Hacker News Reader

Comment by adjkant | Hacker News Reader

> If you seriously believe that fundamental forces leave no space for free will, then it’s impossible for us to genuinely make choices as moral beings.

> The underlying physics would in reality be governing our behaviour, and responsibility wouldn’t enter into the picture.

First, this is one of the few useful things said here. Responsibility, poof. I agree. And I think that radically changes how we should approach so many things. As a hard determinist who is writing arguments, ethics, and moral frameworks around said determinism, I think there is a big issue with a lot of discussions about free will - definition.

When most humans say "free will", they don't mean randomness, not even close. While philosophers in this argument have spent a good deal of time on randomness, I think that focus misses the point entirely. Even if there is molecular randomness, how does that give any more meaning to humans? At the end of the day, the human idea of control gains nothing from it.

When humans say "free will", they are referring IMO in actuality to a real thing - a combination of many things, but basically agency + lack of prediction powers. At the end of the day, those are not going away anytime soon, if ever. This is where ethical, moral, and social questions are based, not in free will formally.

The lack of formal free will is crucial for underpinning all of this, but it in no way makes ethics and the like impossible. We still exist and experience the world, and it is in all of our best interests to go towards a "better" one. Whether we were always going to do that or not doesn't change that, nor does it change the human experience.

I will say this - determinism must be approached carefully precisely because of articles like this - it is easy for the worst effect of determinism on humans to actually be the idea itself and how it makes people defeatist about morality. I hope to spend my time making a good case for how to approach it safely and in a way that makes the world better, and I wish more people were looking at that instead of arguing about quantum randomness.

View on HN

I don't see how a lack of free will changes anything with respect to moral responsibility. Morality does not care about the the initial conditions that would cause a methodical serial killer to enjoy torturing and murdering innocents, knowing that they kill for pleasure is sufficient to judge them as immoral. This isn't to say that such killers deserve "an eye for an eye", but you don't need to invoke a lack of free will to justify humane treatment of criminals.

I suspect we are in agreement, but I would argue that is because the conception of morality you are using happens to be compatible with the resulting morals that I believe arise from determinism here.

You skipped the more relevant application in this case though - not the treatment of criminals, but, to get a bit minority report here, the treatment of pre-criminals. Given their lack of responsibility and control of their being, how do you design a society that treats them fairly? What is fair? How much effort does morality dictate we owe to their happiness?

The lack of moral responsibility doesn't change the real world effects or causal responsibility, you're right there. However, these questions get very different answers based on if the world has formalized free will or not.

Essentially, if you accept determinism, society becomes a configuration optimization game. The questions of what we optimize for are also highly impacted by free will/determinism.

> you don't need to invoke a lack of free will to justify humane treatment of criminals.

There are absolutely many ways to get here, I'm simply pointing out determinism also leads to it as a data point that determinism can lead to moralities that pass the sanity check. Many, including the author if this piece, write off or get very worried about that issue.

Your mention of Minority Report evoked an image in my mind. A sort of thought experiment.

Imagine you run the government along with law enforcement. Say that one day someone on Hacker News announced that they figured out how to predict a person’s future behavior with a resolution of about one day, simply by running some terminal command along with that person’s social media profiles.

As the authority, it becomes imperative for you to use this information. The choice becomes: are people still at fault for their future crimes even if they never commit them? If they are morally bad, then you are justified in executing some people for future crimes, if you believe that they are not responsible for crimes uncommitted, then you might take a more humane approach.

A person, P, will commit crime X at place Y at time Z. So you pour resources into changing Y and Z for future crimes, because you realize that outcomes are a product of P, X, Y and Z. In this equation, it makes no sense to speak of “punishing” the environment, of a time on the clock being “bad”. In exactly the same way, it no longer makes sense that a person is “bad”. What makes sense is: change, influence, separate, nudge the variables to get the outcome you want.

This is an exaggerated version of what happens to an individual once they accept hard determinism. They realize that people can’t be morally at fault because they are simply a small part of the equation, an equation that includes all moments that preceded it.

Personally, to me, this information is liberating. I feel I have more control now because each event is comprised of an equation. Humans are not black boxes, and neither is my mind. There is some semblance of logic to the system, no matter how obscure or opaque it may be, which means there is some possibility for me to influence the world to move toward a more desirable state.

I hope this thought makes some sense to you considering your deeper dives into determinism. I would love to read your writing!

> This is an exaggerated version of what happens to an individual once they accept hard determinism. They realize that people can’t be morally at fault because they are simply a small part of the equation, an equation that includes all moments that preceded it.

Well said, and this is exactly the underpinning of how I approach the world frankly.

Here's something to think on. Say you accept all this. Now consider anger. Is it ever justified to be angry at someone given all this, ever? I think when you stop and begin to understand and at least imagine all the things that happened to them to lead them to this moment to do the thing that is frustrating you, it becomes clear you can only be frustrated, but never angry. The next question becomes then how do you approach any sort of conflict that would arise from that anger.

People don't believe me when I say this without knowing me in person for a good deal of time, but I can't remember being angry since I started down this path of ideas around my junior year of high school. Anger more or less becomes existential frustration followed by a desire to figure out the causes and solutions to the situation.

> Personally, to me, this information is liberating. I feel I have more control now because each event is comprised of an equation. Humans are not black boxes, and neither is my mind. There is some semblance of logic to the system, no matter how obscure or opaque it may be, which means there is some possibility for me to influence the world to move toward a more desirable state.

+1 here too. As I said in some other threads, a configuration optimization problem.

> I would love to read your writing!

Wow, thank you! I have some academic stuff and have been formulating it into some more article/short book style stuff privately but had no intention of publishing. You're not the first person to say this now though, so I might just reconsider how/when I publish!

