What is the meaning of life?
Is there a God?
Is there life beyond death?
Where does it all come from?
Where do we come from?
Does free will exist?
What is truth?
What is the meaning of 'Right' and 'Wrong?'
What is the nature of Knowledge?
What determines the fate of each individual?
What is the purpose of it all?
How can we be happy?
Are people good or bad?
If red looks like red to me, does the same colour look any different to others?
If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
0:00 - Introduction
2:36 - The Meaning of Life
3:49 - Is There a God?
7:44 - The Existence of God
11:35 - Does Free Will Exist?
13:55 - Emergent Properties
17:43 - Meaning of Right and Wrong
19:55 - Happiness and Morality
20:03 - Good vs Bad
21:39 - Perception of Color
23:00 - Moral Abstractions
Stefan Molyneux delves into profound philosophical questions and offers clear, straightforward answers. He explores the meaning of life, distinguishing between the biological purpose of reproduction from the deeper human quest for meaning through moral sacrifice. Stefan emphasizes the unique human capacity for abstract moral ideals and meaningful sacrifice.
Moving on to the existence of God, he breaks down the question by focusing on the ability to translate God's existence into tangible sensory evidence. Stefan discusses the concept of emergent properties, illustrating how free will originates from the complexity of the brain, rather than individual components like neurons.
The lecture progresses to topics like truth, right and wrong, the nature of knowledge, fate, and individual purpose. Stefan argues against the notion of predestined fate by emphasizing the role of free will in shaping individual outcomes. He highlights the pursuit and spread of morality as the purpose that brings true happiness to human life.
Additionally, Stefan addresses the subjective nature of perception, discussing how individuals may perceive colors differently. He offers a practical analogy to explain whether a falling tree makes a sound based on definitions of sound.
Stefan's elucidation expands to include moral abstractions, universally preferable behavior, and the commonality of ethical norms like respecting others' persons and property. He reinforces that actions like theft, assault, and murder go against universally preferable behavior, grounded in respect for individuals' boundaries.
In conclusion, Stefan encourages listeners to engage further with philosophical concepts on his platform, emphasizing the importance of good thinking, reason, morals, and virtues. He shares his appreciation for the audience's interest in philosophy and invites them to continue exploring these profound ideas on his website.
[0:00] Hello, my name is Stefan Molyneux. I'm the world's biggest philosopher. You may never have heard of me, but trust me, I'm controversial enough to qualify. Here are some of the big philosophical questions as gathered from the internet and the answers, which will be surprisingly easy. Philosophy is only rendered difficult because philosophy threatens established power, and therefore philosophy is presented as opaque, mysterious, impenetrable, unfathomable, simply please, so that people don't go to the clear depths and see the roots of power and learn how to undo them. So, the first question, what is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of life? Well, the purpose of life as a whole is to reproduce and avoid being eaten. Feed, reproduce, avoid being eaten. So, when you walk through the forest and you hear the lovely sounds of animals and birds and the trees and the rustling of bushes and the wind and the leaves, what you're hearing is a massive conglomeration of everything trying to have sex, eat, and avoid being eaten. And that's the purpose of life from a biological standpoint. Meaning is different, though. Meaning is a satisfaction that we get outside of the sense pleasures. Hey, I'm a big fan of the sense pleasures. Nothing wrong with them.
[1:21] But the purpose of life for humanity is to rise above and beyond on the sense pleasures. You can't really get animals to go against their sense pleasures. You can't get a lion to diet. You can't even get a cat to diet. And you can't get a bird to abandon its young and not feel great agony. And so they simply, animals pursue their own biological programmed pleasures. Human beings have something called meaning, which is the sacrifice of immediate pleasure for the sake of an abstract and usually a moral purpose. Purpose so when you give up something immediate for the sake not just i give up cheesecake because i want to lose my love handles but you give up comfort in the moment for the sake of an abstract, long-term moral foundational meaningful civilizational goal you give up comfort among friends and family for the sake of speaking the truth about the world and the reality of where we live, then that is meaning. Meaning is when we have or we do have the ability to oppose our immediate pleasures for the sake of larger abstract purposes, and that is meaning.
