Debating Morality With Philosophical Legends

What is morality and where does it come

from?

Is it woven into the fabric of the

universe or something we invent to make

our instincts and emotions make sense?

As we decide how to treat other animals

and artificial intelligence,

we need to understand the roots and the

reach of moral thought.

From ancient religion to modern ethics,

tonight we ask, are we any close to

understanding what it means to be good?

Ladies and gentlemen of the Royal

Institution Theater,

please put your hands together for your

host, BBC New Generation Thinker of

2024, Dr. Jack Size.

[Music]

Nailed it. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Hello and welcome to the mystery of

morality here at the beautiful Royal

Institution Theater. Brought to you by

our good friends at Premier Christian

Radio's Unbelievable.

Every single time I come here, I'm just

blown. I say this every time I come on.

I say I'm blown away by the support.

Another sellout show. I need to like I'm

not I wasn't used to saying that the

first two times, but I think this is the

fifth show in a row that we've done.

Just give me a little show of hands if

you've came to one of the shows before.

Wow. Okay, so maybe a third in the front

there. Keep your hand up if you're one

of those people who were heckling me in

the audience last week.

He's up there, Paul. Make sure that Oh,

no. Was it Was it you all along? Okay,

take yourself out. Drag yourself around

the back. Thank you all for being here.

We've got four exceptional thinkers

waiting in the wings. So, without

further ado, let's bring them out.

Please give them a huge warm welcome.

First of all, for the man who has God

double-checking his moral reasoning,

Professor Richard Swimburn

Pro for what goes around comes around

and always in a good way. It's Dr.

Jessica Frasier,

part-time skateboarder, fulltime

philosopher. It's Alex O' Conor.

Now, please join me. If you've been here

before, you may know that Rich has been

with us before. Jessica's been with us

before. Alex has been with us before.

I'm so excited tonight to welcome for

the first time here at the Royal

Institution Theater, Peter Singer.

Thank you all for being here. This is

going to be I'm really excited about the

discussion. We're going to set our

stalls out in reference to a central

question. We're having about an hour of

free flowing conversation before we open

it up to questions from you, the

audience. The main questions we're

thinking about tonight are what the

grounds of morality are and who counts,

who should come into our moral

calculations, other animals, artificial

intelligence, and the like. Peter, would

you like to kick us off? What grounds

morality and what counts morally?

Well, what grounds morality, I believe,

is our capacity to reason. Now, that's

not denying that morality, that our

moral instincts, our intuitions have a

base in evolution. We evolved as social

mammals and we can find something like

morality, a kind of protomorality in our

closer relatives, the chimpanzees and

bonobos for example. But if we really

want to know what is right and wrong, I

think we have to get beyond that. The

fact that we have something that has

evolved is not a reason for thinking

that that is the right thing to do.

Especially not in the circumstances that

we are now, which may be quite different

from the circumstance in which we

evolved. For example, we evolved in

small communities of maybe 150 people,

face-toface communities. We now live in

a world where we can make a difference

to people on the other side of the

world. So what are our obligations

regarding that? I think the answer is

that if we really think about it, the

interests of any one human being and any

other

uh should carry equal weight unless of

course one of them has some problem so

that they are incapable of experiencing

pleasure or pain. Maybe they're not even

conscious. That would mean that they

they don't have interests in the

relevant sense. And in fact, I will go

further and say that just as we can see

that the interests of one human has the

same weight as another if those

interests are comparable, I think that

extends even beyond our species. So

although we've reached a status at least

officially of accepting a universal

declaration of human rights, which is a

kind of statement that all human beings

matter morally and matter equally in

some sense. I think we need to move

beyond that and we need to recognize

that the species of a being just like

the race or the sex of a being is not in

itself a reason for saying that the pain

it may experience doesn't matter or the

pleasure that it experiences doesn't

matter. I think that we should regard

all sentient creatures as moral

subjects. That is, as beings with moral

standing, which means we have

obligations not to harm them and where

we can to promote their happiness and

well-being.

And uh it's also true then if we want to

talk about the possibility that

artificial intelligence should become

conscious that if we it does convince us

that we have conscious AI that it has

feelings that matter that cares about

things then that I think would also

count as well. So that's my answer to

the question who is a moral subject. Uh

all sentient beings are moral subjects.

Jessica, you specialize in Hindu

worldviews. Uh the popular conception is

that they, you know, they have a better

or I don't want to say better, but they

have a very different approach to

nonhuman animal rights than we have

traditionally in the west. What grounds

that?

Um well, okay, I'm going to put out a

theory, if you like, of how to look at

it that I think folds in. uh all beings

who are able to experience good and bad

and I'm coming partly from the angle

indeed that in Asian religions you often

don't have a particular god or a

platonic good that is the point on which

you hang all concepts of goodness so you

have to come at it a different way I'm

going to suggest um something like

looking at it through an ethics of

ascent where goodness is real but it's

more emergent from out of the natural

world and every being that can help

generate an experience experience of

good is part of that. So to illustrate

that and we'll come to kind of how this

fits into Hindu and Buddhist ideas, but

to illustrate it, imagine the big bang

just happened and suddenly there's space

and time and there's matter and there's

objects and relations. Is there ethics

yet? Probably not. Next stage. Now

there's chemicals, compounds, organic

life consciousness

experiences of anxiety, and of

flourishing. Is there ethics yet?

Unclear. The next stage you've got now

consciousness emotion empathy the

ability to discover emotions in other

beings, to plan on whether to use your

agency to create happiness or sadness in

other beings. You've got stories, you've

got feeling, you've got art, you've got

the ability for self-sacrifice. Now,

emerging out of that picture, it feels

like we have ethics.

This is an idea that you find in a

number of Indian texts. Um, there's an

ancient text that uses the image of

spices. If you take spices by

themselves, there's nothing that

exciting there. But mix them the right

way and you get flavor, which is an

emergent thing that happens in minds.

And it's a real thing.

And I want to argue that ethics is a

certain way of looking at it that sees

ethics and goodness as real. It's

something that emerges and every being

that is able to help generate it as an

experience in some creature is part of

that ethical realm. Three things I'll

end on. One, it's a context ethics. That

means there isn't one thing. It's going

to arise differently in different

situations. And so if you're a moral

agent, you have to be able to be aware

and skillful about how you manipulate

your environment. Two, it means ethics

is real. It's not a reductionist

picture. It's a real ethical realm that

is generated out of us partly just as

numbers as stories are. So it's

something we have to take very

seriously. And three, it puts you in the

driver's seat. Right? If you don't have

a god or a good or a sign or a

commandment, you have to be aware of how

you're making good or bad every minute.

And it's that sense of being part of the

emergent arising of the good that is

really where ethics and ethical subjects

lie. Richard, what do you make of this?

Is ethics something there at the

beginning of time or does it emerge out

of nature?

Let's could consider the individual

person. Um we learn each of us uh

ethical views from our parents who tell

us this is wrong and that's right and

they tell us that with regard to our own

behavior and with regard to the behavior

of others and so we start with certain

uh particular judgments and then we come

to notice uh that um these particular

judgments exemplify general principles

such as that one shouldn't uh uh

unnecessarily hurt people and so on. And

I don't think those principles are

solely concerned with be benefiting the

experiences of others. One of the

deepest moral principles is an

obligation to fulfill your promises. Uh

whether or not it does anybody any good.

um uh if I am making a pro a promise to

a dying man that I will do so and so and

he dies and uh he will never know

whether I do so and so or not and I

think so and so is a bad thing to do. I

would fail in my obligations if I didn't

uh carry out his wishes. So it it

extends a lot further than human

experiences.

uh and what we learn is general we come

to see to recognize as a result of the

particular examples we've been given

general principles which cover a lot of

examples uh so show saying showing that

some actions are obligatory and others

are just good but not obligatory and so

on and um then we come into contact with

other people who have different views

how are we to resolve them well there's

a couple of methods at least. One is by

experience. If someone says

uh no government ought to admit illegal,

uh migrants and um we're originally

taught that and then we go and find and

learn on the telly what horrible things

happened to illegal migrants that made

them illegally migrate and we uh change

our mind. But there is also a principle

which is known as reflective

equilibrium. That is to say, we fi find

ourselves formulating general principles

on the basis of what we have learned.

And someone points out to us that one of

these uh judgments really doesn't fit

with the other ones. And so we want must

know whether we want to stand by the odd

judgment or whether we wish to rule it

out on the basis of what we have heard

others say and that way we can make

progress. Of course there will be some

people one meets who have totally

different moral views and I don't see

any reason for calling those moral views

moral views. It has to have some

connection with the sort of thing that

most of us recognize as moral. Um uh and

um

just to put just to push you on the the

second part of the question briefly is

the uh who counts as uh like who counts

morally there with non-human animals and

um it's um uh

my point was that not all uh moral

obligations are obligations to benefit

somebody's experiences. Many of them are

not all of them. um uh it's uh integral

we recognize it's integral to humans

that we must fulfill our promises and

not lie whether or not it's to the

benefit of human race the human race

that we keep that and just one further

general point I would like to make one

principle which we come to recognize is

if we have um received a very great

benefit from someone and we've agreed to

receive it on condition that uh uh we

fulfill certain obligations we wouldn't

have otherwise. Then of course we have a

duty to fulfill those obligations. But

our two greatest benefactors are

benefactors who have given us life

itself. Uh they are our parents who

brought us into being and are the state

who has kept us in being by security.

And um if we are uh appreciate what they

have done otherwise we should be

committing suicide. Uh if we appreciate

what they have done it's reasonable to

suppose that we have great obligations

to them to do what they say and of

course that is recognized. We we our

children have to obey their parents in

various ways even if there's no other

reason for doing it. Um and likewise of

course with the state and of course I

would generalize that because the the

benefit provided by God is far greater

than the benefit provided by parents or

the state. God makes uh gives the state

and the the um our parents the power to

do things and everything we do is is due

to God who has brought us into being.

And it's reasonable to suppose for that

reason that if we knew all the good

things that had come to us in life, we

would have accepted the obligation to

follow him and what do he wants. So I

think um uh

unless it's wrong, of course, but a good

God wouldn't command us to do wrong. But

what a good God would command us to do

is to do actions which are not

obligatory, but are just fairly good.

And therefore, um, some of our

obligations are obligations to do what

God tells us.

Okay, good. I've I've got to keep my

promise at holding to five minutes and I

wouldn't want to do something immoral.

So, I'll come back to you on a couple of

these, Richard. As Rich was speaking

there, I picked on a bunch of things

that I can imagine you disagree with,

Alex, moral facts, and then we started

talking about God as well. So, where do

you want to start?

I think there's a lot to agree with, of

course, in in what everybody said, as

there always is. Um, I've really liked

this idea of starting with sort of

nothing and beginning to to build things

into our universe and see when

intuitively we think this thing called

ethics might evolve. Uh, because it's

quite a difficult thing to define,

right? Famously, terms like good and bad

are extremely difficult to put into

precise or imprecise definitions. So,

okay, let's try to analyze what what it

is that we think makes something moral

and a universe in which that wouldn't

exist. One way of doing that might be to

start with, you know, the atoms and the

planets and then the people. And we

might say that it's somewhere around

where consciousness evolves. I agree

with that. But think about everyday

actions as well, right? Like if I'm

walking down the street and you see me

kick a homeless person for fun.

There are two things that's important.

There are two things that you could say,

right? One is you could sort of think to

yourself a descriptive fact. Alex just

kicked a homeless person. That's a fact.

That's that's in your mind. It's a it's

a proposition that you're thinking

about. Another is like, I think it's

wrong that he did that. Right?

Propositions like that though, like they

they don't sort of appear in your

consciousness in that way. Some people

think in sentences, but for me, that

proposition, Alex just kicked a homeless

person would kind of exist in my mind

before the before the words that I

formulated them in did. Okay. So then

I'm just going to ask like what's the

difference between those kinds of like

propositions or statements? a

descriptive statement like the sky is

blue um could be true or false. The sky

is blue, the chairs are green.

Descriptive statements like that and

moral statements that was wrong. You

shouldn't have done that. For me, to cut

it quite short because we only have 5

minutes, I am an ethical emotivist. I

think the answer to this question is

feeling. Um, and that's why I think that

there is quite a lot to agree with in

what in what Richard Swimburn said,

although perhaps for different reasons.

Um, ethical emotivists think that

ethical statements are expressions of

emotion. So when you say that murder is

wrong, crudely as AJ A had it, you're

saying something a bit like boo murder,

right? It's not the same thing as

reporting on your feelings. It's not the

same thing as saying I don't like

murder. That's the kind of thing that

could be true or false. That's a

statement. Could be true that I don't

like murder. I could be lying about

that. But the expression of the emotion

itself, that's what murder is wrong,

means. There are a few famous problems

for this. One of the most simple is the

problem of moral disagreement. Now, how

do we account them for the fact that

you've got people who disagree

ethically with each other and yet they

seem to be talking meaningfully? Well, I

agree with Professor Swinburn that you

might see such a debate. I can't

remember the exact example that

that you gave. Oh, about immigration or

something, right? and and you might sort

of think that something's right or wrong

and then you look on the TV and you see

something and it changes your mind. But

as a also pointed out, so much of what

we call moral disagreement is actually

just factual disagreement. It exists on

that descriptive plane. Because if the

thing that changed your mind was a

factual statement that you saw on the

news, a number of people who' been

stopped at a border or an amount of

suffering that had been caused, you

haven't changed your mind on anything

ethical. You've just changed your mind

about a descriptive fact. And that

descriptive fact has informed

your ethical judgment on that particular

uh instance. So another example might be

like um gun laws in the United States.

You could have an ethical debate with

somebody. You know that if you

criminalize guns then more people die of

guns. That's just like a fact that can

be tested as true or false. That's not a

moral claim. You know that swimming

pools kill more children than guns do.

Maybe that's true. Maybe that's false.

But that's not a moral claim. That's a

factual claim. And if those are the

kinds of discussions you're having which

are making you change your mind, you're

not debating ethics at all. So I would

start by answering that objection by

saying that a lot of what we call moral

disagreement isn't moral disagreement at

all. There's more to say about where

there might be fundamental moral

disagreement. Of course, um but I should

be careful here. I don't even know what

time we started. But oh, but the other

thing to say is that there was another

response to this which is like, well,

how else do we deal with uh moral

disagreement? Apart from looking at

things on the TV and stuff, there's also

this wonderful concept of reflective

equilibrium. um you might be familiar uh

with it from the work of John Rules uh

when talking about how we should

organize society and and you kind of

have this idea where you've got your

moral principles that you feed into this

big ethics machine and then you've got

the consequences they cause. So Peter

Singer has a wonderful idea that

suffering matters no matter who's

suffering and you plug that into the

machine and what consequence does it

give you? Well, we catch around 440

billion shrimp every single year. And

for $1 donated to the shrimp welfare

project, you can save one and a half

thousand of them from being tortured

essentially before their death, right?

Is that the best use of your money?

Maybe. But the reflective equilibrium

says like, well, if you think that's a

bit of an unintuitive use of your money,

but you've also got this principle, this

reflective equilibrium is sort of a tug

and tussle between the two. What is

governing

how much stock you place in whether that

conclusion is true? and I just have to

accept it because of my premises or even

though I've got those premises, I don't

like the conclusions. I'm not so sure

about that. I think it's feeling. In

other words,

Jessica, let's I want to bring you in

here. Alex's position. I looked up

before the the show. I was thinking how

many professional philosophers,

philosophers more generally, who

subscribed to something like emotivism

or some non-realism, non-cognitivism.

And I I saw on the Phil paper survey,

this big survey of philosophers, I think

it was like five years ago, 20% have a

view similar to Alex's, 70% have a view

which say there are like moral facts

that are out there and famously this is

a problem that they'd be very weird

things, right? But you seem to be saying

they're not actually that weird. They're

sort of just like things we

moral facts.

Moral facts. Yeah. So what do you think

of emotivism and um and what would you

say to Yeah. What would you say to Alex

to to bring him over to the 70%. I think

that it Oh, what would I say to Alex?

Oh, I think that's an interesting

question here um about the status of

emotion, right? Clearly emotion is part

of this and clearly it's a good analysis

of language that I'm not going, oh, let

me consider at length my objective view

on the kicking of that poor homeless

man. I'm feeling it directly and that's

and I I think the way that I'm thinking

of it that's that's a that's arising

from my whole being

from circumstance from feeling from all

my instincts from many things I'm not

sure I think it's not rational

with that and in a way I think it's

precisely there is a there is a rational

element there right it does matter to me

whether you are kicking him because he

asked you to

uh or you're kicking him because you

were a mean old sod matter Yeah. See, it

doesn't matter. Or whether he killed

your sister. There's a wonderful story

about a guy who ate some other guy and

he went to the police afterwards and

said, "No, but the guy told me to." And

he'd written down, "Yeah, it's okay. You

can do it, mate." Right? So, this moral

kind of confusion about what are the

motives, what are the experiences being

had, what are the um what are the

various circumstantial factors

generating the status of that act? And I

think all of that together with reason

and emotion generates our sense of what

it is that's right and good. It's hard

it I find it hard to see how you

separate them out. Uh one real quick

example there's a there's there's a

famous argument in Buddhism uh Shantaa

talks about it can't remember the text

um in where he says it people don't

exist actions don't exist things don't

exist nothing exists it's all a kind of

virtual magical matrix and nothing is

really there but you know what matters

even if nothing exists that we do the

right thing and are compassionate to

other people

so you get a strange status where

actually maybe moral relations and facts

are the realest things that we generate

no matter what the status of anything

else. I just want to drive a wedge very

quickly between Alex and Richard because

Alex made it seem like you you're

agreeing with Richard on a few points

but I wonder Richard if you've got any

thoughts as well before Alex gives a

response on you know on emotivism

whether it's just

plenty to say um um first I think it's a

basic epistemic pro uh uh requirement

that you should believe that things are

as they seem to be in the absence of

counter evidence.

If it seems to you that you're hearing

me talk to you, you should believe that

and rather than that you are dreaming.

Um, and that applies to absolutely

everything. Uh, unless you've got

positive evidence that that is your

belief is mistaken, you should go along

with it. It's no good saying your you

should only believe this if people agree

with you. Uh maybe but uh u you only

believe but that would only be the case

that you uh were then in the position as

to whether they really did believe in

you and whether they had said that they

agreed with you. But then it would only

be your belief that they had said to you

that they agreed with you about the

other belief. And that is the basic uh

principle on everything and it applies

to morals too. And if you start with the

view that

what I believe about morality is correct

unless and correct I mean is a true

proposition. Uh then you've got to

produce evidence against it and the

reflective equilibrium principle

designed to do that. It's um not a

principle that will solve everything. I

quite agree. Uh it won't solve how many

shrimps have to study, have to suffer in

order to benefit something else. But it

will settle quite a number of things. Uh

a simple example um suppose someone has

been brought up to say it's wrong to

kill except uh um if you've been

authorized by uh the state to kill uh a

criminal who has broken the law in some

way or unless you have uh um uh unless

you're fighting in a just war for your

country or unless in a wild west state

uh someone has killed your relative,

then you're entitled to kill them. Um uh

and also they they may have been taught

it's okay to kill somebody in a duel, a

duel, a fight. Um and then somebody

points out to you, well all your other

principles apart from the last principle

uh say that um life should never be

taken away except to save life or in uh

uh compensation for life. Um and then

that rules out the principle of u

killing in a duel being justified

because it doesn't fit into this general

pattern of of why why uh it's legitimate

to kill. And of course you by reflection

on that principle uh in general about

the sacredness of life, you might come

to the conclusion that it's only

justified to kill in order to save life.

either in a just war or in some other

way, but never in retribution.

Okay, let's uh bring Peter back in here.

Peter, thoughts on these opening remarks

and perhaps on emotivism as well. Did

you used to hold a view similar to

emotivism back in the day?

Um, I did hold a view that there were no

objective truths in ethics for some some

time. Yes. Um, and I eventually came to

the view that that doesn't give enough

place for reasoning. As as Alex said, we

do disagree on ethical matters and we

don't just say as you know, we disagree

on matters of taste. Um, I like

strawberries better than raspberries.

You like raspberries better than

strawberries. It's not worth arguing

about that. Um, but we do want to argue

about

including matters where we are agreed on

the facts, right? We might know all the

facts about abortion and some people

will think that abortion is right. Some

people will think it's wrong.

Admittedly, some of those facts or

supposed facts might be about the

existence of God and God has said one

shouldn't kill or should never kill a

human being and the fetus is a human

being. So, so there can be perhaps some

factual differences, but I think there

are also moral differences that are not

reducible to facts and they're still

worth discussing and arguing. One other

comment, I was a little bit surprised

that Richard Swinburn um supported

reflective equilibrium. Um, Alex did

too, but I think it's more incompatible

with your view, Richard, because

reflective equilibrium really leads to a

kind of relativism. And Rolls himself

admitted this, um, that his reflective

equilibrium that he worked at in theory

of justice was one for basically western

liberal societies. And if you had grown

up in a different society, you would

have a very different set of intuitions

and the reflective equilibrium that you

came to would be different. So it

doesn't lead to an objective morality.

And that's one problem with it. The

other problem with it, I think, is that

even when we do have similar intuitions,

as I said in my opening remarks, they

may be just intuitions that we had

because we all evolved in these

smallcale face-to-face societies. And so

we have the intuition that it would be

terribly wrong not to save somebody in

need uh face to face. But it's quite

okay to continue to live our affluent

lifestyle and buy the luxury goods that

are on sale just a few blocks away um uh

and not donate anything to organizations

that are effectively acting to save the

lives of children who are dying in other

countries in the world. Um and as I say

I think the fact that we have this

intuition does not at all count towards

saying well then that's right. Um it we

don't have an obligation to people who

are far away just because we don't

perhaps grow up with that intuition that

uh we ought to do something for them. Um

and the same may be true about about our

intuitions about race. Certainly people

in earlier centuries um did not have

intuitions that it was we had

obligations to grant Africans say the

same kinds of rights that we grant

Europeans. Um, and we today, I think,

still are lacking in our intuitions

about non-human animals.

Okay, let's bring Richard in for a

second.

I think you misunderstand the principle

of reflective equilibrium. I wasn't

saying it will always give true answers.

I was saying that the um uh we we are

more that the answer given by it is more

probable than not. um and on the

evidence available to us with and the

evidence available to us is how strongly

we feel about different things and

whether they fit together. It's not

guaranteed to get the answer. Uh it may

lead you astray, but it probably won't.

And that's

I think it quite likely will because

those intuitions may be quite as

Yeah, but I mean that's um I don't

accept that. Uh but uh um that's the way

progress has been made often. I may I

took as it were a rather artificial

example uh uh but um uh let's take

another example uh of news uh the

parable of the good Samaritan which uh

Jesus told um uh the um uh lawyer who

asked the Jewish lawyer who asked uh uh

Jesus um he believed that uh uh why one

should love one's neighbor. That's what

the law said. And he said, well, who is

my neighbor? And Jesus told the story of

the good Samaritan to illustrate that

that uh surely um putting in modern

terminology what he was saying is that

if somebody behaves if you come across

someone who behaves like that to you uh

surely there's no difference between him

and the people uh um who uh keep the Old

Testament law and What he's inviting

you, Jesus is inviting his uh hearers to

uh take account of is their conflicting

uh their conflicting views about who is

the neighbor plus their now strong

conviction that he has urged them that

there's really no difference between the

two and once they've seen that then

they've moved to the more general

hypothesis. Do you want to come back

briefly and then I want to bring Alex

and just

Well, I mean I I I totally agree that

you know I if you like I I credit Jesus

with extending the scope of morality for

the people of his time beyond their own

group beyond the the Jewish people and

that's a good thing and there are many

moral reformers who have done that

but quite often they have to go against

very deep intuitions for example um

reforming our ideas about same-sex

relationships there was people many

people had very strong intuitions that

there was something wrong about same-sex

relationships and possibly they had an

evolutionary explanation because they

don't result in reproduction and

societies that discouraged them might

therefore have have grown more but you

know we don't see that as justified and

I think it's important that we rejected

that and incidentally that was rejected

a long time ago by utilitarian thinkers

um although Jeremy Bentham wrote essays

saying that there is you know why do we

make it a crime time that people have

particular sexual orientations. It was

so much against the intuitions of his

day in in the early 1800s that he didn't

even dare publish that and it was only

published relatively recently. So, but I

think we really need to not take those

intuition. We need to think more

critically and on the basis I would say

of principles as Bentham did about um

not not harming people, not interfering

with their behavior where it doesn't

harm anyone else. uh and trying to have

reforms that improve the quality of life

of people in the community. Jessica,

just a small thing on that. I think it's

really an interesting issue that's

raised, right? Obviously,

intuitions emotional motivational

intuitions are very, very powerful. At

the same time, they're very different

culture by culture and era by era. And

what do we do with that if we want to

build something based on those

intuitions? Can we ever raise

platonically up through the symposium to

the good or not? It's interesting just

historically you could make an argument

that people start to do ethics when

cultures meet each other when people

start to go oh my god these guys have

totally different intuitions than me and

they have to start somehow generating

that works for for people who don't have

the same feelings. So you can kind of

think about where people are starting to

even do that work maybe away from mere

motive and towards something a lot a bit

more general in a way. I saw recent, not

to make you blush, Alex, but I saw

recently you rank Peter Singer as the

second greatest philosopher of all time.

He lo you lost out to Aristotle. I did.

I would have lost this anyway. Even

that's a bit excessive.

We we well it was tournament style. So

ladies and gentlemen, you will have to

just apply a reflective equilibrium here

to the value of tournaments on one side

and that conclusion that Peter Singer is

the second greatest philosopher of all

time, living or dead, and figure out

what you think somewhere in the middle.

Um,

why does it sort of why why second

place? So what why is it about his cuz

you know I'm very utilitarian.

For for for clarity's sake, we sort of

have in tournaments you have to sort of

have twos twos twos and then the winners

and the winners.

So I got to the final.

So you got to the final. Well, so you

were the best of the group that we

placed on the left side which did also

such a back.

It also includes Christopher Hitchens

and Richard Dawkins and and the like.

So so

make that and and who did I lose to in

the final?

You know, I can't I can't remember.

No, I think it might have been Judith

Jarvis Thompson.

I think might be who you who you lost to

in the end. Um, which was the tricky one

because I think both of you have are

quite iconic in various ways. Uh, she of

course for

partly um it's a bit unclear who exactly

came up with the idea I think uh

popularizing has anyone heard of the

trolley problem

what a what a great little thought

experiment which can tell us quite a lot

actually um some interesting things in

in what professor Swinburn said uh one

thing I don't know if anybody noticed

the use of the word feel that jumped out

I tried to sort of raise my eyebrows I

don't know if anybody else caught it but

but reel back the video and look for the

use of the word feel and see

contextually why I think that that might

work for ethical emotivism but the

evidence was what's important you should

believe things unless you have good

counter evidence. Um the principle of

incredul I think they call that right

now I'm happy to grant that at at face

value there are a few things to say. The

first is if we start with this thing

that we believe in the absence of

counter evidence that murder is wrong. I

would first ask what do you mean like

what what literally like naively if I'm

like some alien with no moral sense like

what do you mean? Can you describe what

that is to me? And if you can't, and if

it's something that kind of needs to be

felt in the first place, then I'm not

exactly sure what it is that's the

obvious fact that I would need counter

evidence to deny. If it is about

feeling, there might be some interesting

evidence here. People were asked about

the trolley problem. Most people know

it's one person on one track and five on

the other, and you're asked if you would

pull the lever to save five people and

kill one innocent person. Most people

say they pulled the lever.

The situation has then changed such that

you're now on a bridge and there's a

same trolley going under that bridge and

it's about to run over five people. This

time you can save those people by

pushing a rotunded man off the bridge

who will collide with the train, killing

that man and saving the five. Killing

one to save five. Most people say that

they would not do that. But what's the

difference? Well, maybe it's got

something to do with the sort of

hands-on approach, right? that seems

intimately related to how we feel about

the situation versus our rationality.

So, as scientists often do, they put

some people in MRI scanners and they

asked them about the trolley problem.

And as it turns out, the people who said

that they would both pull the lever and

push the fat man. Uh when they were

doing this under the MRI scanner, it was

the part of the brain associated with

rationality that was mostly lighting up.

Whereas people who said that they would

not push the man but they would pull the

lever. It's part of their brain that was

dealing with emotions that was mostly

lighting up. That might tell us

something especially considering that

most people would do the one but not the

other. One important thing I really want

to say about what uh what Peter here

said is that is in regards to moral

disagreement, right? And and I think

it's really useful to compare ethics to

aesthetics because like aesthetics like

do you prefer vanilla or chocolate ice

cream? Do you prefer this painting or

that painting are a prime example of

something most people think is

subjective. But some people don't. There

are a lot of ethicists who consider

aesthetics to be a branch of ethics.

They say there is a correct answer to

whether you prefer, I don't know,

Shakespeare or insert some bad author

who you who you don't like, Peter

Hitchens Mail on Sunday column,

whatever. But there is an objective

answer to which of these you should

prefer. And I think there's a lot to be

learned here because for example, one

thing you said is that when somebody

says, "I like vanilla. I like ice

cream." We don't really tend to even

want to convince them. We don't really

care. But if somebody says murder is

wrong,

we might sort of say, "Well, that feels

like it could be a preference, but I

want to change their mind, but that's

because you picked an important ethical

claim and a trivial uh aesthetic claim.

If it were a more important aesthetic

claim or a more important, like if

somebody said that they think that

Shakespeare is a better writer than

Peter Hitchens, you might be more

affronted by that. you might sort of go,

well actually I I kind of think that

you're you're just wrong about that in

some way. It's a harder pill to swallow.

But some stills just do. They say,

"Okay, gosh, that's harder to accept."

But you know what? I guess it is all

about preference, isn't it? And I think

that's what the ethsist does. Because in

the same way, if you have a trivial

ethical uh dilemma or or debate, you

also don't feel that it's worth

discussing. Like if I said to you, you

know, gosh, I was I was 5 minutes late

today because uh because I overslept or

something, which is not I know it's like

7 p.m., but that's not out of the

question for someone with my

temperament. And I said, I think that

gosh, I think that was really bad. And

you said, you know, I think it's fine.

And somebody else said, no, I think

that's really bad. You should like

that's not the kind of debate that I

would like care about, not because

there's no correct answer, but because

in that particular instance, it's kind

of just not worth it. I think that's the

same with vanilla ice cream and

chocolate ice cream, but it's definitely

not the same in aesthetic preferences of

of higher importance, like the bloody BT

tower that I have to stare at every day,

for example, which is if there is such

thing as objective morality. If you want

to plug something into the reflective

equilibrium that will make me think that

there might be objectivity in ethics,

it's the building of that thing to to

get rid of the BC. Oh, you don't like

it?

Yeah. No. Gone.

I I quite like it, you know, and that's

maybe

sorry to say

the brutalism of it. Uh, Peter, do you

want to come back from Alex's argument

here before we bring Jessica and Richard

back in?

Well, I just point out in a way it

supplements Alex's argument rather than

contradicts it that why do we have these

emotional reactions to pushing a heavy

person off a bridge to save killing one

to save five whereas we don't have the

emotional reaction to pulling a switch?

Does it perhaps have something to do

that for all of our evolutionary history

we've been able to harm people by

pushing them with their our hands maybe

off a high place? um whereas switches

are relatively recent and we haven't

evolved any responses to switches. That

seems to me a plausible explanation and

again I think it shows the unreliability

of the intuitive responses.

Yes.

Richard, you want to come in?

Uh yes, a lot of objections here. Um

uh

it seems very uh as it were uh simple to

say for that same sex if

um someone is homosexual and wants

sexual relations with another homosexual

uh society ought to allow that uh simply

because you're just taking these two

people into account. But if uh but the

consequence of uh making this general uh

might be rather disastrous and I think

in some respects it would be because it

would denigrate marriage and it would

then and marriage is very important

because it through marriage that we have

stable families in which to build up

children. Now two homosexuals can't

uh have that sort of uh uh relation to

their children. They can't have children

in that way. So um uh if one encourages

homosexuality

instead of as it were discouraging that

practice uh that will be to the benefit

of uh um society as a whole and um no

good saying well every people are born

one or the other. I don't think they are

born one or the other. Some people are

born one or the other, but the

statistics show some people are born

binary and can go one way or the other.

And therefore, we ought not to encourage

this homosexuality.

Going to bring Pete's response. You

opened this can of worms, Peter. So, you

better break your veganism and eat them

with a response.

I just want to say that I I do strongly

disagree with the claim that this is

going to weaken relationships because of

course people of the same sex are going

to have sex. Sex is a very powerful

desire and and in fact allowing them to

marry um may make more stable

relationships with them um as it may

make with heterosexual people. So um I

think to prevent people fulfilling their

desires when as you say at least looking

at the two of them they're not harming

anyone else on the basis of a

speculation that this is somehow going

to weaken the marriage bond between

heterosexuals who do have children and

and incidentally of course we do now

allow same-sex couples to adopt children

so they may have children too. Uh I

think that that's quite wrong. I I think

that we would need much firmer grounds

for saying that this is in some way

going to be truly damaging to society as

a whole or truly damaging to children um

if we allow that. And I think in fact

the experience that we've had now and we

have some years of experience with

same-sex marriages um doesn't go to

confirm the idea that it's harmful.

But it's no good saying they will anyway

do it.

But it's no good saying they will anyway

do it. They may uh consider that it

would be wrong to do it. And many people

in certain religious communities and I

include my own uh would think it wrong

to do it. And although they were

homosexually inclined, they would not do

it. And they would not do it firstly

because they believed God had forbidden

it. And secondly, they would see he had

a reason for uh making it uh for

forbidding it in order to give us the

opportunity to build up a society in

which people aren't uh uh encouraged to

be homosexual. I'm not saying it should

be forbidden or anything like that. And

thirdly, I do think that uh uh it's a

matter of fact whether God has or has

not approved of certain uh practices.

And uh uh I will uh if you like extra uh

talk about that for some time.

But I'm just I'm going to bring Jessica

in first of all before we go to Alex.

Jessica on the same topic.

Kind of on the same topic. Um I mean

just on that issue. I'm not I'm not

going to weigh in big time on that.

Everyone has their own views. Um it's

interesting to know that there are there

are cult so my favorite culture in the

whole wide world best place beautiful

society is uh in my own personal feeling

Thailand England comes in second I love

I love the ties as a culture they're

really un un they're really intriguing

it's a culture that has never had a

problem as far as we can tell

historically at any point with se

homosexuality they've never found it odd

or unpro problematic in any way and

they've been perfectly happy to have

couples in fact my experience when

living there is they really gay couples

because they actually are this lovely

stable pleasant sort of group of people

and female couples are seen as great in

business. So I think these ideas about

what it is even that makes society work

a practical point a rational not an

ethical one and what is actually good

and natural and indeed what is

emotionally triggering are extremely

culturally diverse and relative. And

then in a way that makes me want to ask

um Alex I'm just what happens when so

motivism of course in some ways is very

powerful but is that the same thing as

ethics? We've had whole societies who

thought that slavery was very normal and

natural extremely instinctively normal

and natural for centuries.

Yes.

And at some point people said oh I'm not

sure I think it is. I think maybe even

though it's beneficial, maybe even

though for large groups of people it's

very very innately intuitive, we think

it might still be wrong.

But this is kind of a it was a strange

it came orthogonal to people's feelings

in the culture. It came out of out of

the blue. What happens when you've got

feelings and a feeling about and and a

sense of what is ethically right maybe

in the same person at loggerheads?

One of the great problems with any kind

of non-realist ethical system that

include in includes subjective systems

but also non-cognitive systems like

emotism is that it doesn't seem to

account for hypothetical or real

historical situations in which people

just have the wrong feelings or the

wrong emotions. I I accept that as an

objection in the sense that it's

uncomfortable, but I that may just be

the nature of what people are in fact

doing when they have ethical

conversations with each other. I don't

mean it was the wrong feeling when they

liked slavery. I mean that there was a

strange thing that happened at some

point where there seemed to be two

feelings.

I mean I'm I'm I'm not sure that you

know there were people who said oh it

felt really natural to me to have slaves

around and then who said at some point

though I had this other thing going on

in my mind that it felt in some way

after I thought about the nature of the

human mind wrong. And now whether that

was a feeling in the same way as the

other feeling,

I'm not clear that that's the case cuz

I'm not sure they always felt it as

being the same intuition versus reason.

Oh yeah, neither am I. And I also think

that people can have conflicting

emotions about things. Maybe if you were

being technical ultimately they wouldn't

have conflicting emotions in that like

if they really managed to isolate what

they were thinking, emotions pointing

one way were locked on something else

and and it was all sort of getting a bit

confused. But intuitively it does feel

like we can feel emotively different

about ethical scenarios. But the same is

true of of aesthetics and art again like

you know I painting is kind of weird and

ugly but I kind of like it in a way.

Emotions can do that sometimes. I think

also you can have higher order emotions

and

this is this is Simon Blackburn's

crucial contribution to solving the the

so-cal frag problem to to emotivist

ethics which is the idea that you don't

just have attitudes towards things. you

have you have attitudes towards those

attitudes as well. Um

I think I am going to weigh in for a

moment because a moment ago we we

watched we witnessed a debate and I

first want people to notice that it was

a factual debate. It wasn't an ethical

debate. There was a discussion about the

effect on society, the upbringing of

children, the stability of marriage.

These although they have moral

undertones are not moral statements.

Right? These are factual ideas. Well, I

made a moral statement that it was wrong

to rely on specul speculation.

It wasn't what I mean.

The the statistics and people have gone

into this uh say that the happiest and

most flourishing uh children are those

which are children of a happy marriage

and they are biological children of

that.

Well, I would say two things bring Alex

on on this point and maybe on this

two important things to that. Firstly,

that is a descriptive statement. It's a

statistical statement.

Yes. But he was accusing me of

unjustified.

That's what he was doing. That's not

what I'm doing. What I'm saying what I'm

doing is pointing out

that people are often making factual

statements in so-called moral debates. I

would also repeat your words from

earlier that um that sometimes

mere adherence to to to preference or

something like that might not be the the

sole foundation of of our of our ethics.

Um, I think it's important to note that

that was a a mostly a mostly factual a

mostly factual debate rather than

strictly speaking a moral one and that

it has a lot to do with feeling. I also

wanted to point out that there is this

important undertone of theism and

atheism. This makes a huge difference.

Do you think that's a factual difference

that Richard and I are having?

The moral question is more general. The

moral question is whether uh the sort of

behavior um um homosexual relations has

a damaging effect whether we the only

thing to take into account is whether

the P two people involved like it. Um

the question is whether that it has any

certain effect on the wider people

society and uh I think it does but if it

was shown that it doesn't have any make

any difference and everybody was firm in

their sexual uh orientations then I

would change my view. So the factual

state so the fact that factual

distinction would change your view on

this issue which means that so much of

what people might think is an ethical

statement is a descriptive one. You have

an ethical assumption and it's being

informed by descriptive statements. So I

would say that whether or not there is

enough evidence is a descriptive

statement but whether we should not rely

on something without enough evidence is

probably a moral statement. But

crucially I also wanted to point out

that it is true. It is true that the

Bible does mention homosexuality a few

times. It mentions it a bit in the Old

Testament quite quite explicitly

condemning it as a as at least a sexual

practice uh if not an orientation. The

New Testament, Paul mentions it possibly

a few times, probably a few times, but

it's always difficult to translate. Of

course, Jesus didn't mention it.

