Philippa Foot - Can you call these EVIL men GOOD? Why not?

Is Evil just a matter of opinion? Moral Philosopher Philippa Foot, and one of the founders of contemporary Virtue Ethics, has a clear answer that rests upon her understanding of Natural Goodness.

Many moral philosophers think that all moral judgments are based upon personal preferences, and that objective determinations of moral good or evil do not exist. Foot disagreed with this idea. She did not believe that actions such as slavery, the Holocaust, racism or sexual assault were simply a matter of opinion - or actions that might personally make you feel uncomfortable. Foot argued that such actions are universally evil. How does she make that judgment? Watch the video to find out and learn why some human actions are evil because they do not fulfill the natural characteristics of our species.

0:00 Introduction
1:30 Biography of Phillipa Foot
2:40 Objective Moral Truth
4:39 Are Moral Truths all Subjective?
5:12 Making Judgments of Natural Goodness
6:56 Evaluations are not Merely Subjective
8:30 Judgments According to Species
10:50 Moral Judgments about Humans
13:00 Humans and Natural Virtues
14:00 Morality and Human Life
15:58 Why Evil is Objectively Wrong

Interested in Foot? Read 'Natural Goodness' for the full account of her philosophy. Also, take a look at this interview: Alex Voorhoeve, “The Grammar of Goodness: An Interview with Philippa Foot,” Harvard Review of Philosophy 11 (2003): 32–44.

If interested, this video was made with Adobe's Character Animator, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro.

#characteranimator #PhilippaFoot #Foot #philosophy #metaethics #evil #morality #good #womenphilosophy #womenphilosopher #ayer #opinion

[emmasmith]

It really is the moving train that makes this video. What a sensitive recognition of the shortened attention span that people have nowadays, and what an eloquent and aesthetic way of expressing an argument in motion! The train seems to symbolize the discussion moving along to its natural conclusion.

[eleanorfisher]

Great job Dr. Miller and Dr. Jordan! This video was very helpful 😊

[yandespar]

History has shown how dangerous it is to tie value of a human life to some "intrinsic" thing that is usually conjured up on the spot. Nazis assigned Jews and Romanis defective because they were not intrinsically "Aryan" and to what it led?
In the past, some religious groups thought human sacrifice is good because their belief was that it will bring prosperity to their community.
We can't "objectively" decide what's good and natural until we learn everything about the world and humans as species and at this point of time it will be dubious to say we know everything. Not that long ago LGBTQ people were prosecuted because people thought it wasn't natural.
Setting morality in stone is very dangerous because, actually, it's quite easy to manipulate it. Moral values are work in progress that develops and changes depending on our needs as a society

[TheRoark]

It seems arbitrary to assume human dignity without some reason to do so beyond a prescriptivist idea that it is helpful to think so. At most we can say that morality is useful, but not what should be considered moral as we can't truly get an ought from an is. So at worst we can say immoral things are "wrong" as in incorrect, but not wrong in any moral sense. While the argument is incredibly weak, the video is well produced!

[Daniel-tytf]

Wow, this video is priceless! I loved it. But it makes me so sad, because it makes me realize I am a bee without a stinger, an owl without night vision. To wit, morally defective, a moral "useless eater" to borrow a Nazi phrase. This means because i don't follow the virtues and am ethically flawed and defective, you can call the social justice warriors in to use virtue sanctioned evil to eradicate me, so that the human race can flourish without baddies like me. My name is Trumpton Donaldson, by the way. But aside from the weird sarcasm, really good video. I don't agree with Foot but this was great.

[latrim]

I dissagree. This is not objectiv because it is an opinion that humans have to be moral against all humanity. And also that all human life has value is subjective, one could belive only their own or self has value.
You could believe this only for "ones own clan" and thus abusing people not of this clan would be fine. Just like the bee can protect his bee comrads, but yet sting bees from anothet hive. Thus slavery, war, oppression, murder of others would be ok. Some could also go to say ony oneself has value, so abusing others to benefit oneself is ok.
Basically the statment made in the video is based on the statment that all humanity must work for the good of all humanity, which is just an opinion.

So I remain fast that there is no objective morality without God. When God is taken away, the individual "becomes" God and the standard for morality, and it cant be said that something is evil. Just like we can say a lion isnt evil for eating an antelope, it just is a lion, thats what they do, its in their nature. So we could say that rapists, murdrers, etc. are not evil, its human nature. We are just a bunch of atoms assembled from random chance and all we do and think is just random electric currents in our brain. So rape, murder, etc. is just electric sparks done by the randomness of the univers. Nothings evil, nothings good, because it is a random prossess from the movement of the univers. But where did this movement come from, where did everything come from? Once somebody starts pondering this, they will understand the nessecity of Gods existance, and thus that objective morality exists.

[marchess]

the proposition that "respect for human life as intrinsically valuable" is necessary for "genuine friendships" and "productive exchanges" is so obviously false, it's laughable. We know that Rome and Greece had "genuine friendships" and "productive exchanges", as well as some of the highest art and literature in human history, without meaningful "respect for human life as intrinsically valuable" . The only way to judge them as "evil" is by using the standard of revealed religion, as the Judeo-Christian tradition did, while not ignoring their virtues.