Famous SKEPTIC Tries and FAILS to Justify Morality

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The argument is made that science describes the way the world is, chemistry, physics, biology, but that doesn't carry with any sense of oughtness of what we ought to do and how we ought to behave.

00:11

You can't have only factual premises. You have to have something that has an ought, and such that together with the is, you can get an ought in the conclusion.

00:18

Shermer admits that he's beginning with his own moral ought in order to argue for certain other moral oughts that are contingent on the first one.

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The next question should be, what authority does Michael Shermer have to make these pronouncements? Moral oughts that objectively apply to everyone must come from a standard that transcends everyone.

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And if you're thinking to yourself, well, wait a second, Nate, that sounds an awful lot like Christianity. It's because that's exactly what our position is.

00:48

Sean McDowell versus Michael Shermer. The topic, is morality better explained by God or science?

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And they're about to get into it. Now, the question for us is, who holds the better position, right? I'm a

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Christian. My audience is also largely Christian, but we can't assume that the Christian automatically just does a great job every time.

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We've looked at debates in the past together and Christians have lost some of those debates. So what's going to happen this time?

01:12

We're about to get right into it. But first, if you're brand new here, welcome to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective

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Christian that you are meant to be. Make sure to like and sub and share this one around, but only if it blesses you. Amen.

01:23

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Again, the app is Biblingo. Check out the link in the description for the Wise Disciple discount. One of the things you talked about in the article

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I think is helpful, I think we can jump in and kind of go back and forth on this and flesh this out a little bit, is that you call it fallacy, fallacy.

02:14

And I wonder if you can explain as briefly as you can what you think the fallacy is, and then we'll come back to unpacking and discussing it.

02:20

What is the fallacy? Okay. So Schirmer's on here to talk about his upcoming book.

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I don't think it's released as of this recording yet, but he sent McDowell an advanced copy of a chapter or something like that to take a look at, just to engage.

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And now they're here to discuss it. It seems like the focus of Schirmer's book is morality.

02:43

So this is where the conversation comes in. Now we're talking about the Izzat fallacy. So let's see what

02:50

Schirmer has to say about it. The fallacy here, I'll read to you what the philosopher Robert Pennock wrote me, because when

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I went about this debunking this myth of the Izzat fallacy, fallacy, I'm not a philosopher, so I thought

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I better have somebody who does this for a living read my stuff. So here's what he wrote to me. The way the argument works is to say, if you want to get a moral conclusion, you need at least one moral premise.

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It's not that there aren't factual premises, and this I took to be your main point, that science gives us some moral premises that make a difference, and that's exactly right.

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But the naturalistic fallacy doesn't say you can't have factual premises. It says you can't have only factual premises.

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You have to have something that has an ought, such that together with the is, you can get an ought in the conclusion.

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And I would say that the way to make your argument is actually bringing in oughts into your premises, and so you're not actually denying the naturalistic fallacy.

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Really, you're accepting it, but building in some ought premises from the beginning, and that's the right way to do it. So I guess my built -in oughts from the beginning is that sentient beings -

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Can I jump in just for a second, just for clarity? Yeah, I mean, but that is the is -ought fallacy.

03:56

I don't know, okay, we'll let McDowell go. Thank you for watching. Here's essentially, I pulled up a text on meta -ethics, and they said, here's an example of the is -ought fallacy.

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It is true that smoking is harmful to your health. Therefore, you ought not smoke. It doesn't follow from the premise that smoking is harmful that somebody ought not smoke, getting an ought from a description.

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Now, hang on. What we need is some additional premise that we are committed to the health and flourishing and moral good of a human being, then we can move to the ought, a premier observation that smoking itself causes harm.

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The is doesn't give us any ought. And so oftentimes, the argument is made that science describes the way the world is, chemistry, physics, biology, but that doesn't carry with any sense of oughtness of what we ought to do and how we ought to behave.

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As you know, you can't get a prescriptive claim from a descriptive claim.

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That's the is -ought fallacy. So, McDowell is almost right out of the gate, giving some excellent pushback on the idea that a philosophical materialist like Michael Shermer can also argue for objective morality, which is what he's doing.

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I mean, that's what his book is about. This is the view that he holds. And so the question is, though, how can you do that?

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Moral oughts that objectively apply to everyone must come from a standard that transcends everyone.

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If it transcends everyone, then everyone is obligated to obey or adhere to that standard.

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And if you're thinking to yourself, wait a second, Nate, that sounds an awful lot like Christianity. It's because that's exactly what our position is.

