[0:02] All right let's uh continue on in the in the slightly midnight crypt of philosophy that we've got going on here uh it's uh late at night anyway let's uh keep going and move on to the question that we were just talking about at the end of the last video cast video blogging i think it is blogging or something like that, which is the question, does preferred behavior even exist at all?
Because if it doesn't, it's a fairly significant thing around the question of philosophy.
Preferred behavior doesn't really exist at all, then it's really hard to make the case that philosophy exists.
Philosophy is preferred to religion, say, in terms of its truth value, logic, as opposed to illogic, and so on.
So philosophy doesn't really exist if preferred behavior doesn't exist.
And certainly, ethics doesn't exist if preferred behavior doesn't exist.
Now, when I say exist, this of course is a rather tricky question. and.
[1:16] What we mean by that since we do want to always work empirically in the way that we've talked about in the podcast on metaphysics and so on we always want to work empirically from reality and so on so the real question around preferred behavior is, does it exist as a principle sorry does it exist as actions that can be described right so rocks fall so we can start to define the law of gravity and that we measure that relative to the behavior of rocks in the world, right?
So with ethics, a similar kind of question comes up.
Does preferred behavior exist as a manifestation in the real world?
Because if it does exist, in other words, if people do exhibit preferred behaviors of any kind, of any kind, then we have properties of people or behaviors of people that we can begin to question and codify.
[2:16] So the first question is, do preferred behaviors exist at all?
[2:19] Now, the most fundamental question around preferred behavior is, how could it conceivably be opposed, the proposition that preferred behavior exists, how could it conceivably, that proposition, be opposed without using preferred behaviors?
This is one of these self-contradictory, can't-be-opposed positions. positions.
Sorry, it's self-contradictory if you try and oppose it.
So in the same way that when we were talking about the evidence of the senses, you can't tell me that the evidence of my senses is invalid any more than you can use English to tell me that English is totally incomprehensible language.
If I understand the idea, English is not incomprehensible.
If I can hear you with my my little ears, then obviously my senses are not invalid.
And if I say to you, preferred behavior exists, and you say to me, Stef, don't be crazy.
Of course preferred behavior does not exist. In no way, shape, or form does preferred behavior exist.
Okay. So what you're telling me is that you would prefer that I not believe, that preferred behavior exists.
[3:43] See, this stuff isn't really that complicated. But if you argue against preferred behavior, the existence, the manifestation of preferred behavior, you are manifesting preferred behavior.
There's no way to escape the self-contradictory nature of that position.
There's no way to escape that.
[4:06] Even if you just stare at me, then you're still preferring not to answer.
If I say preferred behavior exists and you just give me that thousand-yard stare and don't respond, you're preferring to do that.
Now, you're still not part of the debate. Maybe deep down you don't believe that preferred behavior exists and so on, but you're not part of the debate, right?
But if somebody comes up to you and says morality doesn't exist, They're saying that preferred behavior doesn't exist.
So they're saying, I prefer that you accept the proposition that preferred behavior does not exist.
You see what a contradictory statement that is.
It's very important to really let that sink into your marrow, into the guts of your bones, of your marrow, of your depths, that people who say that preferred behavior doesn't exist are exhibiting preferred behavior.
And it's not just that they're telling you that they would prefer that you not believe or put forward the proposition that preferred behavior exists.
[5:17] If you say to me, Stef, preferred behavior exists, and I say, no way, no way does preferred behavior exist, then, of course, I'm choosing to jab my finger at you. I'm choosing to use English.
I'm choosing to be emphatic. I'm choosing to disagree with you.
I'm preferring all of these things.
I'm not going to break into some sort of interpretive mega dance to let you know about my feelings about the proposition that preferred behavior exists.
I'm not going to rearrange random sentences in my words with the bluefish.
I mean, that's not really going to get. I'm preferring to use English grammatically correctly, to respond to your argument, to tell you that it's not the case, to indicate my preference that the truth is better than falsehood, that grammatical correctness is better than random sentences or random sounds, that you should not be putting forward, false propositions that false propositions should be argued against.
All of these are my shoulds, my oughts, my preferred, based on my actions.
So how could I conceivably argue that preferred behavior doesn't exist?
