Comment for the algorithm. Get this man some views! Content is gold.

Jeffrey Kaplan, master educator. Novice speller.

I am just in love with this guy... I love listening to him and learning... I never get fed up... You are amazing ...

All well explained! ...but, it's also good to have the solution presented. Alasdair MacIntyre explains how we got into the confusing cul-de-sac of Moral-Sentimentalism, in his book _After Virtue._ I'm hoping you'll do a video or two walking through that book's thesis: It sees the issue much more broadly than either Ayer or Moore.

I think the subjective viewpoint is correct. There's a social-behavior component to conflicting with another person over "yay pickled tomatoes" or "no pickled tomatoes". There's a will to dominate the other with one's preferences, in a social reality where violence is extremely expensive. The verbal combat of these preferences is a non-violent posturing to assert dominance over the other person's preferences. It really does boil down to individual motives, in the context of our being social primates.

Thank you again for all your videos - they are awesome: full of passion for thinking, entertaining, educational, convincing, precise and simply a lot of joy!

I am ecstatic at my realisation of the topics in all new ways, as if ,kind of epiphany...Amazed at the teaching!

i am so glad doc kaplan put his coursework up for all of us. its great brain exercise and makes me miss my old college philosophy classes. back then we would laugh that is was just mental masterbation, but as i am older more and err, moore i see how irl it is indeed quite practical.

Wow! This video was a fantastic help for the undergrad essay im writing. I was stunned when I saw the view count, I was expecting hundreds of thousands, not hundreds. You will massive someday soon

Best meta-ethics lecture ever. Well done.

Interesting discussion. Worth watching again.. Best meta-ethics lecture ever. Well done..

This argument is the most sensible of any on morals ive heard yet

According to subjectavism, "Violence is wrong" is shorthand for "I dislike violence." Could it be the view, that "Violence is wrong." means "I think violence is wrong but it indicates nothing about my predilection for liking or disliking violence." In other words, "Violence is wrong, but I recognize that I am not perfect and, to some degree, I don't mind a certain kind of violence whether it be enjoying boxing or MMA or watching an action movie." Meaning that thinking something is wrong is not an indication of whether they enjoy or participate in that thing because that person recognizes their foibles as a human being and contradiction is a natural part of the human experience.

This is by far my favorite video from the series until now. I've struggled with the relativism of truth for aesthetics and morality, because while both seemed entirely subjective, we still argue about it with facts and so there was some sort of conundrum my instincts didn't like. You either commit and say something is 100% arguable for a moral statement or aesthetics, or else you don't and it's meaningless to argue. And yet we do both and acknowledge both. This is why I was never in favor of moral relativism, whatever it means (time to watch more videos), because it implies absolute subjectivism and that it is futile to argue (which would ironically render useless the Oscar's and prizes, reviews for the arts) which is not what happens in fact.

Jokes on you, I really did pause when you asked ^^ An excellent video as always! Keep up the good work :)

Thank you so much sir for amazing explanation.

35:54-36:04 ‘actually, pause the video, right now. And make up an argument either for the claim that marijuana should be legal or that it shouldn’t be… You di- you didn’t pause the video. You’re not actually gonna think of something, … you just wanna keep on watching… ’ 😅😂

Best Teacher Ever

I love that you used the simple word, “sorry.” Now… please do it again as a Canadian 😂 👍🏻

thank you so much for this! honestly, I think I saw every video on this topic but NOW I FINALLY GET IT! "YAY LEARNING" (I hope you got my joke) :)

These videos are so helpful

Interesting discussion. Worth watching again.

Thank you sir ...for this wonderful explaination

Thank you SO much. It only took about 4 hours to complete my homework...haha but this has helped tremendously.

I love your lectures. You are great. ❤️

Thanks, this is awesome.

"I dont know how to spell it" I see myself in this guy

Wait a freakin' second this makes way more sense than I anticipated

An expression like "pickles barf" is basically shorthand for "i don't enjoy eating pickles" which, depending on the speaker's opinion on pickles could be true or false (assuming the speaker is honest). So "pickles barf" could be true or false?

Great job.

I have to say I think I find ethical emotivism the most convincing and comprehensive description of morality I have encountered. If anyone can point me to any well-reasoned critiques of the philosophy I'd be happy to read them.

I feel like there’s a fair number of issues with Ayer’s discussion. Most of which are involved with his theory turning “moral statements” from general statements into statements about the speaker. Like, if I say “Violence is wrong,” if that means “Boo, violence!” it becomes a statement about me and not a general statement. Creating the Sincere/ Insincere analog to true/ false creates a situation where the speaker of a statement plays more of a role in how that statement is evaluated than the statement itself. And in the end, there’s the assumption that there exist some type of behavior that will universally be accepted as “good” or “bad” by everyone.

