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Dec. 13, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
27:01
2864 An Introduction to First Principles
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So I just did a video recently called An Introduction to Sophistry.
I would now like to do an even more important video, An Introduction to First Principles.
Ooh, the basic meat and marrow of philosophy, which I think is absolutely essential for philosophy.
Clear thinking and, you know, bringing the clear, high, rational gales of thought to blow away the low-lying fog of tradition and culture and superstition and so on.
So, let me start with an example from a book I read many, many, many years ago when I was in my early to mid-teens called Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
You probably know it as a movie.
I don't know how many times it's been remade.
The one I saw was with Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy, and it's a good film.
Frightening, because it is basically the mind of a paranoiac extrapolated into science fiction.
But in the book, which has some very interesting philosophical arguments...
A man is talking to another man.
And he says, I don't know how to explain this.
I don't know if this is going to make any sense.
I don't even know if it's sane.
But I really have this very strong feeling that my wife is not my wife.
That at some point, I'm not sure exactly when, but at some point, relatively recently, in the last, I don't know, month, month and a half, that My real wife was taken away and a substitute wife was put in her place.
I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but that is what my experience has been, and I sort of feel like I'm sleeping next to some replicant, or maybe it's a flesh robot, or maybe someone who's been cloned, and I really feel like this is not my wife.
She looks like my wife, she talks like my wife, she has memories that only my wife could have, which I know is a problem with the thesis, but I don't really think that she's my wife.
And the other guy says, well, what about scars?
Because if your wife had somehow been cloned or replicated, the DNA would not produce the scars.
The scars are the result of whatever happens as an adult or a child.
And he said, well, this is the weird thing, and this is where I know.
Like, I mean, I don't know.
If you're crazy, you never think that you're crazy, but I'm totally thinking that I could be crazy.
So I'm just telling you.
You know, when she was in her 20s, she had a mold removed from the back of her neck.
And it left a scar.
It's a little star-shaped scar.
That scar is there.
Which I know kind of scotches the theory, but I cannot shake the feeling.
And it's a creepy, creepy feeling.
I cannot shake the feeling that my wife is not my wife.
That she is someone, or more likely, something else.
A fascinating question.
Let's just say the original wife is wife A and the potential replicant wife is wife B. There's no null hypothesis here, right?
So if your wife gets teleported out and replaced with a flesh robot wife, then you could ask that flesh robot wife about things that only wife A would know about from your early dating that maybe you never shared with anyone else.
What position, what sex position were we in when we think we conceived our first child or whatever?
Or where did we go on our third date?
Remember the place with the giant ceiling fans that looked like palm trees or whatever?
Now, if, of course, your wife can't answer these questions or if she has no scar where the mole was removed, then you have a problem, right?
Something has really changed.
However, if she can answer those questions and has the scar in the shape of the star and so on, yeah, it's a big problem because now there's no way To prove the thesis that wife two is not the same as wife one.
That's interesting.
I know it sounds very abstract.
This is really, really important for your life, which I'll get into in a few minutes.
Because there's no way...
What's called a null hypothesis.
Can something be proven or disproven?
Like if I say I dreamt about an elephant last night and I wasn't wired up to anything, can you prove or disprove that?
Well, no, you can't because it's my subjective reporting.
I mean, it could put me on a lie detector or whatever, but you can't conclusively prove or disprove something.
And so a position that I think is very important for your life is if there are Two positions, and they oppose each other.
Either that's my real wife or it's a replicant wife.
If there are two positions with no null hypothesis, we can rationally discard the more complicated one.
Occam's razor, you know, the simplest explanation is usually the best and the truest.
Because there could be many reasons why I think my wife has changed.
Maybe she's having an affair.
Maybe I'm having an affair not telling her and that's affecting her behavior unconsciously.
Maybe she's got a brain tumor.
Maybe she's not sleeping well.
Maybe she's going through menopause.
Maybe she's under the influence, positive or negative, of some new acquaintance.
Maybe she has a worry she's not sharing with me.
Maybe she wants to leave me.
There could be maybe she really is going to come out as a lesbian, right?
I mean, there could be any number of reasons why my wife is acting differently that would have nothing to do with and not require some bizarre technology which replicated not only memories but also scars on a person.
So when you have two opposing or distinct proposals and there's no null hypothesis between them, Well, basically they're the same, right?
Because if I say my wife is a replicant or my wife is my real wife, and there's no way to distinguish between the two arguments, and there's no way to prove or disprove either one of them, they're really kind of the same argument.
My wife is my wife.
And so you can discard the more complicated one.
My wife seems a little different.
It's obviously possible and believable.
My wife has been beamed up and replicated in some giant orbiting watermelon that has coughed out a wife with the same memories and the same scars as my wife and beamed her back down to me, and so on.
It doesn't really make any sense.
Now, in the context of the book, of course, it makes sense, but in reality, it doesn't.
Let's look at another or a more common issue that people bring up.
This goes back to René Descartes, which is the matrix argument.
How do we know for sure that we are not brains in a vat with electrodes being controlled by some hyper-sophisticated, what he called a demon, or what we may call space aliens turning us into batteries?
How do we know that we are not in a delusion or an illusion?
Because we have the experience of dreams where we genuinely believe we are doing things which are probably impossible and certainly not in the bed that we're in.
We have the subjective experience of smell, of sense, of touch, of sex, perhaps even of ejaculation or orgasm.
We have very vivid and powerful experiences when we kind of know we're in a bed not moving.
So we already have the matrix is one of the reasons why the idea is so compelling is we have that every night.
So how do we know that dreams are subjective but tangible reality, sense reality, waking reality is objective?
Well, there are ways of testing that.
So, for instance, if I go to sleep and I have a dream that I'm doing cartwheels on a beach in Belize, well, what I can do before I go to sleep is I can set up a camera, like a video recorder, to record me.
And then I have the subjective experience of having dreams or of doing cartwheels on a beach in Belize, but then when I wake up and review the footage, I realize I didn't sleep fly to Belize.
I'm not missing from my bed.
I'm in my bed the whole night, and I'm not...
Doing cartwheels on a beach in Belize.
So that's how I know it's subjective.
I can get someone to watch me all night as well if I want to trust that person or whatever.
So that's how you know it's not occurring.
It's occurring in the mind, but not in reality.
However, of course, if I have a memory of doing cartwheels on a beach in Belize, which I do actually, but if I have a memory of that, And there are videos of it, and I have plane tickets, and my family was there, and my friends were there, and we all talked about what a great time we had.
Then there's no reason, of course, to believe that it was a dream.
Because there's actual video footage of me doing the cartwheels, which don't occur when I'm dreaming.
So in this argument, you know, maybe waking reality...
Is a dream just like we sleep?
Well, no, there's a difference, right?
There are differences in that dreams cannot be recorded by third parties, but waking reality can be.
And of course, in dreams, things tend to be very consistent.
You know, you're walking on a submarine, it turns into a whale, you fall, you can swim underwater, and then you are hugged by an octopus, which turns into Kim Kardashian's butt cheeks or something like that.
I'm sure we've all had the same dream.
Torpedos and butt cheeks, not hard to figure out.
But...
When we are dreaming, things happen in a flow.
They happen randomly.
Objects don't have constancy.
There are no laws of physics that apply in a universal that can't be observed by third parties.
These are all indications that what happens in dreams is physically impossible in the real world.
I mean, as a whole, some certain aspects of it would be possible.
But as a whole, there are transitions without travel.
You know, I'm in the Arctic, I'm in the equator, and so on with no intervening travel.
And so this is, you know, for these and many, many other reasons, we know that dreams are subjective within our minds.
But waking reality has consistent principles, right?
Object constancy, the laws of physics are universal.
They are inviolable, at least at the sense data level.
And so we know for sure that there are differences between dreams and reality.
Now, what we could say is maybe our waking reality is a dream, even though dreams are subjective and inconstant and unverifiable by third parties and contain contradictions and other impossibilities.
We could say even though waking reality and dreams have opposing characteristics in many ways, incompatible, opposite characteristics, Maybe, just maybe, waking reality is also a dream.
Well, that doesn't work because dreams are very specific and have specific characteristics.
You can't take that and then say that it's the same.
So, for instance, water tends to take the shape of the container you pour it into, right?
A brick does not.
So if you say, well, maybe a brick is just another kind of water, you know, at the sense level, right, at the sort of naive empirical level, it doesn't make any sense because water has particular properties that aren't applicable to bricks.
You can't take those properties and then just say, well, maybe a brick is just another water.
Well, no, because it doesn't have the same characteristics.
And so waking reality doesn't have the same characteristics as dreams, and they're opposing.
Now, if you're going to say that waking reality is just another kind of dream, then you have to have a null hypothesis for that.
Because we have one to compare dreams to waking reality.
So how...
If waking reality is a dream, how would you know?
How would you know?
Now, it turns out that there's no...
Way to know.
Whenever you talk to people about, well, how would you know?
I know why dreams are dreams.
I don't know how you would prove that waking reality is also a dream.
And whatever test you put up with, whatever test you put up, there's no answer to.
So in other words, reality is real or reality is a dream.
There's no null hypothesis between these two.
And therefore the simplest explanation must be accepted.
And the simplest explanation is waking reality is objective, empirical, it's not a dream, you know, dreams aren't a dream within a dream, we're not in the matrix and so on.
And it's the simplest and most universal and most understandable explanation for a wide variety of reasons.
