Will Torbald

Ethics is described in UPB as the subset that deals with enforceable behavior. The kind of behavior that it enforces is negative behavior, as in not-murder. However, propositions of negative behavior carry no information regarding the actual behavior of the agent. This is confusing in the sense that our minds are conditioned to expect judgments based on positive actions, not negative 'not-actions'. This is why UPB deals only with the examination of moral principles, not of particular actions. In order to acquire information regarding positive behavior we would have to inverse the theory to find the positive side. But before doing that, let's examine the behavioral aspect of the theory. For the purposes of this conversation I will separate behavior into actions and interactions. A simple action is motion that does not escape the body that it produced it. If I swing my arm forward into the air I am performing an action. However, if I swing my arm forward and it knocks out an unsuspecting and random person I have created an interaction. Interactions are the transference of energy from one body to another. It is clear that the ethics of simple actions are understood to be amoral, while interactions are morally judgeable. It is often the case that people try to ban or make rules against simple actions like "killing", but that can never be valid. This in turn confuses people into thinking that secular ethics are impossible, or forever relegated to relativism or egoism - but the mistake is to ignore the reality of interactions. So I'd say that ethics is the subset of universally preferable behavior that deals with universally permissible interactions. With this information, the question of "was this interaction moral or immoral?" can be examined directly instead of indirectly. UPB would only argue that a moral theory that says that an aggressive interaction was good is logically invalid. Whereas it could be asked "was this interaction universally permissible?" and it could have a clear cut yes or no answer without having to jump into meta-levels of examination. By permissible I mean interactions that can have consent removed from them. For example, I wouldn't say that the gravitational effect of the Earth on my body is a permissible interaction because it is universally forced on me and I cannot escape physics. The earth doesn't care if I consent or not because it makes no difference. It is inescapable. But escapable interactions can be permissible since the escape is the removal of the consent and sufficient action against it. This doesn't mean that if I put you in a cage that you can't escape from I've created an inescapable interaction because I could have chosen not to put you in a cage. The Earth can't choose to not pull me in. If I were to remove my clothes and throw my body unto you while saying "I do not consent to your face touching my xxx" you would understand that there is a contradiction between my interactions and my words by which I would be judged by the interactions I caused versus the consent I claimed I didn't give. Therefore the factor of permission is relevant to the agent receiving the energy, not the one giving it as it is logical that if the energy was given it had the consent of the giver (barring mental health and other exceptions). Going back to our Rando that I punched earlier, he has now gotten up and is very upset at me for knocking him down. Nonetheless, I explained to him that I was just making a theoretical example, and that it wasn't personal. This convincing argument satisfied him and told me he was a also a Buddhist monk. He forgave me in the name of his god, and went on his way. So he gave me permission retroactively to assault him, and it went well. I had the luck of punching a very humble person, but if I had punched a more feisty person I don't think he would have forgiven me. This means that there are interactions that, while initially not-permitted by the receiver, can be retroactively permitted. These are retro-permissible interactions, or RPI's. This doesn't mean that RPI's are universally preferable, but that they contain the potential to be forgiven. For the sake of being brief I would summarize that theft, assault, and sexual assault are RPI's: Not universally preferable, but not universally unforgivable either. This doesn't mean that you should forgive them either, but that the probability can never reach zero either. I am leaving murder for last because it is the only aggressive interaction that can't be forgiven by empirical demonstration. If you murder me I would become incapable of giving you permission after the fact because I would be dead. Maybe other people could make nothing of it, but it can't be retroactively permitted by the victim either. It will forever remain in a state of non permission. Since it is impossible for third parties to grant permission over my life or property, no one else can retro-permit it either. The concept of retroactive consent or permission sounds a little offsetting and almost an admission of subjectivity since the weight of the moral category of the interaction falls on the victim's choices. Nonetheless, the ethics of interactions require this level of open ended consensus since interactions are owned by the parties involved, not by third party judges. We as moralists or philosophers cannot interfere with the judgments of the owners of the interaction because doing so would be a violation of their property rights, rather ironically. We can only observe and influence through dialogue whether a victim condemns or forgives his assailants, but to determine the ultimate judgment by ourselves would be an act of arrogance. So, UPB has four interactions as evil: Murder, theft, rape, and assault. But UPI has only one as evil: Murder - and three as wrong but locally and retroactively permissible: Theft, sexual assault, and assault. Just because something can be locally permissible it doesn't mean it will be permitted. Depending on the circumstances the probability of forgiveness is almost zero, but the catch is that it can never actually reach zero as in the case of murder. Only murder has a zero chance of ever being permissible by which the label of true evil is guaranteed. Everything else is wrong, but not absolutely. But there is one more thing. RPI's can't be considered permissible if the interaction happened under the threat of murder. Since murder is the only evil, any permissible wrongdoing committed under the threat of murder becomes evil by association. I could steal something from you when you weren't looking, and it would be wrong, but it's a RPI nonetheless. Maybe I just took a cookie from your lunch as a joke. But I could steal the same cookie while threatening you with a loaded gun and it would not only be wrong, it would be evil. And that's the difference between something being wrong, and something being evil according to the theory of universally permissible interactions. To trespass property rights is always wrong as UPB demonstrates that it can't be right, but to trespass them with the weapon of murder is evil. This also sounds very similar to the NAP, if you were paying attention. However, the NAP would say that all incursions of property rights are abhorred and should be treated with equal moral condemnation. This leads to many arguments about flagpoles, or lifeboats, or any ridiculous objection to it. I get it. I've done the same thing myself in thought experiments, and I don't like it either. This way of thinking, on the other hand, bypasses the extremists by literally saying "Bro, interacting with the property of others without permission isn't evil per se, it's just necessary during emergencies. I'm sure they would give you permission after the fact when you explain it to them, but you're not evil for doing it". This isn't something that Stefan hasn't said before, but it isn't something explicitly described in UPB either. I think that making it part of the theory is necessary to further facilitate its understanding. To synthesize: UPI's are mutually agreed interactions, voluntary negotiations, self defense scenarios. It is 'right' to do these. RPI's are interactions without permission that hold a probability of future permission. Theft, assault, etc. It is 'wrong' to do these. Evil interactions are those which are impossible to permit after the fact, and only murder fits this category. It is evil to murder. RPI's done under the threat of murder are evil by association. It is coercion to do so. Violations of property rights are RPI's as long as they are not done under the threat of murder. At the introduction I said that UPI would examine interactions and not just principles. To do that we need to ask a series of questions and then determine the outcome like a flowchart of events. 1- Was it a mutually voluntary interaction? Yes) It's moral No) See 2 2- Were the property rights of the victim trespassed? Yes) It's wrong No) It's mean 3- Was the victim's life threatened through force? Yes) It's evil No) It's still wrong 4- Was it an accident? Yeah, what if it was an accident? Accidents: By the very nature of reality, accidents are impossible to eliminate from the world. It is a feature of the chaotic relativity we experience that unintended interactions will occur. To distinguish an accident from negligence we would have to prove that there was no intention from the part of the perpetrator, no intention from the receiver to receive, and no known measure to avoid it or intention to avoid it. If we know that good brakes are necessary for safe driving, a failure to have good brakes and the resulting crash wouldn't be an accident, but negligence. If we are driving and a wild goat suddenly lunges into the car, we know there wasn't any way to prevent that from our part, nor from the goat's part since it's just an animal, it is safe to call it an accident. Maybe we steer away from it and hit another car in the process. It's a series of unfortunate and chaotic events. A lethal accident is categorically different from murder because it had no intention from either party, and no reasonable preventability. So you cannot escape the chaotic nature of reality that creates accidental interactions, therefore these do not fall under a category of wrongdoings. You cannot also forgive, or retro-permit, an accident because there is no voluntarily inflicted trespass of property rights. You can't turn it into a voluntary association since the person causing the accident had no intention in the first place to do it. It would be like trying to ascribe volition from me to you, and that's mind control, which doesn't work. So accidents fall in the category of universally permissible interactions because to not-permit accidents goes against the very nature of reality, that chaos is inevitable. However, you cannot encourage an accident to happen because to do it would no longer create an accident, but a moral interaction. If you were to say that you could cause "accidental murder" it would be a logical contradiction. You could ask for reparations of an accident, but you cannot ascribe immorality to the causing person since it was outside his volition. I said that murder is unforgivable by the victim since the victim is literally unable to do so, but what if they were accidentally killed? Wouldn't that be unforgivable too? Well, not from a certain perspective. When we agree to interact with reality we are consenting to its chaotic nature. We realize that a lightning could strike us, a falling piano could smash us, an earthquake could kill us. Accidents are already part of the consent we partake in when we interact with our chaotic reality. 4) Was it an accident? There's nothing to forgive nor to condemn. The Question: Why should I be moral? Under the framework of UPI this question has some interesting repercussions. Let's remember that ethics concerns itself with interactions, not simple actions. That is, not all behaviors are considered in ethics, only those actions that exchange energy between at least two agents. A simple action is owned by the actor, but an interaction is owned by at least two agents - a giver and a receiver. If you as a giver ask the question "why should my caused interactions be moral or universally permissible?" you would be asking "why can't I judge my interactions by myself?". This is because if you could judge your given interactions then victims could be blamed for the perpetrator's actions. The two agents involved own the interaction, not just the giver or perpetrator. It falls on the receiver's end to permit or retro-permit interactions with perpetrators. In other words, you have to behave in universally permissible ways because you cannot be your own judge. If you want to declare immunity from moral judgments you would have to deny the agency of the other person, ascribe it to yourself, and absolve yourself of any violation. So, from the giver's side there is a negative answer: Because you cannot give yourself permission to interact with another person's property by yourself. This would imply that there is a positive answer from the receiver's end instead if we follow the symmetry of the equation. The question of "Why should I behave morally" looks different from the side of the receiver. What the receiver would ask is "Why should other people respect my property rights and my agency?". Another way of putting it is "Why shouldn't you murder me?". This reveals a contradiction in the logic of attempting to question morality. If you allow people to murder you, then it wouldn't be a murder. And the same from any other question of property rights. If you allow the trespassing of your property then it is not a trespassing. This is explained in UPB repeatedly already. The only way of escaping this logical trap would be to state that you have no self awareness, by which you would have no agency, by which you would have no causality, by which you would have no property rights. Well, if I were to believe your argument against your self awareness, I would have no choice but to consider you mentally incapable, and call a professional to assist you. It is then that if the receiver asks "Why should other people initiate universally permissible interactions with me?" the positive answer is: Because I have self awareness, and that grants me the agency to give or take permissions over my property as I wish. To deny this would be to plead insanity to the judge. The catch-22 is that declaring yourself insane proves that you have the reason to realize it, and thus you are sane. The question of why should we be moral cannot be answered without the context of a moral theory, and in this case UPI. If you tried to answer it without context, you would just say "because!" and you'd have fallen into the trap of the nihilist. That is because it is impossible for a person to be alone in the world, and be good or evil at the same time. To be good is to be good to others. To be evil is to be evil to others. And when you ask "Why should I be good?" it can only be answered in two ways, from the giver and from the receiver - not from a third and uninvolved party trying to troll a philosopher. In UPB, however, a person alone in the universe would be considered good because it is not-stealing, or not-murdering. In this sense UPI does deviate from UPB, but I wouldn't mourn this difference at all. I think it is a better interpretation of what being moral means at all, if you ask me, but I'm biased anyway. The final word: UPB & UPI & NAP When you use UPB to prove the NAP you find that there is a gap in the process. UPB is a meta-ethical theory of all behaviors, and the NAP is a moral rule against aggressive behaviors, but the moral theory in the middle of the equation seems to be missing. UPB is the grandfather and the NAP is the grandson, but where's the father? UPB only deals with moral theories, not moral actions. In that way, UPI is a theory of moral interactions that fills the gap between both the larger theory of behaviors, and the lower ground of rules to moderate behaviors between moral agents. The argument when there is only UPB and NAP looks like this: -Why should people follow the NAP? Because it's the only principle that passes the test of UPB -Why should I believe in UPB? Because denying it confirms UPB -Why should I be moral then? Because UPB is true -That doesn't answer my question I don't care. If it's true, you should follow it -Just because something is true doesn't mean that I have to follow it Right, but that doesn't invalidate the theory -I know, I'm just asking why I should change my behavior to follow it I don't know, it's up to you to choose to be virtuous, and have justice, and it will save the world... Suffice to say that the moral doubter is left unsatisfied and devolved into nihilism or egoism, and has no answer as to why he shouldn't be a jerk to other people. But let's try it with UPI and see what comes out. And if I rigged the conversation, well, I came up with it so I'm biased. We can try it for real later. -Why should people follow the NAP? Because you, as a receiver of moral interactions, cannot avoid having the capacity to deny people access to your property, or give them permission. -But what if I want them to trespass my property? That would be a voluntary, or universally permissible interaction instead. -Yeah, but what if they violate my property, but I don't complain about it? Then that's just a forgiveness, or retro-permission. It's part of the UPI theory. -Ok, but what about what I personally should do? Why should I follow the NAP? Why shouldn't I steal? Whether you follow or not the NAP isn't for you to judge. Other people, the receivers of your interaction, are the ones who judge whether you are violating them or not. -That's a bit confusing, can you explain it to me a little simpler? Sure, what I mean is that even if you were to violate the NAP in the absolute, wait, do you follow me there? -On the absolute? Yeah. - You mean, if I were to break the NAP in theory over any little thing? Right, so every single tiny violation of property rights that you do is technically wrong. -Ok, and then? That's what I'm saying! Even if I touch you, or do something you don't like, or take your shoes, or step on your lawn, you could shoot me for trespassing your property! How crazy is that? I know, I know, that's what I am trying to explain. It doesn't have to be like that. There's leniency. -What do you mean by leniency? I mean that not all incursions into property are evil. All interactions between agents occur when their private property comes into contact with each other, right? -Right. So my body would be my property, and your lawn yours. Yes, ok. That is not an evil interaction. To trespass into my lawn is technically wrong, I didn't let you in, but it's not unforgivable either. There's reasonable ways of letting things pass. -So you're not going to shoot me if I overstep, or if I take something, or if I (etc)? No, it's not like that. If you were to initiate lethal force against me I would have no choice but to defend myself. Don't you agree? -Yeah, I don't want to argue against self defense, that as much I understand. Sure, I'm glad we understand each other at least on that. -What if I stole money from you? Would you shoot me then? Steal money how? -Like, if I were to take your wallet when you weren't looking. I'd like to have my wallet back. -Yeah, but I took it, and then I ran away. Ok, so if I were to find you, and ask for my wallet back, would you give it to me, with all the money intact? -I guess I would... Right, so you were just pulling a practical joke on me. It's a prank. Nobody has to get shot for that. -On second thought, I won't give it back What are you going to do with it? -I'm not giving it back I'm assuming then that you would use force to protect the wallet from me taking it back -Yes In that case you have initiated the use of force against me, and I can use force to get it back -No! Yes I can! You agreed on self defense. -Darn, you win this time. All in a day's work. So from that highly biased towards me conversation you can see that if you argue against UPI you don't have to immediately jump in the argument of performative contradictions because arguing against UPI doesn't confirm UPI in the way it happens with UPB. Yes, technically a debate is a universally permissible interaction, but the fact that you chose a UPI to argue doesn't mean that RPI and evil interactions exist either. It could be that evil doesn't exist and all interactions are universally permissible, but as we've seen in the theory, that can't be validated (I hope) - but the act of debating it doesn't prove it either. However, as the debate above showed, there is an unavoidable annoyance that I like to call The Asshole Zone. The ASZ is the zone of interactions were it is just too much work to restitute property and assholes can take advantage of people's patience or leniency. This is why trolling exists, and 4chan exists, but I don't know how to get rid of it in any sensible way other than "don't be an asshole". Epilogue: If you're already someone who is convinced of the validity of UPB you might be wondering why you should care about another theory on top of it. UPB was never intended to be a theory of ethics, but a method, like the scientific method, to validate or invalidate moral hypothesis. In science you would propose a scientific hypothesis, run it through the scientific method, and then either validate it is a scientific theory or discard it. UPB is only the method, not the theory. What I propose with UPI is the ethical theory itself. Not the method to validate it. It is not my intention to discredit or reject UPB, on the contrary. It is an effort to build something that actually guides behavior and provides answers to people hell bent on erasing any and all moral idea from planet Earth. And that includes my own nihilistic tendencies as well. This essay is the direct result of trying to cope with UPB and understand it. In that process I also caught up on its criticisms that could almost be called arguments, but ultimately end up being nothing more than whining. It is totally unproductive to try to discredit or disavow any theory without trying to find the answers to the gap it would leave by its absence. In science it would be a waste of time to go into a lecture only to complain that maybe Einstein was wrong about General Relativity without any reason why and just yell like a monkey that science is based on assumptions. In that sense, this is the result of my personal struggle with secular ethics, and I hope it can either be improved or discarded. But please, if you want to say it's wrong, also tell me what is right instead.

Debating population control with a misanthropist is highly unproductive. I'm never going to get anywhere if you are already presupposing that people holding to live together in close proximity is bad. Your sophistry of the supposed nuances of subtly encouraging people through taxation is so weak, I mean, do you know where you are debating this? I live in a highly dense and populated city of over three million people. I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

People are not plants. I don't know where you get your gardening fantasies, but the idea of enforced population control is going to have to pass the "enforced" part first to be a credible argument.

The counterfeit of relationships can be analogued with the counterfeit of currency. If the latter is a crime, why isn't the former?

Empiricism is used to test the validity and universality of a moral principle. It is not used to see if it provides the greater good or something utilitarian like that. For example, if a moral theory resulted in empirical contradictions, but hag some degree of 'utility' for society or whatever - it would still be a false morality and thus we would reject it in principle. So no, the framework that Stef proposes called Universally Preferable Behavior does not work according to a predicted set of consequences, but if the consequence is that it is impossible to universally follow a moral rule, it rejects it.

Let's take it step by step. The people who follow UPB and would choose to give food to a starving man don't give him food because they believe they should give food, but because they choose to give him food. That choice was weighed with the factors of how much food they have, and how much they can afford to give away. If they were to calculate that giving the man food would harm them instead by not having enough food for them, they have the right to choose to save themselves. That is the evil of altruism that Rand was talking about, of having to sacrifice yourself for others even when it harms you. You could do that, but it's not an obligation. On the evil side, it's not consequentialism. What you are arguing is, instead. Listen, would you save Hitler? If Hitler at the end of WWII came to you asking to save him, would you? Of course it's rhetoric, but the point is that you are not forced to help people whom you deem unhelpable. Helping people whom you choose to help does not ignore UPB because that falls in the aesthetics category. It's not a moral question. UPB is beneficial because it gets rid of the situations that lead to having a man starving in the first place.

No, an axiom in the logical sense exists without reference to an external comparison, but it's self consistent with itself. "I exist" can be confirmed compared to myself because if I didn't exist I couldn't claim that I do. It's self referencial. What you're advocating sounds exactly like "confirmation bias", which is not an axiom, but an informal logical fallacy. You assume the conclusion, and then look for pseudo-evidence that confirms your initial prejudice. In that sense it is a perfect argument that SJW's are full of confirmation bias, but it's not an axiom. You could leave your entire disertation as it is, replace axiom with bias, and it works. The only problem is that everyone already knows this to be true.

I found this funny when I read that I had fallen victim of his machinations. In a way I guess it's true, I did give up, but on another way it's those who did not give up who are victims as well. He's a parasite of your time, your mind, and most important of all- your attention. That's why I implied he had some form of neglect in his history. A person can't be this dense under healthy mental conditions. It's been explained ad nauseam and he will still mischaracterize, misquote, misrepresent, and regress to muh definitions. It's not a rational way of debating. I hope he isn't a victim himself of his own mental parasites making him think he is just asking a reasonable question, but then acting unreasonably. I have to judge his actions, not what he says. His actions simply scream pay attention to me.

I sincerely hope Stef doesn't waste his time with this person in a live show. This is ridiculous. Just watch any other debate on morality and UPB Stef has already done because he explains this already.

You're going to have to be a little more specific for me to understand what the worry is. If anyone is ostracized unjustly that's a big issue, but if the rejection is caused by a legitimate incompatibility of values, why would you be concerned with that?

I think the confusion you have with subjective and objective rules is that you want an objective rule that bans "actions" like "killing". But the NAP doesn't ban "actions". It bans "interactions" and that is much more nuanced an complicated than a rule that says "killing is bad" because it is not the "killing" that is bad, it's the "murder" that is bad. Before you keep complaining that people aren't explaining things to you when they have, you need to understand this difference.

Yeah, that's a grim picture. Child neglect is the worst.

"I exist" is a self contained argument. "I am right" yeah, but about what? Compared to what? It is not a self contained argument. It's just a statement.

All I see is that you don't understand.

I sent you homework in the form of UPB. I said that my definitions are the UPB definitions of morality, which you already claim to have read. It's not a secret. Morality is the subset of UPB that deals with enforceable behavior. The NAP is a principle that describes that only the defense of property rights is an appropriate use of force. The warriors in your example marched into the private property of the castle owner which already is a violation of property rights. If the warriors had been invited into the castle properly, and thrown themselves to the ground, then the owners have all the right to remove the warriors from the castle by force if they declare an attack on the castle since the warriors are initiating force.

I agree, but I haven't seen the argument that IQ "increases" because you breastfeed a baby either. If there are people saying that, then yes, the semantics is backwards.

I am saying that if the test is rigged to disallow a perfect score, it's not a valid test. You're the one who brought the "perfect score" comparison to begin with, and now you say it doesn't work. Without an analogy, any morality that has in itself the impossibility of being perfectly moral is not a valid theory.

Are you actually trying to be wrong on purpose, or do you really not see how it is the same thing? If I can't get a 100 in a test, then the test is impossible to ace. If your morality is impossible to achieve, then it is unavoidable evil. If evil is unavoidable, there is no choice. If there is no choice, there is no morality. Thus morality without perfection is not morality.

I just try to use Occam's razor in a case like this. I don't know all the details, and while it is possible the kid does have some form aggressive behavior from his parenting, I must also consider a simpler explanation which is how I wrote that post.

Thanks for the specific reply. I see other people are already investing in the parenting side of things, so I rather not indulge in it myself. It is a difficult situation indeed, seeing how the child is trapped in aggressive walls. Religion is not the only form of irrationality, but it's the most common, so I asked that first. It seems to me that he might not understand that death is permanent. The death game has a resuscitation aspect of easily jumping between alive and dead, which is why death is funny. Perhaps it wasn't explained properly in order not to burden a young kid with it, but it had the unexpected consequence of making him how he is now. The parents don't seem to take it seriously either, so it is picked up from them as well.

If a starving man in the desperate and ridiculous position of having no choice, literally no choice, but to steal from your food actually stole an apple or a dollar from you - wouldn't you forgive him given that he had no choice? What he did was immoral, but given that you have reduced his life to that of a beast or an animal (life without choice or reason) it is rational to consider him an amoral being. If a starving raccoon stole from you, you wouldn't think the raccoon was immoral because it is an animal without reason and thought. Your starving man is equal to that: You've fictitiously generated a man that is an animal, and asked us to morally judge him as a trick.

UPB can only handle moral theories, not specific actions. If you build a wall around a tree, UPB has nothing to say about that. If you say "People have the right to refuse food that they own to other people" that is a theory, not an action. At the most fundamental level, yes, people can refuse food they own to a starving person, and that would be allowed in the theory of property rights. Absolutely. What you ignore is that A) that never happens, B) you'd have to be a huge douchebag to do it, C) maybe the person starving is a confirmed evil criminal and is suffering the consequences of his ostracism, D) a starving man can always negotiate something in exchange for food, E) the stream of events leading to starvation most likely already includes immoral behaviors and reckless decisions which would make the question of "what happens at the end of a series of immoral events?" irrelevant to a moral discussions because morality works from a "all things being equal" state, as in a "assuming nothing immoral has happened before my scenario" way.

What are the parents' beliefs on death? Do they have religious practices about death?

While it might seem that way, I can tell you from my personal experience that it isn't so. I am not a musician but I have made music as a therapeutic method to integrate my emotions. I didn't know that's why I was doing it at the time, but there are moments when the creative process of writing and composing something new requires the process of self knowledge in order to understand what is it you're trying to create. After the piece is finished there is enormous catharsis and healing, when done from that perspective. Regular and simple composing just for an aesthetic product doesn't result in that, but that's precisely what distinguishes mere singers from real artists.

If you do not accept the idea that man is capable of being perfectly moral, then you cannot have an objective and universal standard of morality. To call it an "unsupported notion" is dishonest in the debate you're having. Without universality, ethics is just an opinion. If your moral theory is that humans can never be moral, you are including yourself in your immorality, at which point why should anyone listen to you if you're evil? Or why should you instruct people in proper behavior if they can never be good? Any theory that posits the impossibility of morality is logically inconsistent.