How Do We Define What Is Good & Bad? | Cosmic Skeptic | Modern Wisdom Podcast 214

1. 0:00 – 0:24

   Doing vs allowing: the life-support unplugging hook

   1. AOAlex O'Connor0:00

      Well, there's a difference between doing and allowing. There's a difference between allowing a bad thing to happen and being the cause of a bad thing to happen, but it gets even more complicated than that because, like, you've got to decide, like, how are you defining the difference between doing and allowing, like, what, what really is the difference there? For example, if I walk up to somebody who is attached to a life support machine and I unplug them, have I killed them or have I allowed them to die?

2. 0:24 – 2:52

   Catch-up banter and why ethics is the real agenda

   1. CWChris Williamson0:24

      (laughs) Alex bloody O'Connor, how are you?

   2. AOAlex O'Connor0:29

      Chris, I am, I'm well. All the better for seeing you, as, as they say. Uh, it's been, it's been too, it's been too long. I haven't seen you in person since we went to that event in London, and I can't think how long ago that was now-

   3. CWChris Williamson0:41

      February.

   4. AOAlex O'Connor0:41

      ... where you made me do the yoga that you seem to be telling everyone and their dog about and-

   5. CWChris Williamson0:46

      (laughs)

   6. AOAlex O'Connor0:46

      ... uh, that photo of me, that photo of me that you keep posting is like, you know the one of Beyoncé that she wanted to disappear from the internet?

   7. CWChris Williamson0:51

      (laughs)

   8. AOAlex O'Connor0:52

      That's my version of that, is me trying to work out how to put my leg under the thing. Yeah, it, it was a nightmare. Um, but yeah, it's, it's a shame. It's good to be speaking to you again, even if it's a, a public conversation.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:03

      Yeah, I know, man. It is, uh, that was one hell of a weekend.

   10. AOAlex O'Connor1:07

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:07

       One, one, one hell of a weekend. I've got, I've got the full-length one-hour yoga form recording both of us doing it side by side, and I'm considering offering it out to the highest bidder.

   12. AOAlex O'Connor1:19

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson1:19

       I'm pretty certain there's some people on the internet, some fairly sort of prominent, uh, debaters of yours that would pay good money for that kind of ammunition.

   14. AOAlex O'Connor1:28

       Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I do worry about some of the ammunition that my friends have on me and the people they could sell it to. I, I think maybe I could release it as a Patreon exclusive or something. That might be a good... Or you could release it as a Patreon exclusive. That, that's an even better idea.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:40

       And then steal all your patrons.

   16. AOAlex O'Connor1:41

       There you go. Yeah. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson1:42

       (laughs)

   18. AOAlex O'Connor1:42

       Yeah, they'll, they'll jump over to you then. Yeah, I don't know. Um, we'll see. But, you know, I haven't even seen that video, so God knows what other-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:50

       Awesome.

   20. AOAlex O'Connor1:50

       ... weird shapes I try to morph my body into.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:52

       It, it was graceful. It was, it was your first time, you know. No one's good at the first time.

   22. AOAlex O'Connor1:57

       No one's g- (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson1:58

       No, no one's good the first time.

   24. AOAlex O'Connor1:59

       Yeah, no one's good at the first time, as they say. Um, hmm. Well...

   25. CWChris Williamson2:03

       But no, yeah, that was s- that was February, man. That was a while ago.

   26. AOAlex O'Connor2:05

       Was that February?

   27. CWChris Williamson2:07

       Yeah.

   28. AOAlex O'Connor2:07

       Man, it's crazy. It's a crazy world out there. Um, it, I, I've been getting a bit of flak for it actually, because, you know, um, speaking... I... 'cause I, I'm, we're gonna be talking about ethics today. Um, uh, 'cause I, I... when you reached out to me and I, I was on your podcast before, and we talked about veganism, which was the first time we properly spoke, and that was ages ago now. Um, but of course, talking about veganism requires ethics more broadly as a, as an underlying, but hopefully I can sway you in an ethical direction that, that puts you off the idea of sharing those videos of me online, but we'll see where it goes.

   29. CWChris Williamson2:41

       (laughs) Yeah. Okay. I see how you're circling this back around now. I am a bad friend if that video ever surfaces-

   30. AOAlex O'Connor2:47

       (laughs)
3. 2:52 – 5:48

   Practical ethics vs metaethics: 'what is good' vs 'what good is'

   1. AOAlex O'Connor2:52

      Yeah. Well, look, I mean, it's, it's a complicated business, right? Um, uh, ethics, generally speaking, people, people have broad intuitions that certain things are right or wrong and, uh, it's clear that some of these things seem to vary, um, across cultures, across upbringings, um, but generally speaking, everybody seems to have some kind of intuition that there is such thing as right or wrong. When you, when you break down ethics, there are, there are a number of layers in which you can look at it, so one of the most important distinctions is between what might be called practical ethics and what might be called metaethics. Um, the simplest way to, to define these two is to say that practical ethics is... answers the question of what is good, whereas metaethics answers the question of what good is, right? So if you're talking about practical ethics, this is generally what people think of when they think of ethics, right? Like, uh, is abortion moral? Is euthanasia permiss- uh, permissible? Um, these kinds of questions. Questions of veganism, that kind of stuff. Social justice, any of that. Um, but underlying that, we need to have some understanding of the meaning of the words we're using. I mean, what does it actually mean to say something is good? What does it mean to say that you ought to do something? Like, what are the definitions of these terms? And this is what you'd call metaethics. And this is the more difficult part in my view, um, and it's the part that, like, kind of there, there seems to be the most kind of irresolvable, uh, disagreements. 'Cause if you just have a different intuition about what, what good is, um, then you're kind of talking past each other. Whereas if you can at least agree that, say you think that, uh, good is... good consists in what maximizes wellbeing for conscious creatures, then when you have an argument about veganism, it becomes, uh, essentially an objective discussion, because you can just objectively point to what affects wellbeing in, in various ways. But if you disagree about what it actually means, um, then you run into problems, right? The thing is, like, nobody, nobody seems to agree on this, right? This isn't like a scientific endeavor where you, you conduct a bunch of experiments and you do peer review and then you just figure out what the answer is. It's like we're asking the same questions that Aristotle and Plato were asking, you know. Like, not much has actually changed. Uh, and a lot of the time, it, it's useful to read those classics because a lot of people end up reinventing the wheel and doing it badly because they're kind of thinking about ethics and they have this bright idea and they think this is amazing, um, but it turns out, you know, 100 other people have done it before them, but it's so buried in the literature that they don't know it exists. So it's really worth kind of familiarizing yourself with some of the... at least the basic kind of, uh, conceptions of ethics a- a- across the board before you can jump into talking about practical ethics. Um, but I, I don't know, like, the, the kind of most, uh, interesting distinction that people tend to start with is what ethics is kind of, what ethics is kind of driving at, right? I mean, so for instance, if I ask you what you think it means to say something is good, w- what, what does that... I mean, what do you... according to your intuition, what do you think that really means?

4. 5:48 – 6:38

   Wellbeing as a moral base—and the challenge of the sadist

   1. CWChris Williamson5:48

      Leaving the situation with more wellbeing or less suffering than when you found it?

   2. AOAlex O'Connor5:56

      Sure. So the question trivially just becomes, why should you care about wellbeing? Why, why does that matter? Why shouldn't we try to maximize suffering?

   3. CWChris Williamson6:05

      There is a preference in one way, and that tends towards something which is not painful.

   4. AOAlex O'Connor6:15

      Okay, but what if someone comes along and says, "Look, I, I prefer other people to suffer. I don't want myself to suffer, but I think, you know, I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a sadist and I really enjoy other people's suffering, so I think the best thing to do is to cause as much suffering to them as possible whilst minimizing my own suffering."

