It is an instance of protecting a specific type of freedom, the freedom to make your own choices. I agree that I am not promoting the protection of the freedom to take other people's choices from them, to physically attack them, to steal from them, etc. It is true that I am not promoting the protection of freedom to do those things.

What I am proposing is that a certain type of freedom should be protected. Not, for example, the freedom to assault others. That sort of freedom should not be protected.

You have misunderstood. It is not the fact that my violent act prevents you from stealing my car that is worth considering, it is the other freedoms of yours I have violated in doing so (such as your freedom over your body).

No, the way we know what choices belong to a person are determining what things belong to them. Self-ownership is easy enough to establish, and if property can be owned, then we own that too. It is not a matter of referring to the "good choice" at all.

It is true that I am claiming that a certain type of choice should be protected, specifically those choices that belong to the person or persons in question. I have discussed the reasons for this in the primer I provided and more deeply in the material referenced within.

I am not limiting the meaning of "freedom". I am saying that only a certain type of freedom is being used as the measure of value, specifically the freedom of persons over their own choices. Only this limited kind of freedom is what ought to be protected, rather than freedom of all kinds.

I didn't say that commiting an act of violence to prevent you stealing my car wouldn't violate/restrict your freedom. When I said "stop you from doing so" I wasn't implying that I was going to physically attack you. Commiting violence in such a circumstance would restrict/violate your freedom, though of course it may be justifiable to do so as long as it prevents greater violations of freedom.

I am not arguing that a bad choice is not a free choice. You seem to be taking "this is the kind of freedom we should protect" to mean "this is the only true kind of freedom" and those do not mean the same thing.

Again, I think you may have misunderstood what I am claiming is morally relevant. The choice to steal from someone is morally relevant in the sense that it is a choice to do something morally bad but the freedom to make that choice is not morally relevant in the sense that it does not have moral weight that we need to consider when making decisions. We don't need to weigh your choice to steal my car against my choice to not have my car stolen, because one choice is the sort that should be protected morally and the other isn't.

Again, I am not defining "freedom" generally as only the kind I refer to here, but I am using "freedom" within the context of freedom consequentialism as a shorthand for "The ability of free, rational agents to understand and make their own choices". That is the thing that I am claiming is morally valuable, and I will sometimes say the freedom to make one's own choices to make that clear. I am using the word "freedom" because it seems like the most applicable of the available options, but if you have a better suggestion, I'd happily use that instead.

I am not defining freedom by reference to what is morally relevant. I am defining what is morally relevant by reference to freedom. I'm not begging the question, you have just misunderstood what I said.

As to things being morally relevant, you have gone down completely the wrong track here. Just like the utilitarian isn't concerned only with the happiness of the person in question, I am not suggesting that only "your own" freedom is morally relevant to your decision making. I am saying that everyone's freedom over that which belongs to them is morally relevant. So the moral status of an action depends on the extent to which it protects persons' freedom to make their own choices and/or the extent to which is restricts/violates persons' freedom to make their own choices.

I didn't have to make any such exceptions regarding the "public world," and I'm not sure when you think I did so.

Is it the term "morally relevant" that is causing confusion? I'm happy to use different language, but I'm not sure how I can be clearer in what I mean here.

I would say that threats that don't involve threatening to restricting one's freedom in a morally relevant way are not coercing a person in a morally relevant way. Threatening someone's property does involve threatening to violate/restrict someone's freedom in a morally relevant way, specifically their freedom over their property, so that would be coercive in a morally relevant way.

I don't think this is convoluted in the least. I think I have been fairly clear from the beginning that what is morally relevant is a person's ability to understand and make those choices that belong to them. If you keep that in mind in reading my responses, I think it will be clear what I mean.

Only threats that threaten to restrict/violate your freedom would be morally relevant. So "I will shoot you" clearly would, but "I won't be your friend anymore" wouldn't be, because someone else being your friend is their choice to make, not yours.

In the case of putting the gun to the person's head, it does restrict their freedom if they think you are actually going to kill them. If the person doesn't believe that, then they haven't really been coerced. That would be a good example of how a threat might restrict someone's freedom or not. That is no more a problem than a bullet not restricting someone's freedom if it missed them. If they believe that you will kill them and don't care, then they have been coerced and their freedom restricted, but they just don't care about the freedom you are threatening.

In the case of the bus, no. My freedom is my ability to understand and make my own choices, which I have here. None of my choices are taken from me, I just don't have all the information I might wish for. I don't need to agree that someone's choices are always restricted because I am setting a much lower bar for being free than you are.

