When we bump into one another, from time to
time, when we can affect each another, make each other’s lives better or worse, we’re
going to have expectations and opinions for what we think they should be doing or what
we should be doing. How do we sort that out? How do we find what’s right and wrong? When we’re reasoning or thinking about what
we ought to be doing, we can reason in terms of, if A happens, it will cause B to happen. We don’t want B to happen, so A ought not
to happen. Or it’s wrong for A to happen. This would be consequential moral reasoning. Thinking of the consequences as being wanted
or unwanted. An example of this reasoning: marijuana may
be relatively safe, but being comfortable smoking marijuana can be some sort of slippery
slope that can lead to doing drugs that are addictive and harmful. We don’t want that to happen so marijuana
ought not to happen. We also reason categorically. We don’t want A to happen. So A ought not to happen. A is wrong. An example of this reasoning: Homosexual behaviour
is unwanted, it ought not to happen. An easy demonstration of how they will conflict
is the trolley problem. Trolley going down the tracks, 5 people in
the way. They will definitely die. But you are positioned somewhere where you
can pull one of those levers like what in the movies that makes the car go onto the
other tracks. Unfortunately there’s one person over there
who will definitely die. You can’t do anything unrealistic like yell
to them. You can only interact with this lever. Is it OK to pull it making the trolley change
tracks? When asked most of us, say yes. If asked to rationalize we may call upon the
consequences, 1 person dying, is unwanted, but preferable to 5 people dying. Different situation, trolley going down tracks,
5 people in the way, they’re definitely going to die. But we’re standing next to a person on another
set of tracks, if we push them in front of the trolley, their guts and bones will surely
gum up the works and make the trolley stop before it can hit the 5. Is it OK to push them? When asked this many people don’t feel it’s
OK. The consequences are the same. With your inaction 5 people are going to die. You can “do a thing” that will make 1
person die instead. Even though our intentions and the effects
might be the same, our answers are not the same. Because the cause is different. When we imagine ourselves or imagining people
watching us, we feel that pushing someone to their death is murder and it’s bad. We don’t want it. For many of us our feelings about what the
act, are strong enough to take precedence over our feelings about the consequences of
the act. We can have difficulty contending the good
and bad and the different aspects that come with certain activities. The pain of exercise and the fitness results. The pleasure of sex and the terrors of venereal
infections like pregnancy. The entertainment of a reality TV show and
the opportunity cost. The benefit that could be gained from literally
anything else. Is it OK to use a deadly and effective but
painful biological weapon on an enemy we’re trying to kill? And who are trying to kill us? It may not be intuitive why we like or dislike
something or whether we will like or dislike something. Like the way it actually feels good giving
to or helping others especially friends. Or the way some people in some environments
enjoy being slapped, choked, tied up or demeaned. We can otherwise be wrong about which actions
will have what consequences. What we want and like can change. It can be strongly influenced by environmental
factors. And we can be taught things are right or wrong,
and then adopt those feelings without ever really thinking about it. Just seeing what someone else has, can make
us change what we think is good and bad. We often go for instant gratification, over
long term benefits. We may not know how to compare the different
experiences of different people or just within ourselves. And people are going to have different ideas
about who’s going to factor in how much. It can be hard to find an optimal place. It can be hard to define an optimal or goal
with all the different people and experiences and our ignorance. Many of us feel that this difficulty is why
we need something greater. Some sort of God or prophet to light the way
with the rules they present. Or maybe we feel that these rules would be
the definitions of good and bad and right and wrong and that our interpretations and
our experiences. Don’t matter. Maybe they’re even superficial and misleading. But what would it be about a God, or its rules
that makes them so important or so much better? Seriously Frank, Frank’s got some good ideas
about right and wrong. (to Frank) Hey Frank, tell them what you were
saying about…. oh…
(to you) He went out for falafel. That boy loves falafel. But if there are God prescribed right and
wrong behaviours, why should we care about those rules in particular? What’s the motivation? What’s being fulfilled there that’s greater
than what we want? There’s lots of Gods and religions of course. But here’s some Bible stories that might
help. God says to Abraham, “see your son over
