For thousands of years, humanity has attempted to enforce ethics through supernatural and secular punishments; this rabid aggression has been both necessary and ridiculous. It has been necessary because a rational proof of secular ethics has never been achieved; it has been ridiculous because it is impossible to imagine any scientific or mathematical argument being advanced in such a hysterical and violent manner.“Ethics” has been one of the great government programs of history; since kings and priests ruled mankind, only those philosophers who served their interests tended to get promoted to prominence, rather than imprisoned, poisoned or burned. Thus, over 2,500 years since its inception, the discipline of ethics remains largely subjectivist, relativist and cultural – and was not only unable to restrain, but may have played a part in promoting the horrors, wars and genocides of the 20th century, the bloodiest hundred years of history of our species.Stefan Molyneux has written "Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics,” which presents radical and rational arguments for a nonreligious, non-statist, entirely secular set ethical standards which validate the nonaggression principle – thou shalt not initiate force against thy fellow human – and the fundamental logic for respecting property rights.Rigorous, analytical and challenging, “Universally Preferable Behavior” provides a solid foundation for secular ethics. This book solves the ancient philosopher Petrarch’s dichotomy, which is that it is better to will the good than know the truth. Armed with the arguments in “Universally Preferable Behavior,” you can both know the truth and will the good.Universally Preferable Behaviour (UPB) | A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics Book Download: https://freedomainradio.com/free/#upbYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZvTXFxPwb0Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Stefan Molyneux, I hope that you're ready for your daily argument.
Today we're going to be talking about ethics, the most important work I think that I've done as a philosopher, and I believe the most important work that can be done in philosophy.
We're going to talk about my theory of ethics called universally preferable behavior.
It's going to be a very brief introduction.
If you want more, and I really hope that you do, then please check out my free book, Universally Preferable Behavior.
A rational proof of secular ethics that is available at freedomainradio.com slash free.
So, let's dive in, shall we?
The question, I guess, is first, why?
Why bother with the system of ethics?
Well, I guess you really can't help but notice these days that since the fall of Christianity as a central ethos or set of virtues for Western civilization, well, we've been just a little bit lost and adrift,
and in some ways I think we're now circling the drain And so the problem I've had with a lot of atheists and secularists is what they've done is they kind of ripped the roof off the church during the Hailstorm of internecine warfare that characterizes most of human history.
They tore down the church, drove people out of the church, but gave them no new place to shelter themselves.
And so now people are just kind of lost and wondering and scared.
They don't have a community.
They don't have a central system of belief.
And, well, let's just say the West has become pretty damn easy pickings.
So whether you can go back and resurrect the Greco-Roman and Christian worldview, I guess that's a possibility.
It's not particularly a strong possibility for empirical rational philosophy.
So I wanted to work on a system of ethics that would prove virtue, that would prove morality, that would crack the Humean distinction between the ought and the is.
You know, like you can't get an ought from an is.
The ought generally has come from divine commandments or failing that.
has come from the secular power of the state to punish people who don't conform to legal norms.
Neither of those are philosophical, fundamentally, so I worked very hard on this.
I was very informed by Aristotle's old dictum that says, hey, you know, by all means, work on a system of ethics, more power to you, but if you end up with a system of ethics wherein, you know, rape, theft, assault, and murder, the big four, are somehow good, Well, then you've made a wrong turn at Albuquerque somewhere.
You've gone in the wrong direction.
So I wanted to work with those sort of four cornerstones of ethics, rape, theft, assault, and murder.
And if I could find a way to prove that those are wrong, then...
Hey, we're on the right path and this is revolutionary stuff.
I just wanted to warn you just over the next few minutes.
There's an old saying that says the mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original shape.
This is going to be you in just a few minutes.
So brace yourself, be aware and get ready.
So the first question is, is there even such a thing as universally preferable behavior?
Ah, fine question.
I'm glad that you rhetorically asked that.
The question would be this.
Can you argue against universally preferable behavior without invoking universally preferable behavior?
So universally preferable behavior is things that people do that they ought to do, that they should do, that's universal.
Doesn't mean they always will do it.
It's universally preferable behavior, not universally preferred behavior.
So it doesn't mean that people actually will do these things, it just means that they should do these things.
You have diabetes, you should follow a certain health regimen and a certain diet.
Doesn't mean you will, but the nutritionist can certainly say you should, based upon the facts at your disposal.
So universally preferable behavior is not what people do and that they automatically do things.
There would be no signs of nutrition if everything we wanted to eat turned out to be fantastically good for us.
We have to go against their instincts and learn more about, you know, health and medicine and nutrition in order to eat wisely or how to exercise.
Like you want to exercise according to that good old Aristotelian mean.
You don't want to exercise so little that you end up as a pear-shaped couch potato, but you don't want to exercise so much that you end up with like shin splints and tendonitis and arthritis in your 50s or something like that.
