Dual economy system

An idea that has popped into my head a number of times goes like this:

 

* Have two economies, one planned and one free.

 

* For the planned economy, the government provides food, clothing, shelter, and other goods and services deemed essential for basic survival (basic medicine, electrical, plumbing, water system, sewer system, distribution of goods, public transport, gas, car maintenance, cell phone service, internet...).

 

* To opt into government products and services, you must pay credits for them.

 

* You earn credits by working jobs related to these essential services. One credit = One labor hour.

 

* Access to government services requires paying a monthly credit fee. Shelter could be 20 credits per month (5 hours a week). Food is 4 credits per month (1 hour a week). And so on.

 

* The idea is that by working something like 15 hours a week, you can have all of your essentials covered. Food, clothing, shelter (including maintenance), utilities (clean water, heating, cooling, plumbing, and electricity), internet, phone, transport (car repair, public transport, gas), and at least basic medicine if not full on healthcare would all be included within those essentials.

 

* People who are disabled, sick, or struggling can receive credits for free from people who donate. This simplifies charity and takes a lot of the guess work out of trying to decide which charities are worth giving to, how much one should give, etc. Very simply, just work more than the 15 hours a week that you need to cover your own basics, and donate credits to a public charity bank. This provides free credits to people in need who, for whatever reason, are running out of credits (perhaps because of needing sick days).

 

* Homelessness is avoided easily because you only need to work a few hours a week to access government housing. Plus, charity credits would prevent those who are struggling from being evicted from government housing.

 

* You can also bank extra credits for your own sick leave or for general paid leave. Though at only 15 hours a week, I don't expect many people needing vacation. In theory you could work many hours and amass a large number of credits, and... retire, more or less.

 

* A single payer healthcare system could be designed along these lines too. You pay credits into the healthcare fund when you are healthy and withdraw them when you are sick. This will depend on how healthcare is handled. I'm thinking that over the counter medicine, preventative care / family physician appointments w/ checkups, diagnostics, and basic prescriptions like pain meds and anti-biotics would fall under the government essentials. Basic dental care like yearly check ups and cleanings and cavity fillings could be included. Yearly eye appointments could be covered as well. More serious and specialized care and surgeries, and perhaps emergency care, would be covered under the open economy.  Credits have a cash value. To prevent a few people from bankrupting the entire fund, actuarial science could be used to create caps on how much a person can withdraw (similar to banks and liquidity risk). So for credit-based insurance, you pay credits into the insurance each month, and if you need specialized or emergency care, you get credits up to a cap that are cashed out for your medical bills. You could have the insurance mandated similar to the Affordable Care Act where everyone is required to pay at least a minimum number of credits into the fund.

 

* Many people search for jobs but are rejected. Because the work is (usually) simple, and in constant demand, good work would always be available to those searching. And the rewards you get for the work are generous, increasing motivation. The idea is that with so many more people working than would be otherwise, many hands make light work; that's why it only takes ~15 hours a week to cover these needs per person.

 

* These services are very basic and designed to just cover survival. So government housing, food, and clothing would be not glamorous, fancy, customized, marketed, or anything like that. They would be designed to just cover the basics with zero fluff or fancy. If you want something more customized or with more personality, you will have to look to the open economy.

 

* This system prevents capitalists from exploiting workers. If an open economy job becomes toxic or exploitative, the worker can simply quit and survive fine on just 15 hours a week worth of work. This provides serious pressure on jobs to offer fair compensation, to not be bullsh**ty, to offer meaningful work, to provide a good work environment, and to treat the employee with respect.

 

* Very importantly – this system prevents abuse. If a teenager is abused at home, he can move out at a measly 15 hours a week. Same with abused spouses.  

 

* This system prevents the alienation of labor. Your government labor is tied directly to the survival of yourself and others. No bullsh** jobs!

 

* This system promotes art, because it allows artists to easily support themselves while pursuing their art.

 

* This system prevents underemployment. At any time there are many people who are able-bodied and able-minded and could provide for society in a variety of ways. But with our current system, employment is an all-or-nothing deal. Either you don't work at all, or you work grueling hours and sell your soul. There are many stories of people who can and want to work but send out countless applications only to get nothing back. That's because labor is extremely expensive, and companies are encouraged to either not hire or only hire when they know they can get a deal on the labor (I've also heard that employment listings are dishonest but that might have been moreso in the PPP loan era, but I digress).

 

* The open economy accomplishes a number of things.

 

A) It provides goods and services that the planned economy doesn't offer. For example, government rations probably wouldn't include beer. So if you want beer, you'll need cash. More complex services, like specialized healthcare, would be privatized within the open economy. If you want to upgrade your living situation to a nicer apartment or a house, you'll need cash.

 

B) The open economy allows for individual freedom and autonomy, both in doing business as a business owner and as a customer looking for products and services the government doesn't offer. If you want, you can operate entirely outside of the planned economy. So there's still plenty of room for innovation.

