I like the interviews with present day, retired Dr. Sugrue. Can we also get some interviews with present day Dr. Staloff? That would be awesome! Edit: Or even have them both on at the same time to discuss a topic!!

0:00 Introduction (precursor to Nietzsche) 3:51 The cause of moral judgment 6:00 Sentiment of approbation 8:26 The scale of morality 9:37 Utility of the community 10:22 benevolence 12:19 Super abundance 13:20 Selfless society 15:34 Super scarcity 18:00 Taking advantage of the weak 21:01 Moral progress through poetry 23:35 Utility of government 25:25 Understanding the need for utility 29:46 The problem of ultimate consequences 32:27 Judging good by its final result 33:48 The problem of calculating 35:00 Inherent good 36:04 What counts is the consequences 38:10 "herd instinct" 40:46 Satisfying the animal in us

Are all philosophy professors this eloquent and accessible? Between my university general Ed philosophy course and Drs. Staloff and Sugrue, I feel so lucky to listen to them!

My ponytail sweetheart.

This channel is treasure. Thank you !!

I love it when I get that warm feeling in my pancreas 🤣

I wish all philosophers were like you

Post something about Hegel next! Much love, Professors Sugrue and Staloff, even if you don't! 💕💞

Very enjoyable and educational. Thank you Dr. Stalloff.

I'm hoping theres hundreds of these lectures you both will continue to upload. Both powerful & excellent in it's presentation for the average thinker to digest.

I was about to read but now I have to watch lol.

Kant watch this video enough. Good stuff.

Thank you for posting!

Thank You, Good presentation. I like Hume for his view regarding morality.

So concise: "We only treat people with justice when it conduces to utility to the public good of our community."

Beautifully presented

Great lecture

“…we’re not that smart of a species, don’t flatter yourself…” Ah, thank you Dr. Stallof, I had almost forgotten 😔

Very educational. I enjoyed it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Literature, poetry, even music are more revealing than philosophy.

I have watched Prof. Sugrue's lecture on Aquinas (in 2023) before watching this. It is interesting. I wonder what Humean morality will say to Nuremberg. I had quite some thoughts.

What if the reason we switch between consequentialist ethics and final causality ethics is because we value intentions in a consequentialist manner? Say a friend says he’s going to help you move. And then he calls you the same day and says ”Sorry man, my daughter is sick, I’m at the hospital and can’t help you today.”, and you forgive him. But isn’t the reason that he’s displayed a willingness to be charitable in the future? In other words, aren’t you simply valuing the future prospect of a reciprocal friendship? Say a perdon kills someone with a car by accident and he gets acquitted. Don’t we let him off the hook because he’s not likely to cause more harm than good in society? And say someone is a person unwilling to harm others, as a matter of fact he has the best intentions for people, he’s a doctor. But a bad one. Do we let him continue his practice? No.

What is lacking in discussions of morality is outcomes. The most wonderful system of morality is judged on outcomes which are not completely dependable. That medicine I take for my headache might be toxic to you. Do on to others as you would have others do on to you while on the surface seems moral is often terrible in practice because it is not true that my experience is reflected in others. Our understanding of what is good for us is not complete and even less so of others. The best set of ethics with a very high prediction of outcomes is still at the mercy of imperfect understandings of the situation in which we make judgements and take actions.

I'm looking forward to his talk on Goulding :-)

21:44 I remember hating the movie Dances With Wolves so much

I wish David Hume and Emmanuel Kant could have met and had a conversation.