[6:24] It's like trying to argue that logic is invalid using logic.
It's simply you have contradicted yourself by opening your mouth.
So we can totally, completely, and utterly and that you could go into more arguments about this and you can have a look on my website freedomainradio.com where I've got an article which is also available on lewrockwell.com, lewrockwell.com called Proving Libertarian Morality I go into sort of more arguments about this, but most fundamentally nobody can put forward the proposition that preferred behavior does not exist okay I'll give you one more just one more little argument now if, If you say to me, Stef, preferred behavior exists, and I say, no, no, no, no, don't be crazy.
[7:10] Of course it doesn't. Well, you can legitimately look me sort of in the eye and say, Stef, did you eat over the last couple of days? Yes.
Did you say, have a drink?
[7:27] It's just water. Did you have a drink over the past couple of days?
Stef, you're, I don't know, a little under six foot. You're like obviously not starving.
So over the course of your life, have you generally eaten when you're hungry?
Have you drunk when you're thirsty? Have you slept when you're tired?
Have you obviously learned language? You put clothes on.
So obviously you're preferring to put clothes on. You're preferring to eat.
You're preferring to drink rather than be dead. every organism that's alive of course has to pursue particular causes of action to maintain its life you need food nutrients rest and so on and so how could you conceivably argue that preferred behavior doesn't exist since you're only alive as a direct result of pursuing the preferred behavior that keeps you alive right so preferred behavior exists exists, right?
Preferred behavior exists.
[8:29] Now, if preferred behavior exists, how are we going to understand it? How are we going to make sense of it?
How are we going to organize it in a way that is not subjective or whim-based or this or that or the other?
Is a very very important question if you accept the definition that morality is universally preferred behavior i.e.
It's put forward as the proposition that this is what everyone should do, if you accept that then morality exists like gravity exists every human being is constantly making preference choices in the conduct of his or her existence in the same way that rocks fall down human beings make choices and they make choices based on preference.
So preferred behavior exists and so the question then becomes does universally preferred behavior exist?
Well we're kind of dealing with the real world here right?
We're kind of dealing with human beings as organisms that eat and drink and have to live and have to rest and have to sleep and have to do all of these things, so we're kind of dealing a little bit with the real world, right?
[9:56] Now, the question then becomes, if preferred behavior exists, is there any possible way that universally preferred behaviors can exist?
Well, obviously there are some that are universally preferred.
It doesn't mean universally obeyed. It just means universally preferred, right?
In that most human beings will seek to avoid pain and pursue pleasure.
Relative to long term and short term objectives you do your taxes because you don't want to go to jail and stuff like that so we have the pleasure and pain principles we have discomfort when we're thirsty and hungry and so on so, we know that there are biologically ingrained not just in human beings but in all organisms certain preferred behaviors and I'm not going to argue for as Bertrand Russell once rather famously said about animal rights, where does it end?
Oysters getting the vote? I'm not going to argue for the property rights of amoebas or anything like that.
I'm just sort of saying that when we look at human beings, just as biological organisms, that we can see that human beings have ingrained within our natures preferred behaviors, even if we just look at the basic pain and pleasure principle and so on.
[11:21] So, if we are going to say that preferred behavior exists and has some biological basis, we're starting to deal with the properties of matter, in this case the properties of biological matter, of the requirements of life, the neurological pleasure plane principle, and so on.
And so we're really starting to deal with some pretty sort of basic facts here.
[11:44] Now i don't think that it's really very hard to put forward the proposition that it's better to eat than to starve that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be people who prefer to starve maybe anorexics or maybe mystics who were on hunger strikes or people in prison who are on hunger strikes it doesn't mean that that people aren't going to occasionally choose to starve but in general most human beings like 99.9999 whatever will choose to eat when they're hungry and drink when they're thirsty so from that standpoint we are dealing with some basic facts and basic requirements that exist exist within the world now the next question is if preferred preferred behavior exists, to what degree does preferred behavior exist, right?
[12:42] Now, if I have a theory of preferred behavior, like I could say, if I wanted, well, everyone can do whatever they want and so on, right?
In which case, I would have no capacity to object to a principle which said that universal behavior exists and everyone should do it, because, you know, I'm just saying everyone can do anything.
