All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 23, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:37
2287 An Introduction to Rational Ethics - Part 1

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, describes the philosophical basis for rational ethics, with reference to his free book Universally Preferable Behaviour: a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Made Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
I'm just going to go for a few of the greatest hits, and one of the biggest and most repetitive questions that I get is, how do we get from what is to what ought to be?
From the facts to the shoulds.
From the is to the ought.
And that is a very fine question, one that has bedeviled and perhaps even bejeweled philosophers, lo, these many, many years.
And my answer, of course, is that the moment that you engage in any correction, of another human being, then you have accepted all of the essential characteristics and requirements necessary for philosophy and for morality.
So, it's sort of like saying, how do you get from the way that the world is to believing in the efficacy of the scientific method?
How?
Oh, how do you do that?
And the answer is relatively simple, which is that if you go to a scientific convention and you've trained as a scientist and you accept the scientific method, then you no longer have to prove the scientific method.
If you are a mathematician talking to a group of mathematicians in a room and you say, why should we believe in mathematics?
Well, everybody there already does accept and value and submit to the objective discipline of mathematics.
I mean, because they're mathematicians, right?
You don't need to convince someone who speaks English that English is comprehensible.
You don't need to yell at someone who's listening to you that sound exists.
You don't have to talk to someone on the phone and try to convince them that phones exist.
You understand?
The moment that somebody accepts a discipline, you no longer have to prove that discipline to them.
Ah, so important to understand.
So when we say, how do you get from an is to an ought?
Well, you just did.
Or you say, there's no way to get from an is to an ought.
Well, you just did.
We say we ought not to assume that there is an ought in the is.
Well, you just did.
So, this is very, very important to understand.
Everybody wants to debate as if debating occurs in a vacuum.
Everybody wants to correct others as if the act of correcting others does not have embedded within it so many philosophical premises and arguments, axioms, whatever you want to call them, propositions that 95% of philosophical problems are solved,
If we simply look at the act of debating, and the act of conversing, and the act of arguing, and in particular the act of correcting, if all we do is we examine everything that is implicit in correcting another human being, we have solved 19 out of 20 philosophical problems.
So, for instance, if I tell you there is no such thing as objective morality, Everybody focuses on the morality aspect of it, but it's the least important part of that sentence.
The most important part of that sentence is, there's no such thing as objective man.
Somebody says to you, there's no such thing as objective logic.
There's no such thing as objective engineering, or objective physics, or objective math, or you name it.
There's no such thing as objective language.
There's no such thing as objective sound.
It doesn't matter what is at the end.
What's important is the sentence fragment called there's no such thing as objective.
What does that mean?
There is It's the most important part of that sentence.
We'll go in order of descending importance.
There is accepting a huge number of philosophical premises.
There is, is not I believe, it seems to me, I like, it could be, I dreamt that, I fantasized that, I had a drug trip that, dragons told me that, voices in my heads, yodel to me that.
There is.
There is.
There is out there.
If I said, in our dreams there's no such thing as objective physics, then I'm not saying there is.
Out there, beyond consciousness, in the universe, in the world.
Now, since everybody is trapped in their skull, or liberated in their imagination from their skull, depending on how you look at it, I always viewed logic and equations and so on as these big giant leverists that cantilever us out of our skull and let us traverse the universe on wings of thought.
Beautiful.
The moment somebody says there is, they're saying out there and is.
So what are they accepting?
Well, that there is...
There it is again.
Oh, there it is.
Ah, it's breathing in my mouth.
There is out there.
Objective universe.
The universe, since we're all trapped in our skulls, the universe that is transmitted to us through the senses.
Understand?
Out there.
There.
Not in here, in the skull, not in the mind, not in the imagination, not in dreams, not in the subjective processes of consciousness, but there!
Out there!
Like if you and I are both standing at a sea and I say, look, there, a dolphin!
And you say, I don't see it.
I said, no, I just imagined it.
And you say, well, why did you point and say there?
There means out there, not in your head.
If you say, I'm thinking of a dolphin, okay, I'm not going to go look for it in the waves.
But if you point there and say, a dolphin, and then say, no, I was just picturing it in my head, then we understand that would be a little fruity, right?
