I like Moore! He's hardheaded. His point seems to be that we should choose the option in which we have the greater confidence: the existence of our own two hands, or the interesting but speculative idea of the Matrix. To make this more perspicuous, imagine that some psycho puts a gun to your head and gives you one choice: either the Matrix or external reality. Get it wrong and you're dead. I suspect the vast majority of philosophers would choose reality. I would!
I agree. Opinions can't be right or wrong. Beliefs can be lies or facts. EX: if I said 2+2=6, it is not an opinion because it is wrong. 2+2=4. It is a lie. If I said blue is the best color ever, that is an opinion because it is subjective and everyone has personal preferences. The opinion isn't right or wrong.
I'm 50 years old and just started A - level philosophy (online) I have a tutor (which I haven't used yet) which replies to my emails within 48 hours. I've also heard that I shouldn't move on in a module until I fully understand it. So I don't want to just stop and wait for a reply, I've been using AI and asking it questions. Do you think I'm going the right thing? Thanks, I subbed straight away 👍🏼
Your presentation takes more of a deontological perspective; your comparison with mathematics assumes an a priori derivation, however you gloss over a consequentialist point of view. From a consequentialist stand point (including utilitarianism) the comparison would be with science and your claim that ethics cannot be empirical would be as wrong as to claim that values of human health cannot be empirical. As with other empirical disciplines (such as science and history), moral realism can potentially be how we assess whether past actions or events were good and beneficial or else bad and detrimental. An example could be the education of women over the last 200 years: have the changes in how modern societies approach women's education been for good or not? . There is plenty there that is readily measurable and although it might be possible to point out one or two odd disadvantages the overall balance of empirical evidence would make it easy to arrive at a clear judgement. If the is/ought issue is problematic then it would be inconsistent to expect that ethics should tell what we ought to do. In fact this is part of the wider problem of induction; no set of empirically derived principles can have absolute certainty of the future, but they can suggest or strongly suggest likely consequences. Assessment of past events is possible, though we can in many cases also acknowledge a complexity that renders this assessment debatable, yet there will be other cases where there really is not much of a debate (e.g. opening up universities to women was really good!).
The seemingly outlandish conclusion here is an outgrowth of a series of previous errors. A web of lies is far more complex than a single falsehood, and has a very bizarre aspect when compared to a single strand. Money is one problem--it's a symbolic perversion of value that permits artificially wide disparities between rich and poor. Governments, too, steal the lion's share of the value from our world and spend it in ways individuals never would. These are magnifying factors. But, of course, the fact that we do not see all others as family, but instead allow irrational distinctions to guide how we treat others. In a truly free society (like Jacque Fresco or Michael Tellinger prescribe) all ships rise together, so whatever resources are available will be spread uniformly across as many people as possible.
There’s an extension to his arguments. When one wants a proof they want to be correct against error. But the only reason we could want to be correct is because we know we could be in error because we’ve found an error and have corrected it. How else could one want a proof if they didn’t already know they could be correct in the first place? You can direct your desire towards something that which you’re not already aware or existing. Therefore, a condition for the possibility of error, which is the source of skepticism, is the necessity of the capacity of being correct. Therefore it is a contradiction to conclude that we could be in total error. Therefore it follows that at least some of the things we perceive are true. And at that point it’s just Occam’s razor, like you eluded to before; what’s more likely: a demon reality or that we are generally correct in most of our perceptual judgements besides some that are illusory? This all actually pairs very nicely with JJ Gibson’s direct realism, Susanne Langer’s linguistics and Henri Bergson’s metaphysics.
But the statement by Moore in my view can be ambiguous but not wrong because of how the sentence was phrased. But context makes the point solid. Another point by another commenter how do we know we are not a brain in a vat again this goes down to unfalsifiabliltiy,there can be a biological argument but the assumption itself can counter the biological claim. If we want to know that there is an external world why don't we connect our referent and object with a meaning but remember that the referent is arbitrary but the idea isnt,but the way we represent the idea with a word is arbitrary but the idea remains. So by Moore again in my view the general statement can be considered because of what it represents. But I again personally believe we may never know if the whatever we see is truly the external world because of the VR argument of consciousness where the brain is single handedly responsible for generating are consciousness and is dependent on conscious experience. Hence the external world is false and ourself is generated by the brain. And with the external world being not real this would again tie to the point that our existence and perception is bound by the brain. Also I would like to hear different perspectives,critiques and arguments to my point. I am not that knowledgeable of philosophy or Moore's paper this my analysis of his statement without any assumptions. Analysis here is what is taken at face value. Moore's point is ambiguous in language.
Even if you were a brain in a vat it would imply that there is an external world that generated this world. Either way, the external world remains a necessary condition of experience.
