I hope that you read comments, because this helped me so much. I have a six page paper due tonight, and I had the options of not doing it, reading 150 pages, or finding a video like this that breaks everything down. I read all the entire section on Mill's and you made it so much easier to understand. Thank you so much!

@WisdomWorkshop

3 ай бұрын

Thanks man 🙏 philosophy is the shit

Dude this was amazing!! I'm trying to get my head around this. You didn't faff about. You explained EVERYTHING and you compartmentalized it. I feel like I FINALLY understand things AND understand which bits I got all mixed up on - had some things down in my notes as Kantism that were Utilitarian. EPIC! Never stop YOU'RE TOO DAM GOOD!

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

why thank you :) glad you got something out of it with minimal faffing about :)

You are truly awesome. Such a humble guy with good intentions :) This was a super helpful video btw!

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

aww! feel so good to be seen! thanks for saying so ! :)

Rather than having one spectrum from utilitarianism to deontology, we could think about having two spectra: one for utilitarianism by itself, and one for dwontology by itself. Then, you would consider each issue according to both spectra.

@WisdomWorkshop

19 күн бұрын

Love this insight.

Wow!!! I needed this and you explained it impeccably. Thank you!

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

Awesome! So Glad!

Made it easy to understand the differences and similarities between both of them. Thank you!

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

thank you!

very helpful for my university assignment thanks so much Sean

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

sweet !

I was struggling differentiating the two, this helped me pass my exam!

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

yay... glad it helped :)

You helped me finally understand the genius of Kant, thank you

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

why thank you! As much as I don't like some of what he does, I admire his inquiry, method, and conclusions (the imperatives) so much!

This explanation was so helpful! Thank you!

@WisdomWorkshop

19 күн бұрын

You are so welcome!

@WisdomWorkshop

19 күн бұрын

You are so welcome!🤗

Thank you, Professor.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

thank you too!

Great video, many thanks

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

Thank you too!

Very helpful. Thank you!

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

Glad it was helpful! thank you!

fantastic video

@WisdomWorkshop

Ай бұрын

cheers, thank you

You did help! Thank you! I only have one question: What did you intend at the end when you said "and, paradoxically..." at 16:15? Did you mean that Kant's deontology could be connected to Mill's idea that multiplication of happiness is what matters? For example, if we follow Kant's ideology, we would "act out the world we want to live in" and thus create the greatest moral pleasure for the greatest number of people (society). Or am I mistaken?

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

Exactly! that it seems like an either/or ... but that both philosophies will get you to the same (or similar) place if you really follow them.

@Byftpup

Жыл бұрын

@@WisdomWorkshop I don't think that it can be seen as a paradox. The missing ingredient for paradox would be that we all want to live in the same manner. Applying the basics of deontology and utilitarianism through different cultures and life experiences will result in many different answers. I'm sorry I'm still trying to get my brain around most of this and it just seems like there is no one answer for any single question even with in culturally similar people. Thanks though for the video. It has contributed to my understanding, and I think it's been the best video so far to distinguish between the two philosophies.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

@@Byftpup thanks for following up on this after all this time -- a year like a blink of an eye. Looking at this again, I don't think that paradoxically is the right word -- perhaps more "interconnectedly" ... or something to suggest that the two "opposite" approaches to ethics might actually feed into eachother if applied in a certain way.

I love the Watery colour in your shirt, very celeste, as we call it. thanks

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

thank you! I got it at a thrift store. :)

I am with those who said to be identified with both . I think it´s because the question "how much do consequences matter?" can be asked about "for whom do they matter?". I believe that the "inner" part of a choice, that includes the intention of an action, is dependent on the "internal logic" you mentioned, that is good for the subject making the choice, but not necessarily for others, in that sense, consequence does have an independence of one's intention and can produce things that are not good for others, and that produces "bad karma" effectively, although if it´s not intended there´s an "amortization" of the produced karma. Sort of that.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

sounds super smart to me :) like this reasoning

@anahelenarizzicintra2679

Жыл бұрын

@@WisdomWorkshop Just made me think:). Thanks

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

@@anahelenarizzicintra2679 yay! :)

"Which one works best for you...which is how I like to approach this" thus missing the point of Kant utterly and illuminating the failure of utilitarianism in one sentence.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

ha! aha!

Thank you Sir!

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

a belated thank you as well!

