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May 31, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
44:30
260 Moral Objectivity
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Time Text
Good afternoon, people.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It's 31 minutes past 5 on May the 31st, 2006.
Yes, there was in fact no date this morning on the podcast.
It's not because I got the date wrong and had to cut it out.
No, no, no. Why are you looking at me that way?
Stop staring. Blink, blink, damn it!
So, hope you're doing well.
I am driving through a rather spectacular thunderstorm at the moment with nice juicy lashes of forked lightning and so on.
So, if you hear this in the background, you'll know that I am in fact thinking so hard that I am making the thunder!
So, we're going to talk about morality, which was the topic from this morning that I didn't quite get to, but I will get to it now because we're not even going to take a pause.
Here we go. Now, this comes from a debate in the board where I kind of thought we had the whole morality thing down, but obviously I had not done a very good job of keeping the debate alive because it seems to be a fair amount of confusion around it, which is entirely understandable because it's a complicated topic because we have received so much propaganda about it.
So, the science of ethics, the science of morality, is absolutely analogous to and contained within the subset of the scientific method.
Now, the scientific method is a methodology for determining whether statements about the behavior of matter are true or false.
Predictive statements, in this case, usually in science, I guess ex post facto stuff is not useless in science, but not the primary goal of it.
And similarly, morality is a statement of the preferred behaviors for human beings.
And of course, just like the scientific method, just like any rules describing matter, it has to be universal.
And it has to be throughout time.
So you can't say that murder is right in Iraq, but wrong in Baltimore.
You can't say that murder was fine yesterday, but now it's evil.
I mean, unless you're awarding medals, in which case it seems to be entirely fine to do that, but we wouldn't say, at least I wouldn't say, that that's a particularly valid logical theory.
Now, you can read more about this.
I have an article called Proving Libertarian Morality, Reclaiming the High Ground, which is on my blog and on lourockwell.com, where I go into this stuff a little bit more syllogistically, but...
I'm going to recap the major aspects of the argument just so that we're on the same page.
I think that this stuff is fairly proven.
This is one of the syllogistic podcasts, so I'll do my best to reconstruct the argument in my mind about what I was talking about.
But if I miss or trip up or whatever, have a look at the article.
I think you'll find it helpful.
I think it makes a strong case, but let me know if it doesn't.
Now, in order for there to be a study of the preferred behaviors for human beings, we have to, first of all, figure out whether or not preferred behavior exists.
And, of course, my approach to it would be to take the scientific method and say, well, we need to figure out that there is such a thing as preferred behavior before we say that there's such a thing as a science of preferred behavior.
So, to my mind, there are five major proofs that preferred behavior, which is the synonym for morality, but we'll just say preferred behavior for now.
It's a little less emotionally charged.
Let's just view it a little bit outside the realm of propaganda.
Well, how do we know that preferred behavior exists?
Well... The first argument, and I think the one that opens and closes the case, although we can take another couple of swings at it with the other four, the first argument is that the proposition is that preferred behavior must exist, or preferred behavior does exist.
Well, if anybody says to me that, Steph, preferred behavior does not exist, and you need to stop believing in preferred behavior, well, they have begged the question in that particular circumstance, and that's not something that you can validly do in a logical context.
So I say preferred behavior exists, and you say, no, it doesn't.
You need to stop believing in preferred behavior.
Well, what have you done sort of implicitly within that statement?
Well, you've said that there's such a thing as truth and falsehood.
My claim that preferred behavior does exist falls into the category of falsehood.
Falsehood is less valid, less preferable than truth, and therefore I need to reject my opinion that preferred behavior exists because you would prefer that I deal with the truth, which is that it does not, rather than that it does.
Well, that's a contradiction.
You can't say to me, I would prefer that you not believe that preferred behavior exists.
Complete contradiction. Really, that's the open and shut case.
I don't think we need more, but hey, you know, if it's a true and valid statement, we should be able to get at it in a number of different ways.
Now, of course, as biological entities, all human beings require sustenance around food and water and so on.
So anybody who's alive to argue with you that preferred behavior does not exist has obviously, at the very basics, at the very basis of it, has chosen preferred behavior in order to continue to be alive.
So, assuming that they're not newborn out of the womb and still attached to their umbilical, in which case their reasoning skills might be a little gurgly, but assuming that they're alive and talking to you, then by that very act they have spent, you know, 20 or 30 years or more pursuing preferred behavior, like eating and drinking and sleeping and so on.
And so it's very hard for somebody who's only alive because they have pursued preferred behavior to say that preferred behavior does not exist.
I think that's sort of a contradiction.
They could say, well, for 30 years I did believe it exists, and now I believe it doesn't exist, and I would simply say, okay, so you're no longer going to eat and drink and sleep, so why don't we reschedule this debate for, like, say, a week from now, at which point I might claim victory in your absence.
So that's sort of another approach that you can take.
Now, the third approach would be, for a scientific theory to be valid, it should be supported through empirical observation.
Now, if preferred behavior exists, then mankind should believe in preferred behavior.
Now, almost all men do believe in preferred behavior, and therefore, empirical evidence exists to support the existence of preferred behavior.
And the existence of such evidence opposes the proposition that preferred behavior does not exist.
So if preferred behavior didn't exist, then very few people would believe in it.
And yet, every single human being you talk to who's not insane believes in preferred behavior and has acted upon that belief.
And therefore, there is an argument to support the existence of preferred behavior.
Now, another way of looking at this, sort of the fourth argument, is also empirical.
Now, as human beings, you have a near infinite number of choices to make in your life, and yet most of us make very similar choices.
I mean, at the basic level, right?
We tend to eat, we tend to drink, and we tend to sleep, and we tend not to sort of throw ourselves off cliffs and so on.
I mean, a few of us do, but, you know, I'll get to the requirement for absolutism in a little bit.
Now... If choices are almost infinite, then statistically we should all be doing completely random things, right?
Running off cliffs, sticking our heads in the sand, eating a sandwich, eating our own arm, eating a live chicken, eating a table leg.
I mean, we should be doing all random things because choices are almost infinite.
But most human beings make very similar choices, right?
So, I mean, most everyone chooses to eat.
Most parents will choose to feed and shelter their children.
So, if all human beings make very similar choices, not all choices can be equal.
And the subset of choices that human beings make, which are similar...
Are a near infinitesimally small portion of all of the available choices available to us as sort of conscious organisms.
So given that 99% of human beings choose exactly the same.0000000000, regression, regression, infinite, infinite, 1% of choices, then not all choices can be equal to human beings, right? So therefore preferred choices, preferred behavior, preferred choices must exist.
Now, the fifth argument for the existence of preferred behavior is biological.
So, all organic life requires preferential behavior, so we can assume that those organisms which make the most successful choices are the ones most often selected for survival.
And I know that the language isn't great because it sounds like someone's selecting you and so on, so I understand that.
You don't need to email me endless references to Richard Dawkins.
I got it. But we can say organisms succeed by acting upon preferred behavior.
Now, man is the most successful organism.
Therefore, man must have acted most successfully on the basis of preferred behavior.
Now, of course, what makes us so different from everything else is our mind.
And therefore, man's mind must be what has acted most successfully on the basis of preferred behavior.
Therefore, preferred behavior must exist.
So, you can go back and forth with me if you want on those, but you're still going to have a problem trying to convince me that preferred behavior doesn't exist, and you would prefer that I not believe in it, because we're then on the same page again, and you're sort of trapped in that.
But I think those other supporting arguments aren't too bad.
Now, since preferred behavior does exist, sort of like gravity, what theories can quantify it, classify it, explain it, and predict preferred behavior?
Well, the first thing that you've got to understand is morality is optional.
Every man is subject to gravity and requires food to live, but no man actually has to act morally.
So if I'm going to sort of steal and kill, no thunderbolt is going to rain down from the sky to me.
So moral rules, like the scientific method or biological classifications, they're just ways of organizing the facts and principles of what exists.
So there are no moral atoms.
You know, physics will not tell me what I should do.
Physics will tell me if I push a man off a cliff, he's going to fall down.
But it doesn't tell me whether I should or shouldn't.
There's no moral world or moral nature that exists in reality any more than biological classifications exist in reality, right?
Zebras exist. The classification zebra does not.
It's a concept imperfectly derived from instances.
Now, for every moral rule that you're going to come up with, there are going to be exceptions.
So man is a rational animal, man has volitional consciousness, blah blah blah, but there are people who are mentally damaged who don't have free will.
There are sort of retarded people who don't have the capacity to be moral agents, there are people in comas, and that's fine.
That's fine. I don't feel that that in any way destroys the science of ethics, because biology is a science as well, which classifies organisms into particular genus and species.
And yet, there are always overlaps, and there are always things which don't fit anywhere, right?
So as I mentioned on the board, a cat has four legs.
But occasionally, like one in a million cats are going to get born with five legs.
