Can please think your questions through? — Rich

I couldn't have thought them through any differently, but I don't see what the problem is. You can start capitalizing words arbitrarily, and I can pretend you're using those words normally in order to maintain my own sanity.

If capitalized "Mind" has some kind of special meaning that makes my question incoherent, please explain that meaning to us.

And/or, answer this question: I've seen you state elsewhere that determinism makes everything meaningless, and so my question to you would be to explain how quantum randomness/fluctuations/indeterminacy/what-have-you actually makes things meaningful???

To many people seem to just react negatively when you suggest that they don't actually have free will. Instead of arguments in response all I ever seem to get is magical thinking and emotional resistance...

Here's a documentary video of what happens when you suggest someone doesn't actually have free will:

I must say I do agree. Volition seems coherent enough, and even the compatibilist sense of un-coerced volition makes sense; I can see how these concepts would arise as a direct product of observation and reason, but where exactly did "free"-volition come from?

Perhaps it arises out of a need to emotionally justify the reciprocation of harmful actions without actually thinking of ourselves as "bad" for committing the same kinds of actions (or worse) as the harmful transgressions inflicted upon us in the first place. It's too easy to forgive when you truly understand someone (morally forgive, not pragmatically forget; rapists still need to be incarcerated and rehabilitated for our own safety). We forgive children all the time because it's so easy to understand their ignorance, but at what point do we actually grow up and free ourselves from pervasive ignorance? (We don't! We just slowly become a bit less ignorant).

But we do KNOW that we have free will, for here resides the weight of public perception and knowing.. Sure, we may be wrong in thus knowing, I`m convinced that we are, it may well be known mistakenly, it may well not be that which actuality is, but it is known all the same. Faith is knowing, but those, for instance, that have faith that there is God may still be proven wrong. I know that free will does not exist, but because I do n`t carry this thought around with me it affects me not at all. Should I do it likely would, Just how it negatively affects people is already documented, so there is no philosophy to be done there. Knowing changes nothing for we already know. — celebritydiscodave

Knowing that we don't have free will does change a few minor things. The main change it brings is the understanding that our actions do not inherently stem from some eternal blame-worthy soul or intrinsic "nugget of essence of being" that gives rise to free-will. Pragmatic blame is still necessary to dole out, but there is something about belief in souls and free-will that allows to despise someone to their very core. What we really should be hating is the entire set of circumstances that gave rise to a persons despicable actions, not the "person" themselves.

Intuitively most people might give a moral nod to the idea of torturing Hitler (were he not dead), but along with the dissolution of free will, the moral jusitifiability of revenge dissolves too. Intrinsic moral guilt resting in the individual is certainly bonkers once we can understand the kinds of things that drive human behavior, and so rather than punishing (torturing) criminals for their actions what we really ought to be doing is rehabilitating them; (if someone is a criminal and cannot be rehabilitated, then permanent segregation from society would be the next best option). For, if you, lacking free will, one day finds yourself in the situation of committing criminal acts (or your children, friends, etc...) would you not want to be rehabilitated instead of punished to deter others?

I think I said Mind. Quantum fluctuations are Mind. — Rich

So your "Mind" doesn't determine your behavior? I'm suggesting that quantum fluctuations are the only possibly undetermined phenomena that you can point to that can be your source of hard free will. So if the quantum fluctuations determines your Mind, and your Mind determines your will, then you don't have "free" will, you have "quantum fluctuating will" which is really quite a silly notion when you think about it.

This is like saying an AI has free-will because it's programming could spontaneously change. Not only would spontaneous changes to programming potentially cause critical failure, there's no existential value difference between an AI and a randomly reprogrammed AI. (Personally I would rather be the AI whose "Mind" isn't subject to the random throes of quantum particles).

P.S: I still really want this answered: I've seen you state elsewhere that determinism makes everything meaningless, and so my question to you would be to explain how quantum randomness/fluctuations/indeterminacy/what-have-you actually makes things meaningful???.

Free Will is an illusion in the same way a field goal is an illusion. — Cavacava

I'm pretty curious as to how these things are similar! How is a field goal illusory like free will is?

I opened with the term "Illusion" because the OP uses it, but perhaps the word I should have used is "delusion". Most people in the west who subscribe to this delusion have originally had it thrust upon them by family/community/religion, etc, and have simply not learned enough about physics, biology, and psychology (human behavior) to imagine things differently.

They all do including the enteric mind. — Rich

So what you're saying is that your behavior is determined by a conglomeration of quantum fluctuations (as opposed to some kind of ethereal spirit or eternal soul or otherwise god-like-source of hard free will)?

Interestingly, indeterminacy in the smallest particles must somehow average out overall when they're in large enough groupings, otherwise matter in Newtonian scales would have no consistency.

I've seen you state elsewhere that determinism makes everything meaningless, and so my question to you would be to explain how quantum randomness/fluctuations/indeterminacy/what-have-you actually makes things meaningful???.

Really? I am afraid your own illusions have caught up with you. — Rich

I'm afraid this isn't an argument ;)

" Everything you claim about illusions is still illusion - unless you have somehow self-inoculated yourself against your in admitted illusions. " — Rich

I'm claiming that a specific thing is an illusion, not that everything is an illusion. this is a straw-man of my own position at best, and a non-sequitur position in your own at worst. If I say that your belief in something is incorrect because the thing you believe in is illusory, I'm not also tacitly saying that anything and everything is or could be an illusion. Your belief that your choices are not determined by the physical states of the universe is an illusion that results from your inability to imagine how complexity emerges from large systems with basic rules and dynamic elements (see: evolution).

Absolutely everything your mind imagines is an illusion including your illusion that there is no Choices. — Rich

You can keep repeating this as if it represents my position, but more likely it points to the gaping hole that is left in your own world view when you imagine removing the cog of free will. I cannot say why free will is so important to you and why without it everything else becomes a false illusion, so perhaps we will get to this another time.

You are making some major call claims about v the Laws of Nature and how they create materialistic, mind illusions of all sorts, including want of Big Macs. It would be nice if you could enumerate them. Maybe it is just a nice myth? — Rich

Maybe you could enumerate which quantum bits in your brain take part in your decision making processes?

I've given you the first physical law, and it's not mythical. If you want me to provide more you should demonstrate how the first one is a myth!

(everything is an illusion), — Rich

No, free will is an illusion. Can you see how going from X is an illusion to EVERYTHING is an illusion is over-blowing things just a bit?

We have willful energy directed by the mind, both being non-material in nature — Rich

Care to substantiate or explain this "non-material in nature" part? Sounds like metaphysical supernaturalism...

There is no such thing as the Laws of Nature, and the last time I asked someone to enumerate them he just fabricated some. Why not? Would you like to take a stab at it? I don't suppose you are going to include quantum mechanics in your Deterministic theory if nature (which is necessarily an illusion)? — Rich

We can only better and better approximate the laws of nature using empirical observations, from an epistemological point of view, but if you wish and for example: the strength of attraction between two masses (gravity we call it) is proportional to their masses and the distance between then. If you double the mass of one of the objects, the strength of attraction between them is doubled, and if you double the distance between them, then the strength of attraction is quartered. This is a well tested physical "law" and I can assure it's no illusion.

I don't see right through the illusion, nobody does, that's my point; the illusion of an uncertain and/or an undetermined future is unbreakable. But we can bend the illusion, and essentially the more we successfully bend it (i.e, making correct predictions about the future), the bigger and bigger the cumulative case against hard-free will gets, and the smaller and smaller the argument supporting free will becomes.

I should point out though that nesting free-will in quantum mechanics is a fruitless endeavor because at best all you can argue is that the undetermined behavior of quantum particles in the world and your brain are what's ultimately governing your actions, not you. If you would like to adopt the position that your consciousness and identity ARE those quantum fluctuations, then your will is therefore determined by this quantum flux right?

P.S, why did you capitalize the word Mind after suggesting that tiny ungoverned particles in your head are what dictates your personal preference for anchovies (yuck!)? It seems like a mind full of quantum noise isn't any more appealing than taking in the results of materialist/empirical science as a whole to explain behavior. (along with the indications we are getting out of quantum science).

Nobody thinks that if you throw a rock that the quantum particles it consists of ill ever spontaneously change the rock's direction. Throw a single quantum particle, sure, for now it's behavior is mostly mysterious, but your "Mind" isn't merely quantum particles, is it?

All that said, IF the undetermined behavior of quantum particles is what constitutes free will, then any old rock has free will by virtue of having un-coutnable numbers of those quantum particles. And so it seems that you're agreeing with me and with science in the hope and assumption that cause and effect is all pervasive, but only up to a point. You're then taking exception with the smallest of possible issues and contending that this renders the human mind, your mind, free from "ThE LaWs Of NaTuRe".

I'm describable as a determinist; I believe hard free will is a complete illusion. But since the illusion is so complete, pragmatically we're forced to behave in all the same ways that we would if we actually knew we had free will (aside from a couple caveats).

The layman's rebuke of determinism goes something like "Well if everything is pre-determined, then nothing I do matters (or "it's all meaningless"), so I might as well just sit on my couch and do nothing, and even if I didn't want to do that I have no choice in the matter". Functionally though, it's impossible to actually predict future states of overly complex systems with certainty (making any such statement about the future mere speculation), and in-spite of the resentment that a lack of free-will engenders, things do still matter (i.e: pain and pleasure remain powerful motivators).

Just because I think the decisions I will make are inevitable doesn't mean that I don't hope for those decisions to be as optimal as possible for bringing about states of affairs that are intrinsically desirable/good to me (or not bad). (It's not as if I don't think that putting effort into making good decisions is not worthwhile (in fact perhaps I recognize too much the value of planning and well-informed decision making)). And since the total illusion of free will is a pragmatic facsimile of hard free will, why should life be meaningless if all we have is the total illusion? The illusion is so good that people actually "won't believe it's not free-will".

So many people intuitively reject the axioms of materialism and empirical science (that everything has a cause), and meanwhile science carries on demonstrating how the more you know about the basic components, behaviors and interactions of a given system, the more you do actually know about it's possible future states.Free-will is turning into the old "god of the gaps argument" as science continues to clear more and more of it's natural habitat: the tangled forest of ignorance produced by competing historical and contemporary thought leaders.

There is no version of determinism that is verifiable or falsifiable (that I'm aware of).

Quantum entanglement doesn't rule out every possibility or knowledge gap that a determinist can posit might be the case (see; non-local hidden quantum variables for instance (or specifically, don't ;) ).

Material/empirical science relies on the presumption that things are consistently causal in such a way that knowing enough about the rules and current state of a system allows us to make reliable predictions about future states, and for almost everything this assumption has been most fruitful. Quantum physics however is currently stuck on the fact that certain qualities or arrangements of systems of fundamental particles cannot be known, measured, or observed, and so this gives rise to a definite limit on our ability to make accurate or comprehensive predictions at quantum scales, but it doesn't prove that some events are "undetermined" in the hard sense.

No it's not violence. In some contexts it might be considered harassment (i.e repeatedly seeking out interaction with particular transsexuals in order to use the pronoun they do not desire), but it's not violence.

Admitting that it is violence in any respect is the first step toward instituting "thought-crime laws".

So long as something is not a direct call for violence (or a "screaming fire in a crowded theater" type situation), freedom of thought simply demands that we have the right to hold and express our beliefs even if some find those beliefs emotionally offensive. Phams argument rests upon the idea that using the undesired pronouns for transsexuals is tacit approval for their lynching or their central cause of suicide. While it is possible that refusing to offer basic respect to transsexuals by using their desired pronoun be a factor in some actual lynchings and suicides, my guess is that they have many larger and more complicated problems to deal with. I don't believe the lynching of transsexuals is statistically significant in the modern west, and if failing to hear one's desired pronouns is statistically significant in contributing to transsexual suicide rates then I reckon such persons really ought to be sequestered in mental health institutions for their own safety. To be clear I do not think transsexuals are so emotionally fragile that name gender-calling is what drives them to suicide in disproportionate numbers, but I do think this constant infantilizing of women, non-whites, and non-heterosexuals (as if they're delicate snowflakes who shatter in the slightest breeze) is really getting quite old.

P.S: Without it Trump would never have won, and the alt-right would never have "cohered".

I am surprised that you do not see injustice in this scenario. If your 1000-employee company gave everyone a Christmas bonus every year except for you, would you not be upset, and rightfully so?This behaviour is called discrimination, which is defined as "unjust treatment of different categories of people or things". — Samuel Lacrampe

Unjust discrimination based on gender or race carries the intent to damage or hinder individuals, but what about random or arbitrary discrimination?

Can the owner of a company decide to give a bonus to specific employee without having to give one to everyone else to abate their jealousy?

This contradicts what you said earlier here about potential harm. — Samuel Lacrampe

You're right, I misspoke.

If the person who did not receive a raise never found out, there would be no actual harm to speak of (the intuitive pull of your example comes from empathizing with the emotional upset feeling of being neglected that we can readily imagine). It may not be immoral either way.

I don't think it's necessarily immoral (whether they find out or not). If bonus were distributed by dice rolls and one person just so happened to roll snake eyes, would that still be immoral?

Giving bonuses to all employees but one is a dick move, to be sure, and the neglected employee really ought to use what leverage they have to lobby for fair treatment. They have the right to quit though, not the right to an un-promised or unearned bonus. So long as the agreement between employer and employee are met in terms of payment for services rendered, could an employee really lodge a complaint to the labor board that their employer did not give them a bonus that they were not obligated to give?

Emotional harm is sometimes tricky to deal with because we often feel injured when in reality we have not been. Not being given a bonus that you were never promised is not an injury; your co-workers getting one and not yourself might be insult, but not injury.

My main point is that the example you have given depicts a kind of harm that is so indirect (compared with other examples of harm) that it loses moral importance (If I give everyone in a room a hug but one person, and they feel neglected, have I harmed them?). I would say that an employers freedom to give away un-promised bonuses however they choose is more important than an employees desire to gain unearned money or not feel somehow excluded.

That's not precisely what I said.

Morality is ruled based. Behaving morally is only to do with following the moral rules. Behaving morally is not morality. — creativesoul

I took issue with the "consciously choosing" bit, not the "rule based" but, in this particular case. When I say "Virgil behaves morally" I mean to say that his actions conform to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons, and there's nothing untrue about that observation.

This is the semantic issue: you're merely using a different definition of "behaves morally"; I'm referring to the strategic/situational component of the actions themselves while you're referring to a conscious choice/intention to carry out actions because they are moral. If you switch to my definition, you will see there is no issue.

So, being moral equates to being mutually beneficial toward the shared interests of Virgil and Vulcan. Writ large that would be to say that moral behaviour is behaviour which is mutually beneficial towards the shared interests of the behaving agent and... someone else... anyone else... or everyone else effected/affected by the behaviour? — creativesoul

Basically, yes. Descriptively, groups of people make agreements which are beneficial for their group and they call it moral (religions and states carrying out wars of aggression is a great example) but obviously individuals and groups who are explicitly dis-considered or harmed by a particular moral agreement will contest that it is immoral, and will not agree.

Moral systems which are more inclusive in their consideration are better because they inherently benefit more people (or harm/dis-consider fewer) and can be agreeably held by more people, which enables them to function in broader social environments.

P.S.

The SEP defines morality exactly how I've been employing the term... — creativesoul

If you would take the time to read the entire article, you would find there are many dilemmas and areas of disagreement when it comes to defining morality. That said, I don't feel the need to explicitly challenge the "code of conduct" description because my own framework can easily incorporate and overlap upon it. I would however like to point out that "rule" and "code of conduct" is rather ambiguous; does it mean instructions for specific situations or a set of ideas that acts like a formula to tell us the correct moral action in any given circumstance?. Perhaps it refers to the very rational foundation of morality itself and the rules of logic that govern it which when understood allow us to be genuinely consciously moral?

I could say "follow the rules of consequentialist utilitarianism" or "virtue ethics is about codes of conduct"; it matters not because I'm not disagreeing that morality is about somehow governing behavior, my point is about what morality is for (the aims and impact of the behavior) and what moral behavior actually looks like as prescribed by a moral system designed to be mutually beneficial to the basic interests of all individuals living in a social/tribal setting.

The problem here is clear. Either there are moral behaviours, in and of themselves, or not. In order for Virgil to be acting morally even though he cannot think about the moral rules, then it must be the case that certain behaviours are moral in and of themselves.

You're attempting to argue that some behaviours are moral in and of themselves. The problem is that your criterion admits of clearly immoral behaviour — creativesoul

It's not the behavior in and of itself that is "moral". It's the fact that the behavior is mutually beneficial toward the shared interests of Virgil and Vulcan both, which is also dependent on the environment they are in. You might argue that in-group resource sharing is a moral rule, but I can actually explain what makes it intuitively persuasive and in which environments it is actually beneficial to carry out, and why: it's that it strategically serves the mutual long term interests of all of us, making it mutually agreeable as a standard of behavior going forward in social environments.

You're still appealing to your own unsubstantiated assertion that morality is only to do with consciously choosing to follow the rules — VagabondSpectre

That's not what I said, nor does it follow from what I've said. — creativesoul

It's precisely what you said. Here:

"Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them."

And here's where you evoked this idea again, just above:

" If Virgil can act morally by virtue of acting in a way that you think is moral, but he does not need to be aware of the fact that he's following the rules, then the notion of choice making is moot as well. That would be to say that one can make a choice to act moral without considering what's not."

You imply here that one cannot choose to act moral without considering what's not moral when the conscious choice to act moral (the conscious choice to follow the rules per your description) was never a part of my description of Virgil's behavior and what makes his actions moral. It's your own enduring presumption that morality is about choosing to follow rules.

At the heart of it all, your position, at a minimum, is one where the ends justify the means. This has always been the case with what you've been proposing. On the old forum, there have been numerous people with numerous examples of behaviours which meet your criterion but are clearly immoral. Here, you've neglected to answer my earlier objections regarding that, and instead moved the goalposts. — creativesoul

I've gone out of my way to clarify the ways in which the ends may not justify the means, to whom, and why. Here it is again: the moment an individual unwillingly becomes a scape-goat sacrifice is the moment they reject the moral framework which would go against their own interests, potentially leading to a breakdown entire social moral systems. The ends don't justify the means in situations where individuals are unwillingly harmed because to them it is not agreeable and decidedly not beneficial; harmful.

I'm not responsible for every spec of ridicule that gets haphazardly shat into digital existence. If you would like to criticize my own actual behavior, please do so, or if you would like to use the behavior of others in an argument showing some contradiction in my own moral framework, please explain their behavior and point out the contradiction once my moral approach is applied.

If you wish to talk in meta-ethical terms, regarding what counts as being moral or not, then what methodology do you find fit to do so? — creativesoul

A clear and agreeable starting point is the most successful. Acknowledging that morality is to do with our survival and welfare rather than some kind of divine or eternal truth goes a long way.

I say, we look to all morality(codes of conduct) to see what they have in common that is morally significant. We can set aside all the individual particulars and look at what remains extant after doing so. What's left would be universally extant, that is - what's left would be a part of all morality. We could then make statements that would be true of all codes.

You seem to be taking a similar route with the bit about what you claim all morality has in common, promoting social and individual welfare(or words to that affect/effect). — creativesoul

I've already brought up several moral systems which inexorably are proliferated precisely because they promote human welfare in given environments, but also because they are intuitively persuasive based on the idea that following them will somehow lead to desirable future outcomes. All superstitious morality is selfish and self serving at heart, virtue and deontological ethics similarly so (virtues rules and rituals are supposedly/intuitively good/persuasive because of their products, not because of what they inherently are). Can you think of an ethical or moral framework which is not persuasive based on it's direct or indirect appeals to life and welfare?

Admitting ad hoc isn't compelling you know. — creativesoul

What's also not compelling is comparing a living creature with a nervous system and conscious mind, capable of complex and varied behavior, to a dandelion.

If following the rules does not require knowing them, then one can follow the rules simply by acting in ways that does not break them. You're bringing sentience into the matter doesn't help, it just continues to move the goalposts. If Virgil can act morally by virtue of acting in a way that you think is moral, but he does not need to be aware of the fact that he's following the rules, then the notion of choice making is moot as well. That would be to say that one can make a choice to act moral without considering what's not. Choosing presupposes volition. Virgil has none. I suspect you know that and that's why you glossed it over earlier... — creativesoul

It wouldn't be to say that "one can make a choice to act moral without considering what's not" because I never said Virgil's decision was to act moral. His decision was to not hoard and share the nuts. Virgil certainly does have some degree of volition.

You're still appealing to your own unsubstantiated assertion that morality is only to do with consciously choosing to follow the rules. I never suggested Virgil made a decision to follow the rules, I suggested he made a decision to not keep all the nuts for himself, which corresponds (corresponds, not "is equivalent to") to what you would describe as the result of following the rules. The fact that Virgil could have acted otherwise per his volition is the same basis of why we bother entertaining the question of how we morally ought to act in the first place, otherwise we would just accept our behavior as inevitable and unalterable.

If monkeys have no volition then children certainly don't, which leads me to think that young adults don't either, nor adults for that matter. Hard free will is an illusion you know...

P.S I had to bring up sentience because you compared Virgil to a dandelion. I

How might your understanding suffice when within the context of another animals life? — Qurious

I extend moral consideration to animals (where possible) even though they cannot reciprocate.

If I was in their situation I would not want to be abused is probably the best explanation I can come up with as to why at the moment. Ultimately it's an appeal to empathy, but if we were to encounter an advanced alien species that made us look like cattle by comparison, we would definitely want them to be considerate of us even though we can offer nothing in return.

Even if we might conceive it as serving our own base-ends, that conception is limited by a presupposition that 'human nature' equates to no more than securing our own interests, and by fulfilling this naively accepted purpose we are somehow doing good. — Qurious

From the perspective of an individual, securing our own interests is the very content of life. Individually, we do good by securing our individual interests. Socially we do good by securing everyone's interests (the realm of morality).

Sustaining the planet for the sake of the elephants and tigers is noble and all, but it's much more important to me that we sustain the planet for the sake of humans. We are locked in a struggle for survival, against nature, in what is in many ways a zero sum competition. In order for humans to eat, many animals must die. One day we may be technologically and logistically able to take the most morally praiseworthy path without sacrificing actual human lives, but until then extending all possible moral considerations to animals leads to a breakdown of morality when survival and health dilemmas arise.

Thus, subjective morality. — Qurious

The real value of my moral approach is that it is very clear from the outset regarding the "subjective" element of moral judgments: nuanced and subjective conceptions of "goodness" are less persuasive and therefore secondary to a specific set of basic values/desires which are nearly universal to all humans (and most animals too). The desire to go on living, the desire to be free and free from strife, and to pursue happiness (in Locke's sense).

Moral arguments concerning and critical to the very preservation of life take utile and persuasive precedence over all other moral arguments. The few exceptions where individuals contend that they value something more than life (excluding valuing the lives of others above one's own, which emotionally many humans are geared for (see: in-group altruism)) are, A), predominantly the result of delusion or mental disorder (I.E: heavens gate), and B), of no moral consequence, given that individuals who do not desire life, liberty, or happiness (yes I realize the contradiction), generally don't care a whole lot about anything else either.

Because they are nearly universally subjectively held by all humans, the enlightened ideals of life and liberty become functionally objective in practice.

I'd say the 'pursuit of true happiness' is futile, because if you are pursuing something then it does not currently exist within yourself. — Qurious

What makes pursuing something that does not currently exist in yourself futile though? Humans have achieved much.

If true happiness is an internal state that you desire, are you not furthering yourself from that state by conditionalising happiness on external occurrences? — Qurious

Life and liberty are dependent on external sources, and they are both required for happiness. So in many ways, no, by conforming external sources to our will we are improving our odds at achieving higher states of happiness. It may be possible through meditation to hijack the cognitive and emotional stimulus-response reward system that produces happiness and achieve it with nothing more than a bowl of rice and a tree to sit under, but really both approaches work!

Cheers!

Yes but chess strategies are hardly ever in the form of "when the Queen is here, move you pawn here" they are in the form of generalised strategies exactly for the reasons you give, chess is complicated. — Inter Alia

Specific moral dilemmas though, they are analogous to specific situations on the chess board. We make broad rules of engagement as heuristics, but we also analyze specific situations to improve our outcomes still. The best strategic approach is a comprehensive one.

We face a choice at each moral dilemma, try to work through all the possible consequences of my actions and sift through all my competing desires to see which one is genuinely motivating me, or rely on the millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of culture (to which I have previously applied my rational criticism) to provide me with a guide as to the sort of behaviour that might work.

Maybe you have a much greater faith in your ability to rationalise thousands of variables in an instant, but I'd choose the latter any day. — Inter Alia

If you create a hierarchy of desires as a main moral heuristic, I won't say it seems ineffective, but it's still a strategy with human welfare as an inexorable end goal. If I could in fact calculate and prove the most robustly moral course of action in a given case, would you not adhere to that course of action?

Looking for the actual harm done by each individual act sets up an impossible task in the real world. Every action will result in a vast number of consequences stretching far into the future, some will cause harm, others will be of great benefit to society, are we going to weigh them all each time we make a moral choice? — Inter Alia

We weigh as many as possible. Similar to chess strategy, due to emergent complexity we cannot make confident predictions far into the future (we cannot be certain that the strategy we choose will be successful in the long run). And yet, playing chess is all about accounting for as many variables as possible, to devise the best strategy we are able to devise. This, I posit, is the essential moral game that in the end all moral agents and frameworks (read: broad strategic approaches to moral concerns) attempt to play.

Is giving nobody a raise also unjust?

What right do we have to be treated equally by our employers? So long as an equitable minimum standard is met, giving a random unearned raise to someone seems morally praiseworthy even though whoever missed out might feel some emotions about it.

The "seems unjust" bit comes from the jealousy and anguish that a person feels when they have less than those around them or less than they expect/want. It's a peculiar and somewhat light manifestation of "harm" but it's pretty much hard-wired into us. It's even manifests in monkeys..

If the employer gave a raise to one person and not the other, and the person who did not receive an unearned raise never found out, there would be no harm and so it wouldn't be immoral (in fact you could call it charity/praiseworthiness on the part of the employer).

The intent to murder is itself potentially harmful (the impending kind). Attempted murder wouldn't be immoral if successful murder wasn't harmful.

I would say attempting to murder someone is immoral because of the possibility of harm it entails (which is why we morally and physically police it).

Didn't you just claim that one can accidentally act morally?

If you cannot see how that shows that sentience and choice making isn't required for acting morally, then I cannot help you... — creativesoul

Dandelions cannot produce accidents; yet still you miss the point: I am making a distinction between the moral component of actions themselves (relating to human welfare) and the conscious decision to actually seek to promote human welfare (or follow the rules as you would put it). There's nothing inherently untrue about my statement that Virgil's actions are congruent with individual and group welfare, or what we might consider a moral state of affairs. At best your objection is semantic: whether "following the rules" means being aware of them and obeying them or merely not breaking them is trivial.

I haven't argued my position here, by the way... I'm critiquing yours. — creativesoul

Since your criticism keeps taking the form: "No, morality is about consciously following the rules, therefore..." you need to actually support the "morality is about consciously following the rules" part.

Aye, another way of stating it is that if something does not cause any harm, then it cannot be considered immoral.

I really like this simplification (ive made a post about it before) as it cuts through so much pseudo moral chaff and clarifies moral dilemmas.

Oh, but it's not. If Virgil can accidentally act morally then having sentience and/or decision making ability to do what's moral is unnecessary for acting morally. Virgil can accidentally act morally. Thus, since sentience is unnecessary for acting morally, it would follow that dandelions act morally. In fact, dandelions don't hit. So, if not hitting is acting morally, then dandelions act morally.

Special pleading... — creativesoul

Dandelions do not "act" at all though, at least in the sense of action to which we might attribute a moral component. You should have addressed my point about why the dandelion is non-sequitir instead of just labeling it special pleading."We cannot attribute morality to the decisions and actions of dandelions because they don't make decisions of any kind or have sentience or complex range of possible actions.". Capuchin DO have some kind of sentience and exhibit a range of complex possible actions, dandelions do not.

Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally. And now it requires special pleading on top of it all... — creativesoul

You have not addressed my position, and repeating yourself while ignoring the majority of my posts (and the points/objections contained within) is very disheartening.

Your position depends upon the assumption that morality starts with moral rules, which is a demonstrably shitty moral position as evidenced by the countless moral exceptions which reveal the fallibility of any given rule. "Morality is about rules" is your own assumption that you haven't discussed or demonstrated in any reasonable way.

I think he means that unjustified harm IS immorality.

You're neglecting the facts of the matter. Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them. — creativesoul

"Deontological morality" (rule based morality) is just one approach of many, an approach that like most others captures one important aspect of moral systems but misses the bigger picture; the only sensical and persuasive moral basis for a rules environment is to cause human welfare to emerge from those rules.

Many moral thinkers outright disagree that morality is about consciously following the rules. Some posit that it is about displaying virtue and having virtuous intent, regardless of the rules. Others say morality is about outcomes as opposed to intentions, virtue, and rules.

I want you to realize that these different moral frameworks begin with fundamentally different and mutually exclusive assumptions as starting points, but their actual persuasiveness all comes from the same obscured place: benefit or prevention of harm to individual and social welfare.

Virtue ethics indirectly appeals to individual and social human welfare by appealing to sets of virtues which intuitively promote human welfare (i.e: charity, patience, kindness) when wielded in action. Deontological ethics is just a slightly different strategy: instead of navigating moral dilemmas using a set of virtues, a standard set of instructive rules generalizes moral outcomes into specific codes of conduct. Consequentialist morality cuts straight to outcomes (and tends to ignore the impact and importance of "means" as well as "ends") to render it's appeal to human welfare, but if you could argue that your own idea of applied ethics leads to the best outcomes, they would accept it as the moral course of action. Similarly, I could likely break down your moral framework until you accept the idea that "promoting and preserving individual and social human welfare is the ultimate rule toward which our behavior must morally conform" thereby revealing that it is not following the rules which is important, it's our individual and societal welfare.

To reiterate, many moral frameworks, including your own, tacitly amount to varying strategies of promoting individual and social welfare. I don't like the framing of these moral systems because they confuse their beginning strategic direction/presumptions with the root moral justification for the system itself (i.e: "morality is about following the rules" as opposed to the more sensical: "following 'moral rules' is about promoting individual and societal welfare".

Would you rather be the champion of following the rules for the sake of following the rules, or, following the rules for the sake of common good?

If you want very persuasive evidence that consciously following the rules isn't the proper root of moral reasoning, simply choose any specific moral rule and then imagine a moral exception to that rule (or state the rule and I'll provide the exception). Exceptions to moral rules like "do not kill" illustrate and illuminate the fact that "consciously following moral rules" isn't necessarily of moral value in and of itself.

The dandelion... — creativesoul

The dandelion is an actual non sequitr. Virgil is not a Dandelion. Since Virgil makes choices (lets not get into whether or not Virgils volition is one of "free will" because the results will color both our positions on Capuchin and Humans.) we can make the simple assessment of whether Virgil's choices are moral or immoral. We cannot attribute morality to the decisions and actions of dandelions because they don't make decisions of any kind or have sentience or complex range of possible actions.

Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally. — creativesoul

It is possible to unknowingly act in a way congruent with the "rules". It's impossible to consciously follow the rules while being unaware of the rules (a direct contradiction), but yes, you can accidentally follow them.

When we tell a child "don't hit", the moral rule I reckon you would reduce it do is actually something like "don't physically harm others unless it's necessary in defense of yourself and others". We give the child a placeholder commandment that they follow instead of the actual moral rule though in order to cause their behavior to be moral rather than their understanding. Following general moral rules is best justified as a strategic approach toward promoting human welfare, but it isn't perfect and lacks moral understanding when people consciously obey the rules for the sake of obeying the rules

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me. It gives me a sense of comfort knowing I am around people smarter than I. (Y) — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Heh, I didn't mean to sound like a preachy douche, but after years of conspiracy theorists telling me that the American government owes $1.50 for every $1.00 the Zionist owned Federal Reserve "lends" them, I've been eager to put my research to work.

IIRC the idea of a state incorporating private banks into national services in this manner began with the bank of England. Wiki notes:

England's crushing defeat by France, the dominant naval power, in naval engagements culminating in the 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, became the catalyst for England's rebuilding itself as a global power. England had no choice but to build a powerful navy. No public funds were available, and the credit of William III's government was so low in London that it was impossible for it to borrow the £1,200,000 (at 8% p.a.) that the government wanted.

To induce subscription to the loan, the subscribers were to be incorporated by the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. The Bank was given exclusive possession of the government's balances, and was the only limited-liability corporation allowed to issue bank notes.[15] The lenders would give the government cash (bullion) and issue notes against the government bonds, which can be lent again. The £1.2m was raised in 12 days; half of this was used to rebuild the navy. — wiki

The Federal Reserve doesn't print actual money though, it lends digital credit to it's member banks and charges them variable interest rates (which makes the member banks more financially secured, and influences the interest rates they charge as a regulatory force). So rather than the FED banks lending to the American government in the way the BoE lent to the King, they lend to banks who lend to the public in order to positively influence overall stability. Without the FED, banks at large might start drastically altering interest rates in response to perceived economic crises, which can create a genuine crisis in and of itself.

Apparently there are over 10 trillion US dollars in existence, but most of them are digital. Only about 1.2 trillion in US cash physically exists. If more US cash is to be printed, the US treasury will be the ones to actually print it, but they too have more than a fiduciary responsibility to ensure economic stability. Even if they went wild and printed a trillion in cash for the US government it would only inflate the currency by about 10%.

Crypto-fanatics rightly understand that faith and trust is the bedrock of any currency, even gold, but they don't seem to understand what makes institutions and foreign governments actually have faith and trust in the American dollar.

Tis better to have lived and worked than never to have lived at all.

This is such an accurate perspective on those investing in Cryptocurrency. Which is why I asked what the USA dollar was backed by because it USED to be backed by Gold bullion but that is no longer the case and as you suggest, we can keep printing it as we need it but eventually it will become worthless on the world stage — ArguingWAristotleTiff

The Federal Reserve is like a fiduciary decision maker when it comes to printing money; they're only supposed to print dollars as the wealth of the economy grows. The whole reason the FED doesn't take direct orders from the federal government is precisely because nobody trusts a king who manages their own finances (if "the king" is backed by a bank who has their own reserves then everyone feels confident when lending and dealing with said king because the they act like a guiding force against bad financial decision making and will/can actually pony-up should things go sour). If the American government really was allowed to print their own fiat they would never have any budget deficits, and the American dollar would have long since hyper-inflated.

What Aug says is also true. The American government (it's ability to sanction and otherwise fuck up it's opponents) and military is like an on-going threat of reprisal for any entity that could damage or destroy the value of the American dollar and the strength of the American economy. The American dollar may be fiat, but it is physically and speculatively held in place with brick, mortar, and mortars. The fact that it's the global reserve currency means every other nation of note lives or dies by the success of the dollar along with the American economy, even nations like China, Russia, and North Korea. We're too interdependent on the dollar for it to fail unless we're prepared to deal with global recession and decades of setback regarding technological (and therefore medicinal, environmental, and economic) progress.

An acquaintance of mine was trying to explain to me why he thought bitcoin will exceed 40k-50k per unit by this time next year.

"It's about trust" he said. "No other currency can be trusted like Bitcoin can, America can just print as many American dollars as it pleases. Everyone can just use bitcoin, we have no need for other currencies. Fractional lending. Visa! They're all bad!".

I tried to explain the hurtles facing bitcoin (authentication times, power consumption, possible unforeseen digital vulnerabilities) and the realities of currency (especially what makes the American dollar so secure/the global reserve currency) but nothing would land and he just kept coming back to the idea that every other form of currency is a bull-shit lie put on by corrupt governments and banks.

With this kind of widespread radical distrust of government and radical faith in bitcoin, ironically, it might actually be able to get that high one day. (that would mean all 21 million bitcoins once they're mined, would be worth around 1 trillion dollars altogether).

One cannot move correctly without thinking correctly. Acting in a way that does not break the rules isn't equivalent to following them. Following the moral rules is behaving morally. — creativesoul

This is a meta-ethical distinction that I don't necessarily agree with because in practice we CAN move correctly without thinking correctly.

Sometimes - often times - we just move how the world and our biology tells us to move without actually thinking about it. When as a baby you suckled on your mothers breast or bottle, you did not need to think about the correct muscle movements, you just started doing it. You quickly became conscious of what was happening and learned why you're doing it and how to do it better, but initially it might as well have been coincidence.

Biological hard wiring nursing infants leads them to perform the act of suckling. Suckling is not an action with a distinctly moral component, but from the perspective of the health and welfare of the baby, it is the correct move to make.

So my point about morality and it's origins is two fold. Firstly, the goals of most or all moral systems inexorably are designed to promote or preserve human welfare (despite insistence from some moral camps that their moral system serves some objective higher moral authority) and so can be sensibly appraised by questioning whether or not a given system, postulate, or action, adequately or satisfactorily promotes or preserves human welfare. Since moral systems, postulates, and actions which are considerate of the genuine welfare of everyone are the most universally appealing, they tend to be the most practical and effective as well.

Secondly, the starting value of "human-welfare" which fundamentally grounds the various courses of human moral reasoning, happens to emerge from biology as an intrinsically valuable premise to almost all individual humans (and Capuchin) which has been shaped by evolution in a set of biological imperatives and maintained by our hard-wired instincts and emotional.hormonal predispositions (less so in humans since we gained sophisticated rational intelligence).

All I wish to point out is that the actions of Virgil are the same actions that a rational moral agent would likely take given similar circumstances, and that this coincidence between Virgils actions and what we would consider to be moral actions is ultimately created by the fact that in the evolutionary history of Virgil's biology, animals that developed a genetically programmed capacity for "in-group altruism" in environments where social life was a better survival strategy wound up being more successful.

"Morality" for conscious and rational humans seems to be all about us figuring out what it means to make a "correct decision", why we ought to, and what those correct decisions actually are. But we often get so bogged down in what it means to make a correct decision and why we ought to that we barely have time to put our ideas into practice. It is then of ultimate utility to boil down the what and why of morality to something that is as universally agreeable as possible (including removing the surface scum with reason and ridicule if necessary) , that we may get on with the what of moral decision making, which is the bit that actually impacts our lives.

Morality has to do with human welfare - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and you ought to be morally engaged because it will serve your own life, liberty, and happiness. You should treat others as they want to be treated because then they will likely treat you as you want to be treated.

If we can just accept that this is in fact the socio-ethical game that is shared/shareable morality, we would save so much time and effort while avoiding the kind of enduring confusion that superstitious, irrational, and non welfare oriented moral systems have wreaked upon the world since the beginning of recorded history.

Confirmation bias/cherry picking is one possibility.

If researchers can test out a bunch of different scales to see which one makes their calculations work, they cannot be sure if they have the wrong approach and just coincidentally found a characteristic scale that makes their calculations work.

Acting X without thinking X. Let X be morally. There is no equivalent in your analogy. — creativesoul

Your wording here is a bit unclear, but here is the equivalent I think you are looking for: "acting in the mutual interest of yourself and others (via instinctive or emotionally driven in-group sharing in the case of Virgil) without thinking (understanding) that it is in the mutual interest of yourself and others"

What you're doing is attributing your label to another. You're attributing your own personal moral value system onto another creature's behaviour. You think it is moral to do X. You see a creature doing X. You claim that the creature acts morally.

All you've done is show that you can pass moral judgment. — creativesoul

If it is moral to do X, and a creature does X, then yes, regarding X the creature is behaving morally.

Isn't the capacity to cast moral judgment a useful component of a formally constructed moral system?

Codes of conduct are necessary when different community members have conflicting ideas regarding what should or should not be done. — creativesoul

Codes of conduct are great avoiding conflict in general, but when specific conflicts do arise the best we can do is appeal to the context and specifics of the specific case in question (moral exceptions to absolute rules or codes of conduct are famously easy to contrive, and we need lots of careful and rational consideration to get the the bottom of complex moral conundrums (i.e: a court system)).

I think the best approach to resolving moral dilemmas is to clarify exactly what it is morality is supposed to be doing/serving in the first place, and once we agree on that we can make some moral judgments as a matter of empirical fact. If morality is supposed to be about making decisions which are mutually beneficial to our survival and well-being, then we can appraise whether or not a specific code of conduct/virtue or contextual moral decision is beneficial (or not harmful) to any given individual.

If an individual is selected as a subject for superstition based human sacrifice (to make the crops grow, let's say), then that individual might decide that they don't like the whole system of human sacrifice altogether because it is about to cost them everything (it's not beneficial to them, and hence not agreeable; immoral). Additionally, if you can show that human sacrifice does not actually lead to a better harvest (or that the gods do not exist), then you might persuade them that the harmful action they propose to carry out is not necessary, helpful, or justifiable.

There is no such thing as innate moral intuition. — creativesoul

There are a set of hard wired instincts and emotions that indirectly nudge us in some cases toward behavior that just so happens to be strategically beneficial to ourselves and others.

Emotional attachment to others; bonding or "love", if you will, is a big one. Pity, leading us to console and comfort and sometimes assist random strangers for our own emotional reward is another (heretofore labeled: empathy). Reciprocity is another (the natural desire to scratch the back of another who has scratched your own). Fear is also a large stabilizer of behavior that sometimes indirectly leads us to cooperate, although sometimes it is the very source of conflict.

"The human condition" is a mixed bag of norms provided by evolution, not mutually agreeable strategy, and some of it is constructive and good and some of it is destructive and bad. If there is a moral intuition, it has the capacity to grant us innate compassion and consideration for others, but it also has the capacity to grant us the will to plunder and rape (to dis-consider others).

Can one act morally without thinking morally? — creativesoul

Yes. Just like how someone can make the correct move in a chess game without thinking strategically (it can be coincidence or the result of factors other than conscious understanding/thought).

Is that act moral in and of itself, or is it moral because we say so? Does what we point out require language? If so, then what's moral in and of itself requires language, does it not? — creativesoul

It's not merely that we say so which gives the act moral relevance, it's that our most important goals are to continue living, freely and happily, and that the action is objectively strategically beneficial to these, our most important goals. We need language to consciously deconstruct the moral framework I describe, but human emotions are such that they push us toward strategically beneficial habits even before we understand that certain actions are strategically beneficial (sometimes evolution pushes in immoral directions, moral on that later though).

To consciously explore and consciously construct morality, we need language or symbols of some kind, but deferring to one's emotions and intuition doesn't require formal language.

Morality is conventionally understood as a code of behaviour. Do codes of behaviour require shared meaning? I would say so. Shared meaning requires a plurality of agents with common meaningful language — creativesoul

We can describe particular moral systems as codes of behavior, but not all moral actions are the result of following linguistically codified instruction. Shared language is fairly essential for the social sharing and communication of moral systems, but even where formal language doesn't exist, if shared values (desires, goals, needs) exist, and we come to realize that we have these shared values, the cooperative strategies can become obvious and highly appealing.

What happens when two uncivilized humans who do not share language have a chance encounter with one-another? Are they incapable of moral interaction because they do not share language?

What's really the reason that two strangers who are incapable of communication might try to avoid conflict and violence when confronted with a novel encounter? Is it because each of them thinks "morality is a code of conduct that I should adhere to, and my code of conduct says be nice to strangers"? Or is it because each of them thinks "I don't want to die in battle with this stranger, and they may not want to risk battle with me; therefore I should not risk escalation to violence"?

Side tangent: evolution doesn't always let us have rational and peaceful encounters because it will happily trade in a cooperative strategy that is beneficial down to the individual level for a violent and competitive strategy that is beneficial on what we might consider a species-wide level (where most individuals suffer and die while the better adapted few proliferate). For example, when confronted with a surprise, such as a chance encounter between two primitive hunters, biological reactions such as a flooding of adrenaline into our system from the stimulating surprise and possibly emotional fear can easily overwhelm our mental faculties and lead to an escalation of violence. If they can remain calm though, then the rational course of action is to threat the other as they themselves want to be treated (others are more likely to treat you as you like if you treat them as they like), which is the strategic nut-shell of why we try to piece together mutually beneficial codes of conduct in the first place; it avoids the prosperity and life destroying ramifications of conflict, which are de facto bad and unappealing outcomes for those whose life and prosperity is destroyed.

And how's it going so far? Folk generally agreeing with you, are they? — Banno

As a system of applied ethics my approach is very persuasive. It's very hard to not be suaded by an argument appealing to basic values like life and liberty. It's the meta-ethical bits that I haven't figured out how to get people to swallow....

Again, you are not doing ethics, you are doing game theory. — Banno

If I practice game theory while extending consideration for the loss/win conditions of others, how does that differ from your own normative approach?

It seems to me that convincing people to extend moral consideration to others is the very crux of (mutually agreeable) moral frameworks. It matters more that we persuade people to adopt this position (while being clear on what's nearly universally beneficial) in the first place, than it does the means of our persuasion (so long as they are well persuaded). The idea that the most selfish strategy is actually a long term cooperative strategy is the basic root of how I would persuade someone to be moral in the first place, and it's a strongly persuasive form of appeal (rationally and emotionally).