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Feb. 21, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:27
652 Compared to What?
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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Stefano.
It is 1736-21-02-07.
Toodling home? Traffic's a little slow, so let's bite us off a meaty slab of philosophical gristle, shall we?
Chew away and see what we don't pass into a bottle.
So, I've had a number of requests to clarify...
A position of mine, which, given that I don't normally get, that must mean either that people don't care, aren't listening, or, least likely of all, that my positions are all perfectly clear.
But the position that is giving people some excitement...
Is this issue that came out of Jennyism Part 2 compared to what?
Compareth to which?
And there were some questions that were thrown around on the board.
I will talk about what I mean by compared to what?
And you can compare that to my previous theories.
What? Yes. My previous theories.
Compared to what to talk in a continuing fashion from the topic of the morning, this morning, which was doubt, the best and most evil friend a philosopher could want, we have ideas within our mind and we compare them first to logic and then we compare them to reality.
If we compare them to logic, we're at least passing the first test.
So if you want to go and buy a loaf of bread, you don't go to a camera store.
That's sort of the first test.
You go to a grocery store and you hope, unless you're living in Soviet Russia, you hope that there's some bread available, but you don't go to the camera store.
And in the same way, if you wish to investigate the truth value of a proposition, the first thing you need to do is check it for internal logic.
For sure, if it's not logical, it's not going to be true.
It may be confusing, a la quantum physics, but it's not going to be true if it's not logical, if it's blatantly self-contradictory.
And only after you've approved or passed the internal test of logic or theories, passed the internal test of logic, would you then move on to test it in the real world.
And after testing it in the real world and finding validations, you can then return to the logic of the position or to the proposition or theory and expand it still further and so on.
And so there's this see-saw between logic checks, physical checks, and then back to logical expansions of the original theorem.
So, compared to what?
First and foremost means compared to logic and then compared to reality, but I'm sure you've gotten all that by now, so let us move on to a slightly more bone marrow topic-y stuff a la philosophy.
So, when you compare a proposition...
You can fairly rapidly, once you get the hang of it, construct the compared to what's and see where they fit, right?
So one listener had a proposition.
Life is meaningless.
I'm not saying it was his proposition, but it is a proposition that we have all heard before, and of course it's not true at all.
Life is not meaningless. Life is a defunct magazine.
Don't even get me started on time.
So... When somebody says, life is meaningless, well, the question is, compared to what?
And there are two definitions that are involved in the phrase, life is meaningless, and, of course, the equation, the word is.
So, life is meaningless.
In order for that statement, and I'm sorry to have to use the word meaning in this, in order for that statement to have any meaning, Then life must be meaningless compared to what?
Well, compared to some other possibilities.
The first possibility is that something other than life is meaningful.
So, if being a rock is meaningful and life is obviously not a rock, then there's a possibility, because there's a logical distinction between life and a rock, that life may not be meaningful.
If you say Life is meaningless and then the word meaningless ends up turning out to mean life, then you've just created a tautology and you've just said two equals two and you've really done nothing other than run in a big, mad, empty, useless circle. So, to say that life is meaningless, you must compare life to something that is meaningful.
Because if you say that life is meaningless and there's no meaning anywhere in the universe, then saying that life is meaningless is ridiculous.
It doesn't make any sense, fundamentally.
It's like saying everything is composed of matter.
Everything that exists is composed of matter.
Forget about energy for a second.
Everything that exists is composed of matter.
And then putting forward the proposition that rocks are composed of matter.
Well, everything is composed of matter, so of course rocks are composed of matter.
If you say that all unmarried men are bachelors, which of course is more of a tautology or a synonym, and then you work very hard to prove that, I don't know, Bob is unmarried and therefore a bachelor...
So you say, all unmarried men are bachelors, Bob is an unmarried man, and then you work very hard to say that Bob is a bachelor.
Well, it's just kind of synonymous, right?
All men have testicles, and then you work very hard to say that Bob has testicles.
Well, you have already proven that Bob has testicles.
Bob is a man, and all men have testicles.
So, if you say that life is meaningless, and it is...
A subsidiary notion to the basic axiom that everything is meaningless, then you've added nothing.
You've added nothing to the pot.
If nothing has any meaning, then saying that life is meaningless is meaningless.
Because there's no compared to what?
There's no compared to something that has meaning.
So, that compared to is just part of the sort of breakdown that's very, very useful to go through in your mind.