 

C) The open economy provides products and services that compete with the government. This prevents the government from being monopolistic and allows for greater customization and potentially increased product / service quality for the customer.

 

D) Specialized jobs, like lawyers, doctors, engineers, and so on, require intense training and work schedules. These professionals do not have the means nor desire to work the 15 mandatory hours to partake in the government economy (in some cases professionals will do some moonlighting, but it's not expected). And we as a society do not want to force a pediatrician to abandon their more essential pediatric duties to do some plumbing on the side. So we need the open economy to provide for those individuals who work specialty jobs that take precedent over the more basic work they would be doing otherwise.

 

In theory, these professionals could still avail themselves of the government services. They would just have to exchange some of their cash from their salary for credits and use those credits to enter the system. Or, even more simply, credits could be offered as part of their compensation package, or the government could treat certain open economy work as essential and give dual credit.

 

* The credit value of labor could be dynamic. More specialized and yet essential government jobs, ones that require certification, for example, could grant more than 1 credit per labor hour.

 

* Many government jobs would still give a salary. For example, access to air travel would probably not be included under the survival essentials. But the government still has an interest in regulating air travel. So these regulation jobs would be part of the open economy and pay a salary. Political jobs would be considered specialized and part of the open economy.

 

* Maybe instead of a "gold standard" there could be a "credit standard" backing up cash to control for inflation and to keep the value of cash stable and fair relative to the credit. Cash could only be printed according to how many credits are being issued. The free market decides how much a credit is worth in cash.

 

* A challenge for this system is the value of labor. One hour of work as a licensed septic tank engineer is not the same as one hour of work as a trainee in janitorial duties. 

 

* One approach is to have the two currency system as described above. Another option is to totally separate the two economies. Credits represent participation in essential jobs, but do not necessarily represent value. If you think the value of your work is more than participation, then you are encouraged to seek work in the open economy. On the other hand, if you are an artist whose work has little economic value, then you can easily support yourself by helping build houses for 15 hours a week while pursuing your art.

 

You could get dual credit for working essential jobs but in the private sector. So a septic tank engineer working for a private company could apply to a government program and receive not only a salary through the private company, but credits as well. Same with jobs like specialized healthcare. For folks who work in non-essential roles, like entertainment, they will have to either work an extra government job on the side to support themselves or support themselves entirely through cash. Credits are tied to you as a person and cannot be bought or sold. Credits expire after X months (3 months on a tighter model, or up to 12 months on a more liberal model), encouraging consistent work. Retirement would have to come from the open economy (or children could support their parents through charity credits). Credits perhaps could be donated in limited capacity. For example: you can give to blood relatives or to legal guardians / dependents. And you can give to a general charity that randomly distributes charity credits to those with qualifying disabilities / illnesses.

 

* At any time there could be a gap between what the government promises and what it delivers. For example, the government promises everyone shelter, but there might not be enough housing to deliver on this promise. Ways this could be addressed: A) The government contracts out work from the open economy to address the housing shortage, or buys out houses / apartments on the open market and marks them as government housing. The government taxes the open market and uses the tax money for this. B) The government prioritizes work towards building new housing, offering extra credit incentives until output stabilizes with demand. And C) The government can increase the credit cost of shelter, encouraging people to either split rent, live with parents, or pay for open economy shelter with cash, freeing up government housing.

 

* On top of all the social safety benefits that this system would provide, you could still have a cash-based universal basic income along the lines of what Yanis Varoufakis recommends. Have a Universal Company that owns a public equity trust. To enlist your company on the public stock market, you must give 1% of total preferred stock to the Universal Company. When dividends are paid, the Universal Company gets cash and disperses it as a universal basic dividend to all American citizens 18 and older. In our current crony capitalist system, profits are privatized and losses are public. A universal public dividend helps amend this: Now profits are public too. This provides massive stimulus to the economy, especially since this cash would largely count as disposable income since people's basic needs are met through the 15 hour a week program. This also helps prevent companies from getting away with rampant greed, lowers inequality, increases individual freedom, and mitigates exploitation.

 

No idea how viable any of this is. At least this could make for an interesting set up for a story. 

 

Really, I just want to have credits like in Star Wars 😁🤓

On the criteria of best philosopher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN0sl_jQ3Mg

 

An interesting criterion could be how deeply a philosopher changed their mind. (Which happens to indicate another criterion: How many comprehensive systems for competing worldviews could the philosopher hold in their mind at once. A philosopher who can articulate a comprehensive naturalistic worldview—complete with objections and responses—is not as impressive as a philosopher who can articulate both a comprehensive naturalistic worldview and a comprehensive Christian worldview complete with objections and responses.)

Per the book A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand, by Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis, JJC Smart was a Christian when he was appointed at the University of Adelaide, but became a thoroughgoing atheist materialist at some point. He would have been at least 29 years old, potentially indicating a deep change of mind. But I don't know how deep Smart's Christian worldview was prior to converting, or how difficult the conversion was.

If I'm not mistaken, William Rowe had a similar late-and-thorough conversion from Christianity to atheism, and so did contemporary philosopher Felipe Leon.

Because philosophy is, at its core, the love for truth above all else, I feel like those philosophers that represent philosophy the best are those who most painstakingly give up prior beliefs for the sake of truth. Camus says in The Myth that "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined." There's something special about that person who is willing to undermine themselves and sacrifice their deepest self-conception and their most desired beliefs for the truth, committing a sort of metaphysical death and rebirth in the process. So if you especially weigh this criterion, then these philosophers are the best.

But this criterion has at least two problems: One, as already mentioned, it's difficult to know which philosophers changed their minds and how thorough and painstaking was the change. Two, the virtue works both ways: an atheist who painstakingly becomes a Christian would too be a best philosopher. I think that fairly characterizes C. S. Lewis. But I wouldn't consider C. S. Lewis to be a good philosopher at all, mainly because he got just about everything wrong. More specifically, C. S. Lewis a) Did not create a systematic philosophy; b) Left many important philosophical problems unaddressed; c) Of the philosophical problems he did address, did not address them in a comprehensive or sophisticated way (like arguments for and against the existence of God, for example); d) Failed to address serious challenges to Christian belief; e) Especially failed to solve the problem of evil, not that any theist ever could.

 

(Note: by painstaking I don't just mean painful, but taking pains, evoking the image of someone carefully, slowly, meticulously, and thoroughly thinking through the issues, gradually leading to a hard-fought change of mind. But I also want to evoke the image of someone wrestling with the issues in a deeply honest, personal, and, yes, agonizing process of metaphysical death and rebirth.) 

The intellectual virtues of lifespace and access to resources

One of the most important intellectual virtues is lifespace. Consider a Muslim teenager who becomes an atheist. If his Muslim parents were to find out, it would be awkward or worse. To build out his new naturalistic worldview, he wants to write public blogposts and post public YouTube videos expressing his views and working through the philosophical puzzles he’s struggling with. This practice of talking out loud and connecting to other philosophically inclined folks across the internet is essential to him for processing information and developing his philosophical skills. He also wishes he could major in Philosophy at university. But he’s scared to express his views publicly in fear of his family and community finding out. Because he relies on his parents for education funding, and because of the economic non-viability of philosophy, he’s scared to pursue a Philosophy major. So instead of focusing on expressing himself, developing his worldview, and engaging with like-minded individuals, he focuses instead on trying to achieve financial independence. The teenager focuses on another career that can pay the bills. But that career has nothing to do with developing one’s intellectual virtue and philosophical knowledge. Many careers stifle one’s intellectual virtue and retard one’s philosophical development. Plus, the teenager wants more than anything to pursue philosophy, and so being deprived of this pursuit leads to chronic stress, and chronic stress is known to severely hurt one’s mental health and brain health, which in turn hurts one’s intellectual virtue. So we can see how a lack of lifespace leads to a loss of intellectual virtue, and indeed a lack of lifespace is perhaps the single greatest cause of the extreme lacuna of intellectual virtue we see in society. We also see how social structures tend to be anti-intellectual in nature, because maintaining one's status in a social structure requires going along with established narratives no matter how absurd and clearly false they may be.

Lifespace alone is not enough, though. Another intellectual virtue is access to philosophy resources. That means: 1) Reading materials, 2) Mentorship & training, and 3) Participation in philosophical communities and extended conversations across a wide variety of topics with a wide variety of people. Considering how rare it is to have the lifespace and access to resources needed, it’s no wonder that intellectual virtue is rare. Because becoming rich and powerful often has nothing to do with virtue, and indeed often has more to do with a lack of virtue, it's no surprise that intellectual virtue is especially rare among the rich and powerful. In a metaphorical sense then, what Jesus says is true when he says that it's harder for a rich man to go to heaven than for a camel to fit in the eye of a needle.

Inseparable subjectivity - Part 3: Inseparable subjectivity

Part 1: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/10/inseparable-subjectivity-part-1-bundle.html

Part 2: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/10/inseparable-subjectivity-part-2.html

Part 3: Inseparable subjectivity
 

In Part 2 I said the following:
 

“Person(2a) = The pure subjectivity (of a particular person) by which all first-person properties (of that particular person) are unified.

E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie all have something in common: the fact that these experiences are happening to you. There is a youness, a subjectivity, that these experiences have in common.

Person(2b) = The other properties of first-person properties that accompany the pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.
 
E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie have differences between them. That which distinguishes one experience from the other—the pain of venom in your veins versus the pain of the initial shock of cold water versus the happiness of the taste of melted chocolate—these differences show that these experiences cannot be the same, despite having a sameness to them, specifically the same subjectivity.

You(2a) is the ‘you’ referred to in the following sentence: You do not choose to be what you are. You do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that you have. So you do not choose for your decision-making process to be what it is. So you do not choose for your choices to come out as they do. The badness (or goodness) of your choices reflects the badness (or goodness) of your inputs, but not the badness (or goodness) of you.
 
But you(2b) is the 'you' referred to in the following sentence: The choices you made were good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy. I.e. the causal properties accompanying the pure subjectivity of first-person properties had good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy effects.”

Two thoughts:

One, even if we allow a distinction between Person(2a) and Person(2b), it’s not clear that 2a is as non-causal as I claimed. If I have stressful experiences, and those stressful first-person properties cause my body to produce stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, then the “pure subjectivity” of being on the receiving end of experience actually does play a role in causal relationships. Plus, presumably pure experiences cause me to remember having those experiences. So pure subjectivity causes memory. Furthermore, memories reveal patterns that affect future actions. By remembering the pain of touching a hot stove, I avoid touching hot stoves in the future. So by causing memories, not only does pure subjectivity play a causal role, but a causal role with respect to our actions.

Two, it’s not clear that the distinction between 2a and 2b makes sense. If I treat subjectivity as a consistent property that survives through time (to explain how a person survives through time), then it sounds like I’m sneaking in the idea of a mental substance, of a subjectivity that exists independently from everything else and is subject to qualia. That’s a problem for bundle theory, which says that there are no substances, only properties. If instead I say that wherever there is a subjective property, there is personhood, and paint this picture that there is no stable, persistent, substantial, mysterious self – and that instead there is a succession of subjective properties and a directly observable, unmysterious self – then it seems like I must consider subjectivity not something separate from the subjective properties. If your subjective properties are you, then your subjective properties involved in your choices and feelings are you. So the pure subjectivity of 2a cannot be separated from the other properties, 2b, that accompany 2a. 

By abstracting out my subjectivity in common with all my subjective properties, I am beholding my subjective property not as something particular and concrete, but universal and abstract. But persons are concrete, not abstract! The self is as particular and concrete as it gets. So to avoid the mistake of talking about the concept of myself when I should be talking about myself, I must avoid abstracting out subjectivity.

It seems that I have been assuming that the subjectivity of a property can be separated from ugly (or admirable) aspects of that property. For example, if someone makes the conscious, unconstrained decision to kill someone out of spite, there’s a subjectivity to that choice. But this subjectivity is replete throughout the property such that the entire property is subjective. We cannot separate the subjectivity from the rest of the property. So the ugliness of the subjectivity just is the ugliness of the entire subjective property, and thus the person.

Imagine the feeling of being judged. It's a sharp pain, which makes it vivid and easy to imagine. Is it possible to separate the feeling of being judged from the subjectivity? No. The experience is necessarily experiential. There is no pain floating around out there without a person to feel it. Pain is by its essence felt. Likewise, there is no subjectivity floating around out there without other properties characterizing that experience. Subjectivity is by its essence a particular kind of experience. So for a painful feeling, like being judged, you can't have the pain without the subjectivity, and you can't have the subjectivity without the pain. The subjectivity is replete and inseparable.
 
But if a person per se is identical to their subjective properties (the person per se of the moment is identical to the subjective property of that moment), then any criticism or praise directed to the ugly or admirable aspects of the subjective property are directed to the person per se (at the moment of that property).
 
If this is right, and if our choices come with a subjective property (the quale of making a choice), then we are our choices, just as we are our pains and pleasures and any other subjective property. If by ‘person’ we mean a collection of subjective properties that all have the same subjectivity in common, then our experiences (including experiences of making choices) are straightforwardly part of us.
 
Far from eliminating free will, this might provide the very resources to build an account of how free will works! Namely, that because a) our choices accompany phenomenal choice, and because b) wherever there is phenomenology there is personhood, therefore c) to criticize or praise a choice just is to criticize or praise the phenomenology, which just is to criticize or praise the person with that personhood.

 

Or put another way, because a*) our choices are caused by our phenomenal choice, and because b) wherever there is phenomenology there is personhood, therefore c*) our choices are caused by our personhood (i.e., by us). So d) the goodness or badness of the consequences of our choices reflects the goodness or badness of the phenomenal choice that caused them, which just is to reflect the goodness or the badness of the personhood that caused them.

Inseparable subjectivity – Part 2: Critical vs moral blame

Part 2: Critical vs moral blame

Now that we have some idea of what ‘person’ refers to, we can make progress on what it means to blame a person. For a recap:

Person(1) = Public person = Your public person is that thing that generates within others certain experiences, such as visual experiences of a certain shape or auditory experiences of a certain sound (like the sound of your voice).
 
Person(2) = Private person = Your private self is any subjective / experiential / first-person / phenomenological property that carries a particular youness to it.

Because this is a phenomenal definition, it’s no surprise that it would be circular – i.e. you = those subjective properties that correspond to… you. The circularity is benign because phenomenal definitions must gesture toward a phenomenology. Compare: red = the red color, another phenomenal definition that is circular in a benign way, gesturing toward the phenomenology of seeing redness. Just as ‘red’ gestures toward the red experience you have, ‘you’ gestures toward the youness of any experience you have.