It's not a matter of what necessarily

scripture said. It's a matter of what

the church has pretty unanimously taught

for 20th century and the teaching of

God. What I would invite people to do if

they wish to see evidence of moral

relativism, the kind of moral relativism

that is often abhored by religious

communities as dangerous, as flippant,

as the idea that you could change your

moral opinions yesterday to today, and

that would show that there's no

objective threat, or at least that we

can't trust the source from which it

comes. I would invite people to

investigate the history of the church's

relationship to slavery and particularly

the uh scriptural injunctions towards

the ownership of other human beings as

private property, the bequething of them

to your children as inheritable property

and a differential treatment of slaves

who are Israelites and slaves who are

not. That is mentioned a lot more than

homosexuality and it's much more uh

in much more detail and with much more

moral force I think. And so what I

wanted to point out is that it's it's

easy to say, you know, well, it's just a

fact. If God says this is wrong, then

this is wrong. God said a similar thing

of slavery, but I I hope and trust that

most people in this room would disagree

with at least that.

Yes. But uh when when the Christian

church started, what it says, the Old

Testament must be interpreted in the

light of the teaching of Jesus. And um

uh the church itself uh was inspired by

God to uh work out the consequences of

this teaching. So um I mean the church

at at very beginning ruled out all sorts

of things that the Old Testament says

not binding.

But of course also in in first Peter we

read uh slaves be obedient to your

masters not just the ones who are good.

Yeah.

enough time of scripture. find I'm not

sure that it is I we

we of course also find Jesus Jesus

telling Jesus telling an analogy and

quite casually including the status of a

slave uh within an analogy or within a

a metaphor that he was giving to his

disciples when they he says to them well

which one of you would when when a slave

comes to you say come and eat at our

table and wouldn't first say go and do

your duty then come to me now that's not

necessarily an explicit uh commandment

to to own slaves or anything like that

but you would think that if it was known

to be wrong or thought to be wrong by

Jesus. He would have at least chosen a

different example. In other words, it's

certainly normal still in the New

Testament I'm talking about and in at

least one case in first Peter also

commanded and possibly reaffirmed in

Galatians 2 where Paul, interestingly,

where Paul says, "There is neither slave

nor free." This might be a reaffirmation

of slavery. Uh he says, "There's neither

slave nor free for we're all one in

Christ." But he then says, "There's

neither slave nor free, male nor

female." I don't think that Paul was a

radical gender abolitionist, ladies and

gentlemen. I think that Paul was saying

that although these statuses obviously

exist on earth quite clearly, they're

irrelevant to your salvation in Christ.

If that's the case, unless we want to

accept that the New Testament is also uh

as I say, radically gender uh

nonconformist, then I think we have to

accept that it

I'm going to move us away from the

debate around scripture and

Christianity. And as promised on the

bill, bring a couple of these applied

ethics issue issues here. um one of

which was non-human animal rights which

um Jessica I mentioned at the start the

principle of a himsa of non-suffering

practiced within the Hindu tradition um

I suppose like it is is this you

agreeing with Peter from different

continents here you know he's his

principle of reduce suffering as much as

possible the Hindu principle of you know

try and eliminate it

yeah this is a mean trick because I was

about to bring in Ivan Caramatel and

dstovski and get into the oh and what's

the essence of it. We won't go into like

what's the essence of um whether or not

you think of God as the ultimate arbiter

of good when your intuitions go against

it. We'll take we'll put that over here.

Read the chapter rebellion from the

brothers caramatsov. I'm sure you know

it.

I think in front of Rich Swimburn and

then you did just put God in the corner.

Put God in the corner.

God in the corner.

Russian existentialists are on the on

the top. But um on the on the non-human

animals thing, I mean Peter, I think has

has important feelings on this that

probably align with intuitions. It's

interesting that in some cultures people

thought of animals as kind of like

almost vegetable machines and in some

cultures they thought of animals as

clearly sensient beings with exactly the

same sorts of rights as humans. I mean

it you then have to negotiate how you're

going to deal with that in cases where

for one reason or another people ended

up killing animals sometimes for their

own survival. But essentially both Hindu

and most southeast South Asian continent

Buddhists uh thought that yeah animals

absolutely if you're sensient

you are a being that can suffer you are

a being that can feel good

uh and therefore you are part of that

moral sphere and we have an absolute

responsibility to try and take care of

them subject to all the other

complications of life the if anyone's

ever read the Bhagavad Gita

It centers around this question. Um, a

man says he's on a bad as a general on a

battlefield against a bad regime who's

not going to be good for anybody.

They're rapacious. They're dishonest.

They're corrupt. They're violent. And

he's on the battlefield. He's about to

fight. And then he says, "You know what?

I want to I want to not harm anyone. I

want to live to a higher ideal right

now, this second, and not kill anyone."

And the others are like, "We're on the

battlefield." And uh they're going to

win if you do this. And he's like, "No,

I gota I gotta go find myself." And in

this case, it's a religious text, but in

an unusual way. God comes along, in this

case, it's Krishna, and says, "Okay,

look, mate. Here's the deal. One, if you

don't fight, we're going to lose, right?

Two, you're also going to look bad." But

anyway, back to the first one. We're

going to lose. And this is this shows

that you have a responsibility. It

develops a concept called loca samraha.

Loca is to the world. Samraha is to hold

the world together. And it says no

matter what you do, no matter what you

are, don't think about just your

feeling, don't think about just uh the

immediate situation. Look at the systems

of the world that keep everybody going.

And that means in that moment the system

that he was involved in was the system

of keeping peace in situations of danger

and war. And so his duty was in fact to

fight in that case. So in that there are

contexts where you have to be that

that's that emphasis on skillfulness and

awareness. That's why humans have a

slightly different moral status from

animals. Yeah,

we have the ability to look at the

situation, calculate the larger picture,

decide what to do, build a build a car,

drive around, etc. Animals may not be

able to do that, but their right as

experiencers to be considered is equal.

You're going to hate me using like the

Hindu worldview as one big idea, but

excuse me as I do it just this once. Um,

Peter, what your thoughts on, you know,

this Hindu worldview of where you've got

the cycle of samsara of reincarnation

and you might be reincarnated as a

lesser being, a being which, you know,

isn't as great as being a human being.

Is speciesism baked into the fabric of

Hindu thought as well?

Could be Judith Jarvis Thompson, the

person who came third.

So, look, I mean, yes, I think you know,

but it depends on on the lives that

these beings have, right? Because if if

if they have bad lives and maybe they

have bad lives because societ so society

treats them badly, then if you believe

in reincarnation, it's reasonable to say

I wouldn't want to be reincarnated as

one of them. I mean, you know, re be

reincarnated as a factory farmed pig or

a chick factory farmed chicken. Nothing

could be worse. So, you know, if you

believe in this whole stuff about

reincarnation,

um I think it maybe it makes sense to

think you don't want to be reincarnated

as as an animal or at least certainly

not as as most animals. But you know to

me that just seems a weird superstition.

I have to say I think that Richard's

belief in God is an equally weird

superstition given the nature of the

world and the amount of suffering we

have in it. But um I think that

uh

so I think I've lost the thread of what

I want to say now. Sorry.

You just giving God a drive by very

quickly.

Yes. Right. Yeah. So yeah. No, what I

wanted to say was I think that there

some of these religions can be stripped

down a bit. I had an interesting

dialogue with a Taiwanese female

Buddhist monastic who basically said

about Buddhism um you know there are

ethical messages about compassion for

all sentient beings which on which she

and I very closely agreed and she was

also a vegetarian um and then there are

these things like reincarnation which

you can believe or not you know we we

Buddhists agree that there's not

compelling evidence for that though she

did think that there was some evidence

she talked about in you know the llamas

who could pick out the object that

belonged to the person they were

supposed to have reincarnated from. Not

something that I'm prepared to accept as

scientific proof. Uh but she said, you

know, you can you can simply strip all

of that away

and um take take Buddhism as a

psychology of how to live well um and

also some ethical requirements um about

how to live well with other sentient

beings. Jessica and then we're going to

bring out

just yeah really briefly it just to note

that the sense that animals are really

important moral sufferers and people we

should take into account isn't really

based on the idea of reincarnation. It's

not that we might be them

and people some it's interesting that

westerners often treat it that way. They

want to turn it into a calculation of oh

my god I it's still ultimately an

egoistic kind of morality. I might be

that moth next week so I better be or it

might be my uncle from last week so I

better be care you know but actually it

is much more fundamental in some sense

it's trying to say that we get this

explicit argument from Shantaa the

Buddhist thinker he says he says

suffering should be ended because

to know what suffering is is to know

that is the kind of thing that calls to

be ended

absolutely

it's simple as that you don't need to

know anymore if understand what that is.

It by its very nature it's aversive to

existing. It's the kind of thing that

shouldn't be there. And you he doesn't

say this and for me that's partly why

I'm more interested in Hinduism and

Buddhism. But he it does surely that

implies that to know what joy or

pleasure or love or kindness is should

be to know that that's the kind of thing

that is good to exist.

Yeah.

Right. And then you generate it. Alex, I

once heard you say that you promised to

buy Peter Singer's animal liberation

book to anyone who would read the first

chapter.

That's right.

There's 44 unfortunately audience. Does

the offer still stand? Have you moved

away from

Since Peter's since that offer became

public and the YouTube channel has

grown, I've done an effective altruist

calculation and worked out that that's

probably not the best use of my money.

Um,

there are a few copies outside people

can buy that, right? I I would highly

recommend people to to spend their own

coin and if someone really can't afford

it, then definitely send me an email and

I might still be able to take you up on

it because I I think it's worth reading.

But you do have to promise to read it.

