavioral reasoning.
Hi Kane.
One question: do you think there are any social (political, so to speak) considerations that may have driven you to have an anit-realist view about morality?
Not as far as I can recall. I'm pretty sure I was a moral antirealist before I formed any particular political views.
@@KaneB Why do you think many people view moral realism as the more intuitive of the two? I've always wondered that.
@@Riskofdisconnect "people"
you mean "philosophers"
@@hiker-uy1bi true, and maybe that has something to do with it. I could see how people who are naturally inclined to think morality isn't real would be less inclined to become moral philosophers. I honestly really only care about moral philosophy because of how common realism is and how puzzling that is to me.
@@Riskofdisconnect i think that it's because we literally grow up being told that 'you have to do x' or that 'x is bad' etcetera, and this is presented as if it was *true*:
"So maybe this actually means that you are one of the only people on earth" imagine saying this unironically in response to something as common as acting rebelliously on principle. my mind is blown.
What?
The ending speech at around 1:53:30 by Bilosophy is one of the most nonsensical things I've ever listened to.
is his argument: change your bias toward moral realism and it will become more likely to be true?
Colour me surprised, but I always thought that desires are merely motivations to act one way or another, they are not reasons to act without other additional prompts/data. Moreover, what do you mean at 22.21 that we can be wrong about our desires? You surely can not mean that we are not clear about what satisfies a desire?
This was easily the worst attempt at an argument for moral realism I come across in the last couple of years. It's astonishing.
39:00 I don’t understand why an anti-realist would assume(grant) there are objectively good or bad states for the sake of following through with this argument. I just don’t get this.
I think the idea is that the antirealist only has to grant:
(1) According to the realist, there are objectively good or bad states of affairs. That seems uncontroversial.
(2) Antirealism could be wrong; i.e. as an antirealist, I could have make a mistake somewhere in my reasoning. Again, fairly uncontroversial; we are all fallible, after all.
It follows from these that even if I'm an antirealist, I should grant that it is epistemically possible that there are objectively good or bad states of affairs. This is all Benne needs for his argument. (It will also be true that, by similar reasoning, the realist should grant that it is epistemically possible that there are no objectively good or bad states of affairs.)
@@KaneB thank you for your response. I’ve recently been listening Huemer’s argument along these lines and in both cases, I’m having difficulty seeing how they are ultimately showing there are any facts of the matter. It always seems to me they are conflating universal(in the descriptive sense) with objective. Huemer talks about evaluating normative props for truth apt-ness from a linguistic perspective which seems compelling so I’m thinking about that, but otherwise they’re just not getting me across the line. I have no formal training so admittedly, I’m fumbling my way through this. I appreciate your content; it’s very helpful to me as a hobbyist.
Edit: and I will now re-listen to this with your explanation in mind
The Kane B realism redemption arc continues
what the arc where my position remains exactly what it was before lol
You can't see the arc from inside of it, Kane
@@aaronchipp-miller9608 What aspects of my views do you think indicate a shift towards moral realism? I'm genuinely curious.
@@KaneB I'm just messing around. Apparently the joke didn't land lol
I guess he needs a sense of humor redemption arc as well
Kane B. Please add a "join" button to your youtube channel so that I can support you. I hate using patreon, it doesn't work for me. Plus, youtube channel memberships help build community.
I don't actually know what that is lol. I will look into how to set it up.
Ah, the "memberships" thing. Yeah, I should be able to sort that out. Thanks for drawing my attention to this.
Don‘t forget UA-cam gets a cut of that.
Whilst offering little in return as opposed to Patreon.
If you’re not interested in a return then why not donate directly which would mean Kane gets 100% of the amount.
And it sincerely doesn’t build a community either.
Discord is better at that.
At the end he said he was going to run back through his argument, but all he did was say let's seek moral knowledge, combined with the assertion that you have something to do in this life, as though that entails a motivator for seeking moral knowledge. That has yet to be shown.
Listening to all this and I still don't know what a reason is other than the perception of one's own desire or inclination to engage in an action. A property of something can cause this in an agent, but it can also cause the opposite, or nothing. This is the simple difficulty in assigning a concept like a goodness or badness to said property, when those are analytically exclusive concepts, and so can't be applicable universally as a property within the same thing without a contradiction issue.
