welcome back so today we're going to be covering subjectivism and it's often closely related to a relativism which we talked about last class but there are some key differences here and we have a lot to go through today so I'm not gonna be as in-depth as I would probably normally be but I'm going to try to hate on all the main points for everything that we talked about so let's begin with chapter 3 of our textbook this is page 33 and it ends on page 48 begins with Hume and a treatise of human nature he says take any vicious action wolf or willful murder for instance examine it in all lights and see if you can find that matter of fact or real existence which you call vise you can never find it till you turn your reflection into your own breasts and find a sentiment of disapproval which arises in you toward this action here's a matter of fact but tis the object of feeling not reason and so it's objectivism basically is going to be arguing it's just that that there's no objective moral standard that we base our morality off of but instead it's our own subjective standard um meaning dependent upon the subject it's contextual its individual personal you know changes from person to person and so there's no such thing as right and wrong there's just you know approval and disapproval that kind of thing so it's gonna be subjectivism and that's what humor used for they talked about some different things a basic idea of ethical subjectivism but that's mostly what I just talked about so simple subjectivism talking about the linguistics terms it's saying basically anytime you say X is morally acceptable or X is any type of action or X is right X is good or exit to be done all you're really saying is I the speaker approve of such an action and similarly X is morally unacceptable X is wrong X is bad X pod not to be done really all you're saying is I the speaker disapprove of such an action so there's also emotivism so language Stevenson observe in many ways sometimes I make statements that is state state facts this we might say gas prices are rising quarterback Peyton Manning underwent multiple neck surgeries Shakespeare wrote Hamlet and each case we're seeing something that is either true or false and the purpose of our utterance is typically to convey information to our otter audience however language is also used for other purposes suppose I say close the door this utterance is neither true nor false it is not a statement intended to convey information it is a command its purpose is to get something someone to do something we're consider other insist such as these which are neither statements nor commands our way to go Peyton or last poor Yorick I understand these sentences easily enough but none of them can be true or false makes them sense to say that it's true that way to go Peyton or is false that are these sentences are not used to say facts are an influence behavior their purpose is to express the speaker's attitudes attitudes about gas prices or Peyton Manning or Yorick so again whenever you're talking about these types of things really all you're saying is whether you approve or disapprove that's emotivism so whenever you say X is wrong you're not making a statement of fact instead what you're saying is I disapprove of X or you might say it would be akin to saying like Nick right there's no true fact true or false you can either say it's true or false you know Inc or gross or ooh right um that's not a true or false statement um instead it's just you know emotivism right you're expressing your disgust let's say with that so that's the same thing when you say X is wrong you know making any statement of fact you're just expressing your attitude towards such a behavior scent emotivism um then the denial value moral theories are primarily about value not language and so our discussion of ethical subjectivism might seem to have gone off track at the heart of ethical subjectivism is a theory of value called nain ISM nihilists believe that values are not real people might have various moral beliefs but really nothing is good or bad or right or wrong earlier we applied nihilism to the issues of abortion and same-sex relations according to an I list neither side is right in those debates because there's no such thing as right so it's another important thing to note here is that they say that really at the heart of the matter is nihilism when you look at subjectivism you can't make a claim about what's right or wrong yeah and then they go into some more specifics which again are important to know but I'm not gonna cover it here because I want to move on to the rest of our reading so let me double check to make sure I have the pages right yeah so we're beginning with the introduction to chapter 17 of the Norton introduction to philosophy textbook 2nd edition so chapter 17 is all about is morality objective and then from there we're gonna look at both Mackey and Nagel and their responses so objective again there is an objective standard there is a definitive right or wrong regardless of you know our personal attitudes or opinions or our subjective feelings so the objective versus the subject of this what we're looking at morality in life consider three hypothetical situations you clean up after your party and find your friend's wallet it contains $100 she had told you she lost it while shopping because she is so confused you're confident that you can keep it without her knowing but you know you should not and instead return the wallet to her scenario - someone breaks into your apartment and steals your laptop luckily you're insured still you're annoyed at the inconvenience of getting a new one but beyond the annoyance you are indignant you've not merely been inconvenienced you have been wronged three you want to buy a shirt but you wanted the company that made it is hiring people desperate for work who will accept five bucks an hour is it wrong to pay so little the company did not pull put the people they're hiring in desperate circumstances and the employees are better off for taking the jobs and turning them down but as a company exploiting vulnerabilities by paying so little are you complicit in the exploitation if you buy the shirt you're thinking about the issue and discuss it with friends maybe you decide that it's permissible to pay the low wage maybe we decide that they ought to pay more neither case you feel the force of the idea that you should not exploit vulnerability in each of these cases you're concerned about what is right about doing the right thing and about being treated rightly um so it seems in that that's also an appeal to something beyond your own subjective standard on