Um although uh yeah, I I prefer the 1975

edition. You know, I know you've just

rewritten it. There were some wonderful

little arguments in the in the beginning

of the of the original which I think

were were omitted from from the second

which are really useful for for thinking

about these kinds of things. Um but

that's up to you, of course. Um,

you bought the argument there. You

became a vegan.

And it was some of those particular

thought experiments or ideas that were

in the original, which which aren't in

the updated edition. I understand why

they're not there anymore. Uh, that that

really

initially got me to to to think about

this kind of stuff. Um, I I think it is

impossible to it's certainly impossible

for any kind of materialist, any kind of

atheist, I think, to come up with some

kind of idea about why they value humans

that doesn't in some way also encompass

other uh non-human animals. The fact of

the matter is you don't even need to

convince most people that far because

most people do care about at least some

animals. There are protests in the

street in this country sometimes about

the practices of other countries and

their treatment of animals which we

consider to be if you like a bit sacred

like dogs for example. a lot of protests

against the dog trade, not just eating

of dogs in other countries, but the

breeding of dogs for fighting, for

example, in this country, to an extent

which no rational person can possibly

think is utterly inconsistent with our

popular intuitions about the treatment

of animals who are reared for food, for

example. A great example that I always

like to point people to is the West Ham

footballer Curt Zoomer. I don't know if

any of you are familiar with him. Um,

Curt Zoomer, for some still undisclosed

reason, decided to film himself kicking

his pet cat across his kitchen and put

it on Snapchat because he thought it was

funny. Um, quite a disgusting thing to

do. It didn't look like the cat was

having a very good time. And we saw not

only widespread condemnation, not only

the fans in the stands of West Ham's

next game saying, you know, when he got

fouled by an opponent and fell over,

that's how your cat feels. That's how

your cat feels. We also saw the mayor of

London on Good Morning Britain saying

that it was a disgrace. We saw him fined

by the West Ham Football Club. Like all

kinds of condemnation. And we also saw

an official condemnation from the RSPCA

who eventually confiscated Kurt Zuma's

cat. They took the cat away. Now, in

chicken farming, uh layer chicks, uh in

in chicken, sorry, excuse me, in pig

farming, uh piglets who are too sick to

be profitable are usually disposed of.

And one of the ways that this is most

commonly done is colloially known as

thumping, blunt force trauma. They're

taken by the hind legs and they have

their skulls caved in on the concrete.

It's a very practical manual maneuver.

Uh this is an official method of

slaughter of uh piglets or at least it

was at the time by that self-same RSPCA.

If your piglet is too sick to be

profitable, that is one of the ways that

they approved of you dispatching of that

piglet. The same RSPCA who confiscated

Kurt Zoomer's cat because he kicked it

across the kitchen. There was a high

welfare farm. I think it was an abodine.

I can't remember and I don't like to

name it in case I get it wrong, but

there certainly was one that was found

to be dispatching with these piglets by

thumping them against the bars of the

cages that their own mothers were being

held in. This was on a high welfare farm

as well. The RSPCA, which approved this

as a method of slaughter, also

confiscated Kurt Zoomer's cat because he

kicked it across the kitchen. Why? Well,

because that one's a cat. Most people

don't need to be that animals matter at

all. They just need to be convinced that

some animals that they don't think

matter in here. Um I find Peter and if

you'll forgive me saying so uh your

moral system to be a very crude and

lowgrade moral system

you are only interested in pleasure and

pain of the individuals. Uh now of

course it's a good pain is as such a a

bad thing and pleasure is as such a good

thing but there are greater goods than

these things

well such as um forming a character uh

such as uh um being honest uh uh not

telling lies uh trying to uh uh

encourage other people to be good uh to

uh uh overcome their problems.

Making a rich society in which um what

is valued is uh people being moral

rather and low one of the ways in which

people are moral is of course promoting

uh um well-being. Uh but um it's not the

only way. Um uh the only thing that's

important what's important is that

people shall form a character

uh for themselves and suffering may be

necessary for them to do that and um uh

um that they people should have freedom

to choose whether or not to hurt or harm

people within limits. uh having freedom

uh to choose and having freedom to

develop yourself in the light of what

you choose and to uh be uh honest and uh

prepared to die for certain causes is a

great thing and you're low seem to be a

very lowgrade borrower.

You see I I I would put it the other way

round. I would I would value honesty in

general and I would value developing

character and I might even value going

through suffering for some good purpose.

But to me if we ask what is

intrinsically good and valuable it is

states of consciousness that that states

of consciousness should be not ones of

pain and suffering and should be ones of

but even Mill thought otherwise because

he thought there are it's not the

quantity of pain or pleasure it's the

kinds of things you got plate

I don't think Mills utilitarianism is

really a very wellthoughtout essay it

was it was written in a very short

period um for a popular magazine uh and

I think it has lots of mistakes. Um I

actually uh with a colleague have

written a critical edition of for for

the Norton library of Mills

utilitarianism and we are quite critical

of it. I think if you want a good

account of utilitarianism you should

look at Henry Sidwick's the methods of

ethics. Um it's a much longer book. It's

less read because Sidwick is not as

fluent a writer as Mill, but it contains

a much more careful argument for

utilitarianism.

I'm just gonna bring Jessica in and go

to Alex because we're excuse me because

we're close to audience questions if I

don't knock Alex out with my elbow

before that. Um Jessica, you want to

come in on this point?

Just a just a small point. A word that

Alex used. I mean, I I there's there's a

lot of things I don't agree with you on,

but I think that's an important

important point that pleasure and pain,

you know, Bentham talks about pleasure

and pain. Everything is tied to pleasure

and pain, and we know that that's not

the whole story. And you use the word,

oh, they're higher order motives, but we

haven't really talked about that.

There's something important there about

the idea that most people do not live

for pleasure and pain. It's actually a a

a fairly it can seem trivially um maybe

wrong to think of it that way but it

might be profoundly wrong

because actually the things we think of

as not just pleasant

but as good are often precisely things

that in some sense are going beyond

that. You have an experience of seeing

someone suffer for their child and their

child goes through a lot but they help

them and the child becomes strong and

confident despite pain. that wasn't

exactly about suffering

and pleasure or it was about suffering

perhaps but avoiding suffering but it

was about something more than pleasure

and I think one of the problems of the

kind of semibiological way that we've

been taught to think about good and bad

and morality is that we have this kind

of like that was tasty that was painful

overly simplistic model of what good is

actually most of human life is partly

about striving towards numerous higher

order goods to do with what is noble

what is beautiful. What is kind?

Okay. Before we open to audience

questions, Alex, some final remarks and

you dodged my question. I asked you why

you moved away from veganism and Peter's

position and then you sort of went in a

different direction. So, if I can push

you on that as well.

Yeah. Well, I'm I have a about an hour

and a half of conversation with Peter

Singer. We've done two podcasts

together. the older one which is in

person. We spoke for about an hour and a

half as to why I don't think if you'll

forgive me for saying so your metics

work or at least didn't convince me

which is to say that I understand the

intuitive force and I think that all

epistemologies including moral

epistemologies might need to start with

some kind of brute intuition even if

that's just the intuition that something

can't be true and false at the same time

that might just be best thought of as an

intuition but it's one which we allow

ourselves to build our practical

epistemology on uh it seems to me at

least at the time when we spoke that the

intuition that that your form of

utilitarianism was based upon was that

something to do with like my pain being

bad for me, my pleasure being good for

me. And my problem was always the

extrapolation metically from my pleasure

is intuitively I'll just accept it at

face value. This is good for me to me

having to care about other people's

pleasure. And it seemed like at the time

the move that you wanted to make was to

say, well, if my pleasure is good for

me, that's evidence that pleasure is

good. And if pleasure is good, then it's

as good for me as it is for everybody

else. That's the jump that I

specifically I think uh

I think Jessica put it very well when

she said we I think you quoted a

scripture, a Buddhist scripture um as

saying that when we see this, when we

experience it, we can't really deny that

it is a good thing.

Yeah.

Um good. Yes. Good for me. I have the

experience of it. But I can see that

what I am experiencing is in general

desirable, not just

Yeah. So the the issue that I have is

that that to the extent that something

can be the foundation of an

epistemology,

it has to be essentially an undeniable

intuition for everybody who's having

that conversation. Otherwise, they'll

just say, "Well, I disagree with you."

So you need to find a base intuition.

There's nobody who's going to think that

their pain is good for them in a crude

sense. They might enjoy harming

themselves to some degree, but only in

the sense that they get some enjoyment

out of the harm, right? They don't harm

themselves for harm's sake. Um, and you

might think intuitively when you look

upon someone else's good as well that

that's beautiful, that that's noble,

that that's great. And so do I. And I

think that's wonderful. But I regret to

inform anyone who didn't know already.

Not everybody thinks that way. And if

you meet such a person, you have no way

of getting through to them if all you

can say is that well, it's just

intuitively true that this is good. If

they disagree with you, it seems like

you just have different intuitions. But

I really also want to pay close

attention to your to your question

because it's an important one. The first

thing I would say is for me pleasure and

pain are not the measure of morality.

That's what a utilitarian would say. An

emotivist just thinks that ethical

statements are expressions of emotions.

It's not tied to pleasure or pain. It

might be that pleasurable experience

give you an emotive reaction and painful

ones give you an emotive reaction too.

But they're not uh they're not tied up

in the same way. So I could say, for

example, yes, I say boo pain and yay

pleasure, but I also say yay nobility.

Yeah. like I have like a really strong

emotive response to that. I could say

that. But I do also want to like offer a

little defense, not offer but but uh

indicate my defense I should say off of

Peter Singer's position that so many of

what we call these completely separate

other important values like nobility or

like dignity or higher order goods or

anything like that do I think at least

conceivably collapse into pleasure when

you understand that the utilitarian is

it isn't using pleasure in the crude

sense of like like a warm bath feels

nice but any experience which is wanted

when experienced. Define pleasure as any

experience which is wanted when

experienced and pain as any experience

which is not wanted when experienced.

And I think you'll find that when

considering any of these other things

which you think are nice or good in the

universe, it will ultimately be at least

in in harmony with with that intuition.

