Thou Shalt Not Kill

Having established that I like living, and plan to do quite a lot of it, I think it is important to consider the ethical issues involved in interacting with other beings. To begin with, we will keep things simple. I know I want to live, and I know other beings want to live, but what reason do I have to value the lives of other beings? After all, that other being might have something that I want, or some other situation might arise in which it would be to my benefit to kill them. Is there an ethical issue here?

To examine this I would like to consider the possible outcomes of meeting another sentient being. In this basic view, there are only 4 situations which readily present themselves. I will either be friendly or hostile, and the other being will either be friendly or hostile. I will score the results of each situation by assuming that I give living a relative value of 1. For this situation I will be assuming that it is not necessary for one of us to kill the other for our own survival, and that no issues are at play which involve a cause worth dying for. This is just a neutral situation where two beings meet.

Situation 1: I am friendly and will not harm them, but they are hostile and will kill me. This situation will result in my death. Since I can’t value anything after I am dead, this results in a score of 0. There can’t be any worse case scenario than this! Perhaps I should be more hostile…

Situation 2: I am hostile and the other being is friendly. This situation will result in my continuing to live (+ 1 point) and could possibly result in some additional gain for myself in the form of some gain in resources (+ 0 to + 0.99; I will take 0.5 as an example value). Total score is 1.5. Now I am getting somewhere!

There is a flaw in this situation though. This other being is sentient, and values its own life. Surely it knows that lying down and letting me kill it is not what it should do according to its own values. Indeed, by my own values, I can’t blame this other being for deciding not to let me kill it either. By the universiality of moral laws, if it is right for me to defend myself, as my values require, it must also be right for this other being to defend itself, and I can expect that this is what will happen. This takes us to the next situation.

Situation 3: Fight! (*Bad techno music starts playing somewhere…*) This situation is more interesting. Since I don’t know anything about this being, I can only give myself, on average, a 50/50 chance of surviving a fight to the death (+ 0.5 points). On the upside, if I win I get the additional resources from the last example (50% chance * 0.5 points = 0.25 points). This adds up to a 0.75 point situation. This is better than lying down to die, but I would still be better off avoiding all other beings than going up to one and picking a fight.

It is interesting to note that while we are assuming that there is nothing worth dying over here (resources are worth less than 1 point) then situation 3 will always be less than a 1 point situation. The only exception to the rule is if I am much more powerful than my opponent, and know it and am thus able to give myself more than a 50% chance of winning the fight. I will address this shortly.

Situation 4: the Alliance. In this situation I get to live (+1 point), but there is also the potential to trade, collaborate, and otherwise benefit from the exchange (+ 0 - + 0.99, let’s say 0.5 for example). This has a total score of 1.5! This is a good option, it is better than avoiding others, and assuming this other being is rational enough to come to the same conclusion I have about the situation, it is a stable one which can benefit us both indefinitely since we will both prefer it to the alternatives.

Let’s summarize and take a look at what we have found:

	I try to kill you	I am friendly
You try to kill me	(0.75, 0.75)	(0, 1.5)
You are friendly	(1.5, 0)	(1.5, 1.5)

My score is listed first, followed by your score. Now, since we know that we can react to each other, and that we are both prone to defend our own lives, two of the possibilities are unstable, and we both know they are not possible as final solutions to this confrontation:

	I try to kill you	I am friendly
You try to kill me	(0.75, 0.75)	(0, 1.5)
You are friendly	(1.5, 0)	(1.5, 1.5)

This means that we can always agree that it is better for both of us if we don’t try to kill each other. This has been derived only from our own self interest, with a couple assumptions and caveats. Let’s try to address some of those now.

I have looked at what is best for me, but is what’s best for me always what is morally right? If I happen upon a situation where I can easily kill another with no risk and great gain should I do so if I think it more profitable than collaboration? No, and the reason why is that the rules put forth in ethics must hold universally.

I have established that I consider it morally right to defend myself if attacked. I can also deduce that any other sentient being who values its life will come to the same conclusion. Thus, all sentient beings which value their own lives can agree that self defense is a good thing. This leads us to the reason why wanton murder of the weak is ethically untenable: it would be morally wrong for someone who was capable of it to choose to kill me, all sentient and self valuing beings would come to the same conclusion, therefore it is morally wrong for me to kill someone else if opportunity arises.