that it's something objective philosophy in life does it matter if morality is objective answer might seem obvious if morality is not objective then it isn't it fine to do whatever you want James is not so easy and as a subject of considerable considerable philosophical disagreement to clarify the disagreement let's first distinguish first-order and second-order moral views first-order moral views are claims about what you ought to do you ought to return the wallet you ought to keep your promises you ought to do it maximizes human welfare you ought to respect the autonomy of other people second-order moral views or claims about the nature of morality the view that morality is objective is a second-order view as is Mackey's moral skepticism so to Sharon straights mind dependent conception of value so when all this goes to show is with regarding to first-order and second-order moral views the first sort of all of you again it's same things that you ought to do so like I ought to keep my promises you know etc etc that's questions or claims about what is right from a first-order sense but the second-order moral view is this idea of whether something is objective or subjective and so with Mackey for instance like he will claim that like yeah there are these first-order moral views like you ought to do this thing but it's still subjective um so he's gonna say the first sort of thing is like yeah you ought to keep her promises you ought not to murder right but the second order moral view is he's going to say morality itself is still subjective nonetheless so it's important to distinguish between first-order and second-order moral views wanting some of the question about the importance of objectivity then is based on the claim that first-order and second-order views are completely independent from one another call this the independence thesis according to independence this is for example moral subjectivism which is a second-order view has no implications for first-order moral views that's gonna be Mackey's perspective even if you're convinced of moral subjectivism you should still think it is right to return the wallet and you should still return the wallet you just should not think that that requirement is objective mag endorses the independence thesis critics of the independent CSIS including Nagel and Street we're gonna read Nagel as well deny that we can neatly separate our first and second order views moral skepticism they are you undermines our first-order beliefs about what we ought to do suppose for example you believe that slavery is wrong objectively wrong now imagine you're persuader the second-order view that the wrongness of slavery is not objective you continue to think slavery is wrong but now you think say well the thoroughness of slavery is a matter of attitude or social convention if however you think the wrongness is a matter of social convention don't you also think that if social conventions approved of slavery and slavery would be permissible but you started out thinking that slavery would be wrong even if people mistakenly thought it was right even if social convictions endorse slavery so your first-order conviction that it is wrong seems to be in tension with the second-order idea that it's wrongness is a matter of social convention so all that to say this is a perfect example of why you might say that independence thesis is wrong um that we don't want to say it's a matter of social convention it seems like slavery is wrong um regardless of social convention or regardless of what you believe or what the society around you believes um and by doing so you're appealing not to subjective standards but objective standards um and so you can't have allegedly uh Mackey's gonna disagree obviously but uh you can't say that you know you ought not to do this thing if you think that it's just your own opinion right these doubts our metaphysical because they arise from a concern about whether rightness is among the constituents of the world so is there such a thing as rightness that exists in the world famously no so what is that the problem according to the metaphysical argument arises from the odd kind of property that rightness would need to be put out to be Mackay says a to be done this that is present in an action that imposes a demand on us and we can recognize through our powers of intuition and perceptions so you're saying that if there's such a thing as rightness it somehow exists in the world but clearly it's not spatial right we can't point to say that is rightness right um and presumably non-temporal as well it's this weird abstract object and when abstract objects are known for us having no bearing on concrete objects or on the real world so to speak I'm playing this with my words there but that's this idea right and so if you're saying that there's this abstract object that somehow imposes like a demand like this to be done it's like you ought to do this thing it's present in an action it imposes a demand on us and then we can recognize there are powers of intuition and perception right how could there be such an intrinsic to be done is the metaphysical argument says that the property is too bizarre to be taken seriously so this is Mackey's argument from queerness it's so you know bizarre or odd that's what he means my career there um they're like how can we expect such a thing actually exist it's too much of an oddity just assume that this is real um a real constituent of the world around us because there's no such property of moral rightness morality is not objective critics of the metaphysical argument think it is founded on a misconception about moral rightness they say that what makes it right to return the wallet is not a special property possessed by the act of returning the wallet when I think that I ought to return the wallet I'm thinking that a kind of reasoning supports my returning it Nagel describes this reasoning as impersonal practical reasoning when I reason him personally I stand back from my desires and circumstances and asked not just about me but about what one should do and that means not just what I should do but what this person in this circumstance should do I reflect on the rightness of the action by considering what the balance of Reason supports given the circumstances what it does tell us is that morality moral objectivity depends on where we are led by practical reasoning and not on the results of metaphysical expedition so that's gonna be the main argument given by Thomas Nagel and then argument from disagreement in 1864 Abraham Lincoln wrote if slavery is not wrong that nothing is wrong Lincoln thought that slavery was objectively wrong he did not simply think that he hated it or that his party or section of the country opposed it a Lincoln knew well that this judgment was not universally embraced southerners in the United States did not share it nor did Aristotle he was deeply he was a deeply reflective person and he did not think that slavery is wrong the division sorry the diversity of moral convictions may suggest problems about for moral objectivity if morality is objective why do we not see more convergence in judgments meaning if it is objective and we can reason to it why does not everybody believe this thing Maggie suggests a persistent diversity of world judgments undercuts their objectivity diverse moral standards or fight different ways of life he says they're not insights into what is morally required Nagle and Elizabeth Harman resist this step from moral disagreement to lack of moral objectivity Mangal says that facts about moral disagreements do not undermine impersonal moral reasoning and said they provide additional materials for such reasoning to wrestle with so it's important it doesn't undermine and said it adds to all the priors for you to wrestle and reason through so at the end of the introduction so I should be cautious about jumping too quickly from serve disagreements to the relativist idea that what is right for them is what is right for us are different Nagle and Harman converts here we experience moral requirements as objective are they really objective will not find the answer in second-order arguments about the nature of moral thought the will only way to answer this question is it do the hard work of substantive first-order moral reflection think about what you ought to do consider the conflicting judgments of others and see whether your moral thinking leaves a compelling conclusions if it doesn't have a strong case for moral objectivity so again you shouldn't understand from the introduction here um you should know what objective and subjective mean you should also be familiar with the independence thesis and first order and second order moral views and then dependency sis meaning that a first order and your second order moral view does not impact your first order mo love you should know that Maki accepts this while Nagel is going to reject it and then Nagel or Mackey's gonna give two main arguments the first one argument from queerness is saying that like if rightness is actually exist it's this weird abstract object with abstract properties and principles that somehow in fact impose themselves on us and impact us in these weird certain ways and relations and to imagine such a thing is such an oddity that there's no and it's too bizarre for it to actually exist and then the next is um this kind of argument from disagreement or diversity or saying look if things are actually objective then we should see if real convergence were and maybe not everybody but most people agree on what is right and because most people disagree or there's a lot of disagreement then that means that there's no way that we can expect things to be objective and said they're subjective and then again Nagel is going to disagree with that and we're gonna see how but I mean he says no this actually adds to part of what we reasoned through it adds to what all of the things that we can pull from like all the resources we can pull from in order to argue and reason to what is objectively best and again know that Nagel and almost all of his works he looks at the subjective versus the objective um in like every field whether it be ethics philosophy of mind I mean he was a brilliant writer but he always looked at the difference between the object of versus subjective and somebody's gonna argue is subjectively we might feel this inclination like yeah I want to take the money do it make me better off right not a better person but like you know maybe I'm hurting for rent money or something like that so I take the money or I'm wanting to take the money but if I take a step back and look at it not from my perspective but from like a perspective of the universe or something like that what would I think is right for a person in this situation to do now what I think it would be right for me to do but for anybody to do in this situation and clearly we would all say from this object of perspective no like if you found a wallet you should return the money right nobody's really gonna disagree with that but from a subjective point of view it's like oh but like I really need the money right that's this thing that Nagel is gonna argue about so let's look at Macke so here's the moral skepticism and kind of talks about this and they talks about subjectivism I'm not gonna really cover those those good do a good job of kind of explaining further what these things are but I mean that's kind of what we've covered so far and these isms objectivity a real issue the main tradition of European world philosophy from Plato onwards has combined the view that moral values are objective with the recognition that moral judgments are partly prescriptive or directive or action guiding values themselves have been seen as at once prescriptive and objective and Plato's theory of the forms and in particular the form of the good our external extra mental realities so this is what he's saying you know the good would be it's this external extra mental reality they are a very central structural element the fabric of the world but it's held so that just knowing them or seeing them will not merely tell men what to do but it will ensure that they do it overruling any contrary inclinations the philosopher kings and the republic hand plato things be trusted with unchecked power because her education will have given them the knowledge of the forms being acquainted with the form of the good and justice and beauty and the rest they will buy this knowledge alone without any further motivation be impelled to pursue and promote these ideals so he's gonna base his understanding of objectivity on you know plato's theory of the forms and you can already see how he's kind of teamed up this idea of well if it's like what Plato says that just seems so weird and so bizarre like you know it's gonna be so easy to prove why this is wrong so then moving on to the claim to objectivity as I've said the main tradition of European moral philosophy includes in the claim that there are objective values of the sort that I've just denied so he denies that right I've referred already to Plato Contin syndrich later on he says in her stumble begins at Nicomachean ethics by saying that the good is that at which all things aim and that ethics is part of a science which he calls