First of all, what do you define evil as?

Let's take people who do good acts to make themselves feel better, i.e. to boost their confidence or self-value. What makes that evil? If this act benefits everyone maximally, isn't it actually the highest good (since it hurts no one)?

Why must complete altruism be the only good?

Can complete altruism even be achieved? Is there any virtuous act that I can commit without affecting myself in a good or bad way? Can I commit an act that benefits others while not affecting myself?

Going back to people who act in terms of non-materialistic confidence or self-value. Someone who volunteers because helping others makes them feel happy. Assuming that they were given your mask (or the Ring of Gyges), wouldn't they continue to commit acts that help others?

On a sidenote, I would recommend reading on Epicurus. He shared your belief that humans are hedonists, but challenges you in your ethical conclusions from that belief.

Why did Camus think that people have an innate desire to find meaning in life (and did he, or am I misinterpreting something?)? Where is that idea coming from? Are there no people that don't ask themselves that question, "what's the meaning of life"?

My substack argues that objective morality does exist (its wrong to torture babies for fun for example, regardless of one's own opinion).

The last section of asks whether you would force others to accept the utility coach. I even state: "My question is whether you would force other people to sign-up for the lifeplan." I'm not interested in one's personal choice, but how far this personal choice should be imposed onto others.

If satisfaction is all you care about, then people would be obligated to force others to accept the utility coach's offer. However, I argue that people should be free to make their own decisions, regardless of the amount of welfare on the table. And this personal freedom is valuable beyond personal welfare. Its something to be respected for its own sake, and its fundamental to ethics.

>So if you ask whether a utilitarian should hire the coach for themselves or others, the answer is probably no to both because doing so probably doesn't result in higher utility for society.

Although it would. Whether for yourself or someone else or society as a whole, the utility coach would increase utility.

And it wouldn't be forced on anyone because peoples free choices are to be respected. Paternalism is justified to a very limited extent, but not for all possible decisions.

Thanks! Would love to hear them

> In fact, there is no experience of free will at all. Free will is not a sensation, but a conclusion we draw about our sensations.

My experience on LSD (described in the article) contradicts this, as do the experiences of people suffering from DP/DR.

Our sense of choice is very primary, on par with (maybe part of) proprioception. It's very distressing to see it disappear. I'd guess that someone who doesn't believe in free will would find the loss of choice-sensation just as disturbing as someone who does.

>Many utilitarians would disagree and wouldn't consider any utility resulting from harming another as factoring within their utilitarian calculus.

It wouldn't factor into their own utility, but it would certainly factor into the utilitarian calculus for what they should do. Utilitarians are interested in maximizing utility in general, not just their individual utility (that would be egoism). So if you ask whether a utilitarian should hire the coach for themselves or others, the answer is probably no to both because doing so probably doesn't result in higher utility for society.

>I don't believe this distinction has any principle, but for the purpose of this thought experiment, one person's utility doesn't require harming another.

Given the additional assumption, why wouldn't this be forced on everyone? I fail to see any reason otherwise. We already have analogs for society forcing such decisions on people. The coach is 100% accurate and the thought experiment is basically saying that you aren't mature enough to know what's best for you, you're just a child with a guardian making the best decisions for you. You occasionally make poor decisions like trying to touch a hot stove so there's some pain when your hand is swatted away, but that pain is nothing compared to touching a hot stove, just like how the pain of the electric stimuli is nothing compared to the pain of your otherwise poor choices.

"...we ever attempt...? You must be DAFT!. I just told you. It's not about the our/we existence! C'mon, pal, get with IT!!

Many utilitarians would disagree and wouldn't consider any utility resulting from harming another as factoring within their utilitarian calculus. I don't believe this distinction has any principle, but for the purpose of this thought experiment, one person's utility doesn't require harming another.