But that doesn't mean that the whole science of zoology and biology falls down and collapses.
So that is not the level of accuracy because we're dealing with ethics, which is a biological situation, biological construct.
It pertains to biological animals or creatures.
It only needs the standards of accuracy associated with biology.
So there are always going to be exceptions. And the dream that some moralists have had to tie morality into something as absolute as physics...
Well, never going to happen because there's free will and biology is based on imperfect reproduction, right?
So you've got mutations and you've got flaws and problems and excesses at times as well, so...
Morality is a biological construct and only needs a level of accuracy associated with the biological sciences, so it just has to hold true for the vast majority, right?
I mean, the vast majority of zebras have to be born with stripes.
If you get one zebra that's born all black, you don't throw your hands up and say, well, that's it.
Biology is a complete lie, right?
You just say, wow, that's a really weird exception.
It's a zebra, right, with no white stripes, or it's all black.
And so that's fine.
I mean, we survive. As a species, conceptually, we survive with that kind of stuff.
In a way that if you say all rocks fall down, but two rocks fall up, you have a problem, right?
I mean, in physics, you have a problem, but in biology, you don't because there's the random factor.
So, yes, every man's a moral agent, whatever it is.
You want a principle of nonviolence, but there's self-defense, and then there's retarded people, and there's people in a coma.
Yeah, absolutely. There are tiny, tiny numbers of exceptions to all these moral rules, but that's fine.
It still doesn't mean that moral rules are invalid.
So the biological thing is a similar thing.
Now, the fact that compliance with moral rules is optional, It's really confused a lot of people.
People think that because morality is optional, it's subjective.
But that's not true at all.
Living organism is part of material reality.
Material reality is rational and objective.
Applying moral theories is optional, but that does not mean that moral theories are subjective, right?
I mean, the scientific method is optional, but it's not subjective.
You can try and understand the world by kneeling and praying to your garden gnomes, right?
Oh, garden gnomes, please reveal to me the unified field theory.
Sure. Relate to me the equation which solves the problem of gravitation and electromagnetism and strong and weak forces of attraction and you can pray to get all of that and your knees will get very sore and your brain won't get any smarter.
So, you don't have to use the scientific method to try and figure out the world.
Of course, for the vast majority of human history, they didn't use the scientific method to solve the real problems in the real world, or to solve the problems of the behavior of matter.
They went to priests. And, of course, human beings suffered enormously thereby.
So, the scientific method's optional.
Morality is optional, but it doesn't mean it's subjective.
The scientific method is not subjective.
But it is optional. So wherever people think something's optional, they think it's subjective.
Like if it's not like a rock falling off a cliff, then somehow it's subjective.
But that's not the case at all.
Now, since preferred behavior exists, like to what degree, or I guess you could say extent, does that preferred behavior exist?
Now, the first test of any scientific theory is universality.
So theory of physics has to apply to all matter.
And so you can't say that a rock falls down in Birmingham but up in San Francisco, or up yesterday and down tomorrow.
I mean, that's not a universal theory, right?
So it's not a valid theory. If you say that it pertains to rocks, or I guess you could say to matter, then it has to be universal.
And if you find a single exception, right?
I mean, it's not a good thing, right?
Now... The same thing is true, of course, for moral arguments, right?
So if you have a moral theory, you can't claim that it's valid if it says a certain action is, you know, right in Syria, but wrong in San Francisco.
You can't have a moral theory that says, person A must do X, but person B must never do X. You can't have a moral theory that says, well, it's wrong yesterday, but it's right today, or vice versa.
If you have got these moral theories which are innately contradictory about the way to classify preferred behavior in the same way the biologist classifies animals, then if you've got really contradictory things around your classifications and descriptions of preferred behavior, then you're just kind of plain wrong, right?
Now, also another way of validating any kind of scientific theory is it's got to be logically consistent.
Since the behavior of matter is logical, consistent, and predictable, all theories that involve matter, either organic or inorganic, must also be logical, consistent, and predictable.
The theory of relativity cannot argue that the speed of light is both constant and not constant at the same time, right?
Or that it's 186,000 miles per second, five fathoms in depth, and also green in color, right?
It doesn't make any sense. So, moral theories apply to mankind, but mankind is organic, so the degree of consistency required for moral theories is less than that required for inorganic theories.
So, right, all rocks have to fall down, but not all horses have to be born with only one head, right?
So, you've got, in sort of biology, you've got three forms of randomness, right?
Environment, genetic mutation, and free will.
So, for example, poodles are generally friendly, but if you beat one around the head for years, it's probably going to become aggressive.