> I would argue that is because the conception of morality you are using happens to be compatible with the resulting morals that I believe arise from determinism here.

Indeed, we are coincidentally in agreement from a values perspective since my argument with respect to determinism could remain unchanged even if I e.g. favored a retributive system of justice.

> Given their lack of responsibility and control of their being, how do you design a society that treats them fairly

Any possible conception of fairness exists entirely with respect to the material circumstances of reality in the moment, the ethereal weight of determinism is not detectable on the scales of justice.

To put it another way, if we lived in a universe capable of libertarian free will, it would not follow logically that we should then amplify the needless suffering of criminals.

Imagine two criminals living in such a universe, both having committed identical crimes under identical circumstances, but only one is capable of libertarian free will... what changes? The deterministic criminal didn't choose to want to commit the crime, but he still wanted to commit the crime by following the same reasoning that the free criminal willed himself into, in every observable aspect of reality their motivations are equally damning. This is further compounded by the fact that both victims are equally harmed regardless of which criminal committed the crime. From the victim's perspective, two equally harmful acts should merit the same consequences, one victim does not suffer less because the crime was committed deterministiclly.

>The questions of what we optimize for are also highly impacted by free will/determinism.

How so?

Criminal court doesn't really use the concept of responsibility, it assigns punishment based solely on who did the crime. And the concept of crime itself is provided by lawmaker, not by human's judgement.

> Criminal court doesn't really use the concept of responsibility, it assigns punishment based solely on who did the crime.

Saying someone "did the crime" is just another way of saying that they are responsible for the crime.

> the concept of crime itself is provided by lawmaker, not by human's judgement.

What? The entire point of the judicial system is to interpret the law with respect to human judgement.

> Any possible conception of fairness exists entirely with respect to the material circumstances of reality in the moment, the ethereal weight of determinism is not detectable on the scales of justice.

You've just made another coincidental compatibility here, so I'm curious - how did you arrive at only valuing material circumstances? For me, that is explicitly derived from following determinism into meta-ethics which then follows into a consequentialist physicalist view.

> To put it another way, if we lived in a universe capable of libertarian free will, it would not follow logically that we should then amplify the needless suffering of criminals.

That's a different argument. Something else has to underpin that, and I would again be curious what that is, and if that also shares compatibility.

> The questions of what we optimize for are also highly impacted by free will/determinism. > How so?

I'm still formulating this fully, but essentially it follows from determinism that objective ethics essentially don't exist (I go with error theory here), which then passes off all of practical ethical meaning to the physical state of the universe in relation to what all beings care about, which I suspect is the step that ends up causing much of the coincidence. So for morality, things that humans (and other beings, but we'll set them aside for now) care about are ethics. I tend to focus on happiness, empathy, and fairness, but there's of course a lot more there. Generally, it means moral psychology actually informs ethics quite a bit.

Since I suspect this isn't going to change anything you specifically believe given the compatibility seen elsewhere, let me highlight some specific ethical views that immediately come under intense pressure from those conclusions:

- basically all deontology (Immanuel Kant and others)

- virtue ethics are then limited to admitting to being a practical compromise at best (originally Aristotle but virtue ethics has been on the rise in many modern debates, and this could 100% shape those)

- even many forms of consequentialism make arguments to optimize for a singular thing or one somewhat removed from humans. This highlights the optimization function is not on a single or even a few variables given that humans don't have a single psychological focus. Or maybe we do and we should be spending more of our time in ethics doing psychological research. But all of this derives originally from that conclusion on determinism.

Basically, even a small difference in underpinning can still lead to different focuses and conclusions down the chain of course.

Determinism is not something that just happens to other people. If a criminal acts deteministically in committing a crime, then you also act deterministically in judging them.

I don't disagree. Not sure why you think I believe otherwise.

I replied to the wrong post, sorry.

>When most humans say "free will", they don't mean randomness, not even close.

They don't mean anything. Although indeterminism of choice originally had meaning, today it's a meme in itself without meaning and propagates by mere memetic infection and is seen as an axiom, the argument about responsibility is a rationalization of this axiom, not a justification.

I think you're being too harsh on people. It is of course used at a surface level, but most people at least mean something when they say it. Everyone can of course mean something different too, but I think the definition I gave fits a vast majority of uses.

I have thought similar thoughts for a while to what I think you're getting at. That certain behaviors are harmonious (a net benefit) for all, while others produce negative externalities and are therefore "sinful" for lack of a better term. In terms of religion this would be similar to a concept of man being fallen from the perfect harmony, where they do not always choose the net benefit option. Hence it takes some effort to not "give in to your demons" ie make decisions which are easier but move things away from that harmonious equilibrium

I agree.

I think this gives ethicists the task of accepting deterministic reality the way it's always been, and developing a moral framework that is in harmony with that reality. Morals can still exist without the principle of free will, just like they can exist without God dictating a list of 10 commandments. Murder can still be wrong without free will, just like it can still be wrong without God saying so.

Completely agreed, and there's a ton of low hanging fruit from simply applying determinism to ethics and really following it. I think it becomes an incredibly powerful tool in moral philosophy that really clears a path of progress that I think the field has been struggling to move on. It kills some ideas dead in the water and makes very strong cases for others, unsticking so many fundamental debates that often came down to "agree to disagree" for so many philosophers that didn't have the formal argumentation tools to properly refute big ideas.

> Morals can still exist without the principle of free will

Not really, because you've just done away with moral blame. If there can be no moral blame, then the moral classification of actions has no meaning.

This is only true if you ground morality in objectivism and objective meaning, and require all useful conceptions of morality to fit that. What you have highlighted is that the meta-ethical view of objectivism is not compatible with determinism.

Subjectivisms (both individualist and things like cultural relativism) and error theory are perfectly compatible with determinism. I personally ascribe to and argue for error theory which essentially leads to moral psychology actually dictating what ethics are. Based on that, it's quite easy to get to "murder is bad" via human traits like empathy and our social nature.

Ethics are already predetermined, though. There is no need for error theory or any moral or ethical theory in a predetermined world - none of it matters. Arguments for determinism always have these "answers" to morality, but the only convincing one is moral nihilism.

> Ethics are already predetermined, though.

No argument here, but knowing them still seems useful to humans. So in relation to humans, those terms and ideas are 100% needed. You're taking moral nihilism and jumping straight to general nihilism without any steps.

> Arguments for determinism always have these "answers" to morality, but the only convincing one is moral nihilism.

Error theory is a form of moral nihilism - what are you exactly disagreeing with here?

------------------------------------------------------

The bigger question is where you go from that moral nihilism. There is nothing that says just because our formal definitions of morality are false that the entire world doesn't matter. I still care for my happiness and life. So do many others. We need both this idea and these further terms and ideas in order to be able to answer the questions we were originally attempting to answer with objective morality because those problems did not magically go away.

Thanks for your clear distinctions. But still I don't understand

Caring about happiness and life, to the point they have value is objective

Do you have any other way to distinguish between moral and general nihilism? -- surely such a thing would need to be objective

But you make a good point in that if there is no objective morality, there may still be some other way to make a value statement. But how could such a thing give value to moral nihilism, and still maintain the nihilism??

To be honest, I don't understand these HN comments any better than the original article -- but I do greatly appreciate them for their importance

For me I think that value arises in a nihilistic world when regardless of what individuals actually do, over time we move further into chaotic outcomes, or that things gradually get more harmonious (less conflict and negative externalities).

The latter comes from the realization that some things (ie actions based only on gaining money/power/fame, knowingly taking advantage of people, needlessly killing, laziness, cheating for gain, not helping the poor, not forgiving people).

This arises from nihilism because some believe that it can't be possible that nothing matters when these values are "beyond our earthly realm" in that it often requires seeing things on a more spiritual level, and thinking beyond immediate gratification.

It is then that one may see nihilistic people as those feeding their temptations as these are often the easiest things to do (running vs. sitting and getting fat).

So while one can think nothing matters, some may then see that indeed some actions "retard" not just ourselves but all, and others are a net benefit for society.

Though believing that such actions are actually a net benefit may be considered "faith" because I can't know for sure.

Just my thoughts.

Thanks @dkn775

Yeah, to accept nihilism seems very destructive. Ultimately, to me, like you; it seems to equate to accepting zero value for others and ourselves

Yet life burns to exist. We are desperate to live and to have meaning. It is no proof, but every fiber of our being cries out for a value beyond zero

> Though believing that such actions are actually a net benefit may be considered "faith" because I can't know for sure.

Nice. Personally, and from personal experience, I would base "faith" on concrete facts, and this provides a safe foundation for logic, etc -- I think you can know for sure

Thanks for sharing

> Caring about happiness and life, to the point they have value is objective

This comes down to philosophical definitions. We are both using the word "objective" differently here. In the philosophical world, this is what moral objectivism means:

> The view that what is right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. That is, the view that the 'moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. [1]

What you appear to be using objective as here as to mean "it's the physical state of the world, no matter who sees it". And that's true, but it doesn't have inherent moral usefulness as a statement, we have to show that it means something, which is where my argument from determinism leads.

> But you make a good point in that if there is no objective morality, there may still be some other way to make a value statement. But how could such a thing give value to moral nihilism, and still maintain the nihilism??

The "how" comes from a phrase I've used in other posts, but essentially, moral psychology and psychology generally.

Think of it this way: Nothing has inherent moral meaning. Really technically meaning generally, things just are. So does anything have more value than anything else, inherently? Not really. It's an interestingly odd base of equality in fact. So we all still exist and have desires and wants and needs, but none are any more worthy than others. We also have the notable traits of empathy and social desire. There's much more nuance and detail there, but essentially, if I or you as a single individual want to satisfy my desires, my makeup as a creature that cares about others dictates that I balance all of our desires together into what we would generally refer to as "ethics", even if no such objective truth exists. Indeed, if you change what a human is, you change morality itself.

[1] http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil1200/RelativismObjectivism...

Again, thanks for your clarity

> [objectivity] doesn't have inherent moral usefulness

Agreed. But I take it as a required pre-cursor, and that was implicit, so you are right to check definitions. I go something like

  Nihilism: an absence. A zero
  Objective: a difference beyond zero. A value

These are simplifications, but useful to me

So "physical state", and "facts not depending on what anyone thinks" both have value -- they are objective realities. Yes some people say physical state and facts are meaningless and so nihilistically ascribe them zero value. But you have not done that

I think you are saying the universe definitively exists -- it has value. Morality does not exist (in that it has no predefined value, it is a zero). And from there, you take emergent properties of life, the mind, and psychology, to create a new morality -- one which does have value, but as defined in an emergent property of humanity

> even if no such objective truth exists

Now I understand you (I think). You are after a different objectivity

By my personal definition, your second morality must be objective -- you've given it a value, and said it is different to the previous morality -- a fact

As far as I understand things, to have any meaning, there must be objectivity -- otherwise everything is an effective zero, and there is no valid way to say any one thing is better than another. For instance to say something is good rather than bad

So what you have done... Please correct me... is say there is no morality, but there is humanity, psychology, physics, desires, etc. You are saying these are objective facts people agree on, and from there you will build an objective morality that people can also agree on

If so, three comments:

1) Emergent properties and psychology are fascinating, you can build an objectively interesting morality on these. I appreciate your work and your clarity so far. Sorry, your link didn't open for me

2) How would this morality differ from the current morality -- or, to what extent is the current morality not based on emergent properties of psychology and human behavior?