So, for instance, how do I know that waking reality is different from dream reality?
Well, in dream reality, I am never told knowledge that I do not at some level possess.
So I've never had someone in a dream step me through all of the mathematical and physical proofs for Einstein's second theory of relativity.
It's never happened.
I have been lead singer for Queen, which has never happened, but I'd certainly love to try one day.
Not with the cold voice, but anyway.
Yeah, like I could step into Adam Lambert's prancing boots.
Not going to happen.
But I have never told myself in a dream information which I do not have at some level or at some capacity.
But of course I can go, if I want, take courses or just look up and go to Khan Academy and look up a variety of things that I don't know.
Which means that there's consciousnesses out there that have knowledge, which I don't.
Anyway, you could sort of go on and on with this kind of stuff.
But the answer is, no.
Existence exists.
Other people exist.
They're just like me.
I'm not a brain in a vat because there's no way to prove or disprove that I am.
And so we throw out the most complicated one.
We take the one that fits the most evidence.
So, having stepped from...
Invasion of the body snatchers to the matrix.
We can now move on to first principles.
So, can the mind make an error in a dream?
When I'm dreaming, can I make an error?
In a kind of way, no.
Because I'm creating that reality, you know, my subconscious is creating that through the weird magic of the brain that allows us to do these amazing things while we sleep.
So, errors cannot exactly exist in purely subjective phenomenon.
I mean, if I like a painting, or let's say something even simpler.
I like the color blue.
Blue is my favorite color.
One is the loneliest number.
Blue is my favorite color.
Can someone tell me that I'm incorrect?
In preferring blue.
Well, no, because it's a subjective preference.
Really no incorrectness in a subjective preference.
I like, I don't know, what's a food that I really like?
I like pasta.
And nobody can tell me you're incorrect, like you're wrong.
But if I say pasta, If Cairo is made of fish, then I'm making an objective statement, not a subjective preference, but a statement of fact.
If I say Cairo is the capital of Scotland, then I'm making an objective fact statement.
If it turns out that Cairo is not the capital of Scotland, can I rationally say Cairo is mistaken?
Scotland is mistaken.
Geographers are mistaken.
The internet is...
Well, the internet is often mistaken, but I can't say that the mistake is in reality.
When I make an objective truth statement claim, the only possibility is that I am correct or I am incorrect.
In other words, error exists only within the mind, which is why evidence trumps eyewitness accounts.
That's just the basic reality.
And that's why in science, empirical testing is the final proof or disproof of a hypothesis or a theory.
You say something, and then you test it, and if the test proves you false, your theory is incorrect.
You don't get to say, well, reality is mistaken, my theory is true, my theory is correct.
Like if I say a brick should bounce as much as a basketball or if I say a basketball will drop against a hard surface and bounce higher Then its original position, well, that would be incorrect because some of the energy is dissipated in the impact against the hard surface.
So if I say a brick and a basketball will bounce the same height, I drop the two together and the brick kind of sits on the ground and the basketball bounces, I don't get to say, well, the brick is mistaken.
My theory is correct.
I mean, I can say that.
I would just be wrong.
So these are very, very important principles for unraveling confusion and sophistry and error in your mind.
Error occurs only in the mind, and first principles tell us whether we're correct or incorrect.
And correctness or incorrectness, in general, references empirical or objective reality, measurable reality in some manner.
So there are two principles, two first principles.
Since what we are doing when we philosophize in general is we are attempting to describe objective principles or things or events or whatever, then there are two principles.
Since what we're trying to do is describe reality, There are two principles which reality embodies.
The first is rational consistency, logical consistency.
So the famous syllogism, all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
Well, that is actually a description of biological reality, right?
All men are mortal.
Walt Disney popsicle accepted, but all men are mortal.
Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates must be mortal.
That is a description of biological reality.
So the first thing that is...
And reality itself is...
Rational and consistent, which is why buildings stay up, why the laws of physics are universal, and why things can be described a hundred million light-years or more away, because laws of physics are universal.
They describe the behavior of matter, the effects and properties of matter and energy, and if a scientific theorem is put forward, a hypothesis is put forward, That says the same matter in the same circumstances will behave in opposite ways at the sense level.
At subatomic level, things get pretty freaky, but philosophy deals with the sense level.
So if I say, well, a ball that I bounce in Tel Aviv will, like a ball that I drop, a rubber ball that I drop on a hard surface will bounce back up in Tel Aviv, But in Philadelphia, it will go through the floor as if the floor didn't exist.
This would be inconsistent behavior under pretty much the same circumstances.
You would get opposite results, which would be invalid, because the laws of physics are universal.
So the first thing we need for truth, the first principle, is rational consistency.
Now, rational consistency is a necessary but not sufficient standard for truth, for validity.
So, if I say an elephant is living and swimming in the interplanetary space between Earth and Mars, that is not possible.
I mean, for reasons that we don't have to get into in much detail here, there's no air, whales and mammals, they breathe air, there's no air pressure, therefore the body would expand.
You could go on and on, right?
So that we know can't be true.
Can't be true.
There's a famous sort of argument from Bertrand Russell, Lord Russell, who says that you could say, well, there's a teacup floating somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars or something like that, and there's no reason to believe that there is.
But that at least would not be impossible.
If I said that an animal exists that is both an elephant and an amoeba at the same time, we would not need to hunt all over the universe for an animal that was both those things, because it can't exist.
Now, if I say a unicorn could exist, well, unicorns, stripping them of their magical powers, like a horse with a horn, yeah, it could exist somewhere out there in the universe.
Yeah, of course.
It's not a self-contradictory entity.
But if I say a unicorn exists that is both fire and ice simultaneously, and is both a reptile and a mammal and an amphibian simultaneously, we would not need to hunt the universe over to know that such a self-contradictory entity could not exist.
If I say somewhere in the universe is a square circle, well, we don't need to hunt all over the universe.
To find out whether that's true or not.
Now, if I say a non-magical unicorn cannot exist, then I'm making an invalid claim.
Because then you would need to hunt the universe and so on, and you'd never figure it out.
Because by the time you got to the end of the universe, so much evolution would have passed that you might have to go back to the beginning and start looking again.
I mean, you simply could never establish that.
So you would never make that as a valid claim or truth statement.
So logical consistency is what is necessary because logically contradictory entities cannot exist, do not exist.
To say that something is logically contradictory is to say that it does not exist.
In reality it may exist in your imagination.
I guess you could imagine a unicorn that was both fire and ice simultaneously.
Or if you said there's an entity that exists, an animal that exists, that has matter but is immune to gravity, well this would be false.
This could not happen.
Because the definition of matter is that gravity is one of its properties.
And that which is immune to gravity does not exist.
Because existence is, I mean materially, existence is being subject to gravity.
So rational consistency, logical consistency is the first requirement, necessary but not sufficient.
Means it could happen, could be true, doesn't mean it is true.
So, that's the first principle, rational consistency.
And you see this in mathematics, you see this in engineering, you see this in physics, you see this in biology, that if people put forward arguments that are logically self-contradictory, they are dismissed without appeal to evidence.
Right?
So, if I were charged with some crime, I was charged with shoplifting, say.
And the shoplifting happened at 3 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon.
Yet, at 3 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, I was kissing my wife on the kiss cam at some major sporting event with 20,000 people watching.
They would not investigate and look for my fingerprints and look for, like, because it's not possible, of course, to be in two places at the same time.
Therefore, because it is rationally impossible for me to be shocklifting and kissing my wife on the kiss cam at the same time, Then I would have an airtight alibi.
I would not be charged with a crime because it's impossible.
You then would not proceed to testing for empirical evidence.
You wouldn't go down to the store and say, well, did you see that guy here?
He wouldn't dust for fingerprints and if found would prove that I was there at that time.
You simply wouldn't.
It would be airtight alibi.
He's off.
He's not a suspect.
Never going to happen.
Couldn't happen.
So the first test is rational consistency.
Once rational consistency is passed, Then you go for empirical evidence.
So any theory which denies the possibility of rational consistency and or empirical evidence has nothing to do with philosophy.
It would be in the realm of sophistry or superstition or irrationality or culture or whatever it is.
And so when someone says, I know, this is true, this is valid, this is factual, you should prefer truth over falsehood and so on, those are in the realms of philosophy.
And being in the realm of philosophy, they are subject to rational consistency and empirical evidence.
Any entity which fails the test of rational consistency is identical with non-existence.
And even if something has rational consistency, If it cannot be empirically observed, it is in a state of unproven potential existence.
If I say I have a car, or you don't know me, I say I have a car, you may believe me, you may not believe me, but...
That doesn't prove that I have a car, if I say that I have a car.
Now, if I say I have a car that is both a comet and a car and an ugly shirt and a horse at the same time, you don't say, like, well, maybe.
Maybe that's a new model that I haven't heard about.
You wouldn't say that at all.
You would know that I did not have such a thing because it's rationally inconsistent.
Couldn't have all those properties at the same time.
So, first principles means accepting that error exists within the mind and error is corrected in statements that we make about reality with reference to the properties of reality, which are objective, empirical rationality.
Got to be rational.
If it's rational, it might be true.
If it's empirically valid, then it becomes true.
So, I hope that helps.
This is, again, if you want more, an 18-part Introduction to Philosophy series right here on YouTube or in the Free Domain Radio feed.
You can go and check those out.
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