An interesting effect of this conclusion is that, all beings coming to the same conclusion, this will result in a social environment which is best for me on average. If I were to have concluded that it was ok to kill someone if I was reasonably sure I could manage it, other rational beings would come to the same conclusion, and since I cannot assume I am the most powerful being around, I would end up someone else’s victim at some point. If I can kill someone I may benefit in the short term by acquiring some new resource, but in the long term I am more likely to die in this environment of kill and be killed.

Conclusions:

• ·         Murder, initiating an attack on the life of another, is morally wrong.
• ·         Self defense is a morally good thing. I should (ethically speaking) try to live at peace and in cooperation with my fellow beings, but if that is not possible, I must defend myself by any means necessary, including killing my attacker.

Assumptions / Scope of Applicability:

• ·         Nothing is at stake which is worth dying for, including that the situation does not require the death of one party for the survival of the other.
• ·         There is no large imbalance of power in the average situation, or if there is, it is unknown to those involved.
• ·         All involved parties value their own life, and know that the other parties value theirs.
• ·         Choices are made with knowledge of the choices of others, and all parties can change their minds based on the actions of others.

Basic Values

There are four basic values which underlie Conditional Ethics. They are Value of Sentience, Value of Free Will, Value of Life, and Value of Well-being. These are the four conditions which the rest of the system depends on, and if we disagree on these four values then we will necessarily disagree about the whole of ethics. The first two values are intrinsic to ethics, and the second two are so practical and so widely held that they merit acceptance on their own terms.

All sentient beings value their own sentience, whether consciously or not. For the same reasons that a thing must affect experience to merit ethical consideration, a thing must affect experience to be of value. If a being is sentient, and values anything at all, they inherently value their ability to value that thing, and therefore their ability to experience. They must also value their ability to reason, because without reason they could not assimilate their experiences. Finally, a being must have some self awareness to value anything at all. If a being is not self-aware, they cannot make the connection between an idea and their value of it. These statements of requisite value, value of being experiencial, value of possessing reason, and value of self-awareness, form the basis for the first value, the Value of Sentience.

A being must also value their free will, for without free will a being could not pursue any other thing they valued. By the definition we have established for free will, this breaks down into value of volition and value of power. A being must value their volition or they cannot be said to value anything. Without volition no value can be selected. Volition is inherent in the ability to value things in much the same way that light is inherent in color; they are inseparable concepts. A being must also value power. Without any power, no value could be pursued. Whether a being values peace on earth, breathing, or the destruction of the universe, the very existence of that value implies that the being values the power required to achieve that end.

The value of power is a very interesting topic, and will be examined at great length. To say that all beings must value power is not to say that the pursuit of power is always ethically justified, but certainly the pursuit of power must be justified to some extent for all beings. There are also many things to be discussed about the ethics of power imbalances between beings. Is there an ethical limit to the power which one being should wield over others? Is it ethical for a being to relinquish power to another being, or remove power from another being? These are all topics for later. Here I only intent to show that power is valued to some degree by all beings.

The Value of Life is not provable, and is certainly not universal as many suicidal people can attest. It is, however an extremely common value. After all, beings who truly do not value their own life tend not to be around for very long. Life, by definition, requires the consumption and use of energy. Without motivation to do the things required to sustain life a being will perish and no longer be of ethical consideration. Ethical questions exist which will require that we question this value, such as the ethics of euthanasia, but they are a small subset of the ethical issues we will need to explore. For almost all ethical considerations it can be safely assumed that all parties involved value their own life. It is for this practical reason that the Value of Life is accepted as a condition of our ethical system.

Similar to the Value of Life, Value of Well-being is, for all practical purposes, universal. While it is possible to imagine a being which did not want to thrive, experience joy, or be fulfilled in any way, it is so counter-intuitive as to seem impossible. Even the clinically depressed, if asked, would respond that they would like to be healthy and happy. Since this value is so prevalent in sentient beings we will accept it as our fourth value.

To pull these concepts a little tighter, I would like to specify that human beings are the primary focus of Conditional Ethics. I have left things non-specific during the formation of the basis of the system so that concepts can easily be adapted to changing situations and understandings. For instance, as we come to understand the mental lives of animals we will already be equipped to evaluate the ethics involved in our relationships with them. Briefly, the degree to which a being has sentience is the degree to which it is of ethical consideration, and humans are the most sentient beings I am aware of, and are thus of the utmost importance in all of my ethical decisions.

We now have some definitions, rules, and concepts central to our ethical system. We also have a set of values which we can base our ethical judgments on. Equipped with these we are now prepared to create a set of rules for ethical behavior, a system of ethics, which depends on these conditions we have established. The foundation of Conditional Ethics has been laid. 

