Pooperscootian Utilitarianism part 1: What is free will?

[Clinton]

Pooperscootian Utilitarianism part 1: What is free will?

I thought up a universal brand of utilitarianism that strives to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for all life throughout all of time in all universes. It is a very slow means of determining right and wrong. I’ve tried to design it to be the most accurate possible means of determining right and wrong though. I think there is a “best” way to determine right and wrong. I’m not sure the “right” and “wrong” I’m referring to would be best defined as objective morality…partly because I’ve never understood exactly what objective morality would be. The purpose of this moral code is, rather, to strive to determine that which every life for in all universe believes to be morally correct. I’m sure that goal sounds very strange at first, but hopefully at the end of this discussion it won’t seem as strange. A vital part of rendering those statements more clear is my explanation of what I believe free will should be defined as.
This is an ongoing work. It will never be complete, anymore than mathematics will. I expect to be wrong routinely, but there are certain foundation-level concepts that I’m pretty confident are soundly logical, and these are what I’ll focus on going over in my next few threads about Pooperscootian Utilitarianism. Many ideas may sound very strange at first. Unfortunately, I’ve not yet found a concise way of clarifying my views. If you have patience though, and are kind enough to read my ideas, I hope you’ll eventually see a few things you might find interesting…because I’m pretty sure I’m right, and I’m also pretty sure I’ve got a lot of ideas that, for some reason, I’ve not head before from anyone else.


So, what exactly is free will? We’ll I’d describe it as existing in number of different tiers. Tier zero would be a complete lack of free will. This would be the mental state of organisms without the capacity to feel. They would have no goals they care about achieving…so no need of free will. They’d rely on simple, unconscious reactions and autonomic processes, presumably.

Tier 1 would consist of organisms with the capacity to feel in a conscious manner, but who lack the ability to roll ideas around in their minds in complex ways. These would be impulsive animals. They feel the urge to do things, but there is no thought process questioning whether or not to suppress this urge. They have free will in the sense that there are things they want to do, which they do.

Tier 2 would be life forms that can feel in a conscious way and have the ability to resist their impulses and roll ideas around in their minds, making conscious choices.

Then there would be an infinite string of higher tiers than tier 2, and what makes a life form be on a higher tier of free will is how informed they are regarding any decisions they are willing to make. For example, if I, “of my own free will” buy stock in a company that uses child labor, but never knew about the child labor…I would be making a decision, but it would be a less informed decision than the decision of someone who’d witnessed the child labor who was also considering buying stock in the company, so the person knowledgeable of the child labor would have more capacity for free will, regarding that decision than I would without that knowledge.

So, I’d say, we gain more free will as we gain more knowledge relating to our decisions we’re considering making. So, I would say a dog has a simple kind of free will that it exercises when it picks one food over another to eat, or when it picks one human to show the most affection too. These are simple choices that the dog’s simple knowledge of the world can handle pretty well. It may not know what food is healthiest for it, or which human will respond best to affection, but it presumably feels that some food tastes better than other food, and feels more affection for some humans than others.
What if that same dog chooses to chase a car though? In that event, it’s quite possible that the dog perceives the car as a threatening monster, whereas its owners know the truth – that the dog is endangering itself, harassing harmless people, and causing them pointless irritation… as well as quite possibly limiting its own freedom more. After all, if you’ve got a dog that chases cars, it’s a lot more dangerous to the dog to let it roam free outdoors.
So, I’d say that dog-chasing-car scenario is the sort of scenario in which the dog’s human owners might actually understand what the dog’s free will really wants, better than the dog does. The humans can imagine what the dog likely wants – presumably to run around freely outdoors. Unlike the dog though, they understand what the car really is too…so the humans know that the dog would likely get the freedom it wants if it only stopped chasing cars…but the dog’s human owners can’t let the dog have the freedom it would prefer, because it chases cars.
So in ways like that, it’s quite possible for beings who are more educated about reality to understand what the free will of other beings wants better than the less-educated beings themselves.
Now, is that saying some group of aliens who have studied humanity enough to understand us better than we do should rule over us like dictators? Not necessarily, at least. They might genuinely understand what we want for ourselves according to our own free will better than we do due to the aliens’ greater education…but that would likely terrify us if they tried to control us too much…which I’d say is one of the major disadvantages of that conquer-the-less-educated type of mentality. People become terrified and hurt by that, and will rebel against it oftentimes.
But I’m just noting that to emphasize I’m not advocating that we develop some kind of society in which the educated conquer and rule over the non-educated.
But the main lesson of all that talk I’ve done so far is…how much free will we have is largely dependent on how informed we are about our decisions.
So, now I’m going to talk about what I think people really want according to their own free will, and why. This is not something I think most people understand well, which is why I see fit to say it. I don’t think most people understand that they really want what I’m about to describe over several paragraphs:

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

Let’s talk about Hitler. I’d definitely not object to, and typically even encourage Hitler being described as a monster…because is a form of negative feedback regarding his actions that seems like it would discourage similar mentalities in other people.
However, Hitler, like everybody else, was a product of his environment and genetics and nothing more. So, imagine for a moment that you were dropped into Hitler’s body. You can now see through his eyes and hear through his senses. You are Hitler. You act according to your own free will…and you have no choice but to behave exactly as Hitler did, because you have Hitler’s genetics and were raised in his environment. You inevitably engage in the same horrors he did. Now, imagine someone wants to torture you for that. I’m not sure that would have been a bad idea, actually. It would certainly send a strong message of negative feedback to anyone who would try anything similar…but nonetheless we’d be causing pain to what is essentially a person damned to their fate. There was no way Hitler could not have engaged in his actions…and we’re considering torturing him for it.
So in this way, all vengeance, all punishment essentially targets what might as well be innocent people. That’s not saying vengeance is a bad thing, necessarily, but if we do it, it should definitely be done to prevent further harm, or discourage it. Nobody deserves vengeance…because any one of us could have been born Hitler, and we’d have been fated to behave exactly as he did.

Now, why is the above relevant? It’s relevant because it tells us why we should all perceive any harm that came to Hitler as a tragedy…It can be worth it, if it means negative feedback that prevents future harms…but it’s still inherently a bad thing…and if it’s a tragedy for people as monstrous as Hitler to experience harm, it’s certainly a tragedy for more normal people to come to harm.
So, in other words, because we’re all products of our genetics and environment nobody really deserves any rewards or punishments more than anyone else. We just treat people as if they do, because that’s what inspires more healthy behaviors and fewer harmful ones. We call Hitler a monster for negative feedback. We call that firefighter who risked their life to save the child a hero…because that rewards healthy behavior. We want that firefighter to feel good, because that type of behavior helps keep society running and makes it better.


So, if nobody really deserves anything more than anyone else…what’s the next logical step? Well, I’d say the next step is to try to build a world of eternal utopia for everyone. We all deserve utopia, because it feels good and nobody deserves anything bad, so there’s no reason why we wouldn’t ideally attain utopia.
So, the next step is to try to achieve utopia for all feeling life…every single life form, throughout all of time, in every universe…or come as close to it as possible, so we need a moral code that seeks to achieve that. Utilitarianism isn’t necessarily a universal-kind of moral code that we need…but it can be. I say we go with that one, unless someone else can think up some moral code that seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for some group of subjects that would work better.


So, that’s what I’d say our free will really points to. What we want, according to our own free will, even if many of us don’t know it due to our lack of knowledge about the way reality works, is to behave the way a universal brand of utilitarianism that has the goal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering for all life tells us to.
And that’s not just what humanity wants…but every single feeling life form, because all of those life forms could have been born into the body of Hitler, or anyone else, and in this way we’re not truly educated about how reality works unless we can feel the pain of Hitler, if he were assassinated, as well as all his victims. We’re not truly educated about how reality works unless we can feel both the pain of the deer being eaten by wolves, and the pleasure of wolves upon eating their deer prey. We can’t do that of course…but we can imagine it.
And because nobody would want to feel that kind of pain unnecessarily, and because everybody likes pleasure, we will all inevitably want to improve reality as much as possible for all life…even though we won’t typically realize that…although hopefully more people will now.

I’m going to stop here now, rather than delve into the specifics of how I think this utilitarian math formula would work, and why, because I think the above is rather important and I’d prefer readers focus on that.
You may have noticed that my proposed moral code, in many ways, treats all life as if we’re connected. That will be a common theme. In many ways, but not all, I think it’s more accurate to think of life forms more like all being sensory appendages of the same super organism rather than individuals. I’ll delve into that topic more in my next post, which will focus on a thought experiment I made that I believe illustrates that what seem to be the most common perceptions of how individuality works are rooted in illusion.

Thanks for reading.

[Flannel Jesus]

So this is a compatibilist form of free will, apparently. On the surface there doesn't seem to be any requirement in anything you said that determinism is incompatible with the basic elements of free will you talk about.

