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Dec. 13, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
44:22
555 Scientific Morality
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Time Text
Let's get some freedom in here.
Let's get some freedom in here.
I've just whited up the black peas like you've never heard before.
It's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
It is 6.15 on December the 14th, 2006, and we are...
Going to have a chat re-round again for the argument for morality.
Gentleman posted. Excellent post.
So he's questioning whether the morality is a system designed to achieve an effect.
Perfectly fine question, perfectly intelligent question, and a question which I'm going to spend a fair amount of time dodging.
No, I'm just kidding. A lot of time dodging.
So he writes, whether morality is a system designed to have an effect.
Let's back up.
You say that morality is universally preferred behavior, UPB, from now on.
Now, when I said that there is no such thing as universally preferred behavior, you said that my statement was a contradiction because my saying that universal preferred behavior doesn't exist, by doing that I was displaying universal preferred behavior.
This... Kind of baffled me.
But when I tried to respond, my responses seemed to baffle you as well.
But I think I figured out the problem here, and that is that we each mean different things by universally preferred behavior.
So let's take a look at the two possible definitions of UPB, and we'll call them type A and type B. It's a bit difficult to put the difference in words, but I should try to do my best.
Type A UBP. This refers to how, in every situation, there will always be behaviors that are universally preferable.
For example, right now, for me to get up, walk over to my next door neighbor and shoot him is universally unpreferable, universally in the sense that all people would not prefer this behavior unless we're talking about someone who is completely evil or insane.
See, there's the exception.
But we'll come back to that. This does not mean, however, that the preferred behavior will always be the same.
Different situations are called for a different behavior, but in each situation there will be a behavior that is universally preferred.
And I'm not sure that I agree with that, but actually I'm sure I don't, but we'll move on.
Type B. This refers to how there are behaviors that are universally preferable, universally in the sense that the very behaviors are preferable in any situation.
An example of this would be to simply say that killing is wrong, or stealing is wrong, or initiating coercion is wrong.
Now the thing is, I have no problem with type A, UBP, but I have pretty serious problems with type B. So when I said no behavior is universally preferable, I meant that no behavior is universally preferable in the type B sense.
You, however, thought I meant in the type A sense, which understandably shocked you because that would mean I was saying there's no good or bad and we should all just behave like wild apes.
No disrespect to apes.
I believe that the big mistake you have made is that you realized correctly that morality has to be universal in the type A sense, but then you incorrectly assumed that it must be universal in the type B sense.
There's just one more thing I'd like to touch on.
Oh yeah, because your podcasts are just so concise, right?
Good point. I already addressed the universal part of morality, but let's look at this preferred business.
We agree that morality is based on preferred behavior, but I'd like to ask you this.
Why bother to act according to what is preferred?
If your wife said that she prefers that you bring home chicken and not steak for dinner, then why is it that you bring home chicken?
Why not according to her?
Why act according to her preferences?
Well, we must not be married.
The answer is obvious to make her happy, so the reason that it is good to act according to universal preferred behavior is to make people happy.
An excellent, excellent post, and I really appreciate that approach.
So let me get my car started.
And we will have a chat about that as I caroom off various pedestrians, trucks, and medians on the way home.
Now, universally preferred behavior is a tricky concept to get a hold of.
It's a bit of a slippery eel. And I don't think that it's a slippery eel because it's innately self-contradictory.
That's more my job.
But rather because...
It is something that an enormous amount of muck has been spat out about.
An enormous amount of muck has been spat out about morality, and so it becomes kind of confusing for a lot of people, myself included.
I mucked around with this stuff for years and years before I came up with something that I think makes a good deal of sense.
Now, of course, as I've sort of pointed out in proving libertarian morality, there's two possibilities to universally preferred behavior.
Either there is such a thing as universally preferred behavior, or there is not such a thing as universally preferred behavior.
Now, the problem with the second statement is that it self-atomizes.
It is a suicide bomber in the moral logic department.
Because if there's no such thing as universally preferred behavior, then you can never say that there's no such thing as universally preferred behavior.
Either you can make positive statements about reality and logic and consistency and so on or you can't.
Now if you can't then there is a pretty significant problem that you're going to have just in terms of things making sense at all, right?
I mean if there's no such thing as universally preferred behavior Then there's no such thing as a sentence.
There's no such thing as a podcast.
There's no such thing as TCP IP packets that work.
