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June 2, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:16:17

STEFAN MOLYNEUX vs RATIONALITY RULES! (HD)

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	all right everybody thank you everyone so much for joining us
	I'm here with Rationality Rules, and I guess we've been batting forth some arguments and ideas and insults and yo mamas back and forth like a bunch of backyard hooligans with a basketball for a couple of years.
	So we are going to do this face-to-face thing and we are going to hash it out.
	This really is the most essential topic that there is in philosophy, in my opinion.
	Philosophy can do a lot of great things, but I think where it really shines and what differentiates itself from other mental disciplines is in the realm of ethics and virtue, what I call universally preferable behavior.
	What we're going to have, of course, Stephen of Rationality Rules tell us his approach And so this is it, man.
	This is the key. This is the core of philosophy.
	It's not about material...
	Sciences, that's physics.
	It's not about life sciences, that's biology.
	It's really about ethics and virtue and the good life, the achievement of happiness and integrity and the appropriate levels of Aristotelian moral courage, all of that kind of good stuff that can help you in your daily life.
	And so that's what we are about.
	That's what we're into.
	Today, we're going to be talking about ethics and virtue.
	And I guess the core is...
	I can feel odd calling you rationality.
	That feels like a bit of a surrender up front.
	I'm going to refer to you as reason and correct.
	And that's going to be, it feels like that's a little bit leaning into the wind.
	So I guess Stephen is fine, right?
	Yeah, Steve's fine. Stephen or Steve, I don't mind.
	Steve, all right. Are you okay with Steph slash Stefan?
	Oh yeah, it's totally fine.
	Wait, you want to slash, Stefan?
	You want to slash? No, I'm just kidding.
	Alright. So we are going to talk about ethics and see if we can come to some kind of resolution.
	I do have, I had some audio stuff queued up.
	I'm going to have to read it because it's not working with this restream.
	It doesn't really matter in particular, but I will of course post my links to issues that I have with Stephen's approach afterwards.
	But for those in the audience who don't No, you.
	I don't know that that's too many, at least in my audience.
	I wonder if you could introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, your history with philosophy, and make sure people can find what they need to find from you on social media and on the web.
	Yeah, of course. First of all, to everybody listening, thanks for taking the time on a Sunday, no less.
	It's very, very generous of you, and I appreciate it.
	My name is Stephen Woodford.
	I run the YouTube channel Rationality Rules, which is dedicated to debunking, which is to say, revealing the logical fallacies and philosophical inconsistencies in theological and pseudoscientific arguments.
	And a couple of years ago, I took a swing at UPB. I believe that I found a few mistakes, as it were, a few begging the questions, etc.
	I conveyed them to Stefan.
	Stefan did a reply. As you said, Stefan, we've had a mixture of good philosophy thrown at each other, slash a few names over the years.
	It's been a good giggle, but we're both tough YouTubers.
	That's what it's all about. And today we're hoping to resolve the issues, to have some good conversations.
	So hopefully we will have a fruitful exchange.
	Well, I think we can't help but have a fruitful exchange.
	Even if we end up parting without either one of us changing our mind, we will have further clarified and illuminated our positions for the lovely audience.
	And that, to me, is what it's all about.
	We're going to start with something called a steel man, which is a phrase I learned from you, I think, in regards to your exposition on the Jordan Peterson-Sam Harris debate.
	So can you tell people what a steel man is and why we're going to do it?
	Yeah, sure. So... Still man is, you can see it's the opposite of a straw man.
	So one of the things you most regularly see when people disagree with each other is they straw man each other's argument.
	They make it weaker than what it actually is, so that it looks like they've taken it down.
	And with a little bit of sophistry and rhetoric, they can get a long way.
	But the point being is that they haven't actually dealt with the argument itself.
	A steel man is a good faith attempt to try and present the argument better or to the standards that the person who adheres to it would acknowledge and accept.
	So me, steel manning UPB, basically would be trying my best to make it as strong as I possibly can, perhaps even stronger than I think Stefan has presented it.
	That would be an example. Excellent.
	And then, because we are both into philosophy, I think it's well worth defining our terms, because Lord knows, I mean, having watched some of the Peterson Harris stuff, the way in which those guys can go round and round to the point where you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground, I think can be kind of frustrating.
	And most, of course, of what we do in philosophy is trying to get to the truth.
	And I believe that 95% of getting to the truth is at least getting an agreement on terms.
	So we're going to do that to make sure, because, you know, language is a tricky and slippery thing.
	I mean, you say something like truth, and it's like everybody kind of knows what that means, but it can mean a very different thing to somebody who's religious, to somebody who is scientific, to somebody who's a Platonist, to somebody who's an Aristotelian, to somebody who's an objectivist.
	So all this kind of stuff we need to define.
	So, you know, I guess what I'm saying is get comfortable people because we're going to be chewing through a lot of stuff.
	But I promise you it is going to be immensely illuminating for all of us.
	So do you want a steel man first?
	Do you want me to take a swing at it and then we'll get into our definitions?
	You know, I'm absolutely happy to throw down a steel man.
	And as you said, you know, do a good job.
	Then UPP is on the table for everybody.
	That's obviously the best place to start.
	As you said, Voltaire said, if you want to debate me, define your terms.
	And if I fail, then it gives you ample opportunity to fix where it went wrong.
	And in any case, we have UPP clearly on the table.
	So I'll give it a go.
	And to preface it, I'm going to employ a metaphor that you use in your book only just for a small while, because I think it's actually a really good one.
	It represents just what's at stake.
	And that is that you said there is a terrible beast of stupendous power, a dragon or a basilisk, which tyrannizes the surrounding lands.
	Wave after wave of champions, such as the likes of Socrates, Plato, Hume and Kant, try to match their strength against this tyrant.
	Try and fail.
	This beast is the belief that it is impossible to define an objective, rational, secular and scientific ethical system.
	It is the holy grail of philosophy, and the desperate villagers' only hope is for a man to appear who can defeat the beast.
	Do you believe that you are that man?
	That's fair play, man. Before leaving the tavern to fight the beast, you equip your armour and weapons by noting a few philosophical concepts, I would say, with your trusted sword being the notion of self-contradictory arguments, which you refer to as self-defeating in the book and also self-detonating.
	To give a few examples, you can't communicate to someone that you don't exist since communication requires existence.
	You can't say that there's no such thing as truth since one could easily retort, is that true?
	And you can't say that language is meaningless since in order to verbally communicate that language is meaningless, language must at least have some meaning, right?
	Now with this sword held tightly in your grasp, you declare that those preferences which can be considered binding on others can be termed universal preferences or moral rules.
	Murder, theft, arson, rape and assault are all proven immoral.
	You do this by charging up to the beast, if you will, and striking it with such blows as stealing can't be UPB since the act of wanting something requires consent and the act of being stolen from requires you not giving consent.
	Another one is rape can never be moral since any principle that approves it automatically contradicts it.
	If rape is justified on the principle of, let's say, taking pleasure is always good, then such a principle immediately fails the test of logical consistency, since the rapist may be taking pleasure but the victim certainly isn't.
	The same, of course, goes for murder and assault.
	Or another way to put this thesis would be, and this is a bit more colloquial, see it's almost like a second still man but in more general language, The essence of UPB is to say that if we're going to propose a theory of universally preferable behavior, then it needs to fulfill three conditions.
	If you're going to make a statement about universally preferable behavior, it needs to be universal.
	In other words, independent of time and place.
	Yes, independent of time and place.
	It also needs to be something which human beings can prefer, although it doesn't have to be what they always do prefer.
	And it has to be behavior because as an empiricist, you can't just read minds.
	And so the first question in UPB is, well, is even the concept of universally preferable behaviour valid at all?
	And you maintain that the answer is yes.
	And your primary argument is, look, if you want to correct me according to some universal standard, if you want to tell me there's no such thing as universally preferable behaviour, then what you're telling me to do is to stop saying that there's such a thing as universally preferable behaviour.
	If you say to me that it's universally preferable behaviour, that you stop arguing for universally preferable behaviour, well that of course is a self-destinating statement.
	It is a statement that falsifies itself in the very utterance.
	The moment you engage in the correction of someone according to universal standards, you are enacting a universally preferable behaviour.
	Now, once we accept that, the question doesn't become, is universally preferable behaviour valid?
	The question then becomes, which universally preferable behaviours are valid?
	Now, I could go into some sub-arguments, one being, what about the Schrödinger's critic, right, who never criticises you?
	But I'm going to leave that off the table because I think that what I've presented is the core.
	How do you feel about that and how would you like to add slash takeaway to it?
	No, I think that's good.
	I do enjoy hearing my own writing come back to me.
	I just wanted to mention that because I'm a big fan of Aristotle as far as content and metaphysics and epistemology goes, but I'm a huge fan of Plato when it comes to rousing metaphors and analogies that really bring things to life.
	So I'm... I'm obviously my own harshest critic when it comes to just about everything I put out.
	Well, you actually might be second, but it is just nice to hear that.
	I did want to just say a no on that, if that's okay, Steph.
	And I'm sure you don't mind the criticisms, as it were, but I just wanted to say it's not personal or anything.
	As you said before, YouTube is just give and take, and it's a bit of fun, it's a bit of banter, it's part of the past, as you've explained to others.
	Sure. Yeah, so the issue is there are four bans that just about every reasonable moral system has at its core, and the question is why?
	So the bans are on rape, theft, assault, and murder.
	And UPB says, okay, well...
	Theft, stealing, can't be universally preferable behavior.
	It's impossible because stealing is asymmetric, which means if you want something to be stolen, in other words, if stealing is universally preferable behavior, then everyone should want to steal and be stolen from because it's universal.
	But if somebody wants to be stolen from, it can't be theft in the same way that if somebody wants to have sex, it can't be rape.
	And if somebody wants to be assaulted, it's boxing or YouTube.
	So we can't have rape, theft, assault, and murder.
	As universally preferable behaviors, which is why there tend to be bans on these things, and that kind of establishes it as the sort of foundational moral ethics.
	Of course, property rights are validated by universally preferable behavior because we own ourselves and we own the effects of our actions, right?
	So as Steve points out, you know, I wrote UPB. It's my argument.
	It's my book. It's my toy.
	It's my ball. I'm going home if I don't win.
	No, it's my book, right?
	So I sat down and thought about and wrote and typed out and narrated UPB. So I am responsible for myself and I'm responsible for the effects of my actions.
	I know that there's determinism in the mix, which maybe we can get to in a little while, but just as far as I go.
	So you get property rights, you get moral responsibility, and you get bans on rape, theft, assault, and murder.
	And that's a pretty tidy bow to put around a moral system.
	So I appreciate that.
	That's a fairly good summation.
	And I really like the fact that you got to the rape, theft, assault, and murder part because everybody seems to get clogged on the sewage of UPB as an initial methodology and not what it establishes after you get past the gate.
	So I'll take a swing at your objections, if that makes sense.
	Sorry, go ahead. If it would be okay, because I guess if we want to get down to the nitty gritty as effectively as possible, would you mind giving a go at Steele Manning, Immanuel Kant's hypothetical and catechal imperative?
	Because that is the main criticism I'm going to be throwing at you today.
	Would that be okay by you?
	The Kant's categorical imperative?
	I'm not an expert on Kant, but from what I recall, the categorical imperative goes something like, act as if the principle of your action becomes a general maxim for everyone.
	And that's not the same as UPB. So for instance, you could say if I'm the...
	Sorry, you're just blurring out a little bit there.
	I think your autofocus is...
	Yeah, it's fine.
	So if I'm the strongest man in the village, I can say I'm perfectly happy to have the strongest...
	A contest of strength be how we determine the resource allocation in the village or who gets the prettiest girl or prettiest guy if I'm a strong woman or whatever.
	So there are ways in which...
	Taking your own principle, your own principle of action, making it a universal principle, can end up with non-universally preferable behavior.
	So if you're the meanest and toughest guy and you have no conscience, you might say the capacity for brutality is how we should organize things in society, and then the more sensitive souls among us would be kind of plowed under by that combine harvester.
	So I do have particular criticisms of Immanuel Kant.
	Plus, of course, Immanuel Kant, in his application of his philosophy, ended up saying you have to obey the king, the prince, the ruler, no matter what.
	And that's, well, that's, you know, by your fruits shall you know them, so to speak, right?
	I mean, if you end up in your moral philosophy saying, well, okay, if Hitler tells you to kill Jews, then you just go kill Jews, then something's gone wrong along the way.
	That's not a good outcome to get out of your philosophy.
	So Kant's philosophy is...
	Well, it's one of the things that laid the foundations for some of the totalitarian horrors of the 20th century.
	That's not specifically a disproof of his hypothesis, but it is sort of an example of or an indication that he may have gone wrong somewhere.
	Sure. So if you don't mind, I'll stick it on the table just because it's really clean.
	You're correct on the categorical aspect of it being something that applies categorically, but Just for everybody listening, because I think it's a really important point because it relates to a lot of my criticisms, Kant came up with two things, and that is a hypothetical imperative and a categorical imperative.
	And the hypothetical is like the if-then, right?
	Yeah, exactly, yeah.
	So a hypothetical imperative is an action that you should do if and only if you want to promote some goal, whereas a categorical imperative is an action that you should do no matter your goals.
	Or to put this in terms of logic, hypothetical imperatives are formulated as if you want X, do Y. Whereas categorical imperatives are formulated as just do Y. So just a few examples for everybody.
	A hypothetical would be if you want to stay out of prison, you must not murder.
	It's basically you can only say you must not murder given that goal.
	Whereas a categorical imperative would simply say do not murder or thou shall not kill.
	Another hypothetical would be, if you want to keep your job, you should not steal.
	Whereas a categorical would simply be, do not steal.
	Another one would be, if you want to live, you ought not eat a handful of arsenic, whereas a categorical would be straight up, you ought not eat a handful of arsenic.
	So thanks for letting me stick that on the table, and I appreciate that fact.
	No, I appreciate it. And I think it's worth, and I'm definitely going to do your steel man, but I think it's sort of worth referring to the donut hole that we're currently trying to inhabit in the West, in philosophy and thought, because the question of the categorical imperative, was answered in the past by religion.