Do you think Savior Sibling falls in the category of Utilitarianism and Deontology perspective? Do you think if I used this for my paper assignment will this be a good way to find a perspective to give us the best answer. I have to come up with at least 2 theory for this one.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

I'm not sure what Savior Sibling is -- but I think you could apply utilitarianism and deontology to it -- if that's what you're asking :)

Thank you Sean

@WisdomWorkshop

4 ай бұрын

Very welcome 🙏

I can relate wholeheartedly with deontology. In either case as a matter of utility a duty is an established boundary meant to uphold the greatest common good ( categorical imperative) and the best utility a liberal ( free) society has to offer. Duty also allows for the possibility of gradual change by virtue of consensus building as a matter of principle.

@WisdomWorkshop

19 күн бұрын

Yes! And aligns with a character -attribute model of ethics of care or virtue ethics 😃

The Utilitarians and Kantians place human beings at the heart of the universe precluding the natural world in which we live. It is great that you have reflected on the articulated that humans aren't at the centre of the universe therefore our stewardship of the earth is of paramount importance.

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

huge failure and oversight of the majority of western philosophy that you don't really see in Eastern or especially First Nations philosophizing. thanks for the comment!

Very interesting. That was a well done breakdown. It's helped me realize I've always been very utilitarian, but I should put more emphasis on the nature of the actions themselves and if they're things I'd want others to do. It's a bit of a hard sell for me; I'm naturally very pragmatic, which seems to have a strong link to utilitarianism. I'm going to give it a lot of thought, because I certainly do see the positives of the other side. It's just harder to justify given the nature of our physical existence, where spiritually (which would fall in line more with Kant's philosophy) is an illusion or fabrication if we're being totally honest. That's not to say that deontology can't be empirically be shown to give good outcomes, of course. It's certainly not all or nothing.

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

awesome! I love this long reflection here! me too: I am a utilitarian if we expand our notions of pleasures and pain -- but see a real value in pragmatism and existentialism to be fully honest :)

Came from Online Class and Lazy Education System

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

ha ha ha ha

Hello I'm an arabic person and i just figured out that this terme (deontologie) really exist in english. that's a real waw for me😅 in arabic means a lot than a theory. دين

@WisdomWorkshop

4 ай бұрын

So cool to be multilingual and see how words carry over. Rich!!

I'm purely consequentialist in my thoughts (although not an act consequentialist and certainly not utilitarian) yet I can't seem to find a philosopher whose moral intuitions match my own. I would describe myself as a heuristical consequentialist who begins with the acknowledgment that expecting human beings to foresee and measure the utility of their actions is virtually impossible (especially far into the future), and who don't and should not value all humans equally in an impartial way (ex: a parent would be a horrible parent if they neglect their child's needs to serve that of two strangers; their immediate responsibilities should prioritize their children). On the question you raised about cases where we intended something good but inadvertently produced a bad consequence or intended something bad but inadvertently produced a good one, our actions are usually susceptible to be repeated in similar scenarios. We are creatures of limited foresight, habits, and intentions, so we should factor in all of this as relevant data to determine whether a behavior should be encouraged or discouraged -- and how -- along with the likelihood of the action being repeated absent intervention, in determining the appropriate action we should take in response. The actions we take in response should also be evaluated by the same criteria in a cascading fashion. For example, if someone causes harm to others, then it's either a freak accident resulting from the worst luck, one that involved good intentions albeit some negligence, or one intentionally produced from bad intentions. In order to determine the best responsive course of action to discourage the person from causing future harm, we should factor in their intent, circumstances, criminal background, etc. In the first case, we may not even require a punishment given that it was unintended and lacked any negligent behavior. In the second case, any punishment should be designed with the best chance of encouraging the person to be more careful in the future. In the third case, the punishment should be designed to encourage the person to become less malicious.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

Yes! it sounds like you're into rule-based utilitarianism - a more modern update that makes consequentialism look a lot more like deontology :)