There's no such thing as any organization, any universally preferred behavior.
So if somebody forms the sentence to me or types it in a coherent way, as this gentleman who is a fine writer and a fine thinker obviously did, If somebody uses coherent English and posts and forms coherent thoughts and is aiming it at me and responding to points that I've made, then clearly they're admitting that there's universally preferred behavior.
They didn't type randomly into some other blog or some other forum and then get angry at me for not responding.
And they didn't use Urdu when I don't speak Urdu, and they didn't speak it into a microphone that was attached to nothing and then wonder why I'm not getting back to them.
They followed particular and specific courses of action in order to respond that there is no such thing as universally preferred behavior, which of course is self-contradictory.
Now, it sort of works like this, just to take a couple of swings at it.
I mean, please don't feel bad if you haven't got it yet.
I still have to swing back and forth on this myself from time to time, so let's just say that we're trying to wade through this on rushing stream together to see if we can't get somewhere.
But nobody has to respond to my arguments.
Sort of think of it like this.
Nobody has to respond to my arguments.
And yet, if they do want to respond to my arguments, there are certain things that they have to do.
This is sort of what I mean by universally preferred behavior.
It's like the scientific method, right?
You don't have to use the scientific method.
You can try and pray to your chicken to get knowledge about the structure of the atom, but it's not going to do you any good, right?
So if you want to make some statements about reality that are coherent and reproducible and verifiable and true, then you have to use the scientific method.
There's just no other. You can't pray for it.
You can't meditate on it.
You can't throw stones on the ground and see if they form an equation.
I mean, you can, but it's not going to work.
So, if you have a statement about material reality that you wish to be accepted as true, then you have to use the scientific method.
You don't have to use the scientific method, but if you're not using the scientific method, then you're not going to end up with anything that's true.
In the realm of philosophy, this is really the basis of the argument for morality, which is the scientific method applied to ethics.
In the realm of philosophy, If you put forward a self-contradictory statement, then that statement is false.
It doesn't mean that you won't spend the rest of your life putting forward that self-contradictory statement.
And I'm not talking about this guy, I'm just talking about in general.
But if you do put forward a self-contradictory statement, then you're not saying something that's true.
So, if I say that one moral law exists for one man, And the completely opposite moral law exists for his twin brother, just to remove as many variables as we can conceivably remove, then,
assuming that they're both alive and all these sorts of tricksy things, Then I am creating a self-contradictory statement because I'm saying that I am proposing behavior that is binding, that is valid, that is logical and rational, in other words derived from reality and conforming to the actions of material objects, the properties of those objects as we talked about a while back on atoms and logic.
So if I put forward a proposition that says, you know, Jim, I must never initiate the use of force.
But Bob, his twin brother, must always initiate the use of force.
Then, as I've used countless times, I'm sort of saying I have a physics theory which says that one rock falls up and another rock falls down.
Now, you don't have to go and test a whole bunch of things to figure this out.
If I put forward a theory in physics which says all but one rock falls Fall down, but one rock will fall up.
Is it now incumbent upon the scientific community to go out and test every single rock in the known universe to find the one that falls up?
Well, no. Of course not, right?
They would... And I'm not saying this is this gentleman's position.
I'm just sort of a... I'm circling it like a shark before a...
Anyway, I think you know how it goes.
Nude swimming girl goes down.
But it's not incumbent upon the scientific community to then go out and say, well, okay, this rock falls down, this rock falls down, we're going to hunt and hunt and hunt for the rock that falls up, right?
What you would say to a scientist who says, ah, all but one shall fall down, is you would say, okay, why would that one rock fall up?
Why, why, why, why, why would that one rock fall up?
And if the person couldn't explain that, right, if the scientist who says all but one fall down and one shall falleth up...
Then you would say, why?
And if he can't answer that, then you'd say, well, sorry, but if you have no reason for your exception, then your theory does not stand and I do not need to pursue it any further.
And I certainly am not going to spend the rest of my life trying to find the one rock that falls up.
So when you propose a theory that claims to talk about reality, then you have to have consistency in the objects that you're talking about.
Some sort of consistency in the objects that you're talking about.
And at least your theory has to be as consistent as the properties of that which you are talking about.
So you can say that...
All helium balloons fall up and all rocks fall down, right, on a sort of M-class planet.
And you'd say, and somebody would say, why?
