Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Thank you for joining us today. I'm Scott Schiff posting the Atlas society, senior fellow Robert <inaudible> on Iran's case secular morality. We wanted people to ask questions. So as Rob was offering his thoughts. If you have a question, please raise your hand and we'll be happy to bring you up. Um, I also want to encourage people to sign up for the Atlas society's weekly newsletter, which has some excellent weekly content. I'll put up a link as we get started. Uh, Rob, thanks for doing this today. Uh, I'll just put it in kind of the form I've heard, you know, if God doesn't exist, why isn't it, anything goes in, in morality,
Speaker 1 00:00:45 Uh, the old, the old saying of this as if God is dead, all things are permitted to it was that dusty ASCII or one of those guys had said,
Speaker 1 00:00:53 Uh, it was it wasn't Russian, you know, the Russians very reframe our Russian, um, may have been Tolstoy actually, because I think he was more traditionalist, but, uh, yes, the sanity of God is dead. All things are permitted. So, you know, without God there can be no morality or I just heard of recently a really, I think revealing formulation of it from it may have been Dennis Prager. It was, um, religious conservatives saying the, the existence of moral commands implies a commander. That is a person who is giving you these commands is telling you what to do. And that I found that formulation intriguing because it really parallels the sort of intelligent design debates, right? Where the idea of that, uh, you know, the order or the order of the universe and the development of humans implies a designer. It implies someone who has created that order.
Speaker 1 00:01:45 And of course, as we know, where I hope we know from the science of evolution is there's a whole explanation you can give for, uh, uh, for how order emerges spontaneously from the natural, uh, processes, uh, the natural processes that lead to evolution by natural selection. These are all simple natural processes that cause highly ordered in complex organisms to, to develop without the need for a designer. And of course, as pre marketers, it's for those of us who are free marketers, it's also a concept we're very well acquainted with in economics that, you know, you could have order in an economy and the coordination, economic coordination, and a highly complex degree of organization without the need for a central planner. So what we want to look for is, is there a similar answer in, in morality that we can have moral commands or at least moral rules without a moral rules, without a ruler moral commands so that a commander or I would prefer the formulation moral rules without a ruler. And so I think Iran has, has accomplished that she has, she has created that argument, uh, she's explained how that can be done and I wanted to go over briefly, uh, how I think she did that.
Speaker 1 00:03:10 All right. So I'm going to sort of, I want to try to do this and this bit of I've been working on developing over the years, a sort of five minute version of five minute explanation of a rational basis of morality. So I've got some quotes from mine, rounding and a drag back in here, but I'm sort of going to put it in a very simplified and I think straightforward way that I've been developing. So I want you to imagine that you get up from where you are right now. You walk out the front door and out of the side walk, and then you can get across the street as you're crossing the Creek, just as your, you know, the first foot down to the pavement, you look and you see a truck bearing down at you at high speed hatred, super high rate of speed.
Speaker 1 00:03:54 Now, what is it you're going to do if, uh, if you find yourself in that situation? Well, it's very simple. You're going to get the, you're going to get out of the way of the truck here. You're going to jump back out of the way. You'd be a fool, not to. All right. So the thing is that we have here that very simple example, three essential ingredients for a rational secular basis of morality. Oh, so first, so first of all, you know, we have this idea, well, moral commands imply a commander while there is a kind of a command and instruction here about what you should or should not do. Right? You walk out into the street, you see the truck bearing on you and the voice in your head is going to say, get out of the way now is that voice, do you need God to be the vole?
Speaker 0 00:04:43 You may be cutting out. It may be me.
Speaker 0 00:04:49 Well, I, uh, assume people can hear, um, I am well folks, I'm sorry about the technical issues. Um, Robert, are you still there? I don't know if we're able to hear Rob. Um, well, I would invite, uh, people up from the audience. Um, you know, if you do, uh, want to talk about this while we're getting a Robin muted, um, you know, I don't want to do too much of a, uh, spoiler alert, but, uh, you know, what ran talked about was, uh, life being the standard of the good that, which furthers human life is the good that, which takes away from it as the bad. Um, Rob, I'm going to suggest you actually maybe leave the room and come back. If that's an option, if you're unable to unmute, um, well, we're going to try to get these technical issues fixed. We appreciate everyone's patience in, um, dealing with this. I, I would, uh, again, invite, uh, people up from the audience, if you want to, um, you know, just talk about some of these issues as we're waiting for sound to come back, bill, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 00:06:29 I'll be listening for a moment because I'm in the middle of dinner, but, um, I will definitely be listening.
Speaker 0 00:06:36 Okay, good. Well, uh, Rob just left. So I'm actually hopeful that that means he's logging out and getting ready to log back in and we'll get to hear, um, the content of what he's talking about. But, uh, one of the things that, um, you know, I'm going to be curious and asking him about when he gets out is that, um, you know, just some religious people use this argument as an excuse for not giving up their faith or traditions to, to try to still find value in what they've been taught since they were children
Speaker 4 00:07:13 On my own observation is yes, but I let him leave him to answer for himself.
Speaker 0 00:07:18 Okay. That sounds good. Lawrence, welcome back. We're going to, uh, invite you on the stage as well. Alejandro. Thanks for joining us, Jack. Thank you for joining us. We've had, uh, Rob had some technical issues. I had a technical issue, but we expect that he's going to be coming back shortly for this.
Speaker 5 00:07:43 Fantastic.
Speaker 0 00:07:45 So, um, in the meantime, we're just, uh, kind of having a bit of a round table, uh, on our own, um, Alejandro, I want to do invite you to speak if you had anything to say while we're waiting for Rob to come back.
