Just gotta drop an appreciative comment after finishing this entire playlist. I'm an engineer by trade, but a philosopher as a hobby. I've spent a lot of time learning informally before this, but you have done much to supplement that. I have learned a lot here, and it's due to your excellent presentation.

There is another way of stating Occam's Razor, which undermines Shafer-Landau's argument that applying Occam's Razor to normative statements is self-refuting: that "The simplest explanation is the most likely to be true," rather than, "The simplest explanation is the one we ought to believe." Stating Occam's Razor this way puts it into the descriptive rather than the normative domain, so Occam's Razor can rule out normative facts without being self-refuting. Of course, the very ideas of truth and falsehood probably still commit you to a kind of epistemic normativity, so applying Occam's Razor to the normative domain may still be self-defeating, just in a less direct way.

@serversurfer6169

Жыл бұрын

> Of course, the very ideas of truth and falsehood probably still commit you to a kind of epistemic normativity, so applying Occam's Razor to the normative domain may still be self-defeating, just in a less direct way. Seems like Occam would say that even if we establish epistemic and prudential normativity, we shouldn't assume moral normativity. I don't see why normative claims should only be considered categorically. 🤔

@AndrewBlucher

Жыл бұрын

​@@serversurfer6169 His name was William

@maximefilion8793

11 ай бұрын

It's a good argument, but I think changing the words only makes it seem like it's a descriptive fact. "...most likely to be true" is in itself an epistemic fact, because it says "You SHOULD believe this, according to rationality" and therefore Occam's Razor is still an epistemic fact.

@technokicksyourass

8 ай бұрын

Actually, there is a mathematical description of Occam's Razor which was developed by Solomanoff in 1970. "The shortest computer program I can write that describes the data is most likely to generalize to all cases". The reason Occam's Razor works, is because complex theorys may describe a specific case very well, but then break down when applied to cases that the creator did not see... whereas simple rules are more likely to generalize, as they can't "overfit". Darwin's theory of evolution for example, generalizes really well because it's a simple theory that's can be applied to a lot of cases. I believe there are objective moral rules that can be found quite easily using Occam's Razor, sadly moral philosophy has yet to adopt mathematics as a pre-requisite,. Hopefully AI research will resolve this in the coming years, and we will see a revival in moral philosphy and moral objectivism. The world is in sore need of it!

Those are such interesting videos, I have discovered this channel yesterday looking for a nice definition of Occam Razor, and now I become philosophy enjoyer. Happy to be here and learn stuff.

@jeffreykaplan1

3 жыл бұрын

Glad you are liking the videos! I have arranged them into courses on the playlists page of my youtube channel.

I think Shaeffer-Landau makes a mistake in all 3 formulations of this argument: Professor Kaplan covered the first argument's weakness very well, but Shaeffer-Landau's second and third arguments also suffer from several errors. Both arguments conclude the same way: Occam's razor cannot be used on normative facts. The first error Shaeffer-Landau makes is this: whether or not this conclusion is correct, it is irrelevant, because the claim of moral objectivity ISN'T normative, it's descriptive. Specific moral claims are normative, to be sure. So the claim "One shouldn't commit murder" is absolutely a normative claim. But the claim of the moral objectivist is that "There exist some at least some objective moral facts." His claim is about EXISTENCE. Some things exist. What things? Objective moral facts. Those facts are normative themselves, but the fact of their EXISTENCE isn't normative. Moral Objectivists don't claim that OMF's SHOULD exist... they claim that they DO exist. That is a descriptive claim, not a normative one, so it doesn't matter if Occam's razor doesn't apply to normative facts, because the moral objectivist didn't make one. In fact, even our normative claim of "you shouldn't murder" becomes a descriptive claim when you consider it the way a moral objectist would frame it: "There exists an objective law of morality which states 'one shouldn't murder'." A second error, or weakness of both argument 2 and 3. Shaeffer-Landau claims that Occam's razor doesn't apply to Normative facts, by showing (if you accept his argument) that Occam's razor doesn't apply to EPISTEMIC normative facts. But then he claims that this shows a problem with applying Occam's razor to normative facts IN GENERAL. But he never showed that there is a problem between Occam's razor prudential or moral normativity. Or at least Mr. Kaplan in the video never made mention of any argument to that effect. Whether you believe S.- L. is correct or not about the problem with epistemic normativity, you shouldn't necessarily believe the problem extends to the other forms of normativity since that argument was never made.

@serversurfer6169

Жыл бұрын

I'd are solid attacks. I'd be interested in seeing Professor Kaplan's response. ✊

@ejb6822

Жыл бұрын

well his mistake is that he doesn't get occam's razor. in a set of competing hypotheses, all of them contain the same number of entities. but he doesn't know this or would understand, because he's not a logician.

I thought it was really funny when you said that birds are real. Good one!

@BrutalSnuggles

Жыл бұрын

I mean even if they were real, how could they fly if gravity exists?! Flat earth confirmed

Good explanation. 1. The categories like objects are just useful ways to describe whatever the ding-an-sich does, but they are descriptive and not prescriptive. We have good pragmatic reasons for compressing and systematizing our experience in ways that include objects and their relations, but objective prescriptive moral rules are extra in the sense that we need a subjective description of the world (including objects, feelings, whatever) AND THEN also objective moral rules. Nvm you already mentioned this, still gonna leave my response up. 2. Nothing wrong (in the sense that it is desirable for me and we have reasons for sharing this desirability intersubjectively) with shaving of all objective normative rules. Just explain why we share certain tendencies intersubjectively, you don't need objectivity for this. 3. Occams razor is just a useful rule we came up with to get coherent mental models with good predictive power (which we find desirable). You don't need to state it as an objective normative rule.

