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Dec. 30, 2005 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:00:28
33 Arguments Against Morality - and the welfare state
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Well, good afternoon, everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
It is the 30th of December, and I did a podcast this morning, and I'm doing a podcast this afternoon.
My wife sees patients in her home, so I am banished from the home for a short period of time while she sees these patients, unless I want to lurk about upstairs in sort of complete silence, which, as you can imagine, is quite a strain for me.
So I'm going to do another podcast, which is to chat about an email that I received, which You know, if you don't like slightly testy podcasts, this may not be the one to listen to, because this guy really irritated me.
Which is, of course, not to say that he's wrong.
He may be perfectly right.
But I did find that his response to my argument for morality article, which was published on lewrockwell.com, and if you haven't read it, it may be worth reading it before you listen to this.
So he took a real swing at the argument from morality.
I mean, that's obviously... I have no problem with that.
I mean, I write these radical articles and put them out in the public domain, and I certainly don't mind.
In fact, I think it's wonderful that people take a real swing at it.
But, you know, I think that this gentleman, I'll call him Bob, I think that the problem, the reason that I find it irritating is that You know, Bob is sort of earnestly lecturing me on things that are so completely in the public domain that he would have to assume that I have come from some other sort of planet not to have been exposed to these things before.
So, for instance, he will say something like, you know, lots of people believe lots of different things, as if, you know, that's not something which anybody with half a brain is fully aware of.
And so, and there's also a lot of blind assertions and so on.
And, but the reason that I think this is worth chatting about is not because I want to sort of bludgeon this gentleman with my podcast, because I mean, unless he has a podcast, he, you know, he, he won't have much of an opportunity to respond except to me, but simply because I think that there's enough common errors in his email that it's worth exploring because, you know, if you decide to use the argument for morality, You may run into these kinds of objections as well.
So he starts off right away, says, Dear Stephan, To prove that principles of morality exist, one must first establish their identity, i.e., what they are, why we need them, and what they accomplish.
If one attempts to prove that the principles exist without first establishing what human purposes they actually serve, one attempts to prove a floating abstraction that lacks meaning or reality.
Well, I mean, those are quite a compressed chunk of sentences, two sentences that he's thrown together there.
And the issue that I have, of course, is that I did exactly define what principles of morality are.
They are universally preferred human behavior.
So why we need them and what they accomplish Well, you absolutely do not need to establish those when you are arguing for morality.
For instance, I'm saying that morality exists.
If morality does exist, then it must be universal to all people.
Otherwise, it's just an opinion.
You know, it's a I like Bach, you like Tchaikovsky situation, rather than, you know, we both are human beings with two arms and two legs.
So, if principles do exist, then they exist independently of one's opinions, or no such thing as morality exists at all, in which case nobody should attempt to argue for it.
And since I believe that morality does exist, my goal was to argue for the existence of a universal and absolute morality.
Now, the idea that we need to prove why we need morals, or what they accomplish, is simply not true.
I mean, and this is, you know, this comes from the kind of thinking which sort of looks at morality from the perspective of religion rather than of science.
So, for instance, you would never say, if you want to prove the existence of the principle of gravity, that we need to figure out what purpose gravity accomplishes, or, you know, why human beings need gravity.
I mean, it wouldn't make any sense, right?
Gravity exists independent of our need for it, or what purpose we might make of it.
Therefore, this sort of argument doesn't really make any sense.
And his second sentence, which says, if one attempts to prove that the principles exist without first establishing what human purposes they serve, you know, one attempts to prove a floating abstraction that lacks meaning or reality.
Well, I really am not sure what is meant by a floating abstraction that lacks meaning or reality.
But I think what he would be saying is something like, if you're an architect, you have to figure out what it is that you're going to build.
Otherwise, you're just going to create a mess that is of no use to anyone.
And, you know, of course, that makes sense if human beings were capable of constructing morality the way that an architect constructs a house.
But of course, if human beings can construct a morality for their purposes, the way that an architect constructs a house for the purposes of its occupants, well, then we're back to subjectivism, that everyone can build their own kind of house or morality, and there are no universal principles.
This is not a case of an architect designing a house.
When I'm talking about the argument for morality, this is more a case that if an architect is going to design a house, he needs to understand that there's such a thing as gravity and weather.
And if he doesn't, then there's going to be problems.
So I think that we're back in the realm of subjectivism here, and of course the argument that's saying, well, you know, if you If you try and prove morality this way, you're going to end up with a floating abstraction that lacks meaning or reality.
You know, that's sort of saying, like, Einstein was a poopoo head.
I mean, his theories were made of abstract, meaningless reality.
I mean, that's not an argument, right?
That's just a sort of description.
And then he goes on to say, it really isn't true that the most consistent moral rule is the most valid.
I've studied a fair amount of logic, lots of Aristotle, taken entire courses on philosophy, and I'm not sure I've ever seen described the it-really-isn't-true argument.
I mean, come on, people!
I put a heck of a lot of work into coming up with these arguments, which doesn't mean that they're correct, but it does mean that if you want to take me on, you've got to do just a little better than it-really-isn't-true.
If you put the word really in a sentence, it doesn't make it a more powerful argument.
So he says, it really isn't true that the most consistent moral rule is the most valid, which is of course something I argue for in the argument for morality.
Rather, it is true that for a principle to be true, it must be consistent.
There are lots of possible rules that could be consistently applied or acted on, but which can't be proven to exist as principles that every person ought to observe.
For example, the rule that everyone ought to nod once a day in the direction of Great Falls, Montana, could be consistently applied and enforced, but that doesn't make it an objective moral injunction.
Well, I mean, it's obviously very true that I could come up with a moral philosophy which says that everyone ought to nod once a day in the direction of Great Falls, Montana, and so on.
But, I mean, I guess this guy, Bob, didn't read my argument too closely.
Because the argument for universality of moral rules applies not to just all people, but to all times.
So before the founding of Great Falls, Montana, obviously nobody would have any clue about where to nod to, and therefore I'd have a tough time saying that Socrates was evil because he did not nod once a day in the direction of Great Falls, Montana.
You know, the problem with moral injunctions, or moral rules that you create, which are thou shalts, rather than thou shalt nots, is that thou shalt will automatically exclude everyone who has never heard of them.
Right?
So if you come up with some moral rule which says, nod once a day in the direction of Great Falls, Montana, well, what about people who don't speak English?
What about people who've never heard of your moral rule?
What about people who don't know where Great Falls, Montana is?
What about people who've got neck injuries?
What about people who are in a coma?
What about... I mean, it's all just so silly, it doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't take a lot of thought to figure out that this doesn't make any sense at all.
So, again, the people sort of make up these sort of mentally tricky things without any reference to reality.
And, of course, the basic fact is that there has never been a moral rule that anyone's come up with.
I guess, well, you could say, sorry, let me retract that, because that may be a bit overly aggressive, because the Muslims, you know, pray five times a day to Mecca.
But I don't think that even the most devout Muslim would say that somebody who has no idea where Mecca is and has never heard of Islam is bound by that moral rule.
So just making up a rule which everyone has to follow is not the same as identifying a universal moral absolute which is true for all people and at all times.
So I didn't consider that to be a particularly strong argument despite the fact that he used the word really like it really isn't true.
So here is a another argument which you may come across which I find irritating and somewhat condescending.
But it's still worth having a look at just because it's a pretty common argument.
So his next paragraph is, There is no good reason to use the scientific method, including empirical verification, to try to prove that moral principles exist.
Now this is similar to, it really isn't true.
If somebody says, there is no good reason to do X, forgive me for not finding that the most compelling logical argument in the world.
There is no good reason to do so.
I mean, what does that mean?
I don't know.
Is he taking apart any of my axioms?
Is he helping me, brother to brother, to understand where it is that I've gone wrong in my moral formulations?
No.
He's just saying there's no good reason.
The scientific method, he says, is appropriate for the physical sciences, but is inappropriate for intellectual pursuits revolving around the logic of choice, such as economics and ethics.
A lab experiment can isolate one variable to observe Measure and alter for the sake of the experiment.
However, in the case of human action, no lab experiments are possible, because there are too many variables to monitor and measure results.
Furthermore, the data under study in human action, the inherent logic of human choice, is not subject to cardinal measurement in contrast to the subject matter of the physical sciences.
Again, this is somebody who did not take the time to read the essay with any clarity or depth, and I'll sort of explain why.
There's sort of three main objections that I would have to this objection.
The first is that I explain within the article that moral philosophy is not subject to the same rigor as the physical sciences, and I give a variety of reasons as to why that is the case, but that it's more close to something like biology, right?
In physics, the rule that you come up with, like gravity, has to apply to all objects that have mass.
But in biology, you can create a classification called a horse, which is, you know, a four-legged quadruped with, you know, a certain length of hair thickness and certain facial features and so on.
And if a horse is born, but it still includes the fact that a horse can be born with two heads because you have mutations and so on.
And, you know, as a species can be considered to be in transition as they move from sort of one form of life to another, and all the stuff that Darwin talked about like 250 years ago.
And so I said that it's much closer to the science of biology, where you can still classify things as good and evil, but there are certain gray areas.
So for instance, when does somebody's IQ become low enough that they're no longer morally responsible for their actions?
Well, there's no exact number of brain cells wherein this occurs, so there absolutely are some gray areas in morality.
At what age does a child become morally responsible for his actions?
Well, there's no one day you wake up and you're now a completely, fully functioning moral agent, whereas the day before you weren't.
So there are grey areas, but that in no way invalidates the science of ethics.
I mean, it's not like, wow, a horse was born with two heads, now we have no idea what a horse is.
Does it have one head or two?
You know, biologists have no problem with this, and we generally have no problem with the fact that the science of biology exists.
And that animals change, you know, their natures as they evolve and so on.
So, you know, this is someone who doesn't read what is put in front of him and then has the temerity to create false arguments and also to create no rational arguments against it.
And you'll come across this a lot.
I mean, this is sort of an intellectual pomposity of a rather irritating kind.
As you may notice, it irritates me.
So let's sort of have a look at the second part of what it is.
The first part is that, I mean, I already conceded this point, so this is a straw man argument where he just sets up something I didn't say and knocks it down.
The second part is that the science of biology is a much closer approximation to the science of ethics.
The third part is, you know, there's no way to use the scientific method to to judge or classify intellectual pursuits, as he puts it, revolving around the logic of choice, such as economics and ethics.
Well, I got to tell you, I think that a lot of economists would disagree with you there, Bob, which is that they absolutely use empirical data.
They absolutely use choice theory, cause and effect, game theory.
They would not call themselves, you know, Dabblers in the mystic arts, they don't think of themselves as numerologists or palmologists or tarot card readers.
They think of themselves as trying to define the general patterns of human choice.
So, for instance, in economics, you know, people respond to incentives, a basic principle of economics.
Does that mean everybody responds to the same incentives?
Well, of course not.
But it does mean that people will respond to incentives.
And if it was as simple as everybody responded to the same incentives, there would be no need for science.
Um, the other thing too is that a lab experiment can isolate one variable, blah, blah, blah.
There's lots of different variables in human choice.
Well, gee, really?
I mean, I really had no idea that there were lots of variables in the realm of human choice because I've never met anybody who disagrees with me.
I mean, I think it's just, what does he think I've been doing?
What does this guy think that I've, I've, I've been in some libertarian think tank bubble under the earth for like 20 years?
Of course I understand that people disagree about ethics.
Why am I writing an article about the need to define objective and universal ethics, unless I'd sort of noticed that this wasn't, in fact, already defined and believed it.
And, you know, would he then switch on the weather channel and say, well, you know, you can't isolate all of the variables around weather, so now there's no such science as weather, and meteorology is a sham, and these people are voodoo practitioners and Satanists.
I mean, this is somebody who you know, has had a little learning, which is a very dangerous thing.
And, you know, he's sort of got some understanding of how the scientific method works, but he's only comfortable with that part of the scientific method, which deals with absolutes not involving human choice, and therefore everything else must be wrong, or sort of subpar.
You know, it's physics envy, which, you know, a lot of the softer sciences and the arts communities have.
And the last thing I'll say about this is You know, he says that there's no way really to measure the results of human experiments and there's lots of subjectivity and so on so on.
It's like, man, I mean, do people not have any clue about the history of the 20th century?
I mean, have they never heard of a little thing called communism and the absolutely universal results of every time it gets applied?
Have they never heard about anything called fascism and the universal results of everything that gets applied when that system gets put in place?
Have they never detected that there's a pattern between any of these things?
If every single time a communist society is tried, it results in mass murder, death, slaughter, starvation, and every single time the free market is put in place, that it results in a vast increase in human wealth and freedom?
I mean, do they think that this is just random?
Do they think that there's absolutely no reasons behind the fact that you get diametrically opposite results when you apply different criteria?
Do they still think that everything's just subjective?
Oh, it drives me crazy!
All right, so let's have a look at this next paragraph just before I go into complete cardiac override.
Your idea that any argument made against the existence of moral principles or preferred behavior is self-refuting fails.
And, of course, all you have to do is say that it fails and magically it all comes down.
I try this with traffic.
You know, I think the traffic is clear ahead of me and I just hit the gas.
I can argue that there is no preferred behavior that should be followed by everyone and so that whatever people choose is okay.
This argument doesn't contradict itself.
It simply denies that one rule fits everyone, or that such rules exist.
I don't claim this argument is correct, only that it doesn't contradict elements built into its premise.
Really?
Well, of course, I dealt with this argument in the article, and it's about as old as the hills.
I mean, people were talking... Democritus was, I think, one of the first people to come up with the argument against this, right?
So, if he argues that there is no preferred behavior that should be followed by everyone, right?
Then is he not saying that people who have the opposite argument are wrong?
Right?
So if he says, Bob says, there is no preferred behavior that should be followed by everyone.
Whatever people choose is okay.
Well, what about people who choose to impose their choices on other people?
Then they're no longer allowing those other people to choose for themselves.
So if everybody can have their own free choice and everything is just whatever people want it to be, Well, what if my free choice is to lock you up in my basement and have you feed me bonbons for the rest of my life?
Is that okay?
Well, of course not, because he's just said that everyone should be free to choose for themselves, and maybe everybody's morality is whatever they want.
But, I mean, that's simply not the case, and this is the oldest argument.
I mean, anybody who's read any philosophy has come across this one on day two.
It's like the argument from relativism, right?
Everything is fine, everything is relative.
Well, first of all, you've created an absolute rule which says that everything is relative, so you've already contradicted yourself there.
And secondly, of course, if everything is relative, if all value systems are equal, what about those value systems that do their best to snuff out other value systems?
Those value systems must be wrong then.
So, I mean, this is just somebody who, you know, there's a sort of, for me, I mean, there's a kind of pomposity, like he feels like he's lecturing me in the basics when he hasn't really thought through much at all.
So, let's have a look at his next paragraph.
The argument that life requires certain preferred behavior Behaviors is true.
See, now he says that it is true, which, you know, is nice.
It's nice that I've actually managed to come up with something that he approves of.
It is true, but that fact does not prove the validity of the proposition that living beings ought to perform the behaviors necessary for their continued existence as living beings.
The fact that a being is alive demonstrates that the being has in fact performed certain actions necessary to the sustenance of living.
However, recognizing that fact does not prove Well, I mean, of course.
I mean, that's absolutely true.
I mean, there's no rule which says you have to live, and we're fairly aware of that because everybody's heard of the word suicide.
So, again, Bob is sort of dealing with me as if I'm some sort of idiot child who has never had any contact with human society or heard of any empirical evidence against
My position in the paper on the argument for morality is not to say that human beings ought to live, simply that every human being who argues with you has followed preferred behaviors in order to be able to argue with you.
I mean, assuming that they are not dead of starvation and have come back from the grave to tell you that there's no such thing as preferred behaviors, which is an argument I would sort of believe.
then they have no right to tell you that there's no such thing as preferred behaviors when they have already followed preferred behaviors to be in the position to argue with you, which is the point that I think I make fairly clearly in the paper, but it doesn't seem to have sort of hit him square on or even obliquely, I guess you could say.
So, of course, there's absolutely no reason why you should get up tomorrow and have breakfast, but if you don't, I don't have to worry about you arguing with me, because you're not going to be around for very long.
So if you are around, if Bob here is going to argue with me, then he obviously believes that there are certain things as preferred behaviors and has followed them.
And the first part of my article was simply to prove that universally preferred behaviors do exist.
I didn't say that people ought to follow them.
You know, as I sort of mentioned very early in the article, the argument for morality, or the argument for universal morality, is just exactly the same as the argument for the scientific method.
You don't have to follow the scientific method.
But you can't come up with any universal absolutes or any sort of accurate descriptions of matter unless you do.
You certainly can't claim that you're a scientist if you don't follow the scientific method.
The scientific method is completely optional, and following preferred behaviors are completely optional, but it doesn't mean that they don't exist as an objective way to validate information.
So I'm going to skip over his brackets and go to his next argument.
The fact that one is alive proves that one has achieved certain minimal requirements for staying alive.
Always makes me want to break into song, doesn't it?
But it isn't obvious that it follows that one ought to live peacefully or productively or honestly from this fact.
People have big disagreements about what choices are appropriate to living, e.g.
from communism to free markets.
A thief could argue that thievery is good for buying good stuff and fine behavior if one is good at it.
Good enough not to get caught.
The fact that he's alive and steals sometimes doesn't prove much about the source and nature of moral values.
Oh, Lordy.
Well, of course I talk about property rights within the article on the argument for morality and talk about how the reason that a thief is wrong when he steals
It's not that he's wrong in that he steals, or that, you know, some thunderbolt is going to blow him up if he steals, but he certainly can't claim that he's right to steal, or that he has any moral right to steal, because he's a human being, just like the person that he's stealing from, and if he's stealing, then he assumes that he's going to be able to keep the product of what he steals, right?