I’ve read a lot of philosophy but not moral philosophy - which is why I’m now binging these videos. And professor Jeff is a great presenter. But contra Jeff, I think a version of subjectivism is correct. Under this version “violence is wrong” isn’t an idiom for “I dislike violence” as subjectivism was presented in the lecture: it’s an idiom for “I dislike (or disapprove of) the commission of violence by anyone.” Personally, as a Humean and a physicalist I don’t see how moral talk could be successfully interpreted otherwise. To keep this short I will focus mainly on one argument here. In his video on moral relativism Jeff concluded that moral relativism is true between different societies: there are differences between the moral systems of different societies. Then to have moral talk be both truth apt and true in all societies (the latter seeming necessary if the spirit of relativism is to be preserved) statements like “violence is wrong” can only mean something like “we here dislike (or disapprove of) the commission of violence by anyone.” This form is also consistent with the point made in that other video that so-called toleration - the acceptance that members of other societies are moral when they follow their code even when it disagrees with ours - is not consistent with relativism. Under my proposed interpretation this is the case because “anyone” includes all those in the other societies. So my proposed interpretation has the virtue of being consistent with both the existence of relativism and the inconsistency of relativism with toleration. Reduce the proposed society-level moral assertions to the moral assertions of any single person in any of the societies and, once again, you have “I dislike the commission of violence by anyone.” Also, wouldn't any moral realist who believes "violence is wrong" also agree with "I dislike (or disapprove of) the commission of violence by anyone?” Such agreement is a necessary condition in order for my view that the first is an idiom for the second to be correct. But that condition appears to be satisfied.

I personally don't see why we cannot go further and do this kind of translations: 'Violence is wrong' -> 'Boo violence' -> 'I don't like violence' || 'I think violence should be prohibited in our society,' etc. It can all be reduced to subjectivism. Also we never perceive the expression 'Buying coffee is bad' as 'I don't like buying coffee' just like we don't perceive it as 'Boo coffee.' We perceive it as a genuine ethical assertion.

Very well explained and entertaining. Enjoyed it.

If Jeffrey Kaplan is reading this, have you had the chance to take any class at Berkeley with the late professor James Gregor. I took his class and I remember he was a fan of AJ Ayer and assigned him for us to read.

3:45 Maybe I should watch the whole video first. But I reject the initial premise that emotive expressions don't have a truth value. The pragmatics of languages means I always translate the expression "Pickles- barf" into "You don't like pickles", but clearly you could say "Pickles - barf" and not mean it. And thus it would be false. Is Ayer's confusing the expression with the actual sensation or sentiment? Or am I not following that for the purpose of Ayer;s discussion the expression of the sentiment and the sentiment are taken to be equivalent? Maybe that's made clear later. But for me the expression is not the sentiment and the expression is pragmatically equivalent to a statement which has a truth value. So the rest of the discussion is probably going to go down a rabbit hole that leads nowhere.

Love your videos. As much as i see it, your are a great Philosopher. Thank you .

Ayer seems to be circling around something potentially significant using a complicated workaound. Yet, there is something compelling to me about the sincerity / insincerity evaluation of moral statements.

The opening statement is true because that is the way you feel, if you are telling the truth.

Will you ever do one on Logical Positivism? As I feel it needs to make a come back today more than ever. Also what about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus? Waiting impatiently for those.

thank you!

So, I was listening to concentration music while writing an ethics paper when the music trickled off without me noticing, and all of a sudden I heard someone exclaim, "PICKLES!" Good grief that is one heck of a way to have one's concentration broken!! 😂

At 16:19 I’m not sure I follow. Is “sorry” not short for “I am filled with sorrow?” Otherwise how could the person be insincere?

Thanks!

I love A.J. Ayer's Emotivist Theory of Moral Language

I love the passive aggressive tone

How does the invisible white board work or can he right backwards very well?

Thank you

I request Shri Jeffrey to explain the theories on the basis of four subsets.... Factual agreement / factual disagreement / moral agreement / moral disagreement.... Please it will resolve the confusion around the Ayer's and Moore's theory...

...uh, I think Ayers may say “I don’t want to record today” and the “another video lecture, ugh” would be similar sentiments. They express mental states, but contain no real ethical substance. If someone says, “I know I have to record my lecture today, but I will not do it.” The way I’ve read Ayers is parallel to how I consider Wittgenstein. We are way to opaque in our use of language to initiate many of moral or logical judgements that we float out to the world. But, I could be misunderstanding them. Like the content.

