Submitted by contractualist t3_xvqkit in philosophy
Comments
Vainti t1_ir4v5pu wrote
You’re making a strong case for the argument that people shouldn’t be compelled to do things they provably cannot do. But nobody disagrees with that. Proving that freedom is in any sense meaningful or valuable is where you fall short. You don’t provide a way to compare freedom with utility or a reason why freedom would ever be more valuable than flourishing.
As far as I’m concerned the lack of free will makes freedom an illusory goal. The illusion of freedom is a path to well being, and any code of conduct should probably only ask for conduct that’s possible. But our code of conduct should be based entirely on utility.
contractualist OP t1_ir4wl56 wrote
Thanks for the comment
I’ve addressed why utility isn’t foundational here
And free will here https://open.substack.com/pub/garik/p/why-free-will-exists?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Freedom is foundational in that it’s required to underlie ethics and has a strong factual ground in our experience. And ethics needs to be built from there. A concern for the worlds welfare or our moral intuitions meanwhile are weak foundations and can’t be the basis of morality. Also, utilitarians have claimed we commit moral wrongs even as a result of actions beyond our control since outcomes matter rather than agency. Although since we can’t do anything about them, not focusing on them is strictly practicable.
I’ll be making more posts on utilitarianism in the future and I’d appreciate your thoughts.
[deleted] t1_ir3hxqu wrote
It is way too difficult for me to understand. Can you please explain to me in layman’s terms and simple examples in real life?
Freedom is a philosophical topic that interests me... because it is what i wish to achieve in life
contractualist OP t1_ir3ivsz wrote
Apologies, I’m trying to write less abstractly but I’ll continue to work on that.
The thesis of the article is that morality must rely on freedom. Morals can’t exist outside of freedom. Imagine a circle that represents freedom and a smaller circle inside it that represents our moral duties.
This has to be the case. We can’t have moral duties to do the impossible or control our involuntary functions. Therefore morality exists only within the realm of freedom. Additionally, the sense of freedom we experience is undeniable. It’s a strong foundation to rest an ethical theory on, yet it’s too often overlooked.
Additionally, our moral universe only includes free beings. Not objects, unconscious life or ideas. So whether a being is conscious is morally relevant.
Let me know if this helps.
iiioiia t1_ir5p8jq wrote
>Morals can’t exist outside of freedom.
Non-voluntary income taxes would yield morality impossible then wouldn't it?
>This has to be the case.
What enforces this rule?
>Additionally, the sense of freedom we experience is undeniable.
I disagree.
[deleted] t1_ir3k7so wrote
Thank you for taking the time to explain to me. I am trying to comprehend it... before i thought that it was the other way around, freedom is within the moral circle, it has to be. But now i think it is true, we(conscious beings) have freedom and it is thru that freedom that we set the standards for our morality. Did i understand it right?
contractualist OP t1_ir3m75q wrote
Yes, freedom creates the capacity for morality. But it’s reason that binds freedom which actually establishes moral rules. Let me know if you have any topics you have questions about on this and I’ll try to write about them on my substack. Thanks for taking the time to comment and question.
[deleted] t1_ir3nqti wrote
Can i write you on personal message?
contractualist OP t1_ir3o3ag wrote
Sure!
ttd_76 t1_irf1z3e wrote
>But it’s reason that binds freedom which actually establishes moral rules.
This is a solid enough starting framework. But it's also been the starting framework for thousands of years of Western moral philosophy.
We have choices. We need to decide which of these options is "right" or "just." So let's just use some logical problem-solving. Except that it seems as though "reasonable" people strongly disagree about many things.
So the real question morality is concerned with is when does MY "reason" trump YOUR "freedom?"
TMax01 t1_ir7g8di wrote
>We can’t have moral duties to do the impossible or control our involuntary functions.
Would that it were so. But this perspective trivializes morality, reducing all moral duties to a preference rather than an obligation. Self-determination is only a strong foundation for a theory of an ethical system if "ethics" is merely a quid pro quo voluntarily entered into (conscientiously and knowledgeably understood) by all participants, the very opposite of morality, though admittedly as close to it as a formal, conventional, or historic philosophical theory has gotten. But if historical systems of ethics had successfully deduced the nature of morality, philosophers would not still be discussing such things. "Normative ethics" is as inadequate for explaining what morality is, let alone elucidating its ramifications on how we should behave, as scriptural faith is.
bumharmony t1_ir4dm7z wrote
So a sleeping person has no rights? An embryo has no rights although he is like a sleeping person who wakes up later - in this case only much later?
contractualist OP t1_ir4qvrj wrote
Sleeping people definitely have rights, as well as people under anesthesia. It’s the existing capacity for consciousness that’s morally relevant.
bumharmony t1_ir52c8h wrote
So other people get to decide about the fate of a coma patient? How you know it is voluntary? I don’t see how the capacity argument works if there is no active participation to decision making. If an unborn baby ”wakes” up earlier than a coma patient, I would say that baby has more capacity to decide than that coma patient who let’s say wakes up in 5 years. (The chaotic slippery slope here is that we need to give birth to all potential babies)
Okay. The coma patient has showcased his capacity at some point but what if the rules have changed since and there is no evidence that he agrees with the common train of thought or whatever the given fixed point is.
Coomer-Boomer t1_ira5l21 wrote
An interesting paper that commits the author to some substantial positions. The way the author defines morality depends on epiphenomenalism being false. If morality depends on freedom and freedom exists only as a subjective experience, epiphenomenalism would refute the very possibility of morality by rendering its basis causally inert.
I'd be interested to see his thoughts on Calvinists - committed liars, amoral zombies, or madmen? If people all feel subjectively free, they're either lying or people can be mistaken about what it is to feel free, raising issues for the author's own position.
A quality article - to the point, clear, and thought provoking.
Note: I'm not a committed epiphenomenalist, I just consider it a serious possibility.
cabalavatar t1_ir440ro wrote
A lot of the time, it's not can but rather may.
apriorian t1_ir4htzs wrote
Freedom is not moral and in fact is a nonsense (meaningless) term. To start with it is relative and often incompatible. My free speech is your hate speech. This is why every nation pays lip service to freedom while bounding it and containing it with innumerable laws.
If you wish to argue freedom is an average state of a population, you are faced with the moral dilemma that those who allocate and distribute the freedom packets must be superior in freedom compared to the average.
Ought may imply can but you would have to convince me duties can be moral and that might be a task you would prefer to forgo. You have no duty to attempt it and no moral obligation to demonstrate ought is a moral factor.
NOTE: My argument is not restricted to or by known social systems. In a system in which administrative hierarchies exist, moral duties must exist and be free to exercise.
contractualist OP t1_ir4rdug wrote
Thanks for the comment. I’ve addressed how we get to actual morality from freedom elsewhere.
Summary: we don’t have morals with freedom alone. Rather we need reason as an authority over our freedom.
Freedom by itself does not create morality, yet the starting point for any moral system must be personal agency.
Let me know if there are necessary points of clarification and I’ll write about it in the future.
apriorian t1_ir4tpp1 wrote
I prefer to understand the moral problem as being one in which morality and duty are incompatible. But in freedom we claim rights and rights cannot exist unless duties are imposed on others. All regulations and laws are duties imposed on us by those with the right.
I agree we cannot have morality without freedom but the barrier to freedom is duty and duty in the way i see it is another mans freedom. A plain example is the duty of the slave is the freedom of the master.
contractualist OP t1_ir4u9wg wrote
I’ll be discussing reason, the authority over freedom, in a later post.
Some people have expressed concern that morality is a restriction on freedom, as if we are slaves. Yet normativity is the exchange of freedom for reasons. Any time there is an “I should” there is a reason that justifies restricting one’s freedom to do otherwise (see Kants hypothetical imperative).
Only when we get to morality do these reasons that restrict freedom take the form of universalizable moral principles (categorical imperative).
TMax01 t1_ir7couu wrote
>Some people have expressed concern that morality is a restriction on freedom, as if we are slaves.
Slaves are not morally bound, they are physically bound. Morality is a restriction on freedom, just not a restriction that prevents transgression.
TMax01 t1_ir7cbxu wrote
>starting point for any moral system must be personal agency.
I agree with this premise, but I cannot discount the inverse; that any personal agency must have morality as it's starting point, in order to be at all distinguishable from lack of personal agency. Freedom by itself does "create" morality, it just doesn't differentiate between moral action and immoral action, without some premise beyond freedom itself; a "boundary", in your formulation. Your analysis confuses moral bounds for mere principle, and simultaneously appears to demand morality be a "limit" that somehow requires adherence beyond moral dictate, as if being immoral made an action physically impossible for the moral agent making moral judgements, even for itself and according to it's own moral strictures, to execute.
TMax01 t1_ir7atie wrote
By focusing more-or-less exclusively on "freedom" as a psychological (philosophy related to contemplation of personal consciousness) matter while ignoring the more important and perilous sociological (philosophy related to laws and government) issue, the author has succeeded in saying precisely nothing. Even still, the essay is meaningful, but primarily as a counter-example to useful discourse on the subject.
>Morality exists only within the boundaries of freedom.
This stands as a reasonable premise, but not an informative one, since any useful discussion of freedom can only be considered within the bounds of morality. To ignore morality is to reduce freedom to "do what thou wilst", which does not merely epitomize immorality, or does not provide a reasonable, or even a logical, basis for any particular or even specific course of action. There are, after all, many things outside of the bounds of freedom or morality which limit our actions, in the real world.
>First, the experience of freedom is a certainty.
If only that were so, we wouldn't need the word "freedom" at all, we could simply say "existence". The belief one is acting freely is easier to experience than freedom itself is, unless of course the inverse is true. The essay does little to untangle this Gordian Knot of "experience", aka consciousness, aka the hard problem. But refocusing on the sociological nature of freedom, freedom from interference by corporeal authority, whether justified by morality or not, makes it plain that the experience (which is to say, for clarity, in this context, the existence) of freedom is not at all a certainty, either in the abstract or in practice.
>Second, freedom is the standard for judging moral claims.
Here is where we have a choice to either consider the premise of the essay to be entirely incorrect or merely incoherent. It is this claim which makes clear the intersection between the psychological and sociological perspectives on freedom. If only the freedom of the judge, or only the freedom of the claimant, is to be considered, then the dictate is merely incorrect; freedom is only one of an indeterminate number of standards that must be utilized in assessing the accuracy of a moral claim. But a useful consideration of freedom, and perhaps even a moral consideration of morality, must (not merely "should", but must) consider not just the freedom of the judge and the claimant, but the freedom of everyone else, as well. So although the statement is not incorrect in saying that freedom "is the standard", an analysis which addresses only the personal/psychological perspective and forgoes focusing (nearly entirely) on the legal/sociological perspective of freedom is incoherent, incapable of producing any reasonable conjectures from its premises.
>Conscious experience also sets the inherent boundaries of our moral community.
Again, if only this were so, no discussion would be necessary on the matter of either freedom or morality, or for that matter, consciousness or experience.
I surmise, after reading the full essay, that the author's intent is to state that a comprehensible and useful morality must take into account the foundational (zeroth order) nature of self-determination (née "free will"), and on that I agree entirely. But rather than subvert any real consideration of morality by making it subservient to consciousness, a philosophically sound approach must presume that morality itself is not secondary and subsequent, even a first order let alone second order phenomena, but an integral aspect of consciousness/self-determination itself, merely a different perspective on the zeroth order existential reality of conscious being. To do anything else leaves us mired in "do what thou wilt" as the preeminent dictate, an immoral premise.
IMHO. Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
contractualist OP t1_ir2gw00 wrote
Summary: Morality exists only within the boundaries of freedom. First, the experience of freedom is a certainty, a la Descartes. Second, freedom is the standard for judging moral claims. We cannot be held morally responsible for actions that are beyond our control. And moral claims must outweigh the value of personal choice.
Conscious experience also sets the inherent boundaries of our moral community, which would exclude non-conscious life, inanimate objects, and mental fictions. Although that does not exclude a trustee relationship.