Hello Kane! Unfortunately, automatic subtitles are disabled for this video. If you have the opportunity to turn it on in the settings for this video, then I will be glad if you do it!
me: I'll just write a bit about Error theory RU-vid: how about a 50 minute video I am happy with it tho, I find this all very interesting, and I'm writing for RE A Level prep :3
Interesting video; I'm subscribing. I do enjoy discussing metaethics, I look forward to the continuation of this series. Is it possible to expand a little bit on the naturalistic explanation of modal statements and modal properties according to moral error theorists? So much of the semantics of moral claims seems to relate to the semantics of modal statements that I think it would be interesting to explore the two side-by-side.
Love this series! So well laid out and interesting. Quick thing - you said you'd link to the debate about whether simplicity was good or not in the description but I can't seem to find it.
Hey Kane. Would you be interested in discussing the topic of meta ethics via streamyard meeting for a segment on my local news channel? I appreciate your comprehensive uploads and I think you would be an excellent panelist.
I’m not sure that error theory requires moral discourse to take place in a strictly fictional sense to have utility. What if we engaged in moral discourse not along the lines, “we must not murder” but rather along the lines, “we will benefit more from adopting an anti-murder position”. This retains the truth concern which appears to be error theory’s principal concern, declines to adopt fiction even for utility purposes, and still engages morality, in the sense of prescribing and proscribing moral attitudes for society. Think of it like a blueprint. We agree that we all want some product, and we all want input on that product. Everyone throws out a bunch of ideas, and right out of the gate, there’s a whole lot of agreement on some basic items, so that goes into the print. Then, we start a bunch of dialogues, trying to build consensus, first on what we want the product to actually do, then on how best to build it to do that. Each of us, and each group of us is all trying to get the others to agree on this function, not that function, this way, not that way, and here and there, some agreement is reached. The agreements contradict across groups, and some people will subsequently change their minds, but the dialogues persist and agreements grow broader. It’s long, excruciating, infuriating, and possibly fruitless, but it’s neither false nor true. Truth and falsity never enter into it in that sense. It’s just the thing we came up with to do the stuff we wanted.
I'm not entirely convinced by how you answered the Evolutionary Debunking Argument. You say that if bees developed rationality or intelligence comparable to that of humans, there would be bee philosophers who would argue about ethics and challenge the ethical practices that evolution had ingrained in them. This is reasonable enough, I suppose. But I don't think it quite follows from the bees' making recourse to rational argumentation in the setting out of views on ethics that the error theorist is wrong. For would not this very reasoning capacity emerge as a product of evolution also? And if we cannot be sure that beliefs of faculties that emerged out of evolution are truth-tracking (they may sometimes be, but they need not always be), doesn't this give us a reason to doubt the results of our deliberations on ethics, and therefore also give the bee philosophers reason to doubt the results of theirs? If our reasoning faculties are products of evolution, how can we know that they are always (or even usually) trustworthy? Indeed, it seems to me that one can say that such reasoning capacity evolved to help us come up with "reasons" for our evolutionarily adaptive moral beliefs so as to make us hold on to those beliefs more strongly. Proponents of the Evolutionary Debunking Argument can thus say that biology is playing a kind of trick on us and making us think that we are arriving at something objective when we reason about morality. I don't think you can quite get out of this by saying that true beliefs or truth-tracking cognitive faculties are very beneficial for survival. No doubt they sometimes are, but it doesn't seem clear to me that they would always be so, or even that they would predominantly be so. I don't think it's terribly difficult to imagine situations where cognitive faculties that don't track truth and produce false beliefs can aid in survival. Suppose that someone were to occasionally have hallucinations that made him think that some area was infested with lions. Based on this false belief, this person would tend remain close to his tribe and not venture into that area, thereby increasing his chances of survival merely because he didn't stray from the group as often. Provided that these hallucinations did not always occur, so as to, say, prevent the person from ever venturing out to gather food, they might actually increase his chances of survival. Or suppose that some area is really infested with grizzly bears, but a person hallucinates that it is infested with lions - his faculties reveal to him that the area is crawling with lions. Based on the false belief that the area is infested with lions rather than bears, the person will not venture into the area, thus increasing his chances of survival. It makes no difference to his survival whether his faculties correctly revel the presence of bears, or wrongly reveal the presence of lions. Perhaps the proponent of the Evolutionary Debunking Argument can claim that our reasoning faculties are somewhat like this. Then, the fact that intelligent bees might philosophize about morality gives us no reason to ascribe any kind of objectivity to the results of the bees' deliberations. So I don't think you've really refuted the Evolutionary Debunking Argument. Its proponent can just double down and say that reasoning is also a product of evolution and that therefore, reasoning is not always worthy of being taken seriously. (To be clear, I'm not speaking here about any kind of global skepticism with regard to our reasoning faculties. The proponent of the Evolutionary Debunking Argument can just restrict his skepticism to moral reasoning specifically, or to some other relevant subset of all reasoning.) I am not a proponent of this way of going about things myself, but this does seem to me to be a viable response that someone who accepts the Evolutionary Debunking Argument can use against your criticism of it. Overall, however, this is an excellent video! Well done! You have a marvelously clear way of explaining things!
IvanTheHeathen Yes, I think the defender of the EDA could respond that way, but they'd need some independent reason for treating moral reasoning differently from reasoning in general. In particular, why should we suppose that moral reasoning, but not reasoning in general, is not truth-tracking?
Kane B Oh, I agree that the distinction seems arbitrary. I do not endorse making it. I simply bring it up as a possibility and for the sake of thoroughness. Although I do think that the argument that reasoning in general need not be truth-tracking, if reasoning emerged purely under evolutionary auspices, is at least plausible. Alvin Plantinga makes just such an argument, as you may know. So if the defender of the EDA is willing to pay the price, he can double down in just that way and say that general reasoning ability which emerges under evolutionary auspices need not be truth-tracking - and therefore that moral reasoning in particular need not be truth-tracking either. I simply introduced the distinction because I don't believe that someone who wishes to argue against you would be willing to pay the price of accepting that our general reasoning ability need not be truth-tracking.
Who's to say though that the bee philosophers would even reach similar conclusions to that of humans? Most moral reasoning seems to have axiomatic foundations, so how do we know the bee philosophers wouldn't be making logical arguments in favor of the things we find abhorent?
@@aarOuOn This is what I would say and why I don't think the counter argument to the EDA works well. There is a lot of psychology that also would need to be discussed here. A proponent of the EDA may be more likely to believe in a constellation of other ideas that are different from moral realists and such. For example, he would likely also argue, as you stated, that though reasoning may be similar between bees and humans and any other intelligent BEEings, the axioms from which a bee starts would be fixed. Most cases of reasoning in ethics does not question the core of a person's belief, more so how to take the core principles one holds and iron out a person's overall moral code in order to make it more consistent. There are different sets of internally consistent codes that can be created depending on where one starts. And suppose that views A and B are in an apparent contradiction, and a person holds view A very strongly and view B not as strongly. A person may change their view B to be consistent with view A, as they would rather give up B than A. If seen in this way, perhaps this is no indication that some sort of truth is being determined by utilizing reasoning and intelligence to change one's views to another, unless there is a way to know that view A is correct in the first place. A moral error theorist may also argue that the use of moral language has corrupted the thought processes of humans and falsely associating non moral emotions and thoughts with moral terminology in the minds of humans. For example, since the age of 2 or 3 most humans have used moral terminology such as 'That is wrong' 'That is bad' 'You shouldn't do this', etc. It is a difficult task to separate out amoral emotions that one may feel when one witnesses a murder, a theft, adultery, blasphemy, etc such as horror, disappointment, sadness, etc that one may feel when clearly amoral situations arise, such as if a tree falls on your car, from morality. Is the thought that arises a true reflection of some sort of moral knowledge that can exist within the brain, or is it merely bringing into the mind words that one has learned to associate with amoral emotions in a sort of Pavlovian manner? These are, of course, questions from psychology that a moral nihilist may bring up.
@@KaneB As Aaron Z says, reasoning only tracks truth if you can demonstrate that the axioms you begin with are correct. both axioms and the reasonings that are applied to them must be correct, not only the reasoning. the problem of proving those axioms correct remains, regardless of reasoning.