politics whose goal is not knowledge but practice and he does not doubt that there can be knowledge of what is good for the man nor once he has identified this as well-being of happiness or he died mania they could be known rationally determined in what happiness consists and it's plain that he thinks that this happiness is intrinsically desirable not good simply because it's desired so it also helps I wanted to highlight this section because it further elucidates what we read from the Nicomachean ethics right so maybe that should help give an even better understanding what Aristotle is saying but this objectivism about values not only a feature the philosophical tradition is also as a firm basis and ordinary thought even in the meanings of moral terms someone who stayed a moral perplexity wondering whether it be wrong for him to engage say and research-related it back to bacteriological warfare once arrived at some judgment about this concrete case is doing this work at this time in these actual circumstances the question is not for example whether he really wants to do this work whether it'll sad fire dissatisfy him whether he will in the longer I have a pro attitude towards that or even whether this is an action of a sort that he can happily and sincerely recommend in all relevantly similar cases nor is he even wondering just whether to recommend such action and all relevantly somewhere are cases he wants to know whether this course of action would be wrong in itself and i do not think that it's going too far to say that this assumption has been incorporated the basic eventual meanings of moral terms any analysis of meanings of moral terms which omits to claim the object of intrinsic prescript ippity is to that extent incomplete so saying even way that we talk about morality we already assume and it's baked in it's evaluated and understanding that morality is objective so we can't even talk about morality really I'm least not in this culture with this language um without already assuming it's objectivity which of course who wants a challenge if second-order ethics were confined into linguistic and conceptual analysis it ought to include that moral values at least are objective that they are so is part of what our ordinary moral statements mean the traditional moral concepts of the ordinary man as well as a main line in question yeah I mean no I was going to say this is mostly what I just said but there's important part here but the denial of objective values allowed to be put forward not as a result of an analytic approach but as an error theory a theory that although most people and making moral judgments implicitly claim among other things be pointing to some something objectively prescriptive these claims are false it is this that makes the name moral skepticism appropriate traditionally this sceptical theory has been supported by arguments of two main times and I shall call the argument called the argument from relativity in the argument from queerness so argument from relativity again it's it's argument I don't want to heart too much on this fact but it's this idea that hey it seems that it's relative right some people believe this thing some people believe this thing there's this big disagreement and if there's so much relativity between what is understood to be right and clearly it can't be objective it can't be something that we're reasoning to otherwise you're saying like at least half the population is unreasonable um which I mean maybe you want to say who knows but um you know you think that doesn't it doesn't look good for the case that object like morality is objective if it was we would expect it to be you know more of a consensus and if someone disagreed that we can argue them too showing what is right I mean kind of gives a couple possible arguments against it but you know then he kind of gives his response same with our even from queerness there's a couple things here that I wanted to point out yeah so halfway through 856 Plato's form gives a dramatic picture of what objective values would have to be the form of the good is such that knowledge of it provides a knower at both the direction in an overriding motive something's being good both tells a person who knows is to pursue it and makes him pursue it an objective good would be sought by anyone who was acquainted with it not because of any contingent fact this person or every person is so constituted that he desires this end but just because the end has to be pursued miss somehow built into it similarly if this were an object the principles of right and wrong any wrong possible course of action would have to not have not to be done there somehow it built into it the need for an argument of this sort can be brought up by reflection on themes argument that reason in which the stage he includes all sorts of knowing as well as reason can never be an influencing motive of the will someone might object that Hume has argued unfairly from the lack of influencing power and ordinary objects of knowledge in ordinary reasoning and might maintain that values differ from natural objects precisely in their power when known automatically to influence will to this Hume could and would need to reply that this objectionable is a postulating of value entities or value features of quite a different order from anything else with which we are acquainted and of a corresponding Faculty with which to detect them that is we would have to supplement his explicit argument with whatever called the argument from queerness so another way of bringing out the squareness is to ask about anything that is supposed to have some objective moral quality how this is linked with its natural features what is a connection between the natural fact that inaction is a piece of deliberate cruelty say causing pain just for fun and the moral fact that it is wrong it cannot be in the tailmon illogical or semantic necessity it is not merely that the two features occur together the wrongness must somehow be consequential or supervenient it's wrong because it is a piece of deliberate cruelty but just what in the world is signified by this because and how do we know the relation that it signifies that this is something more than such actions being socially condemned and condemned by us too perhaps through our having absorbed attitudes from our social environment it is not even sufficient to postulate a faculty which sees the wrongness something must be postulated which can see at once the natural features that constitute the cruelty and the wrongness and the mysterious consequential link between the two so saying this wrongness this cruelty this link on the