@darkengine5931

Жыл бұрын

​@@WisdomWorkshop Rule utilitarianism definitely seems more practical to me in many cases. It can reduce our utility evaluations to a finite set of rules with utility measurements derived in hindsight from a larger number of samples that conform to or deviate from those rules. Yet I see it as just one medium level of resolution on which we might operate in certain circumstances. If I use the trolley dilemma and its variants as an example to attempt to illustrate what I mean about varying resolution levels: 1) Intentions: I see intentions as the shallowest (and therefore the most easily applicable) way upon which we estimate a moral value to our actions since they require the least amount of nuanced data to find applicable samples in our history (they're largely binary: circumstances where we applied benevolent intentions vs. circumstances where we applied malevolent intentions). Even a child who thinks little about the consequences of their actions might still detect something immoral about pushing innocent fat men off bridges or harvesting an innocent patient's organs at a hospital. We can quickly see even with a relatively limited life experience and knowledge that acting upon ill intentions often produces negative results on society and even the individual performing those actions. So I see this as the most child-like and crudest way of thinking about morality, but often the most widely applicable since it immediately yields so many comparable samples. 2) Rules: I think rules like laws function as a medium level of consequentialist analysis. Someone operating at this level might observe that pushing innocent (for all we know) people off bridges would be illegal and that harvesting an innocent patient's organs, regardless of the intent, would be gross medical malpractice, a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, and illegal. 3) Probablistic/heuristic: I see probabilistic style of consequentialist thinking as the highest resolution level we can usually achieve. A person operating at this level of thinking might observe, and even with limited and fuzzy samples (thereby making it a heuristic), that it would very likely pose a public safety hazard to permit doctors to harvest organs from patients absent consent or to allow innocent people to be pushed off bridges for whatever reason. The lever variant poses no such public safety questions regardless of how people answer since it's only applicable when people are already doing something deadly that they absolutely shouldn't be doing: lying down or tying people down to trolley tracks. #3 is probably also the appropriate resolution for a rule-based utilitarian, attempting to constantly evaluate and reevaluate the utility of established rules while seeking to eliminate some or introduce new ones, but I see it as a resolution level only applicable to those who can most confidently predict the probable consequences of their actions. I think most of us often have to fall back to #1 or #2 in the myriad of nuanced circumstances that life throws at us and utilize a synthesis of all these varying resolution levels to try to predict consequences. I also suspect that the optimal rules vary based on the nature of the individuals they affect, their environment, etc. If anything, I tend to think morality is extremely complicated with no simplistic answers that can allow us to navigate the most nuanced situations. I see more virtue in those who confront most situations raising questions and doubts than offering the most confident answers.

@darkengine5931

Жыл бұрын

​@@WisdomWorkshop ... yet I also find it difficult also to bundle in what I consider to be generally faulty about universalism into a rule-based framework operating based on patterns. For example, I can't morally fault a parent who sacrifices the entire rest of the human species in order to save their child regardless of its extremely negative utility. We might be able to dismiss that in terms of rules and operating in accordance with the general rule that a parent should prioritize their child's needs above others, but then I also can't fault the parent who, with tears in their eyes, makes an exception and saves the entire human species by favoring their needs at the cost of the life of their child. Both parents can be right in this circumstance, and I don't see any measure of utility resolving it no matter how generalized it becomes in terms of conformity to rules. The most generalized attempts at coming up with utility-optimizing rules here tend to still introduce two ore more rules at conflict with each other, and I don't see utility measurements comparing the hypothetical application of all applicable rules in a very specific context as a resolution in such cases. No matter how much we generalize the rules, utility is not something I can really see as being so directly tied to morality.

thank you man

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

why you're welcome my new friend! Cool logo

*Problem With Utilitarianism:* We can't truly predict what is the greatest good for the greatest number because of the existence of CHAOS in Life. (Chaos Theory)

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

so so so agree.

thank you!

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

You're welcome! : )

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

thank you :)

This video helped me so much! But I found it so funny on how he has both a Buddha wall hanging and a Jesus candle.

@minjiesther546

3 жыл бұрын

But seriously this video saved my exam score

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

you think it's one or the other? Buddhism provides methods that can complement Christian faith --- it's not about belief but practical ways to increase compassion and selflessness : )

What are the weaknesses of deontology?

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

oh boy :) great question .... I'm not an expert here ... but I'd say that if there were internally consistent rules that we could follow... the weakness wouldn't be in the deontology, but in our fallible ability to understand and follow those rules. does that make sense? it's the best I got right now :)

Nice one, I am a Kantian to the core, I believe that honesty and true intentions are the fundamentals of integrity, and without integrity there is no worthy action. Yes, everybody should have a dignified standard of living, but if so wanna be hero goes around deceiving the Queen to still from her and spread amongst the poor, the hero are also forgetting to treat the Queen as an end in itself. Moreover, a healthy person should never be sacrificed to donate organs to a few sick ones, the healthy person may be healthy due to what you call good "karma" and a responsible lifestyle and just as much as the others has the right to be alive. Likewise one should not sacrifice oneself to maximize the pleasure of many others, as one also have the categorical right to a pleasurable life. But then we enter the realm of defining what is pleasure. For someone as morally inclined as myself, it is easier to understand the pleasure of acting morally, however, I have doubts as to the ability of many others to understand this type of pleasure. Most uneducated males would presume something else to be the highest form of pleasure for example. Or some like myself act morally regardless of pleasure, simply out of duty, therefore , I find difficult to define the scope of the word pleasure, or happiness. Happiness for me is contentment and pleasure can be joy, or satisfaction, or affinity etc..

