Bernard Williams' Attack on Moral Relativism

[@DinkSmalwood]

First Michael Sugrue then Jeffrey Kaplan. So far this year the algorithms have been more than kind to me.

[@adrianhigh4210]

I give the Algoritm some credit for giving me good options although I have rejected most Narcissitic PD from my studies into Psychology. The Philosophy on Utube is pretty good AND such a time saver!?

[@angelonintendo]

We probably in the same boat

[@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked]

Same here, one year later for me. I started watching his videos the other day. Hehe 🔥🤝😅🤓😌

[@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked]

:3 :3 Thank you, Anonymous channel! 🤝🔥😅🤓😌🐩🥰😻☀️ htt ps ://you tu. be/ IK72uf59qyE These 4 companies own just about everything, Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, and Berkshire Hathaway INC. Coca-Cola and Pepsi aren't even real competitors. Lol. Most of these people running it are Whites, as I figured. As most politicians destroying America, Europe, UK, White dominate nations, are White. The owners of the three main news media are White. The man who funded a lot of French and Italian news was White, and served the Nazis, punished by the American government before. He funded a royalty of Italy that pushed a lot of "news" for them. RTL owns many "news" networks. Many try to say Jews run the news. The New York Post is run by a White man. The New York Times is run by Whites. Mainstream media already debunked this idea that Jews own the news and the Federal Reserve bank. This video is gold so far! It's mostly showing Whites. Barely any Jewish people. If Jews were such a problem, it'd be the other way around. I downloaded it in case the mostly White masters (which I'm mostly White myself, but part Jewish, amongst other ethnic backgrounds in my DNA, so I defend myself and attack my cultures too) don't like this. Thank you, Anonymous, for not being another mindless anti-Semetic organisation! (◕ᴥ◕)🤝🔥🔥😅😌😁🥳🥳🥳🥳🤓🤓Let's goooooo!! Fresh video! Released one day ago! Hehe. They should play this on all news networks. Just hack the stations and play this, for everyone to see. Most people won't see this. Most people will sit in a very controlled bubble. I'm sharing this like wildfire! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🌲🌳🌴🎄🎋🏝️ Defeating wild racist politics (often fueled by man-made religions that started from Jewish mythology, and became propagandist, and racism machines)!! 🔥😌😌😌😌

[@BigJThundy]

Right??

[@pezeron24]

Philosophy was my favorite course in high school in France but many other kids hated it and I wish we had such an amazing teacher as you. You make philosophy easy and fun.

[@petardraganov3716]

The word "vulgar" comes from the Latin "vulgus" meaning people. Latin used to be the Vulgar Tongue, the language of the commoners. The term is derogatory nowadays, with its etymology lost to most people, but it is interesting how "common relativism" still is an adequate name.

[@djn48]

Yes! Thank you, I was going to comment basically the same thing, but now I'll reply to your comment so that hopefully it gets moved up the order of comments, because it helps to understand the material if a person understands the terms used. Vulgar relativism = moral relativism of the average person... see but even "average" has derogatory connotations to some people these days. I find it insane how we need to attach good or bad connotations to individual words, hence narrowing their currently acceptable usage and destroying understanding of previous usage. It all seems to be a part of the overall attempt to simplify the English language for ESOL, but it very quickly gets to the point where meaning is oversimplified, confused and destroyed.

[@waggishsagacity7947]

Petar Draganov: I don't think that your explanation is accurate. The meaning of 'vulgus' is more like 'multitude' meaning the common people (=there are so many of them) In the late Middle Ages, as I recall, the multitudes could NOT read the bible in Latin (though the aristocracy and the priesthood could. It was then thought best to TRANSLATE the bible from LATIN to the local languages (French, English, Spanish) etc. This translation was referred to as the "Vulgata." 'Vulgar, ' I suppose, in what Williams means, is "vulgar" in the sense that it is 'unsophisticated' and therefore erroneous --as indeed Williams indicates. Derogatory, if you will, but really unexamined, unsophisticated is a better translation.

[@Sonex1542]

So glad I found this instructor.

[@winbern_BK_Bernard]

i havent seen someone who is crazy mad with Ethics ....wow! you amaze me listening to you teach Ethics and how knowledgeable you are. cant have enough of your lessons💝💝💝

[@xenspace5764]

As I understand it, 'moral relativism' as a concept was created by an anthropologist (or maybe sociologist) in order to get people to reflect on different cultural values and try to see things from the viewpoint of other societies, rather than just judging them (and note that being non-judgmental is not necessarily the same as being tolerant) - it was never meant to be a philosophical argument in the usual sense. The main problem I have with it is that it only applies to morality in the sense of 'following convention; acting according to a set of rules', not to ethical conduct, which involves an individual searching to understand what goodness is, and how to act according to the good. A 'moral' person believes themself to be good regardless of how dreadful their actions might be, because they are following the rules. This is why we need more ethical people in order to create an ethical society, as a bunch of rule-followers have no true insight into what is actually good.

[@ElendielPlaysEU]

@Xyz the rules that are necessary can be put into law and then be executed through sanctions, but the other rules, the moral rules, are not subjected to that. so are they meaningless if there are no hard consequences?

[@jorden9821]

I'd be weary as to whether it started that way. Not calling you a liar, but if you understand that wider portion of academia, you'd know they have a lot of commonalities. IE, revolutionary tendencies, deconstructionism, Post-Modeen thinking, etc

[@jorden9821]

​@@Xyz-mu1hlit's a collective approach to human minds. It treats is like bees rather than the beings we are

[@jorden9821]

​@@ElendielPlaysEUI think there's a lot of ways of looking at moral goods and bads and crime. I think Natural Law might be the only answer we have. And I think there is a worthwhile appeal to our nature (not in the Aristotelian sense, but in so far that we naturally are social beings with certain tendencies). Lysander Spooner has a short essay titled “Vices Are Not Crimes” worth a read or listen if you get the chance.

[@ElendielPlaysEU]

@@jorden9821 one of the issues i got with natural law is that it basically always falls to the 'naturalistic fallacy' and tries to base what one ought to do on that. ill check the paper, thanks

[@AceHack00]

You forgot about non-Euclidean geometry. In those geometries the angles can be greater or less than 180 in a triangle but I get your point.

[@theobolt250]

Well done, Jeffrey. You succeeded in one fell swoop to confuse a whole lot of kids who started their struggles with trigonometry and piss off tons of engineers who "see" triangles everywhere! Well done. 😁😁

[@Raoul684]

Triangles in Euclidian, flat plane geometry do indeed have 180° internal angles. Those a-priori understandings go out the window again when considering non-euclidian geometry. For drawing out a triangle on a sphere can potentially consist of 3 x 90° internal angles. Love all the videos btw, so interesting.

[@bimrebeats]

Right, it’s good to see mathematically informed viewers here. Euclidian geometry could be considered a mathematical society.

[@aluijbajjek]

I was about to say the same thing

[@battlefieldcustoms873]

between this channel and and Royal Institute I am more than confident about getting back to school and learning something real

[@jimitreweek9455]

Thank you for these insightful videos, please continue making them.

