Lesson 8, Part 8, Explaining Away. In the last video, I noted that Joshua Greene does his best to defend utilitarianism without insisting on the truth of utilitarianism. That sounds a bit odd, doesn't it? But it isn't so strange. It depends on premises about how people think and what it might take to get them to think another way. And what might make them happy. None of that necessarily depends on whether any of the things they think are true. Still realizing you are on the receiving end of an argument for utilitarianism. That isn't an argument that utilitarianism is true, may induce a certain sense of epistemic vertigo. Sounds a bit irrational to be persuaded at x without being persuaded x is true, and yet utilitarianism is such a rational theory. Nevertheless this is Greene's position. I will read the quote. Without a moral truth imposed on us from the outside by God, by reason or by nature, we'll have to settle for a more modest metamorality, an intertribal system that works for us. Whether or not it's the moral truth. I am not going to review Greene's argument that we can't know moral truth in any of the three ways that he rejects. He's reasons although offered carefully and in some length are fairly standard as such reasons go. Regarding God he offers first Plato's argument from the [UNKNOWN] more or less. If God causes things to be good by sheer will, that seems too arbitrary. Also we have an access problem. Who is god? Which understanding of religion. Regarding reason, he recently takes it to be fairly self evident, that no one has yet come up with anything rationally self evident enough that to doubt it is he illogical? Where ethics is concerned. As to nature, I gave the argument in brief at the end of the last video. Nature made us to spread our genes, if it made us for anything. It seems unlikely but the one moral imperative is, spread your genes as far and wide as possible. Few if any of us believe that. But what does it mean to retreat to a system that works for us, works in what sense? If the answer is works morally then that begs the question if the answer is works in some non-moral way then that Changes the subject. Greene proposes that utilitarianism is a lousy name for reasons we'll get to in the next video. He would prefer deep pragmatism, which corresponds to the standard of works for us. But again, pragmatic with respect to what values moral, morality is use. Fall. But for what? Where does morality come from? That's the title of chapter one from Hites' The Righteous Mind. The answer turns out to be from us, which sounds like a pretty strong claim metaphysically. Sounds like Hite is saying there is no right or wrong. Thinking makes it so. In fact he does say that. That is to repeat, that sounds like a radical claim. But how strong really? Let's consider. I mentioned Plato's argument in Youthefro is it good or is it bad because God wills it. Is murder wrong because Zeus doesn't like it? For example. That proposition is sometimes called Divine Command Theory. Whatever God says goes. Height sounds like he could be advocating mortal command theory. If everyone says murder is wrong. It's wrong. But if we were all to take a pill to convince us murder is right, well then it would be? Is that right? Does Height think that? I don't know, I sort of doubt it. Put it this way, his chapter about where does morality come from is really about various competing theories of child development. When do children acquire what concepts, in the course of the chapter he also discusses in passing. The question of when children figure out things like, the volume of liquid is preserved. When you pour it from one vessel from another. At a certain age children think that the glass with a higher level of fluid must have more, later they figure out how and why that can't be right. But I don't think Height would call a chapter about that where physics comes from, because I'll bet he's realist about the conservation of volume in cases like these. That is, he believes, there's a mind independent fact of the matter where fluid is concerned. What about ethics? Is there mind independent ethics or is there not? I just don't think Height's serious about the metaphysics. One way or another, and that's okay up to a point. He's a psychologist. But we need to get a little bit more serious about it if we're going to peg Greene's pragmatic attitude to utilitarianism for what it is whatever that may prove to be. I'd like to turn back now to a metaphysical pint made in my Snakes on the Brain video. I wasn't totally clear I think. And getting clearer will allow me to get clear about Greene. Last but not least, I get to reuse my pig graphic, which I quite like. I'm about to launch into some philosophy of mathematics again, so prepare yourselves. Bear with me, the relevance should soon be clear. Remember my pig? I used him or her, it could be a her. To illustrate the saying, independent as a hog on ice, which I use to express the way I feel about the philosophy of mathematics. Now that I think about it, I should maybe connect my figure with heights metaphor for moral judgement, the dog. He's got his dog, it's rational tale wagging. Not really bulging the emotional bulk of the beat. I've got my hog on ice. It's a little metaphysical trotters working away very independently. Not really getting anywhere. Strictly speaking, I had to do my cartoon so the ineffective motion of the feet mirrors the ineffective motion of the tail. There, all fixed. Tails don't wag dogs, pigs can't anywhere on ice. Are we clear about the animal nature of the situation? Good. To me, debates and the philosophy of mathematics have a disturbing tendency to look like this picture. One or another form of Platinism that is metaphysical realism about number or mathematics versus one or another form of imperisism. Math is just the brain or alternatively math is just the notation, just marks on the page. Formalism that position's usually called. Let's just stick with the brain to keep it simple. As the picture suggests the fight tens to be a tie. Because the pigs can't really get at each other. They're too far away in terms of their respective assumptions, where they're coming from. Sometimes they do come in contact, but then it's usually just a different sort of tie, the way I score it. Winston Churchill once said, The balkans produce more. It's more history than they can consume locally. If you don't know what he meant, study European history. The run up to World War I provides a classic, dramatic illustration. Anyway, adapting Churchill. Plato's heaven where all those Perhaps track mathematical entities are said to dwell produces more metaphysical mystery than it can consume locally. A realm of pure form is supposed to explain the striking character of mathematical thought, its difference from the character of the empirical world in which we live. Among other things. But then the question arises. How do we get in contact with this realm of forms? What is our relation to it? For every mystery, about the workings of mathematics that Platonism allegedly explains, at least one new mystery is generated. Thus, as explanatory posits go, Platonism/s doesn't seem to pay its way, at least not to me. If you are an empiricist this is an extremely strong argument against Platonism I think. Unfortunately, there are equally strong arguements against empiricism about math, I think. Here's the basic problem as I see it for Empiricism. How can we imagine mathematics away, sufficiently to get it back just in the brain. On the basis of some alleged facts about the brain. That sounds weird. Imagine mathematics away? What does that mean? Let me illustrate, in what I hope will be a clear sort of way. Suppose, just suppose, you don't believe in Zeus. You want to explain him away, scientifically. Well you've got some explaining to do. How so? Well to begin with you're so smart. Where does lighting come from if not from Zeus? Riddle me that. What's that you say? You've got an alternative theory? A physical theory of electricity. Well great alright well, move on to the next item. If Zeus doesn't exist. How come some many people believe he does. Or at least they did believe in him once a upon a time. Sufficing to say that I can actually come up with a story about how lots of people could come to believe in an entity called Zeus. Even if there where no such entity. I need some premises about psychology and about the human pension for storytelling, gossip and social reinforcement of various sorts. I can explain what they would, why they would want to believe in such a thing, even if it weren't true and how such a belief could spread and be stably maintained in a social environment. Even if it weren't true. I can explain everything Zeus related, including belief about Zeus without making a central reference to any actually existing Zeus. I've reduced Zeus away. I've debunked him. Admittedly, there are still puzzles potentially like, if Zeus doesn't exist, why shouldn't I murder someone If I want? We'll get to that, well we'll try anyway. Did Plato know about this style of debunking naturalistic explanation? For sure he did, at the start of [UNKNOWN] Socrates discusses how a certain story of divine intervention might have a naturalistic debunking explanation. Supposedly the wind god Boreas carried off a mortal girl he had fallen in love with, Arithea. Maybe what really happened is just that a girl was blown off the rock to her death and people came up with the story. People need explanations and there aren't enough good ones to support the population, emotionally speaking. Just subtracting Boreas from the scene is easy and produces a basically coherent explanatory picture. In sum, to debunk religion, maybe all you need are natural explanations for the phenomenon ex, attributed to natural, supernatural beings. And psychological explanations for beliefs in those beings. I'm not saying I actually just refuted all of religion but I think it's intuitive how it's supposed to go. The debunking along the lines I just sketched. But now let's think about why debunking mathematics is a lot harder. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mathematics is caused to exist by 80 billion neurons doing something really complicated. Plus, who knows? Maybe your gut brains even helps sometimes. This is pretty approximate as a theory of how math arises in the brain would go, but you get the idea. And I hope you see the problem. The problem with this. I said you've got an 80 billion in there. Which sounds pretty mathematical. It seems like we have to describe the world in essentially mathematical ways, in order to explain what the world was like before certain empirical states of affairs. Allegedly caused math to exist. You see the problem there, the circularity. Regarding Zeus, it wouldn't make sense to say, there is no Zeus. Zeus just tricked us into thinking there's a Zeus. He's all powerful you know? It's just not clear to me that any kind of imperialist explanation of what math really is can avoid similar problem. You need math for there to be a so, situation, in which math can allegedly arise in a brain. And of course, one is a number two. If an empiricist tells me she wants to imagine a world without mathematics, and then imagine mathematics arising. Purely in the brain. I'm going to insist that she doesn't use any plural nouns in her description, and no singular nouns either. So it's kind of a non starter as stories goes. Why am I going on about all this metaphysics? Areas of mathematics. We get it. You say. The temple of the philosophy of math isn't very solid metaphysically according to Holbo. So what? In a nutshell I want to argue maybe we can do for ethics that so far as I can see we can't do for math. Mainly debunk it. That is, we can imagine ethics away. While still being able to explain undeniable ethical phenomenon, like human behavior and belief. For example, the roof is held up pretty good. Looks like. Kind of funny looking columns, non traditional but why not? This is a roof of belief not truth. You can have belief without truth, but how do we blow away the Boreas of ethics while leaving the human Arithea of moral psychology. It's easy. At least if you start where Greene does. Morality is a a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to cooperate. That's Joshua Greene not me. Although I think it sounds pretty good. In short, morality is a biological adaptation. Now as I said two videos back. My naked molerat Pericles is slightly misleading insofar as molerats aren't really selfish enough to need morality according to this definition. As I said a better comparison might be traits distinctive of amphibians. I should probably do a frog Pericles. Amphibians live sometimes in water sometimes on land. We humans live sometimes out of society, that is very selfishly, sometimes in society, hypersocially, morality is that set of adaptations that allow us to pull of that trick, shifting from one to the other. Can we imagine taking, as it were, a non-moral attitude. To towards that morality. That set of adaptations. It's kind of tricky, because we humans are sort of psychologically locked in to thinking like humans. Well except the psychopath among us. Lets just shift slightly. Could some intelligent aliens. Species look down at us the way we look down at frogs and just study the adaptations that allow us to be as we are as biological beings? This alien race would understand why we evolved to think that murder is bad and kindness is good without itself thinking that murder is bad or kindness is good. It doesn't believe in morality in a moral sense. This alien race. But it knows all there is to know about it. In a biological sense, does that seem coherent? I'm not sure whether that seems coherent. But maybe? This alien is weird. No doubt it's called regard for our moral lives. Might be like a cross between a David Attenborough-narrated nature documentary and a French existentialist novel. I don't know. But maybe there's a coherent perspective to be taken out there. If so maybe we just debunked ethics. Well, at least maybe we outlined a plan for potentially doing so, coherently. Except, this isn't really what Greene wants. This is the coherent plan that he's looking for. Quote Joshua Greene again. As moral beings, we may have values that are opposed to the forces that gave rise to morality, end quote. That was the final slide of the last video, and it makes perfect sense. I said then and I think so now. Just because my moral sense evolved to help me spread my genes, doesn't mean I'm forced to think the only moral imperative is spread my genes. Then again that alien I just imagined? That cross between David Attenborough and Alber Camouix or whoever he is won't be able to make any biological sense of this statement. So that definition of morality that we were using is going to become somewhat non operative if this definition is going to, if this statement is going to make. Sense. Where am I going with this? It's relativly easy I think to imagine how one might coherently give a biologically debunking explanation of ethics. But what Greene really wants to offer is as it were. A half debunking explanation of ethics. It's not all wind, but some of it is just wind. That's a trickier one to pull off. That's the subject of the next video. But I'll conclude this one with a helpful hint. There's something pretty Platonic if you like, about the idea of finding a meta morality for keeping all the different herders in a state of harmony. Joshua Greene is a more obvious candidate for a being a kind of moral platonist than Haidt. Although, of course, I argue that Haidt was actually secretly very platonist. But turning the point around, there is one feature of Greene's position that is. Quite notably unplatonic, perhaps so. Here's a famous visual illusion, the so called Muller-Lyer illusion. The horizontal line in the lower figure looks longer than the horizontal line in the upper figure even though they're both the same length. The eye, rather the eye plus the brain is tricked because we can't help but regard the converging lines as depth cues even when we know intellectually that the lines are the same length, we still can't unsee that they look to be different lengths. The illusion persists. Joshua Greene wants to argue that certain. Odd experiments in ethics, specifically the famous trolley cases are analogous. We'll get to that video. The immediate concern is that, in order for anything in the realm of moral psychology to be analogous to the Muller-Lyer illusion, there needs to be moral truth, moral falsehood. It is true that those lines are the same length. It is false that they are not. If Utilitarianism is true, then Anti-Utilitarian moral intuition are presumably some kind of moral illusion. But if utilitarianism is not true. In what sense could they be? Plato thinks we will be induced to leave the cave when we notice certain things just don't add up. The eyes can tell when they are being tricked somehow, but they can't tell how. So reason is called upon to wake up and adjudicate. This really isn't Greene's model. Remember what I quoted at the start? We'll have to settle for a more modest metamorality. An intertribal system that works for us, whether or not it's the moral truth. Plato thinks we'll be induced to leave the cave when we notice that things don't add up. But what does Greene say instead? Rather than trying to turn away from what might be an illusion to seek the truth, Greene is content to shout, focus at the protectionist, this is the only show in town. For us Troglodytes, we should at least try to make it as clear and coherent as possible. But as, is utilitarianism really suited for this fundamentally modest task, was it more of a philosophical radical at heart. In the next video, we'll consider.
