brimstoneSalad, Ask Yourself, FreindEd, Chris Hines and Tim Jong Un wooeee

[NonZeroSum]

Good going Brim, I can get some highlights up from the transcript on the forum soon. Did you record any audio from your end or shall I simply download FriendEd's video when it goes up for mirroring?

What are people's post-debate reflections? Ask Yourself was acting like a toddler for all to see huh? Shame it took so long to get the lay of the land for people's positions, but you were really clear and concise, and demonstrated your position well. Look forward to the conversation carrying on.

FriendEd is back on Chris Hines channel here:

The Official FriendEd Debate Afterparty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FabyDUP0A5A

[brimstoneSalad]

Ask Yourself was acting like a toddler for all to see huh?

He wanted an answer to something I couldn't give him. He was very insistent about it and became very angry when I wouldn't agree with his argument.

The reason I could not answer his question is that his arguments for #namethetrait (and other arguments) contain logical fallacies (I will explain why that's relevant in a minute after I explain the nature of the fallacy):

P1 - Humans are of moral value
P2 - There is no trait absent in animals which if absent in humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless
C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such a trait in animals, we contradict ourselves by deeming animals valueless

There are many viable arbitrary answer to this because the trait can be arbitrary. Arbitrarity is not the same as contradiction.

1. Divine command (or command by X): God said animals don't have souls/moral value. The trait is souls/The trait is God said so.
2. Moral subjectivism: I don't care about animals; the trait is my caring. If you care then it's wrong for you according to your morals. If somebody kills me on the basis of not caring about me then that is wrong according to my morals, but it may be OK according to their morals. They can make up any rules they want. There's no objective basis to call one better than the other.
3. Cultural moral relativism: According to my culture it's OK, so it's OK. If my culture changed then it might not be OK. In the past it was OK to keep slaves because that was culture. Other cultures have different rules, and their morals are wrong according to my culture's morals. My culture's morals might be wrong according to theirs. There's no objective basis to call one better than the other.

You could list these all day, mostly variations on the same theme.

C just does not follow from P1 and P2.
This is a non sequitur. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29
P2 is irrelevant on its own, and doesn't lead to that conclusion without additional assumptions.
An additional premise or two (or three, depending on how you word them) is needed for the argument to be valid: P3 - Arbitrary assertions of moral value are not acceptable, moral value must be justified by some relevant non-arbitrary trait. Relevant traits can be defined in a way that leads into P2 in this argument: P4 - A relevant trait is a trait that would cause us to deem ourselves valueless if we lacked it.
In other words, you have to insert a variation of the golden rule into the discussion.
And possibly even a clarification upon what it means to deem oneself valueless so there is no question here (it's important to define things clearly, particularly when they have substantial implications to the conclusion and could be interpreted different ways as this can be): P5 - Any attempted defense of personal interests is an indication of self-value.

These premises can not just be assumed without stating them. That's sneaky stuff that apologists do when they're making tricky (and not valid) arguments to "prove" god. We don't need to take after apologists with bad form in argument. Carnists already claim we're mentally deficient due to lack of nutrients, we don't need to provide them support for that ridiculous assertion.

Let me be clear: The propositions I added are GOOD premises, and ones that have very strong arguments behind them. But they are also moral objectivist/universalist/realist premises.
A "moral system" can be arbitrary without having internal contradiction. By just adding these premises, you easily defeat all of these arguments:

Religion is arbitrary, unless you can prove your religion is true (even then it's a weak argument that a god can dictate morality non-arbitrarily, see Euthyphro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro, the argument might have to be expanded to address theist concerns).
Moral subjectivism is completely arbitrary, being based on personal whim/opinion.
Cultural relativism is arbitrary both in terms of culture and how culture is defined (culture/subculture/individual), it deteriorates into subjectivism without any justifiable boundaries.

These are easy premises to add, and easy ones to defend (particularly that against arbitrarity): allowing arbitrary assertions makes morality meaningless and useless (which is basically the brunt of the argument against relativism/subjectivism).


This is what I wanted to discuss, but Ask Yourself had other ideas. He was set on "murking" me based on my claim that he's a moral objectivist as an implication of his hidden premises (an argument I don't think he bothered to read). He didn't care what my argument was and he pressed me to answer if I agreed that he wasn't a moral objectivist based on a definition he does not understand. I had to keep saying I don't know if he is or isn't, even based on robust realism.
The reason I could not answer is because of those fallacies and implicit premises in his argument (which become more apparently held when he states it informally during debates and responds to people's challenges).
Until discussing and resolving those fallacies (and I don't know how he would prefer to resolve them, he might dramatically change his argument) I don't actually know what position that would commit him to. Because of his acceptance of those fallacies and his belief that his argument is logically sound it is clear that he does not fully comprehend his own views and that they are not consistent.

I will fully agree that he thinks he is not a moral objectivist and that he thinks he is a subjectivist, but that was never a point of contention.

Since he is asserting at various points non-arbitrarity and the golden rule as unspoken assumptions (which are great assumptions, but they're ones of moral objectivism/universalism and they need to be clearly articulated), I think it would commit him in the least to minimal realism and universalism. Universalism is also seen as moral objectivism as per the definition. It wouldn't let him pass himself off as a subjectivist.

Aside from him indicating misunderstanding of universalism (He thinks it means that a moral system can be universalized or something like that, and that it's totally different from "moral objectivism"), he tried to argue in defense of his subjectivism.
His argument was that he thinks there can be many different consistent moral systems, but the only one I've seen him offer as an alternative is that of Hannibal Lecter. That's a weak argument, and I think most people could understand that the complete rejection of moral value does not make a moral system. Would the rejection of all numbers and mathematical operators make a mathematical system? No.

Hannibal could form a self-centered moral "system" that gave him moral value personally and denied it to others, but this clearly fails to comply with the "logic" (not actually valid logic) of even Ask Yourself's general argument.

P1 - I am of moral value
P2 - There is no trait absent in others which if absent in me would cause me to deem myself valueless
C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such a trait in others, I contradict myself by deeming others valueless

It's hard to imagine him disagreeing with that since he thinks his argument is valid and it uses the same form.
I would ask Ask Yourself to #namethealternativemoralsystem
I don't think he can.

That said, I am unsure if the resolutions of these contradictions would commit him to robust realism as per the first definition he highlighted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_objectivism

Robust moral realism, the meta-ethical position that ethical sentences express factual propositions about robust or mind-independent features of the world, and that some such propositions are true.

But it's also not clear what he thinks mind independence is. I tried to nail him down on what he thought that was. He wasn't interested in answering my questions so that I could have the information I needed to answer his question.
That brief one sentence Wikipedia summary is not enough to encapsulate the definition of robust realism.

A much more useful outline of robust moral realism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism

The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:[14]

• The semantic thesis: The primary semantic role of moral predicates (such as "right" and "wrong") is to refer to moral properties (such as rightness and wrongness), so that moral statements (such as "honesty is good" and "slavery is unjust") purport to represent moral facts, and express propositions that are true or false (or approximately true, largely false, and so on).
• The alethic thesis: Some moral propositions are in fact true.
• The metaphysical thesis: Moral propositions are true when actions and other objects of moral assessment have the relevant moral properties (so that the relevant moral facts obtain), where these facts and properties are robust: their metaphysical status, whatever it is, is not relevantly different from that of (certain types of) ordinary non-moral facts and properties.

The minimal model, i.e. moral universalism, leaves off the metaphysical thesis, treating it as matter of contention among moral realists (as opposed to between moral realists and moral anti-realists).

The final, metaphysical thesis is of some complexity. Inator and I discussed it at some length. I doubt Ask Yourself has given it any thought.

Is gravity an objective force? Does it fail to qualify if it isn't independent of mass?
Is Pi an objective concept? Does it fail to qualify if it isn't independent of circles?
What does independence mean? This is not a question that has been resolved by philosophers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism

The robust model and the minimal model also disagree over how to classify moral subjectivism (roughly, the view that moral facts are not mind-independent in the relevant sense, but that moral statements may still be true). The historical association of subjectivism with moral anti-realism in large part explains why the robust model of moral realism has been dominant—even if only implicitly—both in the traditional and contemporary philosophical literature on metaethics.[15]

What is the relevant sense?