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It makes no sense to say that there is such a thing as objective morality while at the same time there is no

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God. Why? Because you're saying there is no transcendent moral law giver that obligates everyone to adhere to his transcendent law.

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But hey, also, there is a law giver that obligates everyone to the transcendent law.

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Like what? Where? Who or what is this other law giver? Right?

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Like, where does this law come from? And why does it obligate us if it does not come from a transcendent mind?

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And folks like Shermer and who else? Sam Harris, right? They'll say, well, you know, certain states of affairs are the way they are.

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Therefore, they ought to stay that way. And that right there is the is -ought fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not obligate anyone to keep it that way.

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Where this becomes a fallacy is you begin with what you want to argue for and then you make your argument, thus making a circle.

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In other words, you have to smuggle in your own ought right at the outset in order to then argue that someone ought to do what you think.

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And that's the fallacy. And so if you're going up against somebody who is committing the is -ought fallacy, it is your job to identify this with your leading question.

07:03

So McDowell's doing a really great job. This is where you differ with it. So maybe explain to me why. Let me read what you wrote.

07:09

This might help us have some context from the article you sent me. By the way, this right here, this is what I mean.

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It comes from Shermer's upcoming book that's about to come out. McDowell got an advance cost. He said, if the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings is the foundation of values and morals, then we can say objectively and absolutely that ending poverty is real moral progress.

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Now, a couple lines later, you say, why is it better? Because it is in our nature to prefer flourishing to suffering.

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So it seems to me as I'm reading this, I would argue and obviously you push back that you are committing the is -ought fallacy by assuming a certain ought that's not a part of your system itself.

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How do you justify that ought scientifically or philosophically from within naturalism? Yeah, nice. So what you're saying with the smoking example is correct.

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I am starting from the beginning point saying that the ought

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I'm building in there is human health and flourishing and that cigarette smoking will decrease that.

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So there it is, right? Shermer admits that he's beginning with his own moral ought in order to argue for certain other moral oughts that are contingent on the first one, right?

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And since the admission is here out in the open now, the next question should be, what authority does

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Michael Shermer have to make these pronouncements? He says things ought to be a certain way and then the human race now must obligate themselves to follow what?

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Shermer? Like his own prescriptions? Why? So yeah, that's my built -in ought.

08:43

So you and Panak have both correctly identified that I'm not deriving moral oughts just from is's.

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I'm starting with a starting point, the survival and flourishing of sentient beings. Okay. But even that, you see,

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I'm saying that's not just some random thing I plucked out of the air. That's a derivative of the laws of nature, evolution, physics, entropy.

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The second law of thermodynamics, as you read in that chapter, leads to entropy. Everything is running down.

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So the first purpose of life is to push back against entropy, to carve out a little niche of order, to find food to eat, to find shelter, to find a mate, and so on.

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And that's what evolution, really natural selection designed us to do. Here I'm crediting Tubian Cosmides with this idea.

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Let me see if I can find their quote Again, so what? Why is the entire human race and its flourishing an obligation that rests upon the shoulders of everyone?

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Why not just the individual's survival and flourishing? Why not one family's survival and flourishing?

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What does it matter to the human race after what happens to the human race after the individual dies?

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That's unclear. Now, be careful. If you're a skeptic and you're starting to answer my question that I just posed, you're already smuggling in your own morality.

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Which, by the way, what is your answer? I'm curious. Doesn't it have to be something along the lines of because the human race ought to survive past one individual, right?

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But that's exactly the point. You're already creating the conditions to get the answer that you want to give.

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Which, if that's what you want to do, then so be it. But, I mean, don't look down your nose at the Christian who says,

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I think the best explanation for objective moral values and duties is a transcendent lawgiver called God.

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Don't scoff at the Christian because you think your position is superior, because it's not. The second law of thermodynamics is the first law of life, that you have to push back against entropy.

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Now, why are organisms doing that? Because those that didn't do that just died. So they didn't leave behind offspring and descendants who then have the motive or the drive to have some kind of purpose in life.

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So I actually think you can even derive some kind of purpose, that we have a built -in purpose, part of our nature.

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What is that purpose? To push back against entropy, to find food, to find warmth and shelter, to find mates, and basically...

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Yeah, for one individual, you know? Or one family? Or to feed an entire society?

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Or, you know, to ensure there's enough food for the survival of the human race? Like, which is it, right?

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You would need to be more specific than that. Survive, flourish, reproduce, flourish, and so on. That's my moral starting point.

