 In this video, we're going to look at secular humanism. Now, secular humanism, or the advocates of secular humanism, are emphatic in claiming that secular humanism is not a religion. Instead, what they say is that secular humanism is a practical philosophy, it's good practical wisdom. Now, instead of trying to base this practical wisdom on some kind of esoteric metaphysical principle, or revelation, or mystical experience, or anything like that, the advocates of secular humanism say they draw upon the best of human reason. And so that means that they'll follow standards and methods that you'll find in the physical sciences, and ethical theory, and a philosophy that, again, doesn't appeal to some kind of weird metaphysical principle or mysticism, but instead is something that can be discovered, known, and made intelligible by human reason. Now, the advocates of secular humanism have, or at least according to this writing, to have six main characteristics for secular humanism. The first is that there's a particular method of inquiry. I briefly mentioned this before, but this is exemplified by the physical sciences. Second is a natural cosmic outlook. So, in simplest terms, what this means is that they're not trying to appeal to anything supernatural. On that same line, secular humanism is explicitly non-theistic. They are not going to appeal to some kind of divinity for any kind of explanation, especially for anything natural, and especially for any sort of ethical theory. I got on those lines that their ethical theory will be not only humanist, meaning that it is derived from and just derived from human beings as opposed to some sort of religious principle or divinity, and is going to be agreeable to human reason. Second, humanism advocates democratic principles to govern society. And finally, second, humanism recognizes that a single culture, a single human, a single group cannot make the changes necessary for humanity. Instead, what secular humanism claims is that we all pretty much have to work together to succeed in our own society and for society to thrive. The first characteristic of secular humanism deals with the method of inquiry, and this is how secular humanists say we should go about trying to discover answers to questions. The first thing to note or the first thing they want to insist upon is that the methods given by the physical sciences are the exemplar. This is the best way to start answering these questions about what goes on in the world or what we should do. So this is basically, at least according to this reading, the hypothetical deductive method. So one has a hypothesis to explain some event or phenomena, especially the cause relationships involved in the event or phenomena, and it constructs a hypothesis, and then they construct an experiment to either confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis. Without the experiment, there's nothing there that could be either confirmed or disconfirmed, and so it's really not worth looking at. Theories are further evaluated in terms of their simplicity, their mathematical elegance, how well they fit into other well-confirmed theories, or even provide better or more explanation for what's going on. The second thing is that all the evidence, all the reasoning, all justification for whatever conclusion you're trying to reach, must in principle be observable. People must be able to see what's going on and reach the same conclusion. Kind of in contrast to the secular humanism rejects any kind of private intuitions, any mystical experiences, any kind of spiritual revelations, for the simple fact that, you know, this is inherently a private thing. This can't be shared with others. If we were to allow for such private intuitions as justification, then there would be a force to say that we have to believe what somebody else claims is true without being able to see the evidence for ourselves. Finally, you know, that kind of goes along with this, is that, you know, views that are, or theories that are well-confirmed, or ones that are confirmed through intersubjective confirmation. Again, this is appealing to this idea that in principle we all have to be able to observe it and reach the same conclusion. If we don't reach the same conclusion, if, you know, everybody has an equal chance and then the reasoning is well done, if, you know, people just go, you know, observe the evidence again and again, and we don't have this intersubjective confirmation. If there isn't consensus on whether the hypothesis is confirmed or disconfirmed, then you must withhold judgment. That's not the same thing as proving it's false, right? It's just saying this is not something that can reasonably be believed. So this is the first characteristic of secondary humanism, that the methods of inquiry most best resemble what happens in the physical sciences. The fourth characteristic of secondary humanism is that it's a naturalistic cosmic outlook. Now, in brief concerns, what this means is that the explanations for our existence are meaning what we're supposed to be, we're supposed to do, where we're going. All of this must be, must firmly be planted in this, you know, the universe, right, in the existing universe. Not some obscure metaphysical principle, not some deity, not some other worldly heaven or anything like that, right? Our meaning is found here. It's not found somewhere else. And, you know, as long as you're dealing with what's happening here, that's great, right? Whatever explanations you provide, if they're drawing from what happens here in existence, what actually happens, then that's perfectly legitimate. In fact, you should do that. So, you know, this outlook, this explanation of who we are and where we're going and what we're supposed to be, can draw not only just from the physical sciences, but history, ethics, philosophy. It can draw from the best of what human creative endeavors can do, right? You can pull from art, you can pull from psychology. That's fine, provided they follow, you know, the proper methods of inquiry and provide there's interest-objective confirmation. But this explanation of who and what we are must be drawn from all of this. We must consider it all together. It's got to be synoptic. If we're going to understand who and what we are, we have to draw from the best and all of what human reason can provide. The advocates of seconding humanism are clear. Seconding humanism is non-theistic. If you're going to do seconding humanism, you cannot appeal to divinity, any kind of divine to provide any explanation. All explanations, you know, the reasoning deals with, you know, the reason why they do this is it has to do with the methods of inquiry. Any kind of appeal to a divinity is going to have to be at best some kind of appeal to some kind of mystical experience, some kind of particular intuition, because we don't have interest-objective agreement on any kind of divinity. It's not as if there's a divinity amongst us every day saying, by the way, I'm here and here's what you should do, right? If a divinity did do that, seconding humanism probably would allow for something like that at that point and say because then we can all reach interest-objective agreement. So any kind of explanation of who and what we are and our meaning, our place in the universe, cannot appeal to anything supernatural, right? The only thing that exists is what's natural. Seconding humanism rejects