It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a
thought without accepting it. Welcome to Keith's night.
Don't try it on anyone and the libertarian Institute today.
We have dr. Michael humor.
He is the author of knowledge, reality and value.
A mostly Common Sense guide to philosophy.
Doctor humor. Where is the best place to buy
this? Excellent book?
So, they say eversion and the paperback, or on Amazon.
The hardcover is on Barnes & Noble because Amazon doesn't do
for her covers. Okay.
Got it. What is philosophy?
Oh, okay. Well, it's hard.
It's the other thing, the book you can't actually Define it in
but don't worry because you can't Define anything else
either. But the way that you get that
the way you get most Concepts is by seeing examples of them.
Like when you explain what green is the way you do.
That is by showing somebody some green things, not by giving them
a definition of green. So the way that people learn
what philosophy is is by seeing some examples of philosophy,
right? So I like to give examples like
the ship of Theseus problem and then you can observe some things
about that. I don't know.
I don't know if the listeners on there with this problem is
right, but briefly, there's a shift that.
Okay, Theseus is sale. His ship around the
Mediterranean Sea for like a decade or something.
And he periodically replacing individual pieces of the ship.
And then you imagine that at the end of 10 years, the whole
thing, every piece has been replaced, but not all at once.
They were replaced individual pieces at different times, until
eventually, all of them are place and then you have the
question at the end of the 10 years, whether it's still the
same ship. Still have the ship that he had
it begin. Okay, and I like this as an
example of philosophy, because you can very clearly see that
this is not a scientific question.
Not a religious question either, you know, it's not any other
kind of question besides the philosophical question, right?
You can see some things about this.
So like you can see that there could be arguments on either
side of this. That is a sort of thing that if
controversial is like, it's not obvious, what the answer is.
At the same time, you know, it's not a scientific question
because you can see like there is no scientific investigation
to do that would help like you. It's not like oh if we do some
really careful measurements, we'll find out if it was the
same shaft right? When there's no experiment that
you can do, right? But, you know, they were sort of
rational intuitive argument that you can give for why it is or
isn't the same shit, right? And it's not just all your
opinion or whatever. And, you know, you don't just
like Express your feelings. Alright, so like the argument
that it's the same ship is. Well, if you just if you only
replaced one piece, you would think it was still the same
shit, right? All right, so you take the ship
at the beginning and then the ship after your place one.
Those are the thing, right? And then the ship after you
replace. One piece is the same as the
ship after you replace two pieces, right?
Okay. So if you if you buy that then
you can just go all the way to the end and then by the
transitivity of identity and get the the first ship with the same
ship as the last one, right? The same time, you can see that
there's an argument against it being the same because it's got
like zero percent overlap the components of the first one.
Okay. And so this is and you know, I
don't I bring this up not because of ship of Theseus is
intrinsically, such an important problem.
Right? It's let there's not that much
discussion of it, right? But Because it's a good example
of a philosophical issue, right? Also note that it's kind of, its
kind of fundamental because like this sort of problem applies to
every object that has a lot of carbs which is almost
everything, right. So it's a, you know, it's a
fairly sweeping issue. If it's not the same ship than
actually, you're probably not the same person to with your you
know, 10 years ago because individual atoms go replaced in
your body, right? Right, like all the objects are
going to turn out the same anymore, right?
Okay. So anyway, that was all a long
lead into your your question of what philosophy is like, okay,
and I could give lots of other examples of, you know, bills,
lot more questions, which would then give the audience a better
stand to work philosophies about, but it would take a long
time. Each one of these I have to do
some discussion of. Yeah, that's what the excellent
books are for and I'm curious why you think philosophy is
important people, you know, there's the family.
Joke of Peter becomes a philosopher and all he does is
say why like in response to every he never answers anything.
People will often think of philosophy as something that
just intellectuals do that has nothing to do with my everyday
life kind of a trivial Endeavor wise philosophy important.
Yeah. I was.
So first philosophers, don't generally just sit around saying
why they generally try to present Arguments for an answer
to one of these? Puzzling questions, right?
And your why is it important? I mean a lot of the
philosophical questions are really a central import to just
your understanding of the world and your place in it.
So you may have questions. Like how should we live?
And, you know, it's like that seems kind of important don't
even notice that, that's not a scientific question, and it is
kind of answered by religions, but it's kind of answered
non-rational, he, right. Yeah.
Like questions about just the
general nature of the world, is everything predetermined or do
we have free? Will does the universe have a
beginning or did it always exist?
And it's sort of like, well, if you don't think those are
important than whether it is like that.
Those are sort of like the biggest questions there are,
right, but yes. Yeah, I mean, but other like,
some people just don't find it interesting when they just don't
like them. And if that's the case, I can't
really do anything about that. Right?
Yes, a man named Bryan Caplan. Wrote this book open borders,
the science and ethics of immigration and on page 165.
He summarized a lot of philosophical theories.
So I want to list off a philosophical Theory, kaplan's
brief summary and let me know what you think about.
This Theory and general utilitarianism maximize, the sum
of human happiness. Yes, are the only error in.
There is the word human hearing. Think you should maximize.
Well, okay. Happiness could also be an
error, but they think that you should maximize enjoyment and
that applies to any being that can have enjoyment.
Most utilitarians are you know, Animal, Welfare, Advocates like
Peter Singer and is this something you think is a
legitimate philosophy? Or are there major holes in it?
I mean, I wouldn't say the illegitimate but I don't believe
it true. Right?
So what's wrong with utilitarianism?
I mean, there's just a series of intuitive counter-examples IE.
You can describe situations in which the theory recommend
something that strikes, both people have clearly wrong.
Alright, so maybe you know the maybe the most famous example is
you have this you have a healthy patient in the hospital.
You have five, other patients, who need organ transplants.
And somehow, the one healthy guy is compatible with the other
five. And so, here's something you
could do. You could murder the healthy
patient and then distribute his organs to the five other
patients, right? And they all need different
organs. So, you know, like a lung kidney
heart or liver whatever. And so you can save five lives
at the cost of one life. So on the utilitarian calculus,
you know, you're upset. Thought you're up for life.
So you have to do it, right? Not only permissible.
But actually it's obligatory, would be wrong.
If you don't murder the healthy Visionary.
And that strikes, most people as wrong and they're just the whole
bunch of examples that are like that, right?
Where it looks like you shouldn't do the thing that
produces overall, greater enjoying it.
Oh, yes. The second one is egalitarianism
from the point of John Rawls. He says any qualities must
benefit. First off you think that is a
good philosophy. No, I mean there's a number
things I think went wrong with the girls.
Right. But I mean one of the
fundamental things is thinking that I guess thinking that
there's somebody who's responsible for the overall
distribution of stuff. Right?
And there are light and land like somebody need to justify
the overall distribution. I think that somebody people are
responsible for individual pieces of property and you can
justify why a particular individual gets to have a
particular piece of property because of what the person did
to apartments, right, but then it turns out that there's some
overall And where there is inequality like one person wound
up having more than another person.
And that could be because the person who has more, did more
productive activity, right? And it doesn't have to be that
there are other reasons like one person with more could have just
gotten lucky. Okay, but we're all his
philosophy. Applies.
Its supposed to apply across the board, right?
So I'm not allowed to get more stuff by being more productive
without defying it to the people who are worse off.
Like I have to pay off the poor people, to let me be more
productive and right to let me keep a portion of the stuff that
I produced, but I have to justify why I get to do that by
saying. Well, I'm going to give to the
people who didn't prove, right? And I'm see why that's true.
Right? Sure.
Kaplan summarizes libertarianism as from each as he chooses.
To each as he has chosen, he is drawing to summarize them.
In very, he gets five of them onto one page.
But what are your thoughts on libertarianism?
And that definition of it? Yeah.
I mean, that's very brief right? By the way.
That phrase came from Robert nozik, right?
And of course, like, in case any of the readers?
Don't know. This is like a in contrast to
Karl. Marx is dictum from each
according to his ability, and to each, according to his need,
right? And so, now they say, Idea was
well, you know, Libertarians have a different principle for
distribution. It's that, you know, we like
they're worth of the Marxist. Say you should just contribute,
according to whatever, you're able to contribute to society
and know they says, no, you know, you should contribute.
What? You choose to contribute.
You don't have to contribute, anything, you could sit on your
ass all day. And then she reaches their
chosen what he meant by. That was well, you get money
when other people who have a give it to you, right?
So And they don't, like, not when you force them to give it
to you, but when they choose to give it to you, right?
And I bet, yeah, seems like a good idea, right?
That's it. That is in general a good idea
as readers. Know, I am myself.
A Libertarian was going to say an extreme libertarian in the
sense that I'm an anarchist. Although.
I think I'm not as Extreme as many other Libertarians in
there. The cost-benefit analysis, put
forth by Richard, Posner says, maximize, the total value of
social resources. What are your thoughts on this?
Yeah. I mean on the one hand that
found utilitarian. So it might have a problem with
ignoring people's rights. So, you know, like the example
with harvesting the organs looks like it's like that would
justify turning everybody's organs into asset.
You know that other people can just take They need them more
than all that. Okay, so I don't like that, but
I do think that you should go through a cost-benefit analysis
before implementing a policy because I think it's a necessary
condition on, you know, like the government passing restrictions,
not sufficient, but it's necessary that whatever new laws
or regulations are making. Are going to work like not
produce more harm than good or you know, not be
counterproductive to their aims and things like that.
So you should have at minimum, look at how much it's costing
and how much benefit is producing.
Kaplan summarizes Christianity, as do unto others, as you would
have others, do unto you. Is that, is that something that
you think is consistent? There are can be morally
Justified. Well, so first, I don't think
that's a fair summary of Christian, maybe because there
is no mention of Jesus in that. So here, but for God, right.
But anyway, is that a good moral principle odd, generally, yes,
but it's sort of imprecise. It's not going to get
everything, right? So, you know, an example that I
heard was what if there's like this?
Snake worshiper, who wants to be thrown in a pit of snakes.
And so, therefore he throws other people in a bit of Faith.
Yeah. Okay.
Don't always do what you want other people to do to you, but
still like there's sort of there's an underlying Insight,
right? Which is sort of that when
you're doing stuff you should sort of like try to see from
other people's perspective, how the thing.
You're doing looks right and you're not just always think in
terms of what you want. And finally con thien ISM treat
every person as an end in himself, never as a mere means.
Yeah, there's you know, also there's a good Insight in this
right, but it's also not entirely correct.
Right? So, you know, it's closely
related to libertarianism which is which also appears in those
explode in Anarchy State and Utopia.
He suggests that people have rights because of this contine
idea. The reason why you can't violate
their rights is basically because respecting people's
rights is treating them as ends in themselves, but to wrong with
the content principle is just that I think there are Into it.
So, you know, if you had to kill one innocent person in order to
save the entire rest of the human species, I think you
should do it even though that's violating the principle Kant
would say. No, you can't do it.
Even to save everyone else. Okay, you know, you guys like
maybe let's make it more extreme.
So it's more obvious to people, right?
So if you had to pluck a single hair off, an innocent persons
head with out there. Their consent and I would save
the rest of humanity. I think you should do it.
Okay, even though that would be treating that one person as a
meme and ended up. Yes finding Acceptance in
Anarchy State and Utopia. No, Zack has the experience
machine where he says Suppose there were an experience
machine. That would give you any
experience. You desire.
Super duper neuropsychologist could simulate your brain.
So that you would Think and feel you were writing a great novel
or making a friend of reading an interesting book all the time.
You would be floating in a tank with electrodes attached to your
brain. Should you plug into the machine
for Life? Programming your life's
experiences. Would you plug in know that?
Most people would not plug-in? Although I think that it depends
on how good your life is, so if you have a shitty life, I think
you should plug in, but if your life is going pretty good.
I don't think she's fucking but You know, basically, yeah, I
basically agree with those things discussion there, right?
Like, well, we want to live in contact with reality.
We want to make actual Achievements.
Not merely have the experience of thinking it is.
So, like, if somebody wants to climb Mount Everest, they don't
merely want to be deceived into thinking that they climbed Mount
Everest, they want to actually do it because like, you know,
planning a virtual reality simulation of climbing.
The mountain is not a great achievement.
Actually climbing. It is a great achievement.
Right? And you're like, yeah, you can
imagine the size. So what what is it that, you
know, real people is really pushing people to not plug-in.
Is it because you in the real world, you actually have an
effect on the lives of other real humans who have the ability
to feel emotions or is it you actually achieving something on
your own as opposed to it not being a Reality.
Yeah, I mean it's both right. So, like a utilitarian or
altruistic would say, oh no, I can't plug in because then I
won't be helping other people, right?
Because, you know, then he will. The First new plug-in will be
having great experiences, but he won't be causing other people
that are hurting since, right. So, okay, but even if you could
plug everyone in imagine, you can just make everyone be
plugged into the experience machine forever.
I still don't think you should do that, right?
Okay, so, like, you know, it's a valid point that you won't.
Like, if you have a family you'll be abandoning your
family, right? Hmm.
Your kids will just grow up on their own if you have any kids,
right? So that's kind of bad.
But also like, even if you imagine that, you could plug all
of them into the experience, which means to it, still
wouldn't seem so great. And that's partly because, like,
everything that you're doing, like, everything you experience
is a lie. All of your projects are just a
lie, wait, like you think that you did something worthwhile and
it's just a complete deception because you know, you didn't
actually do it. Let's say I'm sorry.
Did you have anything else on that?
No, go ahead. Let's say we have two different
people who have both stabbed and killed.
Someone one person was in a kitchen, very stressed out
slipped with a knife and killed someone.
It was a terrible accident. The person is very upset in the
second scenario. A guy.
I felt as though he was insulted and then intentionally stabbed
the guy to kill him. So in both scenarios, Else we
have people who have taken knives and ended the lives of
innocent peaceful people. Do you think there should be a
difference in their sentencing and how they are treated?
It seems like an easy question. So if the answer is yes, what is
the explanation for why these two people should be treated
differently? Considering they did the same
thing. One of them started.
One of them deserves worse treatment and the other one.
That's like a short short version of the answer.
Right? Why does he deserve worse
treatment? Okay, because one of them
intended to kill another person and the other one, didn't attend
like, you know, the intention is part of responsibility, the one
who did it by accident, could still have some - dessert
because maybe they should have been more careful, you know, but
I like intentionally killing someone.
Just deliberately trying to kill someone who's worse than merely
being careless or whatever. So right do you think it's
immoral to drive drunk? But to some degree, right?
I mean, let's say it's it. It's morally wrong to drive very
drunk without having a really good reason, right?
Yeah, and why is that imposes? An unreasonable risk on others?
So yeah, so like you're allowed to impose some risk, but at a
certain like it becomes excessive and you don't need to
do it then at some point it becomes a moral.
Yes, the book is knowledge, reality and value.
In a lot of your ethical thinking, you use a common
sense, morality approach. Why do you use that as opposed
to say a strict deontological approach?
Because I care about the truth. That's right.
Very right. So just in general, the way that
human beings know things the way that human beings learn is
starting from the concrete, and generalizing to the abstract and
not the other way around. And so I observed at that, as a
as a general matter in almost all areas.
If you start from abstract generalizations on start to do
things consequences from it, it It work.
It goes badly. So because what happens is like
you start from an abstract generalization, that sounds good
to you at the start but it's totally wrong and you're not
going to notice that it's totally wrong until you look at
that particular examples, but then if you're you know,
dogmatic in the way that most philosophers historically have
been, you just deduce the fault consequences and just embrace
them because, you know, because of the order, in which these
thoughts occurred to you, because you started with the
abstract. Asian and then only later saw
the counter examples, so then you just insist the thing.
These started with us to betray him.
Like this is a thing that has happened repeatedly in the
history of philosophy. No, but basically it's super
hard to come up with a universal generalization that's always
true without first going through a ton of examples.
You have to first go through all the concrete examples to see
what you think about them before you can reasonably generalize,
right? And so that's part of what I'm
doing like. So my approach to ethics is I
look at a concrete example where there's a pretty uncontroversial
intuitive verdict about it. And then I draw an analogy
between that and a case that is controversial, in order to try
to resolve the controversy in the book.
You are mention the unappreciated idea that most
people throughout all of history were generally accepted the
concept of slavery and today they wide Lee say that it is
something terrible. How do you think blatantly
unjustified institutions are able to exist for so long
without being questioned? Yeah, good question rights.
I mean, part of the answer is status quo bias.
Most people have a huge bias in favor of whatever way things are
currently being done in their own society.
And, you know, part of the answer is most people are just
not reflective. So they just don't think they
just do not ask themselves. Whether this is okay.
They just keep doing it because that's what other people are
doing. And also part of the answer is
like most people are naturally bad.
Right, like people are extremely selfish and have a very small
amount of moral motivation. Right?
And so, it's just kind of like to take a long time and take a
long time for them to figure out what's right, you know, when
most people are not trying to figure it out, right?
So, why would you say that things like murder, rape and
slavery are wrong? If it is there any way outside
of the Common Sense morality approach?
If you're talking to someone who lives in a society where murder
rape and slavery are sort of just the norm.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any to fighting which
murder and rape or okay, but I would add a qualification or
many Societies in which it would be accepted to attack.
A neighboring, try to attack another society and murder and
rape. Those people that's been widely
accepted, but murdering and raping within your tribe.
Not, okay. But anyway, yeah, what would I
say to the? All right, and then, you know,
slavery widely practiced as we said.
So, And what would I say to the people in those societies?
Like if they wanted to reason with me, you know, like start
saying, okay. So so you think that it's okay
to attack these neighboring crop tribes?
Why. How were they different from you
then? Like they seem like a lot like
you would be pulling hard drive, you know, they have their own
concerns, their own lives that they're trying to lead and do
the same sorts of concerns that you have and they love their
family, just like you do. Like why do you think that
they're different? So you can attack them?
And I think they basically would have no answer to that.
I think we would have just never thought of it.
Now. I don't think that I would
actually succeed because I think that the people in the Primitive
tribes would just refuse to entertain the moral questions
because I think they would not care.
Do you have a general method for determining morally Justified
behavior from immoral. So like, for example, if pretend
you had never heard of jury duty for the first time and you find
out in America, there is something where people are
composed to serve serve on a jury, in order to determine the
guilt or innocence of someone on trial.
How would you go about determining right from wrong
Behavior? Well, you mean whether it's okay
to force them to serve or they could do when they're on a
journey. I was just using that, that is
an example of when people. Most people who I speak with on
this, haven't really sat down and thought about, whether it's
Justified. They just say, of course it is,
and then move on. And then treat me like a prick
when I ask any follow-up questions.
How would you determine whether this was justified or
unjustified? Yeah.
I mean, so, you know, the general thing is I would try to
think of something else that most people agree with, that is
analogous. Right?
So like I didn't, you know, what, if I have some work that
needs to be done here in my condo.
I like, you know, I got some stuff that needs to be fixed and
what if I just like, pick a random person and force them to
come up and do the work for me. That's not all right, is it,
right? And then you just say, you know,
it wasn't that kind of analogous to it.
The government thing. Some work needs to be done.
We're just going to pick random people and force them to do it,
right, you know, why is that different?
And then you know and then you have to have a discussion when
they try to say that it's different and you discuss
whether really is different in the way that they say or
whatever. And how do you find that
difference? So often I'll be in a discussion
or just thinking about something myself and I'll know that
something is different, but it's hard to determine whether it's
arbitrarily different or it's different in principle.
How can you Tell if something's different arbitrarily or
different in principle. Well, I mean you just tried to
think of trying to think of what the difference is.
Our then you ask yourself if those are relevant and sometimes
it just seems obvious that it's not right.
But if you think of something that seems like it's relevant,
then you try to think of other examples, how you that it, you
try to think of examples that we remove that different.
Okay, so you go. Let's see there.
Different that the jury duty. It's the government for us and
you and not somebody else. Maybe that's a girl.
Okay. So what if the government forces
you to go dig ditches, the that? Okay.
Thank God. Okay, they want to build a new
highway and they just like, grab people random people and just
say, okay, you're now Highway worker.
Right? And you're just sitting there,
you know, with a cop's holding guns, porting that you have to
make sure that you keep it like that.
Doesn't seem okay, really? Anyway, so So, yeah, you just
have to like sort of trying to think of what the differences
might be and try to think of any of them are relevant.
Michael sandel wrote a book called, what money can't buy the
moral limits of markets and he says, why worry?
That we are moving toward a society in which everything is
up for sale for two reasons, inequality, and Corruption
consider an equality in a society where everything is up
for sale. Life is harder.
For those of modest means the more money can buy the more
affluence or lack of it matters. Putting a price on the good
things in life can also corrupt them.
That's because markets don't only allocate Goods.
They also And promote certain attitudes towards the goods.
Being exchanged. What do you think about that
from the standpoint of someone who's a Libertarian?
Yeah, which, which is always my standpoint, huh?
I mean, that there are two arguments there.
One is. So it makes life more difficult
for people of modest means. I don't think that's true.
So like the possibility of buying something can make your
life easier and if you can't afford it.
It then it doesn't make your life easier, but having people
prohibit you from buying, it doesn't help either because you
still can't buy him. Right, right.
Okay, so I think about things like kidney sales, like, all
right. Should I be able shy to be able
to get paid for donating a kidney to that?
Some person who need they can survive?
And then, you know, because that's illegal.
It's impossible for anyone to buy it.
That doesn't mean that now poor people get kidneys.
They still don't get kidneys because they still can't buy
them back into. Now.
It's just that nobody can buy them, that doesn't even poor.
People are better off at, if you could sell them, at least the
wealthy people could give him. At least their lives will be
saved. The poor people will be just as
dead. I do anyway, okay, but also, you
know, if you're worried about the pork is the different
solution. This isn't my view, but this is
a more rational view, just subsidize it.
If you're worried that the poor people won't be able to.
Ford the kidneys have the government, you know, just like
subsidize the purchase of kidney so that they could buy it,
right? Give them like a kidney voucher
or something. And then the other the other
argument that he had, there was something about expressing
attitude, like, oh, you'll be expressing the wrong attitudes
towards kidneys or whatever. Like I think that's one of the
main things that you thinking about, right?
Somebody Park. And I just think, you know, I
don't know if it's true, but I think it's just a completely
trivial. Federation, I'd like, oh, you'll
be expressing a bad attitude about kidneys.
If you sell one or if you buy one.
Okay, I think that's totally trivial in comparison with the
avoidable death of the disease. Sufferers, right?
Okay, and like here's an example that I have.
So compared to cases, right case, one Ted and murder stare
on case to Jill says Jack is an ass.
Whole and his interests and rights, don't matter.
And then she puts that on a giant billboard, by the freeway
where everyone sees, you know, Jack Jack's Mike doesn't matter
and then she tweeted to her 10 million followers.
Okay. So those are two different
things that you could do murdering the person and putting
out this message. Which one is worse.
Okay, and how much works? Okay.
I think the first one I think the actual murdering is like
about a billion times worse than putting.
Billboard and putting up the offensive tweak.
And what they showed is that sending negative messages is
like a trivial harm that the trivial wrong in comparison with
a death of a human being. All right, the problem with Ted
murdering Sarah is not that he conveyed a bad message about
Sarah. It's that Sarah is now dead,
right? And so, similarly, with the, you
know, kidney sale issue, all of these people dying, just swamp.
With the Badness of people sending negative messages or,
you know, whatever. The message is supposed to be.
Yes, Jason Brennan wrote about that in a great book.
I think it's titled. Oh gosh, I can't believe it.
Slipping my mind. What are the limits markets
Without Limits? Yes.
Thank you. And he said there's about
100,000 people on the kidney waiting list and the vast
majority are going to die because of, but because of this
legislation that stops people from compensating others for
giving them their that their kidney.
Let's take a an example similar to the message one.
Do you think it's immoral for me to say start a campaign that
everyone should force Ted to give me money.
I don't know who this guy is, but I know he lives near me.
People should force him to give me money or we should all
collectively. Put him in a cage and then shoot
him. If he resists, I think people
would say that is unjustified. However, This is in principle.
No different than advocating, Socialism or taxation is someone
immoral for advocating socialism.
And should that be illegal? I get that the moral.
Yeah, I don't think it should be illegal.
But, you know, like I mean, it's like that thing, you know,
saying that your neighbor should be put in a cage unless he
agrees to give you money. I think that I think you
shouldn't say that but I don't I wouldn't put you in jail if you
say that, right? Why not?
And, you know, so one of the things that we have to consider
about like when you're making laws, is we have to think about
the overall effect, you know, Authority, if the government is
able to make laws about what political positions you can
Advocate, right? So even if it's totally immoral
to Advocate this political position.
If the government is, they're deciding what political
positions are immoral and like prohibiting you from advocating
war that it thinks are immoral. You know, we're going to
totalitarianism right. And he they're obviously just
going to use that power to prevent anyone from criticizing
them and then and you're like that's what happens in communist
dictatorships and so on, right? So that's one problem.
You know, the other thing is, I mean, just like from a
philosophical standpoint. Mirror, words are not
sufficient, provocation for violence the light, right?
I mean let except in exceptional circumstances.
Let's say right? But most of the time, if you're
just saying, hey, you know, somebody should do something
wrong, but, you know, like just in general, you're just like,
throwing it out there to the world that people should do some
things, which in fact are wrong. Usually, that's not enough of a
reason for other people to do violence against you.
What is the thesis of your book? Ethical intuition is mmm.
Yeah, by the way, I'm glad that you pronounce that correctly
because about half of about having people that we interview
me and use that title mispronounce it, I bought the
book and read it. So yes, some people call it
intuitive ISM. Other people call it
institutional advancement and house into which is about
anyway. Yeah, I mean there's a few ideas
in ethical intuition isn't right.
So one important idea is that there are Values either there
are objective facts about something being right wrong.
Good or bad. Like it's objectively wrong to
torture. Babies for fun.
Another thing is about how we know this and roughly, we know
this because we have ethical intuitions, these ethical
intuitions are cases where when you just sort of intellectually,
reflect on some questions, something seems to you right or
wrong. Like, when I think about
torturing babies for fund, it just seems wrong to me.
And so that's something like to worship the way that I know that
it's wrong. Is it seems wrong to me?
And I have no reason for thinking otherwise no reason for
doubting that intuition. And then and then there's
another part about what reason do we have fraction, which is
basically your reasons for Action in virtue of having these
ethical beliefs. Like, if and independent of you
Dyer's, so even if you want to torture babies, you you have a
reason for not doing it because We're gonna bleed out the
intuition that it's wrong to do it.
Hopefully what is the thesis of your book?
Dialogues on vegetarianism? Yeah, Dialogue on ethical
vegetarianism. It's wrong to buy products from
factory farms, right? Which you know, mostly people
are buying meat from factory farms.
And most of the time, people are eating meat that they got from
factory farms. That's like 99% or something.
Okay. So the short version is stopped
eating meat and the more precise version is stop buying Products
that come from factory farms. And this is because they engage
in killing animals which involves the animal suffering,
right? Yeah.
So, you know, factory farms are the source of something like 99%
of the animal products in the world and we're killing
something in the neighborhood of 74 billion animals per year, in
order to, in order to get these products, you know, because we
like, beasting on their flesh because it's fun.
Okay, and that's like, you know, that's close to 10 times, the
entire human population of the world.
And then, you know, if you'd like, you can go online and look
at these videos and what the conditions are like in the
factory farms, and it's basically like torture, like, if
you are holding a person in those conditions, we would say
you were torturing person. Alright, and so like a total
amount of suffering that were causing every year is
astronomical website, right? Did clearly greater than all the
human suffering that's going. On the back a few years of
factory farming might produce more suffering that all the
suffering and human history that they actually a fairly plausible
estimate ring because there have only ever been 110 billion
humans and we're killing 74 billion animals every year.
So like two years, we kill more animals and all the humans have
ever existed and we tortured both of them for months before
killing it, right. So it's plausible that we're
inflicting more suffering than all the suffering and human
history every few years. Wow.
Yeah, that is definitely a you have a very good point.
Now one hurdle to that could be well is the problem the type of
factory farm and the method of killing and the method of
holding them before killing another words, if all those were
sort of more or less solved, there was an open field and the
killing was just a quick shot that they didn't even feel and
you did it while they were asleep.
Would that justify killing animals for the purpose of
eating them? I'm not sure.
So I mean, you know, this has so like I mean first, I'm not sure
this is practically relevant because I'm not sure that that's
like a thing that might happen. But but there is, you know,
there they sort of free-range and we'll products.
And there are these Animal Welfare organizations that go
and, you know, examine Farms to make sure that their Humane.
And then sometimes you see this Humane certified label on
products, which means one of these Animal, Welfare
organizations. Examine, you know, Their
practices and decided was Humane enough.
And so you could have a reasonable question about
whether it's okay to buy those products.
Now, I think it's questionable because you're still saying
like, you know, it's like I can end the life of this other
creature just because I get a little more pleasure like just
just for fun, right? It's like a little bit more
pleasure during meal times. Like, if that's the only reason
that does strike me as pretty. Noble if you have a stronger
reason that I think it's okay. All right.
So like if you have like a medical reason why you need the
animal products, then I think it's okay, you know, to kill
them painlessly without all the torture.
In the happiness. Hypothesis.
Jonathan haidt. Has a short, of course, fake
story to what try to display, the difficulty of winning an
argument. He says, Julie and Mike are
Julie and Mark are sister and brother.
They are traveling together in France on summer vacation from
college. One night.
They are staying alone in a cabin, near a beach.
They decided would be interesting and fun if they
tried making love at the very least, it would be a new
experience for each of them. Julie is already taking birth
control, but Mark uses. Condom too, just to be safe.
They both enjoy making love but side not to do it again.
They keep that night, a special secret, which makes them feel
even closer to each other. Do you think this is acceptable
for two? Consenting adults?
Who happen to be siblings? Make love.
How would you justify that judgment?
Yeah. So wait, so you're asking me if
it's okay. Well, no.
The whole point is. Okay, your position.
Let's say it's an obvious. No.
Well, how would you? Justify that.
No, I don't. I don't see anything wrong with
it. I don't see what the problem is,
right? Okay, but but I know that
because I, you know, well, I know partly because I'm a normal
human being and also because I've read Jonathan Heights work
that most people say it's not. Okay.
And then they try to explain why.
And then they give false reasons, they say, oh, well, you
know, like there's a risk of birth defects from incest,
right? And by the way, Really only
showed up after you do multiple generations of incestuous
breeding. So and anyway, hype put into the
scenario that they use two forms of birth control.
So it's super improbable that there would be any child that
also like you put all these things in this scenario, to try
to eliminate the negative consequences.
There's with results, right? So then at that point, I really
sure what the problem is. Like, I think there would be
problems if they were if they like they're interbreeding for
multiple Generations in producing Offspring or think
there would be problems if they're going around telling
everybody else that incest is great and they're doing it but
you know in the scenario is described.
You don't really see a problem. Do you think it's immoral for
people to actively promote political policies that they
have done little to no research on?
Yes. Yeah, I think I mean You know, I
think it's I guess lightly immoral because the chances of
your actually having an effect on public policy are very small,
but it's immoral because you know, there's a chance that you
bring to cause other people's rights to be violated and cause
just harm in general. Even if you don't believe in
rights, there's still a pretty good chance that you're going to
be causing harm, you know in the unlikely event that you have an
inflow Hank. There's a pretty good chance of
the things that you're advocating would be harmful
overall. And, you know, you don't Have to
do it. You can keep your mouth.
Shut, right? Because but I think most people
don't realize How likely this is, I think basically if you
have not researched something there's almost 100 percent
chance that you're wrong about a bunch of stuff about it, like
the just casual impression that you have is almost always wrong
in multiple different respects. He goes on to talk about the
myth of Pure Evil height. Says when taking the purple, the
perpetrators perspective, he found this researcher that
people who do things, we see as evil from spousal abuse all the
way to genocide. Really think they are doing
anything wrong. They almost always see
themselves as responding to attacks and provocations in some
ways that are Justified. They often think they themselves
are the victims. What do you think about what he
calls them? It's a pure evil.
So I mean, I think this might be sort of giving too much credit
to the bullshit that evil people say my like, right?
So I don't know how this study was done.
But here's how I'm imagining it happening, you go to somebody
who did something horribly wrong.
And you say, hey, why did you do that?
And then they come up with some story about why it was a good
thing to do. And then the researcher just
takes that at face value, right? Take that bullshit story to
PayPal you, okay? And so, I think the fact that
somebody comes up with a story, like they might just be lying
for the benefit of other people because they're manipulators.
And so and, you know, it might not be that they really
sincerely think that they did the right thing or that they
cared what the right thing was. It might be that, just they did
what they wanted to serve their own interest.
And then after the fact they made up a bullshit
rationalization to tell other people so that other people
would be nicer to them or something like that.
So the people who are doing terrible, things are actually
psychopath and the second pass. Well often say something about
why the thing they did was okay. And, you know, often they will
say something completely ridiculous thing.
Like it was okay to murder this person because he was in my way.
You shouldn't have been, in my way, whatever, it was his fault
because he was in Highway, there's a time when a psychopath
said, you know, He learned a hard lesson in reference to
somebody that's like about that murdered and I think if you were
giving them a valuable lesson by murdering them.
Anyway, so part of what's going on is some of the people just do
not give a shit and do not understand morality.
Right? And so they're saying, like,
ridiculous rationalizations. They're not sincerely trying to
figure out the trash. Okay, all that being fed.
So I think there are some people who are evil.
That being said there are not that many of you.
If you're thinking to yourself, like, oh, Republicans are evil.
No, Frank. It's not going to be like half
the population is like I think maybe psychopaths are evil or I
don't know. Maybe they're just a moral
because they don't even understand what morality is.
Maybe there's a small number of people who are pure evil, like
maybe Hitler and Stalin but it's not going to be like the Trump
supporters. Who won their like 50 million.
It's actually 50 million people are pure evil, be impossible to
what to get anything done. What do you think about the idea
that morality does not exist. It's just as made up as
languages and the only reason we believe it is because we sort of
just trick ourselves into justifying Customs.
There was nothing objectively wrong with me.
Say killing someone cuz their life ends their life is going to
end. Anyway, yes, it hurts them.
But so does, you know someone breaking up with you that also
hurts you but that's not something terribly evil.
So therefore morality is non-existent.
Well, okay. I mean the argument for the
argument for why it's okay to kill people is really lame
thing. That's pretty much like killing
so much. Anyway, yeah, when I think about
the idea that we're out of you just made up of both being
false. So yeah, why do I think that's
false? Well, it seems to me like it's
wrong to torture babies for fun. That seems to me about as
obvious as anything is so someone was going to try to
convince me that that's not actually wrong.
They would have to have an amazing argument.
So they would have to have their have to have some information
that is more obvious than the fact that it's wrong to torture.
Babies are fun. And that information would have
to somehow picked the wrong. Is it Fortune babies?
Right? And I just don't see that
happening right now. I feel like the argument that
people give for this position. I find extremely weak like you
nowhere near as obvious. Right?
So like one of the arguments is there's an argument that you
find in the academic ethics literature.
If they were objective values, then they would be intrinsically
motivated. IE, they would motivate people
to act independent of people's desires, but it's impossible for
any fact to be intrinsically motivating.
Therefore, there. Can't be any objective though.
Okay, and like that's not like a complete non sequitur.
I was like like it's not a completely worthless argument,
right. But neither of those premises
and it is anywhere near as obvious as the premise that it's
wrong to torture, babies 45, right?
So like there's no way I'm going to give up my ethical believe
because of these dubious claims, right?
It's not obvious that objective moral facts, have to be
intrinsically motivating, and it's not obvious.
That nothing can be intrinsically motivating,
either. You have a great book called
Paradox, lost want to give you one that I heard the other day.
This is from Kim jeong-hoon. The father of the sitting on the
sitting Tyrant of North Korea. He said that he was one of the
wisest men in the land because he discovered that one plus one
equals one. If you have one drop of water
and you add another drop of water.
You have one drop of water that. Was his logic.
If you were to explain to the people of North Korea that this
actually does not make sense. Even though on the surface level
it does. What would you say to them?
We're driving. So I had to explain why 1 plus 1
is not equal to 1. Yes, because many of them
believe that story to be look legitimate representation of his
wisdom. Thus his justification enrolling
them. I see.
Well, I mean things like we could give a counter example
like I could take a rock and another rock and show how it's
two rocks like the never heat the generalization now, okay, so
on then you might say oh, so like there's no generalization,
you know, once I wanted him to terminate, it was knowing
entered. You might enhance, right?
No, so, wait, was this Kim, Jang, Hoon.
Or Kim Jong Hill? Who say what did I say?
This was? Who did he write the Kim
Jong-il? This is who Michael malice wrote
the biography about. So Kim. /.
This is the son of Kim il-sung. Yes.
Okay. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. So I think that he's
misunderstood what addition is so I think that you know, one
plus one. Well, actually, by the way that
factual claim is not even true, right?
It depends on the size of the drop it.
So you put them together, you might like if you put two small
drops, may be a big one, big drop, but if you put three
drops, maybe make something like bigger than a drop.
So anyway, but that's not what addition means.
It doesn't doesn't refer to a physical operation in which like
you physically attached to things to each other and make
them into the conduct. That's not what I mean.
Right? One plus one me refers to A
situation in which there's something, and there's another
thing, right? And one plus one equals, two
means when there's a thing. And there's another thing, then
there are two things. And that's all it means, right?
And why do I think that's what it means.
Because that explains how we use the phrase, right?
Like, that's why we say 1 plus 1 is 2 2, like interpret the thing
to me, what it obviously means to make sense of what people are
saying, right? If someone were just on an
island by themself never going to see anyone again, do you
think that person could still act and moral and immoral ways?