Hume's Guillotine and Conditional Ethics

The philosopher David Hume wrote a now famous paragraph discussing an idea which has come to be known as ‘Hume’s Guillotine’. This idea, more or less, is that ethics cannot be founded on facts alone, but that a value judgment must be made at some point, and that this value judgment is essentially arbitrary. This is not to say that facts do not relate to ethics and vice versa, only to say that facts alone are not sufficient to say what is good and what is bad. This idea is also known as the ‘Is-Ought Problem’ in ethics, as there is no way to infer what ‘ought-to-be’ from ‘what-is’.

In Hume’s own words:
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. (Source)

Some claim that this paragraph is being taken out of context, and that Hume meant something different than what most philosophers interpret it to mean, usually coinciding with the viewpoint they themselves espouse. Thus do weaker minds attempt to embellish their own works with a supposed affiliation with greatness. Nevertheless, whether it was Hume’s idea, or a misunderstanding which has been attributed to him, the idea should be judged on its own merits, and bears further consideration.

To illustrate this concept let us consider a common ethical judgment; for instance, we can say that it is morally wrong to kill the neighbors when they irritate us. This statement requires that, within the framework of the ethical system being used to make this determination, life is given some value. If life has no value, then it cannot be relevant what is done with it. The issue then becomes a question of what to value, with some going full circle upon themselves by trying to figure out if it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to value a certain thing.

This problem has been a thorn in many philosophers’ sides as they try to create a system of universal ethics, and several common strategies have been developed for coping with the issue. Some people have attempted to circumvent the problem by considering what is ‘good-for’ X or Y, and making ethical statements based on that. For instance, it is generally ‘bad-for’ a human being to have their head removed, so it must be ethically wrong to rip off people’s heads. Many prominent thinkers of our age, Sam Harris for one, have used this idea in an attempt to reduce ethics to a subset of science; that is, the science of what is good for people and what is bad for people.

Unfortunately, this merely sidesteps the real problem. Who is to say that what is good for people is important? Perhaps there is a goal worth sacrificing the good of humanity for? Perhaps we should make our ethical choices based on what is good for mosquitoes. How can we know that we have chosen the correct thing to value? While I agree with the conclusion that, in general, what is good for people is the right thing, I cannot abide the lapse in logic. There must be a way to determine that it is right to promote the welfare of humanity, or I cannot assert it.

Moral relativists have concluded that the value judgments being made are truly arbitrary, and that when a person says a thing is right or wrong any other person can merely claim to have different values with equal validity. This creates a scenario where 'Good' and 'Evil' are merely opinions, and there is no true ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong’, only one person’s preferences or another’s. In this line of thinking no person’s moral judgment may have any effect on any other person.

I agree that ethical statements are statements of value rather than statements of fact. I disagree, however, in the belief that the choice of values is arbitrary. As my work progresses I will be making the argument that some values are intrinsic to ethics, and that certain others are so widely held as to preclude any practical contention regarding their acceptance. I think I can then integrate these values into a cohesive value-system and proceed from that point to create a rational system of ethics. This system may not be a statement of fact, a description of the universe, or a divine command, but if we can find a way to agree on basic values we should be able to extrapolate from those values to a common set of ethical rules.

This idea will play a key role in the development of the overarching scheme of this system, and is why I call it ‘Conditional Ethics’. The system is conditional upon the acceptance of particular values, without which it is impotent. For instance, I might take it as a condition that human life has value. Under this condition I could then make the statement ‘murder is wrong’. I will try to take the most generic and unassuming conditions I can find, and will state them clearly and explicitly. I will try to only take conditions which have strong arguments in their support. Not all people will agree with my chosen values, but the people who do will find Conditional Ethics to be a solid basis for a rational morality which is right and just, and internally consistent. This is my goal; this is my work.

The Law of Ethical Identicality

There is a concept of fairness that seems so basic that it seems like it shouldn’t need stating: that I must apply the same rules to myself that I apply to everyone else. Still, I will be basing a lot on this idea so I will explore the soundness of this idea today. I will be calling this principle the Law of Ethical Identicality for what will become obvious reasons.

First, let us consider what we are trying to create: a system of ethics. This system is to be based, as much as is possible, on reason rather than whim. Also, as it is a system, it must be a set of logical rules which organizes the moral realm.

Now, let us take, as an example, me. Let’s suppose that it is right and just for me to do a thing, say, eat a sandwich. Now, let’s take another being which is, in all respects which are of concern in ethics, identical to me. It must be right and just for this other being to also eat a sandwich. For me to hold otherwise I would have to provide a reason for the difference in application of rules between myself and this other being. As this other being is, by definition, identical to myself, there can be no such reason.

You see, in a logical system, a given input will always give the same output (taking the state of the system as part of the input for anyone who really wants to press the issue). Thus, if I consider a given action, for a given person, in a given situation, and come to a certain conclusion, I must also conclude that my result would hold to any equivalent being in an equivalent situation considering an equivalent action. To claim different results in similar cases is to claim that 1 = 0, or any other logical impossibility you prefer.

Now this actually allows for a lot of room when interpreting the rules. I might hold, for instance, that there are some differences between myself and this other being. For one, I am myself, and this other being is not. For another, let’s suppose this other being has a different hair color than I do. The question then becomes whether or not these differences would be considered ethically relevant.

First, let’s take the hair color. Going back to our basic axioms, a thing cannot be ethically relevant unless it affects the conscious experience of some being in some notable way. This gives us a criterion to judge our differences. Obviously, hair color does not affect the experience of eating a sandwich in any way, therefore this difference is irrelevant, and I must still treat this other being as equivalent to myself.

Now let’s examine the idea that each being other than me is different in the fact that they are not me. That affects the experience of eating the sandwich. When I eat a sandwich, I experience it. When they eat a sandwich, I don’t. In this way my identity as myself seems ethically relevant. What is important to remember is that as a system of ethics, the rules will be applied the same way by each adherent to them. I can conceive situations in which I might think it would be good to eat the sandwich, and bad if this other being eats the sandwich. What I still cannot do, however, is hold that it is good for me to eat the sandwich, but that the other being must believe that it is bad for them to eat it. I must concede that if I think it is good for me to do, other similar beings will also think it is good for them to do. In this way, I must either concede that, as equivalent beings, each of our respective experiences of eating the sandwich have equal weight, or admit of internal contradictions within the logical system. Therefore, to remain internally coherent, I must dismiss my identity as self as an ethical factor, and treat myself equally with other equivalent beings within this ethical system.

Given that I cannot give myself special status within the system of ethics, I cannot distinguish whether I will be the agent or subject in a given ethical scenario. I must approach each dilemma as if all of the involved parties are separate from myself. It may be helpful to suggest that, while the concerned parties are the relevant topics of whether a thing is right or wrong, the actual decision about the rightness or wrongness must be determined by some uninterested third party whom has no knowledge of the identities of those involved. To honestly consider any ethical situation I must consider it as if I were not involved; I must become an impartial judge.

There is one more situation which requires a short statement, and that is the action of one being upon another. It should be fairly obvious by this point that if it is right for one being to take an action on another, it must still be right if the roles are reversed. Since the identities of the concerned cannot be distinguished by the impartial judge of ethics, they are interchangeable, and what applies to one, applies to all.

Epistemology: How We Learn

Epistemology (definition) is closely tied to metaphysics, as metaphysics discusses what is, and epistemology discusses how we know what is. It is the attempt to answer the question ‘what is the best way to learn?’ There are many answers to this question and not all of them useful. We might learn by withdrawing into ourselves and seeking a spirit guide, or by praying to a deity for answers, or by trying things and seeing what happens. People have tried all kinds of ways to find knowledge and had a wide variety of results.

Of course, a primary trouble with this question is that to evaluate a system of learning, we have to have some standard to evaluate it by. The best way that we can evaluate a system of learning is to see how effectively it conveys a clear and correct understanding of the world. Unfortunately, we must have a way to learn about the world in order to know what a clear and correct understanding of the world would look like.

This problem is fundamentally unsolvable, in much the same way that the problem of metaphysics is unsolvable. If we define a system of epistemology and follow it to an understanding of the world, then, according to that picture of the world, that form of epistemology leads to the clearest understanding of that picture. It is only when we allow some outside influence, a different system of learning, to affect our thinking that we can reach a different picture of the world.

For instance, let us say that the best way to learn about the universe is to read a book written by some people considered wise a few thousand years ago. Let’s say that this leads us to believe that if we are ill, we can be cured by beseeching an ultimate power of the universe with a few whispers. If we were then to consider the scientific method of trial and error, we would find it lacking. By the standard of science, we would test this hypothesis and see if such requests to a higher being actually resulted in cured illness. This has been done, and there is no correlation between prayer and recovery.^{1 2} Given this, we might conclude that beseeching an ultimate power is not a good way to cure illness.

