Ethics question, continued

Miscellaneous Newbies
21

I’ll try to explain it short:

Compatibalists do not believe in free will. They only accept that there is an ilusion of free will. What compatibalists claim is that people make choices and many free will-ists confuse it with having true free will, when it’s not the case. So there are no degrees. By making a choice you take a responsibility for it.

I am influenced by millions of things and so I can’t truly freely choose, everything is connected (determinism part) but that doesn’t mean, again, we can’t make right or bad choices. It’s complicated topic, I know, and I find it hard to explain my view.

Yes, harm is ALWAYS wrong, however, people are able to forgive harm, especially if it’s done in extreme situations and you had no other way or had no time to think about better way. Yes, you would have to pay for them if the victim demanded. But he can just forgive it.

22

Your views are problematic.Sure, not saving a person when you truly CAN save him is not socially good decision, I mean, I’d say it’s ethically wrong, but from moral standpoint, if you caused no harm, you can not be liable for no-action (simply ignoring the situation). But I believe, that most people aren’t that way and they would save the person (well, maybe except chinese people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMb15V4yrV4).

Just in case, to me morality and ethics are not the same thing even though I sometimes use them as synonims out of laziness, I suppose.

23

Okay. How do you define “free will”?

Given your chess example, it seems to me that you’re equivocating over the meaning of “harm” here. A person is not physically harmed by being checkmated in a chess match.

What do you mean by “value differences”? How can “value” (whatever you mean by that) be analyzed objectively?

This is the premise that I completely and categorically reject. I think it confuses correlation with causation. Let me illustrate with an example.

Early in the movie Minority Report*,* John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise) and Danny Whitwer (played by Colin Farrell) have a discussion about predetermination. During the discussion, Anderton rolls a ball down a railing. Whitwer catches the ball before it - presumably - falls to the floor. “Why did you catch that?” Anderton then asks. “Because it was going to fall,” Whitwer answers. My question to you now is, if Whitwer had refrained from catching the ball, and it subsequently fell to the floor, does that mean he caused it to do so? My own answer here is unequivocally no.

It appears to me that, despite claiming an adherence to deontological ethics, you’re really a consequentialist. Then again, all ethics can be expressed in deontological terms, including consequentialism: “Don’t act in such a way that [a given kind of] consequences follow” or “An action that is followed by [a given kind of] consequences is unethical.” This is a premise, not a conclusion - and one that I’m neither required nor do accept.

A premise cannot be logically refuted, as it’s merely assumed to be true. Hence it can only be accepted or rejected. If you’re positing rationales for the propositions you’re calling “premises”, then I’d say they’re not really premises. This then would invite the question, what are your real premises?

Otherwise, it’s hard for me to argue against what you call “free will” when I’m not sure what that is.

Premises - and logic in general - have no necessary connection to reality. I can just as easily presume that men are immortal as I can presume that they’re mortal. What matters to logic is consistency, also known as non-contradiction. This doesn’t mean consistency with reality - it simply means internal consistency. Do the conclusions contradict the premises or not?

24

Thanks MaikU, I appreciate that you clarify your ideas. I’d say that determinism means only one action is possible in any given scenario. Having choices limited by agencies outside of my control does not mean I live in a deterministic universe. Limited choices are not no choices.

Also, how can harm always be wrong if free will doesn’t really exist but is an illusion? Can you explain how you get to moral culpability without freedom of action?

If you make a choice not to do a thing, you instead choose to do a different thing. In the drowning man scenario, you choose to walk away or pick your nose or whatever instead of jumping in or throwing the guy a rope. These are actions that, issuing from a choice where harm is the result of ONE of the choices, would be wrong from both a consequentialist AND a deontologist perspective as far as I can figure.

And finally, how do you distinguish between ethics and morals? Why would you think that socially/ethically good decisions could not be arrived at from a moral analysis grounded in the concept of free will?

Autolykos, this time you’ve given me something good to chew on, so I’ll pick this up again at lunch methinks.

Thanks everyone, please keep challenging my ideas so I can make them clearer.

25

I would define (complete, absolute) free will as being able to choose without outside world influence, meaning, that you truly get to choose, like God. This kind of free will do not exist. But simple choices that humans make are not free at all. They are determined by the laws of the universe, by the neurons in the brain, genetics etc. I know it may sound deterministic, but that’s how world works, and I don’t believe in hard determinism, though, I am open to possibility. As I said somewhere else, quantum mechanics can clarify this thing in future, I hope.

So you are morally culpable just because you chose harm over no harm etc. Humans are rational but also, social animals, and harming your fellow humans is, well, bad :smiley: There is no need for absolute free will for there to be morality (I think that sentence was gramatically incorrect, but whatever). Even some hard determinists believe in objective morality, though I don’t know how the hell they rationalize it.

I believe in freedom of action, but I don’t believe in freedom from outside influence.

Yeah, mumbo jumbo, not doing something equals doing something. I strongly disagree with such view of morality. If you believe in NAP and self-ownership, then there is no problem, you would agree with me, but I think that you think, that humans have positive duties EVEN if they didn’t voluntary signed a contract or agreed upon it… I don’t like to sound like I’m evading, but I’m not that type of deontologist. :slight_smile:

Not sure what you mean, so I’ll pass.

And by the way, morality wouldn’t magically vanish if scientists discovered tomorrow, that we truly live in hard determined universe. Morality exists (in human society at least) for completely other and much more important reasons.

26

Okay guys I’m going to put off my next reply until tomorow. This is going off in too many directions so I want to address everything reasonably. Thanks again!

27

There is too much. I will sum up.

MaikU: You appear to be a soft determinist/compatibilist to me. Your definition of free will requires less actual control than the inteterminist definition of free will. You also do not derive a moral system from the concept of free will but from some other basic concept that is not under discussion here. You do, however, believe that harm is wrong and that some or all agents can be assumed to have moral responsibility. We have not discussed how this can be determined. You also believe that harm can be evaluated by degree or value by an agent. The final response, in your analysis, may or may not be deterministic in nature but still implies moral responsibility.

Autolykos: I’m having trouble with you. You call your thinking Misesian and I’ll take your word for it but I don’t have an overall picture of what this means yet. What I’ve worked out for sure is that you believe only the originator of an event can be held morally responsible for it, and only if their actions are conscious. You define free will and free action as one and the same or inextricably linked I believe, which differentiates your ideas from MaikU’s. You define conscious behavior as not-instinctive behavior. There may be more to this definition but it has not been presented yet. You also believe that most or all animals have free will and thus, I believe, that most or all animals act from more than solely instinctive processes. You do not credit the ability to think objectively as having any bearing on whether or not an agent has the ability to act consciously/rationally.

By what I have read so far, I can see one thing I did not make clear. I am not only looking for internally consistent arguments. I am looking for arguments that can also be demonstrated to be consistent with reality. MaikU is treating the discussion this way already; Autolykos is not. There was no reason to assume as much, so I needed to clarify.

I still have not made any replies to anyone, just tried to summarize. Please adjust my summary as neccessary all; then we’ll continue!

28

I’d say that sounds about right. So what are you having trouble with?

29

Yes, I can be called “weak determinist”, that’s basically what compatibalism is about. Speaking about morality, as I said before, absolute free will is not required. People only has to be able to make decisions based on rational/logical thinking. Also morality can be proved through cultural/social context too, if that makes sense. But yeah, under “hard determinism” there is a serious problem for morality.

Also it’s true, that I do not derive morality entirely from the concept of free will, however, I only believe in that kind of free will if it is defined as ability to choose (i.e. between good or bad outcome). Though, I think those decisions are always influenced by Nature (capital N) and there is where determinism comes into play.

30

Okay, good Autolykos. My trouble is working out what it all boils down to…as a Misesian, are you a consequentialist? That would help to start with. Then I’d like to ask if you therefore believe that free will is only illusion but a good working principle, as MaikU indicates? Believing this would imply that other considerations can supersede the primacy of self-ownership and thus NAP if I’m not mistaken. Analyze?

31

As I mentioned before, consequentialism is really just a form of deontologism. The Non-Aggression Principle, however, isn’t consequentialist in terms of harm per se. Trespassing, for example, may well not cause any (discernible) physical damage to the property in question, but is still considered aggression and thus morally wrong by the NAP. On the other hand, just because I hold to Mises’ view of “rationality” doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a “Misesian” through and through. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m actually more or less with MaikU regarding free will. From the perspective of the universe as a whole - if such a perspective could exist - free will doesn’t exist. We’re no less at the mercy of the forces of nature than stars or stones. But from our perspective as conscious individuals existing within the universe and (presumably) interacting with each other, I’d say free will is an essential concept. None of us is able to predict what anyone will do at any given point in the future - including himself.

32

So you believe in the NAP and you don’t derive this belief from your definition of free will, Autolykos. Am I wrong? Can you discuss what, in your opinion, makes NAP valid other than the existence of free will?

I can imagine, from your perspective, saying something like “NAP is valid and moral responsibility exist because we experience the world AS IF we had free will; but this is illusion”.

I DO believe that free will exists and I DO define free will as the real ability to take more than one action in any given situation. I am also an indeterminist and I consider NAP to be valid because of these beliefs. So if you could, try to frame your perspective in that light, because I have a hard time believing that NAP is valid in a deterministic setting; and feel free to tell me why you think my beliefs are bunk :slight_smile:

Also I’d like somebody to take some pains to explain why I’m wrong in thinking that an observer, by having the OPTION of changing an event, does not gain a level of moral accountability. MaikU indicated that this undermines self-ownership and I just don’t see it.

All of this is why I’m in the “newbies” area. And I’m curious, will I not find others who believe the way I do in this forum?

33

Objectively speaking, neither the NAP nor any other moral principle is valid in the sense of being a feature about the world at large. “Moral” and “immoral”, “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “bad”, etc. are values that we impute to things. Furthermore, the imputation of these values depends upon what we think these values constitutes - or, one could say, the definitions of these values. Since all definitions are arbitrary, it follows that all such values and the imputation thereof are also arbitrary.

I’d say we appear to have a real ability to take more than one action in any given situation (more accurately, at any given point in time) because the future is always uncertain in a calculatively predictive sense. Another way of putting this is that the future is indeterminate from our point of view. But that’s only because our point of view is extremely limited with respect to the universe as a whole.

The notion that an observer has the option of changing an event implies certainty about the future, which doesn’t actually exist (for us, that is). Your notion of moral accountability undermines self-ownership in the sense that other people could now be said to have higher claims over you than you yourself do. If you aren’t considered to have the highest claim over yourself, how can you be considered to own yourself?

There’s always a chance. :slight_smile:

34

In a libertarian sense, you can only be legitimately acountable for positive action. Self-ownership and NAP only defines what you can not do (don’t steal other peoples’ property, don’t harm, don’t murder, don’t rape). All of it involves force and/or property damage (that’s why fraud would be punishable in Libertopia).

But I have hard time understanding how you derive this: having an option makes you accountable… Hell, I have an option to feed 100 starving people each month (of course, then I would be starving myself) but am I accountable, if don’t do it? Why you believe what you believe? Just because you have an option doesn’t mean you have a positive obligation. I didn’t put those starving people there. I didn’t take “their jobs” or homes whatever.

Again, your worldview puts you in a very very unpleasent situation. How about if I said I don’t have money, and asked you to give me 100 dollars? You have an option, to give me money or not. I can die without food. Do you think you would be accountable if I died?

By the way, how you would define “accountable”. Are you talking from mere ethical perspective or in a legal sense (that Government, PDA, DRO or whatever could punish you for not giving me money)?

35

We’re all alone in our thinking :slight_smile: You can find similarities, but there are degrees of being “on the same trail” (if this is correct expression). I kinda think I’m just the only one in the vast universe and you are just my imagination…:smiley:

36

I don’t believe in ANY accountability to any agency but myself. That doesn’t mean there won’t be repercussions. Everything I do has repercussions of one sort or another. Moral accountability is another way of saying that a choice has been made that can be given a value. THIS choice being better than THAT choice. It is the way one makes decisions in a way that is fair to others. It also makes me able to judge others’ actions toward myself, giving me a standard by which I can decide on my reaction.

If you say you don’t have money and ask me for 100 dollars I am accountable for my decision. That doesn’t mean that saying “no” is right or wrong. It only means that I have made a decision that will have consequences for me and others. Maybe the immediate result is that I inherit your property…or maybe I’m your tenant and I suddenly become homeless. Those are consequences that I can accept some moral accountability for even though I didn’t create the original scenario.

It also doesn’t mean that you have any claim over my self-ownership. You can’t call on moral accountability to make me give you that money. You CAN point out that I’ll go homeless if you starve. That might affect my decision from a rational standpoint but it doesn’t imply that anyone but me decides on my actions.

37

That is correct but with all due respect, your libertarian quest for knowledge has reached a brick wall that will never come down.

First of all, you are right. The good samaritan has a choice but in the context of libertarianism, he is morally correct to walk by and do nothing. That is how libertarianism is defined. What you are looking for is to define the concept of morality or ethics to encompass a greater form of virtuous human interaction that involves a form of self-sacrifice towards our fellow man. Nothing wrong with that except that your expectations contradict how libertarianism is defined.

Second, only God knows for certain what choices the good samaritan faces. For all you know, the drowning man in the lake could actually be a set-up to trap the good samaritan into jumping in the water and making himself vulnerable to attack from the wingman hiding behind the tree. How does your sense of a moral code incorporate healthy caution?

38

I think I get you now, Lady Saiga. You were talking from a determinist perspective, so yeah, I agree with you in a sense, that our choices are all interconnected so to speak, you basically described cause and effect here. So far so good.

Now I am interested about what you think of this situation in legal terms, legal accountability. Would you agree that it is legitimate to punish a man (with financial or physical punishment) who just walks by drowning person and does nothing?

By the way, are you utilitarian?

39

For all I know, the guy in the lake IS a setup. If it is, and I jump in, then part of my next predicament is my own fault. It’s my obligation to myself to try to get my facts right, and when I fail, I pay consequences. Sometimes I choose unwisely knowingly, too. If the guy in the lake is my dad, I’m likely to value his safety higher than I would otherwise but by risking myself or him, depending on my choice, I still take on responsibility.

I derive all of this from my understanding of free will so I fail to see why a libertarian perspective supposedly doesn’t support it.

40

Libertarian perpective doesn’t support positive obligation to save him, that’s it. It says nothing about ethics though. I would probably jump into water and try to save the man too, but hell, if that was a setup I am really a victim myself here, not an agressor, and there is no need to blame myself for trying to save a supposedly drowning man.