Michael Almeida - "If you're unfree, your actions have no moral value."

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

I disagree. First, I'm not sure how 'moral value' is meant to differ from 'value.'

Here's one idea: Suppose a man commits adultery, and brags about it to his wife because he delights in her suffering. This man derives value from his evil actions, but he does not derive any moral value.

So we might say happiness is always valuable, but not always morally valuable, as in the case of evil happiness.

But this still leaves it mysterious as to what exactly moral value is. Are some kinds of happiness magically (inexplicably) better than other kinds?

I think we can explain why some kinds of happiness are better than others. We see how some kinds of happiness are evil because they are extrinsic evils.

Maybe Almeida is a Kantian? He might have in mind the Kantian idea that the only actions that have any moral value are those that come from a good will (which requires autonomy). I reject Kantianism for a variety of reasons, some of which I explain here: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2024/11/four-problems-with-kants-ethics.html.

So on my no free will view, our actions certainly can have value, and they can have moral value in the sense of lacking the extrinsic evils attached to evil actions.

Moral value could also refer to things that produce value pertaining to the enabling of moral actions. So rationality is morally valuable, because rationality is essential for the enabling of moral actions. Actions that build one's character are morally valuable, because having a virtuous character is essential for the enabling of moral actions. All of this is compatible on a no free will view.

One hundred thousand words! 🥳

I've reached 100,000 words on my blog. Woo! God willing, I will have written 1,000,000 words in no time :)

Argument against free will #5: intuition

Usually intuition is used to defend the idea that we must have free will. But my intuition points me in the opposite direction: I feel not free at all.

Certainly, at various junctures, I see that I have options. This is what I mean by ‘freedom’ – the ability to choose from among options. I can choose to get up now or sleep in. I can choose to have this or that for dinner. I can choose this or that major in college. But, as I’d argue, when I go to make a choice, I have no control over the ensuing deliberation process. It’s one thing to have options, and another thing entirely to be free in choosing one option over the others.

You’d think that I of all people would believe in free will. I quit my job to pursue my passion, when it would have been easier to just stay the course. What could be a greater expression of free will than that?

But I don’t feel the least bit free even in that. I didn’t choose to be cursed with ‘philosophy brain’, where philosophy problems plague me constantly. While it sounds simpler on paper to stay on the path that life has given you, doing so really would not have been easier for me at all. That would have been the greater agony.  

I feel like everything I’ve done I was forced to do. I was forced to be born, forced to do homework, forced to experience hunger, eat food, and so on. I was forced to be raised in a Christian home, which determined much of my psychology. Almost everything that I’ve ever done, I did it against my desire. That certainly feels unfree.

But even when I did act according to my desires, such as a desire to eat a particular food, I did not desire to have such a desire. If I had things my way, I would be perfectly healthy at all times without the need to eat anything. Certain desires are forced on us. I’m sure I’ve said things like “I want to go to sleep” or “I want to take a break” or “I want a coat.” But those are simplified statements. I want to not have to sleep, to not have to take breaks, and to not need a coat. So all my choices either go against my desires or my second-order desires. That feels unfree.

But then there are some things that are a part of my desires and second-order desires. I want to become a philosopher, and I want to want such a thing. My philosophy-oriented desires feel much deeper and a part of me than more basic desires. I want to be skilled in philosophy, and I don’t feel forced in that want in the same way I feel forced in more basic wants. And yet I do not feel free in these higher order wants either. While I do not actively want against these higher order wants, I still don’t feel as though I chose to have them. I see how my circumstances cause me to have the wants that I do.

Sometimes, simple melodies pop into my head, and I record them. I don’t choose for these melodies to pop into my head – they just do. (This is not a brag. They are very simple melodies.) I’m guessing it has to do with the structure of my brain. Likewise, I don’t choose to feel so haunted by philosophy questions – and to have so many questions and ideas pop into my head.

I don’t want against this – I quite like my simple melodies and my philosophical ruminations. But I don’t feel in control in the slightest of any of it.

I didn’t choose to be a biological creature with survival instincts, or to be born on a planet like ours, or in a universe that works the way this one does, or to be born in a place governed by the laws of biology, evolution, competition, survival of the fittest, and all the sociological and psychological laws that follow, such as tribalism, terror management, psychoanalysis, ego, fear and anxiety, social pressures, gendered social pressures, and so on. I didn’t choose to be as ignorant as I am or to be ensconced by the ignorance of my species. I didn’t choose the year I was born in, the culture and language I was born into, the values and beliefs and confidences of those around me, nor my sensitivity or insensitivity to those social pressures. Not a single feature of our universe or of human nature was up to me.

I didn’t choose, I didn’t choose, I didn’t choose. By the time you get to the things I did choose, it’s pathetic how predictable my choices were given all that I was saddled with. We are extraordinarily complex and specific algorithms programmed by extraordinarily complex and specific inputs. And yet, despite the complexity, it’s often fairly easy to tell the psychoanalytic story as to why this person is this way or why that person made that choice, as long as you have enough biographical and biological information to work with. Everything we did, and every way we were, we can explain via evolution, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, science, biology, neurology, etc.

We are sculpted by the inputs of our genetics and environment and chiseled into shape – and we did not choose the chisels. We are souls along for the ride, like plankton in the water, just particles smashing together in strange ways, witnessing how our brains, shaped by inputs not up to us, interact with our environment.

When people say – and so many people say this – that we feel radically free or self-evidently free, or that our sense of free will is so powerful that we have no choice but to live as if we have free will – that everyone can’t help but see themselves as the author of their choices – I want to ask these folks: Do you really feel this way? Why? I don’t feel free in the slightest.

I understand the feeling of having options, as discussed, and I can even grant the sense that my choices come from me. In those ways, I understand perfectly why people say they feel free. But, as explained, having options alone does nothing to establish free will, and while my choices might come from me in a shallow sense, in a much deeper sense they don’t come from me at all, and really I am just experiencing my brain calculating things as best it can – trying to make the choices that will optimize my life (often failing along the way).

What’s funny is that a pro-free will person must say that I am wrong. In my incorrectness, I am stupid or irrational or ignorant or dishonest or confused or possessing some other kind of epistemic flaw, or some combination thereof. But even they must admit that, obviously, I did not choose to be wrong, or stupid, or irrational, or ignorant, or dishonest, or confused, or possessing some other kind of epistemic flaw, or any combination thereof. At least, it’s self-evident to me that I chose none of these things for myself. The introspection I'm supposed to use to see that I am the author of my own choices I use to see that I am not the author of my own qualities, which determine my choices.

