 So, we're dealing with ethical egoism. The idea that I had to look out for number one, not only that, you know, maybe I do in fact look out for number one, but I should look out for number one. The idea that my interests are what counts, everybody else's interests count only to the extent that they fulfill my interests. Then the ring of Gaijis, this is a myth proposed by an ancient Greek who is talking with Socrates in this dialogue of Plato's. And Glaucon is his name, Glaucon is advocating the idea that we ought to be ethical egoists, that we ought to look out for our own interests first, and everybody else is to the extent that it serves our own. It goes about arguing for this claim using a thought experiment. Now thought experiment is a pretty favorite tool of philosophers. We don't think that the thought experiment could actually happen, but we wonder in these different circumstances how our concepts work in these circumstances to help better inform us of how the concepts work in current circumstances, or in actual circumstances. So the ring of Gaijis, we're imagining this ring that basically lets you get away with anything. Just lets you get away with anything. And Glaucon argues that in this situation, we would be happiest if we just got away with anything that we wanted, that we just served our own interests. And he thinks that this proves that ethical egoism is the right view. So let's take a look at the ring of Gaijis and see what Glaucon has to say, so long as it serves our own interests. So before we get into the actual myth of the ring of Gaijis, it's worth noting what Glaucon thinks is good and bad. What he thinks is good, or what he says is the best, is being able to pursue your own interests without worrying about anybody else. That means being able to pursue your own interests, no matter what the cost to anybody else, without fear of reprisal, or revenge, or justice, or punishment for what you're trying to do. So I'm here in this park, and it serves my interest to, you know, maybe I'll carry in some food, or maybe I've got a power bar with me, and I really don't want to carry it back. So I just crumple it up the wrapper. After I finish eating the power bar, just crumple up the wrapper and leave it aside. Let somebody else worry about it. They could take care of that. Well, and the best in this circumstance for Glaucon is carrying the wrapper and casting it aside without having to worry about punishment, or $100 fine, or anything like that. Now before you think Glaucon is just too selfish here, you know, there's something to be said for ethical egoism. We ought to care about our own interests, at least to an extent. You know, if our interests are important, then why exactly should we care about other people's interests? That's going to be an interesting question we're going to look at. So this is the best for Glaucon, ethical egoism. Being able to look after our own interests without having to worry about any kind of cost, or punishment, or reprisal from everybody else. The worst for Glaucon is suffering at the hands of others. Now this is kind of broad. Suffering at the hands of others could be, you know, when they're pursuing their own interests at our cost, right? That's one way that we suffer at the hands of others. Another way that we suffer at the hands of others is if they're punishing us for what we've done. If we've harmed somebody else in the course of our own interests, so we punish them. So we had the best, and we had the worst. The best is getting exactly what we want without cost. The worst is suffering at the hands of others. Justice, according to Glaucon, is kind of this mutual agreement that we enter into with other people and the society. And the idea behind justice is that I'm not going to make other people pay for what I want. I can still pursue what I want, okay, I can still pursue what I want, but I'm not going to do so in such a way that other people are going to suffer because of it. Well, this is neither the best nor the worst. It's not the worst because, you know, at least hopefully with justice, we're ensuring that nobody is suffering at the hands of other people. However, it's not the best. The best is when we get to do what we want without fear of cost or reprisal. And Glaucon thinks that justice, well, it's neither the worst, it's also not the best. So in Glaucon's book, justice just is not a good thing. It's not a good thing. And he says, you think so too. You think justice isn't a good thing either. And the reason why is because of the Ring of Gaijis. Because of the thought experiment that carried out with the Ring of Gaijis. So let's take a look at that next. So what's going on with the Ring of Gaijis? Well, like I said, it's the thought experiment. Now embedded in this thought experiment is an argument. The argument basically, or at least how we're going to understand it here, is a reductioid absurdum. Now, if you remember from the logic quick sheet, the reductioid absurdum, the basic way that that runs is you assume some kind of proposition. You assume some proposition. But from that proposition, you derive a contradiction. Since that proposition results in a contradiction, you conclude that that original proposition is false. So how does this work with the Ring of Gaijis? Glaucon kind of gives us this idea that, at least the way the Socrates is thinking about it, Socrates is going to say something like this, even if you could pursue your own interest without fear of reprisal, without fear of punishment, you still shouldn't. You should still think about other people. You should still think about how your actions can affect others. And that should be part of your moral reason. Even if your actions are going to hurt other people, that's good reason to think that you shouldn't pursue that action. Not necessarily definitive, but at least good reason to think that you shouldn't perform that action. Well, Glaucon asks Socrates to think of this situation and say, okay, hold on a second. Let's imagine a scenario in which you could get away with anything. So he says, think of, he imagines this Ring of Gaijis. So suppose there's a Ring of Gaijis. And if you wear this Ring, you become invisible and you can get away with anything you want. So here's my Ring of Gaijis. So I put on the Ring and now I'm invisible. Now I can get away with anything that I want. If I want to walk into the classroom and steal your water bottle, I can do it. If I want to walk into the classroom and open up your book and scribble on the inside out of malicious joy and make you miss your notes quiz, I can do it. I can get away with it. If I put on the Ring of Gaijis and I can walk into any movie theater and not have to pay for a ticket and I could do that, I can get away with anything that I want when I wear the Ring of Gaijis. But now I take it off and you can see me again. And I can't get away with anything that I want. Well, Glaucon says, well, just imagine you can have this Ring of Gaijis. You put it on, you disappear and you can get away with anything you want. You take it off and you got it by the rules again. Glaucon challenges you, said, look, what would you really do? If you really had the Ring of Gaijis and you put it on, you get away with anything you want. Of course you'd put it on and of course you'd try to get away with anything that you want. You'd try to be an ethical egoist. You'd try to serve your own interests without worrying about anybody else. Glaucon thinks that's true. You know, in Glaucon's defense, we actually kind of have something like that today with the Ring of Gaijis. There are circumstances in which quite a lot of people, when they have no fear of consequences, will act any way they want to. The phenomenon is called the online disinhibition syndrome. I think it is online disinhibition syndrome. Basically the idea is when you're online and you leave comments on a comment box, there's no fear of consequences. Nobody's going to be able to hurt you because you call them names or call them stupid or yell at them or say they're idiots and everything else. They're not face to face. You can get away with it. Well, since you can get away with it and you know, online with these comment sections you can pretty much get away with a lot. There are a few things you can't get away with, but a lot of things you can get away with online in the comment section. You can't get away with front, you know, face to face. If you're face to face with somebody and you call them kinds of names, you call them a jerk, there's going to be an issue. But online you can get away with it and in fact people do. They become horrible, horrible human beings in these comment sections. You don't have to look around very long to see that this is true. So maybe there's something Glaucon has to say that if you put on the ring, you try to get away with anything you want. No fear of reprisal, no punishment, no worries, just get what you want. You've got to love the special effects in this video, huh? So this is the first thing that Glaucon has to say about putting on the ring of Gaijis. If you wear it, you try to get away with what you want and anything you want. The next part of this argument is that, well, since you would act like an ethical egoist, well, the reason why you would do that is because that's what makes you happy, is getting what you want without fear of reprisal. That ethical egoism is what actually makes people happy. And we're still dealing with this ancient notion of morality. That the point of morality is happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, right? Being, you know, this kind of completion of being. Well, Glaucon says, hey, that's our being. We want to get away with anything we want. Well, since that's what consists in our happiness, this is the next part, since that's what consists in our happiness, we ought to be able to do that. We should be ethical egoists. We should go after happiness. Well, if we should be ethical egoists, then it's false that, you know, so now we have this contradiction. If we really should be ethical egoists, then now we got this contradiction from the first proposition that you shouldn't act like an ethical egoist. Well, so much the worse for this porsocrates claim that we shouldn't be ethical egoists, so reject it. So the basic structure of the argument is something like this. We would, in fact, act like ethical egoists if we can get away with it. And the reason why we would do that is because that's what makes us happy. And since that's what makes us happy, we ought to be ethical egoists. Therefore, justice is bad. Because justice prevents us from doing exactly what we want. Well, I thought about just leaving you guys alone, but I decided against it. And there's a reason why I decided against it. You know, Glaucon thinks that, you know, if we had the opportunity to get away with anything, then we would. And, you know, for a lot of people, that's really true. Now, but he has this additional claim. And that the reason why we would try to get away with it is because that's what makes us happy. Well, is that true? You know, in my own case, if I could just get away with anything that I wanted, what, I just, you know, take a paycheck and, you know, forget about teaching and, you know, just, you know, have happy, fun days and let y'all wallow in misery. Is that really what I want? No, kind of doesn't look like. I mean, at least in my case, I enjoy teaching. I like helping people learn. I like making the videos so that, so that people can improve in the course. Right? That's something I want to do. And, you know, by the way, that's true for a lot of people. You look at a lot of studies as far as what the most fulfilling jobs are. It's not the ones that pay the most. No. It's usually the ones that are the more altruistic. So teachers, right up there on the fulfilling scale, Lord knows we don't get a great paycheck, but it's very fulfilling because we're helping others. Now, this kind of issue seems to be a huge problem for Glaucon because, you know, this claim that if we do exactly what we want, if we serve only our own interests, then we would be happy. Well, empirically, that looks false. I mean, this is an empirical claim. This is a claim about what produces happiness in us. You can make a claim, you know, tickling people on the left foot makes people happy, but that's empirical. So you'd have to go out and test and see where the tickling people on the left foot makes them happy. Probably in most cases it doesn't. So this empirical claim that just serving your own interests is what makes you happy, at least for a good number of people, is false. It's false. So this is a problem for Glaucon's argument that this empirical claim that just getting what we want or just serving our own interests, that that produces happiness, empirically, looks like it's false. Maybe just one more time. Well, Glaucon actually has two versions of the Ring of Gaijis myth. In the second version, he says, well, OK, well, let's just assume, you know, so I'm sorry, with the first version of the Ring of Gaijis argument, he thinks that every time he put on anybody who's given the Ring of Gaijis would use it and they would serve only their own interests. Glaucon says, well, let's assume that's false. Let's assume that's false. Let's suppose that there are two Rings of Gaijis and that one Ring is given to the unjust man, the one that, or the unjust man, and that's the person that pursues only their own interests, especially the cost of others. And the other Ring is given to a just man. And the just man ensures that, you know, when he pursues his, you know, his interests, that he doesn't do so at the cost of others. He's always thinking about other people. So suppose each of them is given a Ring and let them live according to their principles. The unjust man wears the Ring of Gaijis, gets whatever he wants without fear of reprisal. He's rich, he's famous. He's admired and adored by people around him because he's rich and famous and because he always succeeds. Again, this is a little bit scary because there seem to be a lot of people in our society that get whatever they want. And I'm not saying they do so at the cost of others, right? Or just saying they get whatever they want. And we do in fact adore them quite a lot, right? Some magazines that we have in the supermarket shelf would not be in existence if that were not true. But yeah, so this unjust man gets the Ring of Gaijis and gets whatever he wants, no fear of reprisal and is adored and loved and respected by everybody else. What about the just man? Well, Glaucon says, hey, if that just man is really just, he's not gonna care about admiration. He's not gonna care about whether or not people recognize him for his just actions. So let that be the case or the just man lives out his life using the Ring of Gaijis, he wears it, he gets away with it whatever he wants, but he in fact only pursues those courses of action that don't harm other people. He doesn't sacrifice the interests of others for his own sake. Well, that guy, maybe he lives a nice life, maybe not, right? But he's certainly not gonna be all rich and all famous because he's not getting everything he wants. He's living according to justice. And the only way he can succeed is by being unjust. The only way you can get everything you want is by being unjust. Well, he's not doing that. Well, that person, the just man, is never recognized for his just actions. He is not wealthy. He is not all powerful. He does not have the admiration of everyone. Glaucon says, hey, which of these two guys is happiest? I'll give you three guesses. The first two don't count and it's not the just man because the just man is living a mediocre life. Whereas the unjust man is living the grand life. And the grand life is what makes us happy. Well, so Glaucon's second version of the argument runs into some similar problems as the first. I mean, this is the idea that the unjust man, the one that gets away with everything would be happy and the just man, the one who just lives a mediocre life is never recognized for his justice would not be happy. Well, again, this is an empirical claim. We'd have to be able to observe in order to verify that it's true or false. Well, again, when we look to a lot of the studies, the most fulfilling jobs are not the ones where you're caring all about you. According to the statistics, the most fulfilling jobs are the ones where you care about and care for other people. So that's one problem. But here's another problem, even just leaving those statistics aside. Here's a question. Is it even possible to empirically verify this situation as Glaucon has described it? Because remember, he's describing the just man and this just man is never recognized or even known for his just actions. He's just just, right? He puts on the ring of Gaijes. He lives out his just life. He's never known about. Well, given that condition, we can never know whether that just man is happy or not because we never know who he is. It's really hard to empirically verify that. I suppose he can use intuition to try to answer this question, but intuition is notoriously problematic when trying to answer empirical claims. If we could just use intuition to verify empirical claims, we wouldn't need to perform any of the physical sciences. Not at all. Because we could just intuit the way the world is. But we've had huge problems just trying to intuit the way the world is. Or maybe another way of saying this and saying that the just man would not be happy is a claim in psychology. And for this kind of claim in psychology, you need experiment. You need to make observations. But the way this is described, it wouldn't be possible. Now you might alter it and just say, okay, well, we can't point to the unrecognized just man and we can look at the recognized just man and see if he's happy, but Glaucon's probably gonna say, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. You know, that guy's getting admiration. He's known for his justice, so you fail the conditions of the Ring of Geiges. What are you gonna do at this point? It's kind of hard to see. So this is kind of a problem. This is a big question mark that we have with Glaucon's second version and it's related to the first version of the Ring of Geiges.