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261: 'Is' and 'Ought' and Ethics
Summary:
Summary here.
Transcript:
length: 14:30
There was a post on the board this morning based on my discussion yesterday on this argument for the existence of preferred behaviour and to some degree, universal preferred behaviour. And so, a long time poster and a very very smart fellow said “aha! I’ve got it!” and another very smart fellow said “Well wait a minute aren’t you getting an ought from an is” and for those who don’t know the conundrum of that problem very briefly, its that there is nothing in the world that says you “ought” to do something based on what “is”. So the fact that a human being needs food to live in no way commands or demands that a human being has to eat food to live. So that’s something that’s important and this is the big difference that I have with the objectivist approach to ethics. In the objectivist approach, life is the highest value and everything that serves life is good. Rationality serves life and therefore is the highest value. But unfortunately there are lots of people who don’t want to live, and lots of people who choose a value higher than life. For example, there are people who get conscripted, they could run off and live in the woods, but they don’t. They choose to wage war, and so it’s hard to understand what could be possibly meant by that idea that “life is the highest value”. To those people, there are people who kill themselves, there are people who voluntarily put themselves in risky situations. There are people who take large amounts of drugs and die from that, there are anorexics, there are bulimics, and there are people who believe in sexually risky behaviour, there’s just millions. So there’s lots of people who treat their life as the highest value so to me, its logically impossible to say that life is the highest value.
However, my approach to solving this problem is that, my argument is not that preferred behaviour absolutely and inevitably exists independently of human thoughts, human consciousness, and human choice. There is no objective existence of universally preferred human behaviour, but there is endless evidence for universally preferred human behaviour. So that’s of course how we get a lot of truth in life, is through inference, through evidence and not through directly looking at gravity and knowing that my butt is sitting in my nice cushy car seat and I’m not about to float off. We can’t directly look at something and say “ahh gravity waves”, but we know that it exists because of its effect. That is something that is sort of the way that I’m saying we don’t look at ethical rules directly and look at atoms of ethical rules. There aren’t atoms of gravity, so and isn’t it nice for me to use the scientific method that isn’t about rocks falling? Isn’t that lovely? But there is no atom of morality or universally preferred behaviour, but we know that UPB exists because just about everyone is alive. In the same way that we know man is a rational animal because people are alive and use reason to a much larger degree than any other species and not always, actually rarely to a perfect degree. Now there are of course people who are completely irrational, people who are deranged, people who are insane and so on. But that doesn’t particularly matter, because we mentioned before, its biological accuracy that we need for ethics, not the ethics of physics, because of free will, environment, mutation and mental illness. So if you destroy your brain with PCPs then you are not somebody who can be rational anymore, but that doesn’t mean that man is not a rational animal. You could be born without a frontal lobe and have the intelligence of a chimp, but that does not mean man is an irrational animal, it just means that biology is messy and not as tidy as physics. But it doesn’t mean that general categories don’t exist or don’t work. So I’m not saying that there is an “ought” that is automatically derived from an “is”. Human beings desire to live is optional, our desire to live is fairly programmed and takes a lot of harm to become self destructive. But our desire to live is kind of innate to us and what I am saying though is that everyone that you’re arguing with has unconditionally accepted UPB, even if we just say that UPB is getting out of bed in the morning and having something to eat and then having something to drink. So there’s just no conceivable way that any human being could possibly, remotely argue that UPB, well you could just start with preferred behaviour but of course it is universal because our need for oxygen is not up to us. It’s up to good ol’ mother nature, so there’s no conceivable way that a human being could argue against preferred behaviour. Because by being alive and arguing with you, they are accepting preferred behaviour. Now, by arguing with you they are also saying that there is universally preferred behaviour or at least preferred behaviour that exists independently of your consciousness. This is also pretty important, so somebody says to you “oh there’s no such thing as morality”, the amount of packaged dealing as Rand used to call it, that is embedded into that concept is really quite astounding. Because they’re saying that a standard of truth exists independently of your consciousness and hopefully you would think independently of their consciousness too, because otherwise what they’d be saying is “You should believe what I believe for no reason. You should just change your mind and believe what I believe because I’m saying”. Well nobody says that, what they’re saying is “there’s no such thing as universal morality” and what they’re doing by that, is they’re saying that objectively, there is no such thing as universal morality. Or that there is no such thing as ethics, fine. But they’re saying that there’s a standard of truth that exists independently of consciousness, which should be pursued. That you should stop believing in ethics, but if there’s a standard of truth that exists independently of consciousness, that is preferred, then its Universal Preferred Behaviour! So there’s no logical possible conceivable way that any human being alive who opens his/her mouth to flap it at you that you should be a nihilist or that UPB does not exist. There is no way that a human being can open his mouth and tell you that, without coating himself in the biggest contradiction imaginable. And this is true of so much of the debates we’re having. So you know, as I mentioned in the article on Lew Rockwell yesterday, called “Life Without a Government, its closer than you think” it’s absolutely the same as a panting man telling you that human beings do not require oxygen. It’s like “but you’re panting!”. It’s just funny, I mean it is its one of these like “you’re kidding right?”. If you’re telling me that morality is completely subjective, because obviously I believe morality is objective and universal, so the problem exists that if you’re telling me morality is not objective and universal then you’re not saying it subjective. Because you’re saying that my subjective belief that it IS universal, is incorrect! So it’s kind of like they’re not being serious, they’re kind of joking. There’s no way you could ever take that seriously in any way shape or form! It’s like somebody saying to you that money has no value whatsoever, and in the same breath asking you to lend $5000 to them, because they have to pay rent. I mean the level of disconnect is just jaw-dropping, really, it’s just jaw dropping. The fact that nobody notices this kind of stuff is just completely obvious, it’s just propaganda, it’s just because we’re all raised with this complete naughty ridiculous mess of thought that is baffling and baffles everybody and gets us to not notice the most obvious and ridiculous contradictions and to get all confused by them. And I was confused by them for like 20 years too, so it’s just that once you get it, it’s the most obvious thing in the world. So just back to this question of “ought” from an “is”, yeah absolutely you cannot do this, and there is nothing in material reality that forces anyone to do anything. Every choice has consequences; I don’t have to eat right? That’s my choice, but if I don’t eat, I can’t choose to live. That’s not my choice. So there are things which we can choose, and things we cannot choose. We can choose our options and our behaviour, but we cannot choose the consequences of that behaviour. I can’t choose to cut my arm off and be a great juggler or a knitter. I can’t choose to cut my arm off and then want to go and applaud my favorite musical act. So there is no ought from an is, but there always iron consequences, so there is no violation of the rule that you can’t derive an ought from an is, but there is no capacity that anyone open their mouth to argue against UPB without displaying UPB. They’re breathing! Right, if they’re breathing, they’re displaying UPB. There’s simply no way around this issue. I mean if they’re taking in a breath to talk to you, to change your mind about UPB, then they’re breathing in which everybody prefers to do if they want to talk. There’s just no way in God’s green acre, that any human being can take a breath in, activate their vocal chords, phrase the words so that they come out “There is no such thing as ethics”, rather than “soueorosifd” or something equally coherent. So they’re preferring to breath, they’re preferring to talk, they’re preferring to shape their sentence into something grammatically correct and understandable and so how could they conceivably say that there’s no such thing as UPB, when they’ve just displayed about a thousand instances of preferred behaviour that is universal. They don’t just try and make up their own language, with their own hand slaps and signals and belly slaps that communicate what they’re saying. They’re using language, which is to a biological degree, universal. So if they say there’s no such thing as ethics, you don’t interpret that as “Go bring cold to Newcastle”. So that’s just something to understand and appreciate that anybody who says “ethics don’t exist” is kind of joking, it’s like a test right, they’re yelling at you that human beings have no capacity to process sound. OR they’re telling you that language is incomprehensible USING language, it’s just not serious. Since I’ve got this and spoken with people I can’t take this as a serious proposition, its sleight of hand, its propaganda. They’re asking you to disbelieve everything that is totally obvious in the interaction and the last thing, it’s exactly like somebody comes up to you and says “I don’t exist; I need you to believe that I don’t exist”. Well if you’re noticing them talking, then obviously they exist. So I just think that’s important to understand, that people aren’t really being serious when they’re arguing against ethics. It’s just incomprehensible, so anyway I’ve gotta find my conference. I hope you’re doing well, please come by and donate I’d appreciate that as well. www.freedomainradio.com just click on the donate button, and thanks so much for listening.
