See? This is why I hate shooting in my home.
[Snake Wrangler]: Tigger! You're being very unhelpful and you're being a diva.
[off-camera laughter]
[kiss]
And I've learned a great deal...
He's pulling my crown off!
AaaAAAHahaha!
Tigger! Aaah!
[Snake Wrangler]: Okay, Tigger, don't do it, don't grip! Don't--
[Snake Wrangler]: Tigger, no no no no no...
This is all going on the blooper reel.
I'm gonna cut you out if you keep misbehaving!
[Snake Wrangler]: This is a day for him.
Tiggerrr!
I'm gonna need you to behave, please.
We've only done one paragraph and there's like several to go!
Nooo!
Nonononono!
Nope! NOPE!
[muffled cry]
[Snake Wrangler]: Oh Jesus Christ!
[muffled sigh]
[Snake Wrangler]: Come here!
Children and animals!
[Snake Wrangler]: Alright, there we go!
Thank you, Tigger...
for that lovely hug.
[Snake Wrangler] Oh my G--
[unintelligible muffled speech]
[laughter]
It is a little confusing approaching Peterson's work from the point of view of philosophy,
because words like relativism and nihilism, post-modernism and Marxism have technical meanings
that he tends to...
wind around...
Aw, you actually put me off because you're so cute I forgot the line!
In fact, both those practices have parallels in societies that aren't quite so influenced by...
[whispered] "Don 't hiss at me." [kiss]
In fact, both of those practices have parallels in societies that haven't been quite so influenced by
conservative Islam and arguably say more about controlling women [kiss] than they do about religion
He's drawing attention--
I'm gonna... sneeze.
[exactly the sound you'd expect]
Woof.
We'll leave it in, it's Brechtian.
Similarly, Boyd thinks that a word like "good," refers to a cluster of things that are non-morally good for humans
like sharing friendship, sharing love, having fun, watching quality YouTube videos,
but just like with health, you're never gonna be able to pin down a full list because the concept just isn't like that.
And evil, too, is a cluster property.
You'll never pin me down.
I’ll thus much tell thee: thou never art so distant
From an evil spirit, but that thy oaths,
Curses, and blasphemies pull me to thine elbow.
Thou never tell'st a lie, but that a devil
Is within hearing it; thy evil purposes
Are ever haunted. But when they come to act,
As thy tongue slandering, bearing false witness,
Thy hand stabbing, stealing, cozening, cheating,
I’m then within thee. Thou playst, I bet upon thy part.
Although thou lose, yet I will gain by thee.
Basically what I'm saying is I like to keep you all on your toes
Boyd takes his theory in a bit of a different direction from Harris, though.
Rather than try to use it to say that other cultures have bad ideas and you might be justified in taking military action against them,
he thinks his theory can explain why there is moral disagreement in the first place.
People disagree over what belongs in the cluster of good, just like they disagree over what belongs in the cluster of healthy.
Even within what you call modern medicine views of what is healthy vary.
The United States, for instance, dispenses far more painkillers per patient than Britain.
In the US they give out pain pills like they're M&Ms whereas in Britain you can turn up to A&E on fire
and they'll give you half a paracetamol and a biscuit.
And that's without even getting into things like the relation between health and beauty,
which is another cluster property.
There are some humans who I would say are very obviously objectively beautiful
who have a lot of the properties in the cluster of beauty, but we could still disagree over what properties belong there.
Does a beautiful person have to have, for instance, brown eyes?
Like Harris, Boyd thinks that moral expertise is possible and that different cultures
might have radical disagreements about morality.
Perhaps, irresponsibly, he does not consider the possible ramifications of that view for things like foreign policy.
Somebody evidently raised this problem with Boyd, though, because in 1988 he wrote a follow-up.
His response, instead of beginning with "thou shalt not kill," was this:
"By way of examining the question of moral chauvinism,
I define three relations of commensurability which
might obtain within a tradition of inquiry.
Semantic commensurability obtains just in case there
is a common subject matter for all the temporal stages
of the tradition and its various sub traditions.
Global methodological commensurability obtains just in case the differences between the prevailing theoretical
conceptions between any two tradition (or subtradition) stages are always resolvable by the appropriate
application of research methods endorsed by each,
Local methodological commensurability obtains just in case this sort of resolution is always possible for the differences
between consecutive tradition stages or between contemporaneous stages of different subtraditions
within the tradition of inquiry in question."
Oh good, glad we sorted that one out.
By the way, if you wanted to object to Boyd--and by extension Harris--
it's very possible.
The homeostatic bit in the name there refers to the fact that properties within the cluster of good or healthy
or beautiful, tend to occur together. Either because the presence of one makes the presence of the others
more likely or because they have similar causes. Like exercise, being physically healthy,
is thought to contribute to your mental health as well; they go together.
It's very helpful when properties cluster together like that, because if you know that one of them is present,
you can infer that some of the others might be, too.
If I tell you that John Doe is 35, doesn't smoke, and drinks in moderation, you can probably make some
predictions about his health if you understand the reasons why the properties in the cluster tend to go together.
This is called Inductive Reasoning
and it's how Sherlock Holmes thinks. He understands why certain observable things tend to go together.
The reason why the writing in blood on the wall is seven feet high
is because people tend to write things at eye level.
So the killer must be a very tall person.
Elementary!
However, the same does not appear to be true in moral situations.
The philosopher Michael Rubin says, suppose you see four kids playing basketball and they are having fun--
which is one of the properties in the cluster of goodness.
So, is this situation morally good?
Well, maybe they stole the ball.
Maybe they're skipping school.
Maybe one of them's boring the shit out of his friends by yammering on about Jordan Peterson.
You can't infer nearly as much about the moral situation and it could be a very bad one.
So if goodness is a homeostatic cluster property, it looks like it might be so complicated and massive
that it's pretty unlike health or beauty.
So maybe it isn't one at all.
Hang on a minute.
We just had a sophisticated chat about morality and nobody mentioned cucks
or told anybody they were destroying the West
or denied the existence of trans people.
Hell's getting far too pleasant.
I miss 2016, that was a good year for me.
