Morally Uncooperative Worlds

What if there are moral facts, but we can't enact them?
0:00 - Consequentialism
2:31 - Virtue ethics
4:21 - Kantianism
6:44 - Skeptical theism
10:21 - Antirealism to the rescue?
14:48 - Morality as action-guiding
20:00 - Methodism vs particularism

[@KaneB]

The cluelessness objection: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqK2koiGd72ApNE

[@HerrEinzige]

Thankfully this world has one moral fact which is to like and comment on Kane B videos so we live in a somewhat morally cooperative world. :)

[@savenok4869]

My guy killed moralism thousand times over and now he just pokes its corpes with a stick

[@25LynnDoe]

giggity

[@bw7601]

I think Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity is very relevant here. Perhaps one of the earliest discussions of what to do in the face of uncooperative moral world?

[@kennethconnally4356]

I find it somewhat plausible that more global character traits like courage or cowardice don't exist (in the sense that applying these terms to people is a fundamentally unhelpful way of understanding their behavior), but the idea that character traits, in the mere sense of a tendency to make certain kinds of choices in certain kinds of situations (Jack tends to run red lights whereas Jill always stops, etc.) don't exist seems wildly implausible.

[@InventiveHarvest]

My system of ethics avoids the problem of uncooperative worlds because it is derived from facts about the world - specifically that each person has a unique set of desires. Now, in practical terms tho, imperfect knowledge is a challenge. I don't know what other people's desires are. However, I can just take an expected value or credence to avoid this problem. A person might prefer to be punched in the face, but there is no reason for me to expect this. If the world were different, say a world where everyone had the same set of desires, then the system of ethics derived from that world would also be different.

[@pxpx424]

you are such a gem Kane. Im gona spend this summer with making sculptures in the woods and watching your videos.

[@jessejones8088]

Thank you for making all of these awesome and inspiring videos.

[@veganphilosopher1975]

Fantastic analysis as always!

[@frantiseknavrkal2958]

There are degrees of cooperativeness - it's not a simple binary. This also changes over time (due to societal, technological and other changes).

[@alpagator1372]

I don't see how that really changes anythin for consequentialism. There's never been anyone calling for perfect knowledge of consequences to eternity. There is still some amount of immediate consequence that we can in fact fairly accurately predict, and those that we cannot are usually farther away in the future so we can in the meantime research those unkown consequences and act to mitigate them. We end up with a heuristic rule for morals but that is better than no rule at all.

[@augustosignori5751]

Pretty interesting observations here! I'd say that our world being morally umcooperative follows from the fact it's complucated and hard to know stuff about (epistemically and ontologically uncooperative), and it looks like it would be improbable for it to be very different. Still, maybe the ("methodist") moral realist can minimize the problem if he reframes the issue to be just avoiding especially immoral actions and plannig for future scenarios?

[@MarshmallowRadiation]

To me, I feel like whether morality is "in the world" is moot: morality isn't some thing that either exists or does not exist "out there" somewhere, it's a name we give to patterns of human behavior. morality is anthropological: not that it is purely subjective or relative to culture, but it is a descriptor of convergent traits that are universal to the cultural ecosystem of any social species: that being "actions that facilitate the wills and abilities of others, including actions that do not directly benefit the individual performing them". Intent fits into that because intending an action generally speaking tends to be more effective at that goal than completely random actions. It's an attractor point in the space of possibilities given the fact that we are a social species with the ability to consider the experiences of others, and that's true regardless of whether the future is deterministic or possible worlds exist, or whether whatever culture decides the morality du jour.

[@benzur3503]

I always interpreted character traits as retroactive summary of tendencies. Abit like empirical studies. You don’t get a guarantee for a kind person who’ve donated a lot of money to keep doing so indefinitely, but you can estimate some likelihood. And people willing to maintain such a character trait which they consider virtuous (or others consider it as virtuous without the agent considering so themselves) would actively aim to maintain it. You won’t find a virtuously developed part of the brain because it’s a tendency of actions. Psychologists not identifying it doesn’t matter to philosophers who understand characteristics as a summary of actions instead of as a type of organ

[@martinbennett2228]

I had not met the term 'morally uncooperative worlds' before, however I had considered that the most difficult lack of cooperation for ethics is the response of not being bothered and not caring about ethical issues. Morality seems to require that at some level we are bothered. I think the problem can also extend into epistemology: how can we respond to anyone who says that they simply do not care about what is and what is not true or real? On particularists, their moral facts stem from intuitions about ethical particulars, but on your arguments maybe there are no such intuitions. Even if there are intuitions they may have no discernible bases: if there are discernible bases, then these bases would call into question whether they are actually particularists.