It's a mixture of philosophy, psychology, mysticism, literature... And it is a great way of teaching/learning, when one does this the person who asked the question and also answered it, would be hit with a realization which seems to be the truth of that person, the more this realization hits you the more you know/rise into different dimensions of reality/life. It's a blissful experience to have. The teacher's job is to simply ask the right questions (that the student can't ask bcz of lack of clarity) and lead the student to what they want to find.

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Ahh yes, I know what you're talking about. It's the best form of answering for the person who has to answer, and the best way to find the answers for the person who asked the question. Now I'm not very good with the terms used for these, I know how they work though. And you aren't wrong, socrates did do this with a bit of difference. Now if you want to know the term used for it I don't know anything about it, but if you're interested in the work process, I'm your guy.

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Human beings have the capability of good and evil, that's a better way to put it, how and why they tend to use these capabilities defines them. It's what the religions have tried to say, when you are free of this good and bad, of these differences. That's when you see everything as they are. You become a mirror and by reflecting everything (as they are) inside yourself you know their truth. It's a rather easy concept yet human beings keep struggling to know it.

Asking yourself questions (which would contain a string of questions related to it) and answering them honestly to yourself? If that is what you mean to say, it's called philosophizing, the outcome and methods and all of those things are different for each philosopher. "Everyone has their own pathway to truth." And BTW It's not limited to philosophy either.

>If the utility coach would maximize a persons utility, without harming others

This seems be a fundamental flaw in the argument; this is patently anti-utilitarian. Individuals should even experience negative utility when it is to the greater benefit of others (e.g. isolating when sick with a contagious disease.). Utilitarians use the utility of the individual in their calculations, but they don’t focus on the individual to the exclusion of all others. A utility coach trying to maximize an individual’s utility is not following utilitarian principles.

Ethics are subjective. What each of us see as a duty is an arbitrary preference. Morality satisfies the worldview of its beholder.

>If the utility coach would maximize a persons utility, without harming others, would you force that person to accept the utility coach’s offer?

Well at that point the coach is inherently not maximising for personal utility but for collective utility instead, so the question really becomes "do you think it is moral to drastically limit people's freedom if you were guaranteed to achieve the greatest amount of human fulfilment" to which I would say yes. This isn't the original question asked though.

Also I would like to point out that this would be moral only in a hypothetical, because in reality there are no guarantees and the risk would be too big for comfort to me. I wouldn't want to trust a single human with that kind of power, no matter how noble their intentions.

I have to say though, this was a pretty interesting and thought provoking discussion. Have a good one man.

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Although the question isn’t what satisfies yourself personally, but what you would force others to choose. If the utility coach would maximize a persons utility, without harming others, would you force that person to accept the utility coach’s offer? That’s what ethics is, our duties rather than our preferences.

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> So much wrong here. Where to start?

Tip: When reading something you think wrong, don't jump to assumptions, ask questions to get where the other guy is coming from.

> First of all, my original post did not even imply materialism. Nowhere did I state that all mental states have a physical basis, merely that some do.

I need to go back and find it.

“You don't need any conception of physics to arrive logically at the conclusion that the common conception of "free will" is an absurdity. The best arguments deal solely with what we know of the way minds work and their connection to what we know of the brain and biological life in general.”

Reading the above it is not clear that you think some mental states have a non physical basis, so do you. For my part I can't see why 'free will' cannot have a physical basis, I see nothing other than that and the information within such a process.

> If you are going to deny that, then please explain to me how it is that reading this is producing thoughts in your head?

I've no idea. I suspect it's a fairly complex process, as yet unknown. I might add, the physical processes of say this CPU is well known. What it is capable of doing is not.

> Even the most hardcore dualist has to acknowledge the connection between mind and brain.

I see no connection – they are one and the same- is my best guess.

> Second, you seem to be stuck on this point that a deterministic world is like a factory that produces the same things over and over.

It's the idea of Newton, and the determinism of Laplace.

> The world is so, so far away from this that I'm unclear how you came to that conclusion.

Which is my point. The world does not seem to run on mechanical determinism.

> Let's remove life from the question. Is the world of minerals, rocks, chemicals, etc. deterministic?

I doubt it.

> If it is, voila, a deterministic world that produces nothing identical.

Which why I doubt it. Like a die, throwing is get you 1,2,3,4,5,6 – never 7.

> Science is unsurprised.

What does that mean. When Rutherford split the atom he was surprised, gob smacked in fact.

> There is of course quantum indeterminacy, but this is not well understood and even then, would just be randomness.

I'm guessing your not a scientist. Or am I, but I think QM is very well understood. As for randomness, again “just”, that's not the case.

> I certainly hope this is not what you are looking to in order to avoid determinism.

I'm not avoiding it. I just would like proof.

“That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.”

> If this world is not deterministic, please give me the mechanism outside of cause and effect that influences it.

I can't, or can I refute Hume's famous analysis of 'cause and effect' being a psychological phenomena. Or Nietzsche's? That the actual reasoning is always from the effect to the cause. Or that some, like Julian Barbour think time, events, are illusions, in which case how can an effect follow a cause. Or problems in SR with simultaneity...?

> I'll respond to the free will argument you posted. It is quite poor in my opinion.

OK, but as a 'flag' it was made by two very smart guys.

> The scientist, or Laplace's demon, or whoever is in the position to know all deterministic factors possible, would also know the effect their telling would have upon the person making the choice.

Yes, that's part of the killer effect. Maybe you don't get it, the machine, or demon goes into a endless self reference, unless it keeps the prediction secret. But that exposes another fault, found in Tristram Shandy.

My knowledge now T1, say is K1. I then predict T2, which changes my knowledge at T1, to knowing K1 and K2, but then my knowledge is K3, knowing K1 and K2... etc. An infinite regression occurs.

> This is simply another deterministic factor. The knowledge that a person has about what is being predicted, or what is being deliberated in their own mind, is itself a causal factor.

Whatever, the predictor can't predict. They can lie, but that isn't a prediction. They say soup, I choose salad.

> If they are causal -

They are- the argument is clever, it accepts the idea, it's a form of reducto absurdism. The demon, machine falls into an endless loop of self causation.

> a process with a conclusion defined by its beginning.

Sure, and it can then never get going, it ends at the beginning in this case in a salad/soup
loop. Imagine a picture of you in your room, I give it to you, you see in the picture a picture of you in the room, and the picture... ad infinitum. You cannot see the picture of you in the room looking at the picture as the picture extends to infinity.

> If not causal, then we must introduce randomness

No need. The idea has been refuted.

> this too is of course problematic, because randomness, even more than causality, removes the agent's freedom.

How can it remove it more?

> So which class does "their knowledge" (that of the choice-maker) fall into? Is it causal? Then the choice is not free. Is it random? Then also, not free.

Do you know the mechanism for intelligence? Are you intelligent? My answer is No, and yes to some extent.

Intelligence is useful though, so is free, non deterministic – will.

So much wrong here. Where to start?

First of all, my original post did not even imply materialism. Nowhere did I state that all mental states have a physical basis, merely that some do. If you are going to deny that, then please explain to me how it is that reading this is producing thoughts in your head? Or seeing pigments on a piece of cloth produces the sensation of color? Even the most hardcore dualist has to acknowledge the connection between mind and brain.

Second, you seem to be stuck on this point that a deterministic world is like a factory that produces the same things over and over. The world is so, so far away from this that I'm unclear how you came to that conclusion. Let's remove life from the question. Is the world of minerals, rocks, chemicals, etc. deterministic? If it is, voila, a deterministic world that produces nothing identical. Science is unsurprised. There is of course quantum indeterminacy, but this is not well understood and even then, would just be randomness. I certainly hope this is not what you are looking to in order to avoid determinism. If this world is not deterministic, please give me the mechanism outside of cause and effect that influences it.

Finally, even though my post wasn't an argument about whether or not we have free will, but rather my opinion on what type of free will argumentation is best from a deterministic point of view, I'll respond to the free will argument you posted. It is quite poor in my opinion. The scientist, or Laplace's demon, or whoever is in the position to know all deterministic factors possible, would also know the effect their telling would have upon the person making the choice. This is simply another deterministic factor. The knowledge that a person has about what is being predicted, or what is being deliberated in their own mind, is itself a causal factor. This is the fly in the ointment for libertarians. All factors they can mention when talking about choices must be causal, or not. If they are causal - whether we are talking about microbes, neurons, knowledge, outside interaction, or pure contemplation - then we are speaking about cause and effect: a process with a conclusion defined by its beginning. If not causal, then we must introduce randomness - this too is of course problematic, because randomness, even more than causality, removes the agent's freedom. So which class does "their knowledge" (that of the choice-maker) fall into? Is it causal? Then the choice is not free. Is it random? Then also, not free.

>Although now you are fighting the hypothetical by saying the utility coach doesn’t maximize utility, when the hypothetical says it does.

I didn't reject the hypothetical though. As I have said twice by now, I don't think yours did maximise utility, so I changed the hypothetical in a way so that it does satisfy your assumption and then answered that I would be ok with that version personally.

>And the question is about ethics, not about preference. So being a utilitarian isn’t about satisfying ones own preferences, but satisfying the preferences of the greatest number. This includes creating a sense of free will as far as necessary to maximize utility. And the question asks whether you would force others to accept the utility coach. This answer is obvious if you’re a utilitarian, in which case everyone must accept the utility coach, but not if you value freedom for its own sake.

Utilitarians want to maximise happiness for the greatest amount of people. Your coach maximises personal utility. Giving the utility coach to everyone does not in any way guarantee that maximum utility is achieved for the greatest amount of people, because to achieve ones maximum personal utility often comes to the detriment of others. It logically follows that if you are utilitarian you would not choose to give this coach to everyone, especially not those who don't share your own view of morality (utilitarianism) as that would result in less utility for your subjective preference of maximising human happiness.

To give an example: If it is deemed by the utility coach that I would be the happiest by becoming a serial killer, the coach would force me to become one. That is opposed to utilitarianism (less utility for the maximum amount of people) but satisfies the coach.

A utilitarian would think everyone must accept the coach only if the coach would sometimes result in less than maximum utility for the individual, which would be impossible given that it is supposed to give the maximum utility.

An interesting take and one I used to hold myself. I would possibly counter that human beings, being rational creatures, have the unique ability to recognize rationality rationally. A bit Kantian in nature. We use rationality to assign transcendent value to other rational beings. Given this type of thinking, it is possible that humans can be good out of value logic rather than any personal gain. Respecting beings of value given their intrinsic value and nothing else. However, this explanation maybe insufficient given fallibility and lack of genuine access to eternal agent existence (I think therefore I am). This is not really a refutation but a possible alternative.

Thanks for answering. I didn't know about Siemens. I'll answer you part by part, but don't take it personally. If you still enjoy the discussion, we may go further.

>I don’t believe you will have an exact map of unity from your collection; it’s naive optimism. Perhaps a child’s rendition of a map.

That's actually the weirdest part of knowledge itself. Just like every science, although we don't have the full version of the knowledge, as we point to describe a reality, it becomes "truth enough". Euclides, for instance, didn't have the whole map, but those apriori objects (I call them mental objects), once the mind notice it, becomes a thing on its own.

For instance, we have the unity of an author. I can read all the works of, say, Dostoevsky, and, if I don't try to imagine there's a unity there, the pieces won't show up, even though there is one. If, though, I bet on this position, for each line I read my mind is also looking for broader connections. This decision of attention changes everything. It doesn't matter if it isn't perfect, it points to a reality (or this mental object, if you'd rather).

​

>There was a old ambition in scholastic monasteries that one single person could become master of all the studies: Theology, Philosophy (though it technically just theological tools at this point), Law, Medicine, etc.

