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https://freedomain.com/essential-philosophy-part-1/
0:03 - The Quest for Core Truth
14:14 - The Dark Temptation of Determinism
14:23 - Morality and the Elements
1:47:24 - The Value of Philosophy
1:53:36 - The Anti-Rational Hypothesis
2:02:04 - Reality is Subjective
2:16:08 - The Illusion of Free Will
3:17:25 - Critiques and Intellectual Cowardice
[0:00] They literally will not let go of their perspectives and positions.
[0:03] And it is impossible for me to shake the feeling that we are never approaching the core of what is really going on. Think about it. Why would someone so desperately need to believe that there is no such thing as right or wrong, truth or falsehood, good or evil, personal responsibility, morality, the capacity for love and respect and courage and integrity, What possible motivation could there be for someone to burn from the universe all that glory and joy and possibility? How much horror must they have experienced or inflicted in order to call in an airstrike on everything that makes life worth living? Everything that gives us meaning, everything that gives us responsibility and self-respect, pride and love, motivation and responsibility.
[0:58] I think determinists actually understand deep down how much they are giving up to maintain the position that mankind is a mere bag of meaty, mechanized muscle. My question has always been, why would they want to give up so much? The answer cannot be, because it is true. The determinist position denies the very concept of truth or falsehood. If the determinist is right, he believes in determinism, involuntarily, and I believe in free will, involuntarily. It's like dropping a boulder on the knife edge of a peaked mountaintop. It breaks, and one half of the boulder falls one way, while the other falls the other way. Is there any choice involved? Of course not. Would it make any sense to stand at the open door of the helicopter and scream, at one half of the boulder, that it was traveling in the wrong direction, that it needed to reverse course, climb back over the mountain, and join the other half crashing in that direction? That would be the actions of a crazy person. But in the deterministic universe, there is actually no difference between the split rock and the human mind.
[2:16] Of course, the determinist can say that he is predetermined to debate with me and to try and change my mind and therefore he can do nothing about his actions. And here we get to the very heart and crux of the issue. The determinist essentially says, everything I do is right.
[2:40] In the deterministic universe, there is no such thing as an incorrect choice, an unpreferred position, or the rational capacity to criticize anyone. If I write a computer program and it fails to compile, I don't blame the computer, my keyboard, or the monitor. That would be ridiculous and immature. By turning himself into a computer, the determinist renders himself above and beyond any real criticism at all. He is beyond good and evil. It seems like hard science, but it is, in fact, soft snowflake. If I prove the determinist wrong, he can just shrug and say, well, I guess that was predetermined. If the determinist has acted in an immoral manner, he can just shrug and say, well, I guess that was predetermined.
[3:35] The position is one of rank and deep. Self-hatred. It is a troll's position. It is a dark dare to join the determinist in an empty universe of clanking machinery, a lack of identity, a lack of meaning, a lack of virtue, a lack of love. It is an invitation to a walking suicide of value. It is an invitation to free yourself from conscience by destroying your capacity for choice. But what virtuous person wants to be freed from his own conscience.
[4:14] Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we are virtuous in the deterministic universe there is no virtue therefore there can be no love integrity is fidelity to moral truth, In the deterministic universe, there is no truth. Therefore, there can be no morality, and therefore there can be no integrity.
[4:40] Courage is choosing what is right over what is popular. In the deterministic universe, since there is no such thing as right, there can be no such thing as courage. We could go on and on down the list of virtues, all of which in the deterministic universe would be wiped out, irradiated, and erased. It is a cold, lifeless world empty of value, truth, goodness, compassion, charity, or love. It is a world of machines, and you are one of them. Nothing can be changed, nothing can be preferred, and nothing can be won or lost. We are all just lifeless boulders, rolling down the side of a mountain into an inevitable grave. What personal hell must you have experienced or created to be even remotely tempted by such a nightmarish position?
[5:44] Determinism and emotional investment. I am fully aware that my charge of emotional investment could very easily be turned back on me. I openly accept that and have talked about it publicly many times. If I ask people, why are you so emotionally invested in determinism, they can very fairly ask me the same question. Why are you so emotionally invested in free will? Here, we can talk about the unspoken risks of determinism. Falsely believing in determinism can strip you of love, life, value, enthusiasm, courage, all the most wonderful aspects of human existence. And this risk is rarely talked about when confronting the question of determinism.
[6:36] If you are a determinist, you will probably do little to protect your values, while those who accept free will strive mightily to advance theirs. If you are an atheist and a determinist, you will lose. Your entire belief system will lose in the endless back-and-forth tussle of physical and intellectual human combat. This helps us understand why less rational belief systems are spreading and growing throughout the world while the West falters and fails. Through relentless materialism and secularism, we have created generations of deterministic, nihilistic, socialistic, and empty atheists and agnostics. And now we are losing our freedoms.
[7:24] Determinists lose to those who believe in free will because determinism is a false position, and it undermines our desire to maintain our hard-won freedoms. What is the point of political freedoms if we don't even have free will? Would you sign a petition to grant human rights to a rock garden? Would you fight for the right for a statue to do yoga? Would you march and protest to give your smartphone the right to vote? Bad reason is worse than good faith. A priest who gives you good medicine is better than a doctor who gives you bad medicine. The danger of the determinist position is that by not believing in free will, our capacity to exercise free will is destroyed. I am willing to give up deeply held positions if the reasoned arguments are sufficient and if the evidence overwhelmingly supports the new position. I was a socialist, a Christian, an objectivist, and now I have moved beyond those positions, although I treasured them greatly at the time, because accumulated reason and evidence have overwhelmed my original beliefs.
[8:39] However, I cannot rationally change my mind about my capacity to change my mind. I cannot use my capacity to choose to deny my capacity to choose. I cannot use free will to deny free will. The fact that accepting the determinist position would also strip my life of love, passion, meaning, purpose, and joy is a purely emotional argument. I understand that. And such a sandblasting of happiness is not at all a rational counter-argument, but I bring it up as something I am emotionally aware of. And, to give you, the dear reader and listener, the honesty of a fair evaluation of my emotional state.
[9:29] I am also fully aware that a deeply religious person could reject arguments for atheism on the same basis, that a cold and godless universe would be emotionally devastating. I would genuinely respect a religious person for making this honest statement since most arguments, particularly about epistemology and ethics, are mere covers for deeply held emotional preferences. When we admit and discuss our emotional investments in our positions, we do not become less rational, but rather more rational, since honesty is required for productive intellectual debate. And honesty about bias is a confession of a dedication to rationality. Should determinism be established beyond doubt, I would no longer be able to comprehend my being, my identity, what it means to be human. Imagine how strange it would be to know that every single thought, every single impulse, every single decision was not yours. That you imagined you were the pilot of an aircraft when it turned out you were not even a passenger, but merely the machinery of the engine.
[10:49] Can you imagine waking up in a world where everyone was a robot and no one had a choice, including you? Can you imagine waking up in a world where there were no such things as a conscience, virtue, love, courage, or truth? A world where all these preferred states were mere delusions and you faced a bleak and listless future with about as much choice and freedom as a pinball ricocheting between various pre-programmed bumpers.
[11:26] Can you imagine waking up in a world where no one had any responsibility whatsoever? In an old John Cleese comedy called Fawlty Towers, the main character beats his uncooperative car with a tree branch. This crazed immaturity is funny because he is basically punishing an inanimate object, a mere machine. His frustration, of course, is with his own pre-programmed reactions with his expectations of ease, which are constantly violated by an inevitably messy reality. But we do not imagine that the car can do anything to appease such a madman. Can you imagine waking up in a world where it made about as much sense to correct or punish a wrongdoer as it does to hit a broken car with a tree branch? We do not give a medal to the rock that rolls down the hill the fastest. So why would we give a medal to the fastest runner in a deterministic universe? The rock is indistinguishable from the runner, philosophically speaking. Can you imagine waking up in a world where accepting determinism caused you to change your behavior, to advocate different things, to oppose various perspectives, all while accepting that you had no capacity to do any of these things?
[12:54] Can you imagine waking up in a world where you could never do anything wrong, where you could never make a mistake, where you could never be in error, and where you could never be immoral? Can you imagine being the kind of person with the kind of history who would thirst so deeply for such empty salvation?
[13:21] Can you imagine having done such wrong that you were desperate for absolution for forgiveness but still being so corrupt that you would not lift a finger to earn it can you imagine being so guilty that you would destroy love choice virtue itself in order to pretend you did nothing wrong? Can you imagine being so corrupt that you would spread the nihilistic doctrine of determinism, hoping to gain misery and company rather than seeking peace through restitution to those you have wronged? Can you imagine being so solitary, so isolated, so existentially lonely that you would choose to empty the universe of consciousness rather than seek comfort from another human being.
[14:14] I can't. And I never want to.
[14:24] Morality and the elements. Now we turn to the heart of philosophy, which is morality. The purpose of medicine is physical health. The purpose of nutrition is digestive health. All the research theory, scientific examination, testing, and writing in these fields are designed with one and only one objective in mind to get you to change your behavior. There is little point in buying a diet book if you do not change your diet. The cliché of the exercise machine ordered with high enthusiasm at 2 a.m. That ends up gathering dust under your guest bed fits this pattern as well. There is no point in learning how to exercise if you never bother exercising. There is no point going to the doctor and getting a prescription if you never end up taking the medicine. The purpose of all knowledge is to change behavior. We study piano in order to improve our piano playing. We learn how to cook so we can cook better. We diet and exercise in order to become healthier. We study another language to better speak that language. We learn how to use a computer so that we can achieve our goals more efficiently. Why do we check the weather? in order to change our behavior. Bring an umbrella, apply sunscreen, whatever.
[15:53] There was an old video recording and playback technology called the VCR. You can still buy the machines online. Imagine getting a hold of a very early VCR and then learning how it had been programmed. It might be possible to either get the source code sitting on some dusty five and a quarter inch floppy disk somewhere or reverse-engineer the VCR code. Then, imagine spending months learning that code, studying the hardware specifications and capacities of the machine and finding some way to improve its speed, efficiency, or responsiveness. Then, perhaps, you could find some way to inject that new code into an existing ancient VCR and watch it perform better. I can't fathom why anyone would ever pursue that goal because it would be a dismal and useless waste of time for many obvious reasons. It might be possible to justify such a hobby on the grounds that it sharpens your mind, gives you skills that might benefit you in the future, or something along those lines. But I think it would be reasonable to say that anyone who spent hundreds of hours on this pursuit might be exhibiting signs of some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder or other kind of mental imbalance.
[17:18] If you were told today that you had three months to live, would you immediately start studying a difficult foreign language? A subculture of programmers has devoted themselves to the task of getting the old video game Doom to run on a variety of platforms, including printers and cell phones and other disparate hardware. In this case, I can only assume they are pursuing the respect of others in their subculture, along with the immediate dopamine hit of getting code to run on something that wasn't designed to run it. There is a purpose in what they do, and the test is whether they post their successes publicly. If you found some man with a variety of ancient hardware in his garage who had spent the last five years getting an old video game to run on everything from a scientific calculator to a monochrome printer interface, but had never told anyone of his strenuous endeavors and never used his acquired skills anywhere else, wouldn't that be a sign that he was pretty nuts? Intense effort without payoff, without benefit, is a sign of mental illness. Like a man endlessly organizing useless items, or a woman obsessively washing her hands, or a child spending eight hours building and breaking one particular toy, these are all signs that all is not well in the upstairs chambers.
[18:44] I bring all this up because I'm sure you are at least vaguely aware of the enormous efforts that have been poured into philosophy just over the past century or so, and how little productive and valuable meaning has come out of it, at least for the average individual. Quick, tell me what moral principles have come out of existentialism, post-modernism, pragmatism, collectivism, relativism, or even socialism or Marxism or fascism. Have any of these ideologies or philosophies helped you make better moral decisions in your daily life? I'm not talking about political activism, but the personal moral challenges we all face. Generally, vague positive effects are claimed. Philosophy enriches and deepens understanding and brings wisdom, which are all unquantifiable positives that generally accrue only to the individual.
[19:46] Philosophy is not just about making you feel better, but about making the world better as well. When people are generally competent in the science of nutrition, the need for nutritionists diminishes. When people become generally competent in philosophy, the need for philosophers will diminish. Gaining significant expertise in nutrition comes with a reasonable expectation that you will instruct the ignorant. Becoming competent in philosophy also comes with a reasonable expectation that you will instruct the ignorant. Even philosophies that claim to pursue the moral good rarely result in positive changes in personal behavior. There are philosophies that advocate for government control of health care. Do they directly help you make better decisions to become a healthier person? Quite the opposite. If health care is free, people are more likely to neglect their health. If you think of the philosophy of collectivism that the group should rule over the individual it is not designed to help you make better decisions in your own life but rather to surrender your own decision-making capacity to the mob.
[21:12] If you think of relativism, the argument that claims as true the position that there is no such thing as truth, how does that help you make moral decisions in your daily life? Being a Marxist may encourage you to spend your time attempting to establish a dictatorship to transfer control of the means of production to the state, but how does that goal help you make better moral decisions today, tomorrow, or ever. The philosophy of pragmatism may encourage you to judge an idea by its effects rather than by its principles, but it does not help you make any better moral decisions today. It generally encourages you to act randomly and judge the results over time. I can't imagine that a diet book called Eat Randomly, See If You Get Thin would ever sell well. A book on ethics called Kill Today, See How You Feel Tomorrow would not be particularly ethical. The general slogan that praises the greatest good for the greatest number does not help you in your own particular life. It is designed, of course, to get you to vote for more and more government power since collective benefits can, in general, only be secured and enforced by the coercive might of a centralized state.
[22:38] Such philosophies are either designed to make ethics murky, confusing and messy, or they are designed to get you to vote for bigger and bigger government. They are not designed to help you make better moral decisions in your own life today.
[22:55] Compare this to Christianity. The Ten Commandments are not collectivist in nature, but are aimed directly at the individual and his or her own moral choices. The question, what would Jesus do, is specifically designed to evoke a personal reaction in a moment of moral crisis, to help the individual pattern himself after the most moral being in the universe. The Bible consistently exhorts people to pursue virtue individually in their daily lives, using personal decisions. It doesn't just tell people to vote for a politician who is going to enforce some kind of collective and coercive good action. You do good in order to get to heaven. Your conscience is your own and cannot be outsourced to anyone else, any other mob, group, collective, politician, or government. In fact, Christianity directly warns people of the danger of the mob and of the necessity for individual salvation. Your conscience is responsible to virtue, and you can no more outsource your moral responsibility then you can ask someone else to digest your food for you. Once you have saved yourself then you can save others. Put the airplane oxygen mask on your own face first.
[24:21] The destruction of individual conscience that grew out of Darwinism, materialism, socialism and atheism was one of the greatest catastrophes ever to hit Western civilization. In fact, it has been the persistent undoing of Western civilization ever since. The Storm and the Self. An analogy. Imagine a dark village battered by a terrible storm. Only the walls of the village church hold strong. All who venture outside risk sudden death, but all who take shelter inside the church are safe. The villagers all huddle inside singing, praying, and sharing food. Into the village, through the storm, rides a group of atheists. Dismounting. They pull out sledgehammers, cry out that there is no God, swarm up the wet walls and start pounding on the roof of the church, tearing it away. The storm, the hail, the wind, the debris all begin flying into the church and smashing into the people. As the steeple collapses, lightning strikes the cross, jumps through the water and electrocutes some of the panicked congregation.
[25:41] In the hellish storm, with the atheists tearing open the roof, it becomes more dangerous inside the church than outside in the devilish elements. The villagers, crying out in terror, stream out of the dying church and into the rain-lashed landscape, dodging flying tree branches and rolling rocks. The atheists, after having completed their destruction of the church, gather the villagers before them. You can thank us now, for we have saved you from your superstition, cries the leader of the Atheists. The storm is raging and getting worse. Where on earth do we go now? Where do we take shelter? Demand the villagers covering their children, with their own bodies chilled to the bone, cut and broken by flying debris, shaking and terrified and enraged. The Atheists simply smile and charge off into the storm looking for another church to tear apart. And what happens to the villagers? I think we all know. We are seeing it play out every single day across the Western world. The storm gets worse, the violence increases and the church, which sheltered not just the villagers but their entire civilization, lies in ruin.
[27:10] Let us say that the church as an institution is wrong. There are certainly good philosophical arguments to make in that direction, but so what? If you are a decent, moral human being, you do not tear down the only structure that shelters the people from storms without providing them a better place to take refuge. And you sure as hell do not tear down their shelter during a storm. If you despise the existing shelter, build a better shelter, and people will arrive of their own accord.
[27:50] The most fundamental question I've asked of myself recently, and of my own history with atheism, is this. Do atheists love the truth, or do they merely hate the church? The state is the great competitor to religion. Christianity aims to prevent crime. The state aims to cure it. Think of the difference between a nutritionist and a surgeon. Often the more influence the nutritionist has, the less work there is for the surgeon. You can have a big god in a small state, or you can have a small god in a big state. The pendulum of society seems to irrevocably swing back and forth between the two in this tragic manner.
[28:40] Those who wish to grow the power of the state know the church stands directly in their path. Transferring the allegiance of the citizenry from the worship of God to a worship of the state requires that God be discredited. The state inevitably takes its place. For well over a century, atheists have savagely dismantled the church, religious faith, the conscience, the concept of sin, and a fear of the afterlife.
[29:15] The Marxists say that religion is the opiate of the masses. Modernity reveals that Marxism is the opiate of the anti-religious. The church was the moral home of Western civilization amid the perpetual storm of inter-tribal and international conflicts that is the world. Atheists tore down the church because they claimed to love truth and found religion false. else. Did the atheists and do the atheists love truth? By far, the greatest threat to human life, at least in the 20th century, came from the state, not from religion. In that most dismal hundred-year span, governments murdered 250 million of their own citizens. This horrifying figure does not even include wars. This is a basic truth of history states have murdered hundreds of millions of people in a single hundred year span society needs to be organized people need to follow rules the traditional organization in the west that provided these things was based on christianity, When Christianity and the rules it engendered was torn down by the atheists, what did they erect to protect the people?
[30:42] Nothing. Nothing at all. They tore down the church and sold the people to the state. I am increasingly of the opinion that atheists were useful idiots used to destroy the church that stood in the path of the power mongers who thirsted to expand the brutal strength of the state. I am telling you all of this before I introduce you to a rational proof of secular ethics because I was and remain deeply shocked by the hostility and indifference shown by atheists to such a proof. The destruction of Christian ethics created a power vacuum in society that was filled by increasing state power. Atheists hated being influenced by the voluntary participation of Christianity but seemed to have no problem being controlled by the coercive power of the state. Atheists rail against the automatic guilt of original sin but seem to have far fewer objections to the automatic guilt of racism, sexism, patriarchy, misogyny, and all the other slanderous attack labels of the encroaching left.
[32:01] What were atheists as a whole selling to the general public, or at least the intellectual public? Were they selling a new moral goal that would supersede and transcend religious imperatives? Were they combining a hatred of irrationality and coercion that would culminate in opposition to the increasing size and power of the state? Of course not. Becoming an atheist released people from moral obligations. It removed the all-seeing eye of God, the strictness of moral integrity, and the requirement to sacrifice the immediate self to a higher purpose. What moral rules, what strictness, what requirements for self-discipline, self-subjugation, and integrity did atheism provide? Where atheism overlapped with Marxism, or at least socialism, there were larger goals as a whole, increasing the size and power of the state and its capacity to control resources and redistribute income. But that strikes me as a particularly satanic goal.
[33:13] Did Marxists deny religion out of a deep opposition to irrational beliefs? Of course not. reason and evidence have denied the truth and virtue of Marxism, but many Marxists have just abandoned reason and evidence rather than give up their irrational beliefs. Hence, post-modernism. Did Marxists oppose capitalism because they care about the poor? Of course not. Free markets have freed and enriched the poor. Marxism impoverished and enslaved them. Did Marxists oppose existing governments because those governments were oppressive and tyrannical? Of course not. Marxist governments are far more oppressive and tyrannical. Marxism is the mere manifestation of a post-Darwinian lust for power and resources. Christianity stands between the Marxists and the tyranny they thirst for. Therefore, Christianity must go. For Christians, poverty in this life may be a precursor to an eternity in heaven after death. As the Bible saying goes, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Poverty is not a desperate problem to be solved by any means necessary. Many devout Christians embrace poverty.
[34:37] For atheists, since there is no afterlife, the problem of poverty becomes far greater. A poor man does not get his reward after death. He just suffers a miserable life, then dies. More secular philosophies such as socialism and communism tend to focus on material inequality far more than Christianity. As Jesus says, the poor will always be with us. Since it accepts material inequality, Christianity is far freer to focus on fundamental principles – equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. A commandment that says, Thou shalt not steal, rather than a law demanding forced income redistribution.
[35:24] Christianity also focuses on achieving virtue by rejecting materialism and power over others. The devil tempts Jesus by offering him the whole world. Jesus rejects him. As the Bible says, For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? For atheists, a man has no soul to lose. So it is far more tempting to demand that the state serve the material needs of the population rather than reinforce the population's spiritual and moral virtues. A material focus leads to a fundamental problem, however, if the state forcibly transfers income it cannot, at the same time, maintain property rights. The two positions are antithetical. Secular governments increasingly shift from thou shalt not to thou shalt, a far less free proposition.
[36:24] Human beings are strongly primed by nature to desire violent power over others. Even bonobo monkeys, when they climb the hierarchy of tribal power, receive increased dopamine hits deep in their brains, which incentivize them to become even better at subjugating other monkeys. Offering political power to human beings is like offering cocaine to a desperate addict. the addict, has a plan, sure, but we would not describe it as a very noble or elevated plan. Political power requires the initiation of force against citizens. Plotting to gain, keep, and increase political power is deeply immoral. Whether consciously or not, atheists have helped open the gates of hell to endless escalations of state power. They have been foot soldiers in the great stampede of evildoers to gain control of and expand political power, the power of coercion. This is, of course, a hypothesis, but it is a testable hypothesis.
[37:34] Do atheists tend toward leftism? They certainly do. In one study, atheists are almost seven times more likely to support the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party in the United States. From Pew Research. About two-thirds of atheists, 69%, identify as Democrats or lean in that direction, and a majority, 56%, call themselves political liberals, compared with just one in 10 who say they are conservatives.
[38:04] Do atheists recognize that the initiation of force is far more immoral than any possible personal irrationality? They certainly do not, since they consistently attack Christianity and consistently defend the state. For adults, Christianity is voluntary, and there are no penalties for leaving the faith. State commandments and laws are not voluntary and can result in prison sentences for disobedience. If atheists were generally concerned with the philosophical and moral improvement of the human race. They would have restrained their base attacks on Christianity until they, as atheists, were able to provide a rational and objective moral framework to help society become more reasonable and good, rather than merely tear down the church and expose a desperate and frightened population to all the raw and destructive elements pouring down from the black skies of history.
[39:08] Immoral, atheistic philosophy would have said this. Well, a byproduct of disproving God will be the undoing of Christian ethics. But society needs ethics. So we better hold off unraveling the central moral fabric of our societies until we have something better to take its place. Even if Christianity is an irrational painkiller, the population is certainly in pain and withdrawing the painkiller without providing an alternative is mere sadism. So let us put our heads together, start from scratch and build a system of ethics from the ground up, making sure every step is complete and cohesive. And then work our mighty intellectual and verbal muscles to trumpet a rational system of secular ethics from the rooftops so that the people do not dissolve into confusion, depression, materialism, and hedonism. This they did not do. Quite the opposite, in fact. They said, Christianity is irrational and ridiculous and destructive, so away with these false superstitions and contradictory edicts, away with this hierarchy punishment and guilt tripping and all other sorts of nonsense. Let us merely oppose the irrational rather than build the truly rational.
[40:31] If atheists were truly moral, even if they had overlooked the need for generally accepted social ethics, they would surely have cheered the introduction of a rational proof of secular ethics. Doing so would provide a moral framework outside of religion and above the mere coercive powers of state law. This would provide the people with shelter from the storms of the world, and an objective framework by which to organize their lives, their decisions, and the larger decisions of society as a whole.
[41:08] However, in the decade or so that I have introduced my rational proof of secular ethics, atheists have been supremely indifferent and occasionally hostile to the argument. Think of a village in a near infinite desert with a single murky spring for water. Atheists find the brackish spring objectionable, the water is not pure, and destroy it. The people start dying of thirst The atheists say that they want people to be good and healthy and happy But they do nothing to find an alternate water source, A man starts delivering water from an unknown location But rather than find its source The atheists merely tell everyone that the man is crazy And that his water is poisoned And they should shun him.
[42:03] These atheists are condemning the villagers to a slow and ugly death. What is their purpose? Is it not to cause and watch human suffering? Is it not also true that the atheists shall die of thirst in turn? It is fine and good to want to improve a water supply, but to destroy an existing water supply for its imperfections without providing new water is neither fine nor good. Furthermore, when fresh clean water becomes available to scare the villagers into avoiding it is a grim manifestation of selfish sadism.
[42:51] The power vacuum created by the destruction of Christian ethics in society will be filled either by reason or by violence. By failing to pursue a rational substitution for Christian ethics and by damning and attacking those who have, atheists have merely served the state. And they will, I believe, be condemned by history. The old alliance between communism and atheism has been regularly mocked by atheists, without fruitful examination. Why has totalitarianism constantly sought to erase religion? Saying Hitler was an atheist and Stalin was an atheist, but that their atheism was about as relevant to their ideologies as their mustaches does not help or aid a deeper examination of any potential causality.
[43:46] Universally preferable behavior. If I were a nutritionist, I would tell you all about the science, biology, and chemistry of food and digestion with the express goal at the end of convincing you to change your dietary habits in order to improve your well-being. If I were a personal trainer, I would tell you all about the science and biology and chemistry of stretching and exercise with the express goal at the end of convincing you to change your exercise habits. My goal in this book is to give you the background, knowledge, and expertise to understand the value and purpose of philosophy, which is to get you to change your moral habits. The purpose of medical research is to provide knowledge that leads to the prevention or cure of disease. There is no purpose in engaging in medical research if no one ends up changing any behaviors based upon the results of that research. The entire purpose of a smoking cessation program is to have you not pick up a cigarette, light it, and suck on it. Going over the medical, biological, and genetic background as to the dangers of smoking is all very important, but it is important only insofar as it helps reinforce your will power to refrain from smoking that cigarette.
[45:08] Everything in philosophy comes down to you changing your moral habits. And changing your moral habits requires a deep understanding of the value of good moral habits and the disasters of bad moral habits. This may seem like a controversial position, but only because philosophy has been largely hijacked by people who wish to use it for personal gain, such as academics and sophists, often the same category. Therefore, modern philosophy delivers abstractions that are clever, confusing, often annoying, and ultimately worse than useless. Academic philosophy is like an overindulged amateur magician, intrusive, irritating, incompetent, but rarely called out. The four major branches of philosophy, metaphysics, the study of reality, epistemology, the study of knowledge, politics, the study of state power, and ethics, the study of virtue, are like the plumbing that delivers water to your sink. Aqueducts, sewers, piping, these all only have value insofar as they enable you to turn on a tap in your house and actually get some clean water. Metaphysics, epistemology, politics, and ethics, these have value insofar as they enable you to make and enforce better moral decisions in the world.
[46:35] Think of the immense amount of research, science, engineering, and physics that goes into the design and creation of a car, the purpose of which is to get you from A to B. Few people would buy a car without an engine unless it was to cannibalize parts for another car with an engine because the car is not a piece of art, a paperweight, or a hat, but a piece of machinery designed to provide mobility. If you give a paralyzed man a wheelchair with only one wheel, your gift is cruelty, not charity. The purpose of a wheelchair is to give someone without the use of his legs mobility, and such purpose is not served with only one wheel. Think of the engineering complexity and technological genius that is required to serve up a web page to your eyeballs. The whole point is to facilitate your viewing. Without that viewing, everything else is worse than useless. If your monitor won't turn on, the entire infrastructure becomes useless.
[47:35] The purpose of philosophy, the entire substructure and detailed background arguments, is to give you the information and resolution you need to make better moral decisions in the moment. The purpose of the military, the entire procurement, training, physics, engineering, and resource consumption as a whole is to provide individuals with the skill and resolution to kill others and destroy objects. We cannot imagine an entire military-industrial complex with the sole goal of placing soldiers on the battlefield with complex weaponry but zero ammunition. If you take away the final goal, there is no rational way to organize all the prior activities. If you have a goal to pass a class in university, you have, at least hopefully, objective and well-defined steps by which you can achieve that goal. Write an essay, go to class, pass an exam. If you don't have a final goal, you cannot organize your activities.
[48:40] This is not to say that all life must be specifically goal-oriented. We do things for fun, as a hobby, to distract ourselves or to pass time. But so what? If we need to quit smoking, not every single moment of our life needs to be dedicated to that task. But we must still have that goal in our mind as a whole. If we need to lose weight, diet and exercise only consume a small portion of our day. But the overall goal remains important. Hopefully, you will not spend every waking moment of your life making crucial moral decisions, but you will need wisdom and certainty when those moments come. So, let us now examine and understand the theory of universally preferable behavior, UPB, or the Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
[49:38] Ethics, an introduction. All philosophy argues for a preferred state. The very essence of philosophy is to differentiate between various states, to point out the most preferred and the best way to achieve it. This may sound confusing, but this is exactly the same process pursued by dieticians, doctors, scientists, engineers, and so on. A dietician differentiates between various food choices, points out the preferred outcome and the best diet to achieve it. A doctor differentiates between various states of illness and health and guides his patients towards the best practices and medicines to regain and maintain health. A scientist differentiates between various states of ignorance and knowledge and guides himself and others through the scientific method to discard illusion and achieve accuracy.
[50:29] If there is no such thing as a preferred state, there is no such thing as philosophy or free will or morality or debate or truth or falsehood or science or medicine. I can keep piling these on until you accept that there is such a thing as a preferred state.
[50:46] If there is a preferred state, the question naturally arises, compared to what? If I prefer to eat toast rather than gravel, my evaluation is based on what my body can digest. Digestible and nutritious food is preferable to indigestible rocks. This is not a subjective preference, but rather is decided by my body's capacity for turning matter into energy. Some preferences are objective, some are subjective. Objectively, I cannot gain nutritional energy from gravel. A madman may choose to eat gravel rather than toast, but this is one way we know that he is insane. Subjectively, I may prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate ice cream. The science of nutrition deals with objective requirements rather than subjective tastes. The fact that some people reject objectively preferable states does not make those states any less objective or any less preferable. To lose weight, you must eat fewer calories and or exercise more. This is an objective process necessary to achieve an objective state. The fact that most overweight people either never lose weight or lose weight and then gain more back in no way makes the objective process and goal of weight loss any less objective.
[52:11] If I'm driving and my destination is south and I keep driving north, this doesn't change the direction of my destination. Persisting in error does not destroy truth, but rather affirms it. In philosophy, the preferred state is truth. In other words, statements that accurately describe the objective facts, properties, and processes of empirical material reality. Empirical material reality is objective, rational, and universal. A stone is a stone and possesses the properties of a stone everywhere in the universe. Philosophy is the rational hypothesis of empirical action. A proposed preferred state must be rational before it can be acted upon since actions take place in reality which is rational. In engineering, a blueprint must conform to the nature and properties of things in reality before it can be even considered as a plan for creating something. If you try to build a bridge in Manhattan while assuming the moon's gravity, your bridge will collapse because your gravitational factor is off by a factor of six. If a doctor makes important medical decisions based on the belief that blood is inert in the body, he will be far less likely to heal people.
[53:36] Philosophy requires rational consistency because truth is a mental category that is measured relative to objective reality. If I say there are three coconuts when there are only two, my statement is false compared to the simple facts of objective reality.
[53:56] Arguing against preferred states. Humanity appears to be mentally constituted to attempt to find at least one exception to every proposed rule. And naturally, you are probably trying with all your might to find an exception to the concept of preferred states. However, it is logically impossible to argue against preferred states because the act of arguing itself requires a preferred state. The act of arguing with someone rests on the implied premise that you are correct and that your opponent is incorrect. If I point at Africa on a map and refer to it as the Arctic and you correct me, it might not be much of a debate, but clearly you are correcting me with reference to the true name of that continent, which is Africa. You are not saying you have a made-up name for the continent, personal to you, and that you would like me to indulge you by referring to the continent by that name. You are, in essence, saying two things. The correct name for the continent is Africa. Using the correct name is infinitely preferable to using the incorrect name.
[55:14] I use the phrase infinitely preferable because some preferences are relative and some preferences are absolute. I prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla ice cream, but I prefer ice cream as a whole to Brussels sprouts. These are relative preferences in that I would prefer Brussels sprouts to starvation. In general, people prefer ice cream to arsenic, but there are situations in which arsenic may be preferred, such as when facing certain torture or a certain slow lingering death in some remote place or unending exposure to the comedy stylings of Amy Schumer.
[55:50] However, would you ever say that referring to the continent of Africa by its correct name is a relative preference? In other words, would there be an occasion where you would be fine with it being called by some other name? If I want chocolate ice cream, but the restaurant only has vanilla, I might shrug, accept my second choice, and still be relatively content. Would the same be true for misnaming Africa? Of course not. Correctly naming the continent is a binary option. You either get the name right or you get the name wrong. If you're sailing from the Bahamas to New York, the accuracy of your navigation is not a binary option. There's no such thing as perfect navigation. Every wave and gust of wind will put you off course to a tiny degree. Please note, this does not mean that there are no degrees of accuracy. There is, of course, such a thing as more accurate and less accurate, and a certain level of inaccuracy will have you miss your destination completely, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind.
[56:56] However, the proposition that the Earth is flat is binary. It is either flat or it is not. It cannot be halfway between spherical and flat. The proposition that the Earth is a sphere is infinitely preferable to the proposition that the Earth is flat. It is not occasionally flat. It's not flat every second Wednesday. And thinking it's flat is not almost as good. it's not an okay second choice. The earth is a sphere, it is not flat, and that is that.
[57:32] Truth is infinitely preferable to falsehood. If you try to argue against this, you automatically prove that your proposition is false and should be rejected, because in the very act of arguing, you're preferring truth over falsehood. Most people struggle mightily against this basic reality, and at some point, the irrational, angry will collapses, and peace and reason reign in the mind.
[58:06] Given that we cannot argue against preferred states, we must continue with our exploration of what preferred states are. Preferred goals, preferred states, and preferred processes. The preferred goal of medicine is health. The preferred goal of training is expertise. The preferred goal of nutrition is healthy eating and so on. Some of these preferred goals are universal, some are local, and some are subjective. Human beings cannot get nutrition from sand. Certain diets are good for some people, but bad for others. And the taste of food can be highly subjective. In science, the goal is accuracy about the universe, because accuracy is a preferred state, and the preferred process is the scientific method. In philosophy, the goal is truth, because truth is a preferred state, and the preferred process is reason and evidence. Preferred processes are defined relative to a goal. If you have no goal, you can have no preferred processes. If I have a goal called arrive in New York, my preferred process is accurate navigation. The essential question to ask is, what makes philosophy unique?
[59:31] Philosophy aims for truth, to be sure, but so do countless other mental disciplines. It's not like mathematicians strive for irrationality or scientists aim for falsehood. There is a philosophy of science and a philosophy of mathematics. Philosophy is the overarching discipline for all human thought. But there is very little science of philosophy or mathematics of philosophy. Philosophy is the largest circle of mental disciplines. Science, engineering, medicine, and mathematics show up as smaller circles within the larger circle of philosophy. Prior to the scientific revolution, there was a philosophical revolution that focused on skepticism, materialism, empiricism, and rationality, while strenuously rejecting immaterial or superstitious forms of knowledge.
[1:00:28] Philosophy cannot be the same as science, otherwise there would be no need for the word philosophy. Philosophy cannot be unrelated to science, since science relies upon philosophical concepts, such as rationality and empiricism. Science cannot be larger than philosophy, because philosophy examines ideas outside the realm of the physical sciences. is. Since philosophy is larger than science, we must ask ourselves, what is it that philosophy examines that science does not? The answer, simply, is ethics. Science tracks material objects and their properties. It describes what is and what is to be according to rules that operate independent of consciousness.
[1:01:23] Psychology attempts to understand human behavior and how memory, emotions, and reason interact, and how best to achieve optimal functioning. But psychology is not, in essence, a moral discipline. In psychology, generally, something is dysfunctional if it interferes with productive and happy functioning within a particular social context. The morality of that social context is not often directly examined by psychology, which tends to use the words dysfunction and illness rather than evil. The study of ethics is unique to philosophy, although some scientists have attempted to use a scientific method to establish the basis of ethics. In my view, they have been unsuccessful, since they tend to approach moral questions from a consequentialist standpoint, aiming at a more efficient distribution of resources or an improvement in human health as a whole, rather than defining good and evil from first principles. Trying a bunch of stuff and seeing what works best is not science, and it certainly is not moral philosophy.
[1:02:35] Morality, and preference. If you want to say something true about the natural universe, you need to use the scientific method. If you want to lose weight, you should eat less and exercise more. If you want your bridge to stand, you should follow the principles of engineering. However, if you are not using the scientific method, this does not mean that you are not a scientist. A scientist does not necessarily use the scientific method while eating or sleeping. This does not mean he is not a scientist or that he is anti-scientific. Even the person most dedicated to losing weight cannot diet and exercise all day every day. When he is not dieting or exercising, does that mean that he is no longer dedicated to losing weight? Does that mean he is suddenly dedicated to gaining weight? Of course not. However, Things are different in the realm of ethics. If I fail to respect someone's property rights by stealing, I am now a thief. If you murder someone, you are now a murderer. A momentary deviation from dieting does not invalidate the diet, but a momentary deviation from not raping creates a rapist.
[1:03:56] We do not expect a scientist to practice science every waking moment, but we do expect a moral person to refrain from raping, murdering, assaulting, and stealing every waking moment. Sir Isaac Newton was a scientist, although he deeply believed in the superstition of alchemy. His science is judged on its own merits, and his superstitions are discarded accordingly. A man who mixes science and superstition may still be considered a scientist, But a man who mixes pacifism and murder is not still considered a moral person.
[1:04:35] Most human disciplines require positive or proactive actions. To become a scientist, a pianist, an engineer, or doctor requires training and practice, and success one would hope. However, most moral commandments involve refraining from specific action, and they do not require years of training and expertise. We would never expect a three-year-old toddler to be a concert pianist or a scientist, but we do expect a toddler to refrain from punching his playmates. We do not call upon five-year-olds to construct complex bridges, but we do expect them to not snatch toys from their siblings. Preferred versus preferable. We do not expect everyone to be a scientist, but we expect a scientist to use the scientific method. We do not demand that everyone become an engineer. But we do expect engineers to build things that stay up or down perhaps if they are designing a submarine. The scientific method is universally preferable for scientists, but it is not universally preferable that everyone become a scientist or that scientists use the scientific method every waking moment. Rational calculations are universally preferable for mathematicians, but we should not force everyone to become a mathematician.
[1:06:01] Just because something is preferred does not mean that everyone will, in fact, choose to do it. Cutting calories is the preferred way of losing weight. This does not mean everyone will cut calories and lose weight. The difference between what should be done and what actually is done is the difference between preferable and preferred. Preferred refers to the past, to what is objectively measurable. Sally preferred to paint her room red. Joe preferred to go left rather than right. Preferred refers to the past. Prefers refers to the present. Preferable refers to the future. Thus, preferable is the only word wherein ethics can exist.
[1:06:59] Philosophy is like exercise. It exists to help you avoid problems in the long run, not survive a health crisis in the moment. If you call up a fitness trainer and say, I have a family history of heart disease, what should I do? The trainer can give you advice on healthy exercise habits with the goal of avoiding a heart attack in the future. If you call up the trainer and say, ah, I'm having a heart attack right now. What exercise advice do you have for me? Well, the trainer will doubtless tell you to hang up and call for an ambulance instead. The trainer can help prevent a heart attack in the future. He cannot save you from a heart attack in progress.
[1:07:40] The goal of moral philosophy is primarily prevention, not cure. And where there is no cure, prevention is all the more important. If you ask a moral philosopher what should be done in a society where the government has racked up untold hundreds of trillions of dollars of debt and unfunded liabilities, then the philosopher will probably not have a lot of helpful advice. The heart attack is already imminent. If, decades before, you had asked a philosopher whether the government should embark on such a course, then the philosopher would have said that it was a grievous violation of property rights and a pillaging of the unborn and deeply and woefully immoral.
[1:08:26] Philosophy has no power in the past. None of us do. It is frozen in time, inaccessible to will or alteration, or even facts, sometimes since memory can be so malleable. Philosophy has no real power in the present because the deep steps and learning required for true moral understanding cannot be compressed into the time slice of the here and now. If you are on vacation and get cornered in a dark alley by some giant man screaming at you in Russian and you don't speak Russian, it's not exactly a great time to start learning the language. If you spend years studying Russian beforehand, you have a chance to negotiate, or at least understand what he wants.
[1:09:14] Philosophy only has power in the future, and it only examines the past in order to avoid mistakes in the future. You study your family medical history mostly with the goal of avoiding repeating any mistakes that were made.
[1:09:31] Morality and non-compliance. Moral principles are not voided by non-compliance. This is an essential point to understand and seems hard to grasp for many people, perhaps because they are constantly looking for ways to avoid and evade moral principles in the present. Some people don't take medical advice. This doesn't mean that medicine is pointless or irrelevant. Some people drop out of school. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't bother educating anyone. Some people drive drunk. We don't plow up all the roads and ban cars. People don't always follow moral rules. That is the whole point. If moral rules were automatic and involuntary, they would be physical rules and the purview of physicists, not moralists. We have choices, we have ideals, and our behavior often falls short of perfection. A rule does not have to be followed in order to be objective. Mystics do not follow the scientific method. This does not mean that the scientific method is as irrational as mysticism.
[1:10:46] This holds particularly true for the discipline of ethics. The reason we need a discipline of ethics is because people often fail to follow moral rules. The idea that immorality erases morality is like saying that there is no need for encouragement because sometimes people get discouraged. People act badly. That is why we need ethics. It is as simple as that. Ethics and individuals. An ethical theory cannot be judged by individual actions any more than a scientific theory can be judged by the integrity of any individual scientist. If we propose a moral rule such as don't steal, is it invalidated if someone steals? Of course not. In fact, the more people deviate from a moral rule, the more it needs to be explained and reinforced.
[1:11:44] The fact that gases expand when heated is not invalidated by any particular scientist who fudges his data to prove the opposite. In fact, the reason we know the scientist is cheating is because of the scientific method. One cannot rationally invalidate the virtues and values of the free market by pointing out a single business failure or a man who loses his job. Removing resources from unneeded occupations is one of the primary pruning mechanisms of the free market and a central reason why it facilitates the growth of wealth so efficiently.
[1:12:24] Ethics and theories. The primary dangers to human life and happiness, to virtue itself, are irrational ethical theories, not individual evildoers. A serial killer may kill a dozen or more people, but communism has murdered close to 100 million. A thief may make off with your car or your jewelry, but governments extract trillions of dollars from their citizens every single year and create hundreds of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities for future generations to inherit. Almost infinitely more than any mere thief could achieve. You can arm and protect yourself against an individual thief, but Genghis Khan, with a great army, slaughtered 10% of the world's population in his day.
[1:13:17] Governments across the world throughout the 20th century murdered 250 million of their own citizens. And such governments were reinforced and justified by particular ethical theories, ranging from fascism to communism to socialism to various other forms of collectivism. Society, in general, has little to fear from individual criminals. The law acts against them, good people shun them, and steps can be taken to protect oneself from their predations, installing alarm systems, moving to a better neighborhood, buying a gun, and so on. No. It is centralized, collectivist, and oligarchical institutions that reason and evidence compel us to fear the most. Those institutions that can take our property virtually at will, often imprison us on a whim, conscript us into wars, burden us with debt, enter us into intergenerational liabilities without our approval, and indoctrinate us virtually from birth in the narratives that reinforce their dominance.
[1:14:22] This examination of ethics focuses squarely upon ethical theories, not on individual actors. Many of us have been programmed to respond to an examination of universal ethical theories by citing individual immorality. That is one way those who rule us ensure we cannot speak rationally about virtue or examine the narratives that enslave us. The fact that people do evil does not invalidate a moral theory. Evil actions are the fundamental reason why we need moral theories in the first place. The fact that we can eat badly is why we need the science of nutrition. If a man gives a speech about healthy dieting and a woman keeps interrupting him to cry out that she knows someone who eats badly, we can fully understand why the crowd gets restless and annoyed. She's a kind of heckler and interrupter who is managing her own anxieties rather than trying to inform the audience.
[1:15:25] Arguing against universality. Ethics are universally preferable behaviors, actions that people should or should not take independent of time and location. If you argue against this proposition, then you are affirming it. You are telling me that I should not engage in the act of communicating universally preferable behaviors. In other words, you are saying it is universally preferable behavior that nobody should advocate for universally preferable behavior.
[1:16:00] Ethical actions cannot be universally positive in nature, i.e. Thou shalt, because it is impossible to achieve positive actions universally. If I say that it is ethical to scratch your head, you cannot keep scratching your head forever. If I say that it is ethical to give to the poor, you cannot give to the poor forever or while you sleep or after you have run out of money, at which point you are poor yourself and have nothing left to give. Negative actions, prohibitions, or thou shalt nots can be achieved universally. It is possible to go through your entire life without murdering anyone, raping anyone, assaulting anyone, or stealing from anyone. Indeed, it is possible for everyone in the world to achieve such perfect virtue. Think of it this way. if I say everyone in the world has to go live in a cave underneath the Washington Monument, this cannot be achieved because so many people simply wouldn't fit among many other impossibilities. On the other hand, if I say no one in the world is allowed to live in a cave underneath the Washington Monument, well, everyone can achieve that in perpetuity.
[1:17:22] Thus, ethics must be bans on positive actions, rather than commandments to achieve those actions.
[1:17:33] Ethics and universality. Why should ethics be universal? Ethics are generally statements or preferred actions that are binding upon others. If I say, I prefer sushi, this creates no binding requirements upon you, you do not have to love or hate sushi. I am just informing you of my personal preference. You and I can simultaneously have different opinions about sushi. Since we are not imposing our opinions on each other through force, the possession of personal opinions can peacefully coexist. However, if I say it is universally preferable behavior to respect property rights, the universality of my statement creates a binding requirement upon you to respect property rights. There are three categories of actions. Morally neutral behavior, such as running for the bus. Aesthetically preferable behavior, such as being on time. Universally preferable behavior, such as respecting property rights and not initiating force.
[1:18:45] Aesthetically preferable behaviors, such as being on time, are preferable but not universal. If you are sitting at home and you do not have an appointment, you have no requirement to be on time. Also, if you are late for an appointment, you are not enforcing your will on others. You are not initiating the use of force against them, and neither are you violating their property rights. This is the difference between rudeness and immorality. A friend who is perpetually late can be avoided or planned around. A random mugger or murderer cannot be.
[1:19:22] Respecting property rights can be universalized, while violations of that respect, such as theft and fraud, cannot be avoided in the same way that a tardy friend can be avoided. In other words, you need to take proactive actions to continue to be subject to violations of aesthetically preferable behavior. You need to stay in a relationship with a rude friend, continue to arrange meetings with a tardy companion, or choose to remain in a voluntary relationship with a lover who betrays you. The initiation of force, however, is the voluntary imposition of a violent will on an unwilling person. This principle cannot be universalized, since if the moral principle proposed says that everyone should impose their violent will on everyone else, then such violent will cancels itself out. Person A should impose his violent will on person B, but person B should also impose her violent will on person A.
[1:20:24] Since it is considered preferable to impose a violent will, then such violent impositions cannot be morally opposed, and in fact must be approved of as moral. However, if physical aggression must be morally approved, then it is no longer violence. If I want you to impose your violent will upon me, you are no longer using violence. The difference between rape and lovemaking is that rape is unwanted sexual activity. The moment that sexual activity is desired, it is no longer immoral. A surgeon cuts you with your explicit consent. A mugger who stabs you does not.
[1:21:09] Since the initiation of force cannot be universalized, it cannot be moral. The Moral Framework. In science, there is the scientific method and the practice of science. There is the framework, which is that empirical observation trumps mental hypotheses and the requirement that experiments need to be reproducible and so on. Within this framework, the scientific method, the practice of science takes place. Various scientific hypotheses are proposed, compared with rationality and the empirical evidence of the senses, and sorted with regards to accuracy.
[1:21:58] In philosophy, there is reason, and then there are specific arguments. Rationality is the framework or the methodology. The practice of philosophy is the creation of arguments. In ethics, there is the moral framework, and then there are specific ethical theories. The moral framework requires that ethics be universal and that moral arguments be rational. In addition, moral arguments that predict and explain the practice of various moral theories, such as democracy, fascism, socialism, communism, capitalism, and so on, gain additional weight. The explanatory powers of moral theories will never be as perfect as physical scientific theories, since human beings possess free will while individual atoms and physical laws do not. However, human beings respond to incentives which goes a long way to explain the successes and failures of various ethical systems, Those who propose ethical theories that are neither rational nor universal are not proposing ethical theories at all any more than a man who proposes an entirely subjective and untestable scientific theory is practicing science.
[1:23:22] Various mystical theories use pseudo-scientific terms to justify subjective wish fulfillment that is supposedly inflicted on the universe. Others use actual scientific terms, quantum flux, but without any scientific understanding or application. Ethical theories do not directly block violent actions, for that, the virtue of physical self-defense is required.
[1:23:53] Correct ethical theories are used to oppose incorrect ethical theories, such as those that justify the initiation of the use of force or fraud. These incorrect ethical theories, particularly when combined with the overwhelming power of government force, are the greatest dangers facing humanity.
[1:24:15] Ethics and Nihilism You will come across those who say, all ethics are subjective. The first response to this would be to ask such a person if it is objectively true that all ethics are subjective. The key word in the statement is, are. This is a statement of objective equivalence. The moment that a universal statement is made, universal subjectivism self-detonates. There is no such thing as truth. This is a statement of truth. The moment someone tries to correct you by using a truth argument, they cannot say that objectivity does not exist. If you say ethics are universal and the nihilist says ethics are subjective, then he is attempting to correct your wrong think by referencing objective truths. In other words, he is saying that it is objectively true and universally preferable to say that there are no such things as objective truth and universal preferences.
[1:25:31] Ethics and the coma test. It is generally understood that a man cannot be evil if he is in a coma or sleeping deeply. While in a coma, he is not violating anyone else's rights to life, liberty, or property, and therefore he is not being immoral. This is known as the coma test and is another way of reinforcing the argument that ethics must be a series of bans on positive actions. Any moral commandment that cannot be achieved universally, even by a man in a coma, fails the test of universality and therefore is invalid. What moral commandments can be achieved universally. To put it another way, which moral commandments do not contradict themselves?
[1:26:23] Since reality is consistent, any self-contradictory universal commandment is automatically invalid. Think of a court case. If a man has an ironclad alibi, he should never be put on trial for the simple reason that a man cannot be in two places at the same time. If the prosecution's case requires that he be at the scene of a murder and a thousand miles away at the same time, this is an insurmountable contradiction that cannot possibly be true. If a scientific hypothesis requires that physical matter both attract and repel other matters simultaneously, then the hypothesis proposes a contradiction and is therefore automatically invalidated. Any moral theory that proposes a contradiction is automatically invalidated.
[1:27:20] If you argue against the proposition that human beings are responsible for the effects of their actions and you directly reply to the man making that argument, you accept that he is responsible for the argument he has created. You cannot deny that people are responsible for the effects of their actions while requiring that people be responsible for the effects of their actions in order to respond to your argument. Logic 101. Fail.
[1:27:53] Morality and property. The concept of property arises from the reality that human beings are responsible for the effects of their actions. Another way of putting this is that human beings own the effects of their actions. Imagine you were a child playing with your brother. and he knocks over a precious lamp. Your mother storms into the room and demands to know who knocked over the lamp. Why? The simple reason is that she wants to determine who is responsible for the lamp being broken, who owns the breaking of the lamp.
[1:28:39] You can certainly claim that people are not responsible for the effects of their actions, but you contradict yourself the moment you open your mouth. First of all, you create an argument that you are responsible for. If I create such an argument and you start to rebut me, and I then tell you that I have no idea what you were talking about, I never made such an argument and it has nothing to do with me, this would be a sign of mental illness or psychopathic levels of manipulation. An argument is just as much a product of your body as a house, a song, or a murder for that matter.
[1:29:23] If you say to someone you are debating with, you are wrong, you are saying they have created an argument that is false, that they own the argument and they own the wrongness as well. If you say to someone, you are a fool, then you are saying that they have done something that earns them the label of foolishness. Arguing against property rights requires accepting property rights. It is a fool's position. If you clear an acre of land in an unowned wilderness, you own the cleared land since you are responsible for it coming into being. If you cut down trees and use the wood to build a house, you own the house because you are responsible for it coming into being. Property is fundamentally about creation, not expropriation.
[1:30:23] After high school, I spent a year or so working in the wilds of northern Ontario, gold panning, prospecting, and staking claims. To establish temporary ownership over the mineral rights of a piece of land, I had to march in a square kilometer and nail metal plates to trees on all four corners. It was not an enormous amount of fun to march through bug-infested or icy landscapes in order to establish these rights, and these rights had no value in and of themselves. However, if gold was discovered and a mine was built, this process was required to establish exclusive ownership.
[1:31:01] Without this process, no gold would be extracted from the ground. Without the capacity to establish mineral rights, no mines would be dug. It is only through the process of establishing property rights that gold is moved from an inaccessible location deep underground to the surface, to a smelter, and then eventually to a jewelry shop. The goal is jewelry. The method is property rights. Think of fishing. A fish deep in the ocean is not available for use. The fisherman does not create the fish, but he does transform it into a usable product. By pulling it out from the bottom of the ocean, he converts it from non-property to property. To understand this more viscerally, imagine setting up a stall in a fish market and selling not fish, but rather the right to eat a fish somewhere out there on the bottom of the ocean. How many takers would you have? The fisherman is really creating a meal which requires that the fish be pulled from the bottom of the ocean.
[1:32:19] Morality, and theft. Let's say you have three people in a circle, Bob, Doug, and Sally. Bob argues that the world is flat. Doug is outraged, turns to Sally and says that she is completely wrong. What would Sally do? Surely she would splutter and reply that she didn't say anything about the world being flat. If Doug persists in replying to Bob's argument by debating Sally, this would pretty much be the actions of a crazy person. This is an irrational transfer of ownership. Doug is pretending Sally was responsible for the argument that Bob created. Imagine you come across a murder victim in an alley. Just then, a policeman walks up and arrests you for the murder. But I'm innocent, you cry. You are protesting the unjust transfer of ownership of the crime. The policeman incorrectly assumes that you are responsible for, that you have caused and therefore own the murder.
[1:33:31] If you cheat on a test, this is an irrational transfer of ownership. You are saying that you own your answers, which have been generated from your own studying, when in fact, the answers have been generated from someone else, from cheating.
[1:33:50] Property is control. If you take someone else's property without his permission, you are asserting control over that property, asserting property rights as if you were responsible for the creation of that property. If someone else creates something and I assert control over it without his permission, I am enjoying all the benefits of creation without any of the accompanying hardships and risks. In a very real way, I am lying about who created the object. I am pretending that I created the object and thus should have the right of exclusive use when, in fact, someone else created the object and should themselves have the right of exclusive use.
[1:34:42] If I buy an iPad, I am to some degree responsible for the creation of that iPad because if no one buys iPads, none get made. Trade is second-hand creation, but creation nonetheless. Also, I must justly own the money I used to buy the iPad, money I probably received by selling something I created or owned, such as an object or my service. The fact that we own ourselves and are responsible for the effects of our actions is a basic biological and moral fact. It cannot be denied without being affirmed, and thus must universally stand.
[1:35:26] Theft, and universally preferable behavior. Is it possible for stealing to be universally preferable behavior? No. If stealing is universally preferable behavior, then everyone must want to steal and be stolen from simultaneously. This is logically impossible. If I want you to steal from me, if I want you to take my property, then you cannot steal from me because the definition of stealing is that it involves taking my property against my will. Think of it this way. You and I are throwing a ball to each other. Can I throw the ball to you and receive it at the same time? Of course not. that would require the ball be going in two opposing directions at the same time.
[1:36:24] If I want you to take my property, you cannot steal it. If I put $5 into the hand of a beggar, I cannot claim that he stole from me because I am voluntarily giving him my property. I want him to take the $5. Stealing occurs when the desire for property is oppositional, when the thief wants the object and the owner wants to retain it. Their opposing desires cannot both be satisfied simultaneously. This is how we know stealing cannot be universalized. And remember, that which cannot be universalized cannot be moral.
[1:37:09] This is how we know that stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior. In other words, this is how we know that respecting property rights is universally preferable behavior. Furthermore, stealing is a positive action, meaning you have to do something to make it happen, while respecting property rights is a negative or passive action. A man is respecting property rights while he sleeps in that he is not stealing. Stealing requires means, motive, and opportunity, and the positive action of theft.
[1:37:50] Rape and universally preferable behavior The same holds true for rape, defined as sexual behavior against the will of the victim. We can never say that rape is universally preferable behavior for the same reasons that we can never say the same of theft. If rape is universally preferable behavior, then everyone must want to rape and be raped. But if everyone wants to be raped, then rape vanishes as a moral category, in the same way that if everyone wants to be stolen from, then stealing vanishes as a moral category.
[1:38:31] Assault and universally preferable behavior, There are situations where you can be beaten up, but you cannot press charges. If you entered a boxing ring with your gloves on, it doesn't make much sense to claim that you were assaulted. Playing rough sports, hockey in particular, always carries the risk of injury and rarely results in criminal charges. Think of the movie Fight Club. Would it make any sense for the voluntary participants in the fights to press charges against their opponents? If I voluntarily consent to being hit, such as in boxing, no immoral action has been committed. Assault only occurs when I am being hit against my will or under circumstances where I have not reasonably assumed that risk.
[1:39:26] To take another example, if you enter a sadomasochistic dungeon and sign a consent form agreeing to mild forms of sexual torture, you cannot then reasonably charge your dominatrix with assault. This is how we know assault cannot be universally preferable behavior. Not only is it a positive action and therefore cannot be universalized, but it comes with the same logical contradictions as proposing that rape and theft can be universally preferable behavior. If everyone wants to assault and be assaulted, then assault vanishes as a moral category. Not assaulting, however, can be universalized since it is a negative action or a ban on a positive action, if you like, and therefore can be achieved by all people at all times. Refraining from assault also passes the coma test.
[1:40:27] Murder and universally preferable behavior. Murder follows the same pattern as rape, theft, and assault. Is the killing of a person against his or her will? If murder is proposed as universally preferable behavior, then everyone must want to murder and prefer to be murdered at the same time. This positive obligation violates the coma test and also cannot be universalized, since murder is the act of killing someone against his will. But if murder is universally preferable behavior, then everyone must want to be killed, which would put the killing in the category of euthanasia rather than murder.
[1:41:12] If we assume that murder is not morally identical to euthanasia, then we can accept that the irrational proposition that murder is universally preferable behavior trips over the same logical contradictions as the prior three examples. If everyone wants to murder and be murdered, then murder, as a moral category, ceases to exist. Even if we assume that murder is morally identical to euthanasia, the act of murdering is still a positive action and thus cannot be universalized. In other words, it fails the coma test and therefore is invalid as a moral proposition.
[1:41:56] In hospitals, sometimes, patients sign DO NOT RESUSCITATE forms. This means that in the event of a medical emergency, nurses and doctors are not allowed to attempt to save the patient's life. In the absence of this form, medical professionals are required to use every available means to resuscitate the patient and save his or her life. Failure to do so would constitute grievous medical malpractice. However, if the patient has signed the Do Not Resuscitate form, working to resuscitate becomes the wrong thing to do.
[1:42:35] A medical professional is responsible for the death if he or she refrains from applying every reasonable measure to maintain life, unless the patient has requested otherwise, in which case the medical professional has no liability for the death and, in fact, may face sanctions for keeping the patient alive against his or her wishes. Here we can see that the consent to die completely reverses the morality of the situation.
[1:43:06] By the way, I do support the right of people to end their own life if they choose to, The foundation of a rational moral philosophy is the non-aggression principle, which states that human beings are not allowed to initiate force against others. We know this principle is valid because it is not a positive obligation and thus does not violate the coma test, and also because it is universal. It is entirely possible for all human beings to refrain from initiating violence against others everywhere for all time. Given this, euthanasia does not violate the non-aggression principle because no initiation of force is involved in the agreement. We can consent to being stabbed in the form of surgery in order to cure us of a disease. No one considers the surgeon to be guilty of the crime of assault. If life itself has become a disease and a doctor cures you with your permission, the same principle applies.
[1:44:06] The Ramifications of Secular Ethics, The Ramifications of Irrational Proof of Secular Ethics run deep and wide, and I have discussed some of the challenging re-evaluations of existing norms in my other books and articles. Suffice it to say that placing the non-aggression principle at the center of our moral thought completely rewrites what we think of as society from the ground up. This may be hard for some people to work through emotionally and intellectually, but it is essential for the moral progress of humanity.
[1:44:53] Over the last hundred years or so in the Western world, We have seen the unmitigated awfulness of the First World War, the Second World War, hyperinflation, a 14-year Great Depression, communism, fascism, innumerable genocides, the Holocaust, the holodomor, staggering levels of national debts and unfunded liabilities, a collapsing infrastructure, ruinous and decaying public schools, ever-escalating propaganda in higher education, a migrant crisis, increased racial and ethnic tensions, just to name a few, of the virtually endless disasters of the modern world. When societies continually lurch from disaster to disaster, essential principles need to be re-examined or created for the first time, if need be. We should not fear this examination, but rather welcome and embrace it as a difficult but necessary salvation for civilization.
[1:46:04] We have a modern world with its benefits as well as its disasters because people in the past challenged essential assumptions about personal and political ethics. Christians in the West fought and paid and bled and died to end slavery worldwide with significant success. Slavery was a tradition as old as mankind for well over 100,000 years and probably closer to 150,000, and it was ended in a matter of decades, at least in the West. For countless thousands of years, the state and the church were unified in most Western societies. The separation of church and state, the restoration of the original Christian concept of uncoerced conscience was eventually largely achieved, albeit after hundreds of years of religious warfare. Free trade, unimaginable throughout most of the Dark and Middle Ages, was largely achieved from the 18th century onward in some European countries. Equality before the law was largely achieved, albeit with a highly wobbly and uncertain record since.
[1:47:24] Moral progress is a difficult and dangerous game for society the only thing more dangerous than moral progress is moral stagnation and decay.
[1:47:43] The value of philosophy. We have tried organizing society in countless different ways, none of which fundamentally involve philosophy. Philosophers have tried entering politics. Plato took this approach in Syracuse and almost ended up being sold into slavery. But that generally meant playing by the foggy rules of sophistry, manipulation, and coercion. It is dangerous to tell the truth to a society programmed to love lies.
[1:48:20] We have tried organizing society by religion, by class, by theocracy, by tribalism, by democracy, by republics, according to the general will, via fascism, communism, socialism, through the power of the aristocracy and the influence of money over the state. We have tried just about everything except reason, evidence, and universal morality. We have tried revolutions, which impose irrational ideologies, usually by force, upon the unwilling masses. We have tried wiping traditional social values out of existence and replacing them with propaganda, which results in endless and brutal disasters. We have tried appealing to sentimentality, emotion, patriotism, racism, and all the volatile and often destructive passions of the mob. We have deployed sophistry, falsehoods, indoctrination, manipulation, superstition, ostracism for non-conformity, verbal attacks, slander, libel, endless state-sponsored violence with the end result that we face imminent disaster as a civilization.
[1:49:33] The appeal to reason goes back thousands of years, at least at the time of Socrates. It has always remained incomplete and fragmentary, largely because the twin tyrannies of theology and statism threatened or killed those who questioned their imaginary principles.
[1:49:55] As free speech gained more certain footing, ostracism and exclusion were deployed to keep freethinkers out of the discussion. Academics, media personalities, and owners, publishers, movie and television studio heads, you name it, the gatekeepers were always out in full force, making sure that discussion remained somewhat lively, but only within very narrow parameters. The growth of the internet, of unfiltered conversations, has created the great gift of the possibility of reason to mankind for the first time in human history. The possibility of universal and direct speech among the curious and the thoughtful has never before existed and is quite threatened in the here and now. The possibility exists in a very narrow window, I believe, that we may finally be able to submit essential questions of good and evil force and peace violence versus voluntarism to philosophy, to the twin judges of reason and evidence.
[1:51:06] Forces opposed to philosophy, most of the existing power structures in the world, from the state to academics to the mainstream media to public and private power mongers of every kind, gather, even as you read this, even as we speak, to shut down the growing voices demanding and respecting philosophy.