	Steve and I are both atheists, and we are both very pro-science, and we are both—we are into objective reality, we're into reason, we're into empiricism, and self-contradictory thoughts are invalid, and I mean, I'm not speaking—I think I speak for you in far as all of that goes.
	So this is the funny thing, that we have an enormous amount in common, I guess, like brothers who fight the most or whatever, but we do have a huge overlap, and we're both trying to deal with this issue, how the hell do you get morality— Without the commandments that come from a deity.
	Because the answer as to why shouldn't you steal for religious people in general, Christians and all the Old Testament religions, Judaism and Islam and Christianity, their answer is, well, don't steal because God says thou shalt not steal and God is the moral arbiter of the universe and God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good and all that kind of stuff.
	So that's asked and answered.
	Now, it's not an answer, philosophically speaking at all.
	It's merely the assertion.
	It's the ultimate argument from authority.
	And so it is not an answer to say that this was written down.
	It is derived from an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-virtuous God.
	And that's why you have to do it.
	That is no more an answer than saying, where did life come?
	Well, God rolled some snakes in clay and breathed some life into them.
	It's the illusion of an answer that prevents further exploration.
	So we're out here in sort of interstellar depths of the post-religious moral landscape.
	Trying to figure out, because we kinda need to figure it out, right?
	We need to figure out how people can be good.
	Why should we be good?
	What is goodness?
	And neither of us, and I imagine a fair number of the audience here, is not particularly satisfied and philosophically you shouldn't be by edicts from a supernatural being.
	That is not how we're going to get philosophical answers.
	That may be the province of theology.
	It certainly is the province of faith.
	But faith in many ways is the opposite of rational exploration, of science, of empiricism, and so on.
	So that's why this topic is so big, and it is huge.
	Again, we talked earlier about the columns and pillars of smoke rolling across America at the moment.
	That's people who don't believe that they can reason with each other, and so they're taken to the streets, and there's violence.
	If we lose reason, if we lose the conversation, we gain nothing but endless war and conflict.
	And of course, we saw this in Europe with 300 years of civil war based upon religious groups trying to wrestle control of various state governments in order to impose their views on everyone else and avoid having other people's views imposed upon them to the point where Europe said the only way we can survive is to separate church and state.
	And so that's where we are, and this is why it is so absolutely essential.
	If we can't be good, if we can't self-restrain, we can't have a civilization.
	Because the government can't play whack-a-mole.
	I mean, you see this. All of these rioters out there, they're not doing the right thing.
	And I'm not talking about the protesters.
	Protesters is perfectly fine.
	But the rioters out there, they have overwhelmed the body politic.
	If we don't have self-restraint, if we don't have internal management and an internal way...
	To be good, we lose everything.
	So this is really, really important, this conversation.
	So if there's anything you want to add to that, I'll get into the steel man, but I just really wanted to put that context for our listeners and I guess for the world.
	No, that's, I mean...
	I appreciate all that you're saying there and I agree with the fact that we need objective morality.
	You and I share something in common, that is that I'm really not a fan of nihilism.
	I agree with Nietzsche.
	I think it's something that takes actually incredibly smart people and makes them stand idle and just watch horrific things happen and not interject.
	And I think they're philosophically consistent.
	I just think they're not looking at it correctly.
	So you and I are quite unique in the sense that we're both moral realists, but we get there through different themes as it were.
	You were saying about steelmanning.
	As far as I'm concerned, you've done it.
	You've steelmanned my major criticism, as it were, which is Kant's hypothetical imperative.
	And so far as I understood, we're here to debate UPB. So I'm happy to...
	Let me just do one... Sorry to interrupt.
	I'll just literally do like two minutes of the steelman because I really want people to understand at least my perspective of where you're coming from and your critique of UPB. Go ahead, yeah.
	Okay. So...
	Your critique of UPB is centered around the idea that I'm violating the is-ought dichotomy.
	So the is-ought dichotomy is you cannot get a value from a fact.
	So values are human constructs that do not exist in nature.
	And so the problem is morality is you should, you ought to, it's good, it's bad, it's right and wrong, it's moral, it's immoral and punishment and all of that.
	Morality nowhere exists in nature.
	Shoulds and oughts, absolute rules exist in nature.
	I mean, there's gravity, there's electromagnetism, there's like all of these physical properties, radiation and ozone and oxygen.
	All of these things exist in nature.
	But just because you need air to live doesn't mean that somehow everybody ought to provide it to you or not strangle you to block it.
	There's nothing in nature that says we should or should not do things.
	And of course people have their impulses.
	They have their instincts. Some people want to live peacefully.
	Other people want to take stuff by force and so on.
	But in the natural world, there is no such thing as virtue.
	In fact, there is no such thing as truth in the natural world.
	Truth is a human construct.
	That is, the relationship between concepts in the mind and things in the world, whether it's accurate or inaccurate and so on.
	So the philosophical concepts that we treasure the most, truth and virtue and courage, these don't exist in nature and nature.
	And trying to find a way to extract an ought or a should from the mere facts of nature is a doomed enterprise.
	You always have to summon some imaginary bridge between what is and what ought to be and try and link the two.
	And it's a fool's quest. And because UPB is building its castle on the sand of trying to extract an ought from an is, which is absolutely, completely and totally impossible, It's a clever construct, but it doesn't rest on anything.
	And if you just want to shrug it off and walk away, you can totally do that viably by just saying, hey, you can't get an ought from an is, and UPB is all about the oughts.
	Done and dusted, as they used to say when I was a kid.
	I think that's fairly accurate, yes.
	I've just had a couple of extra bits.
	They're not necessary, but just to tighten it, as it were.
	I do believe truth exists.
	And one of the biggest confusions about Hume is that people think that he was saying you cannot get an ought in nature in general, which is not quite...
	I don't know if you would agree with this sense, but certainly my reading of him and the most popular by philosophers is that you can get oughts in reality, but they're the kind of oughts that relate to hypothetical imperatives.
	You could say, if you don't want to go to prison, you ought.
	To not murder, for example.
	Humanists saw no issue with that.
	The main thing he was criticizing is that, particularly religious people, they would be saying, look, premise one, God exists.
	Premise two, he wants you to not murder, and then therefore you should not murder.
	And the should doesn't follow from the is statements.
	You've got a factual statement, a factual statement, that should doesn't make any sense.
	You could argue it by referring to hypothetical imperatives or perhaps a categorical, but he was just warning off that.
	So yeah, good job. I think that's warm and fair.
	All right. And if we can't find a way to extract morality from anything, then of course the big fear or the big challenge is, okay, what if I don't care about going to prison?
	I'm just going to go kill people. You know, what if I can get away with it?
	This is one of the big problems in the modern world, and I think all throughout human history, is that when people gain, for instance, the power of the state, then they can escape negative consequences for what they're doing.
	I mean, you can see, of course, a wide variety of people, both in contemporary and historical history.
	Human society that, well, they get a hold of the state.
	They can just do pretty much whatever the hell they want.
	They can start wars. They can print money.
	They can go into debt on other people's behalf.
	They can throw people in jail based upon a whim.
	They can use the power of the state to target political groups and spy upon political groups that they don't like.
	And they can get away with it because they've got the power of the state.
	And so the if-then, if you don't want to go to jail, then you can do whatever you want.
	That is a big problem because there are many, many circumstances in human society where you can be virtually guaranteed, virtually guaranteed of getting away with something.
	And if we can't find a way to implant the wrongness of what it is that people are doing, look, there's always going to be people who are going to ignore rules.
	I mean, without a doubt.
	There is no giant verbal net we can cast across the world that is going to ensnare everyone and turn them into automatons of infinite virtue.
	We have no capacity to do that.
	But we can convince, of course, a lot of, hopefully we can convince a lot of people that being virtuous is both true and right and correct and, you know, produces the Aristotelian goal of happiness and all that kind of stuff.
	So it is pretty significant.
	The if-then does kind of crack a lot of moral absolutes and the God answer is not sufficient.
	So that's sort of what we're wrestling about.
	So a couple questions. Let's sort of get our definitions going on.
	So, I think I know the answers to these from you, but I don't, of course, want to put my words in your mouth.
	So, does objective reality exist?
	Yeah, I'm convinced of that proposition, definitely.
	All right. What is the validity of reason?
	What do you mean by the validity?
	Because if you're using a reason to justify reason, of course, you're begging the question.
	You can't really do it. But everyone does it anyway.
	It's a bit of a weird one. Well, I'm not sure about that one.
	Okay, but what is the value?
	I mean, you've got a channel called Rationality Rules.
	You obviously think that reason has value and purpose and some positive attribute to it.
	So what is the definition of reason and what is its value, if it has value?
	Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to, because we're using your language for UPB, I'm actually happy to use whatever you feel most comfortable using.
	So really, I'm happy to use straight up whatever you want to use for these words.
	But you have... I don't want to blanket the discussion myself.
	You must have thoughts about what reason is.
	Yeah, no, of course. To quote you from page 10, you say, look, it's one of your ground rules.
	I respect your intelligence enough to refrain from defining words such as reality, reason, integrity, and so on.
	We have enough work to do without having to reinvent the wheel.
	So what I'm basically saying is that I'm happy and comfortable to use...
	Most people don't use rationality as it's defined in philosophy.
	They conflate it with reason and reality etc and that's not what rationality means but it doesn't bother me because since my goal is to try and have a conversation I just meet people with what they mean and since you've presented an argument I'm happy just to like get down to what you think reason and rationality is because one of the weird things about philosophy and I'm sure you've noted this yourself is like so many words that we take for granted such as should Once you start questioning what it is, you get into the real woods.
	And one of the things we don't want to do, as you said about reinventing the wheel, is we don't want to get stuck too much in those definitions.
	But it's also necessary to do it to an extent.
	So I'll leave that up to you for what extent you want to do it.
	Okay, so my answer as to the validity of reason is that reason is the art of non-contradictory identification.
	So reason is a way of saying something in her mind We want to map on to reality because we don't want this solipsistic universe like Descartes' nightmare that we're a brain in a vat in a tank managed by some horrible demon or I guess robots that are using us to be batteries or something like that, that, right?
	So reason is a way of validating whether the thoughts in our mind can potentially connect with reality, because reality is objective and consistent.
	And listen, I know everybody gets dragged down to this quark, quantum mechanics, subatomic level.
	And that's all great for physicists.
	That's nothing to do with philosophy.
	I mean, there is a philosophy of science, don't get me wrong.
	But with regards to moral philosophy, all quantum mechanics, all quantum phenomena cancel out long before you get to sense data, long before you get to the moral realm that we inhabit and so on.
	So yeah, At the level of sense data, at the level of empiricism from a philosophical and daily standpoint without having electron microscopes and weird freaky stuff that's going on with gold leaves and simultaneous particle movements on the ice end of the universe and so on.
	At the level that we're going to talk about, the universe is stable.
	It is consistent.
	It is objective.
	I won't say that the universe is rational because reason is a human construct, but it is a way of vetting our thoughts to find out if they can potentially map onto reality.
	In other words, reason is a necessary but not sufficient condition for figuring out whether our thoughts can represent reality.
	So For instance, if I say, hey, Steve, let's spend the weekend looking for a square circle, you know, we're not very likely to come up with something, right?
	So you have used, Bertram Drussel, it's a great example, like this teapot, right?
	That there could be a teapot orbiting somewhere around Mars that we can't see.
	And it's like, sure, I guess it's possible that some prior civilization developed teapots and lost one around Mars, Matt Damon style, or whatever it is.
	It certainly is possible.
	That's within the realm of possibility.
	But if we say Mars is a square circle, we don't have to go any further.
	Like, we don't have to go and examine the universe to try and figure out whether a square circle exists because as a self-contradictory entity, we can just, you know, wipe it out immediately, right?
	So yeah, there could be on some planet lizards that fly and breathe fire.
	Maybe they inhale methane and spark it up with some Indian food.
	I don't know, right? So, you know, we can't say dragons don't exist.
	We can't say unicorns don't exist because somewhere, maybe in Middle Earth, somewhere on some other planet, there could be a horse with a horn on its head or whatever, right?
	So it's a way of vetting our thoughts to see where they could map on to reality.
	And if we have self-contradictory thoughts, it's something we need to iron out.
	Now, we can have self-contradictory thoughts if we're not trying to map them onto reality, and we do that every night when we dream.
	So we have these weird impossible dreams where waterfalls turn into trees, turn into fire, and we can fly, and then we can breathe underwater.
	But we're not saying that's reality.
	We're saying that's a subjective, twitchy, nighttime experience that trains us to deal with the traumas of the day, sometimes it seems.
	So reason is the way that we have our first vet of thoughts or ideas or arguments that could potentially apply to reality.
	Because what is the question of truth?
	Well, truth has to do with A mapping to reality.
	And that's how we differentiate it from subjective opinion, right?
	I may like guppies instead of goldfish as my favorite fish to have as a pet.
	That's a subjective opinion.
	But if I say guppies are mammals, I'm now taking a thought and I'm trying to map it into something that exists outside my mind, outside my subjective experience, outside my The little prison planet we call a skull, so to speak.
	So once I'm taking my thoughts and I'm attempting to, in a sense, spray them or map them out to empirical reality, then I have to go through the first pass called, is it consistent?
	Is it rational? Does it hang together, so to speak, right?
	And this is why, you know, the arguments that you put forward, the syllogisms you put forward are all...
	Fantastic, right? Because they do train people to say, well, am I saying it's true because I can't believe that it's not true?
	Am I saying that it's true because it's popular?
	All of these things, these don't map onto things.
	If I say a guppy is warm-blooded and gives birth to live young and uses its memory glands to make money off Twitch, no, sorry, uses its memory glands to feed its young and has hair, well, then I'm just incorrect, right?
	So if I say that a guppy is both a reptile and a fish...
	Sorry, a reptile and an amphibian and a fish and a mammal simultaneously.
	I've got contradictory entities and so I don't need to go any further.
	And this is the way that science works and this is the way philosophy should work.
	So science, you propose a hypothesis or a conjecture.
	You propose it. The first thing people do is say, does it contradict itself?
	If it does, you've got to go back and start again.
	If it doesn't contradict itself but it contradicts existing data...
	Then you've still made a mistake, right?
	So reason to me is the first vetting, so to speak, of thoughts that we have that we're trying to map into an objective universe to see if they could potentially say something valid about what is.
	I would say that I pretty much entirely agree with you, especially on the sense of...
	Look, we can't say for sure that there's no T port going around Jupiter.
	We can't say for sure that there's no God.
	We can't say for sure that there's no square circle.
	But for all intent and purposes, given the axioms that we assume, we can say that.
	We have to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps at some point.
	We can only make factual statements about what we have access to.
	And that's perfectly fine. That's perfectly reasonable.
	It's perfectly rational because it's necessary the situation we're in.
	So we're not making definitive statements.
	And I understand that quite a few people have had a criticism of you when it comes to you saying universal means you are saying that there's no teapot because you're talking universally.
	I just want to be clear that I'm not going to levy that criticism against you.
	I think it's true. I think it does hold, but I just think there's better ones to bring up.
	But you've had those debates and other people can judge, right?
	Now that's really interesting because here's where you and I are good.
	Now we're diverging. It's funny, you know, like you get a why.
	When people diverge and you also get a why in philosophy, right?
	So here's where we're diverging, and I'm not just talking hairstyles.
	So there were three things that you talked about there, one of which I'm with you on, two of which I'm not.
	So you gave three examples.
	One was the teapot around Mars.
	It's unlikely, but it's not a self-contradictory entity, right?
	Because teapots exist, they can certainly orbit Mars, so it's unlikely, but it's not impossible, right?
	But then you provided two other things that I do consider positively not there, so to speak, which is a square circle and the traditional concept of a god.
	So those two situations are self-contradictory entities in a way that the teapot is not.
	So I'm perfectly comfortable saying no square circles and no traditional God, but I'm not comfortable saying no teapot because it's not a self-contradictory entity.
	So I wonder if you can just tease that out for me.
	I am totally fine to run on that because that is what I'm convinced of.
	You can't have a square circle in the universe.
	Do I know this with certainty?
	No. Unless we insist the universe functions exactly as we experience it, which considering that we used to make statements about the universe based on Newton's laws of gravity, and we were very confident, we called it a law for crying out loud, and we were really like, it's universal, etc.
	And then what happened is E equals MC squared and general relativity, And all of a sudden, it wasn't universal.
	Well, actually, it was never universal.
	We shouldn't have been so arrogant as to have claimed that we know it's true in all places of the universe.
	And what I'm expressing is that the more I've learned, and I know that a lot of people have expressed this, Hitch did, for example, the more I learn, the more I learn how little I know.
	And it makes me very cautious of wanting to say definitive, universal statements.
	But for the purpose of this, because I'm so close, like, I call myself an atheist and I say that I know that there's no God.
	If you push me, I'll say, no, I don't know with certainty.
	I'm just... You know, as sure as I am on so many other things.
	But that's a deep philosophical, necessarily epistemological hole that's just not worth going to.
	Because one of the things I like about your conversations, about your general method, is that let's just stay in the real world, as it were, as you put it, which is to say, let's work with what we've got.
	So no square circles.
	It's a contradiction. No, God.
	It's a contradiction. Okay, good.
	I just wanted to make sure we weren't casting too wide a net there.
	So we've talked about objective reality.
	We've talked about reason.
	Now, of course, the question is truth.
	And I'm happy to have you talk about that.
	I don't mind jaw-boning. Yes, I never do.
	But I don't want to overshare, so to speak.
	So what are your thoughts on the question of what is truth?
	It's just basically, does it accurately represent reality, those things that are external to us?
	And we have at least two ways of looking at it.
	One is that we make factual statements.
	It is a fact that the Earth is a sphere, for example.
	This is relating to reality, as it were.
	And the second one is that we try and describe the way in which the universe works.
	So we have Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.
	We're now smart enough to call it a theory because again we don't want to make universal statements but it's a damn strong one and colloquially speaking it's a fact.
	So I would put reality in the sense of or our relationship with reality is very much Well, truth, as it were, is our understanding of what actually is, if that makes sense.
	Okay, so I think it's the label that we apply to...
	I mean, the ultimate, to me, the gold standard of truth is that it is rationally consistent, logically consistent, and also maps on to reality.
	Now, of course, in the realm of physics, it's got to map on 100%.
	Like, as you point out, you start missing stuff with Newton, which you start to do closer to the speed of light and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So... When you start missing stuff in physics, you know, that's bad.
	You can't get the same thing in weather forecasting.
	You can't get the same thing in looking at human events.
	But if you have a consistent theory, a theory consistent with itself, and it also happens to map onto and explain larger movements of human history.
	Why is it that central planning in governments tends to fail?
	Why is it that the free market has been so productive?
	Why is wage labor generally more productive than slavery?
	All of these are interesting questions.
	If you have a theory that is internally consistent and does a lot to explain most of that, that's about as goldy gold standard as you can get.
	So to me, truth is the relationship between logical consistency, which is necessary but not sufficient, and then the gold standard also applies to I mean, for like, I don't know, like 15 years, I've been talking about the dangers of increased leftist violence and racial conflict and all of this.
	And, you know, sadly, you know, if it turns out that you're right, that at least tells people that your theory has some potential merit.
	So that's, I think, where truth, you know, logical consistency maps onto reality as best as we can tell.
	That's about as high a bar as we can set.
	So the next one is, and I guess here's where we start to hear a click of the potential minefield.
	So we got objective reality, we got reason, we got truth.
	Look at that. We did that in just a blink of an eye.
	What premises are implicitly accepted when debating?
	This is fantastic.
	I think this is where we're going to really get to the heart of it.
	If you wouldn't mind, I'd actually like to present where I think you equivocate, because I think it will relate to...
	Wait, you're saying I haven't done it yet?
	No, I'm saying... Yeah, right.
	My bad. Yeah, if I could put on the table the claim of equivocation, because basically I think there's about 16, 17 floors with UPB, and particularly there's four of them which are game-ending, as it were.
	Wow, so if my flaws...
	If the flaws in UPB are years, it can almost vote.
	That's great. A couple more and it can drink in the States.
	Anyway, go on. Yeah, well, in the UK, it's already free to do a few of those things, so that's all good.
	Now, basically, in this conversation, if you're up for it, I'd like to give you about three or four of my favourite ones.
	And they're not necessarily mine.
	They are like... I'm so sorry.
	I hate to interrupt you. I really do.
	I do want to get into the UPB stuff for sure, but...
	And we can decide not to do what premises are implicitly accepted when debating.
	Because if we can agree on those, then I think we're a long way towards maybe narrowing down where the major differences are.
	We can take that pathway first, if you like.
	The only reason I'm interjecting here is I think that you'll understand my critique a little better if we do it beforehand.
	But I'm happy to go. No, no, if you want to do it that way, that's totally fine with me.
	Okay, cool, man. I appreciate that fact.
	But we will definitely go through those because I think that's where the heart of our disagreement is probably going to be because that's where Hume resides, as it were.
	So I was wondering if you could explain to the audience the concept of an equivocation fallacy.
	I'll let you take that.
	I'll let you take that bullet.
	Yeah, sure thing. So an equivocation fallacy occurs when a word or a term with two or more different meanings is used in multiple senses in an argument.
	So to give like a classical example, premise one, laws are created by an intelligent agent.
	Premise two, there are laws in the universe.
	Conclusion, therefore an intelligent agent, God created the laws of the universe.
	The reason why that is an equivocation fallacy is that they've used two different definitions of the word laws throughout their premises to get to their conclusion.
	So what I'd like to present is essentially where I think that you have two, perhaps three definitions of UPB in your book and Once I've got all of that on the table, would you be okay with me doing that and then giving the floor to you to respond?
	Because one of the notorious things about equivocation policies when you're trying to present them is the other person wants to interject a lot, which is understandable.
	But would you allow me to get that on the table?
	I'll be quiet till you tell me not to.
	That's totally fine with me. Thanks, man.
	The floor is all yours up.
	The first definition that you give of universal preferences is on page 33.
	And you say, quote, preferences are central to any methodology claiming to define the true values of propositions.
	The scientific method, for instance, is largely defined by innate preferences for logical consistency and empirical verification.
	For science, the premise is if you want to determine a valid truth about the behavior of matter and energy, it is preferable that you use the scientific method.
	In this sense, preferable does not mean sort of better, but rather required.
	And then you give some examples, quote, If you want to live, it is universally preferable that you refrain from eating a handful of arsenic.
	If you wish to determine valid truths about reality, it is universally preferable that your theories be both internally consistent and empirically verifiable.
	Universally preferable then translates to objectively required.
	I'm just going to give that one more time just because I think it's really important.
	Universally preferable then translates to objectively required.
	So here you've given a clear definition of something that's universally preferable.
	That is, objectively required or necessary.
	If you wish to live, it is objectively required that you refrain from eating a handful of arsenic.
	Now before I move to your second definition, what I want to do is put on a flag here for everybody.
	Know that this definition is descriptive as opposed to prescriptive.
	You're not saying that someone should or ought to refrain from eating a handful of arsenic, but rather merely stating that if you want to live, it is objectively required that you don't eat a handful of arsenic.
	We can all of course, sorry to interrupt, but we can all think of situations where somebody would choose to eat a handful of arsenic because they have some other value.
	Maybe they've been captured by the Bad guys and they don't want to give up the goods or maybe they have some terrible ailment that it can't be cured.
	So, yeah, I mean, there are certainly situations wherein, while we may have issues with it, we can certainly understand the motivation.
	Absolutely, yeah. So again, you're simply making a descriptive factual is statement as opposed to a prescriptive should-ought statement.
	You're just pointing out, look, if you want to live, then don't eat a handful of arsenic.
	But on the very next page, you switch from asserting about what is the case to asserting what ought to be the case.
	Quote, thus, when I talk about universal preferences, I am talking about what people should prefer, not what they always do prefer.
	To use a scientific analogy, to truly understand the universe, people should use the scientific method.
	Critically, unlike the first definition you gave on the page before, which operates explicitly in the realm of descriptive factual is statements, by using the term should on this page, you're now explicitly in the realm of prescriptive normative ought statements.
	With your first definition, your statement of, if you want to live, it is objectively required that you refrain from eating a handful of arsenic, you are merely describing what is objectively required to achieve a goal.
	Whereas with your second definition of your statement, you're saying, if you want to live, you should refrain from eating a handful of arsenic.
	With you doing the second, you are now prescribing what someone ought to do given their goal.
	They seem to me both in the realm of if then, right?
	If you want to live down eat arsenic and if you want to say something true about the universe, use the scientific method.
	Sure. So we can get rid of the first definition now, I guess.
	So when you say, I'll go back up, when you say, quote, universally preferable, then translates to objectively required.
	By objectively required, you are implicitly saying that they should do it or should not do it.
	Is that correct? Assuming a particular goal, yeah.
	So you're not describing it is assuming a particular goal.
	It's a Kantian hypothetical at this point.
	No, no, no, but I'm talking about science, and I already said if you want to say something true.
	I mean, you understand the book can be labored if I put the if-then statement in every conceivable time I'm talking about it.
	I mean, I've been talking about science as a category, right?
	Yeah, no, I'm absolutely happy with that fact.
	And, you know, I'm sure you appreciate the term objectively required doesn't necessarily seem prescriptive, but you don't want to keep repeating the same words.
	I get that. So we can write the first definition off.
	So you've got the second, which is the hypothetical.
	Imperatives. But then on page 54, for example, and this is the one you actually use more often, you implicitly give a third definition of UPB. You say, quote, UPB is an all or nothing framework.
	If an action is universally preferable, then it cannot be limited by individual geography, time, etc.
	If it is wrong to murder in Algiers, then it is also wrong to murder in Belgium, the United States, at the North Pole, and on the Moon.
	If it is wrong to murder yesterday, then it cannot be right to murder tomorrow.
	If it is wrong for Bob to murder, then it must also be wrong for Doug to murder.
	Now, this non-contingent, non-hypothetical, non-goal-based moral statement is indeed the holy grail of philosophy.
	Why? Because it's truly universal.
	It's akin to saying without any if clause, do not eat a handful of arsenic.
	Crucially, this is the beast that you claim to have slain throughout your work.
	This is the head that you claim to decapitate it.
	And so I would say that whether you've meant to or not, you have used multiple definitions of UPB. I'm saying if repeatedly in the sentence.
	So of course it's an if clause.
	If I can prove that it's wrong to murder or if murder is wrong, then it has to be wrong for everyone because it's a category that encapsulates human action.
	If you're going to define humanity as carbon-based, hairless ape, biped, or whatever it is, like, if you're going to define humanity as that, then it's almost like a tautology, but it's worth reminding people of this.
	Like, if you're going to claim something is true for all human beings, then it has to be true for all human beings.
	And if morality is something – if we can prove that murder is wrong, then clearly it has to be wrong for everyone – It can't be right or wrong based upon the day of the week or your physical location.
	In the same way that a biologist wouldn't say, well, this thing is a lizard in Australia, but the moment you move it to New Zealand, it becomes a mammal.
	No, that's not how biology works.
	It's independent of...
	So I've got a lot of if statements in there, you know, if murder is wrong, then it has to be wrong for everyone, because murder would be a human action that would be consistent across all humanity.
	If you're going to define something as consistent across all humanity, it has to be independent of time and place.
	Okay, so to clarify that with the example that was being given, I just find it in my notes again.
	So you said, look, if it is wrong for Bob to murder, then it must also be wrong for Doug to murder.
	So if we were to say, look, Bob has a preference for murdering.
	The reason being is that he's in a camp and he's had enough and he just wants to, you know, be done with it, as it were.
	Sorry, what do you mean by in a camp?
	In a camp. Let's just say that he's being, he's under a certain amount of duress.
	Say that he's in a Nazi camp or whatever.
	Oh, then it's not a moral situation.
	So it's not a moral situation.
	No, no, this is like you had this, I actually got really pissed off when I watched that video of yours because I thought you were portraying me as a Nazi because you had that scene from Inglourious Bastards.
	Because you were indicating that my philosophy, if taken to its logical conclusion, would have you giving up Jews to Nazis.
	And I've been real clear about that, that once you have a gun pointed to your head, you're no longer in a moral situation.
	And we all understand that, right?
	So if you go and take a hostage, and then you force that hostage to go and rob a bank...
	Then you're prosecuted, but your hostage is not because your hostage is under duress.