So that's sort of environment, right?
Horses, you get one head, but occasionally you get a two-headed horse is born, and that's a mutation.
And free will is a third level of variability in organic situations, right?
So in the third level, human beings generally prefer food to starving, but anorexics will starve themselves to death at times.
So those exceptions don't bring down the entire science of biology.
So... The final test, I guess you could say, that scientific moral theories have to pass is this criteria of empirical observation, right?
And moral theory has got to explain the universal prevalence of moral beliefs among mankind, and it really ideally, I mean, I guess not even ideally, but practically, it's got to explain the results of sort of human experiments, right?
So fascism, communism, socialism, capitalism, democracy, and so on, small state, big state, dictatorship.
And so it's also got to explain some basic facts about human society, like the fact that state power always grows or that propaganda tends to increase as state power increases.
If it fails to explain the past or understand the present or predict the future, then it fails, right?
That's not a valid scientific moral theory.
So, how does this all look in practice, right?
It's a lot of juicy theory, but let's have a look at how, like the first requirement for scientific validity, universality, how does that affect a moral theory?
Well, if I say that gravity affects matter, it has to affect all matter, right?
This is all back to the Aristotelian Three Laws of Logic.
If even one speck of matter proves resistant to gravity, my theory's in trouble, right?
So... If I propose a moral theory that says, you know, people shouldn't really murder, then it's got to be applicable to all people.
If certain people, like you get soldiers, are exempt from that rule, then I either have to prove that soldiers are not people, or accept that my moral theory is false, right?
So I've got a moral theory which says the preferred behavior for mankind is that murder, and we just say first-degree murder, murder is wrong.
But then if I say, but soldiers can go and kill.
And they can kill people who aren't directly threatening them.
So, then I have a moral theory that's in trouble, right?
Because it's a preferred behavior for mankind is that murder is wrong, except for soldiers, if Congress declares war, or if Congress doesn't exactly declare war but says the President might be able to use force if he wants.
So, that's a moral theory that's in problem, right?
Now, if you sort of reverse it and you say, okay, well, a morally preferred behavior is to murder.
You must murder. A morally preferred behavior is murder.
Well, I've saved a couple of soldiers when they're actually killing people, but unfortunately I've condemned as evil every human being not currently in the act of murdering someone, including those being murdered, right?
So that's not very logical at all.
Well, now, if I say, okay, well, I want to save the virtue of the soldiers because I really like that ribbon on my car, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to say, well, it's moral for people to murder if someone else tells them to, a political leader, say, but then I have the problem of universality.
So, if politician A can order a soldier to murder an Iraqi, then the Iraqi must also be able to order the soldier to murder politician A. And also that the soldier can order politician A to murder the Iraqi.
So this obviously can't work.
Universality also means reciprocity.
So the non-aggression principle is reciprocal in a way that it's okay to murder if someone tells you to.
Well, every human being has to have the same set of preferred behavior.
Otherwise, the theory is not valid.
And so if one person can tell another person to go kill a third person, then everyone has that right.
And surely that is not valid, right?
Because it's impossible for people to act on that.
Now, you obviously can't say it's wrong for some people to murder, but right for other people to murder.
So human beings share common physical properties and requirements.
Having one rule for one person and the opposite rule for another is impossible.
It's like the physics theory, saying one rock falls up and another rock falls down.
And it's not only illogical, but it contradicts the observable and empirical facts of reality, which is that human beings do share as a species common characteristics.
You can't subject them to opposing rules.
It's kind of funny when you think about it, right?
Biologists have no problems classifying certain organisms as human beings because they share these characteristics.
But moralists seem completely freaked out about this and want to split us all into opposing situations.
Now, if you have a moral theory that proves or argues that the same man should not murder one day, but should murder the next, say, steps out of a plane into the Iraqi desert, then your position is even more ludicrous, right?
That's sort of like saying, well, one day, a rock, the same rock falls downwards, and the next day it falls upwards, right?
That's obviously completely deranged.
Now, since scientific theories require logical consistency, a moral theory can't be valid if it's both true and false at the same time.
This is back to the Aristotelian laws of logic.
It's not going to work. So, if I have a moral theory which says stealing...
Well, I have some problems, right?
Because, first of all, it's impossible to apply it, right?
If everybody steals, then nobody is going to steal because nobody's going to actually possess any property, right?
So, you can't eliminate behavior that you define as moral while simultaneously creating behavior that is defined as immoral, right?
That doesn't sort of logically work.
