How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Philosophy Animations on Ethics Narrated by Harry Shearer

The his­to­ry of moral phi­los­o­phy in the West hinges prin­ci­pal­ly on a hand­ful of ques­tions: Is there a God of some sort? An after­life? Free will? And, per­haps most press­ing­ly for human­ists, what exact­ly is the nature of our oblig­a­tions to oth­ers? The lat­ter ques­tion has long occu­pied philoso­phers like Immanuel Kant, whose extreme formulation—the “cat­e­gor­i­cal imperative”—flatly rules out mak­ing eth­i­cal deci­sions depen­dent upon par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions. Kant’s famous exam­ple, one that gen­er­al­ly gets repeat­ed with a nod to God­win, involves an axe mur­der­er show­ing up at your door and ask­ing for the where­abouts of a vis­it­ing friend. In Kant’s esti­ma­tion, telling a lie in this case jus­ti­fies telling a lie at any time, for any rea­son. There­fore, it is uneth­i­cal.

In the video at the top of the post, Har­ry Shear­er nar­rates a script about Kant’s max­im writ­ten by philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton, with whim­si­cal illus­tra­tions pro­vid­ed by Cog­ni­tive. Part of the BBC and Open University’s “A His­to­ry of Ideas” series, the video—one of four deal­ing with moral philosophy—also explains how Kant’s approach to ethics dif­fers from those of util­i­tar­i­an­ism.

In the video above, Shear­er describes that most util­i­tar­i­an of thought exper­i­ments, the “Trol­ley Prob­lem.” As described by philoso­pher Philip­pa Foot, this sce­nario imag­ines hav­ing to sac­ri­fice the life of one for those of many. But there is a twist—the sec­ond ver­sion, which involves the added crime of phys­i­cal­ly mur­der­ing one per­son, up close and per­son­al, to save sev­er­al. An anal­o­gous but con­verse the­o­ry is that of Prince­ton philoso­pher Peter Singer (below) who pro­pos­es that our oblig­a­tions to peo­ple in per­il right in front of us equal our oblig­a­tions to those on the oth­er side of the world.

Final­ly, the last video sur­veys one of the thorni­est issues in moral philo­soph­i­cal history—the “is/ought” divide, as prob­lem­at­ic as the ancient Euthy­phro dilem­ma. How, asked David Hume, are we to deduce moral prin­ci­ples from facts about the world that have no moral dimen­sion? Par­tic­u­lar­ly when those facts are nev­er con­clu­sive, are sub­ject to revi­sion, and when new ones get uncov­ered all the time? The ques­tion intro­duces a seem­ing­ly unbridge­able chasm between facts and val­ues. Moral judg­ments found­ed on what is or isn’t “nat­ur­al” floun­der before our ter­ror of much of what nature does, and the very par­tial and fal­li­ble nature of our knowl­edge of it.

The prob­lem is as star­tling as Hume’s cri­tique of causal­i­ty, and in part caused Kant to remark that Hume had awak­ened him from a “dog­mat­ic slum­ber.” What may strike view­ers of the series is just how abstract these ques­tions and exam­ples are—how divorced from the messi­ness of real world pol­i­tics, with the excep­tion, per­haps, of Peter Singer. It may be instruc­tive that polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy forms a sep­a­rate branch in the West. While these prob­lems are cer­tain­ly dif­fi­cult enough to trou­ble the sleep of just about any thought­ful per­son, in our day-to-day lives, our deci­sion mak­ing process seems to be much messier, and much more sit­u­a­tion­al, than we’re prob­a­bly ever aware of.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 


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Comments (28)
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  • Rafael Oliveira says:

    Thos ani­ma­tions are real­ly nice to make us think a lit­tle about our lives.

  • Rafael Oliveira says:

    Those*

  • Paxalot says:

    After see­ing these over­ly sim­plis­tic exam­ples I can’t have much faith in phi­los­o­phy. Peo­ple are not ratio­nal and they don’t have free will so all the talk about choice is wast­ed effort.