On the contrary,

we're going to have to audience

questions here, but you can come back on

these responses if you can weave it into

your audience question answer. I'm just

going to give you 60 seconds to workshop

that question with the person next to

you and then we're going to come back

and we're going to do the Q&A. So, you

got 60 seconds. Don't go anywhere. The

doors are locked. There's no escape.

If those conversations are indicators

for how many people have got questions,

I could be in trouble here. It might

have more hecklers on the way. Let's

hope not. All right. So, we're going to

take a question beginning here from this

section. If you'd like to pick somebody

yourself, someone with their hand up,

Mr. Taylor, you can pick someone at

random. And then our microphone at the

top, pick someone from this side on the

left for our second question. I can't

see up there, so you'll have to pick

someone you think looks uh like they've

got a good one.

Oh, could you keep your question brief

and direct it to one member of the

panelist?

So, my question is for Peter Singer. Um,

as a moral realist myself, I'm really

curious to know what convinced you of

moral realism. What is the main

argument?

I'm very sorry. I do have a slight

hearing problem.

The questions for Peter and it's why

moral realism.

Yeah. So, one of the things that

convinced me was uh Derek Parett's book

on what matters and in particular the

argument that he puts there um about

this strange person who is indifferent

to whatever happens to him on a future

Tuesday. So this is an argument against

David Hume's claim that reason in

practice always starts from a desire or

what Yume called a passion and Hume said

um you know reason is slave to the

passions and so Parford had asked us to

imagine somebody who just doesn't have a

desire about what happens to him on any

future Tuesday. So if you ask him, you

know, other respects, he's like us. If

you ask him, would you prefer to have a

mild headache or be tortured? And let's

say you ask him this question on a

Wednesday, um, and and the torture

whatever is you're going to have to have

the headache today or be tortured

tomorrow, he will say, "Of course, I'd

much rather have the headache." But if

you ask him the question on a Monday, he

would say, "Well, I don't really want a

headache and I don't care what happens

to me on a future Tuesday. Um, so uh,

you know, I I don't want to have the

headache." and then he's tortured. It's

a Tuesday, but it's no longer a future

Tuesday and he hates what's happening to

him. So, Pettford argues, and I agree,

that this is this person is clearly

irrational. There's something, you know,

gone wrong with his reasoning abilities.

And yet, on Hume's view, that can't be

the case. So, that means that we can

have reasons even contrary to our

desires. And Parford argues that one

such reason, and this is why I said it

really agrees with what Jessica was

quoting, one such reason might be that

if you're going to experience pain or

agony, you have a reason

to try to prevent that even if you don't

care about the fact about it because it

happens on a future Tuesday.

And so then we can have objective

reasons and that can be a basis for

realism.

Got a question up here in the top left,

please.

Um, my question is to uh, Richard

Swimborn on a point he made earlier

about the um, happing and most

flourishing children being in a marriage

between a man and a woman.

Hi, sorry I'm up here. Um, if a

homosexual person was in an unhappy

marriage with a member of the opposite

sex due to being in a society that

didn't support homosexuality,

would you still argue that it's best to

actively not support homosexuality when

that can lead to an unstable family unit

and a child that doesn't flourish? Um

there's nothing nothing wrong. Well, I

mean it's uh undesirable, but it

sometimes may be the best solution uh uh

separation. But if separation is

followed by divorce and marrying someone

else, then um I do think that sets a bad

example in to other people to follow

that. And once again we should uh

consider the effect on society and not

merely whether the two people concerned

would be happy. um Sebastian

influencing the wider society and that I

think is one reason why uh Jesus forbad

divorce and uh that on the whole uh uh

with recent exceptions the church has

also uh uh banned it um because um uh we

owe it to society

uh how we behave not merely that will

make us happy.

I'm going to ask for a question directed

at Alex or Jessica from the middle,

please. So, only raise your hand if it's

for one of them. You've got the back

there with the

fantastic haircut. And then a preference

whether this goes to Jessica or Alex. A

question from the opposite. You can pick

one from the the top there.

Hello. This question is to Alex. Um,

this question is to Alex. The question

is um people who struggle to feel

emotions or outright can't how would the

morality apply to them?

That's a great question right and I

think that there are extents to which we

can isolate different kinds of emotions

right and and people feel different

things very of varying strengths as

well. If morality is an expression of

emotion then what might we expect? We

might expect that it does the same thing

as some of these emotions. So some

people seem more romantic than others.

Some people seem to have a a wider sense

of humor or understanding of humor than

others. For example, you also find that

some people are like more moralizing

than others. You know, some people are

almost obsessed with the minutiae of

moral behavior. They they trip over

themselves in an almost compulsive sense

to make sure they're doing the right

thing. In fact, some people who suffer

from OCD suffer from a kind of OCD

related to ethical decision-making,

constantly worrying that they've done

the wrong thing. Uh for others the

opposite extreme is the sort of moral

apathy the person who just sort of

doesn't really care that much maybe

unless it affects them or they have some

kind of uh intense experience. And so I

do think that the strength of of

emotions does vary and I think that that

is also the case with uh with emotions

within ethics. The really important

thing to note, I think, is that the

emotivist does not say that good and bad

and terms like that like map on to other

emotions that we're all familiar with

like happiness, anxiety, sadness. At

least this emotivist doesn't. They are

their own unique kind of emotion, right?

So when I say that, you know, oh murder

is wrong means kind of like boo murder,

it doesn't actually mean the same thing

as that. That's an analogy. So what I

would say to to to help get that across

is maybe to imagine that we had never

come up with a word for anxiety. There's

no such thing. We didn't know what that

was. And yet you feel anxiety. You're

like, "Okay, well, what is that?" Well,

it's it's a little bit like sadness, but

a little bit like being excited. So,

it's kind of hard to put my finger on.

So, we sort of put a box around it and

we give it a new label cuz it's unique

enough. And we call it anxiety. So, when

you see me kick that homeless person,

you don't just think Alex kicked a

homeless person. You think Alex kicked a

homeless person. And there's something

more something a bit like ew or like

don't or or ah or girl or like there's

something like there's some kind of

thing that's going on. So what we do is

we put a box around it and we give it a

name. And that's what I think good is if

that makes sense. And I also think that

makes sense of the fact that when people

are for example uh like if if you take

somebody who's who's

just briefly at the end here this for

the next question

somebody who's proactively uh

proactively homophobic to the to the

extent that they they really really

don't like and I mean like the

orientation anything like that a lot of

the time they don't just tell you that

it's wrong like rationally oh I've just

considered it I think it's wrong they're

disgusted by it or there and they say

disgusted but it's not quite the same

thing as being disgusted by food. It's

something a bit analogous to that but

again it's a feeling. So the good stuff

and the bad stuff is all I think

feelings that people will experience to

varying degrees. So people who struggle

to feel emotions might be really good at

feeling those kinds of emotions but

really bad at feeling those kinds of

emotions or maybe really good at feeling

them all and really bad at feeling them

all too. But I think ethics works in the

same way as happiness and sadness and

humor.

Question for Jessica at the top there.

Where's my microphone? Where are you?

There you are.

There you go. Wow, you move quick

here. Yeah, go ahead. You choose.

Hi. Sorry. My question is actually to

either Alex or Peter, but whoever wants

to

go on go on very brief briefly to pick

one and then we'll take Jessica's next.

Um, so with reference to the question of

what is the status of a statement such

as Sherlock Holmes wears red socks on a

Tuesday? Yes.

What is the status of a question that is

or a statement murder is wrong? with

reference to the statement that okay so

so uh I think Sherlock Holmes wears Red

Sox on a Tuesday is a statement that

does have truth value because I think

that the reference for Sherlock Holmes

there is like the idea of the character

of Shakespeare and the an idea can have

properties

Shakespeare

what about Shakespeare

huh sorry

he didn't write about Sherlock Holmes

did I say what's that oh for Shakes so

for Shakespeare I mean if somebody asked

that question to Shakespeare he'd

probably say who's Sherlock Holmes And

then whatever image you like he came up

with in his head based on your

description would be the thing that he's

referring to with that sentence. Right?

In the same way that if if you said to

me that like the the the chairs the

chairs are blue and I found out that

like well I'm like I think that's wrong

but then I just found out that what you

mean by the chairs is what I call the

sky. Then actually because your

reference is that thing up there and it

is blue. Like what you said is just true

even if you're using a language that I

don't understand. So, as long as

somebody like knows who Sherlock Holmes

is, or even if they don't, to the extent

that the idea they have of Sherlock

Holmes wears red socks, it would be

true. Ideas can have properties. After

all, imagine a triangle. Has it got four

sides? No. Doesn't exist. It's in your

mind. It's imaginary, but it's got

properties that are true and false of

it. Same thing could be true of

fictional characters like Sherlock

Holmes. Moral claims like murder is

wrong is not like a subjectivist would

say, me talking about something true or

false that doesn't really exist. It

doesn't have truth value. Commands like

uh statements like boo murder, just like

statements like go over there or stand

up or gross, they're not the kinds of

things that can even be true or false.

So the Sherlock Holmes thing I think can

be true or false, but ethical motivists

say that moral statements can't be. They

don't have what's called truth value.

There's neither true nor false. I hope

that kind of maybe makes a bit of sense.

I'm not really sure. Question for

Jessica at the back there with the curly

hair and a question. We'll reset um over

here. If you can pick anyone with their

hand up for the next one.

Hi. Um, oh, this is just a question

about kind of the assumption of kind of

if you've experienced pain, you'll kind

of know it's like a bad thing. Surely

that's ignoring the is gap and it's just

another assumption. The theist may have

a similar one on experiencing the Holy

Spirit. They feel that it's odd to

assume that God doesn't exist. Surely we

need to justify this and there are

differences like there are so many

problems with hedonism, the experience

machine etc. etc.

Yeah. Good. I think that's a really

helpful question because it does sound

as if this guy is saying, you know, as

soon as you experience pain, you're

experiencing something that by the

definition of the phenomenological

qualium of it, what it feels like is for

it to feel like it shouldn't be

happening.