17:50 The counterargument for that claim would inevitably boil down to the fact that the T/F value of that proposition doesn't necessarily pertain to the objective state of the wrongness or goodness of a moral action, but to the objective state of an individual's psychological state.

I love the B.S. abbreviation at 27:27 ;)

I think a great deal of moral disagreements is about moral values, eg. both parties agree that things that, in principle, people should have the right to take drugs, and that people driving under influence is bad, but one side might say that marijuana should be illegal because the risk of people driving under the influence of marijuana outweighs the benefits of people being able to take it recreationally, and the other one says that it doesn't outweigh the benefit. This example shows that people can agree about basic morals (one thing good, another thing bad), but still disagree about what's morals, based on weight of goodness and badness of things.

Combining what we have heard in this video with the explanation of Utilitarianism in prior videos, could the source of moral disagreements by any chance be the overwhelming challenge of measuring and weighing all outcomes postulated in the factual claims made to support moral statements that would need to be satisfactorily met to reach an aggregate value for pleasure/pain that would decide the matter for good? If that calculation was practically feasible, moral claims would in fact be verifiable, at least under the premises of Utilitarianism, contradicting Ayer‘s theory and Subjectivism at the same time.

So, as I understand it, in arguments about the physical world, we agree that things are true or false based on proving facts. But in moral talk, we agree that something is right or wrong based on our values (which comes from subjective experience). In other words, two people that agree with the exact same facts might still come to a different conclusion about a moral claim if they prioritize different values. Ex: we can both agree that suffering is bad and that violence causes suffering. We can also agree that there are contexts in witch violence is socially accepted like sports, self defense, protecting your loved ones, etc. And even if we agree with those things, one of us might think that violence is wrong in all circumstances and the other might think that violence is permissible in some contexts.

Sentences that ends with a period can be T/F? 1) Would you stop confusing people? ( can’t be T/F ) 3) Sentences ending with , ; ! ( Can’t be expressed as T/F)

Do you do a lecture on Eastern philosophies, especially that of Persian's?

What you believe and other people believe is truth to your group. Claims and opinions are real because we treat them as real. So moral talk becomes true when someone you consider truthful or guru tells it and you copy it automatically as true. That's how you change meaning of words from neutral to pejorative or trendy. Even sound of words is affecting their meaning in relation to other similar words meanings you remember. that's why people using different languages see a different reality and structure of their language also affects the way they think That's why ideology is shaping language. To manipulate society into believing something different. A logical person ignores emotional addition to words but majority is reacting emotionally.

I need to listen few more times 😅

In Sam Harris's the Moral Landscape, he defines Morality as the well-being of conscious creatures. I think this is the unspoken assumption of moral statements. So when people say, "Violence is wrong", what they actually mean is "Violence is bad for (reduces) well-being". In resolving questions like "Should we legalize marijuana?", we should just add up the consequences of marijuana that increase well-being and weigh it against the consequences that decrease well-being. Using Sam Harris's definition of morality resolves many dilemmas.

Isn’t “sorry” just a contraction of “I am sorry” which is a statement that can be true or false?

“Violence is wrong” can be shorthand for “the consequences of violence are most often counterproductive to the goals of society and it’s survival” spoken by one of limited verbal acuity

The first thing I thought of when you said true/false was realizing it could be honest/dishonest... then i got confused.

Correct me if my logic is faulty, but: I'm not sure if I can agree with the assertion that moral disagreements are really just factual disagreements. Going by your example of the marijuana argument, most of the time this discussion occurs in the real world, both the person arguing for and the person arguing against are aware of both of the facts that were brought up and might agree that both statements are true. So, actually, the disagreement is not about facts. What they really disagree on is which value - "preventing car crashes" or "stopping seizures" - is more important. Which is the more moral thing to pursue. So the disagreement is, in fact, about morality.

"pickles, BARF!" can be sincere or insincere, and surely sincere and insincere do have truth values.

I did pause the video!

Assertion/ Exclamation / Question /Order....... Types of sentences....

40:20 Yeah this makes total sense I've seen moral system's disagreements where argument was impossible because the facts didn't matter the person on the other side of the argument was very far off the moral baseline.

It seems like Ayer is explaining a meta element and how talking about things in a meta way isn't really an analysis of the data. So in a black and white case you could use a scale to weigh two options with multiple facts acting as weights, you can state that one data point outweighs the other data points for yourself but that doesn't change the state of the scale. "Eugh" states your scale is negatively balanced in a major way while "eh *shrug*" states a negative balance in a minor way, but only stating that the balance is negative is definable and therefore true or false. Arguing about the facts of a moral argument does not actually argue about the exact state of the scale. If you argue a fact that changes someone's mind from "eugh" to "eh" they may accept the fact but still feel negative. If you assume a perfect scale that is always working properly then it's impossible to say the scale is true or false, only to attack the facts sitting on the two sides of the scale.