Now here is the rub, if a person holds that reading this ancient text is really the best way of gaining a clear picture of the world, then we must conclude that science has made a mistake in saying that prayer doesn’t cure illness. Given that science has made an attempt to gain a clear view of the world, and has come to the wrong conclusions, science must not be a very good way of learning about the world. Contrarily, if a person holds that looking at what happens in the world around you is the best way to learn about the world, then you must conclude that the ancient text made a mistake and that reading that text is not the best way to learn about the world. Each method of epistemology is self supporting, and thus, no method can be tested against another, and we can never truly know what method, if any, provides a clear picture of reality, even if reality is objective as we have allowed.

Fortunately this issue, though as ultimately unsolvable as that of metaphysics, can be essentially resolved the same way. Remember with me again that a being can only be affected insomuch as it experiences that affect. Extending this thought, we see that a system of epistemology provides a clear and accurate picture of the world, only in as much as that view reflects the experiences we have while existing in it. Thus, if a method of learning leads us to a conclusion which is directly at odds with what we have seen, heard, and experienced to be true, then that method must have made a mistake.

Science is the best way we as a species have found to come to a picture of the world which accurately reflects our experiences. This is because science is founded on observing, recording, and reasoning from what we experience of the world. No other method has even come close to the amazing power of science to reveal the universe to the human mind. Some people will argue that science makes mistakes, that it has made many mistakes, and freely admits as much. These people have entirely missed the point. I am not saying that science is infallible; indeed much of what we hold to be true is probably inaccurate in some way. What I am saying is that no one has ever presented any alterative that makes fewer mistakes, that continually improves on itself and purges itself of error, and which leads to a clear understanding of the experience of our existence as well as science does. Not even close.

 So, while science is not perfect, it is the best we have, and if you turn your back on the best available source of knowledge available to you, you abandon knowledge, and thus your ability to reason about the world, and thus you despise your own intelligence and all that makes you more than a talking monkey. Those who question the conclusions of science, and use science to further refine those conclusions actively seek true understanding. Those who refuse the conclusions of science out of hand are willfully ignorant, and choose to limit their own intelligence. I seek truth, here and in all places, and in all times. I am a scientist, an empiricist, and a rational being. I cannot advocate other than science and reason as an adequate epistemology.

Metaphysics: About what IS

Metaphysics (definition) is a word which is used to denote discussion and study of the nature of reality. For instance, some might think that this universe is nothing more than the dream of a galactic slime monster, and that when this creature wakes everything will cease to be. Others may think that they are the only being that exists, and that they are hallucinating their life. Still others may hold that reality only exists as the perceptions of it we each holds, that there is no ‘real reality’ which we all base our perceptions and experiences on.

I don’t hold with these theories. First of all, if reality is an illusion, it is a pretty persistent one. In fact, I have never actually witnessed anything which might make me suspect that this is all a farce. The best available evidence points to an objective reality which exists independently of any of us, which we all share together. It makes no rational sense to imagine a theory of the universe at once arbitrary and un-testable.

The other reason I hold with the theory of objective reality is that, in the end, it won’t really matter, and it is the easiest theory to cope with.  Whether the universe ends due to the Great Slime waking, or from the heat death of the universe, or we are all manifestations of one great mind, or nothing truly existed at all, it doesn’t matter. In the end, we are all dead, everything we have done is erased, and as far as we are concerned, there is nothing. Do I know this for sure? No, but I know it is the correct way to approach life. What I do know is that we are here, now. We as beings have thoughts and feelings and experiences. I do not, and cannot, know anything outside the realm of this physical universe I am presented with, and in this physical universe all things must end.

Does this make everything ultimately futile? I don’t think so. Just because a thing will end, it still happened. We can experience things, and revel in the life we have. Ultimately, all that matters are experiences, because that is all there is. Nothing has value outside its ability to affect the experience of some being. A thing, once experienced, cannot be unexperienced, it has been, and that fact will endure. The being will fade, and take the experience with them, but that is ok. The experience itself is enough, because the experience of life is all we have.

In all of these theories of reality, the experience remains the same. Indeed, they must result in the current experience of reality, because that is what they are trying to explain. If the experience is the same regardless of these theories of reality, and the experience is all that matters, all that is considerable by ethics, then which of these theories you choose is immaterial. I choose the theory of objective reality because it is the simplest theory which fits the evidence, and no evidence has ever been brought against it.

