Philosophiraga: Episode Four – Kingdom Hearts and Meta-Ethics
3 min read
“Nothing is wrong if it makes you happy.”
– Bob Marley
In the fourth episode of Philosophiraga’s maiden voyage – our module on morality – we discuss the Kingdom Hearts franchise and what it even means to say that something is right or wrong.
Philosophiraga is the podcast about video games and philosophy, and… I’m astonished to report that it’s been received really well! Or, at least, it’s been received way better than I expected. I wasn’t getting my hopes up about anything in particular, and I still don’t really know what a ‘good’ podcast launch would look like, but I’m really very happy that some people have listened to it and some of those people have said they enjoyed it!
Anyway, here’s episode four.
It’s the last on morality, although we’ll be bridging the gap with an interview episode to wrap things up before moving on to another topic.
In this episode, we consider meta-ethics: what we really mean when we describe something as morally good, whether there’s such a thing as right or wrong independent of how we feel about it, and how the universe of Kingdom Hearts is both thoroughly definite and thoroughly ambiguous when it comes to moral goodness.
So please have a listen to episode four, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Keying’, wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on Apple, Podchaser, Buzzsprout, Stitcher… and if you enjoy the show, leaving a rating and review will, I’m told, feed the algorithms and make things better somehow.
Listen to Philosophiraga!
Gratz on Swag and Phat Lewt
Oh, and a huge thank you and congratulations to our merchandise winners! Those who left reviews in the first week of Philosophiraga’s launch were entered into a giveaway, and four lucky people won stuff with our super-sexy logo which I’m sure they will now be brandishing proudly everywhere they go.
Here's our winners for our #Philosophiraga #podcast #giveaway sponsored by @TeePublic
Grand Prize: @SublimeReviews
2nd Prize: @Pix1001
3rd Prize: @adventure_rules
4th Prize: @BillTuckerTSPThanks for supporting the show! Enjoy the merch heading your way, you fantastic four! pic.twitter.com/rgAhP0U2hE
— the Well-Red Mage (@theWellRedMage) December 5, 2019
Thank you again to everyone who’s reading this (and everyone who’s not reading this but has listened to the show or whatever), and I hope you continue to enjoy Philosophiraga.
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Though he’s been known by many names across the vast and peculiar landscape of the Internet, every iteration of The Sometimes Vaguely Philosophical Mage has shared an urge to look far too closely at tiny details and extrapolate huge, important-seeming conclusions. These days, in addition to Mage duties, he can be found discussing gaming and other pop culture (and occasionally sharing some of his own musical and fictional creations) at the Overthinker Y blog and on Twitter.
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Objective morality doesn’t exist. It’s all subjective based on our experiences in life. Our subconscious reacts to the most traumatic events by developing a sense of what is good and bad in order to protect us from experiencing similar events. I personally tend to approach subjects like this from the position that everything comes from within us. That’s why I reject the idea of there being objective moral values. Now, I’m personally against rape (and statistically you probably also are) but people who commit acts I think are morally wrong don’t decide to live a life doing things which are morally wrong (either objectively or subjectively). Even if we understand what everyone else thinks, none of us do things we can’t justify. So if I’m one of those people, that act is the culmination of a series of events throughout my life which have informed that particular act, whatever it may be, as being consistent with my value system (or at least not inconsistent). In other words, no one does things they subjectively consider to be morally wrong – their value system can have exceptions but those exceptions are still justifications.
If you weren’t already aware of it, you should read Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. He writes a lot about reality tunnels and how he experimented with having a different religion every week and found that he was able to follow their different value systems because of their inherent confirmation biases.
Just throwing this out there: I don’t think an individual’s subjective justifications of their actions actually affects the real moral qualities of their actions. A rapist is really wrong in committing the act of rape whether they justify their actions well or not, or even whether their society justifies their action or not. A rapist may be “for” rape but that doesn’t make the act of rape good. But if rape is always wrong whether justified or not, how is it then not a moral absolute? And if at least one moral absolute exists, is it possible that others do?
