Does Virtue Exist?

Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux looks into morals and rational secular ethics by focusing on relationships and what counts as real. He sets things you can touch against social ideas you can't, saying that relationships lack a physical side but still influence our identities and moral setups. He notes the subjective side of ethics and value, and considers how language defines our ties to others. In the end, he argues that life's meaning comes from relationships and social constructs, pushing back on the view that something must be tangible to exist.  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00All right. Hi, everybody. So, this is a little chitty-chatty about morals.

00:09This is sort of an introduction to the concept of UPP, rational secular ethics,

00:15not so much the proofread, which I've done many times before.

00:18You can get the free book at freedomain.com slash books.

00:21But really, when people say, do morals exist?

00:26And that's an interesting question, of course.

00:30Because the question is, what exists and what does not?

00:36Now, if you say, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.

00:41You have a brother named Bob.

00:44Well, does brother exist?

00:48Your brother, the guy, he does exist as a human being.

00:52And certainly, you share genes and so on, right?

00:56But does your brother as a relationship exist?

01:00Does the relationship exist?

01:03So, I meet my wife.

01:06I met my wife almost 25 years ago.

01:08We got married 24 years ago.

01:11And we have a vow that binds us, right?

01:15So, we are husband and wife.

01:17If we are married, does the marriage exist?

01:22Well, no.

01:23It doesn't exist.

01:25Because we're not bound together.

01:28If we were Siamese twins, then we would share a bunch of organs.

01:31If we were chained together, we, you know, the chain together would join us together.

01:36But does something called a marriage exist?

01:40No.

01:40What exists are the vows.

01:44There are certainly legal documents and so on.

01:48But the marriage as a relationship does not exist.

01:55So, ah, this is my boyfriend.

01:56This is my girlfriend.

01:57Well, you are introducing them as Bob, your brother, Joe, your boyfriend, Sally, your girlfriend.

02:07Well, so what you're doing is saying, this is my boyfriend, if you're a woman, right?

02:11This is my boyfriend.

02:13So, Bob or Joe, the boyfriend, he exists.

02:19Physical, tangible reality.

02:21But does the boyfriend part of him exist?

02:24In other words, when he says, I am your boyfriend, does anything change about him?

02:31I mean, hopefully his commitment and so on, but nothing physically changes about it.

02:35There is no gravitational force binding my wife and I together.

02:41You say, I have a brother.

02:43It's a description of a relationship, although there may be no relationship.

02:47If he's adopted, or you're both adopted, you say, this is my brother, but you have no genetic

02:55relationship in the same way that you would if you were brothers from the same mother and

03:01father, right?

03:03Physics do not change when you go from one country to another.

03:06There are imaginary lines with different rules that are written down and enforced.

03:11The rules don't exist.

03:12Laws do not exist in human society in the same way that the laws of nature exist.

03:21Or, to put it another way, do the laws of nature exist?

03:26Let's go even one step further.

03:28Let's step right off the edge of this cliff of derangement and get to the real facts of

03:33the matter.

03:34So, the laws of a country do not exist in the same way that the laws of nature exist.

03:41The laws of nature existed long before there were people.

03:43They will exist long after there are people, should that ever come to pass.

03:47And they exist whether people believe in them or not.

03:50They cannot be overturned by a revolution, right?

03:52A revolution can say, we are replacing the laws of England with the laws of America in

03:581776.

03:59So, you can have a revolution and you can change the laws.

04:02They were no longer paying taxes to England.

04:04We're now paying taxes to the people in Washington.

04:07But you can't have a revolution and say, we are no longer subject to the laws of physics.

04:12In England, we are now going to design our own laws of physics.

04:18In America, we have broken away from England, therefore fire does not burn and ice is no

04:23longer cold, right?

04:26Now that we have left England, we can control the weather with our nipples.

04:31I mean, come on, we've all tried, right?

04:33So, the laws of nature, of physics and evolution and so on, the laws of nature are not subject

04:42to human will.

04:44The laws of society are.

04:47Relationships do not exist in reality as tangible things, right?

04:54When you say the magical words, I take this woman to be my lawfully wedded wife, I take

05:02this husband to be my lawfully, I take this man to be my lawfully wedded husband, no shimmering

05:08force detectable on a spectrometer rises from the book or the priest's hand and binds you

05:17together in some physical way.

05:19When a piece of debris floats through the solar system and then gets captured by the sun's

05:28gravitational force and ends up joining in orbit somewhere, that is now part of the solar

05:33system because it is subject to universal and objective forces like gravitation.

05:41So, when people say, do ethics exist, what they're asking is, do rules exist?

05:47Now, clearly, rules of virtue, rules of ethics, rules of morality do not exist in the same

05:59way that rules of physics do.

06:02And what's interesting is that rules of physics don't exist either, but that doesn't mean that

06:10they're subjective.

06:10So, gravity is something you can only see the effects of.

06:16You cannot hold gravity.

06:19You cannot trap gravity.

06:23You cannot paint on gravity.

06:26Gravity is simply mass attracts mass.

06:30So, the interesting thing is that we as human beings exist only because of things that don't

06:38exist exist, which is the laws of physics.

06:41We describe the attraction of matter to matter and call it gravity, but it does not exist as

06:53a thing, as an object.

06:55It is a relationship.

06:56The speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, or is it 300,000 kilometers per second or something

07:04like, the speed of light is absolute.

07:08You can't put up a sign, like when you're driving, to say we're going from 40 kilometers

07:13to 50 to 70 to 90, back to 70, right?

07:16That doesn't work that way.

07:18But the speed of light does not exist.

07:23Light travels as fast as it travels, so fast that even when I was a kid and I first read

07:30about this stuff, of course, I tried my very best to turn the light off and close my eyes

07:36and hope to see the room half in light and half in darkness, because I didn't understand

07:41the 30 frames a second that the human eye has and so on, right?

07:44So, we only exist because of gravity, right?

07:50Because without gravity, there would be no planet, right?

07:53There would be no sun, there would be no, was it a fusion reactor, there would be none

07:57of that, none of that stuff.

07:59There would be no aggregation of matter into the form of a planet, there would be no sunlight,

08:04there would be no gravity, there would be nothing to hold the atmosphere here, you get

08:08it, right?

08:09So, gravity doesn't exist, but it's why we're here.

08:12There would be no such thing as life without gravity, because there'd be no heat, there'd

08:17be no planet, there'd be no atmosphere.

08:20So, we only exist because of something that doesn't exist, namely gravity.

08:24Now, obviously, when I say something doesn't exist, I don't mean that there's no such thing

08:28as gravity, there is, but it doesn't exist in that sort of tap it and measure it in terms

08:34of, you can't put a ruler along its length.

08:37You can see the effects of gravity, you cannot see gravity itself.

08:42Gravity does not exist in the way that a rock and a tree exists, or a carbon atom, or a cloud.

08:49Gravity is a relationship, it does not exist in and of itself, as a tangible thing.

08:55It is real, but it doesn't exist in a tangible fashion.

08:59So, we only exist because gravity, which does not exist, exerts its universal, absolute, unnegotiable

09:11way with matter.

09:13If you look at that which gives us meaning in our lives, it is our relationships, our friends,

09:22our family, in particular, husband, wife, children, extended family.

09:26Those are the things which give life meaning.

09:31Love is the greatest form of happiness, and love requires that we act virtuously towards

09:37those who are virtuous, or those, if we're parents, that we have control over when they're

09:41young.

09:42So, what's interesting is that life only exists because of something that is not tangible,

09:48gravity.

09:48And life only has meaning because of something else that doesn't exist, which is affection.

09:57And marriage is one of the greatest sources of happiness, or misery, if it's good or bad.

10:04But marriage doesn't exist either.

10:06It is a relationship that is not even like gravity.

10:10It is a commitment.

10:12You say, we are married.

10:13We have become one flesh, you know, as the Bible would say.

10:17But it doesn't exist.

10:18If you look around at the things that don't exist, it's wild.

10:25If you just look at atoms and space as a human being, it's almost incomprehensible.

10:32Let's look at another word, value.

10:34Value.

10:35Well, it doesn't exist.

10:38I'm sorry, it just doesn't.

10:40Ah, well, food is valuable to a starving man.

10:42Well, no, no, not if he's trying to kill himself, not if he's got anorexia, not if he's on a

10:48hunger strike.

10:49Value is subjective.

10:52How much would you pay for a bottle of water if you're dying of thirst in the desert?

10:56Anything and everything that you own, you would do, right?

11:00In fact, we can say of people long dead, they were brothers.

11:05Now, when a person is born, Bob, right, Bob is born, he has his atoms, he has his cells,

11:14he has his body, he has his being.

11:16Now, what changes in Bob's body?

11:19Let's say Bob is four years old and his parents give birth to a girl.

11:25He has now become, from being an only child, he has now become a brother.

11:32What has changed about his atomic structure, his cellular structure?