Summary here.
Transcript:
length: 14:30
There was a post on the board this morning based on my discussion yesterday on this argument for the existence of preferred behaviour and to some degree, universal preferred behaviour. And so, a long time poster and a very very smart fellow said “aha! I’ve got it!” and another very smart fellow said “Well wait a minute aren’t you getting an ought from an is” and for those who don’t know the conundrum of that problem very briefly, its that there is nothing in the world that says you “ought” to do something based on what “is”. So the fact that a human being needs food to live in no way commands or demands that a human being has to eat food to live. So that’s something that’s important and this is the big difference that I have with the objectivist approach to ethics. In the objectivist approach, life is the highest value and everything that serves life is good. Rationality serves life and therefore is the highest value. But unfortunately there are lots of people who don’t want to live, and lots of people who choose a value higher than life. For example, there are people who get conscripted, they could run off and live in the woods, but they don’t. They choose to wage war, and so it’s hard to understand what could be possibly meant by that idea that “life is the highest value”. To those people, there are people who kill themselves, there are people who voluntarily put themselves in risky situations. There are people who take large amounts of drugs and die from that, there are anorexics, there are bulimics, and there are people who believe in sexually risky behaviour, there’s just millions. So there’s lots of people who treat their life as the highest value so to me, its logically impossible to say that life is the highest value.
However, my approach to solving this problem is that, my argument is not that preferred behaviour absolutely and inevitably exists independently of human thoughts, human consciousness, and human choice. There is no objective existence of universally preferred human behaviour, but there is endless evidence for universally preferred human behaviour. So that’s of course how we get a lot of truth in life, is through inference, through evidence and not through directly looking at gravity and knowing that my butt is sitting in my nice cushy car seat and I’m not about to float off. We can’t directly look at something and say “ahh gravity waves”, but we know that it exists because of its effect. That is something that is sort of the way that I’m saying we don’t look at ethical rules directly and look at atoms of ethical rules. There aren’t atoms of gravity, so and isn’t it nice for me to use the scientific method that isn’t about rocks falling? Isn’t that lovely? But there is no atom of morality or universally preferred behaviour, but we know that UPB exists because just about everyone is alive. In the same way that we know man is a rational animal because people are alive and use reason to a much larger degree than any other species and not always, actually rarely to a perfect degree. Now there are of course people who are completely irrational, people who are deranged, people who are insane and so on. But that doesn’t particularly matter, because we mentioned before, its biological accuracy that we need for ethics, not the ethics of physics, because of free will, environment, mutation and mental illness. So if you destroy your brain with PCPs then you are not somebody who can be rational anymore, but that doesn’t mean that man is not a rational animal. You could be born without a frontal lobe and have the intelligence of a chimp, but that does not mean man is an irrational animal, it just means that biology is messy and not as tidy as physics. But it doesn’t mean that general categories don’t exist or don’t work. So I’m not saying that there is an “ought” that is automatically derived from an “is”. Human beings desire to live is optional, our desire to live is fairly programmed and takes a lot of harm to become self destructive. But our desire to live is kind of innate to us and what I am saying though is that everyone that you’re arguing with has unconditionally accepted UPB, even if we just say that UPB is getting out of bed in the morning and having something to eat and then having something to drink. So there’s just no conceivable way that any human being could possibly, remotely argue that UPB, well you could just start with preferred behaviour but of course it is universal because our need for oxygen is not up to us. It’s up to good ol’ mother nature, so there’s no conceivable way that a human being could argue against preferred behaviour. Because by being alive and arguing with you, they are accepting preferred behaviour. Now, by arguing with you they are also saying that there is universally preferred behaviour or at least preferred behaviour that exists independently of your consciousness. This is also pretty important, so somebody says to you “oh there’s no such thing as morality”, the amount of packaged dealing as Rand used to call it, that is embedded into that concept is really quite astounding. Because they’re saying that a standard of truth exists independently of your consciousness and hopefully you would think independently of their consciousness too, because otherwise what they’d be saying is “You should believe what I believe for no reason. You should just change your mind and believe what I believe because I’m saying”. Well nobody says that, what they’re saying is “there’s no such thing as