No, ideologies, biases, and prejudices do not restrict someone's freedom (generally). Religious faith may do so more often as there is often a threat of eternal damnation or something similar involved. Freedom is restricted by threats because the choice is coerced rather than free. If I point a gun at you and tell you to give me your wallet, your choice to do so isn't free, it is coerced. I have restricted your freedom to choose what to do with your wallet by forcing you to choose between giving it up and being shot. That is how coercion restricts choices, and the same thing is going on with laws.

For a clear example of how not knowing about an option does not restrict one's choices, let's consider how I might get to work tomorrow. Let's imagine that I am considering driving or walking, but I don't know that a bus route has opened up near my house and goes right by my work. My lack of knowledge about the bus route here doesn't make my choice less free. My freedom isn't restricted by the fact that I could have done things that I didn't know about or just didn't consider. I am still able to apply my rationality to the choice in question and make it freely. That there were other options I didn't consider is not a problem.

I don't think that is how habits work at all, but even if we imagine that it is, not realizing an option was available to you (generally) isn't a restriction on your freedom either. You are setting too high a bar for freedom.

I think Amadeus has covered my response to habits fairly well. An option not occurring to you is not a restriction of your freedom. It's just you not thinking about an option that you had.

I agree that thought is mediating the way which coercion violates someone's freedom, but it is doing that by making the person make a choice between one of their freedom's being violated and another. In the case of the habit, the person's choice isn't being restricted at all. These things are different.

No, the threat really does restrict your freedom. It isn't just a reason to act, it is coercing you to act in a way by threatening your freedom. Choosing to do someone for the other reasons you mentioned is not the same, as the choice is free and not coerced.

Not at all. Property can only be owned in a morally relevant sense if it can be owned without laws and property.

Difficult and impossible are not the same thing. Further, people do choose difficult things all the time. Further, not wanting to do something and not being able to are not the same thing.

That is like saying that nailing your hands to a wall doesn't restrict your freedom, since it is your hands that are preventing you from moving. The two thoughts are not morally similar, as one requires the person to choose while their freedom is at risk (due to the threat of punishment) while the other is just someone choosing not to do something.

I mean, I think I disagree, but I'm also not saying that the choices can't involve other people.

What I am claiming is that the measure of moral value is the ability of free, rational agents to understand and make their own choices. By "their own choices" I mean choices over those things that belong to them, their minds, bodies and property.

I mean, a choice being "difficult" in that sense is morally irrelevant. It's not a real restriction on the choice.

Again, laws restrict our freedom because they come with threats attached. If laws didn't carry the threat of punishment, they wouldn't restrict our freedom either.

No, I am saying that only the freedom to make certain kinds of choices is morally valuable. Specifically, the choices over that which belongs to the person, their mind, their body, and their property.

I am not "in denial", though I am denying the truth of your assertion. I do not lack understanding, your claim just isn't so.

You can characterize them as neural pathways if like, but a reinforced neural pathway does not prevent a person from choosing to think differently.

People are able to act against their habits and, in some cases, they are morally required to do so. Knowing the right thing to do and not doing it does not show that you were unable to do it.

No, I am not saying that being "under the influence of habit" affects whether a choice belongs to a person at all. I am saying that habits are not a relevant factor because they don't restrict freedom. I am also saying, seperately, that the only freedom that is morally relevant is the kind over those things which belong to us. These are two seperate claims.

No, I don't imply that you shouldn't make that choice (though in this case you shouldn't). What I am saying is that your freedom to make that choice is not morally valuable because that choice doesn't belong to you. My freedom to keep my car on the other hand is valuable because my car does belong to me.

It doesn't matter whether you are habituated to good action or bad action, both are still available to you. You have free will and your habits do not get in the way of you exercising that to choose to do good, or do bad.

Whether that choice belongs to you is very much morally relevant, because that is the type of freedom that FC is trying to protect: that over those choices that belong to the person in question.

No, a habit isn't a restriction of one's freedom.

No, the principle I'm claiming is that my car, being my property, is something that belongs to me and not something that you get to make choices over, morally speaking. As I mentioned in the primer, the kind of freedom being protected here is specifically over those choices that belong to you. Whether or not to steal my car is not a choice that belongs to you, because it is [my car.