Not sure whether this was intended as a sort of lateral move in the discussion or a refutation to something Alex said, but I can’t see anywhere in Alex’s statement that acknowledges that there is any such thing as ‘really’ wrong.
You’ve ended by asking questions the premises of which I don’t think Alex agrees with, based on his statement (I think to understand your last questions as meaningful you have to accept your assertion that subjective feelings don’t affect real moral qualities, but Alex doesn’t accept that those exist), so… if you’re trying to refute the point that objective morality doesn’t exist by simply asserting that you think it does even if Alex doesn’t, I’m not sure that’s an effective argument!
(But it’s entirely possible I’m misunderstanding one or both of your comments, of course.)
I couldn’t see anything in Alex’s statement that acknowledges there’s any such thing as really wrong, either. I also know he disagrees with the premises of the questions, which is why I attempted to land them on my previous statements. I read his statement as (if I remember right) people are capable of justifying their own actions within themselves, therefore there’s no objective morality. I’m just sharing some thoughts on why I disagree: the rapist being really wrong whether they privately justify their actions or not. Part of the reply does lean on talks along those lines that he and I had had before, too. I don’t intend any lateral move in a discussion between you and Alex, and I attempted to coax a response from him.
After some thought, I came up with that and I’m just throwing it out there (indicative of a passing statement and not a formal argument): I think that Alex is an adult perfectly capable of forming a response, particularly in light of conversations he and I have had in the past, without needing to have comments policed or moderated. If you’d like to do that for Philosophiraga, that’s your right to do so, but it illustrates that conversations like these are probably best had in private, then. For now, I’d love to engage with Alex on the subject and I think he’d likely have an interesting response, too.
Okay, so there’s some stuff I’d like to unpack a little bit here!
First thing to say, I think, is that it was probably a bad move on my part to interject in the discussion – that might have been a breach of Internet etiquette or something and I may not have spotted that. I also see that I came across as if I were speaking *for* Alex, which was not my intention at all. I didn’t want to police or moderate, simply join the conversation.
Essentially, I think, I saw a discussion about subjective vs objective morality, with Alex representing the former position and you the latter. I thought that was an interesting discussion and one worth having, so I thought I would try to join in; as I believed that I understood Alex’s argument but not yours, I thought I’d ask for some clarification. I did that exceptionally poorly, for which I apologise to both of you. I’m extremely disappointed that I came across as if I were attempting to speak on Alex’s behalf, as I entirely agree that he doesn’t need me to!
I should also perhaps clear up what I meant by ‘lateral move’: I wasn’t clear on whether your response to Alex was in fact intended as a direct response (ie a rebuttal) or a sort of related-to-the-topic-but-not-engaging-directly-with-the-argument sideways move into a different conversation.
Given all this I imagine it’s probably appropriate for me to leave the discussion now, should it continue or not, but I would like to quickly try to restate what I was originally trying to get at in the hopes that it’ll go some way to repairing the damage I did by expressing myself extremely poorly.
I believe that I understand Alex’s statement as being an assertion that there are no objective morals. I thought that your response was intended to get at something he had said in order to provide justification for the opposing position (ie that there are objective morals) but wasn’t clear on how your argument was functioning; from my reading of it, I thought it relied on some part of Alex’s statement which had implied a tacit acceptance of objective or universal morality but couldn’t see that part myself and so wasn’t clear on the premises-conclusion chain.
I am truly sorry for how I came across in the first instance and regret that I have probably lost the trust required to be able to join discussions between two other parties on topics raised in the show.
Finally, it’s possible that I ought to have sent this response to you privately, but given that this is where the discussion’s been conducted thus far I’ve elected to keep it here for now. I also hope that anyone else who sees my original comment and feels the same way as you did will take this as an apology to them too.
I haven’t read it, but I’ll have to check it out.