Cosmic Skeptic's video on veganism

[Sapphire Lightning]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1vW9iSpLLk&t=1220s


Looks like Alex may be going vegan, he is asking meat eaters for proper justification for what we do to animals...

[Red]

That's great! Does he agree now that morality is objective?

[Frank Quasar]

That's great! Does he agree now that morality is objective?

Nope. He's still an ethical subjectivist, I don't think he's convinced of moral realism. His attempts to resolve moral issues is to simply bank on the fact that his interlocutors hold an overlapping norm (i.e. maximising well-being), or perhaps fixate upon that as a goal for morality, and play chess in accordance with said goal (like Matt Dilahunty).

[brimstoneSalad]

Wow, great video! I wouldn't assume he is, people can find some weird excuses sometimes, but he outlined many of the arguments well.

Of course he missed the most compelling moral realist arguments, but well...

[Red]

Nope. He's still an ethical subjectivist, I don't think he's convinced of moral realism. His attempts to resolve moral issues is to simply bank on the fact that his interlocutors hold an overlapping norm (i.e. maximising well-being), or perhaps fixate upon that as a goal for morality, and play chess in accordance with said goal (like Matt Dilahunty).

That sucks. I mean, the way he was presenting his case, like saying how eating meat is 'morally bankrupt' kinda lends itself to thinking there are objective morals.

Can he cope with this double standard?

[Frank Quasar]

That sucks. I mean, the way he was presenting his case, like saying how eating meat is 'morally bankrupt' kinda lends itself to thinking there are objective morals.

Can he cope with this double standard?

That's what I thought, especially in regards to the language that he was using when he talked about arbitrary/non-relevant properties used to undermine the status of non-human animals.

Nope, I don't think he can cope with the double standard.

[Lay Vegan]

I'm not very impressed with Cosmic Skeptic in regard to moral philosophy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUtXmT_sIxI

But Harris makes the fatal conflation here between the objective fact that everyone agrees that X is true and the objective fact that X is objectively true. Just because we all subjectively react badly to pain and suffering doesn’t make pain and suffering objectively bad. Truth is not the same as democracy or consensus.

https://twitter.com/CosmicSkeptic/statu ... 6448144384

All ethics is based (in my view) on wellbeing (general prosperity is linked to this). We all assume that wellbeing is good - we don’t therefore need to worry about leaving the alternative option open, since no one can believe it. Regardless, usefulness holds no bearing on truth.

Alex is a non-cognitivist (essentially, he thinks when objectivists make moral propositions about the ethics of our actions, we’re actually making a proposition about our beliefs on its ethics). Tantamount to saying “When you say the grass is green, you’re saying you think the grass is green, as opposed to the grass actually being green!”

His world view incredibly condescending, but more importantly it’s inaccurate. Objectivists are not asserting a fact about a belief about a moral claim, but a fact about a moral claim. Torturing sentient animals on the basis of species is objectively wrong. Of course, my assertion that doing is wrong does not alone make said action wrong, but this proposition can be verified (in the same sense that declaring the Earth is an oblate sphere can be verified). Considering the reference point of interests (the only metric on which an objective value system is based) we can conclude whether torturing and killing non-human sentient animals achieves goal X: is morally good (or conducive to satisfying the interests of sentient beings.

Cosmic Skeptic seems to be quite confused on moral universalism as well (isn't he studying this stuff at Oxford)??

Anyway, his vegan video was actually pretty good, but I wonder if it would motivate him to personally go vegan?

[Sapphire Lightning]

He had an interview with Matt Dillahunty about the ethics behind veganism etc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAOzGNFamgQ