Random and spontaneous are not the same thing. We can say that quantum movement is random to the extent we can't predict it, but we don't go so far as to say it is uncaused. With spontaneity, you're talking about something just blipping into reality from nothingness.

So now it's a false trilemma I suppose. — Hanover

If you want to claim that you have given some sort of precise and uncontroversial definition of "spontaneous," then sure, we can call it a false trilemma. Either way you're not intersecting the points at hand.

What cannot be a false dilemma is the statement "Something is either caused or it is not caused." That statement encompasses every logical possibility.

So, when I choose to pull the trigger, that choice was either (a) caused or (b) not caused. If it was not caused, then I cannot be responsible for it because it occurred from nothing. If I'm walking about and then I pull a trigger with no preceeding cause initiating it, what did I do other than suddenly finding myself pulling a trigger. — Hanover

Is that what you do in court? When you are defending someone accused of murder do you say to the judge, "His choice to pull the trigger was either caused or uncaused. If it was uncaused then it's not his fault. If it was caused then it was the result of spontaneity or pool balls in his brain, and therefore also not his fault. Therefore in no case could the pulling of the trigger be his fault"? You are a lawyer, right?

This is just special pleading. You're trying to deny reasons are causes and then trying to claim that an event can occur without a cause because it was a reason, not a cause that brought it about. — Hanover

You're putting words in my mouth out of nowhere, again. Reason is an indeterminate cause which is neither determined, random, nor spontaneous. It is free, irreducible to these other options.

The person could have chosen 100 ways to build a bridge, but he chose Choice 87 and the reason he chose Choice 87 was because the various pool balls slamming together in his brain led him to Choice 87. How do you propose he chose Choice 87? — Hanover

If you think it was just the result of "pool balls slamming together in his brain," how do you propose he could have chosen anything else? Do you even believe in choice? Do you think we reason between multiple options? Is it more irrational for me to say that the engineer could have built the bridge differently, or is it more irrational for you to say that the engineer was determined to build the bridge according to blueprint 87? I think you are being led into absurdity here, namely by slowly committing yourself to the idea that reason and choice are illusory.

Assuming State of the Universe A, which includes every fact of the universe, will on some occasions in State A the actor choose Choice 87 and sometimes he choose Choice 88? If so, what varied that resulted in Choice 88? Was it an indeterminate force that offers a degree of randomness to the universe from time to time? If so, is that your Free Will Generator? If it is, how does that impose responsibility on the actor? — Hanover

You're still stuck in your false dichotomy. You are assuming that we cannot reason between different options, and that reason is both illusory and reducible to randomness or determinism.

Exactly. Everything is caused by something. That's what determinism is. — Hanover

This is the most common fallacy regarding determinism. Determinism does not mean that everything is caused by something. Determinism means that everything that happens happens necessarily, that all causes are event causes, and that the present is a necessary result of the past. You are equivocating on "caused" and "deterministically caused." Free agents are causes, but they are free, not determined.

You are doing this very strange thing where every time I say, "X is caused by a free agent," you conclude, "Right, so X is uncaused!" This is a failure to understand even the basic contours of an agent-causal worldview. If—as you continue to implicitly assert—free agents do not exist, then you must reject the claim that "X is caused by a free agent." But what you ought to do is say that the claim is false, not that it means that X is uncaused. It manifestly does not mean that X is uncaused.

All causes are events and all events are causes. An event is just the word we use to describe the cause that immediately followed a prior cause. — Hanover

Good. Now you are begging the central question explicitly. This is progress. Recall that I already predicted this:

So we're clearly not disagreeing on whether the event has a cause; you are merely asserting that an agent cannot be a cause of an event (and this begs the question I first raised). More precisely, you seem to be committed to the position that only events can cause events. Needless to say, an agent is not an event. — Leontiskos

Why in the world would we think that all causes are events? Beyond that, your definition of "event" is manifestly false. An event is not "just the word we use to describe the cause that immediately followed a prior cause." I think this is obvious, but I will give you a link to the dictionary.

If you claim an agent is not an event, you are claiming he had no cause... — Hanover

How does that follow!?

Are you an event? Did you have a cause?

and if you claim he had no cause, then when he does something, he did it for no reason. — Hanover

...and how does that follow!? :yikes:

These are just crazy inferences. What sort of principles are you working from? "If X is not an event then it had no cause"? "If X had no cause, then when it acts, it acts for no reason"? Your reasoning here is not only opaque, it is also dubious. It's not just that the things you are saying have no apparent rationale; but also that the things you are saying seem clearly false.

Why did the Agent pull the trigger? Your answer would have to be He pulled it beCAUSE of nothing. I'm not following why I should hold the Agent responsible for something from nothing. — Hanover

He pulled it because he reasoned that by killing the witness his crime would go unpunished, and he is on trial because reason is not deterministic (i.e. he could have reasoned differently and chosen a different course of action, both in committing the initial crime as well as in committing the murder coverup). Are you in the right profession?

This just shows that my occupation isn't causative of my beliefs in this instance, — Hanover

It might just show that you are engaged in a profession that you believe to be premised on false notions of moral responsibility, which is a kind of performative self-contradiction.

The only way out is to accept a pragmatism or just say there is free will and it's all magic. I'm good with either actually. — Hanover

If you posit free will as being a mystery, then you should be logically committed to the idea that the localization of that mystery will necessarily be vague (note too that a mystery could be defined as something which is not explicable in terms of your familiar categories: in your case randomness, spontaneity, and determinism). Likewise, when you fart we can't point to the fart in any exact way. It is diffuse, it spreads, it permeates. Only to the extent that we understand something perfectly can we identify and discern it perfectly.

Free will exercises influence on the world through free agents, and free agents exercise influence through rational deliberation, and rational deliberation results in the arts, sciences, technology, political arrangements, etc. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say that humans are free but reason is deterministic. That would be unduly localizing the "mystery," much like claiming to specify the exact location of your fart. If you think freedom is a mystery, then how are you so certain about where it begins and ends? If you think we are truly free, then don't you also think that that freedom exercises an influence on reality in one way or another? If so, then it makes no sense to hold that all of reality is perfectly deterministic, including reason and everything that follows from it.

To deny that free agents have any causal effect on the world is just to deny free will. It is farcical to claim that freedom exists and exercises no influence on the world whatsoever.

Edit: In a private conversation someone was trying to defend Dennett by defending a thesis that thoughts are causally impotent. This is how I responded:

The modern period becomes very focused on instrumental reason, and to say that we do not have thoughts would seem to imply that we are not able to affect the world in rational and intelligent ways. "If I press this gas pedal the car will accelerate." That is a thought that is true or false, and undergirding it is a great deal of engineering, which also presupposes true thoughts. The truth or falsity of the engineering thoughts will influence the truth or falsity of the acceleration thought. If thoughts had no causal efficacy, then they would play no part in the claim about the accelerator, but this is clearly false. Thus thoughts have causal efficacy. — Leontiskos

- Right, or simpler: for to claim that choice 87 was chosen "because [of] the various pool balls slamming together in his brain," is to claim that there was only one "choice" (and therefore there was no choice at all). If is right that "without [free will] nothing makes sense," then on his theory about "various pool ball," nothing makes sense. And it doesn't; it is completely contrary to sense to claim that we don't reason between multiple options.

Would you argue that we must divorce rational human creativity from the evolutionary engine of biological creativity? Is the freedom of human motive and thought completely absent from the rest of the living sphere, is it an emergent function, are there degrees of freedom at different levels of biological complexity? Or did a god gift humans with a freedom which he denied the rest of nature ( in which case we would exist apart from nature)? — Joshs

I think that, compared to the rest of the living sphere, there is a qualitative difference in human rationality and freedom, but that lower nature is present in the human being, and that lower nature can participate in substantially limited ways in rationality and freedom.

If blameful retributive justice is a function of a belief in the potential arbitrariness, randomness and capriciousness of motive, then what makes Cartesian desert-based approaches , which are assumed to arise from the deliberately willed actions of an autonomous, morally responsible subject, harsher and more ‘blameful' in their views of justice than deterministic , non-desert based modernist approaches and postmodern accounts, which rest on shaping influences (bodily-affective and social) outside of an agent's control? Aren't the latter accounts more ‘arbitrary' interpretations of behavior than the former? On the contrary, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound arbitrariness to free will. We say that the subject who has free will wills of their own accord, chooses what they want to choose , and as such has autonomy with respect to ‘foreign' social and internal bodily influences. The machinations of the free will amount to a self-enclosed system. — Joshs

I am not a Cartesian (in any intentional way). The reason we praise and blame human beings is because they act within a larger system. But the more fundamental fact is that, as Aquinas notes, praise and blame themselves presuppose freedom. I think the pejoratives such as "harsh" are just muddying the waters. If an act came from a person then they are responsible for that act. If it didn't then they aren't. There is nothing "harsh" about this logical fact. The notion of "harsh punishment" presupposes the whole system that Sapolski wishes to undermine, for it imputes blame to the judge who sentences the defendant. If the judge cannot be blamed then his sentence cannot be harsh. More fundamentally, it implies a disproportion between the punishment and the crime, which in turn implies the possibility of a proper proportion.

This solipsist self functions via an internal logic of values that, while rational within the internal bounds of its own subjectivity, is walled off from the wider community of selves and therefore can choose value in a profoundly irrational or immoral manner with respect to social consensus. Therefore, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound potential laxity and arbitrariness to individual free will in relation to the moral norms of a wider social community. — Joshs

If this extreme solipsism follows upon Cartesianism, then you are right. I think that sort of solipsism is obviously a problem to be avoided. I don't at all think it is inseparable from free will.

It’s not as if punitive justice is absent from Sapolski’s deterministic account. If human behavior is assumed to be the product of both biological and environmental conditioning influences, then it stands to reason that it is possible to rehabilitate and recondition a person who is exhibiting anti-social behavior. — Joshs

Rehabilitation and reconditioning are not punitive. C. S. Lewis' The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment is still quite relevant here.

No, because you don't need to view the world as evil for this argument, just that preventing suffering is a priority. — schopenhauer1

The argument holds that human life is evil (or bad) on account of suffering, and therefore we should not further human life by procreation. The proposition that <Life is evil> flows from your claim about suffering, but it still seems to me obvious that this is a crucial proposition in your argument, and that it is "theological."

So whilst I agree with what you have said there, the point is that paternalistically making a decision on behalf of someone to not prevent them from suffering, and thus basically forcing the conditions of suffering onto them, would not be respecting the dignity, as this becomes aggressive paternalism. — schopenhauer1

We force a decision upon them either way. I don't see how only one direction is paternalistic.

In this state of affairs scenario, it is doubtful you will find this thinking absurd. That is to say, just because there isn't a particular person that this state of affairs will affect, doesn't mean we are not incumbent to prevent the situation. — schopenhauer1

The problem is that your argument is a form of metabasis, <We ought to prevent persons from suffering; preventing a person from existing will prevent their suffering; therefore we should prevent their existence>. I don't say that it is necessarily unsound, but it is not a clean syllogism. There is a quasi-equivocation on "persons."

Our obligation is to prevent the suffering of persons, not to prevent persons for the sake of suffering. Our primary suffering-obligation is to prevent existing persons from suffering. Additional argument is required to show that this means that we should prevent persons from existing. Your aversion to suffering is overwhelming, and out of sync with common intuitions. Common intuitions merely say that suffering should be mitigated, not expunged at all costs. ...but maybe I would be better off directly addressing Benatar's argument... (and I do so at the end)

In fact, I didn't even mention whether ONCE ALREADY EXISTING, non-existence is or is not considered a harm. You cannot put the genie back. — schopenhauer1

Why not? Does existence suddenly become a non-harm once someone is born? Is life bad before we are born and good after we are born? So that we must avoid it before we are born and embrace it after we are born?

Let's move to the consensual variant, which seems to me more fruitful:

Well, now you've changed it. If he asked, and everyone consented, ethically speaking, this isn't violating an ethic. Whether this is the right "solution", I don't know, because I don't believe already-existing to be symmetrical for never-existing. — schopenhauer1

Again, why are they not symmetrical? I am guessing that unhappy people correlate to antinatalism and happy people correlate to "pronatalism," because there is symmetricity. Again, the whole thing is based on the question of whether life is good or bad, and that determination should hold steady. So if you really think life is bad then you should think that other people should think that life is bad, and that other people should consent to painless euthanization. If euthanization is not the rational choice for living persons, then why would you promote antinatalism? (Note that when I talk about the "rational position," what I mean is that this is the choice that the rational person ought to freely choose for themselves.")

But once someone has X done upon them, if it means that they have abc experiences, and they value them, I see no need to get rid of them, unless indeed they thought they were were worthless. — schopenhauer1

If X doesn't want to be euthanized because they find life beautiful and valuable, then either they are irrational or else the antinatalism thesis suffers a blow. That person would literally resent your antinatalism, because it sought to "paternalistically" prevent their fulfilling life. These two realities are directly opposed. It is not faulty logic.

Rather, we are NOT LIVING for that value, but rather, preventing that negative state of affairs from befalling someone. — schopenhauer1

It seems to me like a rationalization of pusillanimity: fear of life for fear of suffering. The antinatalist would apparently counsel the unborn to opt out of life for fear of suffering.

Do you agree that, one way or another, we must make a choice for the unborn? That to give birth is to choose life for them, and that to abstain from procreation is to choose non-existence for them? (Really "them," as I am now swimming in the metabasis). I don't accept the purported neutrality of the antinatalist position, as if so-called "paternalism" is not inevitable.

My point was that empirically-speaking, in the real world, there are no such charmed lives, so it is de facto out of the question other than a thought experiment. Supposing only a pin-prick was the suffering, I guess the scenario could be reconsidered. — schopenhauer1

Reconsidered on what basis? I am offering a reductio, and if your argument succumbs then the argument itself is problematic, as it "proves too much."

So for example.. What if when you stab someone, they reanimate every time you do it instantly.. would that be wrong? — schopenhauer1

It wouldn't be wrong in the same way as it is now. But your theoretical does not function as a reductio to any argument that I have offered, and that is the primary difference.

Benatar thinks indeed, being that no one being deprived of this "almost charmed life", there is no foul. No person harmed, no foul. Rather, the violation still takes place in this scenario. — schopenhauer1

The problem occurs if this is a valid argument:

1. Suppose every living human being is guaranteed a pinprick of pain followed by 80 years of pure happiness.
2. [Insert Benatar's antinatalist argument here]
3. Therefore, we should never procreate

Are you starting to see the reductio? The reductio has force because we know that any (2) that can get you from (1) to (3) is faulty argumentation.

You seem to be talking about spontaneous events now. — Hanover

No, this conclusion is based on the false dichotomy that if an event isn't deterministic then it must be random/spontaneous. That is the false dilemma I addressed in my first post to you.

Why am I responsible for things that just happen without causes? — Hanover

What has happened without a cause? I literally just told you that, "If I say that a certain event is caused by an agent then that event has a cause, namely the agent. So we're clearly not disagreeing on whether the event has a cause..."

What causes him to create an event? — Hanover

So the formal cause of a deliberate choice is rationality and rational motives. Why does an engineer build a bridge one way and not another? Because he (freely) reasons that this is the best way to build a bridge in such-and-such a circumstance. But there are a thousand different ways to build a bridge, and he might have built it differently. He is doubtless aware of all sorts of different ways that he could have built it. The final blueprint (or bridge) is not accounted for by randomness/spontaneity or determinism, for randomness does not produce bridges, and determinism cannot make sense of the fact that he was able—though his rationality—to build the bridge in a thousand different ways.

You are asking a question like this, "What caused the agent's act? In your answer you are only allowed to appeal to events, random or deterministic." Your whole presupposition is to reduce agents to events, random or deterministic. My point from the start is that this whole presupposition is faulty. The constraints that you are placing on the answers to your questions are not rationally justifiable.

If everything is determined, then the question of what determines each prior event is the central question in the free will debate. — Hanover

If we say that everything is determined then the free will debate is already over.

The problem is how we define free will in a way that allows for us to be considered responsible for our actions. — Hanover

Okay, but that is a different question than the one which asks whether free will or determinism is true.

If our actions are caused by prior events and those events are pre-determined, probabilistically determined, randomly determined, or are spontaneously determined, none of those actions were within our control. — Hanover

I agree.

Self-determined is a meaningless concept. — Hanover

I disagree. As a lawyer I find it odd that you would say that agents cannot be self-moving.

This is like asking what caused the Big Bang to suddenly bang and then asking what came before it to make it bang. Except in the free will discussion, you seem to be positing a sudden Big Bang every time a decision is made and then attributing that bang to the banger and still being unable to answer the question of what came before the Bang. — Hanover

Nah, I think this is more question-begging of the false dilemma, but it is instructive that you here literally conflate an agent with an event (i.e. the Big Bang). Agents are not events. What is needed is a broader ontology, one which includes bona fide agents.

I thought you were inquiring into the question of how agents and events interact, or how freedom and causal realities interact. We don't have a perfect understanding of how they interact, but we have some very good approximations (represented, for example, by legal systems). We know that agents are responsible and that causal laws obtain. One can pit these two realities against one another under the assumption that one must swallow up the other (i.e. idealism vs materialism), but one could also note that agents make no sense without causal laws and causal laws make no sense without agents to know and witness them. It seems to me a matter of irreducible realities, not insoluble problems. The problem to which there is no solution is the problem of how to reduce one irreducible reality to another.

This just strikes me as a God question which is obviously unanswerable, as in where did God come from, and what was there before he was there, and how did he make something out of nothing? — Hanover

To ask about the cause of an agent's existence is different from asking about the cause of an agent's action. My mother caused me to exist, but she did not cause me to write this post.

But, like I said, I accept there is free will, but I take it as a given, without which nothing makes sense, not even the ability to reason and decide what to believe. I'm just willing to admit that the concept of free will in logically incoherent upon deep analysis. — Hanover

"Nothing makes sense without free will and free will is logically incoherent upon deep analysis." Is this a substantial criticism? What does it even mean to give a "deep analysis"? As I said earlier:

But does anything make sense under "deep analysis"? It seems to me that when any totalizing paradigm is pushed too far one falls into nonsense. So when one falls into Scientism they tend to deny (libertarian) free will, and when ancient peoples favored an anthropocentric agent causation they tended to attribute this sort of causation to everything. Maybe we can have both, where neither needs to dominate the other. Maybe there is a middle ground between materialism and idealism. — Leontiskos

I think we can take it as a rule that that thing which nothing makes sense without, is never susceptible to "deep analysis." This is because analysis is an act of dividing or reducing, and the most fundamental and essential realities are always indivisible or irreducible. The Atomists say that nothing makes sense without atoms, but they do not complain that atoms cannot be further analyzed; they recognize it as an irresistible conclusion. The spat between the idealists and the materialists is a spat premised upon the search for a unified theory, where there is only one irreducible reality.

If every event has a cause, then the agent cannot be the originating cause because the concept of an originating cause makes no sense because that would be a event without a cause and we already said every event has a cause. — Hanover

Oh? That's quite a syllogism you're stitching together. If you clean it up I think you will find that you are still begging the question. If I say that a certain event is caused by an agent then that event has a cause, namely the agent. So we're clearly not disagreeing on whether the event has a cause; you are merely asserting that an agent cannot be a cause of an event (and this begs the question I first raised). More precisely, you seem to be committed to the position that only events can cause events. Needless to say, an agent is not an event.

But, if we are going to go with uncaused causes, then we're talking about neither determinism or indeterminism, but spontaneity, which means things just zap in and out of existence. If you ask me why I killed my neighbor, if my answer is that I did it because the spontaneity switch flipped, I don't see that I should be held responsible for that. — Hanover

This is the same false dilemma:

I don't see it as rational to simply define agent causation out of existence. "Everything is either random or determined, therefore agent causation (and free will) do not exist." But why accept that everything is either random or determined? That premise seems clearly false. A basic datum of our experience is free agents who are the cause of their own acts (i.e. self-movers). An agent's free act is not uncaused; it is caused precisely by the agent. — Leontiskos

-

And that brings up another issue. If I am a godlike creature with this ability to create as we might imagine God could, why should I be held responsible for my actions, considering I was just sort of given my godlike state by something else I didn't have control over? — Hanover

I think it makes sense to say that we are created in the imago dei, but Aristotle posited moral freedom without this idea, and so I don't think it is necessary.

The proximate question here is whether everything must be either random or determined. Other questions come later, such as how morality works, or whether an infinite regress of event-causes makes any sense.

The point being that there is no solution to the free will problem other than to just accept it as a necessary condition for comprehension of the world. — Hanover

There is no solution. — Hanover

What does it mean to say that there is no solution? What is "the problem" to which there is no solution?

Yeh, I'm of the opinion that the three formulations are not "really the same" as Kant claims... — Moliere

I agree. Good points.

But I don't think the collective will is one of self-interest, exactly. It's more like, in the long run of humanity, the final product that comes about when moral agents are acting within a moral community. — Moliere

I think this is right if we look at the fourth formulation instead of the first.

But does the first formulation really entail that we care about other ends-makers? Couldn't we universalize a maxim that the great dominate, and accept our fate in the war of all against all? What makes these four formulations the only formulations, given that each one -- while they paint a consistent picture of an ethic -- doesn't necessitate the others?

That's where I think this sort of elucidation of Kant's religion and moral commitments make his ethic more understandable. It's in the particular examples, and in making sense of all four formulations, that I think we get a sense of his ethic. — Moliere

Okay, interesting.

The unity of it comes down to human freedom to judge while recognizing the rights of other judgers. — Moliere

I think that's a plausible interpretation, although I also think others are equally plausible. This sort of project would require a close reading of all of Kant's ethical works along with an (at least implicit) hierarchical ordering of the different "formulations" of the Categorical Imperative. This task is beyond me, but I think you are right that bringing in the religious background could be helpful in completing such a project. The idea here is that the religious element is necessary in order to bring clarity to Kant's underdetermined moral system.

I'd put it that it's just a different kind of rationality. For him it's the necessary conditions for any particular moral principles one holds to that the philosopher spells out -- but the philosopher does not need to spell these things out because common, good people already know what is good. There is no deep technical knowledge: One does not lie because it is against the moral law. It's the simple, straightforward precepts of the common religion which follow the categorical imperative, or at least that his moral philosophy is aiming at.

I think he's of the belief that people already pretty much know what is good, hence the emphasis on conscience. — Moliere

I think this explains in part why the opacity did not bother Kant, but I think Kant was under the spell of many false assumptions in this sort of thinking, and I think Nietzsche in particular is going to pick it apart.

There's a way of reading Rousseau which puts the popular will as a kind of agent. But I'd emphasize the "bottom up" reading more. The popular will is the result of individual agents willing. It's the call for freedom, and progress, which I'd emphasize from Rousseau to Kant. While it's true that Kant expresses a "warped wood" theory of human nature, it seems that he also believes in human progress else he wouldn't talk about the need for an afterlife to fulfill perfection. Also it makes sense of his insistence that we should develop our talents, and other such stuff.

He, like many philosophers, expresses the dismay of human nature in their time, but I think he's still a progressive liberal for all that. — Moliere

Okay, fair points. Good post. :up:

I am not sure what this is supposed to translate to, ethically speaking. It becomes irrelevant given the considerations of suffering prevention being more ethically an obligation than happiness promotion, all things being equal. In fact, if what you are implying here is correct, it is your notion that has some template that people must adhere to assumed to be there prior to birth "The Good". But I am not sure completely what you are implying, so I'd hold judgement. "Life is good" seems a theological statement of some sort. — schopenhauer1

I think that what is primarily at stake is a "theological" question, namely the question of whether life itself is good or bad, and therefore my response here would be "tu quoque." Your position passes beyond the mere ethical when it comes to depend upon the proposition <Life is evil>. When I respond by saying that life is good, this is not the introduction of a theological proposition, but is rather a theological response to your own theological proposition.

Now it seems to me that you are committed to the proposition <Life is evil> either via the argument that life has a greater proportion of suffering than happiness, or else via Benatar's argument (or some variant thereof). I don't think it matters a great deal which argument is in play, and therefore whether the evil is conceived of as absolute or relative. Either way the conclusion is <Life is evil, therefore it cannot be chosen (via procreation)>. The shift from a merely ethical frame to a theological frame occurs as soon as life itself comes to bear the property "evil" (or bad, or undesirable). The ethical frame (again, in the modern sense) has to do with choices and ends which prescind from opinions about the goodness or badness of ontological realities themselves, such as life.

Clearly, the child did not have to experience any suffering. — schopenhauer1

This is a good example of the ethical/theological or act/potency equivocation. The more precise statement is, "Clearly the child did not have to exist, and therefore did not need to experience suffering." To conflate the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering with the situation where the child does not have to experience suffering because there is no existing child to suffer is part of the problematic equivocation. You are not merely proposing removing suffering from a child, you are proposing removing the existence of the child as a means to avoiding that suffering.

So you are conflating two arguments into one here. It is precisely because people cannot be consented that this Thanos argument is wrong. Also, once people exist, taking their existence away, is not the same question as bringing people into existence, so should probably be thrown out as some sort of counterpoint. There's too many differences. — schopenhauer1

No, not at all, for you have already denied that consent plays a central role in your argument. The Thanos example is apparently apropos. If suffering is the real problem, and life has no intrinsic value, then if Thanos can remove suffering by removing life—without causing suffering in the process—then on your principles he should do so. You relegated consent to a caveat, <1. Do not cause suffering, absent consent>. Because Thanos is not causing suffering consent cannot be relevant. If you reject the Thanos comparison then consent must play a more central role than your defensive argument permits.

Coming at this from a different angle, if Thanos attempted to obtain consent before snapping each individual out of existence, do you think this attempt would be rationally sound? Does it follow from your argument that consensual euthanization of the entire race is the ideal and rational solution?

This is actually touching upon Schopenhauer's notion that we are NOT actually "being" in some rested/Platonic way, but because we are in the world of Maya, we are in the world of "becoming" which by default is always in some way "suffering" as it is a world of dissatisfaction, or lack, or "what we do not have presently and fades away", a world of "vanity", and all such notions. — schopenhauer1

Okay, interesting. I will leave this to the side for the sake of time, but it is worth noting that Platonist and Christian schemes allow for a fallen world of cave-shadows.

However, though I am glad to discuss these notions, it is tangential to the argument itself which doesn't need the world to have any inherent value per se. Rather, as long as there is suffering (in any sense of that word), and the decision is there, that the moral weight is to prevent suffering more than any other one, including promoting (what one believes to be) good experiences for a person. — schopenhauer1

So again, your argument here is bound up with the claim that the world has inherent negative value. More precisely, it is bound up with the claim that human existence has negative value (i.e. is evil). This is in no way tangential. If we remove that premise then your argument disintegrates, does it not?

It creates a baseline set of boundaries, as what people can end up doing is any such harm to a person and justify it in the name of X positive value that they think will result. Rather, if people have inherent dignity and worth, that respect for this boundary would seem to be necessary, otherwise people are perpetual pawns that are to be treated as such. — schopenhauer1

It's not at all clear to me that your position is the one that favors inherent dignity and worth. To nix life on account of suffering seems to be contrary to notions of inherent dignity. If humans have inherent dignity, then they have it regardless of negative attributes or accidents such as suffering, disability, etc. That is basically the heart of what we mean by dignity, "Even in spite of your inadequacies, your life still has intrinsic value." Suffering is merely one form of inadequacy.

That is to say, I believe it to be the case that it is empirically evident that life has X amount of suffering. Charmed lives don't exist, except in perhaps imagination or thought experiments. — schopenhauer1

There is the danger here of an argument which proves far too much. Imagine a world where every person suffers a pinprick but no more, and the remainder of their life is pure happiness. Why wouldn't your or Benatar's argument also prohibit procreation in this world? The pinprick of suffering seems to fuel your arguments just as well as extreme suffering. Benatar's asymmetry holds just as well in that case.

It seems to me the issue for ethics isn’t freedom vs determinism, but what kind of freedom and what kind of determinism. — Joshs

Well, Hanover has already brought up the issue we are now discussing:

Why am I morally responsible for X if I couldn't have done otherwise? — Hanover

Does Sapolski have anything to say to this issue?

Let’s take , for instance , the neurobiologist Robert Sapolski’s determinatist account. His target is traditional views of free will , and his claim is that they justify a harsh, retributive justice because the free-willing individual is radically arbitrary with respect to an ordered system of natural forces. — Joshs

That seems mistaken to me, and would certainly require a great deal more argument. Unless Sapolski's target is Kantian freedom, in which case I tend to agree.

But the exchange might look something like this:

• Hanover: If I could have done otherwise, then I am morally responsible, and retributive justice is applicable.
• Sapolski: Retributive justice is bad, and if it is applicable then there is a problem. Therefore I could not have done otherwise.

If this is right then a curious shift is occurring, but I think Sapolski's value judgments take a back seat to Hanover's logical query. It is now quite common for people to oppose retributive justice per se and this would lead the logically consistent individual to deny moral responsibility and free will, but this seems to me grossly mistaken. In any case, Sapolski seems to agree with Hanover that <I am morally responsible iff I could have done otherwise>; it's just that whereas someone like Aquinas would use moral responsibility to affirm libertarian free will,* Sapolski would apparently deny libertarian free will in order that he might deny moral responsibility (because moral responsibility and the justification of retributive punishment go hand in hand).

*

Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. — Aquinas, ST I.83.1

I'd push back here a bit. Self-interest is definitely a Hobbessian point, and to some extent Locke, but Rousseau -- by my understanding -- is more a romantic. "Man is born free, and yet everywhere is in chains" — Moliere

That's fair. I concede your point. I was thinking more about Hobbes' social contract than Rosseau's. My mistake.

With that said, I do think Kant in his pessimism is closer to Hobbes than Rosseau. In Religion within the bounds of Reason Alone Kant speaks about man as evil or corrupt by nature, and I am told that in his Perpetual Peace a very Hobbesian political approach emerges.

Also since he believes that self-interest is something which makes an action not-moral -- an act can follow the moral law and so be legal, but it's the motivation towards the moral law which qualifies a particular as as moral or not moral -- I'd say that Kant inherits some of this Romanticism with respect to human beings: We are valuable ends unto ourselves. — Moliere

I think Simpson argues convincingly that at the heart of Kant is the universalization of a kind of communal self-interest, but his argument is doing to draw on the universalization formulation of the Categorical Imperative, along with Kant's conceptions of inclination and respect. If we consider the formulation of the Categorical Imperative which has to do with means and ends—which you may here allude to—then an argument against universalized communal self-interest is certainly available.

In a way what becomes sacred is less the metaphysics of morals and more the individual making choices — Moliere

I think the moral principles are sacred in that they are largely opaque to reason, and for Kant any explanation or justification for them will necessarily be limited and incomplete. I think Kant sees it as mistaken to ask for clear rational reasons why we ought to heed his moral principles. In a very weird but true way, for Kant if there are sufficient rational reasons for some act then that act is not necessarily a moral act, and therefore moral philosophy and complete rational explanations are like oil and water.

And what caused the agent to perform the act?

You have two choices here: (1) nothing or (2) something.

Assuming you won't choose #1, then that something had to be caused by (1) nothing or (2) something.

Until you choose #1, you don't have a self-caused event. Once you do choose #1, you have to explain why you're holding someone responsible for something that just spontaneously occurred from nothingness. — Hanover

Well you are begging the question. You are saying, "The agent's act had to be caused by something else, either deterministic or random. It couldn't have been caused by the agent himself." Ergo:

I don't see it as rational to simply define agent causation out of existence. "Everything is either random or determined, therefore agent causation (and free will) do not exist." But why accept that everything is either random or determined? That premise seems clearly false. A basic datum of our experience is free agents who are the cause of their own acts (i.e. self-movers). An agent's free act is not uncaused; it is caused precisely by the agent. — Leontiskos

Now to be fair, for the Scholastics the act of a rational agent cannot be understood apart from rationality and rational motives. Still, rational decisions are also bound up with agency, and they cannot be deterministic if they are truly rational, and also because of the evidence that the rational agent is able to reflect on their own reasons in an infinitely recursive manner.

So the case is really best exemplified by David Benatar's asymmetry argument that is now more widely known than when I used to discuss it. — schopenhauer1

I think Benatar's argument avoids the question of whether life or existence is good.

Preventing happiness is less a moral obligation than preventing suffering. All things being equal, in the case of non-consent, and ignorance (like this Veil of Ignorance argument is saying), it is always best to prevent suffering, even on the behest of preventing happiness. — schopenhauer1

There persists the conflation between the ontological and the "moral" (in the modern sense). It is the difference between preventing something and preventing the potential/potency for that something. To prevent the potential for X will also prevent X, but it is not the same thing as simply preventing X. One could prevent their child from getting smallpox by having no children or by vaccinating the children they do have, but these two options are not parallel. The obligations with respect to each are somewhat different.

Is Thanos from The Avengers a good example of an antinatalist? Specifically, a Thanos who snaps his fingers and everyone disappears without pain, not just half of them? No suffering + no potential for suffering = perfection. The theological gnosticism crops up its head again here, for the gist is that it would have been better for nothing at all to exist. I don't think the theological or metaphysical shift is avoidable given that your argument pertains to ontological realities and sheer potencies, rather than only to mere "moral" realities. To weigh suffering against life or existence will go beyond the "moral" insofar as evaluations of life and existence do not fall within the "moral" (in the modern sense).

But the Christian and Platonist traditions have been saying that being and goodness are convertible for thousands of years, and given that the argument does not recognize this seems to imply that it is weighed down by a specifically modern context. Yet to make an argument against life per se or existence per se is to move beyond that modern context.

Placing responsibility on the mindbody seems an arbitrary assignment of blame or credit. Why do you hold the pool player responsible for the great shot and not the pool stick? They are all just causes. — Hanover

Yes, quite right.

Any cause that did not arise solely from the actor cannot be held as the basis for responsibility. That holds true whether that cause arose as the result of other causes or whether it arose randomly. The only true free will would be an uncaused cause, which either implicates a godlike ability or it just results in further incoherence. — Hanover

I don't see it as rational to simply define agent causation out of existence. "Everything is either random or determined, therefore agent causation (and free will) do not exist." But why accept that everything is either random or determined? That premise seems clearly false. A basic datum of our experience is free agents who are the cause of their own acts (i.e. self-movers). An agent's free act is not uncaused; it is caused precisely by the agent.

Or more precisely, I would take exception with your word "solely." Not all acts are solely caused by the agent, and therefore we hold agents responsible to the extent that their act was self-caused. For example, in the film A Few Good Men the two marines receive a mitigated sentence. If it were "all or nothing" (solely responsible actor or entirely unresponsible actor) then the only two options would have been complete guilt or complete innocence.

Doing nothing is still a decision in the scenario.
Besides, it's easy enough to come up with a scenario where doing nothing would result in more deaths than, say, two other options.
Say, pulling lever left results in x deaths, pulling lever right results in y deaths, doing nothing results in x+y deaths. — jorndoe

Right, a la:

Suppose you are driving your car. Four people appear on the road, two on each side. If you keep going in the same direction you will hit all four. If you swerve left you will only hit the two on the left. If you swerve right you will only hit the two on the right. You don't have time to stop. What do you do? — Leontiskos

---

Leontiskos
Curious if you agree with the thrust here but for different reasons — Fire Ologist

Good thoughts. I agree with some angles and disagree with others, but I see no need to intervene. I think your post will help stimulate fruitful discussion. :up:

Yes, but this does not permit them to sacrifice innocent people to fulfill such duty. — Bob Ross

But their duty as pilot allows them to stop flying the plane, even though they know that by doing so innocent people will die?

This is a really good example, that tripped me up a bit (: — Bob Ross

:wink:

Firstly, I would like to disclaim that this is different than the airplane example because you are stipulating that the people being sacrificed are actually already victims — Bob Ross

Did I? Not that I know of...?

Secondly, I would say that one must continue to go straight, assuming they cannot try to veer away to avoid all 4 altogether (and have to choose between intending to kill the two to save the other two and letting all 4 die), because, otherwise, they would be intending to kill two people as a means toward the good end of saving two people.

A person that says otherwise, would be acting like a consequentialist full-stop: they would be allowing a person to intend to kill an innocent person for the sole sake of the greater good. I don’t see how the principle of Double Effect gets one out of this without it becoming inherently consequentialist.

Now, in practical life, since such stipulations are not in place, I would veer away intending to miss all 4 and would not ever intend to kill two to save the other two. If I happen to kill two instead of four because I didn’t manage to swerve far enough away; than that is a bad outcome but I had good intentions and thusly didn’t do anything immoral (unless, of course, there is reason to blame me for reckless driving or something). — Bob Ross

It seems to me that you have given two different scenarios, one to which you have given a theoretical answer and a different one to which you have given a practical answer. In the scenario I gave, the driver knows that if he swerves left to try to avoid the pedestrians he will hit the two on the left, and that if he swerves right to try to avoid the pedestrians he will hit the two on the right. In your "practical life" scenario he has gained a new option: swerve without knowing that he will hit anyone. But it is not permissible to change the constraints of the problem in this way, and this makes sense because we intuitively know that one problem cannot simultaneously have two different solutions. There are two solutions because there are two different problems. We must go back to the single problem, the single scenario.

According to the standard Catholic version of double effect, one can swerve with the intention of avoiding pedestrians even though they know with certainty that they will hit pedestrians on the left or the right. They are permitted to do this only on two conditions: 1) that the evil effect is not a means to the good effect, and 2) that there is a sufficient proportion between good and bad outcomes to justify acting thusly (note that this is a consequentialist condition, necessary but not sufficient). Cf. <One interpretation>.

In the case of the car I would say that the second condition is clearly fulfilled: hitting two people instead of four is a significant improvement. I also think the first condition is fulfilled, but this has been one of the points of controversy within the thread. It is therefore needful to think further about what it means for one effect to be subordinated to another as a means.

The pilot is not, in your example, in a situation where they are morally responsible for the deaths of innocent lives. — Bob Ross

I agree, and I talk about this in my analysis.

If they keep flying because there are no ways to crash land without intentionally killing innocent people and the plane eventually just crash lands itself (by slowing falling to the ground) and it kills innocent people, then the pilot would be without moral fault. — Bob Ross

In my analysis I claimed that the pilot has two duties, not just one:

The pilot has a duty not to kill, but he also has a separate but related duty to cause as few deaths as possible in the event where he cannot avoid causing deaths (whether or not we decide to call this "causing of death" killing). So the good pilot will land in the area with fewest people to minimize injury and death. — Leontiskos

... if the pilot takes your recommendation then he would apparently be without moral fault according to his first duty, but not according to his second duty.

You don’t think that that pilot, by intentionally veering into an area of innocent people to crash land to avoid crashing into more innocent people in a different area, is intentionally killing innocent people? I don’t see the reasoning there. It isn’t merely an evil effect: the pilot has an evil intention (to sacrifice innocent people for the greater good). — Bob Ross

The proximate question at hand is whether the evil effect that the pilot foresees is a means to the good effect that the pilot desires. In the first place I would want to stress that the two effects are intended in wholly different ways.

I think so; but only proportionally to whatever they are doing to forfeit it. For example, the axeman should be lied to (even though one should normally tell people the truth) because one knows the axeman is using that information to actively hunt and kill an innocent person—this causes the axeman to forfeit their right to be told the truth (in this instance). — Bob Ross

Okay, interesting response. For now, I am going to leave this issue of self-defense to the side for the sake of time.

But none of these account for the way, the how, and the why of his own analyses. — tim wood

Why not?

Fideism is the separation between faith and reason, and the separation is found in different ways in different forms of Protestantism. Folks like Kant and later Schleiermacher emphasize rationalism and protect religion/faith by giving it a purely internal and separate character, and this internalizing is also in line with Pietism. — Leontiskos

Understanding Kant's Protestant fideism is very helpful in situating his thought, and this recognition is commonplace among many scholars. This kind of fideism is something of a novelty, at least in the form it took in Kant. For example:

The key text representing the revolutionary move from his pre-critical, rationalistic Christian orthodoxy to his critical position (that could later lead to those suggestions of heterodox religious belief) is his seminal Critique of Pure Reason. In the preface to its second edition, in one of the most famous sentences he ever wrote, he sets the theme for this radical transition by writing, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” (Critique, B). Though never a skeptic (for example, he was always committed to scientific knowledge), Kant came to limit knowledge to objects of possible experience and to regard ideas of metaphysics (including theology) as matters of rational faith. — Kant's Philosophy of Religion | IEP

Here is Nietzsche:

Kant: inferior in his psychology and knowledge of human nature; way off when it comes to great historical values (French Revolution); a moral fanatic a la Rousseau; a subterranean Christianity in his values; a dogmatist through and through, but ponderously sick of this inclination, to such an extent that he wished to tyrannize it, but also weary right away of skepticism; not yet touched by the slightest breath of cosmopolitan taste and the beauty of antiquity— a delayer and mediator, nothing original (just as Leibniz mediated and built a bridge between mechanism and spiritualism, as Goethe did between the taste of the eighteenth century and that of the “historical sense”. . . — Nietzsche, The Will to Power, #101

This is a theme that George Grant takes up, namely Kant's "great delay." Kant sets up the religious stopgap that morality cannot be had without God, and Nietzsche finally replies: Then we cannot have morality.

Kant's fideism whereby morality gets sequestered off on its own seems intricately bound up with the very sort of religion that Pietism represents, and not a few have noticed this. I'd say this is fairly crucial if one is to understand Kant in his historical context. Kant's fideistic move to protect morality (but also faith) is taken right out of the playbook of Pietism, which did the exact same thing to shelter interior religion from the quasi-rationalistic Lutheran orthodoxy of that time.

You did not hear any such thing from me. Actually, I don’t know what you heard, but I know I never said any such thing. — Mww

You in the sense that you affirmed <this claim>, and @tim wood in the sense that he is creating an artificially high burden of proof for the thesis that Kant's work might have religious influences.

The point I made earlier is that Kant's thinking is reason based and religion is not. — tim wood

This is the sort of modern Enlightenment canard that now stands in disrepute, but you are of course welcome to continue holding it and/or arguing for it. It is possible that the postmodern consensus is mistaken.

That said, I find Kant's morality irrational or at the very least hopelessly opaque. I agree with Simpson:

Kant only secures the nobility and freedom associated with morality at the cost of shifting both into a sphere that lies completely beyond human grasp. The free acts of the will that constitute moral goodness and moral choice are beyond human explanation and comprehension.[27 - footnote to ch. 3 of the Groundwork] — Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble

But the greater the claim, the more to be resisted, if for no other reason - aside from being wrong - that it tends to vitiate and trivialize Kant's thinking and its effects and value — tim wood

There would be the danger of something like a genetic fallacy in a thread on Kant's arguments, but this thread is literally about Kant's religious influences. The constant refrain that I am hearing from you and @Mww is the dogmatic claim that Kant's philosophy simply did not have religious influences. Now for those of us who who think that two things can be held simultaneously, namely that influences can be acknowledged without the thought being invalidated, this is not a problem. It seems that for those who think that to admit influences is to invalidate the thought, it must be denied that their favored thinkers had any influences at all!

This is one of the hallmark errors of Enlightenment thought: "If we receive from the past or from others then our thought is not legitimate" (and the truth of the matter is almost exactly opposite to this). The current errors of philosophy are a variation on this theme. Now it is said that if some proposition exists in language, then it cannot express a truth that transcends the immanent frame of that language (given the linguistic reduction). Or—closer to Kantianism—if some proposition is derived from "phenomena" then it cannot express a truth that transcends the immanent frame of the subject (or their transcendental conditions - given the subjectivistic reduction). More sensible non-Enlightenment approaches do not take such a reductionistic avenue, and are therefore not as wary of admitting influences on thinkers.

This is a difference, no doubt; but not a relevant difference (to me). — Bob Ross

Does a pilot have a duty to fly his plane?

If one amends the trolley example such that the person who decides whether to pull the lever is actually, instead, the train operator and can choose to divert the train to the track with the 1 or stay on the track with the 5; then I would say it is immoral for the operator to divert the track. They cannot intentionally sacrifice one person to save five: they are still using that sacrificed person as a means towards an end.

Same with the airplane.

By “doing nothing” I mean that they let the train run over the five: it is stipulated that them stopping steering will do nothing to help save the five, but nevertheless they should stop steering. In normal circumstances, where this stipulation would not exist, one would be obligated to try to do everything they can besides sacrificing someone else to get the train to stop before it runs the five over. — Bob Ross

Suppose you are driving your car. Four people appear on the road, two on each side. If you keep going in the same direction you will hit all four. If you swerve left you will only hit the two on the left. If you swerve right you will only hit the two on the right. You don't have time to stop. What do you do?

(See also 's thread)

Isn’t one certain, in your airplane example, that they are going to kill innocent people to save more innocent people? — Bob Ross

I would highlight two things that I said earlier:

given that the pilot literally has no choice but to cause the death of innocents, the consequent death of innocents cannot be imputed to his free actions. — Leontiskos

Some might reasonably argue that this falls short of an authentic case of double effect insofar as the act with the double effect (or side effect) is involuntary (i.e. the act of landing the plane, which is not strictly speaking a choice at all). — Leontiskos

Beyond that, the further question lies here:

This intersects with the trolley scenario via the difficult question of whether the evil effect is a means to the good effect. — Leontiskos

In the airplane or car scenario it is not at all clear that the evil effect is a means to the good effect. The good effect would be chosen with or without the evil effect. Of course the trolley introduces an obvious counterargument...

-

With respect to self-defense, I would say that the aggressor has forfeited their rights proportionately to their assault; and this principle of forfeiture is doing the leg-work here, and not a principle of double effect. — Bob Ross

Okay, interesting. I suppose the question is whether someone can forfeit their right to life vis-a-vis a private party. A criminal forfeits their rights and then the community or state punishes them accordingly, but it's not clear that this sort of forfeiture and punishment is applicable to private citizens.

That is, Kant as either a Pietist apologist, or as the sui generis thinker he's usually regarded as being. — tim wood

Or else it's not as black and white as you purport. This should not be hard to see given that both options you give seem to me to be caricatures.

Regarding burdens of proof and the like, the fact that some here take Kant to be a sacred cow doesn't count as a good reason to exempt him from the sort of analyses that are applied to all humans and thinkers. Lots of us don't take Kant to be a sacred cow, and therefore we will assess him the same way we we assess other cows. The birth narratives and childhood stories of sacred figures are jealously guarded, and Kant seems to be no exception. Apparently some secular followers of Kant are threatened by Kant's religious upbringing, and therefore that upbringing must be expunged or laundered lest Kant fail to be "claimable" by secularism. I don't see this approach, this reaction against Kant's background, as especially measured or unbiased.

Do you accept that a claim of ancient wisdom is largely dependent upon a description of what those old people were saying? — Paine

Another way to put the same sort of point is as follows. There is a relationship between claims about the forest and claims about the trees, and claims about the forest depend on knowledge of the trees in the forest. Because of this, disputes about one or more trees can and do have an effect on theses about the forest in which those trees reside. Forest-theses are not immune to tree-theses. ...at the same time, theses about the forest often involve much more than mere tree data (i.e. overarching theses can pull together philosophy, history, economics, religion, etc.).

-

- Sounds good.

To me, this is no different than the trolley problem, and you are here affirming, analogously, to sacrifice the one to save the many. You are saying that the pilot’s lack of action will result in innocent deaths (just like not pulling the lever) and their actions to avoid it would result in innocent deaths (just like pulling the lever); so I am having a hard time seeing how you agree with me on the trolley problem, but don’t agree that the pilot should, in your case you have here, do nothing. — Bob Ross

Well the pilot is flying the plane, but the person in the trolley problem is not driving the trolley. Therefore to "do nothing" would seem to be quite different in the two cases. In the case of the pilot he would not be doing nothing, but would instead (or also) need to stop flying the plane.

To me, the principle of Double Effect rests on a vague and (typically) biased distinction between intending to do something and intending to do something which also has bad side-effects. — Bob Ross

A locus classicus for double effect is Aquinas' ST II-II.64.7:

I answer that, Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental as explained above (II-II:43:3; I-II:12:1). Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one's life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one's intention is to save one's own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in "being," as far as possible. And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful, because according to the jurists [...], "it is lawful to repel force by force, provided one does not exceed the limits of a blameless defense." Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense in order to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another's. But as it is unlawful to take a man's life, except for the public authority acting for the common good, as stated above. . . — Aquinas, ST II-II.64.7: Whether it is lawful to kill a man in self-defense?

I accept a relatively uncontroversial form of double effect whereby the unintended effect must only be possible and not certain.

Regarding a more controversial form, we could think about Aquinas' example. Self-defense must by nature be at least proportionate to the aggressor's level of force, if it is to be adequate. So if a child attacks me I could restrain them easily without risking harming them. But as the aggressor's level of force increases, the level of force required to repel the aggressor in self-defense also increases. So if the aggressor has a knife then I will need to at least disarm or incapacitate them to successfully defend myself. If the aggressor has a gun then I will very likely need to shoot them with a gun to defend myself (if I cannot escape). As the level of necessary force rises, the risk of killing the aggressor also rises, but this rising risk does not necessarily imply that I am no longer justified in using adequate self-defense. The doctrine of double effect at this point seems to be a foregone conclusion, namely at the point where lethal force is necessary to repel an aggressor. At that point you say, "They might die, but I am nevertheless going to defend myself."

For my money, <Aquinas> accepts the principle that one intends any effect which is known to be "always or frequently joined to" an act, and therefore in order to not-intend to kill one must perform an act that does not necessarily result in death. But this opinion is controversial.

I accept libertarian free will as a necessary component for any understanding, analogous to Kantian space and time intuitions, which is simply to say it's necessary for any understanding of the world, even if it makes no sense under deep analysis. — Hanover

But does anything make sense under "deep analysis"? It seems to me that when any totalizing paradigm is pushed too far one falls into nonsense. So when one falls into Scientism they tend to deny (libertarian) free will, and when ancient peoples favored an anthropocentric agent causation they tended to attribute this sort of causation to everything. Maybe we can have both, where neither needs to dominate the other. Maybe there is a middle ground between materialism and idealism.

What is the difference between Fate and Determinism? Is there one at all? — Frog

Taking a cue from , I would say that determinism means that, "all actions and events are necessary effects of impersonal causes," and fate means that, "all* personal events are mysteriously necessary and foreordained."

* All, or perhaps only some.

The issue of the receptivity of matter raises the question of how there can be "natural" beings in a world where necessary events occur in conjunction with accidental ones. The view leads to an argument about the nature of actuality and potentiality (as I refer to upthread). What I have seen in Gerson overlooks the importance of the 'material' in Aristotle's pursuit of the natural. — Paine

Okay thanks, I think I sort of see where you are coming from. It is something like the idea that Gerson fails to recognize Aristotle's naturalism insofar as he overlooks the importance of the 'material' in Aristotle's thought. For Aristotle the specific matter in question must be receptive to the form it holds, and an undue emphasis on form will tend to neglect this thesis. Is it something like that?

I don't quite understand how the quote from Plotinus fits in. Presumably it highlights a Platonic critique of Aristotle, in which the formal principle(s) is clearly seen to overpower the material principle(s)? That for the pure Platonist Aristotle's matter will not be sufficiently determinate or explanatory?

If Kant never mentioned the influence his religious upbringing may have had on the formulation of his moral philosophy, [then] I have no warrant for understanding such philosophy as if it were conditioned by it. — Mww

Do you think this a sound argument?

Then with the human race gone, morality has gone with it - what was the point of upholding that moral decision then! — Apustimelogist

I think there are two different conceptions of morality which are butting heads: one which is based on justice and individual rights, and another which is based on social well-being or lubrication. At the end of the day the (innocent) individual's right to not be killed is not necessarily in sync with with a morality that privileges the whole over the individual.

But at this point the contrived nature of the trolley problem may become problematic, for the claim that one might be forced to kill innocents in order to save the race or community may be nothing more than a contrivance. Further, cases where this sort of thing is required usually create volunteers (e.g. those who volunteer to be soldiers, or those who volunteer to be guinea pigs for a novel vaccine, etc.). When there is legitimate communal need the members of the community are given to satisfying that need, thus adverting a transgression against individual human rights.

I found a five-minute lecture - is that what you were referring to? If a longer, can you provide a reference? — tim wood

I think this is probably the one I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuvshyo0knI, especially the section on Kant's background.

Sure, why not. But can you in a sentence or three sum up just what his religious "orientation" was? — tim wood

So from a Catholic perspective Kant is extremely individualistic, subjectivistic, and fideistic. Individualism and subjectivism are common to both Protestantism and the Enlightenment (and probably not coincidentally). Fideism is the separation between faith and reason, and the separation is found in different ways in different forms of Protestantism. Folks like Kant and later Schleiermacher emphasize rationalism and protect religion/faith by giving it a purely internal and separate character, and this internalizing is also in line with Pietism.

My read is that he found in Pietism certain claims that were founded in Pietist faith that he Kant found grounded in reason, reason for Kant being the more compelling, and dare we say, the more reasonable. — tim wood

Sometimes thinkers embrace and defend their nascent traditions, and sometimes they react against them, but in either case the nascent traditions are exercising their influence. For Kant I would say it is both, but I would say that Kant never really deviated from the fundamental manner in which Pietism sees the world fideistically. Religion for Kant is always somewhat separate and other, and his morality also participates to some extent in this same kind of opacity and sanctity. Obviously fideism dovetails with Enlightenment thinking, and I would argue that Enlightenment autonomy is in no small part inheriting from the Reformation itself, but in any case, there are various interrelating influences.

Or if I may be permitted a metaphor, religion is like a stool with two legs: it does not stand on its own. Kant attached a third leg, and now at least some of its ideas can stand on any surface. Do you find any fault in this? — tim wood

It might represent a rough portrait of Kant's approach, sure. The exchanges between Kant and Hamann are rather interesting in this regard.

What's curious to me is that Kant tries to justify a Christian morality with "pure reason," and if this were possible or if Kant had been successful then I think the questions about his religious background might not loom so large. But if—as is generally accepted—"pure reason" is insufficient to justify such strong, categorical moral claims, then the effect is that Kant ends up sneaking in religious or transcendent principles through the back door. My sense is that Kant's arguments for high-octane (religious) morality are creative and interesting, but also faulty. I don't think the project is impossible, but I don't think Kant succeeded. Most people, for example, do not think that Kant's absolute prohibition on lying holds good. The Kantian successors are basically trying to find ways to rationally justify a high morality or a high view of reason, and some of them (such as Nagel) are haunted by this question of whether their system really holds up without robust religious or metaphysical-anthropological presuppositions.

I feel the same way, but perhaps from a different point of view. I don’t think we have the authority to suggest for Kant anything he didn’t admit for himself.

I’m not saying he never mentioned the influence his religious upbringing may have had on the formulation of his moral philosophy, only that I’ve yet to find out about it. And from that it follows necessarily at least I have no warrant for understanding such philosophy as if it were conditioned by it. — Mww

All philosophers are conditioned by factors they fail to recognize or admit, and these factors are identified by scholars.

Oh yeah? Where?

It's always nice to find agreement. — Moliere

So now that I look again he is appealing more to the Machiavellian-Hobbesian context than Rousseau in particular, but it is similar:

Morality becomes a kind of universalizing of self-interest. [...] , one will find that it is little more than an elaboration of Hobbesian peace. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble

The broad idea is that Kant universalizes self-interest, which results in a communal ethic.

Not quite, in my estimation. I'd prefer to say that he argues that there is more than one legitimate use or power of reason other than theoretical (scientific) knowledge. — Moliere

Okay, interesting.

Yeh. Which, especially considering it's Kant, I'd say isn't warranted at all. Even in his philosophical work he's pro-religion, while obviously arguing for rationality too. — Moliere

Yes, and many would agree that Kant is unconsciously influenced by his religious upbringing in various ways.

