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Majesty of Reason
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Добавлен 19 апр 2020
I make videos about philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and more.
"What altar of refuge can a man find for himself when he commits treason against the majesty of reason?" ― Baruch Spinoza
"What altar of refuge can a man find for himself when he commits treason against the majesty of reason?" ― Baruch Spinoza
Against single-issue pro-life voting
If the pro-life view is correct, should we prioritize abortion over every other issue in politics and voting? Dustin Crummett argues that the answer is no.
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OUTLINE
0:00 Intro
0:50 Overview
3:30 Body Count Reasoning
8:04 Four notes
13:18 Embryo Rescue Case
19:17 Objection: death vs. unjust killing
20:57 Objection: committing unjust killing
23:25 Objection: cooperating with evil
29:22 Objection: timing of abortion
31:59 Objection: non-inferential beliefs
38:20 Crummett himself
52:02 Conclusion
RESOURCES
(1) Crummett (...
Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason
If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid
OUTLINE
0:00 Intro
0:50 Overview
3:30 Body Count Reasoning
8:04 Four notes
13:18 Embryo Rescue Case
19:17 Objection: death vs. unjust killing
20:57 Objection: committing unjust killing
23:25 Objection: cooperating with evil
29:22 Objection: timing of abortion
31:59 Objection: non-inferential beliefs
38:20 Crummett himself
52:02 Conclusion
RESOURCES
(1) Crummett (...
Просмотров: 5 367
Видео
Grim Reaper Paradoxes and Patchwork Principles | Ft. @Friction
Просмотров 4 тыс.21 день назад
The Grim Reaper Paradox does not support the Kalam cosmological argument. In this video, Troy and I explain why. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 0:00 Intro & Outline 1:44 Benardete Paradoxes 6:43 Connection to the Kalam 8:31 Fin...
Arguments for and against Molinism | Dr. Daniel Rubio
Просмотров 4,2 тыс.Месяц назад
Molinism is a popular view of divine providence, but it has serious problems. I'm joined by Daniel Rubio to explore these problems and more. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 0:00 Intro 1:50 Key definitions 19:30 Molina’s argument...
A problem for effective altruism? | Dr. Travis Timmerman
Просмотров 2,4 тыс.Месяц назад
Effective altruism faces a serious dilemma. How might the effective altruist solve it? I'm joined by Dr. Travis Timmerman to explore this question as well as the actualism/possibilism debate in ethics. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OU...
The Modal Ontological Argument: An Analysis
Просмотров 6 тыс.2 месяца назад
Here's your comprehensive guide to the modal ontological argument for God's existence! Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 0:00 Intro & Outline 2:06 General structure of MOA 12:55 Representative argument 15:16 Simpler variant 16:17 ...
Causal finitism is NOT the best solution to infinity paradoxes
Просмотров 6 тыс.2 месяца назад
How should we solve paradoxes of infinity like the Grim Reaper Paradox? One candidate solution is causal finitism. In this video, Alex Malpass and I argue that there’s a better solution: the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD). Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/...
Divine Foreknowledge vs. Human Freedom in Five Minutes
Просмотров 4,7 тыс.3 месяца назад
Is divine foreknowledge compatible with human freedom? Let's see if we can answer this in five minutes. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid LINKS (1) The video from which this is clipped: ruclips.net/video/938qqjwCYC0/видео.html (2) My Free...
Are we moral monsters? | Peter Singer on Charitable Giving
Просмотров 3 тыс.3 месяца назад
Peter Singer argues that you are morally obliged to donate to charity even at considerable personal cost. Is he right? Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid RESOURCES (1) Peter Singer's famous paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", original...
Pascal's Wager | Dr. Al Hájek and Dr. Liz Jackson
Просмотров 4,9 тыс.4 месяца назад
Should you wager on God? Let's find out. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 0:00 Intro and outline 2:48 Key background 15:52 The wager 23:36 Many gods objection 32:16 Mixed strategies objection 39:00 Al’s dilemma 51:21 Pascal’s mug...
Why atheists can blame Trent Horn for his bad arguments
Просмотров 13 тыс.4 месяца назад
Trent Horn (@TheCounselofTrent) recently argued that atheists cannot blame Christians for anything. In this video, I explain why he's wrong. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 0:00 Intro 1:00 Definitions 1:48 Trent’s video 4:24 Are...