Freedom of choice vs freedom to act is not a distinction I am drawing. When I talk about "freedom" in this context, I mean the ability of persons to understand and make those choices that belong to them. But that does include being able to actually do the thing. But yes, this includes freedom to actually do the thing, rather than just choose it in an abstract sense.

Because a threat to your freedom is being imposed in one case (you better not steal or else), and in the other case you are just acting in a not very considered way, which is your "right" (term isn't quite accurate, but useful in this context).

I mean, the type of freedom is quite a limited one already. It isn't the freedom to do anything that is to be protected, it is the freedom to make choices over what belongs to the person in question. If you want to steal my car and prevent you doing that, that hasn't violated your freedom in a morally relevant way (depending on how I do the preventing) because stealing my car was not your choice to make.

I didn't mean to suggest that you were involving everybody, just everybody affected by the decision in question. In the case of the cure for blindness, I'm not sure how this is different from just going with that the majority wants (the majority of people who, as it were, have some skin in the game). And, as that idea won't fly because what the majority wants doesn't matter, I'm not sure how filtering that through economics helps.

I'm not drawing a sharp distinction between mental and physical constraints, I'm simply pointing out that having a habit isn't a proper constraint in the sense of restricting your freedom. No is social conformity etc. Laws are a restriction of freedom because they come with a threat against said freedom attached.

I'm not sure what you take the opposite assertion to be in this context, so I don’t know whether i agree or not.

I mean, I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that external states can't cause internal states, but yes I would agree with the general point that free will requires our actions to be caused by us in a way that is not just a part of a deterministic causal chain. And yes, I would agree that we need to be able to understand it a bit. And I think we do understand it a bit. Not fully, but given that what we are trying to protect is a person's ability to understand and make choices, and we can understand the ways in which that can be prevented from happening (or many of them at least), then it seems like we can get some good protecting done without having a full understanding of how free will works.

No, I'm perfectly happy to say that a state of mind could reduce freedom. I just don't think that the ones you are talking about do.

Perhaps I can clarify with an example. Let's say I choose to chop off my leg. This prevents me from doing a bunch of stuff with it in the future, but this is not problematic. So long as I am choosing to remove/destroy the thing, then I am choosing to give up those things and therefore my freedom over them.

In the same way, if I choose to have a sandwich for breakfast instead of eggs on toast, I might be giving up the other (I mean, I could have both, but I wouldn't want to), but it's my choice to make (assuming some things about access to the foods in question). The making of the choice doesn't restrict my freedom, it exercises it.

I mean, it's a nice idea. I don't it works, but a nice idea.

My first questions are:
1. What about things that people don't generally think of "paying" for?
2. Isn't aggregating in this way functionally the same as using a majority to resolve conflicts, except with economic flavor?

Being dishonest doesn't always impair our ability to apply our rationality to choices, though in this case it would, and would be morally similar to stealing through fraud. Good spotting, heh.

I am indeed very happy to pay out the money if someone comes up with the answer. I have it sitting in an account waiting for just such a person. Yeah, I must admit that I find that cynicism frustrating. Scepticism is great, and you certainly shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, but automatically assuming that everyone is out to get you seems like a fairly poor filter as well. I like to run an assignment in my environmental ethics class where students submit arguments on where I should donate a thousand dollars of my own money, with the winning charity recieving that money, and there have definitely been some in the past who just assume the money isn't real.

Yes, I do plan on engaging with respondants.

People doing the wrong thing due to akrasia, or weakness of will, is not a case of their freedom being restricted, but rather them failing to do the right thing, and I think this is what you are describing here when you talk about habits.

I mean, I think I can have a reaosnably clear understanding of mental causes and effects in the same way that I can have a reasonably clear understanding of causes and effects outside of my mind. By observing that one follows the other, theorizing a causal mechanism that explains how one might cause the other, and then testing that casual mechanism in ways that attempt to falsify it. Obviously our minds are complex, but so is the world, there are plenty of confounding variables to be had in both. The assertion that we can know causes and effects in one but not the other seems unsupported.

Whether the consequences of an action are good or bad is not the same as whether we know whether they are good or bad, but I agree that the latter does rely on observation (though induction is less clear). I would say that describing what is "most probable" in terms of an action leading from a mental state is probably inappropriate as it involves a choice. But predicting how a thought might lead to an emotion seems doable. Also, I fundamentally disagree that not choosing increases ones freedom, so all of this discussion about whether or not we can see the consequences of not choosing and instead engaging in contemplation (which does seem to be implied by what you are saying), is really just debating an ancillary claim you made.