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But it's not just a random thing. It's something I'm deriving from science and reason. I guess

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I would say, I don't know that we need science to tell us that we care about human flourishing. I think it's somewhat obvious and you'd probably agree with me on that.

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Yeah, just look around history. It's kind of obvious. But it's not clear to me why that's obligatory within a naturalistic system.

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So the way you described it is, sure, look around us. We have feelings that we want to survive. We have feelings that we want to flourish.

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But why are those feelings obligatory in terms of how I should care about anybody else's flourishing and act

12:05

A versus B? That's a thing that I think is getting muzzled into the system that is not justified by the system itself.

12:12

Bravo. Bravo. So, so McDowell is zooming in on the granular details of this view, because that's what he needs to do.

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Okay? Because if you do that, you'll realize that the moral math doesn't add up to the race, you know, to the entire human race.

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It just adds up to you as an individual, your own individual survival, which by the way, so, you know, we're skipping over other categories here, but a purely evolutionary perspective, which is the approach that Schirmer appears to be taking very often leads to an instrumental view of human beings.

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In other words, human beings are only valuable insofar as they can contribute to human flourishing. Well, the question is what happens when they can't?

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What happens to the broken and the outcasts who are not considered useful or helpful or the unborn?

13:07

Let's see where this goes. So I agree with you. If the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings is a foundation of values and morals, then ending poverty is real moral progress.

13:17

But it's not clear within naturalism why that's grounded and how that purpose, which is not a material thing, right?

13:24

Purpose is not physical. Obligations are not physical. They're not a part of the natural universe.

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Why that exists and why I have any obligation to follow that, that's what's not clear to me within a naturalistic system in a way

13:39

I think theism grounds that naturally. Well, first of all, I don't see how theism does that, but we could get back to that in a minute.

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What I'm saying is that evolution designed us as survival machines to push back against entropy and all the ways that we can die and suffer and so forth.

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And so the first purpose of life is to carve out a little niche of order against the entropy of the universe, the second law.

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So it's really the second law of thermodynamics, which is the fundamental law of physics, leads to a logic within our evolved psychology to have something to do.

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What is the purpose? This is what emotions are. Emotions are proxies or drivers of human behavior.

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And natural selection has done the calculating for us. You don't have to calculate calories. You just desire food.

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Like, oh, I really like sweet, fat tasting foods. I have to calculate calories.

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Just so we're clear. Simone, moving on. Cheesecake is kind of a hack of the system.

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It has both the sweet, sugary taste of fruit, that's right, and the kind of greasy, fatty stuff of animals, meat and fat that we like, that is really good for us, in terms of caloric intake that you need.

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Not in today's world, where you got too much of it, but in the ancestral environment. So that's kind of the logic behind it.

15:00

If we wanted to apply it to human relationships, I guess starting with sort of a

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Richard Dawkins selfish gene model, sometimes the most... Okay, now watch this. Shermer is about to appeal to why people do what they do, what drives their behavior, okay?

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Even when they perform altruistic acts. But he's going to try to do so by fitting it into a materialist evolutionary framework.

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The problem with that is when you do that, when you sort of run that through the machine, so to speak, what comes out the other side is selfishness.

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Why? Well, because selfishness is the ultimate driving motivator for anyone's behavior in a godless evolutionary framework.

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It's being selfish. So if you serve other people, right, or you try to help other people, give to charity or whatever, the reason you truly do those things is because it ultimately serves you and your own survival.

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Watch. The most selfish thing I can do for myself to get my own genes into the next generation is to be nice to you, to be helpful to you, be cooperative with you.

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Not just my kin and kind. You can do the kin selection calculation with Hamilton's rule and see the math of why it would behoove me to help, say, two of my brothers and four of my half -brothers or whatever calculation is based on genetics.

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But why would I help you, Josh? Sorry. Josh. It's my middle name.

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No worries. I don't even know you. We're not related. I mean, I kind of barely know you.

16:35

So the logic is that, in fact, because of the uncertainty of the future in the world we live in, in our ancestral environment, it pays to be nice and cooperative and helpful to our fellow group mates, such that when times are hard for me,

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I can count on you. And when times are hard for you, you can count on me. This is what's called reciprocal altruism. But it's not enough to do it in a cold, psychopathic, calculating way, like in a utilitarian calculus, where I'm just using you.

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I'm just sort of trying to convince you through my good acts to be nice to me later. Because if you fake it, you can kind of tell if somebody's a genuine friend, if it's somebody you really do trust.

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You can tell. People are pretty good at this. And the reason for that, so this is Robert Trevor's theory of deception and self -deception, that it's not enough to fake being a good person.

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You actually have to be a good person. I mean, feel it, live it, experience it. Like, I really feel good when

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I do something nice for somebody who's a total stranger. Why would I do that? I mean, I could get away with not tipping or whatever, but it's kind of a self -reflection.

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I feel better about myself. But not just that. It's not pure egotism. It's that...

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Wait, wait, wait. How is it not, though? How is it not egotism?

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Even if you don't fake kind, self -sacrificial acts, if the ultimate reason behind those things is that it serves your interests at base, how is that not egotistical at some level?

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A lot of these terms, they just, they would need unique definitions in order to try to make sense of this view.

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Hopefully, McDowell will call this out. It pays to actually be a genuine, caring, loving friend, partner, lover, spouse, whatever.

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And that's where, I think, the deepest emotions of all, the things we care about, love, commitment, honesty, and so forth.

18:25

Okay, that's helpful. First off, Christian's been calling me Josh for 48 years, so now eight months to call me. I'm in trouble, man.

18:31

Sorry. I'm totally kidding. It's fine. No problem at all. Proud of my dad. So, there was a lot there.

18:37

Let me pick apart a few things. You said evolution designed us. I would say, and I assume you agree with this, that evolution is a material, unguided process itself.

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It's a physical process that happened to result in human beings that feel a sense of purpose, caring for others, fighting for freedom.

18:58

We feel that, but it's a trick of our genes, so to speak, to get us to behave in a certain way, but we don't actually have an objective purpose that we are supposed to do.

19:09

You say, if we don't do it, then somebody dies out. Yeah, that's a fact. We're still at the is, but that feeling that has bubbled up through evolution that operates in a way towards getting us to survive doesn't carry any obligation or authority within itself.

19:25

If I don't want to listen to my genes, if I don't want to follow some of the principles that were given, that would be one of my challenges.

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Are you tracking this? McDowell is grabbing onto the original thread here, and he's just continuing to unravel

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Shermer's sweater, so to speak, Weiser. All throughout his comments,

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Shermer is smuggling in his own morality in order to get from human evolution to individual behavior.

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He's sprinkling in his moral oughts without calling attention to them, and then linking together his statements as if they're all connected.

20:01

Well, the only way they are connected is if you allow for Shermer's oughts in the first place.

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But wait a second. Wasn't that supposed to be the very thing up for discussion? In other words, the original question was, how do you get from an is to an ought?

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Shermer is answering the question by assuming his oughts in order to explain his oughts. So, good for McDowell for calling this out.

20:28

I would also say, this is something C .S. Lewis brought up in The Abolition of Man, because in your quote, he said, why is it better, again, fighting towards poverty and real progress?

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Why is that better? He said, because it's in our nature to prefer flourishing to suffering. But as you point out in your book, that's not the only thing that's within our nature.

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Within our nature sometimes is to harm people, to steal, to hurt people, to lie. You and I agree 100 % that we have our better angel and our worse angel.

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Actually, that's not a word, but you get the point. Inner demons. Exactly. What better said? Good point.

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And so, if both of these bubble up from within our nature and make us feel a certain way, there's got to be something outside of our nature.

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It would say, oh, that one is objectively good. And that instinct is objectively bad. That can't come from within nature.

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And if there's no morality outside of our feelings, outside of evolution, then there's no basis by which we can say one is objectively purposeful, objectively right, since they're both instincts.

21:24

Now, I'd love to come back. So, another helpful way to look at that is, and I've talked about this at length before in other videos, but you have to ask the question, are actions in and of themselves right or wrong?

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Or is it our subjective feelings that make something right or wrong? See, the first option locates morality in actions, right?

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In things that take place in the real world. The second option locates morality inside our minds.

21:56

You tracking this? And you just, you have to ask, answer this particular question if you're going to take a position on morality.

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Because if you say that morality is objective, which is what Schirmer is saying, that when people talk about morality, they're describing something outside themselves in some sense.

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And what you're saying is morality is located in actions. That when you say, for example, it's wrong to murder innocent children, you're talking about the action of murder.

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You're not just moaning articulately about what you dislike, right?

22:32

So, I don't know, maybe that's just another way to think through this a little more clearly, because what

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Schirmer appears to be arguing is morality is located in our actions.

22:43

Okay, but why though? And his answer is, well, you know, we've evolved, so we ought to survive, right?

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Therefore, we ought to do things commensurate with our survival. That's not a sufficient answer to the question.

22:57

The question was, why is morality located in our actions? To simply point out that, you know, we've evolved has nothing to do with it.

23:08

The oughts come into play when Schirmer smuggles in his own ought, and that's precisely the point.

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That's what McDowell is challenging right now. Good for him. Schirmer has not given justification for an objective morality.

23:21

He's just continuing to commit the is -ought fallacy. Which, by the way, is this helpful to you?

23:28

Like, as a Christian trying to, you know, think through these issues yourself, are you tracking what's happening here in this discussion?

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I'm so grateful to both Sean McDowell and Michael Schirmer to agree to something like this, because it just helps us think through these issues too.

23:47

And the best part is they're remaining civil, right? Nobody's attacking each other's character or getting personal.

23:54

It's all about the arguments, the evidence, and the warrants. Amen? Okay, just a few more minutes, and we're going to close here.

24:01

So, as a Christian, I look out and I go, oh, people have feelings of wanting to flourish, wanting to come to America.

24:07

Those feelings are real. But those are not just feelings. I have moral obligations to love and care for my neighbor because of who

24:16

God is and the commandments God has given us. So, I think the difference is, I assume you see it differently, is in your system you have to start with an if, which is not a part of the system.

24:26

It's not axiomatic within naturalism. In my system, if there is a God, and this

24:32

God is good, and he's given us commandments to love one another, then it's built in we should care for the survival and flourishing of others.

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So, I say, yes, we have common ground to share about flourishing and survival, though I would flesh out what we mean by flourishing a little bit differently, which doesn't matter.

24:48

But these feelings that we have are not just feelings. They're actually built into reality, which seems to me to give a theistic view the upper hand because it doesn't have to assume that.

24:58

I like how McDowell puts it. On the Christian worldview, our feelings when it comes to morality, so this goes back to conscience, right?

25:11

It aligns to reality. It matches up to something that is outside ourselves.

25:17

That's the only way that morality can be objective, you know? This transcendent standard that our moral intuitions align to, and that comes from God.

25:27

From the materialist worldview, there is no transcendent standard. It begins with subjective claims that get couched with evolutionary language.

25:37

But just talking about evolution doesn't make morality objective, and that's the subtle intellectual dance that's taking place here.

25:48

What makes something moral from Michael Schirmer's worldview is

25:53

Michael Schirmer, and he even admits it, you know, if you're listening closely.

25:58

Tell me what you think. Yeah, yeah, I think, I guess I would respond to that, that, again, if the way something is leads to survival and flourishing of sentient beings, then we ought to do that.

26:09

Why? It's an obligation. You made a promise. You ought to keep your promise. Why? Well, why? You know, the hell with it.

26:15

Well, then fine. Then you're a sinner. You would say that person's a sinner. I mean, you'd recognize, as a Christian, that people are born sinful.

26:21

What do we mean by that? Well, they're not doing what they ought to do. They're not following their obligations. They're not keeping their promises.

26:27

They're breaking their trust. They're lying. He's not answering the question. Have you noticed?

26:33

McDowell is, at this point, he's just giving the Joy Behar rejoinder, which is, so what?

26:39

Who cares? Right? Did you ever see Fred Armisen as Joy Behar on Saturday Night Live?

26:45

So, in other words, why ought people do what you think they should?

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And Shermer now is avoiding the question by shifting the focus back on McDowell. Well, you would call these people sinners.

26:59

Okay. That's not a response, though. We know what the Christian answer to the source of objective morality, right?

27:08

What's the materialist's answer? And he won't say it out loud. But the answer, again, is him.

27:14

It's Michael Shermer. That's where he gets his morality. And if that's the case,

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I mean, all right, fine. Call it for what it is. But if that's the answer, he has not sufficiently justified his belief in objective morality.

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Because his subjective claim is not a proper ground for objective moral values and duties.

27:34

Are you guys tracking this? Because I think I've seen enough. I'm going to share the link for the whole discussion slash debate below.

27:41

I want you to go check it out. I think it was a great discussion. But look, now it's your turn to weigh in. All right. What do you think?

27:47

Is Michael Shermer committing the is -ought fallacy? Yes. And even if he did, is that okay?

27:53

You know, let me know in the comments below. I'd love to get your thoughts. As always, if you made it this far, come on down to my Patreon right now.

27:59

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28:05

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