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

so good! Why breaking down the levels of pleasure is so important -- .. but still "moral pleasure" is ambiguous .. which I'd like to define as becoming the best version of yourself for everyone involved.

@Angelicaarchangelica

2 жыл бұрын

@@WisdomWorkshop that is utilitarian, the Queen and the masses have the same intrinsic value and no one person should be disadvantaged for the advantage of the greatest number of persons, including the Queen.

@Angelicaarchangelica

2 жыл бұрын

Therefore, being the best version of yourself should be your duty, regardless of everyone involved.

What about war, it is a moral action?

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

Good question -- totally depends.

I would never correlate western and eastern philosophies. the concept of Karma is a Hindu religious philosophy also adopted into Buddhist practice. His identification of 'good' karma automatically implies western ideology juxtaposed onto Hindu/Vedic philosophy. It is already an inaccurate account of Karma because of his mind frame so conditioned to western philosophy of binaries such as right/wrong or good/bad.

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the critical thinking -- my understanding of Karma is from the early Indian Buddhist philosophical tradition, where Karma is defined as "intentional action" , and is not "good/bad" but conducive further suffering or not.... thanks for the catch -- Western understandings of Karma imported into Western systems of Good/Bad aren't helpful... I didn't mean to do that here : )

@ashnatiwari

3 жыл бұрын

@@WisdomWorkshop Thank you for acknowleding that, I appreciate it actually. With increased cultural appropriation awareness, it is nice to see some self-reflexivity. Thank you for the informative video

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

@@ashnatiwari I appreciate your critique, honestly! Good/evil doesn't track : )

when you talk about karma, surely doing actions to gain good karma to achieve a better reincarnation (or gain whatever) is selfish to an extent, and creates a paradox. Im sure there is an answer to this, we just havent done buddhism yet

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

yes a great paradox that unravels with the arising of insight into the nature of reality (if we're talking the Buddhist view :)

as long as the pursuit of happiness is a right and the concept of winners and losers exist kantian philosophy is nothing more than blasphemy.

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

I must disagree - if the moral law is imprinted in us by the biological truths of what we are. but ?

Golden rule on steroids🤣🤣

@WisdomWorkshop

2 жыл бұрын

yup

If a system of ethics fails to recognize any duty to consider the likely consequences of our actions, then it's not a good system. It would be silly to say that consequences have to be measurable, while letting putative duties be made up out of whole cloth. Framing consequences entirely, or even primarily, as a matter of pleasure and pain, though? That goes beyond silly. It's downright ludicrous. No one really cares much about pain itself. Pain is a mode of awareness of injury, which is very useful but is usually distracting and can easily become overwhelming, causing severe and pervasive mental impairment. Injury is bad: everyone wants to do some range of things, and injury typically removes one's ability to do things. Mental impairment is bad: it interferes with processes that are central to who we are. So of course people try to avoid painful things, but not because of the pain itself. As soon as pain is separated both from the association with injury and from the risk that it will become overwhelming, people like it, whether it's from hot pepper or from scratching an itch. Pleasure is likewise a mode of awareness, but it's awareness that things are as you wanted them to be. No sane person chooses to have things be worse in any way that's important to them, just so that they can be deceived into thinking things are better. What people primarily seek is the actual improvement in the state of the world (i.e. that which pleasure is an awareness of); being aware of it (i.e. having pleasure) is less important.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

nice -- the challenge, then, of course, is to identify the metric by which you measure consequences. Notice that what actually improves the state of the world may be true for some people and not for others (see the early European contact with the native Americans and many other examples of "the greater good" that isn't actually greater for all concerned)... and for what it's worth, I think pleasure and pain is a ridiculous measure as well -- I like how Mill breakes this open into Moral, Intellectual, Emotional and Appetitive consequences.... but that still strikes me as wanting in some way.... thanks for the comment in any case :) dig it :)