So if he comes and steals my car, he's going to assume he's only going to do it because he's going to keep My car, even if it's just to sell it to someone else, or joyride it for 20 minutes.
If the moment that he stole my car, somebody else stole it from him, well, he wouldn't even bother.
So any theory which approves of theft is both simultaneously affirming and denying property rights at the same moment.
So the guy who's stealing my car says, I have a right to your car because I have a right to that which I steal, or whatever, or that which I possess.
But I already possess it.
So he's saying that I don't have any property rights.
At the same time, is he saying he does have property rights?
Well, we're both human beings, and it's even in the same moment.
So any theory which approves of stealing can't resolve that contradiction between the simultaneous affirmation and denial of property rights, and that was my argument.
So I don't know what he's talking about.
Like, a thief could argue that thievery is good for buying good stuff, and of course he could, but that's not a moral theory, right?
Saying that I like Lamborghinis, so I'm going to steal one is not a moral theory.
That's just a statement of preference, right?
You know, me saying that I want my particular sports team to win is a statement of preference.
Me saying that it's a moral absolute for my sports team to win is a statement of insanity, if you knew anything about Toronto sports teams.
So, you know, this is the old argument, and, you know, I don't claim to be... I think that the argument that I've come up with about property rights is pretty original, but I certainly don't claim any originality in, you know, dealing with the problem of people saying, well, people do bad stuff, therefore morality doesn't exist.
Which is like saying, people are irrational, therefore rationality doesn't exist.
Some people don't follow the scientific method, therefore the scientific method doesn't exist, which is all just nonsense, and stuff that I completely deal with in the paper.
So let's chug along.
I hope this is helpful to you.
I found this quite helpful, not only because I found it irritating, which is usually good.
It doesn't mean that this guy's wrong.
He could be completely right, you know, when he started.
The irritation is important for me, and the fact that I was irritated is why I wanted to share it with you.
Not because my irritation is so much fun, but just because, you know, these are sort of wearying old arguments that anybody who's talked about this stuff at any depth, or for any length of time, has heard a million times before.
But boy, oh boy, don't people present it like it's just some sort of breathless new thing that you've never heard before.
So, his next paragraph.
The fact that most people believe that moral values exist.
makes the subject worthy of investigation.
Well, that's very nice of him, don't you think?
But it doesn't prove that moral values exist.
Most people believe that some forms of violence or coercion are good, but they are mistaken.
The fact that most people believe implicitly that man has volition is also interesting, and is somewhat more persuasive as evidence of the existence of volition because they each possess first-hand information and experience in their lives and mental processes.
However, proving moral values doesn't follow from the fact that I feel that doing this or that is good, since different people feel that very different values are objectively good.
And again, this is someone who didn't take the time to read the essay, but has no problem pompously lecturing me about self-evident and obvious moral problems.
So, of course, in the article I point out That just because morality is optional does not mean that it is subjective.
As I said before, the scientific method is also optional.
Optional does not mean that it is subjective.
So the fact that most people believe that moral values exist, he says, makes the subject worthy of investigation, but doesn't prove that moral values exist.
And, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that that alone proves it.
But I would say that it's pretty strong evidence, because every time you talk to anyone, you will very quickly find out that they have moral values that they believe in.
So, so far, I think that we're in complete agreement it doesn't prove it, which is why it's only one of, I think, seven arguments that I put forward for universal morality.
Most people believe, he says, that some form of violence or coercion are good, but they are mistaken.
I really have trouble with the logical leap here, because it's just absolutely not there, right?
So he's saying that people believe that moral values exist, which is, you know, do moral values exist?
Does objective morality exist?
Yes or no?
And he says most people believe it, so yes.
But then he says most people believe that some forms of violence are good, but they're mistaken.
Well, that doesn't have anything to do with whether moral values exist, right?
The fact that people have different beliefs about what constitute moral values is absolutely true.
I mean, again, to be lectured on that people believe different things is insulting.
But the question is not, what are moral values?
The question is, do moral values exist, right?
The question is not that complicated in the essay that I'm working on.
And I do give some examples, I know, because that was kind of fun.
But I was simply trying to prove the existence of moral values, and I deal with the issue of subjectivity.
So the fact that people don't believe in the same moral values all over the world doesn't have anything to do with whether or not preferential behavior exists.
And of course, the problem that he has with these two sentences as well is, first of all, he's saying it doesn't prove that moral values exist.
And then the second example, or the example that he gives, is most people believe some forms of violence is good, but they're mistaken.
So, you know, So he's saying moral values don't exist because some people use moral values to justify violence.
Well, that just means that they're agreeing that moral values exist, they just have a different definition.
Which sort of proves my point, not his.
The fact that most people believe, okay, the free will thing, I mean, it's very nice for him to say that it's somewhat more persuasive.
And again, I don't know about any logical category of argument that includes the phrase somewhat more persuasive.
As the clincher, like he gets to determine it without having to prove anything.
It must be nice to just be able to type stuff and have it come true right before your eyes.
Proving moral values, he says, doesn't follow from the fact that I feel that doing this or that is good, since different people feel that very different values are objectively good.
Again, really?
Do you think I don't know that?
Of course, I'm not talking about feelings here.
I'm talking about empirical rationality.
Feelings are all well and good, and I've got to tell you that I love the feeling I get when I eat a nice piece of cheesecake.
But, of course, people feel different things.
That doesn't matter, right?
Some people feel that, you know, there's a god.
Some people feel that there isn't.
I mean, that doesn't mean anything.
Some people feel that blacks are inferior.
Some people feel that blacks are better dancers.
I mean, what the heck does any of that mean?
It doesn't mean anything until you get empirical proof, which is what the whole purpose of rationality and empirical verification is all about.
So, you know, for him to tell me that people believe different things throughout the world is...
Not an argument against what I've been talking about, which is, does something called objectively preferred behaviors exist?
Choices may be almost infinite, he says, and the choices of many people overlap.
But the choices of many other people also conflict, indicating conflicting ethical outlooks.
So he seems to be putting a lot of effort into here, into proving to me that people have different ethical outlooks.
Like I've just never read the paper or talked to another human being.
Since the purpose of moral philosophy is to prove and explain the differences between good and bad, and since people obviously embrace conflicting ideas about what constitutes the good or the bad, the act of choice doesn't imply anything that is clear about the nature of the good or bad.
That requires proof.
I'm not exactly sure what he's talking about here, and it's sort of interesting that a guy who uses sort of bland assertions like somewhat more persuasive or it really is true says to me that requires proof.
But I think what he's saying is that I'm sort of saying that people have lots of choices and most people will make similar choices like get up and eat food and go to sleep and, you know, try and keep their kids alive through the acts of feeding them and so on.
And that, you know, that's sort of an example of how human beings throughout the world do act in behaviors that they themselves prefer.
I could do anything at the moment.
I could be, like, learning how to jump rope.
I could be parachuting.
I could be, you know, punching in my foot with a ball-peen hammer if I wanted.
But what I'm choosing to do is to do a podcast about this email, and that indicates that that is my highest value at the moment.
That is my preferred behavior.
And if I choose to drive this car off a cliff tomorrow, then I've acted against my life or whatever, but that still is an indication that that is my preferred behavior.
So given that human beings have a near infinite number of choices, and that every choice that you make is a choice that you make in exclusion of all others.
It must be the one that you have preferred to do.
That was sort of my argument.
And he's saying that that doesn't imply anything clear about the nature of the good or the bad, which is entirely true.
I mean, of course, all I'm simply trying to prove is that preferred choice exists, not what its nature is.
So let's have a look at his next argument.
And this one I think is just entirely contradictory.
But again, this is something that if you deal with people who are big fans of Ayn Rand, Then you're going to have to come up against this.
So he says, I'm not sure about your fifth argument, which is an argument from biology.
The argument from biology is simply saying that the most successful, generally life prefers to live and life prefers to dominate other life forms, which is the basic Darwinian argument.
And therefore, you know, given that human beings are kind of the most successful species and that our brain is our most distinctive organ, that the brain has been self-selected.
to be the organ endowed with the greatest capacity to follow preferred behavior, and the preferred behavior being the sort of flourishing of life.
So given that the organ has developed to most effectively make choices for preferred behavior biologically, we can't then say that preferred choices don't exist.
So he says, I'm not sure about that argument.
However, the fact that man evolved with the capacity to think doesn't clearly prove that man ought to seek moral values.
Why should man continue as the most successful species?
Indeed, why should man live?
I mean, I really don't know what to say with these kinds of arguments.
They're just so ridiculously hypocritical.
I don't even know what, you know, I assumed that he had breakfast or lunch before typing me this long email about why should man live.
And of course, even if that were a debate that I was interested in getting into, which I consider to be an intellectual wank job of the first order, That's not my argument, right?
My argument is that, not that man ought to do something, that's down the road.
My argument is that there is such a thing as preferred behavior.
There is such a thing as, you know, a choice that human beings prefer over other choices.
It doesn't mean that every human being has to choose that, right?
It just means that there is such a thing as preferred choice.
Like, there is such a thing as a horse, that doesn't mean that every single horse has to look exactly the same.
It just means that there are categories, right?
In general, human beings tend to not be violent, unless they're cornered or coerced or paid by the state.
Human beings tend, in general, to respond to incentives in an economic sense.
Human beings, in general, tend to feed their children.
It doesn't mean that there aren't people who don't, just as there are horses born with two heads.
But it does mean that, in general, there are such things as preferred behavior that we see in the world.
And it also means that You know, we are successful because we have developed an organ which is really great at making the best choices, you know, for the success of the species.
That doesn't mean that human beings should be successful.
It just means that they are.
I'm just working with an empirical fact here.
And so, you know, why should man continue as the most successful species?
I really don't know.
I didn't sort of make up the realm of biology.
I didn't sort of...
You know, I'm not someone who's going to try and out-Darwin Darwin and come up with some other theory about there's some moral absolute that species should survive.
They just kind of want to.
So I don't really know what to say about that.
Indeed, why should man live?
You know, I'd assume that.
I'm sorry that this guy is no longer around because it would be interesting to hear his feedback on this.
But I guess he gave up eating and breathing because, you know, why should man live?
And if he didn't, then, you know, stop pestering me with these stupid questions.
Now, then he gets into, and I do get a lot of this, and this is not a sort of moral or intellectual argument, this is just something that I get a lot of.
Maybe you do too if you're a libertarian.
You get the well-meaning list of bibliographies, and I find that... I mean, I certainly don't mind that if somebody's taken a good swing at my arguments, or has sort of shown me where I'm wrong, which is what I want the most.
Like when I open an email that says, you know, Steph, you're wrong.
What I really want is for somebody to, you know, prove that I'm wrong.
I mean, I don't want to be... I don't want to be believing in something that's not true.
I mean, help me out here, brothers and sisters.
Tell me where I'm wrong.
I want to know.
But, you know, what I get is a bunch of strawman arguments and a bunch of people patiently explaining to me that 2 plus 2 equals 4.
And then what I often get is the well-meaning and condescending bibliography.
You know, like, Well, you know, for a confused amateur, I wouldn't say that you've done a bad job in general of, you know, taking a swing at some of these issues.
However, you might want to read, you know, Mr. Jones's Philosophy 101.
It's in big print, therefore it shouldn't be too taxing for you.
So this guy, you know, says you might want to, you know, read this.
It's not very long and, you know, it shouldn't be too difficult for you, that kind of stuff.
You know, that sort of stuff's just insulting.
I mean, I'm more than happy to read books that people recommend if they've actually addressed my issues, right?
