Refutation of AE Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Refutation of Argumentation Ethics [Full Text] —Refutation of Argumentation Ethics— Argumentation Ethics is a philosophy by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the overarching idea is that the Non-Aggression Principle, that is absolute private property rights, is presupposed by the activity of argumentation itself, such that to argue against the NAP is to performatively contradict yourself. The basis of this claim is that to engage in argumentation with an interlocutor, your debate opponent, or multiple interlocutors, is for you to not be intimidating them with the initiation of force, as you and them reject the initiation of force as the legitimate method of resolving a conflict. Argumentation as a whole is a peaceful activity, where you and your interlocutors presuppose they have the right to exclusive control of their own bodies respectively and the property needed to engage in argumentation, as they require this control to give counterarguments. To object to such control, or self-ownership as Hoppe calls it, is to performatively contradict oneself because it is in contradiction with the idea that by engaging in argumentation is to legitimize the activity and thus its peaceful norms as the method for resolving conflict. This is a performative contradiction, thus to argue against the NAP is inconsistent. —Why Hoppe argues Rejecting the NAP outside of Argumentation is invalid— To reject argumentation or claim argumentation or its norms is an invalid way of resolving a specific conflict, and instead claim such conflict must be resolved via the initiation of force, is to prevent oneself from consistently arguing for the claim. To argue for the claim appeals to argumentation as the way to resolve the conflict, yet the claim contradicts that directly. Imagine you were to argue that the norms of argumentation are only a valid way to solve the conflict at hand, for the next 30 minutes, and then afterwards the initiation of force would be the legitimate means to resolve the conflict. To argue this, according to Hoppe, would be to essentially argue that your own argument is invalidated after 30 minutes, because afterwards you would discard the idea that argumentation is a legitimate way to resolve the conflict, thus forfeiting your own argumentative force. If your own argument is invalidated though, that means its outcome would be left undefended. —The Problem of Argument vs. Arguer— The first gigantic problem with Argumentation Ethics, is that it does not and can not disprove any arguments themselves, all it attempts to do is prove the arguer, the person communicating their argument, is performatively contradicting themselves. If the argument being communicated itself stands up to scrutiny, or if it's simply a conclusion derived from premises that both the arguer and their interlocutors do actually accept, then their argument is valid whether the arguer is performatively contradicting themselves or not. To say the arguer is contradicting themselves becomes reduced to simply meaning they are arguing for a claim that they are not abiding by right now by engaging in argumentation, this is a descriptive fact and has no bearing on the truth of the actual argument being provided. If it is possible for there to be some arguments that are valid, and true, but not consistently able to be argued for without violating these norms, then Argumentation Ethics fails to protect the NAP. Imagine someone communicating a proof that 1+1=2 while assaulting you. Does this disprove their proof? No. What if they try to derive a claim by showing it logically follows from true premises? Does them aggressing upon you disprove the deduction? Does it prove the premises false, even if the premises have nothing to do with the norms of argumentation? Again the answer is a firm no. —The Problem of Intellectual Conflict vs. Physical Conflict— The second gigantic problem with Argumentation Ethics, is that it doesn't actually universalize at all, because there is a difference between accepting argumentation as the (or a) legitimate way to resolve an intellectual conflict, a conflict of ideas and of what claims follow from premises, and accepting argumentation as the only legitimate way of resolving a physical conflict, that is a conflict involving property, physical objects, the "contradictory use of scarce means". The existence of this distinction allows someone, as many already do, to argue that the Non-Aggression Principle is a valid method of interaction within the context of argumentation, and that the norms of argumentation including the NAP is a legitimate method of resolving intellectual conflicts; while also accepting that to resolve the actual physical conflicts, initiation of force is sometimes necessary if the transgressor fails to concede the intellectual conflict. To put it more simply, peaceful conduct is a legitimate way to resolve disputes involving the truth value of claims, while the initiation of force can sometimes be a legitimate way to resolve physical conflicts over resources, even if the use of force doesn't actually prove the legitimacy. Force is instead the tool to enforce claims that are proven peacefully. The Hoppean rebuttal to this is to collapse the distinction, which can't be justified.

Yogg Virtue Theory Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Yogg Virtue Theory [Full Text] —Consent from Justification Ethics— Consent is a continuous, preferably enthusiastic, explicit, and relevantly-informed, acceptance of an agreement, contract, or activity. The value of Consent can be obtained through simple Justification Ethics. Agreements sustained via an alignment of interests will ensure people's interests are respected; for if agreements are handled with everyone involved only looking out for their own interests, and not actually in agreement, this will end up with gross interest misalignment and thus the interaction will dissolve into an anti-interest catastrophy in violation of the AIP and AAP. —Passive vs. Active Interactions— Justification Ethics lays out the following concept: Interactions rationally ought to appeal to the normative value of the relevant interests of all involved, due to the premises of the persuasive argumentation necessary to rationally justify the interaction. Thus, interactions must be rationally justifiable relative to Interests. The question here is what kind of interaction? If someone is in danger in front of me, do I have a duty to act and help them? To what end, to what limits? —Justification Ethics and a Right to a Private Sanctuary— Justification Ethics is contingent on the normative obligation to rationally justify methods of interaction. This normative obligation comes from Normative Rationalism. Does this normative obligation apply to inaction as well as action? It could be argued in theory that for someone in danger in front of you, you are not interacting with that person, and thus no rational justification for anything is necessary until you interact with them. This view implies interests only become relevant once you enter into an interaction with someone else who has Normative Will, who has interests. Thus, inaction is never unjustifiable unless somehow inaction is contradictory with the existence of interests themselves, such as if "Interest Structures" or the "Pillars holding up Interests" are themselves under threat, similar to theories of Threshold Deontology. There is a problem with this analysis though, couldn't it be said that inaction is yet another form of behavior, and as a behavior it is the fulfillment of an interest, an interest to not act? Must this interest be rationally justifiable? If so, justifiable to whom? How can it be narrowed down who is involved in a behavior that by definition is directly affecting no-one? —Praxeological Asymmetry— One place to turn to is the idea of a Praxeological Asymmetry. Praxeology is the theory of beings that engage in purposeful behavior. Praxeological Asymmetry is the idea that inaction or withholding from action does not require justification in the same way as active interaction, and this is founded on Epistemological Asymmetry grounds. Epistemology is the theory of how beliefs should be shaped, and this idea holds within it an arguable asymmetry. If you have a claim like "there is a teapot between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn", the lack of evidence for such a claim means that you, empirically, ought to disbelieve in the existence of the teapot. So a lack of evidence leads to disbelief rather than just neutrality? This implies an asymmetry. Applying similar logic, or applying this epistomological thinking to rational justification, leads to a Justification Ethics conclusion that interests are relevant to only involved people in an interaction. If your actions don't directly affect anyone, you aren't interacting with anyone in an active way, then justification relative to interests need not be present due to the asymmetry. —Epistemological Asymmetry is Invalid?— There is unfortunately a problem here too. Belief in such a mystical teapot is irrational, but so is neutrality towards the hypothesis, due to there being an overwhelming amount of evidence that space is mostly empty, so the area between Jupiter and Saturn should be devoid of random teapots, as well as how Earthly objects should be nowhere near planetary orbits, except under very specific circumstances of which none should exist for a random teapot. Thus disbelief is the rational conclusion, not due solely because of a lack of evidence but also because of evidence to the contrary. This presents a problem because other claims where there is limited or no evidence going for or against the claim, may not have a "default state" to point to for deciding whether belief or disbelief is rational, leading to neutrality being the rational conclusion. This breaks the asymmetry which goes against the logic of "non-interaction" leading to non-justification, leading to inaction not being in violation of interests. —Abuse Constructs a Right to a Private Sanctuary?— Perhaps due to neutrality being correct in a true both-sides lack of evidence, no evidence for or against a particular claim, this can grant a "default state" that can bind Justification Ethics to ongoing interactions, the same way non-existent future interests are fundamentally different from Justification Ethics and the Absolute Interest Principle, as the ought to rationally fulfill interests only derives existant interests. You cannot ought that which you cannot. It may also make sense to acknowledge that the Anti-Abuse Principle as formulated grants a protection from Inherently-Frustrating Interests, classifying them as illegitimate based on the logical implications of Interests being treated as the fundamental normative value. A protection from such inherently-frustrating interests may include a protection from harmful obligations, which further demonstrates this "Right to Private Sanctuary". —Yogg Virtue Ethics— Even if it may be hard to justify any form of duty or obligation towards those you aren't actually interacting with, using Justification Ethics, there is still a basis for defining good character and morally positive conduct, and this is Virtue Ethics. Virtue Ethics is a philosophical approach that emphasizes the character and virtues of a person, what guides their behavior, rather than focusing on adherence to a principle or goal. Positive traits, aka Virtues, are the attributes that help curate morally or ethically positive behavior, and reflect an outlook on others or an outlook on existence that is in some sense morally positive. Negative traits, aka Vices, are the attributes that contradict this goal. Positive character, and the recognition of rational and irrational character traits, relative to Interests, is the way to address this problem. Virtue can thus be thought of as a Respect of Interests, of both others and your own, and the adherence to that responsibility. This is similar to Immanuel Kant's "Treat People as an End, never as a Mere Means" philosophy, which is also related to the given Yoggist definition of Abuse, that behaviors functioning off of misaligned interests, may result in frustration for one side of a deal, which can be dangerous to the meaning of interests themselves, and is thus illegitimate. —Plagiarism and Wheaton's Law— Wheaton's Law is a guiding principle that states simply, "Don't be a dick". This guiding principle maps almost perfectly onto the Anti-Abuse Principle, as to be a 'jerk' is pretty neatly spelled out as to engage in behavor that is inherently interest-frustrating, and unjustifiable to others in some way. Taking up the Anti-Abuse Principle with this idea of "Respect of Interests" as a form of Virtue, then maps perfectly the guiding principle of Wheaton's Law. This grants a valuable insight, the ability to both ethically and character-wise decry practices such as Plagiarism in the name of Interests. Plagiarism, and equivalently non-attribution and stealing credit, as well as very specific and limited forms of Intellectual Property, are thus justifiably anti-virtue as they correspond to a disrespect towards other's interests, and in many cases are unethical as they may correspond to inherently-frustrating interests as the product of both vices and interest misalignment. Some things that are illegal under absolutist Intellectual Property Rights, but are not inherently-frustrating, would include archiving, and derivative works. These actions don't harm anyone inherently, and simply represent creative expression. The ethical violation in plagiarism lies in false representation, not in duplication; so archiving doesn't count as an ethical infringement. Plagiarism frustrates interests by: 1. Stealing reputational capital (career prospects, social standing, trust). 2. Undermining trust and attribution (people rely on attribution to evaluate credibility). 3. Creating asymmetric advantage through deception (falsely-attributed exchange). 4. Discouraging creation by breaking the link between effort and recognition. This makes plagiarism inherently frustrating, regardless of any monetary exchange. Archiving does not inherently frustrate interests because: 1. It preserves access without deceptive or abusive practices. 2. It does not claim authorship of anything and ought to include proper attribution. 3. It often aligns interests (creator interest in preservation + public interest in access). Any harm is contingent, not inherent (e.g. bandwidth costs, disputes in hosting). —Forming a Principle— Therefore, based on all this reasoning, we can define Virtue and Vice as the following: Virtue: Traits that curate a respect towards Interests as having value. Vice: Traits that curate a disrespect towards Interests as having value. Some virtues consistent with this view would include: Generosity, Altruism, Self-Reliance, Solidarity, Trustworthyness, Justice, Fairness, Mutualism Some vices consistent with the view would include: Unfairness, Irrationality, Rage, Disrespect, Hatefulness, Exploitativeness, Callousness, Cowardice Using this reasoning we can then define the following principle, describing Just Duty, and Fair Behavior. —Yogg Virtue Principle— You ought to act in a way consistent with the virtues that curate respect for interests, including Mutual Respect, Justice, Truth, and Recognition of others as Self-Sovereign. You ought to not act against Consent, or enforce Interest Misalignment for your own gain through Unfairness, Irrationality, Explotativeness, or Abuse. You ought to form a character that adheres to the responsibility of upholding these character traits, against Negligence towards others, and Abuse of others. Common virtues such as Justice, Self-Sovereignty, and Generosity, are simply emergent properties of the Respect for Interests.

