Yuval and the Philosophers
Added 2024-01-30 02:43:55 +0000 UTCA little mini decoding to get us back into the swing of things as we look at a viral clip that had religious reactionaries, sensemakers, and academic philosophers in a bit of a tizzy. Specifically, a clip from a talk by the well-known author and academic Yuval Noah Harari in which he discussed how human rights (and really all human culture) is a kind of fiction.
Get ready for a thrilling ride as your intrepid duo plunges into a beguiling world of symbolism, cultural evolution, and outraged philosophers. By the end of the episode, we have resolved many intractable philosophical problems including whether monkeys are bastards, if first-class seating is moral, and where exactly human rights come from. Philosophers might be mad but that will just prove how right we are.
Comments
That is the best reason for joining!
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-07 03:13:35 +0000 UTCThis episode pushed me to becoming a patreon, because i really want to spread this important message: sits in rear of the airplane are much safer in case of a crash, so 1st class sits, which are next to cockpit, arent that great
aneladgam_varelse
2024-02-05 23:45:14 +0000 UTCAgree with air travel thing. The other thing is medical care. As a lefty I hate how Australia has basicallu pushed everyone who can afford it into private health insurance. Which has created this horrific divide in health care for those who can or can't afford private insurance. That really bothers me a lot but I still have private health insurance. But I feel guilty about it.
Emma
2024-02-03 02:55:16 +0000 UTCThis is a question I’ve pondered on as well. If mathematical abstracts are based on observable phenomena, then they are materially based. So we can talk about them and use them in abstract ways, but they don’t make sense unless they refer back to something material. I’m not a mathematician, and I’ve never been good at math, so I’m probably ill equipped to answer your question. I should add that I’m also a hopeless materialist, which is why this question is particularly interesting to me.
Linda Sears
2024-02-02 13:20:29 +0000 UTCMy daughter is a philosopher at a University that is very into Theology. The department is very strong on applied ethics, which is a good thing. However, as an anthropologist type who is very suspicious of universal claims (good grief, I had a very painful discussion about Jungian archetypes with a philosopher over Christmas), I just don't get how there can be whole areas of philosophy which a basically someone deciding their random, unevidenced belief about something is true. At least pure maths requires proofs ......
Nina Davies
2024-02-01 14:46:52 +0000 UTCSo...at the risk of coming off as the "angry philosopher", my question for hard-nosed material reductionist types is this: Is truth and ontology reduced only to empirically observable phenomena? If so, are mathematical abstracts and objects "fictions"? You don't have to be a strong Platonist with mystical overtones to think that the answer is no.
Zvi Pardes
2024-01-31 22:47:38 +0000 UTCJeremy Bentham declared natural rights as “simple nonsense” and imprescriptible natural rights as “nonsense on stilts”. That is why I started my charity "Stilts for WarZones", go to www.loftyideals.com to donate. For every $20 donation you will receive a free clown nose.
Ymirsdreams
2024-01-31 20:42:47 +0000 UTCSmoke a blunt, give a ted x talk: pseudo-profound banality. Do some nootropics, record a podcast with a passel of sensemaking bros: pseudo-profound waffle.
Rasterisk
2024-01-31 17:52:48 +0000 UTC"I suppose if I could only afford the bus, some socialist ideas about cars would pop in my head as I watched them pass me in the rain. Or if I spent my days in retail selling things I couldn't afford." I think maybe, in some cases. I've found people blaming it on 'foreigners' far, far, more common sadly.
Matt
2024-01-31 11:54:54 +0000 UTCYes thank you!! It's not at all a new or radical point. And we did this at uni in my arts degree in first year philosophy and in my law degree in the compusory legal theory class, so it's hard for me to understand the pearl clutching. I wonder though if your reference to Betham highlights why it's so triggering for people who look at morality in religious / deontological terms... since his utilitarian and atheistic worldview allowed him space to criticise things like the influence of religion on the state, the oppression of women, homosexuality being a crime etc. The 'nonsense upon stilts' quote is so eye-catching that everyone forgets that Bentham actually wrote in favour of rights as a legal phenomenon, admittedly not without reservation (https://iep.utm.edu/jeremy-bentham/#SH5b). Which just goes to show that you can stridently oppose the idea that rights reflect an underlying universal morality while also being supportive of the idea of rights as a mechanism for achieving what he called 'the general mass of felicity'.