supervenience like all this causal relation like it just the if you saying it's so odd like why would really assume that all of this kind of stuff exists and then he talks about the Platonic forms and all that and he gives a great conclusion there yeah so I mean that is his argument from relativity in this argument from queerness all right so moving on we're going over to Nagel so Nagel begins as ethics by saying let me turn to the question of whether moral reasoning is fundamental and inescapable unlike logical and arithmetic reasoning it often fails to produce certainty justified or unjustified it is easily subject to distortion by morally irrelevant factors social and personal as well as outright error it resembles empirical reason and not being reducible to a series of self-evident steps so already you can see how he's laying the groundwork for arguing against are going from relativity well here's why it's relative like oh here's why you know there's differences in opinion on because like it's this kind of thing right we can fail and reasoning we could have err not like two plus two equals four kind of thing right I take it for granted that the objectivity of moral reasoning does not depend on its having an external reference so he's saying we're not even and this is gonna be his argument against already men from queerness he's saying by it not having an external reference we don't have to appeal to some platonic form of the good they're rather its intrinsic within the action itself there's no moral analog of the external world at universal moral facts I'm impinge on us causally they're casually sorry no causally I was right the first some words are hard all right halfway through 871 if we addressed content with the causal impact of the external world on us we'd still be at the level of sense perception so again this is how he's going to start arguing against argument from witness we can regard our scientific beliefs as objectively true not because the external world causes us to have them oh because we're able to arrive at those beliefs by methods and have a good claim to be reliable by virtue of their success in selecting among the rival hypotheses that survive the best criticisms and questions we can throw at them empirical confirmation plays a final role in this process but it cannot do so without theory moral thought is concerned not with the description explanation of what happens but with decisions in their justification is mainly because we have no comparably uncontroversial and well-developed methods for thinking about morality that a subjectivist position is here more credible than it is with regard to science so you can say it's gonna behave morality behaves in the same way as science we postulate a theory and we scrutinize it you know two arguments and what's the best explanation these kinds of things um but like hey we don't have such a solid law or a theory in morality at least maybe not yet right so that's why subjectivism seems like more of an appeal than it does in science but just as there is no guarantee at the beginning of cosmological and scientific speculation the we humans have the capacity to arrive at objective truths beyond the deliverance of said sense perception and in pursuing we're doing anything more than spinning collective fantasies so there could be no decision in advance as to whether we are or not talking about a real subject when we reflect in our you about morality answer must come from the results themselves only the effort to reason about morality and show us whether it's possible whether in thinking about what to do and how to live we could find methods reasons and principles whose validity does not have to be subjectively or relativistically qualified so let's take for example to try this home something like the law of gravity if you're to have like this actual law that you could say works in every single instance at least in the observable universe um it seems that if you were to tell that to someone 5,000 years ago they would think that you're insane right like yeah you could postulate postulate theory of gravity or something like that you can't ever prove you know gravity or you know this exact formula or whatever it's just cuz like they there are science or technology is too rudimentary for it to like get anywhere and so we're saying just like that but now we know it's the case um it could be that the same is true with morality or just sit like the infancy of morality um but maybe in like 5,000 years from now we'll look at you know laws and theories of morality in the same way that people in the Bronze Age would look at our laws and theories of science so that's his argument there the issue of whether the procedures of justification criticism we employ in such reasoning moral and merely practical can be regarded finally it's just something we do a cultural or societal or even more broadly human collective practice well then which reason comes to an end I believe that if we ask ourselves seriously how to respond to proposals for contextualization relativistic detachment they usually failed to convince although it's less clear than in some of the areas we've discussed attempts to get entirely outside of the objective language of practical reasons good and bad right and wrong and to see all such judgments of a contingent non-objective perspective will eventually collapse before the independent force in the first ordered judgments themselves so he's saying the independent force of the first order judgments themselves again first sort of being like don't murder or it's bad to us liar or it's bad to steal or you should help people these first order judgments the independent force of these is gonna be just enough um to override any kind of subjectivism and obviously in order to do that you have to disprove that or you know at least throw some plausible deniability towards independence thesis because independent CSIS could be like yeah you might think that you know there's some weird real way to these first-order reviews but they could still be on subjective but if you can deny that independence thesis then the real weight of the first sort of views would be enough to push you to the second-order view that it is objective and it does seem like that's what most of our common sense does in the first place well given a lot of people to give lip service to the idea of you know moral subjectivity if you like punch them in the face or showed them a genocide you know or something like that um thought that those two are equal I'm sorry if that was my implication from what I just said there by like if you showed them something that's either really