Because you're only going to steal if you can keep the property that you're stealing, right?
So if you have a coat and I want to steal it, I'm only going to steal it if I can keep the coat, right?
I'm not going to steal it in order for somebody else to steal it from me, right?
What is that? Some sort of Tarantino film, right?
Now, so if you say stealing is good, then you are eliminating stealing as a possibility.
Nobody's going to do it, right? So you can't define something as good and through that definition eliminate the possibility of anybody engaging in that behavior, right?
That would be completely ridiculous.
Now, also, the problem of stealing is good has another logical contradiction.
Because if you say that stealing is good, then you're both simultaneously affirming and denying the existence of property rights.
Because stealing is the transfer of property, but it's the violation of property rights at the same time.
And so, if I'm going to steal from you, I'm going to want to keep what I steal.
So I want property rights To be affirmed for what it is that I've stolen, but by stealing it, I'm denying the existence of property rights.
So I both want property rights, and I want the opposite of property rights for the person I'm stealing from, but we're both people, so this is an example of how we know that stealing is problematic, right?
Or illogical, and therefore any moral theory advocating theft is invalid, right?
Now, if we look at something like rape, well, you've got the same kind of contradiction, right?
Because If you justify rape on someone, the taking of pleasure is always good.
Well, then, of course, you fail the test of logical consistency because your rapist might be taking pleasure, but his victim certainly is not, right?
And the same goes, of course, for murder and assault.
So, this is sort of the basis of the argument, right?
You say preferred behavior must exist.
Preferred behavior must be common to all human beings.
Therefore, any moral theories which fail the logical scientific tests of universality and consistency and so on is an invalid moral theory.
And so this is all stuff that makes sense to us, right?
We're not coming up with moral theories that say, rape and theft are the best thing ever, and asin is the crowning glory of moral development for mankind.
And this goes back to something Aristotle says, where he says, you can come up with all the theories you want, but you do have to have a sort of common sense test as well.
And so...
This is all the stuff that's kind of common sense, right?
So using this principle of universality and logical consistency and the belief that preferred behavior must be common to all mankind, if you're going to classify it, and define it, you've got to have it to be common, universal, consistent, and so on.
Well, what do we end up with?
Well, murder is wrong, theft is wrong, arson, rape, and assault, they're all wrong.
And you can also prove the validity of property rights and nonviolence and so on.
We can sort of talk about that another time.
But... There's ways of categorizing all of this stuff and using this sort of scientific method.
If preferred behavior exists, and we think we've proven that it does, then it must be common to all mankind, or you've got to find some way of subdividing mankind into opposing species with opposing characteristics.
Moral rules in order to be...
Because the characteristics of human beings don't change from day to day, and therefore moral rules can't change from day to day.
So, you know, rocks don't float, but if you blow them into small enough parts, if you change the very nature of their properties, then they can float in air for a while as dust, dynamite or rock or something.
But a human nature, from a biological standpoint, does not change much from day to day.
Now, it's certainly true, and somebody posted this on the boards, that human physiology, individual human physiology, does change from day to day, and your cells get replaced, and this and that.
And that's fine. I understand that.
But it doesn't change your definition as a human being, right?
A biologist is not going to come to me now, and then seven years from now, or whatever it is, when all of my cell has been replaced, and look at me and say, I have no idea what the hell that is.
Seven years ago I was a human being, and now I have absolutely no clue what this is.
So the fact that we're being renewed from a biological standpoint, or I guess now in my early to middle age, not being so quite so renewed in the biological standpoint, just because of that doesn't change the nature of human beings.
The fact that we age, you don't look at an old person and say, what the hell is that?
I have no idea.
Is it a tree?
Is it a mirage?
You say no. That's an old person, right?
And this goes back to what Aristotle talked about in terms of essence.
Essence, as the existentialist had it, existence precedes essence.
You have to say that with more of a French accent while betting your grad students wearing a beret and smoking galtois cigarettes.
But what he called the essence, right?
So if you have a baby sitting there, you go, hey, it's a baby.
If you have a baby that's 10 feet tall, you say, holy crap, that's a huge baby.
If you see a baby that is 10 feet tall and has two heads, you say, wow, a really huge baby with two heads.
You can still identify what it is.
You're just layering on characteristics to it.
But at some point, if you change the baby's color and add tentacles and make it into a gas, at some point you're going to say, I don't know what that is.
I have no idea what that is.
So the last thing you change is the essence.
You're changing the essence. So the essence of humanity, the logical definition of us as a species and so on, doesn't change.
And although my cells are all renewing, I've got to tell you, my personality is the same as it was when I was one day old, according to all reports.
There is a fair amount of consistency.
I look the same from day to day.
And if somebody looks at a picture of me in 40 years, like somehow we magically reach through a wormhole in space and get a picture, they'll say, wow, that's a picture of a really old staff, right?
They'll still know who I am, right?
Of course, there's alteration, no question, but there is consistency at the macro level.
It's the same argument that I make when it comes to logic being derived from the behavior of material reality.
Yeah, there may be freaky stuff going on at the subatomic level, but I'm talking about sensual reality where we get logic.
So this is sort of a way of approaching the study of ethics in a way that I think is sort of productive and so on.
And yeah, people are going to say, well, there are sociopaths who don't respect ethics.
But that's not the issue that we're dealing with here.
There are crazy people who don't believe in the scientific method.
There are crazy people who believe all sorts of conspiracy theories.
But the fact of the matter is those people don't really concern us.
An ethicist is a combination of a scientist and a doctor.
A scientist, logician, and a doctor.
Because with preferred behavior, you're sort of saying like a doctor does, like a preferred state is health rather than sickness, right?
So a preferred state for the moralist is happiness rather than misery and destruction and soul-crushing depression or whatever.
So a psychologist would have a similar goal, mental health, right?
But a philosopher, an ethicist is someone who says that happiness is the preferred state, right?
I understand that to be the case.
Happiness is the one thing we don't do in order to get something else.
This is straight out of Aristotle's ethics.
I don't claim any originality here.
I want to get married so I can be happy.
I want to get a Rio so I can be happy.
But you don't say, I want to be happy so that I can get married.
I guess you could say it at some level, but you'd only want to do it to increase your happiness.
So the preferred state is happiness.
The preferred behavior to achieve happiness is what ethicists look at for human beings as a whole.
And so, like any scientific theory which attempts to classify things which exist in material reality, preferred behavior for human beings exists by a sort of biological nature and by the arguments that are put up ahead.
It's perfectly optional like the scientific method, but it's perfectly objective like the scientific method.
Now, yes, there are sociopaths who will never respect ethics and waving around the argument for morality will do nothing to stop a bullet heading your way from an evil guy who wants to kill you.
But that doesn't matter, fundamentally, any more than the fact that some people will die of a cold, even if they take neocitrine or whatever, doesn't invalidate the science of medicine, right?
The science of medicine is to say that, in general, if we apply antibiotics to an infection, things will get better.
Some people will react negatively to antibiotics and some people this and that and the other, right?
But I think it's fairly safe to say that for all human beings, a non-violent approach will make them happier than a violent approach.
But any theory which says that preferred behavior is random and dispersed among mankind based on each subjective individual whim and so on is obviously not a valid scientific theory.
It's not a valid theory of ethics.
So you can't claim that it's moral.
Morality is universally preferred behavior.
So if I come up with an ethical theory that says...
Every human being must rub baby oil on my scalp.
And that's what morality is.
It may be my particular preference, but it's got nothing to do with morality.
Morality is a science of universally preferred human behavior.
And so it's obviously impossible for everyone just because of the size of my scalp, which is not inconsiderable.
But the size of my scalp relative to the number of fingers in the world, not everyone can be moral.
If I say they've all got to rub baby oil on my head to be moral, some people don't even know me, and there are people who died before I was born who never got the glorious chance to rub baby oil on my scalp.
So were they all immoral, right?
I mean, there's just no way that any of that sort of stuff could be considered scientifically valid in any way, shape, or form.
So you can say, well, they've got these particular preferences, right?
I like bondage, right, so to speak.
That's one thing, to say that that's a sort of personal aesthetic preference, but you can't say that bondage is moral.
As soon as you see the word moral, then you're talking about preferred behavior, you're talking about universally preferred behavior, and obviously it's impossible for everyone to engage in bondage, and if there's no rope around, are you then evil?
And of course, people who never engaged in bondage in the past, because rope wasn't invented, were they evil?
I mean, it just doesn't work, right?
So it doesn't work at all.
Whereas things like prohibitions on rape and murder and arson, all of those things are achievable by everyone, because they're negative, right?
Don't steal, right?
A thou shalt not is always more liberating than a thou shalt, sort of.
So from that standpoint, we can, I think, begin to understand ethics in a way that is scientific and not subjective.
Because the real danger, as I sort of argued a number of times, is not the sociopath, but the state.
The real danger is not the crazy guy in the corner who might have a gun.