And in a way, it's not crossing that

gap. saying, you know, hey, guy over

there just experienced immense agony and

every part of him wished it wasn't

happening. And I saw that and it was,

"Wow, that was really intense." But

anyway, it happened. If it happens

again, I'll walk past and observe it

again. And I think that those Buddhists,

it's interesting because these Buddhist

thinkers like as I said, they don't

they're not sure that anything else

exists. But they think that if you can

recog the feeling of me existing doesn't

have much motivational character to it.

The feeling of there being a turtle on

the floor, whatever, shrug, doesn't

really matter. The feeling of uh

something happening that every part of

that experience in itself has the

character this is horrible, it has to

stop is seen to have a certain kind of

motivational character. And whether

that's crossing the isort gap, I think

it's in a way it's saying to understand

that is to understand it's the kind of

thing that shouldn't be.

Yeah.

Right. And and you can then make a

decision about whether you want to

change that. Right. There's still an

element of free will. End of the

Bhagavad Gita back to Hindus that God

doesn't say now go fight. He says think

about all of this and do as you wish.

That's the only commandment in a way in

the B would be to do as you wish having

reflected on it. So I think it's a good

point. It's not exactly crossing that

gap but it's saying learn that there are

certain kinds of phenomena that have in

their own character something of a

quality of should exist ought to be more

of it shouldn't exist. Everything

involved says this this is something

that would be better if it wasn't there.

So it's trying to play in the middle.

Okay. I think you've got a question up

there in the center.

Uh yeah, my one's for Jessica. Um if you

could recommend uh those less in the

west one uh Hindu philosopher to read,

uh who would you recommend and why?

Can I answer Jessica Frasier with Hindu

world views?

No, that's not true. No, please don't

read that. Um nothing by me.

Reverse psychology. That's how she sells

many books.

Like wait a second. Um Oh, it's really

hard because then it gets very personal.

Um, if you're into theism, read the

Bhagavad Gita. It's an interesting

alternative account of theism. It's not

about God. It's not about commandments.

It's a different kind of model. Uh but

it can be quite beautiful if you're

interested if you're kind of not into

necessarily a religious angle but just

want to think about spiritualities that

are about

spiritualities, ethical paths, ethics

being bound together with something of

what it is to be a spiritually

flourishing developing human in a world

of complex and beautiful strange

reality. My personal favorite is the

Apananishads. Um read the Chandogi

Pananishad.

uh I just go oh find a good little

compilation and read through them and

they're quite beautiful and they I think

they bridge a gap which is the religious

secular gap they take you into a

different place um and they kind of

suggest that ethics is what you find on

a spiritual path

but philosophers on God which was edited

by somebody on the panel and contributed

to by Richard and yourself as well comes

out in Spanish in a few months which is

very exciting and the English copies uh

on sale as Well, cool. I've seen a

little clap from the Spanish members of

the audience. Thank you for joining us.

You got time for another. Pick someone

who looks like they've got a kooky

question.

We might have time for a another on the

top as well. If uh if you find somebody

as well.

Hi. Um, I guess this is really a

question for the theists in the room,

but I'm really curious as to what you

think the relationship between uh

meaning and scripture is. Where is

meaning contained in scripture? Is it as

it would be read in its historical

context? Or is it the intended meaning

by the author? Or um can we really say

that scripture can be meaningfully

prescriptive when it's so unclear what

exactly scriptural meaning means?

Richard, you like?

Yeah. You want a theory of how to

interpret the Bible? Um,

well, Augustine, um, there were many

disputes in the third and fourth

centuries about how much of scripture

should be interpreted metaphorically and

how much should in be taken literally.

Um it it was a serious issue before at

the time when the when the church was

deciding which books should belong to

the Bible. And um uh what Augustine said

is um take everything literally unless

you've got a reason not to. And the

reasons he took not to included

um the latest discoveries of science. So

he didn't quite put it that way. He said

um you may remember Genesis talks about

um dividing the waters above and below

the firmament. And um uh there was a

dispute in in ancient science as to

whether there was uh whether there were

waters above the firmament. Um and

Augustine said if it were shown that

there were no waters above the

firmament, then this um particular

passage has to be read in some

metaphorical way. And also uh he said uh

if it the passage was to be read in the

light of the church's general overall

teaching and if the church had I mean a

lot of most of the church's teaching was

developed in the second uh well first

2nd third centuries before our main

books of scripture were canonized

and um um a lot of passages were

regarded as uncchristian

if they were interpreted literally in

the light of the Christianity that had

developed on the basis of other

passages. So I think you can follow that

uh by saying that the church the church

should interpret and you should

understand

scripture in the light of the church's

overall teaching and in the light of the

discoveries of modern science and in so

far as uh they they uh don't object to

them uh you should take them seriously.

But in so far as they do, you do object

to them that the the passage of

scripture should be interpreted in the

light of them.

Thank you, Paul, for picking a question

on biblical harmonics right at the

towards the end of the show. Um,

I'm just going to ask for a final

question up here. A very brief one.

We've just got time to squeeze in. I did

promise. So, so if you can just pick

somebody at the top there for Alex.

Oh, one on the side for Alex. Oh, hello.

Sorry. There. Um so I wanted to ask

about your ethical emotivism. Um because

you distinguish between you you gave the

example that AJ gives of distinguishing

between kind of ethical reasoning that

is grounded in emotion and then factual

reasoning. You know the example he gives

of you know most ethical reasoning is

actually just people arguing about stats

and data and all that.

Not to risk strawmanning you but you've

previously alluded to the idea that you

don't necessarily see a distinction

between thinking and feeling. Sorry. um

and that you might be a kind of global

emotivist in this sense.

Yeah.

First of all, do you actually still hold

that position? And if that's the case,

do you not risk losing this kind of

Aryan distinction between um sort of

factual reasoning and emotional

reasoning? And would that not cause

problems for your ethical emotivism if

that's the case?

That's such a great and exciting

question. I will try to be as as brief

as I can. It's quite difficult to

explain exactly what the problem is

here, which is that like, okay, how can

I put this? Um,

you've alluded to the fact that I've

said that a lot of thinking is just

actually emoting. The reason I think

that is because I mentioned Simon

Blackburn earlier. I sorry it might get

a bit techy just for a moment to keep it

brief. There's a thing called the Frey

Geach problem or the embedding problem

for emotivist ethics. I invite you all

to look it up. One of Simon Blackburn's

responses to this and and a really

popular response uh is to emotivize

language that sounds like it isn't

emotional. So if I say if I embed moral

statements like you know I wonder if

murder is wrong or if I say if murder is

wrong then I should open a window. It

feels like in a statement like that I'm

not expressing an emotion when I say the

words murder is wrong. Right? If I say

if murder is wrong then murdering Peter

is wrong. The words that came out of my

mouth there murder is wrong and not

expressing an emotion. It's all

conditional. Right? Simon Blackburn's

response is to emotivize all of that

language. And so he says, well, when you

say, you know, if murder is wrong, then

murdering Peter is wrong. What you're

really doing is, wait for it, boo

brackets,

boo murder at the same time as, yay,

murdering Peter, right? That's what he

says you're essentially doing, right?

And I was like, that's really cool and

interesting. And then I was like, well,

hold on. Can't you do that with like all

propositions? Can't you do that with all

conditionals, any if then statement? And

if you can, does that imply that a lot

of what we think is actually rational uh

uh syllogistic reasoning is just

emotional? If the answer is yes, and I

don't have time to go into the reasons

why I think that might be the case, um

then yes, so much of what we call

thinking is actually feeling and this

does remove this Aryan distinction, but

it does something really interesting.

Whereas most moral objectivists try to

take the the sort of language of ethics

and drag it up into the level of uh

objectivity, what this would do is take

the language of objectivity and

description and drag it down into the

realm of emotion. So what you do is you

get back the similarity between talking

about truth claims like the the chair is

red and moral claims like murder is

wrong because both are ultimately some

form of expression of emotion. I think

that if you say the chair is wrong,

there is an really interesting argument

to suggest that at least to some degree

you are expressing an emotion.

Why? Because the chair is there and I

think it exists. Okay. Why do I think

that chair exists? Why do I ascent to

that proposition? What am I expressing

that? Well, because I can see it. Okay.

But why? Because I can see it doesn't

mean the chair is there. Because I think

my sense data is accurate. Okay. Well,

why why do I think that? If I if I keep

going back and back and back, I'll

either get to something like, well,

because if I don't believe in my sens

data, I'll be in a cartisian skeptical

hell hole, you know? And then you could

say, well, why not just do that? And

ultimately, at some point in that

epistemology, you bottom out at a kind

of like, no, boo, you know, even if you

break it down to a law of logic, right?

And this is all foundationally based on

the laws of logic. You know, P can't be

true and false at the same time. Why

not? Because it just can't. Just can't,

man. And it it almost feels like it

belongs in feeling. And when you say

a rational judgment that the P and Q

I'm not sure that it is. I think for

many people would describe it as almost

pre-rational. It's the kind of

assumption which is a prerequisite for

rationality. You know what I mean?

So I'd rather see it as a self-evident

logical truth.

What does that mean self-evident?

Math's got just got really weird.

You know, how much how much in other

words is it to do with feeling? But just

I will wrap it up in 20 seconds. What

that means, and I there are many

objections. Some of my friends look at

me like I've lost my mind when I suggest

this kind of thing. But what it mean if

I'm right about this, what it would mean

is when I say the chair exists, I'm

expressing an emotional discontent with

the negation of a fundamental premise

upon which that relies. See what I'm

saying? This relies on this, relies on

this, relies on this, relies on this.

Why do I like that? Because the opposite

of that is boo.

You're rubbing up

the end

in top level statement. So you can take

it back. Yes, I think it does do that.

In other words, I'm so sorry. Ladies and

gentlemen,

please join me in thanking our wonderful

panelists and everyone working behind

the scenes as well.

Sorry about that. That was a hell of a

question.

[Applause]