Actions Must be Justified Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Actions Must be Justified [Full Text] –Beliefs must be Justified– The Egoist who obtains the ability to be persuaded by sufficient reason must accept beliefs should be justified. Debate itself, regardless if involved in ethics or otherwise, implies beliefs require interpersonal justification, as all debate is to reason about beliefs. –Rejection of Justification forfeits all Argument– To reject the idea that beliefs require justification, is to forfeit all argumentative force, to fully reject all ability to make claims others have any sufficient reason to accept, and to grant yourself the ability to take up any position without justification. For an Egoist to take up this position is to fall for the Igism dilemma. If an Egoist attempts this you may simply respond claiming to be a believer of Igism, where Igism is the idea that one should say 'Ig' once a day, and encourage others to do the same, while attempting to form a coercive government that indoctrinates others into Igism. For an Egoist to reject debate is for them to grant Igism equal weight to their own framework. Any objection to the claim that beliefs should face justification is also to object to the very argumentative force of the objection itself, since a belief in the objection or acceptance of it's conclusion itself counts as a belief and suddenly cannot be justified in a way binding to any agent. –What is a Belief?– What is a belief, though? Ultimately a belief is something you act on, a conclusion you accept and would bet on being correct, and may guide your actions. In a physical sense you can think of it as a pattern within your own brain. Acceptance of beliefs based on justification can then be thought of as internal actions, as actions you take within your own mind. –Actions require Followed Beliefs which face Justification– In-order for Justification Ethics to work, we must derive the claim that actions should be justified normatively in the first place. How can this be shown? Well, this is in effect asking how the justificatory burden of internal actions should imply a justificatory burden on external actions. This can be shown by realizing some beliefs are followed in the present moment and guide action. If you take an action, it can be said that an internal action guided your mind which caused the action to happen, as actions are the output of a mind. We can call such beliefs, "followed beliefs". These followed beliefs, as beliefs, have justificatory burden, thus the beliefs that lead to actions against others must require justification. To reject this is to forfeit all argument as explained earlier. For intentional actions, the actions performed as a consequence of these followed beliefs, a justificatory burden placed on the agent who performed the action is directly implied by the followed belief, as beliefs require justification. –Justification Ethics– If someone is to attack another person, that is an action performed as a consequence of a followed belief. That action being taken implies the existence of the followed belief being accepted by the agent in some form, and that belief requires justification. If said belief cannot be justified, then an action that cannot be normatively justified implies a failure of reason in the sense of the presence of unjustified beliefs. To be clear, it isn't that actions inherit the justificatory burden as an axiom, but rather that the performance of an action can imply an unjustified belief, it implies a failure to meet the standard of justification. As such, some actions imply this failure, and some don't. It is in this sense explicitly, that actions should be justified. Thus, such intentional actions imply a justificatory burden. This is the fundamental premise of Justification Ethics, which then derives Interests as a value. –Belief vs. Action Egoism– Imagine an Egoist that takes up the position that some beliefs require interpersonal justification, but actions and the beliefs that guide them do not. That is, it is sound to argue another needs to be able to prove their belief rationally ought be accepted, but not to argue another needs to prove their action and the belief that guides it ought be accepted. Under this view, beliefs that only imply neutral, non-ethical actions that don't effect others, should be justified relative to your own interests, or if they are truth claims, relative to the truth or logic or whatnot. Beliefs that imply actions affecting others, only require justification relative to your own interests, or if they are based in truth claims, relative to truth or logic. This creates a problem though, as this means some beliefs, followed beliefs, the beliefs that guide actions, don't need to be proven to others; that is, you don't need to prove it ought be accepted. This distinction between some beliefs that need justification and some that don't is arbitrary, and results in a breakdown of all argumentation to do with actions that effect others. –Burden of Proof Argument for Yoggism– For those who may object to the high standard of proof, the standard of rational normative interperso nal justification appealed to in Yoggism, the standard that normative claims ought be justified in a way where you can prove all affected by the claim or perhaps all beings rationally ought accept the claim, the following argument can be made. If you have an ethic, like Yoggism, that passes and explicitly relies upon that high burden of proof, how could that ethic if functional not gain supersedence over alternative ethics based in arbitrary axioms and beholden to lower burdens of proof? It is irrational, under a given framework of theories, to accept theory B over theory A if A passes a higher burden of proof than B, and this is true even if A and B don't fully prove themselves true. Even if we accept it's okay to believe a theory even if it isn't fully proven true, believing B over A is still irrational because A, even if ultimately subjective, is still objectively better. It is not irrational to accept the axioms of mathematics, the Peano Axioms, because they are the minimum rules required to engage in the framework of math. They are the foundation of the framework itself. It makes much less sense though, to engage in a system of mathematics and appeal to it, that contains the Peano Axioms as well as an extra 20 axioms that add almost nothing and create conclusions that aren't just disconnected from but contradictory with basic counting, such as conclusions like 10002 + 43991 = 53993.5. This distinction is presupposed by all debate of beliefs. Those who debate beliefs and normatives while ultimately thinking ethics and even rationality is subjective, also definitely presuppose this, as otherwise all statements would be equal to them. This problem is related to what is discussed in Inherent Interest Theory, if the epistemic cost of all claims is said to be equivalent then all claims are somehow "just as valid". –Actions Must be Justifiable - Deductively Proven– –Definitions: (Belief): A proposition accepted as true by an agent. (Followed Belief): A belief, principle, or judgement that an agent is presently acting according to. (Interpersonal Justification): A deductive argument that derives the conclusion that another rational agent ought to accept some belief from premises they are rationally required to accept. (Intentional Action): An action intentionally performed according to one or more followed beliefs. –Premises: (P1): Acceptance of any rational deductive argument presupposes that beliefs presented as reasons for action or acceptance of claims, require interpersonal justification. (P2): Intentional actions are performed according to one or more followed beliefs. (P3): If an action is performed according to a followed belief that possesses a justificatory burden, then the action inherits a justificatory burden from that belief. –Logic: (L1): From (P1 + P2), intentional actions performed according to beliefs presented as reasons are performed according to beliefs that require justification. (L2): From (P3), an intentional action derives its justificatory burden from the followed belief according to which it is performed. –Conclusion: From (L1 + L2): Therefore, intentional actions performed according to followed beliefs presented as reasons, are thus actions subject to interpersonal justification. Thus, certain actions do require justification, the fundamental premise of Justification Ethics. To reject this conclusion, is to forfeit the rational force of one's own objection, since an objection is itself an attempt to justify the acceptance of a belief by appeal to reasons.

Interest Praxeology Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Interest Praxeology (Yogg-Economics) [Full Text] —Interest Praxeology— Praxeology is, traditionally, the theory of human action, of why humans take certain actions in certain circumstances through purposeful behavior. In Yoggist terms this would translate to how followed beliefs, or action-guiding beliefs, cause one to act to achieve some end; aka to fulfill some interest. Interest here is defined as merely that which a sentient being's behavior tends towards. The end a being is attempting to achieve by engaging in a purposeful action, is the interest. —Behavior and Wants are Separate— Here we can define a "want" or an intrinsic interest: That which a being's behavior tends towards, regardless of external factors. Regardless of external factors here is a distinguisher between interests that are merely due to some current limiting factor, and interests more inherent to the being possessing them. Imagine a person stuck in a cage, with a guard stationed outside ready to shoot them if they attempt to leave. In such a situation, the person does not have an interest in leaving the cage, in the sense that their behavior will not tend toward that end, because doing so will result in bodily harm. With this being said, they do have an intrinsic interest in leaving the cage, they 'want' to leave the cage, which is what is normally meant by someone saying they have an interest in leaving the cage. It isn't that they will try to leave the cage right now, instead right now they would rather stay in the cage, not because of their own preferences, but rather due to an external factor beyond their control that artificially limits the fulfillment of their interests. This immediately demonstrates a critical difference between a being having a mere interest in something in some sense, and them actually wanting something, having an intrinsic interest in some end. In this case we can say they may have an interest in leaving the cage, because absent the external factors "spooking" them into staying in the cage, they would leave it immediately. We can then say them not leaving the cage is merely them placing a separate interest above their own freedom of movement, their interest in not dying. Such an interest acts as a conduit for many other interests, as dying prevents fulfillment of most other interests that are relative to a being's actions in the world. Such an interest that acts as a conduit for other interests can be described as being entangled with many other interests, such an interest is an "Inherent Interest" and is the interest appealed to when acting against an Intrinsic Interest. —The Problem of Market Demand— The problem with the Austrian conception of "free markets", markets that are mostly or entirely unregulated, or Pure Markets as they will be referred to as here as to not confuse moral language with legal detail, is that the logic in favor of them confuses market demand with people's wants. The traditional praxeological argument in favor of Pure Markets is the idea that people's wants generate economic demand, and in an unregulated marketplace sellers will prop up to take advantage of the demand. The demand creates an incentive to give a fairly priced supply, specifically the pricing necessary to make a profit. With competition, overpricing when possible becomes rarer because it becomes less possible, as people can simply go to another seller. Depending on the good being sold, they can also simply stop buying the good. This is the basis of most economics, supply and demand. The more people willing to buy, the more people are incentivized to sell. This demand is not the same thing as actual wants though, as this only measures non-intrinsic interests, or Relative Interests, interests that are relative to the present conditions, taking in all 'spooking' external factors influencing how someone acts according to their interests. This includes economic externalities, coercion, irrational judgement, cultural spooks, lack of information, among many other things. Because of this, a Pure Market only works well if there is fair and plentiful competition. Some industries are harder to enter than others, which creates a loophole wherein if an industry is hard to enter but easy to stay afloat, competition will be low and incentive to act against people's actual wants will be high. —Where Austrian Economics Loses its Grip— Especially for libertarians wanting deregulation, they run into a problem where they make a sharp distinction between someone being coerced by force into acting against their actual wants, and someone being coerced by their own conditions, manipulations, and other "spooking" external factors into acting against their actual wants, or into allowing their wants to be frustrated. The libertarian argument is that the latter isn't coercion at all, and that any circumstance where they make a voluntary exchange isn't inconsistent with their interests or anything else because such an exchange is always mutually beneficial. They then say this is true because any exchange that isn't mutually beneficial is an exchange a rational human would not partake in. The problem here is that, relative to interests, the distinction between what they consider coercion and not, is arbitrary; and the exact same logic can be used against involuntary exchange as well. For someone to stay in a cage because the alternative is death, is them engaging in a mutually beneficial exchange. The guard doesn't want them to leave the cage, and probably doesn't want them dead, just imprisoned. The prisoner doesn't want to die, and views their interest in not dying above their interest in freedom of movement. Yet the libertarians argue allowing criminals to hold people at gunpoint and use that to their advantage in the market, would not protect anyone or ensure adequate supply of goods relative to people's actual wants. This is a contradiction. —Economic Information is Concealed by Absolute Property— Libertarians talk of economic information, a possible argument in their favor is that use of force conceals information in the economy. If Bob is offered a purchase of their land for $100,000, this brings the information of whether they value their land more or less than $100,000 into the market, allowing supply and demand for such land to adjust accordingly. If Bob is instead threatened with force to lose their land, well.. information is still revealed, they value their land less than their own life. The argument from libertarians is such information is less meaningful, less relevant to the economy, that such information doesn't change supply and demand for such land because any seller can assume most people value their own life over their land, or other property for that manner. As such, markets that don't allow such force conceal less information which in turn leads to the market being more efficient, and allowing supply and demand function better. The problem with this idea is that it may be true in a simplistic example such as this, but information is still concealed when people's interests are not given bargaining power; and interests are still frustrated without the use of force. As explained before, the coercive nature of force expands to other domains, and results in very similar results. Imagine a situation where a gay man lives in a town that hates gay people. The threat of him being ostracized acts as a "spook" against his interests, leading to the information of him being gay, being concealed from the market. Similarly, a situation where someone is forced to pay extra for rent from a landlord or work in a very dangerous job simply because they are impoverished and have nowhere else to go, is a situation where their preferences are being hidden from the market. Any case of this will create inefficiency, and this can be logically proven. Inefficiency in a market is measurable by whether there exists an allocation of resources that could make someone better off without making anyone else worse off than they were before. The more such allocations exist, the more inefficient. It can also be measured as whether decentralized actors are unable to coordinate production between each-other using relevant knowledge. If a market contains external factors that distort the expression of intrinsic interests, market demand cannot be assumed to accurately represent those interests, which results in an inefficiency in both market coordination and supply and demand. This can be shown regardless of which measure of inefficiency you choose. —A Proof that Austrian Economics results in Inefficiency— –Premises: (P1): Market demand reflects the behavior of people under their existing conditions, and therefore reflects their relative interests, rather than necessarily their intrinsic interests or wants independent of external constraints. (P2): An interest that is fulfilled or pursued only because of the present conditions affecting an agent's behavior, is a relative interest rather than an intrinsic interest. (Definition) (P3): External factors can alter the conditions under which a person acts according to their interests, causing them to pursue relative interests that differ from their intrinsic interests. (P4): When a person's relative interests differ from their intrinsic interests due to external factors, their behavior does not fully reveal to the market the intrinsic interests that would otherwise guide their actions. (P5): A market allocation is inefficient when there exists an alternate allocation that can better fulfill the interests of at least one person without reducing the fulfillment of the interests of others, or when relevant information necessary for decentralized coordination is concealed. –Logic: (L1): From (P2), interests that are relative to the existing conditions of an agent are distinguishable from intrinsic interests that would remain present regardless of those conditions. (L2): From (P3), external factors can cause a person's behavior to be directed towards a relative interest rather than the intrinsic interest that would otherwise guide their behavior. (L3): From (L1 + L2), when external factors cause a person's behavior to be directed towards a relative interest that differs from their intrinsic interest, the behavior of the person is not necessarily representative of their intrinsic interest. (L4): From (P4), when a person's behavior is directed towards a relative interest that differs from their intrinsic interest, their behavior does not fully reveal the intrinsic interest that would otherwise guide their actions. (L5): From (L3 + L4), when external factors cause a person's behavior to be directed towards a relative interest that differs from their intrinsic interest, the intrinsic interest that would otherwise guide their behavior can be concealed from the market. (L6): From (P1 + L5), market demand can therefore reflect behavior directed towards relative interests while failing to reveal the intrinsic interests of the people generating that demand. (L7): From (P5), when relevant information necessary for decentralized coordination is concealed, the resulting market allocation is inefficient. (L8): From (L6 + L7), whenever market demand fails to reveal intrinsic interests that are relevant to the allocation of resources, the resulting market allocation can be inefficient. –Conclusion: From (L8): Therefore, Pure Markets do not necessarily produce efficient allocations, because market demand can reflect relative interests created by external conditions rather than the intrinsic interests of the people involved, allowing relevant information about interests to be concealed from the market. —Libertarian Slavery and Wage Labor— Some might think that market efficiency and ethics are separate, based on the idea that slave labor for example can be used to enhance market efficiency, making production of goods cheaper. Libertarians who follow Austrian Economics would instead argue such slavery conceals important information from the market such as which people are best at which labor, since the labor is supplied involuntarily giving an incentive to hide your skills from your slave owner. Information is also hidden involving how much of specific products to make, whereas extra production can be done in areas that might not make much sense, simply because production in certain industries may have a disproportionate advantage given by slave labor. In the same way though, abusive wage labor also conceals information even when force is not used. In an unregulated market, people who seek employment simply because of their external conditions and not as an intrinsic interest, conceal from the market information about what jobs they actually want, what jobs are actually needed, and how much their own labor is worth. —Worker-Ownership, Interest Alignment, and Information— The hidden information and thus inefficiency is a side-effect of Interest Misalignment, where the interests of employee and employer, worker and owner, are misaligned to the detriment of the market. Interest Alignment on the other-hand, implies an ability to ensure proper coordination relative to the interests of the parties involved, and thus knowledge of how they manage scarce resources. An enterprise that is entirely worker-owned, has all the knowledge of the interests of all parties involved internally, as such no information is lost in internal organization. Consumer bargaining power has a similar effect, the NAP though can disincentivize these types of arrangements, because in an absence of appropriate regulation those looking to hold on to "dictatorial" power over enterprise and the overall economy will use every means to do so, and this is true historically. The more interests are not being subordinated, the more information is revealed to the market and the better the outcomes. —What is Economic Efficiency, and its connection to Justification Ethics— If we define economic efficiency as how effectively a system can transform scarce resources into things people value, or how efficiently it uses scarce resource relative to what is valuable, we immediately must ask: "Value according to whom?" If the answer is given by appealing to some external objective standard, we've simply introduced a normative axiom. If the answer instead is, "Value according to the interests of the people whose resources and lives we're talking about in the first place", then suddenly economics and ethics have already begun speaking the same language. In-fact, this is familiar. Any other standard of value is arbitrary, thus by the nature of subjectivity all we can appeal to is interests themselves. This is the core logic of Justification Ethics leaking through, but for economics. Unlike Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics, where the argument for why the norms of argumentation necessarily imply what happens to be the proposed "most efficient" system of economics, Austrian Economics, is left completely unanswered, begging you to ask what if someone accepted Argumentation Ethics but disagreed that Austrian Economics was the most efficient economic system, thus implying they must advocate for inefficiency? Instead, Yoggism since it is based on interests, simply turns economic dispute into an argument around what it means for a market to give "good results" in the first place. This then explains why Justification Ethics and Interest Praxeology are so interconnected.