Because, I mean, who meets these people?
And you can, of course, run away and defend yourself.
You can shoot him if he's waving a gun and screaming at the top of his lungs.
The danger in human society is not the sociopath.
We don't care about the sociopath.
The danger is the state.
The danger is the state.
And the state rests on the argument for morality.
The justification for the existence of the state and the ethics of the intrinsic moral value of the family and for the intrinsic existence and morality of God...
All of these sort of three unholy trinities of evil, abusive power, they rest on the argument from morality.
They rest on false moral arguments.
And that's why people subject themselves to those things.
We can never fundamentally fight against that which we accept as moral.
We just can't. Human beings are by our nature, and I'm not even going to tell you how or why, because I don't know.
But I can tell you that human beings are absolutely programmed to follow ethics.
We just live to be good.
Which is why you can explain things like the draft, where the government says, go shoot these guys or we're going to shoot you.
People don't fight back.
They actually volunteer to go, because it's a fight to make the world free from democracy.
It explains why there's so much propaganda.
It explains why governments had to have state schools before they could get anything else, so that they could drill in these false arguments for morality over and over and over and over again.
It explains why when property rights are made more universal, that human beings do better, right?
Happiness is the goal, and when property rights are dispersed, human beings generally do better.
I'm not using the argument from effect here, which you can look up my opposition to that if you like, but it does predict...
That if property rights are universal, and of course they have to be, because I made this argument before, but if there are no property rights, then nobody can consume any property.
You can't eat anything or drink anything.
You can't make any property your own, so we're all going to die.
So human beings do have property rights, and we own our own bodies, right?
Simply it's the nature of reality.
Nobody else can control your body.
So human beings do have...
And so since human beings do have property rights, we can assume that when society recognizes that, when the power of the state is removed from abusing people's and destroying people's property rights, that people will flourish, society will get better.
And then when property rights are denied to the majority, because it can never be denied to everyone, right?
Communism is not a system of no property, but a system where very few people have absolute property rights over everybody else's property.
So, of course, it's going to lead to corruption, it's going to lead to destruction and death.
It's perfectly predictable within this theory.
And so, the sort of universality of ethical theories does explain quite a bit.
And I would sort of submit that it explains just about everything, right?
So... This idea of approaching ethics from a standpoint of universal morality is why I consistently harp on the need to run your own ethical theories through this kind of scientific test, right?
Because otherwise you just have a bunch of crazy opinions.
And theories about ethics are the most dangerous theories in the world.
Because when ethical theories go right, like capitalism and, you know, the minarchistic state was a big step forward from what came before, you know, everybody's happy, lots of people don't happen to get murdered and gulags and, you know, Food production goes up and infant mortality goes down.
All this kind of good stuff. And it's all in effect, but it's something that's testable, right?
So if universal theory of property rights is valid, then we would assume that it's going to have the following sort of facts.
The more the property rights are extended, the better off human society is in material terms.
Well... That would be a testable result, which history has borne out over and over again, and as property rights diminish in the present situation, then naturally we end up with fewer and fewer and fewer economic advancements, and real wages stagnated for the last 20-25 years, and so on.
So all of this stuff is perfectly predictable.
We know that because people are susceptible to the argument for morality, always, always, always, then...
We know that the government is going to always grow.
The government is going to train people that the government is moral.
Therefore, the people will be unable to resist expansions of government power and all this sort of stuff.
And all we need to do to save the world is simply apply scientific methodologies to ethical arguments.
It's really that simple.
Somebody says to me, well, the welfare state is good.
Then I'm like, okay, great.
Well, how do you know? Basically, somebody is putting forward to me a theory of physics.
Right? Saying that, you know, a cat could be in two places at the same time, simultaneously.
We're like, wow, that's fascinating.
If you can prove that, that kind of is very interesting from a standpoint of logic and physics, but it would seem to me you're going to have a tough time with it.
So if somebody comes up and says, well, the welfare state is good or the war in Iraq is moral, they're like, great, okay, well then explain to me how you're coming to this conclusion.
Well, self-defense, it's like, well, but the people who, they weren't being attacked by Iraqis, the people who are over their killings, so help me understand.
Well, there's collective self-defense, it's like, well, so what you're saying is some people have the right to tell other people to go kill other people, and how is that valid?
Well, other people give them that right.
Well, if they give them that right, then why do we need taxation?
I mean, there's lots of ways that you would simply approach this from a logical standpoint.
And all this is, is the Socratic method.
