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Dec. 17, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:08:18
REALITY IS COMPULSION? Can We Get an 'Ought' from an 'Is'? Freedomain Call In
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Okay, so yeah, the question or the issue is around the is-ought dichotomy.
Is that the major thing?
Yes, entirely correct.
And do you want to formulate the question?
Yes, yes. This statement, you cannot get an auth from an is.
It's an auth or an is statement.
That's the base question.
I'm sorry, I didn't quite follow that.
If you could say it again. The original David Hume's statement is an ought statement or an is statement?
Well, it's both, right?
So the ought exists in consciousness and the is exists in reality.
And so the presupposition or the basic belief that drives the relationship between is and ought is oughts do not exist in reality, they exist in consciousness.
But The degree to which consciousness claims as a value the purpose of accurately describing reality unites the is and the ought.
So if we ought to say things that are true about reality, which is saying that there is a conditional in the mind that does not exist in the universe.
And although this sounds odd, I mean, it's very common, right?
I mean, so E equals MC squared.
Does it exist in reality?
Well, no. It's really hard to answer this.
It is. It is and it isn't.
We'll get there. But, I mean, so don't feel bad about this being tricky.
It's horribly tricky. I mean, to me, that is horribly tricky and it's perfectly understandable.
So, E equals mc squared.
Does the equation exist in reality?
The equation doesn't.
It's just a concept.
Right, so there are three ways in which we can answer this, right?
So the first is, it does exist in reality, and that would be the Platonic argument, right?
That there's a higher reality of perfect forms, and the equation describes that.
The second is to say, it does not exist in reality, except that it's been written down, you know, the letters and the forms and the ink and E equals MC squared, like the...
Formulation exists in reality, which I think is kind of sort of pointless.
But the third is to say it does not exist in reality.
And to me, the big acid test is what was this thing prior to consciousness?
So prior to human consciousness, or you could say prior to the understanding of E equals MC squared, the identification of E equals MC squared, prior to human understanding...
It did not exist in the universe as a concept.
What did exist, though, was the actual material relationship of matter and energy.
So energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
So that existed.
Gravity existed before it was described or synthesized by Newton and others.
The world was round even when people thought it was flat and so on.
And so to me, everything that exists or that existed prior to human consciousness exists independently of human consciousness.
And so E equals MC squared existed like what it described existed in reality.
But the description did not.
Does that sort of make any sense? It does, but I'm having a different conflict right now.
Oh, no, I know, I know. We're not getting to the is-ought yet, just so you know.
I'm just sort of like trying to get the concept material thing related.
But sorry, go ahead. The concept I'm having right now is that I used to consider all those concepts as part of the is statements.
Well, but the concepts...
are not the is statement.
E equals mc squared describes a relationship between matter and energy.
Now, there is a relationship between matter and energy, but the concept that accurately describes that does not exist in reality in the same way.
Like gravity, sorry, if you drop something from a spaceship and it falls to the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second acceleration, There's not a little trail of 9.8, like little text trail, 9.8 meters per second per second.
That is the description of a relationship between mass and gravity and the acceleration from, I guess, a broken orbit into the Earth itself.
And so the mathematical description of that relationship does not exist in reality.
Gravity, of course, does.
We couldn't have evolved as a species without gravity because nothing would stick to the Earth and there'd be no atmosphere.
Gravity exists and the acceleration exists, but the concept of describing the acceleration as 9.8 meters per second per second, that does not exist in reality.
And so, the is and the ought goes like this.
The is is the stuff that exists independent of human consciousness.
Now, there are a number of different states of things that exist in the mind, and we're just going to focus on one, which is a state within the mind that claims to accurately describe things in the world, right?
So if I'm telling you about a dream I had last night, I'm not claiming that I'm accurately describing things in the world, right?
If I tell you about my daydream of becoming a rock star or something, right, I'm not describing, I'm not I'm not claiming to objectively and accurately describe things in the world.
Does that make sense? It does.
I can see where you're going, but it still gives me trouble, Stefan, because if I sort of bundle all those descriptive statements...
Just for a moment.
I'm sorry to interrupt. Listen, let's be patient here.
This is one of the toughest problems around.
Let's not claim we can solve it in four minutes, okay?
So the fact that we're still thrashing around is totally fine.
Just so you can tell where I'm coming from, if it matters.
Because if we bundle all the descriptive statements, true or not, Well, if you're claiming to describe accurately what happens in reality,
then It ought to, by definition, accurately describe what's happening in reality.
Right? So if you say, well, what's called a black hole is actually super dense matter which light cannot even escape because of the gravity wells effect on the photons or whatever, right?
So black hole is just an analogy.
It's actually the exact opposite of a hole which is the densest matter known in the universe or whatever it is, right?
So if you're claiming That your idea, your argument, your equation, your hypothesis, your conjecture, whatever, right?
If you're claiming that it accurately describes objective things in the universe, then that is the measure of its truth content.
And you could really say the measure of its value, but let's just say truth content.
So if I say, according to my theory of gravity...
Mass attracts mass.
Well, we can test that, right? We can jump up and see if we are sucked back down into the gravity well of the Earth or whatever.
But if I say my theory of gravity is that mass repels mass, then I'm saying that I'm accurately describing reality, but then we jump up, and of course I shouldn't even be on the Earth if mass repels mass.
And since the empirical reality contradicts my concept, has a negative truth value.
There's no such thing as a neutral truth value when it comes to a statement about objective reality.
It's either true or it's false.
There's no neutral. I mean, I guess you could say it's undetermined or whatever it is, but that's outside of the entire continuum.
So if I say either mass has no effect on mass in either attraction or repulsion, or I say mass repels mass, that's very easy to test.
And it's proven false.
So the ought does not exist in reality.
The ought exists in the claim that what I'm saying accurately describes reality.
And since I'm saying that my concept accurately describes reality, the ought is that it should.
But that's because I'm making a claim that says my concept accurately describes things in the real world.
And so now we have an ought, which is based upon my claim that it does.
Does that make sense? It's mind-blowing, but it's kind of makes sense because up until now, I was just considered that things could not have an ought.
They were just things for humans, things for beings that can be moral.
Well, you've got to... So think of it like we're in the woods and we're trying to find a town, right?
Now, does it exist in reality that we ought to find a town?
Is it some empirical objective facts that we want to find a town or so we ought to find a town?
No. But once we say we want to find a town, Then the claims that we make about which direction to go in now have something we can measure it by.
So if you and I are like, I'm so sick of these woods.
I'm covered in tick bites.
I want a shower and a soft bed and a nice meal.
And we both agree like, oh, let's just get out of these woods.
We can't stand it anymore.
So then I say, look, we've got to go north.
And you say, no, no, no, we've got to go south.
Now, if I say the town is to the north of us, and therefore we should walk north, there's no ought in the universe.
But there is an ought because I'm saying that to achieve our goal of getting to the town, we have to walk north.
We ought to walk north if we wish to achieve this goal.
Now, the goal doesn't exist in reality.
The have to go there doesn't exist in reality.
But once you and I have both said we want to go to a town...
Then my claim that the town is north, therefore she would walk north through the woods, that is an ought.
Because we now have a goal, and I'm claiming that my solution go north, and instead of your solution go south, my solution objectively, empirically gets us to our goal.
So we've both agreed that we want to get to a town.
Now once we've both agreed...
That we want to get to a town, the ought exists.
That if we want to get to a town, or rather since we want to get to a town, we ought to go north.
Assuming that I'm right and you're wrong.
Sorry, that's just a little cheat in the analogy.
I could have made it the other way. But if the town is in fact north of us, then because we have agreed that we both want to get to the town, my statement that the town is north...
If it is correct, if it is valid, then we ought to go.
Steph, I think you're missing the point in some place.
Because you're assuming that we agree we can go to the town.
And here's the deal. I understand what you're talking about, but the use of Hume's guillotine is when we don't agree.
Okay, dude. I mean, first of all, I do find it kind of annoying that you just keep telling me I'm getting everything wrong.
I have thought about this stuff for a long time.
That doesn't mean I'm right. But if you can just be, as I said earlier, just be a little patient.
You know, just stop telling me that I'm always wrong.
I'm trying to build a case here.
And if you want to rush, then we can't have the conversation.
Right? So we're trying to solve one of the biggest problems in philosophy.
And if you just keep telling me I've misunderstood things, I've got things wrong, or whatever it is, It's just annoying.
It's kind of a headwind to work against that makes the conversation less enjoyable.
And in which case, I'll just do a solo show on it.
I'm just telling you sort of emotionally.
It's just kind of annoying for me.
I'm sorry that that was not my intention.
So I'll wait until you finish and while you speak, I will take notes so I don't forget.
No, you don't have to wait until I'm finished.
Just accept that it's going to take a little while to get to the destination.
I mean, it's like I say, oh, it's going to take us half an hour to drive there, and you're like the guy in the backseat saying, are we there yet?
Are we there yet? You know, it's like, no, just be patient.
It's going to take a little while to get there, right?
So I'm happy to take a little time out of my day to help with this issue because it is a very important issue.
I'm just emotionally, I don't particularly like it if you keep telling me I've misunderstood and I'm wrong and I don't get it or whatever it is, right?
Maybe I don't, but at least let me make the full argument.
So we're in the woods.
Where does the ought come from?
The ought comes from we both agreed we want to get to the town.
That's where the ought comes from.
Does the ought exist in reality?
No. The ought exists relative to us achieving our goal, our stated goal.
Now, if you think that the town, instead of being a town that we want to get to in the woods, is the truth.
So, if I make a claim And I claim that it's true, then, I mean, it's almost a tautology.
If I make a claim that I'm saying something true about the objective world, then my claim ought to be true about the objective world.
In other words, the town is the truth.
So if I say mass attracts mass, that is a testable hypothesis in the real world.
In other words, because I say it is true, then it ought to be true.
Now, the ought doesn't exist in the universe.
It's not under a rock, it's not stuck in a tree or anything like that.
But I have made a claim that something is true, and therefore it ought to be true.
Now, if you and I both agree that my claim ought to be true, in other words, I say it is true that mass attracts mass, And you say, well, I want the truth.
I value the truth.
The truth is important. And therefore, we both agree that my statement ought to be true.
And why? Because I'm claiming that it is true.
And you value the truth and I value the truth.
And so because we both value the truth and I'm making a truth claim, it ought to be true.
Otherwise, I have to withdraw my truth claim, my claim that it is true.
So this is not in the realm of morality as yet.
We're just talking about science.
The ought doesn't exist in the universe.
The ought exists in my claim that what I'm saying is true about the universe.
That's the ought. If I'm saying it's true, it ought to be true.
Now, if you also want it to be true or value that it is true, Then you can also make the claim that it ought to be true.
Because we're both valuing the truth.
The truth being an accurate relationship between the concept and things in the world.
The idea and things in the world.
Science 101, right?
I'm not saying it's simple from a philosophical standpoint.
But Science 101 is you make a claim about the material universe.
Implicit in that claim is that it's true, that it's accurate, reproducible, all of that.
That's a sort of Baconian scientific method.
Now, the claim is the ought.
It doesn't exist in reality, but the moment I say what I'm saying is true, then it ought to be true.
If I'm saying I'm going to sell you a car and I deliver a boat, you will say you did not deliver me.
A car. You delivered to me a boat.
I don't want the boat. Send it back and send me the car.
Now, ought I... Does the ought exist in the universe that I ought to deliver you a car, not a boat?
No. Why ought I deliver you a car, not a boat?
Because you ordered and paid for a car, and I promised to deliver a car.
The ought exists in...
The relationship between you and I and the car.
There's nothing in reality that says, like objective of human, independent of human consciousness, there's nothing in reality that says, I ought to deliver you a car, not a boat.
But if you pay for the car and I promise to deliver the car and you expect the car, then I ought to deliver you the car or return your money or whatever it is, right?
So the ought exists in the agreed-upon Values.
You value my money, I value the car, but you deliver me a boat, then that's kind of a fraud thing, right?
And so, if you and I both value the truth and value the accuracy of a statement that is made about reality, then the statement ought to be accurate.
And that's where if you say there is no such thing as an ought...
In reality, you're absolutely correct.
But your statement doesn't exist in reality.
Your statement exists in the relationship between ideas and reality.
So if you say to me, Steph, you cannot get an ought from an is.
And that's true if you're only looking at material reality.
But the moment you say to me the contents of your mind ought to match the contents of reality, Then we just have an ought.
We have created an ought in the relationship between the mind and material reality.
So Hume just looks at material reality and says, he turns over all the rocks, looks in all the trees and under the bridges and he says, I can't find an ought.
He's totally correct. He's totally correct.
Can't argue that because reality existed long before human beings did and ought is a mental construct.
And so, of course, we can't say there's an ought in an is.
Because ought exists within the human mind and is is reality, and the is of reality existed long before the human mind.
But in the relationship between the mind and reality, if I make a claim that something I'm saying is true, then it ought to be true.
And that's where I think people just look at bare, bald reality and say, I can't find any ought there, and therefore oughts don't exist.
But then if somebody says, I can get an ought from an acorn, right?
Let's just take something kind of silly, right?
I can get an ought from an acorn.
Then the other person, so let's say we've got Bob and Doug, right?
Bob says, I can get an ought from an acorn.
And Doug says, you cannot get an ought from an acorn.
Oughts do not exist in acorns or any other piece of material reality.
So Doug is then saying to Bob, who's made the claim he can get an ought from an acorn, he's saying, no, you can't, and you shouldn't.
You ought not make the claim that you can get an ought from an acorn, because it's incorrect.
It's invalid with reference to empirical reality.
So the moment you say to someone, you cannot get an ought from an is, you're giving them an ought.
If you're making a truth claim, you ought not make a false truth claim.
This is fairly basic, but it's tough to connect into this particular socket, so to speak.
If you say to someone, if you make a truth claim, it ought to be true.
And if you're going to make a truth claim that you can get an ought from an is, you should not do that.
That's false, that's incorrect, that's invalid.
You ought not say things that are false when you claim that they're true.
Now, here's the interesting thing.
The concept truth itself does not exist in reality.
It is only a measure of the relationship between the contents of the mind and the facts of reality.
It is a relationship between the contents of the mind and the facts of reality.
And not all the contents of the mind, because again, dreams at night don't have any particular connection with reality.
It's somewhat tangentially, you know, we tend not to dream about things we've never even remotely experienced or had anything to do with.
But when I say the contents of my mind, the argument, the hypothesis, the conjecture, When I say that the contents of my mind accurately map onto what is, now I have an ought.
The ought is in the claim that what I'm saying is true about reality.
Okay, if what I'm saying is true about reality, it ought to be true about reality.
The ought doesn't exist in the universe, and the ought also does not exist subjectively in my mind.
The link is That I'm claiming that the contents of my mind match what's going on in empirical reality.
That connection is where the ought is.
It doesn't exist in reality because reality predates the oughts in the human mind.
It's not subjective because I'm claiming that my mind is a mirror of reality.
9.8 meters per second per second.
Mass attracts mass. Gases expand when heated.
Whatever it is that I'm saying, I'm saying that...
Okay, hold up a mirror to a tree and look at the mirror, right?
Is the tree in reality the same as the tree in the mirror?
No. No, it's not.
You can't cut down the tree in the mirror.
You can't climb the tree in the mirror.
You can't scratch your back if you're a bear on the tree in the mirror.
But the tree in the mirror has a direct relationship to the tree in reality.
That it's reflecting. So when you say in your mind, my ideas match what is in reality, it's not a painting.
Like, you can paint anything you want.
You could paint an upside-down tree.
You could paint a tree with tentacles and eye stalks, whatever you want to do, because you're not claiming that you're accurately painting a tree.
But when you take a photo, you hold up a mirror, now you're saying that there's a direct relationship Between the mirror and the tree, or the photograph of the tree, or maybe even a staggeringly accurate painting of a tree.
So once you hold up the mirror of the mind to what's going on in objective reality, you now have a responsibility.
And I'll sort of give you one last analogy, and then we can get back to hacking away at the idea.
So let's say I hire you to paint a portrait of me.
And you make me black, like in terms of skin color, and you give me a third eye, and you give me a full head of hair or whatever it is, right?
Then I would say, that is not a good portrait.
Why is it not a good portrait?
Because it's not an accurate reflection of how I look.
And surely we sort of get that the best painters of portraits are the ones...
Who capture the person's likeness and spirit most accurately.
In other words, the closer the painting is to the person that you're painting, the better the portrait is.
So the claim from the portrait maker is not like Paul Clay or some cubist or some stylist or Henry Moore with regards to sculpture.
He's not creating an accurate reproduction.
Of the person, right?
So he's got reclining figure, and he used to massage his mom's feet a lot, so the feet are huge, and you can see this body kind of stretching away.
It's a child's view of massaging his mother's feet or whatever.
He's not claiming, like Michelangelo with David, to create an accurate representation of what he's carving.
Modern art is the same way.
More classical art, more representative art, is saying, well, what I'm creating is an accurate representation It's a reflection of what I'm portraying.
What I'm creating is an accurate reflection of what I'm seeing.
And so, if you just say to someone, I'll pay you for a painting, and they just paint whatever, they can't really be wrong.
But if you pay a portrait artist to paint a picture of you, and he gets it totally wrong, he turns you into the butt end of a cow with a blonde wig or something, then you will say, that is a bad portrait.
Why? Because it doesn't match...
What is actually there in reality?
So when you say, I want a portrait, ought any artist paint you?
No. They can paint whatever they want.
There's no ought in that, right?
But if you pay an artist to paint you, ought they accurately paint your portrait, if that's what you're asking for?
Well, of course. That's why you sit as a model and all of that.
So the ought, does the ought exist in the paint or the canvas or No, it doesn't.
But once you both have agreed on a portrait, then the portrait should accurately reflect how it is that you look.
In other words, the portrait is not you, but neither is it wholly subjective.
Now, if somebody's just going to paint their own dreams, Salvador Dali style or whatever, yeah, that's subjective, right?
So there's no requirement.
But when you both agree, you and the artist agree that you're going to have a portrait, Then there's an obligation.
There's an ought. The picture ought to look like you because you've both agreed that that's what it's going to be.
It's the same thing with truth. If you both agreed that truth has value and truth is an accurate description of things in the world, then what you say is true ought to accurately reflect the things in the world.
Now, the ought doesn't exist in the world, but neither does it subjectively exist in the mind because you're saying there is a direct connection between my idea And thing in the world.
In the same way, the portrait should have as direct a connection as possible between the portrait and the person you're actually painting.
And a good mirror, the best mirror, is the mirror that most accurately reflects the tree that you are holding it up to reflect, right?
I mean, if it's all weird and twisted, mutated and bubbly, then it's a bad mirror, right?
It's not accurately reflecting. So, yeah, there's no ought in the world.
Just as there's no, you don't have to be a painter, you don't have to paint anyone's portrait, but the moment you've both agreed that this is going to be an accurate portrait of the person, then there's an ought in there because of the agreement.
And if the agreement is, when I make a truth claim about reality, it ought to be true, or I have to withdraw that truth claim, then that's where the ought comes from.
It's in the agreement. That things in the mind that claim to represent reality ought to actually reflect reality.
I hope that, sorry, and I didn't mean to silence you earlier, but that's, at least it's a decent first pass.
And listen, anyone who's here can sort of jump into this, but I think that's a decent first pass at the relationship.
Steph, you blew my mind.
I'm convinced right now.
First of all, I would like to apologize.
I was a bit impatient before.
But you said four things that convinced me.
The first one was, because I say it is true, it ought to be true.
The second one was, it ought to exist on the agreed-upon values.
Steph, please post this as a show later.
I need to reflect listening to this again.
I will. I am recording it.
I'm certainly happy if other people in have questions.
Just, you know, feel free to unmute.
This is a hell of a thing, to be honest with you.
Like, it's really tough.
Because we are trying to figure out the oughts by examining the relationship between the mind and reality.
And so we're applying oughts to oughts.
It's really n-dimensional brain...
Brain tentacle stuff.
So, listen, don't feel bad at all for, like, this being tough to get through the noggin.
It's the kind of thing, like, once it's in there, it's pretty good.
It's like UPB. It's really tough to get through the noggin once it's there.
I think it's pretty solid, but it's a hell of a thing to wrestle with.
So, if I might, I guess, summarize the idea, I think that the...
What you're saying there is that you can't act out or...
What you ought to do can't run counter to anything that you claim.
And we do this all the time, right?
Hang on, hang on. Sorry, I hate to interrupt.
That's a real sprint and I need to slow that down so I can consider it.
What you ought to do shouldn't be counter to anything you claim?
Let me just make sure I understand that formulation.
I think it's very interesting, but if you can break that out a little bit more, it may be just what I said, but I'm not positive yet.
Right. So if you make a truth claim like...
Like say that, you know, murder is wrong or evil or whatever.
You can't go and then say that you ought to commit murder.
That would be fallacious.
So that's one thing you ought not to do.
So if you say something like, well, murder is evil, then you ought to act out the idea and not commit murder.
Well, now see you.
Sorry, just kicked out my mic jack.
But the thing is, you just vaulted straight into morality, though, which we haven't quite got to as yet, which is totally fine.
I just wanted to point out that that would be more contradiction, right?
Because the whole question of, okay, is murder evil?
Evil is an ought, and we're trying to sort of establish the is-ought stuff.
So I think if you were to say...
Murder is evil, but everyone should murder.
Then you're saying everyone should do evil.
Evil is universally preferable behavior.
So you'd run into a whole bunch of contradictions, but I don't think we quite got to morality yet, and I wouldn't necessarily jump straight in.
That's not only a deep end, it's a deep end with a vortex.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you could switch out for any sort of action.
Like if, you know, you say it would be bad for your car to run into a wall, you shouldn't go right after and drive your car right into a wall.
Same idea. Is that any sort of claim you make to truth about what actually is...
Well, no, but see, hang on, hang on.
Sorry to interrupt.
So the bad for your car to run into a wall?
Oh, no. You could absolutely do that and be perfectly justified because you're starting to talk not about truth claims about reality but value judgments and the value judgments gets a whole lot more tricky.
So I'll give you an example. I can give you an example of how somebody might say it's bad to run your car into a wall and then immediately go and run their car into a wall and be perfectly justified.
Like, they're testing a crash test dummy or they're performing a stunt for a Tom Cruise movie or something like that.
Yeah, it's bad for... Or, you know, I remember when I watched the movie The Blues Brothers as a teenager, you know, like all teenagers who were broke, I was desperate for a car and just the number of cars they destroyed in that movie was kind of heartbreaking.
It's like, come on, just... You could have kept one for me, couldn't you?
So you can absolutely say...
I meant this from a personal perspective.
So, like, if I as an individual say...
I'm not saying that this would be, like...
In abstract to everyone, I'm saying that me as an individual, if I say it would be bad for me to drive my car into a wall, I can't then go after and have it make sense and not be contradictory to drive my own car into a wall that I just said I shouldn't have done.
I'm sure you yourself or people you've known have said, oh, I know I shouldn't date these type of people, but they're so hot.
You know, whatever it is, right?
So people will often, I shouldn't eat this piece of cheesecake, and then they eat the piece of cheesecake.
I mean, so I think...
But that's the whole point of the art, is that it's what you should do, not what you actually do.
So like, yeah, you can go and you could say, well, it would be bad for me to date this type of person.
But if you do it anyways, well, then you'd be running counter to your own advice of what you ought to do, what would be true and bad for you, etc.
So it's more about, um, so it's like, yeah, you could say, well, okay, well, it'd be bad for me to date this person.
And then, um, It would be counterintuitive.
It would be contradictory behavior to go and then to date that person.
You can still do it. It doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't.
You can still do it. It just means it would be fallacious behavior.
Fallacious behavior. Oh, so you mean it would be in contradiction to your stated goals?