	So morality applies to situations of choice.
	And if you have a gun to your head, you're no longer in a situation of choice.
	And so when you put someone in a camp or if someone comes and says, do you have Anne Frank in your attic?
	Of course, you would say, no, you're not in a situation of moral obligation.
	If you're going to bring morality to that situation, you would bring it to the Nazi or the person taking the hostage, not to the victim.
	Okay, so it seems to me that I would make a Kantian hypothetical imperative.
	I would say, look, if you want to be liked, then don't lie.
	But when you're in a situation where there's a gun at your face and you've got to give away someone that's under your table, I'd say, look, man, if you want to live, you ought to give them away.
	There's no inconsistencies here.
	This is just Kant's hypothetical imperative.
	But that's just making up rules, right?
	I mean, there's no philosophy in that.
	You're just saying, hey, if you want to do this, then you want to do that.
	I mean, that's not a universal morality.
	That's just how you might act in a particular situation.
	It's not just what you would do in a certain situation.
	It's a prescription given someone's goal.
	So, you're right, it's not universal.
	But it seems to me that if you're suggesting that for some people the action of murder can be justified, because you say if an action is universally preferable, then it cannot be limited by individual geography time.
	But we could limit it by individual by saying, look, this guy is in a situation where murder is, you know, something that's preferable towards his goals.
	No, no, no. Hang on, hang on.
	So murder can't be universally preferable behaviour because murder is unwanted.
	Right, so you can't say everyone should both murder and want to be murdered at the same time.
	Well, first of all, everybody would die and there'd be no morality.
	So you can't, right, because everybody would kill and be killed in some weird circle jerk Mexican standoff Tarantino moment or something like that.
	So if you were to say murder is universally preferable behavior, then there'd be no people.
	But even if we were to accept that somehow people could survive, murder is asymmetric, of course, in the way that rape and theft and assault are.
	In other words, murder has to be unwanted behavior.
	So we can talk about euthanasia and the ethics and all of that.
	But if you want someone to kill you, then that's not the same as murder.
	Murder is the unlawful, I mean, technically in the law, it's called the unlawful killing of another human being.
	It's not just ending someone's life.
	You can do that in self-defense and be perfectly justified.
	So, no, murder cannot ever be UPB, which doesn't mean you can't kill in self-defense.
	I've got a whole argument for self-defense, which we can go into another time.
	But murder is very, very specific.
	And murder can't be UPB because it has to be unwanted.
	Yes, I understand that it's the murder aspect.
	It's more that you can prescribe something to one person, given their goal, and prescribe something completely different to someone else, given their goal.
	And it seems to me that if you want a universal...
	I don't follow that, sorry.
	Do you mean I'm doing that?
	No, no, no. I'm saying that that's a Kant's hypothetical imperative.
	And when you're introducing if clauses, then you are in the realm of Kant's hypothetical imperatives.
	Because you're saying, look, you should do this if you want this, if you have this goal.
	Whereas a universal morality would necessarily have to just be, thou shall not murder, don't murder.
	This seems to be the thing that you were promising.
	Wait, are you saying that the entirety of UPB is a regurgitation of one of the Ten Commandments?
	Come on.
	I mean, I've worked a little harder than that.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	If I was going to say it's a regurgitation, I'd say it's hypothetical imperative more so than anything else.
	And the reason I say that is because it's because you add these if clauses.
	You say if you want to understand X, you ought to do Y. And the good news, of course, is that I have no problem with that.
	And your peers, you know, philosophers in general don't have a problem with that.
	But it's not the Holy Grail of philosophy.
	Hang on.
	Can theft be universally preferable behavior logically?
	And by theft being universally preferable, do you mean someone wants to be stolen from and steal at the same time?
	Well, yes.
	Can everyone want to steal and be stolen from at the same time?
	No. Okay, so that's good, right?
	So theft can't be universally preferable behavior.
	Yeah, but all you've just done is described a fact.
	You've described a contradiction.
	You've basically just said, look, square circles are impossible, therefore morality.
	That's not morality. You just said that theft can't be universally preferable behavior.
	So anybody who claims that there's any value in universally preferable behavior has to then submit to the strictures of universally preferable behavior.
	In the same way that you can, like science is not a buffet.
	Like you say, okay, well, there's a scientific method for this, but not for that.
	Like it's just the way that it is.
	So the real issue, of course, which where you and I part ways is that You reject the self-detonation of the argument, there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, as far as I understand it.
	No, no, no. It's the problem, and this is why I'm focusing on the equivocation.
	Is the way in which we define universally preferable behaviour.
	Because if we just say, look ma'am, a square circle is impossible, I agree.
	If we say a married bachelor is impossible, I agree.
	If we say that you can't want to be murdered, I agree.
	If we say we can't want to be stolen from, I agree.
	These are all descriptive statements.
	None of this is in the realm of morality.
	It's not even hypotheticals imperative.
	To go to the analogy, you haven't even got out of bed.
	You're intellectually masturbating.
	So you're saying that an argument that says rape, theft, assault and murder can't be universally preferable behaviour, that if you accept universally preferable behaviour as a standard, and I argue that even to engage in a debate is to accept it as a standard, That if you accept universally preferable behavior as a standard, you must reject rape, theft, assault and murder.
	You're saying rape, theft, assault and murder have nothing to do with morality?
	Of course you have something to do with morality, but what you're describing now as UPB is anything that is self-contradictory or self-detonating, as you describe it.
	No. No, no, no.
	We just went through this earlier, man.
	There are scientific theories that are self-contradictory, which you toss out.
	They don't have anything to do with morality.
	Yeah, I know, but you're saying that if it's...
	So you have UPB. One of the best ways I think we can go through this is actually what you suggested earlier, because I think with this now on the table, it would be a good time to do it.
	And that is we can go through the implicit assumptions that we do make when we have a debate, and we can identify which of those we would call UPB and which definition.
	Well, yeah, that's why I wanted to do it first, because that way we can bypass a lot of this confusion.
	Sorry to interrupt, but My whole point was that now that we're going to get into them and these definitions have been put on the table, I think it's going to be more fruitful.
	I understand if you don't think that that's the...
	No, that's fine. Hey, I'm really enjoying the discussion.
	I appreciate it. And look at that.
	We have thousands of people watching us at the same time.
	Wait, how's my hair? Check my armpit.
	All right. So, premises that are implicitly accepted when debating.
	I'm going to do just a tiny, tiny little bit here, just to sort of understand that, right?
	So I'm going to use a tiny analogy, because I think analogies can be helpful.
	They're not proof, but they're very illuminating, right?
	So let's say that Steve and I decide, let's pretend it wasn't coronavirus and America's not currently on fire.
	We decide we want to get on a bus and go to Vegas, right?
	And so we go down to the bus station.
	We say we want two tickets for a bus to Vegas.
	We get on that bus and then we go to Vegas, right?
	Now, Vegas is the truth in this analogy, right?
	We both have a destination that we say we want to get some particular place.
	And both Steve and myself, we both agree that objective reality exists, that reason is of value, empiricism is of value, the truth is of value.
	If you're going to claim something true about the universe, it should be rational, consistent with evidence and all that.
	So we both decide to get on a bus to go to Vegas.
	Vegas.
	We both voluntarily agree to get on that bus to go to Vegas.
	So that to me is the analogy of a debate.
	We both say that we want the truth and that the truth is not something subjective, right?
	So we can't just sit there and say, if the bus gets hijacked and goes to, I don't know, San Francisco instead of Vegas, we don't sit there and say, hey, we got to Vegas, right?
	I mean, I guess they both look the same because they're on fire, but ideally, again, that wouldn't be the case, right?
	And now also, if Steve and I both get on a bus to go to Vegas, there's a better and worse way to get to Vegas.
	Now, there's no objective better and worse way to get around if we don't have a destination, There's no lines on the road that force like a train, like the bus to go in a particular direction.
	But once we've decided to go to Vegas, there are better and worse ways to go to Vegas, right?
	Like if we're in Detroit and we drive north, we're going the opposite way from going to Vegas.
	Unless we have a whole lot of snowshoes on the car, we ain't getting there, right?
	So once we have a goal that we both agree on, then there's better and worse ways to get there.
	Now, we can change our goal.
	Of course, we can say, I don't want to go to Vegas.
	But as long as we both say we want to get to Vegas, then we're both kind of bound by the laws of physics, reality and travel and all of that to get to a particular place.
	So my argument is to say, look, if you and I are going to start engaging in a debate, that's not just a conversation about personal preferences.
	Like the other night, people got me started talking about music, and I mean, I love music, and I was talking all about my particular tastes and getting feedback.
	This is just a taste thing.
	You know, like, again, it's the guppies versus goldfish thing.
	If I like guppies and you like goldfish, you know, we can have a discussion about owning fish or whatever, but it's not like some objective metric, right?
	We're then basically talking about cities we've liked to have visited in the past, right?
	Rather than a city that we're objectively going to in the present.
	So what I'm saying is getting into a debate with someone is like saying, okay, we're both getting on this bus and we're going to Vegas.
	Now we are part of an objective process and objective structure because we both have a goal called getting to Vegas that has an objective destination, that has an objective methodology for getting there.
	And now we can start to talk about better and worse.
	Now the better and worse doesn't exist if we don't both agree to get on that bus and go somewhere.
	So that's, to me, the is-ought dichotomy.
	How do you break the is-ought dichotomy?
	Ought people to go to Vegas?
	I don't know. It's a fun place.
	Don't get me wrong. But ought people to go to Vegas, that's not really a very sensible thing to say, right?
	Because there's no universally preferable behavior called go to Vegas, right?
	But once we both decide we're going to go to Vegas, now we got better and worse.
	Now we've got accurate and inaccurate.
	Now we've got value and the opposite of a value, right?
	So Vegas is the truth.
	We've got to now get a name for the title for the show, right?
	Vegas is truth, baby.
	It's truth. And so that's sort of my argument about getting involved in debates, that we're both trying to do this thing called get to the truth.
	And there's now objective methodology by which...
	We can pursue that.
	But if you and I get, last thing I'll say, this is you and I get on a bus, we're going to Vegas, and then you turn to me or I turn to you and we say, well, There's no better or worse way to get to Vegas.
	It's like, okay, we have no purpose on this trip.
	Once you're getting in the bus and going to Vegas, there's a whole bunch of stuff that you have to kind of accept, as long as your goal is still Vegas.
	And so since our goal remains the truth, there's stuff that's implicit.
	That's what we're, I think, trying to sort of unpack here.
	Yeah, I mean, the only thing I would touch on that is you said a lot of if, if, if, and I know it's deliberate, of course, you're saying if we have the goal, Hume wouldn't have any problem with you saying, look, if we want to get to Vegas, we ought to take this route.
	If our goal was to get there as quick as possible, we ought to take this route.
	You would have no issue. But that isn't bridging the is-ought gap.
	Well, I think it is. And that's, of course, where our big difference lies.
	So go for it.
	What premises are implicitly accepted when debating?
	Sure, so one of them would be that language has meaning.
	Because I can't communicate that to you, of course, or at least I can't, actually I can't in any way, I don't believe.
	I can't communicate that to you without, well, using language.
	It's a self-detonating, self-contradictory statement.
	If you can use language to convey that language has no meaning, language has meaning.
	Okay, yeah, I'm with you there. Yeah, so we both agree with this.
	We could use your analogy.
	We could say, you know what? That's the wheels of the bus.
	Now that song's in my head.
	Oh, I've been a stay-at-home dad for too long.
	All right. Language has meaning.
	Yep, we accept that. So would you call what we just described, would you call that UPB? I would say that to deny that language has meaning would remove you from the debate.
	I agree with that, but would you call...
	Because you go, boom, UPB right there.
	Is that a boom?
	Is that a UPB? I'm not sure what you mean.
	It's not a moral statement.
	So when someone tries to correct you, they go through these implicit premises.
	I'm wondering which of these implicit premises are the ones where you say, boom, you're doing UPB there.
	You're enacting...
	You are using UPB to state to me that there is no such thing as UPB. What I'm asking is, would language...
	With it being a contradiction for me to tell you that language doesn't convey meaning, is that a UVB or is that just simple?
	That's a great question.
	Sorry, it took me a little while to sink that through my scalp.
	So I get the question.
	So what I would say is that self-contradictory statements are false.
	And so if you're saying to me language has no meaning, Then I would say, well, you've just contradicted yourself because you're using the meaning of language to convey that language has no meaning.
	So I would say that that's a false statement, and you could say it's universally preferable behavior to make consistent statements if you wish to be honest, if you wish to be accurate, let's say, right?
	Do you think someone's necessarily doing it if they just say language?
	If they accept that that's a contradiction, have they necessarily enacted a UPB there?
	Like, could someone not do it?
	Now, so UPB is one of these things, and I want to just be clear about this.
	I sort of clarified this more in my new book on UPB called Essential Philosophy.
	So UPB is one of these things that's, it's two things.
	You know, and it's sort of like science, right?
	So science is two things.
	It's the theory and the practice, right?
	Sorry, I promise I'll let you continue.
	Apologies. I know it's rude, but if you're saying that UPB is two things, then you've kind of proven my point of equivocation policy.
	No, no, no, not at all.
	I mean, science is two things, right?
	You can redefine it in different ways.
	No, science is the theory and practice of science.
	There's the scientific method, which is not science directly.
	And then there's the practice of enacting theories and experiments and reproducibility within or under the umbrella of the scientific method.
	So just to clarify that point, I'd say you just gave two things.
	You gave science and then scientific method.
	They're different things. They have different definitions.
	There's no problem there.
	No, but they're both under the umbrella of science, right?
	Yeah, but if we're going to use under the umbrella, then if we're using one definition to be clear on what a preference is, No, I get that.
	So there's UPB, which is just around self-contradictions are invalid, right?
	Or things that contradict empirical evidence are invalid.
	So that's UPB. And then there's UPB, which is used to evaluate moral propositions.
	And that's very clear in the book.
	I mean, I know it's not super clear, and that's why I've sort of written a thing that clarifies it more.
	It's one of these things that when you sit with the idea for so long, it becomes clear to you, it's a little less clear to others sometimes.
	In your book, you defined it as anything that's not to do with people per se.
	You just called it aesthetics, and you called it if it's to do with people preferences.
	You discarded it in reference to just facts in general.
	You necessarily made it part of morality.
	Well, no, because it's universally preferable behavior, which we talked about earlier, that our statements be internally consistent and consistent with empirical reality.
	Okay, so I guess we can go through those implicit assumptions a little further to bury them out from there so that we can figure out which ones are you, P, B. I'll let you continue.
	I don't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to clarify a few things.
	Okay, so language has meaning.
	I mean, objective reality plus the other person has to exist.
	Yep, so yeah, I've got these down.
	When you say that, when I assume that you exist, which is necessary for me to have a conversation with you, is that UPB? Well, it is not UPB to say that self-contradictory statements are valid.
	Sure, and if I say that I'm communicating with you and that you don't exist, then I'm contradicting myself, right?
	Yes. That is a UPP. Well, it's a UPP violation to claim that self-contradictions are valid in reality.
	Okay, so you would say, so we've got language down and we've got the other person existing.
	The senses are valid.
	Or at least as accurate as we can get.
	You know, we caveated earlier, but, you know, let's just be honest, fuck that crap.
	We get straight to the business.
	Oh, listen, we've all had those conversations where you're in a hot debate with someone and you try and reassemble it so as not to break the flow.
	But yeah, the senses are...
	Are valid, right?
	Valid enough. It's like saying, you know, language has meaning.
	It doesn't mean it's perfect, which is why we kind of work on these definitions, right?
	But yeah, language has the capacity for meaning.
	Objective reality exists.
	The other person exists.
	The senses are valid.
	And accuracy is preferable to error.
	So these are necessary assumptions that we make during debate.
	So when it comes to the language one, of course I've made that assumption.
	I would say it's a factual statement that I've assumed, and that is that language has meaning.
	When it comes to assuming that you exist, I've made that assumption.
	Again, we're nowhere in the realm of morality here.
	This is just a descriptive statement about I've assumed that you exist.
	With validity and whatnot.
	So we both assume that we're playing by the game of rationality.
	We both assume the laws of logic, for example.
	So there we go. We're playing by that.
	I agree with you. I don't see any should here whatsoever.
	I'm just wondering if you could tease to me where the should is, because I don't think...
	You don't see any shoulds? Sorry, I don't mean...
	That's incredulity, which is...
	I'm sorry. Let me be clear.
	So if someone says, I want to debate with you, but I don't believe that you exist, that's a self-contradictory statement, right?
	Yeah, self-contradictory statement.
	So I'm not going to debate with somebody who won't accept that that's a self-contradictory statement because they're not in the realm of reality and they can't achieve truth.
	Yeah, basically you're saying, are we going to accept these rules, these factual descriptive rules in order to have conduct?
	Yeah, and I'm accepting these rules.
	Okay, so there's your should. So where's the should?
	The should is I'm not going to participate in a debate with someone who doesn't believe that I exist and language has no meaning.
	And the reason for that is that if they genuinely believe that, then they won't debate with me.
	So there's a contradiction there, right?
	So if somebody says to me, Steph, I want to debate with you, but I don't believe that you exist, that's a contradiction, right?
	Okay. So I'm not going to debate with somebody who accepts contradictions.
	Obviously, right? Yeah, so the contradiction aspect is, you know, you don't want to debate with people that won't play by the rules.
	I don't want to play chess with someone that keeps moving their rook, you know, diagonally.
	I agree with you, but where's the should here?
	It's like I have the hypothetical imperative.
	If you want to debate, then you should be consistent.
	If you want to play chess, you've got to move the rook.
	Horizontal and vertical, right? X and Y. Yes.
	So we accept those rules, but you just said if you want to play chess, I agree with you.
	Sure. If you want to debate, then you have to accept non-contradiction.
	Yeah. If you want to debate me, you have to accept non-contradiction.
	So by debating me, you are accepting non-contradiction.
	But the key word there, Stefan, is that you said if, which is a hypothetical imperative.
	Yeah, but who cares? Oh my god, man.
	Look, do you speak Japanese?
	No, I do not. Okay, so if someone said to you, hey Steve, why don't you come to Japan and give a presentation in Japanese to Japanese people who don't speak English, what would you say?
	I'd say, if you pay me enough money and you give me enough time to learn the language, I'll give it a shot.
	No, no, tomorrow. Just, you know, and no pay.
	I'd say, sorry, I'm on a quick floor.
	It's just someone came up to me and said, hey, do you want to fight Mike Tyson tomorrow?
	Nope. Well, I'll wait 20 years and give it a shot, right?
	Okay, so if you can't provide meaning to Japanese people because you don't speak Japanese, Then you're not going to go, right?
	Well, I think I could provide meaning to them if I don't speak Japanese, but I'm not going to get pedantic on the point.
	But no, I wouldn't go.
	No, you just said you wouldn't go, right?
	Let's not get overly picky, right?
	We say that, but definitions are really clear and stuff.
	I don't want to end up saying something that's not true, of course, which is, of course, I can provide meaning to them.
	They could find my hair or my face funny, or I could juggle.
	Don't need language for that.
	But I get your point. Okay, so let's...
	Your language...
	Would have no meaning to them, right?
	Yeah, sure. Okay. So if somebody genuinely believes that language has no meaning, they will not debate me.
	Sure. We accept that, right?
	Or they can't debate you.
	Sorry? Well, no, they themselves will not debate me.
	It wouldn't make sense, yeah.
	Right, right. So by debating, the if is done.
	If language has meaning, then you can debate, right?
	Okay, so let me tell you where I think that if is, and you correct me where you would put it, okay?
	I would say, if I want to be accurate about UPB, I ought to debate Stefan Molyneux.
	No, no, no, no. Let's stick with the language thing.
	That's way, way down the field.
	That's way down the field.
	That's the only reason I'm having a debate.
	It's all predicated on if clauses.
	No, no, no. We were just right there.
	We were just right there to solve the issue, right?
	So let's just stay where we were just being really productive, if you don't mind, just for a sec.
	So the if is by engaging in debate, you accept that language has meaning.
	So if you debate, you must accept that language has meaning, because if you don't accept that language has meaning, you won't debate.
	The very act of debating solves the if.
	It's embedded in the act of debating.
	So we're going to have to spell this out a little further.
	No, that's good. This is the whole thing, right?
	So when I say I'm going to debate you, one of the premises, of course, is that language has meaning.
	I'm either convinced of that proposition or I'm not.
	And it's necessary that I'm convinced of that proposition to engage you.
	Yes. I agree with you.
	I need to accept that.
	And then I can say, if I want to be accurate about UPB, I want to have a conversation.
	And it's predicated on the fact that I accept that you exist.
	I accept the language, etc.
	There is no should here.
	The only shoulds we have are hypothetical, and it's in me.
	It's not universal. It's just me.
	I know. Look, I get that...
	I mean, universal, there are no universals that exist outside of the human mind.
	I get all of that, right? There's no...
	There's no morality that exists outside of a relationship that we have with each other.
	There's no scientific method inscribed in the nature of atoms.
	There's no physical laws in the universe that are written down anywhere except in a book written by human beings.
	So our concepts, our ideas, they don't exist out there in the real world.
	I get all of that.
	And that's where Hume's at, and you can't get these shoulds from the is.
	I get all of that, right?
	And that's why I say, It's in the act of debating and correcting someone that you're accepting UPB. And you've already got one, right?
	Language has meaning. Now, language has meaning, doesn't exist in the universe.
	It's a concept, right? It's a relationship between you and language and someone that you're talking to.
	So it's like saying there's no such thing as marriage because marriage is not an umbilical cord that ties two people together, right?
	I mean, there's no such thing as a forest because the forest is just a concept and the individual trees aren't bounded by a conceptual cloud called forest that you can measure with a spectrometer or something like that, right?
	So it is, the should or the ought is accepted in the very act of conversing.
	In other words, you accept that language has meaning when you engage in a debate.
	And so if we accept that, that's the should.
	That's the ought. Language has meaning.
	That's the only way you get to debate, is to accept that.
	So you can't argue that language doesn't have meaning.
	That's already off the table.
	I agree that you can't argue that language doesn't have meaning.
	What I'm disagreeing with is...
	Whether or not the should, as it were, is a categorical or a hypothetical, because it's hypothetical.
	If you debate, right?
	That's the if. If you debate, you must accept that language has meaning.
	Now, you could say, well, what if you don't accept that?
	Doesn't matter. You're not debating.
	Like, you're not part of the conversation.
	This is why I gave the first definition of objectively required, because if you say, if you want to debate, you must accept that language has meaning.
	That's just a description. That's why I gave a descriptive version of UPB, because you do that several times in my book.
	I said must. The word must is the synonym for ought.
	If you say must, then it is a synonym of short ought.
	You said must. And if which case, you're doing a hypothetical imperative.
	Yeah, you said. So if you want to debate, you must accept that language has meaning.
	There's your ought right there. To debate, you ought to accept that language has meaning.
	Okay, so the word must can be described as a prerequisite.
	It's necessary. It's just a factual statement.
	Or it could be a should. I can give you...
	No, no, no. There's no must that exists in the universe.
	No, I didn't say must exist in the universe.
	What I'm saying is, if you say something must happen, or if you're going to say for A to happen, B must happen, you can use that as a description in the sense if you're just describing that it's necessary, it's a prerequisite, which is the first definition that I mentioned that you've rejected.
	That's fair play. But if you use must as a synonym of should, because of your if clause, it's just a hypothetical imperative.
	Yeah, I get all of that.
	And that's why I said what premises are implicitly accepted when debating.
	You have to engage and enter into the act of debating in order for these shoulds, these musts, to manifest.
	And if you're not engaged in the act of debating, If you're not correcting anyone, if you're not telling anyone they're wrong, if you're not engaged in the act of polishing the sword of human thought or anything like that, fine.
	If you're napping, you're not debating.
	And you don't have to figure out whether language has meaning because you can have a baffle-gab combination of Klingon and Hobbit in your dreams and who cares, right?
	So it's the moment you step into...
	A correction-based conversation with another human being, boom!
	All of those ifs and oughts are satisfied.
	At least the ones we've started talking about that other people exist, objective reality exists, the senses have validity and so on.
	Those are all accepted.
	All of those are accepted.
	They don't exist in the universe, but they exist in you participating in the act of debating.
	I guess to wrap up on this part for now, if you're up for it, and I'll give you the last word on this part.
	Basically, there's other balls that I want to throw at you, and I don't want to bore the audience with us getting too far bogged into just disagreeing.
	When I debate with you, I assume lots of things that are contradictory can't be true.
	So I assume that language has meaning.
	I assume that reality exists, that you and I inhabit reality, that you and I have a conversation, that language is a useful thing for meaning.
	I assume all of these things All of these things are describing facts that are prerequisites, that are necessary for us to have the conversation.
	But the only way I can say that I ought to have a conversation with you is if I have the categorical imperative of saying, if I want to be accurate about UPB, which I do want to be, I ought to have a conversation with Stefan.
	What I would say, and what I would try and stress to the audience, that this is not the Holy Grail of philosophy.
	It's either just describing what's necessary in order to have a debate, or it's Kant's hypothetical imperative.
	But I'll give you the last word on this before we move on.
	Thanks everyone so far for listening, by the way.
	No, I don't have a...
	I don't have a last word on that.
	I mean, as long as we accept that there are a whole bunch of things that we need to conform to in order to have a debate, yeah, that's UPB right there.
	Now, let's get... No, I know you say that you don't, but that's fine.
	I mean, this will come in...
	Coming a little bit later.
	Now, is there another topic that you wanted to get to?
	Because I have my list.
	Yeah, I do have another criticism that I think will be good.
	I'm not 100% on this one, so it would be definitely good to hear your view on it, as it were.
	And yeah, if you'd like me to, I'll just get straight to this second ball, as it were.
	Because consider that the first one, this would be the second.
	Yeah, go for it. Thanks, man.
	So either you or I should define what begging the question is.
	Would you like me to do it yourself?
	Go for it. So begging the question occurs when the premise of an argument is the conclusion.
	So if I wanted to prove to you, for instance, that the Earth is spherical, and I said, look, premise one, the Earth is spherical, I beg the question.
	Like, it's game over.
	It doesn't matter that the Earth is actually spherical.
	It is still begging the question.
	It's like going into a courtroom and saying, okay, let's assume the guy is guilty and then have a trial.
	It's like, no, that's what you've got to establish, right?
	That's it, man. So one of the most famous examples is presuppositional apologetics.
	I don't know if any of you, yourself, or anyone in the audience has had the pain of having to debate a presuppositional apologist, but their argument essentially goes as follows, and they're trying to prove God.
	They say, look, premise one, logic and argumentation presupposes God.
	Premise two, arguing against the validity of God demonstrates God.
	Conclusion, therefore, no argument against God can be valid.
	It's begging the question because since their goal is to prove the existence of God, their first premise can't be logic and argumentation presupposes God because it's basically, it's not even basically, it's just straight up including its conclusion in any kind of interaction.
	And this brings me to your first proof of UPB, which you give on page 40.
	You say, premise one, the proposition is the concept universally preferable behavior must be valid.
	Hey everybody, it's Steph. I'm sorry to elbow in.
	I'll make this really, really brief because this next section got people a little upset, baffled, bewildered, and so on.
	So I want to sort of clear it up. So Steve says to me that I, Steph, am committing the logical fallacy called begging the question, which is to assume that what's being debated is already true.
	It's like starting a trial with saying, okay, let's assume that the person is guilty, right?
	So that's not valid.
	So this is from a section of the book I'll link to it below.
	It's called Five Supports.
	Back in the day, it was called Five Proofs.
	I think Five Supports is a more accurate term.
	And so what he did is I come up with a whole bunch of arguments for the validity and soundness of universally preferable behavior.
	And one of them starts off, one, the proposition is the concept of universally preferable behavior must be valid.
	Now, if that's all I ever said, I said, oh, the way that I establish UPB is to say that it must be valid, then that would be begging the question.
	And this is the sentence that he says is begging the question.
	However, it is in a chapter called Five Supports or Five Proofs, and I go on with a whole bunch of syllogisms, and you can read this in the book.
	And so there's supports for it.
	And then, of course, the central argument is that from here...
	That you can't argue against, right?
	If I argue against the proposition that universally preferable behavior is valid, I've already shown my preference for truth over falsehood as well as a preference for correcting those who speak falsely according to objective standards.
	I say here, saying that there is no such thing as universally preferable behavior is like shouting in someone's ear that sound does not exist.
	It is innately self-contradictory.
	So, the way that I argue this is, okay, the proposition is the concept universally preferable behavior must be valid.
	But then, if you argue against that, you're demonstrating universally preferable behavior, therefore no argument against the validity of universally preferable behavior can be valid.
	Now, you can argue this, of course, right?
	And certainly people have.
	But... He just took this sentence fragment, the concept of universally preferable behavior must be valid, and say, aha, you're assuming it's true, and you're begging the question, and that's, I mean, it's just not even true.
	It's not even close to true. It's a bit of a smear dishonest tactic and all of that.
	And so the reason, but the reason that I didn't dive into it, just so you know this from a sort of combat standpoint when it comes to fighting for the truth, The reason that I didn't delve into it during the debate was if you say you're begging the question, then you say to someone, so Steve is saying to me, that I, Steph, have made a claim in a very lengthy book that has no supporting evidence, right?
	And so if I then say, okay, let's dive into this and...
	I then have to find some way to rapidly scan through the entire book and make sure that I never made an argument to support the proposition.
	And you can't do that on the fly.
	You just can't grind your way through a long book in the middle of a live debate.
	And that's why I said you need to tell me about this ahead of time, because it's one of these odd things.
	If it's a self-contained syllogism, then you can argue its merits just based upon What's there?
	If it's an argument someone is making live, sure.
	But if you're trying to say to someone, hey man, there's no needle in this haystack, and you said there was a needle in this haystack, it's like, okay, well, I got to go find the needle in the haystack, which I can do, of course, but I can't do that during a live debate.
	So when somebody says to you, That you're begging the question that in a long book you've made an assertion without any supporting evidence or arguments.
	They need to tell you that ahead of time because maybe it's 10 pages away.
	Maybe it's at the beginning. Maybe it's in a footnote.
	It could be any number of things, but you can't try and find supporting arguments for the assertion or the alleging of begging the question.
	You can't do that in a live debate.
	And I said, listen, let's, you know, email me and we'll go further into it.
	But he kept pestering me on it. So, of course, It gets kind of annoying because when he said he didn't want to talk about libertarianism, I'm like, okay, fine, we'll just move on.
	So, yeah, I just wanted to sort of jump in and say that and just remember the link to the book will be below.
	It's well worth checking out.
	Like if you go to my site here, It's really available.
	And there is the...
	Let's zoom out a little here. So we've got the audiobook right there in high-quality audio.
	We've got the video. If you wanted to follow along with the text and the video, you can download the e-book.
	And all of these are free, right?
	Audiobook, the text, this text on the website, all free.
	But you can buy it if you want a hard copy as well.
	All right. So let's just get back to the debate, which I really appreciated.
	And I just want to jump in and tell you this.
	And this brings me to your first proof of UPB which you give on page 40.
	You say, premise one, the proposition is the concept universally preferable behaviour must be valid.
	That is, to me, clearly begging the question because if you are trying to prove that UPB exists and your first premise is universally preferable behaviour must be valid, Correct me where I'm going wrong, but that is clearly begging the question.
	But I then provide a whole bunch of supporting arguments to that.
	It's not just a statement, right?
	I mean, there's a whole series of supporting arguments for evidence towards UPB, so that's not begging the question at all.
	I'm saying, okay, let's get into evidence that supports the concepts of UPB. Okay, so if I wanted to prove to you that the Earth is a sphere, And my first premise was, the Earth is a sphere.
	And then you said to me, you're begging the question.
	I said, no, no, no, no, no, because I give evidences elsewhere.
	My argument is still begging the question.
	Those arguments over there, which can be laid out in premises, may not be begging the question, but it's still begging the question.
	I can't go with you there.
	I don't have the text in front of me, but I go through a lot of effort to establish the validity of UPB. So saying I just state it and that's begging the question, come on.
	I mean, let's be fair about that.
	No, so I don't, if I'm honest with you, I just don't think you understand begging the question.
	And I apologize if that comes across in any demeaning way.
	No, I don't have the text in front of me.
	So, I mean, I don't know what context you're quoting in.
	It doesn't... Syllogism doesn't need context if it's guilty of certain logical fallacies.
	No, no, because if I say UPB is valid, and then I say, here's all the arguments, why?
	And you say, well, you're saying UPB is valid, let's not do this part.
	This part is, I think, beneath both of us.
	Let's see if we can get on. No, because you've got to tell me, if you want to start quoting my book, then you've got to give me the quote ahead of time so that I can see the context of what it is.
	You're just pulling one sentence out and saying that's begging the question.
	That's boring for the audience.
	And, you know, email me and I'll sort of provide something else.
	But I can't sort of pull up the text and see what else is around there and all that kind of stuff.
	So let's, I don't have the context for that.
	Now, let's get to, if that's alright.
	Please, please. Sorry? Because this is critically important.
	Well, if it was so critically important, why wouldn't you send it to me beforehand so I could have a chance to review the text that you're quoting?
	I mean, come on, this is an ambush, right?
	No, that's not. Listen, okay?
	My first video replied to you.
	The first criticism I gave you was off your first proof, because I assume it's your favorite proof because you put it first.
	It may not be true. It doesn't matter.
	But I gave you this clearly.
	And when you reviewed my video, you literally just said...
	That's like a year and a half ago, man. Come on.
	I mean, let's deal with what we can debate in the here and now, rather than trying to quote pull from...
	A book from years ago, from a rebuttal you did from years ago.
	I mean, let's just stay in the here and now.
	Because we were doing really well when we did the here and now.
	And listen, I'm more than happy to review the issues that you have.
	But again, without preparation, without having the text in front of me, it's back foot time stuff.
	Because we were having a great conversation with regards to the other stuff.
	And I'm not saying it's an invalid criticism and so on.
	It's just that I can't go and review my book live in a debate.
	And if it is that important, you know, just next time, send it to me ahead of time and I'll have a chance to review it first.
	Okay, I'll finish my point on that.
	I can see if you want to move on. It is important that I stress this to people.
	When a syllogism begs the question, context is actually irrelevant.
	The reason being for that fact is that Syllogisms work in a function.
	They try to prove something with their conclusion and it follows from the premises.
	If it doesn't follow from the premises or there's a logical fallacy committed, you do not have to read anything else end off because that is the way in which that logical fallacy comes across.
	When you watch the video, Stefan, I gave you the criticism.
	I gave you the time to be able to respond.
	And you simply just said, no, it isn't.
	And you moved on. I don't know what I said two years ago, man.
	I mean, that's a bit of an ambush, right?
	Let's deal with stuff that we can reason out in the here and now.
	Honestly, if me pointing out where you're begging the question is an ambush, like...
	Come on, man. This is the conversation that we want to have, right?
	You invited me on.
	No, but I don't know what the context is.
	This is really boring. Let's do this another time, and maybe you're completely valid.
	Okay, we'll do it another time. I don't know what the context is, and I know that I've got a whole bunch of proofs for UPB, and I'm not just assuming that it's true and moving on.
	Okay. Now, let's get to...
	I did have a chance to look at...
	Do you want me to skip all of your arguments, by the way?
	I'm sorry? Do you want me to skip the other four arguments as well, where I can point out the logical fallacies?
	Because basically, you beg the question in four out of five of them, and the fifth one's a non sequitur.
	I think I could very clearly show it to the audience, but if you feel like I'm ambushing...
	Yeah, no, let's do that.
	Let's do that when I have a chance to reread the part of the book that you wanted.
	And I'd love to do it again. I really would.
	Let's do that when I have a chance to review the book and see the larger context of the arguments and all that kind of stuff.
	Sure. So, let's have a look at...
	Let me just grab it somewhere up here.
	I have it in some useful fashion.
	Hang on a sec here. So, I did want to have a look at some of the stuff that you had put out.
	Now, I'm sorry. I will actually...
	I'll post this in the links below.
	I was hoping to sort of play these directly, but it doesn't look like this particular piece of software actually does allow me to sort of play you in the background on all that kind of stuff.
	At least I don't think it does. So I will just read these aspects of things, right?
	So... We've gone through a lot of them, but when you say, in the video that you did on my Humean suicide, where you've got me as, I think, Dr.
	Evil or whatever it is, right? So you say, I'm not saying that being correct is preferable to not being correct, right?
	So you don't state any preferences for being correct, right?
	And you say, I'm sorry?
	Sorry, I thought that you paused to want an answer, but no, I'll let you carry on and then I'll give you the answers.
	Yeah, so your quote is, when someone corrects Stephan, they are not necessarily implying, sorry, they are not necessarily implicitly accepting the fact that it would be better for him to correct his error.
	While it is fair to say that most people accept this premise, that is, they assume that Stephan has the goal of being accurate about UPB, others don't make this assumption.
	I, for example, don't.
	When I correct Stefan, I do so because, one, I have the goal of being accurate about UPB, and I know that by publicly expressing a critique, I increase the chances of someone else correcting me, should I be mistaken, and, two, I assume that you, the viewer, have the goal of being accurate about UPB. I, however, do not assume that Stefan has the goal of being accurate about UPB because, honestly, I'm not entirely convinced...
	That he does. It's for this reason that I don't tell him that it would be better for him to change his opinion.
	I don't, in fact, tell anyone that it would be better for them to change their opinion.
	Indeed, I don't make any ought claim whatsoever.
	I exclusively make an is claim.
	It is the case that Stefan is correct.
	So your approach is that you don't make ought claims and you don't tell anyone that it would be better for them to change their opinion and you don't violate the is-ought dichotomy.
	Is that correct? So there's a little bit of text before and after that that's relevant, and that is that the word better is like the word greater.
	It doesn't make sense without a reference.
	Greater to what? Better to what?
	And this is where the if clause comes in.
	So the example I gave was, look, Stefan, if you want to win the race, you ought to sprint as fast as you can.
	However... If you want to rest your broken leg, you will not sprint as fast as you can.
	So I do make if and should statements, but I do them by either explicitly knowing that someone has a hypothetical goal, a hypothetical imperative, or I implicitly assume that they have the goal.
	So most people I interlock with, I assume that they have a preference for truth over falsehood on the matter that we're talking about.
	So yeah, it's always contingent and words such as better or greater or even good are always in reference to something, otherwise they just make no sense in and of themselves.
	Do you think that the word correct is more objective than something like better?
	Correct being more objective than better?
	Because correct seems to be in relation to you're describing a factual state of the universe, let's say.
	It's correct that we're currently interlocked in a conversation.
	Whereas better, it necessarily isn't just to say better, you need an if clause.
	You need something that has a reference to it.
	So it would be better for us to be, you know, having the kind of conversation we have rather than arguing.
	Sorry, rather than getting super angry, if we both have the goal of getting to the bottom of this argument.
	So one of them requires references and context, if you will, and the other one doesn't, other than assuming the laws of logic, etc.
	Okay, all right, got it.
	So I do have the goal of being accurate about UPB, and that goal is very explicitly stated in the book, is stated in my multiple videos on the subject, it's stated in my debates.
	So I'm just curious why you think that I don't have the goal of being accurate about UPB when I... Yeah, so one of two things, either you've omitted a really important word from my quote or I failed to put it in.
	I'm going to assume the latter and I apologize for doing it.
	I assume that you have the preference of being correct about UPB, but I don't assume that you have the preference of being publicly correct about UPB. And it's not even a subtle difference in the sense of, look, Let's just say that I put a lot of work into something and I published it and I get money from the sales of it.
	And people say they recognize me as something quite amazing.
	They even say, you know, Steve is really important to this field of study because of this book.
	I might have a preference for truth over falsehood in the sense that if someone corrects me, I want to be able to understand the criticisms.
	But it comes at a massive cost for me to publicly state You know what?
	I'm incorrect. So if I know I'm incorrect just myself, I can still defend my theory.
	Whereas if I am publicly incorrect about it, I lose book sales, I lose my status, I lose these things.
	The thing I was expressing there is that I'm not entirely convinced that you want to be publicly correct about UPB. And I can understand that might come as an insult, but it's just the fact.
	It's just the way in which I see it.
	Well, I mean, just for the record, I give away UPB. There really aren't any book sales to speak of.
	And of course, I have a whole series called I Was Wrong About X or Y or Z. I've got like, I don't know, a dozen or two dozen videos of public statements correcting errors that I've made.
	And I know you have the same things as well.
	So... You know, the monetary incentive is not there as far as status goes.
	My status as a thinker is dependent upon me following reason and evidence not Hanging on to something that is incorrect.
	And I've demonstrated, of course, I think a reasonable capacity, probably more than most, to correct areas where I've made errors in the past.
	So anyway, I'm just telling you, I do have the goal to be publicly correct about UPB. I understand that you're saying that, but that would actually feed into my concept of you not being publicly correct about UPB, you know?
	And that is that I still think there's a lot of incentives for you not to be publicly correct about UPB. I actually do think that if you lose this, you lose your contribution to philosophy and you also lose an objective foundation to justify in and of itself libertarianism, etc. I find that UPB bleeds into a lot of your work and justifies a lot of the things that you speak about.
	And there is a loss in it.
	And the biggest reason as to why I'm not convinced that you have the preference of being publicly accurate about UPB is things such as what happened earlier, where you didn't actually want to delve into the begging the question fallacy.
	Instead, you said, look, man, you're assaulting me.
	This is an ambush. Assaulting you?
	I didn't say you were assaulting me. What are you talking about?
	Ambush. Ambush. Ambush.
	But this is why I'm not convinced.
	And to be honest with you, who gives a crap what I think, right?
	But my point was is that it's not necessary for me to assume that about you to interlock in a conversation and fulfill my own hypothetical goal.
	So I do apologize if it comes off offensive to you or anyone in the audience, but I'm perhaps being a little bit too honest.
	No, no, nothing wrong with being too honest at all.
	And listen, I find it tough when you say I'm begging the question and you're bringing in a text that I wrote 12 years ago that I haven't reviewed in preparation.
	I mean, I'm happy to have that conversation.
	But the two points that you brought up was publicly admitting faults or error and financial incentives, and I'm just saying that those don't particularly exist, and there's evidence to the contrary.
	Okay. So, with regards to whether truth has value or accuracy has value, that's sort of the big question.
	And I think that's where you and I kind of diverge, I guess, a fair amount.
	The reason why I think that you believe that truth has value, right?
	Because one of the statements that you say, you say, I'm not saying that being correct is preferable to not being correct.
	It's a little confusing because...
	I mean, you have videos like nine proofs of evolution, why evolution is true.
	In other words, why evolution is accurate to explain...
	Biological history, the world, and so on, why evolution is true, and certainly more true than something like creationism, which I certainly agree with you on.
	So you've got nine proofs of evolution, why evolution is true.
	You've got dozens of videos with the words debunked, you've got Big Bang debunked, three justifications for scriptural slavery debunked, everyone is religious debunked, and so on, and there's rebuttals and so on, right?
	So That seems to me to have a particular preference for accuracy.
	I mean, even the title of the video that you did on me, Molyneux's Humean Disaster Slash Suicide.
	I mean, if you can't find more negative words in the English language, it would be a challenge, right?
	So if I'm incorrect, there's negative stuff.
	And in one of your videos, The Big Bang Debunked, you say, and hence that's the reason for this video.
	If you're currently convinced that the universe came into existence from absolutely nothing, then I hope that within the next few minutes I shatter your conviction because I care about you, right?
	So I think that's saying that the truth is preferable to error, that accuracy is preferable to inaccuracy, and so that's sort of the positive side.
	Now, I'll be real brief here, and this I admire you for, right, that you did the video...
	That you did a video on transgender athletes and you made some mistakes and you publicly put out a video apologizing and correcting your errors, which I think is a noble and good thing to do.
	So you said the mistakes I made.
	I'm sorry. Let's begin by delving into my mistakes.
	You said I really dropped the ball here and I'll do my utmost best not to make this...
	Mistake again. And you said, now this was, in my opinion, my biggest intellectual blunder, a huge mistake.
	My views on hemoglobin were mistaken, and so on.
	And so if you say that the truth is of value, and you are pursuing the truth, and you're posting about the truth, and you publicly apologize and correct your errors, which again is a noble and good thing to do...
	You can understand why people would be a little bit confused when you pour this amount of energy into correcting people and debunking and refuting and you apologize for making errors and then you say, hey, I don't believe that being correct is preferable to not being correct.
	You can understand why people might be a little confused by that?
	Yeah, of course. Allow me to clarify.
	Thanks for putting that eloquently, actually.
	There's a difference between saying truth is preferable to falsehood and me saying I have a preference for truth over falsehood.
	So I love the idea of reality and reason and rationality, hence rationality rules.
	I want people to be living up to what evidence they have access to.
	And so what I do is I tend to debunk religious arguments primarily and also pseudoscientific arguments, you know, vaccines causing autism, etc.
	And the reason I do this is because I have this preference of living in a world where people are more accurate, that they don't take actions Which are justified by, you know, essentially faith.
	So I have this goal and I make these videos because my goal is to convince people of what is actually rational.
	I want to convince, not only convince them of what's true, I want them, I want my goal is to get it so that they appreciate it as much as me and that we can, you know, develop as a society and become better.
	But the most critical thing here is I never say just as a blanket categorical statement.
	The truth is better than falsehood, because I don't think I can.
	All I can say is that I have the goal of, almost in all things, in fact, I've had everything, I want to be having true beliefs rather than false beliefs.
	There's a couple of caveats, but again, this is just philosophy.
	And there's just different ways in which I can achieve that fact, but there's nothing categorical here.
	So, I mean, do you think I'm doing anything categorical, universal?
	Well, that's a good question.
	I'm not hugely clear on how you don't prefer accuracy to inaccuracy as a value, not just for yourself, but for the world as a whole.
	I mean, that's To me, not particularly clear.
	So here's the thing.
	So your big thing with me is the is-ought dichotomy, right?
	And I get all of that.
	So I would, of course, assume, and I went into your video saying, okay, well, I assume that Stephen is not going to be doing any violations of the is-ought dichotomy.
	And... Listen, I'm not trying to catch you out here and you're perfectly welcome to push back and say I need context and we can talk about it another time.
	That's perfectly valid because, you know, I said, hey, man, you kind of ambushed me with a bunch of detail that I don't have in front of me.
	So you can push back on this.
	But one of the things I found kind of confusing was...
	You've got a video called Jordan Peterson is not a Christian.
	And you say, according to many of the most popular definitions of a Christian, Peterson is not one.
	And that therefore many of his Christian followers ought to cease asserting that he's championing their beliefs.
	Right.
	So you've got a fact statement.
	Peterson is not a Christian, according to most popular definitions.
	And then you go straight into an ought statement or a value statement.
	Therefore, many of his Christian followers ought to cease asserting that he's championing their beliefs.
	I'm trying to figure out how...
	That is not a violation of the is-ought dichotomy that you find objectionable within me.
	No, I shall give it to you.
	So as you said, you know, when we implicitly, when we argue with someone or we try and convey anything to anyone, we implicitly make assumptions.
	Call me criminal, but when I talk with a Christian, I assume that they actually believe in God.
	I assume that they actually want to promote the values of Christ.
	So what I'm saying in that statement is, look, Jordan Peterson is essentially entirely an atheist.
	It's just he plays with words in the same way that Deepak Chopra does, with energy.
	And it's actually managed to confuse some real Christians into thinking that he's fighting their cause.
	And he might be fighting their cause, but he's certainly not a Christian.
	So what I'm saying there, what's implicit there, because, you know, as you said, everything has implicit premises.
	The implicit premise there is I'm thinking that they have the goal, the hypothetical imperative of championing Christianity.
	So I'm assuming a goal in those people.
	Right now with this debate with you, for example, I'm assuming that most of the audience has a goal to be accurate about UPB. And It's just a hypothetical imperative.
	I might be wrong on my assumptions.
	I might be wrong on my assumptions when I tell people that they need to watch out for Peterson, Christians that they need to watch out for Peterson.
	Some Christians, that's definitely true.
	They know what Peterson's about.
	They still want him counted as a Christian.
	They still want to move forward with it.
	So, you know, my ought would have no meaning to them whatsoever because my assumption of the hypothetical imperative has no basis.
	I hope that makes sense. Okay, so that's with regards to Christians.
	I appreciate that clarification.
	The mistakes of many on transgender athletes is one of your videos where you say trans women must be able to compete.
	Now, trans women, of course, an objective.
	What does trans women mean?
	Trans women must be able to compete, you said.
	This is one of the... And again, if it's a little fragment, I was hoping to be able to play more, but the browser is not letting me play this through.
	So trans women must be able to compete.
	That's your... Ought, right?
	Well, see, this is where we were getting into the word of must, and I'm saying that it's required that trans people are able to compete in some fashion or some form.
	Because if you have a goal which says it's a human right to be able to compete in sport, what I'm saying is it necessarily follows that they must have the right to be able to compete in some degree, in some league, whatever league it might be, it doesn't matter. So this is where that first definition, if you will, was coming in.
	And all I'm doing is describing a fact.
	I'm saying if you're saying humans fit this category where they must, sorry, fit this category where they have a human right, you can't rob that human right from one segment.
	That's why I'm making that statement there.
	So you're universalizing it?
	In an objective, descriptive statement.
	I'm saying, given what we said, yeah, but there's no should, there's no or.
	Oh, no, you said must.
	Yeah, and I told you by must, I'm using what I accused you of using with your first definition, which is I'm just saying it's required.
	Yeah, so that which is a characteristic of human beings must be a characteristic of all human beings, right?
	What I'm saying is that if we're saying, and in and of itself it's predicated on this, it's hilarious, And what I'm saying is that if we have a rule, which is that all human beings must be able to compete in the Olympics, then it must necessarily follow that all human beings can compete in the Olympics.
	It's only a descriptive statement.
	I'm just saying must. And you know what?
	Sometimes I mess up with my language and stuff, but I don't think...
	No, no, no. I'm not trying to catch you per syllable.
	I'm just really genuinely trying to understand how you get oughts And then say, but I don't have any preference for correctness and you can't violate the is or dichotomy.
	Now I get you got a bunch of if statements and you're saying, oh, but my if statements are implicit.
	And it's like, well, but I have implicit if statements and sometimes explicit if statements that...
	You reject. But here at least you're saying that that which is a category of human beings must apply to all human beings.
	Of course, trans women are human beings and therefore, right?
	So this is back to the argument earlier about murder, that if you have a characteristic of human beings, that it must apply to all human beings.
	Now, here's the big one. Here's the big one, which I think hopefully we can sink our teeth into because this is the one that troubles me the most, which of course is not an argument.
	I'm just telling you straight up, right?
	So in your...
	Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead.
	I don't want to interrupt.
	I've had more than enough of the floor.
	You go ahead. So you say, why are some people entitled to the fruits of the labor of others?
	And you say, economist Walter E. Williams, he makes this statement basically that I want to keep what I make and you should keep what you make and so on, right?
	Right. So, you say Walter E. Williams inherited a biological and or social advantage that he did not earn, and thus he does not deserve all the fruit of his labor.
	So this is really fascinating to me, because you go from a statement of fact, of course, I did not earn my height, I did not earn my blue eyes, I didn't earn the fact that I speak English, which happens to be a pretty common language around the world, and so I get all of that.
	Like, there's so much in our lives that we inherit, accidental, genetic, we don't earn it, and so on.
	So that's a statement of fact, right?
	So the statement of fact is, I mean, like...
	But there's stuff we don't earn. I think this is a video I made on libertarianism quite a long time ago.
	Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, you have a statement of fact that says Walt E. Williams inherited a biological and or social advantage that he did not earn, right?
	That's a statement of fact, right?
	Yeah, so this is an argument against libertarianism, as it were, and it requires a lot of unpacking on why I would say those words and how I'm describing them.
	Well, no, so far it's just a statement of fact.
	Well, no, so what would you say the statement of fact is?
	Well, that Walter E. Williams inherited a biological and or social advantage that he did not earn.
	Oh, as in like he did not earn, as in he didn't plow the fields or he didn't...
	No, he did not earn, I think, like, so the examples you provide with regards to yourself is that you say that...
	And I sympathize with you for this, of course, right?
	So you say, despite the fact that I come from a broken family and had a very rough upbringing, I am extremely lucky to have the characteristics that I do.
	And while I've worked extremely hard to get where I am, I did not earn the temperament, patience, charisma, and, if you will, intellect that I have.
	I was simply dealt good biological cards, right?
	So... I think we're good to go.
	Yeah, I mean, it sounds like we're going into topics such as libertarianism, etc.
	in general, rather than...
	No, I don't want to go into that. So far, I'm just saying that you're making statements of fact that Walter E. Williams inherited a biological...
	I'm sorry? I was just going to say, I haven't written a book on it, etc.
	I'm not like... I'm super sure on things.
	In that video, for example, I was explaining why I'm not convinced of libertarian theory, as it were.
	I mean, I'm just trying to get to the bottom.
	What's the fact statement that you think I'm saying, as it were?
	I'm sorry. I feel like I'm just repeating myself here.
	The fact statement is that we have characteristics that we do not earn.
	So, for instance, IQ is largely genetic.
	And so the matter of intelligence is not something that we can take personal pride in how smart we are.
	I mean, obviously, there's some things we can do to help and improve it.
	There's 10 to 20 percent that's in play.
	Our height, you know, tall people obviously sometimes make more money.
	Obviously, generally, they make more money.
	Pretty people make more money.
	And our looks and our height, I'm gesturing myself, looks like I'm some Adonis, but you know what I mean, right?
	So our height, our looks, whatever it is, the skin color, we don't earn those.
	They're just accidents of birth, right?
	So, well, one, if we're going to assume determinism, which is one of the things I assume, one of the things I'm convinced of, then we have a whole lot to unpack there for why I could say about what's earned.
	Like, if somebody says they didn't earn something, like, that's a whole debate to argue through.
	You know, you've got John Rawls and you've got Robert Nozak.
	You have to go through all of these things.
	So... My statement of we didn't earn something came after the fact that I was explaining determinism and explaining how I've got to that pathway per se.
	It's a statement of fact that's predicated on other facts that I've given.
	There's no ought or should here.
	No, no, I get that. I get that.
	I'm trying to get to the ought without a doubt.
	I mean, and of course, I mean, there's no sane person.
	I know that's not an argument, but it's just one of these basic things.
	Of course we don't. You know, it's like saying I invented English.
	I mean, you know, I'm not like Al Gore.
	I didn't invent the Internet, right? So you say Walter E. Williams inherited a biological and or social advantage that he did not earn.
	Statement of fact. And thus he does not deserve all the fruit of his labor.
	Now that's an ought statement, right?
	So you're going from the is that he didn't earn everything about him to the ought that he ought not keep everything that he makes.
	But the ought is to accept the theory, the arguments that I gave before.
	Again, it's hypothetical. It's if you accept the arguments I make, it follows that he ought not keep all of his thing.
	If you don't accept that ought, if you don't have that hypothetical imperative, then I'm just farting in the wind to you.
	And that's fair play because that's the nature of hypothetical imperatives.
	No, but you say he does not deserve all the fruit of his labor.
	I think. And listen, I mean, the whole debate about taxation is forced.
	We can maybe have another time. My sort of basic issue...
	Hang on. My basic issue here is that my...
	What you consider as a violation of the is-ought dichotomy in terms of UPB and so on, right?
	So you can reject UPB, and I don't think any force should be used against you.
	I don't think you should be censored.
	I don't think you should be thrown in jail.
	Any of these things, right?
	So here's my issue, and I'm perfectly willing to be schooled on all of this.
	It's going to be tough, but I'm willing to be schooled.
	When you consider that I have violated the is-ought dichotomy when I have done so in a manner that does not require any force.
	I'm not forcing it on anyone.
	I'm not saying anyone should go to jail.
	But when you get an ought, in other words, force used against someone to take their property, when you get your ought out of the is that he didn't earn everything about his attributes or his earning potential...
	I'm just, I gotta tell you, it bothers the hell out of me that you can violate the is-ought dichotomy with guns, but I can't violate it with reason.
	You know, that's pretty wild to me.
	...libertarianism in order to somehow poison the world, because most of the audience is a libertarian.