Of course, not all theories of reality are equivalent. A careless reading of the above paragraph may lead the reader to conclude that I see all theories of the universe as equal, which I don’t. Frankly, you have to be completely irrational to accept as true a theory which has no supporting evidence whatsoever and is much less probable than another theory which makes more sense. Additionally, my thoughts above only included such theories of the universe which conclude with our current experience. Any idea of reality which would lead the adherent to expect reality to be different than it is, or which speculates on experiences outside the physical universe are, at best, detrimental to those who hold them. This is where the evils of religion lay, though I will forgo that topic until I have built more of a framework upon which to build my arguments.

Sentience & Free Will

In this section I hope to show definitions for sentience and free will in ethical terms. I will do this by defining and discussing more exact terms and how they relate to the larger concepts of sentience and free will. I will also discuss how and why free will is required to be the agent in an ethical issue, sentience is required to have free will, and that the ability to experience is required both to be an object of ethics and to be sentient.

I will start with a rock. My pet rock named Billy to be exact. Billy is most certainly not sentient, and most certainly does not have free will. These are facts that all but the most tenacious of skeptics will concede to readily. It just seems like common sense. But why is this exactly? That is a little more difficult to articulate.

Well, for one thing, nothing I could do could ever possible matter to Billy. I could sing to him every day, or leave him out in the rain, and it won’t make a bit of difference to him. Sure, some things I can do can change Billy. I can break him into pieces, or melt him, or any number of things. None of these things would affect Billy in any way, however. They would take effect on his physical form, certainly, but they could not affect him subjectively because Billy is incapable of subjective experience.

Since nothing I can do could ever matter to Billy, I cannot do anything ‘good’ or ‘evil’ to him. Thus subjective experience is a requirement for being considered in an ethical discussion. This is not to say that things like global warming cannot be considered ethical questions, only that they are ethical questions only in so much as they affect beings capable of experiencing the change or its effects subjectively.

It is important that this is subjective experience too. It could be said that a weather balloon with all its instruments and recording devices experienced the trip through the atmosphere. After all, it sensed the environment, recorded the data, and perhaps processed it as well. But this type of experience does not lend itself to ethics, only subjective experience falls into the ethical sphere, because things can only be good or bad in a subjective way, as a value judgment.

Not only is subjective experience required for ethical considerations, it is the only thing which is needed to be considered in an ethical matter. You will observe that if there exists a being which can experience the world in a subjective manner (hereafter referred to as an ‘experiential being’), and there is a particular experience which can be properly demonstrated to be a “bad” experience, then it is definitively wrong to take an action with the sole intent and effect of imposing this bad experience on the experiential being. Thus we come to understand that all experiential beings are the consideration of ethical questions.

Are all experiential beings sentient? Consider if you will an experiential being with no memory, capacity for thought, or will. This being may experience the world, but cannot understand, reason, or even feel emotions in the human sense as emotions are based largely in our memory of past occurrences and our understanding of what we experience. This being, while experiential, and an object of ethical considerations, is not sentient. For this, more is required.

Reason is undoubtedly a requirement of sentience. Reason itself is composed of many things, including but not limited to: memory, thought, logic, abstraction, and conceptualization. Reason gives a being the ability to take experiences and learn from them, to think, to ponder, and to grow. Reason is what gives us our mental life. But even reason and the ability to experience subjectively do not make a being wholly sentient, a final tiny bit is required.

That final piece is self-awareness. A science fiction supercomputer may be able to reason logically after the manner of a human, could even be taught to have subjective experiences if advances in neuroscience and computers continue far enough, but until it knew it existed it would not be sentient. The crux of sentience is not that ‘I think’, but that ‘I am’.

Perhaps I am mistaken on the point of self-awareness. Perhaps a sentient being could exist without a sense of self. It is unintuitive to imagine, but that does not make it impossible. In any case, I am not aware of any such being, so I have little need to consider the possibility, and I do not expect to rely on this point in the future; it is merely written to fill out my idea of sentience. If warranted, I could explore this topic at length in another entry, but I doubt I will see a need.

Having ascertained the nature of sentience, it can be clear what relationship sentient beings have with ethics. They are most certainly of consideration in ethical questions, being by definition experiential, but can they be the ethical actors in an ethical question? No; not unless they have more attributes than we have defined, that is.

In addition to sentience, a being requires the abilities to choose and to act before it can be the agent in an ethical scenario. These abilities can be further described in more basic terms: volition and power. Volition, or a will to do something, is required because without it the being could not choose the action. The being must choose the action being performed, because anything that is done that a being does not choose to do is not that beings doing, not the beings responsibility, and does not enter as an ethical consideration (except perhaps in cases of inaction when action was morally required, which will not be considered until later). This is not to say that a being is not responsible for the unintended consequences of its own chosen actions; the important thing is that the being chose the action in question. Power is also a requirement for being a moral agent. If a being has no power, it cannot affect the experiences of any other being; therefore it cannot be a moral agent. Thus we see that a sentient being with volition and power can be an ethical agent.