Speaker 6 00:08:02 Hi, thank you. Well, I believe religious people think that, well, I believe that God gave people will gifts, people rights and gifts, people moral, but in Rand's view it's life, our, well, we have egg way. Some that our standard, sorry, life is our center of value and that's what correlates with the other rights, right?
Speaker 0 00:08:34 Yeah, I think that's true. And I think what you're talking about is kind of a, um, modern version of Christians where they at least do see, you know, the value of rights coming from God. That's not what the early Christians necessarily accepted when, you know, we were in the dark ages, but, uh, it is, uh, that the concept of rights and tying them to God at least was a, I think a benefit of, you know, the reformation. And, uh, I, I sometimes tie it to the fact that a, the Catholics and the Protestants were so busy fighting each other. They didn't necessarily have as much time to repress their own people. So, uh, that's part of, uh, you know, with the enlightenment grew out of, um, Lawrence, I want to invite you to, uh, make any comment, uh, on the topic, if you have any thoughts.
Speaker 7 00:09:29 I think, uh, yeah, one of the big things that when we talk about secular morality is, and it's been brought up before this sort of interesting thing of, I think it would be a safe assertion to say that there are probably more people who are today, not as strong adherence to religion, it seems that there is more people sort of moving away from that. And as a result though, they're not getting that replacement for their morals, which is this idea of subjectivism and postmodernism that is sort of infiltrated thought of, well, you know, it comes into people adhering to intersectionality or, oh, everything is too subjective. So we can't find real truth. So it's sort of like on the one hand, they've gone away from these principles of a superstition that is guiding their belief, but they just do not have that sufficient build to actually conduct themselves afterwards, which I guess goes to the point that creating a morality without the explanation of some higher being commanding you is difficult. I think that gets into a more individual perspective of, it's hard to do things by yourself. It's a lot easier just to follow what someone tells you to do, because that's just what they say. So
Speaker 0 00:10:52 That is a very good point. I think that is absolutely true. Um, and I think that's part of what happens because a lot of people ended up being not religious, but then they turned to something like, you know, socialism or communism that it ended up, um, leading people to say, you see what happens when you turn away from God. And just, buttressing the point. Um, Richard, thank you for joining us. We have Richard Salzman, senior scholar here. Thanks for, uh, joining us while we're waiting for Rob to get back,
Speaker 8 00:11:27 Uh, glad to join. Uh, if I can pinch it in any way, let me know, but, uh, just joined, uh, just join right now.
Speaker 5 00:11:35 Richard, I'd love to know, um, J LoPaire who's the chairman of the board of the Atlas society shared, uh, his experience with objectivism, um, saying that he was able to sign on, you know, very quickly to the, to the ethics, to the, um, to the economics, but it took him a while to kind of get to the secular basis of morality. I wonder if, um, if either you had that experience or if you had always been, been an atheist, um, or if in your dealing with students of objectivism, if you'd found that to be a similar kind of pathway.
Speaker 8 00:12:19 Yeah. I might have some thoughts on this. I was raised Catholic and, um, I would say my parents were serious about it and you know, we went to church every Sunday. Now it's not, it was not the kind of Catholicism where we're reading the Bible. I can't even say to this day that I've read huge passages of the Bible, but for example, my father was a convert from Episcopalian to Catholic and converts can be, get very serious about these things taught catechism for seven years. I think. So I went, I did, I went to Sunday school as they called it, studied it. And I think around the time I was probably 13, 12, 13, 14, and then none of it made sense to me. It just seemed illogical. And I'm sorry, I started questioning things, but I would say this, that, and by the time I was maybe 20, I was a full fledged objectivist.
Speaker 8 00:13:10 So that would be, um, you know, four or five years later. But I would give this advice I've found if you believe as Iran did that, that religion itself is a kind of primitive form of philosophy that is better than just being a Neal list, having no, you know, organized view of the world. And of course you said we should have a scientific philosophy, but, you know, given the choice between that and Neil ism, uh, religion is, is something at least some kind of structure. My experience with objectivism was by the time I was reading it, I was ready to hear an atheistic argument. But then also she used to say she was not a militant atheist. In other words, she would make a positive case for reason and rationality and science. And that's an easier way to come to it. I think if you just go to a religious person and tell them to surrender, their belief system is very difficult because it's ineffective, it's their philosophy.
Speaker 8 00:14:07 And, um, it's, it's too big an ask if you will. That's what I've learned over time. Now. I'm not saying it as I was going through this, that I approached it this way. I would approach many, you know, fellow Catholics once I became atheist and know brow, beat them a bit. Well, how can you possibly believe this? And I learned over time that the best thing to do would be just to advocate the secretary view to advocate reason and rationality and not take the polemical view of saying how ridiculous it was to, you know, rely on the sermon on the Mount or commandments. So, so I hope that helps a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 0 00:14:44 Great. Appreciate that. Uh, we have TAs founder, David Kelly with us. Do you have a thoughts? We appreciate you joining while we're waiting for Rob to come back, uh, on Iran's case for a secular morality,
Speaker 5 00:15:04 David, you need to unmute.
Speaker 9 00:15:06 Yeah. I came in late to the discussion. Sorry about that. And, uh, so I'm not sure the question I heard Rob's answer, but I don't know the question. Um, was it, uh, you know, about, you know, our personal journeys or, uh,
Speaker 0 00:15:23 I'd be interested in hearing yours?
Speaker 9 00:15:27 Well, mine was, uh, you know, way kind of easy. Um, I, uh, I, I was, I don't know. I, I, my family belonged, but Presbyterian church and there was confirmation, I think when I was 14 or something. So we, in the middle of the week, on top of Sunday school, we had to go to a confirmation class. And, uh, the preacher was asking about, um, w we were talking about the new Testament and, you know, Jesus's junctions. And, um, my memory and at my age, I have to, I, and as an epistemology, I have to say, I've learned how fallible my memory is. So take this with a grain of salt, but it's my, is my objective is creation. If you will. Um, I was, uh, someone asked, you know, Jesus seems to be advocating suffering. I don't get it. What, during the other cheek, you know, go loving your enemy.
Speaker 9 00:16:35 What's that all about? I don't see, what's been about suffering and my family had it. My father in particular had kind of a Calvinist speak to him, or, I mean, very successful. You've worked hard, working hard. Um, but also, um, not out of the joy of work, uh, kind of, uh, achievement and duty or orientation. Anyway, she asked this question, this woman, this girl in the class asked the question. I said, that's a really good question. Why didn't I think of that? And I began, then I started thinking, how, where did that question come from? And I got, I began asking all kinds of questions because I realized you could ask questions about stuff you'd learn. So one day I was wa and I was also, you know, as a teenager, I was kind of contrary. Uh, I began looking for anything I could, I could rebel against or objective.
Speaker 9 00:17:29 So what else do I go to a friend's house? And I said, okay, let's go to the basis. Here is this God exists. And I thought of all, I can think of two arguments. Um, I now know there were primitive forms of the cosmological argument who created the world and the telltale logical argument. How did the world have such order? And I thought, well, no, I can answer both of those. I mean, I was 14 or 15, I don't know. So anyway, um, that kind of did it for me. Um, I was interested, but I became an atheist and, uh, as a teenager, and then when I found on rant, I, I just vastly expanded my understanding. So, um, if my story,
Speaker 8 00:18:16 Uh, Scott, if I could add something that might help as well, I remember the whole concept of going to confession and, um, periodically as a, as a Catholic kid, um, it struck me as odd that it seemed like you could just about do anything, uh, bad. And then as long as you told the priest, you got a clean slate and start all over again. And that's, it struck me as kind of a gimmick or a trick. And you know, what, why, why is this any good? So I wouldn't have used the word, you know, when I was eight or nine years old, you know, where's the accountability here, where's the transparency. But I remember that weekend, my respect for the whole thing. And so then coming to a second or, uh, ethic like rant, where you must take responsibility for your action and you must choose to, you know, be rational and ethical, and then there are consequences and you can't lay it off on others.
Speaker 8 00:19:14 Uh, really influenced me in a, you know, in a positive way. And yet I did not think it had the dogmatism, uh, associated with, uh, the Catholic edicts and things like that. Um, but, um, so that's one thing, but on the other, on the other side, we are, I'm not sure this is true of every religion. I do remember going through a weird transition where, uh, on the one hand in the religion you're taught not to judge. So the, the famous edict don't judge less you'd be judged, that kind of thing, which also had this kind of confessional nature to it. Namely, you know, you can indulge others centers. And as long as you self mutually indulge, you're off the hook. Well, uh, so that didn't seem legit to me either, but when you shift from that to a philosophy like objectivism that says, judge everything, uh, I found myself ill equipped to do that very well.
Speaker 8 00:20:10 And so the transition was tough. It shifted from don't judge, anyone to, you know, judge, uh, almost indiscriminately judge, everything, but, you know, without yet the tools of knowing how to judge in context and judge, you know, benevolently say, so, uh, so I don't think that's a feature of objective as I think it's a feature of going from a system that tells you not to judge at all. And then you're told to judge, and you really, it takes time to learn how to do that. You don't have the equipment yet, if you know what I mean. So yeah, that might, that might help here as well.
Speaker 0 00:20:44 The topic, well, Rob, welcome back. People been sharing anecdotes, uh, while waiting for you, but we look forward to your, uh, that, uh, five minute presentation.
Speaker 1 00:20:55 Sorry about that. When did I get kicked out? Cause I have no idea. It just happens that I
Speaker 0 00:20:59 Started fading a little bit. Uh, I can't tell you the exact word. I would just start with the five minute. Uh,
Speaker 1 00:21:07 Okay. So I wasn't like halfway through the five minutes I was at the beginning of the five minutes,
Speaker 0 00:21:11 I think so.
Speaker 1 00:21:13 Okay. Cause I just kept talking. I didn't know I was frozen.
Speaker 0 00:21:16 I know
Speaker 1 00:21:17 The app froze up on me. I had to restart stuff anyway. Um, all right, so let's do the five minute thing is I was looking at what are the ingredients you need to have? Is this the question of how can you have a secular morality and uh, what are the ingredients you need to actually have a morality in the first place? So we're trying to justify how we can actually build a morality without having to have the commander and the, uh, the ingredients you need is you need something, you need some sort of imperative, something telling you what you should or shouldn't do. Uh, you need to have the basis for that imperative, not be supernatural or subjective. It has to be based on some kind of facts of reality and observable facts of reality. And it has to be something where there is an incentive to do it.
Speaker 1 00:22:09 You need to have a, why should you follow this? And in most moralities and most religious formalities, especially there is a reward or punishment for following the moral code. You're going to go to heaven. You're going to go to hell, but we, if we're gonna have a secular morality that reward or punishment has to be here in this world. All right. So the example I like to use to get people thinking about this is suppose you get up from wherever you are, wherever you are, and you go to cross the street. And just as you're stepping out in the street, you're putting your first steps down into the pavement. You look, and suddenly you see a speeding truck bearing down on you. So what would you do? Well, obviously you get out of the way the speeding truck, you know, you'd be a fool not to, but in that very, very simple and actually somewhat oversimplified example.