Anti-realism is much more elegant and doesn't suffer from these logical flaws.
I think it would help the metaethics debate so much if we could really get to the root meaning of the idea of objective and precisely how anyone knows what it is. I see this as an imaginary, unattainable concept in the area of morality. And yet it pervades the debate.
It's been a while, but I think in Michael Huemer's book on moral intuitionism, he defines objective as "not subjective" (they're a binary, so anything not subjective is objective). He then defined "subjective" as properties which are "constituently dependent upon mental events". "Constituently dependent" means they are "made up of" mental events.
To understand the concept, imagine a brick wall. The construction of the brick wall is dependent upon both the bricklayer and the bricks. The dependence upon the bricklayer is "causal dependence", he is the means by which the bricks are stacked into a wall. Without him, the wall wouldn't be built, but he's not "a part of" the wall itself. The dependence upon the bricks is "Constituent dependence", they are what constitute the wall. Without them, the wall ceases to exist.
For why it is important to define "subjective" properties as specifically *constituently* dependent on mental events, consider the placebo effect. A person may have a reduction in the physical markers of a disease process (e.g. tumor size) due to a mental event (e.g. positive thinking). Even if this is mediated by physical events (e.g. decreased release of cortisol leading to increase in immune function, or something), the reduction of the tumor size is still *casually* dependent upon their mental state, but we wouldn't want to say their tumor is *subjectively* shrinking.
For an example of a property which is constituently dependent upon mental events (i.e. subjective), consider humor. For a joke to be "funny", that means it has the property of people finding it humorous. It's inconceivable that there could be a very funny joke which nobody in the world finds humorous, just as it's inconceivable that there could be a brick wall without any bricks. The "funniness" of a joke is made out of people's humor responses to it (i.e. a joke is funny iff it gets laughs), so "funniness" is subjective. The length of a joke (how long it takes to tell) is objective, nobody's thoughts make up time. Note the length of the joke might be *relative* to the teller (i.e. it takes longer for some people to tell than others), but the length in each case is objective.
@@donanderson3653 I can grasp this explanation. And in the metaethics discussion see its implications that there is nothing either right or wrong for rightness and wrongness are expressions of minds. There is no objectivity about it.
agree with your concern. objective = mind independent. subjective = contingent on mind. best way to provide evidence for a hypothesis is novel testible predictions.
Moral relativism arises from ontological skepticism, which is fundamentally an absurd premise that defies reasonableness given the harsh reality of life.
You can be upset at gravity, but the moment you fall from a plane at 3000 ft is the moment you should kiss your bacon goodbye. Gravity just exists, outside of you. Whether you are capable of coming to the reasonable conclusion that it does is irrelevant. Such is also the case with moral frameworks, which generally arise from a number of social dynamic considerations, or from religious dogma, but never from a vacuum.
Moral realism is I think simply stating that there is a moral world ”out there” that tells us something real about the status of our actions and ourselves, independent of our preferences. Any good morality tale is supposed to show this if it is to be successful in its purpose.
I’m glad you could keep up Kane. As always happens when listening to moral realists I get confused and can’t follow the arguments.
Isn't this just a version of Huemer's ontological argument?
Even accepting the assumptions in Bens thesis that are discussed in the video, it seems to me that Ben also makes a (wrongful) assumption about congruency of subjective goodness and objective goodness; if we don’t know what objective moral knowledge / goodness entails, we cannot not that it is compatible with our subjective ends, right? In which case what is subjectively good does not correspond with what is objectively good, so maximising “subjectively expected objective moral goodness” isn’t necessarily subjectively desirable. And since we don’t know if objective goodness exist, motivation for seeking such knowledge needs to come from subjective desires / reasons (1st person reasons, as I think Ben calls them) for the argument to work.
As I understand it, a crucial part of his argument is that you will have a greater than 50% credence that, if you were to discover the objective moral facts, you would act in accordance with them. That is, you have a greater than 50% credence that you will be motivated to act in accordance with the moral facts. If you don't have a greater than 50% credence in that, his argument doesn't go through.
Yeah I agree. I don’t think that assumption is compatible with the emphasis Ben places on taking a moral scepticism as a starting point point though, because it already vaguely presupposes the content of objective moral goodness. Or at least it seems unlikely from that assumption that moral goodness is something that would be considered horrible by regular people
As a moral nihilist(no, not for any edgy reasons like wanting to treat people poorly etc), I would definitely contend the statement, "torturing babies is wrong". Not because I think there aren't good reasons or desires to object to the torture of babies, but because I think the statement is linguistically speaking obtuse and the term "wrong", confounding and unnecessary.
There are plenty of accurate descriptors for "torturing babies" that you can make which would consistute fair reasons for most humans to feel opposed to the torture of babies - non of which are made apparent or laid out intellectually when using moralistic language.
For example, torturing babies is likely in most use-cases anti-social, cruel and sadistic. Higher sentience social animals like the human ape have evolved to find this displeasing.
The fact that moralists are so concerned about using vague moral language to describe this, and as a means of castigating people who reject the use of such language, betrays what the real purpose behind the moral language is in the first place and what the real concern of moralists is:
Not an actual analytical appreciation of behavior, values and desires in conflict and/or how to best achieve pluralistic and functional harmony between people, but the actual simulacran judgement of right/good and wrong/bad/evil, in and of themselves. Likely, as means of exercising social control. I.E using the ambiguous nature of the terms to piggy-back off of whatever associations people draw from them(irrespective of what actually informs the terms individually) to elicit certain responses favorable to their desires and values.
For example, maybe you want to define "wrong" as that which is anti-social, cruel and sadistic, and I suppose that might seem fine on the surface. However, it begs the question what service the term "wrong" actually provides and why you wouldn't just speak plainly.
To me, the answer seems obvious. It's because the real pay-off is in the associations of the term rather than what it actually refers to. After all, I could merely reject your definition, or say that I don't care whether I'm being anti-social, cruel or sadistic; at which point most moralists would likely simply say, "well, that would make you evil".
Therein lies the silliness of the exercise. After all, what the moralist is asserting at that point is merely a masked tautology. I.E "that would make you anti-social, cruel and sadistic".
We already knew this, hence that conclusion was entirely unnecessary. The fact that it was made anyways then, suggest again that the moralist is more concerned with their ability to use the terms as they exist in common parlance to provoke moral consensus and outrage against their opponent rather than engage with the true substance of what is being said.
It is not clear to me at all what most moralists refer to when they use the terms "right" and "wrong"(especially when they're realists) and it's made even less clear when they actually try to define them since I'm left to wonder why they used them in a first place. Though, if I were to venture a guess(aside from the simulacran piggy-back), they probably subconsciously recognize that not using them would betray how hollow their actual values are in a lot of cases.
For example, suppose Christians stopped using "good" and "evil" and instead said what those words refer to in their theology - consistent/inconsistent with the will/nature of god - then clearly any interlocutor could simply say, "well I don't care about God's will/nature" and move on with their day.
Same is true for Utilitarians or Deontologists(in response to a "I don't give a shit about the "greater good" or about your supposed "virtues"").
This is a non-issue for Nihilists, because we'll just meet every person where they're at. Just like I have my values and desires, you have yours. In so far as they don't come into conflict, there is no problem. If they do, we'll just have to solve it either through discourse or violence. Obviously, this is literally and equally true for any moralist when faced with conflicting values and desires.
The only distinction is that the Nihilist don't need to obscure this and are spared having to engage in a pointless and illusory conversation that are basically just intellectualized obfuscations of name-calling and character assassinations. 😅
This is the best comment in this comment section so far
Hi kane why do you think that dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal of the unholy trinity of Parmendean/Platonic/Aristotlean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and it's close ally, the epistemic fallacy with it's ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kiekegaardian and Nietszhean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard
Errr could you rephrase this, but this time write it so a ten year old could understand
Nice I'd like to have a conversation about realism, too.
Woah great debate
blud aint even watch the video yet😭😭
@@37saya42 I know, I just did and I take it back. the guy kane was talking to made some really silly points especially at the "seeking moral knowledge" part of the convo
no video?