Right. You can't say, yeah, so, like, your stated goals would be, it'd be bad for me to date this particular person, so I ought to not date that particular person.
You can't go then and date that person and say, well, I ought not do that, or I ought to date this person.
Like, it doesn't make sense because you just immediately went and...
Okay, so I think where we shifted, which is fine, but where we shifted was me making sort of the example of truth claims with regards to objective reality, and you're talking about ought statements relative to personal goals?
You know, ought everyone eat less?
Well, no. If you have anorexia, you shouldn't eat less.
You should eat more. If you're overweight, yeah, you should eat less, not more.
If you're a sumo wrestler, you're probably going to eat more.
Like that kind of stuff, right? So there's another level.
Sorry, go ahead. The moral aspect of my first example was irrelevant.
I just meant more so in the relation of if I make a truth claim, it would be fallacious to act against that truth claim or to say I ought to do something against that truth claim.
Yeah, if somebody says, I ought to lose weight, but they don't exercise and they continue to eat too much, then...
Right. Right. Okay.
Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, the one, of course, though, is...
The truth claim about reality is objectively measurable.
In other words, you have an empirical universal state to...
Fire is hot relative to ice or whatever, right?
You've got something you can measure. You know, it's often quite tricky with the concept of secondary gains and so on in psychology.
It's quite tricky to say...
What someone's ought statements are relative to personal preferences, which can't be measured objectively.
So if someone says, I should lose weight, and they don't lose weight, then you can say that you're acting in contradiction to your stated goals.
But it's a bit different from science and UPB, because in science, you can measure the ought statement Not relative to other statements, but relative to objective reality, if that makes sense.
I'm not sure if we lose connection.
Are you still with me? Yeah, no, that makes sense to me.
I'll think about it for a second.
Yeah, because I'll give you an example, right?
So somebody says, I really, really want to lose weight.
And then they don't lose weight.
And you say, you are not acting in consistency with your stated goals.
Okay, that's true.
But then the question is, which goals are they acting in consistency with?
Right? Because people don't act randomly.
They must be acting in accordance with some goal, often unstated or unconscious.
So... A typical example is somebody says, I really, really want to lose weight.
But they're surrounded by family and friends who are all overweight.
And if they lose weight, they'll have less in common, they'll get nagged to eat more, they'll get mocked or attacked or rejected.
And so when they fail to lose weight, it's often because they're serving another unstated goal of conformity with the obesity of those around them.
I remember a woman I knew when I was younger and she had always been overweight and then she vowed and really did strongly work at this.
She really did work to lose a lot of weight and as she lost weight she began to have really destabilizing memories and dreams of being sexually assaulted as a child because she was shedding her flesh defense against male predation, right?
The sort of keeping men at bay by being unattractive.
And so The obesity, she said, I really want to lose weight, but there was a part of her that really wanted to maintain the weight and maybe even grow it in order to keep her protected from sexual violence, or at least the sexual violence she'd experienced as a child.
And you've heard these call-in shows and so on.
If someone says, this is what I want, and then you say, well, you are acting against your stated goals.
Okay, that's true, but...
The real trick is to figure out the unstated goals, if that makes sense.
If a guy dates a woman, stalks her, harasses her, bothers her, goes through her phone, goes through her garbage, hides in her garage or whatever, then she's going to leave him.
Now, his stated goal was to make sure that the relationship continued and that she was trustworthy.
The unstated goal, of course, is that he just feels he always deserves to be rejected and engineers that to come about.
Whereas this doesn't really happen in science, If I say, you know, mass attracts mass, that's a simple, clear stated goal of the relationship between the concept and things in the world.
But when it comes to self-stated goals, there are many layers, some of which are contradictory, which can be tough to figure out.
Any other comments?
Did you want to add something to that? Well, the one thing I see with that is it...
It depends on the perspective.
So if you're having a conversation with someone and you say, well, my stated goal is this, and then you act counter to that, to that person, it would be fallacious behavior.
It would be bad behavior. It'd be contradictory.
Now, if you're talking about to yourself, if you make a statement to yourself of like, okay, well, I should lose weight...
And if you act counter to that, then, yeah, I could see where it wouldn't apply because you have unstated goals that maybe you even yourself don't know that, you know, you're acting against.
So, again, where, you know, if you've got somebody stalking you and you've got your defense of, you know, not losing weight to keep them at bay or whatever, then, yeah, I get it.
Right, okay, good, good.
And generally, it's easier to start with the simpler relationships than the more convoluted ones.
So I get where you're coming from, and those are the most useful.
I mean, not a lot of us are coming up with original theories of physics or whatever.
I'm certainly not. But yeah, it is generally easy to start with the simplest things like mass attracts mass kind of thing and go from there.
But yeah, no, I certainly hear where you're coming from.
All right, any other questions or comments, issues? - So I'd like to make sure that I understand the is on dichotomy properly.
So I'll say my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong.
It seems to me that the is is sort of what's real and what's observable and empirical, and the ought is kind of agreements that we make.
It's like when you engage in a debate, you agree to the rules of that debate.
Well, no, it starts with claims and then moves on to agreements.
So the claim, if I say mass attracts mass, I'm making a claim that that statement accurately reflects things in the world that predate us, that exist independently of human consciousness.
And what I'm saying is that if you imagine we're the only sentient beings in the universe and tomorrow...
A comet wipes us out, right?
Now, that would mean that all of the oughts, all of the morality, all of the should in the universe would cease to exist or would cease to have any effect, if that makes sense.
Science would not exist if human beings or at least sentient creatures did not exist.
And of course, for long before, we formulated the concepts of modern science, really only a couple of thousand years and really 400 years for the most modern aspects of science.
So, everything that we make a claim about that exists independent of human consciousness, that predates human consciousness, and which would survive the end of human consciousness, all human consciousness, well, that would be the first place you would look and say, okay, I'm making a claim that what I'm saying is true relative to objective reality.
Now, if you agree That I'm making that claim, and you also agree that that claim should be true.
So we start with the claim, and then we move to the agreement, if that makes sense.
Somebody has to make a claim about something being true, and then the other people have to agree that it ought to be true, and then you go from there.
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, you remember, you're younger than me, but in the 90s, I think it was, there were these guys who said, we've got fusion in a jar.
Cold fusion, I think, at room temperature or something like that.
And that was a claim.
They said, we can do fusion in a jar.
That was their claim. And then, of course, it went through all these rigorous tests, and it turned out to be complete and total nonsense, right?
And so they made a claim.
We got fusion in a jar.
Other people said that claim ought to be true.
They said, yeah, it is true.
So, if you make the claim that this is true, and other people say, yeah, it ought to be true, and we're going to test it, like Theranos, right?
We can do a thousand tests on a pink prick of blood on a tiny machine, right?
Okay, that's the claim. And, of course, people invested on the idea or the argument that that claim was true, and it turned out it was false.
And, of course, if they had known it was false, they would never have invested, that kind of stuff, right?
So, always look for somebody who's making a claim.
You know, like the communists, this is what the debate last night, right?
The communists claim to be against the predations of multinational corporations and exploitation of workers, and they claim to be for the working class, you know, and then the first thing they did was trash me, a working class guy, and praise the multinational corporations for banning me.
Okay, so your claim is that you hate corporations and are for the working class.
Your actions are that you side with corporations and attack the working class, so therefore your claim is nonsense, right?
Well, one thing I like from Jordan Peterson is his claim that what you believe is what you act out.
What you say is inconsequential.
So their actions tell a completely different story.
Well, that's not Jordan Peterson, my God.
I mean, actions speak louder than words is as old as the ancient Greeks.
I mean, I give him some originality, but that ain't one of them.
I judge a man by his actions, not his words.
It's as old as actions and words, I think.
Eh, fair enough. Alright, anybody else?
Anything else? Now, I was curious, I know you mentioned earlier that it's...
That what you ought to do comes from the mind in relation to what is, what you claim.
And that's really about where it is and where it ends.
But I'm wondering if that's entirely the case.
I bring that up because I don't know if you know Yak Panksepp.
He was a neuroscientist.
He discovered the play circuit in mammals, which showed that there is essentially moral behavior amongst animals, which aren't conscious, like humans don't have the same conscious behaviors, thoughts, etc.
Okay, so I'm afraid you're skating by a very complicated topic there, because what's his definition of morality?
Is it just reciprocal altruism?
Well, that's... Genetic in-group preferences and so on.
So, you know, if you could do it without that, just because I can't possibly verify everything that he said, but I just assume since I'm the guy who did UPB that other people's definitions of morality are kind of wanting.
I just bring it up as a point, maybe if it's something to think about.
I know it's not something we can approach right now.
I just brought up...
What was his name again? Yak Pankset.
And... How do you spell that?
Y-A-C-K? J-A-A-K? Yeah.
P-A-N-K-S-E-P-P. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that, so thank you.
I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, sorry.
Oh, there's a link in the general voice chat.
The reason I think it's relevant, like I said, I know we can't approach it argument-wise, but I think it's relevant because he discovered that there's play circuit in mammals, which is Also part of human beings, because obviously we're related to mammals.
And so one of the things he discovered is that if, for example, you take rats and you watch two of them play, if one rat doesn't let the other one win at least 30% of the time, the other rat won't invite them back to play.
Yeah, yeah. So I think that there's something to say there because it shows that you can't just act out and be this tyrant and just control and rule over everyone.
For example, people think that survival of the fittest when it's actually survival of the most competent because if you're a tyrant chimp or a tyrant rat and you take over, what's going to happen is everybody's just going to group up against you and tear you down and destroy you, rip you to pieces.
So I think that there might be something there to explore as well, and then it may be not just something that's merely in thoughts and actually might still be grounded in morality.
Well, okay, but the evolutionary aspect relative to morality, it's not even the same...
It's not even the same ballpark.
It's not anything to do with each other.
I'm sorry to sound so blunt and, you know, obviously I could be wrong, but sort of my argument would be that animals and, you know, reciprocal genetic altruism has occurred, you know, billions of years before human beings came along.
And, you know, I mean, I've just been raising these ducks, right, to these giant Muscovy death birds of Nazgulness or something like that.
And when they were young, they followed us, followed us everywhere, right?
And stayed very close and all of that.
And we would take them on river walks and they would paddle after us and all of that.
And then about two weeks ago or whatever, they just basically stopped doing that.
Like we'd go on a river walk, it's like, nah, we're just going to sit around here and wash our beaks in the shallow area.
And they don't follow us at all now, right?
Now, I mean, of course, we think, oh, they were affectionate before and they're not affectionate now.
It's like, well, no, they needed our protection before.
And they didn't need as much food, right?
So you would trail after your mother duck to gain protection and then she would maybe help you feed or eat or whatever it is.
And then, of course, when you get older and need more food, you can't all be clustered together because then you're just eating all the same food and it doesn't work out at all, right?
So you need more food, so you've got to scatter and spread out.
And so the behavior which facilitates the reproduction of your genes...
It's nothing to do with morality.
It doesn't mean that it's completely opposed to morality.
The circles don't even overlap.
We hear of...
You know, the parents who sacrifice their lives for their young, right?
And you see this in nature, but it generally tends to be at the tipping point.
So when the young can survive, then the parents might sacrifice themselves.
But when the young are too young to survive, the parents generally will let the young get eaten, right?
So it's not a morality thing.
They're not sacrificing themselves.
It's their genes making a rational calculation about the best way to, if like one mother lion It sacrifices herself so that five of her lion cubs can survive.
Well, then there are now five lions minus one, right?
So four bonus lions, right?
And even if we say, well, only two of them will survive, it's still a two-for-one swap for the young to the adult.
So that's just more lion genes walking around than there were before.
Whereas if the lions are very young and she gets killed, then the lion cubs will also get killed and then you have zero lions, right?
In which case she's going to let the four or five cubs get eaten and she'll be away so she can breed more.
So that's just math, right?
End up with more genes multiplied in the world.
And so, yeah, there's some, you know, I guess you could say reciprocal altruism.
But the altruism is not to the other creature.
The altruism is... Simply to the genes, so to speak, right?
So that is not a universal ideal moral standard at all and has no relationship to it whatsoever because, I mean, the most humble creatures pursue this strategy.
To a T, and they certainly would not be part of a moral calculation, right?
So if you're going to go the genetics route, which I always think is interesting and worth examining and informs us, and it's kind of the reason why we're here, but that is a biological calculation that happens instinctively for the maximization of gene replication, and it does not reference any abstract or ideal moral standard at all.
And so it's simply a calculation of reproduction, if that makes sense.
Right. No, I agree.
What I was saying there is that it's relevant because we act out our behaviors and our morals long before we understand them.
So the same thing with how animals act out whatever their behaviors are that we might look at and say, well, that might be a moral behavior.
Again, it doesn't apply to animals.
Well, but hang on. It's a good question.
I don't know the answer to that, but my first gut sense would be to say, Right.
Right. Right. Well, you don't really have much of a choice in that situation, right? So you're probably going to end up shooting your dog.
Whereas if some guy just wakes up, his dog is, I don't know, crapped on the carpet and he shoots the dog, well, he had a choice.
Didn't have to have the dog, didn't have to shoot the dog, lots of options, could put it up for a shelter, could train it better, these sorts of things, right?
So in order for morality to exist, you have to have two things.
You have to have Well, three things.
One, the ideal moral standard.
Two, the capacity to achieve it.
And three, free will.
And I guess the two are sort of somewhat related.
Let's just say two, right? Ideal moral standard and the capacity to achieve it.
And those don't apply to biology at all.
And so I would say if somebody doesn't understand the ideal moral standard...
So let's say some kid wants cookies, but he knows he's going to get punished...
If he eats cookies, because, you know, it's before dinner or whatever it is, right?
There's a rule. Now, he is...
If he can get away with the cookies, with eating the cookies, he will.
And so he's not acting as a moral agent.
He's acting in the same way a dog...
You know, you see the dog sometimes try and steal food and then the owner comes in and they slink away because they...
No, they can't get away with it.
That's not a moral decision, right?
So the child probably doesn't have the ideal moral standard, and also the brain maturity might be too low for him to actually defer gratification to pursue or achieve it, if that makes sense.
Makes sense, Mia. Thank you.
All righty, righty. Look at that.
Nice dip into juicy abstract philosophy.
My bread and butter, my meat and potatoes.
All right. Okay, well, listen, I should...
I'm supposed to actually...
Yes, sir, go ahead. I have a last insight I would like to ask you.
If this is correct, you can only get an ought from a claim if there is an agreement.
Is that correct? You can only get an ought from a claim if there is agreement.
Okay. I think you might want to flesh that out a little, like agreement in what?
If I were to sort of reformulate that on the fly, I would say the ought exists when you agree on the value of the claim.
The value is the truthiness, so to speak, or the truth content of the claim.
So if you both agree that a scientific statement ought to accurately describe reality, then there's an ought.
So there's a claim, and there's agreement in the value of truth in that claim.
What if I make a claim and the person disagrees?
Is that enough? Can you give me an example?
Let me see.
Oh, in the forest, I could say, the city is at north, and the person could say, no, you're totally wrong.
The city is at south.
Sure, absolutely. Those are both truth claims, which then at some point will be measured against empirical reality.
Like either you both go north, you both go south.
Inexplicably, you both go east-west, or you both go north and south, right?
So there are both truth claims in that, right?
And then you would measure that against actually getting to the city by going north or south.
And so, yeah, you're both making truth claims.
And they're not subjective, right?
They're not like, I like the color blue, you like the color red, right?
Those are two things that can both exist perfectly.
Everyone can have a favorite color.
It can totally be universalized.
But, of course, the city cannot be both north and south.
Unless you do some, well, you could walk all the way around the world, but then it just ends up being north, right?
So, the city can't be both north and south, so it can't be universalized.
We can't both be right.
We can both be right about our subjective preferences.
I like cheesecake, you like pie, or whatever.
And we can universalize subjective preferences.
We just can't universalize oppositional claims about reality because reality doesn't self-contradict, right?
The city can't be both north and south.
So, yeah, we're both making claims that we are correct, and we are both claiming that those claims have value in getting us to the city, which is what we want to do.
Let me try with this one.
We should go to the city and the person in front of me say, no, we should stay in the forest.
Is that enough in this situation?
Well, those are both personal preferences, though.
And personal preferences can be universalized.
So, some people like to live in the city, some people like to live in the country.
That's perfectly universalizable.
There's no contradiction there, right?
And you're not making a truth claim.
You're saying, I want, not it is.
So I want, I prefer, I like, I don't like.
These are all subjective statements that don't have objective or universal truth claims to them.
It is is something which now is really subject to empirical testing.
If I say it is true or the city is north, then I'm making an objective truth claim.
That has value because if we both want to get to the city, we have to go north.
Now, if I say I want to go to the city and you say I want to stay in the forest, well, neither of us are making empirical truth claims about reality.
We're simply describing a subjective and internal preference.
Now, whether that statement is true or not, I mean, I guess if I said, I desperately want to go to the city, I see the city and decide to camp in the woods, then maybe I didn't really want to go to the city, or whatever, or maybe I'm just exhausted, or whatever it is, I'm not going to make it. And so if you say, I love this band, and then, oh, this band is coming to town, do you want to see them?
No. Right?
Okay, well, maybe you just don't like concerts, like it's too loud or too crowded or too smoky or whatever, right?
So if somebody says...
I love modern art.
And then you go to their house and they live alone and all of the art on their wall is classical or, you know, angre and stuff like that, right?
Then you'd say, okay, well, I thought you said you love modern art, but all your paintings are classical, right?
Okay, well... Then there's a contradiction between their stated preference and so on.
But none of that stuff really matters, if that makes sense.
None of that stuff really matters.
Maybe the woman says, I want a nice stable guy and she keeps dating drug addicts or whatever, then okay.
But then you have to find out, as I said earlier, what her real preference is, because the real preference emerges through action, not through claims, which I guess is a kind of empiricism, right?