Speaker 1 00:22:55 Uh, we have those three ingredients that we need. We have something, a command, something you have to do get out of the way of the truck. You have a basis for that command or imperative that's based on facts is based on, you could see the truck coming. You have knowledge of what a truck is. You have some idea of, of what it will cause to you, what it will do to you. If it hits you as you also have the incentive, you have the, the alternative you have the reward or punishment, right? The punishment is you die, a horrible, painful death. And the reward is you get to go on and live your life and enjoy everything that you could, that there is to enjoy in life. So you have three in the elements that you need for a secular morality. Now, in this truck example, uh, there is, uh, one more, it only lasts one more thing that we need to have an actual morality or a moral code, which is it's too simplified of an example.
Speaker 1 00:23:52 You don't need morality to tell you to get out of the way of a speeding truck. Uh, you don't need complex principles. You don't need, um, you know, abstractions for that. Uh, I've. I would point out there are rules of the road that we have, you know, that we set up. There are rules that we set up that are supposed to avoid this, this, this outcome. You know, you just have, you have speed limits, you have red lights, your, your mom taught you to look both ways before you cross the street. So we do have rules that are set up that are supposed to prevent you from getting hit by a speeding truck. And morality is a moral code and actual, uh, theory of morality is like a large, a grander scale version of that. But to really have that need for a whole moral code, we have desolate that we don't have the truck example, which is you need examples.
Speaker 1 00:24:39 You need rules that are more complex rules that require a more complex, abstract knowledge to derive. So, you know, the example is you will walk out into the street and you see socialism come to gig bearing down at you. You know, there's, uh, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez behind the wheel, uh, birdies grinning at human. I flew like he does. And that you have to say, well, should I get out of the way of socialism both to know that you need to know, you know, economics, you need to know history. You also need to know things like, is it okay to act on self-interest? What is your self interest? You need this whole complex moral knowledge. So that's why you need to have a, uh, that's why you need to have something as complex as a whole moral code with rules and principles and, and, um, and abstractions to help you make decisions.
Speaker 1 00:25:30 So that's the basic idea of the, the why you would have a secular basis is the requirements and needs of human life, impose certain conditions, things you have to do and things you shouldn't do. And those give you, you know, good, clear imperatives that you have to follow things you have to do. They give you, uh, a, a rational basis, a factual basis for judging, what are the things I should do and shouldn't do, uh, and they give you the reward and punishment, the, the rewards of, of living a good life versus the punishment of suffering misery serving, uh, all the negative consequences you could possible suffer.
Speaker 1 00:26:11 Now, is everyone still hearing? Yeah. Okay, good. I think the cough, I just wanna make sure, uh, now the one thing I wanna throw out there is to have a fully fledged out case for a secular morality. Of course, we have to go and we have to flush this out. We have to explain how this would apply to a whole bunch of different situations, not just socialism versus non versus capitalism, but I think the two big questions that would be looming over this, uh, that the most common ones are, if the needs of human life, the requirements for human life, uh, are the basis for a secular morality. How does that apply to things that don't seem like they involve life or death decisions? Things like, uh, you know, how do I, um, w w what career should I choose? Will I, will I actually die?
Speaker 1 00:27:00 If I decide to become an accountant instead of a writer, uh, or, you know, uh, romantic relationships, there's all sorts of other sort of minor issues where it seems like these issues are so remote from the basic survival mode of getting hit by a truck or not, you know, that oversimplified example, how can those be tied back to how can you get guidance in those areas of your life from around morality? That's based on this idea that human life has certain requirements. So that's the first question that I want to sort of put out for discussion. And the second one of course is people are going to come back with, well, what about soldiers who volunteered to go fight? You know, if you're, if you're in Ukraine and the Russians are invading, why would you volunteer to go fight? If you had a morality, it was based on human life. Why wouldn't you just run away? Uh, well, what is, you know, so we also have an intuitive grasp that, you know, firefighters who charge into a burning building are heroic for doing so. So if that's moral, how's that calc, can that be squared with the morality that's based on the requirements of your, of, of survival and, you know, morality this based on you pursuing yourself interests. So those are the two great questions I want to put out for people to, to discuss and bring up.
Speaker 0 00:28:14 All right. Well, great. Well, um, I do want to go to biscuit because of his patience, a biscuit. Do you want to address some of those?
Speaker 10 00:28:23 Yeah, no. I, uh, first just want to appreciate what David and Robin, even Richard laid out and I, uh, back in, in college was the last time I, uh, was introduced to iron Rand and she was then being called an ethical egoist and her philosophy. I don't know if that's still the way she's popularly perceived, but I don't agree with the idea that something like morality can arise out of a secular structure. And I think that it at least, uh, nature would agree. Nature said, uh, in so far as we believe in moral law, we passed sentence on existence. And I think what he meant by that is that we shouldn't assume that there are rules to the universe. We shouldn't hide from the chaos that the universe fundamentally is. And so when I heard, uh, Rob, I think that it was kind of, uh, the, the use of kind of a hypothetical imperative where, uh, you know, he said, you know, you know, you can't walk in the middle of traffic because you don't want to get hit by the truck.
