Debate Teacher Reacts: Inspiring Philosophy vs. Cosmic Skeptic

Wise Disciple

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He's a what? He's a non -cognitivist. What is going on with YouTube atheists these days?

00:07

You know what I mean? It's like between this guy and Matt Dillahunty and like some others, it's like attack of the dead theories.

00:15

You know what I mean? Oh no, Ethel, they found me. I don't know how, but they found me. Yeah, all right.

00:38

We're back for more. Oh, a standing ovation. Why are you giving me a standing ovation? That's so crazy.

00:43

All right, all right. Enough, enough, and we're done. Well, anyway, I am so glad to be back.

00:49

It's been a little while, has it not, friends? And we are ready to jump right back into some apologetics debate.

00:56

So we are going to get into the mix. Before I say anything else, if this is your very first time watching a video, hello.

01:04

My name is Nate. I'm the president of a Christian non -profit organization called Wise Disciple.

01:09

And here at Wise Disciple, we're all about living effectively as Christians in today's culture. Now, before I jumped into ministry,

01:15

I actually taught debates. So I like to look at some of the apologetics debates, the more popular ones that have been floating around and react to them, talk about them from a debate coach's perspective.

01:27

So that's what we're going to do. And today we're looking at what appears to be Barry Pepper versus Colin Hanks.

01:33

Can I say that? I'm sorry. It's a little bit, right?

01:39

Am I wrong? Come on now. By the way, somebody told me that I look like this guy.

01:45

And you know what? Okay. Not bad. Not bad. If that guy were

01:51

Samoan and ate a few more donuts, we would look exactly like. So today we're looking at Michael Jones versus Alex O 'Connor.

01:57

Now it looks like they've debated each other a couple of times. This particular one that we're looking at, it's back in 2018.

02:04

It was on the Capturing Christianity YouTube channel. If you have no idea who that is, like shame on you.

02:09

That's a really great channel, Cameron Bertuzzi. But Bertuzzi, we're looking at a particular discussion.

02:15

Now I looked at the first few seconds of this video and it looks like it's more of a loose discussion, not a very stringent formal debate.

02:23

But that's fine because we're going to do what we do. We're going to look at a few things. Who's laying a better framework for the discussion?

02:29

Who's making the better arguments? Who's challenging and providing clash to the interlocutor better than the other?

02:36

So let's go ahead without further ado and jump right into this one. All right. So let's jump into your argument for moral realism.

02:42

Yes. Let's. Let's. Yeah. Let's just jump into it. First, I wanted to ask Alex a question if he's okay with that.

02:48

Of course. Yeah. What is your specific meta -ethical view? Because when I watched your videos, I wasn't really sure where you were coming from.

02:56

Sometimes I thought you were kind of arguing for a position of relativism. Sometimes I thought maybe it was non -cognitive.

03:02

I couldn't really nail down exactly where you were arguing from. Sure. I think I would probably be best described as a non -cognitivist.

03:08

I wouldn't call myself a relativist for the fact that, in effect, I suppose it could be summed up as the view that moral propositions hold no truth value.

03:18

So I wouldn't say I'm a relativist because I wouldn't say that people can be true dependent on their culture or their opinion, let's say.

03:26

I would argue that they can't be true, but they also can't be false, I think. It's probably quite close to emotivism.

03:33

Whoa. Stop, stop, stop, stop. He's a what? He's a non -cognitivist.

03:40

What is going on with YouTube atheists these days? You know what I mean? It's like between this guy and Matt Dillahunty and some others, it's like attack of the dead theories.

03:52

Oh no, Ethel, they found me. I don't know how, but they found me. So I mean, look, that's interesting.

04:05

He's a non -cognitivist, but he's not a relativist. I mean, but he has to be a subjectivist.

04:12

This is going to be a really weird conversation. I don't think, the reason that I wouldn't call myself an emotivist is because I don't think that when someone says this is good, that what they mean is that, well, you know, the boo -hurrah theory, the idea that they just disapprove of it.

04:27

I think that they do mean something more than that. I just think that what they mean can't be justified in objective terms.