So somebody says, hey, I know all about morality to the point where I can justify, from an ethical standpoint, the murders of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, right?
So 250 million people murdered by states directly in the last hundred years.
And somebody says, well, the state is good.
We're like, well, okay, great.
Well, help me understand what is the argument behind this, right?
So theft is bad, but obviously taxation, which is a form of theft, is good.
So I don't really understand that.
And if the welfare state is good, like the transfer of money from the rich to the poor, let's just say it works that way, which it doesn't, but let's just say it did.
If the transfer of money from the rich to the poor using force is good, then it's good for everyone, right?
So then everyone who's poor can go and steal money from people who are rich, but then the people who are rich will then become poor, so they can go and steal the money back.
And so basically you've got endless civil war, and that's the result of the theory, universally applied, that the welfare state is good.
And of course, if only some people can go and steal money from others to give to other people, why those people only have that right?
Any ethical theory does have to be universal in order to be valid.
And I'm sure I could speak this all a little faster, but I'm sure you get the general idea.
Now, since traffic is slowing down a little bit, I'll do my best to recall, with a glance at my notes, the aid in swallowing this rather large conceptual pill.
And this is sort of a way of equating what's going on in terms of the subject matter, the instance, and so on, between physics, biology, and ethics, or morality, or science and preferred behavior.
So, in physics, the subject is matter.
In biology, of course, it's a subset of matter called organic matter.
And in morality, the subject is preferred behavior for mankind.
Preferred behavior. You could say preferred behavior, but it only represents mankind.
Now, the instance, what is it that's being studied in particular?
Well, in physics, it'd be something like a rock, right?
In biology, it'd be something like a horse.
In morality, it's man, right?
And it's what's being studied. Now, a sample rule would be gravity for physics, the desire for survival for biology, and property rights, say, for ethics.
So a sample sort of theory as a whole, entropy for physics, evolution for biology, and property rights again, or no murder, or whatever.
The sample classification for physics is matter-energy, for biology it's like a reptile versus a mammal, and in ethics it's good versus evil.
So an example would be something like, for physics, matter can't be created or destroyed, merely converted to energy and back.
And for biology, be like, okay, if it's alive and warm-blooded, it's kind of like a mammal.
And for ethics, it would be, well, stealing is wrong.
So, for a hypothesis, for physics, it would be atoms share common structures and properties and so behave in predictable and consistent manners.
And for biology, it would be organic matter has rules or requirements that are common across classifications.
And... For ethics, it would be human beings share common rules and requirements, which means that preferred behavior is common to all mankind.
And the proof is the same, right?
Logical consistency, empirical validation or verification, the proof is the same for all.
And you've got negative proof examples, right?
So for every theory, you have to have negative proof, right?
Otherwise, it's just a silly assertion.
So in physics, you could say something like, well, if mass doesn't attract mass, then theories relying on gravity are suspect or incorrect.
For biology, you could say, well, if organisms don't naturally self-select for survival, then the theory of evolution is problematic or incorrect.
And for ethics, you could say, well, if communism succeeds, theories based on the universal value of property rights are problematic or incorrect, and so on.
So, sort of to wrap it up, or in conclusion, my argument would be something like this.
Well, moral rules or preferred behavior does exist.
They do exist. Moral theories have to be subject to the scientific method, just as theories of physics and biology are.
And therefore, so any moral theories based on non-universal or self-contradictory principles is demonstrably false.
And so that's the central approach to it.
The reason that it's so important is that mankind dies by the plane load, or by the country-wide load.
Mankind is slaughtered based on false moral theories.
we are automatically programmed to obey moral theories because we're kind of scientific and rational by nature.
So the first thing that any power structure wants to do is to corrupt our sort of sense of morality to turn it into obedience, which is why these state schools came around first, why dictatorships spend so much time, energy, and money on propaganda.
It's because human beings are incredibly susceptible to ethical rules, and therefore it is absolutely imperative that ethical rules be subject to the same kinds of proof verifications or truth verifications that scientific theories are.
It's much more important to subject ethical theories to the scientific method than it is to...
To subject biological or physics theories to the scientific methods.
So I hope this has been helpful.
Obviously, it's quite a topic worthy of discussion.
It's the most important topic, really, in the world, in my opinion.
So I hope that this is helpful.
Please, the Universal Moral Theory of Freedom and Radio is donate as much as you can without actually becoming homeless.
So obviously that's universal and valid in all situations and at all times.
So I hope that you'll obey that based on your natural inclination to do so.
Throw me some shekels. I appreciate it.
And I will talk to you soon.
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