3) Ah, you are cutting God out of the loop. I don't think this objectively (pun) succeeds...

But would love to hear more and any corrections

> By my personal definition, your second morality must be objective -- you've given it a value, and said it is different to the previous morality -- a fact

At this point we're talking definitions, yes. IMO this is a subjective morality because it is only valid when you value what humans value - it comes from our perspective. Without looking at it through our perspective and values, it has no meaning. Repeat for every individual human and combine to get that more or less "objective/existant" rule set.

> You are saying these are objective facts people agree on

Yes, but stronger. Agreement is not needed. I don't personally find use diving into metaphysical brain in vat scenarios, so I choose to philosophically work under that we can observe the universe, and either it's real or its fake and still matters, for similar reasons of "we still exist and feel" invoked before.

> you will build an objective morality that people can also agree on

Theoretically, but good luck getting that agreement, lol. As to "objective" see above. I think the distinction of "shared subjective" is important here.

> How would this morality differ from the current morality -- or, to what extent is the current morality not based on emergent properties of psychology and human behavior?

It really depends on what morality you ascribe to. This view for example is highly supportive of consequentialism in my experience, while pretty clearly kills deontology where it stands. Generally I think the end results in full won't be all that different, though I will say, politically in the US, lack of responsibility via determinism makes strong arguments for things like socialist and egalitarian policies. Of course, psychological factors can offset those, which is why things like full equality a la communism get so much pushback. I think Rawls and the veil of ignorance become pretty useful ideas as a starting point to figure out the details. [1] Our imperfect knowledge will always make this stuff an estimation at best in practicality though.

> Ah, you are cutting God out of the loop. I don't think this objectively (pun) succeeds...

I've heard enough god arguments that I effectively cut that out of the equation, yes. Similar logic to brain in vat - either its false and we move on, or its true and we can't do anything about it anyways. At the end of the day, there is no god proof that I have seen that justifies a meta-ethical underpinning having to do with god or DCT [2] or the like. Basically, evidence strongly points one direction, and we will never have proof one way or the other, so we do our best, make a choice, and move on.

[1] https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/veil-of-ignoranc... [2] https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/

Thanks that is helpful to me. Will respond, I hope, later today

> Theoretically, but good luck getting that agreement, lol

Ha, yes :)

> As to "objective" see above. I think the distinction of "shared subjective" is important here

So my objective is the "facts irrespective of opinion", but your objective is a subjectivity summed together from many points of view

I suggest my 'objectivity' agrees with what you quoted from the dictionary, but your objectivity (more importantly :o) agrees with the zeitgeist -- in that easily the majority of comments here take your view

-- a rejection of objectivity

I agree this universe is not objective, and I agree shared subjectives exist. So how to make that jump? -- from no fixed point from which to measure true/false -- to a world we can at least have a shared fixed point from which to measure

From an external stand point X varies around zero (or there is no zero). From an internal stand point, everyone can measure from X

So externally we can make no meaningful statement, but internally we can generate a whole microcosm. So shared subjectivity is the internal view?

So is the external an effective zero from a meaning standpoint. Then internal+0 = internal. What meaningfully separates the internal from the external?

Is the external meaningfully non zero. Then internal+external > internal. Good. But then we have external meaning. I think you are also saying shared_subjective > external. So internal > external

I realize you solve this. You say the universe contains something, but not meaning. From electricity, behold, I create light -- a shared subjectivity

If I join you -- I agree, the external world makes no moral sense. I step inside and look from your perspective -- a shared subjectivity. So now I see and make statements about morality based on X -- so to agree with you means to take the perspective that I have objectivity?

I think your answer is yes -- I want you to base your life on X

> I think Rawls and the veil of ignorance become pretty useful ideas as a starting point to figure out the details

So this X is a point from which you can measure decisions and the details of morality? What is the quantitative difference between that and the gods of DCT (thanks for the links) -- haven't you recreated god by a different name?

I suppose you might say: Yes, but my God is from electricity. Theirs is from the unknown

I think we can prove such a statement as partly right, and partly wrong

----

I think:

Either nothing is knowable as true or false, and we move on

Or, we know something is true, and then we have a foundation to build on

Maybe this is shared subjective. But we are not able to fully prove it. For instance mathematical proof is based on axioms. Axioms are unproven assumptions. So even the most basic things are unproven in anything beyond the subjective. We are like finite beings trying to reach outside the realm of finite observations. How can we we make categorical statements when we will never be able to fully check them?

Famously: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

But I would like to suggest a way, and the only way I can imagine

We need evidence that

1) Makes categorical statements

2) Makes them within our observation

3) Gives proof not derivable from observation

4) Does that as a unified package

Some kind of object from beyond our finite realm, stepping in, acting in a finite way (so we can understand it), and also acting in a non-finite way (otherwise ignore it); and doing this as a unified package, so we can connect the two together (finite and non-finite, inside and outside observation)

Notes:

Proof would have to be things we consider impossible -- outside of anything we have observed, and not baseable on anything we have observed

Categorical statements should be things we don't agree with, otherwise (If we already agree with them, then they're probably not based on evidence we don't already have)

I suppose we'd also need reason to trust. Aliens can step onto our television screens and make categorical statements, but they also tend to have the goal of blowing us up and lying -- also they tend to make much lower than categorical claims -- "I can tell you the answers of infinity", or "this is a universal truth" is too wild even for aliens

Such claims are necessarily stupendous, and we'd maybe want equivalently stupendous proof before getting off our backsides

---

So can I say...?

Nothing is knowably true or false, or, evidence exists

Which is tantamount to saying:

Nothing exists, or, evidence exists

I think for a nihilist, I would also add

If nothing exists, then at the very least, evidence also equivalently exists

-- Which I think is as far as anything can be proved

If this is as far as anything can be proved, then is this not effective proof that such evidence exists??

In a deterministic universe, I probably _cannot_ say: "Every action and statement you make is a decision between two options. You are saying one is better, one is worse. You are deciding truth and falsity. Ergo you agree such things exist"

But I probably _can_ say: "At the point all your decisions are not between a better and worse option, then truth and falsity are not relevant, and you at the least, do not disagree with anything I'm saying"

Please do correct me!!! It is now your turn to question my inconsistencies :)

Final point (if you are still with me, and not laughing your head off). I agree: Laughing is a good response

An objective truth -- a truth no matter what perspective necessarily makes a statement beyond observation: Infinity beside the finite is always the ratio 1:0. How can the effective 0 make any statement about the effective 1?

It cannot

The effective 1 is always going to be completely outside the expectations and sensibilities of the 0

I think your electricity giving a shared subjective has been placed in the 1

I didn't know Rawl, or really DCT -- so definitely both useful links

Someone sent me a link just now -- two subjective realities meeting for a shared experience. Sorry not philosophy in the dry sense. But still asking a good existential question, and disagreeing

Personally I think evidence is a necessity. A summation of all, or enough POVs, we must hope contains this evidence, or an indication of

I give you, a music video(!) https://youtu.be/lynwOb2ZiIo

Try like 1:10min -- 5min. Philosophy more properly starts at about 8:30

Do you have any collection of your thinking online? I also noticed that beyond nihilism is where I began to think about these ideas. The problem for me is the thoughts are so hard to condense. One benefit of this stuff you're talking about (determinism right?) Is I have gotten immense peace in my day to day actions by clearly being able to distinguish things which are good and bad for me to do, and accepting that I will be fine or not based on what I am doing. I can also forgive people easier and see that they were "just trying"

See the end of this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23479194

Nothing published yet but I have many smaller academic writings that are building the pieces of this, and currently have a master outline that basically looks like this:

(1) Hard Determinism

(2) Ethics/Morality under (1)

(3) Social/Political Organization under (2)

(4) Personal/Useful/Practical/Life Philosophy under (1)/(2)/(3)

I started (1) when I was 18 and have many different forms at this point. Recently I have spent a good deal of time on (2) in the past couple years. (3) I have worked on independent of these ideas and am still linking up once I sure up and reflect on (2) more. (4) I'd argue is basically a WIP experiment of my own life since I was 17/18 and will be the last to be completed, probably not for a good deal of time.

Basically if this is a checklist representative of how developed/ready these ideas are, (1) is done, (2) is 75% of the way there and my main focus currently, (3) is up next, and 4 requires all the others and of course much lived experience.

As to when/how I want to publish, right now my plan is to have three forms for each - an accessible article (think 10-30 minute read), a short accessible book form that elaborates, and the formal philosophy for the academic/formal community to pick apart. Right now I essentially am working on the articles and planning to expand out. I'm not sure if I want to publish the articles without the books though, so it could be a long time.

However, given that philosophy benefits from discussion and debate, I think there seems to be a good case for publishing the articles. I might try to stand up my website/blog I've been putting off forever once I finish two and start making progress on three. I'd really love to have all four articles published at the same time as a set though, so I might have to figure out a compromise there.

Those ideas are not needed, they don't exist. Morality is just a chemical reaction in your brain, which differs from human to human - if the ideas are useful, that implies they can be changed by agency of choice, which in a predetermined world, doesn't exist.

> Error theory is a form of moral nihilism - what are you exactly disagreeing with here?

More the relativistic morality and psychological morality.

> There is nothing that says just because our formal definitions of morality are false that the entire world doesn't matter. I still care for my happiness and life.

Moral nihilism doesn't mean that they're false - it means moral truths don't exist, there is no right and wrong. You were predetermined to care for your happiness - but your happiness is already determined. There is nothing you can do to increase or decrease it, it will be what it will be based on the initial conditions.

It seems, in general, that you need to cling to ethics as a way to convince your belief in determinism - to cover up for its deficiencies, you have to find a way to convince people that ethics still matter, despite continual argument that it doesn't.

> Moral nihilism doesn't mean that they're false - it means moral truths don't exist, there is no right and wrong. You were predetermined to care for your happiness

I agree 100%. However, you are mismatching objective moral truth with subjective moral truth. I am saying that once you realize the lack of objective moral truth/existence, all that is left is the subjective. Human nature then essentially requires it to become a collective subjective. Subjective preferences of all being essentially become the practical "morality". That's what I am referring to here, not the objective morality that does not and cannot logically exist.

Morality is derived not from the physical world but from our own moral psychology. If we change humans in any way, we change morality. And thus morality is also different for every human. Traits like our social nature, empathy, and equal lack of inherent meaning then morph the problem into a collective/intertwined singular subjective morality based on the world state itself.

> - but your happiness is already determined. There is nothing you can do to increase or decrease it, it will be what it will be based on the initial conditions.

This is where you conflate determinism / free will with agency / choice, which are not the same thing. We do not have the ability to see our future choices and path, so we still have to "function" through it, even if it's a set path. And the questions we have to answer along the way are the reason we looked into morality in the first place, and are no less important or worth of time and effort.

> It seems, in general, that you need to cling to ethics as a way to convince your belief in determinism - to cover up for its deficiencies, you have to find a way to convince people that ethics still matter, despite continual argument that it doesn't.

You've got the wrong direction of how philosophy works - I started with determinism at the base, I'm simply asking what it leads to. You're only disagreeing with what comes after moral nihilism, but you've made no actual argument other than "no it's not that way". I'd truly love to understand more what your critique of my steps after is.

> What you have highlighted is that the meta-ethical view of objectivism is not compatible with determinism.

I don't see how that follows. Compatibilism is perfectly compatible with moral realism.

I should clarify, hard determinism.

Yes, hard determinism is very problematic, and this thread covers some of the reasons. I'm not sure every conception of moral realism is incompatible with hard determinism, but I haven't given it much thought as I don't see much redeeming value in hard determinism.

As a hard determinist, you'll have to re-invent concepts of pseudo-moral blame in order to justify rehabilitation for those who break the law rather than simply changing the law itself to accomodate rule breakers, at which point you've just reinvented free will and called it something else.

Moral error theory has problems of its own, so I don't think these all hang together very nicely.

First, to answer your definitions ask in the other thread.

"Practical" free will, as described by both of us:

> When people say that free will exists, they're saying that there is coherent notion of control over one's actions

> When humans say "free will", they are referring IMO in actuality to a real thing - a combination of many things, but basically agency + lack of prediction powers

You added a very specific phrase outside of the definition though, with no justification: "that grounds moral responsibility". That both implicitly implies moral responsibility, and also claims that it is grounded by this particular definition of free will. I'd be interested in how you got to those conclusions.

The "stricter/formal/whatever label you add here" version, that some try to argue for, including some compatibilists, goes more or less like this:

> Humans have the power to change the state/future of the universe and the universe is not "set" in any way

This feels a bit logically impossible to me, and it may also be something you don't agree with either, but it is still a definition that people use to mean free will, I have seen it way too often. However, the lack of this type of thing still has meaning is what I am trying to say. It is what leads to error theory for me, and then effectively what leads away from it. I wonder if that "away from" part might also solve some of your qualms with error theory.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In terms of hard determinism, it seems to me you only listed off reasons that hard determinism doesn't sound easy, but made no argument against it itself. Just because an idea invalidates many ones that were previously popular does not make it any less true/false, nor does it prevent it from establishing new and helpful ideas on top of it, even if they do not really exist currently.

> you'll have to re-invent concepts of pseudo-moral blame

This is exactly where I think hard determinism has its value. There is no moral blame - hard determinism requires a morality without it, and that's okay. It simply is new because people have focused so hard on blame, but I think that "formal" definition of free will is useful to show precisely that blame is not in play.

> at which point you've just reinvented free will and called it something else

I do think much of this will happen, but the distinction between the definitions has consequences. I already argued about for blame, but I think there is much more to explore there.

> Moral error theory has problems of its own, so I don't think these all hang together very nicely.

Again, I'd love to hear the argument rather than a simple refutation, truly, in a non attacking or confrontational way. At this point I think the HN format is hurting more than it's helping, so if you're interested in talking more feel free to shoot me an email, @gmail.com. You seem well versed in this area and I've love to hear more details on your perspective and reasoning/principles.

> You added a very specific phrase outside of the definition though, with no justification: "that grounds moral responsibility". That both implicitly implies moral responsibility, and also claims that it is grounded by this particular definition of free will. I'd be interested in how you got to those conclusions.

I always qualify my use of free will as being specific to the philosophical use in ethics because there's so much conflation around the term [1]. I hold that the term "free will" as used in various contexts are not necessarily the same, and that conflating them or trying to define a more general notion of free will that encompasses them all obscures more than it helps.

Per [2], I then conceive of free will in this context as "moral responsibility as accountability". I am not referring to free will as used in any other context, and I hope I've been strict about preserving that distinction.

> > Humans have the power to change the state/future of the universe and the universe is not "set" in any way

This definition compounds exactly the conflation that I think hurts progress in this debate. People often want more general abstractions to think about entire classes of problems rather than specific instances, but in this context, I think it obscures more than it clarifies.

> This feels a bit logically impossible to me, and it may also be something you don't agree with either, but it is still a definition that people use to mean free will, I have seen it way too often.

Compatibilism is necessarily compatible with determinism in which the universe is "set" in a specific way, that's the whole point. So I disagree with the definition. That said, just because it's "set" doesn't make it predictable, in which case it's outcome is not "set" in a way that can be known in advance.

So I would revise the clause "the universe is not 'set' in any way" to read, "the universe is not 'set' in a way that's relevant to responsibility", or something along those lines. But again, maybe you're thinking along more general lines that conflate the ethical properties with properties needed for other purposes (like an experimenters' freedom in science).

> Just because an idea invalidates many ones that were previously popular does not make it any less true/false, nor does it prevent it from establishing new and helpful ideas on top of it, even if they do not really exist currently.

I agree. I don't see anything in hard determinism which doesn't already have a satisfactory answer in Compatibilism though. The only quality which people seem to find appealing is a lack of blame, but as you later say, pseudo-blame will also likely be a feature of hard determinism in order to make it workable.

In the hundreds of debates I've had on this topic, pretty much the only reason people have used to justify hard determinism is that they don't think punishment is justified, and they see eliminating blame as a way to avoid punishment. This conflates justice with the simpler question of moral responsibility, and as a result, they erroneously believe that free will and Compatibilism necessarily entail punishment.

> Again, I'd love to hear the argument [refuting error theory] rather than a simple refutation, truly, in a non attacking or confrontational way.

Here's a rough summary of my thoughts when I first read it:

1. The Argument from Relativity: we're apparently not troubled at all by disagreement over natural facts (see: flat earthers), but disagreement over moral facts is somehow more problematic? We distinguish "fact" from "belief" for exactly this reason. I don't see any motivation for error theory here.

2. The Argument from Metaphysical Queerness, aka, moral properties are "qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe", aka are moral prescriptions categorical or hypothetical imperatives: this appears to be the most subtle and misunderstood part of error theory, so maybe I'll delve in deeper at some point.

3. The Argument from Epistemic Queerness, aka, we would need "some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else": the epistemic "strangeness" of moral properties partly follows from the strangeness of qualia. For instance, we have moral prescriptions around causing pain. I'm an eliminativist about qualia, so I think the apparent strangeness are cognitive tricks that we will unpack in time. The only other faculty needed is reason.

Bambrough addressed most of these [3] almost a decade before Mackie's paper on error theory. Bambrough's working example of a child undergoing surgery is precisely an example of a logical argument depending on qualia (epistemic queerness), to establish a moral fact. I'm sure Mackie would find that result very queer indeed!

Which isn't to say that error theory wasn't a valuable contribution, because it's absolutely true that most alleged moral prescriptions have been false. I simply don't think there's any conclusive reason to think they're all false, and per Bambrough, I think there are reasons to think we already know some moral facts.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23480626

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#FreeWillMoraRes...

[3] A Proof of the Objectivity of Morals - Bambrough (1969), https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/3etl9b/a_proof_...

A think we're getting to a stuck point here, but to wrap up some of my main qualms:

1. I feel like we keep talking in circles on the definitional aspect. I'm with you on the many definitions causing confusion and I would love to see expanded vocabulary around this. But you haven't said anything to convince me against the idea that all three have moral relevancy in various ways.

2. To be clear, I do not believe hard determinism needs any sort of pseudo-blame to be workable, at least how I understand you are using that term. The only thing needed is causality in order in order to find the ideal "organization" of the world to optimize for whatever factors are settled on by other parts of the argument.

3. I actually agree with you on the lack of convincing of 1 and 3 for error theory (slightly different reasons but details not needed), but the argument from queerness seems to fit quite well. I'm not sure what part you're claiming is misunderstood.

4. The mentioned "justifications" on hard determinism are going the wrong way logically - you don't decide if something is true by if you need it to make morals that look nice, you follow what is true and see the results, and only then can you "check your work" with a sanity test. You've seem to cut off your thoughts on determinism before ever getting to a point where it actually produced a full set of moral ideas to check in favor of compatabilism simply because it produced something that passed said check, but if the underlying principle is false that's simply a coincidental state. Obviously you've also personally eliminated error theory, which is the core of our disagreement.

As to justice, I fully agree on that being way oversimplified. For context, looking ahead, my theories on morality out of error theory basically lead to a consequentialist version of Rawls, so that's about where I stand re justice, with some nuance.

> I think there are reasons to think we already know some moral facts.

Can you give examples? Single or multiple, whatever you think is more useful in this context. I don't see how we get to moral facts without them being tied back subjectively to humans, which either invalidates the objectivism tract (now we're back at arguing metaethics fully) or you'd have to get there from the error theory route I've been talking about.

To Bambrough's child surgery example, I think that only shows that that moral fact is true only subjectively to humans - it's not an "objective" moral truth. It is derived from the traits of a human, and the example generally works because it takes a clear cut case we can all agree on.

All of this reasoning is still useful to an error theorist, but it is laid on the groundwork that morality is subjective to the state of humans/beings. If you mean to say that this is objective, then there is basically infinite moral facts in existence, we just debate them because humans and society are complex. That is to me the precise meaning of that "optimal organization" I reference, which is essentially that collection of all true moral facts, which I would argue are always subjective to the deterministic state of the world. Change anything about the world, and you likely change ethics itself. The argument from queerness highlights that without our perspective and values, objective morality wouldn't exist at all.

I suspect definition will be the issue here again - are "moral facts" derived from the combination of human traits and our perspective considered objective or subjective? To me, that is subjective and then the combinations of subjectiveness along with the lack of inherent meaning or value produces a single objective level practical morality. I can understand the argument to classify that set of things itself as objective morality, but I think that weakens the base of the argument needlessly.

> But you haven't said anything to convince me against the idea that all three have moral relevancy in various ways.

Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility.

> The only thing needed [in hard determinism] is causality in order to find the ideal "organization" of the world to optimize for whatever factors are settled on by other parts of the argument.

The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it.

> To Bambrough's child surgery example, I think that only shows that that moral fact is true only subjectively to humans - it's not an "objective" moral truth. It is derived from the traits of a human, and the example generally works because it takes a clear cut case we can all agree on.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees by mistaking an existential claim for a universal claim. Suppose we swap out the human child with an alien that doesn't feel pain as we do, but has an adverse reaction to some other stimulus. The same argument applies by parity of reasoning. You're focused on the specifics of the human case, but the moral fact in that case is just an instance of a more general principle from which this fact derives.

It's like I'm pointing out 1+2=3, that's a fact, an instance of the general rule of addition. You then agree that 1+2=3, but gotcha, 1+3!=3, therefore 1+2=3 is not a general fact applicable to all numbers. No argument there, but it was never suggested as such.

> I suspect definition will be the issue here again - are "moral facts" derived from the combination of human traits and our perspective considered objective or subjective?

"Objective" means "mind independent", which is to say, that any form of intelligence will reach the same conclusions given the same understanding.

Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence.

> Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility.

And that's exactly where we're stuck, which is all I'm saying. I think all three affect moral responsibility.

> 1+2=3, etc

> Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence.

There's another assumed aspect though that you have not separated, which is that the judging intelligence has empathy if it agrees. You're claiming only using pure logic, but you're using aspects of that subjective human perspective to imply that the reduction of pain/whatever stimuli. Without the human perspective, the example fails to be a "moral" fact. It's just a configuration that raises x, lowers some y maybe, and the beings prefer more x and less y. But without value being projected on x and y, it is not inherently "good". We require the human perspective to create human morality. What if the intelligence viewing this entire scenario loves to see pain/y? Would it not rationally conclude the anesthesia is bad? Only if it assumes or judges based on the values of a human does it get the same conclusion. Yes, within that, it's objective.

I find that distinction is key in how we approach the derivation later. A lack of such distinction can, for one example, enable using the idea of objectivity here to assign value to the entities (more ideal = more value), which then can shift practical effects possibly. And maybe you disagree with this specific example on deriving value from objective nature, but that is one of the many doors the lack of distinction opens. I'm sure if we went far enough down the road, there is likely an argument that you do agree with that comes from the lack of distinction.

You say I'm missing the forest, but I think you are minimizing the importance of the trees through all of this and disagreeing that the trees can be important, even if you zoom out and the forest is the same. You're saying that the rule in play here is "addition", but I'm saying I think you're missing some rules/definition/workings of the "operator" in this metaphor that lead to different results later down the line, even if it works in this case.

> The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it.

I typed up a longer distinction here, but again this seems to come down to distinguishing between two definitions and if that distinction means something. See importance of trees. In this case, blame being the tree.

If, say, a boulder is rolling down a hill towards my home, I don't need to assign any sense of will or blame to the boulder to know that it's dangerous or to want to stop it.

As social animals, we have an intrinsic interest in preserving social harmony, in as much as the reproductive success of any individual is contingent on the success of the group as a whole. Morality is just the game theory element of this being played out.

I could make reasoned moral arguments on behalf of the well being of chickens or why we shouldn't destroy the planet, and you may nod and agree, but without a strong emotional impulse to attach to these moral causes, it's hard to get people to take these things very seriously. It's too much of an abstraction.

> As social animals, we have an intrinsic interest in preserving social harmony, in as much as the reproductive success of any individual is contingent on the success of the group as a whole. Morality is just the game theory element of this being played out.

In other words, you acknowledge that you have no moral justification for assigning blame, you simply do it out of convenience. That's weak sauce IMO.

Giving up cognitivism and moral realism is very problematic on multiple levels, and your response hand waves away these other problems IMO [1]. You just end up reinventing free will and calling it something different.

For people that accept that moral propositions actually have truth values (most people), assigning blame requires free will, and ultimately, we end up in the same place anyway, just with a bunch more people being confused about why we have new jargon that serves the exact same function as the old jargon.

[1] Edit: for instance, life no longer has any intrinsic value, so you can justify all sorts of morally repugnant conclusions, like that totalitarian regimes are justifiable, or that a government should only care about the death rate of its citizens in order to keep it low enough to prevent widespread revolt.

Assigning blame requires only the impulse to assign blame, which is derived from a very primitive impulse to neutralize a threat, be it a tiger, or a thief, or whatever.

The whole notion of free will is a cultural construct. There are societies that have no perception of it, they believe that their actions are guided by spirits.

Western concepts of justice are founded on the idea of free will, so of course you need it for western rationalizations of how to apply justice, but arguing that we need free will for justice to work is putting the cart before the horse. We just need it for our version of justice. My cat doesn't need it to take a swipe at the dog when it goes for the cat's food.

It is in my interest to argue that life has intrinsic value because if I don't I risk being considered a threat by people who happen to value their own lives quite a bit. It's just simple game theory. I don't see how free will, either real or imagined, is necessary to value the lives of others.

And of course, there are no consequences for killing a chicken, so there are no strong moral impulses against it. By our own rationalizations, life doesn't have any intrinsic value unless it is a life that serves us, or has power over us, and the value of a chicken's life extends only as far as it is tasty to us.

> Assigning blame requires only the impulse to assign blame

Causally, sure. Morally, I disagree. You've just justified mob rule and the tyranny of the majority.

> there are societies that have no perception of it, they believe that their actions are guided by spirits.

Sure, and what do those societies do when someone kills their neighbour and claims the spirits said their neighbour had to die?

> Western concepts of justice are founded on the idea of free will, so of course you need it for western rationalizations of how to apply justice, but arguing that we need free will for justice to work is putting the cart before the horse.

Western justice is founded on free will because it's a logical necessity for coherently assigning blame.

> It is in my interest to argue that life has intrinsic value because if I don't I risk being considered a threat by people who happen to value their own lives quite a bit.

No, it's actually in your interest to argue that your life has intrinsic value, and that anyone else's life is of lesser value.

So here we arrive at the morally repugnant conclusions I mentioned: if you can effectively argue this point, as they did with the divine right of kings, there is no logical basis upon which you can dispute this conclusion.

Moral progress has been marked by eliminating such artificial distinctions, not justifying them.

> By our own rationalizations, life doesn't have any intrinsic value unless it is a life that serves us, or has power over us, and the value of a chicken's life extends only as far as it is tasty to us.

Please explain how this follows from anything I've said in this thread.

> If there can be no moral blame, then the moral classification of actions has no meaning.

At the risk of mirroring Fricken's reply, this isn't so. Suppose a brain tumour drives someone to commit murder, as may have been the case with Charles Whitman. The act remains morally atrocious even if the individual's culpability is doubtful.

Same goes for a killer animal, or natural disaster, or even disease.

Moral blame is discounted entirely in pure utilitarianism (which is of course deeply flawed, but I think it's still illustrative here).

> The act remains morally atrocious even if the individual's culpability is doubtful.

And why is his culpability doubtful? I think you'll find his lack of free will implicit in your argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com