Terrapin: Yes it would be fair to say that I am addressing the philosophical tradition of libertarianism rather than any political party in the U.S. Yes libertarians, even quite hard-line ones, tend to accept that some small amount of government is okay in order to protect freedom (such as through having a police force and an army), my point is that protecting freedom covers rather a lot more than this and that same principle can justify rather big states under the right circumstances.

Mongrel: I would classify freedom as the ability of a person to understand and make decisions and the morally relevant kind of freedom as that over one's own choices, so if you would call that a negative freedom (in the sense of Berlin's negative and positive freedoms) then yes, it is a negative concept.

Yes I agree it is similar to a lot of rights based theories but in a consequentialist way. A consequentialism of rights if you will.

The sentence before it. If what is morally valuable is the protection of person's freedom then what is wrong with both of those acts is that they violate a person's freedom but to different extents. Given that it is all the same value (freedom), we should be able to weigh the freedom violated by one act against the freedom violated by another.

Unenlightened: You have offered a false dichotomy in saying that property exists either by agreement or in a simple you own what you can defend kind of way. I reject this dichotomy entirely and say that property ownership, if it exists at all, is a relation between a person and an object (or objects) which endows the person with the moral right to make decisions regarding that object. So if I own something, I own it regardless of whether anyone else agrees that I do. If, for example, I own a house and the state decides that people with my particular genetic background are no longer allowed to own houses and take it from me, then this is theft. The property is mine, not by agreement or by my ability to defend it, but by moral right.

Mongrel: I disagree that the value of a life, or in this case the value of protecting a person's freedom to continue living, is not calculable. In the most simple terms we can just weigh the lives that are lost as a result of having a state against those that would be likely lost if we were to not have a state and decide whether we should overthrow the government and become anarchists (though I suspect that such a calculation would not favor anarchism). Further, if what is valuable is freedom, then it seems we should be able to weigh the freedom lost when a person is killed against their will against other types of freedom violations. There should be an answer to the question: how many rapes are as bad as a murder? I have a chapter where I discuss this problem if you would like to read it.

Wow, looks like lots of people are joining in on the feedback. Thanks.

Bitter crank: The problem with the social contract is that it doesn't exist. We don't give our consent to the state first and then receive benefits later. Rather we receive benefits and then our consent is assumed. My point is that the removal of one's property through threat of force, such as threat of prison, is a form of theft. My larger point is that, if we are consequentialists, theft is justified when it has sufficiently good consequences that could not come about without that theft. So I am conceding the point that taxation is theft to the libertarian but arguing that this alone is not enough to condemn it in many circumstances.

Unenlightened: Yes I am assuming one can own property in a sense that produces a moral right to it. I do indeed discuss earlier in the thesis that a good justification for how this works has yet to be shown and that it's possible that property, thus understood, cannot exist and, if so, we can disregard everything I say regarding property. While making that assumption there isn't much to be said in regards to those who think that all property is theft except "no it isn't" which isn't very interesting. But if you can think of an interesting way to engage with that flavor of anarchist, please let me know.

Barry: Yes I noticed that too, but don't worry about it too much. He provided a lot of feedback which is what I was asking for.

Bitter Crank: Thanks for your feedback, I will have a proper read through of it tomorrow and respond then as I just got home and it is getting late here.

I understood what you meant in the case of the ghost. Even if the ghost cannot be perceived in principle, it may still exist. This is not incoherent.

I would say that saying someone is obligated to do something and saying they ought to (if we are using "ought" in an objective, universal way, rather than an "if, then" way) amount to saying the same thing.

I absolutely can imagine aliens of that sort. They are not like square circles at all. Evolution certainly occurs, but it is not the only possible way persons could come about. They could be artificially constructed persons, or persons which are the result of a bizarre accident of physics bringing particles together to cohere into an entire person. It seems totally conceivable that one of these convoluted examples could bring about a person without a survival instinct, even if they are only a short-lived person. I can coherently conceive of such a thing. If you find that you cannot imagine such entities, I would suggest that you may not be trying very hard.

If this is your assumption then you are contradicting yourself. The way persons ought to be or act is different than the way they do (or choose) to act - hence it's different than mere freedom. Your proposed morality is just terribly incomplete, otherwise there is nothing wrong with it. — Agustino

I am not sure what you mean by this. I completely agree that the way persons ought to act is different from the way they do act. However, one can only be morally obliged to act in some way if that person can actually act in that way (ought implies can) so it seems to follow that whatever is of moral value must be shared by all possible persons.

I don't remotely agree in the case of the ghost. It may well be the case that the ghost exists. It doesn't make sense for me to believe in it, but that doesn't affect whether it exists or not. As for how we form the idea of the external world, that is either a very hard question or a very silly one. I am going to assume you mean this in the difficult way, in which case I think my answer is probably "I don't know, but I certainly do have an idea of an external world" it seems completely coherent to talk about an external world, even if we have no direct access to it.

If non-human person makes no sense to you then we are likely talking past one another. When I say that morality is the way persons ought to be or act, I mean all persons, not just ones we know about. If this is the case, then either their are lots of different moral values or what is of moral value is something shared by all possible free, rational agents. We can imagine all sorts of aliens that don't share out desires to, for example, grow, or expand their agency or even survive (though that one looks like it might require a bit more mental gymnastics) so these cannot be shared by all possible free, rational agents. So yes, I really am talking about all possible persons, including any imaginable alien.

It is not only humans that are morally relevant. Any kind of person, be they human or not, surely matters just as much. It is not our humanity that makes us matter, it is our personhood.

What do you mean "reach beyond"? If you mean find out if our perceptions are actually reliable and actually represent the external world, then they can't. We are doomed to forever experience only our perceptions, and never the reality beyond them. But whether such a reality exists and, if so, what that world is like is a matter of objective fact. The answer to those questions are true regardless of whether people can ever know them. I suppose what I am getting at here is that there is a difference between something objectively existing and/or being true, and whether we can know it to be true and, further, whether we can know it to be true in a way you would consider "objective". Or, to put it another way, there is a difference between epistemology and ontology.

I do not fail to realize what subjective means but, using your definition, I do not remotely except that what we perceive dictates what is true. There may be things that we, or someone, cannot perceive in any way but the way we, or they, do, but that may not be objectively true.

It should have priority because if morality is the way in which persons ought to be or act, then it must be able to apply to all potential persons, not just humans. And I suspect these other human potentialities (assuming you mean any of the things virtue ethicists generally care about) you are talking about are not necessarily shared by other possible persons.

I would not say you "ought to do whatever you want". I would say you ought to be free to make your own choices. If a person decides to do something they don't particularly want to do, there is nothing wrong with that. The wrong comes in the violation of their ability to make and understand choices. As for how I establish this is the case, it goes back to freedom (by which I mean the ability to make and understand one's choices) being the best candidate for moral value. Which goes back to my assumption that morality is the way in which persons ought to be or act.

Are you sure you aren't considering human nature, rather than the nature of personhood?

No, the fact that we cannot directly perceive something does not mean it does not make sense to say that it exists. When we discuss whether we should believe our perceptions of the external world resemble the actual outside world even though we only have direct experience of the veil of perception, this is a sensible discussion.

Further, the cogito is not subjective truth. It is an objective truth, albeit one discovered through personal experience. When we work out that we exist, this is not true relative to us or true from only our perspective. It is true definitely and objectively, although no one else can know it.

I am not claiming a necessary link. I am saying that the freedom over persons to make their own choices seems the best candidate for moral value we have.

I would not say that if you own yourself you CAN do whatever you want. For example it might be the case you are bound and gagged and locked in a small room. Then you cannot exercise your freedom, though you still own yourself. I would say that you are morally permitted to harm yourself.

Also I should make it clear that I am not defending the freedom to do anything you want. I am defending the ability of persons to understand and make their own choices. To put it another way, the freedom over those things that already belong to the person: their mind, body and property.

The thing about objective reality is that it exists with or without us. Even with no one around to perceive it, the world just keeps on existing. The fact we don't have direct access to objective truth doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or that objectivity is subjective, though it might mean that we are doomed to never be totally sure of anything about reality... except the cogito. But not having direct access to a thing and being forced to view it through an imperfect lens is not the same as it not being objective. The objective exists, the issue is in getting at it.

I am not falling into a trap. I just disagree with you. I will quite happily fly in the face of the way morality has been understood throughout most of history, as I think it has been understood very poorly. I am inclined to agree that the best way of identifying how to be moral starts with inquiring into the nature of people, if by people you mean persons, but that nature is the ability to understand and make choices. That is what makes one a person. So I would say no, self-harm is not immoral as every person owns themself to do with what they will

I am interested in the true philosophy, but everyone thinks the philosophical theories they believe in are true, that's why they believe in them. Claiming to have a true moral theory (though I think it is) wouldn't be any kind of claim at all.

As for objectivity. I think you're just wrong. To go back to basics, when we go through the reasoning of Descartes to find that we most definitely do exist, this is objectively true. It is an odd kind of objective truth in that only you can know, but it is objectively true none the less. It isn't merely a matter of opinion. I agree that happiness could be subjective, but that doesn't mean everything is. 2 + 2 = 4 is, if true (and I'm pretty confidant that it is), objectively true. It isn't a matter of opinion or intra-subjective agreement, it's true because of that those concepts mean. You could say that it is subjective in the sense that we might understand the term "2" to refer to something else, but that is rather missing the point. It isn't that those words have an objective meaning, it is that concept they are presently describing is objectively the case.


I would say that it is completely morally permissible to be a luxury escort, or a poorly paid escort for that matter. I would say so long as they are not hurting anyone else (which in this context can be understood as violating anyone else's freedom), then people can pretty much do what they want. Although I will add the caveat that people can have obligations to do good rather than just refrain from evil, but there is nothing about being a luxury escort that would prevent this person from living up to those obligations.

Bitter Crank: First let me say thank you for reading my work and providing your thoughts. The issue about freedom over one's own mind is something I would like to discuss in my thesis objections chapter. Would you mind if I referenced you as someone who had brought up this objection? If you wouldn't mind, please message me your name so I can reference you properly as I fear calling my detractors bitter cranks won't go over well in my thesis :).

That said, let me try to deal with these issues in order.

First, I think I have made it reasonably clear that I am talking about morality in an objective, universal sense, and not just referring to a system of cultural norms. So it isn't really an issue that Hitler thought he was acting rightly, because he wasn't.

Second, it seems to go over okay so far, but if I only said things my supervisors agreed with, I wouldn't be much of a philosopher.

As for the main issue here, I am not convinced that when someone blurts something unkind and uncharacteristic out unthinkingly, that they are in any sense not acting freely. I am inclined to agree that we do not choose to like or dislike things (though it seems we can choose to attempt to cultivate a like or dislike in ourselves which may or may not be successful), but I think we are free to choose our actions. When we say "felt the uncontrollable urge to punch someone in the face", I would say we are being poetic, rather than precisely describing what is happening in our minds. Firstly, we are still the ones acting, there is no one and nothing else making the choice but us. Secondly, I would say that we can choose how to act in these situations and when we choose to act in a way which is wrong, we are morally culpable for them. The fact that you are very angry doesn't make you hit someone, you still choose to, although the choice may be made quickly and influenced by the person's emotional state. To put it another way, a person does not need to be good at controlling their temper in order to be free.

But, supposing that people exist for whom turning around and slugging someone in the face really isn't a choice, but is rather an automatic action, like a reflex. I would suggest we might want to hold them at least partially morally responsible for this conduct after they know that they have this kind of reflex, if they do not take reasonable steps to avoid situations where they might violently assault another person without intending to. Much in the same way as we might want to hold Cyclops responsible for destroying a building because his glasses got knocked slightly, because he went out with two cannons attached to his face and only a pair of sunnies preventing them from going off... or some other example that doesn't involve one of the X-Men.

As for how free a person needs to be, I would say that the question is ill-formed. A being either has free will, or they don't. That is, they either have the ability to make choices that are not wholly determined by preceding or external factors, or they don't. If we had several more reflexes, we wouldn't be "less free", though there may be fewer things over which we have freedom. If we imagine an alien that has a mass of tentacles that all act independently of its intentions, to ward of predators, absorb nutrients, etc, and could only control its head, then it could still have just as much free will as any other person. So I would say that having free will or not is a dichotomy and not a sliding scale.

I could give it a go. I was worried it would lead to a lot of feedback that was already covered in the body of the thesis. But sure, here goes nothing:

Freedom consequentialism is a consequentialist theory based on the idea that what is of value is the protection of a particular, limited kind of freedom: that of persons over that which already belongs to them; their mind, their body and their property. In the first chapter posted, I begin with the starting assumption that if moral realism is correct, that an objective, universal morality exists, then there is a way in which persons ought to be or act. I make the case for this being a more fundamental starting assumption than those made by other normative theories such as utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics and that their starting assumptions presuppose mine. Then I argue that based on this assumption, our best candidate for moral value is the ability of persons to make their own choices, which I call freedom. Then I make the case for being an act consequentialist rather than a kind of virtue theorist or a deontologist of some kind.
In the second chapter I discuss what kinds of freedom matter and use a triadic relationship chart to clarify what I mean by freedom. Then I discuss how freedoms over different things can be weighed against one another.