It's a shame you're prejudiced against astrology, but never mind this was generally a good treatment of these two non-relativist subjectivist accounts of ethics. You have more patience than I would in the ins and outs of Ideal Observer Theory; when it comes to Divine Command Theory I understand if you don't find it terribly interesting, I didn't formerly myself but I am beginning to be sympathetic to an idea which is not Divine Command Theory but which is similar to it.
So he couldn’t often bring women to genuine orgasm so he instead resorted to inflicting pain which was at least always certain. I think most of us didn’t need the backstory to gather the former.
Good exposition. I used to call myself a subjectivist, of the individual kind. Also a moral relativist. I now think I was confusing different issues and ending up with an incoherence. I now identify as a moral non-realist. :) I think emotivism and individual subjectivism are onto something with their ideas that in moral statements people are either *expressing* or *describing* their attitudes. Subjectively, as it were, we do feel like we're doing that when we're making them. But as we see moral statements also need to be treatable as propositions (Frege-Geach) and also need to be the subject of disagreement when they're different, which would imply they have objective import. Neither of these theories accounts for the fact that when we make moral statements we don't just think we're expressing or describing our beliefs, we tend to think we're talking about what is objectively the case. We think we're talking about a moral reality. I also don't feel that we're actually expressing or describing *emotions* or *attitudes* when we make moral statements. I think we're expressing (not describing) *moral positions*. Moral positions are something more than, or different from, mere emotions or attitudes. They may be based on such things, or be accompanied by them, but moral positions occupy their own mental category. As for cultural relativism (/subjectivism)... I long ago tagged it a hopeless delusion, and dangerous at that. The main arguments I made against it in undergraduate philosophy years ago were the latter ones explored here: how do you define cultures? What are the boundaries of cultures? What about subcultures within cultures or people moving between cultures? Other key ones include: how do we know what the ethics of a particular culture are? And: what makes them that way? It is such a stupid and confused notion, and of course it's a foundational idea in the botched form of multiculturalism we have now in the UK. It makes even less sense that individual subjectivism.
I have experienced a 'migraine aura' once, which was a strange clash of visual experience. I percieved it as a zig-zag of an impsosible colour. I'd say it was certainly dull, like a grey. However, it was also certainly vivid, like a purple-rainbow that was all colours. These are contradictory, and the result of some sort of misfiring in my brain, but it shows that these mental states are not impossible. So, it is plausible that one could imagine themselves into a similar state.
Love this, we disagree on many individual stories rankings but it's great to see someone 100% truly going with their own takes and not just following the fan consensus on some of the "big" stories or disliked stories as many rankings do.
I suspect that the talk about causality is a red herring. This problem would still arise even if the content of the boxes was determined at the same time at which you make a decision. There are two decision occurring in the scenario; the optimal choice for decision 1 is dependent on the outcome of decision 2, but decision 2 is dependent on decision 1. Even if you flipped the order of the decisions or changed the accuracy of the predictor the circularity remains. Attempting to determine which choice is optimal would just be a mistake.
Circularity is No Problem at all, If it is of no vicious Nature, meaning by that a circle of selfjustification without necessity to it, but rather mere presupposition and the consquence of trying to argue for what is wrong. But the other Kind of circularity, that of Analytical Truth as is it Sometimes Said, is Not only of No Problem, but the most certain and Plain instance of Truth, which is implied by any Claim and search of Truth. And with those one finds that necessity, that is that, which is at all convincing. Now to the Question of the Video. It is No Problem, that all possible attempt to answer the Question would necessitate reason, for this is simply what is the Matter with it. Reason is inevitable, therefore one understands its necessity, or Vice versa. It is Like asking, why a circle is circular, for one either understands the genuin necessity, or one does Not understand at all of what one is speaking and furthermore asking for. indeed, the Question is, although possible to understand, unsound, as it seems to imply an alternative, to which one demands a further reason for it Not obtaining. But there is No further reason possible, which can be understood. Therefore, it is unsound to ask for any more, as it presupposes Something wrong. At Last, it is therefore Not Question begging, for No Question can be bagged, unless one has Not yet understood, which is Natural then, until one has come to it. To ask the Question is precisely Like asking why one should adhere to Logic for valid argumtation, as If one could argue validly without it, which only proves, that one does Not understand, what one is speaking of. Like those asking, why that, which is, is, and rather Not, referring Not to why it is somewhat and somehow, but simply being. As If that, which is, could Not be, which is totally Impossible. And that can be understood, and alike it is Here. This is therefore the answer and the Question is answered, No doubt about it.
8:43 I have to disagree that simpler designs are necessarily better. Design trends come and go. Stylized design can hurt your design if people fail to interpret the meaning
I heard once that there were monks so enlightened, they no longer used full sentences, nor engaged in any form of personal decision making, outside of basic survival, and meditation. It's been rumored that many ancient texts of wisdom were not written by enlightened individuals, but written by the people surrounding them, fascinated by the contentment they observed. These average folk would study them, and listen and take note of every detail, eventually filling up pages and pages. Enlightenment, translated literally, means to be unburdened. Free, or even detached. Content with nothing more than the existence of each waking moment.
For this question, I’m not particularly convinced it isn’t a semantic question. Does any normative question hinge on it? In analyzing the moral status of any given token sex act, I’d probably want to know that both a mental-state condition AND an epistemic condition were met. That is, I’d want to know (1) whether each person had the appropriate consent-relevant mental state AND (2) whether each person justifiably believed that the other person had the appropriate consent-relevant mental state. Each person’s epistemic condition would generally be met via some kind of performance or communication by the other person. So, both the mental-state element and the performance element would need to be present. But is the “consent” “itself” “really” the mental-state alone, or the mental-state plus performance, or the performance alone? I’m not sure I care, and I’m not sure I find it a meaningful question. The important question is what’s necessary for consent that does significant moral work- and this requires both the mental state and the performance. Also, it seems our term “consent,” at least in English, already tends to have both elements? When we say “consent” (noun), it tends to connote the subjectivist view. And when we say “consenting” or “consented” (verb), it tends to connote the performativist view. This is pretty speculative on my part, though, and I think it may be controversial whether these sorts of linguistic phenomena are philosophically significant or not. All that said, I think there ARE a lot of interesting substantive (and non-semantic) questions about what kinds of mental states are relevant to consent, and what kinds of performance are relevant to consent, and what the moral significance is of the relevant kinds of mental states and performance. And the “subjectivism vs. performativism” dispute can be a way of motivating investigation and discussion of these important issues, as has been done in this video and the literature it discusses. The mental states tend to be important to whether a person is or isn’t a victim. And the performance (or communication, or elements relevant to the other party’s epistemic situation) tends to be important to whether the other person is or isn’t a perpetrator. But this doesn’t show that the “subjectivism vs. performativism” views themselves are really a matter of substantive disagreement, or that there is a deep conceptual or metaphysical fact about what elements are or aren’t constitutively the consent itself.
I like the discussion here on the relevant concepts and normative considerations, but I’d also want to look at the history and general use of the slogan “safe, sane, and consensual”--For instance, are there particular organizations or documents explaining the original meaning of this phrase? Such sources could possibly help clear up ambiguities on the normative importance of these conditions. Like, are they supposed to be three free-standing conditions, or could some of them be considered variations or aspects of the others? And are they all support to be necessary, or could some be merely helpful while others are necessary? Is there supposed to be a specific theory of what safety, sanity, and consent are, or is it supposed to be more of a loose heuristic? Is "sanity" supposed to be a reference to mental health, or more general? There might be room for an anti-ableism critique. With slogans like this, it sometimes happens that their original usage was slightly more sophisticated, and later usage gets watered down. It can also happen that their original usage was more idiosyncratic and responsive to very niche considerations, and later usage becomes more generally applicable. Whatever the original sources or discourse around the slogan might be, slogans like this still have a tendency to become free-standing (for better or for worse), so it’s still worth critiquing in its own right.
I don't know that I would say there's a hard-and-fast distinction between friend-relationships and romantic relationships per se. I'd say there's a wide variety of types of emotional and behavioral dispositions. The relationships we call "romantic" will tend to involve a saliently different profile of emotional and behavioral dispositions than the relationships we call "friendships" (even though there's overlap, and significant variance in how these terms are used). Some (maybe not all) of these distinctions will also hold for many asexual non-aromantics, so it will often make sense for them to distinguish friendships and romantic relationships as well. I'm admittedly being very hand-wavey about what the emotional disposition clusters are, except to say that there are a bunch of them, many of which do not boil down to whether people are having sex or not. So like having a "crush" on someone is, I'd say, one of the characteristic "romance-feelings" which may contribute to a relationship being romantic (albeit not decisively, since friends might have crushes, and people in a committed longterm romantic relationship might not have those feelings anymore even if they did have them earlier in the relationship). But I don't think "friendship" and "romantic relationship" are natural kinds. They're rather loose conventionally-defined clusterings of the emotional and behavioral dispositions. I think there are other counterexamples to the framework you've laid out. For instance, religious conservatives might go on dates without the intention of having sex, but they can still distinguish romantic relationships and friendships. Some of them might not count as counterexamples, since maybe they're aiming to find someone to marry and later have sex with. But I think some of them are not necessarily looking for marriage either, yet they can still distinguish dating and non-dating friendships. In ace discourse, there's a notion sometimes called the "split-attraction model" that starkly distinguishes romantic attraction and sexual attraction, in order to help conceptually flesh out the distinction between asexual and aromantic. But my understanding is that some aces think this model is something of a strawman (even if other aces have adopted it) which fails to recognize the variety of types of interest in someone. In any case, the "split-attraction model" discourse (either pro or con) may be an interesting line of inquiry to look into, although it might be hard to sift through the various schools of thought on it, and a lot of the material on it consists in years-old blog posts of extremely variable quality, some of which are extremely niche or high-context. So I'm not sure what to recommend on this.
Most of the anti-incest arguments are obviously terrible, or else very limited in scope (like only applying to some cases of reproduction, and irrelevant to other cases of incest-and even the reproduction cases are complex, as you discussed in the video). The most credible arguments are the abuse argument or a few variants thereof. Incest is usually abusive, or otherwise not adequately consensual. And even in cases where adult incest might appear consensual, it *could* be abusive in some subtle way-e.g. if it resulted from, or is maintained by, some nonobvious power imbalance or previous grooming. My main criticism of the video is that I’d like to spend more time on the abuse argument, to better acknowledge the potential difficulty of ascertaining that a given instance of adult incest is genuinely consensual, rather than contingent on some dynamic that would undercut the consent. The abuse argument is the only one that should really be of interest from a progressive, feminist, or libertarian starting point. Some conservatives, divine command theorists, and natural law ethicists may have reason to care about the perversion argument or the social fabric arguments-but the rest of us shouldn’t take them seriously, insofar as those are the same considerations which we already consider to have a terrible track record, like their tendency to oppose homosexuality or birth control. I’d be more suspicious toward incestuous relationships with an age gap such that there was a salient period during which one party was an adult while the other party was a child-which seems very troubling even if both are adults when the incest begins. Such an age gap might not *guarantee* grooming, but it raises the likelihood of grooming or some other consent-undercutting dynamic. Even if there wasn’t grooming, the history of the relationship might create baggage that problematizes valid consent. I also might have made a further distinction between the initiation of a relationship vs. the perpetuation of the relationship, which might differ in ethical status. It seems plausible to me that people in general have a moral right to NOT be propositioned by their family members (or by a subset of their family members). I can’t readily back this up, except to say that I think I’d be horrified if any of my close family members were to sexually proposition me (even if they were to do so in a non-abusive way). And it seems plausible to me that I have a moral right against being caused such horror, and that this is also true of many other people. If so, then it might be wrong to sexually proposition a family member without knowing in advance whether they’d be okay with it. So it might typically be wrong for people to attempt to initiate an incestuous relationship, even in cases where there isn’t abuse or nonconsent, on the grounds that the proposition violates a legitimate moral expectation. However, if two (or more) people DO end up in a consensual incestuous relationship, then the problem with the initiation (if there was one) is in the past-and does not persist as a reason to cease the relationship after it has begun. Moreover, if someone can know that their family member will not be horrified by the proposition, or if the incestuous relationship begins mutually (rather than one party propositioning the other asymmetrically), then there might be no ethical problem in the initiation (OR the continuation) of such incestuous relationships. All considered, legitimately consensual adult incest may be rare (in part since most non-abusive people seem averse to it, whatever theory we hold on the Westermarck stuff), and may be even harder to recognize. So there might not be a sizeable minority of ethical incest-havers on par with, say, queer people, polyamorous people, or other sexual minorities. Nevertheless, consensual incest is surely possible, and it’s hard to see what could be wrong with it insofar as it does exist.