personal to them like it caused something bad happen to them or you just saw them show them something so seemingly objectively horrible that has nothing to do with them it seems that like they're going to override and say that is wrong you wronged me or the murder of millions of people is wrong right um and not just like I think it's wrong or I am disgusted by it but like no there's something objectively wrong about it so it's kind of argument he's making in the first part so part two suppose someone says for example you only believe in a equal opportunity because you're a product of Western liberal society if you've been brought up in a caste Society or one in which the possibilities for men and women radically unequal you wouldn't have the more convictions you have or accept as persuasive the moral arguments you now accept the second hypothetical sentence is probably true what about the first specifically the only in general the fact that I wouldn't believe something if I hadn't learned it proves nothing about the status of the belief or its grounds so this is going against something called the genetic fallacy genetic genes Genesis it's this idea of the the originality or what caused the belief so the genetic fallacy is saying um we can disprove your belief strictly by saying that you believe in it an example of this is let's presume the only way in which a democratically structured society can be run is through one of two systems the Republican Party or the Democratic Party right and let's say that we have two people person a and person B person a was raised in a Democratic household and believes in that the Democratic Party is a right way of governing person B was raised in a Republican household and believes that the Republican way is the right way of governing right and let's assume again that one of these two must objectively be the right way of governing over the other um but we can look at person a and say look you're only a Democrat because you were raised in Democratic household so therefore you know being a Democrat is false or like the idea of democratic being the right way of governing is false but then you can also look at person being say look look you're only Republican because you're a raisin Republican also so therefore the only reason you believe it is because of that and so the idea that the Republican way of governing is objectively right is also shown to be false um well we just disproved both of them and again we've already asserted that one of them has to be right and so that is this idea of the genetic fallacy um it's you know maybe it can cause some undermining like oh maybe I should look to see if I have other reasons for believing this thing but it doesn't disprove it and that's why I said specifically the only in general the fact that I wouldn't believe something if I hadn't learned it proves nothing about the status of this belief or its grounds it may be impossible to explain that learning without invoking the content of the belief itself and the reason for its truth and it may be clear that what I have learned is such that even if I haven't learned it it would still be true the reason the genetic fallacy is a fallacy is that the explanation of a belief can sometimes confirm it have any content a subjectivist position must say more than my moral convictions are my moral convictions that after all is something we can all agree on a meaningful subjectivism must say that they are just my moral convictions are those of my moral community must qualify ordinary moral judgment in some way must give them a self-consciously first-person singular or plural reading that is the only type of anti Objectivist view that is worth arguing against oh that is even possible to disagree with but I believe it is impossible to come to rest with the observation that I believe in equal equality of opportunity and a wish to diminish inherited inequalities are merely expressions of cultural tradition true or false those beliefs are essentially objective in intent perhaps they are wrong but that too would be a non-relative judgment so he's saying their objective in their intent even to say that these beliefs are wrong you know by saying that they're wrong you're saying that's an objective statement right there a presentation of array of historically and culturally conditioned attitudes including my own does not disarm first order of mole judgment but simply gives it something more to work on including information about influences on the formation of my convictions it may lead me to change them so maybe you know you grew up in this political party and I'm going to pick one just because I don't want to so I need to sit here but let's say you grew up in this political party and you just assumed it was right and then someone says like oh you only believe in that party because like you're raised in that party and you start to think about it other like ooh maybe that's true and so then you will start to look more into your own side you start to look more into the other side and maybe by doing this deep open-minded investigation you still come to believe in the same party but maybe it leaves you to go into a different party right or the other party if we're looking at a two party system or something um that's what mingles saying like it might give us cause to look into why we actually believe what we believe but it doesn't disprove the belief in itself um my opinion someone who abandons or qualifies as they think basic methods of moral reasoning on historical or anthropological grounds alone is nearly as irrational as someone who abandons a mathematical belief on other than mathematical grounds this is an instant to the more general truth at the normative cannot be transcended by the descriptive the question what should I do like the question what should I believe is always in order such things may in fact guide our actions but it's always possible to take the relation to action as an object a further normative reflection ask how should I act given that these things are true of my situation the type of thought that generates answers to this question is practical reason so if that's what its gonna argue is practical reason but further it's always possible for the question to take a specifically moral form since one of the successor questions to which it leads is well should anyone in my situation do and consideration that question leads to in turn the questions about what everyone should do not only in this situation but more generally that's the objective perspective such universal questions don't always have to be raised but there is good reason in general to develop a way of