What do you make of the syllogism above? Where Kant is a Lutheran (due to Pietism), and all Lutherns are Protestants, therefore....? — Moliere

...Therefore Kant is a Protestant? Sure, but I think what is desired is a more direct link between Kant's thought and Protestant thought.

↪tim wood has a good point in that he's not really "claimable" by religion -- in the culture wars sense — Moliere

Right.

There's a problem with (1). People found guilty of crimes have a lot of suffering inflicted on them without their consent, so sometimes it's OK to cause suffering absent consent. — RogueAI

The question is then whether these exceptions to (1) apply to the case of procreation. For example, we can cause suffering absent consent when punishment is due, but is punishment due in the case of procreation?

Also, this particular argument is a bit different than just consent. Rather, it is saying that since we are IGNORANT as to how any person's life truly will play out in the course of their lifetime, AND we cannot get consent otherwise, we should do the option that is with the intention of the LEAST harm, which is of course, not even procreating that person who will be harmed to X degree. — schopenhauer1

Okay.

I kind of like this notion, though I don't hold "Consent" to be independent of humans, simply entailed in humanity. If there is no humanity, consent disappears as well. — schopenhauer1

Sure.

But this also relies on what "the good" is, and defines it in "negative" terms (what not to do). Suffering is weighted more heavily in this conception such that, causing negative/suffering unnecessarily on someone else's behalf is weighted as a bigger moral consideration than any of the positives that result from causing the suffering. Not causing great distress to someone is a bigger ethical consideration than say, buying them cake. — schopenhauer1

Okay, so maybe something like this?

1. Do not cause suffering, absent consent
2. Procreation causes suffering, and does not admit of consent
3. Therefore, do not procreate

Thus consent functions as an exception to the prohibition on suffering, but does not apply in the case of procreation.

I would appeal to a similar "inversion" argument to the one I already gave, but focusing on suffering rather than consent. Just as consent does not constitute an absolute principle, neither does suffering-avoidance. "I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent."

The key here is that birth/existence is qualitatively different from, and ontologically prior to, consent and/or suffering. More directly: life is more than the avoidance of suffering, and therefore the desire to avoid suffering is not a sufficient reason to nix life.

Regarding the moral maxim of (1), I think it would apply to procreation in a very dire apocalyptic scenario, but I don't think it applies more generally throughout history. I don't know... There are a lot of different ways one could go with this.

Isn’t there an argument that by pulling the lever you are landing the trolley in the area with the fewest people? — Fire Ologist

Sure, as I said in the same post:

As a parallel to the airplane scenario, folks who pull the lever tend to see themselves as being in a state of necessity, similar to the pilot. — Leontiskos

Now, there is an interesting discussion, from Anscombe, about the difference between intentionally killing someone and doing something which has a statistically likelihood or certainty of killing an innocent person. I am still chewing over that part, so I can’t comment too much; but I am guessing Leontiskos can probably inform us better on that. — Bob Ross

The debates over double effect get pretty tricky. I touched on some of that in <this post> from another thread.

Suppose a pilot runs out of fuel over a large music festival and his airplane will crash somewhere in the festival no matter what he does. The pilot has a duty not to kill, but he also has a separate but related duty to cause as few deaths as possible in the event where he cannot avoid causing deaths (whether or not we decide to call this "causing of death" killing). So the good pilot will land in the area with fewest people to minimize injury and death.

The question arises: did the pilot intentionally kill (or injure) the people in that area? I think not. This is what I would call a legitimate case of double effect, where the pilot's decision is morally sound even though he knows it will result in the death of innocents. It is an easier case on account of the necessity involved: given that the pilot literally has no choice but to cause the death of innocents, the consequent death of innocents cannot be imputed to his free actions. Nevertheless, he does have a choice over how many innocents die, and this choice is morally imputable to him. Some might reasonably argue that this falls short of an authentic case of double effect insofar as the act with the double effect (or side effect) is involuntary (i.e. the act of landing the plane, which is not strictly speaking a choice at all).

(This is all reminiscent of the Tom Hanks film, based on a true story, "Sully.")

Folks argue over double effect, but a common moral principle which double effect presupposes is the principle that one cannot do evil that good may come. This intersects with the trolley scenario via the difficult question of whether the evil effect is a means to the good effect. The lever-pullers often involve themselves in what I (and Anscombe) might call "intention games" where they profess to have intended one outcome but not the other, despite the fact that both outcomes are certain.

As a parallel to the airplane scenario, folks who pull the lever tend to see themselves as being in a state of necessity, similar to the pilot. Those who do not pull the lever do not tend to see themselves as being in a state of necessity. The key is that they view omissions differently. The former think that to omit pulling the lever is the same as intentionally killing the five (or is at least as intentional as the parallel commission), whereas the latter think that the omission is not intentionally killing the five, and is certainly not as intentional as the commission.

I read the paper. Liked it. Agree with it. Think I am speaking in line with much of it. — Fire Ologist

:up:

I'm using "wrong" to mean: violates one's moral code, not a final conclusion after considering all possible points of view (including but not limited to morality). — LuckyR

Then you're using it dishonestly or equivocally, for not only is that not what the word means, it is also not what the word means to your interlocutor. Ergo: you are involved in a very low-level begging of the question of moral relativism.

I wonder: are there any good ways to meet an intellectually substantive partner (viz., perhaps a philosopher)? — Bob Ross

Principle A) Your candidate partners, matches and dates will almost certainly not care about philosophy. At least as much as you. People are good to talk to regardless. You're picking one of your most extremely exemplified traits and filtering on it, just raw statistics filters out most of the people you could get on well with. It's the same principle as the fact that someone who's 190cm tall looking for someone taller will not find many. — fdrake

I tend to disagree with fdrake. There are philosophers and there are philosophers. By "intellectually substantive partner" I suspect that Bob is thinking of someone who is philosophical in a sense that is not exclusively academic. It is worth noting that intellect is not merely one of Bob's traits, but specifically one of his values, and I believe it is worth taking the effort to try to find someone who shares that central value. Intellectual mismatch is not a minor problem in relationships.

Of course, it is likely that his conception of "intellectually substantive" is overly narrow, and in that way I agree with your point. If so, the criterion should be broadened but not abandoned.

- The <paper> I cited earlier represents my position. I am actually going to move on from this thread. I think you will have a more fruitful conversation with some of the other posters in this thread. Take care.

(To answer your last question: I would make the same decision whether or not the situation was "rigged.")

Honest conversation over here. — Fire Ologist

Looks like caricature to me.

What’s wrong with the doctrine of double effect? But I don’t really know what that is. — Fire Ologist

It's the intellectual part of the trolley problem. Clearly not meant for this thread.

It's like an inward-facing version of Rousseau's social contract: the necessary conditions for forming a moral society from the perspective of a rational agent choosing. — Moliere

Peter Simpson makes this point almost exactly.

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- Excellent - I need to read more Maritain. I have been reading John Deely, a well-known semioticist, and he references Maritain often.

The religious background of which we have just spoken is the source of what characterizes Kantian ethics from the outset, namely, its absolutism, the privilege it assigns to morality as revealer of the absolute to man, the seal of the absolute which it impresses upon morality... — Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Philosophy - The Ethics of Kant

I am told that in Kant's later work he makes exceptions to the unknowableness of the noumenal on account of morality.

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My own five-cent analysis is that Kant, whom we're told was brought up Pietist, at some point found it no-longer nourishing; yet finding some of it compelling, tried to reason out why it should be compelling. It being helpful to remember that he is among humanity's strongest thinkers, as well as a professional grade mathematician and world class in physics. — tim wood

There is a Lutheran priest named Jordan Cooper who has at least one lecture on Kant which digs into his Pietism a bit. Kant's religious orientation seems to me obvious, as well as colors of Protestant fideism.

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Does being among humanity's strongest thinkers, professional grade mathematician, and a world class physicist indicate that Pietism is no-longer nourishing or rational? — Moliere

Right: that is the crucial (anti-religious) assumption at play.

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The part I'm questioning at the moment is whether or not it's correct to call it protestant, after all. — Moliere

I didn't quite follow that conclusion, either. But it is Protestant at least insofar as it is individualistic, subjectivistic, and arguably fideistic.