A little fruit nutty cakey.
There means out there in the objective world, in the objective universe.
Like, if you know someone who sleeps restlessly and you're sleeping next to them, and they say...
The bear is taking my food, and they may even be pointing.
We don't look across the room to see the bear, because we fully understand that this is a subjective process of internal consciousness.
This is a fantasy, a phantasm, an imagination, a projection, a truly vivid recreation of reality in ultimate 3D surround sound techno-vision called dreaming.
But we don't look for the bear in the room, even though he may be standing and pointing and asleep, and the bear, whatever, is taking my food.
The moment somebody says, there, bingo, bango, bongo, fill your boots, subjectivism, it's time for you to leave, because they're saying, out there.
So, the universe, the world that is experienced, external to consciousness, that is only transmitted to or perceived or received by consciousness through the evidence of the five senses.
There, one word, entirety of metaphysics, fundamentally solved, and a good chunk of epistemology.
Right?
Nature of the universe, nature of knowledge.
There.
Five letters, five senses, almost all philosophies solved in one syllable.
So, the moment someone says there or appeals to some external standard of universality, truth, reality, objectivity, or whatever, they're saying you exist, I exist, because they're saying to you there, right?
They're not talking to a potted plant or a question mark or the concept apostrophe.
They are talking to you.
Someone talks to you and says, there!
Points at something.
You exist.
I exist.
The senses are valid.
Language has meaning.
Things exist external to our consciousness that we can both perceive.
The senses are objective.
Reality is objective.
We both exist within it.
We have the same thought processes, not the same thought content.
We have the same roughly sensory perception apparatus.
The moment somebody points at something and says, there!
They're directing your eyesight.
They're relying on the validity of your senses.
They're relying that language has meaning.
They're relying that you cannot perceive something directly but need to look at it through your eyes.
They're not wrapping your skull in their hands saying, there, I'm putting the image of a unicorn in your dream bubble.
They're pointing at something saying, there.
See, if you just stop and break down what is happening rather than focus on the sentence as a whole, Then you can solve almost everything in the realm of philosophy.
Philosophy is about slowing the F down.
Slow down, sweet-talking thinker.
Slow down.
So sad, but that's the way it's over.
Oh, wow, that was two and a half octaves done badly.
Anyway.
Hello.
Oh, 70s joke.
It's about slowing down and examining everything that's embedded in the first syllable.
In fact, even before the first syllable.
So, in pointing at something and saying there, I'm saying a thought arises in my mind that I can use language, which is objective, and sound, which is objective, to convey meaning to your mind, which shares the same language To direct your attention towards something outside in the world that we both have accepted as real through the evidence of our senses and so on, right?
You exist.
I exist.
Reality exists.
The senses are valid.
Language has meaning.
Reality is objective.
Things exist independent of our consciousness.
All of this is...
It's not even implicit.
It's directly stated in the act of pointing at something and saying there.
I know, it's a grinding level of detail, but this is so important.
You can solve almost everything in philosophy by examining what is occurring in the first sentence, in the first word, and sometimes even before the first syllable.
Do you grok me, baby?
Well, I think you do.
Let's move on to the second word, is.
It all depends...
Oh no, that's not a British...
It all depends on what the meaning of the word is, is.
I feel your pain and whatever else is in your bra.
So the second word, of course, is is.
Is.
What a great word.
Also, my daughter's...
A shortcut for my daughter's shortcut.
Isabella, Izzy, is!
My daughter, the ultimate philosopher.
She does not believe that we're animals.
She says we're animals because...
We walk on two feet.
I say, well, ostriches walk on two feet.
She says, I guess that means we're ostriches.
Socratic reasoning at the age of three.
Beautiful.
Is.
Specific existence external to consciousness.
That is a tree.
Not could be a tree.
Not has a vague matching to a tree imago that I dreamt of after reading too much Jung is a tree is specific concrete delineation of something which exists external to consciousness objective to perception to others I can't point to the hill and say there is a dream I had last night there is a memory No.
That is a hill.
This is a podcast.
I am the host of Free Domain Radio.
You be wiggin'.