  • Paxalittle says:

    You give up on an entire pur­suit of study because you weren’t thor­ough­ly edu­cat­ed by a minute and a half overview sum­ma­ry of a piece of a philo­soph­i­cal debate?

    Sounds PERFECTLY ratio­nal ;-)

  • No philosopher says:

    Nice videos to start a dis­cus­sion. As to the first video I would also sug­gest; don’t coop­er­ate with evil, espe­cial­ly if coop­er­at­ing will cause anoth­er harm. Bet­ter to not say any­thing, shut the door and warn your friend, get a gun and defend your­self and your friend. Be will­ing to put your­self in harm’s way to save a friend. You noticed, I didn’t lie.
    Sec­ond video; Do the best you can. Take pos­i­tive action to save as many as pos­si­ble. Enlist help from oth­ers near­by. Switch the tracks, save the 5 and warn the one. Throw some­thing on the tracks to slow the train down but not your friend. That would be mur­der since there is no hope of sur­vival as there would be should you switch the tracks and warn the one. Be will­ing to get in harms way to save anoth­er.
    Third video; we as indi­vid­u­als can’t save the whole world but each per­son can do their part to improve the world one life at a time. There is more ben­e­fit to per­son­al giv­ing than imper­son­al giv­ing such as gov­ern­ment pro­grams fund­ed through tax­es. We should per­son­al­ly seek to be pros­per­ous so we can give more to relieve pain and suf­fer­ing as well as teach oth­ers to become pros­per­ous. Teach­ing every­one a phi­los­o­phy of pros­per­i­ty and giv­ing will do more to relieve pain and suf­fer­ing in the world vs. the typ­i­cal gov­ern­ment pro­gram which tends to cre­ate anoth­er class of depen­dent poor who can’t live with­out a hand­out. Of course, if you are the poor then any help is bet­ter than none. I’m just say­ing, I believe there is a bet­ter way.
    The “is/ought” video should be sim­ple for the athe­ist as well as the God believ­ing. From either per­spec­tive, if we draw our val­ues from what is or what was, we will fail to prop­er­ly con­sid­er what could or should be. By eval­u­at­ing our cur­rent state, review­ing the pros and cons, we can then form in our minds a bet­ter state to become our tar­get for change. Reach­ing out and con­nect­ing with oth­ers is a cre­ative act that will cause us to pros­per as indi­vid­u­als and/or a race of beings. If you don’t set a tar­get for a bet­ter life or world, you will live an aim­less life devoid of real mean­ing. You will end up neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing progress much like adding 1,000 lbs. of rock to a truck load of grain need­less­ly slows the truck down and hurts the mar­kets abil­i­ty to meet society’s needs. And if you’re not pros­per­ous enough to save a tribe some­where, try pick­ing a char­i­ty with a clear pur­pose you can believe in and give $5. In many coun­tries, $5 can save a life. Now wouldn’t that make your day?

  • Miguel says:

    It seems as If every­body is con­cerned about sav­ing oth­er peo­ple, but as always they for­get­ting a very impor­tant fact: human specie are the most destruc­tive beings over the earth, there­fore if you save a human life, Are you real­ly mak­ing good?

  • Harmandeep kaur says:

    This helps to think more deeply about life and deci­sions we make

  • Prabhjot singh says:

    It helps to think more eas­i­ly and deeply about deci­sions awe make apart from it it helps to make easy deci­sions

  • Prabhjot singh says:

    It helps to think more eas­i­ly and deeply about deci­sions awe make apart from it it helps to make easy deci­sions there is a lot oh dif­fer­ences between eth­i­cal and moral deci­sions eth­i­cal deci­sions are relat­ed to self sat­is­fac­tion and moral deci­sions also includes think­ing of oth­er peo­ple

  • Harmanpreet Singh says:

    These ani­ma­tions are good, bet­ter way to learn and under­stand the top­ic bet­ter. these videos ques­tion­ing our choic­es and some­where effect­ing the think­ing about the deci­sions that we are going to make in upcom­ing times.