universal morality” and what they’re doing by that, is they’re saying that objectively, there is no such thing as universal morality. Or that there is no such thing as ethics, fine. But they’re saying that there’s a standard of truth that exists independently of consciousness, which should be pursued. That you should stop believing in ethics, but if there’s a standard of truth that exists independently of consciousness, that is preferred, then its Universal Preferred Behaviour! So there’s no logical possible conceivable way that any human being alive who opens his/her mouth to flap it at you that you should be a nihilist or that UPB does not exist. There is no way that a human being can open his mouth and tell you that, without coating himself in the biggest contradiction imaginable. And this is true of so much of the debates we’re having. So you know, as I mentioned in the article on Lew Rockwell yesterday, called “Life Without a Government, its closer than you think” it’s absolutely the same as a panting man telling you that human beings do not require oxygen. It’s like “but you’re panting!”. It’s just funny, I mean it is its one of these like “you’re kidding right?”. If you’re telling me that morality is completely subjective, because obviously I believe morality is objective and universal, so the problem exists that if you’re telling me morality is not objective and universal then you’re not saying it subjective. Because you’re saying that my subjective belief that it IS universal, is incorrect! So it’s kind of like they’re not being serious, they’re kind of joking. There’s no way you could ever take that seriously in any way shape or form! It’s like somebody saying to you that money has no value whatsoever, and in the same breath asking you to lend $5000 to them, because they have to pay rent. I mean the level of disconnect is just jaw-dropping, really, it’s just jaw dropping. The fact that nobody notices this kind of stuff is just completely obvious, it’s just propaganda, it’s just because we’re all raised with this complete naughty ridiculous mess of thought that is baffling and baffles everybody and gets us to not notice the most obvious and ridiculous contradictions and to get all confused by them. And I was confused by them for like 20 years too, so it’s just that once you get it, it’s the most obvious thing in the world. So just back to this question of “ought” from an “is”, yeah absolutely you cannot do this, and there is nothing in material reality that forces anyone to do anything. Every choice has consequences; I don’t have to eat right? That’s my choice, but if I don’t eat, I can’t choose to live. That’s not my choice. So there are things which we can choose, and things we cannot choose. We can choose our options and our behaviour, but we cannot choose the consequences of that behaviour. I can’t choose to cut my arm off and be a great juggler or a knitter. I can’t choose to cut my arm off and then want to go and applaud my favorite musical act. So there is no ought from an is, but there always iron consequences, so there is no violation of the rule that you can’t derive an ought from an is, but there is no capacity that anyone open their mouth to argue against UPB without displaying UPB. They’re breathing! Right, if they’re breathing, they’re displaying UPB. There’s simply no way around this issue. I mean if they’re taking in a breath to talk to you, to change your mind about UPB, then they’re breathing in which everybody prefers to do if they want to talk. There’s just no way in God’s green acre, that any human being can take a breath in, activate their vocal chords, phrase the words so that they come out “There is no such thing as ethics”, rather than “soueorosifd” or something equally coherent. So they’re preferring to breath, they’re preferring to talk, they’re preferring to shape their sentence into something grammatically correct and understandable and so how could they conceivably say that there’s no such thing as UPB, when they’ve just displayed about a thousand instances of preferred behaviour that is universal. They don’t just try and make up their own language, with their own hand slaps and signals and belly slaps that communicate what they’re saying. They’re using language, which is to a biological degree, universal. So if they say there’s no such thing as ethics, you don’t interpret that as “Go bring cold to Newcastle”. So that’s just something to understand and appreciate that anybody who says “ethics don’t exist” is kind of joking, it’s like a test right, they’re yelling at you that human beings have no capacity to process sound. OR they’re telling you that language is incomprehensible USING language, it’s just not serious. Since I’ve got this and spoken with people I can’t take this as a serious proposition, its sleight of hand, its propaganda. They’re asking you to disbelieve everything that is totally obvious in the interaction and the last thing, it’s exactly like somebody comes up to you and says “I don’t exist; I need you to believe that I don’t exist”. Well if you’re noticing them talking, then obviously they exist. So I just think that’s important to understand, that people aren’t really being serious when they’re arguing against ethics. It’s just incomprehensible, so anyway I’ve gotta find my conference. I hope you’re doing well, please come by and donate I’d appreciate that as well. www.freedomainradio.com just click on the donate button, and thanks so much for listening.
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