A big problem for the “intoxication undermines consent” view is that a lot of people intentionally get drunk or high in order to become willing to have sex, and a lot of people intentionally get drunk or high in order to make sex more enjoyable. If someone consents to become intoxicated with the intention of having sex, then surely this makes the resultant sex more likely to be properly consensual. This doesn’t necessarily vindicate the “intoxication undermines consent” view as a default position, but it imposes a limit on it. I don’t think this requires a problematic view on the temporal quality of consent either. Maybe we can say that my “in advance of getting intoxicated” consent at Time-1 does NOT undermine my moral power to say “no” at Time-2, but that it DOES still enable my moral power to say “yes” at Time-2 (whereas my moral power to say “yes” at Time-2 would otherwise be in question). Moreover, I’m pretty sure there are entire subcultures around some kinds of intoxicated sex, such as gay subcultures around sex while high on stimulants. Some scholars like Jay Levy have used the word “chemsex” for this concept. If we say intoxicated sex must always be off the table for everyone, then we’re imposing an “abstinence only” position on these subcultures. This might be a problematic form of cultural chauvinism, probably overlapping with homophobia and other bad things. Moreover, such a position forecloses the important work of actually figuring out how these forms of sex can be more ethical. I think it’s important for people who engage in intoxicated sex to be able to develop standards for how to ensure adequate consent and ethics, as far as this is possible within their preferred cultures or lifestyles. One problem with insisting on an “abstinence only” position toward homosexuality, unmarried sex, or drug use, is that such a stance aims to remove the possibility of developing ethical standards and norms for the people who still engage in those activities, which generally ends up being a lot of people. At the same time, I think there’s a significant feminist motive for the restrictive view that hasn’t been adequately recognized here. There are a lot of people who intentionally get their partners drunk, or more drunk than the partner had intended to become, in order to have sex with them. Sometimes this might be okay, but often it is done unethically. I wouldn’t want our norms to give too much leeway to this sort of thing. Some of it is clearly predatory and should be recognized as such. Alcohol is the most popular date rape drug. But still, we can explain some of the morally relevant differences by appeal to what kind of intoxication the person had consented to, and to whether they’d consented to the possibility of intoxicated sex. Some of this can also overlap with the “rape by deception” cases if and insofar as one person deceived the other person into becoming more intoxicated than intended. A further complication: When people talk about “drunk sex”, they seem often to equivocate between several different situations-like mildly tipsy sex, moderately drunk sex, blackout drunk sex, and straight-up raping an unconscious person. These are very different cases which shouldn’t be lumped together. On the extremes, I think mildly tipsy sex is pretty unproblematic, and the unconscious person case is obviously rape. If an intoxicated person is conscious but is slurring their words, doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on, or is likely to not remember what happened, then I think we should assume by default they cannot consent (or cannot be adequately known to consent) to sex. If someone is moderately drunk, then the problem is a lot less dire. Most of the issues in this video seem to only apply to moderately drunk people.
Just wanted to chime in and say that most formalisms do not assert the irrelevance of content-in fact, they understand the selection and arrangement of contents as a part of the definition of form. See Kantian formalism, Russian formalism, the New Critics, e.g. Wimsatt and Beardsley, etc. Cleanth Brooks' work on poetry, for example, is not just about versification, rhythm or the literal arrangements of words; it's actually much more about the selection and interplay of ideas in a poem. This only debunks a strawman. The flaw of formalism is actually usually taken to be its lack of regard for historical context. This objection is also, I think, largely overstated, but it's much more plausible as one.
29:09 "similarly acceptable" already indicates a phenomenology impacted by cultural attitude. This is a breadcrumb towards a convergence of ethical and aesthetic judgement.
Isn't this just a restatement of "I think, therefore I am"? I cannot prove that anyone else isn't a philosophical zombie, but I can be certain of my own mind because I experience it.
Interesting paper, "Why Ethics and Aesthetics are Practically the Same", by Aaron Ridley. Besides how it’s intended in the subject of this video, I think that paper intones that aesthetic realism is actually just ethics. The writer of course does not go that far, but it’s a reasonable extrapolation.
