Metaethics - The Ontological Argument

[@KaneB]

The Evolutionary Debunking Argument: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZqmVp2CrmNeGfaM The Companions-In-Guilt Argument: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXmrc4GLlMyLhpI

[@TheJosh12694]

Recently found this channel and am absolutely loving the content. Great stuff!

[@KaneB]

Thanks, glad you enjoy the videos!

[@trashygit]

Check Kane's old videos, especially the topical series, they're great.

[@plastic2666]

I would love it if you did a video at huemer's argument for freewill, I bet you'd have a field day since the argument collapse down into if I should believe true things then determinism is false.

[@Mon000]

Such a good teacher and explainer, love it.

[@Ansatz66]

25:58 "The reason why we have the moral attitudes that we do is because those attitudes promoted survival and reproduction among our ancestors. But this means that the truth of those moral attitudes plays no role in explaining why we evolved them." That requires us to assume that the truth of moral attitudes cannot promote survival and reproduction. From a utilitarian perspective, true moral attitudes naturally help a species to promote happiness and that might promote survival and reproduction, especially in a social species. Of course there are many species that thrive despite having no concern at all for utilitarian ideals, but utilitarianism seems to be a survival strategy that works for some species like humans. Therefore we can say that our moral attitudes tend to truly reflect utilitarian ideals because utilitarian ideals are one way among many that a species can increase in survival and reproduction. Or at least our moral attitudes come close enough to true utilitarian ideals for us to gain some advantage, though we obviously often go wrong. When our attitudes fall out of alignment with utilitarian ideals, it tends to be to the detriment of our survival and reproduction. Evolution never produces perfect results.

[@justus4684]

Could you make a video on epistemic expressivism?

[@eyesofnihility]

You ever cover the work of Laurence Bonjour and/or David Enoch?

[@KaneB]

I cover Enoch's deliberation argument in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHyppphpetaVrq8

[@eyesofnihility]

@@KaneB Thanks

[@gotterdammerung6088]

As far as you can tell, is there any way to flip this argument in favor of the negation of Huemer's conclusion? I'm thinking of the way Plantinga's MOA is standardly dispensed with.

[@lanceindependent]

I'm still unconvinced arguments like this can even get off the ground because of the way it employs the notion of 'reasons." I'm not convinced the way philosophers in contemporary metaethics talk about "reasons" is intelligible. I can understand reasons in other contexts, such as when reasons are given as explanations, and I could understand them as describing consistency relations between means and ends, but philosophers make use of various notions of "normative reasons," "decisive reasons," “categorical reasons,” and "external reasons" that it's not clear to me have any communicable content.

[@owenstayton3510]

@lanceindependent For anti-realist that do understand external/categorical reasons then would you think the argument be successful against them? Also im just curious how you respond to a moral realist being a quietist about internal reasons? For example someone could only understand reasons to be categorical so to say theyre instrumental/internal just sounds utterly incoherent and inconceivable. Therefore they take a quietist position on it.

[@KaneB]

Yeah, this is basically my view too. I don't accept that the PRP is a stance-independent norm, or that it gives us reasons in the sense that Huemer seems to have in mind, so the argument falls at the first hurdle for me.

[@lanceindependent]

@@KaneB Right. It's not exactly my view, but it's also unclear why someone can't just take an instrumentalist view and reject Huemer's argument on those grounds. Realists may try to appeal to intuitions that instrumentalism is counterintutive, but those would typically appeal in some fairly direct way to realist intuitions.

[@lanceindependent]

@@owenstayton3510 I already am a quietist of that kind. If I am correct that external or categorical reasons aren't intelligible then I don't think anyone could understand them. I don't endorse internal reasons myself so I'd just agree with someone who said they didn't find them intelligible. I reject all accounts of irreducible normativity and of "normative reasons" more generally. So I don't think there are categorical reasons or instrumental reasons.

[@RefinedQualia]

"I dont get it" is not an argument

[@pbradgarrison]

I love you bro. You do an excellent job and pick great topics.

[@Hvantmiki]

I am a moral realist, but I disagree with the idea that moral reasons are non-selfish. There are moral disciplines where what happens to other people, if they suffer or not is irrelevant. Morality fundamentally are claims that people should or shouldn't do something. Regardless of if people want to do it or not. But it could be that someone is from a culture where for example killing your own children if they cry too much is seen as morally virtous. For example Spartans famously killed their own children for the smallest little thing and that just made them be seen as very virtous and seen as a people who kept high standards. And people talked with pride about killing their own children for small or large slights. There is a story of a woman who bragged that she killed her own son because she told him to either come back victorious or dead and he came back defeated. And people killed their own children only due to promoting one's own personal pride. You can also use Nietzsche's idea of master morality. The fact that master morality exists, even if no human ever held such ideas, the mere fact that it is coherent and COULD be moral opinions humans could have show that moral reasons do NOT have the property that it is non-selfish. It is however categorical. Even among non-cognitivists who intellectually think it is not what morality is. When a non-cognitivist say that killing and eating children is morally wrong, they don't merely mean to for example make a neutral performance of their own personal taste. The only reason why someone would be motivated to say it is to somehow convince someone not to kill and eat children or to imply that someone else should not do it (however for a emotivist the reason why someone should not kill and eat children in that case would be because the one who made the moral claim doesn't like that sort of thing. Which would only appeal to people who cares about the feelings of the one who said it. And not to any cannibals who don't care about his feelings. So it would not be a valid moral reason because it would not appeal to a group who I assume the person who made the claim would intend it to apply to as well.)

[@savyblizzard6481]

15 minutes in, I find the argument strange so far. If torturing babies is objectively morally wrong, is that a reason not to torture them? Like it sort of sounds like an is-ought gap at first. I guess "wrong" in here needs to mean something like, "that which ought be avoided." Thus, X being wrong means X ought be avoided. Then P3 makes sense because we know we don't need to avoid X, but not needing to avoid X doesn't mean we have to embrace it. At 19 minutes I see I'm just voicing the instrumentalist concern. Great video Kane, thanks!

[@rath60]

An observation to any imperasist in the audience. (P1) The imperasist hypothesis. (Stated as know, believe, have justification, or etc) (P2) All sensory systems are non mental. (Eyes have lenses, noses have molecule derectors, touch sensors are simply nerves are trigered by electrostatic potential. (P3 if P2) removing the mechanism of sensation a sensory impresión is unavailable. ( if I remove my glasses i can sense nothing outside the length of my hand. (P4 ) The distinction between one mechanism of information gathering and another is arbritrary. (C) Given premise 1 ,3, and 4 we are not justified in believing anything. ( or which ever wording you preffer.) Or imperassism intails skeptasism by its main hypothesis) I know we have discussed that an imperasist may only reject metaphysical conclussions. But on what ground do we do so. In what way is an at mycroscope distinct from touch. It could be designed to simply amplify the motion of the needle head the same way a microscope amplafies the light. Rather given premise 4 if we are justified in observing with our ryes we are justified in observing with any machine as reliable as they are.

[@skino_98]

For the evolutionnary debunking argument they claim that our intuition about moral may just be a result of evolution, but i think this can lead total skepticism or nihilism because our fondamental intuition about logic might also be just a consequence of evolution. Maybe sometimes 1+1=3 but it's very rare and the case were it's occur are too complicated to verify mentally so our brains evolved to just consider 1+1=2 as it's mostly true and easy to verify. But maybe even more fondamental principle like the principle of non-contradiction might also be just a consequence of evolution because it only occured in rare and complicated phenomenon so our brain deleted that function of considering it possible.

[@haideri0313]

hey you mentioned the majority of meta-ethicists believed moral realism was true, can i get a reference for that?

[@KaneB]

Check out the 2020 PhilPapers Survey. About 60% endorse moral realism, 25% endorse moral anti-realism (the rest either agnostic or endorse some alternative view).

[@haideri0313]

@@KaneB thank you so much

[@Strauss-]

@@KaneB that's all philosophers. I think most metaethicists tend to go non-realist

[@KaneB]

@@Strauss- No, the results are pretty much the same for those who specialize in metaethics. You can look at the survey by area of specialization; metaethicists are 65% realist, 25% antirealist.

[@warptens5652]

14:40 If I granted P2, it seems I'm never going to grant P3 because knowing that X isn't morally wrong increases the epistemic probability that it's morally right, which is a reason to do X

[@uninspired3583]

I think what he's trying to set up is something like if p and if not p, then x We would only ever accept p2 or p3, but accepting either one gets us to his conclusion. The whole thing gets flipped around if we do the same argument in favor of torturing babies. Fun could be a reason, so as long as we have some small reason, we do nonetheless have a reason to torture babies. It seems like the form works just as well for any arbitrary proposition.

[@elibaum714]

Can you do kantian and hegelian idealism?