I don't know if this is quite the truth, though, but if you could show me examples, I'd love to read about. I know about the Enciclopedias, like Isidore of Seville, but after scholastic there were still Diderot and Hegel's encyclopedias. But what was regular back then, though, was the study of the 7 Liberal Arts, that is language, math and physics, the "trivial" arts of natural reason. I have this theory that the institution of liberal arts, Mortimer Adler's Great Ideas Project, Aristotle's Lyceum and Plato's Academy actually had one same principle, that is to provide an image of the "wholiness" (and how knowledge was produced at the time, the state of the art). You don't have to know everything in order to foresee and learn to deal with the fact that all the laws all the sciences study actually points to the reality, which works with the perfect version of such laws simultaneously. Knowledge is just a way to grasp some partial understanding of it in order to improve life (including curiosity).

​

>When the enlightenment finally came knocking on their big oak doors, that ambition faltered, because their finely interweaved premises and conclusions were - strand by strand - proven to be incorrect, and the whole web eventually just collapsed.

I'd like an example.

​

>You risk the chance of creating a fantasy map pointing to the locations of apparent trolls under bridges and dragons in caves; you risk being shown up when the map’s constituents, and their relation to one another, are proven to be inadequate or totally wrong.

I don't think that's a possibility, but I will take that in consideration. I don't think that can happen because it's not like I'm trying to understand everything and create a super final science which is bigger than everything else and puts every knowledge on it. Knowing one single science completely is impossible, since the documents produce are way more that what takes a human life. Let alone all sciences, let alone all the ones that don't exist and may exist, for instance, in 1000 years. But there are 2 points:

1- There is one "apriori object" that only appears once you try to catch unities. I call it "intelligence", but I don't quite know how to call it. It's actually the principle that is in common with what I said 2 topics above. Dante's divine comedy, for example, or Goethe's Faust is actually about that. Also sufism, which is inspired by Plato. The cosmos back then was used as an image to express how to acquire this skill to deal with unities, that is, intelligence. So Dante's work express it, either by showing the ascension in the planets (Paradise) and by showing how intelligence can be broken by our heart, that is, our sins are what makes us afraid of actually being honest with the knowledge we really have. For example, we use general phrases and ideas all the time "knowledge is x", "you are y", "John is a z person", "this country sucks", "the chinese culture is a", "men are stupid". Language can't grasp singularities, it's way, way general. To grasp the "ratio", the relation between the general and the singularity, you have to be bold to break all your past impressions and test the object as it shows, then reason it over and over again. If you have a grudge against something, you won't be able to do that. Those are, in traditional language, the effect of our sins. If you believed someone you love betrayed you, your anger won't let truth speaks even if the truth is the betrayal didn't happen (that's Otelo from Shakespeare).

2- These sciences do are connected. So the new scientific objects are born from this fact. Once you grasp this "unity of knowledge", it is possible to think with way more freedom, because you can literally create small "apriori objects" to gather new evidence for what you need. There's a great advantage on that.

​

>Secondly, study Siemens connectiveness theory of learning which “emphasises the idea that knowledge is a series of interrelated webs from not only social interactions, but experiences, digital observations (commercials, websites), or even organizations. In the end, the interconnectedness of all of the knowledge leads to learning.”

I admit that, from my experience, I don't trust very much about the topic when it's spoken by a scientist. Because the training to be a scientist means focusing way too much on a object. That makes our intelligence generalize not only the object (like physicists who think everything is physics, or linguists who think everyting is language) but also the understanding through specialities, but not through wholes. (EDIT: which usually means speaking of interdisciplinarity, which is compounding a new object rather than trying to foresee the set of knowledge as the object itself). The regular folk, not-scientific, that is, the religious thought, tends to do the opposite. Although one without the other becomes easily wholiness stupidity, or speak through metaphors and applying them to facts that don't fit, the opposit becomes easily lack of comprehension, and in my country that created in humanistic sciences a great crisis. They want to transform a society that don't understand instead of understanding it and helping it to be better what it wants to be.

But I do am very thankful for your reference. I read some about it before answering, but I'll add it to my files to investigate.