I'm inclined to agree with Hume that rationality is means-ends, rather than normative in the sense of setting rational goals. We want what we want, and rationality tells us how to get there (I wouldn't go quite as far as Hume in this regard, but that's rather a different issue.

Less "it just is" and more, "if morality is the way in which persons ought to be or act regardless of their wants, then asking why they ought to follow it is a bit pointless".

Goodness isn't a limit on our freedom. If I have many options and am free to pursue any of them, but only some (or one) of them is the right option that I should pursue, that doesn't limit my freedom at all. It may be helpful to think of freedom as allowing moral agents to determine what they do with their lives. Rather than proscribing that there is a good life everyone should pursue, the good is in each person being able to determine what they pursue, or don't pursue, by being able to make choices regarding what belongs to them. If you want to pursue creating great art at the expense of your own happiness, that's fine, it isn't morally better or worse than pursuing your own happiness, it's just personal preference. Where morality comes in is if someone takes away your choices (the ones that belong to you) that allow you to do so. The good is really just removing the bad, and the bad is in moral agents not being able to make use of the faculties that make them moral agents in the first place.

Yeah, I think that it is incorrect that people will necessarily enjoy their virtue (that is how I am interpreting your use of "should" here, correct me if I'm wrong) or doing the right thing. Doing what is right might well be a pain in the proverbial. It seems entirely plausible that one might not wish to help someone, but do so because it is their duty. Further, while their motives would not be morally relevant, I might think that the person who does the right thing because it's right (What Kant might call acting from duty) even when they don't personally want to more praiseworthy than the person who does good and always wants to and enjoys it.

yes I think perfectly rational agents can plausibly all want and choose different things. This need not be arbitrary, it might be instead related to what those agents want.

To say that there is nothing they "should" choose is different. They should choose what is morally right. Not because that is what rationality dictates but because that is what it means for something to be morally right. Morality is the categorical imperative, the thing we should do regardless of our desires. Why should we do what's right? Because that is what "should" means.

Typo in previous post. "Could have not done it" should read I could have not done it

I meant morally relevant in the sense that it is restricting the person's freedom. If I had a habit of murdering someone, that would be morally relevant in the sense that I'd be murdering people and murdering is morally bad. I meant that acting out of habit is not, in itself, restricting freedom.

To your second point, and using the same example, murdering someone as a habit would violate my victim's freedom, but it wouldn't violate mine. In this hypothetical, could have not done that and should have not done that.

Claiming that I am merely deceiving myself about my own mental states, or their order, if it conflicts with your claim that I can't observe cause and effect relationships in my mind seems like the classic, unfalsifiable refrain of the psychological egoistic when faced with altruism. It seems like if a specific memory (or for that matter a specific experience) reliably and repeatably evokes specific emotional states in me, then it would be reasonable to say one caused the other.

A mutual feedback relation appears to be a cause and effect relation, at least regarding the persistence of the thing, if not it's initial inception.

Also, regarding not knowing the likely consequences of an action, are you assuming expected value consequentialism? Because it seems that actual value consequentialism doesn't need to know the "likely" consequences of an action to evaluate it, only the actual consequences that followed from an action. That's not really relevant to the main point though, and either one would have issues if you really couldn't evaluate the consequences of actions if they involve mental states. Luckily, that appears to not be the case.

With the bar set low for "understanding" then most adults, most of the time, should be able to understand their choices.

Yes, I agree that people in those circumstances may not be able to understand the nature of their choices. People are capable of putting themselves in situations where they aren't really functioning in their full capacity as moral agents for a time and that isn't a problem. As for head injuries and significant cognitive decline (simply having a poorer memory than one used to isn't likely to affect one's freedom in a morally relevant way very often), yeah, those things seem to reduce a person's ability to understand their choices. I submit to you that this is a bad thing. Depending on what you mean, then this could be something of a binary distinction.

That being said, people can be more less free in the sense that more or less of their freedom is being reduced/violated/etc. For example, an alligator biting my toe off reduces my freedom somewhat, but not as much as if it bit my head off. The whole point of this exercise is to figure out how to determine which action violates the least freedom (or perhaps the least important freedom) or, conversely, protects the most.

As for cults, that depends on what the cult has taught them. If, for example, they think that they are going to be punished be an omnipotent being if they do the wrong thing, then that ignorance is reducing/violating their freedom in a morally relevant way as they are essentially always under threat.

That is actually a really good illustration of why I resist the term "promote". Whether someone has a bad habit is not morally relevant. This does not (in most circumstances anyway) reduce their freedom in a morally relevant way according to FC. This is also the case when engaging in an activity. If I choose to go read a book, I don't become less free in a morally relevant way than before I decided to do so, because I am still able to understand and make those choices that belong to me to the same degree as before. It is not freedom of all kinds that is being protected here, it is specifically the ability of persons to understand and make their own choices.

You don't need to know the likely consequences of actions in order to evaluate actions by their consequences. It is certainly a good idea to discover the likely consequences of actions if those consequences determine the morality of those actions. Consequentialism is not itself empirical, but if accepted, it allows us to determine the morality of actions empirically(ish, the kinds of measures of value that consequentialist theories use range from very difficult to measure empirically to very, very difficult to measure empircally).

This last seems a bit dubious. First, it seems like I can observe cause and effect relationships within my mind at least as easily as I can in the world, probably more so. To use an example that would be morally relevant to any kind of hedonistic utilitarianism: If I remember something funny, I experience happiness. In fact, given that almost all consequentialist measures of value appear to evaluate effects that occur within the mind of people. And that's putting aside all of the psychological models that are specifically about the cause and effect relationships between emotions, thoughts, and actions. Second, it is you who is claiming that contemplation increases freedom, not me, which suggests to me that you have at least some basis for thinking that there is a cause and effect relationship between the one and the other, which you now appear to be claiming is impossible to know.

I'm not really sure tangible proof is the right form of proof for moral absolutism, but I take your point. But I think the only viable options are moral realism (and objectivism, and a few other isms, but you get what I mean), or moral error theory. So it's possible moral truths don't exist, but assuming that they do, I want to know what they are... though I'd settle for a step closer than we were before.

no, I am concerned with solving ethics entirely. But having a system that works for ASIs would be a significant benefit of that for sure.

I'm not really sure what it means for a choice to be freer without reference to some restriction of freedom. I agree that it is all freedom, so when determing what is "more important" it seems like we either want to say that the some choices either involve more freedom, or that the freedom to make some choices is more important than the freedom to make others for some reason (eg, more central to is as persons) or that they by reference to which freedom one would choose over the other (as in the POM)

as I did mention though, it is better to consider this freedom being protected rather than promoted. So long as the person is able to understand and make their own choices, then there is nothing that, as it were, "needs doing". Whether the person has constrained their own choices in some fashion is (in most cases) morally irrelevant.

Also, consequentialism refers to a broad range of theories (or, if you prefer, the feature common to a broad range of theories) that share the common feature that they evaluate actions by reference to their consequences. That doesn't necessarily require observation, certainly not external observation. Also, it does seem as though you could, at least in some cases, observe contemplation

I think that is an appropriate, useful, and accurate distinction to draw. Good for me vs morally good. Categorical imperative vs hypothetical imperative.

I am asking for a specific answer and willing to pay for it. I think I've been entirely clear about exactly what I'm asking for. If you feel that deal is not beneficial, you are very welcome not to take it.

I'm not sure what you mean by these criteria that are independent of the freedom derived as a consequence. Could you elaborate on that?

I don't think you are using "freedom" in quite the same way. Also FC doesn't seek to produce the "most freedom" in the way you describe. Also, consequentialism does not require the perspective of an observer, nor is it really connected with such a perspective.

"Better" in the context of a scenario being better or worse than another can be taken to mean less freedom is violated/more is protected. "Worse" in that context can be taken to mean more freedom is violated/less is protected.

Yes, freedom itself is the measure of value, though by "freedom" I mean specifically the ability of free, rational agents to understand and make those choices that belong to them.

There's a difference between being praiseworthy and being good though. A consequentialist might consistently say that an action is morally bad but we should praise the person who performed it, and that an action is an action was morally good, but we should condemn, even punish, the person who performed it. The reaction to the initial action is also an action, and also ought to aim at the best consequences.

It seems to me someone might care about something more than what is morally good, or perhaps not care about it at all. That seems imaginable.

I mean, it is consequentialism, so people's motivations for their actions don't really come into it, just the consequences.

I'm afraid I haven't read it, so I can't comment with certainty.

Yes, manipulation, so long as no one is deceived about about morally relevant choices they are making or threatened with having their morally relevant choices taken away, would probably be permissible. Feature not a bug.

Putting weakness of will to one side, do you think it's possible for people to choose evil over good intentionally? It seems at least possible to me.

that's more an example of not knowing that not caring though, don't you think?