Who Should Superman Save? | Philosophy Tube ft. NerdSync

I love Superman one of my favorite heroes or at least I love the idea of Superman some of the movies not so much but one of the reasons I love him so much is that you get to project and imagine yourself with Superman's powers and think ah if I was Superman what would I do or what should I do one of the things that always bugged me about Superman right is Superman has his secret identity Clark Kent he works at the Daily Planet when he's at the Daily Planet couldn't he be out saving people I mean maybe he Nick's out occasionally on his lunch break or whatever but he spends enough time there at least to hold down a pretty serious job and pay taxes and have an apartment in Metropolis and all the rest of the things they adults do so isn't that all time that he could be spending saving people Superman isn't like other heroes he doesn't need to pay rent or eat and sleep or at least not as much as other heroes do spider-man can't be spider-man all the time because he's just not powerful enough but Superman could drop the Clark Kent force owner live out of the fortress of solitude and be Superman 24/7 although one of my old flatmates once pointed out that spider-man could be spider-man a lot more of the time if you've got a patreon page and the citizens of New York crowdfunded in but anyway you get what I'm saying all their people dying preventively because Superman is spending time as Clark Kent the idea that we could do more and that we should do more was famously discussed by Peter Singer in his essay famine affluence and morality which you can find a free link to in the description singer tries to be uncontroversial he assumes that people dying from poverty through lack of food water shelter medical care whatever is bad and he says that if we have the power to prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance then we should prevent it Superman could prevent a lot of bad stuff from happening without really sacrificing much of anything so it looks like singer would say that he should keep being Superman until he reaches the point of marginal utility that's the point at which if he were to give any more it would decrease his own welfare more than he would help anybody else and presumably if you Superman the point of marginal utility is a long way off if it exists at all singers original point isn't about Superman obviously singer was saying that we need to do more to help people particularly with regards to global poverty maybe one replying to this would be that Superman is supposed to be an example to humanity right he's supposed to show us the way so that we can be like him not just do everything for us presumably one day Superman isn't going to be around anymore and when that day comes we will all be better off if we've learned to be like him then we would if he just saved everybody he could so maybe Superman is less concerned with performing the act that will minimize bad consequences and more concerned with following the rule that in the long run will minimize bad consequences and that rule is something like be an example to humanity maybe he's not an act utilitarian maybe he's a rule utilitarian or maybe he isn't utilitarian at all remember before singer said that if we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance then we should although he tries to be uncontroversial about that it's actually pretty freakin controversial singer believes in positive duties of assistance in a nutshell that means that if someone is in trouble and you can save them all other things being equal you should the classic example is a child drowning in a pond the pond is really shallow you can walk in and save them easily and you should save them but some people only believe in negative duties that means that you don't have to help anybody all you have to do is not harm them as long as you didn't push that child into the pond it is perfectly morally acceptable for you to walk past and let them die people who only believe in negative duties are called moral libertarians not to be confused with political libertarians although there might be some overlap libertarianism is unfortunately one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in philosophy and has a million different technical uses a little bit like relativism or nihilism maybe Superman is a moral libertarian he doesn't believe he owes anybody anything if he wants to go out and save people then yeah that's very nice of him but equally if he wants to spend time as Clark Kent and let those people die then that is totally fine maybe being Superman is super arrow gay Tory it's good if you do it but it's not bad if you don't I've got so many more questions about Superman for the record I know that the answer to a lot of these will be well because it's a story and if he wasn't Clark and some of the time then it would just be really boring I know that it's a narrative and some things are there for the fun but does Superman get involved in wars and if so on which side or is he like the Red Cross does he help everybody does Superman get involved in social justice movements presumably he could do a lot of good there if Superman endorses your position then more people are going to get behind it surely on a direct action level does he defend protestors against police brutality and on a bigger scale does he speak out against systemic injustice is like unfair economic policies racism transphobia ableism sexism homophobia or what have you hmm if only there was a comic book expert that I could turn to who could help me with all of these questions look no further Allie what's going on everyone i'm scott from nerdsync and Superman is a fascinating character to explore with over 75 years of history behind the man of steel his