I'm not sure that I believe that there is such a thing as a categorical moral imperative because I think that such statements always have an unstated assumption that makes them hypothetical. For example "murder is wrong" will always be accompanied by some other assumption resulting in a hypothetical imperative like "murder is wrong because God will send you to hell", or "murder is wrong because the cops will arrest you and you'll get convicted", or "murder is wrong because disapproving people will exile you or seek revenge". I'm pretty sure there is always some sort of unstated hypothetical there that can be simplified to "if you don't want X to happen then don't murder". If this is true then anything based on categorical imperatives would be invalid due to missing unstated assumptions.
Kant agreed in that categorical imperatives are the sort of things that produces the consequences of distrust and revenge in society as a whole. Nevertheless, he further goes with a deontological principle to defend categorical imperatives: to treat a person as an end in itself.
Kant agreed in that categorical imperatives are the sort of things that produces the consequences of distrust and revenge in society as a whole. Nevertheless, he further goes with a deontological principle to defend categorical imperatives: to treat a person as an end in itself.
Hi Kane, I am taking ethics this semester and I need to learn a lot of these in a fairly short period of time and needless to say, your videos are amazing! Is there a way for me to purchase some of these powerpoints from you? That would be extremely helpful to me. Thanks
Mind independence is about objects independent of a person. So what would count as mind independent is another person qua human body is relative to person qua human bodies as members within a group, hence problem of other minds. This seems to suggest if justified there is one thing independent of a particular mind and that is the other human being that purportedly has mind. So the peer to peer comparative situationally embodies morals being mind independent of any one moral agent ( agent has correlational/causal powers to do one action rather than another) but complex interdependent with other moral agents that either like or not like a state of affairs and justify this through cultural appropriate ways that tracks truth within that domain of reference. If chickens are the normative truth tracking approach all agree to than its a moral operandi. Once a group of moral agents converge on an ascriptive 'something in the world' there is consensus to act as an in-group. Morality is a quasi individualist property actualised through group functional structural coherence. The rise of nationalism from early modernism as the nation state dismantled power of selective moral interest groups and invested the state with supreme moral authority as salutatory law. So from the global perspective there are a plethora of nation states that claim a moral authoritarian stance which if comes into dispute as representatives of state seek inter governmental ways to keep the peace in a fragile state of affairs where anarchy separates nation states as perpetual war looms at every point of moral justification to trade good will in various modes of commodities and developments. So morals are understood to exist (for the political scientist) between nation states if complex interdependent relations entails each entity is getting benefits from the deal as a kind of moral deal. This leaves the conscious individual as in perpetual error on misaligned to the international system and second guessing how they fair in their nation state, and so the individual is in a perpetual state of alienation and so leading persons seeking enclaves of moral refuge within nativist (sense of imagined community) discourses of discontent. This innate subjective moral discontent of sense of shifting signifiers of morality is one indicator that error theory might be correct.
how can wrongness be an objective property though? If I was to claim ‘rock music is bad’ then I’m assigning a property to something that exists in the world, but that isn’t to say that the property is objective. After all, what music you think is good or bad is dependent on your personal taste. Could we not make the same argument for the property of wrongness?
Great video, but there is a MAJOR problem in your language usage. If mind-dependent things may be universal across all existing or potentially existing minds, then to say that "morality is subjective" is consistent with there being true moral values.
Universal belief isn't sufficient to make a statement true. Even if it were universally believed that K2 is the tallest mountain on Earth, it still wouldn't be true that K2 is the tallest mountain on Earth. Whether or not K2 is the tallest mountain on Earth depends simply on the height of the Earth's mountains. Similarly, according to the error theorist at least, whether or not slavery is morally wrong depends on whether there are mind-independent moral values, and on what these values are.
@@KaneB Hmm... Good points. When writing my original comment, it seems that I was accidently using my own special definition of "mind independent", so my point might not be valid. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, mind independence is "something whose existence is not dependent on thinking/perceiving things, and thus would exist whether or not any thinking things (minds) existed." Wait a second... I take it back! Because under this definition I think my original point might still be valid. This is because there may be something intrinsically good that is also mind-independent. A mind-independent intrinsic good is possible because only certain forms of experience may be intrinsically good, and according to the definition above, experiences, which are not thoughts or perceptions, are mind-independent. Therefore, assuming that moral values may be derived solely from knowledge of that which is intrinsically good, a fully subjective morally is consistent with there being universally true moral values.