How to excel at philosophy
Просмотров 5 тыс.4 месяца назад
What is philosophy? Why is it valuable? And how do we do it well? Here I talk about these topics and more. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 0:00 Intro 0:56 The nature of philosophy 11:43 The value of philosophy 14:30 Is reason be...
God is dead | April Fools
Просмотров 7 тыс.5 месяцев назад
Today I prove atheism using ontological nihilism. Btw, God doesn't exist. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 0:00 Intro 0:27 The proof 1:08 Ontological nihilism 3:29 Ad 4:24 Proof of ontological nihilism 6:10 Non-fundamental nihili...
Answering HUNDREDS of your questions!
Просмотров 8 тыс.5 месяцев назад
The one million views AMA answers are HERE! Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid ARBITRARY OUTLINE (SEE DESCRIPTION FOR QUESTIONS) 0:00 Black shirt 1:19:51 Dark blue shirt 2:14:17 Grey-ish shirt 3:44:49 Light blue shirt LINKS The Majesty of ...
Avoid these 15 mistakes about Free Will, Christianity, and Consciousness
Просмотров 7 тыс.6 месяцев назад
In this final part of the common mistakes series, we cover mistakes about free will, Christianity, and consciousness. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!): www.patreon.com/majestyofreason If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): www.paypal.com/paypalme/josephcschmid OUTLINE 00:00 Intro 1:03 Mistake 163 20:10 Mistake 164 21:36 Mistake 165 22:29 Mistake...
LEVEL UP by avoiding these mistakes about God
Просмотров 6 тыс.6 месяцев назад
LEVEL UP by avoiding these mistakes about God
Grim Reapers and Endless Futures: A Problem for the Kalam
Просмотров 4,3 тыс.7 месяцев назад
Grim Reapers and Endless Futures: A Problem for the Kalam
Does Free Will Exist? | Sapolsky vs. Huemer Debate Review
Просмотров 19 тыс.7 месяцев назад
Does Free Will Exist? | Sapolsky vs. Huemer Debate Review
These mistakes are RUINING your philosophy of religion gains
Просмотров 8 тыс.8 месяцев назад
These mistakes are RUINING your philosophy of religion gains
Common Mistakes about the Moral Argument, Fine-Tuning, and Ontological Arguments
Просмотров 8 тыс.8 месяцев назад
Common Mistakes about the Moral Argument, Fine-Tuning, and Ontological Arguments
The best philosophy paper ever published
Просмотров 7 тыс.9 месяцев назад
The best philosophy paper ever published
32 CAREER-ENDING mistakes about the Kalam and contingency arguments
Просмотров 7 тыс.9 месяцев назад
32 CAREER-ENDING mistakes about the Kalam and contingency arguments
Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?
Просмотров 6 тыс.9 месяцев назад
Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?
Fine-Tuning, Cosmic Purpose, and Psychophysical Harmony | Dr. Philip Goff
Просмотров 7 тыс.10 месяцев назад
Fine-Tuning, Cosmic Purpose, and Psychophysical Harmony | Dr. Philip Goff
Avoid these HUGE MISTAKES about theism, atheism, and agnosticism
Просмотров 10 тыс.10 месяцев назад
Avoid these HUGE MISTAKES about theism, atheism, and agnosticism
Is everything necessary? | Dr. Josh Rasmussen & Dr. Amy Karofsky
Просмотров 8 тыс.11 месяцев назад
Is everything necessary? | Dr. Josh Rasmussen & Dr. Amy Karofsky
These 54 mistakes are KILLING your philosophy game
Просмотров 13 тыс.Год назад
These 54 mistakes are KILLING your philosophy game
Skeptical Theism and the Problem of Evil | Dr. Perry Hendricks
Просмотров 9 тыс.Год назад
Skeptical Theism and the Problem of Evil | Dr. Perry Hendricks
Best view of Platonism, ever.
When it said “” that opened my eyes….
Think of possible things as those with beginnings and ends (this is what is meant by generation and corruption, unto whatever capacity you like), and the third way is manifestly true. If you draw your finger across the night sky, you will eventually start to point at a star and then cease pointing at a star. So too the sky behind it is drawn and undrawn. It doesn't make sense to say that the star exists because the sky stops existing because out of nothing, nothing comes. One is forced to ask by what power both the star and the sky have their existence positively, and at some point of inquiry, you will find that they must share a common origin, God.
HOLY COW Not even a joke, but your opening with the burning building is something ive been saying FOR YEARS and never once heard elsewhere. The fire, the two choices. Wow haha Amazing.
1:47:00 Analogy Scope Conflation
33:44 People disagree on many facts that are contrary to their intuitions and feelings and then act on those contrary intuitions and feelings. For example... finances, diet, exercise, their activities and interests being harmful or not to themselves or others, etc. Its why therapy, doctors, and debt collectors have so much work to do and are so frustrated by the folks they have to work with. Humans dont like aligning with reality. They prefer to align with intuition and feelings.
17:00 Ghost at Graham's house
Even for pro abortion peole isn't saving 100 furure people better than saving one. This is the trolley problem all over again. The only different is that the 100 peole are potentials.
It is obvious that democracy will never end abortion anyway and I hope more pro-lifers realize it. If murder was made legal and normalized, no candidate would ever do anything to undermine it. Abortion will only end by force.
What do you think of David Bentley Hart?
Based!
1:37:17 I feel like this section on the different types of possibility could very easily apply to the fine tuning argument as well. A common error (at least to me) with some fine tuning arguments is the subtle switch between nomological, metaphysical, and logical possibilities. Proponents will often claim that the constants *could possibly be* different than what they are, yet it is never clear how that can be established. They seem to want to ground the life-giving properties in some nomological possibility, but then talk about these other modes and it’s never clear in what way these other values are *in fact* possible.
20:30 Ironically, my first instinct was to predict that in this thought experiment, the pro lifer *would* save the petri dish. In other words, that the cause of the petri dish's destruction being intentional *would* increase the priority/importance of saving it.
exactly
Moral dillemss are kind of useless pertaining to the broader issue. Lets put it a different way. Lets say there's a dish full of embryos from the two most intelligent people on earth, vs a 102 yr old sick guy with a low IQ. Now which would you save? This reasoning is question begging bc it merely assumes that only WE assign value. This could open up a huge can of worms if ad-populum is our basis for human morality (thats right MORALITY, not "ethics"). I bet you theres some people whod probably save a sack of gold, before either of them. The question here, is "Should one be able to kill their embryonic offspring, up until or even past (depending on who you talk to) the point of birth, so they can have all the sex they want without consequences". This is not a hyperbolic representation of their position. If that is a partys position, and it is the official position of exactly one major political party, i will never under any circumstances, vote for a member of that party. Now, if the other party thought that you should be able to kill five year olds, at that point Im tracking with the moral dilemma.
Asking for tips...jokes on you: I'm Australian!
At best, this shows that pro-life voters shouldn't be single-issue voters _on the basis of number_ of lives killed. As someone who is strongly pro-life, I found Crummett's argument against body-count reasoning compelling. It explains why severity can trump absolute numbers. However, body-count reasoning just isn't the kind of thinking that brings me (and likely others) to become single-issue voters. Some of the extended discussions touch on those reasons, but they were underdeveloped. What compels me to be a single-issue voter is highly related to the severity of the worst cases, and the fact that these still legally occur in high numbers. More specifically, it's the *combination* of: 1) incredibly severe later-term abortions being increasingly morally wrong (culminating in severity matching infanticide the later you go), 2) of these more severe abortions occurring in high enough numbers even in late stages to be extremely evil (it's effectively still mass infanticide + less severe cases in several orders of mangitude higher numbers still), 3) of the impact of pro-abortion candidates in shifting the Overton window to the point where even the born-alive bill is being popularly opposed (which to me is akin to opposing anti-infanticide laws), and 4) of the fact that most pro-abortion candidates are proud of their genocidal positions (and this is less acceptable than voting in favor of reluctant pro-choice politicians - for one, it ties back into the Overton window argument) so in effect you are supporting a pro-murder stance, which is different from a passive indifference to preventing deaths. The last point on intentionality was addressed, but not in combination with the large numbers of severe cases of late-term abortions that still legally take place every year, and the effect that continuing to endorse it will have in further increasing the counts of the most severe cases, which are the most important to prevent. When you take the combination of all these factors together, they are strong reasons for pro-life voters to consider it the most important issue that can surely trump all others combined (at least in the current environment) the more you reflect on how all of these reasons reinforce each other and how much worse it can become if we don't stop this moral abomination now.
It is unfortunate that we cannot get off the starting line and run with the discussion because Don is having a personal debate with himself and cannot commit to trusting his left brain or his right brain. So unfortunate..... Philosophical discussions are personal. If you do not have the balls to expose yourself, do not agree to the discussion.