Its a bit cliche, but Ill say it anyway: It's not about the destination, it's about the journey mannnnnn! When you struggle and "suffer" while making a video, you are staring at the light ahead of the cloud. You are getting the see and, in some sense, bask in that beauty. The fact that the cloud follows you every step you take towards the light isn't the thing stopping you from finding joy from the sunlight, it's the fact that you feel the need to stare at the sun directly to appreciate it...which in reality would be damaging and unfulfilling, like a heroin overdose or something. "One must imagine Sysiphis happy" and all that jazz. It's not impossible simultaneously grit your teeth thrpugh suffering and, in that very moment of suffering, feel joy.
What the argument implies is that linguistic meaning is circular. This really comes out in Kripkenstein's discussion of the possibility of grounding meaning in linguistic community identification, only to erode this possibility by suggesting there is nothing to fix belonging to any particular community because a linguistic community is defined only by shared meanings in the first place. This is circular-not logically, I want to say, but practically, so it's not a problem. I want to say that this is how meaning arises in the first place-through a practical process which is circular and self-reinforcing over time: community belonging constrains individual instances of meaning and individual instances of meaning in turn reinforce community belonging. It's a dialectical activity unfolding over time, in which the community verifies meaning and meaning verifies the community, constantly, continuously. All that Kripkenstein's argument really shows is that, if one takes a synchronic snapshot of language, one can apply skeptical pressure on either piece of the equation to say that without an egg, there can be no chicken, and without a chicken, there can be no egg. But this ignores the fact that, like animals, communities and linguistic meanings evolve. Linguistic meanings compose a phylogenetic tree. On a related point, the argument also crucially ignores the fundamentally systemic (and per Ferdinand Saussure, differential) nature of language, even on a synchronic view. It's rather trivial to take an isolated instance of language and apply enough skeptical pressure on it to conclude that there is nothing to fix its meaning, ignoring that what determines its meaning are precisely the other signifiers and possible utterances existing in the language that differentiate it and determine its "role" as a practical tool. "Plus" doesn't mean much in isolation; it only means fully when defined in relation to other linguistic functions with complementary purposes within the system-"minus", the multiplication and division operators, etc.
What if we access the probability of reliability by a track record of the relatively high amount of successful results (without necessarily accessing the 'success' by scanning through the papers themselves, but rather through practical applications like engineering and medical procedures to which the scientist have contributed) produced by scientists through the training provided by institutions? As there are less institutions to decide between then experts. This seems to me to be a skillful way of going about this problem eventhough it is by no means perfect.
How would a computer apply this rule? Well, it would have to have a definition for vulture and for white. Since the biological essence would probably not include the color, the color white would probably not occur. In the definition Now the two conditions must be applied simultaneously. So the program enters the room with you and encounters a white vulture. The program must be “sticker X if X is a vulture and not white”. So, the program would advise you to not sticker the white vulture because, although it is a vulture, it is not nonwhite. If the definition includes not white or the possible colors not including white, then the program will advise you to not sticker the white vulture because it is not a vulture and it is not nonwhite. To cause the program as much grief as possible, do the following: Rule 1: Sticker if vulture. Rule 2: Do not sticker if white. Rule 3: Sticker if white vulture and require a single outcome. So, the outcome is toSticker = isVulture ^ Not isWhite ^ isWhite ^ isVulture (= False) So, not so much grief to the program.
If you were really in doubt about whether there *is* a cat, you could use more than one kind of evidence to figure this out (call its name, pet it, listen to it, open up a bag of treats, ask others if they see it). You can’t prove the cat is there, but you can use multiple kinds of inquiry to improve confidence. There are ways to interrogate subjectivity, too, like creating/appreciating art, meditating, traveling and meeting new people, or whatever you want to do to discover yourself. Like the cat, there’s no way to absolutely prove anything about your mind, but you can use multiple avenues of inquiry and collect as much evidence as possible. That’s the best we can do.
As for the first example with hands, a brain in a vat is indeed perfectly POSSIBLE but is it also PROBABLE? I'd apply the Occam's razor principle: if our experience of the world is fully consistent with having bodies, why introduce a redundant layer of a brain in a vat? In that scenario, what's the point of even having a brain in a vat if all your sensory inputs are replaced with virtual reality. It would be easier to simulate our minds in the same virtual reality rather than having to deal with brains in vats. Overall, a brain in a vat seems like the LEAST probable of those options 😅
If Wyoming simplified their seal (maybe to something someone would reasonably brand an animal with) and made it smaller to not get so close to the edges, I could see it as the ONE exception to the seal rule. Bonus points if they also change their state seal to be super simplified like a brand to match.