And you'd say, well, you know, because helium is lighter than air and it's encased in this rubber or neoprene or whatever the hell it is, and therefore it's going to be squeezed upwards because of the air pressure to whatever, whatever, and then the rock falls down because of gravity and the mass and it's not hollow and there's no bubbles inside it and so on.
So, if you say, well, you know, all rocks fall down, all helium balloons fall up or go up, so to speak, arise, then you can talk to specific properties of matter that will make this to be the case.
And, of course, it's consistent to all of those properties of matter, right?
I mean, it has to be all helium balloons on an M-class planet that are not tied down, will float up, right?
This kind of thing, right? It has to be consistent to all of the configurations of the properties of matter that you're talking about.
And it's the same thing with ethics.
Ethics is a theory of universally preferred behavior.
It's not a theory of, I like puppies and you like cats.
I mean, that's not universal, because it's not universally preferred that everyone should like puppies or everyone should, because, you know, it's not universal.
In order for something to be a universal behavior, generally, it has to be a negative.
I mean, I can't really think.
There are a few times where it might be a positive just based on the initiation of a previous action that has taken you out of the realm of negative obligations and moved you into the realm of positive obligations.
So, for instance, we've talked about this before.
This is just a theoretical thing.
It never happens in real life.
If someone's drowning and you say to everyone, Stand back!
I shall save him!
And you dive in and everyone wanders off and then you decide, Oh, you know, I'm not going to bother.
Then you kind of have a positive obligation to finish saving the guy or at least try your best.
So there's, you know, a couple of minor...
But that's sort of the result of you taking yourself out.
You certainly don't have a positive obligation to roam around every...
Every beach in the world looking for people who might be drowning, and if you don't go and save them, you're evil.
Because that's not possible, right?
The criteria we've talked about before is that if you have a moral rule, then a sleeping person can't be made evil by that, right?
So that's why negative obligations are really all that matters.
Thou shalt not are, of course, much less restrictive than a thou shalt.
If I say, thou shalt not be an alchemist, that's a whole lot less restrictive than saying, thou shalt be an alchemist.
Just don't go here is one thing.
Don't go to Kandahar.
Gives you the rest of the world.
Go to Kandahar. Gives you nothing but Kandahar.
So, although for most moral philosophy, it's go to the Shire.
Knob it down. So, universally preferred behavior is a description of that which should be done by every single human being.
Now, again, you don't have to say that anyone should do anything.
But the moment that you put forward an argument, it's the logic thing.
You don't have to use logic.
But the moment you put forward an argument, you're using logic and you are now encased in logic.
Logic is not something you sort of...
It's not like a beard. You grow it and shave it off.
I mean, if you're going to get involved in a debate...
This is a little bit sort of daisy-chained off what I was talking about at lunch.
If you're going to get involved in a debate, then you are intellectually extraordinarily dishonest.
And this is what bothers me about religious people.
Extraordinarily dishonest if you say, Okay, I'm going to debate with you.
And you go forward and you go forward and you go forward.
And then when you're proven wrong, you just say, well, I'm going to rely on faith.
Your arguments are good.
I can't fault your logic, but I'm going to rely on faith.
And you get this in anarchist circles as well, right?
I mean, you will argue with somebody about statism.
And they will say, yes, but everything's going to be civil war, and then you go through all the historical examples, and you go through all the implications of human nature, that if everyone's evil, the last thing you can have is a government, and you go through all the logical proofs of universal morality, and then you get back to it, and they say, well, I agree with everything you say, but... Everything would be civil war, so I'm not going to believe you.
That is totally cheating.
That is total jerky cheating.
If you are going to get into a logical debate, you must submit yourself to logic.
You must. Or it's completely dishonest and a massive waste of it.
It's a fraud. It's a massive waste of everyone's time.
It's exactly the same as saying to a consultant, come over and fix my computer and I will pay you 200 bucks.
And the guy comes over and fixes your computer and then you say, I'm not going to pay you.
It's exactly the same.
It is an absolute fraud of time to say to somebody, let's debate, and then not submit to their logic.
It doesn't mean you have to do it in the moment, but you do have to do it, you know, if you're going to get into it, right?
If you then just back out or don't like the conclusions or change your mind, then I would say, like, I think that it would be a reasonable thing myself that you should be sent a bill.
I mean that. I mean that.
