this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
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OK, let me actually explain why I don't think they're worth engaging with:
Ethics are based on subjective axioms but they are motivated by certain objective beliefs about reality. Deontological and virtue ethics are both strongly motivated by a belief in free will, compatibilist or libertarian.
Both compatilism and libertarianism are akin to basically believing in magic (free will) because it feels good. And it feels bad to believe you have no free will.
But most people (including experts) believe in it anyway. Because its very human. We are evolutionary biased to believe in this fairy tale. It helps keep us motivated, the idea that we are in control of our fate (we aren't).
And if you believe in free will, deontological or virtue ethics both make perfect sense. So most experts, who are well read and smart people, are operating on on their education but also... motivated reasoning.
If this is unconvincing to you, then yeah there is no reason for us to talk. Go ahead and think of me as a quack I don't give a shit I don't want to waste my time.
if the world is deterministic, ethics don't exist.
If you wanted to goad a response from me, you've succeeded. That statement is false.
If we're going to throw around experts purely as justification for a belief, Robert Sapolsky and Tapio Lappi-Seppälä would like to have a word.
Determinism also isn't precisely the issue itself either, but I suppose its fair to bring that up given I brought up compatibilism and libertarianism. The ultimate point though is that even if the world isn't determined, that simply means its indeterminate. That doesn't justify a belief in free will either.
The very question of whether we have free will itself has a profound impact on ethics. Coming to the conclusion that there is no such thing as free will changes ethics, but it doesn't cause it to cease to exist. Ethics do not rely on free will to exist. All you need for ethics to be meaningful is the existence of conscious experience(s) of a negative or positive quality.
It essentially means that, when you know that "choice" is an illusion for everyone, it means punishment and reward for their own sake makes no sense and our desire for both is just emotional catharsis with a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify it all. It however doesn't mean suddenly that your behavior or the behavior of a body that governs reward and punishment is not influenced by the new information, or that ethical thought itself suddenly shut down.
Humans, and some other biological life forms, are just a bunch consciousness's riding a path of physical entropy. A process with previously set rules, that none of us had any control over. No one chooses to be born. No one chooses their own mind.
"If you wanted to goad a response from me"
without free will I can have no intention.
Intention exists, its just a form of information processing in your mind. Like all thoughts and motivations.
it's meaningless since I couldn't choose to act on my intention
Its not meaningless, at least not in a material sense. Trying to identify intent is useful information, it can guide interactions to being more empathetic/sympathetic, productive, or interesting.
Is it meaningless in the sense of like, spirituality? Or existentialism? Absolutely. Like, we aren't here for any reason and no one choose to be here. It never mattered in any mystical, magical, spiritual reason. There is nothing beyond what is here. We just exist and we like what we like and want what we want.
if it's meaningless, why are you so focused on trying to define it and defend your position? you must recognize this is only rational if you have agency.
Because I love discourse. I love discussing these ideas. (Though sometimes I also hate it)
Agency is one's ability to influence your environment. Agency feels good. So does solving puzzles and helping people.
if you're not choosing how to change your environment, you have no agency. rock slides change their environment but they have no agency.
Rocks have no agency because they aren't conscious or contain intelligence.
Characters in books are fictional autonomous beings and are often described as having agency or having no agency on the basis of their level of influence on the story. That's what I'm describing in a sense when I use the word, but applied to real conscious beings.
consciousness doesn't grant agency. free will does. if we can't agree on this, then go on making up your own definitions.
Perhaps I should try for a different word to describe it or modify it in some way. I will concede it ends up entering into semantic debate sometimes (if the discussion even reaches this point) and I find that kind of discussion pretty dull.