Truly excellent talk, especially the treatment of defining terms and the circular reasoning of Christian apologetics.

I know a certain evangelical sift-preacher who would stand to learn a lot from this (pity he's already proven himself incapable of learning anything).

Moving this video to Sketch's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*beg

Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter Sketch.

*beg

Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter Sketch.

Giving it another *beg

Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter Sketch.

Silver star powers activate: *quality!!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by hpqp.

god would approve of this mans take on morality.
fundamentalists?....not so much.

Theist response: Nuh-uh!

I'm not a fan of this snide style. That's to say, if he treated me like this, it would take away from my psychological well-being, I wouldn't be happy, and I wouldn't want to be around him or wish success for him, to use his definitions. It was possible for him to make the exact same arguments without being mean. In fact, doing it that way would have been more likely to have impact on people who are not in the allegorical choir, which is to say, those more likely to be in the non-allegorical choir.

But I really like the path he takes on definitions, so upvote for content. Hadn't heard it thought through that far.

I like his basic utilitarianism, but I think he's off a bit in the terms he's maximizing. I'd say that an ethical choice maximizes the fulfillment of weighted preferences among involved parties. Why preferences? Some people like suffering. Some people may not like suffering, but may choose suffering (for example, they might choose to lose a leg to save a tree.. or something). I believe it's ethical to allow them that choice, that preference. In another case, some people would object to, say, having to take a happy pill, even if it truly made them happy and satisfied. I don't think there's any reason they should have to. It's a small quibble, but important in some cases, I think.

And, to be clear, pretty much everyone is a utilitarian when it comes to an actual ethical dilemma. Jesus recommended pulling an ox out of a mire on the Sabbath. This is a utilitarian resolution to a conflict between rules. Pretty much anyone who claims to be, at root, deontological (such as someone who follows a religious code) is going to fall back to utilitarianism when a conflict arises. It's natural and, in my mind, right. And if you use utilitarianism to resolve conflicts, I think it's the "real" system.

On the flip side, while you can believe in utilitarianism as the true root of ethics, you can't effectively live that way because there are too many decisions and too many consequences to predict. Maybe punching a hobo is just the thing that will get him back on the road to life satisfaction. Maybe stealing a stapler and donating it to a charity is a net good. But you can't effectively live like that, and a society based on everyone making decisions in that way is not going to work - so you need to find personal rules of thumb that lead to a "good" (though not likely best) standard of ethics, and you need societal laws and norms that allow humans to interact in positive ways (while also allowing for exceptional actions when those actions will lead to better outcomes - like speeding to the hospital). So, for example, we have a rule of thumb that says "don't kill people, except in circumstances x, y and z" - and we live that way and don't have to further consider ethical questions about whether we should be killing people on a day to day basis. Unless we're the President. Or Dexter. But I suppose he has the code.

The other sad part is that this basic utilitarianism fails to address many of the ethical questions we actually have. For example, take abortion. The terms we're talking about - preferences, suffering, happiness - when do they kick in? I have my own thoughts on this, but we're out of the realm of "obvious philosophy people should be able to agree on". Similar problem with, say, terminating those in vegetative states. Who's preferences do we count, and how much? What does it mean to "be happy" for someone with minimal brain function?

But anyways, good thoughts in the video, even if I do think he took his time in getting to them.