So, somebody says to you, life is meaningless, compared to what?
Compared to what has meaning?
Well, nothing has meaning.
Okay, so then you're not saying anything.
Nothing has meaning.
Or nothing has any meaning.
And life is part of what has...
There's no such thing as meaning.
And life is part of what exists.
Therefore life has meaning. It's not adding anything.
There's no point saying life is meaningless if you are going to say there is no such thing as meaning.
Now, what people generally mean, though, when they say life is meaningless, as somebody quite wisely pointed out on the board, is they say, well, what they're saying is my life is meaningless, but I don't want to face it.
That's a choice, so I'm going to redefine life as a whole as meaningless.
But what they generally mean when they say life is meaningless is they generally mean that the illusions that I believed in have all proven false.
I will not and refuse petulantly and vengefully to construct meaning based on true principles, or to identify meaning based on true principles, because my fantasies failed me, or I failed my fantasies, however, some of the fantasies fail you.
Then my fantasies, my beliefs, which I formerly believed were true and meaningful, are now proven to be meaningless because they're false.
Therefore, everything is meaningless.
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
When people believe in something like God or the virtue of their country or the efficacy of democracy or the benevolence of bureaucrats or the love and automatic virtue of parents or whatever it is, whatever nonsense people believe in,
The divinity of Jesus, the benevolence of Allah, the sanctity of Muhammad, whatever it is they believe in, when these beliefs are turned out to be or are proven to be ridiculous and nonsensical, then the meaning that was in the fantasy that they projected evaporates.
So they project meaning into this fantasy, the fantasy evaporates, and their meaning evaporates with it.
They don't withdraw it and say, oh, I'd better be more careful.
This is the same sort of thing that happens when a guy falls in lust with an evil woman who rapes his heart, and then he says, well, all women are bitches, I'm never going to date again.
Well, this is exactly what happens when people find that their fantasies are meaningless, and therefore there's no such thing as meaning.
They don't say, gee, my fantasies turned out to be full of nonsense.
So in order to create some sense, I need to start believing in something that's not fantasy.
No. They get petulant and vengeful.
Oh, my fantasies don't mean anything?
Well, then nothing means anything.
It's just part of the general destruction that occurs with violated fantasy necrotizing into...
Black-hearted nihilism.
So this is just something to be fought.
This is a cancer. I mean, this is an evacuation that is desperately corrupting and terrible, of course.
So that's just, once you get the hang of when somebody puts forward a proposition, the compared to what is?
You simply compare it to alternate conditions.
And there are two alternate conditions which combined, I guess, give four possibilities with the phrase life is meaningless.
The first is life as opposed to non-life.
And we're not going to categorize things into dead and never living.
So a corpse, to me, is identical to a rock.
The fact that it was living doesn't mean anything because it's now certainly not.
So you compare life to that which is not alive.
And you compare meaning to non-meaning.
Not negative meaning, but non-meaning.
So life either has meaning, life has no meaning.
Non-existence has meaning, non-existence has no meaning.
Now if life has no meaning and non-existence has no meaning, then...
Life is identical with non-existence.
Life is then identical with non-life, which is not necessarily logically impossible.
Life is composed of matter. A rock is composed of matter.
A rock is not alive. Life is alive, and therefore your body can have the same properties as that which is the opposite of alive, or is not alive, let's say.
So that's possible, and that would be in the universe where meaning does not exist.
And then, of course, there's the possibility that that which is not alive has meaning, and that which is alive has no meaning.
Then there's also the possibility that that which is both alive and not alive, i.e.
you and a rock, both have meaning.
So, this is the compared to what, right?
So, that when somebody says life has no meaning, it's all compared to what?
Are you saying a rock has meaning?
No. Are you saying that it's impossible for life to have meaning?
Yes. Is there any possibility for meaning in the universe?
No. Okay, so then you're just saying that meaning doesn't exist, and therefore life has no meaning in the same way that life is composed of matter.
Okay, well, that's fine.
It's not an argument, right?
Because the fundamental argument is, does meaning exist?
Not, does human life have meaning?
And, of course, that's something which we could talk about another time.
But that's an example of a compared to.
Life has meaning. Well, compared to what?
And you can break these things down fairly efficiently.