I'm not a philosopher then, I'm just sort of a negator, like a whim-based life form or whatever.
[13:07] But the moment that I put forward a moral theory, a should, an ought, the moment I try and organize, the moment that I try and organize the concepts of preferred behavior into a cohesive whole, into a system or a theory of ethics, then I'm now bound by certain rigors, right? Now I've stepped out of the realm of opinion.
If I have opinions like I think this sports team is good and I think it shouldn't rain tomorrow and this and that, that's not a theory, that's not philosophy, that's just a bunch of subjective opinions or preferences, you could say, not in the realm of ethics.
But once I put forward something which says this is how human beings should behave.
[13:48] Then I'm taking this sort of collection of preferred behaviors that we see within the world and I'm saying here's how they should be organized, the same way we see a whole bunch of stuff falling and, you know, smoke rising and clouds floating in the air.
And the moment I start to say, well, there's a principle behind all of this, right?
The moment I try and organize all of the complications of matter and energy, into something that approximates a cohesive and logical whole, as in a scientific theory, well, then I'm sort of out of the realm of merely subjective and women-based opinions.
[14:23] If I'm some guy in a bar saying everybody should mow their lawns on Saturday at midnight.
Not exactly scientific, right? It's just sort of an opinion.
But the moment I start putting forward a logical, moral, ethical theory, then I'm now within the realm of logic, the scientific method.
And if I say that it's a moral theory, then I'm saying that it's universally preferred behavior.
This is not just what it would be nice if people did it, like be nice if they didn't put their garbage out on the street and so on. It'd be nice if they mowed their lawn, you know, more rapidly than the seasons changed.
So, if I'm saying that there's a right and a wrong, that there's universally preferred behavior for mankind, the moment I start to use the word universal, then I'm kind of bound by the laws of logic and the scientific method and observation and reproducibility experimentation and so on.
So the moment I come up with an ethical theory then, it has to be universal otherwise it's just an opinion, it has to be universal it has to be independent of time it has to be independent of place it has to be reproducible all the kind of stuff it has to really be part of the philosophical and scientific methodology that we've been working in for the whole past series of podcasts.
[15:41] Now Now, it has to be universal.
And so I can't, for instance, say that a man should not murder.
A man should prefer not to murder. It is preferable that men do not murder.
Let's just say that I'm putting that forward as a proposition.
Thou shalt not kill.
[16:13] Well, now I'm starting to say, thou shalt not kill. That's everybody.
Everybody should not kill. I can't logically say, okay, Tom should not kill, but Jerry should kill.
[16:34] Because then what I'm doing is saying I have two opposing laws for human beings, which is like saying in in science one rock falls down my theory says one rock falls down the other rock falls up in other words i have contradictory principles applying to the same entities now the rocks don't have to be exactly the same just as human beings don't have to be exactly the same and we're not going to include four-year-olds and we're not going to include people who are mentally handicapped and so on we'll get to all of that trust me we're just talking about the average person who's this moral theory would apply to we're not talking about people in a coma we're We're not talking about people who are in a lifeboat and there's only enough water for 10 of them and there are 500 of them and how many get fed to the sharks and so on, right?
We're just talking about average sort of ethical moral situations, which is the majority of what ethical theories are proposing, right?
So if I put forward a moral theory, I'm not proving anything yet.
I'm just sort of saying here's the rigor that moral theories need to be subjected to because they're describing or claiming to describe or prescribe universally preferred human behavior.
[17:42] So, if I say, thou shalt not kill, I can't say to one guy, thou shalt not kill, but another guy, thou shalt kill.
[17:52] That's like a geologist classifying one rock as quartz and another quartz rock as a pterodactyl or a flying fish.
I'm not deriving the consistency that is required from the objects that I'm describing.
So if you have two clouds, you can't call one of them a solid and one of them a gas, or one of them suspended vapor and the other one a tree trunk.
You have to have some consistency in what it is that you're describing.
So the moment that you put forward a rule which is part of an ethical theory which says universally preferred behavior is X.
[18:33] Then you are required to follow the logical consistent constraints, of empirical validation, reproducibility, logic the scientific method you cannot create moral rules for one human being and then have completely opposite moral rules for another human being.