And if the reverse holds true and I am within my epistemic rights to hold the views I do, then that wasn't up to me either, and I take no credit for whatever virtues my circumstances happened to bestow upon me.

Five Reasons to Love Philosophy

I love philosophy 🥰 

here are five reasons why:

1) Catharsis

Writing philosophy allows me to get things off my chest. Without doing that, all those words would be weighing me down. I'm nearly at 100,000 words on the blog -- thank goodness I'm not trying to hold all those words in! There's great relief in unloading my brain and getting it out in writing.

2) Trail of learning

Certainly I will get things wrong. Hopefully I will have a chance to correct my mistakes and leave behind a record of the evolution of my thinking. How cool that philosophy lets me do that! Then, if anyone wonders why I changed my mind, I can show them.

3) Cultivating intellectual virtues

I hate to say it, but I feel like a lot of normal jobs fail to cultivate any virtues in their workers. If anything, most jobs cultivate various vices instead. When I worked a 9-5 office job, I certainly noticed this being true of me, which was one of the many reasons I quit to pursue something I'm passionate about. I was surprised to discover how much my worldview was affected by my job, and I was sad to see how cynical and bitter I was becoming. It makes sense: you have a choice to line up your beliefs with your work or not. If you don't, you will be miserable working a job you don't believe in. But if you do, then your beliefs will be shaped by the culture of your job, for better or worse. Corporate culture is pretty awful.

Only a fool would quit their job to pursue philosophy, but I love philosophy so much that I realized I'd be happy to die trying and miserable to live having never tried at all.

Not only do the intellectual virtues of curiosity, bravery, discipline, and so on, make you a better person, but they make you a deeper, more interesting person too. Being well-read gives you something interesting to say on interesting topics.

4) Never-ending content

Philosophy is so big! There's always another question to explore. Even if I get tired or stuck on one topic, I can work on another area and come back to it later.

5) Legacy

No offense to the chefs of the world, but I'd hate to be a chef! All that work and it doesn't last a day. I'd have to do a cooking show or something. I deeply appreciate art's ability to capture time and to outlive the artist. Your philosophy gives you something to leave behind, allowing you to provide value from beyond the grave, and make a more permanent mark on the world. I know how much I've benefited from reading past philosophers. It's a beautiful thought that I could have a similar effect on someone from the future.

Argument against free will #4: deliberation

1) For our choices to be free, we must be in control of our deliberation process.

2) We are not in control of our deliberation process.

3) So, our choices are not free.

Why think 1? When we introspect, we see ourselves making choices. Certainly, choices are being made, but I have a question over who or what is making these choices. If the deliberation process takes place entirely within our brains, and our experiences of witnessing ourselves make choices is really just us witnessing our brains resolving calculations, then choice is an illusion, as it's not us that's making the choice, but our brain that chooses and generates within us the misleading sensation of the choice coming from us. Call this view automatism.

If automatism is true, then we are not in control of our choices. But if automatism is false, we are still not in control of our choices. Even if the pure subject causes its choices, that causal story has a context involving all sorts of factors that we have no control over. Our deliberation process depends on our intelligence, genetics, epigenetics, quality of education, access to educational resources, beliefs, values, desires, second-order desires, rationality, sensitivity to reasons, psychology, social pressures, time constraints, and so on. We do not have control over our intelligence, genetics, epigenetics, quality of education, access to educational resources, beliefs, values, desires, second-order desires, rationality, sensitivity to reasons, psychology, social pressures, time constraints, and so on. So, we do not have control over our deliberation processes. So, we have no control over the conclusion of our deliberation processes. So, we have no control over our choices. 

Most importantly, most painfully, and most obviously, we do not choose our intelligence, and we do not choose our time constraints. Even with full access to accurate information, if our intelligence is not high enough to absorb it and synthesize it in time to make a well-informed choice, then the resulting low quality of our choice is not our fault. And if we do have plenty of intelligence and/or time to absorb and synthesize accurate information to make a well-informed choice in time, then that's not our fault either.

Argument against free will #3: pure subjectivity

My modern philosophy title: On the Fair Moral Praise and Blame of Pure Subjects

1) If we are pure subjects, then we have no free will.

2) We are pure subjects.

3) Therefore, we have no free will.

Why think (2)? Because it fits with our intuitions:

Define the soul / self / person / you / me as the pure subject. Pure subjects have many things without being those things. I have hands (here is one, and here is another), I have a face, a brain, a body, thoughts, memories, feelings, beliefs, a worldview, dispositions, desires, second-order desires, intelligence, subconsciousness, memories, emotions, experiences, a first-person perspective, a field of vision, perceptions, powers, traumas, a psychology (a psychoanalytic story), a causal history, mental illnesses, values, convictions, virtues, vices, habits, hopes, dreams, successes, failures, fears, possessions, and on and on and on and on. I have these things, but I am not these things. I am not the sum of these things nor any combination of these things. I am me, a pure subject who experiences having all these things.

Separate out consciousness from the subject, who has conscious experiences, but is not the same thing as the quality of their consciousness. If your consciousness is dim, such as when you are half asleep, or drunk, or in an altered state through medication or psychedelics, the subjectivity remains. Your consciousness, and everything else, is something that happens to you. You are the subject of your consciousness.

Imagine a man who is very good at math. There is a quality (the suchness or what-it-is-like-ness) to this man's consciousness. When he does math, the phenomenal quality is different compared to the phenomenal quality of an average person doing math. 

Now imagine this man getting into an accident and sustaining brain damage. He can no longer do math. The quality of his consciousness has changed, but his subjectivity remains. He remains. So subjectivity and consciousness come apart.

Another example: With dementia patients, the subject remains the same, but the quality of the phenomenal consciousness changes, and declines.

Why think (1)? We can identify the following kinds of blame:

Causal blame = X caused Y. X is to blame for Y.

Maybe the pure subject causes its thoughts and choices. If not, then automatism is true and the feeling of choice is an illusion. Our brain chooses and our brain generates misleading thoughts of us having made a choice, when all we are doing is witnessing our brain make choices.

I'll assume automatism is false and we do in fact cause our choices. It doesn't matter, because we don't cause anything in any morally relevant way.

Moral blame = X caused Y in such a way that X's causing Y says something morally meaningful about X. X is to blame for Y and this is morally significant.

To see the difference, imagine an infant knocking over a vase and causing it to break. The infant is to blame for breaking the vase, but this is not morally significant. When the dog bites, when the bee stings, or when the python crushes its prey, these things are to blame for the events they cause, but there is nothing morally interesting about this.

I'm convinced of rationalism, which says morality is intimately connected to reason and rationality. Things that lack rationality will lack morality.

Now imagine an adult breaking a vase in a fit of rage. Now the human is to blame for breaking the vase in a morally significant way. It says something about their character, namely that they cannot recognize the reasons for not letting their temper get the best for them. Or, they do recognize these reasons and disregard them.

However, this is morally significant in one sense, but not another. It's morally significant in the sense that we see the virtue of the person, which answers the question "What kind of person is he?" Because morality is intimately connected to rationality, that which reveals someone's rationality, or their virtue (or lack thereof) is morally significant in the sense of the moral quality of this person. But the subject, the person per se, is not to blame for causing this quality in themselves. They are a victim of their quality. Moral qualities are like qualities of rationality, intelligence, skin color, and what have you -- not up to the person.

Just deserts blame = X deserves to be punished for causing Y.

When we say something is at fault or responsible for a crime, we immediately follow that up with they should be punished (assuming we agree with the law). But there are wrongs for which we morally blame the perpetrator but do not necessarily think state-sponsored punishment is appropriate. Adultery, for example. We might think that someone ought to be socially punished for adultery, which is often what happens. We can give a consequentialist analysis of justice that does not depend on natural rights.

Criticizing blame = X has poor quality.

Morality comes from rationality, and rationality is a matter of quality. So morality is a quality. A good person is like an attractive person, a tall person, or a smart person. No one chooses their genetics or intelligence, and no one chooses to be morally good or bad. They just are that way. So it's not exactly the case that there is no moral evil, it's just that moral evil is a kind of natural evil like ignorance or stupidity.

The truth seeker objection against moral anti-realism

Russ Shafer-Landau states the following: 

". . . among those who have thought longest and hardest about ethics, the view that morality is all make-believe, or that all moral standards are correct only relative to individuals or societies, is deeply controversial. There are lots of problems with such views. Some of these problems may be devastating." (The Fundamentals of Ethics, 5th ed., pg 3)

I suggest that some of these problems are devastating.

One problem for anti-realism is what I call the "truth seeker objection".

1. If anti-realism is true, then a virtuous, intellectually virtuous, smart, well-informed, genuine truth seeker who limits his behavior to the facts could, in theory, commit a mass shooting and be perfectly within his epistemic rights in doing so, not expressing any kind of irrationality, poor reasoning, lapse of judgment, psychological flaw, or lack of knowledge of any kind. 
2. There's no way that a virtuous, intellectually virtuous, smart, well-informed, fully rational, genuine truth seeker who limits his behavior to the facts could, in theory, commit a mass shooting and be perfectly within his epistemic rights in doing so, not expressing any kind of irrationality, poor reasoning, lapse of judgment, psychological flaw, or lack of knowledge of any kind.
3. Therefore, there's no way anti-realism is true. (modus tollens)

Put another way, if God came to Earth and transformed into a swan and raped a woman, or, to give an even more extreme example, if God were to send everyone to hell, this would not reflect poorly on God's character in any real way if anti-realism is true. God, knowing all facts, would see that there are no moral facts and could thus, within his perfect rationality, engage in the worst atrocities we can think of and there would be no fact of the matter that would render God in any way disconnected from reality or acting contrary to reality.

This is, like Michael Huemer would say, insane. Nothing could be more obvious in all of philosophy than the fact that people who engage in mass shootings are in some sense disconnected from reality or are irrational in some way.

However, Russ Shafer-Landau also says:

"There is no quick, knockdown argument that will demolish ethical objectivism. Nor is there any short and sweet proof of its truth. . . . Those who think that ethical objectivism is obviously false, or just as obviously correct, have simply gotten it wrong. Matters here, as elsewhere in ethics, are too challenging to admit of pat and easy solutions." (364)

Part of me thinks morality is obviously, and sometimes I even feel, certainly, objective. So what could it take to convince me that morality is not objective?

One avenue is through etiquette. I think relativity or error theory is true with respect to certain beliefs people have that are driven by social pressures (a good example is beliefs that have to do with gendered roles, gendered shame, social failures of meeting false or intersubjective standards of masculinity/femininity, and things like that). If someone can show that there is no relevant difference between etiquette beliefs and other key moral beliefs, then that would defeat my moral realism. The problem there is that I will argue that there are relevant differences between mere etiquette beliefs and more robust moral beliefs ("You ought not commit a mass shooting" is relevantly different from "You ought not wear a dress as a man", it seems to me).

Another avenue is more fundamental. Some people believe that logic is purely conventional and reflective of human psychology. If philosophy is grounded in a priori reasoning, and if a priori reasoning is grounded in human psychology, then philosophy is grounded in human psychology. If you can show that a certain fundamental skepticism is justified on the basis that all human knowledge is hopelessly constrained by limits of human intelligence and psychology, and that not a single thing we take to know in science or elsewhere is true in any meaningful sense outside of our human idea of truth, then you will have destroyed all sense of fact, and with it moral facts. So extreme skepticism -> moral skepticism is one option -- a nuclear option -- for establishing anti-realism. But if you open up the door to critical thinking and a priori knowledge, then you open up the door to critical thinking as applied to ethical contexts.

A third avenue is to deflate moral realism. This would be to admit that moral realism is true and we have moral knowledge of some very basic moral facts, but once moral dilemmas get into any real complicated territory (which is basically all moral dilemmas we face in real life), the fact that reasonable people can disagree shows that there's no accessible fact of the matter (or really, the fact becomes that it's rational to either phi or not-phi in that case). If so many moral dilemmas end in a "draw" then it's hard to see how morality is objective in any really useful way.

My response to this is that given the complexity of life, science, and discovering truth in general, we shouldn't be remotely surprised that morally complex situations demand serious time and effort to come to a well-reasoned and confident position. For a person to come to a well-informed, well-reasoned, confident position on any advanced topic in philosophy takes serious time and effort.

The problem is that when moral dilemmas arrive, you don't have that kind of time to resolve the issue at hand, unless you hire a bunch of philosophers to give you their analysis, but even then you risk getting pulled in different directions. Still, getting their input would help you come to your own resolution, and it's nice to know there are smart folks who agree with you and would, in theory, be willing to testify on your behalf as an expert witness. (Has a philosopher ever done that?)

At the very least, if you gave philosophers your initial thoughts, they could provide some invaluable constructive criticism of your reasoning and help steer you into a better plan of action, or bring out points in your defense, increasing your confidence.

Just as it's silly to expect for a single person to solve any sufficiently complex problem by themselves when it comes to any typical area of expertise, it's silly to expect for a single person to come to a confident answer to any sufficiently complex moral problem without significant help from many other thinkers.

They say there's building something cheap, fast, and well, and you can only pick two -- and I think that principle applies to philosophy in a way.

Another way I'd respond is that it's powerful enough to have moral facts over the basic or "trivial" cases, because all too often humans fail to act according to even the most basic and obvious of moral facts.

Argument against free will #2: process of elimination

[Disclaimer: this post simplifies things. I'm aware there are libertarians who believe we need both leeway and sourcehood freedom. There are libertarians who emphasize sourcehood over leeway freedom. And there are compatibilists who focus on leeway freedom, giving a compatibilist analysis of leeway freedom. I'm aware there are positions on free will other than the three discussed.]

1) Either libertarianism is true, compatibilism is true, or free will skepticism is true. (Premise 1)

2) Libertarianism is not true. (Premise 2)

3) Compatibilism is not true. (Premise 3)

4) Therefore, free will skepticism is true. (disjunctive syllogism)

Why think libertarianism is true? Libertarians believe we need leeway freedom to have free will. Leeway freedom is the ability to do otherwise. Why think we need leeway freedom for free will? Because we apply ‘should’ and ‘ought’ statements to those things we believe could have been done otherwise. If something could not have acted other than it did, then it’s forced to do what it did, and thus it makes no sense to blame it for doing what it had no choice but to do. If determinism is true, then we cannot act other than we do, and thus ‘should’ and ‘ought’ statements cannot be rightly applied to us. And yet, we feel as though ‘should’ and ‘ought’ statements can rightly be applied to us. So determinism must be false.

I reject ‘ought implies can’ and here is why: When we deliberate, we evaluate reasons to select a choice and reject competing choices. We use criteria to perform this evaluation. We imagine various outcomes, and upon seeing which outcome is the best, we make our choice on that basis. We weigh reasons to select one choice over the other, and we use language like ‘should’ and ‘ought’ to describe the phenomenon of when reasons for one choice outweigh reasons for another choice. ‘Shoulds’ are comparative betters.

When we imagine non-human animals, human infants, or natural disasters wreaking havoc upon the world, we cannot empathize with them; or when we empathize with them, we do not see them deliberating like we do. But when we imagine a teenager or an adult human, someone like us and thus imaginably capable of reasoning like us, it’s easy for us to empathize with them and to imagine us being in their situation. We see how we would deliberate and would have chosen differently than they did. When we say, “He shouldn’t have done that,” we are saying “The reasons for doing that are outweighed by the reasons to refrain from doing that,” and given our recognition of how the reasons stack up, we see how we would have chosen differently. Our sense of blame arises from the sense that the person we are blaming is poor at recognizing reasons, or recognizes reasons but ignores them, which is irrational. Our blame really is a kind of criticism – a recognition of a person's lack of quality in certain respects.

There is another reason to think the libertarian analysis of free will is mistaken. Imagine that someone acts with constraints: a man commits murder because if he doesn’t, his family will be killed. Now imagine the same person acting without constraints: the person commits murder for the fun of it. Even if the actions are determined, if they still find their source in the person who committed the actions, then that tells us something morally significant about that person.

This is why some compatibilists want to set leeway freedom aside and focus on sourcehood freedom instead. As long as you are the source of your actions, then even if you are determined, we can still see a moral difference between acting unconstrained and acting according to who you are.

Different compatibilists offer different senses in which we act according to who we are.[*1] Classical compatibilists, like David Hume, said that to act freely is to act according to your desires. But this demands an obvious question: Am I free to desire as I do? Do my desires really reveal anything morally significant about me, or do they merely speak to the circumstances that instilled my desires?

Frank Jackson suggests that it’s our second-order desires that reveal who we are. If we not only desire to perform an action, but we approve of our desire or desire our desire, then that shows what kind of person we are by those actions. But, obviously, again this simply pushes the problem back a step. Did I choose to desire what I desire, or did my circumstances cultivate my second-order desires?

There are other compatibilist conditions of freedom, such as John Martin Fischer’s reasons sensitivity (if you act according to your own reasoning, then your actions speak to who you are) or Susan Wolf’s moral standards condition (if you act according to your own determination of right and wrong, then your actions speak to who you are). But I suggest that for any compatibilist condition of freedom, that condition is always kicking the can down the road. While my actions might reveal that I am not reasonable or that I have poor moral standards, and if my actions are grounded in my character, it’s never the case that I chose to be unreasonable or chose to have poor moral standards.

While I accept the compatibilist insight that unconstrained actions tell us about the quality of a person, it’s never fair to blame the person for choosing to have that quality, because we don't choose to have the qualities we do; we simply have them. As Derk Pereboom says:

. . . an agent could be considered morally responsible if it is legitimate to expect her to respond to such questions as: “Why did you decide to do that? Do you think it was the right thing to do?” and to evaluate critically what her decisions and actions indicate about her moral character. . . . But while this “legitimately called to moral improvement” notion may be a bona fide sense of moral responsibility, it is not the one at issue in the free will debate. For incompatibilists would not find our being morally responsible in this sense to be even prima facie incompatible with determinism. The notion that incompatibilists do claim to be at odds with determinism is rather the one defined in terms of basic desert. [*2]

Do we deserve praise or blame for our actions? That’s what’s at stake. And while our actions (or our qualities) can, and should, be praised or blamed for their goodness or badness in the sense of admiration or criticism, we cannot be fairly blamed or praised for our actions (or our qualities) because our actions (or our qualities) are not up to us. Derk Pereboom has advanced manipulation arguments to show how we can grant any and all compatibilist conditions of freedom and yet imagine scenarios where it’s clearly a mistake to blame the person for their action, because whether the condition of freedom is met is not up to the agent.

One version of the manipulation argument, the Zygote Argument, comes from Alfred Mele[*3]. With my own gloss on the argument: A goddess casts a spell on a zygote so that whoever the zygote becomes will necessarily have certain desires, second-order desires, sensitivity to reasons, moral standards, values, beliefs, dispositions – whatever conditions of freedom that a compatibilist could want. The resulting man born from the zygote makes choices according to his nature, and by compatibilist standards the man himself can be praised or blamed, as he is the source of his actions in a morally significant way. And yet clearly the man is not the source of his actions in a morally significant way. It’s not the man’s fault that he has the values, beliefs, dispositions, etc., that he does, and so it’s not his fault that he acts according to those conditions. The fault lies with that which caused the man to have the qualities he does – in this case the goddess. But there is no relevant difference between the goddess causing your values, beliefs, dispositions, etc., and your circumstances (genetics, brain structure, social influences, etc.) causing them.

I grant that the man’s traits have lower or higher qualities compared to someone else’s traits – that kind of criticizing blame is not at issue. What’s at issue is moral blame – whether we can fairly blame or praise the person for being the source of their actions. But clearly it’s not fair to blame or praise the person as the source of their actions when the conditions of sourcehood, such as desires, sensitivity to reasons, and so on, are themselves forced upon the person.

---

[*1] - Cf. Alyssa Ney, Metaphysics, 341.

[*2] - Derk Pereboom, Four Views on Free Will, 86.

[*3] - Cf. Alyssa Ney, 346.

Four avenues into free will

It seems to me that there are four ways to approach free will:

1) From modality. This is the standard approach to free will. We investigate whether determinism or indeterminism is true, and then we investigate whether determinism or indeterminism is compatible or incompatible with free will.

I don't like this approach, certainly not by itself. As far as I'm concerned, free will should be defined as the control over our actions necessary for fair praise and blame of the person per se. I find it hard to care about morally neutral actions, and I wonder whether there are any morally neutral actions (even something as mundane as tying your shoelaces could be thought of as morally positive because doing so enables you to play with your school friends which maximizes your flourishing, and maximizing flourishing is the moral thing to do).

Immediately that calls for disambiguations of 'praise', 'blame', and 'person,' and 'moral responsibility.' Moral responsibility is the test for free will. If we have free will, then we will have moral responsibility. Thus, if we do not have moral responsibility, we don't have free will. I'm aware that Derk Pereboom and John Martin Fischer say that moral responsibility and blameworthiness can come apart. I cannot make sense of that, unless you are using 'moral responsibility' to mean something like 'Acting in such a way so as to reveal your lack of quality in a morally relevant respect' which really means 'Acting in such a way so as to reveal your irrationality and/or ignorance of moral facts.' I'm happy to grant we have that moral responsibility, which we can call critical blame, but I do not grant that we choose to have the lack (or presence) of quality we do; we do not choose our rationality or knowledge. We simply have the qualities we do, and it's never up to us whether we have those qualities.

Put bluntly, blaming someone for being morally stupid is as mistaken as blaming someone for being stupid. Certainly, we critically blame people for their stupidity, but it's not fair to morally blame them. Put another way, we can certainly attribute badness to someone's stupidity, but we cannot attribute choice to the person for their stupidity. No one chooses to be the way they are, they simply are that way, and our choices come from the way we are. We choose our choices, but only in a way that speaks to the luck of the subject, not the quality of the subject (i.e., subjects are victims of their quality).

2) From personhood. This is where we explore what it means to be a person. If we are to blame persons, then obviously we need to get clear on what it is exactly that we are blaming.

3) From metaethics. This is where we explore what it means to be a good person. If we are to blame persons, then obviously we need to get clear on exactly what it means to blame something. What are we talking about when we are talking about moral responsibility? I identify different ways in which we use 'blame':

Causal blame = X caused Y.

Moral blame = X caused Y in such a way that X's causing Y says something meaningful about X per se and not just X's circumstances.

Desert blame = X caused Y in such a way that X per se deserves to be punished, rewarded, praised, or blamed for causing Y. [Likely subsumed within moral blame]

Critical blame = Just as we might praise something for having good qualities it did not choose (e.g., praising someone for having good genetics), we blame (or criticize) things for having bad qualities they did not choose.

4) From science. For example, the Benjamin Libet experiment has been used to try to show that we lack free will. I vaguely recall one experimenter saying that we do not have free will (the ability to control our initial desires), but we do have 'free won't', which is the ability to veto our initial desires.

ChatGPT gives me 20 philosophy questions

I asked ChatGPT to toss me 20 Phil questions. I did not ask it to answer any of them, so I don't know how similar or different my answers are to ChatGPT's answers.

1) What is the nature of happiness, and can it truly be achieved?

'Happiness' is used in at least three different ways: 

Happiness is a specific emotion, like elation or excitement. 

Happiness is a state of contentment, a lack of desire, and does not have a feeling to it.

Happiness is any positive feeling.

When you talk about happiness as if it's something to be achieved, I think you mean contentment, especially contentment over one's life as a whole. I once made a post about depression in 25 questions. There are at least 25 major areas of life, like our job, our social life, etc., and we can rate our contentment on all these areas. There are some lucky ducks out there who score high on all these areas, and these people have achieved true happiness.

We can simplify that list to the following: 1) Have a dream. 2) Get paid to follow that dream. 3) Be good at that dream job.

2) Is there such a thing as objective morality, or is all morality subjective?

Absolutely morality is objective. Rationality is objective. Some beliefs are more rational than others. There are objectively good reasons to believe the Earth is round. There are no good reasons to believe the Earth is flat. There are objectively good reasons to believe that you ought not go around stabbing people. There are no good reasons to believe that you should go around stabbing people. Moral facts are no spookier than epistemic facts.

3) Do humans have free will, or is everything determined?

Humans do not have free will. Neither does God. Free will is metaphysically impossible. See my posts on free will. Importantly, embracing the view that there is no free will does not entail all the disastrous consequences that so many people mistakenly believe it does.

4) What is the purpose of art, and does it need a purpose?

Art is entertaining, educational, therapeutic, and probably a hundred other things. Most of the time, creating and consuming art staves off boredom. It also helps you achieve social success (being good at an instrument is seen as cool) and is cathartic, both creatively and emotionally (i.e. the creative impulse wells up and wants to get out... same with emotions).

5) Can something truly be infinite, or is infinity only a concept?

Michael Huemer would get grumpy at this question. The concept of infinity is a concept. Infinity is not a concept. Mathematics uses infinities all the time without trouble. Set theory uses different sizes of infinity. Sometimes decision theory uses infinites, although things get a bit weird there. (I guess infinity tends to make things weird wherever it's found.) William Lane Craig likes to say there are only ever potential infinites, never any actual infinites. I suppose I used to agree with Craig, but Craig's views have come under a lot of scrutiny. But I haven't yet done a deep dive on infinity. I'm aware that Huemer, Oppy, and Pruss have books on the topic.

6) Is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty?

Absolutely. Yo mama is so fat, that even the skeptics are like "Okay yeah we know that one." jk :3

I'm certain that other minds exist, that things other than me exist (i.e. there is an external world), and that I exist. I'm certain of various logical truths. For example, it is certainly the case that you cannot discover the truth that truths cannot be discovered.

7) What does it mean to live a good life?

If someone lived with all their desires fulfilled, then subjectively they lived a good life. But we don't want to say that someone lived a good life if they had evil desires. I think having evil desires is a kind of suffering. So to live a good life is to live a life full of flourishing. This is similar to Aristotle's idea of eudaimonia. Flourishing is basically happiness + other ingredients to prevent the happiness from being evil or lesser.

8) Are humans inherently selfish or altruistic by nature?

Humans are inherently motivated by the desire to maximize happiness and minimize pain. That sounds selfish, but 'selfish' carries a negative connotation that it needn't always carry. We always follow our desires, but we can have truly altruistic desires. So we always act in self-interest, but acting in self-interest can be very morally good. If making you happy makes me happy, then I have an altruistic desire.

9) Is time an illusion, or does it exist independently of our perception?

You can try ignoring time. Go ahead and try for a few minutes and get back to me.

10) What is the relationship between mind and body?

I like to think that I am a mind that has a body. Or maybe I am a pure subject that has a mind and a body. I take a class on mind next semester (hype!).

I definitely accept aspect dualism. We cannot dispense with mental, first-person properties.

11) Do non-human animals have consciousness similar to humans?

I think many animals have souls / selves. I'm basically certain that my cat has a soul.

12) Does life have inherent meaning, or do we create our own meaning?

Life has objective meaning in the sense that choosing to live is not irrational. There are objectively good reasons to live. Put another way, one is within their epistemic rights when they choose to live. Put another way, some measurably highly rational people are attracted to living.

13) Can artificial intelligence ever possess consciousness or moral agency?

I doubt it. I'm not sure how it's possible for us to possess consciousness.

14) Are emotions more powerful than reason in decision-making?

Maybe reasoning is a kind of emotion, in which case this question makes no sense. Some people do have strong emotions, and they fail to stop and wonder whether their strong feelings are justified.

15) If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If by 'sound' you mean something phenomenal, then no. If by 'sound' you mean something physical, then yes.

16) Should we prioritize the rights of individuals or the welfare of the group?

We should prioritize the rights of individuals who score high on logic tests ;)

Maybe one specific scenario where this comes up is end of life care. Do we prioritize the right to life of elderly, senile, terminal, dying patients, or do we euthanize them for the convenience of hospitals and families?

I've heard a statistic that the last week of medical care before a patient dies costs $100,000, money that could have gone to the grandchildren to put them through college and get them a headstart on life. At some point we need to ask: What's more important, a grandchild being set up for their dream life instead of being forced to worry about money and waste their time and focus on random jobs to pay the way, or for the grandparent to live another week or month thanks to healthcare?

17) Can something be both true and false at the same time?

No. Liar paradoxes and paradoxes of law do not impress me.

18) Is beauty an objective quality, or is it entirely subjective?

Phenomenal beauty (the experience of aesthetic satisfaction) is subjective by definition. But often beauty is attached to success. A goal, home run, or hole in one is beautiful. Whether someone has made a goal, a home run, or a hole in one is objective. It's an objective fact that if I drew a stick figure and showed it around, no one would be impressed. But if I drew something beautiful, it would impress some people.

Though, now that I think of it, if someone were to practice the same shot thousands and thousands of times, and finally got a hole in one, would that hole in one be beautiful or sad? It's beautiful to accomplish such a feat, but sad to waste so much time on it (or, sad to care so much about something that might not be worth caring that much about).

Things I associate with beauty: success, survival, power, size, range of influence, coherence, balance, harmony, order, simplicity (no waste), complexity (depth), understanding, command, purpose.

Things I associate with ugliness: failure, death, weakness, smallness, inconsequentiality, imbalance, disharmony, disorganization, superfluousness, shallowness, ignorance, behind, pointlessness.

Given the coherence of the themes here, that suggests there is a real quality to beauty that causes us to feel the way we do about beauty.

19) Do numbers exist independently of human thought, or are they purely inventions?

We cannot dispense with numerical properties in the way we can with fictional properties.

20) Is it ethical to use technology to enhance human capabilities beyond natural limits?

What are the consequences of this technology? Does this technology treat people as means to an end? What does using this technology say about the kinds of people we are?

Argument against free will #1: doxastic involuntarism

1) If we have control over our actions, then we have control over our beliefs. Our actions crucially depend on what we believe. 

2) We have no control over our beliefs. Whether something makes sense to us, or does not make sense to us, is a function of our intelligence, knowledge, bias, access to information, time and life space to digest information, social influences, etc. We have no control over our intelligence, knowledge, bias, access to information, time and life space to digest information, social influences, etc. 

We have no control over our beliefs about whether we should challenge our beliefs, investigate them, or how we should go about doing so. Investigating one's beliefs requires humility, and we have no control over our humility. We have no control over our arrogance, or humility, expressed by our excessive confidence, or lack thereof, in our beliefs. We have no control over whether we believe we are, or are not, arrogant in our beliefs.

3) Therefore, we have no control over our actions. (modus tollens)

Notable quotes: Brennan Lee Mulligan

"Have you ever tried to write? It's the saddest, hardest, worst thing in the world."

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SwZaf1riarQ

Is genocide worse than anthropocide?

Here's an intuitive idea: It's bad to murder one person. It's even worse to murder two people. It's worse still to murder three people. And so on, until you arrive at the worst form of murder: genocide, which is the systematic killing of a group of people, usually based on religion and/or race.