We seem to be closing in on a definition of free will. It is clear that free will is related to the idea of being a moral agent, but to be clear we must see if there is anything which may be taken away from, or must be added to, the requirements of being an agent in order to form a complete definition of free will. To do this, let’s take a step back and examine the idea of free will separately.

Free will, strictly speaking, is freedom of volition. Thus by nature it requires a being be possessed of volition which can be free, and a means of directing it. Free will also implies the ability to act in such a way as to implement our volition, which requires power. This is all that free will requires.

Power in this context is the ability to act on some choice. It does not imply the ability to achieve the goals in mind, merely to take the action being considered. A lack of power implies a lack of choice to make a given decision, as the being does not actually have the options being considered, and therefore is excluded from ethical considerations on this point. This is merely to say that a being is not ethically accountable to those actions over which it had no choice; see above.

The means of directing will is reason. Without reason the will is nothing more than a manifestation of our physical states, such as hunger, thirst, or pain, which are in turn manifestations of our environment. To break this dependency on environment for directing our will, we must apply reason. We may use reason to consider the environment and the states it reflects in ourselves, and determine how we will choose to respond.

Some might contend that reason itself is deterministic, that it is merely a reflection of the situations we have encountered and our physical states. If this is so, then at root, our decisions are a result of the environment, not of any free direction of volition, and thus, no physical being can truly possess free will, or be the agent in an ethical consideration. With no agents, there can be no ethical considerations, and ethics merely do not exist.

I reject this because there is an overwhelming appearance of free will among individuals, and no evidence for direct causal relationships between environments and chosen actions has been brought to bear. Certainly an environment affects a person, and in turn the choices they make, but by no account do these environs seem to determine the actions, but rather that the person in question acts as an intermediary between the physical states and the choices made. This may be a very persistent illusion, but as most of the evidence lies if favor of a free will model, I will accept it as true.

We can now see that free will requires volition, reason, and power. If a being is deprived of these it loses its free will, and simultaneously loses its ability to be an ethical agent. It is thus clear that free will and the ability to be an ethical agent are closely linked; so much so that I will treat them as synonymous unless I find good reason to do otherwise.

This also shows that people are not ethically responsible for actions they have taken under extreme duress, force, or while drugged against their will, etc. If a persons reason, will, or power are forcibly removed by any means, then their ethical responsibility in the situations which follow are also removed. In practical terms, a person always retains some choices, and some degree of free will while conscious, so practically speaking, a persons ethical responsibility is diminished partially, in accordance with the amount to which their free will was diminished.

It is interesting to note that free will does not, strictly speaking, require a being to be able to experience anything. This results in a situation where a moral agent, or a being possessed of free will, is not necessarily sentient. This is a thorny matter, but since it has little practical considerations in the real world, and since it seems likely that being experiential may be required to possess volition, I will not bother to treat these issues. For the purposes of my work, all moral agents will possess free will, and all beings with free will shall be assumed to be sentient.

I believe that finally, after a great deal of examination, have found the defining factors of sentience and free will. As these are intertwined with the requisites for participating in ethical consideration, I believe that these factors are also defining factors in ethical roles. I believe they will assist greatly in coming to a solid foundation of rational ethics.

Postulates

1) Experiences are all that matter in the universe. My post
2) The Law of Ethical Identicality: If a thing is so for a given being in given circumstances, that thing must be so for all equivalent beings in equivalent circumstances. My Post

Terminology and Axioms

Terminology:

• The words ‘ethic’ and ‘moral’, and their related forms, will be used interchangeably throughout my series. I do not make a distinction between the two.
• Agent: The being or one of the beings who take some intentional action which is of ethical consideration. My post Wikipedia's Definition
• Object: The being or one of the beings who could potentially be affected by an ethical consideration. I will show that this requires the ability to experience. My post
• Free will: Can experience the environment, reason to form understanding, possess volition towards some end, and has some power by to pursue that volition. Note: The implementation does not need to be successful in all cases for the being to be possessed of free will, so long as the power is sufficient to take the action under consideration in the ethical concern. My post Wikipedia's Definition
• Sentience: Possessed of reason and the ability to experience the environment. My post Dictionary Definition Wikipedia's Definition
• The Generic Condition: The Generic Condition is fulfilled when:
1. All people are equal in power, ability, sentience, etc., though they may be different in ways which do not make them unequal. Ie: individuals may think and reason differently, come to different conclusions, and choose different actions.
2. No one involved values anything more than their own survival and there is nothing about the situation which requires one person or another to die.
3. All involved parties are self-interested individuals.