But if this guy, for instance, has completely misconstrued everything that I'm talking about, and set up all these strawman condescending arguments, and sat down impatiently and slowly explained to me that 2 plus 2 is 4, and not too quickly so that my poor little brain can follow, then for him to give me a list of basic reading in the field, I gotta tell ya,
It's not the best way to approach somebody intellectually, especially when it's somebody who I think you can judge from my articles and my podcasts that I've spent, you know, some degree of time thinking about this stuff and arguing about this stuff.
And, you know, I have been a very successful debater in university, and I have done some pretty significant and deep work on history.
I have a master's degree in history, mostly focusing on the history of philosophy.
And again, you know, I'm not saying everybody with a master's degree, you know, has the answer for everything.
And there are people out there, doubtless, who have PhDs who've studied more than I have.
But, you know, please don't treat an unfamiliar argument as if, you know, it doesn't fit into the mental box.
And therefore, it's just not worthy of any examination.
And you just need to sort of send someone off to some basic text so that they can correct their thinking.
I mean, I've sort of faced this people having this sort of shock over my intellectual hubris.
What?
You were taking on the problem of the ages?
Like the proof of universal morality?
It's like, well, yeah, why not?
Why not?
I mean, why not go for the ring?
Why not go for the biggest prize in philosophy, which is the proof of universal morality?
I mean, why play a small game?
Why go for something little and petty?
I mean, I'm sort of reminded that when I was doing my master's thesis, Which I sort of mentioned before as it was, you know, 2,000 years of intellectual history in an attempt to categorize every major Western philosopher.
You know, I was sort of sitting down with some of the people that I went to do my master's with, and we were talking about our theses.
Theses.
That rhymes with feces, doesn't it?
And, you know, I remember there was this... I can't remember what everyone's thesis was.
This is, I don't know, 12 years ago now, but You know, people were sort of going over what their thesis was and, you know, one woman was, you know, while I'm studying the spread of a certain kind of sheep in a certain province in France in the 13th century or something, and I just thought, oh man, what evil fairy gave you that curse when you signed up for this program?
I mean, what a completely useless waste of a year of precious time in your life.
And, you know, someone else was doing some other, you know, Well, you know, there's this certain monk in Italy whose works have remained relatively untranslated, and I wanted to do an examination of, you know, how his belief grew over a two-year span.
I mean, you know, just stuff where it's just like, oh my god, the minutiae, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna claustrophobically suffocate in these tiny little mental boxes.
And so, of course, you know, eventually they knew that I was the sort of loudmouth intellectual of the group.
And so they turned and said, Well, what are you working on?
And I said, Well, I'm, you know, I'm trying to categorize all major Western philosophers into two camps, those who, who believe in what I'm going to call suprasensualism, which is a belief that there's a reality that exists over and above the senses.
And I'm going to prove that those people have to argue for dictatorships.
And I'm going to prove that empirical philosophers have to argue for limited or democratic capitalism, limited democracy or democratic capitalism.
So of course, you know, you get the usual sort of vaguely offended and resentful silence around the table because, you know, people are like, Oh, come on, where do you get the stones to do that?
And, you know, for me, it's like, isn't that sort of more fun?
You know, wouldn't you want to solve the biggest issues?
Wouldn't you want to take a swing at the biggest issues you could find?
I mean, you know, it is that phrase in business, or maybe it came from sports, you know, which is go big or go home, you know, and I sort of, I feel very strongly about that.
You know, let's take on the big issues.
You know, I had a friend of mine who was doing some work in the States.
He's an economist, and I mean, I'm sure a very good one.
And he was doing some work in, I think this was part of his graduate work, but I can't remember what level.
And his basic approach was to say, well, you know, when you have a court case that's going on where damages are put in place, So, you know, I sue some company for slipping on their sidewalk or whatever.
If that company, if their head office is out of state, then the awards are generally higher than they are if the company is located in the state, right?
So, you know, there are lots of reasons for this, which I'm sure you can figure out on your own, but that was what he spent, you know, some considerable chunk of time working on.
And I didn't say it at the time because I used to be a lot more conciliatory, but Part of me was saying, dude, what are you wasting your time on?
What does that conceivably matter?
Of course we know that people would rather screw people financially who aren't as close, and we know that a political system is going to award higher damages to out-of-state companies, because it doesn't hurt the voters as much.
People aren't going to get laid off in their own state and get their hands on all that loot through taxation and so on.
I mean, that's something you can figure out just by thinking about it for like 20 seconds.
And, you know, I mean, I can understand why he did it, because it's not much of a thesis to write this down.
This is a sort of self-evident thing.
So, you know, he got out his Mathematica program and worked all the way through the math, because this is something that you can objectively measure, right?
You can measure the awards of settlements.
You can measure the proximity of head office to the court system of a company that's being sued and so on.
And you can come up with all these tasty little correlations about these things.
And, you know, I mean, maybe I'm just too grandiose, but it just seems to me like, why would you waste your time on that?
Why wouldn't you just go for the ring?
You know, why wouldn't you do something like come up with a mathematical proof about how state violence grows until, or let's say the forcible transfer of income grows until the state collapses?
I mean, now that would be a tasty topic to work on.
I mean, if I had mathematical abilities that were more than just calculating the check on a restaurant bill, I would take a stab at it myself.
But that, to me, would be a tasty topic to work on.
I also emailed the same gentleman, I don't know, a couple of years later, when I sort of was tooling around with the idea, which is on one of my Traffic Jam podcasts, about how one of the reasons why the free market gets so these the stock market gets so corrupted is all of this money gets herded into the stock market through all these government about how one of the reasons why the free market gets
Like, you know, you got to put your 401k or RSP savings together, and they all get invested, and you've got to give your money to the government for old age pensions, which it also invests, and you've got an employment insurance, which it also invests.
If you're part of a union, you have another pension where you also have to invest your money in the stock market.
So basically, all your money gets grabbed at the point of a gun, and you're forced to invest it in the stock market, which turns everyone into sort of blind speculators.
And, you know, that's very good for people who know the stock market and can manipulate it, but it's not so good for everybody else who just, you know, is going to end up losing everything, right?
Because, you know, when the current economic system collapses, the stocks are going to go with it, just as they did in the Weimar Republic, and you're going to end up with some nice printout on some old paper rather than any actual resources.
And so I talked about this with him, and I thought, I was pretty excited, because, you know, he was an economist, and I thought, what an interesting topic to work on.
I mean, this is stuff that you could really Verify, right?
You could chart, you know, it's pretty easy to measure how much money goes into the stock market through coercive legislation.
Not down to the dollar, but, you know, certainly down to the ten billion dollar.
And you could then correlate that and say, well, you know, to what degree does executive compensation rise with the influx of money into the stock market through coercive legislation?
To what degree have companies reoriented themselves to quarter-by-quarter results?
You know, which is, you could measure objectively by How much does a stock price get punished by missing a particular quarter's result?
Has that increased as more money has flowed into the stock market?
I mean, there's lots of ways that you could measure this.
Has the incidences of corruption gone up since more and more money has herded into the stock market?
I mean, these are all things that are objectively measurable and would produce a pretty powerful result, right?
Which is that you could get economists to understand And perhaps communicate more readily that one of the major problems with the stock market at the moment is not anything to do with problems in the free market, but rather to do with coercive legislation that forces everyone to speculate and to be involved in the stock market, whether they want to or not, and whether they understand it or not.
And, you know, his response to this was, you know, basically, well, you know, this was during the stock market boom of the 90s.
And he said, well, you know, people are just kind of greedy.
And he sort of left it at that, which, you know, I mean, I thought that the idea deserved a bit more merit than that, but I mean, you certainly can't force anyone to take interest in what you say.
But I did think that, um, it certainly seemed to me an idea that would have a little bit more impact than, you know, does a court system pay more damages to against out-of-state defendants?
Uh, which, you know, to me is, you know, self-evident and who cares?
And to me, you know, sort of to, to, to polish this, this up a little or polish this off a little, That, to me, is one of the great powers of the argument for morality.
You know, as I sort of mentioned in my article, you know, it doesn't require all of this gruesomely detailed technical knowledge about things like, you know, health care and the stock market and legislation and tariffs and all this, that, and the other.
You can really have pretty quick and efficient arguments with people when you're using basic principles and when you're using the argument for morality.
So, you know, for instance, you know, I mean, I'll just sort of give you an example that I don't know, I may or may not write up, but I think it's pretty self-evident.
I've got one on Lou Rockwell at the moment about health care.
But this would be sort of how I would approach somebody to talk about something like welfare.
So people say, well, you know, people have the right to a guaranteed minimal income.
And I would say, okay, well, is that, is that your opinion?
Like it would be nice if everybody made a certain amount of money?
Or is that an objective and empirical absolute fact?
And, you know, if the person says, well, that's just my opinion, and I'd be like, sure, it would be great if nobody got cancer.
And, you know, what else would it be great for you if, you know, be great if, you know, if I had a full head of hair back, you know, whatever you want to come up with.
You know, we can just sit around trading wish lists if we want.
It's, you know, sort of vaguely interesting, but, you know, ultimately sort of pointless, I guess you could say.
You know what that old proverb, if beggars, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
I've always loved that.
But if the person comes back and says, you know, well, it's an absolute fact that everybody has the right to a certain minimal income, right?
Well, that's fine.
Then you say, okay, so what you're saying is that every single human being has the right to a certain amount of money and that obviously other people have to provide that money if they don't meet that.
Let's just say it's $10,000 a year or whatever, right?
So if you make $10,001 a year, then you have no right to steal other people's money or to take other people's money by force, but then if you do drop down to, you know, $10,000 or whatever, then you absolutely have the moral right to take other people's money by force if necessary to sustain your income.
And they say, well, yes.
Okay, then I would simply say, okay, but what's the difference?
Right?
I mean, you have a universal rule, which you're trying to apply to all people.
Would you say that it has to be true for all people?
Well, yes.
It's like, well, yes, but it's not true for all people.
You know, I mean, the moral rule is you have the right, not that you have the right to an income, because that's just a description of what the effect is.
The moral rule, you're saying, is people have the right to take other people's money, and yet some people do and some people don't, right?
You can't just sort of say if they have $10,000 or whatever, right?
Because that's just making up a rule, right?
And if that, you know, what do you do with inflation next year?
And, you know, why is $10,000 the magic number?
I mean, none of that can be objectively defined.
So, you know, if you're trying to create a universal moral rule, then it has to be applicable to everybody, right?
Otherwise, it's just an opinion.
I think it would be fine if people who made a certain amount of money could steal money from other people to make up the difference.
But if you're saying it's a universal moral absolute, then it has to be true for all people at all times.
I mean, you can't just sort of make up your own rule and sort of put an arbitrary distinction in it.
I mean, you can, but then it changes it from an absolute to an opinion, right?
Like, you can't say that, if you want to say that there's a universal absolute truth around physics, right, you can't sort of say, well, you know, a rock over here will fall up and a rock over there will fall down.
Then, you know, it's simply not, it's just not true, right?
Because it's not universal.
So then the person then has to say, That, you know, that there is some sort of substantial moral difference.
They have to prove that there's a substantial difference between somebody who's making $10,000 a year and therefore, you know, so let's say $9,000 a year and therefore has the right to steal $1,000 to sort of top up his income.
That there's an absolute moral difference or an absolute quantitative difference or biological difference between that person and the person who's making $11,000 a year who we assume must now give up His money in order to top up the other guy.
So they both end up making $10,000.
And, you know, of course there is no difference, right?
Because, you know, one person, you know, can take his $11,000 and he can go and blow $1,000 at the racetrack.
And that night he goes to bed without the right to steal money from other people.
Whereas that, you know, that day he had the, sorry, without the right, without the obligation to give money to poorer people.
Whereas, you know, before he went to the racetrack, he owed $1,000, he blew the $1,000, and now he doesn't.
So it really doesn't make any sense.
His nature hasn't changed, just his circumstances have changed.
So, you know, unless somebody can come up with an objective sort of almost different species definition of what it means to have different levels of money, then they can't come up with a moral rule that says everyone has the right to take money, you know, if they have a certain amount of money, or not.
Now the second thing is, but even if you concede that point, let's say, yes brother, let's forget that little objection and we'll say that sure, people do have the right to top up their income to $10,000 if they make less and they have the obligation to give that money to people who make, if they make more than $10,000 they have the right, the obligation to give money to people to top them up.
Well, that's well and good, right?
If it's a universal moral right, then everybody has the right to do that, right?
So, if you believe that, then if I... I mean, if I have a friend... I mean, and this is something that's a very interesting approach, because this is what is meant by universal morality.
Then, if I have a friend who I know is a grad student and he only makes $6,000 a year, Then I'm going to tell him to come to your house tomorrow because you're going to write him a check for $4,000, right?
Because you were going to assume that this guy makes more than, I don't know, $10,000 a year.
Can I tell him to do that?
Well, no, right?
It's like, oh, because I know lots of people who make less than $10,000 a year, so I can just have them go to your house and have you write a check for them, right?
Generally, people don't like that very much, and that you will get a certain amount of irritated looks.
Because you're actually taking a form of pompous moral pontification and turning it into something that people actually have to live with, which is where a lot of people's morals tend to get a little bit more clear.
Right?
So then you'd say, well, why not?
Right?
You're saying this is a universal moral absolute, that people have a right to a certain income.
And therefore, they have the right to come and take that from you.
Right?
Because your participation is actually not required.
I mean, I can go to say to my friend, look, you go and tell some local You know, some local gang of thugs who's making not very much money.
And, you know, I'm sure they'll tell you the truth because everybody does tell the truth about how much money they make.
And so these people can come to your house and demand the money from you because they're making less than you are.
You know, they're making, let's say, you know, there's some kid in high school or some kid who's, you know, 19 years old who's on welfare in Toronto, which only is going to get you about $7,000 a month.
So he can come to your house, and as many of these people as want, can come to your house and get from you the $3,000.
And if you don't want them to, too bad, right?
They have the right to it.
It is a debt that you owe them.
And therefore they can use whatever means necessary to collect that debt, right?
They can, you know, come and steal your car, they can invade your home, they can take your jewelry, they can whatever, right?
And of course, you know, people then say, well, I don't think that's how it should work.
And of course, but that's not the issue on the table, right?
That's not the question that's on the table.
The question that's on the table is, do people have an absolute moral right to a minimal income, right?
I mean, the question isn't, how does it work?
That doesn't matter.
The question is, do people have the right to it at all?
So then the person would get all weaselly and say, you know, they'll just start to get all pathetic, right?
And they'll be like, well, you know, it's the government that should run it and this and that.
It's like, no, that's not what you said though, right?
What you said What you said, in fact, was that everybody has the right to this income.
Therefore, everybody has the right to collect it.
Right?
You're not talking about the government should do this and the government should transfer the money and so on because then you're not saying that everyone has the right to it.
Right?
You're saying that the policemen and some bureaucrats have the right to do it on behalf of others.
Right?
But the bureaucrats themselves are collecting the money and paying themselves and they're making a lot more
than $10,000 a year and therefore you know you're sort of stealing from people who are making $12,000 a year and you know paying bureaucrats who are making $50,000 a year to pay cops who are making $60,000 a year to go and steal money from other people making $15,000 a year and so you're now no longer saying that everyone has the right to it you're saying that a small number of people have the right to transfer money as they see fit you know when they're wearing a certain uniform and you know it's all starting to get
You know, rather silly and rather foolish.
So of course it turns out not to be a universal human right at all.
You know, at all!
You know, it turns out that, you know, if you're a cop in a democracy where people have voted for it and it's been passed by the legislation and it's while you're on duty and you're wearing a uniform and somebody hasn't paid then you can go to their house and you can use a gun and then that money has to go to the government.
But what if the government uses that money to borrow more money And therefore you end up with a system of debt.
Well, you've got to have a special account.
I mean, you end up with like, I mean, it's this sort of universal moral rules, like everyone has the right to a certain income, then just become so ridiculously convoluted and complex that, you know, it all sounds fine when you just talk about it, like it's some absolute, but the moment that you start to break it down into, you know, what, what does it mean to have an absolute moral right?
Even if you accept That, you know, the fact that somebody making $11,000 is somehow morally, quantitatively different than someone making $9,000, even if you accept that, right, the implementation then, it becomes absolutely impossible.
I mean, unless you do come across someone, I've never come across them, right, where they say, you know, yeah, you send that roughneck gang over and I'll top them up until they make as much as I do.
I would respect someone like that.
I gotta tell you, the vision that I have of most people who claim to understand morality, or to talk about universal morality, or against it, you know, they're like a bunch of people who are sort of running around a hospital in lab coats, carrying a clipboard, and, you know, running along with a determined look on their face, and then the moment that somebody says, Doctor, I need a diagnosis, they get all huffy.
Because, you know, all they're doing is claiming the appearance of morality, or of moral understanding, without actually having any knowledge to back it up.
So, you know, the fact that when you question people about the moral absolutes that they put forward that they tend to get kind of offended and, you know, and condescending and, you know, they'll use all of these emotional tricks to scare you off is something that was, you know, of course, well known to Socrates back in the dawn of philosophy.
So, you know, don't be scared off by anybody when you start to pose these questions to them and they get irritated, you know, then just sort of point out that maybe they should figure these things out a little bit more before they start telling people.
Either that there is, you know, such a thing as right and wrong and here's what they are, or there is not such a thing as right and wrong and everything's subjective.
Because these are not, as I've mentioned before, these are not things to fool around with.
These are very, very serious and deadly, if handled incorrectly.
Deadly issues, right?
What is defined as right and wrong is the heart and soul and justification for violence of human society.
So, you know, you really better know what the hell you're doing before you start mucking about with talking about right and wrong and its presence or absence in human life.
So, well, thanks very much for listening.
I hope that you have a great day, and I will probably get a chance to chat with you again before New Year's.
And if not, have a great New Year's as well.
All the best.
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