11:35Well, nothing.

11:36I mean, his mind will be changed and shaped and so on.

11:39He might get some bruises if he's play fighting and whatever and there's an accident.

11:43But Bob does not change his atomic or cellular structure the moment that his sister emerges

11:51into the world.

11:52He is now a brother, he has a sister, his sister is born who already has a brother, but

11:59neither of their atoms are changed.

12:01When I say to my wife, I'm your husband now, and she says to me, I'm your wife now, nothing

12:07has changed about our atomic structure.

12:10Nothing has changed about ourselves.

12:12So when people say morals don't exist, it's a little confusing to me because gravity doesn't

12:21quote, exist in a tangible way.

12:24Gravity is a relationship.

12:26Marriage doesn't exist in a tangible way.

12:29Marriage is a relationship.

12:31Siblings, the sibling, each sibling exists.

12:36The sibling relationship is a relationship.

12:38If you have a boy and a girl, and the girl sadly dies, the boy is now an only child.

12:48He said, I had a sister.

12:49Say, are you a brother?

12:50I am not a brother.

12:51I was a brother.

12:52I am now not a brother.

12:54So let's say the four-year-old, the sister is born.

12:56I'm sorry to use such a grim example, but it does clarify.

12:59So you've got your four-year-old, his sister is born.

13:04He is given the sobriquet of, sorry, I almost got that word out of my mouth in the right

13:10way, sobriquet of brother.

13:13And let's say then, tragically, his sister dies.

13:19Now he is no longer a brother.

13:22Let's say, again, I'm sorry to use the example.

13:24Let's say that his sister is born, and due to some tragic accident, his sister dies five

13:32minutes after she is born.

13:36Well, he is a brother for five minutes.

13:39He has a sister.

13:40And then five minutes later, he goes from not being a brother or, you know, whenever you

13:46count the brother thing as starting conception or whatever, right?

13:49So he is a brother until his sister dies.

13:53Now he is no longer a brother.

13:55He may be, again, if his parents have more children, but he's no longer a brother.

13:59So if we say he's a brother when the sister comes out, the sister dies five minutes later,

14:03so he's a brother for five minutes.

14:04Well, what has changed in his atomic structure or his cellular structure or anything physical

14:08about him?

14:09What has changed in any foundational way?

14:12Now you can say, of course, well, he's four, he understands what it is to have a sister,

14:16his neurons have rearranged themselves, and I get all of that for sure, for sure.

14:22But neuron rearrangement or neuron beliefs don't define everything.

14:28You could be an only child and dream that you have a sister.

14:31And during that time of dreaming, you believe that you have a sister, your neurons fully

14:35accept that you have a sister, you wake up and you don't have a sister, and right?

14:39So I'm not saying there's zero change.

14:41Of course, there's change, right?

14:42I mean, I'm a very different person because of who I married.

14:46My wife is a very different person.

14:48We're both better people because of who we married.

14:49So I get all of that, but nothing foundational has changed in his cells.

14:55We don't say, let's say, when somebody learns a new skill, we don't say they've become a

14:59different person.

15:01I mean, Bob, since you learned French, I don't know what to call you.

15:05Blackshack shellac.

15:05I don't know, right?

15:06So it's the same person, right?

15:08Bob now knows French, but he's still Bob, right?

15:11So when people say, well, but morality doesn't exist, it's a little incomprehensible.

15:18And of course, I'm not saying people are like this who say that as a whole, but it's kind

15:24of sociopathic in a way.

15:26Again, I know that's harsh, right?

15:27But I'll tell you sort of why I think that.

15:29Like, if you're a husband and you're on a business trip and you sleep with some woman

15:35and you cheat on your wife and so on, right?

15:38And your wife finds out about it, right?

15:40Some indication, right?

15:42Your wife finds out about it and you say, well, hang on, hang on, hang on.

15:46I mean, why are you mad at me?

15:49Our marriage doesn't exist.

15:51It's not a thing.

15:52Would that be an answer?

15:53Like, wouldn't that be something that only a very weird person would say?

15:58Can you imagine that?

16:00Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:00I cheated on you.

16:01I guess technically I cheated on you.

16:03But our marriage doesn't exist.

16:05Where does our marriage exist?

16:07It's not a thing.

16:08It's not an object.

16:10I can't paint it.

16:10Can't move it.

16:12Don't put it in a box and ship it to wherever we're going.

16:16I mean, the rings exist.

16:17I get that.

16:17There's pieces of ink on paper.

16:19Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:20But our marriage doesn't exist.