There is something I haven't understood about error theory. Let us assume that we were to discover a book, written at about 1850, by a scientist that argued the following: "All claims of chemical composition are false. Take a claim that water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The word atom means "without parts". Consequently, this statement says that water is made up of two hydrogen things without parts and one oxygen thing without parts. This is false - because the things we have been calling atoms do have parts. So this - and all other statements concerning chemical composition - contain a false assumption." The author then argues, "I propose we remove 'without parts' from the meaning of the term 'atom'. We will keep everything else we know about atoms - but instead of defining atoms as things without parts, we will reform the definition of the term 'atom' so that atoms are made up of electrons, neutrons, and protons. With this correction, the statement "water is made up of two smallest bits of hydrogen and one smallest bit of oxygen - which are themselves are made up of parts. With this correction, all claims of atomic composition can be objectively true." This is exactly the form of argument that Mackie used. Mackie himself made the analogy to "atom" in Chapter 4. "The fact that the word ‘atom’, as used in nineteenth-century physics, had as part of its meaning ‘indivisible particle of matter’ did not in itself, even in the nineteenth century, compel anyone to believe that there are indivisible material particles. One could either refrain from using the term ‘atom’ in affirmative statements or, as physicists have subsequently done, use the term with other parts of its meaning only, dropping the requirement of indivisibility." If we were to discover such a treatise written in 1850 that proposed "using the term 'atom' with the other parts of its meaning only, dropping the requirement of indivisibility" we would not take this as an argument for atomic nihilism, or atomic anti-realism, or atomic error theory. We would take it as an argument for an error-free version of atomic realism. Similarly, it appears odd to me to take Mackie's argument that we should use the term 'good' (or 'ought', or similar terms) with the other parts of their meaning only, dropping the requirement of objective, intrinsic prescriptivity, that this gives us moral nihilism, or moral anti-realism, or moral error theory. It gives us an error-free version of moral realism.
Great vid. I think I disagree with you about moral agreement. I think it is a feature of it that it presents a small set of survival based morals. I really dont think there is more. We combine them not come up with more complex ideas. My idea may be radical but I think morality is in order to create functional societies.
At the same time, if we choose to accept a moral system not because of its accordance with truth, but rather because of the benefits it guarantees, which moral system should be chosen? For example, why should, if its the case, deontology be preferred over utilitarianism? It shouldn´t matter then which of them is more in touch with truth right? Then what should make us choose one moral system over another?
If moral systems are to be chosen based on 'benefits,' it all depends on what benefits you value. If you value the ends, then choose utilitarianism of some kind. If you value the means, choose something deontological. So yes, it is just a preference, and that could result in anything you want. You could pick being a slaveowner if you wanted because that might benefit you personally if that is what you value. 'Benefits' can mean almost anything, and in addition, different people benefit from different things. What benefits you is not going to be the same as what benefits others. Contradictory moral systems would likely be chosen.
I needn't even stick to one moral system if what I'm looking for is practical benefit, rather than theoretical substance. Would you kill one person just to save a dying, evil man? Would you kill one person to save a hospital? Our moral intuitions change systems depending on what's on the line. Sometimes the line between the two is very thin, in which case why bother thinking about the losses? You're going to regret it anyway xD A more interesting question might be: Why should we value what one person benefits from over the other? Why value your own benefits?