Of course, what I would say prior to this, and we'll get into sort of the argumentation side of things in a more structured podcast series, which I'll do when I can do this at least part-time, but the more structured situation would be something like the following, right? So if somebody comes up to you and says, as they will in a French accent, and they get galatoise, galatoise, the cigarettes, and they'll say, life has no meaning, I spit on the life.
And you'll say, well, that's very interesting.
So you're putting forward a proposition that says life has no meaning.
I am putting forward such a proposition.
And you will say, well, that's very interesting.
So how do you know if it's true?
And, of course, you're very unlikely to get any sort of rational response, though it's a very important question to ask.
So you're saying life has no meaning is a proposition that is true.
Well, how do you know it, right? The most fundamental compared to is, you know, true compared to false.
Not life has no meaning, but the statement life has no meaning is true compared to what, right?
And that's really the foundations of the philosophical method that we've been talking about.
Lo, these many mons.
So... True versus false propositions, right?
Compared to the statement, life is meaningless, is a subjunctive sort of logical phrase relative to the statement, life is meaningless, is true.
In the same way that 2 plus 2 is 4 is...
A sort of derived instance of the larger proposition that the equals sign requires balanced similarities on both sides.
That's why you know 2 plus 2 equals 5 is not a valid proposition.
So the definition in mathematics that everything on the equal side has to kind of be equal, sorry to use the word in the definition, but everything on the equal side has to balance out in terms of numerics, that is a basic proposition.
How do you know that an individual mathematical proposition is true?
Well, one of the things is that if there's an equal sign, both sides of the equal sign have to balance, have to equate to each other.
And those sort of fundamental laws of mathematics, laws of logic, laws of philosophy, laws of reality, really, laws derived from the objective behavior of matter and energy, those Characteristics of a true versus a false statement are the first thing that you need to establish.
When somebody comes up to you and says, life has no meaning, then you can compare the content of that, but the most important thing I would say is to compare, first and foremost, to compare the form of that.
Somebody comes up and says, life has no meaning, you say, that statement is true compared to what?
Not, life has no meaning compared to what, but the statement, life has no meaning, is true You're claiming, but compared to what?
How would I know if that statement were false?
So if somebody comes up to you and says, welfare is moral, you can, of course, split into, well, compared to what?
And they'll talk about the selfish people who don't want to help the poor and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And you sort of fall down into a quagmire and don't usually get anywhere because you're sort of missing the framework that allows human beings to resolve disputes in a peaceful and productive manner.
Somebody comes up to you and says, welfare is moral, then you say, or can say, well, the statement, welfare is moral, which you're claiming is true, is true compared to what?
They'd say, well, it's true compared to the statement that welfare is immoral.
I say, no, no, no, no, now you're comparing the content.
The statement "welfare is moral" is true compared to what?
In other words, what framework is being used to determine that that statement is true?
So, when a scientist says that the theory of relativity, or the inverse square law, is valid...
I'm not sure that they would say it's true.
They would say it's valid, I would say.
Then when you say that statement is true, relative to what?
And they would say, well, relative to the scientific method.
Well, relative to logical consistency and empirical validation.
That's consistent and universal and reversible and reproducible and so on.
Sorry, not reversible, but reproducible.
And really, in the absence of that framework, everything is just sort of pointless.
This is what gets people so frustrated about philosophy.
Murder is evil compared to what is not murder is good or murder is morally neutral.
The most fundamental question is, if you say murder is evil, that statement is considered true relative to what?
Relative to what? You can't say relative to murder being good because all you're doing then is then creating an opposite.
But there's no framework.
So, 2 plus 2 is 4 is valid or true relative to 2 plus 2 is 5, but so what?
Do you then have to go through every single iteration of numbers and say, well, is this true relative to 2 plus 2 is 4?
Is this true relative to 2 plus 2 is 5?
2 plus 3 is 4?
2 plus 9 is 7?
Do you have to go through every single combination?
No, of course not. You wish to extract the principle.
So that you can compare statements and say this is true and only this is true.
I think this is true and only this is true.
So 2 plus 2 is 4, you wish to say that that is true and only that is true.
If you say 2 plus 2 is true compared to 2 plus 2 is 5, you really haven't established anything valuable.
Of all of the infinite combinations, of numbers that you could throw together in any conceivable equation.
You said 2 plus 2 is true relative to one of those other infinite equations.
Well, so what? Basically, you've eradicated the value of 2 plus 2 is 4 is true to infinitesimally small, because it's only true relative to an infinite series of other possible combinations.
But if you can say 2 plus 2 is 4, If 2 plus 2 is 4 is true, based on some principle, then you really have gotten somewhere.
So, in terms of philosophy, you compare it to What I would consider to be the scientific method for proving philosophical propositions, which is what we've been talking about.
Logical consistency, reversibility, universality, and empirical verification sure doesn't hurt.
In terms of the philosophy of science, then it's an absolute.
But in terms of the philosophy of people, either free will or some version of compatibilism, which...
Is, to all intents and purposes, free will, since it can't be predicted at the moment, is going to cloud the issues to the point where predictability does not become absolute, right?
So you can tell that people are going to not attempt to accumulate capital in a chaotic and violent situation because it's just going to get stolen from them.
But you can't tell what each individual is going to do.
You can talk about this, the economics, right?
People respond to incentives or disincentives.
And so... You can predict general behavior but not specific behavior of each individual and so on.
So this framework is so essential when you're talking about philosophy with somebody.
And any time anybody makes a proposition that they claim to be true, the first thing that you need to ask them is, this statement is true compared to what?
True, right?
Not this statement. The emphasis is true.
Truth in your philosophy is differentiated by what?
A proposition is true in your philosophy compared to what?
Well, in my philosophy, a statement is true compared to an illogical statement, compared to a statement that directly contradicts the properties and derive logical aspects of reality, logical rules of reality.
And that is the verification of what is true versus what is false.
Thank you.
And people always want to rush into dissecting the content rather than examining the form of a statement.
Somebody says, the government is necessary.
And people automatically want to jump into, no, the government is not necessary.
But without a framework, what's the point?
What's the point? You're just arguing nonsense.
2 plus 2 is green.
No, 2 plus 2 is blue.
Well, good luck with all that.
It's not going to get you anywhere. And I'm certainly starting to introduce this concept I've had for a long time, which I didn't want to sort of introduce at the beginning because it would be kind of exclusionary, at least until we're all sort of tidily composed on our little lilo of warm, bathy, logical understanding.
But when I was talking to the woman who was the Jewish theosophist, the past lives therapist or whatever she was doing, She says that it's true because it's scientifically reviewed, right?
In which case I say, okay, well, you're no longer going to believe it's true if there is no scientific journaling of what you claim, right?
It's true why? It's true why?
Why is it true? It's a fundamental thing.
When you argue with religious people and basically they say it's true because I want it to be true, right?
That's their fundamental thing.
It's true because I want it to be true.
Well, there's nothing to argue with.
There's nothing to argue.
The moment somebody says it's true because, and there's some objective standard, then you have something to argue.
If somebody says it's true because, rather than it's just true because I want it to be true.
Somebody says, I believe in the soul because I've had an out-of-body experience while I was dying and then came back from the dead or whatever.
Came back from the near-death experience.
I saw tunnels of lights and I floated above my body and so on.
Then you would say, okay, so you believe in a soul because you have experienced an out-of-body situation when you were dying or whatever.
And they say, yes, that is why.
Okay, but then you say, well...
Would you then accept another explanation for this?
And if there was another proven explanation for this, then you would believe in that explanation rather than inventing something like a soul and so on.
And if they say, yes, because I believe that I have a soul because I floated above my body when I ran out of oxygen on the operating table or whatever...
Then I believe in it because of that.
But if there's another reason that is more logical, that through Occam's razor is more consistent with reality, then, by golly, I will believe that instead.
And then you say, okay, well, scientists have been able to reproduce the out-of-body experience through stimulating particular areas of the brain.
There's a very strong degree of research that's gone on about oxygen deprivation, which, when it has happened in a non-life-threatening situation, has produced out-of-body experiences in people.
So, It's a perfectly reproducible situation with the right amount of electrical stimuli in the brain.
Therefore, given that when you're dying, your body is going through oxygen starvation, and these particular areas of the brain are being stimulated, and you get these tunnels of light, and you get these out-of-body sort of, quote, experiences, then, since it's perfectly reproducible in near-death situations without requiring a soul, then you must now logically give up on the soul.
You must. Now, if the person just says no, Then you say, okay, well, why not?
They say, well, I want to visit my dead relatives for some God knows reason.
I want to visit my dead relatives when I die.
So I just, I want it to be true.
It gives me comfort. Then it's like, okay, well, then why did you waste my time telling me that there was some logical reason?
You just want to believe it because you want to believe it.
So then it's not a true statement.
It is only a statement that you want to believe it.
When somebody says, a soul exists, or I have a soul, that's a statement of fact, an objective fact, an objective statement.
And you say, well, why?
It's like, well, because of this, this, this, and this.
So you knock all those proofs down, and then the person basically says, no, I still believe it just because I want to believe it.
Then I would simply say, but then the accurate statement is not, I have a soul, but I wish to believe that I have a soul.
Or basically... More fundamentally and accurately, I wish I had a soul.
That is the most fundamental statement.
I wish there was a God.
It's absolutely identical to I believe there is a God.
To there is a God.
It is a statement of personal wish.
It is not a statement of objective reality.
So this compared to is absolutely essential.
When you think about Somebody putting forward a logically positive statement or a statement that has truth value.
A valid truth statement.
The world is round.
Well, compared to what? Well, the world is round compared to or validated by logical reasoning and empirical validation or verification.
Not compared to the world is banana-shaped, not compared to the world is octagonal, not compared to the world is shaped like a brain cloud of Timothy Leary, because that's an infinite chain, right?
But the world is round as a subsection of validated principles that have been put through the wringer of logical integrity and empirical verification.
So I have no problem when somebody comes up and says life is meaningless, you certainly can have some funsies breaking that statement down, comparing it to rocks, comparing it to that which has meaning and that which does not have meaning and so on.
But the most fundamental question to ask of anyone who puts forward a logical proposition is, why do you believe it?
And what is your criteria for calling something true relative to calling something false?
Not, is this statement true or false?
But how do you know whether any statements are true or false?
That's the most fundamental question in the realm of philosophy.
And you would be beyond appalled, or maybe not by now, but you would be beyond appalled if or when you really get the hang of how nobody really...
Answers that question. I know it's the answer to that question.
People put forward the most astounding logical claims, and as I giggled about in the Jennycast part two, Jennyism part two, it's amazing how many statements people will put forward while having absolutely no idea of what constitutes a true or false statement.
It is simply a statement of personal whim.
I am for socialized medicine is the equivalent of saying, I wish people didn't get sick.
I wish somebody would just pay for people who got sick.
Well, that's nice. I think it would be great if the world were banana-shaped and I could eat my way to the gore.
You know, I wish that elves would type out my podcast.
I mean, now your turn.
What would you wish for? That's really all that people are saying when they say things like that.
That the government should help the poor is just a statement that says, I think the poor should be helped.
It's just, I prefer that the poor are helped.
It's not a statement of fact.
It's a statement of purely personal preference.
God exists is exactly the same logically and functionally as I like the idea that God exists.
The two are epistemologically absolutely and completely and totally identical.
Because the moment you say that God exists based on some external criteria, then you have to accept that there's a distinct possibility or you have to accept that God does not exist if God no longer meets that criteria or if that criteria is proven to be false.
So somebody says, I have faith in God.
Well, what's faith? Belief without evidence.
Right? Then the statement, I believe in God, is exactly the same as the statement, I disbelieve in God.
The two are absolutely identical, and therefore it's mere whim which says you'd go one way or the other until you bring logic and science into it.
It's just a mere statement of personal whim.
And it's not even remotely objective.
Like, you could say, I like candy, and then you could be hooked up to an MRI and say, yes, I like candy, and my pleasure centers light up when I get the candy, and this and that and the other.
And I guess you could say the same about God, but people don't say that my preference for candy exists outside my consciousness, exists objectively in the real world.
But people believe that their preference for God exists somehow outside their consciousness in the real world and that they're describing that which exists rather than describing that which gives them a pleasure or that which they prefer.
So the compared to what is always most fundamentally compared to falsehood.
This statement is true.
Compared to what standard of truth and falsehood?
Or subsumed under what criteria of truth and falsehood?
And the most amazing thing, of course, and the most fundamentally terrifying thing when you begin to talk about philosophy with people, in this context, in this context, Not arguing politics or ethics, and all that stuff comes later.
I mean, how on earth are you supposed to build a bridge when you don't even know where your hands are?
People just sort of run around trying to build these bridges.
They don't even know what matter or property or anything is.
So, the first and most fundamental question is, well, of course, what is reality, the metaphysics, but what is true?
What is true? How do we know?
How do we know? How do we know something's true versus something is false?
Compared to what, most fundamentally, is compared to Thank you so much for listening.
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