16:22So I'm not cheating on anything because the marriage isn't real.

16:25It doesn't exist.

16:26Not valid.

16:27Not real.

16:27Well, like, wouldn't that be strange?

16:30Family is a concept that describes people both biologically related and unrelated.

16:38The unrelated, hopefully, being the parents and the related being the children.

16:43Is a family a family if no one is related?

16:46Sure.

16:47Husband and wife is a family.

16:48Husband and wife and two adopted kids from two different parents.

16:52That's a family.

16:54So a family is a description.

16:58But family doesn't exist.

16:59You can't take a family portrait with no people in the portrait.

17:03Say, well, no, I just, I want a picture of the family, but I don't want any people in it.

17:06I just want a picture of the idea of, like, it doesn't exist.

17:10Your country doesn't exist as a thing.

17:13I mean, there are buildings.

17:15There are costumes.

17:16There are weaponry.

17:17I get all of that.

17:19But it doesn't exist.

17:21In the same way a tree, a rock, a cloud, a carbon atom exists.

17:25So when people say, well, something doesn't exist, therefore it's not valid.

17:31It's not real.

17:31It's not true.

17:32It's not important.

17:33Like, I don't understand it.

17:36I don't fundamentally understand it because gravity doesn't exist.

17:40It's why we're here.

17:41Love doesn't, quote, exist as a thing, right?

17:44Family doesn't exist as a thing.

17:46Marriages don't exist.

17:47Friendship.

17:47Oh, here's Bob.

17:48He's my friend.

17:49And then Bob moves away and you sort of lose touch with him and he's no longer a friend.

17:54But, you know, you and Bob have not become different people.

17:57You haven't mutated into different life forms.

18:00You haven't become lizards or anything like that.

18:02But the friendship has gone.

18:05You're still you and Bob is still Bob.

18:07You just no longer have this description of a relationship called friendship.

18:12So everything that we do that has meaning, that gives us joy, that gives us connection,

18:18that gives us comfort, is based on things that don't exist.

18:24And saying, well, but morality doesn't exist.

18:28I mean, could you imagine in some, you know, the sort of aforementioned horrible tragedy

18:32where the family loses a child?

18:38A family loses a child.

18:40One of the worst things that can happen, right?

18:42So the family that dies, a child dies.

18:46And then would you say, well, but, you know, you go to the funeral, you give a speech and

18:50you say, I mean, look, it doesn't mean anything because there's no such thing as the category

18:55child.

18:55There's no such thing as the category family.

18:57They don't exist.

18:58So, I mean, there's no meaning to it.

19:00It's not real.

19:01It's not valid.

19:02It's not valuable.

19:03The category doesn't exist.

19:05We should only value things that exist.

19:08Would that make any sense at all?

19:10Even if there was no biological relationship, this was the child that you had for five minutes

19:15after you adopted and then it died, he or she died.

19:18I mean, that would be terrible.

19:20So it's a very cold and alien view of the universe.

19:25I'll be honest.

19:26I'm just being straight up, right?

19:28If I, if someone, I can't even say myself, if someone would have been to cheat on their

19:32wife, as I said, saying, well, marriage doesn't exist.

19:34Show me, show me where marriage exists.

19:36Show me, show me where marriage exists.

19:38It's not a thing.

19:39It's not tangible.

19:39I can't touch it.

19:41Right?

19:42People would look at you like, what is wrong with you?

19:45Like there's something very weird and alien and cold and kind of sociopathic about that.

19:53Numbers don't exist.

19:54Logic doesn't exist.

19:55The scientific method.

19:57Doesn't exist.

19:59Family, love, gravity.

20:02These aren't tangible things.

20:05So when people say things which don't exist have no value, what they're telling me is they

20:12have no relationships that mean anything to them at all.

20:16Listen, I'm really sad about that.

20:18I think it's very tragic.

20:20But saying things don't exist and therefore have no value or meaning, no relevance, is

20:27so strange to me that I can't, I generally can't wrap my head around it.

20:33I mean, computers don't have relationships, right?

20:38And relationships don't exist.

20:41Computers don't have relationships.

20:43So the way that I think people are saying that they exist is in this kind of weird, cold,

20:50sociopathic way where all that exists is atoms and space.

20:53I don't know, is that artistic, is that, I don't know, sociopathic, is that like there's, well, you show me where morality exists.

21:02Morality doesn't exist.

21:03But everything that keeps us alive by staying on the planet, everything that keeps us alive and gives life meaning and happiness doesn't exist.