   5. CWChris Williamson6:31

      Presuming that we're all sovereign wills-

   6. AOAlex O'Connor6:33

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson6:34

      ... the preference of one shouldn't influence the preference of another.

5. 6:38 – 10:42

   Objective vs subjective morality—and the religious grounding move

   1. AOAlex O'Connor6:38

      Right. So now the question becomes why, right? Because w- you can say something like, "Look, uh, generally there's a preference towards this thing or the other, but just because the majority of people prefer something, that doesn't mean it's necessarily the right thing to do," okay? And the first question that this highlights is objectivity in ethics, right? And one of most important distinctions to make is between a, a conception of objective ethics and a conception of subjective ethics. To say that something is objectively right, or objectively moral, to say that objective ethics exists, is to say that ethical propositions are true regardless of what people think about them. Right? It, it doesn't matter what your opinion is, in other words, because you say something like, "Well, it, it could be to, to do with like a preference for wellbeing," but if everybody on planet Earth decided that, you know, the Holocaust was the right thing to do, right? Let's say the Holocaust wiped out all of its opposition and Germany won the war, and everybody, or at least the majority o- on planet Earth, are convinced that that was a good thing to do, most people would wanna say that that doesn't matter, it was still bad, it was still wrong, even if everybody doesn't agree with that, right?

   2. CWChris Williamson7:37

      There's something universal that sits outside of what an individual's sense of is.

   3. AOAlex O'Connor7:43

      Right. Um, now, of course, that leads us to the intuition that morality does have at least some objectivity, right? That there, there are, uh, that you can say that an ethical proposition is actually true or false, right? And, and it doesn't matter what you think about it. The problem then becomes grounding it, right? Like, on whose authority is it good or bad? Now, traditionally, this is where religion would step up to the mark, and still tries to today, and in fact, a popular argument for the existence of God is the moral argument. And the moral argument is really simple, and it says if, uh, if God does not exist, objective morality does not exist. Objective morality does exist, therefore God exists, right? The idea being that if there is such thing as objective morality, it needs to be grounded in something, and it can only really be grounded in some kind of authority, right? It can't be grounded in some kind of, uh, preference of a human being or some kind of naturalistic feature. It has to have some kind of authority behind it, and that can only really come from, uh, a kind of supernatural authority that supersedes everybody else, right? And so it's basically saying that because objective morality exists, God must exist, right? And there are multiple ways to respond to this. The first is to try to, uh, ground objective morality in something else, but the second thing you can do, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, is to just say that morality actually isn't objective, right? You could say that morality is subjective. That is, it does, it, it is dependent on what the person feels. Um, now, of course, the biggest problem with this is that you, you run into the kind of situations where somebody might say, "Well, in my subjective opinion, you know, the Holocaust was a good thing. Um, therefore, it was the right thing to do," right? And, and this doesn't sit right with us, but there are kind of different levels that subjectivity can work, right? So let me give you one example, um, of the, the utilitarian case. Um, utilitarianism is broadly an objective, uh, ethical theory, but, but I'll, I'll give you a kind of form of it that could demonstrate how the objective and the subjective can, can come together. So, I might say something like, uh, "I subjectively value my wellbeing, and so do you. You, you subjectively value your wellbeing, and everybody subjectively values their wellbeing." Now, it, it, it's trivially true that you, you have to value your own pleasure, you have to think it's a good thing, right? Some people take pleasure in things that other people find painful, but that would not, that would just be a wrong definition of pain for them, because for them, that would be a pleasurable experience, or at least it would lead to a pleasurable experience. Now, I can say something like, "Look, the, the preference for pleasure is subjective," right? It, it's, it's just, it's just due to, to, to your, uh, to your preference, right? But there are objective things we can know about how to maximize it. So if I was a utilitarian who thought that the, the basic justification for having pleasure and wellbeing and suffering as the, the basis on which we ground ethics, I could say that that's subjective, but I could then be objectivist in, in my ways of kind of analyzing situations and seeing what would actually maximize pleasure, right? So it can get a bit complicated, right? And, and it's like-

   4. CWChris Williamson10:42

      (laughs)

6. 10:42 – 15:08

   How philosophers stress-test moral theories: reductio and intuitions

   1. AOAlex O'Connor10:42

      ... this, this isn't even kind of, this, this isn't even the, the beginning. Um, but, like, one of the best ways oftentimes to explore different ethical theories, and one of the ways in which people like to write about it in, in, uh, in the academy, is essentially to rely on intuition, right? Because you come up with some kind of ethical theory and you need to, you need a way to test it. So you have your ethical theory and then you run it against some kind of counter-example and you say, "Well, this ethical theory leads us to this conclusion which seems so absurd that we have to reject the ethical theory." And this is a lot of the time how ethics is done, right? In order to show why someone's ethical theory is wrong, you show what it leads to and show that it's, that it's an absurdity or an immorality or something that's so obviously bad that we have to throw out the the- uh, the, the, the theory. This is known as a reductio ad absurdum. Um, and that's the best way to explore ethics. But, like, jumping into the question of ethics, it's like, it depends on what you wanna do. It depends on what, if you wanna know what good is. It depends on if you wanna sort of work out famous moral dilemmas. It depends on if you, if you're just trying to look at a specific, um, moral issue and trying to kind of break it down. Like, it depends what you wanna do, right? Like, in a, in a conversation like this, there are so many avenues you can go down.

   2. CWChris Williamson11:55

      I understand. Is it possible to have a conversation about practical ethics with the conversation about metaethics still being poorly defined? 'Cause it seems a little bit like playing football but some people think you're allowed to handle the ball and other people think you can only kick it.

   3. AOAlex O'Connor12:09

      Yeah. Well, that, that's exactly the problem if you don't have the same metaethical theory. It's like you could be playing chess with someone who's using the rules of rugby, and it's just-

   4. CWChris Williamson12:15

      (laughs)

   5. AOAlex O'Connor12:15

      ... it's not gonna work, right?

   6. CWChris Williamson12:16

      Okay. Yeah. (laughs)

   7. AOAlex O'Connor12:17

      But generally speaking, people do have certain base level intuitions that are roughly the same, right? And you can talk about practical ethics without breaking it into metaethics, and I think it's more interesting to do so, um, because metaethics can get, it can get complicated and tricky. And, and you have to, uh, define the difference between doing and allowing, and you have to... I- i- i- it gets, it gets complicated, right?

   8. CWChris Williamson12:38

      I imagine it gets quite semantic as well, that you just-

   9. AOAlex O'Connor12:41

      Absolutely.

   10. CWChris Williamson12:41

       ... a, a, a lot of the time, it's, "What does this word mean?" And then you get into-

   11. AOAlex O'Connor12:45

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson12:45

       ... sort of senses of etymology and, and sort of bizarre, um... It's just linguistic territory. This, I think, is one of the big challenges we have with communication sort of generally at the moment in the media, that no one's actually defining what words mean. We-

   13. AOAlex O'Connor12:58

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson12:58

       Words can mean multiple things. There's a term called semantic overload, which I learned from Ben-

   15. AOAlex O'Connor13:02

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson13:02

       ... Ben Shapiro, and that is what's being used an awful lot at the moment, semantic overload.

   17. AOAlex O'Connor13:07

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson13:07

       Uh, so I imagine when you're having a very complex discussion, really trying to get into the weeds with something and work out the nuance of practical ethics, and then someone comes in and goes, "Well, I know that you said that you kicked the ball, but is it really a ball? And why is it called ball?"

   19. AOAlex O'Connor13:21

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson13:21

       And you're like, "Oh, fucking hell, mate. Come on."

   21. AOAlex O'Connor13:24

       Exactly right. But this-

   22. CWChris Williamson13:24

       Kinda ruins the game.

