Off the top of my head, strong candidates for that set are:
“#Suffering is bad”
That’s the only thing that I’m certain is bad. My foundation for #ethics.
“#Mathematics is true”
Math is the only #epistemology that I trust. And math is behind everything.
“I matter. Others matter, too.”
This guards against the polar opposites of egotism and immolation — both mistaken.
[…]
Other propositions, while true and important, are derivative, reducible — not axiomatic:
“#Wellbeing matters”
…insofar as there’s (some degree of) consciousness/sentience. Because only sentient entities can suffer. And suffering is what matters.
eg, relieving a horse of a toothache is more important than preventing the annihilation of a sterile galaxy. There’s no “wellbeing” in a corner of the universe where there are no conscious creatures, no matter how vast that chunk of space-time be.
(If putting “destruction of an entire galaxy” lower in your list of worries than “someone somewhere breaks his little finger” sounds alarming to you, it’s only because it is extremely improbable that we could know for sure that the galaxy is entirely devoid of sentience, is incapable of developing or hosting consciousness ever in the future, and is not and will not provide shelter or resources to any creature. Very little confidence in that, therefore too much risk in prioritising a toothache over the fate of a billion stars in practice.)
“#Pleasure is good”
This is true only because (or to the extent that) pleasure is incompatible with suffering, or that pleasure means that whatever the level of suffering it is being offset by a greater amount of the opposite stuff.
“#Freedom matters”
Very often more freedom means individuals accomplish more of their stated preferences, and very often those preferences point towards less suffering for them (and sometimes for others, too).
Freedom is (usually) good because it (usually) reduces suffering. But it’s not a given.
(Needless to say, this is not a justification for despots or kidnappers, who do not reduce but increase suffering.)
To the best of my knowledge, nothing summarises best what’s “good” or “bad” or “important” than #suffering (avoiding it, preventing it, reducing it).
Not wellbeing, pleasure, flourishing, happiness, freedom, transcendence, detachment, or love.
And nothing seems better to me to measure and describe reality, what reality could be like, and how exactly it can be changed, than #math (rationality, logic, science).
Its contenders all look clearly inferior: intuition, empathy, revelation, tradition, authority, serendipity, chance, art, anecdote…
@tripu Would it not make sense to take a closer look at what freedom means?
From the top of my head, i would list:
- Freedom as practical abilities. My body is able to do certain things but not others. I can walk, but i cannot jump to the moon.
- Freedom as in “not being stopped by others”. Depending on where you are and what your social status is, you will be stopped from doing certain things. Some are stopped from using violence against others, some are stopped from going out to the street without specific garments.
- Freedom as a function of cooperation. Some things i can only do if others cooperate. Even if i can communicate and nobody stops me, if nobody engages i am not able to have a discussion about ethics.
Some of those are at odds with each other. If i do not cooperate in a discussion, the other does not have this last kind of freedom, but if i am forced to, i am stopped from whatever else i wanted to do.
Definitely! Freedom is complex and multi-faceted.
What I meant is that, whatever the definition of “freedom”, I suspect “suffering” takes precedence.
Some anecdotal evidence:
I (think I) would prefer to live under a tyranny or behind bars, than in excruciating pain. A higher proportion of people living in excruciating pain (be it physical or psychological) want to end their lives, and do end their lives, than prisoners for life or citizens in autocracies do, right?
Punching someone in the face (ie causing suffering) feels worse, and I think is punished more severely, than holding them for an hour or keeping them locked inside a room the whole morning (restricting freedom).
Think what we do in advanced nations to reduce our #suffering in contrast to what we do to increase our #freedom — individually and as a society. I would argue that more of our public spending, R&D, political discourse, economic activity, social advocacy, individual decisions, purchases, etc is aimed at suffering less than at having more liberty.
WDYT?
@tripu I completely agree in principle, but would call what you provided examples, not anecdotal evidence.
To go one step further, i would say while we made a big step forward by replacing corporal punishment with curtailing of freedom of movement, there are still issues.
For one, curtailing of freedom would let us compensate unfairly punished better by giving them money compared to a thief which had his hand hacked off never regaining even anything even close.
Another item would be in how far we actually protect prisoners - heard good things about Finland there.
To get back to the underlying issue, i would say that the actual protection prisoners have from suffering (by wardens or other prisoners) determines if we actually made progress there:
If more harm is inflicted to prisoners than offenders of the relevant category of crime become repeat offenders if not punished, we did not gain anything. And if we get those numbers and can agree, this would be an example where i would actually see the use of math (even if only temporarily until the problem with lacking protection of prisoners is solved).
Come to think of it, would you call yourself a utilitarian?
That is what “reasoning from first principles” means to me.
The causal chain may be long sometimes, with many logical steps involved. And there is room for uncertainty and for epistemic humility. But the ultimate goal is to evaluate ideas and to make decisions reducing them all to lower-level equivalents based on a few core propositions.