[@wireless849]

Thanks

[@wireless849]

Would be great to work this up into a publishable paper.

[@EdgarQer]

a new room?

[@jackkendall6420]

No, he just remodeled his old room into an exact replica of a new one

[@Megaritz]

Okay suppose we're in a morally uncooperative world, so ethics per se can't tell me what to do... but I still want to know what to do, in THIS world. It seems then it'd be nice to develop a field of "Within our actual psychological and epistemic situation, what should I do?"-ology, even if this field is not ethics. So then instead of ethics, I'm interested in this other thing.

[@dummyaccount.k]

Did you come up with this cooperative worlds thing?

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

To say that a moral theory can be correct, even though it cannot guide human action, is analogous to saying that words have true intrinsic meanings, of which nobody (not even Humpty Dumpty) is aware. The problem here is a fundamental misunderstanding of the very notion of morality (or meaning). To say that what I ought to do is unknowable by me is to misuse the word "ought" (just as to say that the word "glory" means something, but nobody knows what, would be a misuse of the word "means").

[@KaneB]

Why?

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

@@KaneB Well, because, as you rightly noted, guiding human action is the point of morality. Outside the context of guiding human action, all talk of morality is meaningless and incoherent. Again, linguistic meaning offers a useful analogy. If you reify the notion of meaning and forget that it can only make any sense in the context of communication, you can end up with lots of funny notions, including unknowable meanings. But that would be absurd. The same goes for morality. The question of what action is moral, what one ought to do, only comes up in the first place when considering potential human action.

[@KaneB]

@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 As I see it, action guidance is one of the roles that morality can play; I wouldn't call it *the* point of morality, just one of the points of morality. There are many things we can do with moral judgement: for instance - I might use it to express my own attitudes and values. - I might engage with it as a kind of intellectual game, working out what follows from particular principles. - I might use it to signal my conformity to some group. Moral theories can signal things to others without directly guiding our actions, e.g. promoting virtue ethics might signal “I'm not the kind of person who reduces everything to cold utilitarian calculation,” even if I don't believe that there are stable character traits. But even if action guidance were the only point of morality, I don't see why this would render all talk of morality outside that context meaningless and incoherent. Indeed, that principle is surely too strong since almost every moral theory will *sometimes* be unable to tell us what to do. It's not a problem for utilitarianism that, if I face a trolley problem with only one person on each track, I won't know whether to switch. At least, it's certainly not unintelligible for the utilitarian to say that there is a fact of the matter what choice we ought to make here (what choice will maximise happiness) but that we don't know which this is. There are degrees of uncooperativeness. Almost everybody thinks that the world is uncooperative to some degree - there are some specific scenarios in which we can't work out what we ought to do. The degree to which the world is uncooperative is going to depend on auxiliary hypotheses about what the world is like, such as the psychological hypothesis that people do not have stable character traits. It strikes me as very odd that the meaningfulness of virtue ethics would depend on where the chips fall with respect to that empirical claim. Was it intelligible to Aristotle, but then became unintelligible when the evidence for situationism came in? And then when that evidence was overturned, did it become intelligible again? What if we conclusively establish situationism, but I dogmatically reject the evidence: would virtue ethics remain intelligible to me?

[@PhilSophia-ox7ep]

​@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 I think you make an interesting point, but I remain unconvinced. Even if I grant that the function of morality is to guide human action (which I am indeed willing to grant, unlike Kane), the fact that this or that moral theory (or indeed all of them) are incapable of realizing that goal is an independent question.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

@@PhilSophia-ox7ep I think the focus on theories here is misleading. It's perfectly possible that there are things that I ought (or ought not) to do, which are not derived from a theory or a rule of thumb. Compare that to the claim that I objectively ought to do something, which cannot be known to me. The word "ought" just loses any meaning here. You can argue about how that action conforms with moral theory X until the cows come home, but I cannot possibly have a moral duty to do something if I can't even guess what that duty consists in. Again, the very notion of a moral ought breaks down under such conditions. And again, the comparison to meaning is in place. You may devise a theory, according to which, say, the meanings of all sounds in human languages were set once and for all in the very first language spoken by members of our species 200,000 years ago. Or perhaps, that the true meanings of all our words will be revealed at the Second Coming of Christ. Well, so what? The claim that the actual meaning of our words is unknowable to us may look reasonable to someone stuck on considering theories of meaning in the abstract, but doesn't make sense the moment you realise that we are talking about meaning here.

[@samuelmelton8353]

Instructions unclear, became the other type of Methodist

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

Premise 1: Uncooperative worlds can exist within anatomical systems. Premise 2: Text neck (caused by reading/scrolling) negatively impacts spinal health. Premise 3: A healthy spine is necessary for optimal social interaction and reproduction. Premise 4: Social systems often conflict with anatomical well-being. Premise 5: Habits can be uncooperative (social habit to anatomical habit), hindering efforts to align behavior with spinal health. Premise 6: Anatomical and social worlds often are uncooperative in general. Conclusion: To prioritize anatomical cooperation and maximize well-being, minimizing engagement with uncooperative social systems may be necessary.

[@farzad1021]

The conclusion doesn't follows from the premises.

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

@@farzad1021 please analyse further

[@farzad1021]

@@philosophicalmixedmedia Okay then I analyse your premises in Propositional logic. So, your premises are: P1: U P2: T P3: H P4: S P5: B P6: G C: N So, you can see your argument is conclusion really doesn't follows from the premises in Propositional logic. And if I see it in Informal way, still it doesn't really follows very much. For example the first premise "Uncooperative worlds can exist within anatomical systems." And the second premise "Text neck (caused by reading/ scrolling) negatively impacts spinal health." I'm not seeing any kind of connection here. And like that your third premise "A healthy spine is neccassary for optimal social interaction and reproduction." Doesn't follows from your second premise. And then we can take your fourth premise "Social system often conflict with anatomical well-being." Now it doesn't follows from the third premise we can clearly see. And like that your fifth premise "Habits can be uncooperative (social habit to anatomical habit) hindering efforts to align behaviour with spinal health." Is more likely restate of your fourth premise but it doesn't really follows very much. Because your fourth premise you are talking about social system conflict with anatomical well-being. And in your fifth premise you are saying that habit's can be uncooperative towards spinal health. We can see it doesn't really follows. And it more likely restate of your fourth premise. And like that your sixth premise "Anatomical and social worlds often are uncooperative in general." Clearly doesn't follows from your fifth premise. Because your fifth premise saying that habit's can be Uncooperative for spinal health. But your sixth premise saying that anatomical and social worlds are Uncooperative in general. You can see clearly sixth premise doesn't follows from the fifth premise. And that's why your conclusion doesn't follows the premises.

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

@@farzad1021 P2 denotes ’spinal health’ which is the central nervious system that correlats (connection statistically significant) to cervical region of the spine. P1 entails P2 as sufficent reason for peripheral nervious system impacting the central nervious system qua social determinats, such as the imperitive to compete in a mertitocracy. P3 follows from P2 as a neccesary condition due to the argument from sustainable practices that entail a career path and mitigation of burnout. So it is necessary not to burnout to have a notable career (philosopher that is peer recognized) rather than for example be a worker in a factory. P3 as optimal social is contignent as a condition of p4 (social systems) by token of the null operator (social burnout). A noted assumption is that modernization causes social systems that correlate to burn-out (structural functionalist account pertaining to a cohort of individual agents) There is an arguable correlation from p4 to p5 based on the assumption that ‘anatomical well-being’ is infact interdependent to ‘cooperative habits’. The argrument is if a individuals habits cooperate perfectly with a social system (p4) then p6 is false. However its plain that there is a cohort of people within modernity that do burn-out. Therefore the conclusion is true that a cohort of persons may benifit by minimizing engagment with the structural features of a social world that corrlate to certain anatomical consequences and so allowing the person to florish on their own terms. Additional notes: The Primacy of the Spine: The spine is highlighted not merely for its structural role, but as a conduit of the nervous system, connecting physical health to mental and social well-being. This connection is vital for social interaction and reproductive success. Social Systems as Antagonists: identifies social systems, particularly those driven by competition and the pressure to succeed (like a meritocracy), as potential sources of conflict with biological well-being. These systems can lead to burnout, impacting both physical and social health. Habits as a Bridge (or Barrier): Habits are the mechanisms through which individuals navigate the interaction between their biological needs and social demands. Uncooperative habits, driven by social pressures, can hinder efforts to prioritize spinal health and overall well-being. The Null Operator: The concept of the "null operator" (social burnout) suggests that complete alignment with social systems can lead to the negation of personal well-being. This introduces a potential ethical dimension to the argument. Conclusion and Philosophical Implications The revised conclusion suggests that, for some individuals, minimizing engagement with harmful social systems could be a necessary step towards prioritizing biological cooperation and achieving optimal well-being. This idea resonates with philosophical concepts like: Individualism vs. Collectivism: The tension between the individual's needs and the demands of society is a recurring theme in political and ethical philosophy. The Pursuit of Happiness: The argument touches on the fundamental question of what constitutes well-being and how individuals can best pursue it. Mind-Body Dualism: The emphasis on the spine challenges traditional mind-body dualism, highlighting the interconnectedness of physical and mental health.

[@piotr_jurkiewicz]

'Primum non nocere' is destroying my life cuz i can't tell what will cause harm in the end. Einstein made nukes possible, Jesus (desputed existence, iw) made crusades and witch trials possible, the one and only Nietzsche made nazis possible. Then I remember that not doing anything can be perceived as making a choise not to do anything and that isn't equivalent to a lack of action whatsoever and that choise also can be harmful at the end. Help, I feel like a nazi for simply existing 💔💀. Do I need more drugs or something? 💊, 💉, 🌿?

[@DuppyBoii187]

I think you trust colour science much more than I do :D

[@samuelmelton8353]

Okay, now analyse whether the Co-op is immoral

[@italogiardina8183]

Sound investment of capital in stocks for example have statistically faired better if the investor leaves the investment for the relative long term which is a minimum of 10 years all things being equal such a no world war. This is due to markets fluctuation were actions to pull out the cash at a low point entail loss. So the world as in world political economies on an international level is cooperative to the individual who for example but ETF's for passive investment to grow wealth and live the good life through FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) So a long term particular desire such as not to labour as the good life may have statistical significants if investments are diverse enough to mitigate uncooperative features of the world where a life can find broad trends that add value to life such as collecting photons for power.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

So "Boo, Methodism! Hoorah, Particularism!"?

[@bruhmoment9009]

The world isn't morally cooperative but people are. And people make the world. You have to renew the points of access for the next generation.

[@Alex.G.Harper]

i feel like a skeptical theist response to your initial objection to it would be that god tells us how to act, and given that his reasons to obligating those acts are just unknown, but he knows that on the whole it would lead to the best outcomes.

[@PhilSophia-ox7ep]

Yeah, and if they're a skeptic, presumably they have good reasons for believing that?

[@SgtPwnVids]

Horfp

[@lovethyneibor22736]

I recently met a lady who has a young daughter, she was very sad i asked her what happened, she said it's because she went through her daughter's phone and found out that her daughter is a follower of antinatalism.... First, she couldn't understand what's that about but when she read a couple of articles she realized what a great tragedy it was to bring her innocent child into this sick and depraved world 😢 OMG when she I listened to what she was saying i began to cry 😢😢😢😢 and I too realized that antinatalism is the best philosophy 😢❤❤❤❤

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

Reasons, not anecdotes, please.

[@lovethyneibor22736]

Life is all about stories and anecdotes... Reasons come second or third

[@zeebpc]

Egoism wins again

[@samuelmelton8353]

Please leave moralism alone. Please. Show some mercy

[@KaneBsBett]

First?