I always thought that Occam's Razor was more a heuristic tool that provides a useful, perhaps reconnaissance, method of analysis than a stand alone law. I'm finding these lectures most interesting.

This series was wonderful. Thank you.

this was a wonderful course :D i'm recommending it to all of my friends! Thank you so much for these knowledge, and for making thus world a bit wiser ;)

Thank you for these lectures! This was a great class and I hope to take more classes from you in the future. :)

@jeffreykaplan1

3 жыл бұрын

You're welcome! check out the playlists section of my KZread channel. I have organized the videos into classes, if you haven't seen them all yet.

@larsentranslation6393

5 ай бұрын

@@jeffreykaplan1 Thank you, watched the entire thing. It would be great with a video giving an overview of where Ethics stands today. Secondly, I hope you will make more videos on the language playlist!

I did it, the entire playlist. Thank you so much for your explanations, it felt like I was back at high school doing philosophy, but we never did the ethical course like this (in comparison it was barely about defining ethics and we didn't have time for anything else). I'm not a philosopher by formation but really interested. I've learned many valuable models of thoughts. Still a little disappointed there's no definitive answer, but based on your provided information seems to me objective morality is undefeated, we just don't know the ultimate, best theory of objective morality.

We can just state "the simplest explanation is true", and to skip that "should believe" part that is the problem.

I was watching your video on terminology and wondered if Occam’s Razor would eliminate moral facts and lookin here! A video about it

There are a few ways to describe Occams Razor. As a normative statement: We ought to believe the explanation that posits the fewest entities. As a descriptive statement: The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions Is the one most likely to be true. This Is the version that shows up when typing "Occam's Razor" into google's search bar. Keep It Simple Stupid Aristotle said this: "We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [other things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses." To quote Isaac Newton: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes." and "Hypotheses non FIngo" As a Shitpost: Williams Occam was a monk in the medieval period. A Franciscan Friar, specifically. Occam did not invent the idea of what we now call as "Occam's razor". Franciscan Monks usually shaved their heads in a particular pattern. There is a stained glass portrait of him, and while it is hard to say whether the pop of his head is shaved, his face certainly is clean shaven. Razors are a common implement to shave with, though a sloppier shave may be performed using any other implement brought to a fine enough edge. Franciscan monks probably did not have access to laser hair removal technology. Taking the above premises into account, There is a high probability that there is or was a razor that Occam used to shave his head and/ or face. This 'sacred relic' could be called, Occam's Razor.

@carlpeterson8182

Жыл бұрын

But there is an implied normative statement that you should believe what is true. But I do not know if OR is correct anyways.

@MsJavaWolf

Жыл бұрын

@@carlpeterson8182 You can say, that someone should believe what is true, but the sceptic won't assert that and he doesn't need that assertion to explain anything in the physical world.

@carlpeterson8182

Жыл бұрын

@@MsJavaWolf He does not have to believe that one should believe what is true in order to explain things in the physical world? I do not think that is correct. IF you do not hold that people should be truthful then science completely breaks down. That seems an important tenant to a philosophy of science. If any scientist can lie and that is okay then how can you believe in any scientific work that you do not replicate 100% yourself? The people who did the study could have falsified their data and those reviewing the study could be lying also. But in the real world we have to trust that if a scientist lies then other scientists will catch him and display his/her lies. If we cannot trust the reviewers then we cannot trust much of science because no one can repeat all experiments. WE have to trust in some people or science is doomed as a way of knowledge.

Great video! Perhaps I could suggest a video on Elijah Jordan’s Forms of Individuality

The argument against occoms razor from epistemic normative claims was pretty good

This is the greatest explanation about religion & G*d without ever using either word in the video

I want to construct a theory of X. Suppose that X has finitely many "elemental" parts and finitely many laws. For our discussion, assume that the laws are independent of each other, and the "elementals" are independent of each other. Laws operate on elementals. Now ignore the elementals and focus on the laws. Let's assume that a collection of elementals interact with each other, and that we are attempting to identify the l laws that are causing the outcome we see. So our explanation is simply to find a sequence of 0

Occam's Razor is a pragmatic prescriptive rule. Part of its point is that is constantly disproved: we routinely find that further entities are required and that a more complex explanation is needed; in fact this is the point of Occam's Razor, it provides a method for arriving at more complex explanations. It recognises that whereas there is often only one simplest explanation that invokes the fewest factors (occasionally there could be competing simplest explanations), there are innumerable more complex explanations of which we would be highly unlikely to stumble across the the one that is best (and even true). Moreover it assumes that there are facts to be explained amongst which there could be moral facts. If we want to try to elucidate moral facts how this can be approached is through application of Occam's Razor.

Thank you

It may be an error to call prudential and epistemic "norms" norms at all. Prudential "norms" are the things that are most likely to benefit you, and epistemic "norms" are the things that given the evidence, are most likely to be true. Whether you "ought" to do or believe what's most likely to be true or beneficial, sounds more like a moral norm.

This video should be titled: "The Occam's Razor Paradox".

Reminder, what the human does to the bird depends largely on how long he or she has gone without eating.

Ok. This series is interesting. And Occam's Razor I think is very good. And the 3 responses of morality were good if not brilliant. I think the Golden Rule Jesus proposed allows for Occams Razor to stand in both worlds. Perhaps this discussion on ethics is void of that brilliant Rule. But than there would have to be an acknowledgement of a higher power and a deep dive into the hearts of men of how they would like to be treated or how they act upon their hearts in the treatment of others and society. So yes, Occam's Razor does work on all levels of society and individuals. Great presentation. Thanks.