No. It doesn’t
Hi, can you give me beginner book recommendations.
Hello Joe, i have been watching your videos for a few months now and i have come to love your channel. I have seen your 10k Q&A video and know you (Along with the vast majority of contemporary philosophers) don't take TAG/TACG (Transcendental argument for the Christian God) seriously. However as someone who has looked into it very much (read all of Alex Malpasses blogs on it, read Michael Butlers blogs, watched plenty of Greg Bahnsen, dozens of videos from several perspectives and the like) i think it would do you great favor to read these papers published by FR. Deacon Ananias/Erik Sorem (Who has said to have met you before in real life). The papers are here: www.academia.edu/116734536/The_Reason_for_Reason www.academia.edu/45384040/An_Orthodox_Theory_of_Knowledge_The_Epistemological_and_Apologetic_Methods_of_the_Church_Fathers Erik Sorem is certainly several tiers above presuppositionalists like Jay dyer (Who failed to even present a proper argument against Alex Malpass in their debate) And he is very kind and willing to talk with anyone about his position. I think a good looking into his position would be great, i do recognize that this position often has trouble against some types of neoplatonism so perhaps that can be of use. Hope this finds you well.
A lot of this is just philosophical hubris masquerading as "discussion". It's one of the problems with philosophy being so divorced from the real world.
The hospital is on fire, you can’t save anyone, but you can choose whether or not to do a cool flip out of the window
As someone who is anti-abortion, these are two quick comments: 1. I think one ought to prioritize saving the embryos from the fire because I think the death of an embryo is roughly equally bad as the death of a five-year-old child, so I don't think this argument works on me. 2. I don't think the revised embryo cases work because they do not correctly address the objections. The unjust killing objection does not say that we should prioritize saving people from unjust killing, but that we should prioritize stopping unjust killing. The fact that paramedics don't proritize victims of assault over accident victims (but instead treat them equally) does not mean that assault is not a more serious thing than being injured in an accident. Clearly society should prioritize preventing assaults over preventing injury-causing accidents.
If an embryo is morally equivalent to you and I, then should I be picturing a toddler dying when I think of a fertilized egg not implanting in the uterus and passing out of the body? Also, you said this - “ Clearly society should prioritize preventing assaults over preventing injury-causing accidents.” I do t think this is necessarily obvious. If roughly one out of every five people were dying of some sort of accident I think that would be a huge priority that would require the restructuring of society on a significant scale - in fact, we saw this just happen with COVID. We can absolutely argue about whether the lockdowns were necessary with how contagious COVID was eventually discovered to be,, but I think we’d all agree that if there were a pandemic going around that we knew killed (say) 25% of the people it infected and had a 2-week incubation period where it was super contagious we would probably prioritize getting a handle on the pandemic over stopping assaults, and we’d probably be right to do so.
W.r.t. point 2, the scenario can be further revised to the following: Imagine that no fires have been started yet. But you have been given the foreknowledge that a lightning strike will cause a fire in the left building with a child, and at the same time, the biological mother of the embryos will start an arson fire in the right building with 100 embryos. You have been given a button to stop one of the two fires from occuring, but you are unable to stop both fires. Given this scenario, which fire would you choose to stop. Also, given that you reject the "normal intuition" response for BCR, consider this additional revision. The left building has 100 children, while the right building has 99 embryos. Does this change your choice - i.e. does BCR outweigh preventing unjust killing from occuring here; are there any other ratios that might change your decision?
@@ecta9604I don't think you should necessarily picture toddlers dying anymore than you should picture middle-aged men dying. It's better to accurately picture what is actually happening. But yes, a human zygote, blastocyst or embryo dying due to natural causes is a tragedy and I hope medical advances will solve this problem, similar to how infant mortality has been reduced. I don't think we disagree about whether one instance of assault injuring one person is more serious than one accident inflicting similar injuries on another person. I certainly agree that if people are dying at a massive scale from accidents or a disease, then, assuming we can do something about it, dealing with non-lethal assaults is a much lower priority. But the fact that you invoke the specter of mass death indicates that you think that unjust violence is normally more serious than accidents.
@@shadowc5Good question! I think the answer depends on if all I can do is prevent deaths or if stopping the arsonist mother also involves bringing her to justice for her (attempted) crimes. If it's the former, I think saving 100 born children is somewhat better than saving 99 embryos. If it's the latter, then I think that the tragic loss of one extra life could be outweighed by bringing a homicidal arsonist to justice. That said, I think saving lives is very important, so my answer would probably change if the ratio was 100/90. I hope that clarifies things.
@@Paradoxarn.well, I’m asking about the toddler because I want to know if the death of a fertilized egg is morally equivalent to the death of something like you or I, and I’m invoking mass death because we are absolutely going through a mass death event if prenatal humans - especially very young ones - are as morally valuable as you and I. If I believed that a fertilized egg was morally equivalent to a toddler I wouldn’t be focusing on abortion in the same way that I wouldn’t be focusing on assaults during a deadly plague. Instead I would be trying to structure society in a completely different way because about a third to a fifth of all the people who ever exist are dying before even getting born. Often those deaths are fully preventable either by the woman avoiding things that are likely to cause a miscarriage such as working at night (there was a Danish study that confirmed that a solid fifth or so of miscarriages seem to be preventable in simple ways like avoiding night work or exercise), or by not getting pregnant in the first place when conditions that are likely to cause a miscarriage are present (such as obesity). If I believed that the fertilized egg was morally equivalent to you and I, doing those sorts of things would at the very least be morally equivalent to drunk driving, and would probably be closer to manslaughter or reckless endangerment resulting in the death of a child. Plus, if there’s a moral equivalence between that fertilized egg and you and I, I think it’s completely unavoidable to advocate for things like miscarriages to be at the very least investigated at a cursory level, just as we’d investigate the death of anyone else for obvious foul play. I’m not talking about crazy criminal-level investigations every time - just a quick glance to ensure that the egg which has been passed doesn’t have the equivalent of a knife sticking out of its back. Even in places where people are expected to die, like in old folks homes, we check to make sure that obvious foul play isn’t involved. We also check and keep records of deaths to establish a pattern - even in an old folks home, if the death rate increases sharply then that’s a sign that there is probably something wrong that we should try to fix, despite the fact that nobody is actively killing those people. The only way to observe that sort of pattern is to keep track of the deaths in the first place. If that fertilized egg is morally equivalent to a toddler, in the same way that an abortion or taking Plan B is apparently morally equivalent to killing a toddler, it would be abhorrent to not treat those deaths in roughly the same way. And from a moral standpoint it is bizarre that we’re focusing on abortion in the middle of the worst mass death that humanity has ever experienced.
18:51 we could not be sure. do we each experience one life, or are we the physicality of our brains? Since our brain is an organ just like any other, a function of the living progression of our existence, It think thats its the former.
Very cool
There is no stance-independent, non-circular, objective prescription for any entity to have any value, or do any duty. You can post-hoc rationalize any intuition you want, but I am not going to do that which is intolerable to my conscience. For me, I would not have wanted anyone to force my mother to have me against her own well-being.
Great video!!
I've never used "body count reasoning," so this is utterly irrelevant to me, but all it does is highlight the evil of in-vitro fertilization (at least how it's typically practiced with many fertilized cells instead of just one). The only reason not to save the embryos is that there is no guarantee they will ever be given the chance to grow and develop and live a full life. I'm not so sure being frozen an indefinite amount of time is really better than death.
What do you do when a pro life person bites the bullet?
You look inwards and question why you spent your life being a sophist
You definitely moved my needle as a pro-life social conservative Christian. Maybe TMI, but it’s always nice to have context about the person commenting.
The most complicated answer to "does body count matter".
To combat the embryo rescue argument, you could take the embryos to a later point of development. What if instead of the petri dish, there was an artificial womb machine that had 100 babies that have developed for 9 months and were about to be born in an hour. I think the pro-life answer should be to save the petri dish, because in 5 years time you will have saved far more 5 year old than if you didn’t.
that wouldn't help with the body count argument for single-issue abortion voting, though, given how few abortions occur so late in pregnancy
@moxie.6832 But a pro-lifer would value the embryos as much as a pro-choicer values the artificial womb babies, so it would still apply. The reason I gave the new hypothetical was to show why saving the embryos makes sense from a pro-life perspective.
@@gatuarhin at most this argument establishes that there is some point in development at which we should save 100 fetuses over a child (as discussed in the video). if there’s a reason why we should treat 100 embryos the same, it’s not clear how the argument gives one
Let's say there is a hypothetical deadly disease that can only be cured by subjecting the closest male relative to a medical procedure, that leads to his body growing some organic material, that can than be used to cure the disease. This procedure takes several months an might have several severe side effects e.g. sickness, changes in hormone balance, hair loss, wheight gain, depression... It even might alter his body forever in some undesireable ways incontinence, scars... At the end of this procedure he has to endure unimaginable pain for a few hours. Now the question: would you force the male relative to undego the process to rescue their relative? I personally would not but how do pro-lifers see this? Would they value the life of the patient more than the free choice of their relative? I know its a very hypothetical question but its hard to find an analogy for pregnancy and birth for men
This is sort of like the trolley problem, but instead of running one person over with a trolley to save more lives, you are extracting a cure in a violent way to save more lives. The only difference is that you feel more involved in the action with the cure example.
My challenge to premise 1 is that classifying embryos as people isn't sufficient for establishing that animals in factory farming ought not to be classified as people. One would have to deep dive into the specific arguments in favour of classifying embryos as people in order to determine whether conscious animals ought to be outside the reach of that classification
@iwersonsch5131 Fuck it, let's take the pro-choice route and work to develop immaculate birth control to avoid pregnancy to begin with, then celebrate that we simultaneously ended animal ag by giving animals rights like they deserve. On a serious note, that's definitely an interesting angle to throw at them. An embryo is by far less human than any animal in a farm in the areas that matter. All the areas that helped us decide humans should have rights, apply more to animals than they do to embryos is another way of saying that to help with clarity.
Not a bad video but I bet you won’t post a video that could upset the left. Have some courage Joe, I’ll wait.
Voting?! Arrow's Impossibility Theorem says what?
The hospital is on fire, you can save either: A) 1 fertilized egg B) a machine with 100 eggs and 100 sperms inside, that will automatically assemble the sperms and eggs if it doesn't burn
...Why is this a good objection? The one fertilized egg would be the only person in this scenario; if you're a religious person who believes life begins at conception, there isn't a dilemma here.
@@josephtnied I agree that if you believe a soul magically attaches to the egg when the sperm enters it and this is what gives it human rights, then this thought experiment isn't a dilemma, you just choose A. But many religious people think they can argue against abortion without appealing to that belief. However, the secular arguments they make for why a fertilized egg is valuable tend to also apply to the soon-to-be-fertilized egg, which commits them to choosing B.
@@warptens5652 Not really. They argue that, on scientific grounds, the fertilized egg is an individual human person because it has unique human DNA. The unfertilized eggs and the sperms don't have a unique human DNA so they wouldn't count as a unique person.
@@josephtnied ah yes, this is the one and only argument pro-lifers make, they never say anything else
@@josephtnied I couldn't have said it better!
Forget all the abortion talk for a second. I wanna know how hard it was for Joe to talk as slow as the rest of humanity for a video. Or if he juat slowed it down 25% for us before uploading.
I think the reason that we ought to save the child over the embryos is not the higher moral value of born children over embryos per se, but the higher value of born children over frozen embryos. The vast majority of those embryos will end up discarded, and for those of us who also object to IVF itself, they could never morally be implanted. Thus, the act of allowing a frozen embryo to die and allowing an embryo in a mother’s womb to be aborted are not morally equivalent. I think a frozen embryo is morally equivalent to a patient in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery and who requires constant artificial life support. A better analogy would be, would you stop the murder of one 5 year old or 100 abortions? I think most pro-lifers would save the latter.
you can just add to the hypothetical that every fertilized egg will be implanted
"and for those of us who also object to IVF itself, they could never morally be implanted"
@@ldov6373 it's implanted by magic boom the idea that the morality of ivf has anything to do with the argument is silly
@@warptens5652 That would still be immoral by Catholic moral theology. The point is that there is no moral way to ever have those embryos fully grow to adulthood. The most moral thing would be to remove the artificial life support and baptize them before death. As a result there is no moral equivalence between a frozen embryo and an embryo in a mother’s womb. If you phrase the question as about embryos in mother’s wombs, most pro lifers will not concede anymore that they are less valuable than born children. It is like how an adult that needs artificial life support and has no hope of recovery would be of lower priority to save from a fire than a healthy adult.
@@thebyzantinescotist7081 The fire supplies a sauna with 100 women in the first trimester. If the sauna is allowed to continue, all 100 of those women will miscarry. They are indifferent to that (and will remain indifferent about it in retrospect too). Save the child or turn off the sauna?
