Thanks for the comment

I’ve addressed why utility isn’t foundational here

https://open.substack.com/pub/garik/p/the-utility-coach-thought-experiment?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

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.

I’ll be discussing reason, the authority over freedom, in a later post.

Some people have expressed concern that morality is a restriction on freedom, as if we are slaves. Yet normativity is the exchange of freedom for reasons. Any time there is an “I should” there is a reason that justifies restricting one’s freedom to do otherwise (see Kants hypothetical imperative).

Only when we get to morality do these reasons that restrict freedom take the form of universalizable moral principles (categorical imperative).

Thanks for the comment. I’ve addressed how we get to actual morality from freedom elsewhere.

https://open.substack.com/pub/garik/p/why-should-i-be-moral?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Summary: we don’t have morals with freedom alone. Rather we need reason as an authority over our freedom.

Freedom by itself does not create morality, yet the starting point for any moral system must be personal agency.

Let me know if there are necessary points of clarification and I’ll write about it in the future.

Sleeping people definitely have rights, as well as people under anesthesia. It’s the existing capacity for consciousness that’s morally relevant.

Sure!

Yes, freedom creates the capacity for morality. But it’s reason that binds freedom which actually establishes moral rules. Let me know if you have any topics you have questions about on this and I’ll try to write about them on my substack. Thanks for taking the time to comment and question.

Apologies, I’m trying to write less abstractly but I’ll continue to work on that.

The thesis of the article is that morality must rely on freedom. Morals can’t exist outside of freedom. Imagine a circle that represents freedom and a smaller circle inside it that represents our moral duties.

This has to be the case. We can’t have moral duties to do the impossible or control our involuntary functions. Therefore morality exists only within the realm of freedom. Additionally, the sense of freedom we experience is undeniable. It’s a strong foundation to rest an ethical theory on, yet it’s too often overlooked.

Additionally, our moral universe only includes free beings. Not objects, unconscious life or ideas. So whether a being is conscious is morally relevant.

Let me know if this helps.

Summary: Morality exists only within the boundaries of freedom. First, the experience of freedom is a certainty, a la Descartes. Second, freedom is the standard for judging moral claims. We cannot be held morally responsible for actions that are beyond our control. And moral claims must outweigh the value of personal choice.

Conscious experience also sets the inherent boundaries of our moral community, which would exclude non-conscious life, inanimate objects, and mental fictions. Although that does not exclude a trustee relationship.