I guess I would say no. According to how I think the
word immoral is usually used. So I think the person could act
in rational and irrational and he's like do things that they do
or don't have good reason to do and like, whatever.
I don't think I would call it the immoral when they did the
irrational things. I'm because I think the way the
word moral is used in English. It has to refer to non non
selfish reasons for action. What are some of your favorite
thought experiments? Oh, I don't know.
I like the Chinese room thought experiment.
Uh-huh. I like that because, you know,
kind of convince me that, you know, you couldn't just program
a computer to think, you know that the grant.
No. No, I don't ya.
Okay. So, you know, they're these
people in the artificial intelligence Community who say
here's the way that you determine if a computer can
think, right? You have the computer
communicating via No to a person.
And so the person is communicating with a computer
and a real person. And then the person has to
figure out which thing that he's communicating with is human and
which is a computer. And if he can't figure it out
that proves that the computer is conscious or the computers
thinking or understanding whatever in the same sense that
we're thinking. All right, so that's the claim
by the artificial intelligence people at least some of them and
then here's the thought experiment.
So imagine that That computer programmers have come up with
this program that simulates conversation in Chinese.
And this program is so good that when you interact with it, you
can't tell the difference between if and the native
Chinese speaker. And then imagine that you
transcribe the rules of this program in a giant rule book and
the rule book that says, you know when you see this and
there's a picture of a sequence of Chinese symbols, you did this
and like you do this calculations and Put and use put
out these and then there's another picture of these
symbols, right? The robot doesn't say what any
of these symbols mean. It just tells you do
calculations, when you see symbols with a certain shape and
put out other symbols with a certain shape for okay, you put
me in a room with this trying rule book and then people are
putting things in a slot in the room, which have these
collections of Chinese symbols, and I look up in the rulebook
what I'm supposed to do and I passed the appropriate symbol
that way from and Cause I'm implementing the same algorithm,
you know, I passed the test, but I think that that's the same
test of the computer did. Okay, and but I don't understand
a word of Chinese. Hmm.
Yeah, there's no way that I would understand it just by
following those rules, right? And so, if I don't understand
any Chinese just by implementing the program for understanding
Chinese, then there's no way that any other digital computer
would understand Chinese because it doesn't have anything that I
don't have. And any other favorite thought
experiments you have? You know, I mean there are
various of these examples in in ethics like the organ harvesting
right, which is the counter example, to utilitarianism.
That's pretty good. I think the the violinist
thought experiment about abortion is pretty good and I'm
not saying that it proves that abortion is okay, but it's
definitely good example to think about case anyone doesn't know.
This is your imagine that there's this world-famous
violinist who has to be attached to a person.
A nine-month like physically attached to another person
because he's got some kind of kidney disease.
And like he has to use somebody else's kidneys to filter out
toxins in his blood. Right?
And so some Society of music lovers has kidnapped, you
without your knowledge and attached to you.
You didn't agree to it, but they attached you to the violinist.
And now your body is filtering out the toxins in his blood.
And if they detach you then, or if you detach yourself in the
violence will die, right? And then, you know, you're
supposed to think. Think it's okay to detach
yourself. You don't have to stay attached
to this other person for nine months.
Even if they're going to die. If you detach yourself, we still
don't have to stay there. If you agree with that, then
you're supposed to conclude that it's okay to remove a fetus from
your body, even though it's going to die.
Even if the fetus is a person. Yeah.
What if I am, I choose to go to a place where I know there's a
pretty good chance that I'll get stuck with a violinist.
Next, to me for nine months and I keep Going back to this place
again and again and then one time I wake up and the violinist
is attached to me and I go oh poor.
Woe is me now. I need the state to fund the
violinist removal at violinist Parenthood.
Then then do you think I would be justified in it?
Even though I keep going to the place knowing what the risk is?
Yeah, I mean. You typically don't lose your
right to have a remedy. If you go somewhere, where your
risk of something bad happening to you, right?
So, you know, what, if you're going to a dangerous
neighborhood, and like somebody mugs you and takes your money.
Okay, and then later you complain and you demand the
mugger payback and he goes no because you came to the
neighborhood and, you know, it was a dangerous neighborhood.
So now I get to keep the money. No, so they'll so you know that
Like, even if you knew there was a risk, or doesn't mean that you
agree to have it happen. Final question, who are some of
your favorite philosophers? The like Descartes, you know,
the so-called founder of modern philosophy because I like that
whole I think therefore I am thing even though he was
confused about some things. I like John Searle.
As you might have guessed from the Chinese room example, I like
David stove who is a little-known philosopher of
science from Australia, but he's like the most hilarious
philosophical writer like ridiculing, the other
philosophers of Science and so on.
So, Ago, I like Jason Brennan, of course.
Awesome. Well, the book is knowledge,
reality and value. A mostly Common Sense guide to
philosophy. Doctor humor.
Where is the best place to find that there?
Of course, will be a link to the Amazon to purchase the Amazon
book. What is a the best?
Where's the best place to find your archive of work?
Well, I have a website. I will 232 dotnet, o WL T 3
to.net, and then there's a link to my blog and there's like it
will be a link to some of my papers and links to some of my
books, you know, which the links would take you outside or take
you to Amazon. Perfect.
Those links will be in the description below.
Thank you to everyone for watching Keith and I don't try,
don't anyone in the libertarian Institute.
And thank you. Doctor humor, for being so
generous with your time. You're welcome.
Thanks for having me.