Every abortion that ever happened was good, because if any was bad, God would have prevented them
Do you think that the holocaust was good because God didn’t stop it?
Interesting, I had no idea body count reason was why people single issue vote against abortion. I always thought because the act of abortion is evil, even if there was only a handful of abortion happening a year, that the issue is so obviously barbaric and evil that they couldn't support someone that included that on their policy platform. No different than if someone had pro-slavery on their platform, is that someone you could vote for even if you agreed with them in other areas. That these are uniquely evil things and therefore cannot vote for someone who supports them
I more think of it as a responsibility. If I would be held responsible for my vote on a candidate who supports killing the unborn, then I would be better off abstaining ore voting for a moral canidate with no chance of wining.
Fine but the issue might be whether or not to forgo your responsibility towards the unborn or the born. The pro life candidate might be for activily ending the lives of thousands of innocent born children and pregnant mothers. The pro choice candidate might be for activily protecting the lives of thousands of innocent born children and pregnant mothers from certain demise. It doesn't make much difference to a fetus if it dies from an abortion or dies from the malnutrition of the mother because a nation doesn't want her to get aid. And yeah, I am heavily eluding to the current mass extermination of innocent lives. Heck, you can even consider climate change and poverty. Climate change has contributed to increased miscarriages by hurting people's access to clean water and exposing expecting mothers to extreme heat. Not to mention all the born lives lost to climate change. Impoverished people don't necessarily have shelter from the heat, have the ability to move to a place with cleaner drinking water, or eat healthily. You might have a responsibility for the unborn at risk of abortion but don't you have more of a responsibility to everyone else's lives, the born and unborn.
What the hell are you talking about. USA has no starvation problem and climate change doesn't cause miscarriages.
@@jaskitstepkit7153 I was talking about the world generally and not specifically the US. The US has a malnutrition problem too though. Climate change causes extreme weather including extreme heat which does cause miscarriages. Climate change causes sea level rise and therefore ocean water contamination of underground fresh water. High sodium levels cause miscarriages. This just scratches the surface of the issue.
If the best objection to being a single issue voter on abortion is to posit some absolutely absurd philosopher’s hypothetical situations that NO politician would EVER run with, then I think we are on pretty dang good grounds to say in the case of abortion, we should be single issue voters. “But what about if a politician says he’s going to round up and kill all the black people?!”…. Really? That’s how far you have to push this to make the point? Seeing as how we won’t EVER be forced with that conundrum, yeah, I’m going to vote against abortion.
The video is examining the coherency of a set of beliefs, not trying to posit a personable take on abortion for the common man. If you're not interested in work of this kind, you're in the wrong place.
@@goclbert I am aware of what the video is trying to do. The problem is, it doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t go through is because the very topic involves the creation of laws in politics. Being realistic is literally part of the philosophical evaluation of this topic. You can’t avoid it, putting your head in the clouds, and saying “yeah but that’s the point”… it’s actually NOT the point on this specific case.
Importantly, though, that hypothetical was not proffered as an objection to single-issue pro-life voting in itself. That hypothetical was posed as a *defeater* for Tom's belief B that abortion *must* be stopped even if it takes significant costs to do so. Tom's belief B implies that, in such a situation, one should vote for the far-right candidate. Since that is false, Tom's belief B is false. Also, this may be more relevant to everyday politics than one might think. For starters, you misdescribe the thought experiment. Bobby isn't rounding up and killing *all* black people. He is only doing it to many tens of thousands of black people. This is important. Why? Because there's good reason to think that some realistic policy decisions can, indeed, be the difference between many tens of thousands of born people dying or not. The combination of different approaches to pandemics, different approaches to drugs, different approaches to healthcare, different approaches to gun regulation, and different approaches to environmental issues can easily amount to a difference of many tens of thousands of born lives saved or killed. If one's non-abortion-related political views lead one to judge that the pro-choice candidate would save many tens of thousands of born lives with their policies that would otherwise be killed with the pro-life candidate's policies -- as many millions of people's views are like in the United States -- then the case is actually reasonably relevant to our actual political situation. Of course, the analogy isn't _perfect_ , since (i) the pro-life candidate certainly wouldn't be able to realistically reduce abortions from 900,000 to 900, and (ii) the pro-life candidate won't realistically round up tens of thousands of blacks and kill them; instead. But the analogy wasn't meant to be perfect in this respect; it was only meant to test out intuitions about Tom's belief B.