@danwylie-sears1134

Жыл бұрын

@@WisdomWorkshop The traditional response to any question, of course, is to come up with a framing that lets you reject the question. As it so happens, my conception of how we should define "good" (arrived at many years ago) will do nicely. I think that people normally have a mishmash of whims, impulses, appetites, aspirations, connotations, and so on, right down to the reflexes that keep your hand from getting burned by starting to pull it away from a hot object before the nerve impulses to tell you that you've touched anything hot have even reached the primary sensory cortex in your brain. There's a desire to avoid burning your hand, sure, but in terms of the way it actually affects your actions, it's implicit. You don't get sensory information, reason about it, and then act on it. You have a response, and then figure out your own understanding of what you've done. If you're good at figuring out such understandings, you have something approaching a clear set of preferences about how the world (including yourself as part of the world) ought to be. But the preferences are always at least somewhat muddled and implicit, and never perfectly coherent. And they always include some aspirations, i.e. some preferences about how you would like to be. Different people have different such mishmashes, with different sets of implicit preferences. More to the point, different possible people would have different sets of implicit preferences, including aspirations. We can imagine a sequence of possible people, starting with an arbitrary person (actual or hypothetical) and satisfying some of that person's aspirations to define the next person (now definitely hypothetical) in the sequence. That person's preferences will be somewhat different, including their aspirations. Then satisfy some of those aspirations to specify the next hypothetical person, and the next, and so on. For some questions, and some starting sets of people, the preferences will converge. That is, given any criterion of approximate agreement, there will be a set of numbers N(i), one for each person in the starting set, so that as long as we go out at least N(i) steps in the sequence that starts with person number i, everyone we're considering will approximately agree on that question. For other questions, there wouldn't be any such convergence. I think we should define "good" to mean what people would converge on preferring, as contrasted with "mere matters of taste" where the preferences wouldn't converge. In a nutshell, "good" is (for a general notion of "you" and "I") what you and I would both prefer, if we could get our respective metaphorical heads out of our respective metaphorical lower digestive tracts long enough to think it through. The premise is that, although we all have a jumble of mostly-incoherent aspirations to go with the rest of our mishmash of mostly-incoherent desires, following our aspirations would eventually lead us to become more coherent and more stable. It is in principle an empirical question whether this definition is viable, i.e. whether the preferences really would converge on anything recognizable as a notion of "good" for any reasonably inclusive set of starting hypothetical people. Ideally, the starting set would include everything from whales and baboons to elves and Klingons, as long as they have some initial spark of aspiration to be smarter about how to aspire to more satisfying ways of being. If the definition is viable, it still may be overly restrictive in what groups it's viable for. We may find that chains of aspirations fail to bridge the gaps between different starting points, where people stably agree that something is a matter of right and wrong, not a matter of mere taste, but stably disagree on the actual answers. But, if we suppose that the approach is viable, or at least is likely enough to be viable that we can fruitfully use it as a starting point for further thought, then we are to some extent relieved of the insistence that criteria of good have to take the form of measurement, or any other particular form. The criteria of good take whatever form they converge on, starting from the kind of mishmash that the implicit preferences held by real people actually are. And we can proceed by appealing to whatever works in clarifying the mishmashes that people have, especially the fact that some changes in preferences feel like "I realized that I had been wrong", while other such changes feel like "I used to like this, and now I like that, but I have the feeling that I would also like this other thing if I got in the habit of it". We would have a basis for respecting those feelings, and entertaining the proposition that sometimes they reflect something real about that we're sort-of aware of about ourselves even if we don't entirely understand it.

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

@@danwylie-sears1134 I love "mishmashes" as a technical term of identity systems ... and I love the idea of appealing to whatever works, too. I'm also a pragmatist in that sense ... epecially as it reflects a process that we don't (or can't!) entirely understand.

Kant's ideas seem awful. So unscientific and illogical

@WisdomWorkshop

3 жыл бұрын

ha ha ha ha -- are you serious ? I agree and do not agree at the same time. Very illogical of me, I guess.

@jack.1.

3 жыл бұрын

@@WisdomWorkshop yes, you seem like a fan of Kant. Don't know why

Ironically Kant was such a racist prick. Aghhh. Personally. You should try to see what's the best thing you can do. Then you do it. Then you look again at the effect and learn more about it. And see if what you did was good for (whoever). And almost always there's things you'll change. Cuz knowledge is king. And experimenting produces a lot of data which can be used to further help (others)

@WisdomWorkshop

Жыл бұрын

aghhh indeed. he also looked down on masturbation.