@@sisyphus645 Whats up man. So, I posted this over a year ago, I believe my opinions matured during this period, and I think I can reframe my original question in a better light. In this sense, maybe what the Thomas of last year was trying to ask was the following: how must evaluate philosophical moral discourse? How can a certain moral opinion be a "better" reading of what morality requires than it's own negation? What "standard" can be used to evaluate our moral beliefs/systems/concepts? Better, rather than just philosophical moral discourse, how should we evaluate philosophical normative discourse in general? It seems to me, intuitively, that descriptive discussion seems "easier" to be evaluated: if we have two conflicting opinions, A and B, about a certain state-of-affairs (for example: A) "the sky is blue!" B) "the sky is not blue!"), one of them is better/more correct/more in acoordance with truth than the other one, due to the fact, I suppose, that one of them better "captures" reality (whataver that is suppose to mean) than the other. But what "reality" are we talking about when we are engaged in normative discussion? What aspect of reality can "ground" our moral belief/concept? Observation: maybe I still mixed up somethings, maybe my question still has some flaws. Of course, my questioning is directed towards "polemic" moral discussion: I don't wish to shake the stability of the claim that "slavery is wrong": of course it is wrong, of course I will prefer it to be wrong, even if there are no objective moral proprierties. Nevertheless, I believe my question has value when it comes to more polemic moral opinions (for example, "is having a child immoral?") because, I think, it's answer can guide us on how to make these polemic discussions have sense, that is, on how to make us believe that a certain opinion is "better" than another , whatever "better" might mean
@@thomasstanton8438 Happy birthday! A simple but rather salient point about your statement 'A' being more correct is that "best approximate description of the real world" is the fundamental underlying desire of the descriptor in this case. In other words, we cannot have a standard without having a goal in mind. Now, the problem is: why value truth rather than untruth? Why value one goal/value over another? Philosophically, I think this question is absurd. However, practically; we can have a debate about the most relevant of all values. What do you think bro?
@@sisyphus645 thanks man. You know, I have absolutely no idea. It does, indeed, seem absurd discussing which value we should value over truth: I suppose basically in every realm of philosophy truth was the ultimate vindicatory standard, in one way or another (even cases like "oh, she didn't tell him the truth because it would hurt him" could be read as "the truth is that we shouldn't inflict unnecessary pain onto others"), so ditching it aside seems awkward. And for me, it's difficult how this could be different even in practical discourse. In fact, I believe it was this which got me into philosophy in the first place. The first subject to which I was introduced was ethics, and after being superficially taught about the "main" ocidental moral traditions (deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics), I was like: "ok, so you have these different views. Each one has good consequences of it's acceptance and bad consequences. But what should be the deciding factor to value one over another? What makes one of them "true" and the others "false"?" I think realized this questioning could be asked about any values, not just moral ones. And I collapsed, I guess, many times, the practical and the philosophical framework. It seems difficult for me to see them as different: the philosophical just seems that it goes "deeper" into the foundations of things than the practical. But maybe this is a misconception
Wouldn't the error theorist have a problem with terms like "impermissible" and "not permissible" being treated like synonyms in every day language? So, they will have to answer a question "is abortion not permissible?" with a "yes", but at the same time answer the question "is abortion impermissible?" with a "no". I don't see how that makes moral semantics any less complicated, compared to noncognitivism, and in particular quasi-realism. Also, when we make assertions about things that don't exist (like that "unicorns are pink"), how can the truth value of these statements be false? To deny a statement "unicorns are pink" would be equivalent to saying "no, unicorns are not pink". But that is absurd! If anything, things like that should not have a truth value at all. Loaded statements like that presuppose the existence of unicorns, and unless this existence is accepted, I don't understand how they can be evaluated and determined to be false.
I don't know if 'solidity' is a thing that physicists actually study or how they would calculate such a thing, but perhaps 'mass' or 'volume' etc would be an easier thing to understand.
Mackie goes to a lot of work to conclude that he cannot claim his arguments to be right! I must have misunderstood you because elsewhere I thought you had expressed that you subscribed to error theory.
"By educating people to think in moral terms, even if they also believe that their moral judgements are false, we can secure the benefits of morality." I can see how this could work for those who do are simply being educated. But I do not see how you could organize such a thing when it is not morally right to do so. Couching educational policy on an allegedly white lie, which would be made very obvious if error theory becomes mainstream, sounds problematic and untenable to me
P1: Moral statements are objective. While this is true for some, but it's not true for everyone. If someone say murder is wrong but specify that they are speaking subjectivity but objectively what than? You say Moral statements presupposes objectively because they hold a special value, as you point out in two statement Cup is solid Murder is wrong You say that both sentence have difference in the sence the 2nd one require a response. But it's not the case for just moral statement. For example 1. Frank Ocean is a great artist. This is not a moral statement, yet there will be people who will think otherwise and even try to give argument against the statement.