Absolute Interest Conclusion Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Absolute Interest Conclusion [Full Text] —The Absolute Interest Conclusion— The Absolute Interest Conclusion is the conclusion that: It is utmost rational to uphold the fulfillment of interests of all sentient beings, across all possible reference frames; with priority to existent, rational, Inherent Interests, as a value. This conclusion can be derived logically, using the following argument: (1): Why Future Interests Count Future interests are also valuable as people generally have an interest in their future and the fulfillment of interests they hold in the future. When people do not value their future interests, then we can apply the following argument: A hypothetical large group of people who do not have an interest in their future interests, will on average end up minimizing the fulfillment of interests of a majority of the group. It is utmost rational, relative to each person, of any group, to avoid such a scenario; and this is true regardless of precondition. This logic applies to all future interests, but only interests given from those already or previously sentient. The reason for this is that the minimization of existent interests has no relevant causal relationship with the prevention of the creation of new interests. (2): Reducing everything to Rationality We can thus define oughts as interests, treating the fulfillment of interests as a form of Moral Utility, that we should maximize throughout all of time, across all possible reference frames; assuming present interests are as ultimately meaningful as future interests; which is defendable from the argument already given. Finally, we can now convert all ‘oughts’ and ‘ought-nots’ to simply ‘rationalities’ and ‘irrationalities’. (3): Cooperation for Interests This grants us something similar to the contractarian idea that morality emerges from valuing social cohesion and the need for cooperation through agreements, based on people’s subjective interests; but with one key difference: All sentient beings capable of ‘interests’ are held as morally significant. (4): Fulfillment of Interests vs. Creation of new Interests To maximize interests means to maximize the fulfillment of any existing interests. There is no rational justification for the creation of new Interests, unless it maximizes potential for already existent inherent interests related to certain mental states such as happiness or other Approximate Goods. This is due to it being rational to most rationally fulfill an interest assuming you are acting according to your own interests already, this says nothing about creating new interests to act according to, unless doing so helps to fulfill your existing interests. All of this is to say that forcibly modifying everyone’s brains to really want to lick walls, and then giving them walls to lick, is a terrible way to help anyone, as it is not an ethical thing to do as it does not maximize existent interests and violates basic freedoms which actually minimizes existent interests. Even in situations where everyone ends up happy with their new artificial interests, situations with more rational interests will be more rational and overall more stable, and any situation that tries to force people into some set of interests will be violating their interests in not doing that, continuously. A situation where people are able to fulfill their own individual interests will be much more consistent with the AIC, and much more consistent with the fulfillment of interests as a principle. (5): Overall Rational Outcomes The self-interest of one individual is different from the overall interests of a group. Recognizing and valuing the group interests, the utmost rational, most consistent interests of the most universal group, will give us this Absolute Interest Conclusion. Since the class of all sentient beings represents the largest class actions can be compared and measured according to, it is an Absolute Class, representing the utmost rational standard of intrinsic value. To contradict this utmost rational standard is thus irrational, therefore the intrinsic values that are held consistently among all members of the Absolute Class, must not be contradicted. This intrinsic value is the value of the Fulfillment of Interests itself. It should be noted at this point that the idea of a "collective" is meaningless, as you cannot directly conclude a group collectively has some interest, unless the interest is shared unanimously. Collectives don't exist, only individuals exist in any meaningful way, only individuals can act rationally or irrationally. In this case, the fulfillment of interests is a rational, inherent, and existent value, and interest, intrinsic and inherent to all sentient beings, regardless of external factors. Therefore, it is utmost rational to maximize the Fulfillment of Existent Inherent Interests of all sentient beings in all possible reference frames. (6): Intrinsic Standards, Value Reductionism, and the Axiom of Choice The Axiom of Choice is a mathematical construct, usually added onto Zermelo-Fraenkel Set Theory mathematics. Set Theory is based on the idea of ‘Sets’, of collections of members. So you can have a Set of all Purple Dogs, and a Set of all Bananas. The Set of all Naturally Purple Dogs is equivalent to the Empty Set, a set containing no elements at all. Now, the Axiom of Choice is the axiom that, phrased crudely: If you have a bunch of sets, and then you take one or a few elements out of each set, and group up all of those specific elements into a new collection, that collection is itself considered a valid set. If every set contains valid elements, then grouping one from each set should also yield a valid set. It seems logical, because if each element of a set is a set itself, I.E. a single element A corresponds to a set [A], the set who's only element is A, and the sets containing them are of course sets themselves, then it seems the ‘set-hood’ of each set emerges from and can be reduced to the set's members. If we simply group up a bunch of random or arbitrarily chosen elements, no matter how we group them, that group’s ‘set-hood’ can be reduced to its members, and its members are all valid both as elements and as single-element sets. So, how could the new collection not constitute a valid set? Especially if it follows all other rules for sets, which it unequivocally does. This intuition appeals to a logical and philosophical system called Reductionism, the idea that some thing's function can correspond to it thought of as a collection of members, and that collection's function, as a mere byproduct of its members behavior. Under reductionism, all things that contain other things, function merely as the sum of their parts. A machine functions not as its own thing, but as a byproduct of the parts making it up. It is not separate from its parts, instead it is equivalent, both in function and ontologically, to the sum of its parts. We can apply this same logic to Rational Standards and Values. Let us use the word Class instead of Set, now imagine the class of all Dogs. If all members of this class value chewing bones, even in slightly different ways, each value of each member shares something in common: the concept of “Chewing Bones” itself. If values are the sum of their parts, following this reductionist logic, then each value members have gets their value from its parts. Thus, each member shares the concept of Chewing Bones in common, and as the value of values is deduced from their parts, value should rationally be present in the concept of Chewing Bones itself. This shared concept should thus rationally be a value of the group. To say it another way, it would be irrational to not accept Chewing Bones as a value, as rationally it can be derived through reductionism. This allows us to define a shared Intrinsic Value, universal across some collection, where to act against that value, is to act against this collection as a standard of value from which we can measure actions. To reject the idea of Intrinsic Value is to act in contradiction with basic logical reductionism. To simply ignore the most rational and universal version of some value, is to contradict the idea that actions can be measured by any sort of rational standard, which is utmost irrational and incoherent. The best standards of value are thus the standards that are the most consistent, I.E. the most intrinsic. For example, the standard of "All judges argue based on assumption X" is more intrinsic and consistent than a more arbitrary standard like "My cousin argues based on assumption X". The latter standard would not be a good justification to appeal to some assumption X, while the first standard would not be perfect, but would be better. The best rational standard of value, or measurement, is the class of all sentient beings itself, as anything outside of this class cannot be judged on the basis of rationality. This makes the class, an Absolute Class. Another example of an Absolute Class is the class of all couches, which is the most rational standard of measuring what attributes are intrinsic of couches. This couch class cannot be used to judge the rationality or consistency of values, nor the rationality of actions, it can only be used to judge how intrinsic the attributes of some specific couch is. The Fulfillment of Interests as a shared concept, is an example of an utmost rational value, as it is intrinsic among all sentient beings, an Absolute Class. Therefore, based on all that has been said here, the Fulfillment of Interests relative to all sentient beings is the most rational standard with which to measure behavior and the consistency of values, and the rationality of actions. (7): Intrinsic Potato Theory Jon values eating potatoes driving a car, Jessie values eating potatoes at the beach, Jessica values eating potatoes driving a truck. Jon, Jessie, and Jessica all value potatoes. For Jon to not value potatoes themselves, is for them to not value “eating potatoes while driving a car” in and of itself; yet removing potatoes would make Jon value it less. Thus, eating potatoes must have value. To say that they only value “themselves eating potatoes” and not “eating potatoes” in and of itself, is wrong. This is because if we remove the reference to potatoes we get that they must value “themselves”, regardless of other factors. Yet the feeling of meaninglessness can exist, thus this is wrong. If we assume basic value reductionism, then values get their value from their parts. Potatoes are a part. Thus, the only consistent value here is the eating of potatoes itself, as an object. Therefore, it can be said that: “All beings value themselves performing actions that fulfill interests.” To remove the reference to yourself, is to give the statement: “All beings value the performing of actions that fulfill interests in general.” To remove the fulfillment of interests, is to give the statement: “All beings value themselves performing actions, in and of itself.” Clearly, the first statement is true to a greater extent than the second statement. The third statement is clearly false as a being cannot value themselves as an end in themselves, regardless of all else that gives life meaning, to an extent that is somehow the same as if they were also fulfilling interests. Yet if it isn’t YOU that itself grants all the value, and it isn’t the performing of actions itself that is the value, then assuming values can be reduced to their parts as all things can, there is only one conclusion: The fulfillment of interests for consistency’s sake, must rationally be valued in and of itself. So, rationally, you should act with reference to the value of the fulfillment of interests itself. (8): Justification Ethics Justification Ethics is a way of proving Yoggism via the claim that the normative value of Interests is implied by rational justification, because any argument that is a rational justification of normative force requires an appeal to the interests of whomever you are interacting with. The only exception is arguments that prove things purely rationally, as rationalism is presupposed by engagement with any argument. Any other kind of argument must appeal to Interests. The way this logic works, is that all interactions rationally ought to be justifiable deductively, meaning normative claims should be derivable. This is presupposed by rational discourse, but if it is true then interests are the only thing that can derive normative claims. Justification Ethics (Simplified) All rational justification of normative claims must appeal to Interests as the source of normative value, because: 1. To prove an action or interaction is rationally justifiable through deductive argument, premises based on arbitrary assumptions need not apply. 2. Premises based on simple truths will not derive normative claims. Thus, interactions ought to be rationally justifiable to others involved in the interaction, and that rational justification requires an appeal to the normative value of Interests, otherwise you forfeit all ability to justify normative force. You cannot prove someone ought to buy a washing machine, without appealing to the normative value of their interest in clean clothes. See 'Justification Ethics' for further details. This logic expanded derives the Fulfillment of Interests. —Logical Deduction via Absolute Classes— Finally, to fully disassemble Naive Egoism, we can use the following Logical Deduction: –Definitions: (Intrinsic Value): Something that is valued / acted upon in a way regardless of external factors to some extent; I.E. by most sentient beings in most circumstances, to a reasonable extent. If it is actually valued / acted upon by all sentient beings in all circumstances and all situations, it is intrinsic relative to the class of all sentient beings. Specific values such as individual preferences can give way to broad, all-encompassing values if the preference is intrinsically shared, especially among all beings. (Interest): Something that a sentient being’s behavior tends towards. An interest is Inherent if your behavior tends towards your goal regardless of external factors to some reasonable extent. (Absolute Class): An absolute class is a class where no greater class can be imagined that values and variables can be compared to or measured by, relative to the members of said class. (Rational Standards of Value): Actions and variables can be measured and compared, and rationally judged, relative to some standards of value, I.E. a set of rules or values. The more universal this standard, the least arbitrary and thus most consistent, all-encompassing, and most rational. An Absolute Class is the only utmost rational standard of value that can be defined by definition, as it is the only thing actions and variables can be compared to or measured by, relative to the members of the class. An action that is contradictory to what is utmost rational relative to an Absolute Class, is inconsistent with the only rational standard of value that can be defined relative to that specific class. Said another way, that action in contradicting the standard, would violate the concept of action comparison itself. This is based on the idea of Intrinsic Standards which is derived via Reductionism. –Premises: (P1): Rationally, you ought to fulfill your own interests in the most rational ways possible, relative to you acting in accordance with your own interests, which all are. (P2): Something that is acted upon by all sentient beings under all conditions, is a highly Intrinsic Value. (P3): Rationally, the recognition of Intrinsic Values is utmost logically consistent. (P4): Rationally, acting with reference to your recognitions, with reference to what is true, is most logical. (P5): The class of all sentient beings represent an Absolute Class, the only rational standard of value that can be defined relative to the class. (P6): A value or interest, like "I like mashed potatoes", can through reductionism be reduced to its parts, those parts being "Me", "Liking of mashed foods", "Liking of potatoes"; where each part is itself something held has a rationally necessary value, and the original value is the sum of its parts. (P7): From (Definition of "Intrinsic Value"): Intrinsic values can be defined relative to some large class of things. If something is held as a value or interest, or a value that is rational to act according to as well as possible, universally among the class of things, then that value is intrinsic to said class. (P8): Rationally, all actions and situations can be measured relative to some set of standards. Standards that are the least arbitrary are the most rational of standards to measure by, and can be referred to as specific values and interests. (P9): From (P6 + P7 + P8), An action that is contradictory to what is utmost rational relative to an Absolute Class, is itself a fundamentally irrational action as it is inconsistent with the only rational standard of value that can be defined relative to the class. The action violates the concept of rational comparison and measure itself. –Logic: (L1): From (P1), The utmost rational outcome relative to all sentient beings is the upholding of the fulfillment of existent interests of all sentient beings, non-contradiction with rational oughts. (L2): From (P5), The class of all sentient beings represent an Absolute Class. (L3): From (L1 + L2), The utmost rational outcome relative to the most rational standard of value is the maximization of the fulfillment of existent interests of all sentient beings. (L4): From (L3 + P9), An action that is contradictory to the utmost rational outcome relative to all sentient beings, is itself fundamentally irrational as it is inconsistent to the most rational standard of value definable. –Conclusion: From (L4 + L1), You ought to act in alignment with the value of the fulfillment of interests of all sentient beings. Therefore: It is utmost rational to uphold the fulfillment of existent interests of all sentient beings, across all possible reference frames; with priority to existent, rational, Inherent Interests. This is the Absolute Interest Conclusion. Priority should be given to rational Inherent Interests, as these are the most consistent of interests, and preservation and fulfillment of Inherent Interests will allow the most fulfillment of interests in general; protecting non-inherent interests may result in inherently frustrating behavior. It is also utmost rational to act in alignment with the inference of this conclusion, as to violate it is to act against what is rational relative to the most rational standard of value, which would be logically inconsistent. L4 also grants us something interesting, the Absolute Interest Principle, the principle that it is inconsistent and irrational, to act against or in contradiction with the utmost rational outcome, that which upholds the fulfillment of existent interests of all sentient beings. —The Absolute Interest Principle— The most rational outcome overall, relative to the Absolute Class of all sentient beings, is that which upholds the fulfillment of interests of all sentient beings, across all possible reference frames; with priority to existent, rational, Inherent Interests, as a value. Therefore, it is inconsistent and irrational, to act against or in contradiction with this most rational outcome, and it is irrational to act against others rational interests as an end in itself, and to act against the fulfillment of interests on small scales as well; as it is in contradiction with the only coherent rational standards of value. Value Reductionism Rational Outcomes