   23. AOAlex O'Connor13:25

       ... this is, this is what you run into, especially if you talk to someone who's got an interest in philosophy or ethics. If you, if you talk to them on a practical level and you say, "Well, look, I think that, uh, you know, the, uh, the mass confinement and torture of animals is, is immoral for the purpose of, you know, a, a, a fancy steak," right? And someone turns around, if you talk to the average person, they'll talk around, they'll turn around and say, "But what if they're treated this way? What if they're treated that way?" They bring up practical concerns. But an ethicist might say, "Well, why? Like, why should I care about animals suffering? Like, what, what does that matter?" And I, I could say, "Well, you care about animal suffering for the same reason you care about human suffering." And they say, "Well, why should I care about human suffering?" Yeah. And, and the question can go on and on and on and on and on, and you never kind of come to a, to a useful stopping point unless you can agree on something. Um, but you can talk about practical ethics without breaking it down to metaethics if you do have certain, uh, if you do have certain level agreements. So, if I agree that we shouldn't cause harm to human beings unnecessarily and so do you, then I can make an argument from consistency. I can say that, "Well, I think you're holding an inconsistent set of beliefs if you're okay with harming a human being... or you're okay, okay with harming a non-human animal, but you're not okay with harming a human being." It's like, what are your reasons for one and the other? And I could show that maybe there's an inconsistency there, right? But, like, you could be consistently wrong, right?

   24. CWChris Williamson14:38

       Mm-hmm.

   25. AOAlex O'Connor14:38

       Like, I, I could, we, we could make our ethical, practical ethical case completely consistent. I could say that, "Well, in order to be, uh, against animal exploitation, you also have to be, I don't know, you, you have to be pro-life in this instance and that instance. And for some strange reason, you also have to hold this other belief and this other belief and this other belief." And, and you can kind of convince someone of all of those things. But, like, they could just be, they could just have a consistent worldview that's, that's wrong at its basis, right? So, it depends what you're trying to do. If you're trying to convince someone of a moral cause, then it's better to talk on a practical level and

7. 15:08 – 17:39

   Consequences, virtues, or rules: the three major ethical lenses

   1. AOAlex O'Connor15:08

      try to point out inconsistencies. But if you're trying to get to the question of what is actually good, uh, then you're better off talking a bit about metaethics. And one of the most important questions is, what is the focus of ethics? Does, does the focus of ethics, uh, or let's say, does ethics, should ethics focus on, say, the consequence of an action? Should it focus on the action itself? Should it focus on the agent performing the action, right? These three are, are broadly three ways in which people distinguish ethics. So, if we consider a statement like, "Murder is wrong," some people might analyze that to mean that murder is wrong because the consequences that it leads to, that is, you know, someone dying, people suffering, people mourning, are bad, right? And so, generally speaking, in order to determine whether something's right or wrong, we look at the consequences of the action. Seems somewhat intuitive, but some people like to instead say that the focus of ethics should be... and this is consequentialism, sometimes called teleology, from the Greek word telos for end or purpose. Um, some people prefer to look at the agent. They prefer to say that, "Don't... The reason you shouldn't murder is because the virtuous person wouldn't murder." Right? Like murder is not a virtuous thing to do. A- Aristotle's ethics was a, a virtue ethics theory, and it was kind of like, the right thing to do is what the virtuous person would do, in other words. So it's, it's not so much about the action or its consequences, it's about, it's, it's about the person committing the action, right? Um, some people prefer to just look at the, the action itself, not the consequence, but the action itself. They say murder is wrong in and of itself, regardless of the consequences, regardless of who's performing it. Um, and this generally comes from... This, this, this is a kind of typical view of religious people a lo- a lot of the time with divine command theory, who think that ethics is just what's commanded by God. So if God says, "Don't murder," then don't murder. That, that's, that's kind of it, full stop. Doesn't matter what the consequences are, it's just wrong in and of itself. And all of these things have kind of weight to them. And the reason why, why people, like, kind of flip back and forth in them when they're studying them is because each of them seem to have kind of difficult ethical territory. Like if you... I, I think most people are, at the beginning, tend to be more, uh, attracted to consequentialist ethics. Um, and that's because I think that generally speaking, our society is, is, is, is a bit more based on consequentialist ethics than anything else. Like in, in, in the modern era, that seems to be the, kinda the implicit way that people do ethics. But there are some really kind of, uh, difficult problems with that. So for instance, let me take your,

8. 17:39 – 26:41

   Utilitarianism under pressure: rash doctor, decision procedures, and horrid edge cases

   1. AOAlex O'Connor17:39

      uh, let me take your proposition that kind of the right thing to do is what maximizes wellbeing, right? So this would be a consequentialist view, and essentially a utilitarian one. Um, utilitarianism being the idea that we should maximize utility, and utilitarians identify utility, uh, utility with pleasure. So essentially, the, the, the best thing to do is to maximize pleasure or minimize suffering. Now, there are, there are various problems with this, but let me give you one example. Uh, this comes from a guy called Roger Crisp, who's a kind of leading John Stuart Mill, um, scholar. And every undergraduate at Oxford has to read his commentary on, on, uh, utilitarianism, and he gives this example of the rash doctor, right? So let me ask you a question here.... a doctor has a patient, uh, and, and they've got two potential medicines that they can give to the patient, okay, (laughs) like option A and option B. Uh, option A has... Uh, option A, if successful, will restore the patient to 100% health, but it's got a 99% chance of failure and only a 1% chance of working. The 99% chance is that they'll die, right? So 99% chance that this is just gonna kill the patient. Only 1% chance it's gonna succeed, but if it does, it's gonna restore them fully to health. Option B, it will only restore them to, say, 85% health, but it's got a 99% chance of being successful and only a 1% chance of the patient dying, right? Say the doctor chooses option A and it works. Did the doctor do the right thing?

   2. CWChris Williamson19:10

      (laughs) To everyone who's listening, I've already warned you about this, but I want you to be playing along at home as well, because this difficulty, the, the mental gears that you're going to be able to hear in me that are whirring away, I want you to be suffering along with me. So, um, from a consequentialist, just the outcome... Does the end justify the means? Um, I suppose in that form, yes. Um, you could do that a million times and keep on getting the one out of 100.

   3. AOAlex O'Connor19:44

      Well, so the difficult thing to say is, like, intuitively, when, when faced with the option before we know what's actually gonna happen, and you've got the two, the medicines in front of you, like, you'd probably advise the doctor to take option B, right?

   4. CWChris Williamson19:54

      Yes. Yes, of course.

   5. AOAlex O'Connor19:54

      I'd imagine so.

   6. CWChris Williamson19:55

      Of course, yeah.

   7. AOAlex O'Connor19:57

      And that seems, that seems justifiable, right? It s- it seems like that should be the case. But the weird conclusion is that if he uses option B and it works and the patient's restored to 85% health, whether or not the doctor did the right thing completely depends on what would have happened if he'd administered drug A. Because if had he administered drug A, it failed, then what the doctor did actually did maximize wellbeing, right? 'Cause it was 85% health versus death. Whereas if it were the case that had he gone for option A it would have worked, then what he's done has actually not maximized pleasure, right? Because instead... Or wellbeing, let's say. Uh, because instead of 85% health, he could have got 100% health. Now, the, the kind of easy answer to this is to say, well, okay, so it's not actually about... You, you shouldn't do what will actually maximize pleasure. You should do what will probably maximize pleasure, right? But you can see we've already kind of adapted the theory, right? We've already gone-

   8. CWChris Williamson20:55

      Yes.

   9. AOAlex O'Connor20:55

      ... from kind of saying, well, obviously it's, it's about kind of what maximizes... The right thing to do is whatever's gonna actually maximize someone's wellbeing. But, like, that's not always the case, because you, you-

   10. CWChris Williamson21:04

       Now there's a caveat in there.