Because if she says, I want to date nice guys, and she dates abusive edgelords, then you could say, the empirical evidence of your behavior does not match your claim.
And therefore, your claim is not true.
You might feel that it's true, but your actions...
Betray what your real values are, and your real values in this case would be to have bad relationships and recreate some Simon the Boxer abuse situation from childhood and normalize abuse for the sake of bad parents or whatever.
You've heard this a million times in the call-in shows.
So, yeah, if somebody makes a subjective claim, you certainly can measure it against their empirical actions.
If I say, I really want to go to the city, and then I set up camp In the forest while inside of the city, we might say, okay, well then maybe you don't really want to go to the city and so on.
And the same thing is true when we look at ourselves.
If I say I want to date nice girls and I keep dating these lunatic women, the bunny boilers, right?
Then I would say, okay, well, clearly my goal, my preference is not what I'm doing.
Like my stated preference does not match up to what I'm doing and that's really the beginning of self-knowledge is when your empirical evidence flatly contradicts your stated goals or whatever.
I have a last one for you.
I lied to you and I say, I have a million dollars.
You know that I'm lying and you say, nah, I don't believe you.
Is that enough in this situation?
Well, that's interesting.
So you say, I have a million dollars and I say, I don't believe you?
Yes, I'm lying and you know I'm lying.
No, do I know for a fact that you don't have a million dollars?
Yes. Okay, then I wouldn't say, I don't believe you, because I don't believe you is a statement of a subjective experience.
I would say, no, you don't.
Not, I don't believe you.
Because I don't believe you is a statement of subjective experience.
A subjective mindset.
Whereas you don't have a million dollars is a statement of objective and empirical fact.
Or it's the explicit denial of a claim, I know to be false.
I don't believe you.
I mean, you could still be right, right?
I don't believe you, right?
As opposed to your statement is false.
And so I don't believe you would be, I think...
Not an accurate response to a truth claim that you know exactly to be false.
Like, let's say that you have a brother, you grew up with your brother, and then you're out at a bar, and he tells some woman that he was a Marine and a Navy SEAL. And of course, you know that he wasn't.
Would you say to your brother, I don't believe you?
No. You would say, you weren't those things.
You've never done those things.
When you can prove it, it's not a matter of belief, right?
Thanks.
That was my last question.
Alrighty, ready, ready. Alright.
Well, thanks, everyone. A nice dip in.
And I guess, yeah, I'll be posting the...
I had some pretty good video from...
The debate last night. I was working on it for a little while today to make it as shiny and polishy as possible.
And so I will post that hopefully later today.
And don't forget to check out if you didn't watch the show last night about Bitcoin and ETFs.
You really should. It's very important, even if you don't have Bitcoin.
Or maybe even especially if you don't have Bitcoin, it's worth checking out.
All right. Thanks, guys. Such a great pleasure to chat and have yourself a lovely afternoon.
I will talk to you soon. Wait, Stefan, can I ask a quick question before you go?
You certainly can. Okay, thank you.
So my impression during the debate last night is that the communists didn't want to win so much as they wanted to make you lose.
Do you agree or do you think I may have missed something and something else is going on?
I mean, I think that they were kind of refreshingly honest, right?
They said that they don't pursue virtue in the pursuit of communism, right?
And so they basically said, yeah, we give ourselves full permission to act in an immoral manner.
To pursue our goals. And so the fact that they were willing to lie, I also thought it was tragic and a little scary, of course, that the accusations they leveled against me, it's like, oh boy, never seen communists put forward false allegations and attack people before.
That never happens in communism.
That's the basis of communism and off to the gulags with you kind of stuff.
But no, I mean, I think...
Having mulled it over, and I did a call last night post-debate, I mean, I think they're in pursuit of power, right?
They want power.
And so, you know, if mass immigration helps them achieve that power, they're for it.
And if white males stand between them and that power, or Christians or whoever, then they will oppose all of that.
But no, I think it's all the pursuit of power.
And therefore, if I'm out of the way, then...
I'm a barrier between them and power.
And what do you do with the barrier? You try and move it out the way.
And the fact that they weren't honorable and the debate moderator actually emailed me saying, I'm sorry, I didn't know they're going to behave in that kind of way.
It's like, really? You didn't know communists were going to behave in that kind of way?
So, yeah, the pursuit of power, and that's why I was appreciative of the fact that they said, yeah, we don't have to be good people.
In fact, being good people would get in the way of us achieving our power, which is why I asked, okay, well, what crimes would you commit in order to achieve communism?
And, of course, they didn't want to answer that, which I can kind of understand, especially after accusing me of inciting violence falsely, of course, right?
So, I think it's just the pursuit of power, and the attacks come from It's not personal.
It's just like, well, look, you're, you know, if I'm driving along a road, you know, some dirt road and the tree's falling down and I've got a chainsaw, I'll chainsaw up the tree because it's in my way.
It's not like I don't hate the tree.
You know, I'm like, sorry, you're just in my way, right?
If I've got to get something from a top shelf and I'm not tall enough, I'll just get a little stepladder.
I think we're good to go.
That's completely against my ideals or my virtues.
I withdraw that.
I apologize for that. That's very much outside the bounds of what communism would ever suggest, right?
Because I'm supposed to be for the working class and against the giant multinational corporations.
And so, because I was in the way of communism, if I'm deplatformed, I'm out of the way.
And so, they're happy that I'm deplatformed.
It's got nothing to do with the working class or multinational corporations.
These are all just Well, if that's the case, I think we may both be right, in the sense that they can't make communism attractive in and of itself, and so to get you out of the way, it's much easier to trash you than it is to clean the blood off of communism.
Right, right, right, yeah.
Because remember, the deaths under Stalin were just excessive.
It's absolutely monstrous.
I'm pretty sure if you have a dictator, the buck stops with him.
You can't say it's some other guy's fault.
So there's some number of murders that's fine, but that was just, you know, a couple too many.
Anyway, I mean, again, I appreciated their bluntness and their directness.
I thought, you know, you couldn't get a more stark indicator of where they're at.
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