[2:36] The meaning of life is the meaning of human life, because there's no meaning in animals' life other than screwing and eating and avoiding being eaten. Survive and screw, really, that's the whole plan. And we have meaning, which is that we have the capacity for lofty, abstract, moral ideals, which we can sacrifice our immediate pleasures for. You think of the Christians in Europe and North America who fought tooth and nail for well over a century to eliminate slavery around the world. Well, that did not serve their immediate sense and pleasure needs, but it was a larger moral goal. And you think of the great moral heroes throughout history, they sacrificed their immediate sense pleasures, their immediate comforts for the sake of larger moral goals. That is the meaning of life, because it's one thing that human beings can do that other creatures not only don't do, but can't do. So the meaning of life is to spread meaning. The meaning of life is to spread moral purpose. That's the one thing we can do that is specific to human life that no other creature can do. Number two, is there a God? Well, there is.
[3:44] That's not the question. The question is not, is there a God? That's very specific.
[3:50] So to take a silly example, if I think that there's a ghost named Bob who haunts my car, and I say, does Bob exist? That's not the question. The question is, do ghosts exist, which is a subset of the question of what does exist. So we have to define what is existence, what is non-existence, how do we know something exists versus something that doesn't exist this may sound all kinds of complicated but again it's really not if you look at something like can you navigate i don't know say a door right can you can you navigate a door here look my cupboard i can open and close uh you probably don't reach try to reach through ow my fingers reach through these cupboards oh Oh, that actually does hurt a little. So you open the door and reach inside. So you know what is there and what is not there. When you walk through a doorway, if the door is open, you walk through. You don't bonk, right? Oh, no. You open the door, you walk through. You open the car door to get in the car. You drive through the tunnel, not into the side of the tunnel. So we know what is there and what is not there. That's foundational. That's evolutionarily. Like no creature could survive without knowing the presence and absence, right?
[5:09] So, the question isn't, is there a God? The question is, what do we mean by there? Is something there, right? If I want to reach through and get something from inside this cupboard, is the cupboard door open or closed? Well, we have ways of knowing that. If I open it, my hand passes through, and I reach inside, then clearly the cupboard door is not right in front. I can reach through it. So, presence and absence are determined by what? Well, they're determined by physics.
[5:42] Is something there or not there? I mean, if you park your car and you go to a movie, you come back and your car is gone, well, you're short one car, right? You're short one car. It's gone. And you know it's gone because you can't see it and you can't touch it. And all of your senses deny the presence of that thing's existence.
[6:03] So we say, is there a God? That's not the category that matters. The category that matters is how do we know when something is there versus not there? And of course, sense data is important. There are things that we can, you know, tangibly look and see. My hands don't pass through each other, right? They stop even though they're mostly atoms in space. The various atomic forces prevent them from passing through each other. You know, I can't pass my hands through my head. I can't super tramp style put my hands in my head.
[6:30] So we know that something is there because we can touch, touch it and we can feel it. Now, we know some things are there even though we can't touch them, like x-rays because we can translate them into something we can see so if you've ever walked through a really pitch black room that you're familiar with you feel your way you know something's coming you can't see it but you can feel it so you know that it's there and you walk around it if you feel a table you can't walk through it if you try to do it you bark your shins and curse the day you were born so the question is what is there versus what is not there we know that from a sense level if we can translate something like infrared rays or x-rays into something that we can see, then we know that those things are there. We can also measure the movement of x-rays with various sensitive materials, so then we know when things are there versus not there. But we have to translate them into something to do with the senses. So it's not specific to God, it's not specific to ghosts, it's not specific to anything like that. It is specific to, can we translate it into the evidence of the senses. If there's no way to translate it into the evidence of the senses, then it is not there.
[7:38] And that is the challenge for God. Can we translate God into something that impacts on the evidence of the senses?
[7:44] Because our senses are designed to interact with reality. And if something cannot be translated into the evidence of the senses, it does not exist.
[7:54] Now, there are other things, of course, which we haven't seen directly, but we can infer that they exist. So before we went to the moon, we hadn't seen the dark side of the moon, but we didn't imagine that the moon was like half an orange. You know you cut down the orange in the middle and it was just because everything else is spherical that's the nature of matter is to collapse into a ball because that's equidistant from the center based upon gravity so we knew that there was a far side of the moon and it did not contradict, what we saw to imagine what the far side of the moon was so it was not self-contradictory we didn't have direct proof it existed i guess it could be theoretically possible that the moon was a construct created by space aliens which was like half a grapefruit but once we got to the the other side, we confirmed it. And so there are things that we have not directly observed, but which we know could exist because they don't contradict the nature of reality, right? So there's some distant star, and let's say we haven't measured any planetary wobble, like the planet affecting the wobble of the sun.
[8:57] Does it have planets? Could have planets. Could have planets around it. That does not defy the nature of reality because we live on a planet, so we can't say that there's There's no way it can have planets. Planets are common when the debris that forms a solar system coalesce into planets. So it's going to happen. So that's a possibility, right? There are things which do exist, and we know for sure, right? This cupboard door. There are things that could exist, right? You probably have cupboards in your house when you're listening to this. I'm sure you do. I can't prove it, but they certainly don't. It doesn't deny the properties of reality to say that you have cupboards and I have cupboards. So could exist and then there are things that can't exist like a square circle right something that is a square circle or the equation that two and two make five is is false and invalid and nowhere in the universe is there a square circle and nowhere in the universe does two and two make five so the question is a subset of what exists or not uh is there life beyond death So the definition of life is electrical and biochemical and neurological, obviously, energy in the brain.
[10:09] And there is no such thing as consciousness without a brain. A consciousness is our experience of the processes of the brain. And so since consciousness is a shadow cast by the electrical and biochemical activity within the brain, when that energy ceases, consciousness also ceases. And we can say that that's the case, because that's what we see consistently. And also, we have the experience of non-existence, right? So we have the experience of non-existence in that when we were born, when we were conceived and we grew, our brain came into being in our mother's belly. And did we have any memories prior to having a brain no i mean generally i think it's fairly established that the reincarnation people where you always seem to be cleopatra and never the slave in the past that we don't have memories from before we were born so we know what it is like to not have consciousness because that was the case before we were born so we weren't there We don't have memories prior to that, so we know what it's like to not exist before we were born, and therefore we also know what it's like to exist after we're brain dead, which is to not exist at all. So, not too complicated.
[11:36] Does free will exist?
[11:39] Again, the typical question is, does free will exist? And you focus on that, which is like talking about Bob the Ghost in my car. are. What do you mean by exists? So does free will exist? Well, free will is our ability to choose or to select, future actions based upon ideals, right? So free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
[12:07] So if I say, should I return the shopping cart, right? It's midnight, the grocery store closed, there's nobody around. I take my shopping cart to my car. Should I return the shopping cart? So we have a proposed action, which is, should I physically push the shopping to the ideal standard. It would be nice and good if I did that. So free will is our ability to compare our proposed actions to ideal standards, and it can't be denied.
[12:37] Because if someone says to me, Steph, Steph, Steph, you giant thumb, you giant talking thumb, you vague British noise producing person, if they say, Steph, there's no such thing as free will, you should stop believing in it, then they're saying that I should compare my future actions, which is arguing for free will, against an ideal standard called there's no such thing as free will and i should change my proposed actions to conform to ideal standards but since free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards then he's relying upon my free will to deny the existence of free will which you know doesn't doesn't make any sense so yes free will uh exists within our mind and say ah yes but steve no none of your individual neurons have free will none of your cells have free will you know you can't slice off any portion of your brain and say like a tiny little slice of brain and say well that has free will and therefore where does free will come from if there's no if there's no bits of free will in your brain then how does your brain get free will Well, I mean, that's very, very simple and easy to answer.
[13:56] You're made up of carbon atoms and H2O atoms and so on. None of the carbon atoms are alive. None of the H2O, none of the water atoms are alive. Yet you have life. So it's called an emergent property. It's when complexity produces something new. None of the atoms in your computer or your phone or anything, none of the atoms in your phone can produce computing power. Yet you have computing power in your phone and in your computer and in your tablet. None of the atoms in your ear can hear, yet you can hear, right? So it's called an emergent property, and you can't take shelter under a brick, but you get enough bricks together and you have a house where in which you get the thing called shelter. So emergent properties is totally simple and easy to understand, and we all get that, right? What is truth? Well, a truth is that which is verifiable according to reason and evidence.
[14:52] Truth is that which is verifiable according to reason and evidence. So when I say two and two make four, right, we put two coconuts together, we count them, and then we count four coconuts, and it adds up to the same thing. So two and two make four. If I say I have a cupboard here, right, then I can touch it, and I suppose if I'm a little kinky, I can lick it, all these kinds of things. So, truth is when the concepts in our mind and our communication of them accords with the empirical evidence of rational reality. So if I point at a tree and say, that's the moon, I'm incorrect, because the moon is defined as something one-sixth the size of the Earth that's a quarter million miles away. And the tree is not one-sixth the size of Earth and a quarter million miles away. So when what I have in my mind, and especially what I communicate in the world, accords with or is in agreement with the empirical and rational facts of reality, then it's a true statement. So when people say, my truth, that's a contradiction in terms. If it's purely subjective to you, it's not true. Now, it's true that you experience something. I mean, obviously, the obvious example is nightly dreams.
[16:05] So if you dream about visiting a waterfall at night, and you say, I had a dream that I visited a waterfall, then you're saying something that is true, but of course it's unverifiable. And it's a trust thing, right? I mean, if I say to my wife, I dreamt about a waterfall, she's not going to say, you liar. She's going to accept and we'll talk about it. So if you say, I had a dream about a waterfall, that's a true statement, although unverifiable.
[16:31] But if I say I visited a waterfall last night for real, for real, then, well, my daughter will get upset at me for using Gen Y slang. And also it would be false, right? Because I did not go and visit a waterfall last night. I was cozy in bed dreaming about it. So there are things which are subjective. If I say my truth, truth is something that is shared between people based upon objective and verifiable facts. And you say my truth, it means something that is completely unverifiable is also objectively true, and that can't be the case. Next, what is the meaning of right and wrong? What is the meaning of right and wrong?
[17:12] Well, of course, there are two meanings to right and wrong. One is accuracy, and the other is morality. In other words, that is the right answer could be something amoral or immoral, right? Who robbed the bank? Well, Bob robbed the bank. Well, has it been proven? Yes, here he is on video and he's been convicted. Okay, so Bob robbed the bank. That's the right answer as to who robbed the bank, but it doesn't mean that Bob did the right thing. The second, of course, is he did the right thing. He did the morally correct thing. So what is the meaning of right and wrong? Well, it means correct and or moral.
[17:44] Something could be both moral and correct. Something can be correct but not moral, but it's impossible for something to be moral and incorrect. Right, so we'll get to that in a sec. What is the nature of knowledge? Knowledge is when we have ideas within our mind and language that we use that accords with objective reason and empirical facts within the universe. What determines the fate of each individual? There is no such thing as the fate of each individual because of the aforementioned concept.
[18:20] Free will. So if somebody convinces, tries to convince you that everything that you do is fated, you know, Battlestar Galactica, theory of eternal recurrence, it's all been done before, it's all going to be done again. Well, they're saying that you should choose to believe that you have no choice. You should choose to believe the proposition that you have no choice, which is a self-contradictory argument, right? It's a self-denying statement and can be discarded as nonsense and probably finance-based manipulation. What is the purpose of it all? What is the purpose of it all?
[18:55] Since we are the only creatures with what feels like the divine ability to have a purpose other than the aforementioned reproduction, avoid being eaten and eat something, since we are the only creatures that have a purpose beyond the biological, the purpose of it all is to maximize the beautiful moral abstractions and the beautiful virtuous statements and examples and arguments and spread the greatest purpose in society which is morals and virtue how can we be happy well happiness is when we are fulfilling the purpose that is most human about us and as i mentioned before since we are the only creatures that can and compare proposed actions to ideal standards, and the ultimate ideal standards are moral absolutes, then the way that we are happy is in the pursuit and promulgation, the spread of morality.
[19:55] Are people good or bad? There is no such thing as defining people as good or bad, because if people are defined as bad, then bad is not a choice.
[20:04] If we say, well, it's evil for human beings to be carbon-based lifeforms, well, we don't have a choice about being carbon-based lifeforms.