the efficacy of prayer, right? Prayer doesn't work for seconding humanism. Any kind of salvation received from a deity, right? Salvation is found in humans, it's found in us, not in some kind of God. The soul is not separate from the body. If indeed there is a soul, after all, we haven't been able to find it using the physical sciences. There's no empirical confirmation for soul. And there's no difference between the mind and the brain, right? There is no mind-brain, mind-body duality, there's just the brain, right? That's where your mind is. Again, you can't see a mind, you can only see brains, and that's what we get through interest-objective confirmation. I, you know, maybe another way of saying non-theism is that seconding humanism rejects anything not supernatural, anything that can't be found, discovered, investigated, or discussed in the physical sciences. Now, at least some people are quick to claim that since seconding humanism rejects any kind of divinity, that then there's no possible ethical theory. Well, seconding humanists respectfully disagree and say, well, no, there's lots of ethical theory we can do without appeal to any kind of divinity. In fact, it's probably easier, right? Every time we appeal to a divinity, we are talking about something we cannot understand, right? It's not a physical thing, it's not a temporal thing, it's not even an emotional thing. Trying to understand what a divinity would be like us as a person is, at best, difficult, if not impossible, right? And add on to the fact that we can't reach interest-objective agreement on what this is going to be like. In fact, some religions claim that the minute you try to anthropomorphize the divinity, you've committed a heresy. So, let's let the second humanist say, let's not pretend we can do ethical theory by appealing to a divinity. After all, that's not like us. On top of that, second humanist claim, we can do lots of ethical theory by simply looking at us, right? In fact, most ethical theories are like this. They look at what we in fact do, how we in fact operate, what we are in fact like in order to figure out what we what's good for us. And we think of health. We can look at the concrete actions that we actually perform, eating potatoes versus raw broccoli, right? And it's not hard to discover from those two actions which one's actually better, right? You eat potato chips and you know, you don't get overweight, or your blood pressure rises, you die quicker, or this sort of thing. Whereas eating raw broccoli, the whole tends to be better for you. So, second humanists are quick to point out that it's not hard to look at what's healthy, look at what we actually do to figure out what's healthy. Let's look at the rest of what we do to figure out some of these other moral claims. We start to talk about rights. We could look at the nature of our wills and our decisions. After all, this is what John Locke and Emmanuel Conte have done. When we talk about what it means to thrive as a human being, we could look at what Aristotle and Epicurus have written. I mean, these are just a name of a few. I mean, we already do this in a lot of important ways. We already look at what promotes our, you know, try to figure out what promotes our happiness. So the second humanist claim is, look, we just need to carry on that project, right? Let's figure out what actually makes us happy, what actually contributes to human fulfillment and human society thriving, and then there's our ethical theory. And you don't need to appeal to a divine. So we just got finished saying that for the second humanist, ethical theory can be derived from actual human behavior. And well, you know, the next characteristic of humanism is kind of a specific application of that. Second humanist advocate democracy. And, you know, this means that the government is derived from the consent of the people, not from some esoteric principle or some divinity. It is the people that give the authority to the government, nothing else. And this is because of the way that we work. We make decisions. We have free will. Or at least something that looks like free will. And we tend to be miserable when somebody who doesn't know us or represent us or understand us just starts making decisions from on high as to what we should be doing. So instead of the second humanist claims, we need to have some kind of democratic principles for government. This is going to include, you know, such basic notions that policies, laws, representatives should be put in place by the majority of the adults voting in elections. There should be a legal right to opposition, right? Just because a law has been instituted doesn't mean you have to agree with it. Maybe you have to follow it. Or if you're going to not follow it, there has to be some legal recourse to repeal all the law, reject the law, right? To get the law removed. In other words, we have to be able to fix our mistakes, right? That's why I'm in another way of saying that we have to ensure minority rights. Just because the majority is enrolled doesn't mean they get to dictate everything in how a minority should live. There should be a due process of law, not just the whim of some kind of, you know, autocrat on high. And this should be a guarantee of civil liberties. If we're going to be happy, we have to be able to live our lives as we see fit. And a lot of this is really outlined, you know, a lot of these basic ideas are outlined in John Locke's social political philosophy. And yeah, I mean, he has appeals to scripture here and there, but likely that's just to appease his audience. He's certainly not directly appealing to any kind of private revelation to justify claims about who and what we are. Or at the very least, you can go through John Locke's theory, scratch out the parts from any appeal to any kind of private revelation. You still have an intact theory. So, you know, the second humanist says, hey, we don't need to appeal to any kind of theocracy here. In fact, we ought to have a democracy. Finally, second humanism recognizes that, of course, then not everybody's going to agree with them, right? They're not necessitated that everybody must be a second humanist. But they do stipulate that, you know, if there is going to be human thriving, if human society or societies are going to live and prosper, there has to be cooperation amongst all peoples. It just simply cannot be the case that one group of second humanists can dictate to everybody else how they should live or force everybody else how they should live. Or, you know, that second human is working alone, despite what everybody else is doing, can do the job all by themselves. They can't save the planet just by their own efforts. Instead, second humanist says, it's going to take all of us, we, all human beings are going to be the source of our own, to use the phrase, salvation. Human beings are going to be the source in effort that's going to bring humanity to its fullest potential. It can't be just the humanists working by themselves. It can't be just any one group doing the job or enforcing everybody. You can't force everybody to do it all. I mean, that's, maybe you could, right? You pointed out everybody else and make them live the lives of the way that you think they should. But that would be to violate the very principles of second humans. No, second human is safe. We're going to do this. We're going to have to work together.