there, I want you to kill him for me”. And Abraham says “Yeah sure ok”. Just before he makes the sacrifice. God says. “Stop. It was a test. It was all test. And you passed. Here’s what I’m gon… oh look at a sheep
over there… Get it and kill it for me. Here’s what I’m going to do for you. I’m going to bless you. You’re going to have lots of descendants. And they’re all going to be blessed. All your enemies’ cities, nations and stuff
is going to belong to your descendants one day.” Regardless of your feelings about the characters
in this story, the story has a simple moral. Do what God says and you will be rewarded. Another story, God didn’t like these towns,
he thought it was full of assholes. So he decided destroy them with a miracle. There were some people he thought were alright
though so they were given warning. “It’s not so much a make them die sort
of miracle, as it is a scorched earth sort of miracle, you don’t want to be here when
it happens. Schedules been set, it’s probably going
to happen while you’re leaving…. Just run forwards and don’t look at it. Don’t you look at it!” While running away, the wife looked at it. And because of that she was turned into a
pillar of salt. Which was a weird thing to happen, but nobody
brought it up. Again, the moral is: be like God wants, do
what God says, or bad stuff will happen or be punished. And otherwise, many religions hold ideas of
heaven and hell. Follow the rules and you will go to heaven. Oh and heaven’s a paradise. Sit back, it’s peace and relaxation for
all eternity. They’ve got a blissful garden on white fluffy
clouds. They’ve got all your ancestors if you’re
into that sort of thing. God’s there. Say here they’ve got virgins! Everybody likes virgins. Oh, maybe this says raisins. They’ve probably got both? Really, whatever you want. Don’t follow the rules and you will go to
hell. Hell is the worst. It’s got spikes and weird demons, everyone’s
a downer. Pain and suffering for all eternity. Let’s say we empathized with the gays. We think those people loving and expressing
their love like us breeders do, is good. Or at least preferable to them not doing so. And we’re unaware of any other significant
consequences. If a committed legal monogamy can, at the
very least, help foster that love, then we think they should be allowed to marry. In the real world some people are going to
be grossed out by and have a hatred for homosexuality, but for here, let’s say we all agree that
gay marriage is good. We all think that this makes things better. How might a God affect this reasoning? Let’s say this god has explicitly condemned
homosexuality. Gayness leads to hell, and possibly bad stuff
happening in the cities and countries where they reside, above the background level of
bad stuff happening. Be a normal person, and your chances of heaven
are increased. We’re still us, still looking for which
actions will lead to the best outcomes for us or those we care about. But now when we think about it, we know Hell
is bad. Very bad! We do not want hell. Thus things that lead to it, we ought not
to do, and they ought to be prohibited. And even when it’s not this explicit, when
we’re just trying to please god, live in God image, be loving and giving, it’s about
gaining the favor and avoiding the wrath of this creature that rewards and punishes, believing
an after-life is a part of that and hoping it’s not just going to be like… the end
of Cloud Atlas…. or like The Island…. or Logan’s Run. Now we can want for, the rules of a God to
be fulfilled. We can take the position that it’s not about
the consequences. These rules are what we want, because these
rules define right and wrong. But what if these incentives were switched
, for example homosexuality is still called wrong, this God still condemns it. But you will be punished with heaven and that
was the accepted reality. Would we still want to follow the so called
right rules as much? Would we still do what’s right, fulfill
what’s right so we can say, we’re right? The idea is sort of deeply confusing. Surely they know we don’t want hell, so
if they want us to do it, why are they punishing us? We’re probably not going to do what’s
right, so we can get eternal suffering. The fact that it’s labelled right doesn’t
matter to us so much. If there were no after lives, and no punishment
or rewards, there would be no argument and nothing stopping us from just going with what
we consider better and worse, what we consider right and wrong. If a God’s rules were meant to be better
for us in this life, like these rules lead to better things that we’re just too stupid
to understand. Then again, it’s just coming down to what
we value. It’s what we consider better or worse or
is leading towards better or worse, that is motivating us. Including what a God would want because a
God can create better and worse for us. The point is, what we think ought to be, follows
what we consider to be better and worse. To us, right actions are what we want or lead
to what we want, wrong actions are what we don’t want or they’re leading to what
we don’t want. Religious moral systems seem to be the most
dramatic and illustrative examples of this. They crystalize the idea. Right and wrong actions? are quite literally
meant to be leading to…, an eternity of bliss or suffering, the good life or the bad
life. Doesn’t taking what people feels to be good,
as being what is good to them, make right and wrong completely relative, flimsy, and
impossible to sort out? If there’s a person who genuinely feels
pleasure when they break other people’s legs. Hooked up to a brain scanning machine we can
see they enjoy it, they find it fun and they seem incapable of empathizing with their victims. Do we have to say, it’s good to them? Maybe. But it’s not good to us, and it gets in
the way of what we want. So we put them in crazy person prison or execute
them or try teach them when they’re young or change their brain or something. If we out power them, we’ll make them stop. But it’s not that this is what’s ultimately
good, except in a “we all agree” sort of way. There’s a conflict between what these people
want and consider good. If we all got pleasure from breaking legs,
what we would feel in our core to be good and bad, and our relationships to one another,
would be different. But I suspect these sorts of differences play
a small role in our moral conflicts. When we put aside stuff like that, it’s
not all so impossible to sort out. Heaven and hell either exist, or they don’t. Doing the marijuana can either lead to dangerous
drugs or it can’t . Smoking either helps soothe the lungs or it doesn’t. There is a reality to the way the world is. And although it can be changing, difficult
and situational, there’s the complications we talked about before, there is a reality
to what each of us like and don’t like. You know, we either enjoy getting our legs
broken or we don’t. The universe is either a certain way, or…
proof, observation and learning are useless and have always been. It’s not just often difficult, it’s impossible
to learn anything about the way the world is or what we like and dislike. There would no way for me to know whether
I would prefer to be strapped down and have angry scorpions loose on my eyeballs, or prefer
to ride a walrus to the rainbow factory. What’s the difference? Both of these people are chasing after what
they feel to be better, one of them has to be wrong about what’s actually leading towards
better. One of these people think they’re making
it better but they’re actually making it worse. It’s not a matter of the differences between
these people. It’s a matter of knowledge. And while we can be stubborn and not let new
ideas in, if we fully believed as a matter of fact whether heaven and hell exist or not,
what we’re going to think ought to be here, is going to come pretty much automatically. We may not care about other societies, other
communities, or be in a position to affect them. They are them we are us. We may even just try to kill them to take
their resources. But there’s no need to imagine that both
of these people’s visions for what ought to be are equally preferable. Assuming the non existence of after lives. Is homosexuality largely genetic or learned? It is simple or traumatizing to change? The disgust and hatred felt about homosexuality,
is that genetic or learned, is that simple or difficult to change? Should we teach kids not to tease or bully
homosexuals or anyone different? What are the effective ways of doing that? If we succeed do we lose something, are there
other consequences to trying to prevent conflicts? Which situation would be more preferable? The answers to these questions matter for
what we’re going to think we ought to be doing, and we should seek out those answers. Because unless if we know everything there
is to know, and have experienced everything there is to experience, and are correct, or
at least the very least have tried to consider all ideas without any bias. Then it’s definitely us who don’t know
what’s out there and don’t know what we’re missing. And it’s almost definitely us who think
we’re making it better when we’re actually making it worse. So if we want things to be better we should
be hunting for what this place is really like. We may not get some sort of perfect list of
better and worse. Sometimes we might want what’s best for
the group, and sometimes we’ll defend the rights of the individual even if at the expense
of the group. We may always prefer and uphold different
ideologies at different times for different reasons. But understanding it all would help inform
our decisions and help us get towards the better. Unfortunately everything we know and experience
comes down to this squishy flimsy brain. And everything we know and experience is going
to be as squishy and flimsy as this thing. All of our feelings and values, ideas and
memories, certainty and doubt. Can go away from a bump a little too hard
to the head. This episode is brought to you in part by,
Catholic brand unlubricated condoms. They’re “holy”! That is to say, “holed”. For God’s pleasure.
Great video! The topic was very enjoyable presented. Oh and are those actual references at the end? Have my subscription! Should become standard for those kind of videos.