I really think I would start a rational DRO. I would start a rational argument DRO. And I would have a nice contract on my PDA that somebody would have to sign to say that I am not going to...
If I get involved in a debate with Steph, if his logic foo proves superior, then I will agree with him.
And if my logic foo proves superior, then Steph will agree with me.
And if I then back out, then I'm going to pay Steph 100 bucks an hour for the time that he spent.
If I'm just going to throw my hands up in the air and say, well, I'm not going to accept your logical argument, even though we've been debating using rationality for the past...
Three hours. I'm just going to say, well, now I'm going to go back on faith, or I just repeat the same thing that I said at the beginning, even though I have agreed with every rebuttal of everything that I've said so far.
To me, that would be like, great, okay, I didn't gain a convert, but I made $300.
That, to me, like, let's raise the stakes of arguing.
That would be a fantastic thing, I think.
And yes, of course, somebody would have to analyze what was said and you'd have to tape record it and so on.
And that would be no problem.
I would happily pay for that.
I would happily pay the money straight over to someone Who would analyze our debate.
You take the $300, analyze the debate, and you give this guy a rationality rating.
A nice RR. And if he rejects logical conclusions, then what I want to do is have on my PDA, my DRO PDA, I want to have something where someone comes along and says, oh yeah, I'd really like to debate with you.
They send me an email again on the board or whatever, and I'd say, fantastic.
Give me your DRO ID. And they don't have to, of course, but if they don't, then I won't debate with them.
But if they do, or I sort of give them a thumbprint on my PDA, then it comes up as like, Auga!
Auga! Auga!
Statist! Auga!
Theologist! You know, irrationalist.
We're like, actually, no.
You don't have a high enough rationality rating.
I'm not even going to bother debating with you because I'm not going to waste your time.
Unless you, you know, agree to pay me the 300 bucks if you don't accept the conclusions as they're logically put forward and so on.
That, to me, would be great. Total pie in the sky.
But I bet you there's ways that you could figure out how to make it work.
Because wouldn't that save a hell of a lot of time?
It would be like the troll-o-meter, the jerk-o-meter.
Oh, lovely. Is that a tangent?
I don't think it is exactly.
I'm just formulating the business plan in my mind.
Ooh, it's going to be great.
But once somebody engages in debate, then they...
You know, if you ask a physics professor to mark your exam, or to mark...
Maybe he's not your professor.
You ask a friend of yours to go over your physics paper to make sure it's logical, and a guy spends four hours going over it, And finds a whole bunch of inconsistencies and you say, well, it doesn't matter.
I'm going to hand it in anyway because those inconsistencies are fixed by magical elves.
Don't worry about it. And the person would, you know, be pretty exasperated and say, well, why the hell did you ask me to go over the logic of your physics paper if you had no intention of turning in a logical physics paper?
What a complete waste of time.
Bing! Here's a bill for $400.
Four hours of time, $100?
Anyway. So, there's sort of something implicit in that, right?
So, if you're going to put forward any kind of proposition based on logic, then you are saying that logic is universally preferred behavior.
No question. I mean, there's just no way around that.
That is top-to-front, back-to-front, airtight, indivisible, cannot-be-broken, absolute, certainness-gravity effect.
If you put forward a logical proposition, Then, and engage in somebody with debate, then logic has to be the universally preferred behavior.
It's larger than both of you, you both submit to it, and so on, right?
That's how human beings, civilized human beings, resolve disputes.
And again, I'm not talking about anyone on this post, I'm just sort of talking in general.
So, if there is universally preferred behavior, then the thing is to figure out whether or not Whether or not, sorry, what it is.
What universally preferred behavior is.
What is the content? And it's exactly the same in science.
You say, well, are there physical laws?
Is there universally preferred behavior in the realm of ethics is exactly the same as are there physical laws in the universe?
Now, if you say, are there universally preferred behaviors, you are already using universally preferred behaviors.
In other words, we should formulate a question, we should structure it logically, we should put it in a testable format, we should make it a rational question.
You know, we haven't said, are there latifat past elven bottoms?
Bing, bing, bing! No, we haven't said that, right?
Because that would be hard to answer without yodeling, which I won't do.
So, if you say, are there universally preferred behaviors, you're using grammar, you're using syntax, you're using logical, passed out sentence structure, and you're saying that we need to ask questions and then explore logically to find out if there's an answer, so you're already using universally preferred behavior.