[@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked]

😅:3 Thank you, Anonymous channel! 🤝🔥😅🤓😌🐩🥰😻☀️ htt ps ://you tu. be/ IK72uf59qyE These 4 companies own just about everything, Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, and Berkshire Hathaway INC. Coca-Cola and Pepsi aren't even real competitors. Lol. Most of these people running it are Whites, as I figured. As most politicians destroying America, Europe, UK, White dominate nations, are White. The owners of the three main news media are White. The man who funded a lot of French and Italian news was White, and served the Nazis, punished by the American government before. He funded a royalty of Italy that pushed a lot of "news" for them. RTL owns many "news" networks. Many try to say Jews run the news. The New York Post is run by a White man. The New York Times is run by Whites. Mainstream media already debunked this idea that Jews own the news and the Federal Reserve bank. This video is gold so far! It's mostly showing Whites. Barely any Jewish people. If Jews were such a problem, it'd be the other way around. I downloaded it in case the mostly White masters (which I'm mostly White myself, but part Jewish, amongst other ethnic backgrounds in my DNA, so I defend myself and attack my cultures too) don't like this. Thank you, Anonymous, for not being another mindless anti-Semetic organisation! (◕ᴥ◕)🤝🔥🔥😅😌😁🥳🥳🥳🥳🤓🤓Let's goooooo!! Fresh video! Released one day ago! Hehe. They should play this on all news networks. Just hack the stations and play this, for everyone to see. Most people won't see this. Most people will sit in a very controlled bubble. I'm sharing this like wildfire! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🌲🌳🌴🎄🎋🏝️ Defeating wild racist politics (often fueled by man-made religions that started from Jewish mythology, and became propagandist, and racism machines)!! 🔥😌😌😌😌

[@marcog.7322]

as an Italian I have to partially correct you on "a priori". I didn't know it was proper latin because it is pretty common even in contemporary italian. The point is that it doesn't mean "without experiecing", it is much more "prior to experience". So it's not necessary to pick abstract concepts as examples (as you did with the triangles). Infact you can say "a priori" that if you drop your pen, this will eventually hit the ground. You can say it prior to the real experience of dropping a pen. But dropping a pen was and remains a very accessible experiment to perform, it's just useless because you already now what will happen.

[@viever9158]

At least how it is used in English philosophical, this is incorrect. A priori as used by Williams in his example is used in a sense that we will never ever experience or demonstrate true morality.

[@finndaniels9139]

Not in philosophy. A priori doesn’t just mean prior to this one single event, it means prior to any event - or, put more clearly, without need of the event actually occurring.

[@fearitselfpinball8912]

You sir are an Italian philosopher.

[@daithi1966]

Great presentation. I happen to believe in relativism and try to live my life based on my own moral code, but as a relativist I've never believed that I was required to accept and tolerate the moral views of others. As long as your moral views don't affect me then I have no problem being tolerant. However, once your views cross that line and start to affect me then I just may be willing to go to war over my own morals.

[@SkiRedMtn]

As soon as I saw principle 2 I was like that’s supposed to be applied to everyone so it’s not relative. So if a society didn’t practice tolerance then they’d be universally, not relatively, wrong.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

21:35 you should have added "in flat space", as in curved space (for example the surface of a sphere) the angles of a triangle don't add up to 180°.

[@maxkern976]

I'm completely flabbergasted! That was sooo good. Thx for the clarification. I´v been puzzled by this my entire life!

[@PHILRichardB1987]

Just objectively, this video is so cool. How do you get these awesome effects? I teach online and would love to up my online lecture game!

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Thanks! The biggest help is that the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where I teach, has a lightboard studio. Very few faculty use it, but it is super cool It is a black room with a camera and a piece of glass with light shining into the glass. I just look into the camera, record my lecture, and then the image is digitally flipped after the fact. So it looks like I write with my left hand, when I am really right-handed. This effect can also be achieved with a mirror at a 45-degree angle, but digitally flipping is easier. I get the raw footage and then I spend a few hours in iMovie editing, speeding up the bits where I am writing, punching in the image, etc. I didn't know a single thing about video editing when I started this a few months ago. But my belief is that students will get more if the videos are of high quality.

[@profjeffreykaplan]

I just made video explaining how the board works: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJDHZWeYocaSfaM

[@StephenRWilliams]

@@profjeffreykaplan Here I thought you were just really good at writing backwards, like how lawyers are talented at reading documents that are upside-down.

[@jameskelso839]

I don't know if Jefferty will ever answer So I will give you an engineering math geek view, and that is this, he probably uses of course the all black back ground for the need of making the pens more visible,, dry erase pens in florescent colors, the glass of course, a video camera, and this is the tricky part a mirror. He isn't left handed so from there you should be able to figure it out, right?

[@JagadguruSvamiVegananda]

@@profjeffreykaplan Chapter 03 of my books, "FISH", provides examples of the moral failure of academic “philosophers” (both in their personal lives, and in their philosophical work), so I am loath to consume valuable space here by offering multiple case studies of evil, deluded “ethicists”, but I cannot resist providing at least one more specimen of a Western academic, who was a leader in his field during the second half of the twentieth century, in the Christian era: Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams was educated at the University of Oxford and lectured at the University of Cambridge, arguably the two most prestigious colleges in the history of the world, yet such an illustrious heritage failed to impart any semblance of moral understanding upon Sir Bernard, judging by the literature he composed. His assertion that “There cannot be any very interesting, tidy or self-contained theory of what morality is… nor… can there be an ethical theory, in the sense of a philosophical structure which, together with some degree of empirical fact, will yield a decision procedure for moral reasoning”, is not only blatantly false (as proven in this book) but downright laughable! In the Preface to Williams’ first book he notes the charge against contemporary moral philosophy “that it is peculiarly empty and boring”. How apt, since this is precisely how I, the current World Teacher Himself, find Bernard’s incredibly laborious, humdrum writings on ethics/morality. In order to simplify my point, Professor Williams (like practically every person who has ever lived) was clearly unable to comprehend PROPER meta-ethics, and therefore, devoted decades of his working life composing copious amounts of tedious books and essay papers, to no avail. Also, the mere fact that he was knighted by an illegitimate (so-called) monarch, proves beyond doubt that he was a shill of the corrupt state.

[@josemariarecalde9984]

You can perfectly have moral relativism and not tolerate any other moral systems, because you don't believe in any of them, or apply the one you fancy the most and rip the rest apart

[@mykhailokravchenko4142]

Doesn't it make you moral absolutist by definition? I haven't finished watching the video though. Might be wrong. Unless it's joke to highlight modern hypocrites. Sorry then

[@eljefe8942]

True, and to add to this, just because you don't condemn someone doesn't mean you choose to continue to associate with that person. The same applies to groups. If one deems a culture inferior, then they can simply "allow the pigs to lie in their filth" and continue on

[@edwardlawrence5666]

People are complex, so they can mix and merge all these theories in their behavior. There is a little of a lover and a hater in all of us.

[@grantstratton2239]

I'd say that a faccit of the human condition is believing moral relativism applies in your favor personally, but not to other members of your society.

[@JohannesReiche-i9r]

I think most people have the principle that in order to condemn someone or their belief there needs to be an objective truth and they/their belief have to know/follow it while the other person/belief doesn't. If you want moral relativism and the right not to tolerate other moral systems, you need to let go of that principle to not contradict yourself.

[@gregsimay7379]

A useful distinction in this discussion is between a moral principle and its application. For example, there may be a general moral principle to seek not deliberately offend people. Applying this principle to different societies can lead to different behaviors. So what at first blush appears to be relativism in matters of etiquette may in fact me differing applications of the same general principle.

[@Nick-Nasti]

Exactly. I suggest is even more basic: do not harm the herd (Comply with society)

[@thisslightlysweetlife3402]

Which tends toward absolutism.

[@anaiscarrichon6409]

A big thanks! I'm just starting my memoire in moral and experimental philosophy, with a lack of knowledge (but not of interest!!) in philosophy 'cause I'm studying cognitive science. Your work is really enjoyable and understandable, it will helps me for sure! And your accent is french-friendly in my opinion 😂

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Thanks, and glad that I have a widely-understandable accent! If it's helpful, my videos are organized into playlists: kzbin.info/door/_hukbByJP7OZ3Xm2tszacQplaylists

[@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked]

Nice! I'm part French, 22% in my DNA, I found out in recent years. Hehe.