04:34

It can't be shown to be true or false in an objective sense. This is another problem I have. Sometimes when

04:40

I say this, you know, like when I say moral propositions have no truth, I think it needs to be understood that when

04:47

I talk in those terms, what I mean to say is that it has no objective truth. Okay. You said that really fast.

04:53

And let's try to get some of the definitions of these terms really quickly for those that might not be familiar, as familiar with metaethics.

05:01

So yeah, let's talk about cognitivism versus non -cognitivism. Well, most views can be summed up in either one of those two.

05:09

A cognitivist would say that moral statements have like a truth apnea status. So when I say murder is wrong or rape is wrong, that can either be true or false.

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A non -cognitivist says that they can't be true or false, that it's just something we feel.

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And so like, if I desire, if I desire something, well, desires can't be true or false.

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Or if I have a feeling or an emotion, that can't be true or false. And that's kind of what a non -cognitivist does.

05:37

And there's various forms, descriptivism, emotivism, expressivism, quasi -realism, etc.

05:43

So that's sort of the difference between cognitive and non -cognitivist. Right. And there's a tough pill to swallow if that's what you want to say, which is that, you know, moral facts are neither true nor false.

05:54

What you have to swallow is that actions in and of themselves are not good or evil. You're not describing actions in that sense.

06:01

And that's, you really have to wrestle with the consequences of this particular view, because that's, for a lot of people, that's truly absurd to say, that if we torture people for fun, that the action of it is not right or wrong, good or evil.

06:16

It's actually amoral. That what's going on is we're just having some kind of psychological activity, a reaction in our minds.

06:23

And that's it. That's all that's going on. Moral realists or cognitivists, as well as relativists are, and error theorists, we would say that there are, when someone makes a moral claim, they are expressing something true or false.

06:33

Non -cognitivists say they're not, essentially. Right. In your train of thought, why would you say they're not objective?

06:40

What would be your reasons? Just general overview. You don't have to go too much into detail. Yeah. I mean, this is an interesting question, right?

06:46

Because for all of us, I would argue, because I've never met anyone who disagrees with this, right?

06:53

Morality seems to be objective in our everyday experience. I don't know anybody that disagrees with that.

06:59

And I wonder how O 'Connor would respond to this, right? And so the question appears to trade on that.

07:06

If morality appears to be objective in our everyday experience, then why doubt that? There's a potential issue with this kind of question.

07:14

But maybe Jones is like setting up some kind of garden path. So let's see where this goes. I think it's important to define what we mean by objective, because this is where a lot of the confusion lies.

07:22

And as far as I'm concerned, for something to be objectively true, it must be true or something to be objectively true or false.

07:30

It must be true or false, regardless of, let's say, human conviction. It must be true or false, regardless of whether or not people want it to be true or think that it's true.

07:40

So for me, morality is a kind of, it's a thought, it's an expression, it's something that can't be said to be true without humans thinking that it's true, because all morality is, is humans thinking something is true.

07:59

It's difficult to put into words. It kind of like my moral, my meta -ethical view tends to kind of emerge from discussions when you start putting the pieces together.

08:08

But as far as I'm concerned, in order to say that morality is objective, you would need to ground your morality in something that is not human opinion.

08:19

You need to, you need to ground it in something either naturalistic, that is to say, the kind of thing that Sam Harris tries to do, or you'd need to ground it in supernaturalism, which

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I think is unjustified. And even if you ground it in supernaturalism, this is what my first video tried to demonstrate,

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I don't think even then you could say that morality is objective. So the only way that I think you could truly show morality to be objective is to come up with some naturalistic synonym for words like good or bad or ought or ought not.

08:46

And I think, as I think you probably think, I don't think you can do that. I don't think that naturalism is a valid meta -ethical view.

08:55

I mean, okay. So, I mean, there's so much here, right? But when O 'Connor talks about grounding morality, he's not wrong, okay?

09:04

It's absolutely true. If morality is objective, it needs to be grounded in something transcendent.

09:09

And all I mean by transcendent is that it has to be something that transcends individual minds. This is what O 'Connor is saying.