adventures have tackle just about everything there is when it comes to war for example Superman has in fact gotten involved before there's quite a famous story where Superman ends World War two in literally two pages he heads over to Germany where he picks up Hitler does the same thing for Stalin and Moscow and delivers them both to the League of Nations World Court for trial and this was before the attack on Pearl Harbor so the United States hadn't even entered the war yet that didn't stop Superman from taking the matters into his own hands and ending the war as quickly as possible but I grant you that this story wasn't actually in a comic but rather a random issue of some magazine when it came to the actual comics DC wanted their characters to stay out of the war for the most part they designed covers that screamed propaganda but the stories inside rarely ever dealt with the war they even tried to explain why Superman wasn't getting involved by having Clark Kent be drafted only to fail the eye exam because his x-ray vision was acting up so he remained in Metropolis when it comes to social justice issues this is where the old comics shine Superman was created to be a champion of the oppressed he was constantly taking down corrupt businessmen and politicians and helping the underprivileged in his first year he exposed horrible four inmates in prisons put an end to abusive husbands stood up for the wrongly convicted and even improved the housing conditions in the slums of Metropolis this type of Superman is something that the writers at DC have tried to bring back in recent years in a current story he even stood off against the police trying to break up a peaceful assembly he was depowered at the time so the cops took the opportunity to aggressively attack him simply because they didn't like his presence in their City the main question of why Superman isn't Superman all the time is a big one in fact it actually plays a crucial role in how Clark Kent manages to keep his secret identity despite the bulk of his disguise consisting simply of a pair of glasses you see we as an audience know that Superman has a secret identity but why would the people of Metropolis believe that until recently when his double life as Clark Kent was exposed spoilers metropolis would have no reason to believe that Superman isn't Superman all the time he doesn't wear a mask like Batman or flash so it appears that he has nothing to hide Plus why would he ever want to pretend to be human he's Superman it seems only natural that he should be out saving people and making the world a better place 24/7 because he can perhaps that thought process is what keeps his double life a secret but I think the main reason why Superman insists on keeping his life as Clark Kent is because it grounds him it grants him a human perspective that keeps him in check if he ever became a god full time and lost touch with what it means to be human he might as well be someone like Zod all the power of a Kryptonian none of the humanity coincidentally that's one of the reasons why Lex Luthor doesn't trust Superman he doesn't believe that someone that powerful would have humanity's best interest at heart when he could do whatever he wants there's not a whole lot that we could do to stop him the other reason why Lex hates Superman is because he was responsible for the accident that made Lex lose all of his hair your super breath destroyed my lab and blew the gas fumes at me causing my hair to fall out so Wow Superman fought against unpleasant prison conditions well what a cool guy I'm not really sure that Peter Singer would be persuaded by that reply though I think he would say that what can't ground Superman's humanities so he lets people die and that means he cares more still seems like he could be doing more to approach to the point of marginal utility what do you guys think who should Superman say and his singer right that he should be doing more thanks again to scott from nerdsync for this collaboration it's been really fun working with you buddy I did a video with him over on his channel on multiple universes so go and check that out you can either click on my face now or follow the link in the description and go and see it and for more philosophical videos from me every Friday please do subscribe Jesse Austin one of my top patrons on patreon earned a reward by sponsoring the show he got to ask me any question and I would answer it here and he asked me why does the gamblers fallacy not work on religion it said that the gambler would believe in God because if God exists then he goes to heaven and if he doesn't he loses nothing I think you've actually conflated two different things there I think you've conflicted the gamblers fallacy which is actually something else with Pascal's wager Pascal's wager is the idea that you should believe in God because if you're right you go to heaven and if you're wrong then you don't lose anything a lot of problems with Pascal's wager but the most obvious one is that it's reversible you can make it work for a hypothetical god that punishes believers and rewards non-believers and says that what if that God exists then you should not believe last time we asked whether prisoners should be able to vote so let's see what you had to say a lot of people saying that prisoners shouldn't be allowed to vote both here and on reddit just ended up restating the assumption that they shouldn't and didn't really explain why or just said that that the way things are now and didn't justify but that's the way things should be a few people try to fall back on social contract theory and said that if you break the social contract by breaking the wall then you shouldn't be allowed to vote but again they didn't really explain why not being allowed to vote is one of the punishments that comes with breaking a social contract and in addition you would have to defend social contract theory and show that the social contract match stop with the law and a lot of forces would come after you for doing that and some people said that prisoners have a vested interest when they're in prison and therefore politicians could pander to them but even if you could show that that was true lots of people have vested interests and are still allowed to vote I mean look at Britain now look at the British press at the moment that British crash has a vested interest in keeping more economically right-wing parties in power and yet the members of the British press are still very much allowed to vote and allowed a lot of say over politics actually also and one person on reddit said that if you break the law you forfeit your tights which I'm guessing that was barley a typo but may also be technically true Rowley axes said that only people who pay taxes should be allowed to vote and Wow that is that is quite a quite a barrier to put around voting that's gonna rule out a lot of people it's gonna rule out not just prisoners but everybody who doesn't make enough money to be taxed which is a substantial portion of the population or would it be income tax that would be the decider or would it be any tax because in Britain when we buy things like cigarettes or alcohol or clothing or anything really we have to pay tax on that it's called v80 value-added tax so not really sure how you would decide which taxes count and which don't and also I think that idea rests on the assumption that the government is just a body that distributes tax money I think that might be a bit too simplistic I think the government is arguably more than that selim online and a few others asked how taking the vote away from all prisoners is arbitrary well if you are a prisoner and you have in your view have your vote taken away you're only going to be affected by that if you happen to be in prison when an election is going on and that means that when you commit your crime will affect the severity of your punishment not who you rolled a severely wronged them or or any of the or any any of the factors we normally consider relevant to punishing somebody that aspect of your punishment is determined by something as chances when you happen to commit it and that means that some prisoners will get more severe punishments or the things being equal than others the people said that offenders will be in prison longer and will therefore be statistically more likely to be hit by the boat restrictions but do we want that kind of chance built into the system it is it fair but some prisoners who commit the same crimes when all of the things are equal get worse punishments than others is that a fair thing to systemically building to a justice system loon 442 so that if prisoners are allowed to vote then they will vote for things that make it easier to commit crimes like shorter prison sentences or a lack of legislation and so on but actually there's no evidence to support that are there as I said in the video last time look at the Republic of Ireland or Canada where prisons have been allowed to vote that hasn't happened shelly f said that prisoners not being allowed to vote is a deterrent but again as I said in the video last time there's no evidence to suggest that it's an effective deterrent so in that case why keep it Bob's a ball and a few others suggested that only certain criminals should have efforts taken away for certain crimes like if you commit election fraud or you're found to be corrupt then you have your vote taken away and at first glance I can see how that seems appropriate I go you put an election forward so you can't vote anymore and that seems to match but having thought about it what what is the link between somebody committing that sort of crime and disenfranchisement and how will that link not be covered by some of the arguments we addressed last time I mean I admit that it it looks appealing at first glance but it seems like a lot of the arguments we talked about last time would still apply even in those cases max Schneider said that the two philosophers I pitted against each other last time seem to have quite different starting assumptions Clegg who thinks the prisoners shouldn't be allowed to vote seems to think that voting is something you have to earn and therefore that you can fail to earn that whereas Eastern who thinks prisoners should be given the vote seems to assume that voting is a right that all citizens have and I think you've really illuminated something important about the discussion there there is a talk to be had about what rights are and who has and who's allowed to poke at how that entitlement works and the result of that discussion will certainly affect the prisoners voting question so yeah I think that's actually a really good point that's all the time we've got this week thank you very much for watching do go and check out the other side of this collaboration over on nerdsync and I will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 79,100

Rating: 4.9469209 out of 5

Keywords: Superman (Comic Book Character), Ethics (Quotation Subject), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Morality (Quotation Subject), Peter Singer (Author), Man Of Steel (Award-Winning Work), Batman Vs Superman, Comic Book (Comic Book Genre), Comics (Comic Book Genre)

Id: ujZlpciY_cI

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/ultronthedestroyer]

The person in the best position to determine the marginal utility of saving one more person and not being Clark Kent is Clark Kent. Let him be, man. You don't know what psychological toll being Superman takes on him.

[u/[deleted]]

Turned it off after he said he didn't like Man of Steel.