	You almost want them to know that I'm not a libertarian.
	I know that you are claiming, no, I'm just using an example like this.
	You know, a lot of your audience are right-wing leaning, so you want to bring up the fact that I defend trans people.
	Like, this all feels like poisoning the well.
	But that's not an argument. You can have your feelings, but maybe we could just talk about the facts.
	Absolutely, just to talk about the facts.
	I don't know how many times I can say it to you with these different examples.
	It's hypothetical imperatives.
	Any time I say that you should or ought do something, I am giving the hypothetical imperative.
	Why? I don't think there is such a thing as categorical imperatives.
	If I'm describing something as... Then how do you get to enforce your ought by guns?
	That's my question. How do you get...
	Because there are going to be people who disagree with you about you taking other people's property by force.
	Now you're talking, you're trying to get me to justify a position on libertarianism.
	You've switched the debate.
	Do you want to talk to UPB or do you want to talk about libertarianism?
	No, no. Your criticism of UPB is that I'm violating the is-ought dichotomy and I'm doing so in a perfectly peaceful manner.
	So how the hell do you get to violate the is-ought dichotomy by threatening people with jail who disagree with your ought?
	I mean, how are you so confident on your ought that you're willing to deploy the armed mind of the state?
	To imprison people who disagree with you.
	That is not rationality rules.
	That is brutality rules.
	This is just political now, Steph.
	Are you saying there's no force involved in taxation?
	There's no what? Thoughts?
	There's no force involved in taxation.
	There's no force involved in taxation.
	If you want to argue whether or not taxation is moral, then it's a different question to be had than the one that we're having, because I know that you've built UPB around your book, which, by the way, is another reason why I don't think you want to be publicly accurate about UPB. It's funny, when a Christian's And religious in general, they tend to start with their conclusion and work backwards.
	I don't think it's a coincidence that UPB just so happens to substantiate libertarianism theory.
	I'm not going to discuss libertarianism.
	I'm not a professional. All I was expressed in that video is I'm not convinced of the proposition of libertarianism.
	If you want to talk libertarianism, either I have to go away, do my research and come back.
	Well, we're done, man, because I'm here to talk QPB. And it sounds like you just want to talk about trans and libertarianism.
	No, I'm talking about the Islam dichotomy.
	All right, let's leave the coercion element of libertarianism and we'll go to your objective morality because, you know, you've been grilling me for years over my...
	I'm more than happy to have a discussion about my objective morality with you.
	But surely it constitutes a different argument.
	Because if we title this UPB debate, that's what we've had.
	And then it could be you grilling me here on the next debate on my moral framework.
	But the thing is, is I haven't published a book.
	I don't claim to be essentially the second coming of Socrates with the holy grail of moral philosophy.
	Oh, talk about poisoning the well.
	Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.
	This is the end. There's only a few drips left, I can be honest with.
	I mean, if you describe your...
	That's how you describe it in your book, Stephen.
	You say it is the holy grail of philosophy.
	That is a quote. That's the way that you've expressed it.
	Me saying that... Yeah, that's the second coming of Socrates.
	Come on. It's the same thing.
	Oh, man. Someone came with the holy grail of philosophy.
	That is the second coming of Socrates.
	Okay, well, you're complaining about straw man and now you're putting words in my mouth that I've never said.
	All right. We could call it a synonym.
	Well, you can call it whatever you want.
	Just recognize that you're violating the whole straw man thing, because I've never said that.
	Imagine if someone came along and they produced...
	No, no, no. Forget the imagine stuff.
	We're trying to deal with empirical stuff here.
	Okay. Well, let's close this off.
	And I just... As a teaser, hopefully, for the next debate, this is what you say, because you really don't like violating the is-ought dichotomy.
	But you say... Axiomatic oughts are feelings of obligation that exist self-evidently, and they do so without proof or argument.
	They just are. They're facts of nature.
	We can quarrel about the axiomatic ought, but here's the thing.
	If you already accept it, for whatever reason, or let's face it, lack thereof, then for all intent and purposes, what's the problem?
	Nature has made it so that we are born with axiomatic oughts.
	And while, again, this is intellectually dissatisfying, you say, we just have to get on with it.
	As inconvenient as it might be, we are not born with a blank slate, and all moral discourse must finally accept this brute fact.
	In other words, existence is synonymous with ought, axiomatic oughts based upon the nature of human existence.
	So when you come to me and say, hey, Steph, you might be touching around the violation of the is-ought dichotomy, and your entire moral philosophy is based upon axiomatic oughts that are synonymous with human life and existence, it's like, dude, you might want to take another swing.
	You ought to know something.
	That video is quite old, and I've changed my mind since then.
	I've had some conversations with some moral philosophers.
	I mean, I hadn't published a book, you know, I was just being someone who's open and talking about these discussions.
	I had this discussion with Alex O'Connor and a couple of others, and my mind's since been changed.
	Oh, I didn't see any corrections on the video, so you probably should put that on.
	Yeah, and I'll get that on, no problem.
	I need to go through a lot of my older stuff.
	But no, I don't have that view.
	Someone illustrated to me that while it's true that we're born with innate preferences, as it were, you know, everybody wants to avoid what Jeremy Bentham called our two sovereign masters, which is pain and pleasure, which is better translated to suffering and pleasure.
	The ought itself is derived from that fact.
	It isn't an ought that exists just in nature per se.
	But hey, man, like once I publish a book, I'd love for you to give me a critique and you and I to...
	To go again. And I guess what I'd like to say is that, correct me if I'm wrong, would I be correct to say that you think that my, I say it's my position, it's your peers' position that have critiqued UPP, would you say that they're incorrect with their statements of that you are not clear with your definitions in the sense that you equivocate on three?
	That you beg the question four times in your five proofs, and in your fifth one it's a non sequitur.
	I assume that you still believe in UBB, at least publicly, and held to that.
	Like, you don't think any of my criticisms have had any clout whatsoever.
	Would that be accurate, or do you believe that...
	I mean, I found it as a productive conversation.
	I've actually enjoyed it, by the way.
	I'm sorry, but the question is, do I think UBB is perfect?
	Well, of course not. I mean, things can always be improved.
	Clarifications can always be made.
	This is why I've done so many videos and I've done a rewrite of UBB in a very short format.
	I've got platonic dialogues in my latest book, Essential Philosophy.
	UBB can always be clarified.
	It is a tough, tough theory.
	It is really, you know, we have, all of us, been so programmed with a particular view of ethics.
	I mean, in my case, I grew up I was a Christian.
	I was a socialist for a while.
	So I have a lot of – I have a high population of ethical theories.
	And even these – these aren't even the ones that I studied in my graduate degree and all of that, the Hegel and Locke and Kant and Plato and Aristotle.
	So I got a – I got a – We've got a lot of stuff going on with us in terms of ethics, a lot of contradictory ideas, some nihilism, some postmodernism, some Marxism, all of this stuff is floating around in our head.
	And to me, at least, working on a moral theory is kind of like trying to do math when someone's yelling numbers into your ear.
	It's really, really tough. So UPB is a real challenge.
	Now, that's a big challenge. That, obviously, is not any kind of proof of its validity.
	But, of course, the moment you bring in proof, that is a universally preferable standard of behavior to pursue accuracy, to pursue truth in debate.
	You can't have theft as universally preferable behavior.
	For sure, you can't have murder as universally preferable behavior.
	For sure, you can't have rape or assault as universally preferable behavior.
	That is without a doubt. That has never been challenged.
	You acceded to that, and I don't mean to say this to lord it over you.
	I'm just sort of saying a basic fact of the debate.
	Hang on, I'll be done in a sec.
	I'll give you the last word.
	So if all UPP has been able to do is to validate that the bans on rape, theft, assault and murder, yeah, that's a pretty, that's a pretty cool thing that it's a pretty good thing to have a secular, non-religious, non-state that's a pretty cool thing that it's a pretty good thing to have a secular, non-religious, non-state enforced logical proof for bans on rape, theft and assault and murder, all of and for support for property rights for support for self-defense, for support for the all of and for support for property rights for support for self-defense, for support for the non-initiation
	If all I've done is to prove that rape, theft, assault and murder, spanking, circumcision, abuse and all of this and violent, the initiation of the use of force and validated self-defense and Hey, if that's all I've done, okay, that's pretty good.
	That's pretty good. Now, if there are sort of questions around, okay, how many things are implicitly accepted in a particular debate?
	And I think that's great.
	Those are very interesting discussions.
	To have. But if all you've got out of it or all the audience has got out of it is that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior, I mean, I'm a happy guy.
	So please go ahead and please give people your channel and site again.
	Sure. Look, I know it's got a bit heated and whatnot, which is always actually something I enjoy about debate, and I hope you do too.
	But first and foremost, thank you for having the conversation.
	It is a sign of good faith, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.
	And as we said, hopefully we'll do it again on other topics, slash this topic if it comes up again.
	Yeah, and let's email each other with a bit of prep stuff, because I think it's always better if we have that opportunity.
	But to me it's like, just to clarify that point, if you're trying to justify UPB and you give what you title five proofs and I tackle the five proofs and your response is I didn't have time to prepare, that strikes me as that when they're the five proofs you give, surely like it's not like I'm trying to reference the end of your book or per se, it is literally the five proofs that you give, but But of course, I'll let you know the kind of topics I want to get to because it's a better way of doing it.
	Look, man, like if you're describing UPB as simply self-contradictions, then the good news is that I accept it.
	But if you call that UPB, then to use the analogy that we used at the beginning, you haven't got out of bed to even fight this beast.
	You are laying in bed intellectually masturbating.
	It's just you're in the descriptive world.
	Whereas if you always have the if clauses, then you've got Kant's hypothetical imperative, and in which case you've come out, you've come up to this beast, you've soiled your dress, you've ran into the forest, you've stabbed a rabbit that Kant killed, you know, centuries ago, and now you're gloating, you know, you've had the holy grail of philosophy.
	Whereas what you actually have to prove is the categorical imperative, and It seems that every time we try to get down to that, you just navigate through the three definitions that I give.
	And the one that's strongest is that you're just describing something that's self-contradictory.
	So the last thing I'll say on the front, and then I'll leave it to yourself, is look, Don't you think, what's the reason that your UPB is not vitiating academia in the same way as human can?
	Now, it could be politicized.
	Science and philosophy is politicized.
	But what's more likely, that your peers just don't like you because of your views on X, Y, and Z, and they're just not going to take your argument seriously?
	Basically, there's this conspiracy, as it were.
	Or could it just be that you're not quite The person who has got the Holy Grail, as it were.
	My thesis to the audience is, it's the latter.
	And man, my hat comes off to you.
	Anyone that attempts to do this stuff, as you said, it's so important.
	But as you write in your book, if you're wrong, it's going to be both entertaining and edifying.
	And it is entertaining, but edification requires that you accept the criticisms and deal with them sufficiently.
	And I don't think you've done that.
	So the last thing I just want to say, I guess, last thing, last thing, is I know I've come off rough, as it were, but Thank you for having the debate, Stefan.
	I'm sure we can go again at some point on another topic.
	Anyone who publishes something and is willing to have exchanges, it's a good thing.
	So thank you very, very much and thank you to the audience.
	Yeah, my pleasure. I have debated a number of academics.
	I've presented at universities.
	And, you know, as to why it's not burning down academia, again, not to put myself in any kind of equation to Socrates, but of course, we do remember Socrates' relationship with the sophists was not particularly positive.
	In fact, sophists hated Socrates with a burning passion.
	And the fact, of course, that I Say that taxation is forced and academics are paid for largely.
	Certainly their jobs are protected and tenure is protected by the armed might of the state.
	They are, I think, largely corrupt in and of themselves.
	Of course, they're not going to want to entertain this kind of stuff.
	Very few people want to entertain theories that prove the immorality of their income or protection from market forces.
	So thanks very much. Please don't forget to check out Rationality Rules on YouTube.
	I will put a link below.
	You have a game.
	Do you want to just mention that just before we close off?
	Sure, that's a very generous of you.
	And likewise, when I put this on my channel, everybody, I'll leave a link to Stefan's channel below, and you can go check it out.
	Basically, I made a game titled Debunked, and the premise is essentially, I don't know if anyone's ever played Exploding Kittens, but it's similar to that in the sense that you have Logical arguments tend to be the ones that are for God.
	You know, the watchmaker analogy, the Kalan cosmological.
	And with the fallacies that they commit, you basically play them on top slash trying to mess with other people's hands.
	And it's a simple concept, but hard to explain.
	But it's basically a card game.
	And I'm sure you'll appreciate it.
	It's with the effort of just trying to improve people's both appreciation off and capacity to reason with logical fallacies.
	And the good news is that no kittens are harmed in the making of the card game.
	So, yeah, thanks everyone for listening.
	It was a great tussle, a great tangle.
	I hope that people have gotten a little bit of heat and warmth off the sparks of two challenging, opposing, and sometimes synchronizing brains banging up against each other.
	So, don't forget freedomain.com forward slash donate if you'd like to help out the show.
	Please, please, to my American friends, stay safe out there.
	It is a dangerous environment.
	Trust me, I have... I've stood outside buildings where I've given speeches and stared down Antifa and these violent leftists.
	They are nothing to be messed with.
	They are incredibly violent, incredibly dangerous.
	Trump is going to designate them as a terrorist organization.
	So please, please do not underestimate The feral nature of these people and their capacity to do enormous violence, it is a very dangerous group.
	Please stay safe, stay away if at all possible, and stay safe as best you can, and maybe lay in some food and do all of that kind of good stuff and figure out ways that you can avoid crowded areas and places where people might be gathering.
	It's really, really important when people get very into their belief system and they view you as immoral for questioning or interfering.
	With their unholy goals, you are in particular danger.
	when I was staring down the fairly fascistic riot police in Hong Kong last year and taking facefuls of tear gas.
	It doesn't leave you with a whole lot of illusions and delusions about the nature of people who are committed to violence to maintain their power, their belief system, or to gain power, as Antifa and the other extreme leftists want to do.
	So I do appreciate the break from following this that Stephen gave us.
	I do appreciate the conversation.
	I love you guys as an audience.
	It is a great pleasure to be part of this conversation.
	stay safe.
	Thanks again to everyone and have a great, great evening.
	Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world.
	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

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