[@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked]

:3 :3 Thank you, Anonymous channel! 🤝🔥😅🤓😌🐩🥰😻☀️ htt ps ://you tu. be/ IK72uf59qyE These 4 companies own just about everything, Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, and Berkshire Hathaway INC. Coca-Cola and Pepsi aren't even real competitors. Lol. Most of these people running it are Whites, as I figured. As most politicians destroying America, Europe, UK, White dominate nations, are White. The owners of the three main news media are White. The man who funded a lot of French and Italian news was White, and served the Nazis, punished by the American government before. He funded a royalty of Italy that pushed a lot of "news" for them. RTL owns many "news" networks. Many try to say Jews run the news. The New York Post is run by a White man. The New York Times is run by Whites. Mainstream media already debunked this idea that Jews own the news and the Federal Reserve bank. This video is gold so far! It's mostly showing Whites. Barely any Jewish people. If Jews were such a problem, it'd be the other way around. I downloaded it in case the mostly White masters (which I'm mostly White myself, but part Jewish, amongst other ethnic backgrounds in my DNA, so I defend myself and attack my cultures too) don't like this. Thank you, Anonymous, for not being another mindless anti-Semetic organisation! (◕ᴥ◕)🤝🔥🔥😅😌😁🥳🥳🥳🥳🤓🤓Let's goooooo!! Fresh video! Released one day ago! Hehe. They should play this on all news networks. Just hack the stations and play this, for everyone to see. Most people won't see this. Most people will sit in a very controlled bubble. I'm sharing this like wildfire! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🌲🌳🌴🎄🎋🏝️ Defeating wild racist politics (often fueled by man-made religions that started from Jewish mythology, and became propagandist, and racism machines)!! 🔥😌😌😌😌

[@JagadguruSvamiVegananda]

@@profjeffreykaplan, right and wrong are RELATIVE. ;)

[@oldterry9356]

As a philosopher, are you familiar with the work of Roy A Clouser (professor emeritus of the College of New Jersey)?

[@mileskeller5244]

Brilliant way to pose the issue. I have never thought to use toleration as the negation for moral relativism.

[@brentweissert6524]

lucid. succinct. logically sound. what more can you ask for in a philosophical argument? keep 'em coming.

[@tobiasbenson3234]

You prolly dont give a shit but does anyone know a tool to log back into an Instagram account..? I somehow forgot the login password. I would love any tips you can give me

[@tobiasbenson3234]

@Saul Brysen i really appreciate your reply. I found the site through google and im trying it out atm. Looks like it's gonna take quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

[@tobiasbenson3234]

@Saul Brysen It did the trick and I finally got access to my account again. Im so happy! Thanks so much, you saved my account :D

[@saulbrysen5125]

@Tobias Benson you are welcome =)

[@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked]

​@@saulbrysen5125 true. Some IG focused password crackers out there. I study ethical hacking. Hehe

[@dougtruesdell9937]

Isn't the toleration claim at 8:00 a moral claim? As such it might be accepted in one society, but not another.

[@jimcateno9396]

Jeff, I would love to hear your personal views on morality.

[@matthewdancz9152]

That isn't how 2nd order moral thinking works.

[@austinpowers343]

He's a professor and these are recordings of his lectures so I doubt he'll make a video about that, as interesting as it'd be!

[@BardovBacchus]

I wish I could come up with a good analogy. The thing is, the two concepts may be "incompatible", but they are not mutually exclusive. The confusion, in my very humble opinion, is attempting to tether relativism to an absolute. That *is* impossible. Like attempting to prove the existence of anti-matter merely with the annihilation of matter. Is that the analogy? Tolerance is a paradox where the one thing tolerance can not tolerate is intolerance, but that's not quite true either. I think the details of any given situation will always matter, therefore it is nearly impossible to claim reductive universal morality. We have situations where killing is murder, and wrong, other situations where it is ambiguous like war, and still others where it is good. The good guy with a gun kills the bad guy with a gun, that old chestnut. However, when the lioness kills and eats the antelope, is that even a moral question?

[@andrybevcuk4976]

Somehow not about that. There are general moral codes that state that the situation matters, such as utilitarianism. Relativism in this video means, for example, society A believes that female circumcision is moral, and society B believes that it is not, but they are both right. Tolerance here means that no one has the right to impose his morality on others. The point of the video is that if you look closely, these two statements contradict each other

[@BardovBacchus]

Huh? I think I need more coffee @@andrybevcuk4976 or you need a better example. I don't know where you are finding your external universal values but from my temporal locus the mutilation of an infant who can not consent is wrong, regardless of the individual configuration of the genitalia. Do you think there are universal absolute external values that remain constant over hundreds of thousands of years? {that are not cosmological constants}

[@andrybevcuk4976]

@@BardovBacchus Sorry for the example. I consider this practice immoral and simply cruel. I am trying to emphasize that according to moral relativism, every society/individual is moral when it follows its own rules, whatever they may be. Relativism here has nothing to do with different situations. Among the moral systems listed in the course, only Kantian morality ignores the context of situations and the consequences of actions taken. Tolerance in the video (and not in life) only means that no one has the right to impose their morals. The teacher proves that these two statements contradict each other.

[@BardovBacchus]

Okay, @@andrybevcuk4976 if you're satisfied great. I left this comment a year ago and don't care enough to go back and watch this video

[@DrDress]

21:50 only applies to non-euclidean geometry.

[@jameslooker4791]

I personally like the explanation that imposing tolerance is just intolerance of intolerance, which seems reasonable at first glance. If a principle is so compelling that it must be universal, creating ad hoc exceptions for any portion of the population that doesn't agree undermines any claim of tolerance. "We're intolerant of intolerance" is very close to "we only tolerate the tolerant, so if we aren't tolerating you it's because you're the problem." The axiom that can't survive its own test is surprisingly common in philosophy. "Only verifiable statements are meaningful, except this statement."

[@itsnothat]

I don't know, this could go into an endless loop. I am not sure if this is worth arguing or exploring since everything ( in this case tolerance as well) is relative when put in context. That's what some use to argue as nothing is real.

[@B.S...]

Toleration is a subjective principle and incompatible within a homogeneous group, but would it be relatively acceptable within a pluralistic environment?

[@nourmasalkhi9004]

Hi! I think the criticism of Tolerance is absolutely valid, but you can come to the same conclusion by arguing the negative of its inverse. I will define Intolerance here as a relative moral that holds the imposition of other's morals onto oneself as wrong. I argue that Intolerance is universally moral, because anyone who claims to not be Intolerant would have to accept the imposition of Intolerance onto themselves when told to do so. In any frame of reference if even just one person is both Intolerant and believes in imposing their morals onto others everyone within that frame will either have to adopt that persons morals entirely including Intolerance or be forced to adopt Intolerance separately to protect their own morals until everyone within that frame is Intolerant. Violating Intolerance would grow from being a benign evil to the most evil until it becomes universally evil and it's inverse Tolerance (not imposing ones morals onto others) would become universally moral. Please let me know if there are any logical errors in my reasoning. Loved your video. It helped me a lot. Thanks!

[@jameskelso839]

You know, I think you are completely right, and you would over time see a pendulum effect from Tolerance to Intolerance. Because not everyone will be satisfied with either one. Good supposition.

[@eroorefulufoo6625]

tolerance isn't the "imposition of other's morals onto oneself", nor is intolerance its inverse

[@thameral-hejailan5004]

How does your whiteboard work? Are you writing backwards or is it just edited later? @JeffreyKaplan

[@bouncycastle955]

It's a piece of transparent plexiglass, just mirror the video and post.

[@prodprod]

But isn't relativism itself being presented as a universal moral truth? -- Thus rendering it self contradictory?

[@testest12344]

No? Objective morality makes the claim that actions can be judged as good or bad in all cases, no matter the society. Relativism is just the rejection of that claim. It rejects a universal standard to judge moral actions, not universal claims about the nature of morality themselves.

[@prodprod]

@@testest12344 I find if difficult to accept the position that, moral relativism is, as you seem to be suggesting (and please correct me if I'm wrong) simple the absence of a position -- in much the same way that atheism may simply be thought of as the absence of theism -- simply the "lack" of belief in deities. Thus moral relativism is, in some sense, the lack of a universal objective moral framework -- thus it doesn't impose anything, in itself. That is, it makes no affirmative statement about universal moral conditions. But doesn't it? If I say that there are universal objective moral statements and you say -- no, there aren't -- it isn't the same as theism/atheism -- which are merely statements about beliefs, not about the nature of reality. These are statements about, potentially, the presence or absence of moral realism. If one person says that it's always wrong to serve up baby pate' simply because it's really tasty and someone else says -- well, just how tasty is it -- I mean, if it's really tasty, maybe it's okay? -- the latter position isn't simply a lack of universal objective moral standards. Or, again, am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

[@testest12344]

@@prodprod Oh, yeah, you're right to say that moral relativism isn't just the rejection of objective morality, which is also a position taken by moral antirealists. Still, it's not self contradictory, I'd say. Also, I don't see why the distinction you're making between it and atheism matters? You could even say that the atheist/theist position are statements about the nature of reality.

[@prodprod]

@@testest12344 I'm afraid that I'm still a bit confused. Earlier, you said, "Objective morality makes the claim that actions can be judged as good or bad in all cases, no matter the society. Relativism is just the rejection of that claim." But above, you say I'm right that moral relativism ISN'T just the rejection of objective morality. So -- understand that I'm not digging my heels on this issue. because honestly I don't know enough about it. Just trying to understand it all. Regarding the atheist/theist analogy, I think that that would very much depend on whether we're talking about strong vs. weak atheism. Certainly there are versions of atheism that affirmatively deny the existence of deities, in which case your position would be correct -- but that would be a small sub-category of atheism overall, which simply rejects the affirmative theistic claim. And in that sense, it seemed to me (at least initially) to correlate to your description of objective moral truth claims vs. moral relativism. NMS

[@testest12344]

@@prodprod I'm saying my earlier statement was incorrect.

[@dogsdomain8458]

Could you convert a moral relativist proposition into a non-relatavist proposition by simply saying that you should follow the social norms of your country or culture? Or it is right to do something if it is considered morally accepted by your culture. So you really only have one objective universal moral norm which is to follow the socially constructed norms of your culture. I mean you can have a moral norm that says you should always follow the law and i think that people would agree that this is not a relativist proposition, even though laws can change from country to country, you would still be obligated to follow the law. Like, for example, many religious people believe you should follow the laws of your country and they dont consider themselves relativists.

[@profjeffreykaplan]

Yes, I think so. You would have the metaethical view that there is a moral law that applies to everyone everywhere. And you would have the ethical view that the moral law contains merely one statute, one principle: follow the conventional morality of your society. That would be a kind of moral objectivism that looks very much like relativism, but is technically a non-relativist view. But then we have to ask whether such a view is plausible. One concern is that it doesn't seem to track with most people's moral intuitions, since most people think that murder is wrong even in other societies, regardless of what those societies think.

[@samueldimmock694]

@@profjeffreykaplan There's probably a way to add nuance to that view to reduce much of that implausibility. For example, even in other societies where murder is not seen as wrong in and of itself, there is usually some convention of retribution (if someone murders someone close to you, getting revenge is seen as morally good, if not morally obligatory). There is a moral convention that certain kinds of action merit retaliation, which could be defined as a moral convention saying that those kinds of action are wrong--or at least that they're wrong if other people care about certain aspects of them (in this case, about the person who was murdered; and most people tend to care about people who they learn have been murdered, if for no other reason than that they were murdered). Of course, it might be difficult to make such a modification consistent with itself and with reality, and I am probably not qualified to make one in any case. It also makes the theory quite convoluted, which is its own kind of implausibility.

[@weksauce]

"Non-relative" is just "Absolute". That's like saying "non-good" instead of "bad".

[@bouncycastle955]

non-good isn't just bad, it's bad _and_ neutral.

[@weksauce]

@@bouncycastle955 Nice.

[@weksauce]

@@bouncycastle955 Non-relative isn't just absolute, it's absolute **and** neutral.

[@bouncycastle955]

@@weksauce Or it isn't real

[@ghostagee5232]

Why is it a dichotomy? Is it even a multiplicity? What's outside anti-relativism and relativism? Is it quantifiable?

[@kumapunku]

How do I standout from other channels that also make similar content? 🤔I know! 🗣️ I’ll write on a see through plexiglass marker board backwards placing the camera on opposite side.

[@nonyadamnbusiness9887]

Yeah, and do it left handed while wearing a man's shirt and jacket with the buttons on the wrong side.

[@kumapunku]

@@nonyadamnbusiness9887😂good one. ☝️

[@Paraselene_Tao]

It took me three times to get William's point on the right. On the third try, I sat down and really paid attention. I guess we will take a look at other kinds of relativism: namely one that doesn't worry about Toleration. If we combine Relativism with Indifference, then won't we end up with the real world we live in today? 😁

[@Paraselene_Tao]

I'm guessing it took me 3 times, because I don't really understand toleration. It's clear we live in an intolerant society. I ought to be able to condemn female genital mutilation, and homophobia to name only two.

[@Paraselene_Tao]

I simply believe it's wrong to be tolerant of poor morality. I'm not a big supporter of Relativism anyhow.

[@jameskelso839]

LOL. Good Comment. and it may be accurate.

[@christophertaylor5003]

Not important thing, but interior angles of a triangle not always sum up to 180°

[@profjeffreykaplan]

When would they not? I am not a mathematician, but I am pretty sure that they always sum to 180-degrees.

[@christophertaylor5003]

@@profjeffreykaplan as You fairly mentioned, triangle is a concept, an idea, so it is only natural for us to expect that some people might just redefine whole geometry in such a way that a triangle's interior angles sum would be strictly less than 180° (Lobachevsky geometry) or strictly more than 180° (if I'm not mistaken, that's what called Riemann geometry). But it really is nitpicking, as it is absolutely clear that You meant geometry with zero curveness. P.S. I loved all of Your lectures that I've seen to this point (some about Body-Mind problem and first 19 of this Introduction to Ethics). Thank You for providing people with such energetic and somehow simple way of explaining such complex things!

[@nickstebbens]

The "central confusion" claim is partly true, but I want to go further with it: firstly (a priori (lol)), problems of such large scope as the cited are (imo) best approached at a larger scope (perspective) than the questions themselves, i.e.e.g. (sic) general questions at at least the generalized point of view, relative questions with at least a relativistic scope, etc... I proceed thus: Each society should interact with other societies in whichever ways are most beneficial firstly (a priori) to those acting, and secondly, most beneficial to the other societies affected, in regards to each interactive (i.e. mutually affective) actions of societies. Basically: self-preservation is an objectively moral attitude (this can be proven in another essay), in general, thus the promotion of self-preservative attitudes in other societies, and resolution of disagreement therebetween, is moral, a priori. I know this might sound relative, but it isn't, it's an objective claim that can be proven true or false, even though it does include and account for the relativistic attitudes present in other societies.

[@user-us6ws7vi1l]

what are some objection against personal relativism?

[@Flynbourne]

So it’s wrong to judge but that itself is a judgement. So it’s wrong to assert that it’s wrong to judge. It becomes either circular or infinitely referential which is really what circular is. So is there actually any coherent argument for moral relativism.

[@eliashe1797]

it's not spoken of here, but the point is applicable to and oft discussed as it relates to the practical practices of activism. The generalized solution there is that there are some aspects that have agreed upon or non-relative moral harm associated with them. Where the agreement is between folks within the differing societies. The notion becomes then that one can be selectively intolerant within one's own society, and one can find elements of other societies that are congruent with their own society but in agreement with you, work with them to change the society with the morally objectionable aspect to them. So, if we hold that sexism bad, for instance, we can look for elements of other societies that also agree that sexism bad, and work with them towards the changing of the society. In terms of the point regarding relativism and tolerance the notion amounts to a criticism that societies are not monolithic, and william's argument ultimately depends on a depiction of relativism as if they were. Still, william's argument may work in abstraction or as applicable to individuals, it just doesn't match the reality of societies well.

[@KowjjaMusic]

Not exactly the same relativism but Noam Chomsky's critique of moral relativism is also worth checking out

[@666nevermore]

In Vulgar Relativism statement 1 and 2 can’t exist all together. If one society finds good or moral to condamn other cultures moral then it would deny the existence of the second statement. Since all relative moral as stated “are good/ correct” you also can’t deny them to condemn other societies moral code and they would be right.

[@666nevermore]

Ok lmao you explained it 5 minute later and specifically at the end ahah

[@GregoryWonderwheel]

FYI, we learn and know nothing about triangles without sensory perception being involved. To assert otherwise is patently false.

[@dmitryalexandersamoilov]

Vulgar Relativism is actually not incoherent (when you add one belief/consideration). Relativism says: Ideas about ethics are fundamentally statements about people's preferences. And: If you, as a human being, have a preference for not having anyone else's preferences imposed upon you, you cannot logically impose your own preferences upon them. If you did that, you'd be a hypocrite. That's where tolerance comes from. It comes from the preference for all of us to have the freedom to choose our own preferences. A good analogue is this: Imagine a society which has a preference for being non-violent. They say, violence is wrong and we will not partake in it. But! Someone attacks them. Do they attack back? Or, since they are non-violent, they'd be hypocrites for attacking back? I say, No. They are not hypocrites for being violent against people who "started" the violence. Because the preference should not be misunderstood to mean, we will not use violence no matter the situation. The actual ethical statement should be, in order to be coherent, is: if you do violence, we'll do violence to you. Much in the same way, vulgar relativists say. If you profess to the superiority of your preferences to all other preferences on earth, we will respond by professing the superiority of our preference that all preferences are created equal (unless they include violence). This is a vulgar (that is, unsophisticated) way of thinking, yes. But it's easy to understand and very practical. And to me, it's what I call Ethics.

[@profjeffreykaplan]

There is a famous metaethical view on which ethical statements do not make claims, but merely express preferences or sentiments. You may find this view attractive. Here my lecture video about one version of it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWTJXn-cop1-hMk

[@dmitryalexandersamoilov]

@@profjeffreykaplan i'll take a look, thank you

[@Ockerlord]

I prefer to have other people's preferences imposed upon me, actually. Living in a society with laws that are enforced, even if I do not like some of them, is a good thing. And of course I want laws based on my morals be enforced upon others as well.

[@dmitryalexandersamoilov]

@@Ockerlord yeah people can prefer opposite things. that's the problem. if you prefer people to impose preferences on you, that's great. but what happens when you prefer to impose your preferences on someone who doesnt prefer that? there would be some conflict i assume, and the decision of whose preferences win out in the end will be resolved by violence (or the threat thereof).

[@joefromzohra]

Anti-realism is about objective morality, which it denies, and on that, relativism agrees. Relativism sees morality as subjective, but also as real, which anti-realism denies.

[@JonHuhnMedical]

Oh, geez, you make my head hurt. Subscribed.

[@MrLcowles]

It's truly sad and demoralizing (lol) how few people can understand such a simple argument.

[@Heldarion]

If every society has a version of the toleration principle, wouldn't that make it universal? And then also get us back to the relativism-toleration contradiction?

[@cliffordhodge1449]

This is a sort of ad hominem side issue, but I have long thought there was something inconsistent in both claiming to be a moral relativist and also being motivated to convince others to accept relativism. Even assuming they offer the idea as merely normative and not prescriptive, what difference does it make which view we believe if it is not a moral difference?

[@bouncycastle955]

It's pretty simple, whether morality is relative or not, I don't want to be skinned alive. If someone is going to skin me alive, I'm going to try to convince them otherwise. It's not a complicated problem.

[@arianagrandaremix8858]

Sir brilliant as always But I have a few questions Can a moral relativist say something is wrong? Isn't it all just opinion in moral relativism bez he can not objectively say something is wrong ? So can a moral relativist call Hitler bad? Or wrong? Objectively ?

[@Samuel-qc7kg]

He can but it isn't absolute in his relativism views, it would be just his personal opinion and it isn't better than someone who agrees with Hitler as much as if he disliked ketchup and I didn't.

[@arianagrandaremix8858]

@@Samuel-qc7kg are u a theist ?

[@Samuel-qc7kg]

@@arianagrandaremix8858 Lol why?

[@arianagrandaremix8858]

@@Samuel-qc7kg u sound like one lol

[@Samuel-qc7kg]

@@arianagrandaremix8858 Idk what does that mean. Maybe it is because a bunch of theists are moral realists? If not then I don't know how you assumed that.

[@nikolaychikhachev7115]

It's horrifying how popular moral relativism is

[@wishesandfishes]

Really? What about the argument presented here do you find horrifying?

[@hedgehogsdilemma2220]

i don't know how old is this video and everyone probably knows this already, bit vulgar comes from the latin word vulgo, vulgi. it indicates people, the mass of individuals. in italian the word volgare indicates either the various languages that non-intellectuals spoke in during the Middle Ages, or words that in English are usually referrred to as swearings. they all share this idea that only the majority, less-educated people would use the words or the language, so, in a certain sense, it's always pejorative, but it can also be used in a neutral way, especially in historical contexts

[@thecrapehanger24]

*sitting out in the hallway thinking about what I have done wrong, like: Lecturer: *draws triangle on the board. 'This is a triangle' Me: 'No - that's not a triangle, because triangles are 2d. That's a symbol you have drawn that you intentioned would convey the idea of a triangle to me.'

[@moonman2022]

I too am a condescending prick.

[@jackkrell4238]

Couldn't we also say that all animate objects are just conglomerations of subatomic particls and that evrything else is just how another strucutre made up of particles eprceives the reality around it? If we were to dip our fingers in solipsism, evrything we view are just simulacrums of vague images that are projected from our own consciousness. 2d geometrics exist just like words in the sense that they themselves exist but hte ascribed meaning only matters to one group of agents(humans). What constitutes physical existence of objects if an arbitrary distinciton is made between the level of materiality is contingent on which physical dimension is inhabited? The markings of the dry erase marker or chalk exists to make a shape in the same sense that a three dimensional prism exists regardless of whther or not an observer is present to determine its spatial structure.

[@hjge1012]

I don't get the distinction at the start of the video. What does it take for etiket to be 'real'? Because I genuinely don't see the difference between the two, besides some semantic argument around the concept of 'what is real.' Unless you completely reject the concept of an 'etiket' or 'rudeness'? But that just wouldn't make much sense, unless the distinction you're trying to make is between morals and opinion. as in: it 'is' not rude; 'you think' it is rude. Anyway. I remain confused by that explanation. I'd say that chewing with your mouth open is not inherently rude, but could be rude if in a specific society that was the rule. That's anti-realist right?

[@davidthevegan4901]

Not sure if this is accurate or warranted, but this lecture has me thinking perhaps in our attempt to be morally consistent we will fail to be logically consistent in our meta ethics

[@jajjfajsidjoigfe]

We do not know things like Geometry or even Mathematics in general a pirori. The reason we know that the sum of angles within a triangle is 180 degrees is that we did formal proofs, visually drawing depictions of triangles and observing them to find out their innate properties in Euclidean space. That was observation of our world's Euclidean space and its properties and that's what we describe in Geometry. Geometry outside of Euclidean space uses the properties we found in Euclidean space and extrapolating from there. Literally none of it is a priori or in other words something we came to without observation of the world.

[@batglide5484]

You seem to misunderstand what a priori means. Mathematics, including geometry, is a priori because it is all accomplished through deductive reasoning and _not_ empirical evidence. Prove to me that a triangle has interior angles equal to 180 degrees without using mathematics and only empirical evidence.

[@jajjfajsidjoigfe]

@@batglide5484 Geometry very specifically is based on observations of the real world. You might say it isn't but it's pretty obvious why most geometry is 3 dimensional and Euclidean; because that's the spacial dimensions of the world we live in and experience. In the same way we don't know the gravity constant for Earth a priori but rather from observation, we know things like the sum of the angle of triangles because we live in 3 dimensional, Euclidean space where triangles you would trace on paper would have that sum. We can argue the different particular disciplines, but you can see where the issue is in trying to claim something is a priori when it is informed by the outside world.

[@weksauce]

There is no such thing as rudeness, racism, disgustingness, etc. People should be honest and instead state the objective thing that happened, like, "he chewed with his mouth open", and then either, "I don't like it", or "I don't like it because it belongs to a class of things that I don't like". The not-likingness is inside the judge, not the actor.

[@moonman2022]

This "no such thing" exists "inside the judge". It has ontological reality in the subjective realm. Maybe I'm being pedantic and this is a topic for another lecture, but qualia such as beauty, the color green, or rudeness are real, albeit nonmaterial.

[@weksauce]

@@moonman2022 Subjective things only exist inside the judge. That's why I say, instead of saying, "THAT'S rude", people should say, either, "I don't like that", or, "That's _____ (class of behaviors), all of which I don't like." Similar to other qualia you mentioned, when I say greenness "isn't real", I don't mean that nobody has a subjective experience of green. I mean that there is no green out here, in the world. When somebody says, "That's green", they're making the same mistake as someone who says, "That's rude". It's not a property of the thing. They should instead say, "I find that green", or "I don't like that". There's a little difference, though. Rudeness isn't a quale. A person can't experience rudeness, only dislike. They can experience offense, but instead of saying, "I'm offended", they're saying, "that's rude", and usually they're even more wrong and saying, "YOU'RE rude". Beauty and rudeness aren't even real the way greenness is. You can't feel beauty or rudeness, you can only judge them. Beauty is just, "I like that" and rudeness is just, "I don't like that". Neither is an experience or quale like greenness. I see greenness, but I can't see beauty or smell rudeness, only judge things to match or not-match my beautiful or rude categories/qualities. Saying it that way makes them sound more like green, not sure if I've conveyed the difference between how green is real and beauty and rudeness aren't. Beauty and rudeness are at a much higher and more abstract level of brain function than greenness, which happens wayyyy below consciousness, in our optic nerves and the lowest-level visual processing systems. Offense is real, liking and disliking are real, greenness is real. Beauty and rudeness aren't.

[@weksauce]

@@moonman2022 I've got a better handle on the difference. Greenness is a single pattern in a low-level neural network, and both the network and the pattern are the same in everyone, universal. Beauty is a varied class of different patterns of activity at a very high (abstract) level of neural networks. It's not a single thing, and it's different in its presentations. It's very subjective which patterns ought to be included in beauty or not-beauty. It's very objective which pattern is "detecting greenness", and in which network it happens, which is also objective and universal (let's say it happens in the visual cortex. What is or is not a visual cortex is much more objective than subjective). Both are things that exist entirely inside the mind (neural networks + sensing nerves) experiencing them, not in the objects reflecting light at the sensing nerves hooked up to the mind experiencing them. I call the mind experiencing or judging things "the judge", moreso in subjective matters like morality. In morality, you can (and mostly do) judge things you've never experienced. With greenness, you just perceive it. It's a process that happens in a low-level network that's part of you. With rudeness, you judge a thing that's happening to you as rude because you feel offended. Offense may be universal and low-level, I'm not sure. But rudeness, the judgement of things as rude, is completely conscious, which is high-level, very abstract, and almost certainly different patterns within the same person and I would bet my life more than one different pattern between different people.

[@expensivepink7]

Great professor wish I could have had you when I did my philosophy minor that I wish I made into a double major 💔 then jurisprudence in law school

[@jackf1658]

I’ve heard motion used as an example of objective relativism

[@showcase0525]

Smiles in non euclidean geometry

[@RyanApplegatePhD]

I am pretty certain that a shadow cast by a 3D object could be a 2D triangle. To make the objection concrete, I think you can argue that "shape" can't become an abstract concept by which you could define a triangle, until you see a shape in the wild.

[@colonelweird]

So you think sunlight is 2 dimensional? It's not. And every other feature in the definition of a triangle is purely abstract and can never be seen empirically, e.g., the three angles all end in single points with no width or height. All empirically visible triangles are merely rough approximations of the strictly a priori definition of a triangle.

[@RyanApplegatePhD]

@@colonelweird I didn't say sunlight was two dimensional. A triangle is a 3 sided object with interior angles that add to 180 degrees. If I make a 3D triangular prism that is 1 inch think in it's 3rd dimension and shine light down onto it, and the shadow falls on a flat surface, then the shadow will be a triangle by all mathematical definitions.

[@colonelweird]

@@RyanApplegatePhD Think about what you're saying. "A flat surface" - is it really possible to have a truly flat surface in the physical world? If you had a powerful microscope, would this surface be truly flat down to the molecular level? Of course not. Therefore it would be impossible for any shadow to have a completely straight edge. It would only be relatively straight. For any manufactured flat surface, there must always be a certain tolerance, i.e., a degree to which it's not absolutely flat. That's just how the physical world works. The concept of a priori truths, or a priori objects or facts, is well-established in philosophy. If you still insist they are based on empirical investigation, you should do some reading on the subject. Even if you want to argue that, say, the definition of a triangle came about after humans had experiences of physical triangles - in other words, triangles are not eternal objects pre-existing the physical world (as Plato might say) - even then, the definition is still a priori, that is, purely abstract and not something that can be experienced.

[@RyanApplegatePhD]

@@colonelweird I will take a look at a priori objects as I am not familiar, at least in name, with this. I think my position is likely to take issue with that last part - that purely abstract things can't be experienced. If you truly can't experience something that is sufficiently close to an idea, then I don't think that idea means what you think it means. How could someone understand what a triangle is, enough to form the a priori definition, without a sufficiently correct example in the world? You would say things like "a triangle is like a shadow cast on a nearly flat surface by a certain solid" but you would never go any further. At that point, triangle simply means it's nearest referent in the world. My point here is it's the abstract idea that is faulty, not the real world examples or our ability to perceive them. I would lean into this further and say "there are no such things as true statements", because all concepts are fuzzy.

[@mireille0115]

i think the crux of the problem is that vulgar relativism is not incompatible from an individual standpoint (I believe in relativism, so I should be tolerant), but extending it in this way confounds 2 slightly different things, i.e. the universal truth of something, and an individual’s belief in it. Even if Relativism were true, not everyone would believe in it. Someone who truly believed in moral relativism would not think it right to interfere (intolerance is clearly in direct conflict with a relative view of morality). HOWEVER, someone (or a culture) that did NOT believe in relativism would most likely be intolerant (if I believed i was right and you were wrong on a moral issue, it would then also be my moral duty to interfere) so it is not so much that Tolerance is a universal truth, but that if belief in relativism, then tolerance. so if an individual is intolerant, then no belief in relativism. If everyone believed in relativism, then the illustration of naming all the societies and individuals that are tolerant would no longer be inaccurate. But all of this has no effect on whether or not Relativism is, in fact, a universal moral truth.

[@m.fazlurrahman5854]

1) Relatives ~ ..... is relative to something else e.g: Take you umbrella today. ( anticipating it’s going to Rain Umbrella relative to rain ) 2) Anti-Realism ~ ...... is Dreaming out of boxes e.g. Take your umbrella today. ( anticipating it’s going to rain, but it’s day and sunny )

[@amampathak]

Thanks for this explanation!

[@aaronburgess4442]

Relativism is a meta-ethical claim. Toleration is an ethical principle. Relativism is descriptive and tolerance is prescriptive.

[@markwrede8878]

First comes thermodynamic accounting to establish a real and scientific framework for moral positions. Cui bonum?

[@Pengochan]

That something is desirable doesn't make it an universal truth, and that someone considers his moral system to be superior doesn't make it so. Moral codes judging moral codes might even lead to an equivalent of undecidability or incompleteness.

[@MostlyPonies1]

Are you writing backwards?

[@DaboooogA]

Great video thanks

[@riverhale6469]

I don’t know if a priori knowledge should be considered knowledge at all. Take the triangle example. We can theorize about what a triangle is, ie. a shape that has angles that add up to 180 degrees and is made up of perfectly straight lines. However, such a shape does not exist anywhere in the real world because the real world is not perfect. Because the conditions for a triangle are not possible in the real world, all we can say to exist is triangle-like objects. Can we say that we can have knowledge on things that don’t actually exist in the real world? If it’s true that we can’t, then we can’t say that morality is objective based on a priori reasoning alone.

[@cliffordhodge1449]

And what about the case in which a society has a rule that morality is absolute, the same in all time and throughout history? Or the society which puts forth the rule that morality is neither real nor relative, but that there actually is no such thing as morality at all, and talk which purports to be about morality is like talk about unicorns, and therefore questions of tolerance, conformity to local rules, etc. just do not arise except as delusions?

[@bouncycastle955]

They're just confused. It's like asking what if a society has a rule that blue is red? It's nonsense.

[@adammcconnaughey1716]

there seems to be another contradiction in vulgar relativism, as defined here. when you say that you're having trouble thinking of a tolerant society, doesn't that, by the definition of relativism, mean that toleration is false? moral truth can only be coherently understood as relative to the given moral code of a society no society appears to include toleration in its moral code therefore toleration is false?

[@mireille0115]

imo, as he mentioned near the start, tolerance is in fact a natural progression of a relativistic view of morality. But regardless of whether or not relativism was a universal moral truth to begin with, tolerance would only come in if someone (or some society) BELIEVED in/agreed with relativism. The problem is that there is no society (i don’t think) that truly believes in relativism, so it makes sense that those who did not believe in moral relativity would be intolerant

[@hjge1012]

My first instinct is to say that #2(toleration) is not a moral claim, but that it simply logically follows. So I would reword it to: it is illogical for people [...] to condemn [...] another society -> because: relativism. If you think something can only be understood as relative to a society, it logically follows that you shouldn't judge; you don't understand it after all. So I wouldn't make the claim that it is immortal to be intolerant, I would just say that it's illogical to do so. Though I guess that might just move the problem. Because then you'll get the question: is it wrong to judge things you don't understand. I guess I would again argue that it's illogical to do so. Then I guess the next question would be: is being illogical wrong? A relativist would probably say that it depends on the society. Which basically gets us to the same outcome as just saying toleration is relative. But oh well. Just wasted 5-10 minutes of my life thinking this through.

[@davidwilkie9551]

"With our thoughts, we create the world", attributed to Tripitaka's Buddhist concept. An obvious half-truth of quantization oscillation resonance. Ultra High Frequency interference positioning-location forms Bose-Einsteinian material Condensation, ie the inverse, Nuclear Decay off-resonance returns to hyper-hypo temporal superposition components of Conformal Quantum-fields. Finding morality in the mathematical empirical shaping laws is a matter of perceptions and POV.

[@JM-us3fr]

I think William’s argument is just a glorified restatement of the is-ought problem. The supposed contradiction can be remedied as follows: If we redefine “tolerance” as the fact that it would be inappropriate (not necessarily immoral) to apply one culture’s moral codes to another culture all else being equal, then this follows immediately from relativism. My problem with relativism is not at this level. I would take it back to a much more basic instinct. Moral relativism would suggest that anyone acting against the culture is behaving immorally, and anyone acting in line with their culture is behaving morally. So during the civil rights era, Martin Luther King Jr was profoundly immoral, and during WWII, Hitler was undeniably moral. That’s my problem with moral relativism.

[@etyrnal]

Can a "tolerant" society, "tolerate", an intolerant society? No? Then it's apparently NOT "tolerant", no?

[@nikolaychikhachev7115]

Learn about Popper's paradox of tolerance

[@captainzork6109]

Seemingly so. But it's really not that black and white. There's a threshold to cross before one's value for tolerance and one's distaste for intolerance overtake one another

[@AlexanderYap]

Is it not possible to be tolerant of other societies as long as they don't negatively impact us? Why does it matter to us how other people in faraway lands live, or think of us? Maybe intolerance only comes in when those other societies are directly causing us harm, then it's war.

[@bouncycastle955]

Since protecting innocents is common in most moral systems, we frequently step in to aid the oppressed even if nothing is being done to us.

[@gauravmathur3142]

This is a very useful lecture for understanding the attitude of Islam towards the west… Islam wants west to have relativism and toleration because Islam is a minority in the west eg Scandinavian countries, but islam itself does not accept either relativism or toleration when it is in majority eg Saudi Arabia or Pakistan…

[@kylecheng3710]

Funny thing is i came up with, was confused by, and then resolved in the same way as this whole dilemma, in a state of mania back in middle school. And as soon as you finished writing i thought, well ones an interpretation of the truth, and the other is the enforcement of that interpretation on the basis that that interpretation is more correct than the interpretations of others, which contradicts the whole point of the initial interpretation to begin with.

[@pauljohnson7791]

I have a huge objection to the way Williams and others - perhaps even you, Dr. Kaplan - slide from the set of moral ideals to the set of truths, whether universal or not. The claims, "moral relativism exists," "relativism is the way everyone determines morals," and "moral relativism is the best method for determining moral ideals," are all claims to be judged as true or not. If one society eats dogs and another thinks that is horrible, those are both ideals to be judged as moral ideals, not "true" or "not true". All of humanity can have relative morality, and some objective truths that have nothing to do with moral judgments. Further, if we acknowledge that relativism is to be judged as true or not, not moral or not, then we can also acknowledge that the concept of relativism includes the concept of non-interference or toleration. If a society thinks they can decide what is moral, they must acknowledge that another society can do the same. They cannot simply decide that their morality is objective and impose it.

[@dead_kennedys7870]

"If a society thinks they can decide what is moral, they must acknowledge that another society can do the same." Pragmatically maybe they should expect it, but that doesn't establish that they are wrong. And to that point, the reason why we speak of it as "true" and "not true" is because, accepting that moral realism is correct (which at least this form of relativism does), if it is untrue then it is a bad moral ideal. Moral realism believes that there are moral facts that decide what is morally correct. If a belief does not abide by these moral facts then it is factually and morally wrong. In this sense it would be like saying that "flat Earth should be judged as an astronomical ideal". There are astronomical and geographic facts that makes flat Earth wrong. Same here, if there are moral facts that makes eating dogs wrong factually, then it is also wrong ethically. I'm actually not sure how you think something can be a good moral ideal while being morally unfactual or vice versa.

[@GregoryWonderwheel]

I continue to be amazed at the simplistic discussions within the study philosophy that pass for adult insights. In my view the problem lies with the lack of inquiry into the premises of the discussion such as the assumption of the "real" without defining what is meant by "real." It seems to me that the question of such premises must be the starting point. The main problem here is that "morality" and "ethics" are psychological categories, not physical or materialistic categories. In other words, "good and bad" are psychological terms projected onto physical events. Good and bad are real within a psychical field, not within a physical field. In the terms of Aristotle, morality is a metaphysical event, not a physical event. Sadly, the modern materialistic view does not acknowledge the "reality" of metaphysics and calls it superstition. If something is real but "different from one place to another", then that is the definition of psychological reality. A merganser duck or a sperm whale is not different from one place to another though the name is different according to the local language: that is physiological reality, not psychological reality. The "good" that is real but different from one place to another is not physiological reality but a psychological reality. Thus "good" is a metaphysical reality, not a physical reality.

[@richardleivdal]

I just realized.... is this dude writing BACKWARDS this whole time? Is this something that is common / easy and I just haven't done it? I feel mind-blown at the moment about it...

[@dead_kennedys7870]

I think he's writing forward and then flipping the video in edit to make it look right

[@Zictomorph]

I love the sassy neck action for "cold, hard triangle facts" 😁

[@jsmunroe]

I like to complicate things. Some morality is relative, and some morality is objective. Toleration is appropriate for things that are moral and inappropriate for things that are objective. That it is hard to know which is which is irrelevant. I think people don't like objective morality because it is extremely hard to analyze logically. Nuance abounds.

[@finndaniels9139]

What morality is objective ? I certainly see where you’re coming from - things like ‘murder is bad’ just *is* true, but then things like, idk, ‘having pre-marital sex is wrong’ are very relative. But even then, I think you’d have a hard time truly proving that ‘murder is wrong’ is a statement backed by *a priori* judgements.

[@Debord1]

I do not know if its right to say that toleration is an act ore even have to bee to think towards an other society (24.30), its to not act, at least.

[@martinbennett2228]

The toleration claim is not needed to show the incoherence of relativism, all that is required is the possibility of a society that rejects relativism. According to the relativist principle a society that determines relativism to be wrong is correct. This might be OK where societies are hermetically distinct, but is unsustainable where societies interact or even overlap with each other.

[@ericb9804]

Moral relativism is obvious. It is also obvious that accepting relativism implies tolerance in some sense. However, not being "vulgar" is simply to acknowledge that tolerance has limits; i.e. being a relativist doesn't free you from the practical responsibility of acting on your moral values. If your moral values conflict with the moral values of another society, and you want to interact with that other society, then you have two options: talk it out until agreement is reached, or fight and let the winner decide. "epistemology is a subset of ethics is a subset of politics" - Richard Rorty.

[@batglide5484]

Moral relativism is not obvious. It seems obvious to me that slavery is wrong. Not relatively wrong, but truly wrong.

[@ericb9804]

@@batglide5484 Ok, but what do you say to someone who says slavery is truly right? How are you are to determine which of you knows what is "true?" It doesn't seem to me that you can. It also seems to me that not knowing what is "truly wrong," isn't a problem. The problem is that you don't agree. The point of "relativism" is simply that, at the end of the day, all problems are practical - which is obvious.

[@Advocate7Asaf]

I am from northern are of Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the binding feet and hands of a child in childhood is still practicing in our society and about it our elders are saying that if we don't bind it the feet will be wrinkle and not strong and this fact I know because the atmospheric conditions of our area are such that if we don't bind a child it give very bad impact on child in form of wrinkle and weakness in feet and body.

[@profjeffreykaplan]

You believe the elders that the atmospheric conditions on northern Pakistan make it harmful *not* to bind children's' feet? Do they bind everyone's feet, boys and girls?

[@Advocate7Asaf]

@@profjeffreykaplan Yes sir I am saying that our elders are believing that if we don't bind the feet of a girl and boy in childhood due to atmospheric conditions I mean from atmospheric conditions air and weather etc make their feet wrinkle and weak and I have seen that some people when in childhood didn't bind feet of a childhood in later age there are big difference in their walking style due to wrinkle feet and they are not strong as of those children who have binded in childhood. It's not a philosophical or moral issue in our locality but due to weather etc it's need of people to bind feet. ( Thank you so much sir for such amazing lectures I have learned a lot from it ... Now it is 3:08 am and I am listening it because it such amazing lectures that I can't leave it for sleeping or something else ☺️🥰)

[@profjeffreykaplan]

We may be talking about different practices. I am talking about a Chinese practice, mostly eliminated today, which left women in pain and unable to walk properly. The details are here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

[@Advocate7Asaf]

@@profjeffreykaplan Thanks sir I was thinking something other than this ... We are first cover a child in cloth from hands to feet then bind with soft thread from hands to thread ... kzbin.info/www/bejne/f16kY5ifhK2Bnsk in this video a girl is practicing such activity with her child ... Thank you so much Sir for giving such amazing new branded knowledge and information.

[@BlazyBob1]

Okay, so “Vulgar Relativism” claims that there is such a thing as morality, and that different cultures have different moral codes, and thus there is disagreement between cultures about morality, and yet “all of them are correct”. But isn’t the claim that something “is correct” a moral claim, and thus, by the definition of Relativism, it is relative, so it is not universal? So isn’t it self-defeating in that way? For it to work, shouldn’t the definition of morality stand outside of morality itself? Did I misunderstand something? This is truly a question that came to my mind. Is there any discussion like that? I’m sure there is, I just don’t know how it goes or who makes that argument. Does anybody know?

[@TheEternalOuroboros]

The claim morality is relative is a descriptive one, not a prescriptive one. Thus, not a contradiction.

[@BlazyBob1]

@@TheEternalOuroboros yeah I eventually figured that out while studying more basic aspects of philosophy haha 😅 thanks for the reply tho

[@jjjattardattard46]

The triangle example is only true in case of plane geometry . It is not true in three dimensions.

[@WillRennar]

Anti-realist: "The thing you call rudeness does not exit." Person who punches the anti-realist in the groin half a second later: "So that wasn't rude, then?"

[@shgysk8zer0]

This highlights why I say "philosophy is dead" - so much disagreement and jargon and just appealing to what famous people had to say. Morality needs a goal to say if anything is "right" or "wrong." Well-being is the standard by which we ultimately discuss and measure any moral framework (if you disagree, try to convince anyone of your position without appealing to well-being). Morality is only relative in that we recognize that no goal is objectively an "ought" and that the knowledge of any given society (which affects how well they can create rules which promote a given goal) vary. If we take well-being as the goal, we can recognize that different societies failed in various ways and see that as a lack of knowledge rather than a moral failure - bloodletting was wrong because it didn't cure much of anything, but those who practiced it just didn't know any better.

[@dead_kennedys7870]

"Well-being is the standard by which we ultimately discuss and measure any moral framework (if you disagree, try to convince anyone of your position without appealing to well-being)." Considering the fact that deontological views like Kantianism or Divine-Command do not (necessarily) appeal to well-being, it doesn't seem that unbelievable. Like Kantianism specifically is very famous for appealing to duty and dignity. And though I'm sure one could make a (strained) argument that this is also wellbeing this seems a dilution of what's typically thought of as "wellbeing". You could also say that wellbeing is perhaps needed to achieve dignity, but that would still relegate it to a secondary goal and wouldn't explain why one would prefer it to those that explicitly place wellbeing as primary. Really this raises the question what even is wellbeing? If it admits of many different even contradictory interpretations then does it even mean anything to say it's the ultimate standard? Partial exception to Divine-Commmand since many people will justify it by saying you follow God to avoid hell or get into heaven, but I also feel like many committed theists probably feel like they're observant regardless of heaven and hell.

[@waggishsagacity7947]

Upon hearing this great lecture, the first image that popped into my mind was our American abhorrence of a South Asian ancient custom to slaughter thousands of dogs and eat them at a certain holiday, while at the same time, we slaughter tens of millions of turkeys every year and eat them for Thanksgiving. However, a vast majority of us (not I, though and other Vegetarians) think nothing of doing such a thing to satisfy OUR custom. Isn't that a form of Vulgar Relativism: Relativism + Tolerance= Vulgar Relativism?

[@allencummings7564]

I think the conjuration is the supposition that there can be no limit for toleration, eg to be tolerant one must tolerate the intolerant. But that isn't true. To be tolerant, rather, one must tolerate everything EXCEPT the intolerant

[@andiralosh2173]

Great lecture. You did leave out the refutation of a singular true reality, which I've seen from moral relativists. This nonsense claim being irrefutable in the sense that it is complete nonsense. Everything is true! This is wrong, also true! 🤦🏼‍♀️

[@cliptych]

Vulgar: lacking sophistication or good taste. I'd guess that the lack of sophistication is the important part here.

[@Rabbinicphilosophyforthewin]

You’d be wrong.

[@cinematiccrisis]

I do not understand the whole discussion tbh, can someone help me out? First the relativism part is indeed vulgar if it cannot imagine societies being wrong according their own moral standards or pluralistic or maintaining conflictual moral standards (like any empirical society). Back to the main discussion: The relativism part obviously leaves OPEN how to react to the fact of the social relativity of morals. So there cannot be a necessary connection between point 1 (relativity - fact) and point 2 (tolerance - reaction). If that is what Williams wanted to say, I would agree. You cannot infer anything from relativism, besides that to change morals, you have to change the respective society, which is hard to do. But he seems to go further and claim that moral relativists usually present their tolerant reaction to moral relativity as an inference or apriori statement, which is a strawman! This "harmony" between relativism and tolerance comes instead clearly from empirical thinking: It's hard to change moral norms of others. You had not just to to lecture them, but to transform and maybe conquer their society to change their morals, so you would - if not attacked - probably better leave it as it is and hope for cultural evolution. It's not just leaflets, it's maybe bombs you would have to throw to change some morals. This is what vulgar relativism rightfully wants to convey (no wonder it's popular, it's the reaction of people without power - live and let live). But if you really want to be aggressive about practices you are offended by (Nazis, beheadings, killing of natives and so on), can you still do it with a relativist mindset? I would say yes, because knowing that your judgement is relative to your society does not free you of your judgement, it just tells you that it is hard to change other societies (even if you have the bombs). You can still exercise your own judgement, you could could try to crusade and enlighten them all for thinking they are right, especially if you are the biggest center of accumulated power on earth, a hegemon. On the other hand, then you would obviously not need the frame of relativism and the consideration that others are not easily changed may rather hinder you. But staying within the frame of relativism would force you to see your aggression as not "correcting them", but as just "putting an end to it". To be clear: Relativism leads you to an empirical worldview. You could of course still argue about morals, but it would be arguing about the sustainabiliy of specific cultures and societies, about their chances in cutural evolution, about ecological consequences asf., not about moral doctrines in themselves.