There's nothing that you can do, nothing you can do whatsoever in the realm of debate, in the realm of logical arguments, Except using, or any kind of argument, except accepting that there's such a thing as universally preferred behavior.
Because by asking the question, is there universally preferred behavior, you're saying there are two states of knowledge.
There's a state of knowledge, or there's a proposition which says there is universally preferred behavior, there's a proposition which says there isn't, and it's better to determine which one is true.
So already we have universally preferred behavior, which is that believing that something is true is better than believing that something is false.
Now... So there's just no way to avoid universally preferred behavior if you're going to open your mouth or if you're going to type.
I don't know why people have this massive problem with this universally preferred behavior.
They really do have a problem.
It's exactly the same as saying, your argument for logic is too logical and therefore I'm not going to believe it.
Or, let me use logic to disprove your argument that logic is valid.
I mean, it's all of this kind of nonsense.
I don't know why there's this massive gassy platonic nonsense realm.
Where people think that they can wander around and pass complete sentences and ask questions and use logic and examine the facts and then question universally preferred behavior.
It's just deranged.
And I don't mean deranged like you're deranged, the person who posted this.
I'm just saying that the logic behind the whole thing is completely deranged.
So I just sort of wanted to To mention that.
So universally preferred behavior, we can ask about it, but it's sort of, I mean, the last thing I'll say, it's exactly the same metaphorically as saying, and I'll give an example, is there such a thing as physical laws?
Or do physical laws exist?
Well, if you're going to say, do physical laws exist, then you are going to assume that physical laws exist.
Why? Because you're going to expect that sound waves are going to travel across air, the vibrations in air are going to impact somebody's eardrum and be transmitted, blah, blah, blah.
So it's the same thing as the argument against senses.
People say, are the senses valid?
Well, because there's no mind meld, they have to say it, or write it, or sky paint it or something, or mime it, or sign language it, or lick it onto your forehead.
Well, we'll come back to that when we have the webcam running.
You know, if I could lick that on my own forehead, I bet you'd have picked up lots more women when I was younger.
Anyway, so if you say, I wonder if...
There is such a thing as physical laws in the universe, you are automatically assuming that there are physical laws in the universe, because you're asking someone else that.
Now, if you sit and contemplate whether there are physical laws in the universe, you are using the operation of your own mind, which is subject to the physical laws of the universe, though still not entirely deterministic, at least according to some scientists.
So overall, you simply can't escape physical laws, or you can't use your brain without assuming that physical laws work, right?
Otherwise, if you want to see how a brain works in the absence of defined physical laws, stick a 50,000-walt line up your nose and see how concentrated you can keep your thinking.
That's haywire in the mind.
It's still under physical laws, but it's a significant haywiring of the mind.
You simply can't formulate a question about physical laws, even if you're just sitting contemplating it on your own.
You simply cannot formulate a question.
With physical laws without assuming that they exist and are stable.
And you certainly can't ask somebody else whether or not physical laws are valid without assuming that physical laws are valid.
Simultaneously, you simply cannot ask somebody else if universally preferred behavior exists without using universally preferred behavior.
It is absolutely and completely and totally and utterly impossible.
to deny that universally preferred behaviors exist.
So given that universally preferred behaviors exist, Because you can't argue against them without using them.
Given that they exist, the question is, well, what are they?
Universally preferred behaviors exist.
But what are they?
Now, subjectively preferred behaviors exist without a doubt.
You could make up your own language.
You could learn some sub-dialect of dwarfish or something and make up some D&D language of your own or some dialectic crossover between elf and Klingon.
And that would be not objectively preferred behavior because nobody else would know what the hell you were talking about and they would assume that you'd simply choked on a shrimp stick sideways.
So we have no doubt that there is subjectively preferred behavior in that human beings exhibit preference and choose to do X, Y, and Z, and in the economics realm they respond to incentives and so on.
So there's no question that there's universally preferred behavior, right?
And there's, you know, a couple of different classes, right?
I mean, people like particular styles of music.
Most people like music, but not all people like music.
And then there's other kinds of...
There's lots of gradations of this, right?
So, when it comes to preferred behavior, there's, you know, locally, subjectively preferred behavior, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not particularly important.
It's not universally preferred, right, in the way that if you communicate, you should use logic, and if you communicate, you should use a syntactically correct language structure in the language of the person who is listening, and so on, right?
So those are sort of more preferred behaviors.
They are universally preferred insofar as if you want to have a coherent argument, it has to be in the same language, or at least a language that you're both familiar with.
You have to use grammatically correct sentences, and you have to have some dedication to the prospect of logic, such that if you are disproven, you should withdraw or change your opinion or whatever, right?
So universally preferred behaviors do exist.
The question then becomes, what are universally preferred behaviors?
And the question then is, well, they have to pass the sleeping man test.
The sleeping guys can't be evil.
They have to apply at all times and all places, just like a theory of physics.
You can't say that water flows downhill in Syria and up in San Francisco.
That doesn't really make any sense, right?
You certainly can't say that water will pour out of this bucket onto the ground now, but in two minutes it will pour upwards, and there's no changing conditions, right?
No massive gravity well above or whatever.
And so from that standpoint, you...
You have to have a logically consistent theory.
If you don't have a logically consistent theory to describe universally preferred behavior, then you're wrong.
I mean, then your theory is incorrect.
If you can't find a way to describe universally preferred behavior in a logical, consistent way, then your theory is incorrect.
Just as the same way in biological classifications, right?
If you say, I don't know, it's an ungulate and four legs and horns and so on.
It's a caribou. And if you say that...
If it's got scales and gills and breathes underwater and has no lungs and doesn't regulate its own body temperature that well and has a bladder and so on, then it's a fish.
And if it has no bladder, then it's a shark.
And if its bones are made of cartilage, it's a shark.
Whatever these kinds of things are, right?
You have particular classifications.
Now, naturellement...
Hang on one second. I've got to change lanes.
Ooh, look at that. A Toronto driver accidentally let me into a lane.
Wow, I bet you he's going to lose his license now.
What a shame. Seemed like a nice guy.
So, you have to...
You have to have biological classifications that are going to be pretty structured, right?
You don't put a zebra and a zebrafish into the same biological classification unless it's generally, you know, multicellular living organisms or something, but you don't say a zebra is a kind of striped horse and a zebrafish is a kind of striped horse, right?
That wouldn't make any sense. So you have to have, and it's based on the biological properties of the actual organisms.
Now, There also has to be some kind of pattern, right?
I mean, as I've used this example before, but if you have a horse born with two heads, you don't invent an entirely new classification.
You just say, well, that's a weird mutation, and, you know, I guess one of the things that can happen is reproduction can go wrong, and that's how you learn DNA, and so on, right?
So there are going to be exceptions to the general categorizations, but you recognize them as exceptions based on the general categorizations, right?
You don't make up a new category for every single conceivable possibility.
And of course there are, and this is back to the Aristotelian idea of essence, right?
So there are tall horses and there are short horses and there are brown horses and palomino horses and all these kinds of things.
And there are horses with saddles and people and centaurs.
Oh, wait. Sorry, there aren't horses with people.
And then you have all of these, you know, but you look for the essence.
You look for that which is conceptually similar enough to create a category.
And what is it somebody said?
If God created the world, he seemed to be inordinately fond of beetles.
What, a 300,000 known species of beetles or something like that?
But there are going to be exceptions, right?
So yes, human beings should not kill, should not initiate the use of force.
That's something that we can all get behind.
It deals with self-defense and so on.
Human beings are morally responsible.
Well, yeah, of course. But there are deviations, such as somebody who's grown up mentally challenged or retarded, then they are going to be not as morally responsible.
And children are less morally responsible.
Then adults, and you have to put in some limit where it's like, okay, you're 16, now you're morally responsible.
Has the body changed and reversed itself overnight?
No, of course not, but that's fine.
I mean, there are foals and there are horses, and the foals are small and considered to be the young, and then one day they're called horses and there is gradations, and these gray areas are part of any sort of biological construct, and there's not much that you can do to get rid of all of this stuff.
So, and you shouldn't even try, but, you know, you can't get exactly the same rigor because of the problems of biological reproduction and the uncertainty of functionality in biological reproduction.
So you can't get rid of those gray areas completely.
In fact, getting rid of them would be getting rid of a great deal of, well, there'd be no such thing as evolution.
And we wouldn't exist if these gray areas didn't exist.
So I find it hard to fault them to too much.
But I hope that this makes sense.
I'm going to take a break at the gym, and then we'll finish this up on the way home.
Alright, so to continue, there is a phrase that I think is quite telling when it comes to this gentleman's excellent, excellent responses and questions around this question of universally preferred behavior.
And the question or the comment is this.
He says, there will always be behaviors that are universally preferable.
And the problem, of course, with saying that there are behaviors that are universally preferable.
Is that you take the approach of saying, and you know, I hate to use the rocks all the time, but it is the simplest one to understand, you know, mostly for me.
But it's like saying, if you say something like, there are always behaviors that will be universally preferable, it's like a scientist saying, my theory is that there will always be rocks that will fall down.
Right? There will always be rocks That will fall down.
Now, can you imagine a scientist putting forward that as a theory and saying, well, there are always rocks that will fall down, and that's my theory about science, or that's my theory of gravity, or whatever.
There will always be rocks that will fall down.
Now, it seems quite hard to imagine that that would be a productive way to look at a scientific theory, because what really does it say?
What it says is that we need to merely observe.
That we gain universally preferred behavior from observation.
And this, of course, is a great danger when it comes to putting forward logical theories.
Observation is, it's like, what do they call it in business?
Analysis paralysis.
When it's like Jack Welsh, when he took over at GE, he said, you know, we had this culture of ready, aim, aim, aim, aim.
Aim, aim, aim, and never pulling the trigger.
And he said, you know, then we went to a little bit of ready, fire, aim, and now we're trying to do ready, aim, fire.
With empirical observation, which is where a lot of moralists like to move, right?
They like to move to empirical observation, and they say, well, most cultures are against murder, you see, so there must be something wrong with murder.
And yet, inexplicably, some cultures are very pro-murder at times, right?
It's like war or whatever.
They love love-slaughtering each other.
So the problem with observation is that it doesn't really get you anything useful.
So, you know, most cultures are against rape, right?
It's like, well, yes, but the problem is that people define rape very differently in different cultures, right?
And for a long time, up until recently in the West, it was technically and legally impossible for a woman to charge her husband with rape, right?
So, whereas now we understand that a husband forcing himself and his wife is morally wrong.
So it's very hard, and this is where moralists get quite confused, is they look around the world and they say, well, there's so many different moral things, and yeah, there's some commonality, like there's very few pro-theft.
It's like, yes, but then there's all these governments, right?
So all that happens is people change the definition, and now theft becomes, quote, taxation and income redistribution and so on, right?
There's these things, and then murder is wrong, and then murder is right in war, and you could sort of go on and on.
And of course, people's behavior changes, morally, depending on the legal circumstances that they're in.
So, very few people will try and make a living out of selling illicit drugs until they become illicit, right?
So, whereas people will be far less prone to violence when drugs are legal in the realm of the drug trade, then as soon as drugs become illegal, or very shortly thereafter, then people begin to want to use violence to gain the profits and so on, and so you're basically corrupting people and Have you changed reality?
And so on, right? So when you use observation alone, then you really are, you can never come to any certainty.
Observation alone will never lead you to any kind of certainty.
You are then going to be in the position of a scientist saying, my theory of gravity is that every rock I have tested and seen has fallen down.
And so it seems that rocks tend to fall down.
But I can't say it for sure because I haven't tested every rock, and even if I had, maybe the one that I tested to begin with has changed its nature.
And even if I could simultaneously test every rock in existence at the same time, what would happen if the nature of them should change and I should have to do it right?
You'd have to be perpetually testing every rock simultaneously until the end of time in order to have any certainty, which of course is all completely, totally impossible.
Observation alone will never lead you to certainty, and this is where a lot of people have problems when it comes to ethics.
It's like, well, you know, most cultures seem to do this and that, but for every rule you can find, you know, enormous and massive exceptions, right?
So observation is not the case.
Now, the problem, of course, with observation when you're looking at, and this is the thing that the argument for morality and this idea of universally preferred behavior solves, is that When you deal with observation, you are saying that observation is universally preferred behavior.
So you're creating doubt through certainty, which is sort of a problem.
So in science, there is certain criteria, logical consistency, empirical observation, reproducibility of experimentation, independence of time and space for those which are not dependent on time and space, and so on.
Those kinds of things are sort of required, and it is the certainty that those things are required that make certainty in the results and in the theories possible, right?
So, I Einstein's theory of relativity is proven true because there's criteria by which it can be proven true, right?
So there's an absolute statement of criteria to say the theory of relativity is true, which is light has to bend and the time has to slow down when you get close to the speed of light and mass has to increase and all that kind of stuff.