So the question before us is, is there such a thing As universally preferable behavior.
Now, interestingly enough, if you come up to me and you say, as many people have, Steph, you're totally wrong.
There's no such thing as universally preferable behavior.
What are you actually doing?
Well, you're saying, Steph, the statement you're making, that there's such a thing as universally preferable behavior, is false.
And truth is infinitely preferable to falsehood, and you should not enact the behavior of saying false things in the world.
You see how this works? You cannot oppose universally preferable behavior Without invoking universally preferable behavior.
You can't say someone is wrong without saying truth is objective.
You can't say someone shouldn't say false things without saying true things is infinitely preferable to saying false things.
You cannot reject a universal statement without invoking a universal standard.
So if people say there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, they've just invoked universally preferable behavior.
They're speaking a truth. They're asking other people to not speak falsehoods and so on.
So it doesn't work. There's no possible way around this.
People have been coming at me with this from 6 million different directions for 10 years or so.
You can't get past it.
It is an absolute. You cannot argue against universally preferable behavior.
So given that there's no conceivable way to argue against universally preferable behavior, the only question that remains, and it's a big one, it's a doozy, the only question that remains is, what is universally preferable behavior?
It has to be something, because you can't argue against it without invoking it, so the question is, what is it?
A great question. Another great question.
So the answer is as follows.
In my brief homage to Canadian comedy, just picture, you have in a room two guys, Bob and Doug.
And you give one of them an iPod, you give one of them an iPad.
And you say, guys, we're going to run a little experiment here.
Let's run the experiment that theft is a universally preferable behavior.
Stealing, right, the removal of someone's property against their will.
Stealing is universally preferable behavior.
Now, go to it. What are they going to do?
Well, they're going to snatch each other's stuff.
One guy's going to grab the iPad, the other one's going to grab the iPod, then they're going to snatch it back, and they're going to continue to do this until...
You have pity on them and call a stop to the experiment.
Now, clearly, if they're grabbing and stealing from each other all the time, doesn't that strike you as like that can't be a rational course of action, that can't be the morally good thing to do?
Here's the thing. Physically, I guess you could do it.
You could keep snatching stuff back and forth, but you understand it's kind of weird, kind of exhausting, and you can't really do anything else.
Because here's the thing. If you say X is the good, then the opposite of X is Must be the bad, right?
If this is North, the opposite of North must be South.
So, if you say that the act of stealing is good, then not stealing, right?
If you say violating people's property rights must be the good, then respecting people's property rights, i.e.
not stealing, must be the bad.
Now, if you are napping, you can't be evil.
I mean, I go more into why in the free book, freedomainradio.com.
But if you're having a nap, You can't be evil.
You know, parents always say this, you know, kids maybe being a bit of a terror during the day and then they nap and it's like, oh, he looks like such an angel when he naps.
So you can't be evil when you're sleeping.
You can't be evil when you're in a coma.
And so if you prescribe positive action, you must do X, not you should refrain from doing X. Because when you're sleeping, you can be not stealing, right?
When you're stealing, you can be not murdering, you can be not assaulting people.
And so if you have a positive action as your moral ideal, Then when people aren't performing that moral action, they're not being good.
So when is the actual act of theft taking place, right?
So Bob grabs Doug's iPad.
Okay, he's got it. So in the moment that he transferred it, he's good.
And then it vanishes because he's holding on to it.
Oh no, he's holding on to it.
What happens now? Someone's got to steal from him or he's...
Like you understand, it's just a moment that you can be good.
Whereas if you have respect for property rights, you can be good at a continual basis until you actually go and steal something and then you're bad for that moment, right?
And then that badness follows you in terms of reparations.
So, prescribing a positive action as a moral good is significantly problematic.
So, here's the challenge.
Physically, it's very, very difficult to enact thou shalt steal.
Stealing is it but here's an even better part it is actually my friends impossible to achieve not just physically it's impossible to achieve let me tell you why so let's say I have some rusty old garbage bucket of a lawnmower and I'm like man I don't want to trip over this thing it I'm inept mechanically which I kind of am and so I just you know someone should take this thing away from me all right so what I do is I wheel it In its squeaky way up to the sidewalk,
and I put a big sign on it saying, free, or take me, or I'm yours, or whatever, right?
And then you come along in a pickup truck, and you are mechanically inclined.
I can fix this. Up you, and you drive off, right?
Let's say I captured this on video.
I got security cameras. And then I call up the cops, and I say, someone just stole my lawnmower, right?
Now, if they come and investigate, and the guy's going to say, well, here's the it's free sign.
I saw it on the sidewalk, and they say, do you have...
Is this true? And I say, well, yeah.
I put it on the sidewalk free and the guy took it.
And it's like, then that's not theft.
You're inviting him to take it.
It's like, but he took my property.
Yes, but not against your will. Because you clearly signaled that you didn't want the property anymore.
It was open for anyone else to take.
So theft can't occur if I want someone to steal from me.
If I want someone to take my property, it's not theft.
Stealing is not stealing if I want you to take the property, right?
So, I mean, just to labor the point, you go to garage sales sometimes, I'm sure, and you see, okay, here's a box of free stuff, just free.
You don't have to pay it, right?
So, you can't steal from someone who wants you to take their property.
Now, if theft is universally preferable behavior, then Bob wants Doug to take his stuff, and Doug wants Bob to take his stuff.
You understand? Because theft is universally preferable.
I should want to steal and be stolen from.
But if I want to be stolen from, I can't be stolen from.
It's not theft if I want someone to take.
So theft cannot be universally preferable behavior.
Now think of assault. Think of assault.
Now there are situations where I'm going to voluntarily go into an environment knowing I'm going to get hit.
I'm not just talking about like wearing a MAGA hat on a leftist campus.
I'm talking about like if I go into a boxing ring.
If I go into a boxing ring I'm going to crack and be cracked and punch and be punched.
I don't get to call up the cops and say, hey man, someone just assaulted me.
Where are you? I'm in a boxing ring.
Then hang up. We've got busy things to do.
So, this can even happen like in sports, right?
You're playing street hockey. You get a hockey stick to the face.
Oh, someone just assaulted me.
What were you doing? Playing street hockey.
It's like, hey man, that could happen, right?
Where you go after someone in a mall and you crack them in the face with a hockey stick.
Well, that's assault, right? So if you're in a situation where you're either allowing yourself to be hit or accepting the risks of being hit, it can't be assault.
It can't be assault if it's voluntary.
So it's the same thing with Bob and Doug in the room.
Okay, you say to them, okay, enact assault is universally preferable behavior.
Well, they're just clawing at each other and beating each other up.
But because it's universally preferable behavior, you want to hit and you want to be hit.
Because you can't be asymmetrical, right?
You can't say it's universal, but each person needs to have opposite desires.
One person wants to retain his property, the other person wants to steal it.
One person wants property rights, the other person wants to violate property rights.
It's no longer universal. You understand?
It has to be universal for it to be ethical, or to be philosophical for that matter.
Otherwise, it's personal taste or culture or whatever, right?
As far as assault goes, I guess they could keep pounding on each other, but because they want to hit and be hit, it's no longer assault.
Assault is when you don't want to be hit.
Rape is when you don't want to have sexual activity performed on you.
So this works all along the line.
Rape, theft, assault, murder.
Not only is it almost impossible to enact them physically on a continual basis, not only does it mean that people who are sleeping are immoral, but it actually destroys the definition of rape, theft, assault, and murder for them to be universally preferable behaviors.
This is how we know for sure, 150%, no doubt, no hesitations, rape, theft, assault, and murder cannot be virtuous, cannot be good in any way, shape, or form.
See, that wasn't that hard, was it?
It's funny, you know, because ethics You know, there's lots of complicated systems of ethics, but the problem is we really need to be able to explain ethics to, like, a two- or three-year-old.
And I went through all this stuff with my daughter using figurines and stuff.
I went through all this stuff with my daughter when she was two and a half.
She got it, no problem. She's a pretty smart cookie, of course, but it's relatively easy to explain.
And I've actually got a podcast called The ABCs of UPP about how to explain this stuff to kids.
So, we need an ethical system that kids can understand because we don't want them to hit and punch and steal, right?
It's actually pretty simple, right?
I mean, there's a click moment where it takes a little moment to get it, but once you get it, you've got it.
And you won't ever un-get it, right?
Now you know, without the guns of the state being pointed at you, without theological commandments, you know why respecting persons and property are good.
And you know why doing the opposite is bad.
Now, there will be people who will rape and steal and murder and assault.
That will still happen.
But here's the problem.
The problem is that it's not individual criminals who are the problem in society.
It is not the thief at night.
It's not the mugger. It's not the person who's going to assault you.
Because you can take reasonable steps to avoid those things.
The problem is not individual bad actors.
The problem is moral theories that justify either rape or theft or assault or murder.
And there are lots of those in the world, all over the place.
And you can defend yourself against individual criminals, but those who are pursuing bad ethical theories through the power of the state, through the power of various kinds of compulsion, those people are where the real risk is in society.
So there will be individual bad actors.
UPB is not going to make everyone good, but it is going to do a full Frontal D-Day style assault on irrational, anti-rational, anti-human ethical theories.
And that's where the real danger to us in our future lies.
So I hope that you will check out the book, freedomainradio.com slash free.
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Stephan Molyneux.
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New book coming out! August 2017, The Art of the Argument.
