Articles mentioned in the video: Cowan, "Perceptual intuitionism" Cullison, "Moral perception" Faraci, "A hard look at moral perception" Reiland, "On experience moral properties" Werner, "Moral perception and the contents of experience"
Hi Kane. I am wondering what do you think about the following idea. When we ask the question can we perceive at least some type of value in the world, my immediate reaction to this is yes we can. Isn't it the case that in conscious interoception, when I feel pain, pleasure, discomfort, frustration, suffering - any sort of affective states - those have an intrinsic good or bad qualities to them? I mean when we talk about for instance health and disease or life and death, we tend to associate these concepts with positive or negative evaluations, but I think these are cases where we can understand a concept without any sort of evaluation. Death is the end of life processes and it is a further question whether or not it is bad or not, in what context, why etc. But when we talk about pain, pleasure, or other affective subjective experiences, separations between facts and values seems strange to me. In psychology, when we talk about valence, then it seems to me that valence is a real quality of experiences. In fact, I think that the first time when good and bad emerge in the world is with the emergence of affective subjective experiences. Pain is bad, no matter what anybody thinks about it, because it has this kind of negative, intrinsic quality of it - it is not just a matter of interpretation, construction, fiction that it is considered or evaluated as bad. Now it is a further question how we go about constructing a moral system out of these values, but my point is that at least some values seems perfectly objective and factual in a way that undermines the distinction between facts and values.
Hey, Kane, have you considered making a video on Colin Marshall's compassionate realism? It seems it is related to perceptualism. It seems you tend to focus on non-naturalist over naturalist solutions
Yes, we can perceive moral properties. This is what is happening when you watch a movie that is trying to convey a moral story, simply because you cannot understand what you are watching without it. let's not forget what Kant and Popper have already discovered: even concrete observations of objects are theory-impregnated, are perceived through a certain conceptual lens in the mind. There is nothing different in principle for moral perception, it is just that it is more abstract, and possibly, the causal make up of that perception depends on a type of evaluative understanding that comes from within, rather that photon's hitting the eye.
I've really been getting into your channel. I just started reading Aristotle, after homer, and plan to work my way forward from there. How the HELL do you get it all to sink in so well?
No. I just had a look at an overview of the book and I'm not sure how it's even related to moral perceptualism. I assume it's something in chapter 5? Giving it a quick skim it looks like a fairly standard kind of naturalist realism, and that does entail perceptualism if we think that the relevant natural properties are perceivable (it seems like we can perceive suffering and actions that cause suffering, for instance).
@@KaneB i find it relates, when they give their realist view and its proof, the experiential aspect of pain, and how, just like when we perceive a property of an object from an observation, which leads to a type of experiencing of that property, the property of badness is experienced when the object of pain is experienced. I merely found the discussion of moral perception very closely related to the discussion of moral experience.
In summary, have you know of any philosophical argument for the position that properties experienced, like how the property of color is experienced, the property of pain that can be experienced is badness (particularly of extreme pain or suffering, mainly because their a negative utilitarian).
@@HudBug Like I said, certain forms of naturalism entail moral perceptualism. The question is then just whether those forms of naturalism are plausible.
Proof that moral perception is bunk: moral reactions can be elicited by fiction, deception, or mistakes in interpretation. In contrast, if I perceive redness or a shape or a sound, I can't be wrong that I'm perceiving that. You can't trick someone into having an experience of redness, whereas you can trick someone into having an "experience" of "wrongness" (e.g. by telling them that a horrible thing happened). Or, you tell them that P believes X, then they see P telling Q that ~X. They will think that P has lied and will think it morally wrong, even if it wasn't wrong, since P doesn't believe X. Moral evaluation can only be a matter of interpretation (in fact, evaluation, which may be taken as a sort of interpretation), not perception.
Yeah, this kind of point strikes me as a serious problem for the moral perceptualist. There are a whole bunch of obvious disanalogies between moral experiences and normal perceptual experiences (and unusual perceptual experiences, for that matter!)