If one genocide is bad, then two genocides is worse, and so on. But what if you committed genocide against all groups of people? That would be anthropocide, the killing of all humanity.

Clearly then, anthropocide is basically the single most evil thing that someone can do, short of throwing everyone in hell and torturing them forever.

(As an aside, I feel like torturing a single person for eternity is worse than anthropocide, because the former is an actual infinite of intrinsic badness while the latter is not.)

Anthropocide is clearly far worse than genocide. And yet, if someone did commit anthropocide and instantly and painlessly killed everyone by pressing The Button, no one would know. No one would know and no one would ever find out or care, assuming there is no afterlife.

In the case of genocide, however, many people go through the hellishness of that experience, and the survivors and families are traumatized. To a lesser extent, everyone who hears about what happened is haunted by the genocide too. 

Genocide purely adds to the problems of humanity, but anthropocide, technically, solves all of humanity's problems forever. So how is anthropocide worse than genocide?

Maybe this is just the old Epicurus argument against the badness of death in disguise. When death isn't here, there is no death to be feared. When death is here, there is no me to fear it. So whence the fear of death? Or put another way: When death isn't here, there is no death to harm us. When death is here, there is no us to be harmed. So whence the harm of death?

Alex Pruss suggests there are distributive goods and bads. [https://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-epicurean-argument-on-death.html] 

These are goods and evils that cannot be located at a particular time, but nonetheless appear over a stretch of time or over one's life as a whole. I suggest that harms involve the loss of flourishing, while being impoverished is to have never flourished in the first place. The unborn are impoverished (assuming they would have lived a good life), but the unborn are not harmed by not being born. But it might sound strange to say impoverishment is not a harm. But it seems to me worse to lose something than to never have it in the first place (notwithstanding the common wisdom that "it's better to have loved and lost"). I suppose it depends on context: How painful is it to lose the thing in question versus how good was it to have it for a time?

In the case of one's life, it's not painful at all to lose your life because you have no conscious awareness of being dead. The badness of loss is realized when the loss is consciously experienced. 

If impoverishment is not a bad thing, then it's mysterious why God would create people. Presumably, God creates to maximize flourishing. But that implies that had God created nothing, the world would be a worse world compared to the one where God does create. You might say that God has options to create from a variety of perfect worlds. Perhaps one perfect world is one in which God creates nothing, and another is one in which God does create people. Maybe God, in his perfection, must create all perfect worlds, and so we live in a multiverse (Klaas Kraay's arguments to this effect come to mind).

Setting God aside, if impoverishment (i.e. a lack of flourishing) is not bad, then why would couples ever have kids? Presumably, couples have kids to maximize flourishing. This allows us to say that even though death or not-being-born are not experienced, they are still bad in the sense that their badness generates reasons for reasonable creatures to act according to those reasons.

I want to say badness must cash out eventually in terms of conscious experience, but maybe badness instead is anything that generates reasons in a fully rational person to avoid, disable, prevent, cure, or otherwise act against the badness in question. Bad conscious experiences certainly generate such reasons, but unconscious deprivation or impoverishment generates those reasons too. (Though this might leave it mysterious as to how unconscious bads generate those reasons. Even worse, it might just be circular: "I have a reason to avoid death." "Why?" "Because death is bad." "Why is death bad?" "Because it generates reasons to avoid it." It's perhaps then better to say something like: the difference between conscious flourishing and conscious not-flourishing is self-evident, and it's self-evidently the case that conscious flourishing is better. Deprivational evils are comparative evils, and comparative evils are as self-evidently bad as intrinsic evils.)

So if deprivation theory explains why death is bad, then deprivation theory explains why anthropocide is worse than genocide. Anthropocide, while not generating the reasons pertaining to intrinsic evils that genocide generates, still generates a vast amount more weight in the reasons from deprivation, or failing to maximize flourishing. So a fully rational person, cognizant of all the facts, would choose genocide over pressing The Button if forced to choose.

But is that true? Imagine you polled the world on whether we should collectively commit genocide against a group of people, say, Lithuanians. I'd imagine that 99.99% of people would vote no against genociding Lithuanians. But if you asked the world whether we should press The Button, I'd imagine that fewer people would vote no. I imagine that roughly 75 - 95% of people would vote no. Counter intuitively, we seem to acknowledge that there is something more pointless and gratuitous about genociding Lithuanians compared to killing everyone. Even nihilists who would press The Button uncoerced would not vote to genocide Lithuanians, I would think. 

There are existential reasons in favor of anthropocide that do not apply to genocide (at least, according to some forms of nihilistic thinking). In fact, it's exactly the existence of heinous evils like genocide that motivate the nihilistic reasoning behind wanting to press The Button. But even if there are unique existential reasons in favor of anthropocide that don't apply to genocide or murder, those reasons are surely overwhelmed by reasons pertaining to deprivation / comparative evils. Maybe deprivational reasons, being more abstract, are not as emotionally compelling as the visceral reasons against genocide, despite weighing far more.

How should we talk about belief in God? Part 2

Do you believe in God? That's a difficult question. I want the question to specify:

Model of God

Model of doxastic attitude

Degree of doxastic attitude

Allow for a modified logic for doxastic purposes:

P = P is under consideration.

~P = P is not under consideration.

+P = P has been considered and affirmed. The weight of the reason(s) I have for affirming P outweighs the weight of the reason(s) I have for rejecting P (if I have any reason for rejecting P).

~+P = P has been considered but has not been affirmed because (1) I don't understand P well enough to affirm it, only enough to consider it (i.e., partial consideration) or (2) I worry about certain objections to P or (3) I have counterbalanced reasons for affirming and rejecting P.

-P = P has been considered and rejected. The weight of the reason(s) I have for rejecting P outweighs the weight of the reason(s) I have for affirming P if I have any reason at all for affirming P.

~-P = P has been considered and not rejected.

G = God exists.

Theism = +G

Atheism = -G

Agnosticism = ~+G ^ ~-G

Innocence = ~G

We can translate agnosticism as simply 'G' (considered but not accepted and not rejected). The idea is that if G is really under consideration, then it will be considered and affirmed, considered and rejected, or considered and neither confirmed nor rejected. So:

Agnosticism = ~+G ^ ~-G = G.

 

Rocks and trees are not atheists or agnostics but are innocents (after Graham Oppy's designations). Babies are innocents too.

There is a difference between affirming or believing P and P's being actually true or false. An agnostic neither affirms the existence nor non-existence of God, but the agnostic does affirm that God either exists or does not, keeping with classical logic. The agnostic simply does not want to make any claims of knowledge or confidence over what is actually the case.

What is the nature of this 'affirming' or 'believing'?

Liz Jackson discusses the nature of belief and credence here: https://philpapers.org/archive/JACTRB-5.pdf

See also: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

Beliefs are things we have. Beliefs, like sentences, express propositions and are not the propositions themselves. Propositions are claims about reality and can therefore be true (match with reality) or false (not match with reality). Beliefs can be true or false because they represent true or false propositions, just like sentences. It sounds weird though to say "I have a sentence" when it sounds fine to say "I have a belief." Beliefs are more like mental states (sometimes conscious, usually unconscious) or mental dispositions that can be translated in terms of a sentence. (We say thoughts are propositional. But are thoughts grammatical, like sentences are? Or should we say thoughts are propositional, and we happen to express propositions in that which is grammatical, namely sentences?)

Propositions are like maps. A map of America is about America and is attempting to represent America accurately. A proposition is about reality and can more or less accurately describe reality. (Though, the non-propositional mental states of animals also represent reality, such as the spatial layout of a territory.)

In addition to belief, you can suspect that God exists, be willing to bet on God's existence, be convinced that God exists, or have some pragmatic notion like William James' leap or Jordan Peterson's 'I live as if God exists,' which suggests some degree of suspicion that God exists. As Jackson points out, when the stakes are higher, some philosophers think that this context changes the nature of belief. Because of how high the stakes are with respect to God, belief in God could be contextually quite different from belief in more mundane things.

After we settle on a doxastic model, I want further context of what it means to believe something, namely, whether this person has tested their belief or not.  

Recall that theism = +G. That means this person has considered the proposition that God exists and they believe in it. But what is the degree of this person's consideration? What makes up the story behind that belief?

'Two argument' theism = +G(2)

This means, if we consider every good argument against God to be worth -1 and every good argument for God to be +1 (a good argument in this context meaning that the argument makes no clear mistake such that a reasonable person could be moved by the argument) then the two argument theist has, in the end, two good arguments above the arguments against God.

You could believe there are four good arguments for God and two good arguments against God. Or you could believe there are exactly two good arguments for God and exactly zero good arguments against God. Both result in the score of +G(2).

We might want to acknowledge the total number of arguments for God that you have considered, to add weight to what you consider to be good.

So let's say you have considered the following arguments for God:

1) WLC's Kalam

2) Josh Rasmussen's contingency argument

3) Josh Rasmussen's argument from consciousness

4) Argument from beauty

5) Argument from desire

6) Argument from history (evidence for Jesus' resurrection)

7) Argument from reason

8) Modal cosmological argument

9) Modal ontological argument

10) Argument from moral facts

11) Fine-tuning

12) The applicability of mathematics

13) Aquinas' Third Way

Etc

And arguments against God:

1) Argument from evil

2) Argument from ontological evil

3) Reverse ontological argument (which may or may not be independent from 2)

4) Divine hiddenness

It's complicated by the fact that it's not obvious which arguments are independent. A true analysis of the arguments for and against God would include an analysis of independence, combining dependent arguments into one for each group of dependent arguments.

You can either affirm, reject, or be agnostic to each of these arguments (assuming you have considered them all). Within your analysis of each argument that you accept or reject, you will have reasons to accept or reject the argument. In some cases, there will be conflicting reasons for accepting or rejecting an argument, such that you could be agnostic with respect to individual arguments.

For simplicity, let's say we have 17 independent arguments here, and you think 5 of the theist arguments are good while 1 of the atheist arguments are good. You believe in God. Then your score would be:

+G(5,1,17)

The 17 represents the total number of arguments for and against God you have considered. The first number is the number of those arguments that you think are favorable to God, and the second number is the number of those arguments that you think count against rational belief in God. So on this particular score, you have a mixed score with 5 good arguments for God and 1 good argument against God, and because your 'G' is a '+G' you must think the collective weight of those 5 is greater than the weight of the 1.

This is nice, because it gives far more context than the usual "Yes I believe in God" or "No I don't." We can see, along with the model of God and model of belief, far more specificity as to what it means for this person to believe, disbelieve, or withhold belief. Some scores are more 'impressive' or 'interesting' than others. Consider the hypothetical score:

G(0,0,100)

This person is agnostic, has investigated what they consider to be 100 independent arguments for and against God, and finds not a single argument to give any rational justification for belief in God or disbelief in God. Here's another interesting score:

-G(10,1,25)

This person is an atheist, has investigated 25 independent arguments for and against God, and thinks 10 arguments count in favor of God while only 1 argument counts against God. How could this be?

In this case, this atheist thinks there is only one good argument for atheism, say the problem of evil, but the problem of evil proves that God does not exist. The 10 arguments that count in favor of God help explain how it is that belief in God has been maintained by so many people across so many centuries, including many intellectuals. Those arguments give at least some rational justification for belief in God (or, as just articulated, they give some explanatory power as to how it is that past and current intellectuals could have been or could be convinced in God's existence).

Question: How can we represent the individual strength of arguments? It's misleading to count each argument as +1 or -1 as if each has the same strength. And yet, if you count one argument as +2, that will make it sound like you have two arguments when you have one strong argument.

I don't think this is a problem. You can easily infer whether someone thinks the arguments on one side or the other are strong by whether they have a +, a -, or neither by the 'G'. We shouldn't overcomplicate things, and this new system is already running the risk of overcomplicating things. In everyday life, I don't expect people to adopt a system like this anytime soon. It's much easier to just ask someone whether they believe in God and go from there. 

In fact, we may want to simplify to just one number, which is the number of good arguments that support your view (and for agnostics, the number of arguments they have seriously considered and remain unconvinced by).

But what do we mean by 'considered'? Do we mean that this person has some vague awareness of the argument? Or that they have written a Master's thesis on it? Or somewhere in between?

Something like this would be at least a good starting point: The argument is considered when you yourself feel confident enough to explain to someone why you think it succeeds, fails, or why you think it's unclear whether it succeeds or fails.

Next question: What counts as a good argument? This would be the next thing to model to give even more context as to what it means to believe in God.