[1:51:29] Mankind has the power to think and reason, to oppose evil and support virtue. We are born with this power, but it is scoured and stripped from us through omnipresent propaganda and violence. Our birthright is free thought. Our upbringing is ever-escalating censorship and abuse.
[1:51:56] Society remains trapped within a dismal cycle wherein economic freedoms bring wealth, wealth brings political corruption, and corruption brings social collapse. As the old saying goes, hard men bring good times, good times bring weak men, and weak men bring bad times. The only way out of this cycle is through philosophy, through an acceptance and submission to objective reality and rationality through the development and promulgation of universal and rational ethical propositions and through the rejection of anti-rational ideologies.
[1:52:41] All this sounds wonderful. Who could be against the rational? Which begs the question, why has it yet to be achieved? It has yet to be achieved, because philosophy has yet to take down its greatest foe. The universalization of equality under the law eliminated slavery and the various injustices against minorities, and it is working slowly but surely against the prejudices of childism, the acceptance of male and female genital mutilation, and the physical violence against the mental drugging of and the overall neglect of children. Equality under the law is not a universalization, since there are those who remain above the law, not just in theory, but in practice.
[1:53:37] The existence of centralized lawmakers of the state is a violation of universality and rationality, and thus remains an anti-rational moral hypothesis.
[1:53:52] Taxation is the initiation of force to take property. Science does not advance through voting. A scientific theory is not considered valid if 51 out of 100 scientists vote for it. Moral propositions do not become valid because the majority votes for them. Two men in a forest do not morally get to rape a woman they find, even if all three put it to a vote. Two crazy people do not logically get to override a mathematician who tells them that two and two make four. Truth, reason, objectivity, and virtue lie outside the collective mindlessness of the mob. The mob voted to put Socrates to death. Their vote did not make their murder moral. Sophists love to make the mob the standard of virtue because sophists are so good at manipulating the passions of the mob.
[1:55:00] The essence of sophistry. The main purpose of sophistry, its main value to those in charge, is its capacity to create pseudo-universals. If you can create a rule called, thou shalt not steal, and then create an exception to that rule for yourself, your group, your tribe, or your government, then you are about the most effective thief you can be. Governments were instituted, so the belief goes, to protect property and people.
[1:55:36] This is entirely false, as history clearly shows. Governments protect people in the way that farmers protect their livestock in order to ensure maximum continued exploitation. If governments were so interested in protecting people, then why did governments murder over 250 million of their own citizens outside of war in the 20th century alone. Governments protect property because property rights promote wealth generation. Governments apply property rights to their tax livestock in the way that farmers apply antibiotics to their meat livestock. If governments were so interested in protecting property, then why do governments take the majority of their citizens' property at gunpoint?
[1:56:32] Many priesthoods around the world claim that everyone is subject to the law of God, but then claim priests alone have special access to the will of their God. Ignorance of God's law is no excuse, but only they truly understand God's law. Here again we see a category and an exception. The exception is the purpose of the categorization. Morality was originally invented to convince gullible people to be good so they could be more easily and efficiently exploited by evildoers.
[1:57:11] Think of the social contract. In this construct, people voluntarily give up certain freedoms in order to gain the protections of the state. However, this describes nothing at all in reality. We are born subjected to the near-infinite power of the state, which can strip us of our property and freedom virtually at will, and we never sign a damn thing.
[1:57:37] Also, note that the social contract is unilateral. It can only be imposed by governments upon citizens, not by citizens upon each other, and certainly not by citizens upon their government. If the government is part of society, but it is exempted from being subject to the initiation of force justified by the social contract, then we have a special, sophisticated exception, a pseudo-universal. If the government is not part of society, but is composed of human beings, then we have more pseudo-universals. The concepts of humanity and society contain opposite moral prescriptions, a commandment to respect persons and property, which applies to human beings called citizens, and an opposite commandment to violate persons and property, which applies to human beings called the government. Once you begin to see these pseudo-universals, they will be revealed everywhere, and you will understand that they form the basis for the development of almost all systems of morality.
[1:58:50] The destruction of sophistry is the destruction of pseudo-universals and the revealing of the naked coercive power that hides behind the hidden weaponry of ornate language. The organization of human society along the lines and arguments of rational philosophy, according to the true universals reflected in reason and empirical evidence, will finally create a sustainable society of universal freedoms. The grim cycle of history, from freedom to abundance to corruption to collapse, will be broken at last. It is my fervent hope that you will join me in promoting philosophy to help turn this hope from a destructive mirage into a true oasis that can liberate and sustain us.
[1:59:49] Massive swaths of humanity have adapted to surviving on the shreds of power, like pilot fish living on the scraps of shark's meals. The transition from coercion to voluntarism will not be easy. But as long as we have free speech, as long as we have a strong will, and as long as truth and reason are on our side, It is my belief that we will prevail and the world will become free. If society continues as it is, the existing fascistic finance system will collapse, the food supply will falter, and untold millions of people will fight and die. This is not a vision, but a mathematical and historical certainty.
[2:00:40] It is probably too late for everyone to be saved by words, but enough can be saved to make words worthwhile. Perhaps more importantly, philosophy can lay the foundation for the kind of society that will arise from the ashes of coercion and anti-rationality. The great danger is that the coming crisis will be blamed on freedom, on trade, on property rights, on free speech, and voluntarism. With this kind of diagnosis, our remaining freedoms will become like life-giving trees hacked down and used to fuel the raging fires of eternal fascism. What we have gained, the freedoms we possess, are too precious to sacrifice, even at sort point. And entire future generations hang in the balance of what we do now, today, the words we can wield, and the strength of our will, and the consistency of our positions. You have freedoms, because past generations did not fail you. Do not fail the future, or there will be no future.
[2:02:04] Sample Arguments Reality is subjective. I wish to take issue with the quaint notion that we can comprehend such a thing as objective reality. We do not, as humans, have the capacity to determine objectivity or directly perceive what is commonly called the real world. Every statement we make contains the implicit premise as i see it this is the truth as i see it every culture every religion every individual sees reality and defines truth in a different manner and it is the mark of an uneducated person to imagine that his own personal perspective somehow translates into true statements about objective reality, Thank you for your statements. Are you saying it is objectively true that we cannot perceive objective truth? That is a foolish first-year undergraduate question, a silly trap from which there is a simple escape. The very concept of objectivity is what I wish to dismiss. Saying that it is objectively true that there is no such thing as objective truth would, of course be a contradictory statement, but my whole point is that we should start rising above such petty tricks and look at the true limitations of our knowledge.
[2:03:32] I do not see how that answers my question. You admit that both claiming and denying objective truth is a contradictory position, but then you deny the validity of the question without making any further argument. It seems to me that you are denying the capacity for disproof in order to be able to make bland assertions without the requirement for reason and evidence. Ah, see, here is the problem again. You are talking about proof and disproof and reason and evidence, and that is my point exactly. Such terms arise from archaic perceptions of philosophy prior to the rise of our understanding of quantum physics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and other deep explorations of reality that utterly destroy even the concept of objectivity. We can call this the subjectivity hypothesis. I know it is difficult to accept emotionally because we are so wedded to the superstition of objectivity, just as our ancestors were wedded to the superstition that ghosts lived in trees, but we must accept science and outgrow our prior limited perspectives. Are you saying that objectivity has been scientifically disproved by science?
[2:04:51] I am trying not to get impatient, but you do keep talking about proof and disproof, despite my repeated reminders that these are terms of mere historical interest like Zeus and alchemy. Science supports the subjectivity hypothesis. Anthropology supports the subjectivity hypothesis. Cultural studies, gender studies, historical analyses, all these disciplines support the subjectivity hypothesis. Now, if you wish to master each of these disciplines and overturn the obvious subjectivity of their greatest practitioners and deepest analyses, please be my guest. Such a fantastic hubris is beyond my humble self.
[2:05:37] Do you consider science to be a subjective or objective pursuit? Again with these words, subjective, objective, I am saying that they are meaningless. No. You started this conversation by claiming that objectivity was incorrect and that we can only make statements about subjective perception. You made absolute statements, one of which was, whatever we say must be appended with as I see it. However, you are not using your own thesis of universal subjectivity to reject my requirements for proof. Your argument that my words are archaic and should be discarded is presented as an absolute fact, not as you see it. You make absolute statements about universal truth and then retreat into rank subjectivism when I ask for objective proof of objective truths. Well, of course everything I say is subjective. My point is that everything you say is subjective as well.
[2:06:42] Subjective compared to what? There is no such thing as compared to what. That is my entire point. I have my subjective perceptions, you have your subjective perceptions, and that is the sum total of the human experience. Subjective perceptions. So when you say you know the sum total of the human experience, is that a subjective perspective or an objective claim? It is a denial of objectivity. Is it a subjective denial of objectivity? Of course, everything is subjective. When you say everything is subjective, you are making a universal claim. Do you not understand that? If everything is subjective, there can be no such thing as a universal claim. Huh. I'm a little confused. Do you actually know what the word everything means? It means all things. In this case, every human perspective. Sure, every human perspective is subjective. Is it your subjective perception that other human beings exist? What do you mean? Pretending to not understand the question is usually a way of buying time, But all right, I will explain what I mean. If you say that every human perspective is subjective, then you are claiming, that other human beings exist outside your mind, which is an objective statement.
[2:08:12] I cannot prove for certain that other human beings exist outside my mind. Hmm. Now you seem to be friendlier with the word prove, but let us put that aside for now. If you cannot prove other human beings exist outside your mind, how can you make claims about the contents of their minds? I do not follow. All right. If I do not know how many art galleries there are in Budapest, or even if there are any art galleries in Budapest, how can I make certain claims about the pictures hanging in an art gallery in Budapest? I am not sure what this has to do with our argument. Well, if I do not know whether there are any art galleries in Budapest, can I definitively say that there is no modern art hanging in any art gallery in Budapest? Again, you are using words like definitively, which I specifically reject. This is the problem we are having. Anytime I try to apply any kind of proof to the universal arguments you are making, you claim that there is no such thing as universals. You claim that all human perceptions are subjective. This requires that you have a deep knowledge of the contents of the minds of every human being past, present, and future.
[2:09:33] This is a universal statement. Nonsense! Do you believe that all mass has gravity? I do. Does that mean you require deep knowledge of all mass in the universe, past, present, and future? Of course not. I do not require a deep knowledge of the contents of every human being's mind to know that human beings are subjective any more than you require deep knowledge of all mass to know that mass has gravity. I quite agree. When I make a universal statement about mass having gravity, I do not need to know details about every object in the universe. That is the entire point of universals. Then we are in agreement.
[2:10:12] We are, but not in the way that you want or will like very much. We agree that you have made a universal statement about human subjectivity. I most certainly did not. You most certainly did. And you used the universal statement, mass has gravity, to supposedly argue against what I was saying. When you have a universal principle, according to your argument, you do not need specific details. You can only affirm that all human beings are subjective by using a universal principle. Rather than a deep knowledge of all human consciousness. This you cannot wriggle out of. If all human beings are subjective, that is either a universal principle or an empirical observation of universal characteristics. Either way, it is a claim of universal truth outside merely subjective human consciousness.
[2:11:03] Once more, you veer towards words like proof and truth and so on, when I specifically deny the validity of such language. Is such language universally invalid you are stuck in the loop no my friend it is you who are stuck in the loop you make universal truth claims and absolute objective statements when i then press you for proof or point out the contradictory nature of your statements you merely deny the validity of truth absolutism and objectivity i reject such sophistry is foolish and self-serving, and so I ask you once more, is it universally true that there is no such thing as universal truth? And I reply once more, there is no such thing as universal truth. Is that a universal truth? It is whatever you want it to be, my friend, because everything is subjective.
[2:11:55] I wish to be honest with you. I view your manipulations as destructive and cowardly. If you do not believe there is any such thing as universal truth, then why do you make philosophical arguments? Should there not be rational consequences to the rejection of particular concepts? For instance, if I claim I do not believe in ghosts, would it be honest for me to make money by leading people on ghost hunting expeditions? If I claim to be a fishing guide, while I do not believe there are any fish in one particular lake, does it make any sense for me to make money by encouraging people to fish in that lake? If I do not believe in God, am I an honorable man if I become a priest? Your comparisons do not make any sense to me.
[2:12:44] If I reject the possibility of alchemy, a magical process by which lead can be transformed into gold, then does it make much sense for me to spend my life trying to turn lead into gold? You can do whatever you want. No one is arguing against that. My question is, if I truly believe that everything is subjective, does it make any sense for me to use arguments to correct other people's perspectives? Of course it does. if someone incorrectly believes that his consciousness can be objective. Here we are, right at the heart of things, and I thank you for putting your argument so concisely. You believe my perspective is incorrect, is that right? Of course. That should be obvious by now. If everything is subjective, how can I be incorrect?
[2:13:41] You are incorrect if you believe that something can be objective. That is not true. If everything is subjective, then all human perspectives are a matter of taste. If I say I like french fries, can you rationally contradict me? Can you tell me that I am wrong? Perhaps not, but if you say french fries are universally the best, then I can tell you that you are wrong. How can you tell me I am wrong? With reference to what? The reason I am asking is because when I attempt to disprove your arguments, you reject any standard of proof for objectivity or universality or comparison with material reality. Why could I not do the same to you if you attempt to disprove my belief that french fries are the best? I do not follow. If my subjective belief is that human beings can be objective. How can you disprove my perspective? Well, if everything is subjective, believing that objectivity is possible is incorrect. Why? Because it is a contradiction. It is a belief in something that is not true to say that human beings are capable of objectivity since all human consciousness is subjective.
[2:15:02] So now you are willing to entertain the reality that a self-contradictory statement is incorrect earlier when i pointed out that your statement that it is universally true that there is no such thing as universal truth was contradictory you rejected self-contradiction as a valid reason to dismiss your argument now you are embracing self-contradiction as a valid reason to dismiss my argument. The only thing that has changed is that in this scenario, it is I who make the self-contradictory argument, whereas previously it was you who made the self-contradictory argument. This is not a fair application of the principle to apply it only to me while excusing any self-contradictory statements that you make. This really is a heads-eye-win-tails-you-lose scenario. Now, I am confused. No, you are not confused. You are just wrong.
[2:16:08] There is no such thing as free will. Free will is an illusion. The human brain is composed of matter and energy which are physical objects and properties. Such entities are subject to physical laws which do not allow for free will. Saying that human beings choose their destiny is like saying that the moon chooses its orbit. Free will is the belief that human beings have the power to make choices outside the material realm of physical reality. In other words, that we are inhabited by a willful ghost that is able to magically surmount the laws of physics and generate material states of mind from immaterial causes.
[2:16:50] Studies have repeatedly shown that human beings merely think they are making choices when brain scans can clearly see that the origins of their decisions occur deep in the mind and then are only rationalized after the fact by people holding on to their precious superstition of free will. We are programmed by our minds to act, and we are also programmed by our minds to believe in free will, which mostly arises out of a superstitious lack of knowledge regarding the scientific reality of determinism. Prior to having physical explanations for natural phenomena, storms, volcanoes, tsunamis, we projected an imaginary consciousness onto the material world. It is understandable, although regrettable, that largely through a lack of scientific understanding we still project an imaginary consciousness called free will onto the material brain. It seems hard for people to let go of the soul or the imaginary friend called free will because it takes away their sense of specialness as well as their ability to morally castigate others for their failings.
[2:18:02] There is a lot to digest in what you said. I would try to take things one step at a time. When you say that free will is an illusion, do you mean that an accurate understanding of the world, you refer to science very positively, is preferable to false beliefs about the world? Of course, we should always prefer truth to illusion, no matter how hard it is for our fragile egos, or for our illusions that we even have an ego. It does seem odd to me, I will confess, that you criticize those who believe in free will for morally castigating others, but you seem to refer to such people in derogatory terms. However, we will return to that later. First, I wish to understand your position, that there is such a thing as a preferred state, for example, truth over falsehood, when the determinist position would imply that there is no such thing as a preferred state. Determinism does not deny the existence of preferred states. Well, if it rains on your wedding day, you would be unhappy, but you would not take it personally. In other words, you would not ascribe negative moral qualities to the weather for ruining your special day. Of course not. That is my entire point.
[2:19:19] Would you say that it is possible for the weather to have a preferred state? I do not follow. Is it possible for a storm cloud, say, to prefer raining on a lake rather than a meadow? If I follow you correctly, no, I do not think it is possible. Can you think of any condition under which a storm cloud would or could have a preferred state?