[20:14] So we can't be bad for something we have no choice over. I can't be good or bad for having blue eyes or pinkish skin or whatever. I can't be good or bad for that. I don't choose any of these things. So if we say human beings are bad, then we're ascribing a moral judgment, which requires free will, to human beings and saying they have no free will as to their moral natures. But if you have no free will, you can't be considered bad, because bad is the result of having a choice and choosing the wrong thing. I mean, a man can choose to push a woman off a cliff, but once the woman is pushed off the cliff, she has no choice about falling. We don't blame her for falling. Well, you should have just spent Flintstones like kept running in the air, right?
[20:54] So people cannot be good or bad innately, which is not to say there aren't influences one way or the other, but fundamentally it comes down to moral choice. Next question, if red looks like red to me, does the same color look any different to others? Yeah, absolutely. No question. No question. I mean, 10% of the male population is colorblind, so it looks gray to them. And so, yes, everybody looks at colors, and because of different shaped eyeballs and so on, different distances, different numbers of rods and cones, everybody looks at red and sees it slightly differently. But we obviously have enough of a commonality that we know what red is as a whole, and the technical color for red is called wavelength, right? So let's say the wavelength is, I don't know, 500, whatever it is, right?
[21:39] So the wavelength of perfect red is defined as 500, so then no matter if you and I look at it one way or the other, we see slightly different shades of red, as we will, it doesn't matter, because the objective number, or the objective definition of red is a particular wavelength, and we both would look at numbers and see 500.
[22:00] If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Depends on your definition of sound, which is important, right? If sound is that which impacts the ear, then no, it does not make a sound. If your definition of sound is vibrations in the air, then it does make a sound. So this is just like a, you know, what is it? Older brothers have these kinds of habits of mentally torturing their younger siblings. Siblings and so the older brother might say what's one and one and you say two you said no it's 11 because you put the one next to each other right or you say well it's 11 now it's two one and one way too so they'll just change the definitions to mess with your head and it's just a way of trying to paralyze you it's just a way of trying to paralyze your your sort of thinking so yeah honestly not not super complicated stuff we all understand this so we all know this deep down this is all how we live so um i understand the definition of of good and evil the definition of right and wrong, I talk about moral abstractions.
[23:00] What are moral abstractions?
[23:04] Moral abstractions are universally preferable behavior, which is behaviors that everyone should choose and can choose at the same time. And anybody who disagrees with that is saying, well, there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior. Then they're saying, well, it's universally preferable that everyone stop believing false things. And therefore, Therefore, they're saying, I wish to impose the universally preferable behavior that there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior that can be discarded. Now, as to what universally preferable behavior is, well, fortunately for our instincts and most rational legal systems, certainly common law, Anglo-Saxon tradition, fortunately, what turns out to be violations of universally preferable behavior, rape, theft, assault, and murder. I say rape, theft, assault, and murder are all violations of universally preferable behavior because people can't steal and be stolen from.
[23:57] Stealing can't be universally preferable behavior because if you want your property taken it's universally preferable that everyone steal from each other well stealing is what happens when you don't want people to take your property so it can't be stealing can't be universally preferable behavior same as rape and assault and murder they can't be universally preferable behavior so fortunately and this is what aristotle said back in the day if you come up with a moral system that says stealing and murder is good, you've made a mistake, and you have. So in the same way, if you come up with a theory of physics that can't explain how a dog catches a ball, you've made a mistake. So, yeah, rape, theft, assault, and murder are all banned according to universally preferable behavior, or to put it another way, respect for persons and property, and the boundaries thereof, the personal boundaries of your body with assault and murder and rape, and the effects of your actions, which is your property, respect for your body and the effects of its actions are all supported by universally preferable behavior. And again, anyone who argues against the validity of universally preferable behavior is deploying a weapon they say doesn't exist. And that's quite silly. You can't draw a sword on me and say there's no such thing as swords because you're drawing something. So anyway, I hope this helps make sense. You can, of course, go to freedomain.com for lovely, more tasty morsels. Well, more than a few morsels. Our philosophy, and I thank you for your time and your interest in philosophy.
[25:26] May good thinking be yours, good reason, good morals, good virtues, good companions, and all of the resulting joys and happiness of philosophy be yours, freedomand.com. I love to see you there. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Support the show, using a variety of donation methods
Support the show