I mean, you can. You can do whatever you want, but it's ridiculous.
It's absolutely ridiculous. We would never accept that from a scientist.
We would never accept a scientific theory that on one page of the equations said 2 plus 2 is 4 and on another page of the equations said 2 plus 2 is a red tartan bluefish.
Right we would simply say let's throw this out you're being ridiculous this is not even logic a five year old could be better at it than this and we'll get into the reasons why ethical theories always turn out that way later, so if I'm going to put forward a proposition that is ethical in nature that is morally binding that is a description or prescription for universally preferred human behavior I can't just make stuff up, and consider my theory to be viable.
[19:53] So, what do some of these rules look like that I at least would consider or argue that they would be viable?
[20:11] Well, let's take a look at something like people have property rights.
Let's just say, right? If I put forward the proposition that people have property rights, and we're not going to talk about the reasons why and all of this, we can talk about that another time, or I've got a number of podcasts on this topic, but let's just say I put forward the proposition that says people have property rights.
Well, what is property rights? A property right is a right to use and dispose of matter, fundamentally an object, or it could be an idea, I guess, but let's not get into the whole debate about intellectual property rights.
Rights, but property rights is the ability, the moral legitimate rights, the ability to use an object, right?
If I own the apple, I can eat the apple. It comes down to sort of that simple.
[21:01] So if I say that people have property rights, then people can use matter.
Now, if I say that people don't have property rights, then anybody who uses matter in any any way shape or form is acting in violation of that moral rule right and so if i eat an apple i'm starving and i eat an apple then i've obviously i've ingested that that object into my body and it's now part of me and it's sustaining me and so on so i have violated the rule that there's no such thing as as property rights and of course the first property is the body or one's own body i own my vocal cords and my lips and my ears, right?
[21:44] I certainly wouldn't appreciate it if you tried to take them away from me.
So if we put forward a moral theory that says property rights exist, that's great.
Everybody has property and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we can sort of figure out, you know, how it's legitimized and under what conditions it can be transcribed.
But fundamentally, do people have or not have property rights?
Now, if people do have property rights, then everybody has property rights because we're talking about things that exist in the real world.
Universally preferred behavior. Universally preferred behavior is you have the option...
[22:20] To have an exercise property rights. You don't have to, you can live in a commune, you can all live in the same jacuzzi if you want, and share all the fluids you can imagine, but you have the right if you want to exercise property rights. That's fine.
Now, of course, if I say nobody has the right to exercise property rights, first of all, I'm exercising property rights over my own body.
In order to communicate that, I'm using my vocal cords and so on my in this case my video camera my desk a microphone two computers blah blah blah.
[22:53] And so you can't uh really argue against the existence of property rights without having you know usually and having clothing on and having eaten a meal and you know so obviously you have exercised property rights in order to survive in order to live human beings in order to survive have to consume and so you've consumed something right you've eaten assume you know a dying baby.
So you have exercised property rights in order to survive. You're exercising the property rights over your own body in order to communicate about property rights.
Therefore, anybody who says property rights don't exist doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Again, it's one of these self-contradictory propositions.
Now, you may not agree with me about the property rights thing.
I totally understand that. I'm not going to say that in, what, three minutes I'm going to have convinced you of the universal validity of property rights. I understand that. I mean, I'm just giving this out as an example.
And so...
[23:52] The proposition that property rights exist, if we accept it, it has to be universal either way, right?
We can't say a human being has a right to an apple, to own an apple, but a human being does not have the right to own an orange.
It's just matter and energy, right? It's not another human life.
I mean, you know, no slavery, obviously.
[24:16] So we can't just sort of make things up. We can't say that redheads have the right to own cars and brunettes don't have the right to own cars.
I mean, we can put that forward, but again, we're just saying that some rocks fall up, some rocks fall down.
We're describing the same entity, a human being. You can't just make up opposite moralities for different people out of your own head.
That's not scientific, it's not logical, it's not rational, it's not empirical at all, because they're just people, right?
Biologists can't classify a human being as a human being and a turnip, right? If they're two human beings, they're two human beings.