   11. AOAlex O'Connor21:05

       Yeah. Even, even if, like, in this situation, yeah, had you done the other thing, it would have actually, like, in, in reality, in the actual world, would have caused more, more pleasure. It's like, it probably wasn't justified to do that, right? So yeah, now, now we're kind of talking about probabilistic utilitarianism, right? Um-

   12. CWChris Williamson21:24

       Does this continue to roll down? So does probabilistic utilitarianism then split into some other subdivision, some other subdivision?

   13. AOAlex O'Connor21:32

       Well, there, it doesn't always divide, kind of subdivide in that manner, but there are, there are lots of different kinds of divisions, so-

   14. CWChris Williamson21:38

       I, I imagine there's just a tree branch that continues to go down. My, my point is like, uh, for every-

   15. AOAlex O'Connor21:43

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson21:43

       ... situation that you encounter, do you then need to continue to create a, um, subdiscipline within that that allows you to explore that particular type of solution?

   17. AOAlex O'Connor21:52

       Pretty much. And, and luckily, because these questions have been being asked for thousands of years, you can find hundreds of essays on any particular kind of individual instance of, of a moral dilemma that you have. But, like, there's another, there's a further distinction that might be made, uh, between what you could call, uh, what, what Roger Crisp at least calls the criterion of good and the decision procedure, right? And these are two separate things. So the criterion of good is, like, the criterion by which we determine whether or something... whether or not something is good. Um, whereas the decision procedure is the way that we try to go bringing about that good, right? So take this utilitarian analysis where we've shown that, you know, you should act in a way that probably maximizes pleasure. Like, that would be our decision procedure. Like, we, we kind of decide intuitively that the way to determine how we decide what to do should be based on probabilistic utilitarianism, right? But has it changed the actual criterion of good? If we offer a kind of abstract analysis of what good is, well, we don't think that good is what would prob... We don't think that good is the result of what would pr- what you should probably do or something like that. We, we still think that, that the good thing is what maximizes pleasure and minimizes suffering, even if we've decided that the way we decide which actual action we're gonna take is more probabilistic. So the criterion of good for utilitarianism is still what is actually most pleasurable, but the decision procedure leads us to probabilistic utilitarianism. Uh-

   18. CWChris Williamson23:18

       The route to get there now has some form of discounting that's been thrown in it.

   19. AOAlex O'Connor23:22

       Yeah. And it seems a bit strange. Like, why is it that we've got an ethical theory where we've decided that this is what's good, but that's not what we should actually do in order to try and achieve that good, right? It seems like an inconsistency. Uh, seems a little, little strange, right? Um, further distinctions like, uh, the, the classic kind of argument against utilitarianism is, is something like, uh, an instance of a gang rape or something. It's like, well, don't, don't the pleasure of, of the many outweigh the suffering of the single individual? And some people would say, well, no, because the suffering is so great that even five people, you know, getting immense pleasure, it's not gonna outweigh it. But if, if you think that, then just make it six people or seven people or 100 people until the, the, the scales get balanced out. And some people would say something like, well, clearly it would still be wrong in all circumstances, right? So can we really say that the maximization of pleasure is the criterion of good, is how we should determine what we're, what we're doing? If we've got a situation where it seems it doesn't matter how much kind of the, the scale of the wellbeing tips one way or the other, like, we still wouldn't be in favor of this, right? Um, and it's like, yeah, you, you've now gotta rethink things, right? And this is why people prefer sometimes a, a, a kind of action-based view of morality, um, known as deontology, right? Like the idea that the thing is, is wrong in a, in and of itself, right? It's not about the consequence. It's that gang rape is wrong.... it's not wrong because of the suffering that it will bring about this person or something like that. I- i- it's just wrong, right? And so, when faced with an ethical dilemma like that, you've kind of got two choices. You either have to further adapt or explain or analyze your utilitarianism, or maybe you have to adopt deontology, or maybe you have to accept the conclusion that gang rape is actually moral, and that's the least popular-

   20. CWChris Williamson25:01

       (laughs)

   21. AOAlex O'Connor25:01

       ... (laughs) line to go down-

   22. CWChris Williamson25:03

       Yeah.

   23. AOAlex O'Connor25:03

       ... funnily enough. Um, but so, you know, the, the utilitarian might say, "Okay, well, look, I mean, it's, it's not about what will maximize pleasure in any given instance, but let's say, you know, uh, the best thing to do is to act according with a general rule, which if followed broadly would maximize pleasure, right?" So even if in that individual instance, you know, it would maximize pleasure to allow people to, to commit horrible crimes, like, if we allowed everybody to live by that rule, suffering would, would rise overall because of people being scared of being accosted on the street and people being scared of being robbed or raped, whatever it may be. So, okay, so, so it now becomes, look, the thing that we should do is act in accordance with rules which if generally a- abided by would, would maximize pleasure. Okay? So now our decision procedure has kind of morphed into, you shouldn't do what always maximizes pleasure. You shouldn't even do what always probably maximizes pleasure. Y- you should do what w- what would probably maximize pleasure if we made it a rule that everyone followed. It's like we're getting a lot more kind of further detached from, from the-

   24. CWChris Williamson26:09

       We're down the tree. We're down this little tree now, bro.

   25. AOAlex O'Connor26:11

       Right. And you notice the w- the way that we've done that is simply by taking ethical theory that w- that we started with, that, that you kind of just kind of hypothesized at the beginning and just said, "But that leads to this. Okay, so we should adapt it in this way. But then that leads to this, and that leads to this, and that leads to this, right?" And, like, yeah, the- these things kind of come out of nowhere. Like, a lot of the time someone will come up with an idea that just says, like, like, "What about this counter-example?" Um, and it just, it just kind of blows everyone away, and, and everything has to be rethought. That, that

9. 26:41 – 34:39

   A detour that matters: what counts as knowledge (Gettier cases)

   1. AOAlex O'Connor26:41

      happened in the, uh, in the philosophy of knowledge, um, because (laughs) one of the, one of the most interesting things about philosophy to me is that nobody has a sufficient analysis really of what knowledge is. No one can really decide on, on w- what constitutes knowledge. Um, and the reason for that is because, well, let's, let's think about what kno-... I mean, uh, okay, let me, let me just ask you just out of interest, like, what do you think... I- if you had to give, like, a definition of knowledge, what would it be? Like, how can you say that you know something is true?

   2. CWChris Williamson27:08

      Th- uh, that sounds like two questions, knowing that something is true versus knowing things. I guess it's-

   3. AOAlex O'Connor27:14

      Well, I mean to say, like, what- what's the definition of knowledge in, in either case? What's it mean to know something?

   4. CWChris Williamson27:23

      An accumulation of understanding about the world?

   5. AOAlex O'Connor27:27

      Okay, so, so, uh, basically you now holding a belief about the world...

   6. CWChris Williamson27:33

      Which is represented accurately in reality.

   7. AOAlex O'Connor27:35

      Okay, so which is actually true, right? So you holding a belief about the world which is true.

   8. CWChris Williamson27:39

      Uh, was I far off? A- has, h- has someone else said that, someone famous?

   9. AOAlex O'Connor27:42

      Well, well, you can, you can test it, right? Because you could say something like if somebody was in a room with no windows and irrationally they just believed it was raining, but it was raining, did they know that it was raining?

   10. CWChris Williamson27:58

       (laughs)

   11. AOAlex O'Connor27:58

       Right? 'Cause they believe that it's raining, and it's true that it's raining, but do they know that it's raining?

   12. CWChris Williamson28:03

       (laughs)

   13. AOAlex O'Connor28:03

       Well, clearly not. Okay, so, so it can't just be kind of having a belief that's true. That can't be knowledge 'cause you can accidentally hold a true belief. So then the definition, the popular definition became justified true belief. And you'll hear this phrase thrown around all the time. It's like, well, you have to, you have to believe something is true, it has to be true, and you have to be justified in believing that it's true. And for-

   14. CWChris Williamson28:22

       What do they mean by justified?

   15. AOAlex O'Connor28:23

       As in you have to, you have to believe that it's true for good reasons. And people will offer different analyses of wha- what is a good reason and what's not. But, like, so they'll say, for instance, just, just kind of imagining that it's raining outside isn't a good reason, but if you look out of the window and you see that it's raining, that's good reason to believe that it's, that it's raining. And so if you look out the window, you see that it's raining, then you believe that it's raining, it is actually raining, and you're justified in that belief, so you know that it's raining. Voila.

   16. CWChris Williamson28:47

       (laughs)

   17. AOAlex O'Connor28:47

       Problem solved, right? Enter Edmond Gettier who just kind of blew the lid off everything. And as far as I re- as far as I recall being, being told this, he kind of, he, he, he, he wrote this kind of somewhat flippantly. Like, he, he was going through, like, different problems that, that seemed to just be kind of put to bed, and just for the hell of it was just seeing if he could come up with counterexamples. And he wrote this really, really short paper. It's like two pages long, and it just blew up the philosophy of knowledge, right? Got rid of this idea of justified true belief. Now, I'll tell it to you now, right?

   18. CWChris Williamson29:19

       Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   19. AOAlex O'Connor29:19

       This is, this is kind of crazy.

   20. CWChris Williamson29:20

       So this sounds a little bit like, you know roundabout springtime when you finally got rid of all of the shit old clothes that you don't need anymore.

   21. AOAlex O'Connor29:29

       (laughs) Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson29:29

       And you've, like, put them all... they're all in the charity shop. Your mum's taken them to Oxfam in those big sort of see-through bags. And, um, and you, and you're like, "Right, all my socks are back in. These are only the socks that I wear. All the drawers are organized, color-coded, sized, everything else." And someone's just come in and gone (grunting) , just grabbed all of your stuff-

   23. AOAlex O'Connor29:48

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson29:48

       ... and then just thrown it around the room.

   25. AOAlex O'Connor29:50

       Yeah. Uh, uh, it's also sometimes a bit like someone's kind of a- as, as your mum is driving away with all of the clothes in the bag, someone looks and goes, "You know that she's taken this with her?" And you have to go, "Oh, crap," and you run after them because-

   26. CWChris Williamson30:02

       Oh, the fur, yeah. My favorite jacket.

   27. AOAlex O'Connor30:02

       ... 'cause you realize that, that what you, what you've said, yeah, what you've said has actually taken away this really important belief of yours, right?

   28. CWChris Williamson30:07

       (laughs)

   29. AOAlex O'Connor30:07

       Because you, you're like, "I think this is, this is the right theory, this is the right way to go," and someone says, "Yeah, but you know that if you, if you do that, then this other belief you hold has to fly out the window." And you're like, "Oh, crap," and you're running after it as fast as you can, right?

   30. CWChris Williamson30:18

       Yeah, okay.
10. 34:39 – 42:58

    Free will, responsibility, and Frankfurt-style counterexamples

    1. AOAlex O'Connor34:39

       Exactly. Um, but sometimes it can also work in people's favor, right? So an example would be with, uh, an analysis of free will. Um, I'm someone who doesn't believe that free will exists. Or rather I say I have an active belief that free will does not exist. Um-

    2. CWChris Williamson34:50

       Why do you have that distinction?

    3. AOAlex O'Connor34:52

       Thi- Uh, because it's one thing to be just unconvinced of something. It's, it's another thing to believe that it's false, right? So like... Uh, let me put it this way, this comes from-

    4. CWChris Williamson35:00

       Agnostic versus atheist.

    5. AOAlex O'Connor35:02

       Pretty much, yeah. But it's... I, I would say that agnosticism is, is a claim to knowledge, whereas theism is a claim to belief. Um, so I'd characterize it like this. This, this comes from my friend Matt Dillahunty. If I had a random jar of, of coins, I w- I don't have anything I can use right now, um, and you didn't know how many coins were in the jar and neither did I, and I said, "Look, I think there's an even number of coins in this jar." Would you believe me?

    6. CWChris Williamson35:29

       No.

    7. AOAlex O'Connor35:30

       But that doesn't mean you believe it's false, right?

    8. CWChris Williamson35:33

       No. I just-

    9. AOAlex O'Connor35:34

       So-

    10. CWChris Williamson35:35

        I just don't, don't agree and think, "Odd."

    11. AOAlex O'Connor35:36

        ... this is the distinct- the distin- there's a distinction between not believing a proposition and believing that the proposition is false. So if you believe that I was... If you believe that it was false, that means you believe there's an odd number. If you just don't believe that it's true, that means that you're kind of reserving judgment. So some people might say, "I don't believe in free will. That is, I'm reserving judgment. I, I don't know. I, I, I'm not convinced that free will exists." I'm saying, "I'm, I'm convinced that free will does not exist." But-

    12. CWChris Williamson35:58

        Got you.

    13. AOAlex O'Connor35:58

        And that's a whole nother podcast. But this has interesting implications for ethics, 'cause there's this common intuition that in order to be held responsible for something, you need to have freely chosen to do it. Right? It's like you can't be held responsible for something you didn't freely choose to do. Right? This is a, a general intuition that people, uh, that people held, uh, for the longest time, which seems to make a lot of sense. It's like, how can you hold someone responsible if they, if they can't have acted otherwise, can you hold them morally responsible? And so if there's no free will, basically nobody's ever responsible for anything they do, because

    14. NANarrator36:30

        I was gonna say-

    15. AOAlex O'Connor36:30

        ... they didn't choo-

    16. CWChris Williamson36:31

        ... is, is there any morality left?

    17. AOAlex O'Connor36:33

        Well, exactly. This is the, this is the big problem. It's like, where does morality go? Um, but then again, people were coming up with counterexamples. Um, so generally speaking, the idea is that... The, the principle could be kind of summed up as, you can't be held morally responsible if it's the case that you couldn't have acted otherwise. Right?

    18. CWChris Williamson36:54

        So if you were-... a passenger on a train, and a train kills a person, it's not your fault that the train killed the person, you didn't get to control the train.

    19. AOAlex O'Connor37:04

        Yeah, but also, uh, it might be something like if you trip over by mistake and you knock someone in front of a train and they get hit by a train, that's not really your fault because it was an accident and you fell over. And that's different from pushing them, potentially, but if you, if you tripped through no fault of your own, or if someone else pushed you and you, you ended up pushing into them, it's like, you're not morally responsible because you couldn't have acted otherwise.

    20. CWChris Williamson37:25

        And it's based on intent, it seems like that appears to be the, the distinction there.

    21. AOAlex O'Connor37:29

        Yes. Um, I suppose so. Uh, but this-

    22. CWChris Williamson37:32

        Actually, no, it might not be because there's some constraints. You're saying, couldn't have acted otherwise.

    23. AOAlex O'Connor37:37

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson37:38

        So you might not have intended to do something, but you could have acted otherwise.

    25. AOAlex O'Connor37:42

        Yeah, this is, this is-

    26. CWChris Williamson37:43

        Which would be the, the manslaughter versus murder versus accidental death.

    27. AOAlex O'Connor37:46

        Yeah, pretty much. Um-

    28. CWChris Williamson37:48

        Okay, fine.

