Submitted by contractualist t3_xvqkit in philosophy
Vainti t1_ir4v5pu wrote
Reply to comment by contractualist in Freedom is the Foundation of Morality (or why ought implies can) by contractualist
You’re making a strong case for the argument that people shouldn’t be compelled to do things they provably cannot do. But nobody disagrees with that. Proving that freedom is in any sense meaningful or valuable is where you fall short. You don’t provide a way to compare freedom with utility or a reason why freedom would ever be more valuable than flourishing.
As far as I’m concerned the lack of free will makes freedom an illusory goal. The illusion of freedom is a path to well being, and any code of conduct should probably only ask for conduct that’s possible. But our code of conduct should be based entirely on utility.
contractualist OP t1_ir4wl56 wrote
Thanks for the comment
I’ve addressed why utility isn’t foundational here
And free will here https://open.substack.com/pub/garik/p/why-free-will-exists?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Freedom is foundational in that it’s required to underlie ethics and has a strong factual ground in our experience. And ethics needs to be built from there. A concern for the worlds welfare or our moral intuitions meanwhile are weak foundations and can’t be the basis of morality. Also, utilitarians have claimed we commit moral wrongs even as a result of actions beyond our control since outcomes matter rather than agency. Although since we can’t do anything about them, not focusing on them is strictly practicable.
I’ll be making more posts on utilitarianism in the future and I’d appreciate your thoughts.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments