User:Kinkreet/Ethics

Freewill and Determinism
Free will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. If one is to have free will, one must be free from certain kinds of constraints. The dominant constraint is that of causality, that one event causes another, creating a sequential chain of cause and effect; this school of thought is determinism. There are two subgroups: the incompatibilists believe determinism is mutually exclusive to free will, and the compatiblists believe determism do not contradict free will, and free will is restricted only to other types of constraints such as physical, social or psychological constraints.
 * Retrocausality suggests the idea that the future affects can affect the present and/or past. This is represented by the Newcomb's paradox and Kavka's puzzle. Kavka's original version of the puzzle is the following:


 * An eccentric billionaire places before you a vial of toxin that, if you drink it, will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or have any lasting effects. The billionaire will pay you one million dollars tomorrow morning if, at midnight tonight, you intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. He emphasizes that you need not drink the toxin to receive the money; in fact, the money will already be in your bank account hours before the time for drinking it arrives, if you succeed. All you have to do is. . . intend at midnight tonight to drink the stuff tomorrow afternoon. You are perfectly free to change your mind after receiving the money and not drink the toxin.


 * Because the payoff (1 million dollars) occurs before the effect (1 day of pain), we are able to change our mind after the payoff as to determine the effect. Logically, after receiving the payoff, one would not drink the poison because it will gain no further benefits; knowing you will not drink it in the future, it therefore restricts you to not being able to intend to drink it in the present.


 * However, this argument creates the scenario where the payoff comes before the effect, and so defined the problem as a reverse causality-based question. The actually working of the puzzle is based on forward causality, namely if you intend to drink, then I will pay you 1 million dollars. It is because of the use of two sets of contradictory modes of causality in the same situation that causes this paradox, and thus a person can never intend to do something it does not plan to do, as that is in itself a contradiction.

Incompatiblism
Determinism is the claim that every event is preceded by a cause. Given a set of initial starting conditions, then only one specific outcome is possible. Therefore, all our actions are determined by our starting conditions, and so we can exert no controls over them. It might appear that we have a choice; however, we would only choose one, the one that given a situation we would always choose. The other choices are pseudo-choices because we would never actually get to picking them. Incompatiblists believe that for one to have freewill, they must not only be the effector of an action, but the original cause of one's actions. In the incompatiblist view, therefore, freewill is defined as a property of someone who is the ultimate cause of his actions.

Metaphysical Libertarianism
Thomas Reid, Peter van Inwagen, and Robert Kane are notable libertarianists, who believed that determinism and free will cannot coexist. They take the stance that the world is indeterminant, and free will is able to exist.

Interactionism
Interactionism is a dualist extension which states that the mental state is affected by the physical state. It implies that the mind is made up of biological systems, but also a mental, inmaterial system. Interactionists thus believe that the non-physical part of our mind has the ability to override the causality of the physical world, and thus we might live in a deterministic world, we are not governed by it - we govern ourselves through our minds.

Hard Determinism
Causal determinism, the idea that since we have no control over the events of the past, and we have no control over the laws of nature, we have no control over the consequences of the past, i.e. the future of the past. This takes the view of Laplace's demon, an entity which knows the location and momentum of all the atoms in the universe; if the laws of nature is determinant, then the demon would be able to know the situation of the universe at any given time. If the laws of nature is indeterminant, then we still would have no control over our actions, but our actions would be attributed to random chance.


 * Theological determinism is the idea that a deity determines all our actions, the arguments then follow in the same way as causal determinism, the only difference is by attributing the first cause to a God.


 * Biological determinism states that we are the consequence of our genes and biochemical make up, which are determined by our heredity and the external environment. Deprivative of this include cultural determinism, which states that the external environment is the major contributing factor.

Fatalism
Fatalism is a branch of hard determinism which states that since we cannot change the future, we should just not try at all. For example, since our exam results are already determined, we do not need to work for it, since we will gain the same grade anyways. Fatalism suffers because we are combining a deterministic world (that hard work gives good grades) with a reverse deterministic attitude (the grade comes before the work). Determinists who are not fatalists believes that although the results are determined, we still must play a part to 'fulfil' the results. The idle argument was based on the idea of fatalism, and is outlined by Origen and Cicero; it states that it is pointless to do anything because the fate has already been determined, and so we can all be idle and the outcome will be the same.

Cosmological argument against hard determinism
If determinism is to hold true, then causality is linear, as one cause produce one result. Then it appears there must be a first cause - the first set of initial starting conditions to which everything else is derived from. As we have seen, an event becomes the cause of the next event. If we extrapolate back, then there must be an event before the first cause, and so the 'first cause' is not really the first. By induction, it produces an infinite regress which shows there cannot be a first cause, and thus determinism cannot hold true without a first cause.

In The Laws (Book X), Plato argued that the motion of the cosmos must be caused and maintained by a 'self-originated motion'; to which he attributed to an artisan-like figure he called 'demiurge’, who is responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe.

The first cause illusion
For determinism to hold true, there does not need to be a first cause. Determinism describes a process, it requires a cause, not necessarily a first cause. A cause can exist without a first cause when there exists an uncaused cause, and this is often attributed to God; or that causality is not linear, but infinite or looped.

The equation for a circle must always code for the circumference of a circle, and this is an analytical proposition, true under all circumstances. It produces a line without a beginning or end. So it proves that there are things in this which have no first cause, and their existence is necessary given its nature. Therefore, any that exists by neccesity do not require a cause.

Thomas Aquinas proposed that all contingent things require a cause. This is because it is possible for all contingent things to not exist, and therefore he propose that there must be a time, in the past or the future, where these contingencies do not exist; so their existence must be brought about by a cause, whose non-existence is impossible.

If we did not exist, then we will not be able to perceive the world. We only realize our existence by interacting with the world. If there is no world, we would not realize our existence. Given that we know we exist, it means the world must by necessity exist, its non-existence would be impossible. If it cease to exist, then no one would be there to perceive it. The world could have ceased to exist and return to existence every second, but we would not notice because our perception cease with the world, and return with the world. So, our very existence provides the first cause to which everything else is derived from, another 'first cause' is not required; we must exist for the world to continue its existence, this being a type of in esse argument.
 * An uncaused-cause is not essential - Determinism describes a process of cause and effect, if the chain of cause and effect is circular, then there does not require there to be a first cause, all it requires is for there to be a cause. For example, the equation for a circle encodes the circumference of a circle, a line without beginning or end. So if we say the equation caused the circular line, it would then be possible that some other cause outside our 'dimension' (just as the equation has no dimension but the shape is in two-dimension) provided us with a circular chain of cause and effect, without the need of a first cause.

Causality is based on experience
Causality may be a product of our experience and judgement on events which heavily correlates to each other. It is not a priori, but a posteriori knowledge. And because we are not certain that causality is true, and we do not know if determinism is true. Problem of Induction

Compatibilism
Most of the compatibilists allow freewill to co-exist with determinism because of their way of defining freewill. They define freewill as allowing the person to perform actions parallel to their desires, irrespective of what caused that desire; and so whether the world is deterministic is irrelevant to the argument. It is also independent from the consequences of your actions, as these are uncertain at the time the decision is made; Dennett says that the only well-defined thing is 'expectations' and desires, and we express our freewill by acting in a way that is unpredictable, seemingly against the status quo. Even if everything is deterministic, and our action determined by our starting conditions, and even when we cannot exert control on the matter, in our view, we are still able to make a choice (even if the choice is predetermined), because our choice will coincide with the deterministic outcome; this is a form of compatibilism taken by Harry Frankfurt and Daniel Dennett. It would just be a rational choice. This is different from the definition of the incompatiblists, and thus when discussing this, one must be careful not to fall into the trap of using the same words to play different language games. Thomas Hobbes said if it is the desire of a person to perform an act and he is permitted to do it, then that is freewill. David Hume said that a constraint of freewill would be only physical constraints. Harry Frankfurt and Daniel Dennett introduced the idea of a psychological contraint, where the biological tendencies may impact on our actions and against our will; in this sense, he is attributing the will as another part of the mind which holds our current views, and the 'biological' mind as the mind which is the construct of history.

Parallel
If our desires run in parallel to the chain of causality, then there would be no noticable difference: they might be distinct but are inseparable, and so determinism can exist alongside freewill, as defined by the compatiblists.
 * Freewill’s requirement for knowledge - For freewill to exists, then there must be weighted choices. For example, if I offered you tea and coffee, and you have no experience or knowledge of neither, then it would make no difference if you picked tea or coffee, because it is not a choice. There is a 50/50 chance you will pick coffee over tea, and vice versa. So for freewill to exist, there must be a knowledge of the possible choices, as well as information about at least two contrasting choices. So freewill dictates that we must have a capability to store up knowledge about our choices.
 * Knowledge and determinism - When we have knowledge of our choices, it would add weight to one of the choices and thus any logical person would choose that optional every time. So when the pros and cons of tea and coffee are weighed, and the person decides that tea have more pros than coffee, he would choose tea every single time. And if we have the incorrect or incomplete information, for example that only girls drink coffee, or that only coffee keeps you awake (while omitting that tea also have the same effect), then this would cause us to make the uninformed choice, and this choice can be one which we would make anyway if given the complete information, or it can be some other choice. Only when given the complete information can a logical person choose ‘rationally’. (So rationality is the exercise of reason, and when others have a different set of reasons to us, they’d appear irrational, but to them, they are rational) So the choices that a person makes depends on the information available or given to him, and this is deterministic. So even if a person has a complete knowledge of everything (God), then his choices will still be deterministic (unless complete knowledge removes all discrimination about all objects)
 * A similar example whereby we have complete knowledge about the choices available, but still we choose the option which is not optimal. Then we would not be thinking rationally and logically, and thus not thinking at all. If we are not thinking, then we are not choosing, and so every irrational choice that we make is not made by us, for we are thinking beings.
 * Since logic underlies both determinism and choice, then all choices are deterministic, but can still be compatible with freewill, because we are still able to make a choice that runs parallel with our desires.

Martin Luther and d'Holbach

I am the cause
If determinism is true, then our initial starting conditions (i.e. our conception) defines who we are, and is the ultimate cause of all my actions. But because that original cause is part of me, then I become the ultimate cause of my actions, and thus have freewill, without contradicting the idea of determinism. Taking the idealist point of view, the entire knowable world is the product of my mental construct. Because everything we know is caused by my thoughts or mentality, that makes me the ultimate cause of everything; thus, everything I do will have myself as the original cause, meaning freewill is possible.

Monoistic Existentialism (Sartre)
According to Heidegger, there are two modes of being: present-at-hand and ready-to-hand. Present-at-hand is where one simply look at the bare facts or concept of an object at the present time, it does not take into account the meaning, the use or the history. When a hammer is viewed under present-at-hand, it is a piece of wood attached to a bulk to metal.

Ready-at-hand objects are viewed in terms of their usefulness, or purpose, and so must be placed into the social context in which the object is employed - what it is depends on it relation to the normal social practice. When a hammer is viewed as a ready-to-hand object, it is seen as something that can insert nails into a material.

These two modes of being are expression of the properties which makes them what they are. Humans can be seen in the same way. However, Heidegger argues that humans are not determined by these properties, and so are not merely present-at-hand or ready-to-hand objects, because we can choose what to make of these properties. Humans do not live simply to be, but to be an issue for oneself. Here he means that we see ourselves as an issue, and it is up to us to make the choices.

Sartre rejects the idea that we are the product of our past and/or present, whether that be human nature, biological habits, external influences, or something else. Human beings cannot be fully understood as substances with fixed properties, nor as subjects interacting with a world of objects. He argues that we do not live in a world of causality, but a world of meaning. Another way of saying this is that we should not view the world quantitatively, but phenomenally, or view the world in terms of meanings. These two views existentialists termed facticity and transcendence. Facticity are all the properties of me that a third-person can know about me through investigations; these includes my physical appearance, the psychological mapping of my mind, my history, my social facts etc. In this sense, facticity can be viewed as the objective view of myself, and so if we adopt this stance, we are able to see the factors which determines who I am. However, existentialists say that this view is in error, or we cannot view the world quantitatively, because all these properties that facticity dictates on me cannot be said to belong to me, because it is a matter of fact, and is either true or false. But according to the existentialist, who I am cannot be defined by facticity, but my stance towards facticity; that is termed 'transcendence'.

Humans view the world not as mere facts, but goes beyond (transcends) the factual, and see the world as meanings behind the facts. We may be presented with the same facts, but it is the manner in which we react to those facts that makes who we are. In the transcendence view point, who we are depends on the first-person perspective, the perspective of the agent.

In 'Being and nothingness', summarized in 'Existentialism is a Humanism', he claimed that you are free even if you are on the torture table: you can be constrained physically, but you will always have a choice as to what you do mentally (give in, or hold out), albeit it being limited. When we say we 'can't' do something, we are actually saying we won't do it. When French resistance fighters were facing the firing squads, they were definitely going to be killed, but some started singing their National Anthem. Sartre says that they are expressing their freedom because despite their physical constraints, still have a choice to show their patriotism.

The causal world is deterministic and constrains our choices, but this constraint does not reach the whole way in humans, who are pour soi objects; so ultimately, we still have a choice, it is just a limited choice. Other objects, such as a ball, will only move if something is pushing it, and are en soi objects, meaning determinism reaches all the way, this is because a ball have no rationality and cannot choose whether to move or not.

Heidinger says that the world should not be described quantitatively, but using phenomenology, which looks at the underlying meaning of the world. We act not because we are programmed to; we act towards meaning.

We have expectations for the world and we only respond when the world we experience is not the world we expect. We are living ahead of ourselves. We act to gain meaningful things, and to change the world to how we want it to be. We do not act because we are pushed by causation, because nothing in the world can tell you what you should think, or your view on how the world should be like - we must invent this.

This insists that we have expectations, and these expectations can be from our experiences from the past. But how these expectations are formed, be it innate or acquired, is an important question. However, he does say that our expectations for the world is shaped by our interactions with others. Wittgenstein and Heidegger and Sartre all agree that one needs to interact with others in order to gain self-consciousness. Without interactions, we might still have cognitive functions, but you would not be aware of yourself. Consciousness is the ability to for ourself to see from outside ourselves, and so we need others. We need to imagine a situation where others are judging in order for us to judge ourselves. Consciousness is not a property, it is a creation for each other. For us to be conscious about the world, we must interact with others; but because other humans are not wholly deterministic neither (they have choices too), our expectations are not deterministic.

You don't have a choice of the world you are thrown into (Facticity), but you can choose any possibilities that is available in that world. But one of the possibility is to create a new possibility, and so we can create our own version of our world, and that is our subjectivity, our essence. Our essence is how we coordinate opposing choices and come up with our own decision; and thus who we are (our essence) does not simply depend on our thoughts, but also what we do - these cannot be separated. We create our essence as we live (and act).

So even though we are constrained, we still have a choice of our actions, and our actions and decisions, given the choices available, that determine, or invent, who we are, or our essence. To be is to do and to do is to be. Man first surges up in the world, and then he becomes something. Because we can choose, we are responsible for the actions and decisions we make, and thus responsible for who we are. Therefore, we must try to live a good life. The definition of a good life varies, with Kierkegaard saying we should live a authentic (passionate and sincere) life.

We are all given the ability to choose different choices, we might be inclined or pushed by nature, but we are always the one making the choice. Sometimes the stakes are too high that we pretend we do not have a choice.

To not accept the view, to say that your actions are determined and you cannot change it, or to separate the inner self with the outer body, is subsuming yourself into the causal chain, allowing determinism to reach all the way, just like how beasts follow their instincts; this Sartre termed, is acting in bad faith.

Self, existence and cause are inseparable
Alternatively, if self, existence and cause are inseparable, they become one thing which we do not have a name for; so by the fact that I exist, must mean I have a cause, for everything that exists must have a cause, otherwise it would not exist at all.

Dualistic Two-stage model
In 1884 William James described a two-stage model of free will: in the first stage the mind develops random alternative possibilities for action, and in the second an adequately determined will selects one option. The first stage can be deterministic or indeterministic, but if the choices that are generated is a result of the external environment, and we see the world as an external entity to ourselves, then the action of the environment do not cause me to do anything, only give me different possibilities. The second phase, where I select the choices available, is the act of freewill. And thus, if we take the view of a dualist, where our mind is separate to the external world, then the world can remain deterministic or indeterministic, but we would still maintain freewill, because the realm in which the choice selection is made, is not in the physical world, but in our mind, which is not subject to determinism or indeterminism.

Karl's Popper's Three Worlds Pluralism
If we split the world into three types, and allows the worlds to interact, and then we can break the causal closure of physics. World 1 - physical (states, events and substances) - determinism; World 2 - Psychological (may be able to be reduced to physical states so cannot escape from determinism); World 3 - Content/Meaning - it is not physical (i.e. abstract) and so can break the causal closure.

However, even the so-called ‘World 3 objects’ of meaning must be preceded and caused by previous ideas - there is no meaning if there are no relationship between ideas, so although not physically deterministic, it is ideologically deterministic.

Rationalist Compatibility
Experience tells us the facts about something, the actuality, it does not tell us how we ought to be. So the physical world, or physical causality, can never determine our actions. Now that brings us to ideological causality. We use our innate concept of reason to link each of our ideas derived from experience together, to form a form of knowledge. It is the manner in which we exercise our reason which we should examine.

Our method of reason can certainly change, but how does it change? Is it determined by other's reasons, or do I have a choice? It would seem that when we are presented with two or more opposing modes of reason, we use the reason within us that we have developed already to pick the reason which is best fit to our own. Now if we extrapolate back, there asserts that there must be an innate concept of reason which we are all born with, and that certainly backs up the rationalist's claim, making their argument coherent and valid argument. Whether the premise that we have innate concepts is up for debate, as it has always been. I believe that the concept of reason and logic must be the same for all, for any change in even a small part of the basic concept would deem the concept invalid - if 1+1=3 and 3-1=2, then there is an in-coherency which contradicts the idea of logic; so unless there is no logic, the mode of logic must be the same. Furthermore, if someone has a different concept to us, we would not understand them at all. It might be that we all started off as having different modes of reason and logic, and through evolution and natural selection, the strongest group of people with their set of logic and reason prevailed. That is just one explaination, the only thing we know is that everyone that we can relate to have the same basic concept of reason and logic.

So if we started with the same basic concept of reason and knowledge, why do we have different views? Because we are each presented with different sets of opposing reasons after our birth; this process is deterministic, because that depends on the physical bringing-together of different people with their contrasting ideas.

So in this view, determinism can still exist in the physical world, an also in the cognitive world, but freewill still exist because we still have a choice, because although the reasons we develop are deterministic, it still requires us to use those new reasons to alter our existing reason - there requires an agent which carries out this task, and that provides us with freewill.

Other views
Compatiblist define freewill as the ability to make voluntary actions; incompatiblists define freewill as having the self as the cause. Ted Honderich rebukes both views, saying that freewill can only exist if both parameters are satisfied; namely we must must be the first cause of our actions, and we must maintain every causal event thereafter as voluntary.

Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Freedom of the Will, he said that we are free in the compatiblist sense that we are able to do what we will; however, the generation of the will is deterministic. Therefore, determinism can hold true while free will can still exist.

Indeterminism claims that even though we might be given a set of defined starting conditions, but it can result in multiple results. This is one of the theories use to explain the Big Bang theory, namely how the universe deviated from random energy into the complex systems we have today; it uses quantum physics which states that the location of a particle is not precise, but is a function of probability. And so given a set of parameters, the outcome can be different depending on which option was 'taken'.

Agent causation states that because no set of initial conditions can guarantee any particular action, there must be an agent which causes the set of events to go in a direction, and that agent is us. The working of the mind might be deterministic (or it might not), but that is not the whole story. Through time and experience, we have developed a habitual nature in our body which performs many subconcious actions (internal causal world). Therefore, not all of our actions are determined by our mind, but in concert by both our body and by mind. Some may argue that habit precedes thought, where we perform an action, and our mind simply permits it to continue or to cease. Irrespective of what causes thoughts or habits, agent causation states that we are one holistic entity, meaning both the habitual body as well as the mind cannot be separated when talking about an individual, and so we are the cause which determines our future. Agent causation builds on the idea of a form of indeterminism and a form of dualism.

Escape from determinism?
If my deterministic thoughts cause me to adopt a way of life where every decision I make is based on the throw of a die which is truly random, then my actions would be solely by chance, and so my life would become indeterministic. Depending on the outcome of the dice (random), I would have changed my views and beliefs through my actions. So even though determinism was the cause of my decision to live this way, I have now the ability to have multiple outcomes, and thus have escaped determinism. This means we can escape determinism and into indeterminism, provided such a random mechanism exists. However, for there to be this random mechanism, one must include all the possibilities and options, and that requires a complete knowledge of all possible outcomes. If one is to have a complete knowledge of all the outcomes, one would then use that knowledge to make the best choice possible, which goes back to the deterministic view. Therefore, if the world is deterministic, it would be impossible to escape from it into indeterminism.

Human Nature
Human nature refers to any properties which humans have naturally.

Teleological Approach - Human nature is innate
Socrates believed that everything must have a cause. Humans are part of nature, the final cause, and so will have a 'human nature' to follow that cause. Aristotle described his four causes, or things which are required to describe any subject: material cause (what the thing is made out of), formal cause (how the material is arranged), efficient cause (design of the object), and the final cause (the aim or purpose of the object). He regarded the best life to be one lived in the closest harmony to following the final cause of nature.

Plato and Aristotle regarded the soul as a divided entity. They divided the soul into a rational part, made up of a part that is rational on its own and part which can understand reason; the other part of the soul houses desires and passions similar to those of animals. A good life, according to Plato and Aristotle, is one lived according to reason, where the rational part of the soul rule over the desires and passions.

tabula rasa - There is not human nature
John Locke proposed that an individual start off as a 'blank slate', containing no innate mental components; all knowledge are acquired through time, experiences and perceptions. Human nature may exist, but it is not an innate and unchangeable construct, but an a posteriori construct which can be changed through having different experiences and perceptions.

However, we form experiences through interaction with other humans and objects in nature, but the question is where they obtain their 'nature' from? This is one of the problem with the nurture debate, where we do not know whether the origins of the culture is from human nature, or from a 'higher-order' nature which governs this one.
 * It has been observed that there are many traits of humans that appear to emerge from distinct cultures over history, for example the appearances of dragons in the historic records of many different cultures. This suggests that there are things which are common to all humans, and that is human nature.
 * However, this is quite a weak argument as even if all humans have a common trait, it does not mean the trait will continue or was continued from the past. Secondly, these common traits can be explained scientifically, for example by attributing the appearance of dragons to the uncovering of dinosaur fossils, which appears throughout the globe.

Human nature is an a posteriori construct of the past - human nature is a human construct
It is true that our beliefs now would be (should be, through maturation) different from our beliefs we had previously. What we once thought as good or indifferent we may think now as bad, and vice versa. Our past effects and actions led to experience and habits; experience changes our way of thinking, while habits cement our tendency to perform that action again.

With our new way of thinking, we may want to act a new way, but the habitual nature of the rest of the body, which is a construct of the past, hinders us from doing so. It is this habitual nature of the body that we attribute as human nature. So in this sense, human nature is just the tendency to remain unchanged.

The nature of human nature
If human nature does exist, is it good or bad?

Bad
According to the Confusious philosopher Hsun Tse, human nature is bad, and any good that we see are the results of our actions. Human nature drives us to gain profit, give us fear and hatred, and make us desire pleasant things. It is essential, therefore, for teachers to instill moral principles to people in order of them to be good.

Mencius argued that because of our willingness to learn, to be good, that proves human nature is good. Hsun Tse replied that what Mencius is describing is not human nature, but a construct of humans. Human nature is something which cannot be changed, but human products can be changed, can be acquired through study.

Hsun Tse attributed human nature as having needs that is to be fulfilled. When we yield from these needs, we are going against our human nature, because we have been instilled in us the qualities of morality, which, to Hsun Tse, is a man-made construct.

More importantly, Hsun Tse also says that humans are easily influenced by people. If one is surrounded by a crowd of bad people, then one would conform to their ways.

Self-interested (egoism)
Hobbes lived through the English civil war. Aristotle implies that human beings have a ending state which we all tend to, but Hobbes believed that things will continue to move unless impeded. He applied this to humans, where humans are always moving, moving to strive. Hobbes says there are two types of motion in human behaviour: vital motions and voluntary motions. Vital motions are those which one cannot control, and is attributed to the body; voluntary motions In Leviathan chapter 6 that voluntary motions are divided into two types: appetites and aversions. Humans are self-interested and will drive towards appetites and distance themselves from aversions. Humans are driven by 3 motivations: for gain, for safety and for power. Morality is based on what we desire; if we desire them, they are good, if they are undesirable, they are bad. And so morality is simply an expression of our approval or disapproval.

If there is no law or rules, then there would be chaos, because it is rationally logical to do so. To stop the chaos is to form a social contract, and Hobbes argues that this is how society is first formed.

There are two types of rationality - individual rationality and collective rationality. In a war, it is in our interest for the fighting to stop, but it is irrational for a self-interested person to stop fighting, because it would mean they would always turn out worst if they stopped fighting. In terms of game theory, the choice of stop fighting is weakly dominated by continue fighting.

Hobbes believe that we need a sovereign in order to allow for our individual rationality to come closer with the collective rationality. It would then be in the sovereign's self-interest to create a peaceful society, because the society is his property. There would then be laws which ensures that the social contract is obeyed.

Enlightened self-interest

We may defer from our immediate desires in order to gain more later. There is no altruism, what we do are ultimately for our own self-interest, only that some of our actions for our own self-interests includes being good to others. We may also seem to defer from our self-interests in the short term in order for us to gain more benefit in the long term.

Good
Mencius says that humans are innately good, and bad moral characters arise only from the lack of a positive influence. He used the example of a boy falling down a well, the person witnessing the situation would immediately feel concerned, not because they want to gain anything, because they would not have had the time to conjure up such thoughts. He says that our empathy towards each other are the basis of humanity. We might be self-interested, but we still have empathy, to be able to understand what the other person is feeling. Likewise, when we do something that we consider wrong, we feel shame; that Mencius say is the beginning of righteousness. The feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom. Mencius says that these are the four beginnings of human nature.

He argues that although cultures, external rules and laws may be able to impose moral principles into a person, they do not reach all the way down to the human nature. Only education and renewing the mind allows the innate goodness within us to be developed. Any bad moral characters are because the person is not thinking clearly.

Neither
I think our human nature is conditional, and is not acquired when we are born. As a baby, we have basic cognitive motions (what Hobbes may call the vital motions), but we have no, or at least very limited secondary thoughts, or voluntary motions. I'd argue at this point we have no mind of our own and we are influenced by our surroundings. Only when we have the ability to think critically will we be able to develop a human nature. I argue that if we cannot think, then we would just be a deterministic object, and thus not being human. Generally, we love the people who loves us back, and be indifferent to people that are indifferent to us. Therefore, our human nature is one which tries to justify the world. We give goodness to those who we determine to be worthy, and refrain from doing so to those who do not deserve it. We determine whether someone is worthy or not by their actions as we see it; if we see someone who is generous to people in need, we will be pleasant towards that person; if we see someone who is malicious, we will refrain from being nice.

So, in answering Hobbes' argument that people are naturally bad because of the evidence from the civil war, I argue that they are only bad because they refrain from expressing goodness to others; and they do so because they cannot analyse such a large population all at once to judge whether they are deserving or not. But since they know who are deserving (including themselves), then it is our intention to continue to provide goodness to them, and in this case, it means protecting them. But for others, being deserving means to gain, and thus will take from others. This, from the looted's point of few, is an act of maliciousness, and thus attribute them as unworthy. It is because of these unequal standards of worthiness which are the source of badness.

We are born into a set standard determined by our culture and upbringing, although we are able to make it our own standard by imparting modifications as we see fit. We then use this modified standard to form judgements on the world. And from these judgments we act.

Our human nature is neither good or bad, it is a construct of our sense for justice and of our rationality.

Morality
How do we decide what is moral? Intentions (right or wrong) or consequences (good or bad) - I say morality is based on both. If the consequences are bad and your intentions are good, you have a duty to make it good again - it does not make your action morally right, but you cannot be held responsible for your decision, but you will be held responsible for what you do from here on, as you would anyway. If your intentions were wrong, then there are no duty at all, you are still an immoral person.

Who decides whether something is moral or not? The person performing the act, or the person receiving the act? Performing the act (intentions) or receiving (consequences). If a heated iron burns you, you cannot say it is immoral, because it has no choice as to burn you or not - it is an en soi object. If you punched the heated iron for burning you (stupidly as you will get burnt again), it does not feel because it is an en soi object, and thus what you did cannot be said to be immoral neither. Therefore, morality can only exist between two entities which are capable of thoughts and feelings.

If a person tries to harm you, and we take the view that the person performing the action decides on the morality, then it would be immoral. If it is from the person receiving the harmful treatment, then depending on how he/she view the person, it can either be immoral (if you think he/she is responsible for his own actions) or amoral (if he is not). Therefore, in consequentialism, the morality of an action cannot be determined at the time of the action, and can only be determined by the person receiving the treatment, and even then the morality can change depending on the view of the recipient.

If morality is based on intentions, then it can be determined at the time of action, but it can only be determined by the person performing the action, and their views on what is right or wrong.

So either way, morality is subjective, what we do not know is to whom it is subjective to.

Amorality
If morality and freewill cannot co-exist together, as the view of hard determinists, we are simply machines capable of making high-level cognitive tasks, but ultimately, we are still deterministic machines. Meaning that our actions are not under our control, and thus we cannot be responsible for the action. Since we are just a mediator for the act, and not the source of the act, we are neither right or wrong, and so we are amoral.

Subjective Morality
Social contract

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