  • Jaspreet Kaur -(2306941) says:

    These ani­ma­tions are quite help­ful in order to learn deep about top­ic even it helps to improve the think­ing of a per­son

  • Davinderpal kaur says:

    These ani­ma­tions are good enough to think one’s again in top­ic for bet­ter under­stand­ing and make bet­ter deci­sions . Instead of read­ing this is easy way to learn

  • khushpreet kaur(2308315) says:

    I think this is the best way to under­stand the top­ic and to make deci­sion which would be bet­ter for us.

  • Hina Hussain says:

    A valu­able and prac­ti­cal resource for devel­op­ing a deep­er knowl­edge of eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples is the ethics ani­ma­tion nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er. It gives a fun and insight­ful way to inves­ti­gate dif­fi­cult philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts con­cern­ing right and wrong. Enjoy the process of learn­ing, and don’t for­get to incor­po­rate these rev­e­la­tions into your own eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions and deci­sion-mak­ing.

  • Hina Hussain says:

    A valu­able and prac­ti­cal resource for devel­op­ing a deep­er knowl­edge of eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples is the ethics ani­ma­tion nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er. It gives a fun and insight­ful way to inves­ti­gate dif­fi­cult philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts con­cern­ing right and wrong. We have to Enjoy the process of learn­ing, and don’t for­get to incor­po­rate these rev­e­la­tions into your own eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions and deci­sion-mak­ing.

  • Karan Deep says:

    An indi­vid­ual can learn a lot about the issue and improve their abil­i­ty to think effec­tive­ly by using these ani­ma­tions.

  • Varinda Sharma says:

    These ani­ma­tions are super help­ful for deep under­stand­ing of the top­ic . Instead of read­ing this is eas­i­est and the best way to learn.

  • Mayank Arora says:

    Apart from that, it facil­i­tates eas­i­er deci­sion-mak­ing and allows us to reflect on our choic­es more read­i­ly and thor­ough­ly.

  • Manjinder Singh says:

    Moral phi­los­o­phy indeed pro­vides a rich explo­ration of eth­i­cal frame­works, and con­cepts like the cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tive and util­i­tar­i­an­ism offer diverse per­spec­tives on moral­i­ty.

  • Anoop says:

    With the ani­ma­tions a stu­dent can learn more about the sub­ject as com­pare to lec­tures because it can relate with our lives as well as our dai­ly activ­i­ties so this is one of the best way to teach

  • harmanpreet kaur says:

    A valu­able and prac­ti­cal resource for devel­op­ing a deep­er knowl­edge of eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples is the ethics ani­ma­tion nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er .The ethics ani­ma­tion nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er is an excel­lent and use­ful resource for gain­ing a bet­ter knowl­edge of eth­i­cal con­cepts.

  • harmanpreet kaur says:

    A valu­able and prac­ti­cal resource for devel­op­ing a deep­er knowl­edge of eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples is the ethics ani­ma­tion nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er. the ani­ma­tions were real­ly good, all the con­cepts can be under­stood eas­i­ly.

  • RAJAT MALIK says:

    images and ani­ma­tions are good ways to teach stu­dents

  • Simranjot Singh says:

    It makes it eas­i­er to think deeply about our choic­es, help­ing with both sim­ple and com­plex deci­sions. Eth­i­cal deci­sions are about per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion, while moral deci­sions involve think­ing about oth­ers.

  • davinder singh says:

    ani­ma­tions are bet­ter way to not miss any infor­ma­tion stud­ied in the class

  • Amandeep kaur says:

    In my per­spec­tive that if we lie for some­one’s good it’s not con­sid­ered as a lie as we are pro­tect­ing that per­son from evil things. To save major­i­ty is not but it’s also not good not to do any­thing for minor­i­ty and should go our best to get the solu­tion and save human­i­ty.

  • Vaneet kaur says:

    With the help of ani­mal stu­dents can learn more and eas­i­ly .Ani­ma­tions grab the atten­tion of the stude.

  • Vaneet kaur says:

    Ani­ma­tions plays a very sig­nif­i­cant role in our life . It grab the atten­tion of chil­dren and they want to learn more with the help of ani­ma­tion because it is the easy and best way to learn.

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