Questions: 1. Is SL's first argument against Occam's Razor an appeal to reductionism, e.g. is he saying that in an ontology that doesn't assume randomness, and therefore free will, that picking up the wounded bird is the result of rigid determinism that was set in motion at the big bang and therefor inevitable? 2. Both Occam's razor and the idea of Objective Moral Facts are abstract concepts. Can we really address the 'existence' of OMF from an ontological standpoint? 3. Can any argument be made for either side of this question that does not beg the question, or at the very least present definitional problems from a standpoint?

Jeffery, is there an approach, where morality is viewed in mathematical representation ? Such that a moral claim / a moral view of a behaviour in a context, sits as a coordinate in an dimensional space (N=1, boolean, N=2, 2d vector, N=3, 3d vector and so on) ?

Great lecture. It appears to me that the discussions about normative facts has the origin in religious beliefs. Religion requires some absolute truth that nothing can shake. One of the problems with that is of course that there are many different religions with somewhat incompatible normative facts. What is the simplest explanation for that?

I would like to express my gratitude for realizing this series of videos, which I enjoyed a lot while... stretching 😅 As a researcher in physics, I would like to point out that quarks do not technically move (at least, individually) since they are bounded inside protons and neutrons and, just to add another useless detail, I think I do believe in objective morality, but I will never believe in string theory!

How can we financially support your channel?

What about witches with germs?

How long does it take you to go through and decide which part you're going to use for the opening one liner? they never miss lmao

Ignorant note: 13:30 how would the turn of phrase (or argument) be if witches were - also - represented as "made of a bunch of quarks"? Appreciate clarification.

I don't think he fails at the first, though he doesn't word it very well. The point is, occam's just shaves what's not necessary/redundant. Feelings and thoughts don't explain the phenomena, because then the question becomes "why does he have those feelings and thought?" Eventually you land down on "why people think and feel that they oughta do what they don't want to." In this very case the guy probably would rather do something else, but feels compelled to doing it, and if he doesn't he feels just as uncomfortable as going through the effort and time to do it, but somehow wrong and guilty.

@Google_Censored_Commenter

Жыл бұрын

Any explanation is subject to infinite regress, that includes the objective moral facts explanation. Why do *those* exist? Why doesn't that need to be explained, the way you demand feelings and thoughts be?

@lloydgush

Жыл бұрын

@@Google_Censored_Commenter because they contradict. I don't know if you got that from my comment.

@zoe_gevalt

10 ай бұрын

Couldn't the explanation for "why people think and feel that they oughta do what they don't want to" simply be that we evolved to or were socialized to care for others' pain and protect the vulnerable, as a generalized rule, for mutual benefit? And with the care for the bird specifically, couldn't it be that it is just a byproduct of that care we have developed to feel for each other? Objective moral law still seems like an extraneous assumption.

@lloydgush

10 ай бұрын

@@zoe_gevalt That's a massive red herring cop out. "What about evolution" what's evolved? I didn't even say anything about "care for each other" or "objective morality" but clearly you both thought it was the logical conclusion of "why do we feel we oughta do what we don't want to?" We clearly evolved to do a lot of stuff, isn't that how species differentiate through natural and artificial selection? Well, to explain what we do, and the different niches we humans can grow to occupy and why you felt the need to be defensive here, let me talk about seagulls...

Jeffrey, wonder if those in whose 'ontology' is a dominant idea of god (of any shape, form or ability); are not at risk of falling into a loop where Occam's razor also undermines itself by explaining away all objective facts with that simplest premise: god. Could you analyse this further, please? Especially, how to 'resurrect' concepts of objectives realities to such proponents. Thank you.

Occam's Razor is normative in that it applies to what you "should" believe epistemically, and what you "should" apply prudentially, but it has nothing to do with what you "should" apply morally. So to say that Occam's Razor cannot be applied to objective morality because it's normative in itself, and therefore violates itself upon application to its own normative domain, is some kind of category error or guilt by association. So Occam's Razor *should* be applicable to morality, not in spite of its own normativity but because it's consistent with its particular subset within normativity. Therefore moral objectivism *should* be objected to.

How does Gödel’s proof fit into your 2+2=4 critique of epidemic normativity in objection to moral skepticism?

Yeah my thinking was immediately that Occam's Razor doesn't even apply to objective morals, because I don't really view objective morals as _explaining_ anything. Perhaps they don't "exist" in the sense of a table, but then neither do numbers.

Prior to Schaver-Landau this analysis of Occam's Razor sounds like determinism to me. "Quarks" explain it all so our activities are just determined by physical / chemical reactions. (So any concern for "ethics" is superfluous, or is that part of the programming?).

Being that morality is conceptual by existence and pragmatic. Being that reality is concrete and there is truth. Being that there is truth in actions, there is moral truth. Being that there is moral truth, there is moral wrongness. Being that there is moral truth and wrongness, there is moral objectivism. Morality is based on facts of reality.

Couldn't you just modify Occam's razor from a (probably subjective) normative proposition to a descriptive proposition like that: "The selection of the explanation that is simplest and that requires the existence of the fewest entities will most likely yield the correct explanation." By doing this, you definitely get a non-self-refuting proposition.

These arguments are either purposefully or by accident mischaracterizing Occams Razor. Let's start with the bird example - Moral law - believe in a moral law - personal feeling The first one, gets cut, by the razor, but not the other two. So personal feeling does NOT get cut by the razor. Therefor you can't get rid of prudential laws in the first place, since you have not yet elimiated that option. Then what is "believe in moral law" in the first place? is it really a blanket "get out of jail free card"? Or is it rather a prudential law again? Or Maybe it still is a moral law in of itself? Why would that belive make you act in the first place? Because you want to feel to be a good person? Then it's prudential. Or you believe in it, because your community has decided, that it's good for the community, to follow this law. Then it's moral. However, even though it is still moral, it fails to be objective. Objective would make it always true. If you had instead broken the birds neck to release it from misery in the knowledge, that your feeble attempt of healing it, would only prolong said misery. That would have also been a moral decision, if you think it's better for the bird or a prudential one, if you just couldn't bare the thought. If the first version would have been objective, then it second couldn't have been moral at all, because there would have been only one way. That makes morality fundamentaly subjective. It doesn't get rid of morality in total, but only of its objectiveness. The first two of his arguments all boil down to "That would make me change my view on things, so I want it not to be true, so I make a staw man out of it to disprove it" since in your example for no 1 and my for no 2 it mischaracterizes what Occams Razor actuallys says. And now for the last trick. It is a crafty attempt to disprove it, but again it fails short of making its point stick. Does Occams Razor fail it's own test? In my opinion, it doesn't and here is why. - Do I need to know who Occam was? - No - Do I need to know about his razor? - No - Do I need to be aware of the wording of Occams Razor? - No - Do I need it to explain the world? - No - Do I need it to explain the world correctly? - Yes Because I can make wild assumptions and explain them to everybody, but to find the correct answers, I need to cut the wrong ones away. Every scientific test, can either have it's result be it's result or an error in the test. Every single one. The more tests you make would, without the razor, just give you more instances of the above. With the razor, your pile of evidence against the pile of possible errors, gets more and more likely to be true. If you try to attempt to get rid of the razor, by applying the razor to itself, you would need to show, that there is a simpler answer, that doesn't in itself uses the razor. Yes, I'm watching the video, because of photons hitting my retina, but why do I believe in photons and retinas? Because they are the simplest answer for the question, why and how we can see, therefore the razor was already used to get to this result. It's like gravity in a way. When I was a baby, I had no idea what gravity was, what it was called or that there was an equation and still I didn't float through the air. A correct explanation of anything got rid of all the other variables, that could render it untrue. If an explanation has not managed to reach that point yet, then we tend to doubt it's validity to a degree. The less holes there are, the more likely we think it to be true. And even after we got rid of all the holes, we still try to poke new ones in, just to test, if we might have not considered something to be a hole before. That is the proper use of the razor in science and science gave us all our knowledge about photons, retinas or birds and trees. So we can never get rid of the razor by explaining the world with our knowledge granted by science.

@williamchamberlain2263

11 ай бұрын

Yes

@TryingtoTellYou

7 ай бұрын

Maybe I'm just a crazy pro lifer but I wouldn't agree with you that snapping the bird's neck is the morally right decision. My reasoning for this is that suffering should not be a measure of the value of life. This is similar to how critics of utilitarianism would argue that pleasure/pain is not a good barometer of morality either.

Interesting! It seems there perhaps is a third option to Moral Objectivism and Moral Skepticism, that being a Law Giver that commands moral laws. Thus the law giver is objective and the moral commands are objective. And as you pointed out in another video commands are not the same as objective declaration. But the fact that there is a law giver and the fact that that moral law giver made such and such moral laws can be objectives facts. Thus the morals are nor objective in themselves other than they have been commanded by the moral law giver. As such one can the decide whether that moral law giver has the authority such that one should take those laws as objective facts or not, i.e one has moral choice and that choice is objective. And perhaps this third option is just a special case of the other two. But to answer that question may depend on what makes something moral, i.e some moral truth function as to whether action X1 leads to some good y1 and whether some other action X2 might lead to some good y2 where y2 would be better than y1. But if that moral law giver is also all knowing (i.e is God) then it seems that the commanded law that produces the expected good would objectively be the best good. So that seems to make this third option different from the other two. So regardless of whether one believes whether there indeed is such a moral law giver or not, this third option seems to be possible at least in theory if not in fact and thus deserves to be added to the other two..

@jeffreykaplan1

4 жыл бұрын

If something like God exists and is the source of morality, then Moral Objectivism is true. That's just a version of Moral Objectivism. I see what you are saying about the morals laws not being basic, and coming from some other source, but they are still objective. Also, I talk about these issues in the following two videos about whether objective morality can come from God. One about Plato: kzread.info/dash/bejne/oaCo1cichrrLY6Q.html And the other about Locke: kzread.info/dash/bejne/nKGiyc-xeMuuo7w.html

@RonLWilson

4 жыл бұрын

@@jeffreykaplan1 Great. I am looking watching those. I am working my way through your videos both in the order you are making them and in reverse order as you post new ones, so I should eventually get to those (though it might take me awhile to do so). Thanks for the reply!

@serversurfer6169

Жыл бұрын

@@jeffreykaplan1 > If something like God exists and is the source of morality… This seems to skip past Euthyphro. If God decides what is moral, then morality is subjective, but if God merely conforms to what is moral, then he is not its source. 🤷‍♂

@Dragumix

10 ай бұрын

@@jeffreykaplan1 "If something like God exists and is the source of morality, then Moral Objectivism is true." - Only if this morality was objectively right and not just subjectively from the perspective of the deity.

Isn't Occams Razor more of a tool than a normative fact or rule? Occams Razor told us a hammer was the easiest way to drive a nail into a piece of wood. That is, until the invention of the nail gun. Then the outcome of Occams Razor changed. The question if that nail must be driven through a human hand into a piece of wood is not a question for Occams Razor per sé. By the way: Moral Objectivism as a fact or rule implies that it is universal, as in "anywhere, anytime and in any situation". I've yet to encounter that moral code.

@serversurfer6169

Жыл бұрын

> Occams Razor told us a hammer was the easiest way to drive a nail into a piece of wood. No, it tells us that we shouldn't assume the hammer "actually" summons the God of Nailing to insert the nails on our behalf. 🤓

@carlpeterson8182

Жыл бұрын

I do not believe that Moral Objectivism and moral universalism is the same. At least not epistemologically speaking. Thus, MO does not mean that people hold to the same morals. It also does not mean that morals cannot be somewhat situational. Situations can still affect what is occurring and thus affect what objective moral standard is applied.

I love how Occam's razor if applied consistently, can easily be used to eliminate any and all belief in anything mind-independent, yet so many people appeal to it. Of course, you could just bite the bullet as I do, and say that nothing mind-independent is knowable, but to most people this is an absurdity. I am struck by the similarities between the qualia of goodness and the qualia of redness. Upon what justification would one accept that one qualia indicates a mind-independent truth while the other did not? What is the symmetry breaker?

Finding it odd that im not hearing mention of a difference between objective reality and mental constructs. The argument tha occums razor is "too powerful" and means nothing exists; yes I agree with that. Youve correctly used occums razor to determine that there is a physical reality that is totally separate from the "reality" in our mind. And since every mind is different and morality is contained within each mind there can be no objective morality

11:50 Witches and Germs section: You're being too hasty in dismissing the first "too powerful occam's razor" counterexample. The original occam's razor argument against moral facts can be generalized: P1) If all phenomena can be explained without reference to X, then X doesn't exist. P2) All phenomena can be explained without reference to moral facts. C) Moral facts don't exist. Here, P1 definitely entails that people and germs don't exist. Something *_must_* be changed about P1 to allow us to continue to believe that people exist. Whatever that change is, it will allow for the existence of moral facts. Suppose we change P1 to, "If all phenomena can be explained without reference to either X *_or things which on which X supervenes,_* then X doesn't exist." (It sounds like this is how you're interpreting the original argument.) To then conclude that moral facts don't exist, we would *_also_* need to show that moral facts are not wholly determined by the sum arrangement of quarks (or whatever the agreed fundamental building blocks of reality are). I think most moral realists are naturalists and believe that moral facts supervene on facts about the physical world. Since moral naturalism is a common and coherent metaethical position, moral facts are not ruled out by this updated P1.

What are prudential norms

@jeffreykaplan1

3 жыл бұрын

That's a good question. I should have explained that! Basically, prudential norms are norms or rules that say what someone ought to do *given their own best interest*. So, for example, a prudential norm might say "one should not get sucked into a pyramid scheme". That norm says that you shouldn't do something not because it is evil (there is nothing evil about getting tricked into investing in a scam) but because it is not good for you (it is foolish to get tricked into investing in a scam). Actually, I made a video explaining this: kzread.info/dash/bejne/Y4xqtJqzlZq1YKw.html

@mothernature1755

3 жыл бұрын

@@jeffreykaplan1 oh thank you!

cool!

Like others have mentioned, I find it odd that you don't mention the possibility of Occam's razor being fictional, or a mental construct, or abstract, or something like that. The principle doesn't have to objectively exist (whatever it means to "exist" non-physically) for us to use the principle and find it a useful norm to live by. It's a bit like saying Batman has an ethic that says "you should never kill, or you turn into a monster". But since this ethic, and Batman himself are fictional, therefore the ethic "doesn't work", or, you shouldn't live by it. How does that follow? It seems to me to be missing the point of ethics. Ethics doesn't (or shouldn't) care if things are real or not, it simply tells you what you should do. That's what we have ontology and epistemology for. One would need a normative principle, that's rather implicit. Namely: "One shouldn't believe in things that don't exist". That too is an epistemic claim. One that is required before one can toss out Occam's razor. And yet the moment one accepts that normative principle, Occam's razor shaves it away, because it doesn't need to objectively exist for one to believe the principle. In a way, Occam's razor defends itself from a competing principle. I find that quite the move.

@charleshinkley6

8 ай бұрын

Calypso But the ethical concept DOES exist, irrespective of who first recognised or expressed it, so it’s a non-problem. It’s perfectly sound to believe in the golden rule without believing that any of the claimants to its invention ever existed.

@Google_Censored_Commenter

8 ай бұрын

@@charleshinkley6 how in the world did the concept get communicated to the people that exist, if no one who had ever existed held it?

@charleshinkley6

8 ай бұрын

@@Google_Censored_Commenter I’m not sure which words or phrases you are misunderstanding, or ignoring.

@Google_Censored_Commenter

8 ай бұрын

@@charleshinkley6 You claim it is sound to believe in the golden rule, without needing to believe *any* of the claimants to its invention. This is nonsensical. Unless you wanna say you're the inventor (good luck with that argument), a person, who necessarily existed, invented it first, then communicated it to you indirectly.

@charleshinkley6

8 ай бұрын

@@Google_Censored_Commenter It didn’t need any one “inventor” - that’s as silly as saying Newton invented gravity or Faraday invented electromagnetism. It exists as an evolved characteristic behaviour of a social species. It has been identified independently by most major early civilisations across the globe, sometimes by a historical individual, sometimes attributed to a historical individual, and sometimes attributed to a mythical individual. It’s no less real because it exists without an inventor (or even without an “identifier”). To emphasise: America would exist even if Columbus hadn’t accidentally bumped into it.

Brilliant, THank you. But to be clear, Electrons are Leptons not Quarks.

What if there are no normative facts? It seems like it could all be reducible to descriptive facts. What if what we think someone "should" do in a prudential sense is just a description of what is factually most likely to accomplish that person's goals (e.g. survival, comfort, fulfillment, etc). And what we think someone "should" believe in an epistemic sense is just a description of what is factually most likely to be true based on one's senses, or prior experiences, or logic? And what if what we think someone "should" do morally is just a description of what is factually most likely to accomplish the goals of a particular moral code or circumstantially highest value (e.g. maximizing wellbeing for all involved, or consent for all involved, or a feeling of integrity on the part of the actor, etc). In that case, no one really "should" do anything, but we might still rely on these descriptive facts of what is most likely as the least presumptive explanation for why we might still feel someone "should" do or believe something. In this case, some version of Occam's Razor doesn't razor itself away, because it remains most likely that in a given unknown situation, the most likely thing to be true is that which requires the fewest assumptions (perhaps this has turned out to be true by precedent, and so it's something you already believe). There is no need to say you "should" believe in Occam's Razor, it simply is factually most likely to yield a true belief.

@zoe_gevalt

10 ай бұрын

Anyway thank you for this series, I learned a lot, and also I greatly appreciate how you lean into not being able to draw, spell, or remember facts about other fields. It was incredibly endearing.

Love your videos. But I think you did this the hard way. We have these things: (a) nice behaviour caused by (b) belief in ethics, and (c) actual ethics. But b is not a stand-alone fact, half the problem has been left out, because we have to explain why so many people have belief in ethics. Do they believe for no reason, or for some reason? If no reason, then it should be commonplace for vast, millennia-long disputes to be based on nothing at all. And even more common for small beliefs: I believe there is an elephant in my back yard. Why? Oh, no reason. No, I think we all believe things for some reason, even if it is a poor reason. So, what is the reason people believe in ethics? Discuss that, but accept that choosing amongst competing reasons for beliefs is not a simple matter of applying Occam's razor.

Ockham's Razor is not some objective tool which infallibly determines what is true. It merely suggests that the simplest explanation is most likely to be true, not that it necessarily is true. In many cases the more complex explanation is true, not the simplest one. I don't think that Ockham's Razor can be usefully applied to the issue at hand - moral objectivism vs moral skepticism.

Occam's razor description in this video is incorrect, instead postulate that the hypothesis more likely to be correct is those in which you cut, that's what's the razor for, the assumptions that can not be proved or non corroborated evidence, that simplifies the problem, question or investigation that such hypothesis pretend to solve

If I had a nickel for every time you mentioned an argument against objective morality that defeats itself I'd have two nickels, which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice.

First one would need to define “objective”. Depending upon how one defines the term can make a huge difference. One example is the often used idea of objective morals in theism that is directly linked to there being an ultimate law-giver. Theist often claim there are objective values (or facts if one prefers) because they have accepted the notion of the supernatural to be true or factual. A person who does not adhere to a theistic worldview could also claim there are objective moral values because the recognize those values do not originate with a supernatural law-giver and instead understand that those values come from the real world, by the societies and cultures from which they come and the things they’ve been taught. Now… which system of objective morality is most “provable”? The one based upon empirical real-world facts or the objective morals based upon a supernatural law-giver. Which is more “objective”. On the other hand, a person could also claim there are No objective morals from the standpoint that morals and values are different among different cultures and nations. Thus there would be no (ultimate) universal moral laws and thus claim there are no objective moral values because each culture sets their own values. Again, which is more likely? Are there “objective” moral values or are moral values “relative”?

"You have left objective normative facts untouched." So objective moral laws only exists in the mind like the number 2? A definitional non causal abstract? "Everyone thinks they are the hero in their lives...especially the villains"

Did I miscount or were those only 2/3 arguments

@feyindecay912

11 ай бұрын

@CipiRipi00 ah thank you, I thought 3 was included as a part of 2. I guess after having my math finals even my ability to count is rapidly disappearing

@feyindecay912

11 ай бұрын

@CipiRipi00 well, I guess I'm looking forward to the adventure then... XD

I don't know if this has been stated before in philosophy, because I'm a noob, but just because you call something a "fact" doesn't make it a fact. Normative "facts" are not actually facts. A "fact" is something that is true (comports with reality). Normative things are "oughts". And as Hume has pointed out, you can't get an "ought" from an "is" (fact). Now, you can call them Normative "laws" if you want, because all laws are subjective human constructs (note: when we call them the Laws of Physics, we're being cheeky and anthropomorphic as if everything has to "obey" these "laws" like humans obey traffic laws). And anything that is normative has subjectivity at its foundation. All of the normative laws are conditional: You ought to follow these moral/prudential/epistemic laws IF you want to do X. Nothing can be an ought without an "if" statement attached to it, and the "if" is always pointed at the human being you're trying to get subjectively interested in whatever it is you're talking about. The same goes for Occam's Razor. The full precept would be something like this: "You should not multiply entities unnecessarily to explain something IF you want to be intellectually honest and conservative with your ontology." If you don't want those things, then you don't have to use Occam's Razor. It's not a fact. It's a suggestion. Just like any moral, prudential, or epistemic claim is. Just like any traffic law is. They're all just suggestions put out there by humans for humans in order to fulfill some subjective purpose. So, yes, Occam's Razor can rule out the ontology of Objective Moral Facts, because you're applying it to an ontology (as opposed to applying to a moral "fact" directly), but only IF you want to be intellectually honest and rationally conservative. So, just as there are no Normative "facts", there are no moral "facts". Only moral and normative laws (suggestions).

This first argument against Occams Razor because it almost seems as if you accept quarks into your ontology, yet you then appeal to them as an explanation for everything. I don’t think Occam’s Razor can necessarily work that way.

You need to define what kind of explanation of an event is desired. A moral explanation? A scientific one only? your second choice that stated that the person had feelings seemed different than the other two in what it was trying to explain. Is the explanation regarding what happened? Why the person did what they did? Was the person thinking that he had a moral obligation or did he? Would it be moral or immoral to help or not help the bird? Without specifics the thought experiment seems flawed. Also emotions are not necessarily needed only thoughts. It really does not matter what the person feels about the bird. That is an additional item not needed per OR. But then again you do not need to believe in matter at all. It could all be an illusion and you still have an explanation. Thus I think OR is still too powerful if used in that way since the idea that matter is an illusion would be the best answer given you would not need any ontology. the problem also with OR in this way is that the simplest answer is not always best. Why is having less ontologies better? I know about OR but I still do not see a reason why it is necessarily better if better means more true.

@samueldimmock694

Жыл бұрын

OR, as it is most widely used, is essentially a way to remember the definition of parsimony: when explaining how something works, it is best to ignore everything that is not necessary to understanding how it works. Thus if I can describe the motion of a ball as a function of gravity and velocity, I should not start talking about the hand-eye coordination of the player, weight of the ball or location of the basketball hoop--not because those things aren't true, but because they are irrelevant and impair my ability to apply the same principle to different situations. In fact, it may be possible that OR would support moral objectivism over other moral theories, because if you can adequately explain moral actions by referring to certain moral principles and the degree to which the moral actor understands those principles, you don't need to get into a complicated discussion of cultural values and personal upbringing and social-emotional influences...

Why does Occam’s razor get rid of epistemic facts. Occam’s razor is literally a claim on what we should believe. This use of Occam’s razor only applies to moral and potentially prudential fact

these normative epistemics aren't as easy and obvious to agree to as he makes them to be.

Make sure you use plenty of shaving foam.

Hello! The biggest question is; how the hell is his hand writing legible? Is he that good at writing the mirror image of everything he writes? What a stunt he’s pulling off and no one even notices.

@serversurfer6169

Жыл бұрын

He writes normally on the back of the glass, and then flips the video. He made a video about the process. 🤓

I would say you refuted yourself. If you need epistemic normativity to be able to do things, then Occam's razor says you need it.

All the companions in guilt type arguments are very funny to me because objective epistemic facts seem even more nonsensical than moral realism in my view. Anyhow, quite a good course that far and away outstripped the actual intro to ethics course I'm taking. I had already read and listened to quite a bit of moral philosophy and hoped that the intro to ethics class could straighten out my unstructured, self-taught, understanding of the topic. Where the course I'm enrolled in is failing miserably, your course succeeded in doing that at least a bit :) I feel like doing moral philosophy without doing at least some epistemology and metaphysics first is fairly pointless though. Like, if you haven't got a clear idea of where you sit on epistemology then all the arguments in the entire course are somewhat meaningless. I think I lean towards scientific anti-realism. Because of this I found it quite hilarious when you kept referring to unobservables such as quarks and quantum strings as parts of arguments or analogies for what you should believe in; they often just made me even more of a moral anti-realist

I think I'm a little lost, isn't 2+2=4 descriptive and not normative?

@MsJavaWolf

Жыл бұрын

2 + 2 = 4 is descriptive, but some people think that you also *should* believe that it's true. If you don't believe it, you are irrational, which is bad in a normative sense. I don't think that that's correct, I don't see any should here, it doesn't seem to add anything to the description of the world.

@ejb6822

Жыл бұрын

of course it is. the dude is completely lost and tries to apply the oldest problems of all time: naturalistischer fehlschluss and be/ought-dichotomy. he's not very smart, nor educated.

but wouldnt this mean that we could just have endless normative facts? We need some sort of normative occam's razor

@jeffreykaplan1

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, perhaps it would mean that we would have endless normative facts. But it isn't obvious that that is a problem. We seem to have endless descriptive facts.

Even if I came to the conclusion that everybody should know that 2 + 2 = 4, can anybody prove that it's objectively true that everbody should know that 2 + 2 = 4? I can't and therefore I believe it would be merely my subjective opinion.

But witches are also made of quarks…

I’m not satisfied with this defense of objective morality. In my view, Occam’s razor obviously applies to normative claims; otherwise anything could be asserted without justification. It seems intuitive to me that if something is asserted (even normative claims), there needs to be some justification. As for the contradiction; this is an issue at the heart of logic, and has been known to be for a while. Many people have spent decades trying to sort out the fact that we can’t justify our fundamental logical axioms, but we haven’t had much success. At some point, you just have to assert that your axioms are true and work from there. Of course, you could assert that moral axioms are true, and I would have no objection to that. But at that point you have to cede that you cannot justify your beliefs in moral objectivity (which is fine), and our differences in worldview would just be axiomatic and not really open to much debate or dialogue (which I suppose is also fine).

4:23 argument from incredulousness. Birds aren't real

@williamchamberlain2263

11 ай бұрын

It's a common mistake

I'm comfortable with throwing out normative facts entirely. "Ought" implies a standard of comparison. I don't believe there is or can be an objectively valid-in-all-cases standard of comparison that applies equally to all people -- or at least, I don't believe there is one provable or accessible to human beings.J Or maybe it's "conventional normativity". Error and things like that are explainable as explicit or implicit social agreements. And isn't it true that "There are objective moral facts" is itself a descriptive fact? And finally, Occam's Razor is not a normative fact. It is a *strategy*. Its benefits are observable in the real world. None of this, though, *supports* the existence of objective facts. It just attempts to dismiss an argument against them.

what if you used occam’s razor on god in general. because i can’t conceptualize how objective morality exists without god

As more we learn more about Quantum mechanics i think Shafer-Landau's first argument against Occam's razor becomes more effective. The quantum particles that make up our world behave really strangely but in a predictable way. So much so that it can be said we don't have free will since the movement of the particles that make us are predictable.

I have hemroids in my brain trying to understand what this guy is talking about. 🤷‍♂️ guess i am too dumb for philosophy

Seems like kinda a weak response to the moral skeptic argument

Moral law? Huh? You're getting too complex...Occam's Razor might say compassion for the bird

"Does Occam's Razor rule out Objective Morality?" No such thing as "objective morality". Morality is subjective.

Ummm… no… this video ended up being more about materialism than it did about Occam. Not to defend Occam’s razor or anything. If we want the least number of explanations for a person caring for an injured bird, then why would the assumption be that everything would be reducible to atoms or quarks? There is also something else not accounted for, the viewer of the event. You, who is reading this comment right at this moment, that “first-personness” that exists behind the camera that is your eyes. This phenomenon of the “YOU” cannot be explained by quarks bumping into each other. Hence, another thing would be added to the list of necessary explanations - something not material or made up of atoms. You came close with the “irony” of Occam’s razor needing itself. But you of adding something like “ideas” to the list with quarks, you just said it failed. Do you believe the immaterial exists? Or are we just atoms bumping into each other?

@oliverniemann2541

8 ай бұрын

Occam’s razor doesn’t count things we already believe to exist. Like say your reading a book at the library. Is it more possible to believe that it was written by an author, printed by a machine with countless parts, and shipped to your local library or that it just suddenly appeared? Well we know authors exist, we know authors tend to write books, we know that books tend to be made from machine, and we know that books are often shipped to libraries. As far as I know, books don’t just suddenly appear. The second would only have one entity, but the first doesn’t really have any entities that we don’t already have substantial proof for.

@rasheedlewis1

8 ай бұрын

@@oliverniemann2541 So what exactly are you disagreeing with?

@oliverniemann2541

8 ай бұрын

@@rasheedlewis1 I think I misunderstood what you were saying… We’re on the same page, sorry. Lol

You lost the opportunity to name this video "Does Occam's Razor shave Objective Morality away?".

@oliverniemann2541

8 ай бұрын

It says that in the thumbnail

the dude's not even understand occam's razor. it's not about explanations, since competing explanations are always equally simple. it's about fewest entities in models of the same explanations. everything else is just nonsense. and he doesn't understand descriptive and prescriptive characteristics. wow.

This IS starting to sound more like theology than philosophy. In my country theology is known by the alternative term Bollocks

Only a naif could believe in objective moral facts. What was arete for the Spartans, we would find horrific. And vice versa. Even in our own (Anglo or european) culture’s past, definitions of morality have evolved along with the rest of the culture. Evolutionary biology tells us how the biological motivations arise that drive the moral dimension of cultures, but the particular interpretation and embodiment emerges from and alongside culture and tradition, in response to historical pressures from food supply and social, economic, geographical, political and other spheres.

@9n2f3

Жыл бұрын

your english gave up in the last sentence, making me struggle to get your point. But the first part sounded decent.

@ralphclark

Жыл бұрын

@@9n2f3 sorry about that, my wife was bothering me about something while I was writing it and that last sentence was horribly long. I have removed an “and” that should not have been there and put in a comma. It’s still not great though.

@technokicksyourass

8 ай бұрын

Unless you can derive objective moral facts from pure math. Which I believe is easily possible. For example: Killing others for purely for your own benefit results in poor outcomes for you and your society. You could knock out a mathematical proof for that in an afternoon. Then, with a bit more work you end up with a theory that is parameterized by the things you talk about.. food supply, water supply... resulting in emergent properties like cultures and traditions. Guys like Kaplan and others all fail, because you can't get very far using words to describe reality. Leading them to believe objective moral reality can't exist. To get to objectivism, you must use math and numbers, starting from a mathematical definition everyone can agree on, and then working from there.

The bible teaches that God wrote the 10 commandments on tablets of stone twice. If this is not true the writer is involved in a ridiculous self contradiction. One of the commandments says 'Do not bear false witness against your neighbour'. If God did not so write these commandments the author is bearing false witness agaist God! Hence the decalog gives objective norms.

Couldn’t Epistemic Norms be observed through statistics and moral norms just be considered objective?

Birds aren't real

As soon as you OMF'd I was out.

the whole set up of this lecture is bad, founded on an error. objective morality is about what people OUGHT to do, and not what they actually do do. it's prescriptive and not descriptive. the example given describes what an imaginary person does when he comes up a bird that's fallen from its nest. it's descriptive. explaining why he does what he does is entirely beside the point, regarding objective morality. the question is, what should he do, and why? Kant would say why he does it is much much more important than what he does, and not simply that he should follow the rule that he wishes that everyone would do in similar situations, for all time, in all places, but also that he do it for that reason and not because it gives him pleasure to follow Kant's rule, or because his mommy, or God, would him to do so.