I have a high credence that staring into a void will reveal moral knowledge
Don’t do it. I tried it and now I’m a Kantian
@@hihello-sx1sx better that than a consequentialist
I am an error theorist but I think Ben makes some good arguments. While I agree with both the metaphysical argument and the epistemic argument against moral realism, these beliefs are based on a posteriori knowledge. I cannot eliminate the possibility that there are either natural or non-natural moral facts that are true using only my observations. Therefore there is a possibility that intrinsically compelling moral facts, which I gather is similar to what Ben calls "moral knowledge", exist.
I think Ben gets a little lost when he spends so much time discussing what moral knowledge could be and how to acquire it. This, in my opinion, is irrelevant to the meta-ethical discussion. I think he would have a stronger argument had he said "all of our normative claims and intuitions are subjective (desire-dependent), and therefore morally inert. There is a possible world where we have access to moral knowledge and are therefore capable of moral goodness. This world is preferable to morally inert worlds and it is preferable to realize it."
If all known moral facts are false anyways so we don't have any desire-independent reasons to not maximize the probability that we obtain moral knowledge, whether that is by "seeking" or otherwise. Leave the details to normative ethicists. Even if you strongly suspect that there are no true moral facts, you don't really lose anything by trying to obtain moral knowledge while you stand to gain a lot. Of course any moral knowledge you find is very likely to be orthogonal to your moral intuitions and judgment so it is probably unsatisfactory to many people.
I am not a philosopher so I'm sure there are numerous mistakes with the way I formulated this argument. It is essentially an ontological argument and a weak form of moral realism, but I do find it persuasive.
good podcast
@KaneB There is nothing wrong with being a moral realist.
Having ' independent reasons based on a position aka stans begs the question. Where is the individual moral agent situated in the social identity stratification. So one agent might minimally disagree whilst the other strongly which entails soft moral realism qua social position. The up shot is only God all things equal could be a moral realist. So in the case of prudential reasons qua third person a moral realist defaults ultimately to God as moral community and takes on vested powers qua mystery connection with God. However what arises from hard moral authoritarian ism are a plethora of infinity paradox's that flow on to moral certainty. If moral certainty entails minimally desire independent reasons then moral interdependent reasons seems necessary from both first and third person perspectives. So the social category ' doctor of medicine' moral interdependent reasons as having social comparative rational roles that are desire independent reasons. So one scientist may have a desire to be CEO of the corporation independent of the reason for collaborative research in creating God like AI. So interdependent reasons by necessary involve more than one individual but independent reasons involve social isolation aka narcissistic desire for power within a social structure. This further suggests a form of quasi moral realism to account for a class of persons that are part of an imaged moral community that includes themselves as subjective moral objective ists as having God like insight ( religious high net worth individuals) which is possible but with the caveat of being part of a social structure that fails on accounts that justifies moral realism. However by being part of a cohort of seekers of moral knowledge the subjective moral realist has a valid claim in being not alone in the quest and therefore there is a sense of realism that bolsters self esteem. This entails moral luck by being lucky to be as it were chosen to know. The quasi element holds true due to the notion of there world religions that are not identically morally aligned and so any subject if joining two religious movements would create a syncretic system that entails by necessary correction being a sceptic. So in this sense moral realism has a family resemblance with art realism. A cohort may claim to know true beauty but others see it as art brut. Art critics justification is based on an appeal to the art work being the best in a style whist the moral critics appeal to a moral claim being clear and reasonable universally does suggest a moral community but not necessarily communities at large. However once the subject believes Irricogible moral facts in a social category their only reasonable goal is to enforce it outside the group as in a international human rights convention.
Dr. B, uncool to lose your cool.
Did I lose my cool? It was a very civil conservation as far as I remember.
@@KaneB Perhaps I misread the tone of voice in the disambiguation regarding the term "reasons" earlyish in the exchange. My apologies.
@@mark110292 Oh yeah, maybe I got a bit fired up when I reading some of the comments during that part of the discussion. The people in the chat were kinda triggering me because I'm so sensitive about this topic lol
This was tedious and painful to listen to.