 So we have an interesting tension in morality and ethics. On the one hand, we prize rationality. We always say that we have good reason for our actions. Even if we say, well, I did it just because I wanted to. That's at least a reason, right? Wanting to do it. So we prize rationality in our decisions. That's one thing that we like. What we don't like, however, is that there's a lot of disagreement in ethics. There's a lot of fighting. And what we'd like to do, what we think is the best solution with disagreements, is we try to give everybody what they want. So kind of a motivation here is to say everybody's rational and everybody gets what they want. A real typical way of trying to do something like this is to deny that there's any objective moral facts that apply to everybody. So there might be a reason for me to perform an action, but my reason wouldn't be yours, because you have different sets of reasons. And the reason why they wouldn't be yours is because there's no objective fact that kind of determines for both of us what we should be doing. Now, this kind of denial of objective facts takes two forms in this book. Rachel's looks at two different kinds. One is just simple subjectivism, and the other is emotivism. Simple subjectivism is the claim that is the idea that all moral claims are really just claims of approval or disapproval. So I could say honesty is good. And really what that means is I approve of honesty. And I could say murder is bad. But what that means is that I disapprove of murder. Now, this theory has some advantages. The advantages, I'm still dealing with truth. So when I'm saying honesty is good, and I'm saying I approve of honesty of other something that's true. The only way that's false is if I'm lying, maybe. But as long as I'm being honest, my claim that I approve of honesty is true. The other advantage that you were talking about at the beginning is that everybody gets what they want. And in fact, there's reason involved, because we're dealing with truth claims. So here's the reasoning. I approve of honesty. So I say honesty is good. And that directs my actions, meaning here's my reason for being honest, because I approve of it. I like honesty. I feel good about honesty, however you want to try to cash that out. So we have reason, we have truth claims. But at the same time, we don't have to have the disagreement because I can say things like being honest to my friends in all situations is good. And what that means is I approve of being honest to my friends in all situations. Somebody else can say, I approve of honesty with my friends, but there's sometimes when the truth hurts. And hurting my friends is bad, meaning I disapprove of hurting my friends. So there'd be reason in those cases to not tell the truth to your friends. Now, one person's reasons don't need to affect the other. They don't have to disagree, because all they're talking about is what they approve and disapprove of. So on the surface, it looks like subjectivism gets us what we want. We get reason, we get rationality, but at the same time, we don't have to worry about disagreement. There's a dangerous drop-off over there. We should probably consider that as a warning. So what we think we've got here with civil subjectivism is something that we really want. We want for people to be able to be guided by reason, but to get everything that they want. Well, in avoiding disagreement, I think we've run into another problem. So if moral claims are going to disagree, they have to be contrary, meaning that they both can't be true together. They both can't be true together. So think about the truth relations that we studied in class. At least one of them is false. Like, okay. Well, when you look at simple subjectivism, the moral claims are true, but they're never false. The moral claims are true, but they're never false. In fact, moral claims can't be contrary to each other in this sense. Because the fact that I approve of something has absolutely no impact on the truth value of whether you approve of something. I can say I approve of honesty all the time, in every instance. And you can say, well, I approve of telling my friends the truth most of the time, except in cases when it hurts them. We haven't disagreed. All we've done is express preferences. And we thought that this was an advantage. Well, in throwing away all disagreement in an effort to avoid some, I think we don't understand what we committed ourselves to. In throwing away all disagreement, we've thrown away all disagreement. Simple subjectivism says that people don't ever actually disagree. Well, no, people do disagree. You disagree with others when it comes to moral claims. Pick your favorite hot button controversy issue, pro-life, pro-choice, separation of religion from state, big business versus independent businesses, big government versus small government. Same-sex marriage. Pick your favorite issue. You disagree with somebody. You really do. You're saying, no, this ought to happen. You're not saying, I approve of this and you approve of something else. And so we're not going to worry about it anymore. No, no, you disagree on what is actually true there. So simple subjectivism has some real problems. And