Interest Theory of Duty Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Interest Theory of Duty [Full Text] —The Interest Theory of Duty— Ethical Duty is a concept that, for the purpose of Yoggism, is separate from the ethical legality or rights-based examination of actions. Justification Ethics particularly examines what actions can be justified and what actions cannot. Estoppel Ethics does the same thing from a different angle. Both transcendental arguments imply the Anti-Abuse Principle (AAP) which claims intrinsic frustration of interests is illegitimate and defense against such is legitimate via estoppel. The question is though, what about inaction? Do there exist ethical obligations? If so, what are they? To answer this question we run into a problem. To gather that there exist actions you ought not perform, and actions others ought accept, we stipulate the existence of ethics itself as it pertains to argumentation and debate, as well as deliberation and the justification of self-defense, as well as how ethics is the way of consistently justifying who should win in a conflict over resources or a conflict of interests. When it comes to whether there are certain actions people ought to perform, where it is unethical to not perform the action, even if you are disconnected from the resulting consequences, we must stipulate duty into existence by saying that inaction requires some minimal justification as well. This stipulation can either be made an axiom, whereas we argue: "Relative to the existence of ethical duty, what is the least-arbitrary version of such duty given Justification Ethics?", or we could instead say that since true inaction does not exist and everyone so long as they are awake is acting in some way all the time, that there does exist some minimal and least-arbitrary justificatory burden placed upon those who see a child drowning in front of them and choose to start walking away, either way we get to the same conclusion under Yoggism, so we can continue. To a point, what does it even mean to ask whether duty exists? It is like asking whether ethics as a whole exists, or whether logic exists. The question itself may be meaningless in epistemological weight. —Ethical Duty as prescribed by Yoggism— We can use Yoggism to define and prescribe three layers of Ethical Duty. The zeroth layer of course isn't duty at all but rather just the Anti-Abuse Principle itself, generating negative obligations through rationality, obligations to not perform specific actions deemed unjustifiable by the frustration of interests intrinsic to the content of them. —The First Layer of Duty— We gather from the AAP that the ends always justify the means if no neutral party is both dragged into a situation and unjustifiably transgressed upon. Imagine the situation where someone has the opportunity to either buy five cookies for their friends or buy five cakes, and for some strange reason they are the same price. Assuming their friends have the same interest in a kilogram of cake that they do cookie, by weight, it makes sense to say the ends of more mass of food justifies buying five cakes instead of five cookies. Since nobody is being transgressed upon relative to the AAP, we can apply preference consequentialism and conclude buying five cakes is the better choice. This must not be confused with the idea that the ends justify the means when comparing who to hurt and help, however, nor does it imply it is okay to kill one random person to save five unrelated people. This is the first layer of duty, it is not standard obligation but rather a weighing of which action neutral to you helps others. Since the actions are neutral to your own interests, this is entirely consistent with strict Justification Ethics and doesn't require extra assumptions besides the recognition of interests as a value itself. —Forming actual Positive Obligations— The second layer of duty, the lowest and least-arbitrary version of positive obligation to take action to help others even if it might frustrate your own interests, aka the kind that requires the least assumptions and arbitrary stipulations while still qualifying as a legitimate recognition of duty, must be measured relative to interests as to measure it relative to any other standard would be decidedly more arbitrary. The reason for this is that Justification Ethics implies other standards require extra normative assumptions to make principled ethical claims of value, and that interests are the only thing that you can use to prove certain value judgements follow in a way that is other-regarding. As such, to postulate a principle such as "one ought to make hats for people as much as they can" would fail on two fronts. Firstly, that to perform as much as possible is to claim one must waste themselves away in a way that may frustrate their own interests, which requires a greater justificatory burden and/or epistemic cost in arbitrary stipulations to accept. Secondly, for the central goal of this wasting away to specifically be "making hats" is to appeal to an unprovable axiom for value, that "hats are the greatest thing to exist". Justification Ethics warns directly against this notion, showing that axioms cannot be used to prove something others ought accept, since they are definitionally unjustifiable. Instead, to form the least-arbitrary system of ethical duty, we must advance more fundamentally on both fronts. —The Second Layer of Duty— The second layer of Duty as prescribed by Yoggism is thus, the obligation to prevent others interests from being intrinsically frustrated as long as doing so does not disproportionately frustrate your interests and doesn't prevent fulfillment of such long-term. We can include in this layer, the recognition that certain actions may be unethical if duty is not assigned as a presupposition of the action. An example is if you have a job as a firefighter, if you come across a house burning down with a family inside, and decide to not risk your life to save them, you are in effect responsible for their death. This can also be true under strict Justification Ethics and doesn't necessarily require any semblance of ethical duty outside of obligations to not perform certain actions. Why would this be the case? The reason is that you being a firefighter means other people were not, it is the nature of society. If you refuse to help, the chance of them dying increases relative to their chances of dying if you were never a firefighter in the first place, as someone else would likely have taken your place, as well as your contribution to the bystander effect where one person neglecting to help makes others more likely to do the same, of course here you and your fellow firefighters are not only bystanders but in relation to each-other. We can then conclude that in the second layer of duty, you must help, and without duty, we can still conclude that you not helping implies unethicality by making your employment as a firefighter itself unethical, as you are acting negligent. -Ethical Duty Proportionality- It is disproportionate to say someone must get in the way of a knife to stop a paper cut, if doing so risks you getting a bigger cut, even if such cut isn't that bad. Such proportionality is required to avoid the problems from earlier. It is also disproportionate to say someone must sacrifice themselves to save someone else because that someone else is "too important", as that creates a utility monster problem that assumes without cause that your interests are ultimately subordinate to everyone else's, an extremely anti-individualist and anti-Yoggist stipulation. True proportionality is a threshold from whether the risk to you is much lower than the risk to the person you're acting to help, to whether the risk to you is high enough to seriously hurt you while only being naively proportional because the person you're helping is somehow "super important". Imagine you and your family see a drowning angel. Should you and your whole family be obligated to sacrifice themselves to save the angel? Is that proportional simply because it's an angel? The less arbitrary ethical duty, that requiring less epistemic cost, is that whether helping seriously harms your long-term interest fulfillment trumps whether the harm to you is proportional to them. Thus proportionality at this level cannot simply mean an arguably arbitrary comparison of harms, but also the absolute measure of the harm done to the person we claim is obligated. —Implications of Second-Layer Obligation— A classic philosophical conundrum is to imagine that you have a duty to help others. Must this imply you need to sell all of your possessions, and a kidney, to others, and need this imply an obligation to donate all of your savings for the sake of other people you will never meet? Does this make almost all people evil for not doing these things? The answer is that this absolutism requires extra normative assumptions and is merely stipulated. It decidedly represents a higher epistemic cost, a greater assumption, than the alternative. What is the alternative? Imagine you walk outside to find a sea of drowning children, thousands of them. Any you do not save will die, others are there and can help too, but it is impossible to save them all. Now imagine your bank account is hacked and someone begins draining money from it every minute, one hundred dollars every minute. How long should you spend saving children? Should you do nothing? Should you save 5 children? A dozen? Should you spend the rest of your life at this magic sea saving children? The Yoggist answer, the least-arbitrary answer, is to say you should probably save at least one, perhaps more depending on how much money you have, but you have no obligation to let all of your money disappear and spend the rest of your life there. This is the argument against the claim popularized by Peter Singer that all people are obligated to sell their possessions and donate as much money to charity as is possible, that even a sea of drowning children does not obviously obligate you to ruin your life to make a number of saved lives go up indefinitely. The Interest Theory of Duty, precisely this notion of proportionality and this Second Layer of Yoggist Duty, solves this problem. —The Third Layer of Duty - Self-Sacrificial Duty— What happens if terrorists trap an innocent man and you know with a 95% certainty that either you let them murder the innocent man or they will destroy multiple cities with stolen nuclear weapons? This implies a form of self-sacrificial duty, not only in the sense that it is justified to do something otherwise unethical to prevent a massive catastrophe, but also in the sense that one may be obligated to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. How could we possibly derive this by any means? The acceptance of obligation doesn't imply it directly, Justification Ethics definitely doesn't, this logic is inherently consequentialist in nature. It is an ends justify the means argument through and through. Clearly those consequences should be measured relative to the fulfillment of interests of course, granting something most close to preference utilitarianism for situations where the ends are bad enough, this idea is called Threshold Consequentialism and sometimes confusingly also referred to as Threshold Deontology or "deontology at the threshold", as you stay deontological (or rules-based) up until a critical point is reached. There is a way this third layer would seem to make sense though. Firstly the threshold nature of it is implied by least-arbitrarity. It would seem stipulative to simply say "you can kill ten random innocent people to save eleven others" just because bigger number, but to say "you cannot justify murder even if it saves millions of lives for certain because murder is wrong" feels just as stipulative, and relative to obligation that can frustrate interests it makes sense to say at a certain point this indeed can work. This has just been intuition though. Is there another way? —Threshold Consequentialism as a consequence of Argumentative Norms— To engage in argumentation surrounding ethics or otherwise is only possible if you are alive. To engage in argumentation and argue that one should never argue is a straightforward performative contradiction because you are doing the very thing you argue against. This doesn't actually imply what you're arguing for is wrong, but what it does mean is arguing that you should never argue as a normative claim based on the assumed normative evaluative authority of argumentation as a practice is contradictory and unjustifiable. To argue that one should never murder even if it causes everyone to stop arguing or more fundamentally causes everyone to stop being able to evaluate or recognize ethical claims at all, because everyone dies, does seem to run into a similar problem. If the situation ever arises where the choice really is either murder one person or everyone dies, the everyone dying consequence would seem to be impossible to argue for consistently because to claim it is normatively just to not murder the one person is effectively to claim it is normatively just to allow the consequence of everyone dying. This isn't the same thing as saying everyone should die, but it could be argued that it actually is, same as saying we should not control the weather at all implies there should be earthquakes. If it can be distilled down to everyone should die, because the consequences leading to that should happen, because the alternative should not, because the alternative is murder, then suddenly we reach a normative and performative contradiction. As explained before this becomes a logical contradiction in the argument itself. Thus, the situation's resolution perhaps can be justified based on argumentation. It doesn't make sense to claim such resolution is irrational outside of argumentation either, because that would imply conclusions made within argumentation are invalid outside of the activity. This betrays the very purpose of argumentation itself and renders the objection itself, if argued for, invalid outside of argumentation. —Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics is still Invalid— Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics posits that the Non-Aggression Principle and absolutist first-possessor private property norms are presupposed by engagement in argumentation, as norms constitutive of the activity, and thus to argue in opposition to the NAP is a performative contradiction. This reasoning feels suspiciously similar to the reasoning just described, but it is not. This argument is invalid because one can accept that argumentation is a peaceful endeavor without claiming the NAP as the defining ethical framework. The reason why is actually quite simple, the norms dictating how to properly decipher the truth of intellectual claims, are not logically equivalent to the norms dictating how we should resolve physical conflicts over resources. Hoppe's argument conflates two different notions of conflict, the conflict between ideas and claims, including claims of rightful use of property, and the conflict between the actual physical resources themselves. Who gets to use force against who is an intellectual claim. The use of the force itself is the physical action. Argumentation presupposes that peaceful means should be employed to evaluate the truth of intellectual claims on the use of force. That does not imply any constitutive property norms must also be employed in the physical actions done to distribute resources justly. This is the core category error of Argumentation Ethics, an error the previous argument does not exploit but rather avoids.

Interest Property Theory Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Interest Property Theory [Full Text] —Basic Property through Interests— Imagine you find a stick on the ground. You pick it up and play with it, but unknown to you, the stick is actually an incredibly rare kind of wood, that is extremely fragile, and then it breaks. A collector walks up to you and is furious because that was their stick, and it was worth a lot of money. Now imagine you find a stick on the ground, the stick does not belong to anyone, you pick it up and play with it, and it breaks. You walk away, and that's it. In the second circumstance, messing with the stick affected nobody else. More than that, if someone walked up to you and tried to take the stick from you, they would be frustrating against your interests. In the first circumstance, if the collector tried to take the stick from you, it would have been justified as your interest in playing with their stick would be an inherently frustrating interest, and thus interest transgression against them. In the second circumstance, you can do what you like with the stick as long as it affects nobody else, and nobody else can take the stick from you because that inherently frustrates against you. In this sense, your preferences are wrapped up in the stick, the stick has become a conduit of your interests themselves; the fulfillment of specific interests of yours are dependent on the state of the stick. Thus, relative to Interests as a value, while messing with the stick until it is abandoned, you have ownership over the stick. —Interest Property— The Lockean theory of property, asserts that individuals gain ownership of resources by mixing their labor with them. This matches up with Interests. If you build a birdhouse, from unowned wood, your preferences become wrapped up in, and dependant on, the birdhouse. If the birdhouse is destroyed, a whole set of rational interests you have in relation to the birdhouse, are all inherently frustrated. From this grants a basic right to Personal Property. This grants a justification for the idea that you own what you make, and are ethically justified in defending your own property, as you are simply defending the conduit of your rational interests. —Self-Ownership— Your Body and Mind are both also conduits of your rational interests. Your mind is the conduit of all of your preferences, of all kinds. In the sense described previously, your rational interests, and irrational interests, all preferences you have, are wrapped up in your mind, dependant on it. Your ability to fulfill most interests are wrapped up in your body. Thus, any attack on your body or mind, any frustrating against your interests relevant to your body or mind, any violation of your bodily autonomy, is an inherent frustration against your interests to an even greater extent than a violation against your personal property. This grants a basic sense of "Self-Ownership". Except, what does ownership mean exactly? —What Constitutes "Ownership"?— What does ownership mean exactly? People may own their bodies, their minds, and personal goods that are relevant inherently only to themselves; but in what way? What does it mean to 'own' something? --Absolutist View of Ownership-- Is ownership of some entity, the same thing as saying you can do whatever you want with that entity, so long as it does not violate other people's ownership rights? --Anti-Abuse Principle contradicts this Absolutism-- According to the Anti-Abuse Principle, inherent frustration against others interests, and enforcement of misaligned interests causing frustration, "Abuse", is illegitimate, based on the normative value of interests themselves. This contradicts the Absolutist View of Ownership, because if the basis of ownership is building a thing and using it, it is still possible to abuse your control over that thing, in a way that contradicts others interests, including their rational inherent interests. --Unsafe Food Example-- Imagine a simple example: A business that has a monopoly on food production. This business then decides to start using cancerous chemicals in the food, and rolls back their safety standards, for profits. The business does list their additional ingredients on the food, so customers can read the ingredients. Yet, even though the customers are able to be informed, even if they are, the business will likely recieve sales anyway, and consumers who want and buy the products, will do so even if they themselves would rather the business not use cancerous chemicals in the food. This is the free market at work, and nobody's property rights are being violated here. Yet, it is an inherent frustration against the consumer, done by the business. The business is in the wrong, since the fact that the consumers bought the product, doesn't mean they actually have an interest in cancerous food. It is that interest that is in-fact, being actively violated. How exactly a monopoly of this sort comes to be, is irrelevant to the fact that the business' decision to add cancerous ingredients to their food, against their customer's wishes, was still inherently frustrating against their customer's interests. —Abuse Violates Consent— This idea can be taken farther, obliterating the Absolutist View of Ownership. If someone goes to the store and buys apples, and the apples are contaminated, and the person gets sick and dies due to a lapse in safety protocol by the food producer, that is inherently frustrating against them, even if they were informed previously of the food producer's safety protocols. The reason for this, is that it violates Consent, and thus violates Interests. --Consent-- Consent is a continuous, preferably enthusiastic, explicit, and relevantly-informed, acceptance of an agreement, contract, or activity. --Getting sick from Contaminated Food is a violation of Consent-- Someone getting sick from apples and dying, still had their consent violated to some extent, because they did not consent to die, nor get sick, and they did not have a reasonable expectation that it would happen in the first place. Even if they were technically informed, in the real world people informed or no will buy sometimes risky products if no better options are available. Reluctantly buying a product due to a lack of options, is not consent. The person who got sick and died from contamination, did not consent to eating contaminated food. They did not explicitly agree, they did not give enthusiastic consent, they did not accept "you might die" as a term. None of that is what they "signed up for". --Abuse violates Consent as it is Anti-Interest-- The problem with Abuse, of the enforcement of misaligned interests, either through poor safety protocols being pushed on the public against their interests, or through lay-offs of workers for profit-driven reasons when alternatives to lay-offs are available, or through changes in contracts and ongoing agreements; is that it is contrary to the interests of those involved, as a side-effect of the misalignment of interests, and contrary to what the people involved actually signed up for. Thus, abuse as defined and agreements made through interest misalignment, violates Consent. —Ownership is Consent— If abuse, agreements made through interest misalignment, and inherent frustration, violate the consent of those affected, this also comes into conflict with the point of Ownership. If you own yourself, and a store sells food that went through poor safety protocols, and thus violates your consent, then suddenly that is in violation of your ownership of yourself. This follows, because ownership of yourself means some protection over the conduit of interests that is your Body and Mind; and that protection requires consent. --Loosely Voluntary is not the same as Consent-- The Absolutist View of Ownership thus creates a problem, what counts as a violation of another's ownership rights? It depends on how you define it in the first place. Absolutist Property Rights are usually argued for on behalf of the idea that any agreement made voluntarily is valid, where "voluntary" simply means "the person trying to get you to do something isn't threatening you with violence as an aggressor to make you do it". This is not the same as Consent. What that description of voluntary is really describing, is a 'loosely voluntary' exchange that can include anything from being coerced into doing someone by the threat of eviction, or loss of some deal, misalignment of interests, inherent frustration, etc. --Ownership is Consent Based-- That is not the same as an enthusiastic, mutual agreement, enthusiastic meaning all sides of a deal agree with most terms of the contract, and that the process of deciding the terms is fair. This has Interest Alignment written all over it, so Absolutist Property Rights in the sense of 'loosely voluntary' transaction, is fundamentally Anti-Consent and Anti-Interests. Therefore, if people really own their own bodies and minds, they should own them with respect to the ownership of their own interests and preferences, in a way enforced by rule of Consent. —Conclusion— If Ownership, relative to Interests, should be based on Consent, then what determines Property Ownership? An answer can be arrived at in a way consistent with what has been said, through Justification Ethics. Justification Ethics, the assertion that actions should be rationally justifiable based on the relevant interests of those involved in an ongoing interaction, paraphrased here, allows the pinpointing of the circumstance where the rational justification of exclusive property is valid, and where it is not. The Anti-Abuse Principle states that interference with non-abusive fulfillment of interests is illegitimate. This can be used to craft the following theory: —Interest Property Theory— Definition of Ownership: A right to exclusive, non-abusive control over a particular object or entity, due to the right over interests the entity acts as a conduit of. You own your Interests, and Preferences, through the normative value of Interests. You thus also own your Body and Mind, as they are the primary conduit of your interests. If you build, craft, or otherwise create something, or possess and use something, your interests get wrapped up in your new property, and a set of your interests become dependant on your property. Your property is a conduit to your interests, granting you the right to use your property as you wish, as long as your use is non-abusive and does not inherently frustrate against the interests of others. Interference in the non-abusive use of your property, thus constitutes inherent frustration or abuse against you and your interests. Abuse Violates Consent

Omnilibertarian Rule Theory Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Omnilibertarian Rule Theory [Full Text] —Omnilibertarian Rule Theory— Institutions capable of systematically frustrating the inherent interests of those subject to them, are held to the same justificatory standards regardless of whether they are public or private. Imagine the State forcibly prevented you from criticizing them. What if instead of actually hurting you for criticizing them, they exile you from your country. Does that make it better? The answer is a clean no. Now the fundamental question is, why limit this to the State? Any institution can act similarly to a State, or a government more generally, with or without the use of direct force. Relative to Yoggism, relative to whether actions can be justified relative to others interests, and relative to the Anti-Abuse Principle, that actions inherently frustrating against inherent interests, we can explain the intuitions behind the idea that censorship, discrimination, and unfair treatment more broadly is bad, beyond just enforcement by government. —What does it mean to be Free?— What does it mean to be free? This is usually demonstrated by asking, is a person starving in a desert free? They are merely free to wander and die. What if a person is born into a large company town owned by a crazy landlord who forces you to follow arbitrary rules for his own benefit, and if you break the rules you lose your home and are exiled? This is a clear example of a non-State entity acting as a local government over a group of people, and as such this institution has the ability to threaten their freedom. Under Yoggism, this distinction between the State acting upon you, and private entities doing so, may as well not exist. Actions that frustrate against interests, enforcing interest misalignment, is illegitimate and cannot be justified by any measure. This is true regardless of who is doing it. Ethical evaluation is actor-neutral in this sense. —The Basic Idea— True individual freedom can only be gained if people have proportionate control over how they are treated by institutions that have the capacity to threaten their own interests. Enforcement of interest misalignment, where people who's interests are not aligned with yours enforce their interests at the expense and disrespect of yours, are illegitimate. Thus, certain things like freedom from being censored for criticism, are to some extent rendered universal across domains and institutions, private or otherwise. To be banned from a social media platform for criticizing that platform, or criticizing the government, may be entirely illegitimate. To be singled out and treated unfairly, is illegitimate. Discrimination in public spaces, like restaurants or stores, is illegitimate and unjustifiable. Being arbitrarily prevented from self-expression, where your actions aren't inherently frustrating against anyone, may also be illegitimate, regardless of if such abuse is done under the guise of employment, tenant-ship, government, paid service, or other such management. —Why the NAP need not apply— Here the right-libertarian Rothbardist sites the Non-Aggression Principle as the way to distinguish between coercive institutions, I.E. the State, and voluntary institutions, I.E. private companies. The right-libertarian's claim is that the leader and owner of a company town has the right to all property in the town, and you being born there does not change that. He has no right to hurt you or enslave you, but he does have the right to kick you out at his own discretion. There are two big problems with this. The first problem is that actions taken against people living in an abusive company town cannot actually be justified, not relative to interests, and not relative to anything else. They are enforcement of interest misalignment and represent in a Stirnerian sense, spooks against their own self-interest. As explained in Justification Ethics, such abuse and inherent frustration against their interests are illegitimate. The only argument here is an attempt to somehow prove the town owner has an exclusive right over the town, in an absolute sense. This cannot be shown in a way anyone else is rationally required to accept. The second problem is that this position is fundamentally anti-freedom, and this can be proven if we assume the meaning of freedom has anything to do with a subject's set of possible actions whatsoever. —Self-Sovereign Prescription of Agency— Imagine you are in a cage, there are armed guards that will shoot you if you try to escape. Everyone would agree here that you are not free, even though you technically have the freedom to attempt an escape, but since the consequence of such an action will result in death, it's not a real choice. Now imagine all else is equal, but the guards are actually non-sentient robots, their creator long dead. If you try to escape, you still die. Are you free? Again the answer is a clear no. Yet the libertarian is forced to concede that you are actually fully free, because no person is aggressing against you. You are not being coerced into doing anything according to them. This makes sense to them, as they view freedom in a way that is anti-individualist, in the sense that it has nothing to do with the actual individual's ability to fulfill their own self-interest. Instead, to them, freedom is based on what everyone else is doing. Not what you can do. —Yoggism's Implications— Justification Ethics as previously mentioned, shows some actions cannot be justified relative to interests, because some actions are inherently interest frustrating. This implies the Anti-Abuse Principle, which as previously mentioned is the idea that actions inherently frustrating to inherent interests, are illegitimate, and that enforcement of interest misalignment is the root of illegitimacy. Inherent interests as used here and elsewhere refer to interests that act as a conduit for other interests, where an interest's frustration causes frustration of other interests as an interdependence. This is the concept of interest entanglement. Interest misalignment is the most relevant term here, and it can be demonstrated in the example of the landlord owner of a company town. His interests and your interests are entirely misaligned, and he is enforcing his interests upon you, in the sense that your interests are actively frustrated for the benefit of his. This enforcement of misaligned interests against your own, in a Stirnerian sense, represents a spook against your own self-interest and autonomy. —Conclusion of Omniliberty— The conclusion here is simple. That which is bad, is bad regardless of the entity executing it. Censorship, unfair treatment, discrimination, and similar abuse, as well as things like murder and stealing, are illegitimate whether done by a State or a private entity. Large tech companies trying to shut people down, or enforcing their own rules unfairly, is abuse. A libertarian could claim that abuse of authority and banning people from platforms who didn't violate rules, is actually a contract violation, but merely adding exceptions and extra rules stating they "have final discretion and can act against you for any reason" doesn't make it not abuse. This is what the "omni" in omnilibertarianism means, liberty in all domains. Fairness in all rules. —Rothbardianism is Collectivism— Murray Rothbard is the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism. Rothbardian libertarians claim to be individualist, but this is a farcity. To be held under interest misalignment as described, to be 'functionally enslaved' to the Lord of a company town, is to be controlled by a larger entity, to be treated as nothing more than a pawn in a larger system beyond your own control. This is the same environment of the feared authoritarian state of affairs libertarians rightly fear. To reject this by arguing the town may be owned by a single individual, so it isn't a collective, is to concede that real world authoritarian countries are not "collectivist" in this sense, because they are dictatorships and not actually ran by the people. —True Individualism— The point is not necessarily whose interests are being enforced over yours, it is whether you are treated as merely a member of a collective, or an individual. Collectives more broadly represent simply groups of people controlled by the people in the group, this is not a bad thing in and of itself. Indeed in the real world, if people in the group control the group, there is no enforcement of interest misalignment because there is no misalignment to begin with. Worker-owned cooperatives, credit unions, housing cooperatives, are all collectivist in this weaker sense, while still representing their own separate groups, and indeed the members of these 'collectives' are treated as individuals with power, as they gain the ability to grant themselves such. In a more abusive power structure, this is not the case, and that is what makes it "collectivist" in the authoritarian sense. True individualism is the rejection of this kind of spook against your own interests, the denial that such hierarchy is valid, and the empowerment of individuals to have control of their own lives; all through freedom from enforcement of interest misalignment.

Fetal Rights and Abortion Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Ethics of Fetal Rights and Abortion [Full Text] —The Ethics of Abortion— Abortion is the termination of pregnancy, the killing and removal of reproductive tissue, i.e. a developing fetus or embryo within a uterus, to end a pregnancy. Abortion can be performed in different ways and at different stages in a pregnancy. During the first few stages of pregnancy, most commonly the pills mifepristone, misoprostol are used to induce a miscarriage and medical abortion, by causing the fetus or embryo to detach from the uterus. During middle and later stages of pregnancy, the dilation and evacuation methods are often used, the fetus is removed via suction and other specialized instruments, sometimes special forceps are used to remove the fetus in multiple pieces rather than all at once, along with the placenta and other tissue. Sometimes instead, medications can be given to cause the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy, somewhat like inducing labor. Abortions in a well-regulated medical setting are usually very safe for the mother, almost all abortions are done during much earlier stages of pregnancy, later-term abortions are often done to protect the life of the mother or as the result of serious and fatal birth defects. —Pro-Life Arguments based on Semantics— Some condemn these various practices as murder, there are various arguments in favor of this position. The first one is that a fetus or developing embryo is 'human' because it will develop into a human baby, not an elephant or pig or anything else. Therefore, abortion is the killing of human life, which is definitionally murder. Another argument is that humans have human rights, thus the fetus as being human, must inherit the same rights. Another is that after the moment an egg is fertilized in the womb, it gains unique DNA which makes it a unique human individual, thus inheriting certain rights. The problem with these arguments against abortion is they use the word "human" incorrectly. A pile of skin cells is human, a cancerous tumor is human and has unique DNA to an extent, conjoined twins have the same DNA but are different people. Being human and being "a human" are two different things. When someone says something is "a human", linguistically this implicitly refers to a person, which is why saying "all humans have human rights" is intuitively true. As such, to say something being human makes it a human is begging the question, you are assuming the fetus has personhood or qualifies as a human being with rights, before you even start talking. "Human being" is another flawed term, used most of the time NOT to mean "any human organism that is alive" but rather a person that is human, or a living, sentient organism that belongs to the human species. If someone already does not accept that any organism with human DNA is automatically a person deserving of rights, these arguments will not suffice. —The Pro-Life Argument of Potential— Besides relying on semantics to give an intuitive point, some pro-life arguments focus on the potential of the fetus to becoming a person in the future. The argument is roughly, imagine you're baking a cake. You get all the ingredients together, mix it, and put it in the oven. Someone comes by, opens the oven, and smashes the dough with their boot. You say, "You destroyed my cake!". They respond, "It wasn't a cake yet!". You then respond "Maybe, but it was gonna be!". The point is clear. The cake-in-progress, if left alone in the oven, would become an actual fully-fledged cake, to destroy it prevents that cake from actualizing. To kill a fetus then is to prevent that future person from ever coming to be. What if someone went back in time and gave your mother an abortion? Would that not be your demise? To kill someone at all, is bad because it deprives them of their future experiences. To kill a fetus deprives a future person of their experiences. If the fetus isn't sentient yet, the future person is deprived of ALL of their experiences, this could imply that it is grossly worse than killing an already sentient fetus, or even a newborn baby, at least by this logic. This reasoning would imply abortion is horrendously bad. —Sentience and The Coma Patient— One of the key arguments in favor of the position that abortion is ethically permissible, is that if the fetus is not sentient yet then there is no personhood because there is no preference at all, so nobody is actually being harmed or can be said to be losing out as a result of the abortion. This would imply abortion before the fetus is sentient is, in an ideal case, ethically equivalent to choosing not to conceive in the first place. The pro-life argument against this position is the coma patient example. Imagine a person stuck in a coma, not sentient, they are instead stuck in a dreamless sleep. They have a chance of waking up in a month. Is it ethically permissible to kill them before they wake up? The intuitive answer is no, and indeed they were referred to as a person at the outset, but if they are not sentient right now then there is no preference, nobody is being harmed. Therefore the pro-life person argues that the pro-choice position is wrong, because it denies coma patients a right to life and justifies murder of people in a dreamless sleep. —The Rock Machine Dilemma - Why Potential leads to Absurdity— There is a massive problem with this argument against the pro-choice position, however. Imagine a machine that can turn rocks into people and people into rocks. When a person becomes a rock they enter a dreamless sleep, not conscious at all. If the rock gets turned back into a person, they are the same person they were before. Clearly, if someone is turned into a rock and the rock then broken into bits, that is murder. The person has lost consciousness and can no longer be revived. If a rock is turned into a person and then back into a rock again, and then broken to bits, this is again murder because they were a person and then lost consciousness only to never come back. The question is this, what if a rock that has never been a person is broken into bits? Does the mere existence and usability of this machine somehow imply ordinary rocks have moral value? Does it imply it is unethical or murderous to destroy a rock that has never had sentience before? The pro-life position of potentiality implies the answer is yes, as the rock has the potential to become a person and by destroying it that person never comes to be and "is deprived of their future experiences". The obvious problem with this is that it is absurd, how can someone who never existed in any way be deprived of anything? Well, how can they? Not only does this dilemma break the potentiality argument, it also solves the coma patient argument. A coma patient being killed before they can wake up is analogous to a rock that used to be a person being destroyed, it is murder because you are preventing that person from ever coming back into existence as a conscious, sentient person. —The Asymmetry of Creating vs. Depriving— Before the 20th week of pregnancy, at least before the 18th week, modern science as of the year 2026 (12,026 Holocene Calendar), suggests that such fetuses are not sentient. The above examples and intuition that it is not wrong to not conceive, show an asymmetry between creating and not creating new beings, and depriving existing beings of experiences. To create new beings is fine, to not create new beings is neutral and not a deprivation. To deprive existing beings of things is bad. To take a being and make it not a being anymore, and then make it so its being-hood (or personhood) can never be brought back, is bad. Thus similar to the rock example, to kill a non-sentient fetus is not murder because the potential of it to become a future person, doesn't actually matter for the same reason the rocks that were never persons, don't suddenly gain value just because it became possible to turn them into people. This can be true while it is also true that it is wrong to kill a coma patient even if they are not currently sentient, because doing so prevents that person from ever being brought back. —Gradual Rock Machine— One objection to the rock machine dilemma is to say that it is not analogous to pregnancy, because the machine acts on a binary. The rock goes from not sentient at all, to an entirely sentient person. This is a fair criticism, the real point of the dilemma is to show that potential alone does not suffice for an ethical claim against someone. Let us imagine instead, a machine that you can load a rock in, and have it slowly be transformed into a person over the course of 9 months. Let's also assume that in the first 3 months at least, the rock stays non-sentient. In this scenario, there is no actual reason to say that potential comes into play. To destroy a rock in the first 3 months still does nothing to anyone, and it isn't meaningfully different from just breaking a rock next to a river that hasn't started the transformation at all. What about destroying a rock one day into the transformation? What about one hour? There is no measure whatsoever of the difference. What if the rock in the original problem is sitting on a conveyor belt slowly moving to the machine that will turn it into a person? Does this suddenly make that specific rock but no other, unethical to break or even remove from the belt? It also leads to another absurd conclusion. Imagine for the sake of argument that we figure out how to engineer a sentient robot, a robot that when the appropriate parts are manufactured and added to its body it gains consciousness. You have the blueprint to this machine, you begin building it. You're a few days away from adding the necessary parts to give it consciousness when you change your mind and decide to stop building it. Is that murder? Is this unethical to stop half way through, even if the robot never gained consciousness? This would seem to imply a regular toaster could be unethical to break because it "could be made sentient with a few extra parts". This is nonsense. —"Every Sperm is Sacred"— One possible argument against a lot of this is that fetal sentience is a gradual process, that consciousness is on a spectrum and a fetus before even 18 weeks may still have some very low form of subjective experience. The problem with this insistence is that any subjective experience would toil in compare to the extremely complex consciousness, emotion, thoughts and feelings, and preferences, of a pig, goat, sheep, camel, alligator, or any other developed animal. As explained already, potential alone need not suffice for an argument here. To say a fetus is valuable because it has potential AND it is already to some extent sentient, thus it is being deprived of future experiences, runs into yet another even worse problem. Why must conception be the start of this experience? Egg and sperm cells are both already alive, and a sperm cell on route to an already alive egg cell moving into position is a scenario where both egg and sperm are both alive and have the potential to develop into a person. Just as an already developing fetus in the womb may not be sentient but still alive and perhaps have some low level of experience, though unproven, has potential. Therefore the logical implication is the "every sperm is sacred" absurdity, and as an easy strongman of this argument, if a sperm cell is on route to an egg cell and an implanted IUD, a birth control device, blocks it, that is then murder. If a blastocyst is prevented from implanting into the uterine wall that is also murder. To use a condom during intercourse is also murder for similar reasons. Not all sperm have the potential, only a small few can succeed, but if those few have a definite potential and are stopped, that is thus murder. This is clearly another absurdity, and it implies that a machine that can turn plants into people makes all plants everywhere suddenly have rights. This is again nonsense. —The Yoggist's Solution— Under Yoggism, interests can only be frustrated if they exist or have existed, or are guaranteed to exist. For someone to poison their fetus with the intention of eventually giving birth to a child with a defect, the act of poisoning the fetus does indeed frustrate the interests of the future child. This is true even though the fetus itself may not have value nor interests. To kill a non-sentient fetus though, may be ethically neutral, as there are no interests present or future being frustrated, as the future child never comes to be in the first place. Similarly with the rock examples, the same logic works well. A rock does not have interests and thus has no value intrinsic to it, but if a rock used to be a person then destroying the rock frustrates the interests of that person because it prevents them from ever being revived. If a rock has the potential to become a person in the future though, it frustrates no actual interests to destroy the rock. To instead slightly damage the rock, and then turn it into a person though, would be to frustrate the interests of the resulting person if the person suffers as a result of the damage to the rock. As such, our asymmetry from earlier stands strong under Yoggism, to create new beings is fine but not an obligation, to deprive existing beings is a frustration of their interests. To start building a robot with the potential to gain consciousness once a few extra parts are added, and then change your mind, is also not murder for the same reasons. As such, we conclude from all sides including Yoggism, that abortion before the 20th week, and certainly before the 18th week, should be ethically permissible. —Bodily Autonomy— Under Yoggism, Justification Ethics dictates actions that effect interests have a justificatory burden. To resolve a given conflict, you identify the actor and non-actor or active party and passive party. This distinction of action and inaction then allows you to apply the justificatory standard to the actor, to check if it violates the Anti-Abuse Principle, that being whether the actions are intrinsically frustrating to the other party's interests. The question is, what happens if abortion is performed against a fetus that is already sentient? This is more clearly the killing of a human being, of a person, but it is also a bodily autonomy problem because forcefully restricting such abortion prevents someone from acting on their own body and from stopping oneself from giving their nutrients to someone else without their consent. The question here is who began the conflict? Because whoever did not begin the conflict has the right to defend themselves from it. The clear answer here is that a non-sentient fetus could not have began a conflict, could not have acted against a mother because it is not a moral agent, normative claims cannot be prescribed relative to it at all. But, an already sentient fetus is initiating conflict against the mother, by taking and using her nutrients without consent in the even where the mother wants the abortion. In the event where the mother does not want the abortion and someone forces it on her, that would just be murderous. For the mother to instead have an abortion in a later term, on her own accord, is for her to refuse to give nutrients to another being. The fetus intrinsically frustrated her interests by taking nutrients, the mother is merely stopping that. —A Conclusion of Evictionism— Two questions remain. One, how can the mother have a right over her nutrients if the sentient fetus or baby is not her body? Two, what counts as proportionate defense? The answer to the first question is simple. The fetus is not her body but is taking nutrients from her body without her consent. The fetus not knowing what it is doing does not matter for any self-defense claim because bodily autonomy under Yoggism simply has nothing to do with intention and everything to do with what is necessary to prevent frustration of inherent interests over your own body. The mother thus should have the right to, at any time, revoke permission and capacity to take her nutrients, by whatever means is necessary to protect that right. The answer to the second question is where the problem starts. If the fetus is the initiator of the conflict, the one who begins acting, taking nutrients, and the mother is merely defending her right over those nutrients, the question is what counts as proportionate defense. The real answer is essentially, philosophical evictionism, the idea that abortion may be permissible in later stages but only if necessary to remove it; in later stages at least, the fetus ought be removed in the least-lethal way possible. —A Short Aside— If a person were to purposefully get pregnant with the goal of having a late-term abortion, and to repeat this over and over, this is arguably murderous even if in the moment they may possess a right to have the abortion. The reason under Yoggism is that regardless of their right to do something with their body at the end of the process, to put the entire performance into action is unethical and inherently frustrates the interests of the baby to the highest degree. Imagine a scenario where someone runs around and pulls out people's kidneys and livers only to hook their own blood supply to those people. Does this person have the right to disconnect themselves even if it results in the victim's deaths? It is irrelevant to whether the overall action is ethical or not. The overall action of doing this is still unethical even if we conclude that once already connected and the victim is already arranged into a state where disconnection means death, the perpetrator does still possess the right to disconnect. Ignoring this edge-case, the conclusion below as it applies to the act of getting the abortion in the moment, follows. —The Conclusion on Abortion— Therefore, abortion is ethically permissible before the 20th week or at least the 18th week, for any reason by any means necessary to remove the fetus, and if the fetus truly is not sentient then the manner of removal is ethically irrelevant as long as the person getting the abortion consents to it. Later-term abortions are only ethical if they are performed in a manner necessary to safely remove the fetus, in the least-lethal way possible assuming the fetus is sentient, and if the person getting the abortion does not consent to the operation then it is murderous and unethical. —The Anti-Ethic of Anti-Abortion— Is it ethically permissible to consensually engage in unprotected sex knowing there is a risk of pregnancy if you intend to have an abortion? If you're sure to have an abortion before at least the 18th week, the answer is yes. What if you know it is likely that for whatever reason you will be unable to have an abortion until after the 20th week or even later? Now the answer actually follows as no, this is not ethically permissible. Again, you may possess the right to have an abortion anyway, but to engage in unprotected sex under this context is overall an unethical action as it knowingly risks the inherent frustration of interests of a baby yet to be developed. If you are only engaging in protected safe sex while the risk does still exist but is small, but you also know that local laws coercively prevent you from accessing an abortion early on forcing you to go through other means to acquire the abortion, then the guilt may instead lie with the lawmakers for forcibly preventing others from providing you with the service early on. This case especially, presents the illegality of abortions before the 20th week as potentially murderous as they make late-term abortions obtained in unsafe ways more likely, due to the arduous measures and time commitments that are undertaken to access abortion as a result of this illegality. Under Yoggism, we thus must conclude that attempts to ban or severely limit access to early-term abortion, represents a murderous practice; and that those who enforce the law, police forces, judicial systems, and the justice system of any respective nation-state or governmental entity at large who attempt to severely limit access to such abortion must be resisted with force if necessary to prevent the violation of bodily and sexual autonomy and the death of unborn children.