So they can't have totally different opposite properties, preferred behaviors, moralities, and rules, and all this kind of stuff.
So if you're going to put forward any kind of rule to your kids, to your students, if you're a teacher, to your wife, to your husband, to your community, if you're going to put forward any kind of rules about anything, including yourself, self.
Those rules have to be consistent for everybody.
They have to be consistent for everybody.
[25:29] So, if you put forward a rule that says property rights exist, then they exist for everybody.
And if you put forward a rule that says property rights don't exist, then they don't exist for anybody.
So, for instance, I mean, the theory of communism puts forward that property rights exist for the rulers, but do not exist for the followers, right? Right.
So in the Soviet Union or in Cambodia or in China and all the communist countries, you have a centrally planned economy wherein the bureaucrats dispose of all of the products of society.
Right. I'm going to ship 500 tons of lumber off to Siberia and then we're going to send a bunch of pig iron out to Vladivostok or whatever. so.
[26:22] In communism some people have property rights the people who are in the inner party, the people who are at the top of the food chain, the people with their villas and dachaus on the Black Sea or the Caspian, those people have property rights, they can dispose of property, but the average person does not have property rights bad theory, bad naughty theory, going to dinner without any supper, because if people have property rights, then everybody has property rights, there's no division there's no division you can't just say oh well these people in Moscow who live in this building they have lots of property rights those people who are like on the other side of the wall on the other side they don't have property rights it doesn't make any sense you're talking about human beings and human beings they either have property rights or they don't they have property rights or they don't, you can't just slice people up mentally and say well these people do and these people don't and that's what I'm going to call a political system and a moral theory it's medieval, it's ridiculous it's superstition.
[27:23] Okay, we're done for one month I'll give you another example, thou shalt not steal, again I'm not saying that I'm proving any of these, I'm just talking about if you put forward a proposition, there are certain demands of consistency that you have to fulfill if you want to claim that that is true rather than just, oh I think these people should have property rights and I think these people shouldn't, I think these rocks fall up I think these rocks fall down and I think that Neptune the sea god gives me my birthday back rub if you're going to say something like thou shalt not steal okay obviously if you say thou shalt not steal you're accepting property rights you can't through force or subversion or coercion you can't, take away other people's property without their permission or you know by threatening them or whatever right you have to exchange value for value in a free market situation or whatever you want to call it, now if you put forward a proposition that says thou shalt steal thou shalt steal that stealing is a morally good thing.
[28:28] Let's have a look at that, right? Without offense, you know, it's just a logical theory being put forward as something that is a prescription or an organization of universally preferred behavior.
Okay. Thou shalt steal. Well, what that means, of course, is that people who are not currently in the act of stealing something are immoral.
If you say that the moral behavior is don't rape, then the rapist is immoral.
I mean, it's not that, you know, it's not that, you know, if you say that the person should eat and the person who doesn't eat is hungry. It's the opposite, right?
[29:02] So, if you say thou shalt steal, then everybody who's not currently in the middle of stealing something is evil, right? The person in a coma is evil.
A person who's asleep is immoral because they're not stealing something right then.
Right if you say thou shalt not steal then the only people who are actually immoral are those currently in the act of stealing uh from something and of course if they keep the property then they're as evil as the longevity of the property that they keep and the value and blah blah blah there's lots of some great areas and one penny candy versus i don't know uh maserati but basically then you know a guy in a coma is not evil because not stealing anything right so if you're going to to put forward a proposition that says thou shalt steal then everybody who's not conforming to that rule is immoral right i mean it's the opposite of morality right so obviously that leads you to some very ridiculous things and people who are asleep are evil right and of course if there are two guys in a room are they both supposed to be stealing from each other like grabbing things putting them back and forth i'll take this you take that back back back back right is that the only way that they can be ethical if they're both grabbing each other oh you take my watch i'll take your wallet You take my wallet, I'll take your watch. We'll go back and forth.
We're stealing, stealing, stealing because we want to be good people.
[30:15] And if we're two naked guys with one watch, then while you're grabbing the watch from me, assuming it's my watch, right?
When you're grabbing the watch from me, then you're a good guy and I'm a bad guy because you're stealing and I'm being stolen from.