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2007/entries/moral-anti-realism/

Subjectivism (as it will be called here) allows that moral facts exist but holds that they are, in some manner to be specified, constituted by our mental activity. The slogan version comes from Hamlet: “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Of course, the notion of “mind-independence” is problematically indeterminate: Something may be mind-independent in one sense and mind-dependent in another. Cars, for example, are designed and constructed by creatures with minds, and yet in another sense cars are clearly concrete, non-subjective entities. Much careful disambiguation is needed before we know how to circumscribe subjectivism, and different philosophers disambiguate differently. Many philosophers question whether the “subjectivism clause” is a useful component of moral anti-realism at all. Many advocate views according to which moral properties are significantly mind-dependent but which they are loath to characterize as versions of moral anti-realism. There is a concern that including the subjectivism clause threatens to make moral anti-realism trivially true, since there is little room for doubting that the moral status of actions usually (if not always) depends in some manner on mental phenomena such as the intentions with which the action was performed or the episodes or pleasure and pain that ensue from it. The issue will be discussed below, with no pretense made of settling the matter one way or the other.

[...]

Second, it is not clear that maintaining the “mind-independence” clause as a defining feature of the realism/anti-realism division really does make psychological realism a “non-starter.” Perhaps all that is needed is a more careful understanding of the type of independence relation in question. Certainly there is a trivial sense in which the truth or falsity of a psychological claim like “Mary believes that p” depends on a mental fact: whether Mary does believe that p. On the other hand, there is also a sense in which whether Mary has this belief is a mind-independent affair: The fact of Mary's believing that p is not constituted or determined by any of our practices of judging that she does so believe. We could all judge that Mary believes that p and be mistaken. Most people would accept that even Mary might be mistaken about this—erroneously judging herself to believe that p. In the same way, although the moral claim “Mary's action was morally wrong” may be true only in virtue of the pain that Mary's action caused (or because of Mary's wicked intentions), this may not be the right kind of mind-dependence to satisfy the subjectivist clause.

Well, that wasn't very helpful, but it does throw some doubt on the whole affair of that being any kind of qualifying test of subjectivism/objectivism or even any necessary part of robust vs. minimal realism.

The fact that Ask Yourself thinks it's trivial to brush these questions under the rug indicates to me that either he has not thought much on their answers, or he isn't even aware of the questions. Neither says much about his competence in philosophy.

In terms of his claims to subjectivism specifically, it's useful to see Wikipedia on Ethical subjectivism (redirects from moral subjectivism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_subjectivism
Generally speaking, subjectivism is a form of relativism unless you are religious and subscribe to divine command (or something almost indiscernibly similar).
See also this to further confuse things (although there is general agreement on pretty much that point I made above): https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2007/entries/moral-anti-realism/moral-subjectivism-versus-relativism.html

Conversely, the subjectivist need not be a relativist. Suppose the moral facts depend on the attitudes or opinions of a particular group or individual (e.g., “X is good” means “Caesar approves of X,” or “The Supreme Court rules in favor of X” or “God commands X,” etc.), and thus moral truth is an entirely mind-dependent affair. Since, in this case, all speakers' moral utterances are made true or false by the same mental activity, then this is not strictly speaking a version of relativism, but is, rather, a relation-designating account of moral terms (see Stevenson 1963: 74 for this distinction).

He can pick and choose his definitions, but I never claimed he specifically subscribed to robust realism and I made that clear. I'm agnostic on that point. He might, he might not. But universalism isn't something distinct from "moral objectivism" in the way that Randian Objectivism is that would permit you to ignore it as part of the "may refer to" list Wikipedia recommends.
What seems increasingly clear is that he has no idea what he believes because he doesn't even know what these things mean or care to look closely at them to find out.
And when FriendEd said that Ask Yourself wasn't a Subjectivist, by all accounts of the implications of Ask Yourself's arguments and behavior, FriendEd was right. He was also correct to identify the broad category of moral objectivism as standing in opposition to subjectivism.

I did not take FriendEd's claims to be an assertion that Ask Yourself subscribed to robust moral realism. I don't know why FriendEd gave ground on this in the discussion, maybe because he just didn't want to deal with it or didn't understand how philosophically questionable it is to grant such a distinction hinging only on the metaphysical thesis and an ambiguous claim of mind-independence that doesn't seem to mean anything.
Ask yourself can complain that he has only ever defined moral objectivism as robust realism, but that's really not helping his case that he's a subjectivist and given his broad misunderstanding of these concepts it doesn't really convince me even that he's not a robust realist (I don't care if he is or isn't).

[Jebus]

Where can I watch this? I noticed in the comment section that AY called you (philosophical vegan) retarded.

[brimstoneSalad]

Where can I watch this? I noticed in the comment section that AY called you (philosophical vegan) retarded.

Many times, many times.

There are multiple conversations going on in the video. I think we're going to cut them up, and Chris Hines is going to upload his half to his channel.
I will be adding in some images and text, and maybe video clips, to help clarify the issue which is very hard to parse from the conversation alone.

[Jebus]

I caught the last 45 minutes of the after party and I was not very impressed by most of the debaters. They were discussing sentience and treating it as if it were an have/not have concept. Any idea who they were?

[brimstoneSalad]

I caught the last 45 minutes of the after party and I was not very impressed by most of the debaters. They were discussing sentience and treating it as if it were an have/not have concept. Any idea who they were?

Looks like FriendEd uploaded it to his second channel. I thought he assured me he wasn't going to make it public without me having a chance to edit it... wanted to have a chance to add in some clarifications on things and pictures (like of the text of the argument) so people can follow the discussion (which I don't think they'll be able to with me just stating the argument, and makes me look like I'm just rambling if you don't already know what I'm talking about).

I regret a few things I said (really wish I'd had the chance to clarify in text, like the comment about theists or religious people using fallacious arguments; I meant specifically the bad apologetic arguments for creation that some theists make), but for the most part I'm glad to hear from NonZeroSum that I didn't come off as a total asshole.
Well, it is what it is.

youtube dot com/watch?v=8lX3u7_VfF4

[brimstoneSalad]

Reposted the long comment on its own with a bit of into (minus the quote) to link to.

[NonZeroSum]

Looks like FriendEd uploaded it to his second channel. I thought he assured me he wasn't going to make it public without me having a chance to edit it... wanted to have a chance to add in some clarifications on things and pictures (like of the text of the argument) so people can follow the discussion (which I don't think they'll be able to with me just stating the argument, and makes me look like I'm just rambling if you don't already know what I'm talking about).

I really wouldn't worry about it, if they were to do that then it would look like an unfair advantage to you that you needed because your intuition of your own argument was in error in some way the first time. You were really calm and collected, and Ask Yourself just refused to have the conversation, you explained well after he left also and any more detail that you want to add in can be done in a response video.

I can help collect clips, and make suggestions, just downloaded AskYourselfs 'Friend Ed fails again,' the debate and post-debate videos and made them available on google drive, so you can work on them in a video editor:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8g-aCUkn-onOVhKb3ktZVZaMkE

You can let me know any more that you think would be useful, not sure how you want to structure it, main point I assume being let's be more accessible, have better explenations/dialogue when it comes to advocating veganism and sound logical reasoning. But lots more context to either strip or pay a nod to, like FriendEd's intuitionism, previous vegan critiques of AskYourselfs reasoning, Eisel, OGMizen. Maybe two videos, a response to AskYourself building up to a second video critiqing FriendEd's intuitionism as descriptive defence of meat eating culture?

I regret a few things I said (really wish I'd had the chance to clarify in text, like the comment about theists or religious people using fallacious arguments; I meant specifically the bad apologetic arguments for creation that some theists make). . .

That's fine, something to emphasise again in the response video then about wanting theists on our side and people who are consistent to their own systems even if as atheists we might view their foundation as irrational.

_______________

____________
FriendEd fails again.
AskYourself

FriendEd: I have named the trait both descriptively as in this is the way it is and proscriptive-lee as in this is the way it should be.

AskYourself: Well you use slightly different language when you talk like sometimes you say society sometimes you say the in-group sometimes you say the moral community so there's a little bit of wiggle room here just because you've used multiple similar but slightly different terms whatever that's no big deal when it comes to descriptive ethics sure it's true to say that group membership is what determines who has moral value or not that's pretty much tautology friended because the moral community is defined as those that were extending moral value to when it comes to prescriptive ethics no no no no you have not named the trait unless you're going to tell me that you're okay being murdered by someone based on the justification that you aren't part of their group even if you've done nothing wrong then you cannot use group membership to justify murdering others without producing a contradiction

FriendEd: You have claimed on many occasions that morality is subjective and that you are not a moral Objectivist but if you place your standards for morality on every moral system you encounter from Western democracies to space alien cannibals you are a moral Objectivists.

AskYourself: No FriendEd, a moral Objectivist as should be obvious from the term is someone who believes that morality exists objectively that is independently of subjective experience this is not a belief that I hold what I do is I apply the concept of logical consistency to moral systems to determine if they are internally consistent

FriendEd: If you are not a moral Objectivist and accept there are multiple competing moral systems you have to accept that those systems needn't be logically consistent with one another to be logically consistent within themselves

AskYourself: I would love a quote friended when have I ever said that moral systems have to be logically consistent between each other to be logically consistent within themselves I've never said such a thing complete retarded straumann don't even know why you're going there it's also worth mentioning that name the trait is not an inter perspective argument it's not looking for contradictions between your belief system and the alien belief system it's looking for contradictions within your system it's pointing out internal inconsistencies it is an intra perspective argument when you say I don't want to be murdered just because I'm not a member of someone's group then you say I'm gonna murder animals just because they're not a member of my group you're contradicting yourself because you are deploying and rejecting the same argument your position is internally inconsistent that is what the argument points out.

_________________

Talking to Vegans About Moral Psychology | Ask Yourself, Chris Hines, Philosophical VeganThink
FriendEd

brimstoneSalad All right, well my point is that social intuition is, that's a good model to describe the behavior of some people, but you can't jump from a description of the group behavior to say well they do this therefore you know they ought to do this, or therefore this is the appropriate behavior that. Just jumping there without any explanation, it's not useful, so social intuitionism itself, that's not a non-arbitrary thing to plug into the moral framework, neither is like social contract or anything like that because they have arbitrary bounds. Unless you take away the arbitrary balance and then you can create a framework that's just based on social contract and that's, it is brutal, it is all a bit early written because they can't reciprocate, things like that.

. . .

brimstoneSalad You missed a really important aspect of it, ok so one there is that, that people have these emotional impulses and then as individuals most people will use reason or try to misuse reason, they will rationalize and they will try to explain away or explain the reasons for those emotions, that's arbitrary, it tends to be arbitrary, if they're using reason correctly then it may be fine, but it tends to be that people will rationalize them, rather than be rational, they will rationalize those emotions and they will try to explain why they feel that way, that is on an individual level, it doesn't apply to everybody but it applies to most people, but on a group level, when you have people of different beliefs, we have a conservative and a liberal and if they talk to each other they will use reason and they can convince each other of things based on reason, they don't have to do it emotionally, reason can actually prevail and that's part of the model, that's why we establish the heterodoxy of the academy.

FriendEd: Yeah right but if it's not emotionally charged I mean if it's something people like one of the one

brimstoneSalad We need to avoid emotionally charging things, we need to avoid saying murder, we need to avoid saying cult, Ethan you know, we need to avoid these things and then we can use reason.

FriendEd: I'm not giving up my cult aha, no I agree with you 100%, I totally agree with you 100%.

brimstoneSalad That's you know, we have to pop these echo chambers which is, I don't want to, you know I think Ask Yourself is doing some good things on YouTube, I mean he's inspired a lot of people that's really great, but I think when he rejects criticism like this, it comes in assuming that the other person is wrong, he's not really interested in understanding, he's just pushing his questions and that may be a good debate tactic for him but it's not getting at the truth of the matter and when your elephant is so loud, when you can't hear the reason of the other people, when you can't consider their arguments then that's not going to work, but for most people when you get people with different opinions together and they share their reasons and if they don't get emotionally charged, you can come to more reasonable conclusions.

_________________

A Discussion of Morality #2 "What is the 'Name The Trait' argument?" (SPECIAL GUEST: Ask Yourself)
Darren McStravick
https://youtu.be/jnnrtQ2g6J8

Ask Yourself: If the person cares about human moral value and they extend that to animals to the extent that doing so is possible, then they'd be a vegan, if they care about human moral value but they don’t extend it to animals where it’s logically consistent to do so then they’re inconsistent, and if they don’t care about moral value for humans or animals then they’re a nihilist.


______________

Debating the "I Don't Care" Mentality (Vegan Gains vs. Bearing)

à-bas-le-ciel


The fundamental question is of what kind of a person you want to be and that's why I never gage these issues in terms of shallow crafts logical fallacies I don't think that vegan gains vegan gains take it in the direction he took in a real-life situation face-to-face I don't think that he could have one and there's another channel called ask yourself who took it even further in that direction ask yourself tries to make this into a debate about how how precisely how logically do you define a human being as different from an animal in order to justify violence against animals as different from you and beings you know we we have a we have a saying in political science well I don't know the definition of pornography but I know it when I see it most people this argument goes nowhere what exactly is the different the definition of human being what exact trait does a human being have an animal acts that justifies move yeah well they may not know how to define a human being but they know it when they see it okay if you can engage someone on the meaningful question what kind of a person do you want to be what kind of society do you want to be a part of and what direction you on the server that's great and if you encounter somebody who can't can't engage in that discussion that level of you there's no point in you having a deep discussion while they're having a shell of one stupidity is real stupidity was a huge factor in this debate one side was manifestly much much super than the other so there were limits to where this conversation go but when I encountered that attitude of I don't care I don't challenge them on the fact that they don't care I don't say you should care what I challenge them on is why are you proud that you don't care why are you being self-righteous about it because there's a sense in which I don't care and I can't care about nuclear safety there's a sense in which a very very few people can care and get involved with sewage treatment or other eka logical problems but that impact your life directly water quality can I trust the tap water when I turn the tap okay everywhere I go I try to research that I tried to research that here in China and Victoria in Cambodia on and on everyone lived I try to take it as far as I can okay not everybody can care but that doesn't mean that you should feel proud of yourself because you don't care sure doesn't mean you should be self-righteous in your ignorance and your difference you should have feel some sense of appreciation and some sense of gratitude towards the tiny minority of people who have the passion who had the engagement and who develop the expertise because they really are making the world a better place for us.

_________________

[Jebus]

I regret a few things I said

It's very difficult to get it 100% right especially if you don't have a lot of practice in verbal debate. You are probably a perfectionist.

[Jebus]

Just finished listening through the whole discussion. AY really came out of it looking like an ass. He interrupted you over and over. I probably wouldn't have been as nice as you were. That part of the debate was a waste of everyone's time. It got a lot better after he left and you really found your stride towards the end. I'm glad you interrupted closing statement by asking if your argument had had any impact on him. It became clear that FriendEd pretends to be interested and open minded but as he thinks adopting a vegan lifestyle would be a monumental inconvenience he wont allow any doubt to enter his brain. His "you are asking too much from me" argument was really ridiculous. That could have been a valid comment if veganism cut off twenty years from the average life span. If he had bothered to learn a little bit about the health benefits of a plant based diet he would know that his only sacrifice in exchange for better health and a better chance of a longer life would be a temporary decline in positive taste sensation.

Never good when a meat eater (FriendEd) comes out looking as smarter (and nicer) than a vegan (Ask Yourself) but this is probably how most listeners perceived it.