I discuss my views on free will here. Like all of our inductive knowledge, free will exists as perception and experience. This is what I mean by actual freedom. And its this freedom that sets the boundaries of our moral universe (who are the members of the moral community and what ethical rules can be created).

Yes there is a social contract which shapes our moral law and grounds our legal system. I discuss it here and my substack newsletter is dedicated to the topic. If you have concerns with contractualism/contract theory, let me know and I'll address them in a future post.

The contract doesn't rely on literal consent, but what our consciously free selves would accept or our free selves that act in accordance with our principles. So we cannot reject the terms of moral law. We can only obey or violate it.

Apologies. I try to write clearly but I could have been better here. Reading it over, it did seem very abstract. If you have any advice on how to make writing like this more engaging, I’d love to hear it.

Summary: There are two types of freedom: actual freedom and conscious freedom. Actual freedom is the perception of being free and having choices. This type of freedom determines the limits of our free will and moral responsibility. Conscious freedom is acting in accordance with our higher-order principles. This consciously free state creates and consents to the social contract since the social contract represents our higher-order principles of freedom and reason expressed through universal principles.

>The idea that we can only justifiably believe a proposition if it is the conclusion of a deductively sound argument is essentially epistemological infallibilism

I deal with the issue of inductive knowledge.

And under epistemic justification, philosophers argue for different standards for what would constitute a justified belief. Skeptics may argue that no beliefs are justified, since beliefs require an infinite regress of knowledge. Some philosophers accept the regress, while others deal with it in some way. I argue that its not worth dealing with if we have reasonable certainty.

Philosophical skeptics may argue that there are no inductive beliefs (knowledge outside deductions or our direct sensations) that can be justified. For example, we don't know that we aren't brains in vats, so we can't say we are justified in believing that we are not.

I argue that this level of skepticism is unwarranted if we have reasonable certainty.

In philosophy, sound conclusions require 100% certainty (pretty much impossible for inductive knowledge). I argue that having something like 95% certainty and if its impossible to get any higher, is justification enough for a belief.

yet what I argue is there is reasonable and unreasonable skepticism, particularly where evidence is impossible to obtain and one's skepticism isn't subject to falsification. That level of doubt couldn't be justified to others.

And I wouldn't say all evidence is mere opinion, particularly when we act intuitively on where the evidence takes us.

Moreover, the standard isn't whether there is "sufficient evidence" for a belief but whether we can validly conclude a belief, which in philosophy, for inductive knowledge, we cannot. Yet we can be reasonably certain, where exercising skepticism would be unreasonable.

>if there is sufficient evidence to warrant a certain belief, then that belief is justified, period. This isn't interesting or controversial.

Yet this goes at the problem of induction and skepticism in general, which argues that we should be mindful of our lack of certainty outside of a priori knowledge. It's also the view of many philosophers that we can never know things as their appearance, but who nevertheless fall back on only practicality as their reason for acting like everyone else.

The article argues that this level of skepticism is unreasonable and shouldn't even be kept in mind.

Although the main purpose of the piece is to show that the problem of other minds isn't a morality loophole, that we have certain duties to people in the future (rather than hypothetical people), and as an aside, a justification for athiesm.

If there is sufficient existing evidence for a certain belief, so much so that one can act intuitively as if it is true, then demanding impossible evidence is unreasonable skepticism. Only without this intuitively satisfying evidence can we reasonably warrant suspending disbelief.

Summary: When is it unreasonable to be skeptical? When available evidence shows that a conclusion is intuitively certain and any doubt is only resolvable with evidence that is impossible to obtain.

Since all available evidence shows that other humans have minds like our own, we can be reasonably certain of other minds. Doubting other minds is, therefore, unreasonable if it requires impossible evidence to alleviate. The same principle of reasonable certainly also creates moral concern for future people as well, who we can be reasonably certain to exist in our future. Not being able to see into the future isn’t a valid basis for denying the moral standing of these future people. And reasonable certainty can also let us reject other ideas, like the existence of god and aliens.

People may interpret the deep meaning of a novel differently. However, they are still reading the same intelligible words. Readers can agree on definitions, which are objective, despite their disagreements over the deeper meaning of the novel, which is subjective.

Thanks for reading over and providing a review.

What I mean by observable is not literally observable by the eye, but "able to be noticed or perceived." The fact that we can understand phenomena like dark matter or abstractions like geometry place it within the world of the objective.

Language falls within the objective since you are capable of understanding different languages. The words you read or hear are presented to you the same way they are to everyone else and are subject to equal comprehension, unlike the subjective, which requires our unique set of innate tendencies and experiences (along with their interactions) to comprehend to the same extent.

The portrait of the mona lisa is material and falls within the objective. Its our perceptions of the painting that are within the subjective. Some may see it and have their lives changed, for others, the painting doesn't do anything.

Thanks for the response. I would define the objective as "publicly observable" explainable and even a "shared subjective."

The fact that you are able to articulate your point and I can (try to) understand it , is what I mean by objective. Meanwhile, there are perceptions and experiences that you will have that I could never understand in the same way, no matter how much we were to communicate with one another. Thats the subjective.

> if you don't receive something of greater or equal value to what you sacrificed, it's a failed experiment.

This is part of the issue. No test can determine value or goodness, which is purely subjective. As explained in the article, the objective can provide the means, but the ends are within the realm of the subjective self.

There is no one way to be human that is to be measured against, but is the individual's responsibility to determine.

Someone has a meaning X for their lives. How do you test it? What do you test it against?

>someone says that the grotesque is beautiful. For them this may be a true experience while others don't experience it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that aesthetics are relative. What if existence itself is beautiful?

This is what I'm getting at in the article. The subjective experience that the person is having is real and we cannot judge this subjective sense based on the opinions of others. Just because others don't find this same thing as beautiful doesn't make the experience wrong, only unpopular.

Aesthetics isn't contingent on reason, its determined by subjective experience. Existence may be beautiful for some, awful to others, and those sensations are real, yet they exist in a different reality than material or metaphysical truths.

The objective is subject to empirical verification and testing, the subjective is not. There is no way to test whether I believe something, identify as something, or experience something outside of the belief, identity or experience itself. The meaning we impose on life or our personal ethics isn't subject to tests of right or wrong, but are within the realm of our subjective, which we are free to create.

In a way, you can describe all reality to be in the subjective world. It may be accurate to describe objectivity as "shared subjectivity." And the objective world certainly shapes our subjective perception of the world. They interact, but are still separate.

And I would agree, that public verifiable evidence belongs is the objective whereas value judgments are strictly within the subjective.

Summary: There are two worlds: the objective and the subjective. The objective includes mutually comprehensible reality and abstractions like math, science, language, logic, and ethics. The subjective includes conceptions of the good and our personal passions, like art, beauty, and love. These are two separate realms that some ethical theories inappropriately conflate.

The objective is publicly observable, articulable, and determined. The subjective is personal, unconscious, and the source of meaning. The objective has no authority over the subjective, since you cannot get an ought from an is. And the subjective has no authority over the objective since the subjective is not mutually comprehensible, and therefore, not justifiable to free parties.

>A Patriarchy military State in modern day would run into the problem of blowing up the very resources it's fighting for.

So if we had enough resources, it would become moral?

Because morality is grounded on freedom, it would be what free people would reasonably agree to. A survival mechanism is amoral; any actions can be justified to survive.

The only way we can judge what is called "sliding down" is by having a certain standard to fall from. The standard is the social contract, its the moral law whether or not its obeyed.

I agree that the social contract will be delegated and I will discuss this more on my substack (I talk about it a bit here)

The term has a lot of baggage, but it doesn't lead to the conclusion many think it does. Later on in my substack, I'll be making the case for a liberal welfare state with freedom as the foundation.

This appears to be more of a descriptive view, whereas I'm focusing on the normative.

If its just about DNA, you can justify a patriarchal military state that can produce more citizens and conquer more territory. It may be effective at its goal, but its not moral. Morality, meanwhile, would be based on the principles free people would agree to in a social contract.