Speaker 10 00:29:30 You know, there's a, there's a punishment, there's a consequence. But I think stepping out in front of traffic, uh, accidentally or otherwise might be considered morally neutral, almost like if you were to set the high hypothetical imperative, that if you want to win the chess game, you shouldn't sacrifice your queen. Well, that doesn't make a bad chess move a morally bad chess move. Right. And I think that that equivocation is sometimes where I get lost with respect to what sec, with, with, uh, with respect to what secular morality means, but I will land there for now. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:30:06 All right. So that, that's something that ties into what iron Rand writes about, how, um, you know, the, the choice to live or not is the fundamental choice, right? So if you decide, I don't want to live, then there's no reason not to step out in front of the moving truck. Right. Um, but I think the point of it is that, uh, there is nothing other than that, that can produce anything that looks like morality. There is no other basis for coming up with something that will give you, you know, rules and requirements and tell you what you ought to do. And I guess the point is that if you look, if you, if you accept the idea that yes, I want to live then a great many things follow from that desire to live, right. That choice to live. I shouldn't say desire to live, cause it's not just a desire.
Speaker 1 00:30:57 It's a choice to live from that choice to live. A lot of things follow, and a whole moral code will follow from that and all sorts of rules as to what you should and shouldn't do. And if you decide you don't, if you don't make that choice, you decide, I don't want to live then nothing at all follows from that in any way, shape or form. And you could, you would act or not act and nothing would make any difference whatsoever. So the idea is that it is that the, the, the choice to live has to be is the premise for all of morality. If you don't make that choice, then yeah. Morality won't apply to you. But at the same time, let's go back then to the positive aspect of this, which is, and I've said this before, but after I must have been after I was cut off that the truck example is too much of a, sort of a negative, you know, a negative, a bad thing will happen to you.
Speaker 1 00:31:47 If you do this, it's not just that a bad thing will happen to you. The real basis for this is that as a living being, you need to constantly be affirmatively acting to create the things you need to survive. You know, uh, uh, living beings have a constant need to be expending energy in order to maintain the order, uh, the integrity of their existence, uh, on, you know, from the cellular level on up, you know, you need to constantly metabolizing energy in order to maintain the integrity of an individual cell. And from that level on up, you have to constantly be doing something and they affirmative positive aspect of, uh, requirement to staying alive. And that's how we all came into existence. It's, it's, it's the whole predicate for why we're here on why and how we're here on earth is we, and the who came before us took these whole series of actions of these conditional necessities. These, if then's in order to, um,
Speaker 1 00:32:50 In order to Rio, become, bring ourselves, keep ourselves in existence and in order to grow and, and, uh, uh, expand our capabilities. Uh, and that also goes back to the reward and punishment aspect. You know, the, the example of getting hit by a truck maybe focuses on the punishment. The reward is all the great things that happen to you. If you do stay alive, which I'm assuming since you're here, listening to me is something that's not a mystery to you, right? So I guess the idea is that there, there is, there is no, the problem I have with the funny Chan argument about, well, what if you choose not to live is that it assumes there hat that, that for morality to exist, there has to be a supernatural force that comes in and tells you, yes, you must live, whether you like it or not, regardless of any choice or, or motive that you have, that's not going to happen, but given that that's not going to happen, we should look around and say, well, is there something else that gives us rules and meaning, and a reason to where we should or should not do something?
Speaker 1 00:33:59 And then yes, there is definitely something that does that. And that's the fact that we're living beings and we need to engage in certain actions in order to, in order to remain alive and to grow and prosper as living beings,
Speaker 10 00:34:11 Rob, just to, uh, I want it to respond just really quickly. And then, uh, if possible, you, you, you mentioned that, uh, the choice to live is a fundamental choice and that moral, that, that a moral category will arise out of our desire to survive. And what immediately came to mind was, was Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan was a serial murderer, a genocidal terrorist, serial rapist, one of the most morally reprehensible characters, and that he conquered half of the known world and really instantiated his ability to continue his own survival. And we can think of several dictators who were morally reprehensible characters, who, you know, who had a really great, you know, I mean, as far as, you know, megalomania is concerned and the, the desire to amass power and to be safe and to live, uh, it doesn't seem to me obvious that, uh, that, uh, desire to survive will give you anything that looks like morality.
Speaker 1 00:35:21 That is a great question. That's a variation of the old, I heard, I heard this one given as the, the Bertrand Russell problem, which has Bershard Russell lived to be like 97 years old, but he was like, you know, from an objectivist terms, he was, he was a totally rep, you know, he was a socialist, he was a undercuts the belief and reason it is philosophy. So it was like, you know, it was an example of pick a totally reprehensible person who lived to be a hundred years old. So if life is the standard of value, how come this person is, is not, uh, is not a success story. Uh, uh, it's not, it's not a moral success story. So you have somebody who you regard as immoral, and yet he survived and he lived now, here's the thing that the morality is a set of rules for how you're going to act.
Speaker 1 00:36:07 It's a set of rules that you're setting down for human beings as such to say, this is how, how people would survive. Uh, and this is how this is, these are rules that you should act that will through cause and effect, you know, reliably lead to your being able to live and survive and thrive. Now, the thing is that Gangas case you look at somebody like Ganga, Scott let's take the Gangas Kahn example in his time and in his place Gangas Kahn was by definition the 0.001, you know, I don't, I don't know how many zeros I have to put in here, given the population of, of, of the world at the time of the Mongol conquests, but he was the, basically the 0.001% case out there of the one guy who did really well under the moral rules that, uh, held sway, uh, during the time of, uh, in, in the mung, among the Mongol cohorts. Now that also implies that the other 99.999999999% of people generally did horribly.