"you proved i'm wrong but i don't care" ok
If you don't like hypotheticals, how about you answer the historical example presented later in the video? In 1989 The murderous communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu banned abortion. When he was overthrown Romania legalized abortion. Knowing this, do you support Ceaușescu's secret police in torturing and murdering civilians to prevent his overthrow?
Consider these 2 possible worlds: 1) You save a 5yo child over the embryos. The embryos all die but the child lives. 5 years later we have one 10yo child. 2) You save the embryos over the 5yo child. Said child dies, but then the embryos all get actualized and grown into babies. 5 years later we have many 5yo children. Now imagine you could skip the actual difficult decision-making and instantly time-travel 5 years into the future, which world are you more likely to choose?-as in which one seems more preferable? So in one case you end up having more children saved than the other, namely when the embryos are saved. It may appear to be wrong to have not saved the child, but in hindsight it seems ok to have saved the embryos, and so this merely exposes a flaw in our intuitions, and how sometimes something may seem morally wrong in the moment but revealed to be morally right afterwards, and vice versa. In the same way you will virtually always instinctively value yourself above everyone else, but from this it doesn't follow that you indeed have more objective moral value than everyone else. Another thing is that this hypothetical, even if true, only tells us that we value being born over not being born yet, but not by how much. Intuitively we may feel the embryos could die, but also intuitively almost no one would support third-trimester abortion at 8-9 months when the baby is pretty much fully formed, as that also seems like we're killing a baby. So even if you just want to follow intuitions, this only lets you legalize abortion until maybe 20-24 weeks.
This is a typical utilitarianism dilemma that doesn't count for any value judgements. The petri dish potential of life still doesnt hold as high of a value as the 5 year old that is currently living because of how unreliable that prediction is. The option with higher probability will hold more moral weight. What if the boy you killed was going to be the scientist who cures all cancer? The answer is we don't know so we face the issue at hand without conjecture.
If we change it to a tray of micro machines about to release sperm into ova, does this still hold? Five years from now, we have many five year old children. Should we save unfertilized ova that are about to be fertilized? If we make it unfertilized ova that will be fertilized the next day if we save them, should we save those ova over the child? I'm not sure this line of thought undercuts the intuition to save the child.
This all or nothing approach to abortion is merely a function of the laws, court rulings, and cultural happenstance in the United States. In most of the developed world, people do not hold this position. Abortion is very easy obtain early in pregnancy and the conditions needed to qualify for an abortion increase and/or eventually become impossible as the pregnancy progresses. This aligns much more with natural intuitions. Either way, within the US the vast majority of abortions occur during this early period so the argument still addresses the body count argument.
Doesn't this presuppose contingentarianism
I don't think a time travel hypothetical actually reveal the flaw in our moral intuition. Especially when you consider that it can give rise to some wild scenarios. Imagine if there was an innocent baby in front of you, and you have the option of either stabbing it to death, or not. Given a time travel 30 years later, you know that if you did not, there would be million and billions of additional human deaths - i.e. the baby would grow up to be a warmongering dictator! Would such a scenario reveal that our moral intuitions were flawed when we chose not to stab an innocent baby to death? Clearly not. The only thing time travel could reveal, might be that consequentialism isn't all morality is; and that time travel may reveal additional morally relevant information that isn't (and couldn't) be available at the time of decision making. Just like in the same way that one couldn't possibly know that some baby would become a warmongering dictator in the future, one also could not know that the 50 embyros would not all perish before they are born as they all fail to implant. Future knowledge is therefore additional morally significant information.
Life begins at unfertilized egg.
Then what is sperm? It's not dead or inanimate.
@Decadent_Descent Spirm is a gamete, a body part, like a strand of hair, it is not a human organism, it is a part of the human organism, not a human organism itself.
I don't think anyone argues that life doesn't start there. Personhood and/or bodily autonomy are where the discussion around this subject take place. Someone who breaks into your home can be defended against, but they're undoubtedly alive too. So clearly being alive or a life isn't the end all point. Or considering we slaughter billions of animals every year, they're all lives as well, but I only see small groups advocate for them. You need to make a more comprehensive point.
@@Decadent_Descent so life begins at the time where both the egg and the sperm were created?
@@YuGiOhDuelChannelthe undertakings egg is also a gamete