You can make further distinctions like where ‘you’ refers to the total experiences you caused others or the total experiences you’ve had. For now, these two key distinctions are enough.

I’ve made a distinction between moral versus critical blame, which basically means blaming Person(2) versus blaming Person(1), respectively. That is, to blame a person critically is to criticize the quality of their public properties. To blame a person morally is to criticize the quality of their phenomenal properties.

There’s two other distinctions of blame at work: Blame as cause and blame as blameworthy / blameless cause (or creditworthy / creditless), i.e., whether you are the cause in a way that reflects the quality of you. X can fail to be the cause of Y, explaining why the quality of Y says nothing about the quality of X. For example, I fail to be the cause of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal (so I claim), and so the badness of this disaster says nothing about the badness of me. Or, X can succeed in being the cause of Y, but in such a way that the quality of Y says nothing about the quality of X. For example, a baby succeeds in being the cause of accidentally knocking over a vase and breaking it. The badness of breaking the vase says nothing about the badness of the baby.

But that’s too quick. The badness of breaking the vase does say something about the badness of the baby: the baby can cause bad experiences in others by breaking their vases. So Baby(1) is extrinsically bad. But the badness of breaking the vase says nothing about the badness of the baby’s phenomenal properties, as the baby’s phenomenal properties had nothing to do with causing the vase to break. So Baby(2) is blameless with respect to breaking the vase.

But even if the baby’s phenomenal properties did have something to do with causing the vase to break, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that Baby(2) is bad. If the baby grows up and is now a teenager, and the teenager chooses to break the vase, and thus the teenager has a phenomenal property of making a choice, and if we allow for mental causation, then the teenager’s phenomenal properties do cause the vase to break. So doesn’t that mean that the badness of breaking the vase says something about the badness of Teenager(2)? Yes and no.

If we allow for mental causation, then Person(2) is embedded within Person(1), because “that thing that generates within others certain experiences” includes those phenomenal properties, like those involved in making choices, that cause one’s actions which then generate experiences within others. So if the badness of Y reflects the badness of what causes Y, then the badness of bad experiences reflects the badness of that which caused those bad experiences. And so both public and private properties of personhood can be extrinsically bad.

But we can imagine Pereboom-style manipulation cases where a person is manipulated into having properties, public or private, which cause those bad experiences within others. But whose fault is it that these badness-causing properties obtain? The fault lies with the source of the manipulation. But our deterministic (or random) inputs, like our genetics, social influences, and so on, all together comprise such a manipulator. We do not choose to be what we are. We do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that we have. So we do not choose for our decision-making process to be what it is. So we do not choose for our choices to come out as they do. The badness of our choices reflects the badness of our inputs, but not the badness of us. The badness of our choices does reflect the badness of us as choosers within such and such contexts (e.g., reflects our stupidity, irrationality, ignorance, etc.), but not the badness of us as experiencers, as pure subjects (i.e., as experiencers we did not choose to be stupid or irrational or ignorant, but we experience our stupidity, irrationality, ignorance, etc.).

Our first-person properties come from somewhere. They do not come, ultimately, from us, i.e., our first-person properties do not ultimately come from other first-person properties of ours. They come ultimately from sources outside of us.

What this comes to is that at bottom, the most fundamental self-property is the property of pure subjectivity, a property that is divorced from any choices made. This first-person property is not involved in the making of any choices, and so its quality cannot be fairly criticized.

To capture the distinction between those first-person properties that can be fairly criticized and those that cannot be fairly criticized, we must split Person(2) in two:

Person(2a) = The pure subjectivity (of a particular person) by which all first-person properties (of that particular person) are unified.

 

E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie all have something in common: the fact that these experiences are happening to you. There is a youness, a subjectivity, that these experiences have in common.

Person(2b) = The other properties of first-person properties that accompany the pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.

 

E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie have differences between them. That which distinguishes one experience from the other—the pain of venom in your veins versus the pain of the initial shock of cold water versus the happiness of the taste of melted chocolate—these differences show that these experiences cannot be the same, despite having a sameness to them, specifically the same subjectivity.

 

You(2a) is the ‘you’ referred to in the following sentence: You do not choose to be what you are. You do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that you have. So you do not choose for your decision-making process to be what it is. So you do not choose for your choices to come out as they do. The badness (or goodness) of your choices reflects the badness (or goodness) of your inputs, but not the badness (or goodness) of you.

 

But you(2b) is the 'you' referred to in the following sentence: The choices you made were good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy. I.e. the causal properties accompanying the pure subjectivity of first-person properties had good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy effects.

 

On good vs praiseworthy choices: Good choices include those choices that are good by accident, good in a way that doesn't reflect good qualities of Person(1) and Person(2b). Actions are praiseworthy when they do reflect good qualities of Person(1) and Person(2b). The difference is that a Person(1,2b) with good qualities will regularly make good choices, while a person who makes good choices by accident will only rarely make good choices. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, for bad and critique-worthy (aka blameworthy) choices. None of this speaks to the goodness or badness of Person(2a), who, as a pure subject, is merely along for the ride – only experiencing and never causing anything.

 

On Person(1): You can distinguish between those first-person properties other people have about you. We can label this Person(1a). These are strictly private properties. Then there are those public properties that cause others to have the properties referred to by Person(1a). We can label this Person(1b). These are strictly public properties. If we allow for mental causation, and if we allow a distinction between Person(2a) and Person(2b), then the first-person properties of (2b) can cause the third-person properties of (1b) which then cause the first-person properties of (1a). In other words, your choices (and other internal states that lead to choices, like beliefs and memories) cause your actions (like writing) which cause others to have the experiences of you that they do (like reading your writing).

Spencer Case on evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhhIzTM9yIY&t=2961s

 

46:30 - 53:05

 

As J. P. Andrew mentions, Sharon Street is known for her evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism.

 

Spencer Case mentions that you don't need to appeal to evolution to motivate this kind of argument. You can appeal instead to just cultural influences – your moral beliefs came from your social environment. (But then you could say that the social environment is the way it is because of evolutionary pressures. So from my point of view it makes sense to press the evolutionary aspect of this argument.)

 

The general point is this: If you found out that you had been brainwashed to believe something, then upon discovering this you should lose confidence in that belief. If you can fully explain your moral beliefs via a non-truth tracking process, like evolution, then you have reason to doubt the truth of these beliefs. You don't believe that it's wrong to imprison innocent people for crimes they did not commit not because it's true in some robust, objective sense that it's wrong to imprison innocent people for crimes they did not commit; you believe that it's wrong to imprison innocent people for crimes they did not commit because you have been socially and biologically programmed to believe this.

 

Spencer Case gives an illustration of why this argument fails. 50:30 -  "Even if it's true that evolution pushes us in the direction to thinking that randomly harming yourself is bad, finding out that evolution has pushed you in that direction shouldn't make you think, 'Oh, well I just don't know whether it's actually bad for me to stab myself in the eye with this pencil.' No, I know that's bad for me."

 

So Spencer Case sees anti-realism motivated by evolutionary debunking as having the absurd result that we should be skeptical of the truth of whether randomly harming ourselves is bad. 

 

I agree that it's silly to think we should doubt our self-evident beliefs just because they are evolutionarily convenient.

 

J. P. Andrew then gives the sort of response to evolutionary debunking I would give, which is something along the following lines:

 

*Evolution selects for highly accurate beliefs over basic facts of our environment, as high accuracy over basic facts is needed for our survival.

 

*A certain kind of intelligence is needed to achieve highly accurate beliefs over basic facts, and so evolution selects for this kind of intelligence.

 

*In the case of humans, the kind of abstract thinking needed for language and planning allows for the abstract thinking needed for mathematics, logic, and reasoning. And so our ability to do philosophy and discover philosophical truths is incidentally selected for. We don't need high level mathematical and logical abilities to survive, but these abilities come bundled together incidentally with those abilities we do need to survive.

 

*This allows humans to, through reasoning, engage in evolutionarily inconvenient behaviors, like suicide, refusing to have children, or for speaking truth to power at the cost of one's own life (though in cases where folks with less access to resources and/or with lesser genetics tend to be those who choose death or who choose to refuse to have children, then even these "self-deletion" behaviors turn out to be evolutionarily convenient). The point is that evolution can accidentally give us the ability to discover abstract truths that aren't needed for our survival or for the survival of the species. Higher levels of reasoning and abstract truth-tracking that aren't selected for are packaged with lower levels of reasoning and abstract truth-tracking that are selected for. 

 

*In terms of the surface structure versus the deep structure, the surface structure incidentally gives us access to the deep structure.

 

*By way of analogy: Evolution does not select for heavy fur coats on bison. In fact, a very heavy coat might make things worse for the bison by lowering their speed and endurance. But evolution does select for a thick coat to protect the bison from the cold. And it just so happens that thick coats are heavy. And so evolution incidentally selects for thick coats for bison, and the tradeoff, if there is one, is to the bison's overall advantage. (I credit this analogy elsewhere, though I do not know its origins.)

 

And so this defeats evolutionary debunking arguments in the following way: 

 

*This theory predicts humans to be quite bad at arriving at metaphysical truths because possessing accurate metaphysical beliefs is only very incidentally selected for, and in some ways may be selected against (e.g. people who are overly concerned about truth will clash with the false beliefs of their tribes, potentially leading them to be casted out, losing access to the material resources the tribe provides). Sure enough, we are quite bad at arriving at metaphysical truth as seen by our rampant disagreement over metaphysical truth. So someone could arrive at true beliefs about the metaphysics of morality despite those truths not being selected for and even being selected against.

 

*Of course, this brings in a different, better argument against moral realism, which was already the main argument against moral realism: rampant and deep peer disagreement, and cultural disagreement, over a wide array of moral issues. But I'll set that aside for now and focus on evolutionary debunking.

 

*There are what we might call evolutionarily convenient beliefs (ECBs). These are beliefs like: I should get married, I should have children, I should promote marriage and having children to others, I should do all that I can to survive, I should do all that I can to help my children survive, and so on.

 

*While normally evolutionarily convenient beliefs would be worth doubting (because these beliefs may be caused by evolution and not caused by the truth of the belief interfacing with our ability to discover its truth), it would be silly to doubt self-evident truths like that pain is bad even if those self-evident beliefs are evolutionarily convenient.

 

*In general, if evolutionarily convenient beliefs have independent support, then you can lean on that support for justification. You can, for example, have children not because evolution commands it of you, but because you believe that this would maximize the happiness in the world and thus make the world a better place. You can take evolution's prodding as a recommendation, and then it's your own critical reflection on the goodness and badness of things that leads you to making your own decision to have children.

 

*The difference is that if someone were to ask you why you had children, if you did so purely out of instinct, you wouldn't be able to give much of an answer. But if you did so with purpose and principle in mind, then you would be able to give a sophisticated answer.

 

*There is objective good and bad in the sense that people can be just as mistaken about the goodness and badness of things as they can be mistaken about scientific facts.

 

*In fact, it’s even easier to see the truth of these value facts than it is to see the truth of scientific facts because the value facts are self-evident. If someone says that my pain does not have the qualities it does, then they are certainly incorrect.

 

*And if I base my morality on these value facts that are verified independently of evolution, then it’s not true as that my morality is based purely on evolutionarily convenient beliefs.

 

*Intrinsic goods and evils (i.e. value facts) are not intuitions, judgments, interpretations, evaluations, or theories – they are data. I agree with Sharon Rawlette that this makes sense of where we get our notion of badness from. That is, the theory that badness is evaluative and not data fails to explain how it's even possible that we would have a notion of badness in the first place. On the other hand, if we view badness as fundamentally phenomenal – and I believe we can directly see that intrinsic badness is phenomenal, that the badness of our pain is something directly experienced and not imposed as an evaluation on our experience – then this explains where we get our concept of badness from. Phenomenal goodness / badness is a precondition necessary for evaluations about the extrinsic goodness and badness of things. We couldn't evaluate anything as good or bad without that precondition.

*So evolutionary debunking arguments, just like in epistemic cases, do not work against self-evident beliefs, and the pain of a burn is self-evidently bad.

 

*Another option I see is to say that truth for basic facts like how to procure food, clothing shelter, and how to get along with your tribe, is actually not that fundamentally different from truth for more abstract facts like whether God exists. And so evolution, by selecting us to discover basic truths, actually does select us to discover more abstract truths. For example, because we are selected to care deeply about survival, and because our survival does not depend on God in any tangible way, and because we are selected to observe our environment, and we don't see God anywhere, we are selected to observe that God is apparently hidden. While peer disagreement would normally be an obvious counter to the idea that we are selected to grasp philosophical truths, even theists often admit that God is apparently hidden (or at least that God is more hidden than what we can imagine, or at least that it makes sense why someone who has yet to search for God would think that God is apparently hidden) and try to come up with theories as to why God would be apparently hidden in this way. The data of God's hiddenness cannot be ignored.

 

*I think you can, and should, give an evolutionary explanation for why there is intrinsic badness in the first place. Intrinsic badness leads to aversion behavior that increases survival. But note what's at stake here: whether our ECBs, including value and moral beliefs, should always be doubted. They should be doubted until we find reasons for thinking they are true independent of the evolutionary explanation. That is, if I have an alternative explanation for why I believe an ECB, then that could be the real explanation for why I believe the ECB. And if that explanation involves the truth of the ECB interfacing with my ability to discern its truth, then we have a truth-tracking explanation for my ECB. If the theory that my ECB is explained in this truth-tracking way is superior to the theory that my ECB is explained in a non-truth-tracking way, then the debunking argument fails. The origins of the reasoning process that allows us to discern truth must itself be best explained in a truth-tracking way. And it is: if we were terrible at interfacing with reality on the whole, then we wouldn't have survived. Plus, if we allow for self-authenticating beliefs, like self-evident beliefs, then it's self-evident that our reasoning process is truth-tracking at least in some cases.

56 Questions on Morality

1) Descriptive metaethics: What do people mean in general when they make claims about what is good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong, good or evil, okay or not okay, fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved, justified or unjustified, reasonable or unreasonable, obligatory or prohibited, blameless or blameworthy, supererogatory or non-supererogatory, a duty, a right, a responsibility, a moral failure or success, a moral mistake, faulty or sound moral reasoning, a moral truth or falsity, a moral fact or opinion, a virtue or vice, or what someone should or should not do?

2) Self-descriptive metaethics: What do you mean when you use the above moral terms and make claims using those terms?

3) Prescriptive metaethics: What should people mean when they use the above moral terms and make claims using those terms?

4) What does it mean for something to be good or bad? What is the good-maker of good things and the bad-maker of bad things?

5) What is well-being? What does it mean to live a good life?

6) Can goals be good or bad, better or worse? What should the ultimate goal of the human being be?

7) What does it mean for something to be objective or objectively true? (More generally: What does it mean for something to be true?) What does it mean for something to be subjective or subjectively true? What does it mean for something to be true in a relative sense versus true in an absolute sense? What does it mean for a truth or claim to be stance-independent or judgment independent? What is a stance or a judgment?

8) What is value? Are there facts about value? (Generally: What are facts?) Is value objective or subjective?

9) If there are judgment-independent value facts or moral facts, does this mean there are judgment-independent gustatory facts or aesthetic facts? Why or why not?

10) What are mistakes? Can someone be mistaken about what’s good or bad?

11) What is poor reasoning? Can someone exercise poor reasoning over what’s good and bad?

12) What is normativity?

13) What does ‘should’ and ‘ought’ mean?

14) Can we derive an ought from an is? Why or why not?

15) How does description differ from prescription?

16) What is a categorical imperative? What is a hypothetical imperative?

17) Is there a categorical imperative?

18) Is there an irreducible normative property? What would that look like?

19) Are moral claims meaningful? If yes, then what makes moral claims meaningful? (Generally: What does it mean for a statement to be meaningful?)

20) What are moral intuitions, and what role do they play in our moral theories? (Generally: What are intuitions, and what role do they play in our philosophical theories?)

21) Are moral intuitions data? Are our intrinsic goods and evils data? Why or why not?

22) How does moral normativity (what we ought to do) relate to epistemic normativity (what we ought to believe)?

23) What does it mean for something to be right or wrong? What is the right-maker of right actions and the wrong-maker of wrong actions?

24) Is there a difference between epistemic wrongness and moral wrongness? “The sun is smaller than the moon” is wrong. Killing a child for fun is wrong. Sending a person to prison for a crime they did not commit is wrong. Does ‘wrong’ mean the same thing in both cases?

25) Are there moral facts? If so, what are they?

26) Are there moral mistakes? Can someone be mistaken about what’s right or wrong?

27) Is morality objective or subjective?

28) Is there objectively good and bad moral reasoning? (Generally: Is there objectively good and bad reasoning?)

29) If there is moral knowledge, how do we obtain it? If there are moral facts, then how do we discover them? (Generally: If there is knowledge, how do we obtain it?)

30) Are there morally justified and unjustified actions?

31) What does it mean for an action to be justified, and how does that relate to holding a justified belief?

32) Are there external reasons, or are reasons only internal? (Generally: What are reasons?)

33) How can we tell whether a reason for acting is motivating versus justifying?

34) If someone has a reason to act, must they be motivated to act?

35) Are humans ultimately always motivated by their own pursuit of happiness? Does this make all humans implicit egoists? Is genuine altruism possible? If not, does this threaten the moral value of our actions? Why or why not?

36) What is the difference between moral reasoning and prudential reasoning?

37) How do reasons relate to moral justification?

38) Why be moral? Why be a good person? Why care about these things? How do these questions relate to the question: Why be rational?

39) What are rights?

40) Who has rights or should have them?

41) What are moral obligations? Who has them and when? How do we discover what our obligations are?

42) Which actions are supererogatory, and how can we tell?

43) How great should the moral burden we place on ourselves be? How hard should we strive to be moral, and why?

44) What is justice and injustice?

45) Does anybody deserve anything? What are just deserts? What does it mean to deserve something?

46) How does punishment relate to justice?

47) What is moral responsibility? How does it relate to blameworthiness, blamelessness, and free will?

48) What does it mean to be a moral agent or to have “agency”?

49) Is it possible to knowingly do what’s wrong? Or does everybody always do what they think in the moment is best, in some cases making highly conflicted choices, and in some cases coming to believe that they made the wrong choice?

50) What does it mean to forgive? When should we forgive or withhold forgiveness?

51) If actions are made wrong by something, what is it? Are they made wrong by their consequences, or by the nature of the actions themselves (e.g. a lack of good will behind the action), or by the viciousness of the kind of person who would engage in that kind of action? Or is it all of the above depending on context (pluralism)? Or is it something else (e.g. rationalism)?

52) Can we subsume moral concerns surrounding good will and treating people as ends unto themselves under consequences? Why or why not? 

53) What is virtue? What is vice? Are some actions knowably virtuous or knowably vicious? If so, how?

54) Can we subsume moral concerns surrounding virtue under consequences? Why or why not?

55) Where does morality come from? To what degree is morality selected for by evolution? In what ways, if any, is morality a social construct? Do debunking arguments give us reason to doubt the existence of moral facts, or to doubt the objectivity of morality?

56) How would a best Divine Command Theory—or any theistic metaethical system—spell out God’s relationship to goodness and badness, right and wrong, the objectivity of morality, God’s obligations—or lack thereof—toward creation, and God’s status as a moral agent?