21:14Gravity, relationships, love, family, connection, affection, right?

21:19These things don't exist.

21:21My wife and I are not bound together by the laws of physics, but merely by convention and promises.

21:26It's an odd way, a very odd way of looking at it.

21:31Now, I understand, of course, I really do.

21:33I understand that I have not proven morality by saying this.

21:40But hopefully what I am getting you to understand, and I'm sure you do in general,

21:44and if you don't, this talk won't help you, but I just want to be clear because it's not,

21:48the people who say things that don't exist have no meaning do not exist in the same kind of mind space that I would understand in any way, shape, or form,

21:57or that anyone with any kind of heart or passion or connection or love would understand.

22:02So we can't reach them, but we can reach the people in the middle, right?

22:07There are people who understand that life and everything that gives it meaning, joy, happiness, and purpose is all founded upon things that don't exist.

22:17Do we understand that?

22:20So saying that something doesn't exist, therefore it has no value and has no meaning, has no objectivity,

22:25can't be analyzed, and is pointless, is somebody who doesn't know fundamentally what it means to be a connected, happy, and related human being.

22:37I don't know if it's like a robot would look and see atoms in space.

22:42Robots don't have relationships with each other.

22:44You know, some arm, machine, in a factory, right?

22:51So, logic doesn't have meaning, yet we strive to be logical.

22:57Science doesn't have any meaning, yet if we want to say things that are true about the universe,

23:01then we need to follow the scientific method.

23:04I mean, if you go to your doctor and you say,

23:10oh, I have a tumor, or I think I have a tumor, and he's like, yeah, it's just atoms, just like you are, right?

23:17I mean, health is just a subjective preference.

23:20I mean, what's healthy, let's say it's cancerous, what's healthy for the tumor is unhealthy for you.

23:25What's healthy for you is unhealthy for the tumor.

23:27So, I mean, I could flip a coin or I have no preference, like, that wouldn't make any sense, would it?

23:32Because life is a value and health is a value.

23:35Does health exist objectively?

23:37I mean, you can say, well, you know, your liver failed and blah, blah, blah, right?

23:40Sure.

23:42Health exists as a description and as a preference that is subjective.

23:49Because, again, people who kill themselves or who starve themselves are not acting to benefit their health.

23:56So, when people say, well, does morality exist?

24:00Show me where morality exists.

24:01Morality isn't objective.

24:02Morality doesn't have any meaning.

24:04It's not factual.

24:05It's not tangible.

24:05It's not material.

24:06It's not real.

24:08I mean, they're expressing a preference that things be real in order for those people to accept things as valid, right?

24:16Morality is not real.

24:17Morality is subjective.

24:18Morality is not valid.

24:19So, they're expressing a preference, but their preference doesn't exist either.

24:22Not in the same way a rock does.

24:29So, this is the foundational self-contradiction of this issue.

24:33Is that people are expressing preferences which don't exist, saying that something has less value because it doesn't exist.

24:42But if they believe that things that don't exist have no value, they will express no preference at all.

24:47No individual atom has morals.

24:49I get that.

24:50No individual atom has a preference.

24:52So, the preference does not exist in the same way that a rock and a tree and a carbon atom and a cloud does.

24:59A rock exists.

25:01A preference does not.

25:03So, they're saying, I prefer that you say things that are true.

25:08I prefer that what you say, Steph or the moralist, that what you say has a relationship to that which is true.

25:14It is better to speak the truth than to lie.

25:19In other words, they are expressing a moral preference that I be accurate and tell the truth and talk about things that are real and valid.

25:25That they have a preference that they have a preference that they have a preference that they have a preference that is objective, that I speak the truth and not say things that are false.

25:40And then they say, there's no universality and there are no preferences.

25:46Because that which doesn't exist is invalid.

25:50Well, universality doesn't exist.

25:53There's no universality planet.

25:55So, it is a strange mindset.

25:57It really is a very strange mindset.

25:59And I hope that this little talk has helped you understand it.

26:03Think about all the things in your life that don't tangibly exist but give you meaning and purpose and happiness.

26:08And there's not certain proof of anything.

26:10But it is certain proof that we can't just say that things that don't exist are not important and don't matter.

26:16Unless we're some cold-blooded sociopath or serial killer.

26:21In which case, I think that the important thing is to just try and stay away from those kinds of people.

26:26All right.

26:27Thanks very much.

26:27Freedomain.com slash donate.

26:28Have yourself a lovely, lovely evening, my friends.

26:31I'll talk to you soon.

26:32Bye.

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