    29. AOAlex O'Connor37:48

        But then it also gets more complicated, um, because-

    30. CWChris Williamson37:50

        Of course it does. Is there anything that doesn't, Alex?
11. 42:58 – 51:14

    New problems or new packaging? Simulations, slow progress, and 'discovering' philosophy

    1. AOAlex O'Connor42:58

       It's one of the great things about ethics, is you can do it all by yourself and you don't need any funding for it. But at the same time, it's, it's also very slow-moving, because the basic questions have been the same questions for thousands of years. It's just like, somebody will come up with an interesting particular thought experiment that requires various different responses, or a thought experiment that ends up having quite impactful, uh, or, or quite an impact on the rest of philosophy, or something like that. But like, the fundamental question at the basis hasn't, hasn't really changed. Like, modern developments can inform our ethical discussions, but they don't really change the nature of them. You know, for example, when you develop technology, you can start talking about living in a simulation and this kind of stuff, but like, the question is still the same. So the thought experiment might be like the experience machine, of hooking someone up to the matrix where they experience more pleasure but it's not real. Um, yeah, sure, that's kind of a, that's a new thought, but the idea of kind of somehow replicating, uh, reality is not new. You know, like, you, you, we've just moved from Descartes and his evil demon that, that makes you think you're living in a particular world, to, to it being done by the matrix, right? So like, particular thought experiments and the way that they're expressed can, can change quickly, um, but the fundamental questions are, are still the same. Um-

    2. CWChris Williamson44:08

       I was gonna say, has it been, has it been quite a while since anything revolutionary in terms of a question to be asked as opposed to a criticism of an existing question has come up?

    3. AOAlex O'Connor44:18

       I mean, you, you'll tend to kind of, you'll tend to know when that happens, because this is, this is what can make people famous, when, when they come up with a way of kind of putting things together. Um, a lot of people consider like the kind of most recent really important person to have been someone like Immanuel Kant. Um, like, it, uh, the, the thing is like, it's difficult because it's, it's so kind of, uh, it's so abstract, right? Like, it, it, it's difficult to determine whether what someone's saying is actually new or if it's just a synthesis of, of previous ideas or something like that. Um, but generally speaking, the progress is slow, right? Like, the, the big steps that are taken in ethics will be like on a very, very particular question, on a very, very particular point of ethics. Like, if somebody manages to prove somehow, philosophically, that we're not living in a simulated reality, that would be a really important and, and, uh, kind of philosophical discovery of how we'd manage to argue that, um, that would have wide-reaching implications, right? For instance, if someone kind of discovered, it just so happens that I've got a philosophical argument that says that we can't replicate consciousness. 'Cause you know the simulation argument of Nick Bostrom says that, you know, humanity will get to the point where it can simulate human consciousness, and that consciousness will be able to simulate consciousness, and so on and so on and so on. And, and the likelihood that you happen to be in base reality is, is minimal, it's tiny. Um-

    4. CWChris Williamson45:35

       To interject there, did you watch the episode of Joe Rogan where Nick tries to explain that to him?

    5. AOAlex O'Connor45:41

       Uh, yeah, I d- I didn't but, uh, I re- we've talked about that, you said that-

    6. CWChris Williamson45:43

       Yes, I brought it up. Anyone that's listening-

    7. AOAlex O'Connor45:45

       ... people couldn't, aren't getting-

    8. CWChris Williamson45:46

       So, you'll, you'll have heard me talk about Superintelligence a number of times, one of my favorite books. Recently read The Precipice by Toby Ord, who I met, uh, texted you about-

    9. AOAlex O'Connor45:53

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CWChris Williamson45:53

        ... and said, "Is he one of your, uh, lecturers at uni?" Uh, The Precipice, about existential rescues from the same Future of Humanity Institute. Nick Bostrom, guy that I've read for t- tons and tons of time, sits down with my favorite podcaster, Joe Rogan. I think, "Fucking hell, this is great. This is gonna be brilliant."

    11. AOAlex O'Connor46:08

        Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson46:08

        Um, Joe simply does not get the simulation hypothesis, which is like Nick's sort of, or at least one of Nick's crowning works. Um, and it's fairly straightforward to understand. And then-

    13. AOAlex O'Connor46:20

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CWChris Williamson46:20

        ... for 45 minutes, continues to force the audience down the same groundhog sort of-

    15. AOAlex O'Connor46:27

        Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson46:27

        ... exchange. Um, so yeah, if you want to find out about Nick Bostrom, do not watch his episode with Joe-

    17. AOAlex O'Connor46:33

        (laughs)

    18. CWChris Williamson46:33

        ... with Joe Rogan unless you want to tear your eardrums out. Um, so yes, uh-

    19. AOAlex O'Connor46:38

        Yeah. You can just read the paper that he put out. Um-

    20. CWChris Williamson46:40

        Precisely. There's, uh, there's one interesting thing I was thinking there, that the discovery of knowledge-

    21. AOAlex O'Connor46:47

        Mm-hmm.

    22. CWChris Williamson46:47

        ... in philosophy or ethics, where does that come from? Or what is that discovery? Because it's not like we have discovered a new star, this is a particular new type of element-

    23. AOAlex O'Connor46:58

        Yeah.

    24. CWChris Williamson46:58

        ... this is a new proton. It's somehow universal and existent-

    25. AOAlex O'Connor47:05

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson47:06

        ... and yet, is also manifest by someone's thoughts and also quite sort of transient and ephemeral.

    27. AOAlex O'Connor47:13

        I think you can think of it in the same way ... This, this is probably the most helpful way to think of it, p- potentially is, to think about it, uh, in terms of like mathematical, uh, discoveries. Because, you know, maths is kind of a language that we invent to describe things that we believe are analytically true. Um, and it's essentially tautologies. You know, to say that one plus one equals two is kind of the same as just saying two is two. Um, but you can make mathematical discoveries, 'cause people kind of have a, they, they put together equations. And I'm not a mathematician but, you know, like, you can kind of make discoveries by putting different propositions together and seeing, and seeing how they work, right? Um, and it's weird to think that you can kind of discover things in this manner. They, in this kind of weird abstract kind of sense, but like-

    28. CWChris Williamson47:53

        It really is.

    29. AOAlex O'Connor47:53

        ... I think the same thing is roughly going on, like, ethical movements are made when, when people kind of realize implications of beliefs we already hold, or realize a new way of justifying them or something like that, or realize an inconsistency that we, that we hold. Um, most of the kind of, most of the kind of ethi- When, when you say something like ethical progression, people tend to think of, like, in practice they tend to think of things like, uh, slavery being abolished, or, or the vegan movement. That's number four.

    30. CWChris Williamson48:18

        Yeah.
12. 51:14 – 58:48

    Unintended consequences in real policy: education & suicide, markets & sex work

    1. AOAlex O'Connor51:14

       Well, ethically speaking, I mean... Okay, so I, I remember when we, um, when you asked me to come on, I, I, I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk more about meta-ethics or if you wanted to just... 'Cause you said you wanted to just go through some, like, ethical dilemmas. So like, there are a few that you can, that you can think of and, and there are different ways in which they're difficult. So for instance, um, consider the fact that... A- a... This would be, this would be a demonstration that sometimes the consequences of, uh, a certain thing that we think is good are actually... That they have unexpected consequences. So, broadly speaking, we think that it's good to educate people. The more educated people are, the better. But education rate is directly correlated to suicide rate, right? The more educated a society becomes, the higher the suicide rate. So, is it actually immoral to educate a society more if it's gonna lead to more suicidality? Like, do we... Are we placing a value on knowledge itself? Do we not value knowledge because of what it does for humanity? Like, and do we have the right to essentially kind of risk a, a rise in suicide in order to educate other people? Like, I don't know. It's like you, you don't necessarily think of that consequence. Another example of like an unintended consequence might be something like... I remember I went to a talk once about, um, uh, the ethics of, of markets, right? What can be sold and what can't. So, things like organ selling and prostitution and sex work, right? And I think broadly speaking, in liberal society, people are, are in favor of sex work. They say, "Look, you're, you, you are... It's your body, you can sell it as you please. Like, you should be able to do that." And, you know, I was, I was roughly in agreement. But I'm listening to this talk and I'm thinking, okay, so let's say we legalize prostitution. There's, there's a consequence that people don't necessarily think about, right? If you, if you become like a, like a, like a merchant of sex, um, we-

    2. CWChris Williamson53:04

       (laughs) That sounds like a really good name for a band.

    3. AOAlex O'Connor53:07

       Yeah, or a, or a street name maybe.

    4. CWChris Williamson53:09

       (laughs)

    5. AOAlex O'Connor53:09

       Um, we have, we have laws that exist that say that if you're a merchant, if you're selling a product, you don't get to discriminate who you sell your products to. Right now, it's slightly different with things like baking a cake that has a certain message on it. That was a big controversy, but that's because you're kind of... You're producing a specific, you know, a, a, a specific kind of designed-to-order thing, right? It's not just a general product that you're offering. So, the person who baked that cake basically said, "I'm not gonna bake a cake that says, like, 'Happy marriage' to a gay couple, because that goes against my beliefs. But I can't deny them service to like a product that anybody else could buy because they're gay. So, if they came in and bought one of my pre-made cakes, I can't deny service to them, and I wouldn't do," right? Now-

    6. CWChris Williamson53:47

       Did they make that distinction?

    7. AOAlex O'Connor53:49

       Uh, yeah, the, the, the cake seller definitely did.

    8. CWChris Williamson53:51

       So, he actually had a fairly good sort of consistent grounding philosophy in terms of-

    9. AOAlex O'Connor53:55

       Yeah, he, he said, "Look, like it's not, it's not about like, I'm not gonna sell to a gay person." That's not what it is. It's, "I'm not gonna produce like, essentially like a piece of art..."

    10. CWChris Williamson54:02

        A celebration of that, yes.

    11. AOAlex O'Connor54:05

        In, in the same way that like, although, you know, I wouldn't want to draw an equivalency between these two, it, it works by analogy. If someone came in and said, you know, "Can you bake a cake that says the N-word on it or something?" You, you'd be like, "I don't, I don't wanna make that because it goes against my, my beliefs." And someone could be like, "But you're dis- you're discriminating against me because, you know, because I'm Black and I'm ordering a cake." It's like, no, it's like... It, it's because of what you're, you're making me do. Now, obviously, I'm not trying to say that, you know (laughs) that you should be as uncomfortable writing the N-word as saying happy, happy wedding to a gay couple.

    12. CWChris Williamson54:32

        (laughs)

    13. AOAlex O'Connor54:32

        But what I'm saying, like, the, the kind of basic principle is that there's a difference between refusing someone service because of who they are and refusing them service because of what they're asking you to do.

    14. CWChris Williamson54:40

        Yes.

    15. AOAlex O'Connor54:40

        But if you're selling sex just as a general product, like, we have laws that say that you can't discriminate, right? You can't refuse someone service because they're gay or because they're Black or because they're female or something. But you should be able to refuse sex at any time for any reason, right? Like, if you're having sex like in the porn industry or something, like, you should be able to... You, you should be allowed to determine whether you have sex with men or not, right? You should be able to decide whether you have sex with someone who's Black or white, or someone who you find attractive or don't find attractive, someone who's disabled. Like, it, it is your...... is your basic right to determine who you have sex with and who you don't. But if you're kind of selling a, a general product of sex, does that mean that you kind of are forced to offer your services to men as well as women? Like, if you became a prostitute, Chris, could I try and hire you, and you say, "Look, I don't, I don't serve men," and I could take you to the Supreme Court and say, "Well, look, you're discriminating against me on the basis of sex." It's like, that's an interesting implication that people don't generally think about. And I raised it with the guy giving the talk, and he kind of didn't really have an answer for it, 'cause I don't think it's a, a particularly common objection to bring up. I know that, uh, I, I discovered actually after the fact that one of my tutors for practical ethics had written a paper to this effect discussing this exact question of like, like, here's a kind of interesting reason that maybe we shouldn't be in favor of the legalization of prostitution. And it's not what you think. It's not like, "Oh, it's-"

    16. CWChris Williamson55:58

        (laughs)

    17. AOAlex O'Connor55:58

        ... "It's lewd and it's bad." It's like, it's like, you're gonna either have to create a, something of like an entire new moral legal category about denying people service on the basis of sex, or disability, or attractiveness. I mean, imagine refusing someone a, a service because you don't think they're attractive. (laughs) Like, this is, this is brand-new territory. But if you don't do that, then you're essentially saying this person must be compelled to have sex with anybody who wants it if they, if they pay the right price. And that, that seems equally uncomfortable. So, it's like, maybe not as simple as you first thought.

    18. CWChris Williamson56:26

        Isn't it, isn't it interesting where we have things that we're incredibly familiar with that are, um, artifacts of our heritage as human beings, like way, modes of thinking that, that, um, implicit assumption that you should only have sex with people that you want to have sex with. And yet, at the same time, when that comes crashing into something that we also know really, really well, which is a more modern invention-

    19. AOAlex O'Connor56:54

        Mm.

    20. CWChris Williamson56:54

        ... like free markets and, uh-

    21. AOAlex O'Connor56:56

        And equality and equal treatment, right?

    22. CWChris Williamson56:58

        Yeah.

    23. AOAlex O'Connor56:58

        And, and-

    24. CWChris Williamson56:59

        When, when those two things sort of come crashing together, you're like, "Uh, hang on. I'm c- I, I feel like I'm supporting both teams here." Like, "How the fuck-"

    25. AOAlex O'Connor57:05

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson57:05

        "... how the fuck is this working?"

    27. AOAlex O'Connor57:07

        And people try to kind of, people might try to wriggle out of it or, or synthesize, and they might say something like, "Well, if you agree to be a prostitute, then, then you agree to offer your services to anybody." So it's like, you know, we're not just saying anybody has to have sex with whoever asks it. It's, it's like if you enter into a contractual agreement that says you are a prostitute, you now have to have sex with whoever wants. But it's like, are you saying that someone can, like, sign off their consent? Are you saying that someone can, like-

    28. CWChris Williamson57:33

        (laughs)

    29. AOAlex O'Connor57:33

        ... sign a contract which says, "I am no longer able to consent in any of my sexual encounters so long as the person is paying." It's like, I don't think that's what you want either. Right?

    30. CWChris Williamson57:41

        (laughs)
13. 58:48 – 1:05:53

    Personal cost vs moral duty: kill-and-forget, the trolley problem, and brain scans

    1. AOAlex O'Connor58:48

       Here's one of my favorite ethical dilemmas. This is one of my favorite ethical dilemmas that was given to me before I came to university. I was like, I was like 16, 17. I was in a pub, um, and I met somebody who was studying physics and philosophy at Oxford. And it was the first time I met him, and, and he just kind of... He's a bit of a strange man. He just turns to me and says, "Here's one for you." I went, "Okay." And this question has-

    2. CWChris Williamson59:07

       Alway- always a good way to start, isn't it?

    3. AOAlex O'Connor59:09

       And th- This question remained with me to this day, right? And I want you to answer this honestly. And, and, you, you know, you might... (laughs) You might be kind of, um, exposing some immorality by answering this honestly, but I want you to try your best. Would you rather kill an innocent person and then immediately forget about it, or not kill the innocent person but live the rest of your life thinking that you had?

    4. CWChris Williamson59:32

       The second one.

    5. AOAlex O'Connor59:34

       You'd rather not kill the person but live the rest of your life thinking that you had?

    6. CWChris Williamson59:39

       Yeah. Probably because I haven't fully thought through just how painful it would be to believe that I would have killed someone.

    7. AOAlex O'Connor59:45

       Right. Now, so this is the, this is the answer that I think pe- people often give this answer at first because it kind of sounds like the right one to do. Um, and maybe you actually, maybe it would actually be better for you. Um, after thinking about it for the longest possible time-

    8. CWChris Williamson59:59

       (laughs)

    9. AOAlex O'Connor59:59

       ... I, the, the, the majority of people tend to kind of say, "Well, actually, I think I'd have to say that I'd rather kill the person than immediately forget." Because like, if you're talking about like, i- i- if... As you say, like, it, it's like you don't know what it's like to live that life believing that you've actually killed that person. But there, there are two different questions at, at, at, uh, on the table here. The first is what you would do, and the second is what you should do, right? So like, I think most people when they think about it deeply enough realize that because of the amount of sacrifice that they're making, um, they should, uh, they, they would probably kill the person and then forget because they just can't deal with the, with the, with the k- kind of backlash of that. Um, but that's a separate question from what they, from what they should do, and maybe they shouldn't kill the innocent person. But you could also say like, you know, should we expect somebody to essentially sacrifice a life of well-being for the life of another person? Like, do we have the right to expect that of a person? Or do they have a right to say that, you know, "If I don't commit this action, it's gonna have this horrible impingement on my, on the rest of my life, and I actually have a right to kind of look after my own interests first, even if my own interests are kind of lesser than another person's." In the same way that if you, uh, decide not to give to charity, that's your right to do so. But like, the, the 25 pounds that you're gonna save is so much, is, is worth so much less to you than it would be worth...... to people for whom you could buy mosquito nets or something and, and save them from getting malaria. Um, but we say that even though, like, the, the benefit that it gives you is, is much kind of, is much less than a benefit it would give the other person, like, you have a right to look after yourself first and look in- and, and look to your interests first. And maybe you could say the same thing in this instance. Uh, I'm not entirely sure, um, but it's a, it's a difficult question to think if you were really in that situation, what do you think you would do?

    10. CWChris Williamson1:01:46

        It's hard, man. W- I mean, the, the question here, and it seems like this happens with a lot of it, is whether or not you're able to take a third-party perspective and the, the would versus the should, i.e. the armchair philosophy versus the actual brats, uh, uh, grassroots action. Those two things often, I'm gonna guess, come into conflict with each other because there isn't a third-party perspective. If we are talking about you doing the thing, there is no third-party perspective for you to take. There is only in the should, not the would.

    11. AOAlex O'Connor1:02:27

        Right. But if... I mean, if morality is objective, then we should say, like, it doesn't matter what you would do. Like, there, there is a, there is a right answer to the question regardless to what you f- you find yourself actually doing. Like, uh, in the famous trolley problem, um, when you ask somebody whether they would pull the lever and whether they'd push the foot man of- fat man off the bridge, you know, the, the, the famous trolley tram.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:02:43

        Take us, take us through it.

    13. AOAlex O'Connor1:02:44

        So, uh, you know, the, the trolley is, is going down the track and it's about to run into five workers who are working on the track, and you can pull a lever and it will divert the, the tra- uh, the train onto a track that's got a single person working, so it'll kill one person instead of the five. And the question is, you know, should you pull the lever or would you pull the lever? And most people say, "Yeah, of course I'd pull the lever. I'm gonna s- I'm, I'd rather, you know, the train goes into one person than five people." The principle being, yeah, okay, so I'll sacrifice one person's life to save five innocent people's life. Fine. But then you ask the question, what if you're walking along and there's no lever and the train's going towards five people on the track, but there's this really fat man walking across the bridge, and if you push him off the bridge, he's gonna land on the train, it's gonna kill him, but it's gonna stop the train. Would you push the fat man?

    14. CWChris Williamson1:03:29

        (laughs)

    15. AOAlex O'Connor1:03:29

        And people are like, "Well, n- I don't... No, I don't think so. I don't think I have the right to." See, that's like, hold on, why not? Like, why is it that you're willing to kind of pull a lever that kills one person to save five people, but you're not willing to push the man to kill the man to save the five people? And Michael Sandel, who's, um, a philosopher at Harvard, one of the most famous philosophers living, he's got a great book by the way called Justice, um, which is a fantastic introduction to ethics. Like, I, I don't feel I've done a very good job here of like actually going through the various ethical theories. We've just kind of been mulling here and there. But if you want like a-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:03:58

        That's his fun stuff.

    17. AOAlex O'Connor1:03:59

        ... if you want like a really good introduction to just what ethics is, the different ways of thinking about it, Justice by Michael Sandel is a fantastic book. And, and in a, in a lecture you can watch on YouTube, he gives the trolley problem, which is a great starting point for practical ethics. It's one of the first things that people will, will talk about. And, and he's talking to his students and, and he's asking this question and, and the student kind of says, "But, you know, I don't wanna... It's different because there's a difference between me, like," um, if, if you, if you're like driving the train. So Michael Sandel says you're driving the train and you can, you can turn the, you can turn the wheel and it goes into one person instead of five people, and that's instead of the lever, right? So most people say, yeah they, they would turn, they would turn the wheel, they'd go into the one person instead of the five, but they wouldn't push the fat man. And one of the students says, "But look, the, I mean, the difference is like, there's a difference between like turning the wheel and like actually like getting your hands on a man and pushing him off the thing." And so Michael Sandel says, "Well, what if the fat man is kind of on a trap door, and the way to open the trap door is to grab a big wheel and you just turn the wheel to..." (laughs)

    18. CWChris Williamson1:04:52

        (laughs)

    19. AOAlex O'Connor1:04:53

        And it's like, okay, like, yeah, I still probably wouldn't do that, right? And, but again, the reason I bring this up is to say like, I think it's fair to say that maybe like most people would, would pull the lever but wouldn't push the fat man. But surely if, if the principle is the same then you should do the same thing in either situation. Or is there a difference? Like, y- you know, what's going on there? And i- interestingly, like there have been studies done where, where people have undergone an MRI scan whilst being asked the trolley problem, and when they think about like the lever... Uh, so, okay, so, so the people who say that they would both pull the lever and push the fat man, when they're thinking about the question, the parts of their brain associated with rationality are lighting up. For the people who say that they would pull the lever, but wouldn't push the fat man, when they're thinking about the questions, the emotional parts of the brain are lighting up, right? Implying that actually, yeah, no, no, the, the, the reason you wouldn't push the fat man is actually because of like, you know, your emotional tendency to what you would and wouldn't do rather than your rational thinking about what you should and shouldn't do.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:05:53

        Mm.

14. 1:05:53 – 1:14:02

    Doing vs allowing returns: ambulance boulder, euthanasia framing, and Singer’s drowning child

    1. AOAlex O'Connor1:05:53

       But okay, there are some situations in which I can give you two situations which are like almost exactly the same, and yet you would say that one is right and one is wrong. Um, let's say, for example, you're an ambulance driver and you've got two people in the back and they need to get to hospital immediately, right? And if you don't get there immediately, they're gonna die.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:06:14

       Yeah.

    3. AOAlex O'Connor1:06:15

       As you're driving along, you look out the window and you see a boulder just rolling and rolling towards an innocent man, right? Now what you could do is you could stop the ambulance, you could get out of the ambulance, you could push the boulder out of the way and you'd save the innocent man. But you shouldn't do that, right? You should stay driving it 'cause then the two people in the back of the ambulance are gonna die. So you stay, you stay in the ambulance, you think, "I wish I could save that man, but I can't. I'm willing to like allow him to die so that I can make sure that these two guys get to hospital." Right? Fair? Would you say that that's-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:06:45

       Busy day.

    5. AOAlex O'Connor1:06:46

       ... a fair analysis?

    6. CWChris Williamson1:06:47

       Fairly busy day.

    7. AOAlex O'Connor1:06:47

       Busy day, yeah.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:06:48

       (laughs)

    9. AOAlex O'Connor1:06:48

       Hope that guy gets a pay rise.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:06:49

        (laughs)

    11. AOAlex O'Connor1:06:50

        Um, but now imagine same situation, except this time you're, you're driving the ambulance, two people in the back, and there's a boulder in the way. It's in the road and the only way to, to keep moving forward is to, is to kind of push the boulder so that it rolls and kills an innocent man. Are you allowed to do that? Seems like maybe not.

Episode duration: 1:28:34