[2:19:48] No. Now I am confused. Is not your entire argument that the human mind is functionally indistinguishable from a storm cloud? Both are composed of matter and energy, yes. Right. And would you say that matter and energy can themselves have any kind of preferred state? In other words, could it be possible that the moon would prefer to be closer or further away from the earth in its orbit. No, the moon could not prefer that. Is there any form of matter or energy that could have a preferred state? Not that I can think of, and certainly not according to my arguments. And that is what is most remarkable about the deterministic position. You say the human mind is exactly the same as every other aggregation of matter and energy in the universe, and that it is utterly ridiculous to ascribe singular qualities to the human mind, while at the same time, you ascribe singular qualities to the human mind, setting it aside as utterly different from every other aggregation of matter and energy in the universe. I do not see how I am doing that.
[2:21:04] Let me show you this hand puppet, which I will call Ned. Now, you are having a debate with me, with my mind, which seems like a rational course of action to you. You say, I have no more free will than this hand puppet, but I assume you would consider it insane to continue this debate with my hand puppet instead of with me. Now you are just being silly. That is not an argument. Do I possess more free will? than my hand puppet. No. Neither of you possess free will. All right. Then why is it sane to debate me, but insane to debate Ned?
[2:21:46] I am not sure what you are getting at. I think that you are sure, but you are just stalling and pretending ignorant in the hopes of making my argument look foolish. That is also not an argument. Right you are. Let me try another approach. Let us say I am getting married in a hall with a retractable roof. During the ceremony, it starts raining. What should I do? Well, close the roof, of course.
[2:22:15] I am in my wedding best, and I do not know how to close the roof. What should I do? Get someone familiar with the building to close the roof. Exactly. Alternatively, I could scream up at the clouds to stop raining, or I could attempt to ask the roof itself to close. You mean talk to the roof? Yes, exactly. Wait, does that seem a little crazy to you? Well, it does not seem exactly sane. And if I were getting married to you, I do not think I would complete the ceremony. I think that would be wise. So it would be sane to talk to a person about closing the roof, but it would be insane to talk to the clouds or the roof itself. My question is, why?
[2:23:02] I am not sure why you would ask that. The reason I would ask that is because you are telling me that there is no difference between the cloud, the rain, the roof, and the human being. I would ask to close the roof. All are mechanical, predetermined objects with no free will of their own. Why would I only talk to the person if the person is exactly the same as everything else? If I see three apples in front of me, I say, each of the apples is exactly the same, and yet I will only eat the first apple and would consider it insane to take a bite out of either the second or the third apple, can my perspective that the apples are exactly the same be rationally sustained?
[2:23:47] No, if you will only choose one of the apples and strongly reject the others, they cannot all be the same. Thank you. That is my perspective as well. Therefore, you need to explain to me why the apple you call a person is so different from the apples you call the cloud or the roof.
[2:24:07] If I understand your question correctly, the answer is simple. The person has an input system called the senses, which the cloud and the roof do not. If you back into a person or call him over, he is capable of perceiving your request and changing his behavior accordingly. If you ask him to close the roof, he has ears and will hear you, while the roof has no ears and cannot hear you.
[2:24:31] An excellent answer. If I am a singer and record a song, my recording device has inputs, does it not? It would not be much of a recording device if it did not. Now, if my song wins an award, would it seem sane or crazy to you if at the awards ceremony, my recording device received the award? What? Being in possession of an input device, whether it is a microphone jack or a set of ears, makes no material difference in the deterministic universe. An input device does not magically provide an entity with free will. For instance, it is easy to install microphones on the side of a computerized robot and then program it to respond to various inputs. Here we have a machine that responds to external stimuli. Would you say I have granted such a robot free will? No, of course not. That is why I am arguing that neither human beings nor robots have free will. Have you ever argued with a robot? Not unless you are a very well-made robot.
[2:25:40] While funny, jokes will not save your argument. How many arguments or debates have you had with human beings? Hundreds, perhaps thousands.
[2:25:52] Well, that seems entirely bigoted of you, my friend. All those debates with human beings, but none whatsoever with robots? Again, we are back to square one, you say. That human beings are exactly the same as robots. but would consider it crazy to argue with a robot, while it's perfectly sane, valuable even to argue with human beings. It cannot be due to the presence of inputs, since robots can easily have inputs as well. In fact, almost all do. So you are saying that I should argue with a robot. The difference is that I know what the robot is going to respond with. I do not know what you will respond with.
[2:26:31] That is not necessarily true. The robot could spit out randomized numbers or randomized phrases, which would be unpredictable. Also, you do not know what form a cloud is going to take in the next minute, but that does not mean you will stand in a field like King Lear and scream at the clouds, right? Human beings are far more complex than anything you are talking about here, far more complex than rain or clouds or roofs or robots or anything like that. Aha! Now we are getting to the heart of things. And I appreciate that comment, though by your face you may have some idea where this will now go. You are saying that complexity can breed an emergent property, a property or characteristic that is greater than the sum of its parts. I am not sure I am saying that. Well, let me explain to you what you are saying.
[2:27:26] No individual atom has the power to reverse or arrest the direction of light, correct? Each atom affects the direction of light, of course, but no atom can itself reverse the direction of light. That is correct. However, if you gather enough atoms together into the form of a black hole, light has no power to escape its gravity well. In other words, the property of arresting the direction of light, which is possessed by no individual atom, is possessed by an aggregation of atoms called a black hole. Are you saying that atoms possess free will? Please try not to jump ahead of what I am saying. All it does is indicate that you are not listening.
[2:28:13] Life is composed of atoms. Is that correct? It is. In particular, the carbon atom. Would you say that any individual carbon atom possesses the quality called life? No. Certainly not, since there are countless carbon atoms that are not alive or part of any living organism, and therefore carbon atoms cannot innately possess the characteristic called life. Correct. Now, although no individual carbon atom is alive, is it fair to say that particular congregations of atoms, and energy of course, can be part of a living organism. Certainly. This is an example, I am sure you will agree, of an emergent property, the emergent property called life, which is possessed by none of the individual components of a living organism. This does not prove free will at all. I agree, but it does get us into the right direction at least. Would you say that an individual atom has the property of locomotion or eating or reproducing itself? No. An individual carbon atom cannot run across the African plain, but aggregated into the form of a lion, so to speak, it can.
[2:29:37] Individual atoms cannot produce other carbon atoms, but through insemination, pregnancy, and birth animals can. This seems all rather elementary. I agree. Let me ask you this. Does any individual atom in your brain have the capacity to engage in a debate?
[2:29:58] No. Three of them act together, though, and I win. Again, funny is not right. You are engaging in an action, debating, that relies on a vast and stacked pyramid of emergent properties. No individual atom can clean your blood, but your kidney can. No individual atom can breathe, yet your lungs work. No individual atom can form words, yet I hear you speak. No atom can debate, yet here we sit. I cannot dispute what you are saying, at least not without affirming it. So, your position is that there are countless emergent properties, but that free will cannot possibly be one of them. Are you saying that it is an inconsistent position? It is inconsistent with your first position, which is that atoms have no free will. Therefore, human beings have no free will. That is still my position. No, it is not a position. It is an anti-rational, specific. I am not technically aware of that term.
[2:31:05] If my entire existence as a human being relies on emergent properties, but my argument denies the possibility of emergent properties, I am, in fact, a walking self-contradiction. I do not deny the existence of emergent properties. I just affirmed to them. You did. Right after I reminded you of their existence, at the beginning of the debate, you denied emergent properties. Nonsense. I only denied that free will was an emergent property. No. You said that human beings have no free will because atoms have no free will, which is a subset of the proposition that human beings can have no properties not possessed by individual atoms themselves.
[2:31:48] I never said that about all emergent properties. No. Your argument did not accept that life and locomotion and debating are all emergent properties but then specifically reject emergent properties in the realm of free will, which, would have been honest. Instead, you relied on a base reductionist materialism, saying that all free will was a superstition, a ghost in the machine, without referencing any other emergent properties that might oppose your argument against free will. Now you are just pretending to read my mind. No, I am simply referring to what you said. However, you are correct in that I cannot prove your state of mind when you make these highly specific points. Now that you admit emergent properties exist, you must now prove that there is no possibility that free will is an emergent property.
[2:32:41] I refer you to the numerous scientific studies that show human behavior can be predicted fairly accurately with deep brain scans of the subconscious motivations for supposedly conscious decisions. People think they are choosing whether to click on a red or blue icon on a screen while their subconscious mind has already made that decision for them. Even if we accept all these studies as true, although their accuracy rate is never 100% or even very close. The entire purpose of science is to achieve the preferred state of truth or accuracy, which implies that there is such a thing as a preferred state which requires the concept of free will. The moment you say it is true that there is no such thing as free will, you are accepting that there is a preferred state called truth, which human beings should voluntarily choose. Do you not think that the truth is preferable? Here we have it. In order to correct me during this debate. You must constantly slip into using the language of free will, truth, and preferable, and choice, and so on.
[2:33:48] I cannot reject all of the existing habits of language. If I say that there is no such thing as God, am I religious for having used the word God? I'm not sure what that means, but it does not address my argument. If you say that I should choose to accept determinism and reject free will, can you not see that that is a contradiction? I want you to embrace the truth, yes. Do you think that it is preferable for me to choose the truth? Of course. Then you have already accepted that there is a preferred state, and that I have the capacity to compare the contents of my mind to that preferred state and choose better. If that is called being a determinist, then I guess I am determinist as well, since only the labels differ, not the contents of our arguments. These senses are invalid. I wish to take issue with the naive notion that we have some kind of direct conduit to reality through the mechanism of the senses. Everything that comes to our mind through the senses is narrow, incomplete, and fragmentary, and people who imagine they can assemble some universal and coherent view of the universe, through the tiny windows of the senses, are delusional.
[2:35:11] I have noticed that those who oppose universals always start off with insults, pairing negative emotional terms with the arguments of their opponents. For instance, you have referred to arguments for the validity of the senses as naive notions, and to those who hold such beliefs as delusional.
[2:35:29] I am generally suspicious of people who begin a debate with subtle and not-so-subtle insults, because if you have really good arguments, I do not see the need to start by insulting your opponents. When I teach my child that two and two make four, I do not need to be insulting, that is, the mark of bad faith, or suspect reasoning, to be more precise. I'm sorry if you were offended by my arguments. And now you heap further offense upon me by implying that I could be offended by a mere argument, removing any causality for offense from you by stating that any offense is my subjective perception only. But we shall never get anywhere this way. I merely wish to express a certain frustration that I have with people who start by being offensive, who then pretend the offense is only the subjective perception of their victim. Let me start by asking you on what grounds you find the senses deficient. Are our eyes deficient because they do not see x-rays or infrared, and so on? And are our ears faulty because they hear less than a dog's ears? The senses are deficient, my friend, because they promote limited fragmentary information, which often does more to misinform than to enlighten the mind. All right, let us start here.
[2:36:52] Are the senses deficient in what they process or what they do not process? In other words, I certainly accept that our eyes do not see everything that could be perceived in the universe. That is a limitation, of course. My question is, are the eyes also deficient in what they do see? I do not follow. When I look at a tree, I see the outside of the tree on the side I am facing. I do not see the heat signal of the tree. I do not see the history of the tree. I do not see inside the tree and so on. My eyes and perspective are certainly limited. My question is, are the senses faulty because they are incomplete or because they are inaccurate, even in what they can process? In other words, I cannot see inside the tree, but do I accurately perceive the bark on the outside of the tree that I am facing?
[2:37:46] I believe that the senses are incomplete, and also that they are inaccurate in what they do perceive. All right, thank you. Since we both agree that the senses are incomplete, we will put that aside for now. Can you tell me in what way the senses are inaccurate in what they do perceive?
[2:38:03] Well, when you look at a tree, you only see what the light reveals, at your particular angle, and in the level of detail your eyes allow. Yes, I certainly accept that the eyes are limited. They do not see at the atomic level, and they do not operate in the absence of light, but is what they do perceive accurate? I am not sure what you mean by the word accurate. Excellent. Let us define our terms. In this context, accurate means the eyes provide a true portrayal of things in the world, given the limitations of detail and spectrum and so on.
[2:38:38] So, your big value add to the definition is to provide a synonym? Now it is I who do not follow Well, you say that the word accurate is defined by the word true which does not seem to add much to the conversation A good point, Here, let me grab a cup and draw a circle by tracing the top turned over on the table. Now, when you look at what I have drawn, do you see it as a circle? That is actually quite a complicated question. I agree. It is certainly not a perfect circle, would you agree? I would agree. A perfect circle cannot be delineated in the world using material objects, since there will always be ragged edges and imperfect rotations and so on. A perfect circle can only be described mathematically, not manifested materially. In that, I quite agree with you that the senses are imperfect relative to concepts. However, just because something is imperfect does not mean that it is the same as everything else. Continue.
[2:39:44] Well, is there such a thing as perfectly clean water? No. Of course, perfectly clean water is expressed in science as two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Water does exist in the world in this form, of course. It is the essence of water, so to speak. But it is always mixed with other materials to one degree or another. However, the fact that there is no such thing as perfectly clean water does not mean that all imperfections are the same. If I hand you two glasses of water, one from the tap, the other from a muddy puddle, which would you drink? I would drink the tap water. Good. Accuracy, in other words, is not a binary proposition. The senses are not either valid or invalid, but inhabit a kind of continuum, wherein they can approach accuracy or move further away. An archer can never hit the exact center of a bullseye with his arrow, but that does not mean there is no difference between an archer who hits the red, and an archer who misses the target completely.
[2:40:48] That makes sense to me. However, the sensors can easily fool us, in the case of optical illusions, mirages, and so on. Let me ask you something. Have you ever tried to take a picture, but then realized you left the lens cap on the camera? Of course, although these days it is more of a thumb on the cell phone camera instead.
[2:41:07] Would you say that the camera is not working if you leave the lens cap on? No, I would not say that. I would not either, for the same reason that I do not complain of blindness every time I close my eyes. My eyes are functioning. They are just covered by my eyelids. In the same way, when we stand on a set of train tracks, the rails look like they are joining together in the distance, when we know they are actually running parallel because they would be unusable if they merged together. Exactly. The senses are faulty. Are they? Do the eyes inform me directly that the train tracks merge together? I am not sure what you mean. Let us suppose I am hiking in some distant woods, and I think I hear the growl of a bear. My heart starts pounding and my palms become sweaty, but then it turns out I am just hungry, and it is my stomach that is growling. That is quite an appetite. Is it the fault of my ears that I thought a bear was approaching? Certainly. But my ears are just organs of receptivity. they do not know anything about bears or the woods or anything like that, because these are all concepts which only really exist in my mind. Well, without entering into the truly thorny woods of concept formation, I agree. So, it is not in my ears that the idea of bear arises, but rather in my mind.
[2:42:33] In the same way, if I am sitting in a hotel room, and I think it has started to thunder outside, but it turns out it is just guests in the upstairs room moving furniture around. The concept of thunder and furniture do not exist in my ears, but rather in my mind. Are you saying that the senses can never make mistakes? My, my, you really are a big fan of binary absolutes, aren't you? The question here is, which organ is making the mistake? In the above examples, it is not the senses, but the brain that is making the mistake, thinking that the stomach's growl is a bear's growl, and that the moving furniture is thunder in the sky. This is not the fault of the ears, which are accurately transmitting vibrations. This is the fault of the mind, which is drawing erroneous conclusions from the raw data provided by the senses. Yes, but listen, a man who is colorblind sees only shades of gray, when there are, in fact, vibrant colors. This is not the fault of his brain, but rather of his eyes. Certainly, I agree. And the reason that we have the word colorblind is because it is a deficiency in the eyes relative to the capacity of eyes in general.
[2:43:47] We do not really have the concept of x-ray blind because human beings do not have the capacity to see x-rays directly. The fact that certain senses are faulty does not invalidate the senses as a whole. We know they are faulty because they do not possess the capacities of senses in general. A man in a wheelchair does not invalidate the fact that men in general walk. Yes, I can see that. Now, I am not saying that the senses are always perfectly accurate or that they can see everything, but I am saying that there is reliability in what the senses can perceive.
[2:44:24] Your argument would be much stronger if we had only one sense to work with. However, we can walk down the abandoned train tracks and see that the rails never do in fact touch together. In this way, we understand a rational limitation of our senses, our eyes in this case, and that our idea that the rails come closer together is false. Wait a moment. What do you mean by saying rational limitation? Are you saying that the eyes are designed for some rational purpose by some rational being? Not at all. In our evolution, it was highly advantageous for our eyes to focus on that which was closer rather than further away. Picking apples was more important to us than seeing a distant tree, and so the fact that the apple appears bigger to us makes perfect sense. And that is my point. You have put it precisely. Our sense organs are designed to serve our survival rather than the truth.
[2:45:22] This seems to posit the idea that our survival has nothing to do with an accurate perception of things in the world, such as food and shelter and predators. Is that what you mean to say? Well, almost all organisms have some capacity to perceive the world. That does not mean they are in possession of the truth. Very true. The relationship between concepts and the senses, conceptualization being a unique human capacity, as far as we know, is rich and complicated, but is not directly necessary. for the resolution of this discussion. The question before us is, are the senses valid? If the standard of validity is a perfect perception of every aspect of matter and energy in the universe, then we have an impossible standard to achieve. It is like asking if a man is intelligent relative to omniscience. Referring back to the circle I drew earlier, it is certainly not a perfect circle in that we completely agree. But would you ever look at it and say that it is a square or a spiral or a dodecahedron? No. Assume me the conventions of language. Is it closer to a perfect circle than a square or a spiral? Yes, I suppose so. Ah, you are hedging, which defies what you just said, which is that you would never look at my circle and say that it was a square or a spiral, but let that pass.
[2:46:49] Now, if you and I are standing in a field, and I point at a boulder and call it a tree, am I correct?
[2:46:57] What if it is a boulder that has been carved into the shape of a tree? That is clever, but that would still not be a tree, which is why you had to refer to it as a boulder that has been carved into the shape of a tree. Again, assuming the conventions of language, would I be correct to call a boulder a tree?
[2:47:17] No, you would not be correct. There are things I can say about a tree that are on a continuum. If I say a particular tree is tall, that is a somewhat relative statement. It could be a tall bonsai or a short redwood. However, there is no continuum between a boulder and a tree. That, I grant you, is binary. Something is either a boulder or a tree or something else. It is never half and half.
[2:47:47] I'm going to say nothing about petrified wood. I appreciate that. When I talk about a tree or a boulder, I am talking about the atomic structure of such objects. Even though I cannot see the atoms directly, they form the basis of the aggregation of matter that impacts on my eyeballs through light waves. Different atoms result in different objects. Just as there is no continuum between a carbon atom and a hydrogen atom, there is no continuum between a boulder and a tree, correct? There could be, if you measure weight or mass or height, these are characteristics that they would both possess. That is true, but incomplete. How so? Well, height or weight or mass are measures common to all aggregations of matter. They would not be on a continuum between a boulder and a tree, but would rather be characteristics of all mass. Fair enough. So, in their capacity to accurately provide the information necessary for my brain to distinguish between a boulder and a tree, is it fair to say that my eyes are accurate?
[2:49:08] They are accurate. I think you are correct, but they are still incomplete. Incomplete relative to what? Relative to all the available information in the world. I do not see how it is rational to use a yardstick entirely out of range of the capacities of what you are measuring. Do I call a man illiterate because he has not read every printed word in human history? Do I call a man deaf because he cannot hear a dog whistle or Roger Taylor's falsetto? More importantly, do I call a man blind because he cannot see infrared? This seems like a silly and irresponsible standard to hold everything finite as inconsequential according to a yardstick of infinity. A man who lives for only one-fifth of a natural human lifespan dies young. Saying that everyone dies young because they should all live to be a thousand does not really add much to human knowledge or wisdom, would you say?
[2:50:07] The senses are still limited, though. Well, something is limited around here. All right, let me ask you this, so we can devolve from abstractions to the immediate. You say that the senses are faulty, correct? Correct. Now, in the sentence, the senses are faulty, Which word falls short of perfection? I do not understand. In order to communicate your argument that the senses are faulty, you must use my hearing to process your words. What is the perfect form of the sentence, the senses are faulty, and in what way does that sentence, when communicated through the senses, fall short of that perfection? Still not following, sorry.
[2:50:58] So if you write down on a piece of paper the sentence, the senses are faulty, then each word would not be perfect. Each letter would not be perfect. But in what way are the concepts that are communicated imperfect or faulty? In other words, when I drew the circle, the circle was imperfect. In what way is the concept that the circle represents faulty? I do not see that it is. Exactly. If I put two ping-pong balls in front of you and use them to illustrate that one and one make two, the ping-pong balls are not perfect. They are slightly different sizes and shapes and weights and colors and so on, but they transfer the concept that one and one make two perfectly. Would you not say so? I think so, but I'm still trying to follow. I understand. I understand.
[2:51:55] You rely on the senses to transfer concepts and arguments to me, in this case, my hearing, in other examples, my sight. All the senses are incomplete, you say, or imperfect. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is whether perfect concepts can be transmitted through an imperfect medium. If we are talking over a bad phone connection, and I tell you it is raining where I am, This does not tell you how hard it is raining or which way the wind is blowing, but you do perfectly comprehend the concept of rain, despite the poor communication and limited information. And the reason I am talking about all of this is because if we cannot communicate concepts using our imperfect and incomplete senses, then we cannot engage in debates at all. In other words, by engaging in a debate with me, you are assuming that incomplete senses can accurately transmit concepts. You are telling me that my senses are faulty. This requires that my senses be accurate enough for you to transmit your argument to me. Now, if my senses are actually faulty, you should not use them to transmit your argument any more than I should drive confidently across a bridge I know has half collapsed. If you do rely on the accuracy of my senses to communicate an argument about the senses, then denying their validity is self-contradictory.
[2:53:24] I think I see your point. If there is no better medium for communicating arguments than the senses, then the senses are good enough. If there is a better medium, I await your psychic conversation.
[2:53:43] Ethics are subjective. The idea that ethics are scientific or objective is a laughable notion only sustainable through a back-alley ignorance of the proliferation of ethical theories throughout the world, not to mention throughout history. Every tribe has its own gods, its own moral absolutes, and its own superstitions. I see. And is it your perspective that every ethical statement is subjective. Of course, that is what I just said. Then, are the statements you are making about ethics also subjective? Excuse me. Arguing that ethics are subjective is making an objective statement about ethics. Not true at all. If I say artistic taste is subjective, I am not making an objective statement about artistic taste. I am confining it to the category called subjective.
[2:54:38] You are making an objective statement about artistic taste. You are saying all artistic taste is subjective. In other words, you are not saying that only some artistic taste is subjective. Let me ask it another way. Is it your subjective opinion that ethics are always subjective or is it an objective fact? It is an objective fact. Excellent. Now, is it better or worse, to have opinions that are true, as opposed to opinions that are false?
[2:55:13] Well, if they are true, they are not really opinions, are they? Well said. Is it better to believe things that are true? Yes, of course. In other words, is it universally preferable to believe true things rather than false things?
[2:55:31] I am churning my brain trying to think of exceptions to that rule since I have a deep aversion to universality because it is so easily broken with a single exception. Yes, I can think of one. If a man is dying from a car crash and his wife and child have been killed, is it better to tell him the truth before he dies or to pretend that they have been saved? I do not think it matters what happens in the last moments of life. That is not an argument. Tell me, do you think it is important to eat in a healthy manner? Yes. Do you think it is important for a prisoner condemned to execution to have a healthy last meal?
[2:56:13] I see your point. I assume you would not also suggest he spend his last few minutes on this earth exercising, although I am sure that you would agree that exercise is important in life. We can all think of exceptions, or at least what seem like exceptions, to general rules. But this does not necessarily invalidate the rules completely. It is a bad idea to drive significantly over the speed limit unless you are being chased by criminals or fleeing a tsunami or are bleeding out from a bad cut. I think we can safely say it is generally better to believe true things rather than false things. Would you agree? Let us say I grant you conditional agreement. And we'll take that for now. If it is better to believe true things, then those who tell you true things, who are honest, are acting any better manner, are they not? Let me think about that for a moment.
[2:57:10] There is not much need, I think. If believing true things is better, then liars lead people away from believing true things, which is worse behavior. If truth is universally preferable to falsehood, then those who serve truth are universally preferable to those who serve lies. We cannot propose a universally preferable state, truth, and then be indifferent to those who facilitate that state or who interfere with it. I cannot argue that health is better than sickness and then be indifferent to a poisoner. If health is better than sickness, then those who serve health are better than those who serve sickness.
[2:57:48] That would seem to follow. Thank you. Now, what is your definition of ethics? What people believe they should do. I'm not sure that is complete enough, or perhaps it is too broad. If you talk to people, they believe that they should floss and brush their teeth, wouldn't you say? Yes, they do. Would you say that flossing and brushing your teeth falls under the category of ethics? I would not say that, although I could not exactly say why.
[2:58:22] It does seem different than knocking someone else's teeth out, right? Yes, it does. I am not inflicting injury on someone else if I fail to brush my teeth, but I am if I knock their teeth out. Yes, but this is my problem with most ethical discussions. This difference may feel right, and it may be hard to imagine society operating without this distinction, but none of these are actual arguments. They are appeals to feelings and sentimentality and history and culture and momentum. I agree. The fact that brushing versus hitting feels different is not an argument, but we should not be indifferent to our instincts about this difference. Our instincts can have important ramifications for rational arguments. They are not proof, but they can spur our ambition to understand deep and complex questions. All right, I appreciate that admission. It is rare when speaking of these issues. I am not going to pretend at all that these questions are easy to answer. And also, I am not going to pretend that there is necessarily an answer. Good.
[2:59:29] Now, do ethics in general speak about what people do or what they think? Ethics generally deal with actions, not thoughts. I agree. Now, the actions that ethics deal with, are they words or deeds? Ethics generally deal with deeds, not words. There are exceptions, such as shouting fire in a crowded theater. That is true, but if you shout fire in an empty theater, no one has any problem with that. It is not the word fire that is the issue, but rather the resulting panic and flight and destruction if there is in fact no fire. Agreed. I think it is fair to say that the word good refers to deeds, whereas the word right refers to thoughts or words or arguments. We think of good and evil deeds and right and wrong thoughts or arguments.
[3:00:27] That is the common conception. I agree with that as well. I will use the word behavior when talking about ethics, since the word deed has more than one meaning. Fine. Now, if we define ethics as universally preferable behavior, then we have a starting point for our examination. I do not mind the convention at all, as long as you recognize that definitions are not proof. Totally true and understood. Now, we must first ask the question, is universally preferable behavior a valid concept or proposition? In other words, is there any such thing as universally preferable behavior? It certainly does not exist in the world in the way that a tree or a cloud does. So, universally preferable behavior, UPB, must exist within the mind only. I agree with that as well.
[3:01:33] Now, the fact that it exists only in the mind does not necessarily make it subjective or invalid. A mathematical equation exists only in the mind. The scientific method itself exists only in the mind, not in empirical reality. But this does not mean that mathematics and science are subjective or invalid. A blueprint is not a bridge. But this does not mean that a blueprint is a purely subjective or invalid or irrelevant document. Would you agree? Again, conditionally, yes. So, we must first ask, are there any behaviours that could possibly be universally preferable? Please note that this does not mean universally preferred. Preferable means able to be chosen, not always chosen. I cannot think of any behaviours that could be universally preferable.
[3:02:28] Does this mean you wish to argue against the validity of universally preferable behaviors? You know, I really think I do. Wait, wait a minute. I'm just thinking. I'm trying to find a way to argue against UPB without requiring UPB. That is quite a challenge, I admit. If I tell you there is no such thing as UPB. Exactly. You require UPB in order to deny UPB. Can you break that out for me a little bit, please? Of course. If you tell me there is no such thing as UPB, you are making a universal statement that no one should enact the behavior of advocating for UPB. In other words, you are saying that it is universally preferable behavior to reject the validity of universally preferable behavior. That is remarkable.
[3:03:30] I'm having trouble formulating an argument against what you are saying. Now you are beginning to see the power of UPB. It is impossible to argue against it without saying that truth is universally preferable to error and that it is universally preferable to speak the truth rather than speak falsehood. This dovetails nicely into what we were talking about earlier. Actually, this is very good news. Now that we have established that UPB is a valid concept, or at least we have established that it is impossible to argue against it without invoking it, we have crossed a major hurdle. And now all we need to do is figure out which behaviors can be universally preferred. That is quite a Rubicon. I feel that I am in uncharted territory, very radical, uncharted territory. It is a terrible thing when you think about it, how radical mere consistency actually is in the world. Nothing is more revolutionary than consistency. Shall we continue? I am quite excited. I had meant to oppose you tooth and nail, but I find myself swept up in this idea. Thus, we must remember to be cautious, since enthusiasm is quite often more a friend to ideology than to truth. Shall we begin? Yes, please.
[3:04:57] To take the concept of UPB one word at a time. The first word is universally, which is not an accident. If no behaviors are in fact universally preferable, then we have no right to ever correct another human being, or to use accurate words to describe objects or concepts, or to reply directly to the person who has made an argument, or to do anything that makes any kind of sense. The power of universality is the power to correct. Without universality, a debate is the imposition of manipulative will. Anyone who tells you that you are wrong and attempts to correct your viewpoint accepts UPB entirely. I certainly follow that. The second word is preferable, which in itself does not primarily refer to behaviors that should be chosen but rather those that can be chosen. If a behavior cannot be universally preferable to human beings then it cannot fall under the umbrella of UPB.
[3:06:03] Universally preferable must refer to something that can be chosen by everyone at all times and under all circumstances. Do you agree? I do agree if I say that something is universally preferable, that is either my opinion or it is an objective argument. If it is my opinion, then it cannot be universal. If it is an objective argument, then I cannot reject either objectivity or universality. If I say that I like dogs, this is a statement of personal preference and not an objective argument about the nature of dogs. If I personally prefer dogs. It is not incumbent or binding upon you to prefer dogs as well. However, if I say that dogs are warm-blooded, that is a statement of objective fact. Right.
[3:06:52] And if we say that it is universally preferable to reject objective facts, we are saying that it is an objective fact, that it is universally preferable to reject objective facts, which is a self-contradictory statement. Shall I go on? Please do. The third word is behavior. This refers to measurable actions that occur within empirical and objective reality. a definition that is entirely to be expected since UPB refers to objective universals. Thoughts cannot be objectively measured or ascertained in the absence of the objective behavior that transmits those thoughts in empirical reality. We cannot read minds, but we can read a book. When I speak or write or hand gesture, I am converting my thoughts into an objective medium. Please note that this does not mean that all my thoughts are objective. I could say, for instance, that I like ice cream, which is not an objective claim. However, the words I use to express my preference for ice cream do exist in the objective world. I see.
[3:08:05] Also, there is another important reason to talk about behaviors rather than thoughts, which is that we have almost infinitely more control over our behaviors than our thoughts. I am reminded of the old story about the man who is commanded to sit on a mountaintop all night and to not think of an elephant. Exactly. Ethics require at least a minimal level of self-control. If a man accidentally strikes another man while in the throes of an unforeseen epileptic fit, we do not blame the first man morally or charge him with assault. We treat it as an unfortunate accident since he does not have control over his limbs in that moment. I agree.
[3:08:48] So when we talk about UPB, we are really talking about behaviors that are possible for all human beings to choose simultaneously. This is why in UPB, positive action cannot be a requirement for ethical behavior, since it is impossible for all human beings to perform a positive action all the time everywhere. If we say that it is universally moral to give to the poor, this cannot pass the test of UPB, since it requires both gift-givers and gift-takers, which are not the same category at all. Also, it is impossible to give to the poor while one is sleeping or in a coma, and if we give everything to the poor, then we become poor, and we are then in need of the opposite action, which is not to give but to receive. Are you saying that it is immoral to give to the poor? Certainly not. There are positive behaviors that are preferable, just not universally preferable. It is preferable to be on time, but it is not universally preferable to be on time since we are not all perpetually arriving at an appointment. We can certainly make the case that it is preferable to give to the poor, but it cannot be universally preferable to give to the poor for the reasons described above.
[3:10:07] I see. Do all behaviors fall into the category of preferable or universally preferable? No. While it is true that every action taken by a human being is an action he or she prefers, it is not the case that individual preferences can be extrapolated to generally preferable or universally preferable. I prefer to listen to a particular piece of music while I write. This does not mean that listening to music or a particular piece of music is generally preferable while writing, or even that writing is generally preferable. When you are reading, you are not writing, and there would be little point writing if there were no readers. Is there a consistent way to delineate between personally preferable, generally preferable, and universally preferable? Once we understand that ethics are a relationship rather than a commandment, these differences become much easier to understand. What do you mean? Can a man be evil if he is alone on a desert island? I don't know. Foolish, perhaps. Lazy. But not evil, no I agree Evil is done unto others Not to nature And not to oneself alone.
[3:11:32] Suicide, that is not evil. Tragic, destructive to the happiness of others, but not evil. If a man destroys a stranger's car, that is, the destruction of property, and it is immoral. If he destroys his own car, we do not call him evil, and he is not prosecuted. The same is true of human life. So is there a consistent way to delineate between personally preferable, generally preferable, and universally preferable? Since ethics only manifest in relationships, we need to look at the question of reciprocity. Reciprocity is the extension of personally preferable actions to mutually preferable actions. It is more of an obligation than a commandment. I do not follow. Tell me, are you obligated to lend money to a stranger? No. Are you obligated to lend money to a friend who has himself lent you money in the past? Certainly more so than a.
[3:12:32] If you have a rule called friends lend each other money, and you have taken advantage of this rule in the past by borrowing from your friend, then refusing to lend your friend money is breaking the rule. It is not a contract, so not enforceable, but it is a mutually preferable action, in that it is not a universal rule, but a privilege earned between friends. I see. Personally preferable actions do not involve reciprocity. Mutually preferable actions imply local reciprocity, and universally preferable behaviors are commandments that enforce universal reciprocity, such as, I respect your property and person while you respect mine.
[3:13:18] For example, flossing my teeth does not involve reciprocity, while punching someone else's teeth out rejects reciprocity. I want to punch someone my victim does not want to be punched. I can see by your face that this is not a proof, and I quite agree with you. I am glad I did not have to say it.
[3:13:37] If I wake up and choose to listen to a piece of music, this is my personally preferable action. If you and I agree to meet for lunch at noon, we have created a mutual expectation of reciprocity, which is that we will both meet at noon or close to it. If I help you move to a new house, it is with a reasonable expectation that you might perform a similar favor for me one day. We choose to interact with each other, and neither of us is imposing our behaviors on the other.
[3:14:12] But if I am late for our lunchtime meeting, I am forcing you to wait I do not agree You aren't forcing me to do anything Because I can stay or leave as I see fit Also, I have voluntarily entered into the arrangement To meet you at noon, So, no direct coercion is involved Exactly, If you are repeatedly late for our appointments I can stop being your friend Or at least stop arranging to meet you at a certain time If I keep doing you favors, but you keep rejecting my request for favors, I can just stop doing you favors. No one has coerced me into anything. However, if someone robs you, then we are in an entirely different situation. There is neither an implicit nor explicit contract, and I am not free to do as I choose. By pointing a gun at me and demanding my wallet, the thief is imposing his violent will upon me.
[3:15:11] Theoretically, though, could not stealing be universally preferable behavior?
[3:15:16] No, because stealing is taking someone's property against his will. If stealing is universally preferable behavior, then I want the thief to take my wallet. However, if I want the thief to take my wallet, he is not stealing from me. If I put a table on my front lawn by the road with a sign that says, take me, then I cannot reasonably call someone a thief for taking the table. In other words, it is not theft if I want my property to be removed. If you rip my jacket from my shoulders and run away, I could call you a thief. However, if my jacket is on fire and I beg you to rip it off me, the same standard can scarcely be applied. When you think about it, the same holds true for rape, assault, and murder. None of these can be universally preferable behaviors because they only occur when one person wishes an activity to happen while the other person strenuously does not wish for that activity to happen, as in the case of rape. Consensual rape is an oxymoron because rape only occurs when sexual activity is not wanted by the victim. When you think about ethics, they always exist at the coercive intersection of opposing desires.
[3:16:30] Again, theoretically, we could say that imposing desires, could be UPB. We cannot, though. If all human beings have the right to impose their desires on other human beings, then each imposition cancels out the other impositions. If I have a desire to take $10,000 from you, while you have the desire to keep your $10,000, but it is universally preferable behavior to impose desires on others, then my desire to take your money collides with your desire to keep your money, and the principle cannot be universally achieved. I am astounded. Could it really be that simple? Outside of propaganda, you would really be surprised how simple virtue really is. Thank you.
[3:17:25] Afterward, inevitable criticisms. In professional wrestling, mullet-haired monster men often snarl at each other before matches, engaging in the time-honored tradition of trash-talking. The purpose of this is to build anticipation for the match. It would be a very odd thing if, after weeks of trash-talking, only one of the wrestlers showed up for the fight. It would be considered an act of supreme cowardice to trash talk an opposing athlete while refusing to show up for the actual event. The same process often occurs in philosophy, wherein an opponent slanders you, insults you, surrounds you with a fiery mote of negative adjectives while never actually addressing the content of your arguments.
[3:18:11] The actual fight is about the reason and evidence presented. Everything else is just a distraction. Albert Einstein, remarking on a group of scientists who had signed a document stating he was wrong, said that one scientist proving him wrong would suffice. If you have the capacity to actually prove someone wrong, you do not need to be hostile or insulting. You do not need to imagine malevolent motives on the part of your opponent. You do not need to insult their intelligence, education, writing skills, or appearance. You just need to clearly show where he or she is wrong. We all know this, but many people seem to constantly forget it at the same time. I have been reasoning, reading, debating, writing, and arguing in the realm of philosophy for over 35 years. I have an Ivy League education at the master's level, and my dissertation was a deep thesis on the history of Western philosophy, for which I received top marks. For many years, I have had the privilege of hosting the world's largest and most popular philosophy show, with over half a billion views and downloads. I have interviewed hundreds of subject matter experts in a wide variety of fields, debated both professionals and laypeople on many complex topics, written half a dozen books, and been interviewed myself by friends and foes alike.
[3:19:37] None of this means my arguments are correct. Of course, I could have achieved all of this and still be spectacularly wrong. There are many thinkers with greater credentials than I have whom I consider to be spectacularly wrong. Neither credentials nor experience fundamentally matter in terms of the argument. I bring all of this up because, no doubt, I will be attacked and scorned with regards to experience or credentials or what have you. I am wrong, some will say, because I do not hold a PhD in philosophy from Harvard or Yale. This is a fascinating position. I really cannot call it an argument because the entire history of philosophy is the history of rejecting authority in favor of reason and evidence. Academic philosophers with doctorates worship Socrates. Socrates had no doctorate and scorned arguments from authority. As the saying goes, all science is founded on skepticism of authority. With philosophy, it goes even further. All philosophy is founded on hostility toward authority.
[3:20:47] Philosophy is the ultimate democratic discipline. Rational philosophy holds that individuals are entirely capable of processing reality, of reasoning effectively, and of coming to the right conclusions. Philosophy empowers individuals with the capacity to push back against irrational or anti-rational authority using their own individual capacity for thought. Generally, a refusal to rebut the content of an argument is a confession of cowardice, incompetence, or malevolence. Insulting your opponent, at least absent clear rebuttals to arguments is a betrayal of philosophy, not its fulfillment.
[3:21:32] This is not to say that philosophers must engage with every person who makes a mistake. We do not want to become like the hapless husband in a famous cartoon who says to his wife that he cannot possibly come to bed yet because somebody is wrong on the internet. However, when someone of prominence and influence is publicly making bad arguments, philosophers are honor-bound to push back against these errors. We do not have to argue with a crazy man on the street corner who is waving a Wingdings pamphlet at rain clouds, but egregious errors from a prominent person tend to stand unless and until we correct them. If you refuse to engage in such a necessary debate, clearly that is because you fear losing or you fear anyone coming into contact with your opponent's ideas. However, if you can effectively rebut bad arguments, why on earth would you fear their increased exposure. You might fear the exposure of bad arguments because you imagine that the majority of people cannot think and will end up buried under the verbal dexterity and sophistry of a well-credentialed street preacher.
[3:22:41] I accept that as a possible position, but then your job should be to instruct the masses on how to think, or at least how to think better, instead of engaging with a sophist who cannot be distinguished from the philosopher by the untutored multitude. Maybe you cannot stop all the sugary commercials aimed at your children, but you can at least educate your children about the dangers of sugar.
[3:23:07] If you call your wrestling opponent a coward but then refuse to show up to the fight, your criticism is utterly exposed as projection. It is you who are the coward. If you call your intellectual opponent wrong but then refuse to show up to the debate, your attack is utterly exposed as projection. It is you who are wrong.
[3:23:29] The more extravagant your trash-talking of your opponent, the more your cowardice is revealed when you refuse to fight him. The more hysterical your abuse of your intellectual opponent, the more your cowardice is revealed when you avoid debating him. A number of words and phrases show up as distinct tells for intellectual cowardice. I'm sure I will receive some of them, so it is worth going over them briefly. As I said above, for philosophy, prevention is by far the better part of cure.
[3:24:04] Generic pejoratives. Calling someone's argument reductionist or simplistic or amateurish or unconvincing is a boring way of saying that you are too cowardly or stupid to engage in a debate. If someone's ideas are worth insulting, then surely they are worth rationally rebutting first. Calling someone a misogynist, a cult leader, a racist. We all understand that none of these are arguments. They are confessions of intellectual cowardice and impotence. If you show up to an oncologist to have him remove a deadly tumor and he spends half an hour verbally insulting it, would you consider yourself cured? If you go to an optometrist to get help with blurry vision, is your problem solved? If your optometrist merely rails against the greed of the eyeglass industry or says that all vision is merely subjective, so how do you really know that your vision is blurry? Another trick is to call someone overambitious or grandiose or to imply that the problem is far more complex than he assumes without addressing the content of his arguments. I am fully aware that I have taken on enormous philosophical problems in this book and claimed to have solved them. This is an ambitious project, to be sure. Calling it over-ambitious is not an argument.
[3:25:27] Another trick is to call an argument incomplete, which is a variation of the no-true-Scotsman fallacy. All arguments are incomplete because language has limitations, we are mortal, readers have lives to live, and all resources are finite. I may not have read arguments for determinism written in ancient Aramaic, or I may have failed to address the ethical arguments of a particular Indian philosopher, and I may not have rebutted some article against me, but so what? If the definition of complete is pretty much synonymous with omniscient, it can be safely discarded as a ridiculous standard. Dragging thinkers off to continually research and respond to everyone else's thoughts is just a silly way of ensuring that thinkers remain cripplingly unoriginal. If you cannot paint a picture of a boat until you have lived at sea, studied the history of boating and learned the details of every other picture of a boat, then clearly the purpose of all these restrictions is to stop you from painting your own picture of a boat.
[3:26:29] It's a trap. Let us say that a man named David comes up with an argument called X. Let us say that you wish to oppose argument X but without actually engaging with the content of the argument. Here is another silly trick. Find some other argument that David has made that is generally unpopular. We can call this Y. Now, instead of engaging with argument X, you can instead wave around the red flag of argument Y and hope, usually correctly, that the resulting howls of mob outrage about argument Y drown out your lack of rational rebuttal to argument X. Another approach is to create a fiery language mode of ostracism around David to the point where no one feels safe engaging with him. If you can portray David as so crazy, so evil, so malevolent, so ridiculous, that to even engage with him is to give him more credibility than he deserves, then you can sink original thought in the foggy canyons of social aversion. This is not always an incorrect position, since such crazy people certainly exist, but it is invalid in the face of significant popularity. I do not spend any time rebutting the personal paranoias of inconsequential individuals, but when someone like Karl Marx remains so popular, he is prominent enough to deserve exposure and rebuttal.
[3:27:58] Here is another way you can avoid getting into the ring with a strong thinker. Find the least popular person who likes that thinker's arguments and then promote that unpopular person as a guilt-by-association representative. If David Duke retweeted you once, that means that you and David Duke are pretty much the same person. The beauty of this cowardly move is that you never have to apply it to the thinkers that you like, such as Barack Obama and his association with Louis Farrakhan. Exposing the personal hypocrisies of your opponents can also be a rich vein of avoidance mining. If Albert rails against government subsidies but once had a job at a company that took government subsidies, you can just point out that fact and think you have done something to dismantle Albert's arguments against government subsidies. As before, the beauty of this is that you never have to apply it to those you like. Karl Marx, while simultaneously railing against the exploitation of workers by bosses, impregnated his maid, then tossed her out into the street. This is not brought up by Marxists, of course, but any remote inconsistency on the part of their opponents is shot into people's eyeballs like reddish fireworks.
[3:29:16] Pointing out that someone has been wrong in the past can also be a good way of getting out of a potentially humiliating debate. Being wrong is a natural consequence of making arguments. To wait for perfection is to stagnate in perpetuity. Could we have gotten to Einsteinian physics without going through Newtonian physics? It is doubtful. Saying that someone is wrong now because he has been wrong in the past is like saying you can easily beat a world champion boxer because he once lost a fight in the past.
[3:29:51] Perhaps your intellectual opponent has an esoteric area of interest that has nothing to do with his current argument, which you can highlight with the goal of insulting his general competence. Sir Isaac Newton was obsessed with alchemy and mysticism. Is it not far easier to point that out than to learn and rebut his general mathematical and physical theories? Christopher Hitchens was ridiculously enamored of the child murderer, Che Guevara, but that has little relevance to Hitchens' argument against the existence of God. If Hitchens claims to be a good judge of character, this can certainly be brought up as a counterexample, but its scope should be limited to the argument at hand.
[3:30:36] Pointing out that a moralist has done something immoral does not necessarily invalidate that moralist's ethical theories. If a televangelist who rails against infidelity has an affair, this does not automatically invalidate all of his prior arguments against infidelity, especially since Christianity itself states that everyone is a sinner and temptation is everywhere. Dr. Benjamin Spock's grandson committed suicide. I have heard this fact used to support spanking since Dr. Spock disapproved of the practice. Not an argument. At an even baser level, you can use flattering photographs of intellectuals you like while using unflattering photographs of those you dislike. You can use positive adjectives to describe those who agree with you while using negative adjectives to describe those who oppose you. For example, I have been described in the mainstream media as a former IT worker. I co-founded and grew a successful software company like Steve Jobs, but I have never seen Steve Jobs referred to as a former IT worker.
[3:31:45] If you like a thinker, you can quote his admirers. If you dislike a thinker, you can quote his detractors. If you dislike a group of thinkers, you can create a label to describe them and then infuse that label with as many pejoratives as possible. For instance, you can call people part of the far-right, extreme-right, or alt-right and then hope, usually successfully, that people's internal autocorrect transforms these labels into the ideologically required fascist or nazi. You can label anyone who wishes to preserve his country's culture as far-right slash Nazi and then hope no one notices that Israel has a very strong desire to preserve its own culture, which means that in this insane formulation, Jews are in fact Nazis.
[3:32:34] You can also deride everyone on the left as a snowflake, even when leftists have powerful and legitimate criticisms of Western imperialism, traditional republican warmongering, and the military-industrial complex. You can also divide a group of thinkers into acceptable and unacceptable, and woo those you deem acceptable with favorable articles and attractive photographs in the hope, usually successful, that they will then start avoiding those you deem unacceptable. Bribing selected people with positive coverage is a great way of splitting a movement and turning it against itself. Another way to deplatform a thinker is to manufacture a hysterical controversy and then continually refer to that controversy in the future. Repetition sinks reputation and actual arguments are never addressed. This also serves as a standing threat against anyone who even dreams of taking a similar position. Inevitably, you will hear that my arguments are reductionist or simplistic or incomplete or that I have not addressed so-and-so's argument or that I have a bad reputation or that I am not a philosopher or that I avoid legitimate debates or I am disliked or I am grandiose or that I was wrong about something sometime or someone bad liked something I said once. You name it. The mud is thrown while only hitting the gullible and ignorant.
[3:33:58] Do not fall for the silly tricks. Do what I do. Just skim the article or speed up the audio and see whether any actual arguments are addressed. If not, just understand that the words are a foolish moat around a necessary treasure and that the writer or the speaker is a mere fool, full of sound and fury, whose life signifies nothing. But cowardice. Here end of the reading of my book, Essential Philosophy. My name, of course, is Stefan Molyneux. I'm the host of Free Domain. You can find this at freedomainradio.com. And if you've really liked this book, I really urge you, beg you really, to share the ideas, to share the content, to share the book itself. And also, it took a lot of effort to write, it took a lot of effort to record, and it took a lot of effort to proofread. please, please show your appreciation, show your trade a value for value at freedomainradio.com slash donate. Thank you, my friends, so much.
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