Factual agreement vs factual disagreement

'Is impairment correlated with peak THC blood levels? No. “While fewer studies have examined the relationship between THC blood levels and degree of impairment, in those studies that have been conducted the consistent finding is that the level of THC in the blood and the degree of impairment do not appear to be closely related. Peak impairment does not occur when THC concentration in the blood is at or near peak levels. Peak THC level can occur when low impairment is measured, and high impairment can be measured when THC level is low. Thus, in contrast to the situation with alcohol, someone can show little or no impairment at a THC level at which someone else may show a greater degree of impairment.” Compton at p. 7.' R. Compton, Nat’l Highway Traffic Safety Admin., Marijuana-Impaired Driving - A Report to Congress (DOT HS 812 440) (July 2017)

Ayer

27:47 I don't know. The sentences "I'm exhausted." and "Violence is wrong." both seem to be describing the speaker's mental state.

If our opponent concurs with us in expressing moral disapproval of all actions of a given type t, then we may get him to condemn a particular action A, by bringing forward arguments to show that A is of type t.

I love how he misspelled ,,guy"

how did you know I wouldn't pause the video 😳

Am i misunderstanding the examples or is this all a problematic argument? If i exclaim "ugh" at pickles, that necessarily communicates, "i hate pickles", which obviously has a truth value. How can the exclamation not have that truth value? And Orders have a truth value as well. They imply what the state of the world is and that the speaker does not desire that state. Orders can mismatch with reality and be absurd, and thereby be false.

Ayer also said that moral action was a mere whim. There may be no objective morality, but there is relative morality. That morality relates to us. The common human goal is contentment [happiness]. Whatever you do, you intend your actions to make you or others happy. Actions that reduce the sum of happiness in all those that are affected by those actions are immoral.

Pure Gold

6:00......morality and moral talk....

29:33....... Moore's objection..... .....we have genuine moral disagreements.....

Aren't there genuine disagreements between utilitarianism and deontological ethics that are not factual claims?

What would Ayer have said about issues of applied ethics, such as abortion, animal rights and so forth? It's all about how the agent feels about that action (e.g. she feels abortion is OK, she feels like steak). Isn't this leading to a free-for-all moral subjectivism? thanks in advance.

If I understood it rightly, Aquinas addressed this in Summa Theologica by saying that there are these two things, truth and goodness and each are convertible into the other. Thus one can convert a moral statement (i.e a statement about what is good) into a statement about what is true and vice versa. 1. Thus if one make the assertion there is currently a large city in Texas called Dallas. That is either true or false, and in this case is true. 2. Or one could say it is good that there is a large city in Texas called Dallas. That is a statement about goodness. So to convert 1 into a goodness statement one can say is it good to assert that as True, and the answer to whether it is good depends on whether it is true and assering what is True is always good. For perhaps sometimes making a truth statement may not be good, say revealing a military secret to the enemy is not good, and especially if it is true. And to convert 2 into a truth statement one can say, is it really true that it is good that there is a a large city in Texas named Dallas. And (once again if I understood him rightly) it seems he ascribes truth statements to the intellect while goodness statements to the will. Thus the province of the intellect is to assess what is true vs what is false while the province of the will is to assess what is good vs what is not good. And this conversion then is like changing dollar (which say the intellect measures things) into Rubles (which the will understands) and vice versa. But (once again if I understood that right, and its been quite a while that I read all this) that it is the heart that adjudicates this in that the heart rules on what is preferable. For it seems a rock or such has no preference as to being in one state or another. But humans do have such preferences and most humans would prefer to be healthy than sick, well fed vs starving, happy vs sad, have pleasure over pain, etc., know the truth vs be deceived, etc. that is the heart determines what one loves. So the intellect asses truth but the heart determines whether one loves the truth or not. And the will assess goodness but the heart determines whether it prefers the good over what s evil. Thus the heart it seems addresses more along the lines of what moore is talking about what is an underlying good, that is what outcomes if preferable over some other outcome e.g. thou shall not kill, while the will applies that to the situation at hand, i.e should marijuana be legal given it can cause people to kill others by impairing their judgement, while the intellect assess is that true that smoking marijuana n does impair the judgment and make it more likely for one to kill someone in a traffic action due to their impaired judgment. And this is something I have noticed that many philosopher seem to simply say something an earlier philosopher said just in a different way, albeit maybe they add something to what was said earlier in doing so, or maybe the opposite. For I was listening to the other day, The Enchiridion of Augustine e.g. see librivox.org/the-enchiridion-by-saint-augustine/ having posted it as a link in some other comment and noticed that he said pretty much the same as Descarte about I think therefore I am, by arguing with the Greeks (and I am paraphrasing this from memory so I might not be stating it quite right) that say there is nothing one can know with certainty to be true that in that if one can even assert that then obviously there is something one can know with certainty is true in that if one can be just being able to assert something means ione can be certain that they exist else they could not make any assertions to begin with. So it seems there is more than one way to skin a cat and similarly one can say the same thing different ways. So it seem that much of what you are cited here has been said in different ways by previous philosophers but in different ways but it seems that some get more press for what they say than others. And Aquinas in Summa Theologica argues that theology is a science and it seems that one can take these ideas in philosophy over into religion and argue that statements such as a matter should be settled by two or three witnesses might in part refer to these two or wo witnesses being the intellect, the will, and that third being the heart. Of course there is no way to prove that is what is meant but one can argue that these ideas do seem to track one another well, that is there being these two or three witnesses required to settle important matter vs the parts of the soul (or such) , the intellect, the will, and the heart and the ideas of truth vs goodness and what makes something true or good and why those both matter. So this seems to be another way of saying much the same as what those you cite in your presentation but approached perhaps from a somewhat different perspective or approach. And watching your presentation brought these to mind. So once again, I am finding your presentation both interesting and thought provoking, with the above being a few of those thoughts that were as such provoked. And BTW, I am a retired engineer and approach all this not as a philosopher but more as an engineer in that if I were going to build an architecture say of a robot that acted in a similar manner as a human how might I construct that architecture and what would be its components. Thus I might make a component I might call the intellect that asses truth, a one component that I might call the will that makes decisions as to what seems good, and another component one might call the heart that deines justy what that robots considers to be good, while the will asses how to obtain that good, but not what that good is. So I may be approaching this form a different perspective than one might form opurly a philosophical one but more as an engineer.

...denotes preference ...denotes vantage point

Assertion does two things.... Either true or false...

36:10 No, I didn't pause butI DID make like 5 arguments

Moral agreement vs moral disagreement.....

Marijuana is denoted as a description of the state induced by (being under the influence of) smoking the plant named 'cannabis,' and as such, should be illegal (or treated like highly controlled substances) in states requiring true and logical usage of language, such as that of my own body, and furthermore, the plant named 'cannabis' should be legal to smoke in states that don't require additional external punishment in reaction to self-punishment.

In philosophy, the lack of clear language often masquerades as deep thought. This seems to be yet another case in point.

Must admit that I find Ayer both fascinating, and his argumentation beautiful. But that the same time I don't understand why two non-moral claims can't be true at the same time. Or untrue. Take the example: Weed kills people it traffic, and weed stops seizures. Both can be true and we can disagree on the proportiona of the values or the inherent worth of each, making the underlying structure, moral, no?

Its interesting he used an example of sports because people often argue with eachother over sports opinions as id theyre fact XD

nice

It might occur to someone that "Is the door still shut?" is a question and is true or false. The question asserts that the door was previously shut. Never mind. :)

Would love to know what others think on this and just proposing an idea - but I think that the brain scan that reveals he definitely truely does not like coffee - that mental event is actually the heuristic that presupposes the thinking event that later attempts to order information in order to 'prove' it in the way that we prefer to discuss. I'm not sure the two things can be separated successfully The idea of a collective psyche both biologically and culturally (obviously the coexistent teleology between these) as well as the material reality and its own genealogy - is not immaterial either in this - they give rise to universals as well as moments in time.

It is either true that you feel that way about making lecture videos, or you don't. So, yes, it can be true or false about your actual feelings.

I'm reminded of the fallacy of fallacy; Just because the argument is presented poorly does not invalidate the argument. Oh if I only had a ghost writer and a platform, I could write an entire paper just off of this video. The enlightenment thinkers really are like Franklin, with his kite and key, trying to describe quantum theory. I think the search for absolute rules necessarily limits our understanding to the most simple situations only, like trying to use Newtonian physics in the relativistic universe of Einstein. There just isn't the bandwidth available in a comment to address this issue acceptably

Moral claims X factual claims... ❤❤❤

Ayers seems incoherent. What does it express, when I say "ew, pickles". It expresses that I don't like pickles. To say that something expresses something is basically equivalent to saying it says it. Any expression like this is, in effect, a claim about one's internal state.