The analogy of moral 'objectivity' to mathematics is very revealing, because what people forget is that mathematics is a formal system based on axioms. Axioms are statement which are defined to be true by choice (they have no deeper truth value). E.g. chess is a formal system and the rules of chess are its axioms, all board configurations following from the axioms are objectively true. On the other hand a configuration with 2 black kings on the board is not conform with the (standard) axioms and therefore 'objectively false'. With mathematics it is the same. Sometimes the statement "2+2=4" is taken as an example for an 'objective truth', where it is not mentioned that one needs a whole machinery to make this statement 'objectively true'. And here it is (for those interested in it): Definition of "=" Axiom 1: x=x Axiom 2: If x=y then y=x Axiom 3: If x=y and y=z then x=z Axiom 4: If x belongs to M and x=y then y belongs to M Definition of the natural numbers (N) Axiom 5: 0 is a N Axiom 6: If n is a N then the successor of n which is S(n) is also a N Axiom 7: If and only if x=y then S(x)=S(y) Axiom 8: There in no n belonging to N for which S(n)=0 Axiom 9: 1=S(0), 2=S(1), 3=S(2), 4=S(3),... (Recursive definition of the symbols of the natural numbers) Definition of "+" Axiom 10: If n is a N then n+0=n Axiom 11: If n and m are of N then n+S(m)=S(n+m) And now the proof establishing the objective truth of the statement '2+2=4' 2+2=2+S(1)=S(2+1)=S(2+S(0))=S(S(2+0))=S(S(2))=S(3)=4 (QED) Without the axioms the statement '2+2=4' is actually meaningless, even more so to call it true or false. So if someone tells me "moral realism works like mathematics", my immediate question is "So what are the moral axioms? What are the moral statements which are true by choice in order to establish the truth value of other moral claims?". I also like to mention that in mathematics there can be actual disagreement what is a good set of axiom to describe certain mathematical domain. As a physicist and mathematician by training I am very puzzled how vague (and quite honestly weak) arguments for moral realism really are. From my point of view, moral realism (i.e. the existence of objective moral facts) can be justified when morality is viewed as a formal system, where I have a set of moral axiom (true by definition and choice). This would answer the diversity of morality across different societies, because these have different moral axioms. Otherwise, I would need an answer to the question "How is a world in which moral realism is true different from one where it is false?". This last question settles the question if a statement is scientific or not, i.e. can be decided by observation of the world. E.g. "There are invisible unicorns everywhere, which are impossible to detect by any method." This is a non scientific statement, it is impossible to establish if it is true or not. My feeling is that 'moral realism' is actually a non scientific statement very much akin to the one about invisible unicorns.
The fundamental realist axiom is related to the needs of our species to survive, adapt, and reproduce; it's rooted in biology and anthropology. Maladapted individuals and societies face premature extinction as with that of maladapted species. The optimal way to adapt is also going to be relative to the properties of the individual and their environment. Actions which are perceived by a society (note that perceptions can be quite flawed, especially in religious cultures) to promote natural fitness are considered moral while those that diminish it are considered immoral. For religious societies, sometimes the attempt to improve fitness works towards doing so for the afterlife rather than the current life yet they otherwise behave similarly.
As for moral discrepancies across societies, that's to be expected if we run a simulation of agents with our same biological needs and goals over time in varying environments. As an example, consider the wide practice of infanticide among Inuits who do not deem this immoral even though it may horrify many of us. We have to factor in their harshest Arctic environments with freezing winters at -40°C or below and scarce resources. Only the strongest and best-adapted can survive in such desperate conditions. A tribe would be maladapted and likely doom themselves if they wasted their precious resources looking out for the weakest members. So it makes sense from a survival standpoint that they practice infanticide towards the weakest of their children and do not consider it immoral. We would very likely come to do so too if we lived in the same conditions or find ourselves perishing. Compare this to health. Health relativists and subjectivists when it comes to metahealth believe the definition of "health" to be relative to an individual or culture, and there's a wide range of disrepancy in health-related beliefs and practices across cultures and history to support that including but limited to healing crystals, witchcraft, animal sacrifice, bloodletting regardless of the patient's condition, prayer, balancing four humours based on earth/wind/water/fire, etc. Yet a health realist would note that all such cultures, despite their bizarre and often counter-productive practices, were still pursuing the same overarching goals: to survive, to live longer, to be free of disease, to become stronger, to improve fertility, etc (ultimately survival, just as with morality). A moral realist is like a health realist in this sense. By establishing health realism and a definition of health rooted in empiricism, we can then begin to empirically test and verify or falsify descriptive claims (ex: "Chainsmoking is unhealthy").
Hi! Watching you from Russia. I'm student of Perm State University, where we claim ourself as marxist school. Now i'm studying analytics so i found your video about Moors argument and it was pretty cool. What is your channel about? Are those videos for your students or you try to make something on philosophical part of youtube?
1. If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest. When one says that such and such a proposition can't be proved, of course that does not mean that it can't be derived from other propositions; any proposition can be derived from other ones. But they may be no more certain than it is itself. 2. From its seeming to me-or to everyone-to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so. What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it. Ludwig Wittgenstein - On Certainty.
Including "If" suggests what's been claimed isn't the case and only when it does become the case, will you *still choose* not to tell them." Telling them in a more straightforward manner like "I know and I choose not to tell you" is a better option.
@@starssunff"If" doesn't suggest it is or isn't the case, it's neutral. An example: "If I go to the store, I'll pick up some milk" this doesn't suggest you have no intention to go to the store, rather you may or may not go to the store, just as "if I knew" suggest you may or may not know.