[@ignotumperignotius630]

Ah a Christmas present from kane

[@Ansatz66]

21:13 "In some sense it is perfectly acceptable to say this. After all, you can define words however you want." The debate between moral realism and anti-realism is a semantic debate. If we accept that we can define words however we want, then we tacitly admit that the whole debate is pointless. On one side we have the realists who define moral terminology to point to some feature of the real world (or at least something they take to be real) and on the other side we have the anti-realists who don't do that. The only difference between these camps is how they define moral terminology. If we're willing to accept that people can define words however they want, then what is the point of being anti-realist? We may as well all move into the realist camp and use moral terminology as they use it to better facilitate communication. There is certainly nothing useful to be achieved by adopting the definitions (or lack of definitions) that anti-realists use.

[@KaneB]

>> On one side we have the realists who define moral terminology to point to some feature of the real world (or at least something they take to be real) and on the other side we have the anti-realists who don't do that Obviously, as is suggested by what you write in the brackets, there are antirealists who adopt the same moral semantics as some moral realists, but they have different views about the way the world is. Both moral realists and moral antirealists might agree that moral concepts are attempting to pick out X-properties, while the realist asserts that there are X-properties and the antirealist denies that there are X-properties. So no, the debate between moral realists and moral antirealists is not merely a semantic debate. >> There is certainly nothing useful to be achieved by adopting the definitions (or lack of definitions) that anti-realists use. At least some antirealists will present their semantics of moral terms as a descriptive account of how moral language is actually used. They would argue that what is achieved by their semantic theory is a correct theory of the meanings of moral judgments. More broadly, I don't see why we would take it as a constraint on a semantic theory that it makes language successfully referential. There are lots of things you can do with words beyond picking out properties in the world. But whatever; if it turns out that moral antirealism is not "useful", well, cool. I don't care about being useful anyway. In fact, at this point I'm rather inclined to embrace a kind of anti-utility about philosophy; I regard it as a theoretical virtue when philosophical theories are not useful.

[@Ansatz66]

@@KaneB : Of course there is the debate over whether divine command theorists should be counted among moral realists since some divine command theorists say that gods are real while other divine command theorists say that gods are fictional, but that seems to be outside of the spirit of the debate over moral realism. Whether gods are real or not is its own area of philosophy. I don't know what other properties might qualify as an X-property that both realists and antirealists might agree upon. "At least some antirealists will claim present their semantics of moral terms as a descriptive account of how moral language is actually used." Ultimately that is why we cannot just define words however we want: we want our words to be understood by other people. The best way to do that in practice is to abandon philosophical sophistication and just become a utilitarian. "I don't see why we would take it as a constraint on a semantic theory that it makes language successfully referential." Of course there are situations where certain words really do have no meaning, such as buzzwords that are said out of habit or social convention rather than an actual attempt to communicate anything, and in that case the correct semantic theory really will give those words no referent. But it seems highly unlikely that moral language is all just buzzwords, especially when we have semantic theories that predict how people will use moral language with excellent consistency through assuming that moral language is referential.

[@KaneB]

@@Ansatz66 >> I don't know what other properties might qualify as an X-property that both realists and antirealists might agree upon Hmm. I know that you are actually familiar with some of the options here, because they have been discussed at length both (a) in videos that you have watched and (b) directly with you in some comment threads. So I could, if you've genuinely forgotten, outline some of the views that people take, but I'm not particularly inclined to get into a debate that will doubtless go nowhere. When you say you don't know what other properties might qualify, is it that you have forgotten what these theories say or is it that you disagree with them? >> Ultimately that is why we cannot just define words however we want Sure, if the definition is intended to capture how a word is actually used. But we might be offering a reforming definition or even stipulating a completely new definition. >> The best way to do that in practice is to abandon philosophical sophistication and just become a utilitarian utilitarianism sux >> Of course there are situations where certain words really do have no meaning To say that a word does not successfully refer is not to say that it has no meaning. "Phlogiston" does not successfully refer, which is to say that phlogiston does not exist, but presumably it still means something. Indeed, the meaning of the word is part of what allows us to determine that it doesn't successfully refer. We say that phlogiston doesn't exist because we know what "phlogiston" means and we know that there is nothing in the world to which the concept applies.

[@Ansatz66]

@@KaneB "When you say you don't know what other properties might qualify, is it that you have forgotten what these theories say or is it that you disagree with them?" Probably both. At the moment I can't think of what those properties might be, and if I heard what one of them is I would probably dispute that it actually qualifies as a property that both realists and antirealists agree upon. My dismissing them as examples when I heard about them is probably what causes me to have such difficulty putting my finger on one of them now.

[@KaneB]

@@Ansatz66 Okay then, here are two examples. (1) Moral non-naturalists hold that moral terms such as "good" and "right" refer to objective, non-natural properties. They often argue that moral norms have some property that cannot be reduced to natural properties (say, the argument might be that moral norms are categorically normative, but no natural property could be categorically normative), so they postulate non-natural properties as grounding moral truths. An antirealist might agree with this analysis of what moral properties must be, but then deny that there are any properties that fit the bill. This is a fairly influential dialectic among academic metaethicists. (2) Consider Peter Railton's moral naturalism, which defines morality as what would promote the objective interests of all individuals. The objective interest of an individual is what a perfectly rational, fully informed version of that individual would desire, were the perfectly rational, fully informed version in the actual individual's position. Again, a moral antirealist might accept this analysis, but then argue that there is no fact of the matter what a perfectly rational, fully informed version of an individual would desire -- the antirealist might argue that the counterfactual simply has no content, so it turns out that there are no moral facts on this theory.

[@lpgx9132]

Have you heard of Arnold Zuboff's argument for the existence of moral value?

[@KaneB]

I don't think I've read his work. Just checking out the abstracts of a couple of his papers, it sounds similar to Railton's reductive naturalism. I have a video on that view here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHqunnSOZtqohqs

[@aaronchipp-miller9608]

This argument seems to show at most that we have a decision theoretic or rational reason to not torture babies. This does not establish that there are moral reasons in my view

[@warptens5652]

if you're going to say that, by definition, something being "objectively morally wrong" gives a reason to not do it, then I'll say that, by definition, reasons are subjective and so there's no such objective morality

[@Attalic]

He would respond by saying that holding a subjectivist stance of morals is logically circular. If reasons and thus truth are subjective, then if you ask yourself the question, "let's get to the truth of this subject," then you would be asking yourself what your own opinion is. However, when people say, "let's get to the truth of this subject," it does not seem that they are referring to their own belief. Thus, it would follow that the reasons would have to be objective.

[@lanceindependent]

@@Attalic What's circular about having a subjective view about reasons? //If reasons and thus truth are subjective, then if you ask yourself the question, "let's get to the truth of this subject," then you would be asking yourself what your own opinion is.// Does it follow that if reasons are subjective then truth is subjective? //However, when people say, "let's get to the truth of this subject," it does not seem that they are referring to their own belief. Thus, it would follow that the reasons would have to be objective.// Why would it follow from the claim that people don't seem to be referring to their own belief that reasons would have to be objective?

[@Attalic]

@@lanceindependent 1. Yes 2. I can't imagine what else they would be referring to.

[@lanceindependent]

@@Attalic (1) If "Yes" is a response to "Does it follow that if reasons are subjective then truth is subjective?", can you explain why? (2) I'm not sure I understand. Are you claiming that either when people talk about truth, that either (a) they're referring to their own beliefs, or (b) they're referring to something objective?

[@Attalic]

@@lanceindependent (1) 1. Was a response to your first question. 2. Was a response to your second question. You just asked me a yes or no question for your first question. (2) I'm saying, if you take the subjectivity view, that you'd be asking for your own belief. However, that doesn't seem to be what people mean when they try to find the truth of something. So it must following that they mean something objective.

[@Zagg777]

It’s been many decades since I’ve read a paper in ethics. So perhaps since then there have been papers more philosophy-professorish than this one. But I haven’t seen it. It certainly indicates the the impoverishment of meta-ethical argument.

[@Zagg777]

KZbin won’t me edit out the second “the”.

[@justus4684]

The realists getting desperate

[@macattack1958]

Unless Huemer is arguing for the existence of a necessary being as a part of his broader argument, it is not going to work and it will be laughable. One has to restrict the domain of the ontological argument to only the concept of being. Anything else it gets crazy.

[@KaneB]

To be fair, this is an "ontological argument" only in the sense that it tries to argue from the possibility of moral realism to the actual truth of moral realism. I'm not sure that it has much in common with the traditional ontological arguments for God. I'm just going with how Huemer labelled it.

[@TheGlenn8]

"Thing is really because I can imagine thing being real" has to be the absolute dumbest "smart" argument out there.

[@uninspired3583]

Agreed

[@mf_hume]

Another day, another reminder that taxpayer money pays Huemer to publish arguments like this. *Sigh*

[@KaneB]

I feel that's a wonderful use of taxpayer money. More taxpayers should be forced to fund dumb arguments for moral realism. (Not kidding.)

[@mf_hume]

Personally, I’d rather my taxpayer money go toward something useful like producing more seasons of my favorite Netflix shows.

[@orangereplyer]

this is also a little funny given Huemer's politics

[@onion4062]

@@mf_hume is a high iq individual

[@TheGlenn8]

@@KaneB Your morality just shifted to lawful evil

[@DarkSideoftheMeta]

Ah, another bad argument in favor of realism by Mike Huemer.

[@phillipyangmusic]

hello KZbin