You’d Be Surprised How Bad of a Person You Are - Thought Experiments That Change the Way You Think

this video is sponsored by imprint learn about Big Ideas in Psychology philosophy self-help and much more through beautiful Visual and interactive content the first 200 people to use the link in the description will receive 20 off their annual membership you've just woken up you're not sure who you are where you are or where you've come from you look down and see only a hazy outline of a mostly translucent indiscernible body around you is a vast seemingly unending white space in front of you is a large screen on it an icon reads build your world begin

here you press it and a window appears revealing a list of what appear to be features descriptions and rules for how a world Works how the society you will be born into will work according to you each item on the list has a description and the option to toggle it on or off for some indeterminate amount of time you read through the list and select the conditions of the society you will live in the laws and regulations the way people in groups will be treated what rights people and groups will have the way people in

groups will be aided what will be allowed and forbade how wealth goods and labor will be distributed and redistributed and so on soon realize a problem you don't know who you will be you don't know if you'll be black white asian Hispanic and so on you don't know if you'll be male or female disabled or able-bodied you don't know what you will enjoy you don't know what your sexuality will be if you will be born into a high or low income family you don't know anything about you you quickly determine that the best thing you

can do is ensure that the world you create treats everyone as fairly and as well as possible so that no matter who you are born as even if you're one of the worst off you will still have a fair shot at a pleasant and prosperous life finish you review your work happy with what you've created then at the bottom of the final screen you press done this is a version of the thought experiment known as the veil of ignorance or the original position which was originally formulated by American philosopher John Rawls in his book a

theory of Justice Rawls used this thought experiment to illustrate a neutral point of view that members Founders and leaders of a society must strive to adopt in order to evaluate and determine Fair rules and principles although this thought experiment does arguably promote a very useful ideal for how we ought to consider and strive toward a fair and just Society a problem that we quickly discover with it is the apparent impossibility for anyone to ever truly reach such a position Rawls himself understood this to be the case when he wrote the original position is a purely

hypothetical situation the conception of the original is not intended to explain human conduct except insofar as it tries to account for moral judgments and helps to explain our having a sense of justice when referring to a perspective of balance and neutrality he continues it is doubtful whether one can ever reach the state and here we arrive at our first philosophical problem the problem of fairness how do we Define and Carry Out fairness in a world where everyone can only make decisions and determine rules and principles from bias partial self-interested and unoriginal positions is fairness ever

really possible not only does the veil of ignorance bring up the problem of fairness and justice but it also brings up the problem of luck of course we in fact do not know or choose who we are going to be born as or what Society we will be born into and so whether we are born into a particular society as someone who is favored or Not by said Society is entirely luck and furthermore all the uncontrollable events that happen to us during our lifetime regardless of who we are and where we are born are also

a product of luck this brings us to our second philosophical problem the problem of moral luck the term moral luck was first introduced by English philosopher Bernard Williams in 1976 and was then further developed primarily by American philosopher Thomas Nagel broadly moral luck refers to situations in which a moral agent is given a certain amount of moral blame or praise for an action but the individual did not have any control over the action the action's consequences or their own personal circumstances that influence the degree of moral blame or praise that they received to be clear

a moral agent here refers to an individual who has the ability to think in terms of right and wrong and can decide to act accordingly in his essay moral luck Thomas Nagel identifies the following four kinds of moral luck resultant or consequential circumstantial constitutive and causal situations containing resultant moral luck are cases in which moral blame is assigned to an individual or not based primarily on the consequences of their action and not merely the action itself and the consequences were caused or not largely by chance for example consider two separate bars that are down the

street from each other in the first bar there was a man named Tom and the second there was a man named Larry both Tom and Larry are reasonably decent people but tonight both find themselves in an argument with someone else at their respective bar in both cases the argument escalates to a physical altercation a common bar fight that happens countless times every day across the world at some point in the altercation Tom throws a punch at the other individual and hits them in the face the other person then proceeds to throw a punch or two

back at Tom and then the fight is broken up by the bar staff both Tom and the other individual are kicked out of the bar and Tom goes a separate way home with a couple minor bruises and a body full of adrenaline at the same time over in Larry's bar at some point in his altercation he too throws a punch at the same speed and force with the same bar fight level skill set as Tom and he also hits the other individual in the face this person however Falls backwards and hits their head on the

ground later that night the individual is pronounced dead as a result of the head trauma they suffered Larry is arrested charged with manslaughter and is sentenced to several years in prison both Larry and Tom committed the exact same act but based only on the consequences which occurred by chance Larry is assigned significant moral blame while Tom is assigned essentially none circumstantial constitutive and causal moral luck are all relatively similar to each other as they each refer to the luck or Misfortune of an individual's conditions or circumstances that either lead them to commit an act that

is deemed moral or immoral or to receive a different degree of moral blame or praise compared to someone else who committed the same act for example specifically in the case of circumstantial moral luck consider the same bar situation but let's go further down the street to a third bar where there is a man named Marcus who has also found himself in an argument that has turned into a physical altercation in Marcus's case however right as he is about to wind up to punch the other individual in the face the fire alarms in the bar go

off completely distracting both Marcus and the other person and causing the energy of the fight to dissipate as the two are ushered outside the bar along with the rest of the patrons and employees Marcus was going to punch the other individual in the face as hard as he could but he didn't solely because of the luck of his circumstances and so he receives no moral blame whatsoever even though he had the same intention to commit the very same act as Larry now let's travel to One More Bar a few streets over in this bar we

find Stephanie a woman who is also getting into a bar fight this night it's an active night in Stephanie's case at some point in the altercation she too throws a punch at the other individual and hits them in the face causing them to also fall backwards and hit their head on the ground later that night this person also dies because of their head injury Stephanie however receives no jail time because while in trial it is discovered that she was horribly and relentlessly abused as a child and had recently been diagnosed with severe borderline personality disorder

directly causing her to become overly physically aggressive and have little to no control over her actions and so instead she is only temporarily subject to a mental health facility in this case Stephanie experiences constitutive moral luck because although her actions and consequences are identical to Larry's the condition of her life that caused her to be the way she is affected or reduced the moral blame she received this case may seem reasonable enough that Stephanie receives at least less moral blame but let's go back to Larry Larry was not abused as a child did not experience

a particularly unusual life and is not diagnosed with any mental illness he was just a bit tired this night and is a bit selfish and physically aggressive in general at first glance Larry would seem to be the more morally blameworthy individual but did Larry choose to be tired and on edge that night who would choose this did Barry choose to be slightly selfish and physically aggressive in general Larry is not the original cause of Larry what caused him to be this way was merely a series of circumstances outside himself that he could not control who

he was raised by what he was exposed to what happened to him and so on as well as the behavioral Tendencies inside himself caused by his genetics which he also never decided or controlled if this is true how is Larry any more morally responsible for being someone who got into a bar fight that night than someone like Stephanie according to Nagel's Theory Larry's case includes the final kind of moral luck or Misfortune causal moral luck with this in mind if moral acts by a moral agent require the ability to evaluate right and wrong and make

decisions accordingly can anyone truly be morally responsible for their actions if their actions are invariably caused by other actions and events that were not their own that they never had a Saiyan or control over of course none of this means that there shouldn't be consequences there can and should be but that does not negate the prior Point consider a violent dog we would generally not view a dog as a moral agent and thus we would not deem a violent dog as immoral we may determine it best to put the dog down but at no point

would that equate to or acquire us to assign moral blame to the dog likewise consider a tornado certainly a tornado is exorbitantly dangerous and if we could contain or perhaps kill tornadoes we would but again nowhere in the process would we need to assign moral blame to a tornado and so why do we do it with ourselves are we so conceited to think that somehow we are the only thing separate from nature above it the only being that can somehow Escape what Nature has propelled forth for us we are conscious but what formed our consciousness

a human being wrote Albert Einstein is a part of the whole called by us Universe a part Limited in time and space he experiences himself his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness this brings us to our third and final philosophical problem the problem of moral knowledge what even is morality on what are we to base it is there anything objectively true about morality this problem Finds Its origins in the classic philosophical problem the is odd problem first established by the Scottish philosopher David Hume in

the 18th century the isot problem is what arises when one tries to make ethical claims how the world ought to be and how one ought to behave within it based on facts about how the world is Hume suggested that facts need to be combined with ethical assumptions in order to arrive at any sort of ethical statement but we arrive at these ethical assumptions solely through subjective interpretations because on what other basis do we have to ground and form our interpretations arguably we only can and do determine moral principles through the following methods spiritual or religious

doctrines emotional responses and science and reason the problem is all of these rely on assumption subjectivity or both when deriving moral principles from spiritual or religious sources the problem is of course the sources in which these spiritual or religious sources themselves came from in order for religious doctrines to be objectively true the religion itself needs to be objectively true and with what proof do we have to conclude this the problem with basing morality on emotions is of course that emotions are inextricably linked with individual subjective perception influenced by things like our cultural background temperament upbringing

and so on and lastly seemingly the strongest method for asserting moral principles is through science and reason in his work the moral landscape philosopher Sam Harris argues that morality can be derived from scientific knowledge about how the world is because moral values are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures and so by understanding what actions or events maximize the pleasure or well-being of conscious creatures and what actions cause harm and suffering onto conscious creatures we can determine objective moral truths about good and bad but here too Sam along with other proponents of this Theory seem

to smuggle in an initial ought that we ought to maximize well-being as a matter of objective fact but on what basis is there to ground this claim objective means something that is independent of our feelings and Views that would be true with or without conscious observation or experience how then could the flourishment of subjective conscious experience be a metric used in providing objective Truth for what purpose or to what end outside of ourselves could we attach this metric to ultimately there appears to be no clear way out of the loop of is and ought without

smuggling in an odd assumption first a claim about how reality should be not how it is in the end perhaps the only solution to the problems of fairness of luck of morality is somewhat less about finding Perfect fairness or objective right and wrong and more about moving forth with an effort of understanding forgiveness and compassion for the absurdity of it all a sort of compassion for everyone and everything for those who appear to us to be good for those who appear to us to be bad throughout history throughout the globe and into the future again

this does not mean complacency and total tolerance one can punish fight or resist someone or something that they believe is wrong while still having compassion for the other situation in truth none of us chose that we would be born into this world as what and who we are none of us set up the rules none of us ever really had a say but we are all here now and compassion appears to be one of if not the only through line that has saved us throughout history that bolsters positive change that accepts and forgives the mistakes

we have and will undoubtedly continue to make into the future in the words of the German pessimist philosopher Arthur schopenhauer boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct and needs no casuous tree whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one do harm to No One encroach on no man's rights he will rather have regard for everyone forgive everyone help everyone as far as he can and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving kindness this video was sponsored by imprint for many

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