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June 26, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
25:55
The Essence of Morality!
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Alright, you're all ready for a little bit of technical philosophy.
So important, so important.
So, somebody posted on the Locals community, freedomain.locals.com.
And I'll try not to make, you know, too many comments about the spelling.
But anyway, so Lewis writes, Hello, I have read Universally Preferable Behavior.
I have then re-read it.
I have watched the show for many years.
I then looked at some of the criticisms of UPB. Manly, sorry, mainly the you cannot get an ought from an is.
Has anyone else seen this problem?
I watched the debate between Stefan and rationality rules, and I watched his video on UPB separately.
I think he is correct.
I think he means the rationality.
Rules is correct, so let me...
It is really absolutely essential to the question of ethics, so let me...
Tell you the problem, tell you the solution, and we can all move on to a virtuous life.
Okay, so the problem goes something like this.
No, not something like this.
The problem goes like this.
You cannot get an ought.
From an is. What that means is that there's nothing in the nature of reality that says what you ought to do.
Morality is an ought, universally preferable behavior.
It is a fact that if you push a man off a cliff, he's likely to die.
If you hold him underwater for 20 minutes, 21 minutes if he's Tom Cruise apparently, he will drown, right, if he's not got any breathing apparatus.
So the fact that if you push a man off a cliff, he will die, or if you drown him, he will die, These are facts of reality.
This is the is. It is a fact that these things will result, death will result from these actions.
But why ought you not to do that?
Why should you not do that?
Why is that immoral? Why is that wrong?
Now, the Christian answer is very powerful, very succinct, and this is why Christians do an enormous amount of good in the world, on average, and in many ways more than atheists.
So the Christian answer is Is that the ought comes from God.
That the purpose of life is to follow God's commandments which are more foundational than mere physics because they are the morality and the commandments are handed to you by God and the is is the is of God and the ought are the moral rules handed to you by God.
So that's a very elegant solution for purely empirical rationalist philosophers.
Let's just say it has found, wanting has been found in this area.
It's been found wanting.
So I worked on a whole system of ethics called universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics.
I'll put the link below.
You can get it for free.
You can read it online.
You can order the book.
You can listen to the audio book and so on.
So I'll just touch on how you solve this issue.
But first of all, we have to look at oughts, right?
So, an ought is something you should do, but it assumes a particular goal.
Now, does physics have a goal?
No, of course not, right?
I mean, it just is. That is the is.
What is the goal? Well, if you want to make your 10 o'clock flight, you ought to get to the airport immediately.
A certain amount of time ahead of time, right?
You ought to. Now, if you want, if you want to catch your flight, this is what you have to do.
If you want to lose weight, you need to eat less and exercise.
If you want to not get a sunburn, you should put sunscreen on, right?
So, the goal is conditions what it is that you want to do.
We understand. I mean, you understand.
This is pretty, pretty basic stuff.
It's the if-then statement, right?
Now, If you want to be accurate in mathematics, you say 2 and 2 make 4.
2 and 2 make 4.
If you say 2 and 2 make 5, the universe doesn't crater, reality doesn't reverse itself, you don't burst out Neo style from the dripping green letters of the matrix.
If you say 2 and 2 make 5, what changes?
Nothing. Well, but if you want to be accurate, if you want to be factual, 2 and 2 makes 5.
It's a false statement, if you want to be accurate, if you want to be truthful, if you want to be factual.
If you want to know the truth about the benefits of a particular medicine, you need to follow, you know, double-blind, randomized trials, right?
So, the if-then statement is really, really important.
The if-then statement.
So, obviously, if you want to kill a guy, pushing him off a cliff would be one way to do it.
Exposing him to radioactive levels of CNN, which I think is more than five to six minutes.
Might be another way, but that, I think, should be prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
So, it's the if-statement that matters, right?
So, where does the ought exist?
The ought does not exist in reality.
The ought does not exist out there in reality.
The ought is, if you want to do something, then this is how you should achieve it, right?
If you want to know the truth about the physical universe, you need to use the scientific method.
If you want to accurately describe the relationships between numbers, you've got to use mathematics, right?
If you want to accurately understand living creatures, you ought to use the biological sciences.
So if... Now, you can just make up any old thing that you want, and you can say that the tides are, you know, the humping of sea creatures that are gods.
You make up anything you want, as opposed to the tides are the effect of the moon on the oceans, right?
So, if-then, it's the if-then statement.
Now, the if-then is what drives people kind of crazy, right?
So, how do you get an ought from an is?
So, first of all, you have to question what the ought is.
So, what the question of concepts, the truth is, right?
Is there truth out there in the universe?
No. Truth and falsehood don't exist out there in the universe.
That doesn't mean that truth and falsehood are subjective.
The scientific method doesn't exist Like a tree or a rock or radiation, scientific method doesn't exist out there.
Numbers as concepts don't exist out there.
You can say there are three coconuts.
The coconuts exist and number three is something in the mind.
Things in the mind that claim to describe things in the world Have an if-then statement.
They are the ought.
If you want to accurately describe things in the world, you ought to use reason and evidence.
Why? Because reason is derived from the behavior of things in the world, right?
I mean, I just, you know, grab my glasses.
My glasses are my glasses.
They're not my glasses plus an elephant, and they're either my glasses or something else.
My glasses exist, and they are valid, and they allow me to see better at a distance or whatever.
So, you know, put my glasses down, I come back, they're still my glasses.
They will, you know, entropy will decay over time, I guess like my vision itself.
So if you want to say something true and valid about the world, you must use reason and evidence.
Reason being the art of non-contradictory identification of information.
And the non-contradictory information that you're first and foremost describing and where you get reason from is the behavior of matter and energy in the universe.
Matter is not random, energy is not random, and so on.
And I know that you can dig down deep into the quarks and bits and burps of atoms and so on.
But all of the quantum stuff cancels out long before you get to sense evidence.
Morality is around sense evidence.
It's not about subatomic particles.
So, if you want to say something true, truth being the relationship between things in the mind and things in the world, right?
You look at a tree. You say, that's a tree.
You're making a true statement.
Now, ought you to call a tree a tree?
There's nothing in reality that says you have to.
There's nothing in the tree that compels you.
The tree won't spank you if you call it a shrub or Joe Biden.
So, why should you call a tree a tree?
You should call a tree a tree because you want to say things that are true and valid in the world about the world.
You want to connect things in the mind with things in the world.
And the way you do that is through reason and evidence.
And evidence always trumps reason.
Reason is the conjecture, the hypothesis, and must be logical to describe things in the world because The world acts in a logical, predictable fashion.
Objects have their own identities.
They don't contradict each other. I mean, that's how you know you're dealing with the waking world rather than the dream world.
In the dream world, I had a dream last night where I had dinner with a long series of thinkers and down at the end was David Friedman.
For reasons that pass human understanding, but David Friedman was not in my bedroom last night.
I wasn't sure that was a sentence I was going to say.
Pretty sure that's a sentence I could say most days, but certainly is the case.
I know that David Friedman was not in my bed last night, but I had this dream.
So, you know, people appear, disappear, they come and go, no cause, no effect, and so on, right?
So you know you're in the waking world when matter, through the evidence of your senses, is behaving in a rational, objective, and predictable fashion.
So we get reason from the evidence of the senses through the natural universe and therefore anything that we use to say a truth about the universe that we see must be rational because the universe is rational.
But just because something is rational doesn't necessarily mean that it's true.
That's why you have empirical evidence.
I can come up with a theory That is rational, it doesn't contradict itself, but it still is contradicted by the facts of reality, right?
I could come up with a theory that says clouds are in fact, they don't hang because they're water vapor, clouds are puffy balls of cotton candy that are held aloft by wires and invisible spaceships, right? Okay. Is that innately self-contradictory?
No. Does it accurately describe reality?
It does not, right? Because you can test that, right?
You can go and see if you can pull off a piece of cotton candy cloud.
No, you can't. It just goes through vapor and so on.
You can fly above and see are there wires that are connecting it and so on.
No, no. So I have a consistent theory as to how the world works, but then I go out and test it empirically and it doesn't work.
And this is why when you have a scientific theory, You check it first for logical consistency.
Like if you have a scientific theory that requires an object, like a sense-based object, like my glasses be both in my studio and in San Francisco at the same time, if that's what's required for your scientific theory to work, your scientific theory is rejected.
You don't test it. You don't go and test it.
Because you are proposing a contradiction, which is that an object can be in two places at the same time, a physical object evidenced by the senses.
Physical objects cannot be in two places at the same time, and therefore if that is what your scientific theory relies on, your scientific theory is rejected, it's invalid because it proposes something contradictory, which is an object in two places at the same time.
So logical consistency is required, If you have a theory which says my glasses must be both my glasses and lip balm at the same time, an object must be both my glasses and lip balm at the same time, contradictory.
An object cannot be itself and something else at the same time.
Physical, we're talking physical objects at a sense-based level, which is where the reason comes from.
So arguments, if you want to say something true, About the universe, about reality, which is the relationship between what's in your mind and what's in reality.
You must first be rational, logical.
Your idea must be logically consistent, and then it must be checkable by empirical evidence.
You think of the scientific theory, you have to have consistency in the conjecture, and then it is followed up by reproducible experiments across labs across the world or wherever.
So, you don't think of truth like a thing in the world.
I mean, that's not what it is.
Truth is the relationship between ideas in the mind and things in the world.
Truth is the relationship between things in the mind, ideas in the mind, and things in the world.
You look at a tree and you call it a tree, then the idea in your mind that is a tree is according to the facts of reality, assuming you're actually talking about a tree, right?
And Let's take another example, right?
So let's say back in the day of analog watches, right?
This actually happened to me once.
I was supposed to meet a friend of mine at 7 o'clock, but I got there at 7.15 and he said, you're late.
But I looked at my watch and my watch said 7 o'clock and I said, I'm not late.
It's 7 o'clock. And he said, well, my watch says 715.
Now, either his watch was running fast or my watch was running slow or something in between, right?
So, of course, I looked at the clock in the store and the clock said 715.
I looked at another clock.
It said 715. I looked at my watch and the second hand had stopped because I hadn't wound it.
This is way back in the day, right?
So, I had a hypothesis that I was on time.
Was it logical? Yeah, I could have been on time.
Could be 7 o'clock. I'm not saying it's both 7 o'clock and 12 o'clock at the same time.
I'm not saying I'm on time here and in Australia as well, right?
So it's logically... But I was incorrect because you test things.
You have a hypothesis and then you test it according to the facts of reality.
And once I had established that it was 7.15 and that my watch had stopped because I hadn't wound it, I was late and he was correct.
However, I wasn't late by fault.
I didn't know it was past time.
So, I guess my watch had been slowing in some way, so...
So you've got to think of truth as a relationship between things in the mind and things in the world.
Now, in the world can be in your own body, and it can be things relatively unverifiable, like I had a dream about an elephant last night, which nobody could really verify, but, you know, you go to a therapist and you talk about it, the therapist will probably assume you're not lying because you're paying and it doesn't do you much good if you lie.
So when you understand that The truth is a relationship between things in the mind and things in the world.
And when things in the mind accurately describe and reflect things in the world, then it's a true statement.
Reason, evidence.
This is why I did a 19-part introduction to philosophy like 15 years ago, so you can check that out.
I'll put a link to that below as well.
So, truth so.
Can you get an ought from an is?
Not if the only thing you're looking at is the outside world, as if human beings weren't here.
Right? So imagine there's no intelligent life anywhere in the universe.
You're at the DNC or something.
There's no intelligent life anywhere in the universe.
Does an ought exist?
No. There's no intelligent life anywhere in the universe.
Does morality exist? Nope.
Does the scientific method exist?
Nope. Do concepts exist?
Nope. Does the truth exist?
Nope. Because there are no conceptual beings That strive to make an accurate relationship between things in the mind and things in the world.
But once we have human beings, I'm sure there's other intelligent life out there, but I'm just talking about humanity now.
So we can make errors.
We can make mistakes. We have our local limited perspective, right?
The world looks flat. It's actually a sphere.
The sun and the moon look the same size, about a dime held at arm's length, but they're actually way different sizes.
Just a matter of relationship, right?
So, the ought consists of the if-then statement.
If you want to say something true about the world, you ought to use reason and evidence.
If you want to say something true about the world, you ought to use reason and evidence.
Now, the moment, this is the tricky part, this is the self-knowledge part, which is why I focus so much in this philosophy show on self-knowledge.
This is the self-knowledge part, which is tricky.
So, this fellow, you cannot get an ought from an is.
No. You can't drill into a tree and find the concept of a forest that accurately describes an aggregation of trees.
Of course. Of course.
Right? You can't get from the fact of pushing a man off a cliff that you ought not to do it.
I get that. I mean, it makes total sense to me.
But, once you understand...
But the ought comes from the if-then statement.
If you want to say something true about the world, you ought to use reason and evidence.
So when this fellow says, I've read UPB, I've then re-read it, I've watched the show for many years, I then looked at some of the criticisms of UPB. Well, first of all, I don't believe that.
Because if you've read UPB, I talk about all of this in the book very clearly and very specifically.
I've talked about it in my debates.
I've done PowerPoints.
I've actually done live speeches where I bring people up from the audience and have them act out UPB scenarios so that we know that it's valid and correct.
So when people say, I've read all your stuff, I've looked at the criticisms, this other person is correct and you're not.
That's not an argument. I mean, this is a person who doesn't understand that you have to...
I mean, I wrote a whole book called The Art of the Argument.
You can get it at artoftheargument.com.
This is somebody who just says, I think the other person is correct.
This problem has not been solved.
Steph has not solved the problem of how you get an ought from an is.
But he's just making a claim.
It's not an argument.
There's no evidence there, right?
I just think this... I think the rationality rules is correct and Steph is wrong.
I was like... He might as well just be saying, I like ice cream!
There's not much moral content or philosophical content in that.
So, here's the thing.
If you say, I can get an ought from an is, and the other person says, you cannot, petition the Lord with prayer, you cannot get an ought from an is.
You cannot get an ought from an is.
It's invalid. You should retract that statement.
You're wrong. It's false.
You cannot get an ought from an is.
Boom. You just did.
The moment you correct someone according to objective reason and evidence, The reason is you can't get an ought from an is.
It's not a contradictory statement.
In its form.
It's content we'll get to.
Can't get an ought from an is.
What you're doing is you're saying to someone, because you want to say true things...
And the content of your mind, you can get an ought from an is, is false.
You must reject the content of your mind that does not accord with reality.
There is no ought in reality, and therefore you ought not say there is an ought in reality.
I know, it's tricky, but if you just pump the brakes like crazy and look at the very act of correcting someone, what are you doing when you are correcting someone?
You're saying you're objectively wrong.
The contents of your mind do not match the facts of reality.
There's no ought out there in reality.
And therefore, if you want to say things that are true about the world and there is no ought out there in the world, you ought not to say That you can get an ought from an is.
But the moment you say to someone, you're wrong, you ought not to say that, then you've just got the ought from the is.
And the ought from the is is, when you say something is true, you're saying that the contents of your mind, the contents of your argument, match the principles of reason and the principles of evidence that we all get empirically from the universe.