So there is a sort of, well, it's conditional upon the observations, but it is not...
The observational methodology is not subjective, right?
So it may be that, you know, you will say, well, no property rights equals unhappiness or whatever.
And there may be some exceptions in particular instances which, you know, somebody may just say, well, I didn't have property rights when I lived in a commune in Oregon in the 60s and we were just blissful and wonderful and happy and so on.
Of course, you have the problem of self-reporting and all this, that, and the other.
But even if you say that you need a very strong observational standpoint for universally preferred behavior, then you are still having a standard of universally preferred behavior, which itself is not subject to empiricism.
The principle of empiricism is not itself subject to empiricism.
Because that would be a contradiction.
To say that we need empirical evidence for our beliefs is a fine and logical proposition.
But you don't say that the principle that we need empirical evidence for our beliefs is itself subject to empirical verification.
That would be a circular.
That would be tautological. So even if you were to say that observation is the key for developing moral theories, you still have a standard of universally preferred behavior, which is that those moral standards which can be derived from observation are superior to those which have no empirical evidence.
So, you still have universally preferred behavior, no matter what standard, what criteria, what approach you take to truth or to verification, you are automatically going to be putting in universal standards of behavior.
And if you try and argue against somebody who has a moral proposition, You can only argue about their definition of universally preferred behavior and the logical consistency of their description of universally preferred behavior.
You cannot say there is no such thing as universally preferred behavior because then you're saying that there's a standard independent of us that disproves you.
Because if I say you should stop disbelieving in your theories because I want you to, that would be a subjective demand for an alteration in somebody's belief.
If, on the other hand, I say you should stop believing in what you believe because you are logically incorrect and the evidence doesn't support it.
Then I'm saying that there is something external to both of us that should cause you to change your mind.
It's not me telling you not to believe something because I want you to, but it's you should stop believing this because it's not true.
And it's not truthiness is something that is independent of you and I, right?
You are conforming. I'm asking you to conform to reality, not to my wishes or my opinions.
So in other words, you can't ever say that anyone's argument is false Without recognizing universally preferred behavior, which is that we should have our theories conform to reality and logic, right?
And empirical observation is useful, of course, right?
I mean, and it's very important.
But the entire purpose is, if you do go and say, I mean, like scientists should, right?
If you do go and say, you know, a lot of cultures seem to be against murder, right?
And you say, well, why? Why is it against murder?
Well, you know, there's lots of explanations as to why you could be against murder, right?
Maybe the... The ruling classes don't like murder because it threatens their power.
It could be any number of things, right?
But these kinds of questions continually need to be referred back to the sort of question of the scientific method.
The scientific method is absolute.
Logic is absolute and cannot be argued against.
You can't argue against empirical evidence.
You cannot argue against universally preferred behavior without using it.
And so the real question is, Is there a way to logically define universally preferred behavior in a way that is consistent and conforms with the evidence and also conforms with some common sense things?
Like as Aristotle once said, if you have a moral theory which ends up proving that rape and murder are the highest moral goods, then you probably have made a pretty significant mistake somewhere.
Given that universally preferred behavior exists, the question is, can we come up with some sort of definition of universally preferred behavior that is logical and consistent?
And also for which there is empirical evidence and that kind of makes sense.
So I will, you know, this is a minor refresher.
Maybe we'll pick it up again in the morning.
But that's what the argument for morality is really designed to do, is to find a way of explaining morality or universally preferred behavior that, you know, explains what happened in the past, predicts what's going to happen in the future, explains what's happening across the world, and is logical and consistent and universal and reversible and so on.
And it really is the sort of scientific approach to morality that, you know, the scientific method and capitalism are the two best things that have ever happened in the human race.
So I think that they're worth applying.
The scientific method in particular is worth applying to the questions of morality because they are the most important questions around.
And we obviously don't believe that they should be left to the province of priests, and we certainly don't believe they should be left to the province of parents or of politicians, the triple Ps, which we aim not to please.
And so I hope that this argument for morality and this logical definition of universally preferred behavior is something that makes sense.
And if you want to argue against it, you're going to have no luck.
And this is not me. It's not me bullying you or anything.
You're just not going to have any luck because you can't argue against a universal standard without using a universal standard.
So just give it up.
Thank you so much for listening.
I'll talk to you soon. Donate.
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