This beat be pumpin' pumpin'.
This beat go boom boom.
Is there a hill?
External, right?
There, existence, sense, objectivity, external reality.
There is specific delineation of something, either a concept or a thing, a noun, a verb.
There is no such thing.
We'll do that all at once.
No such thing.
There is no such thing.
There is no such thing as a ghost.
There is no such thing as two and two making five.
There is nothing that is equally red and blue simultaneously.
There is nothing that travels north and south simultaneously.
There is no such thing as a square circle.
There is no such thing as the virtuous initiation of the use of force.
There is no such thing as a valid argument against property rights That is initiated by the exercise of self-ownership over the body.
There is no such thing as using language to invalidate language.
There is no such thing as saying everything is subjective.
There is no such thing as saying nothing is true and being valid.
There is no such thing as a valid contradiction.
There are no paradoxes.
Other than those used as instructional tools.
There is no such thing as gravity without matter or matter without gravity.
There is no such thing as existence in the absence of matter, energy or the effects thereof.
No such thing.
You can imagine it.
You can picture it.
There is no such thing as a horse that can fly without wings or an airplane or a helicopter.
There's no such thing as a self-flying wingless horse.
You can imagine one.
You can make a wonderful CGI image of it.
You can make a movie about it.
You can make a flip cartoon in the corner of a Luke Skywalker scrapbook if you want.
But there is no such thing as a flying horse.
No such thing.
That which violates the laws of physics, a self-flying horse without wings, cannot be.
There is no such thing as life without matter.
There's no such thing as a soul.
There's no such thing as consciousness without matter.
There's no such thing as a God.
There's no such thing as life that neither comes into existence nor passes from existence.
There are no such thing as gods.
There is no such thing as the government or the police.
These are conceptual labels.
There is no such thing as labels having the power to alter the laws of physics.
If I point at a balloon filled with air and say, that's a helium balloon, it does not start to float upwards.
If I say I can fly if I put a beanie hat on, I am incorrect.
If I keep saying it and become a philosophy professor, philosophy would be best served by me testing this theory at the edge of the Grand Canyon.
There is no such thing.
No such thing is a statement that is not empirical.
We have not found a flying horse Horses could fly.
I mean, you get some alien planet with, I don't know, light gravity and big-ass wings.
You could get a horse that has wings on the back and it could fly.
It's not physically or biologically impossible.
A warm-blooded lizard is conceptually impossible because the whole definition of a lizard is that it's not warm-blooded.
A fish with feathers that flies in the air and has a beak is a bird.
It is not a fish with feathers that flies in the air and has a beak and hollow bones.
I don't know, whatever the hell else breeds the air.
There is no such thing says that that which is impossible cannot exist.
There is no such thing as a square circle.
We haven't come across one yet.
Not on some other planet there might be one.
There is no such thing as a square circle.
And please, people, stop sending me these nonsense drawings where you try to create...
I mean, come on.
It's a more important moral issue.
Stop trying to twist your way out of every rule.
That's trauma.
There is no such thing as a fundamental statement...
Of universal truth in philosophy that is independent of verification, of empirical verification.
If I say, there's no such thing as flying horses, and you say, prove it, well, I'd have to scour through the entire universe to find no flying horses, and then by the time I was done, they might have evolved in some place where I first started, and I would never, ever be done.
Never be done.
There is no such thing as flying horses.
No such thing means that which is logically impossible, that which is self-contradictory, cannot be, cannot exist, cannot be valid, is impossible, cannot exist.
Wonderful.
That which is logically contradictory cannot exist.
Cold fire is an oxymoron.
Gaseous ice is a fairly decent name for a band and a contradiction.
It cannot exist.
Oh, well, if you hit a crampon into the ice, it sprays around and there's gas.
No.
Come on.
Ice is not a gas.
Ice is a solid.
You can fragment it.
It's still a solid.
There is no such thing.
Oh, delicious.
You realize we have solved 95, probably 98% of philosophical problems.
Everybody wants to jump into that, like that didn't happen.
And start debating it as if everything that is embedded in, there's no such thing.
Didn't just happen.
Ah, don't do it.
Philosophy, best served by the phrase, whoa, Nelly!