If you want to say true things about the world, about the universe, about philosophy, if you want to say true things, they must be rational, and they must accord to the evidence.
The moment you say to someone, the moment you say to someone, someone says, morality exists in the universe, and you say, no, no, no, no, morality doesn't exist in the universe, therefore you want not to say that.
You're wrong, objectively, or so my opinion.
You are objectively wrong, and you ought to correct the contents of your mind to accurately match what is in the universe.
If you want to say things that are true, they have to accord to reason and evidence.
And the moment you correct someone, you're saying the contents of your mind do not match the standards of truth, which is reason and evidence.
There is no evidence that there's an ought out there in the universe that we can pull apart atoms to find.
Agreed! But the truth is not out there.
The truth is not out there.
The truth is a relationship between things in the mind and things in the world.
And the moment you say to someone, the contents of your mind do not match the truth.
You're saying the relationship between the things in your mind and the things in the world is not accurate.
And you ought to correct that so that you can say things that are true.
Truth exists As a relationship.
Not just between things in the mind and things in the world, but between person A and person B. So if person A looks at person B, Bob looks at Doug and says, Doug, you're wrong.
You ought to correct your thinking.
Thinking is incorrect. Thinking is wrong.
Thinking is false. Reasoning is fallacious.
Evidence supposes what you say.
He just did the ought.
Because the if-then statement is usually implicit, but it needs to be made explicit for theories of morality to work.
Also, if somebody says two and two make five and you correct them, what are you correcting?
Well, the assumption is that the person saying two and two make five is saying something that he believes is true about the facts of reality.
So when you correct that person, what you're saying is, although you think you're saying a true statement, you are not saying a true statement.
Because you want to say a true statement, I'm going to replace your false statement 2 and 2 make 5 with a true statement 2 and 2 make 4.
It's the act of correcting someone that brings the ought to.
Into the conversation.
The ought does not exist out there in the world.
I get all of that. Morality does not exist out there in the world.
There's nothing in the nature of the atoms in the airplane or the airport that says you have to be on time.
If you want to be on time, you've got to get there before it leaves.
If you don't want to be late for a 7 o'clock appointment, you've got to be there by 7 o'clock.
Now, if you don't care about being late, you can be there at 8 o'clock.
You can be there tomorrow if you want.
There's nothing in the nature of the universe or of time that says you ought to be there at 7 o'clock.
I mean, you've made a commitment, but nothing happens if you don't make that commitment in terms of like your atoms don't change or anything.
The if, then.
If you want to say things that are true, then you must use reason and evidence.
The moment you correct someone, you're saying you ought to tell the truth.
And it's not just my opinion.
It's based on the principle that we both share, the relationship between the things in the mind and the things in the world, that it needs to be accurate.
So if somebody points at a car and says, that's a tree, you say, no, that's not a car.
That's a tree. Let's say someone's learning English.
They got the words wrong. They point at a car and they say, that's a tree.
You say, no, no, it's not a tree, it's a car.
That over there with the leaves, that's a tree.
It's not your opinion. It's not subjective.
And it's based upon the empirical facts of the world that we get through the evidence of the senses.
Cars don't have leaves, trees don't have wheels.
You understand, right? So once you understand the relationship aspect of the truth, that you are attempting to have the concepts in the mind, in yourself and in others, accurately match the facts of reality.
The moment you say, well, you can't get an ought from an is, you just got an ought from an is.
With that behind you, you can actually start dealing with morality.
For more on that, you can go to freedomain.com.
The books, freedomain.com forward slash books.
Read UPB. Really, really important to get this because a lot of people get messed up on this.
I hope that makes sense.
I hope that clarifies things.
I'm happy to get more questions about this very important and very essential topic.
The moment someone says to you, you can't get an ought from an is, it's like, oh, so I'm wrong?
Is it better for me to be correct?
Well, yeah, okay, just got an ought from an is.
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