I agree that moral perceptualism is in deep shit but I don't think your point holds. You can in fact be deceived in your perception of a shape/colour. For example, geometric shapes (square, triangle, circle, etc) do not exist in nature. What we perceive as a triangle or a square is only an approximation of the abstract shape-- the shape we think we're perceiving. Further, some people hallucinate colours and sounds. And they really believe in what they're perceiving. It is nonetheless a false perception.
@@sisyphus645 The obvious difference is that an hallucination is a real phenomenon, even if it doesn't correspond to something in the world, and this is why it is a sort of failure or misfiring. But compare that to a vicious rumor. You hear a vicious rumor about someone and have a moral experience that something immoral has happened. And yet, the rumor was false: nothing bad happened. Merely by words, you had an experience without any hallucination or misfiring of any kind. That is, because you *believed* X, you had the moral experience. What other sort of perception is like that? Other perceptions are experiences first and about the world second (I experience X and so I believe Y). Moral experience is about the world first and experience second (I believe Y and so I experience X). Thus, they are interpretational and not like perceptions at all.
Thanks. Excellent video. My first instinct at the beginning of the video in reaction to moral perceptualism was the defect objection. Then I saw you included it too. Have you ever thought of doing a video on Moral Irrealism? I don't quite understand it myself, and would like a good explanation of it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "moral irrealism" -- I would usually interpret that as synonymous with "moral antirealism", but I have a number of videos on various forms of antirealism.
@@KaneB Moral Irrealism is an attempt to bridge the gap between realism and anti-realism. It's essentially a social constructivist argument. I believe it's based on John Skorupski's 1999 paper called Irrealist Cognitivism. Carla Bagnoli has also written along these lines, just not under the title of Irrealism per se. Richard Joyce also has a 2013 paper called Irrealism and the Geneology of Morals.
@@squatch545 I'm pretty sure Joyce uses the term "irrealism" as I do, to refer to antirealism. But yeah, I am planning on doing videos on some of the "via media" positions like irrealist cognitivism, quasi-realism, constructivism, etc. I don't know when I'll get around to that though!
@@squatch545 There's another response from you in my notifications -- I'm not sure if you deleted it or if youtube removed it. In case it's the latter, to answer your question: unless otherwise specified, I would assume that "irrealism" just means "antirealism". But you're right that different philosophers will use these terms differently. The same is true for the term "realism", for that matter. It does sometimes get kind of annoying!
@@KaneB Yes, I posted another reply with a link to an article. I'm not sure if youtube automatically deletes any comments with links, or if maybe you have a filter on your channel under 'comments' that doesn't allow comments with links that needs to be turned off ?
It surprises me that so many philosophers find it attractive, because it's always struck me as totally implausible. But then philosophers do have a tendency to believe weird things. No doubt I hold plenty of positions that seem totally implausible to others!
@@KaneB Not having a belief in God or god was once implausible due to my observations, as well as an attempting of non-contradictory conception to discern true observations from false ones. Now it isn’t too odd or absurd to think that god isn’t explanatorily indispensable.
@@Ffkslawlnkn There are plenty of folks who think that moral antirealism is totally implausible! Still, I think my most unpopular positions are: relativism about justification and truth; epistemological anarchism (essentially, there are no universal rules of belief-formation or belief-revision, not even universal laws of logic); and antirealism about modality (there are no modal properties), which leads to an antirealism about causality and laws of nature.
@@KaneB It surprises me, too. I study philosophy and psychology and specialize in the psychology of folk metaethics (i.e., the metaethical stances and commitments of nonphilosophers). There is surprisingly little empirical evidence to support the presumption realists often maintain, which is that ordinary people speak and think like moral realists. More generally, though, the moral realist position strikes me as having very little going for it. The arguments for it are uniformly weak, and ought to be regarded as such by any unbiased standard of argumentative force. Yet there are almost twice as many realists as there are antirealists. It's remarkable and distressing, because the persistence of such a weak position points to a potentially broader problem with philosophers endorsing weak positions.
Hey Kane Firstly, thank you for the upload. It's pretty fucking swell Second-- is moral realism a common standpoint in academia? It sounds quite marginal/radical to me, don't know why :P Thanks :)
Among philosophers, yes. Moral realism is the majority view. In the 2009 PhilPapers survey of the views of professional philosophers, 56.4% endorsed moral realism, 27.7% endorsed antirealism, with 15.9% selecting neither. I've always found this somewhat mystifying because I don't think there are any good arguments in favour of it, while it faces what strike me as being obvious and extremely serious problems.
I don't read Sturgeon as defending moral perceptualism, at least not directly. Indeed, an interesting thing about the Sturgeon/Harman debate is that both parties assume moral perceptualism. Harman grants that perception represents moral properties: "If you round a corner and see a group of young hoodlums pour gasoline on a cat and ignite it, you do not need to *conclude* that what they are doing is wrong; you do not need to figure anything out; you can *see* that it is wrong ... if you hold a moral view, whether it is held consciously or unconsciously, you will be able to perceive rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, justice or injustice. There is no difference in this respect between moral propositions and other theoretical propositions. If there is a difference, it must be found elsewhere." Then the question is, of course, whether the best explanation for these perceptual experiences involves postulating moral properties.
Articles mentioned in the video:
Cowan, "Perceptual intuitionism"
Cullison, "Moral perception"
Faraci, "A hard look at moral perception"
Reiland, "On experience moral properties"
Werner, "Moral perception and the contents of experience"
Hi Kane. I am wondering what do you think about the following idea. When we ask the question can we perceive at least some type of value in the world, my immediate reaction to this is yes we can. Isn't it the case that in conscious interoception, when I feel pain, pleasure, discomfort, frustration, suffering - any sort of affective states - those have an intrinsic good or bad qualities to them? I mean when we talk about for instance health and disease or life and death, we tend to associate these concepts with positive or negative evaluations, but I think these are cases where we can understand a concept without any sort of evaluation. Death is the end of life processes and it is a further question whether or not it is bad or not, in what context, why etc. But when we talk about pain, pleasure, or other affective subjective experiences, separations between facts and values seems strange to me. In psychology, when we talk about valence, then it seems to me that valence is a real quality of experiences. In fact, I think that the first time when good and bad emerge in the world is with the emergence of affective subjective experiences. Pain is bad, no matter what anybody thinks about it, because it has this kind of negative, intrinsic quality of it - it is not just a matter of interpretation, construction, fiction that it is considered or evaluated as bad. Now it is a further question how we go about constructing a moral system out of these values, but my point is that at least some values seems perfectly objective and factual in a way that undermines the distinction between facts and values.
Hey, Kane, have you considered making a video on Colin Marshall's compassionate realism? It seems it is related to perceptualism. It seems you tend to focus on non-naturalist over naturalist solutions
Yes, we can perceive moral properties. This is what is happening when you watch a movie that is trying to convey a moral story, simply because you cannot understand what you are watching without it. let's not forget what Kant and Popper have already discovered: even concrete observations of objects are theory-impregnated, are perceived through a certain conceptual lens in the mind. There is nothing different in principle for moral perception, it is just that it is more abstract, and possibly, the causal make up of that perception depends on a type of evaluative understanding that comes from within, rather that photon's hitting the eye.
I've really been getting into your channel. I just started reading Aristotle, after homer, and plan to work my way forward from there. How the HELL do you get it all to sink in so well?
Have you read Vinding’s “suffering-focused ethics: defense and implications”? I find his defense almost sufficient.
No. I just had a look at an overview of the book and I'm not sure how it's even related to moral perceptualism. I assume it's something in chapter 5? Giving it a quick skim it looks like a fairly standard kind of naturalist realism, and that does entail perceptualism if we think that the relevant natural properties are perceivable (it seems like we can perceive suffering and actions that cause suffering, for instance).
@@KaneB i find it relates, when they give their realist view and its proof, the experiential aspect of pain, and how, just like when we perceive a property of an object from an observation, which leads to a type of experiencing of that property, the property of badness is experienced when the object of pain is experienced. I merely found the discussion of moral perception very closely related to the discussion of moral experience.
In summary, have you know of any philosophical argument for the position that properties experienced, like how the property of color is experienced, the property of pain that can be experienced is badness (particularly of extreme pain or suffering, mainly because their a negative utilitarian).
@@HudBug Like I said, certain forms of naturalism entail moral perceptualism. The question is then just whether those forms of naturalism are plausible.
Proof that moral perception is bunk: moral reactions can be elicited by fiction, deception, or mistakes in interpretation. In contrast, if I perceive redness or a shape or a sound, I can't be wrong that I'm perceiving that. You can't trick someone into having an experience of redness, whereas you can trick someone into having an "experience" of "wrongness" (e.g. by telling them that a horrible thing happened). Or, you tell them that P believes X, then they see P telling Q that ~X. They will think that P has lied and will think it morally wrong, even if it wasn't wrong, since P doesn't believe X. Moral evaluation can only be a matter of interpretation (in fact, evaluation, which may be taken as a sort of interpretation), not perception.
Yeah, this kind of point strikes me as a serious problem for the moral perceptualist. There are a whole bunch of obvious disanalogies between moral experiences and normal perceptual experiences (and unusual perceptual experiences, for that matter!)
I agree that moral perceptualism is in deep shit but I don't think your point holds. You can in fact be deceived in your perception of a shape/colour. For example, geometric shapes (square, triangle, circle, etc) do not exist in nature. What we perceive as a triangle or a square is only an approximation of the abstract shape-- the shape we think we're perceiving. Further, some people hallucinate colours and sounds. And they really believe in what they're perceiving. It is nonetheless a false perception.
@@sisyphus645 The obvious difference is that an hallucination is a real phenomenon, even if it doesn't correspond to something in the world, and this is why it is a sort of failure or misfiring. But compare that to a vicious rumor. You hear a vicious rumor about someone and have a moral experience that something immoral has happened. And yet, the rumor was false: nothing bad happened. Merely by words, you had an experience without any hallucination or misfiring of any kind. That is, because you *believed* X, you had the moral experience. What other sort of perception is like that? Other perceptions are experiences first and about the world second (I experience X and so I believe Y). Moral experience is about the world first and experience second (I believe Y and so I experience X). Thus, they are interpretational and not like perceptions at all.
@@11kravitzn Hmm.. I think I understand what you mean now
This is just as much a problem for epistemic perception, do you consider that bunk too?
Very nicely done.
Thanks!
Thanks. Excellent video. My first instinct at the beginning of the video in reaction to moral perceptualism was the defect objection. Then I saw you included it too.
Have you ever thought of doing a video on Moral Irrealism? I don't quite understand it myself, and would like a good explanation of it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "moral irrealism" -- I would usually interpret that as synonymous with "moral antirealism", but I have a number of videos on various forms of antirealism.
@@KaneB Moral Irrealism is an attempt to bridge the gap between realism and anti-realism. It's essentially a social constructivist argument. I believe it's based on John Skorupski's 1999 paper called Irrealist Cognitivism. Carla Bagnoli has also written along these lines, just not under the title of Irrealism per se.
Richard Joyce also has a 2013 paper called Irrealism and the Geneology of Morals.
@@squatch545 I'm pretty sure Joyce uses the term "irrealism" as I do, to refer to antirealism. But yeah, I am planning on doing videos on some of the "via media" positions like irrealist cognitivism, quasi-realism, constructivism, etc. I don't know when I'll get around to that though!
@@squatch545 There's another response from you in my notifications -- I'm not sure if you deleted it or if youtube removed it. In case it's the latter, to answer your question: unless otherwise specified, I would assume that "irrealism" just means "antirealism". But you're right that different philosophers will use these terms differently. The same is true for the term "realism", for that matter. It does sometimes get kind of annoying!
@@KaneB Yes, I posted another reply with a link to an article. I'm not sure if youtube automatically deletes any comments with links, or if maybe you have a filter on your channel under 'comments' that doesn't allow comments with links that needs to be turned off ?
Moral realism strikes me as a really really odd position to hold.
It surprises me that so many philosophers find it attractive, because it's always struck me as totally implausible. But then philosophers do have a tendency to believe weird things. No doubt I hold plenty of positions that seem totally implausible to others!
@@KaneB Not having a belief in God or god was once implausible due to my observations, as well as an attempting of non-contradictory conception to discern true observations from false ones. Now it isn’t too odd or absurd to think that god isn’t explanatorily indispensable.
@@KaneB what positions do you hold that others might find implausible?
@@Ffkslawlnkn There are plenty of folks who think that moral antirealism is totally implausible! Still, I think my most unpopular positions are: relativism about justification and truth; epistemological anarchism (essentially, there are no universal rules of belief-formation or belief-revision, not even universal laws of logic); and antirealism about modality (there are no modal properties), which leads to an antirealism about causality and laws of nature.
@@KaneB It surprises me, too. I study philosophy and psychology and specialize in the psychology of folk metaethics (i.e., the metaethical stances and commitments of nonphilosophers). There is surprisingly little empirical evidence to support the presumption realists often maintain, which is that ordinary people speak and think like moral realists.
More generally, though, the moral realist position strikes me as having very little going for it. The arguments for it are uniformly weak, and ought to be regarded as such by any unbiased standard of argumentative force. Yet there are almost twice as many realists as there are antirealists. It's remarkable and distressing, because the persistence of such a weak position points to a potentially broader problem with philosophers endorsing weak positions.
It seems that perception here is used as sense-perception in the looks argument )
Hey Kane
Firstly, thank you for the upload. It's pretty fucking swell
Second-- is moral realism a common standpoint in academia? It sounds quite marginal/radical to me, don't know why :P
Thanks :)
Among philosophers, yes. Moral realism is the majority view. In the 2009 PhilPapers survey of the views of professional philosophers, 56.4% endorsed moral realism, 27.7% endorsed antirealism, with 15.9% selecting neither.
I've always found this somewhat mystifying because I don't think there are any good arguments in favour of it, while it faces what strike me as being obvious and extremely serious problems.
@@Bvic3 If you'd like to discuss it on the channel, we can set something up. I'd like to upload more discussions with people.
@@KaneB That would be great. I'd like to see you talk to moral realists.
I find Sturgeon's response satisfying. "Moral Explanations."
I don't read Sturgeon as defending moral perceptualism, at least not directly. Indeed, an interesting thing about the Sturgeon/Harman debate is that both parties assume moral perceptualism. Harman grants that perception represents moral properties:
"If you round a corner and see a group of young hoodlums pour gasoline on a cat and ignite it, you do not need to *conclude* that what they are doing is wrong; you do not need to figure anything out; you can *see* that it is wrong ... if you hold a moral view, whether it is held consciously or unconsciously, you will be able to perceive rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, justice or injustice. There is no difference in this respect between moral propositions and other theoretical propositions. If there is a difference, it must be found elsewhere."
Then the question is, of course, whether the best explanation for these perceptual experiences involves postulating moral properties.
No, we can't.
Yeah, in my view, that's the tl;dr of this one.
Fancy seeing you here Brenda
Good luck making an *argument* against moral perceptualism, Brenda.
l can't stop myself for saying: "Nice spooks".
based and stirnerpilled
😀😀😀😀😀😀😀
Yes, we can!
I'm curious to what kind of experiment you could make to empirically decide whether a state is good or bad
@@JasminUwU state?
Why do you think we can?
@@lanceindependent good question! Perhaps they're real features, if I were to speculate.
@@savyblizzard6481 Can you say what a real feature is? And why do you think we can perceive them?