if you don't like those, if you don't like those, I guarantee I can start finding examples. You think torture is wrong, especially like torture for entertainment. You think that's wrong. It's not merely a matter of preference. Nobody should ever do that. So when throwing out all disagreement as a way to try to give everybody what they want, we forget there are some people where we don't want them to get what they want. We think they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. So this is a problem with simple subjectivism is that it means that everybody agrees. Quite clearly, everybody does not agree. There's a problem related to this problem of complete agreement. Like I said several times, morality is supposed to be a guide for action. Now, the fact that people approve or disapprove of something is not necessarily a good reason to either do it or not do it. And we do use morality as a basis for, for instance, law. Not always, but most of the time. There are lots of things that are immoral and legal and we know they're immoral and they're legal, but we'll maybe get into that later. So we think that morality should be a guide for action. It's supposed to guide not only our own lives, but be a guide for how we act collectively. But the fact that one particular person or group approves of something, that's the only reason is not a guide for action for you to do it or not to do it. Heck, the fact that you approve of something is not necessarily a good reason. So I got news for you. You have conflicting approvals and disapprovals. Yeah, you do. For instance, I know people who smoke, they approve of feeling good, they approve of pleasure, but they don't approve of the health or the health problems. So you've got conflicting approvals and disapprovals. There are other examples. Maybe I'll just let you think of it. Maybe you should sit down and think, okay, where do my approvals and disapprovals conflict? Because that's a really good question. So a problem here is that if we're dealing with approval and disapproval, morality is, approval and disapproval is not a guide for action. What are moral claims to be guides for action? So another dangerous point here. Several subjectivism runs into another problem and it's related to the problem of complete agreement. So remember that we said that one of the things about subjectivism is that it does deal with the truth. But people can't be wrong. They can't be mistaken about what they approve of. So that means that every moral claim is true. We could call this the problem of impeccability. Or it's not an impeccability, an infallibility. This is the claim that, I mean, subjectivism means that, you know, a subjectivist says that, you know, telling the truth is good. That means that I approve of telling the truth. Well, that claim can't be mistaken. Suppose it's different. Suppose I say lying is good. Lying is really good because it helps me get money and it gives me the things that I want and I get to make suckers out of other people. And I approve of all these things. That's why it's good. That's what it means to say it's good. I approve of all these things. You very clearly don't agree with that. You have said many, many times you're wrong in making that moral claim. You're wrong in thinking, like I said, pick your favorite controversy issue. If that doesn't satisfy you, I can start thinking of examples. You think murder is wrong. Don't sit there and try to think of why you might think murder is okay. If somebody came in and murdered your family, you'd want bloody vengeance. And the reason why is because you think it's wrong that they murdered your family. You don't like that. I can start picking more examples that will curl your toes. So, this is another problem of simple subjectivism. It implies moral infallibility. Nobody is ever incorrect in making their moral claims. Now, simple subjectivism ran into some pretty serious problems. But simple subjectivism is not the only game in town. To try to adapt and overcome those problems, there's emotivism. Emotivism is the claim that what is moral, these moral claims are simply expressions of attitude. They're not even true and false statements. So, with simple subjectivism saying honesty is good, I'm saying I approve of honesty. With emotivism, when I say honesty is good, what I'm saying is, Yay! Honesty! Woohoo! Well, there's, you know, Yay! Honesty! That's not even something that's true or false. It's not a sentence at all. I mean, it's a sentence, but it's not a declarative at all. There's no predication of a subject. Now, you might be able to form a proposition about the truth of that, but that's not what moral claims do. It's just this expression of an attitude. So, this attempts to avoid the problem of disagreement by saying, Look, you know, what moral language is used for is trying to persuade people. And specifically trying to persuade people to take courses of action. Well, there's disagreement and moral discourse because we want people to do different things. So, we do get the disagreement. And avoid the problem of infallibility by claiming that, Well, these just are not claims that are true or false to begin with. These are emotive claims. They're not infallible claims. So, this is the attempt of, again, trying to avoid problems of disagreement and, you know, letting everybody get what they want. Well, emotivism might have gotten us into more of a mess than we realized. So, what's involved with this idea of saying that moral claims are just emotive claims? Well, remember at the beginning of video, and this is something that pretty much every class I've ever had agrees upon, is that we want our actions to be guided by reason. We don't want actions to be foolish. We don't want them to be irrational. And as you said, we want our actions guided by reason. We want our actions guided by what's rational. Well, that means, you know, again, morality is supposed to be guiding our actions. So, we want our moral claims to be rational. Well, you know, why think this? Why not just go along with impulse? It's like, well, you have goals. You want to do things. At the very least, you want your decisions to be rational because you want your actions to achieve those goals. Well, that involves reason. You have to be able to figure out which course of action actually achieves the goals and achieves the goals at the price you're willing to pay. So, there's already this notion of rationality involved in our action-guiding claims. Well, that means that we want rationality and morality. Well, if you're dealing with rationality, you're dealing with logic. Logic just is the science of reason. It's the science of making good inferences and avoiding bad inferences. Well, if you're dealing with logic, well, then you're dealing with what's true and what's false. If you're dealing with logic, you're dealing with what's true and what's false. Logic doesn't deal with pure emotional outbursts. So, we said emotivism has neither true nor false claims. They're trying to avoid the problem of moral infallibility this way. Emotivism is just cheering, expressing, you know, saying, Hey, honesty! But if you deal with logic, you have to deal with claims that say honesty is moral and that that honesty is moral is true. So, emotivism fails in this regard. It fails to be rational. And you already expressed this idea. Many of my classes have already expressed this idea. And the idea is, well, I wish people were logical. I wish they weren't just emotional. I wish they didn't just work on their feelings. Well, guess what? You're rejecting emotivism. You're rejecting emotivism. And kind of on a related note, you know, what we said before about action guiding, other people's emotional outbursts are not necessarily reason to guide your actions. And not, you know, even if it's just your own emotional outbursts, that's not necessarily reason to guide actions, right? Because you have conflicting emotions about things. You really, really do. Part of the beauty of being human is that inner conflict. So, emotivism itself also runs through this problem. And, you know, the big problem with both of them has to deal with truth. So, it looks like, you know, we're going to have to deal with this issue about what's true about moral claims, whether we want to or not. And I know we say we want to avoid disagreements. We want people to be able to get what they want. But we don't think everybody should get what they want. Well, if we're dealing with something like that, it looks like we're dealing with what's true and what's false. So, simple subjectivism and emotivism probably can't cut it. So, up to this point, a really big critique for both simple subjectivism and emotivism is this concern about good reason. And specifically, what we spoke about whether moral claims are true or false. And it looks like we can't escape the idea that moral claims have to either be true or false in order for them to be reasonable at all. And if we can't escape that, well, we're probably going to be committed to the claim that we're going to have to disagree with some people at least some of the time. And in fact, you're already committed to this. There are plenty of people that are doing things out in the world which you think they should stop. And in some cases you think we should force them to stop. So, this question then is, well, what's going to count as good moral reason? Now, you might immediately have worries. You know, you might worry, well, that means that I have to listen to somebody else. I'm like, well, in a sense maybe, but not just because it's that other person. It's because, you know, you're not even listening to the person. You're listening to what's true. Presuming we can find what's true. You know, you might have worries that somebody is going to control you using their moral claims. Well, I mean, you want to do the same thing already. You want to control other people based upon your moral claims. Now, if you just want to claim that you're special and all that, we'll actually get to that chapter later on. The simple fact is if you're committed to the idea that we should stop people some of the time because of the things that they're doing, you have to be open to the idea that you might be one of those people. Now, something else you might worry about is that there's like only one way to live your life and something like this. We should all be one culture that just doesn't fall at all from the idea that there's going to be objective moral claims. You know, some more objective, quote-unquote moral objective theories might imply that, but that's just not necessarily the case. You know, just look at our own society. If you have any inclination towards the idea that liberty, equality, justice are some really strong principles to live on. Well, there's a lot of ways you can live that out. There's a lot of different ways you can live that out. So, you know, the fact that there's going to be moral claims does not necessitate that you are now never free. In fact, you know, one of the more ancient views of morality was indeed that morality limited your actions, but they made you more free because those were the kinds of actions that actually got you what you wanted. So, you might be worried about some kind of a joint objective moral theory having, you know, some issues there. Really, just put those issues on the back burner for the moment. At least try to see what different moral theories say before you start borrowing problems. Now, Rachel hasn't really given us a great idea of what a good moral reason is at this point. We're still wondering. He's even asking questions like, what counts as a proof in ethics? And this is a good question. You know, a proof in ethics is not going to look like a proof in the physical sciences. You know, by the way, a proof in the physical sciences is not going to look like a proof in mathematics. A proof in mathematics is not going to look like a proof in history. A proof in history is not necessarily going to look like a proof in law. So, there's already ideas. I mean, you're already committed to the idea that there are different kinds of proofs. Now, you might wonder whether one is better than the other. That's an interesting question. Maybe we'll talk about that in class. And, yes, I got something on my sleeve. So, Rachel is at least offering something of an idea of what a proof in ethics is going to look like. Well, there's one condition. That you have good moral reason for your judgments, your moral judgments, and that these more reasons can be explained. These good moral reasons can be explained. Now, he tries to go through several examples. Undoubtedly, not all of you liked them, and that's okay. All he's trying to do is provide an example of some kind of value, some kind of principle, and trying to explain how this is actually some kind of good moral principle. The other criterion for a proof in ethics is not only do you have to have good reason for your action, but you have to show that there's no good reason for a contrary judgment, right? You have to have good reason for your moral judgment, and there's no good reason for a contrary moral judgment. That part gets tricky. That part gets tricky real fast. Now, exactly what counts as a good moral reason, that's an interesting question. Rachel still hasn't provided a clear answer as to what that is. And so you might think, well, there's just no such thing as a good moral reason. Well, no, you already think there is. I know you think there is because of what we talked about earlier, right? You want to think that your actions are rational, that your judgments are rational. You even want to think that your judgments are true, even though you don't necessarily want to confront other people with them, right? You know, you're more than willing to say that person's wrong, just so long as you don't have to say it to their, you know, face. So, you already are committed to the idea that you have good moral reason. You think that you're being rational. How do I know this? Well, you have lots of moral judgments. For those of you that have families, you think you believe that the right thing to do is to take care of your family. Why? That why is what you think is a good moral reason. Lots of you have chosen a career, right? You've chosen to follow a certain path, a career. Why have you chosen that career? And yeah, that has to do with ethics, right? Morality is supposed to tell you how you are to live your life. It's supposed to be a guide to action. You have certain reasons for choosing the career path that you did, for choosing the major that you did. Well, that's a moral reason. You have lots of more reasons. You have lots of more and more reasons. You have goals, right? You have ambitions. And you don't think that these ambitions and these goals just float out of the air, right? You don't just go from one ambition to the next. You think you should stick with this ambition, especially over others. You think you should stick with this goal, especially over others. Why? That's what you think is your good moral reason, right? Again, pick your favorite controversial topic. You think you're right. And you don't think that you're right simply because of an emotional outburst or because of a feeling, right? You think you have good moral reason. Why? Write it down. Contemplate. If the answer doesn't come immediately to you, start thinking of why this action is good in comparison to other actions. Try to find that moral reason. It's there. You have it. So write down that moral reason. Write down what you think is a good moral reason. And we'll talk about that in class.