Metaethics 6 - Moral Realism: Non-Naturalism 1

In this video, I examine moral non-naturalism, a form of moral realism. First I outline some general motivations for moral realism, then I present G.E. Moore's use of his "open-question argument" to defend non-naturalism.

[falco]

Love this channel, thank you. You fluidly and clearly articulate complex concepts, while staying humble and attentive to avoid over-simplistic reductionism.

[MrAndreaCaso]

This format usually works pretty bad: a speaker commenting on what appears on the screen, I mean, without figures nor summaries.
Strangely enough, you make it work quite well. Maybe it's the combination of topic (philosophy) and the way you explain it, that make it work.
I thoroughly enjoyed philosophy of mind too. I am looking forward to seeing other lessons, especially in philosophy of mind and ethics/metaethics.

[writerightmathnation]

I think I heard you say that ethics has no place in physics or chemistry, but I disagree with that, and I’m convinced that other educators also disagree with it. Ethics certainly plays a role in physics and chemistry research in a few ways. Firstly, researchers who are unethical in their reporting of results can lose their research permissions, second, many physicists and chemists do medicine related research and will be required to get institutional research board clearance fire certain kinds of medicine related research, and thirdly, unethical research practices cause ontological/epistemological errors in any discipline in which they occur, even when judged subjectively based upon discipline specific ethical standards.

More specifically, STEM universities are now requiring various student cohorts to take ethics classes, and I would not doubt that some universities require chemistry and physics students to take such courses. I do know faculty who teach or have taught courses called “Engineering Ethics”; in some sense, many engineering disciplines are heavily loaded with applied physics and applied chemistry.

[reginapapadopoulou]

Your video really helped me.It is detailed and easy to understand.Thank you, greetings from Greece.

[transcendentphilosophy]

I really appreciate your explanation of the "naturalistic fallacy" and the renaming into the "definitionist fallacy". The naturalistic fallacy's name always bothered me since it gets so easily confused with the "appeal to nature" fallacy.

[Max-nczn]

Moral properties do not supervene on natural properties. If non natural properties, such as intent, can influence moral properties, then two actions can have all the same natural properties yet have different moral properties.

[shumsophia]

Thank you so much for making these lecture videos! Definitely, a lifesaver and I wish you were my lecturer at university! Really appreciate your great work and I hope that more people who are keen on understanding philosophy would be able to discover your channel sooner or later!

[philosophicalmixedmedia]

Moor's distinct idea in the mind of goodness can be fleshed out through how identities organise the meaning where identities can originate from dominant institutions, they become identities only when and if social actors internalise them and construct meaning around internalisations. It is from internalisation of bestowed identities that begin as roles that organise the functions of the institution that good naturally emerges as a supervening property of that institution and becomes encoded as identities further organise the meaning through refinement of roles. This entails there will be actors who never know the good cause a person can claim to know the role but they cannot internalise that role to mean individuation and so that actor remains alienated from the group. Institutions are entities who happen to be non natural but correlate to the natural world. So another way to frame intuitionalism is through individuated internalisation of roles within institutions that form the dominate paradigm in a geopolitical locale as culture. So in that sense intuitionalism is a form of social emotional cognitivism where a person articulates the social emotional state in a conclusion marked as good or bad along a spectrum related to dominant group values that ostensibly pass onto non dominant groups as a form of top down power through codes that acquire meaning evaluation as fields of enquiry within the dominant paradigm of a society as realpolitik. Though were does 'the good' exist in this non natural realism? It does not exist out there as objects but as quantum states encoded as brain patterns that have been detected -through brain scans- in groups who hold a firm ideological belief such as conservatives verses libertarians. So this is a strong case for relativism that correlates with a form of 'the good' being an in-group phenomenology.

[Hecatonicosachoron]

This is an interesting series - will you present your bibliography at the end?

Also this is hardly relavant but 1326 + 869 = 2195 ; it is 1326 + 896 = 2222

[MaximusTCR]

It sounded like you had someone in mind when you remarked that it's possible to be attracted to someone you hate

[chenghaoli]

Hi! This channel is AWESOME! Could you share the slides used for the channel? I won't distribute them to other places.

[ryanjennings]

9:48-14:42

What distinguishes natural from non-natural properties?
Natural properties are those that figure in a mature scientific description of the world.Problems: First: It’s difficult to characterize exactly what science or a scientific description is.
I disagree, science has distinguished itself from ethics. I haven’t ever read a scientific book where it said anything about ethics or philosophy. Have you ever been in a science class and had a teacher say something about ethics? So how does either ethics or philosophy shade into science? It doesn’t. So yes, there is a definite distinction between science and ethics.Second: This makes distinction contingent on social practice. Scientists could start appealing to moral properties- EG a psychologist could explain why someone feels guilty by saying “he realized that his actions were evil.”How would a person would have realized that the actions were evil, are explainable through science. Sterols in the brain create negative feelings, such as depression, and when a person is pushed into an emotional state of distress. The Sterols in the brain come into act, and force the feeling of negativity. It isn’t a realization; it is a simple chemical reaction in the brain induced by stress.

Natural properties are those directly or indirectly observable by the senses.
Problems: First, some things could be totally undetectable, but still natural.Wrong, Photons are massless, and can still be observed. Therefore, argument against this is illogical. Because we can observe something that has no physical volume to it. The smallest non-zero mass would be the electron. Which scientists can still observe, crazy right. Damn science. Don't believe me look it up, your already on the internet.
Natural properties are those that exist in space and time.Problem: Moral properties must exist in space and time too- if I stab someone, the moral badness exists at the place and time of my action.I disagree, a human can be a psychopath and therefore possess no feeling. So what you’re saying is that morality is about your feelings, not about what is moral. Therefore, what it is that you mean is if being moral means hurting someone’s feelings by telling the truth, then you shouldn’t do it. What if that person needs to hear the truth? What if that person is addicted to drugs, and doesn’t want to hear that. Again, flawed argument.Sorry, I had to stop watching after that.

[Tschoo]

your videos are highly appreciated by me!

[violethighgarden]

Thank you so much for those videos, absolute life saver.

[rath]

The object reflects white light such that the reflected light primarily activates the red and green cones in most human eyes but is it yellow?

[manuag]

Have you read the book animal liberation by Peter Singer?

[saimbhat]

Dude, "you think about slavery" kind of appeal to emotion stuff defeats the whole purpose.

[AtheistBulldozer]

29:15 difference between is / ought gap and the fact / value distinction.

[oioi]

Why is reasonable to think that giving charity must be evaluated morally, when it is an single general abstract entity that has no contextual ground for moral analysis?