09:15

From a materialist perspective, it sounds like he's taking the sort of evolutionary track, right?

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Because maybe evolution is the grounding of morality. Maybe survival of the fittest has wired our brains in a certain way to think the way that we do.

09:33

And I believe that's Sam Harris's position. I mean, there are a couple of problems with that particular view, but that's a possible grounding explanation for morality if you're a materialist.

09:43

But when O 'Connor talks about morality only being this thing of humans thinking something is true, what he's saying is morality is subjective.

09:55

And that, like I said, there are some consequences that you have to accept if that's the position that you're going to take.

10:01

So hopefully Jones brings this up. Now, I want to go back to one thing you said, because I thought you might just be begging the question against a moral realist.

10:09

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but you said all morality is thinking it's true. Is that correct? Well, I suppose

10:17

I would say that when you make a moral statement, what

10:25

I meant by that was when you make a moral statement, most people intuitively think that, so like you say, when someone says that murder is wrong or the holocaust was wrong, that's a classic, they have no doubt in their mind that that is true.

10:39

What I'm trying to say with that is basically making the case that even though they think it's true, that's all it is.

10:45

They think it's true, but it's not actually objectively true. So then let me ask - Yeah, which is a really awkward way of saying that the holocaust was not really evil.

10:54

That the actions committed during the holocaust, what the Nazis did to the Jews, what they did to lots of different kinds of people, killing people, torturing people, that those actions in and of themselves were not evil.

11:07

Now, it's interesting how maybe we're tiptoeing in this conversation around that terminology because that makes it very clear for us, right?

11:14

And that's what you have to swallow. That's what I'm saying. If you want to take this approach that O 'Connor has taken, that's what you have to accept.

11:20

I'll ask you this. I mean, one of the reasons most philosophers are more realistic,

11:26

I think their last poll was like 56 % are, is because it's just so dang intuitive. So when you say all that it is is that it's thinking of it.

11:38

My issue with that is like, well, I mean, everything we think is technically subjective. I mean, everything about science we think is subjectively processed in the mind.

11:47

Everything about mathematics or logic is. That doesn't mean those are subjective. I mean, that just means that's how we experience them.

11:53

It's a kind of confusing epistemology with ontology. Just because we may experience morality subjectively, that does not necessarily mean it's not, there aren't objective, immoral facts out there.

12:04

Just like we experience, you know, science, we actually have to experience it subjectively through our own cognitive senses and whatnot.

12:13

So why would it follow that? Just because that's how we experience it, that it necessarily is subjective.

12:19

So I subscribe to that notion that we have to kind of begrudgingly accept the fact that I can never really know whether or not

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I'm really having this conversation, whether or not you two are really speaking to me or whether I'm just a brain being stimulated in a lab.

12:33

So that's a problem, but I don't think that necessarily closes down the debate because I can say things.

12:39

Yeah, but why? Since I subscribe to Descartes notion, I think therefore I am, I think it's fair to say that in order to even be under the illusion that I'm here having this conversation,

12:50

I need to exist in some form. So to me, that says that existence is a thing.

12:58

Existence exists, if you know what I mean. So there is such thing as existence. Now, if I say that there is a cup sat in front of me, which

13:07

I think I have here, as a scientific worldview, like you say, because I have to interpret that through my senses, which

13:15

I don't know if I can trust, I don't know whether or not this glass objectively exists.

13:21

However, I do know that it either objectively exists or objectively doesn't. The statement this cup exists is either objectively true or it is objectively false.

13:32

So yes, I do have to interpret that through my subjective senses, but I can still know that that's either objectively true or false.

13:40

Whereas with morality, I'd go further than that and say that it can't be in principle objectively true or false.

13:47

Yeah, this is not an answer to Jones's question. Jones's question was a good one. Okay. The question was, how does it follow that because we subjectively experience morality, then therefore morality is only subjective.

14:00

Because there are plenty of things that we subjectively experience as human beings, but that are also objectively true.

14:07

And O 'Connor didn't answer this question. He just repeated his claim in a verbose way.

14:12

So if I were Jones, I would call this out. I'd be framing this discussion for the audience so the audience can keep track of how things are going.

14:21

And then I would identify that O 'Connor, you know what, he didn't answer the question here. And then I would press again for a definitive answer to this question.

14:28

When we study moral facts, specifically duties and values, they tend to manifest in a way in reality within our actions that tend to be objective.

14:37

So although we may disagree on the correct normative status, you know, virtue ethics versus deontology versus type of utilitarianism, everyone does agree that the way they manifest appears to be pretty objective.

14:51

It's really hard to act out or even to disagree with someone that says that female mutilation is a good thing.

14:58

If someone says that, we would be like, no, it isn't. So clearly Jones and O 'Connor is really smart.

15:04

Okay. They're really smart. I think it's clear as day. They're really smart. But when you go into a conversation like this or a debate, you need to also include in your thought process, your interlocutor, what your interlocutor is going to say and how to clash with that.

15:20

But you also need to consider your audience. The audience is not going to understand this conversation.

15:26

I doubt it because they're not going to be as well read as Jones. They're not going to be as well read as O 'Connor because what they're really saying is we experience things as if actions in and of themselves are good and evil.

15:38

Okay. So that's how it helps us, the normal lay folk to really think about this issue is our actions in and of themselves good or evil, right or wrong.

15:48

That's what Jones is talking about when he talks about actions appearing to manifest as objective.

15:54

Okay. So just bear that in mind as the conversation goes. I mean, that's clearly something we would want to debate.

16:01

So moral facts tend to manifest in reality the same way logical facts tend to manifest. They're objective, independent, even if we don't, may not agree, if someone may not, may disagree or may think something else.

16:11

So the basic argument, and I can give you a quick quote here from Kai Nelson, for example,

16:17

Kai Nelson says, it is more reasonable to believe such elements, things like wife beating and child abuse are evil than to believe any skeptical theory that tells us we cannot know or reasonably believe any of these things to be evil.

16:30

I firmly believe that this is bedrock and right, and that anyone who does not believe it cannot have probed deeply enough into the grounds of his own moral beliefs.

16:40

So Kai Nelson, David Brink, Richard Boyd, I'll argue from a basic intuitive standpoint, moral realism is pretty intuitive.

16:48

If we're going to apply the principle of credulity, we have to accept that it is at least our intuitive starting point.

16:53

This seems to be the case as we act in reality, as things manifest in moral experience or through things like moral progress.

17:01

So if that's the case, the skeptic has to mount an argument against how they naturally,

17:06

I don't want to use the word naturally, how they basically just simply appear within reality, how they tend to manifest between moral agents.

17:14

So what would be a good skeptic argument for doubting our basic intuitive starting point? So there's a little bit of framing the discussion going on here, framing the debate.

17:22

So that's really good. I would be framing the discussion a lot more than Jones is. And also

17:28

I have a little bit of an issue with continuing to ask this question because it's not just that a skeptic in terms of this kind of a discussion, it's not just that a skeptic needs to challenge moral intuition, but if they're going to provide an alternative, which clearly

17:45

O 'Connor is talking about non -cognitivism, they need to provide some evidence, like a good argument for that particular view as well.

17:56

Look how the topic is titled. I get a lot of pushback from atheists and skeptics who disagree with me on this.

18:01

It really does, in my opinion, come down to how the topic is titled. Because when it says something like the title of a debate is moral realism is true, well, guess who has the burden of proof for that?

18:14

Jones does. And so then Alex O 'Connor can come in and go, oh, well, and challenge him quite a bit and try to provide a lot of clash because that's how the topic is worded.

18:24

But when this topic is worded very vaguely on the moral argument for God, which by the way, they're not even talking about the argument for God.

18:32

They're just talking about moral realism at this point. I really would try to press, if I were

18:37

Jones, on why O 'Connor is a non -cognitivist. And we haven't heard any evidence or good reasons for why he's a non -cognitivist yet.

18:45

See, in normal conversations, this is what happens, right? Somebody says, well, why don't you agree with my stance on a particular issue?

18:52

And the person that they're talking to will usually say, well, because my stance makes more sense. And here is what my stance is.

18:58

Well, that's what we want, right? So in this kind of discussion, the more direct approach to get O 'Connor to do that is just to flat out ask him, why is non -cognitivism true?

19:08

Why is that the best explanation for morality? That's not what's going on here. Jones is asking

19:13

O 'Connor basically like, why is my own view of morality false? And that's a different kind of question.

19:20

The whole point of skepticism is that you take nothing for granted. So something like the, let's say the principle of credulity, as long as I understand the same thing as you do by that,

19:29

I take to be a horrible idea. It's true that we intuitively feel that morality is the case, but that in no way to me,

19:38

I don't see how you could say that because we feel something more strongly, we have more reason to believe that it's the case.

19:44

Well, it's not so much a feel that I don't, I mean, Ruscha Ferlando defines intuit intuitions as conscious experiential states.

19:53

So my basic point would be as most moral philosophers that are moralists argue is like, why should we doubt this?

20:00

If it seems so intuitively obvious, if they manifest, if moral facts manifest in a way that are objective, why would we doubt that they're not objective like the laws of logic are?

20:10

Because historically, the things that have been most important to discuss philosophically are things that we used to take for granted.

20:16

It's like, yeah, right. And now they're talking past each other. Okay. Do you see that? Uh, this is why

20:22

I said, probably the better way to press O 'Connor is just flat out, ask him to defend his own moral ontological position, because now what's going on is when

20:30

Jones asks about doubt, okay, that's key word. He's really asking O 'Connor to make some kind of case against moral realism, but O 'Connor hears the word doubt.

20:41

And so he starts speaking generally about why we should generally doubt lots of things that we take for granted. Um, so they're having two separate conversations.

20:49

You see that, right? By the way, I'd say right now, just given everything that I've been saying, cosmic skeptic probably has the upper hand right now of moral, uh, duty, but in the same way,

21:01

I have an incredibly strong intuition that I have free will. And previously, uh, either speaking previously in terms of the species or previously in terms of terms of my own personal experience,

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I had very strong intuitions that God existed. These are now things that I'm convinced, uh, either in the case of free will,

21:19

I'm convinced of the exact opposite. And why, why are you convinced that they're not? There's no free will because of, well, the reason that I was even able to have that discussion was because I, I didn't trust that intuition or the moment that I questioned that intuition was the moment that I could delve into it.

21:34

I mean, I agree with you on skepticism. We should be skeptical of certain things. We should challenge certain things, but some things,

21:40

I mean, we just have to take for granted. We have to take for granted that our five senses are working.

21:45

So I'm a skeptic. And O 'Connor does that. He takes those things for granted. It's he here's the problem is that there is, there is no clear definition of terms when it comes to doubt.

21:56

And so, because Jones has one way of talking about doubt, uh, and O 'Connor is the other, now they're going to have this protracted conversation and they're not really going to meet in the middle over what

22:07

Jones is trying to get O 'Connor to say. Uh, and it's going to be, this is getting a little frustrating. Comes at me and says, we can't know, not, we can't have knowledge.

22:15

We can't have beliefs. We can't know our five senses are working. I always invoke something called epistemic particularism and that's it.

22:22

Unless you give me a good reason to doubt my five senses, unless you give me a good reason to doubt my cognitive faculties,

22:30

I'm not going to going back to more realism. Why should we doubt in an ontological sense that moral facts are objective?

22:42

What's the, what's a good reason to go in that direction? Right. And what I would have asked is why should we abandon moral realism and adopt non -cognitivism?

22:51

I think that's what Jones is trying to say, except that he's a little stuck on this word doubt and it's causing this kind of parallel conversation.

23:00

The good reason that I would say to doubt our intuition of morality is because we should doubt everything.

23:05

And we've been made aware through moral reflection that perhaps we are wrong about morality and perhaps there is no such thing as morality, or at least it makes no sense.

23:13

I agree. This is the difference between possibility and plausibility, right? When it comes to doubt, because it is a reality that people believe things to be true, but not with a whole lot of certainty.

23:25

You know, maybe they believe it to be true with a percentage of certainty, somewhere between 51 and 100%. Right? So again, it's not enough to simply point out that doubt can exist because someone can still believe something and have doubt as well.

23:40

The question is not about whether doubt exists at all. The question is about whether there is substantial enough doubt, good enough, that's what

23:48

Jones is trying to get at, to abandon moral realism and adopt non -cognitivism. And if so, let's talk about that.

23:55

I wonder if O 'Connor realizes just how obtuse he's being here.

24:00

And I mean, no offense by that, but like I said, Jones is trying to ask a particular question. Maybe he's not asking it in the best way, but O 'Connor should be able to recognize what

24:10

Jones is asking here. So I don't know if he's obtuse and he's not aware of it, or if he's doing it on purpose.

24:17

I mean, maybe he doesn't know. Well, let me put it this way. Would you accept that it is possible that moral non -cognitivism is true?

24:27

Yeah, it's absolutely possible. So if it's possible that it's true, then for me, there's your reason.

24:33

That's why we should explore that idea and see if it makes logical sense, and then compare that against the position of moral realism and see which seems to make more sense.

24:44

I would hate to see O 'Connor on a date. You know what I mean? I mean, because his date would say, you know what,

24:51

Alex, I want to go to a steakhouse tonight. And then Alex would go, oh, I don't want to go. And then the date would go, well, why don't you want to go?

24:57

And then he would go, well, you know, I have lots of good reasons why I don't want to go, why I doubt that we should go to a steakhouse.

25:04

And then, you know, his date would go, okay, well, what are they? And then he'll say, well, I think that we should doubt everything, you know?

25:10

And so how I doubt about going to a steakhouse is I wonder if there's good reasons to go.

25:16

And then I compare other reasons to not go. You know what I mean? And then his date would be like, okay, but why don't you want to go,

25:24

Alex? Why don't you want to go to this steakhouse tonight? Well, you know, if it's possible to doubt going to the steakhouse, then

25:30

I think we should explore that because we should doubt everything. You see how obtuse this is, this conversation.

25:36

By the way, if that's how you're going to talk all night, then your date's going to run off with your roommate. Moral facts and duties tend to manifest in reality in objective ways like the laws of logic do.

25:46

There are skeptics of logic. And as Thomas Nagel wrote in his book, The Last Word, it's completely inconsistent.

25:53

So a lot of the similar type of arguments can be put forward for moral realism. So I just want to know what is a good reason to take a non -cognitivist view in this sense?

26:03

Yeah, at this point, I would have moved on from this line of questioning, and I would have taken a different approach. I think Jones has made his point by spending time on this, but I think he should move on.

26:12

And I would try to take a different tack, maybe go back to something else that O 'Connor said before, you know, like the thing about morality.

26:19

You know, morality is simply people thinking that something is true, right? Okay, well, then the question is, why do so many people all think the same sets of moral facts are true?

26:31

Okay, you know, because think about that. You're not going to find anyone that disagrees with the notion that torturing people for fun is not evil, okay?

26:40

People are not going to disagree about that. So why do we all agree? What causes us all to agree?

26:48

It's a real blanketed statement to make. I'd be wondering if there's data to support this at all, or if it's just some kind of a bald assertion, right?

26:56

And even then, that kind of question, it's an incoherent question if O 'Connor is correct in his position, you know?

27:03

Think about that. There can be no disagreement between two or more non -cognitivists because disagreement can only exist if people are talking about things that are objectively true or false.

27:15

If you're challenging me right now, he's like, Nate's wrong. Whatever scenario that you're thinking of, of disagreement that you can think of in your mind right now, it's always going to be about something that is objectively true or false.

27:26

So I would focus on some other questions here. Why would you say, for instance, it's not an obligation to chase being a doctor, even though that's good, but whereas, let's say, would you say that if you see somebody drowning, like a child drowning in a five -foot swimming pool that you can just walk across, do you have an obligation to help that child?

27:49

Absolutely, yeah. So what's the difference? Why in one case is there an obligation and why not in the other?