And then I can grab the watch from you and then I'm not a bad guy because I'm getting my property back, which is more like restitution and not stealing.
So you end up with these very ridiculous situations that nobody would really logically defend.
And of course, if somebody puts forward a moral proposition which says, thou shalt steal, and they're not currently stealing from you at the time that they're telling you the proposition, then they're self-condemning themselves as evil, of course, right?
If I say thou shalt steal, and I'm not currently picking your pocket, then I'm not stealing, and therefore I'm a bad guy, blah, blah, blah.
And of course even if you did get people to believe thou shalt steal the problem with thou shalt steal of course is that it is both a simultaneous uh an affirmation and a denial of property rights right so let's say that uh i don't know i can uh i can uh go out and hide and jack a car and and steal it well of course the only reason i'm going to do that is so i can keep the car or sell the car or whatever right so that i can treat it as my property i'm not going to to bother stealing from something.
I'm not going to bother stealing the car if like 30 seconds after I steal it, like some crime movie, right?
30 seconds after I steal it, some guy comes and steals the car from me.
I'm not going to bother doing that, right? If.
[31:43] If I can't keep the car that I'm stealing, I'm not going to bother stealing it, right?
So I'm obviously rejecting property rights because I'm saying, I can steal your car, and then I'm affirming property rights by saying, well, I really now want to keep what I've stolen, and I don't want anyone to steal it from me. I want to hang on to my property, right?
So respecting property rights is both good, I can't steal it, or bad, because I can go and steal your car, and then I want other people to respect my property rights so that I can keep my stolen car and sell it or joyride it or whatever.
So the very act of stealing is totally contradictory from a universally preferred behavior standpoint right saying the property rights are both valid and completely invalid.
[32:26] So that's sort of just some minor examples of how you can look at particular kinds of ethics but the main sort of thing that i want to get across here is that when you put forward a proposition about universally preferred behavior you can't just randomly slice human beings up into oh well these are these are the politicians or the these are the these are the soldiers or these are the cops or right if there are moral rules and there are moral rules consistently for everyone they're consistently for everyone otherwise it's just an irrational bunch of nonsense and preferences that make no sense right then we'll sort of we'll get into the implications of this moving forward i just want you to understand that preferred behavior exists this universally preferred behavior seems to be pretty consistent across a human being humankind, if you're going to put forward a claim that you're going to rationally organize universally preferred human behavior which is required by calling it universal i can't create a theory about gravity and say it only applies to one rock then it's not a theory about gravity it's just an opinion about one rock right and it's an incorrect opinion about that rock if it's not universal right because gravity is constant.
[33:37] So if I'm going to come up with a theory about universal human behavior called morality, then it better be consistent for everybody.
[33:47] With some minor exceptions, we'll get into down the road, and we'll sort of get into why those are acceptable, even in a logical scientific framework as we move forward.
But what I'm really trying to get across here is that if you want to work out ethical theories for human beings that are considered to be true and valid, you can't have a rule for one guy, in Syria, they can do this.
They can cut people's hands off for stealing. But in Milwaukee, that's really bad, because they want to cut the feet off or something, right?
You can't say, well, it was really bad yesterday, but today it's really good because the law has changed or something.
We voted a new guy in, so everything has changed. Well, that's not the case at all.
It has to be consistent. It has to be universal. It has to be reproducible.
It has to be consistent. It has to be logical.
Last but not least, it has to be empirical, which we'll get to in about two podcasts.
But this is sort of the major thing that I want to get across.
Cross. Ethicists throughout the history of the world have almost always sliced and diced people up into these random categories, different uniforms, different political structures, different this, leaders, followers, whoever, right?
Priests and lay people and so on. It's all pure nonsense.
If you want to put forward an ethical theory, you want to justify or believe in any kind of ethical theory that you consider to be binding, universal, and valid, then it better apply to everyone.
[35:11] It better apply to everyone. everyone, because if it doesn't, it's just your opinion, and it doesn't mean squat.
[35:21] So I'm just asking for a little bit of rigor from the ethicists of the world, or at least an admission that it's just their opinion, and it means about as much as me saying don't whistle while I do my taxes.
Anyway, thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate it as always.
I'll talk to you soon.
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