Artemis Green
2024-01-31 05:10:46 +0000 UTCMatt's thoughts on first class resonated with me--I was totally on board with leveling air travel. After some reflection I think this might be because as professionals we rarely encounter such a visceral demonstration of the limits of our class status. I don't want a Ferrari, and I can't really imagine buying and selling companies for fun. Leg room looks nice, and I don't like having to walk past it. I suppose if I could only afford the bus, some socialist ideas about cars would pop in my head as I watched them pass me in the rain. Or if I spent my days in retail selling things I couldn't afford.
Trees
2024-01-31 04:48:29 +0000 UTC*kermit voice*: Think again, woke moralist! Maybe that young man in first class merely had the manual for slaying the chaos dragon and First Class was his pot of gold! *starts crying*
Robert Andrews
2024-01-31 01:51:15 +0000 UTCYou definitely need not lump yourself in with Foucault to agree with this point!
Zack Katopodis
2024-01-31 00:55:27 +0000 UTCThese people would die reading one of the most influential philosophers of the last 200-300 hundred years, Jeremy Bentham, argue that “Natural rights are simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, -- nonsense upon stilts”
Zack Katopodis
2024-01-31 00:52:23 +0000 UTCLow blow…
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-01-31 00:03:21 +0000 UTCOne way to rebut the critics of this idea that human rights are a symbolic construct is the fact that most humans throughout history did not have them and many people still do not. For instance, Matt’s experience as a second class citizen in the flight back to Australia. 😄
Linda Sears
2024-01-30 19:44:12 +0000 UTCBig of you to let Gad Saad write the opening skit, Chris. I'm sure he appreciated the work!
Alex H
2024-01-30 14:33:52 +0000 UTCDo you think these exist independent of humans?
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-01-30 12:47:35 +0000 UTCI dunno, I do think there is an intrinsic characteristic of humans that innately lead us certain concepts (like the golden rule or religion)
Farah
2024-01-30 12:12:24 +0000 UTCNot a Lex burner acc I swear
Riku
2024-01-30 09:18:51 +0000 UTCI love all you godless materialists
Riku
2024-01-30 09:18:37 +0000 UTCTwitter/X will lead you astray if you don't first consider this as engagement bait. Some of the characteristics of collective outrage that Jon Ronson observed in "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" are there (uncharitable, over the top, moralistic reactions). And bait topics on academic twitter tend to attract some of the least qualified to comment, which might then attract onlookers to shoot fish in a barrel. Chris mentioned being linked a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article. What might be misleading about that is an encyclopedia article is a comprehensive summary of a topic. It's not necessarily indicative of what is representative or present in recent academic literature, if it was even relevant. I suspect from the discussion that there is little overlap between online philosophers and academic works that might have been relevant - for example I remembered John Tasioulas on Twitter writes on human rights and unsurprisingly he did not comment online and his papers on the first page of Google seem sensible and are not metaethically weird or counter intuitive, as far as I can tell.
rooftowel
2024-01-30 06:59:17 +0000 UTCExcellent amuse-bouche decoding. If people are triggered by this.... There was an episode of Philosophize This! podcast last year (#191) that went over the work of Giorgio Agamben (influenced by Simone Weil) who doesn't like human rights at all!
Kit McLean
2024-01-30 04:41:32 +0000 UTCLol, Matt was flexing his inner Marxist today in the podcast intro :) That said, I do sympathise with you. Seeing a brash, young kid in First Class reading Jordan Peterson would also greatly increase my blood pressure.
SHOUNAK SARKAR
2024-01-30 04:33:56 +0000 UTC