Speaker 1 00:37:17 And, uh, you know, that you were saying, the thing is that, you know, you are much more likely in the middle ages or at the time of, in the dark ages that, you know, at the time that Gangas Kahn held sway, you were much more likely to be one of the people who was murdered. And one of the people who was raped, one of the people who was, you know, looted and starved and, and all the horrible things that happened to people. So the idea that, you know, uh, defended the, the, um, so my, my answer to this person who says, well, why can't I be a gang? This con would be that your presumption is that you're going to be getting this car. You're going to end up being, getting this con, uh, you're gonna end up being the very, the one guy who prospers under the system and not one of the other 99.9, 9% of guys who, uh, ends up getting the short end of the stick under the system. So, you know, you can't make, be like Gangas con a moral rule for somebody because 99.99% of the time, this is going to end up horribly for you.
Speaker 0 00:38:16 Great. Thank you for that. Uh, Sam, do you have a question for Rob? You have to unmute yourself. I tell you what, let's go to Brian while we're waiting.
Speaker 11 00:38:34 All
Speaker 12 00:38:34 Right. Yes. Okay, great. So,
Speaker 12 00:38:40 Yeah, I'm just trying to choose my words, um, you know, to be respectful if this amount of time, uh, let, let me say this. Um, I would argue that we have a secular morality today. That's what I would argue particularly here in the United States. I'm reading. Um, while I was listening to, I was also reading, uh, this article here in the objective standard about, and Rand's view, and basically the rights of individuals, uh, that were secured, particularly in the Americas, you know, north America, United States in particular, I don't have any disagreement with the historical perspective that's laid forth in this particular article. You may be familiar with it. Um, and Rand's American morality, uh, August 25th, 2021 by Craig Bedell. Um, but I would say largely that's the case, right? That what we have today is we have a secular morality. And when I say that, I say that the erosion of the traditional American values that I believe, uh, or sort of laid forth in this article and these ideas of freedoms, particularly, um, freedom of faculties, which, uh, Plato address in the Republic and which the founders addressed in the Federalist papers to secure and protect the individual faculties, uh, uh, of humanity, right?
Speaker 12 00:40:06 Um, the ability to produce this, a right to pursue life, Liberty, the pursuit of, uh, pursuit of happiness, right? Which I always like to highlight the fact that, that, that involves a pursuit, right? The individual themselves must pursue it. And where we've eroded to today is this idea that happiness is a bright, um, happiness must be delivered to me at my doorstep. I don't need to pursue it, but, but what I'm saying is that, that, um, that evolution is precisely because we have a secular form of morality. And, um, in other words, it's detached from any adherence to not just a, sort of a spiritual, uh, traditional spiritual ethic. Um, but, but perhaps a metaphysical ethic, right. A philosophical,
Speaker 0 00:40:52 Well, let's give Robert chance to respond to that.
Speaker 1 00:40:55 Yeah, no, I totally, I think you're, you're right. Here's the thing. I think what we have is we have an implicit secular morality and it's an implicit secular morality by which, I mean, the thing that most people actually live by in most of their life and adhere to is actually not that different from what the objectivist morality would be. Most people have the idea that, okay, you know, I've, I've got a job and a career that I'm going to pursue. I've got family, I've got various things. I want out of life things I want to enjoy out of life. And I'm willing to follow, you know, basic rules of being a honest, decent, productive, human being in order to achieve those goals. That's how most people actually live. But the thing is because the philosophers have basically, you know, since David Hume, the philosophers that basically declared it is impossible to have this be a secular, moral, moral code.
Speaker 1 00:41:47 Most people don't have any idea that this is something that can have a basis or a foundation that you can put onto a firm metaphysical or philosophical foundation that you can define it clearly, et cetera. Now, the interesting thing, if you go back to American history is this is something I've, I've begun to realize more and more over the years I've been investigating it, uh, is, you know, the rap against the enlightenment is that while the enlightenment philosophers wanted to have this to sort of set the great Euro secularism and the enlightenment, and they want, they tried to create a secular philosophy of secular morality and they never achieved it. I think they actually sort of did achieve a secular morality, but they did it under the name under a, under a sort of religious cover. And that's why people didn't notice. So the thing I want you to look up is, look, there's a doctrine in that very popular in the 18th century called natural religion.
Speaker 1 00:42:43 Now, natural religion was this catch all term. And it was, uh, as opposed to revealed religion. So revealed religion means religion that comes from revelation. It comes from God, you know, Moses coming down from the mountain and giving you the tablets, you know, God has given revelations to a prophet and it's written down in the Bible or somewhere else. And religion has be revealed to us by supernatural means. Well, natural religion was in contrast. That was the idea that it's this very enlightenment idea. And it comes from John Locke and a couple other people that in order to determine what's true religiously, we should look at nature. We should look at nature and how nature works and how nature is arranged. And we can infer back from that to what, to why God created to, to what God wanted for us, you know, cause God created nature.
Speaker 1 00:43:31 So if we look at nature and observe how things work in nature, we can then, you know, uncover what God must have wanted for us because he created nature. And so the specific person that I have a friend who's made a study of this as a historian is a guy named Jonathan Mayhew who was a Boston preacher in 18th century, hugely influential on John Adams and a bunch of the guys who would go on to be, you know, the, the P the figures behind the revolution, uh, may who himself died shortly before the revolution, but he was involved in the early stages of it. Uh, and so hugely influential on the, sort of the represents sort of, sort of 18th century outlook. And he, you know, he was, he's my favorite pro two objectivist figure in history. But because if you read his sermons, this is like a preacher re insert gig servants in Boston, you know, the, the, the home base of, of, of the Puritans.