I'm slightly confused about the chronology of topics. I see from a quick search that Hume lived until 1776 so he was around about 100 years earlier than the Origin of Species (1859) and even longer before the First World War. So I'm guessing when the professor mentions evolution (unless I'm misremembering) and WW1 it's in a hypothetical sense of what Hume would have thought. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture! It reminded me a lot of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins which explains how evolution could actually favour a "gene" (oversimplification) for altruism. Even though altruism may not directly benefit the individual or help their own genes to survive. With that in mind, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to say that our sense of morals (the warm fuzzy feeling described by the professor) evolved through gene selection as it helps our society in the utilitarian view of Hume (except Hume presumably wasn't aware of the theory of evolution)

Watched all of it 41:47

6:59. This idea abaolutely applies, for the most part, to large criminal organizations, but pirate captains and officers were elected, historically, the reason being that a tyranical captain would be utterly at the mercy of his crew. Lacking the institutional power which would jump to defend or avenge a merchant or naval captain (or a loyal mafia sub boss) the pirate captain was instead a politician. If he could not deliver, his crew could vote him out, kill him, or simply abandon his ship for another.

You judge a tree by its fruit.

Where did the non-aggression principle originate??

Clicked immediately for the sh*t-eating grin of this OG in the thumbnail 👍🏼

Hume suggests that we can expand our ethical sensibilities beyond considering just those individuals who are in our interest to consider through poetry and literature. This, however, must mean that not all are ethical judgements are the consequence of our self-interest or utility as Hume defines it, which is in contradiction with his original thesis. I, however, would say that beyond our instinct to self-interest, we also instinctively want to care for other people in and of itself. Education does not construct this care for others, but merely recovers it. The reason men of those times did not care for women or Indians is that they were estranged from their innate sensibilities through the workings of society, and the fact that reading poetry or literature can reawaken our care for these people proves this. We are not a cruel and self-interested species as Hobbes would have us believe. In fact, the only reason for the popularity of Hobbesianisms or the Christian doctrine of original sin, is that it allows people in power to justify themselves. To say that, since human beings are evil, we need a Leviathan or king to control their debased impulses. To say that humans are evil is not to be more rational than "naïve optimists", it is to align yourself with the ideological framework of authoritarianism.

Bob Odenkirk sure looks young in this movie!

In constructing the apparati of morality, we are always lead to a paradox. I would suggest Plato intended the reader to use reason to align oneself with the good rather than to decide what goodness is. I think we all recognize the difficulty in defining benevolence (for example) as having utility in the domain of the communal good. It seems the difference between good and evil is grasped immediately (a priori). Knowledge of what is good, seems to imply some kind of prescience, such that we could not know if something is good unless we knew also how it "plays out" in the long run. Of course, "the long run" can go on forever. This is what ties goodness with our concept of eternality. That is, what is good, must be eternally good ... or something like that. I would suggest, as others have done, that morality is a constant, or some kind of (to borrow from Chalmers) some kind of psycho-physical law. We sense its force (in the psyche) and convert/manifest that "energy" into action. We might then say that good and evil are poles that generate a field of morality much like an electromagnetic field. ... I know its out there, but its just a thought.

Does anyone know when these videos were recorded?

Can you please post Dr. Staloff’s Nietzche lecture

So.. It's 2024. AI is prompted to make a hit country song "Glue balloons" which is essentially about getting your privates stuck in a door. And it sounds pretty good. For an AI song. When will the songs about picking up after your dog and returning your cart come out?

The recording quality is hellish but I do appreciate the content

How did morality arise? I suggest it arose by the same mechanisms as every other trait of humans: by random mutation acted upon by natural selection. Our success as a species is attributable to our unique social biology. Those human societies that behaved in accordance with the forces that support what we call morality survived. Those that did not gradually , sometimes possibly suddenly, passed without leaving descendants.

19:31 press X to doubt.jpg

Ako lang ata Filipino na nanonood nito haha

Lol the Disney series “Loki” (2022) is a theatrical manifestation of this speech.

Hume is not my cup of tea. Our duties are those moral reasons that bind us even when we lack the passion to obey them.

this guy is a real nerd.

Damn, Hume was so woke before it was cool

How was napoleon evil? Seems like a swell dude. History is written by the British

Plato stands on my bookshelf next to Tolstoy and now I can see why. Thank you for this video.