living that makes it usually unnecessary to raise them but if they are raised as they always can be they require an answer of the appropriate kind even though the answer may be in that case like this one may do as one likes they cannot be ruled out of order by pointing to something more fundamental psychological cultural or biological that brings a request for justification to an end only a justification can bring the request for justifications to an end normative questions in general are not undercut or rendered idle by anything even though particular normative answers may be so again we can argue is um you can't give some sort of psychological or anthropological or historical account of why you believe the things that you do when someone asks you for justification and like that ends it right instead you have to face the statement or the belief in and of itself and you have to reason through it and give it justification which involves reasoning so he's gonna say is we don't have to appeal to this you know platonic realm of the forms it has this bizarre interaction with us that's you know this weird oddity as Mackey's talking about we don't have to do any of that and said we could just appeal to reason and reason is going to show us what is right and what is wrong I mean it's because of reason that there can be objective or objectivity of morality um so that's gonna be the main point navels are you here part three yeah we're doing one all right the point of view to defeat and in defense of the reality of practical and moral reason is in essence the human one hmm although humans wrong to say that reason was fit only to serve as the slave of the passions is nevertheless true that they are desires and symptoms prior to reason that it is not appropriate for reason to evaluate and it must simply treat as part of the raw material to which it judges its judgments operate the question then arises how persuasive or pervasive such brood motivational data are and whether some of them cannot perhaps be identified as a true sources of those grounds of actions which they're usually described as reasons so he's arguing against Hume saying that you know it's not that we have these passions and we post hoc rationalizations and our desires and sentiments prior to reason are appropriate for reason to evaluate entreats if that's part of the raw material through which it reasons so I really have this desire to drink this cup of coffee right mmm sadly I think itself but like I have this desire and so what I reason about what is right for me to do um should take into account that desire but it doesn't mean I force myself into believing it right maybe it's like it's late at night I need to go to bed soon um so even though I want to drink it like maybe I shouldn't on the other hand like you know let's say it's like 11 o'clock you know so it's not whatever like noon it's not morning um but it's a gallic you're not gonna be staying up too late something you enjoy like you should go ahead and talk hurting you so like you know it's one of the things that we consider through reasoning or desires or passions that kind of thing um but it's not that our reasoning is slave to it and in fact that's what you know is talking about adding more raw material to which it's judgment to operate um so that's the whole point is making here fundamental issue is about the order of explanation for there's no point in denying that people have such second-order desires the question is whether their source of motivation are simply the manifestation in our motives of the recognition of certain rational requirements a parallel point can be made about theoretical reason and it's clear that the belief and modus ponens for example is not a rationally ungrounded assumption underlying our acceptance of deductive arguments that depend on modus ponens rather it is simply a recognition of the validity of that form of argument a question is whether something similar can be said of the desire for Prudential consistency and the treatment of desires and interests located at different times I think it can be in that if one tries instead to regard prudence as simply desire among others a desire one happens to have the question of its appropriateness inevitably reappears as a normative question and the answer can only be given in terms of the principle itself the normative can't be displaced by the psychological that's his whole point here all right so in 476 the supposition that I might not care about my own future cannot be regarded with some more tolerance is a supposition of a real failure the paradigm is something to be regretted my recognition of the failure does not reflect the antecedent precedent presence in me of a contingent second-order desire rather reflects a judgment about what is and what is not relevant to the justification of action against a certain factual background relevance and consistency both get a foothold when we adopt the same point of decision based on the total circumstances including our own condition this standpoint introduces a settled the profound gap between desire and action into which the free exercise of Reason enters it forces us to the idea the difference between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing given our total situation including our desires once I've seen myself as the subject of certain desires as well as the occupant of an objective situation I still have to decide what to do and that will include deciding what just Vittori wait to give those desires this step back you know removing herself from her own perspective this opening of a slight space between inclination decision is condition that permits the operation of reason with respect to belief as well as with respect to action that poses a demand for generalizable justification the two kinds of reasoning are in this way parallel it is only when instead of simply being pushed along by impressions memories impulses desires or whatever one can stop to ask what should I do or what should I believe that reasoning becomes possible and having become possible becomes necessary having stopped the direct operation of impulse by interposing the possibility of decision one can get one's belief and action into motion again only by thinking about what in light of the circumstances one should do so again this is universal this is objectiveness is objective perspective and reasoning is equal for everybody it's not I think two plus two equals four it's two plus two objectively equals four right and so because we have this objective or reliable justification through reasoning that we take a step back from our impulses and being just pushed along by our passions that we can think what should I do and by doing that we introduce reasoning and reasoning becomes necessary at that point and so that's where the objectivity lies through the object activity of reasoning this controversial but crucial point here is everywhere in the discussion the subject is a stand out is a standpoint from which one assesses one's choices from this step back is not just first personal one is suddenly in the position of judging what one ought to do against the background of all one's desires and beliefs in a way that does not merely fro flow from this desiring belief but operates on them by an assessment that should be enable that should enable anyone else to see what is right the right thing for you to do against that background so it's objective rather even the case of purely self-interested choice one is seeking the right answer when he's trying to decide what given the inner and outer circumstances one should do and that means not just what I should do but what this person should do the same answer should be given to that question by anyone to whom the data are presented whether or not he is in your circumstances ensures your desires this is what gives practical reason its generality the objection that has to be answered here is elsewhere is that the sense of unconditioned non-relative judgment is an illusion we can on merely by stepping back and taking ourselves as objects of contemplation find a secure platform from which to judge it possible on this view whatever we do after engaging in such an intellectual ritual we still never bleep by a manifestation of our individual or social nature of the deliverance of impersonal reason for there is no such thing but I do not believe that such a conclusion can be established a priori or just the reasoning alone and there is little reason to believe that it could be established empirically through looking at experience this the subjectivist would have to show that all purportedly rational judgments about what people have reasoned do are really expressions of rationally unmotivated desires or dispositions of the person making the judgment desires or dispositions which normative assessment has no application the motivational explanation will have to have the effect of displacing the normative one showing it to be superficial and deceptive so normative meaning like what one ought to do it would be necessary to make out the case about many actual judgments of this kind and to offer reasons to believe that something similar is true in all cases subjectivism involves a positive claim of empirical psychology so it's not just a subjective claim or a negative claim saying we can't know this you're making a positive assumption we do know this and it's conceivable that such an argument is it conceivable that such an argument could succeed and it since on how to be shown that all are supposed practical reasoning is at the limit a form of rationalization but the defender practical reason has a general response to all psychological claims of this type even some of his actual reasonings are convincingly analyzed away as the expression mere parochial or personal inclinations it will in general be a reasonable friend add this new information to the body of its beliefs about himself and then step back once more and ask what in light of all of this do I have reason to do it is logically conceivable that the subject of his strategy might succeed by exhaustion the rationalist might become so discouraged at the prospect of being once again undermined and his rational pretensions that he would give up trying to answer their current normative question but it is far more likely that the question will always be there continuing to appear significant and demand an answer to give up would be nothing more but moral laziness so again like what he's arguing here is if you're gonna say that rational is a reasoning is not a objective then you're going to say we really don't have reasoning everything is that we call reasoning it's just rationalizations about our passions and our desires what Hugh said he said that's so unlikely in like to say that a objectivity cannot exist a morality you have to also say reasoning itself cannot exist and that seems like you're giving up a lot and it also seems like you can't really prove that claim so that's niggles argument here and the ends by saying more important as a matter of substance I do not think the subjectivist project can be plausibly carried out it is not possible to give it two bunking psychological explanation of prudential rationality at any rate her supposes said plausibly enough that the disc provide for the future has survival value and that it's implement implementation in us is a product of natural selection as with any other instinct we still have to decide whether acting on it is a good idea with some biological natural dispositions both motivational and intellectual there are good reasons to assist or limit their influence if they were they wouldn't give us a kind of reason herb I'm sorry that this has not seen the right reaction Prudential motives except insofar as we limit them for moral reasons shows that they cannot be regarded simply as desires that there is no reason to have if there were they wouldn't give us the kind of reasons for actions that they clearly do it will never be reasonable for the rationalist to concede that prudence is just a type of consistency in action that he happens groundlessly to care about and that he'd have no reason to care about if he did it already the null hypothesis that in this can unconditional since there are no reasons is acceptable only from the if from the point of view of detached self observation issue the superior to the alternatives and as elsewhere I I believe it fails that test there we go so that's Nagle's argument in the details of how to respond to like Mackey's criticisms and subjectivity in general of why we can have this objective appeal to reason and reason is objective and not you know applying some sort of platonic theory ER and realm of the forum's on but instead just recent common sense under everyday rationalization or not rationalization but reasoning and to say that reasoning does not exist you're saying every time we think that we're reasoning or does rationalizing things and that seems absurd and like you're giving up too much yeah so there we go that's a niggle and that's Maki and that's subjectivity on those sides of positive in a defense for subjectivity anyways guys that's going to be a friend of day um if you have any questions again please post it in the discussion board and I'll see y'all next time