Speaker 1 00:44:23 But if you read a sermon, he practically sounds like an objectivist he's talks about rational, happiness. He talks about how, you know, our, our ability to, uh, basically his, the fundamental of his idea is that God gave us the ability to experience pleasure and pain. And he gave us the ability to reason, and therefore he must've intended us to use our reason in order to achieve in order to pursue our happiness. So it's this very sort of pro to objectivist outlook. So that implicit moral philosophy has been there in America, literally from before our founding. And I think is what most people actually live on this, the code, most people actually live on most of the time in this country, but because you know, about the same time that may, he was preaching that David Hume was going out there saying, well, there's this gap.
Speaker 1 00:45:12 And that there's no reason there's no rational reason for me to prefer the scratching of my finger, to the structure of the whole world. Uh, you know, everything's just arbitrary and it's all based on emotions. And so philosophers gave up on the idea that, you know, we could actually come up with, uh, a provable demonstrable, rational foundation for morality, and then morality got neglected. And it became something that I think most people do sort of by default, they do it because in this, they have this implicit grasp of it, but they can't define it. They can't justify it. They can't answer all the various moral conundrums that would be brought up, uh, for them.
Speaker 12 00:45:52 Um, I love that if I can reply just briefly. Um, so yeah, I have, I have a natural religion up and I'm reviewing it. Uh, so I just want to come back, um, just, I think that what you're saying in some degree, um, partially doesn't, you know, affirm sort of my sentiment though, that there's been sort of this trajectory, right? Because if you look at, um, 17th century, uh, traditional classical education, you know, involved multiple languages and ancient texts, um, right. And then for this cause even, you know, Harvard and all of the original institutions that were founded in the 13 colonies were founded and there's, there's inscriptions outside of them that sort of laid this claim. Uh, but the one thing I wanted to highlight Rob, and this is what I wanted to briefly close with is that I've been putting forth here on clubhouse.
Speaker 12 00:46:43 Um, something, this idea of a biological morality and morality is a biological imperative. And, and I would say that, um, the Greek word you Splack knows kind of inspired me, which is the word translated tenderhearted, um, or heart of compassion in the new Testament. And inspired me to realize that it little word literally means a good gutted or positive visceral response, um, which could be interpreted in a number of ways. But what I'm going to say is that, um, there a tremendous body of evidence, which I can't put forth here, nor would it be appropriate in this short amount of time that demonstrates that there is a consequence entailed biologically physiologically and neurologically for every sort of moral decision that a human being makes. Um, and, and much the same way I would also put forth in many philosophers have that a conscience is an indication just the same way you're talking about natural religion. This is why I'm making the comment that a conscience is an evidence of some sort of tailor the illogical order and design. So anyway, I just throwing that out there. Thanks for the inspiration. Thanks for the time. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:47:52 Uh,
Speaker 9 00:47:53 If I could jump in Scott for a second, Brian made a great point about the biological imperative of, uh, uh, behind, uh, behind ethics. I would add that one way of looking at the objectivist ethics is on the analogy with <inaudible> the study of how different organisms flourish in their different environments, which environments they're flourishing, which, uh, including all their, uh, for the social animals, which, uh, arrangements they have, the objections, ethics is a kind of a technology. What, what are you, what are you when beings needs and capacities? And from that, we can, that's the factual basis that underlies the objective is ethics, uh, study of human nature and including psychology. And, you know, that's where we get values, like self esteem, value of romantic love, that value production, et cetera. So just, uh, just a thought for the analogy.
Speaker 0 00:49:01 Good. So,
Speaker 1 00:49:03 Yeah, and I think that's also a good example to that sort of Gangas Kahn problems. Like, well, what kind of environment would you be living in as Gangas Kahn that, you know, if you, if you had the choices of living, you know, and, and ninth century Mongolia or 10th century, I don't know that my centuries off here, it might be offered, but you have, you have the choice to be living in 10 century Mongolia and 21st century America, which would you prefer? Well, obviously you prefer to live in 21st century America, you know, vastly it'd be vastly preferable and it'd be vastly preferable, no matter who you are and the society, you know, that the it's just sort of ordinary average person, uh, even being poor in America in the 21st century would be better than being gagged this con in the 10th century. So, you know, the idea is that, you know, a certain kind of environment, a certain kind of a system with a society in which certain rules or principles are accepted and acted upon is going to be way, way better off for human life than a society based on opposite rules.
Speaker 0 00:50:03 Great. Uh, let's try to get Sam in here, Sam, thank you for your patience. Are you able to unmute?
Speaker 13 00:50:10 Yes. Yes. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, I'm listening to this wonderful discussion and, uh, I keep, uh, and I do appreciate the truck example by, um, by Rob. Um, and the truck example made me think about, uh, what, uh, the fact that it's a force, it's a power. And then it brought me back to Nietzsche again, the nature and the gene genealogy of morality in that, uh, at the end of the day is secular or non-secular it's power, uh, that dictates what the morality would be. And, uh, as we saw in the case of the truck, even the truck is the powerful force. You can fight it, you can get squashed, or you can get out of the way, but then it's the truck that dictates, uh, the situation. So how do we get around power dictating morality? Uh, we see many times in history that the power comes in, be it by sword, be it by weapons, be it by money, uh, and dictates the morality. And then, um, uh, that, that's the problem. That's a problem. And then we go on to issues like, Nope, noble lies, for example, it's a lie, what's a violation morality about we're doing it for a noble cause. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:51:38 Yeah. So I'm going to say that on the issue of power. So Nicha of course was, was famously equivocal about this because he equivocated between, you know, the equivocation here is between the power, the quote unquote power of reality, you know, reality is a force. It's a power in the sense of being a causal chain that will have consequences, right? But there's a difference between that and power as a exercise by one human being over another human being. And what we've seen historically, you know, is that when power is exercised by one human being over another human being produces a code of morality and a code of action that contradicts the requirements of, uh, that, that constructs the greater power of reality. Let's put it that way. You know, th that reality tells you, you know, so for example, comrade, Lysenko combat sorta thing. Let's say, go hero.
Speaker 1 00:52:36 The Soviet union has the ear of Joseph Stalin. And so he has the power of the state behind his theories of biology and tells you, you should, that tells you how you should plant your wheat. The problem is that trophy in blessing goes, theories, go against the power of reality. There are other crackpot theories they're not true. And so the power of reality is such that it causes the wheat planted in that way, the cause of the crops to fail and not produce enough food to feed everyone. So that's the two different conversions of power we're talking about here. And obviously over the long run, the power of reality, does the wheat grow or not is going to win out over the power of Joseph Solen. It's going to be this, it's going to have the last word. So the whole goal of government and the whole goal of the approach of a secular morality should be to align power in the sense of human power, the power of government with the power of force, to align that with rules that are consistent with the much greater power of, of nature.
Speaker 1 00:53:37 Now, I would say the two powers involved here, if you want to use that word are actually, there's the power of reality, which is that it operates according to its laws and its its rules. And it's, you know, cause and effect chains, whether you like it or not, and that's inexorable and you can't fight it, you know, uh, you can, you can ignore it, but eventually it's going to catch up with you. Uh, like, you know, if you decide, I'm not gonna look at that truck and it's not going to hit me, it's still going to hit you. Uh, the other thing is the other power though, is that I mentioned life is a power in its own way. That life is a force of self-generated self-sustaining action, that, that the, the life force, if you want to put it using sort of somewhat metaphorical terminology, but the life force of I'm a living being with the capacity to act, to change my environment, to DEO, bring in energy and bring in nutrients and grow and prosper and protect myself and support myself.
Speaker 1 00:54:35 So virality really arises from those two forces, the force of reality that has certain basic rules. You have to follow whether you like it or not, uh, that cannot be avoided. And then life as the power to take action in that, in the context of reality, to, you know, do the things required to, to, to, to grow and sustain your life. Uh, and those, and then, you know, the, the, the feeblest power involved here is the power of, you know, swords and guns and the ability to control other people. Uh, and that, you know, what happens is when you have a system where the power of force of human beings over other people, uh, when that sets itself against the rules required for life and the rules required by the nature of reality, that always leads to disaster because, you know, the rules that are posed on you by the guys with guns are opposite to the rules that are required for people to be able to live and survive. And you end up with, you know, famines and wars and, and, uh, uh, the sort of thing that's gone on through much of human history and as is happening, you know, very conspicuously in the news right now.
Speaker 0 00:55:49 Great. Uh, I, you know, I don't think we're going to really have time for, uh, another question. Johann, do you have a quick one?
Speaker 14 00:55:58 Yeah, it can. I, uh, I, I speak from Sweden here, so I'm not, so, uh,
Speaker 0 00:56:03 We're ending in two minutes. Okay.
Speaker 14 00:56:06 Then I will put forward the utilitarian view, um, how we economist, um, see that, uh, talking about power in economics. Everyone has power because, uh, when you look at the market, it's the salvation of the prisoner's dilemma problem should give money away. You lose the money, but the bread loaf of bread is more valuable to you. So you win I'm the seller of the loaf of bread loses the bread, but gains the money. So there's a win-win situation In a game where everyone has power. And on the big lever, you have this, um, Solution of the tragedy of the commons,
Speaker 1 00:57:04 Right?
Speaker 14 00:57:05 The democracy challenge. You see what I mean?
Speaker 1 00:57:10 Yeah. So basically the first 30 seconds, just a very quick response to that. And I think economics is an example of, is one of the applications of morality being the idea of you come up with rules for how you can create a system where people can survive and prosper. The only problem I have with the utilitarian approach is it came out of English, uh, uh, empiricism, yeah, this philosophy, this, and really David human being an example of that, where they tend to think, well, there actually are no rules. You just come up with pragmatic rules of thumb, but there are no hard and fast rules as to you can't really come up with moral rules. But that was because they had the Sufis small logical idea. You can't really come up with laws and, and, you know, uh, and, and wider abstractions, they were very suspicious of abstractions. And that's the weakness of that approach. Um,
Speaker 14 00:57:57 Well, why is that? Why is that a weakness? Because
Speaker 0 00:58:03 I'm sorry, we're wrapping up. Yeah,
Speaker 14 00:58:05 Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:58:07 Well, cause I'd say it's a weakness because, you know, you can't come up with, uh, the crease, the sense that all you have is sort of loose approximations rather than hard and fast rules. Uh, and I think that, uh, the appearances tend to, uh, underrate our ability to come up with, with Y with broad abstractions that can actually apply universally, but that's a whole conversation.
Speaker 0 00:58:30 Well, not going to be able to get to it right now. Um, I robbed, this was a great topic. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who helped when we were having technical issues, um, we'll be back here tomorrow at 6:30 PM with Jason Hill, um, 5:00 PM Eastern tomorrow. Atlas society asks Isaac Morehouse. Uh, Rob, thanks again for joining us. Thanks to everyone. Uh, on behalf of the Atlas society, I'm Scott Schiff. Uh, we'll see you next time.