In fact the moral implications, for example the way you talk about justice in the case of Hitler, seems very much like a compatibilist approach.

[FlashDangerpants]

Sounds like Hitler was "rooted in Dasein/dasein"!

[Clinton]

So this is a compatibilist form of free will, apparently. On the surface there doesn't seem to be any requirement in anything you said that determinism is incompatible with the basic elements of free will you talk about.

In fact the moral implications, for example the way you talk about justice in the case of Hitler, seems very much like a compatibilist approach.

Thanks for the comment.

I believe I am a compatibilist according to cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett's view of compatibilism.

This is one of my favorite videos of Daniel Dennett's, on free will in a deterministic universe he describes as compatibilism:
https://youtu.be/joCOWaaTj4A

For Dennett, the question of what "free will" is has more to do with semantics and biology than physics, so I'd say he has a different definition of free will than people who believe it can't exist in a deterministic universe, and I'd say he does a good job of arguing why his definition is a good one.

[Clinton]

Sounds like Hitler was "rooted in Dasein/dasein"!

Unlike the concept of compatibilism...I'm not familiar with Martin Heidegger or his views. Wikipedia suggests those terms came from him.

Thanks for the comment though.

[FlashDangerpants]

Sounds like Hitler was "rooted in Dasein/dasein"!

Unlike the concept of compatibilism...I'm not familiar with Martin Heidegger or his views. Wikipedia suggests those terms came from him.

Thanks for the comment though.

My words were not my own, I never reference Heidegger, they are an ancient curse to summon the demon iambiguos.

[Clinton]

sweet

[Veritas Aequitas]

Pooperscootian Utilitarianism part 1: What is free will?

It is ineffective if you simply jump into the theme of Moral and Ethical Theory without defining what is Morality & Ethics first.

It is evident that Morality and Ethics is part of human nature.
This is why 'Morality and Ethics' is one of the main topic of Philosophy [need a proper definition of this as well].

Utilitarianism, Consequentialism, Deontology are all essentials within a Framework and System of Ethics and Morality in fulfilling the goals of Ethics and Morality. If you are merely focusing on one of the above elements [in your case, utilitarianism] i.e. not systematic and complete, you are likely to miss the objectives of the innate functions of Ethics and Morality within human nature.

[Clinton]

Utilitarianism is a type of consequentialism, and I'd say the only one we need.

I don't think we need deontology at all. It exists...I'd argue, unfortunately. I think it can be entirely replaced with Rule Utilitarianism.

These are all different strategies for seeking moral solutions. We don't need to use them all though. I'd say, deontology claims to make universal rules...but unless it focuses on the consequences of those rules on reality, we have no reason for wanting those rules to be implanted, so I'd argue that the sensible version of deontology is Rule-based utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism is a slow way of thinking about things, because of the complexity of utilitarian calculus, but we already, by default have several quicker replacements, so I don't see us as needing any formal faster replacement to be used when time is short. We've always got our consciences, social norms, law, or emotions to choose from. Also, the golden rule of "treat others like you want to be treated" and the platinum rule of "Do unto others as they would want to be done to them," have their flaws, but they're usually pretty sound advice that's very simple to remember, and they're pretty close to common sense if not quite known about by default, and very quick solutions. I don't see why we'd need anything else.

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

I believe I defined the goal as being what all life really wants...so that would be what is moral.
I think I've explained this by arguing that, were we logical we'd recognize that the pain and pleasure other beings feel is pretty much the same as what we feel...so we automatically want a system that maximizes pleasure and minimizes suffering for all life, based on the best description of what to "want" really means that I can think of.

No other systems I'm aware of, except for utilitarianism strives to achieve those goals...and maybe hedonism. I'm not sure I understand what hedonism is. I've heard it's self-centered with the goal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering...for oneself...but I don't see the concept of "oneself" as even being a completely coherent concept. I'd argue we're all multiple selves and all part of each other in many ways so I'd think anything with the goal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering would be bizarrely inconsistent if it's not universally applied to strive to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for all feeling life.

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

Yeah...different types of morality have functions...but many of these functions are completely unnecessary and distract from better goals I'd say we should have.

Thanks for the comment.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Here is a clue how we need embed the deontological elements into a credible human based moral framework and system.
viewtopic.php?p=647063#p647063
Like most effective system, we need the Pure and the Applied as in Mathematics, Geometry, etc. to facilitate efficient progress.