27:56

Okay, well, for one, if I don't become a doctor, I'm not going to harm anyone.

28:02

I can be a good, as Cameron, as a photographer, and it's not going to cause harm.

28:08

It's not going to... No, but it will, because the person that, like, for instance, the person at the last line at the doctor's surgery at the

28:18

NHS won't be able to get their service because you didn't become a doctor and there's not enough doctors to go around.

28:23

Okay, but that wasn't originally in your scenario, right? That now there's a shortage of doctors. So now that you've added that, now it's a problem.

28:29

But what if there's no shortage of doctors, right? Well, that's a specific scenario. That's assuming that, you know, if you're the only one left, it's sort of like the same type of obligation.

28:38

If you need to become a doctor because someone, let's say, like, I don't know, an angel shows up and says, in the future, those are going to be a doctor shortages, you need to be a doctor you're obligated to.

28:48

That's kind of a different because our understanding of the circumstances has changed. This is something that really needs to be unpacked.

28:55

We need to get to the bottom of this, I think, if you want to understand where I'm coming from, we really need to get to the bottom of why one thing has a moral obligation, one does not.

29:03

For instance, if you're going to say there is no shortage of doctors, so there's no real bad, there's nothing bad that happens if you don't become a doctor.

29:11

Why are you saying that it is good to become a doctor? So why are we saying that it's good to become a doctor?

29:18

Yeah, like, why is that good? Okay, because it's a value that we would have. It's like friendship or cooperation.

29:24

These are valuable things, even though they're necessarily obligatory upon us.

29:30

So basically, what we're basically saying is, you can value certain things without feeling that you're obligated by them.

29:37

So there's a difference between values and duties. Is it good to become a carpenter? It's a valuable thing.

29:43

Yeah, we can value that. Is it good? Like you say that becoming a doctor is good, but becoming a carpenter is like, well, it's valuable.

29:50

Well, I would ask the circumstances for that specific carpenter. So in normative ethics, I would call myself a virtue ethicist.

29:58

So what we would say within certain normative cases like this. This conversation is unlike videos

30:06

I've seen in the past. And I'm struggling at this point to continue to adjudicate this particular discussion because it really doesn't feel like a debate.

30:17

It kind of feels like two guys are sitting down and maybe over a drink and they're just having a discussion and trying to understand each other's views.

30:25

There really isn't a whole lot of clash. In one sense, this is a great discussion to have, right?

30:32

These are the kinds of conversations that you want to have with somebody that you disagree with, whether you're an atheist, a Christian, whatever, right? Because what

30:38

I'm seeing is a lot of questions seeking to understand the person that you're talking to, which is really great.

30:46

The problem is in this kind of a format, I'm really struggling to adjudicate. And so I guess we'll just keep watching and see what

30:54

I come up with. As I just want to say, we're getting more into normative ethics. What are we ought to supposed to do?

31:00

You could be a moral realist and be utilitarian. You can be a moral realist and be a virtue ethicist. Those are different things.

31:06

We're trying to understand in this conversation, what are they? Not what are the oughts? What are the specifics in that?

31:12

Yeah. And the way that I'm trying to do that is by finding the difference between a moral obligation and a moral virtue.

31:18

So what I would say, I'll try and just spell this out. I don't know if I'll be able to do this very well, because this is a thought that's just occurred to me now.

31:24

So to say that becoming a doctor is good, I think that the reason why we think that becoming a doctor is good is because it is conducive to saving lives and helping lives, which we experience, which we think is a good thing.

31:38

Now, for the moment, it doesn't matter whether that's objective or not, because again, we're talking about the duty rather than the value. So let's just grant that we value saving of lives as good, whether that's subjective or objective.

31:50

The reason that I think we would say that it's good to become a doctor is because it saves lives. So in that instance, if there were no shortage of doctors, if it really were the case that you becoming a doctor makes no difference to how many people get saved or don't get saved,

32:03

I don't think I would say that it's necessarily good to become a doctor. But let's say that let's take a situation where there is a shortage of doctors, like there is in my country.

32:12

Is it good to become a doctor? Well, let's say yes. Is there therefore a moral obligation to become a doctor?

32:21

Well, most people would say no, you wouldn't have to become a doctor just because there's a shortage. But then you'd also say that if you were the only doctor who could do the job, then perhaps you would have a moral obligation.

32:32

So where do we draw that line and how do we justify drawing that line? Well, again, this is a really fascinating discussion.

32:41

And again, I just think that the tone of candor that comes from O 'Connor is it's putting his interlocutors a little too much at ease.

32:51

Because while this is a great discussion, this whole thing has one glaring issue. O 'Connor is the one with the problem here, not

32:59

Jones. Okay. It seems like O 'Connor is pressing for some clarification for the existence of moral duties, moral obligations, and how those obligations sort of derive from values.

33:12

That's only a problem if you begin with the presupposition that there is no such thing as objective morality. Okay. If there is no such thing as God, that's a problem.

33:22

O 'Connor is the one who needs to explain under his view why anyone is obligated to do anything moral.

33:28

Just because people obtain certain psychological activities, right, under the non -cognitive's view, it does not somehow make moral duties or moral obligations magically appear.

33:37

Moral prescriptions don't automatically derive from moral descriptions. In philosophy, that is known as the is -ought gap or the is -ought fallacy.

33:48

Given O 'Connor's view that morality is not objective and moral facts are not transcendent truths, then why are human beings obligated to each other to be good or to do good to each other?

33:58

He needs to explain this and it's just not happening. You know what? This was difficult to watch and I went ahead and watched a little bit more of it before deciding to kind of stop and just give a conclusion here.

34:09

You know, going into this video, I immediately noticed that there was no formal structure to this debate. It really didn't even feel like a debate.

34:15

It felt a lot like a very loose discussion. And so when I saw that, I initially thought, you know what, we could treat it like we did the other video with Richard Dawkins and John Lennox, you know, where I kind of found some moments and zoomed in on those moments and focused on who was doing better in those specific areas.

34:31

But as I continued watching this video, and you should definitely go back and watch the whole thing. I'm going to leave the link in the show notes.

34:37

It just seemed to me that O 'Connor really didn't have all of his views completely solidified.

34:42

And that makes it difficult to clash. Okay. Because a lot of time was spent simply asking clarification questions.

34:51

And then when he got a clarification, he would say, okay, I got that. There was even a moment where he said that he would have to go away and like, keep thinking about a couple of things that he heard,

35:00

I guess, for the first time, he made some space for like, the possibility that he didn't fully understand certain terms in the way that Jones and Bertuzzi did.

35:10

So again, all of that, it really makes it difficult for me to adjudicate this kind of a thing. This is a first for me.

35:16

It just really felt like more of an open discussion between two people who disagree, but not trying to clash.

35:22

And look, I mean, that's the thing, right? Like, this is a really good model for how you should be doing this in the real world, right?

35:28

You don't want to go out there with that formal debate structure and really try to press somebody in cross -examination.

35:34

You should be doing what you saw here in this video. So this video is a great example of the kinds of discussions you should be having.

35:40

I would say that given all of those things, Jones could have done a better job asking different questions along the way.

35:48

I think O 'Connor handled himself as best he could with the particular questions that Jones was asking.

35:54

But then on the other hand, O 'Connor, he should have just had his views a little bit more solidified so that they could have truly clashed in a more formal style.

36:02

So because of that, I just, I have to stop here and I'm just going to leave my commentary throughout the video as is, and just hope that it helped you guys think through this kind of discussion.

36:13

And look, if you think that somebody was a clear winner, definitely let me know in the comments below. Also, if you would like to see me react to a particular apologetics debate in the near future, you should let me know in the comments.

36:23

I've got a list going and we're going to hit these along the way. Again, what I do appreciate about this was the calm way that they spoke to each other, the graciousness, the patience that both

36:33

Jones and O 'Connor displayed, even O 'Connor's humility throughout this. I think that we could all learn a few things about watching how

36:40

O 'Connor comported himself during this discussion. But that's all the time that I have. I will return soon with another debate teacher reacts, but in the meantime,