Retaliatory Law Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Retaliatory Law [Full Text] —The Anti-Abuse Principle's Immediate Implications— The Anti-Abuse Principle implies actions that are inherently frustrating to others' interests, and enforce interest subordination, are illegitimate. This does not provide clearance to inherently frustrate someone else's interests, using them and their interests as a means to some greater good outcome. The Anti-Abuse Principle also states that actions constituting proportional defense against inherently frustrating (abusive) actions, are legitimate. —Grounding Self-Defense via Estoppel— To ground the proportionate defense part of the Anti-Abuse Principle, the basis of all hypothetical enforcement of Yoggist principles, we can apply the estoppel argument. The estoppel argument is a philosophical tool that works as follows. Imagine Bob attacks Alice. Alice defends herself from Bob through similar, proportionate means. Under Yoggism, Bob then claims Alice's action is illegitimate as it is inherently frustrating against Bob. The problem is, Bob's claim is self-contradictory with the very position that led to his situation in the first place. For Bob to claim Alice's action is illegitimate, is a self-contradiction as his own action earlier was illegitimate by his own logic. —Grounding Self-Defense via the Action Spectrum— For Bob to claim Alice's action is illegitimate, is also directly impossible because of Justification Ethics' implied action spectrum. In-order to define a particular action as inherently frustrating and uniquely unjustified against another action, requires a recognition of the distinction between inaction and action in a given situation, or more specifically recognize the non-actor and the true actor. To solve a conflict, one must imply the action spectrum; the idea that different actions have differing justificatory burden relative to how much interference they give. Now imagine someone going out of their way to starve themselves. Is this inaction? True inaction may not even exist, as explained in Inherent Interest Theory, as purposefully doing nothing is to starve oneself to death, which is ultimately an action requiring you to resist your own body. As such, an action of murder is definitely an action, while an action of self-defense actually has less of a justificatory burden in this sense because someone refusing to defend themselves is not inaction but an unnatural and highly invasive action upon and against oneself, requiring the intense resistance against one's own body telling them to fight. In the situation where Bob is attacking Alice, Alice's interest in self-defense is less inherently frustrating than Bob's interest in murder, while Bob's interest and action is definitively unjustifiable, while also Alice acting on self-defense is less of an inherent frustration and less interferring than Bob's actions. Thus, Alice is the one in the right. —Lethal Retaliation— If someone breaks into your house and tries to destroy all of your stuff and then tries to burn down your house, is lethal force justified to defend what is yours? The answer is proportionate force is justifiable. If lethal force becomes proportionate, then it is justifiable. It can be argued that the transgressor could tell you explicitly, "You can leave, I won't stop you. If you try to stop me from burning down your house though, I will kill you." If they say this, assuming you know they are being truthful, you now know that any resistance will be met with lethal force by them. Since force against them to some degree is already justifiable defense of your interests, if they turn to lethal force in retaliation, then since that lethal force is unjustifiable this situation becomes the same as one where they used lethal force from the beginning. For this reason, since them using lethal force is foreseeable anyway, it is thus justifiable for you to engage in lethal force before they do. If you have reasonable foresight that they will use lethal force if threatened in any way, then you have a right to cut to the chase, since your interference with them is already justifiable. This logic is also consistent with the estoppel and action spectrum arguments. A right to the use of defensive lethal force, when proportionate, is guaranteed. —Proportionate Defense is based on Necessity— Someone may argue it is disproportionate to enforce action against inherent frustration that does not violate bodily autonomy, for example. Imagine someone is underpaying workers or discriminating in hiring and service unjustifiably, enforcing regulations and civil rights statutes to stop them is disproportionate force because you are using force against someone who isn't, that is a fundamental difference between categories of harm and is thus disproportionate. This standard of proportionality is the idea that force is only proportional if the force is at the same level, same category of harm, of what injustice is being thwarted. This standard immediately breaks, because if there is a disabled person stuck in a wheelchair and all they have is a gun, they may be unable to defend themselves or their property without going from yelling to full on lethal force. By the category of harm logic, they may as well not own their property since jumping to lethal force is "disproportionate". Justification Ethics solves this problem. Since all harm becomes subcategories of inherent interest frustration, there is no "category claim" that can be made because these categories simply don't exist in the way they've been explained. Imagine being slapped in the face vs. being fired from your job for no reason. Both are unjustifiable given Justification Ethics and an appeal to the value of interests, yet being fired from your job may be much worse than simply being slapped in the face. Yet, in terms of harm categories, being slapped in the face is a direct violation of bodily autonomy, while being fired is not. This grants a form of proportionality based in the necessity of the use of force, and here even Libertarians will agree. The disabled person owns their property, and all that is necessary to enforce what is right is permitted. Thus, enforcement of regulations against unfair treatment, discrimination, and other non-violent yet anti-interest abusive activity is actually justifiable under Justification Ethics. Following this reasoning we can craft the following definitions and the defense side of the Anti-Abuse Principle. —Definitions— Interest - What a sentient being's behavior tends towards; sentient preferences. Interest Fulfillment - A being's interest being fulfilled or their preferences respected. Interest Frustration - The violation or contradiction of a being's interest. Good - An action that is interest fulfilling and is not inherently frustrating to any interests. Right - An action that is interest fulfilling, and not inherently frustrating with the exception of if it constitutes defense against abuse (unjustified action). Judgeable - An action that results in the minimally inconsistent outcome relative to Interests as a value, measured by whether the action is 'right' interest-wise, or if the action is rationally integral to the structures that preserve interest fulfillment fundamentally. Bad - An action that is frustrating to interests while any fulfillment is limited to inherently frustrating interests. Evil - An action that is inherently frustrating to interests and is frustrating to the very structures that preserve interest fulfillment. Moral - An action that is overall respectful towards others' interests. Immoral - An action that is overall disrespectful towards others' interests. Ethical - An action consistent with the Anti-Abuse Principle. Unethical - An action inconsistent with the AAP. Judgeable - An action consistent with the Anti-Abuse Principle or existentially protective in the sense of protecting the structure of interests themselves. Entirely Unjustifiable - An action inconsistent with the AAP while being immoral, and not being existentially protective, or being diminishing to the structure of interests. —The Anti-Abuse Principle (AAP)— Actions that are intrinsically frustrating to another's non-abusive fulfillment of interests, or inherently subordinate another's interests, constitute abuse, and are thus illegitimate. Actions that proportionately defend against abuse, or inhibit conduct that is inherently frustrating of interests, are legitimate insofar as they constitute self-defense.

Solving the Non-Identity Problem Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Solving the Non-Identity Problem [Full Text] —Solving the Non-Identity Problem— The Non-Identity Problem is a philosophical problem posited by the philosopher Derek Parfit. A version of this argument goes as follows: Imagine a mother poisons her child, causing the child to live with a disability. This is clearly bad, harm has been caused to the child. Now imagine instead, a mother poisons herself, and then decides to conceive a child. The child ends up living with a disability. This is what the mother intended. This also is intuitively, clearly bad. The question is, in the second example, was the child really wronged? —The Problem— Imagine a mother who has a strange condition where if she has a child the child will end up with a disability, having to spend their life in a wheelchair. Now say the condition is temporary, and if the mother waits a month, the condition will go away and she can safely conceive a child. Imagine the mother is selfish and wants attention, and as such she wants a disabled child. She decides to go out of her way to conceive a child early, to guarantee disability. Here, the child's life is still worth living, but they would never go back in time to stop their mother because that would make them never have existed. If the mother waited a month before conceiving, the child wouldn't end up without a disability, they simply would never have existed. Thus, if the child hadn't been poisoned, the child would never have existed. Assuming the child's life after being born is worth living, the child would never wish this alternative upon them. —What it Implies— Therefore, how can we condemn the mother's actions against the child, if those actions are actually the thing that allowed the child themself to exist? In a way, the child involved is better off than if the decision that caused them a disability was not made, because if that decision was not made, if the mother had not poisoned herself, the child wouldn't have ever existed. So, how can we conclude the child was wronged? 1. If something is bad, it must be bad for someone. 2. Something cannot be bad for someone without making them worse off. 3. Cases like the mother's choice are bad. These three statements cannot all be true at the same time, even though they all appear true. —Ways of Looking at the Problem— One can accept #1 as false, by arguing that people should choose the outcome of the highest overall quality of life. Thus, the mother's choice is bad, because it causes a worse outcome overall relative to quality of life. Derek Parfit makes a claim using this called The Same Number Quality Claim: "If in either of two possible outcomes the same number of people would ever live, it would be worse if those who live are worse off, or have a lower quality of life, than those who would have lived." There is a big problem with this though, it only really works in relation to creating new people if both outcomes create the same number of people. For example imagine you plan to have children. You only have so many resources at your disposal, so if you have one or two children, they will have a very high quality of life on average. If you instead choose to have six children, they won't have as high a quality of life. If we simply take an aggregate of "life quality" however that is measured though, it's reasonable that the six children overall represent more "life quality", or utility, than the two. Thus.. you are obligated to have as many children as possible? This doesn't seem right. Should we maximize quality of life for individuals, or overall? If the latter, how does having kids not become an obligation onto itself? —The Repugnant Conclusion— This kind of thinking leads to another problem. Imagine two populations. Society A, with 1 billion happy people. Now imagine Society B has 9 billion people who's lives are actually pretty terrible, the people are not happy much at all, only barely worth living. The conclusion is that Society B is better than Society A because it has so many more people. If we reject this by arguing average well-being is what matters, then you're instead arguing that it is wrong to bring into being happy people, even when doing so hurts no-one, if you bring them into being in a society that's a bit happier than them. That doesn't sound good either. —The Yoggist Solution— If we apply Justification Ethics here, it solves the problem. Let's look once more at these three statements: 1. If something is bad, it must be bad for someone. 2. Something cannot be bad for someone without making them worse off. 3. Cases like the mother's choice are bad. As previously mentioned, one of these statements should be false. Yoggism implies Statement 2 is wrong. This is for a simple reason, the mother giving birth to a child is an action, and if the mother poisons herself or chooses to conceive before some condition subsides, this action indisputably frustrates the child's inherent interests. Harm does not require making someone comparatively worse off than some alternative possible life, harm consists in unjustifiably frustrating the interests of a person. The child being disabled is a frustration against their interests, and the mother choosing to conceive early is an inherent frustration against these interests. No discussion of whether that frustration is necessary for the specific child to exist, is necessary here. Justification Ethics is clear, the action cannot be justified. The Repugnant Conclusion can be explained in a similar way. There is no absolute obligation to create new interests, Justification Ethics only implies an obligation to not frustrate interests. Taking an irrespective view of time, future interests only matter if they actually end up existing. If the mother chose to wait a month before conceiving, it cannot be said that she frustrated the child's interests by not giving birth to them, because said interests would simply never exist. If instead she decides to conceive early, she is retroactively frustrating interests that will exist in the future. Beings that never exist, cannot be harmed. —Yoggism and the Repugnant Conclusion— Yoggism distinguishes between creating interests and frustrating interests. Failing to create a person does not frustrate anyone's interests, because no subject of those interests exists or will exist by definition. Creating a person creates interests that subsequently deserve consideration. Frustrating those interests requires justification. This asymmetry prevents the Repugnant Conclusion, as there is no standing obligation to maximize the number of technically worthwhile lives, as interests that never exist possess no normative force. —The Repugnant Omnipotent— Imagine again two worlds, one with 1 billion people in prosperity, who love their lives, and another with 9 billion people in extreme poverty, but their lives still have some value to them. Now imagine you are forced to simply delete one of the worlds. Which one do you choose? The obvious choice is to delete the world with the fewest people. Justification Ethics implies this because destroying the second world is even more unjustifiable, as more individuals are having their inherent interests frustrated. When looking at the Repugnant Conclusion, and the two worlds / societies, the question of which society is better, is ill-defined. As an individual, you want Society A. When it comes to which is worse to destroy, the answer is Society B. The Repugnant Conclusion is more about the difference between existent interests vs. non-existent interests, than measurements of Utility. There is a difference between choosing to save one of two sets, one of which giving greater Utility, and choosing what to bring into existence. —Depletion as Policy— These examples show that Yoggism can also solve why it is wrong to enact policies involving rapid depletion of resources that eventually harm future people. The non-identity problem style argument is this: Imagine a society with billions of people. They rely on some key resource, say oil, to survive and thrive and to keep their economy growing. There are two policies we can enact. The first policy very carefully budgets the use of this scarce resource, ensuring slow but stable growth. The second policy causes immense and quick depletion of the scarce resource, causing very fast growth before slowing down later after a century. The second policy is such that the current generation of people will benefit the most in contrast to the first policy, though later generations beyond their lifetimes will suffer. Since we are making a policy choice right now though, depending on our choice, that choice is bound to have a snowball effect resulting in the later generations being completely separate sets of people, different people will end up being born in the future in either scenario. Thus, if we choose the second policy and quickly deplete our resources, we help our own generation, and can we really say we harm the future generation if otherwise they simply wouldn't exist and a different set of people would take their place? Again Yoggism comes in to explain. It doesn't matter if the harm done to them is responsible for them existing, their interests are still being frustrated and that is bad. It is not a frustration of their interests to choose the first policy however, even if that results in them never having existed. This is because if they never exist then their interests don't exist either, no normative claims can be binding on parties that do not and never will exist. As such, the first policy harms no-one and instead fulfills interests of future generations that end up existing, while the second policy causes frustration of the interests of future generations.

Inherent Interest Theory Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Inherent Interest Theory [Full Text] —Inherent Interest Theory— Some actions are closer to being inaction relative to interests. Some actions require more of a justificatory burden than others. Some actions are inherently frustrating to interests. Some interests are more inherent than others. Some actions and interests represent a spook against interest fulfillment that cannot be justified. This is the basis of how to solve conflicts under Justification Ethics. --A Definition of Inherent Interest-- Inherentness is a spectrum used to directly compare interests. An interest is more inherent than another if the given interest is entangled with other interests, or acts as a conduit for other interests regardless of external factors; in a way the second interest does not, or to a higher extent. You can also say such an interest is held by a sentient being as an end in itself, an intrinsic interest. For example, an interest in not having food taken away, can in most circumstances be a very inherent interest, as it acts as a conduit for an interest in not dying; which itself is a conduit for all other interests. --More Details-- When we say "an interest acts as a conduit for other interests regardless of external factors" what is meant is that the acting as a conduit is intrinsic to the interest, and remains true even if external conditions change, to a relevant and reasonable extent. That 'extent change' is the spectrum of inherentness, some interests are more intrinsically foundational to other interests than others. --Inherent Frustration-- Interests can be ends in themselves, intrinsic to a person, or act as conduits for other interests. Some actions can be frustrating in a way where the frustration is similarly an end in itself. If an action frustrates an interest in a way where the frustration occurs regardless of external factors to a reasonable or relevant extent, that action can be said to be inherently frustrating. For example, the difference between eating a sandwich at a public cafeteria that someone else wanted, and taking and eating a sandwich out of someone's hands after they had already picked it up. In the second scenario, this frustration is more inherent than in the first. To measure whether an action is inherently frustrating, simply ask whether the frustration is intrinsic to the content of the action. Acting according to an interest in "nobody else wearing a blue shirt" is very different from an interest in "wearing a red shirt myself". —How Inherent Interests solve Conflicts— Imagine someone is outside of your house and is dancing weirdly on the sidewalk. Not too close to your house to disturb your yard, not making much noise, either. They just.. look weird, and you can see them being weird out of your window. Imagine you have an interest in them not doing that. What should you do? A. To forcibly stop the person from doing what they want. B. To close your window so them dancing stops getting on your nerves. The answer is that, all things being equal, their interest in dancing is more inherent than your interest in them not dancing; because their interest in dancing is merely an extension of non-abusive autonomy. Their interest in autonomy, which their dancing is entangled with, is much more intrinsic to all of their other interests than your interest in them not dancing is to yours. Meanwhile, your interest against them dancing is an inherently frustrating interest. It is in a sense, an anti-interest, and it is the one requiring justification. Therefore, their interest is more inherent. Since them dancing doesn't interfere with your interests to anywhere near the same extent your interest in stopping them from dancing interferes with them, acts against them are unjustifiable. It can then also be said that the action of dancing is not inherently subordinating of other's interests, nor is it inherently frustrating against anyone. The act of stopping someone from dancing though, is inherently frustrating. —Interest Entanglement— As explained earlier, an interest in dancing is entangled with an interest in autonomy to put it simply, and thus dancing is an inherent interest. This is a concept called Interest Entanglement, and it represents how interests can be entangled with other interests by manner of causal correlation. The clearest examples include an interest in not dying being entangled with almost all interests of an individual, an interest in driving a car being entangled with the fulfillment of many other interests that require it, an interest in being able to speak freely being entangled with general autonomy, truth, and an interest in voicing your own interests, etc. The importance of interest entanglement is derived from the idea that Justification Ethics fails to determine strict inaction without defining an Action Spectrum, which must rank interests by how them being frustrated constitutes interference. To argue such entanglement is meaningless because it lies on a spectrum, and thus clear distinctions cannot be defined and are meaningless, is a Loki's Wager Fallacy, a type of continuum fallacy. –Deriving IIT - Unsolved Conflict gives a Contradiction– An appeal to the normative value of interests of those involved in an interaction is presupposed by the justification of deriving a conclusion with normative ethical force. Such justification must prove a normative conclusion where the target of the justification is rationally required to accept the conclusion. Accepting the conclusion requires the premises of the justification to never contradict each-other, otherwise logical normative force breaks down because the truth of premises breaks down or logic itself breaks down. The way normal Justification Ethics works is if you have one person who is performing an action that frustrates the others interests, that action can be unjustifiable as it cannot be justified relative to interests, since the action is inherently frustrating. A situation where two people are both frustrating against one another, and both performing actions against one another, makes this naive view stop working, as they are both acting in a way that cannot be directly justified to the other. This is a serious problem, but also helps prove that a weighing of interests in some form is logically required, as it's lack allows the derivation of contradictory ethical claims. So from a proof by contradiction, someone must be right and someone must be wrong. Otherwise, both people's actions seem unjustifiable, which makes justification collapse. –Deriving IIT - The Action Inaction Distinction– The reason for this issue is that when two people are both acting against each-other, you can't call one action unjustified and thus solve the conflict, because in a way both actions cannot be justified directly, since both actions are counter to the others interests. The action inaction distinction in Justification Ethics is held up by the basis that action requiring justification is presupposed by the existence of ethics itself, while inaction requiring justification is simply an assumption, thus creating an asymmetry used to define the transgressor. Here we run into a deeper problem that again solves a larger one. Imagine a clear example of inaction, a child is drowning in a river. Someone sees that, and just keeps walking. Again it seems as if inaction requiring justification cannot be proven in and of itself, yet someone seeing a child in trouble and simply walking away, isn't actually absolute inaction; because they choose to continue walking, and walking is an action. Is inaction an even more limited category then? Not necessarily. A rephrasing of action can solve this issue. –Deriving IIT - Action Spectrum– Some claims have more or less epistemic cost than other claims, upon others. Such claims are normative and ethical claims that affect others can only be derived via an appeal to interests, through Justification Ethics. The distinction of action and inaction, of weighing between claims, is required to prevent the derivation of contradictory ethical claims, and to prevent the collapse of justification entirely in the case of conflicts. These claims must be weighed relative to interests, as interests are the only thing that can derive these sorts of normative ethical claims. Thus via a proof by contradiction, we derive an action spectrum, of actions weighed by being more or less interfering to interests. Thus actions more inherently frustrating to interests, where the frustration of interests is intrinsic to the content of the action itself, imply stronger claims that require a more justificatory burden, in comparison to what relatively constitutes inaction. Different types of action, that are more interfering with others, result in their justification implying more epistemically heavy claims, and thus requires more justificatory burden, as presupposed by the existence of normative value. In-fact, true inaction may not even exist, as purposefully doing absolutely nothing is to starve oneself to death, and that is ultimately an action requiring you to resist your own body. In this sense, eating food is less of an action than going out of your way to starve yourself, which should imply it has less of a justificatory burden. This has all sorts of implications that will not be explored here, but keep it in mind. –Deriving IIT - Rejection of the Action Spectrum is to imply a Contradiction– To reject this action spectrum is thus to deny the existence of most inaction, as well as prevent the measuring of differing justificatory burdens. It also fundamentally messes up the neutrality logic of Justification Ethics, whereas an action neutral to someone else's fulfillment of their interests can be justified to them despite its neutrality, via an appeal to Justification Ethics itself. To reject the idea that the claims upon others implied by the justification of actions, are not of differing epistemic cost, is a rejection of the action spectrum. Without an action spectrum, neutrality doesn't exist as measurable but rather all action becomes unjustifiable towards someone, even if just a little bit, resulting in all ethical claims failing. This contradicts Justification Ethics and contradicts the existence of normative value itself, and again results in the ability to prove contradictory ethical claims. Thus, we can derive the action spectrum via a proof by contradiction. –Deriving IIT - Inherent Interests– We have established that an action spectrum is necessary to prevent the derivation of contradictory claims, and that this spectrum ultimately deals in interest frustration. How can we directly compare interests themselves? Imagine the difference between someone stopping you from blinking once. Now imagine someone permanently blinding you. The 2nd action is more 'frustrative', more of an interfering action, more inherently frustrating, because the blinding frustrates an interest in seeing that is itself entangled in more overall interest fulfillment. As said before, a way to resolve conflict, a way to weigh interests, is logically required to avoid contradiction. It can be done with the recognition of inherent interests and the action spectrum. This then further explains how to measure actions on the action spectrum. Some actions require more justificatory burden than others, and interests that act as a conduit for other interests, Inherent Interests, require more of a justificatory burden to act against. –Deriving IIT - Thus, Inherent Interest Theory– Thus, Justification Ethics measure of inaction and neutrality imply the Action Spectrum, which imply actions that are more or less interfering towards interests, as the correct measure of justificatory burden. This action spectrum then implies inherently frustrating actions are less neutral, and interests that act as a conduit for other interests, when frustrated, represents more of an interference and thus requires more of a justificatory burden. This is the logic explaining why inherent interests and the inherentness spectrum solves conflicts. Justification Ethics -> Conflict Contradiction -> Action Spectrum -> Interest Entanglement From this, we can then derive the following theorem: —Inherent Conflict Theorem— In a conflict, defined as when two or more people's interests contradict each-other in a way that prevents fulfillment of one or more interests, the resolution that grants the most inherent interests priority in a way consistent with Justification Ethics, applies. Actions more intrinsically interfering with interests require justification over actions closer to inaction that are more intrinsically neutral to interests relative to the content of the action itself. This resolution can be further reasoned out by who's interests are more inherent, and whether self defense logic applies. Specifically, if someone is frustrating someone else's inherent interests, and their behavior's frustration is intrinsic to the content of the action itself, then their behavior is subject to Retaliatory Law; meaning that proportionate resistance to their frustration is legitimate. Through this can be derived and applied, the Anti-Abuse Principle. —Inherent Interest Spectrum and Action Inaction— Inherentness of Interests is thus on a spectrum, of highly relative interests, "I'm personally disgusted by seeing people wear purple hats", and highly inherent interests, "I don't want to be eaten alive by a giant frog". This spectrum is measured based on whether a given interest acts as a conduit of other interests, such as how an interest may relate to basic autonomy which then relates to the protection of all other non-abusive interests. Action is also thus on a spectrum, of highly interfering actions, "Shooting with a gun", and highly inactive actions, "Walking on the sidewalk past someone". The latter is not inherently frustrating. —A Misuse of Inherent Interests— Imagine this argument: "You cannot regulate a business, even if the business' activity is abusive towards its consumers! Because, the regulation is itself an inherent frustration upon the business, and such frustration is done in defense of consumer's interests that are less inherent!" This argument can be summed up as the following: "Consumer's interests in better products are less inherent of an interest than a business owner's interest in not wanting to be threatened with legal force." Given the logic laid out in support of Inherent Interests this seems correct, and appears to support Libertarian Anarcho-Capitalism and the Non-Aggression Principle. This intuition is wrong though, because this argument and this conclusion contradict themselves. Imagine someone breaks into your house and threatens to burn your house to the ground. If necessary, can you use lethal force to defend your house from the person? What if the person tries to non-lethally assault you? According to this logic, you actually cannot, as the aggressor's inherent interest in not dying is more inherent than your interests in both your house and your body. —The Contradiction with the Non-Aggression Principle— This presents an immediate Catch-22 against Absolutist Property Rights. Your interest in your house and body is an inherent interest, but if inherent interests work as described then the aggressor’s interest in not dying is still more inherent, and thus appears to take priority. If we argue against this by saying that the aggressor is invalidating their own inherent interests by threatening your house, then suddenly it's also true that the business owner is invalidating their own inherent interests when applicable, by acting in an inherently frustrating fashion. To be clear, this invalidation is not tied to responsibility, but rather raw causal relationships. If a drunk guy wandered into your house and started burning down your house, the logic still stands. Ironically this sounds even more like libertarianism, yet it contradicts it if Interests are granted Normative Value. Therefore, if you CAN defend your property with lethal force, that implies an invalidation of inherent interests caused by acting unethically, which then implies abusive behavior can be met with lethal force when proportionate, in contradiction with absolutist property rights. This would mean the boss actually can be forcibly stopped from laying off people unfairly, as the boss' behavior is inherently frustrating and thus proportionate resistance is validated, as their own inherent interests in not being resisted is invalidated. If instead the boss cannot be forcibly stopped because his inherent interest in not having force used against him is more inherent than an interest in not being laid off, then suddenly defending property with lethal force is also illegitimate, as the aggressor’s inherent interest in not dying is more inherent than your interest in your own house not being burned down. Therefore, either way, absolutist property rights don’t make sense. The one way out of this mess is to say that the aggressor invalidates his own interest in not dying by trying to kill you in a way that is inconsistent with Interests. And so, any proportionate means to defend rational interests is valid. This answer fixes both problems and allow both lethal defense of property (when necessary), and defense against abusive contracts, in the way that aligns with the Defense and Retaliatory Law Principles laid out previously. —Deriving Inherent Interest Theory from Justification Ethics— –Premises– (P1): Justification Ethics requires normative ethical conclusions to derive their normative force through an appeal to the interests of those involved, such that differences in how those interests are affected constitute differences in the normative force of the conclusions. (P2): Different claims can have different epistemic costs, such that the epistemic cost and corresponding justificatory burden of a claim varies according to differences in how the interests through which its normative force is derived are affected. (P3): The justification of an intentional action toward another person makes a normative claim concerning the interests affected by that action. (P4): A strict distinction between action and inaction cannot determine differing justificatory burdens, because behavior that appears to be inaction can consist of continued or alternative action. (P5): If differences in epistemic cost are denied, there is no basis for distinguishing stronger from weaker justificatory burdens, causing normative justification itself to collapse. (P6): The degree to which an action interferes with the fulfillment of interests determines how those interests are affected by the action. (P7): Interests can be more or less affected by an action, and an action can inherently frustrate an interest rather than merely be neutral toward it; when an interest is entangled with the fulfillment of other interests, frustrating it also interferes with the fulfillment of those interests. –Logic– (L1): From (P1 + P2), differences in how the interests through which a claim derives its normative force are affected constitute corresponding differences in the epistemic cost and justificatory burden of that claim. (L2): From (P3 + L1), the epistemic cost and justificatory burden of an action's justification vary according to differences in how the interests affected by that action are affected. (L3): From (P6 + L2), differences in the degree to which an action interferes with the fulfillment of interests constitute corresponding differences in the epistemic cost and justificatory burden of the action's justification. (L4): From (P4 + L3), the relevant differences in epistemic cost and justificatory burden concern the degree to which actions interfere with the fulfillment of interests rather than a strict action/inaction distinction. (L5): From (P5 + L4), differences in epistemic cost and justificatory burden must be preserved as distinctions within normative justification. (L6): From (P7 + L5), inherent frustration constitutes interference with the fulfillment of an interest, and where that interest is entangled with the fulfillment of other interests, that interference extends to those interests. (L7): From (L3 + L6), actions that inherently frustrate interests entangled with the fulfillment of other interests produce a greater degree of interference with the fulfillment of interests than actions whose interference does not extend through such entanglement. (L8): From (L3 + L7), actions that produce a greater degree of interference with the fulfillment of interests, through inherent frustration of interests, and frustration of interests entangled with other interests, carry a correspondingly greater epistemic cost and justificatory burden. –Conclusion– From (L8): Therefore, Justification Ethics implies an Action Spectrum in which actions are distinguished according to the degree of interference produced by their inherent frustration of interests, such that actions producing greater interference through the frustration of more deeply entangled interests carry a greater epistemic cost and justificatory burden. Such interests are, by definition, Inherent Interests. Therefore, Justification Ethics implies Inherent Interest Theory. —Defense and Retaliatory Law Principles— --Basic Recap of Self-Defense-- As explained before, valuing Rational Interests can only mean the right to defend rational interests from irrational transgressions. To have the right over your interests, and to not have the right to defend your interests through proportionate means, is a contradiction. If the idea that Interests form a right to Property, where certain objects and environments can act as a conduit of your interests, where attacks against personal property is an act of inherent frustration against your interests, this also implies a right to proportionate self-defense of your body, mind, and property, your stuff, belongings, your home; by any means necessary to protect interest fulfillment. --Proportionate Force and Lethal Retaliation-- Rational Interests win out over Irrational Interests, this comes from the assumption of Normative Rationalism. If someone breaks into your house and tries to destroy all of your stuff and then tries to burn down your house, is lethal force justified to defend what is yours? The answer is proportionate force is justifiable. If lethal force becomes proportionate, then it is justifiable. It can be argued that the transgressor could tell you explicitly, "You can leave, I won't stop you. If you try to stop me from burning down your house though, I will kill you." If they say this, assuming you know they are being truthful, you now know that any resistance will be met with lethal force by them. Since force against them to some degree is already justifiable defense of your interests, if they turn to lethal force in retaliation, then since that lethal force is unjustifiable this situation becomes the same as one where they used lethal force from the beginning. For this reason, since them using lethal force is foreseeable anyway, it is thus justifiable for you to engage in lethal force before they do. If you have reasonable foresight that they will use lethal force if threatened in any way, then you have a right to cut to the chase, since your interference with them is already justifiable. —Retaliatory Law— Based on this reasoning, this then justifies a limited use of justifiable force by government and courts. If a court argues you are inherently frustrating against others to such a degree that it must be stopped, and you try to refuse their justifiable demands, then under Yoggism they have the right to use proportionate force to prevent your transgression. If you then resist further with lethal force, your resistance becomes an inherent frustration against them and unjustifiable use of force, to which whoever is enforcing demands against you can then defend themselves with their own lethal force. To be clear, this logic behind enforcement of justified rules immediately fails if said rules are unethical or unjustifiable in and of themselves. In a democratic society, this logic will also fail if rules are contrary to the interests of the public, aka decided undemocratically or in a way not representative of the citizens of some community.