Slow down, baby!
Slow down, you move too fast.
You got to make the premise last.
Just kicking down the metaphysics.
Looking for truth and feeling groovy.
That's where we've got to be.
That's where we've got to be.
Stop, whoa, slow down.
Let's unpack everything that has transpired since you first thought about opening your mouth.
And pause with regret to...
Survey the damage you've done, usually, since you did.
This is why my free book, Universally Preferable Behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics, takes a long time to get into ethics.
Everybody wants to leap over the premises involved in communicating about philosophy and then pretend that the problems of philosophy are unsolvable.
I accept the scientific method, but I disagree with the scientific method.
You understand somebody who says that would be considered kind of lunatic and would certainly have nothing of value to add in the realm of philosophy.
I deny that two and two make five.
I accept that two and two make five.
I'm calling you on your cell phone to tell you that cell phone technology doesn't work.
We understand that this would be somebody who would be so fundamentally confused that they would have nothing of any real value to offer until they had done at least a little something or other to overcome their fundamental confusion.
But this is how almost everybody sounds to me.
Not just how they sound, how they are.
There's no such thing as objective ethics.
So let's keep going.
There's no such thing as...
Fine.
Objective.
There's no such thing as objective.
Well, there's no such thing as objective truth.
There's no such thing as objective ethics.
There's no such thing as objective logic.
This is such a self-contradictory, self-detonating statement.
That it takes a truly staggering amount of hyper-conditioning, brain-squeezing education to believe it and speak it with a straight face.
I'd say there's no such thing as objective truth.
Well, there, out there, objective truth is, exists, a concept that specifies something in particular as being valid or not valid, existing or not existing.
There is no such thing.
There are philosophical truths that can be proclaimed independent of sense data, independent of empirical verification, independent of universe-spanning search and define teams.
There is no such thing.
Well, you have just defined objectivity, sense validity, truth, falsehood, standards, existence, non-existence, contradictions as non-existent.
All of this has just been perfectly accepted.
There is no such thing as objective anything.
You have just contradicted yourself six ways from Sunday school, and Sunday school is already pretty self-contradictory.
So that is a whole Gordian knot mess of Medusa-haired contradictions, I'm telling you, right there.
So, don't do that.
Kind of important.
It's exactly the same as somebody saying, trust me man, there's no such thing as trust.
You gotta believe me, there's no such thing as belief.
Listen, there's no such thing as hearing.
Look, there's no such thing as seeing.
Look, over there, you can't see it.
It's impossible.
There's no seeing, there's no there, there's no you.
Listen, you, you, right there, you don't exist.
There's no such thing as objective is...
The fallacious argument, throwing itself on its own grenade.
sadly taking most confused bystanders with it there's no such thing as objective fail fail fail fail fail fail fail and how could this have been missed for so long Well, because the purpose of philosophy has been, in general, to serve evil.
I'm attempting to wrestle it back from the evil pirate captain of yore, but the purpose of philosophy has been to serve evil.
If I was on a team, and you had you on another team, my team had red jerseys, your team had blue jerseys, and we call our game the purple hug.
Sorry, to blob two.
Then, and I said, my team has the opposite rules because we have a red jersey, you would understand that that would not be particularly sustainable, right?
I mean, it would not be believable, it would not, right?
My team has the red jersey, and the red jersey means that we have the opposite rules.
You have to get the puck in our net to win, we have to not get the puck in your net to win.
Well, that would be insane, right?
But that's exactly what statism is.
I have a blue costume on, and therefore I have the opposite moral rules.
You can't counterfeit, I can.
You can't steal, I can.
For you to declare war is a mass shooting.
For me to declare war is self-defense and nation-building.
So, the whole purpose of philosophy has been to paralyze people with ridiculous contradictions aggressively enforced by entirely corrupt academics.
It's all madness and nonsense.
And again, in the future, they're going to look back and they simply will have no idea how we managed to tie our shoelaces in any way, shape or form, given the kind of things we believe conceptually, how we were able to mouth our platitudes with any kind of straight face.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable what we're able to swallow with a straight face.
They look back at slavery and say, didn't y'all notice that they were human beings?
Look back at sexism and subjugation of women.
Didn't you all notice that women were people?
They're going to look back at us and say, didn't you all notice that the police and the government, the soldiers, were just people?
I mean, how could you create all these opposite moral categories?
How did you get through your days?
Well, some ways we barely do, right?
And certainly our children have a tough time getting through their tomorrows.
So we say there's no such thing as objective truth.
We have just stated an objectively true statement that there's no such thing as objective truth.
Everything I say is a lie.
Same problem, we understand that, right?
But there's no such thing as objective morality.
Well, if you ask someone who says that, is truth...
Is honesty involved in morality?
Well, they'd say, well, yes, of course, right?
Honesty has to have something to do with morality.
There's no such thing as objective morality.
Well, you're saying that it's a true statement that there's no such thing as objective morality.
And that truth is infinitely preferable to falsehood.
And if I'm saying there is such a thing as objective morality, then I'm telling something that is false.
Now that I am told that it's false, I am now lying.
Lying is wrong.
We must always speak the truth rather than lie.
That is objectively true.
So it is objectively true that we must speak the truth rather than lie and that truth is infinitely preferable to falsehood.
And once we know the truth and continue to speak it, we are now lying, which is infinitely bad.
But there's no such thing as objective truth or morality.
Do you understand how mad that is?
You must tell the truth.
Truth is infinitely preferable to falsehood.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy statements.
But there's no such thing as objective morality.
If there's no such thing as truth, there can be no such thing as morality.
If there is such a thing as morality, then truth has to be involved.
If truth exists, morality exists.
Because the truth is preferable to falsehood.
Anybody who corrects you tells you that there's a truth outside your consciousness that your consciousness should conform to.
You may be ignorant now that you're not ignorant.
If you continue to spout your falsehoods, then you are lying, you are false, you are corrupt, you are bad, you are wrong.
We use the word wrong to mean incorrect and also immoral.
He has done great wrong to me.
He is wrong.
There's no such thing as objective truth.
Our minds must conform to objective truth.
If we don't and we're ignorant, then we're merely wrong, uninformed.
Once we're informed, if we continue to be wrong, then we are wrong, really wrong, bad, wrong, a liar.
So the mere act of stating that there's no such thing as objective truth is to create an objective truth and then correct someone else with reference to that objective truth.
Saying there's no such thing as objective morality is to say that it is universally preferable behavior to accept truth over falsehood, to prefer truth over falsehood, and yet there is no such thing as right, wrong, truth, falsehood, lying or telling the truth.
Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.
The moment you correct someone, The moment you correct someone, you are affirming universal objective morality.
You are saying to someone, the contents of the mind may be in error, but reality is never in error.
Logic is never in error.
Actually, just listening back to that, I can sort of understand why Dragon, naturally speaking, sometimes thinks I'm saying E-R-A, error, when I'm saying error.
E-R-R-O-R. Great product, by the way.
A lifesaver.
Literally.
I mean, it's probably added five years to my life just by being so efficient in communications.
Anyway.
There's no such thing as objective morality.
Well, you have just affirmed that the truth exists independently of consciousness, that the truth is infinitely preferable to any falsehood that's out there, that Reality exists independent of consciousness, that consciousness can err,
can make mistakes, but reality doesn't, that the purpose of consciousness is to adapt itself to reality, to objective principles based upon the objectivity of reality, and that it is infinitely better to do that than to continue to participate in falsehood and lies, and then you say there's no such thing as any objective, universally preferable behavior.
The moment you correct someone, you have completely affirmed everything we've talked about, plus Morality.
Morality is universally preferable behavior.
The universally part is you're correcting someone, the preferable is you're correcting someone, and the behavior is you're doing it, not just thinking it.
I don't care what people think, it's unverifiable.
It is, to all intents and purposes, non-existent.
I know it exists, but in terms of philosophy, thoughts are non-existent.
Philosophy is a discussion.
I mean, you have debate with yourself and all of that.
That's very good.
But philosophy is that which is discussed.
Like, if you have a novel written down to the last comma in your head and you never write it down, never speak of it, and any one to never publish it, it is empirically indistinguishable from not existing.
Right?
Right?
If you have a blueprint for the most amazing bridge in your head, and you never discuss it, never write it down, never record it in any way, shape, or form, it is empirically the same as non-existence.
It may be there, but it's empirically the same as non-existence.
And this is why I talk about universally preferable behavior.
Behavior can be anything that you do that is verifiable, right?
Which is making a debate, writing something down, making a statement or whatever, whatever is verifiable.
I say behavior because that is philosophy.
You know, it's like the Venus Project guys had this great algorithm for allocating resources far better than the free market ever could.
Where is it?
Show it to me.
Well, don't worry, it's there.
Well, I'd like to see it.
I don't believe it's possible.
I think it's fundamentally impossible.
An algorithm cannot replace the subjective and eventually, through action, verifiable preferences of billions of people.
And so I don't believe that this can possibly exist.
No, it's there.
It doesn't exist.
This is why I focus so much on self-detonating statements.
I don't think the approach that I take...
I think good philosophy focuses first on self-detonating statements, on everything that is implicit within what is being spoken of and how it's being spoken, or that it's being spoken at all.
That's what philosophy is.
Solving problems through prevention rather than cure.
I've always been into prevention rather than...
nutrition rather than open-heart surgery.
Exercise rather than insulin.
The eternal cure of eternal vigilance that is supposedly required to leash in a state which has infinitely more power is nonsense to me.
Prevention is always better than cure.
And prevention in philosophy is about looking at everything that's implicit in the very act of making an argument.
That's almost all of what philosophy is.
And that's never done.
Almost never done.
That's why people can say things like, there's no such thing as objective truth.
Morality is cultural, they say, without ever stopping to think about what it is they've just said.
What did you just say?
And what does it mean?
Morality is cultural.
Truth is subjective.
The good is the greatest, good to the greatest number.
Whatever nonsense that people are coming up with, you can't escape the fact that whenever you correct someone, you are correcting them according to an objective universal standard.
You don't say, I don't like that apostrophe there.
You say, the apostrophe is in the wrong place.
Ah, the ever-present internet.
Y-O-U-R. A moron.
Oh, how tragic.
I know, I know.
It's grammar.
And therefore, it is not proof.
But it's a pretty good indication.
Especially something as obvious as that.
But I hope this helps you to understand why I focus so much on language, on everything that's embedded.
So...
When I get round to in UPB, in universally preferable behavior, to pointing out that rape cannot be universally preferable behavior, I hope that helps this whole background, which I thought was too technical to put into a book.
And it frankly is too repetitive.
And I apologize for the repetition.
I really do.
But it really, really needs to be this repetitive.
Because, unfortunately, propaganda is best combated through repetition.
Oh, I know, it's horrible.
But it's true.
Because propaganda is repetition.
And some people get bugged or bothered by the fact that I repeat myself in podcasts.
But, you know...
I sometimes have long drives and not many ideas.
But I need to repeat myself because propaganda is repeated.
And so there's very few Christians who just wake up one day or read some argument and the whole thing goes away and it's like they were never Christians.
That never happens, right?
Because Christianity is a bunch of nonsense, as is all religions.
It's repeated ad infinitum under vague or not so vague threats.
And you can counter repetition with repetition.
Sorry.
That's why I have 2,800 shows if you count the premium podcasts.
Which you can get.
You can get the premium podcasts.
Those are the really high-powered ones.
The very specific ones.
And, you know, the ones on objectivism and so on.
They're all at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
You donate and 50 bucks or more, you can get, I think, four or five levels of podcasts.
You can subscribe and get the premium podcasts and the private message boards for people who want to discuss stuff outside the all-seeing eye of Google Mordor.
But this is why I do this sort of deep background in philosophy before trying to get involved in anything particularly specific.
And this is why, with philosophical arguments, I'm always saying at the very beginning, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down.
What, what?
What are you...
My daughter would say, what'd you say?
Actually, she's outgrown that now, but she's said that for a long time.
So, I hope this helps.
This is sort of a deep background to UPB. In the next podcast, we'll talk about how this stuff applies to particular moral propositions that are often considered subjective.
▲
Export Selection