Axioms, Assumptions, those things I take for granted:

1. All ethical concerns have at least two parties, an agent, who is considering a given action or inaction, and an object, who could potentially be affected by the ethical concern. Note: A being can be both agent and object in any consideration.
2. Sentient beings can only be affected insomuch as they experience an affect. My Post.
3. Metaphysics: Objective reality My post Definition
4. Epistemology: Science and reason. My My post Wikipedia article
5. Meta-Ethics: Universal Prescriptivism;
1. Moral statements cannot be objectively true or false; they rely on a value judgment. See Hume’s Guillotine, and the Naturalistic Fallacy. In other words, good is a concept, not a property like mass. Therefore the statement “X is good” is not a description of nature, but a value judgment being applied to an object.
2. Moral laws are universalizable; they apply equally to all similarly situated people.

                                                              i.      The ethical law of identity: If a law must apply to person A in situation 1, and there exists a person B which is identical to person A, and a situation 2 which is identical to situation 1, then the law must apply to person B in situation 2. Therefore the applicability of ethical statements to individual cases is variable only in the amount that the person or the situation varies from that of the stated rule.

                                                            ii.      See Immanuel Kant and R.M. Hare. 

This will be discussed further.

Under Construction

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented so far. I am completely rewriting this from the beginning to improve from all I have learned. Although I know it is hard to wait for the next long, drawn out installment, please be patient, I will have lots of content again soon.

~Liberum Credo

Introduction, Objectives, and Accountabilities

Introduction

       For many years now I have worried over the problems of good and evil and how they interact with the twisting and turning tangle of human lives we exist within. Many matters have appeared to be quite simple, but have proven impossible for me to pin down over the years. Many of these deceptively simple questions have eluded the greatest thinkers for millennia. I have searched within religion for the answers I crave, seeking the counsel of such men as Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, and others. Although I found kernels of truth within each new religion I studied, I found that the truth was overwhelmed by the dogma of the followers in almost all cases. More importantly, the truths I found were merely fragments of what I sought, and were far from enough to piece together the puzzle I saw before me.

       Eventually I turned to atheism, and have been troubled by the void left in my ethical foundations where a reliance upon revelation once lay . I looked to philosophy, and have again, found some kernels of truth here and there, but never enough to complete the puzzle. Philosophy has, however, given me the tools I need to examine the problem properly. I have no hopes of comparing to the great thinkers, but dare to disagree with them when I see good reason.

       I have begun a journey of ethical examination from an entirely rational standpoint, using all I have learned about logic, critical thinking, problem solving, and the practical nature of life. I need this blog because I need you, dear reader, to spot the errors in my reason, to remedy my ignorance of past debates, to chastise me when I stray from where a rational line of thought should lead me. Thank you all in advance for your honest and critical appraisals of my thoughts.

Objectives:

• To define a system of ethics using the fewest and most broadly applicable assumptions possible.  That is, to create a framework of theorems, which is usable to determine what should or should not be done in certain circumstances, and which relies on the fewest and most secure axioms available.
• To apply this constructed system of ethics to general moral cases to determine a group of moral rules which hold in common circumstances and can act as an ethical guide in our lives.

Accountabilities: The Standards of my Work

1) Rational

• The system must conform to the commonly held rules of logic.
• The system must be internally consistent.
• The conclusions must follow naturally from the premises.
• The axioms must be applicable in most situations, and the conditions and limitations of applicability must be noted and acknowledged, not as a flaw in the ethical system, but as potential situations which diverge from a standard treatment.

2) Useful

• The theorems must be usable to create other theorems or moral rules.
• The moral rules must be practical and applicable.
• The moral rules must clarify morally ambiguous issues, prevent potential inethicality, or convey useful ethical information in some way.

Final Words

       This post should be viewed, as should all subsequent posts, as more of a statement of intent than as a finished product. I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings concerning my writing, and if I hear a compelling enough argument I will take a step back, re-evaluate my positions, and perhaps rewrite an earlier post to reflect the new information I have been given. For that reason I hope that this work can be a collaborative work, with me suggesting ideas and playing at being an editor. Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon.